Editor's Note

This double volume of the AJTP includes two types of articles, those that put familiar traditions to work in new ways, and those that interpret familiar figures in new ways. Carol Wayne White's article, originally presented as the 2016 Annual AJTP lecture, further develops her concept of "sacred humanity" and demonstrates the relevance of religious naturalism to critiques of antiblack racism and speciesism. Gary Slater interprets the pragmatist dimensions of the emerging school of "Scriptural Reasoning," and experimentally applies the insights of these traditions in an analysis of the reasoning employed on the different sides of a public policy debate about transgender restroom access. While White and Slater innovatively apply traditions familiar to AJTP readers, the articles by Joseph Bracken, J. August Higgins, John J. Markey, OP and Greg Zuschlag, Louis A. Ruprecht, and Weaver Santaniello present novel interpretations of familiar American philosophers and theologians. Bracken extends his work on systems theory and process philosophy, which he began to explore in this journal in volume 36, no. 3, by offering a close analysis and Whiteheadian critique of Terrence Deacon's major recent work, Incomplete Nature. Higgins examines the continuities and differences between Jonathan Edwards's and Ralph Waldo Emerson's aesthetics of religious experience. Markey and Zuschlag interpret and contextualize the work of Donald Gelpi, the Jesuit philosopher who labored through his career to interpret American philosophers such as Peirce and Whitehead in relation to Bernard Lonergan's systematic work on the structure of human understanding. Ruprecht offers a deep interpretation of the phases of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism and argues that what the United States needs from American philosophers now, whether from West or someone else, is an account of the American evasion of tragedy. Santaniello rounds this issue off with new insights into the influence of Nietzsche in American philosophy and theology, giving attention in particular to the death of God tradition and historical and resurgent antisemitism.