Between rights and gifts: a comment on 'Human rights, global ethics, and the ordinary virtues' by Michael Ignatieff.

• Date: 22 March 2017
• Author: Lichtenberg, Judith

I am honored to have the opportunity to comment on Michael Ignatieff's illuminating discussion of the relationships between human rights and the ordinary virtues. Ignatieff reminds us of the conflict between the local and the universal, the citizen and the stranger, the communal and the cosmopolitan. Yet his remarks demonstrate to me the inadequacy of the dichotomy between the discourse of rights--human rights in particular--and the language of virtue and gifts. There must be more than just these two ways to think and talk.

To many people it seems pretty clear that the typical refugee does not have a moral or human right to haven in a particular country. Imagine a refugee from a country in the Middle East. Assume we agree that this refugee makes some moral claim on U.S. citizens, at least because of previous military and political involvement by the U.S. resulting in some responsibility on its part for the upheavals creating refugees. Does this refugee have a moral right to sanctuary in the U.S.? If so, then so do lots of other people. But surely there are limits to the number of people the U.S. can reasonably accommodate. Philosophers like to say that rights and duties are...