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The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010)

by Kwame Anthony Appiah(Favorite Author)

3.23 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0393071626 (ISBN13: 9780393071627)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: Using three abbreviated case studies, Appiah argues that societies do not abandon English dueling, Chinese footbinding or Atlantic slavery because they realize it is a moral evil in and of itself, but because they are horrified that people they disrespect are now participating in the practice, or people whose respect they want ridicule it. Depressing, but ultimately practical view, although he conveniently ignores the really ugly period in which the society perpetrates the practice in particularly exaggerated form as defiance.
review 2: This thought-provoking book looks at how the concept of honor inspires people to act, sometimes in ways we find laudable, and other times in ways we abhor. Specifically, the author looks at episodes in history where honor was i... morentegral to making radical changes in society in a short period of time, and asks whether we can apply lessons from those moments to contemporary problems like honor killing in Pakistan. His three historical examples are the decline of dueling in nineteenth-century England, the abolition of slavery, and the end of footbinding in China. In each of these three cases, the moral or practical reasons for ending the practice had been clear for some time. Everyone knew that dueling was an arbitrary and stupid way to determine who was telling the truth and that footbinding is painful. He shows how a sense of national or personal honor contributed to societal change. For example, the author asserts that nineteenth-century English workers' increasing sense of dignity in their own role led them to disapprove of slavery because it assigned a lower value to people because of their role as laborers. He suggests that, as China's "honor world" expanded to include the West, footbinding became an embarrassment rather than a source of prestige. I found the overall idea more convincing than the individual examples. (I would actually have preferred if the book were longer and included more historical background on each issue.) This book is most worthwhile because of the way it uses historical examples to clearly explain concepts like the difference between honor and dignity, honor worlds and honor peers, and so forth. less

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