On the 75th 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 the majority of the countries that participated in its formulation. There is no foundation justifying that list because the supposed philosophy backing it is the individualistic liberal one that fails to reconcile them with the idea of a real common good.