A real book on ethics, as Wittgenstein had it, if one could conceive it in the first place, would be the book to destroy all other books. Yet there is an increasing number of real-world discourses in which ethical values are mobilized as justifications for socio-political action while, in turn, moral problems are becoming a topic of political negotiation. Although it will be difficult to find systematic accounts of an absolute good or of absolute values in these debates, it is equally difficult to imagine them not being deeply informed by such considerations.

Rather than merely adding to the corpus of applied ethics on the one hand or remaining in seemingly Wittgensteinian silence about ethics on the other, many contributions to this volume explore the reach of what can be said in ethical terms, while others provide critical discussions of what is being said in various fields of applied ethics and political philosophy under real-world power relations.

This volume collects invited contributions from the 35th International Wittgenstein Symposium 2012 in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria.

Authors include: Alice Crary, Peter Dabrock, Rom Harre, Agnes Heller, Jaakko Hintikka, Peter Koller, Anton Leist, Chantal Mouffe, Julian Nida-Rumelin, Hans Sluga, David Stern, Gianni Vattimo.