Principles and Political Order

The Challenge of Diversity

Bruce Haddock, Peri Roberts, Peter Sutch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134174331
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An ideal new multi-disciplinary volume for students and scholars of philosophy, contemporary political theory, and international relations.

This volume offers key insights into the work of the chief figures in the contemporary debate surrounding thin universalism and presents a usefully themed contribution to the secondary literature on the work of Onora O'Neill, John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Martha Nussbaum, Stuart Hampshire and others as well as a commentary on contemporary debates surrounding human rights and distributive justice. This new book enables the reader to strongly grasp all the core debates in contemporary normative theory.

1 Nation and universe¹

Michael Walzer

TWO KINDS OF UNIVERSALISM

I

Much has been written in recent years about moral absolutism and moral relativism, foundationalism and contextualism, monism and pluralism, universalism and particularism — all the ferventisms — and yet our understanding of these simple polarities does not seem to advance. Advocates of liberal enlightenment confront advocates of communal tradition; those who aspire to global reach confront those who yearn for local intensity. We all know one another’s lines. In every argument, we anticipate the opening gambits; we have memorized the standard replies and the follow-up moves; no one’s closing flourish is at all surprising. The different positions can be defended well or badly; it is still possible to win a debate, much as one might win a game of chess, with superior skill or the quickness to seize upon an opponent’s mistakes. But victories of this kind have no larger resonance. So I have looked for a way of being persuasive without trying to be victorious, a way of escaping the conventional oppositions or, at least, of redescribing them in less contentious terms. I want to argue from within what I, and many others, have taken to be the opposing camp; I want to take my stand among the universalists and suggest that there is another universalism, a non-standard variety, which encompasses and perhaps even helps to explain the appeal of moral particularism.

I shall begin my argument with the historical example of Judaism, which has often been criticized (not without reason) as a tribal religion, the very emblem of a particularist creed. And yet Judaism is one of the chief sources of the two universalisms, the first of which became standard when it was adopted within Christianity. It probably would have become standard even if Judaism rather than Christianity had triumphed in the ancient world — not only because of its strength among the Jews but also because of a certain connection, which will become apparent as I go along, between the first universalism and the idea or the experience of triumph.

The first universalism holds that as there is one God, so there is one law, one justice, one correct understanding of the good life or the good society or the good regime, one salvation, one messiah, one millennium for all humanity. I will call this the ‘covering law’ version of universalism, though in Christian doctrine it is not law so much as the sacrifice of the son of God that ‘covers’ all men and women everywhere — so that the line ‘Christ died for your sins’ can be addressed to any person in any time or place and will always be true, the pronoun having an indefinite and infinite reference. However many sinners there are, and whoever they are, Christ died for them. But I mean to defer here to Jewish ‘legalism’ (and to later natural law arguments), where the aim is to provide an account of what it means not to sin, to live well or, at least, rightly. Covering-law universalism has been called an ‘alternative’ doctrine within Judaism, but by prophetic times it was a very well established alternative, and perhaps even the dominant doctrine, at least in the written literature of the Jews.² Jewish tribalism had by then been reinterpreted and reconstructed in a way that made it instrumental to a universal end. The Jews were chosen for a purpose, which had to do not only with their own history but also with the history of the human race. That is the meaning of Isaiah’s description of Israel as ‘a light unto the nations.’³ One light for all the nations, who will eventually be uniformly enlightened: though, the light being somewhat dim and the nations recalcitrant, this may take a long time. It may take until the end of time.

The end can be described in militant and triumphant terms as the victory of the universalizing tribe; or it can be described more modestly as the ‘coming in’ or the ‘going up’ of the nations. ‘And many people shall go and say Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.’⁴ Whatever its form, the result is an identical triumph of religious and moral singularity – many people will climb one mountain. The hope for a triumph of this sort has been incorporated into the daily prayers: ‘On that day the Lord shall be one and his name shall be one.’⁵ Until that day, this first universalism can take on the character of a mission, as it often did in the history of Christianity and, later on, in the imperialism of nations that called themselves Christian. You will all remember these lines from Kipling’s ‘Song of the English’:

Keep ye the law – be swift in all obedience –
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap where he hath sown.
By the peace among our peoples, let men know bridge the ford.
We serve the Lord.⁶

Eventually, roads and bridges built and peace secured, ‘our peoples,’ all the subject nations, will learn to serve the Lord on their own; for now, ‘we’ must rule over them. The experience of nations that do not keep the law is radically devalued. This is a common feature of covering-law universalism. The Lord’s servants stand in the centre of history, constitute its main current, while the histories of the others are so many chronicles of ignorance and meaningless strife. Indeed, there is a sense in which they have no history at all — as in the Hegelian/Marxist conception – since nothing of world-historical significance has happened to them. Nothing of world-historical significance will ever happen to them except insofar as they move toward and merge with the main current. The Christian version of this sort of thing, the inspiration of much missionizing activity, is well known, as are its secular analogues. But there is a Jewish version too, according to which the exile and dispersion of the Jews, though in one sense a punishment for their sins, was in another sense central to God’s own world-historical design. It served to ensure that the true monotheistic faith would have local adherents and exemplars everywhere in the world – a dispersed light, but a light still.⁷ The exile is hard on its particulars but good for the generality. Monotheism in this view is the burden of the Jews, much as civilization is the burden of Kipling’s English and communism of Marx’s working class.

Since at any given moment some people know the law and some people do not, some people keep it and some people do not, this first universalism makes for a certain pride among the knowers and keepers — the chosen, the elect, the true believers, the vanguard. Of course, the rejection of pride is commonly one of the covering laws and, as I have already suggested, the triumph of God can come in ways that do not invite the triumphalism of his servants. Still, it is always the case that these men and women (we can disagree over who they are) live right now in a fashion that all men and women will one day imitate. They possess right now a body of knowledge and a legal code that one day will be universally accepted. What is the state of mind and feeling appropriate to such people? If not pride, then certainly confidence: we can recognize covering-law universalism by the confidence it inspires.

The second universalism is the true alternative doctrine in Jewish history; we have to recover it from its biblical fragments. Once Judaism is in fullscale conflict with Christianity, it is repressed; it reappears in secular form in eighteenth- and nineteenth century romanticism. The crucial fragment comes from the prophet Amos, who has God ask:

Are ye not as children of the
Ethiopians unto me, O children
of Israel? …
Have I not brought Israel out of the
land of Egypt,
And the Philistines from Caphtor,
And the Syrians from Kir?⁸

These questions suggest that there is not one exodus, one divine redemption, one moment of liberation, for all mankind, the way there is, according to Christian doctrine, one redeeming sacrifice. Liberation is a particular experience, repeated for each oppressed people. At the same time, it is in every case a good experience, for God is the common liberator. Each people has its own liberation at the hands of a single God, the same God in every case, who presumably finds oppression universally hateful. I propose to call this argument reiterative universalism. What makes it different from coveringlaw universalism is its particularist focus and its pluralizing tendency. We have no reason to think that the exodus of the Philistines or the Syrians is identical with the exodus of Israel, or that it culminates in a similar covenant, or even that the laws of the three peoples are or ought to be the same.

There are two very different ways of elaborating on a historical event like the exodus of Israel from Egypt. It can be made pivotal in a universal history, as if all humanity, though not present at the sea or the mountain, had at least been represented there. Then the experience of Israel’s liberation belongs to everyone. Or it can be made exemplary, pivotal only in a particular history, which other people can repeat — must repeat if the experience is ever to belong to them – in their own fashion. The exodus from Egypt liberates only Israel, only the people whose exodus it was, but other liberations are always possible. In this second view, there is no universal history, but rather a series of histories (which probably do not converge or converge only at the mythical end of time — like the many national roads to communism) in each of which value can be found. I assume that Amos would not have said ‘equal value,’ nor do I want to insist that equality of that sort follows from the idea of reiteration. Nevertheless, the purpose of Amos’s questions is to rebuke the pride of the Israelites. They are not the only chosen or the only liberated people; the God of Israel attends to other nations as well. Isaiah makes the same point, presumably for the same purpose, in an even more dramatic way:

For [the Egyptians] shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors. And he shall send them a savior, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day …. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.⁹

Instead of many people, one mountain, what we have here is one God, many blessings. And as the blessings are distinct, so the histories of the three nations do not converge toward a single history.

Reiterative universalism can always be given a covering-law form. We can claim, for example, that oppression is always wrong, or that we ought to respond morally and politically to the cry of every oppressed people (as God is sometimes said to do), or that we should value every liberation. But these are covering laws of a special sort: first, they are learned from experience, through a historical engagement with otherness — Israel, the Philistines, the Syrians; second, because they are learned in this way, they impose upon us a respect for particularity, for different experiences of bondage and pain, by different people, whose liberation takes different forms; and finally, because they are qualified by difference, they are less likely to inspire confidence in those who know them. Indeed, it is always possible that covering laws of this sort will produce mental and moral outcomes that contradict their likely intention: that we will be overwhelmed by the sheer heterogeneity of human life and surrender all belief in the relevance of our own history for anyone else. And if our history is irrelevant to them, so will theirs be to us. We retreat to inwardness and disinterest. Acknowledging difference makes for indifference. Though we grant the value of Egyptian liberation, we have no reason to promote it. It is God’s business, or it is the business of the Egyptians. We are not engaged; we have no world-historical mission; we are, if only by default, advocates of nonintervention. But not only by default, for reiterative universalism derives in part from a certain view of what it means to have a history of one’s own. So nonintervention can claim a positive foundation: the state of mind and feeling most appropriate to this second universalism is tolerance and mutual respect.¹⁰

II

Given the ‘burden’ of a monotheistic faith, reiterative universalism could never be anything more than a possibility within Judaism. But a God conceived to be active in history, engaged in the world, makes it always a lively possibility. There is no reason to confine such a God — who is, moreover, omnipotent and omnipresent — to Jewish history or even to the Jewish version of world history. Is not the strength of his hand everywhere in evidence? And is not he, with regard to all the nations, evenhanded? Consider these lines from Jeremiah (once again, it is God who is talking):

At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.¹¹

Clearly the reference here is to all the nations, though each one is considered independently of the others, at its own ‘instant.’ We might suppose that God judges them all by the same standard; the phrase ‘evil in my sight’ refers always to the same set of evil acts. But this is not necessarily the case. If God covenants separately with each nation or if he blesses each nation differently, then it would make sense to suggest that he holds each of them to its own standard. There is a set of evil acts for each nation, though the different sets certainly overlap. Or, if there is only one set of evil acts (fixed by the overlap: murder, betrayal, oppression, and so on), it might still be the case that the good is produced in multiple sets — for goodness is not (I come back to this point in my second lecture) the simple opposite of evil. It is because there are multiple sets, different kinds of goods, that there must also be multiple blessings. In either of these views, God is himself a reiterative universalist, governing and constraining but not overruling the diversity of humankind. It might nonetheless be argued that this second universalism works best if one makes a kind of peace with the idea that divinity itself is diverse and plural. Of this there is scarcely a hint in the Jewish Bible, though the prophet Micah comes close to such an argument in the following verses (the first of which is more often quoted than the second):

And they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid. … For all peoples will walk every one in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.¹²

The second verse is commonly taken to be a survival of some earlier belief which held that each people has its own god, the god of Israel but one among many. But to take it this way does not explain the survival. Why did successive editors preserve and include the second verse? In any case, the two verses fit together; they have a parallel form and are joined by the conjunction ‘for’ (Hebrew: ki), as if the happy ‘sitting’ described in the first is a consequence of the plural ‘walking’ described in the second. Perhaps that is Micah’s meaning; it is certainly one of the arguments most often made on behalf of reiterative universalism — that the tolerance it inspires makes for peace. How many of us will sit quietly under our vines and fig trees once the agents of the first universalism go to work, making sure that everyone is properly covered by the covering law?

But perhaps pluralism under the vines and fig trees does not require pluralism in the heavens above but only a plurality of divine names here on earth: ‘for all peoples will walk every one in the name of his god.’ And that plurality may be consistent, at least in principle, with the single, omnipotent God of Israel who creates men and women in his own image — hence as creative men and women. For then God himself must make some kind of peace with their plurality and creativity.¹³ The artists among them will not all paint the same picture; the playwrights will not write the same play; the philosophers will not produce the same account of the good; and the theologians will not call God by the same name. What human beings have in common is just this creative power, which is not the power to do the same thing in the same way but the power to do many different things in different ways: divine omnipotence (dimly) reflected, distributed, and particularized. Here is a creation story — it is not, I concede, the dominant version — that supports the doctrine of reiterative universalism.¹⁴

III

But however things are with divine creativity, the values and virtues of human creativity can best be understood in the reiterative mode. Independence, inner direction, individualism, self-determination, self-government, freedom, autonomy: all these can be regarded as universal values, but they all have particularist implications. (The case is the same, though the particularism is greatly heightened, with the chief virtues of romanticism: originality, authenticity, nonconformity, and so on.) We can readily imagine a covering law something like ‘Self-determination is the right of every people/nation.’ But this is a law that quickly runs out; it cannot specify its own substantive outcomes. For we value the outcomes only insofar as they are self-determined, and determinations vary with selves. Reiterated acts of self-determination produce a worl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Nation and Universe
• 2 Thin Universalism: Moral Authority and Contemporary Political Theory
• 3 Thin Universalism as Weak Foundationalism
• 4 Thin Universalism and the ‘Limits’ of Justification
• 5 How Do Principles Work?
• 6 Why Thin Universalism Needs Conceptions of Society and Person
• 7 Proceduralism as Thin Universalism: Stuart Hampshire’s ‘Procedural Justice’
• 8 Gender Equality and Cultural Justice: How Thin is Nussbaum’s Universalism?
• 9 Thin Universalism and Cultural Identity: The Case of Welsh Nationalism
• 10 Thin Universalism and Distributive Justice
• 11 Rawls on Human Rights: Liberal or Universal?