"We hold these truth to be self evident, that all men are created equal". So begins the US Declaration of Independence. "Human Dignity is inviolable". So begins the German Basic Law. Can we still stand by the universalist humanism that's expressed in these statements? Or is the tradition of enlightenment universalism that they embody - based as it is in Kant's thinking - the expression of colonial Eurocentrism that crushes identities and enables injustice?

On September 25, the American Council on Germany and the Goethe Institut New York hosted a discussion with Omri Boehm, Associate Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research.