Freedom, community, solidarity

We associate “solidarity” primarily with the large-scale social events in Poland in 1980-1981. We can also rightly relate it to the spontaneous assistance that Polish society gave to refugees arriving from Ukraine after the aggression of Russia in February 2022. However, at the root of “solidarity”, which, as it were, erupts and develops on a massive scale, is the simplest human solidarity, which we experience in our everyday encounters with other people. Such ordinary solidarity is precisely the subject of this lecture. The phenomenological description of the experience of solidarity is presented in a broader context and preceded by a brief analysis of other important concepts without which solidarity cannot be grasped and understood. These are freedom, community and love.