ABSTRACT
Although the term ‘thin universalism’ is of recent coinage and has, perhaps, yet to achieve the circulation it merits, the commitment to the idea that there is a minimal but nevertheless determinate morality with a universal domain of applicability is a venerable one indeed.1 Its persistent attractiveness lies in its conjunction of two powerful considerations:
[1] the belief that ‘being human’ has an invariable normative significance that places moral limits on the kinds of society fit for people to inhabit (the universalism);
[2] a respect for the plurality of human values, cultures and belief-systems, which implies that a truly universal morality necessarily under-determines the full moral character of any particular form of society (the thinness).
