Transcript III The lecture on Ethics

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
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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.
Internet addresses for philosophers
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www.epistemeliks.com
www.philosophers.co.uk
www.earlham.edu/peters/philinks.htm
www.transy.edu/homepages/philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
www.xrefer.com
http://public.srce.hr/mprofaca/maja01.html
www.erraticimpact.com
www.rtincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/index.html
http://plato-dialogues.org