Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

For the first few years after the accident, sitting was impossible. She could only
stand or lie down, so she read and wrote her essays standing at the
mantelpiece, and still achieved a congratulatory First in Greats. Philosophy had
become her passion.
Kathy spent the next three years as a graduate student at Princeton with
glowing reports from the philosophers whose seminars she attended, and then
came to King’s for a year as a research student. She had just completed her
Princeton doctorate, under the supervision of Thomas Nagel, when she went
to St Hilda’s in Oxford as a tutor, aged just 26. Closer in age to her students than
to the majority of the Senior Common Room, she was also closer in attitude,
sharing many of the liberal views of her generation in the 1960s. She strongly
supported the demands of undergraduates for representation on the Governing
Body, and for the abolition of “visiting hours”.
For the College, she taught across the whole philosophy syllabus, but her
particular interest was in philosophy of mind, and particularly the
relationship between mind and body. She recognised the need for a
philosophical perspective which respected the work done on consciousness
by physiologists and psychologists and worked hard to acquire the
necessary scientific background needed to think about these issues
seriously; her ideas were explained in her two books and in more than 50
articles. In her dealings with students, Kathy was rigorous and demanding,
but also fair. She was particularly skilful and kind with students who had
done no philosophy before arriving at Oxford, listening to their views and
patiently explaining again and again – and again, if necessary – points of
logic or concept that they found difficult. Science and philosophy gradually
drew her away from the Christian faith of her childhood, but culturally she
was always an Anglican.
In December 1979, a letter arrived in Oxford from the Czech philosopher
Julius Tomlin, asking for a lecturer to visit the informal seminars he held in
his home in Prague, because philosophy could not be taught in Czech
schools or universities. The police watched and frequently broke up such
seminars, sometimes violently. Kathy volunteered at once. On her first visit,
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OBITUARIES