Caveat Lector: From Wittgenstein to The Philosophy of Reading

Against the grain of Analytic philosophy’s general avoidance of the fact or phenomenon of reading, and starting out with Wittgenstein’s compact investigation into “the part the word [‘reading’] plays in our life, therewith the language-game in which we employ it”, in this essay I explore the nature of reading, and thereby initiate what is in effect a new philosophical sub-discipline: the philosophy of reading.