Familiarity and forms of life

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the concept of “familiarity,” and to outline a Wittgensteinian point of view on the problem. In so doing, a central notion in Wittgenstein’s philosophy will be discussed, namely, the “form of life”. It will be shown that ofering a “transcendental perspective” on this concept could provide some essential theoretical tools to better understand the meaning and sense of the notion of “familiarity”. For this reason, the original aim of the work appears to be indeed twofold: on the one hand, familiarity will be better understood through a deep insight on the notion “form of life”. On the other, the discussion about familiarity will represent the point of departure to interpret one of the most debated notions in Wittgensteinian philosophy, the one of “Lebensfom”. In particular, since both concepts are related to the “inconceivable,” introduced by Wittgenstein as the “unheard of,” we believe that a combined discussion of them could be particularly productive.