Stella Sandford

12.30-2pm | Thursday 14 February 2008
Room J116 (Cañada Blanch Room), Cowdray House, European Institute, LSE
Stella Sandford in conversation with Kimberly Hutchings

Speaker
Stella Sandford, Principal Lecturer in Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy and Religious Studies Programmes, School of Arts and Education, Middlesex University

Chair
Kimberly Hutchings, Professor of International Relations, LSE

In the year of the centenary celebrations of her birth, this dialogue will explore a variety of inter-connected themes from the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s work is notable for its wide range across a variety of genres, encompassing philosophical essays and books, political journalism, fiction (in particular novels), autobiography, travel writing and letters (not to mention the great, unclassifiable texts The Second Sex and Old Age). Her oeuvre is unified, however, by her philosophical approach, her attempt to see all of the world ‘through philosophical eyes’.

Kimberly Hutchings and Stella Sandford will discuss the enduring themes and issues in Beauvoir’s work, as well as topics particular to certain of her writings, including: existential humanism and its ethical and political elaboration; ambiguity; sex and gender; sex and sexuality; self and other and old age. The question of Beauvoir’s relation to other philosophers, notably Hegel and Sartre, runs through each of these issues. Finally the participants will reflect on the nature of de Beauvoir’s philosophical and political legacies.

Stella Sandford is the author of How to Read Beauvoir (Granta, 2006). Kimberly Hutchings has an ongoing interest in Beauvoir’s work, in particular her ethical and political philosophy. She is the author of Kant, Critique and Politics (Routledge, 1996), Hegel and Feminist Philosophy (Polity, 2003), and Simone de Beauvoir and the Ambiguous Ethics of Political Violenc‘ (Hypatia 2007).

Dialogues
An hour and a half of lively discussion at the LSE during lunchtime, this series offers a unique mix of insights into both the biographical and intellectual development of our most distinguished thinkers.