The notion of the Spirit of Brotherhood in article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Conceptual challenges in liberal societies

According to Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the notion of “Fraternity” is recognized as a human duty and as it stipulates: “All human beings … should act toward another in the spirit of brotherhood”. While The Declaration is partially influenced by religious terms such as “Fraternity”, most of its concepts are based on Western individualistic philosophy which suits the social and economic structure of liberal societies. This paper is an attempt to find whether the notion of Fraternity which requires “to be responsible toward others”, “sense of human unity”, “generosity” … could be applied in liberal societies and accepted as moral values. For this purpose, it studies the concept from three different perspectives: Philosophical, Ontological and Values of the liberal societies.