The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. A friend recommended this book by philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah. Here’s the book’s home page with links to interviews with the author. And here my Amazon link to the book.
Appiah is no libertarian purist (and may be no libertarian at all), but he makes a case about moral and social change that probably rings true with a lot of us. If a practice is widespread, generally accepted, but becomes objectionable (foot-binding in China, dueling in Europe, female genital mutilation or honor killings in Muslim countries, etc.), governments may fail in all their attempts to ban it, and moralists and religionists may fail in all their attempts to shame others out of it. But one day, when people begin to perceive it as a matter of personal honor, or to put it in more modern terms, once they decide it’s tacky and uncool or something only an ignoramus would do — it stops. A practice that has endured for centuries is swept away in a generation.
I haven’t read the book yet (definitely going to). But I’ll bet a lot of us have had similar thoughts every time we’ve watched the fedgov try to achieve some “moral” purpose through law and punishment. At best, the government simply rides (and distorts) a trend that had already begun at the grassroots (e.g. the civil rights movement). At worst, government creates more chaos than the original “immoral” thing it was attempting to curtail (e.g. Prohibition, the war on some drugs). Sounds as if Appiah has given historical and philosophical grounding to some very sound, commonsense concepts. He also seems to have a lot to say about governments of one country and their failures in attempting to influence the lifestyles and moral practices of people in another.
well, the only way this thing got as sick as it is cuz we let it happen….
bumperwack? Who’s we?
I suspect that one day many years from now, when all the hysteria over the war on some drugs has been ended, people will look back at history and compare the government’s actions to the likes of the Salem Witch trials.
all of us?….the “electorate”?…i dunno… I do think it’s gonna get ugly, the beast will not stop…nice if “we” had killed about 20 yrs ago…meanwhile they just keep knocking us off one by one….
Sounds like an interesting book. I can see where knights saving damsels in distress… or loyalty to friend and country (and conversely, the concept of treason)… even honor among thieves — all might have arisen out of a code of respect for the ways of a given society. And equally true of the tenets of most religions, which claim moral sanctity for their members.
Now if we could just establish, say, the Zero Aggression Principle with as strong an honor code, perhaps libertarians, anarchocapitalists, agorists, or other individualists might become an historical force to reckon with.
(Why, I wonder, are those moral revolutions he mentions negative? Were there no positive moral revolutions in early history? Or did they only evolve with the Age of Enlightenment? I hope he sheds some _enlightenment_ on this in his book.)
Parts of the book’s summary remind me of something out of one of Miss Manners’ books. That something commonly practiced is eliminated, or at least becomes hidden, when society decides it is shameful.
Could be an interesting book.
Every once in a while, a moral revolution takes place: a practice like Slavery that was once considered ordinary and honorable comes to be seen as reprehensible. How does this happen? Author Kwame Anthony Appiah thinks the key is “honor.”
http://sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=11Jan11
Claire, another book that discusses some of this is ” The Moral Landscape ” By Sam Harris.