Last Updated: January 2024
Kathryn Lawson
Website: https://www.kathrynlawsonphilosophy.com/
Email: Kathryn.m.lawson@gmail.com
Philosophy Lecturer at Carleton University, Ottawa, ON
RESEARCH AREAS
Areas of Specialization: Philosophy of religion, environmental ethics, Social and political philosophy
Areas of Competency: Aesthetics, Indian philosophy
EDUCATION
2022 PhD, Philosophy, Queen’s University, (Kingston, ON)
Dissertation: Decreation for the Anthropocene
Summary: This dissertation places the philosophy of Simone Weil into conversation with contemporary environmental concerns in that epoch sometimes referred to as the Anthropocene. Weil’s work has been influential in many fields, including politically and theologically based critiques of social inequalities and suffering, but rarely linked to ecology. There are many reasons for this, including Weil’s own ethical focus on human existence, the notoriously unsystematic nature of her writings, but also, her work’s very specific metaphysical associations which seem to restrict its potential audience. Contra these apparent barriers, this thesis argues that Weil’s work can be understood as offering a coherent approach with potentially widespread appeal applicable to our ethical relations to much more than just other human beings. I argue that Weil’s non-traditional reading of Plato reconciles the movement between actual and ideal (metaxu) to the kind of non-dualistic and non-hierarchical “entanglement” necessary for an ecological ethics. Following the movement of deep ecology, I suggest that the process of decreation in Weil is an expansion of the self which might also come to include the surrounding earth and a vast assemblage of others. Ultimately, then, the dissertation works with Weil’s thought to suggest a decreative ecological ethics that decenters the human being by cultivating human actions towards an ecological ethics.
Committee: Mick Smith (Chair), Lisa Guenther, Jacqueline Davies (Queen’s).
Internal External: Molly Wallace (Queen’s).
External Reviewer: Stephen Plant (Cambridge).
2020 Visiting Student Fellowship, Cambridge University, Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, UK (Simone Kotva).
2017 Master of Arts, Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism, Western University (London, ON).
Dissertation: The Tapestry of Memory
Summary: Rationality points to the complete annihilation and end of a life when the body perishes, and yet when a loved one dies, we continue to experience that person in myriad ways. The focus of this thesis is a phenomenological exploration of the earthly afterlife of those we have loved and lost. By positing the subject as always intersubjective and as temporal in nature, this thesis investigates how we continue to create and interact with the deceased upon the earth. Using the thought of Bergson, Levinas, Arendt, Irigaray, and Heidegger this work aims to conceptualize, celebrate, and live our relationships in a temporally liminal and environmentally vitalist way.
Committee: Antonio Calcagno (Chair), Jan Plug, Claudia Clausius, Helen Fielding.
2016 Summer School, Theory and Criticism, Cornell (Branka Arsic).
2015 Summer School, Tilburg University, Netherlands (Simon Critchley).
2015 Bachelor of Arts (Honors Specialization in Philosophy) King’s, Western University (London, ON). Dean’s Honor List.
HONOURS AND AWARDS
Doctorate- Philosophy at Queen’s University Kingston, Canada
2020- 2022
Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship- Doctoral, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, $105 000.
2020
David Edney Travel Fund, $2 000.
Junior Weilienne Scholar Grant, American Weil Society, $350.
Canada Graduate Scholarships Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplements, $6000.
2019
The Dr. H. Martyn Estall Graduate Award in Philosophy to attend the Canadian Philosophy Association Conference, $850.
Nominated for Excellence in Teaching Assistance Award, Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Society.
2018
Robert Charles Wallace Graduate Award- $7,000.
Ontario Humanities Graduate Scholarship- $15,000.
2017
R.S. McLaughlin Fellowship - $10,000.
Entrance Scholarship - $13,000.
Master’s Degree- Theory and Criticism Centre at Western University, Canada
2017
Hutchins Prize: Best Paper at Art, Nature and the Sacred Conference, Gonzaga University, Spokane Washington - $200.
2016
Canadian Graduate Scholarship - $17,500.
2015
Director's entrance Scholarship - $2,000.
Ontario Graduate Scholarship - $15,000.
Undergraduate Degree- Honors Philosophy- King’s College at Western University, Canada
2014 John and Mary Snyder Philosophy Scholarship - $400.
2013 The Great Philosopher’s Award - $2,000.
2013 John and Mary Snyder Scholarship - $400.
2012 King's Continuing Scholarship for students with an average over 90%
2011 King's University College Entrance Scholarship.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Decreation for The Anthropocene: Simone Weil and Environmental Ethics. Taylor and Francis Routledge Environmental Humanities Series. Forthcoming.
Editor and Introduction to Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil: Unprecedented Conversations .Bloomsbury. Forthcoming.
Editor and Introduction to Breached Horizons: Essays on the Work of Jean Luc Marion. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
Peer Reviewed Articles
“Art and the Other: Aesthetic Intersubjectivity in Gadamer and Stein,” Symposium Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring 2020), 74-91.
“The Ethical Imperative of Reincarnation in the Timaeus and the Bhagavad Gita,” Symposia: The Journal of Religion, University of Toronto, 2019. https://symposia.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/symposia/article/view/29347
Book Chapters
“Attention” in “Key Concepts,” The Routledge Companion to Simone Weil, eds. Deborah Casewell and Chistopher Thomas. Forthcoming.
“An Ethics of God’s Grace to Balance a Politics of Worldly Affliction: A Weilian Response to Roncalli on Arendt and the World” in The politics of Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil: Unprecedented Conversations. Ed. Kathryn Lawson and Joshua Livingston. Bloomsbury. Forthcoming.
“Enacting Decreation,” in Rethinking Responses to Political Crisis and Collapse: Hannah Arendt, Edith Stein, Rosa Luxemburg, and Simone Weil ed. Antonio Calcagno. Forthcoming.
“Decreation” in Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil, ed. Lissa McCullough. Forthcoming.
“One Hand Clapping: Anatheism and Contemporary Eastern Art” in The Art of Anatheism: Essays on the work of Richard Kearney. Ed. Matthew Clemente and Richard Kearney. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
Book Reviews
Review of Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins, by Benjamin P. Davis. The Review of Politics, Notre Dame University, forthcoming.
“The Pandemic of Force.” Review of Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way we Live, by Nicholas A. Christakis. Attention: The Life and Legacy of Simone Weil. Online. https://attentionsw.org/the-pandemic-of-force-a-weilian-review-of-apollos-arrow/ (2021).
Other
Decreation for the Anthropocene: Simone Weil and Ecological Ethics. Department of Philosophy Graduate Theses, Queen’s University. PhD Dissertation. 2022. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/30301
“Attention in the Time of COVID-19.” Object Tales. Cambridge Faculty of Divinity Online.
The Tapestry of Memory. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4866. Master’s Thesis. 2017. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4866
PAPER PRESENTATIONS
2024 Panel on “Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil: Unprecedented Conversations,” at Society for Existential and
Phenomenological Theory and Culture Conference, Congress of the Humanities, McGill University, 2024.
2023 “Simone Weil and Climate Activism” at The Worldly Weil Workshop, Washington University, St. Louis, May 30- June 1.
“The Relational Self: Simone Weil, Plato, and Decreation as Community Building Selfhood” at Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture Conference, York University, May 29-31, 2023. Full paper accepted through blind review. Unable to attend due to schedule conflict with Worldly Weil Workshop.
“Weilian Ethics and Environmental Racism” at The American Weil Society annual conference, Colorado University, Boulder, April 14-16, 2023. Attended virtually.
“L’Enracinement: Finding Roots for Climate Activism” at Life Beyond the Anthropocene conference, King’s College at Western University, London, ON, March 17-19, 2023
2022 “Enacting Decreation” at the American Weil Society annual conference, Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, IN, USA,
March 17-19, 2022. Online attendance.
2021 Invited Speaker at “Creation/ Destruction” Café Philo series run by the interdisciplinary arts organization, Inter Arts
Matrix, Kitchener, Ontario, Dr. Katy Fulfer (moderator), April 27, 2021.
“Decreation for the Anthropocene” at the American Weil Society annual conference, Boston College, MA, USA, April 23-25, 2021. Online due to COVID-19. Awarded the Junior Weilienne Scholarship, $350.
2020 “Decreating Plato: An Ecological Reading of the Phaedrus with Simone Weil” at the International Association for
Environmental Philosophy, Toronto, Ontario, October 9-10, 2020. Online due to COVID-19.
“Decreation as Destruction or as Creation?” at the Trans disziplin Denʞkollektiv’s conference Death | text | resonance: Simone Weil and Writing to(wards) Death, Erfurt and Berlin, Germany, July 23-25, 2020. Online due to COVID-19.
“Simone Weil's Ethics: The Confluence of Faculty and Action” at the American Weil Society Annual Conference, Boston College, April 23-25, 2020. Awarded the Young Weilienne Scholarship, $350. Online due to COVID-19.
2019 “The Cartesian Other: Intersubjectivity in Descartes” at Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Conference, University of British Columbia, June 1-3, 2019.
“Environmental Ethics in Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace: The Absence of Nature and God” at The Existential Phenomenological Theory and Culture Annual Conference, June 3-5, 2019.
“Art and the Other: Aesthetic Intersubjectivity” and “Anatheism and Buddhist Art” at Oxford University’s Mystical Theological Network: Metaphor, Making and Myth Conference, Boston College, February 28- March 3, 2019.
2018 “Margaret Atwood and a Feminist Aesthetics of the Small Screen” at The American Society of Aesthetics, October 10-13, 2018. Student Travel Award of up to $1250 USD.
“Irigaray’s Temple” at Irigaray Circle 2018 Conference, Brock University, St. Catherine’s Ontario, June 14-16, 2018.
“A Glass of Whiskey: Memory and Art” at Undisciplined 2018 Cultural Studies Graduate Conference, Queen’s University, March 23- 24, 2018.
2017 “Unearthing Ethical Relations in the Temple: Heidegger, Hegel, and Irigaray” at Heidegger: Dwelling, Thinking and the Ethical Life, The Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy (King’s University College), October 27–29, 2017.
“Re-Imagining God among the Sodden Cigarette Ends: James Baldwin and Emmanuel Levinas” at Toxic/cities: An interdisciplinary conference in Theory, Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Western Ontario, March 2-4, 2017.
“One Hand Clapping: Anatheism and Buddhist Art” at Art, Nature and the Sacred Conference, Gonzaga University, Spokane Washington, January 28-29, 2017. Awarded the Hutchins prize for best paper at the conference and $200.
2015 “The Sunset of Dissolution: Nietzsche and Kundera making sense of the eternal return” at Simon Critchley’s Nihilism Summer School, University of Tilburg, Netherlands, August 6, 2015.
EMPLOYMENT
Lecturer (Full Course)
2024 Introduction to Environmental Ethics, second year undergraduate course. Philosophy Department, Carleton University.
Course design and instruction. TA management. In-person.
Evil and Ethics, first year seminar course, philosophy department, Carleton University. Course design and instruction. In-
person.
Happiness, Wellbeing, and the Goodlife, second year undergraduate course. Philosophy Department, Carleton University.
Course design and instruction. TA management. Online.
2023 Knowledge, first year course, Philosophy department, Heritage Cegep College.
Happiness and the Goodlife, second year undergraduate course, Philosophy Department, Carleton University.
Introduction to Environmental Ethics, second year undergraduate course, Philosophy Department, Carleton University.
2022 The Citizen and the State, first year undergraduate course. Philosophy Department, Queen’s University.
2019 Philosophy of Religion, second year undergraduate course. Philosophy Department, Queen’s University.
Teaching Assistance
2021 Moral Issues, first year undergraduate course. For Jacqueline Davies, Philosophy Department, Queen’s University. Online due to COVID-19.
2020 Social Diversity and Political Resistance in a Global Pandemic, second year undergraduate course. For Lisa Guenther, Philosophy Department, Queen’s University. Principal’s Dream Course. Online due to COVID-19.
2020 Science and Society, second year undergraduate course. For Mark Smith, Philosophy Department, Queen’s University. Online.
2018- 2019 Fundamental Questions: Introduction to Philosophy, first year undergraduate course. For Jacqueline Davies, Queen’s University. Nominated for excellence in Teaching Assistance award from the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Society.
2018 Philosophy: Gender, Sex, and Love, second year undergraduate course. For Jaqueline Davies, Queen’s University.
2017 Aesthetics, third year undergraduate course. For Deborah Knight, Queen’s University.
2016 Girlhood Studies, second year undergraduate course. For Miranda Green- Barteet, Gender Studies department, Western University.
Guest Lecturer
2019 On Feminist Aesthetics including Linda Nochlin and Anne Eaton. For Jacquelyn Maxwell, Philosophy and Feminism, third year undergraduate course, Queen’s University.
2018 On the first three speeches of Plato’s Symposium. For Jaqueline Davies, Philosophy: Gender, Sex and Love, second year undergraduate course, Queen’s University.
2017 On aesthetics in Continental Philosophy including Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Walter Benjamin. For Deborah Knight, Aesthetics, third year undergraduate course, Queen’s University.
2016 On Monique Wittig, Hélène Cixous, and Jacques Derrida. For Antonio Calcagno, French Thought, fourth year undergraduate seminar course, King’s College at Western University.
Research Assistant
2018 Editor. For Paul Fairfield. Artistic Creation: A Phenomenological Account. Lexington Books, 2019.
2016 Editor. For Stephen Lofts. Translation of Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
2013- 2014 Editor. For Paul Werstine. English department, King’s College at Western University and editor of Folger Shakespeare Library.
2014 Editor. For Julius Kei Kato, Philosophy and Religious Studies, King’s College at Western University.
2013 For Leslie Harmann. Sociology department, King’s College at Western University.
ACADEMIC SERVICE AND ACTIVITIES
2021-2022 Editorial Assistant
Assistant to the Editor, Ronald Collins for a comprehensive Simone Weil website, journal, and archives project: Attention.
2013-2021 Conference Work
2021 Organizer: The Self and the Selfless: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil on Individual Action in Dark Times, Philosophy department, Queen’s University, three-day interactive online conference.
2019 Moderator: Iris Murdoch: Perspectives on Moral Philosophy, Philosophy department, Queen’s University.
Organizer: Imagining Otherwise: Radical Alterity, Social Justice, and Philosophies of Difference, Philosophy Department, Graduate Equity Collective. A two-day graduate conference at Queen’s University.
2017 Moderator: Heidegger: Dwelling, Thinking and the Ethical Life, The Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy, King’s University College, Western University.
Organizer: Toxic/cities: An interdisciplinary Graduate conference in Theory, Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Western University.
2016 Moderator: Passionate Dis attachments: Catherine Malabou, Centre for Advanced Research of European Philosophy, King’s College, Western.
2015 Moderator: Breaching Horizons: The Work of Jean-Luc Marion, Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy, King’s College, Western.
2013 Registration: Edith Stein Conference hosted by the Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy.
2017- 2022 Philosophy Graduate Student Association Work
2021 Co-Chair
2020 Chair
2019 Committee of Graduate Studies
Webmaster
2018 Graduate Student Colloquium Facilitator
Graduate Representative in Equity and Women in Philosophy
Graduate Equity Collective (founding member)
2017 Graduate Representative in Equity and Women in Philosophy
Extra Curricular
2018 Organizer: Equity, Philosophy, and Film Movie Night Series.
2013 Writer and Director: Staged reading of “The Divine Tragedy: The Theatre of the Absurd and Existentialism Explore an Absurd Treatment of Human Existence” at King's College at Western University.