NATURAL LAW TRADITION VS HUMAN RIGHTS PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

On the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we wonder if the individualistic foundation of human rights as individual freedoms without reference to a concrete common good that gives real content to those rights is causing the dissolution of modern societies. We question whether the language of human rights has run wild, to the point of being used today to defend all kinds of desires and claims: from abortion to suicide, through surrogacy, incest, or gender reassignment. We also wonder to what extent a right formulated without any measure can be qualified as a right. We contemplate whether the philosophy of human rights, individualistic and liberal, precisely because it departs from the classical tradition of natural law, really serves to justify such rights. We question whether the anthropology underlying the doctrine of "natural rights" is that of an abstract, solitary, and anonymous human individual. We question whether the discourse of human rights, it is not that dreams have come true, but rather the reality of rights has become an unreal dream, deeply unsupportive. We question if it is really true that nothing is a right, nothing is due if it is not reasonably possible, and the possibility of providing that protection depends on the conditions and resources of society, that is, on the real content of its common good. The list of human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is a projection of the historical preferences of most of the countries that participated in its formulation. There is no foundation justifying that list of rights because the supposed philosophy backing it is the individualistic liberal one that fails to reconcile them with the idea of a real common good. We are aware that our thesis challenges politically correct thinking. But we are moved only by the desire to truly know the truth behind the Declaration of Human Rights, applauded enthusiastically and uncritically by most of the world's legal doctrine. To prove this thesis, we will use the most recent studies, carried out especially by philosophers and jurists from the United States, which support the thesis we defend in this work. The question we discuss in our work is not whether the goods protected by the 1948 Declaration are goods, but whether they are really rights. Such a conceptualization does not fit into the classical natural law tradition and contains a dangerous confusion. Among the authors who support the thesis we defend are the French philosopher of law Michel Villey, the American Alasdair MacIntyre, the French Pierre Manent, and in Spain an author like Alfredo Cruz Prados.