La fundamentacion de los derechos humanos (reflexiones incidentales)

Abstract

Human rights, in the true sense of the term, are attributions of acknowledgement and protection that have been incorporated into substantive laws. Based on facts, they show themselves as fully historical-cultural products or creations, although this does not rule out the possibility of their being interpreted, at the same time, as a natural “reality.” As far as the foundations of human rights are concerned, what chiefly matters is to discover the arguments with which it is rationally exacting that such rights be acknowledged. This argument assumes some fundamental principles of an axiomatic nature and, consequently, they are left out of the typical discussion in which they act as a starting point, so that any rational foundation will have both an intrasystematic and a limited validity. Any genuine, critical foundation should have an absolute rational validity in the sense that this validity is rendered subordinate to no rational assumptions alien to the rational context within which it is laid out. Likewise, the absolute nature of the foundation has no exclusive effectiveness, so that one absolute foundation can be formulated only.