Uehiro-Carnegie-Oxford Lecture in Practical Ethics

Professor Michael Ignatieff: “Human Rights, Global Ethics and the Ordinary Virtues” Since 1945, human rights has become the dominant global ethic of international law and state practice around the world. In this lecture reporting on research supported by the Uehiro Foundation and Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Michael Ignatieff asks a new question about human rights: what has been its impact upon the ordinary virtues of daily life? Do human rights figure in the languages that ordinary people use to confront their most urgent moral dilemmas, or do human rights remain an elite discourse of states and politicians, more honored in the breach than in the observance?