Diritti umani, natura e orizzonti dell'"umano comune"

The category of “human rights” should be understood in a dialectical manner between pragmatic utility and theoretical problematicity. The current transition from “human rights” to “fundamental rights” trespasses not only the modern scheme subjective rights-human rights, but involves a founding level and a rethinking of the concept of “nature”. Apart from its possible ontological-referential interpretation, “nature” can be rethought according to a phenomenological-anthropological or hermeneutic perspective which entails a trans-cultural concept of “na- tural human” also beyond the legal articulation. The twentieth-century claims of “dignity” and “justice” evoke a “natural” anthropological dimension and show the relation between the problem of the origins of human rights and the possibility to articulate universal dimensions. The ongoing comparison with non-western systems puts the western model of “nature” into perspective and highlights its crosscutting epistemolo- gical dimension as well. Every culture is rooted in “natural” dimensions and this allows a modulation of the legal intervention.