Kate Kirkpatrick’s research focuses primarily on French phenomenology and existentialism; feminism; and ethics.
She enjoys exploring metaphilosophical questions about philosophy and literature, philosophy and feminism, and philosophy and theology. Other interests include moral formation, ethical exemplars, and conceptions of love, sin, freedom and liberation.
Information about teaching and supervision at Oxford is available here. For essays and journalism see this page. A list of academic publications is below.
Books
Becoming Beauvoir: A Life, London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
For press and information about translations see the Becoming Beauvoir page.
The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought: Being, Nothingness, Love (with George Pattison), Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.
Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Sartre and Theology, London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2017.
Book Chapters
‘Expectant Anxiety in The Second Sex’ in Simone de Beauvoir: A Toolkit for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Liesbeth Schoonheim and Karen Vintges, Abingdon: Routledge, 2023.
‘Pamela Sue Anderson’ in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
‘The Life and Work of Simone de Beauvoir’ in Women of Ideas, edited by Suki Finn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
‘Simone de Beauvoir’ in Philosopher Queens, edited by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting, London: Unbound, 2020.
‘Saved by Degrees: Augustine’s Ontological Pluralism’, in Being Saved, ed. Marc Cortez, Joshua Farris, S. Mark Hamilton, London: SCM Press, 2018.
‘Beneath the Surface: Whose Phenomenology? Which Art?’ in Mysticism, Art, and Articulation, ed. Louise Nelstrop and Simon Podmore, Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
‘“A Perpetually Deceptive Mirage”: Blaise Pascal and Jean-Paul Sartre on the Sinful (No)Self’, in Self or No-Self?, Claremont Studies in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Ingolf Dalferth and Marlene Block, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017.
‘Answering Sartre: Paul Tillich and the Socrates of Nothingness’, in Returning to Tillich: Theology and Legacy in Transition, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017.
Articles
‘Beauvoir and Sartre’s “Disagreement” about Freedom’, Philosophy Compass, 2023.
‘Divine Justice’ , in M. Sellers and S. Kirste (eds), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Dordrecht: Springer, 2022.
‘Literary Interventions in Justice: A Symposium,’ with Rafe McGregor and Karen Simecek, Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics LVIII/XIV, no. 2, 2021: 160–178.
‘Master, Slave, and Merciless Struggle: Sin and Lovelessness in Sartre’s Saint Genet,’ Sartre Studies International 25(1), 2019 : 22-34.
‘Analytic Theology and the Phenomenology of Faith’, Journal of Analytic Theology 4, 2016: 222-233.
‘Sartre: An Augustinian Atheist?’ Sartre Studies International 21(1), 2015: 1-20.
Turkish translation: ‘Sartre: Augustinusçu Bir Ateist mi?’, translated by Metin Topuz, in Özne Felsefe Bilim ve Sanat Yazıları, 36, Spring 2022: 79-99.
‘Past her Prime? Simone de Beauvoir on Motherhood and Old Age’, Sophia 53(2), 2014: 275-287.
‘Jean-Paul Sartre: Mystical Atheist or Mystical Antipathist?’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 5(2), 2013: 159-168.
‘Levinas’ Challenge to Abstract Law: Politics as Totality and Religion as Motivation for the Truly Just’, Ars Disputandi supplement series 5, ed. Roger Trigg and Niek Brunsveld, Religion in the Public Sphere, 2011: 225-236.
Prefaces and Introductions
‘Introduction’ to Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, translated by Ros Schwartz, London: Penguin Classics, 2023.
‘Preface’ to In Dialogue with Michèle Le Doeuff: Philosophies, Encounters, and Friendship, ed. Pamela Sue Anderson and Michèle Le Doeuff, London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
Forthcoming
‘Existentialism and Exemplars’, Educational Theory.
‘Early Existentialisms’ in The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy, ed. Daniel Whistler and Mark Sinclair, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
‘“You know the story”: Sartre and Kierkegaard beyond Abraham’ in Kierkegaard in France, ed. Andrew Sackin-Poll and Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal, Abingon: Routledge.