Abstract
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1921 masterpiece, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, defends no theory of normative ethics, no ethical system on a par with, say, utilitarianism and deontology. Nor does it offer any metaethical theory comparable to emotivism, cognitivism, or moral realism, though in a sense we may consider its ethical remarks “metaethical”. They elucidate what ethics is or means, that is, how ethics structures the ways we relate to the world. Even in the absence of any explicit “ethics of the Tractatus”, understanding Wittgenstein’s conception of the relation between language and reality, as well as the underlying account of subjectivity and the self, is crucial for appreciating what it means to adopt an ethical stance.
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Notes
- 1.
The question concerning Wittgenstein’s methodology divides these lines of interpretation (see, e.g., Conant 2002; Pihlström 2006). My only methodological claim here is that Wittgenstein uses a transcendental methodology of philosophical exposition and argument, not in the original Kantian sense but in a sense distinctive enough to earn him a place in the tradition of transcendental philosophy (cf. Appelqvist 2020). Regarding Wittgenstein’s commitment to the transcendental tradition, it is important to keep in mind his early inspirations from Schopenhauer that shaped his understanding of ethics and the will (cf., e.g., Griffiths 1974; Tilghman 1991).
- 2.
See Appelqvist 2020, especially the editor’s introduction (on ethics, see 8–9). The “Kantian tradition” in interpreting Wittgenstein was largely initiated in Stenius’s (1960) early study. My own approach has been influenced by Kannisto (1986) and Appelqvist (2013, 2016, 2020); see Pihlström (2016, 2020a, 2020b). There are also readings heavily criticizing transcendental accounts, e.g., Fairhurst (2019).
- 3.
This formulation is, I believe, not that different from what Kuusela (2017, 39–40) aims at in his interpretation of Wittgenstein’s project of clarifying how moral value, or the distinction between good and bad, “already informs our lives”—in both the early and the late Wittgenstein.
- 4.
I will partly rely on my discussions of Wittgensteinian ethics in Pihlström (2011, 2016, 2020a, 2020b); however, they serve broader philosophical projects of understanding, e.g., the nature of guilt, mortality, suffering, and solipsism. It may seem that what I am trying to do in this essay is much closer to a traditional interpretation than a resolute one. However, even a resolute reading might, in my view, in its own way investigate Wittgenstein’s articulation of the ethical as conditioning our (or my) relation to the world, and thus its “transcendental” character, without explicating this in terms of any transcendental “theory” and without claiming that the nonsensical sentences of the Tractatus would in some mysterious sense “make sense”, after all. In any event, I have not intended my remarks on the transcendentality of ethics as a direct contribution to the debate on the resolute reading.
- 5.
While “sense” is the standard rendering of the German “Sinn” here, “meaning” might be more appropriate in this context.
- 6.
- 7.
For a lucid discussion of this relation between logic and ethics as transcendental, see De Mesel (2023).
- 8.
- 9.
See also the NB entries on July 8 and 29–30, 1916.
- 10.
Griffiths (1974, 107–108) asks whether the metaphor of “waxing and waning” entails, implausibly, that the meaning of the world could be a matter of degree. It is only “my subjective world”, he concludes, that “must wax and wane” (ibid., 108).
- 11.
Garver’s (1994, 140–145) interpretation of the ethics of the early Wittgenstein comes close to a Spinozistic pantheism. Note that the ethical task of finding harmony with the world would remain unchanged even if the world were “glorious” instead of being miserable. (Thanks to Martin Stokhof for emphasizing this.)
- 12.
Perhaps Wittgenstein is closer to a Christian attitude than a Stoic one. Griffiths (1974, 111) summarizes his view on the “amenities” of life (cf. NB, August 13, 1916) as follows: “Wittgenstein is not saying ‘Learn not to want a warm bed’ but ‘Of course you want a warm bed, but learn to be content to want one and not have one’. As one might say, ‘I wish that so and so, but Thy Will be done’.” (See also Kuusela 2017).
- 13.
For the remark on the world and life as “one”, see TLP 5.6421; for a thoroughgoing discussion, see Stokhof (2002).
- 14.
We cannot here determine in what sense the Tractatus espouses solipsism, or whether solipsism remains its “preferred” view though it cannot be put into words (any more than ethics), but I find the transcendentally solipsistic interpretations in, e.g., Kannisto (1986) and Appelqvist (2016) plausible; see Pihlström (2020b).
- 15.
Tilghman (1991, 51, 59) emphasizes that the “extensionless point” into which the self shrinks is not the thinking but the “willing subject”. Thoughts would be just further facts; hence, the metaphysical subject must in a Schopenhauerian fashion be identified with the will (ibid., 51), which “alters the limits of the world by changing the attitude one takes to the world” (ibid., 60).
- 16.
- 17.
This contrast between transcendentality and transcendence can be carried over into Wittgenstein’s views on death, immortality (or eternity, timelessness; cf. TLP 6.4311), and religion. See Pihlström (2016).
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
See Diamond’s (2000 [1991]) analysis of the “attractiveness” of ethical nonsense.
- 21.
According to Kuusela (2017, 47), ethics “clarifies the constitution of the world as something experienced as valuable/valueless or meaningful/meaningless” and is thus “concerned with […] the experience of the world, which in itself is valueless and meaningless, as valuable and meaningful”.
- 22.
For a different overall reading with a similar rejection of transcendent otherworldliness (without rejecting the term “transcendental”), see Diamond (2000 [1991]). In contrast, Linhe Han (1996, 26, 40–42) misleadingly claims that Wittgenstein places ethics and the subject in a transcendent, otherworldly “domain”.
- 23.
Stokhof also reads Wittgenstein in a Kantian context, examining, transcendentally, the question of how meaning is possible.
- 24.
See NB, August 1, 1916. Another NB entry, July 8, 1916, identifies God with “fate” and with “the world” as independent of our will.
- 25.
I find Stokhof’s “one-world” reading of the Tractatus analogous to one-world treatments of Kant’s distinction between appearances and the thing in itself (e.g., Allison 2004 [1983]).
- 26.
Mounce (1981, 97) also notes that while worldly facts cannot solve ethical problems, they may “give rise to them”. Wittgenstein writes (TLP 6.4321) that the facts “contribute only to the setting of the problem, not to its solution”.
- 27.
See Beiser (2006) for a discussion of the practically constitutive role of the postulates.
- 28.
- 29.
Of course, it does not “refer” in the sense of linguistic representation or designation. But in its own way it still gestures at the transcendent.
- 30.
- 31.
Brockhaus (1991, 312) suggests that the “riddle of life” (TLP 6.4312) and the question concerning the “meaning of life” (TLP 6.251) are “nearly identical with the question of a real ethical reward”, while Tilghman (1991, 61) maintains that the ethical reward is “nothing else but the face with which the world looks back at you”.
- 32.
See Brockhaus’s (1991, 321–331) discussion of the solipsistic metaphysical subject (“the bearer of value”) as in its distinctive way particular and unique, though unidentifiable as any element of the world. This “criterionless uniqueness of the metaphysical ego” (ibid., 322) is deeply puzzling, though.
- 33.
As noted, Wittgenstein uses the term Sinn in a double meaning, referring both to what propositions represent and to the meaning of life (or the world) when seen as “valuable” in some sense. In the Notebooks, he spoke about the “purpose” (“Zweck”) of life in the same context (NB 72). Cf. Appelqvist and Pöykkö (2020), 68–69.
- 34.
Kuusela argues that “accepting” reality and the related sense of harmony and happiness should not be understood in the passive sense of accepting the world, including injustices. Rather, ethics is about “how we ought to will”, and harmony as happiness enters the picture as the attitude that “whatever one wills, the outcome must be accepted” (Kuusela 2017, 49). While sympathizing with this, I am not convinced that Wittgenstein’s references to viewing the world “sub specie aeternitatis” can be explained in terms of our actions being parts of a larger whole (ibid., 50); this seems to dismiss the solipsistic dimension. Moreover, non-acceptance, yielding disharmony, may emerge as a key to the ethical relation to the world.
- 35.
- 36.
As Griffiths (1974, 108–109) plausibly explains, here is a difference between Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: for a Schopenhauerian pessimist, it would be impossible to recommend the attitude of being reconciled with life.
- 37.
Such assumptions of the truth-aptness of (meta)ethical discourse are not restricted to moral realism, as antirealists could maintain that their metaethical view, e.g., expressivism, is a “true” theory of ethical language and its relation to reality.
- 38.
I am grateful to Martin Stokhof and Hao Tang not only for their excellent comments on an earlier draft but also for the kind invitation to deliver this paper at the online Centennial Lecture Series on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in 2021, and to the participants, especially Oskari Kuusela, Kevin Cahill, Benjamin de Mesel, and Hans-Johann Glock, for valuable questions and comments.
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Pihlström, S. (2023). On the Transcendental Ethics of the Tractatus. In: Stokhof, M., Tang, H. (eds) Wittgenstein's Tractatus at 100. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29863-9_5
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