Summation

Abstract

My aim in undertaking this study was neither to offer a biography of KWT, nor to sit in judgment on his politics. What I was interested in was to locate KWT’s ideas, or what he termed “public philosophy,” within the history of international thought. I hope I have done that. The combination of the research and writing experience proved to be much more, however. It became a delightful journey and a rewarding exercise of a conversation with and through the works of KWT about the human condition. I originally thought my task would be to recount the knowledge I had about the thought of a thinker I knew, but in practice, the process became yet another long seminar with KWT that taught me a great deal and I have been humbled by it, recognizing anew the complexity of the human condition in the public sphere. In the end, I hope I have succeeded in canvassing the parameters of his account of the human condition by capturing the pillars of his public philosophy. He believed that “practical, legal and political philosophy provides signposts of recurrent concerns in ethics and politics” (B1980c: 176). What forms of signposts has he offered? What do these signposts tell us about who KWT was? Are they consistent? I hope these three questions reveal to us something about the Aristotelian concerns of how we should live together as a community.

May be our greatest enterprise abroad is the effort of serious and dedicated American, as well as those of other lands, trying in countless small ways to move civilization ahead as may be requested by the leaders of society.

—KWT (A1966a: 32)