The Honor Code

How does moral progress happen? How are societies brought to repudiate immoral customs they have long accepted? In The Honor Code, Kwame Anthony Appiah explores a long-neglected engine of reform. Examining moral revolutions in the past—and campaigns against abhorrent practices today—he shows that appeals to reason, morality, or religion aren’t enough to ring in reform. Practices are eradicated only when they come into conflict with honor.