Seite 120 [120]
118 | THe Putosopuy or Eco-Potitics
of solidarity. “Without knowledge of and attachment to particular
persons and particular places and species, it is hard to understand how
one might be moved to defend the interests of persons, places and species
in general. Local social and ecological attachments are the basis for
sympathetic solidarity with others; they are ontologically prior to any
ethical or political struggle for universal environmental justice.”
3. In the footsteps of community-centred thinkers
Man is the being most dependent on companions; few dispute this. Our
special ability, self-consciousness, is the creation of connection through
language. I have to see myself with others’ eyes in order to consider the
effect of my acts on them when performing my acts. For this, I must
understand them. I think, therefore we are: thought is the creation of
dialogue. The existence of a thinking being can be none other than
coexistence with others. To be able to understand each other, however,
we had to have already agreed with each other; at least on the correct
use of words if on nothing else, Wittgenstein points out in his
philosophical examinations.'"? This understanding has a precondition
too: an advance of trust. Above all, we had to believe others so we could
learn from them. In his work on tacit knowledge, Mihaly Polanyi calls
this trustful participation in others’ mental processes conviviality.'"' Its
original Greek meaning referred to a group of participants of one of the
banquets so important in ancient communities. To my knowledge,
Polanyi is the first to use it to characterise man’s being. Man’s being is
being together. His chief goal is to participate in others’ lives, because
without the understanding and help of companions he would not even
have been able to become who he is, let alone survive. I learn who I am
from the Other, who is of existential importance for me.
Conviviality appeared in the lexicon of the burgeoning green or
ecological discourse through the work of Ivan Illich (another emigrant
from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), a decade and a half after
Polanyi. The author of Tools for Conviviality considers it important to
explain that the fact of interdependence does not impose a limit on
human freedom, but rather gives it meaning. “I consider conviviality to
be the individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as
109 Robyn Eckersley Ibid. p.190.
110 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations. First published in 1953.
11 Mihaly Polanyi: Personal Knowledge, Part 2, chapter 7. First published in 1958.