Abstract
Most commentators working on Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics note that he rejects the very possibility of traditional normative ethics, that is, a philosophically justified normative guide for right conduct. In this article, Wittgenstein’s view of ethical reflection as presented in his notebooks from 1936 to 1938 is investigated, and the question of whether it involves ethical guidance is addressed. In Wittgenstein’s remarks, we can identify three requirements inherent in ethical reflection. The first two is revealed in the realisation that ethical reflection presupposes both a clear understanding of oneself and a normative ideal of how one ought to live and reason. The third source of normativity springs from the fact that ethical reflection involves a relationship with the other, not as judge, but as example and addressee. In this way, ethical reflection is essentially relational. In the article, we unfold how these three normative sources figure in Wittgenstein’s remarks, especially how the third requirement, the relationship with the other, shows both a point of conversion and a difference between his view of ethics and religious faith. It will also be argued that even if Wittgenstein thus presents ethical reflection as a normatively guided activity, the content of the guidance is personal, springing solely from the reflecting individual.
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Notes
I want to thank Lars Hertzberg and Stig Børsen Hansen for insightful comments on work that lead to this article.
Hurka defines perfectionism as following: “This moral theory starts from an account of the good life, or the intrinsically desirable life. And it characterizes this life in a distinctive way. Certain properties, it says, constitute human nature or are definitive of humanity—they make humans human. The good life, it then says, develops these properties to a high degree or realizes what is central to human nature. Different versions of the theory may disagree about what the relevant properties are and so disagree about the content of the good life. But they share the foundational idea that what is good, ultimately, is the development of human nature” (Hurka 1993: 3).
The first notebook contains entries from the 19th of November 1936 to the 30th of April 1937. It is published in Private and Public Occasions (Wittgenstein 2003). The notebooks from Wittgenstein’s return to Norway contain entries from the 13th of August 1937 to the 26th of April 1938. These are available as MS 118–120 in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass—The Bergen Electronic Edition (Wittgenstein 2000). A few of the remarks is published separately in Culture and Value (Wittgenstein 1998). I refer to these entries according to where they are available (in the case of the Nachlass with references to the MS).
The expression ‘the problem of life’ first appears at the time of Wittgenstein’s work on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein 1984: 74; 6.7.16.
The point reappears throughout the history of philosophy. Even Kant, who normally claims that we cannot generally settle the content of our duty, explicitly states that one is under obligation to know oneself (Kant 1797: 191 and Ware 2009). In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard lets his pseudonym Climacus develop the idea that self-understanding is the starting-point of and central element in all ethical reflection. Where we in philosophy are concerned with a general understanding of the world, ethics essentially concerns the fact that the subject has to live his own life. As Climacus notes, “to study the ethical, every human being is assigned to himself. In that regard, he himself is more than enough for himself; indeed, he is the only place where he can with certainty study it”. To this, Kierkegaard later adds “to observe ethically cannot be done, because there is only one ethical observing—it is self-observation. The ethical immediately embraces the single individual with its requirement that he shall exist ethically” (Kierkegaard 1846: 141–2 and 320, respectively).
We rarely find these two obligations spelled out by commentators of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. However, we find discussions of the ethical obligation of an honest understanding of others in the writings of a distinguished line of commentators, for example in Edward’s emphasis on the ethical importance of a “sound human understanding” (Edwards 1982, chapter 6), and in Cavell’s investigation of the connection between knowledge and morality (Cavell 1979/1999, chapter IX).
Such ideals are personal, but one does not choose them arbitrarily; instead, their content are connected to the life one leads and one’s view of the world. In the diary, Wittgenstein draws out how particular ways of living leads one to particular ways of understanding the world. “And thus how can I know what I would envision as the only acceptable image of a world order if I lived differently, lived completely differently. I can’t judge that. After all, another life shifts completely different images into the foreground, necessitates completely different images. […] But if one lives differently, one speaks differently. With a new life one learns new language games” (Wittgenstein 2003: 169, 4.2.37).
Note however, that the categorical imperative in Kant’s thinking does place some restrictions on possible content of maxims for example that such content should be universal. We still need to see whether we find such restrictions in Wittgenstein’s remarks.
This of course does not imply that we cannot have a crocked understanding of others. This understanding may for example be too restricted or unimaginative. The point is simply that thought of the ideal other confronts us with the possible actualisation of our own ideal.
Plant notes that we can say that it is part of our understanding of the suffering of other human beings that it places an ethical demand on us; or, better, “that it is part of the ‘grammar’ of others’ suffering that one is thereby placed under an obligation” (Plant 2005: 89, see also Cavell 1979/1999: 81–83).
This point seems to be influenced by Wittgenstein’s reading of Augustine (see for example Kerr 1986).
That love involves both a clear understanding of the failings (or sin) of oneself and others as well as a willingness actively to forget these failings are central themes in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (see Kierkegaard 1847, chapter II.V). In this context, Kierkegaard refers to the Christian idea that we in love should be “like a child in evil”, that is, without knowledge of evil (ibid. 285 and I. Cor. 14:20). Wittgenstein might have picked up the expression here, but his use is differs from the use it is given in Kierkegaard’s work.
This element in Christian thought finds expression for example in the sermon on the mountain or Romans 14:4 “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand”.
Ethics thus requires that we continuously evaluate our own actions and our motives for them. However, this need for critical self-examination carries with it the danger temptation of self-absorption, something that Kierkegaard more than hints at in his portrait of the ‘ethicist’, Judge William. See Kierkegaard 1843: part two.
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Christensen, AM.S. ‘A Glorious Sun and a Bad Person’. Wittgenstein, Ethical Reflection and the Other. Philosophia 39, 207–223 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9297-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9297-y