Solidarity in Catholic Social Teaching and Its Implications for Creating an Authentic Human Self

Abstract

The human self has been narrowly and erroneously understood in some quarters as simply purely scientific, naturalistic, individualistic, and materialistic. This understanding of the self has contributed to problems like selfishness, rugged individualism, materialism, get-rich-quick syndrome, ritual killings, genocidal wars, profiteering, and so forth. If these erroneous perceptions of the human person or self are left unchallenged, they will continue to degrade human society and dignity. This paper theorizes that the Catholic understanding of the human being as a social and communal being, thus implying solidarity, can help to recover the authentic human self. In this light, this paper uses the methods of critical analyses and hermeneutics to examine the Catholic understanding of solidarity and how it can help in retrieving the authentic human self. The paper finds that there are erroneous and narrow understandings of the human self and person. It concludes that the Catholic concept of solidarity can help to build an authentic human self and society.