ABSTRACT
Moral universalism and global ethics would seem a natural pairing. A universal morality must be global in scope and a global ethic must be universal in range. In fact, the adjective “universal” is not necessarily synonymous with “global”. Something is or is not universal with respect to a given unit. A society that enfranchises all of its adult citizens would be said to have a “universal franchise” even though its franchise is universal only to its own citizens. A regulation might govern all and only member states of the European Union and so apply universally within the EU but not beyond it. The doctrine of human rights is typically conceived as a universalist doctrine, but a proponent of animal rights will ascribe rights universally to a larger set of beings than the set that possesses uniquely human rights. Global universality is therefore only one of many possible sorts of universality. Even so, in what follows we shall use “universal” synonymously with “global” unless we indicate otherwise. “Universal” describes the scope or range of whatever is said to be universal. However, the
claim that a morality or ethic is universal can take different forms depending upon the respect in which its scope is alleged to be universal. Use of the term “universalism” in moral philosophy most commonly describes the view that the morality that should govern people’s conduct is the same morality for all mankind. It refers to the scope of a morality’s application: it claims that there is one morality that applies universally to humanity and accordingly rejects any form of relativism that holds that different moralities properly govern different groups or societies. It need not, and usually does not, make the claim that all humanity actually complies with a single morality or recognizes it as the correct morality; rather the claim is only that there is one morality that should govern the conduct of all. That form of universalism is often associated with, but is distinct from, another which concerns the structure of morality. A morality may be alleged to be universal in that its action-guiding principles can cover all human situations and circumstances; it is allegedly universal in competence. This sort of universalism opposes the claim that the particularity of situations and circumstances requires moral thinking and moral conduct that is fundamentally particular in nature. Universality can also be a feature of the content of morality as a quality that relates to the status a morality gives to human individuals and to the proper scope of their moral relationships. Cosmopolitan moralities, for example, generally emphasize the rights, duties and responsibilities that human beings possess in relation to one another just as human beings; in that way, they take a strongly universalist view of the proper nexus of moral relationships. More communitarian moralities, on the other hand, give greater
emphasis to local attachments and consequently conceive communities of right-holders and duty-bearers in more circumscribed ways. Finally, universality can relate to the issue of justification – the issue of whether a morality can be justified and should be justifiable to all human individuals so that they have compelling reason to accept it. These different forms of universalism can be held together, or not, in various combinations.
It is possible to embrace, or to reject, all four. Alternatively, we might embrace one form while rejecting another. For example, we can consistently take a communitarian (non-universalist) view of our moral relationships while embracing a universalist view of the morality that applies to those relationships. It is also possible to subscribe to universalist positions partially rather than wholly and without qualification. We might, for example, think that, in providing for moral relationships, a morality should give weight to both universal obligations and local attachments rather than only to one or the other. And we might think that, while some moral principles are rightly universal in application, others can reasonably vary from society to society, or that, while a morality structured in terms of universal principles can often guide our conduct, it cannot provide fully for every circumstance we may confront.
