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This volume showcases contemporary, ground-up ethical essays in the tradition of Wittgenstein's broader philosophy and Wittgenstein-inspired ethical reflection. It takes the ethical relevance of Wittgenstein as a substantial and solid starting point for a broad range of ongoing thinking about contemporary ethical issues.
The texts are organised in two sections. The first consists of chapters exploring questions around what could be called the "grammar" of our moral forms of life, and thus represents a more traditional approach in ethics after Wittgenstein. The second part represents a recent turn in the tradition towards investigating moral conceptions, perspectives and concepts that are undergoing change, either because the world itself is changing (for instance with new technologies) or because human agency, such as social movements, has brought us to reconsider previously unquestioned ideas and structures.
Within the book, the authors' contributions are inspired, in their ways of working with ethical questions, by Wittgenstein's conceptions of language, understanding and the nature of philosophical inquiry. This book is of interest to philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein, as well as to all ethicists seeking ideas for how to do philosophy in a manner close to lived experience and practice.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Ethical inquiries after Wittgenstein: Introduction. Part I: GRAMMATICAL INVESTIGATIONS .- Chapter 2. "I don't know": Agency, self-understanding and new beginnings in three films by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.- Chapter 3. "Try to be loved & not-admired". Lily Bart's moral struggle.- Chapter 4. Mortal longings.- Chapter 5. On the difficulty of speaking.- Chapter 6. Animal investigations.- Chapter 7. Absolutely personal: A countercurrent in moral philosophy. Part II: HISTORICAL INVESTIGATIONS.- Chapter 8. Love in teaching and love of the world.- Chapter 9. The on-the-ground radicality of police and prison abolition: Acknowledgment, seeing-as, and ordinary caring.- Chapter 10. Tea and consent. Reflections on the changing grammar of a moral concept.- Chapter 11. Debating embryonic stem cell research: Handling moral concerns more gently.- Chapter 12. "The concept-forming words we utter". Extremism and the formation of a political "we".- Chapter 13. What is changing and whathas already changed: Parenthood and certainty in moral discourse.- Chapter 14. A chip off the old block? Character, transparency and the ethics of tattooing.- Chapter 15. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is": Greta Thunberg, Wittgenstein and the possibility of moral change.- Chapter 16. Conversational machinations.
About the author
Salla Aldrin Salskov is finalizing her dissertation on epistemic habits in queer feminist theory, and on Wittgenstein's language philosophy and ethics. Her work on intersectionality, feminist philosophy, racialization, and homonationalism, love and Wittgenstein has been published in Sexualities, NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, NORMA: International Journal of Masculinity Studies, and Politics and Policy Futures in Education. She is also one of the editors of a special issue on feminist epistemic habits and critique in Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics (2017).
Ond¿ej Beran is a researcher at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (University of Pardubice). His recent publications include Examples and Their Role in Our Thinking (Routledge 2021), Living with Rules (Peter Lang 2018) and From Rules to Meanings (Routledge 2018, co-edited with V. Kolman and L. Kore¿).
Nora Hämäläinen is a senior researcher at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (University of Pardubice). She is the author of Literature and Moral Theory (Bloomsbury 2015, paperback 2017), Descriptive Ethics: What does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), and Är Trump postmodern? (Helsinki: Förlaget 2019, for a general audience, in Swedish).
