The Ordinary Virtues, Michael Ignatieff
The Ordinary Virtues, Michael Ignatieff
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

The Ordinary Virtues
Moral Order in a Divided World

Author: Michael Ignatieff

Narrator: Michael Ignatieff

Unabridged: 7 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/20/2018


Synopsis

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.

About Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff is rector and president of Central European University in Budapest and former professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Marks54 on June 08, 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......more

Goodreads review by Seth on January 13, 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 mak......more

Goodreads review by Mir on 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 practic......more

Goodreads review by Robert on 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 hol......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on November 02, 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 how......more


Quotes

“Ignatieff’s admirable little book represents a triumph of execution over conception.” New York Times Book Review