Does Honor Matter?

What is the virtue we most urgently need more of in America today? A few obvious answers come to mind: honesty, to counteract the corruption at the highest levels of government; compassion, to spur action to help the poor and powerless; patience, to deal with an increasingly toxic public discourse. But in his new book, Tamler Sommers, a philosopher at the University of Houston, argues on behalf of a more unexpected virtue—one that some people don’t consider a virtue at all. What Americans ought to cultivate, he writes, is a sense of honor. “Honor,” he writes in Why Honor Matters, is “indispensable … for living a good life in a good and just society.”

But what exactly is honor? As Sommers acknowledges, it is a slippery word,, in which he justifies being cowardly—that is, dishonorable—on the battlefield: “What is honor? A word … Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.” Falstaff knows that it is senseless to throw away your life for a mere word; as the Bible puts it, it’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion.