Bojanić, Petar D.

Đorđević, Edward

Filozofija i drustvo

English

Repository of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory

449
Petar Bojanić
Edvard Đorđević
Engagement + (Joint) Commitment
On the Obligation to Act Together
What is the difference, or compatibility, between two words or two protocols 
– the French-English engagement (engager) and the English-French com-
mitment (commettre)? Could a few acts (activity, agency, work, effort), 
potentially named by these two terms, imply very specific kinds of obliga-
tion? Our intention is to show that complementarity and correlation of the 
concepts of commitment (joint commitment) and engagement in the Eng-
lish language (although not exclusively) could be an introduction into the 
existence of a new kind of obligation (which is neither a perfect, nor simply 
an imperfect obligation). We would like to elaborate in a few steps, or by 
way of a few operations, the process of constituting group agency (an 
engaged group, such as the Group for Social Engagement Studies). Our 
assumption is that individuals who simultaneously research and thematize 
engagement or group agency together, who write and study together (dis-
cipline means studying something together and in a group) are indeed 
engaged individuals and are a group or make (up) a group. (In Serbian 
and Croatian, the verb činiti means to act or to do, but also to be a part of 
an entity, constitute it, make it up, be part of its content.)
Preliminarily, we insist on there being an entirely inexact or uncertain 
number of different unclassified activities (which is why we are speaking 
of processes and steps) that have the capacity to:
a)  not only encourage or obligate another (or others) to identical or 
similar action or reciprocal reaction, but also to produce an obligation 
that implies a joint, group action (‘to do something as a body’), and
b)  not only obligate members of a group to do something together, but 
to exceed the borders of joint commitment of the group, a priori 
obligating non-members or all potential and future participants to 
joint and coordinated action.
What are these actions like, then, the ones that engage others (all others) 
or that have the capacity to commit (to bring together, collect and bind 
even those who are not present in one place simultaneously)? Let us describe 
and list, that is, assume a few meanings of the verbs ‘commit’ and ‘engage’. 
These three verbs in the first person plural imperative (let us ‘describe’, 
PETAR BOJANIĆ: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade.
EDVARD ĐORĐEVIĆ: Center for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy, Belgrade.
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PETAR BOJANIĆ, EDVARD ĐORĐEVIĆ ENGAGEMENT + ҐJOINTґ COMMITMENT...
‘list’, ‘assume’), which could be uttered sufficiently loudly by any individual 
at the same time suspending their own speech in the first person singular 
(only ‘we’ can replace ‘I’; and only ‘I’ can utter the pronoun ‘we’), could 
together represent a kind of obligation for all those who are potentially 
within earshot and understand the utterances. The way these verbs were 
used potentially connects, mobilizes and invites others to individual agree-
ment or action, but at the same time (also) summons them to (the same, 
common) answer. Their joint answer or joint action1 is confirmed not only 
when each of us conducts a given activity (e.g. describing, assuming or listing 
meanings of the words ‘commit’ and ‘engage’) or else when simultaneously 
and with total commitment, abandon and concentrated activity performs a 
collective performance of ‘assuming’, ‘describing’ and ‘listing’. It is also 
confirmed when these three imperatives are repeated or simply uttered: ‘let 
us describe and assume and list’. The first person plural imperative is one 
of the initial, but conditionless, conditions of institutionalizing the work of 
a group or of joint commitment. Yet certainly not the only one. Verbs such 
as ask, suggest, entreat, supplicate, appeal, demand, order, as well as prove, 
argument, justify or defend (not even necessarily used in the imperative) 
could encourage to engagement and potentially to joint commitment.
The first book of the Torah (Chapter 11) describes the first constituting of 
joint commitment, joint work and first great architectural and institu-
tional adventure. In addition to the imperative that sets collective inten-
tionality in motion (several times, too: ‘come, let us [havah] make bricks…’; 
‘come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, 
and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of 
the entire Earth’), and in addition to the grandiose project and majestic 
goal, singleness of the space and time for all members of the group, the 
introduction of new technology, the discovery of incorporation and the 
invention of the entity of the company (name), and in addition to the abil-
ity of the group to produce a nearly unbelievably powerful instance that 
disrupts and ultimately destroys the very project – in addition to all that, 
the group, also, possesses ad hoc the same language, thus ensuring the clear 
and complete communication of all its members.
Engaged action would then be the one that is above all public or announced 
(for it cannot be a kind of negative social act or a secret, an undisclosed 
1  Would it be too irrelevant a digression to stop for a moment in order to let our ear 
listen to the subtle difference between common and joint? Where common implies a 
simple commonality, that something is happens to be happening in two or more places, 
or an opinion happens to be held by more than one person, joint implies a more com-
plicated unity, one not only with more intentionality (than simple commonality) but 
also comprising two steps: the first step of agreement and the second of expression. 
A common feeling or opinion is one that simply recurs; a joint feeling or opinion calls 
to mind a feeling or opinion arrived at, with a prior state of potential disagreement.
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  FURTHER THOUGHTS ON SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
action performed in silence). Further, it is provocative in nature, really a 
call or message to all, to others (com-mittere can mean to send), a prompt-
ing of all to come closer, to join (not only members of a group, but also those 
absent), because ‘to commit’ precisely means an action that encourages or 
obligates others to do something together by doing so as members of a future 
committee (“joint commitment obligates the parties one to the other to act 
in accordance with the commitments”; M. Gilbert). However, engaged action 
is specific in that it supposes this type of great or grand work, adherence 
(‘giving one’s all’, ‘committed to the end’) and abandon (a kind of sacrifice 
for others or with other or towards others, or in their stead, sacrifice as 
bringing closer, but also as work that calls others to join, repeat our action 
and thus construct future joint work) – all with the goal of bringing us 
closer to others. (The word engager comes from the verb vado, with the 
German word wadi, Latin vas, vadis meaning ‘je m’avance vers quelqu’un’, ‘I 
am advancing towards another’; P. Kemp.) We advance towards or are brought 
closer to others either when we become bound to them or bind them to us, 
when we ‘invest’ or ‘place something’ into or before others, when we ‘mettre 
en gage’ / ‘pledge’ or ‘donner en gage’ / ‘give a pledge’.
What does this mean? What does it mean to place a pledge or burden 
(guarantee, bail, hypothèque; ‘engager, c’est hypothéquer’) before an other 
or before all (the whole community), and to what extent is that a form of 
modest violence and forcing others (or all) to choose whether they would 
join this specific action or not? What kind of action does not principally 
have to be in strictly direct relation with another (‘if I am doing something, 
then you or she must do likewise’), but that certainly binds me to another 
(and the other to me) such that it jointly obligates us to conduct it (‘if I act, 
then we all act’, ‘if you act, then all act’)? If my public activities involve 
collecting money for caring for gravely ill children, organizing temporary 
shelter for war refugees from a neighboring state, or if I often visit slaugh-
terhouses to protest against (the way of) killing animals, would not all 
these activities be called engaged (and ‘activist’)? Each could represent 
‘personal commitment’ (engagement personnel), and at the same time, none 
could be performed individually, but would always require smaller or 
larger groups of people (‘joint commitment’). However, this transformation 
of individual into group agency need not necessarily be the most significant 
characteristic of these actions. The beginning of the explanation of this 
transformation was long ago constructed by Kant, where he speaks of du-
ties to oneself as such (Pflicht gegen sich selbst), of debt or obligation to 
oneself that always precedes and underpins/conditions any possible obliga-
tion to others (which he will call external duty).
Far more complicated, but also perhaps more crucial, is the set of actions 
that could be located in that place in English where two complementary 
words or strategies overlap and at the same time diverge: engagement and 
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PETAR BOJANIĆ, EDVARD ĐORĐEVIĆ ENGAGEMENT + ҐJOINTґ COMMITMENT...
commitment. Personal engaged action (crucially perhaps in contradistinction 
to the French engagement) remains personal, such as me being engaged in 
my career or caring for the ill. Only a handful of people, in my more or less 
immediate circle, will recognize this engagement, and in recognizing the 
engagement might feel that it is ‘a thing of public importance’, and thus an 
obligation to join in. Commitment or joint commitment, for it is always in 
the plural, calls for a different kind of obligation. Namely, when I call a 
lunch meeting of our Group for Social Engagement Studies at a nearby 
restaurant, and promise to attend the beginning of the meeting, then I am 
truly engaged and all those who answer the meeting call will confirm my 
action, thus also becoming engaged. But the joint commitment of our group 
(‘to act in accordance with commitments’) occurs only when the actions of 
the group produce sufficient reason or obligation for those who do not 
initially belong to our group, or those who are still not at the scheduled 
meetings, to necessarily join. If our group truly acts together, if it is jointly 
engaged (such action always referring to the vital connections and relation-
ships that hold the community or the group together), then I am obligated 
to join it, to become engaged (‘if all act, then I act’). Such an obligation is 
different from a non-perfect obligation, because the person that gives charity 
or uses polite protocols or helps the poor in no way produces the identical 
obligation in me. By contrast, joint commitment of a group could never 
leave me or us indifferent.


Engagement + (Joint) Commitment. O obavezi da se deluje zajedno

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Engagement + (Joint) Commitment. O obavezi da se deluje zajedno

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