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In a reduction worthy of Nietzsche (or Augustine), Kant explores the motives behind honor: "the perpetual war between the Arathapescaw Indians and the Dog Rib Indians has no other aim than mere slaughter. In the savages' opinion, bravery in war is the highest virtue. In the civilized state too, bravery is an object of admiration and one reason for the special respect commanded by that estates in which bravery is the sole merit; and this is not without basis in reason. For that a human being should be capable of possessing and adopting as his goal something (honor) which he values more lightly still than his life, and of sacrificing all self-interest to it, this surely bespeaks a certain sublimity in his predisposition. Yet we can see in the complacency with which the victors boast of their grandiose deeds (the butchery, the merciless killing, and the like) that it is in their mere superiority, and in the havoc that they can wreak, with no other end, that they really place their good."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, September 05, 2007 at 03:35 PM
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