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The meaning(s) of solidarity

In this chapter, Rainer Forst raises two concerns about the account of solidarity given by Andrea Sangiovanni. Firstly, he notes that Sangiovanni only employs ‘solidarity’ in the singular, to denote the core content of any meaningful usage of the term, while conceptions provide thicker interpretations of the central components. But it is not clear why Sangiovanni calls the result of different interpretations different ‘concepts of solidarity’ and not ‘conceptions’ of solidarity, as Forst would prefer to do. Secondly, Forst addresses one of the core elements of solidarity, that of ‘joint action.’ Why is ‘action’, as an actual event, required for solidarity? Sangiovanni’s analysis makes clear that different kinds of justifications provide different ‘reason[s] to act in solidarity’ with others. So solidarity implies an identification-based reason to act in solidarity and the willingness to do so if necessary. But that practical attitude and willingness seems to be sufficient to be solidary, and the actual acting not required, as it depends on contingent circumstances. Contrary to what Sangiovanni says, to be in solidarity is to possess a particular practical state of mind. To actually act need not be part of the definition of what solidarity is.

Andrea Sangiovanni's essay ‘Solidarity’ is a groundbreaking contribution to the by now large literature on solidarity that brings much-needed clarity to the debate. The way he lays out the nature, history, grounds, and value of solidarity entails far too many essential insights to enumerate here and comment on, but let it be said that this text will undoubtedly be a cornerstone for all future discussions of solidarity.

Still, as is the task for a solidary commentator, the business of thinking about solidarity we both are engaged in urges me to ask a few questions about the sections that Sangiovanni usefully lays out for us.

Concept and conceptions

I begin with commenting on a major agreement between the two of us – or at least what I think is an agreement. In my work on toleration (Forst 2013, ch. 1) and other concepts such as liberty or autonomy (Forst 2012, ch. 5) and, recently, on solidarity (Forst forthcoming), I use the distinction between a concept (singular) and various conceptions (plural) in a way that is inspired by Rawls, yet differs from his use of the distinction. In particular, when it comes to what I call ‘normatively dependent’ concepts (toleration, solidarity, legitimacy, trust are examples 1 ), I think it is important to recognize that the general core concept is value-free, while different normative conceptions of it can be formed by relying on other normative sources that have a more independent status. That is why I agree with Sangiovanni that solidarity as such is not a value (p. 29) and that it is other justifying grounds that give it normative substance (sometimes with good, sometimes with less good reasons), and that such an approach to the term is useful for purposes of both empirical analysis (of the different conceptions of toleration that have been and are used) and normative assessment (of the justifications for solidarity).

This, however, leads to a possible disagreement between us. I take it that a concept of solidarity appears in the singular only and denotes the core content of any meaningful usage of the term, while conceptions provide thicker interpretations of the central concept components. Sangiovanni's stated aim of developing ‘a unified concept of solidarity’ (p. 5) as a ‘more abstract concept’ (p. 6) as compared to more particular conceptions seems to suggest that much, as does his general definition of solidarity as ‘a particular form of joint action’ based on an ‘identification with others’ (p. 5). The features he lists (p. 17) are components of the general concept of solidarity. This is also what he says in the summary, claim 6 (p. 121, see also p. 117). Hence, I am not sure why he calls the result of different interpretations of certain concept components different ‘concepts of solidarity’ (p. 29) and not ‘conceptions’ of solidarity (as I would prefer to do).

At times, it looks as if Sangiovanni actually distinguishes three and not just two conceptual levels. The first corresponds to what Sangiovanni calls the ‘overarching concept of solidarity’ (p. 30), while the second level harbours the different ‘concepts’ that are used when researchers follow different aims, such as ‘testing an empirical hypothesis about the relationship between solidarity and levels of support for the welfare state’, or exploring historically ‘the changing character of French national solidarity’ (p. 31). I would here rather speak of different uses that such researchers make of the concept of solidarity and I would suggest, more precisely still, that their contrasting scholarly projects are implications of them espousing different particular conceptions of political solidarity. The same holds for the normative case that Sangiovanni discusses, where he says that those who look for EU solidarity in external policy and those who look for it in the area of economic life work with ‘two different, non-competing (normative) concepts of solidarity’ (p. 32). I would rather say that they use the same concept asking different questions, not that they use different concepts (they may, however, use different conceptions of EU solidarity, but that remains to be seen). Sangiovanni, however, seems to reserve the use of the term ‘conceptions’ only for a third conceptual level, which comprises cases where different notions of solidarity are employed with regard to one and the same context, as when people think differently about ‘solidarity in refugee and asylum policy’ (p. 32). But that seems overly restrictive. We can identify different political conceptions of solidarity, nationalist or based on constitutional patriotism, if you like, and they may (quite likely) have different implications for asylum politics; and we need to compare different normative conceptions of solidarity with regard to their different grounds, such as moral, ethical, political, religious, etc. But the aspects of analysis that Sangiovanni mentions (as in the example of internal or external EU solidarity) create neither different concepts nor different conceptions. Otherwise, a tripartite distinction between a meta-concept, aspect-relevant concepts, and particular conceptions would ensue, which is a baroque structure Sangiovanni might not want to adopt.

Being or acting in solidarity?

A second point I want to raise concerns one of the core elements of solidarity, that of ‘joint action’. Why is ‘action’, as an actual event, required for solidarity? As Sangiovanni's analysis makes convincingly clear, different kinds of justifications provide persons with different ‘reason[s] to act in solidarity’ (p. 10) with others. So solidarity implies an identification-based recognized reason to act in solidarity and the willingness to do so if necessary and if one is in a position to do so. But that practical attitude and willingness seems to be sufficient to be solidary, and the actual acting not required, as it depends on contingent circumstances. Contrary to what Sangiovanni says (‘To be in solidarity is […] to act in solidarity’, p. 16), to be in solidarity is to possess a particular practical state of mind. To actually act accordingly merely follows (if circumstances allow for it) and need not be part of the definition of what solidarity is. One can see this also from Sangiovanni's own list of features of solidarity, where he speaks of the ‘intention’ (p. 17) to do one's part, the ‘commitment’ to certain shared aims and to sharing ‘one's fate’, or the attitude of ‘trust’ in others assuming that they are similarly motivated. All of these denote a practical attitude and willingness to act in a solidary way based on a common cause or identity (see my definition in Forst forthcoming), not the actual action. Solidarity is, I conclude (at this point), not ‘joint action’ but the readiness to engage in such action for the right reasons. If you have that attitude but for some reason lose the ability to act according to it, you still are solidary, though you cannot act in a solidary way.

Sangiovanni himself mentions, at the end of his text, an example: Marie who sings the Deutschlandlied on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall falls, along with people there whom she watches (on television, I assume). Marie feels solidary with the people on site, and I think she thus is solidary, identifying with their cause and joy (and I hope, by the way, they only sang the third verse, for otherwise she is a nationalist solidarist, a point I will come back to). Sangiovanni concedes that much but metaphorically adds that this makes sense only ‘in the shadow of nearby forms of possible joint action’ (p. 119). This is a beautiful metaphor, but essentially it means that joint action is no necessary requirement of solidarity – rather, a certain state of mind is. He suggests to regard this example as an exception to the rule, but it might be an example that questions the rule as Sangiovanni identifies it (p. 122).

Joint action?

But how about the second part of the ‘joint-action’ formulation – does solidary action need to be joint in the way Sangiovanni explains? I have doubts about that. Sangiovanni follows a rather strong notion of joint action, based on certain accounts of collective agency (such as Tuomela's). Required for solidarity is, as Sangiovanni argues, a ‘we-perspective’ with shared aims and a shared plan of action (‘coordination based on shared intentions’, p. 20). He modifies this substantively, though, when he allows for ‘different ideas about what the final ends of our action are’ (p. 19); and giving the BLM example, he even goes so far as to say that solidary unity at least implies that different groups ‘are not actively and intentionally undermining’ (p. 22) the activist general aims. At such a level of disagreement between factions of a movement, the definition of ‘joint action’ becomes strained, I fear.

But that is not my main point. Rather, as much as I think that strong forms of joint action are characteristic of many forms of solidary action, I wonder whether Sangiovanni overlooks some important forms of solidarity in generalizing the criterion of joint action. Think of the workers’ movement in a socialist version or of the women's movement. Solidary agents for the common cause of such kinds were always aware that one of the major obstacles or ‘significant adversity’ (p. 23), as Sangiovanni says, was not just the opposition from the ruling classes and groups, but also the inertia and pluralism of attitudes – ranging from ignorance to outright rejection – among those they actually fought for, workers or women. In his historical argument, Sangiovanni himself points to such a case with reference to liberation theology, which tries to raise the ‘awareness among the poor that their situation is a result of social organization, rather than […] a result of the natural order of things’ (p. 53). Thus ‘the most dangerous obstacles in the way of liberation are ignorance and silence’ (p. 53). This is what I mean. One of the main obstacles in such situations is the very fact that no joint action for the right cause is possible, and not even a common discourse, and whether that is explained by theorems of ‘false consciousness’ or others, such movements felt and feel that one of the tasks of solidary action is to struggle for and on behalf of those who were blindfolded by ideology. So their solidarity included those whose ‘real interests’ they (thought they) knew better. In (post-)Marxist as well as feminist discourse, the problems of such approaches, especially of an orthodox kind, have been much discussed, 2 and there is no reason to reproduce such versions here. But the point remains that solidarity can include fighting or working for others with whom you identify for a common cause (based on a ‘shared condition’ in Sangiovanni's sense), which you see as normatively binding but they don't. Think also of struggles against racism and for ecological change – they often contain instances of being solidary with those who feel no solidarity with those who struggle even though the latter think the former (lacking a sense of solidarity) should, while they themselves act in solidarity with and for them, though not together with them. Here, solidarity is not unilateral as in a case of humanitarian solidarity, 3 but it is also not omnilateral; rather, it is an anticipation of the ‘true’ realization of a common cause (which includes, as I would add, a duty not to paternalize those whom one identifies with and regards as unsolidary). ‘We also fight for you’ is a slogan often heard across picket lines. So the ‘we-perspective’ of solidarity can be one which is imaginary, greater than the one of actual solidary action, and based on an identification that is not (yet) fully shared, and you may work with others in joint action (with the ‘enlightened’) to make it shared (among all affected) – as Sangiovanni says with reference to liberation theologians like Gutiérrez. But while you do this, you already act in a solidary way including, in your action, those who are blinded by ideology, yet joint action with them is not available to you.

There are also cases, I think, in which you act solidary on behalf of others who, for example, struggle for justice in parts of the world you have no contact to – and so you identify with them and their cause of justice, but to call your support (donations, for example) a form of joint action in the sense explained by Sangiovanni seems unjustified. I may not have lots of possibilities to communicate with these groups about their aims and strategies; but what I know is good enough (for me) to act in a solidary way. Solidarity is the willingness to act for the sake of others based on a common cause or identity which motivates you, but it need not be jointly coordinated action. The general concept of solidarity is more capacious than Sangiovanni allows for. 4

In the historical section, Sangiovanni addresses some such cases. In defending not just the thesis of joint action but also that of symmetrical relations of equality when it comes to solidarity (a point I will come back to below), he argues that a solidarity on behalf of others without actually acting together with them is mere ‘support’, not ‘acting in solidarity with them’ (p. 63). At this point, the ambivalence of the ‘with them’ comes to the fore: I may well act in solidarity with prisoners (as his example says) whose protest I identify with (without them knowing it), but I have no possibility to actually act in a coordinated way with them. So I fear that Sangiovanni identifies actual forms of acting with others with solidarity generally, which I consider to be a practical attitude of the willingness to act with and/or for others based on a common cause. To be sure, he allows for ‘latent’ (p. 63) solidarity in cases where our protest is in line with theirs, even though we do not and cannot act in concert. But we could, given our shared aims. Such a case I would call one of solidarity proper, just not one where we can fully act together. Still, we are motivated by the same cause and act accordingly. The ‘acting in concert’ condition, if I may call it that (using a phrase by Arendt), is not necessary for solidarity to exist, not even for it to materialize in action. It would cease to be solidarity, however, if the notion to stand in for the others based on a common concern was merely illusionary; there must be grounds for assuming that the cause is actually shared. But a shared intention is too strong as a condition for that; some reflection and reasonable judgment is called for and suffices.

Solidarity and equality

This raises an important conceptual point. In defending the joint action and intention requirement as well as the claim that solidarity ‘is understood to embody a commitment among equals’ (p. 56) and thus conceptually excludes asymmetrical or one-sided relations such as charity or humanitarian aid, Sangiovanni rightly asks why we should use the term solidarity for cases that are close to, or identical with, charity (p. 61) and humanitarian actions (pp. 64–5.): ‘What does calling them instances of solidarity add?’ (p. 65). Such questions are crucial for analyzing the concept of solidarity. But since Sangiovanni himself tends to only count instances of jointly coordinated action based on an egalitarian normative identification as instances of solidarity – ‘Solidarity requires joint action, and joint action requires, at the very least, coordination based on shared intentions’ (p. 20) – we might ask him as well what is added by calling such phenomena instances of solidarity rather than instances of morally grounded egalitarian cooperation. This is close to the way Sangiovanni reads Bourgeois and Durkheim on solidary cooperation, and I think it is very close to his own work on justice and reciprocity (Sangiovanni 2007). But be that as it may, the question here is twofold – what does the term solidarity add to other words describing similar or the same social phenomena, and should it add anything?

We should avoid a common mistake in answering this question. That is the mistake of an exaggerated fear of conceptual overlap, as if solidarity were a phenomenon that could not be connected to practical attitudes such as fighting for justice or identifying with the victims of some distant catastrophe. As Sangiovanni's own argument makes clear, the notion of solidarity needs additional normative resources to make sense and gain practical import, so we need to be careful in analyzing the connections and differences to other normative concepts. Occasionally, interpreters 5 think that solidarity must be a completely separate normative mode of action and thus sever its connections to justice and other concepts and practical motives – and thus have trouble giving it content and also linking it to the history of social struggles (against injustice especially).

Yet, that does not mean that solidarity is reducible to any such terms. It is a practical attitude of the willingness to act with and/or for others on the basis of a common bond grounded in a common cause and/or identity, and the point of solidarity is that it is that very bond that motivates action. So when I fight against concrete injustice, my solidary struggle concretely materializes in this particular engagement for this very cause (say, BLM), as it is this project that I am devoted to, that I am willing to take risks for, and may accept certain extra costs for. Or I fight for this particular nation because I am part of it and value it – or I am not a member but admire it nevertheless and support it. Or I support victims of this natural disaster because of some bond that connects me with them, maybe on the basis of religious considerations or because the disaster was so terrible. Solidarity in such ways combines general normative considerations of, for example, justice, but places them in a concrete setting with particular aims and motivations – and a particular bond. Or it is based on a particular community from the start, such as ‘my nation’, but then those who are solidary in this way can normally give additional reasons for that bond other than mere membership (such as the ‘greatness’ of their nation). What solidarity, in all its forms, ethical, legal, political, or moral, adds is the motive of furthering a cause which has general value in a particular way, as part of a special enterprise or community. 6 It is a motivational force for something particular, yet often as part of general considerations. Solidarity focuses such normative commitments in a particular way.

So humanitarian aid can be a case of solidarity, I think, if it focuses a general moral commitment (of respecting others as having equal dignity) on a particular instance of helping others in need, be they refugees as victims of injustice or of a natural disaster (or both). If they are victims of injustice, the aid should not merely be of a humanitarian kind, as one should also be solidary in overcoming the cause of the misery such people are in and help to fight the injustice, especially if the society one lives in is implicated in it. But humanitarian solidarity is not a contradiction in terms. It also need not be identical with charity if the latter is understood as a top-down, condescending attitude.

So why does Sangiovanni defend the joint-action and equal-relations view so vehemently? My impression is that in the course of section 2, Sangiovanni changes his methodological path. Rather than analyzing the general concept of solidarity, which he does not regard as a value per se since the Mafia (not the most egalitarian of organizations) can also be solidary (p. 29), Sangiovanni here starts to argue for a particular normative conception of solidarity, stressing the ‘value of solidarity for us, which is deeply bound up with the history of egalitarianism as a collective struggle’ (p. 62). This is the point of his genealogy (which I will address in the next section), and it is the reason for his defense of the egalitarian nature of coordinated solidary action. For example, in arguing that the Christian ‘elision between charity and solidarity’ (p. 65) should be abandoned, Sangiovanni says that doing so ‘would help to keep in clear view the distinctive value of solidarity – recall its essentially cooperative and egalitarian character – and maintain a connection to its history’ (p. 65). But the history, as he just showed, does not have such a clear message, and apart from that, the argument here is straightforwardly normative in character, no longer a conceptual analysis. Which brings me to Sangiovanni's short history of solidarity.

The history of solidarity

In his fascinating historical reconstruction of the discourse on solidarity, Sangiovanni places it in a modern sociological perspective, according to which ‘solidarity names an egalitarian, mutualistic, and cooperative practice among strangers […] in an era when traditional social ties […] have weakened’ (p. 34). Such forms of solidarity, he goes on to argue, are ‘omnilateral and symmetrical as well as transformative and critical’ (p. 34). He points to five important traditions of that discourse, namely French solidarism (Bourgeois, Durkheim), socialism, liberal nationalism (Renan, Mazzini), Christianity and more recent social movements (p. 53). His presentation is short but highly illuminating of the rich history of solidarity.

But two questions seem in order. First, given Sangiovanni's own account, does this history clearly show that the concept ought to be understood in the egalitarian transformative way he suggests? And second, is this history adequate, or, more precisely, does it neglect the ‘dark side’ of solidarity, especially in its nationalist forms?

As for the first question, it seems obvious that, from a socialist perspective, the liberal democratic ‘solidarism’ version of solidarity, which stresses the social division of labor and regards class struggle as a major threat to social cohesion and solidarity (pp. 39; 45), is seen as conservative, non-egalitarian, and as inimical to true (socialist) solidarity. Just think of the difference between Durkheim's notion of ‘corporations’ and unions in a socialist sense (p. 44). For socialists, the tradition of solidarism moralized and naturalized capitalist social relations as forms of ‘organic’ (Durkheim) solidarity. The opposition is even starker between socialist and nationalist discourses, even if we restricted (and why should we?) nationalist discourse to ‘liberal nationalism’ (p. 47). In any case, I conclude that Sangiovanni's own reconstruction of the history of solidarity already sheds doubt on the egalitarian transformative reading, as the five traditions did not all include, or aim at, egalitarian forms of social relations. The socialists, a major tradition in solidarity discourse, regarded liberal, nationalist, and a number of religious notions of solidarity as enemies of equality and solidarity.

As far as the second question is concerned, especially the rivalry between socialist and nationalist notions of solidarity points us to the great catastrophes of recent European history which Sangiovanni does not mention. The conflict between socialist and nationalist solidarities characterized social struggles throughout most of the nineteenth century and culminated in the context of World War One, where socialists and social democrats especially faced the decision of which form of solidarity to give priority to. The fear of being called Vaterlandsverräter (traitors to the nation) led to a number of nationalistic choices which would haunt the history of social democracy – and European societies generally (Mommsen 1979; Kruse 1997). Germany is a particular case in point, as the rhetoric of solidarity became closely tied to nationalism, linked to the Gemeinschaft of the Volk rather than modern Gesellschaft (Tönnies 1957). National socialism used this when, for example, it inaugurated a ‘day of national solidarity’ (Tag der nationalen Solidarität) in 1934, a day on which money was collected all over the country for the social organization Winterhilfswerk des deutschen Volkes (winter aid organization of the German people) to benefit the poor and jobless (as the Nazis saw fit). As national socialist rule consolidated after the Nuremberg Laws, Jews were placed under ‘house arrest’ during that day, as they were excluded from that kind of Volkssolidarität. The term ‘national solidarity’ was coined by Goebbels and famously used by Hitler in 1933 to replace any notion of ‘international solidarity’ – not without success (Schmitz-Berning 2007, pp. 602–3). In the time after World War Two, trying to redefine the term, Volkssolidarität was founded in 1945 as a social(ist) organization in East Germany (the GDR) and became a political mass organization (especially caring for the elderly); it still exists today as a major welfare organization.

This is not to say, of course, that in Germany the term solidarity has been captured by nationalist discourse exclusively. But it is to highlight that the very term harbors the great struggles and political tragedies of recent history, and that we should be aware of that history and these ambivalences, to put it mildly, when we reflect on the meaning of the concept. Solidarity can be a term used in emancipatory egalitarian struggles, but also a term used by those who are the deadly enemies of such struggles.

Motivational and normative grounds

The section on the ‘grounds’ of solidarity fully fleshes out the normative conception of solidarity Sangiovanni wants to defend. The way he discusses reasons of identification with regard to sharing a way of life, a certain role, condition, experience, or a cause seen as valuable and binding is highly illuminating. But I fear the section presents a somewhat misleading way to determine the grounds of solidarity. To be precise, the discussion of identification highlights an essential aspect of the motivational grounds of solidarity, but it is underdetermined with regard to the normative grounds that justify such identifications. The analysis shows, at least to me, that solidarity is a ‘normatively dependent’ concept and in need of additional normative substance in order to motivate persons to feel and act solidary. In order to explain this motivation, the value of a common way of life that solidary persons defend or want to uphold is relevant (p. 69), and solidarity depends on the importance of that value in the eyes of persons (and their interest in furthering it). Similarly, certain roles lead to solidary identification only if there is a particular value attached to them by the solidary persons, and that can be the social importance of the role (as teacher or doctor) or a sense of its political importance and obligations, such as citizenship as democratic co-authorship (p. 77). The same is true for social conditions seen as relevant for grounding solidarity, which may lie in a common predicament with respect to suffering from structural injustice – and the corresponding affirmation of the imperative of justice (p. 85). Hence there are no reasons of solidary identification ‘as such’; rather, the relevant normative reasons for solidarity are based on certain general values or principles together with a sense of obligation to a particular group, often referred to by Sangiovanni as reasons of fairness (pp. 71; 76), of doing one's share. Hence the identification that motivates solidarity is itself grounded, it is not the ground of solidarity, as the argument in section 3 assumes. The identification arises from valued ways of life, roles, and conditions, hence it is a necessary motivational component, but it is not normatively sufficient to ground solidarity. Identification is not ‘giving us grounds for acting in solidarity with others’ (p. 67); rather, it rests on certain normative grounds of a substantive nature and thus motivates solidarity.

Given Sangiovanni's discussion, but counter to his explicit argument, it seems that we need to identify the basic normative grounds of solidarity in certain contexts (the value attached to a way of life, certain roles, or a project that is pursued, such as structural justice with regard to a particular group) and analyze how that ground leads to particular solidary identifications and motivations. I think this is what Sangiovanni substantively argues, contre cœur, but then the different grounds need to be categorized differently, namely with regard to the values or principles animating the sense of importance of the solidary project. This also means, I think, that Sangiovanni is correct to argue that ‘shared interests or values’ (p. 102) on their own are not sufficient as grounds for solidarity without the component of identification. Yet, this view neglects the important insight that without shared values (or principles) and the interest in actively furthering or defending them, there are no normative grounds for concrete solidary identification. Solidarity has a point, and that point is what grounds solidarity.

In addition, the notion of rationality used to distinguish rational from irrational solidary motivations (such as on p. 88, where Sangiovanni requires ‘more than an irrational bias toward those who are “like us”’ for justified solidarity) ought to be spelled out. What are the terms of rational justification in the different contexts discussed, what is rational solidarity?

Reasons of solidarity

The discussion of the reasons motivating identification – which argues for the fundamentally ‘private’ (p. 99) character of identification – also raises highly important points using well-chosen examples (pp. 92–4). But it seems that the discussion is richer than the distinction between ‘operative’ reasons and ‘reasons as such’ (p. 94) allows for. In particular, we may distinguish more fine-grainedly between (a) the subjective reasons that motivate persons to feel and act solidary with a particular group (and its cause); (b) the reasons of obligation one feels toward the group in determining what one thinks one ought to do to be solidary (often reasons of fairness or reciprocity); (c) the ‘objective’ reasons of why it is appropriate to identify with the group, given who and what one is; and (d) the general reasons one relies upon to evaluate whether the cause or aims in question are well justified in moral terms. All of these reasons are relevant to understand and evaluate contexts of solidary identification (or the lack of it).

Aristotelian Rawlsianism

Finally, Sangiovanni's discussion of the non-instrumental value of solidarity is highly illuminating, not just because it confirms my impression that solidarity for him basically is a form of egalitarian social cooperation. When he stresses the value of solidaristic reciprocity, he emphasizes (in line with Rawls’ notion of social cooperation) the ‘pleasure’ of cooperative activity (p. 123), and if I may say so, this shows that Sangiovanni essentially argues from the perspective of an Aristotelian Rawlsian, one who believes that forms of solidary, reciprocal cooperation are an important part of individual and collective human flourishing (cf. also pp. 104–11).

It is important, however, that his Aristotelian Rawlsianism commits Sangiovanni to relativize his thesis about the non-instrumental value of acting in solidarity as a collective virtue. For in arguing that the solidarity we find in Mafia groups, for example, does not convey that kind of virtue, as it is ‘conditional on the value of the ends it promotes’ (p. 111), Sangiovanni confirms my interpretation that the value of solidarity is based on other principles and values and thus is not normatively independent. Hence this questions the interpretation of solidarity as an independent, non-instrumental value for us as cooperative beings.

This, however, brings Sangiovanni into conflict with his following discussion of the relation between justice and solidarity. For if (as I believe) the value of solidarity depends upon justifiable principles and values at its basis then it can only demand ‘more than merely justice’ (p. 113) if it rests on another value such as loyalty to a colleague (as in the example on p. 113). One always needs to add what particular kind of solidarity can conflict with the solidarity required by justice, and it is normatively underdetermined to use a notion of solidarity as free-standing to analyze such a conflict, as Sangiovanni suggests.

This is also true when persons give partial communal solidarity priority over the solidarity demanded by justice (p. 113). This is how we should describe such a conflict, not as one between ‘justice’ and ‘solidarity’, as there is no such thing as solidarity without a further ground. It always needs to be grounded; it can be grounded in justice, or something else, or both; and then the two may conflict (as in a conflict between socialist and nationalistic solidarity).

But we may also have arrived at a point at which Sangiovanni actually defends a different view, and maybe he has done so all along. So far, I have assumed that justice, as well as other principles or values, can provide grounds for solidarity (for social movements especially, socialist or other), and I have also assumed that Sangiovanni agrees when he says, for example, that solidarity can exhibit ‘the internal aspect of justice’ (p. 114), that is, ‘the attitudes, relations, commitments, and structure of deliberation that ought to lie behind and support a sincere affirmation and realization of principles of social justice’ (p. 114). But when he goes on to argue that solidarity ‘can be seen as a crucial motivating factor in realizing principles of justice’ (p. 115), he emphasizes that this means that ‘identification with others on one or more of the bases we have discussed gives people reasons to engage in justice-promoting collective actions that are independent of justice’ (p. 115) and merely ‘reinforce reasons of justice’. While I think that reasons of solidarity in contexts of (in-)justice are reasons of justice promoting a particular project and community aiming to realize justice, thus combining justice and a common bond, Sangiovanni separates the two and argues that solidarity here provides independent practical reasons apart from justice based on communal identification. But what would the content of such reasons be? It cannot be ‘solidarity’, as it has no content without supporting principles and values. Yet the argument here seems to suggest precisely such a content. If Sangiovanni means the considerations that stem from a different substantive bond of solidarity, one that is different from justice, such as some form of national cohesion, then this needs to be added here (and could lead to further problems). In any case, solidarity always needs a further adjective, otherwise talk of it remains too abstract.

Or else, it remains too concrete, as in Sangiovanni's argument that ‘the normative, epistemic, and affective degree of commitment required by solidarity far outstrips what is required – by way of our attitudes rather than our actions – to meet the demands of justice’ (pp. 116–7.). At this point, the Aristotelian Sangiovanni wins out against the Rawlsian, as Rawls’ idea of social cooperation did include the required forms of solidarity and ‘fraternity’ (Rawls 1971, §17). 7 Hence, when Sangiovanni stresses that ‘[t]he nature of our identifications is intimate and personal’ (p. 117), he falls prey to taking a certain conception of solidarity in personal contexts for the whole concept, excluding conceptions of solidarity based on justice. The distinction he goes on to suggest between justice focusing on ‘principles’, while solidarity focuses on ‘practices with normative and evaluative significance’ (p. 117) thins out the meaning of justice far too much, as if it were only concerned with principles embodied in abstract institutions and not with practices. This also goes against Sangiovanni's own view of practice-based accounts of justice (Sangiovanni 2008, p. 2014).

In sum, the final attempt to subsume the notion of solidarity, after it has become obvious that it is dependent on other principles and values to gain content and motivational force, under a category of ‘associational ethics’ (p. 117) is doomed to fail. Solidarity is a term of relational ethics and politics which highlights the particular projects and collective aims people have, but it cannot be relegated to the realm of personal or communitarian social ethics. This reifies the meaning of solidarity and reduces the plurality of its forms as we learn to appreciate them from Sangiovanni's great treatise.

1 On legitimacy, see Forst 2017, ch. 8. On trust, see Forst 2022.
2 The literature on this is abundant. On the discussions within Marxism, see Kallscheuer 1986, ch. 10, as well as Jay 1986. Habermas 1971 provides an account of the philosophical debates until the 1960s. On the debates within feminist theory, see Alcoff and Potter 1993.
3 See O’Neill 1996, p. 201, on solidarity with and solidarity among.
4 I shall only note here in passing that Sangiovanni, in counting ecological movements as solidary movements, seems also to include the notion of solidarity with persons not yet born, and that also excludes joint action.
5 E.g. Derpmann 2013 and Jaeggi 2001.
6 See the analysis of contexts of solidarity in Forst forthcoming.
7 See also Sangiovanni at pp. 107–8 and n. 219.

References

Alcoff, L. and E. Potter , eds. (1993), Feminist Epistemologies (New York: Routledge).

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Solidarity – Nature, grounds, and value

Andrea Sangiovanni in dialogue

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