Fredericton Faculty of Arts

BIO

Jason Bell is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick. He has taught in the graduate program at the Higher Institute of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universteit Leuven in Belgium, at Vanderbilt University, and at Mount Allison University. He has served at the University of Göttingen in Germany as Fulbright Professor, as scholar-in-residence at Boston University, as Onderzoeksfonds Research Fellow at the Husserl Archives-Leuven, and as d’Alzon Fellow at Assumption College. He was awarded the doctorate in philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Bell is pictured above with his family.

WHAT COURSES WILL YOU BE TEACHING THIS YEAR? 

"This upcoming academic year I will be teaching several courses:  Existential Philosophy, Socrates and Nietzsche, and the Ethics of Life and Death."

RESEARCH INTERESTS AND UPCOMING PROJECTS

"My main research interest is in the rich theoretical and interdisciplinary context of the 19th and 20th centuries that gave rise to a number of important and enduring methodologies used among disciplines in the present day: phenomenology, pragmatism, process philosophy, and analytic philosophy. A particular research interest is two New Brunswick archives, dedicated to Gustav Hubener and Winthrop Bell, who were founding members of the Goettingen phenomenological circle in the early part of the twentieth century. Because Bell served as an espionage agent in Germany on behalf of the British government after WWI, and because Hubener was forced to flee Germany in the 1930s, as an opponent of Nazism, these archival collections have remained unknown until now. These resources help to reveal Canada's surprising role in the development of modern theoretical methodology.

"My dissertation at Vanderbilt was written on the ethics of loyalty: I am very happy to be living in a province and teaching at a university so closely associated with this crucial virtue."

FAVOURITE PARTS OF FREDERICTON SO FAR?

"During my time in Fredericton, I have enjoyed walking in the storybook woods of Odell Park, and biking to the Saint John river, to Officers' Square, and to downtown cafes to read and write philosophy. At UNB, I have enjoyed the beautiful view over the Saint John river valley."

A SURPRISING FACT...

"I began researching at UNB five years ago after I found a letter from Gustav Hubener (whose papers are housed at the Harriet Irving Library), in another archive, reporting to a Canadian friend that he was being tailed by Nazi Gestapo agents in New York City, just prior to America's entry into World War II. Hubener was part of a circle of anti-Nazi German intellectuals, which raised the ire of the Nazi government."

ADVICE FOR STUDENTS?

"University is a wonderful time for engaging in philosophy--the love of wisdom-- in all your reading, in all your thinking, in all your writing, in all your conversations, in all your classes, and this is true no matter your major. To quote a student remembering his studies at the time of the founding of the interdisciplinary phenomenological movement: 
"In Goettingen there was only philosophizing--
day and night, while eating,
on the street, everywhere." --Georg Moskiewicz