Wittgenstein's Form of Life

(Paperback, NIPPOD)

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Wittgenstein's Form of Life reveals the intricate relationship between language and life throughout Ludwig Wittgenstein's work. Drawing on the entire corpus of his writings, David Kishik offers a synoptic view of Wittgenstein's evolving thought by considering the notion of form of life as its vanishing center. The book takes its cue from the idea that 'to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life', in order to present the first holistic account of Wittgenstein's philosophy in the spirit of a new wave of interpretations, pioneered by Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond and James Conant. It is also an enticing contribution to the rising discourse revolving around the subject of life, led by the recent work of Giorgio Agamben. Standing on the threshold between the Analytic and the Continental philosophical traditions, Kishik shows how Wittgenstein's philosophy of language points toward a new philosophy of life, thereby making a unique contribution to our ethical and political thought.

Reviews

'Two parallel enterprises run through David Kishik's challenging book: the first one is a brilliant inquiry into Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, showing how Wittgenstein brings language into the sphere of life. The second one ventures on something thoroughly unprecedented, attempting to think about life within the sphere of language. The result is both daring and convincing.' Giorgio Agamben, University of Venice, Italy
'Working its way through ethical themes that criss-cross at different points in Wittgenstein's early and later writings...David Kishik's book is valuable as a contribution not only to philosophical conversations about Wittgenstein's thought, but also to conversations about ethics.' Alice Crary, New School for Social Research, USA.
'This inventive and intriguing book boldly inter-connects Wittgenstein's early and later writings. Kishik suggests that we cannot properly understand 'form of life' unless we properly understand 'logical form', and he thinks of life as a form - as a formal concept -- just as much as he thinks 'form of life' as we have traditionally understood it. His book thus realizes an important possibility implicit in the Conant-Diamond reading of Wittgenstein: That one doesn't need to keep apologising for (using) the Tractatus; that Wittgenstein's thought as a whole is worth thinking... this book puts standard relativist readings of 'form of life' into the shade, and Kishik's provocative expansion on the internal relation, that goes without saying, between life and language/meaning is thus much more worthy of reading than most of what has been written about form of life in the last sixty plus years.' Rupert Read, University of East Anglia, UK

Author Bio

David Kishik is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, USA.