LECTURE ON ETHICS

Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics is his sole sustained work on ethics. It is an unusually direct and personal statement to a non-academic philosophical audience—the only such lecture he gave. Moreover, the lecture was given in 1929 during the key transitional period when Wittgenstein was between the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later work for the Philosophical Investigations. It therefore gives a fascinating insight into the intellectual journey that Wittgenstein undertook into a subject of profound personal importance for him.
This edition is the most authoritative ever published. It contains the complete text of the lecture in three drafts. The text includes for the first time manuscript 139b which had been lost for 40 years and pages from the reverse of 139a which constitute an earlier outline of the lecture. Each draft is presented en regard with the draft and all emendations on one page and a final reading copy on the other. The complete text and a comprehensive notation indicating every type of emendation to the drafts allows the reader to reconstruct or unravel the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas in the lecture.
Also included are more than 100 pages of supplementary and explanatory material. This material places the lecture in context by covering its history, style, form and genesis. Two chapters of philosophical analysis, explanation and interpretation provide the most comprehensive published survey of Wittgenstein’s own work on ethics. The supplementary material gives readers the detailed background to understand fully the unusual view of ethics Wittgenstein advanced in his lecture.
Lecture on Ethics: Introduction, Interpretation and Complete Text will be the standard edition of Wittgenstein’s work.