Back to Haunt Us

Quentin S. Crisp will speak of the supernatural as a literary subject-matter and about literature as potentially supernatural in itself. He will compare the otherworldly atmosphere of supernatural horror to the Japanese aesthetic of yuugen and to address the philosophical concept of intentionality as the basis of both language and literature, showing that the literature of supernatural horror employs the normal intentionality of language to things outside of normal sensory experience. 

Jack Hunter will explore methods for making sense of life in a world of many worlds and many minds. He will draw on insights from research at the intersections of the ecology, spirituality, and the paranormal.

Daniel Corrick will delineate the difference between the supernatural and the paranormal. He will elaborate on concepts, such as the meaningful and accessible (through philosophy or mystical intuition), the meaningful and not accessible (epistemic brute facts), and the meaningless (ontological brute facts), with reference to the works of Arthur Machen, Robert Aickman, and Thomas Ligotti. He will direct his exploration at to the ultimate coherence of the radically meaningless.

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes will speak about how, almost a century ago, Husserl warned us of the ‘crisis of European existence’ that stemmed from ‘a barbarian hatred of Mind’. His warning was ignored and the twentieth century saw the apotheosis of matter as the sole substance of reality, with its strictures on ‘science’, following a trajectory catalysed at the Reformation. Alternate metaphysical positions were frowned upon, if not ignored entirely. In this talk, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes will map out a matrix of other metaphysical approaches to reality that contextualise materialism in terms of time, culture, logic, with reference to idealism, dualism, monism, panpsychism, and pantheism.