“The dynamic tension of the particular and the universal is woven into the very fabric of being human”

The human person, the figure at the center of the very idea of human rights, is not a person in general but a concrete figure, embedded in time and place, and yet dis-embedded and capable of seeing beyond one’s own horizon; able to see in the people of other times and places a reflection of ourselves. The dynamic tension of the particular and the universal is woven into the very fabric of being human.

Yehudah Mirsky, “What Is A Nation State For?”, Marginalia (11 March 2015) [http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/nation-state-yehudah-mirsky/]