Oswald Hanfling

Oswald Hanfling (21 December 1927 – 25 October 2005) was a German-British ordinary language philosopher. He was born in Berlin in 1927. His parents were Jewish, and after their business was vandalized during Kristallnacht in 1938, he was sent to England by Kindertransport. He lived with a foster family in Bedford. After World War II, he located his family in Israel with the help of the Red Cross. Hanfling left school at 14 and worked in business for 25 years, eventually running his own employment agency. He learned English by reading comics. Bored with business, he pursued higher education through correspondence, earning a BA in philosophy from Birkbeck College, University of London, with a first-class honours degree. He completed his PhD in 1971. Hanfling was appointed a lecturer at the Open University in 1970 and retired as a professor in 1993. His work was significantly influenced by the later Wittgenstein. He was a regular attendee and contributor to the British Society of Aesthetics.