Dr Simon Hewitt
- Position: Associate Professor in Theology
- Areas of expertise: Systematic theology; Philosophical theology; Philosophy of religion; Political theology.
- Email: S.Hewitt@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 4685
- Location: 1.05 Botany House
- Website: Website
Profile
I am a Christian theologian with an additional interest in philosophy of religion. I work within the tradition known as grammatical thomism.
I am the author of Negative Theology and Philosophical Analysis : Only the Splendour of Light (Palgrave), Church and Revolution (Sacristy), Life After Death After Marx (Cambridge UP) and and numerous articles in peer reviewed journals.
I am treasurer of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, as well as book reviews editor for the journal Religious Studies.
Responsibilities
- Programme Manager -BA PER/ TRS/ RPS
- Programme Manager - MA PRE
- UCU rep for School of PRHS
Research interests
I have three main areas of research at the moment (and am keen to work with PhD students on all of them):
Apophaticism: I am interested in the view, under-represented in contemporary analytic theology and philosophy of religion, but with plenty of classical precedence, that there is an interesting sense in which we do not know what God is. My book Negative Theological and Philosophical Analysis : Only the Splendour of Light (Palgrave) explores this, and locates contemporary wariness about apophaticism in certain unexamined commitments in the philosophies of language and mind. With Fillipo Casati I am writing a book drawing parallels between responses to the so-called paradox of ineffability and to paradoxes of self-reference in logic and mathematics.
Theology's Critics: I engage with thinkers critical of theology - especially Feuerbach, Marx and Freud - in order to make theological progress, in particular to motivate a renewed apophaticism through dispensing with anthropological conceptions of God.
Theology and Mental Health/ Illness: I have written against the tendency to sacralise mental suffering. More recently I am working with Tasia Scrutton on a project drawing on the experience of mental illness to underwrite a liberative approach to philosophy of religion
For more details of my work, see my website.
Qualifications
- PhD (London), MA (London), MA (Oxford), BSc(Hons) (Brunel)
Professional memberships
- Society for the Study of Theology
- British Society for the Philosophy of Religion
- Catholic Theological Association
Student education
I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Research groups and institutes
- Centre for Philosophy of Religion and Theology