Wittgenstein is a key figure of analytic philosophy who crucially influenced diverse strands within this tradition, including logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. To this day, his thought defies pigeon-holing, poses a challenge to traditional conceptions of the nature and methods of philosophy, and has many important implications for the philosophies of language and mind, logic and mathematics, and for philosophy at large.

Approaching Wittgenstein’s work from different perspectives, different members of the School employ a variety of approaches in work on topics including:

• Wittgenstein’s work, early and late, his conception of philosophy and its methods, philosophy of language, mind, and logic;
   
• Wittgenstein’s relation to other founders and representatives of analytic philosophy (Frege, Russell, Carnap, and the so-called ordinary language philosophers);
   
• the application of Wittgensteinian ideas in different areas of philosophy including: ethics, philosophy of language and logic, philosophy of literature and film;
   
• the development of therapeutic conceptions of philosophy, and of concepts and methods for therapeutic philosophy.

We welcome applications from postgraduate students wishing to work in any of these areas. (Please feel free to email any of us to discuss supervisory and other arrangements).
 

Research seminars

We run a well-known Wittgenstein workshop with visiting speakers from the UK, Europe and the US. This provides a valuable opportunity for research students to engage with leading scholars in the field, present their own work, and be part of a vibrant intellectual environment in which competing approaches are vigorously explored.
 

Members of the School working in this area:

Eugen Fischer, Oskari Kuusela, Marie Mcginn, Rupert Read, Mark Rowe, Catherine Rowett.

 

Eugen Fischer

EUGEN FISCHER has pioneered substantive therapeutic accounts of Wittgenstein’s later work. Such readings proceed from scientifically informed and empirically grounded accounts of philosophical thought, which give content to talk of ‘diseases of the understanding’, the ‘symptoms’ and ‘illnesses’ they engender, and ‘therapies’ to ‘cure’ them. With the help of such accounts, Fischer has re-analysed Wittgenstein’s philosophical proceeding in core investigations as well as the nature and genesis of the problems Wittgenstein addresses there and Wittgenstein’s own conception of them. The underlying concern is to explain where and why therapy is needed in philosophy, and to develop techniques to carry it out.

 

Selected publications:

Books

FISCHER, E.,  Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy: Outline of a Philosophical Revolution. London and New York: Routledge, 2010.

Abstract and reviews: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415331791/

AMMERELLER, E. and FISCHER, E. eds., Wittgenstein at Work. Method in the “Philosophical Investigations”, London: Routledge, 2004 (paperback 2010).

 

Papers

FISCHER, E. ‘ Wittgenstein’s Non-Cognitivism – Explained and Vindicated’, Synthese, 162: 53-84, 2008.

FISCHER, E.  Philosophical Pictures, Synthese, 148: 469-501, 2006.

FISCHER, E. A Cognitive Self-Therapy – Philosophical Investigations sections 138-97, in: E. Ammereller and E.Fischer (eds.): Wittgenstein at Work. Method in the “Philosophical Investigations”, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 86-126.

(Further papers on Wittgenstein (and Austin) on http://eastanglia.academia.edu/EugenFischer.)

 

Oskari Kuusela

OSKARI KUUSELA’s research covers both Wittgenstein’s early and late philosophy, with special focus on philosophical methodology, philosophy of logic and language, also in relation to analytic philosophy more widely. He seeks to apply Wittgensteinian methods in ethics and addresses metaphilosophical questions generally from a Wittgensteinian angle.
 

Selected publications:

KUUSELA, O. The Struggle Against Dogmatism: Wittgenstein and the Concept of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674027718

 

Edited Volumes

KUUSELA, O. and McGINN, M. eds., The Wittgenstein Handbook, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

KAHANE, G., KANTERIAN, E., KUUSELA, O., eds., Wittgenstein and His Interpreters. Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

 

Book Chapters and Articles

KUUSELA, O. (forthcoming) ‘The Method of Language-games as a Method of Logic’, Philosophical Topics.

KUUSELA, O. (forthcoming in 2011), ‘Carnap and the Tractatus’ Philosophy of Logic’, Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy.

KUUSELA, O. ‘The Dialectic of Interpretations: Reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in M. Lavery and R. Read (eds), The Tractatus Wars, London: Routledge, 2011.

KUUSELA, O. ‘The Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy’. In Oskari Kuusela and Marie McGinn ed. Wittgenstein Handbook, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

(You can find forthcoming items on http://eastanglia.academia.edu/OKuusela.)

 

Marie McGinn

MARIE MCGINN mainly works on Wittgenstein's philosophy, early and late, and the problem of philosophical scepticism. Her recent work includes the preparation of a second edition of the Routledge Guidebook to the Philosophical Investigations, including new material on the philosophy of psychology; naturalism in Wittgenstein's later philosophy; papers on the work of John McDowell, especially his interpretation of Wittgenstein on rule-following and his defence of minimal empiricism.
 

Selected Publications:

Books

MCGINN, M. Elucidating the Tractatus: Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy of Logic and Language, (Oxford: Oxford UP), 2006 (paperback 2009.

MCGINN, M. Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations, in the Philosophy Guidebooks series, ed.  T.Crane and J.Wolf (London: Routledge), 1997. A second edition is due to be published in 2010.

Papers

MCGINN, M. ‘Wittgenstein’s On Certainty’, in Epistemology Handbook, ed. J.Greco, (Oxford: OUP), 2008.

MCGINN, M. ‘Recognizing the ground that lies before us as ground: McDowell on how to read Philosophical Investigations, in Proceedings of the Austrian Wittgenstein Society, 2010.

 

Catherine Rowett 

(formerly publishing as Catherine Osborne, from 1979 to 2011)

CATHERINE ROWETT brings interests and interpretative strategies informed by the work of Wittgenstein and his followers to her exegesis of texts in ancient philosophy. She uses ancient philosophy, read in this way, to question entrenched ways of thinking that have become problematic in modern philosophy.

Selected publications:

Books

OSBORNE, C., Dumb beasts and dead philosophers: humanity and the humane in ancient philosophy and literature Oxford University Press 2007. [ISBN 978-0-19-928206-7]. Oxford Scholarship online 2008 (paperback 2009).
 

Papers and Book Chapters

OSBORNE, C., 'Socrates in the Platonic dialogues', Philosophical Investigations, 29: 1-21, 2006.

OSBORNE, C., 'Heraclitus and the rites of established religion' in What is a God?  Studies in the nature of Greek divinity edited by Alan B. Lloyd, London: Duckworth/The Classical Press of Wales 1997, pp 35-42 (ISBN 0 7156 2779 1).

OSBORNE, C. Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love  Oxford, Clarendon Press 1994. pp. xiv + 246.  [ISBN 0-19-826761-4]. (paperback 1996).

(You can find forthcoming items on http://eastanglia.academia.edu/CatherineOsborne.)

 

Rupert Read

RUPERT READ is perhaps the leading British advocate of the ‘New Wittgensteinian’ (‘resolute’) approach to Wittgenstein’s work, early and late. Read’s current research focuses primarily on working out the consequences of this in confluence with the later Gordon Baker’s emphasis on Wittgenstein’s philosophising as radically therapeutic. For example, besides his ongoing exegetical work, Read applies this conception of philosophy to develop a Wittgensteinian reading of Kuhn, a therapeutic philosophy of how (some) films work on their audience, and a philosophy of literature that takes seriously the transitional character of literary nonsense.
 

Selected publications:

Books

READ, R. The New Wittgenstein (co-edited with Alice Crary, 2000), London: Routledge.

READ, R. Beyond the Tractatus wars (co-edited with Matt Lavery, 2011), London: Routledge.

READ, R. Kuhn (co-authored with Wes Sharrock, 2002), Oxford: Polity.
 

Papers

READ, R. "On approaching schizophrenia through Wittgenstein", in Philosophical Psychology  14:4 (2001), 449-475

READ, R. “‘Perspicuous presentation’: a perspicuous presentation” (co-authored with Phil Hutchinson)  Philosophical Investigations 31:2, 2008, 141-160.

READ, R. “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as a war book”, in New Literary History, 2010.

 

(You can find forthcoming items on http://eastanglia.academia.edu/RupertRead.)

 

M.W. Rowe 

M.W.ROWE is particularly interested in Wittgenstein's philosophical method, his literary forms, and his significance as a cultural figure.
 

Selected publications:

Papers

ROWE, M. W. 'Goethe and Wittgenstein', 'Criticism without Theory' and 'Wittgenstein's Romantic Inheritance' all reprinted in M.W.Rowe, Philosophy and Literature: A Book of Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) pp.1-72.

ROWE, M. W., 'Wittgenstein, Plato, and the Historical Socrates', Philosophy, 82, 2007, pp.45-85.