There Is No Universal "We"

For those who claim to be interested in philosophical and cultural subjects, and perhaps even in making a name for themselves in that arena, it is extremely important to question the premises of any discussion that a passionate interlocutor would offer. I was once, for instance, speaking with a friend of mine about the Israel-Gaza war, and my friend, though of course supportive of the Israeli position, asked: But what are we to do about the innocents in Gaza who did not choose this war? And I replied that, while no one is advocating for the killing of innocents, I could not accept the premise of the We in the question, because this word here assumes a Western universalistic egalitarian ethos that, in turn, relies on a number of philosophical principles that I reject—the ultimate result being that, while we might have sympathy for those innocents, it is not the responsibility of the West to help them.1

This is not a question of selfishness or of refusing to be of service to others, when possible, but rather of how we relate to the rest of the world, and why we relate as we do. Is the world constituted only by us, or by us and them? If the latter, when are we no longer we—where do they begin? And how much of ourselves does altruism require us to sacrifice?

"The squeamishness many Western conservatives feel about abandoning the universalistic We never fails to impress."

So one would do well to ask what moral principles form the basis of the desire to help the innocents of Gaza. One should inquire: Why is this question of what we are to do about those innocents even being asked? Why does someone even feel this type of responsibility? Perhaps the answer would be: because of a basic humanitarianism. Very well, then one must inquire: Why does someone feel this humanitarianism? Is it because he thinks that every human life is sacred? Well, where, then, does that thought come from? It is not an automatic or necessarily natural feeling, contrary to what Kant thought (famously in the conclusion to the Critique of Practical Reason, but in many passages); rather, it must be inculcated—or if it is natural, the joy in others’ suffering and in inflicting pain is also natural. Someone else might answer that the thought of innocent suffering simply makes him uncomfortable, or induces a feeling of moral disturbance. But again: Why?

These are some of the complex issues that often hide behind seemingly innocuous statements or queries. And they constitute the nexus of questions by which we ought to reject the We, the universalistic egalitarian ethos, in my friend’s question. There are of course more political reasons for not accepting this We, outside of philosophy. For example, the universalistic We does not exist to those we would be helping, and it would therefore be counterproductive to have it exist for us. And introducing a large number of Islamic refugees and migrants into Western countries is a disastrous policy, as anyone familiar with Western and Northern Europe’s cities could attest. But these are topics I have dealt with in some detail elsewhere, and I should here like to focus on the philosophical problems with the universalistic We.

There are of course many We’s that are not only acceptable but even desirable and necessary, such as the We of family, nation, and religion. Some We’s are not necessary but relatively harmless, such as the We of the local sports team or college fraternity. But the universalistic We is an entirely different matter.

Put briefly, the universalistic We, when uttered by a Westerner, has its home in a Christian worldview, but it has some precursors. Middle Platonism helped Christians justify their views to pagans, but especially inspiring was the early Stoic understanding, from the Hellenistic era, of the Greek concept of “logos,” espoused above all by Chrysippus, the third Stoic scholarch, as a divine universal reason permeating the cosmos, in pantheistic fashion, and importantly also permeating human beings. Chrysippus and the Stoics believed that logos existed in different degrees in different human beings—some humans are more reasonable than others—but, importantly, we are all imbued with reason. And since reason is divine, there is at least a spark of the divine in all of us.

This philosophy influenced the early Christians, such as through the Gospel of John, typically referred to as the most “Greek” of all the gospels, which identifies Jesus with the logos (in particular 1:14, where the “word”—logos—is made flesh). John had his own particular purposes with the logos, but his view of it arose in an environment where earlier Greek understandings of the logos were influential, and was tainted thereby. Various Christian philosophers then adapted this teaching in the following century, the second, such as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria. Justin introduced the idea of “spermatic logos” (Second Apology), by which God had sown the divine seeds of logos universally, throughout the world, both spatially and temporally. Clement made more explicit Jesus’ role in John as active logos in the world, by making him or it a potential part of every human being, since we might all one day accept Jesus as our savior, the father of us all (Paedagogus)—including, of course, innocents in Gaza.

It should be clear that within this approach, a universalistic We begins to make sense. This is not to say that a Christian must blindly rush to anyone’s succor without other considerations being involved. The concept of ordo amoris, “the order of love,” originating with Augustine (On Christian Doctrine 1.xviii.29 and City of God 15.22) and further developed by Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica II-II Q26), which has appeared more often in American public discourse in recent years, dictates that love is to be directed toward family and local community before it is expanded onto all of humanity—though this idea, too, borrows from an early Stoic concept, namely oikeiosis (“familiarizing”, “home-ifying”), developed by Zeno of Citium, the first Stoic scholarch, and then by Chrysippus and the Stoic Hierocles. But it is at least the case that the early Christian worldview made possible the universalistic We that dominates modern left-wing and even politically moderate discourse in the West, and that is alien to the earlier, pre-Hellenistic pagan view.

(And, incidentally, I cannot resist the temptation of pointing out that the Stoics I have mentioned, and in particular Chrysippus, were greater thinkers than the gentlemen usually associated with that school of thought by non-specialists today, namely Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. But because the former’s work is in a fragmentary state, and because it is more intellectually complex, they do not receive the credit they deserve, whereas the latter three, with their easily digestible bite-sized Christmas card wisdoms, are lauded by all and sundry.)

The ethos of this universalistic We, by which so many are affected, is something the West must abandon. It is not the responsibility of our civilization, Christ-like, to be the savior of the world and all its suffering innocents—and who sometimes are in fact not so innocent. The matter is rendered more difficult by the fact that this Christian tendency was boosted in modern times by the French Enlightenment, with its anxious handwringing about the world’s poor, and its belief that the nations of the world are basically morally the same (such as Voltaire’s and Condorcet’s Notes on Pascal’s Pensées, as well as Book 4 of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile). But a greater knowledge of the world’s peoples than those philosophes possessed shows us clearly that there is in fact a point where the We ends and the They begins, that there are irreconcilable ethical differences among nations that must be accepted for what they are.

In rejecting this ethos, there are in fact other traditions, still within the ambit of the West, to which we may appeal. I mention not only the obvious one of the West’s pagan origins in Greece, before the philosophical tendencies of the Hellenistic era, but another one of our civilization’s pillars, namely the Jewish tradition. Since we often have good reason to speak of a “Judeo-Christian” West, the philosophical differences between Judaism and Christianity are sometimes forgotten—one comes across “Christianized” Jews all the time, who still believe they are philosophically Jewish, not Christian—but here we have an important distinction. (I will not waste time here on the growing horde of rabble-rousers on the Right who, on X and elsewhere, keep separating off Judaism from Christianity, since their comments are rooted only in anti-Semitism, ignorance, and a failure to understand that Judaism is a sine qua non of the West.)

“...there is reason behind the expression of 'going Old Testament' on someone.”

Some “Christianized” Jews like to emphasize the Jewish notion of Tikkun Olam (“repairing the world”) and to equate it with what we today would call “social justice”, that is, the ignorant and vain—in both senses of that word—interference in the business of others, no matter how different or far-flung they may be. But it is really about virtuous action, which, when performed collectively by the members of a community, makes their society function better. To be sure, Judaism, unlike Classical Greek paganism, considers human life sacred: We are all created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6), and we should love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). But it tends to be much more exclusive in its worldview than Christianity, and certainly than the vulgarized Christianity we have today, the one that has passed through the filter of the French Enlightenment and the process of self-secularization in the nineteenth century.

In part since, unlike Christians and Muslims, Jews believe that gentiles can also reach salvation simply by being righteous (Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 105a), they have no proselytizing urge (and this also means, of course, that in spite of its exclusivity, Judaism is in a crucial way more tolerant than Christianity and, a fortiori, Islam). And when, in another Talmudic passage (Bava Metzia 71a), it is stated that the poor of one’s own city come first, this is indeed a recipe for, and in a context of, Jews helping Jews before gentiles. As I have pointed out elsewhere, proselytism assumes that other people, no matter how different, can become more similar to oneself—which is why on this view Jesus is potentially the father of us all—whereas the Jewish attitude with its complete lack of proselytism is that not everyone thinks or can be made to think as we do.

This is also why the Jewish way of war is, philosophically, more radical than the Christian; there is reason behind the expression of “going Old Testament” on someone. Even though, historically, the opposite was often the case, Jews have traditionally understood that sometimes a problem can be solved only through the utter defeat of the enemy rather than by the enemy’s conversion. Utter defeat of the enemy becomes much more difficult, even undesirable, if one believes that the We never ends but extends throughout the world.

The fact that Judaism in many corners, including indeed Israel, is often Christianized, can be seen in the war mentioned in the opening of this text. This will be an unpopular view, but Israel itself also suffers too much from the universalistic We, sacrificing hundreds of its own citizen soldiers in order to spare Palestinian lives. Israel went door to door in Gaza, issued early warnings, and so on, in order to save their enemy, to kill as few Palestinians as possible. That is one manifestation of the danger and foolhardiness of the universalistic We, and is not, or at least should not be, the Jewish way of war.

(An even more unpopular opinion will be that, even though the return of the remaining few living hostages was of course a cause for rejoicing, their recovery turned into such a cause célèbre, into such a golden calf, that everything else fell by the wayside. The lives of Israeli soldiers were considered a low enough price to pay for the hostages, for Israel’s international reputation, for Israel’s sensibility of the universalistic We. In the United States, such a sacrifice of soldiers for American hostages in a ratio of five to one, or more, would make some sense, since we have a professional army, whose members voluntarily sign up knowing that they may have to make the ultimate sacrifice for their countrymen—which is why they are so heroic and worthy of our admiration and gratitude—but for a country with a citizen army, such as Israel, I find it obscene that so many fathers, sons, and brothers had to die to save the hostages.)

The importance of this rejection of the universalistic We becomes especially striking when one realizes, again, how fundamentally different other civilizations are from ours, and the extent to which these themselves do not accept that We (with a few exceptions, such as Taoism, but it is safe to say that Taoists are not the ones who are shooting at synagogues or making European streets unsafe). It is not the case, of course, that we should stoop to the level of the barbarians, but there is an ocean of space and room for maneuver between them and us. It is suicidal not to meet force with greater force; it is foolish—and, it must be said, unmanly—not to consider your own family immeasurably more important than a family in an alien civilization. This is not a callous attitude. One can certainly have sympathy for faraway innocents, but it is a matter of living in accordance with the world as it is, a matter of limiting morality to a sphere in which one can actually help others, truly help them, asking not what is universally right but rather asking what is right to do here and now.

It is a matter of relating to the world in a realistic way. “Humanitarian” activity has its place—I have engaged in some myself, and I am certainly not a political isolationist (also for America’s own sake)—but it must take place only in limited and very targeted ways, and with a clear benefit-to-damage calculation; crucially, it must strongly prioritize its own civilization. And while Christianity started in a very pacifist way, modeling itself on the Sermon on the Mount—which is just about the only thing from Christianity that many Christians today remember—there were of course a number of gentlemen among the Church Fathers who were more sophisticated thinkers than Jesus himself and who understood that force is sometimes necessary, even if they were not able to abandon the universalistic We, such as Lactantius (in his late work), Ambrose, and Augustine. Much later, Thomas Aquinas also joined them in this regard.

The squeamishness many Western conservatives feel about abandoning the universalistic We never fails to impress. They are incapable of retracing the borders of the We even around the broader Western civilization, not to mention their own countries. A recent example was when a group of Swedish conservatives proudly lauded one of their own for daring to state that anti-Swedish racism should matter as much to Swedish people as other forms of racism. And I shook my head and said: You still do not understand. Anti-Swedish racism should matter even more to you than other forms of racism, because you are Swedish! This is not to say that other forms of racism are a matter of indifference, or that they should not be condemned for their turpitude and intellectual laziness, but it is, again, a question of properly relating to the world as it is, of understanding that one’s duty is to one’s own family, to one’s own nation, that, if one does not fulfill this duty, one may not call oneself a man.

And it must be understood that this duty of a man to his own family and nation is in a great many cases antithetical to a sense of duty toward humanity at large. Indeed one should ask: What is the first duty of a man? He has many, but the first is to protect the woman in his life, be it his wife, daughter, mother, or sister. And when it is the case, as it is in Europe and slowly beginning to be in the United States, that Islamic and other non-Western immigrants are making life unsafe for women, it is the duty of men to expel those who cause such unsafety. Any man who would allow the streets of his city to become unsafe for his wife or mother because of a stubborn insistence on a decayed form of liberalism, because of an insistence on a universalistic We that wishes to be of service to all, is not a man.

And as we survey the philosophical-geopolitical situation in which Western countries find themselves, we ought to understand that there are, fortunately, several native Western sources, even pillars, from which we can draw, on which we can stand, in our rejection of the universalistic We. We also remember that this We was not paramount to those who laid the foundations of our societies, to those who built them up, that, in fact, too strong an insistence on such a We would have been counterproductive to their efforts. And so we ought not be ungrateful to those who created what we have by dissolving the fruits of their efforts in an act of civilizational self-denial and decadence, by incorporating the whole world into our identity, by believing that any human being, simply by dint of being born, must receive our attention and care. This universalistic We epitomizes ingratitude for the efforts of many of those who came before us and in whose luxurious embrace we rest.

In her speech at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square on October 11, 2025, Ivanka Trump said that “the return of each hostage” was a triumph of, among other things, “our shared humanity.” No, that is utter nonsense. It was a triumph of, for all its self-imposed limitations, Israeli and American power. One might say that I am being unduly harsh against what is just a silly political bromide, but that bromide is indicative of a broader attitude that civilized nations, for the sake of their own defense, must learn to shake off. Much better in the political context was the recent speech of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Munich: He emphasized American power rather than humanitarianism and international organizations as the force that brings positive results; and, crucially, the unity of Western civilization. The sooner we realize these things, the better for all of us here in the West—for us, yes, a narrower We we would be wise to concretize.

1. It might also be pointed out that the proportion of innocents in Gaza, at least if by “innocent” we mean those who do not wish death upon the Jews, is small.

Benedict Beckeld is a philosopher based in New York City. His most recent book is Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations, from Cornell University Press. His forthcoming book is Art and Anarchy: Socio-Political Reflections on Aesthetics. He can be found on X @BenedictBeckeld