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Can a Form of Life be Wrong?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Lawrence M. Hinman
Lawrence M. Hinman
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

In recent years, a particular doctrine about forms of life has come to be associated with Wittgenstein's name by followers and critics of his philosophy alike. It is not a doctrine which Wittgenstein espoused or even, given his understanding of philosophy, one which he could have accepted; nor is it worthy of acceptance on its own merits. I shall here outline the standard interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on forms of life, consider the textual basis for such a reading of Wittgenstein, present a more consistent reading of the texts, place the problem of forms of life within a wider philosophical context, and show the ways in which it is indeed possible to say that a form of life is wrong. In the process, I shall note some important similarities between Wittgenstein's actual position, Quine's analysis of scientific knowledge, and Hans-Georg Gadamer's claims about the fusion of horizons.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 225 , July 1983, pp. 339 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 Peter, Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (New York:Humanities Press, 1958), 100–101.Google Scholar

2 Roger, Trigg, Reason and Commitment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 60–61.Google Scholar

3 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Certainty, On, translated by Denis, Paul and , G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1969Google Scholar), 83c. All further references to this work will be given in the text by using the abbreviation ‘OC followed by the paragraph number.

4 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Philosophical InvestigationsGoogle Scholar, translated by Manscombe, G. E. (New York: Macmillan, 1963)Google Scholar. All further references to this work will be given in the text by using the abbreviation ‘PI’ References to Part One will use paragraph numbers; references to Part Two will use page numbers.

5 Willard Van, Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 42.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Farm, K. T., Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971).Google Scholar

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8 This point emerges most clearly in Wittgensteinian discussions of Descartes dream argument and the evil genius argument.

9 Hans-Georg, Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 235ff. Cf. especially pp. 239–240: ‘... the fundamental prejudice of the Enlightenment is the prejudice against prejudice itself, which deprives tradition of its power’.Google Scholar

10 On the relationship between Husserl and Wittgenstein in this regard, see Earl, Taylor, ‘Lebenswelt and Lebensformen: Husserl and Wittgenstein on the Goal and Method of Philosophy’, Human Studies I, No. 2 (April 1978), 184–200. The similarities with Heidegger's analysis of being-in-the-world are even more striking than they are in the case of Husserl.Google Scholar

11 Gadamer discusses the parallel development of Wittgenstein's thought in the essay, ‘The Phenomenological Movement’, in his Philosophical Hermeneutics, translated and edited by David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 173–177.Google Scholar

12 Gadamer, , Truth and Method, esp. pp. 273f, 337f. and 358.Google Scholar