Abstract

In a world where politics is becoming increasingly fragmented, unequal, and divided, solidarity is of crucial importance. But what exactly is solidarity? The concept can feel hopelessly vague and amorphous, bleeding into other related notions such as altruism, community, mutual concern, fellow-feeling, and justice. At the same time, there is a tendency to identify numerous possible kinds of solidarity, notably political, social, civic, and human. In his lead essay for this volume, Andrea Sangiovanni sets out to elaborate a unified concept of solidarity that can comprehend each of these usages while having enough structure to make it normatively and empirically fruitful in a range of other contexts. He argues that solidarity is best understood not as an emotion or kind of fellow-feeling but as a particular form of joint action characterized by a typical profile of commitments, intentions, and attitudes, and triggered by an identification with others on the basis of a shared cause, role, way of life, condition, or set of experiences. Most of the essay is dedicated to unpacking each of these aspects. But Sangiovanni also takes the time to re-elaborate, extend, and revise some of the key insights into solidarity that have emerged in recent literature.