The concepts of the ethical and the religious in Wittgenstein's philosophy

Abstract

Prior to deciding the proper theme to be developed for my masters' thesis, my mind was quite set on bringing forth the notion of laughter as developed by Freud in particular relation to madness. In my last years at university studying for my Bachelor's degree in philosophy Fr Peter Serracino Inglott kindled in me an interest in the notion of laughter. Fr Peter attempted to explain and expand upon, in a number of lectures attended by a large number of non-philosophy students, the relation of laughter to language. September 2000: my mum died; henceforth a confused state of mind ensued. I was still interested in laughter but I could not see myself writing about laughter and humour, however black, laughter and humour might be. I could not blend laughter and despair. The horror of death which loaded me with the wickedness of despair precluded from my part the taking on of a systematic discussion of laughter. Suddenly a silence pervaded my existence; silence was my subsistence; a personality emerged torn between the concrete truth of death and the pregnant refuge of silence. I have always been intrigued by Wittgenstein's courage to face death and in the same instance by the way in which he always attempted to portray silence not as the lack of meaningful communication but as the fulcrum of human life, as the endorsement of all that which is meaningful and important in life. So the deafening silence of death was the arche' of my journey into the funambulist's world.