The Transcendental Reading of the Tractatus argues that Wittgenstein endorses, under the notion of ‘metaphysical subject’, the existence of a willing subject as a transcendental condition of ethics and representation. Tejedor aims to reject this reading resorting to three criticisms. The notion of ‘willing subject’ does not appear explicitly in, nor can it be deduced from, the Tractatus, the metaphysical subject and the willing subject are not synonymous or analogous notions and, finally, Wittgenstein abandons the notion of ‘willing subject’ at (...) the end of the Notebooks. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, it analyzes the critique introduced by Tejedor and presents three problems that demonstrate that Tejedor’s critique cannot adequately reject the Transcendental Reading. Secondly, it sets forth an alternative reading of the Tractatus that overcomes the issues that stem from the Transcendental Reading. This alternative reading conceives the metaphysical subject as an ethical subject and a willing subject. Additionally, it advances an alternative account of the transcendental character of ethics that does not defend the existence of a transcendental subject understood as a condition of ethics and representation in the Tractatus. (shrink)

This book explores in detail the relation between ontology and ethics in the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, notably the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ and, to a lesser extent, the _Notebooks 1914-1916_. Self-contained and requiring no prior knowledge of Wittgenstein's thought, it is the first book-length argument that his views on ethics decisively shaped his ontological and semantic thought. The book's main thesis is twofold. It argues that the ontological theory of the _Tractatus_ is fundamentally dependent on its logical and linguistic doctrines: (...) the tractarian world is the world as it appears in language and thought. It also maintains that this interpretation of the ontology of the _Tractatus_ can be argued for not only on systematic grounds, but also via the contents of the ethical theory that it offers. Wittgenstein's views on ethics presuppose that language and thought are but one way in which we interact with reality. Although detailed studies of Wittgenstein's ontology and ethics exist, this book is the first thorough investigation of the relationship between them. As an introduction to Wittgenstein, it sheds new light on an important aspect of his early thought. (shrink)

In this chapter I discuss Wittgenstein’s early and later views on ethics in the light of the development of his views on logic and philosophical method, maintaining that these developments are motivated by his aspiration to discover a method that enables one to do justice to the complexity of though and language use, and the richness of phenomena. I begin by discussing certain continuous features of Wittgenstein’s views on ethics and philosophy, in particular his conception that philosophy can only offer (...) reminders and clarifications, not give a foundation for language, thought or ethics. The first section thus introduces Wittgenstein’s notions of the personal character and groundlessness of ethics whose different reincarnations are taken up in the sections that follow. In the second section I seek to elucidate Wittgenstein’s early account of the possibility and nature of ethics, conceived in abstract and general terms as the problem of the relation of the will to reality, and his account of a happy or good life. This is followed by a discussion of his later rejection of the early account with its key assumptions, and its replacement with a different account that, in accordance with Wittgenstein’s new methodology, treats the problem of the relation of the will to reality as a particular aspect of ethics, rather than as constituting its underlying essence. In the final section will be concerned with the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s explanation of the nature or grammar of ethical justification, connected with the notions of personality and groundlessness. I argue that although Wittgenstein does regard ethical justifications as inconclusive, neither this nor the personal character and groundlessness of ethics implies relativism, as do not certain other remarks and reported discussions, contrary to what they might at first sight suggest. (shrink)

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein: three parallel tree-structured editions. (1) Tree-structured arrangement of the German text, edited by David G. Stern, Joachim Schulte and Katia Saporiti. (2) Tree-structured arrangement of the English translation by Ogden and Ramsey, edited by David G. Stern. (3) Tree-structured arrangement of the English translation by Pears and McGuinness, edited by David G. Stern.

The paper seeks to interpret and then to criticize Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus paragraph 6.4 to 7, connecting this so-called mystical section with the “Lecture on Ethics” given in Cambridge in 1929, the Notebooks, and a passage in the Big Typescript. Interpretive and critical efforts focus on the claims: that if having intrinsic value, good or evil, is nothing zufällig, then its basis is nothing in the world; that value can only enter through the willing subject; that “how things are in (...) the world is a matter of indifference for what is higher”. Concerning, it is proposed that the zufällig is here that which simply or merely happens. The argument for rests on Wittgenstein's misconception of the categorical. It is remarked that and result in a philosophy of life that is unliveable. Witness the travails of Wittgenstein's own life and his struggle to “get over a particular fact”. Finally will even undermine, which is in any case fatally ambiguous. In conclusion, it is suggested that both the stresses and strains that are induced within the Tractatus itself by its circumscription of the sayable and the difficulties of can be overcome within Wittgenstein's later philosophy, but in ways already prefigured in the doctrine of “showing” as that appears in both Tractatus and “Lecture on Ethics”. (shrink)

I defend a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's notion of religious attitude in the Tractatus , one that rejects three key views from the secondary literature: firstly, the view that, for Wittgenstein, the willing subject is a transcendental condition for the religious attitude; secondly, the view that the religious attitude is an emotive response to the world or something closely modelled on this notion of emotive response; and thirdly, the view that, although the religious and ethical pseudo-propositions of the Tractatus are (...) nonsensical, they nevertheless succeed in expressing the religious attitude endorsed by Wittgenstein. In connection to the first, I argue that the notion of willing subject as transcendental condition is abandoned by Wittgenstein in the Notebooks and is no longer a feature of his position in the Tractatus . In connection to the second, I argue that the religious attitude is dispositional rather than emotive for Wittgenstein: it is a disposition to use signs in a way that demonstrates one's conceptual clarity. Finally, in connection to the third, I argue that the religious or ethical attitude is strongly ineffable in that it cannot be described, expressed or conveyed by language at all. (shrink)

In _Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein considers two related arguments to prove the transcendence of ethics. The inferences involve the claim that the existence of ethics must be indifferent to whether or not the world is inhabited by living things, and that moral good and evil occur only because of the extraworldly metaphysical subject. I reconstruct and criticize these arguments in detail as a prelude to analyzing Wittgenstein's _Tractatus remarks about the transcendence of value, the identification of ethics and aesthetics as one, (...) and the elimination of theoretical ethics or metaethics as meaningless pseudopropositions. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a Kantian reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's early notions of immortality and the problem of life. I argue that, in spite of his rejection of the assumption of temporal immortality as a solution to the problem of life, Wittgenstein's understanding of the problem itself reflects the Kantian setting of his early system. Moreover, while there is no room for any postulates of practical reason in Wittgensein's early thought, God and immortality are still notions that figure in (...) his preferred solution to the problem of life. (shrink)

WHEN WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS was published it was generally identified first with Russell's logical atomism, and later with the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. However, Wittgenstein himself claimed the work had an ethical purpose. In what has become a well-known passage from a letter to Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of Der Brenner, whose help Wittgenstein sought in trying to publish the Tractatus, he says.