"In this book, Rupert Read outlines the first resolute reading, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein school, of the Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding Wittgenstein's later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport. Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user from compulsive (and destructive) patterns of thought, freeing one for possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime goal in philosophy. This book consists in a sequential reading, along these lines, of what Read considers the most important and controversial passages in the Philosophical Investigations: 1, 16, 43, 95 & 116 & 122, 130-3, 149-151, 186, 198-201, 217, and 284-6. Read claims that this liberatory conception is simultaneously an ethical conception. The PI should be considered a work of ethics in that its central concern becomes our relation with others. Wittgensteinian liberations challenge widespread assumptions about how we allegedly are independent of and separate from others. Wittgenstein's Liberatory Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wittgenstein, and to scholars of the political philosophy of liberation and the ethics of relation"--

Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy

Politics & Social Sciences

Read, Rupert

Philosophy

Routledge

In this book, Rupert Read offers the first outline of a resolute reading, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein ‘school’, of the Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport. 
Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user from compulsive (and destructive) patterns of thought, freeing one for possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime goal in philosophy. This book consists in a sequential reading, along these lines, of what Read considers the most important and controversial passages in the Philosophical Investigations: 1, 16, 43, 95 & 116 & 122, 130–3, 149–151, 186, 198–201, 217, and 284–6. Read claims that this liberatory conception is simultaneously an ethical conception. The PI should be considered a work of ethics in that its central concern becomes our relation with others. Wittgensteinian liberations challenge widespread assumptions about how we allegedly are independent of and separate from others. 
Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wittgenstein, and to scholars of the political philosophy of liberation and the ethics of relation.

Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy: Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations

A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)

Inspired by the philosophy of Wittgenstein and his idea that the purpose of real philosophical thinking is not to discover something new, but to show in a strikingly different light what is already there, this book provides philosophical readings of a number of ‘arthouse’ and Hollywood films. Each chapter contains a discussion of two films―one explored in greater detail and the other analyzed as a minor key which reveals the possibility for the book's ideas to be applied across different films, registers, and genres. The readings are not only interpretive, but they offer a way of thinking and feeling about, with, and through films which is genuinely transformative. Rupert Read’s main contention is that certain films can bring about a change in how we see the world. He advocates an ecological approach to film-philosophy analysis, arguing that film can re-shape the viewer’s relationship to the environment and other living beings. The transformative 'wake-up call' of these films is enlightenment in its true sense. The result is a book that ambitiously aims to change, though film, how we think of ourselves and our place in the world, at a time when such change is more needed than ever before.

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

'Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander take us deep inside the debates, tactics, and passion that have bound Extinction Rebellion together from its founding days, bringing us radical reflections from the frontlines of rebellion. If you want to understand the movement that is finally waking us up, read this book.'- Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist 
'Invaluable reflections and next-step ideas right from the heart of arguably the most inspiring and important movement of the twenty first century'. - Mike Berners-Lee, author of There is no planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years 'Everyone should read this book. It is short, and impassioned, but full of important information: above all an honest and practical plea for us to seize the moment for change urgently. It is inspirational. Please, for all our sakes, read it, and take its timely words to heart.'- Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World 
'The ecological emergency is the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced, and Extinction Rebellion may be our last best chance to address it. Read this inside story of the most important social movement of our time.'- David Loy, author of Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis 
'From the eruption of XR in our lives in late 2018, Rupert Read has been closely involved in the organisation as an advisor, influencer, spokesperson and occasional critic. These fascinating essays read like dispatches from the front line, crackling with urgency, tempered by timely reflections, and reminding us of the scale of the challenge ahead as we rebuild our shattered, post-coronavirus economies.'- Jonathon Porritt, former Director of the UK Sustainable Development Commission and of Friends of the Earth 
'Activist-philosopher Rupert Read, a key thinker of Extinction Rebellion, has collected a treasure trove of foundational essays, documenting the transformational XR UK experience, that will be immensely valuable for activists around the world trying to replicate that achievement. The book is incisive, pertinent, self-critical, well-written, and, in the XR way, occasionally cheeky. Anyone concerned with combating the broader wave of ecological collapse - that led to the pandemic and that is rising behind it - should read Read.'- Ken Ward, protagonist in the documentary The Reluctant Radical 
'Most of us like to watch movies about people saving the world but too rarely do we even try to do it ourselves. Despite the situation so obviously calling for it! This is a book about what might well turn out to be the most important social movement in history.'- David Graeber, author of The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside

Science & Math

Earth Sciences

Simplicity Institute

"In this humble, sincere and quick-witted book, Rupert Read invites us to find courage, stop being afraid of fear, and trust people without infantilizing them. It's time to get serious about mass mobilisation as Rupert does with compassion, love, rage and authenticity." 
- Pablo Servigne & Raphael Stevens, authors of How everything can collapse and Another end of the world is possible.\n"This is a book for everyone - a deeply invitational book, not offering certainty but glimmerings of what we can hope may be possible. Whoever you may be, I hope you will read it and find it speaks to you." 
- Prof. Cora Diamond, author, The realistic spirit.\nAs climate breakdown begins, the question each of us must ask is: Do I really want to know the truth? Am I willing to face it?\nIn this book Rupert Read argues compellingly that truthfulness on climate has surprising rewards: we get to live authentically, win or lose; to be with each other rather than stuck in individualised silos of anxiety; and, most important of all, to turn the difficult emotions which climate-honesty generates into energy. In a series of provocative and stimulating chapters, Read shows how truth is a mighty power that can mobilise untold millions.\nRead tackles in particular 'the 1.5 delusion' - the belief that it's still practically possible for humanity to remain in the 'safe' space below 1.5°C of global over-heat. He suggests abandoning this fantasy makes visible the terrible injustice being perpetrated upon the global South and on our children, and that radical truth-telling will liberate us to transformatively adapt to our future on a changed planet.\nThis book is for anyone and everyone who cares.\n"Don't read this book if you want to remain stuck in any kind of denial!" 
- Chris Packham, BBC broadcaster.

Do you want to know the truth? The surprising rewards of climate honesty

A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes examines how some of the classic philosophical paradoxes that have so puzzled philosophers over the centuries can be dissolved. Read argues that paradoxes such as the Sorites, Russell’s Paradox and the paradoxes of time travel do not, in fact, need to be solved. Rather, using a resolute Wittgensteinian ‘therapeutic’ method, the book explores how virtually all apparent philosophical paradoxes can be diagnosed and dissolved through examining their conditions of arising; to loosen their grip and therapeutically liberate those philosophers suffering from them (including oneself). The book contrasts such paradoxes with real, ‘lived paradoxes’: paradoxes that are genuinely experienced outside of the philosopher’s study, in everyday life. Thus Read explores instances of lived paradox (such as paradoxes of self-hatred and of denial of other humans’ humanity) and the harm they can cause, psychically, morally or politically. These lived paradoxes, he argues, sometimes cannot be dissolved using a Wittgensteinian treatment. Moreover, in some cases they do not need to be: for some, such as the paradoxical practices of Zen Buddhism (and indeed of Wittgenstein himself), can in fact be beneficial. The book shows how, once philosophers’ paradoxes have been exorcized, real lived paradoxes can be given their due.

A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes

Lexington Books

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of ‘new paradigm’ and ‘scientific revolution’ make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. 
Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed studies of the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his ‘foes’ or his ‘fans’ claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of ‘incommensurability’, and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology.

Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolutions

Sharrock, Wes

Polity

Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolutions (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

A key development in Wittgenstein Studies over recent years has been the advancement of a resolutely therapeutic reading of the Tractatus. Rupert Read offers the first extended application of this reading of Wittgenstein, encompassing Wittgenstein's later work too, to examine the implications of Wittgenstein's work as a whole upon the domains especially of literature, psychopathology, and time. Read begins by applying Wittgenstein's remarks on meaning to language, examining the consequences our conception of philosophy has for the ways in which we talk about meaning. He goes on to engage with literary texts as Wittgensteinian, where 'Wittgensteinian' does not mean expressive of a Wittgenstein philosophy, but involves the literature in question remaining enigmatic, and doing philosophical work of its own. He considers Faulkner's work as productive too of a broadly Wittgensteinian philosophy of psychopathology. Read then turns to philosophical accounts of time, finding a link between the division of time into discrete moments and solipsism of the present moment as depicted in philosophy on the one hand and psychopathological states on the other. This important book positions itself at the forefront of a revolutionary movement in Wittgenstein studies and philosophy in general and offers a new and dynamic way of using Wittgenstein's works.

Applying Wittgenstein (Continuum Studies in British Philosophy)

Continuum

Philosophy for Life is a bold call for the practice of philosophy in our everyday lives. Philosopher and writer Rupert Read explores a series of important and often provocative contemporary political and cultural issues from a philosophical perspective, arguing that philosophy is not a body of doctrine, but a practice, a vantage point from which life should be analysed and, more importantly, acted upon.Philosophy for Life is a personal journey that explores four key areas of society today: Politics, Religion, Art, and the Environment. Taking tangible examples from modern politics, from climate change to the war on terror, and culture, from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Read shows that philosophy is already an active part of today's world. This captivating and timely book offers a philosophical response to some of the key questions facing today's society and encourages us to use philosophy as a kind of therapy. Philosophy for Life shows that we can improve our perspective on the world and our place in it by doing philosophy everyday.

Philosophy for Life: Applying Philosophy in Politics and Culture

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