Niewypowiadalność etyki w Traktacie logiczno-filozoficznym Ludwiga Wittgensteina

Ethics is not among the principal or most widely discussed issues in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. It was often disregarded as a manifestation of Wittgenstein’s “mysticism” and was treated as an expression of author’s war experiences, external to logic, the alleged main topic of the book. Those approaches ignored the fact that ethics and logic are connected in the Tractatus by the Wittgenstein’s opinion that they both are equally inexpressible. I argue for a rehabilitation of this interpretation and examine, why ethics „cannot be put into words” and what this means. I achieve this in two steps. First, on the basis of the Tractatus I reconstruct three types of argumentation which are supposed to justify the inexpressibility of categories other than ethics. Next, I analyze how these arguments can be applied to ethics. Finally, I complete these reflections with a reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s original argument, which makes it possible to show that the thesis of the inexpressibility of ethics in the Tractatus is justified.