Tractatus Lecture 8

1. Wittgensteins discussion of solipsism is an important thematic turning-

point in the Tractatus as it leads to, and provides the necessary
background for, the more mystical aspects of the work. This is
especially so when we consider his discussion of value. At 6.4 he says:
All propositions are of equal value. Something close to this view
appears to be forced on him by his insistence (5.54) that propositions
can only occur in extensional positions: for It is good that p apparently
generates an intensional context, and he has to get around this by
saying either that all propositions with the same truth-value are of equal
value or by saying that none of them have any particular value. As it is
he resorts to the latter.

2. That he takes this route is evident from his initial elaboration of 6.4: If
there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole
sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is
the case is accidental. Implicit in this argument is the assumption that
values are necessarynot that p is good implies p is necessary but
that p is good implies that p is good is necessary.

3. In fact, however, Wittgenstein is not forced to take this view of ethics.
He might have treated ethical propositions in a naturalistic
psychological way, so that p is good for A is analysed as describing
the psychological state of some agent. If his treatment of doxastic
contexts does succeed in analyzing away their apparent intensionality,
then why can he not say the same for ethical ones? (Cf. Fogelin,
Wittgenstein second edition p. 96.)

4. Where then does the Tractatus take ethical value to reside? The
answer is given at 6.423: It is impossible to speak about the will in so
far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. This remark can be
understood in the context of 6.422, where he says that There must
indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they
must reside in the action itself. Now by action here, I take
Wittgenstein to mean an act of willing. For after all, an ordinary act
(say, the movement of my arm) is merely accidental. And we have
seen (5.631) that the willing subject does in a sense reside outside the
world, if by this is meant the subject that understands linguistic
expressions.

5. You might think that there is a fallacy here. It is true that my physical
action is contingent, but then so is my willing, and it might still be true
that my act, if it really is free, follows of necessity from my willing: so
that the necessity with which my willing has moral attributes is
derivative from the necessity with which it brings about my act.

6. But Wittgenstein denies that willing necessitates anything: The world
is independent of my will. Even if all that we wish for were to happen,
still this would only be a favour granted by fate, so to speak: for there is
no logical connection between the will and the world, which would
guarantee it, and the supposed physical connection itself is surely not
something that we could will (6.373-4). I think that the argument here
is appealing to a kind of regress: even if my willing p brings it about that
p, still I cannot be blamed for p, because I did not will that my willing
that p brings it about that p. We are left with a curiously paralytic
conception of human beings: all I can do is move my will, and the rest
is up to God (see the interesting comparison with Berkeley in C.C.W.
Taylors article in Foster and Robinson, eds., George Berkeley:
Tercentenary Essays.)

7. Thus for Wittgenstein ethical attributes really do reside in the willing
subject, which we have already seen to exist outside the sphere of the
merely accidental. Of course this view of ethics is not new. The idea
that ones will is by itself the sole repository of ethical attributes is pretty
much what Freud regarded as definitive of the neurotice.g. St Paul
when he said that to look at a woman with lust in your heart is as bad
as committing adultery with her.

8. The Tractatus concludes with a brief discussion of the nature of
philosophy and the meaning of life. For Wittgensteinand this was
evident throughout his life and work, not just in the Tractatus
philosophy was a struggle with oneself, and the aim was to find that
peace that stopped you from wanting to raise philosophical problems.
What you were supposed to realize, after reading the Tractatus, was
that problems about the meaning or value of your life could not even be
raised: that is why those who have found after a long period of doubt
that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to
say what constituted that sense (6.521).

9. This irenic resolution is then applied to philosophy and even to the
propositions of the Tractatus itself. That work violates the only true
method of philosophy, which is simply to say nothing positive but
merely to correct the mistaken attempts of others to make philosophical
claims, by showing them that they are speaking nonsense. The
Tractatus itself is therefore nonsense, strictly speaking, for it tries
explicitly to say why certain things cannot be said by drawing a limit to
what can be said. And as Ramsey said, if you cant say it you cant say
it, nor can you whistle it. A more charitable reading is that we are to
think of the Tractatus not as an articulated set of doctrines but as a
process: its meaning lies not in what its propositions say (for they
themselves imply that they say nothing) but in their effect. In this sense
the Tractatus is very much like Philosophical Investigations on some
readings: it is a course of therapy. However it seems to me more like a
particularly frustrating version of the dance of the seven veils, or (to
use Wittgensteins own simile) like a lettuce. You strip away all the
leavesand there is nothing left.