Quotation
Last reviewed:
“To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein · Analytic philosophy · Modern · 1953
What does it mean?
To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life. He has just described builders whose words are orders tied to a job. The words do not sit on top of the life. They are part of it. A rival reading inflates 'form of life' into an uncriticisable culture: whatever a group does is a language-game you may not question. He is making a point about meaning, that words need activities, not issuing a relativism about justice. Another reading treats the phrase as anthropology from a distance. The builders are a philosophical fiction.
Did Ludwig Wittgenstein really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Anscombe's English. The remark follows the builders' language, a narrow language of slabs and beams. 'Form of life' is not a vague culture-word here. It is the activities in which the words are at home.
Where it comes from
Philosophical Investigations §19, in G. E. M. Anscombe's translation
Approximate date: 1953.
How to use it
A new parent in Cardiff and a neonatal ward use 'feeding' in ways that only make sense inside different activities. Imagining the word without the activity is how the two of them talk past each other. The remark asks you to imagine the activity. It does not say the ward and the kitchen are equally good descriptions of the baby.
A mindset reading
Form of life became a slogan in cultural theory. In §19 it is still attached to a primitive language-game. If you cannot say what the builders are doing, you are using the English and not the remark.
Understand the philosophy
The Investigations open by disagreeing with a picture of language from Augustine. Section 19 is an early move in that disagreement. It is not the last word on ethics, and Wittgenstein was wary of people who wanted it to be.
- meaning
- society
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life. He has just described builders whose words are orders tied to a job. The words do not sit on top of the life. They are part of it. A rival reading inflates 'form of life' into an uncriticisable culture: whatever a group does is a language-game you may not question. He is making a point about meaning, that words need activities, not issuing a relativism about justice. Another reading treats the phrase as anthropology from a distance. The builders are a philosophical fiction.
Did Ludwig Wittgenstein really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Anscombe's English. The remark follows the builders' language, a narrow language of slabs and beams. 'Form of life' is not a vague culture-word here. It is the activities in which the words are at home.
Which work is it in?
Philosophical Investigations §19, in G. E. M. Anscombe's translation Approximate date: 1953.