I
Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen!Before I begin to speak about my subject proper let me say a few introductory words. I feel that I will have very great difficulties in communicating the thoughts which I want to communicate, to you & I want to mention some of these difficulties because I think that this may possibly diminish them. The first I will mention – but by no means the greatest – is that, as you¤ know, English is not my native language & my expression will therefore not be as clear & precise as it would be desirable when one has something very difficult to communicate. Please help me in my task of making myself understood by overlooking as much as possible the faults against the English grammar which will constantly occur in my speech. The second difficulty which I will mention seems to me to be by far more serious & to explain it I must tell you why I have chosen the subject which I have chosen. 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 & the second was this: I said to myself that if I had 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 & not to
illuse || misuse
the time that I was given to speak
to you by either explaining some
scientific matter to you which to
be properly explained would need a
course of lectures or an audience
specially trained in one particular line of
thought & that I would still less
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 (& which it is
not a bit necessary that you
should) & to gratify the very lowest
of modern desires viz. the superficial
curiosity about the latest discoveries
of physicists, psychologists & logicians || scientists
I decided – I say – that I should
use this opportunity to speak to
you not as a logician, still
less as a cross between a scientist
& a journalist but as a human
being who tries to
tell his fellow || other human beings something
they || which some of them
might possibly find
useful, I say useful not interesting.
The third and last difficulty I will
mention is one that applies to || adheres to
most philosophical subjects || explanations & it is this that it sometimes
is almost impossible to explain a
III
matter in such a way that the hearer at
once sees the ways || roads || road he is lead & the
end || goal to which it leads. That is to say
it so very often happens that
the hearer thinks “I understand
perfectly what he is saying || says but
what on earth is he driving at” or
else that he sees what one is
driving at & thinks “that's all very well
but how is he going to get there”.
This perhaps is the gravest
difficulty & all I
can do is to ask you to be
patient & to hope that in the end we
will see both the road & where
it leads to. – Now let me begin.
My subject is Ethics & I will
adopt the definition or explanation
which Prof. Moore has given in his
Principia Ethica.
He says there || which is: Ethics
is the general enquiry into what
is good. I will just modify this
slightly & say: “Ethics is the general
enquiry into what is valuable”. I
do
this because I want to include in my
notion of Ethics also what is
commonly understood to belong to the
subject matter of Aesthetics. The reason
for this will perhaps get clear
later on.
Now let me point out first
of all that in our definition of Ethics
I might have substituted many
other words for the word “valuable”.
And I will enumerate some of
them which seem to me to be
IV
synonyms so far at any rate as this || their meaning is
important to us and by enumerating
them I want to produce the same
sort of effect that 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. And
as by looking at || shewing to you such a photo
you can || I could make you see what is the typical,
say, Chinese face so if you look
as it were 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. Now there is the word
“valuable” or “value” or the word “good”
taken in a slightly wider sense perhaps.
Now instead of saying “Ethics is the
enquiry into what is valuable” I
might have said it is the enquiry into
what is of absolute importance or into
what is the meaning of life or into what
makes life worth living.
And if you hold all these expressions
together as
“value”, “good”, “great”, “right”, “sense of
life”, “that what makes life worth living”,
“worth” etc. you will I believe see
what it is I'm || I am concerned with.
Now the first thing I want you to
notice about all these expressions
is that they can all be used in two
V.
very different senses: I will call them
the relative & the absolute or ethical meaning || use.
The relative use of these words is their
use relative to some predetermined
end. When I say “this is a good piano”
I mean it comes up to a certain
standard of tone etc. which I have fixed & which
I conceive as its purpose. 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. 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. In all such
cases “good” simply means: coming
up to a certain standard which
I have previously fixed. The same
applies to the word “important” in
the relative sense. In this sense
we say something is important for
a certain purpose. The same applies
to “right”. The right road is that
which leads to the place I want
to go to. It is right relative
to the desired end. In this relative
sense the words “value”, “good”,
“importance” etc. are easily understood
& present no great problems.
Now in Ethics
these same words are used apparently
in an entirely different sense. Supposing
I could play the piano & one of you
6
a great connoisseur of piano playing
heard me & said, “Well you're playing
pretty badly” & suppose I answered¤
him: “I know I'm playing badly
but I don't want to play any
better”. All the connoisseur could
say would be “well then that's all
right”, & there would be an end to
the discussion. The connoisseur would
have judged me by certain
standards which he could if necessary explain & I
would agree that he had ranked
me rightly.
Now take another case
suppose I had told one of you a
preposterous lie
& this man came to
me & said “look here you have
behaved like a beast”¤ & now I
were to answer “Yes I know I behaved
badly but then I didn't want
to behave any better”. Could || Would he then say
“then that's all right”? Obviously
not. He would say “well you ought
to want to behave better”. The
difference was that this man was making
an absolute || ethical judgment whereas the
other connoisseur made a relative
judgment.
Now the essence of this
difference seems to me to be obviously
this: Every judgment of relative value,
goodness, importance etc. can be || is a
simple statement of facts & can be
put in such a form that it loses all
appearance of a judgment of value.
Instead of saying “this is the right
7
road” I can say equally well “this is
the road that leads me to where
I want to go”. “This is a good
piano
player” simply means that he can
play pieces of a certain degree of
complicatedness in a certain definable
way. To say “the violin has a good
voice” means it has a tone agreeable
to the ear & so on. Now what I
wish to contend is this that although
all relative judgments can be shown
to be statements of facts no
statement of fact can ever be or
imply what we call an absolute
that is ethical judgment. 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 world,
dead or alive who further knew & could describe all
the states of minds of all human
beings that ever were & suppose that
this omniscient person wrote all
he knew, that is everything that
is to be known, in a big book. Then
this book would contain the whole
description of the world. And what
I want to say is that this book
would then not contain anything that
we could || would call an absolute || ethical
judgment of value or anything that
would directly imply such a judgment. It
would of course contain all
relative judgments of value as for
8
instance that so & 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 & seconds.
The book would of course contain all possible
true scientific propositions & in fact
all ¤ significant & true propositions that
can be made. 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 & 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.
Now perhaps some of you will
agree to that & be reminded of
Hamlet's words ‒ ‒ ‒. But this again
could lead to misunderstanding. What
Hamlet says seems to imply that good
& bad are not qualities of the world
outside us but attributes of our states
of mind. But what I mean is that
the state of mind so far as we mean
by that a fact which we can describe
is in no ethical sense good or bad.If for instance in our world book an appalling murder is described || we read the description of an appalling murder in all the details physical & psychological || psychical that is with all the pains & anguish the victim had to endure with all the studied cruelty of the murderer the mere description of facts physical & psychical will contain nothing of 9
what || which we would || could say that this is an
ethical proposition. The event || murder
will be on exactly the same level
as any other event for instance the
falling of a stone. Certainly the
reading of this description might
cause us pain 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 & facts but no
Ethics. – 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. It seems to me
quite obvious that nothing we could
ever think or say should be the
thing. That we can't write a scientific book
the subject matter of which was || is
intrinsically sublime, above all other
subject matters. 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. Our words used
as we use them in science are vessels
capable only to contain & convey
meaning & sense, natural meaning
& sense. Ethics if it is anything
must be || is supernatural & our words
10
will only express facts as a teacup
will only hold a teacup full
of water & if I was to empty || pour out a gallon
over it. I said that so far as
facts & propositions are concerned
there is only relative value &
relative good, right etc. 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 & it is
quite clear to us all that 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 road. Now let us see what
we could possibly mean by such an || the
expression “the absolutely right road”. 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. Generally speaking, the
absolute good, if it is a describable
state of affairs, would be one that
everybody irrespective || independent of his tastes
and inclinations would necessarily
bring about
or feel guilty for not bringing about.
And I want to say that such a state
of affairs is a chimera. –
No state of affairs contains || has the coercive power in itself.
Then what do
all of us who are, like myself, still
tempted to use such phrases || expressions as
11
“absolute good”, “absolute value” etc. what
have they in mind & what do we try
to express? Now whenever I try
to make this clear to me || myself it is
natural that I should try to
recall in which cases
I would particularly || certainly use
these expressions & 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. What you would
do then would be to try and recall
some typical situation in which you
always felt pleasure, for, bearing
this situation in mind, all which
I would have to say to you about
pleasure would become concrete &,
as it were, controllable.
One man
would for instance choose as his stock
example of pleasure the sensation which
he has when taking a walk on a fine
summer's morning & or any || some such occasion. Now
in this situation I am if I want to
fix my mind on what I mean by absolute
or ethical value. And there in my case
it always happens that the idea of one
particular experience presents itself
to me || my mind which therefore is for me in a
sense the experience par excellence &
this is the reason why in talking to you now
I (will always) refer to this experience
particularly || I am using this || it as my first
& foremost example. (As I have said this
12
is really a personal matter & others
would find other examples more
striking.)
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. 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. And I am then inclined to use
such a phrase like || as “how extraordinary
that anything should exist”, or “how
extraordinary that the world should exist”.
I will mention another experience straight
away which I also know & which others
of you might be acquainted with & this
is what one might call the experience
of feeling absolutely safe. I mean
the state in which one says to oneself
I am safe nothing can happen to || injure me
whatever happens. Now let me consider
these experiences because they exhibit
I believe the very characteristics we
want to get clear about. 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.
Let me explain this: It has a perfectly
good and an intelligible sense to say
13
that I wonder at something being the
case. I || We all understand what
it means when I say that I wonder
at a dog which is bigger than any dog
I have ever seen before or at any
other thing which in the common sense
of the word is “extraordinary”. In every
such case I wonder at something being
the case which I could conceive not
to be the case. 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.
To say I wonder at such & such
being the case has only sense if
I can imagine it not to be the case.
In this sense one can wonder at the
existence of say a house
when one sees it &
hasn't seen || visited it for many years & has
imagined that it had been pulled down
in the meantime. But it is nonsense
to say that I wonder at the
existence of the world because I cannot
imagine it not existing. I could
of course wonder at the world round me
being as it is. For instance if I
had this || the 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. But
that's not what I mean. I am
wondering at the sky being whatever it
is. One might be tempted to say
that what I am wondering at is a
tautology, namely at the sky being blue
or not being blue. But then it's just
14
that it's nonsense to say that one
wonders at a tautology. The verbal
expression “do with it what I may”
remains nonsense & I think it
is essential that it should do
so. Now the same applies to that
other experience which I have mentioned
the experience of being safe || absolute
safety. We all know what it means
in ordinary life to be safe. I am
safe in my rooms when I cannot be
run over by an omnibus. I am safe
if I have had whooping cough once
& cannot therefore have it again. That is “to be
safe” essentially means that it is
physically impossible || improbable that certain
things should happen to me, & therefore
it's nonsense to say that I am safe
whatever happens. Again it is a
misuse of the word “safe” as the other example
was a misuse of the word “existence”.
Now I want to impress on you that
a certain characteristic misuse
of language runs through all
ethical & religious expressions. 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 & religious
propositions are really only similes &
that's || that is what they really seem to be. It
seems that when we are using the
word “right” in an ethical sense although
15
what we mean is not what we mean by “right” when
we say “this is the right road to
Grantchester” it's something similar &
when we say “this is a good fellow”
we don't mean it in the same sense
as when we say “he is a good football player” but there is some similarity.
And when we say “this || the life of this
man was valuable” we don't mean
it in the same sense as when we say
“this piece of jewellery is valuable” but
there seems to be some sort of
connection. Now all religious terms & notions
seem in this sense to be used as
similes or allegorically. For when we
speak of God & that he sees & hears
everything & when we kneel & pray to
him it is || seems obvious that all our terms
& actions are part of a big || great & elaborate allegory
which represents him as a human being
of great power whose grace we try to
win etc. etc.. Now this simile also extends over the two experiences which
I have described above in fact the
first of them wondering at the existence
of the world is I believe exactly what
people were referring to when
they said that God had
created the
world & the
experience of absolute
safety is described by saying that
we are safe under God's protection.
A third experience which belongs
to this realm is the experience of
feeling guilty & again that was described
16
by the phrase that God disapproves of our
conduct. I have said
that whenever we describe ethical
or religious experiences we seem to
use language only to make up similes.
But a simile must be the simile
for something & 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. Now
what happens to us in this case is
that as soon as we try to drop the
simile & try to state simply the facts
that stand behind them we find
that there are no such facts. And so
what at first appeared to be similes
now seems to be mere nonsense.
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 in some sense an intrinsic
an absolute value. But when I say
they are experiences surely they are
facts, they have taken place then &
there, lasted a certain definite time
& consequently are describable. And so, from
what I said some minutes ago I must
admit it is nonsense to say that
they have absolute value. And here
I am at || have arrived at the main point of
this paper & it is the paradox for
I know not how to call it that an experience
|| 17 a fact should have an absolute value.
And I will make the point still more
acute by saying, that an experience || a fact should
have a supernatural value.
Now the
way I would be tempted at first
to meet this paradox is this: Let
me consider again the experience of
wondering at existence & let me
describe it in a slightly different way: We all
know what in ordinary life would
be called a miracle: It obviously is
simply an event the like of which
we have never yet seen. Now suppose
such an event happened. Take the case
that one of you suddenly grew a lion's
head & began roaring || to roar; certainly that's
as extraordinary a thing as I can
imagine. Now whenever we would have
recovered from our surprise what
I would suggest is to fetch a
physiologist & have the case scientifically
investigated & if it were not for being afraid
of hurting him I'd have him vivisected.
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 “miraculous” is
merely that
a fact has not yet been explained
by science which again means merely that
18
we have hitherto failed to group this
fact with others in a scientific
system. But This means that it
has no sense to say “science has
proved that there are no miracles”.
No: the scientific way of looking
at a fact is not the way to look at
it as a miracle. For imagine whatever
fact you may, it is not in itself a
miracle in the absolute sense & there are || one is in itself not more or less
miraculous than the other.
I heard once || I once heard
a
preacher in a Cambridge church say
that of course there were still miracles
happening only look at the tiny little
seed from which a tree grows. But
this is wrong for is this more
miraculous than that a stone falls
or in fact any thing which happens
whatever happens! Again we see that
we have used the term “miracle” in
a relative & an absolute sense. In
the relative sense it simply meant
a hitherto unknown kind of event.
Well that's a trivial meaning. But
when we are tempted to use it in
what I would like to call a deep
meaning || sense then it means || we want it to mean
that we wonder at it not because of
the rarity of what has happened || the event but
because what has happened has happened
whatever has happened. And here we have
the misuse of the word “to wonder” which
we talked about previously. –
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 look at existence as a miracle || as the experience of looking at existence as a miracle. 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 what
does it mean to notice this
miracle some times & not at other times?
For all I have said by
shifting the expression of the miraculous
from an 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 & that all we say about it
is || remains nonsense.
Now the answer
to all this will seem perfectly clear to
many of you. You will say: Well if certain
experiences constantly tempt us to
attribute a quality to them which we
call absolute or ethical value &
importance this simply shows that
by these words we do not mean nonsense
that after all what we mean by
saying that an experience has absolute
value is just a fact like other facts
20
& 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. Now when this is urged
against me I (immediately) see perfectly || clearly as it were in a flash of light,
not only that no description that
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.
That is to say: I see now that
these nonsensical expressions were
not nonsensical because I had not
yet found the significant explanation || expression
but that their nonsensicality
was their very essence
for all I wanted to do with them was just
to go beyond the world & that
is to say beyond language. But
this is just impossible. My whole
tendency & as I believe the tendency of all those who ever tried to talk or write about Ethics & religion was to run against the
boundary || boundaries of language. This running
against the walls of our cage is
perfectly, absolutely, hopeless. & still
I feel respect for it & ◇◇◇ would not for my life
ridicule it. I will sum up. I therefore believe
that so far as Ethics springs from the
desire to express || say something about the
ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good,
the absolute important it can be no
21
science, that is to say what it
says does not add to our knowledge
in any sense. But it is a document
of a tendency in the human
mind which I personally cannot help
respecting deeply & I would not
for my life ridicule it. |
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