Wittgensteinian Minimum ethics

Studies in Wittgensteinian morphological and pragmatist moral discourse

Kristijan Krkač

Zagreb, 2018

Abbreviations and a note

Wittgenstein’s works: BT = The Big Typescript, CV = Culture and Value (1998 edition), GB = Remarks on Frazer’s The
Golden Bough, LC = Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, LD = Wittgenstein in
Cambridge, Lectures and Documents 1911–1951 (2008 edition), LE = Lecture on Ethics, OC = On Certainty, PG =
Philosophical Grammar, PI = Philosophical investigations (2001 and 2009 editions), PO = Philosophical Occasions, PPO=
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, RPP = Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, TLP = Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, WN = Wittgenstein’s Nachlass (Bergen Electronic Edition). Other abbreviations: AR = axis remark,
ER = empirical remark, FOL = form of life, GR = grammatical remark (hinge-remark), LG = language-game, WP = world-
picture, α–good = functional meanings of “good”, β–good = value meanings of “good”. Note. Wittgenstein’s lines are quoted
or paraphrased, and commented under small letters in brackets (as (a), (b)…). Examples of remarks belonging to a
worldview, namely grammatical, axes, and empirical remarks, concerning morals and ethics, are quoted under numbers in
brackets (as (1), (2) …). By means of bullets (like here) some intermediate explications and interpretations are accentuated.
Finally, by means of Boxes various excurses (from methodological, to conceptual) are introduced.
Acknowledgements and sources
I like to thank Josip Lukin (culture, history, and morphology), Maja Martinović (application, especially to various business
sectors), Damir Mladić (general ethical theory), Nicholas Rescher (pragmatism), Duncan Richter (Wittgenstein), Neven
Sesardić (method, and application), Peter Singer (general ethical theory), Matej Sušnik (method, and metaethics), and Anja
Weiberg (Wittgenstein) for their valuable comments, objections, and suggestions concerning various parts of the text and
many directions in which it is now more developed. I also like to thank all colleges and schools (colleagues and students as
well) at which some parts of the text were delivered. Namely, during the elective course “Pragmatist ethics” at Philosophical
Faculty of the Society of Jesus in Zagreb, Croatia, 2005/2006; at Annual Symposium of Philosophical Faculty at University of
Rijeka, Croatia, 2007; during the course “Introduction to business ethics and CSR” at Zagreb School of Economics and
Management, Croatia, 2007/2008, and 2008/2009; and during the elective course “An introduction to ethics, business ethics,
and CSR” at Institut D'etudes Politique de Lille, University of Lille 2, France, 2009/2010. The topic of the present study is a
further development of the idea presented in its rudiments in my book “Routine, Morality, and Pragmatism” (in Croatian,
Zagreb, K.K., 2006) in the first chapter “Ethical training and incomprehensible mystery” (2006:14-26).
Note on the 2018 revised edition
The 2009 version of the present research paper was made as a short and a bit developed summary of basic ideas stated in
more detail in my book “Routine, Morality and Pragmatism”, in Croatian: „Rutina, moral i pragmatizam“, (Zagreb, 2006).
Later version in 2010 contained only minor corrections of the first one. This version contains some further minor corrections
in view of the following papers published from 2010 to 2018, namely: Krkač, K. (2010) “Corporate Social Irresponsibility, A
Conceptual Framework”, in Social Responsibility Review, No. 3, 2011:78-89, ISSN: 1759-5886, Krkač, K., Mladić, D.,
Buzar, S (2012) “Habitual Lying Re-examined”, in: American Journal of Sociological Research, 2012 2(1): 1-10, Krkač, K.,
Martinović, M., Buzar, S. (2012) “Fine Young Criminal’s Corporate Social Responsibility: On the Virtues of the Wicked and
the Common Good Performed by Egoists”, in: American Journal of Sociological Research, 2012, 2(5): 98-106, Eterović P.,
Krkač K. (2016) “Necessity of morality and the need for ethics” (in Croatian) in: „Poslovna etika, korporacijska društvena
odgovornost i održivost“], B. Jalšenjak and K. Krkač (eds.), 2nd edition, ZSEM, MATE, 2016:3-22. In all of these papers, at
least on my part, the ideas presented here are a bit more developed and/or applied in particular issues and research questions.

Instead of an introduction

Imagine yourself in your bedroom waking up one sunny spring Sunday morning, in your
house, with your family, in your town, state, and on your planet. Everything looks okay. Yet
something seems different, some finesse you still cannot pin down. You think to yourself “It
is most likely my imagination, perhaps connected with my dreams which I cannot remember
any more, perhaps it has to do with after work party yesterday evening”, or similar. So, you
act as if everything is tolerable, and after a while you convince yourself that everything really
is all right.
However, during the completely normal course of a completely average Sunday, so
modestly suggested by almost everything except by your own mental states, which by the way
really start to annoy you, say while doing homework with your children, you find out that the
planet, by a sheer coincidence called Earth, is situated in a completely different solar system
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in a completely opposite part of the galaxy which strongly resembles Milky way. You find
yourself completely surprised and confused. You frantically start to search the internet and
you find that this is correct. “But how is this possible? Everybody’s here and they know me.
And everything is here, our house, our neighbours, town, everything. Only I am somehow
changed.” Finally, you conclude that you are on a Twin Earth and that you swap places with
yourself in fact.
By the evening you find out that the purpose of this bizarre Twin Earth phenomenon
isn’t just to move people from one Earth to another without their knowledge and permission,
but that there is at least one additional slight difference as well. Namely, you find out that here
there are no words like good, bad, or evil, in fact all words that an Earthling from your Earth
would consider to be words belonging to a usual moral and ethical part of your vocabulary.
Instead of these words, your twin wife, twin children, and all other people (including religious
people, moralists, corporate officers engaged in CSR, university professors of ethics and their
students, parents trying to teach their children to behave properly, and some other primates as
well) simply say that something, which you would call morally correct or good action, is a
standard procedure, a standard exception of a standard procedure, or an exceptionally proper
performance given a non-standard situation in which some action needed to be performed and
in which a doer was at the moment.
Now, surely nothing can shock you anymore, so you quietly go along. By the end of
the next week you find out, or you just guess really, that people, when they say that something
is or isn’t SP or LAP (which is usual abbreviation for “standard procedure” or “lege artis
procedure”) don’t have neither similar mental states, that is thoughts, emotions, intentions
accompanied with our discussions on moral issues, nor that there is any kind of a social
atmosphere regarding this SP phenomenon. In other words, you don’t notice any difference in
verbal or nonverbal activity while they say for instance “It’s raining” and “It’s SP”.
So, on the third week you start to search history, humanities, and especially
philosophy, and you find out that these odd abbreviations like SP or LAP do not belong to the
morality and ethics since they do not have these words but to the culture. You find out that
there are highly theoretical discussions, there are many analyses and exegeses of ancient texts,
models and practical applications of these theories, cultural codes of various kinds for various
spheres of life and professions, many interesting disputes some of which are as old as this
civilization, and some of which are new and concerned with new technologies and scientific
advancement. You don’t know what to say, they simply do not see you think to yourself, so
again you quietly go along. Years pass, you know now that you probably will never go back.
After 30 years you completely adapted yourself to his new world and you don’t
remember the old one so clearly as before. You are spending your days sitting on a rocking
chair on a porch with your two grandchildren in your lap, playing with them, thinking about
your life from time to time.
One sunny spring Sunday morning you wake up, you go down to the kitchen to have a
coffee and a cigarette and you see your grandchildren there having a breakfast. While asking
them about the school you notice that they are eating quite fast probably in order to go out and
play. As so many times before you make a remark that they should sit down, eat properly, not
like animals. You stay completely dazed (thinking “What’s going on here, am I really back or
everybody else switched places, not again”) by your granddaughter’s reply “Why grandpa? Is
this no good? Are we doing something bad?”
On the occasion such as this I would like to point out that the present story has some
important yet fine points that condense the whole discussion on the present topic which is
particular pragmatist (Wittgensteinian style) minimum approach to what is habitually called
ethics and morality. Some of these moments, stated in form of questions, are the following:
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 Is it possible to defend morality and ethics of any kind whatsoever, as anything more then
a mere linguistic dispute or a dispute in general theory of human action?
 Is there really so deep and unbridgeable gap between facts and values, moral descriptions
and moral evaluations, moral and non-moral aspects of human actions?
 Are morality and ethics proper parts of a culture, and consequently, are any moral or
ethical disputes in fact mainly disputes over culture?
In the present study I will presuppose not just that the answers to these questions are
affirmative, more to that, that to answer to these questions affirmatively is the clearest way to
think about morality and ethics at least for humans in human forms of life. Other way around,
it can be said that the hypothesis will be the following:
 If morality and ethics are composed of mere remarks on human languages and human
actions, if there is no relevant dissimilarity between facts and values, moral descriptions
and moral evaluations, moral and non-moral aspect of human actions, and if morality and
ethics are a proper parts of a culture, and consequently, any moral or ethical dispute is in
fact mainly a dispute over culture, then is it possible to have morality and ethics in terms
of being necessary aspects of human action.
In what follows it will be argued that this is possible no matter if all questions above are
answered affirmatively.
This particular approach to ethics, while being quite close to some elements of
pragmatist ethics (pragmatists, but personalists as well), ethics of communicative action
(Habermas and his contemporary followers), ethical relativism, ethical nihilism (Nietzsche),
and ethical minimalism (Wittgenstein), still is worlds apart from them. Morality and
especially ethics as thinking about morality are so to say overcrowded with unnecessary
items. Theories are overcrowded with technical disputes, applications of theories to a
particular sphere or a particular issue with particular psychological, social, economic, and
legal elements, and practical (moralist) advises with “keys”, “models”, “steps”, “cases”, and
“manuals”.
As far as any overcrowdedness is kitsch or a bad taste in principle, so is our ethics too
in terms of theories, applications, and practical advises. Now, in order to bypass this issue,
which is not merely an aesthetical one, it is by all means necessary to engage in some kind of
minimalisation of morality and ethics. However, such procedure does not mean formalisation,
which does not help much (neither to logic, nor to ethics or metaethics). On the other hand
forms of phenomena are all we have, so a kind of formalisation cannot be avoided. Yet, there
is, or at least there should be an obvious difference between the logic of morality and the
morphology of morality. Logic of morality is mostly “logic”, and only accidentally “of
morality” and as such it is kitsch as well, since it is overcrowded, no matter if it is
overcrowded with an absence. Morphology is examined here as a method of achieving this
particular goal, or as a test of this particular view.
However, morphology of morality and ethics is not just the method but the very
structure of phenomena of moral aspects of the human action, and finally the goal of
examination as well. Now, to clear this obvious conceptual mess one can use the concept
“remark” (being a grammatical, experiential, or axis remark) in order to name morphological
result which is mainly achieved when one sees the pattern and therefore understands clearly.
For morphology of phenomena one can use “a pattern of phenomena” and the very notion of
“morphology” is therefore left for the method of observing and comparing phenomena and
their parts.
 In short, in the present study human moral and ethical patterns will be investigated via
morphological method in order to get grammatical, empirical, and axis remarks which
enable understanding in terms clear description of phenomena in question.
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This particular task in the present study is performed throughout four chapters and a
modest conclusion corresponding to this quasi-introduction. In the first chapter some elements
of the morphology of good and bad are explicated and some differences between this and
other methods in ethics as well. In the second chapter some elements of Wittgenstein’s idea of
the grammar of good are interpreted and connected with the morphological method and goal
as described in the first chapter. The third chapter deals with the idea of a manual or a book of
cases as necessary for understanding pragmatist or minimal ethics. It concludes that such
manual is rarely needed especially not for ethical training. The last fifth chapter examines the
idea of constant and mostly unnecessary urge to explicate the grammar of good, bad, and
permissible by most ethical theories.
The overall idea of pragmatist minimal ethics in short is that the morphological
examination of human languages and of human cultures shows that morality and ethics are
deeply entrenched in cultures as forms of life. This simple and perhaps intuitive observation
should reflect on our ethics no matter if it is a general ethical theory, or an application of it to
some sphere of life, to a profession, or to a particular practical issue. However, the way it
reflects is of utmost importance here, and it does so in a manner that our ethics should be
quite different, perhaps not in its internal form as much as in its external form that is to say in
it’s embedness in our daily life and in our culture.
Consequently, much of what is one used to read in ethical textbooks here is criticized
as an unnecessary overcrowdness as explicated previously, or as a simple exaggeration in
various directions (such as unnecessary moralising of trivial cases, oversimplification of quite
complicated issues, and similar). Therefore, for such viewpoints it can be said that they state
too much (and therefore engage in, as H. G. Frankfurt notices, bullshit). On the other hand,
morality and ethics evasion, avoidance, and escapism by and large (no matter if it is relativist,
nihilist, existentialist, or simply linguistic or logical in its nature), represent unnecessary
minimalism and oversimplification in terms of prohibiting of saying anything at all on some
quite rare occasions when something should be said on the matter in question. Therefore, for
such viewpoints it is claimed that they state too little.
Both of these radical viewpoints are stating too little or too much, but previously to
that they are stating what they think they should state in the misleading way, or from the
wrong perspective. So, the change of perspective is also one of goals here. In addition, all of
these or similar moral or ethical viewpoints try to approach the very problems, while it is
suggested here that one should try to understand what lies before the problem that is a
standard practice embedded in a standard culture as a form of life.
What is suggested here as well is that the whole of a human form of life or of human
culture is the “background” and the “rough ground” not just of understanding each and every
particular human action, or any pattern of standard human action given in a particular culture,
but of seeing, describing, and understanding these elements or aspects of human activities and
human cultures among which a moral and ethical aspects are normal but minimal as well as
any other such as usefulness, effectiveness, beauty, and similar aspects of our actions. To see
human actions as human actions, and as parts of standard routines, deeply rooted in cultures
they belong to is the prerequisite of understanding their moral aspects.

1. What is the morphology or the grammar of good?

Bernard Williams in “Ethics and Limits of Philosophy” concerning linguistic approach to

ethical issues, especially regarding Wittgensteinians’ approach, says the following:
“In the ethical case, inasmuch as the problem is seen as the explanatory problem of
representing people’s ability to make judgments about new cases, we do not need to
suppose that there is some clear discursive rule underlying that capacity. Aristotle
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supposed that there was no such rule and that a kind of inexplicit judgment was
essentially involved an ability that a group of people similarly brought up would share
of seeing certain cases as like certain others. This is what followers of Wittgenstein are
disposed to believe about all human learning. At some eventual level they must be
right: understanding a summary discursive rule would itself involve a shared
appreciation of similarities. But this conception of the ability to arrive at shared ethical
judgments goes further that that. It is not merely that the ability to use language
requires a shared capacity to see similarities, but that the capacity to see ethical
similarities goes beyond anything that can adequately be expressed in language. This
is surely true, and is what Wittgensteinians would predict.” (Williams 1985:97-8)
Precisely that what Williams claims and implicitly asks is the topic of this study, namely, the
morphology and the grammar of good which if carried out properly would end in a strange
elucidation in favour of the remark about obliqueness and transparency of morality and
needlessness of an ethical deliberation in vast majority of cases in daily life – or in defence of
ethical minimalism and relativism at least concerning species 5618 in Borg jargon (a
somewhat aggressive species in Star Trek sci-fi series), or species Homo Sapiens Sapiens in
their own discourse. In other words, the present study deals with an issue which could be
considered as an exciting one in many ways, to spell out at least two of these, it concerns
ethics and moral values from so to say a pragmatist point of view, and it begins from
Wittgensteinian ethics (not based in his TLP, rather in PI and later writings in which the
morality is transparent in a culture).
Pragmatist point of view, no matter how knotty and somewhat naïve it may look like,
it still has some important insights if one compares it with major ethical systems such as
virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. Two of these are the following.
 If by present actions one produces more long-term costs then long-term benefits to
everyone relevantly included in suffering these consequences, then these actions are more
probably morally incorrect then correct actions, no matter if they appear morally correct in
short-term, especially in the light of the fact that in most of such cases one cannon
relevantly exclude himself / herself as a carrier of the blame for some further reasons as
for instance mild ethnocentrism. (A part of ethnocentrism is surely so to say a cultural
egoism which ethically speaking perhaps is not relevant as a standpoint during the
decision reaching process; however it is relevant a serious treat at the final stage of the
same process.)

Box 1 This should not be confused with the slippery slope argument which runs
as follows: if you take a first step A, as a result of a sticky sequence of events,
step B will necessarily or very likely follow. B is clearly not acceptable.
Therefore you must not take step A. Example: “Once public officials cross the
line of accepting seemingly innocent gifts like bottles of wine, there is no
stopping and the road to corruption is open.” Now, if accepting a bottle of wine
and accepting a 100,000 € gift are not essentially different, as they are both to be
seen as forms of corruption, and if accepting the larger bribe is clearly morally
wrong, we should also refuse the bottle of wine.

 The second one says that such calculation of long-term costs and benefits (in fact short-
term financial costs and long-term values in terms of economic and non-economic
benefits) should be additionally confronted with the mission, vision, and core values one
struggles to achieve, namely with the projection of oneself one wants to become, and the
world one wants to create precisely by such actions. Being capable of imagining oneself
and the world from the future state backwards to the present in which one tries to
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creatively reach a decision and act accordingly is also quite important for pragmatist
ethics standpoint.
If these two, namely a calculation and a vision are in clash, then the difficulty of a decision is
similar as in any other way of reaching the decision; however it is at least closely hooked up
with what really matters according to the pragmatist ethics that is to say with persons and
actions, or with acting persons.
Now, this essay begins from the point of view of Wittgensteinian ethics in two senses,
initially from principles to cases, namely from the very idea of “a grammar of good” toward
particular cases. Both topics, pragmatist and Wittgensteinian ethics, are controversial in their
own right, and especially if one takes them to be relevantly linked in a way that the later one
determines the former one, to be precise, that Wittgensteinian ethics is in fact a kind of
pragmatist ethics – European style. Regarding the title of the essay, it should be noted that no
more than lesser parts of the essay are really a commentary on Wittgenstein’s ethics from his
later writings, while greater potions of it are in fact our development of his ideas in different
routes (that is the reason why the title of the essay is not for instance Wittgenstein’s ethics).
Now, regarding the crucial approach to an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s passages, it
should be pointed out that if one takes seriously the fact that the time when the philosophy of
language was considered to be First Philosophy is long gone, then one can understand the
intention to equally emphasize Wittgenstein’s categories of language games (further
abbreviated as LG) and forms of life (further abbreviated as FOL) and to apply them equally
to his treatment of morality and ethics. That is why for instance G. H von Wright's approach
from his book “Varieties of Goodness” which says: “By the varieties of goodness I
understand the multiplicity of uses of the word good.” (Von Wright 1963 §:5) should be
improved in the way that it concerns multiplicity of practices that we call good practices as
well.
This implies the following. The first important note is that Wittgenstein rejected fact-
value distinction as a strict and the relevant one, and that he advanced some kind of relativism
(perhaps of rationality, knowledge, and of moral correctness as well since all of these are what
they are only in relation to LGs and FOLs they belong to. Namely, there are practices which
are practiced by vast majority in a FOL and these are good practices by being standard, lege
artis, routine practices. There are even standards for exceptions, standards for non-standard
exceptions, etc. By being good such practices belong to moral majority or moral culture.
However, there are practices practiced by various minorities and in accordance with
more or less different standards. These belong to moral minority or moral subculture. Moral
minorities belong to a FOL which is relevantly dissimilar with a FOL majority belongs to.
They are members of the same society, but not of the same cultural level (they are relative to
the FOL they belong to). (For instance criminals in any society share a separate FOL which is
culturally more similar to a FOL of criminals of a different society then to a FOL of moral
majority of a society they belong to. This is important in understanding a kind of fluency in
net creation of international criminal organisations.) Practices by moral minority are bad only
viewed from the perspective of moral majority, while from within a FOL they belong to they
can be regarded as good (as shown in Table 1).
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Table 1: FOL as the rough ground and the background of the morphology and the grammar of
good

Further motive for this approach to Wittgenstein's ideas is that the most books and
papers on Wittgenstein’s ethics are written regarding his early works (from NB, TLP to LE),
but only a small number of them regarding his later ethics (CV and PI for instance), such as
already mentioned G. H. von Wright's “The Varieties of Goodness” (1963), or P. Johnston's
“Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy” (1989); more to that, only few papers try to develop his
later period ethical ideas (see Burbules and Smeyers for instance). Some elements of his
approach to the topic could be found in various works concerning his social, cultural, and
political ideas (see Bloor 1996; Nyíri 1976, 1982; Phillips 1996; Winch 2008). Of course
some general interpretative ideas could be found in dictionaries (see Glock 1996; Richter
2004). The reason for this condition is nicely articulated by D. Richter regarding
Wittgenstein's ethics in general:
„Writing about Wittgenstein and ethics is problematic for several reasons. He wrote
too little and too much on the subject, ethics are both too central and too marginal to
his work, and what he had to say about ethics is in some ways unconventional and yet
in others quite orthodox.“ (Richter 2004:119)
Certain tension is constituted by the fact that he wrote too little on ethics while in the same
time claiming that morality is essential. Regarding the fact that he wrote too little on the
subject one should differentiate between “too little” in TLP and generally in early works, and
“too little” in PI and generally in later works. In the present paper it will be explicated that he
wrote “too little” on ethics in his later period because of the same reason why he wrote “too
little” on certainty, colours, various qualia, etc. i.e. “on grammar”, namely, because a practice
has to speak for itself. The mentioned tension goes backwards as well, since he claims too
much by saying too little.
One supplementary detail should be mentioned as well, namely that a philosophical
grammar in form of implicit or explicated grammatical or hinge, or axis remarks is a proper
part of a world-picture (further abbreviated as WP). Besides hinges, there are experiential or
empirical remarks, and axes remarks as well (which are, by most Wittgenstein scholars, by
mistake considered as hinge-propositions). The last kind is formally speaking half-
grammatical and half-empirical. For instance, if
 “Washing means using water and soap.”
is a grammatical or hinge remark, and if
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 “Willard is washing his hands properly.”

or
 “We (humans) wash hands with water and soap before meal”
are empirical remarks, then a remark, for instance
 “We (humans) do not clean our hands with mud.”
could be regarded as an axis remark, completely implicit in practice, and explicated rarely if
ever (perhaps in a situation when a child tries to wash its hands in muddy or dirty water or in
a puddle). This difference should be regarded as fairly significant since it shows how a world-
view or a world-picture (further abbreviated as WP) is related to its practices, or in other
words, in which ways is our WP manifested by our FOLs and how it could be explicated by
our LGs.
 Namely, empirical remarks (ER) describe particular actions, hinges (or grammatical
propositions GR) manifest rule-like forms of whole practices as a proper parts of our FOL
(patterns of our culture) and they could be explicated, while axes remarks (AR) are almost
always implicitly or tacitly present in any particular action, practice, or a whole FOL.
They serve in various situations which are not standard, for instance during acquiring and
teaching particular practice, or in times when there is a need for the change of a standard
practice or routine, or when different FOLs clash (however, this last point is somewhat
controversial because of Wittgenstein's complicated and possibly relativist notion of certainty,
rationality and of morality as well).

Table 2: The morphology of good and bad

 Morphology of good is related to “variety of uses of the word good” and its synonyms and
antonyms, but it is related to variety of “our good practices” and to “our culture” as a
whole of our customs, routines, standard, lege artis procedures, and our ways of clarifying
our culture on various circumstances.
Without further investigation of morphology of good we will here just sketch general
morphology of good and bad (as shown in Table 2).
There is also another issue concerning the morphology of good and bad. One should
not forget that in vast majority of cases there are various courses of action one is free to
choose. Therefore, comparing different options and recognising similarity between a
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particular course of action and a pattern of action in given circumstance is of utmost

importance. Comparing suggests that good and bad are used relationally, namely as
 “Being worse then”,
 “being better then”, and
 “being almost equally good”
in the following forms of arguments: “α is worst then β, therefore, one ought not to do is α”,
“β is better then α, therefore, what one ought to do is β”, “α is almost equally good as β,
therefore, it is not relevant what one chooses to do”.

Box 2 Say that one is confronted with a choice between two standard practices,
namely saving a life and returning a property to its owner in the way that if one
returns the property to its owner, then one will omit to save the life of the owner,
and if one saves the life of the owner of the property, then one will omit to return
a property to the same person. If one chooses to save the life of another person,
then one acted not just in accordance with a particular standard procedure but in
accordance with the relation to another standard procedure, and such relations
are standard as well, say, “If there is no way to do both things, then to save a life
is better then to return a property”.

The morphology and grammar of good and bad concerns LGs as much as FOLs.
Regarding this difference between a LG and a FOL we will differ here between:
 human action (individual free human action, an issue of a theory of human action),
 human action being good or bad (in terms of particular characteristic of a human action
among other characteristics such as motives for an action, procedure of an action,
feasibility of an action, beauty of an action, etc., an issue of moral value contrasted with
other values of human action),

Box 3 It is reasonable to suppose that only a human with a little experience,

interest, or esprit de finesse would mix say moral, aesthetical, religious, and
cultural values, or claiming that what applies to ethical mutatis mutandis applies
to aesthetical, religious, and cultural spheres, since there are great differences
between motives, reasons, nature of judgments, and their effect in these spheres
of value. Claiming that an action is morally wrong, that a picture is not beautiful,
that a religious experience is not authentic, that a person is bad mannered are all
negative evaluative remarks by all means; however they substantively differ in
sphere of value, almost as much as say physics, psychology, and history differ in
sphere of science. For the first thing there is a difference in atmosphere, that is to
say moral and ethical problems (experiences) are accompanied with a kind of
mild nausea and unsettled stomach, aesthetic experiences with a sensation of
wonder and harmony, while a religious experience with a feeling of peace,
closeness, and intimacy. Of course, there are other differences, but these seem to
be sufficient in order to point to some characteristics of moral experience,
deliberation, judgement, and action.

 human action being good or bad action in terms of standard procedure under standard
circumstances (routine, no matter is it good or bad, e.g. routine of a burglar or routine of a
doctor), or in terms of standard exception to the standard procedure under standard
circumstances (an issue of morality of human action),
 human action being good or bad in terms of non-standard procedure under non-standard
circumstances (an ethical issue), and
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 human action being good or bad in terms of further issues concerning facts, motives,
intentions, reasons, meaning, etc. of a certain type or sub-aspect of action (a metaethical
issue).
These differences should be taken into account since some of them will be objected to
as useless since we understand ethics pragmatically and indeed in terms of pragmatism. In
particular, some event can appear as a human action while really it is not, or not entirely and
vice versa (such as natural disasters aided by human action); some characteristic of an action
can appear as moral value although it is an issue of effectiveness of it; some moral
characteristic of an action can be thought of problematic and consequently an action as non-
standard and as such an ethical issue while really it is not. However, there are spheres with
which a moral sphere (and consequently an ethical as well) is somewhat blended.
Traditionally, these are the sphere of culture and the sphere of law (as shown in Table 3).

Table 3: The relations between morality, law, culture and society

Morality and law differ regarding motive, reason, nature, and effect. The basic
difference is in the motivation to adhere to standards, that is to say, ethics requires inner
motivation and freedom, while a law does not require inner agreement, but is based on
external compulsion (including a threat of legal sanctions). Law resolve conflicts and passes
judgements based on the best legal argument. On the other hand, morality is based on moral
deliberation by putting forward points of view and trying to convince the other side or simply
to understand better the opposite or different view.
Now, morality and culture are in different relation. Culture, at least in some of its
spheres, includes standard, routine, and so to say lege artis procedures accepted by majority,
and all of these procedures create a pattern of particular culture. In this way morality is
embedded in culture, and in society depending on the fact is it a part of public or private
sphere. When there is a problem with standard practice, what we have are possible ethical
issues concerning various topics (for instance, cases of violation of a routine, a change of a
routine because of further reasons, tolerating practices of cultural minority, the process of
culturing of younglings, clash of cultures, etc.). In short, morality is implicit and manifested in
culture, while ethics is morality which is explicated from culture because an issue appeared
and a culture needs to resolve it. The place in Table 1.3 where diagrams overlap shows that
the best way to resolve an ethical issue is if the solution is consistent with standards of law
and culture. However, cultures can be more or less similar, especially regarding basic moral
values or basic moral goods which create a part of their basic pattern (besides standard
practices, customs, habits, language, origin, etc.).
The threat of moral (ethical and metaethical as well) relativism is here quite real. Now,
relativism regarding values is in principle easy to clarify (as shown in Table 4).
 11

Table 4: Moral relativity

In Table 4 there are five FOLs (A…E), five values (α…ε), and their hierarchy (1, 2, 3). Let as
introduce the morphological examination method via this example.
 FOLs A and B are sharing the same values but they place them on different place in
hierarchy.
 FOLs A and C are sharing two values in the same relation to each other, but C has a
higher additional value and the shared values in the same mutual relation are below it.
 FOLs A and D and B and D share one value.
 However, D is more similar to B then to A since the shared value is in the same position
in hierarchy, but D is equally dissimilar with both since it has different value in the second
position. FOL has two completely different values.
 Therefore, FOLs A, B, C, and D are commensurable (because they share at least one
value).
The question is which the most similar pair of FOLs is, namely, it is questionable is it the pair
A, B or the pair B, D. It seems that this issue cannot be decided without knowledge of what
these values really are. FOL E has values and a hierarchy of them and therefore is quite
dissimilar with all other FOLs (it can be imagined that there is a FOL with values but with no
hierarchy, or even without values at all). In other words, E is incommensurable with A, B, C,
and D, and it seems that they are completely relative regarding values they have, but they
have values and their hierarchy, and in this respect they are similar (but this will be of little
help if values clash).
These relations of similarity and dissimilarity and of commensurability and
incommensurability (moral relativity) will be of use in this essay (especially in the light of the
fact that Wittgenstein’s standpoint appears to be relativistic). In short, in order to have
relativity of moral values one should identify more then one (more or less) distinct groups of
values of which these groups do not share any (and this condition is often hard to satisfy,
especially nowadays).
Now, this whole idea of Wittgenstenian ethics as pragmatic minimum ethics European
style besides this introduction (1) will be presented in the following order: (2) Wittgenstein
and the idea of a grammar of good, (3) A grammar of “good” or – is it really necessary to
write the manual (or a book of cases)?, and (4) Grammar of good, bad and permissible – what
is it good for? Besides (1), part (2) investigates Wittgenstein’s ideas explicitly, parts (3) and
(4) are development of some of his ideas from parts (1) and (2). The further motive for this
kind of investigations is twofold,
 12

 on one hand one can be stimulated by the idea of Witgensteinian morphology and
grammar of good which spells out axes remarks of a particular society in a given culture
(something fairly permanent and rigid),
 and on the other hand by a strange blend of minimalism, elegance, depth, and a kind of
pragmatism which obviously plays an important role in his remarks on ethics and morality
(something somewhat fluid and variable).
These two in mixture make an interesting topic to investigate (in part already done by some
Wittgenstein scholars), and an original way to develop ethics from this standpoint (also done
by some ethicists).
Because of this mixture of topics and somewhat odd method, the investigation should
be of some interest to ethicists, pragmatists, experts in Wittgenstein, and in cultural
anthropology. Finally, this approach seems to satisfy our two common sense intuitions
regarding morals and ethics, namely, that they are in the same time
 an issue of routine procedures in accordance with a FOL
 and something of great importance, significance for our lives.
These intuitions are quite important for understanding ethics and morality, but for
understanding various applications of ethics as well.

Box 4 Concerning the topic of the present study, and some applications of it, say
in business ethics and CSR, it is of utmost importance to see that such
application, for instance in CSR as applied ethics isn’t something additional to
the business in terms of its financial performance and legal compliance, rather
the other way around, its financial performance, legal compliance, and social
responsibility are included in the very process of a core business and are
essentially manifested by it. Furthermore, morality isn’t something additional as
well as the law, rather various laws and regulations are just patches on morality
as manifested by culture and culture isn’t something external to the core business
in terms of necessity of any business being done in a local culture, any business
having certain business culture, and any business together with local cultures
being parts of greater whole of a culture in terms of biological/natural and
cultural anthropological sense of the word.

2. Wittgenstein and the very idea of a grammar of good

Let us turn now to the main issue. Is there an overview (perspicuous presentation) of morality;
is there a chapter in our grammar under the heading “morally good”; what could be counted
as “a grammatical remark” (hinge) or as “an axis remark” in the “field” of morality? This is
not the question such as – are there moral LGs because surely there are (see (a) and (b)
below), or – are there practices which if done in certain manner we consider to be morally
correct practices because surely there are (see (c) below), but the question as it were between
these two, namely – can one make an ethical remark, and if one can, what kind of remark is
it? The principal answers by Wittgenstein are quite explicit:
(a) “In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this
word (good for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games?
Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.”
(PI 77), (this is an application of LG method to moral expressions, see von Wright
1963:15; Baker and Hacker suggest that Wittgenstein is thinking of “goodness” in
narrower sense, but the problem is that one learns to use the word “good” as the good
of exclamations, e.g. if a child repeats a certain procedure correctly then the parent can
say “Good!”, see Baker, Hacker 2005 I, 2, 169),
 13

(b) “Thus it could be said that the use of the word good (in an ethical sense) is a
combination of a very large number of interrelated games, each of them as it were a
facet of the use. What makes a single concept here is precisely the connection, the
relationship, between these facets.” (PG I 36, and AWL 33 where Wittgenstein holds
that “good” is a family-resemblance concept), (this could be a hint of application of
morphology as a heuristic device to moral LGs, see PI 66 and commentary in Baker
and Hacker 2005 I, vol. 2),
(c) “It will often be possible to say: ask what your reasons are for calling something
good or beautiful & the particular grammar of the word good in this case will be
apparent.” (CV 28, MS: 125 17v: 133), (this is explicit claim about the “grammar of
good” and its possibility as grammars of religion, certainty, colour, taste, etc. are
possible as well; now, regarding this point there must be mentioned, “a grammar”
includes “an old TLP logic” (PR, PG), but the important part is the new part that is a
grammar which consists of “representations” which make our good perspicuous to us.
So far ethics really is “logical investigation of language of morals” (Hare 1952), but
something supplementary and more basically as well. On the other hand, “a grammar” is not
just about “the use of our words” (it is more then logic in a way), but about actions and
practices too (on this matter see Baker 2004 and Baker, Hacker 2005: I).
A grammatical proposition perspicuously presents not just the very use of our words,
but the very actions that are considered to be proper. Accordingly, a grammar of good
perspicuously represents the use of our “moral language” in form of “rules” and the very
actions which are considered to be proper (in ethical sense) and which, if they are performed
as described by such grammatical remarks, manifest (implicit) rules which serve as
justifications of action. But why is this important, one could ask?
Any grammar in the end can be summed up as the clear use of our words, utterances,
LGs and speech acts and these are recognised via grammatical remarks, which express the
rules of their use. However, should one consider exclusively LGs in an investigation of the
grammar of morality, or should one be occupied with a broader context as well, namely with
FOLs, and if one should, is the result of such an investigation still a grammar, or other way
around – is there a grammar of non–linguistic parts of FOLs? It is not easy to answer this
question since Wittgenstein never explicitly stated which are other “parts” of FOLs besides
language–games, like actions, practices, activities, or similar (maybe just few notes on
“institutions”, “rites”, “procedures” see Bloor, 1996), and can there be an overview of
something which is counted as “value” and manifested mainly in our “practice” different from
linguistic one besides overviews of “colour”, “shape”, “certainty”, and similar? In
Wittgenstein’s works there are attempts to perspicuously present certainty, music, religion,
culture, and if this is so, then one could conclude that the same is possible for moral as well.
Regarding the previous question, importance of a grammar of good as the grammar of
our justifications, and as the grammar of descriptions of our actions is obvious (one must
notice here that any justification is only a kind of description, and this particular
Wittgenstein’s idea can blur the distinction between descriptive and normative ethics). If, for
practical purposes, one wants to know why a person acted in certain way, or according to
which principle instantiated in particular standard procedure or routine, then the best thing to
do is to investigate (observe, see) what the person did, what kind of consequences are
produced by a doer (descriptively speaking majority of humans are consequentialists). Then
one could see which are the person’s principles or rules, because they manifest themselves in
person’s actions.
(c1) One of interpretative hypotheses of this essay (regarding previously a-c) is that a
description of an action, no matter if it implicitly of explicitly mentions moral aspect
of an action is the only possible occurrence in which such an aspect is implicit and can
 14

be manifested. This is so since, for later Wittgenstein (after LE) it seems that actions
are value impregnated and values are action instantiated (this point seems to be
consistent with his cultural account of LGs, FOLs, action, and culture). The emphasis
of symbolism, impressiveness, ceremonial nature (GB 129, 133), and the surroundings
(GB 147) of human actions, no matter of these are habitual of extraordinary, contribute
to such interpretation. In this particular and somewhat strange manner the fact-value
distinction and the problem how to derive ought from is, are overall dismissed, at least
for vast majority of standard cases.

Box 5 One of the issues in ethics is – is it possible to derive “ought” from “is”,
and answers are both affirmative and negative. Wittgenstein seems to be quite
remote from this and similar issues in his ethical and moral considerations.
Nevertheless, his elucidations and examples as it were all aim at the same target
and their trajectories and the target itself indirectly points to some ideas that can
be counted as clarifications of this and similar questions (at the beginning of 20 th
century counted as ethical, but nowadays surely as metaethical questions). Let us
take few examples in order to clarify this idea. Say that the fact which one
observes is that members of a certain group in vast majority of ordinary daily
situations return various things to other members they borrowed them from. In
other words, one observes “that X borrows T from Y and after some time X
returns T to Y”. This can be considered as “is” or as a fact regarding actions in
the observed group. The negative answer says that one cannon derive “if X
borrows T from Y, then after some time X ought to return T to Y” from the fact.
Wittgenstein seems to sets the scene in the way that the whole procedure of
deriving is futile since if majority of members of the group act in this manner
without obvious external, internal, or mixed pressure, then it seems to be an issue
of a FOL. That it is an issue of a FOL means that it is an issue of culture;
furthermore, this means that the value of returning of the borrowed thing is
“implicit” in action as being “routine action” learned and practiced by majority
or all members in majority or all situations. In other words, if an action is a
member of routine actions, or if it is a standard procedure, then that the value of
an action (meaning that it ought to be done) is implicit in it, or in other words,
that the action by being standard is “value impregnated”. In addition, if such a
standard action is considered as the basic one, then it is basic-value impregnated.
To identify the whole net of such basic standard actions, in fact practices, means
to identify the basic cultural pattern. Basic values are such values which proved
to be useful and above all are used via basic or standard action pattern. Say that
“proves to be useful” means something like “it makes daily life much easier then
any other possibility”. However, one observes that there is a minority of cases in
which “X does not return T to Y”, that one is prevented in returning a borrowed
thing. There are of course standard cases here as well, such as any case in which
a member is prevented in returning a borrowed thing by the forces beyond the
doer’s control. There are even non-standard cases here, meaning any case which
is quite rare and odd, but nonetheless possible. In any such standard or non-
standard situation which presents an exception to the standard, one ought not to
return a thing because it is impossible to do it, however, there are some other
ways of retribution here, as one observes. Standard procedures show that
standard actions are value impregnated, while standard and non-standard
exceptions to the standard actions show that values are action instantiated. There
are no values if there are no standard actions or their exceptions. Now, what
 15

unquestionably shows that values are standard instantiated are situations in

which “X does not return T to Y” and which are not counted as standard or non-
standard exceptions to the standard procedure, rather as willing and premeditated
violation of a standard procedure. Of course, such an action can be value
impregnated but this value does not belong to a particular culture and FOL, and
such a value can be action instantiated, but this action does not belong among
standard actions or their exceptions in this culture and FOL. What's more, such
an action surely is not a part of this culture and FOL culturally, but it is possible
that it is a part of it socially and if this is the case, then there is some kind of
internal procedure for dealing with such violations. On the other hand, if such
violations are not parts of a culture neither culturally nor socially, then there can
be some external procedures for dealing with such violations. To conclude, it
seems that Wittgenstein advances that, if actions are value impregnated (values
are implicit in standard actions) and if values are action instantiated (values are
manifested by standard actions), than there is no strict fact/value distinction, and
consequently there is no problem of how to derive “ought” from “is”. In other
words, to describe a standard basic practice means to present a basic value.

However, (a-c1) is still something like “descriptive ethics”. It is often claimed that “moral
principles serve as guides” for action (Hare 1952: I, 1, 1.1.). They evidently do. Nonetheless,
and that is what Wittgenstein seem to be defending, they do so in an odd way. To be precise,
there is no rule “before” an action in a way that a person:
 in t1 remembers a rule R1,
 in t2 decides to apply it, and
 in t3 acts according to it.
A person simply recognises a situation (“sees it as”) as a more or less similar to a
“prototypical one” (manifested by any example of a routine; a routine being a symbolic
practice not just a typical action) and connected to other situations and acts accordingly i.e. as
in similar situations.
 Recognition of a situation is not recognition of a certain moral principle functioning as a
rule for a given action; rather it is recognition of a particular procedure as being
appropriate for given circumstances or a given situation.
In any such situation one compares particular procedure with similar ones (like in the case of
games in PI 66, which is the clear case of morphological method). This is done almost
automatically (by default), and by performing in such way one performs in a proper way, or
should we say in an accordance (agreement) with the FOL one belongs to ceteris paribus.
Recognition that certain procedure is appropriate rarely is a kind of deliberation
previous to an action (maybe in some rare, new, or strange situations). Often it is just “seeing
connections” and acting in accordance with the form/pattern. For what we de facto do is what
we value, and what we de facto willingly, freely, and responsibly do is what we value
morally. Therefore, in such sense of “accordance”, a rule, a moral principle, or the
justification of an action manifests itself simply by performance of an action “according” to a
prototypical (symbolic) case.
 Concerning “accordance” it should be mentioned that particular action does not
“correspond” to the prototypical case (what one considers to be such case due to her/his
personal history), rather, it “fits in the net of cases” and via that it “manifest the
prototypical case” (which by the way does not exist really since it is only a metaphor, but,
on the other hand, majority of verbal metaphors are useless without visual or tactile
experiences, say “strong as a lion”, “cunning as a fox”, see Eco 1986:89).
 16

Of course, there are new situations, new circumstances and then one should apply the old rule
in a new way, make corrections to the existent rule, invent a new rule, or similar. In such
cases moral principles serve as guides for action, but when they are once applied, what is
important is application itself (agreement itself, the very case), not the rule, since any rule is
made efficient only in its application. In most situations we act automatically, our actions are
self–guided, like a missile directed to its target, and practice has to speak for itself (and along
the way adjust it's and doer's trajectory).
If enough and sufficient is said on implications of Wittgenstein's solution we can
continue with a bit more intriguing question, namely, was Wittgenstein even close to the idea
of a “grammar of good” not in the sense of mentioning it (like in CV 28), rather in the sense
of “constructing it” by giving descriptions as overviews which belong under the chapter
“good” in his “philosophical grammar”? Surely not, but we have at least few examples.
(d) “Is it possible, for instance, to imagine people who cannot lie because for them a
lie would be nothing but a dissonance? I want to imagine a case where people are
truthful not as a matter of morality, but rather see something absurd in a lie. Whoever
lies would be viewed as mentally ill. Or better: Lying or pretending would have to
appear to these people as perversity.” (LW II 56, MS 171). Could this passage, as
being roughly a kind of implicit Kantian thought on lying (since it seems to be
immoral to lie because it is irrational to lie, as it were insane), be understood as a plea
for different context of morality of wrong actions, namely lying and pretending? And
what kind of a context would it be? Of course, Wittgenstein does not make any kind of
explicit Kantian remark, rather a kind of remark concerning our limits of imagination,
and of fact/value distinction in addition perhaps (remarked by D. Richter). Say that if
what Wittgenstein imagines in fact is the case, and then could a proposition, for
instance “Lying is not normal (rational) way of acting” be counted as the grammatical
one, as the part of overview of “our ethics” as our (human) FOL? Surely we can
imagine such culture or such FOL.
(e) Next example is from his famous “Lecture on Ethics” from 1929. According to
Wittgenstein, ethics is ineffable, unutterable, and maybe even inexpressible. There are
no ethical propositions. “I would reject any significant description [of ethics] ab initio,
on the ground of its significance.” (LE 7–9, commentary in Edwards 1982)
(f) Later, in his “Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious
Belief” (1938–46) he slightly changed mentioned position in a way that he claimed
that: we must focus not on the appearance of ethical terms, but on their specific role
within whole of our culture. (LC 2, 7–8, commentary in Glock 1996) The ethical
manifests itself in social and cultural patterns of our action (morphology again).
Ethical systems expose “reasons for action” and as such are autonomous as our
grammar, and are not responsible to reality. This gives raise to many interesting ideas,
for instance: a moral discourse cannot be disqualified as the less objective than the
scientific discourse, no matter how universal they are, ethical standards express only
reasons on which an individual acts, one can disagree regarding different ethics only
from ones own system (ones own FOL), not from “the view from nowhere”.
Now, the first question from the beginning of the chapter
 What can be counted as a grammatical proposition in the sphere of morality?
can be reformulated as the following one
 Which are the ways of manifestation of ethical (morally good) in social and cultural
patterns of our actions or which is the role of ethical terms within role of the whole of our
culture?
Sooner or later one can reach the grammar of good and such grammar is like any other i.e.
like a grammar of colour, of shape, of motion, certainty, religious rites, of aesthetically
 17

beautiful, etc. (on the possibility of a grammar or an overview of practices not just of “word–
use” see Baker 2004:22-52, especially 42-4).
Nevertheless, there are some special features of the grammar of good. In a way it has
something in common with the grammar of beautiful. The similarity between these lies in the
fact that both are considered to be values. On the other hand it has something similar with the
grammar of religious (holy, sacred) and the grammar of culture, namely that it is for the most
part the grammar of practice, know–how, not of religious beliefs or attributes of God.
However, there are many differences between these of course.
Therefore, the grammar of good is the grammar of use of our words (“good”, “wrong”,
“immoral”, “dishonest”, “praiseworthy”, “duty”, “obligation” for instance) and the grammar
of our practices (everyday routines such as “being honest”, “being just”, etc. see Table 1.2),
and by being such, it is the grammar as a description of our use of words as well, and of our
practices in which good is “essentially manifested” in the life of living human beings.
It seems that there is no just an instrumental and the moral “meanings” as two groups
of meanings of the word “good” and similar words, but also instrumentality and morality as
something which in the most wide-ranging way refers to a certain list of descriptions of our
actions closest to the prototypical which are considered to be good. Good knife and good man
are similar (expressions) because of the conception of purpose that can be applied to both.
Namely, in both cases the very purpose is created, one creates a good knife as a knife, which
can serve for particular purpose; one creates others (by upbringing, and education) and one
creates himself / herself as well as a human being who chooses and fulfils certain purpose in
life.
However, besides this similarity there is dissimilarity also, namely, that a craftsman
must give purpose to a knife, while a human being can give his / hers purpose by himself /
herself. Even if there are “eternal” purposes for humans (the idea which is controversial in its
own right), nevertheless these “eternal” purposes must be applicable to different FOLs which
could be incommensurable regarding many issues. Looking for “trans–form of life” (one,
unique, and universal human FOL) so to say, could often result in finding bad and useless
similarities and analogies (PI 66). What is the use of so to speak “trans–formable” practices
regarding different FOLs? – To show that there is one “human” FOL! – But what is the use of
it? Is it not precisely that already showed by describing many different and often
incommensurable human FOLs, many different styles of life which belong to a particular
FOL?

Box 6 Notice how the same level of grasp of particular human right
(quantitatively) in different societies has different historical paths, raises
different (socioeconomic, socio-psychological, and political) issues, and requires
different future developments, almost mutually incommensurable due to
differences in FOLs as cultures (qualitatively) in which an implementation is
carried out. There is no morality detached from our society, culture, and a FOL.
But such distinction became a sort of tradition in course of fundamental ethical
inquiries. Namely, such theoretical attitudes toward the ethical seems to be
something like “back to the roots” of ethics in pre–Christian and pre–Hellenistic
times when, as far as we know, there was not a stringent “moral” meaning
detached from “ēthos” (ήθος) as “a way in which a creature is accustomed in its
living environment” (in Homer) i.e. way of life. Later from fifth century B. C. it
was understood as “custom” or “habit”, “éthos” (έθος), but still not disconnected
from cultural and social spheres. From Hellenistic and Christian age onwards
“morals” became something separated from “everydayness as home” (S. Cavell)
as it were something eminent, sublime, and almost holy but as such still relevant
 18

in daily life in quite peculiar way.

This created the fundamental problem of morality, namely – how can something
from the sphere of value influence the sphere of facts and vice versa, which was
solved with introduction of unique sphere of morality as the special category of
value which is completely disconnected from particular culture, habits, customs,
and particular FOLs on one hand, and from particular individual, its psychology,
character traits (in broader sense of the word), routines, and its personal history
on the other hand. Morals in short became ethics, universal, and almost
metaphysical in sphere of values.
As such ethics nicely goes along with theology, science, democracy, etc. while
really it should go nicely along with practical religiousness, various techniques
(industrial as well), tolerance, solidarity, cultures, etc.
Nevertheless, it is not our task here to give detail explication of these unfortunate
historical events that led even Wittgenstein himself to adopt a version of certain
metaphysical (almost mystical) foundation of ethics in NB, and to dismiss it in
TLP (à la Schopenhauer, or Weininger perhaps) and to dismiss this TLP
standpoint step by step (from LE to PI and later works) as it was hinted here (on
Wittgenstein's ethics from NB and TLP to LE see Wiggins 2004:363-91).
Nevertheless, there are many problems with this solution and in the following
chapters some of them will be discussed.

3. Is it really necessary to write a manual or a book of cases?

Even if there is a possibility of a grammar of “good” and of good as well, there is another
difficulty implied by such solution, namely – are there two groups of different meanings of
“good”, to be exact:
 something like a functional and purpose–fulfilling group of meanings regarding things
(artefacts and natural inanimate, and living beings), actions (human actions being done
properly or lege artis) and processes (natural and social processes), and it should noted
that for instance a robbery and curing disease both can be done properly or not,

Box 7 That which is valued as a means to some end has an instrumental value,
while that end has non-instrumental value. If nails and wood are valued because
they can be used to make a chair, for instance, the nails have instrumental value,
while the chair itself has non-instrumental value. However, a chair as a part of
furniture has an instrumental value because it is used for sitting while eating,
writing, etc. and eating is important for staying alive, and life perhaps has non-
instrumental value, or perhaps it does since there is the value of a species of
Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
Standard practices are manifesting the prototypical or the pattern (a value in
itself) almost like “signposts” (PI 87), that is to say, that a standard practice “is in
order if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose” (concerning
“signpost” see important revision of PI 85 in 2009 edition by P. M. S. Hacker
and J. Schulte, note to PI 85, 2009:249).

 and something like value–meaning group of meanings regarding human actions and
practices (habits, customs, institutions… for distinction see Hare 1952, II, 6. 2, and von
Wright 1963, §:5, especially for “instrumental” use of “good”), and to parallel the same
example it can be said that in the most cases stealing is bad, and to cure disease is good
 19

(for the sake of abbreviation the first will be abbreviated as the α–good and the second the
β–good).
Consequently, a proper robbery is α–better then the one which not proper. On the other
hand both of them are β–bad, but the later being less bad then the former since there is a lower
probability of success. Regarding the exceptions, a proper robbery is α–better and β–better
then the one which is not proper in case where to steal someone’s property is the only way to
achieve a higher value (e.g. to save lives by stealing weapons or in fact by buying weapons).
Of course, there are many more meanings of “good” but these are the most frequent in our
LGs (see quotations a, b, and c at the beginning of the first chapter, and the Table 1.2).
 To give few examples: a tree is α–good if it fulfils its purpose in an ecological system, a
knife is α–good if it is relevantly sharp in order to cut various materials. Washing hands
properly before meal is α–good if hands are relevantly clean in order to maintain hygiene
and to prevent disease. At first sight this seems to be quite irrelevant for “moral” meaning
of “good”. The utterance “This is a good knife” can mean many things namely being
sharp, being made of certain material, being nicely balanced for throwing, being of high
quality, etc., and such utterances can be made for various purposes in order to give the
guarantee regarding the functionality of a knife, or for instance to justify its price.
 Now, let us observe the difference between utterances “This is a good knife” and “He is a
good man”. It seems to be incorrect to say that the second utterance is also shorten for
“this man fulfils various purposes, namely as human being, a professional, a husband, a
father, a colleague at work, etc.” In a way examples referring to things are quite useless,
since examples with actions usefully smudge certain already unnatural distinction
between these two utterances, namely examples like “this is a good cooking”, “this was a
good skiing”, “this was a good football”, etc. In such examples the distinction between the
goodness of an item and the goodness of an action of a human, and the distinction
between a practice and its value are somewhat blurred, but on the other hand they
highlight the value as such. Compare “She is a good skier” with “This was a good skiing”.
The first example seems to emphasise “good” as some kind of value of a person
performing an action, and the second example seems to stress “good” as a value of the
very practice of a doer performing it. The advantages of emphasis of value of a practice
over the value of a human will be discussed later on. Now, turning to the first utterance, if
one emphasises a person, one could complaint that persons are not like some mechanical
objects or machines designed for a particular purpose (surely there is some charm in
imagining a human as a kind of bio-machine with technological implants like a Borg
drone, or a cybernetic machine like a Terminator). Of course, if one agrees with the idea
of purpose (like fulfilment of God's purpose for humans, or like fulfilment of purpose of
survival of the species, or similar), then this would not be an objection, but in deed the
reply (but what is then the objection?).
However, the very reason of emphasising actions (even human) over things regarding
their function is of different kind since we agree with the objection. Good skiing and good
robbery are in the same time α–good and β–good, meaning that they are performed properly
and in accordance with a FOL they belong to, the point which should not be confused with the
fact the they belong to different FOLs (and these as being a different cultures could be a part
of the same society). Indeed, that is to say that when we consider one who steals for a living
and one who does not steal for a living we consider them as two persons belonging to two
different ways of life, it is simple, they do it, we do not, and vice versa. Of course, one can
claim that they are “words and worlds apart” culturally, but not socially since it is possible
and it is a well-known fact that every society has persons who steal for a living.
There is some point in difference between actions which are rare in a given society or
within a social group like stealing, or lying, but which differ regarding their distribution in a
 20

group. For instance lying seems to be (almost divinely) omnipresent in some low level (small
lies) in a whole society, while it could be present enormously (big lies) in some subgroups or
even professions, and less among general population, while stealing is less present if present
at all among general population, and more concentrated in some groups (this issue obviously
belongs to the spheres of sociology and anthropology of lying and stealing, on the other hand,
isn’t it exactly the point about Wittgenstein’s ethics).
 Imagine now that (regarding the cases of “good” knife/man) one asks: “What do you
mean by “good knife/man”?” The answers to such question would also be quite familiar,
such as: “I mean if you want to sharp this arm in order to make a spear, you can use this
knife, since it is sharp enough for such purpose.” or “I mean, if you want to do business
with this man, go ahead, because he is an experienced professional of high integrity.”
Should one be puzzled with cases of comparison of utterances such as the following, “He
is a good professional” with “He is a good doctor” and with “He is a good burglar”? Of
course, one could make conjunction of these propositions since one can be a good doctor,
a good burglar, and a good professional in both activities. Now, regarding the puzzlement,
we do not think so, because “a good doctor” and “a bad doctor” basically differ regarding
performance meaning that for the first we say “performing lege artis” and for the second
“too often falls short in performing lege artis”. Now, what is the distinction between a
“bad doctor” and a “good burglar”? They differ regarding the standard performance in
certain type of action, but they are the same regarding the morality of their actions, or
maybe not, since if we value life more then property then a “bad doctor” is worse than a
“good burglar”.
Now, something should be said regarding the so-called “substantive” family of
meanings of the word “good”, or as we shorten it as the β–good. Supposedly, there seems to
be a huge difference between these two groups of uses of “good”. But, if “a bad doctor” falls
short regarding his lege artis performance as a doctor, that means that he performs contrary to
the “standard procedure” which is by being “standard” also “morally correct” (at least
regarding “prototypical cases” in our human FOL).
 However, how a procedure by simply being “standard” or lege artis could be “morally
correct” as well, one could ask? The answer is that it is so because a standard procedure is
also an institution of our culture and society, of our FOL (Winch 2008:30), and
institutions represent paradigm actions and patterns of a FOL. In another words, the core
of moral actions is that they are members of a family of rule–guided activities. Now, such
activities are obtained, maintained, and in some cases even changed not by learning rules
before actions, but simply by learning by heart standard procedures in standard situations
(even in non-standard situations too, since there are standard exceptions as well).
 To act morally incorrect simply means to go against the rule, against the grammar, against
the standard practice, and that without an obvious reason (given that the scope of obvious
reasons is given by a scope of a FOL; this point raises an issue of relativity of rationality
which is also intriguing in Wittgenstein’s standpoint as already mentioned).
Of course, it is correct to say that any standard procedure is a particular standard
procedure, but also it is a criterion of judging is any given action falling under it, by being a
malpractice or not, compared to it as a standard. Any FOL regarding its social dimension has
some characteristics of implicit and hypothetical social contract which is de facto universally
implemented. Procedural moral correctness is implicit in its basic rules, and basic examples.
Therefore, a “good burglar” can be α–good but never β–good, but a “good doctor” can
be α–good and β–good regarding to our FOL, that is to say – for various practical reasons one
could explicate β–goodness from α–goodness in any case of standard procedure of a doctor,
but not of a burglar. A burglar surely has some kind of ethics, but his ethics is a part of our
FOL only socially, but not culturally, namely, only as far as it is something which we can
 21

consider as morally incorrect. Now, it is not suggesting that Wittgenstein ever explicitly stated
social contract as implicit or hypothetical (for an indication see BT 89).
What we want to say is – that in our FOL the standard performance by a doctor is
morally good by being standard and the standard performance by a burglar is morally bad by
being standard. Performance by a doctor confirms our FOL as well as performance by a
burglar, but only in terms of presupposing its existence. This seems to be quite important
since any case of malpractice or negligence we do not consider just as a performance in which
a doctor falls short regarding lege artis procedure, but also as doing something morally
incorrect (under some further conditions which will be explicated hereafter). If a doctor by
being negligent regarding the standard procedure is eo ipso doing something morally
incorrect, then surely by doing his job lege artis he performs morally correct or at least a
permissible act (this difference will be mentioned later) within a FOL. If this is correct, is
there any point of introducing the “substantive” use of “good” as explicated from the
“functional” use of “good”?

Box 8 Say, for the sake of an argument, that we have a list of the following
utterances: (a) “This is a standard procedure in my profession” (b) “To be
healthy is good.” (c) “To save lives is good”, (d) “To be alive is good”, (e) “To
steal is bad” (f) “A property should be protected”, etc. This seems to be an
example of reasons we give for alleged moral correctness of particular actions
we perform.
For instance, a doctor regarding some of his particular actions as a doctor could
say something like (a), and in order to justify (a) he could say (b), and (c) and
finally (d). No matter how (d) could look like a reason of the same kind in the
chain of justifications, it just looks like that. It's function is somewhat different,
since it functions not as final reason, rather as the criterion for deciding which
reasons can be accepted as “good reasons” (a–c regarding d) in the system of our
justifications and on the background of our FOL.
And we do not decide in favour of mentioned examples (d, e, and f) on “certain
grounds” like habits, social conventions, etc., in short on the basis and on the
background of “our FOL”, rather they are “manifested grounds”, they are
“manifestations of our FOL”, they are our “rough ground”. This does not make
our moral justifications in any way more or less justified or reasonable, possibly
more understandable to members of our FOL and nothing else, since such
judgements (like “to be alive is good”) can be counted as grammatical
propositions in certain situations.

The similarity of mentioned examples and some Wittgenstein’s examples seems to be

obvious:
 “To seat at the table in order to have lunch”, “To apply this remedy in order to save this
patient's life” are both descriptions of cases (experiential remarks) which belong to certain
practices (having a lunch, saving a life),
 “Chairs are made for sitting on them”, and “Doctors cure diseases and save lives” are both
grammatical remarks regarding functions of chairs and doctors (descriptions of practices
(or their parts) which belong to a certain implicit/manifested or an explainable FOL
(culturally, and socially, as shown in Table 5, the top of the iceberg metaphor represents
the only thing that we are in fact acquainted with on daily basis, while only in special
circumstances we explicate a FOL)).
 22

Table 5: A grammar of good in the context of form of life

Nevertheless, one could say – the substantive use of “good” is possible only in
“grammatical remarks”. However, one should not forget that a remark is a grammatical
remark only within a FOL. (For instance:
 „It is good to wash hands properly before meal.“,
 „It is good to distribute this cake equally.”,
 “It is good to share toys with others.”,
 “It is good to do your homework.”, etc.
But, this substantive use has its “use”, like a signpost, only within a FOL.)
On the other hand, it is not just the issue of use of “good” like in a criterion of correct
use, but also the question of a list of quasi–final justifications for any action whatsoever that
are in accordance with a FOL. A supposedly grammatical remark (like “to be alive is good”)
is in fact explicated from particular relation of accordance of certain case to its FOL (to the
standard in a FOL to be exact). Say, in any case of saving a life by a doctor, fireman, or
policeman. They manifest as it were an institutional good.
Furthermore, the same supposedly grammatical remark is nevertheless implicit in a
case as its rule (as implicit justification of the whole practice or a particular case) and it can be
explicated in various occasions (for various purposes) depending on the level of its
manifestation in a case and the very circumstances. Of course, “to follow a rule” is itself a
custom, and “to follow this rule” is an institution of our FOL, but “to follow any rule
whatsoever of our FOL” means to perform in harmony with other standard performances of
our FOL (Baker 2004:52-92, 279-94). And this manifestation of a rule and the level of it
above all depend on the very fact that a case is more or less close to, or far from the
“prototypical one” regarding the practice in question (and its place in a FOL it belongs to).
This is the vital reason why the fact–value distinction never pops up in this kind of
approach to morality and ethics. Therefore, one could say that:
 23

 the substantive use of “good” is symptomatic for any “explicit” mentioning of a

grammatical proposition (or rule, as being more abstract description) regarding morality
of certain action or a practice for particular practical purpose (such as teaching a practice,
or changing a practice),
 while the functional (or “instrumental”) use of “good” is the sign of lesser abstract
description, or “implicit” mentioning of morality of certain action or practice in the course
of which a grammar of good and/or certain rule manifests itself by any action being
performed properly (here any example of standard procedure will do).
The fact-value distinction consequently is a matter of the difference in level, not in kind.
However, if one wants to describe a practice via mentioning its rule, then one should
avoid experiential or empirical remarks, since they cannot be grammatical, i.e. they cannot be
propositions of the grammar, and that is because they cannot serve as criteria of judging on
any subject matter (of course, some experiential remarks belong to our system of reference,
but they are in fact axes-propositions, OC 152).
Such descriptions are of utmost importance in our lives since they describe
“prototypical” and in the same time “idiosyncratic” cases of moral correctness and
incorrectness in the way that “we” in our FOL describe for instance an unnecessary suffering
by use of this particular series of descriptions, while each of “us” can have and should have
his/her own personal story describing unnecessary suffering (R. Rorty in his “Contingency,
Irony and Solidarity” (1989) seems to be quite right on this point, for commentary on Rorty
see Fraser 1996:303-22; Guignon and Hiley 1996:339-65; Bouveresse 2004:129-46, Conant
2004:268-242, and replies Rorty 2004:146-56, 342-51).
A description of a case consists of experiential propositions, but a description of a
practice consists of grammatical remarks and eo ipso of implicit morality of this practice i.e.
its connections to other practices in a whole FOL (and its place in it). The net of all standard
practices manifests moral correctness which is implicit in each and every particular routine in
the way that one belonging to a FOL “sees” various patterns of the net and various
connections between particular practices and these connections are
 sometimes more descriptive (ER),
 sometimes a little bit more normative (GR),
 but mostly somewhere in between (AR).
For instance, “One can brush teeth in this or that way” is obviously more descriptive
(ER), while “One should not brush teeth properly if it means that one will omit an action
which is far more important.” is obviously more normative (GR). Statistical or scientific
descriptions of a practice are insufficient in order to describe the essence of a practice; in fact,
they can be quite frequently misleading, especially in cases of teaching a practice, changing a
practice, and especially in describing the very concept of a practice since they frequently omit
its symbolic function in a culture (semiotic process).
 On the other hand, setting a system of grammatical remarks (with their relations,
similarities, analogies, or in short – morphology) which are used as final justification of
any practice or particular case of a FOL they belong to seems to be crucial not just for
understanding the particular action, or a practice, but a whole FOL as the background of
understanding and eo ipso of justification.
There is no procedure of a justification of an action outside of a culture, and in a way
there is no understanding as well, since understanding a culture, and its majority standards is
primarily not a kind of reasoning about it or insight concerning a system of values; it is not
about thinking but about acting in agreement with a FOL and by that manifesting the very
system, and values. Values implicit in and manifested by standard practices of a FOL are
consequently relative at least in five different ways (as shown in Table 6).
 24

Table 6: Relativity of FOLs as cultures

Final justifications are simply grammatical remarks (GR), i.e. descriptions used as criteria for
use of words simply cloaked as justifications. They are not justifications at all.
Finally, the question is – is it then the grammar of good a kind of manual or like a
textbook of cases? If it is only a grammar of use of our words, then it is a manual, since it says
which ways of use are proper and which are not. For instance, a somewhat shorten description
“To apply this remedy in a case of this illness means to save the life of this patient, and this is
standard procedure in such cases, and by being standard it is also good” in fact implies
grammatical sentence “To save lives is good”. What it really says as a grammatical sentence
is only
 That expressions “saving lives” and “being good” should be affirmatively connected.
However, between such descriptions and grammatical remarks there are various axes-
propositions which are implicit as well, such as,
 “If one catches a cold we do not give her/him ice-cold drinks.”
Therefore, mentioning the correct use of some word (“good” for instance) is not just
mentioning of the rule of its use, but a description of a case falling under the prototypical
action as well, which is prototypical only because it manifests certain value in certain way
(the value of being a good practice). It shows nothing more then the way in which we live our
lives, and if one could “see” how we live our lives (its many “aspects” and their mutual
“connections”), then one could see what we believe in, which is our world–view
(Weltanschauung, WP). Here, such descriptions of prototypical actions can be technically
introduced similarly as for instance J. L. Austin introduced performatives in his paper
“Performative utterances”.
 This is not an issue of something that can be derived or explicated from our practice,
rather it is an issue of something that a practice manifests if one observes it in the right
way, if one understands it, sees it as morally correct or incorrect practice within a FOL.
That is why a grammar of good is and it is not like a manual or a textbook of cases.
 On the other hand, it is like a manual because it is the manual of the use of our words, but
it is not like a manual because there are no exercises how to teach somebody to perform
“good” actions. (If one proceeds by performing a standard action which is standard within
the boundaries of a FOL (boundaries which are not sharp are boundaries as well), then
other members of a FOL say “Good!” and it means “It is performed properly”.)
 25

Rules are on one hand completely explicated by prototypical cases / grammatical

remarks in the grammar of good, but on the other hand, they are completely implicit in
practices described by empirical remarks and also completely manifested in every case of
good practice, which is good only because it accords with the FOL it belongs to.
Nevertheless, is it possible to utter a grammatical remark (GR) regarding moral
correctness and eo ipso to avoid an inclusion of general facts, even if they are just general
“cultural” (ethnological) facts, or facts of our FOL on one hand, and to avoid an inclusion of
“autonomous moral sphere” (like in TLP) on the other hand? For instance, is it possible to
state the justification for any moral rule if grammatical remarks are just sort of descriptions?
Is the remark:
(1) “One should do one's best to act in morally correct way and to avoid acting in
morally incorrect way.”
a grammatical remark (GR)? If it is, does it then describe anything else besides the correct use
of the expression “morally correct” since it says that a moral characteristic of an action is
positive, proper, or desirable? If it does not describe anything else besides the correct use of
the mentioned expression, can this proposition serve as the criterion of judging in a particular
case of use of words and utterances of moral LG?
On the other hand, if it does describe something else, then what it is? Is it just a
cultural (or maybe even trans–cultural) remark, something like the following?
(2) “When we act, besides other goals of our actions (like use, elegance, beauty,
efficiency, efficacy, feasibility, probability, and similar) we also count moral
correctness as the goal of any action and its consequences.”
Now, does (2) stands in need of any kind of justification, since one could say
(2.1) “Our Ferengi rules of acquisition accept (2) by all means (the species from Star
Trek sci-fi series), but I am afraid that we will slightly disagree regarding the content
of the concept of “moral correctness” if we start to debate on that matter”, or “you see,
we don’t count morality”, or “what do you mean by moral correctness, we don’t have
such a concept, we just have a notion of something being agreeable with culture”?
One can reply, “O.K. that is it.”
Here we can see at least one feature of grammatical remarks at work, namely, that they
cannot be justified or unjustified, since there cannot be anything that can be counted as their
justification, since there cannot be a proposition which could be more certain than the
grammatical remark itself. In other words, anything that can be suggested as its justification is
already presupposed by such proposition, or to put in a little bit more straightforwardly, such
a proposition serves as the criterion at least for use of words like “proper action” or “doing X
lege artis” regarding this case. A grammatical remark always belongs to a particular FOL and
WP; however, it can serve as a justification in some other FOL at completely different place
in it (not recognising this difference is often a cause of mistaken empirical generalisations
regarding morals and customs of different cultures, and used as an argument for moral
relativism). On the other hand, is (2) not just a description of our general attitude toward our
own actions, goals of our actions, and what we count as a successful action (their necessary
and sufficient conditions)? We could be accused here of not making the crucial distinction
between “action”, “proper action”, and “morally correct action”. Surely, there are conditions
of “action”. However, some conditions should be added to this list in order to get the list of
conditions for “proper action”. Now, shoplifting and returning a wallet are actions which
could be done properly, but by being done properly they are not eo ipso morally correct or
incorrect of course.
What Wittgensteinian approach suggests is that what we count as “a reason” or “a
justification” for action in a particular case is not a reason or justification at all, rather
something like mentioning general facts about for instance property, protection of property,
 26

returning a property to its rightful owner, and similar regarding examples of shoplifting and
returning a wallet to its owner. However, is it not possible to summarise all that in some
opening rule such as the following proposition.
(3) “When we act, our action in order to be counted as acceptable must be: useful,
efficient, feasible, morally correct…”
This however seems to be just a description of our FOL regarding our way of living, maybe
even of conditio humana. As such can it be understood as a grammatical remark? However,
are we not mistaken when we are trying to answer this question, since it seems that it
presupposes identity between the criterion of action itself and the criterion of morally correct
action? At least partially the answer to this question lies in the concept of “performance lege
artis”. What we mean is that if one performs an action lege artis that means that the action is
performed in accordance with its rule or that it cannot be more similar to the prototypical case
then it de facto is under the given circumstances. Another question is – is it true that there is
no justification for mentioned propositions (1–3)? Could something like:
(4) “We would be worse off without procedural morality then we de facto are with it,
since we live in groups, depend on collective actions (…on each other),
cooperation…” (We indeed owe some things to each other no matter if we are not sure
which these things are)
be counted as the justification? One could ask – “Worse off, but in what sense? Would we
extinct? Is it in the end the question of survival, or on the other hand, of certain quality of life
that we want to achieve and maintain?” However, is not the answer to any of these questions
experiential or empirical remark and as such quite inappropriate as the candidate for being a
grammatical one? The following set of remarks in some contexts can be regarded as
grammatical (belonging to our worldview in last century or a little bit more).
(5) All moral agents are mutually morally equal per definitionem.
(6) Equality among moral agents is de facto best preserved by reciprocity.
(7) Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
What we have here is the problem of sharp distinction between experiential and grammatical
propositions, and maybe the problem of values as well (regarding unsolved issue of
distinction and reduction between α–good and β–good, which we bypassed by claiming
manifestation of β–good via α–good). Vis-à-vis the first difference Wittgenstein himself often
says that certain sentence can “function as” a grammatical or as an experiential remark,
therefore it is the matter of function (furthermore, to “function as” is in some extent similar to
“seeing as” (see Baker 2004), and they can merge one into other and change functions,
aspects, OC 95–98).
(g) Procedural morality is of essence here since it is what Wittgenstein calls “axes” (of
rotation, OC 152). Procedural morality is implicit in standard practices creating a
system belonging to a FOL. Procedural morality is manifested via standard practices,
and if a problem occurs, then a particular standard practice could be described in terms
of empirical remarks (creating a description of morally correct action, i.e. α–good),
and implicit grammatical remarks could be explicated and formed as rules if needed
(creating a rule-like form of moral correctness, β–good).
There are no strict boundaries between particular practices (empirical remarks),
implicit correct procedures (axes-remarks), and rules (grammatical remarks), and
therefore, there is no strict boundaries between standard practices, procedural morality,
and explicated moral values within a FOL and its WP. However, existent, or invented
boundaries no matter how opaque still are more then good enough for our daily
practical purposes.
Procedural morality, as axes and as implicit correct procedures, is in the same time implicit in
and manifested by our WP, and in all of our practices. What’s the point of all this? The point
 27

is that: the morality or value in general can be and in fact is implicit in grammatical remarks,
since if certain grammatical remark is about our practice, then moral correctness of that
practice is implicit in practice itself (in certain particular practice, a case), and in the
grammatical remark describing it as well.
 Finally, any grammatical remark is in fact verbalised overviewed narrative of a
manifestation of a rule exemplified and in the same time constituted by a practice, i.e. a
practice (as a standard procedure) which manifests its rule.
 It can be said that the rule of a practice is manifested (or expressed) solely by practicing a
certain action lege artis (i.e. the closest to the rule it can be regarding the circumstances).
 The rule of a practice is manifested also in terms of overview which consists of
grammatical remarks and can be verbally manifested for various purposes (teaching a
practice, acquiring a practice, change of practice, inventing a new one, etc. as shown in
Table 7).
 In other words, the point of all this is, while “whistling the theme” (RPP II 575), to blow
up the bridge over the invented “is–ought river” by the morphological method
(perspicuous presentation, grammar, and FOL) and to show that in most cases the so-
called river is nothing more then a small stream which perhaps completely dries out
during a hot summer.

Table 7: The minimal and procedural morality and ethics of standard practices

In order to present this idea a basic insight should be understood, namely, that a FOL
is a form of culture. Now, if this is correct interpretation of notion of a FOL, then all other
interesting issues, issues like – how a standard procedure is formed, how are formed standard
exceptions to standard procedures, and finally, how this influences our solutions to non-
standard exceptions – are to be understood as issues of cultural anthropology or philosophy of
culture.
 28

Philosophy of culture should not be envisaged as First philosophy, rather as the

morphology of culture with the clear goal of perspicuous presentation or clear summarising
description which explicates, in this particular case, a grammar of good of a particular FOL.

4. A grammar of good, bad and permissible – what is it good for?

The issue of a grammar of good can be developed in a direction of the following question – is
there really sharp difference between descriptive and normative meaning of “good”, or, what
is the relevance of morality in culture and society? Regarding this question it could be said
that the grammar of good is much closer to the grammar of useful, useless, decent, and
proper, then to the grammar of virtue, vice, duty, imperative, obligation, wrong, etc.
The idea is that, if a morality has its function and manifestation only within particular
life, society and culture, then to act morally correct primarily means to act decently, to
perform proper actions, to perform in lege artis manner which in the end means to act within
the system, on the rough ground, and on the background of the whole of culture, because:
(h) “Culture is like a great organization which assigns to each of its members his
place, at which he can work in the spirit of the whole, and his strength can with a
certain justice be measured with his success as understood within the whole.” (CV 8-
9)
Now, since an ethical manifests our reasons for actions via manifesting our patterns in
social and cultural sphere, it can be said that ethical justification of certain practice has its
legitimacy and legality. Its legitimacy shows that the very action which is justified with
certain reason (in form as “we do α rather then β because …”) in fact belongs to certain social
and/or cultural pattern of our FOL. Consequently, if an action has a legitimacy, it means that it
belongs to certain FOL (its cultural and social pattern) which means that it is more or less
close to a certain “prototypical case” (Stroll 1996:316-317), and this means that its
justification shows that a description of such an action as morally correct is “grammatical–like
remark” or an “axis–remark”. Here, following A. Stroll we could distinguish between
practices and cases in the way that
 “practices are types of moral conduct” (being truthful, lying, etc.)
 and cases are “exemplifications of practices, individual occurrences” (Stroll 1996:317).
On the other hand, any such description of our action as “a grammatical–like remark”
is in fact a description of certain pattern (“prototypical case”) and as such, while being quite
detailed description, nevertheless manifests (or maybe exemplifies) the general rule of action
or at least something like “rule–like form” which is a rule of a grammar, and this feature can
be called the legality of an action (regarding differences between grammatical remark/rule as
a justification of practice and as a justification of particular action falling under it, see Rawls
1999:20–47). It is not so important that we announce legality or legitimacy of standard actions
or patterns of actions of certain culture, society, or FOL because we are in pursue of some
kind of clarity regarding our practical and everyday life, rather because we need to separate
such actions or practices from omissions or negligence regarding their performance within
particular FOL.
Propositions from (1) to (7) are in fact an attempt to suggest something like
“grammar–like remarks” regarding “our human FOL”. If one understands these rules, then
one understands which are the omissions regarding these rules, so one could correct one's
practice in order to be in accordance to the rule, of course for practical purposes (for example
in situation when culture needs to change its pattern due to new circumstances, discoveries, or
when pattern is acquired by children in course of their education, or similar). Interesting
question is the one concerning occurrences of surfacing grammatical propositions in everyday
life.
 29

In “Culture and Value” (CV 92-3) Wittgenstein describes certain doctrine of

consequences of our actions in terms of one being transmitted to places of eternal torment or
eternal joy after death depending on one's actions. He asks – what might be the effect of such
a doctrine? He also emphasises that this doctrine looks like a natural law rather then like a
theory of punishment and reward. In the next passage he writes the following:
(i) “Teaching this could not be an ethical training. And if you want to train anyone
ethically & yet teach him like this, you would have to teach the doctrine after the
training and represent it as a sort of incomprehensible mystery.” (CV 93)
The heart of this idea seems to be obvious – even if you have some ethical doctrine still the
rule is always the same if you want to coach anyone ethically – first the training, then the
doctrine, and the doctrine (at least the huge part of it) in principle just emerges from
describing the practice (by trainer and by trainee as well). But what does this mean? It seems
that it means that ethical training is in a way like any other training: initially a kind of drill in
certain practice, and after that occasionally an explication of rule implicit in practice (and
explicit moral value pops up only in explication (description) of a practice). The drill seems to
be quite similar to learning a LG, namely by series of examples most of which are quite close
to the prototypical case and some of them quite far away from it i.e. by repeating the practice
until the trainee acquires sufficient expertise regarding the proper performance of it.
For instance, if one is teaching a child to wash it's hands before meal the very action of
washing hands properly or while the hands are sufficiently clean for given purpose is morally
correct practice since it is a part of family of practices which we could be called hygiene
which itself is also morally correct family of practices since one should do everything
reasonable in order to avoid unnecessary harm to his/her health, and this means to go along
with our grammar and FOL. However, what is sufficient for the drill to be successful is just
that a child in majority or in all situations automatically washes its hands before meal.
And there are standard exceptions to the rule as well. For example, if a child is very
hungry, if the meal will get cold, if hands are clean enough before washing, and similar, then
there is no need to wash hands before meal. In occasions such as these a child (of certain age
regarding its “moral development”) could ask a series of questions regarding the practice and
the parent should give some of reasons mentioned before as reasons for washing hands or
some reasons for not washing them. After grasping similarities and dissimilarities among few
cases of such exceptions a child is capable of applying the rule and not applying it
occasionally, when it could recognise a case as the case of (standard) exception to the rule.
However, these reasons are reasons only for practical purposes, i.e. for understanding the
correctness of given practice and of exceptions to rule; they are not the final reasons. Final
reasons are “incomprehensible mystery” in the end (such as meaning of health, of avoiding
illness, of living, of life, etc.).
Somewhat different question is – how can the normative element emerge from simple
description of certain “prototypical case” or from a series of cases which are closest to the
prototypical one? Giving reasons for actions is precisely this moment when ethics and
morality emerge. Washing hands properly before meal means that this action is morally
correct because it is one among many actions which serve for maintaining one's health, and
that “we (should) maintain our health” (and should not inflict unnecessary harm to our body)
is axis-proposition (of course it can serve as a implicit rule but also as a revisable value
judgement, noted by D. Richter).
(j) On the other hand, final reasons for moral correctness or wrongness of the most of
our daily practices are not explicitly present in one's mind before, during or after the
performance of a standard action itself, rather the whole FOL as the background gives
meaning to the whole grammar (which is the part of our language–game) and to
particular reasons for the particular actions as well – since they constitute a system, a
 30

system of actions and a system of reasons as well, and stricto sensu the whole system
is not based on anything, rather the whole system of grammatical propositions is the
background of understanding the system as ours, and as such also as a series of criteria
for deciding in vast majority of particular cases. This very system of reasons for
particular practices and actions can be formulated in form of grammatical remarks and
the complete series of such propositions is in fact our grammar of good.
Now, many of previously discussed ideas have consequences on understanding of ethics as
some kind of “thinking about morality of our actions”.
One of the first consequences is that ethics as it was just described rarely “exists”.
That is so because in the vast majority of situations regarding our daily activities we are
engaged in routine practices which are quite acceptable regarding their standard procedure,
feasibility, morality, even elegance. To think about morality of such practices without special
reason is complete waste of time.
Ethical judgements really “serve as guides for our actions”, but they de facto do so
quite rarely, since our practices in the most of cases are self–guided. Now, to be honest, there
is a minority here. This minority of situations is very often connected to “something” that
represents “special reason” for thinking about morality of our standard practices, actions, and
particular deeds. Such “special (or sufficient) reasons” can be various: various changes of
different variables such as circumstances of different kind, low feasibility of practice, high
cost, change in public opinion, change of legislature regarding the practice, simple willingness
to advance a practice, etc. Under such circumstances there are different possibilities of action
as the following:
 leaving the standard practice as it is and wait for the change of circumstances,
 leaving the standard practice as it is and try to change the very circumstances,
 suspension of standard practice for some period of time,
 adjustment of the standard practice to the new circumstances,
 abandonment of the standard practice completely and search for a new one, etc.
Models of mentioned procedures (especially the last one) are quite known in public spheres
(like politics (especially international), legislature, business, and in private sphere (family life,
personal goals, hobbies, etc.).
Now, there is the different minority in addition, namely such cases where there is no
standard procedure for exceptions, where circumstances are unique, or completely new
(regarding new technologies, new opportunities at work, etc.). Regarding such cases we could
say that they can be new regarding: information and know–how which particular person does
not possess at the moment, information and know–how which a group, a culture, a society, a
civilisations, or any person whatsoever does not possess. On occasions such as these there are
different possibilities of action:
 if to act is not necessary, (required by situation), then it is reasonable to think about
different possibilities of action in future,
 but if to act is necessary (required by situation), then sheer luck, and maybe some other
factors can serve as good guides in action (a hunch, emotional approval, willingness to act
in certain direction, etc.), since under such circumstances any guide is a good one.
Now, where is the moral value of such standard procedures? It is hard to say. Maybe
they prove themselves to be comparatively more valuable then other practices during a long
period of practicing (which is the essential element of any routine). In addition, maybe they
prove themselves to be valuable in all spheres of value such as economic value, legal value,
political value, moral value, aesthetic value, etc. As such they are considered to be a habit or a
custom of certain culture, society, and FOL.
It can be noted here that these “different” values are not so different at all since
regarding all of them one could ask about their relation to other values. For instance,
 31

regarding what was previously said concerning morality being closely mixed with culture and
society, a moral value of certain practice could be connected to other values of this practice in
different ways. Perhaps even a general claim on this matter can be made, for example:
 All standard practices are such that they are more valuable then their alternatives
regarding all value–spheres like legality, legitimacy, profitability, etc. (which is the
essential element of any routine as well).
We could even claim that all of standard procedures of a certain FOL have such properties,
namely:
 they were tested for a long time (probability of success is high),
 they are accepted by majority of members of a culture (as legitimacy),
 they are considered to be morally correct things to do (legality, and this claim does not
exclude other procedures which could also be morally correct, accepted by minority, but,
for example do not have high probability of success),
 they are incorporated in “code of conduct” and “rules of procedure” of various
professions,
 they produce short–term costs, but long–term benefits (not just financial, but also social,
cultural, etc.).
Of course this does not answer to the question – how a practice developed into a routine?
It is often suggested that standard procedures exemplify “conventional ethical
standards” and this is correct to a degree. Now, it is often ignored that standard procedures
exemplify and manifest a value sphere of FOL which is being manifested by particular actions
and which is also the very background of any justification of any ethical standard whatsoever.
Justification of non-conventionally accepted ethical standards still has the same FOL as its
background as the one which is conventionally accepted. More to that, such “conventional
ethical standards” are in fact “reasons” for action in the vast majority of particular situations,
and such reasons are grammar of FOL.
Surely, this does not exclude existence of other, quite different FOLs, but it implicitly
claims that other FOLs could be understood only from the point of view of one's own FOL.
Here, there is no “the view from nowhere” or “impartial or ideal observed” (meaning to
observe, understand, tolerate, accept and perhaps to participate as well in a FOL while being a
full-blooded member of a different one). This is simply one of many consequences of
Wittgenstein’s concept of morality (and rationality perhaps).
The point of this feature of morality and ethics is that one cannot be the member of a
FOL if:
 one's form of life does not function as live origin, heritage and background of particular
actions, habits, customs, institutions, routines…,
 there is no challenge of probable omission or negligence on daily basis activities,
 there is no certain motivation to act without such omissions and in accordance with one's
FOL.
These are not criteria of moral correctness of certain practice, rather the criteria of
understanding certain practice as the legal (law–like), and legitimate part of a FOL.
However, apart from these standard procedures and these two types of non-standard
situations we simply fail to see where and when something like “rational, sober and analytic
thinking about our reasons for our actions” contrary to “conventional ethical standards” really
takes place. If previously said is correct, then there is just one type of situations where and
when one could engage in ethics regarding our practices and actions, namely, where and when
there is no standard procedure or standard exception and when we have enough time to think
of reasons for particular actions. Therefore, to put is straightforwardly:
(k) The “good” is what the grammar says and to act accordingly (always
recommended, however we should be clear is a grammar really in question or rather
 32

some experiential judgement), the “bad” is to go against the grammar (never

recommended), and the “permissible” is everything else (recommended under some
further conditions).
In any such case (where in fact there is no grammar) there is a general rule for deciding
(which is a combination of utilitarianism, pragmatist ethics, and additional criterion of
avoiding of unreparable damage or harm) which says the following.
(8) An action is permissible (tolerable, allowable, acceptable) iff:
(8.1) it does not produce any kind of unreparable damage or harm (especially by
severe negligence or malpractice compared to standard or lege artis procedure) to
anyone or anything (stakeholders) relevantly influenced by the consequences of the
action, (unreparable harm principle),
(8.2) it produces fewer costs then benefits to stakeholders relevantly influenced by the
consequences of the action, (utilitarian principle)
(8.3) and by performing such an action one (or a group) is producing an advance
toward the one’s final goal regarding one's FOL and a person one wants to be(come),
and the world one wants to co-create by performing such an action (pragmatic ethics
principle).
If one asks how this criterion is introduced into a LG, as a part of training for example,
then we could say that it is obvious consequence of a simple test in form of a question or a
rule.
(9.1) Question form: would you (as a major bearer of consequences of course of an
action) recommend (always, never, or under certain the conditions) an action to
somebody else, or – would you accept a recommendation (always, never, or under
certain the conditions) as being recommended to you by somebody else (as a major
bearer of consequences of course of an action)?
(9.2) Rule form: accept a recommendation from anybody else if you would
recommend the same course of action to anybody else in the same or similar situation.
Don’t recommend an action to anybody else if you wouldn’t accept it yourself in the
same or similar situation where this recommendation is recommended to you by
somebody else! Recommend to others only an action which you would accept yourself
in the same or similar situation. (This is perhaps a part of the answer to the quite
interesting conceptual question, namely – how a routine/a standard procedure starts,
how it becomes a routine? Of course, if a FOL is presupposed, then a practice should
accord with the FOL and it becomes a routine (there are many anthropological factors
present here). It all depends on the elasticity of a FOL (and on the elasticity of
elasticity, emphasised by J. Lukin). However, if a FOL is not presupposed, then the
very issue is too global, namely how a FOL as a culture started, and as such it is
beyond the scope of this investigation.)
Now, every FOL, among many things, determines which actions are “standard” and eo
ipso “good”, which are opposite to such and by that being “bad”. Nevertheless, the point is
that every FOL does not say much about “good” and “bad”, there are no many “prototypical
cases”, only few of them. The great part of it would be a desert landscape if it would not be
filled with particular styles of life, personal histories, experiences, etc. all of them belonging
to the same FOL. All of these styles (determined by objective features like the nature of a job
or by subjective features like interests), regarding their moral correctness, do not go along
with grammar, nor they are opposed to it. They occupy the space of permissible, permissible
regarding the grammar, nevertheless still permissible. No matter how this criterion of
permissible can appear like an ethical standard, because in fact it is not – it is only a
grammatical remark about how we connect expressions like “permissible action” and “harm”,
 33

etc. No matter if it looks like “a guide for action”, because in fact it is not – it is only a
description of how we already act.
To repeat, our actions, actions belonging to our FOL manifest exactly this grammatical
remark, not the one opposite to it. Consequently, which particular actions one should choose
and for which reasons in range and scope of permissible, completely depends on one’s
grammar of interests, or in short on one’s style of life and precisely this point goes straight
against ethics as “thinking about morality of practice” and in favour of it as – “the primacy of
practice and the work of intellect post mortem”. This point was nicely expressed by H.
Putnam in his book “Pragmatism, An Open Question”:
“The question, the one we are faced with over and over again, is whether a form of life
has practical or spiritual value. But the value of a form of life is not; in general,
something one can express in the language games of those who are unable to share its
evaluative interest.” (Putnam 1995:51)
Once again, the grammar of “good” is crucial for the grammar of good (LGs and grammatical
remarks regarding “good” are crucial for good practices as parts of a FOL), since there is no a
kind of action like “morally correct action”, there is only a “good” which belongs to our LGs,
and the good as our evaluation of certain standard actions or practices, but all of our
evaluations of our actions and practices are on the one hand just evaluations, i.e. LGs, but on
the other hand they are such and such evaluations (not the opposite) only in the context of our
FOL. That is why the FOL issue is the most awkward issue and the most decisive one in the
same time.
(l) In short, if a FOL is a form of culture, then a form of culture is a form of morality
at least in some of its aspects. The question is – which are these? Namely, these are
moral and ethical LGs, practices as routines and as standard exceptions as well. There
are three kinds of remarks one can make, namely, a descriptive remark regarding
actions and LGs explicating these actions, a grammatical or hinge remark regarding
rule-like forms of actions (their standard nature) or rule-forms of their moral
explications, and finally axes remarks regarding implicit “presuppositions” which are
manifested in all standard practices. These last can be explicated in various
“exceptional” situations (these types as shown in Table 8). It is the most crucial for
understanding its LGs, and among these the grammatical propositions which are mere
descriptions as procedures serving as justifications for actions and practices and as
moral evaluations. Moral correctness of any particular action or a practice (as a
standard procedure) is: manifested in prototypical actions (practices) belonging to a
FOL, understandable only on the background (or “the rough ground”) of whole FOL,
explicated in LGs as “descriptions” which are used for various practical purposes, and
“used” in LGs as “justifications” for various practices (in form of grammatical
remarks). This feature of moral correctness was pretty precisely captured by Burbules
and Smeyers: “What does it mean to conceive of ethics as a practice? First of all, it
means that it is a constellation of learned activities, dispositions, and skills. We learn
to engage in complex practices through observing an emulating others who are more
skilled then we; through our own practice, trial, and error; … From the framework we
are sketching here, ethics is no different; we learn to be good, and to do good; we are
initiated into a form of life… In this sense ethics always exists against the background
of a form of life.” (see Burbules and Smeyers 2009).
 34

Table 8: Three kinds of remarks regarding moral and ethical aspects of a FOL as a form of
culture

Let us return to the vital idea which can be considered as a kind of objection to a
certain intuitive idea which says that if one cares to know which moral principles of a person
are, then one should observe what person did. (Hare 1952: I, 1, 1.1) Surely there is something
to it, however, if one simply observes persons actions, and explicates principles from actions,
then it seems that the procedure itself begs the question, since one is presupposing that a
person acts in accordance with some principles. Therefore, one's observation is already
aspectualised (or theory laden), since one presupposes that there must be some moral
principles conceptually separable from practices and cases. This seems to be the wrong way to
explicate this obviously basically correct and important idea.
Nonetheless, there is a simpler way to explicate such procedure. One's actions have no
principles they fall under, they are sufficiently similar in order to manifest basic pattern of a
FOL. Actions have their consequences, and consequences are the goal of actions. What one
could observe and in fact in most cases is observed by one is just that the most of particular
actions of a person belong to certain groups of similar standard routines (or their exceptions
which are in vast majority of cases standard exceptions). Particular actions belonging to a
certain group and groups belonging to a whole of practices of a person (to a FOL) are
mutually more or less similar; but they do not have any distinct feature which would be
present in all of them (like games in PI 66).
A FOL here serves as a “background” of understanding of any particular group or
routines and of any particular action (recognised as) falling under it (as shown in Table 9).
 35

Table 9: Recognition of a situation falling under certain pattern

Other way around, particular action (especially any standard action, or a routine) being
done properly (lege artis) serves as a prototypical case, and through it, a FOL as a “rough
ground”, is essentially manifested. Such action, a whole routine indeed mirrored in a
particular action, and the whole FOL, could be explicated in a LG for various practical
purposes.
This kind of pragmatism splits in two, namely,
 Into the pragmatism of consequences in terms of an action being carried out in a way that
it produces standard and expected consequences (legitimacy), and
 Into the procedural pragmatism in terms of an action being carried out properly or not
(legality).
 To repeat, the first one could be called legitimacy of an action belonging to a routine
simply because it belongs to a routine and as such it produces standard and expected
consequences,
 while the second one could be called legality of an action falling under a routine because
it is performed properly, namely similar enough to something imagined as a prototype.
What we have here are standard actions or routines which are “understood” on the
background of a whole FOL because any such action “manifests” a FOL it belongs to. In a
way this explication is minimal, procedural, and pragmatically speaking consequential. In the
same way, a morality of standard actions or routines by being implicit in any particular
standard action belonging to a routine which belongs to a FOL is minimal, procedural, and
pragmatically speaking consequential as well.
Now, a burglar who steals for a living, and any other person who is doing something
else for a living none of which includes stealing differ substantively. Say that Smith and
Brown, being in the same or similar situation, see that a person walking on the street
accidentally drops its wallet. Smith takes the wallet and returns it to its owner, while Brown
takes the wallet and keeps it to himself. Now, Smith performed a standard action, while
Brown did not. Do these actions belong to the same “group” (say to group of actions
concerning finding other peoples things)? Well, yes and no. Smith and Brown surely belong
to the same “society” and a policeman who also saw the wallet and saw Brown stealing the
wallet belongs to it as well. And it is social issue that the most actions contrary to standard
actions could be performed because most of members of a society do not perform non-
standard actions (say lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc. for further reasons like for instance
 36

fear of punishment), in fact do not have an opportunity to perform them (or the know-how, or
particular motivation).
However, they do not belong to the same “culture”, they do not share it (and if a FOL
is a form of culture, they do not share a FOL either). As one is formally speaking “externally”
motivated (compelled) to obey the laws, so is one “externally” motivated (chooses) to act in
accordance with a FOL by the very process of acquiring a FOL. In fact one is, materially
speaking, “internally” motivated to obey the laws, and similarly to act in accordance with a
FOL (to “follow a rule”) as well, because this is partially a matter of “internalising” of
“external” motivating factors by “force” (of law, or simple by fear of legal sanctions) in the
case of laws, or by constant choosing and proving to act in accordance with FOL in which one
is educated and nurtured, in the case of a culture.
Is this solution of the fact–value issue? Surely not, but the point was to dismiss the
distinction by introducing somewhat new context of moral issues. Wittgenstein himself
accentuated the distinction by introducing it in terms of “relative” and “absolute” sense of
“good” at the beginning of his “Lecture on Ethics” and dismisses it in the same lecture, and
later on by adoption of the rudimentary cultural account of morality and ethics.

5. Concluding unscientific (morphological) postscript

To conclude, we have tried to show that the fact–value issue is not an issue at all, that facts
and values are mostly overlapped in majority cases ant this fact direct our ethical
considerations.
 Namely, facts are mostly so to say value–impregnated, and values are fact–instantiated,
both in minimal way. It is not an issue of deriving “ought” from “is”, but the question of
“manifestation” of “ought” in “is” in some cases under some further conditions. However,
observing FOLs, describing them, and above all acting in accordance with them
(discovering, stating, and above all using facts) manifest their moral correctness or
incorrectness.
 In other words, a β–good manifest itself by means of the α–good, or – substantive moral
values are manifested via functional values. Ethics is nothing more then an explication of
morality implicit and manifested in particular FOL (its customs, institutions, and habits),
culture, and perhaps civilisation as well.
 If this is the case, then ethics is all about explication (description, not explanation) of
moral values which are manifested via non–moral values for various practical purposes.
Standard situations of ethics as explication of practice or of FOLs are for instance all
situations of teaching or of acquiring a particular FOL or one of its standard routines, or a
situation of change of a FOL or one of its routines due to new circumstances, and similar.
 Standard practices or routines of a FOL serve as final pseudo-reasons for actions and their
implicit moral correctness since precisely there the grammar of good is essentially
manifested. This can be counted as a kind of ethical instrumentalism or pragmatism,
perhaps as a kind of minimalism after all. In this way morality is described as implicit in
daily routines, and manifested by them in the same time.
 An agent, an experienced practitioner indeed, does not stand for an institution of a kind,
morality is not institutionalised by being implicit and manifested by actions belonging to a
FOL, however, it exists mostly in the shadow of a practice, and quite rarely it crawls out
of it, or it is dragged out.
However, if “one human FOL” (standpoint defended by N. Garver and some other
Wittgenstein scholars) really exists, then some general “rules” for action should be applied
(such as the irreparable damage/harm rule) and via use of such “rules” some positions such as
 37

radical egoism and radical altruism could be dismissed as rules and as actions that are
contrary to or violations of “our human FOL” on the basis of some further reasons.
On the other hand, one human FOL should not be imagined as something that must be
identical in all or is common to all cultures, or as something trans-cultural, rather as a
complicated net of similarities and dissimilarities, analogies and disanalogies between many
cultures. Much further consequence of such ethics of one human FOL so to say is that
different ethics’ no matter how different they are in respect of differences between their
FOLs, they are always comparable and commensurable. However, if there is no such ethics of
one human FOL, then particular FOLs and their ethical manifestations could be incomparable
and incommensurable and there is no ground or a series of similarities on the basis of which
one could decide that for example lying, stealing, or killing is morally incorrect or correct in
any particular situation. One could only try to investigate a different culture from within in
order to see its grammar of good, reasons, customs, and institutions. The last statement has
some unfortunate implications and consequences, which should be mentioned.
 For the first thing the last claim implies that morality is completely exhausted in culture;
mostly in its standard practices, and sometimes in its extraordinary practices, as it were, in
social experiments in new circumstances.
 Cultural traditions are not strict or legitimate reasons for actions to be regarded as morally
correct or incorrect, but they serves as quasi–reasons, in fact as “background” (context) of
understanding of particular actions and practices in the whole of a FOL, and as “a rough
ground” of doing where these particular actions are instantiated.
This is similar to a position known as European pragmatism in ethics (in last few
decades represented by works of J. Habermas) which differs from American pragmatism
mostly in placing relevant weight on the very actions, not so much on their consequences
valued in the light of future world that is created by present actions and practices (like in
Dewey for example). If it is possible to interpret Wittgenstein’s ethics in his later works
(namely after LE), then he seems to be close to these traditions (no matter if these traditions in
fact implemented many of his mentioned ideas in their ethical considerations).
Pragmatic/pragmatist ethics – European style finally comes down to cultural routines,
customs, traditional institutions common decency and politeness as its background of
understanding and the rough ground of applying, to standard actions and their implicit and
manifested procedural morality (in a way there is no European identity regarding ethics,
however many different FOLs overlap creating a distinctive net of similarities and
dissimilarities, analogies and disanalogies, and finally a recognisable pattern). This idea of
pragmatist and minimal ethics as procedural morality explicated in form of axis propositions
for particular practical purposes has grounds in Wittgenstein’s works, however, these grounds
differ.
(m) “You cannot lead people to the good; you can only lead them to some place or
other; the good lies outside the space of facts.” (CV MS 107 196: 15.11.1929)).
„At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe that is quite
essential. Here nothing can be established. I can only appear as a person speaking for
myself.’“ („Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle“, p. 117)
„He began talking about teaching ethics. Impossible! He regards teaching ethics as
telling someone what he should do. But how can anyone counsel another? Imagine
someone advising another who was in love and about to marry, and pointing out to
him all the things he cannot do if he marries. The idiot! How can one know how these
things are in another man’s life?” (Bouwsma 1986:45)
All other ethical tasks which are not adequate to a particular “standard nausea” when one
considers hard-core moral issues (which is if not the basic motive for pragmatic ethics, then
 38

surely an element of authenticity of such ethical considerations) are nothing more then a kind
of childish escapism or irrational exaggerations in opposite directions, namely,
 in direction of “moral escapism” regarding daily moral issues (so common in academic,
business, legal, and political spheres for various particular reasons and convenience) on
one hand,
 and in the opposite direction of so to say “a moral exaggerations” regarding daily moral
issues (so common when one is moralising an issue which is obviously morally
sufficiently clear).
Among all other mentioned elements and extremes minimal pragmatist ethics first and
foremost tries to escape precisely these and by that it tries to preserve morality and ethics as a
standard implicit and manifested aspect of human actions and as an explicable aspect of
sphere of moral value so important in our private and public life. Finally, did we or didn’t we
answer to three questions from the introduction.
 Well, concerning the first question, if moral LGs are to be closely connectively analysed
within FOLs they belong to, and which implies and manifests patterns of human actions,
then morality and ethics are not an issue of mere formal, linguistic or logical dispute or a
dispute in general theory of human action.
 Concerning the second question, I hope that the idea that there is no strict boundary
between facts and values, moral descriptions and moral evaluations, moral and non-moral
aspects of human actions is now at least more comprehensible and reasonable.
 Concerning the last question, and especially in the light of avoiding mentioned extremes
in terms of “a moral escapism” and “moral exaggerations” morality and ethics seem to be
sufficiently explicated as proper parts of a culture, and consequently, are any moral or
ethical disputes are in fact disputes over culture.
If all of these are at least slightly correct, then, no matter to which school of ethical thought
we belong to, we should write our ethical textbooks all over again.
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About the author

Professor Kristijan Krkač, Ph.D. (b.1970) is a professor at the Zagreb School of Economics and
management (ZSEM) from 2003 onwards. Krkač received his BA, MA, and Ph.D. in Philosophy
(Epistemology) at the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Sciences (FPRS, previously Faculty of
Philosophy of The Society of Jesus in Zagreb) in 2003, (promoted in 2004). In period 1996-2017 at FPRS
he taught Epistemology, Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Analytic and
Continental Philosophy courses on undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. From 2003 and later on
from 2007 he teaches Introduction to Philosophy and Critical Thinking, and Business Ethics and CSR
courses on the undergraduate level, and Business Ethics, CSR, and Sustainability on graduate MBA level.
Before joining the ZSEM he taught at the FPRS, in various primary schools, gymnasia, and Universities
(guest and invited lectures) in Croatia and in EU. He is also a guest lecturer at Science Po Lille (France)
from 2010 where he teaches Introduction to Ethics and CSR. At the ZSEM he served as Head of ZSEM
Business Ethics Center, Head of Humanities and Languages Department, member and the president of
Students’ disciplinary court, as a member of accreditation team, as an organizer of various international
conferences on business ethics, etc. In period 1996-2017 he authored and co-authored of 10 books in
Croatian and English in philosophy and business ethics, he edited four textbooks, two international
conference proceedings on business ethics, and a Special issue of Social Responsibility Journal. He is also
the author and co-author of more than 100 original scientific papers, review papers, professional papers,
book chapters, and encyclopedia entries in philosophy and business ethics, CSR, and sustainability (some of
which are published by De Gruyter, Emerald, Springer Verlag, and Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society,
for complete biography and bibliography see the following URL:
https://www.scribd.com/document/359812534/Kristijan-Krkac-CV-and-Bibliography-2017). He was rowing
(competitively 1984-1991) for RC Croatia, Zagreb, and currently he swimming recreationally (2011-1017).
His hobbies include photography (1980-2017) writing newspaper columns on popular topics (2012-2017)
for various Croatian news portals, and discussing and publishing papers and books in popular philosophy of
sports, film, and rock music.