Royal Institute Philosophy - Matthew Ratcliffe, Haunted by One's Past

What we remember is a central expression of who we are. So what should we remember, and what is best forgotten? Talks will focus on various aspects of the question, such as trauma, conflict resolution, forgiving and forgetting, memorialization, and constructing identities on- and off-line. Explore these questions, among others, through the lens of philosophy at the 2024/5 London Lectures.

On Being Emotionally Haunted by One’s Past

Speaker: Matthew Ratcliffe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, UK. His work addresses issues in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychiatry. He is author of the books Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford University Press, 2008), Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology (Oxford University Press, 2015), Real Hallucinations: Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality, and the Interpersonal World (MIT Press, 2017), and Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience (MIT Press, 2022).

What is it to feel emotionally haunted by something? Talk of being haunted is commonplace in everyday life and also in literature. However, the relevant experiences have been neglected by philosophers working on emotion. In this talk, I will focus on what it is to be haunted by our past—by something we did, something that happened to us, a time in our lives, or who we once were. I will suggest that it is a matter of feeling unsettled by the indeterminate significance of something in our past. We sense that whatever happened or may have happened retains the potential to take on a more determinate significance that would somehow undermine who we are now. I will conclude by situating haunting within a broader conception of human emotional experience, one that emphasizes the themes of dynamism, indeterminacy, and self-integration.

Host or Publisher The Royal Institute of Philosophy