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Special Issue of The Journal of Ethics: Fate and narrative identity Deadline for submission of full draft: 1 January 2027 Length of paper: 8,000-11,000 words, including footnotes but not including references at the end.
This special issue 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, my socio-economic background, or my gender—from voluntary components such as my profession, my marriage, my political allegiance, or my long-term residence.
But even involuntary components admit of more-or-less voluntary interpretations of their meaning. An ethnic identity can yield a sense of belonging or indifference; an unwanted constraint can be changed into a catalyst for important life choices.
Voluntary identity components and voluntary interpretations usually admit of a narrative description of how they came to play an important role in my identity, and of how I see their role in the future.
As part of that narrative description, I might ask myself which components are somehow essential to who I am—in other words, without that component, I cannot imagine being me.
Most often, these components will begin their narrative role with an event of pure luck. In such a case, I may be tempted to speak of that event as fateful.
This special issue therefore asks:
What does it mean to see a narrative identity component as "my fate"? What can the concept of fate contribute to my and others' understanding of my life?
Importantly, we are not directly interested in the concept of fate as denying free will. Nor are we directly interested in any kind of metaphysical notion, divine or otherwise, that might determine my future.
Instead, our autobiographical perspective is primarily about making sense of our past and present, in the sense described by Robert Solomon's article:
Robert Solomon, "Fate and Fatalism," Philosophy East and West, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Oct. 2003), pp. 435–454.
Solomon offers many examples. He himself, a professional philosopher, started at university studying medicine and, on an impulse, took a philosophy elective that steered him into a whole new area of interest. He wants to call the impulse fateful.
Now, it might be said that, given his known and unknown dispositions, he was fated to switch to philosophy sooner or later, and that if he had missed this one elective, other opportunities would have caught his eye. As such, we might reach for Heraclitus's mantra:
"Character is destiny."
But consider another of Solomon's examples: two people have been married to one another for many years and, as such, have deeply influenced one another's identity.
And yet their meeting, their subsequent romantic availability, their mutual attraction, their cohabitational compatibility, their shared interests, etc.—all of that was radically contingent.
Retrospectively, however, that meeting—and everything else—was necessary, fated, in order for them to become who they are now, individually and jointly, many years later.
We are not only interested in Solomon's retrospective view of fateful events. We are also interested in the experience of practical necessity, a phrase coined by Bernard Williams in his 1981 article of that name.
Here the agent, in the present, discovers what she must do, given who she is, what she has become, what roles she fills, who she is in a relationship with, where she works, etc.
Such a discovery about oneself may be more or less surprising, and more or less acceptable and understandable among one's friends, who know her more or less well.
Williams's concept has spawned some philosophical discussion, but his and others' heroes do not usually use the word fate.
The question is whether they are entitled to do so while taking themselves—and being taken—seriously.
We welcome submissions on topics including, but not limited to:
Authors must make use of the standard online Editorial Manager (EM) system used by The Journal of Ethics.
All manuscripts will go through the standard double-blind peer-review process according to The Journal of Ethics' guidelines.
As a matter of general policy on special issues, all submissions will also be checked by the Editor-in-Chief.
All manuscripts should be prepared according to the journal's guidelines provided on The Journal of Ethics website.
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Charles University, Czech Republic University College Dublin, Ireland