A natural-law approach to human rights in a plural society

Abstract

I propose a medieval voluntaristic version of natural-law theory, as a plausible strategy to implement fundamental rights in a culturally non-homogeneous society; it is, in particular, the version proposed by the Franciscan school, which proposes a substantial cut between pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian natural law (the former corresponding to the sphere of fundamental rights of persons while the lattrer marks the sphere of institutional rights of individuals in a given society, with a plurality of the common good). With necessary semantical precisions, this strategy safeguards the political value of tolerance and the real plurality of sundry cultural models withan one society, although such as belong to a certain culture are convinced it is superior to others. This strategy is opposed to ethical legalism, widespread in modern political debate, which I blame for its tendency to homogeneity and its reduction of plurality to non-culturality.