THE VIRTUE of honor is fundamental to the University as a Southern institution and to the character of the University student body. Honor and chivalry, it has been claimed, is an outdated concept that should be left to the Middle Ages and to fanciful tales of knights in shining armor. Not so. Honor is fundamentally a personal concept, and the courteous, helpful character it promotes is integral to this University and to society.
The modern view of honor is often portrayed as little more than a quaint tradition with little real world relevance. More strikingly, honor and chivalry are confused with a desire to keep women on a pedestal rather than as equals. Yet this definition of honor, its role as a societal virtue and the conclusions about honorable action wholly misrepresents the concept and shows a basic failure to understand what exactly constitutes being honorable.
The first major problem is that many people confuse honor as an ideal with honor as an action. Honor is a virtue, which Webster's Dictionary defines as "a conformity to a standard of right." In other words, honor is a set of beliefs about what constitutes right versus wrong, it is a guide for evaluating choices.
Honor in action, on the other hand, is commonly misidentified with chivalry, which Webster's ambiguously calls "the system, spirit, or customs of medieval knighthood." Yet where chivalry is a set of rules governing behavior hundreds of years ago, honor is a method of evaluating behavior in any era. Certainly the two concepts are linked, but chivalry as honor in action simply does not tell the whole story.
Given this, we come to one of the more fundamental flaws in the idea that honor is outdated: The predication that honor is inherently gender-biased and chauvinistic. This is ridiculous, mainly because honor is again not synonymous with medieval chivalry. The original rules of chivalry were created in a time when men were advantaged and women were not, and thus reflected society at the time. This does not mean that chivalry itself cannot evolve, nor that honor is indelibly tied to this original societal manifestation. Looking at honor as a fundamental set of beliefs instead, it is easy to see why honor as a virtue is wholly relevant today: Being honorable means doing what is right.
Though there will no doubt always be disagreement over the details of right versus wrong, some generalizations can be drawn. For instance, one part of being honorable is to be courteous towards others. Smiling and opening doors for women or anyone is not some indication that they are unequal or otherwise different, it is just being a nice person and helps create a more open, welcoming atmosphere. This courteous atmosphere at the University is one of the many things that sets this University and other Southern schools apart.
Another example that goes hand in hand with being courteous is the idea that you should help and defend anyone who is weaker than you. However much many would like to pretend otherwise, no one is the same, and thus different people will have different advantages. In the Middle Ages this meant it was honorable to protect and defend women, who at that time were disadvantaged. Being honorable did not mean keeping women in a position of inferiority, it meant acting rightly in a given context. Rather than confuse honor and chivalry with a desire to protect women because they are seen as inferior, it is critical that we recognize the true purpose is to protect anyone who is weaker and cannot protect themselves.
The only real problem with honor is that, like any system of morals, it is hard to pin down. This is because honor is fundamentally personal, as it is the reflection of how well your actions measure up to your beliefs about right and wrong. As a concept it is absolutely critical, because your honor defines who you are as a person.
Honor as a general term is also fundamental to society, as it is a reflection of general societal morals: courteousness, kindness, helpfulness and responsibility. It is wholly relevant because it is in fact the lynchpin around which our society functions and evaluates itself. Saying that honor is outdated, leads to gender inequality, and should be broken up or abandoned reflects a failure to understand what honor really means.
Honor is your duty to yourself, to live up to the beliefs you claim to hold dear. Honor is also your duty to others, to respect them and to use what strengths you have to complement the weaknesses. Honor is the fundamental virtue of our society, and acting honorably should be our utmost concern.
Allan Cruickshanks is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at acruickshanks@cavalierdaily.com.
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