2026 APA Central: NASSP Session CFA (Due Sept. 10, 2025)

North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP)

CFP for NASSP at APA Central

Theme: “Social Philosophy Amid Social Chaos”

Since the beginning of his second term, Donald Trump has plunged the United States into political chaos. The Executive Branch has made war on its own capacity, workers, and customers, even as it has asserted far-reaching power over functions that the Constitution and/or longstanding practice had assigned to the legislative and judicial branches or to the states. Rapid unilateral policy changes have created fear and instability, spurred economic and financial whiplash, and stunted routine cultural exchange. Unlawful (warrantless) arrests, detentions (without charges) and deportations (without due process) suggest that for many more people, daily life can be traumatically upended without warning.

For decades, most North American social philosophy has presumed the basic reliability and responsibility of government: that salaries, pensions, and insurance premiums would be paid, that contracts would be honored, that our money would be worth something, that votes would be counted, that peaceful protest was protected activity, that we could rely on habeas corpus if it ever came to that. Above all, that Constitutional protections had teeth and rules would be, if only grudgingly, followed. Even “radical” social philosophers have envisioned changes – a net-zero, prison abolition, market socialism, open borders, decolonization – while imagining that these changes would be carried out in an orderly fashion by democratically elected and accountable governments. Governments that kept records.

What does social philosophy look like in a time of chaos? Have the past decades of North American “social philosophy” not really been philosophy at all, but merely glorified op-eds from a now-lost period of stability? Does it matter whether this chaos is an interlude or is the new normal?  How should social philosophers respond when liberal democratic assumptions—such as reliability and accountability of government—no longer reflect lived reality even for the privileged? What are the implications of warrantless arrests and deportations for our understanding of civil liberties and due process in liberal democracies? Are new theoretical tools needed, or can familiar frameworks, be they mainstream, critical, or radical, provide all the analysis we need?

We invite abstracts for a NASSP panel at the 2026 Central APA (Chicago, 2/18-21) on the theme of “Social Philosophy Amid Social Chaos”. We welcome new “chaos-informed” contributions to existing debates, philosophical approaches to new questions that become salient in a time of chaos, as well as meta-philosophical work that addresses the character, point, and value of social philosophy amid social chaos.

Please send a title and a maximum 400-word abstract, as an email attachment and prepared for anonymous review, to: Roksana Alavi ([email protected]) and Avery Kolers ([email protected]) no later than September 10, 2025.