Honorary & Retired staff

Roger White

Honorary Fellow

Roger White is currently doing research on early analytic philosophy, in particular Wittgenstein's Tractatus, and on the concepts of analogy and metaphor.  As part of an extensive exploration of the concept of analogy, he has examined the way in which analogy is exploited in science, and, in particular, in the biological sciences.

He is also revising an article on the central role given to analogy in Aristotle's biology, and is collaborating with Professor Gregory Radick and Jon Hodge on an extended article that seeks to spell out the precise structure of the analogical argument for natural selection employed by Darwin in the Origin.

"White (1996) presents by far the best philosophical treatment of complex metaphors in literature and poetry as well as an original analysis of the structure of metaphorical interpretation"
(Josef Stern, in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language, ed. Devitt & Hanley (Oxford, 2006).

"Roger White's book on the Tractatus is an exemplary work. It succeeds in introducing the novice to the logical and metaphysical doctrines needed to navigate the archipelago of epigrams that constitute the Tractatus. It also succeeds in advancing our understanding of those doctrines. One is left with a profound impression of the Janus-faced features of the Tractatus, features that enabled Russell and Ramsey to make sense of the Tractatus as a work of discursive genius but eventually led Wittgenstein to recognise that what he had written was nonsense."
(Fraser Macbride, *Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews*)

Research Interests

  • Logic
  • Philosophy of Language
  • Wittgenstein
  • Frege
  • Metaphor
  • Theory of Literary Criticism
  • Philosophy of Religion

Publications

  • Talking about God: the Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language, Ashgate (forthcoming, July 2010)
  • Wittgenstein's Tractatus, a Reader's Guide (London: Continuum, 2006).
  • '"Literal Meaning" and "Figurative Meaning"', Theoria 67 (2001), 24-59.
  • The Structure of Metaphor: The Way the Language of Metaphor Works (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
  • '"Ought implies Can"-Kant and Luther, a contrast', in Kant and his Influence, ed. G. M. Ross and T McWalter (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990).
  • 'MacKinnon and the Parables', in Christ, Ethics and Tragedy, ed. K. Surin (Cambridge: CUP, 1989).
  • 'Notes on Analogical Predication and Speaking about God', in Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology, ed. B. Hebblethwaite and S. Sutherland (Cambridge: CUP, 1982).
  • 'Wittgenstein On Identity', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 78 (1978), 157-74.

Translations

  • Frege, Posthumous Writings, trans. P. Long and R. White (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).
  • Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, ed. R. Rhees, trans. Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971).