Home Philosophy Shouldered In and Out of the Reality of Mortality
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Shouldered In and Out of the Reality of Mortality

Rethinking the Relation Between Moral Certainty and Moral Change
  • Ryan Manhire
Published/Copyright: September 1, 2025
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill
Author Information Explore this Subject
Wittgenstein-Studien
From the journal Wittgenstein-Studien Volume 16 Issue 1

Abstract

I consider two examples of experiences of being struck by thoughts that, upon initial reflection, both speakers suspect to be thoughts they must have surely already been previously aware of. The first is Allison Hope’s description of the thought, in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, “I could easily die sooner than later”. The second is Martin Gustafsson’s description of the thought, in relation to his then one-year-old daughter, “She is going to survive me”. Gustafsson draws on the work of both Ludwig Wittgenstein and Cora Diamond to describe his experience of the thought that struck him as both “unfathomable” to doubt, and as the kind of thought that involves “one’s whole view of, and mode of being in the world”. Though not explicitly mentioned by Gustafsson, I suggest there are important similarities between his description and some of Wittgenstein’s remarks in On Certainty, and that these similarities can also be seen in Hope’s case. This leads me to suggest that both Hope’s and Gustafsson’s experiences are instances of fundamental moral change that go beyond Wittgenstein’s “river-bed” metaphor as it is ordinarily understood. I suggest this insight highlights important differences between an account of moral certainty and moral change exemplified by Hope and Gustafsson, and the account of moral change developed by proponents of what I call the dominant reading of moral certainty, and their use of Wittgenstein’s “river-bed” metaphor.205

Work on this paper was supported by the project “Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value” (project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000425, Operational Programme Research, Development and Education, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic). Thank you to Lars Hertzberg, Martin Gustafsson, Michael Campbell, and Chryssi Sidiropoulou for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Bibliography

Boncompagni, Anna: Wrong Hinges, in: Cecilie Eriksen, Julia Hermann, Neil O’Hara & Nigel Pleasants (eds.): Philosophical Perspectives on Moral Certainty, New York 2023, 98 – 116.10.4324/9781003178927-6Search in Google Scholar

Brice, Robert Greenleaf: Mistakes and Mental Disturbances: Pleasants, Wittgenstein, and Basic Moral Certainty, in: Philosophia 41/2 (2013), 477 – 487.10.1007/s11406-012-9385-2Search in Google Scholar

Campbell, Michael: Yearn After Reading: Ends, Endings and the ‘Difficulty of Reality’, in: Jissentetsugaku Kenkyu [実践哲学研究] 37 (2014), 58 – 81.Search in Google Scholar

Cavell, Stanley: Knowing and Acknowledging, in: Stanley Cavell: Must We Mean What We Say?, New York 1969, 44 – 72.Search in Google Scholar

Cavell, Stanley: The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979.Search in Google Scholar

Coetzee, John Maxwell: The Philosophers and the Animals, in: Amy Gutmann (ed.): The Lives of Animals, New Jersey 1999, 15 – 45.Search in Google Scholar

Crary, Alice: Wittgenstein and Ethics: A Discussion with Reference to On Certainty, in: Danièle Moyal-Sharrock & William H. Brenner (eds.): Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, New York 2005, 275 – 301.10.1057/9780230505346_14Search in Google Scholar

Diamond, Cora: Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, in: Alice Crary & Rupert Read (eds.): The New Wittgenstein, New York 2000, 149 – 173.10.4324/9780203449400_chapter_7Search in Google Scholar

Diamond, Cora: The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy, in: Cary Wolf (ed.): Philosophy and Animal Life, New York 2008, 43 – 89.Search in Google Scholar

Diamond, Cora: Wittgenstein, Mathematics, and Ethics: Resisting the Attractions of Realism, in: Hans Sluga & David G. Stern (eds.): The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, Cambridge 2018, 209 – 244.10.1017/9781316341285.009Search in Google Scholar

Eriksen, Cecilie: Moral Change: Dynamics, Structure, and Normativity, Cham 2020a.10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1Search in Google Scholar

Eriksen, Cecilie: Winds of Change: The Later Wittgenstein’s Conception of the Dynamics of Change, in: Nordic Wittgenstein Review 9 (2020b), 79 – 105.10.15845/nwr.v0i0.3515Search in Google Scholar

Fairhurst, Jordi: Problems with Pleasants’ Wittgensteinian Idea of Basic Moral Certainties, in: Ethical Perspectives 26/2 (2019), 271 – 298.Search in Google Scholar

Fairhurst, Jordi: Some Concerns About the Idea of Basic Moral Certainty: A Critical Response to Samuel Laves, in: Philosophical Investigations 47/1 (2024), 119 – 136.10.1111/phin.12403Search in Google Scholar

Goodman, Russell B.: Wittgenstein and Ethics, in: Metaphilosophy 13/2 (1982), 138 – 148.10.1111/j.1467-9973.1982.tb00671.xSearch in Google Scholar

Gustafsson, Martin: Berkeley at Vesuvius: Philosophy, Dichtung, and Common Sense, in: Wittgenstein-Studien 4 (2013), 27 – 44.10.1515/wgst.2013.4.1.27Search in Google Scholar

Hermann, Julia: The Dynamics of Moral Progress, in: Ratio 39 (2019), 300 – 311.10.1111/rati.12232Search in Google Scholar

Hermann, Julia: On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice: A Wittgensteinian Perspective, New York 2015.10.1057/9781137447180Search in Google Scholar

Hertzberg, Lars: Wittgenstein and the Life We Live With Language, London 2022.10.2307/j.ctv2k058wxSearch in Google Scholar

Hope, Allison: How the Covid-19 pandemic has changed our sense of mortality, 21 March 2021, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/21/health/accept-death-covid-pandemic-wellness/index.html (accessed: 25 October 2024).Search in Google Scholar

Hughes, Ted: Six Young Men, in: The Hawk in the Rain, London 1957, 54 – 55.Search in Google Scholar

Hämäläinen, Nora: A Case for Moral History – Universality and Change in Ethics after Wittgenstein, in: Philosophical Investigations 43/4 (2020), 363 – 381.10.1111/phin.12270Search in Google Scholar

Hämäläinen, Nora: Three Metaphors Towards a Conception of Moral Change, in: Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6/2 (2017), 47 – 69.10.15845/nwr.v6i2.3453Search in Google Scholar

Kober, Michael: On Epistemic and Moral Certainty: A Wittgensteinian Approach, in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies 5/3 (1997), 365 – 381.10.1080/09672559708570863Search in Google Scholar

Lichtenberg, Judith: Moral Certainty, in: Philosophy 69/268 (1994), 181 – 204.10.1017/S0031819100046830Search in Google Scholar

Manhire, Ryan: Is the Wrongness of Murder a Universal Moral Hinge?, in: Philosophical Investigations (2024), 1 – 22.10.1111/phin.12439Search in Google Scholar

Moore, George Edward: A Defence of Common Sense, in: George Edward Moore: Philosophical Papers, New York 1959a, 32 – 59.Search in Google Scholar

Moore, George Edward: Proof of an External World, in: George Edward Moore: Philosophical Papers, New York 1959b, 127 – 150.Search in Google Scholar

Moyal-Sharrock, Danièle: Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, New York 2004.10.1057/9780230504462Search in Google Scholar

O’Hara, Neil: Local Moral Certainty and the Possibility of Cross-Cultural Understanding, in: Cecilie Eriksen, Julia Hermann, Neil O’Hara & Nigel Pleasants (eds.): Philosophical Perspectives on Moral Certainty, New York 2023, 117 – 131.10.4324/9781003178927-7Search in Google Scholar

O’Hara, Neil: Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality, Cham 2018.10.1007/978-3-319-75444-4Search in Google Scholar

Pleasants, Nigel: If Killing Isn’t Wrong, then Nothing Is: A Naturalistic Defence of Moral Certainty, in: Ethical Perspectives 22/1 (2015), 197 – 215.Search in Google Scholar

Pleasants, Nigel: Moral Argument Is Not Enough: The Persistence of Slavery and the Emergence of Abolition, in: Philosophical Topics 38/1 (2010), 139 – 160.10.5840/philtopics20103818Search in Google Scholar

Pleasants, Nigel: The Structure of Moral Revolutions, in: Social Theory and Practice 44 (2018), 567 – 592.10.5840/soctheorpract201891747Search in Google Scholar

Pleasants, Nigel: Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty, in: Philosophia 37/4, (2009), 669 – 679.10.1007/s11406-009-9198-0Search in Google Scholar

Pleasants, Nigel: Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty, in: Inquiry 51/3 (2008), 241 – 267.10.1080/00201740802120673Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-09-01
Published in Print: 2025-09-01

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Titlepages
  4. Titlepages
  5. Articles
  6. Hinweis für Leser / Note for Readers
  7. Tractarian Nonsense and Literary Language
  8. The Middle Wittgenstein on Aesthetics
  9. The Question of Linguistic Idealism in the Tractatus
  10. Waismann and Waismann’s Wittgenstein
  11. Die Grenzen welcher Sprache?
  12. Wittgenstein on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
  13. Wittgenstein über die Erkenntnis Anderer
  14. Shouldered In and Out of the Reality of Mortality
  15. On Deep Moral Disagreement Between Theists and Atheists
  16. Redrawing and publishing the graphics in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass
  17. Special Topic:Das erlösende Wort in dürftigen Zeiten – Wittgensteins Fortschritts-‍, Zivilisations- und Kulturkritik
  18. Einleitung
  19. Text und Kontext
  20. Wozu Philosophie und Kunst in Zeiten der Unkultur?
  21. „[I]‌ch sehe jedes Problem von einem religiösen Standpunkt.”
  22. Wittgensteins „erlösende Worte”
  23. Wittgenstein über die Bildung von Begriffen
  24. Buchbesprechungen / Book Reviews
  25. David R. Cerbone: Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism
  26. Peter Eigner: Die Wittgensteins. Geschichte einer unglaublich reichen Familie
  27. Raimundo Henriques: Self-Understanding in the Tractatus and Wittgenstein’s Architecture: From Adolf Loos to the Resolute Reading
  28. Shunichi Takagi, Pascal F. Zambito (eds.): Wittgenstein and Nietzsche
https://doi.org/10.1515/witt-2025-0009

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Titlepages
  4. Titlepages
  5. Articles
  6. Hinweis für Leser / Note for Readers
  7. Tractarian Nonsense and Literary Language
  8. The Middle Wittgenstein on Aesthetics
  9. The Question of Linguistic Idealism in the Tractatus
  10. Waismann and Waismann’s Wittgenstein
  11. Die Grenzen welcher Sprache?
  12. Wittgenstein on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
  13. Wittgenstein über die Erkenntnis Anderer
  14. Shouldered In and Out of the Reality of Mortality
  15. On Deep Moral Disagreement Between Theists and Atheists
  16. Redrawing and publishing the graphics in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass
  17. Special Topic:Das erlösende Wort in dürftigen Zeiten – Wittgensteins Fortschritts-‍, Zivilisations- und Kulturkritik
  18. Einleitung
  19. Text und Kontext
  20. Wozu Philosophie und Kunst in Zeiten der Unkultur?
  21. „[I]‌ch sehe jedes Problem von einem religiösen Standpunkt.”
  22. Wittgensteins „erlösende Worte”
  23. Wittgenstein über die Bildung von Begriffen
  24. Buchbesprechungen / Book Reviews
  25. David R. Cerbone: Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism
  26. Peter Eigner: Die Wittgensteins. Geschichte einer unglaublich reichen Familie
  27. Raimundo Henriques: Self-Understanding in the Tractatus and Wittgenstein’s Architecture: From Adolf Loos to the Resolute Reading
  28. Shunichi Takagi, Pascal F. Zambito (eds.): Wittgenstein and Nietzsche
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2026 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 2.2.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/witt-2025-0009/html
Scroll to top button