The Ends of Universalism

This contribution focuses on the philosophical texture of Claudio Corradetti’s pluralist and universalist theory of human rights. More precisely, the aim of these notes is to bring to light the idealistic background of Corradetti’s defence of a pluralist universalism against epistemic-cognitive relativism. In his attempt to secure an appreciation of human rights as devices of the Verwirklichung of human ends, taking stock of the limitation of human experience, Corradetti finds himself facing a crucial question: that of the relation with the radical otherness of the violent, the figure that persistently refuses to acknowledge the existence of a wholly “revealed truth” – to quote Eric Weil’s Logique de la philosophie. After the reconstruction of the theoretical terrain in which the book’s arguments are carried out – referring, e.g., to the impasse affecting the Habermasian distinction between Verständigung and Einverstädnis –, I offer a critical sounding of Corradetti’s discourse. At the same time, I stress one of the fascinating philosophical challenges to which the author should now turn his attention, in order to further elaborate his elegant perspective: that of elucidating the relation between the “bodily” predetermination of the reflective dimension, and its projection towards the constitutively intersubjective domain of the “reason-giving”.