Republicanism, iusnaturalism and human rights: recovering an (almost) forgotten history

Abstract

The present article investigates the enormous historical and philosophical falsification exercise carried out on the subject of the origin and development of human rights. The vested ignorance, the appropriation and deprivation by liberalism and orthodox Marxism of the traditions, struggles and rights negotiated by republicanism as they came to be, are analyzed here from a historical, juridical and philosophical point of view that shows the existent connection between thinkers such as Pericles, Aristotle, Cicero, Marsilius of Padua, Machiavelli, Harrington, Milton, Locke, Rousseau and Kant, among others, and their contribution to the development of a nucleus of transcendental ideas to those rights and democracy, as instruments and destination locations of the construction of societies in which Constitutional Law and its guarantees, democratic mechanisms, and the main republican institutions, are conditions of citizens’ freedom.