The Berkeley Institute is devoting Fall 2026 programming to the theme of "Human Dignity" by reflecting on how individuals maintain, lose, recover, and confer dignity — upon themselves and upon others — across the full range of human experience. Throughout this semester, we will reflect not only on dignity as a philosophical concept, but on how it is lived: in the body, in relationships, in the face of suffering, and in the encounter with death.

Over the centuries, dignity has been conceived in multiple and interrelated ways, but all seem to converge on the idea of dignity as an inherent value and as a manner of living. We are interested in the gap between these two: between the belief that human dignity is inalienable and the reality of the world we have made. We will discuss both the principles that philosophical and religious traditions have asserted about universal human value, as well as the resources they offer for upholding this value in circumstances that challenge it. How can an inherent quality of humanity be stripped away by illness, bureaucracy, or the indifference of those around us? How can it be preserved by love or witness, or survive in total isolation and abjection? How do philosophy, literature, and the visual arts help us recognize and restore the dignity of human life?

This semester, we will engage two works that place these questions at the center of literary and moral attention: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy.