Solidarity as a Challenge and a Task (original) (raw)
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Solidarity in the Context of Migration: A Philosophical Perspective
Historia i Świat
Solidarity is a permanent component of social life. In this sense, it becomes a transformative value that clearly connects people and their projects with others. The current situation in the world sharpens the issue of human solidarity. War, migration crises, aggressive globalization, territorial elitism, consumerism, populism, and the ideologization of social discourse lead to the distortion or elimination of the idea of solidarity. Nowadays, there are multi-level and multi-directional changes and transformations in individual and social ethos. Therefore, understanding solidarity requires an analysis of the context in which it is applied, as well as basic scientific assumptions. The article addresses this issue in the context of migration. It consists of three main elements: 1/ Firstly, it explains the philosophical phenomenon of solidarity as a very complex and multi-faceted individual and social reality; 2/ It portrays solidarity as a European virtue and value, which today seems ...
Solidarity as Necessity: Subject, Structure, Practices
Unchaining Solidarities: Reflections on Cooperation and Mutual Aid" edited by Petr Kouba, Catherine Malabo, Dan Swain and Petr Urban. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021
Within the discourse on intersectionality, the status of the relation between partial identities that originate from different social structures/discourses is still fiercely debated. In this chapter, I argue in favor of mutual aid as a heuristic tool capable of providing an answer to this conundrum before going on to sketch the politics that derive from it. I contend that the articulation of and relationship between identities within the body of the subject are best explained by Kropotkin's model of mutual aid, as most recently reinterpreted by Catherine Malabou. As I argue, mutual aid is best understood as a socialontological constant and turn to to Malabou's recalibration of mutual aid as a social, moral, and dynamic concept. Applying these characteristics to illustrate how different identities are 'chained', as Malabou puts it, allows us to conceive of an overarching identity that is fluid and processual (social), consisting of equally participating identities (moral) that are in need of each other to be intelligible (dynamic). This mutual and interdependent interplay of identities leads to the subject's final appearance (événement) as a common/collective, oscillating between the identities it contains. As for the politics that such a theorization of subjectivity gives way to, I suggest that the affinities between Spinoza, Kropotkin and Malabou shed light on this matter. Following Malabou, who echoes Kropotkin (and who in turn echoes Spinoza), the practices-and therefore also the politics-of the subject are naturalistic to such an extent that they demand that the subject informs its actions and transforms its life-sphere according to its own nature, i.e. according and corresponding to the history of its ways and modes of production. The latter is a point that is present throughout Kropotkin's Mutual Aid and which he attributes explicitly to Spinoza in his Ethics. It is equally brought up by Malabou, not only in her recent reading of Kropotkin but also in her earlier Ontology of the Accident. Within this framework, the subject's ability to engage in collective practices should be ascribed to its eventuation as a collective and an amalgam of different identities. From this perspective, collective agency and collective practices must be acknowledged as the subject's natural, and therefore necessary, forms of agency and practice. Seen in this light, and against predominant understandings of solidarity as an ethical mode of comportment, the understanding of solidarity I propose here reveals the latter as a social-ontological vector of the subject's structuration and as the form of its political practices.
The paper provides an analysis of the relationship between the concepts of justice and solidarity. The point of departure of the analysis is Ruud ter Meulen’s claim that these concepts are different but mutually complementary, i.e. they are two sides of the same coin. In the paper two alternative accounts of the relationship are proposed. According to the first one, solidarity can be defined in terms of justice, i.e. as a special variety of liberal justice, viz. social liberal justice, which, apart from the value of liberty, also stresses the importance of the value of equality. An example of such a theory is Rawls’ theory of justice, within which the value of equality is ‘encoded’ in the principle of fair equality of opportunity and in the difference principle. According to the second account, solidarity is an expression of a special type of social relationships – the so-called ‘thick relationships’, which (as opposed to ‘thin relationships’) are non-superficial, positive, their para-digmatic examples being family and friendship; in other words, the rules of solidarity are rules that are built into ‘thick relationships’. On the first account, justice and solidarity are not different, while on the second account they are different but mutually exclusive rather than mutually com-plementary. In the last part of the paper some remarks on the social causes of solidarity are made.
Humanity, Solidarity, Morality and Partnership
2005
The context of gender issues in the ecumenical movement is surrounded by many concentric circles. It is human rights that are the common basis for all people of goodwill: nations are united in their fi rm belief and acceptance that humanity is one, organic, coherent and mutually interdependent. From this notion fl ows the need for using power to serve the aims of solidarity and building community. Our community or koinonia is the overall dimension of our moral or ethical behaviour. Therefore, the inner life of the Holy Trinity should serve as a model for our human communities as well, where we can grow in partnership and unity. I. Human Rights (and United Nations) The broadest context in which we need to understand the place of gender issues in the ecumenical movement is, fi rst of all, the dimension of human rights. They in their history have three generations. Their fi rst generation contains the bourgeois freedoms of property. After these, in the second generation we fi nd labour and social security. And fi nally, in the third phase, there are development and the rights of future generations. The participation and infl uence of the ecumenical movement on the development of the human rights is evident when looking, for example, at the case of O. Frederick Nolde, who was the fi rst director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA). He was the one who drafted the United Nations' (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Nagypál Szabolcs (1974) is a graduate in ecumenical theology, law and literature. He is a theologian in the Benedictine Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI) in Pannonhalma, and teaches philosophy in ELTE University in Budapest. He was chairperson of KÖD (Magyar SCM) and WSCF CESR; a member of the ERC and ExCo. He co-edited the books:
Transnational Solidarity: Organic or Proletarian
Since the days of the Schuman Declaration European integration has been predicated upon the confidence that increasing economic interpenetration and interdependence will in the long run give rise to solidarity among the peoples of Europe. Such an “organic” solidarity is supposed to involve not only abstention from violence in the conduct of international affairs, but also a growing readiness, on the part of Europeans, to make sac-rifices for the benefit of nationals of other Member States and on behalf of the larger European house. The following contribution would first like to analyse the moral psychology underlying this project by drawing on the classical Durkheimian framework. Durkheim assumed plausibly that prior mutual sympathies are re-quired in order for market integration to exercise an “organic” solidarity-inducing effect. The result is what one might call genuine organic solidarity. It is closely tied to widely shared ideas of justice and fair opportunities. It will be argued that it indicates a closer connectedness than the etiquette of doux commerce. At the same time, Durkheim believed that any growing division of labour also gives rise to a new form of soli-darity that is remarkably cosmopolitan in its orientation. Whether or how it truly integrates remains to be seen. Remarkably, it operates in a mechanical way, not least for the reason of being triggered by the spectacle of human misery. Substantively, it is difficult to reconcile with the bounded horizon of organic solidarity, from which it nonetheless emerges. The dialectic of cosmopolitan and organic solidarity explains the conflicting moral sentiments that beset us when we are confronted with phe-nomena like the mass exodus of the population from for-lorn places in the Muslim world. Durkheim’s work is amazingly relevant to our times.
Solidarity and Humanitarianism
N/A, 2019
This paper constitutes an examination of Vasak's theory of third generation rights and informal solidarity in post crisis Greece This paper will be guided by the central question; what is the value of solidarity rights and how does informal social solidarity shed light on a failure of formal bodies of human rights? This essay will examine the import of Karel Vasak's theory of "third generation" solidarity rights within contemporary research on human rights. A concern for solidarity rights, and a social practice of solidarity have emerged in response to the refugee crisis. In particular, this essay will consider post 2007 Greece following the sovereign debt crisis and the ongoing refugee crisis. Solidarity rights are relevant to the anthropology of human rights as various crises have lead to expanding notions of human rights, humanitarianism and the role of solidarity in respect to these. This essay will not concern itself with the translation of "third generation" solidarity rights within formal international law, instead, the prevalence of social solidarity in the face of structural failure will be the primary focus. The failure of formal bodies and transnational human rights actors to implement human rights creates space for informal social solidarity. This proposition will be supported by ethnographic research conducted in post crisis Greece. Greece is an interesting site to consider issues of human rights, solidarity and humanitarianism. A humanitarian milieu emerged in Greece as a response to the refugee crisis. A failure of larger structural forces, such as the state and other international bodies created a vacuum that was filled by what many Greeks (as well as Vasak) would call "solidarity". In fact, even state representatives as well as the Prime Minister employ it; solidarity has entered the Greek vernacular (Rozakou, 2016)
Critical Times, 2020
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Solidarity; syncretism of peace and friendship
Center for Human Rights Studies, 2009
Considered as a fundamental virtue in the classical political thought, “friendship” even outshined the other important virtues like “justice”. However, the emergence of modernity and the consequent epistemological rupture caused to the prevalence of other concepts as “security” and “peace” over “friendship”. Thus, humans, as the wolves of each other, forgot about classical virtues including “friendship”. However, the contemporary criticism of modern thought shows the necessity of revival and reinterpretation of classical political concepts. Meanwhile, returning to the importance of “friendship” in the classical thought, Jürgen Habermas syncretizes “friendship” and “peace”, believing that with making “solidarity” central, those two concepts can be realized simultaneously in the society. Thus, “solidarity” is the source of legitimate norm establishing in the modern society. yle='font-size: 11.0pt;letter-spacing:-.2pt'>Plato’s opposition to democracy –indeed only to a certain kind of it– shows that there is no necessary correlation between justice and peace on the one hand and democracy on the other hand. In this paper, having sated Plato’s view on justice, peace and democracy we will show what he regards as pre-conditions to reach justice and peace.
Reflecting on the Principles and Problems of Solidarity.pdf
Filozofija i Društvo, 2017
This review essay takes a critical look at two recently published edited volumes, both focusing on the notion and problems of solidarity. Solidarity: Theory and Practice (Laitinen and Pessi, eds.) attempts to unpack the complex idea of solidaristic practice by looking at a whole range of related concepts, such as the social brain, collective intentionality, empathy, work, and voluntary organizations. The Strains of Commitment: The Political Sources of Solidarity in Diverse Societies (Banting and Kymlicka, eds.), on the other hand, focuses on a concrete problem: the generation and maintenance of redistributive solidarity within societies marked by diversity. Still, both volumes take a thorough and systematic look at existing scholarship on solidarity, and by encompassing both the theoretical and the empirical, mark a significant step forward in deepening our understanding of the role and place of solidarity in general social theory.