Honor: A History [Hardcover]

James Bowman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

James Bowman has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The New Criterion and other publications. He was the American Editor of the Times Literary Supplement of London and is currently a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Institute. Mr. Bowman has appeared on CSPAN. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1St Edition edition (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594031428
• ISBN-13: 978-1594031427
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #342,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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79 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and well-researched social history, May 13, 2006

By 

Thomas T. Worboys (Natick, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Honor: A History (Hardcover)

Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor's at the stake.

- Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 4

Shakespeare's words regarding the nature of honor are a common refrain in James Bowman's work, and it was an understanding of the same that motivated me to read this monograph. I had hoped to take away an understanding of why something so insubstantial as honor was so prized throughout history over more tangible things, including money, land and even life itself. "Honor: A History" answered this question well in excess of my expectations, and I am pleased to say that one can expect to take away much more than a simple answer to a simple query.

I had, in fact, asked my question largely upon false premises, as my understanding of honor was a postmodern and watered-down appreciation. Fortunately, in the first section of the book, Mr. Bowman defines honor, at its simplest, to be thought of well amongst one's peers. In its most primitive form, honor means that a slight will not go unchallenged. However, as cultures do vary, the notions of honor are not static across all societies, and the notion of "cultural honor" is explored in depth, with particular focus on how Christianity shaped the cultural honor of the West.

The next section keeps its focus on the West and explores the decline and fall of Western cultural honor. The beginning of the end of Western honor is placed in 1914, at the beginning of the Great War, and the decline reaches its terminus at 1975, with the end of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Three central causes, namely, modernized warfare, psychotherapy and feminism, which Mr. Bowman identifies as the primary factors in the waning of Western cultural honor, are tracked throughout these fifty years, and the consequences of the same are detailed though major historical events.

The third and final section looks at the West as a post-honor society under a microscope. A number of post-honor phenomena are explored, including honor-guilt, honor-nostalgia and a fascinating postulate of celebrity as a "pale after-image of cultural honor". Mr. Bowman then sums up his work by tackling the most fundamental question raised by all of the foregoing: can honor be revived, and if so, why do we need honor?

My largest criticism of this book is that its focus on Western society is a bit too narrow. To my best knowledge, no one has addressed the concept of honor as well as Mr. Bowman to date. The repeated use of late-20th/early-21st pop culture references to, inter alia, "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" cement this work temporally, when it really does deserve to be read long after such HBO television series are largely forgotten. As a writer for National Review, Mr. Bowman should be expected to approach his work from a modern day perspective, but it would be a shame if his book, like the notion of honor itself, was ever thought to become outdated.

113 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Reading, May 22, 2006

By 

T. Berner (New York, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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 90 years, but it will not be an honor system we have seen since the early Renaissance.

UPDATE DECEMBER 31, 2011; A MIA CULPA: ONE POINT ON WHICH I DISAGREED WITH MR. BOWMAN WAS HIS DATING OF THE TIME THAT THE NOTION OF HONOR DISAPPEARED IN THE UNITED STATES. HE DATES IT FROM WORLD WAR I, BUT I ALWAYS CONSIDERED IT AS HAVING LASTED THROUGH WORLD WAR II. HOWEVER, AFTER A RATHER LONG REFLECTION, I CAN SEE HIS POINT AND CAN OFFER A CONCRETE EXAMPLE. NATIONS AND CULTURES, LIKE FISH, ROT FROM THE HEAD DOWN, SO YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO SEE THE CORRUPTION OF THE CONCEPT OF HONOR TO OCCUR FIRST AMONG THE ELITES OF SOCIETY AND YOU FIND IT IF YOU GO TO THE UNIVERSITY CLUB ON FIFTH AVENUE IN NEW YORK, ONE OF THOSE EXCLUSIVE OLD CLUBS FREQUENTED BY THE RICH AND POWERFUL (AND THE ONE YOU USUALLY SEE IN THE OLD NEW YORKER CARTOONS, WITH THE OLD DUFFERS IN THEIR EASY CHAIRS A HALF STORY ABOVE A BUSY SIDEWALK IN A COMMERCIAL PART OF TOWN). YOU WILL FIND ON ONE SIDE OF THE LOBBY A LIST OF THE CLUB MEMBERS WHO WERE KILLED IN WORLD WAR I, NUMBERING OVER 20 NAMES. ON THE OTHER WALL, YOU WILL SEE THE MEMBERS WHO DIED IN WORLD WAR II. THERE ARE ONLY EIGHT. IF YOU CONSIDER THAT THE US MILITARY WAS ENGAGED AGAINST THE ENEMY ABOUT THREE TIMES AS LONG, HAD ABOUT FOUR TIMES THE CASUALTIES AND TEN TIMES THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ENGAGED IN WORLD WAR II THAN IN THE FIRST WAR (WHICH SHOULD HAVE EXTRAPOLATED TO A DEATH ROLL OF AS MUCH AS 200 MEMBERS AND NO LESS THAN 60, DEPENDING ON THE MEASURE YOU CHOOSE), IT BECOMES VERY CLEAR THAT THE ELITES OF AMERICAN SOCIETY HAD BEGUN TO CHECK OUT OF THE DUTY TO DEFEND THE COUNTRY SOME TIME BEFORE THE REST OF THE PUBLIC DID. ONCE AGAIN, YOU CAN DISAGREE WITH MR. BOWMAN, BUT IF YOU DO, YOU WILL RARELY BE CORRECT.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, January 4, 2007

By 

another believer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Honor: A History (Hardcover)

The book is very readable and I learned a lot from it. The concept of honor has indeed become almost alien to those of us in the West. But it is a large part of what fuels the men and women of those societies we find ourselves at odds with in the Middle East. We must try to understand the honor which motivates our enemies and our potential allies, and it should be required reading for the policy-makers and major writers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bowman points out that there are still honor cultures in America, such as in some ethnic groups and in the military. His own accounts of his later guilt from avoiding service in Vietnam are especially poignant now. Iraq has resurrected the ghost of Vietnam, both for those who served, and those who did not.

I really appreciated the way the author disentangled the concept of honor from Islam. Many of those strictures we find harshest in Islamic society actually predate Islam. However, as Bowman points out, Muslim countries do not have a history of divorcing their culture from their religion.

The reasons for this are simple. Jesus stood against much of the honor code of the Middle East. "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword," and "Turn the other cheek," were invitations to step off the honor-driven cycle of persecution returned with persecution, and violence returned with violence. We Christians have largely not lived up to these ideals, but they have influenced the history of Western law and our political philosophy nonetheless. There is a built-in distrust of honor for honor's sake in our society. Part of this is due to disillusionment with past wars, and part is due to our Christian philosophical heritage.

Bowman posits a return to honor, so that we can effectively interact with the rest of the globe. I am not so sure I buy into this. I take Christ's invitation seriously, and think that it probably offers the only way out of the cycle of violence in our world. But is unlikely that this utopia will come about short of another or a final divine intervention. For now, we must at least educate ourselves and understand honor as a motivator for friend and foe alike.