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this thesis emphasises the qualified rejection of the supposed moral
progression of the moderns beyond the ancients, and outdoes the fourth
thesis in its effort to liberate Greek antiquity from the exotic and foreign.13
that thesis, or set of theses, involves the resurgence of Aristotelian ethics,
also known (with a wider scope of reference) as virtue ethics, in the wake
of various damning criticisms of current ethics, and its defence as a serious
alternative; its emphasis on virtues of character and a conception of a well-
lived life were offered either as alternatives to contemporary normative
ethics or as a persuasive moral psychology. Arguably prompted by G. S. e.
Anscombe’s seminal “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), virtue ethics
gained ground through the elucidating efforts of, amongst others, the
aforementioned Bernard Williams and Alasdair MacIntyre. the role these
latter scholars played in this particular re­emergence of classical ideas is
evidently quite different from their work on Homeric literature and Attic
tragedy; one of the important points is that the earlier literature was pre-
ethical. But, while Aristotle is much concerned with virtue and the good
life, his account in the Nicomachean Ethics places weight on honour; it
plays a role in Aristotle that it has definitely lost in modern moral theory.
II. Clarification and liberation of honour
At the outset I articulated two aims of comparing medieval Icelandic and
ancient Greek notions of honour and shame: on the one hand, a clarifica­
tion of a moral outlook in terms of social structure, and on the other, an
endeavour to liberate these notions for the modern world. These are dis­
tinct projects, in a way opposed to one another, since the first explains
honour in terms of its social embeddedness, from which the second
attempts to pry it loose.
Consider first the aim of clarification. the second thesis mentioned in
the previous section, MacIntyre’s claim that morality and social structure
are the same in heroic society (Greek and Icelandic), when adapted to the
social world of medieval Iceland is fully compatible with a sociological
approach to the sagas, which has not least been championed by Jesse
13 the title of the first chapter of Williams’ Shame and Necessity is “the Liberation of
Antiquity”.
HonouR AnD SHAMe