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The Language-Game View of Religion and Religious Certainty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James Kellenberger
James Kellenberger*
Affiliation:
California State University, Northridge
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Extract

There is a certain view of religion, deriving from Wittgenstein’s thought, that might be called the language-game view of religion. It has many parts, but in essence it holds–in its own terms–that religion is a language-game (or cluster of languagegames) in fact engaged in by men; or, what seems to be an alternative way of saying the same thing, or very nearly the same. thing, religion is a form of life participated in by men. As such it is in order. Although one needs to enter into the torm ot lite and engage in the language-game to learn its grammar or logic and to see the order that it has. For its order has internal criteria: what count as, e.g., rational and meaningful within religion are determined not by criteria appropriate to physics or chess playing but by criteria appropriate to religion as it is lived by the religious.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , December 1972 , pp. 255 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 On this see Philosophical Investigations, § 23 and p. 174; Malcolm, Norman “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,” Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963), pp. 119-120Google Scholar; and Hunter, J. F. M. ‘“Forms of Life’ in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,” American Philosophical Quarterly, v. 1968.Google Scholar

2 In his “Religious Beliefs and Language-Games,” Ratio, XII, 1970.

3 By Peter Winch in His “Understanding a Primitive Society,” American Philosophical Quarterly, I, 1964; reprinted in Religion and Understanding, D. Z. Phillips, editor (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).

4 See Pratt, Vernon Religion and Secularization (New York: St. Martin’s Press), pp. 41-45.Google Scholar

5 Cf. Phillips, D. Z. “Religion and Epistemology: Some Contemporary Confusions,” The Australasian journal of Philosophy, XLIV, 1966, p. 318.Google Scholar

6 Again see Winch, op. cit.

7 Cf. Wittgenstein’s Lectures and Conversations (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 52-64. Wittgenstein speaks of an “extraordinary use of the word ‘believe’ “ in religion; it is (apparently) easy to go from a special religious use to a special religious concept or meaning.

8 Kierkegaard, Soren Concluding Unscientific Postscripts, trans. Swenson, David F. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 296.Google Scholar Also see Maclntyre, Alastair “The Logical Status of Religious Belief,” Metaphysical Beliefs, MacIntyre, A. editor (1970 edition; London: SCM Press. 1970). p. 193Google Scholar; Phillips, D. Z.. “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” Religion and Understanding, Phillips, D. Z. editor (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), pp. 68-69Google Scholar; and Holland, R. F. “Religious Discourse and Theological Discourse,” The Australasian journal of Philosophy, XXXIV, 1956, p. 161.Google Scholar

19 Phillips, “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” p. 68.

10 Kierkegaard, op. cit., pp. 289ff.

11 This is MacIntyre’s very apt analogy. MacIntyre, op. cit.. p. 193.

12 Or an entailment between it being a fact that God exists and it being the case that God might not exist. Cf. Phillips, “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” pp. 65-66.

13 On this and other points in this paragraph see J. Kellenberger, “The Ontological Principle and God’s Existence,” Philosophy. XIV, 1970, pp. 281-86.

14 I have drawn this argument from R. F. Holland, “Religious Discourse and Theological Discourse,” The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, XXXIV, 1956, p. 161.

15 See The Concluding Unscientific Postcript.

16 Summa Theologica, 11-11, q.2, a.4. Perhaps it is closer to Aquinas’ intended view that revelation-assented-to-by-faith is a source of knowledge.

17 Cf. D. Z. Phillips, “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” pp. 76-79.

18 Soren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, trans. Waller Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 28.

19 See McPherson, Thomas “The Falsification Challenge: a Comment.” Religious Studies, V, 1969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Phillips, D. Z.. “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” p. 63.Google Scholar

21 Cf. MacIntyre, Alastair “The Logicai Status of Religious Belief,” pp. 191-92Google Scholar; and Phillips, D. Z. “Religious Beliefs and Language-Games,” p. 33Google Scholar, where he allows that (“external”) evidence is relevant to certain religious beliefs, e.g., the belief in relics and in the Last Judgment and then concludes that such a belief is taken to be a hypothesis. (It is because he wants to say such beliefs are different from other religious beliefs that he speaks of religious beliefs as language-games (plural) in this article.) For a discussion of religious belief in God as opposed to hypotheses and the sort of evidence that relates to each see Kellenberger, J. “We No Longer Have Need of that Hypothesis,” Sophia, VIII, 1969.Google Scholar

22 Moore, G. E. “A Defense of Common Sense” and “Proof of an External World,” Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier Books, 1962). pp. 32-33 and 145.Google Scholar

23 Numbers in parentheses refer to sections of On Certainty. eds. C. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell. 1969).

24 And of course we may need to consider the context to see if an utterance or sentence expresses a proposition at all, whether it be tautological or nontautalogical, as opposed to, for instance, giving an example of a declarative sentence in a grammar lesson.

25 Cases where it is being said that something is necessarily true are another matter, of course.

26 Cf. Philosophical Investigations, ss. 126-29.