Personal Honor and the Possibility for Redemption
Author
Bambrick, Ian James
Subject
Washington and Lee University -- Honors in Philosophy
Bushido
Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1807-1870
Washington and Lee University
Honor system (Higher education)
Conduct of life
Metadata
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What exactly is redemption? Webster's defines it as "an act or instance of repairing or restoring," and "expiation of guilt or wrong." More to the heart of the matter, is it possible to redeem oneself in an honor society when one's honor has been lost? This is a question that delves to the very heart of what it means to be honorable. To answer this question, honor itself must first be defined. The type of honor that will be considered is personal honor, and it will be shown that the answer to this question applies to all systems in which honor is personal in the way defined. This will be accomplished by examining two honor societies that, though very different in some respects, both
conceive of honor as a personal virtue. First, the honor system at Washington and Lee will be described followed by a description of the code of honor from which our system grew, that of the antebellum South. Bushido, a system of honor that developed and flourished in feudal Japan, will then be examined. In each of these examples, it will be shown that a type of single sanction is employed when the fundamental precepts of the system, or code, are broken and that this must necessarily be so because honor is conceived of as a personal virtue. In other words, when honor is a personal virtue, there is only one punishment when honor is lost, namely banishment from the honor society. Once this has been established, the question of redemption will be addressed in full. [From Foundation section]