The word honor is obsolete; there are those who believe that honor has disappeared and that we are much better off without it, although we must not forget that competitive honor, as recognition of academic or artistic merit, survives regardless of morality. What is indisputable is that shame, his inseparable companion, continues to exist. Whatever its interpretation, our societies create codes that are based on patterns of behavior and expression of feelings. In these patterns, honor functions as the axis around which the fundamental tendencies of behavior revolve. Although the word has not been used at different times, it has always existed and continues to this day, at least at various levels of the intangible social hierarchy, of pride or of the responsibility of sharing a code of conduct, which allows us to think that we are better or worse depending on a paradigm that, ultimately, is equivalent to honor.

For our ancestors of three or four hundred years ago, it was meritorious to die for defending honor and there were those who considered dishonor worse than death, but no one would have been able to exhibit the text of a supreme law that exalted it or the rate of what was would pay for his loss. What anyone understood and what abundant documents preserved was the fear of disgrace or shame that accompanied it.