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Abstract
Philosophers have come to no consensus on the role of honor and its relationship to moral philosophy. This dissertation uses the frame of the Beowulf, the life of St. Francis, and the history around the Selma Civil Rights march to identify questions about this relationship that suggests it is an important one. The dissertation then breaks out philosophers views on the questions into typologies, and then works through them to determine which view of honor is most plausible. The dissertation also considers some problems of honor that may be permanent features, why honor is nevertheless indispensable to both ethics and political philosophy, and how best to mitigate the dangers of honor to take advantage of its goods.