His doctoral dissertation, "The Cognitive Status of Metaphors", written under the supervision of Professor Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, earned him his Ph.D summa cum laude 1970 from the Hebrew University.

Since 2006 Margalit has been the George Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

[5] In addition, in the 1990s Margalit served on the board of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Since 1984, Margalit has been a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books (NYRB),[6] where he published articles on social, cultural and political issues; his political profiles included Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres, as well as cultural-philosophical profiles of thinkers like Baruch Spinoza, Martin Buber and Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

A collection of his NYRB articles was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, under the title Views in Review: Politics and Culture in the State of the Jews (1998).

Through analyzing these examples he gradually builds up concepts and distinctions that serve him as the philosophical tools needed for the understanding of the phenomena he investigates.

He presents the logical, moral and cognitive reasons for choosing "philosophica negativa": it is not justice that brings us to politics but injustice – the avoidance of evil rather than the pursuit of the good.

In the second part of the book Margalit gives an account of institutions that are in particular danger of generating humiliation, like prisons, the security services, the army, and the media.

To a large extent because of its discussion of the idea of humiliation, Margalit's book has become a major source[citation needed] for the study of the notions of human dignity and human respect, which constitute the cornerstones of contemporary ethics, politics and legal theory.

The book offers a deep analysis of the entire semantic field of the notions of dignity, respect, self-respect, honor, esteem, and their cognates.

This move does not evade the problem of human dignity, Margalit argues, but rather it points the way toward salvaging it from the futile and inconclusive metaphysical analysis.

[9] While fundamental in the Jewish tradition, the obligation to remember ("zachor") is rarely brought up in philosophical discussions.

In this book, Margalit explores the evaluative and ethical dimensions of memory both in the private and in the collective spheres.

One of Margalit's central theses in the book is that a "community of memory", as a political concept, is more significant and weighty than the notion of the nation.

In the 20th century it can be traced to fascism – prominently in its German and Japanese varieties – on the one hand, and to communist Maoism on the other.

[11] The argument of the book assigns great value to the spirit of compromise in politics, while warning against rotten ones.

The book examines central historical examples, like the Great Compromise that paved the way for the US constitution, which accepted the institution of slavery despite its inhuman, cruel and humiliating nature.

The forced return by the Allies of the Russian POWs to Joseph Stalin's hands served in the book as a paradigm case of a rotten compromise.

On Compromise focuses on the tension between peace and justice, and warns against seeing these two as complementary products, like fish and chips.

The book defends the significance of the concept of betrayal even in modern societies, where treason no longer carries the weight it once did, where adultery is not a crime, and where apostasy, or changing one's religious affiliation, is considered a basic right.

Thick political relations should be based neither on blood, nor on seed, nor on soil, but on shared historical memory.

Thick relations provide individuals with a sense of meaning and belonging, an orientation in the world, a home.

But its ethical significance consists in the kind of reason it provides for this reevaluation, namely the violation of a commitment.

[21] Avishai Margalit was married to Edna Ullmann-Margalit, a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University.