ABSTRACT
Human passions used to be considered too errant and fickle, and the task to make human cohabitation secure too serious, to entrust the fate of human coexistence to moral capacities of human persons. The postulate was a reflection on the modern practice of universalization-in a way similar to that of the related concepts of 'one human nature' or 'human essence', which reflected the intention to substitute the citizen (the person with only such attributes as have been assigned by the laws of the single and uncontested authority acting on behalf of the unified and sovereign state) for the motley collection of parishioners, kinsmen and other locals.
