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Let
me explain this like this: Suppose that one of you or I was an omnicient person who therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the wo[r|l]d, dead or alive who further knew & could describe all the states of minds of all human beings that ever were & suppose that this omnicient person wrote all he knew, that is everything that is to be known, in a big book. Then this book would contain the whole description of the world. And what I want to say is that this book would ˇthen not contain anything that we [c|w]ould call an absolute ethical judjment of value or anything that would ˇdirectly [e|i]mply such a judgment. It would of course contain all relat<i>ve judgments of value as for 8 IV
instance that so & so is a good ˇor a bad runnerfor it would contain the fact that he ran so many yards the distance of 1 mile in so many seconds minutes & seconds. The book would ˇof course contain all possible true scientific propositions & in fact all A significant ˇ& true propositions that can be made. |
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Now what I wish to
say is that all facts are as it were on the same level that there is no such thing as absolute impor- tance or unimportance in them & that therefore in the same way all propositions are on the same level that there are no propositions which are in any absolute sense sublime, important or ˇon the other hand trivial. Now perhaps some of you will agree to that & be reminded of Hamlet's words ---. Dut this again could lead to misunderstanding. What Hamlet says seems to imply that good & bad are not qualities of the world [a|o]utside us but a<t>tributes of our states of mind. But what I mean is that the state of mind to so far as we mean by that a fact which we cann describe is in no ethical sense good or bad. |
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If for instance in our world book ˇwe read the description of an
appalling murder is described in all the details physical & psychological psychical that is with all the pains & anguish the victim had to endure with all the studied cruelty of the murderer the ˇmere description of facts ˇpysical & psychical will contain nothing of 9 what which we [w|c]ould say that this is anethical proposition. The event murder will be on exactly the same level as any other event for instance the falling of a stone. Certainly the reading of this description might cause us pains or rage or any other emotions or we might read about the pain or rage caused by this murder in other people when they got to know it but there will simply be facts facts & fa<c>ts but no Ethics. — |
From http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/texts/BTEd/Ms-139a
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