Philosophy

Arguing over rights: man is not an abstraction

Communitarian discourse, currently in vogue and carried by minorities in need of an existence rather than victims of real repression, is torpedoing the fine 19th-century idea that the freedom of minorities should be preserved and defended, by transforming it into a weapon against freedom of expression, which includes, among other things, the right to humor. It is to be feared that the controversy provoked by French-speaking comedienne Claude Inga-Barbey's sketch dramatizing the difficulties of naming gender transformations illustrates an era marked by the thought police. From a philosophical point of view, this situation conceals an opposition between two types of universalism, that of proclaiming the rights of Man versus the rights of men.

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