Deborah Casewell

I am Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Chester. 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.

My first book was published in 2021: it explores the theologian Eberhard Jüngel’s 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 many more besides. Future projects include a new analysis of asceticism and reflections on philosophy and literature in particular relation to the work of Thomas Mann.

I am also the Co-Director of the AHRC-funded Simone Weil Research Network UK, alongside Christopher Thomas at Manchester Metropolitan University. We will be organising a series of events over the next two years to support research into Weil’s unique philosophy.

I previously 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.