Universality as a Feature of Moral Phenomena
The paper deals with some problems philosophers face in their attempts to conceptualize the universality of moral phenomena. In the first stage of the research the author evaluates Ruben Apressyan’s claim that moral universality is ‘really heterogeneous’. Starting from the moral philosophy of Richard Hare, he shows that different manifestations of moral universality turn out to be not a heterogeneous complex but a coherent and harmonious system. In the second stage the author demonstrates that requirements resulting from the universality of moral phenomena are not identical to the fundamental moral imperative ‘promote the good of others’. This imperative could be inferred from the universalizability of moral evaluations only if an agent putting himself into the shoes of a recipient of his action completely identified himself with the other person. Though such a complete identification blocks any normative consequences of the aforementioned thought experiment. In the third stage the author proves the thesis that the universality of requirements generates in the moral sphere the strong presumption in favour of highly general principles. This presumption should be considered as one more definitional feature of morality.