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.