Abstract

I argue here that an adequate appreciation of Wittgenstein's philosophy requires the recognition of what I call the "moral dimension" of his writing. By this I mean that Wittgenstein's work never addresses itself merely to technical problems in philosophical logic, the philosophy of mathematics, or the philosophy of language. Instead, a central task of his work is to alter his readers' relationship to language, and thereby how they think about the contexts in which philosophical problems arise. I call this the moral dimension of Wittgenstein's writing because it is essential to that writing that the kind of change that Wittgenstein hopes to effect in his reader can only come about through the same sort of sensitivity, honest self-reflection, and integrity that are often thought to be requirements of an agent in specifically moral contexts. I argue further that the connections between these characteristics, our relationship to language, and the problems of philosophy, form an important motivation for Wittgenstein's preoccupation with language in the first place. Therefore, a grasp of this aspect of his writing is integral to a proper understanding of Wittgenstein as a philosopher. Because Wittgenstein's relation to this dimension of his work changed in important ways between the period in which he wrote the Tractatus and the period in which he composed his later work, understanding this aspect of Wittgenstein's work cannot be separated from understanding his struggle to find a more mature concept of philosophical writing. In fact, this problem suggests yet another way in which we can interpret the much-debated transition between the early and the later Wittgenstein. Accordingly, I show how one can read the Tractatus as embodying a moral dimension in one sense, and later works such as the Philosophical Investigations as embodying this in a quite different sense