Why Honor Matters

by Tamler Sommers Narrated by Tamler Sommers

Overview

A controversial call to put honor at the center of morality

To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity, and gives a sense of living for something larger than oneself. Sommers shows how honor can help us address some of society's most challenging problems, including education, policing, and mass incarceration. Counterintuitive and provocative, Why Honor Matters makes a convincing case for honor as a cornerstone of our modern society.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Sommers's arguments for honor make it sound like an attractive and necessary virtue." —The Atlantic

"Why Honor Matters positions a culture centered in honor against one that its author calls a dignity culture."—Wall Street Journal

"This is a top-notch study and a priority resource for those interested in ethics and philosophy."—CHOICE

"Sommers's vivid style and engaging anecdotes will appeal to general readers as well as to those interested in moral and political philosophy. It draws comparison to William Ian Miller's Eye for an Eye."—Library Journal

"A philosopher offers an impassioned... defense of honor cultures."—Kirkus Reviews

"Beautifully written, fiercely argued, and very timely, Why Honor Matters is really going to shake things up."—Paul Bloom, author of Against Empathy

"A funny, smart, provocative book in defense of honor—without which, says Tamler Sommers, liberal democracies become craven and selfish. A timely book for liberals and conservatives alike."—Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, and Professor of Practice, Institute of Global Affairs, London School of Economics

"Any defense of honor must explain what it is, acknowledging its dangers while suggesting how to mitigate them and showing the good that it can do. Tamler Sommers accomplishes all three tasks splendidly; in sparkling prose, sprinkled with everyday examples, he shows why now, as always, honor matters."—Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at NYU and author of TheHonor Code

Kirkus Reviews

2018-01-28
A philosopher offers an impassioned, but disturbing, defense of honor cultures.In a social critique sure to generate controversy, Sommers (Philosophy/Univ. of Houston; Relative Justice: Cultural Diversity, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility, 2012, etc.) argues that honor cultures offer a better ethical model than "Western liberalism," with its insistence on universal dignity. Honor cultures, characterized by "social cohesion and solidarity"—think sports teams, urban gangs, and Navy SEALS—emphasize "courage, integrity, and accountability" and adherence to a "formal and informal" set of codes. Such cultures "take great pride in their exclusivity." Societies guided by liberal values, writes the author, lead to "diminishing personal accountability, increasing social isolation, alienation and a weakening sense of solidarity and community spirit." Responding to the "common objection" that honor cultures mistreat women, Sommers asserts that honor itself does not require "sexist norms and practices." He acknowledges, however, that honor cultures can inflict "systematic violations of the rights of women," as well as incite "long, bloody" family feuds and "trap individuals within rigid social roles, limiting their autonomy as rational agents." To address these concerns, the author argues that honor cultures require constraints; white working-class Southern men, for example, engage in ritualized, circumscribed violence as a form of "active resistance to the domination of others" and a way of gaining respect. Condemning the "depersonalized, excessively rationalistic" legal system, Sommers argues persuasively that "honorable punishment" can be facilitated through the restorative justice movement, which involves mediated encounters between victims and criminals. The violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 was for Sommers "an eye-opening event" because he "didn't quite realize the extent" of white nationalists' "abhorrent racist ideology." Neofascists, he admits, "do use rhetoric that isn't too far off from the language I've employed to describe honor communities," and he belatedly acknowledges "the morality of dignity and its focus on equality and respect for human rights."A celebration of insular, exclusionary honor culture that does not adequately account for its pernicious effects.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172639159
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	11/14/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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