Philosophy as a Way out of Life: Wittgenstein’s Mystical Ethics

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein asserted that ethics is not finally a matter for philosophy. For him, the ultimately good or ultimately meaningful cannot be captured by reason. Wittgenstein thus gives us a different route for answering Kant’s famous questions: “What should I do?” and “What can I hope for?” If Wittgenstein’s skepticism about ethical philosophy is correct, we do not need a theory to act or hope. Rather, theories serve to procrastinate action and obscure hope. Wittgenstein’s deflationary approach to philosophy teaches us to abandon the hope for a theory of hope. I will argue that this is not a counsel of despair. Rather, Wittgenstein frees us for authentic hope: hope not underwritten by a philosophical or theological system, but simply ordinary hope for this or for that, hope that relies on nothing but itself. It is this hope, hope freed from philosophical theory building, that liberates us to act.