Maxwell Institute fellow Katharina Paxman has big plans to spend the next two years writing about what she loves: philosophy and the gospel.
In 2013, the Maxwell Institute—which provides a platform for Latter-day Saint scholars to share how their field elevates worship—published the first of a series of books called The Living Faith. Professor Katharina Paxman (Early Modern Philosophy) has been hoping to contribute to the series so she could write about how philosophy, and her studies on empathy, can make us stronger members of the Church. As one of the Maxwell Institute’s newest fellows, Paxman will write a manuscript that she hopes will be the next publication in this series when her fellowship begins in fall 2025.
Questions that Inspire Faith
The Maxwell Institute requires each accepted fellow to choose a major project to work on during their two-year stay at the Institute. Paxman looks forward to having the chance to focus on a project that will allow her to share her research with a Church-wide audience. “I feel really blessed because it feels like things have all come together for the next two years, and I’m going to have an opportunity I don’t think I ever would have dreamt of,” she says. For her main project, Paxman will be writing More to Question, More to Believe, a manuscript she plans to submit for consideration in The Living Faith series that focuses on philosophy’s role in spirituality.
Throughout the book, Paxman hopes to show how philosophy bolsters faith. “More to Question, More to Believe starts by framing philosophy as a practice that largely is centered on questions that are difficult to answer,” she says. She argues that philosophy teaches how to ask better questions, which will help produce more specific answers to questions related to spirituality. To get her point across, Paxman plans to introduce faith, hope, and charity as epistemic principles, meaning that they can help people develop their beliefs more carefully and intentionally. By learning to process questions—and even doubts—using philosophy, she says, “you’re introduced to a particular way of conceptualizing and understanding the elements of the question and can experience understanding in a different way.”
Learn more about Katharina Paxman’s work and research here.