What is the Philosophy Department reading? ……………………….………………………Page

LITERATURE The Philosophy Department Reads...

Miss Ball -

“I love a good story and am an avid novel reader. I try to keep up with non-fiction reading though and recently finished Cassandra S peaks. This appealed because it deals with the strength of stories and how they causally contribute to our understanding of the world. So many of our assumptions, norms and unconscious biases are shaped by the narratives, myths, religious texts, parables and stories of the culture we grow up in. These stories have largely been written by men, yet we derive from them laws, norms and ethics which are applied to all humanity. I have studied biblical texts where women have been edited out, names masculinised etc, but this book casts the net wider, unpacking some of the influential narratives of Western culture. The eponymous Cassandra, blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her, is painfully recognisable for many women today; women whose voices are still silenced, who are too often neither respected nor believed. Lesser asks how different our culture would be if women’s voices had been equally heard.

If women are the storytellers too, their authentic voices and values are heard; they become protagonists whose experience of what it means to be human is acknowledged and this inevitably influences the metanarrative, ensuring our evolving narratives are more inclusive and therefore reflective of all of humanity.”

Rev Peat is r eading I s A th eism Dead ? by an American writer called Eric Metaxa about the ‘New Atheism’ and the counter-arguments from modern science, archaeology and philosophy. By the same author he has also been reading a biography of the German pastor and theological Dietrich Bonhoeffer who opposed the rise of fascism in Germany under Hitler and was eventually hung by the Gestapo towards the end of the war. He is also reading The Gulag Archipelago by the Russian writer Alexander Solvenitsyn about the interment in labour camps of those who opposed Stalin’s regime in communist Russia. Finally, he is reading a book by 4th century Christian writer Avagrius Pontikus whose work greatly influenced the whole of the monastic Christian tradition and its teaching on contemplative prayer right down to the present day, particularly an order known as the Carthusians.

Mr Wood is r eading M etap h ysical A n im als by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman about some remarkable female philosophers within the last century. He has also been reading a biography of Victor Rothschild by Kenneth Rose. Victor Rothschild was a British banker, scientist and intelligence officer during WW11. On the fiction side, he has been re-reading In S earch of Lost T im e by Marcel Proust. This is a comic portrait of France in the author’s lifetime and is a profound meditation of art, love, time, memory and death.