Tensions of Modernity

Politics today is marked by tension between claims of universal human rights and diversity. From the war on terror to immigration, one of the major challenges facing liberalism is to understand the scope of equality in a world in which certain peoples are perceived to reject and/or violently resist democratic principles. This book revisits Europes initial encounter with the Native Americans of the New World to shed light on how the Wests initial defense of so-called barbarians has influenced the way we think about diversity today, and elucidate the arguments of exclusion that unconsciously permeate the moral world we live in. In doing so, Daniel R. Brunstetter traces Bartolom de Las Casass oft heralded defense of the Native Americans in the sixteenth century through the French Enlightenment. While this defense has been rightly lauded as an early example of human rights discourse, tracing Las Casass arguments into the eighteenth century shows how his view of equality enabled arguments legitimizing the annihilation by just war of those perceived to be barbarians. This philosophical narrative can be useful when thinking about concepts such as just war, multiculturalism, and immigration, or any area in which politics confronts radical difference.