The Natural Balance of Honour

Honour, Empathy, and Compassion in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way


Some Definitions

Before proceeding to analyze the connexion between honour, empathy and compassion, it would perhaps be useful to give definitions of the terms themselves since such definitions (and etymologies, if applicable) might help to avoid confusion and mis-understandings in respect of the use of these terms in the philosophy of The Numinous Way.

Compassion

The English word compassion dates from around 1340 CE and the word in its original sense (and as used in the philosophy of The Numinous Way) means benignity [1]. Hence, compassion is being kindly disposed toward and/or feeling a sympathy with someone (or some living being) affected by pain/suffering/grief or who is enduring vicissitudes.

The word compassion is derived from com, meaning together-with, combined with pati, meaning to-suffer/to-endure, and thus useful synonyms for compassion, in this original sense, are compassivity and benignity.


Honour

The English word honour dates from around 1200 CE, deriving from the Latin honorem (meaning refined, grace, beauty) via the Old French (and thence Anglo-Norman) onor/onur. As used by The Numinous Way, honour means an instinct for and an adherence to what is fair, dignified, and valourous. An honourable person is thus refined: that is, they are noble and cultured and hence distinguished by virtue of their character, which is one of manners, fairness, natural dignity, culture, and valour.

In respect of early usage of the term, two quotes may be of interest. The first, from c. 1393 CE, is taken from a poem, in Middle English, by John Gower:

And riht in such a maner wise
Sche bad thei scholde hire don servise,
So that Achilles underfongeth
As to a yong ladi belongeth
Honour, servise and reverence. [2]
The second is from several centuries later:
" Honour - as something distinct from mere probity, and which supposes in gentlemen a stronger abhorrence of perfidy, falsehood, or cowardice, and a more elevated and delicate sense of the dignity of virtue, than are usually found in vulgar minds." [3]

Empathy

Etymologically, this fairly recent English word, used to translate the German Einfühlung, derives, via the late Latin sympathia, from the Greek συμπάθεια - συμπαθής - and is thus formed from the prefix σύν (sym) together with παθ- [root of πάθος] meaning enduring/suffering, feeling: πάσχειν, to endure/suffer.

As used and defined by The Numinous Way, empathy - ἐμπάθεια - is a natural human faculty: that is, a noble intuition about another human being or another living being. When empathy is developed and used, as envisaged by The Numinous Way, it is a specific and extended type of συμπάθεια. That is, it is a type of and a means to knowing and understanding another human being and/or other living beings - and thus differs in nature from compassion.



The Connexion Between Honour, Empathy, and Compassion


Compassion - the human virtue of having συμπάθεια with other living beings - often or mostly derives from, has its genesis in, our natural (and thus still undeveloped) faculty of empathy: from that translocation of ourselves that empathy provides. In essence, to be compassionate is to not cause or contribute to the suffering, or to aid in the alleviation of the suffering, of other living beings.

The Cosmic Ethic is the expression used to describe the ethics of The Numinous Way, and the Cosmic Ethic is essentially that presencing of ψυχή [Life] which occurs when the insight (the acausal-knowing) of a developed empathy inclines us toward a compassion balanced by and manifest in and through personal honour.

Thus, personal honour establishes both boundaries for and, to an extent, the content of compassion as compassion is understood by The Numinous Way, and thence represents the natural - the Cosmic - balance of human life. Or, expressed another way, personal honour manifests, presences, the numinous for us as human beings, and is a means whereby we can live in a more numinous way.

This natural human balance which personal honour presents is the principle of Δίκα - and the boundaries of compassion are most obvious in the principle of honourable self-defence. For The Numinous Way allows for the use of physical force sufficient to cause injury ('suffering') to another being - and allows for, if honourable, the use of lethal force - both in self-defence and (in the immediacy of the personal moment) in defence of someone close-by who is dishonourably attacked or threatened or bullied by others.

This use of force is importantly, crucially, restricted to such personal situations of immediate self-defence, and cannot be extended beyond that, for to so extend it or attempt to extend beyond the immediacy of the personal moment is dishonourable, contrary to the nature of honour itself.

Such individual action by individuals is the honourable - the fair, the valourous - thing to do so when faced with someone or some many acting dishonourably; when personally faced with someone whose nature inclines them toward, or subsumes them into, committing the error of ὕβρις thus upsetting the natural balance and undermining the numinous. Such a dishonourable person thus may be said to have a bad (a rotten) φύσις - that is, they lack or are deficient in ἀρετή and thus have little or no understanding of Φύσις [4] and do not possess the virtue, the skill, of σωφρονεῖν, of a reasoned, a balanced, judgement.

Hence, for The Numinous Way, compassion - benignity - is not (as it tends to be in some other Ways) unconditional, but rather must be balanced by and be in accord with honour. To so balance compassion by the ethical guidelines that honour provides is, from the perspective of The Numinous Way, the human thing to do; that is, consistent with our natural numinous nature, consistent with Nature, and thus with how Φύσις is revealed to us by both empathy and πάθει μάθος.


            The connexion, therefore, between empathy, honour and compassion is the living human being, or rather a type of human being, for a well-manned individual adhering to what is fair, dignified, and valourous, presences the Numen [5], aids the cultivation and development of empathy (and embodies such empathy), and has benignity, that is, is compassionate in a manner consistent with the natural human balance that is Δίκα.

Expressed simply, such a type of human being is the Cosmic Ethic - and thus Δίκα - just as such an Ethic cannot live - exist, be found - in anything other than such a living being; that is, this Ethic cannot live in some law, in some Institution, in some Court, in some dogma or in some abstract theory. To be numinous, to presence the numinous, what is ethical requires a living honourable person, not some abstract theory of ethics.

Thus, in essence, it is the cultivation of such empathic, honourable, individuals - individually, and by, for example, a culture of ἀρετή - that is the simple praxis of The Numinous Way.

As mentioned elsewhere:

" The culture (the ethos, the way) of ἀρετή is, in essence, the self-education of discovering and knowing, intellectually and personally, that noble balance between our natural human tendency to commit ὕβρις – to go beyond the respectful, noble, limits of behaviour – and the necessity of learning the hard way, from πάθει μάθος, from direct personal experience. Δίκα is this balance; a balance manifest in us – or which can be manifest in us – through thoughtful reasoning, that is, by a well-balanced, fair, noble, personal judgement.

This culture of ἀρετή is thus a particular and an acquired balance - born from personal honour, from πάθει μάθος (from the personal knowing of the error, the unbalance, that is ὕβρις) and from using reasoned judgement (σωφρονεῖν), and both of which make us aware of the true nature of our φύσις [our own individual character] and of the nature of Φύσις itself."   A Glossary of Some Numinous Way Terms, Version 1.09 



David Myatt
October 2011 CE
(Revised JD2455975.101)

Notes

[1] The word benignity derives from the Latin benignitatem and the sense imputed by the word is of a kind, compassionate, well-mannered character, disposition, or deed. It came into English usage around the same time as compassion; for example, the word occurs in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde [ ii. 483 ] written around 1374 CE. 

[2]  John Gower, Confessio Amantis. Liber Quintus vv. 2997-3001 [Macaulay, G.C., ed. The Works of John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1901]

[3] George Lyttelton. History of the Life of Henry the Second. London, Printed for J. Dodsley. M DCC LXXV II [1777] (A new ed., cor.) vol 3, p.178

[4] In respect of φύσις and Φύσις see, for example, my brief essay Physis, Nature, Concealment, and Natural Change [Some Notes on Heraclitus Fragment 123 ].

[5] That is, presences beauty - τὸ καλόν - culture, grace, a respect for 'the sacred', and imputes a knowledge of the need to avoid what is vulgar, dishonourable, and undignified.