Victor Sholl, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy, was selected as the 2024 winner of the prestigious Mary Hatch Marshall Essay Award for his piece titled “Writing the story of the world: the case for World Narrativism"!

Victor will receive a $1000 prize, and will stage a public reading of his essay Wednesday, April 10th, at 1pm over Zoom for the Syracuse University Library Associates. Please email libevent@syr.edu by April 3rd to register for the event.

Abstract:
This article introduces and argues for a view Sholl calls World Narrativism: that narrative features affect the quality of trajectories the world can take, thus becoming relevant when we decide which course of the world we should promote. Though the idea that the history of the world has narrative features has been defended before, views of this kind typically do not involve an explicit claim that individuals should promote a better story of the world. The common assumption is that whatever is the story of the world, it is something governed by factors beyond the control of individuals. He argues that World Narrativism is original in this respect.