So we can (begin to) explain what an epiphany is by saying “an experience like that”, and pointing the inquirer to examples like the three above. Epiphanies are experiences like the three just quoted, and the testimony of those around me, at any rate, is that such experiences are a very common part of people’s lives. Or at least, they know as soon as I drop the technical and religious-sounding term “epiphany”, and talk about “wow-moments” and “aha-moments” and “eureka moments” and “peak experiences” instead.
What is an epiphany? When people who aren’t academic philosophers ask me what I do, and I tell them that my current research project is about epiphanies, they usually know immediately – as immediately as they would if I was writing about birds – what I’m talking about. My interest in them is that they all report what I shall call epiphanies. No, not birds all three of these passages do, as it happens, feature birds, but that is not why I quote them. Together these three striking passages point to my present research topic. High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-ĭom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important.
The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God. I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth. A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was standing and poured out its song above my head, and then sank still singing to rest. I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields. If I had been brought suddenly among the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could not have been more surprised.
MEANING OF EPIPHANY IN LITERATURE FULL
As I walked I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought that I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before. It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all year round and I had never noticed it. I remember now the shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears. One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can only be heard at that time of the year at dawn or at sunset. In order to allow the reader to get a better grip on which range of phenomena may count as an epiphany, I examine in some detail several examples from literature, in particular from works by Murdoch, Hopkins, Wordsworth, C.S. Since epiphanies are what I call a focal-case category, not all of the conditions listed above have to be fulfilled by all instances of epiphanies. It may be something that leads directly to action, but it may also be something that prompts contemplation or other responses again. It might also be anger or reverence or awe or a hunger to put things right – a hunger for justice or many other things.
Often the correct response is love, often it is pity, or again creativity. As a first pass, I characterize an epiphany as an (1) overwhelming (2) existentially significant manifestation of (3) value, (4) often sudden and surprising, (5) which feels like it “comes from outside” – it is something given, relative to which I am a passive perceiver – which (6) teaches us something new, which (7) “takes us out of ourselves”, and which (8) demands a response. I propose a programme of research in ethical philosophy, into the peak-experiences or wow-moments that I, following James Joyce and others, call epiphanies.
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