The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen - Hardcover

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393071626 ISBN 13: 9780393071627

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Cambridge-educated philosopher, and one of America's foremost public intellectuals. Uniquely cosmopolitan by birth and upbringing, he has written extensively and intelligently about race, identity, Afrocentrism, history, colonialism and morality. He sounds an urbane and civilised note when discussing what are often raucous and rancorous issues. But the civilised note is quietly compelling, and never more so than in this latest book. --Simon Blackburn, The Guardian

About the Author:

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the president of the PEN American Center. Born in Ghana and educated in Britain, he has taught philosophy on three continents and is currently a professor at Princeton University. Author website: www.appiah.net

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393071626
• ISBN 13: 9780393071627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264