By fraternity we mean the relationship and the bond established in a community based on the “pleasure of being together”; therefore, it involves the development of a certain deliberation and is materialized in the recognition of a common identity.
Two opposing views
By fraternity we mean the relationship and the bond established in a community based on the “pleasure of being together”; therefore, it involves the development of a certain deliberation and is materialized in the recognition of a common identity.
Two opposing views
Historically, the idea of fraternity has had two opposing foundations: the Aristotelian-metaphysical, which defines fraternity as a feeling of empathy based on the common features of an imagined community, and the Epicurean, according to which it was a form of friendship, the product of a shared experience, and therefore an interpersonal relationship that could only live in real communities.
Interestingly, it is not from the Aristotelian view, but from the Epicurean-communitarian view, that the term was transferred into political language. Back then, it expressed the social aspirations of the first democratic cities, and the development of a new class of freemen formed by merchants and artisans.
Recent blog posts
- Fraternity, Subversion, Pigs, and Asparagus, about Epicureanism.
- Community and happiness, about Epicurean communities
- Fraternitas mercatorum, about the concept of fraternity and its emergence within the medieval urban democracies.
- Community and personality, about the concept of community in Alfred Adler’s works