The Human Rights After the Spanish Civil War: A essay about the catholic thinking of Vallet de Goytisolo and his lectures of Michel Villey

Abstract

The aim of this study is to characterize the weak discussion about the Human Rights in Franco’s time, not in general, but by testing Vallet de Goytisolo’s works. This author is deeply infl uenced by the lectures of M. Villey, Parisinian philosopher well-known by his denial of Human Rights. A comparative study of these authors will be done focusing on two – faced aspects : the strength and fragility of their doctrines. Both authors are defi ned as supporters of the Methodical Realism (Aristotelian-Thomist school), although their arguments and sources are very similar, their purposes and conclusions are different. Juan Vallet does not reject the Human Rights, but he prefers the denomination of ethical-legal principles, that is, moral categories that must guide the legislative and judicial praxis. The root of these ethical-legal principles is the ethical-natural principles extracted at natural order, and the duty of all authority is to adequate his rules to the nature of things, exactly as in Saint Thomas. In Vallet’s works, the theoretical reason for this rejection is that the notion of fundamental right is scientifi cally unsatisfactory to understand the complexity of the social reality. The practical reason defends that the Civil right should not be confused with the power or faculty of the individual, errors of nominalism, but the origin of these powers is to be found in the context of a particular legal relationship. However, in the end, this catalogue of rights will be not feasible for the citizen, since these rights are at the mercy of the legislator or the judge. They are liable to obey these principles, only morally.