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Ladies & Gentlemen. Before I begin to speak about my subject ˇproper let me make a few introductory remarks. I feel I still have great difficulties in communicating my thoughts to you & I think some of them may be deminished by mentioning them to you beforehand. The first one, which allmost I needn't mention, is, that English is not my native tongue & my expression therefore often lacks that precision & subtelty which would be desirable if one talks about a difficult subject. All I can do is to ask you to make my task to easier by trying to get at my meaning can inspite of the faults which I will constantly be commiting against the English grammar ◇◇◇ ˇetc. The second difficulty which I will mention is this, that probably many of you come up to this lecture of mine with slighly wrong expectations. And to set you right in this point I will say a few words about the reason for choosing the subject which I have chosen: When your former secretary honoured me by asking me to read a paper to your society, my first thought was that I would certainly do it & my second 2 thought was that if I
3 goal which it leeds
to.
That's to say: he either thinks „I understand all he
says, but what on earth is he dr[y|i]ving at” or else he
sees what thinks „I see what he's driving at, but
how on earth is he going to get there”.
All I can do is, again, to ask you to be patient & to
hope that in the end you may see both the
4 faces on the same photogra⌊p⌋hic plate
in order to get the picture of the typical features they all
ha[ve|d] in comon.
And as by shewing to you such a collective photo I could make
you see what is the typical – say – chinese
face so if you look through the row of synonyms which I will
5 I say that this is a good chair
this means that the chair serves a certain predetermined purpose
& the word good here has
only meaning so far as this purpose has been previously fixed
upon.
In fact the word good in
the ˇrelative sense simply means coming up to a
certain predetermined standard.
So ˇThus when we say that this man is
a good pianist we mean that he can can play
pieces of a certain degree of difficulty
[in|wi]⌊th⌋ a certain degreeable ⌊of⌋
dexterity.
And similarly if I say that it's important for me
not to cach cold I mean that caching a cold
produces certain describable disturbances in my life & if I say that
this is the right road I mean that it's the right road
relative to a certain goal.
Used in this way these expressions dont present any
very difficult or deep problems.
But this is not how Ethics uses them.
Sup[o|p]osing that I could play
Te⌊n⌋nis & one of you saw me playing
& said „well you play pretty badly ” &
suppose I answered „I know, know I'm playing badly
but I don't want to play any better”
All, the other man could say [is|wou]⌊ld
be⌋ is would be „Ah then
that's all right”.
But suppose I had told one of you
6 a preposterous lie & he came up to me
& said „You're behaving like a beast”
& then I were to say „I know I behave badly, but
then I don't want to behave any better”.
Would
7
Suppose one of you were an omnicient person
& therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the world
dead or alive & that he also knew all the states
of mind of all human beings that ever lived.
And suppose th⌊i⌋s man wrote all he knew & that is all
that can be known int a big book.
Then th⌊i⌋s book would contain the whole description of the
wo⌊r⌋ld; and what I want to say is, that this book would contain
nothing that we would call an ethical judgment or anything that
would logicaly imply such a judgment.
It would of course contain all relative judgments of value &
all true scientific propositions & in fact all true propositions
that can be made⌊.⌋◇◇◇
But all the facts described in this world would, as it were,
stand on the same level & in the same way all propositions
stand on the same level.
There are no propositions which, in any absolute sense, are sublime,
important, or trivial.
Now perhaps some of you will agree to that & be reminded of
Hamlets words:
nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so!
But this again could lead to a
misunderstanding.
What Hamlet says seems to imply that good 8 & bad, though not qualities
of the world outside us, are atributes of our states of
mind.
But what I w mean is that a 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 we read the description of
a murder, with all its details physical & psychological
the mere descr[e|i]ption of these facts will contain nothing
which we could call an ethical judgment
proposition.
The 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 emotion or we might read about the pain or rage caused by
this murder in other people when they heard of it, but there will simply be
facts, facts, & facts but no Ethics. –
And now I must say that if I contemplate what Ethics
realy would have to be if there were such a science,
this ˇresult seems to me quite obvious.
It seems to me obvious that nothing we could ever think or say
should be the thing.
That we cannot write a scientific book, the subject matter of which
we could be intrinsically sublime, & above all other
subject matters. 9
I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor, that, if a man could
write a book on Ethics, which realy was a book on
Ethics, this book would⌊,⌋ with an explosion, destroy all the
other books in the world. –
Our words⌊,⌋ used⌊,⌋ as we use them in
science, are vesels capable only of containing and conveying
meaning & sense, natural meaning & sense.
And Ethics, if it is a⌊n⌋ything, is
super natural[. O| & o]ur words will only
express facts; as a teacup will hold only a teacup
full of water & if I were to 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 there is no sense in talking about the right
road apart from such a predetermined goal.
Now let us see what we could possibly mean by the expression
„the, absolutely, right
road⌊”⌋[?|.]
I think it would be the road which
everybody on seeing it would, with logical
necessity, have to go, or be ashamed
10 independent of his
tastes and inclinations, would,
necessarily, bring about or be ashamed feel
guilty for not bringing about.
And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a
chimera. –
No state of affairs has ˇin itself
the⌊,⌋ what I would like to call, the coercive power of an
absolute judge. –
Then what
11 experience presents itself to me which
therefore is, in an sense, my experience par
excelence & this is the reason why, in talking to
you now, I will use this experience as my first & foremost
example.
(As I have said before, this is an entirely personal matter
& others would find other examples more
s⌊t⌋riking)
I will describe this experience in order, if possible, to make you
recall to your ◇◇◇ the same or similar
experiences, so that we may have a comon ground for
our investigation.
ˇI believe [T|t]he best way of describing
12 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 & clear sense to sa
say that I wonder at something being the case, we all understand
what it means to say that I wonder at the size of a dog which is bigger than
anyone I have ever seen before, or at any thing which⌊,⌋ in the
13 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 blue.
But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at
a tautology.
Now the same applies to the other experience which I have mentioned, the
experience of absolute safety.
We all know what it it means in ordinary life to be
safe.
I am safe in my room, when I cann't be run
over by an Omnibus.
I am safe if I have had whooping cough &
cann't therefore get it again.
To be safe essentially means that it is physically impossible that certain
things should happen to me, & therefore it's nonsense to say
that I am safe whatever happens.
Again this is a misuse of the word „safe” as the
othe⌊r⌋ example was a misuse of the word „existence”
or „wondering”.
Now I want to impress on you that a certain characteristic misuse of our
language runs through all ethical & religious
expressions.
All these expressions seem, prima facie, to be
ˇjust similes.
ˇThus [I|i]t seems that when we are using the word
right in an ethical
sense, although what we mean, is not what we mean
right in its trivial sense,
it's something similar, and [if| when]
14 we say „this is a good
fellow”, although the word
good here is not
here does⌊n't⌋ mean what it means in the sentence „this
is a good football player” there & seems to
be seems to be some
15 constantly to be using similes.
But a simil[y|e] must be the simile for
something.
And if I can
16
should ˇseem to have supernatural
value.
Now there is a way in which I would be tempted to meet this
paradox:.
Let me first consider again our first experience of wondering at the
existence of the world & let me describe it in a slightly
different way:
We all know, what in ordinary life would be called a miracle.
I⌊t⌋ 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
lions head & began ˇto
roaring.
Certainly that would be as extraordinary a thing as I
can immagine.
Now whenever we would should have
recovered from our surprise, what I would suggest would be to
fech a Doctor & have the case
scientifically investigated & if it were not for hurting
him I would have him vivisected.
And where would the miracle have got to[,|?]
for it is
clear that when we look at it in this way everything
miraculous ⌊has ⌋ would have disappeared; unless what we mean by this term is
merely that a fact has not yet been explained by science, which
ˇagain means that we have hitherto failed to group this fact
with others in a scientific system.
This shews that it is absurd to say then „science has
proved that 17 there are no
miracles”.
No, ˇThe truth is that the scientific way of
looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle.
For, immagine whatever fact you may, it is not in itself
miraculous in the the absolute sense of that
term.
For we see now that again we have been using the word
„miracle” in a relative & an absolute
sense.
And I will now describe the experience of wondering at the existence of
the world by saying: it is the experience of seeing the world as a
miracle.
Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the
miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition
in language, is the existence of language itself.
But what then d⌊o⌋es it mean to be aware of this
miracle at 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
ex⌊i⌋stence of language, all I have said is again that we cannot
express what we want to express & that all we say about
the ˇabsolute miraculous 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 atribute a quality to them which we call absolute or ethical value & importance, this simply 18 shews that
◇◇◇ all by these words we don't mean
nonsense, that after all what we mean by saying that an experience has
absolute value is just a fact like other facts & that all
our difficulties ⌊ it⌋ comes to is, that we have
not yet succeeded in finding the correct logical analysis of
what we mean by our ethical & religious expressions. –
Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a
flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of
would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject
every significant description or 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 jet found the correct
expression⌊s⌋, but that there
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 significant language.
My whole tendency & I believe the tendency of all men who ever
tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to
run against the boundaries of language.
This running against the walls of our cage
19 is perfectly, absolutely, hopeless. –
Ethics, so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the
ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable can be no
science.
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
personaly cannot help respecting deeply
& I would not for my life ridicule it.
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