I am afraid that interpret me as claiming that I have reached an Archimedean point, as you put it, does not take account of either the historicity I am repeatedly stressing in my perspective or the evolutionary, anthropological, and phenomenological roots that I am trying to develop for it. I am all too aware that when one looks at the history of philosophy (in any tradition) it is deeply rooted in its context, and of course I am in that sense no exception. There is no view from nowhere, as it is called - but there is a view from somewhere which is not limited to its geographical or cultural origins, and that is all I need. And I am quite happy, having read them both, that LW and HG would be able to take this sort of thing on board without difficulty.

I would also like to know exactly where these alleged biases are lurking, given that in everything I have said I have been quite happy to welcome ideas from any tradition and in the work of any thinker. It is true, of course, that in the last two hundred years there have been repeated instances in European and American history of universal declarations of rights being found not to apply universally in practice, and so on; but that is not my game. I couldn't care less whether the ideas belong to someone who is male or female, black, white, brown, yellow, or any other colour you please; I only care about the ideas themselves, and I am not interested in giving with one hand only to take back with the other. I will not dismiss anyone on ad hominem grounds, nor does the fact that they might happen to disagree with me make them necessarily less interesting to me. I have, in other words, no interest in imposing anything on anyone.

What I am interested in, for purposes of this conversation at least, is getting an answer to a question I have yet to see you propose your own answer to - how a comparative study of politics is possible if there is not something universal as well as something particular in the notion of politics as an activity? That is, on what grounds are you able to identify what goes on or went on in China at any period as 'politics' at all , if you do not have a conception of the activity which is something other than merely local? Because, once you do identify it as 'politics', you are surely placing it in the same class as other activities which are not Chinese but also 'politics'. Put another way, if there is such a thing as 'Chinese political thought', it is surely not the Chinese-ness of it that makes it political - the adjective only particularizes - so I am curious as to what you think does? It is certainly not the 'Western-ness' of Western political thought that makes it 'political', after all. The Western-ness only makes it different, and at the level at which most political thought takes place, difference strikes the dominant note.

And yet one still needs a concept of logical self-identity, a=a, or one cannot have 'political thought' at all. So where is the source of the identity to be found? It is to be found partly in my contention that one can happily make meta-statements about a language in that language itself. The last sentence is indeed just such a statement. This seems to me clear evidence that thought possesses the reflexive resources required for a degree of self-consciousness sufficient for its own analysis. The very possibility of the act of writing that last sentence, and the fact that it can be meaningful, only underlines my point. Finding oneself engaged in an activity like politics, or observing it to be taking place at various times and places in the world, one can then meditate on its conditions in way that makes it clear it is more than a merely local and temporary happening.

Such a meditation has lead me to the evolutionary-anthropological-phenomenological solution that I have been proposing. But I have yet to see you offer your own way out of this logical dilemma. Just saying that one needs to learn the language, or to adopt the perspective of the tradition in question, the two substantive points you have offered thus far, isn't good enough; of course learning the language helps enormously when it comes to pinning down the differences, as I have repeatedly acknowledged, but as a theorist one simply can't use the same terms one is analysing. Imagine trying to construct a theory of democracy which was pro- or anti-democratic; such a theory would never have left the political arena to begin with, and would be useless for explanatory purposes. Which isn't to say, of course, that there many never begin to get past this error; or, indeed, that defending democracy isn't important. But if I wanted actually to defend democracy I would not waste time theorizing about it; I would pick up my megaphone, or my telephone.

Perhaps I should put it another way - insofar as I am part of the so-called Western tradition I find myself living amidst the rubble; the grand but rigid Platonic-Christian edifice which sustained things for two and a half-millennia has collapsed. But amongst the ruins there are plenty of materials for reconstruction that are made of more flexible stuff. The new foundations, indeed the only possible remaining foundations - and here is just where the metaphor goes wrong, in a way, because 'foundations' of the traditional sort are precisely what I would like to avoid - are radical contingency and historicity. Perhaps this is a castle in the air, but there is nowhere else left to build one, and build one there we must, since there is no longer any ground beneath our feet. It is exactly because one must always occupy some perspective that it is important to be self-conscious about what the range of possible perspectives can include, and I do flatter myself that I wear fewer blinkers than most, having made the study of blinkers, if anything, my profession,