Synopsis
In this landmark work, a leading philosopher demonstrates the revolutionary power of honor in ending human suffering.
The Barnes & Noble Review
Appiah makes a careful and fairly strong case, though ultimately one cannot help but wonder whether the notion of honor is capable of retaining as much force as he desires it to in the modern world. Most of his examples, after all, are historical; the one contemporary case he considers, that of honor killings, is one in which the effectiveness of appeals to honor and collective shaming have yet to be demonstrated. And even if such appeals prove successful in Pakistan, it isn't clear how much power they can exert in the West. To take just one telling statistic, a 2001 survey at the University of Virginia, a school that takes its venerable honor code as a point of considerable pride, found that over 95% of students who were aware of cheating or other honor code violations chose not to report them. Did these students not see their complicity as itself dishonorable, or did they simply not care? Either way, if honor really is the main motivating force behind moral progress, as Appiah contends, the moral forecast for the next few decades may appear bleak indeed.