Neighborliness As a Social Relation of Our Time

Neighborliness is probably the most contingent relation in the triad kinship-friendship-neighborship. Neighbors are close because they live close, not because we feel close to them as in friendships or are related to them through bonds of kinship.The neighbor-relation is the only one which is based on proximity, closeness of space, which makes it both a vital and a precarious relation. For Max Weber, interested in rational social action, neighborliness was an unsentimental, economically inspired brotherliness, "that sombre economic brotherhood practiced in case of need". In the last decades, sociology has rethought and widened this understanding of neighborliness considerably.

Historically, it was the neighbor who inspired theologies of world religions. The neighbor, ‘Nachbar’, ‘voisin’ is ‘der Nächste’ or ‘le prochain’ in the Old Testament. “...thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” refers originally, as has been argued, to the one living close. Islam also has a strong and well-thought out ethic of neighborliness.

The question of neighborliness thus is also a theological, ethical and political-philosophical one.This makes it a concept apt to reflect on the human capacity of co-existence throughout history and our time. Being both deep and concrete and expressing both social realities and aspirations, it challenges and complements other concepts currently en vogue.

The presentation will explore neighborliness along these lines as a form of social love.