Table 4.

Five criteria for selecting a canonical text by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006: 71–74), applied to Rosanvallon (2013)

Criteria	Socialism OW
(a) The selected text should be (one of) the earliest political text(s) to present the polity in a systematic form. The grammar of the political text should provide for general formulations, i.e., be applicable to everyone and in all situations, which validate the operating customs, procedures, rules and settlements on the local level. The higher common principle must be satisfied “in order to sustain justifications” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 66). However, not all aspects of a canonical text are relevant. For example, the Civic OW defines the “State” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 72) based on a (legal) equality of citizens	Rosanvallon’s Society of Equals is selected as a canonical text because he is (among) the first to focus on the ‘singularity’ (individual) as a ‘solidaristic human being’ that constructs a communal and reciprocal polity (social world). The ‘solidarity’ among singularities is rooted in the esteem for oneself and others (see also Honneth, 2005: 121). Based on a historical and contemporary analysis of the French and US societies, Rosanvallon theorizes (Chap. 5) that the sociality of individual human beings can be singular as well as communal and reciprocal. In contrast to other accounts of alienation in the individualized, singular world (e.g., Bauman, 2000; Reckwitz, 2020), Rosanvallon provides a clear grammar to describe the communal and reciprocal ‘solidarity’ between singularities (see also Rosanvallon, 2014)
(b) The text needs to define a higher common principle, which is used in a socially structured situation for the construction of worth, [and to] present “a form of sacrifice and a form of common good possessing universal validity” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 72)	The higher common principle is communal and reciprocal ‘solidarity’ between singularities. Worth is based on the ethical continuum of singularities’ ‘solidarity’: the generality pole consists of “just rules,” and the particularity pole consists of agreement on singularities’ benefits being tied to “forms of attentive behavior” (Rosanvallon, 2013: 268). The worth of the higher common principle and its expression of subsidiarity ideally reduce the need for legal ‘rules and regulations’ (Civic OW) to a minimum. However, the sacrifice of singularities’ communal and reciprocal solidarity threatens social stability
(c) The text has to be explicitly political in the way the author argues for the “principles of justice that govern the polity” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 72)	The ‘solidarity’ of singularities, based on mutual esteem, is fundamental for the social construction of a communal and reciprocal polity
(d) The canonical text has to aim to establish practical trust within a polity by constructing a “natural order so as to institute situations that are stabilized by recourse to a higher common principle” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 73)	Rosanvallon argues in Chapter 4 that the natural trust known in industrial modernity (e.g., cultural conformity, rationalization, technicalization and expansion of the welfare state) is no longer valued in late modernity. In Chapter 5, the idea of singularities’ communal and reciprocal solidarity might be judged utopian in 2022. However, the Socialism “world is possible – that is, logically possible, cohesive and robust” (Boltanski, 2012: 99) based on Rosanvallon’s (2013) political philosophy of the Society of Equals
(e) This criterion is ambiguous. Boltanski and Thévenot (2006: 74) start by postulating that the text should be “widely known,” and then specify that the text's use to formulate political technologies is a more important element of this criterion. Political technologies are defined as the “construction of instruments for establishing equivalence that are of highly general validity or for the justification of such instruments” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 74)	Of course, in comparison to Rousseau’s Social Contract, which is used by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) to justify ‘legal’ structures (Civic OW), the work by Rosanvallon (2013) was published only recently. Rosanvallon (2013) systematically analyzes from a historical perspective the American and French dissonance of ideals in the evolution of non-solidaristic social structures of singularities life chances. In particular, Rosanvallon (2013) describes the political technologies of devaluation of singularities by the five different compensation types of social justice Rosanvallon (2013) defines the arrangements and arguments for esteem-based ‘solidarity’ as the core of a polity of communal and reciprocal singularities. Accordingly, ‘solidarity’ is the test for the justification of worth of the Socialism OW