PSN lecture series - Matthew Ratcliffe

PSN Fall Lecture 

Thursday, November 14th, 2024 (15.00-16.30 GMT) Prof. Matthew Ratcliffe (University of York, UK) 

The Possibilities of the Past

In this talk, I will sketch a phenomenological account of how the autobiographical past remains unfixed and continues to offer up significant possibilities. These possibilities, I suggest, serve to sustain, disrupt, and re-consolidate a non-localized, dynamic sense of who we are, in ways that are inseparable from how we experience time. I begin by reflecting on the analogy of a bore wave, as employed in a novel by Julian Barnes. Building on this, I turn to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre in order to address how our memories are revised in light of our current concerns and vice versa. Then, by adapting Edmund Husserl’s conception of temporal “protention”, I show how acts of remembering are integral to a process of ongoing reconciliation between our current orientation towards the future and the autobiographical past. I focus throughout on a distinctive way in which the past sometimes comes alive, taking on certain future-like qualities.

Bio: 

Matthew Ratcliffe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, UK. His work addresses issues in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychiatry. He is author of the books Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford University Press, 2008), Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience (MIT Press, 2022) 

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Additional Information

On Possibilist Thinking: A Modal Approach in the Humanities.

Possibilism assumes that a thing or event acquires meaning only in the context of its possibilities—what it may be as opposed to what it actually is. The potentiality cannot be reduced to either actuality or necessity. A world consisting solely of actualities would lack meaning and significance, as I argue in my book, A Philosophy of the Possible: Modalities in Thought and Culture (in Russian, 2001; English translation, 2019). We'll explore possibility as the catalyst for the most profound emotions and illuminating thoughts. We'll delve into the implications of this approach for fields like ethics, psychology, metaphysics, and the interdisciplinary integration through possibilism.

I define potentiality as a possibility with a certain propensity towards realization. While it might be challenging to draw direct historical connections—like between Schopenhauer’s philosophy of will and Bohr's probabilistic approach to quantum phenomena, or between the analysis of modalities in Lewis and the 'courage to be' in Tillich—concepts such as will, probability, potential, desire, power, and faith are all various expressions of potentiality. They manifest as ethical, psychological, physical, theological, and other projections. We propose viewing potentiology as a burgeoning branch of metaphysics, one that concentrates on potentiality and complements the established branches of ontology and epistemology.

Mikhail N. Epstein is a cultural and literary scholar. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Emeritus Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University. He moved from the USSR to the USA in 1990 and, during 1990–1991, was a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as a Professor at Emory University from 1991 to 2023. From 2012 to 2015, he served as Professor and Founding Director of the Centre for Humanities Innovation at Durham University (UK).

Epstein's research interests include new directions in the humanities; contemporary philosophy and religion, in particular the philosophy of culture and language; the poetics and history of Russian literature; postmodernism; and the evolution of language. Epstein has authored 42 books and more than 800 articles. His works have been translated into 26 languages. Some of his latest books include Ideas Against Ideocracy: Non-Marxist Thought of the Late Soviet Period (1953–1991) (2022); The Phoenix of Philosophy: Russian Thought of the Late Soviet Period, 1953-1991 (2019); A Philosophy of the Possible: Modalities in Thought and Culture (in Russian, 2001; English translation, 2019); The Irony of the Ideal: Paradoxes of Russian Literature (2017). The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto (2012).

He is a recipient of the Andrei Bely Award (St. Petersburg, 1991), the prize of the London Institute of Social Inventions for intellectual creativity (1995), the International Essay competition award (Berlin-Weimar, 1999), Liberty Prize (New York, 2000), and the Modern Language Association (MLA) Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for the best book in Slavic Studies (USA, 2023).