An ‘epiphany’ for philosophy academic at the OU

Posted on 23 August 2017 • Society and politics

An academic from the OU has been awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to explore the impact of “epiphanies” on individuals and societies.

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Professor of Philosophy, Sophie Grace Chappell, has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (MRF) of £142,000 to research epiphanies and author a book about the place of such experiences in individuals’ and society’s ethical life, reasoning, and thought.

Contemporary philosophy and its resistance to epiphanies

In her research, Professor Chappell focuses on the experience of epiphanies – a term popularised by

novelist, James Joyce – as the moments that set the values on which we base the rest of our lives. Such experiences are everywhere in poetry and literature, yet contemporary philosophy, despite constantly asking these questions, remains oddly resistant to providing a place for epiphanies. The main aim of the research is to overcome this resistance.

During the three-year tenure of her Fellowship, Professor Chappell will be a Visiting Fellow of the Philosophy Department at the University of St Andrews, travelling widely to disseminate and discuss her research. In September 2017, for example, she will visit the universities of Chicago, Creighton (Omaha, Nebraska), Louvain, and Munich.

“Our world is rich with epiphanies”

Commenting on the Leverhulme Trust MRF, Professor Chappell, said:

“Leverhulme Trust MRFs are extremely prestigious – about two a year are awarded in my discipline, and about 34 across the full range of the arts and humanities. So far as I know, I am the first academic at the OU ever to win one and this is a great honour for me.

“Whether or not we do see it, the truth remains that the world is rich with epiphanies. If we lose the ability to see or to find them that is not an impoverishment of the world, but of us.”