Honors in Absence of Virtue

There is a distinction between honor and honors, the latter being ways of showing appreciation and respect and the former being the quality that really deserves such demonstrations. As Aristotle holds, honor is the quality that allows the best kind of person -- the magnanimous -- to achieve the fullest expression of virtue by rational reflection on what most deserves honors, and then doing that thing to the degree that most fully deserves to be honored. In this way, virtue and honor are properly connected.

Yet it is quite possible for honors to be deployed separately from the things that properly merit them, or refused to those who indeed do merit them. A system can honor those without virtue, in other words; it can also refuse to honor those whose virtues deserve it. This is why Aristotle rejects honor as the end of ethics: the true end has to be something internal to the person, not something that other people (who may not themselves be virtuous) ultimately control.

This kind of counterfeit use of honors was on display last week with the ridiculous conveyance of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (even with Distinction) on some very unworthy persons (though not all of the awardees are absurdities). The award itself is a little absurd; the medal with Distinction in particular is meant to ape the heraldry of a Knight Grand Cross, and exists only so that certain American elites don't have to feel like poor relations when they are rubbing elbows with European royalty. Those orders too have drifted from their roots in knightly virtue, and are now granted for reasons of high birth or social cachet rather than from merited service. 

American culture generally rejects such things. Unlike the Congressional Medal of Honor, which most Americans would know from exposure to war movies that themselves are honors paid to martial distinction, almost no Americans have ever even seen the Presidential Medal with Distinction displayed by one of our alleged grandees. The military medal, like the ancient orders of knighthood, has its basis in real virtue. Americans deeply respect it. The counterfeit medal no one dares even to wear in American company, not though our own government issues it. 

Another attempt to use honors without virtue as if they were not thereby counterfeit occurred this week when Denmark attempted to reinforce its claim to Greenland. Responding to offers of money and protection should Greenland declare its independence and join the United States, Denmark's king altered his coat of arms to include a polar bear (and also a ram symbolizing the Faroe islands, lest they get any ideas). They are trying to do with honors alone what the Royal Danish Navy, three squadrons strong, could never do with courage and virtue.

Honor is thus one of the most important things in ethics, but only when it is the internal quality. Doing what is worthy of honor, even when it receives no honors, is the mark of the best sort of person. Accepting unmerited honors is a hallmark of the scoundrel; awarding such honors, a mark of corruption among the powerful.