Honor Means What?

The Philosopher's Petition:

Professor Althouse excoriates French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy for his failure to explain exactly why he feels that Roman Polanski should go free.

Even philosophers are sometimes free to write simple calls-to-action, but I do agree that it would be helpful if he explained some of his terms. I was particularly struck by this section:

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Honor requires it?

Honor requires that the strong be a friend to the weak. In this case, the weak would be the girl, now apparently a married woman. Insofar as she seems to want the matter dropped, to judge from the press coverage, one might argue that it could be honorable to follow her wishes and allow the matter to drop. I don't think you could argue, however, that honor requires you to do so; and at least for the district attorney in L.A., his honor is quite clearly involved in doing his office to the best of his ability.

The comment was directed at the Swiss courts, though: their honor, apparently, requires them to release Polanski instead of turning him over to the United States. Why would that be the case? The Holocaust has been proposed as a reason that Europeans feel that Polanski has to be protected; his mother died in it, and he himself survived in the ghettos. Perhaps the claim is that European honor is concerned with protecting those they failed to protect before; the Swiss courts should feel an obligation to prevent the arrest and deportation of a Jew to his tormenters precisely because the French were once complicit in helping to send their Jews to earlier torments.

Yet the cases are entirely different; we are not talking about genocide, but about a perfectly lawful proceeding resulting from a violent crime to which he pled guilty. Protecting the innocent is one thing; protecting the guilty is quite another. Honor cannot be concerned with protecting the guilty.

What I am left with is the sense that Mr. Levy believes that Polanski's contributions as an artist are so great that Polanski's own honor should place him above spending the rest of his life in prison. Honor thus requires releasing this great man; it is absurd that an incomparable artist should languish in prison like a common criminal. After all, he crafted such masterpieces as this:



If that's the argument to be made -- that it is his personal honor that requires he be released -- the philosopher should remember that Polanski's is not the only honor that must be considered.

The honor of a 13-year-old girl is not a small matter. For the lady she became, we might forbear; but for her as she was, he ought to be destroyed. If the Swiss courts hold their hand because of honor, let it be to honor her and her wishes.