On Solidarity: Gramsci’s Objectivity as a Corrective to Buber’s I-It

Abstract

I and Thou sets out a dichotomy of human interactions between the merely objective I-It and the intense intersubjective relationship of the I-Thou, creating a problem of how one is to differentiate the I-It relations that are healthy and natural, and those that are limiting and detrimental. As a corrective to this ambiguity, I posit the principle of solidarity as a relation which retains the personhood of the Other yet still confines it to what Buber calls the I-It “relation”. To do this I will discuss similar attitudes such as sympathy and camaraderie using them to draw out the meaning of solidarity in contradistinction to them, and show how solidarity functions as Gramsci’s Objectivity.

Keywords

• Martin Buber
• Antonio Gramsci
• intersubjectivity
• objectivity