Robert Rowland Smith is a British author and philosopher. His books include Derrida and Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Breakfast with Socrates: The Philosophy of Everyday Life (Profile Books, 2009), and AutoBioPhilosophy: An Intimate Story of What It Means to Be Human (4th Estate, 2018). He is a regular speaker at public and private events, addressing a wide range of topics that includes philosophy, psychology, politics, and art. Alongside his literary career, Smith works as a business adviser and practitioner of Systemic Family Constellations.
Biography
Smith was born on 21 January 1965. From 1975 to 1983 he attended Dulwich College in south London. He read English Language and Literature at Mansfield College, Oxford, where he was a Scholar, graduating in 1988 with a top First. From 1988 to 1990 Smith was a doctoral student at Wolfson College, Oxford, specialising in the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In 1990 he was elected to a Fellowship by Examination ('Prize Fellowship') at All Souls College, Oxford. He was awarded a D.Phil. in 1991. While a Fellow of All Souls, Smith also held lectureships at both Mansfield College, Oxford and Hertford College, Oxford, and was a member of the English Faculty, lecturing on literary theory, modern poetry, and Shakespeare.
Smith left Oxford in 1998 to pursue a career in management consultancy, becoming a partner in a London-based firm in 2004. In 2009, Smith set up a company of his own in order to operate independently. He continues to be a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Smith has sat on the board of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and of the Institute of Art and Ideas. He is a founding faculty member of The School of Life, and from 2013 to 2015 was a faculty member of the London Graduate School based at Kingston University. In 2017 he stepped down from the editorial board of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, an academic publication that he helped to found in 1993.
Literary career
Books
Robert Rowland Smith is the author of seven books. Three of these are academic. Derrida and Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 1995) was based on Smith's doctoral thesis, and won a Choice award for 'Outstanding Academic Title'. Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) is an examination of Freud's metapsychological works in relation to other theorists of death including Heidegger, Durkheim and Pascal. On Modern Poetry: From Theory to Total Criticism (Continuum, 2012) also won a Choice award for 'Outstanding Academic Title'. The first part of the book examines theories of poetry; the second part is made up of close textual analysis of certain nineteenth and twentieth century poems.
Smith has written two works of popular philosophy: Breakfast with Socrates: The Philosophy of Everyday Life (Profile Books, 2009) and Driving with Plato: The Meaning of Life's Milestones (Profile Books, 2011). The former has been translated into twenty languages.
The Reality Test: Still Relying on Strategy? (Profile Books, 2014) draws on Smith's experience as a business adviser. It poses and seeks to answer forty-eight questions relating to business vision, market strategy, organisational performance, and leadership.
Smith's most recent book is AutoBioPhilosophy: An Intimate Story of What It Means to Be Human (4th Estate, 2018). The book combines the genres of autobiography and philosophy in order to explore themes such as fate, love, spirituality, death, friendship, and creativity.
In addition, Smith wrote the text for an art book by Israeli photographer Ori Gersht, entitled Gersht's Ghosts (Photoworks, 2012). He also contributed a foreword to the 2015 design publication, Patternity: A New Way of Seeing: The Inspirational Power of Pattern (Octopus, 2015).
Journalism
From 2009 to 2012, Robert wrote the To Be Or Not To Be column in the Sunday Times Magazine, that examined moral dilemmas. He recorded a weekly video blog for the online version of the same publication, looking at current affairs through the lens of philosophy. He has written articles for numerous other publications including Intelligent Life, The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian, The Observer, New Scientist, Psychologies and Photoworks. He contributed articles to the first three editions of The Alpine Review, published in Toronto by Louis-Jacques Darveau. He has also been profiled in The Sunday Telegraph and Time Out.