Australasian Journal of Philosophy Reaches Out to Historians
The Australasian Journal of Philosophy (AJP) has been making efforts to publish more history of philosophy.
The journal has long focused on contemporary analytic philosophy, but has recently added two new associate editors to help handle submissions in history.
Phyllis Gorey, “Spirit People”
According to Stephen Hetherington (UNSW), the journal’s editor-in-chief:
AJP has long been internationally known especially for the high quality of the ‘conceptual’/contemporary/analytic philosophy that it publishes. But I’m here to let you know that we welcome philosophically excellent and engaging papers in the history of philosophy, too. In that spirit, we now have two new Associate Editors (AEs) with history specialisations—Margaret Cameron (Melbourne), in mediaeval philosophy, and Frisbee Sheffield (Cambridge), in ancient Greek and ancient Roman philosophy. Margaret and Frisbee will complement the terrific editorial work that is already being done by Deborah Brown (Queensland) and Paisley Livingston (Lingnan), who have been overseeing most of our history submissions. So, I encourage you to think of AJP as a leading journal also for philosophically insightful papers in the history of philosophy.
(via In medias PHIL, the blog of Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado)
The title was a bit interesting. Thought the invitation was to historians who work in departments of history, on some collaboration between historians and philosophers.
It’s a great move when one reflects that “Australasian” doesn’t necessarily mean “analytic”.
I remember once reading David Armstrong remarking in print of Jack Smart words to the effect of: “he never paid any significant attention to history of Philosophy, and it never did him any harm”. Ha!
(I just tried to track down the quote via Google, but failed.)
Thanks for highlighting this, Justin. The aim of this move is to enrich even further what we (the editorial group at AJP) believe is already an excellent meeting-place for so much fine philosophy. AJP will continue being mainly a journal that showcases some of the best writing in contemporary philosophy, most clearly in contemporary ‘analytic’/’conceptual’ philosophy. But adding more history — we already publish some — to that mixture can only enliven and deepen the journal’s conceptual smorgasbord. So, I am encouraging those many people who are writing insightful and productive philosophy with a focus in the history of philosophy to see AJP as a place to call home. Welcomely, the resulting neighbourhood will be even more mixed than it now is — and all the more lively and attractive for that! AJP’s standards will stay at least as high as they now are; our acceptance rate will remain extremely low; but let’s see if the consequent array of provocative and potent papers in the journal can become even wider and more inclusive in its philosophical reach than it now is. Everyone who already submits to AJP should continue doing so; I’m simply encouraging some people — from among those working in the history of philosophy — who haven’t been submitting to the journal to start doing so.