Recapturing ‘Fraternity’ as a Forgotten Dimension of the Political

• In Event: Politics and Friendship in the Cosmos

Abstract

Fraternity is a very much overlooked element of political reality. It was Hegel who said that the human person abstracted from the reality of the “other,” is not truly a human being but a “sheer empty unit.” Indeed, he pointed out how the the absolute possibility of abstracting from every determination in which I find myself, the flight from every content as a limitation…is negative freedom. This is the freedom of the void.

The human being is conscious of being a member of a totality in such a way that he actually becomes who he is by his or her participation in the political. But all too often we dress the “political” up in the frayed clothing of our own ideas, prejudices and judgments failing to allow a politics of friendship to shine through.

In this paper I set out to fill this “person-centric” vacuum by recapturing the essential dimensions of “fraternity” in political life. In so doing, we discover how the priority of the human person, is the beginning of the beginning of politics resulting in an epiphany of who are as persons.

Author

• John McNerney, The Catholic University of America