Ideas as history changers

Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code shows how honor drives moral progress. - By Paul Berman - Slate Magazine

A book which has the rare temerity to suggest that ideas -- in this case, of honor -- have driven moral progress. It has always struck me as odd that universities, for which ideas constitute their major product, have, for a generation, denigrated mere ideas as agents of history, seeing, ideas as mere epiphenoma of economic, sociologic, or even biologic forces. It seems refreshing that an academic has attempted to argue that ideas matter, particularly in moral revolutions - in thess cases, the elimination of dueling, foot-binding, and slavery.