Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings inspired contemporary philosophical thinking and advanced many issues that had been addressed by traditional philosophy. The questions raised by the Viennese philosopher initiated debates on a reconsideration of philosophical terminology. This is especially true for a term that has generated at least three significant controversies since its creation and will probably generate more disputes in the following years. It is the expression “form(s) of life” which translates into German as “Lebensform(en)” and “Form des Lebens”. The present volume contains contributions on forms of life, language games and the influence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy on other scholears.

Far from overthrowing or stepping outside that tradition, Wittgenstein builds on it, draws from it, and contributes brilliantly to the fruition of certain elements in it. In This Complicated Form of Life, Garver analyzes from several angles Wittgenstein's relationship to Kant, and to what Finch has called Wittgenstein's completion of Kant's revolt against the Cartesian hegemony of epistemology in philosophy.

This volume deals with the connection between thinking-and-speaking and our form(s) of life. All contributions engage with Wittgenstein’s approach to this topic. As a whole, the volume takes a stance against both biological and ethnological interpretations of the notion "form of life" and seeks to promote a broadly logico-linguistic understanding instead. The structure of this book is threefold. Part one focuses on lines of thinking that lead from Wittgenstein’s earlier thought to the concept of form of life in his later work. Contributions to part two examine the concrete philosophical function of this notion as well as the ways in which it differs from cognate concepts. Contributions to part three put Wittgenstein’s notion of form of life in perspective by relating it to phenomenology, ordinary language philosophy and problems in contemporary analytic philosophy.

The novel contains imagined lives that achieve a kind of meaning and intensity our own lives do not. Out of the novelist's moral imagination--the breadth and depth of his awareness of human motivations, tensions, and complexities--emerge fictional persons through whom we learn to read ourselves. This eloquent book, exploring fictional lives in crucial moments of choice and change, stresses both their difference from and their deep connections with life. Martin Price writes here about ways in which character has been conceived and presented in the novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with chapters that cogently argue the artistic value of character, Price then deals with the different forms character has taken in individual novels. His first discussions center on authors--Jane Austen, Stendhal, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Leo Tolstoy--who define individuals by their adherence or opposition to social norms. The next chapters deal with novelists for whom the moral world is largely internalized. The characters of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster live in society and act upon it, but the authors are particularly concerned with the confusions, terrors, and heroism that lie within consciousness. The last chapter uses novels about the artist by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Mann in order to apprehend the process by which experience is transformed into art. Avoiding both formalistic and moralistic extremes, this new book by a distinguished critic helps us recover a fuller sense of literary form and the forms of life from which it emerges.

Persons and Their Minds compares the conflicting claims of mindism and personism and argues for placing persons at the center of philosophy of mind. Mindism stems from Descartes, takes the spectator stance, and makes the mind the subject of mental verbs such as ?know,? ?think,? and ?believe.? Personism stems from Wittgenstein and Ryle, takes the agent stance, and restores persons to their proper place as subjects of mental verbs.Employing lessons taught by Wittgenstein and Ryle, the book offers a running criticism of mindism as it appears in the work of Descartes, Locke, Davidson, Fodor, Hume, Parfit, Dennett, Searle, McGinn, Flanagan, Chalmers, and Baars, and demonstrates personism's ability to resist various forms of mindism. Intended for upper-level or graduate students of philosophy, Persons and Their Minds should also interest psychologists, psychotherapists, and other professionals who use philosophy of mind in their work.

In On the Way to Theory, Lawrence Grossberg introduces the major ways of thinking that provide the backstory for contemporary Western theory. Asking readers to think about thinking, Grossberg traces cultural and critical theory’s foundations from the contested enlightenments to modern and postmodern conceptualizations of power, experience, language, and existence. He introduces key figures as historical characters and lays out the unique set of tools for thought that their “deep theories” offer. Through finely tuned and accessible descriptions of their concepts and logics, Grossberg highlights thinkers including Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Hall, defining the possibilities of their thought. This book is essential for those interested in how theories shape our understanding of the world, influence our choices, and define our realities. It challenges us to recognize the multiplicity and complexities of ways of thinking in our quest for knowledge and understanding. By setting out a story of theoretical foundations, Grossberg invites readers to think toward the future of theory and expand conversations around theoretical scrutiny and criticism.

Published in honor of Sergio Galvan, this collection concentrates on the application of logical and mathematical methods for the study of central issues in formal philosophy. The volume is subdivided into four sections, dedicated to logic and philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. The contributions adress, from a logical point of view, some of the main topics in these areas. The first two sections include formal treatments of: truth and paradoxes; definitions by abstraction; the status of abstract objects, such as mathematical objects and universal concepts; and the structure of explicit knowledge. The last two sections include papers on classical problems in philosophy of science, such as the status of subjective probability, the notion of verisimilitude, the notion of approximation, and the theory of mind and mental causation, and specific issues in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, such as the ontology of species, actions, and intelligible worlds, and the logic of religious belonging.

Wittgenstein's later writings generate a great deal of controversy and debate, as do the implications of his ideas for such topics as consciousness, knowledge, language and the arts. Oswald Hanfling addresses a widespeard tendency to ascribe to Wittgenstein views that go beyond those he actually held. Separate chapters deal with important topics such as the private language argument, rule-following, the problem of other minds, and the ascription of scepticism to Wittgenstein. Describing Wittgenstein as a 'humanist' thinker, he contrasts his views on language, art humanity and philosophy itself with those of scientifically minded philosophers. He argues that 'the human form of life' calls for a kind of understanding that cfannot be achieved by the methods of emirical science; that consiousness, for example, cannot properly be regarded as a property of the bran; and that the resulting 'problem of consoiusness is an illusion. Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life is essential reading for anyone interested in Wittgenstein's approach to what it means to be human. It will be invaluable to all Wittgenstein scholars, and all who are interested in the philosophy of mind, language and aesthetics.

This encyclopedia, magnificently edited by Byron Kaldis, will become a valuable source both of reference and inspiration for all those who are interested in the interrelation between philosophy and the many facets of the social sciences. A must read for every student of the humanities.--Wulf Gaertner, University of Osnabrueck, Germany "Byron Kaldis′ Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is a triumph. The entries are consistently good, the coverage is amazing, and he has managed to involve the whole scholarly community in this field. It shows off the field very well, and will be a magnificent resource for students and others." -- Stephen Turner, USF, USA " Like all good works of reference this Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is not to be treated passively: it provides clear and sometimes controversial material for constructive confrontation. It is a rich resource for critical engagement. The Encyclopedia conceived and edited by Byron Kaldis is a work of impressive scope and I am delighted to have it on my bookshelf."-- David Bloor, Edinburgh, UK "This splendid and possibly unique work steers a skilful course between narrower conceptions of philosophy and the social sciences. It will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers in either or both fields, and to anyone working on the interrelations between them." -- William Outhwaite, Newcastle, UK "A work of vast scope and widely gathered expertise, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is a splendid resource for anyone interested in the interface between philosophy and the social sciences." --Nicholas Rescher, Pittsburgh This encyclopedia is the first of its kind in bringing together philosophy and the social sciences. It is not only about the philosophy of the social sciences but, going beyond that, it is also about the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences. The subject of this encyclopedia is purposefully multi- and inter-disciplinary. Knowledge boundaries are both delineated and crossed over. The goal is to convey a clear sense of how philosophy looks at the social sciences and to mark out a detailed picture of how the two are interrelated: interwoven at certain times but also differentiated and contrasted at others. The Entries cover topics of central significance but also those that are both controversial and on the cutting-edge, underlining the unique mark of this Encyclopedia: the interrelationship between philosophy and the social sciences, especially as it is found in fresh ideas and unprecedented hybrid disciplinary areas. The Encyclopedia serves a further dual purpose: it contributes to the renewal of the philosophy of the social sciences and helps to promote novel modes of thinking about some of its classic problems. "The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences edited by Byron Kaldis, provides a unique, needed, and invaluable resource for researchers at every level. Unique because nothing else offers the breadth of coverage found in this work; needed because it permits researchers to find longer but also relatively brief, clear, but nonetheless expert articles introducing important topics; and invaluable because of the guidance offered to both related topics and further study. It should be the place that any interested person looks first when seeking to learn about philosophy and the social sciences." Paul Roth, UC Santa Cruz, USA "The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences edited by Byron Kaldis covers an enormous range of topics in philosophy and the social sciences and the entries are compact overviews of the essential issues" Harold Kincaid, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

At first sight, Karl Marx and Ludwig Wittgenstein may well seem to be as different from each other as it is possible for the ideas of two major intellectuals to be. Despite this standard conception, however, a small number of scholars have long suggested that there are deeper philosophical commonalities between Marx and Wittgenstein. They have argued that, once grasped, these commonalities can radically change and enrich understanding both of Marxism and of Wittgensteinian philosophy. This book develops and extends this unorthodox view, emphasising the mutual enrichment that comes from bringing Marx's and Wittgenstein's ideas into dialogue with one another. Essential reading for all scholars and philosophers interested in the Marxist philosophy and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, this book will also be of vital interest to those studying and researching in the fields of social philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of social science and political economy.