The Pluralist

Beginning with the present number of The Pluralist, we commence an association with the well known and widely respected Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, founded in 1972. It is a pleasant circumstance that we can combine our twenty-five-year history of service to pluralistic and personalist philosophies with the admirable mission of the SAAP, which has always stood for openness and responsible philosophical growth with an eye to the lessons of the past and an orientation to a more ideal future for the natural world, its inhabitants, and the role of thought in guiding and evaluating our common direction.

Our journal will publish the best and most representative offerings at the annual meeting of the SAAP, including the addresses of its Presidents and Founders, its prize papers, and its interdisciplinary Coss Dialogues. Accordingly, one issue of The Pluralist every year will be edited by the Vice President of SAAP, with contents selected from the annual meeting. This journal will also take over certain functions formerly carried out by the venerable SAAP Newsletter, including the most comprehensive effort at publishing thorough reviews of the books that are most crucial to the mission of the SAAP. Accordingly, we want to welcome to the staff of The Pluralist Patrick Dooley of St. Bonaventure University and Roger Ward of Georgetown College, who have worked for years on the SAAP Newsletter and now bring their experience and energy to the service of The Pluralist. We will also seek to provide an outlet for the many other organizations with which SAAP has been associated, the societies dedicated to the study of individual philosophers, such as Peirce, Royce, James, and Dewey, but also the many other constituencies with which SAAP interacts.

Thus, a considerable expansion of our mission and a great increase in responsibility have been taken on, beginning with the present number of [End Page v] our journal. I personally want to thank the Executive Board of SAAP for its work in getting new agreements signed and for so much support in starting our adaptations to these new ends. Especially to be noted are the efforts of Bill Myers, the secretary/treasurer of SAAP; Jim Campbell, its president; and Jackie Kegley, the vice-president. Professors Myers and Kegley are currently serving on an Editorial Committee that is overseeing the development of new policies. Also to be thanked is the staff and leadership of the University of Illinois Press for their excellent and devoted labors in producing such a fine journal for these past four years and for working with the leaders of SAAP to create our new partnership. I especially want to thank Clydette Wantland, journals manager at the University of Illinois Press, who also serves currently on the Editorial Committee.

Having worked tirelessly to secure the health and continued flourishing of this journal, my coeditor John Shook of the Center for Inquiry Transnational, Amherst, NY, has decided to pass on his responsibilities to the able hands of others. John's seemingly limitless energies are responsible for the very existence of this journal, and all who read it and who rely on it owe him a great debt of gratitude. I certainly do.

The present number marks a transition, then, and I believe that we do well to look back and all the way around the world for our contributors and our problems, as we prepare to think about the future. To those living in it, nearly any age must seem pivotal, a portent of a future either bleak or hopeful. But that sense is especially upon us in the present. Religious pluralism may be the answer to devastating conflicts in the present, and I am glad to offer this collection of papers from Portugal, Finland, and Iran that take up aspects of the problems with religious pluralism. Also a group of authors has examined, each in turn, some of the important but neglected roots of American thought, voices whose reinstatement in the common conversation will enrich our thinking and mutual understanding. I encourage readers to think of these studies as important resources to which we may all refer in the future, often, as we work to keep...