John Lachs is Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He received his Ph. D. from Yale University in 1961. He taught at the College of William and Mary for eight years before moving to Vanderbilt. He is the author of Intermediate Man (1981), In love with Life (1998), Mind and Philosophers (1987), the Relevance of Philosophy to Life (1995), and A Community of Individuals (2003).

Robert B. Talisse is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He earned his Ph. D. from City University of New York in 2001. He is the author of dozens of articles and two books, Democracy After Liberalism (2005) and A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy (2007).