DERECHOS HUMANOS: UNA IDEA INCOMPLETA

Abstract

Three important tasks in the field of human rights were achieved in the Enlightenment: the secularization of ancient natural rights, drawing up a list of rights and converting them into an instrument of political demands. Since then there has been no further theoretical development of the idea. In our days, the concept of human rights is much more indeterminate than in the eighteenth century because we lack consensus about the examples that make that abstract idea specific. In our time the task in the field of human rights may well be that of correcting that indeterminacy, so completing the labour of the Enlightenment.