Allies of those experiencing injustice or oppression face a dilemma: to be neutral in the face of calls to solidarity risks siding with oppressors, yet to speak or act on behalf of others risks compounding the injustice. We identify what we call ‘a normative demand for deference’ (NDD) to those with lived experience as a response to this dilemma. Yet, while the NDD is prevalent, albeit sometimes implicitly so, in contemporary solidarity theory and activist practice, it remains under-theorised. In this (...) article, we analyse the potential benefits of adhering to the NDD, highlighting both a commonly accepted epistemic benefit, and a neglected but important good in bearing witness. Yet adhering to the NDD also raises real challenges. While the literature focuses on a gold standard model of direct engagement, we defend a valuable role for a second-order form of engagement through reading, films, and similar media, which, we argue, is particularly salient for global and transnational solidarity, an important element of contemporary global politics. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In a famous passage in A Theory of Justice, Rawls had an interesting view on fraternity. However, he did not develop it further. The first aim of this article is to show that there are at least two possible interpretations of what Rawls wrote about fraternity: the narrow interpretation and the wide interpretation. We will focus on the narrow interpretation and attract attention to the kinds of problems it presents. In the last section we will assert that there are different (...) ways of conceptualising the ideal of fraternity and that Rawls’s general approach to the issue was just one of them and maybe not the most attractive one. (shrink)

The complexities of how justice comes to be realized, and by which agents, is a relatively neglected element in contemporary theories of justice. This has left several crucial questions about agency and justice undertheorized, such as why some particular agents are responsible for realizing justice, how their contribution towards realizing justice should be understood, and what role agents such as activists and community leaders play in realizing justice. We aim to contribute towards a better understanding of the landscape of these (...) kinds of questions. First, we argue that theorists should distinguish between (i) agents who are responsible for realizing justice, but not committed to it, (ii) agents who are not responsible for realizing justice, but who are committed to it, and (iii) agents who are both responsible for and committed to realizing justice. Second, we discuss how to incorporate agents of justice more robustly into theorizing about justice. (shrink)

This paper reclaims the concept of solidarity for democratic theory. It does this by proposing a theory of solidarity as social involvement that is construed through the integration of three better known conceptions of solidarity that have played an influential role in the political thought of the last two centuries. The paper begins by explaining why solidarity should receive more sustained attention from political theorists with an interest in democracy, and proceeds by presenting two indispensability arguments. Section three outlines the (...) three rival conceptions of solidarity and contends that whilst individually incomplete, each provides an important insight, so that a fuller and more satisfying conception of solidarity can be developed by weaving together some features of these three conceptions. This task is undertaken in section four, which introduces the theory of solidarity as social involvement, defining solidarity in terms of acting-for and acting-with. Section five briefly discusses some of its potential implications for democratic theory, before bringing the article to a close. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In der öffentlichen Debatte über die Corona-Warn-App kann der Solidaritätsbegriff als wichtiger, aber inhaltlich umstrittener normativer Bezugspunkt gelten. So stehen hier unterschiedliche Solidaritätsrekurse mit heterogenen Voraussetzungen, normativen Implikationen und praktischen Konsequenzen nebeneinander, die einer medizinethischen Untersuchung bedürfen. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es Ziel des Beitrags, _erstens_ die Bandbreite der Verwendungsweisen des Solidaritätsbegriffs in der öffentlichen Debatte zur Corona-Warn-App anschaulich zu machen sowie _zweitens_ die Voraussetzungen und normativen Implikationen dieser Verwendungsweisen herauszuarbeiten und einer ethischen Bewertung zu unterziehen. Dazu stelle ich (...) nach einer kurzen Einführung in die Corona-Warn-App und einer Vergegenwärtigung der Grundzüge des Solidaritätskonzepts vier Beispiele aus der öffentlichen Debatte zur Corona-Warn-App dar, die mit Blick auf die zugrundeliegende Identifikation, die Solidaritätsgruppe, den solidarischen Beitrag sowie das normative Ziel erhebliche Unterschiede aufweisen. Sie unterstreichen die Notwendigkeit weiterführender Maßstäbe, um ihre Legitimität zu bewerten. Dazu greife ich auf vier normative Kriterien einer kontextsensitiven, moralisch gehaltvollen Solidaritätskonzeption zurück (Solidaritätsoffenheit, gestaltbare Inklusivität, Angemessenheit des solidarischen Beitrags, normative Abhängigkeit) und evaluiere auf dieser Grundlage die vorgestellten Solidaritätsrekurse ethisch. Für alle dargestellten Solidaritätsrekurse lassen sich in der Folge kritische Rückfragen formulieren. Dabei werden einerseits die Potenziale und Limitationen von Solidaritätsrekursen in öffentlichen Debatten deutlich. Andererseits werden Schlussfolgerungen möglich, wann eine Tracing-App tatsächlich als solidarische Technologie zur Pandemiebekämpfung verstanden werden kann. (shrink)

Some healthcare systems are said to be grounded in solidarity because healthcare is funded as a form of mutual support. This article argues that health care systems that are grounded in solidarity have the right to penalise some users who are responsible for their poor health. This derives from the fact that solidary systems involve both rights and obligations and, in some cases, those who avoidably incur health burdens violate obligations of solidarity. Penalties warranted include direct patient contribution to costs, (...) and lower priority treatment, but not typically full exclusion from the healthcare system. We also note two important restrictions on this argument. First, failures of solidary obligations can only be assumed under conditions that are conducive to sufficiently autonomous choice, which occur when patients are given ‘Golden Opportunities’ to improve their health. Second, because poor health does not occur in a social vacuum, an insistence on solidarity as part of healthcare is legitimate only if all members of society are held to similar standards of solidarity. We cannot insist upon, and penalise failures of, solidarity only for those who are unwell, and who cannot afford to evade the terms of public health. (shrink)

Many lament that solidarity is declining, implying there is something good about it; but what is solidarity and why should we want it? Here, we defend an original functionalist re-interpretation of solidarity. Political solidarity plays a key functional role in a polity’s persistence through time. Thus, we should want institutions that foster solidarity. This paper is divided into three parts. In the first, we draw on the philosophy of biology to pinpoint what counts as a proper function, in a way (...) that is naturalistic, objective, and selective. On this aetiological account, a sharp distinction between functional needs (e.g. the pumping of blood) and functional mechanisms (e.g. the valve that pumps blood) is drawn. In the second part of the paper, we propose that solidarity should be understood as an aetiological function of society. This new conception sheds light on the widely acknowledged, yet seldom clarified connection between two common readings of solidarity: solidarity as a set of feelings of mutual kinship (its functional need), and solidarity as a set of redistributive institutions (a key functional mechanism). The third part concludes that this new functional conception of solidarity provides normative reasons to foster solidarity. (shrink)