[Important note: I usually avoid posting Calls for Papers that involve the requirement that authors pay a fee for submission and/or publication but do so when the topic is particularly relevant to the presence community. In these cases, as with the Call below, I add an explicit note near the top of the post noting the fee requirement. For more information about the specific fees, see this page on the publisher’s website, and for general information about publication fees, see AJE Scholar’s “Understanding Submission and Publication Fees” and Wikipedia’s entry on Article Processing Charges. –Matthew]

Call for Papers:

“Encounters with the real”
Special Issue of Journal of Value Inquiry

Guest editors: Silvia Caprioglio Panizza and Luca Zanetti

Contributors: Bill Brown (The University of Chicago), Sophie-Grace Chappell (The Open University), Jonardon Ganeri (University of Toronto), Silvia Jonas (Universität Bamberg), Megan Laverty (Columbia University), Hans Maes (KU Leuven)

Deadline for submission of abstracts: February 1, 2025

DESCRIPTION:

Sometimes the flow of experience is abruptly interrupted by moments in which we have the impression that some veil that stands between us and reality is broken. These experiences have been variously described and interpreted throughout history. Interestingly, although most reports agree with the veil metaphor, there are significant disagreements concerning what is discovered in these moments of insight. On the one hand, in mystical traditions, these experiences are understood as encounters with the divine or with absolute value. On the other hand, in some existentialist writings, such experiences are interpreted as the discovery that there is nothing divine or sacred or even meaningful, but just brute and absurd existence. This special issue takes step back from both traditions, by offering a critical take on these interpretations and creating a platform for philosophical investigations of the experiences of encounter with the real without presupposing either sacredness or meaninglessness. The aim of the special issue is to offer a fresh perspective on these experiences, taking a critical look at established interpretations and opening up the question of the nature, significance, and objects of such experiences, drawing on both Western and Eastern philosophy. To this end, and unusually within the academic tradition, contributors are encouraged to incorporate their personal experience as a starting point to develop their reflections and questions, grounding rigorous philosophical exploration into practical questioning of often intense personal significance.

Possible questions to be explored include, but are not limited to:

• What is the nature of such experiences? What is the best way of conceptualizing them?
• Under what conditions do they occur? What are, if any, the (moral) preconditions for such experiences? Are there practices that create the conditions for these experiences to occur?
• What is the connection, if any, between ethics and such experiences?
• What is the connection, if any, between aesthetics and such experiences?
• What are the merits and limits of the way these experiences are discussed in mainstream philosophical traditions (e.g. existentialism)?
• What does it mean to have an intercultural dialogue on such experiences? What are the methodological constraints for such dialogue?

We invite paper proposals to fill in two slots in the special issue. Please send a long abstract of about 1,000 words by to both silvia.capriogliopanizza@upce.cz and luca.zanetti10@unibo.it by 1 February 2025. Decisions will be sent within a month from the deadline. Selected authors will be asked to submit a full paper of 6,000–8,000 words by 1 July 2025. For any queries please don’t hesitate to contact us.