The book is a contribution to the fields of pragmatism, intercultural philosophy, and social and political ethics. The argument in the book runs along two lines: firstly, four pragmatist philosophers (William James, John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and Roberto Mangabeira Unger) are discussed by putting them into their respective intercultural contexts. They are interpreted as philosophers that were/are either explicitly or implicitly linked to some of the key tenets in comparative and/or intercultural philosophy of the twentieth/twenty-first century. Secondly, the book looks to their particular works and discusses the role of the body and its important ethical potential. In their respective contexts, it looks at the possibilities for linking James, Dewey, Rorty, and Unger to the original idea of the interculturally oriented ethical pragmatism. In this endeavor, the book also approaches the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer, Luce Irigaray, and Enrique Dussel in order to show their importance for a historical and contemporary (feminist and intercultural/global) debate about the philosophy of American pragmatism. The book concludes with two chapters — i.e. with a discussion of Irigaray’s ‘ethical pragmatism’ and finally with some reflections on contemporary Slovenian and French philosophy (Žižek, Badiou) as linked to the communism-democracy controversy. In both cases, again, pragmatist and intercultural methods are employed and the role of the body in their respective oeuvres is reflected.

This book eloquently argues and illustrates why pragmatism remains one of the most interesting and still promising philosophical traditions on the intellectual scene. Redolent of Rorty’s ebullient and generous readings, Škof shows how at the heart of pragmatism is a corporeal ethics of co-responsibility, a watchful attentiveness to the generative civic praxis of communities, and a solicitous hermeneutics that calls for an intercultural philosophy. Rorty’s proclamation of a post-philosophical culture is here translated in terms of an intercultural philosophy. This book also has the added virtue of excavating for us a fascinating genealogy that should make us more humble and reticent to bunt around anachronistic terms such as analytic and continental. -- Eduardo Mendieta, Pennsylvania State University
One must welcome the efforts made by Lenart Škof to promote a democracy that is not based only on money, goods and conflicts for appropriating them. -- Luce Irigaray

Lenart Škof is research counselor, associate professor of philosophy and religious studies, and Head of the Anthropology and Philosophy Departments at the University of Primorska.