“Introduction to the Book Symposium on Sophie Grace Chappell’s Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience"

This introduction situates Sophie Grace Chappell’s Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience within a broader philosophical lineage that treats experience, rather than judgment or theory, as the primary site of value. Drawing on John Dewey’s and William James’s conception of experience as “double-barrelled”—encompassing both what is experienced and how it is experienced—the essay argues that Chappell develops an ethics grounded in the inclusive integrity of lived experience. Epiphanies are presented not as rare mystical events, but as moments in which revelation and what is revealed become one, disclosing value through the full integrity of experience. The introduction emphasizes Chappell’s phenomenological method, her resistance to moral theoreticism, and her account of experience as revelation. It also highlights the existential significance of her “republic of conversation,” an inclusive dialogical space in which moral understanding emerges through shared reflection on experience. The symposium contributions extend this conversation by addressing questions of agency, authority, cultivation, and pluralism in epiphanic ethics.