Wittgenstein : L'éthique est-elle une science ? (La guillotine de Hume)

Hello everyone and welcome to this

new recording dedicated to

Vidgenstein's thought. Today I wanted to

talk to you about a short text by

Vidgenstein called "A Lecture on

Ethics." Small in size, but large in

content and scope. To

briefly situate the "A Lecture on

Ethics," it's a lecture given

by Vidgenstein in Cambridge to a lay audience with

no particular philosophical curiosity.

We discover in it a

pedagogical side of Vidgenstein, who uses

many examples, some of which are

funny and sometimes even

wacky. In short, in this text, the author of the

Tractatus adopts a

refreshingly teacherly stance and makes

his ethical thought as intelligible as possible.

This lecture can be situated precisely between the

writing of Vidgenstein's two major works,

the Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus and the

Philosophical Investigations. This distinction is

important because while the Tractatus addressed

the limits of language, the

Philosophical Investigations, which his mentor Russell

considered uninteresting,

focused more on the social and

practical character of language, showing that This recording

obviously cannot be limited

to a strictly descriptive function.

I've already dedicated a recording to

each of the two works; in fact, it

seems the one on the Tractatus

is one of the most popular on my

channel because I elaborate on the

main ideas of the Tractatus at length.

So, if you're interested, you can take a look.

I won't go over it again in this

recording, but I'll simply recall

some basics of his thought at the beginning

when I deem it necessary. My

goal here is to make Witgenstein as

accessible as possible because I know he

can sometimes be off-putting and frightening

to those who aren't yet very

philosophically trained, and I think

his lecture on ethics is a good

way to achieve this. Why am I emphasizing

the publication date of this

lecture? Precisely because

Witgenstein develops, one might

say, the practical consequences of the

limitations of language that he

previously outlined in his Tractatus.

I'll give a few quick reminders about his

thought for those who aren't very familiar with

Witgenstein. Please don't hold it against me

if I simplify things a bit.

Here, as I've already said, I'm discussing the

Tractatus in more detail

elsewhere. Widgenstein was a student of

Russell and belongs to the school of thought known as

analytic philosophy, a school that

seeks to decompose the structure of our

language in order to reveal the

errors we make

when, like some

metaphysical philosophers, we speak without saying anything.

In the Tractatus, Widgenstein

pushed this perspective to its

limits, showing that if the

only sensible use of language consists of

perfectly encompassing all the

facts that constitute our world,

then most of our propositions are nonsense. Indeed,

Widgenstein's logic is a logic that makes the

meaning of our propositions dependent on

our

experience based on

observation. If, in language,

I express something spiritual,

metaphysical,

or even something related to

aesthetic experience—"Wow, this

piece of music is so beautiful!"—I am expressing something

that, by definition, is

inexpressible because the words I use

correspond

to elements of reality that they serve

to

designate. But the world, composed of facts, shows

the totality of facts. According to

Witgenstein, about whom I can say something, nothing can

be placed on the same level

as what is experienced

internally, particularly when I

observe the limits of my language in

trying to express what Witgenstein

calls the mystical, the feeling of something

beyond language. I have something expressible

that coincides with the limits of my

world, since I can say nothing about the

world except what appears to me in it.

Many of our propositions are

philosophical nonsense, especially in

the religious domain, which I will

return to later. It is in this that

Witgenstein claimed to solve

philosophical problems, since he

thus provided a criterion for establishing

which propositions still have meaning and which do

not, and to undermine

metaphysical theses employing

abstract terms referring to a reality that

escapes the sum of facts that

constitute our world—a good or a

beautiful in itself, God, and so on. I'm making it

brief, but here, essentially, Witgenstein

concludes his Tractatus by saying that one

should remain silent about what

one He cannot speak of the silence he deigns to

break, since his lecture on

ethics concerns the domain of

morality, which

at first glance does not seem to fall within the realm of fact. Indeed, no

one has ever seen morality

incarnate; one would have to be

very presumptuous to think oneself to be

morality incarnate, to be a fact,

a moral phenomenon, except perhaps

the disciples of Jesus, and even then, according to

them, no one has ever seen

morality incarnate, which would be a matter of fact.

We have all undoubtedly

seen people who are examples

of kindness and virtue, or

conversely, of wickedness or vice. But

precisely by designating these people as such,

we have judged them.

All value in matters of morality

consists of establishing a judgment

based on certain criteria. But

are these criteria absolute and

indisputable? Can we establish a

science of good and evil in the same way

that we try to establish criteria in science or

epistemology to

distinguish truth from falsehood? It is on

this point that we will now examine, starting from

The limits of the

language Widgenstein developed and

the ethical consequences he

will address in this

lecture are discussed, but first, I'll take a

brief detour to David Yum, whom I've

mentioned a few times and whose moral

theory I recently explored. There's

a major text by Yum

in his Treatise of

Human Nature, Book 3, dedicated to morality,

which I haven't discussed until now,

but which resonates with

Widgenstein's

ethical thesis. Mind you, I'm not saying that

Humum and Widgenstein say the same

thing, even though

Humum's influence on the latter is evident. It would be

disingenuous to

tell me there's no connection between the

two ideas. Widgenstein, being in

the lineage of the

empiricist tradition, is simply being shown to have

a clear link between them on this very

point, and that Yum sheds some

light on

what Widgenstein will say. In

any case, we'll see how this takes on even greater significance.

So, going back to

Yum, this is the excerpt where

the famous Law of Yum appears,

sometimes also called Yum's Guillotine. We're going to talk

about Yum's Guillotine because,

wow, it's impressive, it's striking! Well, actually,

Yum's Law is pretty cool

too, you might say.

Anyway, Yum's Guillotine is

n't easy to grasp at all, to the point

that when you try to illustrate it, you run into a brick wall.

Misunderstandings

surface everywhere as soon as you

try to understand concretely

what it consists of, and obviously, I won't name names.

I'm going to read you the excerpt in question

and tell you what, in my opinion, is the

valid interpretation of this idea in

practice. So, I quote: "I can't help but

add to these arguments

an observation that may be

of some importance in all the

moral systems I've encountered so far:

I've always noticed that

the author proceeds for a while with the

ordinary way of reasoning and

establishes the existence of a God." or makes

observations concerning

human affairs when suddenly I am astonished to

find that instead of encountering the

usual copulas "and" and "is not," I

find no proposition that is not

connected with fingers or "should not."

This change is imperceptible but

nevertheless has great consequences because,

as "should" or "should not" expresses

some new relation or

affirmation, it is necessary that

this be observed and explained, and that at the

same time a reason be given

for those things that seem quite

inconceivable: that this relation could

be a deduction from others that are

entirely different. But since

authors do not frequently use

this precaution, I take the liberty of

recommending it to the reader, and I am

convinced that this small attention will cause

all vulgar systems of

morality to succumb and will show us that the

distinction between vice and virtue is

not based simply on the

relation between objects, nor is it perceived by

reason. End of quote. The idea of ​​"yum"

is very simple to summarize but

incredibly difficult to explain,

especially when it comes to taking

concrete examples. The idea fits in one

sentence: one cannot You can't deduce

normative principles from

descriptive statements, or put it another way: you can't go from a

being to an ought-to-be.

The term "

guillotine" is used to name this

idea, which amounts to cutting or slicing

between statements linked

to facts observed through simple

observation—what is, and what ought to

be, or should be.

So, imagine a

proposition with a stated value

concerning what is—that's the body—and the

subsequent statement indicating a duty—that's

the head. Well, smack! The

guillotine arrives in the middle and slices

the statement in two, saying no. What

comes before has nothing to do with what comes

after. In fact, I think that's why we

talk about the

guillotine. But it's still not

clear. Concretely, what does it mean?

Because it's all very abstract. Let's

cut the ground out from under you, but without a

guillotine or a lawnmower, there's a very common misconception

when it comes to

explaining this. The first

misinterpretation is to think that *Humum*

criticizes the fallacy

commonly known as the "call of nature," essentially implying that

if something is natural, it must be

good, and we should follow nature, which

tells us what is right to do. You

can disregard this interpretation,

given that *Humum* doesn't mention

nature and, in the

excerpt I quoted, doesn't discuss anything other than

propositions related to

theological questions concerning God

or what he calls "

human affairs"—in other words, matters of

our everyday behavior,

ethics, or morality. The other

misinterpretation would be to say that *

Humum*'s law doesn't allow for

moral judgments or the establishment of

duties based on observations

without this being false. In reality, if I acknowledge from

the outset that I'm making a moral argument and

state the premises in a normal way,

the proposition in question is valid.

For example, using *

Humum*'s guillotine, one could say that the

proposition Lying is an action that

should never be carried out because it is

essential to preserve a society founded

on trust in our

mutual exchanges. There is no contradiction because

in the first part of my sentence

I use the word "should" and I link this

duty to an imperative related to trust.

Basically, we shouldn't lie to each other because we

must be able to trust each other. The

guillotine of "yum" doesn't cut anything at all.

However, if I say the

following: "It is immoral to lie," or

rather, "Lying is wrong, therefore we must

n't lie," it works much

less well. In fact, the very proposition "

It is immoral to lie" already results

from a judgment, so it's a

prescription that passes for a

descriptive statement. In fact, I'm acting as if

the action itself

were objectively immoral, or that lying

was something immoral, but in

reality, it's already a judgment. So the

initial proposition would be: "Lying

consists of hiding the truth from someone

by telling them something false;

therefore, it is immoral and must not be

done." Well, there, the "guoti chlac" (a French expression meaning "the wording")

comes into play in my previous sentence.

I'm thus making the leap from the descriptive

to the

normative. When I say that

lying consists of this, I describe very

precisely what it consists of, and

then I say, "and therefore we mustn't lie." There, I

go

from "that's how it is," to "that's what

it consists of," and therefore "we mustn't do it." And yes, well, why shouldn't we do it? Well, we shouldn't. We're troubled because it's not something we can justify based on a fact. Yes, lying consists of

deceiving someone. Yes, and so what

prevents me from doing so? So, we ca

n't base morality on a fact; we can't

go from a fact to a duty.

You see, that's something that seems

implacable, but it's also

logical because, as

I explained,

if everything is normative in the proposition,

well, in that case it's fine, but in

any case, we mustn't... Moving from the

descriptive to the

normative—basically, Youum's idea is that something

stated indicatively cannot give rise

to

a prescription or a duty. And if You

says this, it's also because

morality isn't simply a matter of

observation but of feeling. We can't

arrive at the imperative "Thou shalt not kill"

simply by first reminding ourselves

that killing consists of taking

someone's life. We must feel in our

own flesh that someone is

profoundly evil. It's not the

act of recalling what murder is

that will lead us to morality and

duties, according to Youum. But I've

already elaborated on this elsewhere recently. We can't

invoke mere observation

to establish morality or ethics because the latter

will necessarily rest

on feelings of justice or

injustice, which, in turn, will

dictate what is useful or harmful for

ourselves and others, and therefore good

or evil. I refer you to

the recording in question for more

details on this point. This is also the

reason why Yum brings

reason into play at the end of the extreme I quoted

just before concerning morality,

since it depends on feelings.

Morality is not a matter of prior calculation;

reason, as we know, strictly allows for

calculation. But now let's

return to Widgenstein, because we will be able to

observe that his theory about

ethics resonates with

Yum's law and allows us to precisely circumscribe the

field of ethics.

Widgenstein begins by

considering that defining ethics

based on the field that studies what constitutes

good in a moral sense remains imprecise,

in the sense that the term "good" can take on

different meanings depending on the

situation and what one actually wants to say.

Widgenstein therefore begins

by making a distinction between a

relative meaning—understood as relative to a

specific goal or a predetermined end,

which would not fall within the field of

ethics—and an absolute meaning, which, on the other hand,

would depend on ethics. When

I say that something is good, I can mean that it is

adequate to the goal I am aiming for.

But I don't

necessarily mean by that that it's

virtuous and that it falls under the umbrella of morality.

Why would morality fall under what

Widgenstein calls an absolute sense? And what do we mean

by that? That's what we're going to

see now with two

very relevant and illuminating examples: the bad

tennis player and the lying cad. The lying cad

isn't my example, it could have been,

but this is a

Widgenstein example.

Yes, I assure you that the example of the lying cad

is excellent. You'll see. I

quote him like this: instead of saying ethics is the

investigation of what is good, I could have

said what is

the investigation of what has value

or what really matters? Or I could have

said that ethics

is the investigation of the meaning of life or

what really matters? Or I could have

said that ethics is the

investigation of the meaning of life or

what makes life worth living

or the correct way to live. I

think that by examining all these sentences

you will get a rough idea

of ​​what ethics deals with. Now, the

first thing that strikes us in

all these expressions is that each

of them is actually used in two

very different senses. I will call them, on the

one hand, the trivial or relative sense, and on the other hand,

the ethical or AB sense. For

example, if I say, "Here's a good

chair," it means that this chair

serves a certain predetermined purpose, and the

word "good" that we use here only has

meaning insofar as

this purpose is already pre-established. In fact, the

word "good" in the relative sense

simply means that which satisfies a certain

predetermined model. Thus, when we say of

someone that he is a good pianist, we

mean by that that he can play

music of a certain degree of difficulty

with a certain degree of

dexterity. And similarly, if I say that it is

important for me not to catch a cold, I

mean by that that a cold

produces certain disturbances in my life

that can be

described. And if I say that this is the By "

correct route," I mean

the correct route to reach

a certain goal. Used in this way,

these expressions don't raise any

difficulties or serious problems, but

that's not how ethics

uses them. Suppose I knew how to

play tennis, and one of you,

seeing me play, said, "You play badly,"

and I replied, "I know I

play badly, but I don't want to play better."

All my interlocutor could

say would be, "Oh, well, in that case, everything's fine."

But suppose I told

one of you an

extravagant lie, and they came to me and said, "You

behave like a Gou," and I replied, "

I know I behave badly, but

anyway, I don't want to behave any better."

Could they then say, "Oh,

well, in that case, everything's fine"?

Certainly not. They would say, "Well, you

must want to behave better." Here

you have an absolute value judgment,

whereas the one in the

previous example was a relative judgment in

its essence. The difference between these two

types of judgment seems clearly to

consist in this: every value judgment A

relative value judgment is a simple statement of fact and

can therefore be formulated in

such a way that it loses all appearance

of value judgment. Instead of saying, "This is

the correct route to

Grandchester," I could just as easily say, "This is

the correct route you need to

learn if you want to get to

Grandchester in the

shortest possible time." "This man is a good runner" simply

means that he covers

a certain number of kilometers in a

certain number of minutes, and so on. What

I want to argue now, although it

can be shown that any

relative value judgment reduces to a simple

statement of fact, is that no statement of

fact can be, or can imply,

an absolute value judgment. End of

quote. To

summarize, when one states a

relative judgment outside the realm of ethics,

it is always justified

beforehand by a specific end,

and this end becomes the very condition

of the action: "I will take this path

because I know it is the condition for

reaching my destination," or, as

absurd as it may seem, "If I

want to play bad tennis," or "I

absolutely must not..." improved, so

I have to keep hitting

my ball haphazardly with My racket, yes, who are

you to force Vidgenstein to

take tennis lessons, huh? If he

wants to play badly, well, he plays badly, huh?

He's not hurting anyone by

randomly hitting the

ball with his racket, at least not as long as he doesn't

accidentally send the ball into the

sensitive areas of passersby, which

his example doesn't mention, by the way. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he's probably not

hurting anyone. However, if he

behaves like a lying, boorish man and makes

his interlocutors believe false

things about himself to make himself look good, like he

was a kind

and affectionate teacher towards

his students, for example, well, in that

case, if he's caught out by people

who feel deceived by his lie,

he can't just

justify himself by admitting his desire to be

a lying jerk and expect

his

interlocutor's approval. Being a bad

tennis player is one thing, if that's what that he

wants, but lying so brazenly

can only lead to disapproval because

the action induces a judgment from the other

person. All is not well

in the sense that the lying jerk should question himself

and stop

taking people for fools by

appropriating efforts and merits

that are

foreign to him. The judgment is said to have

absolute value because it is the action that is judged

morally by the action in relation to

a

goal. In other words, the

absolute value of the action is linked to the fact that

nothing external to the action itself

can legitimize

or

justify it. The end does not justify the

means because ethics judges

the action as absolutely good or bad without any

reference other than

a value of good

or evil whose claim is

universal. Therefore, it is not the action

relative to a goal that is judged, but

truly the action as such,

not in relation to anything other than itself. This is

the

absolute dimension that we find precisely in From an ethical standpoint,

it is absolutely wrong to

behave like a lying cad, and this is

not justifiable in relation to the end the lying

cad sets for himself. However, if

we adopt the perspective of

relative judgment, which is not that of ethics,

we can call the lying cad's lie

successful if no one manages to

unmask him. His lie is good because it

is credible and convincing in order to deceive those around him. As

you will have

understood, we come back to the

major philosophical problem that Yum

indirectly raised: if

knowledge is based on

observations of facts, and if this

empirical teaching allows us to know

what to do to obtain a certain

result, then morality escapes the

realm of knowledge. It possesses

a prescriptive dimension that cannot

be deduced from the realm of simple

observation, giving rise to

descriptive statements. In this sense, it is possible

that the lying cad might give a lesson,

and in front of him, someone might give

him a moral lesson, and who might

reply, "It's not moral, certainly, but

I must lie in order to get by." For what

I am not and to achieve my goal, in

other words, the description of a

set of conditions to be met to

achieve a goal, and foreign to morality,

which is concerned with absolute values ​​that are unobservable,

and since they are unobservable,

they can only be nonsense

from a logical point of view because there are no

moral facts, or as

a certain Nietzsche would say in Beyond

Good and Evil, there are no

moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation

of phenomena. I can proclaim my

indignation, say that it is good or bad,

but I will never manage to state

a proposition that makes as much sense

to my interlocutor as, for example, "there is a

desk in front of me" or "it is raining

outside," because these elements

correspond to verifiable facts at

any moment. My language then

conforms to a part of the world.

Wittgenstein explains this point well with

another pedagogical example

that can be likened to a

thought experiment that one generally known

as the great book of the world, I

quote, let me explain it thus:

suppose that one of you is

omniscient and therefore

knows of all the movements of

all bodies, dead or living, in this

world; that you also know

all the states of mind of all

human beings at whatever time

they lived; and that everything you know is written down

in a large book.

This book would contain the

complete description of the world. And the point I want to make is that

this book would

contain nothing that we would call

an ethical judgment, nor anything that would

logically imply such a

judgment. Naturally, it would contain

all judgments of relative value,

all true scientific propositions,

and in fact all

true propositions that can be

formulated. But all written facts would be, in a

way, on the same level,

and likewise all propositions would be on the

same level. There are no

propositions that, in any absolute sense,

be sublime, important, or trivial. End of

quote. So, one must imagine an

immense book that would

ultimately contain, according to the The very definition of the

world in the

Tractatus is the totality of facts, since, as

I recall at the beginning of the Tractatus,

Vidgenstein defines the world thus:

imagine that someone could access at

any moment everything that

constitutes the world in which we

live, the sum total of the facts that occur there

and which remain the basis for

any meaningful statement, since they

possess a real reference point. Well,

in that case, even if we had the

omniscient gaze of a kind of God, even if we had

total and

complete knowledge of the world, we still wouldn't know what

ethics are. We would know

that such and such a physical law is linked to such and such a

process, stated scientifically

and rigorously. We would know that such and such a

person once thought or acted in such

and such a way by observing their actions, but nothing

moral would be taught to us.

We could describe with as much

precision as possible the state of the

world and the way inert,

living, or human bodies act and

interact, but that's all. We would never

leave the realm of

description, and nothing would

allow us to pronounce

judgments with moral value. But yet,

if We can observe the state of the world and

everything that happens in it; we would certainly be able

to witness the horrors that

take place. Isn't this a

decisive experience for establishing

morality and for arriving at the

factual observation of things that are

morally good or bad? Well, no, not quite.

And that's where we see that with

this, the guillotine of

Yum would always be sufficiently

sharp if V. Gstein were to use it. And he

will illustrate this with the example of

murder. I quote: what I mean is that a state

of mind, insofar as

we understand by this expression

a fact that we can describe, is neither

good nor bad in an ethical sense.

For example, if we read in our

book of the world the description of a

murder with all its physical

and psychological details, the pure description of

these facts will contain nothing that we

could call an

ethical proposition. The murder will be exactly on the

same level as any other

event, for example, the falling of a

stone. Certainly, reading this

description could provoke pain in us.

Anger or any other

emotion, or we could read about

the pain or anger that this

murder aroused in those who learned of it,

but there will

only be facts, facts, facts,

but not ethics. Therefore, I must

say that if I were to consider what

ethics should truly be,

assuming such a science exists, the

result seems quite obvious to me.

End of quote. This example is very

illuminating insofar as it

reminds us at the same time of the limits of

language and shows us its full

extent concerning ethics. Indeed, even when

trying to penetrate the inner thoughts of the

murderer, even when describing the

motivation behind the murder, the

precise way in which it takes place, it is still

nothing that falls within the domain of

ethics; it is description.

Here, we describe that A killed B out of a thirst for

revenge and that B stabbed him

countless times with a large

knife, for example, in order to satisfy

his bloodlust as

intensely as possible. In saying this, I have

still not stated any

moral judgment, nothing that is ethical.

Obviously, one can... To feel disgusted by

the description of the murder, to feel within oneself

the greatest indignation,

to have a sense of horror or

terror in the face of the cold and

relative judgment aimed at establishing as

accurately as possible the

circumstances of the crime and the

exact motives of the criminal—yet still,

no ethics

intervenes in this story. As you will have

understood, Widgenstein's great thesis

is here as simple as it is

profound: ethics relating to the notion of

good or evil does not pertain to

science or established truth, but to

the unspeakable. I could shout my

indignation and say, "It's horrible, what happened

is appalling, it's

very wrong," but I would say nothing true, nothing real.

Strange as it

may seem, put that way, moreover,

all our language seems to deny this.

When we

sometimes say, "It's really horrible" or "What

you did is really wrong," we

say "really," we say "really," as if that,

precisely, gives an

even more real dimension to the judgment, to what is

the object of the judgment. You see, but

precisely, we give a The

actual content of the order of facts, expressed in words that in

no way reflect the facts of this

world and the structure of reality,

therefore ethics rests on nonsense.

Hence the following passage from Widgenstein

describes the supernatural dimension of

ethics: our words, as we

use them in science, are vessels

capable only of containing and

transmitting meaning and sense,

meaning and natural sense. Ethics,

if it exists, is supernatural, whereas

our words only want to express

facts, like a cup of tea that will never

contain more water than the value

of a cup, even if I pour

a liter of water into it. I said that

insofar as it concerns facts of

propositions, there is only relative value, relative

accuracy, end of

quote. The metaphor of the cup of tea

means that it can never

contain more than the quantity of water

it is designed to hold, and that, just like

this cup, we may

try to exceed the

limits of our language, as one

overflows the cup, try to

fill it to The use of words, even

stronger and more meaningful than possible, to

morally blame or honor a set

of actions performed by someone, will

never allow us to go beyond the

limits of description. The cup won't

suddenly hold more water

because I decided to put in more than it

can hold; it

will simply overflow. And it's the same for my

language. My pledge won't suddenly start

expressing

more than I can

accurately describe under

normal circumstances. But Vidgenstein goes further,

showing that the same is true

for any mystical or

religious experience. Here we are in the presence

of the unspeakable, of what remains buried deep

within us and cannot be

expressed using words whose referent is not

in the world; it is not there. And

so, it is never a matter

of observation or science; it is what

we also feel in the face of the fact that there is

something rather than nothing, something

which was not lacking in To be astonished, as

Heugger or, before him, Emnitz noted,

sometimes without thinking about it, we find ourselves astonished by

the existence

of this world in which we live,

particularly when we contemplate the

beauty of natural landscapes while

walking. I quote Wigstein again, and

I will now describe the experience

of being astonished by the existence of the

world by saying that it is the experience of

seeing the world as a miracle. I am

then tempted to say that the

correct way to express in language the

miracle of the world's existence, although it is

not a proposition of

language, is the existence of language

itself. But what then does it mean that

we become aware of this miracle at

certain times and not at others? Because

all I have done in shifting the

expression of the miraculous from an

expression through the means of language to an

expression through the existence of language,

all I have done is to

say again that we cannot express what

we want to express, and all

we say about the Miraculous absolute remains

nonsense. End of quote. Here, Wittgenstein

implicitly reminds us that the limits of

our world coincide with those of our

language, because we cannot say that

anything has meaning outside the

horizon of our common experience of

observable facts. Yet it is in

language that we can think and say

this. The existence of language

then appears as a kind of miracle, and the

fact of being able to pronounce on the

limits of our knowledge, or of what

we cannot express as knowledge, is also a miracle.

However, in doing so,

we are still expressing nonsense, because

nothing absolute can, by definition,

be relative. Here, it is relative to an

external element that serves as its reference and

that it serves to designate. Therefore, what

remains absolute, as opposed to relative, appears to be

nonsense. What

appears as an intimate experience

linked to anything observable has as its

reference only a feeling, something

that cannot be the subject of a

rigorously objective description because

it does not concern a physical fact.

Hence, Wittgenstein's conclusion—I

quote everything to which I I tended, and I

believe, to what all men

who have ever tried to write or

speak about ethics or religion tend to do was to

confront the limits of

language. It is perfectly, absolutely hopeless to

thus confront

the walls of our cage, insofar as

ethics is born from the desire to say

something about the ultimate meaning

of life, about absolute Good, about that which

has absolute value. Ethics

cannot be a science; what it says

adds nothing to our knowledge in any

sense, but it informs us about a

tendency that exists in the

human mind, a tendency that I can only

deeply respect, and

that I could never, in my life,

ridicule. End of quote. This last

point is fundamental because it allows us

not to misunderstand Wittgenstein's intentions. He is not

saying that since we cannot

describe what morality is, or what

good and evil are, they do not exist,

or that no morality is possible.

Rather, Wittgenstein shows here that there is no way

Language will never be able to

guide us towards good or help us

discover it; no

ethical or philosophical system can do so in a

meaningful way, because these are

necessarily metaphysical statements that

elevate us to something mystical,

going far beyond language. We sense

good or evil; we can feel it

viscerally when we are

confronted with facts, but these facts do

not possess the moral properties we

attribute to them in judgment. Ethics does not

lead us to a better

understanding of the world or ourselves;

it does not allow us to go beyond what can be

expressed, in that it expresses

no

meaning. But it reveals to us, in a

profound way, that we cannot help but

try to transcend the

limits imposed by our language. In

short, the necessity we have to

judge as good or evil, which

appears to us, is the mark of our

inability to see language as merely a

medium at the service of

knowledge, a simple tool of

communication intended for

utilitarian information and related to mere survival.

We have within us this need for the absolute and That's precisely what

an analysis of the limits

of language reveals:

good and evil remain

unknown, yet they will forever haunt

us, drawing us into

the unknown, into an ineffable realm we

cannot

express. Thank you for your

attention, and I'll see you next

time.