"Odin makes an impressive case for the claim that the Chicago School pragmatism of George Herbert Mead provides the most adequate version of the 'social turn' in Western philosophy and thereby the best basis for understanding the self of modern Japanese Buddhist thought, especially Zen, which has undergone its own social turn. Odin then shows how Mead's 'social self' provides an illuminating basis for intercultural dialogue on such issues as individualism and groupism, freedom and determinism, universalism and relativistic particularism, mind and body, and humanity and nature. This is first-rate intercultural philosophy." — David Ray Griffin, School of Theology at Claremont Graduate School"The exceptional achievement of Steve Odin involves his having marshalled an enormous amount of extremely apposite data, focusing on the notion of the social character of the self, and his adroit and ingenious use of this material in a manner which allows the reader to move in a variety of distinct directions in order to assay important implications of the 'paradigm shift' away from the Enlightenment's 'atomistic self' and toward the 'social self' of American pragmatism and modern Japanese philosophy." — David L. Hall, The University of Texas at El Paso