A NEED THAT CAN'T BE FILLED:

On Our Honor: a review of Liberalism with Honor by Sharon R. Krause (Ryan Holston, Policy Review)

The language of honor is not well received today. Honor invokes aristocratic images of privilege and inherited status that appear to affront our democratic ideal of equality. In her recent work, Liberalism With Honor, Harvard professor Sharon Krause tries to rescue the concept for liberal democracy. Krause recalls Tocqueville's observation that while honor does bear some inherent tensions with democratic culture, the belief that it is obsolete comes from an incomplete understanding of its nature. Honor is variable, according to Tocqueville, and tends to adapt and serve the unique identities of different regimes. Krause explains that honor has deep roots in human nature, in our capacities for courage, pride, principled ambition, duty to self, and the desire for self-respect and public distinction. Therefore, while honor did appear as a prominent feature of the old regime, this need not imply its necessary kinship with that society. On the contrary, she argues, the advent of democracy has brought with it a new form of honor which incorporates the modern ideal of equal dignity.

In democratic society, this ideal, expressed through civil and political institutions that respect our equal status, replaces the fixed "honor" or privilege of the old regime. The honor of the new regime speaks to a quality of character, not an inherited status. This new form of honor engages capacities of our human nature in actions that must earn distinction from others. Honor, in this sense, aims to achieve and actually vindicates the ideal of equal dignity. And although the new regime supports equal rights and opportunities, the new form of honor exhibits in such rare and extraordinary actions that it is likely to be achieved by only a few.

But this rarity and honor's diminished prominence in democratic society do not make it any less potent. Its limited acts can have lasting impact. As Krause defines it, honor always includes recognition by others, a code of principles, and the ambitious desire to live up to that code and to be recognized for it. The ambition identified here is self-regarding, which is consistent with the pervasive self-interest in liberal society. Honor, then, is more reliable than the selfless altruism or obligations to the community that other theorists argue are the appropriate supports for liberal society. By examining other philosophical reflections on honor and "excavating" several of its most prominent displays in a liberal democratic context, Krause aims to better understand honor's meaning and value, particularly as a resource to inspire individual agency within a democratic context.

One wonders if they aren't missing the larger point here. Modern liberal democracy, by creating a one-to-one relationship between the individual and the state and by destroying all intermediate institutions, also does away with all forms of internal restraint--altruism, obligation, honor, morality of any kind. All that remains is law and regulation--the tools of the state. These are, of course, ideal to a system which has as its ultimate end equality, because it's easy enough to require that all meet these explicit and rather minimal standards. Concepts like honor, and the other internalized restraints on human action, are in fact affronts to the ideal of equality, because all are not ever going to feel themselves equally bound to strive to do the right thing simply because it is right. In this sense, at least, there can probably never be a liberalism with honor. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2002 12:38 PM