Schulte on Wittgenstein in 1929

Joachim Schulte's review of Wittgenstein's Philosophy in 1929 says this about my contribution to the collection:  

Duncan Richter (in “The Good, the Divine, and the Supernatural”) discusses central    concepts from Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics, that is to say, concepts like those mentioned in his title, the distinction between relative and absolute value, “absolute safety”, “experience par excellence”, and other notions well-known to readers of that   lecture and the secondary literature dealing with its topics. The background of Richter’s reflections is a discussion between Cora Diamond and Michael Kremer. These authors focus on certain passages from Philosophical Investigations, in particular §107, which is read as referring to “a conflict” that could be seen as having taken place in Wittgenstein’s thought around 1929. This interpretation is fruitfully illustrated and supported by quotations from Wittgenstein’s manuscripts, “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, the Lecture on Ethics, and in many cases Richter’s characterisations of Wittgenstein’s words hit the nail on the head, for instance when he says of the better part of the lecture that it is “like one long false start” (p. 203). A good deal of the content of Richter’s piece is alluded to by a quotation from MS 107, where Wittgenstein notes in November 1929: “If something is good, then it is also divine. Strangely this summarizes my ethics. |Only the supernatural can express the supernatural” (Richter, p. 195). He is surely right in   foregrounding this passage, even though he misreads Wittgenstein in claiming of this remark that “even he [Wittgenstein] admits that it is strange” (this claim is repeated on p.208, where Richter speaks of “Wittgenstein’s strange identification of the good with the divine”).  Strangeness, however, is attributed, not to the quoted remark, but to the observation that the first sentence serves, or suffices, to summarise his ethics.

I agree that Wittgenstein attributes strangeness to the fact that "If something is good then it is also divine" summarizes his ethics. But why is this strange? Is it because Wittgenstein's ethics can be summarized in just one sentence? That doesn't seem so strange. It seems most likely to me that it is because the view that if something is good then it is also divine is in some sense strange. By 'strange' I don't mean false, of course. But it is unusual, and perhaps hard to understand. 

I don't argue for this reading in the paper, as I probably should have, but I don't think it's a misreading.

Wittgenstein and Ethics

For the next ten days or so this new book by Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen is available to download for free. It's highly recommended, as is looking out for other books in this series. 

Rachel Fraser on Sophie Grace Chappell’s Epiphanies

Although I have yet to read the book under review, I have some thoughts about Rachel Fraser's criticism of Sophie Grace Chappell's new book Epiphanies. All quotes from this in the Boston Review. Bits that seem extra important to me are in bold.

Chappell’s proposal for managing disagreement is what she calls “a republic of conversation.” We should explore together our various epiphanies. Only extremists—those whose epiphanies preclude such conversation—will be excluded. This, of course, is textbook political liberalism. As such, it inherits much of the dreamy unreality characteristic of liberal visions of collective life. There are particular agents with their private projects. Sometimes those agents come together. When they do, their conduct is governed only by the thinnest of requirements: be tolerant, be respectful.

This seems unfair. Chappell is not responsible for the alleged faults of other members of the same tradition or family of views. And Chappell offers, apparently, a proposal (concerning what we should do), while Fraser criticizes a “fantasy” of how our collective lives are lived.

This is a fantasy. Our collective lives are always governed by a thicket of normatively structured institutions—institutions that orient us to a particular conception of the good. [...] Arguably, it is just these thickets which enable conversation. Meaningful discourse requires an interpersonal infrastructure, which cannot be laid in a normative vacuum; it needs some lifeworld to bed into. But it seems to be within just such a vacuum—all moral content thicker than civility pumped out—that Chappell proposes we converse.

Evidence that Chappell proposes conversation in a moral vacuum? None that I can see. But, of course, I haven't read the book.

Once we start thinking of ethics as a social technology, systematicity and argument take on a different hue. It’s hard to be all that piecemeal or poetic when thinking about how to organize social institutions. We may live by our visions, but they can’t write our social policy. And some of us are doomed to live within a moral order that we disavow. This, I am inclined to think, is an unavoidable feature of human life: there could not be a form of life both neutral and meaningfully collective.

Once we do what?! Can this be a good idea? I would think that piecemeal is the only way to think about social institutions. Pretty much for reasons that Fraser gives. We are borin into a world of such institutions and they shape the way we think. We can destroy everything but only literally, only physically. We cannot imaginatively or intellectually wipe the slate clean and then think afresh from there. Wiping the slate clean removes the tools we need to think with. We are stuck with something like reflective equilibrium as the best or only option for social evaluation.

Moving on... So, to converse (meaningfully and collectively) we need a lifeworld. This will not be neutral. And so neither can we ever be. OK.

But if we can’t be neutral, we should at least be articulate. In other words, you owe me an argument. The vision of the good life that our social institutions encode should be explicit and contestable. And to be explicit and contestable—well, that sounds a lot like the law, and less like art criticism (at least as Chappell conceives it). Arguments can be challenged, rather than merely traded, in a way that visions cannot. 

Couldn’t one equally say, “But if we can’t be neutral, we should at least be civil, tolerant, and respectful”? And surely articulating a vision of the good life need not, and usually will not, take the form of putting forward an argument. And how contestable will a vision be that is encoded into the social institutions that enable the very conversation in which alone it can be contested? Somewhat, no doubt, but imperfectly or awkwardly, I would think, at best.

This seems like the key to the mystery here. There's an ideal (that seems visible in Fraser's thinking) of stepping back to get as clear a view as possible of social norms so that they can be critiqued and changed as desired. But there is also a recognition that we cannot do this except from within a lifeworld that is not completely separable from those norms and institutions. Which makes Chappell's view seem more correct than Fraser's. 

Wittgenstein's Philosophy in 1929

 

Edited By 

Florian Franken Figueiredo

The book explores the impact of manuscript remarks during the year 1929 on the development of Wittgenstein’s thought. Although its intention is to put the focus specifically on the manuscripts, the book is not purely exegetical. The contributors generate important new insights for understanding Wittgenstein’s philosophy and his place in the history of analytic philosophy.

Wittgenstein’s writings from the years 1929-1930 are valuable, not simply because they marked Wittgenstein’s return to academic philosophy after a seven-year absence, but because these works indicate several changes in his philosophical thinking. The chapters in this volume clarify the significance of Wittgenstein’s return to philosophy in 1929. In Part 1, the contributors address different issues in the philosophy of mathematics, e.g. Wittgenstein's understanding of certain aspects of intuitionism and his commitment to verificationism, as well as his idea of "a new system". Part 2 examines Wittgenstein's philosophical development and his understanding of philosophical method. Here the contributors examine particular problems Wittgenstein dealt with in 1929, e.g. the colour-exclusion problem, and the use of thought experiments as well as his relationship to Frank Ramsey and philosophical pragmatism. Part 3 features essays on phenomenological language. These chapters address the role of spatial analogies and the structure of visual space. Finally, Part 4 includes one chapter on Wittgenstein’s few manuscript remarks about ethics and religion and relates it to his Lecture on Ethics.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Wittgenstein in 1929 Andrew Lugg

Part 1: Mathematics and Thinking the New

1. Wittgenstein’s Struggle with Intuitionism Mathieu Marion and Mitsuhiro Okada

2. The Origins of Wittgenstein’s Verificationism Severin Schroeder

3. Searching in Space vs. Groping in the Dark: Wittgenstein on Novelty and Imagination in 1929-30 Pascal Zambito

Part 2: Method and Development

4. The Color-Exclusion Problem and the Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Logic Oskari Kuusela

5. What Would It Look Like? Wittgenstein’s Radical Thought Experiments Mauro Luiz Engelmann

6. Phenomenological Language: "not possible" or "not necessary"? Florian Franken Figueiredo

7. Hypotheses as Expectations: Ramsey and Wittgenstein 1929 Cheryl Misak

Part 3: Phenomenology and Visual Space

8. Simplicity in Wittgenstein’s 1929 Manuscripts Michael Hymers

9. Temptations of Purity: Phenomenological Language and Immediate Experience Mihai Ometiță

10. Speaking of the Given: The Structure of Visual Space and the Limits of Language Jasmin Trächtler

Part 4: Ethics

11. The Good, the Divine, and the Supernatural Duncan Richter

The Creation of Wittgenstein

 

Table of Contents

ABBREVIATIONS
1. Introduction, Thomas Wallgren (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Part I: Portraits of Wittgenstein's Literary Heirs
2. Rush Rhees: “Discussion is my Only Medicine” , Lars Hertzberg (Åbo Academy University, Finland)
3. A Portrait of Elizabeth Anscombe, Duncan Richter (Virginia Military Institute, USA)
4. Georg Henrik von Wright – A Biographical Sketch, Bernt Österman (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Part II: Understanding the Editors' Contributions to the Wittgenstein Scholars Have Known and the Philosophical Implications of their Achievement
5. The Letters which Rush Rhees, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Georg Henrik von Wright Sent to
Each Other, Christian Erbacher (University of Siegen, Germany)
6. The Revision of Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Kim Solin (University of Helsinki, Finland)
7. Naked, Please! Elizabeth Anscombe as Translator and Editor of Wittgenstein, Joel Backström (University of Helsinki, Finland)
8. From A Collection of Aphorisms to the Setting of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: G.H. Von Wright's Work on Wittgenstein's General Remarks, Bernt Österman (University of Helsinki, Finland)
9. “… Finding and Inventing Intermediate Links”: On Rhees and the Preparation and Publication of Bemerkungen Über Frazers “The Golden Bough”, Peter K. Westergaard (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
10. Editorial Approaches to Wittgenstein's “Last Writings” (1949–51): Elizabeth Anscombe, G.H. von Wright and Rush Rhees in Dialogue, Lassi Jakola (University of Helsinki, Finland)
11. Art's Part in Wittgenstein's Philosophy, Hanne Appelqvist (Helsinki Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland)
12. Unearthing the Socratic Wittgenstein, Thomas Wallgren (University of Helsinki, Finland)

APPENDIX 1:
Wittgenstein's Will. Facsimilie of G.H. von Wright's exemplar, kept at WWA.
APPENDIX 2:
Table of Writings Published Postuhumously with Ludwig Wittgenstein Named as Author and at Least One of the Following As Editor: Rush Rhees. G.E.M. Anscombe, G.H. Von Wright. Created By Rickard Nylund In Cooperation With Thomas Wallgren.
BIBILIOGRAPHY
- Compiled by Patrik Forss in cooperation with Thomas Wallgren.
NOTE ON ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
- Compiled by Anna Lindelöf in cooperation with Bernt Österman and Thomas Wallgren.

Available for pre-order here.

The Oxford Handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe

 

Introduction, Roger Teichmann
Part I: Intention
1. 'On Anscombe on Practical Knowledge and Practical Truth,' Lucy Campbell
2. 'Intention with Which,' Charles F. Capps
3. 'Intention, Knowledge and responsibility,' Rémi Clot-Goudard
4. '"Practical knowledge" and testimony, Johannes Roessler

Part II: Ethical Theory
5. 'Anscombe's Three Theses After Sixty Years: modern moral philosophy, polemic, and "Modern Moral Philosophy,"' Sophie Grace Chappell
6. 'Practical Truth, Ethical Naturalism, and the Constitution of Agency in Anscombe's Ethics,' John Hacker-Wright
7. 'Criterialism and Contextualism,' Gavin Lawrence
8. 'Anscombe on Double Effect and Intended Consequences,' Cyrille Michon
9. 'Anscombe on Ought,' Anselm Mueller

Part III: Human Life
10.'Justice and Murder: The Backstory to Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy,"' John Berkman
11. 'Anscombe on euthanasia as murder,' David A. Jones
12. 'The Knowledge of Human Dignity,' Micah Lott
13. 'Life and Other Basic Rights in Anscombe,' Katharina Nieswandt
14. 'Anscombe: Sexual Ethics,' Duncan Richter
15. 'Linguistic idealism and human essence,' Rachael Wiseman

Part IV: The First Person
16. 'The first person, self-consciousness and action,' Valerie Aucouturier
17. 'Anscombe and Self-consciousness,' Adrian Haddock
18. 'The first person and "The First person,"' Harold Noonan

Part V: Anscombe on/and Other Philosophers
19. 'Anscombe's Wittgenstein,' Joel Backström
20. 'Anscombe and Aquinas,' John Haldane
21. 'Ethics and Action Theory: An Unhappy Divorce,' Constantine Sandis
22. 'Anscombe and Wittgenstein on Knowledge "without Observation,"' Harold Teichman

Schopenhauer on relative and absolute good

The following are selections from §65 of Volume I of The World as Will and Representation.

First, however, I wish to trace back to their real meaning those conceptions of good and bad which have been treated by the philosophical writers of the day, very extraordinarily, as simple conceptions, and thus incapable of analysis; so that the reader may not remain involved in the senseless delusion that they contain more than is actually the case, and express in and for themselves all that is here necessary. I am in a position to do this because in ethics I am no more disposed to take refuge behind the word good than formerly behind the words beautiful and true, in order that by the adding a “ness,” which at the present day is supposed to have a special [solemnity], and therefore to be of assistance in various cases, and by assuming an air of solemnity, I might induce the belief that by uttering three such words I had done more than denote three very wide and abstract, and consequently empty conceptions, of very different origin and significance. Who is there, indeed, who has made himself acquainted with the books of our own day to whom these three words, admirable as are the things to which they originally refer, have not become an aversion after he has seen for the thousandth time how those who are least capable of thinking believe that they have only to utter these three words with open mouth and the air of an intelligent sheep, in order to have spoken the greatest wisdom?

The above sounds like the kind of thing the later Wittgenstein, at least, might have agreed with. 

We now wish to discover the significance of the concept good, which can be done with very little trouble. This concept is essentially relative, and signifies the conformity of an object to any definite effort of the will. Accordingly everything that corresponds to the will in any of its expressions and fulfils its end is thought through the concept good, however different such things may be in other respects. Thus we speak of good eating, good roads, good weather, good weapons, good omens, and so on; in short, we call everything good that is just as we wish it to be; and therefore that may be good in the eyes of one man which is just the reverse in those of another. The conception of the good divides itself into two sub-species—that of the direct and present satisfaction of any volition, and that of its indirect satisfaction which has reference to the future, i.e., the agreeable and the useful.

Compare Hume: "personal merit consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others" An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 9.1

This idea of good seems very much like Wittgenstein's idea of relative goodness or goodness in the relative sense.

It follows from what has been said above, that the good is, according to its concept, ["something belonging to the relative"]; thus every good is essentially relative, for its being consists in its relation to a desiring will. Absolute good is, therefore, a contradiction in terms; highest good, summum bonum, really signifies the same thing—a final satisfaction of the will, after which no new desire could arise,—a last motive, the attainment of which would afford enduring satisfaction of the will. But, according to the investigations which have already been conducted in this Fourth Book, such a consummation is not even thinkable.

Wittgenstein might sort of agree with this, seeing as he thinks talk of anything absolutely good or good in an absolute sense is nonsense. But he does not say that goodness is essentially relative, nor that absolute good is a contradiction in terms. He focuses, rather, on what people who use such words are trying to say.

If, however, we wish to give an honorary position, as it were emeritus, to an old expression, which from custom we do not like to discard altogether, we may, metaphorically and figuratively, call the complete selfeffacement and denial of the will, the true absence of will, which alone for ever stills and silences its struggle, alone gives that contentment which can never again be disturbed, alone redeems the world, and which we shall now soon consider at the close of our whole investigation—the absolute good, the summum bonum—and regard it as the only radical cure of the disease of which all other means are only palliations or anodynes. 

Here Schopenhauer too adopts the words "absolute good" for a kind of metaphorical use. That much is a bit like Wittgenstein in the Lecture on Ethics. But Schopenhauer relates the absolute good to the denial of the will, which Wittgenstein doesn't talk about.