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The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World
What moral values do human beings hold in common? As globalization draws us together economically, are our values converging or diverging? In particular, are human rights becoming a global ethic? These were the questions that led Michael Ignatieff to embark on a three-year, eight-nation journey in search of answers. The Ordinary Virtues presents Ignatieff's discoveries and his interpretation of what globalization--and resistance to it--is doing to our conscience and our moral understanding.
Through dialogues with favela dwellers in Brazil, South Africans and Zimbabweans living in shacks, Japanese farmers, gang leaders in Los Angeles, and monks in Myanmar, Ignatieff found that while human rights may be the language of states and liberal elites, the moral language that resonates with most people is that of everyday virtues: tolerance, forgiveness, trust, and resilience. These ordinary virtues are the moral operating system in global cities and obscure shantytowns alike, the glue that makes the multicultural experiment work. Ignatieff seeks to understand the moral structure and psychology of these core values, which privilege the local over the universal, and citizens' claims over those of strangers.
Ordinary virtues, he concludes, are antitheoretical and anti-ideological. They can be cheerfully inconsistent. When order breaks down and conflicts break out, they are easily exploited for a politics of fear and exclusion--reserved for one's own group and denied to others. But they are also the key to healing, reconciliation, and solidarity on both a local and a global scale.
Through dialogues with favela dwellers in Brazil, South Africans and Zimbabweans living in shacks, Japanese farmers, gang leaders in Los Angeles, and monks in Myanmar, Ignatieff found that while human rights may be the language of states and liberal elites, the moral language that resonates with most people is that of everyday virtues: tolerance, forgiveness, trust, and resilience. These ordinary virtues are the moral operating system in global cities and obscure shantytowns alike, the glue that makes the multicultural experiment work. Ignatieff seeks to understand the moral structure and psychology of these core values, which privilege the local over the universal, and citizens' claims over those of strangers.
Ordinary virtues, he concludes, are antitheoretical and anti-ideological. They can be cheerfully inconsistent. When order breaks down and conflicts break out, they are easily exploited for a politics of fear and exclusion--reserved for one's own group and denied to others. But they are also the key to healing, reconciliation, and solidarity on both a local and a global scale.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
62 people are currently reading
550 people want to read
About the author
Michael Ignatieff
75 books150 followersMichael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
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June 8, 2019
This book is a bit odd. I enjoyed some parts of it but was less persuaded by others. I am rating this four stars for now because it was thought provoking but my sense is that it is closer to three and a half stars. Whatever...
Michael Ignatieff is an interesting person. He is an accomplished academic and author and tends to focus on history and political philosophy, in particular liberal democracy. His 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin was good. Ignatieff has also been a successful Canadian politician and university administrator.
This book - The Ordinary Virtues - is motivated by the wish to examine the current status of a wish of Andrew Carnegie from before the start of WW1 - to examine the progress of moral globalization and whether there was any progress on the centennial of WW1 of the effort to get representatives of world faiths to transcend their differences and centuries of religious conflict. What was the state of moral progress at national and international levels?
What???
Ok, what Ignatieff really wanted was to look at what moral globalization looked like in 2014 and how the efforts of various global elites interested in global languages of ethics and moral development interacted with the lives of ordinary people (non-elites) around the world to get a sense of how moral order was constructed out of combinations of international and local forces at the beginning of the 21st century. He had been working with the descendent of Carnegie’s Church Peace Union - the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs - and this seemed like a good project to celebrate the centennial of the organization.
This makes some sense and the interaction of global and local cultural dynamics in globalization (whatever that means) seems like a reasonable question to explore. This part of the motivation seems fine after some thought.
I have more concerns about how this project was carried out. Ignatieff and a team travelled to a variety of places around the world, where in conjunction with local Carnegie Council representatives, they did some research and conducted interviews with some key individuals involved in how the various state institutions in each location interacted with ordinary people and the very poor in the construction and maintenance of a working positive social order. The investigators visited two sites in the US - Jackson Heights, Queens in NYC and Los Angeles - along with Rio de Janeiro, Bosnia, Myanmar, Japan (Fukushima), and South Africa. This is a good grouping of sites and the book is fairly consistent in reporting how moral order is (or is not) emerging in these locations in the aftermath of their often traumatic histories that have put such stress on the politics and culture of how people live together in these settings. By the way, the focus in the sites is on large and highly diverse global cities that will absorb the largest portion of global population growth in the 21st century. The hope is to get some sense of how diverse community can grow in such cities even when individuals in different small sub communities and groups maintain their own identities and do not integrate into the broader community.
What is troubling about a design like this? Given the visibility of the events and histories behind the selection of these sites and the visibility of the Carnegie Foundation, I have to wonder what the expectations were for what these visits would reveal that had not already become clear to observers and researchers in advance. If you select sites based on their visibility due to various high publicity events on certain issues and then choose contact people based on their role in that history, what will be learned that was not already learned in selecting the site and planning the visit? Maybe I am too critical but I have to wonder about the costs of the visits versus what was obtained.
So why is this interesting?
A major punchline in the book is that what is most important for the lives of ordinary people across sites is not some particular ethical system or universal philosophy or even some particular local set of religious affiliations. What was more important was the growth of “ordinary virtues” - including tolerance, trust, forgiveness, reconciliation, honesty, and resilience. These virtues and their variants form the basic operating system that permits individuals in large highly diverse global cities to constructively interact and continue to do so such that a prospering society can maintain itself even in large mega cities with dozens and even hundreds of diverse racial and cultural subgroup and communities that live separately but interact together.
This suggests that moral order or ethical systems, in the sense of the ordinary virtues, are better understood as elements of social capital rather than as individual ethical systems. How communities come to support these virtues (if they do) involves individual choices but also the growth and maintenance of health social institutions and organs of government to provide the frameworks within which people can coexist without killing each other. This does not necessarily involve the content of particular ethical systems as much as it does the ability of the moral order to facilitate different individuals and communities getting along with each other on a continuing basis.
This is a decent punchline and it resonates well with writings on liberal democracy and its differences from resurgent nationalisms around the world. It actually sounds like a “micro logic” for a liberal democracy, as opposed to the more exclusive and nationalist democratic movements that have become popular recently. Jill Lepore has a new book out on this for US history and I think Ignatieff’s book will be a good complement for it.
Michael Ignatieff is an interesting person. He is an accomplished academic and author and tends to focus on history and political philosophy, in particular liberal democracy. His 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin was good. Ignatieff has also been a successful Canadian politician and university administrator.
This book - The Ordinary Virtues - is motivated by the wish to examine the current status of a wish of Andrew Carnegie from before the start of WW1 - to examine the progress of moral globalization and whether there was any progress on the centennial of WW1 of the effort to get representatives of world faiths to transcend their differences and centuries of religious conflict. What was the state of moral progress at national and international levels?
What???
Ok, what Ignatieff really wanted was to look at what moral globalization looked like in 2014 and how the efforts of various global elites interested in global languages of ethics and moral development interacted with the lives of ordinary people (non-elites) around the world to get a sense of how moral order was constructed out of combinations of international and local forces at the beginning of the 21st century. He had been working with the descendent of Carnegie’s Church Peace Union - the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs - and this seemed like a good project to celebrate the centennial of the organization.
This makes some sense and the interaction of global and local cultural dynamics in globalization (whatever that means) seems like a reasonable question to explore. This part of the motivation seems fine after some thought.
I have more concerns about how this project was carried out. Ignatieff and a team travelled to a variety of places around the world, where in conjunction with local Carnegie Council representatives, they did some research and conducted interviews with some key individuals involved in how the various state institutions in each location interacted with ordinary people and the very poor in the construction and maintenance of a working positive social order. The investigators visited two sites in the US - Jackson Heights, Queens in NYC and Los Angeles - along with Rio de Janeiro, Bosnia, Myanmar, Japan (Fukushima), and South Africa. This is a good grouping of sites and the book is fairly consistent in reporting how moral order is (or is not) emerging in these locations in the aftermath of their often traumatic histories that have put such stress on the politics and culture of how people live together in these settings. By the way, the focus in the sites is on large and highly diverse global cities that will absorb the largest portion of global population growth in the 21st century. The hope is to get some sense of how diverse community can grow in such cities even when individuals in different small sub communities and groups maintain their own identities and do not integrate into the broader community.
What is troubling about a design like this? Given the visibility of the events and histories behind the selection of these sites and the visibility of the Carnegie Foundation, I have to wonder what the expectations were for what these visits would reveal that had not already become clear to observers and researchers in advance. If you select sites based on their visibility due to various high publicity events on certain issues and then choose contact people based on their role in that history, what will be learned that was not already learned in selecting the site and planning the visit? Maybe I am too critical but I have to wonder about the costs of the visits versus what was obtained.
So why is this interesting?
A major punchline in the book is that what is most important for the lives of ordinary people across sites is not some particular ethical system or universal philosophy or even some particular local set of religious affiliations. What was more important was the growth of “ordinary virtues” - including tolerance, trust, forgiveness, reconciliation, honesty, and resilience. These virtues and their variants form the basic operating system that permits individuals in large highly diverse global cities to constructively interact and continue to do so such that a prospering society can maintain itself even in large mega cities with dozens and even hundreds of diverse racial and cultural subgroup and communities that live separately but interact together.
This suggests that moral order or ethical systems, in the sense of the ordinary virtues, are better understood as elements of social capital rather than as individual ethical systems. How communities come to support these virtues (if they do) involves individual choices but also the growth and maintenance of health social institutions and organs of government to provide the frameworks within which people can coexist without killing each other. This does not necessarily involve the content of particular ethical systems as much as it does the ability of the moral order to facilitate different individuals and communities getting along with each other on a continuing basis.
This is a decent punchline and it resonates well with writings on liberal democracy and its differences from resurgent nationalisms around the world. It actually sounds like a “micro logic” for a liberal democracy, as opposed to the more exclusive and nationalist democratic movements that have become popular recently. Jill Lepore has a new book out on this for US history and I think Ignatieff’s book will be a good complement for it.
October 26, 2017
Very impressed with the book - a beautiful set of essays about morality and how people live and work together (or fail to). A lot about us/them situations, and conflicts between democracy and morality. Good review in the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/bo....
January 14, 2018
This is a very timely book that explores how diverse cultures manage--or don't manage-- to coexist together within a circumscribed community. I agree with Ignatieff's observation that the cosmopolitan intellectuals (I include myself here) who embrace the virtues of globalism and multiculturalism make up only a very small portion of the world's population, and that for most people, living cheek-to-jowl with people who are different succeeds on a case-by-case basis (or doesn't) based on the practice of everyday virtues rather than on philosophical doctrines regarding human rights. Most of the time this means that different cultural groups live side-by-side rather than together. They interact in public spaces (on the job, in the supermarket) but then withdraw to private spaces where they mostly interact with "their own." Ignatieff explores what social conditions facilitate living side-by-side (e.g., fair policing, upward mobility) and the exercise of the ordinary virtues, and which social conditions create a downward spiral that can lead to riots, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Ignatieff visits a variety of different locations to explore these themes--Los Angeles, Jackson Heights, Myanmar, Rio, South Africa, Bosnia, and Fukushima. There are many interesting observations and insights along the way.
My only negative comments are 1) some of Ignatieff's writing is repetitive and could have benefited from better editing, and 2) it isn't clear how he chose the communities he visited as opposed to others he did not, nor the degree his methodology was standardized as opposed to being impressionistic. This could have been a better book, but I found his thinking useful and provocative, and I'm glad I read it.
My only negative comments are 1) some of Ignatieff's writing is repetitive and could have benefited from better editing, and 2) it isn't clear how he chose the communities he visited as opposed to others he did not, nor the degree his methodology was standardized as opposed to being impressionistic. This could have been a better book, but I found his thinking useful and provocative, and I'm glad I read it.
April 25, 2022
Most books that deal with moral philosophy or ethics belong to the speculative or normative fields. Issues such as virtue and values that different societies live by moves all too seldom in the descriptive field. That's one of the reasons why Michael Ignatieff's book is so welcome. In this practical study of the virtues that "ordinary people" (whatever that means) in a variety of cities live their lives by and how they relate to different civic institutions and the trust in them, we get to follow the author of such different plastics as fukushima and Los Angeles
Ignatieff belongs to a classic liberal tradition. It permeates his entire empirical study, it is a warmer liberalism than the iron-clad intervention of the invisible hand we see in Europe or the Democrats' elbow-sharp line-in mentality. The thesis that permeates the book is as follows: the only way for societies to survive various forms of trauma, regardless of whether it is genocide, natural disasters or police violence, is if civil society succeeds in maintaining values such as trust, forgiveness and reconciliation in relationship to its civic institutions and the bureaucracy. The book's value is that Ignatieff manages to explore what these mean in different local contexts. It is with great care that he describes how all these values are negotiated by individuals and groups and how they are constantly broken against each other. A picture that is painted is of social orders and mosaics that is build with great care and the work of generations can be fragmented, or even crumbl in a few moments.
So far so good. But the book is based on a research project funded by the Carnegie Institution for Science, and it shows. Either Ignatieff's conclusions have been colored by this weapon of liberal globalization, or they only fund projects and researchers who come to the desired conclusions, whichever of these two alternatives the result is one and the same. The authors choose to turn a blind eye to the attacks on the institutions and the trust on which they are derived from stem from the steel bath of th economic globalization the same institute is promoting.
The characters in the book that promote ethnic and religious violence are financed bye local kleptocrats whom have enriched themselves thru the global casino. The fact that the globalization that Ignatieff praises has led to a rampant inequality, and that the mistrust of the existing institutions is justified, because they tend to look only at the interests of the economic elite is ignord. whatever Ignatieff claims is this is not a not a failure but a feature. The very purpose of these institutions has always been to facilitate the flow of capital and possibly for this capital to increase and find new investment opportunities. The virtues that Ignatieff wants to defend become at most a curiosity alongside the power of cash payment.
Ignatieff belongs to a classic liberal tradition. It permeates his entire empirical study, it is a warmer liberalism than the iron-clad intervention of the invisible hand we see in Europe or the Democrats' elbow-sharp line-in mentality. The thesis that permeates the book is as follows: the only way for societies to survive various forms of trauma, regardless of whether it is genocide, natural disasters or police violence, is if civil society succeeds in maintaining values such as trust, forgiveness and reconciliation in relationship to its civic institutions and the bureaucracy. The book's value is that Ignatieff manages to explore what these mean in different local contexts. It is with great care that he describes how all these values are negotiated by individuals and groups and how they are constantly broken against each other. A picture that is painted is of social orders and mosaics that is build with great care and the work of generations can be fragmented, or even crumbl in a few moments.
So far so good. But the book is based on a research project funded by the Carnegie Institution for Science, and it shows. Either Ignatieff's conclusions have been colored by this weapon of liberal globalization, or they only fund projects and researchers who come to the desired conclusions, whichever of these two alternatives the result is one and the same. The authors choose to turn a blind eye to the attacks on the institutions and the trust on which they are derived from stem from the steel bath of th economic globalization the same institute is promoting.
The characters in the book that promote ethnic and religious violence are financed bye local kleptocrats whom have enriched themselves thru the global casino. The fact that the globalization that Ignatieff praises has led to a rampant inequality, and that the mistrust of the existing institutions is justified, because they tend to look only at the interests of the economic elite is ignord. whatever Ignatieff claims is this is not a not a failure but a feature. The very purpose of these institutions has always been to facilitate the flow of capital and possibly for this capital to increase and find new investment opportunities. The virtues that Ignatieff wants to defend become at most a curiosity alongside the power of cash payment.
May 29, 2018
This book is good, however in my opinion written a bit much “American way” in the world of XXI Century where the “Global narrative” is no longer as it was after 1945. That was originated by WEIRD (an acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), which now evolved into more holistic approach as it started after 29 06 2007 (first IPhone introduced to the world).
With this mild criticism taken lightly ☺, I am convinced that it is worth reading about the role of “Ordinary Virtues” vs. Human Rights, because as Ignatieff rightly points out that without ordinary virtues there can’t be achieved universal, global, intellectually arrived at, human rights. We as people are as we are, and universal can be achieved only through constant struggle of virtue vs. vice in local and concrete reality of here and now.
With this mild criticism taken lightly ☺, I am convinced that it is worth reading about the role of “Ordinary Virtues” vs. Human Rights, because as Ignatieff rightly points out that without ordinary virtues there can’t be achieved universal, global, intellectually arrived at, human rights. We as people are as we are, and universal can be achieved only through constant struggle of virtue vs. vice in local and concrete reality of here and now.
November 3, 2020
There are many interesting aspects in this book. The main point I bring along with is also what I think is Ignatieff's main point, namely that human rights have had an impact in the way people think of themselves as subjects, or voices worthy to be heard and counted. It has been more problematic however with the claims of a universal moral attached to certain human rights discourses. Here Ignatieff proposes that ethics and morals are worked out in the local, where your neighbour is treated with more value than the stranger - because that is how we work, Ignatieff seems to say. He has hopes that we can include more and more people in the neighbour category, but he argues that from the interviews ordinary virtues are still practised best when universal claims are rest aside.
I would probably argue with him here, but that is not my main critical point. My problem with the book is that it comes across as somewhat anecdotal. Maybe I'm damaged as a academic myself, but I would have a clearer report on the results and methods of his interviews. My impression from reading the book is that he talked to some people, had a few valuable moments, thought some made some insightful comments and then wrote what he thought was a proper way of dealing with his experiences of those four(?) years.
I would probably argue with him here, but that is not my main critical point. My problem with the book is that it comes across as somewhat anecdotal. Maybe I'm damaged as a academic myself, but I would have a clearer report on the results and methods of his interviews. My impression from reading the book is that he talked to some people, had a few valuable moments, thought some made some insightful comments and then wrote what he thought was a proper way of dealing with his experiences of those four(?) years.
April 15, 2023
The book is a result of a series of journeys over three years and four continents, from 2013-2016, financed by an endowment from the Carnegie Foundation. The author led a team to the multi-ethnic jumbles of New York and Los Angeles; to Brazilian favelas; to the former battlegrounds of Bosnia; Myanmar before the new anti-democratic crackdown began; Fukushima, Japan after the tsunami; and post-apartheid South Africa. He convened panels of experts and talked to ordinary people and tried to answer the question whether globalization is drawing us together morally. “Beneath all our differences, what virtues, principles, and rules of conduct are we coming to share?” The result is a series of short and somewhat insightful essays about his findings in each place. Although he seems aware that he can only scratch the surface of his subject, he investigates “corruption and public trust, tolerance in multicultural cities, reconciliation after war and conflict, and resilience in times of uncertainty and danger.”
He finds that the globalized free market is something that generally brings people together, but it isn’t enough. Globalization provides many opportunities but it also destabilizes economies, communities, and moral orders. People need to feel that it is possible to climb the ladder of economic opportunity; however, more than a merely transactional moral order is necessary. It is also easier to muck up the gears of the market than to have it run smoothly. Corruption, cronyism, and any kind of failure to enforce the rule of law will keep countries from developing. Further, authoritarian countries allow people to participate in the market, but deny their citizens a voice.
Order is fragile everywhere. All communities need to feel that their common institutions can provide justice and opportunity, or things will quickly break apart. Once broken, they are very difficult to stitch back together. Even the best institutions cannot withstand a battering from predatory elite capture, corruption, undermining or extreme inequality. Conflict about moral issues within and between communities is the norm, not the exception. On the other hand, what holds communities together are “trust, tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation and resilience.”
Ignatieff understands the limits of liberal freedom. It is not a substitute for reconciliation. It does not bring redemption, transform human nature, or have a blazing vision of the future. It only offers institutions that seek to protect human beings from the worst aspects of human nature and to share power in the interests of the majority rather than only political insiders. It relies on freedom of speech so that no one has a monopoly of truth. There are no political enemies, only adversaries, and that means that they have as many rights as you. Sometimes the experts it relies upon get it wrong. The speed of changes in the world today are leading many, not just among the poor but also among the elites, to question its ability to solve the problems destabilizing globalization brings.
But I think the biggest ideas of the book explore the differences between how ordinary people and elites think. First, Ignatieff states that we live in a “post-imperial world.” By that he means that everyone, rich or poor, thinks that their voices matter. The old hierarchies are gone. When he goes into the houses of poor people in poor neighborhoods to ask them their opinion, none of them find it strange that this former candidate for Prime Minister in Canada is there asking them questions. Of course their opinions matter and important people should take them into consideration. Further, though religious and secular hierarchies still exist, people are much more unwilling to listen to authorities tell them what to think. In the face of a cacophonous global multiplicity of voices, there are those who try to wall themselves off from anyone with a different viewpoint, sometimes murderously, but they generally fail. Those are good things.
The most important contradiction Ignatieff explores is this: generally, the global human rights elite take a “view from nowhere”: everyone in the world has rights equal to everyone else. These transcend country, religion, and even practicality: they are truly universal. On the other hand, most people think, first me, then my family, then my friends, my neighborhood, my country, and if there is some left over for someone else somewhere else, well, that is okay, but don’t take it away from me.
The global view of universal human rights originally comes from Immanuel Kant, in his book "A Pure Critique of Reason". The title of that book is important - because it is only really possible to arrive at that conclusion through the use of pure reason. On the other hand, people are generally emotional creatures, capable of reason, but usually not guided by it and we all have a somewhat problematic human nature. As scholars such as Daniel Kahneman and Nicholas Christakis have pointed out, we generally prefer our own groups to other groups and favor them at every opportunity. Citizenship, neighborhood, family, these all matter to most people. If the global human rights community wants to be more effective, it needs to take this into account.
I give a lot of credit to Ignatieff for his efforts here. He talked to community leaders and gang members in Queens, Los Angeles and Rio de Janiero, racist Buddhist priests in Myanmar, municipal government heroes who saved many lives in the Fukushima disaster in Japan, very disaffected youth in South Africa, and many other people besides. And he wrote insightful essays about it all. I wish he had given more direct voice to some of the ordinary people, and I would have liked to see more hard data rather than thoughtful prose. But, he recognizes that local, democratic decisions must take precedence over any kind of universalist, globalist discourse of human rights, while at the same time those who champion the vision of universal human rights must be free to challenge the morality of those democratic decisions.
He finds that the globalized free market is something that generally brings people together, but it isn’t enough. Globalization provides many opportunities but it also destabilizes economies, communities, and moral orders. People need to feel that it is possible to climb the ladder of economic opportunity; however, more than a merely transactional moral order is necessary. It is also easier to muck up the gears of the market than to have it run smoothly. Corruption, cronyism, and any kind of failure to enforce the rule of law will keep countries from developing. Further, authoritarian countries allow people to participate in the market, but deny their citizens a voice.
Order is fragile everywhere. All communities need to feel that their common institutions can provide justice and opportunity, or things will quickly break apart. Once broken, they are very difficult to stitch back together. Even the best institutions cannot withstand a battering from predatory elite capture, corruption, undermining or extreme inequality. Conflict about moral issues within and between communities is the norm, not the exception. On the other hand, what holds communities together are “trust, tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation and resilience.”
Ignatieff understands the limits of liberal freedom. It is not a substitute for reconciliation. It does not bring redemption, transform human nature, or have a blazing vision of the future. It only offers institutions that seek to protect human beings from the worst aspects of human nature and to share power in the interests of the majority rather than only political insiders. It relies on freedom of speech so that no one has a monopoly of truth. There are no political enemies, only adversaries, and that means that they have as many rights as you. Sometimes the experts it relies upon get it wrong. The speed of changes in the world today are leading many, not just among the poor but also among the elites, to question its ability to solve the problems destabilizing globalization brings.
But I think the biggest ideas of the book explore the differences between how ordinary people and elites think. First, Ignatieff states that we live in a “post-imperial world.” By that he means that everyone, rich or poor, thinks that their voices matter. The old hierarchies are gone. When he goes into the houses of poor people in poor neighborhoods to ask them their opinion, none of them find it strange that this former candidate for Prime Minister in Canada is there asking them questions. Of course their opinions matter and important people should take them into consideration. Further, though religious and secular hierarchies still exist, people are much more unwilling to listen to authorities tell them what to think. In the face of a cacophonous global multiplicity of voices, there are those who try to wall themselves off from anyone with a different viewpoint, sometimes murderously, but they generally fail. Those are good things.
The most important contradiction Ignatieff explores is this: generally, the global human rights elite take a “view from nowhere”: everyone in the world has rights equal to everyone else. These transcend country, religion, and even practicality: they are truly universal. On the other hand, most people think, first me, then my family, then my friends, my neighborhood, my country, and if there is some left over for someone else somewhere else, well, that is okay, but don’t take it away from me.
The global view of universal human rights originally comes from Immanuel Kant, in his book "A Pure Critique of Reason". The title of that book is important - because it is only really possible to arrive at that conclusion through the use of pure reason. On the other hand, people are generally emotional creatures, capable of reason, but usually not guided by it and we all have a somewhat problematic human nature. As scholars such as Daniel Kahneman and Nicholas Christakis have pointed out, we generally prefer our own groups to other groups and favor them at every opportunity. Citizenship, neighborhood, family, these all matter to most people. If the global human rights community wants to be more effective, it needs to take this into account.
I give a lot of credit to Ignatieff for his efforts here. He talked to community leaders and gang members in Queens, Los Angeles and Rio de Janiero, racist Buddhist priests in Myanmar, municipal government heroes who saved many lives in the Fukushima disaster in Japan, very disaffected youth in South Africa, and many other people besides. And he wrote insightful essays about it all. I wish he had given more direct voice to some of the ordinary people, and I would have liked to see more hard data rather than thoughtful prose. But, he recognizes that local, democratic decisions must take precedence over any kind of universalist, globalist discourse of human rights, while at the same time those who champion the vision of universal human rights must be free to challenge the morality of those democratic decisions.
October 31, 2017
Niet makkelijk om dit boek samen te vatten. De schrijver reist in opdracht van de Carnegie trust naar verschillende landen om te zien hoe mensen in het algemeen overleven in deze tijd van globalisering. Hij merkt op, dat de meeste mensen niet bezig zijn met abstracte zaken als "mensenrechten", maar meer hoe samen te leven in hun eigen omgeving en met verschillende mensen. Tolerantie, vergeving, vertrouwen, veerkracht. Dat zijn volgens hem de gewone deugden waarmee we proberen te overleven in moeilijke tijden. en dat gaat ook vaak mis. Hij reist naar New York, Los Angeles, Bosnie, Zuid-Afrika, Japan en Brazilie. Overal zijn conflicten of grote problemen geweest of moeten mensen ineens met mensen uit totaal verschillende werelden samenleven. Dat gaat vaak goed,maar niet altijd. Ik vond vooral de stukken over Bosnie en over Fukushima erg goed.
May 26, 2020
I wish I could rush into an ethics classroom and teach this book. It is excellent. I devoured it quickly.
Ignatieff, both an academic and political leader, explores the impact that human rights have had upon the globe, shaping the moral order. A key idea of the book is that over the last fifty years we have improved morally as a species, with the advances in human rights, humanitarian responses to suffering, and environmentalism.
He sets out to various global hotspots to explore the current global moral order--Queens, LA, Rio, Bosnia, Myanmar, Fukushima, and South Africa. In these places he dialogues with poor women living in shanties and prominent public officials. He is a sympathetic and compassionate listener who draws keen philosophical insights from what he observes. A brilliant model for how to do academic work in our time.
What he discovers is that there are a few key aspects of ordinary virtue that humans seem to share. Trust, tolerance, and resilience are among them. And key to promoting these virtues are well run public institutions and civil society. Ordinary virtue becomes almost impossible in a broken, violent, corrupt society. He writes, "The whole point of a liberal society is to create laws and institutions that make virtue ordinary."
The most brilliant chapter is that on Fukushima, and I would recommend it as reading right now in our moment of global pandemic. He writes that the triple disaster in Japan--earthquake, tsunami, meltdown--was the unimaginable and that we moderns are not well prepared for the unimaginable to happen. Yet, the unimaginable has consistently been occurring the last twenty years eroding our trust in our institutions which keep failing us and eroding our ability to plan for and hope for our futures. He writes, "Instead of embracing the future, imagining radiant tomorrows, we now think of the future in the language of harm reduction, target hardening, and risk management." This breakdown has made humans more individualistic in their resilience strategies.
Here is the final paragraph of that brilliant chapter, where he discusses hope:
The hope I am talking about is an ordinary virtue: it is free of hubris, and so it takes for granted, that we will not always be able to avoid the worst. At the same time, it is not misanthropic: it prepares for the worst but does not think the worst of human beings. It is anti-utopian: while it believes that over time we get better at learning from our mistakes, it does not have any faith that we can fundamentally change; it is rationalist but questions that History, with a capital H, is knowable. It draws faith from the past, from the memory of the samurai, but it also knows that sometimes all you can do is to keep moving, keep going toward the future, no matter how uncertain the destination. But resilience has an unshakeable, physical element of faith. It affirms that we do learn and that we are not condemned to endless repetition of our folly. This complex hope is, I believe, what underpins human resilience, more than an attitude of responsibility toward others. It is also a metaphysical commitment, deep inside, usually left unspoken, to the future continuity of human life itself, no matter what, a commitment best expressed by the belief that we will not only survive but prevail.
Ignatieff, both an academic and political leader, explores the impact that human rights have had upon the globe, shaping the moral order. A key idea of the book is that over the last fifty years we have improved morally as a species, with the advances in human rights, humanitarian responses to suffering, and environmentalism.
He sets out to various global hotspots to explore the current global moral order--Queens, LA, Rio, Bosnia, Myanmar, Fukushima, and South Africa. In these places he dialogues with poor women living in shanties and prominent public officials. He is a sympathetic and compassionate listener who draws keen philosophical insights from what he observes. A brilliant model for how to do academic work in our time.
What he discovers is that there are a few key aspects of ordinary virtue that humans seem to share. Trust, tolerance, and resilience are among them. And key to promoting these virtues are well run public institutions and civil society. Ordinary virtue becomes almost impossible in a broken, violent, corrupt society. He writes, "The whole point of a liberal society is to create laws and institutions that make virtue ordinary."
The most brilliant chapter is that on Fukushima, and I would recommend it as reading right now in our moment of global pandemic. He writes that the triple disaster in Japan--earthquake, tsunami, meltdown--was the unimaginable and that we moderns are not well prepared for the unimaginable to happen. Yet, the unimaginable has consistently been occurring the last twenty years eroding our trust in our institutions which keep failing us and eroding our ability to plan for and hope for our futures. He writes, "Instead of embracing the future, imagining radiant tomorrows, we now think of the future in the language of harm reduction, target hardening, and risk management." This breakdown has made humans more individualistic in their resilience strategies.
Here is the final paragraph of that brilliant chapter, where he discusses hope:
The hope I am talking about is an ordinary virtue: it is free of hubris, and so it takes for granted, that we will not always be able to avoid the worst. At the same time, it is not misanthropic: it prepares for the worst but does not think the worst of human beings. It is anti-utopian: while it believes that over time we get better at learning from our mistakes, it does not have any faith that we can fundamentally change; it is rationalist but questions that History, with a capital H, is knowable. It draws faith from the past, from the memory of the samurai, but it also knows that sometimes all you can do is to keep moving, keep going toward the future, no matter how uncertain the destination. But resilience has an unshakeable, physical element of faith. It affirms that we do learn and that we are not condemned to endless repetition of our folly. This complex hope is, I believe, what underpins human resilience, more than an attitude of responsibility toward others. It is also a metaphysical commitment, deep inside, usually left unspoken, to the future continuity of human life itself, no matter what, a commitment best expressed by the belief that we will not only survive but prevail.
June 22, 2019
This is a well written book about the ordinary virtues - values - that make up tightly knit communities. The author compares several values: resilience, empathy, willingness to share, and tolerance across communities in Rio de Janeiro, Bosnia, Myanmar, Queens, New York, Los Angeles, Fukushima, and South Africa.
They find that groups either coexist or live with individuals of different races, ethnicities, religion, cultures, and gender orientation in the community. It's grounded in history, and he goes to great lengths to show comparisons between historical events and more recent ones. Most of the book is grounded in globalization, particularly around the economy and human rights. As such, he explains that there's a tendency for groups to live with or coexist with local groups and or individuals that share some of their own ideas, values, behaviors as opposed to groups that don't. Additionally, in describing the impacts of globalization and it's economic impact on populations, a tendency was emphasized to connect with and identify local consequences of commodity in regards to its production and consequences before connecting the plight of another group (in another country) impacted by the production of the commodity or product. It really brought home, how the global is local first, in regards to economics, human rights, and how the ordinary virtues are necessary to maintain relations and acknolwedgement of diversity and multculturalism within communities.
This book was very eye opening. One note about the author's style, he likes to use complicated words so definitely have a dictionary handy. Some of his sentences are quite long. These are some indicators of his own privilege as an academic.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I think it should be required reading for graduate and undergraduate students of anthropology, sociology, public health, and women's studies.
They find that groups either coexist or live with individuals of different races, ethnicities, religion, cultures, and gender orientation in the community. It's grounded in history, and he goes to great lengths to show comparisons between historical events and more recent ones. Most of the book is grounded in globalization, particularly around the economy and human rights. As such, he explains that there's a tendency for groups to live with or coexist with local groups and or individuals that share some of their own ideas, values, behaviors as opposed to groups that don't. Additionally, in describing the impacts of globalization and it's economic impact on populations, a tendency was emphasized to connect with and identify local consequences of commodity in regards to its production and consequences before connecting the plight of another group (in another country) impacted by the production of the commodity or product. It really brought home, how the global is local first, in regards to economics, human rights, and how the ordinary virtues are necessary to maintain relations and acknolwedgement of diversity and multculturalism within communities.
This book was very eye opening. One note about the author's style, he likes to use complicated words so definitely have a dictionary handy. Some of his sentences are quite long. These are some indicators of his own privilege as an academic.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I think it should be required reading for graduate and undergraduate students of anthropology, sociology, public health, and women's studies.
April 27, 2024
En su obra "Las virtudes cotidianas: Orden moral en un mundo dividido", Michael Ignatieff nos invita a un viaje introspectivo donde las preguntas no solo son meros interrogantes intelectuales, sino también brújulas que nos orientan hacia una comprensión más profunda de nosotros mismos y de la sociedad en la que vivimos. Este texto no se limita a ser un catálogo de virtudes o normas éticas; más bien, desentraña la tela de araña moral que tejemos colectivamente como seres humanos inmersos en una realidad cada vez más interconectada y diversa. Ignatieff nos desafía a enfrentar la complejidad de la moralidad en un mundo donde las fronteras entre el bien y el mal, lo correcto y lo incorrecto, a menudo se desdibujan en el torbellino de la globalización, la diversidad cultural y los conflictos geopolíticos.
En líneas generales, considero que "Las virtudes cotidianas" de Michael Ignatieff es una lectura valiosa para aquellos interesados en la filosofía moral, los desafíos de la convivencia en un mundo diverso y la ética. Sin embargo, la esencia del texto alcanza su punto culminante en el último capítulo, donde el autor despliega todo su potencial. Los capítulos anteriores son como las huellas de procesos históricos de las virtudes cotidianas. Descubrir cuáles son esas virtudes cotidianas, queda como tarea a ti que nos lee.
En conclusión, "Las virtudes cotidianas" es una obra que no solo nos desafía intelectualmente, sino que también nos insta a reflexionar sobre nuestra propia moralidad y el papel que desempeñamos en la construcción de una sociedad más justa y compasiva. Es un texto que, aunque puede resultar denso en ocasiones, recompensa al lector con una comprensión más profunda y matizada del mundo moral en el que vivimos.
En líneas generales, considero que "Las virtudes cotidianas" de Michael Ignatieff es una lectura valiosa para aquellos interesados en la filosofía moral, los desafíos de la convivencia en un mundo diverso y la ética. Sin embargo, la esencia del texto alcanza su punto culminante en el último capítulo, donde el autor despliega todo su potencial. Los capítulos anteriores son como las huellas de procesos históricos de las virtudes cotidianas. Descubrir cuáles son esas virtudes cotidianas, queda como tarea a ti que nos lee.
En conclusión, "Las virtudes cotidianas" es una obra que no solo nos desafía intelectualmente, sino que también nos insta a reflexionar sobre nuestra propia moralidad y el papel que desempeñamos en la construcción de una sociedad más justa y compasiva. Es un texto que, aunque puede resultar denso en ocasiones, recompensa al lector con una comprensión más profunda y matizada del mundo moral en el que vivimos.
November 10, 2024
The author poses the question of whether globalization of trades has also led to a globalization of morals and values. For this purpose, he travels around the world, from NYC, LA, to South Africa, Brazil and Bosnia. Not only does the reader learn more about the people living there and the historu, you also get a sense of their day-to-day struggle.
This book really appealed to me as an introduction into the political genre. While still a bit difficult to “get through” due to the topic, it was a great read with the right mix of facts, anecdotes and insights from the author.
This book really appealed to me as an introduction into the political genre. While still a bit difficult to “get through” due to the topic, it was a great read with the right mix of facts, anecdotes and insights from the author.
March 20, 2018
The things that hold communities together in the face of violence, catastrophy, oppression and hatred are not so much the higher level discussions about human rights democracy and so on, but the "ordinary virtues' of tolerance, forgiveness, trust, and resilience.
The author takes us to favelas in Rio, neighbourhoods in New York and Los Angeles, Burma, Bosnia, South Africa and Fukishima to meet ordinary people applying these virtues in extraordinary circumstances.
A great book.
The author takes us to favelas in Rio, neighbourhoods in New York and Los Angeles, Burma, Bosnia, South Africa and Fukishima to meet ordinary people applying these virtues in extraordinary circumstances.
A great book.
September 14, 2020
I was eager to read more to from Ignatieff, and this book was exciting and challenging. It was well written and interesting. I like the way it talked about virtues that just ordinarily occur and how to work with that.
It gave me more to understand about the joys the spiritual joys of liberal democracy and the fun that still happens outside of that.
I'm trying to read more because I took a semester off from seminary
It gave me more to understand about the joys the spiritual joys of liberal democracy and the fun that still happens outside of that.
I'm trying to read more because I took a semester off from seminary
October 31, 2021
There is a lack of intellectual rigour here and the writing feels rushed and unfocused. Very odd introduction to this book as well.
Not sure how something like this becomes elevated as something worthy of investment and consideration. May be due to past performance on other topics and the celebrity status of the author.
Not sure how something like this becomes elevated as something worthy of investment and consideration. May be due to past performance on other topics and the celebrity status of the author.
February 19, 2018
Schrijver overtuigd niet echt met zijn aan de praktijk ontleende voorbeelden. Het slothoofdstuk is echter weel treffend, maar de onderbouwing daarvan vind ik niet erg sterk. Ook dit boek in naar mijn mening te veel gepromoot door de recensenten.
October 12, 2019
Somber reflection about the human rights framework in light of the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people based on case studies in 8 or so countries. No need to read the whole book perhaps, opening essay and then I found the chapters on Bosnia, Japan, and South Africa particularly interesting.
November 13, 2017
Skip to the conclusion chapter. Covers it less tediously
April 14, 2020
Ik wil dit boek helemaal niet lezen. Nooit van gehoord .....het wordt me opgedrongen door Goodreads
July 24, 2020
Reluctant 3 stars. Lots of interesting information if you can sift through masses of rubbish.
September 20, 2021
A trenchant critique of the limits of liberalism yet also perhaps the most eloquent defense of liberalism that I have ever read.
January 8, 2024
Good book discussing moral virtues in various cultures across the world. Justice and Fairness are common to all people, but corruption of institutions can erode trust in equality of opportunity.
February 12, 2025
¿cuál podría ser la utilidad de una ética universal como los derechos humanos en un mundo donde la perspectiva moral de la mayoría de las personas todavía está determinada por las virtudes cotidianas?
Me temo que el liberalismo no es lo mismo que el cristianismo. Y este autor es más cristiano de lo que se imagina. Admirable honestidad intelectual.
Me temo que el liberalismo no es lo mismo que el cristianismo. Y este autor es más cristiano de lo que se imagina. Admirable honestidad intelectual.
June 29, 2020
Un ensayo lúcido y muy enriquecedor sobre cómo influye la globalización en los valores que configuran a las sociedades. Micjael Ignatieff realiza un trabajo de campo en el que a través de ejemplos locales nos muestra una operativa general. Os dejo un link a la vídeorreseña que hice en mi canal de Youtube: https://youtu.be/fG7ppC2mypY Espero que os guste.
December 21, 2018
Michael Ignatieff recorre el barrio neoyorquino de Queens, Los Ángeles, Río de Janeiro, Bosnia, Myanmar, Fukushima y Sudáfrica en busca de las virtudes cotidianas –la tolerancia, la resiliencia, la confianza y el perdón–.
Want to read
October 22, 2017guess I can't edit the full review in the app. read a review in nytimes, seems to have relevance for social networks that cut across polities.
Want to read
April 19, 20191-48
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