Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori
et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth living (VIII, 83).
Although it is not entirely impossible that Veblen, like Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis), here intends to satirize those who sacrifice their lives for honor, I find it doubtful since the sentiment is so pervasive among those who fall (or will fall) within Veblen’s orbit.
Later this semester Alexander Kojeve and then Francis Fukuyama will take this preference for death and honor over life and dishonor as a leading quality of the master race (an interpretation that Fukuyama ascribes, not unjustly, to GFW Hegel’s master class). And Hannah Arendt, another Chicago luminary, will come to fault the working class for failing, when granted leisure time, to know quite what to do with it, since they had long ago sacrificed their human dignity in the pursuit of industry.
PE 160 will take up this topic more fully on Monday.