Conclusion: Essentialist View of Human Self or Panhumanist Universalism?

Abstract

This last chapter concludes with the thesis that we must not absolutize cultural differences, but at the same time avoid the currently highly fashionable tendencies to deny any boundaries between cultures. As mentioned in the chapter on methodology, while these boundaries certainly exist, they are by no means fixed, but rather dynamic and variable. Only on such a basis can we understand the specifically Chinese concept of humanism, and only in this way can it be integrated into the framework of a new global ethics.