ABSTRACT
The modern moral cynic is equipped with a good deal more than the stock of arguments with which the traditional non-cognitivist confronts the moral realist. The chapter argues that the function of certain religio-ethical codes and practices is to preserve the integrity of the languages we all speak, understand and are liable to misunderstand. It provides more weight to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s moral and religious preoccupations than would be accorded to them by such scholars as G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker. A consequence of this theory is that the preservation of these values is a precondition for the exercise of other power-begetting techniques which preoccupy the cynic. This theory employs a form of transcendental argument in order to demonstrate that the preservation of certain moral norms is a necessary condition for the very possibility of language, as the later Wittgenstein conceived of it, and for the rise and fall of historical epochs, as that process was conceived of by the mature Marx.
