Renunciation as a Practice of Solidarity?

Towards a Critical Examination of a Relationship and Its Ethical Implications in the Context of the Climate Crisis

Abstract

The essay explores the relationship between solidarity and renunciation in the context of the global ecological crisis. To what extent can acts of renunciation in response to the ecological crisis be understood as practices of solidarity, and what ethical implications arise from this relationship? After refining the concept of renunciation, the essay discusses certain ›problem constellations‹ of the renunciation paradigma – freedom, universalizability, and collectivization – as exemplary challenges to acts of solidarity in late capitalist societies.