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Wittgenstein's Notion of ‘Theology as Grammar’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael G. Harvey
Michael G. Harvey
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

In the wake of Kantian and positivistic critiques of metaphysics and theology, one group of philosophers and theologians has attempted to reconstrue the meaning of religious discourse without making ontological commitments to a mind-independent reality. Another group has refused to abandon such commitments: they remain convinced that religious language is meaningless without them, because it cannot otherwise be ‘about’ anything objectively real; it merely becomes an expression ‘of’ religious piety, sentiment, or emotion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 89 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

page 90 note 1 This example is a slightly modified version of Peter Winch's example in ‘Meaning and Religious Language’ in Reason and Religion, ed. Brown, Stuart C. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 193–221.Google Scholar See also Phillips, D. Z., ‘Primitive Reactions and the Reactions of Primitives: The 1983 Marett Lecture’, Religious Studies, XXII 2 (06 1886), 165–80.Google Scholar

page 90 note 2 Winch, , op. cit. pp. 204–5.Google Scholar

page 90 note 3 Bambrough appears simply to lump these thinkers together as expressing a more or less identical view. However, it must be stressed that their views are similar only but certainly not identical. There is substantial disagreement among Winch, Malcolm, and Phillips about many important points in wittgenstein scholarship.

page 90 note 4 From Bambrough–s ‘Introduction’ to Reason and Religion, op. cit. p. 16.

page 90 note 5 Nielsen, Kai, ‘Religion and Groundless Believing’ in The Autonomy of Religious Belief, ed. Crosson, Frederick J. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 98–9.Google Scholar

page 90 note 6 Ibid., pp. 104–5.

page 91 note 1 Putnam, Hilary, Reason. Truth and History Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981;, pp. 127 ff..CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 92 note 1 Bambrough, , op. cit. p. 15.Google Scholar

page 93 note 1 Malcolm, Norman, Nothing is Hidden: Wittgenstein's Criticism of His Early Thought (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 135.Google Scholar My indebtedness to Malcolm's recent book will appear obvious to anyone who has had the pleasure of reading it.

page 94 note 1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., tr. by G. E. M., 51. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1968), ∞∞ 373–4.Google Scholar

page 94 note 2 Wittgenstein, LudwigLectures & Conversations on Aestgetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, cd. Cyril Barrett (Berkeley: University of California Press, [1966]), p. 59.Google Scholar

page 95 note 1 Ibid. p. 59.

page 95 note 2 Ibid. p. 63.

page 96 note 1 Winch, , op.cit. p. 200.Google Scholar

page 96 note 2 Ibid. p. 200.

page 97 note 1 Ibid. p. 203.

page 97 note 2 Ibid. pp. 208–9.

page 97 note 3 A contemporary analogue to this debate and outstanding example of the attempt to mediate this opposition is Lindbeck's, George A. recent book, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984).Google Scholar Lindbeck raises the issues at the heart of the controversy between Bambrough and Winch in attempting to mediate classical propositionalism and expressivism by proposing a cultural–linguistic model of doctrine. The model is based in part on Lindbeck's understanding of Wittgenstein, which (for myself) is more Hegelian than Wittgensteinian. For a brief yet probing criticism of Lindbeck in particular and the Wittgensteinian position in general, see Jackson, Timothy P., ‘Against Grammar’, Religious Studies Review, 2: 3 (07 1985).Google Scholar

page 98 note 1 See, e.g. Timothy, Jackson, P., op. cit. p. 239.Google Scholar

page 98 note 2 D. Z. Phillips has been inaccurately identified with and unjustly criticized for this position. For Phillips's criticism of the view – which is falsely attributed to him – that religious beliefs are autonomous in an absolute sense, see ‘Belief, Change, and Forms of Life: The Confusions of Externalism and Internalism’ in The Autonomy of Religious Belief, op. cit. pp. 60–92.Google Scholar There Phillips argues that religious beliefs are not autonomous but distinctive. In fact, their distinctiveness depends on their not being autonomous, i.e. on their being conceptually related to other beliefs and not cut off from their surrounding context.

page 100 note 1 Putnam, , op. cit. pp. 119–24.Google Scholar

page 102 note 1 See, e.g. Chisholm, Roderick M., The First Person (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981);Google ScholarBlackburn, Simon, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).Google Scholar My discussion of the reference of religious language is based on another paper in which I contrast Chisholm's metaphysical theory of reference with Hilary Putnam's illuminating interpretation of Wittgenstein's understanding of intentionality.

page 102 note 2 I am alluding to Wittgenstein's discussion of logical compulsion and necessity in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, rev. ed., tr. by Anscombe, G. E. M., ed. by Wright, G. H. von, Rhees, R., and Anscombe, G. E. M. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983), passim.Google Scholar

page 103 note 1 Putnam, , op. cit. p. 54.Google Scholar