Human rights: from the uniformity of the species to the universality of the right

Abstract

This article intends to approach, for a philosophical bias, the problem of Human Rights enunciated in Declarations of the XVIII and XX centuries. The basic question is human rights based on the "ideal of humanity" or "human dignity", considering two ideas: 1) the paradox of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the notion that one feels only a human "With guaranteed rights someone who sees himself contemplated in the legal scope of a nation. 2) Humanity as a "great family" (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948), and the world as "great nation". Therefore, we promote in this work a debate between three thinkers: Diderot, with his notion of the general will of the human race; Rousseau, with his refutation of Diderot's thesis, denying that there is a "natural or general society among men"; And Kant, who in his Perpetual Peace, in his own way, takes up the notion of cosmopolitanism denied by Rousseau and points to the possibility of the right to extend to all mankind.