Editors’ Introduction

The articles in this special issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy were selected from revised versions of papers that were originally presented at the sixty-first annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on October 12–14, 2023. The SPEP 2023 plenary addresses were delivered by Rahel Jaeggi of Humboldt University of Berlin and Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò of Georgetown University. Jaeggi’s presentation, “Progress and Regression,” defended Critical Theory’s traditional pairing of these two concepts as a necessary tool for diagnosing and analyzing the crises of our times. Táíwò’s presentation, “The Point Is to Change It,” expanded on the constructive approach to politics developed in his recent book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) (2022). Unfortunately, for various reasons, we are not able to include either of the plenary addresses in the present...