Universalism

The idea that there are universal principles of human behavior is an ancient idea that is of renewed interest in the global age, where it can be seen as essential for the notion of cosmopolitanism and a global civil society. Principles of behavior or features of human life that apply or appear at any time or place, past, present, or future, are often referred to as universals and the quality that makes them so as universality. The doctrine that they are necessary and valid requirements for human conduct is known as universalism.

Whether global consciousness brings the realization of such requirements any closer or highlights how far human beings fall short of observing them is only the latest reformulation of the terms of a debate with origins that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. The Stoic philosophers asserted certain principles for all human beings; the statement that he was a “citizen of the world” was famously attributed to Socrates. The later language of universalism is derived originally from the Latin universum, simply meaning everything taken together, and appeared in medieval Christian thought, as with universal propositions, asserting something to be true for all of a class of objects and, as with universe, for all existence.

In the Christian religious tradition, universalism was a doctrine first linked with Origen of Alexandria in the third century CE asserting that non-Christians could be saved. Although declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, it has enjoyed many revivals, often with distinct groups of believers such as the Universalist Church of America (since 1961, the Unitarian Universalist Association). Scholars have regularly spoken of universalism in reference to any religion that makes claims to have found eternal truths. But this raises the problem that has preoccupied commentators on the diversity of cultures from Herodotus 2,500 years ago to this day. Different cultures claim universality for different things. Some declare equality of the sexes to be universal, others the subordinate place of women; some regard revenge as an absolute obligation, and others reject it in the name of impersonal justice.

Recognition of the diversity of principles of behavior in different societies was shared by philosophers of the European Enlightenment such as René Descartes, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant. They may all be called universalist in that they aimed to find valid principles of thought and action underlying apparent, superficial differences. Kant's solution was to offer a higher order principle, his categorical imperative, that a person's action should imply a rule that would hold for anyone. For Voltaire, the answer to the conflict of morals was to move to a higher order of tolerance, equality, and liberty.

Unfortunately, higher order principles are not necessarily any more consistent with each other than are practical moral rules and, as with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, inspirer of the French Revolution, equality easily becomes the enemy of tolerance. European powers of the 19th century legitimized their imperialist projects by the universal validity of their civilizing mission. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 sought to close the modern era of savage colonialism and nationalism through nations coming to agreement on universal principles rather than seeking to impose them on one another by force.

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