Some years ago, when I was still working full time as a philosophy professor, I got a late-afternoon call from E.S. He was a senior colleague and good friend.

We’d exchanged just a few words when he remarked, with concern, “You sound like hell. What’s the matter?”

I told E.S. that I’d just hung up from talking with a woman friend whom I was soon to meet for dinner. “She said she’s going to kill herself and – from her tone – I believe her.”

As it happened, E.S. had lost a daughter to suicide. So he knew enough to take such a threat seriously. First, he advised, “don’t argue with her. Don’t try to talk her out of it.” Second, “buy her dinner.” Third, “buy her a present.” Fourth, “Whatever you might want to say later, first just listen.”

We met at a nice restaurant in the neighborhood. I told her that dinner would be my treat. From what I recall, my present was a teddy bear. In other words, nothing grim and grown up. And I settled back to listen.

She told me that she had submitted a book proposal to a publisher that had the potential dramatically to upgrade her status in her profession. She’d made her case thoroughly, covering every aspect of the venture, with great care and in detail. Nevertheless, after considering the proposal with much interest and at length, in the end it had been rejected.

Since I wasn’t in her line of work, I couldn’t feel the defeat as she felt it. But I understood that, for her, the setback was major. It came at a time when she was getting romantically involved with a man whom she wanted to impress with achievements and status of her own. Now she was back to being, in her own eyes, nobody special.

     “So how do you plan to kill yourself?”

     “I’ll rent a hotel room and take enough sleeping pills.”

     “So they’ll find your body in the morning and that’ll restore your image? When he finds out, Jack will be devastated. Which do you think he’d rather have – a live fiancée who’s suffered a career setback, but can still be there to plan new initiatives and share the highs and the lows with him – or a dead body in a hotel room?”

I don’t know what I said that might have turned the tide. Or maybe it was nothing I said. Maybe it was the teddy bear.

But I think it was a friend’s seeing that her concern was with losing face – which is a concern with honor. What I did was take that concern as seriously as she did and try to address it on its own terms.

Another friend who contemplated suicide had a more classic motivation. She had joined a self-help group whose members included a guy who took it upon himself to be specially supportive to newcomers. In that capacity, he had managed to get her into his bed. It was unlikely that she was the first, or would be the last, to be taken advantage of in that manner.

Of course, in the aftermath she hated herself and wanted – with all her proud Iberian soul – to die. Nothing less would do justice to such a dishonor.

As a concept, nowadays honor is thought to belong to a pre-modern era. All I can say is, not in my experience.

I began what was understood to be our farewell dinner by accepting her view of honor as well as her view of its defeat. With me that acceptance didn’t have to field objections – whether philosophical, psychological or feminist. Like her, I too thought honor was real – though it played out differently for a woman than for a man – and you could lose it. If I had to defend that view on the terrain of philosophical argument, I might be in difficulties. But in real life, I knew what I knew.

So what did I say? I didn’t contest her loss. I fully granted the difficulties that encounter had put her in. I simply pointed out that this dog-of-a-man and his abuse of power wasn’t worth her life! Why honor him with her uncured defeat? Let him live to regret the loss of her charms and the ignominy of her contempt. 

Did my interventions cost me anything? Yes. It cost me both friends. I assume that neither friend wanted an inconvenient witness to moments of defeat that otherwise would have been visible only to themselves. I respected their decisions. 

On balance, I’m willing to accept the loss.

As long as they’re alive!