Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed. OTHELLO, III.iii
The most interesting sentence in the most recent issue of In Character magazine probably belongs to Marietta Jaeger Lane ("Might I suggest that what happened to my precious child would certainly qualify as an unforgivable act?"), but the finest paragraphs are Theodore Dalrymple’s. The good doctor on the perverse ritual of the public apology :
. . . The neat division of populations into victims and perpetrators, oppressed and oppressors, sinners and saints, that public apologies for long-past wrongs both imply and strengthen means that all sense of human tragedy is lost. The situation of the Aborigines in Australia, however, was and is tragic, and would still be tragic even had the settlers behaved from the first in the best possible or morally ideal fashion. (It is not in human nature that they should have done so, least of all in a rough-and-ready and very young frontier society.)Here at Helen’s House of Unconventional Ethics, we specialize in obsolete systems of morality, and, while my favorite ethical antique is probably purity, honor runs a close second. Why does no man speak of his "good name" anymore? Why has honor been reduced to (in the words of Bertram Wyatt-Brown) "a resistance to cheating on exams, the holding of doors for ladies, [and] a quaint prickliness about insults?" Why has honor been superseded by conscience, and shame by guilt?
At one time, a man probably felt most morally responsible for his own actions. He was adjudged (and judged himself) good or bad by how he conducted himself toward those in his immediate circle. From its center rippled circles of ever-decreasing moral concern, of which he was also increasingly ignorant. Now, however, it is the other way round. Under the influence of the media of mass communication and the spread of sociological ways of thinking, a man is most likely to judge himself and others by the opinions he and they hold on political, social, and economic questions that are far distant from his immediate circle. A man may be an irresponsible father, but that is more than compensated for by his deep concern about global warming, or foreign policy, or the food situation in Africa.
The German chancellor, Mrs. Merkel, spoke in the Knesset recently of her shame at what Germany had done: this was the correct word to use, and precisely the right sentiment for a German who shared no part of the responsibility for what had happened. Pride in the German musical tradition; shame for what Germans had done in the 1930’s and 40’s.
Well, "why" is the least interesting question; of course it’s individualism. In Liberalism with Honor (well reviewed here by Ryan Holston), Sharon Krause tries very hard to imagine what honor culture might look like in a liberal democracy, but she keeps her honor as a scholar without quite winning the argument. There is simply no comparison between preserving the honor of my family, nationality, or class and preserving my honor as a human being; the latter concept hardly makes sense. The whole advantage of honor over conscience is that, while most men are willing to sacrifice their own reputations for the objects of their desire, few are willing to sacrifice their nation’s, or their daughters’. (Example: I might be willing to risk the moral hazard of torturing an enemy terrorist, but I won’t risk America’s soul as quickly as I’ll risk my own.) I know what it looks like to disgrace my family’s name; do I know what it looks like to disgrace the human race’s? I can imagine the public acts that might be necessary to restore America’s honor; how would a man even begin to go about restoring humanity’s?
This is not a post in favor of shame culture. (If it were, I’d confine myself two sentences for brevity’s sake: one, guilt, unlike shame, is something a man can be proud of ; two, there can be no humility without humiliation.) The only thing I want to point out is that, if like Dalrymple you do want to preserve shame-based public apologies rather than guilt-based ones, it will be necessary to take tribal loyalties seriously—family, country, class, etc. A man whose only loyalties are to the Good, the True, and the Human is, in the most literal sense, shameless; he has no party’s name to uphold, nor any public’s judgment to defer to.
Come to think of it, I could have made that point in two sentences: first, patriotism is glorified brand loyalty but there’s nothing wrong with that ; second, this deceptively flippant remark of Oscar Wilde’s—"I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue and white china."
