Editor's Note

In the intervening period between our previous issue's going to press in February 2020 and its publication that summer, the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted more disruption upon everyday life than most of us had ever seen. Now, as this double issue goes to press in the fall of 2020, the potential for further disruption remains undiminished. As of this writing, it is impossible to predict with any specificity the outcomes of the moment's crises—in politics, in public health, in racial justice, and in economics—but what is clear is that these crises raise important questions about the functioning of our democracy and the basic ability of our society to evaluate information, communicate across factions, maintain civic trust, and gauge institutions' ability to respond to problems. Still deeper, one finds occasion to reflect on the relationship between human and nonhuman life, as well as the ways in which publics succeed—or not—in changing their habits of behavior amid complex interactions between technical expertise and broader cultural values.

It is a great strength of the AJTP that the traditions out of which the journal speaks generate insights on all of these issues. Indeed, I am particularly proud of how the current volume succeeds in placing topics of historical interest alongside present problems. Although any sharply drawn distinction between "engaging current crises" and "engaging history" is, I firmly believe, a false one, it is nonetheless helpful to understand this present AJTP issue as a conversation between past and present.

On the historical side, Gary Dorrien continues his magisterial treatment of Hegel and his legacy, Richard Kenneth Atkins reimagines Royce's The Problem of Christianity in light of Peirce's theory of inquiry, Dan D. Crawford makes a careful but provocative case for reading James's Varieties of Religious Experience as an expression of the author's own spiritual seeking, and David E. Conner ably explicates a figure of perennial interest in his review essay on The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead's Radical Empiricism, by Randall E. Auxier and Gary L. Herstein. On the contemporary side, Jeremy Sorgen both challenges and repairs Jeffrey Stout's vision of the role of the philosopher within democratic discourse, Andrew R. H. Thompson extols a tradition of environmental justice movements as a model for a postpandemic public, Donald A. Crosby marshals William James in response to ecological emergency, and Walter B. Gulick sketches a comprehensive theory of aesthetics that breaks new ground within the field. Such chronology-traversing conversations attest to the relevance of classical figures like Peirce and James and their ilk. They also inspire one to hope that, in broadening our frame of reference, historically literate perspectives on contemporary challenges will enhance our capacities for response, the intended effect being a bit like Reinhold Niebuhr's vision of "being in the battle and above it." With that in mind, then: happy reading!