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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Cuba History > Item 81
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Honor: A History
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by James Bowman
Sales Rank: 228615
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List Price: $18.95
$12.89
At Amazon
on 10-31-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 382 pages
Published by: Encounter Books May 22, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 1594031983
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1594031984
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Description
The importance of honor is present in the earliest records of civilization. Today, while it may still be an essential concept in Islamic cultures, in the West, honor has been disparaged and dismissed as obsolete. In this lively and authoritative book, James Bowman traces the curious and fascinating history of this ideal, from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and to the killing fields of World War I and the despair of Vietnam. Bowman reminds us that the fate of honor and the fate of morality and even manners are deeply interrelated.
Publisher Description
The first complete survey of this subject, tracing the evolution of honor as an ideal from the Greeks onward. The subject is in the cultural air at the present, as antagonists argue over whether the "honorable" course is to persevere in Iraq or withdraw and as the honor of U.S. forces is tarnished by the prison abuses scandal. The importance of honor is present in the earliest records of civilization. Today, while it may still be an essential concept in Islamic cultures, in the West, honor has been disparaged and dismissed as obsolete. In this lively and authoritative book, James Bowman traces the curious and fascinating history of this ideal, from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and to the killing fields of World War I and the despair of Vietnam. Bowman reminds us that the fate of honor and the fate of morality and even manners are deeply interrelated. His book is an indispensable document in a time of growing concern about the erosion of values.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Honor: A History (Hardcover)
Harvey Mansfield's recent book "Manliness" caused quite a stir when it was published early this year. At the risk of overly simplifying his erudite work, "Manliness" is a defense of what he calls "assertiveness." Dr. Mansfield gives only a tepid defense of such behavior, believing it to be fifty percent positive and fifty percent negative. Personally, I would describe "assertiveness" as a defining element of being a male, common to almost all species and expressed in violence and sexual adventurism. Male behavior also has an unfortunate bully mentality, a tendency to subordinate itself to superior force and assert one's power over lesser beings. Manliness, to my mind, is the concept which regulates such behavior and directs it into socially useful channels, and encourages one to defend one's concept of Right against overwhelming odds. A bar fight is male behavior, the Normandy invasion was manly behavior. Mr. Bowman would consider my concept of "manliness" to be a peculiarly Western and archaic version of honor. It is hard to compare the two books: Dr. Mansfield's book is a work of philosophy, while Mr. Bowman's book is a history of a social concept (and also an enthralling cultural history of the twentieth century, as viewed through the prism of that concept). Mr. Bowman's book, however, is by far the more important of the two. First, because, by definition, "assertiveness" doesn't need anyone to defend it. It is still the most important quality to have to succeed in business, and, increasingly, in other professions. Even its avowed enemies fall prey to it, as witness Gloria Steinem's pathetic memoir of the short period of time when she was the main squeeze of an alpha male. Honor, on the other hand, has no defenders. Abandoning honor has liberated men from their obligations and the main beneficiary of the concept - civilization - has no defenders. Another reason why Mr. Bowman's book is far more important is because he addresses perhaps THE fundamental difference between the West and radical Islam. The first section of the book - where Mr. Bowman discusses primitive honor systems, which have been largely maintained in Muslim countries - and the last - the "where do we go from here?" - section should be required reading for any soldier, politician, commentator or critic interested in the War on Terror. After the first section, Mr. Bowman takes us on a tour of the evolution of honor in the Western world from something similar to the primitive form common in most of the world to that fragile, but refined concept the Victorians bequeathed to us. From there, Mr Bowman takes us through the decline of the concept through the last hundred years. Anyone familiar with Mr. Bowman's sparkling book and film reviews and media criticism for such publications as TLS, the New York Sun, the American Spectator and New Criterion will know what an engaging tour guide he is. He touches on everything from Shakespeare to comic books with confidence and insight. One example: I have been a great fan of the unfairly forgotten novelist James Gould Cozzens for many years, but it wasn't until I read "Honor" that I realized that in Cozzens' works about professionals maturing in their professions, his concept of maturity involved leaving behind one's idealistic sense of honor and learning to compromise with real life, so in "Men and Brethren," an Episcopal priest facilitates an abortion for a married parishioner who has conceived a child with her lover and in "The Just and the Unjust," a young prosecutor overcomes his scruples to make a deal with the local political boss. It takes an acute critic like Mr. Bowman to make you see old things in a whole new light. Mr. Bowman also encourages one to look at the concept of honor anew. One revelation for me was the importance of reputation for the maintenance of an honor system. As a child of post-war America, I had always assumed that the personal code of honor of the sort Humphrey Bogart proclaimed in Casablanca was at least equal to and perhaps superior to the earlier form, but "Honor" shows why this is not so. Of course, anyone outside of an "honor group" in modern America has to rely on a personal code of honor because society itself no longer respects honor, but that is really the central problem. Hard as I looked for errors, I only found a few matters on which I would interpret things differently. 1. George MacDonald Fraser, I would argue, is not an "honor debunker," because when he writes about someone who really is a man of honor, like Rajah Brooke in "Flashman's Lady," he pulls out all stops. Fraser instead is concerned with false reputations for honor, although "honor groups" often find such reputations important (see John Ford's "Fort Apache"). 2. Although Mr. Bowman does a splendid job of debunking that old canard that the firing of Douglas MacArthur preserved the concept of civilian control over the military, there is also a strong Constitutional argument that MacArthur (as well as the Admirals in the so-called "Admiral's Revolt" of a few years earlier) was right to respond honestly to Congressional inquiries and that the firing of both MacArthur and the Admirals led to an emasculated Joint Staff in the 1960s who sat on their hands while the Johnson Administration deliberately lied to Congress. 3. Jimmy Stewart's character may have been a poor gunslinger in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence," but that didn't make his honor an illusion. He did after all stand up to Valence and by printing the legend and not the fact, the newspapers preserved that honor since John Wayne killed Valence from ambush, which is not an honorable act. 4. Many of the subjects in the book "Stolen Valor" may have been trying to claim victimhood, but I suspect that a lot more of them were ashamed of having missed serving and were trying to differentiate themselves from others of their generation who had no qualms about their evasions. Mr. Bowman acknowledges that the literature on honor is vast and that his book is only the first stab at the subject. Nevertheless, Mr. Bowman has read widely, wisely and well. Although his command of the literature is astounding, there are a number of old friends I would have liked his insights on, such as Anthony Powell's Dance sequence (with its juxtaposition of old honor and no honor), the old Sgt. Rock comics (in which an infantry company served as a classic "honor group"), the movie "Falling Down" (which pitted two men with similar codes of honor against each other), J.P. Marquand's "Melville Goodwin, USA" (which is a corrective of sorts to his pre-war anti-honor writings) and the movie "Hamburger Hill" (where U.S. soldiers refuse to accept the victimhood offered to them by the media). Mr. Bowman also touches on subjects which could be books in themselves: how luck and acquisition of wealth have replaced trial by combat, how certain minorities have retained their codes of honor not just at the street gang level, but at the level of their elites, how honor may have led German officers to attempt to assasinate Hitler but also ensured their failure to do so, how the development of a personal sense of honor has led to a fracturing of society's concept of what honor means (many people I know prefer Ashley Wilkes' code of honor to Rhett Butler's) and how the loss of Anglo Saxon dominance of society may have been caused by their willingness to abandon the concept of honor. Mr. Bowman remains "deeply pessimistic" about the possibilitry of a resoration of honor in society, even as he demonstrates that the concept is necessary for survival. He might be overly optimistic about that. The media is willing to sacrifice its reputation for truth and impartiality in its opposition to our efforts in the Middle East. Recently, The New York Times rewrote the last letter home from a dead GI so that instead of sounding proud of his service and accomplishments, the Times made him seem disillusioned and discouraged. To call this monstrous and ghoulish attempt to steal a dead man's honor "dishonorable" is to lend a dignity to the act it does not deserve. If the opponents of official policy succeed in ending our efforts to create a democratic and tolerant form of Islam, then as Islam becomes the majority in Europe over the next fifty years or so, the West will find a restoration of the honor code that it has shunned for the last ninety years, but it will not be an honor system we have seen since the early Renaissance.
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Honor: A History
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Updated on 10-31-2008.
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