A Call to Honor: Selected Readings on Human Dignity

In A Call to Honor: Selected Readings on Human Dignity, Prof. Shulamit Almog offers a unique reading of human dignity, weaving together literature, culture, and law. This singular fusion of classical literature, contemporary writing, and legal texts provides an incisive ethical, legal, and human perspective that exposes both our vulnerability as individuals and the many ways we hurt others. The book focuses on common situations involving human dignity in the encounter between men, women, and organization, and explores the recognition of human dignity, its absence, and its foundation.

By nature, there is an imbalance of power between the individual and the organization. Organizations are powerful entities, able to make decisions that affect the individual and to accept or deny requests. They have the power to create an environment that is fair, inclusive, and supportive or an environment that is indifferent, hostile, and even aggressive. Organizations have the capacity and knowledge to affect the dignity of those who come in contact with them; they have the ability to either violate that dignity or respect it. Literary writing, with its multi-faceted nature and the depth and nuance that it offers, is revealed by this book once again to be an accessible, effective, and influential tool for critiquing the zeitgeist, which too often fails to recognize the right of women and men to dignity, and the duty of society—and the legal system that serves it—to safeguard this right.