The Declaration of Human Rights did not stem from any specific philosophical or religious stance, but rather emerged in response to the great horrors of World War II. Since the articles of the Declaration make fairly precise prescriptions regarding the political system, it would not be logical—unless one wishes to fall into circular reasoning—to seek the foundation of the Declaration in the very political ideal it proposes. However, despite this form of “ideological neutrality,” even a first glance at the text reveals some of the document’s underlying assumptions.
Much has changed since this Declaration was adopted; some minorities have managed to turn the tide in their favor, and all fundamental rights have begun to slide downhill, driven by hedonistic individualism and ideologies that know little or nothing of love—ideologies that only reduce, exclude, and incite fanaticism. An individualism taken to the point of exasperation makes lifelong decisions—such as marriage, the priesthood, religious life, or having several children—impossible. Faced with such a decision, the aforementioned groups would appear and shout in your face that you are a reactionary, a slave who is depriving yourself of a right (now declared fundamental by these minorities) and your self-realization. This is clearly the dictatorship of minorities, because in democracy (the democracy of old) it was believed that everyone could have their say, but now only what they say is considered democratic.
The first point of this Declaration of Rights—and “to declare” is not to confer, but to recognize that those rights already existed—is its claim to be universally binding. The Declaration is presented as “a common ideal toward which all peoples and nations should strive” (proclamation). It thus aspires to give legal form to a moral sense of humanity, which cannot be understood unless it claims universality.
The document points to principles that are presumed to be recognized by all human beings, to the extent that they require no further justification. It begins with the assertion that “freedom, justice, and peace in the world are based on the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (Preamble, No. 1). It further states (Art. 1) that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and then that “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind….”
However, these various documents do not tell us precisely—within the anthropology of the human being—where that dignity is grounded. It must necessarily be constitutive and universal for all human beings. What seems crystal clear to us is that neither biology nor human psychology can be the seat, the source from which this constitutive dignity arises. F. Rielo provides us with insights from experience: The human being is a fabric composed of three unified layers—biology, psychology, and spirit. Biology and psychology can be explained by evolution, but the spirit is actual. This spirit is not merely spirit in and of itself but is open to God: “If theology is the science that studies God, anthropology is the science that—not without God—studies the human being” 1 Here, at least two of us see clearly that individualism is not constitutive of the human being. This is why, Rielo tells us, we must grasp the profound and serious meaning of a formal anthropology open to a transcendental anthropology. Formal anthropology studies the structures, properties, and functions of our “psychosomatized spirit”, but the definition of the human being cannot stop there, at the formal level of a psychosomatized spirit… The human person is, therefore, a spirit that relates psychosomatically to everything that is spirit and to everything that is not spirit. On the other hand, we cannot reduce the human being to any of these three levels we have discussed previously: body, soul, and spirit, because even these three together do not yet account for the transcendental nature of the human being. Let us draw from F. Rielo, from the immense richness of his thought, what concerns us at this moment as we continue to speak of the human person: “The [divine constitutive presence] is a presence intrinsic to the spirit of personal beings. This divine presence is transverberative (penetrative, interpenetrating). Personal beings are, by virtue of the divine constitutive presence, “image and likeness” of the Absolute… They are opened to the Absolute by the Absolute itself”. 2 Human beings do not have the power to grant themselves this transcendental status, nor can society or the State grant it to them.
Now that we know the foundation of every human being’s dignity, let us continue on our journey.
“Dignity” and “rights” constitute a special and unique condition, proper to persons in whom the status of subjects is united with an openness to a truth that transcends them. The Declaration presupposes the notion of men and women as responsible beings, subject to objective moral requirements that can be codified. Furthermore, it presupposes the universality of a law that is to govern many peoples with different histories, customs, and cultures—and which, therefore, must have persisted through divergent cultural evolutions. The fact that it retains universal validity, remaining consistently applicable to all, suggests a high degree of immutability: human rights would be not only universal but also permanent.
It is possible that ethical or legal prescriptions of a universal and enduring nature reflect some form of humanity’s basic ethical experience. For when a person approves, disapproves of, or regulates a given behavior, this occurs first and foremost because they perceive it as conforming to or deviating from what their own nature dictates. Approval is a kind of practical adherence to the object intended by the behavior, a genuine harmony between the object of the action and its agent.
The agreement required and proclaimed in the Declaration does not purport to be based on any particular conception of human nature that is explicitly recognized within it. However, it is difficult to avoid the impression that acceptance of the Declaration presupposes a degree of agreement on what has long been called “human nature” Perhaps for this very reason, it was accepted as a project by thinkers such as Jacques Maritain, who upheld the notion of a “human nature” from which rights and obligations flow. In contrast, philosophers such as Croce, who favored a historicist interpretation of what it means to be human, relativized or questioned its value.
An analysis of the Declaration’s content reveals that provisions such as those regarding the right to liberty in Article 3, fundamental social freedoms (Articles 18–20), as well as social security (22) and the right to work (23), have been interpreted in an increasingly individualistic light—as rights limited only by the exercise of others’ rights— while the definition of the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society, entitled to protection by society and the state, has been undermined by a renewed individualistic conception of children’s rights and their opposition to the rights of parents. It should be recalled that in the Declaration, it is parents who have the primary right to choose the form of education their children will receive. If this statement is compared with Article 13 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which was adopted twenty years later, one can see what we have already noted: namely, a shift toward interpreting rights in terms of individualistic self-assertion.
One of the most significant consequences has been the demand for so-called “reproductive freedom” and a distorted conception of women’s freedom to dispose of their own bodies, which, following its logical course, leads to the full justification of induced abortion. The notion of reproductive freedom has even been extolled by prominent legal scholars such as Robertson, who considers it a preeminent right of women. This individualistic interpretation of social reality is still evident in statements that seek to defend the natural order in specific cases. Recall President Clinton’s argument following the announcement of the cloning of a sheep: “Many of us would be deeply disturbed at the thought that we might be cloned.”
There is a particular case of a violation of human dignity—one that is more subtle but is gaining significant ground. It is characterized by the use of a misguided concept of human dignity to turn it against life itself. This confusion, very common today, comes to light when discussing euthanasia. For example, laws that recognize the possibility of euthanasia or assisted suicide are sometimes referred to as “dignified death laws.” The idea that euthanasia or assisted suicide is compatible with respect for human dignity is widespread. In light of this, it must be strongly reaffirmed that suffering does not cause the sick person to lose that dignity which is intrinsic and inalienably their own.” 3
But alongside a growing and overwhelmingly individualistic anthropology, there has been a spectacular development of medical and biological technologies that directly affect the personal and social lives of multitudes of human beings. This impact—which is ultimately what justifies addressing these issues in conjunction with a Universal Declaration of Rights—stems from the fact that biomedical interventions, by their very nature, tend to multiply their effects and entail multiple and rapidly spreading consequences. I witnessed this firsthand in my work at the UC School of Medicine, where the fact that the faculty were simply Catholic was not enough to prevent a drift toward dehumanization; it became necessary to establish a Program in Humanistic Medical Studies and a journal, “Ars Medica,” to help doctors realize that it was not enough to heal organs, tissues, nerves, bones, and the like; rather, the person who sustained all those organs could not be left out of the healing process.
Let us consider the impact on the family of the introduction of hormonal contraceptives. Not only has this led to serious demographic crises, but it has also triggered the sexual revolution by separating the genetic impulse from the responsibilities of procreation to the greatest extent possible. Furthermore, the family faces radical conceptual shifts stemming from “in vitro” fertilization. This has introduced the possibility of replacing procreation with the “manufacture” of human beings. Silver argues that “in vitro” fertilization ushers in a new branch of technology, New eugenics, which will make it possible to regulate everything related to procreation through a combination of fertilization techniques and interventions on the genome. The advances made in recent years in nuclear transfer cloning in mammals will soon make it possible to apply this technique to humans as a method of intervening in germ cells.
The replacement of “procreation” with “manufacturing,” the questioning of all ties of kinship, consanguinity, and filiation through gamete replacement—and even more radically through cloning, genetic intervention, and embryo selection—are actions that lead to the practical social validation and, eventually, the legal acceptance of forms of cohabitation and procreation that deny even the very premises of the human family.
Consider, for example, that—even if they had no other effect—reports on cloning have made it clear that the age-old overlap between genetic relationships, social bonds, and emotional ties must be reevaluated for the thousands of individuals who are “manufactured” each year using gametes different from those of their “social” parents. Indeed, this complex system—comprising the laws of descent, emotional bonds, and human sociability, whose unit is the family—is facing a severe challenge to its very existence. The family—which, according to the Declaration, is “the natural and fundamental element of society”—needs to be redefined, thereby effectively denying its status as a “natural and fundamental element.”. Indeed, how could something with such characteristics be redefined? This means that the Declaration would have to be reformulated, and it is clear that in countries that wield real influence in international affairs, this redefinition could not be carried out without an entirely individualistic bias.
But, furthermore, when there are contraception campaigns that resort even to mutilation, when surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization are used as experimental subjects in research aimed at what is called the good of humanity, there is no doubt that the “dignity” of the human being is being sacrificed as an object of technology, and we know that objects are not subjects of rights like persons.
There is an invasive tendency on the part of technology to treat everything as a potential object and to act as if everything that is possible were permissible. And here we see that peculiar contradiction of our time, whereby human beings, while asserting themselves through the exercise of technology’s powerful tools, surrender themselves as objects to those very tools. In practice, this means that the question sidestepped in the Declaration—“What is a human being, and from where do their rights derive?”—is replaced by a more limited and practical one: “Who is a human being, and who can invoke those rights?” As in Orwell’s joke, “Here, we are all equal, but some are more equal than others.”
When the Declaration was drafted in 1948, atrocities such as those at Auschwitz were still fresh in people’s minds, and there was a clear awareness of the horror of the Gulag, for example. However, no one would have bothered to draft a Declaration like this if there had not been a deep conviction that, amid so many horrors, human beings were indeed called to do good, and that it was possible to illuminate their path and strengthen their will. Hundreds of millions of people were peaceful, and even in the midst of terrible suffering, they held onto hope and respect for humanity.
Today, in the face of the scourges of abortion and contraception, and in the face of the devaluation of the human person and the family, we cannot forget for even a moment the hundreds of millions who yearn for a truly human life—those who devote themselves to family life, to caring for the sick, and to all public and private activities, with at least an immanent hope that they will be able to live out the fullness of a human life.
Contemporary secularism’s attempt to eliminate God from public life has also led to the erasure of the concrete human person from that sphere and his replacement with a legal abstraction that dissolves under analysis and criticism. It is doubtful that human beings can establish a code that effectively protects their lives and rights if they overlook the most fundamental aspect of that life: that it is a gift, not just any available good, and that man is not the master of the universe but a contingent being and a creature.
How to cite this article
Angel Rodriguez Guerro PhD. (2026, August 3). Individualism and Human Rights. The RIID Review. http://riidblog.org/post/03-08-2026/