BUSHIDO: THE SEVEN VIRTUES

In Japanese tradition, Bushido (武士道), is a term which translates "way of the warrior". Many samurai devoted their lives to bushido, a strict code that demanded loyalty and honor to the death. If a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by committing seppuku (ritual suicide).

Bushido is an internally-consistent ethical code. In its purest form, it demands of its practitioners that they look effectively backward at the present from the moment of their own death, as if they were already, in effect, dead. This is particularly true of the earlier forms of Bushido or budo. Of later forms, traditionalists would scoff, "they reason with staying alive kept clearly in mind."

There are seven virtues associated with Bushido:

義 - Gi - Rectitude (Right Decisions)
勇 - Yu - Courage
仁 - Jin - Benevolence
礼 - Rei - Respect
 誠 - Makoto - Honesty
名誉 - Meiyo - Honor
尽忠 - Chugi - Loyalty

Rectitude 

Rectitude: Uprightness as a consequence of being honorable and honest.

As we rarely use the term, the virtue of rectitude is somewhat difficult to grasp for western minds. The term not only suggests the honorability it seems to, but also implies that doing the honorable thing is difficult. Someone who is displaying rectitude is not only acting honorably, but is also willing to suffer the consequences of acting honorably.

For example: You are working as a salesmen when you find that your employers are using a shady tactic to trick consumers into buying their product. If you tell potential buyers about the shady tactic so as not to deceive them, then you are acting honorably, but without rectitude. If you address your employers directly to demand that they be honest with their customers, knowing this may cost you your job, then you are showing rectitude. 

 

Courage

Courage is the ability to confront fear in the face of pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. As a virtue, courage is covered extensively in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, its vice of deficiency being cowardice, and its vice of excess being boldness.

The precise view of what precisely constitutes courage not only varies between cultures, but between individuals. For instance, some define courage as lacking fear in a situation that would normally generate it. Others, in contrast, hold that courage requires one to have fear and then overcome it.

There are also more subtle distinctions in the definition of courage. For example, some distinguish between courage and foolhardiness in that a courageous person overcomes a justifiable fear for an even more noble purpose. If the fear is not justifiable or the purpose not noble, then the courage is either false, or foolhardy. 

Benevolence

Definition
Benevolence characterizes the true goodness of the mind, the unbiased kindness and altruism. It converts thought and regard for the welfare of other people, and finds expression in sympathy and kindly gentleness and compassion, with charitableness and disinterested love. A weak Benevolence stands for little, if any, thought or regard for others, and a tendency to put the emphasis on self-interest. 

Localization
Benevolence is located in the upper part of the forehead. This part is very convex when Benevolence is strong; a slanted forehead often comes with a negative Benevolence. 

Interaction with other faculties

* Negative Benevolence + positive Firmness: authoritarian personality without consideration and humanity. 
* Negative Benevolence + positive Destructiveness: propensity for unkindness or cruelty in one form or another. 

 

Respect

Dignity is a human condition of being worthy of respect or esteem.

To esteem a person or a thing is to assign to it or him or her a high value. Esteem for a person or a thing is an assessment of its or his or her high value.

Respect is the objective, unbiased consideration and regard for rights, values, beliefs and property. Kant's categorical imperative as well as what is commonly understood as being civilized incorporate the concept of respect. The levels of respect the people show to each other can vary from showing no respect, which may constitute abuse in some circumstances, to showing great respect. Many cultures have institutions that ritualize respect, as with a constitutional monarchy. Some believe that it is only through showing an appropriate level of respect in all circumstances (regardless of whether or not it is felt to be earned) that one can achieve self-respect, which allows one to be dignified.

Differences in culture, as well as in perceptions of self and outward appearances can result in a person being unintentionally disrespectful.

Respect was a central value in the raver 'culture', principally of the late 80s to early 90s, which claims to believe in never doing anything to hurt or insult anyone. Later on, towards the mid-nineties, it was combined with 'p'eace, 'l'ove and 'u'nity in the usenet news reading raver's acronym PLUR.

Respect has served as the catch-word of the British entertainer Ali G, and Norman from Def 2 in the early 90s.

The opposite of respect is abuse. 

Honesty

Honesty is often thought of as the opposite of lying. However, this is a very narrow definition that is often thought of as being very "Western" or dualist.

Most moral philosophy would recognize a sort of trivial dishonesty that is part of etiquette, "little white lies" and "polite lying," as acceptable, and usually also recognize the acceptability of lying under grave risk of bodily harm to self or others - Benjamin Constant's "Middle Principle" was one such provision. However, there are some that seek a much more comprehensive ethical certainty about what one says - Immanuel Kant for instance was quite rigid about this. Confucius recognized several levels of honesty, fundamental to his ethics:

His shallowest concept of honesty was implied in his notion of Li: all actions committed by a person to build the ideal society - aiming at meeting their surface desires of a person either immediately (bad) or longer term (good). To admit that one sought immediate gratification could however make a bad act better, and to hide one's long term goals could cloud a good act. A key principle was that a "gentleman" must strive to convey his feelings honestly on his face, so that these could help each other coordinate for long term gain for all. So there was a visible relation between time horizon, etiquette and one's image of oneself even in the mirror. This generates self-honesty and keeps such activities as business calm, unsurprising, and aboveboard. In this conception, one is honest because it suits one's own self-interest only.

Deeper than Li was Yi or righteousness. Rather than pursuing your own selfish interests you should do what is right and what is moral - based on reciprocity. Here too time is central, but as a time span: since your parents spent your first three years raising you, you spent three mourning them after they die. At this level one is honest about one's obligations and duty. Even with no one else to keep you honest or to relate to directly, a deeply honest person would relate to ancestors as if they were alive and would not act in ways that would make them ashamed. This was part of the moral code that included ancestor worship, but Confucius had made it rigorous.

The deepest level of honesty was Ren, out of which flowed Yi and thus Li. Confucius' morality was based upon empathy and understanding others, which required understanding one's own moral core first, rather than on divinely ordained rules, which could simply be obeyed. The Confucian version of the Golden Rule was to treat your inferiors as you would want your superiors to treat you. Virtue under Confucius is based upon harmony with others and a recognition of the honest reality that eventually (say in old age) one will come under the power of others (say one's children). So this level of honesty is to actually put oneself in context of one's whole life and future generations - and choose to do or say nothing that would not reflect one's family's honor and reputation for honesty and acceptance of truth, such as eventual death.

Partially because of incomplete understanding of these deeper notions of honesty among Westerners, in China and Japan it is common to refer to those who do not have them as barbarians. While sometimes Asian cultures sanction an almost intolerable degree of delay and ambiguity for Western tastes, it is very often to avoid lying, or giving a positive impression where doubt exists. These would be thought dishonest by Asians. Thus pressing for a decision on a matter where it is not yet possible to give an honest commitment or answer is seen as extremely rude - in effect, forcing someone to choose to be either rude or dishonest. Both being unthinkable in traditional culture, one thus delays.

Education is often emphasized in ethical traditions because it may be impossible to be considered honest without acquiring some terminology with which to state truth as understood by the society. Thus ignorance can itself generate dishonesty. 

 

Honor

Honor (most variants of English, including Australian English, British English and New Zealand English) or honor (American English) comprises the reputation, self-perception or moral identity of an individual or of a group.

Previously honor figured largely as a guiding principle of society, functioning as part of a code of honor for a gentleman and often coming to expression in the practice of dueling. One's honor, that of one's wife, of one's (blood-)family or of one's beloved formed an all-important issue: the archetypal "man of honor" remained ever alert for any insult, actual or suspected: for either would impugn his honor.

The concept of honor appears to have declined in importance in the modern secular West. Popular stereotypes would have it surviving more definitively in alleged "hot-blooded" Mediterranean cultures (Italian, Arab, Hispanic ...) or in more "gentlemanly" societies (like the "Old South" of Dixie). Feudal or other agrarian societies, focused upon land use and land ownership, may tend to honor "honor" more than do deracinated industrial societies. Traces of the importance attached to honor linger in the military (officers may conduct a court of honor) and in organizations with military echoes, such as Scouting.

"Honor" in the case of females historically related frequently to sexuality: preservation of "honor" equated primarily to maintenance of virginity, or at least to preservation of exclusive monogamy. One could speculate that feminism may have changed some linguistic usage in this respect.

One can contrast cultures of honor with cultures of law. From the viewpoint of anthropology, cultures of honor typically appear among nomadic peoples and herdsmen who carry their most valuable property with them and risk having it stolen, without having recourse to law enforcement or government. In this situation, inspiring fear forms a better strategy than promoting friendship; and cultivating a reputation for swift and disproportionate revenge increases the safety of your person and property. Thinkers ranging from Montesquieu to Steven Pinker have remarked upon the mindset needed for a culture of honor.

Cultures of honor therefore appear amongst Bedouins, Scottish and English herdsmen of the Border country, and many similar peoples, who have little allegiance to a national government; among cowboys, frontiersmen, and ranchers of the American West, where official law-enforcement often remained out of reach, as famously celebrated in Western movies; and among aristocrats, who enjoy hereditary privileges that put them beyond the reach of general laws. Cultures of honor also flourish in criminal underworlds and gangs, whose members carry large amounts of cash and contraband and cannot complain to the law if it is stolen. The encouragement of violent cultures of honor appears one of the drawbacks of legislation that creates victimless crimes.

Once a culture of honor exists, it is difficult for its members to make the transition to a culture of law; this requires that people become willing to back down and refuse to immediately retaliate, and from the viewpoint of the culture of honor this appears as a weak and unwise act.

In contemporary international relations, the concept of "credibility" resembles that of honor: when the credibility of a state or of an alliance appears at stake, honor-bound politicians may call for drastic measures.

Compare the concepts of integrity, face (social custom) in stereotyped Oriental cultures, or of mana in Polynesian society.

For a similar concept with many connotations opposite to honor, see shame. 

 

Loyalty

Loyalty, one can surmise, began with fellow-feeling for one's family, gene-group and friends. Loyalty comes most naturally amongst small groups or tribes where the prospect of the whole casting out the individual seems like the ultimate, unthinkable rejection.

In a feudal society, centered on personal bonds of mutual obligation, accounting for precise degrees of protection and fellowship can prove difficult. Loyalty in these circumstances can become a matter of extremes: alternative groups may exist, but lack of mobility will foster a personal sense of loyalty.

The rise of states (and later nation states) meant the harnessing of the "loyalty" concept to foster allegiance to the sovereign or established government of one’s country, also personal devotion and reverence to the sovereign and royal family.

Wars of religion and their interminglings with wars of states have seen loyalty used in religious senses too, involving faithful support of a chosen or traditional set of beliefs or of sports representatives. And in modern times marketing has postulated loyalties to abstract concepts such as the brand. Customer churn has become the opposite of loyalty, just as high treason once stood as the opposite of the same idea. Compare loyalty card.

Loyalty is also used in context to employee satisfaction with their organization, and their propensity to exit or stay with the organization.

Etymology and Semantics
The English word "loyalty" came into use in the early part of the 15th century in the sense of fidelity to one’s oath, or in service, love, etc; the later state-oriented sense appears in the 16th century. The Old French word loialté (modern French loyauté), comes from loial (loyal), Scots leal, Latin legalis (legal, from lex (law)). The word functioned in the special feudal sense of one who has full legal rights, a legalis homo being opposed to the "outlaw". Thence in the sense of "faithful", it meant one who kept faithful allegiance to his feudal lord, and so loyal to the ultimate temporal power.

 

    "Even if you are a minority of one, the Truth is the Truth."

                                                                               Mahatma Gandhi