The paper is a conceptual inquiry on the later Wittgenstein’s approach to ethics through an account of how the method of language-games applies to research on the bystander effect. Using the Kitty Genovese murder and the Wang Yue hit-and-run as sample cases, I cite findings on how the bystander effect involves confusion on action due to the ambiguity of the situation. I argue that the presence of this ambiguity is consistent with Wittgenstein’s view on the indeterminacy of language and that the method of language-games offers a solution via an approach of engaged reflection rather than abstract deliberation. The method of language-games deters the bystander effect by establishing a sensitivity that puts us in a better position to clarify and take the perspective of others. Emphasis on acquiring this sensitivity is significantly similar to how closeness and social learning facilitate social courage. I conclude by explaining how the method of language-games leads to a critical conception of agency that is fundamentally connected to a sense of the other and how closeness and social learning serve as concrete illustrations of how Wittgenstein’s method of language-games becomes applicable in practical ethics.

Wittgenstein offers a method of engagement and participation that enables us to establish overlaps between the public and the private. One such overlap is social courage. The duty to help is not a matter of entitlement, but it is an obligation that comes from our sense of connection with others. Wittgenstein’s method of language-games enables us to extend this sense of connection even to strangers because it a ‘socially reflective mode of learning’ through which we are better able to take the perspective of others. Obligations do not just come from a system of codified rules, but from the sense of agency we acquire as a result of reflective engagement in different practices. Wittgenstein does not advance any substantive thesis, but the critical nature of his method offers a framework for understanding social courage without leading to the antagonism between altruism and rationality

In contemporary ethical theorizing, Wittgenstein is categorized as a particularist (O Neill 1996). Moral claims are reached and advanced not in terms of abstract universal principles but in terms of acquired sensitivities to the requirements of particular situations. Because of this, his position is taken to have the same limitations that come with relativism. These include arbitrariness, self refutation and outright endorsement of evil practices. The paper argues that this reading is mistaken. Though Wittgenstein emphasized flexibility and variability, there are passages in his later work which allow for a notion of moral universality that escapes the limitations of relativism. Wittgenstein’s moral position cannot simply be assimilated with existing forms of ethical relativism and moral objectivism. (http://wittgensteinrepository.org/agora-alws/article/view/2829/3382)