ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to unpack and assess what Wittgenstein says about ethics in the Philosophical Investigations. Someone who tries to define the concepts we use in ethics, he says there, is in the same position as someone who tries to draw a sharp picture that corresponds to a blurred one. The task is impossible because the relevant concepts do not have sharp boundaries. It does not follow, though, that we cannot say what ‘good’ and other such words mean. Wittgenstein would probably agree with G. E. Moore that ‘good’ is indefinable and with Henry Sidgwick that ‘ought’ is unanalyzable. But he would not agree with Moore that the word ‘good’ denotes a simple thing, like the smell of coffee, nor with Sidgwick that the notion of moral obligation is basic, again like a particular smell or color. Wittgenstein’s position is closer to Aristotle’s in that he does not think of goodness as one simple thing. There is no specifically ethical use of words such as ‘good’ and ‘ought’. They have a family of uses, and to understand their meaning in ethics we need to take the whole family into account.
