Thought never happens in a vacuum. Descartes wrote the famous phrase "cogito ergo sum" or, "I think therefore I am." Am what? Descartes was child of France, a polymath whose contributions to geometry (cartesian coordinate system) are better known than his philosophy, which was influential. Many significant philosophers are trained in other things, generally physical sciences. The most influential philosopher of science, Galileo, also invented the modern telescope and is primarily known as a hugely influential astronomer. This starts to get circular, the scientist inspired to write about science. The issue is, Galileo never could have produced his philosophy without first being trained as a scientist. At the very least, the discipline of thought learned in astronomy allowed him to write as beautifully as he did. To return to the universal, even the most supposedly objective thoughts arise out of the experiences of the thinker.
But thought, as particular as it is in some respects, can still be universal. Recently I've been reading the works of Kant and Hegel, as I prepare to write an article on the philosophy of knowledge. Both of these men have been dead for many years. They never saw things like cellphones and the internet, all our modern devices that make the communication of information so rapid and so shallow. The context has changed. Yet I still found myself nodding in agreement as I went through Kant's passages on the categories of understanding. Knowledge is always individual, but that does not mean we cannot learn from each other.
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