Winthrop Pickard Bell (May 12, 1884 – April 4, 1965) was a Canadian academic who taught philosophy at the University of Toronto and Harvard.[1][2][3] He is however perhaps best known for his work as a historian of Nova Scotia.[4]

Biography edit

He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and educated at Mount Allison University, McGill University, Harvard University (where he studied under Josiah Royce, about whose theory of knowledge he was later to write his doctoral dissertation),[5][6][7] the University of Leipzig, and finally at the University of Göttingen (where he completed his doctoral studies under Edmund Husserl).[8][9]

 
Engraving by Winthorp P. Bell on a cell-door in the Karzer of Göttingen University

Edith Stein was among his friends during his Göttingen period.[10][11]

During the First World War he was held in the civilian internment camp at Ruhleben, near Berlin, for more than three years.[8][12][13] After the war he became a secret agent for MI6 in Berlin[14][13], and also taught philosophy at the University of Toronto and at Harvard University,[15] which he left in 1927 to pursue a career in business.[8][16]

In his latter years he focused his energies on historical research, much of which concerned the group of mid-18th-Century immigrants to Nova Scotia known as the "Foreign Protestants".[8] His most notable publication was The "Foreign Protestants" and the Settlement of Nova Scotia, which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1961; his Register of the Foreign Protestants of Nova Scotia was published some years after his death.[17]

Subject of the book Cracking the Nazi Code by Jason Bell (2023).

References edit

  1. ^ "Winthrop Bell Archives".
  2. ^ Cairns, Dorion (October 2, 2012). The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Springer. p. v. ISBN 9789400750432.
  3. ^ Cairns, Dorion (October 2, 2012). The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. ISBN 978-94-007-5043-2.
  4. ^ "Search - Directory of Special Collections of Research Value in Canadian Libraries".
  5. ^ Bell, Jason (February 2014). "On Four Originators of Transatlantic Phenomenology". Josiah Royce, Edmund Husserl, William Hocking, Winthrop Bell. pp. 47–68. doi:10.5422/fordham/9780823255283.003.0005. ISBN 978-0-8232-5528-3.
  6. ^ Ward, Roger (January 25, 2015). "Review of The Relevance of Royce".
  7. ^ Bell, Jason M. (2011). "The German Translation of Royce's Epistemology by Husserl's Student Winthrop Bell: A Neglected Bridge of Pragmatic-Phenomenological Interpretation?". The Pluralist. 6 (1): 46–62. doi:10.5406/pluralist.6.1.0046. JSTOR 10.5406/pluralist.6.1.0046. S2CID 144317418.
  8. ^ a b c d "Winthrop Pickard Bell: Man of the Maritimes, Citizen of the World".
  9. ^ "Winthrop Pickard Bell".
  10. ^ MacIntyre, Alasdair (2007). Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-7425-5953-0.
  11. ^ Stein, Edith (2014). Letters to Roman Ingarden. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications. ISBN 978-1-939272-25-6.
  12. ^ Bell, Winthrop Pickard; Angus, Ian (2012). "The Idea of a Nation". Symposium. 16 (2): 34–46. doi:10.5840/symposium201216226. ISSN 1480-2333.
  13. ^ a b Fraser, Elizabeth (June 4, 2019). "Canada's unsung hero: Academic turned spy foresaw WW II, says UNB scholar". CBC News.
  14. ^ Bell, Jason (April 29, 2023). "The history of espionage shows how spying contributes to a free society". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  15. ^ Cairns, Dorion (1973). "My Own Life". In Kersten, Frederick; Zaner, Richard M. (eds.). Phenomenology:Continuation and Criticism. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-94-010-2379-5.
  16. ^ Spiegelberg, Herbert (March 9, 2013). The Context of the Phenomenological Movement. p. 229. ISBN 9789401732703.
  17. ^ "Bibliography". preserve.lib.unb.ca. Retrieved May 19, 2022.

External links edit