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World and Life as One
Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein's Early Thought
By Martin Stokhof STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2002 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7984-5
CHAPTER 1
Backgrounds
INTRODUCTION
This book concerns itself with the relation between ontology and ethics in Wittgenstein's Tractatus and defends a particular interpretation of Wittgenstein's ontological views, arguing that such an interpretation is required by his views on ethics and their consequences for everyday moral behavior. If we regard the Tractatus as a coherent whole, that is, as a work whose component parts are systematically related, then a proper interpretation of the ethical part forces us to consider this interpretation of its ontology.
This book's argument is part of a broader investigation concerned with the question of realism in Wittgenstein work. In what sense and to what extent is Wittgenstein a realist? How do the early and the later works compare in this respect? We want to defend the following position: both Wittgenstein's early works (the Notebooks and the Tractatus) as well as his later writings (the Philosophical Investigations, the Remarks of the Foundations of Mathematics, and On Certainty) are uniquely characterized by a commitment to what is essentially human in the subjects they address. Ultimately, the content and role of various key notions, such as meaning and rule but also world and value, depend on what we are: on our nature as human beings as well as on our physical and social surroundings, and on the ways in which these interact. Our experience as humans, both of the world and of ourselves, is the starting and end point of almost all of Wittgenstein's investigations. And he primarily concerns himself with the role various notions play in our human experience.
This argument positions Wittgenstein's early and late work differently than is commonly assumed with respect to the issue of realism. According to prevailing opinion the Tractatus can be regarded as a prototypical realistic theory. By contrast, the Philosophical Investigations are widely considered to be one of the sources of modern antirealist thinking. The problem with this received view is that it fails to take into account the characteristics of both the early and the later work. This is not to deny that there are substantial differences between the early and the later work. One of the most important differences is that whereas the early work is monistic and absolutistic, the later work is pluralistic and, to some extent, relativistic. The Tractatus is an enterprise that seeks to unravel one, unvarying, necessary, common core in all of language. In the later work this goal is abandoned, and description of "the motley of language" takes its place. But it is important to notice also that despite this fundamental difference in outlook there is a subtle "undercurrent" common to all of Wittgenstein's work: it maintains an emphasis — at some points more and at others less explicitly — on what is decisively human in many of the topics that it addresses.
The challenge, then, is to show that such an undercurrent does indeed exist. This book addresses itself to this challenge, aiming to show that for various reasons, one of which is provided by a proper interpretation of the ethical part, the ontology of the Tractatus has to be read in a distinctly nonrealistic way. The ontology is not intended as a theory of the fundamental components and structures of reality per se, but rather as a description of the structure of reality that is presupposed by language and thought. It does not characterize reality as it ultimately is, but rather how reality appears in the medium of human language and thought. To put it differently, the Tractatus deals with reality so far as it can be accessed by the discursive mind. Complementary to that, the ethics provides a model of the world as it bears on value, which is tied to human action. However abstract the analyses in the Tractatus may be, they are informed by concerns with what is human.
The basic tenet of the Tractatus is monism: there is only one way in which mind, language, and reality harmonize. In his later work Wittgenstein leaves room for more than one way of dealing with "reality," each particular way constituting within its own sphere a system of concepts, meanings, and rules not applicable outside. This transition from monism to pluralism certainly constitutes a major difference between Wittgenstein's early and later work. But it is important to notice that the later work is not radically relativistic. Wittgenstein stresses that external factors, notably nature in the two senses indicated above our human nature and physical nature — place important restrictions on the systems of rules and concepts of which we can avail ourselves. Hence, in terms of a "realism-antirealism" opposition it seems that the earlier work cannot be classified as straightforwardly realistic while the later work cannot be said to be completely antirealistic either. The positions defended in each phase differ, but in more subtle ways than this dichotomy allows us to express.
With regard to Wittgenstein's views on ethics, it seems that a similar story can be told. However, it is more difficult to tell. For one thing, since he has not given any really systematic treatment of this topic, it is hard to establish the exact contents of Wittgenstein's views. In the earlier work remarks on ethics are relatively many, at least compared with the later work. Here we can draw on the Tractatus itself, the Notebooks and the "Lecture on Ethics," which dates from 1929. Other sources are the conversations with Engelmann (see Engelmann 1967) and with Schlick and Waismann, recorded by Waismann. As for Wittgenstein's later ideas, what we have at our disposal are the "Lectures on Religious Belief" and scattered remarks from various manuscripts and notebooks, a selection of which were published as Culture and Value. Apart from that we have to make do with indirect evidence, mainly to be drawn from the recollections of various people. However, despite the fact that it is hard to get a comprehensive view on what Wittgenstein's thoughts on these matters are, it seems clear that here, too, there is much continuity between the earlier and the later work. This continuity derives from the same undercurrent pointed out above: Wittgenstein's interest in, we might almost say "devotion" to, what is human.
In short, there are both important resemblances and major differences between Wittgenstein's early thought and his later work. The differences are many and they have received a lot of attention in the literature. That is not to say that the resulting picture of "two Wittgensteins" has been universally adopted. The resemblances are less, both in number and in perspicuity. The essentially language-dependent character of reality, traditionally a self-sufficient category, is one. The insight that our cognitive capacities are constrained by external factors, and yet do not exhaust our human nature, is another. One reason to think that the relationship between ethics and ontology constituted an ongoing concern for Wittgenstein lies in the objectivity of values he endorses. The most commonly held ontological positions — (metaphysical) realism and antirealism — both present a problem here. Realism seems to leave only reductionism and emotivism as options. Either values are facts, or they are mere expressions of noncognitive attitudes. In either case there is no room for an objective status of ethical values. Antirealism, by contrast, runs the risk of ethical relativism, certainly a position Wittgenstein does not take. If one wants to secure the objective nature of ethical values, then one needs to find an ontological position that is consistent with such a view. Both the Tractatus, as well as some elements of the later work, notably On Certainty, can (also) be viewed as attempts to come to terms with this problem. As a matter of fact, there seems to be continuity in Wittgenstein's thinking on this issue, his later thought gradually evolving from his earlier views, while keeping much of what stimulated and inspired them. And the differences in his views on ethics, such as they are, can be correlated with the different positions Wittgenstein takes toward language and its relation to reality.
A fully worked out defense of this broader thesis is beyond the scope of this book. Here we concentrate on one piece of the puzzle: the relationship between ontology and ethics in Wittgenstein's early work. Before proceeding with that, however, it may be helpful the sketch the background against which this question is to be answered.
THE PROBLEM
Our starting point is that the Tractatus is both a logical work as well as an ethical undertaking. The ontology is part of the logical theory, and we will study in detail the role it plays in the tractarian theory of language. That Wittgenstein intended the Tractatus to have ethical significance is nowadays a commonplace, but early readings of the Tractatus, for example, those in the tradition of logical empiricism, have been so occupied with bending its logical theory to their own needs that the ethical part was simply ignored, or brushed aside as a remainder from an earlier, immature period. The (implicit) suggestion seems to be that Wittgenstein's views on ethics were, if not written, then at least conceived before he developed his logical insights and that hence the two are independent. Today, however, no one will want to deny that there are two sides to the Tractatus: the logical and the ethical. Many would even admit that so far as Wittgenstein's own intentions are concerned the latter is certainly no less important than the former. However, that being so, many modern commentators still do not recognize any intrinsic relationship between these two sides of the Tractatus. To a certain extent this should come as no surprise. For what the Tractatus has to say about ethics is so condensed that it may very well appear to be little. It seems to characterize ethics only negatively, by indicating what ethics is not, but it does not seem to allow for a more positive interpretation, that is, for a reading in which what it says makes for practical moral consequences. Thus one may very well be tempted, pace Wittgenstein and all that this part of the Tractatus meant to him, to attach little value to it and to concentrate on the seemingly more rewarding study of the logical and semantical issues.
However, such an approach does not do justice to the Tractatus: not to Wittgenstein's intentions in writing the book in the form he did, not to what he actually manages to convey in the few enigmatic phrases on ethics that it contains, and, most importantly, not to the internal coherence of the work. Despite appearances to the contrary the remarks on ethics in the Tractatus can be interpreted in a positive manner, that is, in such a way that at least the outlines of a substantial view on ethics can be traced and some connection with actual moral practices can be construed. Furthermore, this positive reading of the ethics has important consequences for the interpretation of other parts of the book, notably the part that deals with ontology. Some key features of the ontology can be understood only against the background of such a positive reading of the ethics.
This way of viewing the Tractatus and its internal structure is in line with Wittgenstein's intentions as they are expressed for example in the following letter written to Ludwig Ficker in 1919:
... the point of the book is an ethical one. I once wanted to include in the preface a sentence that is now actually not there, but that I will write to you now since it might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one that is present here and of everything that I have not written. Precisely this second part is the important one. For the ethical is delimited as it were from the inside by my book; and I am convinced that strictly speaking it can ONLY be delimited in this way. In short I think: everything of which many nowadays are blethering, I have defined in my book by being silent about it. ... I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion since these express the point most directly.
This does not leave much room for doubt about Wittgenstein's concerns. It clearly indicates that whatever importance he attached to the logical theory he develops in the Tractatus, he considers the "point of the book" not to be a logical one, nor an ontological one for that matter. Rather, the logical part is subsidiary to the ethical goal. Now there may very well be some exaggeration in what Wittgenstein is saying here, but we must also not misunderstand him. What he says is not that the Tractatus is a book about ethics, in the sense that it develops an ethical theory. It is "the point" of the book that is described as ethical, not its contents or subject matter. Of course, the Tractatus is about meaning and truth tables and Russell's theory of types and identity and all that, not much of which is in any way intrinsically ethical in nature. Neither should we interpret Wittgenstein as saying that these logical matters are not of any interest as such. After all, he was not the kind of person to devote years of intensive study and excruciatingly hard work to matters that he considered futile and of no value. But what does come out clearly from the passage cited above is that he feels that what he has done in the sphere of logic and language has enabled him to solve an important problem, that of unambiguously and definitively assigning ethics its own territory. That is to say, the views on logic and meaning and on all that is subsidiary to that which the Tractatus contains have a direct bearing on what ethics is concerned with, a point indeed poignantly expressed in the conclusion of the book. From these considerations, it seems safe to conclude that at least according to its author there is an intrinsic relationship between the logical and the ethical part of the Tractatus: it is a coherent whole in which the various parts are tightly connected, not a loose collection of hard logical results and some aphorisms on mystical matters. Of course, authors may make mistakes when assessing their own work, but it seems reasonable to start from the assumption that here that is not the case, unless proof of the contrary is forthcoming. So we take it that the first premise of the present undertaking, that the Tractatus. is a coherent whole, is not obviously wrong.
Let us then proceed to the second premise, that the ethical part can be given a positive interpretation. It seems that the Tractatus itself contains several remarks that indicate that according to Wittgenstein himself his outline of the ethical is indeed more substantial than a mere characterization ex negativo. Compare the following two remarks:
The meaning of the world must lie outside of it. In the world everything is the way it is and everything happens the way it happens: in it there is no value. (6.41)
There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but these must lie in the action itself. (6.422)
What is important to note is that, although Wittgenstein emphatically denies that ethical value can be situated in the world, in the sense that some situations or events in the world are ethically more valuable than others, he does not deny that there is such a thing as ethical value, which is presumed to be connected with our actions. This may strike us as a blatant inconsistency and may hence entice us to dismiss this part of the Tractatus as "irredeemable nonsense," but the real challenge is, of course, to try to make sense of it. Doing so will involve providing an interpretation of the notion of "world" that Wittgenstein is using here, which will show, on the one hand, why value is said not to be in the world, and, on the other hand, how value can be regarded as intrinsically connected with our actions, which, after all, are in the world.
Thus it appears that an interpretation of the ontology of the Tractatus is an essential ingredient of a proper analysis of its ethical part. This means that we will have to investigate in detail the various possible interpretations of the ontology and that we must examine to what extent each of them allows for a suitable interpretation of the ethical part. For the latter to be feasible, we must, of course, also closely study the contents of the positive interpretation of the ethical part.
It will become clear that the ontology of the Tractatus cannot be analyzed in isolation, without taking into account the parts dealing with logic and language. These three — language, logic, and ontology — are intimately connected and an investigation into one of them will automatically lead to a consideration of the others. This means that although we focus on the relationship between ontology and ethics, we will also have to pay some attention to the logical and grammatical aspects. Given that language and ontology turn out to be interwoven aspects of the tractarian system, an important subsidiary question arises: What is the relationship between language and ontology exactly? We know that the two are connected by means of the mechanism of picturing, but which component in this system is dominant? In effect, this question allows us to divide various interpretations of the ontology into two fundamentally different classes. First there are those that assume that the ontology is primary and that language takes on its fundamental features from reality. Second, we have interpretations that, to the contrary, hold that it is language, or logic, that takes precedence and that hence the ontology is not a theory of reality as it is, but only of reality as it appears in the medium of language. The first kind of interpretation can be called realist, in the commonsense or "naive" sense of the word. These interpretations differ among each other in what kind of reality (physical, phenomenal) they take the ontology of the Tractatus to describe. But they share the assumption that it is a theory of reality on its own terms. The second one is more aptly dubbed "critically realist," in a loosely Kantian sense. Here, too, there are substantial differences between the various analyses, but they have in common that they view language as the dominant element in the relation between language and reality.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from World and Life as One by Martin Stokhof. Copyright © 2002 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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