Abstract
The value of solidarity, which is exemplified in noble groups like the Civil Rights Movement along with more mundane teams, families and marriages, is distinctive in part because people are in solidarity over, for or with regard to something, such as common sympathies, interests, values, etc. I use this special feature of solidarity to resolve a longstanding puzzle about enacted social moral rules, which is, aren’t these things just heuristics, rules of thumb or means of coordination that we ‘fetishize’ or ‘worship’ if we stubbornly insist on sticking to them when we can do more good by breaking them? I argue that when we are in a certain kind of solidarity with others, united by social moral rules that we have established among ourselves, the rules we have developed and maintain are a constitutive part of our solidary relationships with one another; and it is part of being in this sort of solidarity with our comrades that we are presumptively required to follow the social moral rules that join us together. Those in the Polish Revolution, for example, were bound by informally enforced rules about publicity, free speech and the use of violence, so following their own rules became a way of standing in a valuable sort of solidarity with one another. I explain why we can have non-instrumental reasons to follow the social moral rules that exist in our own society, improve our rules and even sometimes to break the otherwise good rules that help to unite us.
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Notes
The problem of ‘rule-worship’ was forcefully pressed against rule-utilitarianism by Smart and Williams (1973). The more general puzzle, of why (if at all) we should follow an otherwise good rule when the reasons for having the rule do not obtain in a particular occasion, persists in contemporary discussions, including Gaus (2011), Marmor (2009), Raz (1990, 2001, 2005), Regan (1987) and Schauer (1991). A common element among their worked-out proposals (with the exception of Marmor) is that the reasons we have to follow the rules as such are all instrumental, either to our own wellbeing (following the rules as such allows us to avoid sanctions of various kinds), or to morally good ends (following the rules as such improves coordination, the stability of the rules, the likelihood that we will make better decisions quickly with less error than if we had considered the matter anew, etc.). The trouble, as I point out, is that this entire class of instrumental reasons cannot, strictly speaking, solve the puzzle—they are the wrong kinds of reasons—for there is always the possibility of a case in which following an otherwise good rule brings no instrumental good at all (I could break the rule secretly, forget I had done so, etc.), leaving us to wonder why on such occasions we should still follow the rule as such. Perhaps we shouldn’t, but it is important to ask this question, for it bears directly on how we understand the relative moral status of rules, whether we see them as mere means of social control or as something more morally basic and important. If we are to explain why the existence of a rule sometimes gives us a reason to comply with it even when there is no instrumental benefit in our doing so, we must supply a different and non-instrumental kind of reason for following rules as such, of the sort briefly suggested by Schauer (p. 162–3), discussed in general terms by Marmor (p. 144–54), but different from Raz’s exclusionary reasons.
Mill and Crisp (1998), section 5.12
The rules may conceivably be created by one person, but only indirectly, as when a cult leader proclaims some dress code and his followers obey. But this is not a paradigmatic example of how such rules come to exist.
This account of what it is to accept a rule, which I mostly take from H.L.A. Hart (1994), does have the puzzling feature that someone can believe, for example, that those in the church must take off their hats without ever calling that belief to mind, saying it out-loud, etc. But, on reflection, I think this is true for many of our beliefs—someone can, it seems, implicitly believe that the number of planets in our solar system is less than 10, less than 11, less than 19,213 without these beliefs being before our minds. What implicit belief is more exactly, I’m not sure, but perhaps in the case of wearing hats in church, we could say that the person in question would believe the rule authoritative if it were presented to him in the right circumstances (he read it in the by-laws, for example) and also conclude from the way he sneers at those who break the rule, asks them to remove their caps and removes his own, that the best explanation of these actions and attitudes, and maybe the only way to make what he does understandable to us, is to ascribe to him a tacit belief that hats must not be worn in the church.
Compare ‘bunting’ or ‘breaking a promise’, which presuppose the existence of rules, and ‘swinging an oddly shaped stick’ and ‘killing someone’ which do not. See Rawls (1999b).
Social conventions are by their nature such that among the reasons for accepting them are that the others do so as well—if most others began to accept a different social convention about right of way then my reasons for holding to the first convention would be greatly diminished. Some conventions, such as those about promising or property, are also social moral rules, but not all social moral rules are conventions because our grounds for accepting a social moral rule may have nothing to do with whether others accept them as well. When a social moral rule successfully binds us in solidarity, however, the fact that others are maintaining our solidary bonds and expressing their support for it by following and accepting our shared rules is a reason for me to do so as well. I thank an anonymous referee for highlighting this last point.
A different, and not implausible, view would be that accepting a moral rule forbidding x is the same as genuinely believing that x is wrong.
Virtue ethicists and particularists, however, may admit that, like laws, social moral rules can be useful social devices.
The general account draws from Feinberg (1970), p. 234–6, Ronald Dworkin’s (1986) discussion of what he calls ‘true communities’ and Durkheim and Halls (1984) discussion of solidarity. One might wonder whether solidarity is the sort of relationship that can be analyzed into constituent parts and, if it can, whether it should be regarded as primarily or exclusively an emotional or affective sort of relationship. I think there are severe limits to how far a philosophical analysis of solidarity can go. For one thing, I argue that solidarity cannot be reduced to mere pleasure or happiness. Instead, solidarity is an extremely complicated complex of dispositions, beliefs, and emotions. The boundaries between various components are also overlapping and vague; emotions themselves are notoriously difficult to understand; and there are interactions among the parts that a philosophical analysis must take account of. But, keeping these limits in mind, it is worth asking what is distinctive about solidarity and exploring how relationships of solidarity differ from other relationships, such as those between friends, parents and children, co-workers, etc. My approach, of relying on paradigmatic examples of solidarity, counteracts the tendency to reduce and simplify phenomena. While I do not attempt a full account of solidarity, my emphasis is on one of its characteristic features, which is that we are in solidarity with regard to something (shared oppression, common causes, and, I argue later, shared moral rules).
Reflecting on the nature of our solidary relationships from the inside can strengthen these bonds, cement their value to us, expand our self-understanding once we find that our solidarity with various groups is indeed part of who we are, and explain why we are often moved as much by our brothers and sisters in arms as we are by the cause that unites us.
One of the standard historical accounts of the Polish Revolution is that of Garton Ash (2002).
See the wonderful discussion of Schultz (2001).
See Bissinger (2004).
One might wonder whether the Permian Panthers and their fans really care about one another’s wellbeing for its own sake. Although I do not know all of the historical details, I think it is likely that they did, and exhibited this with such things as: food drives for members of the group who are in need, Habitat for Humanity builds for them by fans, players and coaches, outpouring of support for members of the “Panther-nation” who are deployed by the military, diagnosed with cancer, or need money to attend a prestigious college, etc.
I thank an anonymous referee for pointing out the possibility of cases in which this progression of value does not occur.
My account, as far as possible, is meant to be agnostic about metaethical questions concerning the ultimate grounds of moral value, and in particular whether values are, for example, natural or non-natural.
See chapter 1 of Garton Ash (2002).
NE I.4.1095a17–20; 1097b22–1098a20. Aristotle (2000) will be abbreviated NE. Perhaps happiness also requires having an adequate provision of external goods (see NE I.10.1101a14–16; VII.7.1153b17–19).
NE I.7.1097b21–3
NE I.13.1102a5–7
NE X.8.1178a9; VI.13.1144b14–29; X.7.1177a13–19. At NE V.1–2.1129b–1130b5 Aristotle distinguishes between these two forms of justice.
There is a tradition in political theory, going back to Hegel, Thomas Hill Green, and F. H. Bradley, that is concerned with the importance of community and belonging in political society.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank two anonymous referees and the following people for their help with this paper: Robert Adams, Kristen Bell, Kimberley Brownlee, Tom Hill, Marc Lange, Jeff McMahan, Ram Neta, Laurie Paul and Susan Wolf. I am also grateful to audiences at UNC Chapel Hill, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University and Virginia Tech for valuable comments and discussions.
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Cureton, A. Solidarity and Social Moral Rules. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 15, 691–706 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-011-9313-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-011-9313-8