Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

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78 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> <strong>Lectures</strong> on Human Valuesmuch success as the previous ones. 5That is, I do not think that“dignity,” “liberty,” and “equality” are values any less susceptibleto diverse interpretations, or any less contested, than “the perfectingof the human being,” “social progress,” or “the developmentof civilization,” although, as we will see, I believe that from anethical point of view they are rather more fundamental than thelatter.But my major disagreement with Pérez Luño’s definition hasto do with the general meaning he attributes to it. In his opinion,“the proposed definition is intended to unite the two main dimensionsof the general notion of human rights, that is, the jusnaturalistrequirement as to their grounding and the techniques of itspositive support in law and protection that assure their enjoyment.”6Of course, Pérez Luño has every right, natural or not, toextract jusnaturalist implications from his definition, but not allof us who accept his definition can be expected to accept theburden of those implications.From his definition it follows - or, more exactly, it is understood- that the demands of human dignity, liberty, and equalityalluded to are prior to the process of positive support in law andthat the reason why they ought to be legally recognized providesthe grounding for the rights in question. But is that all? Jusnaturalism,as we will see, is nowhere in view, or at least not unlessone acknowledges beforehand - as a jusnaturalist would undoubtedlybe inclined to do -that the fact that those demandsare prior to the process of legal recognition makes them naturalrights.To me such a presupposition seems gratuitous. But beforetaking up this point, I want to deal with another, less important,one. That is, the presupposition that values such as dignity,5In any case the supposed charge was not so much leveled at the “teleological”character of the definition - that is, at its goal of saving ultimate values - as at thevagueness and imprecision of the values in question.6 Pérez Luño, Derechos humanos, 51.
[MUGUERZA] <strong>The</strong> Alternative of Dissent 79liberty, or equality are the exclusive patrimony of the jusnaturalisttradition.To concentrate for the moment on the first of these, who wouldassert that the jusnaturalist tradition and the tradition of humanrights are coextensive? Pérez Luño adduces the case of SamuelPufendorf, whose system of human rights indeed rests on the ideaof the dignitus of man. 7 And there is no doubt about Pufendorf’srepresenting an important stage in the history of modern naturallaw. But, on the other hand, it is not as clear that we can discernthe same jusnaturalist filiation in the Kantian notion of Würde,nor in Kant’s philosophy of law. 8 And the case of Kant is of particularinterest to us here.No one would deny that there are abundant traces of jusnaturalistinfluence in Kant, just as it is impossible to deny that thegeneral division of the Rechtslehre, or “system of the principlesof law,” that he espouses opposes natural law (Naturrecht),which is based on a priori principles, to positive, or statutory, law(statutarisches Recht), which depends on the will of the legislator.9But Kant’s so-called “rational law” (Vernunftrecht) cannotsimply be identified with traditional natural law, even of arationalist lineage, not even if we find that it does not mind assuming- on the basis of quite different suppositions - some of thelatter’s functions, which it consequently inherits. l0And, especially,I do not believe we can or should interpret in a jusnatu-7 Ibid. In this connection see Hans Welzel’s classic Die Naturrechtslehre SamuelPufendorfs, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1958).8 On this subject, see J, G. Murphy, Kant: <strong>The</strong> Philosophy of Right (London,1970); S. Goyard-Fabre, Kant et le problème du droit (Paris, 1975); Z. Batscha, ed,.Materialien zu Kants Rechtsphilosophie (Frankfurt am Main, 1976) ; F. Kaulbach,Studien zur späten Rechtsphilosophie Kants (Wiirzburg, 1982) ; H.-G. Deggau,Die Aporien der Rechtslehre Kants (Stuttgart, 1983).9 I. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten. I. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre,Werke, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 6, p. 237. All references to Kant’s worksare to this edition.10 See below, in connection with Jürgen Habermas’s interpretation of Kant’s“rational law.”
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Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

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