A Beguiling Military Virtue: Honor

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on various forms of military honor at play within the West's military traditions. I seek the true form. Employing a Humean framework, I clarify the beliefs and their origins grounding five of our highly disparate forms of military honor: (1) Southern Honor (Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg); (2) Regimental Honor (British Lieutenant John Rouse Merriot Chard, 5^th Company Royal Engineers, and Acting Assistant Commissary James Dalton at Rorke's Drift, Zulu Wars, January 22–23, 1879); (3) National Honor (French Marshall Ferdinand Foch at the Marne, World War I, 8 September 1914); (4) Officer Honor (Israeli Nahum Arieli in Israel's War for Independence, 1948); and (5) Warrior ‘Honor’ (the unknown French and Algerian warriors at Chipyong-ni, South Korea, Korean War, 13–15 February 1951). I employ in my analysis four Humean insights derived from a close study of A Treatise of Human Nature and a little known essay by Hume, ‘An Historical Essay on Chivalry and Modern Honour’. They are the Fundamental, the Temporal, the Level of Abstraction, and the Ultimate Insights. The conclusions suggest the following as a characterization of true military honor, a virtue best exemplified in practice by Robert E. Lee: ‘Reliant on esteem for its past, warrior honor is a certain constancy, harmony and refinement of the natural virtues of greatness of mind and extended benevolence. Both virtues for the warrior are deeply rooted in and expressive of a common life for which he is prepared to die’.