Learning global solidarity in the Covid-19 pandemic?

Authors

  • Christoph Rehmann-Sutter Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies, University of Lübeck, Germany

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2300-1690.21.02

Keywords:

Complexity, Trust, Inequalities, Covid-19, Judgement

Abstract

In a letter published on March 30, 2021, 24 world leaders have called for global solidarity in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. This commitment to act in solidarity with low-income countries however was won under duress, and it was in part at least self-serving. Can this still be called solidarity? On the basis of a functional view on solidarity the paper argues that states can indeed act in solidarity, if they accept costs to assist others with whom they recognize similarity in a relevant respect. States can act in solidarity, or they can fail to act in solidarity, also in situations of duress and if solidary acts also serve their own interests. The paper concludes that if this is true for the Covid-19 pandemic it is also true for the climate crisis, where damage of even much bigger dimensions are to be prevented. Also in regard to anthropogenic global heating, nobody is safe until everyone is safe.

Author Biography

Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies, University of Lübeck, Germany

Christoph Rehmann-Sutter is Professor of Theory and Ethics in the Biosciences at the University of Lübeck in Germany and honorary professor of philosophy at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He has widely published in philosophy and ethics of biomedicine and biotechnology. Research interests include philosophical foundations of bioethics and phenomenological philosophy of biology. With a hermeneutic approach to ethics and often with qualitative empirical methods, he has been working about ethical issues of genetic engineering, of prenatal genetics, transplantation, stem cell medicine and palliative care, currently also on the ethics of climate change. Together with Heike Gudat and Kathrin Ohnsorge he edited a volume at Oxford University Press on The Patient's Wish to Die. Research, Ethics, and Palliative Care (2015). Genes in Development. Re-Reading the Molecular Paradigm (Duke University Press 2006) was edited together with Eva Neumann-Held. His last books are on our views of death and dying: Was uns der Tod bedeutet (Berlin: Kadmos 2018) and on the ethics of bone marrow transplantation from children as donors: Stem cell transplantation between siblings as a social phenomenon: The child’s body and family decision-making (ed. together with Christina Schües, Madeleine Herzog and Martina Jürgensen; Springer 2022).

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Published

2021-01-01

How to Cite

Rehmann-Sutter, C. (2021). Learning global solidarity in the Covid-19 pandemic?. Władza Sądzenia, (21), 8–14. https://doi.org/10.18778/2300-1690.21.02

Issue

No. 21 (2021)

Section

Articles

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