Honor and Shame in Early China.

• Author: Olberding, Garret Pagenstecher

Honor and Shame in Early China. By MARK EDWARD LEWIS. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2021. Pp. vi + 258. $40 (cloth); $32 (e-book).

At the very outset of his book, Honor and Shame in Early China, Lewis announces an ambitious project: to trace "how a discourse of honor and shame helped create the imperial state in China." He aims to examine not only in-state but extra-state groups. The roles these outside groups occupied and the critical language they employed defined a "non-state, public realm which remained in permanent tension with the imperial government." Using a multiplicity of early Chinese terms he connects to the pair of concepts, Lewis aspires to assess a broad variety of sensibilities on the achievement or loss of status, thereby acquiring "a more complete picture of Han imperial state and society" (p. 1). This entire project, of course, relies on how one defines the concepts of honor and shame, and the terms and texts one involves in their investigation.

From my own understanding, in the main to speak of "honor" is to speak of a normative valuation, that which bestows upon the recipient not simply an economically or politically valuable status or rank but veneration, an esteem that often is reserved for those who act against their own self-interest, for those who display an uncommon valor or self-sacrifice. If not, a book about "honor" could be categorized as one about awarding partisan distinction, however self-serving the person rewarded. That which earns one vulgar rank and status, or even broad fame, as popular celebrities can earn, in itself does not generally rise to the level of that which deserves "honor."

And yet this seems to be that with which Lewis equates honor: raw status or rank, no matter how it is earned or by what means it is bestowed. Honor is "generally understood," as Lewis defines it on the very first page, "as a person's value perceived by the self and his or her group. Consequently, it expresses a society's perception of what defines a superior person" (p. 1). For Lewis, what a person or "group" perceives as valuable is somehow immediately and logically connected to what a society at large defines as a superior person. From where Lewis produces this "generally understood" definition of honor is unknown. How this definition would not simply result in a cheap, fleeting popularity (and perhaps only within a select group), unconnected from any deeper merit, is also uncertain. A question of normative...