An Inquiry into Honor

Abstract

Our everyday encounters with honor suggest that it is a largely positive notion. Such examples might include honoring one’s parents, referring to a judge as ‘Your Honor’, or a soldier receiving the Medal of Honor for extraordinary battlefield valor. Unfortunately, honor also has its share of problematic associations. Historically, honor has close ties to violence, social hierarchies, oppressive ideologies, and a base desire for public approval. Consequently, despite its initially positive appeal, there is little support for honor as a notion that should be permitted to govern our modern social interactions. My dissertation is an inquiry into the philosophically underexplored notion of honor for the purpose of defending honor against such views. In Chapter 1, I offer my provisional account of honor as the respect to which the member of an honor group is entitled according to that person’s reputation, which is determined by his adherence to the group’s shared honor code. My account is not intended to be comprehensive; instead, these four stipulated features serve to facilitate an examination of the most significant objections to honor. In Chapter 2, I explore these pressing objections: first, that honor enables a host of morally objectionable practices; second, that honor promotes problematic social hierarchies; and third, that its essential connection to reputation deprives honor of moral significance. I argue that each of these objections is misplaced. Accordingly, a denial that honor is unfit to govern the interactions of individuals in our society on the basis of any of these objections is inappropriate. Finally, in Chapter 3, I argue that what makes honor special is its unmatched ability to promote a group’s values and ideals. Honor demonstrates this ability in three ways: acting as a distinct form of motivation, aiding in the projection of our values, and enabling moral resilience. In virtue of honor’s value, as constituted by these three features, honor can be a benefit not only to the groups that utilize honor, but also to the society in which these groups are located.