Laurie Johnson investigates two Enlightenment-era reactions to honor in Locke and Rousseau. She provides an in-depth analysis of how political philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau react differently to the place and importance of honor in society. Locke continues the trend of rejecting honor as a means of achieving order and justice in society, preferring instead the modern motivation of rational self-interest. Johnson explores the possibility of an honor code that is compatible with Lockean liberalism, but also points out the problems inherent in such a project. She then turns to...

Laurie Johnson investigates two Enlightenment-era reactions to honor in Locke and Rousseau. She provides an in-depth analysis of how political philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau react differently to the place and importance of honor in society. Locke continues the trend of rejecting honor as a means of achieving order and justice in society, preferring instead the modern motivation of rational self-interest. Johnson explores the possibility of an honor code that is compatible with Lockean liberalism, but also points out the problems inherent in such a project. She then turns to...

Is there such a thing as American honor, or is honor simply incompatible with modern liberal democracy and capitalism? Tocqueville's Democracy in America is particularly well suited as a means of exploring these questions. Through an in-depth analysis of Tocqueville's views on aristocratic versus American democratic honor, this book explores what honor might mean in the modern Western context. Its aim is to strengthen citizens' moral obligations and understandings of community in the face of forces within democracy and capitalism that naturally erode these binding and stabilizing influences....

This book brings together some of the foremost researchers of honor to debate honor's meaning and its compatibility with liberalism, democracy, and modernity. Contributors examine honor past to present, from masculine and feminine perspectives, and in North American, European, and African contexts.