Of not Communicating a Man's Honour

There is a custom of reasoning, widespread in all the courts and drawing-rooms I have had occasion to observe, which holds that a family’s honor rises and falls with the most conspicuous of its members. When a nobleman is condemned for treason, his children — who knew nothing of the plot, who may have actively opposed him, who are entirely different people with different characters and different histories — are held to share his disgrace, as though guilt were a property that passed through blood. When another man distinguishes himself on the battlefield, his cousins shine a little brighter at dinner for a month afterward, having contributed nothing.

I find this reasoning not merely incorrect but structurally incoherent. Honor, properly understood, is the assessment of a person’s character as expressed in their choices. It attaches to choices; choices are individual; therefore honor is individual. It cannot be distributed across a family any more than a toothache can be shared equally among one’s relatives. The man who disgraces himself has disgraced himself. His brother, having done nothing, has done nothing — and nothing is what he deserves to be credited with, in either direction.

“The shame that falls on a family for one member’s crime is a punishment inflicted on the innocent, which is the definition of injustice. We have dressed this injustice in the language of natural connection, but it remains what it is.”

This matters practically because the fear of contaminating one’s family has been used, throughout history, as a lever of control — a way of ensuring compliance from people who might otherwise act freely, by making them feel that their freedom costs their relatives something. A man who might speak the truth, or resist an injustice, is silenced by the thought that his family will pay for his boldness. This is tyranny at its most efficient, because it requires no direct enforcement: the potential victim does the tyrant’s work for him.

I have a name, and I care about it, and I will not pretend otherwise. But the name is mine to manage. What my grandfather did with it, or what my nephew may do, is their business, reflecting their character and not mine. To think otherwise is to deny that we are separate persons, which is to deny the most basic fact about human beings there is.