About
I am interested in language, literature, and the history of thought. I have published extensively in metaphysics, philosophy of language, history of philosophy, literary theory, aesthetics, literary criticism, and the classical tradition. My main philosophical project is a defence of linguistic idealism, the view that the world is in some sense a product of language. This has been the focus of much of my work for the last fifteen years or so, and it is also the principal theme of my recent book Language and World (Routledge, 2020). I have recently published an edited collection, The Question of Linguistic Idealism (OUP, 2025), and am working on a book with the provisional title 'Intimations of Linguistic Idealism in Early Wittgenstein'. In the field of literary studies I have a commentary on the fourth book of Virgil's Aeneid forthcoming (LUP, 2025), and am writing a book provisionally titled 'Tragedy and the Foundations of Morality in Melville's Billy Budd'. My main non-academic pursuits, overlapping extensively with my academic interests, lie in the areas of literature, music, and the natural world. I maintain a website (https://literaryvoice.org/) on which I mount recordings of some of my favourite pieces of poetry and prose. I was born in Glasgow and grew up in Aberdeen, where I attended Robert Gordon's College, and I studied at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. I have also spent extensive periods in Germany, where part of my family lives, and have conducted research, under the aegis of the Humboldt Stiftung, at the universities of Mainz and Bonn. My wikipedia page is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Gaskin