Rowan Williams explores the major and timely idea of solidarity in this impassioned work. Solidarity is both an idea and a way of acting in in the world, both a condition and a virtue. From its use in the labour movement as a rallying cry to the rhetoric of empathy, allyship and identification prevalent on contemporary social media, ''solidarity'' is invoked as the answer to inequality, conflict and even climate crisis. But, as Rowan Williams argues in this impassioned work, it''s only by exploring how we are able to speak with and work alongside each other that we can unlock the real power of solidarity as a model for real community and care. Tracing the myriad of ways in which solidarity has been understood, from its roots in the French Revolution, through the positivism of August Comte and Emile Durkheim, to resistance against the Nazis and Communism, Polish workers'' rights movements and the Nueva Solidatyridad in Mexico City, Williams shows how understanding solidarity is an ongoing labour of self-scrutiny and communication in which difference and strangeness are affirmed, not elided. This insistence that solidarity requires recognition - in the deepest sense - is an impassioned one; true recognition is not claiming they are ''just like us'' but joining with their claim that they ''are themselves''. And it is in this recognition, one which is also capable of encompassing the non-human, that true hope for the future can be found.

Autorentext

Rowan Williams is a former Archbishop of Canterbury, from 2002 to 2012 and until 2020 Master of Magdelene College at the University of Cambridge. He is contributing writer to The New Statesman.

Klappentext

Celebrated thinker Rowan Williams explores the shared hopes and burdens that make solidarity possible.

From its use as a rallying cry by the labour movement to its central place in struggles for racial justice, the idea of solidarity is often invoked as the answer to inequality and conflict. And yet, as both a term and a practice, solidarity is tantalizingly slippery. We are encouraged to 'show solidarity', but how can we truly realize it?

As Rowan Williams argues in this impassioned book, solidarity is not something fixed to be achieved, but a process of mutual recognition. From its origins in the French Revolution to the Nueva Solidaridad in Mexico City and the Solidarnosc movement in Poland, Williams traces solidarity's myriad forms through its deep influence on Catholic social thought, its transformation in the hands of thinkers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jan Patocka and the creative struggle so central to the writings of Gillian Rose.

He reveals solidarity to be a constant exercise in self-scrutiny and dialogue in which we find that true recognition lies not in asserting that others are 'just like us,' but rather in affirming their claim to be 'fully themselves'. It is in this work of recognition, this possibility of communion, that true hope can be found.

Inhalt

Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1: Recognizing Strangers: Who Counts as Human?
Chapter 2: Understanding Strangers: Empathy and Its Paradoxes
Chapter 3: The Claims of Strangers: Debating Human Rights
Chapter 4: Solidarity: the Making of a Discourse
Chapter 5: The Solidarity of the Shaken: Jan Patocka and the Care of the Soul
Chapter 6: Solidarity Without Enemies: Jozef Tischner and the Conversation of Human Labour
Chapter 7: Solidarity, Responsibility, Guilt: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Helplessness
Chapter 8: Solidarity, Co-inherence, Communion
Conclusion
Acknowledgements