Universalist Theories Research Articles

Care as a Basis for Radical Political Judgments

The best framework for moral and political thought is the one that creates the best climate for good political judgments. I argue that universalistic theories of justice fall short in this regard because they cannot distinguish idealization from abstraction. After describing how an ethic of care guides judgments, I suggest the practical effects that make this approach preferable. The ethic of care includes more aspects of human life in making political judgments.

Benhabib and Rawls's Hypothetical Contractualism

In Situating the Self Seyla Benhabib addresses the question: what is living and what is dead in universalist moral and political theories?1 Her answer is that what is living is a particular version of communicative ethics. Like Jiirgen Habermas, Benhabib argues that the conditions of an ideal speech situation entail strong ethical assumptions. First, they require that we recognize the right of all beings capable of speech and action to be participants in moral conversations. Second, they require that within such conversations each has the same symmetrical rights to various speech acts, to initiate new topics, to ask for reflection about the presuppositions of the conversation, etc. The first requirement Benhabib calls the principle of moral respect. The second requirement she calls the principle of egalitarian reciprocity. According to Benhabib, these two principles together with the basic principle of discourse ethics which is that only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all concerned in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse serve as an adequate universalizability test for moral judgments. Passing this test is said to be a necessary, but not sufficient condition for generating morally valid judgments.2 Benhabib wants to distinguish her version of communicative ethics from the hypothetical contractualism of John Rawls as well as defend it against criticisms that have been raised by communitarians, feminists,

When Logic Meets Politics: Testimony, Distrust, and Rhetorical Disadvantage

The contested testimony in the Hill-Thomas ease is an illuminating test case for universalistic theories about the reliability of testimony. There is no reasonable alternative to universalistic standards of epistemic appraisal. And yet the charge by feminists and others that such criteria can be applied selectively and used to discredit and silence people is shown to be accurate. The road to a solution is to offer guidelines for the interpretation and application of these norms.

Pidgins and Creoles: The Blurring of Categories

In conclusion of article he wrote on Pidgin and Creole Languages for 1976 issue of Annual Review of Anthropology, Derek Bickerton (20) claimed that despite achievements of previous ten years the field still has a long way to go. Fifteen years later, pidgin and creole studies have come a long way. They have been transformed into one of most dynamic and theoretically challenging fields of contemporary linguistics. During past 15 years, Bickerton himself has done much to project pidgin and creole studies to forefront of academic debate. His controversial but thoughtprovoking Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (22, 23) has generated vibrant discussions among scholars in a range of fields interested in human language faculty. Can study of creoles reveal role played by universal faculties of language in language formation and interlingual communication? Bickerton's challenge has catalyzed theoretical interest and brought focus and direction to a field of studies that had become extremely dispersed. As if to answer Bickerton's call, a number of important general books on pidgin and creole linguistics have appeared recently: Holm's (89, 90) ambitious and highly successful survey, balancing role of universals and substrates in formation of Atlantic creoles; Muhlhausler's (133) carefully crafted generalizations on pidgin and creole linguistics, from standpoint of a universalist theory; Romaine's (155) meticulous introductory manual pro-

Universals in Music: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology

G eertz makes this whimsical point prior to a devastating critique of universalist theories and procedures of the last fifty years. Nonetheless, beings do notice similarities and differences between themselves and fellow humans. How to make sense, to describe and understand, this fact of man's world is one of the oldest and most profound of activities. Such description and explanation, in fact, are the core of modern anthropology, and so it is hardly surprising to find that ethnographers and ethnomusicologists have raised this issue of human universals with respect to our-the world's-musics. Perhaps somewhat less expected is the keen interest of contemporary cognitive psychologists in universal behavior, even in the musical domain.

Culture Conflict and Delinquency. I. Culture Conflict and Misconduct

T HE history of criminology as a science is a record of the successivefumbling with anthropological, psychological and sociological hypotheses which have not brought us appreciably nearer to an understanding of the problems of misconduct. In the attempt to explain delinquency we have been repeatedly shifting our attention from the personality to the surroundings and have emphasized first one, then another biological, psychological or cultural fact, usually to the exclusion of all others. In stressing culture conflict as one of the possible factors in delinquency we are merely selecting for special investigation one of the items in the sociological approach and are neglecting for the moment other factors both situational and personal. In the face of the imposing series of exploded theories of criminality, prudence dictates that a new theory avoid the persistent error of claiming universal applicability. It should be frankly stated at the outset, therefore, that not all delinquency is explained by culture conflict and not all of life's experiences and social relations involve culture conflict. But, if the social psychologists are correct, conscious mental life arises out of conflict situations. Still it would be an exaggeration to speak of conflict as a universal etiological principle. There are so many significant problems on which it has an immediate bearing that it is not necessary to magnify the importance of this principle to convince others of its usefulness. There have been several widely accepted theories of sociologv which have been constructed around the central notion of conflict. For our purposes, however, we need a much more specific and workable conception than these universalistic theories imply. It is the merit of William Healy to have called attention to the relationship between mental conflicts and misconduct. The sociologist might raise the question whether these mental conflicts as they appear on the inner, personal side of life are not sometimes paralleled by culture conflicts when viewed from the standpoint of the social world. The records of social agencies concerned with the behavior problems of individuals, in their emphasis on the details of biological heredity, on psychometric tests, on psychiatric diagnoses generally reflect the fashion that happens to prevail at the moment with reference to the sciences of human behavior. In our conventional case records we often find, largely due to medical, psychological, and psychiatric bias, a fairly detailed account of the personal characteristics of the individual, but relatively little about the cultural setting, the group customs out of which the individual's behavior at least in part flows. One is tempted to ask: Is it not as important to record the sometimes grossly conflicting family traditions of the paternal and maternal ancestors as to trace their respective childhood diseases? Whatever may be the physical, the psychological and the temperamental differences between various races and societies, one thing is certain, namely that their cultures are different. Their traditions,