Seize the Means of Community

In the previous post, we explored Richard Rorty's key concepts—contingency, irony, solidarity, and final vocabularies—laying the groundwork for understanding how the Communitarium Project might build upon and extend them. Now, let’s take a closer look at Rorty’s concept of solidarity and examine both its potential and its limitations. Can we envision a form of solidarity that is less fragile, more collective, and embedded in a community that continuously sustains itself?

Contingent Solidarity

For Rorty, solidarity is contingent—it emerges from shared vocabularies and the empathetic connection that grows out of these shared ways of talking and understanding. Solidarity, in his view, is not something rooted in universal truths or some essential feature of human nature. Instead, it is built in the everyday, through the act of imagining ourselves in the place of others, using the language that binds us together for a time.

But this solidarity is always precarious, because the vocabularies that form its basis are themselves contingent, ever-changing. Solidarity, then, must be continuously reimagined and renewed as vocabularies evolve. This raises a challenging question: How do we create durable communities when the very foundation of our shared experience—our language—seems to be in constant flux?

Might the fragility of Rorty’s solidarity be a strength, forcing us to remain adaptable? Or does it point to a need for more structured mechanisms of communal maintenance, something the Communitarium Project seeks to address?

Contingency In Rorty | The Communitarium Wiki

The Fragility of Rortyan Solidarity

Rorty’s solidarity is powerful in its emphasis on empathy, but it is also fragile. If solidarity depends on shared vocabularies, what happens when those vocabularies shift or fracture? If we accept that language is contingent—always subject to historical and cultural change—then we must also accept that solidarity, in Rorty’s sense, can never be fully stable. It must be continuously negotiated, continuously worked at.

But here’s where the Communitarium Project steps in. While Rorty’s solidarity may seem to fade as vocabularies evolve, we might ask: What if we could structure solidarity in a way that it doesn’t dissolve as quickly in the face of contingency? Can we design communities where solidarity is maintained even as the frameworks we use to make sense of the world shift?

This is not about fixing vocabularies in place, but about creating practices and interactions that keep the community coherent, even as its language evolves.

Is it possible to develop rituals or forms of schmooze-level interaction that preserve communal bonds in the face of linguistic and cultural change? How would these practices look in a living, breathing community?

Toward a More Durable Solidarity

The Communitarium Project is, in many ways, a response to the limits of Rorty’s vision of solidarity. While Rorty’s approach emphasizes the beauty and necessity of empathetic connection through language, it leaves us with the problem of how to sustain these connections over time. How can solidarity persist when it is based on vocabularies that are always in motion?

The Communitarium seeks to create a structured medium in which solidarity is not just a byproduct of shared vocabularies but is actively cultivated and maintained through collective practices. In this sense, the Communitarium aims for a form of solidarity that is more embedded—one that doesn’t simply arise from empathy but is reinforced through ongoing rituals, shared work, and schmooze-level interactions.

Here, we are not just talking about solidarity as a feeling or a momentary connection. We are talking about the possibility of building solidarity into the fabric of communal life, through practices that reinforce the bonds between individuals even as their vocabularies evolve.

What would it take to embed solidarity in this way? What practices and mechanisms could help communities maintain their cohesion as they adapt to new circumstances?

Solidarity In The Communitarium | The Communitarium Wiki

The Role of Language in a Durable Solidarity

Language, for Rorty, is central to solidarity—but its contingency is what makes it so fragile. In the Communitarium, we are interested in whether language might still be flexible and adaptive, but anchored within a structure that allows solidarity to be maintained despite shifts in vocabulary. Could there be a way to institutionalize the flexibility of language, ensuring that communities remain adaptable without losing their sense of coherence?

This is where we begin to see the distinction between Rorty’s individualistic solidarity—rooted in the contingency of language—and the Communitarium’s vision of a collective, embedded solidarity. For Rorty, solidarity can never be fully secure, as it is contingent on the constant renegotiation of vocabularies. In contrast, the Communitarium aims to create a space where solidarity is practiced and maintained through collective effort, even as language continues to evolve.

Is there a way to create a community that values both the contingency of language and the durability of solidarity? Can we imagine a structure where the flexibility of language becomes a source of strength, rather than a source of fragility?

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In the next post, we will explore how the Communitarium Project builds on these ideas, expanding solidarity from an individual, empathetic practice to a collective, structured form of community cohesion.