Picturing life

More about the book

Wittgenstein‘s critique of philosophy often employed the notion of images. His various remarks on ethics and religion seem to suggest that we live in, and base our decisions on, images; it is simply part of our human form of life. Moreover, from his earliest writings Wittgenstein continually suggests that ethics cannot be captured propositionally, but that it is found in ways of seeing the world or in images which ‚hold us captive‘. This collection will examine the role of imagery, symbolism and iconic practices in Wittgenstein‘s ethical thought, and thus contributes to the on-going, vital interest in Wittgensteinian ethics on the one hand, as well as to the recent debates on his notions in visual culture studies on the other. The papers combine these two fields of interest and provide fresh insight by approaching these issues from a philosophical as well as media and cultural studies perspective.