Abstract

The main concern of this dissertation is the relation between logic, ethics and aesthetics during the first period of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which begins in 1911, when he starts to investigate logical and philosophical problems, and finishes in 1921, when his philosophical masterpiece, the Tractatus, is published. ;This study of Wittgenstein's early philosophy is divided in three parts. The first deals with the relation between language and world, which is clarified by the analysis of logical syntax; Wittgenstein expect to solve the problems of philosophy by this kind of analysis, these problems being caused by a misunderstanding of the logic of language. The second part deals with the modalities of subjectivity, as the subject's will, on one hand, is at the same time empirical and transcendental ; on the other hand, the subject is intimately related, by the exercise of his will, to ethics. The third part deals with the stages of ethics: the moral and stoical levels lead to the aesthetical level. In this philosophical evolution from "moralism" and "stoicism" to "aesthetism", the subject must accept, appreciate and finally appropriate the world, by bending his vision of the world as well as his will to the world as it is, that is to say, using Wittgenstein's own expression, the world's will or state which can be understood as God's will. This shows that there is an unavoidable tension between the logical and the ethical aspects of the early philosophy of Wittgenstein, because the subject should be at the same time inside and outside the world in order to see the world as a whole and submit his will to the world's. ;The principal works on which this dissertation is based are the Notebooks , the Logical-Philosophical Treatise , better known by its abridged latin title, the Tractatus , and the Lecture on Ethics , this last work throwing a new light on the two first works' elliptical remarks on ethics and aesthetics