Vincent Vincke

Although A Lecture on Ethics is commonly interpreted against the backdrop of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, this article argues that such a framing is methodologically misleading. By November 1929, Wittgenstein had abandoned the project of a phenomenological language and reoriented his philosophy towards the clarification of ordinary language and its grammar. The lecture should therefore be situated within his middle-period work rather than read predominantly through a Tractarian lens. Accordingly, this article develops a grammatical reading along three connected threads from Wittgenstein's middle writings: (1) the distinction between physical (im)possibility, determined by experience, and logical (im)possibility, determined by grammar; (2) (un)imaginability as an apparent criterion of logical (im)possibility; and (3) Wittgenstein's warning that both are readily distorted – not only by our misgivings about language (difficulties of the intellect) but by what we desire and expect from it (difficulties of the will). On this basis the lecture is reread. First, Wittgenstein’s denial of ethical propositions and ethical facts is shown to turn on logical rather than physical impossibility – on grammatical exclusion, not empirical absence. Second, a tension in his treatment of absolute experiences dissolves: his claim that we cannot imagine the world not existing is neither a psychological nor an ultraphysical assertion but a grammatical reminder, since the world’s existence admits no conceivable negation and functions as a condition of sense. Third, his distinction between relative and absolute miracles is read as grammatical – to call something an absolute miracle is, by definition, to take it under a description that excludes explanation – locating the absolute not in the experience or any object but in the grammatical status under which the world is apprehended. Finally, the inclination to run against the limits of language is separated from the desire to go beyond them: the utterances absolute experiences prompt need not betray an ultraphysical conception of ethics; what must be resisted is rather the temptation to construe them ultraphysically – a difficulty of the will, not merely of the intellect.

This article aims to challenge the idea that the ‘Middle Wittgenstein’ restricted himself to a so-called ‘calculus’ approach to aesthetics, i. e., to a conception of aesthetic language and judgement as rigidly determined by the rules of ‘autonomous systems’, and thereby allocated only a minor role to human practice and agency. The incompleteness of such a view will be addressed by highlighting the various ‘anthropological’ considerations that guided Wittgenstein’s treatment of aesthetics in his 1933 Cambridge lectures. This will be done by inquiring into his discussions about (1) the word ‘beautiful’. By reflecting on this ‘difficult case’, Wittgenstein came to illustrate the limitations of the calculus approach, anticipate the methods of the Blue Book, and direct his gaze to ‘actual aesthetic controversies and enquiries’, as well as (2) his ‘propaganda for a descriptive rather than explanatory method’ in aesthetics. By critiquing Frazer and the conflation of aesthetics and psychology, Wittgenstein argued for a descriptive aesthetics where perspicuous presentations and a person’s aesthetic puzzlement play a central role. Lastly, (3) Wittgenstein’s conception of ‘ideals’ in aesthetics will be clarified in relation to the judgements and the language of musicians, painters, architects, etc., as well as in relation to our own accounts of aesthetic practices.