WERNER HAMACHERexisted. The goal of this reminder, this explication and publication of the rights of man,
this opening up of something that, as such, is already revealed and accessible to all, is to
eradicate the ‘‘sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments.’’
Political corruption, therefore, stems from a lack of cognition (whether through ignorance
or forgetfulness) and from a lack in the practical application of such cognition (through
contempt): it is a deficiency of the self-presence of man in his rights and of the presence
of the Supreme Being in man. The Declaration becomes necessary only in order to mend
this deficiency, ‘‘so that this pronouncement, being constantly before all the members of
the social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties.’’ The inalienable
character of these human rights—and thus of human essence—finds a warranty ‘‘in the
presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being,’’ because this is the only way in
which the essential characteristics of the humanity of man can be secured. The inalienable
and public substance of man, the substance of his rights, is therefore presented under the
protection of the revelatory and inalienable qualities of the manifest.
The substance of man is the theological, the onto-theo-logico-political substance of
the language of the Declaration itself. It is the kerygma of the kerygmatic, the manifesta-
tion of being manifest, the revelation of revelation. Man is not a blank spot in this declara-
tion, but rather the one who, through it, assures himself of his own essence, the one who
traces this essence back to its highest source, and the one who elevates his presence to a
public, universal, and unforgettable fact, which is, precisely, his human nature. Human
essence, correctly recognized and recognized as right, does not merely assert itself through
this Declaration as through a foreign medium. The essence of the human and its human-
ityisitself andconsists inthis Declaration, since it makes itself manifest and actual in it.
In the Declaration, the human announces itselfclare et distincteas juridical essence, as the
process and product of an autoenactment and autoverification carried out in universal
consensus. In the very act of this self-declaration it declares—explicates, publishes, and
enacts—each of the four fundamental rights enumerated in the first Declaration of 1789:
liberty (in which the freedom of choice between action and nonaction is implemented),
property (in which this freedom is asserted aspropriumeven before any possession of
goods), security (in which human juridical essence is guaranteed as a perpetual right),
and resistance to oppression (by which the oppression of man’s freedom to proclaim
himself is prevented).
The implication that human rights are the form in which human essence articulates
itself and that this form is the juridical one of rights and their perpetual declaration is
rendered more precise by the second implication of the rights of man: human rights, as
enduring as they may be, arise from a moment of decision and form a conclusion. ‘‘The
representatives of the French people,’’ it is written in the Declaration of 1789, ‘‘have
determined to set forth... the rights of man.’’ And the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of December 10, 1948, which follows the rhetoric of the French Declaration in all
decisive points, proclaims in its preamble that the General Assembly of the United Na-
PAGE 672672.................16224$ CH34 10-13-06 12:37:36 PS