New draft with minor corrections, 27. 12. 2010

Minimum ethicsPreliminary Studies of Wittgensteinian morphological and pragmatist moral discourse

Kristijan Krkač

2010

Contents

Instead of an introduction 21. What is the morphology or the grammar of good? 52. Wittgenstein and the very idea of a grammar of good 133. Is it really necessary to write a manual or a book of cases? 204. A grammar of good, bad and permissible – what is it good for? 305. Concluding unscientific (morphological) postscript 39References 41

Abbreviations and a note

Wittgenstein’s works: BT = The Big Typescript, CV = Culture and Value (1998 edition), GB = Remarks on Frazer’s The Golden Bough, LC = Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, LD = Wittgenstein in Cambridge, Lectures and Documents 1911–1951 (2008 edition), LE = Lecture on Ethics, OC = On Certainty, PG = Philosophical Grammar, PI = Philosophical investigations (2001 and 2009 editions), PO = Philosophical Occasions, PPO= Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, RPP = Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, TLP = Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, WN = Wittgenstein’s Nachlass (Bergen Electronic Edition).

Other abbreviations: AR = axis remark, ER = empirical remark, FOL = form of life, GR = grammatical remark (hinge-remark), LG = language-game, WP = world-picture, α–good = functional meanings of “good”, β–good = value meanings of “good”.

Note. Wittgenstein’s lines are quoted or paraphrased, and commented under small letters in brackets (as (a), (b)…). Examples of remarks belonging to a worldview, namely grammatical, axes, and empirical remarks, concerning morals and ethics, are quoted under numbers in brackets (as (1), (2) …). By means of bullets (like here) some intermediate explications and interpretations are accentuated. Finally, by means of Boxes various excurses (from methodological, to conceptual) are introduced.

Acknowledgements and sources

I like to thank Josip Lukin (culture, history, and morphology), Maja Martinović (application, especially to various business sectors), Damir Mladić (general ethical theory), Nicholas Rescher (pragmatism), Duncan Richter (Wittgenstein), Neven Sesardić (method, and application), Peter Singer (general ethical theory), Matej Sušnik (method, and metaethics), and Anja Weiberg (Wittgenstein) for their valuable comments, objections, and suggestions concerning various parts of the text and many directions in which it is now more developed. I also like to thank all colleges and schools (colleagues and students as well) at which some parts of the text were delivered. Namely, during the elective course “Pragmatist ethics” at Philosophical Faculty of the Society of Jesus in Zagreb, Croatia, 2005/2006; at Annual Symposium of Philosophical Faculty at University of Rijeka, Croatia, 2007; during the course “Introduction to business ethics and CSR” at Zagreb School of Economics and Management, Croatia, 2007/2008, and 2008/2009; and during the elective course “An introduction to ethics, business ethics, and CSR” at Institut D'etudes Politique de Lille, University of Lille 2, France, 2009/2010. The topic of the present study is a further development of the idea presented in its rudiments in my book “Routine, Morality, and Pragmatism” (in Croatian, Zagreb, K.K., 2006) in the first chapter “Ethical training and incomprehensible mystery” (2006:14-26).

Instead of an introduction

Imagine yourself in your bedroom waking up one sunny spring Sunday morning, in your house, with your family, in your town, state, and on your planet. Everything looks okay. Yet something seems different, some finesse you still cannot pin down. You think to yourself “It is most likely my imagination, perhaps connected with my dreams which I cannot remember any more, perhaps it has to do with after work party yesterday evening”, or similar. So, you act as if everything is tolerable, and after a while you convince yourself that everything really is all right.

However, during the completely normal course of a completely average Sunday, so modestly suggested by almost everything except by your own mental states, which by the way really start to annoy you, say while doing homework with your children, you find out that the planet, by a sheer coincidence called Earth, is situated in a completely different solar system in a completely opposite part of the galaxy which strongly resembles Milky way. You find yourself completely surprised and confused. You frantically start to search the internet and you find that this is correct. “But how is this possible? Everybody’s here and they know me. And everything is here, our house, our neighbours, town, everything. Only I am somehow changed.” Finally, you conclude that you are on a Twin Earth and that you swap places with yourself in fact.

By the evening you find out that the purpose of this bizarre Twin Earth phenomenon isn’t just to move people from one Earth to another without their knowledge and permission, but that there is at least one additional slight difference as well. Namely, you find out that here there are no words like good, bad, or evil, in fact all words that an Earthling from your Earth would consider to be words belonging to a usual moral and ethical part of your vocabulary. Instead of these words, your twin wife, twin children, and all other people (including religious people, moralists, corporate officers engaged in CSR, university professors of ethics and their students, parents trying to teach their children to behave properly, and some other primates as well) simply say that something, which you would call morally correct or good action, is a standard procedure, a standard exception of a standard procedure, or an exceptionally proper performance given a non-standard situation in which some action needed to be performed and in which a doer was at the moment.

Now, surely nothing can shock you anymore, so you quietly go along. By the end of the next week you find out, or you just guess really, that people, when they say that something is or isn’t SP or LAP (which is usual abbreviation for “standard procedure” or “lege artis procedure”) don’t have neither similar mental states, that is thoughts, emotions, intentions accompanied with our discussions on moral issues, nor that there is any kind of a social atmosphere regarding this SP phenomenon. In other words, you don’t notice any difference in verbal or nonverbal activity while they say for instance “It’s raining” and “It’s SP”.

So, on the third week you start to search history, humanities, and especially philosophy, and you find out that these odd abbreviations like SP or LAP do not belong to the morality and ethics since they do not have these words but to the culture. You find out that there are highly theoretical discussions, there are many analyses and exegeses of ancient texts, models and practical applications of these theories, cultural codes of various kinds for various spheres of life and professions, many interesting disputes some of which are as old as this civilization, and some of which are new and concerned with new technologies and scientific advancement.

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You don’t know what to say, they simply do not see you think to yourself, so again you quietly go along. Years pass, you know now that you probably will never go back.

After 30 years you completely adapted yourself to his new world and you don’t remember the old one so clearly as before. You are spending your days sitting on a rocking chair on a porch with your two grandchildren in your lap, playing with them, thinking about your life from time to time.

One sunny spring Sunday morning you wake up, you go down to the kitchen to have a coffee and a cigarette and you see your grandchildren there having a breakfast. While asking them about the school you notice that they are eating quite fast probably in order to go out and play. As so many times before you make a remark that they should sit down, eat properly, not like animals. You stay completely dazed (thinking “What’s going on here, am I really back or everybody else switched places, not again”) by your granddaughter’s reply “Why grandpa? Is this no good? Are we doing something bad?”

On the occasion such as this I would like to point out that the present story has some important yet fine points that condense the whole discussion on the present topic which is particular pragmatist (Wittgensteinian style) minimum approach to what is habitually called ethics and morality. Some of these moments, stated in form of questions, are the following: Is it possible to defend morality and ethics of any kind whatsoever, as anything

more then a mere linguistic dispute or a dispute in general theory of human action?

Is there really so deep and unbridgeable gap between facts and values, moral descriptions and moral evaluations, moral and non-moral aspects of human actions?

Are morality and ethics proper parts of a culture, and consequently, are any moral or ethical disputes in fact mainly disputes over culture?

In the present study I will presuppose not just that the answers to these questions are affirmative, more to that, that to answer to these questions affirmatively is the clearest way to think about morality and ethics at least for humans in human forms of life. Other way around, it can be said that the hypothesis will be the following: If morality and ethics are composed of mere remarks on human languages and

human actions, if there is no relevant dissimilarity between facts and values, moral descriptions and moral evaluations, moral and non-moral aspect of human actions, and if morality and ethics are a proper parts of a culture, and consequently, any moral or ethical dispute is in fact mainly a dispute over culture, then is it possible to have morality and ethics in terms of being necessary aspects of human action.

In what follows it will be argued that this is possible no matter if all questions above are answered affirmatively.

This particular approach to ethics, while being quite close to some elements of pragmatist ethics (pragmatists, but personalists as well), ethics of communicative action (Habermas and his contemporary followers), ethical relativism, ethical nihilism (Nietzsche), and ethical minimalism (Wittgenstein), still is worlds apart from them. Morality and especially ethics as thinking about morality are so to say overcrowded with unnecessary items. Theories are overcrowded with technical disputes, applications of theories to a particular sphere or a particular issue with particular

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psychological, social, economic, and legal elements, and practical (moralist) advises with “keys”, “models”, “steps”, “cases”, and “manuals”.

As far as any overcrowdedness is kitsch or a bad taste in principle, so is our ethics too in terms of theories, applications, and practical advises. Now, in order to bypass this issue, which is not merely an aesthetical one, it is by all means necessary to engage in some kind of minimalisation of morality and ethics. However, such procedure does not mean formalisation, which does not help much (neither to logic, nor to ethics or metaethics). On the other hand forms of phenomena are all we have, so a kind of formalisation cannot be avoided. Yet, there is, or at least there should be an obvious difference between the logic of morality and the morphology of morality. Logic of morality is mostly “logic”, and only accidentally “of morality” and as such it is kitsch as well, since it is overcrowded, no matter if it is overcrowded with an absence. Morphology is examined here as a method of achieving this particular goal, or as a test of this particular view.

However, morphology of morality and ethics is not just the method but the very structure of phenomena of moral aspects of the human action, and finally the goal of examination as well. Now, to clear this obvious conceptual mess one can use the concept “remark” (being a grammatical, experiential, or axis remark) in order to name morphological result which is mainly achieved when one sees the pattern and therefore understands clearly. For morphology of phenomena one can use “a pattern of phenomena” and the very notion of “morphology” is therefore left for the method of observing and comparing phenomena and their parts. In short, in the present study human moral and ethical patterns will be

investigated via morphological method in order to get grammatical, empirical, and axis remarks which enable understanding in terms clear description of phenomena in question.

This particular task in the present study is performed throughout four chapters and a modest conclusion corresponding to this quasi-introduction. In the first chapter some elements of the morphology of good and bad are explicated and some differences between this and other methods in ethics as well. In the second chapter some elements of Wittgenstein’s idea of the grammar of good are interpreted and connected with the morphological method and goal as described in the first chapter. The third chapter deals with the idea of a manual or a book of cases as necessary for understanding pragmatist or minimal ethics. It concludes that such manual is rarely needed especially not for ethical training. The last fifth chapter examines the idea of constant and mostly unnecessary urge to explicate the grammar of good, bad, and permissible by most ethical theories.

The overall idea of pragmatist minimal ethics in short is that the morphological examination of human languages and of human cultures shows that morality and ethics are deeply entrenched in cultures as forms of life. This simple and perhaps intuitive observation should reflect on our ethics no matter if it is a general ethical theory, or an application of it to some sphere of life, to a profession, or to a particular practical issue. However, the way it reflects is of utmost importance here, and it does so in a manner that our ethics should be quite different, perhaps not in its internal form as much as in its external form that is to say in it’s embedness in our daily life and in our culture.

Consequently, much of what is one used to read in ethical textbooks here is criticized as an unnecessary overcrowdness as explicated previously, or as a simple exaggeration in various directions (such as unnecessary moralising of trivial cases, oversimplification of quite complicated issues, and similar). Therefore, for such

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viewpoints it can be said that they state too much (and therefore engage in, as H. G. Frankfurt notices, bullshit). On the other hand, morality and ethics evasion, avoidance, and escapism by and large (no matter if it is relativist, nihilist, existentialist, or simply linguistic or logical in its nature), represent unnecessary minimalism and oversimplification in terms of prohibiting of saying anything at all on some quite rare occasions when something should be said on the matter in question. Therefore, for such viewpoints it is claimed that they state too little.

Both of these radical viewpoints are stating too little or too much, but previously to that they are stating what they think they should state in the misleading way, or from the wrong perspective. So, the change of perspective is also one of goals here. In addition, all of these or similar moral or ethical viewpoints try to approach the very problems, while it is suggested here that one should try to understand what lies before the problem that is a standard practice embedded in a standard culture as a form of life.

What is suggested here as well is that the whole of a human form of life or of human culture is the “background” and the “rough ground” not just of understanding each and every particular human action, or any pattern of standard human action given in a particular culture, but of seeing, describing, and understanding these elements or aspects of human activities and human cultures among which a moral and ethical aspects are normal but minimal as well as any other such as usefulness, effectiveness, beauty, and similar aspects of our actions. To see human actions as human actions, and as parts of standard routines, deeply rooted in cultures they belong to is the prerequisite of understanding their moral aspects.

1. What is the morphology or the grammar of good?

Bernard Williams in “Ethics and Limits of Philosophy” concerning linguistic approach to ethical issues, especially regarding Wittgensteinians’ approach, says the following:

“In the ethical case, inasmuch as the problem is seen as the explanatory problem of representing people’s ability to make judgments about new cases, we do not need to suppose that there is some clear discursive rule underlying that capacity. Aristotle supposed that there was no such rule and that a kind of inexplicit judgment was essentially involved, an ability that a group of people similarly brought up would share of seeing certain cases as like certain others. This is what followers of Wittgenstein are disposed to believe about all human learning. At some eventual level they must be right: understanding a summary discursive rule would itself involve a shared appreciation of similarities. But this conception of the ability to arrive at shared ethical judgments goes further that that. It is not merely that the ability to use language requires a shared capacity to see similarities, but that the capacity to see ethical similarities goes beyond anything that can adequately be expressed in language. This is surely true, and is what Wittgensteinians would predict.” (Williams 1985:97-8)

Precisely that what Williams claims and implicitly asks is the topic of this study, namely, the morphology and the grammar of good which if carried out properly would end in a strange elucidation in favour of the remark about obliqueness and transparency of morality and needlessness of an ethical deliberation in vast majority of cases in daily life – or in defence of ethical minimalism and relativism at least concerning species 5618 in Borg jargon (a somewhat aggressive species in Star Trek sci-fi series), or species Homo Sapiens Sapiens in their own discourse. In other words, the present study deals with an issue which could be considered as an

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exciting one in many ways, to spell out at least two of these, it concerns ethics and moral values from so to say a pragmatist point of view, and it begins from Wittgensteinian ethics (not based in his TLP, rather in PI and later writings in which the morality is transparent in a culture).

Pragmatist point of view, no matter how knotty and somewhat naïve it may look like, it still has some important insights if one compares it with major ethical systems such as virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. Two of these are the following. If by present actions one produces more long-term costs then long-term benefits

to everyone relevantly included in suffering these consequences, then these actions are more probably morally incorrect then correct actions, no matter if they appear morally correct in short-term, especially in the light of the fact that in most of such cases one cannon relevantly exclude himself / herself as a carrier of the blame for some further reasons as for instance mild ethnocentrism. (A part of ethnocentrism is surely so to say a cultural egoism which ethically speaking perhaps is not relevant as a standpoint during the decision reaching process; however it is relevant a serious treat at the final stage of the same process.)

Box 1 This should not be confused with the slippery slope argument which runs as follows: if you take a first step A, as a result of a sticky sequence of events, step B will necessarily or very likely follow. B is clearly not acceptable. Therefore you must not take step A. Example: “Once public officials cross the line of accepting seemingly innocent gifts like bottles of wine, there is no stopping and the road to corruption is open.” Now, if accepting a bottle of wine and accepting a 100,000 € gift are not essentially different, as they are both to be seen as forms of corruption, and if accepting the larger bribe is clearly morally wrong, we should also refuse the bottle of wine.

The second one says that such calculation of long-term costs and benefits (in fact short-term financial costs and long-term values in terms of economic and non-economic benefits) should be additionally confronted with the mission, vision, and core values one struggles to achieve, namely with the projection of oneself one wants to become, and the world one wants to create precisely by such actions. Being capable of imagining oneself and the world from the future state backwards to the present in which one tries to creatively reach a decision and act accordingly is also quite important for pragmatist ethics standpoint.

If these two, namely a calculation and a vision are in clash, then the difficulty of a decision is similar as in any other way of reaching the decision; however it is at least closely hooked up with what really matters according to the pragmatist ethics that is to say with persons and actions, or with acting persons.

Now, this essay begins from the point of view of Wittgensteinian ethics in two senses, initially from principles to cases, namely from the very idea of “a grammar of good” toward particular cases. Both topics, pragmatist and Wittgensteinian ethics, are controversial in their own right, and especially if one takes them to be relevantly linked in a way that the later one determines the former one, to be precise, that Wittgensteinian ethics is in fact a kind of pragmatist ethics – European style. Regarding the title of the essay, it should be noted that no more than lesser parts of the essay are really a commentary on Wittgenstein’s ethics from his later writings,

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while greater potions of it are in fact our development of his ideas in different routes (that is the reason why the title of the essay is not for instance Wittgenstein’s ethics).

Now, regarding the crucial approach to an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s passages, it should be pointed out that if one takes seriously the fact that the time when the philosophy of language was considered to be First Philosophy is long gone, then one can understand the intention to equally emphasize Wittgenstein’s categories of language games (further abbreviated as LG) and forms of life (further abbreviated as FOL) and to apply them equally to his treatment of morality and ethics. That is why for instance G. H von Wright's approach from his book “Varieties of Goodness” which says: “By the varieties of goodness I understand the multiplicity of uses of the word good.” (Von Wright 1963 §:5) should be improved in the way that it concerns multiplicity of practices that we call good practices as well.

This implies the following. The first important note is that Wittgenstein rejected fact-value distinction as a strict and the relevant one, and that he advanced some kind of relativism (perhaps of rationality, knowledge, and of moral correctness as well since all of these are what they are only in relation to LGs and FOLs they belong to. Namely, there are practices which are practiced by vast majority in a FOL and these are good practices by being standard, lege artis, routine practices. There are even standards for exceptions, standards for non-standard exceptions, etc. By being good such practices belong to moral majority or moral culture.

However, there are practices practiced by various minorities and in accordance with more or less different standards. These belong to moral minority or moral subculture. Moral minorities belong to a FOL which is relevantly dissimilar with a FOL majority belongs to. They are members of the same society, but not of the same cultural level (they are relative to the FOL they belong to). (For instance criminals in any society share a separate FOL which is culturally more similar to a FOL of criminals of a different society then to a FOL of moral majority of a society they belong to. This is important in understanding a kind of fluency in net creation of international criminal organisations.) Practices by moral minority are bad only viewed from the perspective of moral majority, while from within a FOL they belong to they can be regarded as good (as shown in Table 1).

Table 1: FOL as the rough ground and the background of the morphology and the grammar of good

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Further motive for this approach to Wittgenstein's ideas is that the most books and papers on Wittgenstein’s ethics are written regarding his early works (from NB, TLP to LE), but only a small number of them regarding his later ethics (CV and PI for instance), such as already mentioned G. H. von Wright's “The Varieties of Goodness” (1963), or P. Johnston's “Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy” (1989); more to that, only few papers try to develop his later period ethical ideas (see Burbules and Smeyers for instance). Some elements of his approach to the topic could be found in various works concerning his social, cultural, and political ideas (see Bloor 1996; Nyíri 1976, 1982; Phillips 1996; Winch 2008). Of course some general interpretative ideas could be found in dictionaries (see Glock 1996; Richter 2004). The reason for this condition is nicely articulated by D. Richter regarding Wittgenstein's ethics in general:

„Writing about Wittgenstein and ethics is problematic for several reasons. He wrote too little and too much on the subject, ethics are both too central and too marginal to his work, and what he had to say about ethics is in some ways unconventional and yet in others quite orthodox.“ (Richter 2004:119)

Certain tension is constituted by the fact that he wrote too little on ethics while in the same time claiming that morality is essential. Regarding the fact that he wrote too little on the subject one should differentiate between “too little” in TLP and generally in early works, and “too little” in PI and generally in later works. In the present paper it will be explicated that he wrote “too little” on ethics in his later period because of the same reason why he wrote “too little” on certainty, colours, various qualia, etc. i.e. “on grammar”, namely, because a practice has to speak for itself. The mentioned tension goes backwards as well, since he claims too much by saying too little.

One supplementary detail should be mentioned as well, namely that a philosophical grammar in form of implicit or explicated grammatical or hinge, or axis remarks is a proper part of a world-picture (further abbreviated as WP). Besides hinges, there are experiential or empirical remarks, and axes remarks as well (which are, by most Wittgenstein scholars, by mistake considered as hinge-propositions). The last kind is formally speaking half-grammatical and half-empirical. For instance, if “Washing means using water and soap.” is a grammatical or hinge remark, and if “Willard is washing his hands properly.” or “We (humans) wash hands with water and soap before meal” are empirical remarks, then a remark, for instance “We (humans) do not clean our hands with mud.” could be regarded as an axis remark, completely implicit in practice, and explicated rarely if ever (perhaps in a situation when a child tries to wash its hands in muddy or dirty water or in a puddle). This difference should be regarded as fairly significant since it shows how a world-view or a world-picture (further abbreviated as WP) is related to its practices, or in other words, in which ways is our WP manifested by our FOLs and how it could be explicated by our LGs. Namely, empirical remarks (ER) describe particular actions, hinges (or

grammatical propositions GR) manifest rule-like forms of whole practices as a proper parts of our FOL (patterns of our culture) and they could be explicated, while axes remarks (AR) are almost always implicitly or tacitly present in any particular action, practice, or a whole FOL.

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They serve in various situations which are not standard, for instance during acquiring and teaching particular practice, or in times when there is a need for the change of a standard practice or routine, or when different FOLs clash (however, this last point is somewhat controversial because of Wittgenstein's complicated and possibly relativist notion of certainty, rationality and of morality as well).

Table 2: The morphology of good and bad

Morphology of good is related to “variety of uses of the word good” and its synonyms and antonyms, but it is related to variety of “our good practices” and to “our culture” as a whole of our customs, routines, standard, lege artis procedures, and our ways of clarifying our culture on various circumstances.

Without further investigation of morphology of good we will here just sketch general morphology of good and bad (as shown in Table 2).

There is also another issue concerning the morphology of good and bad. One should not forget that in vast majority of cases there are various courses of action one is free to choose. Therefore, comparing different options and recognising similarity between a particular course of action and a pattern of action in given circumstance is of utmost importance. Comparing suggests that good and bad are used relationally, namely as “Being worse then”, “being better then”, and “being almost equally good” in the following forms of arguments: “α is worst then β, therefore, one ought not to do is α”, “β is better then α, therefore, what one ought to do is β”, “α is almost equally good as β, therefore, it is not relevant what one chooses to do”.

Box 2 Say that one is confronted with a choice between two standard practices, namely saving a life and returning a property to its owner in the way that if one returns the property to its owner, then one will omit to save the life of the owner, and if one saves the life of the owner of the property, then one will omit to return a property to the same person. If one chooses to save the life of another person, then one acted not just in

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accordance with a particular standard procedure but in accordance with the relation to another standard procedure, and such relations are standard as well, say, “If there is no way to do both things, then to save a life is better then to return a property”.

The morphology and grammar of good and bad concerns LGs as much as FOLs. Regarding this difference between a LG and a FOL we will differ here between: human action (individual free human action, an issue of a theory of human

action), human action being good or bad (in terms of particular characteristic of a human

action among other characteristics such as motives for an action, procedure of an action, feasibility of an action, beauty of an action, etc., an issue of moral value contrasted with other values of human action),

Box 3 It is reasonable to suppose that only a human with a little experience, interest, or esprit de finesse would mix say moral, aesthetical, religious, and cultural values, or claiming that what applies to ethical mutatis mutandis applies to aesthetical, religious, and cultural spheres, since there are great differences between motives, reasons, nature of judgments, and their effect in these spheres of value. Claiming that an action is morally wrong, that a picture is not beautiful, that a religious experience is not authentic, that a person is bad mannered are all negative evaluative remarks by all means; however they substantively differ in sphere of value, almost as much as say physics, psychology, and history differ in sphere of science. For the first thing there is a difference in atmosphere, that is to say moral and ethical problems (experiences) are accompanied with a kind of mild nausea and unsettled stomach, aesthetic experiences with a sensation of wonder and harmony, while a religious experience with a feeling of peace, closeness, and intimacy. Of course, there are other differences, but these seem to be sufficient in order to point to some characteristics of moral experience, deliberation, judgement, and action.

human action being good or bad action in terms of standard procedure under standard circumstances (routine, no matter is it good or bad, e.g. routine of a burglar or routine of a doctor), or in terms of standard exception to the standard procedure under standard circumstances (an issue of morality of human action),

human action being good or bad in terms of non-standard procedure under non-standard circumstances (an ethical issue), and

human action being good or bad in terms of further issues concerning facts, motives, intentions, reasons, meaning, etc. of a certain type or sub-aspect of action (a metaethical issue).

These differences should be taken into account since some of them will be objected to as useless since we understand ethics pragmatically and indeed in terms of pragmatism. In particular, some event can appear as a human action while really it is not, or not entirely and vice versa (such as natural disasters aided by human action); some characteristic of an action can appear as moral value although it is an issue of effectiveness of it; some moral characteristic of an action can be thought of problematic and consequently an action as non-standard and as such an ethical

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issue while really it is not. However, there are spheres with which a moral sphere (and consequently an ethical as well) is somewhat blended. Traditionally, these are the sphere of culture and the sphere of law (as shown in Table 3).

Table 3: The relations between morality, law, culture and society

Morality and law differ regarding motive, reason, nature, and effect. The basic difference is in the motivation to adhere to standards, that is to say, ethics requires inner motivation and freedom, while a law does not require inner agreement, but is based on external compulsion (including a threat of legal sanctions). Law resolve conflicts and passes judgements based on the best legal argument. On the other hand, morality is based on moral deliberation by putting forward points of view and trying to convince the other side or simply to understand better the opposite or different view.

Now, morality and culture are in different relation. Culture, at least in some of its spheres, includes standard, routine, and so to say lege artis procedures accepted by majority, and all of these procedures create a pattern of particular culture. In this way morality is embedded in culture, and in society depending on the fact is it a part of public or private sphere. When there is a problem with standard practice, what we have are possible ethical issues concerning various topics (for instance, cases of violation of a routine, a change of a routine because of further reasons, tolerating practices of cultural minority, the process of culturing of younglings, clash of cultures, etc.). In short, morality is implicit and manifested in culture, while ethics is morality which is explicated from culture because an issue appeared and a culture needs to resolve it. The place in Table 1.3 where diagrams overlap shows that the best way to resolve an ethical issue is if the solution is consistent with standards of law and culture. However, cultures can be more or less similar, especially regarding basic moral values or basic moral goods which create a part of their basic pattern (besides standard practices, customs, habits, language, origin, etc.).

The threat of moral (ethical and metaethical as well) relativism is here quite real. Now, relativism regarding values is in principle easy to clarify (as shown in Table 4).

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Table 4: Moral relativity

In Table 4 there are five FOLs (A…E), five values (α…ε), and their hierarchy (1, 2, 3). Let as introduce the morphological examination method via this example. FOLs A and B are sharing the same values but they place them on different place

in hierarchy. FOLs A and C are sharing two values in the same relation to each other, but C

has a higher additional value and the shared values in the same mutual relation are below it.

FOLs A and D and B and D share one value. However, D is more similar to B then to A since the shared value is in the same

position in hierarchy, but D is equally dissimilar with both since it has different value in the second position. FOL has two completely different values.

Therefore, FOLs A, B, C, and D are commensurable (because they share at least one value).

The question is which the most similar pair of FOLs is, namely, it is questionable is it the pair A, B or the pair B, D. It seems that this issue cannot be decided without knowledge of what these values really are. FOL E has values and a hierarchy of them and therefore is quite dissimilar with all other FOLs (it can be imagined that there is a FOL with values but with no hierarchy, or even without values at all). In other words, E is incommensurable with A, B, C, and D, and it seems that they are completely relative regarding values they have, but they have values and their hierarchy, and in this respect they are similar (but this will be of little help if values clash).

These relations of similarity and dissimilarity and of commensurability and incommensurability (moral relativity) will be of use in this essay (especially in the light of the fact that Wittgenstein’s standpoint appears to be relativistic). In short, in order to have relativity of moral values one should identify more then one (more or less) distinct groups of values of which these groups do not share any (and this condition is often hard to satisfy, especially nowadays).

Now, this whole idea of Wittgenstenian ethics as pragmatic minimum ethics European style besides this introduction (1) will be presented in the following order: (2) Wittgenstein and the idea of a grammar of good, (3) A grammar of “good” or – is it really necessary to write the manual (or a book of cases)?, and (4) Grammar of good, bad and permissible – what is it good for? Besides (1), part (2) investigates Wittgenstein’s ideas explicitly, parts (3) and (4) are development of some of his ideas from parts (1) and (2). The further motive for this kind of investigations is twofold,

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on one hand one can be stimulated by the idea of Witgensteinian morphology and grammar of good which spells out axes remarks of a particular society in a given culture (something fairly permanent and rigid),

and on the other hand by a strange blend of minimalism, elegance, depth, and a kind of pragmatism which obviously plays an important role in his remarks on ethics and morality (something somewhat fluid and variable).

These two in mixture make an interesting topic to investigate (in part already done by some Wittgenstein scholars), and an original way to develop ethics from this standpoint (also done by some ethicists).

Because of this mixture of topics and somewhat odd method, the investigation should be of some interest to ethicists, pragmatists, experts in Wittgenstein, and in cultural anthropology. Finally, this approach seems to satisfy our two common sense intuitions regarding morals and ethics, namely, that they are in the same time an issue of routine procedures in accordance with a FOL and something of great importance, significance for our lives. These intuitions are quite important for understanding ethics and morality, but for understanding various applications of ethics as well.

Box 4 Concerning the topic of the present study, and some applications of it, say in business ethics and CSR, it is of utmost importance to see that such application, for instance in CSR as applied ethics isn’t something additional to the business in terms of its financial performance and legal compliance, rather the other way around, its financial performance, legal compliance, and social responsibility are included in the very process of a core business and are essentially manifested by it. Furthermore, morality isn’t something additional as well as the law, rather various laws and regulations are just patches on morality as manifested by culture and culture isn’t something external to the core business in terms of necessity of any business being done in a local culture, any business having certain business culture, and any business together with local cultures being parts of greater whole of a culture in terms of biological/natural and cultural anthropological sense of the word.

2. Wittgenstein and the very idea of a grammar of good

Let us turn now to the main issue. Is there an overview (perspicuous presentation) of morality; is there a chapter in our grammar under the heading “morally good”; what could be counted as “a grammatical remark” (hinge) or as “an axis remark” in the “field” of morality? This is not the question such as – are there moral LGs because surely there are (see (a) and (b) below), or – are there practices which if done in certain manner we consider to be morally correct practices because surely there are (see (c) below), but the question as it were between these two, namely – can one make an ethical remark, and if one can, what kind of remark is it? The principal answers by Wittgenstein are quite explicit:

(a) “In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word (good for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.” (PI 77), (this is an application of LG method to moral expressions, see von Wright 1963:15; Baker and Hacker suggest that Wittgenstein is thinking of “goodness” in narrower sense, but the problem is

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that one learns to use the word “good” as the good of exclamations, e.g. if a child repeats a certain procedure correctly then the parent can say “Good!”, see Baker, Hacker 2005 I, 2, 169),(b) “Thus it could be said that the use of the word good (in an ethical sense) is a combination of a very large number of interrelated games, each of them as it were a facet of the use. What makes a single concept here is precisely the connection, the relationship, between these facets.” (PG I 36, and AWL 33 where Wittgenstein holds that “good” is a family-resemblance concept), (this could be a hint of application of morphology as a heuristic device to moral LGs, see PI 66 and commentary in Baker and Hacker 2005 I, vol. 2),(c) “It will often be possible to say: ask what your reasons are for calling something good or beautiful & the particular grammar of the word good in this case will be apparent.” (CV 28, MS: 125 17v: 133), (this is explicit claim about the “grammar of good” and its possibility as grammars of religion, certainty, colour, taste, etc. are possible as well; now, regarding this point there must be mentioned, “a grammar” includes “an old TLP logic” (PR, PG), but the important part is the new part that is a grammar which consists of “representations” which make our good perspicuous to us.So far ethics really is “logical investigation of language of morals” (Hare 1952),

but something supplementary and more basically as well. On the other hand, “a grammar” is not just about “the use of our words” (it is more then logic in a way), but about actions and practices too (on this matter see Baker 2004 and Baker, Hacker 2005: I).

A grammatical proposition perspicuously presents not just the very use of our words, but the very actions that are considered to be proper. Accordingly, a grammar of good perspicuously represents the use of our “moral language” in form of “rules” and the very actions which are considered to be proper (in ethical sense) and which, if they are performed as described by such grammatical remarks, manifest (implicit) rules which serve as justifications of action. But why is this important, one could ask?

Any grammar in the end can be summed up as the clear use of our words, utterances, LGs and speech acts and these are recognised via grammatical remarks, which express the rules of their use. However, should one consider exclusively LGs in an investigation of the grammar of morality, or should one be occupied with a broader context as well, namely with FOLs, and if one should, is the result of such an investigation still a grammar, or other way around – is there a grammar of non–linguistic parts of FOLs? It is not easy to answer this question since Wittgenstein never explicitly stated which are other “parts” of FOLs besides language–games, like actions, practices, activities, or similar (maybe just few notes on “institutions”, “rites”, “procedures” see Bloor, 1996), and can there be an overview of something which is counted as “value” and manifested mainly in our “practice” different from linguistic one besides overviews of “colour”, “shape”, “certainty”, and similar? In Wittgenstein’s works there are attempts to perspicuously present certainty, music, religion, culture, and if this is so, then one could conclude that the same is possible for moral as well.

Regarding the previous question, importance of a grammar of good as the grammar of our justifications, and as the grammar of descriptions of our actions is obvious (one must notice here that any justification is only a kind of description, and this particular Wittgenstein’s idea can blur the distinction between descriptive and normative ethics). If, for practical purposes, one wants to know why a person acted in certain way, or according to which principle instantiated in particular standard procedure or routine, then the best thing to do is to investigate (observe, see) what

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the person did, what kind of consequences are produced by a doer (descriptively speaking majority of humans are consequentialists). Then one could see which are the person’s principles or rules, because they manifest themselves in person’s actions.

(c1) One of interpretative hypotheses of this essay (regarding previously a-c) is that a description of an action, no matter if it implicitly of explicitly mentions moral aspect of an action is the only possible occurrence in which such an aspect is implicit and can be manifested. This is so since, for later Wittgenstein (after LE) it seems that actions are value impregnated and values are action instantiated (this point seems to be consistent with his cultural account of LGs, FOLs, action, and culture). The emphasis of symbolism, impressiveness, ceremonial nature (GB 129, 133), and the surroundings (GB 147) of human actions, no matter of these are habitual of extraordinary, contribute to such interpretation. In this particular and somewhat strange manner the fact-value distinction and the problem how to derive ought from is, are overall dismissed, at least for vast majority of standard cases.

Box 5 One of the issues in ethics is – is it possible to derive “ought” from “is”, and answers are both affirmative and negative. Wittgenstein seems to be quite remote from this and similar issues in his ethical and moral considerations. Nevertheless, his elucidations and examples as it were all aim at the same target and their trajectories and the target itself indirectly points to some ideas that can be counted as clarifications of this and similar questions (at the beginning of 20th century counted as ethical, but nowadays surely as metaethical questions). Let us take few examples in order to clarify this idea. Say that the fact which one observes is that members of a certain group in vast majority of ordinary daily situations return various things to other members they borrowed them from. In other words, one observes “that X borrows T from Y and after some time X returns T to Y”. This can be considered as “is” or as a fact regarding actions in the observed group. The negative answer says that one cannon derive “if X borrows T from Y, then after some time X ought to return T to Y” from the fact. Wittgenstein seems to sets the scene in the way that the whole procedure of deriving is futile since if majority of members of the group act in this manner without obvious external, internal, or mixed pressure, then it seems to be an issue of a FOL. That it is an issue of a FOL means that it is an issue of culture; furthermore, this means that the value of returning of the borrowed thing is “implicit” in action as being “routine action” learned and practiced by majority or all members in majority or all situations. In other words, if an action is a member of routine actions, or if it is a standard procedure, then that the value of an action (meaning that it ought to be done) is implicit in it, or in other words, that the action by being standard is “value impregnated”. In addition, if such a standard action is considered as the basic one, then it is basic-value impregnated. To identify the whole net of such basic standard actions, in fact practices, means to identify the basic cultural pattern. Basic values are such values which proved to be useful and above all are used via basic or standard action pattern. Say that “proves to be useful” means something like “it makes daily life much easier then any other possibility”. However, one observes that there is a minority of

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cases in which “X does not return T to Y”, that one is prevented in returning a borrowed thing. There are of course standard cases here as well, such as any case in which a member is prevented in returning a borrowed thing by the forces beyond the doer’s control. There are even non-standard cases here, meaning any case which is quite rare and odd, but nonetheless possible. In any such standard or non-standard situation which presents an exception to the standard, one ought not to return a thing because it is impossible to do it, however, there are some other ways of retribution here, as one observes. Standard procedures show that standard actions are value impregnated, while standard and non-standard exceptions to the standard actions show that values are action instantiated. There are no values if there are no standard actions or their exceptions. Now, what unquestionably shows that values are standard instantiated are situations in which “X does not return T to Y” and which are not counted as standard or non-standard exceptions to the standard procedure, rather as willing and premeditated violation of a standard procedure. Of course, such an action can be value impregnated but this value does not belong to a particular culture and FOL, and such a value can be action instantiated, but this action does not belong among standard actions or their exceptions in this culture and FOL. What's more, such an action surely is not a part of this culture and FOL culturally, but it is possible that it is a part of it socially and if this is the case, then there is some kind of internal procedure for dealing with such violations. On the other hand, if such violations are not parts of a culture neither culturally nor socially, then there can be some external procedures for dealing with such violations. To conclude, it seems that Wittgenstein advances that, if actions are value impregnated (values are implicit in standard actions) and if values are action instantiated (values are manifested by standard actions), than there is no strict fact/value distinction, and consequently there is no problem of how to derive “ought” from “is”. In other words, to describe a standard basic practice means to present a basic value.

However, (a-c1) is still something like “descriptive ethics”. It is often claimed that “moral principles serve as guides” for action (Hare 1952: I, 1, 1.1.). They evidently do. Nonetheless, and that is what Wittgenstein seem to be defending, they do so in an odd way. To be precise, there is no rule “before” an action in a way that a person: in t1 remembers a rule R1, in t2 decides to apply it, and in t3 acts according to it. A person simply recognises a situation (“sees it as”) as a more or less similar to a “prototypical one” (manifested by any example of a routine; a routine being a symbolic practice not just a typical action) and connected to other situations and acts accordingly i.e. as in similar situations. Recognition of a situation is not recognition of a certain moral principle functioning

as a rule for a given action; rather it is recognition of a particular procedure as being appropriate for given circumstances or a given situation.

In any such situation one compares particular procedure with similar ones (like in the case of games in PI 66, which is the clear case of morphological method). This is done almost automatically (by default), and by performing in such way one performs

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in a proper way, or should we say in an accordance (agreement) with the FOL one belongs to ceteris paribus.

Recognition that certain procedure is appropriate rarely is a kind of deliberation previous to an action (maybe in some rare, new, or strange situations). Often it is just “seeing connections” and acting in accordance with the form/pattern. For what we de facto do is what we value, and what we de facto willingly, freely, and responsibly do is what we value morally. Therefore, in such sense of “accordance”, a rule, a moral principle, or the justification of an action manifests itself simply by performance of an action “according” to a prototypical (symbolic) case. Concerning “accordance” it should be mentioned that particular action does not

“correspond” to the prototypical case (what one considers to be such case due to her/his personal history), rather, it “fits in the net of cases” and via that it “manifest the prototypical case” (which by the way does not exist really since it is only a metaphor, but, on the other hand, majority of verbal metaphors are useless without visual or tactile experiences, say “strong as a lion”, “cunning as a fox”, see Eco 1986:89).

Of course, there are new situations, new circumstances and then one should apply the old rule in a new way, make corrections to the existent rule, invent a new rule, or similar. In such cases moral principles serve as guides for action, but when they are once applied, what is important is application itself (agreement itself, the very case), not the rule, since any rule is made efficient only in its application. In most situations we act automatically, our actions are self–guided, like a missile directed to its target, and practice has to speak for itself (and along the way adjust it's and doer's trajectory).

If enough and sufficient is said on implications of Wittgenstein's solution we can continue with a bit more intriguing question, namely, was Wittgenstein even close to the idea of a “grammar of good” not in the sense of mentioning it (like in CV 28), rather in the sense of “constructing it” by giving descriptions as overviews which belong under the chapter “good” in his “philosophical grammar”? Surely not, but we have at least few examples.

(d) “Is it possible, for instance, to imagine people who cannot lie because for them a lie would be nothing but a dissonance? I want to imagine a case where people are truthful not as a matter of morality, but rather see something absurd in a lie. Whoever lies would be viewed as mentally ill. Or better: Lying or pretending would have to appear to these people as perversity.” (LW II 56, MS 171). Could this passage, as being roughly a kind of implicit Kantian thought on lying (since it seems to be immoral to lie because it is irrational to lie, as it were insane), be understood as a plea for different context of morality of wrong actions, namely lying and pretending? And what kind of a context would it be? Of course, Wittgenstein does not make any kind of explicit Kantian remark, rather a kind of remark concerning our limits of imagination, and of fact/value distinction in addition perhaps (remarked by D. Richter). Say that if what Wittgenstein imagines in fact is the case, and then could a proposition, for instance “Lying is not normal (rational) way of acting” be counted as the grammatical one, as the part of overview of “our ethics” as our (human) FOL? Surely we can imagine such culture or such FOL. (e) Next example is from his famous “Lecture on Ethics” from 1929. According to Wittgenstein, ethics is ineffable, unutterable, and maybe even inexpressible. There are no ethical propositions. “I would reject any significant description [of

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ethics] ab initio, on the ground of its significance.” (LE 7–9, commentary in Edwards 1982) (f) Later, in his “Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief” (1938–46) he slightly changed mentioned position in a way that he claimed that: we must focus not on the appearance of ethical terms, but on their specific role within whole of our culture. (LC 2, 7–8, commentary in Glock 1996) The ethical manifests itself in social and cultural patterns of our action (morphology again). Ethical systems expose “reasons for action” and as such are autonomous as our grammar, and are not responsible to reality. This gives raise to many interesting ideas, for instance: a moral discourse cannot be disqualified as the less objective than the scientific discourse, no matter how universal they are, ethical standards express only reasons on which an individual acts, one can disagree regarding different ethics only from ones own system (ones own FOL), not from “the view from nowhere”.

Now, the first question from the beginning of the chapter What can be counted as a grammatical proposition in the sphere of morality? can be reformulated as the following one Which are the ways of manifestation of ethical (morally good) in social and

cultural patterns of our actions or which is the role of ethical terms within role of the whole of our culture?

Sooner or later one can reach the grammar of good and such grammar is like any other i.e. like a grammar of colour, of shape, of motion, certainty, religious rites, of aesthetically beautiful, etc. (on the possibility of a grammar or an overview of practices not just of “word–use” see Baker 2004:22-52, especially 42-4).

Nevertheless, there are some special features of the grammar of good. In a way it has something in common with the grammar of beautiful. The similarity between these lies in the fact that both are considered to be values. On the other hand it has something similar with the grammar of religious (holy, sacred) and the grammar of culture, namely that it is for the most part the grammar of practice, know–how, not of religious beliefs or attributes of God. However, there are many differences between these of course.

Therefore, the grammar of good is the grammar of use of our words (“good”, “wrong”, “immoral”, “dishonest”, “praiseworthy”, “duty”, “obligation” for instance) and the grammar of our practices (everyday routines such as “being honest”, “being just”, etc. see Table 1.2), and by being such, it is the grammar as a description of our use of words as well, and of our practices in which good is “essentially manifested” in the life of living human beings.

It seems that there is no just an instrumental and the moral “meanings” as two groups of meanings of the word “good” and similar words, but also instrumentality and morality as something which in the most wide-ranging way refers to a certain list of descriptions of our actions closest to the prototypical which are considered to be good. Good knife and good man are similar (expressions) because of the conception of purpose that can be applied to both. Namely, in both cases the very purpose is created, one creates a good knife as a knife, which can serve for particular purpose; one creates others (by upbringing, and education) and one creates himself / herself as well as a human being who chooses and fulfils certain purpose in life.

However, besides this similarity there is dissimilarity also, namely, that a craftsman must give purpose to a knife, while a human being can give his / hers purpose by himself / herself. Even if there are “eternal” purposes for humans (the idea which is controversial in its own right), nevertheless these “eternal” purposes

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must be applicable to different FOLs which could be incommensurable regarding many issues. Looking for “trans–form of life” (one, unique, and universal human FOL) so to say, could often result in finding bad and useless similarities and analogies (PI 66). What is the use of so to speak “trans–formable” practices regarding different FOLs? – To show that there is one “human” FOL! – But what is the use of it? Is it not precisely that already showed by describing many different and often incommensurable human FOLs, many different styles of life which belong to a particular FOL?

Box 6 Notice how the same level of grasp of particular human right (quantitatively) in different societies has different historical paths, raises different (socioeconomic, socio-psychological, and political) issues, and requires different future developments, almost mutually incommensurable due to differences in FOLs as cultures (qualitatively) in which an implementation is carried out. There is no morality detached from our society, culture, and a FOL. But such distinction became a sort of tradition in course of fundamental ethical inquiries. Namely, such theoretical attitudes toward the ethical seems to be something like “back to the roots” of ethics in pre–Christian and pre–Hellenistic times when, as far as we know, there was not a stringent “moral” meaning detached from “ēthos” (ήθος) as “a way in which a creature is accustomed in its living environment” (in Homer) i.e. way of life. Later from fifth century B. C. it was understood as “custom” or “habit”, “éthos” (έθος), but still not disconnected from cultural and social spheres. From Hellenistic and Christian age onwards “morals” became something separated from “everydayness as home” (S. Cavell) as it were something eminent, sublime, and almost holy but as such still relevant in daily life in quite peculiar way. This created the fundamental problem of morality, namely – how can something from the sphere of value influence the sphere of facts and vice versa, which was solved with introduction of unique sphere of morality as the special category of value which is completely disconnected from particular culture, habits, customs, and particular FOLs on one hand, and from particular individual, its psychology, character traits (in broader sense of the word), routines, and its personal history on the other hand. Morals in short became ethics, universal, and almost metaphysical in sphere of values. As such ethics nicely goes along with theology, science, democracy, etc. while really it should go nicely along with practical religiousness, various techniques (industrial as well), tolerance, solidarity, cultures, etc. Nevertheless, it is not our task here to give detail explication of these unfortunate historical events that led even Wittgenstein himself to adopt a version of certain metaphysical (almost mystical) foundation of ethics in NB, and to dismiss it in TLP (à la Schopenhauer, or Weininger perhaps) and to dismiss this TLP standpoint step by step (from LE to PI and later works) as it was hinted here (on Wittgenstein's ethics from NB and TLP to LE see Wiggins 2004:363-91). Nevertheless, there are many problems with this solution and in the following chapters some of them will be discussed.

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3. Is it really necessary to write a manual or a book of cases?

Even if there is a possibility of a grammar of “good” and of good as well, there is another difficulty implied by such solution, namely – are there two groups of different meanings of “good”, to be exact: something like a functional and purpose–fulfilling group of meanings regarding

things (artefacts and natural inanimate, and living beings), actions (human actions being done properly or lege artis) and processes (natural and social processes), and it should noted that for instance a robbery and curing disease both can be done properly or not,

Box 7 That which is valued as a means to some end has an instrumental value, while that end has non-instrumental value. If nails and wood are valued because they can be used to make a chair, for instance, the nails have instrumental value, while the chair itself has non-instrumental value. However, a chair as a part of furniture has an instrumental value because it is used for sitting while eating, writing, etc. and eating is important for staying alive, and life perhaps has non-instrumental value, or perhaps it does since there is the value of a species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Standard practices are manifesting the prototypical or the pattern (a value in itself) almost like “signposts” (PI 87), that is to say, that a standard practice “is in order if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose” (concerning “signpost” see important revision of PI 85 in 2009 edition by P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, note to PI 85, 2009:249).

and something like value–meaning group of meanings regarding human actions and practices (habits, customs, institutions… for distinction see Hare 1952, II, 6. 2, and von Wright 1963, §:5, especially for “instrumental” use of “good”), and to parallel the same example it can be said that in the most cases stealing is bad, and to cure disease is good (for the sake of abbreviation the first will be abbreviated as the α–good and the second the β–good).

Consequently, a proper robbery is α–better then the one which not proper. On the other hand both of them are β–bad, but the later being less bad then the former since there is a lower probability of success. Regarding the exceptions, a proper robbery is α–better and β–better then the one which is not proper in case where to steal someone’s property is the only way to achieve a higher value (e.g. to save lives by stealing weapons or in fact by buying weapons). Of course, there are many more meanings of “good” but these are the most frequent in our LGs (see quotations a, b, and c at the beginning of the first chapter, and the Table 1.2). To give few examples: a tree is α–good if it fulfils its purpose in an ecological

system, a knife is α–good if it is relevantly sharp in order to cut various materials. Washing hands properly before meal is α–good if hands are relevantly clean in order to maintain hygiene and to prevent disease. At first sight this seems to be quite irrelevant for “moral” meaning of “good”. The utterance “This is a good knife” can mean many things namely being sharp, being made of certain material, being nicely balanced for throwing, being of high quality, etc., and such utterances can be made for various purposes in order to give the guarantee regarding the functionality of a knife, or for instance to justify its price.

Now, let us observe the difference between utterances “This is a good knife” and “He is a good man”. It seems to be incorrect to say that the second utterance is

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also shorten for “this man fulfils various purposes, namely as human being, a professional, a husband, a father, a colleague at work, etc.” In a way examples referring to things are quite useless, since examples with actions usefully smudge certain already unnatural distinction between these two utterances, namely examples like “this is a good cooking”, “this was a good skiing”, “this was a good football”, etc. In such examples the distinction between the goodness of an item and the goodness of an action of a human, and the distinction between a practice and its value are somewhat blurred, but on the other hand they highlight the value as such. Compare “She is a good skier” with “This was a good skiing”. The first example seems to emphasise “good” as some kind of value of a person performing an action, and the second example seems to stress “good” as a value of the very practice of a doer performing it. The advantages of emphasis of value of a practice over the value of a human will be discussed later on. Now, turning to the first utterance, if one emphasises a person, one could complaint that persons are not like some mechanical objects or machines designed for a particular purpose (surely there is some charm in imagining a human as a kind of bio-machine with technological implants like a Borg drone, or a cybernetic machine like a Terminator). Of course, if one agrees with the idea of purpose (like fulfilment of God's purpose for humans, or like fulfilment of purpose of survival of the species, or similar), then this would not be an objection, but in deed the reply (but what is then the objection?).

However, the very reason of emphasising actions (even human) over things regarding their function is of different kind since we agree with the objection. Good skiing and good robbery are in the same time α–good and β–good, meaning that they are performed properly and in accordance with a FOL they belong to, the point which should not be confused with the fact the they belong to different FOLs (and these as being a different cultures could be a part of the same society). Indeed, that is to say that when we consider one who steals for a living and one who does not steal for a living we consider them as two persons belonging to two different ways of life, it is simple, they do it, we do not, and vice versa. Of course, one can claim that they are “words and worlds apart” culturally, but not socially since it is possible and it is a well-known fact that every society has persons who steal for a living.

There is some point in difference between actions which are rare in a given society or within a social group like stealing, or lying, but which differ regarding their distribution in a group. For instance lying seems to be (almost divinely) omnipresent in some low level (small lies) in a whole society, while it could be present enormously (big lies) in some subgroups or even professions, and less among general population, while stealing is less present if present at all among general population, and more concentrated in some groups (this issue obviously belongs to the spheres of sociology and anthropology of lying and stealing, on the other hand, isn’t it exactly the point about Wittgenstein’s ethics). Imagine now that (regarding the cases of “good” knife/man) one asks: “What do

you mean by “good knife/man”?” The answers to such question would also be quite familiar, such as: “I mean if you want to sharp this arm in order to make a spear, you can use this knife, since it is sharp enough for such purpose.” or “I mean, if you want to do business with this man, go ahead, because he is an experienced professional of high integrity.” Should one be puzzled with cases of comparison of utterances such as the following, “He is a good professional” with “He is a good doctor” and with “He is a good burglar”? Of course, one could make conjunction of these propositions since one can be a good doctor, a good burglar,

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and a good professional in both activities. Now, regarding the puzzlement, we do not think so, because “a good doctor” and “a bad doctor” basically differ regarding performance meaning that for the first we say “performing lege artis” and for the second “too often falls short in performing lege artis”. Now, what is the distinction between a “bad doctor” and a “good burglar”? They differ regarding the standard performance in certain type of action, but they are the same regarding the morality of their actions, or maybe not, since if we value life more then property then a “bad doctor” is worse than a “good burglar”.

Now, something should be said regarding the so-called “substantive” family of meanings of the word “good”, or as we shorten it as the β–good. Supposedly, there seems to be a huge difference between these two groups of uses of “good”. But, if “a bad doctor” falls short regarding his lege artis performance as a doctor, that means that he performs contrary to the “standard procedure” which is by being “standard” also “morally correct” (at least regarding “prototypical cases” in our human FOL). However, how a procedure by simply being “standard” or lege artis could be

“morally correct” as well, one could ask? The answer is that it is so because a standard procedure is also an institution of our culture and society, of our FOL (Winch 2008:30), and institutions represent paradigm actions and patterns of a FOL. In another words, the core of moral actions is that they are members of a family of rule–guided activities. Now, such activities are obtained, maintained, and in some cases even changed not by learning rules before actions, but simply by learning by heart standard procedures in standard situations (even in non-standard situations too, since there are standard exceptions as well).

To act morally incorrect simply means to go against the rule, against the grammar, against the standard practice, and that without an obvious reason (given that the scope of obvious reasons is given by a scope of a FOL; this point raises an issue of relativity of rationality which is also intriguing in Wittgenstein’s standpoint as already mentioned).

Of course, it is correct to say that any standard procedure is a particular standard procedure, but also it is a criterion of judging is any given action falling under it, by being a malpractice or not, compared to it as a standard. Any FOL regarding its social dimension has some characteristics of implicit and hypothetical social contract which is de facto universally implemented. Procedural moral correctness is implicit in its basic rules, and basic examples.

Therefore, a “good burglar” can be α–good but never β–good, but a “good doctor” can be α–good and β–good regarding to our FOL, that is to say – for various practical reasons one could explicate β–goodness from α–goodness in any case of standard procedure of a doctor, but not of a burglar. A burglar surely has some kind of ethics, but his ethics is a part of our FOL only socially, but not culturally, namely, only as far as it is something which we can consider as morally incorrect. Now, it is not suggesting that Wittgenstein ever explicitly stated social contract as implicit or hypothetical (for an indication see BT 89).

What we want to say is – that in our FOL the standard performance by a doctor is morally good by being standard and the standard performance by a burglar is morally bad by being standard. Performance by a doctor confirms our FOL as well as performance by a burglar, but only in terms of presupposing its existence. This seems to be quite important since any case of malpractice or negligence we do not consider just as a performance in which a doctor falls short regarding lege artis procedure, but also as doing something morally incorrect (under some further conditions which will be explicated hereafter). If a doctor by being negligent regarding

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the standard procedure is eo ipso doing something morally incorrect, then surely by doing his job lege artis he performs morally correct or at least a permissible act (this difference will be mentioned later) within a FOL. If this is correct, is there any point of introducing the “substantive” use of “good” as explicated from the “functional” use of “good”?

Box 8 Say, for the sake of an argument, that we have a list of the following utterances: (a) “This is a standard procedure in my profession” (b) “To be healthy is good.” (c) “To save lives is good”, (d) “To be alive is good”, (e) “To steal is bad” (f) “A property should be protected”, etc. This seems to be an example of reasons we give for alleged moral correctness of particular actions we perform. For instance, a doctor regarding some of his particular actions as a doctor could say something like (a), and in order to justify (a) he could say (b), and (c) and finally (d). No matter how (d) could look like a reason of the same kind in the chain of justifications, it just looks like that. It's function is somewhat different, since it functions not as final reason, rather as the criterion for deciding which reasons can be accepted as “good reasons” (a–c regarding d) in the system of our justifications and on the background of our FOL. And we do not decide in favour of mentioned examples (d, e, and f) on “certain grounds” like habits, social conventions, etc., in short on the basis and on the background of “our FOL”, rather they are “manifested grounds”, they are “manifestations of our FOL”, they are our “rough ground”. This does not make our moral justifications in any way more or less justified or reasonable, possibly more understandable to members of our FOL and nothing else, since such judgements (like “to be alive is good”) can be counted as grammatical propositions in certain situations.

The similarity of mentioned examples and some Wittgenstein’s examples seems to be obvious: “To seat at the table in order to have lunch”, “To apply this remedy in order to

save this patient's life” are both descriptions of cases (experiential remarks) which belong to certain practices (having a lunch, saving a life),

“Chairs are made for sitting on them”, and “Doctors cure diseases and save lives” are both grammatical remarks regarding functions of chairs and doctors (descriptions of practices (or their parts) which belong to a certain implicit/manifested or an explainable FOL (culturally, and socially, as shown in Table 5, the top of the iceberg metaphor represents the only thing that we are in fact acquainted with on daily basis, while only in special circumstances we explicate a FOL)).

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Table 5: A grammar of good in the context of form of life

Nevertheless, one could say – the substantive use of “good” is possible only in “grammatical remarks”. However, one should not forget that a remark is a grammatical remark only within a FOL. (For instance: „It is good to wash hands properly before meal.“, „It is good to distribute this cake equally.”, “It is good to share toys with others.”, “It is good to do your homework.”, etc. But, this substantive use has its “use”, like a signpost, only within a FOL.)

On the other hand, it is not just the issue of use of “good” like in a criterion of correct use, but also the question of a list of quasi–final justifications for any action whatsoever that are in accordance with a FOL. A supposedly grammatical remark (like “to be alive is good”) is in fact explicated from particular relation of accordance of certain case to its FOL (to the standard in a FOL to be exact). Say, in any case of saving a life by a doctor, fireman, or policeman. They manifest as it were an institutional good.

Furthermore, the same supposedly grammatical remark is nevertheless implicit in a case as its rule (as implicit justification of the whole practice or a particular case) and it can be explicated in various occasions (for various purposes) depending on the level of its manifestation in a case and the very circumstances. Of course, “to follow a rule” is itself a custom, and “to follow this rule” is an institution of our FOL, but “to follow any rule whatsoever of our FOL” means to perform in harmony with other standard performances of our FOL (Baker 2004:52-92, 279-94). And this manifestation of a rule and the level of it above all depend on the very fact that a case is more or less close to, or far from the “prototypical one” regarding the practice in question (and its place in a FOL it belongs to).

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This is the vital reason why the fact–value distinction never pops up in this kind of approach to morality and ethics. Therefore, one could say that: the substantive use of “good” is symptomatic for any “explicit” mentioning of a

grammatical proposition (or rule, as being more abstract description) regarding morality of certain action or a practice for particular practical purpose (such as teaching a practice, or changing a practice),

while the functional (or “instrumental”) use of “good” is the sign of lesser abstract description, or “implicit” mentioning of morality of certain action or practice in the course of which a grammar of good and/or certain rule manifests itself by any action being performed properly (here any example of standard procedure will do).

The fact-value distinction consequently is a matter of the difference in level, not in kind.

However, if one wants to describe a practice via mentioning its rule, then one should avoid experiential or empirical remarks, since they cannot be grammatical, i.e. they cannot be propositions of the grammar, and that is because they cannot serve as criteria of judging on any subject matter (of course, some experiential remarks belong to our system of reference, but they are in fact axes-propositions, OC 152).

Such descriptions are of utmost importance in our lives since they describe “prototypical” and in the same time “idiosyncratic” cases of moral correctness and incorrectness in the way that “we” in our FOL describe for instance an unnecessary suffering by use of this particular series of descriptions, while each of “us” can have and should have his/her own personal story describing unnecessary suffering (R. Rorty in his “Contingency, Irony and Solidarity” (1989) seems to be quite right on this point, for commentary on Rorty see Fraser 1996:303-22; Guignon and Hiley 1996:339-65; Bouveresse 2004:129-46, Conant 2004:268-242, and replies Rorty 2004:146-56, 342-51).

A description of a case consists of experiential propositions, but a description of a practice consists of grammatical remarks and eo ipso of implicit morality of this practice i.e. its connections to other practices in a whole FOL (and its place in it). The net of all standard practices manifests moral correctness which is implicit in each and every particular routine in the way that one belonging to a FOL “sees” various patterns of the net and various connections between particular practices and these connections are sometimes more descriptive (ER), sometimes a little bit more normative (GR), but mostly somewhere in between (AR).

For instance, “One can brush teeth in this or that way” is obviously more descriptive (ER), while “One should not brush teeth properly if it means that one will omit an action which is far more important.” is obviously more normative (GR). Statistical or scientific descriptions of a practice are insufficient in order to describe the essence of a practice; in fact, they can be quite frequently misleading, especially in cases of teaching a practice, changing a practice, and especially in describing the very concept of a practice since they frequently omit its symbolic function in a culture (semiotic process). On the other hand, setting a system of grammatical remarks (with their relations,

similarities, analogies, or in short – morphology) which are used as final justification of any practice or particular case of a FOL they belong to seems to be crucial not just for understanding the particular action, or a practice, but a whole FOL as the background of understanding and eo ipso of justification.

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There is no procedure of a justification of an action outside of a culture, and in a way there is no understanding as well, since understanding a culture, and its majority standards is primarily not a kind of reasoning about it or insight concerning a system of values; it is not about thinking but about acting in agreement with a FOL and by that manifesting the very system, and values. Values implicit in and manifested by standard practices of a FOL are consequently relative at least in five different ways (as shown in Table 6).

Table 6: Relativity of FOLs as cultures Final justifications are simply grammatical remarks (GR), i.e. descriptions used as criteria for use of words simply cloaked as justifications. They are not justifications at all.

Finally, the question is – is it then the grammar of good a kind of manual or like a textbook of cases? If it is only a grammar of use of our words, then it is a manual, since it says which ways of use are proper and which are not. For instance, a somewhat shorten description “To apply this remedy in a case of this illness means to save the life of this patient, and this is standard procedure in such cases, and by being standard it is also good” in fact implies grammatical sentence “To save lives is good”. What it really says as a grammatical sentence is only That expressions “saving lives” and “being good” should be affirmatively

connected. However, between such descriptions and grammatical remarks there are

various axes-propositions which are implicit as well, such as, “If one catches a cold we do not give her/him ice-cold drinks.” Therefore, mentioning the correct use of some word (“good” for instance) is not just mentioning of the rule of its use, but a description of a case falling under the prototypical action as well, which is prototypical only because it manifests certain value in certain way (the value of being a good practice). It shows nothing more then the way in which we live our lives, and if one could “see” how we live our lives (its many “aspects” and their mutual “connections”), then one could see what we believe in, which is our world–view (Weltanschauung, WP). Here, such descriptions of prototypical actions can be technically introduced similarly as for instance J. L. Austin introduced performatives in his paper “Performative utterances”.

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This is not an issue of something that can be derived or explicated from our practice, rather it is an issue of something that a practice manifests if one observes it in the right way, if one understands it, sees it as morally correct or incorrect practice within a FOL. That is why a grammar of good is and it is not like a manual or a textbook of cases.

On the other hand, it is like a manual because it is the manual of the use of our words, but it is not like a manual because there are no exercises how to teach somebody to perform “good” actions. (If one proceeds by performing a standard action which is standard within the boundaries of a FOL (boundaries which are not sharp are boundaries as well), then other members of a FOL say “Good!” and it means “It is performed properly”.)

Rules are on one hand completely explicated by prototypical cases / grammatical remarks in the grammar of good, but on the other hand, they are completely implicit in practices described by empirical remarks and also completely manifested in every case of good practice, which is good only because it accords with the FOL it belongs to.

Nevertheless, is it possible to utter a grammatical remark (GR) regarding moral correctness and eo ipso to avoid an inclusion of general facts, even if they are just general “cultural” (ethnological) facts, or facts of our FOL on one hand, and to avoid an inclusion of “autonomous moral sphere” (like in TLP) on the other hand? For instance, is it possible to state the justification for any moral rule if grammatical remarks are just sort of descriptions? Is the remark:

(1) “One should do one's best to act in morally correct way and to avoid acting in morally incorrect way.”

a grammatical remark (GR)? If it is, does it then describe anything else besides the correct use of the expression “morally correct” since it says that a moral characteristic of an action is positive, proper, or desirable? If it does not describe anything else besides the correct use of the mentioned expression, can this proposition serve as the criterion of judging in a particular case of use of words and utterances of moral LG?

On the other hand, if it does describe something else, then what it is? Is it just a cultural (or maybe even trans–cultural) remark, something like the following?

(2) “When we act, besides other goals of our actions (like use, elegance, beauty, efficiency, efficacy, feasibility, probability, and similar) we also count moral correctness as the goal of any action and its consequences.”

Now, does (2) stands in need of any kind of justification, since one could say(2.1) “Our Ferengi rules of acquisition accept (2) by all means (the species from Star Trek sci-fi series), but I am afraid that we will slightly disagree regarding the content of the concept of “moral correctness” if we start to debate on that matter”, or “you see, we don’t count morality”, or “what do you mean by moral correctness, we don’t have such a concept, we just have a notion of something being agreeable with culture”?

One can reply, “O.K. that is it.” Here we can see at least one feature of grammatical remarks at work, namely,

that they cannot be justified or unjustified, since there cannot be anything that can be counted as their justification, since there cannot be a proposition which could be more certain than the grammatical remark itself. In other words, anything that can be suggested as its justification is already presupposed by such proposition, or to put in a little bit more straightforwardly, such a proposition serves as the criterion at least for use of words like “proper action” or “doing X lege artis” regarding this case. A

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grammatical remark always belongs to a particular FOL and WP; however, it can serve as a justification in some other FOL at completely different place in it (not recognising this difference is often a cause of mistaken empirical generalisations regarding morals and customs of different cultures, and used as an argument for moral relativism). On the other hand, is (2) not just a description of our general attitude toward our own actions, goals of our actions, and what we count as a successful action (their necessary and sufficient conditions)? We could be accused here of not making the crucial distinction between “action”, “proper action”, and “morally correct action”. Surely, there are conditions of “action”. However, some conditions should be added to this list in order to get the list of conditions for “proper action”. Now, shoplifting and returning a wallet are actions which could be done properly, but by being done properly they are not eo ipso morally correct or incorrect of course.

What Wittgensteinian approach suggests is that what we count as “a reason” or “a justification” for action in a particular case is not a reason or justification at all, rather something like mentioning general facts about for instance property, protection of property, returning a property to its rightful owner, and similar regarding examples of shoplifting and returning a wallet to its owner. However, is it not possible to summarise all that in some opening rule such as the following proposition.

(3) “When we act, our action in order to be counted as acceptable must be: useful, efficient, feasible, morally correct…”

This however seems to be just a description of our FOL regarding our way of living, maybe even of conditio humana. As such can it be understood as a grammatical remark? However, are we not mistaken when we are trying to answer this question, since it seems that it presupposes identity between the criterion of action itself and the criterion of morally correct action? At least partially the answer to this question lies in the concept of “performance lege artis”. What we mean is that if one performs an action lege artis that means that the action is performed in accordance with its rule or that it cannot be more similar to the prototypical case then it de facto is under the given circumstances. Another question is – is it true that there is no justification for mentioned propositions (1–3)? Could something like:

(4) “We would be worse off without procedural morality then we de facto are with it, since we live in groups, depend on collective actions (…on each other), cooperation…” (We indeed owe some things to each other no matter if we are not sure which these things are)

be counted as the justification? One could ask – “Worse off, but in what sense? Would we extinct? Is it in the end the question of survival, or on the other hand, of certain quality of life that we want to achieve and maintain?” However, is not the answer to any of these questions experiential or empirical remark and as such quite inappropriate as the candidate for being a grammatical one? The following set of remarks in some contexts can be regarded as grammatical (belonging to our worldview in last century or a little bit more).

(5) All moral agents are mutually morally equal per definitionem. (6) Equality among moral agents is de facto best preserved by reciprocity.(7) Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

What we have here is the problem of sharp distinction between experiential and grammatical propositions, and maybe the problem of values as well (regarding unsolved issue of distinction and reduction between α–good and β–good, which we bypassed by claiming manifestation of β–good via α–good). Vis-à-vis the first difference Wittgenstein himself often says that certain sentence can “function as” a

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grammatical or as an experiential remark, therefore it is the matter of function (furthermore, to “function as” is in some extent similar to “seeing as” (see Baker 2004), and they can merge one into other and change functions, aspects, OC 95–98).

(g) Procedural morality is of essence here since it is what Wittgenstein calls “axes” (of rotation, OC 152). Procedural morality is implicit in standard practices creating a system belonging to a FOL. Procedural morality is manifested via standard practices, and if a problem occurs, then a particular standard practice could be described in terms of empirical remarks (creating a description of morally correct action, i.e. α–good), and implicit grammatical remarks could be explicated and formed as rules if needed (creating a rule-like form of moral correctness, β–good). There are no strict boundaries between particular practices (empirical remarks), implicit correct procedures (axes-remarks), and rules (grammatical remarks), and therefore, there is no strict boundaries between standard practices, procedural morality, and explicated moral values within a FOL and its WP. However, existent, or invented boundaries no matter how opaque still are more then good enough for our daily practical purposes.

Procedural morality, as axes and as implicit correct procedures, is in the same time implicit in and manifested by our WP, and in all of our practices. What’s the point of all this? The point is that: the morality or value in general can be and in fact is implicit in grammatical remarks, since if certain grammatical remark is about our practice, then moral correctness of that practice is implicit in practice itself (in certain particular practice, a case), and in the grammatical remark describing it as well. Finally, any grammatical remark is in fact verbalised overviewed narrative of a

manifestation of a rule exemplified and in the same time constituted by a practice, i.e. a practice (as a standard procedure) which manifests its rule.

It can be said that the rule of a practice is manifested (or expressed) solely by practicing a certain action lege artis (i.e. the closest to the rule it can be regarding the circumstances).

The rule of a practice is manifested also in terms of overview which consists of grammatical remarks and can be verbally manifested for various purposes (teaching a practice, acquiring a practice, change of practice, inventing a new one, etc. as shown in Table 7).

In other words, the point of all this is, while “whistling the theme” (RPP II 575), to blow up the bridge over the invented “is–ought river” by the morphological method (perspicuous presentation, grammar, and FOL) and to show that in most cases the so-called river is nothing more then a small stream which perhaps completely dries out during a hot summer.

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Table 7: The minimal and procedural morality and ethics of standard practices

In order to present this idea a basic insight should be understood, namely, that a FOL is a form of culture. Now, if this is correct interpretation of notion of a FOL, then all other interesting issues, issues like – how a standard procedure is formed, how are formed standard exceptions to standard procedures, and finally, how this influences our solutions to non-standard exceptions – are to be understood as issues of cultural anthropology or philosophy of culture.

Philosophy of culture should not be envisaged as First philosophy, rather as the morphology of culture with the clear goal of perspicuous presentation or clear summarising description which explicates, in this particular case, a grammar of good of a particular FOL.

4. A grammar of good, bad and permissible – what is it good for?

The issue of a grammar of good can be developed in a direction of the following question – is there really sharp difference between descriptive and normative meaning of “good”, or, what is the relevance of morality in culture and society? Regarding this question it could be said that the grammar of good is much closer to the grammar of useful, useless, decent, and proper, then to the grammar of virtue, vice, duty, imperative, obligation, wrong, etc.

The idea is that, if a morality has its function and manifestation only within particular life, society and culture, then to act morally correct primarily means to act decently, to perform proper actions, to perform in lege artis manner which in the end means to act within the system, on the rough ground, and on the background of the whole of culture, because:

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(h) “Culture is like a great organization which assigns to each of its members his place, at which he can work in the spirit of the whole, and his strength can with a certain justice be measured with his success as understood within the whole.” (CV 8-9) Now, since an ethical manifests our reasons for actions via manifesting our

patterns in social and cultural sphere, it can be said that ethical justification of certain practice has its legitimacy and legality. Its legitimacy shows that the very action which is justified with certain reason (in form as “we do α rather then β because …”) in fact belongs to certain social and/or cultural pattern of our FOL. Consequently, if an action has a legitimacy, it means that it belongs to certain FOL (its cultural and social pattern) which means that it is more or less close to a certain “prototypical case” (Stroll 1996:316-317), and this means that its justification shows that a description of such an action as morally correct is “grammatical–like remark” or an “axis–remark”. Here, following A. Stroll we could distinguish between practices and cases in the way that “practices are types of moral conduct” (being truthful, lying, etc.) and cases are “exemplifications of practices, individual occurrences” (Stroll

1996:317). On the other hand, any such description of our action as “a grammatical–like

remark” is in fact a description of certain pattern (“prototypical case”) and as such, while being quite detailed description, nevertheless manifests (or maybe exemplifies) the general rule of action or at least something like “rule–like form” which is a rule of a grammar, and this feature can be called the legality of an action (regarding differences between grammatical remark/rule as a justification of practice and as a justification of particular action falling under it, see Rawls 1999:20–47). It is not so important that we announce legality or legitimacy of standard actions or patterns of actions of certain culture, society, or FOL because we are in pursue of some kind of clarity regarding our practical and everyday life, rather because we need to separate such actions or practices from omissions or negligence regarding their performance within particular FOL.

Propositions from (1) to (7) are in fact an attempt to suggest something like “grammar–like remarks” regarding “our human FOL”. If one understands these rules, then one understands which are the omissions regarding these rules, so one could correct one's practice in order to be in accordance to the rule, of course for practical purposes (for example in situation when culture needs to change its pattern due to new circumstances, discoveries, or when pattern is acquired by children in course of their education, or similar). Interesting question is the one concerning occurrences of surfacing grammatical propositions in everyday life.

In “Culture and Value” (CV 92-3) Wittgenstein describes certain doctrine of consequences of our actions in terms of one being transmitted to places of eternal torment or eternal joy after death depending on one's actions. He asks – what might be the effect of such a doctrine? He also emphasises that this doctrine looks like a natural law rather then like a theory of punishment and reward. In the next passage he writes the following:

(i) “Teaching this could not be an ethical training. And if you want to train anyone ethically & yet teach him like this, you would have to teach the doctrine after the training and represent it as a sort of incomprehensible mystery.” (CV 93)

The heart of this idea seems to be obvious – even if you have some ethical doctrine still the rule is always the same if you want to coach anyone ethically – first the

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training, then the doctrine, and the doctrine (at least the huge part of it) in principle just emerges from describing the practice (by trainer and by trainee as well). But what does this mean? It seems that it means that ethical training is in a way like any other training: initially a kind of drill in certain practice, and after that occasionally an explication of rule implicit in practice (and explicit moral value pops up only in explication (description) of a practice). The drill seems to be quite similar to learning a LG, namely by series of examples most of which are quite close to the prototypical case and some of them quite far away from it i.e. by repeating the practice until the trainee acquires sufficient expertise regarding the proper performance of it.

For instance, if one is teaching a child to wash it's hands before meal the very action of washing hands properly or while the hands are sufficiently clean for given purpose is morally correct practice since it is a part of family of practices which we could be called hygiene which itself is also morally correct family of practices since one should do everything reasonable in order to avoid unnecessary harm to his/her health, and this means to go along with our grammar and FOL. However, what is sufficient for the drill to be successful is just that a child in majority or in all situations automatically washes its hands before meal.

And there are standard exceptions to the rule as well. For example, if a child is very hungry, if the meal will get cold, if hands are clean enough before washing, and similar, then there is no need to wash hands before meal. In occasions such as these a child (of certain age regarding its “moral development”) could ask a series of questions regarding the practice and the parent should give some of reasons mentioned before as reasons for washing hands or some reasons for not washing them. After grasping similarities and dissimilarities among few cases of such exceptions a child is capable of applying the rule and not applying it occasionally, when it could recognise a case as the case of (standard) exception to the rule. However, these reasons are reasons only for practical purposes, i.e. for understanding the correctness of given practice and of exceptions to rule; they are not the final reasons. Final reasons are “incomprehensible mystery” in the end (such as meaning of health, of avoiding illness, of living, of life, etc.).

Somewhat different question is – how can the normative element emerge from simple description of certain “prototypical case” or from a series of cases which are closest to the prototypical one? Giving reasons for actions is precisely this moment when ethics and morality emerge. Washing hands properly before meal means that this action is morally correct because it is one among many actions which serve for maintaining one's health, and that “we (should) maintain our health” (and should not inflict unnecessary harm to our body) is axis-proposition (of course it can serve as a implicit rule but also as a revisable value judgement, noted by D. Richter).

(j) On the other hand, final reasons for moral correctness or wrongness of the most of our daily practices are not explicitly present in one's mind before, during or after the performance of a standard action itself, rather the whole FOL as the background gives meaning to the whole grammar (which is the part of our language–game) and to particular reasons for the particular actions as well – since they constitute a system, a system of actions and a system of reasons as well, and stricto sensu the whole system is not based on anything, rather the whole system of grammatical propositions is the background of understanding the system as ours, and as such also as a series of criteria for deciding in vast majority of particular cases. This very system of reasons for particular practices and actions can be formulated in form of grammatical

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remarks and the complete series of such propositions is in fact our grammar of good.

Now, many of previously discussed ideas have consequences on understanding of ethics as some kind of “thinking about morality of our actions”.

One of the first consequences is that ethics as it was just described rarely “exists”. That is so because in the vast majority of situations regarding our daily activities we are engaged in routine practices which are quite acceptable regarding their standard procedure, feasibility, morality, even elegance. To think about morality of such practices without special reason is complete waste of time.

Ethical judgements really “serve as guides for our actions”, but they de facto do so quite rarely, since our practices in the most of cases are self–guided. Now, to be honest, there is a minority here. This minority of situations is very often connected to “something” that represents “special reason” for thinking about morality of our standard practices, actions, and particular deeds. Such “special (or sufficient) reasons” can be various: various changes of different variables such as circumstances of different kind, low feasibility of practice, high cost, change in public opinion, change of legislature regarding the practice, simple willingness to advance a practice, etc. Under such circumstances there are different possibilities of action as the following: leaving the standard practice as it is and wait for the change of circumstances, leaving the standard practice as it is and try to change the very circumstances, suspension of standard practice for some period of time, adjustment of the standard practice to the new circumstances, abandonment of the standard practice completely and search for a new one, etc. Models of mentioned procedures (especially the last one) are quite known in public spheres (like politics (especially international), legislature, business, and in private sphere (family life, personal goals, hobbies, etc.).

Now, there is the different minority in addition, namely such cases where there is no standard procedure for exceptions, where circumstances are unique, or completely new (regarding new technologies, new opportunities at work, etc.). Regarding such cases we could say that they can be new regarding: information and know–how which particular person does not possess at the moment, information and know–how which a group, a culture, a society, a civilisations, or any person whatsoever does not possess. On occasions such as these there are different possibilities of action: if to act is not necessary, (required by situation), then it is reasonable to think

about different possibilities of action in future, but if to act is necessary (required by situation), then sheer luck, and maybe some

other factors can serve as good guides in action (a hunch, emotional approval, willingness to act in certain direction, etc.), since under such circumstances any guide is a good one.

Now, where is the moral value of such standard procedures? It is hard to say. Maybe they prove themselves to be comparatively more valuable then other practices during a long period of practicing (which is the essential element of any routine). In addition, maybe they prove themselves to be valuable in all spheres of value such as economic value, legal value, political value, moral value, aesthetic value, etc. As such they are considered to be a habit or a custom of certain culture, society, and FOL.

It can be noted here that these “different” values are not so different at all since regarding all of them one could ask about their relation to other values. For

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instance, regarding what was previously said concerning morality being closely mixed with culture and society, a moral value of certain practice could be connected to other values of this practice in different ways. Perhaps even a general claim on this matter can be made, for example: All standard practices are such that they are more valuable then their alternatives

regarding all value–spheres like legality, legitimacy, profitability, etc. (which is the essential element of any routine as well).

We could even claim that all of standard procedures of a certain FOL have such properties, namely: they were tested for a long time (probability of success is high), they are accepted by majority of members of a culture (as legitimacy), they are considered to be morally correct things to do (legality, and this claim

does not exclude other procedures which could also be morally correct, accepted by minority, but, for example do not have high probability of success),

they are incorporated in “code of conduct” and “rules of procedure” of various professions,

they produce short–term costs, but long–term benefits (not just financial, but also social, cultural, etc.).

Of course this does not answer to the question – how a practice developed into a routine?

It is often suggested that standard procedures exemplify “conventional ethical standards” and this is correct to a degree. Now, it is often ignored that standard procedures exemplify and manifest a value sphere of FOL which is being manifested by particular actions and which is also the very background of any justification of any ethical standard whatsoever. Justification of non-conventionally accepted ethical standards still has the same FOL as its background as the one which is conventionally accepted. More to that, such “conventional ethical standards” are in fact “reasons” for action in the vast majority of particular situations, and such reasons are grammar of FOL.

Surely, this does not exclude existence of other, quite different FOLs, but it implicitly claims that other FOLs could be understood only from the point of view of one's own FOL. Here, there is no “the view from nowhere” or “impartial or ideal observed” (meaning to observe, understand, tolerate, accept and perhaps to participate as well in a FOL while being a full-blooded member of a different one). This is simply one of many consequences of Wittgenstein’s concept of morality (and rationality perhaps).

The point of this feature of morality and ethics is that one cannot be the member of a FOL if: one's form of life does not function as live origin, heritage and background of

particular actions, habits, customs, institutions, routines…, there is no challenge of probable omission or negligence on daily basis activities, there is no certain motivation to act without such omissions and in accordance

with one's FOL. These are not criteria of moral correctness of certain practice, rather the criteria of understanding certain practice as the legal (law–like), and legitimate part of a FOL.

However, apart from these standard procedures and these two types of non-standard situations we simply fail to see where and when something like “rational, sober and analytic thinking about our reasons for our actions” contrary to “conventional ethical standards” really takes place. If previously said is correct, then there is just one type of situations where and when one could engage in ethics

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regarding our practices and actions, namely, where and when there is no standard procedure or standard exception and when we have enough time to think of reasons for particular actions. Therefore, to put is straightforwardly:

(k) The “good” is what the grammar says and to act accordingly (always recommended, however we should be clear is a grammar really in question or rather some experiential judgement), the “bad” is to go against the grammar (never recommended), and the “permissible” is everything else (recommended under some further conditions).

In any such case (where in fact there is no grammar) there is a general rule for deciding (which is a combination of utilitarianism, pragmatist ethics, and additional criterion of avoiding of unreparable damage or harm) which says the following.

(8) An action is permissible (tolerable, allowable, acceptable) iff: (8.1) it does not produce any kind of unreparable damage or harm (especially by severe negligence or malpractice compared to standard or lege artis procedure) to anyone or anything (stakeholders) relevantly influenced by the consequences of the action, (unreparable harm principle), (8.2) it produces fewer costs then benefits to stakeholders relevantly influenced by the consequences of the action, (utilitarian principle) (8.3) and by performing such an action one (or a group) is producing an advance toward the one’s final goal regarding one's FOL and a person one wants to be(come), and the world one wants to co-create by performing such an action (pragmatic ethics principle). If one asks how this criterion is introduced into a LG, as a part of training for

example, then we could say that it is obvious consequence of a simple test in form of a question or a rule.

(9.1) Question form: would you (as a major bearer of consequences of course of an action) recommend (always, never, or under certain the conditions) an action to somebody else, or – would you accept a recommendation (always, never, or under certain the conditions) as being recommended to you by somebody else (as a major bearer of consequences of course of an action)? (9.2) Rule form: accept a recommendation from anybody else if you would recommend the same course of action to anybody else in the same or similar situation. Don’t recommend an action to anybody else if you wouldn’t accept it yourself in the same or similar situation where this recommendation is recommended to you by somebody else! Recommend to others only an action which you would accept yourself in the same or similar situation. (This is perhaps a part of the answer to the quite interesting conceptual question, namely – how a routine/a standard procedure starts, how it becomes a routine? Of course, if a FOL is presupposed, then a practice should accord with the FOL and it becomes a routine (there are many anthropological factors present here). It all depends on the elasticity of a FOL (and on the elasticity of elasticity, emphasised by J. Lukin). However, if a FOL is not presupposed, then the very issue is too global, namely how a FOL as a culture started, and as such it is beyond the scope of this investigation.)Now, every FOL, among many things, determines which actions are

“standard” and eo ipso “good”, which are opposite to such and by that being “bad”. Nevertheless, the point is that every FOL does not say much about “good” and “bad”, there are no many “prototypical cases”, only few of them. The great part of it would be a desert landscape if it would not be filled with particular styles of life, personal histories, experiences, etc. all of them belonging to the same FOL. All of these styles

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(determined by objective features like the nature of a job or by subjective features like interests), regarding their moral correctness, do not go along with grammar, nor they are opposed to it. They occupy the space of permissible, permissible regarding the grammar, nevertheless still permissible. No matter how this criterion of permissible can appear like an ethical standard, because in fact it is not – it is only a grammatical remark about how we connect expressions like “permissible action” and “harm”, etc. No matter if it looks like “a guide for action”, because in fact it is not – it is only a description of how we already act.

To repeat, our actions, actions belonging to our FOL manifest exactly this grammatical remark, not the one opposite to it. Consequently, which particular actions one should choose and for which reasons in range and scope of permissible, completely depends on one’s grammar of interests, or in short on one’s style of life and precisely this point goes straight against ethics as “thinking about morality of practice” and in favour of it as – “the primacy of practice and the work of intellect post mortem”. This point was nicely expressed by H. Putnam in his book “Pragmatism, An Open Question”:

“The question, the one we are faced with over and over again, is whether a form of life has practical or spiritual value. But the value of a form of life is not; in general, something one can express in the language games of those who are unable to share its evaluative interest.” (Putnam 1995:51)

Once again, the grammar of “good” is crucial for the grammar of good (LGs and grammatical remarks regarding “good” are crucial for good practices as parts of a FOL), since there is no a kind of action like “morally correct action”, there is only a “good” which belongs to our LGs, and the good as our evaluation of certain standard actions or practices, but all of our evaluations of our actions and practices are on the one hand just evaluations, i.e. LGs, but on the other hand they are such and such evaluations (not the opposite) only in the context of our FOL. That is why the FOL issue is the most awkward issue and the most decisive one in the same time.

(l) In short, if a FOL is a form of culture, then a form of culture is a form of morality at least in some of its aspects. The question is – which are these? Namely, these are moral and ethical LGs, practices as routines and as standard exceptions as well. There are three kinds of remarks one can make, namely, a descriptive remark regarding actions and LGs explicating these actions, a grammatical or hinge remark regarding rule-like forms of actions (their standard nature) or rule-forms of their moral explications, and finally axes remarks regarding implicit “presuppositions” which are manifested in all standard practices. These last can be explicated in various “exceptional” situations (these types as shown in Table 8). It is the most crucial for understanding its LGs, and among these the grammatical propositions which are mere descriptions as procedures serving as justifications for actions and practices and as moral evaluations. Moral correctness of any particular action or a practice (as a standard procedure) is: manifested in prototypical actions (practices) belonging to a FOL, understandable only on the background (or “the rough ground”) of whole FOL, explicated in LGs as “descriptions” which are used for various practical purposes, and “used” in LGs as “justifications” for various practices (in form of grammatical remarks). This feature of moral correctness was pretty precisely captured by Burbules and Smeyers: “What does it mean to conceive of ethics as a practice? First of all, it means that it is a constellation of learned activities, dispositions, and skills. We learn to engage in complex practices through observing an emulating others who are

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more skilled then we; through our own practice, trial, and error; … From the framework we are sketching here, ethics is no different; we learn to be good, and to do good; we are initiated into a form of life… In this sense ethics always exists against the background of a form of life.” (see Burbules and Smeyers 2009).

Table 8: Three kinds of remarks regarding moral and ethical aspects of a FOL as a form of culture

Let us return to the vital idea which can be considered as a kind of objection to a certain intuitive idea which says that if one cares to know which moral principles of a person are, then one should observe what person did. (Hare 1952: I, 1, 1.1) Surely there is something to it, however, if one simply observes persons actions, and explicates principles from actions, then it seems that the procedure itself begs the question, since one is presupposing that a person acts in accordance with some principles. Therefore, one's observation is already aspectualised (or theory laden), since one presupposes that there must be some moral principles conceptually separable from practices and cases. This seems to be the wrong way to explicate this obviously basically correct and important idea.

Nonetheless, there is a simpler way to explicate such procedure. One's actions have no principles they fall under, they are sufficiently similar in order to manifest basic pattern of a FOL. Actions have their consequences, and consequences are the goal of actions. What one could observe and in fact in most cases is observed by one is just that the most of particular actions of a person belong to certain groups of similar standard routines (or their exceptions which are in vast majority of cases standard exceptions). Particular actions belonging to a certain group and groups belonging to a whole of practices of a person (to a FOL) are mutually more or less similar; but they do not have any distinct feature which would be present in all of them (like games in PI 66).

A FOL here serves as a “background” of understanding of any particular group or routines and of any particular action (recognised as) falling under it (as shown in Table 9).

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Table 9: Recognition of a situation falling under certain pattern

Other way around, particular action (especially any standard action, or a routine) being done properly (lege artis) serves as a prototypical case, and through it, a FOL as a “rough ground”, is essentially manifested. Such action, a whole routine indeed mirrored in a particular action, and the whole FOL, could be explicated in a LG for various practical purposes. This kind of pragmatism splits in two, namely, Into the pragmatism of consequences in terms of an action being carried out in a

way that it produces standard and expected consequences (legitimacy), and Into the procedural pragmatism in terms of an action being carried out properly or

not (legality). To repeat, the first one could be called legitimacy of an action belonging to a

routine simply because it belongs to a routine and as such it produces standard and expected consequences,

while the second one could be called legality of an action falling under a routine because it is performed properly, namely similar enough to something imagined as a prototype.

What we have here are standard actions or routines which are “understood” on the background of a whole FOL because any such action “manifests” a FOL it belongs to. In a way this explication is minimal, procedural, and pragmatically speaking consequential. In the same way, a morality of standard actions or routines by being implicit in any particular standard action belonging to a routine which belongs to a FOL is minimal, procedural, and pragmatically speaking consequential as well.

Now, a burglar who steals for a living, and any other person who is doing something else for a living none of which includes stealing differ substantively. Say that Smith and Brown, being in the same or similar situation, see that a person walking on the street accidentally drops its wallet. Smith takes the wallet and returns it to its owner, while Brown takes the wallet and keeps it to himself. Now, Smith performed a standard action, while Brown did not. Do these actions belong to the same “group” (say to group of actions concerning finding other peoples things)? Well, yes and no. Smith and Brown surely belong to the same “society” and a policeman who also saw the wallet and saw Brown stealing the wallet belongs to it as well. And it is social issue that the most actions contrary to standard actions could be

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performed because most of members of a society do not perform non-standard actions (say lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc. for further reasons like for instance fear of punishment), in fact do not have an opportunity to perform them (or the know-how, or particular motivation).

However, they do not belong to the same “culture”, they do not share it (and if a FOL is a form of culture, they do not share a FOL either). As one is formally speaking “externally” motivated (compelled) to obey the laws, so is one “externally” motivated (chooses) to act in accordance with a FOL by the very process of acquiring a FOL. In fact one is, materially speaking, “internally” motivated to obey the laws, and similarly to act in accordance with a FOL (to “follow a rule”) as well, because this is partially a matter of “internalising” of “external” motivating factors by “force” (of law, or simple by fear of legal sanctions) in the case of laws, or by constant choosing and proving to act in accordance with FOL in which one is educated and nurtured, in the case of a culture.

Is this solution of the fact–value issue? Surely not, but the point was to dismiss the distinction by introducing somewhat new context of moral issues. Wittgenstein himself accentuated the distinction by introducing it in terms of “relative” and “absolute” sense of “good” at the beginning of his “Lecture on Ethics” and dismisses it in the same lecture, and later on by adoption of the rudimentary cultural account of morality and ethics.

5. Concluding unscientific (morphological) postscript

To conclude, we have tried to show that the fact–value issue is not an issue at all, that facts and values are mostly overlapped in majority cases ant this fact direct our ethical considerations. Namely, facts are mostly so to say value–impregnated, and values are fact–

instantiated, both in minimal way. It is not an issue of deriving “ought” from “is”, but the question of “manifestation” of “ought” in “is” in some cases under some further conditions. However, observing FOLs, describing them, and above all acting in accordance with them (discovering, stating, and above all using facts) manifest their moral correctness or incorrectness.

In other words, a β–good manifest itself by means of the α–good, or – substantive moral values are manifested via functional values. Ethics is nothing more then an explication of morality implicit and manifested in particular FOL (its customs, institutions, and habits), culture, and perhaps civilisation as well.

If this is the case, then ethics is all about explication (description, not explanation) of moral values which are manifested via non–moral values for various practical purposes. Standard situations of ethics as explication of practice or of FOLs are for instance all situations of teaching or of acquiring a particular FOL or one of its standard routines, or a situation of change of a FOL or one of its routines due to new circumstances, and similar.

Standard practices or routines of a FOL serve as final pseudo-reasons for actions and their implicit moral correctness since precisely there the grammar of good is essentially manifested. This can be counted as a kind of ethical instrumentalism or pragmatism, perhaps as a kind of minimalism after all. In this way morality is described as implicit in daily routines, and manifested by them in the same time.

An agent, an experienced practitioner indeed, does not stand for an institution of a kind, morality is not institutionalised by being implicit and manifested by actions

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belonging to a FOL, however, it exists mostly in the shadow of a practice, and quite rarely it crawls out of it, or it is dragged out.

However, if “one human FOL” (standpoint defended by N. Garver and some other Wittgenstein scholars) really exists, then some general “rules” for action should be applied (such as the irreparable damage/harm rule) and via use of such “rules” some positions such as radical egoism and radical altruism could be dismissed as rules and as actions that are contrary to or violations of “our human FOL” on the basis of some further reasons.

On the other hand, one human FOL should not be imagined as something that must be identical in all or is common to all cultures, or as something trans-cultural, rather as a complicated net of similarities and dissimilarities, analogies and disanalogies between many cultures. Much further consequence of such ethics of one human FOL so to say is that different ethics’ no matter how different they are in respect of differences between their FOLs, they are always comparable and commensurable. However, if there is no such ethics of one human FOL, then particular FOLs and their ethical manifestations could be incomparable and incommensurable and there is no ground or a series of similarities on the basis of which one could decide that for example lying, stealing, or killing is morally incorrect or correct in any particular situation. One could only try to investigate a different culture from within in order to see its grammar of good, reasons, customs, and institutions. The last statement has some unfortunate implications and consequences, which should be mentioned. For the first thing the last claim implies that morality is completely exhausted in

culture; mostly in its standard practices, and sometimes in its extraordinary practices, as it were, in social experiments in new circumstances.

Cultural traditions are not strict or legitimate reasons for actions to be regarded as morally correct or incorrect, but they serves as quasi–reasons, in fact as “background” (context) of understanding of particular actions and practices in the whole of a FOL, and as “a rough ground” of doing where these particular actions are instantiated.

This is similar to a position known as European pragmatism in ethics (in last few decades represented by works of J. Habermas) which differs from American pragmatism mostly in placing relevant weight on the very actions, not so much on their consequences valued in the light of future world that is created by present actions and practices (like in Dewey for example). If it is possible to interpret Wittgenstein’s ethics in his later works (namely after LE), then he seems to be close to these traditions (no matter if these traditions in fact implemented many of his mentioned ideas in their ethical considerations).

Pragmatic/pragmatist ethics – European style finally comes down to cultural routines, customs, traditional institutions common decency and politeness as its background of understanding and the rough ground of applying, to standard actions and their implicit and manifested procedural morality (in a way there is no European identity regarding ethics, however many different FOLs overlap creating a distinctive net of similarities and dissimilarities, analogies and disanalogies, and finally a recognisable pattern). This idea of pragmatist and minimal ethics as procedural morality explicated in form of axis propositions for particular practical purposes has grounds in Wittgenstein’s works, however, these grounds differ.

(m) “You cannot lead people to the good; you can only lead them to some place or other; the good lies outside the space of facts.” (CV MS 107 196: 15.11.1929)).

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„At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe that is quite essential. Here nothing can be established. I can only appear as a person speaking for myself.’“ („Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle“, p. 117) „He began talking about teaching ethics. Impossible! He regards teaching ethics as telling someone what he should do. But how can anyone counsel another? Imagine someone advising another who was in love and about to marry, and pointing out to him all the things he cannot do if he marries. The idiot! How can one know how these things are in another man’s life?” (Bouwsma 1986:45)

All other ethical tasks which are not adequate to a particular “standard nausea” when one considers hard-core moral issues (which is if not the basic motive for pragmatic ethics, then surely an element of authenticity of such ethical considerations) are nothing more then a kind of childish escapism or irrational exaggerations in opposite directions, namely, in direction of “moral escapism” regarding daily moral issues (so common in

academic, business, legal, and political spheres for various particular reasons and convenience) on one hand,

and in the opposite direction of so to say “a moral exaggerations” regarding daily moral issues (so common when one is moralising an issue which is obviously morally sufficiently clear).

Among all other mentioned elements and extremes minimal pragmatist ethics first and foremost tries to escape precisely these and by that it tries to preserve morality and ethics as a standard implicit and manifested aspect of human actions and as an explicable aspect of sphere of moral value so important in our private and public life. Finally, did we or didn’t we answer to three questions from the introduction. Well, concerning the first question, if moral LGs are to be closely connectively

analysed within FOLs they belong to, and which implies and manifests patterns of human actions, then morality and ethics are not an issue of mere formal, linguistic or logical dispute or a dispute in general theory of human action.

Concerning the second question, I hope that the idea that there is no strict boundary between facts and values, moral descriptions and moral evaluations, moral and non-moral aspects of human actions is now at least more comprehensible and reasonable.

Concerning the last question, and especially in the light of avoiding mentioned extremes in terms of “a moral escapism” and “moral exaggerations” morality and ethics seem to be sufficiently explicated as proper parts of a culture, and consequently, are any moral or ethical disputes are in fact disputes over culture.

If all of these are at least slightly correct, then, no matter to which school of ethical thought we belong to, we should write our ethical textbooks all over again.

References

Wittgenstein's works

Culture and Value, 1998 Revised 3rd edition, Oxford, Blackwell Lecture on Ethics, 1993 in “Philosophical Occasions”, Indianapolis, IN, HackettLectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, 1966 Oxford, BlackwellLudwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, 2003 ed. James K. and A. Nordmann, Lanham, MD: Rowman & LittlefieldNotebooks 1914–1916, 1961 Oxford, BlackwellOn Certainty, 1969 Oxford, BlackwellPhilosophical Investigations, 2001, 2009 editions, Oxford, Blackwell

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Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, 1993, J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (ed.), Indianapolis, Hackett Remarks on Frazer’s The Golden Bough, 1993 in Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, I, II, 1980, Oxford, Blackwell The Big Typescript, 2005, Oxford, BlackwellTractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1974, London and New York, Routledge Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Lectures & Documents, 2008, B. McGuinness (ed.), Oxford, Blackwell Wittgenstein Conversations 1949–1951, 1986, Bouwsma O. K. (ed.) Indianapolis, HackettWittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition, 2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Commentaries of Wittgenstein’s ethics

On ethics

Bogen D. 1993 Order without Rules: Wittgenstein and the “Communicative Ethics Controversy”, Sociological Theory, Vo. 11, Issue 1, Mar. 1993:55-71Brenner, W. H. 1991 Chesterton, Wittgenstein and the Foundations of Ethics, Philosophical Investigations, 14Burbules N. C. and Smeyers P. 2009 The later Wittgenstein and ethics, Wittgenstein, the practice of ethics, and moral education; http://wwwfaculty.uicd.edu/burbules/papaers/wittethics.html (Retrieved 10. 7. 2009)Crary A. (ed.) 2007 Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts Edwards J. C. 1982 Ethics Without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life, University Press of FloridaFisogni V. Ethics and Language in Wittgenstein, http://serbal.pntic.mec.es/~cmunoz11/vera28.pdf (Retrieved 23. 12. 2010)Goodman R. B. 1979 Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein on Ethics, Journal of History of Philosophy, 17 (4):437-47Goodman R. B. 1982 Wittgenstein and Ethics, Metaphilosophy, 13 (2):138–48Johnston P. 1989 Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, Routledge, London Johnston P. 1999 Contradictions of Modern Moral Philosophy, Ethics after Wittgenstein, Ethics after Wittgenstein, Routledge, LondonKitching, G. and Pleasants N. (eds.) 2002 Marx and Wittgenstein London, Routledge. Levi A. 1979 The Biographical Sources of Wittgenstein's Ethic, Telos, 38, Winter, 1979:63-76Levy D. K. 2009 Morality without agency, in: Wittgenstein’s Enduring Arguments, E. Zamuner and D. K. Levy (eds.) London, Routledge 2009:262-81Litwack E. B. 2009 Wittgenstein and Value: The Quest for Meaning, London, ContinuumMorscher E., Stzanzinger R. (eds.) 1981 Ethics: Foundations, Problems, and Applications, Proceedings of the Fifth International Wittgenstein Symposium, ALWS, Kirchberg am WechselPitkin H. F. 1972 Wittgenstein and Justice Berkeley, University of California PressRhees R. 1965 Some developments in Wittgenstein’s view of ethics, The Philosophical Review 74:17–26Richter D. 1996 Nothing to Be Said: Wittgenstein and Witgensteinian Ethics, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34, no. 2, 1996:243-56 Richter D. 2002 Whose Ethics? Which Wittgenstein?, Philosophical Papers Vol. 31(3), 2002:323-42Stokhof M. 2002 World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein’s Early Thought, Stanford University PressPleasants N. 2008 Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty, Inquiry, Volume 51, Issue 3 2008:241-67Von Wright G. H. 1963 The Varieties of Goodness, Routledge, LondonWiggins D. 2004 Wittgenstein on Ethics and the Riddle of Life, Philosophy, 79, 3, 2004:363-391Wisnewski J. J. 2007 Wittgenstein and Ethical Inquiry: A Defense of Ethics as Clarification, London, Continuum

On related topics

Baker G. 2004 Wittgenstein's Method, Neglected Aspects, Blackwell, Oxford Baker G. P., Hacker P. M. S. 2005 Surveyability and surveyable representations in: Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Part I: Essays, vol. 1 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (second, extensively revised edition by P. M. S. Hacker), Blackwell, Oxford

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Baker G. P., Hacker P. M. S. 2005 Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Part II: Exegesis §§ 1–184, vol. 1 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (second, extensively revised edition by P. M. S. Hacker), Blackwell, OxfordBaker M., Hacker P. M. S. 1985 Wittgenstein, Rules, Grammar, and Necessity, Vol. 2, Blackwell, OxfordBloor D. 1996 What did Wittgenstein Mean by Institution? in: K. S. Johannessen, T. Nordenstam (eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Culture, Verlag HPT, Vienna, 1996:60-75 Bouveresse J. 2008 Wittgenstein’s Critique of Frazer, in Preston J. (ed.) 2008 Wittgenstein and Reason, Blackwell, Oxford, 2008:1-21Frankfurt H. G. 2005 On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, PrincetonGlock H. J. 1997 A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell, OxfordNyíri J. C. 1976 Wittgenstein's New Traditionalism, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 27, 1976:503-509 Nyíri J. C. 1982 Wittgenstein's Later Work in relation to Conservatism, in: B. McGuinness (ed.): Wittgenstein and his Times, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982:44-68 Phillips D. Z. and Mounce H. O. 1970 Moral Practices, Schocken Books, New YorkPhillips D. Z. 1996 Wittgenstein, Religion and Anglo-American Philosophical Culture, in: K. S. Johannessen, T. Nordenstam (eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Culture, HPT, Vienna, 1996:201-218Richter D. 2004 Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham MarylandVon Wright G. H. 1982 Wittgenstein in Relation to his Times, in: von Wright, “Wittgenstein”, Blackwell, OxfordWinch P. 2008 The Ida of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, Routledge, London

Other cited works

Anscombe G. E. M. 2000 Intention, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts Ayer A. J. 1946 Language, Truth and Logic, The Camelot Press, LondonBouveresse J. 2004 Reading Rorty: Pragmatism and its Consequences in Brandom R. B. (ed.) Rorty and his Critics, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004:129-46, R. Rorty’s reply to Bouveresse pp. 146-56 Conant J 2004 Freedom, Cruelty, and Truth: Rorty versus Orwell, in Brandom R. B. (ed.) Rorty and his Critics, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004:268-342, R. Rorty’s reply to Conant pp. 342-51 Eco U. 1986 Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Bloomington, Indiana University PressFraser N. 1996 Solidarity or Singularity? in Malachowski A. (ed.) Reading Rorty, Blackwell, OxfordGuignon C. B. and Hiley D. R. 1996 Biting the Bullet: Rorty on Private and Public Morality in Malachowski A. (ed.) Reading Rorty, Blackwell, OxfordMoore G. E. 1922 Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeRawls J. 1999 Two Concepts of Rules, in: J. Rawls Collected Papers, Harvard University PressRorty R. 1989 Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressSearle J. R. 1970 Speech Acts, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressSearle J. R. 1991 Minds, Brains & Science, Penguin, Oxford Stroll A. 1996 Ethics Without Principles, in: K. S. Johannessen, T. Nordenstam (eds.) “Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Culture”, HPT, Vienna, 1996:310-321Williams B. 1985 Ethics and Limits of Philosophy, Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts

About the authorKristijan Krkač, PhD, is a professor of Business ethics and CSR at Zagreb School of Economics and Management (Croatia); guest lecturer of Introduction to Ethics, Business Ethics, and CSR at School of Political Sciences Lille (France); and guest lecturer of Epistemology and Analytic philosophy at Philosophical Faculty of the Society of Jesus in Zagreb (Croatia). He is the author of five books; he edited and co-edited four books and a special edition of a scientific journal; he is the author of more then 50 papers mostly on Wittgenstein and corporate social responsibility.

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