Honor/Honour a philosophical thought

[constraints_theoryParticipant 43]

What is honor? This has been a word that I have heard a lot lately and got me thinking what is honor? In a pure philosophical way I have thought about this. we have all heard the terms “honorable men” and “no honor among thieves” or for some of us we have heard this in a court room  “the honorable judge Dickhead”  this is a word that knights would swear by and would most certainly kill over if they felt they have been “dishonored” in some way. I find that none of those terms actually describe what honor is. Honor isn’t a noun it’s neither a person, place nor thing nor is it a verb perhaps adjective? A word to describe a person, a person’s action, a person’s title maybe even to the extent of a person’s award commendations? But we run into the assumption that we truly understand what honor is.

I would give examples of what I am talking about but coming from a strong mathematical background an example is just one case it does nothing to help prove an argument so I won’t be providing any examples.
Suppose we define honor as: honor is a subjective idea that has been created by man to describe a person based upon the consensus of a society that reflect the majority of agreed upon morals. (Simply put if a man is honorable it is because they meet the criterion based upon the majority of agreed upon morals in a society)
Already we have hit a bump in the road in understanding honor. Since honor is different from person to person then there cannot be a clear cut definition of what honor is. Then again the same can be said about the concepts of good and bad everyone could give examples of what good and bad are and have some sort of common ground with what they are. However, no one can precisely say this is what “good” is and this is what “bad” is simply for the fact that your idea will not match everyone’s beliefs.
Let’s take this a step further if we define the concepts of “good” and “bad” as a majority consensus of a society or group of people then that would imply that it would most definitely be based on morality. However, morality is also subjective from person to person since no two person’s morals will be equal.
So if “good” and “bad” defines morality and morality defines honor then “good” and “bad” defines honor
Therefore since we cannot define the concepts of “good” and “bad” an infinite loop is created and no definition can be made to define honor since its subjective from person to person.
This does not mean honor doesn’t exist just that it’s a metaphysical construct that simply cannot be define.

I hope I didn’t make anyone upset or confuse anyone I was typing all of this as it came to mind in a way a rambling of myself to myself if that makes sense? Feel free to add your own thoughts and ideas or if you disagree with me where and why? anyway, Hope you enjoyed

I've killed worse than you on my way to real problems.

[Lazarus LongParticipant 365]

Well unfortunately I think this is only going to muddy the waters but the problem is that words are merely symbols and as such have no real meaning other than the meaning that has been ascribed to them. This is hard enough with words that are for tangible things but when dealing with a word that is referring to something intangible it becomes completely muddied. As with all symbols even though they may have one meaning they normally have many more and they refer to whatever the symbol user wants them to mean. In the case of Honor I suspect that the definitions are as varied as there are people to use it.

It does seem clear that there have been occasions where Honor has been codified but I would imagine that just as there are no universal morals there is not a universal definition of Honor.

Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self. -Terry Goodkind

[constraints_theoryParticipant 43]

@lazarus Long

yeah i agree with you i think in a way you reduced everything i said in to a paragraph haha which is good i tend to make things long winded. but i do agree with you there is no universal one size fits all morals like there is none for honor however i think they are tied together. as i said they are metaphysical constructs that exist because we created them we just can define them. you did bring up an interesting point though about how words are merely symbols that really have no meaning. i would even go as to far as to say language in and of itself is an inferior form of communication however it is the best that we currently know of.

I've killed worse than you on my way to real problems.

[John DoeParticipant 743]

Last time I checked, to receive “honor” one must be “honored” by people.  People will praise any and everything whether they know what it is or not.  Honor is very subjective in nature.   It is how they convince people to jump into a battle/fight and get killed/wounded for nothing.

[peterfaParticipant 833]

Honor stems from the pre-Christianization of Europe. They had a whole system based on reputation. If you were loyal to the king, the king gave you land. Then you had peasants work the land and they’d pay rent. You were their landlord. Everything you did was about honor. However, things like charity and forgiveness were considered for only the weak. So, you only committed moral acts if you had to gain from them, which is honor. It’s also why insulting honor meant war. You insulted someone’s honor you could seriously threaten them.

Honor has no place any more, since we abandoned that for a better system: intrinsic worth. You do things because they are to be done. You help someone in need if that person cannot carry his or her burden (likewise, you do not help someone by carrying their burden, but by teaching them how to better help their burden). Each person has intrinsic worth regardless of any factors.

You could say that now it’s entirely twisted since it’s mixed with Christianity and secular ideals. This is may be the Mangina Complex.

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