Ludwig Wittgenstein et Georg Henrik Von Wright sur l’existence des propositions éthiques

Abstract

This work aims to answer the question of whether ethics is a field where logic can legitimately extend. We examine this question through a debate between Wittgenstein and von Wright about the existence of ethical propositions. For Wittgenstein, logic deals with the necessarily true; it is therefore a priori. By its necessity, it avoids the contradictory and helps to say what is in the world. On the basis of this characterisation of logic, Wittgenstein believes that it cannot help to say what is ethical for two reasons: on the one hand, the referents of ethical discourse are not to be found in the world; on the other hand, the diversity of uses of the term “good” drowns ethics in a necessary relativism. For Wittgenstein, therefore, we must adopt a mystical position in ethics, applying the utmost silence to it. Von Wright, who also admits, following Wittgenstein, the “diversity of the good”, nevertheless stresses that despite this diversity, there are normative invariants that attest not only to the fact that ethics is rational, but also that the diversity of the good does not imply absolute relativism. Moreover, norms have both a prescriptive dimension that can be attached to a culture, and a descriptive dimension that makes them assessable by logic. With von Wright, we therefore have the development of the logic of norms or deontic logic, the aim of which is precisely to reconfigure logic in order to help it to say what is ethical. However, this project of a deontic logic was not as successful as expected, which is why von Wright ultimately returned to the original Wittgensteinian thesis. In the end, however, it appears that the assertion of the inexistence of ethical propositions is untenable. By presenting an interpretation of these authors’ thoughts within the framework of ecology, and by showing the intrinsic rationality of ethics, even so-called intuitionist ethics, we come to the conclusion that both authors recognise, implicitly, the existence of ethical propositions.