SOURCE: Krause, Sharon. “The Politics of Distinction and Disobedience: Honor and the Defense of Liberty in Montesquieu,” Polity 31, 3 (1999): 469-99.

[In this essay, Kraus applies the philosophy of Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois to modern American politics, arguing that his concept of honor is necessary to contain the growth of sovereign power and to protect individual liberties. Acknowledging that honor is not wholly virtuous, Krause suggests that honor nonetheless works to channel personal ambition for the public good instead of attempting to suppress self-interest altogether.]

Why do men and women sometimes risk their necks to defend their liberties? Citizens with a strong sense of individual agency are crucial to liberal polities because, as Montesquieu pointed out, “any man who has power is led to abuse it. He continues until he finds limits.”¹ The problem of limiting political power is perhaps even more complex in the U.S. than it was for the old regime that Montesquieu knew. The limitation of power as the American founders conceived it makes it “necessary not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but also to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.”² In addition to overreaching executives and unscrupulous legislators, the specter of majority tyranny always haunts governments based on the principle of popular sovereignty. So along with such developments as Watergate, Iran-Contragate, Whitewater, and now Kenneth Starr, Americans must be on guard against measures such as Jim Crow laws or Colorado's Amendment Two—efforts by one part of the society to restrict the individual liberties of another part. In the United States, a Constitution of separate powers, federalism, and the Bill of Rights all set formal limits on the will of majorities, and on the powers of government. Yet the formal limits specified by our Constitution are only “parchment barriers”³ without the springs of individual agency that set them in motion: American liberties need spirited guardians.

The spirited defense of liberty once was explained not merely as a matter of self-interest, but also as a point of honor, as when the first Americans pledged to defend their independence with “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”⁴ We rarely speak of honor today. It is a word that lost currency soon after the first Americans declared their independence. These days honor seems quaint, if not entirely obsolete, and it makes us vaguely suspicious. That is not surprising, as honor always has elicited mixed reactions, arousing admiration and envy and contempt all at once. And because honor seeks distinction, it seems to be at odds with equality. Yet like the American founders who so admired him, Montesquieu saw that a sense of honor could be an effective spring of individual action, one especially suited to resisting the abuse of power when material self-interest could not be relied upon to do so. It is true that Montesquieu was not in favor of revolution, or even sudden reform, but he thought that spirited resistance to encroaching power was crucial for individual liberty, and he saw honor as a spring of such resistance. In contrast to the traditional honor of medieval soldiers, which required uncritical obedience, on Montesquieu's account those with honor distinguish themselves through their disobedience, which divides political power and therefore limits it, thus protecting individual security.⁵ For that reason, his concept of honor has been called “openly rebellious toward authority,”⁶ as well as a form of “regulated disobedience”⁷ and “interference.”⁸

As Montesquieu presents it in The Spirit of the Laws, honor contains three components: (1) public honors, the external recognition that attends prizes and special distinctions; (2) the codes of honor establishing general rules of conduct within specified spheres of activity; and (3) an internal quality of character, the ambitious desire to live up to one's code and to be recognized publicly for doing so. To be sure, Montesquieu was wise to the ways in which honor could be corrupted, slipping easily from “a great and generous courage”⁹ to “vain and frivolous conversation.”¹⁰ Even at its best, honor is a mixed motive.¹¹ If it sometimes seems similar to the magnanimity of the Aristotelian gentleman,¹² at other times it appears to be nothing more than “having someone to look down on.”¹³ That complexity makes honor difficult to categorize. It cannot be reduced to self-interest, even self-interest well-understood, because honor may motivate the sacrifice of one's most fundamental interest, life itself. At the same time, honor should not be confused with civic virtue, because even when honor involves personal sacrifice, it does not aim directly for the common good. In contrast to civic virtue, honor is primarily self-serving, rather than other-regarding; it has less to do with what one owes to others than with what one owes to oneself.

No sustained, systematic account of honor in Montesquieu presently exists. Although honor is mentioned by nearly everyone who has written on Montesquieu, it is treated briefly and in passing.¹⁴ This lack of attention partly reflects the difficulty of categorizing honor on the basis of present typologies, but also reflects democratic discomfort with what appears to be an aristocratic concept. Thus honor has been overshadowed by Montesquieu's remarks on the political virtue of ancient republics. Those remarks capture the attention of many commentators because they seem to contain the precursor to contemporary civic virtue and to speak more directly to today's democratic citizens. Yet on Montesquieu's account, it is honor, not republican virtue, that checks encroaching political power and serves liberty in the form of personal security. Because of the way in which honor divides political power, even supports a nascent form of separate powers, the concept of honor is more significant for Montesquieu's liberalism as a whole than prior scholarship has acknowledged. It reflects both his conviction that the institutions of limited government need lively defense, and his reluctance to assign that task to civic virtue.

Following a brief account of how honor fits into Montesquieu's typology of regimes, three features of honor as a quality of character are elaborated: its high ambitions; its balance of reverence and reflexivity; and its partiality. The substantive content of codes of honor may vary from one political society to another, as do systems for distributing public honors, but the features of honor as a quality of character represent more enduring aspects of political agency, or the capacity for intentional, self-initiated action. In the final section, the tensions between honor and liberal democracy are addressed, and possibilities for mitigating those tensions in the context of contemporary American political society are explored. Forms of honor that ground codes of honor in the American Constitution, for example, and in the plural codes of conduct that regulate the voluntary associations of American civil society, can sustain the strong sense of agency that honor entails without returning to the fixed hierarchies and political exclusions of the ancien régime.

I. THE PLACE OF HONOR IN MONTESQUIEU'S TYPOLOGY OF REGIMES

There are three species of government in Montesquieu's typology of regimes, each with its own “nature” (that which makes it what it is) and “principle” (that which makes it act).¹⁵ The former is its particular structure; the latter consists of the human passions that set it in motion.¹⁶ The nature of a republic is popular sovereignty, and its principle is political virtue; despotism is the rule of one on the basis of arbitrary will, and its principle is fear; monarchy is the rule of one according to fixed established laws, and its principle is honor. Each regime exists only as a “totality,” as the unity between its nature and its principle.¹⁷ Despotism, for example, cannot be sustained unless the people are made to fear the ruler, because “individuals capable of esteeming themselves very highly would be in a position to cause revolutions.” Therefore fear must beat down everyone's courage and extinguish even the slightest feeling of ambition.¹⁸ Without the support of fear, the “passion that sets it in motion,” the institutional apparatus of despotism gives way. Similarly, a republic cannot survive without what Montesquieu calls political virtue.¹⁹ In the absence of a monarch or a despot, a people must do for themselves what a strong central authority would otherwise force them to do. In particular, they must restrain themselves from harming others by loving equality and the laws, and must defend the interests of the state by subordinating their individual interests to the common good.²⁰ The constant preference of the public interest over one's own, and even the “renunciation of oneself,” is the essence of political virtue for Montesquieu.²¹ Without that, the institutions of republican government collapse; its nature dissolves without its principle.

Honor finds its home in the government of constitutional monarchy, where it serves the division of power that is central to that regime. The structure of monarchy includes the “intermediary bodies” that stand between the king and his subjects. They mediate the flow of political power, and check its exercise, for “in order to form a moderate government, it is necessary to combine powers, to regulate them, to temper them, to make them act; to give a ballast to one, so to speak, to put it in a position to resist another.”²² By mediating the will of the sovereign, the intermediary bodies support the rule of law, because without limits on sovereign authority, nothing can be fixed and there is no fundamental law. Honor presupposes an institutional division of power, even as it supports such a division. The intermediary bodies include the lords, clergy, nobility, and towns, those powers recognized as “independent” that “alone arrest arbitrary power.”²³ They provide alternative sites of authority from which the king's use of power can be contested.²⁴ Of these bodies, Montesquieu emphasizes the role of the nobility, saying that “the nobility is of the essence of monarchy, whose fundamental maxim is: no monarch, no nobility: no nobility, no monarch; instead one has a despot.”²⁵

Military men and lawyers, the nobility were charged with carrying out the will of the sovereign. As members of the parlements they adjudicated and administered his laws, as mayors of local villages they minded his subjects and collected his taxes, and as soldiers they commanded his armies and oversaw his conquests. This charge to take care of the king's business also gave the nobility the power to interfere in the king's business; the legislative and judicial functions of the nobility had the status of constitutional rights.²⁶ Although in theory the courts were only to receive, record, transmit and enforce the sovereign's directives, in practice the parlements prided themselves on the right to delay registration of a questionable law while they presented their objections to the king and awaited his response.²⁷ The right of remonstrance was supplemented with other forms of interference by the nobility at the level of local adjudication, administration, and enforcement of the laws. Both were further enhanced by the ability to arouse public support for such interference.²⁸ Every delegation of authority made for a potential pocket of resistance, so that “just as the sea, which seems to want to cover all the earth, is checked by the grasses and the smallest rocks found on the shore, so monarchs, whose power seems to be without limits, are checked by the smallest obstacles.”²⁹ As Montesquieu presents it in The Spirit of the Laws, honor is the spring that animates the perpetual tumults between the nobility and the crown, tumults that serve liberty by dividing power. Thus honor is indispensable to monarchy, just as virtue is indispensable to republican government and fear to despotism. Without honor the differentiated structure of monarchy would dissolve into the perfect unity of the unopposed will of the sovereign.

II. HONOR'S HIGH AMBITIONS

The heart of honor is ambition (l'ambition), which Montesquieu defines as “the desire to do great things.”³⁰ Ambition “is pernicious in a republic,”³¹ Montesquieu says, because it subverts equality, and therefore unity; because it is fearless, the spread of ambition would be catastrophic for a despot. Yet ambition “has good effects in monarchy”³² because of its enlivening influence on the intermediary bodies. Those with honor are contentious, but that serves to divide political power and so limit it, as in moderate monarchies in which the ambitions of the nobles counteract the ambitions of the king. Yet, as everyone knows, ambition can be low-minded and petty, and countless commentators have faulted Montesquieu for his defense of it.³³ Indeed, honor frequently is interpreted as nothing more than “ambition in idleness, pettiness in pride, the desire to enrich oneself without work, the aversion to truth, flattery, betrayal, [and] perfidy.”³⁴ Readers who take this account of “the miserable character of courtiers”³⁵ as the sum total of honor have missed a great deal, however.³⁶ Montesquieu regards honor as a complex quality of character, far more complex than either virtue or fear, because it includes ambition without being limited to the lowest forms of ambition, such as that of the courtiers.

The story of the Viscount of Orte displays the higher ambitions of honor, and its complexity:

After Saint Bartholomew's Day, when Charles IX had written to all his governors to massacre the Huguenots, the Viscount of Orte, who was in command at Bayonne, wrote to the king: “Sire, I have found among the inhabitants and the warriors only good citizens, brave soldiers, and no executioner; thus, they and I beg Your Majesty to employ our arms and our lives for feasible (faisables) things.” This great and generous courage regarded a cowardly act as an impossible thing.³⁷

Orte's disobedience parallels the “interference” of the parlements, although it is more spectacular. It did not spring from material self-interest, since Orte risked his life to disobey his king's command. Nor does he give any indication of having acted from civic duty or solidarity, or from the principle of “universalizibility,” as we say today. Instead, Orte's courage must be understood in light of Montesquieu's definition of honor as a form of personal ambition. Honor as ambition is primarily self-serving rather than other-regarding. In fact, Montesquieu says that honor has less to do with what one owes to others than with what one owes to oneself: it is “not so much what calls us to our fellows as what distinguishes us from them.”³⁸ Orte refused the king's command because he thought too much of himself to undertake such brutality. He expects more of himself than to kill innocents just because someone, even his king, told him to do so. He is, so to speak, better than that; he would not stoop so low. He owes it to himself to uphold his code of honor because that is what distinguishes him from those who are simply the instruments of someone else's will, and he is proud that he is more than just that. Honor is therefore a mixed motive, and the courage of Orte is not altogether different from the vanities of the courtly air. What distinguishes Orte from the courtiers is not that his motives are purer than theirs, in the sense of being more altruistic or more universal, for he thinks of himself no less than they do. If anything, Orte thinks more of himself. It is his high opinion of himself that turns his ambition to this brave act of resistance, rather than to the obsequious social climbing of the courtiers. The courtiers are obsequious because although they think only of themselves, they think too little of themselves, and so freely debase themselves. They are ambitious, and yet they will put up with anything.

Orte's “great and generous courage” reflects his ambition to be someone special. After all, it is no small thing to refuse a king. That ambition is an unusual (for us) mix of partiality and higher purpose. That explains why Montesquieu says that with honor, “one judges men's actions … not as good but as fine, not as just but as great; not as reasonable but as extraordinary.”³⁹ What Orte did was “fine” (belle) in the sense of being beautiful or admirable. It exceeded average expectations. Honor is something to live up to because it is above average. It is wonderful to see, like a beautiful painting, because it reminds us that there is more to being human than getting by.⁴⁰ Yet honor, Montesquieu says, is not virtue; thus it yields “fine” actions, but not necessarily “good” ones. For “in order to be a good man (un homme de bien), it is necessary to have the intention of being one, and to love the state less for oneself than for itself.”⁴¹ The good man or woman has a pure heart, which means doing the right thing for the right reason. But that is not Orte, who acted for himself. If he did the Huguenots a good turn, their welfare was not his sole intention. Orte treated the Huguenots not only as ends in themselves, but also as the means to his own self-respect, and even his distinction. Their plight was his opportunity, and he made the most of it. Thus one must judge Orte's courage not as good but as fine.

If honor is not necessarily “good,” neither is it intrinsically “just.”⁴² Contemporary accounts of honor very often treat it as a part of justice,⁴³ but Montesquieu emphatically distinguishes them. With honor, one judges actions “not as just but as great.” What one owes others is the province of justice; what one owes oneself is the province of honor, and by emphasizing this distinction, Montesquieu reminds us that they do not always coincide. Justice and honor may conflict, as what I owe to myself may come at the expense of what I owe to you. Nor does Montesquieu offer a clear rank ordering of the two. Moreover, except under despotism where there are no fixed laws, one usually can act in a just fashion simply by following the law. So except where the laws are non-existent or very bad, it is possible to be just without making much effort. But honor calls forth a certain “greatness of soul”⁴⁴ because it cannot be had so easily. Indeed, “the things that honor forbids are more rigorously forbidden when the laws do not concur in proscribing it, and the things that it requires are more strongly required when the laws do not demand it.”⁴⁵ Honorable people such as Orte ask more of themselves than what is minimally required by the laws.⁴⁶ Risk is involved in honor, self-assertion, and the willingness to undertake something difficult. So honor is an effort, even if it is not exactly self-sacrifice.

Finally, one judges honorable actions “not as reasonable but as extraordinary” because they interrupt the ordinary processes and resist the constraints that condition our expectations. It is true that Orte's disobedience is in line with, even demanded by, the laws of honor contained in his code. Yet if the demands of honor can be known in advance, individual acts of honor are more difficult to predict. Honor cannot be “reckoned on” with the same assurance that Hobbes attributed to the need for self-preservation, for example. Honorable acts are risky, and so call forth a greater measure of intention, and therefore agency, than does the automatic response to bodily needs on which Hobbes reckoned. Individual acts of honor are unpredictable because they are so extraordinary.

So honor is ambitious and assertive, and it aims high. That distinguishes it from the contemporary concept of “self-esteem,” which usually is conceived as a good to be distributed, rather than as a form of ambition. Self-esteem even can be guaranteed, it is thought, if only the principles of justice are executed properly. As John Rawls puts it, “by arranging inequalities for reciprocal advantage and by abstaining from the exploitation of the contingencies of nature and social circumstance within a framework of equal liberty, persons … insure their self-esteem.”⁴⁷ It is true that honor in Montesquieu begins in rank, and so depends partly on public recognition and the distribution of public honors. But the story of Orte demonstrates that for Montesquieu honor does not end with either rank or public recognition. Indeed, the fact that Montesquieu associates honor with ambition emphasizes the active quality of honor. Honor as a quality of character never could be “insured,” because it requires an act of individual self-assertion that goes beyond what the laws require or provide, and sometimes even against the authority that stands behind the laws.⁴⁸ The fact that honor cannot be provided by the authorities is what gives it the independence needed to resist them when necessary. Moreover, those with honor have high opinions of themselves, which means that they have much to live up to, which makes them willing to undertake risky actions in defense of their liberties. That explains why the quest for distinction is central to honor. Would Orte have stood up to the king if he could have esteemed himself either way? If doing something exceptional had not been necessary to his sense of self-respect, would he have gone to the trouble? Would he have bothered to risk his life? If one can be made to esteem oneself regardless of what one does, then there is no incentive for taking the risks and making the efforts that the defense of liberty may require. In a “well-ordered society,” it is true, great acts of resistance to political authority in defense of individual liberties are not often called for. But in those rare instances, great acts can make all the difference,⁴⁹ and high ambitions make them possible.

III. REVERENCE AND REFLEXIVITY

In a moderate monarchy, those with honor distinguish themselves by defending their constitutional liberties and the principles of right contained in their codes of honor. Honor is not mere “self-expression,” but rather “has its supreme rules” (ses règles suprêmes).⁵⁰ The codes that give honor its rules, and thus its constraints, are not derived from divine will, or natural law, or from reason. Instead, codes of honor are grounded in social and political roles, in institutions that have histories, and in collective traditions with constitutional standing. Their authority comes from the weight of tradition and they rest on the conventional reverence for those institutions, traditions, and principles held by members of the society. Honor's codes have little authority independent of society's belief in their authority. They must therefore be revered in order to provide strong grounds for contesting the abuse of power.

Honor's need for reverence distinguishes it from Machiavelli's virtù, but there are similarities, as well.⁵¹ Like both the “great men” of Machiavelli's Discourses and his “new prince,” Montesquieu's honnêtes hommes seek glory. As in Machiavelli, the individual pursuit of glory indirectly produces public benefits. In republican governments, according to Machiavelli, the glory-seeking of princely types contributes to their “tumults” with the people, and to “the good effects that they engendered.”⁵² In a principality, the pursuit of glory by a single individual leads to the consolidation of power and thus to political stability. Montesquieu wants to divide power, not consolidate it, but the pursuit of honor supplies the defect of better motives in a way that parallels the pursuit of glory in Machiavelli. The nobility's prideful defense of its prerogatives serves the liberty of all by checking the perpetually encroaching power of the sovereign.

Although honor yields general benefits, those with honor sometimes distinguish themselves at the expense of particular others, partly because, as Montesquieu says, “an excessively great man renders all others small.”⁵³ Honorable men show up their fellows, and occasionally even make use of their fellows. For that reason, the concept of honor has been called Machiavellian, “in the morally pejorative sense in which Montesquieu understood it.”⁵⁴ So even though Montesquieu seems sincerely to see in honor a “more noble” motive than material interest, nevertheless the “velvet gloves” of the gentleman sometimes may “conceal claws.”⁵⁵ Still, honor does not engender the great acts of terror that made “Machiavellianism” a pejorative term for Montesquieu. Honor impresses and sometimes stings, but it does not “stupefy” others the way that Cesare Borgia's bisection of Remirro d'Orco did, because it does not terrify them.⁵⁶ Honor is less fearsome than virtù because it is more moderate. The example of Orte is striking in this regard. As a soldier, Orte makes us think of the honor of the medieval knight, with its thirst for military glory, and its ambition to conquer and to subjugate. But Orte's ambition does not consist in conquest and subjugation. Indeed, he refuses even to take the battlefield against the Huguenots, much less subjugate them. Even his disobedience is moderate, for while he resists his king's command, Orte does not attempt to unseat him. His honor issues in an act of conscientious objection, not a regicide.⁵⁷ In this respect, then, honor has an element of Machiavelli's popular humour as well as his virtù. Those with honor will not be dominated, but they do not particularly wish to dominate others, either. Honor brings courage together with moderation. Thus Orte's courage is not only “great,” but “great and generous.”

Honor is further distinguished from the virtue of Machiavelli's “new prince” by being tied to particular social codes, political traditions, and a constitutional order. Killing innocents is something that the Viscount of Orte simply will not do because his code of honor forbids it. By contrast, there is nothing, in principle, that the new prince will not do. He will do anything because there is no moral standard above him to limit him.⁵⁸ His virtue is his self-assertion; he is a self-made man. This quality of being self-made explains the newness of the new prince and his virtue. He should found his own principality, rather than inheriting one, and he must establish new modes and orders, rather than binding himself to the old standards.⁵⁹ The new virtue of the new prince is unbounded because of its newness. But honor is old, and limited by its past. It depends on the old modes and orders, and that dependence constrains and directs its ambitions. Unlike virtù, then, honor has an inheritance, and needs it. That means honor leans on reverence, even though it sometimes leads to political resistance. Indeed, honor's reverence for its codes supports its resistance to encroaching political power.

If honor's history is a constraint from the point of view of virtù, however, it is a liberation when seen from the standpoint of Aristotelian magnanimity. Aristotle defined magnanimity as complete virtue directed toward oneself,⁶⁰ and distinguished it from complete virtue in relation to another person,⁶¹ which he called justice. Like Aristotelian magnanimity, honor is concerned with what one owes to oneself. Yet Aristotle emphasized that a magnanimous man should be a “good” man, for honor was the prize of virtue, and it was “bestowed only on good men.”⁶² Magnanimity without both nobility and goodness was impossible.⁶³ As we have seen, however, for Montesquieu those with honor are not necessarily good, for one judges honorable actions not as good but as fine. While the magnanimous man must do the right thing for the right reason,⁶⁴ for Montesquieu it is enough that those with honor do the right thing, even if their reasons are not, morally speaking, the right ones. The honorable person's reasons for doing great things may not be morally pure, for “mores are never as pure in monarchies as in republican governments.”⁶⁵ That does not mean that anything goes, however. Not just any reason will do, because honor as a quality of character is guided by established codes of honor, rather than arbitrary will.

The difference between honor and magnanimity reflects Montesquieu's turn away from the idea of nature as a standard. Like everything else under the sun, Aristotelian magnanimity had its place in the natural order. It was important that the magnanimous man also be a good man⁶⁶ because political recognition should reflect natural deserts,⁶⁷ and that was important because the political order should be commensurate with the natural order.⁶⁸ By contrast, honor is embedded in a social and historical order, not a natural one; in traditions and constitutions, not in cosmology. Montesquieu denies that nature determines human ends directly, and that it can be a definitive guide for politics. It is true that he opposes despotism, like slavery, on the grounds that they are bad for “human nature.”⁶⁹ To the extent that human nature has a role in political standards, however, it is one that is mediated by the “spirit” of the laws of particular societies, by the climate and conditions of a country, by the customs, manners, and religion of the inhabitants, and by their political histories. Montesquieu does not fully exclude nature from political standards, but neither does he believe that absolute, universal standards of political right are given to human beings fully formed by nature, or that such standards can be taken directly from an analysis of human nature.⁷⁰ Political standards are to be discovered through a comparative and historical analysis of different forms of government, ways of life, and political constitutions, as the method of The Spirit of the Laws demonstrates. In contrast to magnanimity, then, honor has a history. The social codes and political constitutions that underwrite it change over time.

These considerations illuminate the two sides of honor as a historical phenomenon. On the one hand, the historicity of honor limits it by setting constraints on what one honorably can do. Those constraints, grounded in the weight of tradition, distinguish honor from Machiavelli's virtù, and from mere willfulness. On the other hand, the historicity of honor frees it from what Montesquieu regarded as the determinism of ancient metaphysics.⁷¹ Even though the Viscount of Orte did not personally choose his code of honor, that code was the product of a long series of collective human choices, rather than a dictate of nature or command of God.⁷² Thus the historicity of honor is simultaneously a freedom and a constraint. Consequently, honor is both a source of agency and a limit on agency. Reverence for its codes makes both its power and its limits possible.

If honor rests on reverence, however, it is far from simple obedience. After all, Orte risked his life to resist the command of his king, not obey it. Most of the time, it is true, a soldier's disobedience to the chain of command is grounds for a dishonorable discharge, not a mark of honor. That makes the story of Orte all the more notable as an example of honor, and emphasizes the novelty of Montesquieu's treatment of it. The story of Orte disrupts the conventional association between honor and obedience, for Orte distinguishes himself by his disobedience. Obedience is more properly associated with the motive that Montesquieu calls political virtue, the principle of ancient republics. Political virtue requires that one's particular self be made to obey the common “self” of the political community, which amounts to a “renunciation of self” that Montesquieu calls “a painful thing.”⁷³ For that reason, “one needs the whole power of education,” as the obedience that political virtue requires, its self-renunciation, is so contrary to particular inclinations. Political virtue also needs the continual support of censors. Thus the Spartans were “always correcting or being corrected, always instructing or being instructed.”⁷⁴ Virtue requires the supervision and the enforcement that establish obedience.⁷⁵ Honor, which is “is favored by the passions and favors them in turn,”⁷⁶ cannot be reduced to obedience, even in effect. Nor does it require a heavy-handed education. The principal education of honor is not even to be found in the public institutions where children are instructed. Instead, “the world is the school of that which is called honor, the universal master that ought everywhere to guide us.”⁷⁷ The world is the school of honor because the world is a stage for the rivalries and the achievements that inspire the ambition to do the “great things” that bring respect and self-respect. The particular associations and roles that one inhabits from the time that one enters the world shape the standards that guide one's ambition, and provide the recognition that rewards it. The fact that honor cannot be reduced to obedience reflects the strong sense of agency at its core. Whereas virtue can be inculcated, honor must be asserted; and while virtue can be habitual and even half-forgotten, honor always is aware of itself, for better and for worse. Virtue can be forgotten when one is sufficiently habituated to it to act automatically. And political virtue is by definition self-forgetting because with virtue one gives priority to purposes other than one's own. But the world, the school of honor, “teaches man never to forget himself.”⁷⁸ Honor always is aware of itself, both because it is self-regarding and because it never is automatic. As we have seen, honor interrupts the automatic processes and resists the necessities that constrain us. So those with honor not only are aware of their desires and ambitions, but also are aware of themselves as sources of agency.

This self-awareness, or the reflexive character of honor, can be seen in its claim to be the “arbiter” (l'arbitre) of its obligations:

There is nothing that honor prescribes more to the nobility than serving the prince in war. … But, in imposing this law, honor wants to be the arbiter; and, if honor has been offended (choqué) it requires or permits one to retire to one's home.⁷⁹

So Orte's “great and generous courage” was the result of an arbitration, over which he was the presiding judge. He regarded (regardait) his situation, his orders, and his code of conduct, and he adjudicated the conflict between them.⁸⁰ That is precisely what Hobbes and Locke forbade when they said that individuals must relinquish the powers of judgment and execution upon entering civil society. Orte judged the civil law on the basis of a standard independent of it, and then he acted on that judgment. Even for Locke, who admitted a right of rebellion, what Orte did only could have been justified by some violation of his natural right to self-preservation. That is not what happened to Orte, however. His action was not motivated by his material necessities, but by a desire, a form of ambition, that was more than material. The concept of honor reminds us that we are more than our necessities.⁸¹ Honor requires a form of reason that is more than merely instrumental because honor does more than strategize about the means to a given set of ends. Those with honor also arbitrate among their conflicting obligations and then resolve themselves upon a course of action. The claim to arbitrate one's obligations opens up a field of action not available to those whose material interests constitute their only legitimate source of agency. For whereas we are moved by our interests, as arbiters we move ourselves. Indeed, honor rests upon some conception of human autonomy, albeit not Kant's conception of autonomy. Orte's disobedience reflects an awareness of himself as arbiter but not as legislator; he judges and he executes but he does not legislate the laws of honor. Those laws are given to him, not authored by him, which separates honor from autonomy in the Kantian sense. Yet for Montesquieu, as for Kant, liberty is possible only if there is more to the self than its material interests, and more to action than a response to necessity or obedience to command.

Honor's claim to be an arbiter does not make it intrinsically arbitrary, but it does raise that possibility. The reflexivity that enhances agency also opens the door to corruption and uncertainty. Honor can be corrupted by being too reflexive. The responsibility for arbitrating one's obligations may be pushed to the point of license, rather than balanced with a measure of reverence for those obligations, and so may issue in acts of arbitrary willfulness. That is a problem for honor, but it is a problem that is endemic to liberty itself. The perfect protection against corruption and uncertainty also would be a perfect subjection, because it would require the elimination of choice altogether. Beyond that, however, honor's reflexivity is at odds with its own need for reverence. Honor brings the two together, because it requires both, but it does not dissolve the tension between them. The activity of arbitrating one's obligations may undermine their power to guide and to limit individual ambition. After all, if Orte can disobey the king, why not also his code of honor? There is a paradox at the heart of honor, for it presses conflicting demands upon us.

That paradox reveals a fundamental tension within political agency, at least under liberal government. If one's reverence is too complete, then one's actions are nothing more than obedience, and so not free. But with perfect reflexivity, or radical autonomy, one has no good reason to act in one way rather than another, and then it is difficult to distinguish one's choices from mere willfulness or simple impulse. In other words, there is a point at which radical choice fades into non-choice.⁸² The unchosen attachments and identities and obligations that constrain our choices also give us reason to choose one course of action over another. In that sense, they support our capacity for choice and thus for agency. The paradox of honor as both reverent and reflexive captures this deep feature of individual agency. By preserving the tension rather than dissolving it, the concept of honor helps us see why a theory of agency that privileges one at the cost of the other is bound to be incomplete, at least in view of the aspirations of liberal society. It suggests that even the self-determination of the modern subject rests on reverence of one sort or another. Honor balances choice with limits on choice. Our limits make our choices meaningful and effective, and if those limits are not to be coerced from the outside (by God or nature or king), then they will need to be revered from the inside.

IV. THE PARTIALITY OF HONOR

Honor does not require an abstraction from human partiality, but rather makes public use of it. There are two aspects to the partiality of honor. First, it is grounded in particular social and political identities that yield particular sets of obligations and particular standpoints. Honor does not take a universal view, but always is a view from somewhere.⁸³ That viewpoint is not altogether subjective, however, because honor is tied to general principles that extend beyond the particular case and give it wider bearing than individual material self-interest. Although honor is self-serving rather than collectivist in its aims, its beginnings have a corporate character. The substantive content of one's code of honor grows out of one's condition, so that an action that would dishonor a noble might have no significance if undertaken by a commoner. For Montesquieu, one's code of honor is attached to one's membership in a particular segment of society. Yet honor rests on the multiple shared identities of the “intermediary bodies” of monarchical society, not on the single shared identity of the political community as a whole, and so cannot “be linked with a unified vision of society enforced from the center.”⁸⁴ The shared but particular identities and social ties that sustain the intermediary bodies of monarchy are crucial to honor.

Honor also is partial in the sense of being based on affective attachments, rather than derived directly from reason. Those with honor defend their codes on the basis of an attachment to them, rather than a reasoned assessment, which helps explain why Montesquieu calls honor the “prejudice” of each person and each condition.⁸⁵ Honor is a prejudice because it assumes the worth of one's principles and one's claim to distinction. The honorable person is self-confident without being particularly self-examining, perhaps even self-confident because not self-examining. That is not a criticism of honor, for the effectiveness of honor in motivating risky action is tied to its partiality in this second sense, which engages the affective, desiring side of the human psyche. Nor does the partiality of honor mean that it is without rational foundations altogether. It only means that rational scrutiny is not the basis of this form of agency. So even though Orte did not scrutinize the foundations of his code of honor, Montesquieu does. In his presentation of French constitutional history in the final books of The Spirit of the Laws, for example, Montesquieu examines the history of the codes of honor of the French nobility and evaluates them as to their reasonableness. In fact, The Spirit of the Laws as a whole is a study of the reasons for different codes of conduct the world over. But rational scrutiny of the principles that underlie honor is Montesquieu's job, not Orte's. Or at least, it is not Orte's job in the moment. In the moment of crisis, Orte's attachments, not his reason, make him act.

Still, honor is incomplete because it needs the direction, and sometimes the correction, of reason. In that respect, honor calls to mind thymos. Like thymos, which Aristotle called the capacity of the soul by which we feel affection,⁸⁶ honor shares in reason even though it is not the same as reason. On Aristotle's account, it was spirited attachments that moved those who guarded the city to defend it bravely. In his view, the capacity for ruling and the capacity for political freedom also stemmed from thymos.⁸⁷ In a similar way, the partiality of honor, its spirited attachments to its principles, makes it effective as a guardian of individual liberties. Yet without the critical reflections of reason (and the fixed and fundamental laws of constitutional government), honorable persons may find themselves defending unreasonable, even unjust, codes. So honor needs reason but it cannot be reduced to reason.

Montesquieu's goal is to channel or regulate human partiality, rather than suppress it. Efforts to suppress partiality usually fail because it tends to come out anyway, and when suppressed it comes out in uncontrolled and extreme ways.⁸⁸ There is nothing that a religious zealot will not do for God, and nothing that a virtuous republican will not do for the sake of his homeland. The suppression of human partiality thus makes for unstable politics. Moreover, it is difficult to suppress partiality without forcing the issue, which means relying on fear, the principle of despotism.⁸⁹ The partial attachments and desires that inspire action can be moderated more effectively by being channeled and directed than by being suppressed. Montesquieu's system channels them by tying individual ambition to principled and established codes of honor and by arranging political institutions in such a way that particular ambitions check and balance one another. Instead of suppressing particular passions for the sake of the common good, Montesquieu's concept of honor makes use of them for the sake of individual liberty.

V. HONOR AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

Montesquieu's concept of honor gives rise to a politics of individual distinction and disobedience that divides political power and serves liberty. We cannot reproduce that concept of honor in toto today, and most of us would not wish to, for few liberal democrats would relinquish their way of life to live within the framework of eighteenth-century monarchy. Yet we can learn from Montesquieu's idea of honor, in particular from the three features of honor as a quality of character elaborated in the preceding pages. The high ambitions of honor remind us that having high and principled expectations of oneself is crucial to a strong sense of individual agency, and that the desire for distinction can be a powerful source of motivation. Honor's balance of reverence and reflexivity illuminates the potential power of that balance for individual agency, and it suggests that a theory of agency that privileges one at the cost of the other is bound to be incomplete. The partiality of honor emphasizes the effectiveness that mixed motives can have in inspiring political action and supporting political obligations, as compared to a purified form of reason or the self-renunciation of altruism and civic virtue. Montesquieu's treatment of honor as a quality of character is an important resource from within the tradition of modern liberalism for advancing present understanding of political agency. Today, as we shall see, forms of honor that are tied to the intermediary bodies of American civil society and grounded in the codes of conduct that regulate the many voluntary associations (both civil and political) in American democracy, as well as in the principles of political right contained in the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, can make the politics of distinction and disobedience available to liberal democracy in America.

The tensions between honor and democracy that make us suspicious of honor today are not insignificant, however. First, the shared codes of conduct that are integral to honor presuppose interconnected communities of the sort that modern pluralistic societies seem to lack. Under the ancien régime, as Tocqueville pointed out, “generation followed generation without change; each family was like a man who never died or changed; ideas altered hardly more than conditions.” In democratic societies, which lack a fixed social order, citizens are on the move, and society itself is subject to continual modification, changing “its opinions with changing needs.”⁹⁰ The greater mobility of an open society undermines the shared identities that support honor, and produces greater variability in codes of honor. That variability makes honor less powerful because it dissolves reverence for codes of honor, making the precepts of honor appear to be optional rather than obligatory. Moreover, where the codes and standards that guide honor are chosen, rather than given, honor has a tendency to become more individualistic, even radically subjective. One lives by a personal code, which consists in whatever principles or standards one chooses. The authority of one's code comes from the fact of one's having asserted it, making it as relative as it is self-expressive. The more subjective democratic honor becomes, however, the more it begins to resemble mere willfulness and the less reliably can it restrain and guide individual ambitions.

If democratic forms of honor are bound to be weaker in some respects than the honor that Montesquieu describes, still democratic societies need some form of honor. Without some individuals who are motivated by high and principled ambitions, as Tocqueville also remarked, everyone “limits himself to paltry desires and dares not face any lofty enterprise,” with the result that “the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring” even to liberty.⁹¹ Low ambitions reflect low expectations, which give rise to complacency. Because political power is of an encroaching nature, however, a complacent populace seldom is a free one for long. That does not mean that political liberty requires continuous or universal activism on the part of citizens, but rather points to the need for a few individuals who, at crucial moments, are willing to resist violations of their liberties, even when most people are not willing to do so, or do not see the need for doing so. Resisting the overreaching executives, the unscrupulous legislators, and the majority tyrannies to which democracy always is vulnerable is a “lofty” enterprise, one that requires more than the average level of ambition, and ambitions of a principled, not merely acquisitive, sort. The capacity for such resistance rests on having high expectations of oneself, tied to principled codes of right. Thus, Tocqueville continues, “far from thinking that we should council humility to our contemporaries, I wish men would try to give them a higher idea of themselves and of humanity; humility is far from healthy for them; what they most lack, in my view, is pride.”⁹² So it is not enough that “everyone in America has ambitions.” What is needed to protect against the danger of democratic despotism is more of what Tocqueville calls “lofty” ambitions.

The link between one's expectations of oneself and the capacity for political agency is not unknown to contemporary theorists. In recent years, some theorists have attempted to reconcile that insight with a commitment to egalitarianism, postulating several democratic alternatives to honor. Rawls, for example, acknowledges that those who think too little of themselves are easily subjugated in politics. Without self-respect, Rawls says, nothing would seem worth doing, and men and women would lack the will to act.⁹³ Thus citizens need self-respect in order “to care about their basic liberties and opportunities,”⁹⁴ and to use and defend their liberties. That is Rawls's reason for including the social bases of self-respect, or what he calls “self-esteem,” among the primary goods of distributive justice. Indeed, self-esteem is the most important primary good, Rawls says, because it enables individuals to make use of other goods.⁹⁵ Rawls's concept of self-esteem is more fully democratic than is honor, because it is equally available to all. In fact, self-esteem even can be guaranteed to all as a matter of equal distribution, as we have seen. Achievements are irrelevant to self-esteem; all that is needed is the appreciation of others, who are obliged (in a just society) to provide it.

Yet the disjunction between the concept of desert and the sense of one's own value undermines the power of self-esteem as a source of political agency, especially when it comes to risky and difficult forms of action. In practice, one gains confidence in proportion to one's advances in mastering some skill or situation; one's confidence increases with one's abilities and as the result of one's abilities. By disconnecting abilities from self-esteem, Rawls makes self-confidence into an assertion rather than an achievement. One might be able to muster some measure of confidence simply by asserting it or having it asserted by others, independent of any real abilities or achievements. But surely that would be a false confidence, liable to get one in over one's head and to crumple under the pressure of the first real challenge. The confidence needed to drive risky and difficult action in defense of individual liberties (think of Martin Luther King, for example) cannot be spun from air or from good intentions. Risks like that rest on real confidence, confidence that is equal to any challenge because it is girded by firm convictions about one's abilities and the worth of one's achievements. Self-respect cannot simply be asserted or distributed; it must be won, at least if it is to withstand challenge in the toughest cases and so to support the strong sense of individual agency that occasionally rises to the defense of individual liberties when the risks are high and the benefits are uncertain.

Charles Taylor suggests another democratic alternative to honor, “the modern notion of dignity, now used in a universalist and egalitarian sense, where we talk of the inherent ‘dignity of human beings.”’⁹⁶ That idea is the founding principle of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance.⁹⁷ Dignity in this sense is a given, not an achievement. Everyone has dignity inherently, and in the same measure, independently of one's particular conditions and actions. When dignity is understood in that way, it is impossible to lose. One need not do anything distinctive to claim one's dignity; indeed, one need not act at all, for there is no necessary connection between dignity in this sense and action. Brave or timid, ambitious or lethargic, awake or asleep, one is in possession of one's intrinsic worth as a human being, or one's equal dignity. The idea of inherent dignity provides a justification for equal political rights and universal human rights, and a standard for assessing the legitimacy of the laws and public policies of particular governments. As such, it is irreplaceable, and in liberal democracies the standard set by democratic dignity never should be forgotten. Still, sometimes that standard must be surpassed if only because the defense of the principle of equal dignity itself occasionally requires unusually spirited forms of action. The form of dignity articulated by Taylor and the Declaration of Human Rights is necessary but not sufficient for sustaining liberal democracy.

The need to go beyond the standard set by the principle of equal dignity is reflected in another common usage of the word dignity today, which Taylor does not mention but which is instructive. Today we can distinguish “dignified” actions and persons from “undignified” ones, and we may characterize someone whom we admire as a person of “great dignity.” Dignity in that sense is neither universal nor equal. It may be lost or forfeited and it admits of degrees. Dignity in this more restrictive sense is a mark of distinction, even a democratic euphemism for honor, as it is tied to action, achievement, and character. To be a man or woman of great dignity, one must do something to distinguish oneself; dignity in this form must be earned. Similarly, we sometimes speak of a “sense of dignity” that inspires great acts. Martin Luther King's “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” refers to such a sense of dignity as an important motivation for black civil rights activists.⁹⁸ But a sense of dignity is not something that is distributed equally, even if human dignity in principle adheres equally in us. Some people have a stronger sense of dignity than others, as their different actions attest, and so a sense of dignity does not accrue to every individual simply as a function of being human. Few of us could match the strong sense of dignity that inspired Rosa Parks to hold her seat on the bus, for instance. Thus while everyone is entitled to have their equal dignity respected, not everyone is entitled to be called “dignified,” and not everyone possesses the strong sense of dignity that can inspire risky action. The principle of inherent dignity cannot replace honor, either; there is a remainder between them, features of honor that democratic dignity cannot capture and that liberal democrats should not neglect.

What Taylor most objects to in honor are the inequalities of recognition that it entails.⁹⁹ Recognition is important, he thinks, because it is a necessary component in the intersubjective constitution of identity. Inequalities of recognition run counter to the principle of intrinsic dignity; when individuals are denied recognition, their inherent dignity is offended, and their identities may go unrealized, or even may be harmed. But public honors distribute recognition unequally. The Order of Canada, for example, “would be without worth if tomorrow we decided to give it to every adult Canadian.” Thus honor is incompatible with the equal recognition that democracy demands. For that reason, Taylor says, democracy requires that the special and unequal recognition that attends honor be replaced with the reciprocal recognition that goes with “the politics of equal dignity.”¹⁰⁰ Yet important as some form of reciprocal recognition is to democratic society, it, too, is no replacement for honor. Taylor's presumption that reciprocal recognition can stand in for honor is based on an incomplete characterization of honor. He sees only honor's external dimension, its quest for public honors, not acknowledging its internal dimension, honor as the quality of character that makes one wish to live up to certain principled codes of conduct. Or rather, he collapses the two dimensions of honor together, casting honor simply as the quality of character that makes one wish to be recognized. But as Montesquieu understood it, and as contemporary usage still suggests, honor means more than that. The honorable person wants to be the kind of person who lives up to her code of conduct. It is true that she also wants to be seen as the kind of person who lives up to her code of conduct, but her concern with appearances does not diminish her allegiance to a set of independent principles.

Taylor's concept of reciprocal recognition also lacks that internal dimension. The only basis of recognition as he construes it is public opinion, for in order to have recognition one must be recognized by others. To have honor, on the other hand, it is not enough to be honored, as one also must act honorably; and one can act honorably (abiding by the honor code on a take-home exam, for instance) without being honored for it. Recognition, like the principle of inherent dignity, is a passive affair; it happens to you, rather than by you. Thus one's recognition cannot be asserted, but instead must be received. The problem with substituting recognition for honor is that it leans too heavily on public opinion. By contrast, honor's attachment to codes of conduct and principles of political right gives it a measure of independence from public opinion. One can defend one's principles even when one is unpopular or unrecognized. That makes honor a more powerful source of individual agency, particularly for the members of the marginalized and minority groups with whom Taylor is most concerned, those persons who are least likely to be favored by the public opinions and the political authorities that distribute recognition. So democratic alternatives to honor, such as self-esteem, dignity, and recognition, cannot replace honor. They lack the high ambitions and the spiritedness of honor as a source of political agency. In fact, they may contribute to the dispiriting of individual agency by detaching self-respect from achievement and dignity from action, and by making self-respect and dignity too dependent on public opinion.

As against Taylor, who concludes that “it is obvious that the concept of dignity is the only one compatible with a democratic society,”¹⁰¹ Michael Walzer has argued that some form of honor is not only compatible with but important to modern liberal democracy. Walzer's notion of honor brings out the features of honor as a quality of character that made it a powerful source of individual agency in Montesquieu. But Walzer brings those features of honor together with the principles of equal opportunity, pluralism, and consent that characterize American politics and contemporary American civil society. With honor as Walzer presents it, one respects oneself not just for being (as with self-esteem), or for being accepted (as with recognition), but for acting well, in accordance with the established rules of conduct and standards of achievement that constitute one's code of honor. Thus Walzer's notion of honor restores the concept of desert, which Rawls rejects explicitly and Taylor implicitly erodes. Walzer recognizes the moderating influence of the idea of desert based on fixed standards. Without it, he points out, honor (or esteem, or recognition) “is simply available for tyrannical use. Because I have power, I shall honor so and so. It doesn't matter whom I choose, because no one really deserves to be honored … and I don't recognize any intrinsic connection between honor and any particular set of performances.”¹⁰² The concept of desert based on fixed standards protects self-respect from the tyranny of public opinion and despots alike. And if some sense of self-respect is needed for the defense of individual liberties, as Rawls himself acknowledges, then such protection is essential.

The standards that make self-respect possible and that underlie modern democratic forms of honor are specific to particular spheres of activity, on Walzer's account. He finds them grounded especially in the codes of conduct that regulate the voluntary associations of American civil and political society. Those associations are the democratic approximation of the corporate orders, or intermediary bodies, of the ancien régime.¹⁰³ Codes of honor are plural, and as Montesquieu believed, partial. They are not simply private, but neither are they universal in scope, for they are relative to particular organizations or social groups, and to their particular purposes. To the vocational and professional associations that Walzer emphasizes, one could add political parties, community associations, advocacy groups, and families. The codes of conduct prevailing in those different associations provide principled limits and direction for individual ambitions. They mitigate the tendency of democratic forms of honor to become increasingly subjective, yet they do so without returning to a fixed, hereditary social order, or to political inequalities. They are important sources of the shared (if partial) identities and interconnected (if not comprehensive) communities that support honor.

Following Tocqueville, recent scholarship in political theory and empirical political science has shown the value of civil society for American citizenship.¹⁰⁴ Voluntary associations are said to serve the collective liberty by making individuals more participatory. By taking part in the associational life of small organizations, men and women learn to see with a collective vision and develop the habit of working together for common purposes, which prepares them for the challenges of democratic participation. Such associations support democracy by increasing communality; they build reservoirs of “social capital”—shared beliefs and values, trust in one another and in the whole—that fuel large-scale political enterprises. Yet while democracies need social capital and a measure of civic virtue, liberal democracy also needs individual ambition, despite the fact that ambition is somewhat at odds with the collectivism of civic virtue. The resources within civil society for the cultivation of civic virtue have been articulated in recent years, but the resources there for inspiring honor have not been explored. The social attachments, the principled codes of conduct, the standards of achievement, the competition and the public distinction that such associations provide support the high ambitions, the accomplishments, and the self-respect that give rise to a strong sense of individual agency. They create reservoirs not just of the social capital that serves political participation, but also of the high expectations and the “lofty ideals” that, when necessary, can fuel the spirited defense of individual liberties in the face of obvious risks and indeterminate benefits.

The self-serving character of Walzer's democratic honor also is in keeping with honor in Montesquieu. The physician and the trade-unionist that Walzer mentions are concerned to preserve their self-respect. They might also regulate their actions in order to meet some additional sets of obligations. The physician might treat her patients compassionately out of a love of humanity, or from religious commitment, for example, or she might make her best effort because she feels bound by the contractual relation between them. But the idea of honor points to another motivation, based on a sense of obligation to oneself, rather than to others or to the whole. Similarly, the trade unionist might hold out for a better contract because he is moved by a sense of workers' solidarity, or because he wants to make the world a better place, or because he wants to maximize his individual interest. But when his honor is involved, he also holds out for the sake of his self-respect. It is honor that tells him that “he ought not to lower himself for some personal advantage,” but also that “he ought not to sell himself short,” and further that “he ought not to endure such-and-such an affront.”¹⁰⁵ Too often today we think in terms of a false dichotomy between interest and obligation: interests are what we do for ourselves, it is thought; obligations are what we owe to others. But what we do for ourselves ought not be limited to our interests, and what we owe to others does not exhaust our obligations. A sense of obligation to oneself can be a powerful source of individual agency when it combines, as honor does, self-regarding ambition with principled codes of conduct.

Even liberal-democratic forms of honor cannot be distributed equally, however. Honor cannot be distributed, because it must be asserted, as we have seen. As long as one's self-respect is tied to the worthiness of one's actions, honor never will be a matter of simple distribution. Yet the power of honor would be radically reduced if it were, as are Rawls's self-esteem and Taylor's recognition, goods that one receives from a benevolent authority or a well-intentioned “Other.” So long as honor as a quality of character must be asserted, it never will be had by all, or never will be had equally by all. Similarly, public honors in the form of awards and prizes will inspire outstanding achievements only if they confine rewards to outstanding achievements, rather than rewarding all achievements. Honor is intrinsically inegalitarian in those respects. The inequalities that attend honor do not preclude its coexistence with liberal democracy, however. Honor need not contest the equality of political rights or civil liberties, although it did do so in Montesquieu's day. In liberal democracies, where equal political rights prevail, honor may rest on differential distributions of forms of recognition that do not interfere with equal political rights. After all, we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. with a national holiday, and we honor him for having acted so honorably, but if he were alive today he would not thereby be entitled to an extra vote. The agonistic, inegalitarian aspects of honor as a form of ambition may give us pause, but they need not jeopardize our commitment to political equality.

Nor is honor a continuous and society-wide ideal in the usual sense. Individual acts of honor are episodic achievements, rather than universally shared habits. This episodic character further distinguishes honor from civic virtue, which, as usually conceived, governs the actions of most citizens on a continuous basis. Individual acts of honor can have great effects on political society as a whole because honorable actions set precedents, which then may be sustained and even extended without the continuous or universal operation of honor. At the same time, no single code of honor gives a comprehensive or universal standard for action, because each code yields a standard that governs only a part of one's life. Honor is relative to different spheres of activity, and to the various purposes of particular social and political institutions. Because each of us inhabits a variety of roles in a variety of settings today, we may be subject to multiple codes of honor as we fulfill our various roles as friends and citizens and family members, for example; and by still other codes as professors or physicians or carpenters or senators. Nor does honor provide a complete account of political agency, or of human motivations more generally. Honor cannot replace motivations such as self-interest, or civic virtue, or solidarity, or faith, or friendship, or love, or any of the many other sources of human agency—but it can add to them. The very limitedness of honor in this regard reminds us of the irreducible multiplicity of human motivations. We lose richness and depth in our understanding of human agency when we attempt a unification theory of motivations, reducing genuine diversity to an artificial unity.

It is worth noting that the affective character of honor, which makes it active rather than contemplative, also makes honor incomplete in the sense that it is not self-justifying. Codes of honor may be ill-conceived, after all; the honorable person may defend a set of principles that are irrational when viewed from the standpoint of impartial reason, or illegitimate when judged from the perspective of some independent moral or political standard. Still, every form of human motivation can go wrong. Self-interest, solidarity, virtue, faith, friendship, and the rest all may be ill-used, and may serve wrongful ends or produce undesirable consequences. Honor is no more or less risky, in that respect, than any other form of motivation. Like all our motivations, honor needs the direction, and sometimes it needs the correction, of reason. If honor is incomplete because it leans on reason, however, reason also is incomplete. The faculty of impartial reason that we employ to evaluate codes of honor is not itself a powerful form of motivation. Honor cannot justify the codes that it defends, but reason on its own does not motivate the defense of the standards that it justifies.¹⁰⁶ Yet it would be misguided to expect a single human faculty to meet all the demands of moral and political life that press upon us. That honor cannot justify its codes is another of its limits, but not cause for disregarding it.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

While the tensions between honor and liberal democracy are real, the fact that there are tensions between them is no reason to conclude that we can do without either one. Honor in some form has a role to play in any polity that takes the limitation of political power seriously. Moreover, contemporary theories of liberalism need a richer treatment of the motivations that drive political action; and current theories of civic virtue, which give an account of motivations, are not always consistent with individual liberty. Montesquieu's concept of honor offers a rich account of motivations, and one that is suited to the defense of individual liberty. Honor is not exactly a virtue, but it does some of the work of virtue. It can, as Montesquieu says, inspire the finest actions, risky undertakings that yield great public benefits. The power of honor lies in the fact that it is a mixed motive. It builds on the particular attachments and private desires that make us who we are and move us to act. It channels and directs personal ambitions, rather than suppressing them in the name of a comprehensive common good or a universal standpoint. Nor does it require the state to cultivate character, or submerge diverse identities into a homogeneous collective one.

Today we cannot help but feel that there is more to politics than self-interest, even that interest may be an insufficient spring for liberty, and yet we resist the rule of virtue. And while we see that the principle of autonomy abstracts from the particularities of human identity, we will not trade our choices for our encumbrances, and we refuse to let our identities displace our principles as the constituting factor of American politics. All that is more or less as it should be in a liberal democracy. Yet if those tensions reflect real complexities, they also reveal the limited horizons of political agency as we understand it. Moreover, even democratic authority can overreach itself, and when that happens neither self-interest nor civic virtue nor reason itself can be relied upon to motivate principled resistance. And contemporary alternatives to honor, such as dignity, self-esteem, and recognition, lack its spiritedness and high ambitions. So if we resist some features of honor today because we are democrats, because we are liberal democrats, we need some of them. A strong sense of agency is crucial to liberal government, as Montesquieu knew. As long as political power is of an encroaching nature, we will need “the great and generous courage” of the few who on occasion resist it, men and women who are willing to risk their necks to defend their liberties.

Notes

1. Charles-Louis de Secondat baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, ed. Victor Goldschmidt (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1979), 2 vols., XI.4. Translations are my own. Roman numerals refer to book; arabic numerals refer to chapter.

2. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1961), no. 51.

3. Hamilton, et al., Federalist Papers, no. 48.

4. Declaration of Independence.

5. Although Montesquieu does not equate individual liberties with equal political rights, he does conceive of liberty in terms of the personal security of individuals. To the extent that honor contributes to the division of political power, and its limitation, honor serves freedom of press, conscience, and private property; the abolition of torture and cruel punishment; and a division between the public and the private spheres. For references to liberty as security, see Esprit des lois, XI.6; XII.5; XII.12; XII.23; XIII.7; and XIX.6. There is broad consensus among interpreters as to Montesquieu's liberal conception of liberty. See, for example, Norman Hampson, Will and Circumstance: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution (London: Duckworth, 1983), 10; Phillip Knee, “La question de l'appartenance: Montesquieu, Rousseau et la révolution française,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 22 (June 1989): 303; Franklin Ford, Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 20; and Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 418 and “Virtuous Republics and Glorious Monarchies: Two Models in Montesquieu's Political Thought,” Political Studies 22 (December 1972): 392.

6. Michael A. Mosher, “The Particulars of a Universal Politics: Hegel's Adaptation of Montesquieu's Typology,” American Political Science Review 78 (March 1984): 180. On the same point, see David W. Carrithers, “Montesquieu's Philosophy of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (January-March 1986): 76; and Corrado Rosso, Montesquieu moraliste: de lois au bonheur (Bordeaux: Ducros, 1971), 100.

7. Louis Althusser, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx: Politics and History, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1972), 80. On the same point, see Mark Hulliung, Montesquieu and the Old Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 179; and Lawrence M. Levin, The Political Doctrine of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws: Its Classical Background (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 104.

8. Ford, Robe and Sword, 20.

9. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2

10. Montesquieu, Mes Pensées, ed. Louis Degraves (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, S.A., 1991), no. 107.

11. That partly explains Montesquieu's “vacillating attitude toward honor.” See Levin, The Political Doctrine, 103f. On the same point, see Paul Vernière, Montesquieu et L'esprit des lois ou la raison impure (Paris: Société d'Édition d'Enseignement Supérieur, 1977), 68.

12. Anne M. Cohler, Montesquieu's Comparative Politics and the Spirit of American Constitutionalism (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 91.

13. Hulliung, Montesquieu and the Old Regime, 30.

14. An exception is Michael Mosher, who treats Montesquieu's concept of honor as interesting in its own right, in “The Judgmental Gaze of European Women: Gender, Sexuality, and the Critique of Republican Rule,” Political Theory 22 (February 1994): esp. 38-40. Even that treatment, although rich and insightful, is brief.

15. Montesquieu actually enumerates four types of government, insofar as he notes that a republic can be either democratic or aristocratic, but he classifies the two together because in either case the people as a whole or a part of the people are sovereign (Esprit des lois, II.2).

16. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.1.

17. Althusser, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx, 46.

18. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.9.

19. Montesquieu distinguishes what he calls the “political virtue” of ancient republics from “moral virtue” in a foreword to the book: “For the understanding of the first four books of this work, one must note that what I call virtue in a republic is love of the homeland, that is to say, love of equality. It is not a moral virtue or a Christian virtue” (Avertissement de L'Auteur). He reiterates the distinction periodically throughout the early sections of Esprit des lois (III.5 note, IV.5, V.2,4). Several commentators have called into question those distinctions, on the grounds that Montesquieu in fact connects what he calls political virtue with both moral and Christian virtue, as when he illustrates “what virtue is in the political state” by describing the self-sacrifice of Christian monks (V.2). With passages like that in mind, Rosso, for instance, concludes that “Montesquieu's distinction between political and moral virtue never has convinced anyone.” See his Montesquieu moraliste, 119. On the same point, see Pierre Manent, La cité de l'homme (Paris: Fayard, 1994), esp. 38-54; and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Taming the Prince (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 225ff. Those interesting debates are beyond the scope of this article, however. For present purposes, it is enough to call attention to the ambiguity of what Montesquieu calls political virtue.

20. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, V.3.

21. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.5.

22. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, V.14.

23. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, II.4.

24. See Ford, Robe and Sword, 7; and Gabriel Loirette, “Montesquieu et le problème, en France, du bon gouvernement,” in Actes du congrès Montesquieu réuni à Bordeaux du 23 au 26 mai 1955 pour comémorer la deuxième centenair de la mort de Montesquieu (Bordeaux: Impriméries Delmas, 1956), 219-39.

25. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, II.4.

26. Esprit des lois XXVIII and XXX-XXXI comprise Montesquieu's contribution to the contemporary literature on the constitutional standing of the French nobility and the status of their legislative and judicial rights. For further discussion, see Keith Michael Baker, The Old Regime and The French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Iris Cox, Montesquieu and the History of French Laws (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1983); and Kingsley Martin, French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London: Turnstile Press, Ltd., 1954).

    It is worth noting that Montesquieu's discussion of the nobility elides an important division within that category. There had long been tensions, even hostilities, between the nobility of the sword (noblesse d'épée), who were soldiers, and the nobility of the robe (noblesse de robe), who were magistrates and members of the administrative parlements. The debates over the status of the nobility often played the two classes of nobility against each other. From Montesquieu's point of view, however, such skirmishes could only increase the power of the crown by dividing its most potent opposition. That is one explanation for why he runs the two groups together in his discussion of honor, and why he has been called “the reconciler” of the feudal and magistral traditions within the nobility (Ford, Robe and Sword, 22).

27. Ford, Robe and Sword, 80. And note Esprit des lois, V.10: “The bodies that are the depository of the laws never obey better than when they act slowly and when they introduce into the affairs of the prince reflection that one can scarcely expect from the absence of enlightenment in the court concerning the laws of the state. … What would have become of the finest monarchy in the world if the magistrates, by their slowness, by their complaints, by their prayers, had not arrested the course of even the virtues of its kings.”

28. Ford, Robe and Sword, 80.

29. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, II.4.

30. Montesquieu, Pensées, no. 30.

31. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.7.

32. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.7.

33. See, for example, Condorcet, in Destutt DeTracy, Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Jefferson (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969), 286f; and G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 178.

34. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.5.

35. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.5.

36. See, for example, Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 219; and Hulliung, Montesquieu and the Old Regime, 29.

37. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

38. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

39. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

40. For a discussion of the aesthetic dimension of honor, see Edwin Dargan, The Aesthetic Doctrine of Montesquieu (Baltimore: J.H. Furst Company, 1907). For an interesting treatment of the “theatricality” of honor in Montesquieu, see E. J. Hundert and Paul Nelles, “Liberty and Theatrical Space in Montesquieu's Political Theory: The Poetics of Public Life in The Persian Letters,” Political Theory 17 (May 1989): 223-46.

41. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.6.

42. Although it may be either good or just, or both.

43. Both John Rawls and Michael Walzer treat honor under the rubric of justice. See Rawls's Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), and A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), esp. 178f, 440ff and 544ff; and Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), chap. 11.

44. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, V.12.

45. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

46. People such as Orte are likely to be few in number, although Montesquieu is somewhat ambiguous about exactly what portion of the population is motivated by honor in monarchy. On the one hand, he says that honor “reigns like a monarch over the prince and over the people,” (Esprit des lois, III.10) and that honor “makes all the parts of the body politic move” (III.7). On the other hand, he draws attention to “the miserable character of courtiers” (III.5), which contrasts strongly with the great and generous courage of Orte, and in discussing punishments in monarchy, he remarks that it is in “the spirit of monarchy” that “the noble loses his honor and his voice at court; while the villein, who has no honor, is punished in his body” (VI.10). One way to reconcile these apparently conflicting stands is to recall the distinction between public honors as awards or marks of public recognition, and honor as an individual quality of character. A society-wide system of public recognition that distinguishes between different categories of persons based on their status and that requires everyone to participate in the system, in the sense of recognizing and honoring those distinctions, could be said to “reign over the prince and the people”—even if individual acts of honor such as Orte's are few and far between. For surely Montesquieu's description of Orte, while it is meant to illustrate the essence of honor as a quality of character, is not meant to depict a universal characteristic of monarchical subjects. Honorable actions, Montesquieu says, are extraordinaires (IV.2).

47. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 179.

48. It is worth noting that the self-assertion that honor requires is not the open-ended striving that one finds in a competitive society, but rather the striving to prove worthy of one's appointed station. Thus honor requires that “when we have once been placed in a rank, we must do or suffer nothing that might make it seem that we hold ourselves inferior to the rank itself” (IV.2). Yet that is not a passive affair, for it may require actions that are, as Montesquieu says, belles, grandes, and extraordinaires.

49. It is true that the acts of resistance that Montesquieu associates with honor are not revolutionary. One might even say that the resistance promoted by honor really amounts to a form of inaction. The parlements, for example, resist not by attacking the king, but by doing “nothing.” (See note 27.) Similarly, “if honor has been offended (choqué) it requires or permits one to retire to one's home” (Esprit des lois, IV.2). Yet such forms of political inaction can be powerfully activist in effect. Montesquieu capitalizes on that fact, which allows him to defend forms of (in)action that have the effect of checking the monarch without appearing to attack him.

50. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

51. For treatments of Montesquieu's debt to and departures from Machiavelli, see Robert Shackleton, “Montesquieu and Machiavelli: A Reappraisal,” Comparative Literature Studies 1 (1964): 1-13; Marc Duconseil, Machiavel et Montesquieu: Recherche sur un principle (Paris: Denoel, 1943); Maurice Joly, Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, ou, la politique de Machiavel au XIXe siècle (Bruxelles: Imprimerie de A. Mertens et fils, 1864); and A. Bertière, “Montesquieu, lecteur de Machiavel,” Actes du Congrès, 141-58.

52. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), I.4.

53. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

54. Rosso, Montesquieu moraliste, 100. For evidence of Montesquieu's disapproval of Machiavelli, see his Pensées, no. 207 and Esprit des lois, XXI.20.

55. Rosso, Montesquieu moraliste, 101.

56. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), chap. VII.

57. Similarly, Montesquieu understands the interference of the parlements as aimed to limit the king's power, not to establish a monopoly on political power for the nobility.

58. It is true that Machiavelli's princely types are limited by their own necessities and by their knowledge of those necessities. Still, those limits no doubt were small comfort to Remirro d'Orco.

59. Machiavelli, Prince, chap. VI.

60. Or “greatness in every virtue.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Hippocrates Apostle (Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic Press, 1984), 1124a.

61. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1129b.

62. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1123b.

63. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1124a. On the differences between honor and magnanimity in Aristotle, see Aristide Tessitore, Reading Aristotle's Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), esp. 28-35.

64. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b.

65. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

66. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1124a.

67. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1123b.

68. That is, the political order should be commensurate with the natural order, even if it is not always so in practice. In the best regime, which is the final standard for all regimes (NE, 1135a5-6), the good man and the good citizen are the same (Politics, 1288a137-38). Ultimately, the standard of magnanimity, like the standard of every virtue, is given by the nature of the absolutely best man. Variations that depart from that standard may be good, but they are not the best, according to Aristotle.

69. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, VIII.8 and XV.13.

70. That Montesquieu resisted the idea of a single, universal standard of right derived directly from nature is the most widely accepted interpretation of his view, and the one most well-supported by the evidence that his words provide. See, for example, Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 250ff; Georges Benrekassa, Montesquieu: La liberté et l'histoire (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1987), 175; Cohler, Montesquieu's Comparative Politics, 48; Jean Ehrard, “Presentation,” Politique de Montesquieu (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965), 10f; Simone Goyard-Fabre, La philosophie du droit de Montesquieu (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973), 54; Robert Alun Jones, “Ambivalent Cartesians: Durkheim, Montesquieu and Method,” American Journal of Sociology 100 (July, 1994): 13 and 29f; Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology, trans. Ralph Manheim (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966); Knee, “La question de l'appartenance;” and Mosher, “The Particulars of a Universal Politics.” A notable exception to that interpretation is Mark Waddicor, who characterizes Montesquieu as a natural law theorist in Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970).

71. See his Pensées, nos. 410 and 1154.

72. It is debatable how far Aristotle regarded standards of conduct in politics as simply “dictates of nature.” An analysis of Aristotle's views on justice is beyond the scope of this article, however. For present purposes, it is enough to say that Montesquieu's criticism of ancient philosophy suggests that he interpreted Aristotle as believing that political standards are simply given.

73. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.5. It is in regard to this self-renunciation that Montesquieu links virtuous republicans with Christian monks (see notes 19 and 88), and in a later passage refers to the “slaves called ecclesiastics” (Esprit des lois, XXII.14). What Montesquieu calls virtue is in effect, if not in theory, obedience.

74. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, XIX.16.

75. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, V.19.

76. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.5.

77. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

78. Althusser, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx, 62.

79. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

80. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, IV.2.

81. Hobbes and Locke surely knew that there was more to individuals than their necessities, but both regarded that “more” as the source of the worst contentiousness in politics. Therefore their political theories were intended to operate on the basis of material interests and an instrumental form of reason tailored to serve those interests without looking beyond them. That is the purpose of Hobbes's assertion that “there is no sumum bonum,” an assertion that Locke does not dispute. Or, as Hirschman puts it, “all heroic virtues were shown to be forms of self-preservation by Hobbes.” See Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 11. So at least for the purpose of politics, individuals' self-awareness was to be limited to their interests; when self-awareness went beyond self-interest, politics tended to unravel. By contrast, in describing how the Roman senate and people rebelled against the decemvirs after the death of Virginia, Montesquieu indicates how the act of arbitrating conflicting obligations (in contrast to the instrumental reasoning that serves material interests) supports liberty: “The spectacle of the death of Virginia, sacrificed by her father to modesty and to liberty, made the power of the decemvirs evaporate. Each one was free because each one took offense; everyone became a citizen because everyone was a father” (Esprit des lois, XI.15).

82. See Charles Taylor, “What is Human Agency?” in Human Agency and Language (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), esp. 28-35.

83. And never a “view from nowhere,” as in Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

84. Mosher, “Judgmental Gaze of European Women,” 39.

85. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III.6.

86. Aristotle, Politics, 1327b41.

87. Aristotle, Politics, 1328a6-7.

88. “The less we can satisfy our particular passions, the more we turn ourselves over to general ones. Why do monks so love their order? It is exactly because of the same thing that makes it intolerable to them. Their rule deprives them of everything upon which ordinary passions rest; there remains, therefore, the passion for the rule that afflicts them. The more austere it is, the more it denies their inclinations, the more force it gives to those that are permitted” (Esprit des lois, V.2). For a discussion of how this passage anticipates Nietzsche's idea of “slave morality,” see Richard Myers, “Christianity and Politics in Montesquieu's Greatness and Decline of the Romans,” Interpretation 17 (Winter 1989-90): 223-38.

89. For an elaboration of Montesquieu's view of Christian virtue as despotic see Cohler, Montesquieu's Comparative Politics, 35-44; and Diana J. Schaub, Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu's Persian Letters (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 71-72 and 145-47.

90. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 624.

91. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 632.

92. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 632.

93. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 318.

94. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 76f and 318f.

95. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 440.

96. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 27.

97. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A., 217A, U.N. Doc A/810 (1948).

98. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” in Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 302

99. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 27.

100. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 64f.

101. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 27.

102. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 262.

103. On this point, see Tocqueville, 192.

104. See, for example, Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (January 1995): 65-78; Mary Ann Glendon and David Blankenhorn, eds., Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1995); Ronald Beiner, ed., Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995); Robert Bellah, et al., The Good Society (New York: Knopf, 1991); and Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

105. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 274f.

106. For an interesting account of the difficulty of deriving motivations from “the abstractive achievements required by the moral point of view,” see Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), esp. 107-09; and 160-84.