Prf Sophie Grace Chappell

Professional biography

Sophie Grace Chappell is a philosopher whose main research concern is the relation between objectivity and history. She wants to understand what it is for ethical truths to be both objective, and also the product of long and often haphazard historical processes. Given that ethics always aspires to universal truth, and yet always has specific cultural and historical roots, can there be true epiphanies--manifestations to us of genuine ethical insight? Epiphanies - Sophie Grace Chappell - Oxford University Press (oup.com) Are there any character-traits that are always "virtues", ways of being that are always valuable and admirable? Can there be true ethical progress, steps whereby moral understanding makes real advances, rather than just changing?

[Spoiler: Yes, yes, and yes. Although, in each case, it's complicated.]

She follows Raimond Gaita, Alasdair MacIntyre, Iris Murdoch, Charles Taylor, Simone Weil, and Bernard Williams in working broadly in the "virtue ethics" tradition. For reasons autobiographical, and Wittgensteinian, and Nietzschean (Twilight Maxim 26: "The will to a system is a lack of integrity"), she is as sceptical as they all are about the idea of "moral theory", at least when that means ahistorical systematisations of our ethical thought and life. Her writings explore the history of ethical experience, and of the concepts that philosophers and poets and others have deployed to understand that experience. As a classicist, she focuses especially upon ethical experience among the ancient Greeks; she thinks that Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides have as much to teach us about this as Plato and Aristotle, and moreover that Plato and Aristotle thought so as well.   

As a Christian of the Scottish Episcopal Church, she is interested too in the ways in which humans have sought to experience the Divine, or have experienced what they took to be the Divine no matter what they sought, and to make sense of that experience. This also is, for her, always a historical inquiry; she has a lifelong affection (sometimes a somewhat crabby one) for Augustine and Aquinas, and at present the inquiry involves her in translating Dante's Paradiso and Euripides' Bacchae. 

The relation between objectivity and history has particular bite for her as a Christian who is also a trans woman, and publicly visible as such since 2014. To her mind the question for Christians is not whether or not they should be "traditionalists"--they should, of course; the question is, what it means to be faithful to the Christian tradition today. On that and on related questions, she has written a number of things in the hope of conveying to the nonplussed what being transgender is actually like, and what it isn't like. In particular there is her forthcoming book Trans Figured: on being a transgender person in a cisgender world Author Books | Polity (politybooks.com) . She discusses Trans Figured in this November 2023 podcast for the Berkeley Divinity School of Yale University: 10: Trans Figured with Sophie Grace Chappell | Berkeley Divinity School (yale.edu)

She has been Executive Editor of The Philosophical Quarterly since 2021, and she served on the Philosophy Sub-Panel in REF 2022. She was Treasurer of the Mind Association from 2000 to 2021, and Director of the Scots Philosophical Club from 2004 to 2006.

She has published a poetry collection, Songs for Winter Rain by Sophie Grace Chappell | Waterstones . Her translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon was staged in a production at Boston University, MA, USA, in April 2024. (99+) Aeschylus' Agamemnon: a new translation | Sophie grace and Timothy Chappell - Academia.edu She has numerous other translation projects on the go, including Homer's Iliad (99+) Homer Iliad Book 1 | Sophie grace - Academia.edu and Dante's Divina Commedia (99+) Dante Inferno Canto 1 | Sophie grace - Academia.edu . (She has translated Plato's Meno (99+) Plato's Meno: a new translation | Sophie grace - Academia.edu and Crito (99+) Plato Crito translation | Sophie grace - Academia.edu as part of her work writing OU teaching courses.)

She has published over 100 academic articles and (depending how you count them) about ten books. Many of her articles are accessible here: . (99+) Sophie grace | The Open University - Academia.edu

When not reading or writing, she likes cycling, skiing, ski-mountaineering, hillwalking, and climbing (but not falling off) [PDF, 66 KB]. She is a member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, with over 50 FWAs to her name.

Research interests

Ethics, metaethics, applied ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics especially philosophy of literature, ancient philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of religion especially religious experience and mysticism, mediaeval philosophy.

Some examples of Professor Chappell's published and late-draft work in philosophy are available on her  Publications page.

PhD supervision

In progress:

Kumar Viswanathan, "Nietzsche and Williams on moralism"

First supervisor, with Manuel Dries

James Leigh, "Schopenhauer as educator in the thought of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein"

Second supervisor; with Manuel Dries

Chris Searle, "Merely verbal disputes in philosophy"

Second supervisor, with Mark Pinder

Completed:

2018-2022 

Rob Jones, "Asceticism in Nietzsche"

Second supervisor; with Manuel Dries

2017-2021 Lucy Fay Manning, "Logical atomism in the Theaetetus and the Tractatus"

First supervisor; with Naoko Yamagata (Classics)

2016-2020 Chris Grey, "Church-musical aesthetics"

Second supervisor; with Martin Clarke (Music)

2014-2018 Sarah Pawlett Jackson, "Second-person-plurality in ethics" (PhD awarded 2019)

First supervisor; with Manuel Dries (second supervisor)

2012-2016 Jon Phelan, "Truth in narrative fictions" (PhD awarded spring 2017)

Second supervisor; with Derek Matravers (first supervisor)

2010-2015 Paul Jackson, "Epicurean atheism and theism in Lucretius' de Rerum Natura" (PhD awarded spring 2015)

First supervisor; with Naoko Yamagata (Classics)

2006-2013 Raymond Boyce, "Moral perception" (PhD awarded spring 2013)

Second supervisor; with Alex Barber (first supervisor)

2006-2013 Luca Sciortino, "Ian Hacking on styles of thinking" (PhD awarded autumn 2013)

Second supervisor; with Cristina Chimisso (first supervisor)

Teaching interests

There is no area of philosophy that Sophie Grace Chappell is not interested in teaching, though she is probably not the Go-To Person for philosophy of quantum physics.

She is an Open University course author on 

A222 (Philosophy of religion)

A333 (Philosophy of narrative art)

A853 (Plato's Meno)

DA 223 (Plato's Crito and political philosophy)

Impact and engagement

Sophie Grace Chappell gives frequent talks in schools and public philosophy clubs and other such forums, both in Britain and elsewhere: for example at the Barnes Philosophy Club (at least when she doesn't stand them up), at the Pinner Philosophy Group, at Chigwell School, at Wellington College, at How The Light Gets In, and at Harris Academy. She also gives the sermon in her church sometimes, and on one occasion in Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford.

She is always happy to consider invitations for further banging on and sounding off in public. 

External collaborations

Sophie Grace Chappell has held the following Visiting Fellowships or Professorships:

School of Latin and Greek, St Andrews University, September 2001-May 2002

University of British Columbia, January-April 2003

Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, September-December 2005

Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, St Andrews University, January-May 2006

University of Oslo, February 2010

University of Reykjavik, August 2011

Flinders University, Adelaide, June 2014

Philosophy, St Andrews, 2017-2020

Erskine Fellowship, Univesity of Canterbury, NZ, February to April 2020

Academic visitor, Yale University Law School, November 2023

International links

American Philosophical Association (apaonline.org)