The monograph Personalizam i Univerzalna deklaracija o ljudskim pravima (Personalism and Universal Declaration of Human Rights) written by Ivan Čulo has just been published by the Institute of European Studies.
This work analyzes and points to the significance and contribution of personalism to modern legal creating of human rights. Personalism, as a philosophical direction in which the center is a ‘person’, was most intensely formed between the two world wars in France, with the most important representatives being Jacques Maritain, Nikolai Berdyaev, Denis de Rougemont, Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Mounier. Personalists have had built a complete and systematic philosophical anthropology followed by political philosophy on the basis of which they have developed their own philosophy of law – a contemporary version of the natural law concept. Personalistic concepts of universalism, person and human dignity have contributed to the creation of modern human rights, modern European integration and other positive movements in the 20th century. The concept of the so-called modern ‘human rights’ is tied with the fourth decade of the twentieth century and is connected with the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The work points out that the most prominent thinker in the defense of the concept of human rights was J. Maritain and that Universal Declaration is a part of the tradition of natural law and personalistic humanism. The dominant personalistic influence on European integration and on European human rights acts, in particular on the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights, is also analyzed. The work points out on the reflection of personalistic thought in national constitutional laws.
Dr. Ivan Čulo is a Croatian lawyer and philosopher, lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Zagreb. He is the author and editor of several books and the author of more than 80 scientific and professional papers in the fields of law, philosophy, history and social thought.
