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This article explores a particular connection between friendship and social solidarity and seeks to contribute to understanding the societal significance of non-institutionalised relationships. Commonly the benefits of friendship are assumed to accrue to friends only. But this is only part of the story. Friendship, as instantiation of intimacy and site of moral learning, is conducive to solidarity understood as felt concern for unknown others. That potentiality rests on a specific characteristic: friendship's loose institutional anchorage. Beginning with an explanation of friendship's institutional deficit, the article elaborates Durkheim's 'positive solidarity' juxtaposed with Honneth's recent take on solidarity. It then discusses the contribution (partial) personal relationships make to (impartial) morality, before turning to the specifics of moral learning in friendship. Finally, the article argues that although undesirable as social organising principle, friendship's institutional deficit renders it conducive to the relational acquisition of a comprehensive understanding of solidarity.

An examination of the complementary role of esteem- & respect-based solidarity in the development of a postconventional self in the postconventional society. Respect-based solidarity, based on the work of Jurgen Habermas, is more applicable to problems of political justice & leads to learning processes with wider appeal. By contrast, esteem-based solidarity, derived from the writings of Paul Ricoeur & Axel Honneth, builds on strongly evaluative interpretations. It is argued that esteem-based solidarity lacks the learning processes necessary for insights into problems of exclusion. J. Sadler