The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 1 (Fall, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

This issue marks the return of this newsletter to active publication. The hiatus that has marked its recent history has been due to, among other reasons, the paucity of submissions to it. I have been concerned not to put issues out just so that something, anything, will be out there. In the interim I have been busy building a pool of articles that will yield an unbroken record of publication henceforth. I use this opportunity again to remind our readers that this or any other publication cannot thrive unless APA members take seriously the duty of sending in contributions. I look forward to a more felicitous future for this newsletter.

The two submissions published below fulfill a part of the original plan that I announced for the newsletter at its inauguration. The earlier issues were more closely tied to the activities of the Committee for International Cooperation, sponsor of the newsletter. Future numbers will continue to carry submissions arising from panels generated by the Committee. But the publication was originally intended to be much more than an outlet for the activities organized by the Committee. I am very pleased then to introduce this edition.

The first article introduces us to the reflections of a Korean philosopher on the contemporary philosophical scene in Korea. Heisook Kim, who was recently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Loyola University in Chicago, argues that if one takes seriously the view of philosophy that sees it as "an act by which one manifests one’s intellectual curiosity about the surrounding world and oneself, regardless of one’s nation, race, or gender," it is problematic to talk about philosophy delimited by geographical boundaries. For were we to take the latter route it would be "even trickier" to talk of a specifically Korean philosophy given that Korea’s intellectual history has been intermixed with different foreign traditions. What she proceeds to do is to identify how philosophy in Korea has evolved in light of Korean intellectuals’ efforts to make sense of the world around them structured, as it were, by their indigenous traditions and those of foreign provenance. The end product reflects the tensions generated by this intellectual history and philosophy in Korea is an ongoing attempt by Korean philosophers to synthesize the different traditions domiciled there.

The second piece is by Shahriar Shafaghi, an American-trained Iranian philosopher, currently resident in Canada. In it, Shafaghi explores the philosophical scene in Iran against the background of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini-led Iranian Revolution of 1978, the strong nationalist sentiments that characterize Iranian attitudes to the United States of America and other western countries and ongoing debates about the relationship between philosophy and life in a state in which the state and religion are conjoined. He challenges some of our assumptions about the phenomenon of fusing religion and the state, our understanding of Shiite Islam, and counterposes the possibilities of intellectual debates where there is a conjunction of religion and the state, as in Iran, and where there is a separation, as in the United States. This he does by revisiting the arguments for the separation of the state and civil society and of philosophy from life. Finally, we learn from the piece how much the reality of philosophy in Iran differs from the popular perceptions of it in the United States. Although the news media have lately been announceing some thaw in relations between Iran and the United States, Shafaghi shows that western philosophy has continued to enjoy serious scholarly attention in Iranian institutions and Iranian philosophers have not turned their backs on the possibility of obtaining insights from engaging their western counterparts. If only the same were true of the philosophical scene in the United States. One can only hope that contributions like Shafaghi’s would elicit reactions from those who disagree with his characterizations.