A Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy? A discussion on the future of independent philosophy education and Gillian Rose

Book launch of Promise & Perdition in the Thought of Gillian Rose, followed by a discussion with its editors, Peter Osborne and Howard Caygill, and one of the contributors to the essay collection, Louis Hartnoll

One half of the evening will be dedicated to a discussion of the wide-ranging thought of the British sociologist and philosopher Gillian Rose, as well as Caygill and Hartnoll’s contributions to the volume. In the other half of the evening, the speakers will reflect more broadly on the present and future of independent philosophical research and publishing at a time when their place in the university appears increasingly under threat.

If promise and perdition are themes inseparable from the advice of Silouan the Athonite to “keep your mind in hell, and despair not”, which adorns the entrance to Gillian Rose’s final book, Love’s Work, then this might also be an appropriate maxim to guide our discussion of the challenges and opportunities of running an independent educational association outside the academy. If the European philosophical tradition lives only through the rigour of its own critique, where does philosophy migrate to, and what are its possible forms of transmission, when some of its most defiant or unruly critical perspectives, such as Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis, are increasingly excised from teaching altogether?

CRMEP (Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy) is an independent educational association based in London. It was established at Middlesex University in 1994 before moving to Kingston University in 2010, where, until its closure in 2025, it developed an international reputation for research and teaching in modern European philosophy. From its inception, the Centre has been committed to the idea that philosophy must engage with contemporary social and political issues, cultural practices, and other theoretical disciplines. It now operates independently, organising events, publications, and study groups.

The essays collected in this eighth volume in the CRMEP Books series, Promise & Perdition in the Thought of Gillian Rose, derive from a conference on the thought of the British sociologist and philosopher Gillian Rose, held at Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury, London, on 18–19 June 2025. Interest in Rose’s wide-ranging body of critical work in the sociology and philosophy of modernity has grown significantly since her early death in 1995. In the wake of the publication of a Penguin Modern Classics edition of Rose’s Love’s Work (2024), along with some of her undergraduate lectures on critical theory delivered at the University of Sussex in the late 1970s (Marxist Modernism, Verso, 2024), this thirtieth-anniversary event set out to explore the interplay of promise and perdition—a tension from which Love’s Work itself emerged—across the full span of her writings.

Promise & perdition in the thought of Gillian Rose
Edited by Peter Osborne & Howard Caygill
CRMEP Books 2026

Copies of Promise & Perdition in the Thought of Gillian Rose will be available on the evening, alongside copies of all the other volumes in the CRMEP Books series. The evening will be moderated by Daniel Gottlieb, a former doctoral student at CRMEP.