Today I came to reflect on something that Sartre says.
He says that if we make the aristotelian argument that all things are
defined by their characteristics. And if man is mostly defined by his
behaviour, then each man is existentially bound to others behaviour. From
that, he argues, that man is ultimately responsible for his choices with
regards to all of humanity, as his choice of behaviour outline what it is
to be human.
This is not a liberal philosophy.
But there is, ofcourse, another assumption in this. It is the ontological
commitment that man is. Sartre does commit to the object of man.
Now, on to something else. If you reflect on the declaration of human
rights, is is clear that it makes the same ontological commitment. The
human rights declares what you are entitled to as a human being, but more
importantly it assumes human being to be a meaningful category, and it
makes the identification that all men belong to this category.
Because of this, a society based on human rights cannot be liberal in an
abstract sense. This is the contradictory nature of liberal democracies,
that they are not ultimately about freedom, but about promoting a certain
lifestyle and values.
