The Importance of Universal Principles in Politics

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The idea that Europeans European Americans shouldn't look at the world from other than European perspectives come straight out of the enlightenment. The entire reproach about Eurocentrism was invented by the enlightenment okay and there's an excellent but not perhaps a hundred percent accurate book that came out last year on this issue. If you are not a universalist you base your principles on tribal claims which are fundamentally interests of power and not principles, so if we're going to make any genuine progress it will be through living up more fully to these principles.

Susan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer. She is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, and the author of Left is Not Woke.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Susan Neiman discuss how liberals can uphold their universal values while maintaining a politics of empathy and compassion; how the left’s tendency to discount the progress of the past inhibits progress for the future; and whether Germany can serve as a model for how America, and other nations, should deal with the dark aspects of their own history.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight.

If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone.

Email: podcast@persuasion.community

Website: http://www.persuasion.community

Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry

Connect with us!

Spotify | Apple | Google

Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion

Youtube: Yascha Mounk

LinkedIn: Persuasion Community

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices