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Roberto Toscano THE CASE FOR NON-FOUNDATIONAL UNIVERSALISM Richard Rorty challenges with great clarity and cogent reasoning the tenets of foundationalism, i.e. the proposition that it is possible to maintain that values are rooted in some a priori, non-subjective foundation, be it religious or philosophical. To quote one of the most significant points of his Tehran lecture: We anti-foundationalists () regard Enlightenment rationalism as an unfortunate attempt to beat religion at religionss own game the game of pretending that there is something above and beyond human history that can sit in judgment of that history. Put in these terms, Rortys statement is hardly questionable. Personal, subjective preference in terms of moral, or political, choice has always been arbitrarily presented as if it were grounded in objective sources and foundations: Gods will, human nature, reason. Historical experience, on the other hand, shows that values allegedly linked to the bedrock of fixed foundations evolve, change so that one would be obliged, in order to save foundationalism in the presence of change, to posit the quaint hypothesis of movable foundations. One can also agree with Rorty when he says: There is no way to step outside of human history and look at things under the aspect of eternity. I will take issue, however, on one of the basic points of Rortys argument: the assumption that universalism can only be foundationalist. I will, on the contrary, suggest that there can be such a thing as non-foundational universalism. What I mean is that relativism can be challenged without having recourse to foundamentalism. I suggest a three-stage approach: 1. The first has to do with logical scrutiny. Propositions can be questioned not only on their merits, but also because of a lack of internal consistency. Orwellian obfuscation can be attacked logically, and not only ethically: war is not peace; slavery is not freedom. Christs message of love and nonviolence is intrinsically inconsistent with the Crusades. There cannot be such a thing as communist capitalism . And so forth. Clearing the ground of internal inconsistencies will definitely reduce the width of the spectrum of relativist variation in values. This should be done on purely logical grounds:

we do not say, in this context, whether non-violence is better than violence, capitalism better than communism: we just want to clear the ground of inconsistencies. We want to know what we are talking (and arguing) about. As Confucius said: If you want peace in the kingdom, take good care of definitions. Logic is not a foundation, but it can - by subjecting moral/political propositions to certain minimum standards of consistency reduce the relativist drift. 2. Since we are talking about ethics, it is important to state going back to Webers famous definition - that whereas the ethic of conviction has an inherently foundationalist profile, the ethic of responsibility is linked to an evaluation of the consequences of our actions. The former is a priori, the latter a posteriori, i.e. the former is deductive, the latter inductive. If this is so, then we can try for a second time to narrow the scope of ethical variability, i.e. of ethical relativism. This can be done, for instance, with reference to political systems. Of course it would be intellectually absurd, historically unsubstantiated, and politically suspect to maintain that there is one universal political model, good for all times and all latitudes. On this, Rorty says: We are sure that rule by officers freely elected by literate and well-educated voters is better than rule by priests and kings, but we would not try to demonstrate the truth of this claim to a proponent of theocracy or monarchy. Here Rortys relativism crosses the threshold into hard-core skepticism. Of course those who prefer theocracy and monarchy have the right to their beliefs, and will not be easily convinced. Yet, why not try to apply some empirical scrutiny, at the end of which process perhaps the number of those who hold such views would not be as large? Political systems can be judged, leaving aside a foundationalist approach, by measuring their performance in terms of: a. Prevention or, on the contrary, promotion of conflict, both internal and international. Without being foundationalists, we can say that Senegal is better than Liberia or Sierra Leone. b. Economic well-being. All foundations aside, we can say that South Korea is better than North Korea. c. Intellectual creativity. How many outstanding works of art? How many scientists? How many patents? How many Nobel prizes? Democratic Spain is clearly better, culturally speaking, than Spain under Francos dictatorship. All of the above, pace Rorty, can be demonstrated.

3.Having thus tried to clear the ground by revealing logical inconsistencies and by stressing empirical evidence of the consequences of different ethical and political choices, we can now move to what I believe is the most decisive argument in favor of non-foundational universalism. The argument is both historical and empirical, and it focuses on the positive correlation between the degree of convergence of ethical values and political options on one hand and the degree of freedom of choice of individuals and groups on the other. Arent Rorty and other relativists struck by the fact that universalism grows as coercion diminishes? Dont they notice the growing ethical convergence in a universalistic direction that recent history has shown us from Spain to Taiwan? Why, to give one example, women of all cultures and all parts of the world reflect whenever they have the freedom to choose - the same patterns in a field so ethically charged and (apparently) culturally determined as reproductive behavior? Let me be even more categorical. Relativists are unable to prove their thesis insofar as the lack of choice in ethics and politics which is the sad lot of large portions of humanity makes their assumptions arbitrary. Who can tell, if people are repressed, what is their genuine particular (relative) Weltanschaaung? Spaniards were supposed to possess certain highly conservative values, sharply distinct, in particular, from those of their French neighbors. Then, when allowed to choose with the end of dictatorship, it turned out that they while remaining Spanish and preserving very distinctive cultural traits - shared universalistic beliefs (on ethics and politics) markedly in line with those of their fellow Europeans. One could add any other examples, the most astonishing being the shift from the values of Maos time to those of todays China. Foundationalism is indeed a shaky proposition. It is enough to recall the fact that on all major, historical debates on values and institutions one finds foundationalists on both sides of any given issue. There were foundationalist abolitionists but also foundationalist champions of the institution of slavery, some of them quoting the Bible, for instance. On the other hand, this day one does not see many relativists on the issue of slavery. This proves that, at least on slavery, we are universalist without being foundationalist. Universalists (or, I would almost prefer to say, anti-relativists) can do without foundationalism, since the strength of their argument is based on historical, empirically verifiable, or falsifiable, facts. Relativists, indeed,

cannot answer the basic question of why universalism demonstrably grows in parallel with freedom of choice (democracy) 1 while relativism shrinks. On the contrary, universalists can accept the burden of the proof. We can suspend judgment (and also continue adhering to our own personal intellectual and spiritual choices) on why, whenever there is freedom, there are such overwhelming universalist convergence in moral and political choices. What I mean is that we should keep our arbitrary foundationalist convictions some people need them for a healthy moral life and, when stating propositions that claim objective validity, stick to what is proved by the historical evolution of mankind.2 Having tried to set up our case for universalism, let me immediately turn around and, for the sake of clarity and in the guise of a necessary caveat, define what kind of univesalism I am upholding. In the first place, of course, I will repeat that I believe in universalism by induction , i.e. all the universalism that is revealed by actual human thought and behavior in conditions of freedom of choice. Secondly, I certainly do not see universalism as uniformity. Cultural, religious, historical differences are not only a fact, but a precious human asset to be supported and defended: cultural diversity should be considered as precious as biodiversity. What we see, after he distorting factor of political repression is removed, is indeed a universalist convergence, but one that preserves the significant peculiar aspects of different cultures. Imagining to apply and, worse, to impose - an identical model everywhere is absurd and can only produce rejection even of sound universal principles such as freedom and democracy. Let us remember what happened, from Spain to Southern Italy, when liberte, egalite, fraternite were imposed by Napoleons armies. They were violently rejected by a majority of the people, headed by reactionary but national leaders. Later, those same immortal principles were freely accepted throughout Europe, and to a large extent the world.
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I must interject, here, a note of disagreement with Rortys definition of democracy, in particular where he defines it as constitutionalism. There is no way, I believe, of equating democracy with constitutionalism, since one can have a monarchic or aristocratic constitution, too. One sees little democracy in XIX-century Europe. There was the rule of law. There was constitutionalism, but democracy came only later, built upon those prerequisites, which are indispensable but cannot be identified with democracy itself. Constitutionalism opens the way to democracy, but is not democracy in itself. 2 It is important to stress that I use the term evolution in a totally neutral way, as transformation, and not as progress. As a matter of fact, we should be aware of the fact that there is no guarantee of a linear advancement in values, but there can be, on the contrary, regressions that become at least for a time universal trends. For instance, the ethical effect of the deadly diad terrorism/torture is today quite evident in its widespread morally regressive effects.

I believe in what could sound as a contradiction in terms, but is not: pluralistic universalism. I would like here to reverse a quote from the first page of Tolstoys Anna Karenina, where one reads that all happy families are the same, but unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way, and say instead: All non-democratic countries tend to resemble one another, but democratic countries are each democratic in their own way. Thus, the way I conceive universalism is exactly the way in which Ramin Jahanbegloo speaks of soft universalism. I would prefer, however, to use narrow instead of soft, since what I see is a core, a kernel of (hard) common beliefs on good and evil, justice and mercy surrounded by a softer and variable pulp reflecting different traditions, different phases of development and also, of course, the traces of different foundationalist inspirations. Universalism should be seen as pluralist and narrow. Besides, it should also be seen as constantly evolving. And this is where I rejoin the antifundamentalist approach of Richard Rorty. Human groups maintain their identity through time, but they are constantly changing also in terms of values. To use Latin, often unbeatable in its clarity, they remain ipse, but never idem.