Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion

(Dana P.) #1
114

HOOKER, RICHARD


has become “obsolescent” (Peter Berger).
Some philosophers (e.g., Marilyn Adams),
impressed with the anthropological study
of so-called “honor cultures,” find deep
roots for thinking of honor in the Abra-
hamic sacred texts. But mostly philoso-
phers ignore the concept. This neglect
is unfortunate, especially if based on
conflating different concepts all labeled
“honor” (honor as reputation, recognition,
status, achievement, trust, commitment,
and the like); even when distinguished,
however, these concepts are peripheral to
normative work today. Rather, the central
concept of honor should be personal
honor, a Janus-concept facing both
inward (an individual’s responsibility,
rooted in character, for maintaining her
own honor) and outward (membership
in an honor group, commitment to its
publicly-shared code, and special trust in
members of the group). Personal honor
varies (in both membership and code)
from group to group, so that some
instances may be noble, others despicable.
Such honor is relative and hence not
the same as morality, though in some
instances honor is at least consistent with
morality. Arguably personal honor is
nearly ubiquitous in human societies, and
not least in our own—in the military, of
course, but also in sports, professions,
the family, politics, and elsewhere.
In religion, the concept is useful not
only for describing religious communities
and their members’ normative commit-
ments to one another and to the object of
their ultimate concerns, but perhaps also


in theocentric thinking about God’s rela-
tions to humanity. In short, although it
currently lies fallow, personal honor is a
fertile field for philosophical and theo-
logical cultivation.

HOOKER, RICHARD (1554–1600). An
important Anglican who promoted an
influential theory of natural law. Hooker’s
view that humans are naturally oriented
toward law was influential in the minds
of the founders of the American republic.
His primary work was Of the Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity: Eight Books (1593).

HSIUNG SHILI. See XIONG SHILI.

HSUAN-TSANG. See XUANZANG.

HSUN TZU. See XUNZI.

HUAINANZI (a.k.a. HUAI-NAN TZU).
The Huainanzi is a text compiled in the
second century BCE under the patronage
of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, a member
of the imperial family. The Huainanzi is a
syncretic work, introducing Daoism and
cosmological elements into Confucian-
ism. This text is among the first to elabo-
rate a non-theistic cosmogony based on
the origin of all things through the inter-
action of heaven and earth and yin and
yang. The Huainanzi also considers the
human body a microcosm and describes
breathing techniques and physical disci-
pline to prolong life. It helped link philo-
sophical Daoism with the emerging forms
of religious Daoism.
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