ABSTRACT
Western political theory in the Enlightenment tradition has generated principles and ideals typically meant to apply universally, and to any and all social situations. Such principles are justified without essential reference to the details of the social settings to which they are to apply. Since they are based on impartial reason and apply to humanity as such, there is allegedly no need to qualify their scope with reference to particularities of time and place. (Though of course all actual theories in this tradition betrayed this ideal and made highly specific qualifications about the kinds of places and people to which they were meant to apply.) In this same vein, a fundamental assumption behind such theories is that whatever injustices exist or have existed in the actual world, they are irrelevant to the nature and justification of political principles themselves.
