Under Discussion: Geoffroi de Charny's Book of Chivalry

A Western Hagakure

The Hagakure is a collection of commentaries on the Way of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, recorded between 1709 and 1716. Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a samurai during a period of peace who was not permitted to commit seppuku following the death of his retainer, Nabeshima Mitsushige. He retired to the mountains and lived as a hermit, frustrated by what he saw as a collapse of Traditional samurai culture into decadence and weakness. The Hagakure is often contradictory and curmudgeonly, and it is characterized by dark humor and what Yukio Mishima, who wrote his own commentary on the book, referred to as a "manly nihilism." Whereas Musashi's Book of Five Rings focuses more on swordsmanship and strategy, the Hagakure is more directly about a Way of living and dying.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a trained samurai, but he never saw combat. Geoffroi de Charny did.

Charny died heroically in battle, still clutching the oriflamme, a sacred banner charged to him in 1355 by Jean II, King of France. The bearer of the oriflamme was to be "the most worthy and adept warrior," a knight "noble in intention and deed, unwavering, virtuous, loyal, adept, and chivalrous." Charny had proved himself thus again and again in battle. When Jean II feared that French knights were becoming decadent, weak and cowardly, he formed the Order of the Star, a group of virtuous knights meant to reform French knighthood. Charny was an exemplary member, and it is likely that he produced The Book of Chivalry at Jean II's request.

The Book of Chivalry is not a manual on tactics or technique, it is a treatise on how to live -- and die -- like a knight. It describes "The Way of the Knight." And, importantly, it was written --likely dictated aloud to a scribe as the Hagakure was -- by an actual knight. Charny was not a monk or a poet or a politician or a novelist or a Victorian or a modern historian. He was a battle tested knight held in high regard as an exemplar of chivalry by his king and his peers. Chivalry was his Way.

Under discussion: Honor: A History by James Bowman (Encounter Books, 2007)

What happened to honor in the West? And without honor -- or at least an honest understanding of it -- are we capable of facing the challenges of the 21^st Century?

In Honor: A History, Bowman places these questions in a political context, as a clash between the old honor culture of the Islamic world and the anti-honor culture of the modern West. In this sense, his question is similar to the one Mark Steyn asks in America Alone. If Islam has all the attributes of what Osama Bin Laden famously called "a strong horse," will the pampered and polite social democracies of the West be able to survive its galloping onslaught?

This horse race bookends a rare and worthwhile exploration of the concept of honor itself, which is a confusing topic in the contemporary West where honorable ideals have been discredited as anti-modern, and the word "honor" has been reduced to a mere synonym for neutered, universal, non-hierarchical values like "goodness" or "honesty" or "integrity." The bumper sticker banality "honor diversity" renders the word honor a substitute for the verbs "value" or "esteem." While you can certainly follow the dilution of honor's meaning here, this is a world apart from a word once closely connected to glory won in battle.

I recently took part in a "males only" workshop at a local private high school. It was an unlikely opportunity for an advocate of traditional masculine ideals, especially given the fact that the workshop was part of this fairly liberal school's yearly "Diversity Conference." I was thankful for the chance to get across some countering viewpoints. I shared the floor with a veteran leader of men's groups, and I knew we had different aims from the get-go, but I had the first hour.

To begin, I played the guys my favorite scene from The Outlaw Josey Wales -- the part where Wales rides up to the Comanche chief Ten Bears and bargains for peace.

There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see. And so, there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men.

There is iron in your words of death.

This is how civilization happened.

Agreements between men, backed by the threat of violence.

This is how men made this world.

On Sam Sheridan's The Fighter's Mind

If you want to study the engine of masculinity -- if you want to know what really drives men -- don't start at the junkyard. Yet, that's too often exactly where people who study men start. It's not that you can't learn anything from the rusted out, fragmented husk of a broken man, but it's always going to tell you a story about "what went wrong." You're not going to understand men if you only talk to the men who are failing, who are in therapy, who are angry at men, who aren't making it. And you aren't really getting the whole picture by crossing your legs, sliding your glasses down your nose and interviewing young men who are still figuring things out, all hopped up on testosterone, passionately reciting their manly mantras. You don't go to the student for enlightenment. You go to the teacher. You go to the man on the mountain. If you want to understand men, talk to the men who are good at being men. Talk to the men who other men worship. Talk to their heroes. Figure out how their engines run, and why they run so damn well.

Any honest, serious attempt to understand men should include a survey of sports writing and biographies of athletes -- the kind of men who men choose, organically and of their own free will, to put on pedestals. Sam Sheridan's The Fighter's Mind is as good a place as any to start, though to get your bearings I'd recommend reading his 2007 book A Fighter's Heart first. His running, informal bibliography found throughout the books should round out a solid reading list.