The romance of philosophy -- The pragmatic turn -- Richard Rorty: 'So much the worse for your old intuitions, start working up some new ones' -- John Dewey's encounter with Leon Trotsky -- The spectre haunting multiculturalism -- Cultural pluralism -- Charles Taylor's engaged pluralism -- Democratic hope -- The normative core of the public sphere -- Herbert Marcuse's critical legacy -- Hannah Arendt: Thought-defying evil -- The justification of violence? -- Can we justify universal moral norms? -- Is politics 'practicable' without religion? -- The secular-religious divide: Kant's legacy -- Paul Ricoeur's Freud