John Lachs
born July 17, 1934, is Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA. He is the author of Marxist Philosophy: A Bibliographical Guide (1967), The Ties of Time (1970), Intermediate Man (1981), Mind and Philosophers (1987), George Santayana (1988), The Relevance of Philosophy to Life (1995), In Love with Life (1998), with Michael Hodges, Thinking in the Ruins: Wittgenstein and Santayana (2000), A Community of Individuals (2003), On Santayana (2006), Stoic Pragmatism (2012), Freedom and Limits (2014), Meddling: On the Virtue of Leaving Others Alone (2014) and The Cost of Comfort (2015; the manuscript submitted for publication). He is the editor of Animal Faith and Spiritual Life: Unpublished and Uncollected Works of George Santayana with Critical Essays of His Thought (1967). He is the co-editor with Shirley M. Lachs of Physical Order and Moral Liberty: Previously Unpublished Essays of George Santayana (1969), with Charles E. Scott, The Human Search (1980), with D. Micah Hester, A William Earnest Hocking Reader (2004), with Robert Talisse, Encyclopedia of American Philosophy (2008), and with Matthew C. Flamm and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, American and European Values (2008). He is also co-translator with Peter Heath of J.G. Fichte: The Science of Knowledge (1970).
Michael Brodrick’s
research examines the work of American philosophers George Santayana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josiah Royce, and William James, linking their thought to contemporary moral concerns of individual and social significance. His most recent publications argue for a conception of the good life that includes an element of value-free transcendence. Brodrick has also published on the idea of God, relations between concepts and natural objects, the history of philosophy in America, and the history of the American Philosophical Association. He is the author of the book The Ethics of Detachment in Santayana’s Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan). Book chapters include: “Transcending Means and Ends Near the End of Life”, in George Santayana at 150: International Perspectives, Matthew Caleb Flamm, Giuseppe Patella, and Jennifer A. Rea, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), pp. 241–248; and “Reflections on Living Well”, in Santayana: Un Pensador Universal, Jose Beltran, Manuel Garrido, and Sergio Sevilla, eds., Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans, Universitat de Valencia, 2011.
Vincent Colapiertro
is Liberal Arts Research Professor in Philosophy as well as African-American Studies at Penn State University. His PhD is from Marquette University. One of his main areas of historical research is philosophical thought in the United States from the late nineteenth to the twentieth-first century (including the singular contribution of black Americans such as W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison), while another is jazz (especially the forms of “musicking” developed in the middle and later decades of the twentieth century, in particular, bebop, cool jazz, and free jazz). His other areas of specialization are: American philosophy, semiotics, and the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. Most recently, he authored Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom: John William Miller & the Crises of Modernity (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), and co-edited (with Michael J. McGandy and Joseph P. Fell) John William Miller’s The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, & Community (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005).
Andrew Fiala
is professor of philosophy and director of Ethics Center at California State University at Fresno. He has authored Against Religion, Wars, and State. The Case for Enlightenment Atheism, Just War Pacifism, and Liberal-Democratic Anarchism (Rowman&Littlefield 2013); Introduction to Philosophy (Kendall Hunt 2010); Public War, Private Conscience: The Ethics of Political Violence (Continuum 2010); The Just War Myth (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); Tolerance and the Ethical Life (Continuum, 2005); The Philosopher’s Voice (SUNY Press, 2002); and Practical Pacifism (Algora Press, 2004). He also co-authored (with Barbara MacKinnon) Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues (Cengage, nine editions) and produced numerous other volumes and scholarly papers.
Matthew Flamm
is professor of philosophy and director of undergraduate students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Professor Hodges works in the areas of Wittgenstein, American Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Education. His recent projects include a series of papers on transcendence and a book on philosophy of religion. He has authored Transcendence and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Temple University Press 1990), and co-authored, with John Lachs, Thinking in the Ruins Wittgenstein and Santayana on Contingency, with John Lachs (Vanderbilt University Press 2000). He has published a number of essays concerning William James and George Santayana and recently on the constitutional limits to power with Professor Thomas Crocker (University of South Carolina, Law School.)
Nóra Horváth
(1978, Ph.D. Philosopher) is an assistant professor at the Széchenyi István University, Apáczai Csere János Faculty, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (Győr, Hungary). Her education includes a B.A. in Teacher Training (Elementary School Teacher) at University of West Hungary, Győr; a B.A. in Cultural Management (Cultural Manager) at University of West Hungary, Győr; another B.A. in Philosophy at University of Szeged, Hungary; an M.A. in Philosophy at University of Szeged, Hungary; and a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Pécs, Hungary. She is an art critic and member of the editorial board of a Hungarian journal (Műhely). Her fields of research include: the aesthetics of George Santayana; American aesthetics; the aesthetics of Platonism; aestheticism; the philosophy of the aesthetic way of life; pragmatism; and the somaesthetics of Richard Shusterman.
Jacquelyn Kegley
is CSU Outstanding Professor of Philosophy and Wang Family awardee for outstanding teaching, research, and service at California State University, Bakersfield. She is also Professor of Philosophy, and the Chair of the Academic Senate and Director of the Helen Hawk Honors Program at CSU Bakersfield. She is the author of Josiah Royce in Focus (Indiana University Press 2008) and Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities: A Roycean Public Philosophy (Vanderbilt University Press 1997). She is also the author and editor of Genetic Knowledge, Human Values and Responsibility (Paragon 1999) and Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy (Lexington 2013, co-edition with Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński), as well as of numerous articles on American philosophy, and genetic technology. She also contributed to the volume, Pragmatic Bioethics and has a chapter on “Democracy Theory” forthcoming in the Bloomsbury
Phillip McReynolds
is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has published in the areas of American philosophy, pragmatism, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of film in journals such as The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, The Pluralist, and Philosophy and Technology. He is the author of The American Philosopher: Interviews on the Meaning of Life and Truth (Lexington 2015), and the director of the film upon which the book is based, American Philosopher (2010). His current project focuses on the crises emerging from humanism and its decline and the ameliorative capacities of a reconstructed pragmatism.
Phil Oliver
received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1998. His academic specialty is American Philosophy, in particular the thought of William James and John Dewey. His book William James’s “Springs of Delight” (Vanderbilt Press, 2001) explores “personal enthusiasms and habitual ‘delights’ and their power to make our days meaningful, delightful, spiritual, and even transcendent...[and] to sponsor our”return to life“in all its rich, robust, and personal concreteness.” His other research interests include the philosophy of childhood and education, biotechnology, ethics, the environment, and philosophical ideas in contemporary literature. He was born near St. Louis, Missouri—which possibly explains his unreasoning love of baseball (about which he has also published), and his partisan preference for the Cardinals. He teaches at Middle Tennessee State University (since 2002). He lives with his family in Nashville.
Charles Padrón
is a scholar and writer in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. Recent articles of his have appeared in Limbo (Spain) and Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society (USA). His translation of Daniel Moreno’s Santayana filósofo, La filosofía como forma de vida (Santayana as Philosopher: Philosophy As a Form of Life [Bucknell University Press]) came out in 2015. Currently he is working on an intellectual biography of Santayana, and an intellectual history of the Canary Islands.
earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He also holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Texas A&M University. His main interests are American philosophy and environmental philosophy. He is the author of The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought (Vanderbilt University Press, 1998). Other publications include: “Pragmatism and Environmental Thought” (in Environmental Pragmatism, A. Light and E. Katz, eds., Routledge Press, 1996), “Josiah Royce on The Spirit of the Community and the Nature of Philosophy” (Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2000), and “Normative Judgment in Jazz” (in The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce, Fordham University Press, 2012). He is co-editor of the books Teaching Sustainability / Teaching Sustainability (Stylus Press, 2012) and Josiah Royce for the Twenty-First Century (Lexington, 2012). He is currently developing a textbook and course on the Philosophy of Sustainability.
Daniel Pinkas
is a philosopher, born in Caracas in 1951, the son of Jewish immigrants from ex-Yugoslavia. He is Professor Emeritus at Haute École d’Art et de Design de Genève (HEAD–Geneva). He has taught and written on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of art, visual perception, Digital art and design, and the philosophy of George Santayana. He is the author of La Matérialité de l’esprit (La Découverte, 1993) and Santayana et l’Amérique du bon ton (Métropolis, 2003) and has published numerous articles, particularly on Santayana, the philosophy of mind and the aesthetics of digital art forms.
Richard M. Rubin
is President of the George Santayana Society. He has published several articles in the Society’s bulletin, Overheard in Seville and in other journals. He has participated in five international philosophy conferences. In addition to Santayana scholarship, he has an ongoing interest in philosophy and cognitive loss. In 2013, he was one of the organizers of a symposium entitled Finding Humanity in Advanced Dementia at Washington University in St Louis, where he has taught as an adjunct Lecturer. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Washington University, his MA in Drama from New York University, and his AB in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. He also worked for thirty years as a software developer and regards database and software design as applied ontology.
Herman Saatkamp
is an American philosopher and scholar. He is the Founding Editor (1976–2003) and Consulting Editor (2003-) of The Works of George Santayana (MIT Press). He was President of Stockton University (2003–1015), where he was also
Patrick Shade
PhD, teaches ethics, medical ethics, the history of philosophy, philosophy of education, and American Studies at Rhodes College. His early research focused on developing a pragmatic theory of hope, the result of which was Habits of Hope (Vanderbilt University, 2001). He has since worked on the implications of this theory for education and religion. More recent research interests concern care ethics and virtue ethics, again as they relate to education. In his writing, he works with multiple resources including traditional philosophy, contemporary sociology, literature and pop culture. He edited John Lachs’s Freedom and Limits (Fordham University Press 2014).
Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński
PhD, teaches Contemporary Philosophy, Aesthetics, Cultural Anthropology, Polish Philosophy, and American Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, Opole University, Poland. He co-founded Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum e.V. He has co-organized thirteen editions of the American and European Values international conference series. He has authored the following books: Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty’s Neopragmatism (Lexington Books-Rowman Group, 2015); Beyond Aesthetics and Politics: Philosophical and Axiological Studies on the Avant-garde, Pragmatism, and Postmodernism (Rodopi 2013); Values and Powers. Re-reading the Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism, (Rodopi 2009); and Santayana and America. Values, Liberties, Responsibility (Cambridge Scholars 2007). He has edited Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life (Brill/Rodopi, 2015). He has co-edited books: (with Matthew Flamm) Under Any Sky. Contemporary Readings of George Santayana (Cambridge Scholars 2007); (with Matthew Flamm and John Lachs) American and European Values: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars 2008); (with Larry Hickman, Matthew Flamm and Jennifer Rea) The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey: Reflections on Aesthetics, Morality, Science, and Society (Rodopi 2011), (with
Shannon Sullivan
Griffin Trotter
MD, PhD, is a philosopher, bioethicist and physician. He is Professor Emeritus at Saint Louis University. Professor Trotter has over 100 published articles in philosophy, bioethics, medical, and legal journals. His books include The Ethics of Coercion in Mass Casualty Medicine, The Loyal Physician, and On Royce. His current research interests include classical American philosophy (especially Thoreau, Emerson, Santayana, and Royce), political philosophy (especially modus vivendi theory and anarchism), legal medicine (especially the theory of informed consent), disaster and emergency ethics, and non-conventional values in medicine. He has been working on a new book, Deviant Bioethics, which he hopes to complete in 2018.
Eric Thomas Weber
PhD, joined the philosophy department at the University of Kentucky in July of 2016. He was assistant and then associate professor of Public Policy Leadership and affiliate faculty member in the philosophy department and in the School of Law at the University of Mississippi from 2007 until the move to Lexington. His research focuses on ethics and political philosophy approached from the tradition of classical American philosophy. In addition to advocating for an experimentalist outlook in ethics, he applies ethics to leadership and public policy. He aims to follow John Dewey’s example, championing public philosophy, engaging both with scholars and the public sphere. Dr. Weber’s next book in progress is a study of the role of culture in fostering or inhibiting justice and the consequent responsibilities that individuals and institutions bear for shaping culture. It is tentatively titled A Culture of Justice: On Fairness and Pragmatism. He is also completing an edited collection of John Dewey’s public writings, titled America’s Public Philosopher: John Dewey. Like Dewey, he writes for newspapers in an effort to contribute to shaping culture and is a contributing columnist for The Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi. In February of 2015, he was honored with the Mississippi Humanities Council’s Humanities Scholar Award. He authored Uniting Mississippi: Democracy and Leadership in the South (The University Press of Mississippi 2015), Democracy and Leadership. On Pragmatism and Virtue (Lexington 2013), Morality, Leadership, and Public Policy: On Experimentalism in Ethics (Bloomsbury 2011), and Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism: On the Epistemology of Justice (Continuum 2010).