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Meeting 6 “Human Rights in the Age of Man (Anthropocene), between Universalism and Relativism” By Miguel Benasayag Saturday, November 4, 2023 The exhaustion of modern rationality becomes perceptible in common sense. The Age of Man, the Anthropocene, is what is exhausted, after centuries where this figure was the center of everything, converted by itself into the subject of history, in contrast to the object of nature. This colonial way of appropriating life and thinking about the world has definitely found its limit. Today, the alleged progress hand in hand with rationality causes more harm and destruction than the benefits it can achieve. The defense of human rights does not escape the logic of the Anthropocene, given that life as a whole has not been incorporated into this process, despite the remarkable experiences that must be revalued. The analysis of the contrast between Universalism and Relativism allows us to enter into the debate on Human Rights 40 years after the restoration of democracy, always starting from the distinction in a concrete situation, in which a subject, an object and a context are only identifiable from the situation that includes them. It is not, of course, a question of falling into the obscurantism of relativism, but the question is disturbing: what is the defence of human rights today? Miguel Benasayag has developed a professional career as a research clinician, which articulates several areas, ranging from psychopathology, philosophy, biology and epistemology. The central axis of the work that began with Francisco Varela at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which has housed the Paris Brain and Spinal Cord Institute since 2010, and which contributes to the prevention and treatment of neurological or psychiatric diseases.