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Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński is a professor at the University of Opole, Poland, and Scientific Affairs Manager at Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum e.V., Germany. His primary focus is on contemporary culture and philosophy. He is also a Karate Shotokan instructor (4 Dan).

Biography
Skowroński was born in Opole, Poland, on July 11, 1965. Very early he recognized his interest in the humanities, and at the age of 13 he learnt by heart the fragments of the philosophy of Confucius (in translation). He earned degrees in English philology, social and political sciences, and philosophy. He earned his PhD (1998) and his habilitation (2014) from Uniwersytet Wrocławski. His dissertation was devoted to Henryk Elzenberg (1887-1967), a Polish philosopher of Jewish origin educated in Switzerland and France (PhD at the the Sorbonne). Elzenberg was a modern stoic who tried to read historical Stoicism, especially its late Roman version, through the lens of a philosophy of values and proposed a concept of culture that would be based on value-oriented actions and activities. In his post-doc period, he got numerous stipends in the United States (The Kościuszko Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Liberty Fund) to study the philosophy of George Santayana and American pragmatism at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, IN (IUPUI), under Herman Saatkamp, and at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, under John Lachs. He gave online courses at the University of Illinois, Springfield. He visited Spanish universities on numerous occasions, giving classes (Erasmus plus), doing research, and participating in conferences: la Universidad de Alcalá, la Universidad Castilla-la Mancha en Toledo, and Universidad de Valencia. He participated in World Congresses of Philosophy (Seoul, Athens) and numerous international congresses in the US, Spain, Germany, Poland, Brazil, Italy, France, England, Slovakia, Austria, and other places. For thirteen years he co-organized a series of international conferences American and European Values, with the participation of scholars from Europe, North America, Brazil, Israel, Turkey, and other countries. He resides in Berlin, Germany and in Opole, Poland.

Publications
Skowroński is the author of numerous books and articles in English, Spanish, Polish, and German on contemporary culture and philosophy.

Authored Books
A Meaningful Life Amidst a Pluralism of Cultures and Values: John Lachs’s Stoic Pragmatism as a Philosophical and Cultural Project. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2023.

Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty’s Neopragmatism: Studies, Polemics, Interpretations. Lanham-Boulder-New York-London: Lexington Books/The Rowman&Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2015.

Beyond Aesthetics and Politics: Philosophical and Axiological Studies on the Avant-garde, pragmatism, and postmodernism. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2013.

Values and Powers: Re-reading Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2009. Santayana and America: Values, Liberties, Responsibility: Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

Edited Books
John Lachs’s Practical Philosophy. Brill 2018. Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life. Brill 2015.

Co-edited Books
(with C. Padrón) A Life of Scholarship with Santayana: Essays and Reflections by Herman Saatkamp. Brill, 2021. (with R. Auxier and E. Kramer) Rorty and Beyond. Lexington, 2020.

(with S. Pihlstrom) Pragmatist Kant: Pragmatism, Kant and Kantianism in the Twenty-first Century. Nordic Studies in Pragmatism, 2019.

(with C. Padrón) ''The Life of Reason in the Age of Terrorism. Brill,'' 2018.

(with K. Stikkers) Philosophy in the Time of Economic Crisis. Routledge, 2018.

(with Tom Burke ) George Herbert Mead in the Twenty-first Century. Lexington, 2013.

(with J. Kegley) ''Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy. Lexington'', 2013.

(with C. de Waal) The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce. Fordham, 2012.

(with K. Parker) ''Josiah Royce for the Twenty-first Century. Lexington'', 2011.

(with L. Hickman, M. Flamm, J. Rea) The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey;. Lexington, 2011.

(with J. Lachs, M. Flamm) American and European Values. Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

(with M. Flamm) Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana. Cambridge Scholars, 2007.

Santayana Scholarship
The philosophy of Spanish-American thinker, George Santayana, the reception of his work and its continuations have been permanent themes of Skowroński's academic activity. During his The Kościuszko Foundation stay in the US(2001-2002) he did research under top Santayana scholars: Herman Saatkamp (IUPUI Indianapolis) and John Lachs (Vanderbilt University, Nashville). He continued his research during his following stays in New York (the Rockefeller Foundation), San Francisco (The Liberty Fund), and many other places. He authored one book, co-edited three volumes, and has written numerous articles on the topic. He is an active member of the Santayana Society and a contributor to two journals that are dedicated specifically to Santayana scholarship: Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the George Santayana Society (USA) and Limbo: bulletin de estudios internacionales sobre Santayana (Spain).

Philosophical Views
Skowroński represents the tradition of Western secular humanism (the Stoics, Montaigne, the pragmatists, Santayana, Elzenberg, Gombrowicz) that recognizes the potential of individual human beings in their efforts to self-realize and flourish according to the idea of eudaimonia (happiness). At the same time, he does not hide his Eastern European sensitivity and his Polish background.

Teaching Career
Skowroński teaches in English, in Spanish, and in his native Polish. He offers, among others, the following courses: Rhetoric and Persuasion, Anglo-hispanos discursos e imágenes, Multiculturalism, Multiculturalism in Canada and the US, Philosophy, Social Philosophy, American Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics, Digital culture, Gombrowicz. The main idea, while teaching, is to recognize the student’s potential and interest and, then, to give him/her the opportunity to develop it in a possibly free way.

Disability
All his life, Skowroński suffers from high myopia and, related to it, the retinal tearings and detachments that occasionally take place and render his sight uncertain. It affects his daily life, and it would be very difficult for him to function academically (and in sports, as a karate instructor) without the recent development of ophthalmology: numerous laser interventions on his retinas, relatively high-technological glasses, relatively high-technological medical examinations of the eyeball and its surgical operations. On the other hand, as he puts it in his book, “it is impossible for me to have access to the most recent and costly ophthalmologist developments and interventions, so I need to navigate between external possibilities and an internal attitude. I pragmatically develop my knowledge about the most developed ophthalmologist devices that are accessible to me and stoically enjoy the fact that I am able see at all. I reflect about the potency of my abilities rather than lament about the tragedy of my disability. In this way, I want to hold onto to my limited freedom in the face of the deterministic physical limitations that have been a part of my whole adult life.”

Karate
Skowroński has been practicing karate Shotokan for forty years. His principal affiliations are: AZS Politechnika Opolska (Poland) and Uni Karate Dojo Berlin (Germany). He earned 4 Dan in 2000 from Giuseppe Baghetto (Italian Karate Federation) and Wacław Antoniak (Polish Karate Federation), during an examination training session in Gallarate, Italy. His 4 Dan grade has been officially confirmed by German Karate Federation.