Forthcoming in Proceedings of the 39th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. by Weiberg, Anja / Majetschak, Stefan. Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society – New Series (N.S.) (De Gruyter, 2017) Absolute and Relative Value in Aesthetics Simo Säätelä, University of Bergen Wittgenstein's "Lecture on Ethics" concludes with a paradox: all ethical and aesthetic value judgements are either relative, and thus completely trivial (since reducible to statements of fact), or absolute and important but nonsensical (since they go beyond meaningful language). While this distinction is embedded in a Tractarian conception of language and value, Wittgenstein's treatment of it in the Lecture points forward to his later work, especially through its use of examples of "what we would say when". But it is not until he frees himself from the Tractarian constraints on language and value that he can take in the full force of these kinds of considerations about use, and describe aesthetics in a satisfactory way. Examples from Wittgenstein's later treatment of aesthetics show how the earlier unconditional distinction between relative and absolute value is understood instead as grammatical distinction within a family of different language-games involving aesthetic evaluation and appreciation. Keywords: Wittgenstein, aesthetics, ethics, relative value, absolute value Introduction The "Lecture on Ethics" occupies an important, but disputed and problematic place in the development of Wittgenstein's thought. He was invited to give this lecture by the Heretics Society in Cambridge in January 1929, that is very soon after his return to England and philosophy. 1 The Lecture is commonly seen as the last expression of his early philosophy, since it develops themes from the Tractatus, but it also points forward to his later thought by emphasizing the use of language and considering concrete examples of it. This makes it crucial when we try to understand continuities and discontinuities in Wittgenstein's thinking about ethics and aesthetics. 2 My intention in this paper is to elucidate the distinction between relative and absolute value, as it occurs in the Lecture, in relation to aesthetics. Then I will look at how this distinction, and the paradox that Wittgenstein thinks it leads to, is treated in his later thought about aesthetics. Wittgenstein begins the Lecture by saying that he will adopt G.E. Moore's explanation of the term "ethics" in Principia Ethica: "Ethics is the general enquiry into what is good." But Wittgenstein then wants to widen this definition by substituting "what is good" with "what is valuable". This means he is "going to use the term Ethics in a slightly wider sense", which includes what he believes "to be the most 1 The lecture was probably not delivered until November 1929 (Somavilla 2007: 243). 2 The text survives in three versions: two manuscripts (139a and 139b) and a typescript (TS 207) (all three are printed in LE). Here I will mainly be referring to the TS, but I will also draw attention to some places where the manuscripts are not identical with the typescript. I use the word "Lecture" to refer to these texts, while "lecture", Ŷot Đapitalized, refers to WittgeŶsteiŶs aĐtual talk. Quotations from Wittgenstein's printed works are indicated by citation keys with the number of the remark or page. A list of the citation keys can be found at the end of this paper.