Abstract
This paper aims to distinguish Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘form of life’ from other concepts or expressions that have been confused or conflated with it, such as ‘language-game’, ‘certainty’, ‘patterns of life’, ‘ways of living’ and ‘facts of living’. Competing interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘form(s) of life’ are reviewed (Baker & Hacker, Cavell, Conway, Garver), and it is concluded that Wittgenstein intended both a singular and a plural use of the concept; with, where the human is concerned, a single human form of life characterized by innumerable forms of human life.
Highlights
This paper aims to demarcate Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘form(s) of life’ from other concepts or expressions that have been confused or conflated with it, such as, ‘language-game’, ‘certainty’, ‘patterns of life’, ‘ways of living’ and ‘facts of living’
Competing interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘form(s) of life’ are reviewed (Baker & Hacker, Cavell, Conway, Garver), and it is concluded that Wittgenstein intended both a singular and a plural use of the concept; with, where the human is concerned, a single human form of life characterized by innumerable forms of human life
That Wittgenstein is working his way towards the idea that, yes, extremely general facts of nature – which include ‘regular ways of acting’ (CE 397)) shared by all human beings – are certainties, they can only be such within a form of life
Summary
This paper aims to demarcate Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘form(s) of life’ from other concepts or expressions that have been confused or conflated with it, such as, ‘language-game’, ‘certainty’, ‘patterns of life’, ‘ways of living’ and ‘facts of living’. The givenness or indubitability or basicness of some facts of living are such only in the coherent context of a particular form of life It seems to me, that Wittgenstein is working his way towards the idea that, yes, extremely general facts of nature – which include ‘regular ways of acting’ (CE 397)) shared by all human beings – are certainties (or objects of certainty), they can only be such within a form of life. General facts of nature that belong to our human form of life are objects of certainty for all humans, whereas the facts that frame the various forms of human life are objects of certainty for only some humans depending on culture, society, education, interest etc It will be a given for all human beings that people need to breathe air, eat, drink, sleep; that they can walk, feel pain, and use language; that they normally live in communities and do not systematically kill each other. The interpretation of form of life as synonymous with ‘patterns of life’ and with ‘language-game’
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