فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

Ethics was the major issue in Wittgenstein’s writings from 1916 to the time of publication of the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. He explicates the notion of “good” in terms of “happiness” and the latter as “accepting the world as it is.” Nonetheless, this reductionistic philosophical program could not get off the ground unless there is a pretty clear conception of the notion of “accepting the world.” In this paper, I shall explore two alternative accounts of this concept. According to the first account, which I dub “the actual world hypothesis,” Wittgenstein had meant accepting the actual world by the term “being good.” The alternative account, “the substance of the world hypothesis,” suggests accepting the substance of the world as the best reading of the Tractatus. Morris and Graver have endorsed the actual world hypothesis, as opposed to the substance of the world hypothesis. In this paper I try to show that they fail to provide good arguments for the former and against the latter. Additionally, I use ideas from McGuinness to illustrate “accepting the substance of the world” in a way that it avoids Graver’s objections. I argue that acceptance of the world ought to be interpreted as “accepting the fact that the world exists.” Finally, I shall point out that despite of his insight about the acceptance of the world, McGuinness misrepresents the relation between accepting the actual world and accepting its substance.