Abstract

In this work, I attempt to elucidate those views of the later Wittgenstein that I consider to be significant for ethics, and in particular, for moral justification. I then proceed to analyse some of the key claims and arguments of a number of Wittgensteinian ethicists who have used Wittgenstein's views in a variety of ways. These authors have been chosen both because of the inherent interest of their ideas, and because they are representative of some of the main ethical claims in Wittgensteinian philosophy. ;I have interpreted Wittgenstein as a humanistic critic of modern scientism, engaged in a project of philosophical anthropology. This involves a repudiation of reductionistic accounts of human behaviour such as positivism and mechanistic theories of the mind and human society. I hold Wittgenstein to have elaborated a humanistic account of persons, in which expression, forms of life and appropriate backgrounds to truth-claims and certainty figure prominently. I discuss the significance of aspect-perception, religion and particular insight as part of Wittgenstein's humanistic philosophy. The relevant questions of absolutism and cultural relativism are herein examined