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Ethiek en logica in de Tractatus. Verkenning van een analogie
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, Volume 115, Issue 2, May 2023, p. 126 - 138
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- 01 May 2023
Abstract
Ethics and Logic in the Tractatus. Exploring an Analogy
I explore an analogy between logic and ethics, as Wittgenstein understands them in the Tractatus. In the first section, I argue that Wittgenstein regards logic as a condition of the possibility of meaning, in the sense that logic makes meaningful language and thought possible. In section two, I ask why Wittgenstein calls both logic and ethics ‘transcendental’. I suggest that, while logic is a condition of the possibility of semantic meaning, ethics is a condition of the possibility of existential meaning. Without ethics, life could not be meaningful. In section three, I show that harmony and agreement play a crucial role in Wittgenstein’s accounts of logic and ethics. A meaningful proposition can be true or false, a meaningful life can be happy or unhappy, and both truth and happiness consist in some kind of harmony or agreement with reality.