PHILOSOPHY
Honour and Vulnerability
1.
In Hamburg in 1834, a handsome young army officer named Baron von Trautmansdorf challenged a fellow officer, Baron von Ropp, to a duel. The precipitating offense was a poem that von Ropp had written and circulated among his friends about von Trautmansdorf’s moustache, stating that it was thin and floppy and hinting that it might not be the only part of his physique to which those adjectives could be applied. The feud between the barons had originated in their shared passion for the same woman, Countess Lodoiska, the grey-green-eyed widow of a Polish general. Unable to resolve their differences amicably, the two men met in a field in a Hamburg suburb early on a March morning. Both were carrying swords; both were still short of their thirtieth birthdays; both would die in the ensuing fight.
In this last aspect, the event was no exception. From its beginnings in Renaissance Italy until its end in the First World War, the practice of duelling claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Europeans. In the seventeenth century, duels were responsible for some five thousand deaths in Spain alone. Visitors to that country were advised to take extra care when addressing the locals, lest they accidentally offend their honour and end up in the grave.“Duels happen every day in Spain,” declares a character in a play by Calderón. In France, meanwhile, Lord Herbert of Cherbury reported in 1608 that there was “scarce any man thought worth the looking on, that had not killed some other in a duel,” and in England, it was widely held that no man could be termed a gentleman unless and until he had “taken up his sword.”
Although occasional duels were sparked by matters of objective importance, the majority had their origin in small, even petty, questions of honour. In Paris in 1678, for example, one man killed another who had said his apartment was tasteless. In Florence in 1702, a literary man took the life of a cousin who had accused him of not understanding Dante. And in France under the regency of Philippe d’Orléans, two officers of the guard fought on the Quai des Tuileries over the ownership of an Angora cat.
2.
For as long as it lasted, duelling symbolised a radical incapacity to believe that one’s status might be one’s own business, a value one decided on and did not revise to accord with the shifting judgements of others. In the dueller’s psyche, other people’s opinions were the only factor in forming a sense of self. The dueller could not remain acceptable in his own eyes if those around him judged him to be evil or dishonourable, a coward or a failure, foolish or effeminate. So dependent was his self-image on the views of others that he would sooner die of a bullet or stab wound than allow unfavourable assessments of him to go unanswered.
Entire societies have made the maintenance of status, and more particularly of “honour,” a primary task of every adult male. Whether called, as in traditional Greek village society, time, as in Muslim communities, sharaf, or as among Hindus, izzat, honour was expected in all cases to be upheld through violence. In traditional Spanish communities, to be worthy of honra, a man had to be physically brave, sexually potent, predatory towards women before he was married and loyal thereafter, able to look after his family financially and authoritative enough towards his wife to ensure that she did not have sex or even engage in flirtatious banter with other men. Dishonour was the penalty not only for infringing on codes oneself but also for failing to respond with appropriate fury to an injuria inflicted by another. If one was ridiculed in the market square or given an offensive look in the street, doing anything short of soliciting a fight would only confirm the offenders’ point.
3.
While we may look askance at those who resort to violence to answer questions of honour, we are nevertheless liable ourselves to share the most significant aspect of their mind-set—that is, an extreme vulnerability to the disdain of others. Like the most hotheaded of duellers, we are likely to base our self-esteem on the value we are commonly accorded. Duelling is merely a helpfully far-fetched historical example of the more universal but equally thin-skinned emotional disposition that almost all of us exhibit in matters of status.
The intense need to be viewed favourably by others may still be foremost among our priorities. The fear of becoming what the Spanish termed a deshonrado, or “dishonoured one”—a category whose contemporary connotations might best be captured by the chillingly contemptuous word loser— may today be no less haunting than it was for the characters in Calderón’s and Lope de Vega’s tragedies. Being denied status—for example, because one has failed to reach certain professional goals or is unable to provide for one’s family— may be as painful for a modern Westerner as a loss of honra, time, sharaf or izzat was for a member of a seemingly more hidebound society.
Philosophy and Invulnerability
Other people’s heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.
SCHOPENHAUER,
PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA(1851)
Nature didn’t tell me: “Don’t be poor.” Nor indeed: “Be rich.” But she does beg me: “Be independent.”
CHAMFORT,
MAXIMS(1795)
It is not my place in society that makes me well off, but my judgements, and these I can carry with me … These alone are my own and cannot be taken away.
EPICTETUS,
DISCOURSES (CIRCA A.D. 100)
1.
On the Greek peninsula, early in the fifth century B.C., there emerged a group of individuals, many of them bearded, who were singularly free of the anxieties over status that tormented their contemporaries. Untroubled by either the psychological or the material consequences attendant on a humble position in society, these men remained calm in the face of insult, disapproval and penury. When Socrates, for example, saw a pile of gold and jewellery being borne in procession through the streets of Athens, he exclaimed, “Look how many things there are which I don’t want.” As Alexander the Great was passing through Corinth, he sought out Diogenes and finally found him sitting under a tree, dressed in rags, with not a drachma to his name. When the most powerful man in the world asked the philosopher if he could do anything to help him, Diogenes replied, “Yes, if you could step out of the way. You are blocking the sun.” Alexander’s soldiers were horrified and steeled themselves for the inevitable outburst of their commander’s famous anger. But he only laughed and remarked that if he were not Alexander, he would certainly like to be Diogenes. Antisthenes, for his part, when informed that a great many people in Athens had started to praise him, demanded, “Why, what have I done wrong?” Empedocles evinced a similar scepticism regarding the intelligence of others. He once lit a lamp in broad daylight and announced, as he went around, “I am looking for someone with a mind.” And Socrates again, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?”
2.
These philosophers had not ceased to draw distinction between kindness and ridicule, success and failure; rather, they had settled on a way of responding to the darker half of the equation that owed nothing to the traditional honour code. They implicitly refuted its suggestion that what others think of us must determine what we may think of ourselves, and that every insult, whether accurate or not, must shame us.