“Wittgensteinian approaches
to moral philosophy” was the theme of a philosophical conference at the
university of Leuven.
I submitted a paper, but it was not selected.
What was I thinking!
The idea that Wittgenstein scholars would be attracted to a Wittgenstein lover
was one of my worst ideas ever. And believe me, I've had bad ideas.
Without the slightest feeling of rancour, let me assure you, I would like to
make an existential remark.
Wittgenstein attended in his life only one conference.
Never having seen Wittgenstein before, he [Mabbott] assumed that this
[Wittgenstein] was a student on vacation who did not know this hostel had been
given over to those attending the conference. 'I'm afraid there is a gathering
of philosophers going on here', he said kindly. Wittgenstein replied darkly: 'I
too'.
(Ray Monk in his biography of Wittgenstein)
The POSSIBILITY that Wittgenstein would make the same remark in the present
crossed your mind?
I strongly believe in the possibility that you might
like reading my essay.
Wittgenstein is considered as one of the most
important philosophers of the twentieth century. He had a somewhat atypical
career. When he was having legendary discussions with philosophers like Frege,
Moore and Russell at the age of twenty-five he didn’t even have a BA in
philosophy. Although he taught at Cambridge, he didn’t get his PhD until he was
forty years old. On this occasion, he said to his examiners Moore and Russell
when they raised some questions: “Don’t
worry, I know you’ll never understand.” Would that be possible today? Telling examiners that they don’t understand
your dissertation and getting a degree from them? During his lifetime
Wittgenstein published only one little book, the Tractatus Logico
Philosophicus. To his own bewilderment, he had great difficulty in getting it
published. He wrote a lot, but except for an article “Some remarks on logical
form”, he never published anything else. He was sort of a Van Gogh of the
philosophers. As far as ethics is concerned, Wittgenstein gave only one lecture
which dealt exclusively with ethics and he made a rather radical statement in
it. So, it’s not a great deal of work to become a specialist in the moral
philosophy of Wittgenstein.
WITTGENSTEINIAN APPROACHES TO MORAL
PHILSOSOPHY.
(Why Wittgenstein won’t ridicule me.)
This title assumes that anyone who submits
a paper understands Wittgenstein. Or that the author at least believes that he
understands Wittgenstein. If this was not the case, it couldn’t be
Wittgensteinian approaches, it would be the author’s approaches. However, considering
that Wittgenstein himself emphasised on numeral occasions that nearly no one
did understand him, it is a bold statement to claim that you understand
Wittgenstein. It’s even bold to claim that you believe you understand
Wittgenstein.
“Perhaps this book
will be understood only by someone who has himself had the thoughts that are
expressed in it – or at least similar thoughts” is written in
the Tractatus.
“What are these thoughts” seems to be the first object
of investigation when you want to look deeper into this proposition. What is the essence of the book? What is the
essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in general? However, since I am inclined to believe that
the book is understood only by someone who has himself had the thoughts that
are expressed in it, I would like to postpone this subject for obvious reasons:
I already know what these thoughts are, I already know what the essence of the
book is, I already know the essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. So why would
there be any need to explain this?
Instead, I would like to start with the question “When
did you have these thoughts?” It must be obvious that “these thoughts” are
prior to the reading of his book. It’s not my intention to play hide and seek
in this matter. As “these thoughts” were overwhelming to me, I know exactly
where and when I had them. August 2010, at that time I hadn’t read a single
word of Wittgenstein. Quite a reference, isn’t it. For obvious reasons, I
forgot to mention this in my abstract.
Let me try to explain.
This is a picture of a ring box that is on the
dressing table of our bedroom.
For years and years, this was a very familiar picture.
I watched it every morning and every night.
It’ s my wedding ring. I almost never wear it because
in my work there is a danger that my finger gets ripped off and even worse, the
insurance company won’t pay a dime if it turns out that you wore a ring at that
time.
Now, imagine my surprise when one evening some months
ago I found the box like this.
The ring next to mine is a ring a gave to my wife when
we were a couple for a year or so. She had worn it ever since. I never knew her
take it off. What the hell was going on?
I found out when I took the ring out of the box.
The ring was broken. I have to admit that the ring
hadn’t cost a fortune back then, we were teenagers and teenagers don’t have a
lot of money. But still, I wanted to make a proposition if you know what I mean,
so I definitely wanted it to be a real ring.
As I said, my wife wore it every single day. And each
and every day the ring became thinner and thinner, each and every day it became
a little less of a ring. Until one day it’s broken, until one day it’s no
longer a ring. It has lost the essence of being a ring. It has become another
object. If I ask you to give a definition of a ring and this object fits into
that definition, then every object could be qualified as a ring, it would be a
completely useless definition of a ring.
And yet, I still can refer to this object as a ring.
If I would ask my wife what happened to her ring, she would understand
perfectly well what I was talking about. Even to you I can refer to this object
as a ring.
Maybe… maybe, maybe, maybe, I can refer to this object
as a ring not despite it has lost his essence but because, BECAUSE IT HAS LOST
HIS ESSENCE!
Maybe this is what the thoughts of Wittgenstein are.
After all, it’s a rather nonsensical thought.
(“My propositons
are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as
senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them.”)
Now, you may disagree. Or maybe you nod in agreement, but
that doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand it. Nothing wrong with that.
I don’t want to discuss what Wittgenstein’s thoughts are. It would be a nice
side effect if there would be a glimpse of recognition, but I only want to make
clear that the way Wittgenstein came to his thoughts are like the ring. You
might come close to these thoughts, you might come a little bit closer every
single day, but you should realise that in the end there is only one moment
that counts.
That is the moment when the ring breaks.
Convinced that the thoughts that are expressed in the
Tractatus came in a similar sudden way to Wittgenstein, I want to give a
suggestion when this happened to him. When did Ludwig
Wittgenstein had these thoughts for the first time? When did he see clearly, as
it were in a flash of light, the essence of his philosophy?
This was on the tenth of May 1915.
When Wittgenstein was
nineteen he read “The Principles of Mathematics” by Bertrand Russell and from
this day on he would focus on the fundamentals of logic. He was convinced that
he offered an answer for the fundamentals in his Tractatus. (“On the other hand the truth of the thoughts
communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I am, therefore, of
the opinion that problems have in essentials been finally solved.”)
All
his writings before the tenth of May 1915 should be considered as an account of
his search for these essentials.
In his notebooks 1914-1916 Wittgenstein is
continuously asking questions.
20.09.1914
“How
can a function refer to a
proposition? Always the old, old
questions. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with questions; just take it
easy.”
He’s looking for answers, but he doesn’t
seem to find them.
29.09.1914
“The
solution to all my questions must be extremely simple.”
He gets frustrated.
09.10.1914
“In
all these considerations I am somewhere making some sort of FUNDAMENTAL MISTAKE.”
Wittgenstein is desperately looking for a
theory.
23.10.1914
“On the
one hand my theory of logical portrayal seems to be the only possible one, on
the other hand there seems to be an insoluble contradiction in it!”
In this process of his constant thinking
he gives himself advise.
01.11.1914
“Don’t
get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a
free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still
not a clear one.
03.11.1914
“Only
don’t lose the solid ground on which you have just been standing.”
15.11.1914
“Don’t
worry about what you have already written. Just keep on beginning to think
afresh as if nothing at all had happened yet.”
Wittgenstein thinks he knows what the
problem is.
25.11.1914
“It is
the dualism,
positive and negative facts, that give me no peace. For such a dualism can’t
exist. But how to get away from it?”
But he cannot find an answer.
15.04.1915
“I am
almost inclined to give up all my efforts.”
By the ninth of May, he is on the verge of
getting to the end.
09.05.1915
“But it is clear that components of our propositions
can be analysed
by means of a definition, and must be, if we want
to approximate
to the real structure of the proposition. At any
rate, then, there is a process
of
analysis. And can it not now be asked
whether this process comes to
an end? And if so: What will the end be?
If it is true that every defined sign signifies via its definitions then
presumably the chain of definitions must some time
have an end.
…
But does not that of itself presuppose that the
class of all propositions
is given us? And how do we arrive at it?”
And then,
on the tenth of May, Wittgenstein writes nothing.
Of
course, there are a lot of days in his notebooks when Wittgenstein writes
nothing. But this is different. Wittgenstein writes “nothing”. That means, he
writes the date in his notebook. And then nothing else. When his notebooks were
published, the editors omitted this date as if it was insignificant. You can
find the date only written in the facsimile. The importance of saying nothing
or writing nothing is very often underestimated. You cannot find another entry
in his notebooks where Wittgenstein writes nothing but the date.
The next
day Wittgenstein tries to formulate the answer he found.
11.05.1915
“Is the logical sum of two tautologies a tautology
in the first sense?
Is there really such a thing as the duality:
tautology — contradiction?
The simple thing for us is: the simplest thing that
we are acquainted
with. The simplest thing which our analysis can
attain — it need
appear only as a protopicture, as a variable in our
propositions— that is
the simple thing that we mean and look for.”
Actually,
Wittgenstein did write something on the tenth of May 1915.
It was in
his secret diary.
10.05.1915
“MUCH excitement! Was
close to CRYING!!! Feel broken and sick! Surrounded by vulgarity”
Although this “surrounded by vulgarity” fits into the general atmosphere of
this entry, it must be noted that is a line which appears frequently in his
secret diary. The first part however is very unique.
The original words in German:
“VIEL Aufregung!
War nahe am WEINEN!!!! Fühle mich wie gebrochen und krank!“
Was
close to crying (War nahe am weinen).
Tell me
about it.
Until
the tenth of May, Wittgenstein is thinking within the boundaries of the ring.
Every word he writes is like a grain of sand that scrapes against the gold of
the ring. Every grain of sand asks the question “Is it now?”
Every proposition can be questioned in this way.
For example: “I have a piece of paper in my hand.”
“Have you now?”, is a more logical question to be
asked, more adapted to the particular proposition, but that would lead us to an
infinite number of questions.
However, if we reformulate the above mentioned
proposition as “It is true that I have a piece of paper in my hand.” Then
actually, every proposition can be questioned with “Is it now?”.
Now this “now” is the most important word in the
question because this “now” is the exact moment when I’m picking up a piece of
paper. Or dropping it.
This ‘now’ is the most important word in the question.
“Is it now?”
Another grain of sand scraping against the ring.
Until the ring breaks, until Wittgenstein understands.
But then again, what is it he understands?
The answer to this question would have to be a
nonsensical expression.
All that can be done is providing grains of sand,
providing grains of sand as much as possible. That is what all his writings
after the tenth of May are all about. They are nothing more, but also nothing
less than invitations to think. Mind you, it is a special kind of thinking, it
is a thinking that “goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in
comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.”
With this in mind I would like to focus on Wittgenstein’s Lecture on
Ethics.
“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”
I think there is little scope for interpretation here.
The absolute good is a chimera.
Categorical.
However, there might be more than one option in the way we deal with
this chimera.
At this point Wittgenstein makes a distinction between his audience and
himself
“You will say: Well, if certain
experiences constantly tempt us to attribute a quality to them which we call
absolute or ethical value and importance, this simply shows that by these words
we don't mean nonsense, that after all what we mean by saying that an experience
has absolute value is just a fact like
other facts and that all it comes to is that we have not yet succeeded
in finding the correct logical analysis of what we mean by our ethical and
religious expressions.
Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a
flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to
describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every
significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its
significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were
not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that
their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was
just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. My
whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or
talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This
running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics
so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate
meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science.
What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document
of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting
deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.
I think that it is safe to say that the whole tendency
of Wittgenstein was to refute his own statements. There was always something to
add in his writings, there was always something new in his writings, there was
always something to change in his writings. He never finished writing.
Wittgenstein writes: “My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried
to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of
language.”
It must be obvious that without the negation of this
sentence, we have to admit that it is not possible to write or talk Ethics. Without
the negation of this sentence, the whole subject of ethics falls within the
realm of relativism. Or perhaps even worse, if it would not be possible to
negate this proposition, it would place ethics in the mystical region as
Bertrand Russell pointed out in his introduction of the Tractatus. “The whole subject of ethics, for example, is
placed by Mr. Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region”, he
writes.
Now Mr. Wittgenstein was not at all happy with this
introduction. He was convinced that Bertrand Russell didn’t understand him, so
the odds that Mr. Russell is right about this are very poor. It is indeed
possible to deny this proposition. But the real challenge is of course to
reject the proposition in a Wittgensteinian way. Let’s not forget that it is
our aim to formulate Wittgensteinian approaches. It seems like a catch 22. How
to make a Wittgensteinian approach to moral philosophy while Wittgenstein
himself claimed that all men who ever tried to do this was to run against the
boundaries of language?
In order to do this, it’s necessary to understand
Wittgenstein. There is no intellectual challenge to understand at all. But at
the very same time, it’s a huge assignment.
“What has to be overcome
is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.”
(Nicht eine Schwierigkeit
des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden.)
It’s not possible to explain Wittgenstein,
it’s only possible to provide some grains of sand.
A grain of sand that keeps on nagging your
brain.
Here is a grain of sand:
There are no boundaries of language. There are no
boundaries because they exist.(1)
(1) When reading Wittgenstein, one must ask himself whether Wittgenstein is explaining a language game or playing a language game.
