Tractatus Lecture 8 1. Wittgenstein’s discussion of solipsism is an important thematic turning-

point in the Tractatus as it leads to, and provides the necessary background for, the more “mystical” aspects of the work. This is especially so when we consider his discussion of value. At 6.4 he says: “All propositions are of equal value.” Something close to this view appears to be forced on him by his insistence (5.54) that propositions can only occur in extensional positions: for “It is good that p” apparently generates an intensional context, and he has to get around this by saying either that all propositions with the same truth-value are of equal value or by saying that none of them have any particular value. As it is he resorts to the latter.

2. That he takes this route is evident from his initial elaboration of 6.4: “If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.” Implicit in this argument is the assumption that values are necessary—not that “p is good” implies “p is necessary” but that “p is good” implies “that p is good is necessary”.

3. In fact, however, Wittgenstein is not forced to take this view of ethics. He might have treated ethical propositions in a naturalistic psychological way, so that “p is good for A” is analysed as describing the psychological state of some agent. If his treatment of doxastic contexts does succeed in analyzing away their apparent intensionality, then why can he not say the same for ethical ones? (Cf. Fogelin, Wittgenstein second edition p. 96.)

4. Where then does the Tractatus take ethical value to reside? The answer is given at 6.423: “It is impossible to speak about the will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes.” This remark can be understood in the context of 6.422, where he says that “There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.” Now by “action” here, I take Wittgenstein to mean an act of willing. For after all, an ordinary act (say, the movement of my arm) is merely accidental. And we have seen (5.631) that the willing subject does in a sense reside “outside the world”, if by this is meant the subject that understands linguistic expressions.

5. You might think that there is a fallacy here. It is true that my physical action is contingent, but then so is my willing, and it might still be true that my act, if it really is free, follows of necessity from my willing: so that the necessity with which my willing has moral attributes is derivative from the necessity with which it brings about my act.

6. But Wittgenstein denies that willing necessitates anything: “The world is independent of my will. Even if all that we wish for were to happen, still this would only be a favour granted by fate, so to speak: for there is no logical connection between the will and the world, which would

guarantee it, and the supposed physical connection itself is surely not something that we could will” (6.373-4). I think that the argument here is appealing to a kind of regress: even if my willing p brings it about that p, still I cannot be blamed for p, because I did not will that my willing that p brings it about that p. We are left with a curiously paralytic conception of human beings: all I can do is move my will, and the rest is up to God (see the interesting comparison with Berkeley in C.C.W. Taylor’s article in Foster and Robinson, eds., George Berkeley: Tercentenary Essays.)

7. Thus for Wittgenstein ethical attributes really do reside in the willing subject, which we have already seen to exist outside the sphere of the “merely accidental”. Of course this view of ethics is not new. The idea that one’s will is by itself the sole repository of ethical attributes is pretty much what Freud regarded as definitive of the neurotic—e.g. St Paul when he said that to look at a woman with lust in your heart is as bad as committing adultery with her.

8. The Tractatus concludes with a brief discussion of the nature of philosophy and the meaning of life. For Wittgenstein—and this was evident throughout his life and work, not just in the Tractatus—philosophy was a struggle with oneself, and the aim was to find that peace that stopped you from wanting to raise philosophical problems. What you were supposed to realize, after reading the Tractatus, was that problems about the meaning or value of your life could not even be raised: that is why “those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense” (6.521).

9. This irenic resolution is then applied to philosophy and even to the propositions of the Tractatus itself. That work violates the only true method of philosophy, which is simply to say nothing positive but merely to correct the mistaken attempts of others to make philosophical claims, by showing them that they are speaking nonsense. The Tractatus itself is therefore nonsense, strictly speaking, for it tries explicitly to say why certain things cannot be said by drawing a limit to what can be said. And as Ramsey said, if you can’t say it you can’t say it, nor can you whistle it. A more charitable reading is that we are to think of the Tractatus not as an articulated set of doctrines but as a process: its meaning lies not in what its propositions say (for they themselves imply that they say nothing) but in their effect. In this sense the Tractatus is very much like Philosophical Investigations on some readings: it is a course of therapy. However it seems to me more like a particularly frustrating version of the dance of the seven veils, or (to use Wittgenstein’s own simile) like a lettuce. You strip away all the leaves—and there is nothing left.