Abstract: In this book chapter, I reconstruct Machiavelli’s political theory of honor in the context of his serious reflection on the extreme difficulties for republican citizens to grapple with the profound corruption of their fatherland. Those who wish to restore a just rule for the future must fiercely resist unjust individuals, laws, and institutions of the present, but their resistance may weaken the authority of the rule they aim for, often by igniting their own ambition to usurp this rule. I argue that Machiavelli’s ultimate solution to this problem is the cultivation of citizens’ sense of honor, as it can motivate them to acknowledge the importance of resorting to necessary evils and refraining from unnecessary ones for the sake of their resistance. This, in turn, is possible because of honor’s capability of initiating a dialectical process through which citizens strive to maintain a proper distance from social opinion. Although his account of honor remains inadequate, Machiavelli offers some of the most compelling reasons to explain why the sense of honor is irreplaceable for self-restrained resistance to social and political injustice and hence serves as the best theoretical backdrop for understanding the stake of later attempts to reform this motivation.

Bio: Antong Liu is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University. As a normative political theorist, he studies and teaches modern Western political thought and East Asian political thought, with a focus on the ethical implications of motivations for political action. In his ongoing book project, entitled The Sense of Honor: Political Resistance and Early Modern Political Theory, he examines the writings of several influential early modern Western thinkers largely misconceived as opponents of honor to rediscover a neglected theoretical tradition that aims to defend and reform the sense of honor as a motivation for self-restrained political resistance under modern circumstances. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Review of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and History of European Ideas.