aesthetics and ethics

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British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 25, No. _ j . Summer

' ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ARE ONE'Dian CollinsonWHAT DID Wittgenstein mean when he said that 'E thics and aesthetics are one'?1Once the usual acknowledgement is made that ethics and aesthetics are one inthat both have to do with values, it is customary to explore their differencesrather than their affinities. The ethical, it has been pointed out, has to do withhum an actions while the aesthetic is concerned with contem plation, w ith seeingor beholding something. Moreover, it is possible, we arc told, to bypass theaesthetic in a way in which we cannot bypass the ethical: aesthetic awareness israrely forced upon us and aesthetic situations do not seem to affect our livessignificantly but ethical situations, in Sartre's words, 'spring up around us likepartridges' and even if a person decides to ignore an ethical matter then thatdecision is itself an ethical one.There are other well-known contrasts. Ethicaljudgements are said to be m adeby reference to general rules and principles whereas aesthetic judgem ents aremade by reference to the particular features of what is jud ged. In an ethicalmatter we act towards some end whereas in an aesthetic matter we experiencesomething for its own sake.2 In the light of these considerations, it might beasked, is it not perverse to suggest that ethics and aesthetics are one?One w ay to counter that objection would be to argue that Wittgenstein heldan idiosyncratic view of ethics and that once his view is understood we shall seewhat he meant in asserting its oneness with aesthetics. Professor PhillipsGriffiths, for instance, has maintained that 'for Wittgenstein ethics seemsabsolutely n ot to be about what most of us would take it to be abou t' and that hedid not concern himself with the particular attitudes that constitute 'mostpeople's conception of ethics' but only with attitudes to life as a whole. 3It is undoubtedly true that Wittgenstein's preponderate concern was withattitudes to life or the world as a whole. But I question whether that concernmeans that his view of ethics was not about 'wh at most of us would take it to beabout'. Our particular judgements of good and evil are not independent of ourattitudes to life as a who le, nor of our views as to its meaning or lack of m eaning,and Wittgenstein's remarks about ethics reveal that he was mindful of suchconnections.4 Thus I shall not argue that his view of ethics was idiosyncratic.Instead, I shall try to show something of what he meant by the gnomic 'ethicsand aesthetics are on e' and I shall m aintain that his view of ethics was very muchpart of a mainstream in ethical thinking.

W ittgenstein's most succinct general description of the oneness of ethics and266

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DIAN COLLINSON 267aesthetics is given in his 1929 'A Lecture on Ethics'.5 There he stipulates that hewill use the term 'ethics' in a sense 'which includes what I believe to be the m ostessential part of what is generally called Aesthetics'. Ethics, he says, is 'theenquiry into w hat is valuable, or, into what is really im po rtan t. . . the enquiryinto the meaning of life, or into what m akes life w orth living, or into the rightway of living'.6 The values into which ethics enquires are to be regarded asabsolutes. The judge ment, for example, that something is ethically good is notone that states that something is good for some purpose or end but that it is goodsimpliciter, irrespective of any purpose it may fulfil.Th e view that ethical value is intrinsic aligns W ittgenstein's ethical thinking inthe Kantian strand, rejecting from the outset the contrast, already noted,between the ethical as action towards some end and the aesthetic as 'for its ownsake'. So the unity claimed thus far for ethics and aesthetics is not of anexceptional or original kind: they are one in having to do with values, with themeaning of life or 'what makes life worth living', and also in that the values ofboth are intrinsic. What does require closer attention is the attitude Wittgensteinsays they share. It receives some detailed treatment in the Notebooks. In the firstpart of the 7.10.16 entry we read:

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aetemitatis; and the good life is the worldseen sub specie aetemitatis. This is the connexion between art and ethics.The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them,the view sub specie aetemitatis from outside.

The attitude that is common to ethics and aesthetics is a way of seeing. Anydifferences are between the objects to which the attitude is directed. Som ethingseen from the standpoint of eternity is seen not 'from the midst of things' but,Wittgenstein says, 'from outside'. Here we have, as the phrase 'as it were'indicates, simile but as yet no deep puzzlement; rather, an account that iscertainly familiar as a description of aesthetic perception, characterizing it as ashift away from the everyday, practical relationship with what is perceived sothat the object is seen and know n in a way which is at once more vivid and moredetached than the everyday relationship. We are to think of the ethical as sharingthis attitude.

The passage has to be placed in the context of the logical doctrine of theNotebooks and the Tractatus. That doctrine states that the world is the totality offacts in logical space and that the m etaphysical self, as distinct from the empiricalself, is not one of the facts of the world but a limit of the world. This self,Wittgenstein says, is brought into philosophy because 'the w orld is my w orld'.7It is a logical presupposition of the world and also of the aesthetic and ethicalattitude that sees things 'from outside '. The latter part of the 7.10.16 Notebooksentry tells us more about this attitude. Looking at things 'from the outside' is tosee them 'in such a way that they have the whole world as background'. Weread:

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268 'ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ARE O N E'Is it this perhaps in this view the object is seen together with space and tim e instead o fin space and time?Each thing mod ifies the w hole logical wo rld, the whole oflogical space, so to speak.(The th ou gh t forces itself upo n one): the thing seen sub tpede aeternitatis is the thingseen together with the whole logical space.

I v e n t u r e t h e f o l l o w i n g u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h a t e n t r y . T h e a e s t h e t i c o b j e c t , o rthe ob je c t s e e n a e s the t i c a l ly , i s ' s e e n toge the r w i th the w ho le log ic a l spa c e ' i ntha t i t oc c up ie s , f o r i ts pe r c ip i e n t , t he w ho le log ic a l spa c e ; a nd ' t h e w ho le log ic a ls p a c e ' o c c u p i e d b y t h e o n e o b j e c t is ' m y ' w h o l e w o r l d . T h i s is a g a i n c o n s i s t e n tw i t h t r a d i t i o n a l a c c o u n t s o f a e s t h e ti c c o n t e m p l a t i o n w h e r e i t is t y p i c a l l y o n e i nw h i c h t h e w h o l e o f c o n s c i o u s n e s s is i n h a b i t e d b y t h e o b j e c t c o n t e m p l a t e d . T h i si s w e l l s u b s t a n t i a t e d b y W i t t g e n s t e i n ' s n e x t e n t r y i n t h e Notebooks:

As a thing among things, each thing is equally insignificant; as a world each oneequally significant.If I have been contem platin g the stove, and then am told: but no w all yo u k no w is thestove, my result does indeed seem trivial. For this represents the matter as if I hadstudied the stove as one among the many things in the world. But if I wascontemplat ing the s tove it was my w orld , and everything else colourless by c ontrastwi th i t .8

S o m e w o r d s o f S c h o p e n h a u e r , i n w h o s e p h i l o s o p h y W i t t g e n s t e i n w a ssteeped, re la te c losely to this . In TTie World as Will and Idea h e s p e a k s o f t h e w h o l eo f a p e r s o n ' s c o n s c i o u s n e s s b e i n g fi ll ed b y t h e c o n t e m p l a t e d o b j e c t :

. . . inasm uch as he loses him self in this ob jec t. . . i.e. forgets even his ind ivid uali ty,his will , and onl y co ntin ues to exist as the pu re subject, th e clear m irr or of the ob ject,so that it is as if the object alone wh ere there . . . he can no long er separate theperceiver from the perception, but both have become one because the wholeconsciousness is filled and occupied. . . 9

F or S c ho pe nh a u e r t h i s f u s ion o f pe r c ip i e n t a nd ob je c t e n t ai l s a spe c i a l k in d o fk n o w l e d g e in w h i c h t h e i n d i v i d u a l w i l l a n d th e i n d i v i d u a l o b j e c t ar e r e p l a c e d b ya P l a t o n i c I d e a w h i c h is b o t h p u r e k n o w i n g s u b j e ct a n d t h e k n o w n I d e a . H el i k e n s i t t o S p i n o z a ' s t h i r d c la ss o f k n o w l e d g e , t h a t k n o w l e d g e w h i c h i s e t e r n a la nd f r om w h ic h ' f o l low s the g r e a t e s t pos s ib l e s a t i s f a c t ion o f m in d ' a nd'ne c e s sa r i l y t h e in t e l l e c tua l l ove o f G o d ' w h ic h i s ' t he l ove o f G od , no t i n so f a r a sw e i m a g i n e h i m p r e s e n t b u t i n s o fa r a s w e u n d e r s t a n d G o d t o b e e t e r n a l . ' 1 0S i g n i fi c a n tl y f o r t h i s p r e s e n t e n q u i r y , s i nc e w e k n o w t h a t W i t t g e n s t e i n r e a d a n da d m i r e d h i m , S c h o p e n h a u e r c it es t h e f o l l o w i n g w o r d s f r o m S p i n o z a ' s Ethics:'Me ns a e t e r na e s t , qua te nus r e s sub a e t e r n i t a t i s spe c i e c onc ip i t . ' 1 1

A n o t h e r p a s s a g e f r o m The World as Will and Idea h a s b e a r i n g o nW i t t g e n s t e i n ' s r e m a r k t h a t ' E a c h t h i n g m o d i f i e s t h e w h o l e l o g i c a l w o r l d , t h ew h o l e l o g i ca l s p a c e , s o t o s p e a k ' . S c h o p e n h a u e r is e x p o u n d i n g h i s i d e a t h a t a n

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DIA N COLLINSON 269indivisibil i ty underl ies the apparent mult ipl ici ty of ordinary perception. Theparticular thing, he says,

cannot have its true self spread out in d dispensed . . . on the contrary . . . [it] ispresent entire and undivided in every object of nature and in every living being.Therefore we lose nothing by standing still beside any individual thing.' 12

Can we now fill out the remark about ethics in the 7.10.16. entry: ' the good lifeis the world seen sub specie aetemitatis'?At 24.7.16. in the Notebooks Wittgenstein states that 'the World and Life areone', so the following may perhaps be said. Just as the aesthetic object is thesingle thing seen as if it were a whole world , so the ethical object, or life, is themultiplicity of the world seen as a single object. In aesthetic contemplation thesingle object is 'my whole world'; in ethical contemplation the multiplicity ofthe world is seen as a whole and is 'my whole world '. In both cases the wo rldthat is 'my world ' is the world of the metaphysical self, the self that is a hmit butnot a part of the world, and which is consequently able to view the wor ld as alimited whole, occupying or 'togethe r w ith ' the whole of logical space. And ineach of these sets of circumstances the empirical self disappears in a conceptuallyappropria te w ay. In the case of the aesthetic object the em pirical self disappearsbecause the aesthetic object is one's whole w orld: there is no logical space for anempirical self. That is consistent with the typical aesthetic experience in whichwe seem to inhabit or become w hat is contem plated, hi the case of the ethical theempirical self disappears in that it becomes just one among the facts of the w orldwhich are seen as a whole, so that there is no individuation of any particularempirical self. And that is consistent w ith the typically ethical attitude in which aspecial place is never given to oneself. In the Notebooks 12.10.16 entryWittgenstein wrote: 'A stone, the body of a beast, the body of a man, my body,all stand on the same level.' And in the 2.9.16 entry:

The human body, however, my body in particular, is a part of the world amongothers, among animals, plants, stones, etc., etc.Whoever realizes this will not want to procure a pre-eminent place for his own bodyor for the human body.This whole characterization of the ethical, as well as resembling that of theaesthetic, is markedly similar in form to accounts of the ethical in muchmainstream philosophy. Consider some of the recurring features of m ainstreamethics in relation to features of Wittgenste in's rem arks. First, there is som e kindof contemplative apprehension of the Good, or value, or meaning. Aristotle sawthe highest good in intellectual contem plation. Plato saw the highest good in thedirect intuition of the Form of Good, a knowledge untainted by senseexperience. In Kant, a holy will is the product of reason unaffected by the desiresand aversions of heteronomy. For Wittgenstein, the world or life itself, when

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270 'ETHICS ANDAESTHETICS ARE ONE1beheld independently of one's empirical participation in it, has absolute value.Next we have the concept of a transcendental, or metaphysical, ornon-empirical self as the logical condition of the apprehension of the Good. InAristotle it is the highest part of the soul, that part w hich is not correlated w ithany part of the body; in Plato it is the soul itself; in Kant, the noumenal self; inSchopenhauer, the will-in-itself; in Wittgenstein the metaphysical will or self.

Third, we find accounts of some sort of necessity connected with theapprehension of the good: something that 'follows from' the experience ofametaphysical reality. In the 'Lecture on Ethics' W ittgenstein mentions this whenhe talks of' th e absolutely right road'. H e says: 'I think it would be a road whicheverybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go , or be ashamed fornot going.'13Similarly, 'the absolute good', he says, would be a state of affairs 'whicheverybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bringabout or feel guilty for not bringing about.'14The same kind of necessity is expressed in the dictum, 'Love God and do asyou please'. That remark does not mean tha t any thing goes as long as you loveGod, but that if you love God you cannot go wrong in so far as you act out ofthat love: loving God necessarily shows a person the perfect way.But this brings us to the fourth characteristic shared by Wittgenstein'saccount and mainstream ethical philosophy, a characteristic that is also a

difficulty and which occurs not only in ethics and aesthetics but in the broaderspectrum of philosophy of mind as well. It is the difficulty of show ing h ow thedisengagement from the empirical world that is the condition of apprehendingthe Good is the ground of particular good deeds, decisions, and judgements.Plato could not convincingly relate the Form of Good to particular goods; Kantfailed to show how the noumenal will could determine the phenomenal will;Schopenhauer merely asserted an undemonstrable knowledge of the identity ofbody and w ill. And W ittgenstein encoun tered a difficulty ofa similar form in hisreflections. For there is nothing that his metaphysical will can do in the empiricalworld: '. . . if good or evil willing affects the world it can only affect theboundaries of the world, not the facts. . . .'15 Wittgenstein's thought at thisstage of his philosophical development is as firmly lodged as many of hispredecessors' in a profound dualism. Like them he found himself faced w ith anunbridgeable rift between two realms at just the point where a connection isrequired. In this respect, and in the ways shown in the other comparisonsalready made, ethics for Wittgenstein turns out to be very much w hat it was fora number of mainstream philosophers. For them, as for him, only some form ofmetaphysical dualism was capable of supporting certain deeply felt and widelyshared intuitions about the existence and nature of a transcendental self and atranscendental good . A difference between Wittgenstein's account and the otheraccounts referred to is that Wittgenstein did not attempt to forge a connectionbetween the transcendental and the empirical. The difference has perhaps som e

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DIANE COLLINSON 271significance in the history of the slow and painful movement away fromphilosophical dualism. It is, I think, a perspicuous exemplification of a remark inZettch 'In philosophizing we may not terminate a disease of thought. It must runits natural course, and slow cure is all-important.'16

Wittgenstein's early reflections on ethics and aesthetics led him into paradoxand contradiction in his concepts of the self and the will. To follow thenumerous threads of his thoughts on these matters is to come always to aconfrontation, one that is both baulking and salutary, with the failings oftraditional dualism: baulking because those failings, as they present themselves,are incorrigible; salutary because it enforces a deep realization of therequirement, seen and understood by Wittgenstein, for a radically newapproach. This does not mean that he was wrong in asserting a oneness of ethicsand aesthetics. It does mean that any insights derived from reflecting on theassertion have to be detached from the metaphysical framework in which theyare presented.

I have been able here to explore only a small part of what underliesWittgenstein's claim that ethics and aesthetics are one. For him that oneness hadits source in the sub specie aetemitatis attitude: an attentive seeing that isunimpeded by any manifestation of the empirical self. Aesthetically speakingthis stance enables us to see and know another person or object as a whole world,as a sovereign. Ethically speaking it enables us to see and know that each one ofus belongs with the world as a whole, where everybody is on the same level. I donot think that has to mean that everything has the same value, but thateverything is of account, that ascriptions of value are possible. It is the conditionsof value, aesthetic and ethical, that are established in the sub specie aetemitatisattitude.

REFERENCES1 L. Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-1916, trans. 3 A. Phillips Griffiths, 'Wittgenstein,

G. E. M. An scom be (Oxford: Basil Black- Schopenhauer, and Ethics', Understandingwell, 1969) entry for 24.7.16. The remark Wittgenstein, Royal Institute of Philosophyalso occurs in Wittgenstein's Tracuttus Logico- Lectures, Vol. 7, 1972/3 (London: Macmil-Philosophicus at 6.421. In the Pears/McGuin- Ian, 1974), pp. 97, 98.ness edition of the Tractatus (New York: * Sec, for example, Notebooks 1914-1916,Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961) the transla- 29.7.16.tion is 'Ethics and aesthetics are one and the 5 L. Wittgenstein, 'A Lecture on Ethics',same'. The German, however, is simply Philosophical Review, vol. 74 (1965), p. 4. The'Ethik und Asthetik sind Eins': there are no Lecture docs not discuss or presuppose thewords to be translated as 'and the sam e'. C. K. logical background provided by the TractatusOg den 's translation (London: Routledge and and the Notebooks 1914-1916.Kegan Paul, 1933) is the same as Professor 6 Op. cit., p. 5.Anscombe's . 7 Tractatus (See Reference 1), J.641; and Note-

2 These and other distinctions are discussed by books, 2.9.16.Stuart Hampshire in 'Logic and Apprecia- 'Notebooks, 8.10.16.tion', Aesthetics and Language, ed. Will iam 'A.Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea,Elton (Oxford: Basil Blackw ell, 1967), ch. 7. trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London:

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272 ' E T H I C S A N D A E S T H E T I C S A R E O N E 'Kegan Paul , Trench, Trubner and Co. Ltd. , u The World as Will and Idea, I, p. 168.1896), Vol. I, p. 231. u 'A Lecture on Ethics', p. 7.

10 Spinoza, Ethics, t rans. Andrew Boyle (Lon- M Ibid.don: Everyman's Library, 1963), V, Prop. 1S Notebooks, 5.7.16.X X X I I . 1 6 L. Wittgenstein, Zettet, t rans. G. E. M.

11 O p. cit. , V, X X X I: "The mind is eternal An sco mb e (O xford : Basil Blackw ell, 1967),insofar as it conce ives thin gs und er the aspect 382.of e ternity . '

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