ABSTRACT
The demand for universality is an exaggerated expression of this wish for universality, as an attempt to force what people sometimes wish. The demand for universality and its insistence on absolute certainty, achieved by taking up a point of view which is everyone's and nobody's, and by freeing oneself from every form of commitment, from one's body, from society and history, and from ones upbringing, is criticized by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger starts his description of the Being of Dasein by stating that to Dasein, Being-in-a-world is something that belongs essentially. Heidegger also stressed that reasoning is never pre-supposition less. Hans-Georg Gadamer moreover credits Heidegger explicitly for having explicated the circular structure of understanding. Heidegger does not make the embodiment of Dasein explicit. This chapter describes Richard Rorty's use of the term ethnocentrism which, is for many reasons, problematic, however. The problem with Alasdair Macintyre's reasoning is firstly that it is not clear how different traditions are to be distinguished.
