Nothing to be said?

          This insistence on the irrelevance of theory to ethics could lead us to assume that Wittgenstein argues against all philosophical investigations of ethics - an assumption that would cause trouble for the interpreter of his remarks on ethics (and, for example, cut this chapter rather short). Some commentators have argued in favor of this conclusion (especially Richter 1996), but there are convincing reasons to resist it. What we find Wittgenstein opposing is a particular form of moral philosophy with a particular purpose, namely that of building a moral theory, and this accords with his general view of the goal of philosophical activity as 'elucidations', 'clarification', or a 'perspicuous representation of our use of language' (TLP 4.112; BT sec. 86; see also TLP 6.54 and PI §122). In his critique of moral philosophy, Wittgenstein does not express reservations about the possibility of reflecting on ordinary ethical discussions or of elucidating ethically significant uses of words, and the claim that he has no such reservations finds support in the fact that Wittgenstein's own remarks on ethics are not restricted to the critique of moral philosophy. 

This is from Christensen, p. 797. [Etiquette-related update: I have met Anne-Marie Christensen a couple of times, so should I call her by her first name as I would in real life? Or, since people reading this are unlikely to have met her, should I be more formal? I don't want to be coldly formal or condescendingly familiar. Maybe she will be so annoyed by this post that cold formality becomes the only option. (I hope not.)]  I want not so much to defend my 1996 position as to reconsider it in the light of her objection. The issue once seemed fairly simple to me, then I started to think I had simply got it all wrong, but now it seems difficult. It's this difficulty that I want to explore.

It might help to go step by step. So:

This insistence on the irrelevance of theory to ethics could lead us to assume that Wittgenstein argues against all philosophical investigations of ethics - an assumption that would cause trouble for the interpreter of his remarks on ethics (and, for example, cut this chapter rather short).

I don't think so, because I don't think that interpreting a philosopher's remarks or writing an account of a philosopher's views is itself philosophy. Many philosophers would agree with that, but others, with whom I'm likely to be in sympathy, would consider it naive. One often has to do philosophy, to evaluate arguments  for instance, when interpreting, in order to apply the principle of charity. But Wittgenstein did not present a lot of arguments of that kind, and philosophy as he understands it does not, it seems to me, include textual interpretation or summary. His later philosophical method involves such activities as assembling grammatical reminders and imagining possible uses of language that strange tribes might make. Interpreting Wittgenstein is a different kind of activity, it seems to me.

Next:

What we find Wittgenstein opposing is a particular form of moral philosophy with a particular purpose, namely that of building a moral theory, and this accords with his general view of the goal of philosophical activity as 'elucidations', 'clarification', or a 'perspicuous representation of our use of language'

I agree with this. The last part is the hardest part:

In his critique of moral philosophy, Wittgenstein does not express reservations about the possibility of reflecting on ordinary ethical discussions or of elucidating ethically significant uses of words, and the claim that he has no such reservations finds support in the fact that Wittgenstein's own remarks on ethics are not restricted to the critique of moral philosophy.

I agree that Wittgenstein does not express reservations about the possibility of reflecting on ordinary ethical discussions, and that Wittgenstein's own remarks on ethics are not restricted to the critique of moral philosophy. Even here, though, I'm not sure about the phrase "remarks on ethics." Of course if by "ethics" we mean moral philosophy then Wittgenstein's remarks on ethics are restricted to the critique of moral philosophy. When does he ever discuss it without censure? But that would be an obviously unfair 'criticism' to make. It clearly isn't what Christensen means. The problem is that it is not all that clear to me what she does mean, what we should understand as "Wittgenstein's own remarks on ethics." If ethics means something like how to live then just about everything he ever said or wrote could be treated as a remark of his on ethics. Christensen herself brings this out (when she observes that ethics is not a particular area of life, for instance), and there is evidence for it in such remarks of his as that he was thinking about both logic and his sins (in a conversation with Russell, in which Russell had asked him which of the two he was thinking about) and that he saw every problem from a religious point of view. There are two aspects to this point: according to a certain Wittgensteinian view (associated with Cora Diamond and Iris Murdoch especially) ethics is a facet of everything we do, say, or think, it is not something that applies to or covers only certain kinds of actions (say, those that benefit or harm others) or kinds of sentences (say, those involving words or concepts such as goodness or duty); secondly, (and this is part of the point of my paper "Wittgenstein's Ethics") Wittgenstein himself provides as good an example as any of how this can be, which makes his remarks in particular likely to have ethical significance.  

That might seem (and be) confused. If everything has an ethical aspect, how can this have anything to do with Wittgenstein in particular? The point is this. Everything can have ethical significance, and Wittgenstein appears to have been acutely aware of this and to have lived accordingly, which makes his life a rich source of examples to illustrate the point that everything can have ethical significance. He shunned ornament and luxury (in later life at any rate), seeing what kind of cups to drink from or what (not whose!) bed to sleep in as moral issues. He wanted to eat the same thing every day when staying with Norman Malcolm, again for ethical reasons. He believed in doing and saying things the right way. He cared deeply and passionately about just about everything he did and said (he tended to take things very seriously) and he cared about this caring. Attention to particulars and going the bloody hard way were central to his ethics, to his outlook on the world, to his view of how to live. It is the possibility of this kind of ethic that makes everything potentially a matter for ethics. If I doze in front of the television all weekend this might seem to have nothing to do with ethics (I am not wronging anyone, for instance) but Wittgenstein might well have disapproved. (As might Peter Singer.) So my action is a possible object of moral judgment. This is even more so if I ought to be somewhere else or doing something else. Perhaps I am complacently dozing while someone who needs my help is struggling. Perhaps I am dozing rather than attending a wedding or funeral that others think I should be at. And there is much more to ethics than judgment, as Murdoch, Diamond, and Alice Crary have brought out. As I recall, Bouwsma (implicitly) quotes Wittgenstein as saying, "Is Dewey dead yet? He ought to be." Is that a remark on ethics? It isn't about moral philosophy, but if the remark expresses a condemnation (I'm back to judgment again!) of Dewey's views then it seems to have ethical significance. But Wittgenstein's whole thought is suffused with ethical concern. So all his remarks really have such significance to some degree. Or so I'm inclined to believe.   

Which brings me to "elucidating ethically significant uses of words." What are these uses and how are they to be elucidated? It is not the words themselves that make their use ethically significant. "Pass the milk, please" is not normally ethically significant (although vegans might differ, of course). But it could be. It could be said in order to change the subject away from something controversial, or as a way of pointedly ignoring what someone else has just said. ("If you don't let me marry him I'll kill myself!" "Pass the milk, please.") Any words could be used in ethically significant ways, or just about any, it seems to me. 

Maybe I should distinguish a few points about the scope of ethics that I have not really distinguished above:

1. Language is flexible enough that we can use it in ethically significant ways without having to use any particular set of words or phrases, so all language is potentially ethically significant
2. On some ethical views (standard versions of deontology, for instance), ethics forbids certain things but allows others, leaving many of these other things not good but ethically neutral, whereas other kinds of ethical view (standard versions of consequentialism, say) apply to everything, so that every act and every omission is potentially subject to moral judgment--this is one sense in which ethics might be said to be global, universal, or ubiquitous
3. Other ethical views (e.g. virtue ethics) care about not only what is done but the way it is done, and might therefore judge not only actions and decisions but also reactions, emotions, thoughts, and so on--this is another sense in which ethics might be said to be global, etc.
4. Finally, ethics can be thought to be about more than judgments of what is right and wrong. It can apply to perception, so that it can be an ethical failing not to notice something. This might seem to come down to a judgment that such failure is wrong, but (perhaps because we are all limited when it comes to sensitivity and perception) it sometimes seems better to talk about better and worse than right and wrong in such matters. Relative insensitivity need not be judged wrong for it to be seen to be less than ideal. (It might even be wrong, unduly harsh, to judge it wrong.) If this all seems very obscure, think of issues of equality involving men and women, straight people and gay people, human beings and animals, people of different ethnicities, and so on. If I am generally pretty sympathetic to members of some other group but not as sympathetic as I should be am I wrong? Where on the scale of sensitivity do we draw the line between right (or acceptable) and wrong? There might be a wrong part of the spectrum, but the terms 'right' and 'wrong' seem too crude to be useful here. And if ethics is not only about judgments and the judge-able, if it covers also what is assessable as more or less good, then, once again, it has a broader scope than might be thought.    

I think two points follow. One is that we cannot identify ethically significant uses of language just by looking at the vocabulary involved. The other is that how we do identify such uses will depend on our own ethics. Are we (merely) judgmental or something more (or something else)? Are we virtue ethicists or do we focus only on actions? Do we recognize a sphere of action that is neither moral nor immoral, or not? And these need not be the only questions worth asking here. If we cannot identify ethically significant uses of language without applying controversial ethical standards, then we cannot philosophize about such uses of language in a way that everyone can be expected to agree on. (See PI 128 for why I think this matters as far as Wittgensteinian philosophy goes: "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them.") Unless we stick to non-controversial examples, that is, examples that are uncontroversially ethically significant. They might be controversial in other ways, e.g. with regard to what to make of them. For instance, it is uncontroversial that abortion is ethically significant, but whether it is ever acceptable is controversial. So perhaps a Wittgensteinian ethicist might elucidate the use of words in a sentence like "Abortion is wrong." This would be meta-ethics, of course. (It is what I meant when I referred, no doubt confusingly and confusedly, in my last post to "the philosophy of ethics" as opposed to ethics itself.)

So for now that's my conclusion. Wittgensteinian philosophy can accommodate meta-ethics but not what I think of as ethics proper. I still have doubts though. Hasn't Paul Johnston done a good job of showing that the distinction between meta-ethics and ethics (or normative theory) breaks down? I need to re-read his work. I ought to have some sort of view on Anscombe at my fingertips, but not teaching what you do research on can be a problem sometimes. I don't remember my own work, let alone other people's. As I recall, though, Anscombe's critique of the concept of moral obligation as meaningless is bound up with her own moral views. My suspicion is that it would not be possible to do work in meta-ethics that was actually useful, that provided clarification where it was needed, without taking some kind of moral stand.

But maybe that is always the case in philosophy. In which case maybe it's only possible in some sense to do Wittgensteinian philosophy with people with whom one agrees. Then the philosopher would have to be a member of a kind of thought community. And that doesn't sound right. I think the Wittgensteinian philosopher is supposed to be more like a therapist, asking questions to guide someone else to clarity, out of the fly-bottle, and not proposing or defending this or that belief, and hence not really speaking for herself. Whether this can be done in meta-ethics seems doubtful, but it would help to look at some examples. That could be food for a future blog post.