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The Oxford Dictionary describes honour as “high respect, glory; credit, reputation, good name”, but also as “adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct”.
Honour isn’t an easy concept to understand. The word is used in a variety of ways, making it difficult to define how honour is gained, how it is kept and how it is lost.
You can ‘honour your word’, you can be honourably (or dishonourably) discharged from an army, you can bring honour or dishonour to your family, you can even fight for your honour. But what exactly is it that you’d be fighting for?
The concept of honour exists in the codes of behaviour of organisations ranging from the military to organised-crime families, so it’s clear that honour doesn’t relate to one specific set of morals or values.
Instead, honour can apply to any code of behaviour of any group or society. Rather than being specific to one set of morals or rules, honour is achieved by having integrity — that is, being true to the morals and rules you have agreed to live by, regardless of what they are.
Integrity is the cornerstone of honour and means doing as you say you will do or, in a broader sense, behaving in a way that matches the expectations that you have created in others of you.
The expectations others have as to how you should behave will come partly from what you say you will or should do, and also how you expect others to behave towards you.
Expectations others have of your behaviour will also be based on the basic moral standards of your community. For example, it is generally expected that we fulfil the promises we make, that we don’t take what is not ours and that we apologise when we’re mistaken. These are basic codes of behaviour and failing to follow them can result in a loss of integrity and therefore, dishonour.
Japan’s Samurai class were heavily bound by their sense of honour, which still holds relevance to us today. In Inazo Nitobe’s book, Bushido: The Warrior’s Code, he writes “nothing clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes honour; but that it lies in each acting well his part”. In old Japan, terms such as na (name), men-moku (countenance) and guai-bun (outside bearing) were used in reference to honour. These words all have a sense of the image you portray to others, or how others perceive you. Especially from an Eastern point of view, dishonour is basically the same as losing face, or being shamed.
According to Nitobe, shame comes when the integrity of one’s name is undermined. In that sense, shame can be seen as the opposite of honour, which comes from integrity and respect.
In his book, Nitobe talks of the old Japanese tales of Samurai who would kill those who insulted them, to preserve the integrity of their name and therefore their honour. However, Nitobe says such stories were basically invented to warn common people against doing things to undermine a Samurai’s good name. In fact, the extreme importance of upholding their names was “strongly counter-balanced by preaching magnanimity [noble generosity] and patience”. In other words, while defending one’s name was necessary, meeting other moral obligations was seen as more important in maintaining honour. This is still true today.
To determine whether your actions are honourable, ask yourself: will my actions be respected? Have I maintained my integrity, by being true to the moral obligations I’ve accepted, and true to my own words? In the end, it will be decided by the feeling in your gut as much as the reactions of others.
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