Solidarity Virtue Commentary

Duncan Pritchard

Solidarity Virtue Commentary

Social Virtue Epistemology, (eds.) M. Alfano, C. Klein & J. de Ridder, (Routledge)

Response to Heather Battaly’s ‘Solidarity: Virtue or Vice?’...Read more

2 virtue of solidarity is social is that solidarity is a virtue that one manifests towards others rather than oneself. But it doesn’t follow from that point alone that solidarity is not an individual virtue. Indeed, aren’t most virtues essentially other-directed in their manifestation? Consider, for example, the virtue of kindness. To manifest this virtue surely involves appropriately manifesting kindness to others. But we would not conclude on this basis that there is no individual virtue of kindness, much less that this virtue is in fact a collective virtue that couldn’t be understood in terms of the individual virtue. So while I agree that solidarity is an inherently social virtue, I am not convinced that we should regard it as a distinctively collective virtue in the sense described. 3. Battaly argues, following Tommie Shelby, that solidarity demands trust. In particular, she maintains that it demands that one “be disposed to trust the testimony of other group members with respect to their goals and actions.” Battaly’s takes this point about trust as following from the fact that solidary requires acting in accordance with shared goals, as this “will entail knowing in broad outline that one is working with others who have the same goals, knowing roughly what kinds of actions they are performing in pursuit of those goals, and coordinating one’s actions with theirs.” Crucially, however, she further claims that we cannot gain this knowledge unless “we trust the testimony of our fellow members; knowing these things requires trusting their testimony with respect to their goals and their actions.” I’m not convinced that solidarity does require trust. Can’t there be solidarity amongst a criminal family for example? If so, then it is hard to see why solidarity requires trust. Presumably Battaly would claim that in this case what’s on display is not solidarity but rather mere loyalty, which she claims doesn’t demand trust. But since the only reason we are given for thinking that loyalty and solidarity come apart is that only the latter demands trust, a natural response would be to maintain that in fact neither of them requires trust. Absent any additional supporting argument, why aren’t members of the criminal gang displaying solidarity rather than just loyalty? In any case, I’m not convinced by the reason Battaly gives for claiming that solidarity demands trust. It simply isn’t true that the only way to gain knowledge of shared goals is by trusting the word of others, as one can usually gain independent grounds for the target beliefs, and hence one needn’t simply rely on the other person’s say-so. In any case, there seem to be genuine instances of solidarity where there isn’t trust and where, therefore, knowledge of shared goals is not based on trust. Consider, for example, the solidarity of the members of a group of recovering addicts (at an AA group, for instance). Recovering addicts know full well the dangers of trusting the word of fellow recovering addicts, especially concerning anything related to the issue of their addiction, and so would be naturally circumspect about each other’s testimony in this regard. But that needn’t prevent them from coming to know enough about their shared goals in order to act in

For Social Virtue Epistemology, (eds.) M. Alfano, C. Klein & J. de Ridder, (Routledge). ON SOLIDARITY: COLLECTIVITY, TRUST, AND DEFERENCE (COMMENTARY ON HEATHER BATTALY’S ‘SOLIDARITY: VIRTUE OR VICE?’) DUNCAN PRITCHARD University of California, Irvine 1. For the most part, I agree with Battaly’s excellent treatment of solidarity in this essay, so my critical comments are relatively minor. Given space constraints, I want to focus on three points that I hope will be helpful. The first concerns the idea that Battaly opens the paper with, that solidarity is a distinctively collective virtue. The second is the claim that solidarity demands trust. The third is the thesis that solidarity essentially involves deference. I will take these points in turn. 2. What does it mean to say that a virtue like solidarity is a distinctively collective virtue? Attributing this idea to Ryan Byerly and Meghan Byerly, Battaly argues that “a distinctively collective virtue is a virtue of a collective (or group) for which there is no individual analogue; i.e., there is no corresponding virtue V of individuals, from which the collective version of V could be derived.” Solidarity is meant to be a “paradigm” example of a distinctively intellectual virtue in just this sense. While Battaly raises some issues for this way of thinking about solidarity at the end of her piece, she nonetheless broadly endorses it. In contrast, I do not find it convincing. In particular, while it is obviously true that the virtue of solidarity can only be manifest in a social setting, rather than individually (one cannot manifest solidarity with oneself), I don’t think it follows from this that the virtue in question must thereby be a collective virtue, and hence that there is no (theoretically independent) individual virtue in play. The obvious sense in which the 2 virtue of solidarity is social is that solidarity is a virtue that one manifests towards others rather than oneself. But it doesn’t follow from that point alone that solidarity is not an individual virtue. Indeed, aren’t most virtues essentially other-directed in their manifestation? Consider, for example, the virtue of kindness. To manifest this virtue surely involves appropriately manifesting kindness to others. But we would not conclude on this basis that there is no individual virtue of kindness, much less that this virtue is in fact a collective virtue that couldn’t be understood in terms of the individual virtue. So while I agree that solidarity is an inherently social virtue, I am not convinced that we should regard it as a distinctively collective virtue in the sense described. 3. Battaly argues, following Tommie Shelby, that solidarity demands trust. In particular, she maintains that it demands that one “be disposed to trust the testimony of other group members with respect to their goals and actions.” Battaly’s takes this point about trust as following from the fact that solidary requires acting in accordance with shared goals, as this “will entail knowing in broad outline that one is working with others who have the same goals, knowing roughly what kinds of actions they are performing in pursuit of those goals, and coordinating one’s actions with theirs.” Crucially, however, she further claims that we cannot gain this knowledge unless “we trust the testimony of our fellow members; knowing these things requires trusting their testimony with respect to their goals and their actions.” I’m not convinced that solidarity does require trust. Can’t there be solidarity amongst a criminal family for example? If so, then it is hard to see why solidarity requires trust. Presumably Battaly would claim that in this case what’s on display is not solidarity but rather mere loyalty, which she claims doesn’t demand trust. But since the only reason we are given for thinking that loyalty and solidarity come apart is that only the latter demands trust, a natural response would be to maintain that in fact neither of them requires trust. Absent any additional supporting argument, why aren’t members of the criminal gang displaying solidarity rather than just loyalty? In any case, I’m not convinced by the reason Battaly gives for claiming that solidarity demands trust. It simply isn’t true that the only way to gain knowledge of shared goals is by trusting the word of others, as one can usually gain independent grounds for the target beliefs, and hence one needn’t simply rely on the other person’s say-so. In any case, there seem to be genuine instances of solidarity where there isn’t trust and where, therefore, knowledge of shared goals is not based on trust. Consider, for example, the solidarity of the members of a group of recovering addicts (at an AA group, for instance). Recovering addicts know full well the dangers of trusting the word of fellow recovering addicts, especially concerning anything related to the issue of their addiction, and so would be naturally circumspect about each other’s testimony in this regard. But that needn’t prevent them from coming to know enough about their shared goals in order to act in 3 accordance with them. Solidarity thus doesn’t seem to demand trust, nor is trust in any case required in order to have the kind of social knowledge required for the manifestation of solidarity. 4. This brings us to a final point, which concerns solidarity and deference. Battaly insists that solidarity demands deference, where this is itself a kind of trusting of other group members. She takes this point to follow from the requirement that solidarity requires group action. She writes that in order “to be disposed to coordinate our actions with the group’s, when our judgments are initially in conflict with the group’s, we must be disposed to at least sometimes trust, and defer to, the group’s judgment.” That is, if we didn’t defer in such circumstances, then we would be acting contrary to the group, and hence no longer coordinated with it. Hence, deference is required. I don’t find this line of argument very convincing. To begin with, notice that it depends on an implausibly robust conception of the kind of coordination of one’s actions with the group that solidarity demands. Battaly earlier outlines this requirement in terms of the convincing claim that one needs to be disposed to act in accordance with the shared goals and values of the group, but given that this is a general disposition it doesn’t preclude one being willing to sometimes act contrary to the other members of the group. General dispositions are not exceptionless, after all. Moreover, there seems to be a salient rationale for an exception in play here, which is when one is clearly in a state of elevated knowledge and expertise relative to the group. In that case, why should one be disposed to defer to the group? To take the example of domestic violence that Battaly uses in this regard, suppose that one has suffered for years as a victim of domestic violence (and so one has first-hand experience of the phenomenon) and then one goes on to become the recognized authority on domestic violence (and so one has an exceptional level of relevant theoretical knowledge too). It would now seem entirely appropriate to not defer to the group, and indeed to be willing to not align with the group’s actions where one judges that these actions are based on poor judgement. Lack of deference here seems entirely compatible with solidarity.

Burhani, Ahmad Najib. 2016. “Empat kategori ‘Menjadi Muhammadiyah’” dalam Menjadi Muhammadiyah: Autobiografi Gerakan Kaum Islam Berkemajuan. eds. Hajriyanto Y. Thohari at al., hal. 19-34. Bandung: Mizan. Proses perpindahan dari keyakinan keagaman tertentu ke keyakinan lain, menurut William James, pakar psikologi ternama dari Amerika Serikat yang hidup tahun 1842 – 1910, disebut sebagai proses conversion. Proses ini tidak melulu berarti perpindahan dari agama tertentu ke agama lain seperti dari Kristen ke Islam dan dari Hindu ke Kristen, tapi juga mencakup perpindahan dari kelompok agama tertentu ke kelompok agama lain, seperti dari Sunni ke Syiah dan dari Jesuit ke Mormon. Bahkan, perpindahan dari seorang yang sebelumnya merupakan penganut agama atau beriman menjadi seorang ateis atau sebaliknya adalah termasuk dalam kategori conversion. Pertanyaannya, apakah perpindahan dari seseorang yang secara kultural adalah pengikut NU (Nahdlatul Ulama) menjadi aktivis Muhammadiyah bisa disebut sebagai proses konversi juga? Jika mengikuti William James, maka jawaban dari pertanyaan adalah bisa “ya” dan bisa juga “tidak”. Ini tentu mengacu pada definisi dari kata konversi itu sendiri. Dalam buku klasiknya yang berjudul The Varieties of Religious Experience (1985), William James mendefinikan konversi sebagai sebuah proses dimana “religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy” (h. 196). Artinya, konversi itu terjadi jika suatu pandangan keagamaan yang dulunya hanya dianggap pinggiran dan tak penting atau bahkan menyimpang oleh seseorang, namun kemudian ia berubah menjadi meyakini bahwa yang pinggiran itu menjadi sentral atau sangat penting, maka orang itu telah mengalami apa yang disebut proses konversi. Apalagi jika keyakinan baru menjadi tempat ia menumpahkan seluruh aktivitas dan energinya. Mengikuti definisi yang dikembangkan oleh James itu, maka beberapa kasus perpindahan dari NU ke Muhammadiyah atau sebaliknya bisa masuk kategori konversi dan bisa juga sekadar perpindahan organisasi. Arifin Ilham, da’i selebritis dan pelopor dzikir berjamaah, bisa menjadi contoh konversi model ini. Ia berasal dari keluarga Muhammadiyah dan mendapat pendidikan di sekolah Muhammadiyah. Pada masa mudanya Arifin Ilham adalah orang yang benci dan antipati terhadap dzikir. Ia, misalnya, pernah mengatakan kepada orang-orang yang berdzikir bahwa “Mereka itu ahli neraka. Zikir pake dikerasin segala, ramai-ramai lagi” (Mintarja 2004, 41). Namun kini Arifin Ilham menjadi orang yang memilih dzikir sebagai paradigm hidup dan sesuatu yang paling sentral dalam hidupnya. Contoh sebaliknya, konversi dari non-Muhammadiyah ke Muhammadiyah, barangkali bisa dilihat dari kasus Ketua Umum Muhammadiyah saat ini, yaitu Din Syamsuddin. Berbeda dari kasus Arifin Ilham, banyak sekali orang yang menjadi Muhammadiyah karena dia diangkat menjadi guru atau dosen atau tenaga medis di lembaga milik Muhammadiyah. Ada juga yang menjadi Muhammadiyah karena sekolah di Muhammadiyah. Tentu saja tak semua orang itu bisa disebut mengalami konversi. Mereka yang tak mengalami transformasi spiritual tak akan masuk kategori konversi. Mereka masuk kategori kedua, yaitu hanya “menjadi” (becoming) Muhammadiyah. Beberapa diantara mereka bisa jadi sama sekali tak memahami ideologi Muhammadiyah dan secara ritual berbeda dari apa yang umum dilakukan di Muhammadiyah. Kelompok ini barangkali tak perlu dipermasalahkan selama mereka tetap profesional dalam pekerjaannya dan tidak mengganggu aktivitas Muhammadiyah. Yang merepotkan adalah mereka yang ada di dalam amal usaha Muhammadiyah namun tak pernah menjadi Muhammadiyah dan justru sebaliknya mereka menjadi ancaman bagi Muhammadiyah. Kelompok ketiga ini mungkin bisa disebut sebagai “Muhammadiyah palsu” atau “fake Muhammadiyah”. Kasus tahun 2006 dan 2007 ketika Muhammadiyah melakukan “disiplin organisasi” dengan mengeluarkan SK 149/2006 dan SK 101/2007 bisa menjadi contoh (Burhani 2013). Tentu saja ada berbagai alasan mengapa hal ini bisa terjadi. Kita tak hanya perlu menengok hal ini sebagai ancaman dari luar, tapi juga bisa dilihat sebagai kekurang berhasilan proses pengkaderan di internal Muhammadiyah. Bentuk terakhir adalah mereka yang tidak sekadar “menjadi Muhammadiyah”, tapi “menjadi aktivis Muhammadiyah” namun dengan tetap membawa gerbong pemahaman dan pemikiran yang sebelumnya dimiliki oleh orang tersebut. Mereka yang masuk dalam kategori ini sangat banyak dan, meminjam istilah dari Abdul Munir Mulkhan dan Abdul Mukti, mereka inilah yang kemudian menjadi dasar dari kelompok yang disebut sebagai Marmud (Marhaen-Muhamadiyah), MuNU (Muhammadiyah-NU), Kris-Muha (Kristen-Muhammadiyah), dan sebagainya. Keberadaan kelompok ini bisa memperkaya warna Muhammadiyah dan menghidupkan gerakan pemikiran di organisasi ini jika dikelola dengan baik. Dan tentu saja jika Muhammadiyah ingin menjadi organisasi yang kosmopolit, ia harus siap menerima orang dengan latar belakang yang sangat beragam.

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Solidarity Virtue Commentary