Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

[MUGUERZA] <strong>The</strong> Alternative of Dissent 77admirably focuses on the heart of the matter and which is prefacedby the author with some twenty-odd pages dedicated to guaranteeingits plausibility. 3 Thus, although it amounts to a stipulation,his proposal is by no means a “Humpty-Dumpty definition,” sinceit rests both on a lexicographical study of the linguistic limits ofthe defined term and on something even more important, that is,a conceptual circumscription of its context.In addition, Pérez Luño is well aware of the merits of hisdefinition, which he believes avoids some of the more qualifiedcharges against the very attempt to define human rights. 4In thefirst place his definition is not “tautological,” as a definition wouldbe that read: “the rights of man are those that belong to him byvirtue of his being a man,” since his definition not only specifiesa series of human “requirements” but also mentions the historicalcharacter of this “specificity.” Second, neither is it a “formalist”definition, for example, “the rights of man are those that belongor ought to belong to all men, and of which no man may bedeprived,” since Pérez Luño’s definition, in referring to the activerecognition of such rights in the legal statutes, leaves enoughmargin for both the normative aspects of the “process of positivesupport in laws,” or legal recognition, and the techniques of protectionand guarantees as to their actual implementation. Thirdand last, the definition means to avoid being “teleological,” aswould be the case with definitions that allude to preserving ultimatevalues, ones ordinarily susceptible to diverse and contestedinterpretations, of the kind: “the rights of man are those necessaryfor the perfecting of human beings, for social progress or thedevelopment of civilization, and so on.” However, in my view itis by no means clear that Pérez Luño’s definition manages to avoidthis third charge, if that is what it is, with as much ease or as3 Ibid., chap. 1.4 On p. 25 the author draws on Norberto Bobbio‘s “L‘illusion du fondementabsolu,” in the joint volume, Les fondement des droits de l’homme (Florence, 1966),3-9; see also 49ff.