Two Kantian Issues within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: Autonomy of the Will and Duty (original) (raw)

The Ethical and the Metaphysical Will in the Early Wittgenstein (and Beyond)

Análisis. Revista de Investigación Filosófica, 2021

In the Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein engages himself in a dialogue with Schopenhauer’s project —one that Wittgenstein makes his own— of substituting an immanent metaphysics of human experience for the transcendent metaphysics discredited by Kant’s critique, and thus for finding a path that would be able both of capturing the reality of human agency and of staying away from the kind of self-alienation that appears to be the necessary consequence of philosophical reflection. Wittgenstein’s reflections on the ethical and the metaphysical will are instrumental to bring this project to successful completion. However, I will go well beyond Wittgenstein’s early work in order to elucidate what strikes me as the solution provided by the late Wittgenstein (mainly, in On Certainty) to two problems that the Notebooks and the Tractatus left unanswered. On the one hand, there is the question about whether the agreement between agency and passivity is possible—namely, about how to come to see the friction of the world not only as something that is, but rather as something that ought to be. On the other, there is the problem of how to make of ethical subjectivity and metaphysical subjectivity two constitutively co-related aspects of the same transcendental subjectivity. Keywords: Agency, Free Will, Meaningfulness, Schopenhauer, Transcendental Subjectivity.

The Problem of the Will in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

100 Years of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — 70 Years after Wittgenstein's Death. A Critical Assessment. Contributions of the 44th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 2023

At the beginning of the 20th century, opinions on the problem of the nature of the will appeared divided between the empiricist tradition and Schopenhauer’s philosophy. It is common knowledge that the young Wittgenstein was influenced primarily by Schopenhauer; however, it is reasonable to ask how much his early views on the nature of the will were influenced by the empiricists. In this paper we analyze Wittgenstein’s statements on the nature of the will in the Tractatus and show that they present a fragment of a theory obviously closer to Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophy and evincing no significant empiricist influence.

Wittgenstein on Moral Consciousness

Rawat Publications, New Delhi, and Jaipur. , 2008

The paper intends to discuss Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of moral consciousness. The term moral consciousness refers to moral experiences, moral point of views, ethical expressions, moral arguments, etc. – above all, that which pertains to morality and opposes to immoral and unethical. Wittgenstein does not use the term moral consciousness; rather his deliberation on ethics helps us in developing it. Ethics as discussed by Wittgenstein has great significance with reference to the notion of meaning of life. The meaning of life is philosophized to show the basis of ethical expression. The basis of ethical expression is formed with reference to the moral consciousness. The moral consciousness involves the notion of feeling and the willing in order to construe the content of the ethical expressions. The feeling and the willing are the intrinsic features of moral consciousness or moral experience. The paper is divided into five sections. The first section commences with an illustration of the idea of following the ‘right road’ as the aim of ethical inquiry. The second section brings out the logical status of the feeling for the comprehension of the values, showing that values lie in the logical space. In the third section, we discuss about the logical form of thought, which goes along with the intentionality of realization of values. In the fourth section, we develop the idea of moral consciousness with reference to Wittgenstein’s analysis of feeling. The final section is followed by a conclusion brings out the notion of communion between the feeling and the willing unfolding the underlying characteristics of moral consciousness.

Young Wittgenstein’s Account of the Will, Action and Expectation

The Philosophy of Perception and Observation. Contributions of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 2017

This paper focuses on young and "middle" Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on nature of will, action and expectation. It is argued that if empiricist lines of thought in Wittgenstein's work are followed he appears to consider imperative sentences as near-identical or even reducible to sentences expressing expectations. Firstly, Wittgenstein's account of imperative sentences (commands) will be established; thereupon an investigation into the preliminary structure of obeying command will be undertaken as the basis of further discussion. In following paragraphs, we will analyze Wittgenstein's view on the relation of act to will, briefly discussing the concept of will itself. To conclude the paper is a discussion of the nature of expectation and its fulfillment. Wittgenstein's philosophical development is briefly alluded to only where relevant to the discussion.

Early Wittgenstein’s Views on Ethics: Some Reflections

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2018

The paper undertakes an in-depth analysis of the early phase of Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings in Notebooks (NB), Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (TLP) and ''A Lecture on Ethics'' (LOE) in order to present an exposition of some of the central themes, and to extrapolate his views on ethics. To this end, the paper analyses Wittgenstein's understanding of the nature of philosophical inquiry, significance and centrality of ethics, the model of language, saying/showing distinction, notions of will, happiness, good and evil, use of relative and absolute values and several others. Early Wittgenstein's views on ethics are peculiar in so far as they are implied by his views on language with the study of which he was centrally concerned. He claims that language, thought and reality are isomorphic; therefore, language is the basis of all speculation about morality. In TLP, Ethics is transcendental and transgresses the limits of language. The paper begins with a discussion of the importance of ethics, as explicated in his early writings.

Wittgenstein and Ethical Norms : The Question of Ineffability Visited and Revisited

2004

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we find Wittgenstein’s first and most substantial published investigation of ethics. I will argue that if the ethical sections of the Tractatus are seen in connection with a particular concept of showing, they then reveal a coherent and radical alternative to traditional conceptions of ethics; an alternative which sheds light on Wittgenstein’s claim that ethics cannot be expressed and the necessity of ethics. But I furthermore want to argue that the reasons leading Wittgenstein to a demand for silence in ethics falls away if one looks at the later investigations of necessity which he makes in On Certainty.

The Contemporary Significance of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy

2014

In his post-Tractatus work on natural language use, Wittgenstein defended the notion of what he dubbed the autonomy of grammar. According to this thought, grammar – or semantics, in a more recent idiom – is essentially autonomous from metaphysical considerations, and is not answerable to the nature of things. The argument has several related incarnations in Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus writings, and has given rise to a number of important insights, both critical and constructive. In this paper I will argue for a potential connection between Wittgenstein’s autonomy argument and some more recent internalist arguments for the autonomy of semantics. My main motivation for establishing this connection comes from the fact that the later Wittgenstein’s comments on grammar and meaning stand in opposition to some of the core assumptions of semantic externalism.