História - Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (Jun 2015)
Direito internacional : rumo a uma ética universalizante de Direitos Humanos
Abstract
Starting from the framework generally accepted in terms of the history of international law and diplomacy around the minimization or mitigation of the effects of armed conflict, this paper seeks to identify some medieval and enlightenment antecedents that appear as central to the emergence of an ethics and philosophy of human rights, translators of an ever growing sense of their universal nature. This is more an anthropological approach than historical that sees the slow universalization of the idea of compassion for the Other as a process that begins with the ideal of “to civilize the war”, but whose affirmation will entail the overcoming the initial arguments of religious nature and the adoption of a wider idea of the Other as similar in more absolute terms. It is the statement of this idea that will allow the emergence of an universalizing ethics of human rights.