[SydPhil] CONFERENCE: Narrative, Flourishing, and Moral Psychology

[Douglas McConnell]

Narrative, Flourishing, and Moral Psychology
28-29th May, 2026, Macquarie University, Sydney

Building 25WW, Room C122 Exhibition Space

This conference will bring together leading philosophers of narrative, including Prof. Marya Schechtman (UIC) and Senior Prof. Daniel Hutto (Wollongong), to examine and discuss the links between self-narration, co-authoring, Master narratives, flourishing, self-governance, and moral agency.

Other speakers include Jeanette Kennett, Stephen Matthews, Richard Menary, Mary Walker, Talia Morag, Regina Fabry, Emily Hughes, and Doug McConnell. Schedule to be finalised next week.

Attendance is free but please mail douglas.mcconnell at mq.edu.au<mailto:douglas.mcconnell at mq.edu.au> if you wish to attend so that catering can be arranged.


One of the aims of the conference will be to specify the benefits of self-narration for flourishing and moral agency. How does self-narration generate those benefits (if it does at all), and under which conditions?

Some have claimed that living a good life involves a lifelong quest of personal improvement and self-narrative provides the tools required to successfully undertake such a quest (MacIntyre 1981; Ricoeur 1990; Taylor 1989; Rudd 2012). Others think that the cognitive organisation provided by self-narration is so fundamental that, without it, one would suffer from psychotic disorganisation that undermines any form of a good life  (Mackenzie and Poltera 2010; Rudd 2012). Another idea is that self-narration beneficially facilitates a complex temporal perspective on one's life giving rise to valuable kinds of emotional states, such as being sad that something is over but glad it happened (Schechtman, 2020).
Contrary to these positive accounts, many theorists have raised concerns about self-narration. The narrative form might hold the meaning of one's life hostage to distant future events that may never occur and/or one might become blinkered within a sub-optimal narrative (Camp 2024). There are familiar concerns that the fictionalising tendencies of narration will result in self-deception (Strawson 2004). Others worry that some alleged benefits of self-narration depend on an overly broad conception of self-narrative, a conception that posits ubiquitous implicit self-narrative (Hutto 2016; Fabry 2023; Strawson 2020; Zahavi 2007). If these critiques are right, then, rather than promote a good life, self-narratives might actually undermine flourishing and distort one's moral judgement.