Rediscovering Universal Reason

The widespread agreement, across world religions and states and cultures, that human beings have rights as human beings—rights that no religion, state, or culture may violate—is a sign that we may be ready to reconsider the possibility of universal reason. I shall not approach this question in a theoretical manner, but rather in a manner both empirical and concrete. The speculative debate is not without interest, but more pressing is our awareness that, despite progress toward agreement about universal rights, there still exists a considerable gap between principles (which are as general as they are wide-ranging) and observed reality. This discrepancy can lead to discouragement, skepticism, and even to a dangerous mistrust of human reason, which ascertains and avers our rights. And the conflict between the ideal and reality is growing. Is there a nation decent enough in its cynicism to acknowledge it intends not to respect and guarantee human rights? Regrettably, the most noble declarations of principle can serve merely to justify the most abject abuses.

But the idea of human rights has indeed become part of a universal way of thinking. It is by now an imperative in social and political relations, and the basis of dignity for every human being; it appears even to define the human condition. Still, in the name of human rights, world powers confront one another in pitiful disharmony. With each confrontation, our contemporaries further doubt that such rights have any basis, conceptual or factual. Some are thus drawn toward the desperate conclusion that modern civilization (and in particular, Western civilization) is based on a lie, inasmuch as the ideals it proclaims serve only as an alibi for objectives considerably less worthy. This allegation—that our most sacred principles are merely weapons for relentless political and economic conflict—hangs over Western civilization and undermines its political thought. But the crisis does not affect the West alone: ideological conflicts today divide continents, not only East from West but also South from North. The allegation, most seriously, may yet sabotage any possibility of civilized conscience. Young people of many nations question bitterly whether it still is possible to make decisive or credible statements about the human species as a whole. Are we rationally capable, they ask, of creating a universal code of ethics? In what field of knowledge are universal claims verifiable?

Two Significant Events

The last world war posed these questions in the most brutal fashion to Europeans and, somewhat less directly, to Americans. I want to deal with two significant events of the war and its aftermath—first, the medical experiments in the Nazi concentration camps. I do not wish to recount details of those atrocities, but instead to examine one absolutely astonishing feature. In the Nuremberg Trials, it was discovered that most of the doctors accused were not sadistic lunatics but very ordinary scientists, researchers, and academics. They had worked according to the usual norms of scientific rationality. They were trying to resolve problems, some of which are today still unsolved and which our experts continue to examine in line with the same epistemological principles. The Nazi doctors did not adhere to any moral framework and had no regard for any nonscientific rules. Nevertheless, at Nuremberg they were judged by the results and abhorrent consequences of their acts, though—and here is the problem—without their accusers questioning the theoretical principles that had rendered the atrocities possible.

Long after the Nuremberg Trials, we are no more certain of what humanity has morally the right to do or not do with the human body. Nor are we more certain of the exact meaning of bodily integrity or individual identity. Even if there exist positive definitions and decisions with legal force (such those made in the United States by the Supreme Court and in other democracies by comparable jurisdictions), there is no authority to decree rules that fully harmonize with universal conscience. No court can define as right and just what appears wrong to human conscience, nor define as wrong what is perceived as right and just. We return, then, to the same question...