Form of life (philosophy)

Form of life (Lebensform) is a term used sparingly by Ludwig Wittgenstein in posthumously published works Philosophical Investigations (PI), On Certainty and in parts of his Nachlass. Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) was concerned with the structure of language, responding to Frege and Russell. Later, Wittgenstein found the need to revise the view held in TLP as he did not resolve issues concerning elementary propositions. Leading up to a revised view in his PI, still concerned with language, but now focusing on how it is used and not insisting that it has an inherent structure or set of rules. Deriving from this that language comes about as a result of human activity.

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben doesn't take Wittgenstein's concepts in his analysis of the history of Western monasticism in order to rethink "bare life" in contemporary (bio)politics. In The Highest Poverty – Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, he finds earlier versions of form-of-life in monastic rules, developing from 'vita vel regula', 'regula et vita', 'forma vivendi', and 'forma vitae'. Agamben looks at the emerging genre of written rules starting in the 9th century, and its development into both law and something beyond law in the Franciscan form-of-life, in which the Franciscans replaced the idea that we possess our life (or objects generally) with the concept of 'usus', that is 'use'.