Tommi Uschanov and Reshef have a nice discussion here about what Wittgenstein might mean when he talks about the absolutely right road in the Lecture on Ethics. Tommi provides a link there to this essay by Arto Tukiainen. Tukiainen writes:
Wittgenstein himself connects ethics with logic when he compares absolute goodness to an absolutely right road that everyone chooses with logical necessity after having become aware of it (1965, 7). He qualifies this by saying that if we don't choose absolute goodness, we feel guilty. One might wonder how it is possible to feel guilty for not choosing absolute goodness if choosing it happens with logical necessity. Is it not the case that not choosing absolute goodness and feeling guilty about this excludes choosing it and being happy? So how can choosing absolute goodness happen with logical necessity? How can Wittgenstein compare absolute goodness to a road we choose with logical necessity? (p. 105)There seems to be a mistake here. Wittgenstein says:
I said that so far as facts and propositions are concerned there is only relative value and relative good, right, etc. And let me, before I go on, illustrate this by a rather obvious example. The right road is the road which leads to an arbitrarily predetermined end and it is quite clear to us all that there is no sense in talking about the right road apart from such a predetermined goal. Now let us see what we could possibly mean by the expression, "the absolutely right road." I think it would be the road which everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for not going. And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera. No state of affairs has, in itself, what I would like to call the coercive power of an absolute judge.I take the alleged logical necessity to be, not that one takes the absolutely right road, but that one either takes this road or feels guilty. So there is no need to wonder "how it is possible to feel guilty for not choosing absolute goodness if choosing it happens with logical necessity". Choosing it does not happen with logical necessity. (Unless I'm misreading the text.)
It's interesting that Wittgenstein says that there is no such state of affairs. How does he know? He goes on not to give evidence (unrepentant murderers, etc.) but to ask what people, including himself, who still want to talk about absolute value have in mind and mean to express. And he thinks then of cases in which he would use such language. Here he starts talking about psychology, and certain kinds of experiences, in the hope that the audience will call to mind similar experiences of their own. (This all sounds like the kind of thing he later recommends not doing in philosophy, although given his particular purpose here perhaps even his later self would be OK with it.)
When he considers these experiences the first thing he has to say is that their verbal expression is a nonsensical misuse of language. These experiences seem to people like him to have "in some sense an intrinsic, absolute value." But a few lines later he concedes that, "it is nonsense to say that they have absolute value." Shortly after that (I'm going through this too fast: one day perhaps I'll write a line-by-line exegesis) he realizes that nonsensicality is the essence of the expressions he is concerned with.
I think, then, that it's not an accident that there just happens to be no state of affairs with the power of a coercive judge. Any such state of affairs, if it did exist, would not be what is wanted. An object or person that made one do what it wanted or else feel mental pain would be evil (cf. Kant, who, however, doesn't say exactly the same thing, and this from Wittgenstein: "If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him." (Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 107-8)--quoted here). To see what Wittgenstein means to help you see, though, you ought to go through the twists and turns in the lecture.
One final note. The first paragraph of the lecture (there are two in all, the second being the longer) ends thus:
My third and last difficulty is one which, in fact, adheres to most lengthy philosophical lectures and it is this, that the hearer is incapable of seeing both the road he is led and the goal which it leads to. That is to say: he either thinks: "I understand all he says, but what on earth is he driving at" or else he thinks "I see what he's driving at, but how on earth is he going to get there." All I can do is again to ask you to be patient and to hope that in the end you may see both the way and where it leads to.This, again, warns against relying on a summary of what the lecture says, but it's possible that it isn't just a coincidence that Wittgenstein uses a road metaphor here as he does in explaining what he means by "absolute value," etc.
Thanks for contributing to the discussion. A line-by-line exegesis of the Lecture on Ethics by you would certainly be something to look forward to.
ReplyDeleteBut my own objection (whether I can identify anything in Tukiainen's own text that is its exact equivalent, or have to be content to merely acknowledge him for inspiring it) is still the original one. We have a competing standard for absoluteness that is more absolute still, and compared to which even Wittgenstein's standard is merely relative, this being the absoluteness of laws of nature.
If I use this competing standard for absoluteness, then where Wittgenstein says that no state of affairs has "the coercive power of an absolute judge", I say that every state of affairs has this power. After all, Wittgenstein's being dead has the coercive power of preventing him from clarifying to us what he meant in the Lecture on Ethics; our being on different continents has the coercive power of precluding the possibility of our discussing the Lecture on Ethics face to face today; and so on. (This is what I meant when I spoke of a road on which we all always are already, whether we like it or not.)
No state of affairs has the power to coerce anyone to act on any moral judgement. But this is not due to no state of affairs having the coercive power of an absolute judge, but to the fact that the coercive power of an absolute judge is only a power over states of affairs.
So the absolutely right road would be the most absolutely right road, which would be a road we were always already on?
DeleteBut then Wittgenstein is explaining what he means by 'absolute' or 'ethical' here, so it needn't match what we think of as being absolute or most absolute.
Unfortunately, he says this:
I said that so far as facts and propositions are concerned there is only relative value and relative good, right, etc. And let me, before I go on, illustrate this by a rather obvious example. The right road is the road which leads to an arbitrarily predetermined end and it is quite clear to us all that there is no sense in talking about the right road apart from such a predetermined goal. Now let us see what we could possibly mean by the expression, "the absolutely
right road." I think it would be the road which everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for not going
This is problematic. If as far as propositions go there is only relative value, then as far as propositions go there is no such thing as absolute value. It is quite clear to us all that there is no sense in talking about a right road without a predetermined goal. But then, right after saying this, he goes on to say, with little hesitation, what we could possibly mean by "the absolutely right road." And he does this in propositions.
If he's contradicting himself then I'm sure it isn't by mistake, but it looks like some sort of contradiction, and if we're going to understand him we need to sort out (or through) what he's doing here. Which I hope I can start to do soon.
Tommi, on your view, is there room for distinction between kinds of necessity: specifically between logical and physical necessity? Is there a difference of grammar between saying ‘I can’t breathe under water,’ and saying ‘I can’t draw a circle without a diameter’? If there is a distinction, which is “stronger”—logical or physical necessity? – Or are these bad questions to ask?
DeleteDuncan, I am really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
I've been thinking of what to say to this. Perhaps the best thing I can say briefly is that I take a view influenced by Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics, which emphasised that what he famously called "the hardness of the logical must" is not something whose hardness one can so to say lean on when something having to do with human beings and their actions (something anthropological) is involved. As Wittgenstein wrote in 1937 in the seemingly little read "Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness": "'Must': that means we are going to apply this picture come what may."
DeleteIn a sense, I am criticising Wittgenstein's use of the term "logical necessity" in 1929 in the expression "the road which everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for not going" as being problematic in the light of the view of logical necessity which he himself went on to take in his philosophy of mathematics later, in the 1930s and 1940s.
I’m actually working on the philosophy of mathematics now in connection to aspect-seeing. Anyway, I should say: I agree with everything you say about necessity. Specifically, I agree about the anthropological element you say is involved. I even agree that there is tension between what Wittgenstein says about logical necessity and the way he uses the term in the Lecture.
DeleteThe only thing I disagree with is that, even with his later most mature views about necessity on board, what he says in the Lecture on ethics about necessity cannot be given a more charitable reading. It could be represented as tension between the early-middle Wittgenstein of the Lecture and the later Wittgenstein of the philosophy of mathematics. But even in the Tractatus, I think the tension exists, or some similar tension, for he doesn’t talk there about necessity but he does talk about the non-accidental (and, as I pointed out already, he says of both logic and ethics that they are transcendental). That is, it seems to me implausible to suggest Wittgenstein was unaware of this tension in the Lecture or even earlier. The choice we have then is between saying, implausibly I think, that he was unaware of the tension, and saying alternatively that he uses the expression ‘logically necessary’ in the Lecture *on purpose*: precisely *because* he is aware of the tension. – That is, we have a choice here; saying Wittgenstein is inconsistent or is making some mistake is not our only alternative here. I opt for the latter option. It very much seems to me he doesn’t *have* to use this expression. More so, the text of the lecture does not even lead to this expression in any way, and to me, at least, it therefore very much seems like a purposeful choice on his part. So I prefer to think he has a point in doing so. Or at least, I think we owe it to him to see if there might be something intentional here, and not fault him for doing something just because we can’t find a way to make sense of it. That is I think we can be more charitable, and I also think that if we try, we can get something pretty deep and important. That’s what I’ve tried to do in that paper of mine I mentioned before. I don’t know if I was fully successful. But anyway, I don’t know of many who tried to be charitable to Wittgenstein on this point, let alone of many who think we can be charitable in the way I recommend.
And yet Wittgenstein himself indicated, right at the start of the lecture, that if he was wishing for charity in his listeners, it was a charity towards what he himself viewed as his careless and inexact manner of expressing himself:
Delete"English is not my native tongue and my expression therefore often lacks that precision and subtlety which would be desirable if one talks about a difficult subject. All I can do is to ask you to make my task easier by trying to get at my meaning in spite of the faults which I will constantly be committing against the English grammar."
By "grammar" I'm sure he also meant (as the German Grammatik does) things such as the right choice of words.
That is one thing. Another is that in ethics too, and not just in the philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein developed later in a direction which I find much more interesting. For instance, I think the Wittgenstein who discussed ethical issues with Rush Rhees in the 1940s, as described by the latter in his "Some Developments in Wittgenstein's View of Ethics" (which accompanied the Lecture on Ethics when it was first published in the Philosophical Review in 1965), is philosophically a much more useful/helpful figure than the Wittgenstein of the Lecture on Ethics. For this reason, although I'm keen to give any text as charitable an interpretation as possible, I find myself unable to give the question "What is the single most charitable interpretation of the Lecture on Ethics?" quite the same weight as you clearly do.
Invoking the request Wittgenstein makes at the beginning of the lecture you mention is a dangerous move. It can open the door to almost random criticisms of what Wittgenstein says, because apparently he himself admits that he does not talk precisely. I think this would open the door to a lot of uncharity, for it can be taken to suggest that we don’t need to take just about *anything* Wittgenstein says in this lecture seriously.
DeleteThe preliminary remarks he makes at the beginning of the lecture, I think, are objects of comparison. Specifically they are *relative* objects of comparison, to be used (by the attentive listener, or the reader) by contrasting them with claims he makes later in the Lecture about absolute uses of language. So, in this particular case, saying that his grammar lacks precision is a case where the lack can be amended. His formulations lack precision relative to possible formulations that don’t lack such precision. This is—in the subtext of the Lecture—contrasted with the cases of absolute uses of language, in which we *feel* as though our language doesn’t do a good enough job, and as if we would like to be able to be more precise, but in fact there is no formulation of what we want to say that would make sense. Saying what we want precisely would require that we cross the boundaries of sense. So this is the comparison here, I suggest, and I think this is the philosophical purpose of this preliminary remark. Similar things can be said about the other preliminary comments he makes. Anyway, this is how I suggest we read him.
I don’t know how you read the ‘Some Developments’ paper, but I agree with you that it contains interesting stuff. What I disagree is that we have to choose between the Wittgenstein of the Lecture and the Wittgenstein of the discussions with Rhees. Saying there is a contrast between the two Wittgensteins is one possibility, and I think this possibility is uncharitable. It is more charitable to say that this is the same Wittgenstein. And my point is that this is *possible.* We really have this alternative, which you seem to want to say doesn’t exist, or doesn’t interest you so much. I also think that we can get more out of the ‘Some Development’ paper if we read it together with the lecture (and other things Wittgenstein wrote, early and late). The paper I mentioned suggests a way of doing that too.
If someone doesn’t want to take the Lecture seriously, that’s fine. One does not have a moral obligation to, I think. But not trying to take it seriously enough, and then presenting what we get as a serious reading of a Lecture seems to me a bit fishy.
Just a note: That otherwise respectable readers of Wittgenstein don't seem to want to read the Lecture seriously is not new. E. D. Klemke is perhaps the most brutal and explicit. He begins his essay on the Lecture thus: "Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics is undoubtedly one of the shoddiest things ever written on the subject."
DeleteI'm not sure what it is that makes readers not take the Lecture seriously. It goes with, I think, and probably have similar origins as, not wanting to take the Tractatus on Ethics seriously. I think it is also related to not wanting to take Anscombe's claims about the moral ought seriously. I say "wanting" b/c it seems to me that this is a matter of will.
But that Lecture is fuzzy and muddle-headed and even Wittgenstein seemed to acknowledge that. What, after all, do we come away with after reading it? Do we have a better sense of what ethics is or what he took to be our reasons for doing some things but not others?
DeleteIn the end, all he offers is some general stuff about how he takes ethics to arise from (or be associated with) things like feeling safe, as if nothing can touch us (which, in a sense, is how we feel if we disengage our egos from the world -- discarding the pull of desire and the significance of having needs, thus disengaging from the possible hurt and suffering that come when our wants and needs go unfulfilled). In this way he seems to be suggesting we reach a level of being that is beyond the pettiness of the egoistic self and thus our behavior achieves an ethical state as a kind of corollary. Yet it's never clear how that state leads us, or prompts us, or causes us to behave in ways we typically think of as morally (ethically) right. After all, can't we simply abandon everything this way, even concern for others' suffering (which seems to be the quintessential moral drive which we seek to explain and justify)?
The Lecture on Ethics is interesting to those of us who see Wittgenstein as an important thinker but it adds virtually nothing to ethical discourse (though it adds something to our efforts to understand Wittgenstein and grasp the changes that were occurring in his thinking from his early period to his later).
Perhaps people tend not to take the lecture seriously because it isn't very helpful to an inquiry concerning what ethics is and why its role in our lives, and the things it seems to enjoin on us (when we take it seriously), should matter to us at all. Why, after all, not just reject ethical concerns and do as we like when we want to?
Duncan has asked whether Ethics is even a subject at all, whether it's a fit area of inquiry for the philosophically inclined? Perhaps, after all, ethics just is what it is and we do what we do without need for or benefit from philosophical inquiry.
Yet we still have questions about all this, especially when there are competing opinions on what to do and why we should do it. Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics does hardly anything to shed light on these kinds of concerns. Just because we admire him (and find insight and important ideas in his work) is no reason to suspend credulity and embrace everything he put his name to. Sometimes, as they say, a cigar is just a cigar. Even Wittgenstein seemed to dismiss the significance of that lecture. Why shouldn't we take him at his word?
“The Lecture is fuzzy and muddle-headed and even Wittgenstein seemed to acknowledge that.” – Where?
DeleteI have the opposite view about the lecture, it’s not worth repeating.
I do find it interesting that there is such a strong inclination among philosophers, moral philosophers, to treat Wittgenstein’s earlier views (both Tractatus and Lecture) in such a dismissive way. Even more than interesting; I think fully understanding why this happens might actually go together with understanding what the Lecture has to offer.
Here are two things I can think of for why this happens:
(1) People don’t want to think about the Tractatus, and are not interested in the views in it, specifically about necessity and sense-making (without which, I think it is impossible to get anything out of the Tractatus on ethics or the Lecture).
(2) The kind of *moral*-intellectual demand the Lecture I think is making (the kind of thinking it requires, without which it says ethics will not even be visible) is something people do not want to engage in (or admit they do). This is most visible in utilitarian thought, but it is present all over moral philosophy.
I think the problem with his earlier views on ethics, which prompt the dismissive attitude you refer to, is that they really don't serve to clarify but mainly obfuscate. The Lecture is in that same vein. It is imprecise and blurry in its approach, invoking feelings without explaining their role. But, of course, Wittgenstein declined to use explanation in philosophy in both his earlier and later periods. Presumably he believed that reticence must apply to ethical concerns as well: nothing to explain, nothing to be asked, it's just that some things we must do and some things we must not and we know it in some unarticulated way. There are no reasons to be given as to why -- or to guide us in our more difficult choices when confronted with competing options.
DeleteIf ethics is anything it must be about what we should do and if the study of ethics is anything it must be about why we should think we have reasons to do some things but not others.
Is that a place philosophers can weigh in? Wittgenstein apparently did not in his later work and in his earlier he contents himself with pronouncements about what can be shown, not said, and, implicitly at least, what can be done, not argued for.
But in the end ethics is all about having reasons to do some things and to avoid doing other things. If it isn't about that how is it about anything at all?
The ethics of the Tractatus and of the Lecture seem to not be about any of this. Isn't that a reason he is not taken all that seriously on the matter of ethics even though many Wittgensteinians find themselves engaging in ethical issues and inquiries as a matter of course? What does he really offer us by way of making ethics as such clearer?
As Stokhof proposes, ethics for the early Wittgenstein seems to rest on the transcendental. He argues that this is consistent with Buddhism and Schopenhauer (the latter of whom we know Wittgenstein read). But with those two approaches, ethics is basically ancillary, a byproduct of spiritual advancement. The reasons to do one thing rather than another are utilitarian, instrumentalist: to get oneself into a better state of being, of mind. Stokhof sees this in Wittgenstein, too, although he reminds us that the later Wittgenstein's approach to language use implies a kind of moral relativism which is inconsistent with the transcendental absolutist ethics of the younger man. This divergence does need to be reconciled I think though I'm not sure Stokhof gets us there.
I don't think you're right that people who reject Wittgenstein on ethics in his early work "don't want to thing about the Tractatus." At least that is not the case for us all.
And there is a problem with relegating ethics to the transcendental though I would not say doing so is entirely wrong. My own view is that ethics or moral valuation is finally grounded in something like Wittgenstein's insight about ethics being transcendental, but I don't think it all comes down to showing not saying. That isn't useful or helpful in understanding what ethics is about. If anything, ethics is finally about what we say about the things we do and so saying as such continues to matter.
I don't recall where it was that I read that Wittgenstein himself dismissed that Lecture of his as pretty bad. If I can recall I'll provide the cite, of course. If not, well I won't mention it again until I do!
Isn't the problem to be found in the notion of "absolute value" itself? What can that be? We think moral claims must compel us in ways that override contingent facts about our situation because what we take to be moral claims are not and cannot be what is merely prudent or instrumentally useful to us. We think of the moral as something that stands apart from us, a higher form of demand upon us. And if it isn't like that we wonder how can it be moral at all? Why should we feel compelled to set aside what seem to be our own interests for something that doesn't serve those interests or maybe even works against them?
ReplyDeleteWe are trapped in a picture of things that portrays the moral as commands and commands come from outside, from somewhere else or someone else, and are thus imposed on us. They are "absolute," we think, because they constrain us in a manner that is beyond our individual control, universal, not particular (as in being grounded in this set of circumstances rather than the other).
But why assume that that is what we mean by "absolute"? If the moral is about making choices (and how can it not be if we are to be accountable for what we choose?), then the only "absolute" thing about it must come from within us. The choice we make, the road we follow, must be chosen for a reason in which case we could always have chosen differently. If there is an analogy with logical necessity it must lie in that. We can choose to be logical or not and suffer the consequences for choosing the negative option. But there is nothing absolute in that. Logic, as in playing by the rules, is always a choice.
What then enables us to set self-interest and the sort of valuing that serves it aside in favor of something that overrules it in a sense that we want to call "absolute"? Must we not conclude that to be "absolute" is to be ruled absolute by the agent him or herself? That is, the moral absolute is that because it is self-imposed, not other imposed. If "absolute" is seen in this way, it is not absolute in the way Wittgenstein seems, at times, to conceive it in that lecture. If we always have the choice of playing by the rules or not, this is not about what must absolutely be the case.
On the other hand the rules we choose will determine what we do and moral behavior is about choosing which rules we will play by, isn't it? So the very idea of absoluteness here runs aground. We are absolutely constrained by the rules we choose to follow as long as we adhere to that choice, but which rules we choose are contingent on who we are, how we see the world, what we have learned from those around us and on the biological necessity that always constrains us.
"Absolute value" in this sense can never be an external absoluteness imposed by external constraints, even if we sometimes feel it to be like that or cannot express it in any other way. Nothing is "absolute" in that sense, nothing that is which constrains our choices other than physical necessity. And that, at least theoretically, could always have been otherwise.
To the extent moral judgment is about following certain rules in how we behave in the world (I would further limit it to how we behave towards and with others), it is only absolute within a framework. But in that case, in the moral sense, there is nothing absolute about it at all.
“in the end ethics is all about having reasons to do some things and to avoid doing other things. If it isn't about that how is it about anything at all?”
DeleteYes, people go into a philosophical discussion like many undergrad students today go into a classroom: i.e. like customers. They have expectations. And they tend to become dismissive if their expectations are not met. They don’t like it when a philosopher undermines those expectations, and asks them to think critically about them. And they especially don’t like it if the philosopher is *morally* critical about those expectations.
What I don’t feel I fully understand is this: If people are not interested in a certain philosopher, that’s fine. They usually don’t think or write about them. That’s the natural way to express disinterest. No harm needs to be done. But when it comes to Wittgenstein--especially to his early views on ethics--people manifest their disinterest by positively writing about Wittgenstein dismissively; that is, not in a tone of levelheaded criticism, but using positively derogatory language. – I find it very weird. But perhaps not: People may feel the need to be able to criticize Wittgenstein: criticize the uncriticizable, as it were. It seems some at least find an iconoclastic kind of pleasure in it. Hacker does this with the remarks of Frazer somewhere. Klemke does it with the Lecture. Many do it with the Tractatus. This is a psychological explanation. I wonder if there is a deeper reason for that.
Anyway, this lets-be-dismissive-towards-wittgenstein sport was more fashionable when Wittgenstein was fashionable. I was hoping that since Wittgenstein went out of fashion that this sport will become less fashionable as well. Oh well.
But how is it to be dismissive of Wittgenstein to be willing to criticize his ideas and efforts and to be willing to differentiate between those we take to be better or worse? Surely Wittgenstein, like every other thinker (philosopher or otherwise), must be deemed to be an acceptable target of our criticisms, no?
DeleteShould philosophy provide answers for its "customers"? But what else is it to do? What do we think we are about when taking up a philosophical question? What other point is there in doing this sort of thing if it is not to seek to provide some answers (even if the answer turns out to be there are "no philosophical problems" as such and so the questioner needs to look elsewhere or just stop asking)?
You are asking me to teach you philosophy. I'm not going to do this. Your conception of philosophy is very different than mine (and I fear Wittgenstein's), and I'm not going to change it. For what it's worth, I'll say this: If you learn anything from Wittgenstein about philosophy (or Plato, or Kant, or from Kierkegaard, for that matters), is that the point of studying philosophy is *not* to get answers to *our* questions. Wittgenstein expressed this many times. And his moral philosophy is ALL about this. If one is not willing to take even this seriously, then I don't see any point.
DeleteAnd of course, "Wittgenstein, like every other thinker (philosopher or otherwise), must be deemed to be an acceptable target of our criticisms." But as with every other thinker, if you are going to criticize him, you should make sure you understand him first. If not, your criticism will not really be of *him*. It will probably just be an arrogant exercise of self-affirmation. Several thinkers, including Elizabeth Anscombe, Cora Diamond, and Saul Kripke (in his discussion about following a rule, not the discussion about the Paris meter), are critical of Wittgenstein in places. They do so by first trying to learn from him. This, I claim, is too often not done in the discussions about the Lecture.
No, I am not asking you to teach me anything. Just to engage in some discussion. If that's not your thing, or if you think I am not philosophical enough for you, that's okay. But I would suggest that perhaps you might want to consider that you are adhering to an overly narrow picture of what philosophy is.
DeleteYou write:
. . . as with every other thinker, if you are going to criticize him, you should make sure you understand him first. If not, your criticism will not really be of *him*. It will probably just be an arrogant exercise of self-affirmation. . . . [first trying to learn from him], I claim, is too often not done in the discussions about the Lecture.
Well you are entitled to your opinion, of course. And I am only a guest here so I won't argue further. But I would just make one more point: There is more to philosophy than the thoughts and writings of any single philosopher, even than Wittgenstein. Philosophy starts with the individual who takes it up, not with the canon of a particular philosophical school.
While I am a great admirer and, indeed, student of Wittgenstein, I do not ever want to be taken for an adherent -- of him or anyone else -- and so it seems to me important, indeed, de rigueur, to consider his points, his insights on their merits and not just because they are his. After all, he rejected a lot of his prior work, too, and when he died he did so still convinced he hadn't gotten his later writings right enough to see them published.
In the end philosophy is about the issues, not the people who attempted to wrestle with them. I believe Wittgenstein saw that very clearly.
I agree with almost everything you say.
DeleteOne place I think we disagree is regarding Wittgenstein's attitude and opinion about his own achievements. He was *not* dismissive of them. And although he was a kind of perfectionist and rather critical of what he wrote, he never simply dismissed his own work. Also, in criticizing himself, he always showed himself the curtesy of understanding himself first. That he criticized himself does not give us a license to dismiss what he wrote, or to illicitly impose our own questions and assumptions on his text, note triumphantly that he doesn't have answers for us, and then conclude that his work is "muddle-headed."
Well, perhaps you misread me or I wasn't clear enough. My own interests are largely in the area of ethical philosophy and, though a great admirer of Wittgenstein, I haven't found his work helpful in that area.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's because I approach ethics differently than he did (and maybe you do). In fact I probably approach philosophy differently, rejecting the idea that there are no philosophical problems. I take Wittgenstein's latter day assertion that there aren't to mean that there are no problems in the sense that science confronts and solves problems. There certainly are philosophical problems or why else was he trying to unmuddle muddles?
So where do ethics fit in? I see that field as an area where confusion often shades into application. Looking for fixed codes of behavior with authoritative sources we often find ourselves facing competing ethical claims so we want to know how to navigate our way around these. Why do we think there is any right thing to do at all? Why not just do what we like when we like and/or reject all moral claims as empty?
Here the muddle has to do with what words like "good" (in an ethical sense but also other senses) or "right" mean and why any claims which assert such terms should have any hold on us at all. On my view, Wittgenstein doesn't add much here and the Lecture doesn't help. Nor do the early statements found in the Tractatus.
But they aren't pointless either. There is much to be said for the insight found in that work re: ethics having a different nature than observables and the claims associated with them. But for ethics to be "transcendental" is not helpful for those who are engaging in ethical inquiries (not the same as philosophical inquiries about ethics). Ethics in philosophy is about clearing the way for those actually engaging in ethical thinking and decision making (all of us in our ordinary lives).
As I see it, philosophy's job is to help us get clearer on various questions but not all questions. Whether to eat white bread or whole wheat, real meat or a meat substitute, take this road not the other, are all questions which involve valuation but not necessarily an ethical one (though they may have an ethical aspect as in the case of eating meat). Ethics kicks in, as far as I can see, when we are faced with the effects our choices are likely to have on others. Ethics are interpersonal so they involve a certain range of our behaviors which is narrower than valuing generally.
I'm interested in philosophical inquiry into ethics as a means of discerning the basis we have for dealing with such questions which are not, themselves, philosophical questions.
So perhaps we don't have the same view of philosophy but I doubt we are as far apart as you seemed to think above. But on Wittgenstein's attitude towards his own work, I tend to take him at his word, especially if I have come to a similar conclusion.
I see no reason to think he added much to the philosophical questions surrounding ethical matters based on what I take ethics to be: how and why we decide what to do in relation to our fellow human beings and maybe others besides. But this is not to equate this with psychological or sociological surveys of what we actually do but with an examination of how and why we choose certain reasons for acting and how we come to understand why we have reason(s) to do so.
Your duty to justify your assumptions and questions is mainly to yourself. Go ahead; you don't need my permission.
DeleteTrue, I don't. And you don't need mine. All we're doing here is having a conversation expressing different points of view. In the end how are such things resolved? In philosophy, not very definitively I expect. That's why there are different schools of thought often ferociously at odds with one another. I have, in my day, been attacked for being a Wittgenstein groupie (I am hardly that and never was, but you can't disabuse folks of their preconceptions and beliefs). How does it work in philosophy? In the end we justify to ourselves as you say and look to the community of others with an interest in the same thing to ratify what we've done. But ratification doesn't mean being right. It just means that what one has said has resonated, found a sympathetic audience. Such audiences may come and go with the trends of the times. Peirce suffered in a kind of intellectual isolation despite the efforts of his friend William James but has seen a revival of respect for his work in our time.
DeleteI have no illusions that philosophical claims of any sort can be definitively resolved. They are always a matter of finding their audience. If they don't, they may go for decades or longer unrecognized (as with Schopenhauer or, to a lesser extent, Nietzsche) and maybe they never are. Today's academic world, at least the Anglophone world, has created a certain audience with certain shared assumptions and beliefs (though within that there are various divisions each with its own adherents). The same has occurred in continental Europe. Philosophy outside the Western world has its own specs to be sure and its own traditions, too. In the end its the community that makes or breaks a set of ideas, adding them to the grand opus or rejecting them.
So no, neither of us need "permission," nor was I aware either of us was seeking it. We were, as I understood it, just talking about something which seemed to be of interest to us both.