universalism in ethics

In one sense, the idea that moral demands apply to everyone, no matter what their local cultural or historical traditions may be. Thus liberalism may assume a budget of human rights that apply worldwide, insisting, for instance, that women have a right to education or to political representation, regardless of their actual oppression in particular traditions. In a different sense, the idea that ethics can be formulated in terms of universal principles, rather than learned as a swirl of potentially conflicting pressures on policy and action. In this sense it is the opposite of particularism.