One of my difficulties with such philosophy is that it always takes me a lot of time to realize, to formulate to myself, that this is what might be going on—especially when I’m doing it. But this is a small matter. Another difficulty I find is that such philosophy isn't always ready to recognize that this is what it is doing. But the bigger matters emerge when such philosophy is tempted to try to see two aspects at the same time, when the claim is made that ducks just ARE rabbits. It is at such philosophical moments that I cannot understand what is going on any more.
This happens to me in connection with the discussions of ethics in the Tractatus’ and the “Lecture on Ethics.” Moral language, I want to say, has both the aspect of sense and the aspect of nonsense. It has the aspect of sense insofar as it has the tendency—the function—to change our perspective: to reveal something anew, re-introduce it into our world:
“This prisoner here, she’s someone’s daughter, you know.”
One is thus made to come into a new life with the object.
On the other hand, I want to say, moral use of language is not that of changing a perspective—not really. Because what moral language reveals is a “perspective” form outside life and world.
“You cannot treat her as if she had no value!”
– But what value? value to whom? relative to what? – Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, ‘not only that no reply that I can think of would do to answer these questions, but I would reject every significant reply that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance.’ With no possible reply we have a life, which means we don’t have a life with the original injunction that these replies are supposed to substantiate. Moral language thus makes us contemplate things as if from a world apart. It makes us see things—our own language—from “sideways on.” I.e. there is here no perspective, no contemplation, no seeing. It thus has the aspect of nonsense.
There are other cases in which something that is meaningful also has a meaningless aspect: you can look at humans as bags of mostly water, or at a Rembrandt painting as a mere assortment of colors, a bundle of perceptions. But the case of moral language is different. In this case, the nonsense aspect is essential. You have to see it together with the sense-aspect. You have to see both aspects at the same time.