When Howard Rheingold first coined the term virtual community, he was referring to a new kind of community on the World Wide Web, defined by the possibility of (real-time) communication in physical absence. However, as new media can change the way we look at old media, it has become clear that the spoken word, not to mention writing and printing, already creates spaces of virtuality. The project aims to show that communicational communities are always virtual, regardless of their constituent media – but that these media and their diversity are crucial to the quality of social relations. It therefore examines the historical connections between human judgment, its media, and the virtual communities to which it refers, from the early modern period to the present. This investigation assumes that judgment is not merely an isolated epistemic operation, but a social reflection and thus a performative act. The social space of performativity is therefore captured by the concept of virtuality, which emphasizes the absent presence of others in the use of media. Judgment depends on and constitutes virtual communities, it involves an anticipation and reinterpretation of the implicit and/or explicit consensus of the community. In doing so, it preserves, updates or transforms the community, also endangering it, moving in the realm of a virtuality constituted by the possible performative acts of possible present and future members.