Letteren en Wijsbegeerte

Workshop: Fate and narrative identity

28 & 29 May 2026

Content workshop

This philosophy workshop starts with the autobiographical question: who am I? What are the most important constituents of my identity? We might distinguish involuntary components, such as my birth nationality, my ethnicity, perhaps my gender, from voluntary components, such as my profession, my marriage, my political allegiance, my long-term residence.

In the voluntary case, the identity components usually admit of a narrative description of how they came to play the important role in my identity, and how I see their role in the future. But even with respect to the involuntary components, a voluntary interpretation might admit of a narrative account. An ethnical background can turn into a sense of belonging, an imposed social role can become a source of meaning, an unwanted constraint can be bent into a catalyst for life choices.

Autobiographical enquiry also engages with the following question: which components of my identity are somehow essential to who I am -- in other words, without that component, I cannot imagine being me. One could call this necessity 'fate', as in: “it was my fate to be X.” According to Robert Solomon’s 2003 paper ‘Fate and fatalism’, fate in this sense provides meaning to life’s outcomes. The workshop is about questions raised by this concept of fate. What does it mean to see a narrative identity component as 'my fate'? What can the concept of fate contribute to meaning in life in a secularized age? How does an autobiographical perspective give meaning to past and future events as being fateful?


Schedule

Thursday 28 May

  • 9.45 Welcome
  • 10-11.15 Chris Hamilton '"All one wanted was to be left alone": shadows, ghosts and the reverse side of destiny in Angelica Garnett's Deceived with Kindness'.
  • 11.15-11.45 Tea & Coffee
  • 11.45-13.00 Eileen John “Writing and being forced into meaning: working between life and fiction”
  • 13.00-14.00 Sandwich Lunch
  • 14.00-15.15 Charlotte Knowles “Authenticity, Gender and Fate”
  • 15.15-16.30 Paddy McQueen "Becoming what one always was? Authenticity, fate and self-transformation"
  • 16.30-17.00 Tea & Coffee
  • 17.00-18.15 Kalin Pak “Death Denial and Disenchantment: Death Anxiety and the Question of Personal Narrative”

Friday 29 May

  • 9.00-10.15 Christopher Cowley “Now I am going where my way must go." The suicide of Ajax.”
  • 10.15-11.30 Paper 7: Alfred Archer and Hamish Linehan “It's All Chaos: Fate, Autobiographical Necessity and Misfortune”
  • 11.30-12.00 Tea & Coffee
  • 12.00-13.15 Katrien Schaubroeck “In between autobiographical despair and death denial: a moral orientation towards fate according to Iris Murdoch”

Practical information

28-29 May 2026

Location: University of Antwerp, Stadscampus, Building C, Room S.C. 102. Entrance via Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp

Participation is free, but please register by sending an email to Katrien.Schaubroeck@uantwerpen.be

Organised by Katrien Schaubroeck and Christopher Cowley, with financial support from the Philosophy Department of the University of Antwerp, the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin and the FWO-SBO project Death Care.

Biographies

Alfred Archer

Alfred Archer is an Associate Professor of philosophy at Tilburg University. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2015.  He is especially interested in ethical questions related to the ways we find meaning in our lives, particularly in relation to morality, sport, culture and politics. He is the co-author of Extravagance and Misery: The Emotional Regime of Market Societies (Oxford University Press 2024); Why It’s Ok to be a Sports fan (Routledge 2024) and Honouring and Admiring the Immoral: An Ethical Guide (Routledge 2022).

Christopher Cowley

Christopher Cowley currently works at Charles University in Prague, and at University College Dublin. He is interested in the philosophy of value and identity, broadly construed.

Eileen John

Eileen John is a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. She works in aesthetics and philosophy of literature, with publications on authors such as Lydia Davis and Emily Dickinson, and on topics such as aesthetic consistency, moral learning from literature, meals and art, fictional characters, and poetry and thinking. She co-directs Warwick’s Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts.

Christopher Hamilton

Christopher Hamilton is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. His most recent books are Philosophy and Autobiography: Reflections on Truth, Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Others (2021) and Rapture (2024).

Charlotte Knowles

Charlotte Knowles is an Assistant Professor of Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy at The University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her primary research interests lie in feminist philosophy and phenomenology (particularly Beauvoir and Heidegger). Much of Charlotte's recent work has centred on the issue of complicity in the context of gender, aiming to understand why women often make choices, adopt ways of life, or defend practices that reinforce rather than resist their own subordination. In 2023 Charlotte received an early career award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for her work addressing deep rooted issues in gender dynamics. Since 2024 Charlotte has been co-editor in chief of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.

Hamish Linehan

Hamish Linehan is a PhD researcher on the Stirling and St Andrews Partnership Programme (SASP), working with the Centre for the Science of Place and Memory. His research focuses on accounting for the ways in which memories are embedded, embodied, extended, and enacted. Drawing on his professional background in social research, he is especially interested in how first-person testimonies can provide insights into the mind and the ways in which our cognition is encultured.

Paddy McQueen

Paddy McQueen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy & Political Theory at Swansea University. He has a wide-range of research interests, especially within ethics and social philosophy. His recent publications include Regret (OUP, 2025) and Critical Phenomenology: An Introduction (Polity, 2023, co-authored with Elisa Magrì).

Kalin Pak

Kalin Pak is a PhD researcher in philosophy at the University of Antwerp, working on the SBO Death Care project. Her research interests lie at the intersection of moral psychology and feminist meta-philosophy. She currently examines the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of ecological death practices.

Katrien Schaubroeck

Katrien Schaubroeck is professor of philosophy at the University of Antwerp. She works in moral psychology and feminist philosophy, and writes on moral emotions like love, grief, moral discomfort.