The Concept of Solidarity – A Humean Perspective

ABSTRACT

In this article, I define solidarity as the willingness to share with people we do not know personally but whom we consider to be equal to ourselves on the basis of some common feature allowing for identification. In the spirit of David Hume, I explain how identification can be developed through a learning process that leads us to ever more encompassing forms of sympathy. Then I show how solidarity, thus defined, is implemented in the institutions of the welfare state. Finally, I present arguments for not making solidarity too much dependent on responsible behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Solidarity
• identification
• social security
• theories of justice
• individual responsibility

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the difference between thick and thin definitions (of democracy), see Van Parijs, Sauver la solidarité, 29.

2 A survey of the literature on tolerance and indifference can be found in Heyd, Toleration: An Elusive Virtue

3 Aristotle, Politics. 1155 b 34 and 1156 a 9.

4 Marx, Misère de la Philosophie, MEW 4, 180.

5 See the comments of Annette Baier in A Progress of Sentiments.

6 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others.

7 Smith, 24 Theory of Moral Sentiments (and the whole of Book III).

8 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, 277.

9 Paradoxically David Hume, who has been one of the first philosophers to have advocated the separation of is and ought, also develops an ethics based on the principle of sympathy, which seems to violate this separation. By the way, Hume’s view on the is-ought division is notoriously controversial and hard to interpret.

10 Durkheim, Division du travail social.

11 Latour, Où suis-je?; Sheldrake, Entangled Life; de Waal, Primates and Philosophers.

12 Latour, Fictional Planetarium.

13 Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue.

14 Segall, Health, Luck and Justice.