The Needs of Strangers

An Essay on Privacy, Solidarity, and the Politics of Being Human

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What do we need in order to survive?
Whose needs do we have a right to speak for?
Which needs can be satisfied through political actions, and which cannot?

To answer these vital questions, Michael Ignatieff returns to the ancient languages of religion, art, and tragedy—and to important texts by Shakespeare, St. Augustine, and the great writers of the Enlightenment.

Drawing on these sources, he has written an incisive, moving interpretation of community and democracy in a work that not only examines the breakdown of human solidarity but shows how it might be re-created. The Needs of Strangers restores philosophy to its proper place as a guide to the art of being human.

$32.00

June 3, 1986

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MICHAEL IGNATIEFF is the author of Isaiah Berlin and The Warrior's Honour, as well as sixteen other acclaimed books, including a memoir, The Russian Album and the Booker finalist Scar Tissue. He writes regularly for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books, and has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including Fresh Air and Fareed Zakariah GPS. Former head of Canada's Liberal Party and director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School, he is currently the president of Central European University in Budapest.