acknowledgment of a global pandemic in March 2020 and subsequent containment policies disrupted routines. Violent suppression of anti-racists and ongoing state-sanctioned killings in the United States made and continue to make plain the precariousness of justice. The disruption, violence, and uncertainty have resulted in strange, disturbing, and disorienting experiences of time, leading some to describe time as distorted and elastic.I have repeatedly forgotten what day it is and sometimes, upon being reminded of the month, had the shocking sense of weeks (...) suddenly gone. After months of intentional practice, I have become better able to recall details of the recent past. Indistinct collections of days no longer fade... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article is an exploration of certain central features of the affective dimension of human lives. It moves from a consideration of moods, especially as these feature into several of Emerson's essays, to a consideration of sentiments, as they are treated by Peirce, and concludes with tones. At the center of this article, there is an attempt to bring into focus some of the most important connections among moods, sentiments, and tones. The ephemeral and variable character of moods is (...) contrasted to the abiding and integrated character of sentiments in Peirce's sense. The article concludes with a discussion of tone in general and its bearing on democracy in particular. The topic of tone is first examined in light of James's “The Social Value of the College-Bred” and, then, in that of Duke Ellington's musical experiments in hitting upon the right sound, including the right tone. This is an ongoing experimental and improvisatory process in which “mistakes” are taken up and incorporated into the flow of the music or some other endeavor. “By their tone,” James insisted, “are all things human either lost or saved.” This text is dedicated to showing the contemporary relevance of James's claim. (shrink)

Humor is an indispensable element of George Santayana's philosophy. Santayana is, in many ways, philosophy's fool, poking fun at endeavors to obtain epistemological and moral mastery over existence. Moreover, he reminds us of the over-arching benefits of a humorous attitude, suggesting a humility by which we may put into relative perspective our otherwise totalizing aspirations and pursue a moral life without succumbing to moralism. Ultimately, a sense of humor reminds us that comedy is as honest a narrative as tragedy and (...) that the benefit in living is the fun of it. (shrink)

There is a tension in Santayana's ontological system, one that is generated by the interactions of his doctrine of existence, doctrine of systematization, and critical agnosticism on the infinity of material substance. From and, in conjunction with what will be called the expansionist postulate, an infinite material expansion is generated, one that is in conflict with. This tension is remediated by a coherentist proposal regarding Santayanan existence, the relevant feature of which is that existents at distinct orders of organization are (...) in symmetrical dependence relations. "Metaphysical coherentism," which has recently been described as "one of the least explored areas in contemporary... (shrink)