Since the end of the twentieth century, discussions around issues related to universalism have intensified. Against claims to universal knowledge made on behalf of Christianity, Western rationality, feminism, and criticism of racism, scientists have shown that the problems are actually much more complicated. Despite the validity of their criticism, universalism is not only compatible with the approaches that have condemned it, but to a large extent, in a certain sense, are supposed by them.
The concept
In theology, universalism is the doctrine that all people will eventually be saved. In fact, these are the principles and practices of the liberal Christian denomination, founded in the 18th century, initially supporting the belief in universal salvation and now combined with unitarianism.
In philosophy, universalism is, in essence, the perception of natural phenomena as identical. He is distinguished by his understanding of the truth of statements as independent of the person who affirms them. Universalism is considered as an ethical worldview, which is the opposite of individualism. What is its essence?
According to the principles of universalism, the researcher does not attach any importance to the personal experience of recognition and foresight. Value is attributed only to the impersonal procedure for recognizing generally significant conclusions, the reproduction of which is possible if the specified conditions are met. Thus, universalism is also a form of thinking that considers the universe (universe) as a whole.
Worldview and Ethics
Ethical worldview (worldview) is a holistic image of the surrounding social world. Its formation and change occurs within the framework of an emerging and changing subjective experience. It represents a whole system, the functioning and transformation of any component of which is possible only if there is a connection with the rest. The essence of the development process of this system lies precisely in the change in these relations and its components. The elements of ethical worldview include:
- categorical structure and implicit ethical theory, the formation of which occurs in subjective ethical experience;
- ethical reflection;
- emotional attitude;
- ethical picture of the world.
Thinking process
Its content is presented in a historically developed logical framework. The main forms of thinking in which its formation, development, and in which it takes place are concept, judgment, and inference.
The concept is a thought, which is a reflection of the general, essential properties, connections of objects and phenomena. It is also called pure thinking activity. Through concepts, not only is the general reflected, but objects and phenomena are also divided, grouped, classified on the basis of existing differences.
Judgment is a form of thought that allows one to affirm or deny the existence of connections between concepts.
Inference is the operation of thinking, during which, when comparing certain premises, a new judgment is formed.
Reflection in Philosophy
Different types of universalism should be distinguished. This concept has a complex form, due to the way it manifests itself in the philosophy of science, defends the idea that thinking about any problem in science always leads to reasoning, and that this reasoning will always look for external limits. There are two forms of this simple and elegant idea of the mind. Some philosophers believe that this submission to the order of the mind is a requirement of the mind itself. Other scholars disagree that people ultimately obey the order of reason. Following Charles Pearce, they argue that even when people try to think about this order of nature and rationality, they always do it through a community of researchers, so that this convergence of opinions about universally applicable scientific laws always preserves its ideal aspect. Here, Pierce sought to renew the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant and to show his relevance in the philosophy of science.
Pierce also argues that how well people think ultimately depends on the ethics of the scientific community to which they belong. Ethics then, as criticism of the knowledge community, including scientific knowledge, can be justified without the need to lose the attractiveness of scientific laws as justified and universal.
Criticism
Feminists working in the field of philosophy of science, such as Evelyn Fox Keller and Sandra Harding, have made important contributions to criticizing the requirements of universality for scientific law from at least two points of view. The first and most important is that the knowledge community is corrupt at the deepest level. It adopted a research ethic that, for the most part, excluded women. Moreover, it actually adopted the concepts of instrumental rationality, which do not achieve true objectivity, since they relate to nature from a male or patriarchal point of view in which nature is reduced to something valuable only from the point of view of its use for people.
An analysis by thinkers of the Frankfurt school, such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, led them to conclude that rationality does not necessarily lead to the rejection of universality, understood as the limit of perception of the mind.
Discussions
Another major issue in the discussions around universalism was raised in ethics. It consists in whether it is necessary to rationalize ethical reasons into something more than a circular procedure of moral reasoning.
It is known that Habermas opposed his predecessors and even Kant himself, trying to show that the mind can be based on universal principles of communicative action in combination with an empirically sound concept of evolutionary learning processes. This attempt to rationalize the moral mind was widely criticized by theorists of language and communication, who argued that it was impossible to find assumptions in the first place. Moreover, even if they could be found, they would not be strong enough to substantiate a normative theory, to appear as a common comprehensive normative concept of modernity and human moral education. Habermas adds an empirical dimension to the general and comprehensive worldview of universalism defended by Hegel. In fact, Habermas tried to use a general and comprehensive theory to exploit John Rawls's position, which justifies universalism through the connection of reason and a comprehensive concept of rationality.
In her work on moral philosophy, Marta Nussbaum tried to defend universalism. This, in turn, was based on her defense of the Aristotelian idea of a moral view of human nature. Her opinion should also be seen as universalism in the sense that she claims that we can know what our nature is and draw from this knowledge a strong commitment to the values universalized because they are true to the essence of human nature.
In this case, criticism of European modernity, different from one form or another of history, is crucial for freeing the ideal of universality and even the ideal of humanity from its consequences in brutal imperialist history. Universalized norms, in this sense, carry a certain kind of self-reflexivity, in which universality as an ideal should always lead to critical analysis. The danger lies not only in the confusion of community with universality, but also in the proclamation of a specific form of human being, as if this is the last word about who and what we can be. In other words, this concept, as a requirement to cover the sphere of protected rights, is always open to the moral competition that it protects.
This concept of universality, as an ideal, the meaning of which can be interpreted in such a way as to meet its own requirements, should not be confused with relativism. Relativism, which states that norms, values, and ideals always apply to culture, actually includes a strong, substantial statement about the nature of moral reality. His adherents must become the most powerful rationalists in order to defend their position. To defend relativism as a material truth about moral reality is, of course, necessary in order to turn to the form of universal knowledge. After all, if a statement is that principles are always inevitably cultural, then that statement is one that must defend itself as a universal truth. In our globalized world, remembering and adhering to universality require us no less than adherence to criticism and corresponding figurative openness for re-formulating the ideal.