Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Needs of Strangers by Michael Ignatieff ISBN: 0-312-28180-3 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: A brilliant essay about modern humanism
Comment: "Being human is an accomplishment like playing an instrument. It takes practice. The keys must be mastered. The old score must be committed to memory. It is a skill we can forget. A little noise can make us forget the notes. The best of us is historical; the best of us is fragile. Being human is a second nature which history taught us, and which terror and deprivation can batter us into forgetting."
In this slender volume, Michael Ignatieff argues beautifully and eloquently for a modern humanism based on the awareness of what makes us human: our ability to express our needs and our ability to remember and reflect our history. It is also a short history of ideas in the field of political philosophy, ranging from the Stoics to Rousseau.
The "needs of strangers" refer to "fraternity," the most difficult of the ideals on the banner of the French Revolution of 1789. "Liberty, equality, fraternity" still determine to a large extent our modern political discussion. Michael Ignatieff asks to what extent have we achieved "fraternity" (solidarity, that is), to what extent can we achieve it, at what cost do we achieve it? On his stroll through the history of ideas he discusses the key issues of our social existence against the backdrop of political philosophy: what is our social identity? Is there a natural human identity? What happened to our metaphysical needs in the modern secular society?
Ignatieff is not a mystic or a dreamer, however. His views are firmly grounded in the Western philosophical tradition. For him, "political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish." He is for the most part a realist who thinks we need justice (i.e. equality before the law), we need liberty, and "we need as much solidarity as can be reconciled with justice and liberty."
Ignatieff's book is not light reading, in particular because the term "need" is not part of our familiar political vocabulary. Another reason is that Ignatieff is writing against the grain of our times. He speaks about our silences: our "silence about the meaning of death," meaning our having shelved the ultimate questions; our silence about human solidarity and dignity, meaning our having relegated all responsibility for the needs of strangers to the welfare system. In our silences, he fears, we risk becoming strangers to our better selves: "Our needs are made of words: they come to us in speech, and they can die for lack of expression. Without a public language to help find us our own words, our needs will dry up in silence. It is words only, the common meanings they bear, which give me the right to speak in the name of the strangers at my door. Without a language adequate to this moment we risk losing ourselves in resignation towards the portion of life which has been allotted to us." Or put more bluntly: if we speak only the language of profit and consumption, we will never learn to speak of what we can be as individuals and human beings.
For once, I fully agree with the blurb on the cover of a book: Incisive and moving, "The Needs of Strangers" returns philosophy to its proper place, as a guide to the art of being human.
 |
Title: The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience by Michael Ignatieff ISBN: 0805055193 Publisher: Owl Books (NY) Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Gifford Lectures (Princeton University Press)) by Michael Ignatieff ISBN: 0691117519 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
 |
Title: Human Rights As Politics and Idolatry (University Center for Human Values) by Michael Ignatieff, Amy Gutmann ISBN: 0691114749 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism by Michael Ignatieff ISBN: 0374524483 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century by Robert Cooper ISBN: 0871139138 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
