The Problem with Honor | Schopenhauer

แชร์
ฝัง
  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ธ.ค. 2024

ความคิดเห็น • 46

  • @WeltgeistYT
    @WeltgeistYT  2 ปีที่แล้ว +22

    Due to health issues, we weren't able to upload new content this week. But hopefully this full video on Schopenhauer's honor culture, putting both parts together in one, serves as a compensation. We know a lot of subscribers don't watch each individual part but instead wait for us to release the full video, so we hope you enjoy it. Thank you for all the support!

    • @satnamo
      @satnamo 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      Health, youth+freedom=3 greatest blessings of life;
      But most people don’t appreciate what they have until it is gone.

    • @abhishek8515
      @abhishek8515 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      Schopenhauer criticized hegel very harshly in many places in his work but their is no one good video where his criticism of hegel is discussed and explained in a scholarly way .......they all just put his criticism by calling it a jealous ranting .....can you make one video......

    • @lilatolouian
      @lilatolouian 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      I hope you feel better soon! 💙🤞Thank you for this video!

  • @christianschmitz5261
    @christianschmitz5261 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    "Insulting" an individual in Germany today can lead to serious legal consequences. Insulting public officials during the performance of their duties, or in relation to their duties, constitutes a more "serious offense", while insult of the president of Germany may lead to five years in prison. Generally, as observable in many other societal spheres, conducts of all sorts between humans, are increasingly being interfered by (and transferred to) the handling of the "State", such as the recently instituted "sex laws" of Sweden.

  • @shadadalshad2574
    @shadadalshad2574 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I have watched every single video on this channel about Schopenhauer,he is Just so intellectually virtuous,you can easily see how much he tries to understand the world

  • @GE0attack
    @GE0attack 2 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    This honour cultur has spread throughout out asia because of colonization and it has developed into something weird combo of what we had here and the European.

    • @GE0attack
      @GE0attack 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @Vercingtorix7 yah your right
      Now that I think of it. Even Indian kings forgive. Turks who inavaded us, i forgot kings name he forgave the same guy multiple times and but when the Turk guy defeated the Indian king brutalised him and did horrible stuff. Rping his wife n stuff

  • @satnamo
    @satnamo 2 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    Self-veneration is das ultimate form of honor,
    True honor itself.

    • @piotr_jurkiewicz
      @piotr_jurkiewicz 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Yes, I thought it was gonna be about it. Now I'm wondering what type of honor is this and where it bagun. Any help? : /

  • @moshefabrikant1
    @moshefabrikant1 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    3:20
    To be rich
    Be useful to others ai give them value.
    And then make it a standard you love what you do
    7:00
    Don't focus on approval of others but give value

  • @Kar-Kan
    @Kar-Kan 2 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    How about feodal Japan. They have samurai codex and so on, do they not considered as Honor culture?

  • @Orion225
    @Orion225 6 วันที่ผ่านมา

    After reading this essay i realised that schoppy wasn't much of a pessimist but more of a realist.

  • @wiseone1013
    @wiseone1013 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Excellent video two thumbs up!!

  • @mrinallguptaofficial2236
    @mrinallguptaofficial2236 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Please make a separate detailed video on Stoicism

  • @jmiller1918
    @jmiller1918 2 ปีที่แล้ว +20

    This is one of the areas where I disagree a bit with Schopenhauer. The dueling culture appears to have had rather developed rules and a general consensus seems to have been in effect regarding what kind of language or actions were worthy of a formal challenge. This culture actually gave some space for deliberation around what constitutes a legitimate injury to honor, and provided some socially sanctioned "exit ramps" before an actual duel took place. We still have violence and killing today, particularly in certain quarters. But people today aren't getting the benefit of the old culture's education in restraint and deliberation. There were certain principles back then that gentlemen agreed to abide by. All that is gone. I would welcome a return to formal dueling, if we could get the cultural seriousness and gravity back along with it.

    • @muneebanwar1982
      @muneebanwar1982 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      I think he's actually talking about the same thing that Thomas Sowell talks about

  • @ihsanulusoy16
    @ihsanulusoy16 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Great review mate well done. Cheers

  • @mechailreydon3784
    @mechailreydon3784 2 ปีที่แล้ว +8

    Interesting, is it worth saying that we can see remnants of this in societies with high gang violence

  • @HARV1991
    @HARV1991 10 หลายเดือนก่อน

    15:32 I mean there are no duels over insults anymore, but instead you go to trial, and can be fined or be put under house arrest or sent to prison over an insult. This already happened here in Spain, where a man was sentenced to a week under house arrest and to pay a fine because he insulted his ex-gf on whatsapp.
    I think duels were better than what we have now.

  • @tutubism
    @tutubism 19 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Much of what you describe about honor sounds like an unhealthy or unethical style of parenting that tries to justify the use of violence to control their own child's behaviour. Both of my parents were like that especially my dad who felt like tyrannical dictator that mostly relied on using force like fear and intimidation instead of empathy or understanding. things he viewed as "weak". He would get really upset if one of us tried to defy or ignore his orders.
    There was a point in my life were i got bullied and cried while graduating in preschool. i didn't let my dad know since he was scary guy and I had no idea how he would react to this. unfortunately my older sister knew about this and snitched on me. my dad got really mad that I cried instead of confronting my enemies because he thinks real men don't cry and showing emotions is weakness. the way he pushes masculine values felt very toxic to me. this incident was probably a huge blow to his ego and thought it was humiliating as a man/father. he even encourage me to use violence to fight back at the bully thinking it would be the only way to restore my honor which I didn't

  • @bioliv1
    @bioliv1 2 ปีที่แล้ว +10

    "Today you must expect that everyone is a psychopath, until the opposite is proven." - Prof. Sam Vaknin
    Unfortunately Sam Vaknin is much more relevant today than Schopenhauer. No sense of honor is left, and psychopathy will be our destiny.

    • @bioliv1
      @bioliv1 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      @Vercingtorix7 The psychopaths are making the laws.

    • @robertvondarth1730
      @robertvondarth1730 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Psychopaths may not feel a natural instinct for honor (assuming there is such) but may still see the cold utility of it, regardless.
      And so act in that regard.

  • @seramer8752
    @seramer8752 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    There is something honorable about it, though brutish, it has its charm.

  • @faz8028
    @faz8028 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    There is more jealousy and stealth. But it’s a mix of both. More civic than knightly though

  • @ideologybot4592
    @ideologybot4592 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I'm going to elaborate on honor here and I don't mean it as a criticism of the video. It's a very good explanation of how Schopenhauer looked at honor, but I think Schopes got some stuff wrong on both the history and deeper meaning of honor that Nietzsche understood much better. It might sound a bit brutal, but that doesn't mean it isn't true or doesn't have value, and if this seems wandering, then feel free to skip it, but I think the importance of honor needs to be clarified, as it is one of those cultural issues I have strong views about.
    Honor as value, usefulness, is valid insofar as it is an extension of sociability in people. This is why Schopenhauer emphasized trades and reputation. But honor at a deeper core is about honesty, which is prior to usefulness. When you communicate, when you agree to do something, when you present yourself as being a type of person, you must be trusted, and this is about truthfulness. Notice the common root of 'honor' and 'honesty'. The latter's definition is strictly involving accuracy and reliability, not usefulness in itself. So, let's assume that people were smart enough in the past to understand that they were ultimately self-interested, looking to move up in their social hierarchies, and saw their relationships in the same way Helvetius insisted, we would say cynical, but ultimately functional. Here, honesty becomes more important for whether or not people can accept someone who ends up in a position of power. Trust IS power; being able to state something is so and be believed, that's as deep a form of power as there is, one that allows someone with information to shape the abstract perception of the world that everyone who listens ends up with. And it makes perfect sense that someone with power can do almost anything BUT lie: their judgments and rules must be consistent, and in ages before the Christian prohibitions against cruelty, it made more sense to band together against powerful people who lied than to go against those who were merely cruel. After all, you can draw an agreement out of a cruel leader to be cruel only under lawful circumstances, which were probably seen as necessary for social order. But what's an agreement with a liar worth?
    So honesty, even cruel honesty, was the critical characteristic of being trusted, and trust is power. In the age of realizing that most of our perspectives are social constructions, we know that might often has made right, and even the perception that there is a "right" beyond having the power to enforce your view is suspect, possibly a creation of religion, not a fact of reality. We know what we're told, especially about other people, and that was more true in an age before cellphone cameras.
    Lies can be very convenient in the short term - there are a lot of useful fictions - but make everything worse over time. Most people lie to get a break from social pressure and get accepted where they usually wouldn't. This can make life very complicated very quickly, and having to trust a liar is pure misery. But being powerful means that you don't have to lie, because social pressure is largely irrelevant. You make the judgments, you aren't subject to them, at least until people get to the guillotine stage. Nietzsche's understanding of power was heavy on expression and fearless creation that assumed honesty as the critical virtue. Temet nosce - know thyself - is an ancient Greek saying for this reason, because a man who knows himself has the luxury of understanding himself well enough to not be wrong about his intentions or his character, and thus be truly trustworthy. The Greek hunger for knowledge was rooted in a desire for reliable knowledge in the same way. Cruelty might be necessary for social order, and uselessness may or may not be avoidable in some situations, but honesty is THE virtue of ancient society.
    It was customary for knights, and all ranking men of society, to announce their accomplishments and titles when they came to a new place or met new people. Honesty was far more important to this, to establishing one's relevance and how much respect they should be afforded, than simple utilitarian value. So the reputation was obviously something to be guarded, and something to be prized, and something to fight over. If you place usefulness over honesty, you end up with people saying whatever benefits them. Look at politics today. Then vomit. Then look again.
    So, the idea that knightly honor was a perversion of honor isn't right. Knightly honor was a formalization of honor which retained its association with strength and power, but because it was so clearly formalized, became incredibly easy to game. The more painful knightly honor principles listed here were considered necessary checks on liars assaulting the validity of reputation, which society was fundamentally dependent on. Having a trickster lie about a person in a position of power, insinuating that he is a fool or a coward particularly, can destroy the legitimacy of a social order in its entirety. It's like discovering an exploitable bug in a competitive video game. The duel had value in simply killing the source of the lie, in a way that seemed ordained by God. Giving honor to those who insulted without consequence, in the same way, meant that the insult was probably true and important information about the stupidity or cowardice of leaders was discovered. ("Promises mean nothing" was hardly a commonly held perspective, even in the medieval world. Some probably exploited their position in small matters, as powerful people always have, but the act of making and upholding promises was taken seriously when there were real stakes)
    I worry about this kind of thing, because there is a belief among people that if you are a good person, it doesn't matter what people think, and this is supposed to be enlightened and civilized. It's ridiculous: people know they have to be their own ad agency, and we see this on social media today. The idea that reputation doesn't matter has to be related to Christianity, with getting what you've REALLY earned after you die, otherwise having an opinion of yourself that conflicts with everyone else's is delusional and stupid and messes up your life. That's particularly true if you're a socially relevant person, someone with rank, as opposed to a normal peasant who doesn't matter and might not understand all the fuss about honor anyway. The idea of reputation never died and can't die, and the idea of defending honor only died among people who never had anything to lose in the first place. Today, we bash anyone who holds public attention freely, often not having any reason to believe what's said, and that's historically unusual - the Plutarch story is cherry picking - and one wonders whether it has a bad impact on trust in authority and institutions. Living in a post-honor society is having some negative consequences.
    Also, there are TONS of examples of Asian cultures caring very, very, very much about honor, it's just likely that Schopenhauer didn't know much about them because no Westerner did. He had an academic understanding of Asian thought that came from studying Buddhism and the Upanishads, and not much more.
    So, in conclusion, great fucking video.

    • @WeltgeistYT
      @WeltgeistYT  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Thank you for the elaborate comment

    • @robertvondarth1730
      @robertvondarth1730 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Honestly is a social contract that should not be given frivolous, but earned

  • @mrinallguptaofficial2236
    @mrinallguptaofficial2236 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    This reminded me of Barry Lyndon

  • @luciferdante884
    @luciferdante884 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    no i don't think civil honor exists in that many people don't assume the honorable nature of a stranger people are afraid that any stranger can be criminal or we assume honor based on things like wealth, political opinions, sex, race, religion etc or others believe that the very idea that our value is in what we add to our society is a kind of oppression

  • @samar1462
    @samar1462 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    India is filled with knightly honour.

  • @ricksturgis6403
    @ricksturgis6403 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Just go to a bar on friday night after 1 a.m. and see whether honor fighting is dead

  • @billyb6001
    @billyb6001 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Robinson Caruso got a lot done.

  • @austinthornton8729
    @austinthornton8729 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Hompt, is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. In knowing when you’re acting like a fool.

  • @wiseone1013
    @wiseone1013 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Knight Honor ecourages bullying behavior by uneducated simpletons with big ego's.Over exaggerated reactions of an emotional nature is often a sign of weakness, projection of some inadequacy.

    • @benjaminburns6336
      @benjaminburns6336 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      The claim that "over exaggerated reactions of an emotional nature is often a sign of weakness, projection of some inadequacy," is an explanation contrived by intellectuals (or some would argue pseudo-intellectuals) to soothe their own big egos. These nerds were perhaps bullied at one time, or at least have looked on with envy at those with greater physical or social gifts. It is little surprise they "discover" that their "oppressors" actually are the weak ones.

    • @tefilobraga
      @tefilobraga 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@benjaminburns6336 That is an argument worthy of Nietzsche. But Schopenhauer is careful enough to point out that his opposition to the tyranny of the strongest, at this in this particular instance, does not result from what Nietzsche would call a "slave morality". However, perhaps Nietzsche would argue (and perhaps he did) that Schopenhauer was unconsciously biased in his moral judgements regarding this issue by the all-pervasive influence of Christianity...

    • @Luca-si5fy
      @Luca-si5fy 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Engaging in violence (Especially for petty things such as honor) might not be a sign of weakness in the common understanding of the term, but it's indeed a sign of blindness.
      Those who can't truly grasp the impermanence of things and their lack of a true essence, can't properly grasp the nature of dissatisfaction and suffering, and therefore can't distinguish what is beneficial from the harmful.
      When someone has completely removed the veil of ignorance and is able to see things as they are, they can't even conceive of causing harm to the other.
      They have conquered themselves, the greatest adversary, and have obtained a peace that can't be taken away.

    • @shamusson
      @shamusson 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@benjaminburns6336 Indeed, it is a way for midwits to cope with the fact they have shit physiques. That's why they hide behind walls of text, for nobody would listen to them were they to meet their opponents irl.

    • @Ash-so2sr
      @Ash-so2sr 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Yes