Comparative Philosophy

Kaija Mortensen

Associate Professor of Comparative Philosophy

News Headlines

• Moscarítolo Palacio, Mortensen receive Interfaith America Curriculum Development Grant
• Mortensen publishes article in philosophy journal
• Students deliberate ‘Ethics and Social Justice’ in VFIC Ethics Bowl
• Randolph junior eyes Olympics while making her mark in the national weightlifting arena
• Kids say the most philosophical things: new program teaches philosophical concepts to children
• Randolph students to debate multicultural ethical issues in VFIC Ethics Bowl
• Randolph students engage in political debates at VFIC Ethics Bowl
• Randolph team wins debates about ‘Ethics and Civic Responsibility’ in VFIC Ethics Bowl
• Kaija Mortensen presents research at national conference

My first course as an undergraduate was Philosophy of Mind. As we read the work of philosophers from Aristotle to Daniel Dennett, I was fascinated by the ways our collective inquiry mirrored our subject matter as we used both our introspective experience and collaborative analysis to draw conclusions about the nature of the mind. I marveled at the skillful way my professors orchestrated class discussion. I was impressed by the pleasure my classmates took in listening to and challenging one another and the course texts. Over time, I realized that I wanted to spend my life doing these things, thinking in concert with other minds.

I teach a variety of courses, including Knowledge and Reality, Philosophy of Mind, History of Modern Philosophy, Practical Reasoning, and Logic. I am convinced that dialogue is the central activity of philosophy. Participation in such dialogue regardless of one’s role as a student or teacher requires learning (1) how to charitably understand the ideas of others, (2) how to critique ideas in ways that contribute productively to an overall investigation, and (3) how to enter one’s own voice (in writing and speaking) into an ongoing conversation articulately and on point. I help my students strengthen their skills in each of these areas and hope that, as a result, they leave my class with an increased understanding of the relationship between themselves as knowers and the things they claim to know.

My current research questions the ways theories of knowledge and theories of mind inform how philosophers (should) do philosophy and the ways expertise is developed (both in philosophy students and professional philosophers). I am also interested in Experimental Philosophy, a new field that uses the methods of social science to answer philosophical questions, and what it can teach us about the discipline of philosophy.

My philosophical interests also include peer disagreement; the relationships among philosophical, scientific, spiritual, and aesthetic ways of knowing; and the historical origins of current philosophical debates about intuition.

As you may have inferred from my emphasis on dialogue in my description of philosophy above, my second love is theatre, followed closely by the other performing, literary, and visual arts.

Suzanne Bessenger

The Barbara Boyle Lemon ’57 and William J. Lemon Associate Professor of Religious Studies

News Headlines

• Bessenger attends conference in Sri Lanka
• Randolph professor, students present during annual ASIANetwork Conference
• Randolph begins 2023-24 academic year with Convocation
• Randolph professor, students traveling to Nepal for ASIANetwork-funded research
• Bessenger invited to present at Northwestern University conference
• Bessenger presents research at international conference
• Bessenger visits Bhutan for research on Tibetan Buddhist religious biographies
• Bessenger to speak at Institute for Asian Cultural and Religious History in Austria
• Bessenger, Dop approved for tenure
• Religious studies professor selected to participate in national seminar on teaching interfaith understanding

My first year of college I found myself in an introductory philosophy class called “Crucial Human Issues of Our Culture,” where I discovered, to my amazement, that the questions that had consumed me in my high school years — What is a good human life?  What is beauty?  Why do we suffer?  What does it mean to die well?– were questions that lay at the heart of the academic enterprise, and that philosophers had been asking for millenia.  My pursuit of answers to these questions eventually led me to the study of Asian religions and philosophies, the creation of a self-designed major in Asian Studies at Mills College in Oakland, California, and a college semester abroad experience studying Tibetan Buddhism in India, Nepal, and Tibet through the School for International Training.

After college I spent a year teaching science in a Bay Area public school, and then another year traveling through Buddhist pilgrimage sites in northern India and living at a Buddhist nunnery in the foothills of the Himalayas.  I eventually pursued a masters and doctorate in the History of Religions at the University of Virginia, where I focused on the study of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as South and East Asian religions and philosophies.  My research focuses on the 14th century Tibetan saint Sönam Peldren and her husband Rinchen Pel, some of which I have published in the book Echoes of Enlightenment: The Lives of Sönam Peldren (Oxford, 2016).  I am currently working on a complete translation of Sönam Peldren’s biography.

At Randolph College I enjoy introducing students to the distinctive traditions of thought found in Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Daoism, and to topical courses on subjects such as death and dying, gender, and visual culture.  Randolph students bring to the classroom the same questions and passions that started my own intellectual journey all those years ago, and it is a joy and privilege to work alongside them as they find their own paths forward to meaningful and abundant lives.