Is humanity’s circle of moral concern expanding? I explore frequencies of morally universal language in 15m book publications in American English, British English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian from 1800-2000. In each language, morally universal terminology diminished markedly. This pattern also emerges in Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew books.
I test two prominent hypotheses predicting moral universalism, pertaining to reason and religiosity. Reason-based terminology indeed correlates positively with purely morally universal terminology but also (and more strongly so) with morally communal terminology. These empirical patterns cast doubt on claims of (i) moral universalism expanding and (ii) reason being its driver.
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