• About
  • Instructions for Contributors
  • Honor Scholarship

Honor Ethics

~ Devoted to the study of honor as an ethical value

Honor Ethics

Monthly Archives: December 2014

The moral equality of combatants

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by PaulR in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

IRRUSSIANALITY

We do not accord a policeman and a criminal equal status: the criminal is committing an injustice, and so forfeits his right not to be handled forcibly by the policeman; the policeman on the other hand has done nothing to forfeit his right not to be attacked. Their rights are not equal.

In contrast, one of the bedrocks of the laws of war is the principle of the moral equality of combatants. Assuming that one can objectively decide that a given war has a ‘just’ and an ‘unjust’ side, those fighting on the ‘just’ side are still bound by the same rules as those on the ‘unjust’ side. Unjust soldiers are entitled to shoot at the just ones, and they have the same protection under the laws of war. Just and unjust warriors are morally equal, and should treat each other as such.

Not everybody thinks that this is how…

View original post 529 more words

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Notice of Peter Olsthoorn’s Honor in Political and Moral Philosophy

15 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by dan demetriou in announcements, history of honor, honor and political philosophy, honor in literature, philosophy of honor, political science of honor

≈ 5 Comments

I’m very pleased to announce that honorethics.org contributor Peter Olsthoorn’s (Netherlands Defense Academy) Honor in Political and Moral Philosophy (SUNY) will be coming out soon.Olsthoorn, Honor in Political and Moral Philosophy

You can pre-order it here. You can peruse the Google Books preview here. Here’s the (U.S.) Amazon link. You can find more of Peter’s work here.

I read and commented on a draft of this book a couple years ago before I visited Peter in Rotterdam and Breda, and I can assure readers it’s a major contribution to the field that anyone interested in honor needs to add to his or her library. Peter’s careful and scholarly discussion of the intellectual history of honor is especially valuable for us, since books on honor (if they discuss history at all) tend either to focus on one epoch (say, the antebellum South), region (say, the Mediterranean), or author (say, Hobbes). Sometimes honor books provide us with useful snapshots of honor-psychology through the ages by discussing samurai for one chapter, medieval chivalry in another, etc. As an analytic philosopher who isn’t very strong on history, I have relied upon and cited all such books a great deal in my own work. But more rarely attempted has been a sustained story of how leading intellectuals have analysed honor in the West. The scholarly aspects of Peter’s book will be the go-to resource on that question for some time.

Peter’s book is also a polemic for reviving honor as a moral and political motivator. I have lots of good things to say about his argument there, too, but that aspect of the book is better handled in this summary Peter provided me:

Until not too long ago it was not uncommon for moral and political philosophers to hold the view that people cannot be expected to do what is right without at least some reward in the form of reputational gain. Authors from Cicero to John Stuart Mill did not dispute that we can be brought to accept the principles of justice on an abstract level, but thought that in concrete instances our strong passions, our partiality to ourselves, and our inability to be a good judge of our conduct, prevent us from both seeing and acting on what is just and virtuous. In their view, our sense of honor and concern for our reputation can help us in finding out what is the proper thing to do and, just as important, provide us with the much-needed motive to actually do what is right. Especially in this latter, motivational, aspect conscience appeared somewhat impotent to them.

Today, most of us tend to take a stricter view, and think that people are to be just from a love for justice, not from a fear of losing face. Considerations of honor and reputation are generally considered to be on the wrong side of the line. That diminished position of honor is at least partly a result of the fact that, as a motive, honor is somewhat inconsistent with the ideals of autonomy and authenticity, valued by most people in our day. Modern political and moral philosophy mirrors (and, to some extent, feeds) these ideals, and many authors are not too upset that the honor ethic gave way to more demanding forms of ethics that give central place to that notion of autonomy.

The aim of this book is to make the case that the old arguments for a role for honor are still compelling, and that also today, without deep roots in our present-day vocabulary, honor can yet be of use because it is less demanding, and that the articulated opinions of others remain important for making us see, and then actually do, what is right. The underlying assumption is that honor, although it has lost much of its appeal, is still a common motivator. If there is some truth in this, it is all the more regrettable that most modern theorists have turned a blind eye on the topic.

To make that case the first part of the book describes the early, aristocratic argument for honor made by, among others, Cicero and Sallust, and the conversion of honor into a more modern, democratic form by later thinkers, from John Locke and Bernard Mandeville to Michael Walzer. Even in that more democratic form honor still comes with some serious drawbacks, mainly lying in it being something external (which potentially reduces morality to not being caught), and in its exclusiveness (limiting the number of people that matter to someone). To address the first shortcoming, honor should be internalized, at least to some extent; otherwise honor is, indeed, reduced to not being found out. As to that second weakness: to avoid that too much priority is given to the interests of those who are near and dear to us, it seems that we should define our honor group as broad as possible. Finding out if these two goals can be accomplished is the aim of the second part of the book, which focuses on three virtues related to honor: loyalty, integrity, and respect.

Congratulations on the book, Peter!

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent events:

Kansas State mini-conference: "Perspectives on Modern Honor"

Book series: Honor and Obligation in Liberal Society

Honor and Ethics Mini-Conference

Contributors

  • Andrea Mansker
  • Craig Bruce Smith
  • Dan Demetriou (administrator)
  • Graham Oddie
  • Jim Peterman
  • Joe Thomas
  • Lad Sessions
  • Laurie M. Johnson
  • Mark Collier
  • Mark Griffith
  • Paul Robinson
  • Peter Olsthoorn
  • Robert Oprisko
  • Ryan Rhodes
  • Shannon French
  • Sharon Krause
  • Steven Skultety
  • Tamler Sommers
  • Tony Cunningham
  • Valerie Soon

Recent posts

  • Two new books on honor by contributors Tamler Sommers and Craig Bruce Smith
  • Jordan Peterson on the play/honor (agonism) ethic
  • Honor and the Military Photo Scandal
  • HonorShame.com write-up of Honor in the Modern World
  • “Ethics for Adversaries” blog

Contributors’ Books

Johnson and Demetriou's Honor in the Modern World

Peter Olsthoorn's Honor in Political and Moral Philosophy

Joe Thomas' Leadership, Ethics and Law of War Discussion Guide for Marines

Anthony Cunningham's Modern Honor

Laurie Johnson's Locke and Rousseau: Two Enlightenment Responses to Honor

Peter Olsthoorn's Military Ethics and Virtues: An Interdisciplinary Approach for the 21st Century

Tamler Sommers' A Very Bad Wizard

Lad Sessions' Honor For Us

Andrea Mansker's Sex, Honor and Citizenship in Early Third Republic France

Laurie Johnson's Thomas Hobbes: Turning Point for Honor

Shannon French's The Code of the Warrior

Sharon Krause's Liberalism With Honor

Robert Oprisko's Honor: A Phenomenology

Graham Oddie's Value, Reality, Desire

Paul Robinson's Military Honour and the Conduct of War

Jim Peterman's Philosophy as Therapy

Archives

  • October 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011

Social

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Honor Ethics
    • Join 110 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Honor Ethics
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: