Solidarity and Community: Thinking Today with Jan Patočka

Abstract

It is difficult to speak about Patočka’s political philosophy because he didn’t analyze at the conceptual level issues such as democratic functioning, social justice or state theory. However, Patočka’s originality consists in analyzing from a phenomenological point of view such notions as community, war, history, polemos and solidarity. According to him, political life is not only characterized by antagonism, but also by solidarity. The traditional concept of social solidarity refers to the mutual responsibility that is established between members of a social group on a common ground. Being in solidarity with others requires becoming part of a whole in which the differences between the parties become invisible. In other words, the concept of social solidarity seems to lead us towards an understanding of community that rests upon a common and solid foundation, or a final purpose. Patočka criticizes this kind of political and social foundationalizm. Political solidarity is a unity of individuals each responding to a particular situation of injustice, oppression, social vulnerability. Those who join in a solidarity of the shaken do not obtain a common ground which shapes society. The solidarity of the shaken is the solidarity of those who have lost their trust in all forms of ideological, economic and spritual mobilization of society because of a decisive event. Thinking about political solidarity allows us to think about the emancipatory possibility of social action and the obstacles to the realization of these possibilities.

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