Democracy and human rights from our America

Abstract

It is ultimately about the constitution of humanity as a matter of reflection that the text attempts. The constitution of humanity runs through the history of our species from its most remote origins to the present; it is the history of a conflictive and never-ending constitution. In the proposed text, it is understood that it is what concern us as practitioners of the profession of philosophy, an authentic philosophical problem insofar as it is part of our socio-cultural situation, both globally considered, and that of the current situation in Latin America, which within it, especially involves us. Democracy and human rights specify this problematic –socio-cultural and philosophical- as institutional mediations that diverse and opposing humanities have been elaborating within the perspective of our constitution as humanity. It is not enough to affirm these mediations to achieve that constitution; it is necessary to discern both – democracy and human rights- so that a sense that has become hegemonic, making them functional to anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian economic structures does not consolidate and gain legitimacy. The text contributes to this discernment as a contribution to the construction of democracy and human rights in an alternative sense to the hegemonic one that disputes legitimacy. The place of enunciation of the text, which is part of the claim to legitimacy, is the topical-utopian “we” implied in “our America”, which in line with José Martí’s Our America de 1891 reflected on when referring to our Latin America. Latin American Philosophy provides the philosophical mediation that, from our America as a place of explicit enunciation puts into action to elucidate the problem of democracy and human rights, as a contribution to our critical understanding as Latin America and as a global humanity in the perspective of our humanization.