From Honor to Dignity and Back Again: Remarks on LaVaque-Manty's “Dueling for Equality”

We are grateful to Ryan Balot, Merike Andre-Barrett, and Simone Chambers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Peter Berger , “ On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honor,” in Revisions: Changing Perspective in Moral Philosophy, eds. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 172-81.

The dominant source for the social and intellectual context of Kant's writings in the last thirty years has been Lewis White Beck's classic Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969). Recent years have seen an explosion of more contextually sensitive readings of Kant that have undermined the cold rationalism often attributed to his life and work. See Anthony Louden , Kant's Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Manfred Kuehn , Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); John Zammito , Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

Louden, Kant's Impure Ethics.

Mika LaVaque-Manty , “Dueling for Equality: Masculine Honor and the Modern Politics of Dignity,” Political Theory 34, no. 6 (December 2006): 726.

LaVaque-Manty , “ Dueling for Equality,” 717.

LaVaque-Manty , “ Dueling for Equality,” 733.

Immanuel Kant , Doctrine of Right, in Practical Philosophy, eds. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood , trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Ak. 6:336.

Ibid. Emphasis added.

LaVaque-Manty , “ Dueling for Equality,” 721. Original emphasis.

LaVaque-Manty , “ Dueling for Equality,” 722.

LaVaque-Manty , “ Dueling for Equality,” 723.

LaVaque-Manty , “ Dueling for Equality,” 726. Emphasis added.

Ibid.

See for example: “titled position of dignity may instantiate real dignity,” (LaVaque Manty, “Dueling for Equality,” 721); “A more general courage is connected to real honor, our maintaining the dignity we have by virtue of our humanity” (724). Also see 738n42.

Immanuel Kant , “Kant's Practical Philosophy: Herder's Lecture Notes,” in Lectures on Ethics, eds. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind , trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Ak. 27:44.

Kant , “ Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss , trans. H. B Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 226, 224-225; Ak. 8:119, 8:117-118.

Kant, “Conjectures,” 224; Ak. 8:113.

Kant, “Herder's Notes,” Ak. 27:44.

Kant, “Herder's Notes,” Ak. 27:39.

Kant, “Conjectures,” 229n; Ak. 8:118n.

Kant, Doctrine of Right, Ak. 6:336.

Kant, Doctrine of Right, Ak. 6:337.

Cf. “… but the legislation itself (and consequently also the civil constitution), as long as it remains barbarous and undeveloped, is responsible for the discrepancy between the incentives of honor in the people (subjectively) and the measures that are (objectively) suitable for its purposes.” Ibid.

LaVaque-Manty, “Dueling for Equality,” 735.