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Solidarity remains a second- or perhaps third-tier concept in political theory, despite the attention it received from Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas in the last decades of the twentieth century. Not only must it compete with related concepts like friendship and fraternity, but when solidarity does emerge, discussions about it frequently become arguments about justice, as the question arises immediately: Solidarity toward what end?
Philosopher Sally Scholz's new book brings solidarity front and center as a moral and political concept in its own right. Concerned that scholars use solidarity in imprecise ways, thus diluting its meaning and causing confusion, her aim is twofold: first, to set forth a classification system of three levels and then three types of solidarity, and second, to provide a theory of one of those types, political solidarity. Scholz defines solidarity at the most general level as 1) a form of unity that 2) mediates between the individual and community and 3) entails moral obligations. She then identifies three types of solidarity at the second level of her system: social, civic, and political solidarities. Attachments like sympathy and camaraderie comprise the third level in her system. She classifies these bonds as "parasitical solidarity" since they do not entail moral obligations and, thus, are not really forms of solidarity.
Scholz's project of conceptual clarification is primarily aimed at the second level, distinguishing what she calls the "three basic forms" from one another (p. 17). Social solidarity has to do with group cohesiveness, whether that group is a family,...