human rights Archives - Michael Ignatieff

Universal Values at Bay

Michael Ignatieff — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:38:13 +0000

The moral universalism enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obliges us to recognize the humanity of others and the reality of their suffering. If that doctrine sounds naive in today’s world, it is because we have allowed malignant spoilers to smother this foundational intuition.

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Populism and the Future of Democracy in Europe

Michael Ignatieff — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 09:00:24 +0000

Populism is one of those words that is dying from promiscuous over-use. [...] I think what it means it is a general descriptor of any course of political action that does not command assent from a centrist elite of experts. Which means that it is not necessarily a bad thing at all. So we must not use it as a swearword, it may be a wakeup call. I am going to use populism to describe anti-elite, anti-institutional challenges, in the name of the people, to center right and center left political dominance of European politics.

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Human Rights and the Ordinary Virtues (Ignatieff Symposium)

Michael Ignatieff — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 09:00:00 +0000

In my book, The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World, I set out to explore what impact human rights have had upon the ordinary virtues. The question I asked was whether human rights has become a global ethic, a standard reference point for moral judgment in ordinary life in cultures around the world.

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Human Rights, Global Ethics, and the Ordinary Virtues

Michael Ignatieff — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 09:00:00 +0000

Although globalization of our economies has not produced globalization in our hearts and minds, the geography of our virtues has changed. We now play out local conflicts before the whole world; and when we justify ourselves, we do it to strangers linked to us by new media. That is what moral globalization means—the steady enlargement of the audiences before which we feel we must justify ourselves.

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American Exceptionalism and Human Rights

Michael Ignatieff — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:00:00 +0000

Since 1945 America has displayed exceptional leadership in promoting international human rights. At the same time, however, it has also resisted complying with human rights standards at home or aligning its foreign policy with these standards abroad.

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The Attack on Human Rights

Michael Ignatieff — Thu, 01 Nov 2001 09:00:00 +0000

Shared among equals, rights are not the universal credo of a global society, not a secular religion, but something much more limited and yet just as valuable: the shared vocabulary from which our arguments can begin, and the bare human minimum from which differing ideas of human flourishing can take root.

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