The Philosophical Forum is a philosophy journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. It is currently edited by Douglas Lackey.

The Philosophical Forum was founded in 1943 as an annual philosophy journal, published by the Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

 Philosophical Club. The first editor was Sheldon C. Ackley. The first issue contained articles by Edgar S. Brightman

Edgar S. Brightman

Edgar Sheffield Brightman was a philosopher and Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and liberal theology, and promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism....

, David Easton

David Easton

David Easton is a Canadian political scientist who was born in Toronto, Ontario, went to the United States in 1943, and is currently Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.He is a former President of the American Political...

, Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker or Whittaker may refer to:*Robert Whitaker , American author*Robert Whitaker , British photographer*Robert Whitaker , British showjumper*Robert Whittaker, American vegetation ecologist...

, and William E. Kerstetter

William E. Kerstetter

William E. Kerstetter was president of DePauw University and earlier of Simpson College.Kerstetter had a bachelor's degree from Dickinson College. He had a Ph.D. from Boston University. He was an ordained Methodist minister who spent most of his career in academia...

. The journal continued to publish more or less annually until 1964. In its run it contained articles by many philosophers including Paul Arthur Schilpp

Paul Arthur Schilpp

Paul Arthur Schilpp was an American educator.He was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States prior to World War I...

, Hugo Adam Bedau

Hugo Adam Bedau

Hugo Adam Bedau is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Tufts University, and is best known for his work on capital punishment...

, Brand Blanshard

Brand Blanshard

Percy Brand Blanshard was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason. A powerful polemicist, by all accounts he comported himself with courtesy and grace in philosophical controversies and exemplified the "rational temper" he advocated.-Life:Brand Blanshard was born August...

, Abraham Edel

Abraham Edel

Abraham Edel was a North American philosopher and ethicist. He was the younger brother of North American literary critic and biographer Leon Edel, the uncle of composer Joel Mandelbaum. He was married three times; the first two were fellow academics and co-authors.Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,...

, and Gordon W. Allport.

The Philosophical Forum was reconstituted in 1968 under the editorship of Joseph Agassi

Joseph Agassi

Joseph Agassi is an Israeli academic with contributions in logic, scientific method, and philosophy. He studied under Karl Popper and taught at the London School of Economics. He later taught at the University of Hong Kong, the University of Illinois, Boston University, and York University in...

. It was published quarterly by Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

's department of philosophy. The first issue contained articles by Charles Hartshorne

Charles Hartshorne

Charles Hartshorne was a prominent American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of St. Anselm's Ontological Argument...

, Sylvain Bromberger, and Yehuda Elkana

Yehuda Elkana

Yehuda Elkana was born in 1934 in Subotica, Yugoslavia. He is a distinguished historian and philosopher of science, and a former President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He is married to Dr Yehudit Elkana and has four children.-Life and career:Born to Hungarian...

's translation of an article by Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...

. After two issues Walter G. Emge took over as editor. He held the position for two issues until Marx Wartofsky took over editorship and reconstituted the Journal. When Wartofsky moved from Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

 to Baruch College

Baruch College

Bernard M. Baruch College, more commonly known as Baruch College, is a constituent college of the City University of New York, located in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, New York City. With an acceptance rate of just 23%, Baruch is among the most competitive and diverse colleges in the nation...

 The Philosophical Forum moved with him . Marx Wartofsky edited The Philosophical Forum until his death. William James Earle and then Douglas Lackey, both of Baruch College's Philosophy department, edited the Forum after Wartofsky's death.

The Philosophical Forum has been consistently publishing articles by prominent philosophers. The journal's approach to philosophy is rare. Marx Wartofsky had an extremely broad conception of philosophy that included philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

, political philosophy

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

, and aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 and many other branches of philosophy, from both sides of the philosophical spectrum, including analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...

 and continental philosophy

Continental philosophy

Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...

. The Philosophical Forum continues to publish articles from many different philosophical traditions.

The Philosophical Forum often publishes single-topic issues. Notably it has released issues on philosophy and economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, sociobiology

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...

, apartheid, African-American philosophical traditions, race and ethnicity, the philosophy of Jerry Katz, translations of philosophical poetry, ethics and architecture, and translations of French philosophy of science.

Recently it published a 66 page book review of Terence Irwin

Terence Irwin

Terence Irwin is a scholar and philosopher specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and the history of ethics Terence Irwin (born 21 April 1947, in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland) is a scholar and philosopher specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and the history of ethics Terence Irwin (born 21...

's The Development of Ethics: A historical and critical study written by 82 separate authors.