Why Honor Matters Hardcover – May 8, 2018

Tamler Sommers does a superb job of explaining the importance of honor cultures and outlining the values of maintaining them, whilst also giving a clear and precise criticism of the flaws and faults of honor. Why Honor Matters touches upon every aspect of honor that is widely understandable, from the traditions of sports values, to the brutal honor killings in extremist-religious societies. It must be stressed that Sommers does not in anyway defend atrocities, nor does he in anyway promote the abhorrently immoral acts of violence towards individuals or animals, but rather he emphasizes the values of what it means to stand up for and respect oneself, and to maintain a sense of respect towards the morals of the culture within ethically acceptable reason. One of Sommers' most difficult endeavors is perhaps the attempt to bring the idea of honor out of this barbaric and brutally-tribal stereotype. Sommers carefully suggests that honor can exist within culture and be a morally good and strong influence on the society, without the need for obscene acts of immorality. It is honorable, just and respectful to defend oneself, one's loved ones and one's moral standing, within reason. But it is not honorable, disrespectful to oneself and indeed morally wrong to subject another to violent immoral acts of injustice and outrage.Perhaps the most crippling issue of the book is the misunderstanding of what the author is trying to push. It is quick and easy to immediately jump to conclusions upon reading just a few excerpts here and there, but that would be discrediting the work any philosopher or author has done to study an ethical ideology. It is important to note that I quite frankly, do not agree with all of Sommers' views on honor, but to say that the author is misinformed or perhaps encouraging violence is just plain wrong. Why Honor Matters does a clear and thorough job of explaining nearly every accessible trait of what the modern world perceives as honor as well as emphasizing the importance of the good values that honor promotes, while asserting that the unethical acts of certain honor cultures must be stripped away and destroyed. All in all, while I restate that I don't agree on every point Sommers makes, this book was a delight, funny, accessible and eye-opening to read; while the idea of honor appears to be outdated, Tamler Sommers has successfully revitalized the subject with all its baggage and has given the topic a fair and critical assessment.

Sommers does an excellent job of outlining what honor is (no easy task in itself) as well as why it is useful, where it goes astray, and how we can avoid its shortcomings without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.That said, there are a few inconsistencies in the politics of the book.. The most brazen instance, in my opinion, happens in Chapter 2, in which Sommers dives into an 8-page screed against people who are against accepting refugees. This argument is supported by sections in the previous chapter, in which he describes the importance of hospitality in honor cultures, and how our modern rejection of honor has led to a culture of cowardice. But he neglects to mention the reciprocity of the obligations with hospitality when it comes to migrants. It also neglects to mention the analogy of the Trojan War, in which Sparta and its allies destroyed a city and all of its inhabitants over a ten-year war for what amounted to a single rape. Migrant populations have committed extraordinary amounts of violence in Europe, including thousands of rapes, and many terrorists in the United States came from the same cultures from which the refugees originate. He dismisses this danger by casually stating that no refugees have committed terrorism in the United States. But this argument falls apart on the premise of the book, for two reasons: first, the United States shares an aspect of its identity with Europe, and refugees HAVE committed acts of terrorism in Europe; and second, by the principle of group honor, it is the culture, and not the individual, that bears such responsibility. Needless to say, this would not be a problem for an individualist worldview, where individuals are harmed, not groups, and individuals (not groups) bear responsibility, but from the explicitly collectivist perspective of an honor-culture (even a constrained one), Sommers is painfully inconsistent. The inconsistency would not be so distracting if it was not eight straight pages of attempted moral shaming.That said, the inconsistencies seem to reflect the author's personal unfamiliarity with living in an explicit honor culture, not the wrongness of his general ideas. If one is unfamiliar with other writings on the subject of honor (Jack Donovan, Sebastian Junger, Steven Pressfield), Why Honor Matters is an excellent place to start, and does a particularly good job of articulating some of the value of honor to the sorts of people who would otherwise think of themselves as "above" honor. Perhaps because they are intellectuals.

I had to resist offering a one-star, “repugnant” review.Tamler Sommers offers up a compelling defense of honor. I was struck most by the humility of such a controversial project. Sommers appears with pockets turned out and no strict definition of honor to give. However, he knows honor when he sees it and provides many examples thereof. He openly acknowledges its many downsides, tempers our expectations on its upsides, and presents how we may utilize it within the chaos of reality.All told, he does this very well. The examples are drawn from literature, film, history, myth, and his own life work to persuade the reader of honor's day-to-day value. I found my opinions challenged frequently during the course of the book. In addition, I learned a lot about the sociology and anthropology of honor cultures. Above all, I found the book to be an easy read and very entertaining throughout.On the other hand, I did not find myself persuaded that honor is, on balance, a force for good. The intuition I walked away with is that honor, vengeance, etc. just do not seem to scale. The best examples of honor Sommers offers are often in microcosms: sports teams, personal vengeance, and so on. The final chapters of the book, relating to restorative justice and containment of violence in larger honor cultures, work to show how values of honor could scale-out. I have no objections to the technical details he outlines, but just didn't put the book down feeling like these methods could fully overcome the obstacles that honor brings with it.

If you're looking for a contemporary book on honor, you can't go wrong with this one. Why? Two reasons: first it's really good (although it's too short for my taste). Second, it's just about the only one. There's one by Kwame Anthony Appiah but it's a historical book. Here, with "Why Honor Matters" the author tries to take a look at what honor means here and now. Very good read!

Devo dire che eroun poco prevenuto, ma leggendo il libro si scopre un'analisi molto equilibrata di come un concetto di 'onore' con limiti definti, possa correggere alcune storture della nostra societa'.

As a big fan of the consistently excellent ‘Very Bad Wizards’ podcast, I was intrigued to see what Tammler could do with a bigger space to rehearse his arguments, and I am glad I did: the book is very stimulating, offers a lot to get to grips with, and says some contentious but valid things well. It’s also written in an engaging style, designed to be accessible to non-philosophers. Recommended.

It’s topics like these, topics of old human values that need to be looked at with not only a critical but a sympathetic eye. Shallow rationalists may want to throw away all “irrational” honor culture, but can or should we? Is a good life only one that obeys a thin instrumental reason? People that want to destroy honor culture because of its extremes, are like surgeons who operate with a sledgehammer. Perhaps it’s time to “revalue” the old values, and cut away only the extremes and keep a real valuable source of moral life.