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Reimagining a Global Ethic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2012

Michael Ignatieff
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Extract

“Reimagining a global ethic” is a project worthy of Andrew Carnegie and of the Carnegie Council's upcoming commemoration of his founding gift in 1914. As a collaborative research project stretching forward over the next three years, it ought to be integrative and reconciliatory: that is, it must try to understand the globalization of ethics that has accompanied the globalization of commerce and communications and to figure out what ethical values human beings share across all our differences of race, religion, ethnicity, national identity, and material wealth. When human beings do disagree morally, the search for a global ethic becomes an attempt to elucidate by analysis what exactly people are disagreeing about, so that, after arguing out our differences, we can either agree to disagree or work together to find common ground. Finding common ground on large ethical matters and understanding more deeply why, in some instances, we remain at odds with each other is worthwhile in itself, but it might also further Andrew Carnegie's original goal in founding the Council, which was to reduce the amount of conflict and violence in the world.

Type
Symposium: In Search of a Global Ethic
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 7 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2012

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References

NOTES

1 This essay began life as a lecture to the Global Ethics Fellows, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, New York, November 10, 2011. The original version is available in audio and video format at www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/audio/data/000714. In revising it for publication, I am grateful to Joel Rosenthal and the Ethics Fellows for their criticism and suggestions. The Council's project on reimagining a global ethic is an initiative to commemorate the centenary of the founding of the Council in 1914 by Andrew Carnegie.

2 Grotius, Hugo, The Rights of War and Peace, with the notes of J. Barbeyrac (London, Printed for W. Innys et al., 1738)Google Scholar; and Pufendorf, Samuel, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, with Mr. Barbeyrac's prefatory discourse (London, 1729)Google Scholar. On international law as a social practice, see Beitz, Charles, The Idea of Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 See, e.g., Taha Abderrahman, A Global Ethic: Its Scope and Limits (Tabah Foundation Paper Series 1, 2008).

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19 Singer, One World, chap. 2.

20 FGC Files Online. Harvard KSG ISP 224 reading list for Mamouna Traore and FGC Abolition in Senegal, 2004. See the International Women's Health Program at iwhp.sogc.org/index.php?page=279 and womenshealth.gov at www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/female-genital-cutting.cfm.

21 Ghani, Ashraf and Lockhart, Clare, Fixing Failed States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Stewart, Rory and Knaus, Gerald, Can Intervention Work? (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011)Google Scholar; Antonio Donini, “Afghanistan: Humanitarianism under Threat,” Feinstein Center Briefing Paper, Tufts University, March 2009; Andrew Beath, Fotini Christia, and Ruben Enikolopov, “Winning Hearts and Minds through Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan,” MIT Political Science Department Research Paper No. 2011–14, October 25, 2011.

22 International Commission on Sovereignty and Intervention (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 2001).