Solidarity

SOLIDARITY. - A term deriving from Roman law, where a solidary obligation, or in solidum, denoted an obligation with a plurality of subjects (creditors or debtors) and an identical and single object, by which each of the various debtors is bound to the entire performance, or each of the various creditors is entitled to the entire performance; but, on the other hand, only one of the debtors pays or answers for all, and conversely only one of the creditors demands or obtains satisfaction for all (P. Bonfante, Istituzioni di diritto romano, 5th ed., Milan 1912, p. 362).

This meaning persists in modern civil codes (cf. Italian Civil Code, art. 1184 ff.) and in moral theology (v. OBLIGATION; RESTITUTION). In primitive criminal law, solidarity was taken in the sense of collective responsibility, whereby the members of a group were liable to vengeance for a crime committed by only one of them (cf. G. Glotz, op. cit. in bibl.). This juridical meaning of solidarity was broadened in the 19th century to denote natural solidarity, founded on physical and biological laws (cf. Cl. Bernard, Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale, II, Paris 1865, p. 3), and consequently, according to positivistic determinism, social solidarity. For A.

Comte, solidarity denotes either the intrinsic and total dependence of every man on preceding generations (Système de polit. posit., Disc. Prélim., I, Paris 1851, p. 364) or on the present social situation (ibid., pp. 364-65; III, 1, p. 71). With E. Durkheim the concept of social solidarity becomes fundamental for the French sociological school. In his Division du travail social (1893) he distinguishes a twofold social solidarity: mechanical and organic. The former is founded on similarities and on the uniformity of feelings, ideas, customs, and beliefs, without any manifestation of individual originality, and gives rise to a repressive law; with the introduction and progress of the division of labor, solidarity becomes increasingly organic, that is, a coordination and subordination of differentiated and hierarchized elements, as among the organs of a living body, giving rise to a cooperative law whose basis is no longer repressive but restitutive (cf. ibid., I, 2-4). His thought was developed especially by C. Bouglé (Le solidarisme, Paris 1924).

Humanitarianism attempted to make solidarity the fundamental virtue of the moral life, replacing justice and charity with it (P. Leroux, De l'Humanité, de son principe et de son avenir, ibid. 1840). Moral solidarism has its greatest representative in L. Bourgeois (La solidarité, ibid. 1879): the fact of social solidarity shows that everything a person has or is capable of understanding or doing is the fruit of the labor of society as a whole, present and past; this is a debt that the person must pay, devoting himself completely to placing his activity at the service of society, accepting all the sacrifices that may follow from it. The moral good is therefore identified with the demands of solidarity; and moral duties require us always to keep before our eyes the repercussion of our acts in collective life. To explain the passage from solidarity as fact to solidarity as duty, Bourgeois has recourse to the psychological instinct of the need for justice that exists in every conscience.

The existence of a natural solidarity among all beings and of a social solidarity among all men is an undoubted fact: nevertheless it is not the cause of social living, but a simple conditioning of personal activity. Moral solidarity must be distinguished as "fact" and as "duty." As fact, it rightly emphasizes the good and bad consequences for society deriving from the good or bad activity of each individual person, whereby the value of the community depends on the moral value of each individual. As duty, it is nothing other than an ambiguous term for expressing the duty of justice and friendship, which is at the basis of all the social duties of the person and which finds its ultimate foundation in the eternal divine law (v. OBLIGATION). Every person has from God the natural vocation to cooperate in the good of his brothers according to the various forms of sociality and according to his particular task in each of them (v. STATE, DUTIES TOWARD ONE'S OWN): society is a collaboration of persons to realize together particular human goods with a view to the eternal attainment of the supreme good. Given the historical character inherent in the concept of society, the activity of every person comes to have a value of intimate collaboration in the human good not only on the horizontal plane of existing society, but also on the vertical plane of historical society.

The term solidarity is today also used in dogmatic theology with regard to particular questions: solidarity in Adam, in Jesus Christ, among men; v.: COMMUNION OF SAINTS; ORIGINAL SIN; REDEMPTION; for the same concept developed in moral theology, v.: COOPERATION; JUSTICE; RESTITUTION.

Tullio Piacentini