Identifying the “Apophatic Impulse” in Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy: The Lecture on Ethics as an Interpretative Key (original) (raw)
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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.
Reformation Bible College, 2021
This thesis reconsiders common understandings of Tractarian ethics by proposing to recontextualize it within the anthropological bent that runs through Wittgenstein’s philosophy and culminates in the Philosophical Investigations. More specifically, I claim that this recontextualizing of the Tractarian vision of value, ethical propositions as nonsense, and ethics as transcendental shows how these are actually instantiated within the anthropological frame of Wittgenstein’s vision of meaning as use, language-games, rule-following, and forms of life from Philosophical Grammar to Philosophical Investigations. The significance of the paper is that it offers a study of Wittgenstein’s moral thought positioned between traditionalist and resolute readings which offers the possibility of new avenues of dialogue with other moral philosophers.
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Ludwig Wittgenstein bluntly suggests that the ethical propositions are nonsensical. This argument of Wittgenstein is widely interpreted by the logical positivists in the way that ethics for Wittgenstein is a meaningless phenomenon altogether which cannot be talked about. However, this paper opposes the view that Wittgenstein denounces ethics as a meaningless subject. On the contrary, it puts stress on the fact that although Wittgenstein sees that ethics is nonsensical within the boundaries of propositional expression, he claims that it has a transcendental form of truth and meaning which discloses itself in the way the subject introduces it into the world and manifests it in a good and fulfilled life. In other words, I argue that even though ethics is nonsensical within the scope of propositional expression for Wittgenstein, it has a meaning as a transcendental truth that shows itself through the ethical life of the subject.
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The aim of this paper is to clarify Wittgenstein’s notion of ethics, and explain how it can contribute to the understanding of the continuity of his philosophy. The broad consensus on Wittgenstein’s work divides it into an early and later period; however, few have undertaken the challenge of finding the linking thread between them. Of those who have, results have in general led to prioritising the original aspects of one in favour of the other. The premise of this study is that the ethical purpose of Wittgenstein’s philosophy remained essentially the same throughout his life. This means that interpretation of his work (from the Notebooks 1914 – 1916 to On Certainty) through the lens of his notion of ethics, may offer a synoptic, yet non-discriminatory view of his writings. If this is correct, it should lead to a fresh reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy that avoids postulating in advance an internal discord in his thoughts and that prioritises its conception as coherent in its development. Finally, it also underscores Wittgenstein’s will in contributing to the pursuit of the ‘good’ life.
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The paper examines the ethical standpoint of the Tractatus as it has been reconstructed by Cora Diamond ("the austere view") and gives an account of some of the criticism this reconstruction has received in the work of P. M. S. Hacker and Meredith Williams ("the standard view"). The second half of the paper tries to argue that the austere and the standard views rather complement each other if we recognize "two I'-s" in the Tractatus and if it is supposed that there is a "3rd person" and "1st person" perspective which are voiced on its pages.
Wittgenstein and Ethical Norms : The Question of Ineffability Visited and Revisited
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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.