Commentary

What If S. G. Chappell was an Eastern Philosopher?

Yury Tikhonravov

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, IT

Tikhonravov, Yury. 2026. “Commentary on Epiphanies: What If S. G. Chappell was an Eastern Philosopher?” 

Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 7, no. 2: 24-34. https://doi.org/10.33497/2026.winter.4. 

Abstract: Chappell's Epiphanies could be put together, like an Oriental composite miniature painting, from the concepts of Eastern philosophy. What it would lack is the influence of "secular Calvinism," according to which nothing can be done about epiphanies. Removing this influence opens the door to practical mysticism and raises the question of systematic effort for the sake of cultivating epiphanies and discovering new final values. Is there anything we can do to bring the epiphanies closer, make them more frequent, brighter, and so on? Sophie Grace Chappell believes that the only way is spontaneity. I think if she were an Eastern philosopher, the approach would be more activist.

Key words: Comparative philosophy, East and West, final values, multiculturalism, mysticism

EASTERN MIRROR

First of all, let us note that it is very good that Chappell is a Western philosopher who is “one of our own” in Western philosophy, and can present concepts that are not close to it in its language. Now, if necessary, you do not need to endlessly justify yourself and build arguments understandable to analytical philosophers (which in other traditions are often not arguments at all)—just refer to Chappell's book. In this sense, Epiphanies is not only an insanely bold attempt to introduce mysticism into analytical moral philosophy, but also an extremely useful study that will build a whole springboard in the difficult dialogue between Western and non-Western traditions of philosophy.

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Chappell herself says that, in some respects, she goes against the habits of Western philosophy ( e.g., 24, 100, 102, 232). And it is impossible to argue with this: indeed, modern Western moral philosophy, although not completely ignoring such non-repeatable experiences, treats them rather indifferently. However, while for modern Western, and above all so-called analytic, philosophy, the main idea of the book is in any case heretical, for all the major traditions of Eastern philosophy, it is rather commonplace—there is nothing to debate, nothing to prove.

Accordingly, if Chappell were yet an Eastern philosopher, the book would be different, albeit with the same title. Books with such a title abound in the intellectual traditions of the East. Among the relatively recent ones are, for example, Gamal al-Ghitani's (2012) The Book of Epiphanies and Malyavin's (1997) The Book of Epiphanies. The former is a work of fiction with a philosophical and mystical bent, while the latter is a book on the borderline between philosophy, Asian studies, and a mystical-artistic understanding of reality. To meet Chappell's criterion that books about morality cannot be boring (Chappell 2021, 98), these books have to be something like this. 

If Chappell were an Eastern philosopher, her book would be missing not only dozens, if not hundreds, of pages arguing that epiphanies are the source of what we consider valuable and, above all, the most valuable and most important things in our lives, but also, for example, arguments against exclusivism in the construction of theories (67–71). The exclusivism characteristic of Western philosophy is one reason why this tradition is, as stated above, indifferent to epiphanies. Epiphanies come in many different ways, and including them can lead to mutually exclusive views of life. For analytic philosophy, this is a verdict: epiphanies are irrational and cannot be the basis for an only correct theory.

Chappell cites two possible alternatives in this regard:

To this phenomenon of disagreement, broadly three responses seem possible. Using names that are unavoidably, but not inappropriately, freighted with historical baggage, I’ll call these responses evangelism, ecumenism, and secularism. (394)

Evangelism in this case seems indeed to be exclusivism. What is missing among these options, however, is what I call complementarism: the position according to which different points of view complement each other, reflecting different dimensions of this or that object, and being as a whole. There are as many as two traditions in Eastern philosophy that are based on such an approach—the Jain Anekantavada (refer to Matilal 1981, Koller 2000) and the Chinese system of San Jiao (Vuong 2018). In Western philosophy, something similar is associated with the double truth theory, which penetrated Europe from the Muslim East (for a famous connection of this theory with phenomenology, refer to Sallis 1995). This, too, is a rather characteristic "detail" that would distinguish an "Eastern Chappell" book. However, some prototype of such an approach is also present in the Epiphanies:

Our human phenomenology presents various aspects or dimensions of the world to us, not neutrally or dispassionately, but as of concern to us. And experiencing the world as being-of-concern-to-us is the root, or one root, of experiencing it as a place of values and of reasons: as we might put it, it is the (or an) ur-form of the ethical. (Chappell 2021, 166)

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CLARIFICATION OF SOME TERMINOLOGY

Here it is high time to make a number of reservations, including with regard to terms. By Eastern philosophy I mean not only Indian and East Asian philosophy, but also Arab-Muslim and Eastern Christian philosophy, including Russian philosophy. In contemporary discourse, the term "Eastern philosophy" now does not include, for example, Arab-Muslim philosophy, which is categorized as "Middle Eastern philosophy" (as if the Middle East is not part of the East as a whole). In this commentary, however, I will be considering the classical philosophical traditions of the East more in the old sense—in the swath of non-Western written cultures from the Maghreb to Japan.

At the same time, going beyond previous ideas, I will also include Russian philosophy here. Today it is probably more obvious that Russia is not Europe or the West, but Asia and the East. Yes, there was a period of rather harsh attempts to Westernize Russian culture in the 18th–20th centuries (refer to Florovsky 1979). But it is now evident that Western culture in general has not taken root in Russia, and that its patina is wearing off in no time at all by historical standards. This is confirmed by the prevailing style of Russian philosophy, which is more reminiscent of the sayings of Eastern sages (albeit expanded into more verbose texts) than of the doubts and arguments of Western authors (refer to, for example, the philosophizing writers Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, whom Chappell cites).

In all these traditions, of course, there is a dry rationalism that tries to derive all values, or, what is the same thing, all the criteria of what is good and right, from reason alone, from a revelation once given to a prophet, or from tradition, the authority of which is unshakable. For example, in Arab-Muslim philosophy these are Mu'tazilites and Salafis, and in East Asian philosophy these are classical Confucians; and these traditions are not marginal at all. But never and nowhere in the East has there been a situation in which rationalism of this kind dominated culture almost to the level of a spiritual monopoly.

In addition, I use in this commentary the term mysticism, for which there are no authoritative conventions in the literature. In this text, by mysticism I will mean the position that another, non-naturalistic reality is available to us right now and at any other moment through a special kind of experience. Conceptions of the nature of such a reality may vary considerably from tradition to tradition, but the idea of the possibility of immediate contact with it remains everywhere. The world of values may well be regarded as such a reality, even if it is intertwined with naturalistic reality—just as, for example, samsara and nirvana, from the point of view of Buddhist mysticism, or God and His creation, from the point of view of some branches of Sufism.

Similarly intertwined, if I may say so, are Western and Eastern realities in Chappell's book. At times we can discern Eastern philosophy behind a layer of Western philosophy. We could probably even put Chappell's book together from the concepts of Eastern philosophy, like an Arcimboldo-inspired portrait or, better said, like an oriental composite miniature painting from India or Persia. In other words, we could replace almost all the concepts of Epiphanies with their Eastern counterparts, most of which are half a millennium old.

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EPIPHANIES IN THE EAST

This concerns first of all the very notion of epiphanies and its role as a source of what we recognize as valuable. In all the large cultural areas of the East we can find not only corresponding categories, but pairs of categories, one of which represents, dare I say, the noetic side of epiphanies, and the other the noematic side (for the connection between Eastern philosophy and phenomenology, refer to, e.g., Lusthaus 2002). For example, in Indian philosophy there are the categories of pratibha and darshan (Gopinath Kaviraj 1923–24, 1923–24a; Eck 1998). Pratibha is something between revelation and poetic inspiration, the way we grasp sudden knowledge. Darshan is this knowledge itself, its content, what is revealed to us.

Different schools of Indian philosophical thought used different synonyms for epiphanies. The Buddhist tradition originating in India has always been characterized by the originality of the terms used. With regard to the two sides of epiphanies, the pair appears as dṛṣṭi-svabhāva and sambodhi. These categories, like Buddhism itself, did not establish themselves within Indian culture, but spread throughout East and Southeast Asia. They are now better known in the West in their Japanese version as kenshō and satori, and in Chinese culture as jianxing and wu (refer to Fouts 2004, Hori 2000, Toshihiko Izutsu 1984). In the Muslim world, too, the pair is present: kashf and tajalli (Chittick 1981, Morris 2005, Toshihiko Izutsu 1984).

In Russian philosophy the words "ozareniya" and "prozreniya" are used. Usually, when one speaks of Russian philosophy, one means the religious philosophy of the 19th to mid-20th centuries. This philosophy is part of Eastern Christian thought and inherits most of its ideas. This applies to epiphanies as well. The first to develop this concept within the above tradition is Isaac the Syrian. In one of his discourses he speaks of "the mysteries which in the epiphany about the nature of God the mind reaches" (Isaac the Syrian 2020, 20, 160). The term "epiphany" (sukkala), most often used by Isaac the Syrian in the plural (sukkale), is used to describe a sudden and vivid contact with another reality.

Here is what Ivan Ilyin writes on this topic in his book "Axioms of Religious Experience":

Being-empty-of-God is not a property of objects or subjects, but only of subjective acts and "subjectified" contents. This condition is not invented by any doctrine, but is the true basis of the religious worldview, and a basis that can be proved. One can only obtain proof or experiential confirmation of this in one's own, direct experience, in the experience of religious epiphany: any vulgar object—when addressed, according to the main thing, from the main thing, with an intension for the main thing—turns out to be a case of "too-little-understanding": objective meaning is revealed from behind of nothingness, the object-essential appears from behind of the ashes of trifles. The spiritual seer reveals to a person born blind their spiritual eye, and this eye receives its "gaze" and its "vision" from the teacher and prophet. (Ilyin 2002, II, 1; my translation)

Here we see a hierarchy of epiphanies characteristic of all Eastern traditions, which corresponds to the hierarchy of mystical realization. Note that if the epiphanies did not depend in any way on our efforts (as Chappell writes), such a hierarchy would be impossible.

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Let us not be confused by the fact that in all Eastern texts epiphanies are inextricably linked to religious experience. In the East, religion, if I may say so, is total—in fact, there is nothing outside of religion.[1] If today in the West they argue whether Buddhism and Confucianism are religions, for the East even atheistic communism is certainly a religion (Berdyaev 1930). Chappell herself also problematizes the boundary between the religious and the irreligious:

For my own part, throughout this book I have carefully resisted drawing a firm line between the ‘religious’ and the ‘non-religious.’ Epiphanies are peak-experiences in which value in the world—and beyond it—is revealed to us. Are they religious experiences? My difficulty here is that I’m not certain that I know what ‘religious’ means (and there are plenty of Religious Studies academics who share my uncertainty). The transcendent, the spiritual, is everywhere, and we all experience it. It’s just that we have different names for it, and it’s with the names that the hard lines begin to appear. For example, I don’t suppose an atheist would be all that likely to call it ‘the spiritual’, as I just have, being, as I am, a Charismatic Anglo-Catholic Christian. But it’s the same thing that we’re all talking about in our different ways. Or so I believe. (Chappell 2021, 385)

However, some Eastern authors also distinguish a special axiological experience. Thus, according to the Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky (1991), only in the totality of all types of perception—intellectual, sensual, mystical intuition, as well as experience based on Revelation—is it possible to realize the supreme moral values. Values are absolute, objective and accessible to perception through axiological, moral and religious experience. These three forms of experience are sufficient to guide moral behavior. But the theoretical development of a system of ethics requires other forms of experience, intellectual intuition and Revelation (Lossky 1991, 70).

So, for the bearer of a particular Eastern culture, the very question of a non-religious domain is strange.[2] On the other hand, in the West, in the Modern era, such a strange phenomenon as secularization emerged. But this phenomenon also has a religious basis—Calvinism. Calvinism takes religious goals beyond human endeavor. Salvation as the supreme religious value is only a gift of God (monergism), and there is nothing we ourselves can do to obtain it. But if the value cannot be the result of our actions, even if only indirectly, it cannot be our goal (the ideal consequence of our actions). As a result, people turn away from religious values and focus on what they can do, and because of this religion itself is pushed to the periphery of culture.

Chappell, too, shows the influence of Calvinism ("secular Calvinism"): her epiphanies are rather uncontrollable ("nothing can make epiphanies come", Chappell 2021, 151). Just like salvation in Calvinist theology, epiphanies cannot be brought about by one's own efforts, nor can one even prepare for them. The only question that remains is whether other people can arrange epiphanies for me. For example, if one considers works of art to be, so to speak, a secondary source of epiphanies, can their authors be considered as those who at least create the conditions for other people's epiphanies?

In contrast, in all Eastern traditions, even though it is sometimes said that epiphanies are a gift from a higher power, they are still something to which one should direct one's efforts. You can prepare for them, you can open up to them, you can cultivate them. The fleeting epiphanies of ordinary people are different from those of advanced mystics who have spent years practicing "soul cleansing," "heart polishing," or something like that. 

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Ultimately, epiphanies, and in general what can be analogically called salvation, are in the hands of the individual. This is the main difference between the hypothetical Eastern Chappell and the real Western Chappell. However, the latter also has a quite Eastern epiphany in this regard:

Epiphanic perceptions. We just see a value, in a moment of revelation. This happens. (This whole book is about it happening.) Not all the time; but often. And it's not happening oftener could well be less about the unavailability of such experiences, and more about our obtuseness, or the filters that our minds apply. (296)

That is, if we work on ourselves, on overcoming our obtuseness and so on, the epiphanies may happen at least more often. And maybe they will also be clearer, more vivid, richer, and so on?

Chappell writes about cultivating "passive susceptibilities" (51), but generally relies on spontaneity, which cannot be cultivated (84). This is not what Eastern mystics rely on. This is most clearly seen in the approach of Russian religious philosophers who believed the ideal to be so-called free theurgy, understood as the union of art and religion (the connection between art and epiphanies was mentioned above):

Artists and poets, must again become priests and prophets, but already in another, even more important and loftier sense: not only the religious idea will own them, but they themselves will own it and consciously manage its earthly incarnations. (Solovyov 1884, 8–9; my translation)

Theurgy does not create culture, but new being. Theurgy is supercultural. Theurgy is art creating another world, another being, another life; creating beauty as essence, as being. Theurgy overcomes the tragedy of creativeness, directs creative energy towards a new life. In theurgy the word becomes flesh. In theurgy art becomes power. (Berdyaev 1962, 229)

PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE

In my opinion, the phenomenological approach, or its semblance (Chappell has written extensively on phenomenology and considers herself a follower), can reconcile the Western and Eastern Chappell. Just as phenomenology overcomes the opposition between object and subject by bracketing this opposition, so too can the opposition between inner and outer, will and grace, synergism and monergism in moral philosophy be overcome. A prototype of this approach can be found in such an old Western author as Bernard of Clairvaux: "You would not seek Him at all, O soul, nor love Him at all, if you had not been first sought and first loved" (Bernard of Clairvaux 1948, 162).

Curiously, this solution is explicitly given in Martin Buber, whom Chappell often quotes. While Buber speaks directly on the same subject as Chappell—the perception of the tree—Chappell, for some reason, omits this passage:

I consider a tree.

I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash, of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.

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I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air — and the obscure growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life.

I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognise it only as an expression of law — of the laws in accordance with which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accordance with which the component substances mingle and separate.

I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in pure numerical relation.

In this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.

To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and type, law and number, indivisibly united in this event.

Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colours and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole.

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it — only in a different way.

Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.

The tree will have a consciousness, then, similar to our own. Of that I have no experience. But do you wish, through seeming to succeed in it with yourself, once again to disintegrate that which cannot be disintegrated. I encounter no soul or dryad of the tree, but the tree itself. (Buber 1937, 7–8; my italics)

Will and grace here appear to be sides of the same coin: there is no will without grace, no grace without will. Refer to Richard Avenarius' doctrine of principal coordination (Avenarius 1891, 83), which is a precursor of phenomenology: without the subject there is no object and without the object there is no subject.

The practical difference between the phenomenological and "secular-Calvinist" approaches to epiphanies is well illustrated by the attitude to suffering. If contact with the world of values does not depend on our efforts, then we do not need to do anything, and it is better to wait for epiphanies in comfort:

Space and silence, and physical and mental health, and freedom from serious dangers, threats, and worries, are all prerequisites in this sense: without them it is hard for the psyche to be and do well. (Chappell 2021, 235)

But if we are to improve ourselves in any way to make our epiphanies closer, more frequent, more complete, etc., suffering is an important part of our spiritual growth. This is why Dostoevsky would never have agreed with Chappell's statement above.

For me, as an Easterner, it is this moment—the moment of practical mysticism—that is important. I share Chappell's "Dynamic Thesis" that the list of final values can be expanded (Chappell 1998, 44). Moreover, I believe that it must be expanded today in order to deal with the expanding existential crisis of both individuals and humanity as a whole, which is steadily heading toward collective suicide. Accordingly, if epiphanies are the 

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main source of realizing values, including values that we have not noticed before, the question arises how to induce and cultivate these epiphanies.

As I understand it, Chappell still shares the position that was expressed in the late 20th century:

So I do still believe that there are (basic) goods—as I did when, in 1998, I published Understanding Human Goods. No doubt there is some kind of relation between those goods and epiphanies. Or rather there are some kinds of relation: given that the goods themselves are an indefinite plurality there are probably indefinitely many such relations, and certainly more than we can itemise, let alone systematise.

Perhaps talk of ‘the goods’ is a way of labelling the peaks and intensities in the value that is omnipresent in the world, just as talk of ‘epiphanies’ is a way of labelling the peaks and intensities in our experience of the world. Perhaps. But these days it is enough for me to believe that there are goods without trying to have a theory of them. (Epiphanies, 256, footnote 26)

If there are an indefinite number of final values, if new final values can be discovered in epiphanies, and if epiphanies can be cultivated in one way or another, it would be strange to miss such an opportunity. Final goods are definitions of the most important things we can have. Each new final good can be the source of a new way of life, a new culture, and even a new civilization. Each new final value can revitalize attitudes toward previous final goods, give rise to new life scenarios, new ideals, new images, stories and styles of art, new ways of knowledge, and new social institutions. It is even surprising that no one is searching for new final goods.

Thus, if we take out of Chappell's book the secular Calvinism—the most Western element of it—we can come to the need for a special "agency of epiphanies," or a brotherhood of epiphanies (like the Sufi brotherhood of tajaliyyah), or something like that. This, in my opinion, is what makes this book most valuable.

However, Chappell herself sees the practical dimension of her book differently. Instead of some hybrid institution in search of new final goods, she writes about a quasi-political project—a conversational republic.

The book ends on a rather minor note. For some reason, the lofty reflections of authors, whether Eastern or Western, these days invariably end with the conclusion that it is necessary to shut up the bearers of such and such views.[3] No matter how you look at it, you have to shut someone up. And the list of these views is constantly expanding (along with the list of soul-nourishing things, one hopes). I'm in no position to argue with such suggestions—maybe that's the way to go. Maybe eventually everything will come to a "republic of silence" where all citizens are in blissful voicelessness, ready to accept the next epiphany.

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Notes

[1] In this case, I do not mean a single religion that should fill the entire cultural space, as it was customary for Western culture in the past. In many Eastern countries the principle of "one person—one religion" does not work and the sphere of religion is a whole system of complementary teachings (for example, above-mentioned San Jiao), and the religions themselves are often very different from what we are used to in the West (for example, they sometimes do not involve worship of gods, etc.).

[2] Of course there are heavily Westernized countries, like South Korea or Russia, which may be familiar with Western secularism, but I believe they also always have a chance, like Russia, to take the path of returning to Eastern traditions.

[3] E.g., De Pinedo, Villanueva 2022; Dugin 2023; these two examples represent opposite points of the spectrum in the style of silencing (cancelling, deplatforming, deleting, banning, censoring, and so on), but the result is always the same. Dugin's logic is interesting: if the West shuts up heretical voices in its own countries, Russia can do the same.

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Yury Tikhonravov © 2026

Author email: yury[dot]tikhonravov[at]gmail.com