When a person or group of people lack a particular good, others will sometimes act in solidarity with them by depriving themselves of that good too. For example, while leading his army through the desert, Alexander the Great is fabled to have refused a helmet filled with water, preferring to undergo the soldiers’ suffering with them than to accept something which they couldn’t have. Or again, imagine that a group of soldiers has been captured as prisoners of war. After some weeks, one of the POWs is approached and offered early release, as his father is a high-ranking officer. Yet he refuses, choosing to remain captive with his fellow soldiers. (As some readers may recognize, this example is based on the experiences of the late Senator John McCain during his service in the Vietnam War.) Here’s one last example. In the 1940’s, an Indian woman—call her ‘KC’—is travelling across the American South by train. At a stop, the train conductor informs her that she is seated in a carriage reserved for White passengers. However, thinking that she does not look Black, he asks her where she is from. KC replies, “I am a colored woman,” and is consequently ejected from the carriage. (This example is based on an event in the life of the Indian independence and women’s rights campaigner Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, though I have modified some details. While Kamaladevi spoke the words “I am a colored woman,” she was not in fact ejected from the carriage.)
Self-depriving acts of solidarity pose a puzzle. At least sometimes, they can seem morally praiseworthy. Yet, on the other hand, such acts make things worse overall. Let’s assume that the people in my examples all know that by depriving themselves of the good in question, they will not make others any better off. When he declines the offer of water, Alexander knows that it will not be offered to his soldiers instead; the POW knows that by declining early release, he will not thereby increase the likelihood of the others being released; and KC knows by identifying herself as a “colored woman,” thus voluntarily subjecting herself to anti-Black prejudice, she will not thereby protect others from prejudicial treatment. Given this, each of these individuals knows that, in self-depriving, they are making themselves worse off without making the objects of their solidarity any better off. So, what is there to praise in these acts? If they don’t improve things for anyone, and leave at least one person worse off, then why do we find them morally admirable?
Several philosophers have proposed solutions to this puzzle. Nicolas Bommarito claims that self-depriving solidarity manifests a morally virtuous concern for others. Michael Zhao, on the other hand, argues that acts of self-deprivation can be a pre-requisite for developing and preserving community within a group. I don’t find either of these answers persuasive, though I won’t go into details here about the problems I think they face. Instead, I want to explain how I think we should resolve the puzzle of self-depriving solidarity.
Let’s start with an observation about the nature of solidarity. Typically, standing in solidarity with others involves having a collective aim: i.e., an aim that a group of people achieve something together. For example, Alexander aims that ‘we’ (i.e., he and his soldiers) get water, the POW aims that ‘we’ (i.e., he and his fellow prisoners) go free, and KC aims that ‘we’ (i.e., people of color) be free from prejudice. (Some readers might find this last claim about KC a little far-fetched. I am drawing here on the work of the historian Nico Slate, who argues that, in identifying herself as a “colored woman,” Kamaladevi epitomized a cosmopolitan solidarity movement between Indians and Black Americans which transcended traditional racial distinctions.) Standing in solidarity with others requires one to prioritize collective aims over one’s own private aims (i.e., aims that ‘I’ achieve something). If my getting some good for myself would undermine our getting it, then solidarity requires me to forego my private aim and pursue the collective aim instead.
Notice, however, that in my three examples, there is no immediate tension between the pursuit of collective and private aims. If Alexander accepts the water offered to him, then he will not thereby prevent the group from getting water, since they won’t have any either way. So, the observation that solidarity requires us to prioritize collective aims will not, on its own, explain why the individuals in my examples choose to self-deprive. What I suggest is going on here is that, instead of merely prioritizing collective over private aims, these individuals are abnegating their private aims altogether, focusing solely on the collective. The aim that ‘I’ get water simply doesn’t enter into Alexander’s deliberations. His only aim is that ‘we’ get water; and since it won’t advance this aim to accept an offer made only to himself, he is not motivated to do so. Abnegating one’s private aims in this way, I suggest, is not required by solidarity. But it is continuous with the concern for the pursuit of collective ends which is characteristic of it.
This helps to explain why people sometimes choose to self-deprive in solidarity with others. But it doesn’t explain what is praiseworthy about doing so. Why would it be morally good to abnegate one’s private aims and focus exclusively on the collective? My suggestion is that, at least sometimes, this constitutes a form of selflessness which the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch identified in her monograph The Sovereignty of Good. Here, Murdoch describes instances of what she calls “unselfing”: that is, instances in which “[w]e cease to be in order to attend to the existence of something else, a natural object, a person in need.” In a famous passage, she illustrates this idea with an example:
“I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but the kestrel.”
When a person engages in Murdochian selflessness (or “unselfing”), their own interests do not feature in their deliberation, and their attention is absorbed entirely in something else, such as another person, or a hovering kestrel. This is precisely what seems to be going on in cases of self-depriving solidarity. The POW simply isn’t thinking about himself; his interest in being released doesn’t feature in his deliberation. Rather, he is focused exclusively on ‘our’ interests. Similarly, when KC says to the train conductor, “I am a colored woman,” she is not thinking about her own interest in avoiding prejudice. Instead, she attends exclusively to the interests of a transnational group of people of color. To be clear, I don’t think we should always deliberate in this way; we need to take our own interests into account when reasoning about what to do. However, it can be tempting to overinflate their importance, particularly when they are under threat or when goods are scarce. Selfless deliberation, in Murdoch’s sense, helps to guard against this. If you’re able to forget about your own interests and attend exclusively to those of others, at least momentarily, then you will be less inclined to exaggerate your own importance; “[t]he brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared.” Thus, while self-depriving solidarity may not make anyone any better off, it nonetheless stems from a way of thinking that warrants moral approbation.
Rowan Mellor
Rowan Mellor is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, where he teaches in the Brady Scholars Program in Ethics and Civic Life. His work focuses on the ethics of group action, and he is particularly interested in how group obligations can diverge from the obligations we have as individuals.
