From nonsense to openness: Wittgenstein on moral sense

Many assume that the ability to justify one’s actions by moral reasons is central to morality. Wittgenstein disagrees. His Lecture on Ethics declares the “absolute” dimension of ethics indescribable, and dismisses appeals to justifying reasons as “chatter”. This chapter explains what’s right in Wittgenstein’s suggestion, but also what’s confused in his formulation of it. The confusions result from early Wittgenstein’s failure to articulate the fundamental role of the relation to the other person. His later thinking, however, moves decisively in just that direction. The very idea of ethics is reframed when set within his later account of human understanding as a responsive openness between us, itself ethical in a broad yet precise sense. Furthermore, moral difficulties are, as Wittgenstein emphasises, radically different from merely intellectual problems (which can be reasoned about), because they demand changing oneself in ways we resist. And as Wittgenstein indicates, standard representational, just like broadly public-performative, views of language misrepresent ethics and language. The heart of the ethical is between us. It cannot be represented, but it can and will inevitably be expressed—with moral life pervasively deformed, alas, by our attempts at repressing this expression through more or less “rational” or “emotional” strategies.