Honor: A History

by James Bowman

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.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Cultural, Anthropology, Military Fiction, Psychology

265 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jeroen Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsure what all the bad reviews are about. It clearly states it's about conceptions of honour in the West. Criticizing it for being too "western" or expecting it to contain information on Middle Eastern honor cultures is absurd.

I used this for my BA thesis history. It is an easy to read yet well researched book on the history of the concept of "honour" as Bowman sees it. That last part is important, as honour can mean different things to different people in different situations. Yet because Bowman skips most of the theoretical discussion about honour, which other books have already covered and which he refers to, the book is a light read for anyone interested in the subject. To write a history of something that is as untangible as honour - basically, to write the history and describe the transformation of a complex set of norms and values that are so ingrained in society that it becomes an automatic emotional response, common sense for the people who lived in those societies - is bound to be difficult. How can you trace a person's intentions? What sources to use? Bowman chose to analyse popular culture, unsurprising given his longtime occupation as a film-critic, in particular great literature. He provides an impressive account of the transformation of European/Western honour from the high middle ages until the present time.

Judging by the other reviews, some readers take offense at Bowmans personal take on the disappearance of honour in our culture, and his suggestion that we might have thrown the baby away with the bathwater (Dutch saying, I hope it makes sense in English). In short, Bowman advocates a kind of honour, as opposed to none. That is a debatable issue but not controversial in any sense - anthropologists have described honour as a code of conduct that is intrinsic to human societies and that serves an evolutionary purpose. More recently, Kwame Anthony Appiah has suggested something similar in his book The Honor Code. It seems to me that if you take offense at such a statement, you either can't tolerate other opinions, are not interested in debate, or are simply looking for books that confirm your beliefs about the world. Each to their own, of course, but such considerations don't do the book justice and shouldn't be conflated with valid criticism.

One thing that is very difficult for me to appraise is to what extent Bowman cherry picked his evidence. At first glance, the evidence seems impressive. As a historian I can affirm that the general trend he describes seems to make sense - from a tribal warrior might-makes-right mindset in the middle ages to a more "civilized" and pacified view of honour in the nineteenth century, that, like warfare and high court culture, became more subtle. Less about a direct show of power and more about following "the rules of the game", of the way things ought to be done. It also fits well with Norbert Elias' civilizing theory, and with Foucault's theory on the gradual development of incarceration in the justice system. But I am not a literary critic, and therefore it is difficult to judge how Bowman chose his literature. How many books did he select? Did he only pick the great pieces of literature? Or did he only pick the ones that fit into his worldview? How representative were those great books for the time? etc.

In short, I'd highly recommend reading it as an introduction to Western honour culture. A light read that provides ample information for all who are interested. Academics use it as a steppingstone to other literature.

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes, based on the back jacket copy and the cover art, which depicts an ancient frieze, that this would be what the title implies - a history of the concept of honor, presumably in the Western mode. What it actually is is a shallow literary criticism of the use of a narrowly-defined concept of honor in the past 100 years, with the assumption that our culture is 'anti-honor' and somehow it is a big problem that our government couldn't declare war on Iraq by saying "These guys had nothing to do with 9-11, but we want to beat someone so the rest of the world knows not to mess with us."

Yeah. That's his thesis - we need a return to 'face saving through violence' because... masculinity. Pissed me off no end. Also, the oldest text he references (rather fleetingly) is Mallory. MALLORY?? Man, history's almost over by the time you get to Mallory. Then he takes a quick jump to Shakespeare and a nod at Cervantes before going into World War One. His example-driven approach allows him to cherry-pick passages that support his theory and I'm just not convinced. I'm not convinced that modern 'honor skepticism' wasn't present in pre-14th-century European writing. I'm not convinced that we have less of an idea of 'saving face' after the enlightenment. Rather I'm convinced that his personal statement in the forward that he feels he 'missed out' on an important masculine rite by being a conscientious objector in Vietnam to be indicative of a deeply disturbing psychology that values a mythologized masculinity over being a productive member of society. I want to smack the dude and tell him to get over himself.

[Lily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've tried several times to read this. The ideas seem terribly muddled and directed towards an agenda.

[Brent Barnard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really hoping this would shed more light on the honor cultures of the Middle East... but it's still a fairly good book. It means something very specific when it refers to honor. When men are insulted because they are publicly shamed, their honor has been affronted. When they are accused of being cowards or women are accused of being loose, this is the essence of the type of honor he's discussing. Also, when someone from your clan is killed by someone from another clan, and this results in multi-generational enmity and warfare, this all revolves around honor. You can see, then, why he would contrast this with Christian ideals, which embrace values which are universal rather than strictly local, and focus on inward purity rather than outward public esteem. It did help me understand Middle Eastern cultures to a greater extent. For example, he outlines why Saddam Hussein would do everything possible to make it appear that he has nuclear weapons even though this would mean being invaded by outsiders... because his power depends on being ultra-macho within his own culture, and that if he loses this, he would've lost the very power bolstering his throne. So he pretended to be "the man," facing down the entirety of the West and doing whatever he wants. This type of thing.

[Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most infuriating books I have ever read. Bowman is insightful at times, but the assumptions he makes about other cultures and the conclusions he arrives at aggravate me to no end.

[Dave McCracken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite normally I am prone to give high ratings to authors in spite of the quality of their work, primarily to recognize the supreme effort it takes to write a book. In this case, I cannot.

[Olive Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

If James Bowman were a Lord of the Rings character, he would be an Ent, rambling through long, almost run-on sentences, speaking wistfully of a time that is past and may never return.

That would be one of my major issues with the book is that I often had to reread several sentences, find the noun, hop over the dependent clauses to reach the verb, and then make sense of the sentence. If John Rhys-Davies were to narrate this as an audio book, this world would reach critical mass, is what I'm saying.

That being said, I enjoyed Honor: A History because I enjoy sociological theories and history. If a book makes me stop and think about other books I've read and how their thesis fit into this new idea, I consider that a positive. I was even able to filter recent political events and their reactions through what I was reading.

This book sketches an outline of the honor/shame culture and relates how Western culture morphed the traditional honor culture and virtue into a unique package...before the wars of the 20th century seemed to kill the honor culture in America (and Europe) altogether. It's a fascinating look at the 20th century and shows the roots of the victim culture that is now eating America from the inside.

Also, if I were optimistic that we could once again have discussions about ideologies instead of highly polarized arguments, I think understanding honor/shame cultures around the world and the foundation of honor would heighten our political discourse. I write this in February 2017, so I am not optimistic. One does not need to come to the same conclusions as the author about how to revive honor; yet, at no better time in our nation's history is an understanding of honor - and virtue, for that matter - more necessary.

This book is a good place to start.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honor: A History, de James Bowman no leva para um passeio histórico através das mudanças nos conceitos de honra adotados desde os gregos até uma sociedade estadunidense pós-onze de setembro. Claro, como a maioria dos livros feitos por cidadãos norte-americanos, ele ignora que exista ouro mundo além dos Estados Unidos em que os conceitos de honra possam funcionar e forma diferente. No mundo machista latino certamente eles funcionam e no Japão mais ainda. De toda forma, a evolução do conceito de honra que vai do mais coletivo para o mais individual sempre esteve relacionado com os papéis de gênero e como esse conceito de honra, seja voltado para o âmbito coletivo ou individual, constrange o que podemos ou não podemos fazer como homens e mulheres. Também é explícito como o conceito de honra se aproxima de sentimentos éticos e morais, embora não tenha uma relação direta com eles. Este é um livro muito interessante e sei que vou voltar nele para consultá-los vezes e vezes. Muito bom!

[Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Appalling garbage that I picked up from a free pile due to my scholarly interest in honor cultures. A thinly researched, cherry-picked, jingoistic, swinish, misogynistic, ham fisted justification for the Iraq War posing as a work of historical scholarship. I made a Goodreads account because this book infuriated me so much and I needed to vent about it.

[Brandon Chun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shows the historical development and changes to the idea of honor throughout the history of western civilization. Notes the key differences between USA and the Middle East in regards to honor. Proposes good directions for western civilization to go in, in regards to honor. Good read overall

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I try to understand that the process of disagreement can be productive and I can learn from those I disagree with. This book was an opportunity for me to reinforce this idea.

I am very interested in “social history,” where you take one concept, idea or institution and follow it through a number of centuries and/or societies. I have always enjoyed the work of Philippe Aries (In the Hour of Our Death, Centuries of Childhood) as well as simple examples like salt (Salt: a history) and hygiene (The Dirt on Clean). This book claims to be a history of the concept of honor. I had assumed that it would cover more than just the west, but it did not.

The author’s main concept is that the idea of “honor” has seriously declined in the culture of the west. He goes through the period from the Middle Ages until the present, and monitors the reasons why honor has been eroded. The list was fairly compelling, including the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the individual, the way war has lost its glamour and glory, the emancipation of women, and a variety of other factors. His documentation of this process was very interesting, informative and entertaining. I found myself cheering at almost every step as honor declined, especially about the change in the way war is viewed and the decline in the need to defend the “honor” (willful subjugation) of women.

Now, as we are in a post-honor society, we find ourselves confronting very strong pro-honor societies (Islam is his example) and we will not be able to deal successfully with the challenge without a workable concept of honor. Therefore, we need to reconstruct and regain honor.

Huh? His analysis convinced me that the decline of honor has produced many benefits. Contrasting the silly ways in which honor is written about in the myth of King Arthur (where Lancelot feels he is true to his king if he defeats anyone who accuses him of sleeping with the queen in combat, even though he is guilty) to the way in which combat is seen by soldiers surviving the first world war is clearly many steps in the right direction. The question for me is, why would we want to go back?

Going back to the old days is very much what he proposes. He argues that what we need to do is to regain an appreciation of the role of the warrior, reinforce a spirit of aristocracy and social stratification, destroy the cult of celebrity and step back from the unqualified emancipation of women so that they can regain a status of submission and chastity.

This is the section that really needs elaboration, and yet he saves it for the last few pages of the book. He proves so compellingly that modern war is evil and dehumanizing, why would we want to try and glorify it? He talks about the evils of Islamic honor killings and veil compulsion, and yet he wants women to return to the background as cherished vessels of chastity and controlled reproduction.

One of the major reasons why this entire effort of reconstructing honor seems of little worth is his analysis that the west’s confrontation with Islam will result in a triumph of the west, while another is that he freely admits that the changes that need to come to regain honor will never come about. If we don’t need it and can’t do it, why yearn for it so passionately? He is very critical of various “utopian” approaches to social organization, yet he posits a similar solution to his honor quandary.

I found his use of different forms of media to be useful in illustrating his points, especially about the decline of honor, but he gets a bit selective at times. I understand that the works of Spencer were important in their time and that the Arthurian legend was important in the case of honor, but as we get closer to the present I find these media examples less compelling. He seems to be more self-serving in his choices as we get closer to the present. I was particularly disturbed by his use of a 1968 movie called “If…” in which school children gun down their schoolmates and teachers.

His analysis of the way in which western societies have evolved seemed to come back again and again to the concept of “power” being all important. I would have expected a discussion of Michel Foucault’s work but it was not to be found and is not cited in the bibliography.

This book was interesting and well worth reading, but its conclusions were fairly vexing. I think he might have been better off to just stick with the social history and pass on the social recommendations. As a side note, I see that the book is dedicated to his father (who served in the military) and to his son (who serves in Iraq). This may explain why he feels that we must regain honor, perhaps because he has not experienced the “glory” or fighting for honor. He makes quite a point about those who did not get to fight feeling left behind and feeling like they “missed out” but he did not apply this concept to himself. He does note that his father and son can do more about honor than he does, which is only to write about it.

A post-honor society as described by the author seems just fine to me.

[Zachery Tyson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should have been called "Toxic Masculinity: A History," or "Living with a Micropenis: My Struggle"

[Sergei Shnitman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into Honor evolution. Ambitious reasearch. Language is a bit complicated to read.

[Jeff Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. The author depends heavily on literature in his analysis of the changing meaning of honor in western civilization. Sometimes this grew a little tedious and repetitive. However, it did open my eyes to how prevalent the anti-honor perspective is in media. In many cases, I was not aware that my own thinking on many things has been influenced by the anti-honor culture around me. It really made me realize that media truly frames the way we see the world.

After reading the book, I can't help but agree that the collapse of the honor culture has contributed to the demise of western culture. The west seems to have found no substitute for honor in the anti-hero, the victim, or in celebrity. The loss of the honor culture has bankrupted many of our institutions. Marriage in a society without honor is increasingly useless. It is clear that it now operates on the cultural memory of what it once was rather than what it actually is. The same could be said of military service. Kinda depressing.

The author holds the Victorian ideal of honor in highest regard believing it represents a compromise between morality, democracy, and honor. sadly sees no sign of honor's recovery. In the final chapter he lays out what he believes must change before an honor culture could ever return: revival of the warrior spirit, acceptance of war, acceptance of inequality, the rejection of celebrity, and a renewed respect for femininity and motherhood. None of which seem possible, save for a catastrophic event like the collapse of western civilization.

[Regina Doman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me think harder and longer than any book I've read in a long, long while. I'm still pondering it.

We live in an anti-honor society, and Western civilization, says the author, is the first to become so in the course of human history. This places a huge gulf between us and every other civilization that has ever existed, most prominently between us and Muslim culture today. As someone who's always trying to see through other's eyes, I have wanted to try to grasp and understand this hallmark human quality (especially reflexive in males), particularly if I ever want to try to write historical fiction.

This book was an excellent start on the topic, answering many questions as to what honor is, why it works, how it works in history, how Western Civilization (including Christianity) destroyed it. It also raises the question of whether it was worth saving in the first place.

I am still pondering all of the above, and would recommend all my friends read this book, at least so that we have something else to discuss together.

[Barbara]

Interesting book. Premise is that the "honor" culture has been discarded in the West, and the influence of Judeo-Christian concepts, in favor of individual morality, and sincerity and authenticity in private and personal life, made the Western concept of honor different from that in other parts of the world.

This is in direct conflict with countries that maintain a traditional concept of honor. From the author: "These challenges to honor and the accommodations with it that they ultimately produced are a fundamental theme in our own culture's distinctive history; and the eventual collapse of the honor culture in the West is the background against which the War on Terror and the Clash of Civilizations ought to be seen."

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only survey of the history of honor that I'm aware of. Unlike Mansfield's "Manliness", this was an enjoyable, not a difficult read. I expect this to be required reading at all military schools. Excellent.

[Matthew Dambro]

I read this some years ago after becoming acquainted with Bowman's work in National Review and other journals. It is a brilliant piece of scholarship and a call to men of all ages not to forsake Honor as an ideal.

[Andre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I'd hoped for, but it does fill in some answers to where we are as a society.

[Sherri]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12159958

[Stanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me a framework to understand historical phenomena from biblical times (the book of Judges) to modernity (the legacy of WWI, the advent of social media ADD).