It is quite another to say that they derive from
the same inspiration, and it is yet another to take the view that they
promote freedom . The question takes us further still if we ask whether the rise of new rights might not signal a perversion of the principle ?f
human rights, or might not even undermine the whole democratIc
edifice. We cannot leave matters there. All these questIOns concern
only the formation and the transformations of Western societies. No
one can be unaware of the fact that over the great part of our planet,
the idea of human rights is either unknown - because it is incompatible
with communal traditions which in some cases date from tIme
immemorial - or is furiously denied. How can anyone be unaware of
that? It is in my view impossible to investigate the meaning of human
rights if, at the same time, we ignore the spectacle provIded by certam
dictatorial regimes that have been estabhshed m some of the great
countries of the modern world, notably in Latin America, and by those
totalitarian regimes that are described as socialist