Follow-up to Prior

The last post was more than long enough, and attacked the basic problem of 'what is wrong with this coherent argument about fairness?'. However, the Clovis example reminds me of an interesting fact about the Beowulf.

Clovis asks his warriors for a gift of honor at the end of a successful fight. He does not simply lay claim to a share of the treasure that is not warranted by the equal law governing their unequal society: "I ask you, O most valiant warriors, not to refuse to me the vase in addition to my rightful part."

The one soldier who refused him obeyed their law about division of spoils, but also then refused the king a requested gift -- he denied him an asked-for honor, which is to say that he imposed a shame. It was this, I think, that Clovis was revenging with his later murder of that soldier in a shameful manner, imposing a shame on him in turn. The entry does not mention, however, if Clovis later paid a blood-price to the soldier's family, as is highly likely. Fairness and unfairness were not the only issues in that society; the honor requested and the shame of being publicly embarrassed had to be addressed as well.

In the Beowulf, which holds up the title character as the very model of honor, we get demonstrations of what contemporary societies thought ideal behavior looked like. Having come to help the Danes with Grendel (in order to repay a debt of honor to Hrothgar incurred by Beowulf's father, who had enlisted Hrothgar's aid to help settle a wergild dispute of his own), Beowulf defeats first Grendel and then, when it proves necessary, Grendel's more powerful and magical mother. In doing the latter, he discovers and wins a great treasure. 

What does he do with it? He gives it all to Hrothgar.

Beowulf spake, offspring of Ecgtheow:

“Lo! we blithely have brought thee, bairn of Healfdene,

Prince of the Scyldings, these presents from ocean

Which thine eye looketh on, for an emblem of glory.

Beowulf had come, after all, to help Hrothgar and settle his father's debt of honor. He keeps nothing for himself. Yet Hrothgar recognizes that this 'gift from the ocean' is too great on top of the fight Beowulf has borne, and creates a new debt of honor on him. He repays this by giving Beowulf presents of his own, rich ones; and later, when Beowulf would leave him to return home, parting gifts as well. Hrothgar declares that all the old feuds are forgotten, and the two peoples united in friendship by this mutual exchange which will bring further visits and exchanges and growth and prosperity.

Unferth, a thegn of Hrothgar's who had not been able to defeat the monsters, gives Beowulf his sword as a gift -- an honor that repays the shame Unferth likely felt at having been unable to do the deed himself. Beowulf's acceptance of this redeems Unferth's incapacity, and restores the honor he might otherwise have lost by not being part of the story of Grendel's defeat.

On the return home to his own king, Hygelac, Beowulf is met by the coast guard to whom he gives a sword as a gift; then, on arrival to the king, he gives the king all that Hrothgar had given him as gifts to his own king, thus eliminating any chance that Hygelac would see Beowulf's newfound wealth as a potential threat to their relative positions. But this is also not the end of the exchange, because Hygelac then gives Beowulf great gifts in return for the substantial honor that Beowulf has shown to him by this free-handedness with what he had won. These gifts include manors and establishments that will produce wealth, placing Beowulf higher in the structure of Geat power because he has proven he can be trusted to keep faith with his king. Indeed, after Hygelac's death and then the death of his son, Beowulf arises to the kingship himself. 

This mode of gift-giving looks unbounded and without economic logic to modern eyes: Beowulf was the one who had earned the 'presents of the ocean' through combat; why give it to Hrothgar, who had already received much by having the monsters killed? One present, perhaps, but all of it? Then too with Hygelac, who had perhaps contributed by allowing Beowulf to go on the trip rather than insisting he stay at home; but did he thereby deserve all of the spoils of the venture? In freely giving away everything and keeping nothing for himself multiple times, Beowulf places his fate in the hands of men who are the very sort of men that the author of the 'fairness' piece would suggest ought to be expected to take unfair advantage, being already in positions of social power and authority. It looks illogical and uneconomical.

Perhaps outside of a work of literature, the kings would have behaved more like Clovis than like Hrothgar or Hygelac. Yet in the poem, where the ethic is being spelled out purely and on its own terms, honor provides an answer to these problems of economic grasping. Each recognizes the honor being done him and repays it fairly -- fairly, not disproportionately to his own advantage according to a notion of 'fairness' that is derived from the system's own extant inequalities. At least in the poem, honor proves to have an economics and a logic of its own, one that leads to Beowulf reigning in peace and stability for many decades. His people love him; nations abroad respect him whether they love him or fear him.

And so there is peace, until the dragon comes.