Table of Contents

1 Introduction.- Part I: On Mesocosmic Rituals: Three Accelerations.- 2 Towards Mesocosmic Rituals in the Vedas.- 3 Schelling, or From the Abyss of Ethics.- 4 A New Way of Gesture (G. H. Mead).- PART II: Two Intermediate Variations on the Elements of Water and Air.- 5 Feuerbach’s “Pneumatische Wasserheilkunde”.- 6 Heidegger’s Hölderlinian Breath.- Part III: Communities of Breathing, Communities of Peace.- 7 Ethics of Breath: Derrida, Lévinas and Irigaray.- 8 Divine Violence? Radical Ethics and Politics of Nonviolence.- 9 Rorty and Irigaray: On a Culture of Love and Peace.- PART IV: the Return of the Breath.- 10 Breath of Silence.- 11 Ethics of Breath and the Atmosphere of Politics.- 12 Conclusion.- Index nominum.

About the Author

Lenart Škof was born in Ljubljana, on July 6, 1972. He studied philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. In 2001 he obtained Ph.D. in Religious studies at the Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana with a thesis on Schopenhauer’s ethics of compassion. During his postgraduate studies he spent 6 months on a KAAD research grant in Tübingen, Germany, studying at indological and philosophical seminars and in 1998-2001 he was a guest student at indological seminars at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. In 2005 he published a translation and commentary of the ancient Indian Upanishads from Sanskrit into Slovene. He is Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Primorska, Slovenia, where he was Chair of Depts. of Philosophy and Anthropology, and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Research in 2006-2012. Dr. Škof published a paper in Schopenhauer Jahrbuch (2006, another paper in 2010). He has also important publications in the field of pragmatism. In 2008 he published two papers on American pragmatism. The first one was published in the leading journal for the philosophy of American pragmatism, Contemporary Pragmatism (USA). The second one was published in a special issue dedicated to the memory of Richard Rorty of journal Ideas y Valores (Colombia). His other important publications are about Rorty’s philosophy of religion (in one of the leading journals for philosophy of religion Sophia), contemporary political ethics and intercultural philosophy (Peace Review: Journal for Social Justice) and Dewey’s philosophy as compared to Ambedkar. He is also an author of three monographs in ethics, Indian and comparative philosophy and pragmatism. In May 2012 his fourth book on American pragmatism was published by Lexington Books. Dr. Škof received a Fulbright research grant for the 2005-06 academic year and Humboldt research grant for the 2010-11 academic year.