Decent Society

Avishai Margalit builds his social philosophy on this foundation: a decent society, or a civilized society, is one whose institutions do not humiliate the people under their authority, and whose citizens do not humiliate one another. What political philosophy needs urgently is a way that will permit us to live together without humiliation and with dignity. Most of the philosophical attention nowadays is drawn to the ideal of the just society based on the right balance between freedom and equality. The ideal of the just society is a sublime one but hard to realize. The decent society is an ideal which can be realized even in our children's lifetime. We should get rid of cruelty first, advocated Judith Shklar. Humiliation is a close second. There is more urgency in bringing about a decent society than in bringing about a just one. Margalit begins concretely where we live, with all the infuriating acts of humiliation that make living in the world so difficult. He argues in a concrete way in the spirit of Judith Shklar and Isaiah Berlin. This is a social philosophy that resists all those menacing labels that promote moral laziness, just as it urges us to get beyond the behavior that labels other human beings. Margalit can't be earmarked as liberal or conservative. If a label is necessary, then the most suitable is George Orwell's humane socialism, a far cry from Animal Farm socialism with its many tools of oppression. How to be decent, how to build a decent society, emerges out of Margalit's analysis of the corrosive functioning of humiliation in its many forms. This is a thoroughly argued and, what is much more, a deeply felt book that springs from Margalit's experience at the borderlands of conflicts between Eastern Europeans and Westerners, between Palestinians and Israelis.

Review: 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. -- Alan Ryan New York Review of Books [This] book explores the concepts of humiliation and respect and characterizes some of the central features of a decent society. What all cases of humiliation share in common, in Margalit's view, is justified feeling that the actions or omissions of another indicate that one is being rejected from the human commonwealth...A highly engaging and original book. The work is sure to be important for scholars with academic interest in the topics of humiliation and self-respect in their own right. It offers timely and challenging corrective to the philosophical community's obsession with the problems of justice. And it will be a stimulating resource for applied political theorists working on a variety of issues of cultural and social policy. -- Alan Patten Mind 20010101 Within philosophy much of the current thinking is in reaction to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, where justice is the principle value to be striven for. In The Decent Society, Avishai Margalit, Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, offers an equally wide-ranging analysis which would see decency as the primary goal...It is clear that to live by the story he tells would in itself transform our own society in ways likely to be recognized, and approved of, by many of the public house and tabloid philosophers. The state would need to adopt much greater responsibility for the condition the unemployed find themselves in; welfare would be in principle preferred to charity as a way of assisting the needy, but great care would have to be taken in its administration; in general bureaucracy is suspect, even where it is recognized as necessary. To tell the story of a decent society, appealing to the honour of your hearers, in the hope of motivating people to bring its realization about in the way that argument alone could never do, is the central goal of this challenging work. -- Paul Nicholson The Month Margalit's book offers a great deal...A decent society would have more books like A Decent Society. -- Alan Wolfe New Republic Arguably the most important book on social justice published since John Rawls's A Theory of Justice 25 years ago...Margalit shows that decency is a strong moral concept in its own right. A decent society strives to eliminate the institutional humiliation of its members, which robs them of their self-respect or control over their lives. -- Charles Leadbeater New Statesman & Society Margalit's discussion of these themes is full of deep psychological insight and philosophical precision. The book is a model of how philosophers, using only a fine attention to distinctions between similar-sounding moral terms, can help to clarify, and by doing so, purify our moral language. It is a noble addition to our understanding of what our political and moral ideals should be and it frees political reflection from the strait-jacket of pure rights talk. -- Michael Ignatieff Times Literary Supplement Within philosophy much of the current thinking is in reaction to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, where justice is the principal value to be striven for. In The Decent Society, Avishai Margalit...offers an equally wide-ranging analysis which would see decency as the primary goal...That [the] experience [of humiliation] should be combatted is, in his view, one of the basic positions of any morality, not a conclusion that needs to be argued for. So he offers a wealth of illustrative example, from history, contemporary life, and literature. He also knows that decency is not enough--at a number of points he would favour a civilised society, one that for instance positively values cultural diversity rather than merely tolerating it. But if tolerance will avoid humiliation, and can be achieved, he is content to settle for that pro temps...To tell the story of a decent society, appealing to the honour of your hearers, in the hope of motivating people to bring its realisation about in the way that argument alone could never do, is the central goal of this challenging work. -- Paul Nicholson The Month [UK The Decent Society presents arguments in the rigorous style of British analytical philosophy about why no one should be humiliated. In an ideal world, we seek justice; in this world, we can realize decency, and the welfare state can help us to do so. To save the welfare state, we need to be reminded why we created one, which Margalit effectively does. -- Alan Wolfe Lingua Franca Margalit provocatively inquires whether a just society is also a decent society...[His] lucid exploration of decency includes insightful discussions of bureaucracy, the welfare state, punishment, and even snobbery...The Decent Society is a serious contribution to moral philosophy. Choice