New draft with minor corrections, 27. 12.

2010

Minimum ethics
Preliminary Studies of Wittgensteinian morphological and pragmatist moral
discourse

Kristijan Krkač

2010

Contents

Instead of an introduction 2
1. What is the morphology or the grammar of good? 5
2. Wittgenstein and the very idea of a grammar of good 13
3. Is it really necessary to write a manual or a book of cases? 20
4. A grammar of good, bad and permissible – what is it good for? 30
5. Concluding unscientific (morphological) postscript 39
References 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).
 2

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.
 3

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
 4

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
 5

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
 6

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,
 7

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
8
 9

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.
 10

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 accordance
 11

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
 12

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).
 13

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
 14

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,
• 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
 15

expressions, see von Wright 1963:15; Baker and Hacker suggest that
Wittgenstein is thinking of “goodness” in narrower sense, but the problem is
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
 16

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
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
 17

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
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
 18

done almost automatically (by default), and by performing in such way one performs
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
 19

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
 20

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.
 21

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
 22

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,
 23

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
 24

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)).
 25

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
 26

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).
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
 27

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.
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
 28

prototypical actions can be technically introduced similarly as for instance J. L. Austin

introduced performatives in his paper “Performative utterances”.
• 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
 29

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
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
 30

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
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.
 31

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:
 32

(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
 33

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
 34

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
 35

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
 36

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
 37

(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
 38

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).
 39

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
 40

it is social issue that the most actions contrary to standard actions could be
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
 41

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)).
 42

„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, Hackett
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, 1966 Oxford, Blackwell
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, 2003 ed. James K. and A. Nordmann, Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Notebooks 1914–1916, 1961 Oxford, Blackwell
On Certainty, 1969 Oxford, Blackwell
Philosophical Investigations, 2001, 2009 editions, Oxford, Blackwell
 43

Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, 1993, J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (ed.), Indianapolis, Hackett
Remarks on Frazer’s The Golden Bough, 1993 in Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951
Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, I, II, 1980, Oxford, Blackwell
The Big Typescript, 2005, Oxford, Blackwell
Tractatus 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, Hackett
Wittgenstein’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. 1993:55-71
Brenner, W. H. 1991 Chesterton, Wittgenstein and the Foundations of Ethics, Philosophical
Investigations, 14
Burbules 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
Florida
Fisogni 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):437-47
Goodman R. B. 1982 Wittgenstein and Ethics, Metaphilosophy, 13 (2):138–48
Johnston P. 1989 Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, Routledge, London
Johnston P. 1999 Contradictions of Modern Moral Philosophy, Ethics after Wittgenstein, Ethics after
Wittgenstein, Routledge, London
Kitching, G. and Pleasants N. (eds.) 2002 Marx and Wittgenstein London, Routledge.
Levi A. 1979 The Biographical Sources of Wittgenstein's Ethic, Telos, 38, Winter, 1979:63-76
Levy D. K. 2009 Morality without agency, in: Wittgenstein’s Enduring Arguments, E. Zamuner and D.
K. Levy (eds.) London, Routledge 2009:262-81
Litwack E. B. 2009 Wittgenstein and Value: The Quest for Meaning, London, Continuum
Morscher E., Stzanzinger R. (eds.) 1981 Ethics: Foundations, Problems, and Applications,
Proceedings of the Fifth International Wittgenstein Symposium, ALWS, Kirchberg am Wechsel
Pitkin H. F. 1972 Wittgenstein and Justice Berkeley, University of California Press
Rhees R. 1965 Some developments in Wittgenstein’s view of ethics, The Philosophical Review 74:17–
26
Richter 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), 2002:323-42
Stokhof M. 2002 World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein’s Early Thought,
Stanford University Press
Pleasants N. 2008 Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty, Inquiry, Volume 51, Issue 3
2008:241-67
Von Wright G. H. 1963 The Varieties of Goodness, Routledge, London
Wiggins D. 2004 Wittgenstein on Ethics and the Riddle of Life, Philosophy, 79, 3, 2004:363-391
Wisnewski 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
 44

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, Oxford
Baker M., Hacker P. M. S. 1985 Wittgenstein, Rules, Grammar, and Necessity, Vol. 2, Blackwell,
Oxford
Bloor 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, 2008:1-21
Frankfurt H. G. 2005 On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, Princeton
Glock H. J. 1997 A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell, Oxford
Nyíri 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 York
Phillips 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,
1996:201-218
Richter D. 2004 Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham
Maryland
Von Wright G. H. 1982 Wittgenstein in Relation to his Times, in: von Wright, “Wittgenstein”, Blackwell,
Oxford
Winch 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, London
Bouveresse 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 Press
Fraser N. 1996 Solidarity or Singularity? in Malachowski A. (ed.) Reading Rorty, Blackwell, Oxford
Guignon C. B. and Hiley D. R. 1996 Biting the Bullet: Rorty on Private and Public Morality in
Malachowski A. (ed.) Reading Rorty, Blackwell, Oxford
Moore G. E. 1922 Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Rawls J. 1999 Two Concepts of Rules, in: J. Rawls Collected Papers, Harvard University Press
Rorty R. 1989 Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Searle J. R. 1970 Speech Acts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Searle 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, 1996:310-321
Williams B. 1985 Ethics and Limits of Philosophy, Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts

About the author

Kristijan 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.