Staff Profiles

Undergraduate

• Essentials in the Philosophy of Religion
• Continental Philosophy of Religion
• Religion, Philosophy and the Body

Postgraduate

• PhD supervision in the areas of contemporary theology, philosophy of religion (including relationship with feminism and psychoanalysis), and gender.

Philosophy of religion, and particularly feminist approaches to the subject. Also the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and philosophy of religion.

Co-organiser of interdisciplinary seminar series 2014-15 on 'Success in the Neoliberal Life Cycle: Alternative Perspectives on a Dominant Paradigm.'

Currently writing on failure and loss.

Books

• Clack B, How to be a Failure and Still Live Well: A Philosophy, Bloomsbury Academic (2020)
  ISBN: 9781350030688 eISBN: 9781350030701
  Abstract

  In consumer economies, success has increasingly been defined in terms of material attainment and the achievement of status. This model of 'the good life' and its formulas for success ignore the haunting possibility that one may not succeed and as a result be deemed 'a failure'. How to be a Failure and Still Live Well explores that often neglected theme of failure, not just as the opposite of achievement, but also, and more importantly, how it has been conflated with loss: that which haunts all transient, mortal human experience.

  Understanding loss as a form of failure affects our ability to cope with the everyday losses that permeate existence as a result of the natural processes of ageing, death, and decay. Engaging with loss and thinking about what it inevitability means for our lives and commitments, allows different values to emerge than those connected to success as attainment. Relationships, spontaneity, and generosity are explored as qualities that arise from taking seriously our vulnerability and that form the basis for richer accounts of what it might mean to 'live well'.

  Website 
• Clack B, Clack BR, Philosophy of Religion: A Critical Introduction (Third Edition), Polity Press (2019)
  ISBN: 9781509516926
  Abstract

  For over twenty years, Beverley Clack and Brian R. Clack’s distinctive and thought-provoking introduction to the philosophy of religion has been of enormous value to students and scholars, providing an approach to the subject that is bold and refreshingly alternative. This revised and updated edition retains the accessibility which makes the book popular, while furthering its distinctive argument regarding the human dimension of religion. The central emphasis of the philosophy of religion – the concept of God, and the arguments for and against God’s existence – is reflected in thorough analyses, while alternative approaches to traditional philosophical theism are explored. The treatments of both the miraculous and immortality have been revised and expanded, and the concluding chapter updates the investigation of how philosophy of religion might be conducted in an age defined by religious terrorism. Clear, systematic and highly critical, the third edition of The Philosophy of Religion will continue to be essential reading for students and scholars of this fascinating and important subject.--Provided by publisher.
  

• Beverley Clack and Michele Paule, Ed., Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9781509516926 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Abstract

  In this timely collection, contributors from a number of disciplines discuss neoliberal visions of success, and the subsequent effects they have on the construction of the lifecycle. Frequently mentioned in popular political discourse, the notion of neoliberalism is often deployed as shorthand for the consensus that austerity is necessary and the hard-working individual can survive it. This volume unpicks and interrogates the term by engaging with the interface between the political ubiquity of neoliberal forms and its lived experience in neoliberal societies, cutting across a multiplicity of factors including gender, age, and access to education. Impressive in its wide scope and analysis, Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle presents an informed discussion not only of the limits of the neoliberal paradigm but also of possible alternatives. 
  

  Website 

Journal articles

• Clack B, 'Wisdom, Friendship and the Practice of Philosophy'
  Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 25 (1/2) (2020) pp.141-155
  ISSN: 0969-725X
  Abstract

  This paper considers the impact that the practices of friendship might have on shaping philosophical activity in the twenty-first century. To consider what it means to practise philosophy necessitates understanding the effect that the structures of the contemporary university have on philosophical enquiry. Maintaining the historic sense of the university as a place where conversations take place which aim at deepening the understanding of one’s world is increasingly difficult in universities structured by the imperatives of the neoliberal economic policies of the last forty years. The model of friendship, because it is both personal and conversational, has the power to reinvigorate not just the practice of philosophy but also the understanding of the university as a place for deep learning.
  

  Website 
• Clack B, 'Lived Religion: Rethinking Human Nature in a Neoliberal Age'
  International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 79 (4) (2018) pp.355-369
  ISSN: 2169-2327 eISSN: 2169-2335
  Abstract

  This article considers the relationship between philosophy of religion and an approach to the study of religion, which prioritises the experience of lived religion. Considering how individuals and communities live out their faith challenges some of the assumptions of analytic philosophers of religion regarding the position the philosopher should adopt when approaching the investigation of religion. If philosophy is understood principally as a means for analysing belief, it will have little space for an engagement with what it feels like to live out one’s faith.
  

  Website 
• Clack B, 'On Returning to Church: Practising Religion in a Neoliberal Age'
  Modern Believing 57 (3) (2016) pp.229-240
  ISSN: 1353-1425 eISSN: 2053-633X
  Abstract In 1999 I wrote an article ‘on leaving the church’ (Craske and Marsh 1999). In this article I revisit this theme having recently returned to church. I explore the themes that led to me leaving (the Christian contribution to the history of misogyny and the desire for liberation, coupled with the desire to have the freedom to think); themes which, paradoxically, are not dissimilar to the reasons behind my return. The paper engages with the reductionist functionalism of the dominant social and political paradigm of neoliberal consumerism, and engages with Michèle Le Doeuff’s claim that the framework provided by religion for life is attractive, precisely because it allows for uncertainty and a deep engagement with the realities of being human.Website 
• Clack B J, 'On Returning to Church: Practising Religion in a Neoliberal Age'
  Modern Believing 57 (3) (2016)
  ISSN: 1353-1425 eISSN: 2053-633X
  Abstract In 1999 I wrote an article for a collection whose purpose was to offer a range of perspectives on the future of Methodism at the turn of the millennium (Craske and Marsh 1999). In that article I described my reasons for leaving the church in which I had been brought up (Clack 1999). In one of those quirks of memory, I had completely forgotten writing this article until reminded of it by an academic researching people’s reasons for church-leaving. This reminder came at a strange time: I had recently returned to the church, indeed, to the same Methodist tradition I had previously left.
   
  In what follows I reflect upon my reasons for this return which, when I revisited my previous piece, were strikingly similar to those that led me to leave. While those reasons reflect my own struggles to find a meaningful life, they also offer, I hope, some more general insights into the attraction of religious perspectives for some philosophers. 
  Website 
• Clack B J, ''Beginning Something New''
  Sophia 53 (2) (2014) pp.261-273
  ISSN: 0038-1527
  Abstract

  This paper suggests ways in which a philosophy modelled as dance provides the means of challenging political strucures that emphasise control and constraint at the expense of spontaneity and creativity. Through combining Arendt's claim that spontaneity is the quintessential human quality with Nietzsche's modelling of philosophy as disruptive dancing, the possibilities of modelling philosophy as dance are explored. Envisaging philosophical practice in this way provides a corrective to the prioritising of certainty in philosophical method, thus enabling further reflection on what it means to promote human flourishing.

  Website 
• Clack B, 'What difference does it make? Philosophical perspectives on the nature of well-being and the role of educational practice'
  Research Papers in Education 27 (4) (2012) pp.497-512
  ISSN: 0267-1522
  Abstract This paper suggests ways in which philosophy as a discipline and practice offers the possibility of a richer account of well-being than currently informs policy initiatives in this area. Sources derived from philosophy - and particularly moral philosophy - support a shift away from understanding well-being as something grounded primarily in the emotions, towards an understanding of its relationship to the well-lived life. Refocusing the debate in this way suggests, moreover, a view of education as a practice that transcends the classroom and that is, in effect, a lifelong pursuit.Website 
• Clack B, 'Philosophy of religion in an age of austerity: towards a socially engaged philosophy for the well-lived life'
  Political Theology 13 (2) (2012) pp.167-182
  ISSN: 1462-317X
  Abstract This paper explores the shape that a socially-engaged philosophy of religion might take. Against the backdrop of the so-called -œAge of Austerity,- questions are being asked about the relevance of academic subjects to the world outside the academy. A functionalist view of education may well be resisted, but pursuing the question of what makes philosophy of religion relevant enables an account of the discipline to emerge that is rather different from the model that dominates analytic forms of the subject. I suggest that returning to existential themes offers a way forward for the discipline that makes it not just relevant but particularly important for current public discussions of what makes for a well-lived life.Website 
• Clack B, 'Violence and the Maternal in the Marquis de Sade'
  Feminist Theology 17 (3) (2009) pp.273-291
  ISSN: 0966-7350
  Abstract Feminist philosophers of religion have drawn attention to desire as a neglected category for approaching the sources and concerns of religion. This paper extends this discussion by engaging with one particularly disturbing aspect of the writings of the Marquis de Sade. In a world where ultimate sexual pleasure is derived from destruction of the Other, Sade glories in describing the suffering of mothers, often at the hands of their own children. This paper offers one possible reading of these dark desires through employing aspects of psychoanalytic theory to suggest that, rather than isolate him from the majority of humanity, we might consider possible connections between the desires he details and our own. This involves considering the ambivalence of the mother, and thus challenging the (often oppressive) idealization of the all-caring, all-nurturing mother.Website 

Book chapters

• Clack B, 'Death and Dying in "Third Way" Death Manuals: Shaping Life and Death After Neoliberalism' in Beverley Clack and Michele Paule (ed.), Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9781509516926 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Abstract

  In this chapter I consider what might be called the ‘Third Way’ death manuals of Philip Gould and Kate Gross, who were both, in different ways, involved with the New Labour Project. Their memoirs describe their experiences of dying, and are notable for the conclusions to which they come; conclusions which suggest values at odds with the individualist and progressive narratives that shape neoliberal views of what it means to life well. In considering the tensions and possibilities that shape their respective narratives, new ways of living in the face of death become possible.

  Website 
• Clack B, Paule M, 'Afterword: Advice for a Life Beyond Neoliberalism?' in Clack B, Paule M (ed.), Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9783030007690 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Website 
• Paule M, Clack B, 'Introduction: Welcome to the Neoliberal Lifecycle!' in Clack B, Paule M (ed.), Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9783030007690 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Website 
• Clack B J, 'Constructing Death as a Form of Failure' in Immortality and the Philosophy of Death, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
  ISBN: 9781783483839 eISBN: 9781783483853
  Abstract

  In this paper I explore the model of success arising from the neoliberal account of subjectivity. My focus is on the problems this model of the successful life encounters when confronted with the inevitability and inescapability of death. This necessitates, firstly, addressing the model of failure that arises from the neoliberal account of success; and secondly, resisting the neoliberal construction of death as the ultimate failure in order to reassert the fact that to be human is to be mortal. My contention is that recognising the inevitability of death for the human subject enables a set of values to emerge which are more conducive to human flourishing than those currently offered by dominant neoliberal philosophies. 

  Website 
• Clack B, 'Play, psychoanalysis and feminist philosophy of religion' in Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs: Essays in Moral and Religious Philosophy, Continuum (2011)
  ISBN: 9781441140319
  Abstract Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs suggests new ways of thinking about moral philosophy in its under-explored but potentially very fruitful encounter with philosophy of religion. The contributors to this volume undertake this project through a variety of novel approaches, via literature, psychoanalysis, history of philosophy, continental and feminist thought, as well as by means of analytic philosophy. The volume will include essays by both highly regarded academics who have already made significant contributions in the fields of moral and/or religious philosophy - and a select number of young, up-and-coming researchers, who will add fresh voices to the debate.
• Clack B, 'Evil, Feminism and a Philosophy of Transformation' in N.N. Trakakis (ed.), Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue, Oxford University Press ()
  ISBN: 9780198821625
  Abstract

  Rather than offering another ‘solution’ to the problem of evil, in the form of, say, a theodicy, the discussion of this chapter is situated within an ethical framework concerned with unmasking the enactment and perpetuation of ‘structural evils’ on the political and social levels. Indebted to the insights of feminist philosophers such as Michèle Le Doeuff, but also Hannah Arendt’s analysis of evil, the novelist Muriel Spark, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work on social suffering, the chapter seeks, not to justify the ways of God, but to critique and transform unjust structures, and to pave the way for alternatives that might best support human flourishing. This necessitates attempting to identify and understand the sources of human wickedness—social and individual—while contending that, ultimately, the only appropriate response to evil and suffering is to commit to a reorientation of the self towards others and the world.
  

  Website 

Conferences

Conferences

Recent conference papers

• ‘Constructing Death as a Form of Failure: Addressing Mortality in a Neo-Liberal Age’    for Inaugural Conference for the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying, Pomona College, Claremont, USA, November 2014.
• ‘Loss and Waste: On Uncertainty and the Acceptance of Limits,’ Philosophy and         Psychoanalysis in Dialogue Conference [sponsored by the Institute of      Psychoanalysis and the Institute of Philosophy], Heythrop College, London, October 2014.
• ‘Feminism and Religion,’ Inaugural Lecture for International Gender Studies Centre,    Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, October 2014.
• 'Feminism, Evil and a Philosophy of Transformation,' Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia, July 2014
• 'Being Human: Religion and Superstition in Psychoanalytic Philosophy of Religion', Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference, Oxford Brookes University, June 2010.

Academic Qualifications

• BA Honours Degree (First Class) from Westminster College Oxford (1986)
• PhD in the History and Philosophy of Religion from King’s College London on the Suffering of God in the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1991)
• MSc (Distinction) in Theoretical Psychoanalytical Studies from UCL (2006)

Previous employment

• Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at University of Surrey Roehampton (1990-2002)
• Joined Brookes in 2002 as Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Religious Studies
• Promoted to Reader in Theology, Philosophy and Culture in 2004
• Promoted to Professor in Philosophy of Religion in 2009

Before becoming an academic, Bev worked in the Press Office of the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Centre in London (1989). She is currently City Councillor for St Clements, Oxford (Labour and Co-operative Party) (2012-2016).