%Wab_entities;]> [DRAFT!] (2007-): Wittgenstein MS 139a ("Lecture on Ethics"): Ms-139a.xml Ludwig Wittgenstein Alois Pichler Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB) Trinity College, Cambridge; Oxford University Press, Oxford; InteLex Corporation, Charlottesville; University of Bergen, Bergen; Uni Digital (earlier "Unifob Aksis"), Bergen; L. Meltzers Høyskolefond, Bergen; GDRE+ Hyper-Learning, Paris; COST Action A32, Brussels; eContent+ DISCOVERY, Luxembourg Alois Pichler coordination, editorial guidelines Vemund Olstad stylesheets Tone Merete Bruvik XML-TEI validation Øystein Reigem PHP Alois Pichler, Deirdre Smith transcription, correction, XML-TEI markup, structural enrichment Kyrre Trohjell, Alois Pichler transcription and MECS-WIT markup 1998

Copyright holders: The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; Oxford University Press, Oxford; University of Bergen, Bergen; Uni Research AS (earlier Unifob AS), Bergen. Released under the Creative Commons General Public License Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike version 3 (CCPL BY-NC-SA).

The text has been proofread and corrected since the production of the Bergen Electronic Edition (2000)&p.es; The lecture was given on 17&p.es;11&p.es;1929&p.es; External references: WAB; Hans Biesenbach, "Anspielungen und Zitate in den Schriften Ludwig Wittgensteins"&p.es; Source description tba&p.es;

 February 26, 2009Tone Merete Bruvik: Added a section of fascimiles, and some other changes to make the file valid&p.es; September 28, 2007Tone Merete Bruvik: Moved the legend part into its only document&p.es; Made the file valid&p.es; September 25, 2007Alois Pichler: Draft of the file encoded&p.es; I GeMr&p.abbr; Chairman, Ladies &.and; Gentlemen! Before I begin to speak about my subject proper let me say a few introductory words&p.es; I feel there that I will be have very great difficulties in communicating the thoughts which I want to communicate, to you &.and; I want to mention some of these difficulties because I think that this they can may possibly thereby be diminished them&p.es; The first I will mention — but which is I believe &unread; by no means the greatest — is that, as you, know, English is not my native language &.and; my expression will therefore not be as clear &.and; precise as it would be desirable when one has something very difficult to communicate&p.es; Please help me in my task of making myself understood by abstracting overlooking as much as possible from the faults against the English grammar which will constantly occur in my speech&p.es; The second difficulty which I will mention is t seaems to me to be by far more serious &.and; to explanein it I must tell you why I have chosen the subject which I have chosen&p.es; When your former secretary honoured me by asking me to read a paper to your society the first thought that came into my head was that I would certainly do it &.and; the second was this: I said to myself that Iif I hade the opportunity of talking to a room full of II people that I would use this opportunity to say something that comes from my heart &.and; not to illmisuse illuse misuse the time that I was given to speak to you toby either explaining some scientific matter to you which to be propperly explained would needs a course of lectures or an audience specially trained in one particular line of thought &.and; that I would still less illmisuse illuse misuse this opportunity of speaking to you by giving you a popular lecture, say on logic, which would serve to make you believe that you understand a thing which as a matter of fact you don't understand (&.and; which it is not a bit neccessary that you should) &.and; to gratifiey the very lowest of modern desires viz&p.es; the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of physicists, psychologists &.and; logicians scientists I decided — I say — that I should use this opportunity to speak to you about not as a logician, still less as a cross between a scientist &.and; a journalist but as a human being to human beings who tries to tell his fellow other human beings something they which some of them might possibly find usefull, I say usefull not interesting&p.es; The third and last difficulty I will mention is one that applies to adheres to most philosophical subjects explanations &.and; it is this that it &unread; sometimes is almost impossible to explain a III matter in such a way that the hearer at once sees the ways roadsroadsroad he is lead &.and; the Eend goal to which it leads&p.es; That is to say it so very often happens that the hearer thinks &udq.sudq;I understand perfectly what he is saying says but what on earth is he driving at&udq.eudq; or else that he sees what one is driving at &.and; thinks &ldq.sldq;&udq.sudq;that's all very well bybut how is he going to get there&udq.eudq;&p.es; This perhaps is the gravest difficultiey &.and; all I kcan do is to ask you to be patient &.and; to hope that in the end we will see bothe the Rrodead &.and; where it leeads to&p.es; — Now let me begin&p.es; My subject is Ethics &.and; I will adopt the definition or explanation which Prof&p.es; Moore has given in his Principia Ethica&p.es; He says there which is: Ethics is the Ggeneral Eenquiry into what is good&p.es; I will just modifiey this slightly &.and; say: &udq.sudq;Ethics is the general enquiry into what is valuable&udq.eudq;&p.es; I do this because I want to include in my Nnotion of Ethicss also what is commonly understood to belong to the subject matter of Aesthetics&p.es; The reason for this will perhaps get clear later on&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now let me point out first of all that in our Ddefinition of Ethics I might have substituted many other words for the word &udq.sudq;valuable&udq.eudq;&p.es; And I will enumerate some of them which seem to me to be IV synonyms so far at any rate as theirsthistheir meaning is important to us and by enumerating them I want to produce the same sort of effect that Gallstone Galton produced when he copied a number of different faces on the same photographic plate in order to get the picture of the typical features they all have in common&p.es; And as by looking at shewing to you such a photo you can I could make you see what is the typical, say, cChinese face so if you look as it where through all the synonyms which I will place one behind the other before in front of you, you will see which feature common to them all I want you to look at in each of them&p.es; Now there is the word &udq.sudq;valuable&udq.eudq; or &udq.sudq;value&udq.eudq; or the word &udq.sudq;good&udq.eudq; taken in a slightly wider sense perhaps&p.es; Now instead of saying &udq.sudq;Ethics is the Eenquiry into what is valuable&udq.eudq; I might have said it is the Eenquiry into what is of absolute importance or into what is the meaning of life or into what makes life worth living&p.es; And now you And if you hold all thoese Eexpressions together as &udq.sudq;value&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;good&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;great&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;Rright&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;sense of life&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;that what makes life worth living&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;worth&udq.eudq; etc&p.abbr; you will I believe see what it is I'm am I'm I am concerned with&p.es; Now the first thing I want you to notice about all these expressions is that they can all be used in two V&p.es; very different senses: I will call them the relative &.and; the absolute or ethical meaning use&p.es; The relative use of these words is their use relative to some predetermined end&p.es; When I say &udq.sudq;this is a good piano&udq.sudq; I mean it comes up to a certain standartd of tone etc&p.abbr; which I have fixed &.and; which I conceive as its purpose&p.es; It has only sense to say that a piano is good if you have previously fixed what sort of qualities a piano must have to deserve that name&p.es; And the same applies when I say that a man is a good piano player or a good golf player or that a road is good etc&p.abbr; In&unread; all such Ccases &udq.sudq;good&udq.sudq; simply means: coming up to a certain standard which I have previously fixed&p.es; The same applies to the word &udq.sudq;important&udq.sudq; in the ordinary relative sense which is the relative sense&p.es; In this sense we say something is important for a certain purpose&p.es; The same applies to &udq.sudq;wright&udq.sudq;&p.es; The right rodead is that which leeads to the place I want to go to&p.es; iIt is right relativlye to the desired Eend&p.es; In this relative sense the words &udq.sudq;value&udq.sudq;, &udq.sudq;good&udq.sudq;, &udq.sudq;importance&udq.sudq; etc&p.abbr; are easily understood &.and; present no great problems&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now in Ethics these same words are used apparently in an entirely different sense&p.es; Supposing I could play the piano &.and; one of you 6 a great connaoisseur of pianoplayingpiano playing heard me &.and; said, &udq.sudq;Well you're playing pretty badly&udq.sudq; &.and; suppose I answered, him: &udq.sudq;I know I'm playing badly but I don't want to play any better&udq.sudq;&p.es; All the connaoisseur could say would be &udq.sudq;well then that's all right&udq.sudq;, &.and; there would be an end to the discussion&p.es; The connaoisseur would have judged me by certain standartds which he could if neccessary explain &.and; I would aggree that he had ranked me wrightly&p.es; Now take another case suppose I had told one of you a preposterous lyie &.and; this man came to me &.and; said &udq.sudq;look here you have behaved like a beast&udq.sudq;&p.es; &.and; now if I were to answer &udq.sudq;IYes I Yes I know I &unread;behaved badly but then I didn't want to behave any better&udq.sudq;&p.es; CWould Could Would he then say &udq.sudq;ththen that's all right&udq.sudq;&qm.eis; Obviously not&p.es; He would say &udq.sudq;well you ought to want to behave better&udq.sudq;&p.es; The difference was that this man was making an absolute ethical judgment whereas the other connaoisseur made a relative judgment&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now the essence of this difference seems to me to be obviously this: Every judgment of relative value, goodness, importance etc&p.abbr; can be is a simple statement of facts &.and; can be put in such a form that it looses all appearance of a judgment of value&p.es; Instead of saying &udq.sudq;this is the right 7 road&udq.sudq; I can say equally well &udq.sudq;this is the road that leeads me to where I want to go&udq.sudq;&p.es; &udq.sudq;This is a good pianoplayer piano player&udq.eudq; simply means that he can play peaieces of a certain degree of complicatedness in a certain definable way&p.es; To say &udq.sudq;the Vviolorin has a good voice&udq.eudq; means it has a Ttone agreeable to the ear &.and; so on&p.es; Now what I wish to contend is this that although all relative judgments can be sheown to be statements of facts no statement of fact can ever be or imply what we call an absolute that is ethical judgment&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Let me explain this like this: Suppose that one of you or I was an omniscient person who therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the worrld, dead or alive who further knew &.and; could describe all the states of minds of all human beings that ever were &.and; suppose that this omniscient person wrote all he knew, that is everything that is to be known, in a big book&p.es; Then this book would contain the whole description of the world&p.es; And what I want to say is that this book would then not contain anything that we cwouldcouldwould call an absolute ethical judjgment of value or anything that would directly eimply such a judgment&p.es; It would of course contain all relative judgments of value as for 8 IV instance that so &.and; so is a good or a bad runner for it would contain the fact that he ran so many yards the distance of 1 mile in so many seconds minutes &.and; seconds&p.es; The book would of course contain all possible true scientific propositions &.and; in fact all A significant &.and; true propositions that can be made&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now what I wish to say is that all facts are as it were on the same level that there is no such thing as absolute importance or unimportance in them &.and; that therefore in the same way all propositions are on the same level that there are no propositions which are in any absolute sense sublime, important or on the other hand trivial&p.es; Now perhaps some of you will agree to that &.and; be reminded of Hamlet's words &sdash;&p.es; DBut this again could lead to misunderstanding&p.es; What Hamlet says seems to imply that good &.and; bad are not qualities of the world aoutside us but attributes of our states of mind&p.es; But what I mean is that the state of mind to so far as we mean by that a fact which we cann describe is in no ethical sense good or bad&p.es; If for instance in our world book we read the description of an appalling murder is described an appalling murder is described we read the description of an appalling murder in all the details physical &.and; psychological psychical that is with all the pains &.and; anguish the victim had to endure with all the studied cruelty of the murderer the mere description of facts physical &.and; psychical will contain nothing of 9 what which we wcould would could say that this is an ethical proposition&p.es; The event murder will be on exactly the same level as any other event for instance the falling of a stone&p.es; Certainly the reading of this description might cause us pains or rage or any other emotions or we might read about the pain or rage caused by this murder in other people when they got to know it but there will simply be facts facts &.and; facts but no Ethics&p.es; — Editor's paragraph division. And now I must say that if I contemplate what Ethics really would have to be if there were such a science this: seems to me quite obvious&p.es; It seems to me quite obvious that nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing&p.es; That we cann't write a scientific book the subject matter of which was is intrinsically sublime, above all other subjecti matters&p.es; I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor that if a man could write a book about Ethics which really was a book on Ethics this would with an explosion destroy all the other books in the world&p.es; Our words used as we use them in science are vessels capable only to contain &.and; convey meaning &.and; sense, natural meaning &.and; sense&p.es; Ethics if it is anything must be is supernatural &.and; our words 10 will only express facts as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water &.and; if I was to empty pour out a gallon over it&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. I said that so far as facts &.and; propositions are concerned there is only relative value &.and; relative good, right etc&p.abbr; And let me, before I go on, illustrate this by a rather obvious example: The right road is the road which leads to an arbitrarily predetermined end &.and; it is quite clear to us all that a road apart from such a predetermined gool it has no sense in ordinary life to talk about the a right road apart from such a predetermined end, that there is no such thing as the right wroad&p.es; Now let us see what we could possibly mean by such an the expression &udq.sudq;the absolutely wright road&udq.eudq;&p.es; I think it would be the road which everybody if he sees it would with logical necessity have to go or be ashamed for of not going&p.es; Generally speaking, the Aabsolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one that everybody irrespective independent of his tastes and inclinations would necessarily go or feel guilty for not bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about&p.es; And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a Cchimerea&p.es; — No state of affairs contains has the coercive power in itself&p.es; Then what do all of us who are, like myself, still tempted to use such phrases Eexpressions as 11 &udq.sudq;abososlute good&udq.eudq;, &udq.sudq;absolute value&udq.eudq; etc&p.abbr; what have they in mind &.and; what do we try to express&qm.eis; Editor's paragraph division. Now whenever I try to make this clear to meyself me myself it is natural that I should try to recall what use I in which cases I would particularly certainly use these expressions &.and; I am then in the situation in which you would be if for instance I were to give you a lecture, say, on the psychology of pleasure&p.es; What you would do then would be to try and recall some typical situation in which you allways felt pleasure, for, bearing this situation in mind, you all which I would have to say to you about pleasure would become concrete &.and;, as it where, controllabelle&p.es; One man would for instance chuoose as his stock example of pleasure the sensation which he has when taking a walk on a fimne summer's morning &.and; or any some such occasion&p.es; Now in this situation I am if I want to fix my mind on what I mean by absolute or ethical value&p.es; And there in my case it allways happens that the idea of one particular experience presents itself to mey mind me my mind which therefore is for me in a sense the experience par excellence &.and; this is the reason why in talking to you now I (will always) referr to this experience particularly I am using this it as my first &.and; foremost example&p.es; (As I have said this 12 is really a personal matter &.and; others would find other examples more striking&p.es;) The experience the which I'm talking about I will describe this experience in order if possible to make you recall to your minds the same or similar experiences so that we may have a common ground for our investigation&p.es; Now the best way of describing this my experience is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world&p.es; And I am then inclined to use such a phrase like as &udq.sudq;how extraordinary that anything should exist&udq.eudq;, or &udq.sudq;how extraordinary that the world should exist&udq.eudq;&p.es; I will mention an other another experience straight away which I also know &.and; which others of you might be acquainted with &.and; this is what one might call the experience of feeling absolutely safe&p.es; I mean the state in which one says to onesself I am safe nothing can happen to injure me whatever happens&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now let me consider these experiences because they exhibit I believe the very characteristics we want to get clear about&p.es; Now there the first thing I have to say is that the verbal expression which we give to these experiences is nonsense! If I say I wonder at the existence of the world I am misusing language&p.es; Let me explain this: It has a perfectly good and and intelligible sense to say 13 that I wonder at something being the case&p.es; I We all understand what it means when I say that I wonder at a dog which is biggger than any dog I have ever seen before or at any other thing which in the common sense of the word is &ldq.sldq;&udq.sudq;extraordinary&udq.eudq;&p.es; In every such case I wonder abt something being the case which I could conceive not to be the case&p.es; I wonder at the size of this dog because I could conceive of a dog of another namely the ordinary size at which I would not wonder&p.es; To I say I wonder at such &.and; such being the case has only sense if I can immagine it not to be the case&p.es; In this sense one can wonder at the existence of say a house when one sees it &.and; hasn't seen visited it for many years &.and; has immagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime&p.es; But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world because I cannot immagine it not existing&p.es; I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is&p.es; For instance if I had thiesthisthe experience of wonder while looking into the blue sky I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case where it's clouded&p.es; But that's not what I mean&p.es; I am wonderring at the sky being whatever it is&p.es; One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautologiey, namely at the sky being blue or not being blue&p.es; But then it's just 14 that it's nonsense to say that one wonders at a tautologiey&p.es; The verbal expression &udq.sudq;do whith it what I may&udq.eudq; remains nonsense &.and; I think it is essential that it should do so&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now the same applies to that other experience which I have mentioned the experience of being safe absolute safety&p.es; We all know what it means in ordinary life to be safe&p.es; I am sa&unread;fe in my rooms when I cannot be run over by an Oomnibus&p.es; I am safe if I have had whooping cough once &.and; cannot therefore have it again&p.es; That is &udq.sudq;to be safe&udq.eudq; essentially means that it is physically impossible improbable that certain things should happen to me, &.and; therefore it's nonsense to say that I am safe whatever happens&p.es; Again it is a misuse of the word &udq.sudq;safe&udq.eudq; as the other example was a misuse of the word &udq.sudq;existence&udq.eudq;&p.es; Now I want to impress on you that a certain characteristic misuse of language runs through all ethical &.and; religious expressions&p.es; I can perhaps best describe it in this way: When it has become clear to one that there is amongst significant propositions no such thing as a judgment of absolute value the first thought I believe is that all ethical &.and; religious propositions are really only similes &.and; that's isthat'sthat is what they really seem to be&p.es; It seems that when we are using the word &udq.sudq;right&udq.eudq; in an ethical sense although 15 what we mean is not what we mean by &udq.sudq;right&udq.eudq; when we say &udq.sudq;this is the right road to Grantchester&udq.eudq; it's something similar &.and; when we say &udq.sudq;this is a good fellow&udq.eudq; we don't mean it in the same sense as when we say &udq.sudq;he is a good footballplayer football player&udq.eudq; but there is some similarity&p.es; And when we say &udq.sudq;thisethisthe Llife of this man was valuable&udq.eudq; we don't mean it in the same sense as when we say &udq.sudq;this piece of juwvewelry is valuable&udq.eudq; but there seaems to be some sort of connection&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now all religious terms &.and; notions seem in this sense to be used as simileies or allegorically&p.es; For when we speak of God &.and; that he sees &.and; hears everything &.and; when we pra kneel &.and; pray to him it is seems obvious that all our terms &.and; actions are part of a big great &.and; elaborate allegory which represents him as a human being of great power whose grace we try to win etc&p.abbr; etc&p.es; Now this simile also extends over the two experiences which I have described above in facktt the first of them wondering at the existence of the world is I believe exactly what we are ref people were referring to when they said that God had created the Wworld &.and; the the experience of absolute safety is described by saying that we are safe under God's protekction&p.es; A third experience which belongs to this realm is the experience of feeling guilty &.and; again that was described 16 by the phrase that God disapprooves of our conduct&p.es; Now the three experiences which I have mentioned Editor's paragraph division. I have said that whenever we describe ethical or religious experiences we seem to use language only to make up similes&p.es; N But a simile must be the simile for something &.and; if I can express a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to explain the facts without it&p.es; Now what happens to us in this case is that as soon as we try to drop the simile &.and; try to state simply the facts that stand behind them Wwe find that there are no such facts&p.es; And so what at first appeared to be similes now seems to be mere nonsense&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now the three experiences which I mentioned before (and I could have added many some more) seem to those who have experienced them for instance to me to have some in some sense an intrinsic an absolute value&p.es; But when I say they are experiences surely they are facts, they have taken place then &.and; there, lasted a certain definite time &.and; consequently are describable&p.es; And so, from what I said some minutes ago I must admit it is nonsense to say that they have absolute value&p.es; And here I amhave at arrived atam athave arrived at the main point of this paper &.and; it is the paradox for I know not how to call it that an experience 17 a fact should have an absolute value&p.es; And I will make the point still more acute by saying, that an experience a fact schould have a supernatural value&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now the way I would be tempted at first to meet this paradox is this: Let me consider again the Eexperience of wondering at existence &.and; let me describe it in a slightly different way: We all know what in ordinary life would be called a mirakalcle: It obviously is simply an event which the like of which we have never yet seen&p.es; Now suppose such an event happened&p.es; Take the case that one of you suddenly grew a lion's head &.and; began to roaring roaring to roar certainly that's as extraordinary a thing as I can &lb;There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so&p.es;&rb; immagine&p.es; Now whenever we would have recovered from our surprise what I would suggest is to fetch a physiologist &.and; have the case scientifically investigated &.and; if it were not for being afraid of hurting him I'lld have him vivisected&p.es; And where would the miracle have gone to, for it is clear that looking at it in this way everything miraculous has disappeared unless what we mean by &udq.sudq;miraculous&udq.eudq; is merely that a fact&unread; has not jyet been explaniined by science which again means merely thtat 18 we have hitherto failed to group this fact with others in a scientific system&p.es; But t This means that it has no sense to say &ldq.sldq;&udq.sudq;sciensce has prooved that there are no mirakcles&udq.eudq;&p.es; No: the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle&p.es; For immagine whatever fact you may, it is not in itself a miracle in the absolute sense &.and; there arone isthere areone is in itself not not more or less mirakculeous than the other&p.es; I heard once I heard once I once heard ina in a preacher in a Cambridge Cchurch say that of course there were still mirakcles happening only look at the tiny little seed from which a trees grows&p.es; But is this more is wrong for is this more mirakculeous than that a stone falls or in fact any thing which happens whatever happens! Again we see that we have used the term &udq.sudq;miracle&udq.eudq; in a relative &.and; an absolute sense&p.es; In the roelative sense it simply meant a hitherto unknown kind of event&p.es; wWell that's a trivial meaning&p.es; But when we are tempted to use it in what I would like to kcall a deep meaning sense then it means we want it to mean that we wonder at it not becoause of its the rarity of what has happened the event but because what has happened has happened whatever has happened&p.es; And here we have the misuse of the word &ldq.sldq;&udq.sudq;to wonder&udq.eudq; which we talked about previously&p.es; — Editor's paragraph division. In fact 19 what I then called to wonder at the existence of the world I might have equally well described by saying to regard to as the experience of looking at existensce as a mirakcle by saying to regard to look at existensce as a miracle as the experience of looking at existensce as a miracle&p.es; Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world is the miracle of the existence of language but this would not account for a fact being important the absolute importance of but what does it mean to notice that this miracle some times &.and; not at other times&qm.eis; For of course the expression &ldq.sldq;&udq.sudq;miracle at the For all I have said by shifting the expression of the miraculous from ianinan expression by means of language to the expression by the existence of language, all I have said is again that we can not express what we want to express &.and; that all we say about it is remaines nonsense&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. Now the answer to all this will seaem perfectly clear to many of you&p.es; You will say: Well if certain experiences constantly tempt us to attribute a quality to them which we call absolute or&unread; ethical value &.and; importance this simply shows that by these words we do&bar;not do not mean nonsense &unread;&unread; that after all what we mean by saying that an experience has absolute value is just a fact &.and;like&.and;like other facts 20 &.and; that is to say that my contention in the beginning of this paper when I said that no describable fact could ever be or imply an absolute judgment was wrong&p.es; Now when this is urged against me I say (immediately) see perfectly clearly as it where in a flash of light, not only that no description that could I can think of would do to describe significantly these experiences, but that I would reject every explanation that anybody could possibly suggest ab initio on the ground of its significance&p.es; That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical becoause I had not jyet found the significant explanation expression but that thereir nonsensicality was thereir very essence for all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world &.and; that is to say beyond language&p.es; Editor's paragraph division. But this is just &unread;impossible&p.es; My whole tendency &.and; as I believe the tendency of all those who ever tried to talk or write about Ethics &.and; religion was to run against the boundaryies boundary boundaries of language&p.es; This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely, hopeless&p.es; &.and; still I feel respect for it &.and; would not for my life ridicule it&p.es; I will sum up&p.es; I therefore believe that so far as Ethics springs from the desire to sa express say something about the ultimat ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute important it can be no 21 science, that is to say what it saiys does not add to our knowledge in any sense&p.es; But it is a document which I of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply &.and; I would not for my life ridicule it&p.es; of scientific expression they are a misuse of language in fact they are nonsense&p.es; The word &udq.sudq;to wonder&udq.eudq; has of course a good sense which we all understand if it means to wonder at a certain state of things to wonder that such &.and; such is the case&p.es; It has a good &.and; clear sense to say that I wonder at some unusually dressed man as I have never seen before or at some strange sound etc&p.abbr; etc&p.abbr; It is also clear what it means to waonder at the existence of say a building which you had thought had been pulled down long ago for here it has a meaning to say &udq.sudq;I did not think that this building still existed&udq.eudq; or to say that it does exist&p.es; On On the other hand it's nonsense &.and; not a prop&p.abbr; at all to say that colour &.and; sound exists &.and; for this reason it's nonsense to say that I wonder at their existence&p.es; Now the correct wright expression of what we mean when we say that colour &.and; sound etc&p.abbr; exist is not a proposition at all but really the vocabulary Galstonsche Photogr&p.abbr; Sense of life, what makes life worth living Worth&p.es; Value, importance Ethics is the enquiry into what is good&p.es; Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable&p.es; Ethics is if anything the natural science of value&p.es; Distinction between relative &.and; absolute value&p.es; Examples&p.es; Statements of relative value, goodness or importance are statements of facts which are in no way problematic&p.es; KContrast to judgments of absolute value&p.es; Attitude of the Jjudge to the judged&p.es; No Sstatement of fact is or implies an absolute judgment&p.es; Science &.and; the whole realm of propositions contains no absolute no ethical judgment&p.es; Still let us investigate such absolute judgments &.and; that we can only do by investigating the cases where we are tempted to make absolute judgements&p.es; I will describe an experience which I allways must think about when I want to know what I mean by absolute importance&p.es; The experience of wondering at the world at the Eexistence of the Wworld&p.es; Let us analyse this verbal expression of my experience&p.es; It is nonsense&p.es; Expression of existence &.and; possibility&p.es; &lb;There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so&p.es;&rb; Cf. facsimile: Drawing with text, possibly: "The order of even[ts]", "Will", "Fr[eedom]".