British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 25, No. _j.

Summer

'ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ARE ONE'

Dian£ Collinson

WHAT DID Wittgenstein mean when he said that 'Ethics and aesthetics are one'?1
Once the usual acknowledgement is made that ethics and aesthetics are one in

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that both have to do with values, it is customary to explore their differences
rather than their affinities. The ethical, it has been pointed out, has to do with
human actions while the aesthetic is concerned with contemplation, with seeing
or beholding something. Moreover, it is possible, we arc told, to bypass the
aesthetic in a way in which we cannot bypass the ethical: aesthetic awareness is
rarely forced upon us and aesthetic situations do not seem to affect our lives
significantly but ethical situations, in Sartre's words, 'spring up around us like
partridges' and even if a person decides to ignore an ethical matter then that
decision is itself an ethical one.
There are other well-known contrasts. Ethicaljudgements are said to be made
by reference to general rules and principles whereas aesthetic judgements are
made by reference to the particular features of what is judged. In an ethical
matter we act towards some end whereas in an aesthetic matter we experience
something for its own sake.2 In the light of these considerations, it might be
asked, is it not perverse to suggest that ethics and aesthetics are one?
One way to counter that objection would be to argue that Wittgenstein held
an idiosyncratic view of ethics and that once his view is understood we shall see
what he meant in asserting its oneness with aesthetics. Professor Phillips
Griffiths, for instance, has maintained that 'for Wittgenstein ethics seems
absolutely not to be about what most of us would take it to be about' and that he
did not concern himself with the particular attitudes that constitute 'most
people's conception of ethics' but only with attitudes to life as a whole.3
It is undoubtedly true that Wittgenstein's preponderate concern was with
attitudes to life or the world as a whole. But I question whether that concern
means that his view of ethics was not about 'what most of us would take it to be
about'. Our particular judgements of good and evil are not independent of our
attitudes to life as a whole, nor of our views as to its meaning or lack of meaning,
and Wittgenstein's remarks about ethics reveal that he was mindful of such
connections.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 'ethics
and aesthetics are one' and I shall maintain that his view of ethics was very much
part of a mainstream in ethical thinking.
Wittgenstein's most succinct general description of the oneness of ethics and
266
 DIAN£ COLLINSON 267
5
aesthetics is given in his 1929 'A Lecture on Ethics'. There he stipulates that he
will use the term 'ethics' in a sense 'which includes what I believe to be the most
essential part of what is generally called Aesthetics'. Ethics, he says, is 'the
enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important. . . the enquiry
into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right
way of living'.6 The values into which ethics enquires are to be regarded as
absolutes. The judgement, for example, that something is ethically good is not
one that states that something is good for some purpose or end but that it is good
simpliciter, irrespective of any purpose it may fulfil.
The view that ethical value is intrinsic aligns Wittgenstein's ethical thinking in

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the Kantian strand, rejecting from the outset the contrast, already noted,
between the ethical as action towards some end and the aesthetic as 'for its own
sake'. So the unity claimed thus far for ethics and aesthetics is not of an
exceptional or original kind: they are one in having to do with values, with the
meaning of life or 'what makes life worth living', and also in that the values of
both are intrinsic. What does require closer attention is the attitude Wittgenstein
says they share. It receives some detailed treatment in the Notebooks. In the first
part 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 world
seen 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. Any
differences are between the objects to which the attitude is directed. Something
seen 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 is
certainly familiar as a description of aesthetic perception, characterizing it as a
shift away from the everyday, practical relationship with what is perceived so
that the object is seen and known in a way which is at once more vivid and more
detached than the everyday relationship. We are to think of the ethical as sharing
this attitude.
The passage has to be placed in the context of the logical doctrine of the
Notebooks and the Tractatus. That doctrine states that the world is the totality of
facts in logical space and that the metaphysical self, as distinct from the empirical
self, 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 world is my world'.7
It is a logical presupposition of the world and also of the aesthetic and ethical
attitude that sees things 'from outside'. The latter part of the 7.10.16 Notebooks
entry tells us more about this attitude. Looking at things 'from the outside' is to
see them 'in such a way that they have the whole world as background'. We
read:
268 'ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ARE ONE'

Is it this perhaps—in this view the object is seen together with space and time instead of
in space and time?
Each thing modifies the whole logical world, the whole oflogical space, so to speak.
(The thought forces itself upon one): the thing seen sub tpede aeternitatis is the thing
seen together with the whole logical space.

I venture the following understanding of that entry. T h e aesthetic object, or

the object seen aesthetically, is 'seen together with the w h o l e logical space' in
that it occupies, for its percipient, the whole logical space; and 'the whole logical
space' occupied b y the one object is ' m y ' whole world. This is again consistent

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with traditional accounts of aesthetic contemplation where it is typically one in
which the w h o l e of consciousness is inhabited by the object contemplated. This
is well substantiated by Wittgenstein's next entry in the Notebooks:

As a thing among things, each thing is equally insignificant; as a world each one
equally significant.
If I have been contemplating the stove, and then am told: but now all you know is the
stove, my result does indeed seem trivial. For this represents the matter as if I had
studied the stove as one among the many things in the world. But if I was
contemplating the stove it was my world, and everything else colourless by contrast
with it. 8

Some w o r d s of Schopenhauer, in whose philosophy Wittgenstein was

steeped, relate closely to this. In TTie World as Will and Idea he speaks of the whole
of a person's consciousness being filled by the contemplated object:

. . . inasmuch as he loses himself in this object. . . i.e. forgets even his individuality,
his will, and only continues to exist as the pure subject, the clear mirror of the object,
so that it is as if the object alone where there . . . he can no longer separate the
perceiver from the perception, but both have become one because the whole
consciousness is filled and occupied. . . 9

For Schopenhauer this fusion of percipient and object entails a special kind of
k n o w l e d g e in which the individual will and the individual object are replaced by
a Platonic Idea which is both pure k n o w i n g subject and the k n o w n Idea. H e
likens it to Spinoza's third class of knowledge, that k n o w l e d g e which is eternal
and from which 'follows the greatest possible satisfaction of m i n d ' and
'necessarily the intellectual love of G o d ' which is 'the love of God, not insofar as
we imagine h i m present but insofar as w e understand God to be eternal.' 1 0
Significantly for this present enquiry, since we k n o w that Wittgenstein read and
admired h i m , Schopenhauer cites the following w o r d s from Spinoza's Ethics:
'Mens aeterna est, quatenus res sub aeternitatis specie concipit.' 1 1
A n o t h e r passage from The World as Will and Idea has bearing on
Wittgenstein's remark that 'Each thing modifies the whole logical w o r l d , the
whole logical space, so to speak'. Schopenhauer is expounding his idea that an
 DIAN£ COLLINSON 269

indivisibility underlies the apparent multiplicity of ordinary perception. The

particular thing, he says,

cannot have its true self spread out ind dispensed . . . on the contrary . . . [it] is
present 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 life
is the world seen sub specie aetemitatis'?
At 24.7.16. in the Notebooks Wittgenstein states that 'the World and Life are
one', so the following may perhaps be said. Just as the aesthetic object is the

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single thing seen as if it were a whole world, so the ethical object, or life, is the
multiplicity of the world seen as a single object. In aesthetic contemplation the
single object is 'my whole world'; in ethical contemplation the multiplicity of
the world is seen as a whole and is 'my whole world'. In both cases the world
that is 'my world' is the world of the metaphysical self, the self that is a hmit but
not a part of the world, and which is consequently able to view the world as a
limited whole, occupying or 'together with' the whole of logical space. And in
each of these sets of circumstances the empirical self disappears in a conceptually
appropriate way. In the case of the aesthetic object the empirical self disappears
because the aesthetic object is one's whole world: there is no logical space for an
empirical self. That is consistent with the typical aesthetic experience in which
we seem to inhabit or become what is contemplated, hi the case of the ethical the
empirical self disappears in that it becomes just one among the facts of the world
which are seen as a whole, so that there is no individuation of any particular
empirical self. And that is consistent with the typically ethical attitude in which a
special place is never given to oneself. In the Notebooks 12.10.16 entry
Wittgenstein 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 among
others, among animals, plants, stones, etc., etc.
Whoever realizes this will not want to procure a pre-eminent place for his own body
or for the human body.

This whole characterization of the ethical, as well as resembling that of the

aesthetic, is markedly similar in form to accounts of the ethical in much
mainstream philosophy. Consider some of the recurring features of mainstream
ethics in relation to features of Wittgenstein's remarks. First, there is some kind
of contemplative apprehension of the Good, or value, or meaning. Aristotle saw
the highest good in intellectual contemplation. Plato saw the highest good in the
direct intuition of the Form of Good, a knowledge untainted by sense
experience. In Kant, a holy will is the product of reason unaffected by the desires
and aversions of heteronomy. For Wittgenstein, the world or life itself, when
270 'ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ARE ONE1
beheld independently of one's empirical participation in it, has absolute value.
Next we have the concept of a transcendental, or metaphysical, or
non-empirical self as the logical condition of the apprehension of the Good. In
Aristotle it is the highest part of the soul, that part which is not correlated with
any part of the body; in Plato it is the soul itself; in Kant, the noumenal self; in
Schopenhauer, the will-in-itself; in Wittgenstein the metaphysical will or self.
Third, we find accounts of some sort of necessity connected with the
apprehension of the good: something that 'follows from' the experience of a
metaphysical reality. In the 'Lecture on Ethics' Wittgenstein mentions this when
he talks of'the absolutely right road'. He says: 'I think it would be a road which

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everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for
not going.'13
Similarly, 'the absolute good', he says, would be a state of affairs 'which
everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring
about or feel guilty for not bringing about.'14
The same kind of necessity is expressed in the dictum, 'Love God and do as
you please'. That remark does not mean that anything goes as long as you love
God, but that if you love God you cannot go wrong in so far as you act out of
that love: loving God necessarily shows a person the perfect way.
But this brings us to the fourth characteristic shared by Wittgenstein's
account and mainstream ethical philosophy, a characteristic that is also a
difficulty and which occurs not only in ethics and aesthetics but in the broader
spectrum of philosophy of mind as well. It is the difficulty of showing how the
disengagement from the empirical world that is the condition of apprehending
the Good is the ground of particular good deeds, decisions, and judgements.
Plato could not convincingly relate the Form of Good to particular goods; Kant
failed to show how the noumenal will could determine the phenomenal will;
Schopenhauer merely asserted an undemonstrable knowledge of the identity of
body and will. And Wittgenstein encountered a difficulty of a similar form in his
reflections. For there is nothing that his metaphysical will can do in the empirical
world: '. . . if good or evil willing affects the world it can only affect the
boundaries of the world, not the facts. . . .' 15 Wittgenstein's thought at this
stage of his philosophical development is as firmly lodged as many of his
predecessors' in a profound dualism. Like them he found himself faced with an
unbridgeable rift between two realms at just the point where a connection is
required. In this respect, and in the ways shown in the other comparisons
already made, ethics for Wittgenstein turns out to be very much what it was for
a number of mainstream philosophers. For them, as for him, only some form of
metaphysical dualism was capable of supporting certain deeply felt and widely
shared intuitions about the existence and nature of a transcendental self and a
transcendental good. A difference between Wittgenstein's account and the other
accounts referred to is that Wittgenstein did not attempt to forge a connection
between the transcendental and the empirical. The difference has perhaps some
 DIANE COLLINSON 271

significance in the history of the slow and painful movement away from
philosophical dualism. It is, I think, a perspicuous exemplification of a remark in
Zettch 'In philosophizing we may not terminate a disease of thought. It must run
its natural course, and slow cure is all-important.'16
Wittgenstein's early reflections on ethics and aesthetics led him into paradox
and contradiction in his concepts of the self and the will. To follow the
numerous threads of his thoughts on these matters is to come always to a
confrontation, one that is both baulking and salutary, with the failings of
traditional dualism: baulking because those failings, as they present themselves,
are incorrigible; salutary because it enforces a deep realization of the

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requirement, seen and understood by Wittgenstein, for a radically new
approach. This does not mean that he was wrong in asserting a oneness of ethics
and aesthetics. It does mean that any insights derived from reflecting on the
assertion have to be detached from the metaphysical framework in which they
are presented.
I have been able here to explore only a small part of what underlies
Wittgenstein's claim that ethics and aesthetics are one. For him that oneness had
its source in the sub specie aetemitatis attitude: an attentive seeing that is
unimpeded by any manifestation of the empirical self. Aesthetically speaking
this 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 of
us belongs with the world as a whole, where everybody is on the same level. I do
not think that has to mean that everything has the same value, but that
everything is of account, that ascriptions of value are possible. It is the conditions
of value, aesthetic and ethical, that are established in the sub specie aetemitatis
attitude.
REFERENCES
1 3
L. Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-1916, trans. A. Phillips Griffiths, 'Wittgenstein,
G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Black- Schopenhauer, and Ethics', Understanding
well, 1969) entry for 24.7.16. The remark Wittgenstein, Royal Institute of Philosophy
also 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.
5
tion is 'Ethics and aesthetics are one and the 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 the
words to be translated as 'and the same'. C. K. logical background provided by the Tractatus
Ogden's translation (London: Routledge and and the Notebooks 1914-1916.
6
Kegan Paul, 1933) is the same as Professor Op. cit., p. 5.
7
Anscombe's. 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. William 'A.Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea,
Elton (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), ch. 7. trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London:
272 'ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ARE O N E '
u
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. Ltd., The World as Will and Idea, I, p. 168.
u
1896), Vol. I, p. 231. 'A Lecture on Ethics', p. 7.
10 M
Spinoza, Ethics, trans. Andrew Boyle (Lon- • Ibid.
1S
don: Everyman's Library, 1963), V, Prop. Notebooks, 5.7.16.
16
XXXII. L. Wittgenstein, Zettet, trans. G. E. M.
11
Op. cit., V, XXXI: "The mind is eternal Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967),
insofar as it conceives things under the aspect 382.
of eternity.'

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