Moral Relativism and Moral Universalism: a Coherentist Approach

<p>In the following work I examine the long-standing dispute between the moral relativist and their opponent, who I call the moral universalist. I examine this dispute from a coherentist perspective. For both moral relativism and moral universalism I identify a key conviction underlying the position and I attempt to deliver a theory that accommodates both of these two convictions in a coherent fashion. This involves distinguishing between distinct types of moral principle and showing how the relativist's conviction is a reaction to one type while the universalist's conviction is a reaction to another type. These types of moral principle are not mutually exclusive, however, and a large part of my project will be to explain how each type of principle is able to be included as part of a coherent whole.</p>

Moral Relativism and Moral Universalism: a Coherentist Approach

<p>In the following work I examine the long-standing dispute between the moral relativist and their opponent, who I call the moral universalist. I examine this dispute from a coherentist perspective. For both moral relativism and moral universalism I identify a key conviction underlying the position and I attempt to deliver a theory that accommodates both of these two convictions in a coherent fashion. This involves distinguishing between distinct types of moral principle and showing how the relativist's conviction is a reaction to one type while the universalist's conviction is a reaction to another type. These types of moral principle are not mutually exclusive, however, and a large part of my project will be to explain how each type of principle is able to be included as part of a coherent whole.</p>

Moral Universalism: Measurement and Economic Relevance

Many applied economic settings involve trade-offs between in-group members and strangers. To better understand decision making in these contexts, this paper measures and investigates the economic relevance of heterogeneity in moral universalism: the extent to which people exhibit the same level of altruism and trust toward strangers as toward in-group members. We first introduce a new experimentally validated, survey-based measure of moral universalism that is simple and easily scalable. We then deploy this tool in a large, representative sample of the U.S. population to study heterogeneity and economic relevance. We find that universalism is a relatively stable trait at the individual level. In exploratory analyses, heterogeneity in universalism is significantly related to observables: Older people, men, the rich, the rural, and the religious exhibit less universalist preferences and beliefs. Linking variation in universalism to self-reports of economic and social behaviors, we document the following correlations. Universalists donate less money locally, but more globally, and are less likely to exhibit home bias in equity and educational investments. In terms of social networks, universalists have fewer friends, spend less time with them, and feel more lonely. These results provide a blueprint for measuring moral universalism in applied settings and suggest that variation in universalism is relevant for understanding a myriad of economic behaviors. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Transcendence as Reflexive Sacredness

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the debate on the so-called Axial Age. It presents the major contributors from Karl Jaspers on, but also the predecessors in the 18th and 19th centuries. , It explores concepts such as the age of transcendence that have been used to characterize the fundamental innovation of that age. It particularly emphasizes the emergence of moral universalism in that period. The chapter also attempts to bring the different perspectives together by interpreting a reflexive view of the sources of sacredness as a major turning point in the global history of religion.

Historical memory, democratic citizenship, and political theory: Reconstructing a historical method in Judith Shklar’s writings

Judith Shklar has been invoked by contemporary realists as an example of how history is a better source of political knowledge than abstract philosophy. This emphasis on history challenges the predominant understanding of her political theory that stresses the universality of fear of cruelty. This contrast between history and moral universalism invites a serious investigation of Shklar's historical method. This article takes up this task by reconstructing a Shklarian historical method based on a tripartite relation between historical memory, democratic citizenship, and historically minded political theory. This reconstructed historical method challenges the boundaries of Shklar's liberalism and broadens the possibilities that her political theory can offer.

Marking Time in Memorials and Museums of Terror: Temporality and Cultural Trauma

The theory of cultural trauma focuses on the relationship between shared suffering and collective identity: Events become traumatic when they threaten a group’s foundational self-understanding. As it stands, the theory has illuminated profound parallels in societal suffering across space and time. Yet focusing on identity alone cannot explain the considerable differences that scholars document in the outcomes of the trauma process. Namely, while some traumas become the basis for moral universalism, generating a capacity to forge connections between an in-group’s suffering and that of out-groups, others have the opposite effect, leading to particularism and closure. Returning to the interdisciplinary literature on trauma, I argue for incorporating temporality as a twin pillar of the trauma process, distinguishing between acting out (reexperiencing a past event as the present) and working through (situating a painful event within historical context). A comparison of three U.S. sites of memory dealing with terrorism illustrates the distinction.