Research Group: History of Philosophy

In the influential Philosophical Gourmet Report (2009), we are ranked equal first in the UK and equal fifth internationally for our work in nineteenth-century continental philosophy. We recently completed a £300K Arts and Humanities Research Council project, titled Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy, which brought together leading philosophers in the fields of Nietzsche scholarship and contemporary ethics with the aim of assessing, and finding responses to, the challenge that Nietzsche's critique continues to pose to modern moral philosophy.

We have published on a variety of topics in the History of Philosophy from Spinoza's metaphysics to Hume's aesthetics, in addition to our major research focus on Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

Philosophy has teamed up with other disciplines in the University of Southampton's Faculty of Humanities - specifically, English, History and Music - to establish a Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies .

Current Research Student Profile:  Jenny Goodall

"My thesis topic is Nietzsche's views on human suffering and how they connect to Schopenhauer's. I aim to demonstrate in detail that although Nietzsche agrees with Schopenhauer's contention that suffering predominates in human life, his response to this radically diverges from Schopenhauer's and that Nietzsche's views are a reaction to Schopenhauer's.  I am developing a close study of Nietzsche's views on human suffering, including the topics of Nietzsche's highly individualistic conception of human beings, compassion and pity, human greatness, value, affirmation and negation, and comparing Nietzsche's views on these issues with Schopenhauer's." Jenny Goodall

Beyond Selflessness Reading Nietzche's Genealogy by Christopher Janaway

Heidegger and the Measure of Truth by Denis McManus