Revisiting Universalism
Alison Assiter
Revisiting Universalism
Also by Alison Assiter
PORNOGRAPHY, FEMINISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL, Pluto Press
ALTHUSSER AND FEMINISM: A Re-Reading of Althusser, Pluto Press
BAD GIRLS, DIRTY PICTURES: The Challenge to Reclaim Feminism
(co-editor with Avedon Carol) Pluto Press
ENLIGHTENED WOMEN: Modernist Feminism in a Postmodern Age,
Routledge, 1996
USING RECORDS OF ACHIEVEMENT (co-editor with Eileen Shaw), Kogan Page
USING TRANSFERABLE SKILLS IN HIGHER EDUCATION (as editor), Kogan Page
Revisiting Universalism
Alison Assiter
Assistant Vice-Chancellor and Pro Dean, of Humanities
Languages and Social Science
University of the West of England, UK
© Alison Assiter 2003
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Assiter, Alison.
Revisiting universalism/Alison Assiter.
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ISBN 0–333–98452–8
1. Ethics. 2. Universals (Philosophy). 3. Philosophical anthropology.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
viii
Introduction
1
1 Why Pluralism?
11
2 Forms of Universalism and Monism
32
3 Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept?
53
4 Moral Obligations Arising from Needs
74
5 Needs and the Imagination
93
6 Bodies and Dualism
109
7 Feminist Epistemology and Value
126
8 Conclusion
146
Index
162
vii
Acknowledgements
There are many people, as writers always say, without whom the writing
of this book would not have been possible. During the process of
writing of the book, I have been through several personal and professional crises (unrelated to the production of the book) and the steadfast
and matter-of-fact manner of my partner, Cyril, and the strength of my
son, Ben, helped ensure that I wrote this, rather than sink into despair.
I would like to thank my close friends, particularly Kim Adam, Tricia
Kelly, Tony Coult, Angela Fenwick and Gill Hague for their love and support. Pat East also provided wonderful food and holiday talks just when
needed. Two of my closest friends – Nira Yuval -Davis and Keith Graham
have provided love and support and they are also referred to in the text.
Neither of them is afraid to be devastatingly critical when the text
requires.
I would also like to thank all my colleagues and friends in the former
Faculty of Economics and Social Science at the University of the West of
England, where I was Dean, during the writing of this book. There are so
many of you that I do not have the space to list you all. There have been
many occasions indeed when the activities of writing and being Dean
have been incompatible. I have not, during the period, been in receipt
of a sabbatical nor have I received any research leave.
There are others who have provided critical discussion or who have
read parts of the text and commented on it. Those who attended my session at the conference in Bristol on Human Frailty, in September 2001,
commented upon some of the text; so did those who have attended
papers I have delivered in internal conferences and seminars at the
University of the West of England. The audiences in Durban, South
Africa, in July 2001; at the Feminist Theory conference, in Lancaster, in
January, in 2002, in Royal Holloway College, in April 2002; in Oxford
University, May 2002; in Brisbane, Australia, and in la Trobe, in
Melbourne, in July 2002 all provided useful feedback. Finally, the following individuals read parts of the text: Allesandra Tannesini, Sanjay
Seth, Rob Cuthbert, Doris Schroeder and my friends Barbara Bleiman
and Adam Sharples. I am grateful for their comments. I am also very
grateful for the comments of the unknown reader who encouraged me
to make various improvements to the text.
viii
Acknowledgements ix
An earlier version of Chapter 1 appeared in Liberalism and Social
Justice: International Perspectives, in eds Calder, G., Garrett, E. and
Shannon, J. 2000 Ashgate, Aldershot; an early version of Chapter 1 as
Assiter, A. (1999) Bodies and Dualism, in K. Ellis and H. Dean (eds) Social
Policy and the Body, Macmillan, London and of Chapter 7, as Feminist
Epistemology and Value, in Feminist Theory, vol. 1, No. 3, Dec. 2000,
pp. 329–347, Sage Publications.
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they
didn’t go for us – they were thirty to five – and have a good
tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were
big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet though their
skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard.
And I saw that something restraining, one of those human
secrets that baffle probability had come into play there.
(From Conrad, Heart of Darkness)
On 19 December 2001, The Guardian, UK published an article entitled:
‘Winter Closes in on Families Trapped by War’. The article begins as
follows:
The jeep crests another peak and finally the valley stretches below, a
freezing wasteland of ice where nothing stirs. The village of
Mamorick once thrived here but the mud brick houses dotting the
plain are now rubbed ruins coated smooth and white by snow.
It continues:
There is a rumour among aid agencies that refugees in the mountains
have returned to Mamorick, but it seems fanciful. There is nothing to
return to.
A figure breaks the stillness by stepping from a doorway. His name
is Quardan Gunalasin. He is barely 4 ft tall and looks 10 years old,
although he is 16. Two fingers on his left hand are missing, lost to
shrapnel wounds worsened by frostbite.
1
2
Revisiting Universalism
He led the way into the roofless house. Snow crunches underfoot
inside what used to be a kitchen and bedrooms. He opens a door into
a room the size of two car parking spaces. Beneath the improvised
ceiling live 17 people.
The article goes on to describe how the people are seeing their first
foreigner for three years, and they barely have enough food to last the
winter. They half expect to die there.
Quardan is Afghani. He is desperately poor. In the over-developed
world, by contrast, the wealth of a tiny number of people exceeds the
total income of whole populations of continents. ‘In 1994 the assets of
the world’s 358 billionaires (in US dollars) exceeded the combined
annual incomes of countries with 45 per cent of the world’s population.’ … ‘In 1998, the assets of the three richest people in the world were
more than the combined GNP of the 48 least developed countries, comprising 600 million people’ (UNDP, 1999, p. 37, quoted in Castells, 2000,
p. 78). According to the UN World Food Programme, more than 16 million people in seven Southern African countries risk starvation (UN,
WFP). For how long, one might ask, can the world continue to exist with
these kinds and levels of inequality?
Many theorists of postmodernity focus upon the technical, the technological and the information aspects of the contemporary ‘globalised’
world. Ulrich Beck (Beck, 1992) and Anthony Giddens (Giddens, 1999),
for example, separately and in their different ways describe the contemporary world as the ‘risk’ society. Beck outlines the way in which the rich
and the ‘overdeveloped’ world (Gilroy, 1993 ) fail to escape the effects of
the potentially catastrophic risks to which people in general in the contemporary world are exposed. Any one of us anywhere could be killed by
a possible nuclear bomb, by the effects of a ‘terrorist’ biological attack,
by being subjected to smallpox, or by being the victims of the substance
found recently in a North London flat, ricin (see press reports, 9 January
2003 in the UK). Anyone might have died, to use an example from Beck,
from the fall out from the after effects on foodstuffs of the nuclear waste
distributed after the Bhopal accident (see Beck, op. cit.).
The risk society is one way of describing the contemporary world.
Risks are distributed randomly in a globalised economy and are manifest, in their starkest form, in the terror experienced by many people in
New York after 11 September 2001. However, poverty and riches are not
evenly distributed across the world. As Castells has put it, in his full and
detailed account of the subject: ‘Divergence in output per person across
countries is perhaps the dominant feature of modern economic history.
Introduction
3
The ratio of per capita income in the richest versus the poorest country
(between 1870 and 1989) has increased by a factor of 6 and the standard
deviation of GDP per capita has increased between 60 and 100 per cent’
(Castells, p. 73). Moreover, substantial numbers of people are excluded
from the globalised technological economy. The population of the
African continent (with the exception of South Africa) not only does not
have access to information technology or the ability to use it and adapt
to it, but it does not even have the minimum infrastructure required to
make use of computers. Most of Africa does not have access to a reliable
electricity supply. Indeed, to quote Castells again ‘there are more
telephone lines in Manhatten or Tokyo than in the whole of subSaharan Africa’ (Castells, p. 92).
The focus on the technological and risk features of our world that is
globalised for the rich is one recent approach to the analysis of society. A
different feature of much contemporary thinking is upon particularist
and pluralist theoretical views. We are advised by postmodernists, postcolonial theorists, liberal political theorists, feminist epistemologists and
others, to focus on our differences; to celebrate our diversity. Doing otherwise, it is said, produces false and partial pretences at universalism, that
serve only to disguise and mask reality, and further to marginalise those
groupings that, it is said, will inevitably be left out of such grand theories.
It has appeared, in recent years, that the battle between ‘universalists’
and ‘particularists’ has been won by the particularists. Indeed, one critic
of universalism describes it in very strongly negative terms: ‘… incredulous voices have drawn attention to the bold, universalist claims of
occidental modernity and its hubristic confidence in its own infallibility’
(Gilroy, 1993, p. 43). Another writer, this time someone who is sympathetic to reviving the notion, poignantly says; ‘human universality as
an idea, or as an ideal, might seem like an overweening Enlightenment
conceit’. Further, he writes, ‘We do not, it is argued, get our values
straight from some metaphysical hot-line to the Great Tribunal of Right
and Wrong’ (Calder, 1998, p. 140).
The battle between universalists and particularists has been fought in
ethics, in epistemology, in sociology, in politics, in cultural theory and
in social and political theory.
In this book, I seek to defend a non-liberal form of universalism. I ask
the simple question: what is it that the richest few have in common
with Quardan and others who share his plight? Each of us has a natural
nature. Each one of us has a set of basic needs that must be satisfied
before any one of us is able to do anything at all. In the case of those
who are super rich, or who are comfortably off, satisfying basic needs is
4
Revisiting Universalism
a trivial and insignificant matter. For many of them and for others like
me, what matters is which wine to imbibe tonight; which restaurant to
patronise and where to find the best cappuccino. For Quardan, or for
many inhabitants of North Korea or Rwanda or Zimbabwe or indeed,
of North America, today, by contrast, the satisfaction of basic needs
is deeply significant, and just eating and drinking assumes the highest
priority.
I seek to argue in the book that there is a universal human nature, and
that significant moral consequences flow from the assumption that
human beings share a natural nature and a set of basic needs. The universalism I will seek to defend is not the form usually adumbrated in liberal circles. Liberal universalists are said to assume a disembodied subject
that is cut off from a downgraded natural realm. In contrast, the universalism I wish to defend in the book is a universalism that begins from an
embodied needy subject that is integrally connected to the natural
world. From the Cartesian and liberal traditions therefore, I take universalism. The form of universalism, I seek to defend, however, has some
affinities with the thought of the early Marx and with radical ecology.
In his Introduction to his book ‘Philosophy and Social Hope’ Richard
Rorty remarks: ‘we pragmatists shrug off charges that we are “relativists” or
“irrationalists” by saying that these charges presuppose precisely the distinctions we reject’ (Rorty, 1999, p. xix). Whilst I do wish to describe my
approach in this book as ‘universalist’ rather than pluralist about moral
value, and universalist also in an epistemic sense, like Rorty I would reject
some of the polarisations which are taken to characterise modern philosophy. For example, ethics and epistemology are often taken to be distinct
and separate domains of inquiry. Like Shildrick, however, although from a
very different starting point, I think that it is important to show some links
between the two areas of thought (see Shildrick, 2001).
It is my belief that materialist universalism is not the trivial thesis it
has sometimes been caricatured as being. Rather it us imperative that we
recognise in the twenty-first century, the validity of its claims.
I will begin the book by laying out here in the Introduction some of
the central ‘particularist’ themes in social and political thought and in
epistemology. This laying out will be necessarily sketchy and general,
but it will present some of the most common particularist arguments in
the two domains listed earlier.
1. Particularism in ethics
In the ethical realm, particularists criticise the abstract universalising
subject for detaching itself from any particular interests, and for setting
Introduction
5
out to weigh all interests equally. In contemporary political theory, the
well-known universalist, John Rawls’ ideal of impartiality is said to
presuppose that individuals are all alike; it is even supposed to rule out
discussion between individuals. These assumptions are believed by
particularists to be misguided and wrong (see e.g. Young, 1990).
One set of particularists, in this domain, are the communitarians. To
simplify somewhat, their arguments against universalism can be
summed up as follows: first universalists are said to rely upon an overly
‘individualistic’ conception of the self. This notion of the self is viewed,
by some communitarians (e.g. Sandel, 1981) as metaphysically flawed:
the self of, for example, the ‘original Rawls’ original position, the self
lying behind the veil of ignorance, who/which doesn’t know which conception of the good it adheres to, is said to be incoherent. In contrast,
some communitarians have writtern, people’s ends and values partially
form who they are. As Sandel puts it: ‘people are constitutively attached
to their ends’ (ibid.). This claim can be described either as a sociological
point to the effect that people necessarily derive their self understandings from the social world, or it can be put as the conceptual point that
language or moral life is impossible outside a social setting.
A second criticism made by some particularistic communitarians of
universalism is that the community or society is important for a moral
theory to have practical force. As Waltzer (Waltzer, 1983, 1994) argued,
it is important that we stay rooted in our traditions in order to interpret
to our fellow citizens the meanings that we share. The asocial, disembodied liberal individual is in no position to explain or to justify to anyone the particular moral stance that ‘it’ takes.
Third, even supposing that it were coherent, communitarians question whether the universal self is a desirable one. MacIntyre (MacIntyre,
1981) puts this point particularly forcefully: in After Virtue, he describes
the post Enlightenment liberal self, the typically ‘modern’ self as an
emotivist one, as an ‘arbitrary will’ devoid of rational means or criteria
for choosing between standpoints.
Some critics of liberal universalism, therefore, and this is a fourth criticism of the position, have described the liberal choice of moral stance
as an arbitrary expression of preference: there is no scope, it is said, on
liberal premises, for the rational pursuit of interests, or the rational evaluation of moral standpoints.
Fifth, it is argued that liberal universalists inappropriately universalise
from one type of experience: are freedom and justice, critics have asked,
appropriate for those who adhere, in fact, to radically different values?
The form of universalism denigrated by communitarians in the preceding set of arguments is broadly liberal. A certain form of liberalism
6
Revisiting Universalism
and a form of universalism are often identified. In this book, however, as
I have written, I propose to defend a different form of universalism; one
that assumes a self that is material and embodied, rather than the sort of
self that is assumed by the liberal writing once denounced by Sandel
(Sandel, op. cit.), Waltzer (Waltzer, op. cit.) and MacIntyre (MacIntyre,
op. cit.). Some of the difficulties faced by certain liberals, I will argue in
what follows, do not apply if the universal self is construed differently.
However, I will also defend the view in the book that some of the particularist criticisms of liberal universalism are misguided. Throughout the
book I will be responding to criticisms of universalism including those
outlined earlier.
Communitarianism is one form, and a particularly resonant form, of
contemporary particularism. Communitarians, alongside other particularists, are sometimes labelled ‘neo-Aristotelians’. These particularists are
said to draw on a particularising reading of Aristotle. But the term
‘neo-Aristotelian’ is also used to refer to a hermeneutical philosophical
ethics deriving from Gadamer (see Benhabib, 1992). For this group, as
for Sandel, MacIntyre and others, there can be no moral standpoint that
is not dependent upon a shared ethos.
Many of these particularising critics of universalising ethical assumptions draw upon the famous criticism put across by Hegel of Kant, that
the test of whether or not a maxim can be universalised cannot determine its rightness. In his essay ‘Natural Law’, Hegel argued that Kant
answers his own question: ‘should I return deposits that are entrusted to
me?’ in the affirmative. Kant argued that it is self-contradictory to will
that deposits should not exist. Hegel, however, responds to Kant that
there is no contradiction in assuming a world in which neither deposits
nor property exist. Out of the pure form of the will, Hegel claims, nothing follows about how people should behave. I will suggest in the book
that there is a response to Hegel but it need not be the Kantian one.
It is important to point out, as well, that some liberal universalists –
the early Rawls for one, but there are many others – are particularist
about ‘conceptions of the good’ whilst they are universalists about
justice. Indeed a number of recent thinkers (see e.g. Berlin, Rawls
and Larmore) suggest that the ‘fact of pluralism’ (about value) is a
fundamental and basic feature of the modern world that has to be
accommodated in any political theory. I shall suggest in this book,
however, that pluralism about value need not be taken for granted.
A form of universalism, as you can see, has come under fire in the
spheres of ethical and political theory. A version of universalism however is also a heavily criticised doctrine in epistemology. In the latter
Introduction
7
domain, on one version of a universalist perspective, individual knowing
subjects are supposed to be detached, objective onlookers on the world.
The epistemic norm of objectivity is sometimes explicitly connected
with a version of universalism in ethics and political theory. Gellner, for
example, pointed out in relation to Descartes (Gellner, 1983, p. 3) that
objectivism is associated with the abstract individualism of liberal
democratic theory. Like the latter, it presupposes that knowers must
detach themselves from their embodiment and from their various
beliefs. This epistemic starting point resonates with Rawls’ thinking in
his setting up the early version of his ‘original position’ (Rawls, 1973).
Often, however, the two domains are discussed quite separately.
In recent years, the most vocal critics of the universalising perspective
in epistemology have been the postmodernists, although there are
many other types of critique of the above perspective in epistemology.
Postmodernists have argued that there is no difference between knowledge and any other narrative – knowledge is a language game whose
rules arise from only fleeting agreement by ‘present players’ (Lyotard,
1979, p. 82) Less strongly, it is argued that knowledges are relative to a
particular perspective or point of view. There are no universal norms of
rationality or of justification. On both of these perspectives, what is
often represented as ‘the Enlightenment’ belief in progress and emancipation is no longer possible. Postmodern feminists (see e.g. Fraser and
Nicholson) suggest that we should replace the unitary notion of
‘woman’ by more plural conceptions of the subject. Identities, it has
been said ‘seem contradictory, partial and strategic’ (Haraway, 1990).
Postmodernists, then, advocate an ontology of fragmentation. They do
so partly on the political grounds that any universalising ontology must
be exclusionary.
There are, as you can see, then, common criticisms levelled against
these various forms of universalism. In response, Rawls, for one, has
admitted in his recent writings that he is not universalising after all, but
he is describing some presuppositions of liberal democracies.
Universalists have offered some responses to these various particularistic arguments. Benhabib (1992) for example, develops a Habermasian
communicative ethics that is based on the acceptance of principles of
universal moral respect and reciprocity. O’Neill (1996) outlines a developed form of Kantianism that attempts to answer the Hegelian objection
outlined earlier. Larmore (1996) has urged that liberalism be defended as
the view that people should tolerate different points of view.
O’Neill (op. cit.) points out that certain universalists orient ethical reasoning’ by reference to its form. There are supposed, for the universalist, to
8
Revisiting Universalism
be ethical principles which hold for all and not just for certain groupings
and in certain situations. She further suggests that universalists make reference to the scope of ethical principles. Ethical principles, for universalists, range over everyone and not just over particular segments of
certain populations. She argues that early universalists relied on
‘demanding’ metaphysical and epistemological positions in order to sustain their claims. Plato, for example, presented an account of the objectively good which transcended the empirical world. Good lives were to
be guided by the Form of the Good. Aristotle too, in so far as he can be
read as a universalist, outlined an account of the Good which applies to
all, independently of the location of any particular individual. He proposed a conception of the Good for Man, which was historically invariant. O’Neill (op. cit.) points out that, although for many contemporary
political theorists, ‘virtue’ and ‘justice’ have diverged, with the former
being associated with particularists, and the latter with universalists,
both Aristotle and Plato offered standards both of virtue and of justice,
whose observance would constitute that good. In this sense, Aristotle’s
‘man of practical wisdom’ was intended as a description of any and
every one of us.
Many contemporary liberal universalists reject their predecessors’
reliance on metaphysical assumptions, and rely instead merely upon
a minimal conception of reason. Their particularist critics argue that
universalists implicitly draw in more than they are entitled to in their
description of this minimal notion. Implicitly they refer to ‘white men’
or to white western men, or to some other grouping which they
implicitly represent as universal. I will not in this book be relying upon
a minimal conception of reason. I will argue, indeed, that the early
universalists were right to attempt to ground their notion of reason in
a metaphysical notion. I would like to argue that there is a kind of foundation that we might refer to, that replaces Plato’s transcendent Good,
or Aristotle’s ‘man of practical wisdom’. Common human nature, I will
suggest, provides something akin to the sort of metaphysical foundation
required for an appropriate universal view of certain ‘goods’ as well as a
universalising epistemology.
The first chapter, entitled ‘Why Pluralism?’ examines and begins to
question some of the arguments that have been put for the pluralist perspective. I identify three types of argument and offer some challenges to
each. Chapter 2 looks at a set of arguments that have been presented
against the idea of value universalism, and some objections to monism. In
the third chapter, I outline and develop the notion of a common human
nature. I defend the notion against some possible objections to the idea.
Introduction
9
In Chapter 4, I argue that there are moral consequences of taking
seriously the idea that we are embodied natural beings with a natural
nature and basic needs. These moral consequences constitute a form of
universalism about certain moral values. In the chapter following, I consider a way in which one might begin to persuade those sceptical of the
notion.
The penultimate two chapters consider the epistemic dimension
of the argument. Chapter 6 looks at one type of particularism in
epistemology – feminist standpoint theory. I consider this type of theory
because it, as I do, takes seriously the notion of embodied human
subjects. However, I suggest that there are limitations of the viewpoint.
In Chapter 7, I offer an alternative epistemic approach that constitutes
a form of universalism in this domain. Chapter 8 concludes the book.
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10 Revisiting Universalism
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1
Why Pluralism?
One may observe in one’s travels to distant countries the
feelings of recognition and affiliation that link every human
being to every other human being.
(Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics)
Value pluralism is assumed by many, liberals, post-colonial theorists,
feminists and communitarians alike, to be both factually inevitable in
the contemporary world, and normatively desirable. This form of pluralism is supposed, indeed, to be the inevitable result of the heterogeneity of humanity. Rawls, for example, states the problem of justice as
follows: ‘how is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and
just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable,
though incompatible, religious, philosophical and moral doctrines’
(Rawls, 1993, p. xxv). Some contemporary liberals see the toleration, or
more strongly, the accommodation of a plurality of moral and religious
viewpoints, to be of paramount importance. Tolerating and recognising
difference becomes, on the view, a profoundly significant feature of
what it means to treat another as a free citizen. Some see the refusal to
accept pluralism as a kind of blindness to difference. As Tony Skillen put
it, referring to an essay by William James: ‘The “blindness” James diagnoses is that which is the consequence of humans’ “practical” engulfment in their own lives, such that the lives of others appear empty and
beneath due respect or appreciation’ (Skillen, pp. 33–4). In the Second
World War, in the UK, the British rounded up Italians and shipped them
off to the Isle of Man. This should not have been allowed in a genuine
liberal society that tolerates difference. Today, in ‘liberal’ democracies all
around the world, ‘the Muslim’ has become a threat to the ‘toleration’
mentioned in the earlier quote from Rawls.
11
12 Revisiting Universalism
Value pluralism is taken to imply that there is an irreducible plurality
of values, and that these values are ineradicably in conflict. On John
Stuart Mill’s account, plurality and conflict are natural and indeed desirable conditions of humanity. He writes: ‘Human beings are not sheep
and even sheep are not indistinguishably alike’ (Mill, 1978, p. 113).
Pluralism, in this sense, is taken to be obviously true in the contemporary world, because what is often taken to be its contrary – value
universalism – is seen to be false. So, for example, it is said that in this
context universalism implies: (a) that we must develop a substantive
conception of human nature, when all attempts to do that have been
shown to be culturally specific; (b) improbably that one can consider the
interests of the whole of humanity; and (c) some improbable way of
looking at ideal political or moral outcomes as benefiting every individual in the same way. (This way of looking at some universalist arguments is usefully summarised by Calder, 1997, p. 41.) The assumption
underlying pluralism is that there can be no true moral principles or
moral values that all reasonable people would accept.
In this chapter, I would like to ask two questions: ‘why pluralism?’
‘what are some possible grounds for pluralism about value?’ I would like
to examine and to challenge some of the arguments that have been
presented in favour of the value pluralist perspective.
There may be some who would claim both to be pluralists and
universalists. For example, as I pointed out in the Introduction, Rawls
might claim to be a universalist about justice and a pluralist about other
values. However, it is questionable to what extent Rawls is a universalist.
He certainly does not see himself this way in his recent work (Rawls, 1993).
Rather he sees the task of political philosophy to be that of finding solutions to problems in a particular range of societies. He believes that there
cannot be a ‘true’ moral theory. Several have argued that his conception of
justice relies upon a particular institutional context (at the same time as it
ignores some aspects of its institutional context) (see e.g. Young, 1990).
1. Why pluralism?
How might one support the kind of value pluralism described earlier?
How might one support the claim that it is inevitable that there is a
plurality of values that are irreducibly in conflict with one another?
The pluralist claim could be spelt out as follows: there is no way of arbitrating between the two mutually incompatible claims: ‘I should do X’
and ‘I should do not-X.’ An example might be pro- and anti-abortion
claims.
Why Pluralism?
13
The pluralist might argue in support of this perspective that the facts
about the case and about any case are inevitably underdetermined.
There is simply insufficient evidence to arbitrate between the two
incompatible claims. This would make value pluralism into a specific
example of a more general problem about the undetermination of facts
by the evidence.
She might argue alternatively that the judging powers of humans are
necessarily variable and conditioned by a variety of factors some of
which will arise out of the specific circumstances of that individual.
I will consider what I will call ‘structural’ pluralism and ‘cultural’ pluralism in a moment.
Third, she might argue that moral judgement is simply and necessarily
variable and probably incommensurable. The abortion case, for example,
does not rest on factual claims but on incommensurable judgements
about the principle that life is intrinsically valuable. The two protagonists might argue and come to an agreement over the factual claim that
the foetus is a living thing, but disagree about the value that is attached
to that thing. The abortion case might alternatively derive from radically different circumstances which are such that no agreement could be
reached. I shall consider this claim in the final section of the chapter.
I would like, in the next two sections of the chapter, to look at two of
the types of pluralism – structural pluralism and ‘cultural’ pluralism –
that might be thought to underpin value pluralism. In the final section,
I shall consider value pluralism itself.
2. Structural pluralism
The pluralist claim about value might be supported by the perspective of
‘minority’ groupings. Feminists, for example, have argued that significant cultural, moral and political assumptions that in fact apply only to
men have been presented as though they are universal truths. An example is the way that classical liberal theory implicitly assumed the
‘subject’ – the free and equal citizen – to be the person who operated in
the ‘public’ domain. This either explicitly or implicitly excluded
women. Similar claims have been made by or on behalf of lesbians and
of people of ‘minority’ cultures in some nations. Indeed the claims
could be extended, if there were the spokespeople to argue the case, to
majority groups as in the case of Africans in general in South Africa, but
who have been effectively treated otherwise over generations (see e.g.
Moodley and Adam, 2000). The arguments either have been or could be
extended, then, to apply to all the groupings listed. It is further argued
14 Revisiting Universalism
that it is inevitable that the world is structured along lines of gender and
race, if not all of the categories listed, and that therefore there can only
be local or ‘plural’ cultural and moral assumptions. Both Rorty, and in
recent years Rawls, have argued something like this.
One assumption here is that it is inevitable that the world is divided
up along these lines. It is possible to imagine a world that was not so
divided: a world where there was, for example, only one gender and
only one race. Imagining a world where there was only one class, might
seem these days even more fantastic. However, the latter is exactly what
Karl Marx envisaged. So long as there were some means by which the
members of such a world could reproduce themselves, it would not be
necessary even to have a division between genders. However, there is
not any need or imperative to abolish genders in the way that there is to
abolish classes.
Rather than beginning from the idea of the sort of human race one
might imagine, we might start from what is necessary to sustain a person’s identity, the starting point of several political theorists. Starting
from here leads us to a different kind of view. Many theorists have argued
recently that it is the context of choice that makes it possible to have a
freely choosing being, and, importantly, that context includes the individual’s identity (see e.g. Kymlica, Sandel). Gender and race, it is argued,
are of crucial significance in identity formation, and it is wrong for one
group to impose its identity on another. Thus, in relation to these two
categories at least, we must recognise plural structural assumptions.
But is gender identity crucial to making each person what she is? Is
racial identity crucial?
Keith Graham has argued that one constraint on the operation of
autonomous choice is ‘the constraint of necessity’ (Graham, 1996,
p. 139). There is, he has written, a limit on how far a person can sensibly distance themselves from what they are. The limit is fixed by
features over which the person has no control. These are ‘constraints of
necessity’. Graham argues that ‘my racial origin’ falls into this category.
If one’s racial origin is indeed an unalterable feature of oneself, then it
would seem to follow that we must be pluralists, in order to respect these
varying constraints of necessity.
Now, Graham might argue that race falls into the category in question
firstly because one’s race is a biological category and it is difficult to change
one’s biology. However, some transsexuals have argued that undergoing a
difficult and complex and painful series of operations – to change their
biological sex – is easier than identifying with the ‘wrong’ gender given a
particular body. It is easier to undergo a complex and painful biological
Why Pluralism?
15
change than it is to go around identifying with the ‘wrong’ gender. So, the
intuitive assumption that a biological alteration is more difficult to
undergo than a social and cultural change is undermined.
Moreover the changes undergone by an individual like Michael
Jackson and many others lead one to question the extent to which the
‘look’ of a person, which is part of the biological basis for categorising
someone as belonging to a particular race, is unalterable. Anyway, the
biological basis for racial identification is certainly not a sufficient condition for making a claim about someone’s racialised identity and origin. The basis on which claims to a particular racialised identity and
origin are made include reference to country of origin, cultural identification and sometimes to a set of religious or moral beliefs. It would
be difficult to say which of these constitutes, for each one of us, the
constraint or constraints of necessity.
It is possible to argue, then, that race is an inappropriate example of a
constraint of necessity. But there are other characteristics of a person
that fit Graham’s characterisation in that they are genuinely unalterable
by the person. So long as we are unable to travel in time, the date, the
time and the location of our birth constitutes one such constraint.
Maybe therefore, we must be pluralists about any values that flow from
this fact about a person. But the problem with listing this as a constraint
of necessity on the ground that it is unalterable by me, is that what is
important in identity construction may not be the fact that this happened, but its significance for the individual. Is the person’s place of
birth significant for someone who was born in Australia, whose parents
were Indian, and who spent most of her life in the UK? Is the nation of
origin important for someone who was born in Israel, and who lived all
her life in the US? For someone who wishes to obtain an UK passport,
then the fact that he or she happened to be born in the UK is highly significant. For someone who wants to get the free bus pass that is only
available for individuals over a ‘certain age’ in the UK then the date of
birth is important. But if these things ceased to have that significance,
then so would that fact about the person. These facts then make it difficult to suggest that there could be a set of values that derive unproblematically from the date and time of a person’s birth.
One might categorise a constraint of necessity differently and suggest
that such a constraint would be one that is relatively difficult to change
because so doing would require complex psychic and deep alterations to
the individuals’ personality, altering ways of life that are deeply
entrenched in the individual. However, it is very difficult to offer
a general categorisation of this kind of thing. What constitutes a deep
16 Revisiting Universalism
psychic change for one person may mean little in psychic terms to
another. For me to undergo what Michael Jackson has undertaken
would be deeply traumatic. Maybe it has been for him too, but he has
continued to function. For one person, having a sex change is what
enables them to live a fulfilled life, whilst for another it would, no
doubt, cause them to have a breakdown. It may also be the case that, for
one person, a social and cultural change, like, for example, a move of job
or house is deeply traumatic and deeply affects the person’s sense of
identity whilst those things are insignificant for another.
An alternative model of identity looks, then, not at general and necessary features of all of us, but at what is psychically significant for each
one of us. The particular psychic, social, biological and cultural context
in which each of us grew up, is what, on this view, is deeply and of ongoing significance for each of us, for our identity. What is significant, for
each of us, moreover, is structurally determined by the economic, social
and cultural environment into which we are born and live out our lives.
Debbie Epstein, for example (Epstein, 1999) has argued that the education system, certainly in the UK, educates children into compulsory heterosexuality. Some children of ‘mixed race’ (this is itself a contested
category, since we are all, to different degrees of ‘mixed race’) parents
argue that they are categorised by others by the way that they appear to
those others. The ‘look’ of the individual becomes deeply significant in
identity construction. For example, an English woman whose partner is
of Indian origin has two children. One ‘looks’ Indian and is so categorised by others in the UK. The other ‘looks’ Mediterranean and is categorised as Italian or Greek by others in the UK. For those children, the
way that they are categorised by others is of deep significance in their
identity construction. Another case is of the woman who, when asked,
at a conference, to self identify either as black or as white said that she
was both. She was both because she was usually seen as black by white
people and white by black people. So it is not even obvious that each
one of us is either black or white.
Does pluralism follow? I suggest that it does not for two reasons.
One is that, despite the facts outlined in the earlier paragraph, many of
the constraints outlined earlier represent structural features of most
societies, where one or more groupings is in a position of relative power
over another. To say that pluralism and toleration represent a partial
solution to this problem is problematic. Kymlica (1995) for example,
assumes that a ‘minority’ grouping can be identified; its culture outlined
and its members protected by being ‘accommodated’ or ‘tolerated’.
However, in the case of the gender example mentioned earlier, the
Why Pluralism?
17
members of the female sex were not in a position to identify what
was ‘their’ point of view, and thereby to have it ‘accommodated’ and
‘tolerated’ (a) because it took years of education and experience to arrive
at the viewpoint and (b) because the ‘female’ point of view actually challenged the legitimacy of the ‘male’ point of view. Just ‘accommodating’
and ‘tolerating’ it was therefore not sufficient. Indeed, feminism, anti
racism and an ‘anti class’ position pose a challenge to the idea that a
range of beliefs and cultures just exist alongside one another, tolerating
and accommodating one another. In fact, many values represent challenges to each other and one set will be right and the other wrong. The
feminist ‘point of view’ challenged the outlook of the liberal male. It
showed him to be wrong both factually and morally in some of his
assumptions.
But there is another reason why pluralism is open to question. There
are some clear examples of ‘constraints of necessity’. There are material
constraints that affect all of us. Each one of us has to have our basic
needs satisfied in order to survive at all. Any value system that prevents
vast numbers of people’s needs from being satisfied, therefore, should
not be tolerated. Emphasising structural pluralism may undermine the
imperative to see ourselves as members of a common humanity.
3. Cultural pluralism
Let us move on, now, to look at the second type of pluralism that might
be thought to underpin value pluralism – cultural pluralism.
An argument put by cultural pluralists, proposed by communitarians
and now accepted by many liberals, is one that questions the ‘atomistic’
view of the self. It is said, as we have seen, that it is impossible to make
moral choices, except from within a given cultural context. Both Rawls
and Dworkin propose a version of this view. Kymlica suggests this point
of view in a critique of what is possible in a communist society (Kymlica,
1995). It is nonsensical, he argues, to postulate ‘free creativity’, since
creativity only makes sense in a context. One cannot pursue ‘freedom’
for its own sake; rather it is the context of moral choices that gives freedom its meaning. Once this is accepted, pluralism follows. Cultures, and
the contexts of moral choice that give them meaning, must be plural.
But one is free to the extent of not being constrained, quite independently of any context. I am free to stretch my arms and adopt the yogic
‘dog’ posture, just so long as I am ‘fit’ enough to be able to do so, and no
one is preventing me from so doing. I can do so in whatever moral and
cultural context I like. All I need by way of ‘context’ is some knowledge of
18 Revisiting Universalism
yoga. There may be circumstances where so doing would be deemed
inappropriate behaviour or rude or odd, but its being so regarded is not a
constraint on freedom to do it. There are, of course, circumstances where
a person would not be free to engage in this piece of behaviour. For the
person holed up in a cell along with other suspected Al Quaida supporters
in jail in the USA it would be physically very difficult. Furthermore, for an
amputee from Sierra Leone’s civil war, who had lost his legs, it would also
be physically impossible. However, these are not the kinds of cultural context presupposed by Kymlica.
Similarly, I am free, if so disposed, to express critical views on the Blair
government in whatever context I like, unless someone prevents me
from so doing. But it would also be possible to do so in contemporary
Iraq, and, indeed in most countries in the world today.
The Rawls/Kymlica/Dworkin argument is sometimes expanded in the
following way: people’s identity is tied up with their belonging to a particular culture; to their espousing a particular set of values. The preservation of this culture is important for people’s sense of self, for their
being a certain kind of person. Kymlica has proposed a version of this
argument. The modern world, he claims, is divided up into ‘societal
cultures’ that are ‘typically’ associated with nations. Rawls, too, has
argued in his later work that it is difficult to leave one’s ‘societal culture’
because one’s ‘societal culture’ is crucial to one’s sense of well-being; to
one’s sense of self-identity. Kymlica believes that there are many ‘societal cultures’; that being part of one of these things is no doubt, ‘deep in
the human condition’ (Kymlica, 1995). Kymlica stresses the importance
of ‘societal cultures’ to self-identity, at the same time as denying the
communitarian thesis that values are constitutive of one’s identity.
Values, he believes, by contrast, are revisable.
There are two arguments here then. Communitarians argue that values emerge from one’s social and cultural context; and are tied up with
identity. Cultural contexts and the context of value are plural. Kymlica,
by contrast, wishes to hang on to what he sees as a crucial component
of liberalism, which is that each one of us must be able to revise the
values we hold dear; yet he believes that our identities are embedded in
cultures and contexts, which are plural.
On one interpretation, this is an argument about individual
self-identity. Being part of a societal culture is said to be essential to an
individuals’ sense of identity. If we identify ‘societal culture’ with
nation, however, as Kymlica sometimes appears to do, then there is a
number of difficulties that arise. There are plenty of cases where culture
and nation part company. Is there a Scottish culture, for example?
Why Pluralism?
19
To what extent is Jewish ‘culture’ co-terminus with the state of Israel?
Is there a Kurdish culture? Are the Celts ruled out as a cultural grouping?
The first of these is a grouping which identifies with a region that did, at
one time, qualify as a separate nation. The Kurds today, and the Jews,
throughout history, have experienced degrees of discrimination and
oppression, and degrees of identification with the grouping that have
been partly to do, historically, with their lack of a nation state (see e.g.
Bauman, 1989). Is there a British culture? If there is, are the features that
encourage individuals to identify with it – it has been recently argued
that one of the significant features of ‘Britishness’ is the proms in the
summer – the same as the features that cause individuals to self identify
as Canadian or French or Czech? If they are not the same, then what
sense can be given to the idea that national identity is significant for all
of us, because it is formative of our identity?
Furthermore, many social groupings, in the contemporary world are
uprooted from their country of origin and forced to become, in Bauman’s
words ‘vagabonds’ (see Bauman, 1997). One example of a cultural grouping which is regularly hounded out of its homes and is seen to be unwelcome in its own country, is the Roma people. The Roma were deemed so
marginal, during the Holocaust that their murder provoked no intraagency rivalries and thus required no written authorisation. More recently,
on 6 May 1996, a police officer in Southern Romania shot and killed a Rom
who had refused to pull his wagon over to the side of the road (Cahn,
1997, p. 29). If the Roma’s identity were bound up in the fashion suggested
by Kymlica with their nation, their plight as a group would be worse than
it is. It is indeed true, today, that, as Anthony Giddens has put it ‘all identity is a “pure” relationship, a relationship with no strings attached’
(Giddens, quoted in Bauman, 1997, p. 88). However, most nations today
are made up of large numbers of ethnic groupings, many of whom have
travelled relatively recently from elsewhere to constitute that nation.
Nira Yuval-Davis argues that the notion of a common nation of origin
is a peculiarly western mode of identity construction. She quotes a case
of a man who was adopted as a baby by a Jewish family, and who claims
that he discovered, when papers relating to his adoption were made
known to him, that he was not Jewish at all, but an Arab. He was born
as the result of an affair between an English woman and a Kuwaiti man
when they were both students in London. The man became engaged in
a (probably futile) battle to be given Kuwaiti citizenship, even though
his father had made it quite clear that he wanted nothing to do with
him. His conception of identity was absurdly tied up with the idea of his
father’s nation of origin (Yuval-Davis, 1997, p. 28). These various cases
20 Revisiting Universalism
suggest that it is implausible to suppose, as Kymlica does, that nation
plays just one kind of role in relation to identity.
But another set of problems concerns the division between ‘societal
culture’ which is supposed to be formative of identity, and the possible
revisability of value. A deeply religious Catholic, of Irish origin, who has
lived in London for some of her life, would no doubt argue that her
nationality is revisable, but her values are not, because the latter are formative of her identity in a way that the former is not. For the woman of
Indian origin, who moved, with her family, along with many ‘Ugandan
Asians’ to Uganda, only to be uprooted from there by Idi Amin’s policies, and forced to come to Britain, her left labour values may be more
significant to her sense of who she is than her particular set of national
identities. For the girl of Peruvian origin, who has grown up in Boston,
with her two lesbian mothers and who has been provided with a particular set of values that derive from that experience, her identity is tied up,
in complex ways, with lots of other things than her nationality.
One more case: the woman of Israeli origin, who has lived for much of
her life in Britain, for part of it in the USA, and who is deeply critical of
the policies of the Israeli state, has a set of values that, for her, are
constitutive of who she is, but they certainly do not derive from her
country of origin. Maybe all of these are hypothetical cases. In fact they
are not.
The pluralist may argue, now, that these cases constitute the exceptions to the rule. Civic nationalism, the liberal pluralist may argue, is a
necessary background condition for the operation of liberal tolerance
and liberal autonomy and freedom. Historically, there are four components of the liberal model of the nation: historical territory, rule governed legal political community, legal political equality of members and
a common civic culture (see e.g. Smith, 1991, p. 11). Rawls and Dworkin
have argued that, providing that such societies conform to objective
principles of justice, then they offer the only foundations that liberalism
requires (Rawls, 1973; Dworkin, 1977). Taylor also makes the point that
‘our’ capacity to be free agents requires a context in which the rule of
law operates (Taylor, 1989). One might ask the question whether the
Algerian people, subjugated under French colonialism, and whose
plight was so effectively outlined by Franz Fanon, believed that ‘their’
capacity to be free agents was allowed by the rule of law. Fanon, indeed,
captures the violation of freedom represented by the ‘liberal’ colonialist,
in his desire to discourage women from wearing the veil. The colonialist, in that case, abrogated the freedom of Algerian women to dress as
they wished (Fanon, 1970). This is a different interpretation of the
Why Pluralism?
21
Kymlica argument, anyway. Whilst the argument might have some
plausibility in relation to the requisite framework for liberal principles,
it does not establish either cultural or moral pluralism. Rather,
the argument is about the constitutional framework necessary for the
operation of liberal principles. This is significantly different from the
arguments about identity. It is about the set of rules that everyone must
follow in order to live equitably with one another in a broadly liberal
and tolerant manner. However, as the Algerian case, and many more like
it shows, this set of liberal principles is not sufficient to ensure that all
live equitably and in harmony with one another.
The argument of this section could be spelt out as follows: the pluralist claims that cultural contexts which are plural, and especially national
contexts, are crucial for identity formation and therefore for the possibility of agency. Pluralism about value stems from this.
Countering this, I have provided cases, to the contrary, where nationality is insignificant for a person’s sense of identity and therefore figures
only in a very minor way in their values. Second, I have suggested that
it is possible to make choices, contrary to the pluralist claim, from
within a minimal cultural context.
Finally, one might raise the question: on what ground is cultural context thought to be so significant for agency? Some have argued that it is
only embodied, culturally determined, real beings who make choices.
However, one could accept that one must be embodied and real to act,
and to exercise agency, without accepting the stronger claim that one
only has agency in a specific cultural context.
Indeed, one might argue along Cartesian lines that culture is dispensable. Descartes argued that culture and tradition were dispensable in the
search for truth. One could make a parallel point that they are dispensable when it comes to establishing what is the right thing to do.
Descartes believed that culture hampered one; that it caused one to
hang on to implausible claims just because they had been handed down
by culture and habit. One example of this applied in the moral sphere is
a friend of mine who used to recount the story of his mother reading
from the Koran to him as a child, and who used to twist her hair
through her fingers as she did so. For years, he believed that this was
part of the ritual, and he desperately tried to do it himself, and wondered if it was morally wrong to have short hair. A further example of
this sort of thing is provided by Ashis Nandy, who argues that ‘colonial
man’ was constructed as effeminate in colonial discourse, and the way
to emancipation and empowerment is seen to be through the negation
of this cultural impediment (Nandy, 1983).
22 Revisiting Universalism
Some people of a communitarian persuasion might argue that
Descartes comes up against the ‘empty self’ argument. Yet they would be
wrong. Descartes did ostracise himself from the Thirty Years War, from
friends, contemporaries, from his ‘culture’. Yet he did not cut himself off
from himself. He was left at least with a room, a stove, food. He was left,
in other words, with the necessities of life. More should be made, of the
significance, for moral choice to be possible, of these bare necessities.
They were the preconditions for his producing his arguments, rather
than his ‘bare’ transcendent self or his cultural context. He was able to
make choices, within that very limited and solitary cultural context.
Arguably, therefore, it is the material context that provides the set of
constraints that are minimally necessary for any choice to be made. This
kind of context is not plural but common to everyone. Indeed, it is
arguable that Descartes actually generalised too much of his own situation to that of everyone else, since he supposed that everyone had, not
only the bare necessities, which as a matter of fact they did not (some
did not have the freedom to write as they wished), but he also generalised a formal, minimal notion of reasoning that might not have been
appropriate to all outside that context.
A less ‘total’ case is provided by the cultural ‘hybrids’ who live at
the nations’ margins and who develop from the margins, counter narratives to the dominant ones (see Homi Bhabha, 1990, 1994). Counter
narratives about the boundary of the nation (see Yuval Davis, 1997)
have disintegrated the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.
In each of these cases, there are material constraints that influence the
possibility of the production of a narrative. Quadran, quoted in the
Introduction (Assiter, this book, p. 1) would have been in no position to
have created a narrative of any kind at all.
Let us move, now, to look at at the value pluralist claim itself.
4. Moral pluralism
A weak argument in favour of the moral pluralist view is simply that it
is a fact of life – moral pluralism is an inevitable feature of a large, complex, highly populated world. Unless we are to have a population of
identikit Martians, which no one would want, moral pluralism is
inevitable. The thesis is said to be desirable, then, on the ground that it’s
contrary – a world of identical moral clones – is highly undesirable. This
begs the question, often put by proponents of equality, of whether a lack
of moral pluralism implies sameness. Equality, it used often to be said,
does not imply sameness. Similarly, the moral monist might argue that
Why Pluralism?
23
his thesis does not imply sameness, even in respect of moral claims. The
view of the moral monist might be that her perspective on the world is
one of whose truth and moral correctness she hopes eventually to be
able to persuade others. The moral monist might believe, however, that
the process of deciding on the correctness of moral claims would
involve majority voting, and would not therefore imply that everyone
held the same moral views. Moral monism, then, is compatible with difference in respect of moral ideals, and is certainly compatible with differences between people in all sorts of other respects – circumstances,
abilities, wealth and ways of realising the ideal. So a moral monist world
would not be a world of clones.
There is an important point that the pluralist ‘toleration of moral difference’ leaves out of account. Liberal advocates of pluralism stress the
importance of agreeing principles of justice that would be perceived as
fair and impartial by all adherents in a society that is characterised, as
one person has put it: ‘by a deep and enduring pluralism of views about
human excellence’ (de Wietz, 1999, p. 85). Most liberals of such a persuasion stress how difficult, if not impossible, it is to agree on one view
of what human flourishing should consist in. Yet most liberal pluralists
rule out some views as unacceptable. In other words, most liberal pluralists accept some limitation on the incommensurability of value.
Bearing in mind the liberal emphasis upon reason, this particular
thinker rules out some categories of moral thought as ‘unreasonable’.
De Weitz, indeed, draws on two of the classic notions of reason in
the liberal tradition. On the one hand, there is the normative conception of rationality, according to which individual human beings are
self-defining, autonomous agents, with the ability, in virtue of their
rationality, both to recognise the ‘moral law’ and to determine, in accordance with this law, their own ends. This notion of reason can be found
in Kant, but also in Rawls’ thought. On the other hand, there is, implicit in
the liberal tradition, an ‘instrumental’ conception of reason, deriving
initially from seventeenth-century science. According to this latter
notion, each individual must be consistent in the pursuit of his or
her ends.
Importantly, then, the intrinsic dignity and worth of the individual is
grounded in reason. De Weitz, then, stresses that there are two broad
categories of moral thought that are ‘unreasonable’ and that should
therefore be ruled out of the scope of recognition and toleration. One
category, which fits the instrumental notion of reason, is the set of
bizarre beliefs about the world – for example, a doctrine that insists that
the world is made of cream cheese and consequently pink elephants,
24 Revisiting Universalism
not human beings. The second, the normative view, is a doctrine that is
‘evil’ – a doctrine that seeks, for example, the unlimited domination or
destruction of others. The Nazis stand as the paradigm case. Very few
liberals would want to tolerate the Nazis.
Such liberals also object that it is wrong to impose one view of what is
right or acceptable on another group. I agree. I don’t think that you have
to be a moral pluralist to agree with this view, however.
Let us spend a few moments discussing the ‘madness’ or the bizarre
case. It is interesting that this was the kind of belief that Descartes ruled
out in his discussion of possible counter-examples to his Cogito. He
ruled out of account, without any argument, the views of the ‘madman’.
In his early work, Madness and Civilisation (Foucault, 1965), Foucault
analyses the historical coincidence of the emergence of the Cartesian
Cogito, the birth of the Enlightenment, which splits reason and its others, with the beginnings of the interment of the insane. Prior to this,
madness was seen to be a moment in reason; in mediaeval times, in
Europe, for instance, the ‘fool’ epitomised the fate of humanity in
dreams and illusions. Madness was imbued with moral significance. Up
until the Renaissance, mad people were listened to. Renaissance people
recognised the limitations of reason. Descartes split reason and its others, symbolised by madness, within the method of doubt. All that might
threaten reason’s certainty is banished: dreams, errors, the senses, madness. For Foucault, the Cogito implies an ethical stand against reason’s
others. Reason is affirmed over against unreason, and the self-reflective
subject is thereby constituted. In the process of doubting, Descartes considers, in order to reject, various possible sources of knowledge: he
might, he suggests, gain knowledge through the senses. But his senses
sometimes deceive him. Therefore they constitute an unreliable source
of knowledge. He considers the possibility that he might be dreaming: it
is possible that he is dreaming that he sees the fire in front of his eyes.
In all cases except the hypothesis of madness, however, Descartes sets up
an hypothesis to refute. He might gain certain knowledge through the
senses. But he cannot because they sometimes deceive. But madness is
simply ruled out of account. As Descartes puts it, in the first Meditation:
‘And how could I deny that these hands and this body belong to me,
unless perhaps I were to assimilate myself to those insane persons whose
minds are so troubled and clouded by the black vapours of the bile
that they constantly assert that they are kings, when they are very poor;
that they are wearing gold and purple, when they are quite naked;
or who imagine that they are pitchers or that they have a body of
glass’ (Descartes, 1972, p. 62). Foucault stresses that whereas dreaming is
Why Pluralism?
25
contained in Descartes’ method, as a possible subject for rational discussion, madness is excluded a priori; madness both demarcates the
individual’s domains of irresponsibility, and constitutes the banished
‘other’, excluded from the civil community, from the domain of subject
hood. The subject who doubts excludes madness. If Descartes were to
take seriously the hypotheses of mad people that would presuppose that
he himself were mad. In the case of potential errors of thinking occurring in dreams or through the senses, the object of thought is analysed.
With madness, however, it is the subject of thought himself that is at
issue. The subject as intellect cannot be mad. This Cartesian subject of
reason becomes the subject of the post-Renaissance world.
In the seventeenth century, madness ceases to be endowed with moral
or eschatological significance, and comes to be viewed solely in terms of
deviance and disruption. Simultaneously, a major change takes place in
the treatment of the mad. Now, instead of being set afloat in the Ship of
Fools, mad people come to be ‘detained and maintained’ in houses of
confinement and hospitals. Foucault argues that this confinement was a
response to the economic crisis affecting Europe in the seventeenth century. By detaining ‘troublesome’ elements of the population, confinement both acted as a means of social control – it protected society
against uprisings – and it provided a source of cheap labour. Foucault
writes that, in Paris, at a certain point in the seventeenth century – close
to the country and at approximately the same time as Descartes is sitting
in his room in front of his stove: 1 in every 100 inhabitants were
detained for a certain period. Symbolically, Foucault writes, the mad person represents ‘the other’ of bourgeois rationality. Descartes purports to
be writing about everyone. Foucault suggests that he is not: that the
form of rationality he depicts necessarily excludes the mad – 1 in every
100 people. The argument is a very strong one: it is not that Descartes argument does not in fact apply to a certain group despite his best intentions.
It is rather that it necessarily excludes a whole segment of the population:
that it is set out in such a way that logically it omits a significant number
of people, who also happen to be morally and socially excluded from society. Montaigne, Foucault argues, writing at the time of the Renaissance,
could not have spoken as Descartes does about the mad: he could not have
excluded the mad person from the structure of rational thought.
When reason defines the scope of what is acceptable, then, madness,
as the negation of reason, has to be ruled out without argument.
But what if the arguments of the ‘mad’ person challenged the liberal
pluralist tolerator of a range of points of view? It was not difficult for the
arguments of early feminists to be represented as those of ‘mad’
26 Revisiting Universalism
people. Those who challenge received wisdom – Galileo, for example,
Wittgenstein, as another – are more easily dismissed if they are characterised as stark raving bonkers. Early anthropologists characterised the
views of ‘primitive’ peoples as ‘irrational’ for example, in the apocryphal
case of the Polynesian islanders, the islanders’ apparent inability to justify their practices to visitors like the explorer, Cooke, was supposed to
constitute evidence of the irrationality of these practices. Similar apparent forms of irrationality amongst contemporary Americans, however,
whether they may gain the epithet ‘paranoid’ do not usually lose US
citizens the right to count as part of the liberal polity.
Travelling recently in South Africa, I heard the view expressed many
times, seven years into the Post Apartheid period, by white and by
Indian South Africans that ‘the people of the Transkei’ or ‘the blacks’ are
crazy or mad. Of course this is a very easy way of not having to take
these groups of people seriously. It is an easy way not to have to engage
with their views. Even from the point of view of the white liberal, isn’t a
stronger message given to those who might care to listen if the views of
those who have been stigmatised as ‘mad’ are actually shown to be
wrong? Isn’t it more likely, however, that the labelling of the people I
have described is a way of justifying ignoring them? The needs of
Asylum seekers in the UK or in Australia at the moment can simply be
disregarded if the people concerned are labelled crazy or deviant or mad.
In the more extreme case of Aboriginals in Australia, Native Americans
in the USA and Jews in Germany, to take just three cases, so labelling the
groupings can be used as a means of justifying their extermination.
A different point is that madness is sometimes, and in certain circumstance, the sanest ‘strategy’. Yuval-Davis documents the case of Ihlas
Basam, a 38-year old Druze woman who was murdered by her younger
brother, a soldier in the Israeli army. Her ‘sin’ was to appear in western
style clothing, including a short skirt and with bleached hair and lipstick, while being interviewed on Israeli television. She was being interviewed because she had just completed an impressive fund raising
campaign for her Druze people while living in New York. One of Ihlas
sister’s had a nervous breakdown on hearing about the deadly deed, but
the rest of the family were reportedly ‘proud’ of the murderer (cited in
Yuval-Davis, 1997, p. 46). Which reaction is the ‘sanest’ here? Mary
Midgley also makes the point that private following of conscience can
easily be turned into mental illness (Midgley, 1996, p. 49).
Doesn’t the same point apply in the case of those whose doctrines are
rejected because they are ‘evil’? Don’t we give them less credence if we
show carefully and painstakingly, once again, that they are wrong?
Why Pluralism?
27
In order to illustrate this point, I would like to consider briefly the case of
fundamentalism. One set of ideas that is frequently juxtaposed with liberal
pluralism is fundamentalism. Fundamentalists, whether Christian, Islamic,
Hindu or Judaist are characterised in the following way: they advocate a
return to holy texts but they also call for these texts to be applied in social
or political life (see e.g. Halliday, 2002, p. 52). It is recognised that there are
differences, based on one or the other of these religious texts, for example,
both Christianity and Islam have centuries of political power, whereas this
is not the case for Judaism (ibid., p. 52). However, it is generally recognised
that ‘for all their apparent other worldliness’ (ibid., p. 55) each of them
aspires to ‘political and social power’ (ibid., p. 55).
Two types of explanation are commonly given for the success of fundamentalism: one is a religious explanation – fundamentalism is seen as
a return to holy texts, out of some fear of corruption within the tradition. A second type of explanation sees fundamentalism emerging as a
reaction to the failures of the modern, secular tradition, which is perceived as ‘corrupt, unable to solve social and economic problems and
often dictatorial’ (ibid., p. 58). Fundamentalism establishes a certainty; a
‘we’ in opposition to others, proffering a legitimate history, including
‘heroic acts, a morality of struggle and sacrifice’(ibid., p. 59).
Counterposed to fundamentalism, both by its detractors and by its
critics, is liberal pluralism. Halliday, for example, poses the alternative to
fundamentalism as the recognition of the ‘need’ and ‘right’ to a politics
of difference (ibid., p. 52). Fundamentalists themselves describe liberal
pluralism as ‘the enemy’.
In his Dimblebey Lecture, in December 2001, Bill Clinton posed the
future of the world in terms of a contrast between a fundamentalist ‘disdain’ for the other and a liberal pluralist tolerator of the difference of the
other. The former decries what the believer is not; the latter accepts the
otherness of the other, and extols each of us to tolerate our differences.
In the former case it is assumed that we should not begin to know the
other, since the other is characterised as ‘not Muslim’ ‘not Judaist’ and is
therefore seen as deserving of a life of at best non-recognition and at
worst (as in September 11) extermination.
In the case of the latter, it is assumed that we don’t need to attempt to
know the other, since his or her difference is taken for granted. There is
seen to be no obligation on any of us to think about his or her beliefs,
values and outlook.
Both perspectives assume the unknowability of the ‘other’. Each
effectively assumes scepticism about the ‘mind’ of the other in accordance with classical mind/body dualism. In a recent paper, Tannesini,
28 Revisiting Universalism
(Tannesini, 2001) reminds us of an alternative Wittegensteinean outlook,
that takes as its premise that we can know the other. There is a third way,
then, that lies somewhere between the extremes of fundamentalism and
liberal pluralism. This book will attempt to spell out that third way.
If we were to attempt to challenge the views of the ‘other’ rather than
accommodating or tolerating those views, or than castigating them as
unreasonable or deviant or mad, then we have a challenge to pluralism.
We would have to accept that there are some moral views that should not
be tolerated, not because they are unreasonable, but simply because they
are wrong. A parallel point arises in the following example. I was at a conference recently when we were discussing liberalism. A good liberal was
putting the pluralist point about the importance of tolerating a range of
moral viewpoints. Not tolerating difference and difference in respect of
moral outlook, he was arguing, has unacceptable consequences – it has
led to wars and to one set of values being imposed on another. He gave
an example: he said: ‘A friend of mine believes that homosexuality is
unnatural.’ This friend is a deeply religious Catholic. At that point I
became upset. I said later that I had once been in love with a woman,
and that this was in part, I thought, why I had become upset. In reality
I did not quite know what exactly had upset me. Perhaps, though,
I believed, this view of his friend should not have been tolerated.
Why not? It should not have been tolerated, I believe, for the same sorts
of reason as those outlined earlier about the classical liberal view of
women. It should not be tolerated because it supposes that one group of
human beings is unnatural. Homosexuality is deeply part of the identity
of many ‘out’ gay men and women, and to describe it as unnatural is to
describe them as unnatural. Similarly, one could argue, the views of
Nazis should not be tolerated not because they are unreasonable, but
because they are wrong. They are wrong partly because they involve
denying the humanity of certain groups of people – Jews, gypsies, black
people, Armenian people and whoever else individual Nazis might have
included into her or his categorisation.
Elsewhere I have tried to defend the view that there is a set of values
that represents a ‘true set’. I used the concept of an ‘emancipatory
value’ (Assiter, 1996, 2000). I meant by ‘emancipatory’ the following: a
value will be emancipatory if it contributes to removing oppressive
power relations. The most fundamental emancipatory values will be
those that ensure life.
It may be argued, however, that this claim is not uncontroversial.
One kind of argument is that of Rawls. Rawls argues that, however long
reasonable people spend discussing which values to accept they will
Why Pluralism?
29
never reach agreement. All moral views, he believes then, should be
upheld with a degree of caution. Anyone who upholds the kind of view
that I am advocating, for him, is illiberal in so far as she is not admitting
the possibility that she could be wrong. The believer in true moral
values, then, is characterised as a kind of fanatic. Since it is never possible to reach agreement on the set of fundamental moral values, anyone
who tries to persuade someone else of the rightness of their view will be
imposing it on the other, and that is, of course, illiberal and the wrong
thing to do.
This perspective of Rawls’ may assume a kind of pluralist but quasi
Kantian approach to moral questions. It suggests either that a principle
of what one ought to do can be accepted by a grouping without any
grounding in a view of human nature or that human nature is inherently variable. I think that Psiorias’ reply to Kant is important however.
This is the view that no principle should be accepted unless that principle is grounded in some view of why it is good for humans – a view of
human nature. I believe, furthermore, that it is possible to show that
some aspects of human nature are not variable.
I see no good reason, then, for supposing that arbitration between
moral viewpoints in the case of a set of ultimate values is impossible.
Making a knowledge claim requires that the person making the claim
should be credible and that she should be recognised as such (see
Fricker, 1999, for this idea). Knowledge claims that can be accepted as
true are more likely to be made in communities that are relatively free
from oppression, because in oppressive regimes, at least one persons’
credibility on at least one subject is thrown into question. Similarly,
true moral claims will be those that are made in communities that are
relatively non-oppressive. This view will be expanded in Chapter Seven.
In this chapter, I have distinguished three senses of pluralism, and
I have challenged the prevailing view that pluralism is an inevitable
result of the heterogeneity of humanity. I accept that it is perfectly possible for a practising Catholic, for example, to say to me that his views
on abortion remain unaltered by any of my arguments. I accept also that
a certain type of feminist might argue that her views, which are diametrically opposed to those of the Catholic (in certain cases, although there
will, of course, be Catholic feminists) are also unaltered by any of my
arguments. At this stage, however, I will make the point only that the
argument so far has been conducted at a different level of abstraction. I
have been concerned to examine and to challenge some of the arguments for the pluralist assumption. To the hypothetical protagonists
here, I would say only that I don’t think that it is inevitable that the two
30 Revisiting Universalism
must continue to disagree on the subject of abortion. My concern in the
book, however, will not primarily be with this subject. Rather, I will be
suggesting in the rest of the book that there are some core moral concepts that ought to be universally upheld.
References
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Assiter, A. (1996) Enlightened Women, Routledge, London.
Assiter, A. (2000) Feminist Epistemology and Value, Feminist Theory, November
Issue.
Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bauman, Z. (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge,
London.
Cahn, C. (1997) Towards a Typology of Violence against Roma in Central and Eastern
Europe, in Nationalism and Racism in the Liberal Order, collection of papers
from conference, J.E. Purkyne University, Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic, 1–6
July, 1997.
Calder, G. (1997) Liberalism without Universalism:Some Lessons from Rorty,
Nationalism and Racism in the Liberal Order, Conference Handbook for conference in Usti nad Laben, Czech Republic.
Descartes, R. (1972) Meditations and Discourse, trans. and edited by Anscombe, E.
and Geach, P. Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, Nelson’s University Paperbacks,
Norwich.
de Weitz, S. (1999) Reasonableness, Pluralism and Justice: A Pragmatic Approach,
paper presented in the conference volume. The Liberal Order: The Future for
Social Justice, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, pp. 84–94.
Dworkin, R. (1977) Taking Rights Seriously, Duckworth, London.
Epstein, D. (1999) Presentation to National Women’s Studies Conference,
Warwick.
Fanon,F. (1970) The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Foucault, M. (1965) Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason (abridged and trans. by Richard Howard) Pantheon, New York.
Fricker, M. (1999) Reason and Emotion, Radical Philosophy, 57 (Spring).
Graham, K. (1996) Coping with the Many Coloured Dome: Pluralism and Practical
Reason, in Archard, D. (ed.) Philosophy and Pluralism, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Halliday, F. (2002) Two Hours that Shook the World; September 11, 2001: Causes and
Consequences, Saqi Books, London.
Kymlica, W. (1995) MultiCultural Citizenship, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
McLennan, G. (1995) Pluralism, Oxford University Press, Buckingham.
Midgley, M. (1996) Utopias, Dolphins and Computers, Problems of Philosophical
Plumbing, Routledge, London.
Mill, J.S. (1978) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Moodley, K. and Adam, H. (2000) Race and Nation in Post-Apartheid South Africa,
Sociology, 48(3): 51–69.
Why Pluralism?
31
Nandy, A. (1983) The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism,
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Rawls, J. (1973) Theory of Justice, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Rawls, J. (1993) Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, New York.
Skillen, Anthony (1996) William James, ‘A Certain Blindness’ and an Uncertain
Pluralism in Archard, David (ed.) Philosophy and Pluralism, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, pp. 33–47.
Smith, A. (1991) National Identity, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Stoller, R. (1984) Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity,
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Tanesini, A. (2001) In Search of Community: Mouffe Wiffgenstein and Cavell, Radical
Philosophy, no. 110 (November–December) 12–20.
Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA and London, England.
Young, Iris Marion, (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton
University Press, New Jersey.
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) Gender and Nation, Sage, London.
2
Forms of Universalism and
Monism
I have offered a preliminary critique of pluralism. In later chapters I will
outline a universalist viewpoint in relation both to some moral values
and to certain epistemic questions. In this chapter I shall look at some
critiques of forms of universalism and monism. I shall anticipate my
own perspective to some extent in what follows. I shall also, in
this chapter, begin to differentiate the form of universalism I wish to
defend, by offering a critique of some of the work of one recent liberal
universalist.
Moral reasoning, on one familiar universalist perspective, that of the
early Rawls, consists in adopting an impartial and impersonal point of
view detached from any particular interests. Rawls’ outlook involves
abstracting from the particularities of feeling, situation, point of view,
interests, class position and status. Rawls’ subjects must therefore operate what has been described as a ‘thick’ veil of ignorance. Rawlsian subjects neither know what natural abilities and assets they possess, nor
does any one of them know anything about the moral perspectives that
each person would in fact adopt. In Rawls’ original position each person
is ‘disinterested and rational’ (Rawls, 1973).
Critics object that this outlook is untenable. Feminist critics, for
example, have suggested that the model of reasoning adopted is a
‘masculine’ one (see e.g. Benhabib, 1987); that it excludes bodily and
affective needs and therefore the family (Okin, 1989). Feminists argue,
further, that the impartial model of justice proposed by Rawls is connected to the model of public citizenship that is implicit in the early
modern political tradition that excludes ‘persons associated with the
body and feeling’ (Young, 1990, p. 97). Others write that the impartial
model of justice is anyway an implausible way of going about generating moral principles, since we cannot actually abstract away from the
32
Forms of Universalism and Monism 33
particularities of our situation in the way that is demanded by the
theory (see e.g. Taylor, 1990; MacIntyre, 1988; Sandel 1982; Benhabib,
1987). Early communitarian critics made the point that moral convictions are bound up with the sorts of people that we are, and we are
embedded in context, community and traditions.
Rawls’ liberal outlook is criticised for ‘abstracting’ from difference.
Some people (see e.g. Ramsey, 1997, p. 12) argue that doing this comes
from seeing human beings as isolated individuals rather than as social
beings. I will respond to this next.
One of the particularist critics of Rawls is Iris Marion Young (Young,
1990).
Some of the points she makes would apply not only to the arguments
of John Rawls, but also to the perspective I am developing. I shall begin
the chapter by examining some of her arguments against universalism.
1. Young
Young suggests that Rawls’ position and those that use similar arguments deploy ‘the logic of identity’. This logic encourages one, she
writes, to ‘think things together, to reduce them to unity’ (ibid., p. 98).
To give a rational account, on the universalising perspective, she argues,
is to deny or repress difference. Those who offer universalising accounts, in
her view, seek to generate stable categories and flee from the heterogeneity of experience. Young claims that the logic of identity necessarily
entails expelling some of the properties of a substance. Because it
engages in this repressing act, it always leaves a remainder. It therefore
‘must necessarily fail’ (ibid.).
A related point has been made by feminists about universalising early
liberal theory (e.g. by Pateman, 1988). These feminists argued that liberal theory necessarily excluded women. It has also been argued that
early 1970’s universalising feminists effectively made the same mistake
in implicitly excluding black and other ethnic minority women from its
universalising framework (see e.g. Mohanty, 1991, Anthias and YuvalDavis, 1983). Recent writers have suggested that any perspective that
generalises about ethnic or racialised groupings, based on cultural or
national identities, risks masking important distinctions between individuals, and significant cultural influences upon individuals and groups.
Gilroy, for example, adopts the metaphor of the ship in transit, to
describe crucial features of groupings uprooted from their nations of origin and transplanted and correspondingly influenced and partially
shaped by the location in which they find themselves (Gilroy, 1993).
34 Revisiting Universalism
There is undoubtedly an important truth in these accounts. However, I
do not believe that they preclude all forms of universalising.
Young argues that monological reasoning adopts a universal point of
view that is the same for all rational agents. It arrives at a ‘transcendental point of view from nowhere’ that abstracts from the body and from
feeling and emotion. It seeks to represent a point of view that any and
all rational subjects can adopt. She writes that this universalising reason
requires that participants are mutually disinterested individuals, who
are precluded from listening to others or from being influenced by
them.
Young argues that ‘universalising’ characteristics necessarily ‘leave
something’ out. If the universal characteristic is ‘reason’ then it leaves
out feeling. If the impartial self is viewed as disembodied then that, by
definition, is not referring to real embodied creatures. In other words,
the objection presumably is that it is impossible ever really to be genuinely impartial. Impartiality will always be proxy for some partial set of
characteristics that will involve prioritising a particular group of human
beings over others or in characterising people in a certain fashion that is
false of real human beings.
Young draws analogies, as many feminists have done, between
reason/male and feeling/female. If the universal characteristic is taken
to be reason, then the emotions are excluded and there is therefore
a risk of disregarding women. However, several have argued that the
dichotomy between reason and feeling is not as great as has sometimes
been assumed (see e.g. Assiter, 1996; Fricker, 1991). Indeed it has been
argued that the separation of reason and feeling is specific to Western
European cultures (see Parekh, 2000). It is certainly not logically impossible to develop a notion of reason that applies equally to men and
women, and that may be applicable to all human beings. Nor does such
a notion necessarily imply that feeling is excised from the domain of the
human. It is logically possible that impartial reasoning beings feel for
others as impartial reasoning beings, and treat them thus.
The approach that ‘abstracts’ from difference, according to Young,
must necessarily exclude someone, and must therefore fail. However,
why must the liberal Rawlsian, to take one familiar universalising perspective, necessarily exclude someone? Why could a Rawlsian not reply
that if it is true that someone has been excluded from the model of reasoning outlined, then that shows that the abstracting model has not
been properly outlined, and it should be developed to include those
excluded? Okin (1990), for one, has suggested abstracting differently in
Rawls’ framework so that it includes the family. Young (1990), argues,
Forms of Universalism and Monism 35
however, that a universalising perspective must necessarily exclude
someone, because of the logic of identity that it presupposes – every
concept has an opposite, and this opposite must necessarily be excluded
from the universalising outlook. Impartial reason, as I have written, generates a contrast between reason and feeling, and it therefore excludes
feeling and anything associated with feeling from its outlook.
Just because it is true, however, that every concept has an opposite, it
doesn’t follow that there can be no universal concepts or processes or
forms of reasoning. Characterising humans in a minimal sense and outlining what is true of them in this minimal sense does not mean that
they are only and exclusively that minimum. To say, for example, of all
tables that they are four legged (assuming, for the moment that this is
true) does not mean that this is all they are and does not exclude my garden table from being beautiful, white, of classic proportions and very
useful.
There are at least two different notions of universality wrapped up in
Young’s view. One is the following: a kind of thing might have characteristics in virtue of which it is categorised as that kind of thing. In this
sense it possesses the characteristics universally. Every instance of the
kind must possess the qualities or the thing in question will not be an
instance of the kind. Not only is universality possible in this sense, but it
must be allowed or categorisation would be impossible. As O’Neill has
put the point, ‘abstraction is a matter of bracketing but not of denying
predicates that are true of the matter under discussion. Abstraction in
this sense is theoretically and practically unavoidable, and often ethically
important’ (O’Neill, 1996, p. 40). Rawls’ outlook is universal in this
sense. Abstraction brackets off but does not deny a set of assumptions
about an issue; idealisation actually denies these truths. Idealised reasoners are not real individuals. When we abstract from differences, we are
not denying that human beings are actually different from one another.
Second, the notion of universality of which Young is critical might be
said to imply impartiality. Rawls’ original position might be supposed to
imply that no one takes anything that is particular to that person into
account when reasoning about justice. Both Young and Sandel (op.cit.)
object that this is an impossible thing to do. The self is always in some
fashion ‘encumbered’ and presuming that it is not yields an improbable
and attenuated conception of morality. As we have seen, I am certainly
of the view that the self is encumbered. However, I will later suggest that
some of these ‘encumbrances’ might be universal to all human beings.
Young distinguishes universality in the sense of impartiality – the
adoption of a general point of view that excludes particularity – from
36 Revisiting Universalism
the universality of moral commitment. The latter is encapsulated in the
idea that all persons are of equal moral worth. The ideal of reason as
impartiality, she argues, promotes a monologic notion of reason, a
notion of reason that has no particular desires or persons in view. She
argues, in contrast, that a moral point of view arises from the encounter
with others, from interacting with others. The justice as impartiality
framework is said to take for granted that individuals are self-interested
reasoners, taking their own interests as paramount (see also Ramsey,
op. cit. and others). Critics have objected to this picture of human
beings, arguing that it expels feeling, commitment to others and any
form of interaction with others from the view of the constraints that
operate on us as reasoners about justice.
However, it is not necessarily true even of a Rawlsian perspective that
it denies interaction with others. One interpretation of Young’s argument might be that Rawlsian universalism denies that there are any irreducible social goods, interests or values. There are only the interests and
values of individuals. Young’s response here would be that there are
social goods that cannot be analysed without remainder into individual
interests or goods. Taylor has made a similar point (see e.g. Taylor, 1995,
p. 188). The individualist about value can reply that all that she means
is that social goods are only valuable in so far as they promote some
individual good or value. Love for example is only valuable for the value
that it provides to the individuals who are said to be ‘in’ love.
Colin Bird (1999) has drawn a useful distinction in relation to this
point. He argues that one might distinguish ‘internal’ states of an individual from ‘external’ states of that person. Internal states are those that
subsist without any relation to any other individual. Being exhausted,
being miserable are examples of such states. External states, by contrast,
are possible individual states relating to something outside the person. He
offers the following as examples: being a friend, being famous and being
a citizen. Bird argues that a claim that is intrinsic to the liberal project –
the moral commitment to the equal worth of each individual – is actually
an external state of the individual. To enjoy equal consideration is to
stand in a particular relation to other members of one’s community. Built
in to Rawls’ basic assumption, here, Bird is arguing then, is a conception
of individuals as being part of a community. Young and other critics are
wrong, then, to assume that Rawls’ perspective assumes that people are
purely self-interested. On the contrary, the notion of equal moral respect
implies that the self takes others’ interests into account.
I do not myself wish to defend the Rawlsian form of universalism. My
own account, as I will argue in the next chapter, depends very much
Forms of Universalism and Monism 37
more than is the case with Rawls’ account, on the individual being part
of a social polity. However, I think that a follower of Rawls would be able
to defend his or her position against the above arguments deriving from
Iris Marion Young.
2. Parekh
In the next section of the chapter, I should like to look at the some of the
claims made by another recent critic of the Rawlsian universalising perspective. In his book Rethinking Multiculturalism, Parekh develops a
different argument against Rawls. He points out, what is now familiar,
that the early Rawls, the Rawls of ‘A Theory of Justice’, sought to ground
his theory of justice in a shared perspective on human nature, a notion
that Rawls now labels a comprehensive philosophical doctrine. In his
early work Rawls had proposed a set of principles that every ‘rational
man’ would want to follow, irrespective of his conception of the good
life. The just society, he had claimed, was stable, because the principles
of justice expressed in it expressed people’s moral nature. Rawls now
believes, however, that this Kantian conception of the person on which
he had relied is actually questionable and has been questioned by some.
Instead, therefore, of claiming that his theory relies upon a shared conception of human nature, Rawls now argues that his concern is to
provide a workable basis of social co-operation for liberal democratic
societies. He assumes, as Parekh points out, that the democratic public
culture is ‘neutral and capable of providing the foundation for a society
that supports a range of moral outlooks’ (Parekh, op. cit.). For Rawls, the
notion of the free and equal person and the idea of society as a system
of voluntary co-operation between such persons are central to the political culture of democratic societies. Rawls argues that people will continue to subscribe to such a polity because citizens possess a sense of
justice and the capacity to form and to revise a conception of the good
(Rawls, 1985, 1993).
Rawls, as we know, is very concerned to emphasise the fact that societies today uphold a variety of conceptions of the good. However,
Parekh points out, Rawls’ commitment to plurality does not extend to
conceptions of justice (Parekh, op. cit.). Parekh argues further that
although most democratic societies are committed to freedom and
equality, they are not necessarily committed to Rawls’ difference principle. Many fail to share Rawls’ view that all social and economic inequalities should be judged on the basis of what they do to the worst off.
Indeed the view that one’s undeserved natural talents should not be the
38 Revisiting Universalism
basis for reward is questionable and questioned by many. For Hindus,
Buddhists and others, these talents are the products of the agent’s meritorious deeds in his or her past life. The central claim that Parekh makes
against Rawls is that the latter is advancing an overall liberal conception
of human nature – that Rawls’ claim that his political liberalism does
not presuppose comprehensive liberalism is not in fact true. The two
powers that Rawls emphasises, Parekh argues, are distinctly liberal powers, and involve treating those who reject them with less than respect.
Parekh is making the important point that the principles upon which
Rawls relies presuppose comprehensive liberalism and treat those who
reject those liberal principles with less than respect. However, Parekh
must surely show more than this. He must also argue that these liberal
principles are actually wrong. To say that many reject them – that, for
example, Hindus do not accept them, is not sufficient, because the
Hindu might be wrong. If Parekh is simply proposing that there is no
such thing as human nature; that no political theory can be grounded in
anything more general, then that is one thing. We would have to be, on
this assumption, moral relativists, relativists about justice, relativists
about culture and relativists, presumably about everything. Yet Parekh
appears not to want to accept such a position. I should like to examine
some of his other arguments, in order to illustrate this point and to
point to some of the tensions in his thinking.
Parekh offers a defence of something he calls ‘pluralist universalism’
at the same time as criticising both what he calls ‘monism’ and ‘culturalism’. I’d like to begin with his critique of monism. He writes that
moral monism is the view that only one way of life is ‘fully human’,
true, or the best and that all others are defective in so far as they fall
short of that’ (ibid., p. 16). The moral monist, he argues, grounds her
morality in something that all human beings necessarily share. This
something is common human nature. This common human nature
defines a person’s humanity, whilst differences between human beings
shape their particularity. There are further assumptions, he suggests,
made by moral monists. Each of them assumes the moral and ontological primacy of similarities over differences; each claims that human
beings are basically the same in all times and places, and, furthermore,
the monist assumes the ‘total knowability of human nature’ (ibid.,
p. 17). Parekh takes Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Locke and Mill to be
moral monists.
There is a number of difficulties with this. First, each thinker is,
I think, more complex than the characterisation allows. Interestingly,
Aristotle, for example, is often read in contemporary political theory
Forms of Universalism and Monism 39
circles as a particularist and not as any kind of universalist about human
nature. Both Charles Taylor and Alistair MacIntyre, for example,
describe their particularist forms of communitarian thinking, which
seek to anchor ethical claims by appeal to particular practices and patterns of judgement in local communities, as Aristotelian (Taylor, 1990;
MacIntyre, 1988). The man of practical wisdom, for MacIntyre and
Taylor and for other recent communitarians and also for Gadamer
(Gadamer, 1975) lives a life of virtue, and this is not at all historically
invariant. Rather the ‘phronimos’ inhabits a particular period and a
localised place. Traditional readings of Aristotle, on the other hand, suggest that he is committed to an historically invariant account of proper
human functioning or of ‘the Good for “Man” ’.
Maybe one group is right about the actual Aristotle and the other is
wrong. On the other hand, the truth may be that he was neither, that
the contemporary categorisations involve reading into his thought the
presuppositions of a later epoch. I wish to use some of the universal
elements in Aristotle’s thinking in developing my own argument, but
I accept that there are particularist themes there as well. For example,
there is his claim that ‘in the end practical wisdom is concerned with the
ultimate particular, which is the object … of perception’ (cited in
O’Neill, 1996, p. 15. O’Neill refers to David Wiggins’ radical particularist
reading of Aristotle).
One point about Parekh’s argument then, is that it gives rather a stark
reading of at least one of the historical figures he cites. But there is a second reservation I have about this section of Parekh’s argument. This
occurs partly in his discussion of Locke. Parekh argues that Locke’s
British colonial justification of Indian colonialism shows the limitation
of universal theories of human nature (Parekh, 2000). Locke believed
that, since Indians did not enclose their land, but roamed freely over it,
the land was free, empty and wild and could be taken over without their
consent. Locke did not discuss with Indian people their view that their
gods and dead spirits inhabited it; that they had lived on it for generations. Indians, according to Locke, were unable to raise themselves to
the level of the ‘civilised part of mankind’ (Parekh, quoting Locke) and
colonialism was therefore justified. Locke was certainly wrong about
Indians. However, Parekh draws a general ‘critique of monism’ from
this. He argues that none of the thinkers he has mentioned was able to
realise his vision that there is one and only one way of leading the good
life. This is because (ibid., p. 47) the whole project is ‘philosophically
flawed’. Human beings are culturally embedded and a culture gives
meaning and structure to shared human capacities. Since, he writes,
40 Revisiting Universalism
‘cultures mediate and reconcile human nature in their own different
ways, no vision of the good life can be based on an abstract conception
of human nature alone’ (ibid.). Moral life, he argues, is necessarily
embedded in and cannot be isolated from the wider culture. ‘A way of
life cannot be judged good or bad without taking full account of the system of meaning, traditions, temperament and the moral and emotional
resources of the people involved’ (ibid.). Moral monism, he argues, runs
a constant danger of grossly misunderstanding other ways of life and
spells a hermeneutic disaster (ibid., p. 49). I believe that this view of
Parekh is held by a number of people (see e.g. Gilroy, 1993).
One response to Parekh’s critique of Locke, however, is that Locke got
the concept of human nature wrong and that he wrongly outlines the
form that moral monism should take. In this book, I will be suggesting
that there is indeed a common nature to human beings and that significant moral consequences flow from the view that there is such a nature.
I have argued earlier in the chapter that the notion of abstraction need
not be problematic.
I am surprised, though, given the vehemence of Parekh’s critique of
the notion in his first chapter, to find him endorsing a view very like my
own in a later chapter. Indeed, in this later chapter, he proposes a far
‘thicker’ conception of human nature than the one I have outlined. In
his chapter ‘Conceptualising Human Beings’, Parekh argues that there is
‘a body of moral values which deserve the respect of all human beings’
(ibid., p. 133). These include ‘recognition of human worth and dignity,
promotion of human well being or of fundamental human interests,
and equality, but this is only illustrative and does not exhaust the totality of possible universal moral values’ (ibid., p. 133). Equality is a value
that has been heavily criticised, both from within ‘western’ political theoretical writings as well as from within some of the eastern traditions.
Indeed, Parekh seems to contradict his own universalising impulse here
when he emphasises the value of equality, at the same time as encouraging respect for such culturally specific phenomena as the Hindu caste
system. I would ask Parekh to justify how it is that these particular
values are universalisable. On what basis should anyone accept that they
apply to all?
Parekh properly seeks to revise some of the purportedly ‘universal’
values of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in favour of cultural
groupings who are, in his view, discriminated against in that charter. So,
for example, he suggests that the claim of some East Asian leaders that
there is ‘a’ conception of the good life, which they have a duty to
enforce, actually respects universal human rights and human values, but
Forms of Universalism and Monism 41
relates and ‘prioritises them differently’. Such leaders wish to ‘ban
pornography, protect some of their deeply held moral and religious
beliefs and practices against irresponsible attacks and censor films and
literary works that incite communal hatred or mock and demean minority or majority communities’ (ibid., p. 138). I wonder, first, what conception of equality it is that allows leaders of this kind; how banning
pornography serves the universal rights of those who would like to use
it; and whose rights would be served by banning Lady Chatterley’s
Lover, Oz, Satanic Verses and so on. Parekh’s very favourable treatment
of the values of ‘East Asian leaders’ contrasts with his highly critical
account of the view ‘drawn from the ranks of Chinese and Vietnamese
leaders’ that society is more important than the individual and a strong
and powerful state (is) ‘the highest goal’ (ibid., p. 139).
Third, though, I think that Parekh only describes one form of monist
theory in his description of moral monists as deploying a ‘theory of a
common human nature’. There are other forms of monism.
3. Forms of monism
Monists believe that there is an overriding value or set of values. As
Parekh claims, Plato could be described a monist. He believed that there
was a summum bonum which he called the Form of the Good. This
form sets the standard against which particular claims to the good are
evaluated. Moral disagreements and moral confusions can be resolved
by reference to this form. The Form ‘exists’ in some ‘ideal’ realm that
most human beings only approximate to in their real lives. Thus moral
conflicts are to be resolved by reference to this.
There are two objections to the Platonic version of monism that I
would like to consider. The first is the following and it is raised by Kekes
(1993). As he puts it – it is the ‘familiar Kantian objection against all
transcendental metaphysical theories’ (ibid., p. 65). We have reason,
Kant had argued, according to Kekes, to believe only those factual claims
for which we can have evidence, and the only kind of evidence that is
acceptable must ultimately rest on observation. Observation, Kekes
writes, must be either by means of the unaided senses or by these aided
by scientific instruments.
This point of view, however, has been deeply and frequently contested
to the point where I had believed that it was simply discredited. (For
reference to some of these see Chapter 6.)
Kekes second objection to Platonic forms of monism is that if moral
disagreements have been contested over years and by many people, it is
42 Revisiting Universalism
unlikely that agreement will ever be found. Why should we assume, he
writes, that millions of people, who have tried hard to resolve their
moral disagreements, are all wrong? Why should we doubt the evidence
that has come from radically different societies, separated by vast historical, cultural, environmental and psychological differences?
I think, however, that Kekes is wrong to assume that, just because vast
numbers of people, over centuries and across cultures, have failed to
resolve their moral difference, it follows that these differences are incapable of resolution. It took hundreds of years, to the point where
Wittgenstein claimed that it was inconceivable, for anyone to land on
the moon. Scientists for many years have been trying to find a cure for
cancer. I’m sure that they would not bother to continue if they believed
that their lack of success hitherto means that it is impossible that they
will ever succeed in finding a cure.
A hundred years ago Marx hypothesised that there is a reason why
many people are ‘blinkered’ as he put it, by appearances and are therefore unable to see the truth. He argued that the explanation lay in the
structure of society itself (see Marx, 1968). In class societies, he argued,
one class, whether it does this deliberately or consciously or not, has an
interest in keeping the truth from other classes. Maybe Marx was wrong.
However, it is dogmatic to assume that just because millions of people
have not reached agreement over X it is therefore impossible ever to
reach agreement.
Another type of monist theory is a version of which Utilitarianism is
the most famous exemplar. According to this type of monism, values are
ranked and thereby compared by substituting for them equivalent units
of some medium. According to Benthamite Utilitarianism, the medium
is pleasure, and values can be ranked in terms of the extent to which,
and by how much, they realise that medium. The more pleasure a value
yields, on the view, the better it is. Thus values are compared by testing
to see how much pleasure each delivers (see Bentham, 1967).
One familiar difficulty with this, as Mill (see Mill, 1962) recognised, is
that pleasures may differ in quality as well as quantity. As Kekes puts it:
‘a small amount of pleasure of one kind may outweigh a great amount
of pleasure of another kind’ (Kekes, op. cit., p. 67). For example, the lover
of opera might get a great deal of pleasure from listening to a small
amount of opera and a great deal more so than that same person would
from watching a lot of baseball. We cannot simply calculate degrees of
pleasure, since pleasures are not equivalent.
Mill revised Bentham’s view and distinguished ‘higher’ and ‘lower’
pleasures. The pleasure gained from eating may be of a lower quality
Forms of Universalism and Monism 43
than the pleasure I gain from reading (or it may be the other way
round). However, Mill’s refining of Bentham’s theory removes its clear
advantage from the monist point of view. If pleasures are qualitatively
different from one another, it is much more difficult to use them as a
unit of measurement, in terms of which all other values can be ranked.
A third type of monist theory, then, recognises the subjectivity of the
medium in terms of which values are calibrated, but attempts to use the
notion of a standard against which values are measured. This third type
of theory takes the medium to be individual preferences. Morality is
seen as a bargaining game in which most individuals seek to realise most
of their preferences. One difficulty with this, however, pointed out,
again, by Kekes, is that an individual may have inconsistent preferences.
It may not be possible, therefore, to realise all or even most of that person’s preferences. Moreover, some preferences ought, on moral grounds,
not to be satisfied, because they are destructive or stupid or trivial. Even
coherent and considered preferences may continue to display all or any
of these negative qualities.
The preference theorist, Gauthier, argues that something is good
because it is preferred; it is good from the standpoint of the person for
whom it is preferred. However, Hitler no doubt had his felt preferences,
as did Stalin and as does each paedophile. Each one of us, indeed, who
may not be a Hitler or a Stalin, no doubt has immoral and non-moral
felt preferences. To say that they are good because they happen to
constitute a person’s felt preferences, is to make a nonsense of morality.
I do not propose to offer, in this book, a decision procedure which will
enable one to arbitrate between the protagonists in all possible moral
disagreements. However, I would like to argue that there is a set of values that is binding on all of us.
In this chapter thus far, I have considered a couple of particularist critiques of forms of universalism. I have also looked at a few variations on
monism. In the final section of the chapter, I should like to look at some
of the arguments of a recent liberal universalist thinker – Kymlica. I shall
begin, in this section, to anticipate my own universalist perspective.
4. Kymlica
In his book Liberalism, Community and Culture, Kymlica (1989) defends
liberal universalism against communitarian critics. I’d like to look at
four of the arguments he examines, specifically in his chapter on
Communitarianism. The four, all of which purport to be communitarian objections to liberal universalism, run as follows: (i) the liberal view
44 Revisiting Universalism
of the self is empty; (ii) the liberal Rawlsian self doesn’t correspond to
‘our’ self perception; (iii) the liberal self ignores ‘our’ embeddedness
in social practices; (iv) the liberal self fails to recognise the necessity
for social confirmation of ‘our’ individual judgements (see ibid., p. 47,
quotation marks are mine).
I will first consider the ‘emptiness’ argument. The communitarian,
Taylor, argues that the liberal view that one can question all the limits
of one’s social situation; that one can question all one’s roles, is selfdefeating. Taylor claims that the liberal view that freedom is a project in
itself; that we should have the freedom to form and revise our projects
is an empty notion. He argues that there has to be some project that is
worth pursuing; something that is fulfilling.
Kymlica objects, however, that no liberal has ever said that freedom is
the most valuable thing in the world. On the contrary, he claims, our
ends and our projects are the most valuable thing, for the liberal. The
liberal has argued, Kymlica claims, that freedom of choice is not pursued
for its own sake. Instead the liberal claims that freedom is a precondition
for engaging in projects and tasks that are worthwhile. Kymlica points
out that someone who is nothing but a free, rational being would have
no reason to choose one way of life over another. The position attributed to the liberal by some communitarians, then, is said by Kymlica to
be a misnomer.
In his critique of the empty self, the communitarian, Sandel (op. cit.)
had written that the self is not given prior to its ends. Rather these ends,
as we have seen earlier, are said to constitute the self. Kymlica splits this
communitarian argument in two. The first is the ‘self perception’ argument. The second is the notion that the self is ‘embedded’. According to
the first of these two arguments, on the classical liberal perspective, we
should be able to see through our particular ends to the unencumbered
self. But, the communitarian Sandel teaches, we don’t see ourselves in
this way. Kymlica argues, however, that what is central to the liberal
view is not that we can perceive a self as prior to its ends, but that we
understand ourselves as prior to our ends, in that no end is exempt from
possible re-examination. We can always question our present aims and
values. This claim I think is an important liberal one, and an important
corrective to some communitarian arguments.
On the second of these two arguments, Sandel, along with other communitarians, claims that practical reasoning is not about making judgements as to what is right or wrong, but it is about making discoveries
about who or what we are. Our aims are not just ‘affirmed’ (ibid., p. 55);
rather they define who we are. A Christian just finds out or interprets
Forms of Universalism and Monism 45
what it means to be Christian, but makes no judgements about that role.
Kymlica suggests, however, in response to Sandel, that what is important about liberalism is the possibility of radically revising one’s conception of the good life. If one simply ‘discovered’ the good life, it would
not be possible to revise ones ends.
Finally, Kymlica points out that communitarians argue that we need
considerable social confirmation of our individual judgements in order
for us to have any confidence in them. As isolated individuals it is
almost impossible for any of us to hold and act upon a set of beliefs. Of
this, he writes: ‘as sociologists we can agree that people’s lives might go
better if they had the moral confidence which comes when communal
practices and traditions are taken as “authoritative horizons” and critical reflection on them is discouraged’ (ibid., p. 63). However, he dismisses the ‘sociologist’s’ need for confidence as insignificant in the
following throwaway line: ‘The confidence we desire in our moral judgements is … essentially a by product’ (ibid., p. 63).
I should like to argue that Kymlica is both insufficiently liberal, in
some respects, and insufficiently communitarian in others. I should like
to focus particularly upon the first and the fourth of Kymlica’s arguments. I think that there is more to the notion of an ‘empty’ self than he
is prepared to allow.
Kymlica derides what he sees as the mythical liberal notion that the
self is a free chooser of ends. He properly dismisses the idea that arbitrarily and for no good reason at all, we should adopt the ‘quasi existential’ view that we wake up each morning and decide anew who to be. He
claims that no liberal has actually held such an absurd notion. I would
like to discuss this idea a little. I think that Kymlica may be insufficiently
liberal with regard to this argument.
In one sense, the idea of changing who we are each day, whether or
not it is an existentialist perspective, is no doubt pointless, confusing
(except for some young children who do exactly that in imagination all
the time) and, more importantly, it has no moral significance. However,
the Sartrean idea of the existential chooser of ends is not this pointless
person.
For Sartre, the self is distinct from any particular social role that it may
happen to assume. There are circumstances, contrary both to Kymlica,
who dismisses the notion as a fictional outlook that is not really liberal,
and to the communitarians who are sceptical about the idea, where we
might want to endorse this Sartrean self. If individuals want to be
authentic, to be what they want to be rather than what society/the
family/the workplace/the nation expects them to be, then they must
46 Revisiting Universalism
choose themselves – they must make themselves into the free and
creative beings that they could become. Sartre’s project assumes that
individuals are autonomous; that they can deliberate on their goals and
their projects.
Some of the most poignant cases of moral choice have derived from
the individual being almost wholly unencumbered, in so far as there is
no ‘tradition’, no community, no context from which they could take
their chosen moral stance. One such case is Antigone.
Antigone refused to follow the norms of the state, of the polis, of citizenship in Thebes. In Hegel’s discussion of Antigone in the Philosophy
of Right, women are excluded from political life; from ethical life, from
the public community. As the defenders of family interests, women
become the enemy of the public community. In the Phenomenology of
Spirit, Hegel constructs women as destined to give birth to children, to
look after them and to sort out the household. Women, he argues, never
make decisions or face choices … Hegel cannot therefore explain why
Antigone chooses to defy her uncle and bury her brother. Women’s
interests, according to Hegel, are identified with those of the family, and
women are destined, by nature, to express those interests. In the
Philosophy of Right, Hegel argues that women are destined to give
birth to children; effectively there is no split between their inclinations
and their choices. This is an extreme sense of being constitutively
attached to one’s ends, communitarian fashion. Men, on Hegel’s analysis, are necessarily constitutively attached to the polis, to the civic community and their duties as citizens flow from this attachment. Women,
by contrast, are necessarily attached to the family; and, within the
family, for Hegel, there is no scope for choice or for rational reflection
on conduct.
In fact, the right-wing communitarian, Ezioni’s (1995) view of communitarianism is very like Hegel’s view in the importance both attach to
education and to work for male citizens. For Hegel, work lies in the
sphere of civil society; work is central to the process of realising freedom
in the world. For Ezioni, too, the experience of work is a crucial component in the subjective experience of citizenship. For those who are
citizens, in fulfilling the formal requirements of a job, individuals gain a
social identity as universal members of society; as individuals who have
paid their debt to society and who are therefore able to fulfil their own
personal interests as free and responsible individuals. Women, for Hegel,
are unable to do this.
In this reading, then, the two ‘constitutive communities’ – the family
and the workplace – actually stand in opposition to one another, and it
Forms of Universalism and Monism 47
is not possible for them both to be ‘formative’ of a person’s identity and
value system. This, then, is a kind of liberal objection to the communitarian perspective.
Antigone, one might argue, was not literally unencumbered in pure
Sartrean fashion. She had a family and a position. However, she chose to
reject most of her encumbrances. This is just the point. None of her
encumbrances provided a basis for effective moral choice.
A Sartrean could give an entirely opposing reading of Antigone from
that of Hegel: rather than Antigone being immersed in a tradition and
being unable to exercise any choice, a Sartrean reading would suggest
that she, alone of the characters in the play, assumed responsibility for
herself: she did not remain, as her sister Ismene did, in her role of following her uncle’s dicta. She did not remain immersed in the encumbrances of her particular position.
Yet there are limitations to this approach. Antigone chose a course of
action knowing that death would be the consequence. Perhaps this is
the ultimate vindication of the Sartrean self: we can all choose to die. If
that is the chosen option then the self is genuinely and literally unencumbered. But in most situations, the self is not unencumbered.
Eichmann needed to eat. No doubt he needed a lot more. One option –
the Sartrean one – is to stand for what you believe to be right, and to
take the consequences. Antigone stood fast by what she believed to be
right. Antigone became powerless. Sartre, in Being and Nothingness,
argues that any situation can be transcended by an individual. ‘There is
no privileged situation. We mean by this that there is no situation in
which the given would crush beneath its weight the freedom which
constitutes it as such – and that conversely there is no situation in which
the for-itself would be more free than others’ (Sartre, 1956, p. 549).
Sartre’s is the sort of liberalism against which the communitarians and
others have set their faces. Others, for Sartre, are seen as potential
threats to individual autonomy and freedom. The self, essentially, is
constituted in the absence of any of the social roles and situations that
give it meaning. We have come full circle. The communitarians argued
that such a self, stripped of any special features, is incoherent. Kymlica
endorses this communitarian critique of Sartre. The case of Antigone
suggests, however, that the ‘empty’ self (in the sense of being empty of
the kinds of encumbrance provided by family, workplace, community
and so on) need not be incoherent. Rather its standpoint, cut-off from
the various social roles that give it most of its values, beliefs and
motives, may in certain circumstances be the only moral stance. If the
case of Antigone is anything to go by, however, the stance is both
48 Revisiting Universalism
morally praiseworthy and ultimately, for that individual, destructive of
all other aspects of his or her identity. To follow that ultimate moral
dictat is ultimately to face defeat for oneself.
Antigone and those like her may seem to be the most extreme possible
cases. However, if one considers the nature of, for example, many workplaces today, as Wright Mills (1956, 1959) pointed out in relation to
many bureaucracies, and Goffman (1983) argued with respect to asylums,
the values that govern acceptable behaviour often conflict with the interests of individuals. Those who choose to operate outside these constraints are making choices that are not far removed from those of
Antigone. Those, for example, in contemporary academic life, who
choose to opt for what is perceived by them to be the right thing to do,
rather than following the norms of the institutions, may not lose their
lives, but they might lose their means of life.
There are circumstances, I believe, then, where Kymlica is insufficiently liberal. But there is an important qualification. The ‘empty self’
may not be encumbered by the norms of nation, family, workplace, local
community and so on, but it is not literally empty, in the sense of being
totally unencumbered. Even the self that seeks to transcend these
encumbrances is not literally empty. Such a self – it could be the actual
Antigone, or the real Descartes – needs to eat, to drink, to be clothed and
to have some shelter, in order to be able to make any moral choices at all.
There are circumstances, moreover, when the absence of freedom has
meant that freedom as an end in itself has been ardently pursued. In
communist USSR or in Nazi Germany the simple freedom to consider
and evaluate a range of points of view was valuable, for its own sake. In
these circumstances, freedom was not, in Mill’s words, ‘our’ distinctive
endowment. For any political prisoner, the freedom to peruse different
books, to choose between foods, to decide whether to walk or not, is
literally valuable for its own sake because for that person, the absence of
freedom is literally his or her ‘distinctive endowment’.
This brings me to Kymlica’s fourth argument: what he calls the
‘sociological’ point. I believe that Kymlica seriously undervalues
the poignancy and the importance of the sociological dimension in
morality. Sociology should not simply be concerned with providing
descriptions of existing social structures, social formations and social
arrangements. Its function is also to evaluate a particular social framework. If the existing social arrangements in which someone finds
themselves – the particular ‘encumbrances’ that the individual is bound
by constrain criticism, render effective action very difficult, then
the presence of others, with shared ends and aims, becomes not only a
Forms of Universalism and Monism 49
question of individual ‘confidence’, but absolutely vital in successfully
implementing ones’ chosen ends. Kymlica believes that what is important is whether one’s ends are ‘rationally’ grounded, or simply caused.
This is no doubt true if we are, for example, Fellows of an Oxford
College, debating the rights and wrongs of abortion. In that context,
having rational grounds for one’s belief will help influence others to
share one’s end, and will help all, as Mill suggests, to arrive at a conclusion that is right.
However, let us transpose ourselves to other situations and ask
ourselves whether what matters is the rational justification of a belief, or
the extent of its support. Bauman has argued that two of the reasons for
the success of the Holocaust were: (a) the substitution of values like
duty, loyalty and efficiency – characterisation of modernity – for truly
moral values; and (b) the indifference and the apathy of most of the
German population at the time. In that context, one which has been
argued to be a consequence of the very ‘rationality’ of modernity, the
question of the sheer number of people prepared to stand up and defend
their beliefs is of far greater significance than the rationality of anyone’s
beliefs. Of course, as Kymlica would no doubt argue, the critics of
Nuremberg would need to be able to defend their views ‘rationally’.
However, in those circumstances what would have had far more impact
would have been the numbers of people prepared to stand together and
remove the blinkers from the eyes of so many Germans.
Now the other two arguments. No doubt it is true, as Kymlica affirms,
that ‘we’ don’t as a matter of fact look inside ourselves and ‘discover’ an
unencumbered self lurking there behind our various encumbrances
and ends. It is also absolutely vital, as Kymlica argues, that we don’t just
‘discover’ our ends and values by looking at our backgrounds, our
fathers’ influence on us, our work roles, our religious upbringing and
so on. But the position may be more complex than either the ‘communitarian’ or Kymlica’s liberalism, will allow. Some of our encumbrances
are indeed unnameable to alteration. But others are not.
I will be responding further to Kymlica, to the postmodernists and to
the communitarians throughout the book. The arguments of the book
can also be taken as a response to a challenge posed by O’Neill. O’Neill
(1996) argues that the common fate of particularist and universalists
in the contemporary world has been a loss of those metaphysical or
religious certainties on which the whole of ethics had been either
overtly or tacitly based in the pre-modern world. Neither theory in the
modern world, she suggests, is firmly anchored. There is, she suggests,
a crisis of foundations. She herself suggests replacing the grounding
50 Revisiting Universalism
in metaphysical certainties with an appeal to convincing practical
reasoning which will replace the metaphysical foundations.
As I wrote in the Introduction, I believe, however, that there is a kind
of metaphysical foundation that we might refer to, that replaces Plato’s
transcendent Good, or Aristotle’s ‘man of practical wisdom’.
In the following chapters I shall attempt to make sense of the idea that
it is not inconceivable in the early twenty-first century, for us – that is to
say, the whole of humanity – to be ethical monists about some issues.
Ethical pluralists like Rawls talk of the importance of there being a plurality of ‘conceptions of the good life’. A good life encompasses more
than ethical values. It includes all that goes to make the life worthwhile,
personally satisfying as well as morally good. I shall be concerned with
part of the particular subset of the values that go to make up the ‘good
life’ that is concerned with specifically moral values – values about how
to live in a way that is deserving of moral merit. Moral values are the values that motivate us to behave in ways that affect others. They are values
affecting the well-being of self and others that are humanly caused. They
also pertain to the way in which one sets out to live one’s life. In fact
I shall be concerned, in a fairly limited sense, with a subset of this set.
However, the particular subset is, I think, a very significant set of values.
The perspective I will develop does not assume that the common
characteristic of each of us is the person as an impartial reasoner. Just as
universal views about selves as impartial reasoners do not assume that
this is all they are, so too the notion of human beings as natural beings
makes out that they are more than merely this. Human beings as
natural beings are also beings with particular wants, preferences and
desires. There is, however, a parallel objection brought against this sort
of theory, that it either assumes too ‘thick’ a conception of human
nature and inserts characteristics that are actually specific only to some
people in its characterisation, or that it is so attenuated as not to tell us
anything about human beings at all that is useful for moral and political
theory. It might be said of such an approach that it tells us nothing
about moral and political theory. In the ensuing chapters, I propose to
attempt to argue that it does.
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Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge.
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3
Common Human Nature:
An Empty Concept?
Many have urged, as we have seen in the opening chapter, in the
contemporary world, that we must focus on our differences; that we
must beware of false generalisation, and that we must emphasise our
multicultural and plural nature (see e.g. Parekh, 2000; Rawls, 1973;
Kymlica, 1989; Fraser and Nicholson, 1990). If we do not do this, it is
argued, we run the risk of falsely generalising features of what happens
to be our own experience onto others who are radically different from
ourselves.
I believe, to the contrary, that in the present world of fast international travel for the wealthy, of the globalisation of western technology,
western products, western cultural and state forms and of migration of
social groupings, it is vital that we outline the common features of
humanity. It is imperative that we do so since, if we do not, we run the
risk of further isolating, ignoring and degrading certain cultural groupings who happen to be amongst the poorest in the world. We run the
risk of identifying and valuing those social and cultural groupings
whose representatives are able to express their identity and challenge
dominant ideals but of ignoring those who do not have such ‘leaders’.
Many people in recent years have pointed to the domination of male or
masculine ways of thinking in many fields and to the domination of
Eurocentric or western models of thinking. Most of those who have
expressed the view that we should not be deaf to other voices have
focussed on the need for plurality – in ethics, in culture, in conceptions
of the self and in social and political organisation. Heeding the voices of
others is, of course, absolutely vital. However, we can only heed those
whose voices are able to be heard. Recently, in political theory, the
voices of the Quebecois (Kymlica, ibid.) have been heard as have the
voices of ‘Asian leaders’, of Hindus, of the Amish (Parekh, ibid.) and
53
54 Revisiting Universalism
many more. (At least these groupings have been mentioned – whether
that is the same thing as really hearing them is a moot point.)
How do we know, however, when we have heard everyone? How can
we be sure that we have not missed out some grouping? Isn’t it possible
that the poorest of all are the least likely even to be mentioned? One
way of being sure that we have heard everyone is by attempting to specify features that are shared by all human beings. Of course we might get
these qualities wrong, and it is important that, as with the plural picture,
any attempt to specify the characteristics shared by all should be open
to constant revision. Such an outlook must be regularly challenged and
questioned and made more precise. I want to attempt, in this chapter, to
begin to characterise what it is that all human beings share not by developing a notion of the rational, autonomous self, but by spelling out
what it means to describe people as ‘natural beings’. I believe, furthermore, that the notion of the human being as a natural being is a considerably weightier notion than it is sometimes represented as being.
Norman Geras, for example, writes: ‘… (y)ou point out … that there
are certainly transhistorical human needs and capacities, you get the
reply: “Oh well, if that’s what you mean by human nature …” ’ (Geras,
1995, p. 109).
I would like, in other words, to attempt to develop what many pluralists have deemed impossible, and that is a ‘substantive conception of
human nature’ that is not culturally specific. I think, furthermore, contrary again to the impression gained from many pluralists, that it must
not only be possible, but rather it is imperative, that we attempt to consider certain kinds of ‘interest’ of the whole of humanity. Some of these
interests, however, may not have been consciously conceptualised. I do
not think, however, contrary to the impression created by the pluralist
critics of universalism in the first chapter, that we need consider all
moral imperatives as benefiting everyone in the same way. In a later
chapter I will argue, however, that we must consider certain moral
imperatives that ‘bind’, though not in a Kantian fashion, all of us.
My argument has some affinities with the work of those feminists who
have urged that we re-value embodiment and nature. Eco-feminists (see
Mies and Shiva, 1993; Mellor, 1997) have challenged the feminism of
those who seek to transcend nature and biology. For Simone de Beauvoir,
for example, the cultural world is created through the transcendence of
nature and biology. If women are to be free, she argued, they must escape
their embodiment. ‘The female, to a greater extent than the male, is the
prey of the species: and the human race has always sought to escape its
specific destiny’ (de Beauvoir, 1968, p. 90). The rejection of women’s
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 55
embodiment was key for Beauvoir; she castigated domestic work,
marriage and childbearing and sought to live, as Mary Evans has put it
‘like a childless, rather singular, employed man’ (Evans, 1985, p. 56).
Eco-feminists, by contrast, have sought to celebrate women’s bodies and
their mothering roles. For Collard and Contrucci, for instance, nature
must be reclaimed as sacred and valued for its own worth (Collard and
Contrucci, 1988). Adrienne Rich urged women to reclaim their bodies;
to ‘explore and understand (our) biological grounding’, to ‘think
through the body’ (Rich, 1976, pp. 284, 285). Others have followed this
theme (see Firestone, 1971; Daly, 1978).
Feminists in ‘the south’ have challenged the myth of development,
which, they argue, has led to significant underdevelopment in parts of
the world. Shiva (ibid.), for example, has campaigned worldwide for forest protection and for the recognition of the role of women in the
defence of local environments on which they depend for firewood, forage and water. For poor women in the South, all struggle is ecological
struggle, since their daily lives are inextricably bound up with the satisfaction of basic needs. Mies and Shiva (1993) paint a picture of a new
cosmology that recognises and values life in nature. Drawing on the
women of the Chipko movement, they strongly question cultural
relativism.
My argument has some affinities with this tradition of thinking.
Moreover, Marx’s writings are inspirational in a certain fashion for some
of what follows, but I do not specifically engage with Marx. Ted Benton
(1993) has offered a useful assessment of Marx on human nature.
In the first section of the chapter, I will consider four arguments
against the notion of a minimal human nature. In the second section, I
distinguish types of need claim, and attempt to make the notion more
precise. Finally, I put a general argument about need claims.
1. Human beings: are we empty?
I begin from the premise that all human beings share a set of basic, natural, material needs for food, water, clothing and shelter. These needs
are objectively present in all human beings.
This minimal claim has, however, been contested in a number of
ways. I will consider four such forms of contestation.
First of all there is the argument that there is no distinction between
needs and wants, since both are brought into being by the social
arrangements in which we find ourselves. One version of this argument
was proposed some time ago by Althusser, and I have argued against
56 Revisiting Universalism
him (Assiter, 1990) in another context. I set out Althusser’s argument as
follows: needs exist only as effective demand. Effective demand is either
individual or productive; productive consumption is directly dependent
upon the production process; individual consumption depends upon
the level of income available and on the nature of the products one can
buy; production takes place in relations, uses forces; forces and relations
occur only here. Hence, the existence of needs depends on production.
I then suggested that the terms used in this argument as it is set out by
Althusser refer only to the capitalist mode of production, but I argued
that more general expressions could be used that did not have this connotation. I also suggested that the relevant class of needs should be
restricted to needs for material or physical objects of some kind.
There is a parallel and more recent variation of this type of argument
that has been developed by Judith Butler. According to Butler, there is
no such category as the individuals’ ‘natural’ sex. Butler writes: ‘gender
ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of measuring on a pre-given sex (a juridical conception); gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are
established’ (Butler, 1990, p. 7). Gender is not the cultural elaboration of
a pre-given sex. Gender is sex, but it is simultaneously that which produces the false notion that sex is natural. Sex, then, for Butler, is a foundationalist myth. The interplay of nature and culture, for her, is really all
part of what it is to ‘act’ gender.
For Althusser, then, needs and effective demand are one and the same
thing. For Butler, in parallel fashion, sex and gender are equivalent entities.
However, both Althusser and Butler leave some things out of account.
There are some needs that a person might have, but if he or she cannot
afford to buy items to satisfy them these needs do not get expressed as
part of effective demand. Second, some individual might fail to recognise the existence of a need he or she might have – someone who is
starving might not be in a state to be aware of their needs. One could
say, in parallel fashion, to Butler: there are aspects of biological sex –
hormonal balances, for example, that may not be ‘enacted’ in a person’s
gender identity. A person may and no doubt does possess biologically
influenced qualities of which they are unaware and which may affect
their behaviours quite independently of those that derive from the psychic, social or cultural settings in which they find themselves.
One of the responses offered to the argument attributed to Althusser
here brings me to the second of the arguments that have been put
against the concept of objective human need. This is that the
assumption that there are objective needs is both metaphysical (and
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 57
hence, the supposition might be, unproveable) and paternalistic, in that it
involves someone else in outlining the nature of a person’s needs. Stephen
Lukes, for example has described the assumption of objective needs as
a ‘paternalist licence for tyranny’ (Lukes, 1976, quoted in Benton, 1982,
p. 8). In other words, the assumption that needs are different from
expressed preferences or wants allows for the manipulation of individual
wants in the interests of some powerful group or person. It is argued, by
liberals, that the assumption of non-expressed needs is incompatible with
individual liberty. I shall have more to say about this argument in a
moment.
Third, it is said that it is impossible to define needs. Kate Soper quotes
Aristotle with approval: ‘when life or existence are impossible … without
certain conditions, these conditions are “necessary” and this course is
itself a kind of necessity’ (Soper, 1981, p. 11). She says ‘rather than condemn the circularity of his definition, we should accept it as a salutary
reminder that in all attempts to argue for or against certain conditions
as needs … we are already involved in judgements about what constitutes “life” or “the good” for human beings’ (ibid.). She argues that
needs are always relative to ends; ends are necessarily value laden.
Therefore definition is impossible.
Fourth, and following on from this, it is argued that need claims are
normative (see Benn and Peters, 1959). Statements of need take the form:
‘A needs X in order to Y’. All necessities are conditional. If all need statements imply that a need is relative to a particular end, and ends vary enormously, then it is not possible to provide an objective definition of a need.
Ted Benton, for example, whilst he is sympathetic to the realist position,
continues to have reservations about it (Benton, 1984). He argues that, in
existing social arrangements, and deploying scientific practices that comply with those existing social arrangements, it is impossible to discover
whether or not there are any ‘real interests’ that underlie those that are
discoverable using felt preferences. He has reservations about research
that can do no more than reveal expressed preferences, claiming that such
research does not register unarticulated wants, potential aspirations
which might have been formed were it not for the persistent relationships
and practices that shape wants within that society. In other words, those
liberals who advocate freedom as a primary value in order to allow the
multiplicity of felt desires to flourish are assuming that autonomy consists
in the ability to express the wants one believes one has. But these beliefs
may be false or tainted or in conflict with one’s ‘true’ interests.
However, the difficulty of establishing what a need might be in certain
circumstances, should not detract from the claim that needs exist and are
58 Revisiting Universalism
objectively present. Someone who has to spend all day searching for water,
for example, has a need for water whatever their ‘felt preferences’. In nonindustrial societies, most problems revolve around access to clean water
(Asian and Pacific Women’s resource Collection network, 1989, quoted in
Mellor, 1997, p. 25). Someone who has been through a severe hurricane, a
war, a tornado and who has had his or her home destroyed needs shelter,
whatever their preferences. What sort of water they need and what sort
of home, should be for the person themselves to decide. Moreover, to say
that the needs in these cases are descriptions of ‘values’ is true only in
the sense that the description of any basic need involves reference to some
value. The values in question, however, are quite unlike those that have
been stressed in arguments about the irreducible plurality of value. In
the case of abortion, for example, or sati, or adherence to the Muslim faith,
there is clear room for disagreement about values. In the case of values that
underlie the expression of the kinds of basic human need outlined earlier,
the scope for disagreement is not there in the same way. This argument, as
I wrote previously, will be further spelt out later in the book.
Yet, Benton argues, it is difficult, without describing ‘real’ needs as the
needs individuals would express under conditions of genuine autonomy, to escape the tyranny argument. If the agent is allowed to have
non-expressed needs then someone other than this person has to determine which are the ‘objective’ needs of that individual. He concludes,
along with earlier critics, that statements of need are irreducibly value
dependent.
However, I reiterate the point made earlier. Merely because it may be difficult to establish what a need might look like in certain circumstance does
not detract from the point that needs exist and are objectively present.
In a different context, and making a different point (Benton, 1993)
Benton suggests a reading of Marx that allows for a ‘fully human’ practice of satisfaction of needs, that would have these needs met in a way
that is ‘aesthetically and cognitively’ satisfying (Benton, 1993, p. 49).
No doubt, it is preferable for many human beings to drink Perrier water
in the comfortable and aesthetically satisfying surroundings of a cafe.
However, this perspective could be argued to be a peculiarly western or
northern preoccupation. As Dankelman and Davidson write in the
Preface to their book: ‘It has not been possible, in this book, to convey
adequately the drudgery and the suffering so many Third World women
must face in their daily struggle to survive and care for their families.
Nor have we done justice to the extraordinary resilience and energy
these women display in impoverished and sometime dangerous
environments. Northern women, writing about life in the South, can do
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 59
little more than try to give some voice to the voiceless’ (Dankelman and
Davidson, 1988, prelims). Although the women in certain ‘southern’
societies bear more than their fair share of the burdens, the men too in
these societies are little preoccupied with the ‘cognitive and aesthetic’
dimensions of their need satisfaction. Simply satisfying the need itself,
for many, is of overriding significance. According to UN Development
Reports, one-third of humankind was living at subsistence or below subsistence level at the turn of the millenium. More than 1.2 billion people
lacked access to safe water (UN Development Report, 1999).
In a variation of Benton’s argument, Kate Soper (Soper, 2000) argues,
against Benton, that the specific ‘modes in which human beings gratify
the needs (for nourishment, sex and so on) cannot be understood without invoking those more spiritual needs of “self realisation” which
are said to be “in some sense” emergent or derivable from them’ (ibid.,
p. 23). She suggests that what distinguishes the specifically human
mode of gratification of needs are the aesthetic and symbolic dimensions themselves, and, she suggests, it is unlikely that a non-reductive
naturalism can respect these dimensions. I have no doubt that there is a
species-specific ‘aesthetic’ dimension to need satisfaction. Whether
there is an aesthetic and symbolic dimension to the satisfaction of
the needs of dolphins, for example, may turn on what is meant by
‘symbolic’ and whether non-language users can be said to deploy this
dimension in their experience. However, the symbolic and the aesthetic
dimension of the satisfaction of the need for water can only be exercised
when the individual is not desperately short of water. In so far as members of all natural species need water, in order to survive, the need is
common to them all. This is not to say, however, that all the natural and
basic needs of human beings are shared with animals. I would agree
with Soper, therefore, that there is probably a human species specific set
of natural needs. However, this does not imply that it is not possible to
provide an ‘objective’ definition of a need. I will now attempt to do this.
2. Categories of need
There are different categories of need claim. David Miller (1976) has
identified these as follows:
(a) Instrumental needs, for example, Fred needs a bow in order to play
the cello;
(b) Functional needs, for example, a tennis player needs a racquet;
(c) Intrinsic needs, a starving person needs food.
60 Revisiting Universalism
In the first case, the need is a means towards achieving an end. The
second type of need is where the need is a requirement of the carrying
out of a certain function. The third just appears to be the statement of a
need per se. Marx described ‘natural needs’ in such a way that they
appear to fall into the third category. They simply are needs of the
individual as a natural being. ‘ “Physically, he says, man lives only on
those products of nature whether they appear only in the form of food,
heating, clothes, a dwelling etc” ’ (Marx, 1973, p. 528). Brian Barry
(Barry, 1976) gives the example ‘A needs physical health’ as an example
of a need statement which is not elliptical. It could be spelt out as
‘A needs physical health in order to survive’ but the ‘in order to’ appears
to be redundant. A different way of putting this point is that survival is
a necessary condition of pursuing any ends a person might have (with
certain exceptions e.g. Antigone). Survival and basic physical and mental health could be argued to be necessary conditions of acting in any
way at all. The definition of a natural need, then, is that it is a need that
must be satisfied if the individual is to survive. A natural need is one that
must be satisfied if the person is to be able to do anything at all. Clearly
though, what counts as survival is culturally variable. I will return to this
point in a moment.
I should like briefly at this point to consider some of the claims made
by Gewirth (1994 and elsewhere) and a few of the responses that have
been made to his argument. Gewirth has argued along similar lines to
myself, but he makes the further claim that life is a necessary good, a
basic good. There are detractors of Gewirth, however, who have questioned this claim. For example Bernard Williams proposes a distinction
between projects to which a person is committed unconditionally and
those that he or she may be committed to only conditionally.
Unconditional projects are those that someone has and cannot carry out
unless he is alive. Conditional projects, by contrast, are those that we are
committed to only on condition that we stay alive. Taking the argument
a step further, Donald Regan (1999) has raised the further question: could
a person have only conditional projects? If such a person could have
only such projects, he suggests, then that person is not committed
to being alive. Life, for them, is not a ‘necessary good’. Those who live
in societies where people value honour over other ends might be said to
value life less than honour.
Regan offers the following example as illustration of the above point:
suppose somebody wants to commit suicide. Again this is not merely a
hypothetical case. Gilroy (1993) has pointed out that, for many black
slaves in turn of the century USA, death was preferable to continuation
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 61
in the kind of subjection to which they were used. Indeed, he writes
movingly of the slave mother – Margaret Garner – who ‘killed her
three year old daughter with a butcher’s knife and attempted to kill
(the) other children rather than let them be taken back into slavery …’
(op. cit.). For Palestinian, for Al Quaida or for Tamil suicide bombers,
also, death is preferable to the continuation in the sort of subjection
which they have experienced.
Regan suggests that the person who wishes to kill herself must value
her capacity to kill herself. But, he suggests, her being alive is a condition of her having a capacity to do anything at all. So being alive is a
necessary condition of something else that she values. He points out,
further, however, that, from ‘A values X’ and ‘Y is a necessary condition
of achieving X’ it does not follow that ‘A must value Y’ (Regan, 1999,
p. 50). In other words, it is possible for someone not to value life. The
above cases illustrate the abstract theoretical point. If Regan is right,
then, Gewirth’s claim that life is a necessary good does not seem to be
true. Regan’s argument, though, does not carry weight against the more
restricted claim that I am making here, which is, following Graham
(1996) that being alive is a condition of doing anything at all, whether
or not that life is valued. In this sense, the satisfaction of material needs
is ‘a constraint of precondition’. Their satisfaction is not just necessary
for a sense of independence or for exercising our two moral capacities
‘but for anything else at all’ (ibid., p. 143).
This might seem a glib and formal response to the condition of slavery or of the Tamil or of the Palestinian suicide bomber. I think that
these cases suggest that more needs to be said about this ‘constraint of
precondition’.
What exactly does this constraint of precondition mean? I suggested
above that those needs that must be satisfied are those that are required
for survival. However, it is not quite survival, per se, that determines any
kind of human well being (see Doyal and Gough, 1991, p. 56). Someone
who survives as nothing but a vegetable attached to a life support
machine is not in a position to do anything much at all. Such a person
is not in a position, indeed, to do anything at all. It is more than bare
survival, then, that is required in order for someone to function and to
have any goals.
Survival in the kind of subjection suffered by black slaves in the USA,
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or in the kind of subjection
experienced by certain Palestinians today is the kind of survival that has
not been seen to be worth having. Survival indeed, in conditions where
at any moment one’s home might vanish, as is the case with those living
62 Revisiting Universalism
in cardboard cities in the most developed countries in the world or in
Johannesburg or in Cape Town in the townships, or in many other parts
of Africa is not survival that is worth much.
These points suggest that it is not actually survival at all, but, as Doyal
and Gough argued some time ago, physical health that matters for
the person to be able to function. Following them, I’ll define physical
health as ‘freedom from disabling diseases’ (ibid.). A person’s physical
health needs are met, they suggest, if that person does not suffer from
one or more disabling diseases. The avoidance of serious diseases, therefore, becomes, for all of us, an overriding precondition for doing most
things. Doyal and Gough argue that a combination of traditional and
biomedical models can provide transcultural definitions of ‘freedom
from serious diseases’ and they offer cross-cultural data on morbidity
and mortality rates, in order to define what counts as a ‘serious disease’
at the time they were writing. The avoidance of serious diseases, conceptualised in biomedical terms, then, becomes the measure of physical
health. In other words, we have biomedical knowledge of what is necessary for physical health and causal evidence of the destructive effects of
frustrating these physical health needs.
The existence of survival and physical health needs can be verified by
causal explanations, by reference to biological theories, which demonstrate the effects of their non-satisfaction on the individual and on the
species. These needs are characteristically independent of individual
feelings and beliefs. Natural needs are determined in part by our biological constitutions. The amounts of food and water that each individual
requires for survival may again vary. A pregnant woman, for example,
may need more or different types of food from a woman her size and
weight who is not pregnant. A very tall person may need more than a
very short person and so on. Someone who is diabetic will need different foodstuffs from someone who is not. Yet none of this detracts from
the claim that whatever is needed for physical health is an objective
matter, determined in the way I have outlined.
In certain cultures, individuals may believe that they are able to determine what they need for physical health – many menstruating women
in the ‘developed’ world, for example, claim that they need Vitamin B6
in order to be able to function. In the absence of this kind of awareness,
women cannot know this. It is possible, indeed, that research on the
awareness of those women who do believe this about themselves would
demonstrate its beneficial effect. However, I would resist the conclusion
that this shows that individuals themselves are the best judges of what
they need.
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 63
What about the issue of slavery? Suppose a slave were treated perfectly
well, as far as his or her natural needs were concerned – imagine a slave
being given decent food, reasonable shelter and maintained in good
physical health. Is there not, if the person is owned by another, still a
significant dimension of that person’s humanity that is denied? That
person is denied freedom. Is this not crucial, as the liberals have urged,
to a person’s humanity?
I don’t question the view that freedom is important. It is important,
no doubt, for those kept in Rampton high security mental hospital in
the UK and for those in high security jails. It was particularly important
for those convicts, like the notorious Ned Kelly, who were either themselves sent to Australia from the UK in the nineteenth century, or who
were directly descended from such people. Many of those had committed minor crimes and were sent to jail to suffer in tiny cells in isolation
from one another. Freedom has also been argued to be significant for
schoolchildren aged seventeen who feel imprisoned by the school
regime. There are clearly differences of degree here.
Slavery in particular is important, because, as Gilroy has poignantly
suggested, it was a condition of modernity. The universal rational subject of the Enlightenment actually required an ‘other’ to do the kind of
labour that slaves undertook (Gilroy, op. cit.). Many of those slaves were
badly treated by their owners, simply because the slaves were seen as
subhuman – they were seen as pieces of property. Many African slaves
died en route to the west. Many more survived only a brief period of
time in the West Indies. Many more were very badly treated on the sugar
plantations. Some slave owners, however, treated their property well, as
they would have treated their homes, or their land. Many did not. This
will be a controversial claim to make, but those slaves who were well
treated in the sense of having their basic needs satisfied and not being
maltreated so that they became physically sick, were better off than
many today who are not slaves. A slave who is well treated is better off
than millions who are starving or who have no shelter today. The slave
who is well treated, it is arguable, has his or her humanity in a way that
some free people living in South Africa today or in many other parts of
the world do not. The free, usually black person living in South Africa
today has the right to go where he or she likes. He or she possesses the
classic liberal democratic right – the right to vote. But the vast majority
of the population of South Africa today have no proper shelter; no effective clothing; the threat of dying prematurely from AIDS and not
enough food to keep themselves in reasonable physical health. In Eritrea
today, most people have the right to go where they like. Yet, according
64 Revisiting Universalism
to aid agencies, 2.4 million people out of a population of 3.5 million do
not have enough to eat. In Malawi, too, this year, 2003, the rains have
failed, and the World Food Programme estimates that 35 per cent of that
population may be in need of food (WFP, 2003). As Conrad put it, in
‘Heart of Darkness’: ‘it takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger
properly. It’s really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one’s soul – than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true’
(Conrad, 2002, p. 47).
The earlier is not intended, as controversially it might be taken to be,
to be an argument in favour of slavery. The argument is that freedom, in
the basic and ‘negative’ sense (see Berlin, 1969) of ‘the absence of constraint’ is not a constituent part of the basic universal natural nature of
human beings.
Natural needs, then, will be needs that individuals have as natural
beings. These needs may take different forms depending upon the social
arrangements in which they are manifested, but the needs, nonetheless,
remain invariant. Marx wrote: ‘Hunger is hunger; but the hunger that is
satisfied by cooked meat eaten by knife and fork differs from hunger that
devours raw meat with the help of hands nails and teeth’ (Marx, 1973). It
appears that the presence of the knife and fork alters not just the mode of
satisfaction of the hunger but the hunger itself. However, both kinds of
hunger are nonetheless hunger. What remains constant is the need for
food. We can empirically discover what survival and health needs are from
facts about biological and physiological constituents in social contexts.
I suggest that basic needs fall into category (c). Most need statements
are elliptical, they are usually needs in order to do something else. In
many cases of need: for example, A needs B in order to do C, the ‘C’s’ are
open to evaluation. But in the case of basic needs, the ‘in order to’
appears to be redundant.
One feature of basic need statements then is that they are not elliptical. Furthermore criteria for basic needs are determinate. If a Rwandan
Tutsi is starving, he or she needs food. A basic need for food must be satisfied by food. Other needs, for example, the ‘need’ for music may be
satisfied in other ways. Another feature of claims about basic needs is
that criteria for basic needs are determinate. If someone is starving, they
need food. A basic need for food must be satisfied by food. Other needs,
however, are not so obviously determinate.
A basic need then could be defined as one which must be satisfied for
the maintenance of the physical health of the individual.
However, Kate Soper raises a further difficulty that relates to the points
I have made so far. She points out (Soper, 1993) that it is difficult to
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 65
conceptualise when a person’s need for clothing in order to keep warm
becomes a wish to wear a particular type of designer clothing. Exactly what
type of clothing constitutes the natural need as opposed to the felt preference? I accept that it is difficult to describe exactly in what this consists,
and it is clearly more difficult to conceptualise in what, precisely, ‘physical
health’ consists. However, it is possible, in relation to clothing, to say that
the clothing should be comfortable, warm (although not too warm) and
appropriate to the activity (in so far as the person’s survival is at stake). If
the person is going swimming, for example, it is not appropriate that they
should be dressed in long dresses and warm tights. Already, though, the
definition might be thought to be culturally specific. What right have I, it
may be said, to condemn Victorian standards of swimming dress, for
example? I accept here that if I specify with too great a degree of precision
in what this clothing consists, then I risk autocratically defining what is
appropriate for cultures other than my own. Clothing, at all, in any case
may not be thought to be necessary in very hot climates. I will define
‘body covering’ then as follows: what is necessary is some body covering
that is sufficient to keep the body at a reasonable temperature and that is
appropriate to the activity being undertaken. I doubt, in fact, that were
alternatives to have been made clearly available and were cultural
assumptions about the body not to have held sway, Victorian women
would have continued to have dressed as they in fact did, for swimming.
Fundamentally, though, if they were able to survive and to function with
the form of clothing they deployed, this is all that is necessary.
A further point made by Soper is that many individuals in fact wish to
engage in activities that are detrimental to their survival and their
health. She suggests that, since natural needs are not mere biological
urges, individuals actually have to have an instinct for life. She goes on
to argue that some might prefer to hypostatise that some individuals
should flourish and have their desires met as well as their needs, at the
expense of the needs of others. The alternative, she implies, might be a
sort of puritanism about desire.
However, survival and health needs are objectively determinable. It is
perfectly fine for some individuals to engage in activities that are detrimental to their health, so long as their natural needs are met to the
point where they are able to engage in these activities. I do not personally wish to present an account of the procedural conditions necessary
for the satisfaction of the needs of all, in so far as these procedural conditions assume scarcity and a redistribution of existing scarce resources.
Rather, in a later chapter, I will suggest a reconceptualisation of our
relationship to ‘our’ natural nature as a different way of looking at this
66 Revisiting Universalism
issue. This reconceptualisation, would, as Soper suggests, involve
rethinking desires and wants away from greater and greater consumption of ecologically scarce resources.
Natural needs could be said to be ‘real’, then, in so far as they exist
independently of any particular social interpretation of their mode of
satisfaction. They are independent, further, of any particular epistemology about their mode of manifestation. Biological science can be used to
make discoveries about them, and medical science will provide evidence
of the destructive effects of their non-satisfaction. But they exist independently of any of these discourses, and they relate to survival and
health. They are entities, therefore, in a ‘critical realist’ sense: they exist
and operate causally, quite independently of any theory about them or
about their modes of satisfaction. These facts about human beings are
universally important.
It might be suggested that some needs are basic to the human race as
a whole. Sex for procreation, in this sense, might be described as a basic
need. However, this leads to a number of difficulties. It could be argued
(this point was made to me in discussion by Allesandra Tannesini) that,
if I am interested in a universalism of a sort, I could obtain such a perspective by focussing, in a neo-Aristotelian fashion, upon human flourishing, rather than on the survival of individuals and the species. It
might be said to be wrong and heteronormative, for example, that I
make sex for reproduction a need, but not homosexual desire. This
could have the effect of normalising heterosexual desire and pathologising homosexual wants. An extreme consequence might be, then, that if
there were a choice between two forms of desire and two individuals,
and one was promoting the survival of the species but the other was not,
logic would dictate that the former should take priority over the latter.
I agree that logic, in such circumstances, would dictate the desire that
tended to promote the survival of the species. It may be, however, that
refusing to propagate better promotes species survival in certain circumstances than encouraging procreation. There need be no prioritising
therefore, of heterosexual over homosexual desire. But, I do not want to
deploy the neo-Aristotelian notion of ‘flourishing’. The latter notion is
better understood, in my view, as agent-specific (see e.g. Rasmussen,
1999). Each one of us flourishes in different ways, and there are features
that arise out of the individual’s particular talents, beliefs and circumstances that provide the conditions for each individual to flourish. It is
important to me, however, that I describe features of humanity that are
generic to all of us. The moral obligations I will outline in a later
chapter depend upon this.
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 67
A further difficulty that might arise, though, is that there may be
circumstances where individual health and the health and survival of the
species are at odds. In parallel fashion to objections to the Utilitarian perspective, might there not be circumstances where one had to sacrifice the
individual for the sake of the species? If five people can survive in a state
of relative health by killing one, would it not be right to kill the one?
Although the needs of the species are vital, and may, indeed, in a situation of relative scarce resources, be even more important than individual
needs, I shall not consider them in this book. This is because the needs in
which I am specifically interested are those the satisfaction of which constitute a precondition for acting in any way at all. The needs of the
species, whilst they are important, do not function in quite this fashion.
Might human beings cease to have basic needs? Might we cease, for
example, to need to eat? So long as human beings continue to need some
form of sustenance they have a basic need for this. Basic needs, then,
could not disappear altogether without human beings ceasing to be.
The existence of basic needs can be verified by causal explanations by
reference to biological theories which demonstrate the effects on survival
and physical health if they are not satisfied. Their existence, unlike that
of wants and desires, is not verified by reference to what people think or
feel, but rather by what is objectively required if survival is to be possible.
Their existence is not verified by what the person knows about themselves. Moreover, contrary to the liberal argument that it is easy to establish wants, but not needs, some wants may be unconscious and therefore
unexpressed. Needs, on the contrary, do not have to be consciously felt
in order to exist. Indeed, it may be ‘paternalist’ to identify another’s
wants, if those wants are based upon desires engendered by, for example,
exposure to a great deal of advertising by multinational companies.
Needs, on the contrary, are identified independently of what may be
artificially constructed felt preferences. (There is a view expressed by
Andrew Collier (1999) that some feeling – for example happiness, is
actually independent of one’s experience of it. He suggests that it is an
‘objective’ end, independent of anyone’s consciousness of it. However,
I remain unpersuaded by the claims he makes in support of this view.)
3. A development
Far from the existence of ‘objective’ non-expressed needs being incompatible with individual liberty, then, to the contrary, the satisfaction of
basic needs is a precondition of anyone being free to do anything at all.
The argument might be put in the following way: (i) All human beings
68 Revisiting Universalism
have basic needs which must be satisfied, if they are to act in any way
at all; (ii) These needs therefore ought to be satisfied, and this is a
universally valid ‘ought’. It is a basic principle of rationality, because
a contradiction ensues if (i) it is affirmed and (ii) denied. We might alternatively argue along the following lines: we will, as a matter of fact,
converge on certain universal claims, deriving from the fact of our common humanity: starvation is wrong; lack of shelter is wrong. As it
stands, this claim tells us nothing about what these basic needs are nor
does it tell us anything about the social conditions necessary for their
satisfaction.
Even so, there are three ways in which these kinds of argument might
be criticised, and I shall mention each. First, it could be argued that this
basic moral claim is too broad, in that it covers other animals as well.
Second, it might be said that it is too narrow, in that it tells us very little
about any one human being. And finally, it will be said that the claim is
not really universal, but, as with the liberal argument, it purports to be
universal when in fact it only refers to a limited group of people. I shall
attempt briefly to respond to each of these critical points in turn.
First of all I’ll consider the argument that the claim is too broad
because it encompasses other animals. In a provocative recent article,
Mary Midgley asks: Is a Dolphin a Person? The question, she points out,
actually came up during the trial of two people, who, in May 1977, set
free two bottle-nosed dolphins used for experimental purposes by the
University of Hawaii’s Institute for Marine Biology (Midgley, 1996).
If the possession of Cartesian rationality in the deductive sense were
necessary for being a person, then the dolphin is clearly not a person.
But, there are people – young children and people with certain kinds of
special needs who may not possess minimal Cartesian rationality nor
indeed they may possess the more extended type of Cartesian rationality. It seems then that the possession of Cartesian rationality is neither
necessary nor is it sufficient for being a person.
The question how human beings are distinguished from animals is a
very large one, which I shall not go into here. An important point for
the argument though is that if we are to ensure the satisfaction of the
basic needs of future generations, then we may need to think more
broadly than in terms of satisfying the needs of human beings. In order
to satisfy the basic moral claim, we may need to include the needs of
other animals and indeed those of the environment. A contemporary
of Descartes’, a woman philosopher, is much more sympathetic than
is Descartes, to non-human animals. Anne Conway, writing in the
seventeenth century, suggests: ‘There are only three species of thing
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 69
“God, Christ and the Creatures” … there is no fourth kind of being.
Beings are not to be multiplied without necessity. Let us take an Horse,
which is a Creature induced with divers degrees of perfection by his
Creator, as not only strength of Body, but (as I may so say) a certain
kind of knowledge, and love, fear, courage, memory and divers other
qualities which are also in man: which also we may observe in a Dog …’
(Conway, 1996). In a certain sense then, the argument does apply to
non-human animals as well as humans.
Recently, like Conway, a number of ecologically inclined thinkers have
stressed the continuities between human and other animals. Benton, for
example, and Collier (op. cit.) argue for the intrinsic worth of all entities.
Even rocks, Collier claims, ‘have value’. Following Augustine and Spinoza,
he suggests that beings have value simply in virtue of their being.
One feature that distinguishes humans from other animals, though,
and most certainly from rocks is that human beings are able to recognise
themselves as having the aforementioned nature, and of recognising the
obligations that flow from that nature. Some of these obligations,
indeed, will be obligations to other animals. I will expand on this point
in a later chapter. Whilst therefore, I accept that there may be a distinction of degree rather than kind between non-human animals and members of the human species, there is, for the purposes of my argument
later on, one crucial feature of human beings that is probably different
from all other animals. This is that humans can, as I have written, reflect
upon the fact of their nature and of the possible obligations towards
each other that flow from this ability.
On the second counter argument: that referring to a common human
nature is not saying very much, I would briefly say the following: the
reference to a common humanity and to common human needs is a
very basic claim. However, to reiterate some of the points already made,
but in a different way: today some 800 million people are starving across
the globe; and, each day, some 34,000 children die for want of food and
medical care. (Some of these children are in one of the world’s richest
countries: the USA.) In the UK today, two million children are being
brought up in such poverty that they lack at least two basic necessities.
In 1999, 24 per cent of households in the UK were living in such circumstances. Four million people cannot afford fruit and vegetables or
two meals a day; 6.5 million go without clothing such as a warm waterproof coat. (Source: Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain, Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.) Indeed, and equally significantly, the standard
deviation of rich and poor is increasing. Since 1980, there has been a
dramatic surge in growth in some fifteen countries, bringing rapidly
70 Revisiting Universalism
rising incomes to many of their 1.5 billion people. Over much of this
period, however, economic decline or stagnation has affected over
100 countries, reducing the incomes of 1.6 billion people. In the mid1990s 1.3 billion people, amounting to 33 per cent of the world’s
population, lived on less than 1 US dollar per day (a definition of
extreme poverty) (UN Development Report, 1999). This, therefore,
underscores the importance of the basic universal moral claim.
The third objection denies that there is any universal human nature
or that there are any universal values at all. Several writers, as we have
seen in the previous chapters, have argued that ethical beliefs are necessarily plural. This plurality is said to reflect the diversity of humanity.
For some people, ethics has historically been the product of whichever
group has monopolised political right: for example, Greek male citizens
or the liberal male white individual. Some of their needs and desires are
then identified with rationally grounded principles and are thus converted into rights and duties. For others, there is simply a plurality of
values, and it is not possible to talk of a human nature, or any universally applicable values.
This plurality argument, as we have seen in the opening chapter, has
been expressed in many different ways, and it has been enormously
influential recently. The assertion of difference has become, for many,
the principle dynamic of contemporary society. New social movements:
environmental movements, gay and lesbian, black, disability groupings
assert a politics of difference that challenges universalising voices.
One might ask, however, is the ‘cultural imaginary’ necessarily or only
contingently plural? Are values plural only in today’s postmodern
world, or is pluralism a characteristic of all possible worlds? Is the universalising voice ruled out a priori, or is it only culturally inappropriate
in the world of today? It surely cannot be ruled out as either necessarily
impossible or as a priori impossible, because that would be a move analogous to the view being rejected: it would involve ruling out one possible, coherent and widely accepted view of the world as impossible or
incoherent. If it is then only contingently ruled out, then that opens up
the possibility that it might re-emerge, as an important worldview.
Might it not re-emerge in a possible non-racist, non-sexist Mars?
It is only possible to articulate the position that reality is irreducibly
plural or dual, from a perspective that allows conversations between the
outlooks. If it allows conversations, then does it not allow commonalities? I can only recognise that a nineteenth-century American history
written from the perspective of white women, or of black slaves, differs
from one written by an American white male, who excluded the former
Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept? 71
from seats of learning, on condition that I, a white, professional woman,
can converse with descendants of black slavery, as well as with descendants of American colonisers. Recognition of plural voices, surely
strengthens the notion of a common humanity, with a common voice.
The cultural theorist, Paul Gilroy, asks us to rethink Hegel’s master/slave
relation, in favour of the position of the slave (Gilroy, 1993). In Hegel’s version of the master/slave dialectic, the master achieves self-consciousness
through the suppression of the slave. Against Descartes, Hegel recognised
the need for an ‘other’ if a subject is to gain consciousness of itself as a selfreflective rational self. But he reinforced the role of the slave. Gilroy
reverses this role, and suggests that, for the slave, death is in act (and was
chosen by several black slaves in the USA) preferable to subordination. For
such people, of course, the argument about needs is inapplicable. But for
whom is death preferable? For those who no longer live? As a symbol to
others that they too can resist slavery in this way? But death is a tragic and
drastic solution for these others. As a symbol for the emancipation of
slaves, no doubt it is valuable, but is it not again the perspective of the
universalising voice (purged of its explicit non-recognition of Cartesian
others) that allows us to see ‘death’ as a symbol of emancipation? Is it not
the perspective of universal humanity that produces this recognition?
I shall be elaborating on some of the claims that have been put rather
baldly here in the next chapter.
Before I conclude this chapter, I should like to respond to some criticisms of the notion of a common human nature that have been made by
Bikhu Parekh. Parekh (2000) argues that the moral monist who upholds
the idea of a common human nature believes the following: (i) that similarities take moral and ontological primacy over differences; (ii) that
differences between individuals are ultimately inconsequential and that
all human beings are human in exactly the same way; and (iii) the moral
monist assumes the total knowability of human nature. I would like to
comment here on the first two points. First, the upholder of the notion
that there is a common human nature that is shared by all need not
believe that this nature is morally and ontologically primary in all circumstances. In the next chapter, I will point out what, in my view, are
some of the significant moral consequences of taking seriously the idea
that human beings share a common human nature. I will not claim,
however, that every moral dilemma can be resolved by reference to this
notion, nor does it follow that the upholder of the notion must believe
this. I will argue for moral monism in certain circumstances. Second,
whilst I have argued, and will continue to do so, that the notion of a
common human nature is a very important concept, it does not follow at
72 Revisiting Universalism
all that differences are ultimately inconsequential. In certain respects,
every person is human in the same way, but there are other respects in
which individuals and groupings are very different from one another,
and respecting some of these differences is vital in certain circumstances.
I am arguing, then, as Descartes claimed in the seventeenth century, that
there must be scope today for the universalising voice, based partially on
the recognition of a common humanity. There must also be a place for the
voices of particular groups: women, black Africans, indeed university staff,
refugees and many more. Moreover, some of the designators of these
groupings belong to them by necessity. It is much more difficult for me to
change my race or my sex than it is for me to change my designation as
member of the staff of the University of the West of England. There will be
some practical and moral consequences that follow from this.
The difference between descriptions being only contingently true of
me and therefore amenable to alteration, versus those that are more necessarily true of me is played on by Woody Allen in his film Bananas, in
which the hero, played by Allen, bemoans the fact that he’d dropped
out of college. ‘What would you have been if you’d finished school?’ he
is asked. ‘I don’t know’ sighs Allen ‘I was in the black studies programme. By now I could have been black.’
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4
Moral Obligations Arising from
Needs
Recent announcements regarding the end of history have been
much exaggerated. History is not only continuing, it is also proliferating: the recovery of histories and local traditions is
proceeding in such a way and to such an extent that a disconcerting range of possible futures – some comforting, others
distressing – is becoming apparent
(Docherty, 1993)
I would like to outline, in this chapter, a set of presuppositions necessary
for avoiding one of these distressing possible futures.
Michael Sandel has made the following point: ‘Where, for Hume, we
need justice because we do not love each other well enough, for Rawls
we need justice because we cannot know each other well enough for
even love to serve alone’ (Sandel, 1989, p. 167). I’d like to see how far we
can get with love and knowledge.
For Rousseau, love and justice are antagonistic virtues. Family members, in the ‘natural’ sphere love one another; justice operates in the
civic domain, where abstract individuals confront one another with
their individual desires, motives and beliefs. For Rousseau, love does not
operate in the ‘public’ domain. Love, I hope, might operate in a broader
domain than Rousseau allows.
In the previous chapter, I have defended a conception of the human
being as a natural being. I would like to go further, here, and suggest that
my recognition of you as a needy being creates moral obligations on someone towards you. If you wish to dispense altogether with the concept of
moral obligation, then you may wish to eliminate it here. However, for
those who believe in the concept of moral responsibility, I want to argue
that there are responsibilities in this context. In this chapter I will spell out
what I mean by this and consider some objections to the idea.
74
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 75
There are those who would concur that there are values deriving from
our natural natures, but for some, this is a ‘truism’ (see Kekes, p. 40).
Kekes, for example, believes that there are ‘primary’ values deriving
from natural needs, such as not being ‘tortured, maimed or deprived
of our legitimate livelihood’ but, he writes, ‘we cannot go very far’
with these (ibid.). I will suggest that the values that derive from needs
are certainly not ‘truisms’.
1. The self
There is a view of the self that stems from the premise that neither I nor
anyone else can be a self with needs, desires, beliefs and so on, unless
there is also another. Many people (e.g. George Herbert Mead, 1934;
Lacan, 1977; Taylor, 1991) have drawn on Hegel’s view, expressed in the
Master–Slave chapter of his Phenomenology of Mind (Hegel, 1977), that
each of us becomes aware of ourselves as a self, through acting upon
the world in order to satisfy our desires. As we act on things because
we want them, we become aware of ourselves as distinct from those
objects. Hegel argues that we cannot be fully aware of ourselves as selves
unless we are aware of other selves. He writes: ‘Self-consciousness
exists in and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for
another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being recognised’
(ibid., p. 229).
Hegel suggests that we all aim to be recognised by others; wanting to
be noticed by others is a trait we all possess. Sometimes, indeed, we identify with another and we risk the prospect of our own identity being out
of our control. Famously, Hegel suggests that the struggle between the
two of us can become a life and death struggle, for, if my identity lies in
you, then I may wish to set out to destroy you. In order to prove myself
as a free being; I must risk the ultimate sacrifice.
One subsequent reading of Hegel is that of Taylor. Taylor draws on
Hegel, suggesting that authentic recognition by me of others implies
that I morally owe them a right to their own life projects (Taylor, 1991).
One question is: on what grounds are others owed this right? How do we
differentiate between worthy and not so worthy life projects?
Yet Taylor’s insight is important. If I am unable to do anything at all
unless my basic needs are satisfied and if you are like me in that respect,
then, in order for me to gain a sense of myself as a being with needs and
life projects, I need to recognise the same in you. This gives me a moral
obligation to you – to ‘the other’. Although it strictly creates an instrumental relation to ‘the other’, the relation is also by definition an
empathic one. My taking myself as another – my seeing myself through
76 Revisiting Universalism
the eyes of the other – is an empathic relation; it is one where I am
intrinsically related to others. But this process need not involve authentically identifying with everything about the other. Rather it is sufficient
that I recognise what is crucial to the other’s survival and what enables
him or her to act at all. It is questionable to what extent I am really capable of feeling the way the other feels; yet I am able to recognise him or
her as a being with needs just like mine and as requiring that those
needs are satisfied in just the way that my own must be satisfied. In this
sense, I cannot abandon the demands of empathy without abandoning
myself and my own needs. I am, as Heidegger put it: ‘always already
with others’ (Heidegger, 1927).
Having a conscience and an empathic relationship to others is
implicit in my selfhood. The needs I recognise that the other has must
be satisfied just as my own needs must be. As Mensch has put it: ‘to
know myself objectively I need an external standpoint – that of the
other. To take up the other’s standpoint, however, requires the empathy
that exposes me to this person’s needs. Thus the standpoint that opens
me up to the other also divides me. It makes me present to myself as two
sets of needs springing from my own and the other’s embodied being’
(Mensch, 2001, p. 139). Mensch writes that the question ‘why be ethical?’ is answered by saying that our selfhood is at stake. Levinas goes one
step further and argues that the terms of the relation – between self and
other – are established through the relation itself (Levinas, 1979).
2. Needs and obligations
The above argument, then, could be put in the following way: in order
for me to be a self with needs that must be satisfied, I need an ‘other’.
But this creates a moral obligation on me to ensure that the needs of the
other are satisfied.
There are, however, a number of problems with the argument as
expressed so far. First of all it may be objected that it is logically possible
that I could satisfy my needs entirely alone, and therefore, although
I might not be a full, self-aware self, I could still have minimal agency.
However, even as a minimal ‘natural being’ each of us is also a human
being. As human beings we depend, in all sorts of respects, upon
others – for company, for friendship, for support, for love and so on. A
solitary natural being, without the basic constituent of most liberal theories of morality – the notion of equal respect for persons – would have
no reason for satisfying his or her needs. Such a person, without this
idea, would have no particular reason to respect herself, and therefore
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 77
no reason to satisfy her needs. In other words, the notion of a being
with needs that must be satisfied if one is to do anything at all, presupposes the idea of respecting oneself sufficiently to be motivated to feed
oneself.
This idea of equal respect presupposes a relation of reciprocity with
others – it is an external state of the individual – a state which refers to
the relation between that individual and another person. Even the solitary individual, then, has characteristics that depend upon his being
part of a collectivity. In Kantian fashion, that individual still has duties
to herself. Kant would argue not only that the Crusoe figure has a strong
desire to preserve himself; rather he is morally bound to do so. Kant’s
insight here is that the duty of respect to the person – to oneself – is
already a relational duty. The individual, in one respect, is bound to herself. In other words, even the solitary individual has some relational
characteristics. In a sense, then, even the solitary individual is bound to
others. Several narratives – Robinson Crusoe itself, and the film
Castaway, starring Tom Hanks,depend upon this idea. In the film, the
central character creates a fantasy other out of a football, that sustains
him. He comes to ‘love’ this other, and sees it as a being with needs.
In fact and in most circumstances, the individual is part of a polity;
she lives in a world of others who share similar needs. Effectively, then,
the solitary individual must be the exception, because individuals actually depend upon others for their sense of self. Indeed, each one of us
depends, in fact, upon more than one possible other for our sense of
self-identity. Thus, although it is possible to argue that a person’s sense
of self depends upon only one other, such a self would be denuded and
impoverished. Recognition by only one possible other would lead to a
limited sense of self. Although it is possible, therefore, in exceptional circumstances, for the individual to survive alone, or with only one other,
such an individual in most circumstances depends upon several others.
There are therefore two kinds of relation that obtain between myself
and every other person: first, I stand in a relation of likeness to every
other person; and second, at least one of these others is required in order
for me to establish my selfhood.
Even if this point is conceded, the point will still, no doubt, be made
that I cannot possibly have obligations to all others. My selfhood cannot
be dependent upon all possible others. How can I assume responsibility
for the satisfaction of the needs of all possible persons? Don’t I have
greater obligations to some rather than others?
I cannot differentiate between these various others, however, without
discriminating against someone. To set up relations of obligation to
78 Revisiting Universalism
some and not to others, is immediately to suggest that there is some
factor other than their humanity that obligates me to some people
rather than to others. This is inherently and profoundly discriminatory.
On what ground might I claim that the needs of my son are of greater
significance than those of someone who is starving in Zimbabwe?
I might, of course, claim greater obligations of some kind towards him.
But this is different from claiming that his needs count for more than
those of anyone else. Might I claim a difference on the ground that
I have never met the latter and the former is very dear to me? Why does
this provide a ground for not satisfying the needs of the stranger? No
moral theory would suggest that I treat my son as an end-in-himself but
I do not have the same duty to the stranger.
Failing to recognise a person’s material, embodied nature is an
extreme form of discrimination against him or her. The denial of a person’s humanity is a form of oppression that effectively denies them
agency. In so far as anything is regarded as morally wrong then it is
surely this. If it is morally wrong to deny someone agency then it follows that I have an obligation to ensure that your agency is not denied,
by ensuring that your needs are satisfied.
This extreme form of discrimination, though, is effectively the form
practised, although not in these words, by liberals in the eighteenth century, who modelled the ideal of a human being on the white educated
male person (see Pateman, 1989). It is effectively also, the form practised
by those who exclude anyone or any group from being allowed the
rights that accrue to those who are accorded the status of human being.
If Mohammed suffers from a disability that prevents him from seeking
food, the notion of his sharing the same basic nature as me obliges
someone to ensure that his needs are satisfied. The assumption that each
individual is alike in respect of the possession of basic needs creates
relations of obligation and dependence between individuals.
As Sartre argued, each of us takes charge of our lives by accepting
responsibility for our actions, in so far as they affect us and others.
But the objector might continue: how is it possible for me to have an
obligation towards someone with whom I have no relations whatsoever?
It may be said that two conditions are necessary in order for me to be in a
position to have obligations towards another: one is that I should stand in
some causal relation towards that person, and the second is that I should
have assumed such a responsibility. In the case of me having some obligation towards a total stranger, neither of these conditions is met.
But is it true that if I am to be said to have an obligation towards someone, I must have assumed that responsibility? Surely not. If I must
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 79
assume responsibility towards someone in order to have it, I could reject
all possible responsibilities – for injuring my best friend, for example, by
saying that I had assumed no responsibility towards her.
Perhaps the causal condition is a more difficult one to answer. For me
to assume responsibility for someone with whom I have had and could
never have had any causal connection seems odd. On the other
hand, though, it is possible for someone to deny responsibility for an
action and legitimately to do so, even where there appears to be a clear
causal connection between them and the action. Take a hypothetical
Eichmann, for example. Such a person may have been the one who
happened to press the button that led to the gas entering the chambers
that in its turn led to the deaths of thousands of Jews. But suppose this
hypothetical Eichmann denied knowing what he was doing at all.
Suppose he argued that he thought he was providing oxygen to the people in the chamber. Then although he was the causal agent, he could be
said not to have been the one directly responsible for the deaths.
This case may need more discussion. Eichmann is clearly causally
responsible for the act in question, even though he did not know what
he was doing. Is he not morally responsible therefore? I find this conclusion odd, since it would render the hypothetical or actual anaesthetist, who made a genuine mistake, and who might have taken all
reasonable precautions to ensure that they did not, responsible for
administering carbon dioxide instead of oxygen to a patient. Causal
connection with the event, then, is not sufficient for moral responsibility, but it is not necessary either, though, since we can be responsible for
the non-occurrence of events – for example, for not doing sufficient to
enable our children to lead happy and fulfilled lives.
It is possible to claim, therefore, that I can have obligations towards
someone with whom I have never had any connection whatsoever since
it is not necessary either that I must have assumed responsibility for my
acts or that I have any causal connection with the person.
There is a sense in which this seems counter-intuitive. In what sense,
for example, is it possible to claim that a person living two hundred
years from now could be responsible for something occurring today, in
my part of London? What sense does it make to ascribe responsibility
to someone for some event that might be taking place on the other side
of the world from that person? It is interesting, however, that nonindigenous Australians are beginning, today, to hold that it is conceivable that they are responsible for the evils committed by their ancestors
towards the indigenous Australian population (see e.g. Poole, 1997).
It seems to me to make perfect sense to ascribe such responsibility.
80 Revisiting Universalism
Someone, it could be argued, must be held responsible for those evils. If
the original perpetrators of the crime were never held responsible, and if
their descendants are still suffering the effects of the actions of the white
settlers, then someone should take responsibility today for the continued suffering of Aboriginals. In the same fashion, if some sections of
humanity are suffering deprivation at the hands of other groupings,
then, someone, somewhere, should take responsibility for doing something about this situation.
Another difficulty, however, is that it may well be regarded as implausible to ascribe responsibilities tout court in this way for a different
reason. Someone might legitimately claim that it is important to discriminate between individuals. Don’t I have greater obligations towards
someone who has lived his life in accordance with the virtues – honesty,
courage and so on or in accordance with a set of moral principles
or moral ideals than I do towards the immoralist, the serial killer, for
example, or the mass murderer?
To this I would say that, like the principle in law that we assume a person innocent until proven guilty, likewise we must assume, until proven
otherwise, that each one of us has an equal right to have our basic needs
satisfied. This obligates someone to ensure that they are satisfied. There
may, subsequently, need to be overriding moral considerations that
lead, in certain circumstances, to the denial of the basic moral obligation, as, for example, in the case of the woman who requested to have
her life support machines switched off. (There was such a case that was
widely publicised in the press in the UK in 2001.) However, I can see no
reason why even the mass murderer should have her right to have her
basic needs satisfied removed, until other overriding moral considerations have suggested otherwise.
There is one further issue I would like to consider at this point.
It might be suggested that, if I require an other in order to be a self, and
this hypothetical ‘other’ decided that he or she does not wish to satisfy
his or her needs, then my self-hood is compromised. I would write in
response, that, if every ‘other’ decided this, then my self-hood would
indeed be compromised. I would concur with the general point, though,
that my self-hood is indeed crucially bound up with others, and with
the needs satisfaction of others.
3. Humanity-as-a-whole
One possible, and different, way of making the claim I want to make
removes the assumption that I personally have obligations towards
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 81
every other human being. Some of these others will be perfectly capable,
without my intervention, of satisfying their needs. Moreover, of those
who are not capable of so doing, there will be others, in closer proximity to them or perhaps better placed in other respects than I am who
could assume this responsibility.
One possible approach to the question is to suggest that humanity at
large, humanity as a group is morally responsible for ensuring that the
basic needs of each and every one of its members are satisfied.
An immediate difficulty with this is that the notion of responsibility
with which most of us are familiar is an individualist conception. It is
premised on the idea that one person can be held accountable for a particular act or for a failure to act. The emphasis, in this perspective, as
Kathryn Addelson has put it: ‘is on the judging observer, rather than the
actors’ (Addelson, 1994). The individualist outlook is a framework that
sets out to hold someone to account in order to be able to predict a
future outcome – the attributing of blame and the laying on of appropriate punishment. But this notion of responsibility, as Addelson points
out, is inappropriate for such notions as responsibility for gender or class
oppression. Kuhn found it difficult to paint a clear picture of the one
person who discovered oxygen, preferring to ascribe the discovery to
several – Priestley, Lavoisier and their peers and predecessors. Similarly,
attributing collective responsibility may not be clear and precise in the
sense that the juridical perspective assumes. There may be many people
responsible for collective actions.
Furthermore, if it is a collective agent, does humanity not need
an ‘other’ in order to establish itself as an agent? What could constitute
the ‘other’ in this case? The other might be other animal species. It
might be, indeed, that humanity, as a species, does indeed require some
other species in order to function as a collectivity. On this argument,
then, it becomes important that humanity is differentiated from
other animals both in order for human beings to assume responsibility
for other animals, and in order to establish the collective agency of
humankind.
It may be, on the other hand, that the assumption of some kind of
agency to the collective entity need not entail that the collective is
like the individual in the respect that it requires an ‘other’ in order to
establish this agency. This notion might be attempting to make the
collective entity too like the individual human being. It may be, further,
that any notion of responsibility that is ascribed to the collective
entity – humanity-as-a-whole – is different in kind from that ascribed to
individuals.
82 Revisiting Universalism
There are some fundamental questions, then: what kind of entity is
‘humanity as a whole’ and what sense does it make to ascribe agency to
it? How do my obligations as a member of the collective relate to those
of the collective itself?
4. Some suggested answers
Humanity might be described as a collective agent responsible for all of
its parts. We might use the analogy of a plant. A plant survives and flourishes if each of its parts – its leaves, its roots, its petals, contributes to the
survival of the whole plant. Phillipa Foot (Foot, 1995) has argued that
there is a set of behaviours that partly constitute the plant. Similarly,
there is a set of behaviours that constitute, to take a different kind of
example, a particular animal. ‘There is something wrong’, she writes,
‘with the free-riding wolf’ (ibid., p. 196). A wolf that abandons its pack is
somehow defective as a wolf. Foot’s naturalism suggests to her that she
values each individual member of a species or of a type of plant as a
specimen of their kind.
One might argue an analogous point with respect to humanity as a
whole. An individual who fails to play a part in enabling the rest of
humanity to realise its nature might be said to be defective as a human
being. The psychopath lies at one end of the spectrum, but the individual who simply minds their own business, and fails to notice what is happening to others, is also, in a certain sense, defective as a human being.
Individual members of humanity will be good human beings, therefore,
using the analogy, in so far as they each contribute, in so far as each is
able, to the good of the whole. This will take place in analogous fashion
to the way in which the parts of a plant contribute to the survival and the
good of the whole plant. A good human being in the respect in question,
therefore, is good as a part of the whole as well as good in themselves.
A serious objection to this, however, is that I am offering an exclusionary definition of humanity in just the fashion that the theories
I rejected at the beginning of the book were exclusionary. I have
objected to forms of purported universalism, like liberalism, that in fact
exclude certain sections of humanity, whilst purporting to include all.
How can I claim universality if I am definitionally excluding certain
people from counting as human beings?
It is important to point out, though, that the liberal who inadvertently
excluded women from counting as human beings, failed in his description of universal humanity inadvertently. If I have failed in my ascription
of universality, by contrast, it is quite deliberate. It is deliberate, though,
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 83
in just Foot’s sense: that the free-riding wolf is ‘defective’ as a wolf. The
strong claim would be then that ‘free-riding’ humans do not deserve the
epithet ‘humanity’. They are ‘defective’ as humans. Each one of us, then
has a responsibility for the rest of humanity. We each function well in so
far as we take on board our membership of the whole of humanity.
The argument might be spelt out in the following way: unless humanity as a whole and each one of us assumes the kind of obligation I am
outlining to every one of its members, then there is a risk of the destruction of the whole of humanity. Every time someone differentiates a
Muslim from a Christian and assumes that the former has no obligations
to satisfy the basic needs of the latter and vice versa, then, for the
Christian, the Muslim is defined as ‘other’ and as a lesser human being.
Every time any grouping – women, ‘black’ people, Afghan people, Iraqi
people – is defined in such a way that its needs do not matter and can be
disregarded, then that group is defined as in some way ‘lesser’. No group
can be seen to be immune from the wrath of any other – this point has
been, after 11 September 2001, underlined across the world.
Therefore, every time one grouping differentiates itself from another
and assumes its own superiority, then, that group is, in some way, making itself vulnerable to the wrath of the other. Wrath and killing are
extreme reactions, of course, to subordination. But they are the logical
outcomes of a refusal by any grouping to recognise the basic humanity
of another. The extermination, or the reduction to conditions of subsistence, of a population so characterised has, in fact, throughout history,
been a common occurrence – one has only to think of American
Indians, Australian Aboriginals, South African blacks, but also the ordinary people of Iraq today, of Afghanistan today, of Somalia, Rwanda.
The list is a very long one. Recognition of the needs of the ‘other’ then,
implies that someone somewhere has a responsibility to ensure that
their needs are satisfied.
My argument assumes that we are all, in some sense, interconnected
and that we ignore other people at our peril. Ulrich Beck has made a
related point about the interconnectedness of humanity. He argues
(Beck, 1992) that the reduction of certain segments of the world’s population to a subhuman standard of living affects the whole of humanity.
He quotes a newspaper source referring to Villa Parisi, referred to as
‘the dirtiest chemical town in the world’ (ibid., p. 43). A Brazilian oil
company had selected the coastal resort for its refinery. Various multinational companies – Fiat, Dow Chemical and Union Carbide built
refineries there. Environmentally harmful products were produced in
Villa Parisi. The town became heavily polluted: ‘every year the slum
84 Revisiting Universalism
residents have to redo their corrugated iron roofs, because the acidic rain
eats them away. Anyone who lives here for some time develops rashes,
“alligator skin” as the Brazilians say’ (Beck, quoting Der Spiegel, 1984,
no. 50, p. 110). In 1984, 700,000 litres of oil flowed through the swamp
on which the pile buildings stood. Within minutes a firestorm raged. 500
people were burnt to death (ibid., p. 43). This phenomenon affected dramatically those who lost their lives. However, it also affected those who
had invested there and who had set out to profit from the investments.
Another example of this kind of thing provided by Beck, is Bhopal. ‘In
the city of Bhopal an industrial apocalypse without parallel in history
occurred. A toxic cloud escaped from a chemical factory and settled like a
shroud over sixty-five thickly settled square kilometres; when it finally
dissipated, the sickly smell of decay was spreading. The city had turned
into a battlefield in the midst of peace’ (ibid., p. 44). Beck argues that the
pauperisation of the ‘third’ world is contagious for the wealthy. Pesticides
return to the industrialised ‘developed world’ in fruit, cacao beans and tea
leaves. ‘The extreme international inequalities and the interconnections
of the world’s markets move the poor neighbourhoods in the peripheral
countries to the doorsteps of the rich industrial centres’ (ibid.).
Returning to my argument, humanity-as-a-whole is just that – all of
the members of the human race. To say that it has a collective responsibility for satisfying the needs of its members is to say that it has the welfare
(in the sense in question) of its individual members at stake, and that each
member of the collective is responsible for his or her share of the realisation of this collective goal. Humanity as a whole, as a collective, is analogous to a collective like the Cabinet in this respect. Each member of the
Cabinet is obliged to abide by the decisions of the collective body. Cabinet
members are jointly responsible for actions taken by the cabinet, and each
member can attract praise or blame for the actions of the collective.
This argument might seem far-fetched. However, most collectives of
which I am a member require certain obligations of me towards other
members. Each member of the cabinet is obliged, for example, to stand
by the decisions of the collectivity – of the cabinet. The cabinet member
has obligations towards other members of the collectivity just by virtue
of her membership of the collectivity.
There are ways in which one might wish to differentiate the collective
‘humanity’ from others: just the fact that I have not chosen to join
it might be thought to distance me from the actions of the collective.
I certainly would not want to hold myself responsible for decisions that
might be taken by representatives of ‘humanity’ with which I fundamentally disagree.
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 85
But there are other collectives of which I am a member which I have
not chosen to join, and where there can be obligations on me to stand
by the views of the collective. One example, in my own case, is that as
a Dean of Faculty there are certain bodies in which I have to take part.
I have not directly chosen, for example, to be a member of the body that
meets fortnightly in my institution – the Deans and Directorate.
However, as a Dean, I have an obligation to stand by the decisions of
that collective body, unless and until there are overriding moral considerations that lead me to think and act otherwise.
Each of us has similar obligations towards humanity as an entity. I am
not obliged to stand by every decision that any member of this very
large collective makes. However, I am obliged to stand by the features
that each member of the collective shares. Effectively if I wish to abrogate these responsibilities, I have to choose to abandon humanity.
By virtue of what, though, does each of the members of humanity
incur the relevant responsibility? To take another example: a citizen of a
particular nation gains the right to vote in that nation not merely by
virtue of membership of the nation, but additionally because he or she
is in possession of a certain degree of autonomy and so on. Do I incur an
obligation to other members of humanity for similar reasons, or is it just
by virtue of my membership of the collective? No doubt each one of us
has different abilities to work towards the needs satisfaction of others.
It does not make sense to suggest that I am morally bound by the decisions of every collective of which I happen to be a member. For example,
if I am coerced into joining an army, I am not morally bound to adhere
to the collective decisions and obligations of that body. In fact, it might
be said that the opposite is the case: that there are circumstances, as, for
example, might have been the case for a member of Hitler’s SS during
the Holocaust, when acting ethically required one to act against some of
the decisions of the collective. The same might be said to be the case,
indeed, of my role as Dean. Morality might require me, in certain circumstances, to oppose the decisions of that particular collective.
I suggest, however, that each one of us has some responsibility
towards humanity as a whole, just by virtue of our membership of the
collective. Humanity as a whole is a unique entity in this respect in so
far as each of its members must have its needs satisfied before it can do
anything at all. In this sense, if large numbers of us are abandoned by
humanity as a whole, then humanity itself will eventually cease to exist.
But the same principle applies if one member of humanity is abandoned
by the others. Each one of us, as members of the collective will have
responsibilities that are proportionate to our capacities and our
86 Revisiting Universalism
circumstances. The responsibilities of a new-born baby, or of someone
who is severely paralysed, will be very different from those of someone
who is able-bodied and healthy. Nonetheless, each one of us, just by
virtue of the kind of interdependence I outlined at the outset of this chapter, has an obligation to play his or her part in the needs satisfaction of all.
In the case of the collective ‘humanity’ then, I suggest that the
particular moral requirement I am discussing is a requirement of each of
the members of the collective just because he or she is a member of the
collective. It is a condition of being a human being, and therefore of
being a member of the collective, that each of us has our needs satisfied.
This imposes very specific moral requirements on each of us in so far as
we are members of the collective agent humanity. Humanity as a whole
must act in pursuit of the interests, in the respect concerned, of each and
every one of its members, or the collective itself will eventually perish.
5. Individual and collective responsibility
It may be said that this is all very well, but it tells us nothing about the
relation between individual and collective responsibility. I would like to
consider this issue by referring to an example quoted by Seumus Miller
in his book Social Action (Miller, 2002). In his book, Miller describes a
savage physical assault of a young woman in New York, perpetrated by a
man who had accosted her while she was on her way home. The
woman’s screams and calls for help were heard by at least thirty-eight
neighbours, each of whom witnessed the struggle from his or her own
home but none of them offered any help, either in the form of phoning
the police or by directly intervening. Eventually one person did summon the police but it was too late for them to do anything for the young
woman, who died on her way to hospital.
Given that there were thirty-eight people, each one of whom could
have intervened to save the woman, who should have been the one to
intervene? There is no joint responsibility on the part of the collective to
intervene in this case, yet there is an interdependent individual responsibility. This kind of point has led some to claim that the sort of position
I am defending leads to an infinity of possible obligations (see Singer,
2001) and it is therefore an unrealistic theory.
In the very general case of humanity as a whole, who should it be who
has the obligation to intervene in the case, for example, of people left
destitute in Palestine, or in Rwanda, or in many other parts of the world?
There are a couple of possible responses to this question I would like
briefly to consider. One is (and I am indebted to David Miller (keynote
speech, 2002) for this idea) that we adumbrate a conception of each
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 87
person’s ‘fair share’ of responsibility for satisfying the needs of others,
according to some quota system of apportioning responsibility. Thus
each of us would perform a certain number of acts of helping satisfy
people’s needs, up to a quota, and, once that number had been carried
out, one’s quota would have been exhausted.
There are a number of difficulties with this idea, however. First, it
would be very difficult to determine what each person’s quota should be.
But second, in relation to specific acts, it is odd to suppose that, if I was
presented with a starving person and I could easily provide food for that
person, I should refuse to do so, because my quota had been exhausted.
There is alternatively the view that collective responsibility for the
needs of others is attached to the state, through taxation. But, it seems
to me to be manifestly true that this principle, which has been tried for
many years, has not succeeded in ensuring that the basic needs of all are
satisfied. Indeed the opposite has in fact been the case. Inequalities
between rich and poor have been on the increase in almost every country in the world in recent years.
In the next chapter, whilst I shall not be offering a direct answer to the
question posed, I will begin to suggest an alternative approach to going
about providing the answer. I think that the first stage is the major task
of getting each one of us to accept that we have some responsibility for
the welfare of strangers. I will examine this issue in a little more detail in
the following chapter.
Indeed, until there is a general and widespread recognition of the sorts
of obligation outlined, this question, I think, cannot be answered. If and
when there is this sort of recognition, then the people with the appropriate awareness would be in a better position to answer the question.
They might, for example, suggest that each person satisfies the basic
needs of another to the extent that he or she is able to do so. They might
set up groupings with the responsibility of determining how to go about
the process of needs satisfaction.
However, the ability to do all of that depends upon the prior recognition, in many cases absent in the world at the moment, of the basic
moral obligation described above. The following chapter will outline
one way of beginning to develop this awareness in people.
6. Virtue ethics?
The above might be described as limited kind of ‘virtue’ ethics, but one
where the collective unit is not the locality or the trade union or the
workplace or the nation, but rather humanity as a whole.
88 Revisiting Universalism
It is an ‘abstract’ version of virtue ethics, and virtue ethics is
sometimes celebrated for its concrete nature. Indeed, my account may
be subject to the objection Sandel has put of ‘the liberal’: ‘Contemporary
liberals extend Kant’s argument with the claim that utilitarianism fails
to take seriously the distinction between persons. In seeking above all to
maximise the general welfare, the utilitarian treats society as a whole as
if it were a single person; it conflates our many, diverse desires into a single system of desires, and tries to maximise … (T)his fails to respect our
plurality and distinctness. It uses some as a means to the happiness of
all, and so fails to respect each as an end in himself’ (Sandel, 1984, p. 3).
Or as Rawls has put it: Utilitarianism … by conflating all systems of
desires, it applies to society the principle of choice for one man thus
overlooking ‘the plurality of distinct persons with separate systems of
ends’ (Rawls, 1971, p. 29). My argument, it may be suggested, is subject
to the same sort of difficulty.
Some useful points against these claims about the distinctness of
persons have been made by Keith Graham (Graham, 1998).
The liberal objection here is sometimes cashed out as the claim that
no way of life should be imposed on any other; an objection (see
Benhabib, 1992) whose force is not lost on me. Indeed I am entirely in
agreement with the point. However, it does not follow from assuming
the notion of society as a single person – a collective entity – that each
person is not distinct and separate. It does not follow from my membership of my local school governing body and from my abiding by the collective decisions of that body that a school governor is all that I am or
that the decisions of that body are imposed on me. Even if I disagree
strongly with the decisions of the body, I have the option of leaving the
collective. Even if, as in the case of humanity as a whole, the consequences of my choosing to leave the collectivity mean that I cannot go
on living at all, it does not follow that my obligations are imposed on
me. Indeed, as in the case of Antigone, it is possible for me to leave that
collectivity if I dislike the way it behaves. However, for everyone to take
up that option – see the next chapter – would be a very sad outcome for
humanity as a whole.
There is another set of criticisms of ‘virtue’ ethics which are expressed
by Charles Larmore (Larmore, 1996). Larmore has been an important
influence on my thinking. However, I do not agree with his rejection of
‘virtue’ ethics and with his defence of a revamped and historicised
Kantianism.
Charles Larmore points out that Kant held that the only thing that is
unconditionally good is a good will. Larmore, whilst he rejects as
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 89
inconsistent with ‘modernity’ the notion that this principle rests with
belief in God and whilst he also wishes to contest the view that practical
reason itself provides a sufficient justification for this type of principle,
nonetheless wishes to hold onto a kind of Kantianism. Larmore quotes
a contemporary critic of Kant – Pisotrius – who claimed that no principle outlining what one ought to do is a sufficient basis of moral action,
since one must first of all determine whether or not that principle is
itself good. Pistorius argues that a principle of action is good only if all
human beings have a common nature that produces an interest in this
‘summum bonum’. The principle of right action, then, would be to act
in accordance with this common nature and interest.
According to Larmore, Kant offered at least two arguments in favour
of the priority of the right over the good. Larmore puts these in the
following way; (i) if good is not subordinated to a principle of right,
then ‘the determining ground of the moral will must be the object of
some desire’ (ibid., p. 29). Even if, he argues, desires are not narrowly
construed as what brings us pleasure, what is desired is too variable to
provide a basis for morality. One reading of Aristotelian ethics suggests
that all human beings share a commitment to self-fulfillment that consist in the exercise of virtue. But, Kant argues, and Larmore agrees,
human nature is too variable to provide such a basis for action. Kant also
offers the following argument: if the desire for some object is made the
determining ground for the moral will then what this object is must be
an empirical matter, since it is only from experience that we can learn
what gives us pleasure. But, Larmore argues, experience or interests or
desires can never instruct us in what we ought to do regardless of what
we may want. Moral rules are unconditional in character.
Larmore points out that some followers of Kant have argued that the
unconditional character of the good will is simply, in the absence of
God, a fact of reason. Larmore himself, however, holds that practical
reason of itself cannot be sufficient to justify the basis for any moral
obligation. It is, he writes: ‘just too slender a basis for justifying the
validity of any moral obligation’. Practical reason, he suggests, cannot
generate the moral obligations, but it can evaluate the purported
commitments arising from other commitments.
Instead, Larmore defends the view that adherence to the good will lies
in a commitment to a ‘form of life that we all share’ (ibid., p. 40). Moral
convictions, he suggests, are rooted in traditions that are historically
contingent. We can maintain the universalist content of the notion of
right whilst rejecting the view that this notion requires a justification
that all will accept. Justifying a principle will not always be necessary.
90 Revisiting Universalism
One will not need to give reasons for believing a principle to be true;
rather what we would need to do would be to set about, where necessary, dispelling doubt about the truth of a principle.
This perspective rests on the view that modernity requires a strong
commitment to a plurality of conceptions of the good, but that this very
same modernity generates agreement, implicit in traditions and forms
of life, about universal conceptions of what is the right thing to do. Why
should this be so? What can it mean? Who is the ‘we’ who develops
these traditions and these forms of life? There are, as we saw in our discussion of Parekh (Chapter 2), those who would reject liberal principles
and the liberal way of life. On what basis is the commitment to plural
views of the good taken as a fact of life at the same time as a conviction
that there is a uniform and universal perspective on the nature of a
reformulated ‘good will’? I think that Larmore is right that there are universally shared views about right conduct. I would not differentiate,
however, so clearly as he does between principles of right conduct and
notions of the good. I would describe them, indeed, as shared views
about the good. But, far from being implicit in the forms of life and traditions that human beings share, to the contrary, they may not at the
moment be fully accepted by anyone. Larmore may additionally be
right that these universal principles cannot be given the kind of justification that some people historically would like to have given them.
Instead of locating them in historically variant and radically diverse
forms of life, however, I will seek to provide an account of why we ought
to accept those that I have proposed. I will refer to the notion of imagination and of what a particular perspective on the imagination might
lead us to accept.
The Kantian objection to the Aristotelian tradition is only persuasive
if one accepts the point that interests and desires are necessarily variable. As I have urged previously, some interests and desires must vary
depending on the circumstances in which one finds oneself. However,
there are interests that each individual should have as a natural being
that should not vary from person to person.
Of course there are huge questions about how it is that needs can be
satisfied in conditions of relative scarcity (assuming that there is relative
scarcity). Attempting to answer these questions would involve a whole
book. Karl Marx, I think, went some way towards answering these questions, in a way that is entirely different from the Kantian tradition.
Aristotle conceived virtue as the foundation of a good life and the
good of society. Virtue comes about from behaving well as a man of
practical wisdom. For Aristotle, there is a public framework of good
Moral Obligations Arising from Needs 91
behaviour that leads to the good life. Aristotle has been much criticised
for excluding women, slaves and many men from his vision of the good
life. It has also been argued that, whilst Aristotle’s perspective made
sense in the ancient Greek world, where people had their fixed social
and moral roles, it doesn’t apply in the modern world where this is no
longer the case.
A growing number of contemporary moral philosophers, however, are
articulating an alternative to the dominance of Kant in moral theory.
Nussbaum (1999 and elsewhere) is one prominent moral philosopher
who locates the roots of this alternative approach to moral theorising in
Aristotle’s moral framework. Nussbaum describes Socratic ethics, as
received in certain versions of contemporary liberalism, as disembodied,
removed and abstract. She advocates a sensitivity to particularism in
moral thinking. Communitarians, too, take Aristotle as their moral mentor (see e.g. MacIntyre, 1981, 1990; Sandel, 1989; Taylor, 1991).
Instead of taking the Aristotelian ‘rational man’ as the unit, and
instead of emphasising the particularist tendencies in Aristotle, my
approach draws on Aristotle in a different way. I have suggested that we
take the community of human beings as material beings as our moral
entity, rather than the ‘man of practical wisdom’. My version of Aristotle
suggests that we should aim to function well as material beings. We have
the basis then for a universal moral theory about certain moral matters
that might generate universal claims to knowledge.
For the early Marx, the activity of each individual is activity of the
species. Marx develops in these early writings a naturalistic view of
human nature. He also, as Benton has pointed out, offers, in these writings a humanism, and an opposition between humans and other animals. I would go along with the reaction of Kate Soper to Benton (see
Chapter 3) here, however, when she claims, against Benton, that it is
important to maintain the distinction between humans and other animals for two reasons. First, only humans can reflect on their nature in
the fashion described; and second, humans should take up a moral attitude towards non-human species. I would add a third differentiating
feature – humans should, as I have urged, take up a moral attitude
towards other humans, by virtue of their natural natures.
The politics of a just society involves a politics of the self. It presupposes that individuals should stand to each other in certain mutual relations of respect and authority. These interpersonal relationships define a
well-ordered collectivity. They presuppose that it is most likely that,
even as a ‘simple’ natural being, I stand in relations of reciprocal likeness
and obligation to others in a collectivity.
92 Revisiting Universalism
References
Addelson, K. (1994) Moral Passages: Towards a Collectivist Moral Theory, Routledge,
New York, London.
Beck, U. (1992) The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage Publications,
London. (Quote at the outset of the chapter.)
Benhabib, S. (1992) Situating the Self, Gender, Community and PostModernism in
Contemporary Ethics, Routledge, London and New York.
Foot, P. (1995) Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake, Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies, 15, pp. 1–14.
Docherty, T. ed. (1993) Postmodernism: A Reader, Hemel Hempsted, Harvester. Xiii.
Graham, K. (1998) Being Somebody: Choice and Identity in a Liberal Pluralist World
in Nationalism and Racism in the Liberal Order (eds) B. Brecher, J. Halliday and
K. Kolinska, Aldershot, Ashgate, UK.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1977) The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
Heidegger, (1927) Being and Time, trans. John Maquarrie and Edward Robinson,
Blackwell, Oxford, 1967.
Kekes, J. (1993) The Morality of Pluralism, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Lacan, J. (1977) Ecrits: A Selection, Tavistock, London.
Larmore, C. (1996) The Morals of Modernity, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Levinas, E. (1979) Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority trans. Alphons
Lingis, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame,
Indiana.
MacIntyre, A. (1990) Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, Duckworth, London.
Mead, G.H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist,
edited with an Introduction by C.W. Morris, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.
Mensch, J. (2001) Alternity and Society Paper presented at conference on Conflict &
Identity, Palachy University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 1–6 July.
Miller, David (2002) Keynote address to conference, The Politics of Altruism,
Royal Holloway College, April.
Nussbaum, M. (1999) Sex and Social Justice, Oxford University Press, New York and
Oxford.
Pateman, C. (1989, reprinted 1995) The Disorder of Women, Polity Press,
Cambridge.
Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Ross Poole, Jul. 7 1997 in discussion at conference in Czech Republic.
Sandel, M. (1984) The Procedural Republic and the unencumbered Self, Political
Theory, 12.
Sandel, M. (1989) Justice and the Good, reprinted in his ed., Liberalism and its
critics, Blackwell, Oxford.
Singer, P. (2001) Writings on Ethical Life, Harper Collins, New York.
Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
5
Needs and the Imagination
The Freudian myth, which is avowedly political, is patricidal.
It counters the morality of domination with the morality of
liberation (1)
Many of us would emphasise the satisfaction of our own desires, whatever they may be, over the satisfaction of the basic needs of any other.
This can be illustrated in a range of ways: how many wealthy middle
class people in the ‘North’ would willingly sacrifice that bottle of Merlot,
to give something to a ‘beggar’ who needs food? Perhaps it is quite
appropriate that such people should not do so, since it is unlikely, it has
been argued, that such an attitude of individual sacrifice will solve any
of the problems of a radically class divided world. It is also, it has been
argued elsewhere (Soper, 1993) an approach that smacks of a certain
kind of puritanism, in its refusal to recognise individual desires.
However, I don’t think that we need be puritans in order to adopt a
process of changing the attitudes of each one of us. The process of doing
that, can, I think, usefully be illustrated by Lara’s notion of the politics
of recognition, and by Cornell’s categories for properly understanding
the Other.
In previous chapters I have defended a conception of the human subject as a natural being, possessing natural needs. I have argued that it is
not possible for this subject to act at all unless these natural needs are
satisfied. Given that the subject is in fact a social being, dependent upon
others, I have argued that there are moral consequences of this; that the
notion of the subject implies obligations that pertain to it and to others.
These moral consequences, and this conception of the subject, are,
however, not at all present to the consciousness of the subject. This
chapter suggests a role for the constructive imagination in setting out to
93
94 Revisiting Universalism
bring these various matters to conscious awareness. I will contrast a positive constructive role for the imagination with the rather more negative
and destructive role for it described in his recent writings by Slavoj Zizek.
Drucilla Cornell (1995) has written of the ‘psychic fantasy’ that is
Woman, that has led certain women – usually white, heterosexual and
middle class – to prescribe the identity of all women. A shared common
nature might be seen, in parallel, to be a ‘psychic fantasy’. To the contrary, I shall suggest, common human nature is a form of psychic imaginary of which we ought all to become aware.
How might we go about bringing to conscious awareness on the part
of each of us that we are part of a shared humanity? The ethical process
envisaged by Cornell may be valuable in beginning to answer this question. The notions she deploys, taken from C.S. Pierce, of ‘musement’
and ‘fallibility’ that she wishes to translate into ethical virtues and that,
she suggests, we should each aim for, in coming to a ‘non violent’ appreciation of the Other, can be usefully appropriated here.
In a sense my project is more limited than is that of Cornell. The latter describes ‘consciousness raising’ as the endless attempt to re-imagine
and re-symbolise one’s relationship to ‘the Other’, and specifically, for
her, one’s relationship to the ‘feminine’. I don’t think that we should be
‘endlessly re-imagining’. The really significant issue, to my mind, is how
we go about persuading each person that every other is like him or her
in crucial and significant respects, and is therefore equally deserving in
relation to her fundamental nature. The notion that we should be endlessly re-imagining’ is reminiscent of the conception of ‘the Good’
upheld by G.E. Moore, and rewritten by Iris Murdoch, when she
suggests that ‘the Good’ is a notion that is infinitely difficult to define
(see Murdoch, 1985, p. 42). Instead of attempting to define ‘the’ good,
which may indeed be an impossible task, we should be attempting to
persuade people how to ‘be’ good, in certain respects, or how to act in
ways that are good.
Solidarity amongst people might be given by our shared identity as
natural, needy beings. However, this solidarity is not a present and a
consciously shared identity on the part of each one of us. Therefore, we
need a process of subtly reconceptualisng the way in which our realities
appear to us, in order that each of us becomes a self aware being in the
appropriate sense. We need an exercise which has been described as one
of re-framing our ‘habitus’; re-framing the basic taken-for-granted set of
assumptions we make (see Jantzen, 2001).
Simone de Beauvoir, for example, in her desire to separate women
from their bodily selves, set about creating a shared reality for women
Needs and the Imagination 95
that involved a reconceptualisation of the understandings many women
of her generation in her kind of social milieux had about themselves.
However, in terms of the recognition of all human beings as sharing a
common nature, she set things back. De Beauvoir’s conception of what
it is to be a woman, is one of the symbolic conceptualisations of woman
that needs to be undone.
We might draw on the work of Lara. Maria Lara (1998) has written
of the need for imaginative reconceptualisations of each of us, and of
the way in which New Social Movements, through their imaginative
use of narrative and story telling, set about redefining conceptions of
justice and of the good life. The feminist movement, for example, suggested ways in which conceptions of justice and of the good life are
interconnected.
In order to gain mutual understanding of ‘the Other’ she writes, one
must use powerfully imaginative speech, both to attract the attention of
the other, and to open up possibilities for different kinds of recognition
between all parties. In Benhabib’s reading of Arendt’s book Rahel
Varnhagen The Life of Jewish Woman, for example, Arendt is bearing
witness, through her writing about the story of Rahel, to her own
‘pariah’ status as marginal in the sense of her Jewishness and her female
identity (Benhabib, 1992).
We need to develop stories and a movement in relation to our membership of a common humanity. Such stories might take the form of the
symbol of Ali Ismael Abbas – the Iraqi boy who appeared, minus both
arms, on the pages of UK newspapers, at the end of the 2003 Iraq war. As
Taylor has recognised, drawing on the work of Hegel and George Herbert
Mead, our identities are constructed dialogically, through the recognition of others (Taylor, 1989, 1991). New social movements have opened
up the possibility of different channels of recognition and solidarity with others. Emancipatory narratives, such as feminism, mediate
between group identities and moral principles. Taylor emphasises the
importance of authenticity – of gaining a real and proper understanding
of the other. Therefore, for Taylor, Kant’s pure autonomy fails to give
sufficient attention to one’s uniqueness as an individual human being.
Instead one should define oneself through dialogue with others. Feeling
and rationality are interdependent and this dialogical interaction
allows the development and expansion of horizons of belief. This
inter-subjective recognition, as Honneth (1995) recognised, is itself a
moral act. Reflexivity allows one a critical distance from oneself. Failing
to recognise the ‘other’ then is wrong both because it denies
the other’s freedom, and because it injures them with respect to the
96 Revisiting Universalism
understanding of their own self awareness. Lara has developed this
notion so that it is not a closed, or final process. Locutionary forces and
unconscious processes mediate this demand for recognition.
Much of this writing about recognition and solidarity seeks to redress
the balance of a non-contextual notion of recognition that sees the
‘other’ as a kind of block with some sort of consciousness that is there in
order to enable the self to gain its identity as a self with a certain sort of
identity. The contextual readings have emphasised instead, the need for
full recognition of the other, and have pointed also to the moral dimension of these acts of recognition. However, there is a danger, in my view,
of going too far in the particularistic direction. Solidarity has a universal
dimension that involves seeing the other as crucially like oneself in certain respects. Much of the discourse on basic needs, by contrast, has
been written as though the human natural dimension is outside the
symbolic and outside the narrative dimension of human experience. Of
course it is not. Imaginative symbolic systems and narrative story telling
must be developed, as Marx did, and as the ecologists are now doing,
that reconfigure the significance in the richness of human interaction,
of the basic natural dimension. If I recognise the ‘other’ in his or her
richness but as someone who, in various unconscious ways, is engaged
in systematically exploiting others, and exploiting those others in very
fundamental and life denying ways, as most of us do, most of the time,
then that recognition is severely lacking in terms both of justice and of
the good life. Indeed, every time the mutual recognition of two human
beings carries a dimension of injustice, then the self engaging in the
process is in some sense denuded.
Using the creative imagination, then, we can reconfigure the simple
narrative of the natural natures of human beings in the contemporary
world. This will also involve us in reconceptualising the relationship
between the right and the good. Unless in our processes of recognising
each other and of gaining in self-awareness as we engage daily in those
acts, we recognise the basic natural humanity of each and every one
of us, our own self-identities will be denuded and impoverished. As a
consequence of this recognition we must recognise the immorality of
discriminatory practices.
1. Zizek
The above approach to the exercise of the creative imagination differs
from that of Zizek, as presented in the opening chapters of his book:
The Ticklish Subject (Zizek, 1999). My perspective might be described as
Needs and the Imagination 97
optimistic about the imagination whilst his is pessimistic. I should like
briefly to consider his view.
Zizek begins his text with a consideration of Heidegger: ‘Heidegger
substitutes a certain concept of Dasein for a conception of the subject
still too marked by the traits of being a “vorhanden” ’ (ibid., p. 15). The
Heideggerian subject, Zizek suggests, has an ‘engaged’ immersion in the
world; it is ‘thrown’ in it and this entails, he writes, a rejection of
the ‘Cartesian duality between facts and values’ (ibid.).
Zizek credits Heidegger with the view that there is an ‘authentic’ and
an ‘inauthentic’ individual engagement with the world; and it is likewise for collective engagement. If one is authentic in a collective sense,
then one is assuming one’s historical destiny. Neo-conservative communitarianism is therefore, according to Zizek, the best model for the radical Marxist.
Heidegger, Zizek writes, encountered ‘the abyss of radical subjectivity
announced in Kantian transcendental imagination’ (op. cit., p. 23) and
he ‘recoiled from this abyss into his thought of the historicity of being’
(op. cit., p. 23).
And now Kant …
This brings Zizek to a consideration of two dimensions of Kant’s
writings. First he looks at Kant’s ethical writings. Kant had written that,
as phenomenal entities, human beings are caught in the web of causal
connections. Freedom, however, has a noumenal dimension. The
noumenal, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant characterises as a kind
of knowledge and morality which is outside the realms of the human
being as a being that is connected with the world. The noumenal is a
domain where there is no ‘sensibility’. Kant describes the noumenal as
‘something x, of which we know and can know nothing whatsoever’.
Kant refers to noumena as mere objects of understanding, but which
nonetheless, can be ‘given’ to an intuition, although not one that is
sensible (Kant, 1963).
Zizek considers Kant’s solution to the antinomies of reason. Kant had
solved the claim that it is true both that ‘all phenomena are causally
linked and therefore that man (sic) is not free’ and (on the other hand)
that ‘man is free’ in the following way. Human beings are free in so far
as they are noumenal beings. As phenomenal entities, they are subject
to universal causation. But, Zizek writes, Kant recognised that there was
a bigger problem here than he is sometimes credited with noticing. In
his text: Of the Wise Adaptation of Man’s Cognitive Faculties to his Practical
Vocation, Kant asks the question: ‘what would happen if we were to gain
access to the noumenal realm?’ Kant answers this, Zizek says, with the
98 Revisiting Universalism
recognition that, in such circumstances, God and eternity would stand
unceasingly before our eyes ‘in their awful majesty’ (Zizek, op. cit., p. 25).
Most actions in such circumstances would be carried out from fear, and
not, as Kant writes elsewhere is the hallmark of moral action, out of
duty. Moral worth in the noumenal realm would therefore not exist at
all. In fact, Zizek suggests Kant recognises, on his premises, that the
subject actually exists in an ‘in-between’ domain, half way between the
phenomenal and the noumenal realms. There is a split in the noumenal
between the way in which it appears to the subject and its actual
existence. The latter is impossible.
Heidegger, according to Zizek, incorporates this ‘noumenal’ dimension, which, in Kant is outside temporality and experience, into the
subject’s ‘being in the world’. Heidegger’s notion, here, then, is one
source for Zizek’s view that there is a ‘lack’ at the core of the subject’s
immersion in the world.
Zizek also writes about another dimension of Kant’s thought – a
section of his account of the way in which it is possible to gain knowledge of the world. In the Critique, Kant refers to the imagination. He
describes it as a ‘blind but indispensable function of the soul, without
which we should have no cognition whatsoever’. The imagination,
for Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, fulfils a synthesising function –
it brings together ‘diverse intuitions’. It contributes to enabling knowledge, by bringing the diverse objects of our senses together; by unifying
what would otherwise be random colours (although not yet understood
as such), shapes and sounds. Imagination, in Kant, then, fulfils a role
rather like cement – it helps enable us to have experiences which make
sense; experiences that cohere together rather than pulling apart. The
imagination, in this sense, fulfils a constructive, bonding role.
Zizek writes, however, that Kant is unduly optimistic about the role of
the imagination. Hegel, Zizek tell us, had recognised the potential disruptive power of the imagination – its ability to tear things apart; to disrupt. Imagination, in this sense, is negative. Zizek claims that this
disruptive power of the imagination is actually prior to its positive healing, cementing character, since the initial state of things is, for Kant as
well as for Hegel, a chaotic one. Zizek then draws parallels between the
thought of Hegel on this matter, and that of Schelling, Freud and Lacan.
Lacan, as is well known, describes the coming to be of the self as
a process of imposing an artificial unity on the chaotic morass of disorganised perceptions, which are themselves like the paintings of
Hieronymous Bosch. Zizek uses this to underline his claim that the
self is intrinsically lacking; it is intrinsically a chaotic, even a mad being.
Needs and the Imagination 99
He points out that even for Descartes, thought arises out of the calming
of potential madness. Zizek claims, then, that Kant has missed out this
chaotic and destructive potential power of the imagination, and that his
epistemology effectively depends upon an unduly optimistic reading of
the effects of the imagination.
Why, however, should the primary role for the imagination be seen to
be destructive in this fashion? How, indeed, would communication of
any sort be possible, if this were the primary and fundamental function
for the imagination? Thought, Zizek writes, arises, for Descartes, from
the calming of potential madness. But this is a peculiar reading of
Descartes. Thought just occurs. Some thoughts are mad or crazy. Others
take on different characteristics altogether. To suggest, as Zizek does,
that the mad or crazy thoughts are primary is contentious at the very
least.
Furthermore, there is another way of reading Descartes. Descartes, the
embodied and real character, had to eat and drink before he could contemplate his potential madness. Potential madness, then, could only be
calmed, rather than literally and simply experienced, if Descartes were
not starving and thirsty. The self is intrinsically lacking, therefore, in a
quite different sense from that of Lacan.
2. Lacan
As I wrote above, a further significant influence on Zizek is Lacan.
Lacan’s ‘imaginary order’ draws on the mother–child dyad described in
Rousseau’s thought.
Like Freud, Lacan had set out to explain how it is that subjects gain a
sense of themselves as selves. Individuals become human selves through
incorporation into the cultural order. Lacan rejects the Freudian notion
of the Ego (see Assiter, 1996, pp. 37–43). For Lacan, self-identity is an
alienating, imaginary process. In his various papers on the Mirror Stage,
(see Lacan, 1977) Lacan rewrites some Hegelian concepts in his account
of the formation of the Ego. These Hegelian concepts will now be familiar to the reader from the previous chapter of this book. Lacan rejects
biologistic or humanist appropriations of Freud’s work, and emphasises,
instead, a more hermeneutical reading. He would argue that no biological event could have an unmediated effect upon the self, since the subject must interpret each such event. Drawing on the master–slave
dialectic of Hegel (see previous chapter) Lacan writes that it is only
through the recognition of the desire of the other that the self gains a
sense of itself as a self. Self-consciousness emerges out of the cycle of
100 Revisiting Universalism
desire and its satisfaction. As I wrote once; ‘to crave an ice-cream is to
experience oneself lacking that ice-cream’ (Assiter, 1996). The satisfaction of the desire by the consumption of the ice cream reinforces the
sense of self. Physical objects cannot perform this role long term, however, for the satisfaction of the craving obliterates the ‘lack’ which produced the original sense of self. Only another similarly placed subject
can perform the requisite role in abiding fashion. The self gains a sense
of self through the mediation of the other’s desire.
Lacan, in his famous papers on the mirror stage, imagines the child
contemplating its image in a mirror. We see it begin to develop an integrated self-image. It is still uncoordinated, but it begins to imagine itself
as whole and unified. The object with which it identifies is both part of
itself – it identifies with it, and alien to it. The gaining of a sense of self,
furthermore, is inseparable, ultimately, from the acquisition of language. Outside ‘discourse’ there is no self; outside language is psychosis
(see Brennan, 1989).
On the other hand, though, for Lacan, there is a domain – the Real –
that exists outside symbolisation. Zizek, throughout his writings, develops his notion of the ‘antagonistic’ imagination by reference partly to
this Lacanian concept, as well as the Kantian and Heideggerian influences described earlier. The Real Order, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, is
that which represents the ‘lack’ in the subject’s relation to the ‘other’,
or to the mother. At the point where the emergent subject recognises that
the other/mother has desires that are not wholly fixated on him or
her, there emerges a ‘lack’, an ‘absence’ in the desire of the emerging self.
There is ‘lack’ in the core of the self, furthermore, because demands, linguistically expressed, can never be fully satisfied. Demands, as opposed
to needs, take the form ‘I want’. The satisfaction of the desire is never
complete. The self has desires that have no object, or that have as their
object something Lacan sometimes refers to as the ‘object petit a’. This
is what is left over when the apparent object of the demand is obtained.
In his later work, Lacan questions ‘the impossible goal of achieving
oneness, of recognising the other, of satisfying our desire, of knowing
the object’ (see e.g. Williams, 1994). The subject, for Lacan, will always
remain incomplete and fragmented, and absolute truth and knowledge
are impossible. The Real is, as Homer puts it ‘the dark underside of the
Ego’ (Homer, 1999, p. 84). When Zizek applies this notion of the Real to
his analysis of social reality, he implies that the subject, now by extension the social and political subject, is sometimes incapable of acting at
all. Concerning the NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia, for example,
Zizek’s position was ambivalent between the Serbs and NATO. When
Needs and the Imagination 101
asked about his position on the subject, he replied: ‘So precisely as a
Leftist, my answer to the dilemma “Bomb or not?” is: not yet ENOUGH
bombs, and they are TOO LATE’ (Zizek, 1999).
But there is an important qualification to all of this. Whilst the subject’s demands might never be satisfied, its needs must be, or it could
not express any demands or desires at all. In this sense, therefore, there
is a whole and unified needy self that pre-exists the subject of demand.
The child, for example, must have its needs for milk satisfied before it
can experience itself as lacking in relation to any one of its desires.
The child who has experienced warfare and who is starving and thirsty
experiences itself as lacking in very specific and literal ways.
My hypothesis about the exercise of the creative imagination presupposes that we can come to understand and know the other, in one
crucial and significant respect. Bush can come to understand, if he so
chooses, that Ali has very specific needs that must be satisfied. Desire, as
Lacan wrote, can never be satisfied, because it is potentially limitless
in its scope. Needs can be. The subject, therefore, need not be viewed
as intrinsically lacking. In his later work, as Carol Williams has put it,
Lacan clearly questions ‘the impossible goal of achieving oneness, of
recognising the other, of knowing the object’ (Williams, 1994, p. 170).
The ‘phallus’ for Lacan, sometimes symbolically represents a mythical
state of full recognition on the part of two subjects for each other. But
there is, I am suggesting, a real state of ‘full’ recognition, in the relevant
respects, of two subjects for each other. Each is capable, fully of recognising the other as a needy being. This state of recognition is not mythical, but real and vitally significant. In order to understand and
recognise this basic and fundamental fact about each other, we require
the exercise of the productive and creative imagination. But the fact that
these needs exist for each of us is a fact that presupposes a whole and
unified subject; a subject that is not conceptualised as lacking.
3. Some questions to Zizek
Before moving back to the central question, I would like to ask a few
questions about Zizek’s thought as presented so far. I wrote that, for
Zizek, Heidegger’s view that the subject is engaged in the world; that it
is immersed in it, suggests that the duality between facts and values
should be rejected. However, I am not certain that it necessarily follows
from an engaged immersion in the world that there cannot be a radical
separation between ethical and natural qualities. Zizek might expand
his view to the effect that there cannot be ‘pure’ natural qualities.
102 Revisiting Universalism
However, there could still remain a duality between an ethical and some
other type of outlook on the world.
Zizek also suggests, as I have written above, following Heidegger, that
there is an authentic form of collective behaviour, and an inauthentic
form. This might be spelt out in the language of the New Social
Movements, as implying that there is an authentic way of expressing
one’s gender; one’s race; one’s connection to the Tottenham Hotspur
‘movement’; one’s identification with one’s workplace and so on.
However, there are radically different kinds of immersion in these collectivities. I can choose to disassociate myself from my workplace
tomorrow. It may be more difficult for me to disconnect from my
gender. There are consequences for the ‘authenticity’ or not of my
involvement with any one of these collectivities depending partly upon
the answer to the question: can I choose to disengage from the collectivity in question? (This point comes partly from Graham, 1996, op. cit.)
There is a further issue. It may not be appropriate to suggest that
‘effective’ or moral or correct social action invariably stems from
‘authentic’ engagement with a particular collectivity. Sometimes, such
action may better flow from disengagement with the collective and
engagement with values that stand in opposition to those that ‘it’ holds.
Does it make sense, anyway, to set out to characterise the ‘authentic’
values of a collectivity? Were Hitler’s the authentic values of his
racialised grouping? If they were not, whose values or which values
were? What about the values of a minority grouping in a nation state or
what about values that may not yet have emerged in a collectivity
because conditions are not yet right for them?
4. Zizek on the imagination and the self
The central question I would like to return to, however, is this: is Zizek
right in his view both of the imagination and of the self? Others who
have written about the role of the imagination, for example, Babbit,
have given it a role rather like Kant’s ‘intellectual intuition’. Babbit suggests that one can have an ‘imaginative perception of the universal’ –
the imagination gives one an intuition of universal reality and life. It
offers one a non-conceptual awareness of the universal (Babbit, 1952).
Croce (1922) too allowed that there could be an entirely intuitive universality, radically different from the universality of conceptual thought.
Coleridge spoke of the ‘infinite I am’ – an imaginative joining of all selves
with each other (Coleridge, 1971).
Needs and the Imagination 103
Imagination, for these thinkers, fulfils a positive, quasi-ethical role. In
the case of another thinker, Rousseau, it also fulfills a positive function.
I would like to spend a few moments looking at Rousseau’s thought on
this matter (Rousseau, 1984, discussed in Assiter, 1996).
In Rousseau’s ‘Confessions, Discourse and Emile’, Rousseau discusses
the state of nature. He hypothesises an ‘original’ state of nature, where
there is no language and no separation between self and other. Needs are
satisfied, but no expressions are required to symbolise the objects of
these. As some people begin to acquire property and inequalities
develop, emotions begin to appear. Jealousy is one such emotion. These
emotions need linguistic expression, and, at this point, self and ‘other’
begin to separate.
Rousseau describes the relationship between mother and child as the
paradigmatically natural relationship. The love the child feels for the
mother is both focussed on the mother and, simultaneously on itself,
since the child does not separate itself from its mother.
In ‘The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’, Rousseau (1966) writes
that there are two hypothetical states of nature. In the first of these,
described earlier, as people begin to acquire property, a Hobbesian state
of nature emerges. Ambition brings about desires in people to harm one
another. Riots ensue and a tyrant emerges. But the people revolt and a
new state of nature, with a newfound equality emerges. This new state,
is, according to Rousseau, peculiar to human beings and in it the preeminent natural sentiment or virtue is ‘pity’. Pity, Rousseau suggests,
comes before any kind of reflection – it is a pre-eminently natural sentiment, and it is illustrated paradigmatically ‘by the relationship between
mother and child’ (ibid., p. 34). Pity, however, also, for Rousseau, brings
about the undoing of the natural. The specifically human expression of
pity requires characteristics that take us out of nature and into culture.
The human expression of pity, Rousseau argues, requires the exercise of
the imagination. Rousseau, then, is offering a different view of the creative imagination from that of Lacan and Zizek. Rather than the exercise
of the imagination being destructive in its force, and causing the subject
to see itself as intrinsically lacking and as only possessing in illusory
form a sense of wholeness, for Rousseau, the fundamental exercise of the
imagination lies in its expression in the form of pity.
Another way of considering the self and the imagination, then, is to
imagine people as ‘pitying’ one another, and as fundamentally engaged
with and concerned about one another.
I do not want to suggest with Rousseau, that we should all go around
pitying one another. However Rousseau’s perspective on the imagination
104 Revisiting Universalism
offers another contrast with the view of Zizek. My picture and that of
Rousseau are optimistic. Zizek’s outlook is fundamentally pessimistic.
Who is right and how may one go about determining who is right?
Both accounts I have considered give the imagination a role – it is
either ‘constructive’ or it is ‘destructive’ in its force. A theorist in the
broadly pessimistic vein, although not specifically in relation to the
imagination, is Hobbes. Hobbes develops a picture of human beings as
fundamentally, and, by nature, competitive, fearful and as holding others in contempt. Without the influence of ‘civilisation’ there would be a
‘warre’ of all against all. Life in the Hobbesian state of nature is famously
‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ (Hobbes, 1929). However,
Macpherson (1962) has argued that Hobbes actually deduces his theory
of ‘men’ in the ‘natural’ state by means of an abstraction from the
behaviour of people in the ‘civilised’ world. He did not hypothesise, as
did Marx, a picture of behaviour in a society where the barriers to
civilised communication between individuals and groupings were
removed. He did not imagine a society where the conditions that give
rise to social inequalities and social divisions are hypothetically extrapolated away. Instead, his society is imaginatively constructed from ‘men
as they are’ but with the state and the law and other such forces
abstracted away.
One might argue along analogous lines about the Freudian and
Lacanian concept of the ‘death drive’. In his ‘New Lecture of
Psychoanalysis’ (Freud, 1933) Freud asks why it has taken so long to
accept the existence of an aggressive instinct, when it is obvious that
this kind of aggression is found in many people. In his work ‘Beyond
the Pleasure Principle’ (Freud, 1920) Freud introduces the notion of the
death drive to explain certain types of clinical phenomena found in his
patients. In his later works, he relates the notion to concepts like war
neurosis, primary masochism, sadomasochism, an unconscious sense of
guilt. He suggests in Beyond the Pleasure principle that no explanation
has yet been reached of war neuroses. Basically and fundamentally,
Freud, like Hobbes, considered aggressiveness to be a fundamental part
of human nature.
It is not my purpose here to engage in analysis of this Freudian concept. However, the same kind of point may be made of Freud’s notion,
later taken up by Klein and by Lacan, as is made by Macpherson of
Hobbes. The kind of evidence provided by Freud for his notion was
taken, inevitably, from his own patients. These patients had suffered the
range of problems that confronted the sorts of patient who came to him.
The evidence for the phenomenon, in other words, was derived not
Needs and the Imagination 105
from an analysis of human nature, but from symptoms manifested by
his own patients and by others who engaged in the practices, such as the
various ‘perversions’ he outlined, current in the kind of society in which
he lived, in early twentieth-century Vienna.
Hobbes and Freud offer a view of human nature and of the hypothetical role of the imagination in human knowledge and in human interaction that is, in the respects I am considering, analogous to that of
Zizek. However, as Hobbes himself recognises, if his assumptions about
human nature were actually put to the test, humanity would die out, for
there would be a ‘warre of all against all’ (Hobbes, 1929).
An alternative way of reading Lacan on the imagination from that of
Zizek, which I will outline in very sketchy form here, but leave the
reader to develop further, draws out an element in Lacanian thinking
that is begun by Fink, in his reading of Lacan. Fink reads Lacan as offering a ‘radically new theory of subjectivity’ (Fink, 1995, p. 91). In her
Sexuality in the Field of Vision, Rose had suggested that psychoanalysis,
through its reconceptualisation of subjectivity, could become political.
Althusser had characterised ideology by analogy with the Lacanian
mirror stage, suggesting that the individual’s relation to society parallels
the ‘closed narcissistic space of the imaginary order’ (Althusser, 1971,
see Elliott, 1999, p. 149). In ideology, for Althusser, individuals
are ‘interpellated’ as subjects (Althusser, ibid.). Society functions like
the Lacanian mirror, in ‘hailing’ the person as subject. Subjects, for
Althusser, are positioned within the social and economic roles provided
for them.
The lack at the core of the Lacanian self could be represented as the
desire of the other (mother). If the subject were to internalise, in fantasy,
this other’s desire, then there is scope for the development of an alternative subject position, beyond the existing symbolic. This alternative
subject might be capable of radically rethinking its relation to the existing Lacanian symbolic. Fink, in fact, offers analogies between the ‘object
petit a’ and surplus value in capitalism, that I do not find plausible.
However, there is the scope, on Lacan and Zizek’s premises, for refusing
Zizek’s pessimistic conclusion. Such a viewpoint is admirably developed
by Suh-Young Kim (2002).
But there are important reasons, as I have suggested earlier, for refusing Lacan’s premises. There are good reasons for suggesting that there
need be no ‘lack’ at the core of the self.
From a non-Lacanian perspective, then, I’d like to draw on the work
of Morwenna Griffiths. In her book ‘Feminisms and the Self’, Morwenna
Griffiths (1995) offers some insights that she hopes might help all of us
106 Revisiting Universalism
understand the nature of the self – the nature of each one of us. She
offers some autobiographical musings, and a range of brief biographies.
She suggests that theorising about the self may be an insufficient way of
going about understanding the nature of the self. She does not describe
it this way, but one might conceptualise her project as a project in the
exercise of the creative imagination; a project that engages positively
and productively in setting about understanding selves and their interactions with one another. She writes that, as well as theorising, we need
to listen to stories; to write narratives of personal experience. She suggests that we use the subject position – our personal stories – to question
some of the abstractions of philosophy. She is particularly concerned
to write the stories – briefly – of those at the margins of dominant
groupings in contemporary societies.
I would like to use her narrative in a different way here. Her work,
I suggest, is a work of the constructive, positive imagination. She suggests ways in which, instead of going about failing to hear each other;
failing to listen to one another, we do the opposite; we try our utmost to
hear the ‘other’. We set out to open up dialogue rather than closing it
down. Instead of attempting to claim universality for our own experience, we do the opposite, as Rousseau did in his Confessions, or
Augustine in his Autobiography. We recognise the particularity of our
own peculiar experience and outlook.
Our experience is, in fact, as Griffiths recognises, more than particular.
I have some shared experiences with others who are mothers; with other
women, with other Deans of Faculty. But Griffiths’ point is important,
however. For, through her focus on the particular, and on listening and
hearing, she is describing something that Kant might have characterised
as a transcendental condition of experience. Without listening to the
‘other’; without hearing the ‘other’, human beings could not survive
together. Things would be, ultimately, as Hobbes described them: there
would be a state of semi violence, where individuals are unable to
co-operate with one another, and where they live in fear for themselves
and for their loved ones.
The stories of those at the margins of society include aspects that concern the facets they share with those at the pinnacle of society’s various
ladders. Indeed writing these stories in such a way to emphasise what is
shared by, for example, President Bush and an Afghani labourer, is to
write a different aspect of the story of the labourer – the ‘marginal’
individual – from the more readily available emphasis upon his or her
differences from Bush. To write the story, inconceivable as it may seem,
of what Hitler shared with his victims, is to look upon each person as
Needs and the Imagination 107
part of a shared humanity. We might use Griffiths’ metaphor, then, in
the context of developing an awareness that we all share a natural
nature in common and that certain moral obligations flow from that. By
‘listening’ to others who are radically different from ourselves, we may
realise that they share something with each of us. Suppose, to return to
the topic of the first chapter, the radical Catholic about abortion listens
to the radical feminist who is strongly ‘pro’ abortion. Suppose, instead
of focussing on the topic that divides them, they listen to each other talk
about other matters. Suppose they talk about their experiences, and listen to each other, openly, putting to one side their radical differences on
the one subject. There is no reason why they should like each other; no
reason why they should reach a point where they recognise that they
have very much in common. Nonetheless, if one of them is suffering a
shortage of basic material goods, then the project of listening might
enable each one of us to recognise that the needs of the other are not
something that we can all choose to ignore. In the end we cannot
choose to ignore the starvation of those at the other end of the globe,
because, as Beck (Beck, op. cit.) has pointed out, the other end of the
globe affects those at this end.
From an alternative non-Lacanian psychic starting point, and using the
imaginative story writing of Griffiths and the parallel imaginative writing
of Lara (Lara, op. cit.) there is scope for a different view of the emerging self
from that of Zizek, and scope for an alternative metaphor for the social self.
If we are to avoid the Hobbesian ‘warre’ then it is imperative that
humanity begins rethinking its relationship to its natural nature and to
the natural natures of those around each one of us.
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Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA.
Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self: the Making of Modern Identity, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Williams, C. (1994) Feminism, Subjectivity and Psychoanalysis: Towards a Corporeal
Knowledge, in Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology,
ed. Kathleen Lennon and Margaret Whitford, Routledge, London.
Zizek, Slavoj (1999) The Ticklish subject, the Absent Centre of Political Ontology,
Verso, London.
6
Bodies and Dualism
In the book thus far, I have defended a universalist perspective about
a particular set of moral values. I should like, in the following two
chapters, to look at a dimension of epistemic thinking and to defend a
version of universalism in this domain.
Much recent thinking, in the epistemic domain, as in the ethical,
has been particularist. Focus upon the ‘other’ of the purportedly universal
subject, whether it be women as a group, lesbians or the ‘subjects’ of postcolonial societies, for example, is thought to lead necessarily to a particularism and a pluralism. Maria Lugones, for example, writes that western
postmodernism, in its rejection of any form of universalism, reflects the
experience of resistance to the colonial experience (Lugones, 1990). Many
feminist writers condemn the ‘enlightenment’ universal subject as irreducibly masculine and male. Linda Nicholson, for one, suggests that
‘ideals’ such as objectivity and ‘reason’ have reflected the values of masculinity at a particular point in history (Nicholson, 1990, Introduction,
p. 5). Iris Marion Young argues, as we have seen, that feminism must pursue, not a universal ideal, but a politics of difference, which recognises and
celebrates an ‘inexhaustibility of human relations’ understood through
the idea of the ‘irreducible particularity’ of entities (Young, 1990). Gone,
for many recent feminists, post-colonial theorists and recent thinkers who
would have us re-evaluate the thought of the Enlightenment, is the ideal
celebrated by Mary Wollstonecraft (Wollstonecraft, 1976) that the development of a reason which is ‘the same in all’ would alleviate the misery
and oppression, peculiar to women, that arises out of the particular laws
and customs of society (ibid., p. 73) (quoted in Jeffery, 2001, p. 2).
Deconstructionist thinkers, from Nietzsche, through Derrida, to
Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous, applaud a particularist point of view. In
Spurs, for example, Derrida announces: ‘it is woman who will be my
109
110 Revisiting Universalism
subject’ (Derrida, 1979, p. 37). This ‘woman’ is in fact a metaphorical
woman – Nietzche’s Woman – a woman who is a ‘great sailing ship, a
“ghostly beauty” an elusive object of desire’ (ibid., p. 45). Woman offers
a ‘trace’ of knowledge of absolute truth and a challenge to the masculine
universal subject and universal knowledge.
Cixous, too, in her critique of the universalising subject, claims that
the ‘civilised world’ founded its power on the repression of populations
which had suddenly become ‘invisible’, like proletarians, immigrant
workers, minorities who are not the right ‘colour’ (Cixous and Clement,
1996). Universalising philosophy, like society, is said to suppress and
make invisible ‘others’. Cixous associates women and other minorities
with particularity, a particularity that has been devalued and suppressed
by universality. For Cixous, there is a universal structure of thought in
which Woman is subject to Man. Masculinity becomes, for this universalising thinking, the norm; femininity a limitation or a qualification of
that norm. Cixous seeks to develop an alternative mode of awareness to
this false universalism (Cixous, ibid.).
Universalism, then, for many, should be on its last legs, contaminated
as it is with associations of anti-feminism, of colonialism, of slavery, of
racism and homophobia. Even class, for some, is associated with the
logic that should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
In earlier chapters I have offered some responses to some arguments
which are akin to some of these. In this chapter, I shall consider one type
of feminist particularist epistemic theory. It is an outlook that is particularist in a slightly different sense from any of those mentioned earlier.
It is, however, an approach that is significant for the argument of the
book in so far as it is a theory that focusses specifically upon the embodied self. Furthermore, I develop a particular kind of critique in the chapter of the liberal form of universalism.
1. Liberalism and the disembodied self
The classical universal liberal self, as we have seen, is assumed to be disembodied. In this chapter, I’d like briefly to outline, once more, this
classical liberal position, and then to describe and critically analyse one
of the feminist responses to the perspective. The response is the perspective in epistemology that takes the notion of embodied women’s
experience as an epistemological starting point. I shall argue that
this perspective remains inside the dualist outlook of the liberal view.
This dualism, I will suggest, is one of the problems with the classical
Enlightenment form of universalism.
Bodies and Dualism 111
In classical social contract theory, the individual political subject, the
subject of political and legal rights, the subject that enters into the contract, the individual of classical liberal theory, the citizen, is constructed
in opposition to the private, conjugal and familial sphere. On certain
versions of classical liberal theory, represented in one form, this century,
by Sartre’s conception of the freely choosing, autonomous self, and
much earlier by Kant’s ‘noumenal’ self, the subject becomes literally disembodied. The needy, desiring, reproducing self is something to be transcended when one operates as an ethical being, as a self that is truly
autonomous and free. Some theorists in the tradition represent the body
as something dirty, an inconvenient obstruction that is to be transcended if one is to function in a truly rational or truly moral fashion.
Descartes (1985) is probably the most famous in this respect. He clearly
sees the body as alien, as outside the self. Metaphors like a cage, a prison,
a swamp are used by Descartes to describe his body. Indeed, another,
more famous, image in Descartes compares the body to a watch. The difference between a living and a dead person is just like that between a
watch that’s wound up versus one that’s unwound.
Much earlier, in a similar vein, Plato had said this of his body; ‘(it is) a
source of countless distractions by reason of the mere requirement of
food … (it is) liable also to diseases which impede us in the pursuit of
truth: it fills us full of loves, lusts and fears, … of all kinds, and useless
foolery and in very truth, as men say, takes away from us the power of
thinking at all. Whence come wars and fightings and factions. Whence
but from the body and the lusts of the body?’ (Plato, 1948, p. 66). In
general, Plato viewed the body with disgust. It is part of the region of the
changeable; it is excluded from and in opposition to the genuine
self, the soul. In his later work, Plato developed the notion of the
divided soul, but bodily elements continue to be depicted as inferior
(Plato, 1965).
Continuing this just for a moment, I think that it is significant that a
number of feminist writers have also been susceptible to this negative
thinking about the body. Simone de Beauvoir, for example, writing as
recently as 1949, has this to say about women’s bodies, including her
own: ‘she is absorption, suction, humus, pitch and glue … inhibiting
and viscous’. De Beauvoir sometimes associates herself very much with
the negative dualist reading of Descartes: ‘woman is her body, but her
body is something other than herself’ (de Beauvoir, 1975, p. 189).
On the other hand, there are, it should be said, thinkers in the tradition who write much more positively about the body – for example,
Nietzsche, Deleuze, Foucault.
112 Revisiting Universalism
In so far as classical liberal theorists have seen themselves as embodied,
they have necessarily possessed male bodies. Civilised society is not supposed to concern itself with reproduction, but only with production. The
task that, up until recently (perhaps with a few exceptions such as the
notorious society where men participate in the task of having a baby)
only women are able to perform, is excluded from the domain of civil
society; from the domain of citizenship. Carol Pateman has argued that
the third element in the trilogy: liberty, equality and fraternity, is often
forgotten. She argues, in The Disorder of Women (Pateman, 1995) that
liberalism is forged through the necessary subjection of women – of
women’s bodies. In the social contract story, sexual or conjugal right is
natural: men’s dominion over women is held to follow from the respective natures of the sexes. Eve’s subordination is simply the subjection
that every wife owes her husband. The individuals who make the social
contract are men. Women are constructed as naturally deficient in a
specifically political capacity, the capacity to ‘create and maintain political right’ (ibid., p. 96). Civil society is the sphere of freedom, equality,
individualism, reason, contract and impartial law. This sphere is separated, in classical liberal theory, from the ‘private’ world – from the
world of ties of love, emotion and sexual passions – the world of women,
but also the world of the body. The individuals who make the contract,
in so far as they are embodied, they have male bodies, but these are male
bodies that lack emotion, love and passion.
One of the clearest exponents of this view of women’s nature is Hegel.
In Hegel’s discussion of Antigone, as we saw in Chapter 2, in the
Philosophy of Right (Hegel, 1973) women are excluded from political
life; from ethical life; from the public community. In the Philosophy of
Right, Hegel argues that women are destined to give birth to children;
effectively there is no split between their inclinations and their choices.
Men, on Hegel’s analysis, are necessarily constitutively attached to the
polis, to the civic community, and their duties as citizens flow from this
attachment. Women, by contrast, are necessarily attached to the family;
and, within the family, for Hegel, there is no scope for choice or for
rational reflection on conduct. Freud too argues that women are deficient in the basic moral law underpinning the social contract – a sense
of justice (Freud, 1932).
There are two senses, then, of disengagement with ‘the body’ in classical liberalism. In one sense, the individual of classical liberal theory,
the individual that participates in the body politic, has a male body. As
an embodied male the individual is entitled to work and to engage in
any other task for which the possession of a body may be a requirement
Bodies and Dualism 113
in the political process. In another sense, however, the individual is
disembodied: human identity is constructed, on the second reading,
as transcendent mind or as transcendent reason. Descartes (Descartes,
op. cit.) is usually invoked as responsible here, with his explicit articulation of mind/body dualism (I think that this is only partially true of
Descartes himself). This is sometimes presented as a normative ideal –
the better aspects of human identity are construed as the mental/ those
aspects that have to do with the functioning of reason. Then, nature, on
some readings of Descartes again, is constructed as mindless – as alien.
Animals, on readings of Descartes, are also mindless – mechanical
things. (Again, I think that this reading of Descartes downplays the
extent to which he idolised machines but that, again, is another story.)
In many readings of classical liberal theory, though, continuing the
story, nature is seen as lack, as empty, passive and without a value of its
own. It is this view of nature that justifies Locke’s view that property is
justified where one has mixed one’s labour with it (Locke, 1924). Nature
has no properties; it is ‘unowned’, and it cannot have a sense of selfownership. (Of course, as we have seen in Chapter 2, Locke was in fact
wrong that the examples of nature he considered were unowned.)
The disembodied individual of classical liberal theory is reinforced in
Christianity, and especially in the early Protestant tradition. Early
Protestant reformers made nature suspect, robbing it of its previous status as a source of religious inspiration. Protestantism was connected
with attacks on magic, superstition and witchcraft (see Turner, 1984).
Several writers have pointed to contemporary residues of this early
modern denigration of the flesh. For example there is the contemporary
middle-class obsession (reinforced in policy terms) with dieting, fitness,
the dangers of smoking – arguably a hangover from the early Puritan
desire to control the body and to curb its desires and excesses (see e.g.
Ehrenreich, 1990). (This may, on the other hand, be read as deriving
from a consumerist desire to maintain an ‘attractive’ body; a body that
is seen to be desirable to others. On this reading, as well, however, the
body is checked and controlled, as it is in the Puritan tradition.) Another
example from a very different area, of the separation of ‘people’ from
bodies is the use of parts of bodies for medical experimentation without
the consent of the people whose bodies are being experimented upon.
There is also the defining of gay men as the repository of AIDS: gay men
become defined through a certain type of bodily condition.
Certain feminists have responded to the above picture by advocating,
as an alternative to the liberal framework outlined, an ethic of care, that
focusses upon the qualities that derive from women’s role in the
114 Revisiting Universalism
‘private’ sphere. Rather than there being separate, autonomous, free and
equal beings, care theorists emphasise the relational and embedded
character of a person, deriving from the classical role of women in the
private sphere, and the ethical qualities of caring and nurturing that
might flow from such a model. Indeed, this perspective has been presented as offering a female ethic, as opposed to a male one (see e.g.
Gilligan, 1982). Instead of looking at this, however, I should like to look,
in this chapter, at a certain feminist response to the picture in another
domain – that of the epistemology that underlies the outlook.
2. ‘Bodily’ feminist standpoint epistemology
Some feminists have urged that the solution to the silencing of women
and of the body from the political process is to effect a rethinking of the
epistemology that underlies the theory. They have argued, first, that the
disembodied individual of classical liberal theory was also the ‘subject’
of Cartesian, positivist and many other types of epistemology. It is this
‘subject’ that purports to be gender neutral, that claims to be merely
a ‘filler’ for the S in the generic knowledge claim of the form ‘S knows
that P’. Instead of assuming this disembodied, disembedded subject
as the knowing subject, the subject of liberalism, feminists have suggested that we should take up the standpoint of women. They have
suggested that there is an epistemological standpoint or an outlook on
the world that is specifically a women’s or a ‘feminist’ outlook. Some of
this writing has explicitly linked such an outlook with the body.
Irigaray, for example, has talked of thinking ‘through the body’ and
of ‘writing the body’ (Irigaray, 1974, 1977). Feminists have argued this
in a number of ways. Lorraine Code, for example, one of the important
contributors to this debate, put the point thus: philosophers have
tended to group philosophy with science as the most gender-neutral of
disciplines. But feminist critiques reveal that this alleged neutrality
masks a bias in favour of institutionally stereotypical masculine values
into the fabric of the discipline – its methods, norms and contents
(Code, 1991, p. 26). In her path-breaking work, Sandra Harding
(Harding, 1986) has produced extensive research documenting some of
the ways in which this has been the case. She points to evidence of sex
bias in what is presented as neutral scientific inquiry in the sociological
and the biological sciences. For example, she suggests that, in biology,
women the gatherer played as significant a role as man the hunter in
the origin of the species. Biological studies that omit this crucial fact
about evolution, therefore, may be biased in any or all of the following
Bodies and Dualism 115
ways – in the research questions asked; the hypotheses generated; the
methods deployed; and the kinds of evidence accepted for knowledge
claims.
One might accept the argument so far, however, and yet question
Code’s claim that there is a specific ‘woman’s’ epistemological outlook.
How have feminists justified this further claim?
There are a number of different kinds of argument deployed by feminists to justify the view that there is a woman’s outlook on knowledge.
At one extreme, feminists like Firestone and Daly have argued that men
and women have necessarily different cognitive capacities, based on
sharply antithetical ways of experiencing the world. Firestone wrote of a
‘subjective, intuitive, introverted’ female response to the world, as contrasted with an objective, logical outlook (Firestone, 1971, p. 175).
Others have pointed, in celebratory fashion, to research into brain function that reveals ‘natural’ female and male cognitive differences. This
same research can be used either as Phil Hogan does in his column in the
Observer to denigrate women (Observer, Him Indoors, weekly column
in Life magazine, The Observer) or to celebrate female ways of knowing.
The outlook that privileges ‘female’ qualities was used by the women of
Greenham Common to suggest that women are more peace loving than
men; less prone to warfare (see e.g. Thompson ed. 1983).
This type of research has been questioned however. Ruth Bleier, for
example, has argued that the biology of the brain is shaped by an individual’s environment (Bleier, 1986, p. 65). Instead of proposing that
there is an outlook on the world which necessarily connects with being
a woman, another group of feminists therefore have looked to contingent connections between being a woman and seeing the world in a certain way. The major candidate for such claims is women’s experience.
Some feminists have argued along the following lines: the ‘subject’ of
philosophical or sociological or other knowledge claims, historically,
has been male. This fact about the knowing subject means that characteristics normally associated with masculinity have influenced the
sorts of research questions asked; the methods used; and the interpretation of the results. Dorothy Smith, arguing for a women’s outlook in
social research, suggests that the sociological methods associated with
Weber – rationality – should be contrasted with ‘another voice’ in
sociology, which is more emotional and connected to the heart (Smith,
1988).
Smith, in other words, is continuing the effective association of
women with the body. Rationality, certainly in the Kantian tradition, is
seen to be transcendent of the emotional, embedded, particular self.
116 Revisiting Universalism
Some such feminists have drawn on the very influential work of
Nancy Chodorow (1978) who argues that female mothering produces
and reproduces women whose deep sense of self is relational whilst
that of men is not. Drawing on theories of childhood socialisation and
psychoanalytic theory, Chodorow describes the reproduction in
women, over generations, of qualities associated with mothering (ibid.).
Chodorow’s work has been both extensively quoted and heavily criticised. I am both sympathetic to the idea that there are common features
of the experience and practice of mothering which may be reproduced
in little girls, and conscious of the vastly different circumstance of any
two mothers, even in my own area of Haringey, North London. My son’s
school contains mothers who are of South Asian origin, who attempt to
provide their children with a combination of cultural experiences;
mothers of Kurdish refugee children; mothers who are single parents;
mothers who have Italian, Greek, Cypriot, African and many more, origins. That group of mothers are all alike in that their children attend the
same school. In other respects, though, the group is very diverse. How
much more diverse, then, must be the experiences of mothers and their
mothering behaviour and beliefs across continents and over centuries?
Feminists, recognising the difficulties involved in describing ‘mothering’ as the uniform shared experience of women, have tended to look
instead to sets of values that have traditionally been associated with
‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’. An interesting example of this sort of reasoning is the article by Janice Moulton on what she called the Adversary
Paradigm. ‘Under the adversary paradigm’, she wrote, ‘it is assumed that
the only, or at any rate, the best, way of evaluating work in philosophy
is to subject it to the strongest or most extreme opposition’ (Moulton,
1983, p. 153). She suggests that this model of philosophical reasoning
both accepts a positive view of aggressive behaviour and is based on the
perception that aggression is ‘natural’ and good for males and neither of
these things for women. It is possible therefore, to generalise from
Moulton’s work and suggest that there is an epistemological outlook,
derived from a non-aggressive form of reasoning that is common to all
women. Sheila Ruth (1979) describes mainstream philosophy in its content, method and practice as male, masculine and masculinist. Instead,
an alternative outlook on the world, deriving from women’s experience,
would emphasise emotion and connectedness.
One of the motivations for this focus on women’s experience, as
Jean Grimshaw points out in her widely acclaimed book (Grimshaw,
1986) is that many women experienced a sense of discrepancy between
some official (and often male) definition of their identity – who they are
Bodies and Dualism 117
supposed to be – and their feelings. One example she gives is women’s
actual experience of sex as compared with the views of ‘experts’ on the
subject. Another important example – originally documented by
Ehrenreich and English (1978) is the domination of male ‘experts’ in theories of motherhood and child-rearing. Yet, again, it is hard to find common experiences of women across cultures or even indeed in one area.
Jean Grimshaw points out, indeed, some of the difficulties involved in
focussing in this way upon women’s experience. She writes: ‘one is
never just a man or a woman. One is young or old, sick or healthy.’
Experience, she pointed out, ‘does not come neatly in segments, such
that it is always possible to abstract what it is due to being a woman’
from that which is due to being married, being middle class and so on
(Grimshaw, 1986, p. 85). A further important point made by Grimshaw
is that feminists have coined certain concepts, such as ‘sexual harassment’ which, she argues, perform a double function. On the one hand
this term suggests a realignment of the concept of ‘harassment’, but it
also points out that certain behaviours are intrusive and coercive. This
double function, she argues, would be unintelligible on the assumption
of male and female realities. Grimshaw was referring to the idea of men
and women inhabiting radically different worlds, which emerged from
the view of Dale Spender and others that there are ‘male and female languages (Spender, 1980). But the point applies also to the notion of male
and female ways of knowing: from whose perspective would we set out
to understand the double function of the term? It has to be from both
perspectives.
The central difficulty feminists have found with the notion of experience as performing the aforementioned role, is that it is very difficult to
come up with some experience that is genuinely shared by all women.
What would or could it be? Judith Grant has extended this point (Grant,
1993). She points out that none of the qualities usually said to be shared
by all women like emotion and connectedness or lack of aggression need
be specifically associated with women until feminists name them as such.
If that is the position, however, the argument becomes circular: feminists
suggest that there is a woman’s experience, which provides the ground
for a specific woman’s way of knowing. Yet experience is ascribed to
women on the basis of this very claim about a woman’s way of knowing.
An alternative to focussing on women’s experience is to suggest
that there is a ‘perspective’ on the world which derives in some way
from the fact of women’s powerlessness relative to the position of men.
Commonly, the approach draws on Lukascian Marxism, and an analogy
is posed between the positioning of women as a group and that of the
118 Revisiting Universalism
proletariat in Marxism. Bat Ami Bar On, for example, puts the view that
knowledge is perspectival and the perspectives of socially marginalised
groups are more revealing than those of others. Bar On draws on the
work of earlier feminist writers who had intimated that there was an
intrinsic connection between the ‘degree of oppression’ suffered and
approximation to the truth (Bar On, 1993). Robin Morgan, in 1971, for
example, had suggested that revolution must be made by those who are
the most oppressed – whom she described at the time as ‘black, brown
and white women’ (Morgan, 1971, p. 84). (It is interesting that it was
possible, in the western world at that time to locate these women all
in one group.) Slightly later, Ann Ferguson, in Woman as a New
Revolutionary Class in the US (Ferguson, 1979) following Shulamith
Firestone, had argued that women form a revolutionary class. Other
feminists, notably Nancy Hartstock and Sandra Harding made the connection between oppression and epistemological standpoint explicit.
A version of this kind of argument is put by Anna Yeatman, who
paints a picture of a ‘contestatory politics’ where socially marginal subjects continually push against the walls of established subjects and
established hegemonic knowledges (Yeatman, 1994).
Bar On argues, however, that there is a significant difference between
the Marxian proletariat and women as a group. The proletariat is both
socially marginal in relation to the capitalist class and in the centre stage
of capitalist production. Social marginality, she argues, is a function of
economic centrality. I have outlined several problematic features of the
association of women with the Lukacsian proletariat, in my book
Enlightened Women (Assiter, 1996). One of the critical points I made there
is that, for Lukacs, truth is equated with knowledge of the world. This true
understanding of the world, for him, will be revealed when the working
class brings about socialism, because it is only then, for him, that the ideological blinkers on knowledge will be removed. But the working class
may not bring about socialism. The truth of the theory is made to rest
upon a possibility that may not become actual. Harding’s particular version of standpoint theory is not quite parallel with Lukacsian Marxism
here for she does not argue that women have access to a truth which men
do not. Yet her theory, and that of other standpoint theorists, is open to
the objection that women’s standpoint may not reveal gaps in the dominant one: women may, and often have, wholly imbibed the dominant
view. Women’s experience might fit the dominant paradigm.
I am wholly in sympathy with the argument that the values, interests,
beliefs, indeed the identity of the knowing subject influence the sort of
research questions asked, the type of evidence that is accepted, and
Bodies and Dualism 119
therefore the justification of claims to know. I accept that what Harding,
following Kuhn, has labelled the context of discovery is indeed relevant
in these ways. But this is entirely different from endorsing the further
claim that the sex of the knower is epistemologically significant. Why is
my sex so particularly important when it comes to the justification and
the truth of my claims to knowledge? Why is my sex so much more significant than my professional status; my location in North London; the
particular circumstances of my life; my most cherished beliefs and values and so on? Feminists have provided Freudian or other psychoanalytic explanations for the emphasis placed on sex: sexual difference is
said to be a deep-seated identification, forged, in a range of ways, into
our very being, entrenched in our unconscious, in a way that the other
qualities I mentioned are not. A baby is labelled male or female (and
occasionally wrongly – see the case studies of Robert Stoller) (Stoller,
1984) at the moment of its birth. Sexual difference is deep-seated
baggage from which it is very difficult for us to distance ourselves.
Sexual difference is constantly reinforced – through the different stages
of socialisation – in school, for example. Mixed schools in the UK used
to have separate entrances. Even today, when the entrances are no
longer used in this way, and when many schools make an explicit
attempt to breakdown behavioural sexual differences, the differences,
nonetheless, manifest themselves very early on in all sorts of ways.
3. Some reflections
Some of the above criticisms of the epistemological approach will be
familiar. As one writer has put it: the margins (the women’s standpoint)
is not a shared space (Griffiths, 1995). Others, in a very familiar criticism, have criticised the ‘essentialism’ of the outlook. It is supposed to
propose an essential nature of women, that purports to render change
impossible. Essence, however, can be understood in a range of ways –
from the Aristotelian unchanging substance that persists through
change; through to a nominal essence account whereby essence is the
set of qualities by means of which we name the thing what it is. On the
latter view, essence is not unchanging.
I see nothing wrong in supposing that there is a Lockean ‘real essence’
to women – a causal substrate, shared by all women, which is responsible for the set of ‘secondary’ properties on the basis of which we name
women as such. The problem with some individuals whose sex is indeterminate is that they were sometimes mistakenly assigned to the female
sex. My argument against certain forms of ‘essentialist’ feminism, then,
120 Revisiting Universalism
is first, that I think that the above feminists are actually wrong in their
view of what the essence is. It cannot be the experience of mothering,
because many women do not mother; nor should it be, except in a
historically relative sense, a set of qualities that flow from women’s
marginal status, because such qualities are essential only in societies and
historical periods where woman is marginal. Women, anyway, are never
marginal in the same ways. The real essence will actually consist in the
set of biological properties that are necessary for categorising someone as
female.
The other component of the argument, though, concerns the conclusions that are drawn from the idea of essence. I have been suggesting,
here, that there are no grounds for assuming that an epistemological
outlook flows from one’s identity as a woman. Further, the supposition
that there is such an outlook confirms the position of women in the
philosophical imaginary as embodied, and correspondingly men as disembodied. This is disadvantageous both for women and men.
It seems to me, then, that the attempt to found an epistemology
on sexual difference has not been helpful for feminists. It has rested,
I believe, on a form of Cartesian dualism. Descartes, on common
readings, artificially separated the ‘I’ – the rational, thinking, believing –
subject – from the body – the sensual, emotional ‘thing’. Feminist dualist epistemologists separate the ‘I’ of the history of epistemology – the
rational, autonomous, ‘universal’ mind from the embodied, emotional,
sensuous female. In attempts to search for universal characteristics
shared by these ‘female’ or feminist subjects, feminist epistemologists
have retreated, inevitably to these Cartesian claims. I say inevitably
because it is inevitable, when you are attempting to find commonalities
where it is in fact very difficult to do so, where, dare I say, none may
exist, that you will revert to a cultural heritage which is, in many
respects, dualist in the Cartesian sense. The woman’s way of knowing
becomes the way of knowing of embodied females, or of females identified as bodies, whilst there remains a man’s way of knowing which will
continue to be as it is expressed in the liberal tradition. Many of the candidates identified in the earlier examples of shared features or experiences of women are experiences of them largely as ‘disminded’, to coin
a parallel expression to that of disembodied. None of the types of experience or the common features mentioned in the literature involve the
use of any higher cognitive faculty. A non-dualist approach will be
either unitary – there is one and only one type of knowing subject –
or it will be plural: there is a diversity and range of types of knowing
subject.
Bodies and Dualism 121
It seems to me that there are other dualisms that parallel the liberal
mind/body; male/female dualism. Any conceptualisation that characterises a certain group as ‘other’ in relation to a mainstream grouping is
reinforcing this framework. One example of this is the expression
‘minority groupings’ that Avtah Brah coins in her book: Cartographies of
Diaspora, Contesting Identities (Brah, 1997). Brah refers to a conference
that took place in the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. The
aim of the conference was to sanction the concept of ‘minority
discourse’, and the project was conceived of as one of ‘marginalising
the centre’ and ‘displacing the core/periphery model’. She signals the
importance of this event and of the political discourse it suggests. She
emphasises that many of the contributors to the conference suggested
that a minority location ‘is not a question of essence but a question of
position’, a subject position that in the final analysis can be defined
only in political terms. In other words, she is sympathetic to the political project, as indeed am I to the intention behind the early feminist
examples I have discussed. However, she says ‘I am less than convinced
about the use of the term “minority” discourse’ (Brah, p. 188). Her argument is that there is a tendency for the term ‘minority’ to be used to
refer to racialised or ethnicised groupings, and it can be used as an alibi
for pathologised representations of these groupings.
Whenever we employ the ‘marginal’ or the ‘lesser’ expression in a
pair of binary opposites in a political or value laden context, then we are
opening ourselves to that grouping being presented in the terms in
which women and bodies in general have been depicted in classical
liberal theory. I do not want to deny that it is possible to turn a term on
its head, as the Black Power movement did in the USA, and as the gay
and lesbian movement has done in the western world. However, it is not
insignificant, given the liberal history that I have outlined, that the negative stereotypes of black people, of gays and lesbians, of women, of animals, relate to sexualised and bodily image. The image of the black man
as over sexualised; that of the gay man as the repository of AIDS, each
relates to bodily image. It is, moreover, a bodily image that somehow
suggests that the person is purely a body; that he has no higher mental
abilities.
In her book Bodies that Matter Judith Butler (1993) reached a similar
conclusion to the above. She writes that binaries such as male/female;
mind/body; and form/matter form part of the ‘phallogocentric’
symbolic that produces the latter constituent of the pair as the former’s
‘outside’, as its ‘other’. She suggests that it is the ‘cultural symbolic’ that
assumes such binaries that brings about the exclusion of femininity and
122 Revisiting Universalism
the female from metaphysics and from the symbolic domain itself.
She symbolically identifies ‘woman’/‘matter’/the body with the
Derridean ‘supplement – the excess that cannot be symbolised, or the
Wittgensteinean’ – that of which we cannot speak. I concur with some
of her characterisation of the problem, but I would very much demur
from Butler’s conclusion that woman cannot be identified at all – that
there is no such thing as women.
4. Towards a solution
In the end, a possible solution to the problem I have outlined, I suggest,
involves the development of an alternative philosophical imaginary to
the dualist perspective – one that is neither liberal nor does it attempt to
turn around some negatively defined ‘other’ and valorise that ‘other’.
The dualist thinking outlined stems from a logic and metaphysics of
‘A’ and ‘not ‘A’, where the ‘not A’ is invariably characterised by virtue of
its not being ‘A’, as with ‘man’ ‘woman’ that is ‘not man’. An alternative
logic and metaphysic would emphasise the idea of ‘becoming’ as fundamental. Rather than identities being fixed and determinate, with clear
boundaries, rather identity would be fluid, with the capacity for change
and development. Such a metaphysic would allow for identities that
contain others within them, and for a more fluid boundary between
male and female.
Some people have suggested turning to Spinoza for an alternative
model of identity to that of Descartes (see e.g. Moira Gatens, 1996).
Spinoza writes that there is only one substance, which is single and indivisible; body and mind become expressions of the attributes of substance.
We might also turn, in Brah’s words again, to a ‘multi-axial performative conception of power’. This would allow that a grouping that is constructed as a minority in one context may be in a majority in another. It
would also allow for the extension of identity. Butler, for example, has
suggested that people should try out new sexualities in a ‘game of masks’
(Butler, ibid.).
Another dimension of the solution will be spelt out in the next chapter and will involve separating out the determination of identity from
the values that are significant. The epistemological outlook I have, for
example, and the values that I uphold, may have nothing to do with my
identity as a woman.
Further, it will come as no surprise when I write that it is important to
remember that each one of us, in so far as we are human beings, is an
embodied agent and a minded body. There are points of commonality
Bodies and Dualism 123
between men and women; between gays and heterosexuals; between
majority and minority groupings. The most significant point of
commonality, as I have been arguing throughout this book, is that all of
us are human beings with certain basic bodily needs. Some of those
needs are not being met for significant numbers of people in the world.
5. Conclusion
I have argued, in this chapter, that feminist epistemologists who emphasise qualities shared by all women, reinforce traditional liberal assumptions about women as ‘other’, as ‘disminded’ bodily creatures. Thus,
although they escape the picture of humans as disembodied that characterises much liberal theory, they remain, I have argued, within liberal
premises by valorising the qualities traditionally left out of the picture,
rather than through revising the dualist assumptions of traditional liberal universalism.
In the penultimate chapter of the book, I will develop an alternative
epistemic outlook; one that might be described as universalist in certain
respects, but one that, hopefully, avoids the difficulties alluded to here.
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7
Feminist Epistemology and Value
In previous chapters I have contended that it is significant that there is
a universal human nature of a certain sort, and that it is possible to question the claim that moral values, in our contemporary world, must be
plural. I have then moved on to look at the epistemological dimension
of the argument. Descartes is one of the earliest and most forceful
‘universalists’ in epistemology, and I have suggested that, contrary to
recent ‘postmodern’ thinkers, universalist thinking, although not of the
Cartesian type, is tremendously important. In this chapter, I would
like to defend an alternative epistemic outlook that begins from the
conception of human nature earlier outlined.
Traditionally, in analytical philosophy and in subjects influenced by
that discipline, individual knowing subjects were supposed to be detached,
objective onlookers on the world. Positivists, from Comte (Comte, 1853)
through to the 1930s verificationists (see e.g. Hempel, 1965), emphasised
that gaining knowledge of any kind is a matter of assessing evidence
in a detached, impartial way. Objectivism, as characterised not only by
the positivists, but also by Popper and others (Popper, 1962; Lakatos
and Musgrave, 1870), legitimised the cognitive authority of science.
Objectivism was embedded in the definition of science, and social scientists, in order to gain the cognitive authority of physics, emulated what
they thought were the latter’s practices.
The norm of objectivity, as described above, as we have seen (Gellner,
1992, p. 3), is associated with the abstract individualism of liberal democratic theory. It presupposes that knowers must cut themselves off from
their embodiment and their various beliefs. Rawls relied on the same
kinds of assumption in setting up the early version of his ‘original
position’ (Rawls, 1972). I remember being taught, in my undergraduate
philosophy programme, almost a Golden Rule of philosophical study,
126
Feminist Epistemology and Value 127
that the genesis of a belief, where it comes from, is irrelevant to its truth
or falsity. Knowledge claims are supposed to be evaluated rationally, and
not accepted on the basis of status or authority.
In this outlook on knowledge, the knower is disembodied.
Alternatively, ‘it’ exists outside its body. The view is present in extreme
form, as we have seen, in Plato. In the Phaedo, the true self is reason and
the forces of nature, emotion and animality are viewed as being located
outside this true self or the soul. For Plato, the body is part of the region
of the changeable – the realm of nature – and is excluded from the
genuine self or the soul. With Descartes this picture is extended and
deepened.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, this epistemological
perspective, has been forcefully challenged. Its assumptions have
been questioned by non-feminists, but, amongst the foremost critics
of its assumptions have been feminist epistemologists (see e.g.
Hartstock, 1983b; Harding, 1986, 1993; Code, 1991). These and other
critics of the ‘objectivist’ assumptions have argued that a person’s
embodiment matters in making knowledge claims and that values enter
into claims to know that something is the case.
This chapter offers a contribution to feminist literatures in two ways.
First, it draws heavily on the feminist epistemological writings of
Harding, Hartstock, Code and Longino. Second, it makes a contribution
to the debates that are taking place in feminist approaches to ethical and
political theory (e.g. the work of Pateman, Hekman, Benhabib).
However, although it begins from feminist debates, it seeks to go beyond
these discussions to offer a different kind of universalist outlook in epistemology. It recognises embodiment, but does so in a different fashion
from the assumptions of the views outlined in the previous chapter.
1. Weak values
Early critics of objectivism in epistemology simply pointed out that it is
actually, as Popper emphasised, impossible ever conclusively to verify
any claim to know something (Popper, ibid., 1963). Many philosophers
used the somewhat hackneyed example ‘All swans are white’. It was
argued that an observer can never be sure that she or he has observed all
the swans that there are and that could be discovered in the future (see
e.g. Achinstein, 1968; Hesse, 1974; Lehrer, 1978; Newton-Smith,1981).
Thus, a knowledge claim is accepted on other bases than the empirical
evidence – it might be the simplicity of the claim, its explanatory power
or its consistency with other claims. It is possible to argue that, in this
128 Revisiting Universalism
weak sense, then, values enter into determining what is known.
However, the use of these kinds of value has been criticised by feminist
epistemologists. It is said, for example, of simplicity as a criterion distinguishing claims to know from other claims, that we have no obvious
reason to think the universe is simple (see Longino, 1997).
2. Stronger values
Feminist epistemologists (e.g. Hartstock, 1983; Harding, 1986, 1991; Code,
1991) have gone further, therefore, and have argued that value-neutrality
in science is a myth, because the descriptions, interpretations and explanatory phenomena in science inevitably involve social values. We are
embodied and embedded creatures and these facts about us matter, when
making claims to know something. Kuhn (1970) had argued a similar thesis in his claim that ‘normal science’ presupposes accepting a set of norms
and presuppositions. Values for him are the presuppositions that make the
practice of a particular science possible. However, the question: how does
one distinguish those practices that result in knowledge from those that do
not? remains pertinent. Kuhn believed that the distinguishing feature of
knowledge was the practice of ‘puzzle-solving’ within a paradigm.
Feminist epistemologists, as we have seen, proposed a different kind
of answer. Harding, for example, along with other ‘standpoint’ theorists,
argued forcefully that marginal groupings, by virtue of their position
and outlook on the world, are able to gain insights into knowledge that
are invisible to those in a dominant position (Hartstock, 1983; Harding,
1986, 1991, 1993). Although, therefore, this might not provide a definitive criterion distinguishing all cases of genuine knowledge from mere
belief, fiction or fantasy, it is supposed to provide us with one in some
cases. Harding has offered us examples where the position of a politically marginal grouping can open the eyes of all to blind spots in science. The perspective of the marginal grouping has been used by a
number of groups who see themselves this way to open up new ways of
thinking about a subject and new outlooks on the world.1
Harding’s outlook, as we saw in the previous chapter, has been criticised from a number of perspectives, however. First, to reiterate, but
from a slightly different angle, some of the points made in the previous
chapter, it is said that there may be a number of different margins, or a
range of perspectives, each of which, from the point of view of someone,
is marginal to a dominant outlook. As Griffiths puts it: ‘the margin is not
a shared space’ (Griffiths, 1995, p. 16). Gilroy makes the point, in referring
to Hill-Collins (1991) appropriation of the notion of a ‘standpoint’
Feminist Epistemology and Value 129
to describe the shared perspective of black women, that Hill-Collins
unconsciously elides ‘black and African-American’ when she describes the
‘black women’s standpoint – those experiences and ideas shared by
African-American women. …’ (Hill-Collins, 1991, p. 27) (Gilroy, 1993,
p. 53). Furthermore, the point has also been made, as we saw, that the
margin may not even exist. Talking of ‘margins’ is exclusionary – it may
actually serve to create a group or an individual as marginal (see Brah,
1996). It has been suggested, therefore, that, rather than focussing
specifically on marginality as conferring epistemic privilege, we should
recognise our own embodied, embedded identity and attempt constantly to engage with other perspectives. We should metaphorically
travel the world – we should engage with other positions, where our
own outlook is continually tested and modified (see Seller, 1994;
Lennon, 1997). From a very different starting point this view was
emphasised by Mill (1982) who urged the importance of allowing as
many points of view as possible to be expressed, so that each one could
be tested and modified. Lennon (ibid.) suggests that each of us sets out
to empathise with as many ‘others’ as possible, so that, in similar vein,
our own outlook is tested and modified. In this fashion, she argues, we
will arrive at knowledge.
The difficulty I have with this, however, is that there may be some
‘others’ who close down knowledge, whose values are such that it is
inappropriate for me or for anyone to empathise with them – the Nazis
come to mind as one such example. How do we decide which ‘others’ to
take seriously?
We may, at this point, decide that it is inevitable that we accept, with
some sceptical postmodernists (Lyotard, 1979, for example, argues this
point of view) that we cannot distinguish knowledge from power, and
that, in extremis, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Lyotard, for example,
argues that knowledges, in contemporary post Second World War two
societies, tend to be legitimated, not by their truth, but by their ‘performativity’ (Lyotard, 1979). Claims to the truth or to truths do not distinguish knowledges from any other narrative. In this sense, Lyotard
argues, there is nothing special about knowledge; it doesn’t really matter to anyone whether anyone can make a claim to know something as
opposed to writing a piece of fiction. But knowledge does matter.
Adapting an example from Anne Seller: it is false that women having
babies means that they have no brain power left to be educated (see
Seller, 1988). It is true that I live in Haringey and George Bush does not.
What entitles us to make these kinds of claim? It is, indeed, important,
if I am picking berries from a tree, that I know which kinds of berry
130 Revisiting Universalism
poison me and which do not. Knowledge is important and some types
of knowledge, indeed, are important for survival.
I would like to argue in the rest of this chapter that knowledge
depends on value in a fairly strong way. But, I would also like to argue
that it is possible to make universal claims to know that something
is the case; that claims to know something are not merely relative to a
particular time and place and set of norms. I will begin the argument by
considering a different kind of approach to the question: how do we
distinguish claims to know something from other claims?
3. Fricker and the epistemic state of nature
In a recent paper, Miranda Fricker (1998) lays out a partial answer to the
question – how do we distinguish claims to know from other claims?
In the paper, she actually sets out to do two things. First, she wants to
demonstrate that, contrary to the view of the ‘traditional’ analytical
epistemologist, social power is of concern in epistemology. I shall not
discuss this part of her paper here. Second, she seeks to demonstrate that
the postmodern attempt to reduce knowledge to social power is false.
The paper is of interest to me, however, for the insights it provides on
the nature of knowledge. Drawing on the work of Craig (1990), Fricker
aims to identify those features of knowledge that distinguish it from true
belief. The approach taken is to offer a ‘genealogy’ of the concept of
knowledge. She aims, following Craig, to outline what she calls an epistemic ‘state of nature’. Human beings, she argues, need to acquire
knowledge for without it they would not survive. In the state of nature,
people will survive only if they possess true beliefs about their fellow
humans and about the world around them. Working with others, they
learn truths about their surroundings. Fricker argues that this minimal
epistemic practice has an ethical dimension – each person will treat
every other as an agent with a common purpose. Collectively, the group
is interested in gaining true beliefs. Fricker writes that knowledge, in
such a situation, is captured by the ‘good informant’ – someone who is
competent and trustworthy. Competence she spells out as ‘believing
that P if P is the case, and believing that not P if not P is the case’
(Fricker, 1998, p. 162). Trustworthiness is explained as follows ‘channels
of communication (between informant and inquirer) should be open’
(ibid.). This covers such things as ‘the informants’ accessibility, speaking
the same language, willingness to part with the information and a possession of a good track record of non-deception’ (ibid.). The informant,
she argues, further, must be recognisable by the inquirer as trustworthy.
Feminist Epistemology and Value 131
Fricker is setting out to outline the minimal conditions that would
have to be satisfied, in an imaginary ‘state of nature’ setting, for
anyone – woman or man – to possess knowledge. She is setting out, in
other words, to describe an ideal ‘epistemic community’.
If Fricker is right then she has shown that it is possible to provide a
characterisation of an epistemic community, where there is a mutual
and empathetic concern to arrive at the truth, independently of power.
It demonstrates that there are cases where power and knowledge can be
disengaged from one another.
The significant ethical features of the thought experiment are: the
shared empathy of the individuals involved and their mutual and collective desire to seek out the truth. This setting contrasts with the sorts
of inequality of epistemic empathy in many situations in life – one
might point to the differing ‘agendas’, for example, of teacher and pupil
in many schools; the relative epistemic positions of actor and manager
in a particular theatre; of student and vice-chancellor in a university. In
these cases, the child, for example, might think she needs to know the
minimum necessary to get through her day at school; the teacher might
believe the child needs to become more familiar each day, with whatever is necessary to get her through her exams. These are obvious and
visible power differentials. But of course it also contrasts with those epistemic situations where there are relative power differentials brought
about by structural inequalities – of race, gender, sexual orientation and
class, for example. Despite this, I believe that Fricker’s case study can
throw light on the circumstances in which knowledges can be acquired
in the real world where these power differentials are very much present.
In Fricker’s thought experiment, the empathy exhibited, and the consequent greater likelihood of individuals being ‘good informants’ rests
partly on the relative straightforwardness of the information required –
contrast ‘are these berries poisonous?’ with ‘what happened at the theatre last night?’ or with ‘what is happening to the subject in the Milgram
experiments?’2 But there is a fundamental issue at stake, and that is that,
in the thought experiment, individuals are likely to be mutually empathetic, and mutually interested in giving and receiving the truth, because
their survival is at stake. The survival of each depends on the survival of
others. Knowledge is linked to survival. Of course, it might not have concerned everyone’s survival: it is very easy to imagine circumstances in
which the majority ganged up on one person if they thought they could
get something they did not have. They might then begin to subvert that
person’s purported competence and trustworthiness. In such circumstances, the ‘ideal’ knowledge community begins to break down.
132 Revisiting Universalism
This case study describes an epistemic ideal – if we are to gain knowledge, then we should be competent and trustworthy informants. If we
were to compare two practices – two communities of physicists, for
example, then the group that exhibited these qualities to the greater
degree, could be said to generate the more legitimate claims to know.
The practice, then, could be advocated as an ideal for all of us – all of us,
in making claims to know, should attempt to exhibit these qualities. All
of us should attempt to be reflexive about our epistemic practices in
these kinds of way.
Mostly, in the real world of epistemic communities, however, conditions are quite unlike those described by Fricker. How might a real world
community approximate to Fricker’s conditions?
4. A dilemma: does embodiment lead to relativism?
Accepting our embedded and embodied nature, accepting that our
identities are at least partly tied up with the ‘constitutive communities’
(I take this expression from the communitarian literature of Sandel,
McIntyre, Taylor and Waltzer) in which we find ourselves; accepting
that our values inform our claims to know, as the feminist epistemologists suggested that we should, appears to lead both to relativism and to
the sorts of inequality of epistemic empathy described above.
Knowledge appears to be both relative to the framework assumptions of
the various communities to which I belong and unequal as between the
participants in the epistemic community. For example, as a member of
my son’s school governing body I can make knowledge claims about the
school’s SATs 3 results that depend upon the shared understanding and
history of working with that grouping. Within the group, my position as
someone who does not work at the school gives me a different standing
from that of the Head Teacher. Taking a different example, as a woman,
I may be able to make claims on behalf of women as a group. However,
as a female Dean of Faculty, my voice counts very differently in the
university from that of a female cleaner.
Are there any areas where these two constraints do not operate? Are
there circumstances when the recognition of my embodied and embedded identity does not lead to relativism and to inequality of epistemic
empathy?
Liberal objectivists set out to describe the conditions under which universal and objective knowledge arises. However, as we have seen, their
attempt failed. Positivist attempts to gain certain knowledge were
unsuccessful, and the laudable liberal aim to uncover the universal
Feminist Epistemology and Value 133
subject of knowledge was revealed as partial and particular. However
there is a different route to objective knowledge. Instead of abstracting
away everything bodily from the knowing subject, if we recognise
instead our material and bodily nature, we can reach a knowing subject
that is genuinely universal. All of us belong to a number of different
‘communities’, as the communitarians have called them (see Sandel,
MacIntyre) We belong to a certain gender; we belong to a national
grouping; we may belong to certain workplaces. If there is knowledge
that arises from these communities, then it may be specific to those.
But there is one ‘community’ to which we all unquestionably belong,
and that is the community of material beings. In this sense, I am a
universal subject.
As a material being, I have material needs – for food, shelter and
water – that I share with all other material beings. As a material being,
I have needs which must be met before I can do anything else. As Keith
Graham has puts it (1996) my material nature constrains me in two
ways: I cannot detach myself from being a material being with needs
that must be satisfied, in the way that I can divorce myself – both in
imagination, and in reality – from my workplace, or from my present
home. I can cut myself off, in reality, from my present nation. I can also
split myself off in imagination from my nation of origin. I can imagine
myself (so long as I take a great deal of trouble to think this through and
to research the subject properly) as having been born in South Africa,
and at a time that is different from the actual date of my birth. Indeed,
this kind of imagining is precisely the stuff of many novels. It is possible, although by no means easy to alter one’s gender. It is certainly
possible to take on in fantasy, in performance or even (as in the case, e.g.
of George Eliot who wrote under a male pseudonym, in life itself) the
opposite gender identity. It is not possible, however, to detach oneself,
either in reality, or in imagination or in fantasy, from one’s material
nature without ceasing to exist at all. One’s material nature functions as,
in Graham’s words, a ‘constraint of precondition’ – I cannot do anything else at all until my material needs are satisfied.
No one is able to pursue any other value, or adopt any system of values, or do anything at all, unless their material needs are satisfied. We all
share material needs as embodied creatures. This claim is quite independent of any particular cultural value. Indeed, it is a precondition of the
holding of any set of values. If it is dependent upon a set of values, then,
it is dependent in an entirely different sense from the way in which any
other claim is value dependent. It therefore applies to all of us, wherever
we come from and whatever value system we choose to adopt.
134 Revisiting Universalism
There is knowledge that I have, therefore, alongside everyone else, as a
material being, with material needs. I know that I need food, water and
shelter. I know that everyone else has needs like these as well. Each one
of us knows these simple facts about each other. Even those who fail to
recognise their desires, as may be the case with some who are mentally
ill, cannot fail, if they are to survive, to recognise these basic needs about
themselves. In this sense, our knowledge is collective, universal and reciprocal. It is also quite independent of power differentials. There is therefore no inequality of epistemic empathy. It is collective in that it is shared
knowledge – it is knowledge we each have about each other. I know that
you know that I have these needs. You have similar knowledge about me.
As a material being, then, I am a genuinely universal subject that
possesses knowledge that is relative only to the community of all
human beings. The knowledge that I possess as a material being about
my needs and about the needs of others, is universal knowledge.
I have argued earlier that there are some moral obligations that flow
from the fact of materiality. I am obliged to satisfy my needs if I am to
do anything at all. What else I can do depends upon how easily I am
able to satisfy those needs. The passengers on the 7.45 a.m. Paddington
to Bristol train talk on their phones, operate their computers, talk to
their colleagues and write and read, all whilst travelling at 12O mph to
their destination, and whilst eating breakfast and drinking coffee and
tea. Contrast this group with the homeless in either of the two cities,
who spend all day begging for enough to buy a cup of tea; or with those
in some African countries who spend all day going in search of water.
For any of these people to be able to satisfy their needs, someone, somewhere must produce the constituents of the goods that meet these
needs. There is both a reciprocal material obligation – on someone to
produce for me – and a moral obligation – on myself and others, to
ensure that material needs are satisfied. I am materially bound to others
who produce the constituents of the food and drink that I consume. I
am materially bound, therefore, to ensure that their needs are satisfied,
or they will be unable to produce to satisfy mine. But this gives me a
moral obligation to them. I am dependent upon them, and caught up in
a system of obligations – effectively a system of moral obligations,
because as well as being materially bound to those who produce for me,
I am also indebted to them. I am caught up in a network of reciprocal
others, each one of whom, if she or he is to do anything at all, must have
her or his material needs satisfied.
If I deny my obligations to any one human being, whilst recognising
that that person does have material needs, I am effectively making
Feminist Epistemology and Value 135
contradictory claims – I am both asserting their membership of a
common humanity, and denying the consequences of that.
5. Need and moral obligation
It might be contended that there is no reciprocal moral obligation
to others expressed here, but simply a dependency upon others. In
Chapter 4, however, I argued that there is a stronger obligation than
this. The politics of a just society involves a politics of the self. It presupposes that individuals should stand to each other in certain mutual
relations of respect and authority. These interpersonal relationships
define a well-ordered collectivity. They presuppose that it is most likely
that, even as a ‘simple’ natural being, I stand in relations of reciprocal
likeness and obligation to others in a collectivity.
Knowledge, on this account, could be compared to Aristotelian practical wisdom (Aristotle, 1976). Instead of taking the Aristotelian ‘rational
man’ as the unit, and instead of emphasising the particularist tendencies
in Aristotle I have been urging in this book that we take the community
of human beings as material beings as the appropriate unit, and suggesting that the relevant Aristotelian aim for all of us is functioning well as
material beings. We then have the basis for a genuinely universal moral
theory, generating universal claims to knowledge. The community of
human beings as material beings, then, in so far as it takes seriously its
reciprocal moral obligations to its members functions analogously to
Fricker’s ‘epistemic’ community. Can this notion be extended?
6. ‘Emancipatory values’
In a different context, I developed the concept of an ‘emancipatory value’
(Assiter, 1996). I used the concept ‘emancipatory’ in the following sense: a
value will be emancipatory if it contributes to removing oppressive power
relations. Oppressive power relations are most fundamentally relations
that deny life and the means to live to some people. Emancipatory values,
then, will be those that ensure life and the satisfaction of needs. The most
fundamental set of emancipatory values of all, then, involves all of us in
recognising our membership of a common humanity, and the role played
by that community and its common needs in generating values.
I have suggested earlier that some will argue that this claim is very
minimal; that it tells us very little and that the values that make a difference will not involve the whole of humanity. For example, there are
said to be competing arguments on female genital mutilation, veiling,
136 Revisiting Universalism
abortion, family planning, all of which might claim to be ‘emancipating’ some group of women from subordination.
It is said along these lines by liberal pluralists, as we saw in Chapter 1
(see e.g. de Weitz, 1999) that a commitment to a plurality of values is
both desirable and inevitable. Postmodern influenced feminists, for
example, have claimed that there is no possibility of reaching agreement
in the kinds of case mentioned earlier (see e.g. Fraser and Nicholson,
1990). They have argued this because it is thought that the points of
view are either radically incommensurable, or that drawing a conclusion
that one set is right and another wrong will inevitably mean that one
group – the more powerful group – is imposing its view on the other. As
I have suggested, I see no reason for reaching this conclusion. I see no
reason for believing that it is impossible ever to reach agreement on
these and related matters.
Once the claims of Chapter 4 are conceded, it becomes easier to
imagine the possibility of reaching agreement on other moral issues.
Suppose, for example, a passionate, committed Catholic who is vehemently opposed to abortion begins talking to a committed western
liberal feminist, equally vehementally opposed to abortion, about the
points that they share. Suppose the two of them begin from their shared
humanity; their shared moral commitment to humanity. Isn’t it, in
these circumstances, conceivable to imagine them seeing points of commonality, rather than their emphasising their differences? Isn’t it even
possible that one of the world’s three billionaires might see what
he shares with Quardan, mentioned in the Introduction? Of course
they might not reach agreement. My hope, however, is that they aim
to do so, rather than focussing on tolerating and emphasising their
differences.
Of course there will be many cases where it will be extraordinarily
difficult to decide what is right. When it is difficult to determine which
voice to take note of, dialogue – listening to the voices of others – the
notion of ‘transversal politics’ can help provide answers (see Yuval-Davis,
1997). Dialogue, though, in addition to being informed by one’s own
identity, and to hearing the voices of marginalised others, should incorporate a vision, that is open to constant revision, but a vision nonetheless,
of possible emancipation of all groupings from oppression. Without such
a vision, some of the voices to which one listens will be committed to
closing down communities, closing down opportunities for some people.
This outlook need not imply the total knowability of human nature.
The total removal (even if this were possible) of all forms of oppression
need not imply that there is no mysterious, unknowable, unpredictable
Feminist Epistemology and Value 137
element to human nature, that may be inaccessible to scientific and
related forms of investigation.
I see no good reason, then, for believing that moral conflicts are
necessarily inarbitrable. Sometimes it may not matter that there is a
diversity of view on a topic. At other times, however, it will matter.
Anyone who argues that treating women unjustly through oppressing
them is unproblematic is not advocating a point of view that should, in
a pluralist fashion, simply be tolerated. The principle that requires each
person to respect every other as a being whose material needs must be
satisfied, functions like a meta-norm that must be respected if moral discourse is to be possible. Those who deny this meta-norm are effectively
constructing themselves as outside the terms of reference of this moral
discourse. Seyla Benhabib argues that her Habermasian ‘communicative
ethics’ constitutes a meta-norm in this way. She writes that, in order
for moral discourse to be possible, universal rights and universal respect
must be treated as more significant than the moral values of specific
moral communities. So, for example, she argues that a moral democratic state ought to tolerate an hypothetical Mormon sect. On the other
hand, however, if the wife of a Mormon protests that she has been held
against her will, then this should not be allowed, because the metanorm of universal respect takes precedence over this particular value of
the Mormon sect (Benhabib, 1992). Whilst I do not necessarily agree
with her way of putting the point, I am using the moral consequences of
the constraint of precondition as a meta-norm in this sense.
There have been extreme forms of discrimination that have involved
a grouping being denied a place in the system of reciprocal obligation I
have outlined. There are forms of discrimination, therefore, that should
not be tolerated, and where there should be no room for disagreement
about the value or values that are the right ones. Groups of individuals
have literally been represented as subhuman. Hegel (1967), for example,
described Africans as ‘a people without a history’ (see Coker, 1994,
p. 227). In some respects, then, Africans, for him, are subhuman, and this,
of course, is a metaphor that is used to justify slavery. Hegel does allow,
on the other hand, a human role for the slave in the metaphor of the
lord and bondsman. Modernity, and the liberal objectivist epistemology
that is its handmaiden, has depended upon the construction of certain
groupings as literally subhuman. But there are other, less extreme, ways
of denying a person’s humanity. Braidotti, for example, has spoken of
the ‘unacknowledged and camouflaged sexual distinction at the very
heart of philosophy’ (Braidotti, 1991, p. 193). Women have been used
symbolically, to represent the natural and non-human order.
138 Revisiting Universalism
Black Africans have been, at various historical moments, represented as
‘lacking in civic or moral virtue’ (see Lawrence, 1998). Effectively, they
have been depicted as subhuman. This representation of certain groupings as subhuman can be used, as Philip Lawrence has argued (ibid.) to
justify their extermination. Colonisers of the USA used depictions of
Amerindians as subhuman savages to justify the total annihilation of a
population. There were similar representations, in American popular culture during the Second World War, of Japanese people. In the Gulf War,
as Said puts it ‘Arabs are only an attenuated recent example of Others
who have incurred the wrath of a stern White Man’ (Said, 1992, p. 357).
In Britain, whilst colonial policies did not usually go quite so far
as these, they involve representing colonial peoples as ‘inferior’
(see Zubaida, 1970).
In each of these cases, some grouping is represented as in some way subhuman. But some moral conflicts rest upon one side in the conflict representing a grouping as in some way subhuman. In the case of such conflicts,
therefore, it is not sufficient to say that the points of view should simply be
tolerated and allowed to co-exist in a liberal polity, alongside other views.
These types of moral conflict, therefore, must be resolvable.
It has sometimes been argued that any theory that attempts to reach
agreement on some moral claim will involve force (see e.g. Benhabib,
1992; de Weitz, 1999). Consensus, according to Benhabib, can never be a
criterion of anything. What is important, she claims, is the rationality of
the procedure for attaining consensus. I agree that forcing anyone to do
anything would be wrong. Benhabib emphasises the potential irrationality
or injustice of political positions like sexism or racism. A further question
I would raise, is ‘on what ground are they unjust?’ Benhabib writes: ‘any
judgment guided by universal moral respect and reciprocity is “good”
moral judgement’ (Benhabib, 1992, p. 54). But the fundamental question
is: universal moral respect for what? If, as she does, Benhabib wishes to
reject the universal liberal atomised self, what or whom is being respected?
My suggestion is that the answer to this question is fundamentally that it
is the human being conceived as a natural being, with common needs.
Emancipatory values, then, are values that set out to remove some
grouping from oppression. I have described the most fundamental set.
However, there will be others emanating from other oppressed groupings. Emancipatory values will be linked in various ways to the group or
groups that generated them. Lesbian emancipatory values, for example,
arose from the writings and the behaviour of politically active lesbians.
Radclyffe Hall (1983), for example, deliberately wrote of the lesbian
as the invert, drawing on the work of nineteenth-century sexologists.
Feminist Epistemology and Value 139
She helped draw attention both to the existence of lesbianism, and to
the many forms of discrimination lesbian women suffered in the UK at
the time. Later lesbian writing has brought to light the heterosexism of
much early second wave feminist writing.
Optimally, the argument runs, then, knowledge will arise in ‘epistemic communities’ (I drew on the work of Anderson, 1982, for this
concept) that minimise the oppression of any one grouping. Such communities will most closely approximate to Fricker’s ‘state of nature’
where the inequalities of epistemic empathy outlined earlier are absent.
The argument of this chapter is therefore two-fold. First, I have argued
that there are universal claims to knowledge that arise from the fact of our
respective embodiment as natural beings. But second, and moving on
from there, I am suggesting that there are ‘emancipatory’ values. The
most fundamental of these are those I have spelt out in Chapter 4, but
they might operate on a scale, where values that seek to remove any
grouping from oppression are to be preferred over those that maintain the
subjection of that grouping. If an epistemic community were taken to be
one that adhered to the moral values outlined in Chapter 4, then that
community would have begun the removal of conditions that close down
knowledge and blinker each of us in our quest to understand the truth.
Such a community would begin to think in terms that involve sharing
mutual interests, so that each person treats every other, at least in respect
of their natural natures, as an agent with a common purpose, in Fricker’s
fashion. If agreement can be reached on the moral obligations that
humanity has towards its members, then that opens the door to agreement being reached on other forms of oppression. The optimal ‘epistemic
community’ will be one where all forms of oppression and therefore all
forms of inhumanity between groupings have been removed.
7. Some objections considered
There are four issues I would like to consider at this point. First, the
point may be made that the argument is viciously circular. In order to
determine which values are relatively more emancipatory than others,
one needs knowledge. In the above cases, for example, we need to know
what contributes to the satisfaction of needs. But the circularity here
need, as I have suggested earlier, not be vicious. The gaining of knowledge will be a process of constant dialogue, involving listening both to
what ‘the other’ is saying and to what is revealed about that others’ values. Listening to others will enable each one of us to learn about our
own beliefs and about our own values. For example, the ancient Greek
140 Revisiting Universalism
denial of humanity to certain groups of people was factually wrong, and
the discovery that it was factually wrong required a value commitment
to all human beings. Learning the ‘truth’ about what is taking place
in Iran today requires a similar commitment both to emancipatory
values – that, for example, torturing people for no good reason is ethically wrong and to listening to others. Learning who to listen to also
requires this dual commitment. The point made earlier, by Kathleen
Lennon (Lennon, op. cit.), is important, then, but, it needs to be supplemented by a vision of how, in ‘ideal’ circumstances, knowledge can
be gained.
Listening will be supplemented by judgement. However, whilst some
conceptions of judgement are closed, in that they refuse to hear the
other, as in Said’s description of the ‘knowledge’ of colonial peoples
(Said, 1992) this one, however, will be open, in so far as it is shaped, not
by prejudice, but by an ideal vision of the circumstances in which
knowledge might be possible.
There is a second point that relates to the earlier one. Surely, it will be
said, white settlers in Australia were able to produce knowledge, despite
their dubious values about the indigenous peoples. Perhaps this knowledge emerged by chance; perhaps it came to light because there happened to be some highly intelligent individual, who revolutionised
thinking in some area. I accept that the white settlers did indeed produce some knowledge, but the optimal conditions for the obtaining of
knowledge were not present. They were certainly unable to produce
knowledge about all human beings and their nature. Ancient Greeks
and Australian white settlers who believed that certain human beings
were less than human effectively deceived themselves about the nature
of humanity, and their claims to know matters relating to the nature of
humanity therefore failed to match up to Fricker’s conditions for the
optimal epistemic environment.
Third, it might be said that there may be circumstances when knowledge
and survival are quite clearly disconnected. For example, a friend, Meena
Dandha, has told me that her father recently died. Her mother, who
believes in reincarnation, believes that a child, who visits her, is her husband reincarnated. That belief of hers, which many people in the world
would not describe as knowledge, is contributing to her survival. Her
belief, however, was not derived from emancipatory values in my sense.
There may be some beliefs, like this one, which deserve to count as
knowledge. Yet, the general interpersonal context in which this woman
operated must contain values of the kind I have articulated if it is to be
one which optimises the conditions in which knowledge can be gained.
Feminist Epistemology and Value 141
If it were not, the trust that needs to exist between those make claims to
know and those recognising those claims would break down. Each of us
may and no doubt does have some false beliefs – our fantasies, imaginings and wishes – that do contribute to our survival. But there must be a
link, in relation to a substantial number of our beliefs, between knowledge and survival. If Meena’s mother were constantly wrong about
where to obtain food, about where to go for company, about what was
happening at certain times, then she would not survive. If all of those
with whom she associated relied on beliefs like this one to survive, then,
as a grouping, they would not survive and would not be in possession of
knowledge about a range of other matters.
A further point though is that it may be argued that there are some
knowledge claims – such as, ‘this table is brown’ or ‘gold is soluble in aqua
regia’ that do not seem in any obvious ways to depend upon the
conditions that obtain in any given epistemic community. There is a big
argument to be developed here, and I can do no more than sketch it out
here, but broadly the claim pursues the thinking outlined earlier:
that knowledges depend upon some sort of interaction between epistemic
communities or between communities and the non-human world.
Certain forms both of realism in epistemology and theory of meaning and
of their antithesis, anti-realism, construe objectivity without any reference to inter-subjectivity. In this sense they are Fregean (Frege, 1960)
in that, for him, senses and thoughts exist and bear their truth values
independently of their being cognised by anyone. In the Investigations,
Wittgenstein (1958) argued, famously, that we learn the meaning of the
word ‘pain’ by associating our use of the word with pain behaviour.
Rather than privileged access to the sensation of pain giving meaning to
statements using words like this, and constituting evidence for their
truth, the statement ‘I am in pain’ is an avowal with which we express our
sensations and which acquires its public linguistic meaning by virtue of
being used in this way. Harding (op. cit.), to some extent, goes along
with a Wittgensteinean construal of objectivity, in so far as she, like him,
rejects the notion that objectivity can be equated with a stark mirroring
relation between a word and a thing, or between a sentence and some
state of affairs or structure in the world. I concur with some of this
Wittgensteinean account. I don’t think, in other words, that claims like
‘this table is brown’ can be wholly isolated from the context of their utterance. Whether or not anyone should believe someone who utters such a
claim will depend on his or her epistemic credibility. I have been suggesting that epistemic communities committed to ‘emancipatory values’ will
be more likely to produce credible claims to know something.
142 Revisiting Universalism
However, what is missing from the Wittgensteinean account is some
notion of who is the ‘we’ and how the knowledges of different ‘we’s’ can
be distinguished from one another. The Wittgensteinean ‘form of life’
presumes that all participants in the knowledge sharing community will
have their claims to know something treated equally. In fact, in most
real life communities, power differentials prevent this. My argument is
that the best conditions for the production of knowledge will arise in
those communities that optimise ethical conditions for their members.
This may apply in relation to all knowledge claims and not just to those
that relate to the circumstances of the grouping. The kinds of knowledge
claim, however, to which I attach the most significance, are claims
about the social and political world.
World travelling, I suggest, then, needs to be supplemented by a
vision of ‘ideal’ epistemic empathy. Communities informed by emancipatory values, I suggest, can help move in that direction.
Notes
1. There are lots of examples of feminists opening up knowledge in this kind of
way. For instance Carole Pateman (Pateman, 1988) opened the eyes of liberal
political theorists to the impact of taking the perspective of the woman on
classical liberal theory; the collection Knowing Feminisms (Stanley ed., 1997)
presents the challenges to the perspective of a number of academic disciplines
that is opened up by taking the point of view of the female academic. Rather
different examples of this kind of thinking is presented in the provocative title
of a piece ‘Is a Woman a Person?’ (Willis, 1993) that presents the thinking of
some classical philosophers on the subject of what it is to be a person, thinking that might have excluded women; and a final example is the difference
that thinking from the perspective of the woman carrying a foetus makes to
arguments about abortion (see e.g. Dalmiya and Alcoff, 1993; Sherwin, 1994).
2. The Milgram experiments contain some very interesting case studies of obedience to authority, and suggest that the experimental subjects somehow lose
touch with the outside world and with its attendant moral norms, when they
are participating in the experiment (Milgram, 1974).
3. For readers outside the UK, SAT stands for Standard Attainment Task and SATs
represent levels of attainment that children at specified ages are expected to
achieve.
4. Arlene Saxonhouse offers a useful and balanced reading of Aristotle on
women, in Shanley and Pateman, 1991.
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G.E.M. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) Gender and Nation, Sage, London.
Zubaida, S. ed. (1970) Race and Racialism, Tavistock Publications, London.
8
Conclusion
I have attempted, in this book, to defend a form of universalism about
human nature, about moral values and about certain epistemic issues. I
should like, by way of conclusion to the book, to engage with some of
the writings of Zygmunt Bauman and Richard Rorty. I shall suggest some
points of commonality between my thinking and theirs and some areas
of disagreement.
1. Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman is a major intellectual writing today, and, at some
level, his concerns resonate with mine. Bauman’s intellectual reach is
broader than my own – he participates in sociological and political
debates, whilst my concerns are pitched at a different level of theoretical abstraction. His writings engage with issues of justice and ethics, but
also, like mine, with the question of the ‘stranger’ in the midst of various types of social interaction. Like Derrida, he is preoccupied with the
question of how one should relate to and deal with this stranger, and
with the ways in which, in the contemporary globalised world, where
certain of the ties of community and of nation state are breaking up and
disappearing, we relate to others. An abiding image deployed by
Bauman is the metaphor of ‘dirt’. Termites, cockroaches, flies, spiders,
mice are uninvited guests in a person’s home, and cannot therefore be
incorporated in a scheme of purity. Bauman moves effortlessly from the
image of the termite to the representation, at certain notable points in
history – the Holocaust is the most frequently quoted case, and is examined at length by Bauman (1991) – of certain groups of human beings as
dirt, as violating a system of order and purity.
146
Conclusion 147
As I have done, Bauman draws upon the role of the ‘other’ in my
self-identity. He quotes Schulz: ‘I am able to understand other people’s
acts’ only if I can imagine that I myself would perform analogous acts if
I were in the same situation, directed by the same because – motives, or
oriented by the same in-order-to motives – all these terms understood in
the same restricted sense of the ‘typical’ analogy, the ‘typical’ sameness
(Bauman, quoting Schutz, 1997, p. 9). In this context, the stranger
intrudes, as Lacan or Freud might have said, to break up the bond
between self and other. The stranger, writes Bauman: ‘has the impact of
an earthquake. The stranger shatters the rock on which the security of
daily life rests’. Bauman is particularly preoccupied with the way in
which, in the contemporary globalised world, perfectly innocuous
‘neighbours next door’ may suddenly turn into terrifying strangers. There
are innumerable examples of this kind of thing occurring in the contemporary world. The certainties of earlier epochs are brought into question.
In an evocative reminder of Tolstoy’s line, Bauman writes: ‘All societies produce strangers; but each kind of society produces its own kind
of strangers, and produces them in its own inimitable way’ (Bauman,
1997, p. 17). He refers to George Orwell’s image of the jackboot trampling a human face. No face, he writes, was secure, since everyone was
prone to be charged with the crime of trespassing or transgressing.
In the contemporary globalised world, in the ‘new world disorder’ (ibid.,
p. 22) twenty or so wealthy but worried and not self assured countries’
confront the rest of the world. In this world, the universal deregulation of
the market has torn up safety nets, such as the welfare state, and has
pushed to new limits global inequalities, and the suffering of the ‘new
poor’. Buaman refers to the ‘old’ ‘modern’ unemployed, who were often
described as the ‘reserve army of labour’. The new poor are permanently
unemployed; they resort as a last resort to crime, and, of course, post
11 September 2001 the possibilities of crime and the types of criminal
activity that may be contemplated, are more extreme and more radical.
The issue that will concern me, however, in the next few pages, is
Bauman’s ‘solution’ to the problems he characterises so well. Solution is
perhaps an inappropriate expression to use, for, as he recognises, and as
I am well aware, there may be no solutions. Moreover, there must be
many dimensions to the answer, if, as I hope there will be, there is an
answer to the serious and major problems facing the world today.
Bauman himself attempts to engage in the solution to the problem at a
range of different levels. Here I will only discuss one of his levels of intervention. This is his engagement at the rather more abstract theoretical
level; the level that borders on the philosophical.
148 Revisiting Universalism
2. The face to face
Bauman is influenced, as is well known, by the writings of Emmanuel
Levinas. I am not going to engage with him at the level of whether or
not he has ‘got Levinas right’. I am interested, rather, in what he draws
out of the writings of Levinas. In the chapter Morality Begins at Home,
in his book Postmodernity and its Discontents (Bauman, ibid.). Bauman
writes of the engagement with ‘the Other’ that Levinas typifies as the
relation with The Face. Bauman notes Levinas’ idea of responsibility for
the other, when the other is represented as ‘the face’. When I relate to
‘the Other’ as ‘the Face’, for Levinas, I relate to him or her as a unique
being. In order for me to act ethically towards that other, I must recognise values like mercy, love and charity. Bauman quotes Levinas: ‘the
order of ethics, or the order of mercy, or the order of love or the order of
charity where the other human concerns me regardless of the place he
occupies in the multitude of humans, and even regardless of our shared
quality of individuals of the human species; he concerns me as one close
to me, as the first to come. He is unique’ (ibid., p. 50). Any act of violence
operates in defiance of this uniqueness. Justice, for Bauman’s Levinas, represents a weakening of this primarily ethical relation. The scope of justice
is the generalised other, and it is simply not possible to develop the
kind of relation of mercy that typifies the Face to Face, with the millions
of others to whose attentions the notion of justice must concern itself.
In fact, ‘the Other’, according to Levinas, can never be known by me.
The ‘other’ ‘remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign’ (Levinas,
1969, p. 194). Only a small portion of ‘the other’ for Levinas, is ever
made visible to any one of us.
Now it will be apparent that, in this book, I have questioned the view of
Levinas that the other is ‘infinitely transcendent’. By contrast, I have urged
the importance of recognising the respects in which every other is just like
me. I have suggested, furthermore, that it is both possible and necessary
for someone to satisfy the needs of each of those ‘millions’ of others.
Bauman and Levinas sometimes speak of saintliness as the ultimate
moral value. As a matter of fact, different religions see ‘saintliness’ in different ways. One example of a saint is Confucius. He was said to be
China’s greatest saint. According to certain types of Chinese religion, a
sheng sen was a holy man or a wise man who possessed perfect wisdom.
Confucius, according to The Dictionary of Comparative Religion,
(Brandon and Weidenfeld, 1970) had completely fulfilled his destiny as
a human being; he was perfectly in harmony with Cosmic Law and he
formed a Trinity with Heaven and Earth. Some versions of Islam, by
Conclusion 149
contrast, see a saint as a ‘friend’ or as someone who is near to one
(Dictionary of Comparative Religion, Brandon and Weidenfeld,
London, 1970). To give a third view of saintliness, if one looks up the
word ‘saintliness’ in the Penguin Thesaurus, one finds the following
equivalents ‘goodly, holy, pious, devout, righteous, worthy, pure, blameless, sinless, spotless, angelic, innocent’ (Thesaurus, Penguin, 2000).
Why, we might ask Levinas and Bauman, should the ultimate ethical
values have to do with being pure, blameless, perfectly in harmony with
cosmic law or sinless? Why should good or appropriate ethical behaviour involve being free of sin or blame; or, to put the point in a more secular fashion, why should it not be possible to be moral, in the requisite
sense, whilst one is also faulty and imperfect so long as one does not
deny the humanity of some others? Moreover, I have argued in the
book, we must assume that we know enough about ‘the other’ to know
what he or she really needs.
This model of the ethical relationship; of the relationship of one to
another in the Face to Face relation, leads Bauman to suggest that justice, which, as I wrote earlier, pertains to the larger world of many egos
relating to one another, is a ‘distortion’, a watering down, of the ethical
relationship. The generalised other is far away; this other may, indeed,
be a stranger. Bauman suggests that most people do not have a developed sense of justice and of what it means. Most, he writes, however, do
recognise injustice when they see it. Most people recognise that the
growing level of inequality in the world as evidenced by all indices of
poverty and wealth is unjust. However, Bauman points out, this recognition of the injustice of this growing inequality has not triggered a collective desire for the vindication of these wrongs. To the contrary, when
the rich enjoy growing freedom of choice, and wish to continue with that
freedom, they will exploit the ‘markets’ that are made available to them,
whatever the effects on the growing and increasingly invisible and redundant poor of those markets. A sense of justice, Bauman argues, must be
developed, and this must arise, not from the demands of the other but
from the moral impulse and concern for the moral self, … this self must
assume responsibility for justice being done (Bauman, ibid., p. 62).
Bauman, indeed, offers a ‘solution’ that is very much along the lines
of my own thinking, when he suggests that the well off of the world
must develop a sense of ‘solidarity’ with the poor. But he parts company
with my thinking when he suggests that this must involve the rich in
‘tolerating’ the other; this other, he often writes has the ‘right’ to retain
his or her uniqueness. He is strongly skeptical about the liberal imperative that denuded certain groupings of their cultural heritage, and set
150 Revisiting Universalism
out to recreate this culture. This, he writes, is partly responsible for
the lack of community and of ‘home’ and security that characterises
the postmodern era. I agree that ‘the other’ has the right to retain the
uniqueness so long as that uniqueness does not involve oppressing and
exploiting some other individual or group.
How far, moreover should ‘tolerance’ go? How indeed, is toleration of
difference compatible with behaving as a saint towards the other? The
latter implies a quasi-liberal renunciation of the features that make for
difference amongst groupings, and an immersion in the other. The former involves one in retaining one’s ‘embeddednes’ (MacIntyre) and
recognising and tolerating the same in the other? In order to see
whether these questions can be answered, I’d like to look at another
dimension of Bauman’s thinking.
3. Bauman on Rorty
One other philosopher who is admired by Bauman is Rorty. He upholds
the latter as a ‘different’ kind of philosopher; as a ‘great’ philosopher in
a different sense from that which might have previously been the case.
Philosophy in the ‘old’ sense was a philosophy that tied loose ends
together; that wound up discussions; philosophy, in the ‘old’ sense
was a ‘Thanatos’ driven philosophy (Bauman, ibid., p. 83). In that sense,
philosophy was lived towards death.
I think that something might be lost if the ‘underlabourer’ conception
of philosophy of Locke or of Austinian ordinary language philosophy
was equated, as Bauman sometimes implies, with the great system building of Plato or Kant. However, the type of philosophising Bauman
admires in Rorty is an ‘eros driven libidinal philosophy’, one that fulfills
itself in its perpetual unfulfillment and in asking such questions as ‘fear
final answers’ (ibid., p. 84). This is akin to the philosophy adumbrated by
Zizek, in his remarks to the effect that the (Lacanian and other) ‘Real
itself’, ‘explodes in the guise of uncontrolled hallucinations which start
to haunt us once we lose our anchoring in reality’ (Zizek, 2002, p. 20).
Zizek celebrates the Benjaminian lesson that ‘in order to comprehend
human language, we have to conceive it in terms of the “gap” which
separates it from language “as such” ’ (p. 21). For Zizek, this gap is a
lesson missed by Habermas.
The philosophy of Rorty, as admired by Bauman, offers no answers. In
Rorty’s world view, if one were aliens, musing on the nature of the contemporary world, one would be better off reading Dickens than
Heidegger. Fiction offers a better view, according to Bauman, of the
Conclusion 151
‘conditionality’ and the ‘conventional’ status (Bauman, p. 123) of
contemporary postmodern identity. The world out there, according to
Bauman, in the contemporary postmodern way of life, increasingly
acquires the status of fiction, of a work of art.
One might ask the question: why Dickens, in particular? Would the
alien attempting to understand the postmodern world gain as much from
watching The Matrix; from absorbing news reports on 11 September
2001, or from reading Lacan or Zizek? The ‘isness’ of the world Dickens
writes about, for Bauman’s Rorty, is the ‘impossibility of isness’. Is The
Matrix articulating the impossibility of ‘isness’ in a different sense? Is the
absorption of contemporary ‘tourists’, to deploy Bauman’s metaphor, in
the ‘hyper-real’ of Hollywood or the hygenised version of 11 September
as presented on most of our screens, an indication of the ‘impossibility of
isness’? Or is the theoretical abstraction of a Heidegger an indication
of this in a different way? What exactly does it mean? What is it about
the contemporary world in particular that leads a number of thinkers,
including Baudrillard, Zizek and Bauman, to compare it to a work of art?
Bauman thinks that it is only at a certain point in history that Rorty’s
picture of philosophy can come to fruition. Rorty, as a great philosopher
at the time of Plato, would have been an oxymoron. In that time, each
of us had a secure identity, a clear place in the scheme of things, and a
role to fulfil. In those days there was, I presume, a truth and a world out
there. Nowadays, in these postmodern times, the sort of philosophy
articulated by Rorty, as presented by Bauman, who refuses to locate
himself and his thought in history, is great philosophy. Just as Foucault
suggested that the Victorians invented the concept of sexual identity,
so there is today, for Bauman, a new concept of philosophy, that is
appropriate to the postmodern times.
One might ask the question: if there is no truth, and if the world is a
fictional creation, why has this only recently come to be the case? Surely
it is either the case that there is no truth, per se, or that there is a truth?
Either the prisoners in Plato’s cave can never escape and they will
inevitably merely see shadows on the wall, or they can escape and see
the real world; they can understand the truth. Moreover, if no one ever
escapes, then there is no way of distinguishing the truth from the fiction. It seems odd, however, to suggest that it is only now in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, that the walls of the cave
have turned into a Dickens novel or a Hollywood cinema screen.
On the other hand, though, if it is true that present society is ‘on the
move’ then is it not all the more imperative, contra Bauman, that truth
is stable? If Bauman is right about the tourist and the vagabond, then is
152 Revisiting Universalism
there not all the more need for some kind of system building; for some
sort of universalising thinking? How can anyone persuade the tourist,
who is able to leave his chosen destination, and move on, of his own
free will, to take note of the concerns and the life chances of the
vagabond, who is forced to move on, if there are no universals? How can
we persuade someone that it is wrong that there should be the kinds of
prison (see Bauman, 1998, Ch. 5) from which the inhabitants cannot
escape or from which there is no escape unless there is some reason why
this someone should take note of the prisoner?
Unless there are these universals, there is very little likelihood of a certain version of Melucci’s ‘encounter with otherness’ (Melucci, quoted in
Bauman, 1998, p. 11). Moreover, far from Rorty’s outlook helping
answer the question: how can we develop a sense of solidarity with ‘the
other’? On the face of it, we look further from solving that conundrum.
Bauman’s Rorty does not seem to help us understand how ‘tolerance of
the other’ helps the vagabond. But perhaps there is more in Rorty than
I have articulated so far.
4. More on Rorty
I should like to spend a little more time looking at Rorty on the question
of moral universals.
Rorty describes himself and those of whom he approves as ‘ironists’.
The ironist is ‘aware of the contingency and fragility of (his/her) final
vocabularies’ (Rorty, 1989). As ironists, we can create ourselves in any
way that we wish, through re-description of our values, beliefs and
motives. The ironist accepts the contingency of language; he or she is
always conscious that a particular viewpoint may be wrong. The view
that there is a nature to human beings Rorty sometimes implies is linked
to the mistaken notion, thoroughly repudiated in ‘Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature’ (Rorty, 1979) that there is a mirroring relationship
between the mind and nature. The view that there is a nature to human
beings, and that there is certain behaviour which is, thereby, inhuman,
if it fails to fit the definition, is part and parcel of the foundationalism
Rorty rejects. Rorty writes: ‘our insistence on contingency, and our consequent opposition to ideas like “essence”, “nature”, and “foundation”,
makes it impossible for us to retain the notion that some actions and
attitudes are naturally “inhuman” ’ (Rorty, 1989, p. 189).
In these circumstances, what becomes of moral values and a concern
for others? In Rorty’s view, solidarity with others is all the stronger the
more particular and parochial the attachment. There is no identification
Conclusion 153
with fellow humans, and therefore our identifications are formed with
particular localised groupings – with our fellow nationals, those with
whom we have a shared religious affinity; the people in our street. One’s
moral values partly derive from this sense of shared identity. In this
sense, Rorty is at one with the communitarians. Rorty does, however,
wish to go further than the communitarians, and he emphasises the
need constantly to question one’s own moral values and to extend one’s
sense of community. He does not share the view of MacIntyre, for example, that one’s moral values are provided by ones’ constitutive attachments, and make no sense outside these. On the contrary these very
‘constitutive’ attachments must be constantly questioned and revised.
Rorty is more like Sartre in this respect than like MacIntyre.
Rorty must, however, hang on to some middle way. The difficulty
with the Sartrean perspective, as we have seen elsewhere, is that there
may be nothing left for the individual to hang on to if she is constantly
recreating herself. For some communitarians, by contrast, it is impossible to criticise the values that constitute one as a particular type of
human being. It is important, in Rorty’s view, that a particular local
grouping should be constantly extending its reach and accommodating
and tolerating the views of others. The notion Rorty is keen to reject,
because of its inappropriate foundationalist overtones, is the idea that
there is a nature to human beings. The view that there is a nature to
human beings, for Rorty, is tantamount to the mistaken view that moral
and political beliefs require a foundation.
Kate Soper (2002) however, raises the question of the extent to which
Rorty has fully rejected the notion of human nature. She suggests that
there are plausible and acceptable versions of ‘humanism’ that escape
the kind of foundationalism Rorty wishes to reject. She writes: ‘… one
can be a realist on human nature (deny a wholly relativist position on
human needs, insist that individuals are not exhaustively analysable as
webs of beliefs or discursive constructions) without felling the commitments which Rorty ascribes to his metaphysicians’ (Soper, 2002, p. 124).
She further points out that, at the same time as he rejects the notion of
a common human nature, Rorty strongly eschews the view that cruelty
is acceptable. Soper puts it very strongly: ‘Rorty at the same time
premises his whole philosophy on the claim that cruelty is to be
avoided. … And in explication of this he, not unreasonably, cites our
shared capacity to experience pain and humiliation’ (ibid., p. 123). She
argues that Rorty exaggerates the notion of ‘essence’ suggested by the
believer in such an essence, in order to create distance between his own
position and that of the ‘essentialist’. We can be realist in a minimal
154 Revisiting Universalism
sense, however, she suggests, without accepting foundationalism or the
thesis that the mind mirrors nature. It will be apparent that, in this
book, I have rejected both foundationalism and the mirroring thesis
whilst also defending a minimal realism and a minimal human nature.
Rorty’s focus on the local has been quite extensively criticised (see for
some examples, Horton, Conway and Owen, in Fesenstein, ed. 2002). To
the further objection that there are localised communities – nations,
localities, races and so on that have engaged in morally unacceptable
practices, Rorty would reply, as I have written, that he is committed to
giving absolutely priority to the avoidance of cruelty. As articulated by
Judith Sklar, this can be read as follows: ‘To put cruelty first is to disregard sin as it is understood by revealed religion. Sins are transgressions
of a divine rule and offences against God; pride – the rejection of God –
must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all others. However
cruelty – the willful inflicting of pain on a weaker being in order to cause
anguish and fear – is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it
is judged as the supreme evil it is judged so in and of itself and not
because it signifies a denial of God or any other norm’ (Sklar, 1984,
pp. 8–9). Rorty advocates ironism as a way of ensuring that cruelty is
placed above all other values. The ironist continually subjects her own
beliefs to testing, and if she therefore holds a belief that is worth dying
for, it must indeed have survived stringent tests on its veracity.
Rorty directs his writings against the ‘metaphysician’ who upholds a
shared power, a shared rationality, a shared God or history. The ironist,
by contrast, is sceptical about the idea of ‘real truth’ in ethics. Referring
back to the points made above, however, the question arises: what is
meant by ‘real truth’? What does Rorty mean when he suggests that the
believer in ‘real truth’ has to be committed to something ‘more’ than
the recognition that cruelty should be avoided? As I have suggested in
Chapter 7, there is another way than the ‘old’ metaphysical fashion
with its commitment to beliefs mirroring nature, of upholding a
commitment to ‘real truth’.
Furthermore, the question that arises equally importantly is this: what
follows from the recognition that cruelty is placed above other values?
Should the ironist pursue cruelty with vigour, in order to ensure that
avoiding it is really an acceptable and a ‘final’ commitment? How
should the ironist operate?
Should the ironist operate in the fashion advocated by Zizek, when he
suggests that the ‘honest Nazi’, the mayor of a small east German town,
who, when the Russians were approaching in February 1945, put on his
mayoral uniform and all his medals, and took a stroll along the main
Conclusion 155
street, where the Russians shot him down’. Zizek comments: ‘was his act
particularly noble, or was it a desperate attempt to confer some nobility
on a life that was full of compromises with the worst criminals?’ (Zizek,
2002, p. 7). Is this the kind of thing that the ironist should do, or should
he have cowered away?
Another commentator on Rorty, Norman Geras, argues, like Soper,
that Rorty in fact requires the nature he rejects – a common humanity –
in order to uphold the solidarity he wishes to promote.
Zizek, in his recent writings, adopts a point of view that is akin to that
of Rorty, although he takes the argument a step further. Zizek, like Rorty,
objects to the notion that there is some position that has a particular
claim to the truth; the believer in such a notion is somehow in bad faith.
Zizek indeed, pours scorn on the ‘committed’ (western) intellectual
including himself who pass(es) high judgement about how either
workers in our societies or Third World crowds cravenly betrayed their
revolutionary vocation and succumbed to nationalist or capitalist temptations? ‘Take the repellant figure of the comfortable, well-paid English
or French “radical leftist” condemning the Yugoslavian masses for succumbing to the ethnic siren songs in the late 1980s: it was these “radical
leftists” who were actually on trial, and who miserably failed the test in
their misperception of the post-Yugoslav war. The same goes even more
for the liberal multi-culturalists who deplore the rise of New Right violence in Western societies by adopting an arrogant patronising attitude
towards those they condemn, they fail the test …’ (Zizek, ibid., p. 75).
Bauman invited us to ‘tolerate’ the Other. Rorty suggests that we
should not be ‘cruel’ to the other. Zizek, following Badiou, satirises the
liberal multi-culturalist who ‘respects’ the Other. He quotes Badiou as
asking what ‘respect’ for the other means when one is at war with an
enemy; when one is brutally left by a woman for someone else; when
one is asked to respect mediocre artists? One might ask the same questions about Bauman’s notion of ‘tolerance’ for the other. Zizek suggests,
with the perspicacity he has of finding the right film to illustrate his
point, that Speilberg’s animated series the Land Before Time provides
the ‘clearest articulation of the hegemonic liberal multi-culturalist
ideology’ (ibid., p. 64). In the animation the same message is repeated
over and over again: we are all different – some of us are big, some of us
are small; some know how to fight; others know how to flee. But we
should all, so is Speilberg’s message, learn how to live with each other.
The conclusion is that ‘it takes all sorts/ to make a world/short and
tall sorts/large and small sorts/ …’. In this fashion, Zizek pokes fun at the
liberal ‘tolerator’ of difference.
156 Revisiting Universalism
Zizek further writes that when the ‘left’ makes its demands ‘for full
employment’ ‘retain the welfare state’ ‘full rights for immigrants’ … it is
bombarding the capitalist state with demands it cannot fulfil. The left,
he writes, is ‘playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the
Master with a demand it will be impossible for him to meet’ (ibid., p. 60).
Should Rorty’s ironist play a game of hysterical provocation in order to
test the power of the state?
But Zizek, in my view, and as I have argued in Chapter 5, goes too far.
His view, as I urged in that chapter, is essentially a pessimistic one. What
is the one with a political conscience to do, on Zizek’s premises? On his
premises, someone with a conscience, who might not step over the beggar in the street; who might desire, as well as the satisfaction of her
desires, that at least some of the desires of others are satisfied as well, is
no better than the person who never heeds another. The one with a conscience, might even fantasise, not like Kanif Kureishi (2002) having a
better, a younger, a more perfectly formed and better functioning body,
but fantasise a world that is better for those who are really suffering. On
what grounds does it make sense to describe the latter, rather than the
former, as in bad faith?
Even if no one actually has such fantasies, is there really no set of values that is better than any other set? What is significant about the notion
articulated so forcefully both by Rorty and by Zizek, that we should adopt
a position of humility in relation to all the values we hold dear?
I agree that it is important to hear the other. The leftist who condemns
the Bosnians for capitulating to the Serbs in former Yugoslavia; the liberal multi-culturalist who vaguely ascribes a generalised set of values to
the Turks in her neighbourhood, or who, like the politically correct
teachers satirised by Zadie Smith in her novel White Teeth (Smith, 2001)
ascribe a set of beliefs and values to ‘Indian people’ in the misguided
belief that she is being tolerant, may not be really hearing anyone.
But listening is one thing. Constantly questioning everything one
holds dear is quite another. When does listening stop and ancient scepticism step in? Would Zizek and/or Rorty approve of the following,
taken from a recent editorial of the UK journal Feminist Review?
This issue brings together exciting new essays on diverse topics …
What all of these essays have in common is that they aim to contest
orthodoxies, even – or perhaps especially – feminist orthodoxies. Each
of these essays contests orthodoxies of sexuality, both of normative
heterosexuality and also of those forms of sexuality which feminists
have regarded as anti-normative and contestatory … the essays also,
importantly contest feminist orthodoxies. Laura Alexandra Harris
Conclusion 157
challenges the hegemony of white middle-class feminists of the 1970s
and 1980s – not just heterosexual feminisms but also lesbian feminisms – with a vital new articulation of “queer” …
(Feminist Review, no. 54, autumn 1996, Editorial, p. 1.)
Would the editorial read even better, in Zizek and Rorty’s terms, if, at
the same time as ‘challenging orthodoxies’ and bringing a ‘vital new
articulation of “queer” ’ these feminists were at the same time challenging this ‘vital new articulation’? Why would this be better and better for
whom and for what? Such a position might indeed be better for those
gay people, perhaps like Pim Futuyn, (the leader of the Far Right in the
Netherlands) killed in early May 2002, who was gay and tolerant and yet
a member of the far Right, who might not have wished to identify with
the ‘vital new articulation of “queer” ’? Perhaps also it would have
been better for those old fashioned enlightenment feminists, who want
to hang on to something of the 1970s feminism. But the question I am
raising here is: according to what or whose standards are we to judge the
answer to these questions, on the perspective of Zizek or Rorty?
How indeed, does the position ultimately differ from that of the
ancient or of the Cartesian sceptic, who also invites us to challenge all of
our beliefs held on grounds of custom and habit?
Some twentieth century Cartesians adopt the procedure of rational
decision making. Simon (1976, quoted in Adam, p. 35) characterises
rational decision making as a process of listing alternative strategies,
determining the consequences of each and then comparatively evaluating each consequence in turn. Decision theory then applies sophisticated mathematics to decision in a number of areas, based on these
precepts (ibid., p. 35). In the latter case, there is a rational or more precisely a mathematical decision procedure determining which view one
should ultimately accept. One has the ‘comfort’ of believing that the
view arrived at is justified in accordance with the most precise mathematical theorems. In the case of Zizek’s caricatured leftist, she has no
such security. She just believes that she is doing the right thing and
helping, in some vague way maybe, to make the world a better place.
Contrast that, however, with the British SPGB, a political party that has
operated in the UK, and elsewhere, since 1904. Members of the SPGB
reject Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky as ‘impure’ versions of Marx, and believe
that they must argue the socialist case in as many venues as possible, in
order to convince a majority of the working class of the veracity of their
case (SPGB, 1942). They adopt the strategy of believing that rationality
will prevail and that once people see and understand the logic of their
case, just like the believer in decision procedure, then those people will
158 Revisiting Universalism
convert to their cause and there will be no more capitalism, no more
wars and no more wage slavery.
The question I would like to put to Zizek and to Rorty, however, is:
which strategy should we follow? Why is questioning one’s beliefs valuable as an end in itself and when should the questioning process cease?
What criteria would one presuppose to suggest an answer to this question?
I do not wish to be misunderstood here. It is vital that we are all open
constantly to have our prejudices challenged. However, there is a point
where questioning must stop or it will become disabling and where it
will prevent any kind of judgement and any kind of action.
In this book, I have suggested a different approach. I have suggested
that there is a set of values that should not be questioned. I have suggested that it does make sense to outline a human nature that all of
humanity shares in common.
5. Back to the beginning
In the Introduction to this book, I quoted the case of Quardan, an
Afghani boy, who had insufficient food to survive the coming winter.
Recently, the World-Watch institute, a Washington-based body, has
published a report that claims that the human race has only one or perhaps two generations to rescue itself. The longer, the report claims, no
remedial action is taken, the greater the degree of misery and impoverishment of mankind. In this book, I have argued for a particular type of
moral framework that, in my view, is a prerequisite for taking remedial
action to begin to resolve this serious and major problem for the world.
Rather then seeking to ‘tolerate’ ‘the other’ or to ‘respect’ the other,
which may be no use at all to Quardan, I have suggested that the framework required if we are to save the human race, is one where we assume
moral obligations for satisfying the basic needs of the other.
I recognise that this may be seen to be too abstract and too general a
thesis to deal with any of the severe problems facing the world, and, it
may, indeed, generate conflicts over how it is to be implemented. Just to
quote one story: a philanthropist and businessman from Staten Island,
in New York, when he saw the state of human suffering and misery in
Sierra Leone, following the war there, determined to use his business
skills in development prostheses (artificial limbs) to help some of the
local people who had lost limbs. However, his project ended when the
people of Staten Island could not agree on what should be done about a
group of people from Sierra Leone, brought over to New York to be given
new artificial limbs (Backer, 2003). There are many many more such
Conclusion 159
examples that could be quoted. The difficulty of knowing what to do is
one of the reasons for the sceptical stance taken by Zizek and by Rorty.
Sceptics might contend that my stance offers no practical advice or help
at all to those who might accept the broad premise.
I entirely accept the point that no practical advice has been offered.
However, the intention of the book is to suggest that there is a precondition for adopting practical measures. This precondition, in the opening years of the twenty-first century, in our globalised, shrinking world,
is to recognise that the stranger next door, the amputee in Freetown and
President Bush all share something significant and important. The qualities I have documented in this book, shared by each of these people
who are so unlike each other, are as significant as the qualities shared by
one member of the Republican party in the USA with a fellow member
of the Republican Party.
Bauman (Bauman, op. cit.) documents the time when the Welfare Sate
in the UK was supposed to provide for UK citizens, on the backs of those
who were in work. Welfare was seen as a collective insurance for all in
the UK. Such a policy initiative presupposes a shared ethos on the part
of UK citizens and a shared commitment to each and every one of them.
Bauman points out that the welfare ethos made sense when industry
provided work, shelter and food for the majority of the population.
However, there is no reason, in principle, why a similar policy objective
should not be worked out, worldwide. Such a policy would presuppose,
in my view, precisely what I have been arguing in this book – that
human beings across the world recognise their shared humanity and
their shared responsibility for other members of the species. A policy of
worldwide welfare may not be practicable, and there may be others that
might be more sensible and practicable.
The foreign policy adopted recently by George Bush has been
described by the Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat as
setting the world on a course towards nuclear disaster (Guardian nonproliferation conference). This policy, whilst there is no sense in which
it could be said to flow from the moral and political positions I have
been criticising in this book, presupposes a stance which divides
the world of humanity into ‘us’ and ‘them’. The world is divided into
those who share sufficient of the world view of the Bush administration
to be worth his protection and those who are so far beyond the pale, so
much drawn towards the ‘axis of evil’ as not to be worth bothering
about. In this respect, the position of Bush, as a liberal tolerator of
difference, is just like that of the fundamentalist fanatic, of whatever
faith, who is prepared to shed the blood of those outside his faith.
160 Revisiting Universalism
The Hindu fanatic, the Christian Crusader and the Muslim fundamentalist are alike in this regard.
A policy initiative that might be said to flow from the sort of perspective
I have been outlining in this book is the recent courageous stance taken by
Israeli army ‘refuseniks’. In 2002 hundreds of Israeli reservists refused to
serve in the occupied territories. They argued that they could not participate in a war set up to ‘dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire
people’ (see Zizek, 2002, p. 113). Their testimonies bear witness to the
atrocities committed by the Israeli army against innocent Palestinian civilians. A similar kind of act to the above is the proclamation, by former
US army personnel, that they plan to go to Iraq and lay down in front of
possible sites of US bombing (see press reports, January 2003).
Maybe those who are concerned to have practical policy initiatives
will not be persuaded by the argument of this book. It is my hope,
however, that those who think that it is inevitable that we can only
emphasise our differences, will be persuaded to rethink something of
their views.
In this book, I have attempted both to raise some doubts in the minds
of those at present persuaded by the notion, that pluralism about value
is a premise that we cannot question. To the contrary, I have urged that
there are moral values that we should all accept, that flow from the fact
of our common human nature. These values and this perspective, however, is one that requires, to use the words of Irigaray a ‘new imaginary’.
It is not a conception of whose existence and normative consequences
we are all immediately and unproblematically aware.
Moving on from here, I have suggested that there are also certain epistemic universals, again stemming from the fact of this common nature.
Overall then, the book offers a very different perspective, on moral
value and on certain epistemic questions, from the outlook considered
in this final chapter, both of Bauman, on the one hand, and of Rorty on
the other. I hope that some people may be persuaded to think again
about universalism, having read this book.
References
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London.
Bauman, Z. (1991) Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bauman, Z. (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequences, Polity Press,
Cambridge.
Conclusion 161
Brandon and Weidenfeld (eds) (1970) Dictionary of Comparative Religion, Brandon
and Weidenfeld, London.
Conway, D. (2001) Irony, State and Utopia: Rorty’s ‘We’ and the Problem of
Transitional Praxis, in Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues (eds) Festenstein, M. and
Thompson, S. Polity, Cambridge.
Horton, J. (2001) Irony and Commitment: an Irreconcilable Dualism of Modernity,
also in Festenstein and Thompson.
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Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity, Duqesne University Press, Pittsburg.
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Princeton.
Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press,
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Sklar, J. (1984) Ordinary Vices, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma.
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Soper, K. (2002) Richard Rorty: Humanist and/or Anti-Humanist, in Festenstein, and
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Zizek, S. (2002) Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Verso, London.
Index
abstraction, 29, 35, 40, 104
theoretical, 146, 151
Achinstein, P., 127
Adam, A. 157
Adam, H., 13
Addelson, K., 81
Alcoff, L., 142
Althusser, L., 55, 56, 105
Anthias, F., 33
Aristotelian ethics, 89
Aristotle, 6, 11, 57, 90, 142
‘man of practical wisdom’, 8, 50
moral monist, 38
particularist tendency, 39, 91, 135
vision of the good life, 91
Assiter, A., 22, 28, 34, 56, 99–100, 103,
118, 135
autonomous self, 54, 111
Babbit, I., 102
Bar On, Bat-Amin, 118
Barry, B., 60
basic moral claim, 68
basic needs, 67–8, 75, 78, 80, 81, 83,
87, 93, 96, 134
of the other, 93, 158
Baudrillard, J., 151
Bauman, Z., 19, 49, 146–52, 155, 159
Beck, U., 2, 83, 84, 107
beliefs, 24, 49, 95, 127, 128, 140, 141,
152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158
rational justification of, 49
Benhabib, S., 6–7, 32–3, 88, 95, 127,
137–8
Benn, S.I., 57
Bentham, J., 42, 43
Benton, T., 55, 57–9, 69, 91
Berlin, I., 6, 64
Bill Clinton, 27
Bird, C., 36
Bleier, R., 115
bodily image, 121
Brah, A., 121–2, 129
Braidotti, R., 137
Brennan, T., 100
Bunting, 11 (no initials)
Butler, J., 56, 121, 122
Calder, G., 3, 12
Cartesian dualism, 120
Castells, M., 2, 3
childhood socialisation, 116
Chipko movement, 55
Chodorow, N., 116
civic nationalism, 20
Cixous, H., 109–10
Clement, C., 110
Code, L., 114, 127–8
Coker, C., 137
Coleridge, S., 102
Collard, A., 55
collective body, 85
collective ‘humanity’, 84, 86
collective responsibility, 81, 84, 86–7
for the needs of others, 87
collectivity, 84, 102, 135
Collier, A., 67, 69
common human nature, 53–72
a form of psychic imaginary, 94
common humanity, 69, 71, 95, 155
membership of a, 95
recognition of a, 71, 72
common nation of origin
western mode of identity
construction, 19
communitarianism, 6, 43, 46, 97
communitarians, 5, 6, 11, 17, 18, 39,
44, 45, 47, 49, 91, 133, 153
comprehensive liberalism, 38
Comte, A., 126
confinement
means of social control, 25
source of cheap labour, 25
consensus, 138
‘constitutive’ attachments, 153
‘constraint of necessity’, 14, 15, 17
162
Index
‘contestatory politics’, 118
Contrucci, J., 55
Conway, A., 68, 69
Conway, D., 154
Cornell, D., 93, 94
Craig, E., 130
creative imagination, 96, 101, 103,
106
Croce, B., 102
cruelty, 153, 154
cultural ‘hybrids’, 22
cultural identification, 15
culturalism’, 38
‘cultural’ pluralism, 13, 17–22
Dalmiya, V., 142
Daly, M., 55, 115
Dankelman, I., 58, 59
Davidson, J., 58, 59
death, 60, 61, 71
as a symbol of emancipation, 71
‘death drive’, 104
de Beauvoir, S., 54, 55, 94, 95, 111
defence of local environments
role of women, 55
Deleuze, G., 111
democratic public culture, 37
Derrida, J., 109, 110, 146
Descartes, R., 7, 21–2, 24–5, 48, 68,
71, 72, 99, 111, 113, 120, 122,
126, 127
de Weitz, S., 23, 136, 138
differences, 3, 23, 27, 35, 38, 42, 53,
71, 72, 107, 136
female and male cognitive, 115
sexual, 119
disengagement
with ‘the body’, 112
with the collective, 102
Doyal, L., 61, 62
Dworkin, R., 17, 18, 20
early liberal theory
universalising, 33
eco-feminists, 54–5
Ehrenreich, B., 113, 117
Elliott, A.,105
emancipatory narratives, 95
emancipatory values, 28, 135–42
163
embodiment, 7, 54–5, 126–7, 132,
139
leading to relativism, 132–4
‘empty self’, 22, 44–5, 47, 48
argument, 22
‘epistemic’ community, 132, 135,
139, 141
ideal, 131
optimal, 139
Epstein, D., 16
equality, 22, 37, 40, 41, 103, 112
equal respect
a relation of reciprocity, 77
a relational duty, 77
‘eros driven libidinal philosophy’,
150
ethical beliefs, plurality, 70
ethical pluralists, 50
ethical qualities of caring and
nurturing, 113, 114
Evans, M., 55
‘external’ states of an individual, 36
Ezioni, A., 46
family and the workplace
two constitutive communities, 46
Fanon, F., 20
‘felt preferences’, 43, 57, 58, 67
female and male cognitive differences,
115
female mothering, 116
‘femininity’, 116, 121
associated sets of values, 116
feminism, ‘essentialist’, 119
feminist epistemologists, 3, 120, 123,
126, 127–8, 132
feminist standpoint epistemology,
114–19
Ferguson, A., 118
Fink, B., 105
Firestone, S., 55, 115, 118
Foot, P., 82
Form of the Good, 8, 41
form/matter binary, 121
Foucault, M., 24–5, 111, 151
Fraser, N., 7, 53, 136
‘free creativity’, 17
freedom, 64, 95, 112
of choice, 44, 149
164 Index
in the sense of ‘the absence of
constraint’, 64
noumenal dimension, 97
‘free-riding’ humans, 83
Frege, G., 141
Freud, S., 93, 98, 99, 104–5, 112, 147
Fricker, M., 29, 34, 130–2, 135, 139,
140
fundamentalism, 27, 28
juxtaposed with liberal pluralism,
27
Gadamer, H.-G., 39
Gatens, M., 122
Gauthier, J.-P., 43
Gellner, E., 7, 126
gender identity, 14, 56, 133
Geras, N., 54, 155
Gewirth, A., 60, 61
Giddens, A., 2, 19
Gilroy, P., 2–3, 33, 40, 60, 63, 71,
128–9
Goffman, I., 48
‘good informants’, 130–1
trustworthiness, 130
Gough, I., 61, 62
Graham, K., 14, 15, 61, 88, 102, 133
Grant, J., 117
gratification of needs, 59
Griffiths, M., 105–7, 119, 128
Grimshaw, J., 116–17
Habermasian ‘communicative ethics’,
7, 137
Habermas, J., 150
Halliday, F., 27
Hall, R., 138
Haraway, D., 7
Harding, S., 114, 118, 119, 127–8, 141
Hartstock, N., 118, 127–8
Hegel, G.W.F., 6, 46, 47, 71, 75, 95, 98,
99, 112, 137
Heidegger, 76, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102,
150, 151
Hekman, S., 127
Hempel, K., 126
Hesse, M., 127
‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures, 42
Hill-Collins, P., 128–9
Hobbes, T., 104–7
Homer, S., 100
Homi Bhabha, 22
homosexuality, 28
Honneth, A., 95
human flourishing, 23, 66
neo-Aristotelian notion, 66
humanity as a whole, 80–2, 84–8
ideal ‘epistemic community’, 131
identity construction, 15, 16, 19
identity formation, 14, 21
‘imaginary order’, Lacan’s, 99, 105
imagination, 98, 99, 101, 102–5
disruptive power, 98–9
imaginative reconceptualisations, 95
impartiality, 5, 34, 35, 36
impartial model of justice
proposed by Rawls, 32
individual desires, 74
refusal to recognise, 93
individuals, autonomous, 46
‘internal’ states, of an individual, 36
intuitive universality, 102
Irigaray, L., 109, 114, 160
Jantzen, G., 94
Kant, I., 6, 7, 29, 54, 77, 88–91, 97–9,
102, 106, 111, 160, 161
Kantian conception, of the person, 37
Kekes, J., 41–3, 75
Kim, Suh-Young, 105
knowing, 117, 118, 120
notion of male and female ways of,
115, 117, 120
knowledge, 7, 24, 69, 97, 98, 105, 110,
114, 115, 118, 119, 127–35, 135,
139–42
compared to Aristotelian practical
wisdom, 135
different cognitive capacities, 115
genealogy, 130
and survival, 130, 140–1
woman’s outlook on, 115
knowledge claims, 29, 91, 115, 127,
132, 141–2
Kristeva, J., 109
Kuhn, T., 81, 119, 128
Index
Kureishi, H., 156
Kymlica, W., 14, 16–21, 43–5, 47–9,
53
Lacanian self, 105
Lacan, J., 75, 98–101, 103, 104, 147,
150, 151
Lakatos, J., 126
Lara, M., 107
Larmore, C., 6, 7, 88–90
Lawrence, P., 138
Lehrer, K., 127
Lennon, K., 129, 140
lesbianism, 139
Levinas, E., 76, 148–9
liberalism and the disembodied self
110–14
liberal pluralism, 27, 28
liberal universalism, 5, 6, 43, 110, 123
communitarian objections to,
43–5
particularist criticisms, 6
Locke, J., 38–40, 113, 150
Longino, H., 127–8
love and justice: antagonistic virtues,
74
Lugones, M., 109
Lukes, S., 57
Lyotard, J.F., 7, 129
MacIntyre, A., 5–6, 33, 39, 51, 91,
133, 150, 153
Macpherson, C.B., 104
madness, 24–6
imbued with moral significance,
24–6
potential, 99
the sanest ‘strategy’, 26
Madness and Civilisation, 24
male/female dualism, 121
male and female languages, 117
marginality, conferring epistemic
privilege, 129
Marx and Marxism, 4, 14, 42, 55,
58, 60, 64, 90, 91, 96, 97, 117,
118, 161
‘masculinity’, 116
sets of values traditionally
associated with, 116
165
master/slave dialectic, 71, 99
material beings, 133–4
community of, 133
human beings as, 91, 135
with material needs, 134–7
materialist universalism, 4
Mead, G.H., 75, 95
Mellor, M., 54, 58
Melucci, A., 152
Mensch, J., 76
meta-norm, 137
Midgley, M., 26, 68
Mies, M., 54–5
Milgram, 131, 142
Miller, D., 59, 86
Mill, J.S., 12, 42, 129
Mills, C.W.M., 48
mind/body dualism, 27, 113, 121
minimal conception of reason, 8
minimal human nature, 55, 154
minimal ‘natural being’, 76
Mohanty, C.T., 33
‘monism’, 8, 32, 38, 40
other forms, 41–3
moral, 38, 40, 71
Platonic version, 41
monological reasoning, 34
Moodley, K., 13
moral choice, 47
moral claims, 23, 29
moral conflict, 138
moral obligation, 74–6, 80, 87, 89,
134, 135
moral pluralism, 22–9
moral thinking, 32, 91
sensitivity to particularism, 91
moral values, 48, 50
sociological dimension, 48
Morgan, R., 118
Mother–child dyad, 99
‘mothering’, 116, 120
Moulton, J., 116
Murdoch, I., 94
Musgrave, A., 126
‘natural needs’, 57, 59, 60, 63, 65, 75,
93, 135
determined by biological
constitutions, 62
166 Index
and moral obligation, 135
as opposed to felt preference, 65
need claims, 55, 57
need satisfaction: species-specific
‘aesthetic’ dimension, 59
needs and obligations, 76–80
needs of the ‘other’, 83
needs satisfaction, 87
different from expressed
preferences, 57
functional/instrumental/intrinsic
needs, 59
New Social Movements, 70, 95, 102
Newton-Smith, W.H., 127
Nicholson, L., 7, 53, 109, 136
Nietzsche, F., 109, 111
non-expressed needs, 57–8, 67
incompatible with individual
liberty, 67
non-liberal form of universalism, 3
notion of imagination, 90
notion of responsibility
an individualist conception, 81
notion of society
as a single person, 88
a collective entity, 88
notion of the Real, 100
‘noumenal’ dimension, 97–8
noumenal realm, 98
‘noumenal’ self, 111
Nussbaum, M., 91
objective needs, 56–8
Okin, S., 32, 34
O’Neill, O., 7–8, 35, 39, 49
ontology of fragmentation, 7
oppressive power relations, 28,
135
‘other’, 75–7, 80, 81, 83, 94–6, 106
otherness of the other, 27
Parekh, B., 34, 37–41, 53, 71, 90
particularism, 4, 6, 9, 91, 109
in ethics, 4
particularistic communitarians, 5
particularity, 110
Pateman, C., 33, 78, 112, 127, 142
Peters, R.S., 57
physical health, 60, 62–4, 67
as ‘freedom from disabling diseases’,
62
Pisotrius, 89
pity, 103
Plato’s transcendent Good, 8, 50
pluralists, 12
‘pluralist universalism’, 38
plurality, 53
need for, 53
of values, 136
plurality and conflict, 12
points of commonality, 122, 136, 146
between men and women, 122–3
Poole, 79
Popper, K., 126–7
postmodernists, 7, 49
feminists, 7
power differentials, 131, 134, 142
‘psychic fantasy’, 94
purported universalism, 82
racial identity, 14, 15
Ramsey, M., 33, 36
Rasmussen, D., 66
Rationality, 7, 23, 25, 49, 68, 95, 115,
138, 154, 157
instrumental conception, 23
normative conception, 23
‘rational man’, 91, 135
Rawls’ difference principle, 37
Rawlsian universalism, 36
Rawls, J., 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18,
20, 23, 28, 29, 32–8, 50, 53, 74,
88, 126
reason and feeling: dichotomy
between, 34
reason/male and feeling/female, 34
reciprocal material obligation, 134
reciprocal obligation, 137
recognition, 93, 95, 96, 101, 154
of the desire of the other, 99
Regan, D., 60, 61
relativism, 132
cultural, 55
Rich, A., 55
Rorty, R., 4, 146, 150, 151, 152–8
Rousseau, J.J., 74, 99, 103, 104, 106,
108
Ruth, S., 116
Index
Said, E., 138, 140
saintliness, 148–9
Sandel, M., 5–6, 14, 33, 35, 44–5, 47,
74, 88, 91, 132–3
Sartre, J.P., 45, 46, 47, 153
satisfaction of needs, 58, 135, 139
Saxonhouse, A., 142
Seller, A., 129
sense of justice, 37, 112, 149
sense of shared identity, 153
senses: as unreliable sources of
knowledge, 24
sex and gender: equivalent entities, 56
‘sexual harassment’, 117
Shanley, M., 142
shared reality for women, 94
Sherwin, S., 142
Shildrick, M., 4
Shiva, V., 54–5
Singer, P., 86
Skillen, A., 11
Sklar, J., 154
slavery, 61, 63, 64, 71, 110, 137, 158
Smith, A., 20
Smith, D., 115
Smith, Z., 156
socially marginalised groups, 118
‘societal culture’, 18, 20
importance to self-identity, 18
solidarity, 94–6, 149, 152, 155
Soper, K., 57, 59, 64, 65, 66, 91, 93,
153, 155
Spender, D., 117
Spinoza, B., 69, 122
Standard Attainment Task (SAT), 142
Stanley, L., 142
Stoller, R., 119
structural pluralism, 13–17
Tannesini, A.., 27, 28, 66
Taylor, C., 20, 33, 36, 39, 44, 75, 91,
95, 132
167
‘the Good’, 94
a notion difficult to define, 94
theories of motherhood, 117
the ‘other’, 25, 27, 28, 63, 71, 75–6,
81, 93–6, 106, 109, 122, 123, 147,
148–51, 155, 158
thinking ‘through the body’, 114
Thompson, D., 115
‘transversal politics’, 136
Turner, B.S., 113
universalists and particularists, 3
utilitarianism, 42, 88
‘vagabonds’, 19
value pluralism, 11–13, 17
‘virtue’ ethics, 87–8
Waltzer, M., 5–6, 132
Williams, B., 60
Williams, C., 100–1
Wittgenstein, L., 26, 42, 122, 141–2
Wollstonecraft, M., 109
‘woman’/’matter’/the body, 122
‘woman’s’ epistemological outlook,
115
women, 112, 123
as ‘disminded’ bodily creatures, 120,
123
excluded from political life, 112
as ‘other’, 123
‘writing the body’, 114
Yeatman, A., 118
Young, I.M., 5, 12, 32, 33–7, 109
Yuval-Davis, N., 19, 22, 26, 33, 136
Zizek, S., 94, 96–105, 150, 151, 154,
155–60
‘antagonistic’ imagination, 100
Zubaida, S., 138