This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book considers the point of departure for the theories of reconciliation and critical idealism. It focuses on four principal sources: libertarian socialism, a drastically modified form of idealism, critical theory and legal theory. The four sources are synthesised to articulate four theories intended to project thinking about political legitimacy beyond the restatements of Immanuel Kant and the sociologically reconstructed versions of Aristotle which in various combinations continue to dominate mainstream social and political thought. Liberal democratic and radical modernist attempts to realise the promise of Enlightenment by liberating humanity from the danger and unpredictability of nature. The imaginative power of traditional idealism taken up by Kant lies in the discovery that the transcendence of necessity is contingent upon factors which are external to and internal to humanity.