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Wittgensteinian Perspectives (Sub Specie Aeternitatis)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Emyr Vaughan Thomas
Emyr Vaughan Thomas
Affiliation:
92 Ffriddoedd Road, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2TT, Wales
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Extract

This paper will examine a descriptive approach in philosophy of religion which portrays authentic religious belief as necessarily characterized by an independence from the world. Such independence is, moreover, claimed to be inextricably linked to self-renunciation through the self attaining a perspective on the world as a whole, a seeing of everything sub specie aeternitatis. This idea of a ‘perspective’ is supposed to elucidate the character of religious belief, to show just how it is distinctive from other forms of belief.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 329 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 In what follows the citations will be from Wittgenstein's Notebooks 1914–16, 2nd edition edited by von Wright, G. H. and Anscombe, G. E. M. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) and his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Pears, D. F. and McGuiness, B. F. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961).Google Scholar Also, ‘Lecture on Ethics’, Philosophical Review, LXXIV, no. 1 (1968), 4–14.Google Scholar

2 Quotations in what follows are taken from Phillips' books The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965)Google Scholar and R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God (London: Macmillan, 1986).Google Scholar Quotations in the text are followed by the letters CP for the former and RST for the latter book, with page numbers also in brackets.

3 The following account is based on his book Studies in Language and Reason (London: Macmillan, 1981).Google Scholar Quotations are followed in the text by the abbreviation SILAR and a page number in brackets.

4 White, Patrick, The Eye of the Storm (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975).Google Scholar References will be cited in the text by the letters ES and a page number in brackets.

5 White, Patrick, A Fringe of Leaves (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976).Google Scholar References will be cited in the text by the letters FL and a page number in brackets.

6 In this paper I shall not consider objections as to the compatibility of self-renunciation with morality. For an example of a recent view on this see Hampton, Jean, ‘Selflessness and Loss of Self’, in eds Paul, E. F., Miller, F. D. and Paul, J., Altruism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

7 Further distinct concepts of self-renunciation are to be found in my papers ‘D. Z. Phillips, Self-Renunciation and the Finality of Death’, Religious Studies 28, no. 4 (12 1992)Google Scholar and ‘Innocence’, Philosophy 69, no. 2 (04 1994).Google Scholar

8 See Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991), p. 116.Google Scholar

9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, pp. 116–17.