Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - TEST

Antong Liu

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Name
Antong Liu

Honor and the politics of diversity

In the face of diversity in contemporary world, my dissertation project attempts to challenge the opinion that honor is an outdated ethical concept harmful to modern politics of pluralism. Apart from addressing specific criticisms of honor, I take issue with the works of such contemporary thinkers as John Rawls and John Gray, representatives of two distinct schools of political philosophy advocating pluralism, for their misrepresentation of the relationship between politics and individuals that in turn challenges the overall soundness of their theories. I then propose that an ethics of honor can capture the complexities of the relationship between politics and individuals better than the two schools criticized, and examine views of honor and its relationship with politics expressed in the writings of influential modern thinkers such as Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant. The entire project attempts to illustrate that the world today in search of peaceful coexistence of multiple ways of life should take honor seriously as a way not only to interpret moral disagreements among peoples, but also to solve political problems possibly ensuing from such disagreements.