DOI: 10.4324/9781003255185-4 Practical Identity and Open Cooperation Mario De Caro, Benedetta Giovanola, and Massimo Marraffa 2 2.1 Introduction According to a classic conception of analytical political philosophy, indi- viduality exists prior to relationality, and sociality is a cultural product generated by the necessity to live together. By challenging this assump- tion and integrating philosophical analysis with some fndings that come from contemporary psychological sciences, we will argue that individ- uality and relationality are indeed interconnected so that they give rise to a specifc form of cooperation, which we will call “open coopera- tion.” In this light, open cooperation presupposes a particular form of practical identity 1 that includes individual responsibility, which cannot be conceived independently of our relational practices. The aim of this chapter is to show that such an understanding of open cooperation and its connection with practical identity allows both to gain a deeper under- standing of personal practical identity and to shed light on the role of genuine relational practices in supporting political communal life. The chapter is structured as follows. Section 2.1 shows that, contrary to the standard view in political philosophy, individuality and relation- ality are interconnected in ways that depend on both nature and culture and that give rise to a particular form of cooperation, open cooperation, which is explored in Section 2.2. 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 scenario involves a disposition to engage in relational practices and prominently depends on a specifc relational motivation: the act of giving trust, construed as the decision to entrust oneself, according to own’s own choice, to an inter- personal situation of risk within cooperation. Section 2.3 makes the hypothesis that open cooperation occurs by virtue of a particular form of practical identity that includes the con- cept of individual responsibility. For it is only through the permanent internalization of ethics of individual responsibility that the strategies BK-TandF-ANNA_9781032181493-221062-Chp02.indd 41 31/01/23 2:17 PM