Radford University Philosophy and Religious Studies Home Page

KIM KIPLING

Kim Kipling

Kim Kipling
Professor of Philosophy
Radford University
105 Howe Hall
540-831-5388
kkipling@radford.edu
Welcome to my home page. I have assembled some bits and pieces of information about myself that may be of some interest to current or future Radford University students, colleagues, friends, and web surfers.

I have been teaching at Radford University since 1984 and have served as chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies since 1994. While I teach a wide variety of philosophy
courses, my areas of primary interest are aesthetics and recent continental philosophy (existentialism, phenomenology, and post-structuralism). I also have a special interest
in the life and thought of Henry David Thoreau and am currently working on a manuscript
exploring his philosophy. In addition to my work as a teacher and scholar, I am active in the
political life of the community and have, since 1985, volunteered as a writer and editor
for the New River Free Press, a community-based alternative newsmonthly.

Here is a brief list of links to useful web sites for research in Philosophy and for information
on some of the Philosophers whose work has exerted a major influence on my thinking:

"More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity
a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself,
and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever
the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of man
whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends
of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks,
have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually
also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscious of their time."

-- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud
that hangs over men: they herald the advent of the lightning, and, as heralds, they perish.

"Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud;
but this lightning is called overman."

--Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found
a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."

--Thoreau, Walden

"Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right,
changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not
consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches,
it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the
diabolical in him from the divine."

--Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Fall Semester 2006 Teaching Schedule

Philosophy 111.06--Knowledge, Reality, and the Human Condition: TTh 12:30-1:45

Philosophy 114.01--Origins of Western Philosophy: TTh 3:30-4:45

Click here for Curriculum Vita

Click here for Philosophy Course Descriptions

Click here for Department Home Page

Mailing Address:
Dr. Kim Kipling
Chair, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
P.O. Box 6943
Radford University
Radford, VA 24142