102 Strength to Strength

of Wittgenstein's §19 is not, then, in the concept of "form of life" but only
this: that to investigate a language means to investigate a form of life:

To conclude: the expression "form of life" plays a very small role in Witt­
genstein's later philosophy. No aura or mystique should be allowed to
attach itself to his notion of a form of life. In itself it is of no great moment.
What is of great moment is the larger body of thought of which the con­
cept of a form of life is merely a surface ornament. That larger bo�y of
.
thought is the ethnological conception of language as a form of actiVJty
embedded in the ways of living of a language-using community. That
activity is normative, i.e. rule-governed-but not in the manner of a cal­
culus; rather in the manner of a garne.87

In order to make sense of Hacker, I would insist that his statement

that "form of life" is not of great moment, comes simply to claim that
Wittgenstein himself is neither coining nor referring to a ne� p�ilosophi­
cal concept with that usage (of no great moment) but deploying 1t to make
an argument that is of great moment at that moment.88 It would follow,
therefore, what the language lacks, the form of life cannot comprise."
As Hacker sums up, as lucidly as could be hoped for, "In short, human
beings in different epochs, in different cultures, have different forms of life.
Different educations, interests and concerns, languages, different human
relations and relations to nature and the world constitute distinct forms
of life. For different cultures form different conceptual structures, adopt
distinctive forms and norms of representation, limited only by the vague
boundaries of the concept of a form of representat10n · or a 1anguage. " 90 In
investigating a language, we are investigating a form of life. A form of life
that has no word that means "religion" cannot have religion in it, nor can
there be a "Judaism" without a word that refers to it.

Brown Books [Oxford: Blackwell, 1969], 134). Since that book was written in English, it is clear
that, for him, Lebensform is a virtual equivalent of English "culture," but, paradoxically for
English, "form of life," seems less theoretically pitfall-ridden than "culture.-"--
87. Hacker, "Forms of Life," 18.
88. I must confess that "merely a surface ornament'' confounds me quite totally.
89. As Hacker so well sums up his compelling point: "Wittgenstein's aim was to under­
mine such conceptions of philosophy, philosophy of logic and language [as those of Frege,
Russell, and his own Tractatus) and to replace them with an anthropological and ethn�logical
conception. According to the latter (which incidentally harm�nizes 'in the Iarge' with von
.
Humboldt's observations on thought and language), language ts not the totahty of sentences
that can be generated from a set of primitive indefinables, definitions, formation- and trans­
formation-rules. It is rather an uncircumscribable motley of human activities, of the playing
of language-games, in the medley of human life" (Hacker, "Forms of Life," 4).
90. Hacker, "Forms of Life," 11.
viii Contents

AbelJ. Herzberg's The Memoirs of King Herod:

The Interaction between a Tragic Tyrant and His Subjects
Jan Willem van Henten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
Study Is Greater, for Study Leads to Action
Leonard Gordon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
Dicing and Divination: New Approaches to Gambling
in Jewish History
Jonathan D. Cohen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663
Bibliography of the Writings of Shaye J. D.Cohen
prepared by Menachem Butler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Index ....................................................... 687