A pessoa e os direitos humanos à luz do historicismo axiológico

Abstract

In this research, we‟ll investigate the philosophical status of the person and the human rights, according to the axiological historicism theory. In this way, we gather the main works of its founder, the brazilian philosopher Miguel Reale. We‟ll relate his understandings with the transcendental criticism, the phenomenology, the philosophical antropology and the Law. For axiological historicism, the values come from the person, making up the essence of the self, having a triple role: constitutive, gnoseological and practical. The constitutive function is relationated with the fact that person builds the world creating cultural goods, composed by values. The gnoseological function derives from the finding that knowledge brings itself the question of values, principally through the introduction of language. The practical function is linked with ethical conducts, because values are understood as meanings of action, imposing a duty to respect to others. The axiological historicism uses the dialectical method of implication and polarity. So, there is a necessary relationship between opposites in the heart of person‟s concept, without a synthesis that suppresses them, but recognizes its complementarity, reflecting the structure of the value itself. Thus, the values are the person. Encompassing the world of nature there is the world of culture, which is formed by the values and the subjective meanings. It‟s the person that gives the unity required by the world of culture, becoming the source-value of it and of the other values. Of course values are understood in their historical contingency, but there is a kind of values enhanced and optimized in time, that become product of the spirit in its universality: we call them axiological constants. They‟re conditions of possibility of values‟ emergence, going beyond history and reaching the metaphysics‟ plane. When referring to history, we‟re referring to inovation and future. The spirit‟s radical freedom requires the guarantee of valious goods, but requires an open perspective to future too. In this sense, Law is an indispensable image of person, and has a strong axiological structure. Human rights, in this conception, are the normative version of the axiological constants.