The Honor Code

Honour emerges at the centre of our modern world in Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code. Over the last few centuries, new democratic movements have led to the emancipation of women, slaves and the oppressed. What drove these modern changes, Appiah argues, was not imposing legislation from above but harnessing the ancient power of honour from within. He explores the end of the...

Honour emerges at the centre of our modern world in Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code. Over the last few centuries, new democratic movements have led to the emancipation of women, slaves and the oppressed. What drove these modern changes, Appiah argues, was not imposing legislation from above but harnessing the ancient power of honour from within. He explores the end of the duel in England, the tumultuous struggles over footbinding in nineteenth-century China and the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery. Finally, he confronts the horrors of "honour killing" in contemporary Pakistan, where rape victims are murdered by their relatives. He argues that honour, used to justify the practice, can also be the most effective weapon against it. Intertwining philosophy and historical narrative, Appiah has created a dramatic work, which demonstrates that honour is the driving force in the struggle against man's inhumanity to man.

奎迈·安东尼·阿皮亚，美国笔会中心主席，《大同主义》（Cosmopolitanism）一书的作者。在加纳度过童年时代，在英国接受教育，毕业于剑桥大学克莱尔学院；曾经在世界上三个大洲教授过哲学课程，目前是美国普林斯顿大学教授。