Words&Dirt

“‘Sublimity,’ Hauptmann says, panting, ‘you know what that is Pfennig?’ He is tipsy, animated, almost prattling. Never has Werner seen him like this. ‘It’s the instant when one thing is about to become something else. Day to night, caterpillar to butterfly. Fawn to doe. Experiment to result. Boy to man.’”

––All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, pg. 245

“I have spent a good deal of my scholarly life trying to get my fellow philosophers to recognize both the theoretical and the practical importance of things that they may have taken too little notice of: race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, nationality and religion…all of the rich social identities with which we make our lives. Honor, it turns out, is another crucial topic modern moral philosophy has neglected. And one reason why it is crucial is that like our social identities, it connects our lives together. Attending to honor, too, like noticing the importance of our social identities, can help us both to treat others as we should and to make the best of our own lives. Philosophers once knew this––read Montesquieu or Adam Smith or, for that matter, Aristotle. But, though ‘respect’ and ‘self-respect’ are in pretty good odor in contemporary philosophy, the related but distinct concept of ‘honor’ seems to have been largely forgotten. It is time, I suggest, to restore honor to philosophy.”

––The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, by Kwame Anthony Appiah, pg. xv