Kate Kirkpatrick

@philosofemme.bsky.social

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Philosopher, Oxford | Post-Kantian European Philosophy, Feminism, and Religion | katekirkpatrick.co.uk Also enjoy photography 📾

Paragraph from the Preface of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws reading: “Often have I begun, and as often have I laid aside this undertaking. I have a thousand times given the leaves I have written to the winds: I have every day felt my paternal hands fall. I have followed my object without any fixed plan: I have known neither rules nor exceptions; I have found the truth, only to lose it again. But when I had once discovered my first principles, every thing I fought for appeared; and in the course of twenty years, I have seen my work begun, growing up, advancing to maturity, and finished.”
Conference programme of the UK Sartre Society 2026 (day 1)
Photo of the Maison Française d’Oxford under a blue sky with the French flag extended in the wind from a flagpole on the roof
Book cover of Simone de Beauvoir, Une fois que les femmes ont ouvert les yeux. Écrits et paroles fĂ©ministes, 1947–1985
Photo of Nassau Hall under a blue sky with sunlight casting trees’ shadows on snow
Photo of Princeton’s Nassau Hall after a night of heavy snowfall, taken just after sunrise
Photo of a solitary walker under a green umbrella with a background of Princeton’s Dod Hall and green metal tables in the foreground
The Radcliffe Camera tonight
Handwritten index card by Martin Luther King, Jr., on 'Existentialism'
Photo of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Pont au Double illuminated at night
Reading Madonna by Giorgione
A sunlit Paris street scene with a single walking figure in the bottom left corner and long shadows cast by morning light. The words are Emily Dickinson’s. Funny how an image can bring a poem to mind.
Black and white photo of the interior of the Church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, at night, looking from the entrance down the nave to an illuminated choir and conductor with arms raised.
B&W photo of illuminated façade of Saint Sulpice, with a cyclist in slightly blurry silhouette in the foreground
A photo of trees in sunrise silhouette with a few yellow leaves dangling from the branches of a Cherry tree
Photo of The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy, edited by Jonathan Webber
Photo of Christ Church Meadow, Oxford, with sunlight illuminating the limestone Meadow Building
Book cover image of “Kierkegaard in France: A History of Reception and Influence”, edited by Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal and Andrew Sackin-Poll
Photo of the Radcliffe Camera illuminated at night under a cloudy sky reflecting light
A photo of the River Thames reflecting trees and starlight in Oxford, with Magdalen Tower visible on the horizon
Photo of Regent’s Park College quad, with the leaves of Virginia Creeper on the north wall in their autumnal transition from green to red, under a bright blue sky.
Photo of the Supplementary Volume of the Aristotelian Society, 2025, new series vol. XCIX.
Photo of a willow with branches swaying over the Oxford Canal on the left and the canal path disappearing into the distance on the right.
Photo of Paris windows and rooftops/the top of Notre Dame
Black and white photo of me leaning out of a window in the rue de la Bûcherie, Paris, with Notre Dame in the background.
Black and white 1930s photo of three women in joyful motion: one cartwheeling and two jumping with their arms uplifted, all in flowing skirts. (Hannes Kilian, ‘Springende MĂ€dchen auf einer FrĂŒhlingswiese’, 1938)
Photo of a paperback book cover: In Dialogue with Michùle Le DƓuff, edited by Pamela Sue Anderson & Michùle Le DƓuff, Preface by Kate Kirkpatrick (Bloomsbury)
Photo of a black swan on the River Avon, in Stratford, England
A photo of swans on the Avon with one in the foreground spreading its wings
Photo of double doors with light and shadow falling onto a tile floor. One door is open and its glazing reflects the bright day also visible through panes in the doors and transom. Cerisy-la-Salle, France.
1926 photo of Jean-Paul Sartre
Poster for the Colloque de Cerisy « "À distance et ensemble". Nouvelles perspectives sur Beauvoir et Sartre »
Photo of Carrara marble staircase inside Glasgow City Chambers, taken from the level of the banqueting hall.
Photo of a viaduct nestled in verdant English countryside under a blue sky.
Photo of exhibition catalogue: « Beauvoir, Sartre, Giacometti. Vertiges de l’absolu »
Photo of an issue of Les Temps Modernes with a pencil sketch by Giacometti on the final page of ‘La maternité’ by Simone de Beauvoir (an extract from ‘The Mother’ chapter of The Second Sex)
Photo of a plaster sculpture of the head of Simone de Beauvoir by Alberto Giacometti (c. 1946) in a mirror-backed case. In the mirror you can see the reflection of a the rear of the bust as against a light, white gallery room, art-nouveau stained glass, and the photographer (me).
Photo of two works in an exhibition, a photo and a sculpture: Agnùs Geoffray’s ‘Femme oblique’ (2025) and Alberto Giacometti’s ‘L’homme qui chavire’ (1950)
A photo taken from the Pont Notre-Dame in Paris, with the Conciergerie visible to the left. A single walker crosses the bridge wearing a pastel pink bag and sandals.
Photo of two poppies, one in the “hook stage” of budding and another in late bloom with red petals fading.
Pastel on paper artwork entitled ‘Death of the Innocents’, a 2015 memorialisation of a child lost to the dangers of immigrating to the U.S. through the Northern Mexican deserts by artist Judithe Hernández (b. 1948, Los Angeles). The billowing cloths bear the colors of the Mexican flag, and a ribbon clings to the child’s hand reading “We come but to dream.”