Today I came to reflect on something that Sartre says. He says that if we make the aristotelian argument that all things are defined by their characteristics. And if man is mostly defined by his behaviour, then each man is existentially bound to others behaviour. From that, he argues, that man is ultimately responsible for his choices with regards to all of humanity, as his choice of behaviour outline what it is to be human. This is not a liberal philosophy. But there is, ofcourse, another assumption in this. It is the ontological commitment that man is. Sartre does commit to the object of man. Now, on to something else. If you reflect on the declaration of human rights, is is clear that it makes the same ontological commitment. The human rights declares what you are entitled to as a human being, but more importantly it assumes human being to be a meaningful category, and it makes the identification that all men belong to this category. Because of this, a society based on human rights cannot be liberal in an abstract sense. This is the contradictory nature of liberal democracies, that they are not ultimately about freedom, but about promoting a certain lifestyle and values. -lindus