An Introduction to a Profound Grasp of the UDHR
During 22 months of hard work, dozens of women and men delivered the UDHR as a standard document for human rights.
If the meanings of the document’s concepts are not standardised, the UDHR becomes either a decorative text or a “standard without standard contents”.
The UDHR is a serious text. It is for enforcement or, more accurately, for materialising by humans.
A superficial reading of the UDHR cannot lead to its enforcement or the realisation of the peace and brotherhood the founders intended.
All concepts and terms used in the UDHR shall be understood for their enforcement. For instance, you must understand what “Justice” means, where you can find it and how you can exercise it.
How can you achieve “Justice” when you don’t know what it is?
Neglects of Scholastic Philosophy(Academic Philosophy) caused us not to understand the UDHR, and when we couldn’t grasp that text, we couldn’t enforce it. Our ignorance caused a text designed for engineering to be distorted into a decorative document.
As I do, if you believe that dialogue among people is the best way to bring peace and comfort to us (humans), then we can make the UDHR the hub of our dialogues.
Questioning is an integral part of the dialogue.
By posing questions about the concepts in the UDHR, we can provide an infinite source for our dialogue. By answering the questions correctly and logically, we can increase our knowledge and make that document more applicable.
To have a profound touch with the UDHR, good studying of my Six-volume books is inevitable, but I cannot expect all humans to have the time and desire to devote a lot of time to reading and understanding those books.
Thus, I repeat the entire text of the UDHR and make some words or phrases clickable. By pressing them, you will access related meanings or explanations.
The clickable terms cause the people who want to read and understand that document to achieve their goal.
Then, you will find the original text of the UDHR as it appears on the United Nations’ website immediately after this introduction. The only difference is that some concepts or phrases are explained via their links in this place.
As was stated previously, the UDHR is a serious text, and any word or sentence in that document can absorb interrogative words. However, you see the lack of interrogative words in the following text of the UDHR. For example, “dignity” is the first clickable term in the text of the UDHR. Upon clicking “dignity,” you should encounter this question: What does dignity mean?
I did not pose such a question; instead, I directly responded to the unasked question, left the creation of question marks to the readers, and focused straight on their meanings.
I did so because I desired your active involvement in studying that document.
Therefore, when you see in Article 26, “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality,” create questions such as these:
1. What does “full development of the human personality” mean?
2. Which type of education can guide us towards the “full development of the human personality” ?
Then, seek the solutions to your queries. If you can or can’t find them, click on clickable words, read my answers, and compare them with your own —if you have any.
This is an attempt to break the silence surrounding the meanings of concepts left unclear since 1948.
I hope that other thinkers will critique my definitions. If they do, I will have fulfilled my objective: establishing a dialogue about the contents of the UDHR.
Bahman Azadfar, 15th December 2023, Boras, Sweden