ABSTRACT
In the course of the twentieth century, something strange and distorting appears to have happened to the concept of ‘solidarity’. If we can take ‘solidarity’ as a rough rendering of the third of the great ideals of the French Revolution, of ‘Fraternity’, along with ‘Liberty’ and ‘Equality’, then the word, as both ideal and concept, admits of multiple interpretations, and in at least four dimensions: first, fraternity, or solidarity, within countries, between similar social groups, communities and, in the language of modern socialism above all, classes; secondly, international solidarity, in the conventional sense of supporting legitimate struggles, of workers, or ethnic groups, in other countries; thirdly, support for those within countries who are in some way different but who have a claim based on common humanity, or at least derived from common exploitation by a shared system of oppression, such as women, ethnic groups, or immigrants, this often subsumed in appeals to cultural pluralism or multiculturalism; finally, support for those who are not from the same social or class group, who are outside or foreign to the community in question, but to whom support, what Kant termed Hospitalita, is due, or toward whom, in modern terminology, ‘duties toward strangers’ are owed.
