Defending universalism

Simon Caney

pp. 19-33

in: Iain MacKenzie, Shane O'Neill (eds), Reconstituting social criticism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Are there any universal moral values? Or do moral principles vary in different cultures? Philosophers are sharply divided on these issues. Some contemporary liberal political philosophers (like Brian Barry and Martha Nussbaum) and some critical theorists (like Seyla Benhabib, Jürgen Habermas and Thomas McCarthy) affirm universal moral principles.¹ They defend some core universal principles and maintain that only a universalist perspective enables us to engage in moral criticism of socially condoned injustice. Others, however, including some communitarians and postmodernists, abjure universal moral principles, arguing that such "metanarratives' are untenable and that universalism is repressive of difference and variety.² This paper aims at exploring what might be said in defence of moral universalism. To do this it will examine three defences of a universalist moral perspective — what I shall call the "appalling outcomes' argument, the "argument from moral experience" and the "argument from reflective equilibrium" — and I shall note limitations in the first two arguments before going on to defend the third argument.

Cited authors

Habermas Jürgen

Benhabib Seyla