The Style unto death: meditations on untimely late style in philosophy

Abstract

The thread of philosophical style I propose to write is late style—so-called for the assumed relationship to temporality and biography found in works written late in a philosopher’s life. Late style implies a biographical motive for the creation and arrangement of formal elements in a text. Late style also assumes continuity within a philosopher’s oeuvre, even if those links take the form of departures and transformations, such as, for instance, what we encounter in the relationship between Wittgenstein’s early (Tractatus) and late (Investigations) work. Most importantly, late style weds two key assumptions: the first—that style is technically recognizable; the second— that a bond exists, if often implicit, between a philosopher’s life and the presentation or expression of the philosophy.