Book contents
- Wittgenstein and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy
- Wittgenstein and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations of Wittgenstein’s Major Works
- Introduction
- 1 Writing after Wittgenstein
- 2 A Wittgensteinian Phenomenology of Criticism
- 3 Appreciating Material
- 4 A Vision of Language for Literary Historians
- 5 Wittgenstein and the Prospects for a Contemporary Literary Humanism
- 6 Storied Thoughts
- 7 Wittgenstein and Lyric
- 8 Life, Logic, Style
- 9 Wittgenstein’s Apocalyptic Subjectivity
- Index
8 - Life, Logic, Style
On Late Wittgenstein
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2022
- Wittgenstein and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy
- Wittgenstein and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations of Wittgenstein’s Major Works
- Introduction
- 1 Writing after Wittgenstein
- 2 A Wittgensteinian Phenomenology of Criticism
- 3 Appreciating Material
- 4 A Vision of Language for Literary Historians
- 5 Wittgenstein and the Prospects for a Contemporary Literary Humanism
- 6 Storied Thoughts
- 7 Wittgenstein and Lyric
- 8 Life, Logic, Style
- 9 Wittgenstein’s Apocalyptic Subjectivity
- Index
Summary
While readers have long recognized the innovative styles of Wittgenstein’s writings, this chapter considers the philosophical significance of the concept, perception, and attribution of style in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and other works. Contrary to some interpreters, I argue in the first section that the later Wittgenstein continued to see philosophy as logic, but expanded his conception of what constituted “the logical” to include “forms of life,” “life,” “living,” and so on. In the second section, I draw on recent work on the logical form of judgment about living organisms to describe distinctive logical features of such judgment including necessity, unity, generality and its relation to particularity, and temporality, and in the third section, I show that this logical form and its distinctive features can elucidate claims made about forms of life in Philosophical Investigations. In the final section, I show how Wittgenstein’s concept of style exhibits the same logical features and thereby serves as a guiding metaphor for recognizing “the logical” in our everyday life-activities.
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- Wittgenstein and Literary Studies , pp. 168 - 193Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023