ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that the heritage of solidarity should be at the foreground of the political imagination of Europe. He argues that, the tendency in debates on solidarity is to see it either as bounded by the national state or as an essentially moral condition that is unbounded. Solidarity in modern societies will very often entail a political challenge to the status quo. There are two broad positions on solidarity as a concept. The first is that solidarity is culturally and spatially bounded. A second position contends in contrast that solidarity is a universalistic moral trait of human beings and is potentially therefore of global scope. Anti-war solidarity made possible the largest protests in European history in 2003 when millions of people took to the streets on 15 and 16 February to protest against the Anglo-American-led war in Iraq.
