European inventory of
societal values of culture

Brunkhorst - Solidarity

Brunkhorst, H. (2005). Solidarity: From civic friendship to a global legal community. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262025829; 0-262-02582-5

This book presents several theoretical perspectives related to the concept of ‘democratic solidarity,’ conceived as the bond among free and equal citizens. Drawing on the disciplines of history, political philosophy, and political sociology, its author traces the historical development of the idea of universal, egalitarian citizenship and analyses the prospects for democratic solidarity at the international level, within a global community under law. His historical account of the concept outlines its development out of the initial egalitarian notions of civic friendship in the Greco-Roman world and brotherliness in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The destruction of these older, hierarchical solidarities in the modernised Western context is then analysed, including the problems arising from the exclusion of certain groups from the benefits of society that could be solved only with democratic solidarity in the form of its institutional embodiment, i.e., of the democratic constitution. Finally, the return of exclusion problems as a result of economic globalisation is examined. The author claims that the global protest movements are the beginning of transnational civic solidarity. His normative and sociological account of recent events demonstrates the necessity of keeping normative requirements systematically attuned to the conditions of social reality.