Subject: (9) from THE RADICALS AND NONVIOLENCE
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CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUS NATURAE
by Angiolo Bandinelli (1)
[...] In a recent essay (2), the philosopher and political scientist
Norberto Bobbio stated that "in terms of the rights of man, the serious
problem in our times is not to found them but to protect them. The problem
we are faced with is not philosophical, but juridical, and in a wider sense
political". Why? Because, Bobbio stressed, the problem of foundation "was
solved with the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man approved by the
General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948." That
declaration is held up by the only proof "with which a system of values can
be considered humanly founded and therefore recognized: and that proof is
general consensus about its validity."
Such universalism is not rooted in an eternal orginal or "rational" nature
of man, but only, as Bobbio points out, in a "slow conquest" over history.
It is not, however, an abstract conquest that remains in the limbo of
transcendental principles. That declaration has been followed by others
which have reinforced it and widened its jurisdiction, weaving it into a
system of values, and now of behaviours, in a wide range of sectors, from
work to infancy, up to - and this is not a casual reference - the
"Convention for the Prevention and Repression of Genocide" approved by the
General Assembly on 9 December 1958. And upon these declarations there has
unfolded a spectacular fan of struggles and advances which form an
impressive part of the history of the liberation of peoples, of classes as
of individuals, in the post-war period. And it is no coincidence that,
together with the crisis within states, within the State, we are now
witnessing a deep crisis in those international and supernational bodies,
beginning with the United Nations, whose existence initiated the dialogue
between men that made possible the definition of those principles as the
objectives of a possible progress. The crisis is caused by the
irrepressible return of dangerous and backward nationalist egoism, which
threatens to waste a patrimony of important certainties and hopes for the
growth of justice and of the rights of man; to render grotesque the memory
of the Nuremberg trials, which sentenced those responsible for Nazi crimes;
to destroy the United Nations Organization, and to reduce relations between
states to the most primitive bellum contra omnes.
December 1992
(1) Angiolo Bandinelli: among the founders of the Radical Party. Secretary
of the Party in 1970, 1972 and 1973, and a former deputy. He has edited
many Radical publications, from "Prova radicale" to the Radical Newsletter.
(2) Norberto Bobbio: "Il problema della guerra e le vie della pace", Il
Mulino, 1979.
