Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T13:25:15.140Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Ethics is transcendental’ (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.421)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2021

JORDI FAIRHURST Open the ORCID record for JORDI FAIRHURST [Opens in a new window]
JORDI FAIRHURST*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITAT DE LES ILLES BALEARSjordi.fairhurst@uib.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper I offer a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that ‘ethics is transcendental’ (TLP 6.421). Initially, I set out to offer said interpretation by resorting to both Wittgenstein's understanding of ethics and his understanding of the transcendentality of logic—which entails taking Wittgenstein as endorsing a Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. This leads to the claim that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is the condition of a certain ethical experience. Nevertheless, this interpretation involves some inadequacies due to certain incompatibilities between the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the aforementioned Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. I identify the peculiarities of Wittgenstein's understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’, and on this basis, I set forth a novel interpretation of 6.421. Specifically, I argue that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is internal to or constitutive of a certain mystical view: viewing the world sub specie aeterni as something valuable.

Keywords

WittgensteinTractatus Logico-Philosophicusethicslogictranscendental
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Fall 2021 , pp. 348 - 367
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte del Gobierno de España (MECD) under Grant FPU16/05569. For helpful comments and discussion, many thanks to Janet Anne Chilton, the participants of the 41st International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, the editor, and two anonymous reviewers.

References

Appelqvist, Hanne. (2012) ‘Apocalypse Now: Wittgenstein's Early Remarks on Immortality and the Problem of Life’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 29, 195–210.Google Scholar
Appelqvist, Hanne. (2013) ‘Why does Wittgenstein say that Ethics and Aesthetics are One and the Same?’. In Sullivan, Peter and Potter, Michael (eds.), Wittgenstein's Tractatus: History and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 40–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnswald, Ulrich. (2009) ‘The Paradox of Ethics: “It leaves everything as it is”’. In Arnswald, Ulrich (ed.), In Search Of Meaning: Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ethics, Mysticism and Religion (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Publishing), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arrington, Robert L. (2017) ‘Wittgenstein and Ethics’. In Glock, Hans-Johan and Hyman, John (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell), 605–11.Google Scholar
Christensen, Anne-Marie Søndergaard. (2011) ‘Wittgenstein and Ethics’. In Kuusela, Oskari and McGinn, Marie (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 796–817.Google Scholar
Churchill, John. (2009) ‘The Convergence of God, the Self, and the World in Wittgenstein's Tractatus’. In Arnswald, Ulrich (ed.), In Search Of Meaning: Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ethics, Mysticism and Religion (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Publishing), 113–30.Google Scholar
Dain, Edmund. (2018) ‘Wittgenstein's Moral Thought’. In Agam-Segal, Rashef and Dain, Edmund (eds.), Wittgenstein's Moral Thought (New York: Routledge), 9–35.Google Scholar
Diamond, Cora. (2000) ‘Ethics, Imagination and Method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus’. In Crary, Alice and Read, Rupert (eds.), The New Wittgenstein (Oxford: Routledge), 149–73.Google Scholar
Fairhurst, Jordi. (2019) ‘The Ethical Subject and the Willing Subject in the Tractatus: An Alternative to the Transcendental Reading’. Philosophia, 47, 75–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flanagan, Owen (2011). ‘Wittgenstein's Ethical Nonnaturalism: An Interpretation of Tractatus 6.41-47 and the “Lecture on Ethics”’. American Philosophical Quarterly, 48, 185–98.Google Scholar
Goodman, Russell B. (1982) ‘Wittgenstein and Ethics’. Metaphilosophy, 13, 138–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacker, Peter M. S. (1986) Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, Liam. (2009) ‘“If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case.” (TLP 6.41)’. In Arnswald, Ulrich (ed.), In Search Of Meaning: Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ethics, Mysticism and Religion (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Publishing), 51–65.Google Scholar
Jacquette, Dale. (1997) ‘Wittgenstein on the Transcendence of Ethics’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75, 304–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Gruyer, Paul and Wood, Allen W.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, John C. (1995) ‘Wittgenstein, the Self, and Ethics’. The Review of Metaphysics, 48, 567–90.Google Scholar
Kertscher, Jens. (2009) ‘Sense of Ethics and Ethical Sense’. In Arnswald, Ulrich (ed.), In Search of Meaning: Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ethics, Mysticism and Religion (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Publishing), 87–112.Google Scholar
Kuusela, Oskari. (2018) ‘Wittgenstein, Ethics and Philosophical Clarification’. In Agam-Segal, Rashef and Dain, Edmund (eds.), Wittgenstein's Moral Thought (New York: Routledge), 37–66.Google Scholar
Mersch, Dieter. (2009) ‘“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words”. (TLP 6.522) Wittgenstein's Ethics of Showing’. In Arnswald, Ulrich (ed.), In Search of Meaning: Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ethics, Mysticism and Religion (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Publishing), 25–50.Google Scholar
Morris, Michael. (2008) Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Oberdiek, Hans. (2009) ‘Wittgenstein's Ethics: Boundaries and Boundary Crossings’. In Hacker, Peter M. S. and Hyman, John (eds.), Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy: Essays for P. M. S. Hacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 175–202.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Severin. (2006) Wittgenstein: The Way Out of the Fly-Bottle. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Stokhof, Martin. (2002) World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein's Early Thought. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tejedor, Chon. (2013) ‘The Earlier Wittgenstein on the Notion of Religious Attitude’. Philosophy, 88, 55–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tejedor, Chon. (2015) The Early Wittgenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and Value. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wiggins, David. (2004) ‘Wittgenstein on Ethics and the Riddle of Life’. Philosophy, 79, 363–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1961) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (2015) Notebooks, 1914–1916. London: Forgotten Books.Google Scholar
Worthington, Bernard A. (1981) ‘Ethics and the Limits of Language in Wittgenstein's Tractatus’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 19, 481–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar