Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

92 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> Lectutres on Human Valuescal one. 33This led Bobbio solemnly to pronounce that “we donot consider the problem of grounding to be nonexistent butrather, in a certain sense, as solved, so that there is no further needto concern ourselves with its solution.” To which he added:“Indeed, now we can say that the problem of founding humanrights was solved by the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsthat the General Assembly of the United Nations approved onDecember 10, 1948.” 34Which is to say that this Declarationwould be the best possible proof that a system of values is deemedto have a grounding and thus be recognized as, in short, “the proofof the general consensus as to its validity.” In Bobbio’s view thereare three primary ways of founding such values. One way consistsin deducing them from some invariable objective datum such as,for example, human nature (which is what jusnaturalism has alwaysdone and what in one way or another will have to continueto do in order to avoid debasing itself to the point where it admitsto any interpretation we wish to make of it; but the truth is thathuman nature can be imagined in many different ways and anappeal to it can serve to justify extremely divergent and even contradictoryvalue systems, so that the “right to dignity, liberty andequality” would be just as natural as the “right of the strongest”).A second way considers the values in question to be self-evidenttruths (but an appeal to evidence is no more promising than theappeal to human nature, since what at one moment in time isconsidered evident may not be at another moment: in the eighteenthcentury property was considered “sacred and inviolable,”a view which is certainly not held today, whereas the “evidence”today that “torture is intolerable” was no impediment to its beingconsidered a normal legal procedure in the past, nor does it keep33 N. Bobbio, “Presente e avvenire dei diritti dell’uomo,” La ComunitàInternationale23 (1968): 3-18. I have quoted from the Spanish translation of thistext, delivered the previous year at the Royaumont Colloquia, by A. Ruiz Miguel,“Presente y porvenir de los derechos humanos,” Anuario de Derechos Humanos 1(1982) : 7-28.34Bobbio, “Presente e avvenire,” 10.