Ethics and the philosophy of culture : Wittgensteinian approaches

Questions of ethics and the study of culture are tightly interwoven. Are we to see ethics as one thread in the fabric created by human culture or does ethics rather transcend culture? The discussions in this volume take place within this spectrum. Eleven Wittgenstein scholars explore how ethics is embedded in everyday activities and speech. The topics dealt with range from the ways we speak about human practices and nature, religious belief, gender, and moral understanding to questions about Wittgenstein's views on ethics and what it means to understand and attend to a particular individual. Central points of departure are, firstly, that ethics cannot be reduced to any specific cultural form and, secondly, that how we conceive of language is crucially connected with how we perceive the relation between culture and ethics. The points of view put forth frequently pose radical questions to the mainstream of philosophy. The different uses to which Wittgenstein's thought is put also raise important questions about how one should understand the role of language, ethics and culture in his philosophy. CONTENTS 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 8 INTRODUCTION 10 ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS BY WITTGENSTEIN 32 PART I - LANGUAGE IN CULTURE 34 “DIRTY” AND “CLEAN”, AND THE DIALECTIC BETWEEN FACTS AND PRACTICES 35 ETHICS AND THE LOGIC OF LIFE* 53 WITTGENSTEIN, RELIGION, AND THE REJECTION OF METAPHYSICS 83 THE OMNISCIENT BEING KNOWS 101 PART II - ETHICS, CULTURE AND THE PERSONAL 122 WITTGENSTEIN ON ETHICS, NONSENSE, AND METAPHYSICS 123 ETHICS, WONDER AND THE REAL IN WITTGENSTEIN 146 ON KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG 169 PART III - ETHICS IN LANGUAGE 180 GENDER, LANGUAGE AND PHILOSOPHICAL RECONCILIATION 181 WITTGENSTEIN, FOLLOWER OF FREUD 221 LIMITS OF RATIONALITY 254 FORMS OF ATTENTION, ATTENTION TO FORM 273 CONTRIBUTORS 291