OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Universalism has become one of the most disputed aspects of the Enlightenment heritage. Some see in eighteenth-century thought a defence against relativism and particularism. Others, however, reproach the Enlightenment for having fostered thinking that is Eurocentric, colonialist, even racist. This lecture adopts a different starting-point. At the heart of the Enlightenment, we find no single theory of universalism but rather competing languages of the universal. There is a cosmopolitan universalism, based on the right of individuals; a progressive universalism, founded on the history of civilisation; and a critical universalism, that denounces the Europeans’ overweening pretentions. It is important to identify these multiple languages of universalism to properly understand the modern relevance of the Enlightenment.
