Law and solidarity nowadays in Europe (original) (raw)

Nowadays, in the social, political, religious and philosophical spheres, and in general in public discourse, there is a renewed discussion of the principle of solidarity, with a constant presence of references to it and a conspicuous literature dealing with its various aspects. However, there is still a certain vagueness about the vocabulary used, sometimes with curious confusions, because the concept is used indiscriminately to talk about, for example, consanguineous unions, belonging to the same social class, connivance of power, ties between members of the same corporation, etc. Among the most recent studies reconstructing the origin and development of this concept, the most noteworthy is the book, translated from French, by Marie-Claude Blais, Solidarity. Storia di un'idea (Solidarity. History of an idea), edited by B. Magni, Giuffré, Milan 2012; and, then, for its impact in the European context, Malcom Ross and Yuri Borgmann-Prebil, Promoting solidarity in the European Union, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010. In Italy, there is the essay by Stefano Rodotà, published in 2014 but reissued for the Economica Laterza series, which in its dense and articulated treatment aims at restoring the use of the term to a clearly distinguishable peculiarity and thus dissolving the ambiguities that often accompany it; and, then, intends to highlight the fact that the denial of the idea of solidarity as an instance of orientation and evaluation of actions in the public and private sphere is equivalent to "an act of arbitrariness, an undue amputation of the legal order" (p. 5). For these reasons, according to Rodotà, on the one hand it is necessary to rediscover the deeper meaning of the principle of solidarity and on the other hand to take into account that it finds its precise place in international documents, such as the European Treaty of Lisbon, in many Constitutions and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union itself. The author believes that the essential character of the concept of solidarity is not to be found in some sort of naturalistic presupposition, but that it can ultimately be traced back to