|| A Note On Solidarity || The M-W Unabridged Dictionary defines ‘solidarity’ as one might expect: “an entire union of interests and responsibilities in a group : community of interests, objectives, or standards.” This is not a primarily-political notion, as Habermas seems to want in his Athens lecture. Indeed, the English dictionary’s exemplar is Joseph Conrad: “...solidarity that knits together innumerable hearts.” In dwelling with the problem of solidarity in Habermas’s Athens lecture, I would want to dwell with the knitting as such. There is an appropriate distance from the ground of group solidarity in kindredness (I believe) and development of that into sustained political motivation. That doesn’t undermine Habermas’s designs for political internationalism, but it might fruitfully change one’s sense of national intransigence (which may be based in ethnolinguistic history, rather than willful nationalism). What is the nature of our belonging that *creates* sustained group union—the so-called condition for the possibility of union—which sustains interest in “the” political? I think that Habermas’s view can be enriched by such questioning, not undermined by it. Next month, wonderful Martha Nussbaum is publishing her new _Political Emotions_, which is at least the kind of thing one might find important for understanding the *nature* of solidarity *in complement* to pleas for identification with transnational union.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 01:44:56 +0000
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