Faculty and staff

Joseph grew up in a small, quiet town in rural Newfoundland. He went to Memorial University with no pre-set plan and spent his first two years just going with the flow. Perhaps because he is a first-generation university student, he found the experience eye-opening in more ways than one. After taking some Russian courses, the first thing that he discovered was that he had a love for languages—which would later lead him to learn German and French as well as to pursue graduate studies in Belgium, Germany, and France. But he quickly discovered that he had, above all, a love for philosophical questions and inquiry. He has never forgotten those transformative years spent as an undergraduate student. It has instilled in him a desire to help his students recognize the value of philosophy for one’s personal, intellectual, and academic growth, something he has experienced firsthand.

Courses taught:

PHIL 100 – Reasoning: An Introduction to Critical Thinking

PHIL 120 – Knowledge and Reality

PHIL 251A – Rationalism and Early Modern Philosophy

PHIL 483L – Special Topics in Philosophy: Žižek as Philosopher

PHIL 483M – Special Topics in Philosophy: Hegel

PhD, McGill University, 2020

MA, Erasmus Mundus Erophilosophie, 2012

MA Memorial Univeristy of Newfoundland, 2010

BA (Hons), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2008

Joseph’s teaching combines close readings of philosophical texts with the history of philosophy. He wants his students to not only learn the essentials of philosophy—its central isms, schools, and methods—but to also see two things about philosophical ideas: how they evolve over time by being in dialogue with one another; and how they always arise as a response to concrete problems. In this manner, he engages his students to participate alongside him in the activity of reconstructing the complex intellectual and cultural world behind philosophical texts in order to show how philosophical ideas, whether past or present, do not stand aloof from life and can continue to be relevant to us today. In a similar vein, when he teaches critical thinking, he is concerned with getting his students to see how the practice of good reasoning has a social and political importance.

Joseph’s teaching interests include metaphysics and epistemology, the history of philosophy broadly construed, and continental philosophy. In his courses, students can expect to delve into topics such as the fundamental nature of reality, arguments for and against God’s existence, and the scope of human cognition from historical and contemporary perspectives. Thinkers such as Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Nietzsche are likely to make an appearance. While he particularly enjoys giving historical surveys and seminars that deep dive into a specific philosopher, he also has a passion and penchant for introducing students to the world of philosophy and critical thinking.

Joseph’s research focuses on metaphysics and epistemology in 19^th- to 21^st-century continental philosophy. Right now, his work deals mostly with Hegel, German Idealism and Romanticism, and Žižek. In terms of metaphysics, his work interrogates issues concerning the human being and its place in nature. As for epistemology, his work centers on the relationship of rationality, logic, and language to knowledge and asks the question of whether transcendental and linguistic idealism can be reconciled with a robust realism. These interests led to his first book, Ontological Catastrophe: Žižek and the Paradoxical Metaphysics of German Idealism (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2014), and serve as the impetus for his current two ongoing projects: a new book, Hegel’s Realism: The Logic of Human Life and the Discovery of Nature, and the first English-language edition and translation of Schlegel’s Transcendental Philosophy, both of which are nearing completion.

2022-2023

Carew, Joseph. “Three Models of a Secular Religion in Hegel.” Western Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Meeting. The University of British Colombia. 23 October 2023.

Carew, Joseph. “Žižek’s Dialectics of History in the Eyes of Hegel.” 1^st Hegelian Society of Spirit Conference. Online. 27 January 2023.

Carew, Joseph. “Hegel on the Need for Religion in Modernity.” Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Meeting. Online. 19 May 2022.

2022-2023

Carew, Joseph. “Conclusion: Schelling Past, Present, and Future.” In The Palgrave Schelling Handbook, edited by Sean J. McGrath, Joseph Carew, and Kyla Bruff. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023.

Carew, Joseph. “Schelling and Hegel.” In The Palgrave Schelling Handbook, edited by Sean J. McGrath, Joseph Carew, and Kyla Bruff. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023.

Danz, Christian. “Schelling and Theology.” Translated by Maximilian Hauer and Joseph Carew. In The Palgrave Schelling Handbook, edited by Sean J. McGrath, Joseph Carew, and Kyla Bruff. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023.

Franks, Manfred. “Schelling and Marx.” Translated by Joseph Carew. In The Palgrave Schelling Handbook, edited by Sean J. McGrath, Joseph Carew, and Kyla Bruff. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023.

McGrath, Sean J., Joseph Carew, and Kyla Bruff, eds. The Palgrave Schelling Handbook. London:  Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023.

Pozzi, Mattia Luigi. “Engel’s Philosophical Mock-Epic: The Triumph of Faith.” Translated by Joseph Carew. In Friedrich Engels for the 21^st Century: Reflections and Revaluations, edited by Terrell Carver and Smail Rapic. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 289-309.

Sandkaulen, Birgit. “Jacobi and Spinoza.” Translated by Joseph Carew. In Jacobi and the Ends of the Enlightenment: Reason and Religion at the Crux of Modernity, edited by Alexander J. B. Hampton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 34-48.

Sandkaulen, Birgit. “Schelling and Art.” Translated by Joseph Carew. In The Palgrave Schelling Handbook, edited by Sean. J. McGrath, Joseph Carew, and Kyla Bruff.  London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023.

Schlegel, Friedrich. “‘Introduction’ to Transcendental Philosophy (1800-1801): Excerpt.” Translated, introduced, and annotated by Joseph Carew. Symphilosophie: The International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism 4 (2022): 451-469.

Schlegel, Friedrich. “‘Introduction’ to Transcendental Philosophy (1800-1801): Excerpt Continued.” Translated, introduced, and annotated by Joseph Carew. Symphilosophie: The International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism 4 (forthcoming 2023).