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Massey Lectures 2000
The Rights Revolution
by Michael Ignatieff
Michael Ignatieff presented a one-hour
public lecture on the topic of his 2000 Massey Lectures, from
Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto.
The public lecture was webcast live and is available in RealAudio.
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Pictures from the 2000 public lecture
In these lectures, I am going to talk about a fundamental
change that has come over us in our lifetime. I'm calling
this change the rights revolution, to describe the amazing
way in which rights talk has transformed how we think about
ourselves as citizens, as men and women, and as parents.
When we see justice done - for example,
when an unjustly imprisoned person walks free, when a person
long crushed by oppression stands up and demands her right
to be heard - we feel a deep emotion rise within us. That
emotion is the longing to live in a fair world. Rights may
be precise, legalistic, and dry, but they are the chief means
by which human beings express this longing.
The rights revolution is a story of
struggle. Indeed, the concept of rights comes from the struggles
of the male landholders of England and France to throw off
the tyranny of barons and kings and establish rights of property
and due process of law. But one of the ironies about rights
is that people who win theirs don't necessarily want anyone
else to have them. What dead white males fought for, they
then denied to everyone who came after - women, blacks, working
people. Nothing is less obvious than the idea that rights
commit us to equality.
The idea of rights implies that my
rights are equal to yours. If rights aren't equal, they wouldn't
be rights, just a set of privileges for separate groups of
individuals. The essential purpose of any political community
based on rights is to protect that equality on behalf of everyone.
What holds a nation together, then, is this commitment we
each make to treat all individuals the same.
Most people in this country are deeply
attached to the green-baize version of political space: one
space for all; one set of rights for all. The minority nations
see political space on the patchwork model: self-governing
spaces for each; each nation master in its own turf. To this,
the majority then asks, "What space remains in common
if each nation insists on its own?"
So the unity and coherence of a liberal
society is not threatened because we come from a thousand
different traditions, worship different gods, eat different
foods, live in different sections of town, and speak different
languages. What is required of us is recognition, empathy,
and if possible, reconciliation. To use, once again, the words
chosen by a wise French-Canadian judge when he delivered a
judgment that brought long-delayed justice to fellow citizens
of aboriginal origin, "Let's face it, we're all here
to stay."
Massey College head John Fraser
Ideas host Paul Kennedy
Former Massey Lecturer John Raulston Saul
Governor General Adrienne Clarkson
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