The most complete edition yet published of Wittgenstein’s 1929 lecture includes a never-before published first draft and makes fresh claims for its significance in Wittgenstein’s oeuvre.

• The first available print publication of all known drafts of Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics


• Includes a previously unrecognized first draft of the lecture and new transcriptions of all drafts


• Transcriptions preserve the philosopher’s emendations thus showing the development of the ideas in the lecture


• Proposes a different draft as the version read by Wittgenstein in his 1929 lecture


• Includes introductory essays on the origins of the material and on its meaning, content, and importance