Introduction

When Wittgenstein looked at a particular neighborhood or form of life in the city of language, what he examined were surface details and activities. Activities were performed with adherence to rules that were perhaps beneath the surface, but these subterranean features could be made visible by asking the question, “What is the rule for …?” or by a dispute over a play in a game that requires reference to the rules, or even by a behavioral faux pas that breaches a rule or rules, resulting in embarrassment. The rules themselves were the product of the activities visible on the surface. They affect the activities with incomplete and indeterminable reciprocity. As products or codifications of activities, the rules demarcate the activity from other activities (chess from checkers, for example), but at the same time these rules have a provisional character. That is, they can be amended, bypassed (with something akin to a “mulligan” in golf or a “do over” in some referee-less street game), or dropped altogether. Indeed, language-games and forms of life come into being and die out transforming what is described best as Wittgenstein's linguistic vision in small but distinctive ways. This city of language before us is actually a palimpsest where the surface includes traces of razed structures and older districts buried over by time. Older versions of the city become part of what counts as the bedrock upon which the newer city is built.