This paper proceeds from two assumptions. First, that human rights belong to the unconditional values of humanity, insofar as these rights explicate the value of the human being as such – as an end in itself, and not as a means of attaining other ends. Second, that cultural identity is a value in itself too. For considerations of space, we will take the value of cultural identity for granted.
Prima facie, those two assumptions seem to be mutually contradictory. If we give priority to human rights, this seems to “entitle” us to interfere in the “internal affairs” of any cultural community if its mores – or, more generally, if its cultural standards of behaviour – somehow violate human rights as we understand them. On the other hand, if we prioritize cultural identity we would be able to justify any mistreatment of human beings by declaring this to be part of the cultural specificity of the respective country. In the first case a nation, or a group of nations, which has the economic and military might to impose its human rights standards on the rest of the world, will get legitimation of its attempts to control the internal affairs of other countries, and to achieve cultural and political dominance as well. In the second case a political regime will be free to do anything it wants with the citizens of its country with impunity. Any form of oppression may be claimed to be an element of the cultural identity of the people against which it is exercised.
Obviously, simple postulation of the priority of rights or identity cannot be conducive to dialogue with “the other side.” The arguments of the human rights champion are worthless to the cultural identity champion and vice versa. One of the ways through which mutual understanding may be achieved is to justify one’s own position by referring to some sort of universally accepted norm or value. If I succeed in demonstrating that a given human right or cultural identity deserve to be respected because that ensues from a universally accepted moral regulative – not because I think that this should be the case – I could count on far greater understanding from my opponent. His? attitude to my claim would depend not on whether he likes or dislikes my position, but on his own morality. If he admits that this claim is indeed based on a universally accepted standard of behaviour, i.e. a standard recognized by himself too, my opponent would have to concede my claim even if it might seem unacceptable to him. In other words, universal regulatives may serve as a criterion of the legitimacy of particular human rights and cultural traits. And if in a given istance there is no incompatibility between them, the contradiction between respecting rights and respecting cultural identities in this particular case can be considered as resolved.

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Is it possible to claim that there are universally accepted moral norms and values at all? It seems that this claim is contradicted by the countless social, national and cultural conflicts that take place all over the world. If we all recognized the validity of, albeit just several, universal standards of behaviour, shouldn’t we be capable of reaching agreement on at least the basic parameters of our co-existence in order to avoid our deadliest clashes?
The contemporary advance in scientific disciplines such as cultural anthropology, intercultural communication and hermeneutics shows the limitations of naïve liberalism expounded in the spirit of Locke and the French Enlightenment, as well as of cultural evolutionism. Today no one can afford to regard cultural specificity as civilizational backwardness. Yet this advance in theory has also made researchers aware that morality is culture dependent – a relationship which can be a substantial obstacle to the universal validity of any moral regulative (see Apel 00:140). If we assume that ethical values and norms in a given society are an “offshoot” of its mores, how could we expect them to be respected beyond this culture too? It seems that cultural relativism is only a step from ethical relativism.

Here we will examine several theoretical attempts to show that moral regulatives may be universally valid in the conditions of genuine cultural pluralism. Before that, however, we will dwell briefly on the question raised above – doesn’t the actual increase in new social and cultural conflicts suggest that there have never been (and are unlikely to be) universally accepted norms and values.
Discussing this problem, we ought to keep in mind that if people recognize the validity of a given moral norm, this does not yet mean that they will apply this norm by its own logic. History shows how ever since the dawn of time, norms that have been nominally upheld in an unconditional form have actually been applied with substantial limitations. In the typical case, a given standard of behaviour is observed only in regard to "us", the so-called "in-group", while all who belong to “them” are treated either regardless of any moral constraints (i.e. “no holds barred”), or by substantially different rules. The excuse for such “double standards” – the moral commitment to “the barbarian” or “the savage” is entirely different from that to “in-group" members – may vary by degree of sincerity. It ranges from pragmatic stipulations (for example, that in a critical situation, especially if there is an inter-group conflict, the interests of one’s own community have unconditional priority, and morality becomes “temporarily” invalid in regard to anyone who threatens those interests) to explicit denial of “the strangers’ ” belonging to humankind.
This study, however, is concerned with respect for human rights within a given nation and/or cultural community, i.e. it does not prioritize the problem of corporate application of morality. In this case the question is, rather, whether the mores in a particular country meet some sort of general, if not universally accepted, standards. Hence the theoretical task is to establish the extent to which the latter may claim to be valid for different cultures and in different conditions.

In his book Foundations of Religious Tolerance, J. Newman notes one possible justification of such a claim. According to his theoretical model, the ultimate values are the same, or at least similar, throughout the world, and are merely interpreted or applied in different ways depending on the geographical and historical conditions. Newman coins the term “trans-cultural values,” citing e.g. love, justice, peace, economic prosperity, wisdom, progress, self-realization, duty, honour (see Newman 82:66-67). Those values may be regarded as an ideal of what ought to be, whereas cultural differences, as an expression of different views on the ways of attaining those ideals.
This position may fit into the conceptual background of both cultural evolutionism and cultural relativism. Newman tends towards the former, insofar as he thinks that any society or religious group may be rated by a “scale of civilization” depending on “…how much or how successfully its ideal values have been realized”* (Newman 82:68). As the quote shows, Newman assumes that the levels of realization of one and the same ideal in different situations may be commensurable. Even though two or more cultural communities may pursue one and the same end by different means, each community’s progress at a particular point in time may be evaluated and compared with the other’s.
This relation between ends and means, however, may also be interpreted in the spirit of cultural relativism. If we admit that the alternative means of achieving an end may be radically incommensurable, the attempts to divide cultures into advanced and backward in terms of “civilization” will prove groundless and even harmful, insofar as they fuel ambitions for domination of some societies over others. If, for example, we consider human dignity as a common ideal of a modern and a traditional value systems, we will see that in these cases the actual behaviour that conforms to the same ideal is radically different. Respect for the modern person’s dignity takes the form mainly of guarantees of his individual autonomy – the inviolability of his private life, freedom of choice, responsibility in the light of universal norms of behaviour. By contrast, in a traditional environment the person’s dignity is measured foremost by his loyalty to his community. Precisely the individual’s non-alignment with particularistic interests, which is a conditio sine qua non for his in Modernity, is counter-indicative for the person’s dignity in traditional society. The closer someone’s status in a given instance is to the ideal of dignity in one dimension, the farther it is from the same ideal in the other dimension. Then how could one compare the progress towards this end, which is achieved along these two different routes?
Yet irrespective of whether this scheme of the relation between cultural differences and similarities is applied in an evolutionist or relativistic context, it works equally well. We may validate normative claims in both cases – as long as the requirements that we tolerate cultural practices which run counter to our own views are justified by referring to values which are among our own moral regulatives.
Another author, S. Bok, attempts to resolve the same problem by applying a definitely descriptive approach. She claims that social life has certain traits which are universal simply because “any community in which they were altogether lacking would be short-lived” (Bok 95:14). Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Confucian, Hindu and many other scriptures invariably assert three types of values. Those are “the positive duties of mutual care and reciprocity; the negative injunctions concerning violence, deceit, and betrayal, and the norms for certain rudimentary procedures and standards for what is just” (Bok 95:16).
A similar view is expounded by P. Strawson, who introduces the term “minimal interpretation of morality” referring to the need of keeping fundamental rules of conduct if a society wants to be viable. Those fundamental rules are “the abstract virtue of justice, some form of obligation to mutual aid and mutual abstention from injury, and, in some form and in some degree, the virtue of honesty” (Strawson 70:101).
Conceptions of this type fail to answer an important question. Are universal values and norms universal because they are trivial abstractions from the full-fledged, real value systems which have “crystallized” in the different trends of cultural development; or, by contrast, are they some sort of fundamental integral motives of human behaviour that only appear in different “guise” in the different cultures because of contingent historical circumstances? This question is not insignificant, because in the first case universal moral regulatives would not deserve to be taken seriously – they would be, to quote M. Walzer, a sort of moral Esperanto (Walzer 94:7). The second case would largely refer us back to classical cultural evolutionism – to devaluation of cultural identities.
Walzer himself proposes a radical alternative. In his scheme of thin and thick morality, he presents the former as a manifestation of the latter – as occasional overlapping of different value systems in socially critical situations, as flashes of solidarity in the event of natural disaster, war and revolution. In such situations we spontaneously identify with “the others”, and realize that in this particular case we can understand them whatever our cultural differences may be (see Walzer 94:18).
Walzer’s approach has definite advantages over the more traditional attempts at reconciling universal regulatives with cultural pluralism. He explains the empathy with the Other’s joy and suffering, which arguably all of us have felt at some point in our lives, without introducing an abstract theory of value relationships. Yet the latter is also his main shortcoming. Those “ad hoc solidarizations in crisis situations,” to quote K.-O. Apel (Apel 00:147), cannot be turned into algorithms. They cannot serve as the basis of a common responsible policy (ibid.).
Indeed, the problem of universal norms and values poses a great challenge to ethics and philosophy in general. This paper, however, is concerned with them in connection with a particular task: establishing the extent to which it is possible to legitimate certain human rights and certain cultural traits in the eyes of the world by referring to such regulatives. For the purpose, we do not have to go into the details of the dispute on the justifications of universal standards of behaviour. We only have to agree with, say, authors like Newman, Bok and Strawson, that there are culturally-normative invariants, and we can proceed to discuss the possibilities of their serving as a reference point in intercultural dialogue in the course of which dividing lines between cultural specificity and despotism, as well as between human rights protection and intervention in the internal affairs of another sovereign country, are drawn in a reasonable and mutually acceptable way.

When discussing the possibility of legitimating a certain human right or cultural trait by referring to a universal value or norm, we are faced with an obvious problem. How to distinguish between the justified and the purely declarative references of this kind. Should we accept as valid every claim that some social action or relationship be regarded as a realization of a universal regulative? Hasn’t virtually every major historical crime been claimed by its perpetrators to have been committed in the name of beautiful ideals? Haven’t many wars been waged in the name of peace? Who should have the authority to judge whether in a particular case there is a substantiated claim, relating the respective human right (or cultural trait) to the respective universal regulative, or there is just cheap rhetoric?
Formal logic can hardly help in this respect. False conclusions may be correctly deduced from false premises. Even absurd theses may be clad in impeccable logical form, whereas intercultural misunderstandings usually stem not from not understanding, but from radically misunderstanding the Other.
One might consider developing a theoretical procedure for justifying the relation between rights or cultural traits and universal values (norms). J.Newman proposes such a method in his above-mentioned book. As noted above, Newman presents cultural differences as an expression of different strategies of realization of the same ideals – of the so-called “trans-cultural values.” This approach can arguably be applied to evaluate arguments of the type under consideration. One can compare the end (some universal value) and the means (alternative sets of cultural standards), and judge which means are adequate to the end, and to what extent. Newman cites cases of obvious incongruity between historical undertakings and the values in the name of which they have allegedly been launched. How could the attack on Poland in 1939 be adequate to Nazi declarations that the Third Reich was aspiring towards peace; or how could torture and burning on the stake be adequate to the Spanish Inquisition’s claims that it was guided by love for thy fellow (see Newman 92:70)?
Anyone with some knowledge about the history of the events cited by Newman ought to be aware that it is possible to provide certain arguments that the means were indeed adequate to the end in both cases. It is a historical fact that Nazi Germany accused Poland itself of aggression and presented the attack as justified resistance. It is also known that by causing physical suffering to the heretics the Inquisition arguably helped them to atone for their sins and thus save their souls. So Newman’s proposal may be regarded, rather, as proof that we could hardly distinguish adequate from inadequate means of realizing an ideal by applying a purely theoretical procedure – in his terms, “critical examination” – and thus justifying a given social relationship in the light of a universal regulative.
One “instrument” that has been frequently applied for the purpose, is public opinion. The mass media have been employed extensively in this regard. The past few decades have seen many media campaigns in defence of human rights in other lands, as well as against the intervention of world imperialism in the own country’s internal affairs. At that, reference to universal values has been commonplace in those campaigns. Various techniques of public opinion making have been employed to assert relations between social reality and the sphere of the normative which, upon theoretical examination, often prove groundless.
Is it possible to have successful dialogue between cultural formations if the public opinion in one’s own country is cited as an argument supporting one’s own position? Could we hope that a political regime that apparently abuses human rights would be strongly impressed by the unanimous outcry in the media on another continent? Or that the economic pressure and threats of military intervention, through which a world superpower tries to force the government of another sovereign country to change its policy, would be stopped as a result of mass demonstrations in the latter country? As 20th century history shows, "arguments" of this kind seldom bring about mutual understanding.
We can cite different reasons why public opinion cannot be an absolute judge of the correspondence of a given cultural phenomenon to universal norms. First, it is well known that public opinion is subject to manipulation. If a political force controls most of the mass media, it would be capable of moulding public opinion to its own advantage – even if there are no restrictions on the freedom of speech.
And then, even if there is no manipulation and public opinion expresses, by and large, the genuine attitudes of the public, there is still no guarantee that the ordinary people themselves will correlate adequately a given cultural phenomenon with the respective values and norms. Philosophy refers to this by the category of “false consciousness.” It is a fact that the notion of human rights differs significantly from one nation to another. What is seen by some as an intolerable abuse of freedom and dignity, is entirely normal for others. Yet does this difference stem from cultural specificities that are significant to the cultural identity of the people and are worth respecting? Couldn’t the unenlightenment of one part of the public be at the core of its position that justifies the curtailment of rights? And perhaps the unenlightenment of those people could even be an obstacle to the constructive realization of their cultural identity, to full-fledged expression of its potential? Or vice versa – why can’t we presume that a missionary mentality of the other part of the public, deliberately cultivated in it for centuries, is the real reason why this part of the public is trying to make other people’s decisions about what is tolerable and what is intolerable for them?

Contemporary research on the mechanisms of public opinion formation pays special attention to the so-called public sphere. Its role in legitimating social and cultural relationships is noted, albeit in other terms, even by I. Kant. In this connection J. Habermas interprets in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere certain formulations in works like “Perpetual Peace” and “What is Enlightenment” – for example, “the harmony which the transcendental concept of public right establishes between morality and politics” (Kant 57:129). Habermas thinks that the message here is that the public sphere may be the bridging principle between politics and morality. He refers to a constitution of the state according to which political actions ought to in agreement with “the foundation of the laws, which in turn had been validated before public opinion as being universal and rational laws” (see Habermas 92:108). In this sense, the public sphere may be a guarantee of the legality and legitimacy of political undertakings, as long as it guarantees the fairness of public opinion formation.
What does “public sphere”* mean here? Since we are aware of the polysemy of the term, we use it here only in the sense of Habermas’s above-mentioned book: as "all those conditions of communication under which there can come into being a discursive formation of opinion and will on the part of a public composed of the citizens of a state" (Habermas 92A:446). This is a process of communication which is: 1) rational; 2) “open,” accessible to everyone concerned – both as sources and recipients of information; 3) in which participants are equal in principle; 4) as a result of those preconditions, it has a self-transforming potential.
The legitimacy of the positions formed in the course of public debate?, (or at least subject to public approval), depends on the character of the procedure just described, rather than on their adequacy to the original will and qualities of the participants (see Habermas 92A:446). Adherence to the rationality and openness of communication, as well as the equality of participants, guarantee that its results would be acceptable to all.
A debate of this type could proceed from an at least nominal mutual respect of the partners. The subsequent exchange of arguments is nothing but rational concretization of the originally recognized “equal value” of participants – what its reciprocal recognition entails for the subject of the particular debate. In this case it is not of crucial importance whether each of the participants really, sincerely recognizes the other side’s interests. If the procedure has been properly applied, the result is the same as it would have been if the partners had genuinely abided by moral norms in their relationship. Yet while respect for moral regulatives cannot be established empirically and could therefore be “simulated,” observance of the procedure can be established by objective methods. In this sense, even though the public sphere tends to equate social with moral relations on a secondary basis, it is irreplaceable as a source of motivation to “outgrow” one’s own interest in one’s relationships with the others.
On the other hand, the public sphere makes it possible to avoid abuse of public opinion. Manipulation is far more difficult if public opinion is formed in a free public clash of arguments “for” and against.” If we take this approach to the task of distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate claims about human rights and cultural identity, we will arrive at the conclusion that demagogic reference to universal values and norms has little if any chance of success if anyone may demand further specification of an argument and question its validity before the eyes of a public that will judge rationally who is right and who is wrong.

Yet this general possibility should not be taken for granted. Contemporary studies of publicity tend to overrate the homogeneity of the public sphere. The legitimating potential of public opinion drastically declines when the latter proves deeply divided in some respect. Exclusion mechanisms are triggered almost automatically in regard to the representation of cultural “Otherness” in the public sphere. This is quite clear in, for example, Western discourse on Islamic culture. The latter has little if any possibility for self-representation in the Western public sphere. And this is not due to lack of good will and material resources. There is also a deep mistrust and even suspicion of the normative claims of “the other side,” an apparent irrationality in the hierarchy of value priorities in the other culture.
As noted above, rational, i.e. argumentative, communication is one of the sine qua nons for the public sphere. If this communication process took place in the sphere of intercultural relations, the interests of each party would not be “transparent” for the others. Such communication would be a meeting of different life-worlds, different value systems, different codes of deciphering meanings. If one of the parties substantiated its claim that a cultural trait of its society was legitimate by referring to a specific cultural need of its, how could the others know whether it was telling the truth. If none of them had this particular need, or if the latter was not a priority in the particular case, this could not be an argument against the claim, because such is the “nature” of culture – what is important for me might not be important for you, and vice versa.
How could one rationally object to a hypothetical claim for, say, privileges for a religious minority, the members of which believe for some reason that it is a sin to handle any machinery. Would it be just (i.e. here we are referring to a universally accepted value) if the other people who happened to be working with members of the said minority, had to conform with this peculiarity of their fellow workers? How could someone who does not belong to such a group know precisely how important it is for its members to keep this rule without exception and compromise? They might really care, or that might be nothing but a silly superstition. Does he have any choice but to believe all that the Others claim? He can certainly not step in their shoes.

How could one find a way out and use the otherwise huge legitimating potential of publicity to clarify the relation of specific cultural practices and the universally accepted moral values. We think that a direct campaign against the heterogeneity of the public sphere has little chance of success. It would be more feasible to focus on intensifying and advancing in-group dialogue, i.e. publicity within the cultural communities. If the problem of mutual “opening up” between Islamic and Western cultures becomes a standing and significant issue of free discussion in the Muslim world, and this process is accompanied by an analogical development “on the other side,” it will be possible to evaluate not the validity of the others’ normative claims directly, with all their “intransparency,” but only the formal, procedural quality of the public discourse that has produced them.
To establish whether public opinion-making in another culture is fair – i.e. whether each person is free to uphold his position in a way that enjoys full respect, whether the end result of a debate on a given issue is the product of a reasonable exchange of arguments – you do not necessarily have to go into the specificities of the others’ cultural life. In that case, if “the other side’s” in-group discourse meets the general formal criteria, you would be able to conclude that the normative claims formulated by this discourse really express the relation between the others’ cultural practices and universal values, and are not yet another propaganda bluff. This will be a crucial step towards bringing empirical differences under the common denominator of fundamental similarities – which is the scheme of intercultural understanding promoted in this paper. If, for instance, public opinion in a particular country accepts that on the whole human rights in that country correspond to universal standards, “the outside world” may trust this evaluation without inquiring as to what exactly is permitted and prohibited there, and without making comparisons with the situation elsewhere in the world. It would be enough to establish that the procedural standards of public opinion formation in the conditions of a full-fledged public sphere have been kept.

Applying such a proceduralist approach to the problem of intercultural understanding, we generally follow the well established methodology of discourse ethics. Precisely as according to the latter, the efforts for arranging the relations among the participants in the dialogue are to be concentrated on the procedure of fair working out of consensus about the norms, which should regulate these relations. The dialogue doesn't concern the differences in the content of the participants' initial positions (i.e. differences in terms of interests, mores, value systems, etc.). In this way enough free space is left "for a plurality of individual and collective projects of the good life or of self-realization" (Apel 00:149). The relations among the participants are to be harmonized without anyone interfering in the internal affairs of the others.
There is, however, one important difference. The discourse-ethical procedure regulates the direct communication among the participants. This methodology can be applied to intercultural relations only if there is a significant cultural proximity between the parties to the dialogue. In practical discourse, argumentative communication plays a key role. This means that each party should acknowledge or question (with counter-arguments) the validity of the partner’s normative claims. Yet if the debate deals with moral norms, how could agreement on the validity of such a claim be reached by proceeding from different cultural positions? It seems that a proceduralistic minimization of the involvement of content in the ethical dialogue, which could make it relevant to intercultural relations, can not be achieved in this way.
That is why we suggest taking a more radical step. As noted above, it seems more practicable to elaborate abstract universal criteria of fairness of the in-group “discourse,” i.e. the discourse within a cultural community. In other words - to elaborate such criteria of the full-fledged functioning of the public sphere in the respective society. This could, in turn, serve as the basis for reciprocal recognition of the validity of normative claims in intercultural communication, with each party evaluating not directly, from their own perspective, the argumentation of the other party’s claim, but only its fairness in terms of the other culture’s own mores. That is, the extent to which this claim expresses the genuine position of the other party to the intercultural dialogue.

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Of course, healthy skepticism demands consideration of at least another two questions. First, isn’t our original notion of the public sphere over-idealized? The theoreticians of this type of publicity themselves regard their considerations as regulative, i.e. the question is on what conditions could the public sphere mediate relations between politics and morality constructively. This is not claimed to be a reality somewhere in the world (e.g. in economically advanced Western countries). Still, is the ideal expounded in such detail by authors like Habermas attainable at all?
Contemporary publications on the issue leave the impression that the main obstacle to the effective functioning of the public sphere is identified as the latter’s dominance by power relations. In this respect, hopes are pinned on the emergence of a “spontaneous flow of communication unsubverted by power, within a public sphere that is not geared toward decision making but toward discovery and problem resolution and that in this sense is nonorganized” (Habermas 92A:451). The social significance of such publicity would not take the form of direct participation in government, but in the exercise of a “communicative power that cannot take the place of administration but can only influence it. This influence is limited to the procurement and withdrawal of legitimation” (Habermas 92A:452).
Of course, it remains to be seen how inclined political power would be to relinquish control over such a source of legitimation which it could use, or at least render harmless. Either way, in his above-mentioned book Habermas stipulates something that is rather indicative: regarding politics the public sphere may function fairly only with the guarantees of a constitutional state and with the assistance of “the supportive spirit of cultural traditions and patterns of socialization, of the political culture, of a populace accustomed to freedom” (Habermas 92A:453).

This brings us to the second difficult question. Could we hope that the mechanisms of the public sphere that have developed in a particular cultural environment – that of Western civilization – would function effectively in another cultural environment? Isn’t the approach to intercultural understanding discussed here yet another expression of cultural imperialism? Isn’t this an attempt to impose on Islamic culture a Western procedure of public opinion making? Will the Islamic position on any issue of interaction with other cultures be authentic if it is formulated by applying alien rules? Wouldn’t it be legitimate to refuse to apply free and rational discussion in the elaboration of such a position simply because this procedure is against Islamic mores? Let us take the different interpretations of the relation between the principle of the shura and parliamentarism only as an example of the problems created by attempts to develop political pluralism in countries with strong Islamic religious and cultural traditions. Opinions vary from the presentation of parliamentary elections as one of the possible realizations of the shura, to the contrasting of shura as prescribing a consultative, consensual model of decision making, and Western democracy as encouraging conflict and compromise in political life (see Trautner 99:45).
In this connection, M. Walzer’s objections seem valid in this case too, even though they originally refer to the proceduralistic moral minimalism of discourse ethics. In his book Thick and Thin. Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Walzer questions the moral-minimalistic character of the discourse procedure. According to him, this procedure presupposes rather specific conditions. Its rules of engagement “are designed to ensure that the speakers are free and equal, to liberate them from domination, subordination, servility, fear and deference” (Walzer 94:12). Otherwise their arguments could not claim to be valid. Yet the said conditions necessarily depend on a particular social structure, political arrangements, distributive standards. Values such as equality and tolerance, rights such as the right to free speech, predetermine themselves a particular way of life (ibid.). Could we demand that every society, whatever culture it belongs to, fulfill procedural criteria of publicity “customized” to suit Western democracies?
We think that the public sphere in any society beyond the Western cultural circle might be able to fulfill the functions that are important for us here – i.e. clarify in a legitimating way the relations between specific cultural practices and universal moral regulatives – even if it does not fully meet the above-mentioned criteria. It ought to be possible to universalize those requirements, reformulating them as the possibly most abstract standards of fairness of the public debate which forms public opinion. Needless to say, this is impossible without knowing different cultural traditions and using their potential to harmonize alternative positions in public life. Forums such as this one could be a step in this direction. Discussions devoted to questions of this type ought to have a place of their own in a future dialogue of civilizations.
 

REFERENCES

Apel, K.-O. 2000, Globalization and the Need for Universal Ethics, In: European Journal of Social Theory 3 (2)
Bok, S. 1995, Common Values, Columbia, University of Missouri Press
Habermas, J. 1992. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Polity Press,
Habermas, J. 1992A, Further Reflections on the Public Sphere, In: Calhoun, C., Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge MA, MIT Press
Kant, I. 1957, Perpetual Peace, In: L.W.Beck (ed.) On History, Indianapolis
Newman, J. 1982, Foundations of Religious Tolerance, Toronto, University of Toronto Press
Strawson, P. 1970, Social Morality and Individual Ideal, In: G. Wallace and A.Walker (eds.) The Definition of Morality, London, Methuen and Co.
Trautner, B. 1999, The Clash within Civilizations: Islam and the Accommodation of Plurality, Bremen, InIIS - Universitaet Bremen
Walzer, M. 1994, Thick and Thin. Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press

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