Form and Philosophy

Possibility and reference have been central topics in metaphysics
and the philosophy of language in the past decades. Wolfgang
Freitag’s Form and Philosophy provides a novel approach to
these notions and their interrelations, based on the concept of
form as the key modal concept: form is the possibility space of
objects. In its historic dimension, the book analyses the role of
form in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In its systematic dimension,
the book offers an alternative ontological basis to David
Armstrong’s combinatorial theory of possibility and rejects David
Lewis’ analysis of possibility in terms of possible worlds. Representation
is shown to rest on the idea of direct reference as
proposed by David Kaplan and Saul Kripke. It is argued that the
problem of reference links up with Wittgenstein’s rule-following
problem, the nature of which is extensively discussed. It
emerges that form and reference are complementary with
respect to the notion of representation. Once their individual
roles are seen, many metaphysical puzzles appear in a new light
or disappear altogether.
WOLFGANG FREITAG is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Konstanz.