John Lachs (1934-), for nearly sixty years in his philosophical, educational, and public activity has been showing the relevance of philosophy to life, to use the title of one of his books here (The Relevance of Philosophy to Life, 1995). Through his writings he warns us against viewing philosophy as merely a professionalized and technical specialization, appropriate only for the narrowed group of professionals in academia, and encourages us to recognize the existential and ameliorative dimension of practicing philosophy both in academia and outside of it. His attention to such practical issues as love and happiness (In Love with Life, 1998), self-development in the context of the relation between the individual and society (A Community of Individuals, 2003), freedom and social progress (Freedom and Limits, 2014), and individual liberty (Meddling, 2014) matches his attention to more theoretical issues on philosophical figures (George Santayana, 1988), on philosophical positions (Stoic Pragmatism, 2012), and on specific problems (Mind and Philosophers, 1987).
International scholars recognize and appreciate Lachs’s lifelong efforts and the present volume testifies to this as did the four-day international conference on John Lachs’s Practical Philosophy organized by the Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum, e.V. in Berlin, Germany in 2015, within the Berlin edition of the American and European Values series of conferences.
The present volume discusses many aspects of Lachs’s practical philosophy: education, art, humanism, justice, tyranny, a good life, and covers many areas of philosophical investigation from the practical perspective: ethics, bioethics, anthropology, social philosophy, political philosophy, the history of philosophy, ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and others. Nineteen international scholars discuss Lachs’s contribution to contemporary philosophy and his way of practicing philosophy in the conviction that John Lachs’s way of philosophizing can be seen as exemplary for those who want to unify and present a clear and understandable articulation of philosophical messages to everyone interested in the recognition of their profoundness, attractiveness, and the practical importance on both the individual and social planes.
Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński
Institute of Philosophy, University of Opole, Poland
Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum e.V., Germany