LANGUAGE AND TRUTH OF AESTHETICAL AND ETHICAL PRACTICES
Philosophical Explorations after Wittgenstein
Keywords:
aesthitical, ethical, natural scienceAbstract
Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (TLP)1 remarked, “It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Aesthetics and Ethics are one and the same)” (6.421). Aesthetics and ethics are one and the same because they cannot be put into words as they are not concerning contingent matters of fact; they concern matters which cannot be otherwise. The logic of aesthetical and ethical discourses is different from that of the propositions of natural science. Like logic and unlike science, aesthetics and ethics are not discourses on contingent matters of fact and cannot be expressed in bipolar propositions. According to this view, there cannot be any truth value in the discourses on ethics and aesthetics as “The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science” (TLP 4.11). Wittgenstein famously summed up his early philosophy in the Tractatus: “What can be said at all can be said clearly and what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (Preface). Aesthetics and Ethics are included among the subjects that could not be said clearly and therefore must be passed over in silence. This looks like just the opposite of what we generally agree and practice. There are aesthetic and ethical discourses and they are fundamental to human forms of living. Wittgenstein also admitted that “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (TLP 6.522). The mystical would include all that is beyond what is the case and what cannot be given in propositions of natural science – aesthetics, ethics, philosophy, religion, etc.
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