Ethical Uses of Words in Wittgenstein’s Lectures in the 1930s and Beyond
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
14th April, 2026
@ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
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About the Speaker
Abstract
Video
About the Speaker
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen is Professor of Ethics at the University of Southern Denmark, where she also serves as Chair of the interdisciplinary Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Health home for research on ethical, existential, and epistemological issues in health. She has written extensively on Wittgenstein’s writings on ethics. She also writes on relational and virtue ethics, as well as applied philosophy focusing on ethics in healthcare, professional ethics, and methods in moral philosophy. She is currently writing a book on individual moral responsibility.
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%22format%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ISBN%22%3A%22978-1-009-43977-0%22%2C%22DOI%22%3A%22%22%2C%22citationKey%22%3A%22%22%2C%22url%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ISSN%22%3A%22%22%2C%22language%22%3A%22English%22%2C%22collections%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22dateModified%22%3A%222025-04-09T14%3A14%3A59Z%22%7D%7D%5D%7D
Christensen, A.-M. S., Forsberg, N., & Rodogno, R. (Eds.). (2025). Contextual Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan. Cite
Christensen, A.-M. S. (n.d.). Moral Philosophy and Moral Life. OUP Oxford. Cite
Christensen, A.-M. S. (2024). Wittgenstein and Ethics. Cambridge University Press. Cite
Abstract
It is a widely acknowledged assumption that Wittgenstein did not do any sustained philosophical work on ethics after the “Lecture on Ethics”. This assumption is, however, not entirely adequate. Ethics remained a theme for Wittgenstein. In particular, it is major theme in his lectures in the 1930s where it is central to some of the developments that shaped his later philosophy. In this talk, I outline his critique of the philosophical approach to and assumptions about ethics that dominating British philosophy at the time (many of which still characterise philosophical ethics today) as well as the development of a radically descriptivist and contextualist approach to the study of ethical uses of language in Wittgenstein’s lectures. I also show how this approach aligns with the more limited discussions in later writings. In the final part of the talk, I situate Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach to ethical language use in his lectures in relation to some dominant strands of ‘Wittgensteinian ethics’ and discuss some of the challenges involved in doing moral philosophy in line with this approach.
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