III The lecture on Ethics

Return to Cambridge

• W 1929 he returned to Cambridge seemed to have rekindled his interest in philosophy and gave the lecture. The lecture on ethics was delivered in November 1930 to the Heretic Club. (published in Philosophical review, LXXIV pp.3-12. Before the Lecture he remarked to Schlick: "I intend to put an end to all the chatter about ethics" (see also Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, p. 69).

Moore’s Definition of Ethics

At the very beginning of the lecture he agrees with G.E. Moore: Ethics is the general enquiry into what is good. Moore put a question: what does ‘good’ mean when used as a moral term? There are three possibilities, the ‘good’ denotes (in its ethical sense):

• First: sth simple and indefinable – it stands for simple property or characteristic that things or actions may have;

• Second: it denotes sth complex; • Third: it denotes no property either simple or complex, therefore it

means nothing at all (there is no such subject as ethics).

Moore rejected the second and third, and settled for the first possibility. The good is the simple, indefinable a non-natural quality.

Arguments against the two possibilities:

• 1. Who tried to define ‘good’ and give it a descriptive meaning confused the question what sort of things is good with the question what goodness itself is. The former cannot be answered in descriptive natural terms, but only an answered to the latter would constitute a definition or analysis of ‘good’;

• 2. Take some proposed analysis of ‘good, say ‘conductive to pleasure’. I admit that such-and-such is conductive to pleasure, but is it good? You may substitute for ‘conductive to pleasure’ any another definition, say ‘socially approved’, ‘in accordance with God’s will’. The question is still open.

The naturalistic fallacy

The thesis supposing that goodness, which Moore takes to be the fundamental ethical value, can be defined in naturalistic terms, say, of pleasure or desire or the course of evolution. The position involves a fallacy; he calls the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. As against such claims Moore insists that goodness is indefinable, or un-analyzable, and thus that ethics is an autonomous science, irreducible to natural science.

An adjectival sense of ‘good’• ‘Good’ in adjectival sense is indefinable – it refers to a

simply non-natural property. This property, ones recognized, makes us desire its existence; when we say “it is good’ we mean: it is good that it should exist.

• “Good” in an adjectival sense must be related to the context in which what is called ‘good’ is valued. It cannot be shown to be of value independent of the moral reactions of human beings. The property, ones recognized, that makes us desire its existence - a state of affair which one would necessarily desire to bring about, or feel guilty for not bringing about.

Ethical knowledge

• Moore holds that ethical knowledge rests on a capacity for an intuitive grasp of fundamental ethical truths for which we can give no reason since there is no reason to be given.

The logical independence on statements of fact and of value

• “if we knew all the movements of all bodies and all states of mind and described them in a total world description would contain no ethical judgment and nothing that would imply one, though it would contain 'all true propositions that can be made''; all propositions stand, as it were on the same level'. State of mind like a murder, or a pain or rage it causes are facts which, therefore we can describe and are not ethical.

Reason and faith

• . “ Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts”. The problem of life, the meaning of human existence - these very questions are in principle unanswerable; it is impossible for reason to find any solution. Reason can only lead to paradox; faith is needed to overcome it. This difficulties show why all we can do morally is to live one's life. But this silence will somehow allow a person (even the most simple, un-reflected one) to eschew, avoid error and live well, although nothing in the world seems to have absolute value.

The difference between logical and moral necessity

• If we consider an ethical law of the form: “You ought to: love each other, respect one another, help etc., the first thought is, “And what if I don’t?” As though it were a statement of relative value. With a judgment of absolute value that question makes no sense. “You ought to make sure if that strip is firmly clamped before starting drilling. “What if I don’t?” When I tell you what will happen If you don’t, you see what I mean. But “You ought to behave better.” “What if I don’t.” What more could I tell you.

The experiences of value

• Wittgenstein in the Lecture discusses the thought that surely we sometimes do succeed in giving expression to ethical thought and, therefore, philosophers simply “have not yet succeeded in finding the correct logical analysis of what we mean by our ethical or religious expressions”. When we use ethical expressions we have certain experiences in mind and we try to express them.

A Misuse of language

• “'All these expressions seem, prima facie, to be similes (he also describes their use as metaphorical). “But the simile must be the simile for something. And if I can describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to describe the facts without it. Now in our case as soon as we try to drop the simile and to describe the facts behind it, we find that there are no such facts”. Because there are no such facts, these expressions are nor similes. They denote nothing.

• Value is not in the world and the experiences which seem to find it there are prompted by nothing in the world. “These expressions are not nonsensical because I had yet not found the correct expression. It is in their essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and it is to say beyond significant language”.

The three experiences

• All the three experiences he had mentioned could be interpreted in religious terms. He is talking about a mode of experience in which things are seen from a particular perspective. It is not a scientific perspective. It is a non scientific way of looking at a fact - seeing a fact in the world as a miracle. He warns that any attempts to articulate such an experience can only generate nonsense.

The ethical subject

• Ethics and religion involve an attempt to characterize the world and our relation to it as a whole. It is evident in the assertion that God has created the world and its existence is a miracle; however, the experience of being safe in the hands of God or under God’s judgment also includes the notion of the world as a totality; for it involves seeing ourselves as a creatures standing in some sort of relationship to our creator, who is distinct from his creation.

The personal ethical context of Tractatus

• Wittgenstein had mentioned many times the experience referred to in the passage 6.44 of the Tractatus: “Not how the world is, but that it is, is the Mystical”. “It circulates from beginning to end through later Philosophical Investigations, present but nor announced – not even by way of a thunderous declaration of silence, as in the earlier work.” W. Barrett, The Illusion of Technique, New York, 1978, s. 160. The importance of this experience of wonder at the existence of the world W. had emphasized many times. A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Wienna, New York 1973, were the first to argue that the Tracatus had to be viewed in its Viennese cultural context, more particularly, in its personal ethical context.

A letter to Ludwig von Ficker• (Briefe an Ludwig von Ficker, Salzburg 1969, 35-36): “The

Tractatus’ point is ethical one. I once mean to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I mean to write then, was this: My work consists of two parts; the one presented here plus all that I had not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it.”

War as a chance to be a decent human being

• His emotional and spiritual life was shaped by Tolstoy’s The Gospels in Brief, read while he was serving in the Austrian army in Galicia in the First World War. War, as Wittgenstein stated himself would give him a chance to be a decent human being, for he would be standing eye to eye with death. “Perhaps the nearness of death will bring light into life. God enlighten me”.

• ”What saved him from suicide, however, was … exactly the kind of personal transformation, the religious conversion; he had gone to war to find. He was, as it were, saved by the word. Tolstoy’s Gospels in Brief became for him a kind of talisman”. (115, 116) Thinking about logic and he himself were but two aspects of the single “duty to oneself”, this fervently held faith was to have an influence on his work Tractatus.

Discussion of ethical problems

• Rhees then offered him 'the problem facing a man who has come to the conclusion that he must either leave his wife or abandon his work of cancer research' - a little bit old fashioned example. Wittgenstein elaborates by discussing the various ways in which he may get to a moral decision with the aid of a friend. He may say: 'Look, you've taken the girl out of her home, and now, by God, you've got to stick to her'. - This would be called taking up an ethical attitude. If the man tries to continue his work, the friend may have to remind him, that the others can carry it on. Yet he may think if he were to do this 'he would be no husband for her'. Wittgenstein states we now have all the materials for tragedy, and we could only say: "Well, God help you".

The solution • It seems that the solution lies in a retrospective shift, in the man’s

attitude towards this situation, regardless of the choice he has made. The man may thanks God that he stayed with his wife or left her. Each of the opposite responses can be solutions to the ethical problem. For thank God that one has made a certain decision, or to bitterly regret it, is to have moved beyond original uncertainty about what to do, and in this respect to no longer find the situation problematic. As Wittgenstein put it earlier in the Tractatus: “The solution of the problem of life is seen in vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have they been unable what constituted that sense?)”. 6.521.

The other example

• Wittgenstein says: Suppose I view his problem with a different ethics – perhaps Nietzsche’s – and I say ‘No, it is not clear that he must stick to her; on the contrary, and so forth’. Rhees, “Developments, p. 23.

What does 'adopting Christian ethics mean’?

• - Partly: the person talks and behaves as a Christian should, or express remorse when he does not. But it is not enough. He may do all this without believing in Christian ethics. His behavior and remorse may be simply politic. It is not only when he believes that they are thus and right. 'If you say there are various systems of ethics you are not saying they are all equally right. This means nothing. Just it would have no meaning to say that each was right from his standpoint. That could only mean that each judges as he does.' Rhees, p. 24.

Brutus' killing Cesar

• After discussing Brutus' killing Cesar W. said "This is not sth. they could discuss. You would not know for his life what went on in his mind before he decided to kill Cesar".

Summary - dissolving the moral problems

• Wittgenstein after having described a moral dilemma, or generally, the search for a 'right ethics' ends it by saying that in such cases there is no right answer and, therefore, there is no problem. ‘WHEN THE ANWER CANNOT BE PUT INTO WORDS, NEITHER CAN THE QUESTION BE PUT INTO WORDS. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it”. 6.5. We may say - he dissolves the problem. It has disappeared. Wittgenstein has turned the moral dilemma into a philosophical illusion. This kind of treatment destroys ethics, where we have to make up answers as we go along, and hope they are right. If that hope is an illusion, so is ethics.

An agreement in felt response• Like Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, and Tolstoy, Wittgenstein saw

Christianity as primarily a matter of inwardness and spirituality, personal orientation towards life, rather than one of doctrine. He still thinks that ethics is a personal perspective which exists outside of the shared frameworks of our ordinary language. It implies that the agreement about ethical matters which one finds among Christians is not based on the necessities of a common grammar, rather it would seem to be more like an agreement in felt response, such as can be found among those who share a sense of humor or the same taste in music, for which words are a very inadequate mode of expression.

Bibiography

• 1. Kelly, John C., Wittgenstein, the self, and ethics. The Review of Metaphysics; 3/1/1995;• 2. Peter C. John., Wittgenstein’s “Wonderful Life”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.49,

No.3 (Jul.-Sep., 1988), 495-510. • 3. Colin Radford, Wittgenstein on Ethics, Grazer Philosophische Studien, her. Von R/Haller,

Vol 33/34-1989, 84-114.• 4. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius, London 1990.• 5. Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversation on Aesthetics, Psychology & Religious Belief,

ed. C. Barrett, Oxford 1966.• 6. Frank Cioffi, Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer. Cambridge 1998. • 7. D.Pears, Wittgensten, 1979.• 8. A.J.P. Kenny, Wittgenstein, 1973.• 9. G.P. Baker and P.M.S.Hacker, Wittgenstein (2 vol., 1980).• 10. WILLIAM JAMES DEANGELIS, Ludwig Wittgenstein – A Cultural Point of View, Philosophy

in the Darkness of this Time, England 2007.

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Internet addresses for philosophers

• 1. www.epistemeliks.com - • 2. www.philosophers.co.uk• 3. www.earlham.edu/peters/philinks.htm• 4. www.transy.edu/homepages/philosophy• 5. http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html• 6. www.xrefer.com• 7. http://public.srce.hr/mprofaca/maja01.html• 8. www.erraticimpact.com • 9. www.rtincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/index.html• 10. http://plato-dialogues.org