Wittgenstein's Ethics and Modern Warfare [Hardcover]

This original and insightful book establishes a reciprocal relationship between Ludwig Wittgensteins notion of ethics and the experience of war. It puts forth an interpretation of Wittgensteins early moral philosophy that relates it to the philosophers own war experience and applies Wittgensteins ethics of silence to analyze the ethical dimension of literary and artistic representations of the Great War.

In a compelling book-length essay, the author contends that the emphasis on unsayability in Wittgensteins concept of ethics is a valuable tool for studying the ethical silences embedded in key cultural works reflecting on the Great War produced by Mary Borden, Ellen N. La Motte, Georges Duhamel, Leonhard Frank, Ernst Friedrich, and Joe Sacco. Exploring their works through the lens of Wittgensteins moral philosophy, this book pays particular attention to their suggestion of an ethics of war and peace by indirect means, such as prose poetry, spatial form, collage, symbolism, and expressionism.

This cultural study reveals new connections between Wittgensteins philosophy, his experience during the First World War, and the cultural artifacts produced in its aftermath. By intertwining ethical reflection and textual analysis, Wittgensteins Ethics and Modern Warfare aspires to place Wittgensteins moral philosophy at the centre of discussions on war, literature, and the arts.

In keeping with Wittgensteins famous last proposition of the Tractatus, Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, Santi??ezs readings of & a constellation of First World War texts take us beyond the eras general ethical retreat into formal logic, where some ethical understanding may yet be possible in the figuration of silence itself. The premise of ethical silence & dovetails exactly with much of the theory of PTSD narrative, in which the unspeakablewar trauma, rape, child or spousal abuse, wounding, torturebecomes quite unsayable and unwriteable. The lãâ