Abstract

For Avishai Margalit, the normative ideal of a decent society is one in which institutions do not humiliate those who are party to them. The relevant sort of humiliation is centrally one in which human beings are ‘rejected from the Family of Man’ or treated as inhuman, where the opposite of humiliation consists of respecting (something about) human nature. In the course of richly expounding this ideal, Margalit provides an account of what justifies respect or, relatedly, forbids humiliation (Part II) and then thoughtfully specifies revealing instances of humiliation in a variety of social, economic, and political institutions that render a society indecent (Parts III and IV). About his position, I intend to make two claims. One is that I believe there are logical gaps between Margalit’s account of what it is about human beings that warrants respect and of why it is wrong to humiliate them, on the one hand, and many of his examples of humiliation, on the other. The latter ought to be informed by the former, but I will argue that it often appears that what it is that entitles us to non-humiliation on Margalit’s view (roughly our capacities to repent and to suffer) does not, and cannot plausibly, ground what intuitively counts as humiliation for him and for many readers. My second claim will be that a certain alternative conception of what it is about human nature that warrants non-humiliating or respectful treatment can close this gap. Drawing on relational values salient in the Global South, and particularly the African philosophical tradition, I advance the view that human dignity inheres in the capacity to be party to relationships of harmony or friendliness, and then show that it is plausibly this capacity that is degraded by the various forms of humiliation that Margalit discusses.