The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.

—Emerson, The American Scholar

This is the fourth volume of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy that has reserved one of its issues for papers selected from the annual program of the Society's meeting, held this year in San Antonio, Texas. The papers included here are those that were distinguished by receiving various awards by the Society (Blau, Greenlee, and Schneider) as well as several noteworthy essays dealing with the spectrum of American philosophy. The themes express familiar concerns of American philosophy: the avoidance of dualism, the importance of meliorism in a world without absolutes, the dynamism of experience as the basis of intelligence through action, and the humanistic conception of experience itself that takes truth as a guide to wisdom rather than seeking knowledge as an end in itself.

In this issue, Ken Stikkers shows the importance of understanding the influence of Ramian logic in the history of American philosophers side-stepping the traditional bivalent logic of dualism. Naoko Saito continues exploring the intersection of the thought of Dewey, Emerson, and Cavell undertaken in her recent book, The Gleam of Light. Jessica Wahman, drawing on George Santayana, defends the humanistic ideal of philosophy as love of wisdom, as "expressive truth-telling," that transcends the parameters of epistemology. Eric Mullis raises a postmodern concern that Dewey's aesthetics of consummatory experience may miss an important democratic artform, namely the use of the human body itself as an aesthetic medium for the end of social awareness, including "transgressive" uses as well as more familiar forms of dance and theater. John Kaag states, "The challenge of explaining how experience is situated in relation to human understanding is, in many respects, the principal challenge of American [End Page 75] pragmatism," and turns to a subtle analysis of William James to explore how organized, habituated action can arise from the stream of experience. David Strand tries to answer Heidegger and Lyotard as critics of progress by understanding meliorism in light of Socratic faith—it seems Plato had read his William James! Colin Koopman also treats the topic of meliorism as a touchstone of American philosophy: "I understand pragmatism, and find it at its best, as a philosophical way of taking hope seriously."

James Campbell, Vice President of The Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, William Gavin and I selected for publication the articles that appear here. We hope that the pluralistic voice in philosophy that both the Society and the Journal foster will encourage readers to join us.