The Southwestern Philosophical Society (SWPS) is an association of scholars and philosophers founded in 1936. SWPS provides a forum for philosophical and scholarly research and originally served philosophers in the American Southwest; it has been for many years a national and international society. 

While the organization does follow trends and methods that prevail in the world of Anglo-American philosophy, the Society is proud of its pluralism and its tradition of openness where scholars of all major traditions find their views and philosophical styles taken seriously.  Respectful and spirited conversation is the Society’s path to healthy philosophical practice.

The Society is especially interested in nurturing younger philosophers from all traditions and methodologies as they explore the issues that will motivate their thinking in their early careers.

In 1983 the Society founded its own journal, Southwest Philosophy Review. While the acceptance rate for the journal and the annual conference is competitive—usually fewer than 20% of submissions are accepted—we encourage submissions from younger scholars and seek to provide the challenging discussions that will assist these young scholars in their professional development.  The Journal publishes the proceedings of the Society’s annual conference and also accepts submissions for publication apart from the Society’s annual conference.  The current editor of the Journal is Todd Stewart at Illinois State University. The President of the Society is currently David Beisecker:

2012 annual meeting details are here 2012 meeting.

The 2010 (72st) meeting took place in Memphis, TN.

An archive of past meeting materials is here.

Submissions are invited on any philosophical issue from any perspective. Author's name should appear only in a separate cover letter. Submit one copy (email is fine, although you may mail a CD with a copy of the file on it to the editor instead) in MSWord (DOC), MSWord 2007 (DOCX), TXT, or RTF format by email by April 15, 2012 to by April 15th, 2012 to: tstewar@ilstu.edu