The following pages will analyze the polemical redefining of honor carried out in the wake of the feudal system. Preserving it from a commerce-driven order by making it a principal of monarchy (Montesquieu), reinterpreting it as «emulation» in a republican perspective (Rousseau) or desubstantiating it and making it the mere name for that which is valued by «opinion» (Hobbes, Mandeville): these three major strategies are made apparent hereafter.