Abstract
As we have seen, Anscombe’s recommendation to moral philosophers is that they put aside moral philosophy, at least for the time being. She does not, though, suggest that ethics in itself is either an impossible practice or an incoherent notion. In this chapter I want to look at some approaches to moral philosophy that she suggests, from those she considers possible but undesirable, to her primary recommendation and then to some secondary remarks sprinkled through “Modern Moral Philosophy” about how, and how not, to do moral philosophy if one were to do so, against her explicit but temporary advice. This will be the concern of the last part of the chapter. The following two chapters will look in more detail at particular ways of doing moral philosophy, specifically those suggested by Sabina Lovibond, Renford Bambrough, Cora Diamond, Iris Murdoch, and Charles Taylor.
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Notes
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations,Basil Blackwell, Oxford (1958), translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
Anscombe, G.E.M. An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (1971).
See Lovibond, Sabina, Realism and Imagination in Ethics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1983) and Bernard Williams, “Left-Wing Wittgenstein, Right-Wing Marx,” in Common Knowledge, Vol.! No.1, Spring 1991.
Schulte, Joachim. Wittgenstein, translated by William H. Brenner and John F. Holley, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York (1992).
See William H. Brenner, “Chesterton, Wittgenstein and the Foundations of Ethics,” in Philosophical Investigations, Vol.14 No. 4, October 1991.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Notebooks 1914–1916, edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1979), p. 72e
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Culture and Value,edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with Heikki Nyman, translated by Peter Winch, Basil Blackwell, Oxford (1980), p.3e and p.79e.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1961), 6.521. The Tractatus, as it is known, consists of seven remarks, numbered 1 — 7, remarks on these remarks, such as 1.1 and 1.2, remarks on these sub-remarks (1.11, 1.12), and so on. As is customary, I will refer to remarks from the Tractatus by number and not give a page reference.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig “A Lecture on Ethics,” in Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1951,edited by James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann, Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge (1993), p.43. Hereafter this lecture will be referred to simply as Lecture
See Conant, J. “Must We Show What We Cannot Say?” in The Senses of Stanley Cavell edited by R. Fleming and M. Payne, Bucknell Review (1989) p.273 footnote 10.
See Hare, R.M. Moral Thinking, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1981), p. 139.
Endo, Shusako Silence, translated by William Johnston, Taplinger, New York (1980).
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Richter, D. (2000). Is Moral Philosophy Possible?. In: Ethics after Anscombe. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1478-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1478-5_2
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