Research
Research Interests
In my current philosophical work I aim to defend a form of linguistic idealism, the thesis that the world is in some sense created by language; relatedly, I am interested in systematic and historical aspects of the theory of the proposition, and in the theory of literature. In 2008 I published a book on the unity of the proposition, and have just released a sequel entitled 'Language and World: A Defence of Linguistic Idealism' (Routledge, 2020). I have also published books on the cognitive value of literature (Language, Truth, and Literature: a Defence of Literary Humanism, 2013), on the poetry of Horace and A. E. Housman (Horace and Housman, 2013), and on the ideas of moral and linguistic compensation in the European tragic tradition (Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: a Philosophical Perspective, 2018). I plan to do further work on linguistic idealism in the context of a study of negation and falsity. I am also working on Virgil: I have a recent paper on the end of the Aeneid in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, and am writing a commentary on Book 4 of the Aeneid. I am interested in supervising graduate students in any of the following areas: philosophy of language; philosophy of literature; the classical tradition; history of philosophy.
Research grants
The Theory of Complexly Signifiables.
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
February 2003 - May 2003
Research collaborations
Daniel Hill
Daniel Hill and I have collaborated on two articles.