The idea that a particular nation may be the bearer of a universal principle such as freedom or democracy, and that its historical actions therefore serve a higher end, is recognizable from recent American experience.
Recent American experience(the real-world example being discussed in the statement)
A reference to how the United States has justified its foreign policy and military interventions by claiming to spread freedom and democracy to other countries.
Universal principle(as used in aesthetics and logic)
A rule that applies to all similar cases, not just one specific example—like saying 'every painting with this feature is automatically better.'
Critics may argue that Nishida’s universalism is still plagued by an exemplary particularism,[17] and that he succeeds in questioning Eurocentrism only by way of shifting the locus of the concrete universal to Japan. Yoko Arisaka argues that “the chief claim of the defenders—that Nishida’s philosophical ‘universalism’ is incompatible with nationalist ideology—fails because universalist discourse was used both as a tool of liberation and oppression in Japan’s case” (Arisaka 1999, 242). Arisaka