[the first part is here, the second part is here]

I think Wittgenstein believes that we can live a good life and be good Christians and appreciate art and so on without having to rise philosophical problems about it, without arguing about philosophical ideas at all. Everyone would agree that murder is wrong.

However, not everyone would agree that a certain action was murder. Some people, for instance, take abortion to be similar with murder, while other don’t. The difficulty lies in linking moral values with actions.

But good and bad just aren’t properties of our actions. A man stabs another in the back. Still, maybe he did it due to a posthypnotic suggestion.

Is he responsible for his action, in this case?
Nope.

Did he do something bad?
Don’t think so.

Is the action of stabbing in itself bad?
Of course not.

Imagine now a world in which no one gets hurt. Nothing bad happens to anyone. Still, the people from that world have a really bad attitude towards each other. They hate their fellows and plot to do extremely bad things to them, and it is only sheer luck that always prevents them from fulfilling their criminal intentions.

Is this a good world? I wouldn’t agree.

Why then, you might ask, if we don’t have to argue about moral matters, we don’t all share the same moral principles? Now, you just don’t get it, do you? What do you mean by ‘moral principles’? You think perhaps of statements saying that this or that action is good or bad.

Still, actions are not good or bad in themselves, remember? We can’t speak of moral matters. Therefore, it’s meaningless to ask whether we share the same moral principles or not. It’s like asking: “Do we all share the same xyz?”

In a deeper sense, of course we all wish to be good people and distinguish good from bad and we do it in the same vein and we are all humans and all alike with respect to morals and so forth.

But this is not to be really spoken of. It’s like when we share some unspoken complicity by blinking, nodding, patting each other on the back etc.

We display something which cannot be expressed in words, but only shown. It is only in this way that we show to each other that we all know what is bad (and try to stay away from it) and what is good and so on.

Now, please don’t jump to the conclusion that Wittgenstein was a mystic and encouraged obscurantism.

This will just prevent you from understanding his view, ’cause you’ll say: “this guy just says nothing about what is important in life; he’s got no opinion whatsoever, apart perhaps from the one that we should all get on our knees and pray”.

Wittgenstein doesn’t want you on your knees. He has also got some interesting and influential opinions, so bear with me a little more.