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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
i. In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein yoked together these remarks:
Essence is expressed by grammar.
Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar) (Inv. I, 373).
page 307 note 1 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, (trans.) Anscombe, G. E. M., (ed.) Anscombe, and Rhees, Rush (New York; Macmillan, 1953)Google Scholar, part I, section 371. Henceforth references to this work will be noted in the text as follows: Inv. part, section (or page where appropriate), e.g. (Inv. I, 371).
The following references to Wittgenstein's works will also be abbreviated as follows and cited in the text:
BBB The Blue and the Brown Books, (ed.) Rhees, Rush, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958.Google Scholar
RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, (trans.) Anscombe, G. E. M. (ed.) von Wright, G. H., Rhees, , and Anscombe, , New York: The Macmillan Co. 1956.Google Scholar
Z Zettel, (trans.) Anscombe, , (ed.) Anscombe, and von Wright, , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967.Google Scholar
OC On Certainty, (trans.) Denis, Paul and Anscombe, , (ed.) Anscombe, and von Wright, , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969.Google Scholar
page 307 note 2 Cf. Moore's, G. E. discussion in his Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 276.Google Scholar Also, Miss G. E. M. Anscombe, in a recent conversation insisted that ‘grammar’ as used by Wittgenstein should be taken in its ordinary sense (Conversation in Cambridge, England, July 5, 1972).
page 307 note 3 Miss Anscombe pointed out to me that the emphasis in this remark: ‘Grammar tells what kind of object anything is’, should be placed on ‘kind’ rather than on ‘object’ (‘object’ would seem the more natural rhetorical stress). If, for example, the kind of object is to be found in the grammar, then ‘objects’ in theological expressions, such as God, can be understood to be of a kind which the grammar of the theological expression shows (i.e., makes apparent), and not for instance of an empirical kind.
page 310 note 1 The main thought in this paragraph was brought to my attention in a seminar paper by one of my students, Miss Patricia Lull.
page 312 note 1 Garver, Newton, Grammar and Criteria, Cornell University (doctoral dissertation), 1965.Google Scholar Garver comes to Wittgenstein's aside on theology after a careful and illuminating analysis of ‘grammar.’
page 312 note 2 Ibid., p. 292.
page 312 note 3 A paper given by David Burrell at the meetings of the Society for Religion in Higher Education in Collegeville, Minn., August, 1972. Parts of this paper will appear in a book of Mr Burrell's on Aquinas which is forthcoming.
page 312 note 4 Ibid.
page 315 note 1 Parts of the above paragraph paraphrases elements of Wittgenstein's argument in Zettel 484–94.
page 315 note 2 Weil, Simone, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 55.Google Scholar
page 316 note 1 See important discussions in Garver, op. cit.; in Specht, E. K., The Foundations of Wittgenstein's Late Philosophy, (trans.) Walford, D. E. (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, Chapter VI; and in my dissertation, op. cit., Chapter Six.
Both Garver and Specht put the discussion in the classical Kantian mode of whether a priori judgments can be synthetic. They each identify (for the most part) grammatical propositions with a priori ones, that is, grammatical propositions do not depend for their truth value on any empirical fact, and each author defends the notion of a priori synthetic judgments.
page 316 note 2 Specht, Ibid., p. 158 f. Although Specht's formulation places Wittgenstein's view squarely into certain traditional philosophical and linguistic molds, it is on the whole fair, and as long as one renders an adequate interpretation of Wittgenstein's conception of ‘the linguistic activity of man’ and how it ‘organises phenomena into ordered wholes’, then few should quarrel with him.