Only when philosophy discovers in the dialectical course of history the traces of violence that deform repeated attempts at dialogue and recurrently close off the path to unconstrained communication does it further the process whose suppression it otherwise legitimates: mankind's evolution toward autonomy and responsibility.

A lonely freedom cannot satisfy

A heart that has grown one with every heart

I am a deputy of the aspiring world

My spirit's liberty I ask for all.

We also need to consider how a deliberate engagement with the twentieth century's histories of suffering might furnish resources for the peaceful accommodation of otherness in relation to fundamental commonalty. In particular, we need to ask how an increased familiarity with the bloodstained workings of racism – and the distinctive achievements of the colonial governments it inspired and legitimated – might be made to yield lessons that could be applied more generally, in the demanding contemporary settings of multicultural social relations. this possibility should not imply the exaltation of victimage or the world-historic ranking of injustices that always seem to remain the unique property of their victims. Instead of these early choices, I will suggest that multi-cultural ethics and politics could be premised upon an agonistic, planetary humanism capable of comprehending the universality of our elementary vulnerability to the wrongs we visit upon each other.