Argues that Wittgenstein, though himself often silent on particular ethical matters, gives us immense resources for understanding the aims appropriate to any philosophical ethics. This work re-examines some of the landmarks in the history of moral philosophy in order to cast contemporary ethical philosophy in a fresh light.

The most complete edition yet published of Wittgenstein’s 1929 lecture includes a never-before published first draft and makes fresh claims for its significance in Wittgenstein’s oeuvre. The first available print publication of all known drafts of Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics Includes a previously unrecognized first draft of the lecture and new transcriptions of all drafts Transcriptions preserve the philosopher’s emendations thus showing the development of the ideas in the lecture Proposes a different draft as the version read by Wittgenstein in his 1929 lecture Includes introductory essays on the origins of the material and on its meaning, content, and importance

A distinctive feature of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work after 1930 was his turn to a conception of philosophy as a form of social inquiry, John G. Gunnell argues, and Thomas Kuhn's approach to the philosophy of science exemplified this conception. In this book, Gunnell shows how these philosophers address foundational issues in the social and human sciences, particularly the vision of social inquiry as an interpretive endeavor and the distinctive cognitive and practical relationship between social inquiry and its subject matter. Gunnell speaks directly to philosophers and practitioners of the social and human sciences. He tackles the demarcation between natural and social science; the nature of social phenomena; the concept and method of interpretation; the relationship between language and thought; the problem of knowledge of other minds; and the character of descriptive and normative judgments about practices that are the object of inquiry. Though Wittgenstein and Kuhn are often criticized as initiating a modern descent into relativism, this book shows that the true effect of their work was to undermine the basic assumptions of contemporary social and human science practice. It also problematized the authority of philosophy and other forms of social inquiry to specify the criteria for judging such matters as truth and justice. When Wittgenstein stated that "philosophy leaves everything as it is," he did not mean that philosophy would be left as it was or that philosophy would have no impact on what it studied, but rather that the activity of inquiry did not, simply by virtue of its performance, transform the object of inquiry.

The essays collected in this volume explore some of the themes that have been at the centre of recent debates within Wittgensteinian scholarship. In opposition to what we are tentatively inclined to think, the articles of this volume invite us to understand that our need to grasp the essence of ethical and religious thought and language will not be achieved by metaphysical theories expounded from such a point of view, but by focusing on our everyday forms of expression.

This book explores Wittgenstein's conception of ethics, religion and philosophy. It aims at providing us with the tools necessary for assessing to what extent the Austrian philosopher can be considered an anti-Enlightenment thinker. The articles collected in this volume explore the relationship between Wittgenstein's thought and that of several authors who were, in various ways, key to the counter-enlightenement, authors such as Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, James and Pierce. One of the central issues examined here is Wittgenstein's opposition to the Cartesian method of doubt – a cornerstone of the enlightened movement against prejudice and superstition.

In an incisive work of comparative philosophy, James F. Peterman considers the similarities between early Chinese ethicist Confucius and mid-twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Their enduring legacies rest in no small part on projects to restore humanity to healthy ways of living and thinking. Confucius offers a method of answering ethical questions designed to get his interlocutors further along on the Dao, the path of right living. Struggling with his own forms of unhealthy philosophical confusion, Wittgenstein provides a method of philosophical therapy designed to help one come into agreement with norms embedded in our forms of life and speech. Highlighting similarities between the two philosophers, Peterman shows how Wittgensteinian critique can benefit from Confucian inquiry and how Confucian practice can benefit from Wittgensteinian investigations. Furthermore, in presenting a way to understand Confucius's Dao as concrete language games and forms of life, and Wittgenstein's therapeutic interventions as the most fitting philosophical orientation toward early Confucian ethics, Peterman offers Western thinkers a new, sophisticated understanding of Confucius as a philosopher.

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.

This volume showcases contemporary, ground-up ethical essays in the tradition of Wittgenstein’s broader philosophy and Wittgenstein-inspired ethical reflection. It takes the ethical relevance of Wittgenstein as a substantial and solid starting point for a broad range of ongoing thinking about contemporary ethical issues. The texts are organised in two sections. The first consists of chapters exploring questions around what could be called the “grammar” of our moral forms of life, and thus represents a more traditional approach in ethics after Wittgenstein. The second part represents a recent turn in the tradition towards investigating moral conceptions, perspectives and concepts that are undergoing change, either because the world itself is changing (for instance with new technologies) or because human agency, such as social movements, has brought us to reconsider previously unquestioned ideas and structures. Within the book, the authors’ contributions are inspired, in their ways of working with ethical questions, by Wittgenstein’s conceptions of language, understanding and the nature of philosophical inquiry. This book is of interest to philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein, as well as to all ethicists seeking ideas for how to do philosophy in a manner close to lived experience and practice.

There is a tendency in modern scholarship to describe the Renaissance Humanists merely as readers—as interpreters happily absorbed within the bounds of their chosen classical texts. In Theory as Practice, Nancy Struever contests this accepted notion; by focusing on ethical inquiry, she presents the Humanists as engaged in subtle, innovative moral work. Struever argues that the accomplishment of five major Renaissance figures—Petrarch, Nicolaus Cusanus, Lorenzo Valla, Machiavelli, and Montaigne—was to consider theory as practice and thus engage the ethics of inquiry. She notes three stages of investigation, the first represented by Petrarch, who "relocated" ethical inquiry from a theoretical realm to a familiar practice responsive to daily experience. Next, Struever describes how Cusanus and Valla assume Petrarch's relocation, yet confect ethics into discursive disciplines. Finally, while both Machiavelli and Montaigne produced strong revisions of discipline, they considered the problems of addressing the non-inquirer as well. Struever urges modern readers to employ both rhetorical and philosophical analysis to reveal these Humanists' aggressive tactics of presentation as well as their novel disciplinary reorientation. By doing so, she suggests, we discover how Renaissance ethical inquiry illuminates, and is illuminated by, the modern ethical theory of such philosophers as Peirce, Wittgenstein, Bernard Williams, and Quine.

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy.