A post I saw recently joked about how literature reflects what people are willing to die for—freedom in America, love in France, honor in English Literature.
The Post
I assumed this perspective is taken from classic books from each nation, so maybe it's a bit outdated. Then I thought: People still die for love, yes. People still die for freedom, yes. But honor?
It feels like such an old-fashioned concept! Something tied to knights and duels and grand sacrifices of a bygone age. Yet, there was a time when honor was a supreme principle, it meant everything- a person's entire identity and legacy rested on it. Losing your honor was worse than death itself. But now.... who cares about it? What do we honor so much that we'd be willing to die for it? What principle? What values? What beliefs?
We don't fight duels to protect our reputation (not saying that we should), we don't risk everything to keep a promise. We don't have beliefs or ideals that we are willing to lay down our lives for. We are not like Joan of Arc who was willing to burn in order to stay true to her divine visions or Socrates who drunk hemlock rather than betraying his philosophy or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was executed for standing against the Nazi regime or Hypatia of Alexandria who was killed for her devotion to science and philosophy in a time of great political and religious unrest.
What these people had in common was that they were willing to die for their beliefs, their principles. For them honor wasn't an abstract ideal but something worth sacrificing for. But they are figures of another time, aren't they? What do we value today that we are willing to die for it?
I think in modern society we prize convenience and comfort over principles. We are more concerned with self-preservation and so we relegated honor to an abstract ideal. We aren't willing to die for it. Our principles, while valued do not hold enough weight to demand such a sacrifice, we'd rather compromise.
We've traded the idea of living and guarding something greater than ourselves for a more easy-going existence. The bold, extreme sacrifices that once were acts of honor seem... foreign, and a little unnecessary. When did this shift happen?
I also think that maybe honor has evolved into something new. It doesn't carry the same life-or-death stakes, but it still motivates us to stand up for ourselves, maintain self-respect or defend the dignity of others.
Is that enough? Or does our fidelity to our honor and principles need to manifest itself some other way, some other extreme way - like dying for it if it comes down to that?
Is it necessary for us to die for honor and our beliefs to show our fidelity?2
