Solidarity Means a Bond: Reflections on solidarity — understood both as a universal experience and as the Polish social movement
Збигниев Ставровски. Солидарност значи връзка
Zbigniew Stawrowski: Solidarność znaczy więź
Language: Bulgarian
Zbigniew Stawrowski’s Solidarity Means a Bond is a collection of philosophical essays as well as a few conversations with the author. They come from the 1990s, that is, during the period when Poland and all of Central Europe was emerging from Communism. The inspiration, as well as the subject of reflections presented here, are the writings and statements of Pope John Paul II and the Polish philosopher Fr Józef Tischner, two intellectuals and patrons of meditations on freedom wider than the Polish tradition alone. For the author, the first of these is a master of faith, while the second – a master of thought. However, the gratitude he has for these authorities should not be confused with a position of uncritical, prostrate humility before them. Rather, it expresses itself in a creative – sometimes indeed polemical – engagement with problems and themes important to them.
Among these may be found: the relationship between the right to freedom and the obligation of searching for the truth, the sense of an attitude of mercy variously understood in relation to justice, the tension between individualism and community, the nation, the fatherland and patriotism, the philosophy of the state, and politics. The author courageously takes up contested issues – essential not only from the perspective of Polish destiny, but that of any national community – which sometimes confront the necessity of a difficult reckoning with harmful injustices, and even treason, committed by members of the same.
The theme that binds all of these meditations together is the phenomenon of solidarity – understood both as a universal experience of communities in general, and also in the sense of the Polish social movement ‘Solidarność’. A testament to the fervour of the analyses presented in the book that touch upon the unique character of Polish ‘Solidarity’, as well as the exceptional interpersonal bonds from which the movement emerged (described here in philosophical terms) is the author’s allusion to categories of the miraculous: ‘Solidarity’ as a sui generis miracle.
Zbigniew Stawrowski’s book allows the reader to perceive the trunk and branches of the tree of thought of these two important 20th-century thinkers. This is valuable, as frequently, only individual branches of said tree (J. Tischner’s metaphor) are revealed to our eyes.