Text

MS 139a

 

12 loose leaves, 24 pages

 

This is the earlier of two manuscript versions of the so-called “Lecture on Ethics”, a paper given at a meeting of the Heretics Club in Cambridge, on 17 November 1929, that is, roughly ten months after Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge. (The Heretics played a great role in the development of Ramsey’s intellectual life, and Ramsey in his turn was — as the preface to Philosophical Investigations attests — a person of great importance to Wittgenstein.)

            The text of the lecture proper can be found on pages I to V and 6 to 21. The verso of p. 17 (leaf 10) shows a drawing of unclear import, which is probably unrelated to the content of the Lecture on Ethics. The versos of pp. 15 and 16 (leaves 8 and 9) contain a crossed-out early draft of parts of the Lecture.

            This manuscript of the Lecture contains more corrections than the comparatively clean copy 139b; this fact is one reason for regarding it as the earlier of the two manuscript versions. (In addition, there is a typescript of the Lecture — TS 207.)

            The lecture is of great interest, as it contains the only sustained treatment of (vaguely) ethical questions Wittgenstein is known to have produced. A question of particular importance concerns the extent to which relevant remarks in the Tractatus can be seen as anticipating what Wittgenstein says in the Lecture.

            A diplomatic version of MS 139a and comments can be found in Lecture on Ethics, ed. by Eduardo Zamuner, Ermelinda Valentina Di Lascio and D. K. Levy (Malden, MA, & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).