Wittgenstein's Ethical Thought

Ludwig Wittgenstein is not generally regarded an ethical thinker. He is typically taken to be preoccupied with themes in the philosophy of language and mind that are presumed to be external to or independent of ethics. But there has, in recent years, been a growing tendency to see his preoccupation with these topics as having significant implications for ethics. This book offers a systematic account of Wittgenstein's unique ethical thought, both in his early and in his later writings. It challenges the widespread view that Wittgenstein had a vision of language and subsequently a vision of ethics by showing how the two are actually integrated in his work on meaning and his philosophical method per se. This significant integration retrieves the interdependence of grammar and ethics, and allows us to reframe traditional problems in moral philosophy that are presumed to be external to questions of meaning.

Yaniv Iczkovits is Post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University, USA, and the New School for Social Research. He has been researching and teaching Wittgenstein and early twentieth century moral philosophy for the past ten years. Iczkovits is a published writer whose books have been translated into several languages, and a political activist for human and animal rights.