KRISTOF K.P. VANHOUTTE is a Belgian philosopher with an interest in “continental philosophy”—particularly the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben—and Church History, with a focus on the Early Church Fathers and Medieval concepts of the Afterlife.
Kristof is Guest Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy, and Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Having received his BA and MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, Kristof went on to study Spiritual Theology at the Pontifical University Gregoriana in Rome before obtaining his PhD in Philosophy from the Pontifical University Antonianum. He has served as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK, and is the recipient of the 2010 Essay Prize for European Philosophy from Kant to the Present, awarded by the University of Kentucky, USA.
Kristof’s thinking and publications span a variety of genres and reflect his interests in “continental philosophy,” patristics, theology-philosophy-politics interdependencies, educational theory, and soccer. His publications include Sulla ‘vera’ Filosofia – Un’Archeologia della Filosofia Cristiana (On ‘True’ Philosophy – An Archaeology of Christian Philosophy) (Lateran University Press, 2009) and Saramago’s Philosophical Heritage (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 – co-edited with Carlo Salzani). A particular research interest—described by Kristof as the “Archeology of Forgotten Concepts”—has yielded the publications Purgatory. Philosophical Dimensions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 – co-edited with Benjamin McCraw) and Limbo Reapplied. On Living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Kristof is currently working on a multifaceted research project analyzing the contemporary implications of the ancient understanding of the concept of Heresy.
In 2023, Kristof published the book, There Is No Such Thing as ‘Continental’ Philosophy, which appeared as the first volume of the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking’s own PICT Books imprint. The book is based on Kristof’s PICT course of the same name.
To find out more about Kristof, check out his:
PICT Courses
- PICT Aegean Summer School
- There Is No Such Thing As “Continental Philosophy”
- Thinking Through the Afterlife
- Utopia
PICT Public Lectures
PICT Conferences
PICT Podcasts
- PICT Voices #8: Living in Limbo (YouTube) (SoundCloud)
- Dates with Death (series host)
PICT Articles
- American French-ness: The American Appropriation of Contemporary French Philosophy (dePICTions)
- Behind the Derridas and Foucaults, There Is Absolutely Nobody (The Faculty Lounge)
- The Gentle Art of Making “Un-Decisions” (dePICTions)