Solidarity Review by Rowan Williams – What does it really mean to stand by someone? | Philosophical books

YYou don’t need to scroll down social media pages to find someone expressing “solidarity” with victims of cruelty or injustice. Showing solidarity seems more emphatic than expressing support or sympathy. As Rowan Williams says, it can act as a “moral capacitor,” placing us squarely on the side of the victim. It can also be a declaration of innocence, a way to distance ourselves once and for all from the perpetrators and their condemnation.

Williams wants to move us beyond the idea of ​​solidarity as an unambiguous identity. He has some sharp things to say about “empathy” as a modern solution to all problems, when it too often serves the needs of a “loud self” that “cannot bear the idea of ​​a real stranger.” He believes that true solidarity is not a virtue that must be developed as much as it is a human condition that must be recognized. It requires us to accept two stubborn truths: first, that we can never fully identify with another person, because we are inevitably separated from him in mind and body; Second, we are innately social beings, bound together by invisible threads of obligation and reciprocity.

For Williams, solidarity is hard work. It takes time and emotional effort to get to know our fellow human beings, both in their stubborn difference and in their commonalities with us. He criticizes the contemporary idea of ​​human rights as stand-alone individual entitlements or “cheques that cash”, making them vulnerable to degenerating into “conflicting absolutes” – the fractious debates now taking place around freedom of expression being a case in point. He points out that the moral interconnectedness of all human life entails an endless dialogue in which rights are placed side by side with obligations. The “displacement” of self that this entails can be unsettling. Following in the footsteps of the Czech philosopher Jan Patocka, Williams calls for the “solidarity of the shaken,” a radical human togetherness formed by the acceptance of our common weakness and interdependence in a fallen world.

Williams does not have adequate recipes for how to achieve this. He rarely addresses how solidarity worked in practice, in radical social movements such as feminism and anti-racism or the trade union led by Lech Walesa that was instrumental in the end of Soviet rule in Poland. About the only piece of advice he offers is that solidarity needs some sort of celebratory expression, a public act of “rebalancing” where we see ourselves again as collective beings – something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, or Michael Sheen’s passion play played on the streets of Port Talbot in 2011. Mostly, however, Williams sticks to scholarly discussion, working through his own ideas by carefully deconstructing the ideas of others, especially twentieth-century religious thinkers. Such as Edith Stein, Joseph Teichner, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Williams is a brilliant writer and explorer, but I wish he had shown some solidarity with his readers by making his prose more engaging. His penchant for abstract nouns and admonishing phrases results in many sentences like this one: “Our actions become intelligible through persistent persistence.” He hopes For mutual clarity, even when it involves acknowledging the depth of the misunderstanding that exists. He tries to push us with comforting phrases like “It’s important to stay alert” and “The most salient point here is,” when some analogies and illustrations might be more helpful. He erases himself from error. “The recent history of Christian struggles over gender and sexual identity is familiar enough, unfortunately,” he writes. It’s familiar enough to him, and presumably he means it (as Archbishop of Canterbury, he’s had to navigate deep divisions in the Anglican Communion over female priests and homosexuality) but he’s too polite to say it.

Yet this book remains humane and encouraging, “woke” in its original and best sense—though Williams wisely never uses a word that has been drained of all meaning by his enemies. He concludes that solidarity should not reassure us of our innocence, but rather make us aware of the extent to which most of us are complicit in the injustices and inequalities of the world. Rather than inspiring some selfish performance of self-reproach, this should alert us to our common and flawed humanity – to what Joseph Conrad called “the subtle but invincible conviction of the solidarity that binds together the unity of innumerable hearts.”

Solidarity: An Act of Recognition by Rowan Williams is published by Bloomsbury (£20). To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply