Gastvortrag von Prof. Sophie-Grace Chappell (The Open University): „Epiphanies“ [Einladung]

Seminarraum VI der Theologischen Fakultät (Karl-Rahner-Platz 3, 1. Stock)

An epiphany is an overwhelming existentially significant manifestation of value in experience, often sudden and surprising, which feeds the psyche, which feels like it ‘comes from outside’—it is something given, relative to which I am a passive perceiver— which teaches us something new, which ‘takes us out of ourselves’, and to which there is a natural and correct response. (At least one; possibly more.) Often the correct response is love, often it is pity, or again creativity. It might also be anger or reverence or awe or a hunger to put things right—a hunger for justice; or many other things. It may be something that leads directly to action or new knowledge, but it may also be something that prompts further contemplation or reflection; or other responses again. My thesis is that epiphanies are central to our ethical understanding, and that we need an ethics that gives them that centrality. Such an ethics will be phenomenological; inherently realist; and anti-systematic.

Sophie-Grace Chappell is Professor of Philosophy at the Open University and Executive Editor of The Philosophical Quarterly. Her latest book is Epiphanies: an Ethics of Experience (Oxford University Press, 2022). She is writing Trans Figured: How to survive as a transgender person in a cisgender world, and A Philosopher Looks At Friendship (for Cambridge University Press). She makes frequent media appearances advocating transgender rights.