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Honor Ethics

~ Devoted to the study of honor as an ethical value

Honor Ethics

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Welcome Tony Cunningham

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by dan demetriou in announcements, philosophy of honor

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On behalf of honorethics.org, I am pleased to welcome Tony Cunningham as a contributor. Although Tony is just an hour or so away from me, I had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time at last week’s Perspectives on Modern Honor conference at Kansas State, at which Tony graciously never complained about our shameless appropriation of his “Modern Honor” title for our volume.

Tony is Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.  He is the author of Modern Honor: A Philosophical Defense(Routledge, 2013). He comes to his philosophical interest in honor via his deep interests in literature and moral psychology.  His earlier work on literature and the emotions, The Heart of What Matters: The Role for Literature in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley, 2001), led him back to classic texts like Homer’s Iliad and Euripides’ Hecuba to think carefully about complex topics like anger, shame, and humiliation.  This work led him to other rich resources for honor like the Icelandic sagas, the American South, samurai Japan, and contemporary American gangs.  As he argues, most of modern moral philosophy abandoned the notion of honor, and philosophers erred badly by so doing because a sense of honor is at the center of our ethical experiences for creatures like us.

A description of Modern Honor:

This book examines the notion of honor with an eye to dissecting its intellectual modern honordemise and with the aim of making a case for honor’s rehabilitation. Western intellectuals acknowledge honor’s influence, but they lament its authority. For Western democratic societies to embrace honor, it must be compatible with social ideals like liberty, equality, and fraternity. Cunningham details a conception of honor that can do justice to these ideals. This vision revolves around three elements—character (being), relationships (relating), and activities and accomplishment (doing). Taken together, these elements articulate a shared aspiration for excellence. We can turn the tables on traditional ills of honor—serious problems of gender, race, and class—by forging a vision of honor that rejects lives predicated on power and oppression.

Tony is particularly interested in making philosophy relevant for everyday people embroiled in the business of living. As he sees it, the real business of philosophy is to become people on whom nothing is lost. He has essays reflecting these aims on anger, consolation, and modesty.

Welcome, Tony! We look forward to your contributions.

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Welcome Joe Thomas

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by dan demetriou in announcements, honor and war, military ethics

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military ethics

It is my pleasure to welcome Joe Thomas as an honorethics.org contributor.

Dr. Joe Thomas is a retired Marine and past Director of the John A. Lejeune Leadership Institute at Marine Corps University. In that capacity he was the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Executive Agent for Character Development and responsible for educating the force on all matters pertaining to honor. He currently serves as the Class of 1961 Chair and Professor of Leadership Education at the US Naval Academy. His books include ‘Leadership Explored’, ‘Leadership Embodied’,’ Leadership Education for Marines’, and ‘Leadership, Ethics, and Law of War Case Studies for Marines,’ which provides case studies illustrating the dilemmas faced by soldiers and Marines in modern warfare. thomas leadership ethics laws of war

Dr. Thomas plays an influential role in shaping how contemporary US service members conceive of honor, and we are very fortunate to have him in our ranks. We look forward to your contributions, Joe!

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Welcome Mark Griffith

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by LJ in Uncategorized

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I’d like to extend a welcome to Mark Griffith, Prof. of Political Science at the University of West Alabama-Livingston. Mark attended our very recent conference for authors contributing to the Perspectives on Modern Honor volume Dan Demetriou and I are co-editing. He is currently working on the historical and fictional writings of Winston Churchill, and he presented “Winston Churchill and Honor: The Complexity of Honor and Statesmanship” at the conference. Welcome, Mark!

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John McCain and Honor

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by mgriffith2015 in Uncategorized

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This is one of the best stories I have ever read about honor.  It appeared in the Wall Street Journal a while ago but it will always be worth reading.

Notable & Quotable:

John McCain remembers how Henry Kissinger helped preserve his honor as a prisoner of war.

June 8, 2014 7:23 p.m. ET

Sen. John McCain‘s toast at a 91st birthday celebration for Henry Kissinger in New York, June 2:

To do justice to the life and accomplishments of Henry Kissinger would take—as Henry would be the first to agree—a vehicle longer than my few brief remarks. A mere single-volume biography couldn’t really manage the task competently, could it, Henry?

So I’ll limit my remarks to recalling one anecdote that I think illuminates the character of my friend.

For several years, a long time ago, I struggled to preserve my honor in a situation where it was severely tested. The longer you struggle with something, the more you come to cherish it. And after a while, my honor, which in that situation was entirely invested in my relations and the reputation I had with my fellow POWs, became not just my most cherished possession, it was my only possession. I had nothing else left.

When Henry came to Hanoi to conclude the agreement that would end America’s war in Vietnam, the Vietnamese told him they would send me home with him. He refused the offer. “Commander McCain will return in the same order as the others,” he told them. He knew my early release would be seen as favoritism to my father and a violation of our code of conduct. By rejecting this last attempt to suborn a dereliction of duty, Henry saved my reputation, my honor, my life, really. And I’ve owed him a debt ever since.

So, I salute my friend and benefactor, Henry Kissinger, the classical realist who did so much to make the world safer for his country’s interests, and by so doing safer for the ideals that are its pride and purpose. And who, out of his sense of duty and honor, once saved a man he never met.

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Waller Newell on manliness and honor

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by LJ in Uncategorized

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Here’s an interesting podcast featuring Waller Newell on manliness and honor. Newell has published several books whose theme is the question of modern man, and frequently discusses ancient and modern honor in that context.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-manliness/id332516054?mt=2&i=337024304

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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

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