European Political Universalism: A Very Short History

Abstract

If we are allowed to make an analytical distinction between nature - particularly human nature — and values, we can detect at least three forms of political universalism in the European tradition. First, there is a moral or political universalism based on the assumption that the highest moral standards — such as justice -are the same for all regardless of time and place. Second, there is a political universalism based on the assumption that by nature all human beings — especially when it comes to their rational capacities — are identical with each other regardless of spatiotemporal conditions. Third, there is a political universalism based on the assumption that people are absolutely equal in terms of their value and worth. Roughly speaking, these forms of political universalism — universalism of moral standards, universalism of human nature, and universalism of worth — have developed historically in sequence so that new dimensions are added to the previous ones without necessarily replacing them. In Stoicism, for instance, it was thought that the highest values are common to all human beings in the world and that people are identical by nature, but not that people are absolutely equal with each other. In early modern and modern declarations of human rights, on the other hand, it is implied that the highest moral standards are the same, that people are — more or less — identical with each other, and that they are absolutely equal when it comes to their worth as living beings.