In an era where the primary metric of success seems to be winning at all costs, Michael Huemer offers a startlingly different metric: the quality of the victory itself. He argues that we have lost a crucial social technology—honor—that once forced competition to remain fair, even in the face of total annihilation. This isn't just a philosophical musing; it is a diagnosis of why modern life feels increasingly shabby and why our institutions are brittle.
The Architecture of Fair Play
Huemer begins not with abstract definitions, but with visceral examples that span from a 2012 footrace to a 19th-century massacre in South Africa. He contrasts a runner who helps a competitor cross the finish line with the Zulu king who massacred unarmed Dutch settlers after a peace treaty. The distinction, Huemer suggests, lies in the intent to win fairly versus the intent to win by any means necessary.
"If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed."
This line from the character Malcolm Reynolds, which Huemer cites, encapsulates the core of his argument: honor imposes limits on conflict to ensure the outcome reflects true merit rather than deception or surprise. The runner in the footrace didn't help his rival out of pure altruism; he did it because a victory gained through the opponent's confusion would be a "cheap, merely technical victory." Huemer writes, "He would always know that he did not earn it."
This framing is powerful because it reframes honor not as a rigid code of chivalry, but as a pragmatic mechanism for social stability. If everyone could kill in their sleep or cheat without consequence, the stakes of competition would become so terrifying that society would fracture. Huemer argues that these norms "serve to limit the destruction caused by competition and conflict and to make competition more socially beneficial."
However, the author admits the definition is slippery. He struggles to reconcile the concept of "fair play" with the archaic and dangerous notion of "a woman's honor," which he notes is often tied to chastity and used to justify violence against victims of rape. He concedes, "I still can't connect this to chastity; that just seems like a completely different use of 'honor'." Critics might note that this disconnect is not a minor semantic issue but a fundamental flaw in the concept; historically, "honor" has often been the very weapon used to oppress the vulnerable, not protect them. Huemer's attempt to salvage the concept by focusing on competitive fairness risks ignoring its darker, exclusionary history.
"Perhaps 'honor' in the aretaic sense (the sense in which it is a moral virtue, as in 'a person of honor') refers to a subset of the traits of character that are worthy of respect."
The Crisis of Modern Motivation
The essay's most stinging critique is reserved for the present day. Huemer observes that while moral philosophers obsess over justice and autonomy, they have largely abandoned the concept of honor. He sees a society where both the political left and right have abandoned the idea of playing fair, settling instead for a desperate scramble to "win" at all costs.
"Now it seems that both leftists and rightists just want to 'win' at all costs. It is a value system for shallow people."
Huemer points to the corporate and academic worlds as the primary battlegrounds where this erosion is most visible. He describes a culture where the goal is not to follow the rules, but to avoid getting caught breaking them. He illustrates this with the example of illegal discrimination in hiring, which continues because organizations simply refuse to put their discriminatory plans in writing. The motivation has shifted from internal integrity to external avoidance of punishment.
"I don't know whether society can continue to function with people motivated by such things as the desire to avoid getting in trouble, with no internal sense of honor."
This observation lands with particular force because it diagnoses a specific kind of exhaustion. When people act only to avoid consequences, they live "shabby, ignominious lives." The argument suggests that without an internal compass of honor, we are left with a society that functions technically but lacks soul. A counterargument worth considering is that Huemer may be romanticizing the past; perhaps the "honor" of the past was often a mask for hypocrisy, and the modern focus on accountability and rules, however flawed, is a necessary evolution toward a more transparent society.
"Even if society continues to function like that, I think this is a recipe for a lot of shabby, ignominious lives led by people who are not worth knowing."
Bottom Line
Huemer's strongest move is reframing honor not as a relic of aristocracy, but as a necessary constraint that makes competition meaningful and human life livable. His biggest vulnerability is the difficulty of separating this useful concept from its historical baggage of violence and exclusion. The reader should watch for how this tension plays out: can we revive the spirit of fair play without resurrecting the codes that once justified oppression?