The School of Philosophy is an international centre of Wittgenstein research, with one of the highest concentrations of Wittgenstein scholars worldwide.

The School's research centres on the following topics:

  • Wittgenstein's work, early and late, his conception of philosophy and its methods;
  • Wittgenstein's relation to other founders and representatives of analytic philosophy; 
  • 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.

Wittgenstein Workshop

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

Dr 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. (See publications and Academia.edu page)

Dr 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. (See publications and Academia.edu page)

Prof 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. (See publications and Academia.edu page: published as Catherine Osborne until 2011)

Dr 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. (See publications and Academia.edu page)