Avishai Margalit is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The recipient of numerous prizes, he is the author of The Decent Society, The Ethics of Memory, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises, and On Betrayal.

A splendid book. It is serious without being ponderous, it is unassuming but ambitious, and it is engagingly unorthodox, both in its concerns and in the way it pursues them. At a time when the idea of decency appears in politics only in the mouths of politicians eager to keep sex off the Internet, it is a pleasure to come across an intelligent discussion of a much more serious subject, one that has had little attention from philosophers--how to build a society that doesn't humiliate its weaker members.

• Preface Introduction The Concept of Humiliation Humiliation Rights Honor The Grounds of Respect Justifying Respect The Skeptical Solution Being Beastly to Humans Decency as a Social Concept The Paradox of Humiliation Rejection Citizenship Culture Putting Social Institutions to the Test Snobbery Privacy Bureaucracy The Welfare Society Unemployment Punishment Conclusion Notes Index

Avishai Margalit is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The recipient of numerous prizes, he is the author of The Decent Society, The Ethics of Memory, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises, and On Betrayal.

A splendid book. It is serious without being ponderous, it is unassuming but ambitious, and it is engagingly unorthodox, both in its concerns and in the way it pursues them. At a time when the idea of decency appears in politics only in the mouths of politicians eager to keep sex off the Internet, it is a pleasure to come across an intelligent discussion of a much more serious subject, one that has had little attention from philosophers--how to build a society that doesn't humiliate its weaker members.

• Preface Introduction The Concept of Humiliation Humiliation Rights Honor The Grounds of Respect Justifying Respect The Skeptical Solution Being Beastly to Humans Decency as a Social Concept The Paradox of Humiliation Rejection Citizenship Culture Putting Social Institutions to the Test Snobbery Privacy Bureaucracy The Welfare Society Unemployment Punishment Conclusion Notes Index