Just saw this and thought I’d jump in.

Ana wrote: “I think new ideas or recognition of the existence of more universal principles that bind us may come to the fore, perhaps out of sheer necessity and survival.” The final clause is crucial. For me, the search for universals as an end point is the foreclosure of politics (which I understand as the art of collective transformation). It’s not that the search for universal values or principles is wrongheaded, per se—for our ways of thinking must always be nimble and adaptable enough to recognize the pragmatic use of something as powerful as a purported “universal truth.” Instead of an end point, though, it would be “universality” as a strategic and provisional tool (perhaps for “sheer necessity and survival,” or to afford a means of resistance to governing structures), the power of which lies in its peculiar force here and now, not as some end on which to stake (or ground) our futures (even if we recognize that the ground could shift). In this way, universality would be a tool of radical contingency, on which ethics and politics depend—values and concepts for us, here and now, even if never again, and even if for no one else and nowhere else. But this is dangerous, because we risk foreclosing the possibility of the political task itself.

It seems appropriate to call the concepts of progress, dignity, equality, etc. “transcendental nonsense” not because they’re useless (or pie-in-the-sky or merely abstract) but because they feign warrant to some grand position of privilege (whether we call them “ideals” or something else). And if they are privileged within our (liberal democratic) social and political discourse (as they surely are), it’s because our discourse is severed from the forces that actually push and pull us through the world, not because it points to some underlying or foundational Truth or Reality. When MLK invoked equality, for example, we should resist thinking that either he was referring to some essential fact about the world (e.g., that all humans are born with equal dignity, or something) or that he was incorrect—rather, I believe we should understand it as a pragmatic utterance to intervene in the 1960s American discourse, aimed at effectuating some social transformation. If we repeat MLK’s words, it should not be because he expressed some truth, or because we admire him and want to continue his work, but rather because his words have a peculiar power here and now.

-- TimCuffman - 09 Feb 2017