Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

Ethics & International Affairs, April, 2002 by David Petrasek

Michael Ignatieff, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 208 pp., $19.95 cloth.

THIS BOOK, a collection of essays and responses, confirms Michael Ignatieff's reputation as one of the most interesting commentators on human rights issues. Ignatieff is difficult to describe: He is a respected novelist, biographer, and moral philosopher. In Britain, he hosted a late-night television program for a number of years; in the United States he is known mostly as a reviewer and political commentator. Last year, Ignatieff was appointed director of a new human rights center at Harvard University. The appointment, and Ignatieff's increasing prominence in the United States as a shrewd and visible analyst of human rights discourse, has generated excitement...