Robbery was honored because it defied subordination to objective norms.

Evidence

This state of affairs serves to explain numerous phenomena, including, first of all, the naturalness and honorableness of robbery, of the subjective and normatively unregulated seizure of what is immediately desired. Long after the Homeric era piracy remained a legitimate occupation in peripheral Greek territories. Indeed, among many primitive peoples armed robbery is held to be superior to honest payment. This latter point of view is thoroughly understandable: in exchange and payment one is subordinated to an objective norm, which the strong, autonomous personality must defer to, something it often is just not inclined to do. For this reason very aristocratic, self-willed natures disdain commerce. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 263

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the reader’s framing: where commerce requires civil-inattention-style self-discipline, theft preserves the willful self — a concrete instance of Simmel’s autonomy-vs-objective-norm tension.