Tractarian Ethics: A Transcendental Vision

Abstract

Abstract This paper attempts to offer a positive reading of Tractarian ethics motivated by Kevin Cahill’s therapeutic framing of the Tractatus, on which ethics and language are taken to be coextensive, mutually encompassing spheres. This is taken to secure positive import for Tractarian ethics in a broad sense, though not connected to specific approbations or prohibitions. This is argued for in three sections: first, specifying the animating therapeutic intention of the Tractatus as reawakening the reader to a sense of wonder, against the sedative effects of scientific-causal explanations; second, an elucidation of the underlying logic of TLP 6.4 – 42 to show that Wittgenstein’s repudiation of ethical propositions is not an abolition of ethics but an assertion of the disparity between the absolute value of ethics and the aims of scientific explanation; and third, outlining a positive reading of Tractarian ethics beginning with the cryptic expression, “ethics is transcendental”, by drawing out an analogy with logic as the transcendental condition of language to a view of ethics as a condition of meaningful actions and lives.