 The key imperative in Rorty’s ethico-political agenda is the deepening and widening of solidarity. Consistent with his ethnocentrism, he distinguishes between “us” and “them,” arguing that thinking of more and diverse people as “one of us” is the hallmark of social progress (CIS, 191). Solidarity is brought about by gradual and contingent expansions of the scope of “we;” it is created through the hard work of training our sympathies rather than through the recognition of antecedent criteria that stipulate what we have in common. We train our sympathies, Rorty thinks, by exposing ourselves to forms of suffering we had previously overlooked. Thus, the task of the intellectual, with respect to social progress, is not to provide refinements of social theory, but to sensitize us to the suffering of others, and refine, deepen and expand our ability to identify with others, to think of others as like ourselves in morally relevant ways. (EHO, Part III; CIS, Part III). The liberal ironist, in particular, sees “enlarging our acquaintance” (CIS, 80) as the only way to assuage the doubts she has about herself and her culture.