No. 75 (2026): Mayo-agosto
Articles

The Ethical in Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy

PDF (Spanish)
  • Silvio Mota Pinto
Silvio Mota Pinto Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Iztapalapa

Published 2026-03-04

How to Cite

Mota Pinto, S. (2026). The Ethical in Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy. Tópicos, Revista De Filosofía, 75, 243-275. https://doi.org/10.21555/top.v750.3240

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Copyright (c) 2026 Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein claims that there cannot be ethical propositions. However, in the Lecture on Ethics he tells us about his own ethical-religious experiences, which are described through statements like “I wonder at the existence of the world”, “I am safe whatever happens”, or “God disapproves of our conduct”. If ethics can find no adequate expression in language, then how could the author of the Lecture convey to us his ethical experiences? In this article, I propose an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s conception of the ethical which reconciles the ineffability of ethics with its apparent expressability in Wittgenstein’s early texts. I also show that this interpretation can account for the idea that the very writing and publication of the Tractatus was, for its author, an ethical act: his way towards the philosophical revelation that ethics belongs to the domain of paradox and nonsense because it is situated outside the space of the world’s possibilities. 

Keywords

  • early Wittgenstein,
  • critique of language,
  • ethics of the Tractatus,
  • limits of sense,
  • facts,
  • values,
  • the ineffability of the ethical,
  • saying,
  • showing,
  • the philosophical life,
  • the happy life,
  • the contemplation of thought
    • ...More
    Less
PDF (Spanish)

References

  1. Aristóteles. (1984). The Complete Works of Aristotle. 2. J. Barnes (ed.). Princeton University Press.
  2. Aristóteles. (2011). Protréptico. Metafísica. C. Megino Rodríguez y T. Calvo Martínez (trads.). Gredos.
  3. Aristóteles. (2014). Ética a Nicómaco. J. Pallí Bonet (trad.). Gredos.
  4. Carnap, R. (1928). Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Weltkreis.
  5. Carnap, R. (1988). La construcción lógica del mundo. L. Mues de Schrenk (trad.). UNAM.
  6. Diamond, C. (2000). Ethics, Imagination and the Attractions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. En A. Crary (ed.), The New Wittgenstein (pp. 149-173). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203449400_chapter_7
  7. Fairhurst, J. (2022). The Early Wittgenstein on Living a Good Ethical Live. Philosophia, 50, 1745-1767. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00485-0
  8. García-Carpintero, M. (1996). Las palabras, las ideas y las cosas. Editorial Ariel.
  9. Harcourt, E. (2007). Wittgenstein, Ethics and Therapy. En C. Jäger y W. Löffler (eds.), Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg (pp. 523-537). Ontos. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110329018.523
  10. Hawthorne, N. (1846). Mosses from an Old Manse. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  11. Kuusela, O. (2018). Wittgenstein, Ethics and Philosophical Clarification. En R. Agam-Segal y E. Dain (eds.), Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought (pp. 37-66). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180762-3
  12. Janik, A. y Toulmin, S. (1973). Wittgenstein’s Vienna. Simon and Schuster.
  13. Janik, A. y Toulmin, S. (1974). La Viena de Wittgenstein. I. Gómez de Llano (trad.). Santillana.
  14. MacIntyre, A. (1996). A Short History of Ethics. Notre Dame University Press.
  15. Monk, R. (1991). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Penguin.
  16. Moore, G. (1903). Principia Ethica. Cambridge University Press.
  17. Rogers, B. (2015). Generality in the Tractatus: Wittgenstein’s Critique of His Former Account in His 1930-33 Cambridge Lectures. [Conferencia no publicada]. Universidad de Iowa.
  18. Russell, B. (1905). On Denoting. En R. C. Marsh (ed.), Logic and Knowledge (pp. 39-56). Routledge.
  19. Russell, B. (1918). The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. En R. C. Marsh (ed.), Logic and Knowledge (pp. 177-281). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist19182843
  20. Stenius, E. (1960). Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus”. Blackwell.
  21. Tejedor, C. (2013). The Earlier Wittgenstein on the Notion of Religious Attitude. Philosophy, 88(343), 55-79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819112000538
  22. Williams, B. (2006). Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203969847
  23. Wittgenstein, L. (1921), Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung. En W. Ostwald (ed.), Annalen der Naturphilosophie. Band 14 (pp. 185-262). Verlag von Veit & Comp.
  24. Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. F. P. Ramsey y C. K. Ogden (trads.). Kegan Paul.
  25. Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Notebooks 1914-1916. Blackwell.
  26. Wittgenstein, L. (1965). Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics. The Philosophical Review, 74(1), 3-12. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183526
  27. Wittgenstein, L. (1969). Briefe an Ludwig von Ficker. Otto Müller Verlag.
  28. Wittgenstein, L. (1973). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. E. Tierno (trad.). Alianza.
  29. Wittgenstein, L. (1974). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. D. Pears y B. McGuinness (trads.). Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  30. Wittgenstein, L. (1982). Diario filosófico. J. Muñoz e I. Reguera (trads.). Ariel.
  31. Wittgenstein, L. (1989). Conferencia sobre ética. F. Birulés (trad.). Paidós.
  32. Wittgenstein, L. (1999). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. J. Muñoz e I. Reguera (trads.). Alianza.
  33. Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Diarios. Conferencias. J. Muñoz, L. F. Moreno Claros, I. Reguera, J. Sádaba, J. Castro y C. U. Moulines (trads.). Gredos.

Most read articles by the same author(s)