Ethical dialogue in Wittgenstein from the perspective of Charles Taylor’s notion of “embodied understanding”

Abstract

In this paper, the complexity of dialogue in ethical impasses is approached from Wittgenstein's point of view. With the analogy of language with games, Wittgenstein shows us what it means not to share the same background of implicit rules. In the case of ethical impasses, two points of view with different ethical backgrounds are opposed. However, this does not imply ethical relativism, since the fact that the backgrounds are different does not presuppose that they have nothing in common. Establishing a dialogue requires an “embodied understanding", that is, seeking similarities by means of explicit figures that are not separated from the implicit.