Values and Ethics Across Civilizations: Toward a Comparative Framework for Shared Moral Foundations and Pluralistic Coexistence

Abstract

The relationship between values, ethics, and civilization sits at the centre of contemporary debates about whether a plural world can sustain a shared moral horizon. Dominant readings, framed by the thesis of a coming clash of civilizations, treat cultural difference as a structural driver of conflict. This paper advances an alternative, comparative reading. Drawing on cross-cultural value theory, moral philosophy, and civilizational history, it asks two questions: first, whether the world's major civilizational traditions share an identifiable moral core; and second, how that core can be operationalised to support tolerance and pluralistic coexistence rather than confrontation. Methodologically, the study is a conceptual-comparative analysis that maps the ethical vocabularies of five civilizational clusters onto Schwartz's cross-culturally validated structure of basic human values, and situates the analysis within regional scholarship on moderation, identity, and tolerance published in this journal. The paper contributes a heuristic instrument, the Cross-Civilizational Value Convergence Index (CVCI), that expresses the degree of moral overlap between traditions on a bounded 0–1 scale. The analysis finds a robust convergent core organised around self-transcendence values (universalism and benevolence) and reciprocity, alongside genuine and durable divergence on the conservation–openness axis. It argues that coexistence is best served not by value-neutrality but by an ethics-based, moderation-centred model that names shared goods explicitly while protecting difference. Implications for governance, education, and inter-civilizational dialogue are discussed.