Moral Thought in Wittgenstein: Clarity and Changes of Attitude (original) (raw)
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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.
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Wittgenstein’s so-called Big Typescript from the early 1930s includes a famous chapter on ‘Philosophy’, containing a curious heading: ‘Difficulty of Philosophy not the Intellectual Difficulty of the Sciences, but the Difficulty of a Change of Attitude. Resistances of the will must be overcome’. This chapter attempts to understand what Wittgenstein might have had in mind here. How did he see the character of the philosophical problems he was dealing with, in particular the connection between them, language trouble, and the broadly speaking moral-existential difficulties apparently referred to in hsi heading? And how are we, quite apart from any concern with Wittgenstein-exegesis, to understand this?
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Wittgenstein’s Notion of Ethics
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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.
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.