Philosophy of Education and the Gigantic Affront of Universalism

In recent years anti-universalism has become a sine qua non for respectability in philosophy of education, along with several other disciplines. The standard philosophical view that morality involves universal values has been heavily attacked by proponents of ‘cultural relativism’, who dispute the claim that there are values or norms independent of cultural contexts and practices, insisting that all values and norms are culturally variable and diverse. Their arguments have cast doubt on universal categories of moral and political judgement as analytical tools and have promoted the idea that they are invariably ‘a cover for particularistic hegemony’ (Beiner, 2006, p. 33). This view has been advanced under the influence of a set of related trends: identity politics, the politics of difference and the politics of recognition as well as the broad trends of postmodernism, post-colonialism and, from a different quarter, communitarianism. Expressions of anti-universalism have reflected a preoccupation with cultural differences, though they have also sometimes been associated with feminism and anti-racism.