Les droits de l'homme depuis 68. Entre individualisme et personnalisme.

Abstract

In France, 68 is the sign of the dominant Marxist thought which encourages some only social and collectivist human rights (HR), on an anti-idealist, anti-subjectivist or anti-humanist ground- that is an echo of the nineteenth century. Due to its materialism, this thought also boosts a relativist and individualistic caricature of these (H) rights, which sometimes support some of its dissident movements. It is in this individualism that a liberal thought grew to become so contemporary. This thought reduces rights to the claims of each individual and nominal unit. It leads to the idea -however incompatible with the HR and with the international law— that each culture may have its own theory of the HR possibly conflicting with others. But 68 has never prevented a more authentic thought of the HR (that underlie the law and the international institutions) from better assuming its historical roots in the rationalism of a human nature common to the plurality of the cultures that carry out any former collectivist tendency or any present individualistic propensity. 68 could no more oppose the contemporary growth of a thought that also turned to a realism of the person (existential and "in situation "), at a time where, beyond the usual armed conflicts, the singularity of each, even the free relation between persons, is jeopardized by different technical controls which are exercised over the entire process of the development of life — this life being of bio-ethical, food, ecological, cultural, family or religious nature.