Gadamer and Scholz on Solidarity: Disclosing, Avowing, and Performing Solidaristic Ties with Human and Natural Others

ABSTRACT

This essay is concerned with Gadamer’s reflections on solidarity and practice as found in several of his later writings. While Gadamer offers a robust explanation of practice, practical reason, and how both are operative in solidarities, his investigations of solidarity are in no way systematic. He does, however, distinguish two aspects of solidarity, viz. what one might call “natural solidarity” and “avowed solidarity”. In contrast to natural solidarities, avowed solidarities require an intentional decision and commitment to act with others for a common cause. Since Gadamer’s writings on solidarity are more sketches than detailed treatises, we will bring his work into dialogue with feminist and political philosopher Sally Scholz. Scholz has devoted significant research to the concept of political solidarity. Like Gadamer, Scholz too is concerned with how we engage natural others and how our present practices harm and exploit them. By bringing Scholz’s and Gadamer’s work into dialogue, we gain a better understanding of different facets and types of solidarity, how they interrelate and influence one other, and how their interrelations might help to effect positive social and political changes for all who inhabit this world.

Notes

1 Throughout my essay the term “natural others” functions as an inclusive category, which includes non-human animals, forests, ecosystems, etc. In short, it refers to all natural others (including humans). The term “earth others” refers to all natural, non-human others.

2 Gadamer, ‘The Diversity of Europe’, 235–36.

3 As will become clear later when we discuss Gadamer’s description of solidarity as a “promise of a payment of friendship,” the commitment to act for a common cause is intertwined with a commitment to promote the other’s flourishing.

4 See, for example, Lawn, Gadamer, esp. chapter 7.

5 See, for example, Warnke, ‘Solidarity and Tradition in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics’.

6 Gadamer, ‘The Relevance of the Beautiful’, 49; hereafter RB. Gadamer, ‘Die Aktualität des Schönen’, 139; hereafter, GW8.

7 See, for example, Gadamer, ‘Friendship and Solidarity’, 3. Gadamer, ‘Freundschaft und Solidarität [1999]’, 56.

8 See, for example, Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, esp. 85–6.

9 Gadamer, ‘From Word to Concept’, 119.

10 Gadamer, ‘Friendship and Solidarity’, 3. [‘Freundschaft und Solidarität’, 56].

11 Ibid., 4. [Ibid., 57].

12 Ibid., 5. [Ibid., 57].

13 Ibid., 7. [Ibid., 60]. The full German text reads: “Aber daß Heimat und Herkunft eine Bindung darstellt, eine Art Gemeinsamkeit, eine Art Solidarität echter Art ist, da braucht es das nicht erst, daß man sich solidarisch erklärt” (ibid.).

14 Ibid., 10. [Ibid., 63].

15 See also, Walhof, ‘Friendship, Otherness, and Gadamer’s Politics of Solidarity’, esp. pp. 571–75. Walhof argues that for Gadamer, solidarities are not created, as Rorty stresses, but rather are disclosed and brought to awareness.

16 Gadamer, ‘Friendship and Solidarity’, 11. [[‘Freundschaft und Solidarität’, 63].

17 See, for example, Gadamer, RB, p. 40 [GW8, 130].

18 Ibid., 11. [Ibid., 63–4].

19 Ibid., 11. [Ibid., 64]. However, as noted earlier, Gadamer is not always consistent in his terminology. For example, he also refers to natural solidarities as genuine, true, and authentic solidarities [Echt Solidaritäten].

20 Ibid., 11. [Ibid., 64].

21 Ibid., 9. [Ibid., 62].

22 Ibid., 9. [Ibid., 62].

23 Ibid., 9. [Ibid., 62]. I have slightly altered David Vessey’s translation by inserting the word “fully” to reflect the German text.

24 Ibid., 12. [Ibid., 64–5].

25 Practices are also central to and in many ways constitutive of traditions.

26 Gadamer, ‘What is Practice?’, 87.

27 Ibid., 81.

28 Gadamer, ‘What is Practice’, 82.

29 Ibid., 85.

30 Ibid., 84–5.

31 Gadamer, ‘From Word to Concept’, 110, 111.

32 Ibid., 113.

33 Ibid., 114.

34 Ibid., 117.

35 Ibid.

36 For Scholz’s discussion of civic solidarity, see Scholz, Political Solidarity. In broad strokes, civic solidarity “is found in the obligations of civil society to protect citizens against vulnerabilities through the provision of healthcare, welfare, and consumer and environmental protection” (ibid., 5).

37 Scholz, ‘Political Solidarity and The More-Than-Human World’, 82.

38 For a more detailed account of political solidarity, see Scholz, Political Solidarity, esp. chapters 2 and 3.

39 Scholz, ‘Political Solidarity’, 82.

40 On the role of difference and otherness in Gadamer’s hermeneutics, see Schmidt, ‘Respecting Others’,359–79 and Schmidt, ‘Critique’, 202–17.

41 Ibid., 83.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 See, for example, Mallory, ‘Val Plumwood and Ecofeminist Political Solidarity’, 3–21.

45 Scholz, ‘Political Solidarity’, 84.

46 Ibid.

47 For example, in Plumwood’s book, Environmental Culture, she argues that humans and natural others act together in political solidarity. In Scholz’s judgment, for Plumwood’s claims regarding interspecies communicative dialogue and agency to work, she needs to provide “a more developed theory of political subjectivity for earth others” (Scholz, ‘Political Solidarity’, 94).

48 See, for example, Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other, Schmidt, ‘Respecting Others’, and Davey, Unquiet Understanding, esp. 161–70.

49 Gadamer, TM, 361.

50 For example, although epistemic awareness of a particular injustice may and often does foster greater self-understanding and strengthen group bonds, it does not constitute the basis of political solidarity. One could have an acute epistemic awareness of how a particular ethnicity is oppressed and yet choose to do nothing to liberate the group. In such a case, one is not exercising political solidarity with a particular ethnic group, as one has not made a commitment to act with others to oppose the social injustices that continue to oppress them. Perhaps one could say that epistemic awareness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for political solidarity.

51 Scholz, ‘Political Solidarity’, 95–6.

52 Gadamer, ‘From Word to Concept’, 117.

53 Scholz, ‘Political Solidarity’, 96.

54 I am grateful to Sally Scholz, Lawrence Schmidt, and Mike Vendsel for providing helpful feedback on an earlier version of this essay. I am likewise indebted to the participants at the recent NASPH conference for their patient lingering with my essay, and I especially thank Dan Tate, Nicholas Davey, and Jean Grondin for the post-conference dialogues and suggestions, which have no doubt have substantially improved the essay.