Practical Identity and Open Cooperation

This chapter explores the notion of open cooperation in political life in connection with a particular form of practical identity. This form of cooperation takes shape when the zero-sum games produced by the familistic and tribal forms of cooperation melt away, and the relationships based on loyalty and trust are generalized to a collectiveness, i.e., a multitude of strangers who are willing to establish non-zero-sum relationships. This process originates from a specific relational motivation: the act of giving trust, construed as the decision to entrust oneself, according to one's choice, to an interpersonal situation of risk within cooperation. The hypothesis is made that good cooperation occurs only by virtue of a specific form of individualism that includes the concept of individual responsibility. For it is only through the permanent internalization of ethics of individual responsibility that the strategies of trust among strangers can work effectively and prevail over both the traditional tribal solidarity and the localist and nepotistical systems. Open cooperation originates from the individuals’ capacity to be psychologically autonomous, viz., to understand their own responsibilities, to choose new ones, and to remain faithful to them.