A note of caution: I think the analytic-philosophy thing I’m doing, of trying to carve things up into a precise and exhaustive set of buckets, risks picking the wrong carving and missing subtleties in the thing Anna was gesturing at in the OP.
E.g., Anna said:
If I am safeguarding my “honor” (or my “reputation”, “brand”, or “good name”), there are some fixed standards that I try to be known as adhering to. For example, in Game of Thrones, the Lannisters are safeguarding their “honor” by adhering to the principle “A Lannister always pays his debts.” They take pains to adhere to a certain standard, and to be known to adhere to that standard. Many examples are more complicated than this; a gentleman of 1800 who took up a duel to defend his “honor” was usually not defending his known adherence to a single simple principle a la the Lannisters. But it was still about his visible adherence to a fixed (though not explicit) societal standard.
I feel like this is a deep-ish paragraph that’s getting at some attitude shifts that haven’t yet been fully brought to consciousness in this discussion. Like, I feel like there’s a sense in which US-circa-2021 PR culture and “defend my good name” culture both have fixed standards, at any given moment in time. But there’s something different about the attitude toward those standards?
It’s like virtue and reputation (“honor”) were one thing at the time, and now they’re two things. So the very word “PR” has become a thing that feels manipulative, amoral—no one thinks it’s virtuous to do PR, it’s just what’s done.
I almost wonder if the problem is less “people stopped caring about being truly-intrinsically-virtuous” and more: People stopped rationalizing their reputation-management as virtuous; which fed into a “it’s impractical and uncouth to care about virtue” cycle; which resulted in people having too many degrees of freedom, because it’s easier to rationalize arbitrary actions as practical than to rationalize arbitrary actions as virtuous.
It’s like virtue and reputation (“honor”) were one thing at the time, and now they’re two things.
I almost wonder if the problem is less “people stopped caring about being truly-intrinsically-virtuous” and more: People stopped rationalizing their reputation-management as virtuous; which fed into a “it’s impractical and uncouth to care about virtue” cycle; which resulted in people having too many degrees of freedom, because it’s easier to rationalize arbitrary actions as practical than to rationalize arbitrary actions as virtuous.
It’s like virtue and reputation (“honor”) were one thing at the time
When I read this, I thought (with my feelings, not my words) “It sounds like Rob thinks honor is a combination of virtue and reputation, but I do not think that honor is a combination of virtue and reputation.”
So before I go and try to write a bunch about what I think honor might be, I’d like to check: Do you think that honor is a combination of virtue and reputation? Do you think that’s basically right but incomplete description of honor? Do you think that honor is some other thing entirely, which you could state? Do you not know what honor is in a way that you could state without a lot of time and effort?
I’d be interested to hear what you think honor is. :) I think the word ‘honor’ is used to point at some ‘inherently good things about a person’ (things related to integrity, promise-keeping, fairness, respect, grace) and also to point at some things about how others perceive you (that you’re seen as having honesty, principle, dignity, etc.). I wasn’t trying to precisely define ‘honor’, just saying that honor seemed to involve both internal-virtue-like things and reputation-like things.
A note of caution: I think the analytic-philosophy thing I’m doing, of trying to carve things up into a precise and exhaustive set of buckets, risks picking the wrong carving and missing subtleties in the thing Anna was gesturing at in the OP.
E.g., Anna said:
I feel like this is a deep-ish paragraph that’s getting at some attitude shifts that haven’t yet been fully brought to consciousness in this discussion. Like, I feel like there’s a sense in which US-circa-2021 PR culture and “defend my good name” culture both have fixed standards, at any given moment in time. But there’s something different about the attitude toward those standards?
It’s like virtue and reputation (“honor”) were one thing at the time, and now they’re two things. So the very word “PR” has become a thing that feels manipulative, amoral—no one thinks it’s virtuous to do PR, it’s just what’s done.
I almost wonder if the problem is less “people stopped caring about being truly-intrinsically-virtuous” and more: People stopped rationalizing their reputation-management as virtuous; which fed into a “it’s impractical and uncouth to care about virtue” cycle; which resulted in people having too many degrees of freedom, because it’s easier to rationalize arbitrary actions as practical than to rationalize arbitrary actions as virtuous.
Yeah, I was having similar thoughts.
When I read this, I thought (with my feelings, not my words) “It sounds like Rob thinks honor is a combination of virtue and reputation, but I do not think that honor is a combination of virtue and reputation.”
So before I go and try to write a bunch about what I think honor might be, I’d like to check: Do you think that honor is a combination of virtue and reputation? Do you think that’s basically right but incomplete description of honor? Do you think that honor is some other thing entirely, which you could state? Do you not know what honor is in a way that you could state without a lot of time and effort?
I’d be interested to hear what you think honor is. :) I think the word ‘honor’ is used to point at some ‘inherently good things about a person’ (things related to integrity, promise-keeping, fairness, respect, grace) and also to point at some things about how others perceive you (that you’re seen as having honesty, principle, dignity, etc.). I wasn’t trying to precisely define ‘honor’, just saying that honor seemed to involve both internal-virtue-like things and reputation-like things.