ABSTRACT
Solidarity concerns the social bond, the complex amalgam of emotional relations towards other persons and groups: sympathy of various forms, but also commitment to a conviction and to those people and groups (supposedly) sharing this conviction, an emotional investment in a cause or an idea. This chapter proceeds in three steps. First, it addresses the problem that the various uses of “solidarity” (and their conceptual relatives) always take some cue from the term’s conceptual history. “Solidarity” essentially functions as a polemical term that inevitable raises issues of social membership, and does so against the backdrop of historically intertwined political and legal discourses. Second, the chapter argues that the phenomenal content of the attitude and experiences of solidarity is conceptually linked to concerns of emotional affiliation and group membership. Third, it concludes that solidarity plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between the partiality of emotional attachment and the universal claims of (moral) obligations.
