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Solidarity and Cosmopolitanism

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Abstract

The review article examines the relation of solidarity and cosmopolitanism in contemporary political, philosophical and sociological debates. In some contexts, solidarity and cosmopolitanism are closely related, in others they are understood to be incompatible. The main body of the report is divided into three parts displaying a tentative classification of the reviewed literature on the subject. The first part serves to outline a general account of solidarity, the communal obligations that follow from it, and its opposition to the moral arguments grounding cosmopolitan obligations. The second part deals with the actual development and realization of solidarity and cosmopolitanism, as well as the tension between both within the European Union. The third part considers some arguments for the extension of solidarity relations beyond state or nation towards cosmopolitan affiliations, obligations and institutions. Finally, a reading of solidarity and cosmopolitanism is offered in which both are compatible with each other.

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Notes

  1. The reviewed literature does not deal exclusively with this opposition, and the contributions do not form a clearly delimitable discourse. Nonetheless, one can identify one core issue which is relevant in all the contributions. To do this, the literature is selected on the basis of whether or not it makes a contribution to the discussion of the relation of solidarity and cosmopolitanism.

  2. As Kurt Bayertz remarks, solidarity has "seldom been the object of an elaborated theory", but has often been employed in "wavering, inexact and also suggestive" ways (Bayertz 1999, p. 4).

  3. For the historical development, see also Stjerno (2005), and Wildt (1999).

  4. Jean Harvey argues that solidarity applies paradigmatically to moral obligations within communities in the face of oppression, rather than to communal obligations in general. Harvey (2007).

  5. Bayertz (1998) distinguishes between human solidarity as a universal care for humanity, social solidarity as a general form of cohesion, civic solidarity as it is expressed in social policies, and political solidarity emerging against injustice or oppression. Franz Xaver Kaufmann gives four types of reason and motivation for solidarity, which are loyalty, reciprocity, orientation towards the common good, and altruism (Kaufmann 2004, pp. 55 ff.).

  6. This may be partly explained by the dominance of moral theories that emphasize negative and universal duties (See Bayertz 1998, p. 13). At this point the debate about 'thick' norms such as solidarity points at a more general problem in ethical theory.

  7. See the last chapter of Brunkhorst (2005), From Civic Friendship to a global legal Community in which he identifies the problem of the erosion of "democratic solidarity".

  8. Of course, there is not necessarily a single direction from moral obligation to the evaluation of a social practice. The latter may with good reason be understood to have an influence on which options are considered to be plausible in the former.

  9. One could say that the legal arrangements of the welfare state reduce the possibility of disappointment caused by violations of obligations of solidarity, because they do not allow the opportunism of individuals to damage the good will of the majority. The welfare state contains something like an 'administered' solidarity. One can argue that this form of solidarity reduces 'exercised' solidarity, which is considered to be an important characteristic of the civil society.

  10. The term 'solidarity' appears several times in the Treaty on the European Union and the consolidated version of the Treaty establishing the European Community.

  11. Such are the instruments of economic support that can be found in the European structural funds and the cohesion funds. If they were to be understood as cosmopolitan in the way Hayden defines it, they would not only need to be directed towards the support of regions or member states, but towards individual citizens.

  12. It is criticized that compared to the progresses in economic and political cooperation there is still a lack of reference points that would allow for a normatively meaningful identification as a European citizen.

  13. Those rights are stated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.

  14. See also Delanty (2005).

  15. One could argue that there is a difference between the UN as an institution that is meant to promote human rights and the EU that, as Delanty and Rumford also criticize, is still widely seen as a community which follows economic ends.

  16. The underlying philosophical arguments are already outlined in his Romanes Lecture Reason before Identity (Sen 1991).

  17. According to Heydt (2007), this conclusion could not be drawn concerning distributive justice. He understands solidarity as the basis for distributive justice which derives its legitimacy from hypothetical and actual contracts. If solidarity determines the scope of distributive communities, and if there cannot be something like a universal solidarity, a regime of global justice cannot be argued for.

  18. Mohrs (2003) mostly gives an overview of the recent literature on the relation of politics and economics, in which he criticizes some consequences of an overly strong liberal individualism. Mohrs admits that communitarians might be right in emphasizing that a political theory solely based on individual human rights leaves out a meaningful understanding of social and moral order. The decrease of the importance of communal ties leads to an understanding of the state in which it only provides its citizens with the most basal frame of rights.

  19. Like Hayden, Cabrera starts from a concept of universal individual human rights. It is a "cosmopolitan approach which at its root views individuals, not nation-states, as the primary unit of moral concern" (Cabrera 2004, p. 8).

  20. Concerning the suspicion of utopian thinking see also Pensky (2007).

  21. Habermas agrees with Münkler and Brunkhorst that some vital forms of solidarity are essential for democratic communities.

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Derpmann, S. Solidarity and Cosmopolitanism. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 12, 303–315 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9150-6

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