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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (78135)	2/27/2003 5:02:24 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't think he could help it. Ignatieff struck me as a very forceful personality -- very intense. Can you imagine taking a course from him, what a great experience. He's written some wonderful books on Bosnia and Kosovo, among other things. But his books are an acquired taste. They are filled with insights that are worth the price but are not nearly so strong in sustained argument. His more general stuff on human rights issues is different. Written at an abstract level with prose that doesn't grab but then suddenly he drops a story in that is absolutely perfect. Lights up the entire chapter. I recall a philosophy professor in my undergraduate days, John Silber, who argued that one should not pay attention to Kant's illustrations. They undermined the argument. Ignatieff strikes me as exactly the opposite: illustrations make the argument much better than the abstract propositions.