Before all, I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to all the contributors to this volume, first, for their splendid contributions, and second, for their enthusiastic support and cooperation.
The volume possesses an uncanny unity that is owed entirely to their contributions and the deep attunement to the volume's overall goals with which they were written. Perhaps, this uncanny unity across differences in approach and in topics is itself a persuasive indication of the contemporary actuality of “philosophical romanticism.”
I want also to thank Tony Bruce at Routledge for taking a keen interest in this project from the very beginning, and for his support and patience throughout.
The volume is dedicated to my son Kaelen, from whom I have learned that the success of any new beginning, no matter how well begun, rests on a generous act of self-transformation. His new beginning was mine as well. For that, and so much more, I am deeply thankful.
Finally, I should say a word or two about my choice of cover image for the volume, Francisco Goya's ‘The Dog’, one of his very last paintings. Why this image, one might ask? It is surely very poignant, and just as surely very ambiguous. Is the dog in a state of wonder or displacement? Is it meant to suggest hope or despair? Is that sun rising or setting (for him, for us)? Is it mourning an irrecoverable loss, perhaps, the loss of its voice, or awaiting some new possibility, a second chance, a new beginning? What of the future that lies ahead (or hovers above) — is it welcoming or indifferent? What blocks our view? What must we overcome to open our view of things, to open the horizon again? Since these are some of the central questions of romanticism, questions that we cannot and should not evade even if we can't come up with definitive answers, I cannot think of a better cover image to represent this volume than this ordinary-looking dog set in what looks like an ‘extraordinary’ situation.