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This special issue of Social Research was occasioned by the publication last year of Avishai Margalit's important and interesting book, The Decent Society. The issue has been edited with the help of both Avishai Margalit and Sidney Morgenbesser, and I am grateful to both of them. It was not meant simply as a discussion of the book, but rather as a consideration of some of the provocative issues that inhere in the idea of the "decent society" and are raised by the book. The authors were asked to consider such things as how the decent society differs from a just one and whether the main characteristic of a decent society is that it is nonhumiliating. They were asked also about the roles of punishment and social welfare in such a society. I invited Professor Margalit to add whatever afterthoughts he had to his book. I think you will agree that the end result is a very lively issue. Arien Mack
Harry Frankfurt is professor of philosophy at Princeton University. His publications include The Importance of What We Care About (1988).
Axel Honneth is professor of philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. Most recently, he is the author of The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1996).
Steven Lukes is professor of moral philosophy at the University of Siena. His most recent book is The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat: A Comedy of Ideas (1995).
Avishai Margalit is professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Decent Society (1996).
Philip Pettit is professor of social and political theory at the Australian National University. His most recent publication is Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (1997).
Anthony Quinton is former President of Trinity College, Oxford University. He is the author of The Nature of Things (1973) and Between Hume and Russell: British Philosophy, 1750-1900 (forthcoming).
Arthur Ripstein is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Equality, Responsibility and the Law (forthcoming).
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty is professor of the history of ideas at Brandeis University. She is editor of Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric (1996) and author of The Political Sources of Morality (forthcoming).
Frederic Schick is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. His publications include Making Choices (1997) and Understanding Action (1991).
