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Louis E. Wolcher, "A Meditation on Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics", Law and Critique IX/1 (1998), 3-35: My interpretation of Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics can be summarised in three propositions: (1) Wittgenstein's remarks say nothing "about" Ethics. Instead, they manifest Wittgenstein's radical predisposition to withhold his Ethical approval from texts which canonise or demonise particular, and therefore contingent, states of affairs. These states of affairs and ethical texts are describable as facts, whereas Wittgenstein wants it to be known that his sense of the word "Ethics" is unsayable. (2) Although it does not make any sort of claim about the meaning of the word "Ethics", the lecture nonetheless does offer itself as an ethical deed. This deed comes out in Wittgenstein's closing expression of personal respect for the human tendency to use ethical language to express ethical judgments, even though he classifies as nonsense all of what people say about the Ethical. I compare Wittgenstein's philosophy of Ethics with his philosophy of mathematics to clarify this aspect of my interpretation. 3) To respect something is to judge it worthy of respect. But what does it mean to valorise a tendency without also valorising particular manifestations of the tendency? Wittgenstein's respect for the general human tendency to talk ethics is ethically questionable because it either seems to embrace, indiscriminately, some horrific particular manifestations of the human tendency to talk ethics, or else it comes across as a vapid gesture whereby Wittgenstein the man weakly tries to attach himself to the ethical impulse in humanity, while all the while remaining coldly aloof from what people actually do when they give in to the impulse. e-mail: wolcher@u.washington.edu

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