Honor in the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

by Anthony Cunningham (Contribution by), Dan Demetriou (Contribution by), Amitai Etzioni (Contribution by), Steven Forde (Contribution by), Shannon E. French (Contribution by)

Overview

After a century-long hiatus, honor is back. Academics, pundits, and everyday citizens alike are rediscovering the importance of this ancient and powerful human motive. This volume brings together some of the foremost researchers of honor to debate honor’s meaning and its compatibility with liberalism, democracy, and modernity. Contributors—representing philosophy, sociology, political science, history, psychology, leadership studies, and military science—examine honor past to present, from masculine and feminine perspectives, and in North American, European, and African contexts. Topics include the role of honor in the modern military, the effects of honor on our notions of the dignity and “purity” of women, honor as a quality of good statesmen and citizens, honor’s role in international relations and community norms, and how honor’s egalitarian and elitist aspects intersect with democratic and liberal regimes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498502627
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/03/2016
Series:	Honor and Obligation in Liberal Society: Problems and Prospects
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	326
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Laurie M. Johnson is professor of political science at Kansas State University.

Dan Demetriou is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
Shannon E. French is the Inamori Professor in Ethics, director of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, and a professor in philosophy and law at Case Western Reserve University, USA. Prior to CWRU, she taught for eleven years at the United States Naval Academy. She founded the first MA program in Military Ethics at CWRU, works globally with the US and allied military, service academies, and chaplain corps, and held the General Hugh Shelton Distinguished Visiting Chair in Ethics for seven years. Her core fields are military ethics and ethical issues in emerging technology.
Sharon R. Krause, Brown University, USA

Table of Contents

Fighting Together: Civil Discourse and Agonistic HonorLiberalism and Honor through the Lens of DarwinLiberal HonorA Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Political HonorPutting One’s Best Face Forward: Why Liberalism Needs HonorCommunitarianism and HonorGood Citizens: Gratitude and HonorWinston Churchill and Honor: The Complexity of Honor and StatesmanshipLife in Death: Democracy and Civic HonorThe Female Point of Honor in Post-Revolutionary France A Woman’s Honor: Purity Norms and Male ViolenceRestoring Order: The Ancient Greeks on Taming Honor and AppetiteThe Honour of the Crown’: The State and Its SoldiersHonor in Military Culture: A Standard of Integrity and Framework for Moral Restraint

Editorial Reviews

After decades of neglect in moral philosophy, the topic of honor is starting to receive scholarly attention again—thanks in large part to the authors in this volume. The essays in this excellent collection tackle the thorny question of how honor can fit within the western liberal value system and offer compelling reasons for why we need to take honor seriously in today’s world.

Tamler Sommers

This is a superb anthology that questions the value and even the existence of honor in the contemporary world. This timely book insofar as the essays contained therein analyze practices that differ from previous research that focused almost exclusively on a Mediterranean perspective. This is an impressive set of works that casts new light on an ancient concept.

The European Legacy

Honor in the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an extremely important work that is at the forefront of a larger reevaluation of honor—presenting it as a still-relevant and modern concept with global political, social, and moral implications. Featuring chapters by some of the field’s top scholars across several disciplines, this book advances the relevance of honor from the ancient world to the present day. Simply put, it makes the case that honor still matters from the battlefield to the boardroom to the classroom, and beyond.

Craig Smith