World society analysis explains change in terms of dissemination of ideas. However, many have insisted that Western ideas have played an outsized role and therefore current world society is illegitimate. To avoid this conclusion, we must show that world society analysis offers resources to find that role reasonably palatable. We can offer three responses: the Western tradition contains a plethora of approaches; the recent predominance of Western ideas is embedded into a human web that has unfolded for much longer; Western ideas are not alien elements infringing upon other traditions, but responses to earlier stages. The most important response is that ideas whose transmission involves coercion can be authentically appropriated. With this understanding of world society, we can formulate the conception of the political philosopher as a global discussant. However, some of the theoretical machinery to formulate a global public reason standpoint can only be developed in Part III.

“Justice” is a big word. One response to such words is to defer to the common-sense wisdom that lies in running together a range of themes and do as good a job as possible of tracing the common concern. Thereby, we would make as much sense as possible of a big word. This approach is what we try to do here for justice. But this is an uphill struggle. The centrality of distributive or social justice to political philosophy is a historical anomaly. It is a challenge to integrate ideas about the global properly with considerations of social justice. To talk about the coloniality of the concept of social justice means to draw attention to the built-in disregard for the concerns of many people on this planet. So, as we make a case for the importance of social justice, we must also integrate ideas of the global in appropriate ways.