Dr Deborah Casewell
Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion
I am a philosopher working on the relationships between philosophy, religion, and culture. I work largely, but not exclusively, in the area of continental philosophy. My interests include religious existentialism, German Idealism, morality and moral frameworks, and self-formation in philosophy and theology. I also have particular interests in literature, philosophy, and religion.
I work in the areas of philosophy and culture, philosophy of religion, and theology & religion, in particular on existentialism and religion, and questions of ethics and self-formation in relation to asceticism and the German cultural ideal of Bildung. I have given a number of public talks and published on these topics in a range of settings.
In a former life, I worked on the theology and philosophical aspects of the German thinker Eberhard Jüngel. I published a book in 2021 on his philosophical inheritance and how his thought provides a useful paradigm for the relation between philosophy and theology. My second book, Monotheism and Existentialism, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press as a Cambridge Element. I have a number of articles on a number of subjects such as philosophy as a way of life, philosophy and the hidden God in modern theology, ethics as attention in Simone Weil in relation to moral psychology, mythology, art, and the novel in Schelling, Hegel, Mann, and the role of beauty in Bildung, and more besides. Future projects include a new analysis of asceticism and reflections on philosophy and literature in the work of Thomas Mann.
Alongside Dr. Christopher Thomas I co-direct the AHRC-funded Simone Weil Research Network UK. We will be organising a series of events over the next two years to support research into Weil's unique philosophy.
Previously I held a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Bonn, and prior to that was Lecturer in Philosophy at Liverpool Hope University and a Teaching Fellow at King's College, London. I received my PhD from the University of Edinburgh, my MSt from the University of Oxford, and spent time researching and studying at the University of Tübingen and the Institut Catholique de Paris.
Undergraduate
- The Human Condition
- Introduction to Ethics
- Christian Ethics
- The Philosophical Imagination
Postgraduate
- Key Texts in Christian Theological Ethics
Research Interests
- 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy
- Existentialism
- Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy and Literature
- Ethics and Meta-Ethics
PhD Supervision
- Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy, Religion, and Literature
- Continental Philosophy
- Moral Philosophy
External Funding
- AHRC Network Grant 2021-23
Elsewhere on the web
Monographs
Monotheism and Existentialism. Elements in Religion and Monotheism series, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Eberhard Jüngel and Existence: Being Before the Cross, Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology series, London: Routledge, 2021.
Journal Articles
‘Rewriting Mythology: Tautegory, Ontology, and the Novel’, Epoché 27:1 (Fall 2022).
'Philosophy of religion as a way of life: Askesis and Ethics', published online in The Heythrop Journal August 2022.
‘Nothingness and the Left Hand of God: Evil, Anfechtung, and the Hidden God in Luther, Barth, and Jüngel’, in Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 64:1, 2022, pp. 24-49.
A Study of Character: Simone Weil’s Psychological and Ethical Attention’, Theologica. 6:1. 2022.
“The Joy of the Saints: Exploring the role of joy in Desert Monasticism”, Studia Patristica Vol. CXXIV, 2021.
“‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’: A novel account of Beauty, Bildung, and Truth in Hegel and Thomas Mann”, Literature and Theology, March 2021, 35:1, pp.79-97.
“The Self and Despair: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Jüngel’s Anxious Existence”, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2019, Vol. 80:4-5, pp.408-423.
“Reading Heidegger through the Cross: On Eberhard Jüngel’s Heideggerian Ontology” in Forum Philosophicum, Spring 2016, Volume 21.1.
“The place of divine relations in Lossky’s Theology” in New Blackfriars, Volume 97, Issue 1069, May 2016.
Book Chapters
'Truth in Fiction: Schelling and the Ontology of the Novel' in Mythology and Continental Philosophy, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming.
‘The Authenticity of Creativity’ in Building the House of Wisdom, Münster: Aschendorff, forthcoming.
“Tragedy” in the T & T Clark Encyclopaedia for Christian Theology: Prolegomena, London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.
“Simone Weil: Decreation, Obligation, and the Common Good” forthcoming in Autonomy, Diversity and the Common Good, Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
“Eberhard Jüngel” forthcoming in the T & T Clark Handbook to Modern Theology, ed. R. David Nelson and Philip Ziegler, London: Bloomsbury.
“For the Beauty of the Earth? Aesthetics and the Problem of Philosophy”, forthcoming in The Freedom of Christian Theology: New Studies in Dialogue with Eberhard Jüngel, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
“Evil and the Demonic in Paul Tillich”, forthcoming in The Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism series on Paul Tillich, ed. Russell Re Manning, London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming.
“Loving in relation to nothing”, in Polis, Ontology, and Ecclesial Event: Engaging with Christos Yannaras' Thought, ed. Sotiris Mitralexis, Cambridge: James Clark and Co, 2018, paperback 2019, Greek translation 2019.
Popular Writing
Why Read Jaspers?, January 2023, Aeon Magazine.
A just and loving gaze, July 9th 2021, Aeon Magazine.
- MA (Hons) Edin
- MSt Oxon
- PhD Edin