Abstract

The absence of a clear theorisation on the nature of nonviolent solidarity in the contemporary debate on solidarity is inexplicable given the importance of certain contemporary practices of social and political transformation. If we reconstruct the link between fraternity and solidarity within the history of ideas of the last few centuries, we realise that in order to clarify when and how we can speak of solidarity as an instance of political emancipation in nonviolent practices, it is possible to consider some of the general characteristics that distinguish political solidarity. After proposing a classification that takes into account the polarisation that marks different forms of solidarity, it will be clarified how the nonviolent perspective should be considered a radicalisation of the openness to otherness and universalisation of political solidarity practices. Thanks to Jean-Marie Muller’s nonviolent philosophy, it is possible to derive a normative core of this kind of solidarity, confirmed by some important reflections of the three major contemporary nonviolent philosophers, M.K. Gandhi, Aldo Capitini and Johan Galtung. In their nonviolent conceptions, it emerges how it is central at the same time for the moment of conflict, the general conception of nonviolent society, and for the moment of common creation. It is on this basis that nonviolent solidarity can finally be defined as active solidarity