What We Talk About When We Talk About Dignity

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When the Albanian political philosopher Lea Ypi was growing up, her grandmother, Leman Ypi, would tell her that during her honeymoon—which took place in Italy in 1941, when war raged throughout Europe and at the edges of the Pacific—she was “the happiest person alive.” Decades later, Ypi wondered how Leman, “no fascist apologist,” had managed to experience joy amid so much devastation—not just in the midst of war but also years later, when her family was persecuted in Albania during the reign of the Stalinist Enver Hoxha. “ Indignity ,” Ypi’s latest book, is devoted to t