Delphic Maxim 22: Pursue honour
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
22. Pursue honour
From the outset, let’s set aside the ridiculous way ‘honour’ gets thrown around today (at least far as ‘honours’ go). Australia went through a period of high farce a few years back when our Prime Minister at the time tried to re-introduce Knights and Dames to the system of Australian Honours. This sort of charade — obsessed with titles — is not what honour is about, and nor should it be.
At its core though, these honours give us an insight into what is actually meant by the term ‘honour’ — it’s about a person’s relationship to their society. So when we award things like the Order of Australia, we are recognising a person’s selflessness — their contribution to the broader social enterprise. Most of the time, these recognitions are genuinely commendable, though always it’s important to remember that any public performance of recognition is necessarily political (we’re just lucky that the vast majority of people who receive Australian Honours are authentically good people).
We can’t all be awarded ‘honours’ in this sense, in the main because there’s only so much to hand out on a given Australia Day, and people generally only live for 80 odd years. So how do we pursue honour? This is where that more basic principle of the idea of ‘honour’ comes into play.
You see, honour actually has very little to do with the self. People who claim that ‘honour’ has been taken or they must ‘defend their honour’ are hearkening to some melodramatic version of honour they’ve probably seen in a movie somewhere. Honour is a function of the relationship between an individual and their society. It’s not a coincidence that a society as saturated in the idea of heroic virtue as the ancient Greeks would place such an emphasis on the idea of honour. Virtues — at least in the Aristotelian sense — are embedded in a specific context, and specific social role within that context. Not everybody is a hero like Achilles, for whom the pursuit of honour demands the avenging of his cousin Patroclus’ death. Others might find honour in their contribution to the war effort in Troy.
Interestingly, it’s my view that Achilles violates a whole lot of precepts about honourable conduct (it’s part of what makes him such a jerk right through The Iliad). He sulks at Agamemnon’s dishonourable conduct as king. He oversteps the bounds of honour after he kills Hector in revenge — dragging his body around the walls of Troy in front of Hector’s wife and father. Achilles honour is only restored when he respects the wishes of King Priam who begs for the return of Hector’s body. Priam is reduced to begging, shedding his honour as King of Troy, and yet in that inverted social relation, he gains honour — he recognises his place as just a man, even when he occupies the position of king.
Honour today feels like a dated word — it’s too grand and dramatic for the daily grind in late-modern capitalist Australia. But there’s room for a revival in daily honour: it lies in the pursuit of goodness and virtue in your social conduct. What does honour look like in retail, for example? There is of course respect for customers (as frustrating as rude people might make that experience), but also in bringing joy, solidarity and collegiality to the work place (joining your union is an honourable thing to do!)
But just as there is honour in work, there is honour in custom. How do we behave honourably as a shopper in a retail store? We recognise that someone is there, a person just like us, occupying a position in society, and helping us get through our day. So we can be polite, we can also show solidarity, we can smile and please remember that we’re all part of one great social enterprise. Of course you don’t necessarily need to think that while you’re buying a pack of eggs — just remember to smile and be polite!
Honour accrues with respect for one another, and in our efforts to improve the lot of those around us. That’s definitely worthy of pursuit.
