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The Appropriation of Wittgenstein's Work By Philosophers of Religion: Towards A Re–Evaluation and an End

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Joseph M. Incandela
Joseph M. Incandela
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man – but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen).

The hell–fire of life consumes only the select among men. The rest stand in front of it, warming their hands (Erich Heller, ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein: Unphilosophical Notes’).

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 457 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

page 457 note 1 Heller, Erich, ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein: Unphilosophical Notes.’ Encounter, XIII (1959), 40.Google Scholar

page 457 note 2 Hudson, W. D.. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Bearing of his Philosophy on Religious Belief (London: Lutterworth Press, 1968), p. I.Google Scholar

page 457 note 3 Malcolm, Norman, ‘Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations’; in Pitcher, George, ed. Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations, (University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), p. 91.Google Scholar

page 458 note 1 Hudson, W. D., Wittgenstein and Religious Belief (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 458 note 2 Malcolm, Norman, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief,’ in Reason and Religion, ed. Brown, Stuart C. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 156.Google Scholar

page 458 note 3 Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 100–I.Google Scholar See also Phillips, D. Z., Religion without Explanation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), p. 41.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Phillips, RWE.

page 458 note 4 Zabeeh, Farhang, ‘On Language Games and Forms of Life’, in Essays on Wittgenstein, ed. Klemke, E. D. (University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 360.Google Scholar

page 458 note 5 Gellner, Ernest, ‘Reply to Mr. Maclntyre’. Universities and Left Review, Summer 1958Google Scholar; quoted in Bartley, William, Wittgenstein (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973), p. 173.Google Scholar

page 459 note 1 Manuscript 173; quoted in Hallett, Garth, A Companion to Wittgenstein's ‘Philosophical Investigations’, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 231–32.Google Scholar The translations from the German are his.

page 459 note 2 I am indebted here to Edwards, James C., Ethics Without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life (Tampa: University Presses of Florida, 1982), pp. 122ff.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Edwards, EWP.

page 459 note 3 Cavell, Stanley, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 403.Google Scholar

page 460 note 1 Edwards, , EWP, pp. 131–42.Google Scholar

page 460 note 2 Cf. Cavell, Stanley, ‘The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy’, in Pitcher, op. cit. p. 183Google Scholar; and Edwards, , EWP, p. 149.Google Scholar

page 461 note 1 Edwards, , EWP, pp. 163, 216.Google Scholar

page 462 note 1 Trigg, Roger, Reason and Commitment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 462 note 2 Nielson, , ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’, Philosopy, XLII (1967), 193.Google Scholar

page 463 note 1 See Edwards, , EWP, p. 147Google Scholar in this regard.

page 463 note 2 Phillips, D. Z., The Concept of Prayer (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 27.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Phillips, , CP.Google Scholar

page 463 note 3 Stout, Jeffrey, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 266.Google Scholar

page 464 note 1 Phillips, , RWE, p. 41.Google Scholar

page 464 note 2 Pears, David, Ludwig Wittgenstein (New York: Viking Press, 1969), p. 184.Google Scholar

page 465 note 1 Ibid p. 214.

page 465 note 2 See, for example, PI, §§373, 496, 580; Z, §55; Lectures and Conversations, pp. 71–2.Google Scholar

page 465 note 3 See Malcolm in Pitcher, , op. cit. p. 92Google Scholar and Phillips, , CP, p. I.Google Scholar

page 465 note 4 Phillips, , Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London, 1970), p. 239; quoted in Trigg, p. 22.Google Scholar

page 466 note 1 Rorty, Richard, ‘Keeping Philosophy Pure: An Essay on Wittgenstein’, in Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 27.Google Scholar

page 466 note 2 Pears, , Wittgenstein, p. 182.Google Scholar

page 466 note 3 Edwards, , EWP, p. 2.Google Scholar

page 466 note 4 Rorty, , ‘Keeping Philosophy Pure’, p. 26.Google Scholar

page 468 note 1 Hertz, Heinrich, Principles of Mechanics, trans. Jones, D. E. and Walley, J. T. (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 38.Google Scholar

page 469 note 1 Russell, Bertrand, The Analysis of Mind (London, 1933), p. 233Google Scholar; quoted in Hallett, , p. 562.Google Scholar

page 469 note 2 Ibid, p. 234; quoted in Hallett, , p. 39.Google Scholar Compare PI, §452.

page 469 note 3 Ibid, p. 44; quoted in Hallett, , p. 562.Google Scholar

page 469 note 4 This would explain (at least in part) Wittgenstein's impatience with attempts to give religion a rational foundation by proving God exists (see Malcolm's, , Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 71).Google Scholar

page 469 note 5 Wittgenstein claims that religious belief is a ‘trust’ (Manuscript 168; quoted in Hallett, , p. 426)Google Scholar and says that for a wide variety of our actions, we act on trust (OC, § 509). However, trust is not some subjective feeling, but rather a mode of conduct or behavior (‘Benehmen’, ‘Verhalten’) within the flow of life (cf. Z, §566).

page 470 note 1 Janik, Allan and Toulmin, Stephen, Wittgenstein's Vienna (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), p. 235.Google Scholar However, this point cannot be pressed too far; for in Wittgenstein's early work, the type of ‘atfitude’ taken by an extensionless and detached metaphysical self which is not a part of the world but merely its limit (Tractatus, 5.632) really did amount to a subjectivistic feeling about the world. So Tractatus, 6.45 states, ‘Feeling (Das Gefühl) the world as a limited whole – it is this that is mystical.’ The later work, however, deals with a situated agent – one who is immersed within the flow of life and, consequently, eingestelt towards certain areas of this life. Hence, meaning no longer resides in an inert, detached, subjective attitude but is carved out through activity and praxis (cf. Z, §§ 135, 144)

page 471 note 1 The Blue Book, pp. 14–15Google Scholar; see also PI, §§ 166, 481 and Zettel, §437.

page 471 note 2 Rorty, , Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 157; see also p. 158.Google Scholar

page 472 note 1 Manuscript 229, § 1299; quoted in Hallett, , p. 732.Google Scholar

page 473 note 1 Bartley, , p. 105.Google Scholar

page 474 note 1 Manuscript 128 (ca. 1944).

page 474 note 2 See Moore's, G. E.Autobiography; quoted in Fann, K. T., ed. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy (New York: Delta, 1967), p. 44.Google Scholar

page 474 note 3 I wish to thank Professors Victor Preller, Jeffrey Stout, Malcolm Diamond, David Burrell, Stanley Hauerwas, and Alven Neiman for reading and criticizing one or more earlier drafts of this essay.