Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Legitimate Reality and Ethical Authority -- The Postcolonial Predicament in Modern Political Philosophy -- "Objective" Knowledge and Sacred Belief -- 2 Ethical Authority According to Three Ideal Types of Reality -- Three Ideal-Typical Views of Reality -- Time: Synchrony and Diachrony -- Language: Metaphor, Metonymy, and Description -- 3 The Primitive Ideal Type of Reality -- Primitive Reality -- Nature as a "Container" of Human Life -- Emotional Cognition and the Feminist "Ethics of Care" -- 4 The Historical Ideal Type of Reality -- Historical Reality -- The Transhistorical Realm of Historicity -- Human Fault and the Responsible Agent -- The Communitarian-Liberal Debate: The Individual as an Institution and Universal Humanity -- 5 The Mystic Ideal Type of Reality -- Beyond History: Absolute Emptiness as a Phenomenological Center for Universal Morality -- Compassionate Morality: Toward a Liberal-Cosmopolitan Political Philosophy -- 6 Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.