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.

Chapter 3 formulated the philosopher’s role in terms of shared citizenship. Chapters 4–6 develop a global version of this view, according to which the philosopher is a theory-providing global discussant. Some view about the impact of ideas at the global level must be in place for there to be reflection on anything like a genuinely global philosophy or to make good on the implicit assumption that ideas make a difference somehow. The account that I enlist emerges from world society analysis. According to that stance, ideas are causally efficacious, in contrast, say, with materialist understandings in the Marxist tradition. Also, world society analysis seeks to understand the efficacy of ideas in a global context, by way of contrast, for instance, with international relations realists who believe it is mostly interests backed by power that explain change in the international domain. World society analysis has illuminating implications for political philosophy.