Abstract
This chapter discusses Edward Harcourt’s recent criticism of Cora Diamond’s account of Wittgensteinian moral philosophy, and the view she associates with Wittgenstein that ethics has no specific subject matter. I argue that Harcourt has misconstrued Diamond’s account, and that his own proposal for what a Wittgensteinian moral philosophy would be like is not consistent with what Wittgenstein says about morality. In particular, Wittgenstein’s suggestion in his later philosophy that goodness is not a quality or property of actions in addition to their other properties lends further support to Diamond’s account of ethics as devoid of subject matter that could be identified in terms of distinctively moral concepts. Through my discussion of this issue I hope to clarify and reinforce the challenge that Diamond’s account poses for traditional moral philosophy which sees as its goal the development of an abstract theory of moral goodness the purpose of which is to account for all instances of goodness in an ethical sense.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Lovibond discusses Diamond’s critique of her 1983 account in Lovibond (2002, 34ff.).
- 2.
See Kuusela 2018, 41–51 for discussion and justification of this interpretation.
- 3.
Edited notes were published by G.E. Moore (1954, 1955) and Alice Ambrose (1979). More recently Moore’s complete notes were published by Stern, Rogers, and Citron eds. (2016). Although the style of Ambrose’s and Moore’s notes is rather different, with Moore’s including more detail, they seem to give a reliable account of what Wittgenstein said on the issue of goodness in that both mention the same examples and employ the same terms. (For discussion of the different set of lecture notes, see ‘Editorial Introduction’ in Stern et al. 2016).
- 4.
Colour words do have specialized uses that depend on the object. For instance, a blue face and red wine are not blue or red in quite the usual sense. However, it seems that these uses can be treated as what they seem to be, specialized. They are used as names for special cases rather than as descriptions. If so, such cases do not indicate that colour concepts function like goodness does according to Wittgenstein.
- 5.
I would like to thank Maria Balaska, Lars Hertzberg, and Sofia Meléndez Gutiérrez for comments on a draft version of this essay.
Bibliography
Diamond, Cora. 1996. Wittgenstein, Mathematics, and Ethics: Resisting the Attraction of Realism. In The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. Hans Sluga and David Stern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harcourt, Edward, 2019. ‘Moral Concepts, “Natural Facts” and Naturalism: Outline of a Wittgensteinian Moral Philosophy, Benjamin De Mesel and Oskari Kuusela eds., Ethics in the Wake of Wittgenstein. New York: Routledge.
Kuusela, Oskari. 2018. Wittgenstein, Ethics and Philosophical Clarification. In Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought, ed. Reshef Agam-Segal and Edmund Dain. New York: Routledge.
———. 2019. Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy: Re-examining the Roots and Development of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2020. ‘Wittgenstein and the Unity of Good’. European Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 428–444.
Lovibond, Sabina. 1983. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2002. Ethical Formation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moore, G.E. 1954. Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33. Mind 63 (249): 1–15.
———. 1955. Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33. Mind 64 (253): 1–27.
Mulhall, Stephen. 2002. Ethics in the Light of Wittgenstein. Philosophical Papers 31 (3): 293–321.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1951. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
———. 1958. Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations” Generally Known as the Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 1961. Notebooks 1914–1916. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
———. 1969. Briefe an Ludwig von Ficker. Salzburg: Otto Müller.
———. 1974. Philosophical Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 1979. In Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932–35, ed. Alice Ambrose. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
———. 1993. Lecture on Ethics. In Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. James Klagge and Alfred Nordmann. Indianapolis: Hackett.
———. 2000. Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, The Bergen Electronic Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (References by manuscript/typescript number.)
———. 2009. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
———. 2016. Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933: From the Notes of G.E. Moore, ed. David Stern, Brian Rogers, and Gabriel Citron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kuusela, O. (2021). Defending Diamond Against Harcourt: Wittgensteinian Moral Philosophy and the Subject Matter of Ethics. In: Balaska, M. (eds) Cora Diamond on Ethics. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59219-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59219-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-59218-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-59219-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)