From “right” to “human”: Human Rights through the Philosophical Anthropology’s gaze

by Giacomo Pezzano (giacomo.pezzano@binario5.com; III of 3)

IV. Born to become

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Bansky, 2012

A capability/education approach (CE) could offer both a solid theoretical referring and a consistent practical possibility, by binding the uni(versali)ty of the HN with its different manifestations and the plurality of the individuals that “embody” it. At one hand, CE is fully universalistic, because concerns each and every citizen, in each and every nation, and each is to be treated as an end (it concerns each and every human being). At the other hand, CE is fully pluralistic, exactly for the same reason: it affects the specific and particular characteristics of cultures and individuals. Like any universalistic approach, CE is only valuable if developed in a relevant way; like any pluralistic approach, CE is only valuable if developed in a unitary horizon: then, we need to focus – through PA and CE – the threshold between the human right (the “generic” features of the HN which opens up to a multiple realizability) and the human rights (the several specific rights and laws created and to be created – a lawyers and politicians’ task), in order to provide an anthropological underpinning (in the naturalistic and philosophical sense) for an account of basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by the governments of all nations, as both a bare minimum and a huge maximum of what respect for humanity requires, the RE.
Finally, these reflections open up the foundations for an inquiry of the institutional and political forms of the promotion of the RE which moves from the statement that RE does not correspond with something as the “right to school”, at least because i) school is a “solid” institutional structure that may exist only in an already structured socio-political context and ii) education affects both children and adults: RE should not be conceived only merely as “childhood education” [Moro 1991], but even as right to lifelong education/learning [Morin 2000]. In the EU’s context, this may be traduced with the implementation and promotion of exchanges and projects such as Erasmus, Leonardo, Comenius etc., which currently concern mostly children, teenagers and young, but should and could be rethought in order to be extended to the “European citizens” in general: besides, being European means first of all being lifelong educated as such.

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