Universalism and its Limits

Universalism and its Limits
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Universalism has its roots in the Western culture in the eighteenth century as a response to political conflicts between Great Britain and its France and North American colonies. From the Western notion of the “natural law” to Western colonialism and imperialism, the long history of universalism served to yield arguments that led to the French Revolution. In 1625, Hugo Grotius argued that natural laws should be derived from the study of human nature and therefore supersede religious, political, and historical contexts of defining human rights. The Western imperialists encouraged the idea that Europeans were superior and could determine the best interests and actual laws befitting other people. While Western imperialism, colonialism, and natural laws defined universalism in the Western culture, it later emerged that opponents of colonialism would support natural laws, claiming that colonizing them destroyed their natural rights. In 1690, John Lock’s social contract theory argued that the governments were to be defined by social contracts which are expressed by universal rights and natural laws. Locke had maintained that all men enjoyed natural rights to freedom, property, and life and that the design of governments should aim to protect these rights. However, Locke’s interpretation of “man” or “men” has raised heated debates considering that he was referring to the rights of the male English property owners, but not females, slaves, or the poor, thus setting limits of universalism. Drawing from “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” and “The Declaration of the Rights of Woman” in Lynn Hunt (1996), this paper provides the historical contexts of the two documents, compares and contrasts how they define universalism, and examines how their arguments reveal the limits of universalism.[Lynn, Hunt. ed, The French Revolution and Human Rights (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1996), 4.] [Hunt, The French Revolution, 4.] [Ibid]
The Historical Contexts of the Two Sources
Before 1789, the publication of “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” and “The Declaration of the Rights of Woman” and an article entitled “Natural Law” from the French Encyclopedia (1755) received much controversy. The publication rebelled against the French political monarchial powers and Catholicism by arguing that natural law is based on the universal or general will and reason and should be the foundation of political and social duties. Since general will and universalism teach people how they determine their natural rights based on natural laws and reason, it contradicted the justification of the monarchy and the Church by legitimizing democracy. Like many other monarchial systems around the world during the eighteenth century, the French monarchy, “divine right,” was the basis of its legitimacy. Kings in the monarch ruled because they were closer to God compared to other humans. Other people, including queens married to kings, could never rule as women and were regarded problematic to rule in their names. F...