REGENT’S NOW PROFILES
Dr Kate Kirkpatrick The new Fellow and Director of Studies in Philosophy introduces herself and her work
H
ow should one introduce oneself to alumni when one is an alumna? I suppose the best place to start is to say that I read Philosophy and Theology at Regent’s Park from 2002–2005. During that time, I don’t remember doing much to distinguish myself in extracurricular matters: once I was nominated for a JCR award—Most Elusive Person in College—but (paradoxically, it seemed to me) because I was not present at the awards event, I was disqualified.
A return to Philosophy My publishing years gave me time to reflect on the kind of research I valued: I was interested in methodology in philosophy and theology, the relation between philosophy and literature, and between philosophy and feminism. In all of these domains of ‘philosophy and’, questions of form and content fascinated me: what makes, for instance, something like Augustine’s Confessions a philosophical work? How does narrative context affect the meaning of what is said? Why are some philosophers so preoccupied by propositions or ideal theories? Do those preoccupations lead to the consequence that some people’s questions—or even entire social groups—are unjustly excluded from the field of ‘philosophy’? I reached the conclusion that working in French phenomenology and existentialism would offer an opportunity to think through some of these questions in dialogue with views that continue to influence contemporary thinking about the world. I wrote my doctorate on the concept of nothingness Dr Kirkpatrick with Professor Pamela Sue Anderson, Oxford, 2016 I came to Regent’s Park from the United States, and during my undergraduate years my intellectual interests were nurtured with care under the direction of another American abroad, the feminist philosopher Dr Pamela Sue Anderson. After graduating I worked in publishing for five years, as an editorial assistant and then commissioning editor of non-fiction books. I liked working in the book trade but soon realised that I was in the wrong part of it: I enjoyed the creative conversations with authors about honing their projects, but I also wanted to research and write my own. So, I returned to do my MSt and DPhil at St Cross College, Oxford, from 2010–2015.
Jonathan Kirkpatrick
REGENT’S PARK COLLEGE
|
OXFORD
Dr Kirkpatrick with Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, adopted daughter of Simone de Beauvoir, Paris, 2018
in Jean-Paul Sartre’s early phenomenological ontology under the supervision of George Pattison, then Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, and Pamela Sue Anderson, then Professor of Modern European Philosophy of Religion. Now you might well wonder: What does phenomenological ontology have to do with contemporary ways of thinking about the world? I argued that Sartre’s ontology was indebted to the Christian doctrine of original sin, and to debates about the reception of Augustine in 17th-century French philosophy. According to Sartre, humans have a propensity to look at each other with a reductive gaze: a gaze that sees your surface or hears your voice and categorizes you according to class, race, sex (to give just three examples) without questioning these categories any more than a child who sorts her Lego by colour or shape. Lego do not suffer from this treatment, but for human beings the objectifying gazes of others often result in alienation and oppression – and perpetuate human suffering on a wide scale. Needless to say, these phenomena are not new. The question is: what can be done? After completing my doctoral work, I was appointed to a Stipendiary Lectureship in Theology at St Peter’s College in 2015,
