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Title: Wittgenstein, religion, and ethics : new perspectives from philosophy
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 Contents

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgements xi
^Abbreviations xiii

Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics: Seeing the Connections

Mikel Burley 1

1 The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness as a Dispositional

Attitude Chon Tejedor 13

2 ‘The Problem* of Life’: Later Wittgenstein on the Difficulty of

Honest Happiness ' Gabriel Citron 33

3 Wittgenstein and the S^dy of Religion: Beyond F^eism and

Atheism Mikel Burley 49

4 Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard arid Chalcedon Rowan Williams 77

5 On the Very Idea of a Theodicy Genia Schönbaumsfeld 93

6 Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion in Mulhall’s

The Great Riddle Wayne Proudfoot 113

7 Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language Stephen Mulhall 129

8 Wittgenstein and the Distinctiveness'of Religious

Language Michael Scott 147

9 Nuinber and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor

JohnMilbank 169

10 What Have I Done? Sophie Grace Chappell 195

11 Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity Duncan Richter 219

Bibliography 237
Index 255

Notes on.Contributors
Mikel Burley is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University
of Leeds, UK. His publications include Contemplating Religious Forms of Life:
Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips (Continuum, 2012), Rebirth and the Stream ofLife:
A Philosophical Study of Reincarnation, Karma and Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2016)
and a volume co-edited with Niklas Forsberg and Nora Hämäläinen entitled
Language, Ethics and Animal Life: Wittgenstein and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2012).
He is currently completing a monograph entitled Expanding Philosophy of
Religion: A Radical Pluralist Approach.
Sophie Grace Chappell i^ Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, UK.
Previously known as Timothy Chappell, she began living openly and officially as
a woman in autumn 2014. She was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and
Edinburgh University, and has published widely oh ethics, moral psychology,
epistemology, ancient philosophy and philosophy of religion. Her books include
Understanding Human Goods (Edinburgh University Press, 2003), Reading Plato's
Theaetetus (Hackett, 2005), Ethics and Experience (Acumen, 2009) and Knowing
What to Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics (Oxford University
Press, 2014). She has also editçd or co-edited-four collections of essays in ethics,
piost recently Intuition, Theory, and Anti-Theory in Ethics (Oxford University
Press, 2015). From 2017 to 2020 she is a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow,
hn'd a Visiting Fellow in the Depattment'of Philosophy, University of St Andrews.
Her main current research is about epiphanies, immediate and revelatory
encounters with value. She lives with her femily in the north-east of Scotland.
Gabriel Citron is Assistant Professor in Religion and Critical Thought at Princeton
University, US A. His extensive Wittgenstein editing work includes publishing notes
by Rush Rhees and Norman Malcolm in Mind and co-editing (with David Stem
and Brian Rogers) Wittgenstein: Lectures. Cambridge 1930-1933: From the Notes of
G. E. Moore (Cambridge University Press, 2016). His authored work includes articles
in Philosophers’Imprint, Philosophical Investigations and Faith and Philosophy.
John Milbank is Emeritus Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics at the
University of Nottingham, UK. His many books include Theology and Social
Notes on Contributors IX
Theory (Blackwell, 1990; second edition, 2006), The Word Made Strange
(Blackwell, 1997), Truth in Aquinßs (co-authored with Catherine Pickstock;
Routledge, 2001), Being Reconciled (Routledge, 2003), Beyond Secular Order
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the
Human Future (co-authored with Adrian Pabst; Rowman and Littlefield, 2016).
He has also published two collections of poetry and co-authored two books with
Slavoj 2i2ek and Crestón Davis.
Stephen Mulhall is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New College, University
of Oxford, UK. His publications include Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Kierkegaard (Oxford University Press, 2001), On Film (Routledge,
2002; second edition, 2008; third edition, 2016), Wittgenstein’s Private Language
(Oxford University Press, 2006), The Conversation of Humanity (University of
Virginia Press, 2007), The Wounded Animal:}. M. Coetzee and the Difficulty of
Reality (Princeton University Press, 2009), The Self and Its Shadows (Ojeford
University Press, 2013) and The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense,
Theology and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Wayne Proudfoot is Professor of Religion at-Columbia University, USA, with
research interests that encompass, contemporary philosophy of religion,
conceptions of religious experience and mysticisip, classical and conteipporary
pragmatism and modern Protestant thought. His publications include God and
't(ie Self Three Types of Philosophy df Religion (Associated University Presses,
Í976), Religious Experience (University of California Press, 1985), an edited
volume entitled William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing 'The
Varieties of Religious Experience’ (Columbia University Press, 2004) and some
recent articles on the thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Duncan Richter is Professor of Philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute,
USA. His publications include Ethics after Anscombe: Post ‘Modern Moral
Philosophy’ (Kluwer, 2000). Wittgenstein at His Word (Continuum, 2004), Why
Be Good? A Historical Introduction to Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2007),
Anscombe’s Moral Philosophy (Lexington, 2011) and Historical Dictionary of
Wittgenstein's Philosophy (Lexington, 2014; first edition, 2004). He has also
published articles on philosophy’s relation to poetry and the emotions as well as
on Wittgenstein and religion.
Genia Schönbaumsfeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Southampton, UK. Specializing in Wittgenstein, epistemology, Kierkegaard and
philosophy of religion, her publications include Transzendentale Argumentation
 X Notes on Contributors
und Skeptizismus (Peter Lang, 2000), A Confusion of the Spheres: Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2007) and The
Illusion of Doubt (Oxford University Press. 2016). From 2003-6 she held a
prestigious Hertha Fimberg research grant awarded by the Austrian Science
Fund.
Michael Scott is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Manchester, UK. He
IS the author of Religious Language (Paigrave Macmillan, 2013), co-editor (with
Andrew Moore) of Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological
Perspectives (Ashgate, 2007) and has published articles on the philosophy of
■language, the senses and action as well as on realism hiid antirealism in the
■philosophyof religion. His current research focuses on feith and on apophaticism
in the context of religious language'.- < tb'run so smoothly. I am also, of course, obliged to the speakers and delegates
phon Tejedor is Senior Lecturer ip PhÜosophy at Ae University of Hertfordshire
and Philosophy Research FeUow pt ^egenfß Park College, Uniyersitypf Oxford,
UK. Specializing in the^history.,of philosophy (especially Wittgenstein and
Hume), philosophy of language, ethics and epistemology, her publications
include Starting with Wittgenstein (Bloomsbury, 201 l)\^The Parly Wittgenstein on
Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and Value (Routledge, 2014) and a
forthcoming collection. WiUgenstein on Science, co-edited with Adrian Moore.
Rowan Williams is Master of Magdalene CpUege, University of Cambridge, UK.
a position Aat he took up in 20 n after having been Archbishop of Canterbury
from^ 2002 to 2012. An accomplished theologian and poet, his major theological
works include Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love {Continuum,
2005), Wrestling with Angêb: Conversations in Modem Theology (SCM Press,
2007), Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction (Continuum, 2008), A Margin of
Silènce: The Holy Spirit in RusSian’Orthòdòx Theology (Éditions du Lys Vert. 2008),
FaitH iñ the Public Square (Bloomsbury, 2012), The Edge of Words: God'and the
Habits of Language (Bloomsbury, 2Ö14; based on the author’s Gifford Lectures of
2013-14) and The^Tragic Imagination (Oxford University Press. 2016).
I
Acknowledgements
Nine of.the eleven chapters in this volume are based on papers presented at the
Eighth British Wittgenstein Society Annual Conference, which took place at
Hinsley Hall in Leeds on the 6th and 7th of September 2016.1 am grateful to
colleagues of mine at the University of Leeds who assisted and encouraged me
in the organizing of that conference and to staff at Hinsley Hall who enabled it
who attended, without whose contributions it could not have been the success
that it was.
Since its founding in 2007 the British Wittgenstein Society (BWS) has been
active in promoting-deeper and wider understanding of'Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
ideäs and methods, with a particular focus on displaying theirrelevance to major
themes not only in philosophy but also in contempowry'society and culture at
large. My thanks'are due td“the Executive Committee of the BWS, especially its
President, Danièle Moyal^Sharrock, and Vice-President, Ian Ground, for their
tireless support of the conference and of this volume. 4 also thank tiiem for
inviting me to present the Ihirteenth British Wittgenstein Society Lecture at the
■Bloomsbury Institute, London, in May 2015, an embellished version of which
constitutes Chapter 3 of the present volume.
The other contribution to this volume that is not based on a paper presented
at the 2016 BWS conference is Chapter 10 by Sophie Grace Chappell. This is a
significantiy amended version of a paper first published in the online journal
Diámetros (No. 38, December 2013), though not previously a^^able in print. I
am sure readers will agree that the issues addressed in the chapter, including
those of intention and the doctrine of double effect, are highly pertinent to the
present volume’s themes.
The conference was dedicated to the late D. Z. Phillips, who died slightly over
ten years previously. PhiUips’ prodigious efforts at advancing Wittgenstein-
influenced approaches to die study of religion and ethics made him an inspiration
to many, and his name was mentioned numerous times at the conference. It is
likely that he would have taken issue with most, probably all, of the chapters in
this volume to a greater or lesser degree, as Phillips had a sharp eye for what he
saw as weaknesses in others’ arguments. But insofar as the contributions collected
Abbreviations
xiv XV

PI second edition, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, ST Thomas Aquinas, Symma [composed c. 1265-1274], ed.
1958. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, 2006.

fourth edition, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, W VC Friedrich Waismann,

P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, 2009. [The subscript will be 1979.
included in citations only when the translation quoted differs from
that in earlier editions.]

PPF ‘Philosophy of Psychology - A Fragment* [formerly known as

Part 2], 2009.

PPO 2003.

PT 1971.

RFM third edition, 1978.

RPPI 1,1980.

RPP II 1980.

TLP trans. D. F. Pears and B. F.

McGuinness, revised edition, 1974.

trans. C. K. Ogden, 1922.

WLC 1980.

Z second edition, 1981.

Works by Other Authors

EW Rowan Williams.
2014.

FT„ Soren Kierkegaard. [1843], trans. Alastair Hannay,

1985.

FTj^ Soren Kierkegaard, [1843], trans. Walter Lowrie,

1994.

GR Stephen Mulhall,
2015.

PF Soren [1844], 1985.

 Introduction
Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics: Seeing the Connections

Mikel Burley

A mam source of ourfailure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of

the use of our words. - Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable
representation /'übersichtliche DarstéUung/ produtes precisely that kind of
understanding which cònsists in 's'èeing connections’. Hence the importance of
finding and inventing intermediate links’.

PI^ §122

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a phüosopher and a hnman being who evades simple
dassifications. He ploughed his own fiirrow in his Work and in his life, coming to
eschew general theories in fevour of sustained and rigorous attention to the nuances
and intricacies of particular cases. To say that Wittgenstein was most deepiy
toncemed with the workings of language in our lives is a legitimate starting point
for considering his appmaches to philosophy, but it only begins to do justice to the
prodigious range of his thinking when one notices how pervasively intermeshed
language and human life are. The intellectual tools that Wittgenstein developed for
investigating our language-pervaded lives lend themselves to being depioyed in
Ration to an unlimited number of phenomena and indeed to 'proto-phenomena'
(PI §654) - to the very conditions of our being able to do or say anything at all.
Thus, regardless bf the feet that he wrote relatively little that makes direct reference
to religion or ethics. Wittgensteins ideas have inspired and continue to inspire an
abidance of insightfol work in the study of these areas, among not only
philosophers but also practitioners of many other disciplines, including theology
sociology, anthropology and the multidisciplinary field known as reUgious studies.’
■Hie present volume brings together new or newly revised pieces by eleven
eminent scholars who work in philosophy or theology or across these two broad
 2 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
disciplinary areas. Each chapter engages with or carries forward ideas from
mgenstein - m most cases directly, though in some cases more obliquely.
Taken together, they demonstrate something of the diversity of forms that such
engagement is taking in the contemporary period. My task in this introduction
IS to set the context for those chapters by providing a concise overview of the
connections between Wittgensteins thought on the one hand and inquiry into
religion and ethics on the other. I shaU also, in the final section, offer summaries
of each of the chapters.
From passing over in silence to the elucidation of grammar
^e famous final proposition of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - the only
book of Wittgenstein’s to be published during his lifetime - states that What
we cannot.speak about we must pass over in silence’ (TLP 7).' Regardless of
how one interprets the purpose of the Tractatus as a whole, it is generally agreed
that, for Wittpnsteiiv at that time, the matters about which we cannot speak in
any inteUigible manner include the religious and the ethical dimensions of our
h™s. H ]t IS. Wittgenstein writes, ’impossible for there to be propositions of
ethics. I Propositions can express nothing that is higher. | It is dear that ethics
cfflnot be put. into words. | Ethics is transcendental’ (TLP fi.42-6.421). By
a rming that ethics exceeds-the expressive capacities of language. Wittgenstein
s not., of course, denying the importance of ethics. On the contrary, by
c «actermng it-as’higher’ and ’transcendental’, Wittgenstein is dedaring ethj
Luti mportance in our liyes. It is just that one cannot s«y anything
When Wittgenstein returned to academic phUosophy over a decade after
having completed Ae Tractatus. he was invited to gfve a lecture by a group at
.^bridge caUedThe Heretics. Accepting the invitation. Wittgenstein presented
published, as A Lecture on Ethics’ in 1965. In certain respects. Ae lecture
represents a moment of transition m Wittgenstein’s Amking. Wfiiie still tied A
Ae Tractprian contention Aaf attempts to.say anyAing about eAics or rdigion
meviAbly run up against Ae limits of language. Wittgenstein was dearly puUed
towards wantmg tq-pake space for eAicgl and religious iocutions. To mAcate
what he means by a value Aat -i, ’eAical’ or ’absolute’, Wittgenstein mentions
A ee of his ovm e^eriences. The first he describes as ’wonder at Ae existence of
Ae world (LE 8). Ae second is ’Ae experience of feeling absolutely safe’
Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 3
regardless of what might happen (LE 8) and the third is the experience of‘feeling
guilt/ (LE 10). Searching for forms of language in which such experiences might
be expressed, Wittgenstein reaches for a religious vocabulary. He suggests that
wondering at the existence of the world is ‘exactly what people were referring to
whfen they said that God had created the world’,‘the experience of absolute safety
has been described by saying that we feel safe in the hands of God’ and the feeling
of guilt is what ‘the phrase that God disapproves of our conduct’ is describing
(LE* 10). While seeing a place for these forms of words in our lives, Wittgenstein
cannot find a way of formulating them as propositions with a straightforward
correspondence to actual or possible states of affairs in the world. He therefore
feels compelled to call them nonsensical, despite maintaining a deep respect for
them (LE 11).
Over the remainder of his career and life, Wittgenstein came to see how
corresponding to (or picturing) what he had in the Tractatus regarded as states
of affairs is not the only way in which a form, of words can gain a sense. It is, he
came to think, precisely by having a role*in a form of life - a cole that might, but
lieed not, involve picturing states of affairs - that our modes-of language come to
have the sense that they do. If it is practice that ‘gives the words their sense’ (C Vj^
97e), then insofer as a form of words is deployed within the/stream’ or‘weave’ or
‘hurly-burly’ of human life, it has,a sense tb he looked for;^ and the place to look,
at least in ‘a large class of cases’.ds how it is used ‘in the language in which it is at
home. (PI^ §§43,116). From this revised vantage point, the philosophical task
ceases to be that of driving a sharp wedge between sense and nonsense in any
general sense of these terms, and becomes instead that of attending to particular
cases of things that are said - whether by oneself or by others - which generate
difficulties of understanding. In struggling to overcome those difficulties it is
not, Wittgenstein thought, a general theory of language that will help us, but
dose attention to the problematic cases themselves. The form of investigation
required is ‘grammatical’ in the sense that it seeks to elucidate, by means of
description, how particular words or phrases cohere with the linguistic and
behavioural surroundings in which they have a place: it is a returning of the
words to their rpugh, often messy, everyday locations as opposed to the
abstracted, decontextualized, rarefied environments typical of much
philosophical theorizing.
There is no reason in principle why ethical or religious uses of language
should be exempt fi:om these grammatical inquiries. Indeed, if ethical and
religious discourse tends often to trip us up, it may be that precisely these uses
are among the ones to which careful consideration will need to be given.
 4 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 5

Thinking about" religion and ethics in Wittgensteins wake

Winch came to recognize, this way of putting things can be simplistic, as it not
only implies that these different aspects of human life do not overlap, but it
The majontyof the remarks ofWittgenstein’s that refer most directly to religious
neglects the fact that ‘they are frequently internally related in such a way that one
or ethical matters are scattered throughout his notebooks, lectures and
cannot eyen be intelligibly conceived as existing in isolation from others.’^ More
conversations. Many of them have appeared in edited collections published
recently, Stephen Mulhall, a contributor to this volume, has highlighted the
subsequent to Wittgenstein’s death, some of th'ese being based on students'
dangenof turning terms such as ‘language-games’ and ‘forms of life’ into pieces of
partial transcriptions of his lectures or on notes of-informal conversations
jargon.that might just as readily serve to obscure qs to illuminate the phenomena
written down by his friends. Notwithstanding the fiaginentary nature of the
that lie before us.® The solution is to retain a critical self-awareness about our use
remarks, they, along with the general orientation ofWittgèiiStein’s methtìds.have
of,vocabulary, whether that vocabulary be borrowed from Wittgenstein or from
provided inspiration to manyphilosophers,'theologianshnd other thinkers who
anywhere else. When that is done, the concepts of language-games and forms of
ave inherited and pursueifthose methods aloifgtheir own particular trajectories
life - or perhaps other concepts that develop or modify them in particular
Among the themes characteristic of Wittgenstein’s work thatlhave been
influential upon inquirtrs into religion and ethics áre thosedf/ami/y fesembUmce. cqntext-sensitive ways - can, as Wittgenstein intended, serve to remind us of the
extent to which our life with language is integrated into our lives and activities
language-games and forms 0/ life, plus-the' "impbrtairce of the instinctive
more generally, with all their religious and ethical and multiferious other
(■primitive', 'animal’) Sources'of much of oUr bbdily tad verbal behaviour. From
dimensions. While it would be mistaken to conflate the grammar of one form of
*e 19508 onvrards. for example,, philosophers and oiher scholars of reUgion
ianguage with that of another - to suppose, for example, that talk of hearing
began to see the value in viewing the concept of religion in terms of the ‘femUy
God’s call (in religiously relevant 'circumstances) is not significantly different
resemblances’ between its multiple uses. In other words, it was noticed that terms
■from talk of receiving a call from.one’s mother - so too js ;t erroneous to assume,
such as -religion’ and 'i-eligious’ apply to a diverse range of hmrian phenomena
in advance of any inquiry, that one area of hiynan discourse is. entirely unrelated
not y virtue o'f those phenomena all possessing some essential set of shared
to others. 'The Wittgensteinian trick is tq cultivate .sufficient attentiveness to the
properties’ but rather by virtue o'f the complex overlapping similarities that they
particularities of different discursive situations to appreciate where the
collectively tomprise.’ Adopting’such a perspective’helps to free the scholar
continuities and where the discontinuities obtain.
from the-grip of â twofold assumption; first, that wherevér a sin’gie word or
With regard to the instinctive basis of much of what human beings do, one of
cluster of words is in play(such”as-ieligionr'religions’, ■religiosity’.’etc.), there
the principal contexts in which Mttgenstein ruminates upon this theme is the
must be some cordof essence to whichChe Words in question applyyand second,
-notes that he wrote in response to reading portions of James Frazer’s great work
that the relevant concept must therefore be ’definable in terms of individually
of comparative anthropology, The Golden Bough. In those notes Wittgenstein
necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for its correc't ajiplication. Being freed
from the grip of this crainng for defifiitions has repercussions for many areas of criticizes Frazer for assuming too hastily that the ritual activities he is describing

phdosophy. including but fer from limited to phUosophizing ab’otit religion and piust be explicable in terms of theories held by the participants, or by the
participants’ forebears, concerning hpw the performance of the ritual will
ethics. Nor should it be construed as a rejection of dbfiniti’Ofts toM court, there is
expedite, some instrumental effect (GB, esp. 119-25). To counteract such an
a world of difference between, on the one hand, definling one’s words when
assumption, Wittgenstein encourages us to reflect upon the many actions we
necessary or usefiil to dO io. arid on the other hand assuming that unless and
perform not because we possess a theory or even a belief about how they will
until we have precisely defined our terms. -We cannot possibly proceed with any
engender a desired result but merely because, as it were, ‘this is what human life
inquiry into the phenomena to which those terms are applied.
is like’ (GB 121) and is simply what we do (cf. PI §217; LC 25). Others have
Thenotions of language-games and forms of-life have been appropriated and
developed Wittgenstein’s suggestion in relation to their own examples. Frank
adapted in various ways. Some appropriatbrs have got into trouble for mi,king
Cioffi, for instance, reminds us that someone’s speaking to a dead relative at the
apparenfly-sweeping claims, such is that Veligioh.-is both a form of life and a
graveside of the deceased is intelligible to us without our needing to impute to
language-game-that can-'be contrasted with others such as science.» As Peter
the person any theory of an afterlife.® D. Z. Phillips, meanwhile, has noted how
 6 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
isteste at the thought of stìckihg pins into a picture of a loved one need have
rit”d‘° 1“ pins will cause physical harm to the person
depicted; mfter, the dwaste is apt to be part of a iriofal reaction - Such reactions
or forms of behaviour are not universal, and tnay in many instances be culturally
inflected. But neither Wittgenstein nor those who have been influenced by him
are proposing a general theory of the origin of religious and moral attitudes On
the contrary, they are recommending caution in the face of any would-be general
*eoty.mvitingus always tolookforexceptionSandalternativepossibleaoLuná
O^asionaily an ^gerness to resist general theories might prbmpt an excitable
author such as Wittgenstein to deploy indautious'wording himself, thereby
untying that he does wish to advocate a rival theory Of his own: Critical readers
of-Wittgenstém. alerfto these slips, will endeavouf to go^eyond-flieta rather
becoming- mere apologists for Wittgenstein even' in hii -most 'un-
Wittgenstemian’moments.^
nre patt of a sdnsibility that'seeks to disabuse us. and especially those of us with
a certain hcademic bent, of an overly inteUectualistic picture-of what human
mgs me. I w^nt to regard man here as an animal’. Wittgenstein writes in one of
IS final notebooks, as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not
Viriemd^ '^ attentioif to the
S^om hé léf°“tb that-we-cöüld in principle suspend
ÓVdT f Wittgenstein insists that such a supposition
tluW d“P;r°«ednéss of the kinds of beliefs without which we simply
toul^otfiincüoñmtheworld.Inaedd.-beliefs’(aa«be„).f'orWittgensreinfeüI
oS) Fof ‘"n idea-of’religious beUef coihes closest
prior to. and make possible, thè ratiocinative activities that include sunfisinl
speculating.doubtmg.decidingBetween alternatives andsoon.Itisthisemphastó
m ‘ttgenstims thought that has spurred,some philosophèrs to ponder the
ment to Which our moral UVes mighrbe grounded in ’basic moral certainties’
ftm ane themselves groundless.not in the säiäe of lacking a foundation that
reafly ou^t to be m place if the moral commitments in Question are to be
justified.bht rather in the sense that there is'absolutelynOwhere deeper to go- the
basic (moral) certainties.are simply’theta - like our life’ (OC 5559).-
All. that I have äUüded to above barely scratches the surface of the rich
resources avaüablè ih Wittgenstein’s work for thinking through and about the
Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 7
religious and ethical aspects of human life. As will be seen from the contributions
to this volume, the variety of ways, both constructive and critical, in which one
might explore and utilize those resources eludes neat encapsulation. The
following concise chapter summaries should thus be regarded as little more than
invitations to read and engage with the chapters themselves.
Summary of chapters
In Chapter 1,‘The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness as a Dispositional
Attitude’, Chon Tejedor discusses some of the shifts in Wittgenstein’s early
thinking on religion and ethics, as he transitions from the views rehearsed in his
Notebooks 1914-1916 to an 'altogether different approach in the Tractatus.
Dürftig this period Wittgenstein moves away from the view that ethics and
reli^osity are conditioned by a trànscerîdental subject and comes to endorse an
understanding of the ethical-religious attitude as non-transcendental. The
attitude, Tejedor argues, is dispositioiiàl faÜier than emotive: it is bound up in
lawguage, thinking and action ahd yef, at the same time, ineffable.
’Chapter 2, ‘“The Problem bf Life”: Later Wittgenstèin >on ihe Difficulty of
ribnest Happiness’, sees Gabriel Citron examining Wittgenstein’s battles with the
profound anxiety that can arise in response fo â sense of the radical contingency
of everything one is and everything one cares about By giving particular
attention to entries in-Wittgenstein’s ‘Koder Diaries’ from the 1930s,'Citron
discusses the nature of‘the problem of life’ both as it manifested in Wittgenstein’s
own life and as a universal problem. He also reflects on how Wittgenstein might
respond to questions about whether life really is as problematically precarious as
many of his most self-revealing remarks seem to presume.
Chapter 3, ‘Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion: Beyond Fideism and
Atheism’, takes as its-starting point the observation that there remains confusion
over the implications of Wittgenstein’s work for the study of religion. On the one
hand Wittgensteinians and sometimes Wittgenstein himself are lambasted as
‘fideists’ seeking to isolate religion from legitimate critique; on the other hand
Wittgenstein’s naturalistic tendency is said to result in atheism. Interrogating the
assumptions underlying these interpretations, I aim in the chapter to clarify
'existing debates and make space for a reinvigorated utilization of Wittgenstein’s
ideas’. I argue, first, that the charge of ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ conflates two
distinct principles - one acceptable to Wittgensteinians, the other not - and
second, that Wittgenstein’s invocation of instinctive aspects of human life

8 Wittenstein, Religion and Ethics
threatens to undermine faiüi only if one begins with an unnecessarily secularized
conception of the natural. The chapter ends with remarks on the terrifying (and
wondrous) phenomenon of radical epistemic contingency that Wittgenstein’s
approach highlights.
In Chapter 4, ‘Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon’, Rowan Williams
reflects both sympathetically and, at times, with a critical eye upon the various
remarks in which Wittgenstein refers either directly or indirectly to the
Christian gospels. Drawing connections* -between these remarks and
Wittgenstein’s thinking about ethics and aesthetics, Williams considers both the
similarities between Wittgensteins and Kierkegaard’s thought and^ the ways in
which each of these Ûiinkers helps to identify the error of treating the divinity
of Christ as being- merely one further ‘itenj of infarmation about him’. Coming
to see Christ as truly divine as well as truly human - as stated in the Definition
of Chalcedon - involves not perceiving an additional fact in the world,-but
undergoing a transformation'of, as Wittgenstein puts-it, one’s entire ‘system of
reference’ (CV 64e).
In Chapter 5, ‘On the Very Idea of a Theodic/, Genia Schönbaumsfeld brings
the themes of religion ^d eüiics vividly together by highlighting the moral
implications of a pervasive assumption in contemporary analytic philosophy of
religion, that it makes sense to try to justify the ways of Go<J to humankind by
devising a fliçodicy. Arguing fliat this assumptipn-is erroneous, Scfionbaumsfeld
contends that theodicics worsen^'ather than alleviate the purported‘problem of
evil’ In addition to conceptualizing God in unduly anthropppiorphic terms,
thçodicies turn out to-be morally pernicious on account of their efforts to
vindicate the existence of evil-arid suffering. Schönbaumsfeld thus proposes that
instead of constructing putative theoretical justifications for the state of the
world, the lesson should be learnt from Wittgenstein th?t the solution to the
•problem of evil’ lies in flie ‘vanishing of the problem’, and from Kierkegaard that
faith consists not in excusing the world’^ predicament but in accepting it in a
joyous spirit.
Chapters 6 and 7 closely complement eacht)ther, with Chapter 6,‘Wittgenstein,
Analogy and Religion in Mulhall’s The Great Riddle’, comprising a sustained
examination by Wayne Proudfoot of key themes fron? recent work by Stephen
Mulhall, some of which, are reiterated and developed further by Mulhall himself
in Chapter 7. Of the issues that emerge out of Mulhall’s engagement with
Grammatical 'Ihomist theology, notable among those that Proudfoot illuminates
and perceptively questions are: first, the idea that austere.nonsense may be
motivated by a refusal to assign available kinds of sense to language about God;
Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 9
second, the'eontention that the analogical projection of words into new contexts
is guided not by rulesbut by a natural projective trajectory: and third, the relation
between phUosophy and theology. All of this is not only apt to prompt further
thinking about the issues themselves, but also helpfully sets the scene for the
subsequent chapter.
In Chapter 7, ‘Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language’, Stephen Mulhall,
after summarizing the distinction that he, following Cora Diamond, draws
between riddles .and great riddles, fruitfully explores the relation between his
own concerns and certain of those articulated in Rowan Williams’ Gifford
Lectures, which were published in 2014 under the title The Edge of Words. A
first or^even a second glance at Williams’ book may suggest an antagonism
between, on the one hand, Williams conception of God-talk as a mode of
representation and, on the other hand, Mulhall’s insistence that such talk is
radically discontinuous with both descriptive and representational discursive
practices. Ultimately, however, Mulhall sees a significant consonance between
Williams’ willingness to endorse certain yersions ofmegative theology and his
own contention that great riddles, fer from being'solvable, serve .to open up a
space in which we are called to ‘absolutely or unconditionally cede control of our
speech and forms of living’.
In Chapter 8, ‘Wittgenstein and the Distinctiveness of Religious Language’,
Michael Scott investigates why it might -be that Wittgensteins ideas about
reli^ous language have endured but not prevailed in the philosophy of religion.
Drawing especially upon Wittgenstein’s 1938 lectures on religious belief and on
notes published in Culture and Value, Scott identifies four key themes in
Wittgenstein’s thinking. By locating those themes in relation both to the
dominant philosophical view of religious discourse - a view that Scott calls the
face value theory - and to several rival theories that challenge the dominant view
in .various ways. Scott develops an intricate comparative analysis that highlights
weaknesses as well as strengths in Wittgenstein’s treatment of how religious
language differs from other regions of human discourse, most notably scientific
and historical but also empirical forms of discourse more generally.
Chapter 9,*Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor; by John
Milbank exhibits immense historical und intellectual range, exploring
intersections between philosophy, theology and mathematics and situating
thoughts from Wittgenstein on these matters within a longer trajectory from
ancient Greece to tfre contemporary world. Picking up on critical remarks
made by Wittgenstein in response to Cantor’s set theory. Milbank diagnoses
why Wittgenstein may have regarded Cantor's theory as mystery mongering.
 10 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
While acknowledging that there is a sense in which both Cantor and
Wittgenstein can be viewed as partially, but not entirely, right, Mübank
proceeds to engage critically both with what he regards as an ‘arbitrary
transcendentalism ... about rules’ in Wittgenstein’s rejection of a realist
conception of set theory and with Wittgenstein’s retention of a distinction
between intension and extension. Ultimately, Mübank’ sees these aspects of
Wittgenstem’s thought on mathematics as tied to a more general- aversion to
speculative metaphysics that, in MUbanlds view, impedes the usefulness of
Wittgenstein’s work to theological reflection.
In Chapter 10. “What Have I Done?’. Sophie Grac¿ ChappêU first develops an
extemaUst view of intention on broadly Wittgensteinian grounds and then
applies this view to show-that the classic Thomist doctrine of double effect,
tiiough It has good uses in cásuistry, has also been overused because of the
intemalism about intention that haii generally been presupposed by its users.
Ar^g that we clearly-need a good criterion to determine the-nature of our
mtention^ actions. ChappeU proposes (again on Wittgensteinian grounds) that
the best criterion comes not from foresight, nor from foresight plus some degree
öf probabUity, nor from any metaphysics of ‘closeness’, but simply from our
ordinary shared understanding of what counts as doing a given action, and what
does not.
FinaUy, in Chapter 11, ‘Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarit/, Duncan Richter
focuses on Wittgenstein’s ethic'of clarity and the related opposition both to
reductionism and, to the obscuring of difierentes in language‘and thought.
Rather than merely’ discussing Writtgensteih’s work itself, the chapter reflects
upon clarity and upon the ethical and political rámificatíons of valuing it.
Choosing one’s words on the basis of their expected effects, for example, suggests
a deliberate evasion of saying what one means. Anyone who values clarity in
communication is likely w oppose this kind of consequentialist choice. On the
öther hand,the consequencesofaparticularchoiceofwordsmightbe significant.
It could be lazy or cowardly or otherwise irresponsible simply to insist on 'caUing
a spade a‘spade’ in the name of honesty or clarity. Proponents of blunt speech
are not always on the side of the angels. So the rights and wrongs of clear
communication are not simply obvious. Rather than* proposing simplistic
solutioiis to these conundrûms, the chapter aims to make the conundrums more
visible. Since the issues of clarity and honesty in language are central to matters
of reUgious and ethical meaning more generally, this-chapter constitutes a fitting
finale to the volunie as a whole. It also points in the direction of further themes
that might usefully be developed in future research.
I
Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 11
Notes
1 Or, in Ogden’s more poetic rendition: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must
be silenfCTLPo?).
2 For important qualifications concerning what it might mean to say that, for example,
ethics (or religion) is‘transcendental’, see Chon Tejedor*s chapter in the present
volume.
3 Cf. TIP 6.44: Tt is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.’
4 For phrases such as‘stream of life’,‘weave of life’,‘hurly-burly’, etc., see,e.g.; Z $§173,
567-8; LW I §§211,913; LW II 30e; PPF §2; RPP II §629.
5 See, e.g., Ninian Smart, ‘Numen, Nirvana, and the Definition of Religioi¿ Church
Quarterly Review 160, no. 2 (1959), 216-25, at 222-3. For Wittgenstein’s enunciation
of the idea of famUy resemblances, see PI §§66-7 and also BB 17-20. The idea was
to some extent anticipated by WUliam James, who proposed that ‘religion’ be thought
of as ‘a collective name’ rather than as denoting a ‘single principle or essence’ {The
Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, 2nd edn iNew York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 19021,26). For further discussion of the influence of the
idea of femily resemblances in the study of reUgion, see Mikel Burley, ‘“Being Near
Enough to Listen“: Wittgenstein and Interreligious Understanding*, in Interpreting
Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies,
ed. Gorazd Andrejá and Daniel H. Weiss (Leiden: Brfll, forthcoming).
6 See, e.g., Norman MaIcolm,‘’Ihe Groundlessness of Belief, in his Thought and
Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 199-216, at 212; Peter Wmch,
The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, 2nd edn (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2008), 94.
7 Wmch, The Idea of a Social Science, xv.
8 Stephen Mulhall, The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theology and
Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2015), 49-50.
9 Frank Cioffi, Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 1998), 168.
10 D. Z. Phillips,‘Primitiv€ Reactions and the Reactions of Primitives: The 1983
Marett Lecture’, Re/igiottf Sfud/es 22, no. 2 (1986), 165-80, at 176-7.
11 Cf. Cioffi, Wittenstein on Freud and Frazer, 156.
12 For applications of ideas from Om Certainty to moral philosophy, see esp. Nigel
Pleasants,‘Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty*, Ingm’ry 51, no. 3 (2008),
241 -67; idem,‘If Killing Isn’t Wrong, then Nothing Is: A Naturalistic Defence of
Basic Moral Certaint/, Ef/jica/ Perspectives 22, no. 1 (2015), 197-215; Julia Hermann,
On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice: A Wittgensteinian Perspective
(Basingstoke: Paigrave Macmillan, 2015).
 1

The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness

as a Dispositional Attitude
Chon Tejedor

In his early writings, Wittgenstein explores an approach to religiousness that is

deeply personal to him: it is a form of religiousness he finds ethically appealing,
one he aspires to and wth respect to which he repeatedly fìnds himself to fall
short. His preoccupation with this form of ethical religiousness pervades many of
his eárly writings, from the Notebooks 1914-1915'(N B ), through the Prototractatus
(PTJ and the Tracùitus (TLP), to ‘A Lecture on'EthicsXLE).^
In this chapter, I continue developing my reading of Mt^nstein’s eariy
approach to religiousness - which I call the Pispositional Reading - and consolidate
my critique of the major alternative available in the literature - the Transcendental
Reading.^ In so doing, I a^e that, in die Tructaius, Wittgenstein sums to dissolve
- not endorse - three major Schopenhauerian commitments; to transcendentalism;
to choice: and to the abandonment of desire. Ihe approach to religiousness that
enierges once these commitments disappear is both intriguing and telling of
Wittgenstein’s own character. 1 begin by presenting a series of arguments against
the Transcendental Reading; I then defend my own alternative Dispositional
Reading.

The Transcendental Reading

Although I have argued against the Transcendental Reading (TR) in detail

elsewhere, 1 would like to begin by summarizing some of my reasons for rejecting
it' This seems necessary since TR remains dominant in key sections of the
literature. TR presents the early Wittgenstein as endorsing (at least some of) the
following three views: frrstiy, that the metaphysical subject is a transcendental
condition of ethical religiousness (‘religiousness’ for short, hereafter); secondly,
 14 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
that religiousness consists in choosing one particular emotive attitude towards
the world. i.e. the attitude of abandoning (rather than holding on to) desires;
and thirdly, that religiousness is ineffable in that it can only be conveyed by
means of nonsensical propositions.’ I will consider each of the three strands of
TR in turn.
First strand: A transcendentàl subject^
It is often assumed that the Not&>ooks, the Prototractatus and the Tractatus
advance one, mostly homogeneous position on religiousness. I suggest instead
that Wittgenstein’s views are in flux at this time and that, although he toys with
transcendentalism in some sections of the Notebooks, he finally abandons this
view; by the time he wntes the Tractatus, far.from endorsing^transcendentalism^
Wittgenstein is seeking to dissolve it. I will not defend this claim in detail in this
section, but wilthighlightmy main arguments for it
In the Notebooks, Wittenstein discusses three notions of the subject the
thinking, subjecf (e.g. NB. 4.8.16 and 5.8.16), the‘willing subject* (e.g. NB 2.8.16
and 5.8.16), and the'metaphysical subject* (NB 4.8.16 and 2.9.16). NB 5.8.16 and
other entries make it clear that the phrase ‘thinking subject* relates to the notion
of an object-like, thinking (or - more generally - representing) self a simple self
located in the world, acting as a condition for representation. The phrase *willing
subject*, in turn, relates to thè notion of a transcendental condition - a necessary
unit (or unified perspective) at the limits of the world, acting as a condition for
representation and religiousness. Both ofthese notions ofthe self are'philosophical*.
insofar as they come to Wittgenstein from the history of philosophy: the notion
of a thinking subject comes to him through the works of Descartes and Russell;
that ofa willing subject, though Kantian in origin, comes to him primarily through
Schopenhauer.
The third notion of the subject discussed by Wittgenstein is that of a
‘metaphysical subject*. It is often assumed that Wittgenstein uses the phrases
‘willing subject* and 'metaphysical subject’ interchangeably in these early texts. In
my view, this is a mistake. Note indeed that, although the expressions ‘willing
subject* and 'metaphysical subject* both appear in the Notebooks, they never
appear together in the same entries. And there is nothing in the entries in which
theydoappear-i.e.separately-to suggest thattheexpressionsare interchangeable
for Wittgenstein. I will return to this notion of‘metaphysical subject* below.
It is generally agreed in the literature that Wttgenstein discards as nonsensical
the notion of a thinking subject located in the world. However, a significant
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 15
number of commentators argue that he endorses, throughout this early period,
the notion of a willing subject at the limits of the world - that is, the
Schopenhauerian notion of a transcendental condition.’ I propose that this is
misleading. Although Wittgenstein toys with this notion in entries such as NB
5.8.16, his Notebooks discussion of the transcendental willing subject ends with
two entries that challenge this claim:
Is belief a kind of experience? Is thought a kind of experience? All experience is
world and does not need the subject.
NB 9.11.16
What kind of reason is there for the assumption of a willing subject? Is not my
world adequate for individuation?
NB 19.11.16
NB 9.11.16 suggests that experience - that is, here, mental representation -
does not require a subject, including (as is made clear by the context) a willing
subject. In the next entry (NB 19.1U6),Wittgensteyi moves to an even stronger
view: he suggests that there is in fact no re^on whatsoever to posit such a
subject. The idea that, having toyed with the notion of a transcendental subject,
Wittgenstein abandons it around this time is further coi?x>borated by his
correspQndence with Paul Epgelm^nn, whom he meets for the first time in
Olmütz in October 1916. In the autumn of 1916, Wittgenstein and Engelmann
have a series of discussions in which they explore their respective understandings
of i;eligiousness. This period coincides with the more strongly transcendentally
flavoured entries from the Notebooks, which end abruptly in late November 1916
with the two entries mentioned above (NB 9.11.16 and 19.11.16). In December,
Wittgenstein leaves Engelmann and travels to Vienna for Christmas, before
returning to the Front. Wittgenstein and Engelmann meet again one year later, in
December 1917. By then, it is clear to Engelmann that Wittgenstein has had an
important change of heart In January 1918, Engelmann writes a letter in which
he expresses his concern over Wittgenstein’s spiritual condition and states: It
seemed to me as if you - in contrast to the time you spent in Olmütz [in the
autumn of 1916], where I had not thought so - had no faith.’To this, Wittgenstein
replies:
' If you tell me now I have no frith, you are perfectly rigfif, only I did not have it
before either. ...lam clear about one thing. I am far too bad to be able to theorize
about myself; in fact I shall either remain a swine or else I shall improve, and
that’s that! Only lefs cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is
as plain as a sock on the jaw. [My italics in the last instance - CT]*
 16 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
I shall return to Wittgenstein’s‘reply to Engelmann towards the end of this
Chapter. For now.let us simply notethat this supports theview that,by the winter
ot 1917-18, when Wittgenstein is writing the Prototractatus, he-has already
given up on the ’transcendental twaddle’i he has abandoned as nonsensical
the Schopenhauerian notion of a transcendental wiUing subject. It is highly
significant from this point of view that the phrase ’willing subject’ is never used
again in the Prototractatus or indeed in the Tractatus.
The only distinctively ‘philosophical’ notion- of% subject that Wittgenstein
continues to endorse throughout this period and into the final version of the
Tractatus is that of a’metaphysical subject’ (PT 5.33552, TLP 5.641; cf. NB 4 8 16
and 2.9.16). I suggest that this notion of a metaphysical subject is altogether
separate from that of a transcendental wiUing subject The ’metaphysical subject’
IS a phhosophicd notion that is not transcendental and of which we can
«nsefiiUy speak ïloie indeed that according to TLP 5.641, ’there really is a
senseinwhichpfiUosophycSn[’’must”inNBli.8.16]talkaboufthemetaphysicaI
subject If the metaphysical subject were the willing subject of the NotOrcoks,
TLP 5.641 would be advancing both that the wiliifig subject is a transcèndental
condition oT the world and that philosophers can - even perhaps must - talk
about ,t. Such a claim vvould be deeply problematic, especiaUy since there is
noffimgin *e sections of the Tractatus in which Wittgenstein discusses the role
of pKdoSophytnotablyTLP4.112,4.114:4.115,4.116’and the Prefiicefto suggest
that the task of philosophy is to talk abOuf trahscendehtal conditions by means
nonsensi propositions. Far froni encouraging philosophers to do this,
Wittgensfein consntently suggests in' the Tractatus that the task of philosophy is
to dissolve nonáense. ^ ^
r “dependent reasons for assuming that
metaphysical Subjecf is mteròhangeable with ’willing subjecf‘for Wittgenstein
and smce this assumption renders TLP S.64rimpossible to parse. We should’
seek » alternative interpretation of’metkphysical subjecf. I have argued in detail
elsewhere for such an alternative.' In my view, Wittgenstein rejects, in the
Tractat^. any metaphysicaUy restrictive notion of the self or subject, that is to say,
any notion of the self or subject understood as imposing necessary conditions -
«. restr,a.ons - on representation, the world or ethics. He therefore rejects both
the notion of dunking subjecf and that of’willing subject’. Having discarded
these two metaphysicaUy restrictive notions of the self, Wittgenstein moves on to
ofthT'ififT non-restricHve. phUosophical understanding
ofd.eself*eselfunderstoodastfietom%o/pn«,‘W,rfiongte-d,e’m
subjecf of TLP 5.641.ÄS we wiU see in the second half of this chapter, the notion
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 17
of totality (all senseftil thoughts» all senseful language) is closdy associated with
Wittgenstein’s early understanding of religiousness.
Second strand: Choosing the emotive attitude of
abandoning desire
In theJ’ranscendental Reading, religiousness involves making a choice: the choice
between adopting an attitude of acceptance of reality (the religious attitude) or
adopting,an attitude of non-acceptance of - or resistance to - reality (contrary to
genuine religiousness). Desire, insofar as it is associated with attempts to change
or control - rather than simply accept - reality, is thus presented as contrary
to religiousness. In this reading of Wittgenstein, the religious attitude involves
choosing to abandon one’s desires and accepting the facts of reality as they are
(rather than as we would desire them to be). The religious attitude is thus an
emotive response to reality that consists in letting go of desire and easing oneself
into, acceptance.
Whilst aspects of this viewj;ertainly echo Wittgenstein’? early thinking - notably,
as we will see, the idea that a certain farm of acceptçinçe is central to religiousness
- dig emphasis on choice and oç fhe^c^^n^onipent of desire misrepresents his
pc^sition. In Schopenhauer’s vie^^ freedom and choice are possible by virtue of the
transcendental willing subject, located at the limits of - rather than within - the
causally necessitated phenomenal world.® Insofar as I am part of the phenomenal
^rld, I am causally determined and unfree. Insofar as I am also conditioned by
the transcendental, willing subject, I am free to choose to the following extent
-I-jcan wiü to adopt, either an attitude of resistance to reality or an attitude of
acceptance of it. Key here is the idea that, by virtue of the transcendental subject
(i.e. through its willing), I can necessitate a change in my attitude: a shift from
4esire (and resistance to reality) to the abandoning or letting go of desire (and
acceptance of reality). The idea of necessitation is pivotal here: freedom and choice
are only present if the will can necessarily generate or necessarily entail the
abandonment of desire. If desire could happen - contingently - to persist when its
abandonment has been willed, we would not be looking at free willing, nor indeed
at a choice.
Thi§ reading is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is predicated on
the ,^?sumption that Wittgenstein endorses the notion of a willing subject in
.the Tractatus, an assumption which is not warranted, as we have just seen.
Secondly, this understanding of freedom and choice rests on a notion of necessity
and entailment that Wittgenstein rejects as nonsensical. This emerges in the
 18 Wittgenstein. Religion and-Ethics
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 19
reÏm oft T’' Wittgenstein mentions
In Wittgenstein’s view, this is fundamentally confused. Insofar as =*• turns
Z ® ltnow them crucially on our understanding of necessity and entailment. it exploits our
nly If causality were an imer necessity like that of logiçal inference ’ ordinary idea of a logical operation. The transcendental view does not purport
Choice and freedom of the wiU - as conceited by Schopenhauer as to repiace ordinary logic with an altogether different one, but to retain ordinary

abtod ■ “n<i“*tnnds him - involve the will’s capacity to necessitate the logic whilst restricting some of its applications. The view suggests that, when
abtodonmg of des,rê. wherd desire is a mental/art. In other wor*. Wittgenstein certain circumstances pertain (i.e. when the transcendental subject wills in
finj implicit m Schopenhauer’s notion oftranscendehtal entailment (as. indeed specifte ways), then, for some possible senses (i.e. for senses relating to the having
his notion of dèterministic phenomenal'causatiori) the idea thdt facts can be and the abandoning of desire), the relevant entailment operation becomes =^,
rathei? than Implicit in this idea seems to be that the results of ^ => p should
nbsdnce-ofinternal relations.
inis, in Wittgensteins view, is problematic ^ hate a-beäring on any other logical combination into which p and q may enter
and that the ordinary logical operation of entailment -♦ should remain applicable
to propositions in ail other circumstances. In other words, the implication seems
■ttf be that our logical practices should remain untouched, except in the restricted
domain of those propositions affected by transcendental willing (e.g. propositions
concerning desire).
This, however, betrays a ednfusion. For the understanding of logical operations
associated with entailment andmeceSsity - i.e. the understanding associated
with those very notions ffoni which the idea of transcendental entailment
thé Lth firn 7 J ’ ’ r^ ^ ahove.
the trum jetton for , -.p is (TTTT)(p,5) and thus tautologous (see TLP 5 101) derives its apparent force - turns crilCially on treating logical operations
toa^dthat,istheproposition7ohn désires to tfavel’andAepU^^^^^^^^ as applying across propositions with differenrseiises in a uniforth manner.
ab^do„éhisdesiretdtravel’a„dthatweapplytothe.epmposiüLdieopeJZ Moré specifically: it is central to the very notion* of a logical operation'that the
piôcesses involved in (and results drawn from) applying an operation to
propositions should only depend on the truth-functional structures of these
propositions - structures that are expressible from within logic alone, in purely
áre not mtemaUy related to each other. ynoimg mat they symbolic notation. This is precisely the notion of an operation that lies behind
Implicit-in the Schopênhauèrian view is the idea that some relations of the use of truth functions and truth tables for Wittgenstein: truth functions
necessary entament hold, not by virtue of die internal relattons betTeeÎ and tables express relations between propositional forms - forms to which
Woposmons, but by ™tüe of the willing of the transcendental subjeefif. by fnany different propositions (with different senses, but bearing the same truth-
Zl ie I To K “bject. John abandons his desire to junctional relations to each other) belong (cf. TLP 5.24). Hence, whenp and q are
to trá ’ * K abandons his desire «of internally related to each other, the truth function for the ordinary logical
this reTf of transcendental (rfecessary) entailment. Let us indicate operation q-*p remains identifiably the same, irrespective of the particular senses
sÏ W Zo ZrZ'“' ordinary logical) entailment with the of q andp (cf. TLP 5.4, 5.41). As a result,‘there can never be surprises in logic’
g ^ though die ttvo pröposiüons in question are nót intërnaUy related to (TLP 6.1251): in particular, there can be no surprises in logic by virtue of fectors
rT7 ™ *“*’through the willing of the transcendental Lbject external to logic.
The notion of transcendental entailment attempts to gloss over what are in
fact two very different approaches to logic: in the first, the processes involved in
applying operations to propositions depend exclusively on the truth-functional
 20 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
structures of propositions and can be completed by attending to these structures
alone; m the second; this is not so. In the second approach, the application
of operations also depends on the particular semes of the propositions in
question (whether or not they concern, for instance, desire) and on whether
e transcendental subject'has engaged in the relevant form of willing. In
other words, in the second approach, the application of logic depends on
attending to factors exterml to logic. Ue first approach does not allow for
surprises- m logic; the second does: I might be surprised to discover tomorrow
*at John desired to travel and.faüed to abandon this desire’ has suddenly
become necesssrfiy false because the transcendental sujiject has, unbeknownst
to me. willed it so. Clearly, tljis approach would make a nonsense of our ordinary
linguistic and thinking practices. In Vittgensteirfs view. ftere,would,under such
cirœmstances. be nothing that would count as sensefiil thinking or speaking
For Wittgenstein, the notion of transcendental entailment implicit in the idea
of a willing subject dissolves into nonsense. For. as soon as we attend to ,it we
realise-that this notion subverts the very understanding of logic that it attempts
to exploit; it stultifies itself. One of the upshots of this is that the purported
operation of transcendental entaUment is in feet no operation at all: it is not u
Qrpi of entaUment. one that can be integrated into the rest of our logical practices-
It, IS a departure from logic. Hence: 'There is no possible way of making an
inference from the existence of one situation to tl>e existence of another, entirely
(iiiterent situation’ (TLP 5.135).
Third strand: IneffabiUty as illuminaUng nonsense
The Transcendental Reading coincides with other readings in suggesting that
according to Wittgenstein, religious insights cannot be represented in sensefhl
language. However, according to TR. Wittgenstein holds that religious and ethical
msights can be shown, notably by means of nonsensical'propositions.'” This
attempt to align the notion of nomense to that of showing is. however, highly
problematic. The Tractatus uses the term 'show- in a variety of dilfetent contexts
(e.g. m connection to: the application of signs in TLP 3.262; sense in TLP 4 022-
Xmm f saying in’
TLP 4.1212;formal concepts in TLP 4.126; tautologies and contradictions in TLP
4461; operations and variables in TLP 5.24; etc.)." Differences notwithstanding.
showmg IS generaUy presented in a positive light, as contributing to clarity. In
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 21
contrast, tiie remarks relating to nonsense (‘unsinn’) are for the most part negative
in tone (TLP 4.003, 4.124, 4.1272, 4.1274, 5.5351, 5.5422, 5.5571). This tonal
discrepancy should be read as indicative of a misalignment - not an alignment -
between the Tractarian notion of showing and that of nonsense. Indeed, other
than in the highly contested TLP 6.54, where Wittgenstein does seem to allude
to some sort ofconnection between the positive notion of‘elucidation’ and that of
‘nonsense’, I see little evidence to suggest that Wittgenstein endorses the idea of
illuminating nonsense at all. Note that there is nothing in the remarks in which
Wittgenstein discusses philosophy to suggest that the task of philosophy is to
convey insights by means of illuminatingly nonsensical propositions. On the
contrary, nonsense is consistently presented as sometiiing that philosophers should
seek'to avoid or dissolve (TLP 3.324, 3.325); even in the contested TLP 6.54,
nonsense remains something to be thrown away and discarded. In view of all this,
the case for illuminating nonsense - and for the associated understanding of the
saying/showing distinction - seems very slim indeed.
The notion of illuminating nonsense should, I suggest, be abandoned.*^ This
is not to say that we must, for this reason, altogether abandon the idea of a
Tractarian commitment to some version of the saying/shqwing distinction.
Abandoning this in its entirety, wopld be problematic for a numbçr of reasons.
Amongst them is Wittgenstein’s claim, in a 1919 letter to Russell, that‘the cardinal
problem of philosophy* lies precisely in this distinction between saying and
showing. In this letter, in which he responds to some of Russell’s queries about
the TractatuSyWittgenstein writes:
I’m afraid you haven’t really got hold of my main contention, to which the whole
business of logical prop [osition] s is only a corollary. The main point is the theory
'of what can be expressed (gesagt) by prop[osition]s - i.e. by language - (and,
which comes to the same, what can be thought) and what can not be ejqjressed
by prop[osition]s, but only shown (gezeigt); which, I believe, is the cardinal
problem of philosophy.*’
There has, in recent years, been a degree of convergence, amongst readers on
different sides of the New Wittgenstein debate, on an understanding of the
saying/showing distinction that presents showing as associated with a form of
practical - rather than theoretical or representational - understanding. Showing
involves a form of know-how. knowing how to use signs and knowing how to
recognize the use of signs.*^ This proposal is, I think, highly promising.*’ As we
will now see, this notion of know-how and the related notion of disposition are
crucial to understanding Wittgenstein’s approadi to religiousness.
 22 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness
23
The Dispositional Reading
Ihe Trßcfatus as ‘machine’
Part of the aim of the Tractatus is to effect a transformation in its reader: the book
aims to train our dispositions to speak and think away from particular forms of
nonsense and, in so doing, to alter our practical understanding of the position
we occupy in the world.^* This process, when successful, amounts to an ethical-
the 1 tearOf «»o of religious transformation. In order to shed light on these claims, we need briefly
to coñsider the question of the philosophical method at work in the Tractatus.
For Wittgenstein, philosophy aims at the clarification of language and thought.
ide by my book and Tarn convinced thaï strictly spealdhg it can ONLY be In his view, our ability to judge how (linguistic and mental) signs are used is
not dependent on our being presented with a theory of language, thought or

ssSSSHS™--: representation - and the TracfaiMs does not attempt to present us with such a
theory. On the contrary, inso&r as we already have mastery of everyday language
and thought, we already have the ability to make apt judgements with respect to
our use of signs (TIP 4.002). Hence,'Our problems are not abstract, but perhaps

SSSSSSErri the most concrete that there are’ (TLP 5.5563). Our problems are not to be
resolved by getting to grips with an abstract theory of representation, for they do
not stem from the lack of such a theory.’Instead, our problems result from the

iS|=S=E-3= fâct that, although we already possess the know-how needed to use signs and
recognize their use (insofer as we already have mastery of everyday language
and'thought), our disposition to act on this know-how has become eroded by our
distorting philosophical practices.

Most propositions‘and questions, that have been written about philosophical

™^e;br beco™-«,decent. eJch a “d“
I suggest that, for Wittgenstein, the Tractatus is precisely such a ‘macb- f
bccoteingdecenawih defend this dai™ in thereuiaindeLf this ch^Î:“^^^
matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of
this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions
of the philosophers result from the feet that we do not understand the logic of
our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less
identical than the Beautiful.)
And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no
problems.
TLPq 4.003
Our feilure to 'understand the logic of our language’ is not the kind of failure that
results from the unavailability of an abstract theory of language; it is a feilure in
our practical understanding, a feilure in our disposition to use linguistic and
mental signs in particular ways. It is our disposition to act - in particular, to wse
signs - that needs to be corrected. And. for Wittgenstein, only an activity can
 24 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
S"i "« •'
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentiall); of elucidations.
to do with phüosophy and then aJwaTT* * ^
but it would be the only strictly corree, n^ZT"
Lchine-isintirdtot^y'hirr^
an internal dialogue, similar to that which l^epSl?' "'1" ”
approach.“ Implicit hen» ic tu^ 'a
adialecücstruLletotTet;;^^^^^^^
äisposmo„st.Zl^i^ZTZ
oftechniquestothispurpose-someo'fhsnr
that aita to recall us to 7know ho f dhect instructions
Know-how we already possess fe e TT P '5 -> i ^ 24 *l
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 25
dispositions - our personal vulnerabilities - towards nonsense so as to loosen
the hold It has on us.
I Suggest that Wittgenstein regards the more strongly ethically flavoured
propositiöns of TLP 6.4-6.522, not as illuminatingly nonsensical propositions
that show us ineifable insights, but as precisely such puzzles - puzzles we can
engage in so as to test our (endlessly recurrent) susceptibility to nonsense, with
a view to weakening it. When successful, this process helps to reinforce our
ordinary thinking and linguistic know-how, it orients our dispositions to use
signs away from nonsense, toward senseful language and thought.'Note indeed
that Wittgenstein presents the ethically flavoured remarks following TLP 6.4
TLPp 4.112
as' coihments on TLP 6.4: All propositions are of equal value*. Indeed, if all
propositions are of equal value, no propositions enjoy the privileged status of
Conveying ethical insights better than others. There are no specifically ethical
propositions: all propositions are ethically - strictly - on a par.
Interestingly, both Engelmann and Ramsey (who, as we saw above, are
amongst the first to read the Tractatus and discuss it with Wittgenstein) mention
that the book deliberately includes ambiguous sentences as part of its'method.^®
In his Memoir, for instance, Engçlmann makes the followihg remark concerning
Wittgenstein’s use of brackets ;n'‘(Ethics, aqd aesthetics are one and the same.)’
(TLP 6.421):
that has nothing
But the statement [in TLP 6.421] is put in parentheses, said by the way, as
something not really meant to be uttered, yet something .that should not be
passed over in silence at that point. And this is done as a form of a reminder
" P“““?'*’'- recalling to the understanding reader an insight which he is assumed to possess
in any case.’^
TLP^6.53
The Tractofiis‘machine’ aims to train our dispositions away from the production
of nonsense and to return us to a pre-philosophical know-how in the use
of signs. In so doing, it aims to impress upon us that certain philosophical
notions - such as that of the willing subject and that of transcendental necessary
direct èntailment - simply disintegrate in our hands upon dose inspection. With the
^ ‘-sformation in our recognition that these notions are nonsensical comes an important shift in our
understanding of our own position in the world: the illusion that we occupy a
ftietaphysically privileged position - either through being a necessary condition
of the world or throiigh being able to necessitate changes in the world (e.g. the
abandonment of desire) - vanishes. This illusion vanishes when the training -
the activity of clarification, of honing our dispositions to use signs - bears fruit:
we then come to ‘see the world aright* (TLP 6.54).
 26 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Wittgenstein teUs us that, in his case, sji.ch moments of clarity tend to be
accompanied by an experience of'[wondering] at the existence of the world’ an
experience that makes him inclined 'to use such phrases as “how extraordinary
at anything should exist” or “how extraordinary that the world should exist”'
(LE 8). For Wjttgenstein - i.e. for him personally - achieving the dispositional
attitude of seeing the world aright’ is often accompanied by a sense of wonder-
the wonder that any possible state should obtain, at all,-as a fact. This sense
o wonder attaches itself to all facts: physical fects (the rocks, plants, animals
human physical bodies we encounter in reality), but also mental fects (such
as desires, beliefs, «úshes,.,etc.). WhUst this experience of wonder'tends to
accomp^y moments of accrued clarity for Wittgenstein, it should not be
confiised with this,very clarity or - indeed . with-the religious attitude itself. For
particul,ar emotions - even en,otions offender -,are mental.fects. As such, they
are entirely devoid of ethical valu^.
Emotions and wonder
In Wittgenstein’s view, emotions are describable mental fects - fects that are
on a, par with aU other facts in the world. That mental facts have no special
ethical currency is made clear in the following passage from ‘A Lecture on
rithics :
Butwhatlmeanisthatastateofmind,sofafaswemeanbythatafactwhichwe
can déscribe’ is m no ethical sense good or bad. If for ihstance in our world-book
we read the descnption of a murder.... Cert'ainly the reading of this description
might cause us pam or rage or any other emotion, or we might read about the
pam or mge caused by this murder in other people when they heard of it, but
there wiU simply be facts, facts, and facts but no F.thic
LE 6-7; my italics
It follows.that, for him, the religious attitude cannot bp an emotive response - not
evenanemotiveresponseofwondenlnsteuithereligiousattitudeisdisposiW
Having a rehgious attitude does not involve experiencing certain emotions:
It involves bemg disposed to use linguistic and mental signs (as well as more
generaUy to «ci) in ways that reflect that we am clear with respect to our position
in *e world. Havmg such a dispositional attitude might li,e associated for us
with experiencing certain emotions, but these emotions - e.g. in Wittgenstein’s
own çase emotions of wonder - in and of themselves do not constitute the
attitude. Ue emotions are epiphenomenal to the.ethical-reUgious attitude: they
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 27
are phenomena that tend to accompany the attitude (at least, in Wittgenstein’s
own case), but which are neither constitutive nor in any way necessary to the
attitude.
Choice-less ethics and desire
This leads us to our final question: the question of Wittgenstein’s treatment of
the, Schopenhauerian notions of choice and desire. For, as we saw above,
Schopenhauer holds that we can and should choose the attitude of abandoning
our desires. In Schopenhauer’s view (or, at least, in Wittgenstein’s understanding
of-Schopenhauer’s view), I cannot freely choose what desires I have, but I can
choose to abandon those desires I do have. Imagine that I have a desire for
warmth. Although I cannot choose to have a desire for coldness instead, I can
choose to let go of - i.e. to abandon - my desire for warmth. To this limited
^ent, and by virtue of the will of the transcendental subject, freedom is possible
in Schopenhauer’s view: I am free to choose to let go of those desires I have and
doing so is the ethically correct choice.
s Wittgenstein’s positioji.is different. To begin with, there i§ in his view no
suggestion that we are foced with an ethical choice here. He allows that there are
two possible attitudes towards the world (one religiçus or ethical, the other not),
but he does not suggest that we choose (let alone /reely choose) between them.
There is no choice to be. made between these two attitudes: it is not as if I can
decide between two attitudes that are both available to me at any one point, or
as if I can necessitate either one of them to obtain at will. Instead, Wittgenstein
simply notes that our attitude towards the world goes hand in hand with our
religiousness or lack thereof. Hence, the claim, in his January Î918 letter to
Engelmann: T shall either remain a swine or else I shall improve, and that’s that!’
Either he will come to adopt the religious attitude or he will not - ‘that’s that!’
Furthermore, for Wittgenstein, desires are mental facts - they are part of the
fundamentally contingent reality, of the world as totality of facts. Seeing desires
‘aright’ involves, not striving to abandon them, but treating them as the fragile
gifts that they are: it involves holding them in sight whilst acknowledging that
they may contingently persist or disappear and that, if they do persist, attempting
to fulfil them may prove entirely futile. In this respect, Wittgenstein’s treatment
of religiousness does indeed involve a notion of acceptance, but it is a notion of
acceptance radically different from Schopenhauer’s. For Wittgenstein, acceptance
of reality does not involve trying to abandon desire, but involves acknowledging
both the reality of our desires and their fundamental contingency. Desires are
 28 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
mental facts and. as such, part of that very reality that we are tryingto accept; all
facts. Jce all propositions, to. from the point of view of ethics, strictìy on a par.
cknowledgmg the fundamental contingency of reality includes acting and
using signs in a way that reflects that the only necessary relations between facts
arise from mternal relations. It involves resisting the illusion that I can (causaUy
or transcendentally) necessitate - independently of any internal relations -
changes in the facts (e.g. in my desires).^®
This presents us with an unsettling picture. Indeed, we could be forgiven at
this point for asking: if we calmot nedessitate any changes in reality, if we cannot
^11? imprevement. why strive towards anything at
Why impose iny ethical demands whatsoever dn ourselves? This ispu^zlL
especially in the hght of the stringeni ethical demands that Wittgenstein did
impose on himself, during his lifetime.”
In *e ^ent, Wittgenstein's'response to'lhis question is both' stark and
stongely liberating. For his suggestion is that, whilst we cannot necessitate ethical
^ange,'we may well Be presented with opportunities to train for such change
This framing may be successi, or not; the 'machine' may end up working, or it'
my not fit does work, it wiU effect an ethical-religious transformation in us; if
not. It will not - ‘that’s that!’
Portraying the Tractatus as a 'machine' betrays both Wittgenstein's impatience
with his own ethical-religious condition and his tendency towards self-
eprecahom Perhaps it also betrays the-worrj? that he may. in essence, never
ave moved on from being an engineer.'sohiéone who designs and buUds
machines - even if. in'this partictilaf case, the machine in question turns out to
be a most important ohe: 'a machine fbr becoming decenti
Notes
' Lecture on
Ethics. Wittgensteins approach to religiousness and the ethical remains almost
identical in these two texts.
2 I hay developed different and related aspects of this discussion in Chon Tejedor.
The Earfy W.ttgemtem on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language an4 Value
(A mgdon; Routledge, 2015), esp. Chs 2,3 and 6; 'The EarUer Wittenstein on the
Notion ofReligious Attitude;Phi/„sophy88,no. 1 (2013),55-71;and'TheEthical
Dunensionofthe Tractatus'. in Doubt, Ethics and Religion: Wittgenstein andthe
aunter-Enhghtenment. ed. Luigi Perissinotto and Vicente Sanfélix (Frankiiirf
Ontos, 2010), 85-103.
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 29
3 Martin Stokhof, in his World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein’s
Early Thought (Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press, 2002), defends a version of
TR that includes all of these views. Stokhof writes: ‘Ethically speaking we face a
choice between trying to mold the world according to our desires and detaching
ourselves from it, refraining from wishing and craving* (219).'Ihis emphasis on
choice is absent in other transcendental readings of the Tractatus, which are, in my
view, greatly strengthened by this absence. See notably Julián Marrades Millet,
‘Subject, World and Value’, in Doubt, Ethics and Religion: Wittgenstein and the
Counter-Enlightenment, ed. Luigi Perissinotto and Vicente Sanfélix (Frankfurt:
Ontos, 2010), 63-83.
4 I defend some of the following arguments in more detail in Tejedor, The Early
Wittgenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and Value, Chs 2 and 3.
5 As mentioned in note 3 above, see esp. Stokhof, World and,Life as One.
6 Engelmann’s letter and Wittgenstein’s reply from 16 January 1918 are cited in Ray
Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Lpndon: Vintage, 1990), 152-3. In
the original. Wittgenstein’s reply reads: ‘Wenn Sie npn sagenjdaß ich keinen Glauben
habe, so haben Sie ganz recht, nur batte iph ihn auch früher nicht. Es ist ja klar, daß
der Mensch der, so zu sagen, eine Maschine erfipden will \jm anständig zu werden,
daß dieser Mensch keinen Glauben hat. Aber wa« soll ich tun? Das eine ist mir klar:
Ich bin viel zu schlecht um über mich spintisiereij zu können, sondern, ich werde
entweder ein Schweinehund bleiben oder mich .bessern, und damit basta! Nur kein
transzendentales Geschwätz, werpi allçs so klar ist wje eine Watschen’ (my italics
in the last instance). See Paul Engelm^n, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Briefe und
Begegnungen (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1970), 18-19.
7 Tejedor, The Early Wittgenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and
Value, Ch. 3.
8 See, e.g., Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans.
E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover. 1969), esp. Voi. 1, §§28 and 56; and Arthur
Schopenhauer, Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, ed. Günter Zoller, trans.
E. F. J. Payne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. §§III and V
9 Wittgenstein suggests that a similar confusion is at play in the causal view
characteristic of the kind of determinism that would, according to Schopenhauer,
govern the phenomenal world. On this see Tejedor, The Early Wittgenstein on
Metaphysics, Natural Säence, Language and Value, Ch. 4.
10 See, for instance, Stokhof, World and Life as One, Ch. 4, esp. 211.
11 Floyd highlights the Tractatus' ‘daunting variety of cases of showing* in Juliet Floyd,
‘Wittgenstein and the Inexpressible’, in Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in
Honor of Cora Diamond, ed. Alice Crary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007),
177-234, at 182-5.
12 On this point, several metaphysical readers (opposed to resolute or austere
interpretations) agree; see, notably, Howard Moimce, ‘Reply to Read and Deans’,
 30 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Phdosophcal Invesagatics 26. no. 3 (2001). 267-70; and Roger M. White.-Throwing
^ Baby Out with the Ladder: On -Therapeutic" Readings of Wittgenstein-s
Tractatm, m Beyond the Tmctatus Wars: The New Wittgenstein Debate, ed. Rupert
Read and Matthew A. Lavery (New York: Routledge. 2011). 22-66.
13 Letter sent from Cassino. 19 August 1919. in Ludwig Wittgenstein. Cambndge
Utters: Correspondence with Russell. Keynes. Moore. Ramgey and Sraffa, ed. Brian
McGumness and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell. 1995). 98.
14 ms proposal can. I think, be traced back to A. W. Moore.-On Saying and Showing’.
Phdosophy 62 (1987). 473-97. Different approximations to it can be found in the
literature on different sides of the New Wittgenstein debate; see; A. W Moore
Ineffability and Nonsense - Part I’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
Supplemenmiy Volumes 77.no. 1 (2003). 169-93.at 190-1; White.-Throwing the
Baby Out with the Ladder! 44; Marie McGinn. Elucidating the Tmctatus:
WtUgensteini Early Philosophy 6f Ugic and Unguage (Oxford: Oxford University
Pre^ 2006). 172-3; Michael Kremer.-Th-e Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense! Noli; 35.
no. 1 (2001). 39-73; Michael Kremer.-The Cardinal Problem of Philosophy! in
^¡»S‘ttsteinandtheMotalUfe:EssaysinHonourofCoraDlanu>nd.ei.Mice
Crary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 143-76.
15 For this debate, see: Peter M. SuUivan.-Q-n TYying to be Resolute: A Response to
Kremer on the Tractatui, Europeanfournal of Philosophy 10. no. 1 (2002). 43-78’
James Conant and Cora Diamortd.-On Reading the TYactatus Resolutely: Reply to
Meredith Wilhams and Peter SulBvan! in Wittgehsteirís Lasting Significance, ed.
Max Kolbel and Bernhard Weiss (London: Routledge. 2004). 42-97; and Kremer
The Cardinal Problem of Philosoph/.
16 Qiwted in-Stokhof. World and Life as One. 5-6. The letter is also cited in Brian
cGuinness. Young Ludwig: Wittgenstein's Ufe, 1889-1921 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press. 1988). Ch. 9, and in Monk. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 178.
17 For Frege’s response to the Tractatus, see Burton Drehen and Juliet Floyd.‘Frege-
Wittgenstem Coitespondence’. and Juliet Floyd. ‘The Frége-Wittgenstein
Corresponden«: Interpretive Themes! in ¡nteractive Wittgenstein: Essays in Memory
of Georg Hennk von Wright, éd. Enzo De Pellerin (DoMrecht: Springer. 2011). 15-74
75-107. For Ramsey’s response, see Monk. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 215-24.
18 Quoted in McGuinness. Young Ludwig, 279. Around this time. Wittgenstein
considered devoting himself to a religious life. It was also around this time that he
made the decision to give up the family fortune he had inherited. See McGuinness
Young Ludwig, 278-80.
19 Kul Eng^ann.-A Memoir! in Portraits of Wittgenstein, ed. F. A. Flowers III and Ian
Ground, Voi. 1 (London: Èloomsburyi 2016), 309-59 at 335
20 Engelmann’s letter and Wittgenstein’s reply from 16 Jmtuary'l918 are dted in Monk
Ludwtg Wittgenstein. 152-3. For the original text in German, see note 6 above.
The Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness 31
21 There is no difficulty with the idea of causally producing a change or an effect,
according to Wittgenstein, so long as we are clear that this does not involve
necessary relations between facts in the absence of internal relations. So, whilst
the ideas of causal necessity and of causal necessary entailment are problematic
in his view, other understandings of causation are not On this, see Tejedor, The
Early Wittenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and Value, Ch. 4.
22 On this, see Brian McGuinness,‘Two Cheers for the"New”Wittgenstein?’, in
Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy, ed. José L Zalabardo (Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 2012), 260-72, at 264-5.
23 This is also highlighted in Juliet Floyd,‘The Uncaptive Eye: Solipsism in
Wittgenstein’s TYactatus’, in Loneliness, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 79-108, at 82.
24 Propositions that provide us with instructions (or, as I call them,‘instruction-
propositions’) are not regarded by Wittgenstein as nonsensical, as is shown by his
treatment of the principles of the natural sciences in the Tractatus. See Tejedor, The
Early Wittgenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and Value, Chs 4 and 5.
25 This notion of a puzzle draws on Cora Diamond’s notion of a riddle, but differs from
the latter in key respects. See Cora Diamond, ‘Riddles and Anselm’s Riddle’, in The
Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1991), 267-89, and Tejedor, The Early Wittgenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science,
Language and Value, 156-68.
26 Ramsey remarks on this in a letter to his mother dated 20 September 1923. Extracts
from this letter can be found in Brian McGuinness, Wittenstein in Cambridge:
Lettersand Documents 1911-1951,4th edn (Oxford; Blackwell, 2008), 139 (no. 99,
note), and in Joachim Schulte,'Ethics and Aesthetics in Wittgenstein^ in The Darkness
of This Time: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Wittgenstein, ed. Luigi Perissinotto
(Milan: Mimesis International, 2013), 1-17, at 16.
27 Engelmann,'A Memoiri, 352; also quoted in Schulte, *Ethics and Aesthetics in
Wittgenstein’, 6.
28 For Wittgenstein’s discussion of causal necessity, see Tejedor, The Early Wittgenstein
on Metapi^ics, Natural Stíence, Language and Value, Chs 4 and 5.
29 See esp. the biographical'material in McGuinness, Young Ludwig, and Monk, Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
 2

‘The Problem of Life’

Later Wittgenstein on the Difficulty of Honest Happiness

Gabriel Citron

But philosophy is after all perhaps only the recognition of the abysses which lie
on each side of the footpath that the vulgar, follow with the serenity of
somnambulists.
Georges Sorel*

Introduction: The personál and the universal

In G. H. von Wright’s ‘Preface’ to Culture and Value - his anthology of

Wittgenstein’s miscellaneous remarks - he describes his principle of selection as
follows:

I excluded from the collection notes of a purely “personal” sort - i.e. notes in
which Wittgenstein is commenting on the external circumstances of his life, his
state of mind and relations with other people — Generally speaking these notes
were easy to separate from the rest and they are on a different level of interest
from those which are printed here.
CV,xe

It seems to me, however, that precisely when you get to the most personal sections
of Wittgenstein’s writings - those diaries in which he lays bare his soul and records
his spiritual struggles most nakedly - it is hardest to draw a line between the
personal on the one hand, and the philosophical and universal on the other. For
Wittgenstein thought that the struggles he was undergoing were struggles that
every serious and honest person ought to be going through too. Wittgenstein once
said to Rush Rhees that, ‘whether you tr[y] to keep from it or not, your own
 ’The Problem of Life' 35
34 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

The relationship between Wittgenstein’s not being good and his not being
difficulties and conflicts [a]re bound to appear in what you are writing in
happy, however, is a complex one - and I will not be able to explore both these
philosophy^* And the same was certainly true the other way round as well;
aspects of the problem here. In what Mows I wiU therefore concentrate on
Wittgenstein was a philosopher through and through, and therefore constitutionally
Wittgenstein’s complaint that he is not happy. Let’s ask, then: why wasWittgenstem
incapable of keeping philosophy out of his reflections on his inner life.
In this chapter I would like to examine Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the most so unhappy in February 1937?
The best source we have for understanding Wittgenstein’s state of mind at this
central and unifying of his inner difficulties - namely, what in February 1937 he
time is Manuscript 183, commonly known as the ‘Koder Diaries’. This manusenpt
called ‘the problem of my life’ (PPO 169; my italics). On other occasions
notebook contains entries - including many very personal ones - dating from
Wittgenstein spoke of‘the problem of life’simpKdfer (e.g. TLP 6.521; CVj^ 6e), as
1930 to 1932 and from 1936 to 1937. The diaries reach their climax in February
a universal problem, without the first-person possessive. I think that a helpful
1937 when Wittgenstein underwent the peak of a spiritual crisis, alone in his
way to approach Wittgenstein’s understanding of the nature of the universal
Norwegian cabin. On reading the diaries, one of the chief themes that emerges
problem of life, however, is to begin by examining the specifics of how he saw
- speaking to Wittgenstein’s unhappiness - is that of his anxiety.
what was so problematic in his own life, and from there to move on to thinking
Let’s take his relation to his philosophical work as an example. As is surely
about the degree to which that problem might be generalized to some or even all
true of a lot of people. Wittgenstein alternated between two states in this
other people.
regard. The first was that of bemg unable to work, or at least being unable
In what follows, therefore, I will chart the following course: First of all I will
to work well. Unsurprisingly. Wittgenstein often found this condition to be
illustrate the nature of the problem of Wit^enstein’s own life as he understood it
acutely painful. Thus, for example, in March 1937 he wrote: ‘In a hideous state of
in his later penod. Next I will show how his considerations about the problem of
rtiind; Without any thoughts, gaping vacantly.... Tarn here in the wasteland
his own life naturally opened up towards factors that would be relevant to
without rhyme or reason. As'if someone had played a joke on me, brought me
everyone’s lives. Then I will defend Wittgenstein’s claim that there really is a
here & left me sitting here’ (PPO 217). But of course these states of inabüity to
significant -universal problem here,, .against what is probably the principal
work alternated with times when he could work, and indeed could work well.
potential objection that might be levelled against the existence of the problem.^
The 1930s was, after all, a phenomenally fruitful decade for Wittgensteins
Finally, I will condude with a few words about the difficulty of truly feeing the
philosophizing. We might think, then, that in those periods during whidx
problem that Wittgenstein describes, given its power to radically destabilize our
Wittgenstein was able to work, he would be free from the hideousness of his
lives. Unfortunately, examining and evaluating Wittgenstein’s cluster of proposed
solutions to the problem of life will have to be left for another occasion. In this sterile periods.
But this was not so. For when he was able to work - rather than enjoying it,
chapter I hope only to convince you that there is a genuine need for some sort of
being excited by it, or even just being satisfied - he was instead mainly plagued
solution, because Wittgenstein has identified a real and serious problem.
by the anxiety that this ability might falter again at any moment Thus, just a little
earlier in the same day in March 1937. when he was actuaUy working fairly weU,

The problem of Wittgenstein’s life: The insidious he worried:

poison of anxiety
/*
What, then, was the problem of Wittgenstein’s life? In the 1937 diary entry from
which I quoted above, he glossed his reference to the problem ofhis life by saying
‘I am not good & not happ/ (PPO 169). Thus it seems that the problem of
Wittgenstein’s life had two aspects. And indeed, sometimes rather than talking
about a single problem of life, Wittgenstein referred to ‘the problems of life’ in the
plural (e.g. TLP 6.52; CVj^ 84; my italics).
Will it be granted to me that I keep working? I work, think & write some daily
now. most of it only tolerably good. But is that now the draining of this
work or will the brook continue to flow. 8c swell? Will the work so to speak lose
its meaning? I do not want that; but it is possible!
PPO 217
The same proneness to anxiety dogged him in connection with his lectures too.
Thus in October 1930:
 36 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
When something iS wrong withme like toda/ssorethroatlget very anxious right
away, [and irthink, whafUdiappen if it gets worse & I need a doctor & the doctors
here are worthless & perhaps I must cancel my lectures for a long time etc.
PP0 63
Again and again, we find that - at times when things were going well with his
philosophical writing and teaching - Wittgenstein would bè possessed by a
terrible anxiety about the possibUity of the imminent collapse of this good
ortune: ‘Before my lectures I am always anxious even though so fer it has always
gone quite well. This anxiety then possesses me like an illness’ (PPO 37).
Moving towards the universal probleiij of life: From anxiety
over philosophical work to anxiety over everything
Wittgenstein’s obsessive anxiety over the pos^bility of having the tools and
talents necessary to his phüospphical vocation taken fromhim. however, did not
remain contained. Rather, it often snowballed into a much more general anxiety:
I am very often or almost always full of anxiety.. .It always strikes me frightftdly
when I think how entirely my profession dependí^ on a gift which might be
mthdrawiVfrom me at any moment. I think of that very often, again and again.
& generally how everything can be withdrawn from one & one doesn’t even
know what... one has & only... becomes aware of the most essential when one
.suddenly loses it. And one doesn’t notice it precisely because it is so essential,
therefore so ordinary.^
PPO 9-11; my italics
Indeed, imagining the things that might be withdrawn from him, and the
ways m which they might be so withdrawn, came-exceedingly naturally to
Wittgenstein. ' horror - and as Wittgenstein observes, for the most part we are completely
On *e one hand these anxieties could be of a fairly common sort, such as
wony about the loss of loved ones. Thus, for example, on noting in his diary in
prd 1930 that he has received handkerchiefs from his girlfriend. Marguerite,
for his birthday, and how pleased he is at this, he seamlessly and immediately -
and withnoparticular prompt-segues into the reflection that‘[o]fallthepeopIe
now alive the loss of her would hit me the hardest’ (PPO 11). This morbid
thought was completely unprovoked - or rather, was provoked by nothing other
than by his being happy. Thus, even when he was contented in his relationship
with Marguerite, her potential loss was constantly on his mind.
’The Problem of Life' 37
On the other hand, however, Wittgenstein’s anxieties could also be of a for
from fcommon sort. For his talent for noticing the backgroimd conditions of our
forms of life, conditions that are so ordinary that they are therefore often most
hard to see (BT 300; PI §129) - a talent that he used with such power in his
philosophy - was just as potent in uncovering those unnoticed conditions upon
which most of us obliviously depend for our basic equilibrium, but which we
could so easily lose. Consider, for example, this particularly horrific insight from
January 1932:
Mutilate a human being all the way, cut off his arms & legs nose & ears & then
see what remains of his self-respect & of his dignity & to what extent his concepts
of such things stUl remain the same. We have no idea how these concepts depend
on the ordinary, normal, condition of our body. What becomes of them when we
are led by a leash with a ring through our tongues & tied-up? How much of a
“ ‘’human being then remains in him? Into what sort of state does such a human
being sink? We don’t know that we are standing on a high and narrow rock &
aroxmd us chasms in which everything looks completely differeiit.
' PPO 147-9
The most basic tolerability of our lives depends^ on our retaining at least some
reijinant of dignity and self-respect, but - observes Wittgenstein - it is terrifyingly
easy for a person to be robbed of these. In fact, all one needs to do is watch the
news to be confronted with actual c^es of people being mutilated by others
almost beyond human recognition, or of prisoners being fundamentally
humiliated, even by being led around on a leash. The point here is that these are
not difficult realities to actualize, and yet their actualization would utterly destroy
most of us.
Thus, even when we stand in a tolerable reality, we are surrounded by vast
expanses of logical space, the actualization of which would make life a living
oblivious to this fearsome logical geography: We don’t know that we are standing
on a high and narrow rock & around us chasms’ (PPO 149). Wittgenstein,
however, tended to notice these chasms, and to brood upon them.
This brings us to Wittgenstein’s identification of what is perhaps the most
subtle of those preconditions of a minimally tolerable life that usually go
unnoticed due to their very essentiality. In February 1937 - that month of
profound crisis and illumination - he observed in his diary that:
A human being lives his ordinary life with the illumination of a light of which he
is not aware until it is extinguished. Once it is extinguished, life is suddenly
38 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
deprived of all value, meaning, or whatever one wants to say. One suddenly
becomes aware that mere existence—as one wojild like to say—is in itself still
completely empty, bleak. It,is as if the sheen was wiped away from all things,
[everything is dead— One has then died alive__*] Really, the horrible that I
wanted to describe is that... “There is no blessing with anything.”... Why does
it say: “The Lord is wrathful.”*—He can min you. Then one can say that one is
descending to hell— You hang trembling, with all you have, above the abyss. It
is horrible that such a thing can be.
PPO 207-9
A month later, in March, he returned to describing this condition. This deadness
and emptiness was not merely an absence of good-feeling, but rather a state of
pain and suffering that was positively felt in its own right: TTave been sleeping
quite badly for a few nights & feel dead, can’t work; my Noughts are dim.& I am
depressed but in a glowering way’ (PPO 235). Willig James ojice tried to make
the same poipt ^ stressing that serioys melancholy is more than just an
‘incapacity for joyous feeling’, but rather, i$‘‘a positive and active anguish’.® As
Wittgenstein said, until a person has experienced the ground of all sense, value,
and bearableiless in their life collapsing beneath them, and experienced how
when that is gone life can become a positive torment to its unlucky bearer, it is
very hard to realize or even acknowledge that such a ground is needed at all. For
it is usually simply taken for granted that living in itself is a basically tolerable or
even enjoyable mattef, as long as notiiing particulárly bad is Happening. But once
one has experienced the loss of that ground of life’s tolerability^ - as, for example,
is often experienced by those who have suffered from severe depression - one
becomes all too aware of how very thin the mysterious divide is between a
perfectly pleasant life and one of unremitting anguish.
Importantly, it is possible for those of otherwise robust mental health to
nonetheless gain an appreciation for how dose even they are to such states of
anguish, and for how very easy it is to tip over the edge of the abyss that
Wittgenstein insists we are all hanging over - namely, by means of certain
psychedelic drugs. Sam Harris describes this very well:
My “bad trips” were, without question, the most harrowing hours I have ever
endured, and they make the notion of heU... seem perfectly apt__ On my first
trip to Nepal, I took,a rowboat out on Phewa Lake in Pokhara, which offers a
stunning view of the Annapurna range. It was early morning, and I was alone. As
the sun rose over the water, I ingested 400 micrograms of LSD.... For the next
several hours my mind became a perfect instrument of self-torture. All that
remained.was a continuous shattering and terror for which I have no words.^
’The Problem of Life' 39
From these bad trips Harris drew the following very rdevant condusions:
There is no getting around the role of luck here. If you are lucky, and you take the
right drug, you will know what it is to be enlightened.... If you are unludcy, you
will know what it is to be dinically insane. While I do not recommend the latter
experience, it does increase one’s respect for the tenuous condition of sanity... .*
Once the veil has been pulled back, and a person has seen how little it takes to
hurl them - sturdy mental constitution and all - from the side of sanity to the
side of dark insanity, it is hard to forget how dose that other state lies, even when
one no longer inhabits it.
Those who have suffered from severe depression - or even just from a
harrowing drug trip - have had revealed to them just how tenuous life’s
tolerability is. And having recognized this radical tenuousness they might well
find it difficult to rest easy, even when life is fine. After all, what is to stop tìie
ground of life’s tolerability from giving way at any moment?
This was precisely Wittgenstein’s situation, renewed and intensified each time
he noticed yet another way in which the Hearableness of’our lives is dependent
on yet another rickety suppori! He was continually’compelled to say: 1 feel a
dependency which I hadn’t recognized before... . 'That which was firm for me
seems adrift now & capable of going imder’ (PPO 189). And the recognition of
the profound ricketiness of his situation kept on provoking in him renewed
anxiety, fear, and sometimes terror - even when things were ostensibly going
well.
After all this, it should not come as a surprise to find the following staccato
sentences in Wittgenstein’s November 1946 notebook. They could act as a bullet-
point summary of the core of the universal problem of life as Wittgenstein saw it
- namely: ‘The fundamental insecurity of life. Misery, everywhere you look’
(CVj^ 63e). This misery, presumably, was disjunctive in nature: either what vras
valuable in people’s lives had collapsed and they suffered because of that, or else
it had not, but then they might nonetheless suffer from the very natural and not
unreasonable anxiety engendered by worrying about if, when, and how the
collapse might happen. Both disjuncts of this miserable dilemma are undei^irded
by the single fact of life’s fundamental insecurity or fragility: the fact that
absolutely everything we value can so easily‘go under’.
Note that this insight is no longer limited to Wittgenstein’s personal
circumstances - to the fact that his philosophical talent was particularly prone to
disturbance or that Marguerite was less invested in their relationship than he
was. Rather, Wittgenstein’s observations have broadened out to universally
 40 Wittgensìein, Religion and Ethics
applicable fectors about thfe fragility of the often unobserved conditions that
make any life good or bearable.
To sum up - and to perhaps bring a little more order to these reflections - it
seems that we might characterize what Wittgenstein calls ‘the problem of life’ in
three increasingly broad ways:
• At its narrowest, the probjem of life might simply be the feet that (i) our
lives and all their gopds are fundamentally fraile and insecure.
• Taken somewhat more broadly, the problem might be considered to include
the fact of fragility plus the two further considerations that (ii) we can be,
and often are, aware of this feet; and that (iii) awareness of this feet all too
naturally - and not unreasonably - tends to lead people to react with
anxiety, fear, and even terror.
• At its most capacious, the proWem of life might be taken to include the three
considerations aljeady mentioned, along with the conclusion that (iv) many
people’s lives will therefore often involve alternating swings between, on the
one hand, periods when things are going badly, and on the other hand,
perjods when things are ostensibly going well but which are.undermined by
anxiety over how.easily they could collapse. The result is that for these
people,.life is never going well - because the bad is bad, and the good is
poisoned by anxiety.,
If we areto be ablento thitìk in an orderly manner about whether or not there is
a solution to the problem of life then it will be most helpful to take it in this last,
broadest, four-point-form. Points (i) to (iii) should then be seen as necessary
conditions for the unfortunate alternating result described in (iv). Thus, in order
to try to rid ourselves of thè problem, we will need to undermine one or 'more of
its three coriditions.
There are two kinds of undermining that we could engage in: theoretical on
the one hand, and practical on the other. A theoretical undermining would deny
the truth of a given one of the three points, whereas a practical undermining
would grant itá truth but seek to overturn it, to make it no longer true. In other
words, theoretical responses to the problem of life deny that there is a problem
at all, while practical responses grant that there is a problem and turn their
attention to trying to solve it. Thus, for example, a theoretical response might
deny that life really is as fragile as Wittgenstein claims it to be, whereas a practical
one would suggest various ways in which life could perhaps be Stabilized so as to
m'ake it less fragile than it currently is. Or a theoretical response might deny that
we are ever really aware of life’s fragility in the way that Wittgenstein describes,
‘The Problem of Life' 41
whbreas a practical one might recommend that we distract ourselves from our
awareness of life’s fragility by means of entertainment or medication.^
The bulk of Wittgenstein’s discussions of the problem of life were practical in
orientation - exploring and experimenting with numerous potential ways to try
to solve what he took to be a significant existential challenge. But before it can
make sense to examine his practical responses, we must first be sure that the
problem is real and not merely apparent. In the next section, therefore, I will turn
to what is perhaps the most basic theoretical attack on the problem of life as
Wittgenstein formulated it.
Is life really as insecure as all that? And is its insecurity really
significant enough to be worthy of such great anxiety?
At this point, then, we must ask: Is life really quite as insecure as Wittgenstein
makes out? And is its insecurity really as significant as he seems to think? If not,
then Wittgenstein’s problem of life will not gain much purchase. Perhaps
Wittgenstein’s writings on these matters are less the result of-.en accurate
appreciation for how things actually are, and more a manifestation of some kind
of hypochondria or gratuitous morbidness on his part.
One fairly natural way to react to Wittgenstein’s claims, after all, is simply to
pbserve that while, of course, there are many ways in which one’s life might
possibly be undermined at any given moment, the chances of this happening -
especially in its most radical forms - are relatively slim, and therefore oughtn’t to
be taken to be of such awesome significance. Even if we take the possibility of my
life, one day, simply losing all its sense and becoming a horrific burden to me -
something which actually does happen to ordinary people all too often - what
are the chances of it happening to each of us, right now? The fragility of life
should not be measured according to what is logically or metaphysically possible,
but rather, according to how likely it is that the worst will actually befall me. And
judging by how seldom truly devastating and irreparably terrible things happen
to those around me. this does not seem all that likely. Certainly not likely enough
“to constitute a major and constant existential crisis.
How would Wittgenstein respond to this line of thought, and defend the truth
and relevance of his claims regarding the fundamental insecurity of life? At this
point I will need to be rather speculative, because he never addressed objections
like this explicitly. But I think that one can pull together from his various remarks
at least three significant lines of response.
 42 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 'The Problem of Life' 43

First defence of the problematicness of life: From the inapplicability This line of thought touches on something very deep in Wittgenstein’s
of probabilistic calculation approach to the fundamental insecurity of life, but it seems to come at quite a
The first response Wittgenstein might offer could be seen coming out of a rather cost. For on this view of things it’s not just life’s important goods which cannot be

surprising passage in the Koder Diaries from February 1937. He wrote: counted on and for which calculating probabilities makes no sense, but surely it
would be absolutely everything - including whether I will foil, float, or disappear
It is strange< that one says God created the world & not: God is creating, if I step out of the window, and whether I will be nourished, poisoned, or turn
continually, the world. For why should it be a greater miracle that it began to be, polka-dotted, if I drink this water, and the like. Given that this approach seems to
rather than, that ^t continued to be. One is led astray by the simile of the
entirely undermine our standard reliance on inductive reasoning in daily life,*'^
craftsperson. That someone makes a shoe is an accomplishment, but once made
we might therefore wonder whether Wittgenstein had any other ways to defend
(gut of what is existing) it endures on its own for a whüe. But if one thinks of
his claim about the insecurity of life against the objection that life is not really all
God as creator, must the conservation of the universe not be a miracle just as
that insecure and that the probabilities are with us radier than against us.
as its creation,—yes, aren’t the two one and the samp?
1 - , , ^Pp0 215
This passage is surprising because it sounds so much like Wittgenstein is Second defence of the problematicness of life: From decision
engaging in unreconstructed-metaphysical argumentation of the kind that he theory and the possibility of infinite negative utility
uSuaUy-rejects. But regardless-of that, he is echoing a theme that had long been
A second approach could, then', be for Wittgenstein to grant that many of the
air important aspect of his thought - namely, the idea that the existence of the
ways in which our lives might collapse are indeed not all that likely, but to insist
world at every moment is â miracle, and something to be wondered at. As he said
that the significance of a given.potential collapse is a,fop4tion both o/how likely
in his 1929 Lecture on Ethics’: 1 will... describe the experience of wondering at
that potential collapse is and also of how bad the collapse would be if it happened.
the existence of the world by saying: it is the experience of seeing the world as a
In a move analogous to Pascal’s handling of infinite disutility in his fomous
miracle (LE 11). But part of seeing the existence of whatever exists as a miracle
wager (at least on some readings), we mi^t say that if the potential awfiilness is
IS putting it outside the realm of what could legitimately be expected or relied
sufficiently great, tiien that possibility will be of great significance even if the
upon.Soifmyexistence-ahdsotòotheexistènceofthemysteriouspreconditions
chance of it coming to pass is fairly small." And indeed, Wittgenstein repeatedly
of the meaningfulness and bearableriess Of my life - are miracles, then these are
stresses that the potential for positive suffering in life - indeed in any one
nfot things that one could legitimately approach by means of statistics or
moment of any one life - is infinite. Thus, in February 1937 he wrote:
probability. On this view, at each new moment the balance is poised utterly
equally between whether my life will be illuminated with meaning, on the one [I]n an instant one can experience all terror — If you want to imagine hell you
hand, or whether it will be a harrowing experience devoid of all sense, on the don’t need to think of unending torment I would rather say. Do you know what
other; and how my life has gone until now, and the statistics regarding how unspeakable dread a human being is capable of? Think of that & you know what
peoples lives tend to go, will be no basis at all for expecting things to continue hell is even though this is not at all a matter of duration.
that \vay into the future. Wittgenstein might well say. therefore, that life is PPO 179
insecure down to its very core, and to think that we can consider any aspect of it And in 1944:
to be a likelihood or a feirly sure thing is to miss the'rather terrifying corollary of
the miraculous nature of existence: that nothing can be expected. Now, while A cry of distress cannot be greater than that of one human being. Or again no
distress can be greater than what a single person can suffer. Hence one human
Wittgenstein Would not have thought it possible to provide any arguments that
being can be in infinite distress__The whole Earth cannot bé in greater distress
everyone ought to consider the existence of the world to be miraculous, he might
than one soul.... There is no greater distress to be felt than that of One human
nonetheless have thought that anyone who foiled to see the miracle was blind to
being. For if someone feels himself lost, that is the ultimate distress.
something immensely important.
CV^^ 52e-53e
 44 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
On this approach the point about life’s fundamental insecurity is neither that all
the goods in our lives are very likely to collapse at any moment, nor even that
they are always perfectly equally poised between the possibUities of coUapse and
of stability - but rather, that given the enormity of the potential suffering, the
fact that collapse is possible at all, even if not overwhelmingly likely, should be
enough to make anxiety about that chance a very natural and not unreasonable
response.
And even if decision theorists are right to tell us that we can ignore vanishingly
ßmall possibilities for all practical purposes - even vanishingly small possibilities
of enormous catastrophes - that is northe case with the kinds of coUapse that
Wittgenstein has in mind; for they are not vanishingly rare. Many people right
now are in states of infinite torment - often people who seem to be living in
perfectly comfortable circumstances - and no one is in a position to think
themselves'imriiune fröih such statés: In-áho‘ft. this kind* of collapse‘is perhaps
not common, but it is a very live possibility; And given the stâkes, a possibility
that we might think ought to greatly concern us.
'Ihird defence bf the problematicness of life: Shifting from
anxiety to outrage
Wittgensteins third potential response could go in another direction. On this
line of thought Wittgenstein could grant that the likelihood of the worst befalling
each of us at any moment is not extremely high, and he might even grant that
anxiety is therefore not an entirely natural response to life’s fundamental
insecurity. But granting all this does not undermine the problem of life, because
even if anxiety is no longer so plausibly in the offing, another family of very
negative states is. and this ffimily will simply replace the role of anxiety in the
problem as I laid it out earlier. These alternative negative states I have in mind are
anger and outrage.
Consider, for example, that one day my neighbour tells me that he has bought
a gun, and that he has decided that it’s quite possible that one morning when he
sees me coming out of my apartment he will simply shoot me dead. Whether or
not he will do this, he explains, will depend on a decision made randomly by his
computer, and he has set it so that the chances that it will tell him that he should
shoot me are one m ten million. In this case, we might think that given these
odds (they are/nr better than the odds of me getting hit by a car as I cross the
road) it is not anxiety that would be foremost amongst my responses, but rather:
something like outrage. Outrage at the affront to my autonomy, outrage at the
'The Problem of Life’ 45
appareildy pointiess malice of my neighbour, outrage that something of
such great significance to me could be decided so capriciously, and outrage
at my o^yn impotence in the face of this threat - aU this, even whüe recognizing
that the chances of my actually being shot by my neighbour are very small
indeed.
Moreoyer, a good number of the reasons why I might naturally feel anger or
outrage at my neighbour’s plan do not depend on the fact that it is a person who
is doing this to me. For it is perfectly natural and common to feel anger and
outrage at entirely impersonal forces when they put us in a similar position. For
example, towards the end of a long and dark Norwegian winter in 1937, when
Wittgenstein was daUy and desperately waiting for the reappearance of the sun,
he chided himself for his tendency to ‘get angry with fete’ (PPO 225).
Thus the mere feet of the insecurity of all life’s goods, die mere fact that in a
moment, everything of value to me could be taken from me. and that I could be
kft lost and bereft - regardless of the degree of likelihood - is a feet that might
naturally provoke in us anger and outrage. It should not surprise us, then, that in
thatkeymonthofFebruary 1937 it was,in ^ct,oùtragetìmtplagued Wittgenstein
more than anxiety. When, one nigl^t, the feet of his absolute dependence on
external^foices was brought homei.to hhn partiçularly sharply, he,wrote: ‘I was
now simultaneously in a sort of shock & outrage as so often during the last
10 days’(PPO 185-7).
Given these three avenues of response to the attempt to deny either the truth
or the significance of the insecurity of life - and especially given the second and
the third -1 think we can conclude that Wittgenstein has a genuinely strong case
for the problem of life being truly problematic.’^
Conclusion: The difficulty of acknowledging the problem
There is, of course, good reason why we would avoid admitting the reality of the
problem to ourselves, why we would turn away from recognizing just how
unstable everything we value actually is. After all, to acknowledge this would be
to open ourselves up to precisely the overwhelming anxiety and outrage which
Wittgenstein describes, and from which he suffered.
Remarkably, at almost exactly the same time as Wittgenstein was grappling
with these issues in his diaries, Simone Weil was working through almost the
very same things in her own notebooks - the two of them entirely unaware of
one another. What Wittgenstein caUed ‘the problem of life’, Weil called 'the
 46 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics 'The Problem of Life’ 47

problem of afíliction’. And Weil expresses very well the near impossibility of
genuinely feeing up'to life’s profound insecurity:
To acknowledge the reality of affliction means saying to oneself: ‘I may lose at
any moment, through the play of circumstances over which I have no control,
anything whatsoever that I possess, including those things which are so
intimately mine that Tconsider them as being myself. There is nothing that I
might not lose. It could happen at any moment that what 1 am might be abolished
hnd replaced by anything'whatsoever of the filthiest and most contemptible sort.’
To be aware of this in the depth of onèVsoul is to-experience noft-being. It is the
state of extreme and total humiliation.... This is why the naked spectacle of
affliction makes the soul shudder as the ffesh shudders at. the proximity of
death.... Only by fhe supernatural \yprking.of grace can a soul pass through its
own armihilation to the place where,alone it cm get thesort of attention which
can attend to truth and to affliction.*^
As I said in' my introduction, making a case for the significance of the problem
of our fragility will have to suffice for this chapter, and investigating potential
ptactical solutions will need to be left to another occasion. If this leaves us
hanging - at least for the time being - in a state of existential angst, perhaps that
is not such a bad thing. For I think that Wittgenstein might have approved of
Georées'Sorel’s remark'that ‘philosophy is after all perhaps only the recognition
of the abysses which lie on each side of the footpath that the vulgar follow with
the serenity of somnambulists.’“-*®
9 It should be noted that the sharp distinction between theoretical and practical
responses may break down somewhat when it comes to responding to condition
(iii).
10 An undermining which early Wittgenstein supported (see TLP 5.134-5.1361,
6.3631-6.37),butwhichlaterWittgensteindidnot (see PI §§466-90).
11 For an illuminating discussion of these matters, see Jeff Jordan, Pascal’s Wager:
Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 105-8,
115-18.
12 Of course, to make this case fully it would be necessary to say a great deal more
about each of these points than I have just said. I intend to do this in future
publications.
13 Simone Weil,‘Human Personalit/, in her Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical,
Political, and Moral Writings, ed. and trans. Richard Rees (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock,
2015), 9-34, at 27-8.
14 Sorel,Reflections on Violence,6.
15 I am grateful to the organizers of both the Eighth British Wittgenstein Society
Annual Conference (Mikel Burley) and the Ryerson University Philosophy
Colloquium (Paula Schwebel and Klaas Kraay) for the opportunity to present earlier
versions of this chapter, and to the participants in those events for very helpful
comments and discussion. And for extremely fruitful conversations about - and
comments on - various drafts of this chapter, I would like to thank: Lochin Bruillard,
Mikel Burley, Richard Gipps, Sol Goldberg, Elisha Mallard, Stephen Mulhall and
Nick Stang.

Notes

1 Georges Sorel. Reflections on Violence, trans. T. E. Hulme (London: Allen & Unwin,
1925), 6.
2 Rush Rhees, Letter to Maurice O’Connor Drury, 6 November 1966, in The Rush
Rhees Collection, Richard Burton Archives, University of Swansea, call mark;
‘ÜNI/SU/PC/1/1/3/4'.
3 Paragraph breaks have been omitted here and in some subsequent quotations.
4 Wittgenstein crossed out the words enclosed by square brackets here.
5 See, perhaps, the Book of Nahum 1:2.
6 William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, 2nd
edn (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902), 147.
7 Sam ñarr^. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (New York: Simon
ÔfSchûster.2014), 194-6.
8 Ibid., 189.
 3

Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion

Beyond Fideism and Atheism

Mikel Burley

Hie impact of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein on the multidisciplinary field

known as the study of religion has been extensive since the- 1960s, albeit
sometimes a Utile way beneath the surface. His significance has been especiaUy
discernible in the phUosophy of religion, where his votaries have been highly
vocal despite being relatively few-in'number. Mostmotable among these is
D Z Phillips, whose prodigious'butput kept WitigenSteinian phfiosophy of
religion centre stage untfi his death ih 2006.' Even though.the majority of other
phUosophers disagreed with Phülips on most points, they generaUy rêcognized
him as a hard figure to ignore, and his influence persists through' the work o
those who continue to reflect upon and respond to his ideas.' In the stu y
of religion more broadly, Wittgenstein’s influence has seeped in through filters
such as the work of certain anthropologists and social theorists,' to the point
where some of the central themes of his later thought, especially the ideas
of forms of life, language-games and of the 'farmly resemblance’ character of
concepts, have been absorbed into the vocabulary of many academics, both m
the study of religion and elsewhere.*
Getting clear about Wittgenstein is therefore of considerable importance
if we are to understand what U going on in a good deal of work in the study
of religion: and yet the most prevalent interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ideas,
and of their impUcations fbr how we think about religion, exhibit radical
■dive^ences. According to one persistent line of interpretation, Wittgenstem,
having sought 'to insulate religious beUefe’ from external critique,' mspired
a whole cohort of philosophical protectors of faith, whom Kai Nielsen
notoriously dubbed the school of‘Wittgensteinian fideism’.' According to otiier
commentators, meanwhfle, Wittgenstein’s thought displays forms of’naturaUsm
 50 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 51

and'anthropocentrism’ that‘contribute to the erosion of belief in transcendence’^

The ‘Wittgensteinian fideism* debate
Indeed, at least one prominent scholar has asserted of Wittgenstein that ‘the
consequence of his later thought on religion is an unavoidable acceptance of
When Kai Nielsen concocted the term Wittgensteinian fideism’ he did not mean
atheism’.®
to assert that Wittgenstein himself was a fideist. He meant merely, or at least
What are we to make of these competing claims? Can Wittgenstein’s work be
primarily, that Wittgenstein’s work has been taken in that way and it is thought
both a resotírce for those who want to immunize feith against rational criticism
in many quarters that such an approach will give us a deep grasp of religion and
and, at the same time, something that undermines religious belief, precipitating
will expose the shallowness of scepticism’.*® Since then, however, some of the
an inevitable slide into atheism? Far from being of merely esegetica! interest, a
principal ideas that Nielsen intended to indicate by means of the term have been
study of Wittgenstein on these matters can open up important ways of thinking
ascribed to Wittgenstein as well as to several philosophers who apply his methods
about such issues as philosophy’s relation to religion and the interplay between
to the study of religion.
the concepts of feith and naturalism. It thus has the potential to focus our
Ihe term ‘fideism’ - or its French equivalent, fidéisme - can be traced to
thoughts on what it is to be religious and, moreover, on what it means to be living
pineteenth-century France, where it was initially used in a Catholic periodical in
a human life.
1854 to characterize the thought of the Catholic priest Hugues-Fâicité Robert
My procedure, in -this, chapter will be as follows. Beginning with a critical
de Lamennais.** It was subsequently taken up, or perhaps coined afresh, by the
examination of the debate over‘Wittgensteinian fideismi I distinguish between
Lutheran theologian Eugène Ménégoz,.who employed it-‘in Schleiermacherian
two principles-that have come to be conflated under this heading. I argue that
feshion to define the core of religious life, a pure state of feith, which would
one of these, which I call the non-interference principle, is benign and consistent
exceed the historical particulars and symbols of different religions’.*^ Only a year
with Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy, whereas the other, which I call the
lafor the term also appeared in. a work by. die Catholic philosopher. Léon OUé-
incomprehensibility principle, is both pernicious and far from anything that
Laprune, this time to designate ‘what he took to be a distressing overreliance on
Wittgenstein or Wittgensteinians have endorsed.® In view of the latter principle,
moral faith in establishing the existence pf'God in 'Kantian and post-Kantian
Wittgensteinians such as D. Z. Phillips are right to repudiate the label of fideism,
idealism’.*® Thus, from its beginnings the notion of fideism has been treated by
though not for all the reasons that Phillips advances. Turning to Wittgenstein’s
some as an affirmative self-description and by others as a pejorative term of
alleged naturalism, I focus on the question of whether his contention that
critique.,
‘primitive’ (or ‘instinctive’) reactions can be thought of as the source of much
In Nielsen’s appropriation of the pejorative usage, ‘fideism’ comes to be
human, cultural and linguistic activity has the deleterious implications for
associated with the idea that religion, either in general or in the sense of some
religious belief that some commentators have supposed. After explaining why it
particular religion, is a swi generis‘form of life’ with‘its own norms of intelligibility,
has become common to characterize Wittgenstein’s thought as naturalistic, I
rgality and rationalit/.'* When .conceived in these terms, Nielsen complains,
draw upon and elaborate ideas from Peter Winch in order to argue that talk of
religion is immunized against philosophical attack by being artificially removed
instinctive reactions has the imagined deleterious implications only if one begins
from the sphere of legitimate interrogation. Nielsen sees this isolative strategy as
with reductively antireligious assumptions in one’s conception of what is ‘natural’.
part of a more general tendency among Wittgensteinians to ‘compartmentalise’
Once these àssumptions are recognized .to be unnecessary, the possibility is
aspepts of human culture, such as religion and science, on the presumption that
opened up of a naturalism that is neither reductive nor atheistic. I end, however,
the standards of rationality internal to each are incommensurable with those of
by highlighting a further worry that some proponents of religious belief might
the others.*®
have in response to Wittgenstein’s thought, namely the worry that what
What Nielsen attributes neither to Wittgenstein nor to Wittgensteinians is the
Wittgenstein terms ‘the groundlessness of our believing’ (OC §166) cannot
claim that any given religion can be understood only by people who actively
avoid leaving us with a profound sense-of uneasiness - albeit perhaps expressible
participate in it. He is alert to the difference between, on the one hand, the idea
as a sense of wonder - about the radical contingency of our epistemic, and hence
that to understand a religion requires consideration of how participants
about our religious, lives.
understand it, and on the other hand the idea that understanding a religion
 Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 53
52 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

phUosophers of reUgion assert or assume a non-interference principle, the

requires being a participant in it oneself. Drawing an analogy with ethnographic
principle that religions are not amenable to philosophical criticism. The other
fieldwork, Nielsen endorses the view that considering a participant’s perspective
is the charge that the Wittgensteinian philosophers in question affirm an
is essential to understanding a culture or an aspect of a culture; what he rejects incomprehensibility principle, iiccoiding to which religions cannot be understood
is thè view that understanding precludes criticism.'® Thus when Norman
by anyone other than active practitioners. This latter principle entails the former,
Malcolm asserts that a ‘deep understanding’ of the concept of God cannot be
for if one cannot even satisfy the condition for understanding something then
achieved ‘without an understanding* of the phenomena of human life that give one is hardly in a position to legitimately criticize it; but the former principle
rise to it’,'^ Nielsen has no reason to demur. Similarly, when Malcolm says of
Aliselm’s ontological argument that he suspects it ‘can be thoroughly understood’ does not entail the latter.
In the light of the distinction between two dissociable aspects, or strengths, of
only when vieWêd from 'inside', by those with ‘at least some inclination to partake
tìie charge ofWittgensteinian fideism, itbecomes possible to see why philosophers
in [the] religious form of life’ from which it emerges,*® Nielsen iVould disagree sympathetic to Wittgenstein’s methods sometimes react very differently to the
only if this were taken to mean that One must actually partake of that form of life
charge. The reaction is Uahle to be coloured by which version of the charge is
if any understanding of it is to be achieved. Bufwhat Malcoliû is talkiñg about is
being emphasized and by how it is interpreted. Moreover, it becomes possible to
a kind of hermeneutical sympathy,‘a willingness to see die point in a religious
see why someone might affirm that Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians are
practice or attitude tb life.^*’ He is* proposing that such sympathy is likely to
fideists in one sense whUe denying that they are fideista in another sense. To
be necessary if one is to gain a thorou^ understanding of certain aspects of the
illustrate this point, let us consider some contrasting reactions.
religion, which is very different from asserting that one must belong to die
religion if one is to understand it at all. Nielsen appreciates this difference.
In the wake of Nielsen’s essay, however, other critics have made the accusation
Rejecting and affirming Wittgensteinian fideism
that Wittgensteinian philosophers deploy notions such as those of forms of life
and language-games to portray religions as capable of being understood 'only
OnereactionistypifiedbyPhiUips.whorejectedthewholeideaofWittgensteinian
from within, by those who actually play the game in question’.“ If this were in
fideism’as'simplyascandal in scholarship’.“Others have concurred.maintaining
feet what Wittgensteinians are-doing, then Anthony Kenny’s lament that
that owing to the term’s misleading connotations,‘it does not belong m academic
‘Wittgenstein’s influence on the philosophy of religion has been disastrous’
discourse’.“ An alternative reaction is illustrated by Duncan Richter, who, having
would not be out of place.^^ But it‘is highly questionable whether-anyone has
noted Nielsen’s contention that a fideistic approach to philosophy seeks only to
ever, in Wittgenstein’s name, declared that such radical autonomy applies to ‘display the workings, the style of functioning, of religious discourse’, attests that
celigions. As Niniân Smart has observed, supposing that belief is necessary
this is indeed a feir summary of a genuinely Wittgensteinian method.“ Richter
for understanding woidd make it a ‘waste of time’ to study any religion other therefore accepts and endorses part of what the term ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’
than ohe’s own.“ Yet Smart is among those who think that D. Z. Phillips
fias come to stand for, namely the part that I have called the non-interference
exemplifies precisely this supposition, neglecting to notice that Phillips, from
principle. I shaU now examine each of these contrasting reactions more closely.
his earliest Work onwards, insists that ‘religious concepts are not inaccessible
Phillips responds to the accusation that he aqd other Wittgensteinians
to ncfn-religious understanding’, for they are connected with such things as ‘joy
are.fideists chiefly by highlighting passages in his own writings, such as those
and sorrow, hope and despair’,“ which constitute ‘the common experience of
which I mentioned in the previous section, where he explicitly controverts the
human life’.“ It is precisely for the latter reason that it is feasible to elucidate the
view that religious forms of language are logically disconnected from other
meanings of feligious concepts, a point which Phillips reiterates and elaborates areas of human life. Though implicitly aware of the distinction between the
in numerous places.^® non-interference and incomprehensibüity aspects of the fideism charge, Phillips
Wlwt we see, then, in die debate over Wittgensteinian fideism is a tendency
finds neither of them acceptable. He thus goes to considerable lengths to show
on the part of some critics to slide between or conflate two distinct charges. not only that a Wittgensteinian approach does not assume religions to be
One of these, which Nielsen emphasizes, is the charge that Wittgensteinian
 54 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 55

comprehensible only to their practitioners, but also that such an approach can
Phillips has provoked particular antagonism from philosophers otherwise
include criticisms of religious mistakes and cònfusions » Phüosophical criticism
sympathetic to Wittgensteinian methods by offering what some see as an over-
IS especially câlled for, Phillips maintains, when beliefs or activities fail to ‘take
interpreted reading of a remark made by Wittgenstein about the scapegoat ritual
the world seriously’, tending instead to ‘ignore or distort what we already know’.^'»
outlined in Leviticus 16:20-22. In his Big Typescript of 1933 Wittgenstein writes:
When, for example, someone proposes of suffering that it is not ultimately real
‘The scapegoat, on whom one lays one’s sin, and who runs out into the desert
or that it ahvays has a purpo'se, or when death is spoken of as though it were
with it - a false picture, similar to those that cause errors in philosophy’ (BT
merely a prolonged sleep, Phillips deems it appropriate for philosophy to point
317e).’^ Although I have insufficient space here for a fuU discussion of the
out that suffermg and death are not being treated with due sobriety and that the
controversy surrounding this remark, a concise summary might run as follows.
lack of sobriety reVeals confusion.^^
Phillips, in the light of speculations by Rush Rhees, understands Wittgenstein to
Critics of Wittgenstänian approaches are apt to welcome this embracement
be saying that the scapegoat ritual is confused, its confusion consisting in the
by Phillips ofphilosoph/scritical ambitions, whüeperhapsrémainingsuspicious
assumption of those who perform it that an animal, which obviously lacks the
that Phillips and other Wittgensteinians are still, despite appearances, wedded to
capacity to experience such feelings as remorse for its wrongdoings, could
a thoroughly uncritical position. The latter suspicion niight be nourished by
nevertheless carry the burden of a people’s sins. While acknowledging how the
rtmarks-that Phillips makes elsewhere to the effect thafphUosophy is a purely
idea of a human being taking on the sins of others can gain a foothold in many
dismterested’ and ‘contemplative’ pursuit, which seeks merely to do ‘conceptual
societies, Phillips sees little hope of making sense of a ritual that accords this role
justice’ to the many‘possibiUties of sense’ that inhere within human forms of life,
to an animal.”
both religious and non-religious, without trying to adjudicate between them in
Berel Dov Lernet and Brian Clack regard the elaboration of Wittgenstein’s
the name of a supposedly universal rationality.^^
remark proffered by Rhees and Phillips as having been biased by à ‘Christian
Some Wittgensteinians. too, may be glad of PhiUips’ insistence that a
sensibility’,” which assumes Christ’s crucifixion to be the paradigmatic instance
Wittgenstein-inspired approach possesses a critical edge, perceiving it as a
of someone’s unburdening others by taking their sins upon himself.*® On Clack’s
vmdication against folse accusations of ‘quietism’ or ‘conservatism’.” Others.
interpretation, what Witfgënstein considers to constitute a false picture is the
meanwhUe, will harbour their own suspicions that in his enthusiasm to'placate
idea of sins being transferrable, as though they were akin to physical objects; the
th^ snarling horde of anti-fideists. Phillips has lurched dramaticaUy away from an
picture resembles ones that give rise to errors in philosophy in the sense that, in
aOthenticall/Wittgensteinian path. Reading Phillips’ cursory dismissal of talk of
philosophy too, there is a tendency to assume that a substantive must be
death as a kind of sleep, for example, they might wonder why he gives no
correlated with an object or substance, if not a physical then at least an ‘abstract’
consideration to the specific religious contexts in which such talk has its place,
one.*^ Since Clack considers the sort of picture involved in the scapegoat
both m the Bible and elsewhere.” In a letter penned in 1522. Martin Luther asks
ritual - a picture that portrays as a transferrable substance something that is not
rhetorically on whose authority it can be denied that ‘the souls of the dead
really a substance at all - to be widespread in religious thought and practice, not
sleep out the interval between earth and heaven, or heU. or purgatory, in the same
least in the Christian conception of atonement, he infers that Wittgenstein’s
way that the livmg pass in profound slumber the interval between their down-
‘apparently throwaway remarli is ‘in foct deeply subversive of humanity’s
lying at night and their uprising'in the morning’.” PhiUips might, of course, want
religious life’.*^ Thus, having begun by noting the oddity of Wittgensteinians such
to place Luther among thbse who. foiling to treat death with sufficient earnestness,
as Rhees and Phillips seeming to go out of their way to be critical of an ancient
foritasize m ways that overlook ‘what we already know’. But others wiU hear words
religious rite, Clack ends up concluding that an approach in keeping with that of
such as those of Luther precisely as a challenge to common assumptions, both
Wittgenstein would go even further in a critical direction, much further than is
religious and secular. Whatever the case may be, it can hardly be settled in advance
assumed by Rhees or Phillips or by most other readers of Wittgenstein.
of a careftiUy contextualized investigation, which would need to takeaccount of,
Finally in this summary of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s enigmatic
among other things, the conceptual connections between talk of death as a sleep
scapegoat remark, I should mention Christopher Hoyt’s recent claim that the
and talk of spiritual revival and awakening.”
analogy Wittgenstein is drawing does not depend on our regarding the scapegoat
 Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 57
56 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

describe it... It leaves everything as it is’ (PI^ §124) and that ‘Philosophy just
ritual as itself confused or as being based on confused ideas; what Wittgenstein
puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything* (§126).'“
is insinuating is that the ‘ritual is a sort of trap that leads to misunderstanding’ in
Although in these and similar passages it is not specifically philosophy’s relation
a way analogous to how certain features of the grammar of our language set
to religion that is at issue, it hardly requires an extravagant inference to see that
traps generative of conceptual confusions, which in turn are the source of many
if, by Wittgenstein’s lights, philosophy leaves everything as it is’, then a fortiori, by
errors in philosophy.^ Rescuing Wittgenstein’s remark from the dutdiesof those
those same lights, it leaves religion as it is. And given that Wittgenstein is reported
who would use it to portrayWittgenstein as a critic - or even an arch destroyer
to have said of his later philosophy that, unlike the work of other phüosophers,
- of religious practices, Hoyt indicates how it can be read as suggesting that it is
it interferes in no way ‘with what you can believe in religion’,*’ it appears that
those who misinterpret the ritual that are confused, not the ritual itself.^ We
construe it confusedly <when vfß assume that the ritual’s enactors must be Wittgenstein would concur with the inference.
Although there continue to be heated disputes over how to put Wittgenstein’s
conflating sins with transferrable object^, just a§ we construe our own language
descriptive conception of philosophy into effect - and there is hardly space even
confusedly whçn, for example, we assume that psychological terms must refer to
to begin trying to resolve those disputes here« - it nevertheless has to be
‘metaphysically peculiar things locked away in apetaphysically peculiar place’.^*
■admitted that the non-interference principle, or something very much like it, is
What isneeded to dissolve our confusions in each case is aproperly contextualized
thoroughly in tune with Wittgenstein’s most decisive pronouncements on the
investigation ofthe rol.e of the pracfjce (i.e. the roje of the ritual or of psychological
nature of philosophy, some of which I have cited above. In this light, Phillips’
expressions) jn the lives of those who perform it.
efforts to repudiate the non-interference principle, appear misplaced. This
An analysis such as Hoyt’s fecilitates the incorporation even of the scapegoat
appearance is strengthened when we recaU that Phillips himself is weU known
remark into an account that regards Wittgenstein’s approach as generally
for .characterizing the ‘contemplative task of philosophy of religion as that of
uncritical of religion. It is thus consistent with a perspective that welcomes rather
‘showing what it means’ to hold or to reject a religious belief, without taking sides
than rebuts the description of Wittgenstein, and of Wittgensteinian methods, as
on the matter.” If we accept such a conception pf philosophy’s task, little room is
fideistic, at least in the sense embodied in the non-interference principle. Richter
left for an approach that invokes what we purportedly‘already know in order to
ç:çemplifves such a perspective when he affirms that the task of philospphy of
oppugn certain religious beliefs or forms.of words as being confused. To do so in
religion is to do no more than bring to the surface the grammatical operations of
Wit^enstein’s name is to overreact to the charge of fideism. It is to neglect the
religious forms of language.^ For the most part, Richter’s exegetical strategy
possibility of rejecting only one aspect of the ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ label - the
involves distinguishing between, on the one hand, the written material that
aspect that I have termed the incomprehensibUity principle - whüe affirming
Wittgensfein prepared most carefully and which was eventually published as the
Philosophical Investigations, and on the other hand the assortment of personal the other aspect, namely the non-interference principle.
Overall, we might still agree with Phillips that the label ought to be spumed
opinions and only half-formed ideas that Wittgenstein jotted down in diaries
entirely. It ought to be spumed precisely because of the ambiguity that I have
and notebooks or tried out in lectures and in conversations with friends,
been discussing, an ambiguity that enables ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ to be heard
^though some of these thoughts may be of considerable interest in their own
as implying that a Wittgenstein-influenced approach to the study of religion
right, Richter admits, they do not represent Wittgenstein’s most developed
invariably attempts a defence of feith. As I. following Richter, have been arguing,
philosophical work.^^ 'This distinction facilitates a conception of Wittgensteini^
a credible reading of Wittgenstein’s least equivocal statements on philosophical
philosophy as purely descriptive, with the more judgemental and opinionated
methods shows that a Wittgensteinian approach is in the business neither of
remarks from Wittgenstein’s corpus being relegated to the category of the non-
attacking nor of defending faith; it ‘just puts everything before us’. If, in response
or pre.-philosophical.
to what has been put before us, we then adopt a religious form of life, or renounce
There are, of course, many passages that can be cited in support of a reading
it, so be it; but Wittgenstein’s point - and indeed Phillips’ point, for the most
of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as purely descriptive, among which are
part - is that whichever course one takes, it will not be philosophy that has told
Wittgenstein’s femous - or notorious - pronouncements that ‘Philosophy must
not interfere in any way with the actual use of language, so it can in the end only one to take it.
 58 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 59

If this picture of a descriptive, contemplative, disinterested style of

generate a theory that Wittgenstein’s philosophy and outlook on life are not
phUosophizing is aptly attributed to” Wittgenstein, however, how are we to
niecely incompatible with religious faith but are subversive of its very possibility.
account for the contention that pursuing Wittgenstein's methods results in what
In the next section I argue that it is mistaken to suppose that atheism is the
C ack describes as ‘an unavoidable acceptance of atheism'? If Wittgenstein is not
destination to which Wittgenstein’s later philosophical thought inexorably leads.
a defender of faith, could he nevertheless "be its saboteur? Addressing these
Here, however, it is important to acknowledge the elements in Wittgenstein’s
questions wiU require carefiil attentioh to the idea that Wittgenstein espouses a
thinking that might tempt us in the direction of the latter supposition. Central
verston of naturalism:
among these elements are the notion of primitive or instinctive reactions on the
.opfijiand and the distinction between ‘surface grammar* and ‘depth grammar* on
the other, each of which I discuss below.
Wittgenstein's naturalism' -Wittgenstein’s emphasis upon the instinctive level of human life is evident in
many of his writings from the 1930s onwards. In contemplating how human
It has become somewhat commonplace to describe Wittgenstein's later
beings learn the terms for particular sensations, for instance, Wittgenstein
phüosophy as naturalistic, albeit naturalism of i ‘weak* or Wimal' or ‘liberal*
femously offers as ‘one possibility* the suggestion that ‘words are connected with
kind, one-which steers dear of reductionism.“-In a relatively early instance of
this tendfticy.DaVid Pears coins-the term ‘linguistic naturalism'to distinguish the primitive, natural, expressions of sensation and used in their place.’ With
regard to the word ‘pain, for example, it could be the case that its use comes,
Wittgenstem's approach from the ‘psychological naturalism' of David Hume.“
According to Pears, Wittgenstein's phUosophy is both naturalistic and within particular social contexts, to replace the cries and groans that are-the
natural pre-linguistic expressions of'pain (PI^ §244)| Stressing that it is not
anthropocentric insofar as it views ‘ordinary human life' as the'proper locus of
merely in relation to oui; own sensations, that terjns suçh. as 'pain*, are learnt,
investigation. It is specifically a linguistic form of naturalism in the sense that it
Wittgenstein observes that tending'the injured part.of someone else who is in
conceives-of language as continuous with natural-nonverbal human behaviour,
pain is also a primitive reaction> by which he means that ‘it is the prototype of a
^t if avoids reductionism by refiising to privfiege any particular area of human
discourse above another.H It thus refiises. for instance, to treat a restrictedly ,Vay of thinking and not the result of thought* (Z §§540,541; cf. RPP I §§915,
916). Invoking a maxim-from Goethe’s Faust - ‘,im Anfang war diç Tat’ (‘In the
scientific conception of the ‘natural' as that which is ultimately true“ With
beginning was the deed*)®’ - Wittgenstein proposes that language‘is a refinement*
regard to the phenomena of religion and ritual, it has been argued that
(CE 420; CVj^ 36e; cf. OC §402), a development from the primitive reactions
ittgenstem's fiaturalisinrcoitìes through most vividly in his Remarks on Frazer's
Golden Bough, in which he'counters James Frazer's ‘inteUectualisf account of .jthat underlieit, not a product of‘ratiocination’ (OC §475).“
In view of Wittgenstein’s frequent insistence that he is not advancing theories
ritud activittes by maintaining that there is no need to suppose that rituals are
based on theoretical modes of cognition; rather - and this is a point to which I or explanations, we should be wary of ejqjecting from his remarks on primitive
reactions a theory of how human beings came to be language-using animals.®'
return below - they can be viewed as arising naturally out of instinctive forms of
Sp too should we be mindful not to ignore the ‘modal qualifications’ (‘Here is one
numan behaviour.®®
possibility .. i ‘Here we might say .. i and so on) that are scattered throughout
Notwithstanding the reluctance on the -part of many commentators to
Wittgenstein’s oeuvre.®^ Yet, even so, it does not appear to be going too far to
attribute to Wittgenstein a fiiU-bloodedly reductive form of naturalism, there
propose that there is a prominent strand of Wittgenstein’s thinking in which he
remam suspicions m some quarters that his naturalisti'c tendencies sit
maintains, as Malcolm has argued, that our initial ‘learning of words is an
uncomfortably with religious belief and practice. These suspicions have melded
outgrowth of unthinking, instinctive behaviour’ and that ‘something of the same
mth other considefations - most notably the observations that Wittgenstein
kind permeates and surrounds all human acting and all use of language, even at
espite seeing things ‘ffom a religious' point of view', tould never commit himself
sophisticated levels’.®® It is this strand of Wittgenstein’s thinking that is evident in
to a religious form of life,'? and that he shared with Oswald Spengler a deep
his reflections on ritual in the light of what he perceives as Frazer’s over-
pessimism concerning the viability of genuine religion in the modern age»» - to
intellectualized account. Whether or not Wittgenstein’s criticisms do an injustice
 60 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
to Frazer can be set aside here,*^ our immediate purpose being to illustrate how
the notion of instinctûàl of primitive reactions informs Wittgenstein’s alternative
suggestions.
What Wittgenstein chiefly objects to in Frazer’s treatment of ritual behaviour
is theVery idea that such behaviouf could be'explained by reference to some
belief or theory'that the participants supposedly hold. Thus, in response to
FraZfei-’s surmfee that'in the anciént rite of succession at Nemi, the priest-king
haâ to be killed in his prime by th^ would-be siicÈêssor because this was believed
to preserve the freshness of the king’s soul, Wittgenstein complains that all we
Can really say aböut such liiatters is that‘where that practice and these views
occur together, the practice does nof spriifg from the view, but they are both just
there’ (GÉ 119). Instead of assuming that rites ñiustbé explicable in terms of
Beliefs or \Spinions. Wittgenstein utgés ifs to look for analogous forms of
behai/iour in‘bur^own lives and to thefebycome to see ifesemblánces. The
ânâlogies that Wittgenstein himsêlf addúces involve what he calls ‘Instinct-
actioñs (GB 137), one of his best-known exámples being that of someone’s
kissing the picture of a loved one (123). Patently not believed to have any
particular effect upon’the person in the picture, this act is simply something we
(or some of us) do, and 'if it happens to bring some satisfaction, that is not
because it wa& done with any intention of feeling satisfied. Wittgenstein’s
mtimatidn is that examples of this sort help us to see that a ritual action such as
burning an êffigy need not be thoiighl of in instrumental terms either; for it too
can jusras well be'Understood Us Sh'sing from an instinctive urge rather thah as
a consequence of delibêMive" reasoning, whether theoretical or practical. A
further example ofWittgensiein’s is the act of venting hiS anger by beating the
ground órU tree with a walking stick (ÖB 137): just as it would be out of place to
'suppose that this is done because of a^eUef that the ground is guilty of some
offence or that beating it will rectify what one is angry about, so. again,
Wittgensteins thought seems to be that there is no reason to invoke such
instrumental intentions in giving an account of more ôrganized forms ofritual
activity.
It is in the light of examples of the sort just outlined - and especially on
account of occasional incautious remarks that Wittgehstein makes in connection
with theUi,sUch as that'all rites are of this kind’(GB 137) -that Wittgenstein has
been charàcterized as an ‘expressivist’ or ‘emotivist’.®® According to this
interpretation. Wittgênstein is very much a reductionist who, despite his
disavowâls, is offering explanations that reduce actions with an ostensibly
instrumental motivation to the mere expressions of emotions, wishes, desires and
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 61
so on.®® Once this attribution to Wittgenstein of an emotive or expressive theory
of ritual has been made, then a way is opened up for attributing to him a more
general conception of religion as 'a thoroughly human product, an expression of
human nature rather than a relationship with transcendent realities’.®^ This latter
attribution is assisted by a particular reading of the distinction, introduced by
Wittgenstein in the Investigations, between ‘surface grammar’ and ‘depth
grammar’. There. Wittgenstein Initially illustrates the distinction by reference to
the verb ‘to mean’ (PI §664). Although our talk of meaning something might at
first be assumed to amount to only one kind of thing - owing to a certain
commonality of sentence structure, and hence of surface grammar, when we
speak of meaning such-and-such - Wittgenstein points out that meaning
sonftthing by a certain form of words can itself take many forms; coming to
understand what ‘meaning means in any given instance will require attention to
the context of what is said. To investigate the depth grammar of a word (or
concept or phrase) is to examine the range of types of context into which it enters,
observing how it interacts with its linguistic and behavioural* surroundings. As
one commentator has put it, it iato turn frbfti ‘what can be taken hi at a glance’ to
‘the overall geography [or ways of using] an expression’.®®^ -
However, if one thinks of attending ‘to the depth grammar of'religious
discourse’ as revealing the ‘true nature’ ôf that discourse®® - and, furthermore, if
one thinks Wittgenstein takes himself to have revealed that what religious
discourse really consists in is the expression of primitive reactions to a world
which, in itself, contains nothing spiritual or transcendent - then one is liable to
share Clack’s scepticism about whether anyone could‘accept all that Wittgenstein
has to say about religion in his later period and yet still be able to continue in his
or her feith’.^® As Clack sees it, it is precisely the surface grammar of religious
faith that has to be affirmed if one is to participate in a religious form of life; if,
irpon analysis, a confession of belief in God, or in an afterlife or miracles, is
disclosed to consist in nothing more than the expression of a feeling, which in
itself is devoid of propositional content, then there is no sense in which the
putative confession can be either true or false. This is why Clack maintains that
genuine belief in God cannot withstand Wittgenstein’s account of religious
belief not because the accoimt commits one to a denial of God’s reality, but
because it commits one to the view that what appears to be an affirmation of
God’s reality is really nothing of the sort it is, beneath the surface, an expression
of non-cognitive feeling, a linguistic refinement of an instinctive reaction to the
natural, nonspiritual world. The very idea of God’s reality as being spiritual and
transcendent therefore evaporates.
 62 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
displayed m Wittgensteins philosophy has the atheistic implications that these
toer sugestiona portmy it as having. In the next section I develop this point in
relation to some ideas Crom Peter Wmch.
Hie natural and the religious
In his essay -Meaning and Religious Language’ Winch ipvites us to imagine a
sniau-scale comipunity whose language has yet to include any terms equllent
thattl^'T l I ” '*’®°“P”'=‘ice-butwho nevertheless engage inactivities
*a. Winch tl^ks we should want to d^scrfte as religious. Wiiut presuming
contexL°"i
coTOwhiÆrehgiousconc.eptscguldbegintoWOneofthecharacteristics
mthm the community dies, the body is cremated or buried wi* a degree
of solemnity. %e ceremony includes perhaps some moment of sL
contempla ion of the mountains, perhaps prostration of their bodies before the
mountams Winch writes. Comparable acts are performed at other sign ficam
moments: 'at a marriage, on the occasion of a birth, when an adZenU
initiated mto adult life’.” “uoiescent is
Elaborating the thought experiment. Winch imagines further ritualistic
bei^viourbeingdirectedtow^dsotherfeaturesofthecommunit/senvironment
features «th particular salience in the people’s lives, such as the sea an7Zu
r:i expectaüons of orare
coleZr7 r ™ feel
mpelled to describe the behaviour of the imagined community as r^gious
Zr 1'"“ «cognizably religious talk or beUef’.-Without trying
^°^^<>^y^-”S^PP^matingne<:essaryorsumcientcondi^^^^^^
g religious, the sorts of characteristícs that Winch thinks we are apt to expect
o rfo r r- -ventional acT7
p rformed with a sense of awe for purposes that are not direcfly instrumental-its’
being assQcated with longstanding traditions; and its having the potential to be
corl^Ji ^ 0“^— -Bers oft
By prompting us to entertain the thought that identifiably religious pmctices
could occur ^ong people who lack an explicitly religious vocabulary. Winch is
argmng that the religious vocabulary might constimte a natural outgroJÏ of &e
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 63
practices, in a way analogous to that in which articulate verbalteations of pain
might plausibly be held to develop, given suitably conducive social conditions,
from inarticulate, yells. Much like Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer, one of
Winch’s principal aims is to challenge the assumption that religious forms of
language - what religious people say in connection with the things they do -
necessarily serve to explain the practices in which the people engage. What
Winch is suggesting is that to describe the people in his imagined community as
showing reverence for their gods by looking to the mountains ‘is not to explain
why they look to the mountains, but to point to a conceptual connection between
what they understand by their gods and their ritualistic practice’.”
It is, perhaps, not hard to envisage a critical commentator seizing upon
Winch’s argument as a telling example of how the view that religious beliefe and
practices are based on instinctive reactions entails a reductive naturalistic, and
hence atheistic, conception of religion. It entails this, it might be argued, because
it involves the claim that religious beliefe derive from responses to purely natural
phenomena - mountains, seas, animals and so on - and this claim leaves no
logical room for a connection with anything beyond th<natural world. As Clack
says of what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s position, religion comes to be viewed
as no more than'an expression of human nature’, devoid of any'relationship with
transcendent realities’. Does Winch’s imaginary scenario not encourage us to see
the origins and indeed the continuation of religion in precisely diese narrow
naturalistic and anthropocentric terms?
Resisting an aflirmative answer to the latter question requires elaborating
what a nonreductive naturalism could be. To characterize Winch’s account in
reductive terms would be to assume that when he writes of such actions as
silently contemplating the mountains and prostrating before them, the notion of
what a mountain is must be exclusively secular with no inherently religious or
spiritual content. But there is no obvious reason why this assumption should be
accepted. The feeling of reverence displayed by members of the commimity
might be internal to their understanding of what mountains are, and it is far
from evident why any non-religious conception 'of mountains should be
regarded as, necessarily, logically prior to a conception that includes this
inherently religious clement
When Wittgenstein speaks of language as a refinement or extension, he is not
claiming that language adds something entirely new that was not already there,
to some extent, in the primitive reaction.” He is suggesting that the lines of
demarcation between the pre-linguistic and the linguistic are not fully
determinate, that language facilitates greater subtlety of articulation, perhaps
 64 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
embellishing and elaborating what was previously present in embryonic form.
Thus if we imagme Winch’s small-scale community coming to use words such as
worship; ‘sacred; ‘diviire’. ‘gods’, etc. in the context of bowing down before the
mountains, we need not assume that these words are merely giving a religious
gloss to a non-religious activity or that they are ultimately empty of genuine
religious significance merely because they grew out of a ‘natural’ mode of
behaviour.
From the sort of perspective exemplified by Wittgenstein and Winch, one can
say that in order to see what worshipping their gods means for the community in
question, we must observe how they behave in relation to the mountains - and
to‘other things, such as the kä and animáis; perhaps'acfoss a broad range of
situations. But this is nofto inipiy thaïthere is ‘nothing more’ to their form of
worship than boWiiTg down before-entities that are ‘in reality* simply large
elevated moundsofearth-NorfleedOnebe implying thatthe religious dimension
of the act. is o'nly a psychological projection, a kind of fictional narrative
superimposed upon the raw material of the mountains by the people who bow
down before them. Rather, one may say, it is in the acts of contemplation and
prostration that the people do in fact worship their gods - it is by these acts that
they actualize and consolidate their ‘relationship with transcendent realities’.
Concluding remarks
Here I shall sum up what I have been arming. A Wittgensteinian approach to the
study of religion, and to the phÜosOphyof religion in particular, has repeatedly
been labelled in unsympathetic-portions of the critical Uterature as fideistic, in
the sense that such an approach purportedly seeks to immunize faith against
the legitimate scrutiny of reason. ParadoxicaUy. it is also, the case- that
Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the primitive or instinctive sources of our linguistic
activities has-been held to be incompatible with faith and, if treated with due
seriousness, to leäd inevitably to atheism. This chapter has explored the two sides
of this paradox and has argued that each of its constitutive claims is suspect. Ihe
charge of fideism is ambiguous, since the notion of fideism it relies upon
comprises two distinct principles. Having designated these the non-interference
and incomprehenSibüity principles respectively. I have argued that the former -
notwithstanding attempts by Wittgensteinians such as D. Z. Phillips to oppugn it
- is m fact benign and consonant with Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy,
a conception that envisages phüosophy as a grammatical inquiry, one which
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 65
elucidates concepts and assuages confusions about those concepts without either
defending or attacking the forms of life in which the concepts have their natural
home. The incomprehensibility principle, meanwhile, is not one that Wittgenstein
himself or practitioners of his methods would endorse, maintaining as it does
that,religious forms of life can be understood only by those who actively
participate in them.
My challenge to the claim that Wittgenstein’s appeal to the primitive and
instinctual in our lives undermines the conditions for feith has comprised an
exploration and elaboration of some important ideas from Peter Winch. The
contention that‘the consequence of [Wittgenstein’s] later thought on religion is
an unavoidable acceptance of atheism (Clack) and an erosion of belief in
transcendence’ (Malcolm Diamond) relies on a reductive construal of
Wittgenstein’s approach to religious forms of language. It presupposes that when
Wittgenstein speaks of religious beliefs and practices as being based on or
developing from natural instincts, he is thereby insinuating tl^t the phenomena
Vhich are being reacted to - and indeed the reactions themselves - must be
natural in a sense that is thoroughly reductive and scientistic. The presupposition
is unwarranted, however, gs there is no goodjreason^to assume that a purely
secular model of the world is logicallyprior to one that; is imbued with religious
and spiritual significance from the outset. What Winch’s imagine^ scenario helps
,us to see is how religious concepts could be formed in the process of a people’s
deepening eng^ement with the world around them, as opposed to being merely
superadded to a pre-existing irreligious base.
In the light of the considerations I have brought forward, we should view the
contributions, both extant and potential, of Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians
to the study of religion as extending for beyond fideism and atheism. It is no
accident that many anthropologists have taken up and appropriated ideas from
Wittgenstein, and also from Winch, in their studies of complex cultural
phenomena, including religion,^® for there is much in those ideas that encourages
a heightened attentiveness to conceptual nuances and to the intimate relation
between a people’s understanding of their world - and of their gods or God -
and the modes of behaviour in which they engage. Before completing this
chapter, however, I should sound a less sanguine note for those who seek an
accommodation between Wittgensteinian methods and a confident feith.
Although I have not had space to discuss it in detail here, a further aspect of
Wittgenstein’s thought that may harbour unsettling implications for faith is the
radical contingency in our epistemic lives that it brings to light.” This contingency
consists in the fact that regardless of what particular beliefs we hold, those beliefe
 66 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
could have been different, and indeed would have been different if our forms of
life had developed‘differently. As Wittgenstein emphasizes. ‘Ihe difficulty is to
realize the groundlessness of our believing’ (OC §166).^®
Several commentators, including Winch, have proposed that the relativistic
implications of Wittgensteinian contingency can be staved off by means of an
appeal to our common biological inheritance; the system of beliefs with which
afty given individual operates might well be dependent upon the form of life she
inhabits, but that need not threaten us with' epistemic ’relativism because
everyone, after all, inhabits an overarching form of life,■‘namely that of bfeing
human. Winch, for* example, speaks of there being certain 'limiting notions* that
Constrain ati/ conception of a human life, notions that include the fact that we
undergo such things as birth änd death and engage in seXual relations.” Others
havehighlighted Wittgenstein’s teféreñtes to shared modes of Ifliman behaviour
as indicative qf a basis for-overcoming the drift towards relativism.“ But even if
we were to COnciir that there are some basic biological and behavioural features
that facilitate a degree of transcultural understanding, it remains the case that,
from a Wittgensteinian perspective, any person’s or community’s epistemic
framework is radicaUy contingent upon the way in which human life happens to
have evolved - ‘the natural history of human beings’ (PI §415). It is the thought
that one’s most cherished beliefs and values partake of that contingent status that
is liable to disconcert many religious believers; and not only religious believers,
for-atheism'and secular naturalism are, as it were, in the same.boat.®‘*In short,
whüe Wittgensteinian approaches to the^Study of rdigion certainly take us for
beyond any simplistic'côhceptionS of fideism ànd athefsm.tbey also open up a
hugê can of worms concerning‘the extent to which wè can ever escape the
epistemic constraints 'of our bio-socio-cultiiral pYedicameñt. As Stanley Cavell
recognized, ‘It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and
because it is) terrifying’.“ It is also. I should add. aWision capable of inspiring a
sense 'of wonder, that we aré the sorts of-beings we are.®^
Notes
1 For a comprehensive bibliography of Phillips’ works up to 2002, see John H.
Whittaker, ed.. The Possibilities of Sense: Essays in Honour ofD. Z. Phillips
(Basingstoke: Paigrave, 2002), 290-303. For a list of hjs more recent wo;ks, see Andy
F. Sanders, ed, D. Z. Phillips' Contemplative Philosophy of Religion: Questions and
Responses (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 220.
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 67
2 See, e.g., P. F. Bloemendaal, Grammars of Faith: A Critical Evaluation of D. Z. Phillipss
Philosophy of Religion (Leuven; Peelers, 2006) and Ingolf U. Dalferth and Hartmut
von Sass, eds. The Contemplative Spirit: D. Z. Phillips on Religion and the Limits of
Philosophy (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 2010). as weU as some of my own work, such as
Contemplating Religious Forms of Ufe: Wittgenstein and D. Z. PhÜlips (New York:
Continuum, 2012).
3 These include: Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press. 1990),
Ch. 1; Clifford Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological Ejections on Philosophical
Topics (Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press. 2000). xi-xiii; Rodney Needham,
Belief, Language and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972); and Veena Das,
‘Wittgenstein and Anthropolog/, A«««í3Í Review of Anthropology 27 (1998), 171-95.
Seé also Jason A. Springs.'What Cultural Theorists of Religion Have to Learn from
Wittgenstein; Or, How to Read Geertz as a Practice Theorist;/ournoi of the American
Academy of Religion 76, no. 4 (2008), 934-69.
4 Illustrative examples include; Gabriella EiChinger Ferro-Luzzi, The Polythetic-
Prototype Approach to Hinduism’, in Hirtduism Reconsidered, ed. Günther-Dietz
Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke. 2nd edn (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), 294-304;
John Hick, Art Interpretation ofReligioñ: tíuman Responses to the Transcendent, 2nd
edn (Basingstoke: Paigrave Macmillan. 2004), 3-5; Ralph W. Hood. Jr.'Spirituality
and ReUgion’, in The WorliTs Religionsî Continuities and Tran^ormatiorfs, ed.-Peter
Clarke and Peter Beyer (Abingdon; Routledge, 2009), 665-78, at 665-6. For critical
discussion of such vocabulary, áee Benson Saler,‘Faftiily Resemblancé ànd the
Definition of Religion’, Historical Refiections/R^exions Historiques 25, no. 3 (1999).
391-404.
5 John Hyman,‘Wittgenstein’, in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Charles
Taliaferro, Paul Draper and PhiUp L Quinn. 2nd edn (Malden, M A: Wiley-BlackweU,
2010),476-88,atl85.
6 Kai Nielsen,‘Wittgensteinian Fidásni, Philosophy 42 (1967), 191-209.
7 Malcolm L. Diamond,‘Hudson’s Wittgenstein and Religious Belief. Religious Studies
15.no. 1 (1979), 107-18, at 118.
8 Brian R. Clack. Ah Introduction to Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 127.
9 Terms similar to ‘non-interference principle’ have been used by other commentators
on Wittgenstein; see, e.g., Jonathan Lear.‘Leaving the World Alone’,/ournal of
Philosophy 79. no. 7 (1982), 382-403. at 383; Bob Plant, Wittgenstein and Levinas:
Ethical and Religious Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 69,209 n. 170. The term
‘incomprehensibility principle’ is, as far as I am aware, original to me in this context.
10 Nielsen,‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’, 193-4.
11 See Thomas D. Carroll, Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion (Basingstoke:
Paigrave Macmillan,-2014), 112.
 Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 69
68 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

Wittgensteinian Fideism 1967-89: An Appreciation’, in Nielsen and Phillips.

12 OUi-Pekka Vainio, Beyond Fideisnt: i^egotiahle Religious Identities (Farnham: Ashgate,
Wittgensteinian Fideism?, 1-18, at 15:'[T]he attitude and substance of Wittgenstein’s
2010), 9. See Eugène Ménégoz, Flexions sur Vévangile du salut (Pans: Sandoz et
philosophical works show a fideist orientation. So it sheds light on our
Fischbacher, 1879).
understanding of his work, and works done in his legacy, to say that they belong to
13 Carroll, Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion, 112. See esp. Léon OUé-
Lapnine, De La Certitude Morale (Paris: Belin, 1880), Ch. 4, in which the author this family of [fideistici thinkers.’
29 See, e.g., D. Z. Phillips,‘Religious Belief and Philosophical Enquiry; A Reply to
argues that the idea, deriving from Kant, that we can know only appearances and not
Dr Hick and Dr Palmer’. Theology 71 (1968), 114-22, at 120; Belief, Change and
things in themselves - and hence can reach beyond appearances only by means of
Forms of Life, 13;'Wittgenstein and Religion: Some Fashionable Criticisms, 48.
faith - is a ‘doctrine of fìdeism’, whose legacy is scepticism.
30 D.Z. Phillips,‘Religious Beliefs and Language-Games’, Rafio 12, no. I (1970), 26-46,
14 Nielsen,‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’, 193.
at 39-40. See also Phillips, Belief, Change and Forms of Life, 13-14; ‘Wittgenstein and
15 Ibid., 201.
16 Ibid., 192-3. Religion: Some Fashionable Criticisms’, 48-9.
17 Norman Malcolm,‘Anselm’s Ontological Arguments’, Philosophical Review 69, no. 1 31 Phillips, ‘Religious Beliefs and Language-Games’, 40.
32 See, among many other places; D. Z. Phillips, Religion and Friendly Fire: Examining
(1960), 41-62, at 60.
Assumptions in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Aldershot Ashgate, 2004), 55;
18 Ibid., 62.
‘Philosophy, Piety and Petitionary Prayer - A Reply to Walter van Herck! m
19 Cf. Colin Lyas, Pefer Wïnc/i (Teddington: Acumen, 1999), 131:‘If Idid not have the
D. Z. PhiUips’Contemplative Philosophy of Religion: Questions and Responses, 139-52,
possibility of religion in me, I could not begin to understand its sense in the lives of
at 139-40; Reli^on and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation (Cambridge: Cambodge
those who are religious.’
20 Frederick C. Copleston, Religion and Philosophy (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1974), University Press, 2001), 33,201.
33 Though not making specific reference to Phillips, a recent instance of an ostensibly
viil Copleston is here, in part, echoing a complaint first made by John Hick, who
anti-quieüst interpretation of Wittgenstein, occurs in Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read
characterizes Wittgenstein-influenced approaches as adopting an ‘autonomist
and Wes Sharrock, There is Ho Such Thing as a Social Sdence: In Offence of Peter
position’, an ‘unacceptable feature of [which] is that by treating religious language as
Winch (Aldershot Ashgate. 2008), esp. 124-31. Upon inspection, however, it appears
autonomous - as a language-game with its own rules, or a speech activity having
that Hutchinson, Read and Sharrock are arguing not that Wittgensteinian philosophy
meaning only within its own borders - it deprives religious statements of
is directly critical of what people think or say, but rather that such philosophy
“ontologica^ or “metaphysical” significance’. John Hick,'Sceptics and Believers’, in
provides a kind of‘self-therap/ that enables people to cease saying what they come to
Faith and the Philosophers, ed. John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1964), 235-50, at 239.
recognize as lacking the sense that they had previously supposed it to have.
21 Anthony Kenny,‘In Defence of God’, Times Literary Supplement, 7 February 1975,145.
34 Biblical instances are plentiful; see, e.g., Job 3:13,17; Daniel 12:2; Matthew 27:52;
22 In Bryan Magee, Modern BrifisfiPWIosop/iy (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1971), 173.
John 11:11-14; Acts 7:60,13:36; 1 Corinthians 15:20; I Thessalonians 4:13-15.
23 D. Z. Phillips, ‘Moral and Religious Conceptions of Duty: An Analysis’, Mind, n.s. 73
35 Quoted in M. Michelet. The Ufe of Luther (London: Bogue, 1846), 133.
(1964).406-12,at411.
36 See, e.g., Ephesians 5:14 (King James Version):‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise
24 D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), 40.
from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light’ See also George MacDonald’s sermon
25 See, e.g., Phillips,‘Faith, Scepticism, and Religious Understanding! in Religion and
‘Awakening! 13 April 1873, in George MacDonald in the Pulpit: The “Spoken Sermons
Understanding, ed. D. Z. Phillips (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 63-79, at 71; Belief,
Change and Forms of Life (Basingstoke: Macmillan„1986), 10;‘Wittgenstein and of George MacDonald (Whitehom, CA: Johannesen, 1996), 9-24.
37 The same remark occurs in two earUer typescripts (TS 211:394; TS 212:1205) and
Religion: Some Fashionable Criticisms’, in Kai Nielsen and D. Z. Phillips,
is based on a manuscript entry dated 8 November 1930 (MS 109:210); for these
Wit^nsteinian Fideismi (London: SCM Press, 2005), 39-52, at 46-7.
sources, see Udwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic
26 D. Z. Phillips,*On Wittgenstein: VIH’, Philosophical Investigations 24, no. 2 (2001),
Edition, ed. Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (Oxford: Oxford
147-53, at 150.
27 Carroll, Wittgenstein within the Philosopl^ of Religion, 168. University Press, 2000).
38 D. Z. Phiflips.‘Wittgenstein’s Full Stop’, in Perspectives on the Philosophy of
28 Duncan Richter, Wittgenstein at His Word (London: Continuum, 2004), 173, quoting
Wittgenstein, ed. Irving Block (Oxford: BlackweU. 1981). 179-200, at 189-90. See also
Nielsen.'Wittgensteinian Fideism’, 193. Cf. Béla Szabados,‘Introduction:
 70 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 71

PhilÜps, Belief. Change and Forms of Life, 29-32; Faith after Foundationalism
compared with the highly qualified character of many of Wittgenstein’s other
(London: Routiedge. 1988), 307-8; and Rush Rhees,‘Wittgenstein on Language and
remarks. The variety of tones internal even to the Investigations might place in doubt
Ritual; m Essays on Wittgenstein in Honour of G. H. von Wright, ed. Jaakko Himikka any attempt to sharply demarcate it, conceived of as a single work, from other
(Amsterdam: North-Holland. 1976), 450-84. at 460-2; Rush Rhees on Religion and
instances of Wittgenstein’s writings. However, for the purposes of this chapter I shall
Philosophy, ed. D. Z. Phillips (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 1997), 75-7
not be challenging Richter’s broad distinction between the personal and the
39 BrianR.Clack.-ScapegoatRitualsinWittgensteinianPerspective;in Thinking
philosophical.
through Rituals, ed. Kevin Schilbrack (New York: Routledge. 2004), 97-112 at 104
49 Wittgenstein, quoted in G. E. M.Anscombe,‘Misinformation: What Wittgenstein
40 BerelDovLerner.Wmgenstein-sScapegoat;Pft,7o5op/irW/nvas%a^^^^ 17.’no.4 '
Really Said’, The Tablet, 17 April 1954,373; see also Richter, Wittgenstein at His Word,
(1994), 604-12. at 609; Clack,‘Scapegoat Rituals in Wit^ensteinian Perspective’
176-7.
102-3. 50 A useful entry point into the variety of ways of inheriting Wittgenstein’s legacy is the
41 Clack, Scapegoat Rituals in Wittgensteinian Perspective; 107. See, e.g., Ludwig collection of essays in Guy Kahane, Edward Kanterian and Oskari Kuusela, eds,
Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann, The Voices ofWittgenstem: Thé Vienna Circle Wittenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker (Malden, MA:
(Abingdon; Routledge, 2003), 491': 'A substantive misleads us into looking for a
Blackwell, 2007).
snbstance; She dso BB'5: PG 108: WaUmann, The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy
51 Phillips, Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation, 144; Philosophy’s Cool Place
(London: Macmillan, 1965), 81. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 130,1.63.1 discuss Phillips’
42 Clack, Scapegoat Rituals in Mttgensteinian Perspective’, 110.
contemplative approach at further length in ‘Approaches to Philosophy of Religion:
43 Christopher Hoyt, Wittgenstein on the Language of Rituals: The Scapegoat Remark
Contemplating the World or Trying to Find Our Way Hopie?’, Religious Studies 51,
Reconsidered’,Reh;gïo«5Sfud/es48,no.2 (2012), 165-82,at 166
no. 2 (2015), 221-39.
44 Ibid., 172.
52 See, e.g., Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Caipbridge, MA: Harvard University
45 Ibid., 174. Press, 1992), 175: ‘Wittgenstein has a naturalistic<but not a reductionist) yiew of
46 Richter’s position could be seen as ambivalent. In some places he endorses the view man’. For the ascription to Wittgenstein of‘a very w^ form of naturalism’, see John
that a ‘properly* or ‘truly’ Wittgensteinian approach refrains fróm criticizing religion,
Fennell and Bob Plant,‘Ludwig Wittgenstein; in The Newßentury: Bergsonism,
whereas m othepplaces he implies the weaker claim that it is simply not ihevitable Phenoirienology, and Responses to Modern Science, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Alan
that aWittgensteinianlñvesti^tion of religious beliefs will expose them as
D. Schrift (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 287-318, at 294. For‘minimal naturalism; see
incoherent (see Richter. Wittgenstein at His Word. 174);The apparent ambivalence esp. Plant, Wittgenstein and Levinas, 10,95. For the notion of‘liberal naturalism’, see
largely dissolvês, however.when We lïoticé the emphasis he gives to philosoph/s
Marie McGinn,‘Liberal Naturalism: Wittgenstein and McDowell’, in Philosophical
bemg‘a personal process’, the purpose of which is to clkrify the sense of human
Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory?, ed. Matthew C. Haug (Abingdon:
discourse (ibid., 162--3).The process of reflecting upon the sense of One’s own words
Routledge, 2014), 62-85. See also Hoyt,‘Wittgenstein on the Language of Rituals’,
could, though need not. lead setae individuals’to relinquish their use of particular
174, on Wittgenstein’s ‘naturalistic, even animalistic, account of language’.
religious vocabulary. In these instances philosophy haï frcilitated the relinquishment
53 David Pears, Wittgenstein (London: Fontana, 1971), 172.
but has not been directly critical. Compare note 33 above on Hutchinson. Read and
54 Ibid., 173.
Sharrock, 55 Cf. McGinn,‘Liberal Naturalism’, 65, who, comparing the respective approaches of
47 Richter, Wittgenstein at His Word. 153.
Wittgenstein and John McDowell, observes there to be ‘a clear parallel between the
48 These rem'arks'o'f Wittgenstein's were first fornlûlated in the early 1930s; see Peter
view that McDowell dewlops and the sort of naturalism that is central to the
Hacker,-Tuming the Exafiiination Around: The Recantation of a Metaphysician; in
Philosophical Investigations. In particular, there is a shared commitment to avoid
Wrngeftstem at Work: Methods in the ■philosopnical Investigations', ed. Erich both a reductive approach to meaning and what McDowell calls “supematuralism”,
Ammereller and Eugen Fischer (Abingdon: Routledge. 2004), 3-21, at 3, As some
that is, the idea that meaning and thinking are “strange” processes that are
commentators have noted (e.g. Stephen MulhaRThilosoph/s-Hidden Essence: PI
fundamentally alien to ordinary nature.’
89-133; in Wittgenstein at Work Methdds in the 'Philosophical Investigations', 63-85' 56 See. e.g., John Churchill, ‘The Squirrel does not Infer by Induction: Wittgenstein and
at 66), the tone of these femarks is strikingly authoritative, even authoritarian. the Natural History of Religion’, in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief
 72 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
ed. Timothy Tessin and Mario von der Ruhr (-Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 48-78,
at 70: ‘I think Wittgenstein shows us how to look for the roots of ritual and religious
behaviour in humanity’s repertoire of apparently shared behaviours and capacities
for response to ïhe environment and to eath other.’ See also Bob Plant, ‘Religion,
Relativìsm,'àhdV\rittgenstèin’s Na.taI^lìsrrí, International Journal of Philosophical
Studies 19, no. 2 (2011), 177-209, esp. 183,189. For the characterization of Frazer’s
approach as ‘intellectualist’, see E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ‘The Intellectualist (English)
Interpretation of Magic’, Bulletin of the Faculty ofArts 1, no. 2 (1933), 282-311; John
ChurchilI,‘SomethingDeep and Sinister',Modern 7heolo^S,no. 1 (1992), 15-37,at
21-2; Berel Dov Lerner, Rules, Magic, and Instrumenten Reason: A Critical
Interpretation of Peter Winch's Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Abingdon:
Äoutledge,'2002), 76.
57 See Wittgenstein, quoted in M. O’C. Drury,‘Some Notes on Conversations with
Wittgen'steii^ in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees (Oxford University
Press, 1984), 76-96; at 79: ‘I am not a religious man but} cannot help seeing every
problem from a religious point of view! For book-length ruminations on this
remark, see Norman Malcolm. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? (London:
Routledge. 1993) and Tim Labran, Wittgenstein’s Religious Point of View (London:
Continuum, 2006).
58 For critical discussion of Wittgenstein’s reception of Spengler’s thesis, see Patricia
- Sayre. Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Religious Belief’, Pre-Proceedings of the
26th International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig
Wittgenstein Society, 2003), 308-10, and WilUam James'DeAngelis, Ludwig
Wittgenstein - Á Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in thé'Darkness of This Time
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). In a manuscript note from 1931 (CV^ 16e), Wittgenstein
includes Spengler in a list of authors by whom he considers himself to have been
iûflûence'd!
59 See J. W. von Goethe, Faust (Londôn: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1880), Part 1, Scene 3.
60 Cf. Z §545: ‘Our language-game is ari extension of primitive behaviour (For our
language-game is behaviour.) (Instinct).’
61 For cautionary reiharks of this kind, see Lars Hertzberg,‘Primitive Reactions - Logic
OÌ- Anthropology?; Midwest Studies in Philosophy 17, no. 1 (1992), 24-39, at 26; Rush
^ees. language as Emerging from Instihctivè Behaviour’. Philosophical
Investigations 20,no. 1 (1997). 1-14, at 3.7; Elizabeth Wolgast,‘Primitive Reactions’,
Philosophical Investigations 17, no. 4 (1994), 587-603.
62 For discussion of Üie importance of these quâlifications, see Katherine Morris,
*Wttgensteins Method: Ridding Peoplé of Phiíosophlt^rPrejudices’, in Wittgenstein
and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, 66-87, at 80-1.
63 Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: The Relation of Language to Instinctive Behaviour;
Philosophical Investigations 5. no. 1 (1982), 3-22, at 17. Malcolm’s reading of
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 73
Wittgenstein on this matter has been much contested. For discussion and further
references, see D. Z. Phillips.‘“In the Beginning Was the Proposition,”‘Tn the
Beginning Was the Choice,”“In the Beginning Was the Dance’”, Midwest Studies in
Philosophy 21, no. 1 (1997), 159-74, at 162-4. Nevertheless, even Rhees, who raises
some doubts about the scope of Malcolm’s interpretive claims, concurs ‘that
Wittgenstein thought of instinctive reactions as fundamental for language’ (Rhees,
‘Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour’, 13).
64 For a nuanced evaluation of the points of similarity as well as difference between
Wittgenstein and Frazer, see Brian R. Clack, Wittgenstein. Frazer and Religion
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), esp. Ch. 8.
65 See, e.g., Paul O’Grady, ‘Wittgenstein and Relativism’, International Journal of
Philosophical Studies 12, no. 3 (2004), 315-37, at 329; John WCook.‘Magic,
Witchcraft, and Science’, Philosophical Investigations 6, no. 1 (1983), 2-36. For critical
discussion, see Brian R. Clack,‘Wittgenstein and Expressive Theories of Religion;
International Journal for Philosophy o/Religion 40, no. 1 (1996), 47-61; Wittgenstein,
Frazer and Religion, 21 -50; and Plant, ‘Religion, Relativism, and Wittgenstein’s
Naturalism’, 197-200. As aii indication'that the attribution of ôtpressivism to
Wittgenstein has infected even school textbooks, See Michael Lacewing and
Jean-Marc Pascal, Revise Philosophy AS Level (Abingdon: Routlddge, 2Ô07), 138.
66 See Cook,‘Magic, Witchcraft, and Science’, 3-4.
67 Clack, An Introduction to Wittgenstèin’s'Philosbphy of ReUgiOtiJUS.
68 Hans-Johann Clock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Malden, MA:3lackwell, 1996), 155.
And we should not assume that, ih a living language, ‘the overall geograph/ is ever
fixed: ‘The description of grammar remains open-ended:! Daniel Steuer,‘Sketches of
Landscapes: Wittgenstein after Wittgenstein', in Wittgenstein at the Movies: Cinematic
Investigations, ed. Béla Szabados and Christina Stojanova (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2011), 49-77, at 74 n. 19.
69 Clack, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion, 125.
70 Ibid. See also idem, ‘Postscript; in Faith and Philosophical Analysis: The Impact of
Analytical Philosophy on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Harriet A. Harris and
Christopher J. Insole (Aldershot Ashgate, 2005), 71-5, at 75: ‘While it is feasible that
the non-religious might embrace Wittgenstein’s view as a plausible account of the
nature of religion, it is doubtful that religious believers could accept it.’
Cf. M. Diamond, ‘Hudson’s Wittgenstein and Religious Belief, and also the following
remark from John Searle in conversation with Bryan Magee: ‘You have to be a very
recherché sort of religious intellectual to keep praying if you don’t think there is any
real God outside the language who is listening to your prayers.’ In Bryan Magee,
The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Oxford University
Press, 1987), 345; cited with approval in Clack, An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s
Philosophy of Religion, 125, and in‘Postscript’, 75.
 74 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion 75

71 Peter Wmch,‘Meaning and Religious Language; in his Trying to Make Sense (Oxford;
Epistemic Incommensurability, and Wittgensteinian Epistemolog/ in A Companion
Blackwell, 1987), 107-31, at 110-11.
to Relativism, ed. Steven D. Hales (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 266-85, at
72 Ibid., 112.
283; cf. idem, Epistemic Angst, 110.
73 Ibid., 111-12.
81 Cf. Thomas Nagel,‘The Absurd’, Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 20 (1971), 716-27, at
74 Ibid, 112-13.
718, on ‘the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the
75 Cf. John, V. Canfield, 'Wittgenstein’s Later Philosoph/, in Philosophy of Meaning
perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as
Knowledge and Value in the Twentieth Century, ed. John V. Canfield (London:
arbitrar/
Routledge, 1997), 247-84, at 262: 'The passage to speech does not cross some great
82 Stanley Cavell,‘The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosoph/ Philosophical
ontological divide’.
Review 71, no. 1 (1962), 67-93, at 74.
76 See, e.g., Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive
83 Substantial portions of this chapter were presented at the In Wittgenstein^ Footsteps
Anthropology (New York: Basic Books. 1983), Ch. 4; Rodney Needham,‘Polythetic
conference. University of Iceland, 15 September 2012, and as the Thirteenth British
Classification; Convergence anjJ Consequences’, Aion, n.s.,^0, no.,3 (1975), 349-69;
Wittgenstein Society Lecture, Bloomsbury Institute, London, 12 May 2015.1 am
Stanley Jey^aja Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope ofRationality
grateful to the organizers of and participants in those events for the opportunity to
(Cambridge; Cambridge University Press^ 1990), esp.‘Ch. 3; Gopala Sarana. ‘Do
present and discuss the material. For encouraging comments on written drafts, I
Anthropologists pxplain?’, in Discourse and Inferençe in Cognitive Anthropology: An
thank Brian Clack, Chris Hoyt, Bob Plant and Duncan Richter.
Approach to Psychic Unity and Enculturation, ed Marvin D. Loflin and James
Silverberg (Ihe Hague; Mouton. 1978), 239-56; Robert C. Ulin, Understanding
Cultures: Perspectives in Anthropology and Social Theory, 2nd edn (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2001), Ch. 3.
77 For uses of the term ‘radical contingenc/ in connection with Wittgenstein’s thought,
see. e.g., Newton Garver,‘Philosophy as Gramma/ in The Cambridge Companion to
Wittgenstein, ed Hans Sluga and David G. Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), B9-70, at 159; Nuno Ornelas Martins, The Cambridge Revival of
Political Economy (Abingdon; Routledge, 2014), 194, and Martin Kusch,
Wittgensteirtand the Epistemology of Peer Disagreement; www.academia.
edu/1517295AVittgenstein_and_the_£pistemologyiof_Peer_Dis^greement. See also
Michael P. Hodges, ‘Faith; Ihemes from Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche’, in
Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Religion,,ed. I^obert L. Arrington and Mark Addis
(London: Routledge. 2001), 66-84. at 79, on the ‘radical possibility of the
contingency, and therefore the non-existence, of religious discourse’.
78 Cf. Norman Malcolm, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’, in his Thought and Knowledge
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 1977), 199-216; Duncan Pritchard, Episfemic
Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton, N J:
Princeton University Press, 2016).
79 Peter Winch, ‘Understanding a Primitive Societ/ American Philosophical Quarterly
1, no. 4 0964), 307-24, at 322; cf. GB 127.
80 An especially relevant passage is PI^ §206: ‘Sharedjiuman behaviour is the system of
reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.’ For discussion, see
Plant.‘Religion, Rejativism. and Wittgenstein’s Naturalism; 184. Sec also the idea of'a
shared background of commitments’in Duncan Pritchard,‘Epistemic Relativism.
 4

Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon

Rowan Williams

Wittgenstein, ethics and aesthetics

Some modem discussions of Wittgenstein and ethics note the paradox that,
while he has very little to say explicitly about what are tradition^y thought of as
ethical questions, there is a strong and pervasive assumption being^ade, about
the ethical character of his eniirç philosophical enterprise.' The brief but
significan^ ‘Lecture on Ethics’ whi<âî he delivered in 1929 hfilps tp clarify spme
aspects of this tension.* Ethical utterances are not, he insists,,statemcnts of feet;
,‘No state of affairs has, in itself, whatrljvould like to the coercive powpr.of an
absolute judge’ (LE 7). That is to say, an etbiçaljudgement (‘such and suçh an
’action is xmequivocally good’) cannot be the outcome of either a series of
empirical/deductive steps or a chain of logical reasoning. Ethical utterance,
Wittgenstein aigues, belongs in the same territory as the experience of wonder
at the existence of the world or of the sense of absolute security beyond all
contingent possibility of hurt or feilure. Both these experiences are different in
kind from others which are described in a seductively similar vocabulary: I
wonder at this phenomenon or set of phenomena (it could be otherwise, I’ve
never seen anything like this before); I feel safe here (in a way I don’t feel safe
diere). If I wonder at the world, it isn’t because Tve never seen anything like it; it
isn’t a thing in a series of things, a new bit of information. If I feel absolutely
sepure, it isn’t because this situation makes me feel more comfortable than that;
this isn’t one state of affeirs in a succession of possible states of affairs in which I
feel varying degrees of safety. And so as soon as we try to find appropriate words
for such sensations, or, better, such dispositions towards our environment, we are
likely to talk nonsense. Ethical judgement is the same kind of nonsense; an
action is not good because something in the world makes it so, and to speak of
its goodness is not to add anything to the sum total of facts. Thus it is not a
 78 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
judgement which has the necessar/ force of a conclusion in an argument, a
«rrr nT ^ ““■'diaonauy required in order to
fiiIfil the definitional requirements of the terms being used. Judgements of
relative value have the form, 'If this is the goal you propose, this must be the way
I“ “ ^ y«“ -»ust
In contrast, nothing makes ethical judgements true, and they don't have the
conditional structure possessed by the kind of utterance just quoted (if this is
what you want, this is how to get it). In that regard, we could say that they have
another sort of'necessity- which is significanüy different from logical necessity,
in *at they cannot be understood as products of any sequence of events. In 1929
stiU more or less commitfed to IhVtho-ughf world of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein
provocahvely concludes that all systematized ethical and reUgious discourse
must be ndHsense- not in the reductive Sense such a word would have in the
rtouthof a stóightforward-logical positivist, but in a far more complex manner
•If repfesems the human desire to go beyond language itself; that is itself a fact
Md as such-cannot have 'absolute Value'. But aU-this means Is that there is no way
Of so describing the ftcthf this obstinate anomaly in human speech as either to
mate 1, an argument for a partiente judgement of value or to give grounds for
prohibiting It as'somethihg that shouldn't be said. Wittgenstein remarks that he
IS tempted-to say that 'the existence of language itself' is the only adequate
expresión of the sense of the miraculous (or, pretemably, the sense of
impregnable spiritual security Or-oftincoilditional moral shmmons); ifthis is the
<^e then-once agiih wécannBt argué br describe systematically, since 'language
dS lÙr* “ f- ““P' ‘nonsensicaUy-. But the
. , '^'^^^.®hows Us-Wittgensfeifi already on thé'edgè ofa different kind of
arialysisr h^ing said very plainly in the lecture that direct speech about ethics or
rehgion is bound to deal m 'similes', and that a simUe can be recognized as-such
when we are abid to say what it's a simile/or, he presents an intriguingly different
late 1930s (LC W40), as weU as in his notes from thé 1930s and várious reported
cônverMüons. The aesthetics lectures begin by addressing the question of the
disconfenr we e^erience in viewing certain phenomena, including artefacts: we
feel uncornfomble with- what we s6e (hear, etc.)'and identify a 'danse' for that
iscomfort - but only m a very unusual sense of'caUsel We are looking not for a
act or set of fects that will explain why I feel uncomfortable, but for what
Wittgensfom s«ms to have calléd a'direction' of feeling in our response: Hhafs
where it doesnt work! He compares it with the processes around composiüon.
Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 79
looking for the ‘right’ word or phrase, and even with the question of what makes
a joke work. And in speaking about a work of art, we look for comparisons until
we find one that ‘clicks’ or fits, even though we know that this is a very blunt-
edged metaphor: what we are really saying is that we are satisfied, we recognize
something. In a lecture from 1940 ‘belonging to a course of lectures on
description’, he returns to the same point: ‘[Y]ou say of a certain phrase of music
that it draws a conclusion,“'Ihough I couldn’t say for my life why it is a‘therefore’!’”
(LG 37).^ It is hard to imagine that Wittgenstein did not have in mind the famous
'Muss es sein? Es muss sein!* in Beethovens notes on his String Quartet no. 16: the
way the music unfolds displays an inevitability, a move towards resolution that
feels natural or organic, connected without force, argument or strain with all that
l^s preceded. Later, in a note from 1947, Wittgenstein strongly repudiates the
idea that this means no more than that we find the transition ‘pleasant*:
we want to exclaim ‘Of course!’, he says (CV'"57e). That is, what we seek to say is
not that there is a psychological explanation oí why the transition seems good to
us; that we feel ‘satisfied’, to use the word he favôuri'earlier, is not at-all an
observation of the fact that we are emotiOitally pleased.
This illustrates something of what Wittgenstein is feeling'towards in the *1929
lecture: there are judgements that we éan intelligibly call ‘nêceSsary*, while being
clear that they are not necessitated', they do not comeat the end'of a chain of
evidence or argument such that we cafi say that this or that stage of argument or
this or that state of affairs makes it inevitable that this tonclusion has to be
accepted. The later notes suggest that we convey how such judgements work not
by locating them within a scheme of causal relations but by directing someone’s
áttention towards a very variegated practice: a person wül come to understand
fhusic (and so to understand why some musical transitions seem ‘necessary’) by
attending to the conventions of sequencing and harmony in a particular musical
tradition, by- observing the gestures and fecial expressions of performers, by
reflecting on the images a musician may use to describe musical activity. Why
music works like this is something we can only clarify by accumulating instances
of what we recognize as music; why this *has’ to follow from that we can darify
only as we attend to someone who navigates musical practice and shows signs
we should, in other circumstances, see as diaracteristic of a response to constraint
or obligation. There are obvious parallels with the treatment of rule-following in
the Philosophical Investigations: we could point, for example, to PI §490 on how
I know that such and such a line of thinking brought me to this particular action.
‘Well, it is a particular picture: for example, of a calculation leading to a further
experiment in an experimental investigation. It looks like this-----and now I
 80 Wmgenstein, Religion and Ethics
cm d^cnbe an example/And all this is a move on from the lecture on ethics
the extent that Wittgenstein is no longer confident that the use of a simile is
™ nous If „e cannot specify what we should want to say in 'plain’languTge if
*e only real repfesentation of the miraculousness of the world is language itself
m«ar ‘'“S“age itself is already diverse and
etaphoric^y charged h, a number of ways that can't be reduced to or translated
nto a speech that is free from simUe and image and indeed physical gesture -
beding in mmd that the issue of the logical form of commLLive 2L
gesture was (anecdot^y at least) one of the worries that moved WittgensteL on
from the philosophy of the Tmcinhis.. It remains true for him that an eftic:;
judgement cannot add any new fact to the world, and that the recognition of the
V iities. And the 1940s discussigns in Wittgenstein’s Vermischte
Bemet/,„„ge„notebooks(translatedasCn/f„ren„dVnM
*a . the learner recognizes what to do next, how (in the language of J
disi^layed or described: then that would be the right thing to do nexf And i!
related, sense, the awareness of an imperative of a certain kind can itself be a
command, such as Dont be resentfiih". may be like the affirmation of a truth’ -
o “(cZiTr^^^
truth (CV 61) Ue.boundary between a narraüon.and a sense of what is
onperahve is being deliberately blurred here, not in a way that represents anv
reversal or.qudificatipn by Wiitgensteinpfhis early disjunction between ethiJ
judgement and statements of feet but so as to make the point that the mode in
wh^h feet IS spoken of tells us whatkind-of comprehensive ontological dal is
g made - and such a daim cannot be made in the form of any daim as to
specific extra states of affairs in the universe. ^ mm as to
Wittgenstein. Christian belief and Kierkegaard
ms mpid tour of Wittgenstein’s thinking about ethics and aesthetics is designed
m lo ate mqre precisely the way in which he reflects on both theology in gelai
md the foundational texts of Christian bdief in particular. The Cultl ld
hich Wittgenstein compares the style of the gospels to a 'mediocre’ stage set
Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 81
for a drama: the staging does not distract from the actual drama. It is important
that there is no way in which the literary excellence of the gospel narrative can
be deployed as a covert or overt argument for taking the content with appropriate
seriousness (CV 31). Equally, the claim articulated by the gospels, the claim on
our, faith or obedience, cannot be dependent on the historical accuracy of the
texts:%"Ihe historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be
demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this’ (CV 32e). And this
does not mean that their truth is a matter of reason or logic - nor, presumably
(though Wittgenstein doesn’t quite say this in so many words) that it is a matter
of some eternal ‘message’ symbolized or encoded in the narrative. The point
throughout is that there is nothing in or about the gospels that would persuade
us of their claim in any terms not intrinsic to their own language. They offer no
information to justify what they say, and it is a category mistake to try and quarry
their historical basis to reinforce the claims made; all this would do is to establish
or otherwise certain facts in the world, certain bits of information. As Wittgenstein
puts it, ‘Christianity ... offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe!’
(CV 32e) - that is, not‘Believe that this is a true historical narrative!’, but‘Believe
that your life can and must change!’
‘It is love that believes the Resurrection’ (CV 33e). What Wittgenstein is
asserting is that religious conviction belongs precisely,with ethical and aesthetic
judgementin being, grammatically speaking, a tuansition between narrative and
judgement tiiat is ‘necessary’ in the terms of the process of a certain kind of
discourse, yet not explicable as something caused by that process. Hence
\Vittgenstein’s provocative remark that it would not matter if the gospel records
were ‘false’: if the story of Jesus (including the Resurrection) were a fiction, the
relationship between narrative and judgement would be unaltered because
historical certainty is not the basis of the judgement that follows, the judgement
which we call feith or obedience and which changes my life’s conditions. It is
worth noting that this is something of a loose end in Wittgenstein’s reflection,
and not in any obvious way consistent with his comments on the impossibility of
thinking that Christ’s body is 'dead and decomposed’ while having hope or
confidence in Christ.* If the gospel narrative is what we usually mean by a fiction,
it is presumably a deliberate fiction; and if it is a deliberate fiction designed to
produce faith, what is produced cannot be feith but only a capitulation to some
other individual’s purpose of persuasion. Even if we were to say that it is not a
deliberate fiction but a series of half-conscious misrepresentations or distorted
traditions, we should have to imagine a process whereby the narrative was
constructed in response to various historical conditions; and this takes us back
 82 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
to Wittgensteins basic problem - here as in the ethical and aesthetic sphere - of
the relation between contingent fact and absolute significance. To put the point
as Wittgenstein does in terms of the'falsity’ of the narrative allows us - awkwardly,
in terms of Wittgenstein’s basic argument - a kind of space into which we can
slip to view the narrative independently of its actual relation to the believing
hearer; so to consider this perspective is already to deny the-^necessit/ of the
response. Faith does not guarantee the historical accuracy of the text; equally,
lack of faith is not the same as scepticism about the history^ In that sense, we can
say that historical accuracy is immaterial to faith; but this is not the same as
saying that faith exists in diféct and deliberate contradiction to historical veracity
(alternative facts’ to borrow the singular language of an American political
communicator ,..). Considering the text âs an imperative is a distinct kind of
discourse;where assent or refusal is not determined by a judgement of historical
fact. An-inability‘to believe cannot be dealt^th by reinforcing historical claims.
ÎÜ1 we know IS that the'story is told, as a story about events in this world, in such
á way as to lead up to the imperative: believe!
Consequently Wittgenstein’s aporia is - as he expresses it in the note on belief
in the Resurrection - that in order to believe and to be changed, you must already
have been changed; you must already no longer rest your weight on the earth but
suspend yourself from heaven’{CV 33e). He implies strongly here and elsewhere
that there is, in effect, no way in which religious commitment could be learned’,
no possibility of induction into feith. This relates to his statement that no one can
truthfully speak of herself in terms of absolute self-disgust - either this is the
mark of (or the beginning oí} madness, or it'heralds radical change (CV 32).
Thus, to speak ät all of the imperative embodied in the gospel story is to move
away from any kind of simply desaiptive language; it impels us-into a frame of,
or mo-de of, discourse where stating the truthds inseparable from obeying an
imperative. The transition from narrative to judgement in respect of the gospel
leaves no room for an account in third-person terms of what the story might
mean to a hypothetical hearer: I either hear or don’t hear, I either respond or
don’t respond: When the Wittgenstein of 1937 objects to the language of St Paul,
as opposed tó'that of the gospels, it is because he reads it as attempting such a
third-person account (CV 30.32). This makes Paul’s writings schäumlich - not
simply froth/; as the published translation implies, but literally‘scummy’, what
you see on standing water rather'than flowing. And Paul’s discussion of
predestination is a cardiñal instance of a sort of category mistake (CV 32); it
cannot be understood in an authentically‘religious’ way - or if it can, it can only
be by someone who has learned to read it quite differently. Later on. according to
Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 83
Con Drury, Wittgenstein had second thoughts on this, and allowed that gospels
knd epistles witnessed to 'the same religion’;® but in the context of the earlier
notebooks it is not difficult to see why he turns away from what he thinks is the
Pauline approach. He reads Paul as trying to imagine God’s purposes in a sort of
narrative of divine agency; and this is obviously another attempt to slip away
from responding to an imperative into the realm of description. If I were to
venture a guess as to why the later Wittgenstein changed his mind, I suspect that
he had come to see that his own analysis of impotence to respond in the face of
the gospel narrative, his recognition that you would already have to have changed
in order to respond, might correspond to Paul’s anguished arguments in Romans
^bout both his personal awareness of imprisonment (*Wretched man that I am!
in Romans 7) and about the‘resistance’of Israel to Christ (9-11).
"Ihe way you use the word “God” does not show whom you mean - but, rather,
wh&t you mean’ (CV 50e); similarly, and famously, in §373 of the Investigations,
‘Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)’There is
a way of speaking about God which clearly pannot be speaking about God, in
Wittgenstein’s eyes: he notes that stories qf the.Greek’gods of Olypipus allow us
to frame the question, *What would it be likq if they «ysted?’ - i.ç. what difference
would it make to the world if it happened to have these agents within it? (see C V
82). We can’t ask what difference it would make if the world‘contained’ God, any
more than we can ask what difference it makes in the \yorld that we perceive it
and describe it in terms of colour. We are proposing a comprehensive scheme of
perception and of‘reading’ the fects of the world, not speculating about what the
world might or might not contain.' Thus the grammar of belief in the
Resurrection, say. is manifest in narratives of how a person’s life is radically and
comprehensively altered by belief in the Resurrection. It looks like this, in the
.language of the Investigations. Just as ‘God’ does not pick out an agent or an
individual among others, in the way a proper name does, so ‘resurrection’ does
.not pick out a specific event in chronicled history - which does not mean that
the Resurrection of Jesus is without any historical correlate, so to speak, but that
no account of it in terms of information is adequate. Like belief in God overall,
believing in the Resurrection is positing a‘system of reference’, as Wittgenstein
puts it in a note of 1947 (CV 64e), which I can find my way into only as it is
repeatedly portrayed in connection with ‘an appeal to conscience’ - until the
point at which I connect the narrative with what I now recognize I need and
want. What it is that brings me to that point of seeing a response as natural,
'necessar/ or imperative cannot be systematized or generalized. But, as the
discussion so fiir has spelled out, it is going to be comparable to the varied ways
 84 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 85

in which I am inducted into a moral or an aesthetic practice, a system of reference.

‘follower at second hand*, insists that the only advantage of the contemporary is
If the early Wittgenstein is inclined, as we have seen, to characterize ethical and
in terms of information; but information is not what occasions encounter with
aesthetic judgement as more or less inaccessible for speech, his developing
truth and acknowledgement of untruthfiilness. 'Ihe god must provide the
sensitivity to the diversity of speech itself and the beginnings of his analysis of
condition for such recognition, whether for the contemporary or the non­
what it is to ‘follow’ a mode of discourse, a language game, gives him some space
contemporary (e.g. PF 65-6). And if some immensely powerful contemporary
to grant that what we could call a procèss of induction is not unthinkable; we can
or near-contemporary brought to bear all possible resources of research and
redect cm how m feet people coifte to believe, come to occupy a stance, without
testimony to establish a dependable and universally acceptable report of the
thereby sacrificing the fundamental point, that this process is not an acquisition
events around the god’s manifestation, this - although producing an historical
of information or the‘conclusion of an argmnent.
certainty ironically greater even than that of the contemporary - would have
By how it will be very clear how close Wittgenstein is throughout his
nothing to do with feith. If an infallibly comprehensive historical record put
reflecttons in this area to 'the Kierl^^rd of the Philosophical Fragments
before us miraculous events at which we were invited to ‘wonder’, this would not
Kierkegaard’s concern is almost precisely the same anxiety about ways of
be the wonder of feith itself (PF 92-3). Rather like Wittgenstein speaking of the
speaking about God that are in feet grammatically incapable of doing what they
sense of the world being ‘miraculous’, the wonder of feith is radically different
purport to do. Ihus Kierkegaard can argue, in his chapter on ‘The Absolute
from finding aspects of the world amazing. The follower, in Kierkegaard’s
Paradox’ (PF 37-48), that if the human subject comes to know the unknown and
schema, is not amazed at certain events* in the life of the incarnate god (and
unconditional truth that surrounds her, she can only know it as that which is
therefore not at others), but wonders at what is done in the entire reality that is
without qualification different: the knowing individual is ‘untruth’, and thus
the god’s incognito in the world, whose effect is the new and converting self­
cannot realize for herself the very feet of her untruthfulness. We can be taught
reflection that is the recognition of untruth. If faith requires the veracity of the
about the unconditional, about ‘the god’, in Kierkegaard’s terms, only by what is
contemporary’s witness as its condition, feith will have as its object not the god
not ourselves: which implies the recognition of‘sin’, the endemic state of self-
but the reliable contemporary (PF 100-1).
deceit in which we Uve. Reason confronts its downfeU; if it passionately wiUs its
Wittgenstein’s general debt to Kierkegaard is regularly acknowledged; but
downfeU. desiring not to be untruthful, it confronts its difference from the
their closeness in this particular connection still needs some further explication.
unconditional not with terror but with faith or love (PF 46-8). If we are to be
Wittgenstein’s throwaway remark about the possible historical felsity of the
confident that we have not created the difference in the terms that suit us, we
gospels as a matter indifferent for belief makes a good deal more sense if read
must be clear that the way in which we are taught the difference is precisely not
against the background of Kierkegaard’s analysis of what the contemporary
by the pd manifesting himself eichibiting a particular kind of worldly difference.
follower can and cannot claim; Wittgenstein is in his own idiom clearly repeating
If IS this which puts the revelation to feith of the divine difíérence on a different
Kierkegaard’s point about what is the condition for belief. In his notes in 1937, he
level both to the teaching of a human sage, a Socrates, and to the putative
explicitly wrestles with Kierkegaard in regard to the eternal consequences of
revelation of a god. a divine agent inteUigible in the same terms as finite agents
feith: if the consequences are such, why is God not clearer in communicating
The absolutely different god can confront us with our own untruth only as the
what has to be said? But if God sets out all this in a riddle or in the form of four
anonymous saviour who does not seek to convince us. let alone compel us. to
not obviously consistent records, is this not because the appropriate form simply
submission, smee that would be to abandon his difference in fevour of a kind of
is a riddle, or a set of'quite averagely historically plausible’ narratives (CV 31e)?
power or freedom directly competing with our own, different in degree not kind
As Wittgenstein remarked to Drury, 'll is impossible for me to say what form the
(PF 29-33). We might plead for the god to reveal himself inaclearerway.butwe
record of such an event should take.’* The excellent discussion of the two
should have to be prepared to hear the god reproaching us: ‘so you love only the
philosophers by Genia Schönbaumsfeld, A Confusion of the Spheres,^ notes that
omnipotent one who performs miracles, not him who humbled himself in
both see the philosophical task as the removal of illusions about the thinking
equality widi you’ (PF 33). This has consequences for how we read the gospel
subject, a task which is not achieved by information or by erecting a ‘world-view’.
narrative. Kierkegaard, in his discussion of the ‘contemporary follower’ and the
Their shared suspicion of metaphysics is a suspicion of any claim to a ‘God’s eye’
 86 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 87

View of reality/“ or of the idea that we can ‘think ourselves out of’ illusion,
Chalcedon the point had already been made that it was improper to associate
untruthfulness." But what is especially interesting is their convergence on the
some of Jesus’ activities with his divinity and some with his humanity; and by the
questions we have been examining - the nature of Christology. of faith in Christ
eighth century, the majority of the Church had agreed that the Chalcedonian
as risen, and the role of the gospel witness in generating faith. If Kierkegaard
Definition entailed the unbroken exercise of created activity and will in Christ.
clears the ground for underst^ding.whatthe grammar of‘God’ requires in this
In other words, the divine indwelling in Christ, the presence of the eternal Word
conneftion. Wittgenstein in effect applies the same kind of argument to the
united with the humanity of Jesus, cannot be conceived or described in terms of
whole discourse of value. It is not that is atguing a textbook disjunction of fact
anything that looks like a divine ‘interruption of the human narrative.
and value, in which Value’ becomes-sijnply a judgement that cannot be backed
Kierkegaard’s argument that any such interruption would - paradoxically -
up by feet; it is rather that he seeks to clarify the grammar of value itself as the
signal not the omnipotence of God but its opposite is a typically counter-intuitive
result of the wide variety of‘cultural inductions’ in Which human beings engage
and teasing version of this. Referring back to his earlier parable of the king who
with each other, in a way for which the mere transfer pf information is of limited
seeks to woo the beggar maid (PF 26-30), Kierkegaard explains how the god has,
imporfenfe. As he acjcnowledges with increasing clarity this means that we are
in a crucial sense, less ‘freedom’ than .such a king: ‘He cannot betray his identity;
constantly bound up in the exchanging of narratives, continuously being
j... he does not have the possibility of suddenly disclosing that he is, after all, the
reworked to draw Qut their ‘compelling’ aspects, so that we can see why certain
king - which is no perfection in the king (to have this possibility) but merely
transitions are natural wijhin the terms-of the discourse. And in this respect at
manifests his impotence and the impotence of his resolution, that he actually is
least: Wittgenstein is very far from suggesting that religious language is a special
incapable of becoming what he wantedjto become’ (PF 55). For God to interrupt
case -among discourses: what marks it out is not that it is somehow more
the human life with which he has united himself in order to communicate with
inaccessible to feet or ‘reason’-than other kinds of discourse, but that it insists on
humanity is for God to admit defeat, to admit that what is said and done humanly
Jhe most radical kind of self-dispossession, the recognition of some fundamental
cannot communicate in a manner that transforms and .saves. Even more, it
lack of truthfulness in our self-perception. Kierkegaard is-manifestly a major
undermines the very principle of.the god’s action in ‘descending’ to the level of
presence in the background of all he has to say about the error of linking
equality with us: that is itself the thing that has to be communicated, the freedom
conversion to information.
of the god to be what he isnot for die sake of uniting human beings to the truth
they repudiate. AE we can say about the visible sign of divinity in the human
Jesus is that his mission consumes him; he understands himself as identical with
Chalcedon and the grammar of‘God’ his work (PF 56-7). But this is a matter of what can be said of an uninterrupted
humanity, not of any epiphany of Godhead. An epiphany would necessarily in
But them IS a further pqint worth making in relation to these two philosophers
this context be an epiphany of something less than God; an agency tiiat was not
and their responses to the gospels and to the figure of Christ, a point that
sufficientiy free or self-sustaining to be wholly itself in die humble and formally
connects them - surprisingly - to the mainstream of Christian doctrinal
anonymous shape of the human (‘formally’ anonymous in the sense that there is
reflection, >Vittgenstein certainly and Kierkegaard probably wpuld have seen the
nothing odd or imperfect in the vray Jesus satisfies the criteria for being
history of Christological debate and clarification as 'grammatically* odd - as
recognized as human).
claiming the territory that cannot be claimed, from whose vantage point we can
Connecting this with Wittgenstein’s discussion of ethics, we could say that the
desçrAe the ways of God in the third person. But there is a way of reading the
point made in the shape of Chalcedonian Christology is that the divinity of
tradition whicl) echoes precisely this central grammatical anxiety of both
Christ is not an item of information about him. Divinity is not a predicate that
philosophers. The classical doctrinal definition of the Council of Chalcedon
'can be added to the sum total of what is true of Jesus as human individual
declares that phrist is complete in both divinity and humanity and much of the
(‘Jewish, male, brown-eyed, divine ...’). His divinity is thus not something that
rnpnumentally complex argument of the centuries that foUqwed turned upon
can figure in any argument about how we should respond to him; and the
what^was meant by completeness in humanity. In the debates leading up to
theologian is not free to use the affirmation of divinity as any sort of explanation

88 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
of either certain facts in Jesus’ life or of the response of faith itself. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, whose Christology is arguably more deeply shaped by Kierkegaard’s
approach than that of any other modern theologian, insisted that - for example
- the use of ’the miraculous elements in the narrative of Jesus to confirm his
divinity would be a kind of category mistake? after all, miraculous deeds were the
stock in trade of plenty of wandering sages in the classical world,*^ But there is a
deeper point to be drawn out. Classical Christology has to be understood as
itself part of the process of clari^dng the grammar of‘God’. If God acts fully and
without restraint in the human life of Jesus yet does not in any way ‘break the
surface’ of that humanity or replace some aspect of it, it is dear that there can be
no sense in which finite agency andTnfinite are in competition with each other.
As some have put it, the religious believer does not daim that there are any more
facts in the universe than the unbeliever allows;^ they may disagree about the
Status of various reports of feet, they may offer radically divergent readings of
fact, but in principle their difference is not about the presence in the world of
some extra agency called divine. The believer will no doubt maintain that there
are events and outcomes that would have been radically different in a different
kind of universe, one that was not permeated by or sustained by divine agency,
but cannot daim that bdief gives certain access to extra matters of feet within
the realm of contingent and finite causes. And, as we have seen, this is precisely
Wittgenstein’s daim about ethics: the person making an ethical judgement does
not have access to extra information that would dinch an argument about what
to do; she is simply someone who inhabits a culture in which certain ‘moves’
have become dear, certain connections hnve been acknowledged^ and must be
acted upon.’As Schönbaumsfeld explains with admirable darity, this does not
mean that the religious bdieveror the ethical agfent has no bdiefe about what is
true of the world and is simply adopting a willed set of policies: ‘no such thing as
a fully fledged uñderstanding'of any domain of discourse is possible without
both aspects of understanding [sc. what Schönbaumsfeld calls “external” and
“internal” understanding, doctrinal assertion and personal or “mystical”
involvement] being present.’^^ The difficult notion for some philosophers is that
of‘beliefs about what is true of the world : these are not beliefs about what is true
of states of affeirs’ in the world but about how adequatdy to operate what
Wittgenstein calls a ‘system of reference’ affecting every specific claim about
matters of feet (remember Wittgenstein’s comparison with the language of
colour: we don’t ask what would be different if it were nöt the case that things
had colour because things having colour is not a feet among others in the list of
actually prevailing states of affairs).
Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 89
In sum, what Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard have to say about the gospel
narrative and about the nature of the grammar of claims about divinity - divmity
in general and Christ’s in particular - offers a novel and clarifying perspective on
someofthefeaturesof classical doctrinal languageaboutChristAnyqualification
of the Chalcedonian insistence on the completeness of the two ‘natures’ will in
feet compromise the grammar of‘God’: it wül imply that God acts in the world
by displacing finite agency and thus cannot coexist in the same logical space^
finite agency. But if this is the case, then divine agency becomes a rival fact in the
universe; and as such it cannot make upon us the unconditional claim that it
purports to. Unless religious discourse is of a piece with the judgements of ethics
and aesthetics that Wittgenstein analyses, it becomes something that can m
principle be refuted by evidence: it has been ‘made to be true’ by a certain causal
process and thus can be made untrue by another process. To recognize this is not
to say that religious (or ethical or aesthetic) conviction is beyond challenge; only
that such chaUenge has to be about a global shift in the framing of reference, not
the production of a new piece of evidence. Thus the confession of Christ as
divine - or simply as risen from the dead - has the form of a proposed glob^
‘reading’ of fects; one such feet being the narratives of those who have responded
in a certain way. those who have created the culture of faith. To put it m more
theological terms, it is a reminder that the acknowledgement of Christ’s divinity
is inseparable from the reality of the Church. The imperative to which the
Church’s gathering is a response is the way in which ‘the affirmation of a truth
about Christ is encountered. Does this mean that explicit Christological doctrine
is an inappropriate exercise? Not necessarUy; as we have seen, clarifying the
grammar and avoiding reductive, unbalanced or mythologizing ways of talking
about God is not a waste of time; we need ways of checking whether it is mdeed
God we are still talking about, and this must apply to what we say about God m
Christ. But Wittgenstein would. I think, insist that Christ’s divinity is essentiaUy
what is affirmed by the practice of repentance, radical change of life or obedience
or, most simply, love. And if anyone should be tempted to say.‘h that all?’it is not
difficult to imagine a derisively incredulous reply from the philosopher, A .
Notes
1 The literature on Wittgenstein’s ethics is stUl a bit patchy, but it is worth noting in
this connection James C. Edwards. Ethics without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the
Moral Ufe (Gainesville. FL: University Press of Florida. 1985) and J. Jeremy
 90 Wittenstein, Religion and Bthics
Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon 91

C A Defense of Ethics as Clarification

iol «TT '■ Ethics 12 See, for example, Dietrich BonhoeiFer,‘Lectures on Christolog/ [1933], in The
Lo„don.Bla^elU983),remainsperhapsü.emo«crea«™ Bonhoeffer Reader, ed. Clifford J. Green and Michael P. Dejonge (Minneapolis, MN:
^.cal .ssuea from a broadly Wittgensteifrian-point of view in refnt decades Fortress Press, 2013), 261-313, at 311. The impact of Kierkegaard on Bonhoeffer’s
ttereas nowa critical edition of this text with notes and comments in Ludwig argument in these lectures and elsewhere deserves further study, and the parallels
. ittgenstem, Lecture on Ethics, ed. Edoardo Zamuner. Ermelinda Valentina M with Wittgenstein’s comments are striking.
Lascio and D. K.Levy (Chichester: Wiley-Blackvvell 2014) 13 Schonb&umsfeldyACcnfiisionoftheSpheres, 188.
' Court Lectures: Cnmhridge.
«r u ™ A. Manx and Nernhard
letter (Malden, MA: Wiley-BIackwell, 2017) 149
4 mat indines ^n me to believe in Christ's Resurrectioni It is as though I play with
_ e thought - If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in ^ve Jfc
yother man. He«dendn«d decomposed. In that case'heisateaiherlike any oto
andcannolongerA«//(CV“33e). ' ^cnuyomer
5' Witfgenstem's appfoach to these issues hada súbstantiaúmpact on the theological
atSne H “■ »/

ress. 1975, enlarged edmon, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013), argues for just
to a posmon. The meaning of the text is what it narrates, not its comespondence
Trd BV‘ does not mean that historical claims are
irrelevant qt that historical scepticism is mandated: if the narrative works in a
cefr,^way,d.e he,ieverunderstandstothe required response ishl?-^
coOTtóion about h.«orical probabilities or possibilities, hut commitment to the texfs
parting meaning as a true depiction of the reality.which readér and text alfe

* r 'ei* Wittgenstein; in Recollections of Wittgenstein ed

7 Th! ?^°"’'°'^°'^™''"“*)'^eess,1984),97-171,atl65
^pomt hasbeen made that for an ancient Greek this night not be so
1? “T a question. We can imàgine after a fesKion a world in which certain
Rema to agents might or might not be presebt (do ghosts exist? pixies?
coZ ■ ,1 T '7" ' "-^-de of tot Or a
T “r"“’ ”0' e die
mZ TT It “d speaking
toutoe contents of the universe, but invites some further refinement of to

8 Drury,‘Conversations with Wittgenstein’. 164

' mlTZTZZ nnd Wittgenstein on
Phlosophy and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
1Ü Ibid., 46.
 5

On the Very Idea of a Theodicy

Genia Schönbaumsfeld

It is, for the most part, an unchallenged assumption in contemporary analytic

philosophy of religion that it makes sense to justify the ways of God to humankind
by constructing a theodicy.* In this chapter I will argue that this assumption is
severely flawed: for from solving the so-called ‘problem of evil; theoHicies do
nothing but exacerbate it. Not only do they presuppose an incoherent,
anthropomorphic conception of God as a kind of invisible ‘super-person’ who
inhabits the same moral universe as ordinary human beings, but the attempt to
turn God into such a ‘super-agent’ morally backfires as well. For anyone who
thinks that allowing the Holocaust to happèn, for instance, is soipething that a
decent moral agent can, in some sense, tolefate - by, for example, viewing it as an
opportunity for character 'development or the exercise of moral responsibility -
thereby turns God into a monster.
I propose, therefore, that'we should abandon the wrongheaded project of
offering a justification for the state of the world in favour of learning from
Wittgenstein that the solution to the ‘problem of evil’ (like that of the 'problem of
life’) is seen in the ‘vanishing of the problem’ {TIP 6.521), and, above all, from
Kierkegaard that to have faith means to learn to accept - not to exonerate - the
way the world is in a spirit of joy.
I will start my discussion by considering the Book of Job, as this furnishes us
with one of the oldest ‘theological’ challenges to the whole idea that God can be
anthropomorphized into an ordinary - albeit ‘omnipotent* — moral agent on
whose behalf philosophers of religion need to plead. This will put us on the path
towards seeing why it makes no sense to suppose that God shares a moral
community with human beings, as well as whát the iirtplications of this insight
might be.
 94 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 95

A critique of the anthropomorphic view is conceived of as being just like a human being, albeit one who happens to be
‘bodiless’, invisible, infinitely powerful and good.
In the Book of Job, Satan^ contends that faith cannot withstand extreme suffering
It is for this anthropomorphic God that the so-called‘problem of evil’emerges
and wagers with God that even the hitherto righteous Job will abandon the feith
as a pressing concern: for how can an infinitely powerful and good person
once death and destruction visit him and his kin (Job 1-2).^ God, confident of
possibly permit the kind of horrendous evils that are ubiquitous in the world?
Job’s steadfestness, allows ^Satan to proceed^with the wager, and so Satan takes
Since even averagely good human »beings would presumably shrink from
Job’s children, his property, and. in the end, Job’s health. During the first of these
allowing them, the theist is confronted by a serious dilemma here: If God can’t
trials. Job is able to remain faithful, but when his misfortunes prevail, he
prevent the evil, then He isn’t omnipotent, and if He doesn’t want to prevent it,
starts arguing with God in despite of his soi-disant friends’ best attempts to then He isn’t omnibenevolent. Traditional theodicies standardly seek to deny the
convmce him that his suffering must serve some penitentiary or expiatory
second horn (as we shall see belov).
purpos^. Although God apjparently joins Job in rejecting the friends’ accounts. This dilemma won’t arise at all, however, if it makes no sense to conceive of
Job’s own legalistic quarrel with God is shown, in the end, to be blasphemous
God in this anthropomorphic manner. So, the question that needs to be settled
and to constitute a re4iictiq of the ye^ notion that it makes sense tp describe
before the moral implications of theodicies can even*be considered is whether
God’s actions’ in ordinary moral terms such as just deserts." For, as Job presciently
the God-conception of analytic theism is coherent. For if it turns out that it isn’t,
declares, while then going on to ignore his own insight: ‘For he [God] is
then this would seem to imdermine the whole idea of theodicies before they
not. a man, as I am. that I might answer him, that we should come to trial have even got off the ground. Tb. this^end, I will fpcus on two .central problems
together. There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both’ (Job
that cause trouble for a Swinburne-type view: the attempt to assign probability
9:32-33).®
values to supernatural causey and events, and the.conception of Gpd as a being
In this ‘text of terror’, which, according to Tilley, ‘offers no solutions to
of‘limitless’ power.’
probl^s of suffering’,® Job makes two/mportant points: first, that God is not a
According to Swinburne, there is no qualitative difference^ between being
man as Job himself is, and. second, that there is no higher court of appeal from
God and a human being, but merely a quantitative one:.God, as Swinburne says,
whose vantage point one could judge God’s ‘actions’ (‘therQ is no arbiter between
is just an (invisible) entity with ‘zero limits to his power’, as opposed to an entity
us. who mi^t lay his h^d on us both’). Taking the first point first. Job is rightly
(such as a human being) with very many limits to its power. Furthermore,
drawing our attention.to the fact tl^at attempts to ‘put God on trial’, and h^nce,
Swinburne contends,
theodicies that seek to exculpate God from the indictment, presuppose a skewed,
anthropomorphized conception of God. the claim that there is a God is a very simple claim, because it is a claim for the
This kind of view, however, seems endemic in contemporary analytic existence of the simplest kind of person there could be ... a being with zero
phüosophy of religion. One need only turn to the ^vritings of Richard Swinburne limits to his power, to his true beliefs, and to his freedom. Scientists and others
to find a prime exponent of th^ conception that Job appears to be criticizing. In always prefer on grounds of simplicity hypotheses which postulate one entity
his essay. ‘Philosophical Theism; for example, Swinburne describes the ‘theory rather than many, and entities with zero or infinite degrees of their properties
that there is a God’ in the foUowing way: ‘God is supposed to be roughly a person rather than some finite degree thereof. They postulate that photons have zero
without a body, essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free, perfectly mass (rather than some very small mass, equally compatible with
observations)__ Althou^ the existence of anything at all is perhaps
goo4, creator.and sustainer of any universe there may be. a source of moral
enormously improbable a priori, the existence of a very simple being has a far
obligation, eternal and necessary/^ Given that (ordinary) persons, according to
higher prior probability than does the existence of anything else.'“
Swmburne, are ‘bemgs with power to bring about effects intentionally, beliefs
(true or false) about how things are. and some degree of freedom to exercise
These are quite striking claims and we need to unpack them in piecemeal fashion.
their power^, God. on Swinburne’s conception, ‘is postulated as a being with zero
First of all one might wonder what notion of ‘simplicity’ Swinburne is
limits to his power, to his true beliefs, and to his freedom’.« In other words, God
operating with in this passage, as one wouldn’t ordinarily think that the idea of a
 96 WittgensteM. Religion and Ethics
being who IS omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly free, perfectly good, bodiless
Md everlashng, is a conception of a 'simple entity- at all (rather, one might think
the reverse). Swinburne is clearly meaning to give the impression that he is
operating with the same toncept of ■simplicity’ that scientists use, but this turns
out, on closhr inspection, not in feet to be the case. For Swinburne’s example of
simpUcity in God’s case - possessing ‘zero limits to his power’, say - is not
remotely analogous to scientists postulating, for instance, that photons have zero
mass (or no weight), as possessing a property in unlimited form (having
unlimited poVer) is quite different ih kind from „of having a property (having
no weight or zero mass’). Consequently. Swinburne is relying on equivocation
bn the meanm^ 6f the word ‘zero’ in order to generate his analogy (‘¿ero Umits’
and zero mass aré quite different things), which means that he has not managed
to show in what sense the ‘hypothesis’ that thère is the God of analytic theism is
supposed to be a simple’ one.“
Even were one to let that pass, however. Swinburne would need to get over the
nea hurdle: the very idea of assigning probability values to supernatural events
and causes. Swinburne just takes for granted that this is possible given that he
daims that the existence of a ‘simple being- (i.e. the God-of theism) has a ‘fer
higher prior probabihty than does the existence of anything else’. But the notion
Aat one can 'assign probability values to the existence of supernatural causes
(God as creator of the universe, for example) cannot just be assumed without
«gument. Rathe« Swinburne first needs to tell us how one might avoid the
followmg three insuperable-seeming problems: ( 1) we don’t have any experience
of supernatu^ events on the basis of which a comparison Vith natural ones
might be made, such that we could say ‘supernatural event A’ is more likely to
occur than ‘natural event B’ or. indeed, ‘supernatural event A is more likely to
occur than supernatural event C’; (2) we have no criteria avaUable that would
teU us at which point it becomes ‘likely- that a natural event (or set of events) has
a supernatural rather than a merely natural one (Bayes, for example, has
no investigated this); (3) it would first have to be independenfiy establishable
not only that there are supernatural events or causes at aU. but also that these are
able to brmg about effects.m the natural world, which seems impossible.'^
In *e absence of adequate responses to these difficulties. Swinburne’s appeal
o probabdity and ‘inference to *e best explanation’ is doomed. Reiteration of
ffie point that God as cause is ‘more likely- because of God’s aUeged ‘simplicity-
does not help m the slightest, even if one grants the cogency of Swinburne’s
anMogy, as this response also just assumes that we have ways of comparing the
likelihood (or unlikelihood) of‘simple’ supernatural causes with the likelihood
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 97
(or unlikelihood) of‘simple’ natural ones. But if we have no ways of doing so, as
I have just argued, the mere addition of the word ‘simple’ is not going to get us
any further.
Finally, let’s turn to the idea of ‘unlimited power’ itself: Is this a coherent
notion? If'unlimited power’ is supposed to describe the possibility of being able
to do anything at all, then this seems, when applied to God, either to be a felse or
a self-undermining concept. The latter, because ‘the ability to do anything’ is
really the ‘ability* to do nothing in particular - without constraints that set the
parameters within which one can choose to do one thing rather than another, no
choice, and, hence, no freedom, is possible at all. This is why Kierkegaard’s Anti-
Climacus, the pseudonymous author of The Sickness unto Death, says that the
person who is ‘free’ of any possible constraint is like 'a king without a country,
actually ruling over nothing; his position, his sovereignty, is subordinate to the
dialectic that rebellion is legitimate at any moment.’*’ Rebellion is legitimate at
ány moment, because without limits and constraints of any kind - without
contingencies that independently constrain my choices and give' me reasons to
Uct or not to act in various ways -1 have no reason to choose to do x rather than
y. Any ‘choice’ I do make^would be a ‘feasonless choice’ in‘the sense that it is
entirely haphazard and subject to whim (as there afe no external constraints at
all that make certain courses of action available while limiting others, only my
■bwn ‘private’ intentions). Hence, ‘rébellion’ against one’s own idiosyncratic
choices is legitimate at any moment, and any dioice can, at any time, be
overthrown by another, equally reasonless, whim.
Kierkegaard’s point here anticipates Wittgenstein’s famous discussion in
Philosophical Investigations that one cannot follow a rule ‘privately* (i.e. without
independent constraints):
That’s why‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is
not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privatel/;
otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as
following it.
PI, §202
In other words, if no distinction can be drawn between following a rule and
merely believing that one is doing so, because whatever one says or chooses is at
the same time law, then there is no such thing as genuine choice or compliance
with rules at all. Without independent standards that determine whether my
behaviour is in accordance with a rule or not, thinking one is following a rule
and actually doing so collapse into each other, thus undermining the very idea of
 98 Wittgenstein. Religion and Etìxics
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 99

a rule.'^ If this is right, then Swinburne’s God who has ‘zero limits’ to his power is
standard’). This not only raises insuperable moral problems for God (as we shall
like Anti-Climacus’s king - an apparently aU-powerfuI monarch who is really
see in the next section), it also appears to fly in the face of Christian orthodoxy.*®
ruling over nothing.^®
For if God is a moral agent like ourselves, what do we make of Jesus’ remark at
Even were one to set aside the previous considerations, however, one would
Mark 10:18, for example, that ‘No one is good - except God alone’?*’ Is Jesus
still be left with the problem that the idea of‘unlimited power’ attributes not only
trying to say here that the only good member of the human moral community is
a self-undermining notion to God {as we saw above), but also a false one, as there
God?
are many (non-logically contradictory) things that God cannot do: e.g. lick an
It seems that Jesus cannot really mean that there is no such thing as human
ice-cream; have sexual intercourse, ride a bicycle.*« Of course one might counter
goodness, as otherwise striving to keep the commandments and to love God and
that God’s ‘inabUit/ to do these thftigs does not constitute a genuine limitation,
one’s neighbour, for instance, would be utterly pointless. Furthermore, given that
as'these are not activities that God can meaningfully be said to engage in at all.
Jesus makes this comment in respect to himself (‘Why do you call me good?’) -
but. if so, then this just exposes another flaw in the anthropomorphic conception!
and which human being is supposed to be considered good if not even Jesus is?
For what this shows is, that we cannot understand what it means to speak of
- he must mean something different. Perhaps that only God can be considered
God’s power simply by infinitely magnifying human power (otherwise we would
good in an ‘absolute’ sense; that God is the final arbiter of what‘good’ is. But, if so,
have to grant that ñot being able to lick-an ice-cream is a limitation on God’s
we need to distinguish between two senses' of ‘good’ - the 'ordinary, ‘moral’,
power) - we also need to attend to the distinctive grammar of the concept ‘God’,
human kind of good, and the ‘abSölute’ señsé in which God is uniquely said to be
which tells us what it does and. does not make sense to say of Him.
‘good’. If God is this ‘absolute standard’, however, then, like the standard metre in
For example, although God’s eye is often spoken of, nobody thinks it makes
Paris, which, as Wittgenstein says, cannot be described* as either being or not
sense to enquire about the whereabouts of His eyebrows (cf. LC 71). Neither
being one metre long since it set? tiie standard for what is to count as one metre
does anyone beUeve that we cannot hear God speaking to someone else because
(PI §50), God Himself cannot be thought of as ‘good’ or ‘,bad’ in^the ordinary
He IS normally out of earshot or a creature with an extremely low voice. None of
ljuman sense either. In other words, whatever ‘God’s absolute goodness’ means, it
these features are contingent descriptions of God as they would be if. per
cannot just be an aggregate of all human goodnes?, or an extrapolation of human
tmposMe. they happened to apply to a human person. Rather, they serve to
goodness in ‘perfect’ form.
constitute (aspects of) the meaning of the word ‘God’ - they are part, as the later
For example, God, in Christianity, is said to be able to love and forgive every
Wittgenstein would say, of the ‘grammar* of the concepì- But if this is right, then
human being. But, if so, then His love must be qualitatively, not just quantitatively,
we cannot just assume.pflce Swinburne eia/., thgt the correct way pf understanding
different from human kinds of love. For even a morally excellent human
divine predicates is by modelling them on human super-persons.*^
being would struggle with the idea of genuine love which is also indiscriminate
So, let’s turn now to Job’s second point in order to examine its implications. If
as well as all-forgiving, since this seems to violate our natural sense of justice:
Job is right that there is no arbiter between God and human beings, as there is no
How, we might ask, can God love the good and the bad equally, when the
‘higher standard’ in respect to which both God and human brings can be judged,
bad - just think of Hitler or Daesh killers - are eminently unloveable? And if
since Cod’, for believers, constitutes the ‘absolute’ standard, then it is difficult to
God does love tiie heinous just as much as the virtuous, whafls the point of being
see how God could nevertheless be a member of the same ‘moral community’ as
good? Presumably, such questions have no ft>rce for God, as He is precisely
we are. For this would require either that God and human beings are equal
rejecting the natural connexion we tend to make between love and just deserts
members- of the same community (i.e.- that they are both .subject to the
(or between love and the possessing of virtues), and to show that, inasmudi as
community’s moral principles), or that ffiere is a higher, independent meta­
we are all sinners, no one deserves God’s love - and yet He offers it freely to all.
standard to which both are subject. Neither option sits pasily with God’s ‘absolute’
But if this is so, God’s love must be different in kind to human love - it’s not just
status: If the anthropomorphic conception is correct, God would have to be
a matter of God’s offering more of the same kind of love of which human beings
conceived of as a moral agent standing on the same footing as ordinary human
are capable (otherwise it could not be alUforgiving and ‘natural justice’-
beings and be judged according to the same standards (pr the same higher‘meta­
transcending).
 On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 101
100 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

allow the Holocaust to occur - with or without a second thought? I.e. do the evUs
If this is right» howeveV.'then it is a mistake to treat God as if He were a denizen
that God allows to happen matter to Him?If not, then,even if onegrants that the
of our moral community. For if we do this, we not only lose sight of how a
evil was in some sense ‘unavoidable’, God would be deemed callous and
conception of all-forgiving love might be seeking to transform our ordinary
"insensitive by the standards of our moral community, as would any member
moral vision - our ordinary ideas of what‘love’ is - we also risk turning God into
who didn’t care at what price he purchased certain goods. If God does care,
a mcft-al ageht altogether more callous than-any decent human being. But more
however, then He wUl recognize that He has been involved in evU (even if that
of this in the next section.
evil was an ‘unavoidable’ consequence), and will give this feet its full weight. But,
if so, God can no longer be characterized as 'perfectly good’ (m the
anthropomorphic sense) after all. For no ‘perfecüy good’ member of moral
God as moral consequentialist community - and it is the assumption of the analytic theist that God is such a
member - can recognize the horrendous evils of the Holocaust, allow them to
The analytic theist; tends to be a moral consequentialist, who reasons in the happen because they are the ‘unavoidable consequences’ of bringing about some
following way: good (e.g. that of presenting opportunities for'character development“), and
remain morally unscathed. So, whichever horn of this dilemma the theodicist
.[I]t is-not always a bad act to bring about or to allow to occur a bad state of
affairs. For it njay be that the only way in which an agent can bring about some grasps, God turns out tb be either callous and insensitive (if the evÜs do not
good state by brmging about first (or simultaneously) some bad state, or by matter to Him), or not‘perfectly good’ (if they do).
,allowing such a statç to occur.“ It is hard to see hbw one rtiight avoid this düemma. For having to face difficult
(and even unavoidable) moral chVes does not necessarfly absolve one (torn
Such reasoning is meant to show that God’s ‘perfect goodness’ (conceived on the
moral responsibility. In örderto show that Gòd cannot be'considered to be
anthropomorphic model for which we have raised difficulties in the previous
‘perfectly good’ whüe suffering-the consequences of the Holocaust, Phillips
section) is compatible with* allowing horrendoü's evils to exist, because it would gives the example (borrowed frdm William Styron’s novel. Sophie’s Choice) of
otherwise* be impossible to briifg about certain goods. Furthermore, such Sophie Zavfistowska, a Polish survivor of Auschwitz, who was given the
theodicists contend, all suffering will ‘in the end’ - say in the ‘heawnly afterlife’
terrible ‘freedom’ of choosing which of her two chUdren, Jan or Eva. were not
- be redeemed or compensated for.^' ' to be sent to the gas chambers. If she refused the choice, both children would
Swinburne gives the example of a parent allowing her chüd to go to the dentist
die, so Sophie, in the end, chooses Jan. TWs is a situation where, whatever
where she knows he will ejqperience pain:
Sophie chooses (including her not making-a choice at all), it is a bad choice.
[Tjhe only way in which a human parent can get his child’s teeth repaired may Furthermore, her choices are unavoidable in the sense* that they are forced
be by taking him to the dentist and allowing pain to be inflicted upon him__ and there are no possible other alternatives within the given parameters. In the
But the human parent is none the less good for taking the child to the dentist.“ Ught of this (especially if we are moral consequentialists), we might regard
Sophie as moraUy blameless. Nevertheless, Sophie ends up takmg her own life
This may well be true in the dentist case, but does this analogy really hold water
after Uberation from Auschwitz. Phillips now compares Sophies situation with
when we are confronted by the horrors of the Holocaust, for example? Does it
make (moral) sense to claim that God allows such evils for the purposes of a God’s:
greater good (healthy teeth, say^^) or that they can, in Some sense, be tolerated If God shares a common moral community with Sophie and ourselves, what
because they will be ‘compensated for’ in the eschaton? Ish’t the very idea morally should we say of his aUowing the Holocaust to happen? Is God to be the object
abhorrent? , of pity? Is creation a moral tragedy in which God is necessarUy involved in evU?
D. Z. Phillips certainly thinks that it is: He cohstructs a dilemma^ for the And what of God's view of what he has done? Does the Holocaust stay with him?
Does he think it can be excused in the Ught of the greater good that made it
theodicist which I will argue is fatal.The questionffi'at proponents of theodicies
necessary, or does he recognize he has something to answer for? It wffl be
need to be able to answer is the following: Does God do what He has to do - e.g.
 102 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 103

obvious that within these moral parameters, there is no logical space for talk of
CjOos perfect goodness.“ this - that it would have been better for there to be something rather than
nothing).^^ Hence, if God is a moral agent like ourselves, and He has decided to
Philips seems to assume that 'perfect goodness'.is not compatible with being create a world full of evil, then - given that He could have not created it - He will
involved m.tragic moral dUemmas, which, he appears to think, leave one with have to face up to having‘dirty hands’.“
dirty hands whichever option one chooses. Of course a hard-core utUitarian, for If this is right, then theodicies already fell at the first hurdle, and it is not
mst^ce would not agree: if the better option is choosing the survival of one necessary to examine further how ‘soul-making’ theories trivialize human
dd rather than none, then this end-justifies the means (allowing the other to suffering or rely on an objectionable, self-centred instrumentalism.^^ What
le). So why shoul4 thipgs be any different in the case of God? If it is better for we need to do instead is recognize that if we are to make any headway here, we
there to be a world that includes the Holocaust*^ for there not to be a world need to drop the assumption that led to the dilemma in the first place, namely,
at all, then, surely God is justified in creating sud) a world. that God is a member of our moral community, and a calculating consequentialist
Since Phillips doesn't speak directly to thispbjection. we need to fill in some at that
of foe blanks. We might concede that in foe case of ordinary moral blamelessness
(w ch may be remforced by a consequentialist view of foe world), we could
grant cautiously, that because her choice is. forced and unavoidable, Sophie is An alternative conception; Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
morally blameless - for even if we thought that Sophie should have refosed foe
chôme altogether and let other people be responsible for foe death of her
So where do we go from here? We have seçn not only that theodicies face
foddren one might worry that this would be for her to put her own virtuousness
an insuperable dilemma, but also that ‘-they presuppose an incoherent,
before foe survival of even one of her children, which also seems moraUy
anthropomorphic conception of God: the God of analytic theism for whom the
objectionable. But we need not agree that moral blamelessness therefore entails
problem of evil is a theoretical problem that needs to be solved before belief in
perfect goodness' (or divine omnibenevolence). For even if we allow that Sophie
such a God becomes possible. Theodicies, in other words, seek‘to shoiV to anyone
IS. to a large extent, not morally culpable, any sensitive human being would still
that belief in God is plausible despite the “natural inference” from the reality of
reg^d her as a.tragic figure, and it is hard to see how this can be compatible with
evil to the nonexistence of God’.^'’ In light of the problems already discussed,
e fond of moral perfection standardly attributed to foe foeistic God. In other
however, it is surely better to abandon this enterprise, for it is, in any case, and as
ivords. moral blamelessness alone does not suffice for moral perfection: one can
I have argued elsewhere,’^ impossible to demonstrate God’s existence (or non­
simultaneously, not be moraUy culpable and yet fall weU short of perfect moral
existence) fh)m premises that anyone would accept.
goodness. If this is right in Sophie's case, then it applies even more strongly to
If, for instance, I wanted to demonstrate Napoleon’s existence from Napoleon’s
God: a supremel,, perfect being who offers redemption to others cannot be a
works, to use an example from Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments (PF), I can
tragic figure. Himself in need of redemption.
only do this if I already assume that Napoleon’s works are ‘his’ works, that is, if I
To make, matters worse, it seems that God had a choice which Sophie never
already assume that Napoleon exists. For, if I do not do this, all I can demonstrate
had. Given that we are operating-with foe concept of foe anthropomorphic
is that the works in question have been accomplished by a great general, but this
creator God. even if one grants that God could not have created a world (any
in itself is not sufficient to demonstrate Napoleon’s existence (as opposed to
possible world) without evU. He could nevertheless have decided not to create a
someone else’s), as another person could have accomplished the same works (PF
world at all m the light of this fact. So. whUe, in Sophie's case, her reffisal to
40).” This is why Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author (Climacus) says that one
choose would still have had bad consequences (i.e. it would have involved foe
can never reason in conclusion to existence, but only in condusion from
death of two chUdren and. perhaps, her own). God's refusal to create would not
existence:
ave had any actual bad consequences (as there would then have been nothing,
and It seems impossible to determine - because we again have no criteria for For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which
exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but
 104 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
that the accused, who does indeed exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to caH
existence an accessorium or the eternal pnws, it can never be demonstrated.
PF 40
And the same. Climacus believes, applies to demonstrating God’s existence from
works; that is, from the existence of the universe: I cannot infer the existence
0 God from the existence of the universe, since God’s works do not exist
immediately and directly in the way that tables and chairs do. Hence, even if we
^sume that nature is the work of God, only nature is directly present, not God.
Therefore, just as in Napoleon’s case. I can only demonstrate God’s existence
from these works (nature/the universe) if I already regard them ideally as Godi,
that IS d I already assume what is to be proved, namely that the universe is
ordered according to providential or divine principles:^^
Gods works, therefore, only the god can do. Quite correct. But, then, what are the
gods works? The works from which I want to demonstrate his existence do not
■mniediately and directly exist, not at all. Or are the wisdom in nature and the
goodness or wisdom in Governance right in front of our noses? Do we not
encomter the most terrible spiritual trials here...?... Therefore, from what works
do demonstrate it [God’s existence)? From the works regarded ideally - that is, as
they do not appear directly and immediately. But then I do not demonstrate it
from the works, after all, but only develop the ideality I have presupposed....
PF42
ttat one cannot get beyond a petitio principa here - it is only possible to see
ivine governance in nature'or the universe if one already believes in divine
governance (and vice versa) - shows that what is at issue here is not something
which could be adjudicated from a neutral, theoretical standpoint. For. as
Chmacus points out. when we look at nature in order to find ‘divine’ meaning in
ft. we encounter the most terrible spiritual trials’^ the aUeged ‘wisdom in nature’
IS not right in fiont bf our noses. We can therefore go on examining nature od
in order to find traces of God in it, but such an ‘investigation’ wiU never
conclusively establish whether nature is the work of God or the product of
naturd fiictors,’* just as a historical investigation of the New Testament will
never be able to tell us whether Christ was God.”
If this is right, then there is no such thing as demonstrating from the way the
worid IS that there is or there isn’t a God. Consequently, there is also no ‘evidential’
problem of evil which could be solved by the construction of a theodicy that tells
us why It IS all right for an anthropomorphic God to aUow extreme suffering to
be mflicted on His creatures. Instead, we need to recognize that the attempt to
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 105
provide a theoretical justification for the existence of evil is itself evil; that the
construction of theodicies is part of the problem, and not the solution.” For
what the theodicist does is not just morally objectionable, it also gets things back
to front: It makes more sense to regard the Christian religion as an existential
response to the problem of human suffering, for example, rather than as a
neutrally accessible theoretical explanation for why, from ‘God’s point of view;
such evils exist.
'The ‘problem of evil’, therefore, isn’t the kind of problem that can be solved
intellectually. Rather, it is an existential problem whose solution consists in its
dissolution. As Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus:
The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.
(Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt
that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what
constituted that sense?)
TLP 6.521
We are all, to speak with Heidegger, thrown into a. mercilessly contingent
world that is not of our own making and which can, at any moment, reduce all
our strivings to nothing. The religious response constitutes a means of making
sense of this apparently meaningless struggle that every human being is engaged
in. Even though we will later want to reject some aspects of Wittgenstein’s
conception (see below), the thought that there is a connexion between belief in
God and understanding the ‘meaning of life’ comes out very well in Wittgenstein’s
First World War Notebooks:
To believe in God is to understand the question of the meaning of life. To believe
in God is to see that the facts of the worid are not the end of the matter. To
believe in God is to see that life has meaning. The world is given me, i.e. my will
approaches the world completely from the outside as something finished__
That is why we have the feeling that we depend on an alien will... and what we
are dependent on, we can call God. God would, in this sense, simply be fate or,
what is the same: the world independent of our will. 1 can make myself
independent of fate— In order to live happily, I have to be in agreement
[Übereinstimmung] with the world__ lam then, as it were, in agreement with
that alien will on which I seem dependent. This means: ‘I am doing the will of
God’.
NB 8.7.1916”
What Wittgenstein seems to be saying here is that since I did not choose the way
the world is constituted, and my ability to change it is limited, all I can do is to try
 106 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 107

and make myself independent of the facts (of the way things are). That is to say. I
Wittgenstein’s account in the Notebooks and Tractatus seems to lade this
can choose not to depend on the comforts of the world, which could, as in the
dimension of a joyful acceptance of existence,*® thus rendering his conception
Book of Job, at any moment be'taken from me. For 'even if everything we desired
doser to that of the knight of infinite resignation than the knight of faith. And
happened, this would only be the luck of the draw. as there is no logical connection
although Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author would agree that the dying to
between will and world ...’ (NB 5.7.1916). Consequently, for early Wittgenstein,
immediacy that early Wittgenstein proposes - renouncing die comforts of the
only that life is a happy one which is able to renounce the comforts of the world.
world - is a necessary condition for faith, it is not the same as feith itself, but rather
For such a life these comforts are just so many mercies of fkte' (NB 13.8.1916). In
located on an existential rung below it For the spirit of faith does not just tolerate
other words, if we are áble to renounce our claim tothe ‘comforts of the world’ in
die way the world is from the lofty heights of resignation, it has the courage to
fevour of treating everythingwe receive asagift, then theoppositionbetweeri will
learn to love the finite in spite of (or because of?) its finitude: To have faidi, in the
and world will cease, and we will no longer perceive life as a ‘problem’.
words of dp Silentio, is ‘to exist in such a way that my opposition to existence is
It is hard not,to be reminded of Kierkegaard’s .conception of ‘infinite
expressed as the most beautiful and assured harmony with if (FT^ 41).*’
resignation’ here - what his pseudonymous authpr, Johannes de SUentio, calls the
Of course such a perspective may be impossible to achieve. Indeed, de SUentio
last step’ before faith: ‘In infinite,resignafion.there is peace and repose... [It is]
believes that it is impossible for him.‘I can swim in existence’, he says,‘but for this
that shirt in the old feble. The thread is spun with tears, bleached by tears, the
mystical soaring I am too heavy* (FTj^ 41). In this respect, faith might constitute
shut sewn in tears, but then it also gives better protection than iron and steel’
the kind of admirable response to the human existential predicament that can
(FTjj 74).
only ever be, for most of us,-a Kantian regulative ideal.*®
Why IS this shirt a better protection than iron and steel? Because once we
have renounced aU relative enas (once we have ‘infinitely resigned’ ourselves)
and have sublimated our desires'into a love of God. we can never be touched in
the same way again by the loss oí what we have already willingly given up before,
Conclusion
n this respect, if one manages to bring about this existential feat, infinite
Let me conclude, as I began, with the' Book of Job. Job’s words ‘The Lord has
resignation inoculates one against further suffering and loss
given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21) are
Now one might think, perhaps, that the price to pay for this perspective is
not meant to provide a justification for human suffering, but radier constitute
high, for. as de Silentio himself notes, the ‘knight of infinite resignation’ is a
the (personal) response of feith. In this respect, they also mirror the conclusions
str^ger and foreigner in the world. The finite can no longer hold any interest for
drawn in this chapter. We have seen that the so-caUed 'problem of evil’ cannot be
such a knight, and in this much his perspective is close to a form of nihilism. This
solved by offering a theoretical explanation of an anthropomorphic God’s
raises the question of whether there might not be a better way of responding to
reasons, but dissolves once we stop rebelling against the ‘alien will’ on which we
human suffering and the ‘problem of existence’.
seem dependent.** This does not make the sufferings themselves all right or,
Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author believes that there is a better response- it
indeed, morally justifiable, because nothing could. But whereas infinite
IS Ae perspective of the person he calls the ‘knight of faith’. The important
resignation is an attempt to return the lottery ticket and to take refuge in
ifference between the knight of infinite resignation and the knight of feidi is
‘eternity’,** to have faith is joyfully to play in the knowledge that one wUl lose.**-**
at the latter regains the world after having renounced it. That is to say, after
having confronted the possibility that all of his heart’s desires may come to
nought, he nevertheless manages to believe, through his love of God, that they
are still worth pursuing - that finitude. transience and suffering are not. in the Notes
end. an ‘objection’ to existence: ‘every moment to see the sword hanging over the
loved one’s head and yet to find, not repose in the pain of resignation, but joy. 1 Exceptions include D. Z. Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God
- that is wonderful’ (FTj^ 79). ^ (London: SCM Press, 2004); Kenneth Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); Terrence W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington,
 108 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
DC: Georgetown University Press. 1991); Nick Trakakis,‘Theodicy: The Solution to
the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?’, Sophia-47, no. 2 (2008), 161-91; and
Rowan Williams, ‘Redeeming Sorrows’ in Religion and Morality, ed. D. Z. Phillips
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 132-48.
2 Satan, in this story, is not the devil, but rather a ‘son of God’ turned accuser (the
literal meaning of‘Satan’ in Hebrew); see Robert S. Ellwood and Gregory D. Alles,
eds. The Encyclopedia of World Religions, rev. edn^New York: Infobase, 2007), 243,
3 I offer the following reading not as a philosophical argument against the
anthropomorphic conception (such arguments will be considered shortly), but
rather as a biblical challenge posed by a text that ú shared by the world’s main
monotheistic reUgions (Judaism, Christianity. Islam). This should draw the reader’s
attention to the fact that an anthropomorphic view isn’t, even from a theological
perspective, necessarily the default option when thinking about God (as seems to be
assumed in, for example, Richard'Swinburne, 'Pliilosophrcal Theism; in Philosophy of
Reason in the 21st Century, ed. D. 2. Phillips and Timothy Tessin [Basingstoke:
Palgravé, 2001], 3-20).
4 And this point emerges more forcefully precisely because it is made in a context
where an anthropomorphic conception of God just seems to be taken for granted.
5 The quotation is from the English Standard Version of the Bible.
6 Tilley, The Evib of Theodicy, 109.
7 Swinburne, Philosophical Theism’, 8, In his The Coherence of Theism, 2nd edn
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 103-21, Swinburne defines God as an
‘omnipresent spirit’ (a purely Rental’ substance). This is consistent with Swinburne’s
earlier definjtion in Philosophical Theism; as he believes that a person is also a
‘mental substance’; just not, as in the case of pod, a ‘pure’ one. I doubt that we can
make sense of the Cartesian notion of a‘mental substance’, but cannot argue it here.
8 Swinburne,‘Philosophical Theism’, 9.
9 I cannot, in this chapter, examine all of the different ways in which an
anthropomorphic conception might He mistaken: rather, I will focus on two aspects.
Fonmore detailed discussion of these issues, see my A Confusion of the Spheres:
* Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University
Press; 2007).
10 Swinburne,‘Philosophical Theism’, 9.
11 Furthermore, and as we shaU see below, the whole idea of'unlimited power’, seen as
freedom from all and any constraint, makes no sense, which puts paid to the notion
that one might compare God’s ‘infinite poweri with a particle’s travelling at ‘infiiiite’
velocity (a comparison that Swinburne also draws).
12 Swinburne, in The Coherence of Theism, for example, has a go. but his account begs
m^y questions. So, for instance, he thinks that God 'causes’ things to happen merely
by intending them, dr by ‘causing’ the laws of nature to obtain (whatever that might
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 109
mean antecedently to already having laws of nature). It also leaves unanswered the
questions of how a ‘pure mental substance’ (assuming this notion makes sense) can
intend anything, and how this ‘intention’, by itself, is supposed to bring about an
effect As it stands, this conception not only presupposes the cogency of many
contentious metaphysical claims, it also makes God’s ‘causal powers sound like the
operation of magic.
13 Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for
Upbuilding and Awakening [1849], ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 69.
14 For more on Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following, see my The Illusion of Doubt
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
15 Swinburne now seems to concede this and maintains that reason imposes a limit on
God’s freedom: God always chooses the rationally better action (Swinburne, The
Coherence of Theism, 148-9). This, of course, implies that rational principles are
independent of God and exist ‘timelessl/ (in iddition to the created universe), like
numbers (another contentious metaphysical clami that Swinburne is ksking us to
swallow).
16 These examples are from Phillips, The Probleth of Evil and the Problem of God, 12.
17 This is not to say that there is no room at all for the thought thát God is'jJèrsonal’ in
the sense that the believer can enter into a relationship iVith Him. Rathef, it is to
reject the norion that the idea of a ‘persbnal’ God is 'exhausted by a Swinburne-type
anthropomorphic conception of Him.
18 This should at least be a problem for those analytictbeists who are Christians (of
which there are many).
19 New International Version.
20 Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998), 10.
21 See, for example, John Hick,‘Transcendence and Truth’, in Religion without
Transcendence?, ed. D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin (London: Macmillan, 1997),
41-59; Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil.
22 Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 10.
23 Theodicists tend to invoke free will, ‘soul-making* and the eschaton as the ends that
are supposed to justify the means; for a comprehensive summary, see Trakakis,
‘Theodicy*. For a critique of the notion that ‘free will’ can even coherently be
considered a‘good’, see Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, Ch. 4.
I do not have the space to address this issue here.
24 See Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 40-1. Compare Trakakis,
‘Theodic/, 169.
25 See, for example, John Hick,‘An Irenaean Theodic/.in EttcownferiogEvi/, ed. Stephen
T. Davis (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 38-52.
 lio Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
On the Very Idea of a Theodicy 111

26 Phillips, The Problem ofEvil and the Problem of God, 43.

27 This is my arguraeni,-not one that Phillips makes. again, none of this implies that ‘joyfully accepting existence’ is any kind of moral
28 Compare Trakakis,‘Theodicy’. imperative or something one should refrain from for moral reasons.
29 As Phillips says: To make the development of one's character an aim [à la Hick and 39 Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, The Goy Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Swinburne, say]4s to ensure that the development will not take place. This is because \Tntage, 1974), §276:‘I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is
the endeavour so conceived is self-defeating: it lacks character' {The Problem of Evil necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.
and the Problem of God. 57; Phillips* itahcs). For fUrther discussion also see Trakakis Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!’
‘Theodicy^ ’ 40 In other words, to achieve such a perspective is an ongoing struggle that lasts as long
30 Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy, 227. as life itself. It is not a perspective that one can win once and for all, and it may be
31 See my A Confusion of the Spheres. impossible to maintain in the foce of extreme personal suffering.
32 This parallels the 'reference problem’ of the name ’God’ (and according to Swinburne, 41 Of course, we might wish to follow Nietzsche and not speak of an ‘alien will* at all It
is an advantage of the view offered here that in regard to taking an ‘admirable
It IS a name, not a ‘job description’): how do we know that the word refers to the
God-conception of an^ytic theism, and not, say, to the Great Pumpkin, the perspective’ on human existence, both the religious and the non-religious person are
Abominable Snowman or any other ‘super-empirical’ object? Swinburne admits that in the same boat.
.this 1ÍÍ a prqblem for his view, but thinks that appeals to the alleged ‘simplicit/ of the 42 In the sense of‘immunizing* oneself against the finite.
God of analytic theism can again help us to get around it. For further discussion of 43 This is not an ‘ironic’ perspective; this is why, as Johannes de Silentio says, it requires
why this strata foils, see myA Confusion of the Spheres. great courage, and the person who manages to achieve it is ‘the only great one’
33 Or, as Swinburne claims, that we can assign probability values to supernatural events (FT„79).
and thus regard them as a ‘better’ explanation than natural causes. We have already 44 I would like to thank Aaron Ridley and audiences at the Southampton Research
seen above why this doesn’t work. Seminar and the Eighth British Wittgenstein Society Annual Conference (Leeds,
34.0ne can only regard Swinburne*s‘God hypothesis* asagenuine alternative to natural 2016) for comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
explanations if one already believes that there might be supernatural causes to which
one cap assign probability values.
35 For more discussion of these points, see myA Confusion of the Spheres. As this is
primarily a chapter about theodicy. I cannot delve any fiirther into these issues here.
36 In the words of Surin: *A theodicist who, intentionally or inadvertently, formulates
doctrines which occlude the radical and ruthless particularity of human evil is, by
implication, mediating a social and political praçtice which averts its gaze from the
cruelties that exist in the world. The theodicist... cannot propound views that
promote serenity in a heartless world’ (Surin. Theology and the Problem ofEvil. 51).
Also compare Phillips. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, and TiUey, The
Evils of Theodicy.
37 This and subjejiuent translations from the Notebooks are mine.
38 A >yful acceptance of existence* is not a moral acceptiince; it is not to accept
existence because it is ‘good’ or because the existence of the world is ‘morally
justifiable’ (whatever that might mean). Hence, it makes no sense to ask. in the moral
sense, whether one s/iomW joyfully accept existence (or whether one should not)
Rather, it is merely a question of whether one ca« - or whether one can become the
kind of person who can. A ‘joyfiil acceptance of existence’ is its own reward, and
surely, better, for all sorts of non-moral reasons, than a 'rejection* of existence. But,
 6

Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion in

Mulhall’s Ihe Great Riddle
Wayne Proudfoot

Based on his 2014 Stanton Lectures, at the University of Cambridge, Stephen

Mulhall’s The Great Riddle is one of the most innovative contributions in recent
years to discussions of the relev^ce to theology of Wittgensteinian ideas.* The
book takes its departure not, in the first instance, from Wittgenstein’s own
remarks about religion, but from the way others have used his work tp think
about religious language: In particular, it, addresses .the question of whether
religious language constitutes its. Qwti language game or games, with grammars
and forms of life that differ from pther, not distinctively religious, forms of
everyday speech and language. In doing so Mulhall is led to rethink the concepts
of language game, grammar and form of life in’ a way that responds to earlier
criticisms of Wittgensteinian fideism, to develop a different view of the religious
uses of language, and to clarify and even enhance Wittgenstein’s visions of both
language and philosophy. To do this and to present his view of the relation of
philosophy to theology Mulhall draws on a rich variety of resources, including
the work of Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and two Wittgenstein-influenced
commentators on Thomas Aquinas he refers to as Grammatical Ihomists,
Herbert McCabe and David Burrell.^ Mulhall weaves these strands together
persuasively. I don’t want to disrupt that interweaving, but I will call attention to
some of the differences between those strands and their implications for how to
conceive of the resources Wittgenstein provides for thinking about religious uses
of language.
While I am not convinced that the Grammatical Thomists can be used to
illumine Wittgenstein’s work in the way Mulhall suggests, there is no doubt that
Grammatical Thomism is of considerable interest for contemporary theology
and that Mulhall has used it well to open up new questions about the relation of
Wittgenstein to theology and to the philosophy of religion. As a contribution to
 114 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
the discussion the book invites, I’ll focus on its two chief topics, ‘Nonsense and
Its uses’ and ‘Analogy and projectibilit/, and on their bearing on Mulhall’s
account of the relation between philosophy and theology.
Nonsensé and its uses
Mulhall sees a parallel between the fact that the Grammatical 'Ihomists regard as
a theological virtue the recognition that language directed toward the
transcendent Christian God necessarily outstrips the limits of sense, and Cora
Diamond’s resolute reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Phihsophicus and
of some of Wittgenstein’s later work.^ Diamond interprets the Tractatus, along
With Wittgenstein’s remark that what he had written there was nonsense, in a
Way'that takes th'e sentencfeS'^of that book to be austere or strict nonsense, in
contrast to those who read the remark to suggest a kind of substantial nonsense,
a use öf contradictory or paradoxical terms to point toward some insight that
t&n’t be put into words. Austere nonsense, according to Diamond and Mulhall,
results not from using meaningful words in a logically contradictory way, but
from the fact that at least one of the words in a sentence is entirely devoid of
sense and thus doesn’t admit any interpretation at all; Diamond and Mulhall are
interested in what might motivate use of this strictly unintelligible language.
Diamond holds that-a central point'of the Tractatus is to acknowledge, and
perhaps tú overcome, the temptation to think that metaphysical analysis can
show that phUosophy is limited by the limits of language. If Wittgenstein is right,
what are the implication's ot^is use of nonsense for an analysis of religious
language?
Mulhall begins the book by considering two influential models of reflecting
on the use úf Wittgenstein for illumining religious language. Both reject the
characterization of that language as nonsense. In the first model, represented by
Anthony Kenny and Bede Bundle, nonsense is taken to be incapable of illumining
anything and therefore to be of no value in analysing religious language. In the
sedond, exemplified by Normair Malcolm and D. Z. Phillips, according to
\N^ittgenstein all language that is used has a grammar and thus has sense. The
task of the analj^t is to lay out that grammar and to make explicit the rules that
govern it rather than to conclude that it has no sense.
In his Lecturd on Ethics’, Wittgenstein distinguishes between a judgement of
relative value and one of absolute value. What would it mean, he asks, to express
an experience of or to make a judgement of absolute value? Absolute value can’t
Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion 115
be identified by moving along a spectrum of contingent values from something
that is relatively to something that is absolutely independent or self-standing.
Wittgenstein writes: ‘I see ... not only that no description that I can think of
would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every
significant description that anyone could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the
ground of its significance’ (LE 11). It is not just that a statement or expression of
absolute value is nonsensical, but, according to Wittgenstein, a person could be
intelligibly motivated <to re/wse to accept any attempt to give sense to it.
The motivation to use such unintelligible propositions might derive from the
need to distinguish discourse about ethical and aesthetic value from empirical
discourse, or to distinguish between ethical wrongness and the incomprehensibly
evil, for instance. In either case the point would be to mark a discontinuity, to
refuse to allow the ordinary mêaning of a term to apply in cases that are taken to
be radically different. Mulhall writes thht refusal to give sense to these
propositions can be appreciated only by 'graâping \^hat Friedrich Nietzsche
might call their genealogy. By attendiñgto'how words hâve come tef be used that
way we might come to regard the uttering of such nônSèifsê’as ‘an intelligible
outworking of the broader formS of human'life within which the words uttered
have uses whose internal logic and overall significance can be more
straightforwardly grasped’ (GR 33). Eveiî thotiÿr these -words have been
unmoored from their ordinary uses, they can be seen as ân intelligible extension
of diose uses in other contexts.
For a different e:mmi5le of how words-can become removed from their
contexts in a way that is fruitful for an account of religious language, Mulhall
turns to Cora Diamond’s analysis of talk about God in Anselm’s Proslogion*
Diamond doesn’t regard Anselm’s reflection on the implications of the phrase
‘that than which nothing greater can be conceiwd’ as a logical argument, but as
a riddle. A riddle, she says, can’t be solved by explicating its formal logic, as in a
mathematical proof. Rather, it depends for its ‘solution’ on something external to
it. It can be given its sense only from outside. The traditional riddle of the Sphinx
is of this sort. What has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the
evening? This answer can’t be inferred from the grammar or logic of the riddle
alone. It depends on knowing something about the course of a human life.
Anselm’s phrase, she says, is a riddle phrase. He doesn’t set out a conception and
then prove that it exists. 'Ihe phrase is constructed on the basis of a femiliar
model (that of the use of the words‘great’,‘greater’, and‘greatest’), but it is removed
from any context in which those words make sense, for instance in which
something is said tô be greater in some respect. Anselm’s phrase, she says, has no
 116 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
grammar, but only a ’grammar’. Hie phrase operates in such a way that nothing
whose non-existence could be conceived would count as satisfying it. For
Diamond..Anselm’s phrase is a promissory note, ’forging the outer shell of a
necessary connection in a language we do not,yet know how to speald (GR 37).
t s a rule to. the effect that whatever one is thinking of cannot be God. Nothing
that human beings have themselves thought up can be identified as ’that than
which none greater could be conceived’.» Diamond doesn’t’rule out the possibility
of a new language-game in which that word-shape has a place’, but that would be
outside of established grammar and logic (GR 37).
Diamond regards the nonsense of Anselm’s phrase, as weU as the propositions
of foe-Tracfofos, as having been constrpcted in order to loosen the hold of an
unduly narrow understanding of some of our concepts and to enable us to see
more clearly yrhat is before us. In other wprk, she has emphasized this point
aboutWmgenstein. what she caUsthe’raalisticspirifofhispractice.«Sometimes
an experience strftesus as real in a way that seems to break through anything we
could have conceived to be possible (e.g. the taste of honey, or inconsolable
grief), at other times an experience may be exceptionally astonishing or painfol
m a way that is so difficult it elicits resistance to our thinking it
Diamond foUows Karl Barth in holding that the phrase ’that than which
nothing greater can be conceived’lacks content. It is not a description but arnie
for thinking about God. Nothing that we could conceive, nothing that is within
our capacity to imagine, could be GodJ Reality may surprise us beyond anything
that we could possibly have thought. This is not because we know ahead of time
what IS possible for .thought. It is that Anselm’s phrase, on Diamond’s reading,
works ,n such a way as to rule out in advance anything we could possibly think
^language appropriate for God. This ’rule’ fonctions in a way that is simUar to
Wittgensteins statement in the ’Lecture on Ethics’ that he would reject any
ascription of significance to the phrase ’absolute value’ from the outset on the
grounds of its significance. The phrase serves. Diamond says, as a prqmjssory
note for a new grammar’. She writes that ’to be a great riddle is to “allude” to a
language whose full transparency to us is ruled ouf.®
Mulhall applies the idea of a ’great riddle’ of the sort Diamond finds in Anselm
to Thomass Five Ways. As with Anselm’s argument, these ate not to be read as
ways of provmg the existence of God. but rather as five ways of lefosing to make
sense. McCabe and BurreU bring a Wittgensteinian sensibUity to Aquinas’s
interest not only.in God. but in the language we use to talk about God,MulhaU
asks If the grammar of the terms through which we reflect upon whether and
how we can talk about God [might] be Just as mysterious as that to which they
Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion 117
aspire impossibly to refer’ (GR 49). Our language about God can never be
adequate, but we can orient ourselves by Thomas’s comment at the beginning of
the Summa Theologiae that theology ‘is chiefly concerned with God, and [with]
creatures considered... in their relation to him, [with] their origin and end’ (ST
la.1.3, ad 1).
The second of Thomas’s Five Ways begins with familiar language of causation.
We know God is not a thing and cannot operate on other things in any of the
familiar ways, but McCabe argues that inquiry into natural causes can lead
legitimately to the idea of God as Creator. Mulhall glosses this as Thomas’s
construction or projection of a ‘grammar’ of a language whose adequacy is
guaranteed by its source, but which we cannot actually mean. We need the idea
of causation to understand the concepts of beginning and end, he writes, and
that sets up a riddle that ‘at once implants a natural projective trajectory for the
^ele^^nt expressions and excludes the possibility that whatever answers to the
resulting linguistic construction... could be any such thingf (GR 53).
Talk about God, like language about absolute value or the propositions of the
Tractatus, is austere rather than substantial nonsense,’,but it also seems to be
construed by Mulhall as productive nonsense. Words used to express absolute
value can be read as an intelligible extension of their uses in broader forms of
human life, even though they have .become, unmoored, from the conditions of
those ordinary uses. We might have to employ a kind of genealogy to capture the
chains of association that allow us to make the relevant connections, but that
makes them spmewhat available. Anselm has constructed a phrâse that is itself
rather austere. Its grammar, even in the sense of ordinary language and logic, is
quite sophisticated, and it operates recursively over the range of conceptions we
might consider. Diamond considers it a riddle that cannot be resolved by any of
our own resources, conceptual or otherwise. It requires and invites a solution
from without. This is different from genealogical connections that can be made
with respect to value terms, but it is a riddle and it inspires a search for a solution,
even though it could never be understood.
In each of these cases nonsense is productive. It is not the kind of nonsense
produced by a string of keyboard strokes recommended for strong passwords. It
is also not the nonsense Noam Chomsky meant to exemplify with his
grammatically correct sentence ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”.’ It is
nonsense that prompts critical reflection and advances inquiry. This is especially
true of Mulhall’s claim that in Thomas’s Second Way reflection on God that
originates in ideas of beginning and end‘implants a natural projective trajectory
for the relevant expressions’. That provides a direction, even a vector, and some
 118 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion 119

guidance for language about Gqd, extending out from familiar patterns of use
sui generis. They don't necessarily arise from and are not restricted to distinctively
whUe acknowledging that it cairnever be adequate.
religious modes of discourse, and those modes cannot be sharply separated from
There is an important diffeftnce between Diamond’s characterization of
others.
Anselm’s argument as a riddle and MuIhaU’s reading of Thomas’s Second Way as
By making this point MulhaU addresses Kai Nielsen’s criticism of
a riddle. Diamond argues that Anselm’s carefhlly constructed nonsense prompts
Wittgensteinian fideists for distinguishing religious language games and forms
recognition of the difference between a concept of necessary existence and
of life sharply from non-religious ones, and he sets the stage for a more accurate
actual teal-existence. Hüs recognition aUows one to see more dearly what is
way of understanding Wittgenstein’s account of language.’^ Wittgenstein’s
before her. In acctird with what she calls Wittgenstein’s realistic spirit, this
signature concepts are themselves used analogically and have different meanings
experience of the'real is-sharply distinguished from a priormabUity to see A
-indifferent contexts. They are more flexible than they might appear from earlier
terrible loss or a surprising joy might 'shoulder ouf our prior categories so that
debates between Nielsen and Phillips, for instance. A language game is not a
we experience something familiar, or perhaps even everything, as if for the first
discrete set of uses governed by a single grammar that consists of rules
time (GR 123'-5).>» MuIhaU’s portrayal of the Second Wayas ariddle emphasizes
determining which meanings are acceptable and which- are not. Such a view
contmuity, not discontinuity, with his image‘of reflection’on ordinary causation
would yield a picture of insular forms of discourse and of life related to one
implanting a natural projective trajectory for language about God. This suggests
another only externaUy.
a more traditional, teleological, reading of Thomas that has no clear counterpart
Ordinary words can be and are etpployed in different contexts with different
m Wittgenstein. Both Diamond and MulhaU recognize continuity as well as
meanings. Different uses of a term in different.contexts don’t-require some
discontinuity, but their different images suggest different emphases.
common feature, but may be related by a chain pf overlapping resernhlances. We
might come to recognize ^ucjt a dj^n qnly by attending to the history of a term
and to previous settings -intwhich it h^ hcen used. Here, as in,his.comments
Analogy and projectibdity about expressing absolute value-by .extending ordinary words beyond the
conditions needed to give them sense, MulhaU writes that something like
Thomas writes that words properly Used to refer to God are neither equivocal
Nietzsdie’s genealogy may be required. In each pf these cases he seem$ to mean
uor univocal, but analogical. The tradition has sometimes ascribed to hito a
retracing intermediate steps by-v^hich a word has come to be used in a certain
doctrine of analogy that aUoWs for calculating the meaning of analogous terms
way. But this is quite different,from Nietzsche’s idea and practice of genealogy.
usfedior God Thb Gramtaatical Ttìomists demystify this doctrine. Mc'Cabe’and
Nietzsche traces contingent historical connections to show how concepts,
BurteUïegard Thomas’s use of the term'analog/as limited and mostly negative,
practices and institutions have been reinterpreted, redirected, transformed, even
the chief pomt of which is that words used about God can have meanings that
hijacked, for purposes other than those they initiaUy served.^^ He undertakes
are neither univocal nor equivocal, but are also not simply metaphors. BurreU
this in the interest of a niore actual, a more truthful, history that might help to
has written-extensively on analogy in a way thal is'expUcitly informed by
advance self-knowledge. MulhaU writes at one point that religious uses of
Wittgenstem.“Mulhall argues thatBurreU’swork on analogy andStanleyCaveU’s
language iUumine ‘something essential to the everyday words upon which the
acCount-of the ways in which words are projected from one context to another
violently transfigurative religious impulse operates, and so [reveal] something
are helpfiil „ot only for ffltiminating religious uses of language, but also for
fundamental to language as such’ (GR 63). This echoes Nietzsche’s language of
clarifying Wittgenstein’s signature concepts like language game! 'grammar’, and
power and mastery in his practice of genealogy, and it would be good to hear
form of life as well as his visions of language and philosophy.
more about what MulhaU means by this violently transfigurative religious
For BurreU. aii analogous term is simply one that-faUs to conform to an
impulse. To understand it might require an analysis quite different from the
account to remains invariant across different contexts. Analogy is a particular
historical tracing of a chain of overlapping resemblances.
example ofwhatCäveU regards asacapacityofwords to pointbeyond themselves
A central feature of MuIhaU’s book is the bringing together of BurreU’s reading
and to be used in quite different settings. Rdigious words, for instance, are not
of Thomas on analogy and Stanley CaveU’s account of the projection of words in
 Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion 121

120 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

PoUowing Thomas, BurreU focuses his discussion of analog on perfection
his ‘Excursus on Wittgensteins Vision of Language’*^ If analogy is, as Burrell
writes, a propensity to employ a word in diverse contexts in spite of acknowledged
differences of meaning, Cavell shows that this practice is not limited to what we
call analogies. Iri Cavell’s ^mple, we learn what it means to feed the cat and the
lions, and thïii come to understand what is'meant by feeding the meter or
feeding our pride. Thesd are projections of words that are tolerated though they
function appropriately ® ^hey are also achievement terms.
were not part of the initiàl meaning. Words are projected into different contexts
and given meanings thaf viere not known ahead of time. 'Iheir meanings are not
circumscribed by particular language gameá. This projectibility of words is
essential to language.
Dinguâge is tolerant, Cavell writes, but ‘not just any projection will be
acceptable,... it is equally thie thaf whàtVill ¿ownt as a legitimate projection is
deeply cdntroUed’.” An îndfefiiiite nuniber of projections is possible, but they are
not arbitrary. Judgements about acceptable meanings require practice and skill
and result from interaction between nature and' culture. Pre>Unguistic natural
reactions may create spontaneous linguistic reactions that in turn have their
effect oft what is felt to be natural. Attention to which words are projectible under
what conditions contributes to’ our understanding and to the development of
dur use of language. It is essential to the projection of a word that it can be made
to proceed naturally, in contrast ’to metaphorical uses tiiat depend upon
interrupting normal directions of projection.
Mulhall makes a good case for tiie fit between Burrell’s reflection on analogy
and Cavell’s focus ón projection. Both reject the idea that judgements about the
prdpnety öf anâîogdus usés or projections of words could be resolved b^rappeal
tb án^ formula of set’of rifles. SUch judgements can’t be settled in advance, but
are'devclôpèd and perfected over time. CaVell’s feflettion'oh the projectibility of
words seNeS to thicken Bm'rell’s account of analogy.
The fifth chapter of The Great Riddle is entitied ‘Perfections and
Transcendentals: Wittgenstein’s Vision of Philosoph/. Mulhall argues that that is
appropriate, eVen though Wittgenstein doesn’t use the terms ‘perfections’ or
‘tfáhscéndentals’ In Mulhalls view, attention to BUrrell’s elucidation of these
terms in Thomas’s account of language about God can help to illumine language
more broädly as well as Wittgensteins conceptions of langúage and of philosophy.
Much of thé chapter is concerned with a careful interweaving of Brnrell’s reading
of Thoftias oft perfections and transcendentals and Cavell’s discussion of the
relation between the projectibility of words and their perfectibility and of his
Emersonian perfectionist conception of the self. I \^nt tb call attention to these
separate strands and to take note, as MiJhall himself does, of tiieir differences.
S==S5S
 122 Wittenstein, Religion and Ethics Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion 123

if a language game is regarded as discrete, isolated, dominated by a monolithic

these issues to be central to Wittgenstein’s worie. Burrdl’j? accounts of language and
grammar, and correlated with a similarly^efinite form of life.
philosophy are deeply informed by Wittgenstein, but his conception of the primary
Burrell and Cavell agree on many points, but their accounts of analogy and
meaning of perfection terms, and MulhaU’s reading of the Five Ways as a riddle
prpjection are developed in different contexts and put to different ends. For
inviting an answer from without, seem quite different from Wittgenstein and Cavdl.
Burrell apd the Grammatical Thomi^ts, the literal or primary meaning of the
Neither of the latter two philosophers posits an antecedently existent primary
word ‘good’ is given by its reference to Qqd. We can reflect on the way in which
meaning and no natural trajectory is established for projection and perfection.
the term functions, but of its primary meaning, its application to God, we know
only that it is always inadequate. WeVe seen that MulhaU reads the Five Ways as
posing riddles the answento which eludes^pur understanding, but they establish
Theology and philosophy
a ‘natural projective trajector/-that points.in the direction of the grammatical
object to which wç can refer only by, the tautologous words. ‘I am who I am’.
In the final chapter MulhaU offers his own account of the proper relation between
CqveU'doesn’t p.osjt^py such primary .meaning. He doesn’t identify particular
philosophy and theology, building, on his analyses of the different ways of
perfection terms, interested in the ways in which language allows, invites,
inheriting Wittgenstein in Diamond, Burrell and Cavell. BurreU, foUowing
and sometimes rejects projection-of words into new contexts with new meanings
Thomas, focuses not only on perfection wçrds, but also on transcendental terms
and in the etiycal andaesthetic implicationspf those projections. Unlike Burrell,
such as ‘one’, ‘true’, ‘being’^.and ‘good’.- As we’ve .seen, MulhaU holds tl^t the
Cavell doesn’t posit or imagine spme fullness of perfection that is beyond further
distinctive nature of these terms is nbt that they catfbe projected across categories
criticism and perfectibility, in which every perfection term might fulfil itself and
like other perfection terms, but that they .refuse restriction to ahy range of
find peace. Ubere is no origin and end of all things.
categorical concepts and are therefore assumed bytany discourse. Burrell, Gavel)
The aim of this practice of projecting and perfecting is, in words Cavell draws
and Wittgenstein all agree that.such terms should be construed not as universals,
from Emerson and Wittgenstein, to bring language back from metaphysics to
with meanings that remain invariant, bût as words^that can be legitimately and
the everyday or the ordinary.'* What is meant by the ordinary? Not what an
fruitfuUy applied analogously across categories. Burrell takes Thomas to be.using
ethnQgraphçi; or lexicographer would record, about our use of language. He
them chiefly as examples, rather than as a fixed set, but he stiU foUows him in
writes of bringing Janguage hack to the eventual ordinary, borrowing a term
treating them as particularly important for understanding religious language.
from John.Dewey.'^ ‘Back’ to an ordinary.thaf js not^giyen. hut is the eventual
MulhaU writes that the key idea of his proposal is ‘to see transcendental terms
result of an endless practice qf critical reflection; revision, and perfecting. Cavell
as a kind of transcending or perfecting of cross-categorical perfection terms,
identifies himsejf writh a kind of naturalism defined not by, science, but by an
which are themselves a kind of perfecting of the projectibility of terms as such’
eventual conception o,f the natural-that acknowledges both the biological and
(GR 106). For him, as for CaveU, projectibility and perfectibiUty are internaUy
the social directions qf Wittgenstein’s forms of life.'*
related so that a comprehension of words and an understanding of self are
.Both Cayell and MulhaU have written informatively on Wittgenstein’s concept
subject to endless deepening, in a mode of appraisal that is at once ethical and
of a criterion. The fact that we have no prior knowledge of what is or is not
aesthetic and not restricted to some specific linguistic domain. MulhaU takes
projectible is not due to the transcendence of the fuUness of good, nor is there
himself to have shown in his reading of Wittgenstein that perfections and
.any ijatural projective trajectory that wiU set us in that direction. In this respect
transcendentals are deeply woven into philosophy, and he regards that as an
Wittgenstein’s .approach differs from that of the Grammatical -Ihomists, even if
argument against any easy dismissal of attempts to project them into a theological
their accounts of the judgement, skiU and practice of analogous usage are similar
context. He then elaborates that argument in an account of the proper relation
and complementary.
between theology and phUosophy.
MulhaU introduces the concept of analogy with the Thomists and they are
PhUosophy is distinguished by its attention to trans-categoricai features of
central to his argument, but they are edipsed in the heart of the book by the care
language, thought, and reality. This develops from the ways in which we move
with which CaveU has addressed issues of projectibility and perfectibility and shown
from judgements of appraisal in specific domains (e.g. chemistry, history or
 124 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
psychology) to examining the assumptions of each category in the light of its
relation to the others, and then to considering reality as a whole. Each of these
steps requires analogous constructions of concepts not strictly determined by
those at the prior level. ‘If the step from category-specific judgement to the cross-
and trans-categorical is legitimate’ iCiulhall asks,‘however peculiarly orthogonal
or analogous it may be, then- what exactly is illegitimate about the equally
peculiar analogous step from the trans-categorical to the theological?’ (GR 109).
How we assess Ûiat move from philosophy to theology depends on what is
meant by the theological. For much of The Book MuÙiall has emphasized the
ways in which religious and theological uses of language differ sharply from
ordinary uses of wordsrin othtr contexts. Diamond On ihc-Tractatus and Anselm
and the Grammatical Thoiriists-onthe impossibility of our comprehension of
words about God make this-point. Words may be projected into new contexts
and take on' meanings that differ greatly from those that they have in their
previous settings, but is that sufficient to legitimize the move from philosophy to
theology? Mulhall portrays this move as a final step in a series of self-reflexive
steps in which terms and categories are constructed and projected beyond their
previous boundaries. It is the fulfilment of this process, the self-overcoming of
philosophy. Iheology is the construction of a ‘perspective’ in relation to which
any philosophical understanding of this process is acknowledged and
transcended as essentially limited or imperfect. It is a perspective from which
any idea of further perfecting is rulèd out.
We might ask; in the spirit of Cavell or Wittgenstein; Why should any step in
that séries be taken to be final? Why can’t it itself be considered a form of
philosophy and, like any other step, subject to critical reflection and liable to and
capable of some further self-overcoming and perfecting in the future? Mulhall’s
answer is that the ‘perspective’ constructed by theology is different from earlier
isteps in the'process of analogous concept-construction. It is not couched in a
language we can understand. It is formulated so as to refuse attempts to give it
sense, as in Burrell’s reading of Thomas’s doctrine that God's essence and
existence are identical as ‘to be God is to be to-be’.*® Of course this doesn’t make
sense. Iris not another step in a recursive series, but a deliberate ‘Stop!* that is
required to express God’s transcendence. But if that is the case, then how can it
be considered a step at all in the enterprise of critical reflection? Isn’t it just a
refusal to play, a refusal of the spirit of the enterprise?
Theology’s sheet existence, Mulhall writes, reveals- an ineliminable but
unappeasable aspiration of philosophy and testifies to its fulfilment. Humans
aspire by their nature to a completeness of understanding that they cannot
Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion 125
realize. Theology discloses philosophy’s aspiration to a God’s-eye view as both
essential to its nature and beyond its grasp. Such a view could be given only as a
gift and grasped only through faith. Anselm’s argument, Thomas’s Five Ways and
Johannes de Silentio’s depiction of God’s command to Abraham in Soren
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Tremblin^° each pose a riddle the answer to which is
not accessible within the conceptual and imaginative resources available to us,
but must be given from without. Theology has no knowledge to impart to
philosophy, Mulhall says, but it does have something to tell it. It can offer witness
or testimony.
Drawing on this idea of a great riddle, Mulhall writes that theology must
possess ‘phrases and formulations that it is compelled to regard as the perfect fit
pnJtimatete/osforthehiunanimpuIsesforwhichperfectionsandtranscendentals
are the expressive vehicle...’ (GR 113). He says that these formulations are fixed
points in a logical space beyond anything we could* conceivably imagine. They
4eserve our attention, even though we can’t assign any sense to them. They must
have absolute authority for us, thejiuthority of revelation.
Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus offers an^ instructive parallel. In the
Philosophical Fragments Qimacus employs a thought experiment, a poetic tale,
and an analysis of what it would mean to think something genuinely other, to
argue for a radical difference and even-complete discontinuity between theology
and philosophy.®* For Climacus theology can provide only witness and scripture
should be read as testimony. He writes elsewhere that he wants to'shqw how
difficult it is to be a Christian and how difficult it is to be an actually existent self,
and that those are not different questions.®® By this he doesn’t mean that to be a
self one must become a Christian. But he thinks, with Mulhall, that there is some
kind of fit between Christian claims about God and frith and what it means to
be an actual human being.
For Gimacus, this fit is not wjth the specific words of scripture. Witness, in
this instance, whether in scripture or elsewhere, is not dependent on either the
truth or the truthfulness of what the testifier has to say. Whether or not he or she
had faith, or even was sincere, has no bearing on the matter (P F 99-105).®® How
could it have any bearing, given the enormity of the Christian claim? What is
important is that it poses a question. It is the paradoxical character of Christian
faith and God that is the fit with what it means to be a self for Climacus, not the
fit of the phrases and formulations of scripture with the tdos of the impulses for
which the perfections and transcendentals are expressions.
Mulhall’s claim that his account of the moves from category-specific to cross-
and trans-categorical judgements in philosophy, and then on to the theological
 126 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
perspective, legitimates the step from the trans-categorical to the theological is
not convincing as it'stands. This assessment need'not come from some reductive
naturalism. Diamond, Mulhall’s reading of the Grammatical Thomists and
erkegaard' aU draw a sharp distinction between religious or theological
langage on the one hand, and that employed ih category-specific and in
phUosophical inquiries on thé otheb^-fhe gulf between them is emphasized in
the book and in the msistence that paradigmatic religious language is without
sense.
MulhaU offers what seem to be two models of this guif and how it might be
crossed. ^ his vision of language and phUosophy, but I don’t find support in Wittgenstein’s
Diamond takeíthelariguagdoftherracíftft« to be austere nonsense requiring
a resolute reading that might effect'a shifr in thi reader's vibw of the world and
m his or her ethical relation tb it. Anselm’s riddlinè phrase is nonsense intended
to rule out concápüons of God and to elicit the insight that its meaning can
confi ofrlyfrom-whatever it turns out to apply to. These, and examples in
Wittpnstems later philosophy, are intended to shoulder out language games
that have hindered us from becoming aware of what is before us. This model is
of a gestalt switch into somè distinct and different view, though it need not
happen instantaneously^^
The other model, from the Grammatical Thomists, is continuous and
teleologici. The primary meanings of our perfection and transcendental terms
when used of God are inaccessible to us. but there are ways to make sense of
them. Gehealogy can show, if bnly in retrospect, theway meanings of the same
term used analogically have change-d hTdifferentbontexts. Thomas's Second Way
according td McCahe and-Mulhail. cab implant a natural projective trajectory
towmd a meaning-that is out of reach. Scriptural formulations such as T am
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first añd the lasf and T am
Who I am are a'perfect fit for the impulses expressed by perfections and
transeendehtals.
The land of reflection CaVell finds in Wittgenstein and exemplifies in his own
work, a finding oneself to be lost or Confiised and an attempt to bring or lead
an^age back to the everyday, mises questions about the aspirations-of
phdosophyiiícludhrgthattoaGoa’s-eyeview.Whatgivesrisetotheseaspirations
and What ddes it mean to say that they áre essential to human nature? What
should We shp about claims to satisfy them, either from within human resources
or from without, and what would Vithouf-mean in this context?
Neifoer Wittgenstein nor Caveli is dismissive about religion or unattuned to
It. But both raise questions that Should make us Suspicious about the aspiration
Wittgenstein, Analog and Religion 127
for a perspective from which any idea of further perfecting is ruled out and
about any philosophical or theological claims to provide that perspective. The
heart of Mulhall’s book seems to lie with Cavell’s account of projecting and
perfecting words and self and with Diamond s reading of Anselm as contributing
to the realistic spirit she finds in Wittgenstein. There is a discrepancy between
these and the contributions of the Grammatical Thomists to the structure of the
book and the argument. MulhaU shows that Burrell and his colleagues are deeply
influenced by Wittgenstein and that their work may be used to cast new light on
work for their theological project
Despite these misgivings, it was a pleasure for me to read Mulhall’s book. In
The Great Riddle he presents an original and sophisticated way of exploiting
resources Wittgenstein offers for an analysis of reUgious and theological language.
Philosophy of religion can take many different forms, but accounts such as this
that engage critically with the best thought and practice of á particular religious
tradition are among the most important.
)
Notes
1 Stephen MulhaU, The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theolo^ and
Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).iiereafler abbreviated in
citations as‘GR’.
2 Herbert McCabe,‘Creation! in God Matters (London: Chapman, 1987), 2-9; David
B. Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1973) and Aquinas: God and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1979). MulhaU also refers to Victor Preller, Divine Science and the Science of God:
A Reformulation of Thomas Aquinas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967).
3 James Conant and Cora Diamond, ‘On Reading the Tractatus Resolutely: Reply to
Meredith Williams and Peter SuUivan’, in Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance, ed. Max
Kölbel and Bernhard Weiss (London: Routledge: 2004), 42-97; Cora Diamond,
•Wittgenstein on Religious Belief The Gulfs between Us’, in Religion and
Wittgenstein^ Legacy, ed. D. Z. Phillips and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Ashgate,
2005),99-137.
4 Cora Diamond, ‘Riddles and Anselm’s Riddle’, in The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein,
Philosophy, and the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 267-89.
5 Anselm’s carefully constructed phrase does not say that God is greater than anything
that can be conceived, but that God is that than which none greater can be
conceived. This is not negative theology.
 128 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

6 Cora Diamond,‘Realism and the Realistic Spirit’, in The Realistic Spirit, 39-72.
7 Diamond, ‘Riddles and Anselm’s Riddle’, 278-80. Diamond (ibid, 289) expresses her
debt to Karl Barth’s Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (Cleveland, OH: World
Publishing Co., 1962). 7
8 Diamond, ‘Riddles and Anselm’s Riddle’, 282.
9 See Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague; Mouton, 1957), 15.
10 For Diamond’s use of the phrase‘being shouldered ouf, see Cora Diamond,‘The Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language
Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of PhUoso_phy:' in Stanley Cavell. Cora
Stephen Mulhall
Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking and Cary Wolfe. Phi/osophy and Animal Life
(New York: Columbia University'Press, 2008), 71.
11 ^\xrxeW, Analogy and Philosophical Thought.
12 Sée Kai NÍe]sen,‘Wt^ensteihian'FideismÍP/»7osop/iy 42 (1967), 191-209.
In my recent book, The Great Riddle^ (a revision of my 2014 Stanton Lectures), I
13 Nietzsche writes: ‘the cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual
sketch a way of understanding talk about God which-I claim is feithful both to
employment and place in a system'of purposes, lie worlds apart; whatever exists,
having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, Thomas Aquinas and to Wittgenstein, in that it draws simultaneously upon, and
taken oyer, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it.. 1 Oo the so amounts to a synthesis of, two Wittgensteinian sources or models: his remarks
Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kauftnann (New York: Random House, 1967), about judgements of absolute value in the ‘Lecture on Ethics’, anti his use of
Second Essay, §12. riddles as a lens through which'to grasp the status of mathematical conjectures.
14 Stanley Cavell, The Claim ofReason (New York: Oxford University Press 1979) In its epilogue, I reported an initial sensçof consonance between these lectures
168-90. and Rowan Williams’ 2013'Göford tectures (published as Thé^Edge of Words:
15 Ibid., 182-3. God and the Habits of Language^)', although I suggested that it might take either
16 Stanley Cavell,‘Declining Decline’, in This Newyei Unapproachable America another book, or a revision of every chapter in my own book, to bring this out.
(Alberquerque, NM: Living Batch Press, 1989), 29-75. Receiving the invitation to participate in the conference out of-which*this edited
17 See Stanley Cavell. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of volume has grown, in the knowledge that Professor Williams would also attend,
Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press. 1990) 21
encouraged me to revisit that suspicion; and I now hope that the briefer span of
18 Stanley CavelI.‘Posßcript(2002) to “TheEveryday Aesthetics of
an essay might at least further darify that sense of consonance. To do so, however,
Itsdr; in Natumlisfk^iñ Question, eU Mäfio De Caro and David Macarthur
I must first summarize my own argument.
(Ç^ibridge, MA: Harvard University Press', 2004), 275-9.
19 EurreU,Aquinas:God'andAction,24,42:Cf.ST la.3.4.
20 Soren Kierkegaard, Pear and Trembling. Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de silentio
[1843] (London: Penguin, 1985). Absolute value, riddles and great riddles
21 Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments; Johannes Climacus (Princeton. NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1985). Its first source is Wittgenstein’s distinction between a relative and an absolute
22 See esp. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical mode of evaluative judgements. Take someone who claims to feel safe. Ordinarily,
Fragments [1846] (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). this is a relative judgement: it is a daim to feel safe from something - a rabid
23 Mulhall, however, writes that testimony in this instance presses our ordinary use of dog, a threat to one’s reputation, a tsunami; what it means to be safe is thus
the term to its analogous limits, placing an absolute burden of responsibility on the determined by the specific threat, and we can always envisage what our current
one who testifies as well as on the one to whom one testifies (GR 114-15). safety in fact depends upon, andhow those fectual conditions might be otherwise.
24 Not between theological language and ordinary language, because Mulhall But if L daim to feel absolutely safe, I invoke an idea of safety that is essentially
understands religious language to be withih the realm of the ordinary. imconditional - that is not a matter of being safe from anything in particular,
hence is not keyed to any particular threat, and so is not vulnerable to any change
 130 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
of contingent circumstances or conditions, hence could not conceivably be
overcome or subverted.
In effect, a femUiar use of evaluative words has here been recast in such a way
as to deprive us of our famüiar way of making sense of it. And for Wittgenstein,
this lack of coherence is their distinguishing mark: the verbal expressions of
experiences of absolute value are essentially lacking in sense (and not because
they are incoherently attempting to refer to phenomena in a transcendental
re m). But as Cora Diamond has pointed out. accepting this resolute reading of
absolute value judgements is entirely consistent with seeing their employment as
intelligibly motivated, and so as possessed of significance - a significance they
pdssess fpr their users (not despite but) by virtue of their nonsensicaUty.^ For if
such a speaker finds'sàtisfaction precisely in refusing any available assignments
ofmeaningloherwords,thenunderstandingher means understanding why she
might find such assignments essentially unsatisfying.
In .both the Tractatus and the later lecture.- the specific kind of meaning-
assignment to ethical utterances that is being resisted is that characteristic of
fact-stating, empirical discourse in general, and of empirical psychological
iscourse m particular. Hence, the unconditional nature of.the refiisal indicates
a sense of absolute discontinuity between this conception of the ethical and
the empirical world. Evaluating threats can be understood perfectly well in
naturdistic terms; so can the use of language to alter people’s feelings and
attitudes, or to express adherence to prescriptive principles, or to guide action.
So by refusing to accept any such assignments of sense to his utterances about
absolute value..Wittgenstein draws a sharp contrast between two kinds of evU
(and hence two kinds of good): in Diamond’s words, 'evU as something
inconsequential or close to home... something [not] very bad which one could
get accustomed to’ and evil as ’something terrible, black and whoUy alien that you
cannot even approach’^ ’ yet somehow haunts them: that is why, however much violence we must do to
Recall the Grimm Brothers-feiry tale about the fisherman who rescues a magic
ounder. who then offers to grant his rescuer whatever he wishes; the fishi-rm^w.
mfe begms by asking for a better home and ends by expressing dissatislhcfion at
the suns and the moon’s rising independently of her will - at which point a
cosmicaUy destructive storm arises from the flounder’s ocean and returns her to
the pigsty m which they had originaUy been living. Being dissatisfied at living in a
pigsty IS not. only not evU. it may even seem essential to anyone’s sense of self-
respect; so the wife’s tiansitioft to her climactic dissatisfection may appear to be
seairiessly comprehensible. But to see her final demand as the endpoint of some
mteUigible process of moral deterioration, one must overlook the feet that wanting
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 131
the world to conform to her will amounts to wanting it not to be a world at all; it
requires the unintelligible idea of her occupying God’s perspective on the world.
To see in this nothing more than an unwise but understandable over-extension of
an essentially healthy self-regard would be to obliterate the distinction between
genuine human needs and world-extinguishing hubris.
The early Wittgenstein’s removal of thought and talk about the good and evil
will from the empirical realm is another way of marking that contrast - one of a
number of possible techniques of language through which it might be indicated
and maintained. The dissatisfection of the fisherman’s wife is akin to that of the
unhappy man of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (6.43), who is dissatisfied at the world
regardless of how things go within it, hence not so much dissatisfied with how that
world is as with the bare fact of its existence, with its sheer independent reality -
its refusal to meet the conditions he lays down, to submit to. his control. Ihe
discontinuity is manifest in the unintelligibility of the dissatisfection (for what
would it be like if the world did apswer to the conditions either lays down?); and
yet, both techniques for marking it simultaneou^y acknowledge an underlying
continuity.
The cosmic dissatisfection of the fisherman’s wife is intuitable even in her
initial desire to have a cosy little house rather than a pigsty: the tale explicitly
marks this by noting that the ßea is already feintly discoloured and mildly
turbulent when the fisherman brings his wife’s first wish to the flounder’s
attention, quite as if the world-annihilating storm she eventually unleashes is
already gathering its energies.. So the wife’s catastrophic hubris is at once
something absolutely out of the ordinary, and yet always already lurking beneath
the surface of the most innocuous expressions of human will. Her terrible evil is
essentially irreducible to everyday moral and psychological .understanding, and
their familiar modes of use, it is precisely these words (the ones we employ
to talk intelligibly about intra-worldly objects of desire and dissatisfection) to
which the violence must be done if what we intend by our utterance is to be
satisfied. Nothing other than the failure of sense resulting from that violence
could convey the simultaneous continuity and discontinuity we mean to capture;
jt is the unintelligibility of these forms of words that alone can articulate the
resistance of such evil to our comprehension.
'Ihe words that comprise expressions of absolute value thus remain devoid
of sense; but we can make sense of their being so employed, and so of those
employing them, if we can see their lack of sense in this evaluative context as a
denial or deconstruction of the sense they make in other evaluative contexts - as
 132 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
stripping away of those specific patterns of sense-making. We relate to them
not aa simply lacking sense but as lacking that particular sense, as deprived of or
refusing that famihar meaning (so that each bare mark is marked by the present
ivoTl r '^hich its user’s refusal necessarUy
nvokes). This IS not a matter of grasping the peculiar internal logic of an
^«s^n of absolute value (since it has none), but of grasping what Nietzsche
ight caU Its genealogy; we appreciate the peculiar significance of uttering such
of the broader forms of
human life within which the words uttered have uses whose internal logic and
veraU significance can be more straightforwardly grasped.
My secofid source is Wittgenstein’s comparison of a mathematical conjecture
atlacks aproof to a riddle for which #e have not found a solution (cf.LFM 84)
Suppose I ask: mat has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in
the ovenmg. To solve this riddle, you need to know more than what that form of
being might be seen as fitting that description, how those words might be seen
^ a descripuon of human existence. If so. then until we have the solution toT
Jfnt’ T k ^ T Of how it counts as a solution to it. to that
«ent we lack an understanding of the riddle phrase that the question employs,
so lack an understanding of the question. It may seem clear in advance thm
»y solubon will have to meet certain conditions - for example, that if something
has four legs, it must have more than two legs; but that would (falsely) imply that
the solution to our riddle cannot be a human being. In other words, we no more
understand the fiirther cohditions we might impose on a solution to our riddle
4an we understand the riddle’itself: part df grasping its solution ns n so
lose ‘h--»ciUar^ conditions, and so
those conditions cant be said to control what wUlcount as a solution
“®"8"hient with the riddle is controlled by
ZlZ: hi ourlanguagcon the basis of which thi
riddle phrase has been constructed. In this case, there are existing patterns of
eniploying number words, of describing animal anatomy and its supplements
and o measurmg time; and familiar ways of extending those patterns - for’
^ple. comparing different ways of measuring time (measuring the course of
atZZf Z "=“ding a solution to the Sphinx’s riddle
are nm k ^ *»ae patterns onto it; we
arenotseefangsomethmgofwhichwehavebeengivenadeterminatedescription
t something that it will strikt us as right to call by the riddle phrase The
famUiarityof the phrase’s construction, and ofits grammatical connections with
Riddles, Nonsense and Religions Language 133
other phrases, orients our seeking, and gives the phrase whatever meaning we
wish to say that it has at this pre-solution stage; but we cannot simply read off
what we will be prepared to count as its solution, or indeed whether there is one.
Wittgenstein sees an analogy here with our relation to a mathematical
conjecture that lacks a proof. By fixing its place in the system of mathematical
propositions, a proof gives the conjecture a determinate meaning it hitherto
lacked, although the task of seeking a probf of it is given such orientation as it has,
and so the conjecture has whatever meaning we may wish to say that it has for
US-prior to the construction of that proof, by virtue of our familiarity with other
mathematical concepts and procedures on analogy with which the conjecture has
been constructed. And Diamond suggests® that Anselm’s ontological argument
can be illuminatingly regarded as a working out of just such promissory
connections in the domain of theology, with respect to the riddle phrase ‘that than
which nothing greater can be conceived’ (hereafter TTWNGCBC).
That phrase is constructed on the basis of a familiar model (great, greater,
greatest, greatest conceivable); and Anselm draWs-upon existing'linguistic
connections between lacking something, being limited, being dependênt, coming
into existence and having a beginning in ofder to establishlhatlf we were to call
anything TTWNGCBC, then it would be something thkt had no-beginning.
We understand ‘something that has ncf beginning* aâ much and as little as'we
understand ‘TTWNGCBC’; the link we’ establish between them is the outer
shell of a necessary connection in a language we do not yet know how to speak.
We are entertaining Umiliar words combined in a femiliar pattern, holding open
the possibility of a new language-game in which that word-shape has a place and
in^which we might find ourselves at home; but if that possibility were realized, it
would be the discovery of a logical space, not a discovery within one.
Anselm’s emphasis on the difference between existence in the understanding
and existence in reality then appears as a (potentially misleading) way of
distinguishing between ideas that we can, and those that wc cannot, conceive of
being the result of human inventive capacities. He wants to emphasize that our
conception of what is possible might itself be shown up by reality - that reality
might show us not only that something is the case that we imagined was not,
but that something beyond what we had ever taken to be possible, something
beyond anything we could imagine as possible, was actual. If there were anything
answering to that condition, it must also be such that we could not imagine it
never having existed. For if we could, then we could separate the idea of it from
its actuality, could make sense of the possibility of its being a mere possibility to
which nothing actual happened to correspond; but then we could conceive of
.11 III 11

134 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
something greater than it - something whose actuality is a condition for the
possibility of conceiving it, something without which it is inconceivable that we
could possess a language of any kind for it. Hence, anything we were willing to
count as TTWNGCBC would have to be something whose non-existence
could not be conceived, something tìiat is conceivable only on condition of its
actuality.
In the case of ordinary riddles, and mathematical proofs, Diamond argues
that it is only when we discover a solution to. the riddle, and how it counts as a
solution, that we fully understand the question the riddle poses; before this, the
relevantphraseshaveonlypromissorymeaning.Butin the caseof TTWNGCBC,
Anselm establishes that every statement we can make about it can only have a
promissory meaning; the full transparency of that language to us is ruled out,
because if yre could fully grasp its meaning now, then we could conceive of
something greater than whatever those words describe (namely, something
iyhose nature exceeds the grasp of any concepts of which we can even conceive).
Andof course that form of words (‘something whose nature exceeds the grasp
of any concept of which we can even conceive’) is no more fiilly transparent
to us than any other form of words to. which it is ‘grammatically’ linked, via
the outer shell* of a ‘necessary connection. All are ‘allusions’ to a ‘language’ we
cannot even conceive of speaking before actually finding ourselves in a position
to: speak it - a language given to us by the being to whom it applies, and whose
revelation of himself will effect the radical conversion of all our existing concepts
of him»
The phrase TT WN.GCBG thus stands in need of a determination of meaning
which must come not from us but from-whateyer it turns out; to apply to. Since
ordinary riddle phrases can be given meaning by us, insofar,as we can find a way
of meaning them, Diamond talks of riddle phrases such as,T*TWNGCBC as
embodying a great riddle (alluding thereby to Wittgenstein’s Tractarian invocation
of the‘question’ of the meaning of life (TLP 6.4312,6.52), which he tells us will
remain even were we to arrive at answers to all our articulable, grammatically
coherent questions, and to which he tells us there is no conceivable solution, only
a dissolution of the question).
My synthesis of the two Wittgensteinian sources discussed above is effected
by applying them to Aquinas along lines inspired by Grammatical Thomists such
as David Burrell and Herbert McCabe. I argue that the whole project of the
Summa can be seen as a creative response to the enigmatic authority of one
particular riddling phrase from scripture - one amongst many scriptural and
doctrinal shapes of truth that Aquinas treats as divinely authorized or inspired
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 135
acts of speech, hence as aspects of God's revelation of Himself to us. but whtch
tìrerefore necessarily present themselves to us as inherently mystertous or
enigmatic. This anchoring phrase is introduced very early m Aqumas treatmen
ofhis first question.'the nature and scope of sacred doctrine^havmg^gued tot
we required instruction from divine revelation not only to supplement the
disclosures of human reason, but also to place reason's deliverances in the right
light, in Article 3 he declares that 'Sacred doctrine ... is chiefly concerned with
God. and it turns to creatures considered as being in relation to him. their origin
and end' (ST la.1.3, ad 1).‘ The Scriptural basis for such a characteriration o
God lies in passages such as this, from the Book of Revelation (22il3)i I am
Alpha and Omega, the beginnmg and the end. to first and to last.
The opening question which orients to Summa (with its »partite structure
embodying a vision of aU reality as flowing from and eventually returning to i
divine source) thus takes its bparings from tot Biblical phrase - treating it as its
own alpha and omega; and therest «f to Summa attempts to make such sense
of tot riddle phrase as is possible..by working out the promissory connections
between this phrase and as many as possible of to other riddling shapes of truth
bequeathed to us by scripture and tradition, given to concepts and procedures
more generaUyavaUabletous.He thereby constructs the'gramraarofalanguage
whose adequacy to to,divinerealityisguaranteedbytoauthor.tyof Its source
but which we are not and cannot bdinaposition simply to speak.’Weundersto
that God is to solution to all to riddles out of which this language has been
woven, but not/low He is.
The Five Ways are Aquinas' initial attempt to impose conditions on to tad
of solution to that riddle that we might accept. If we are wiUing to caU anything
■the beginning and end of all things', would we be wiUing to caU it a thmg - an
object, a substance, an individual particular? WeU; according to Thomas best
understanding of thinghood. any thing is alterable, capable of causmg alteration
in other things only insofar as it is capable of being made subject to their causal
efficacy, capable of going out of existence, imperfect and capable of bemg subject
to the goal-directedness of others. In one sense, therefore, the realm of thmj
gives content to the very idea of-beginnings' and'ends' out of which the riddle
phrase is constructed; without a grasp of alteration and its causes, contingent as
opposed to necessary existence, and the way in which values am fiinction as
standards and goals, and so bring things and activities into bemg for to sake o
fiilfiUing an end. we would have no initial grasp on the riddle phrase^ Bu
precisely because that initial grasp is conditioned by its applicabUity to thmgs
amidst other things (that is. as part of a world in which what alters or destroys a
 136 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
thing, what shows it to be lacking or puts it to goal-directed use, is some other
thing), appreciating that fact has two consequences.
First, it naturally generates the impulse to put together the ideas of beginning
and ending in a less conditioned or relative way - to construct the concept of
something that is (not the beginning or ending - whether causal or teleological
^ of some particular thing or things but) the beginning and end of all things.
And second, it entails that*anything añswering to that description could not
itself be a thing: for thén some other thing could in principle constitute its
beginning or end. Accordingly, whilst we couldn’t have constructed the idea of
‘the beginning and end of all things'except out of our conception of what it is to
be a thing amongst other things, that point of origin at once implants a natural
projective trajectory for'the relevant expressions and excludes’the possibility
that whatever-answers to the rÄulting linguistic construction (what fulfils the
intellectual desire articulated thereby) could be any such thing.
If‘the beginning and end of all things’ cannot be a thing, then it cannot have
the ciîifological profile of a thing. And the Five-Ways implicitly spell out what
Aquinas takes to be the crucial aspects or dimensions of that ontology: the
distinction between matter and form (integral to the First and Second Ways),
the distinction between essence and existence (implicit in the Third Way), and
the distinction between a thing’s present actualization of the norms and ends
internal to its nature and the fullest possible such realization (invoked in the
Fourth and Fifth Ways). These elaborate our core concéption of what it is for a
thing to have a nature, a particular manner or mode of being; and they display
that and how any given thing is necessarily open to other things (necessarily
tapablê of variously affecting and being affected by them) in th‘e system of
naturè. If such division's or diïemptiofls - such structural multiplicities - are
internal to thinghOod, then ‘àie beginning and end of àll things’ must lack them:
wheiè things suffer a kind of non-self-ideritity, one mi^t say,‘the beginning and
end of all things’ must bé genuinely self-idSntical - wholly one, absolutely simple.
Herd, the process'of condition^construction for this Biblical riddle phrase
makes contact with another such phrase - on&that Aquinas cites immediately
before developing his Five'Ways: ‘Exodus represents God as saying,“! am who
anf [Eio'dus 3:14]’ (SÍ la.2.3). This gréât tautology inimediately déniés that,
with respect to the beginning and end of all things, one could make a distinction
between essente âlid existence; but since such a deiiial entails denying the
applicability of the distinttions between form and matter and telos and actuality,
it confirms what our imaginative conjecture based on the riddle phrase from
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 137
Revelation independently displays - divine simplicity. And this is the insight
from which Aquinas begins in his third Question, which orients the rest of his
treatment of our ability to know and name God in the Summa.
David Burrell formulates Aquinas’ way of formulating the Exodus tautology
as follows: ‘to be God is to be to-be’; or, slightly more telegraphically; ‘to be
God is to be’.^ Wittgensteinians such as Anthony Kenny and Bede Bundle find
it hard to imagine anything more radically absurd or lacking in sensé;® but
sheer nonsensicality is precisely the point. The Five Ways taken individually
or collectively, or the Biblical phrases that orient Aquinas’s treatment from its
outset, are exemplary instances of great riddles; and what distinguishes great
riddles from mere or simple riddles is that an intelligible answer to them is not
just a leap of the imagination away (as it is for the princess who, told to come to
the ball neither clothed nor uitclothed, attends, wearing a fishing net). On the
contrary, their significance for us as questions depends on*our excluding a priori
the possibility that we might construct a satisfactory answer to them out of our
own resources.
Take the Second Way. If the radical causal question it articulates (not ‘Why
this as opposed to not-this?’ but racier ‘Why this as opposed to there being
nothing at all?’) is itseif a great riddle, it has such sense as we are inclined to
attribute to it by virtue of our familiarity with the concepts and procedures of
causal explanation on analogy with which it has been constructed; and one
condition we impose on the kind of answer to the’question that we are willing
to accept is that the creator of everything cannot possess or'instantiate a kind
of causal power (since our everyday grasp of causal explanation tells us that
causation is a process by which one thing is made to be or to be otherwise by the
operation of another thing upon it or upon that from which it is made). But it is
not just that divine Creation ex nihilo is necessarily not any kind of human
creative activity; it is equally essential that the very meaning of the word‘Creation’
in this context is not the result of human linguistic creativity. For if that phrase
forms part of a great riddle, its meaning can only be given to us, and by the very
Being to whom it will at last successfully refer (when, and only when, we meet
Him face to face); and one way of expressing that conviction is to refuse to accept
any proffered specification of a grammar for these words, precisely on the
grounds that doing so would confer intelligibility upon them. Faith herewith
finds a use for nonsense that is significantly different from the (primarily ethical)
one we explored in the Tractatus and the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, and yet not
unrelated to it.
 138 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Silence speaks: Three glances at the 2013 Gifford Lectures
At first glance. Rowan Wffliams’ Gifford Lectures seemed uncannily close to
my own Stanton Lectures. Looking at the first chapter alone, the issues and
reference poiiits'touched on include: the Atraordinariness of ordinary speech,
the limitations of a descriptive model fot religious discourse. Aquinas, pushing
everyday modes of causal explanation to the point at Which we are compelled to
change linguistic géâr. Wingehstein. analogical uses of words, Cavell, difficulties
of reality,conversationale&hanges.riddles;pivelation.Kenny.ohJects understood
as mforiMd matter dependent on pure activity, excessive or projective speech, the
mtellect tóing ordered to What it cdnnot know, and so ajrparently endlessly on.
A s&ond glance suggested, hoWeverl that these shared elements were in fact
bemg organized or ordefed towards an end that might be the exact opposite of
the One to which'my hoOk attefnpted to direct them. To he sure. Williams begins
by rejecting the suggestion that we should
portray God and God’s dealings with the world as simply another ‘department’
of description: here is an ^ent with these properties and habits, to be added to
the list of other agents with properties and habits[, as if] God ‘comes in’ as an
extra item in our routine description of what is the case.
EW4
For him, speaking of God is characteristically or primitively something quite
other than this; indeed, it ‘comes in’ by demanding a linguistic response that
disrupts such descriptive routines. But he immediately emphasizes, two points.
First, there are many
moments in our femUiar perception and discourse where familiar description
ms... because something is apparently demanded of us - in order to make an
adequate Hnguistic response to our situation - which is not just another attempt
to describe agencies negotiating with each other or combining to effea a specific
outcome. It is not only that answers fafi to come - we hâve to think again about
the questions. Second, we need to explain why a response to this 'something
demanded of us’ is not properly understood as an arbitrary move,.drawing us
away from precision, labour or indeed truthfulness.... It is more like putting the
question, ‘What sort of truth can be told only by abandoning most of our norms
of routine description?’
EW 5-6
Williams devotes separate chapters to various exemplary aspects of our ordinary
practices as speakers in which those norms are abandoned or otherwise put in
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 139
question in order to respond truthfully to reality’s demands. Beginning with a
reminder of our freedom as language users (the feet that our speech is not
reducible to patterns of stimulus and response, and so not comprehensible as
behaviour determined by the causal impact of given elements or states of affeirs),
he goes on to stress the temporality of speech (its insights being achievements
of successive exchange that are always open to fresh events of speaking and
hearing), its embodiedness (its rootedness in equally provisional and open-
ênded physical transactions), its excessiveness (its deployment of creative forms
of utterance that enlarge language by making us strangers to ourselves and
our world) and its capacity for silence (for suspending itself as a strategy for
furthering the goals of truthful response rather than abandoning them).
Williams calls these phenomena 'modes of representation rather than
description: where descriptions are a mapping exercise designed to produce a
traceable structural parallel between what we say-arid what we perceive, usually
with a view to manipulating it, rèprese’ntationS"seek to embbdy, translate, make
present or re-form what is perceived’ (EW 22). So represehtâtidnsr'retain an
orientation to truth, without purely reproducing or imitating discrete elements
of the world or our ejq)erience of it; they answer to somdthiñg largely irrelevant
to prediction and control, something ñiore like a sheer desire to understand and
to enlarge the repertoire of communication. In his first chapter hé cites a-range
of contexts (in Western and Eastern religion, in science, in art) in which this
ideal of description-disrupting responsiveness finds analogical expression;
and he suggests that its pervasive enactment in our life as speakers suggests a
metaphysical vision of reality as ‘a continuum of "analogical” relations in which
we can speak of one thing in terms of another, of [relations of] participation
existing between not only object and object in the world but between object and
representing subject* (EW 20). This is because to represent anything presupposes
that something of what is perceived can ‘come to be’ in another medium - that it
has a characteristic form of action or energy (‘energeia’) that can be activated
within another phenomenal shape, and so can in some ways be more clearly
apprehended when transplanted from its original embodiment to another
context.
To illustrate such ‘playing away from home’, Williams invokes the lion-men
statuettes produced in the Ice Age era of Homo sapiens’ evolution: figures with
lions’ heads and human bodies partly shaped in leonine form. They are depictions
of one thing seen as another thing, thereby at once blurring the boundaries
between lions and humans and sharpening our grasp of both; and they indicate
the active presence of a mind capable of conforming itself to both things in ways
 140 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
that do not stmply reproduce them but create a newhybrid conception - a mode
of reaponstveness to reality that ia the oppoaite of the merely playfhi, or more
precisely that reveals such creatíve. excessive play to be a way of laboriously and
igomualyachie™gdeeperunderatandingofreality.andof contributing thereby
to die. materially and temporally embodied communicative exchanges that
TumM beta¡ *°®«-=h“racteristic forms of activity of the
To sum-up. them although Wilhams regards talk of God as coming into
everyday discoursein a way that unsetdes such discourse’s descriptive routines
he emphasize^that it is not only talk about God that has this kind of disruptive
ffect (and so that reUgious,.discourse is mot uniquely out of step with an
otherw^e resolutely descriptive linguistic drive),and he spends most of his time
«^mmg die ways in which so-called ordinary speech is in feet shot through
. a variety, of such non-reiigious representative registers, consciously
exc ssive oreccentric modes of responsiveness to reality. Together.-they imply a
reta,on between knower and object of knowledge in which the latter is acL
eyond the gçasp of the knower. but in a way which provokes, us to/ethink how
t^igibk hinterland belongs to every percept, then our experience suggests
that reality consistendy gives itself tobe known. The activity w, meet in o^ects
IS congruent with our own. and so represents a feature of activity as such, of
canah^ 'h ’ “a.a presence that eniarges our
c pa ityandservesoqrwelfere. It suggestsaprior reality of address, to wL we
aiways subsequent and wWçh wq are always seeking to receive appropriately.
[Tj he indeterminate diversity of représenta,ionai postibUity points us towards
™ r “"“ink. raysrooted in Z
Uigible, and also active in bestowing its activity on and in whi it is not The
TZlT t 7 “nsiderations are spelled out is, ultimately, that
‘bM “d beneficent
EW 32
If this summary is accurate. WUliams’ argumentative strategy and my own
h ^ of representation relates
to truth, knowledge and sense-making in a way my approach resists Táke his
treatment of riddles.andofAquinas’'SecondWay. WUliams expliciiiy cites riddles
m tas árst chapter, when arguing that both descriptive ahd representative modes
of speech presuppose schemata of understanding. A schema is ’a complex of use
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 141
and association or resonance and recognition patterns or habits’ (EW 23); and
fon Williams there is an irreducible plurality of them. "Ihey are not quickly
exhausted, and we cannot say in advance just how diverse their range might be;
we can only try them and see.
An overwhelming number of cultures deliberately push this as a social and
intellectual game: how obscure can you get before recognition disappears? Hence
the riddles so popular in pre-modem cultures, in which elaborate metaphorical
strategies are consciously developed to make recognition difficult, and so to
extend still further the range of what can become part of a communicative
exchange.... [W] e couldn’t say in advance how many possible riddling ‘kennings’
there might be for femiliar objects.... [T]here is an indeterminate - or, perhaps
better, underdetermined - element in representation so understood.
EW 26-7
Riddles here function as one way in whi,ch the creative human imagination
might deepen our understanding of reality and of one another. 'They exemplify
exactly what Wittgenstein’s invocation^ of. them in attempting to understand
mathematical conjecture exploits: their ability tp prompt the di§cover)^,of a ijew
logical space rather than, a new discovery within an established logical,space. In
this respect, riddles fit neatly wiAin Williams’ investigation of excessive speech.
He begins that chapter.with ^ quotation from Margarçt-Masterman: ‘Paradox is
the most extreme kind of metaphor, just as metaphor is the most extreme kind
of simile’;® since Williams has already implied that riddles are an extreme kind of
metaphor, they would presumably be located towards' the paradox end of
Masterman’s spectrum, and thereby exemplify the ways in which paradox can be
a vehicle of enhanced insight.
With all of this, I would heartily agree. But Williams’ account does not mark a
distinction that is pivotal to my own, and so to my understanding of talk about
God - the distinction between riddles and great riddles. His interest in riddles
seems exclusively directed to that use of them in which it is in principle possible
to construct an answer to them, and thereby maintain the possibility of intelligible,
truthful discourse about reality employing the relevant riddle phrases. Whereas I
argue that it is internal to the riddle phrases that are central to talk about God
that the possibility of assigning a sense to them is excluded a priori, for the
purposes they serve require that we maintain a relation to them as having been
violently dispossessed of any such sense.
A parallel sense of divergent goals likewise appears to surface in Williams’
opening discussion of Aquinas and his Ways, particularly the Second.
 142
Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 143
*' T” » *• p-
exist as a discrete subject of predication is to depend’) is not treated as a mere
relations of dependence- if denf T'' we encounter is involved in
anything at all, are we bound to findTr^U^ooLg fov7l restatement of the grammatical relation. It is rather said to evoke or gesture to
that which is depended on (by any or all finite beings), even though we can’t
some sort of global dependence? fTlf > • ^^ language to express
p«* I..U formulate a sensible question as to what is thereby evoked or gestured to.

result of a process of .nm. ‘ contmgent, i.e. the But doesn’t our inability to formulate such a question show that we can’t
definition of finite and in'teUieiblVb'^^ *^th ** '® P^rt of the intelligibly think of Williams’ proposal as evoking or gesturing to anything either?
Williams seems to think that the relevant question isn’t sensible because it

•f —-i" “rite;“'"“*'' "“-

character of ener^a!:X^:r Ten™'

not as the résuit of'a process of exchangei’lf wemovItaftaTd*^ T

not seek for another obWf tn i r
anything SomTJn. ? of
with the language o^dependenœTt
frame of reference that we use to de^
built in to the structure of all possibl
saiying that to be anything intelligible It ms'tob
that, but this would ... ignore the nn,.ci-
this comprehensive statement And the f
such and in sum is
predication is to depend So tha^whichl
doesn’t depend because we have no
presupposes that we are seeking a sort of thing, when we have left that discursive
frame behind; but since not all speech is descriptive in that way, he thinks that
leaves open the possibility of moving forward as speakers in another way, in a
direction... we do different linguistic gear - that of evoking or gesturing. In short, such religious
t evocations of that upon which everything depends, of enei^ as such, of being,
are genuinely truth-seeking modes of representing reality, hence intelligible ways
^
of responding linguistically to what is givpn to us as comprehending beings.
relations. If dependence is
This sense that Williams wants to ^e.talk about God as basically continuous
we are
with the other disruptiye but nevertheless intelligible representative modes and
k ^
^ whether and how we 'frame’ strategies he discusses in his book is confirmed by the qualms he expresses about
Preller’s claim that the human intellect is ordered to a reality it cannot, know.
H ''' .Williams first warns that this fl,at formulation damagingly ignores the complexities
of what knowledge might mean; then he says that
the process we are seeking to characterize is one in which we are brought to a
point where to go on speaking at all requires a shift of expectation, away from the
assumption that there will be a point of descriptive closure.... When we
EW9-I0
acknowledge the impulse to continue when ‘ordinar/ description is done with,

.-.«rxn’LX’rr ■~7 * “• » ™ «-
Take the example of enersv on tb/ u u ”'8^*
energywee„coLerisT2L:„t:::;tir“”^"'”°^^^^^^^
there is no such thing as enerev tab • ■ 1
he appears to suggest that we^n b”
as such. We don’t have to do so: we lol^d'simply t,°“b
grammatical relation between energy and
note the grammatical relation betwem finJLinT^^’ Td^" T
says that stopping in this wav inno 1 ^ ®
■frame’such a comprehensiyestatemi. WaTI^ciüyWr
"“ ‘ -"a.« - w»Lr
we ... seek a register for speaking in this situation [that] might indeed be
described as a ‘yielding to what we know*... looking for a discourse that can be
acknowledged between speakers.
EW 8-9
® •™P''““™i>bly by definition
But the difficulty encountered with religious talk of'energy that is not involved
but then
in exchanges or of that on which all beings depend’ is not generated merely
»efgy
by the mistaken expectation that they’re meant descriptively, and so can’t be
V ^ ^
resolved simply by seeing that they’re really functioning lepresentationally. The
difficulty is that their significance for us in this context lies in our dismantling
dependence. But he also
(and thereby evoking) their descriptive meaning, and refusing to assign any
™
other kind (representational or otherwise). If the significance of such God-talk
is precisely that it is constructed by removing just the conditions that confer
sense on it in everyday contexts, then its significance is not best described as a

144 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
way of going on speaking non-descriptively; it is a way of not going on speaking
(descriptively or otherwise). It is not a mode of discourse, but a mode of
‘discourse’ - discourse deconstructed. In short, Williams seems to present talk
about God as one amongst a heterogeneous range of intelligible modes of
linguistic representation that disrupt our routine descriptive concerns, however
distinctive it may be; whereas I want to suggest that at least core regions of
such talk about God are essentially discorttinuous with sense-making, whether
descriptive or representative. Otherwise put: if these kinds of talk about God
count as'modes of representation in Williams’ sense, then either that category
elides an important distinction (between eccentric or excessive modes of
sense-making and refusals of sense, between riddles and great riddles), or it
misapprehends the distinttive way in which talk about God disrupts speech.
Even this'second glance at Williams’ argument is not, however, enough to
conclude thkt he and I are hmdamentally at odds on these matters. To begin
with, my own account of the nonsensicality of talk about God lays much stress on
the continuities between more everyday modes of language use and the uses to
which religious believers resort. First, there are the internal relations between
nonsensical religious discourse and its intelligible kindred, the kind found in
ordinary, transparent religious language-games and practices of the kind on
which D. Z. Phillips and others concentrate. It is only in the context provided
by the latter - the context of a religious form of life - that the sense-rejecting
practices upon which I concentrate could have the significance I claim to discern.
In addition, I devote two lectures to arguing that analogous religious uses of
language (to which the nonsensical ones belong) tap ipto the basic nature of
words as projective (always already open to new contexts of use), and so into the
inherent relatedness of meaning in our forms of life with language. Given my
focus on Wittgenstein, I use such phenomena as femily resemblance and
secondary sense to exemplify the phenomenon; but many of the phenomena
Williams discusses would work equally well for my argument.
Such continuity is in feet inherent in my argument that the relevant kinds
of talk about God are constructed by stripping familiar forms of word use of
their sense-making conditions. That absence of sense is necessarily the result of
violence done to, and so depends for its significance on a continued relation to,
everyday ways of making sense. To put it in Williams’ terminology, such religious
talk is a mode of achieving silence; and as his conduding lecture on that topic
stresses, there is no such thing as an unframed or pure silence: ‘Silence for us is
always the gap that occurs here, in this specific place between words or images’
(EW 157). Even if any silence does specifically disrupt and modify an equally
Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language 145
concrete mode of speech, however, does it foUow - as Wdliams infers - that.
■thus itself “says” something (EW 157)? Well: when I stress *at such talk abou
God is senseless, I don’t mean that employing words m this senseless way
Lf unintelligible - for we can make sense of those who do it, in part by seemg
what theyre doing as extending a creative use of language to its unmteUigi
it and so can perhaps regard what they are doing as a kmd of mguisti
responsiveness to reality, as a humanly
hutan employment oflanguage-Butcallingitakindof saying IS Itself justifiable
only if those inverted commas remain firmly m place.
My approach plainly taps into abroader tradition of negative theology with Iti
extreme sensitivity to theextenttowhichGod’stranscendenceconstitutivetyre^sti
any attempts to apply language to it When WiUiams addresses this manif^tation
ofIilenceintheology.hefirststresses iti dangers,citingEasternfiieolo^ans^^^^
that it risks becoming ’a conceptual game whose outcome is simjfiy a kmd of
filstidiousness: as if we were just saying ’not qmte about vano
prédications concerning infinite agenc/ (EW 174). But he is willing to ^nd^tie
Lions of such negative theology which whofiy resign ’the imnd ... to to
attentive receptivity’ and abandon ’all aspiration to definitive ^enence o God
for tiien ■[ulltimately. what matters is ... a ")
thinking and feelingbecome...dispossessed of controUablematen^ (EW 174).
Thathowevetisexactlytheunder^andingofreligiousdticoursethatmy^^^^^^
of negative theology points towards: for its sUences are "LTaulÏvof
i„u¿tive response to great riddles whose provenance is die reveded auW
scripture, and so are framed by a conception of the authority of
emLsires its requirement that we absolutely or unconditionally cede control of
our speech and forms of living.This Thomist reading deman^ exaedy the se^
dispossession, of transcending registers of order and manipulation m om
words that Williams says a serious ne^tive theology must dehver (and thm wod
be anchored in a broader form of reUgious life in which dispossession is emboied
or enacted). And such an account would certainly aUow Williams to make good
his eariy and vital acknowledgementthatlanguage about God,whilst bemg for
uniquelhavingadisruptiveeffect,does’lpropose,themostserious»
all Luse it proposes ... something... about aU possible subjects of discourse...
so that what is said about it is going to be linguisticaUy eccentnc m a unique y
marked way, and the role of... strategic sfience becomes central (EW 31).
At third glance, then, I see a deep continuity underlying the more apparen
discontinuities between my approach and that of WUliams, ^d one that miJ
be framed in the most general terms that Williams provides for his lectures.
 146 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
he initiaUy presents himself as trying to recover a defensible form of natural
theology in the light of currently influential criticisms of its supposed tendency
to discount the role of revelation, and so of God's capacity actively to interrupt
our natural processes of thought, experience and speech. For Williams, this
overlooks the extent to which a natural theology that is properly sensitive to the
pervasive ïccéntricitiesof normal lifewith lahguage already delineates a space
within which that divine disruptive capacity can be manifest and acknowledged.
His lectures practise just such a natural theology; they foreground aspects of our
encounter with reality which are exactly as we should expect if the world really
were, what the Christian discourse of-reyelation daims it to be (cf. EW 180).
Then my lectures could be read as an attempt to understand that discourse of
revelation as the self-emp.tying fulfilment ofthe discursive frames which make
possible the understanding of na^re, and so natural theology. Both approaches
therefore present natural'theology and the theology of revelation as each others
other. internaUy related and so mutuaUy constitutive. They show, in other words,
not only that revelation and natural theology are essentially complementary, but
that the same might be said of these Gifford Lectures and my Stanton Lectures.
Notes
1 Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2015.
2 London; Bloomsbury, 2014; hereafter‘EW’.
3 Cora Diamond, ‘Ethics, Imagination and the Method of the Tractatus', in The New
Wittgenstein, ed. Alice Crary and Rupert Read (London; Routledge, 2000), 149-73.
4 Diamond,'Ethics, Imagination and the Method of the Tractatus’, 166.
5 In Riddles and Anselm’s Riddle; in The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein. Philosophy, and
the Mind (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 1991), 267-89.
6 All quotations from the Summa are taken from the translation in Thomas Aquinas.
Summa Theologiae: Questions on God. ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
7 David B. Burrell, Agumos; God and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
1979), esp. 7-8,24.
8 See Bede Rundle, Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004); Anthony Kenny. The Five Wflys.vSi Thomas Aquinas’Prooß of
God’s Existence (Lçndon; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969).
9 Margaret Masterman,;MetaphysicaI and Ideographic Language’^ in British Philosophy
in the Mid-Century: A Cambridge Symposium, ed. C. A. Mace (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1957). 2^-357. at 295;.quoted in EW 126.
8
Wittgenstein and the Distinctiveness
of Religious Language
Michael Scott
Religious language as a topic of philosophical research has a lengthy pedigree,
extending back to at least the middle of-^tiquity. The high-water mark of
broader philosophic^ interest in the field was probably during the linguistic
turn’ of the early and mid-tweotieth century„\yhen concern aboqt the meaning
(and meaningfulness) of religious utterances rivalled çr.exçeeded Jhe attention
given to the existence and k^ioviledge of (3od. Ho\yever, there are medieval
discussions of the meaning' of divide predicMes. debates .sutrqunding
apopbaticism. early modern discussion of the çootentfulness of, religious
utterances and much more recent research on religious metaphor, reference and
Ihe^use of religious language in both analytic and Continental pfiüosophy. We
findin this research a wide range of different accounts of how religious languie
should be interpreted, ranging from what religious sentences are about and what
kin,ds of speech acts speakers employ when they use them, to the attitudes that
speakers express when they engage in religious discourse. The aim of this chapter
is to situate Wittgenstein’s remarks and writing, on religion in the history of this
rqsqarch, better both to critically assess hb contribution to the field and to get an
insight into how his work relates to other writers on religious language.
Trying to get a broader historical and theoretical perspective on Wittgenstein’s
account of religious language should not be taken to imply that its time to
consign hb work to hbtory! Indeed, whfle there are fewer treatments of
Wittgenstein’s writings on religion these days than there were (say) twenty years
ago, Wittgenstein is still very widely cited and interest in hb work has endured
fçr far longer in the philosophy of religion than in many other areas of philosophy
qn which his writings were far more extensive. However, it is fair to point out
that Wittgensteinian accounts of religious language have not prevailed. Dewi
Phillips, perhaps the last very widely recognized exponent of such a position,
 148 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
died in 2006. A better understanding of the reasons both for the enduring
interest in Wittgenstein’s work on religion and for its limited persuasiveness are
also aims of this chapter.
Wittgensteih’s work on religion has generated not only a substantial literature
but a wide range of different theories about what he was saying. A central point of
agreement among thèse "theories is tìiat Wittgenstein thought that there were
important points of difference between the ways in which, religious utterances
should be interpreted and the ways in which utterances in other discourses or
language games should be interpreted - specifically scientific or historical
utterances. A great deal of his writings and lectures on religion seem to be concerned
wìtìi articulating these differences. However, beyond this broad characterization of
Wittgensteins position, there is little in the way of further substantive agreement.
In particular>^What these points of difference tell us more generally about tìie
differences between religious discourse and other areas of discourse remain
contentious issues. 'Theories range from attributing ttf Wittgenstein a kind of
fideisñi, to seeing him as a kind of non-cognitivist about religion,^ to portraying
him as offering á relatively modest correction to standard'realist* accounts.’
This chapter will begin from the opposite direction. What is the view that
Wittgenstein is dissenting from? 'That is, what is the standard theory of purported
areas of similarity between religious discourse and other areas of discourse that
Wittgenstein wanted to upset? I will set out the kind of theory this might be - I’ll
call it thefacè-vdîue theory ~ in the first section of the chapter. 'Ihe subsequent
section will consider various ways in which the face value theory has been
resisted by a variety of philosophers and theologians. I will then consider some
of the differences between religious and other áreas df discourse thatWittgenstein
posits and, further, draw some critical comparisons between Wittgenstein’s and
other accounts of religious language.
Any treatment of what Wittgenstein says about religion must be prefaced by
qualifications'about the prospects of reaching an entirel5^ fair treatment of his
views. As with many of Wittgenstein’s writings, his treatment of religion is spread
through numerous notebooks writtén over a number ofyears and is accompanied
by nbtes'talcen by lecture attendees.-However, in Contrast with his- compendious
output on mathematics, or discourse about sensations, his remarks on religions
are few in ntimber. They also lack the intense reworking and refinement of
specific remarks that we ^d in his other philosophy Finally, many of the
remarks are personal, reporting his own feelings, grappling with his personal
beliefs an'd riot always clearly making a contribution to what he might have
wanted to present in a-lecture br in a more formal written form.
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 149
Ihe face value theory of religious language
Although there is no general agreement on the details of Wittgensteins view
about religious language, it seems that he was resisting or offering some sort of
correction to the prevailing interpretation of religious discourse in analytic
philosophy. It is useful, therefore, to begin by considering what this interpretation
is. I will call it the/ace value theory.*
According to the face value theory the affirmation of an indicative sentence
about God, such as
1. God created the universe,
has the propositional content that God created the universe and is true just m
case God created the universe. It should (in normal contexts) be understood as
an assertion that conventionally expresses the speaker’s belief in that propositional
content; moreover, the utterance represents the feet that God created the universe
in just the same way as indicative, sentences in science or history, aim to describe
scientific or historical states of-affairs. In general,, according to the, fece value
theory, the principal difference between religious discourse and .scientific,
historical, ethical and Qther discourses is in,their subject-matter.
'Ihe fece value theory about the contents typical uSage and descriptiveness of
religious language (specifically its indicatiye sentences) oÔen forms the'assumed
background in tackling questions in the philosophy of religion. I will return to
this presently. To begin with, here are two important qualifications to the fece
value theory.
'Ihe first qualification is that the face value theory, as it has been presented so
fer, is clearly incomplete. Beyond the utterance of indicative sentences, there is a
rich variety of religious expressions in the form of religious utterances that are
non-literal and/or non-assertoric - such as metaphors, questions, fictional
stories, expressions of hope, awe or devotion. In addition to saying things like
(1), speakers also say:
2. God is my rock.
3. Christ is the way, the truth and the life.
4. Believe in God!
Clearly, the face value theory will need to provide an account of these too.
However, the strategy here is straightforward. According to fece value theory,
non-literal speech acts and expressions of attitude are found outside religious
discourse as well as within it and the accounts given of the meanings of these
150 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
non-literal speech acts and expressions of attitude will follow the treatment
given to non-assertoric communication more generally. For instance, while
there is a substántive* issue of what metaphors are, once we arrive at a theory of
metaphor it should apply" across different *eâs of discourse, whether or not they
arfe religious. Tliere is nothing about rèligious discourse, according to the face
valufe theory, that demands specfel treatment.
The second qualification - which is as mudi a clarification - is that the face
value thebfy does not suppose that thére is a field ôf religious language that is
either discrete or precisely defined. Sentences can fell into a number of different
areas of discourse. For example, (sy can lay claim to beings a mathematical
utterance and (6) to being an ethical utterance as well as being religious
utterances:
5. God is one.
6. God is good.
Nor is it critical - at least for the purposes of characterizing the position of the
face value theory - that there is a precise account of where the boundaries of the
subject matter are situated. If a reductionist variety of divine command theory is
true, then sentences that appear to be ethical may be better thought of as
religious. Without diminishing the philosophical interest of these issues, we do
not need to settle them to reach an account of what the fate valiie theorist is
proposing.
Why does the fece talue theory command* support? One key point in the
theory’s favour is its simplicity. It provides a uniform way of treating a variety of
different areas of discourse while recbgflizing that they describe different subject
matters. The differences in subject m'atter, according to the face value theory, do
not show that<there should be ‘differentes’in the manner in which those subjects
ire represented linguistically. Moreover, the fece value theory also allows for
complications in the treatment of non-literal speech and expressions of feeling,
but sees these as characteristic of a wide variety of different areas of discourse
rather than as indicative of systematic differences between them. We can ask
questions, use metaphors, express our feelings, and so on, in historical and
scientific language as well as in religious language. However, the principal
argument in favour of the face value theory is that it can explain apparent
linguistic similarities between different areas of discourse. This is, of course,
something that Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians will want to challenge.
However, it is useful to begin by considering why the idea that different discourses
are not substantfálly'differenf shoilld be só attractive.
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 151
Consider the similarities between religious, scientific and historical discourse
(I select these because they are ones that are prominent in Wittgenstein’s
treatment of religion). Sentences of these discourses can be negated and
affirmed. We can call these sentences true or false, and call them factual
or descriptive. If one person affirms a sentence of the discourse and another
affirms a negation of it, they disagree. Sentences of these discourses can be
tensed, placed into conditionals, made the subject of a variety of propositional
attitudes such as believing, wishing, hoping, etc. Sentences in each discourse can
be regimented into arguments that can be evaluated for their validity. We can
even mix sentences from these discourses and organize them into valid
arguments (as we find in some versions of the design and cosmological
arguments). These characteristic similarities in the ways in which we talk about
religious, historical and scientific matters lend support to the view that these
areas of discourse are fundamentally similar ahd can be understood with the
same general theory.
Challenging the" face value theory
Most current philosophy Of religion in the analytic tradition that is riot
specifically about religious language has typically taken the fece value theory tor
atleast the main components of it) for granted. An 'indication of the prevalence
of the theory is that opposition to it is sometinies portrayed as a brief historical
aberration of the early and mid-fwentieth century, usually tied in with logical
positivism, atheism or confined to a lunatic’ fringe of Continental philosophy
and theology and, in any event, lacking any substantial supporting arguments.
For instance, J. L. Mackie says:
The main reason why it has been thought that religious language cannot
be literally meaningful is that some philosophers - particularly the logical
positivists - have embraced a strongly verificationist theory of meaning.... But
this theory of meaning is itself highly implausible.®
According to Richard Swinburne:
Some twentieth-century writers from R. B. Braithwaite to Wittgenstein and
D. Z. Phillips have denied that theological ‘assertions’ ever make statements,
claims about how things are. As an account of the actual use of such assertions
'by religious believers of the past two millennia;this is plainly false. The sentences
of creeds do make statements.®
152 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Peter van Inwagen contends that disagreement with face value theory is really an
atheistic position masquerading as a religious one:
Not so long ago, as time is measured in the history of thought, anyone who said
that it was a mistake to regard x as F would have meant, and have been taken by
everyone to mean, that x was not F.... Not so long ago, everyone who said that
nothing had the properties in the list‘aseity, holiness, omnipotence, omniscience,
providénce, love, self-revelation’ would have proudly described himself as an
atheist/
Similar disparaging comments are offered by Alvin Plantinga.®
Putting aside for,the moçient whether rejection of the fece value theory is
rationally defensible, the other objections - that such rejection is a twentieth-
century phenomenon, tied to atheism, or is an outlier theory in philosophy or
theology - are all ill-founded. For instance, Maimonides (c. 1135-1204) treats
much of what we say about God as non-literal/ Gregory Palamas, writing a couple
of centuries later, questions whether either our thoughts or language should be
taken as accurately representing God.'® The early Christian theologian Dionysius
(writing c. 600) and the unknown fourteenth century author of The Cloud of
Unknowing, propose that a closer relationship with God is achievable through the
recognition that no utterance represents the way that God is." This was not an
uncommon view among apophatic and mystical theologians. According to
Geoige Berkeley the aâirmations of central Christian ideas and doctrines
(including the doctrines of original sin, the action of.grace and the afterlife) do
not express beliçfe in them.'^.Kant (at least in his more radical moments) suggests
that religious judgements are action-guiding principles rather than beliefs.'’
In feet, most theories of religious language that have been the focus of
philosophical discussion have been, in one way or other, in opposition to the fece
value theory. That is, they have pointed up differences of a systematic sort - other
than differences of subject matter (which the fece value theory allows) - between
religious language and other areas of language.
It’s time to consider some of the specific ways in which the face value theory
has been rejected. The theory has a number of key elements. It proposes of
indicative religious utterances such as
7. God is omnipotent
(a) that they have a propositional content (i.e. God is omnipotent), (b) that their
utterance conventionally asserts the speaker’s belief in what is said (i.e. the belief
that God is omnipotent), and (c) that the utterance represents its subject matter
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 153
just as indicative utterances in other descriptive areas of discourse represent
their subject matter (i.e. it represents - truly or felsely - the feet that God is
omnipotent). Each (and all) of these different components of the fece value
theory have, by various writers on religious language, been rejected.
The most radical rejection of fece value theory is that religious utterances feil
to express religious propositions (tíiereby rejecting (a)).'^ The most well-known
example of this position is A. J. Ayer’s version of logical positivism popularized
in the 1930s.*’ However, there are other more constructive ways of rejecting (a).
For example, R. B. Braithwaite proposes that religious utterances express plans.**
For instance, he takes (3) to express the intention to pursue an agapeistic life.
Notably George Berkeley, mentioned earlier, proposes that talk of original sin,
the afterlife, grace and other ‘Christian mysteries’ is not representational but
instead serves a practical function of motivating and guiding the faithful to
think and act according to Christian principles. A different way of rejecting (a),
suggested by Ronald Hepburn, is to argue that many religious claims are
paradoxical and feil to express propositiôns; they have other, pragmatic and
non-representational* benefits.*’ Also femilfer are jeductionist accounts of
religious language. These allow that religious utterances have“ propositional
content but not the content that they are usually token,to have. Instead, they are
taken to have non-religious - usually naturalistic - truth conditions. Such an
approach is taken by Spinoza,*® some supporters of religious empiricism,*’ and
more recently (in at least some of his work) by Gordon Kaufman.’®
There are two main kinds of resistance to (b). The first focuses on speech acts
(or, to use the terminology of J. L. Austin, illocutionary acts”). Speech acts are the
various kinds of utterances characteristic of a discourse: assertions, commands,
questions, wiriies and so on. According to one standard account of speedi acts,
they are characterized by distinctive norms. For example, it’s been proposed that
the practice of asserting obeys a justification norm (where the onus is on the
speaker to justify what is asserted if challenged) and a retraction norm (a speaker
who assertsp should not continue to assertp ifp has been shown to be untrue).”
A norm for the speech act of promising might be that if one says ‘I promise to do
x* then one should x unless certain excusing conditions obtain.” Non-literal
discourse can also be understood as engaging in varieties of speech act. Fictional
utterance, on one account, is pretend assertion. Metaphor is a speech act that
involves saying something patently felse (‘Juliet is the sun’) or trivially true (‘A
revolution is no tea part/) in order to suggest something related but different to
what is said. Now, according to the fece value theory there is no speech act
particularly characteristic of religious utterances: there are religious assertions.
 Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 155
154 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

it to a gestalt-change. With discernment, one sees the world in a new light; one
questions, commands, various kinds of non-literal speech, but there is no speech
appreciates something of profound value. Moreover, these two things are
act that is characteristic of religious discourse. However, there is a history of
connected: it is the discernment that gives rise to the commitment. According to
attempts to resist this view. The view that predicate expressions used about God
Ramsey, the purpose of reHgious language is to communicate and promote
are invariably used analogically can be seen as an early example of this (although
religious commitment and discernment. The following is a sample of some of
it is a matter of debate whether analogy contributes to a kind of speech act). A
the proposals he makes about religious language. He proposes, for example, that
clearer and more recent ex^ple is the theory that-talk of God is irreducibly
‘religious language talks of the discernment with which is associated, by way of
metaphorical. Paul Tillich’s suggestion that religious language is symbolic is
response, a total commitment’^^ and that the purpose of religious arguments is
perhaps an>‘early expression of the view.^ Anthony Kenny and Sallie McFague
‘to tell such a tale as evokes the “insight”, the “discernment” fi-om which the
endorse the'idea that all statements about God are metaphorical.“
commitment follows as a response’.“ Religious language, Ramsey maintains,
An initial difficulty with theories of this type is that it looks like speakers
generates‘a sense of the unseen’ or‘a sense of mystery, something‘which eludes
assert religious sentences. (1), for instance, döes not look like a metaphor. Nor
the grasp of causal language’.“ We should “map our theological phrases with
does it seem that speakers (many of them, at least) intend to be taken
reference to a characteristically religious situation - one of worship, wonder,
metaphorically when-they say (1). They certainly don’t think that what they are
awe.’“ He suggests that the ‘logical behaviour’ of such phrases be understood as
saying is fríviaí/y untrue (or trivially true), which is what the metaphor theory
primarily evocative of what [he calls] the odd discernment, that characteristically
seems to require. So a preliminary problem is to show why, despite appearances,
religious situation which, if evoked, provokes a total commitment.’^'
religious utterantes are metaphorical.
So Ramsey rejects (b) insofar as he thinks that there is something distinctive
Perhaps the most serious difficulty with this first kind of resistance to (b) is in
about the use of religious language; it is in the business of expressing and
working out the norms of religious discourse. Metaphors are, as noted above,
communicating commitment and disclosurei However, this is taken to be the
typically trmally folse claims used to imply or suggest something other than
general purpose of éngagement in religious discoùrse, which is not tied to any
what is said. For instance,
particular type of speech act.
8. God is my rock Of all the lines of resistance to the fece value theory, it is the rejection of (c)
that is most commonly associated with Wittgenstein. Two of the most notable
might be taken to imply that God is, for the speaker, a source of psychological
proponents of this line of resistance - D. Z. Phillips (in his later work) and HUary
and spiritual comfort or -security. If, however, utterances about God are all
Putnam - trace its origins (rightly or wrongly) to his work. For reasons that will
metaphorical then these implications will also be metaphorical. We will not be
become clear presently, I wül call their approach minimalism. Minimalists agree
able, even by metaphorical implicature, to get to an utterance about God that is
with (a) and (b) - i.e. that religious discourse expresses propositions and that it
literally true. This is, perhaps, a consequence that supporters of this theory would
exhibits the range of speech acts that we find in other areas of dUcourse - but
embrace: talk of God is elusive in that it never settles on a true representation.
take issue with the fece value understanding of descriptiveness along with
However, the problem this raises is that of determining what the norms of the
associated ideas of fact, representation, reference and truth as properties that are
discourse are if speakers are not uttèring claims that are true.
realized in the same way in religious, historical, scientific and other discourses.
The second kind of résistance to (b) does not rely on an account of speech
CaU these realism-relevant properties. The opposition involves two main ideas.
acts but instead argues that religious language is used with distinctive purposes.
First, rather than posit a demanding standard that a field of discourse must meet
An example of this approach is Ian Ramsey’s theory.“ He argues that religious
to count as genuinely descriptive, minimalists propose that a discourse that
engagement involves two things: a commitment and a discernment. The
satisfies very modest conditions - for example, that it possesses a truth predicate
commitment is 'total’ and iá an attitude that is characterized by its intensity and
and standards of justification for what is affirmed or rejected - is thereby
being directed towards the universe as a whole. The discernment involves a
descriptive. Second, realism-relevant concepts are taken to be at least partly
‘disclosure^, which is a type of recognition of something of enormous importance.
constituted by features of the discourse (or ‘language game’) in which they are
This recognition he presents as a bringing together of what is known, comparing
 156 Wittgensìein, Religion and Ethics
used. Minimalists thereby reject a uniform account of descriptiveness across
different areas of discourse. Here are comments from Putnam and Phillips
respectively:
The use of religious iMguage is both Hke and unlike ordinary cases of reference:
but to ask whether it is “really” reference or "not really" reference is to be in a
muddle. There is no essence of reference.'... In short, Wittgenstein is telling you
what IS« Í the way to understand religious language. The way to understand
religious language isn’t to try to apply some metaphysical classification of
possible forms of discourse.’^
[Bly all means say that ‘God’ functions as a referring ^expression, that ‘God’
refers to a sort of object, that God’s reality is a matter of fact, and so on. But
^please remember that, as yet, no conceptual or grammatical clarification has
taken place. Wç have all the work still to do since we ^all now have to show,
in this religious context, what speaking of ‘reference’, ‘object’, ‘existence’, and
so on amounts to, how it differs, in obvious ways, from other uses of these
terms.^^
In general^ descriptiveness, reference, truth and other realism-relevant notions
are language-game-internal concepts: they are constituted differently in different
areas of discourse. These di^erences in the uses of the realism-relevant concepts
constitute the philosophically crucial points of contrast between discourses.
This completes a (very) brief overview of some of tjie m^ ways in which the
face value theory has been resisted. Accounts that reject the idea that religious
utterances represent their putative subject matter .include expressivist, non-
cognitivist and reductionist theories. Accounts that reject the assumption that the
use of religious language is similar to the use of other areas of Janguage include
metaphor theories as well as praise and prayer theories developed in Continental
philosophy. Accounts that reject a unified account of truth, descriptiveness and
other realism-relevant properties across religious and other areas of discourse
include the minimalism of Dewi Phillips and Hilary Putnam.
Wittgenstein on religion
Finding sdme common themes in Wittgenstein’s work on religion is chaUenging
because there are different emphases and questions raised in his written outputs
and his lectures on the subject. For example, the idea that religious judgements
are like pictures is prominent in his lectures but plays httle role in his writings.
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 157
However, here are four ideas that are repeated in his work and that are (I hope)
relatively uncontroversial elements of what he wanted to say about the
distinctiveness of religious discourse. In general, Wittgenstein finds points of
contrast between religious judgements and beliefs and a range of other
judgements and beliefs: scientific hypotheses, historical assessments, descriptive
beliefs about perceivable features of our environment. For convenience, I will
call these empirical judgements.
(i) Religious and empirical judgements are differently related
to evidential considerations
We find this idea expressed in a variety of ways:
The point is that if there were evidence, this would'in fact destroy the whole
business. | Anything that I normally call evidence wouldn’t in the slightest
influence me. | Suppose, for instance, that we knew people who foresaw the
future; made forecasts for years and years ahead; and they described some sort
of a Judgement Day. Queerly enough, even if there yrere such a thin^, and even
if it were more convincing than I have described, belief in this happening
wouldn’t be at ail a religious belief.
LC 56
Queer as it soimds: the historical accounts of the Gospels might, thç historical
sense, be demonstrably false, & yet belief would lose nothing through this: but
«ot because it has to do with‘universal truths of reason’! rather, because historical
proof (the historical proof-game) is irrelevant to belief This message (the
Gospels) is seized on by a human being believingly (i.e. lovingly): That is the
certainty of this“taking-for-truc”, nothing else.
CV„ 37e-38e
Life can educate you to ‘Tjelieving in God”. And experiences too are what do this
but not visions, or other sense experiences, which show us the “existence of this
being”, but e.g. sufferings of various sorts. And they do not show us God as a
sense experience does an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him.
Ejqieriences, thoughts, - life can force this concept on us.
CV^97e
He also says that the evidence for the truth of a religious belief may be ‘more
than ridiculous’ considered as evidence for an empirical belief (LC 61). These
comments are just a small selection. In general, Wittgenstein seems to be
proposing that the religious judgement thatp is not accepted or rejected on the
158 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
kinds of evidence that would be relevant to the acceptance or rejection of an
empirical judgement. It is (at least, to some extent) insensitive tç doubts that
would be considered compelling reasons to reject an empirical belief; it is
supported (at least, to some extent) by considerations that would be completely
inadequate to support an empirical belief.
(ii) Religious judgements have practical consequences for
believers that empirical beliefs do not have
Ihis idea is particularly presseâ in the lectures when discussing the belief that
there will be a Last Judgement:
This [in] one sense must be called the firmest of all beliefs, because the man risks
things on accoimtbf it which he would not do on things which are by fet better
established for him.
LC 54
It will show, not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but
rather by regulating for all in his life.
LC 54
(iii) The religious believer and the atheist do hot contradict
each otlier; they "mean something different’ and are "on an
entirely different plane’ (LC 53)
This idea,-in contrast with (i) and (ii), seems to be explidtly about meaning.
[Regarding the judgement T believe in the Last Judgement’:] I can’t treat these
words as I [would] normally treat T believe so and so’.
LC62
In a religious discourse we use such expressions as: “I believe that so and so will
happen,” and use them differently to the way in which we use them in science.
LC 57
It doesn’t rest on an historic basis in the sense that the ordinary belief in historic
facts could serve as a foimdation. | Here we have a belief in historic facts different
.from a belief in ordinary historic fects. Even, they are not treated as historical,
empirical, propositions.
LC57
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 159
(iv) Religious judgements are differently connected to our other
experiences and commitments than are empirical judgements
Whereas (ii) concerned the kinds of risk-taking and practical consequences that
follow from having a religious judgement, Wittgenstein also proposes that
religious judgements have deeper connections with the experiences and other
judgements of believers than do empirical judgements.
It appears to me as though a religious belief could only be (something like)
passionately committing oneself to a system of coordinates. Hence although it’s
belief, it is really a way of living, a way of judging life. Passionately taking up this
interpretation.
CV^73e
Election by grace: It is only permissible to write like this out of the most frightful
suffering - 8f then it means something quite different. But for this reason it
is not permissible for anyone to cite it aá truth, unless.he himself says it in
torment. - It simply isn’t a theory. - Or as one might also say: if this is the truth,
it is not the truth it appears at first glance to express. It’s less a tlieoiy than a sigh,
or a cry.
CVjj34e-35e
Although only the third of the above ideas is^ clearly about religious
. * language
whereas the others are nominally about commitments, behaviour and evidence,
we should note that it is not entirely clear what Wittgenstein takes to be
included as part of the meaning of an utterance. For instance, construed in a
sufficiently broad way, the reasons for adopting a judgement or the practical
consequences of having a judgement might be considered part of its meaning.
Indeed, Wittgenstein seems to have had this construal of meaning in mind:
‘What is the criterion for meaning something different? Not only what he takes
as evidence for it, but also how he reacts, that he is in terror, etc.’ (LC 62). Let us
proceed, therefore, with this broad construal of the meaning of religious
utterances.
Wittgenstein and the opposition
Armed with a characterization of the main points of difference that Wittgenstein
sees between religious discourse and other fields of discourse (specifically
scientific, historical and related descriptive discourses), how do they fit in with
160 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
the long tradition of differences posited by theologians and philosophers who
challenge the fece Wlue theory and which we revieWed earlier in this chapter?
They fit very well indeed. In fact, the kinds of differences to which Wittgenstein
draws our attention are just the kinds of differences that many of those who
challenge the face value view would see as supporting their (otherwise
conflicting) theories. Take, for example, the non-cognitivist option. For non-
cognitivists, religious utterances express plans or motivational attitudes in
contrast to the belief states expressed-by scientific and historical discourse. The
kind of differences that Wittgenstein highlights would be welcomed by
expressivists because ñon-cognitivism appeats able'to e^^lain them. If religious
utterances express non-cognitive states rather than beliefs, we would expect
religious discourse to be distinctively related to our motivations and
commitments (points (ii) and (iv) in my list of kçy ideas from Wittgenstein
above). We would'also expect non-cognitive attitudes to be less susceptible to
change by empirical evidence than beliefs (point (i)) - after all, non-cognitive
states aren’t truth-apt so empirical evidence will not be able to establish whether
they are true on false. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s point (iii) also fits neatly with
non-cognitivism. If a religious assertion e?q)resses a non-cognitive state and a
denial of that assertion (by an atheist) expresses the te/iefthat it is untrue, then
they will not contradict each other. If Peter’s religious utterance expresses his
plans and feelings while Paul’s denials express his belief that, as a matter of
empirical feet, that religious utterance is untrue, then they are effectively talking
past each other.
It is not just non-cognitivism‘ that is receptive to the differences that
Wittgenstein discusses. Ihe theories about religious speech acts, religious
purposes and what I called minimalism can also find* support in what
Wittgenstein says. For example, we can see why (iii) fits with these theories. If a
religious utterance p is metaphorical, then the speaker is presumably not trying
to communicate what p says but something else. So an atheist denying p misses
the point of the utterance (someone who says ‘God is my rock’ could even agree
that‘God is not (really) my rock’). Similarly, someone who thinks that truth is a
language-game-internal concept may conclude that asserting‘God is omnipotent^
in religious discourse is not true in the same way as asserting‘God is omnipotent*
in other areas of discourse is true.
Aside from die thematic differences between religious discourse and other
areas of discourse that VVittgenstein presents, his other comments on religion
can similarly be used by supporters of different theories of religious language.
Here is a selection of some of his more famous statements:
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 161
(a) Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to
describe what we are supposed to do, but not to justify it. Because to be a
justification they would have to hold good in other respects too.
eVg 34e
(b) Religion says: Do this! - Think like that! but it cannot justify this and it only
need try to do so to become repugnant; since for every reason it gives, there is a
cogent counter-reason.
CV^34e
(c) Christianity is not based on a historical truth, but presents us with a
(historical) narrative & says; now believe! But not believe this report with the
belief that is appropriate to a historical report, - but rather: believe, through
thick & thin & you can do this only as the outcome of a life.
eVg 37e
(d) In the way in which asking a question, insisting on an answer, or not asking
it, expresses a different attitude, a different way of living, so too,fe this sense, an
utterance like “It is God’s, will” or “We are not masters of our fate”. What this
sentence does, or at least something similar, a commandment too could do.
Including one that you give to purself. And conversely a commandment, e.g.
“Do not grumble!” can be uttered like the affirmation of a truth.
CV^69e-70e
(e) Now why am I so anxious to keep apart these ways of using “declarative,
sentences”? Is it really necessary? Did people in former times really not properly
understand what they wanted to do with a sentence? Is it pedantry? - It is simply
an attempt to see that every usage gets its due. Perhaps then a reaction against
the over-estimation of science. The use of the word “science” for “everything that
can be said without nonsense” already betrays this over-estimation. For this
amoimts in reality to dividing utterances into two classes; good & bad; & the
danger is already there.
CVj^70e
Statements (b) to (d) fit well with speech act theories, statement (e) with
minimalism and all of them comport with non-cognitivism about religion.
Moreover, none of them clearly rules out any of these theories.^
Perhaps the lack of theoretical direction in Wittgenstein’s remarks or clear
indication of what we should conclude from the differences might be taken as
unproblematic. Indeed, perhaps Wittgenstein should be seen as kicking over the
traces of research on religious language - in which case, his lack of dearly stated
sympathy with any of the challenges to the fece value theory that I have discussed
162 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
is understandable (I will come back to this in my concluding section). However,
there is a more serious difficulty at hand. It’s that Wittgenstein’s observations also
look as if they can be given innocuous readings that are consistent with the fece
value theory. There are two components to this objection. First, it seems that the
putative differences that Wittgenstein highlights can be understood as emerging
from thp distinctive subject matter of religious discourse rather than as telling us
anything interesting about religious language more generally. Second, the
differeiTces in many cases do not seem especially relevant to religious language.
Many of them appear neither to distinguish religious language from other areas
of language'nor to be generally true of religious language.
Here are three considerations that the fece value theorist might raise in
response to Wittgenstein’s observations. First, many religious claims are about
matters of enormous importance. Whether there is a god or an afterlife, for
instance. One’s beliefs on these matters will have significant implications for
one’s practical decisions and life plans. So it’s hardly surprising that some
religious judgements would have major effects on the lives of those who accept
them (points (ii) and (iv)). This is, however, neither distinctive of religious
language generally nor generally true of it. There are many matters of religious
doctrine that have (at least for some) little or no practical impact on the lives of
those that believe them. For instance, the status of angels or the Nephilim. For
many, particularly members of organized religions, there is a ‘package deal’ of
religious judgements, some of which one regards as very important but others
less so. Moreover, there are cléarly many non-religious judgements that are
enormously consequential. Judgements àbout the morality of abortion or of war,
political judgements about the rights and duties of citizens, and so on. There are
also judgements outside the ethical and political realm that exhibit the kinds of
characteristics in (ii) and (iv): the judgement that one has a year to live, that civil
war in one’s community is a realistic, imminent possibility, or coming to the
judgement that one has been adopted. The significant practical implications of
these judgements, however, do not lead us to consider talk of adoption, war, or
end of life as distinct areas of discourse (beyond their subject matter). Why,
therefore,’ should it be different for religion?
Second, as is commonly observed, religious commitments are often acquired
through upbringing and sometimes through personal religious experiences; it is
relatively‘fore that they are acquired by an assessment ofrempirical evidence.
Also, as Wittgenstein notes in (i), some religious commitments look as if they are
resistant to empirical considerations - even to the extent that one can maintain
a religious commitinént in the face of conclusive contrary evidence, or that
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 163
supporting evidence might undermine one’s religious commitments. Does this
make for the distinctiveness of religious language or religious commitments? It’s
Useful to distinguish the more modest claim here about evidence resistance, i.e.
that religious judgements are generally not changed or produced by a
consideration of empirical evidence, from evidence repellence, i.e. that religious
judgements are compatible with conclusive contrary evidence or are undermined
by conclusive supporting evidence. Regarding evidence resistance, there are
several points that could be made on behalf of the fece value theory. They can
grant that religious judgements are not easily susceptible to contrary evidence or
empirical enquiry, while pointing out that the same is true for many of our
ethical and political judgements and judgements that we have about matters that
are of great importance to us. More significantly, we find evidence resistance
with judgements about matters that are more straightforwardly empirically
evaluable. For example, it’s usual to think well of people that we love and be more
inclined to dismiss evidence that presents them unfevourably.
What of evidence repellence? It is tricky to assess Wittgenstein’s observations
on this because it is difficult to determine how people might react in the highly
unusual situations in which definitive evidence for or against a religious
judgement became available (or, indeed, what that evidence would look like).
Ihe best indication that we have comes from research on en'd of world prophecies
where a date in the near future is specified that its believers subsequently live
through. These provide the most plausible instances of religious judgements
being conclusively disconfirmed by empirical evidence. The most famous
tesearch on this is by Leon Festinger et al., who studied the community of
believers in a UFO religion which predicted the world would end on
21 December 1954.^ This and other research^ indicates a mixed picture among
the believers: some double down on the religion, reinterpreting the prophecy or
the conditions under which it would obtain, while others splinter off. Evidence
repellence does not, therefore, seem to be a characteristic feature of religious
judgement. Moreover, according to Festinger, persisting in commitments that
have been conclusively disconfirmed is part of a broader phenomenon of
cognitive dissonance that is characteristic of a wide range of commitments and
hot just of religious ones.^^
Third, what of the linguistic claim in (iii)? If, we mentioned earlier,Wittgenstein
is working with a very broad construal of meaning that includes such things as
the sorts of evidence that a speaker takes to be relevant for the truth of what is
said, or the sorts of reaction that the speaker has to the truth of what is said, then
it follows that a speaker expressing her religious judgements will not mean the
 164 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
same thing as what the atheist denies. The face value theorist can simply concede
that in this hroad sense of meaning, Wittgenstein is right, while also pointing out
that there is a narrow sense of meaning that is needed if communication is to be
possible. In the broad sense, it won’t just be the believer and the atheist who do
not mean the same thing, it will be believers in the same community that have
different attitudes towards their commitments or consider different kinds of
evidence as relevant to their religious judgements. We need a narrower sense of
meaning - one linked to what utte;-ances say - 4o account for why there also
seems to be ^something in common in^ their judgements that fecilitates
communication. So, at least, the face value theorist could afgue. The range of
observations in (i) to (iv), dp not, as they stani! upset the face value theory.
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter has been, in part, to put Wittgenstein’s work into the
context of research on religious language and also to see why his ideas have
endured but not prevailed. We are now in a position to draw some conclusions. I
have argued that a central focus of Wittgensteins work on religion is to identify
points of difference between religious discourse and other areas of discourse. It
is for this reason, I thuik, that his work has been a source of enduring interest for
researchers interested in religious language: his lectures and writings are a
sourcebook of instances of differences that provide the materials for any aspiring
opponent to the face value theory. Equally, I-have argued that Wjttgenstein gives
little direction as to what we should do with the differences that he highlights.
Moreover, his examples, while often striking, do not seem to be characteristic of
religious discourse more generally nor distinctive of only religious cases. It is for
these reasons. I think, that his work is now often used as a source of examples in
the development of theories that Wittgenstein would not have endorsed.
The lack of theorizing in Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion can. of course, be
seen as-a virtue or evpn as part of a process of philosophizing that proceeds hy
describing use, one that ‘put§ everything before us’ without explanation (PI
§126). However, this is difficult to square with what Wittgenstein does. To begin
with, he seems content with the idea that there is such a thing as religious
discourse - apparently unified hy its subject matter - and is willing to make very
broad generalizatiqns about how religious language ia used (as in (b) and (d) and
many of the-other remarks quoted aboye). A more, descriptive project would
presumably look at types of language,use from a variety of discourses irrespective
Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 165
of their subject matter. This alternative project is orthogonal to the investigation
of religious language that Wittgenstein pursues.
Notes
1 Kai Nielsen, ‘Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians on Religion’, in Wittgenstein and
Philosophy of Religion, ed. Robert L. Arrington and Mark Addis (London; Routledge,
2001), 137-66.
2 B. R. Tilghman, Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics: The Viewfrom Eternity (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1991); Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of
Theism, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Scholarship Online],
2003).
3 Brian R. Clack, A« Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
4 For more detail on this theory as well as its background, see Michael Scott, Religious
Language (Basingstoke: Paigrave Macmillan, 2013) and'Rdjgious Language’, in The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2017). Face value is not
intended to indicate that the theory is obviously true (or that it should have
unchallenged priority in the range of possible interpretations of religious discourse)
but that it provides the simplest accoui^ of religious discourse consisten! with the
way in which it appears to be used.
5 J. L Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Argumentsjbr and against the Existence of God
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 2.
6 Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism,'Attitüde Theories’ chapter summary.
7 Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the
University of St Andrews in 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 156.
8 Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000), Ch. 2.
9 Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Voi. 1 (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1963), Ch. 52.
10 Gregory Palamas, The THads, ed. John MeyendorfF (Mahwah, N J: Paulist Press,
1983), 32.
11 Pseudo-Dionysius,‘The Mystical Theology’, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete
Works (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), 133-41; anonymous, The Cloud of
Unknowing, in The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (London: Penguin, 2001),
11-101.
12 George Berkeley, Aldphron, or the Minute Philosopher, in The Works of Geoide
Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, Voi. 3 (London: Nelson,
1950).
 Wittgenstein and Distinctiveness of Religious Language 167
166 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

13 Immanuel Karit, Critique of Pure Reason, trans, and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen
W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge*University Press, 1998), A671/B699, A686/B714.
14 1 am calling it the most radical because theories that reject (a) reject (b) and (c) as weU.
15 See esp. A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1936).
16 R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Reli^ous Belief (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1955).
17 Ronald W Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox: Critical Studies in Twentieth-Century
Theology (London: Watts, 1958).
18 Benedictos de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (1670), in Spinoza: Complete
Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), 38Í-583.
19 For ¿review, see Nancy K. Frankenberry,‘Religious Empiricism and Naturalism’, in
A Companion to Pragmatism, ed. John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis (Malden, MA:
Blackwell. 2006), 336-51.
20 Gordon D. Kaufman, 7« Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Üniversity Press, 1993);‘Mystery, God and Constructivism’, in Realism and
Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, ed. Andrew Moore and Michael
Scott (Aldershot Ashgate, 2007),’31-46.
27 Ibid., 49.
28 Ibid., 37.
29 Ibid., 62.
30 Ibid., 89.
31 Ibid., 50.
32 Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1992), 168.
33 D. Z. Phillips, ‘Philosophers’Clothes’, in Relativism and Religion, ed. Charles M. Lewis
(London: Macmillan, 1995), 135-53, at 138.
34 What of reductionism, which I associated earlier with Spinoza, Gordon Kaufman
and others? In fact, this seems to be a theory that Wittgenstein quite explicitly
supported, albeit briefly, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He posits a number
of reductions of religious sentences to sentences about subjective mental states
(e.g.LE 10).
35 Leon Festínger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schächter, When Prophecy Fails
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1956).
36 See, e.g., Jon R. Stone, ed.. Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed

21 J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Prophecy (New York: Routledge, 2000).
Harvard University in’lSSS, eà. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà, 2nd edn (Oxford: 37 Some supporters of Wittgenstein deflect potential counterexamples by drawing a
Oxford University PreSs, 1^75), esp. ChS 8 and 9. distinction between religious and superstitious belief, notably Phillips. See, e.g., D. Z.
Phillips, The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), Ch. 6; for
22 See, for example, John MacFarlane, *What Is Assertion?’, in Assertion: New
recent discussion, see Mikel Burley,‘Approaches to Philosophy of Religion:
Philosophical Essays, ed. Jessica Brown and Herman Cappelen (Oxford: Oxford
Contemplating the World or Trying to Find Our Way Home?’, Religious Studies 51,
University Press, 2011), 79-96.
23 See John R«w\s, ATheory ofJustice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, no. 2 (2015), 221-39, at 228-9.
1971).
24 Paul Tillich,‘Religious Language as Symbolic’ [1955], in Philosophy of Religion:
Selected Readings, ed. Michael Peterson et al., 4th edn (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 398-403.
25 Anthony Kenny, The Unknown God: Agnostic Essays (London: Continuum, 2004);
Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language
(Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982). See also Eberhard Jüngel,‘Metaphorische
Wahrheit’, in Metapher: Zur Hermeneutik religiöser Spmche, ed. Paul Ricoeur and
Eberhard Jüngel (Mimich: Kaiser, 1974), 71-122. Another notable proposal, due to
Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida, is that religious discourse is a form of praise
or prayer; see Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being, 2nd edn (Chicco, IL: Chicago
University Press, 2012) and Jacques Derrida,‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials’, in
Derrida and Negative Theology, ed. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1992), 73-142.
26 Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases
(London:‘SCM Press. 1957).
 9

Number and Transcendence

Wittgenstein and Cantor

John Milbank

Number, logic and reality

What is the difference between logic and mathematics? Western logic effectively
began with Aristotle as a theory about the predication of words in terms of the
consistent implications of ascriptions of identity arid non-identity. That gave us
die theory of the syllo^sm,"which always belohged tö philosophy.' Oilly in the
itìneteenth century, with the work-of the self-educated Lincolrishiîe man Geôrge
Boole, did logic get transferred from words to "algebraic signs through his
invention of logical symbols, and so from phüoSöphy>to mathematics.* Oncè this
had happened, an ironic consequence ensued: people tried to make logic the
foundation of mathematics, and so, in a way, to verbalize number, or at any rate
to algebraicize it, in the long-term wake of François Viète (Vieta) and René
Descartes.^
But mathematics is not about the predication of identity and non-identity:
the basic operation of addition is not affirmation, just as the operation of
subtraction is not denial.-Rather, it is confusingly both a construction of an
organized and self-consistent abstract spatial and temporal reality, and an
intuition of this reality as existing, although normally invisible. One makes what
one measures and measures what one makes. Hius ‘the true is the made’: the old
medieval and Thomist transcendental verum is also the new transcendental
factum,as first Nicholas of Cusa and later Giambattista Vico put it, initially for
both in the context of philosophy of mathematics, before Vico applied this
principle to human history. (The notion that all knowing is creating and all
creating is knowing may be ultimately derived from John Scotus Eriugena; for all
three thinkers this is grounded in a Trinitarian logic - the Father knows in
170 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
generating the Son/Logos.) These two conjoined characteristics, of measuring
and making, invoke a solid and substantial yet in some sense constructed world
that is intuitively quite different from the world of logic: it seems, by comparison,
to partake both of‘art* and of external reality.^
It is for this reason that mathematics, all the way from Pythagoras to Quine,
has often presente'd itself ás a more'’pláusitle ctódidate for ontologization than
has logic, even though such ontologization, as in the case of Quine, is intimately
bound up with the natural pragmatism of mathematicàT activity
Numerical Platonism
Even in the case of Plato, there was already a certain link between the theoretical
certainty and the evident practicability of iriaihematics - a link later emphasized
by the theurgic Neoplatonist Proclus. As with all the ancient Greeks, as Jacob
îClein pointed out, number or arithmos is for Plato the measure of a collection of
‘somethings’, and never exists in pure abstraction.^ It therefore follows that Plato
himself was not ‘a mathematical Platonist’ in the debased sense in which that
term is used today. However, if number is considered, reflexively (as opposed to
abstractly), then, considering the. pragmatic reality of all arithmoi, it followed for
Plato that if numbers themselves can be numbered (as seems to be strikingly the
case) then they themselves constitute a ‘corporeal’ collection of real ‘thingy’
entities, existing on their.own elevated psychic plane - yet not outside this plane
of awareness - to which only souls have ac;i:ess.
Nevertheless, the air at this height is-very thin and .rarefied, because it does
not reach up to the real glorious heaven of the ‘intellectual’ divinities which is
thickly populated with the plenitudinous eidè or ‘forms’ - the super-numbers -
which are the archetypes of real physical entities. But as with the forms, so also
with arithmoi, Plato’s belief in their eternal character is not to do with a
hypostati^tion of abstraction or empty universality, but the very opposite: an
insistence on the concrete character also of the ideal, and of the eternal reality of
the concretely manifest and identifiable content of all appearing entities. Just
because of his, conjoined realism and pragmatism concerning numbers, yet his
sense of their abiding truth as disclosed by their perfect reflexivity, Plato arrived
at his own authentic ‘Platonism’, for which number and more particularly
geometric shape was the key to entering the philosophical academy, though it
did.not provide the whole content of the doctrine that one learnt within its
portals.
Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 171
Number and sign
For once inside those portals, one had.to consider the shape of the key as a clue
rather than a directly effective instrument: it pointed towards the abiding forms,
butiheir fuller disclosure was less apodeictic than mathematical procedure, and
involved the endless detours of both negative dialectical refutations of falsity
and the positively poetic, rhetorical, mythical and ritual confirmations of truth
through the reading of temporal, physical and cultural signs.
The richer truth of the forms in balmy celestial çlimes was nonetheless less
evident than the bare but complete truth of number, directly accessible on the
alpine heights by a purely alpine climb, since in the mathematical field ontological
content and gnoseological method are putely-at one. The feet th&t this is not the
case for the higher and completer truth of the eidê, in whose trutheven the truth
of number merely participates (as the ineliminable mathematical appriae tend to
reveal) constitutes what has well been called'‘the ancient dilemma’, whereby the
further off and less accessible-is truer, but the more completely at hand is
deceptively clearer and more apparent.^ j
One should not therefore take the immediacy, integrity and entirety of
number for the final and, complete truth, evading the needier a hermeneutic of
.obscure signs that always pointaway from themselves in lack "of-a completely
realized integrity. But pn the other h^d. it; is just because the forms do not, like
numbers, offer themselves to an immediate^ vision and constimtion, that this
path of conjoined dialectical and grammatical method has to he trodden, and
the guiding thread of this path remains that of number, since it leads the self­
negation of the sign away from itself towards the super-integrity of the forms. It
is just this logic that informed the medieval educational ascent by way of the
iliberal arts’ from the iriviwm of the sign-disciplines through the quadrivium of
the number disciplines (including music and astronomy) to the heights of
philosophy (metaphysics, ethics and rational theology) and revealed theology
concerned with the pure formal-intellectual existences of God and the angels,
besides the hybrid formality of the created material world which participates in
and is governed by the celestial realm.®
Ihe strange numerical kinship of Wittgenstein with Plato
If Ludwig Wittgenstein had been aware of all this, then surely he would have
realized that his own intriguing anxiety concerning the modern 'forgetting^ of
 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 173
172 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

ceased to be the number one and has become many, sucJi that progress can only
simple mathematical processes, of counting and so forth was a Platonic anxiety
be here made by belying the reality of the starting point, that is by cancelling its
after all. This anxiety is, for example, expressed in his statement, with regard to
presupposition. Arithmetic is then primarily constructive„yet the possibility of
Georg Cantor’s diagonalization proof, that‘the co«cepf“real number^’ [that is, all
this process rests transcendentally on a deconstructed ultimate foundation in
the numbers on a* modern number line, including fractions and irrationals] may
have ‘much less real änalogy with the concept “cardinal number” than we, being \micity.
It is because these basic arithmetical situations and operations are already for
misled by certain analogies, are inclined to believe’ (RFM II §22). I shall
Plato aporetic, involving a problematic diminution of thinly unified reality, on a
eventually revert to his attiftide in this respect.
psychic plane already less than the replete noetic reality of the forms, that he
For the moment, in,relation toXVittgenstein’s remark, it should be noted here
does not really have a problem with the aporias posed by the existence of
that traditional,'Pythagorean and Platonic-iñflüenced mathematics did not
incommensurability and irrational quantities (such as Pi).® For Plato in The
allow that fractions, decimal and negative numbers had the full status of arithmos,
Sophist, and according to the record of his oral teaching, the indeterminate Dyad
while zero' (quantity was riot seen aS a nurnber at all, but rather as its specific
absence. Many, like Jácob*Klein hlmselfthave supposed tìiat this rendered ancient WAS co-primary with the One. if of lower status. Accordingly (in line with the
aporetic logic just described), the inherently fluid ‘Two’, problematically in
mathematics incapable of resolving the aporiae posed by irrationals, and so of
conflict with the very unity that it also expresses, was ingredient in the ultimate
approaching‘the modem ‘solutions’ proposed by calculus and other modes of
probability theory, which depend upon the admission to full ontological status reality known to us.‘®
By comparison, the early modern invention of ‘the number line’ or the
of all so-called ‘real’ numbers.^ But the Warwick University mathematician
'acceptance of the full numerical reality of negatives, fractions,, decimals,
D. H. Fowler has shown that it is perfectly coherent to argue, after Plato, that any
irrationals and zero, can be.regarded.as.sn Attempi to evade ihe really non-
division is more primarily a multiplication, such that, for example, a divided loaf
evadable aporiae consequent upon the problematic inter-invplvement of the one
can only be perceived as such because, with phenomenological priority, division
with the many and of the indeterminate asymptpti<: approgeh-to indeterminate
has resulted in the new appearance'of two pieces of bread.® With equal coherence,
quantities - which implies, in’ modern mathem,atical thought, a bizarrely
one can add, subtraction is more primarily for Plato an addition: there is only a
■measurable excess of a specifically indeterminate point over a specified
remainder of three if you take-two from five because you are still glimpsing the
indeterminate sequence. For now. the primary integral re4ity of the integers has
actuality of the" banished'two out of the corner of your eye, even if your action
been denied, along with the overarching transcendental character of numerical
pretends otherwise.
unity for the numerical- field of pure multiples - abandoned by specifically
In'this'li^ay, on U Platonic view, the cumulative number series - 1,2,3,4,5,6
Greek-hating Calvinists like ^leta in fevour of an ultimately Hindu and Islamic-
etc. - holds* logically and ohtologically a pre-eminence, while the possibility of
derived transcendentality of a blank zero, which was now elevated beyond
variant arithinetic operations- of subtraction, division, multiplication and so
convenience (the Arabic numerals including the zero-sign having been in Latin
forth has to do with the feet that the number one is not exactly a mere arithmos,
but a reality transcendent to the entire arithmetic field, which allows it to exist at usage since around 1200) to be regarded not just as a fully-fledged number, but

all.The tension between àny ordinary arithmos and the number one, or the feet as the very principle of number, replacing ‘one’ in this respect, but with the very
different transcendental impUcation of ‘flattening’ every other number to
that, for example, the number five must be a coraplete.unity in order to be ‘five’
univocal equality with itself.“ The new status of zero as a proper number also
and yet is not a pure single unity after all, is exactly what permits the methodical
implied a levelling of affirmation with negation and an insinuation of dubious
permutations on addition. Thus the number five, because it both is and is not a
conventions, such as that the sum of two multiplied negations is supposed to be
unity, can be further multiplied, removed from and divided. By contrast, these
processes cannot strictly speäking be applied tb thé number one at all. When a positive, as absolute and allegedly provable classroom truths.
In consequence of the epodial seventeenth-century shift, the number line
they are applied, for example, to the number five, it does not cease to be a unified
approaches the condition of a continuum, or of a quasi-geometric indefinitely-
five, since this starting point is thfr required presupposition for the operation of
stretched, thread-like magnitude. In this way, after Vieta and Descartes, the
the processes. But-when they are applied to the number one, then it has already
 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 175
174 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

of the curve to the straight line because of its inability to see that fractions have
difference between the arithmetic counting of a multitude of discrete items
the status of fully-fledged numbers. For as Fowler has shown, the mathematics of
(reflexively the arithmoi themselves) añd the geometric drawing of discrete
the Academy dealt with both fractions and asymptotic approaches in terms of
magnitudes - which can, unlike arithmetic entities, be of any size, since their
anthyphairesis, which involves repeated subtraction, whereby fractions can be
integrity is rather defined by their shape - is algebraically denied. Not only, as the
reduced to the endless mulüplicatory emergence of new whole numbers: so
esotericist René Guénon pointed out, does modern thought thereby undergo a
quantification, it also Itíses a qualitative difference within the quantitative sphere instead of one half, two from one and so forth.“
This same approach, rather than claiming to isolate ever new‘real’ numbers,
itself.^^ Only recTentlylias this suppression finally leaked through to ordinary
instead supplements strieüy‘arithmetic’ additive processes, whether pursued up
linguistic usage itself: thus the adjectival qualifier ^ess’ now serves to cover also
or down the scale, with what the Greeks understood to be those of logistike, or of
‘fewer’, to the'screamihg-point despair ôf people of my generation. But a serious
the ratios between numbers as exposed to a more reflective consideration, such
metaphysical point lurks hère: this suppression collapses both number and shape
as is-already involved for subtraction, multiplication and division. For a logistical
into,’bizarrely, a quasi-linguistic because algebraic blur; just as inversely and
tellingly, Vieta’s Huguenot friend Pierre de la Ramée (Ramus), who shared his pèrspective, it appears that the unity of three, for example, is really to do not just
With the unproblematic counting of digits, but also with the mysteriously
hbstility to the entire Greek legacy - to the extent of imagining a Biblical affinity
to a cónje¿tured "truer, near-Eastern ancient science - collapses the linguistic problematic proportion between ‘three’ âiid ‘orfe’. whereby the unity of three can
nevertheless be recursively applied agaih to its threeness. to give three ‘twice^ and
sign into an exact measurable position on a grid of mathesisP In this way
then indefinitely many other timês. The other operations of subtraction, division
number and sign fuse with each other and thereby quantity and quality. In a
and so forth can- similarly be derived fromAis not éxhaustively fathomable and
really peculiar way, the quantification which Guénon saw as the crucial mark of
moderriity involves more deeply an unnatural qualifjdng of quantity, besides the tensional ratio.“
Such a logistical approach to more complex arithmetic operations in terfns of
quantification of quality It is just this confusion which undergirds the modern
à'teonsìderation of proportions or ratios also implies a certain geometric
claim, as with the calculus, to handle exactly the inexact.
dimension to arithmetic, since the repeated application of a-ratio implies an
For now the continuum can be divided ad libitum, and aporeüc leaps can be
indifference to exact multiple content, more characteristic of the geometric
putatively plastered over in terms of a precisely measurable consistent ratio of
concern with integral magnitudes that can be of any size. Thus in logistic the
degrees of asymptotic approach to a transition that cannot really be made in any
Operation of a rule of ratio involves the imagination of a certain quasi-spatial
finitely specifiable series of steps. But the pròjected ‘consistency of measure is
pro|K)rtion, rather than a completely specifiable quantity graspable by pure
supposed to be Ale to convey you safely ànd rationally over every quantitative
intellèct as a series of cumulative temporal moments. For this reason, as Klein
abyss. One can note here that Wittgenstein’s disquiet with non-finite number
showed, logistic tended to migrate, in Neoplatonic thought, somewhat under the
extended also to a certain unease even àbout the calculus of infinitesimals, even
influence of the Pythagorean priority of arithmetic over geometry, to the side of
though he thought that in a Sirnple ‘abacus’ sense, ‘Mathematics is always a
mere pragmatic application of mathematical principles. But in the case of Plato
machine, a calculus’. Since, nonetheless, 'The calculus does not describe anything’
thêre remained a strict logistike theoretikè, and this feet can be connected with
(WVC 106), the modern câlculus of Newton and Leibniz should not be thought
both his privileging of geometry over arithmetic and his exaltation of the
bf as ail infinitesimal approach to something feal, if elusive.
Metaphysical dyad to near parity with the metaphysical monad. Logistic in this
One can claiin th'at this modern geometrized and algebraicized arithmetic
Vay formed a kind of hinterland between arithmetic and geometry, without ever
perspective suppresses aporias, since they would be an embarrassment for its
iosing the integral difference of the two processes.“ This loss rather occurred in
finitized“ rationalism, whereas the older Platonic approach can readily confess
them, within its hierarchy bf metaphysical sense, which takes number as a modern times, with Descartes and others, as we have just seen.
In short, Wittgenstein shares with Platonic tradition a sense that the ordinary
guiding clue to the plenitude of the rational, the logikos, but not as its ‘full
and primary procedures of arithmetic and geometry are both primary and more
actuality. And it is not, as Klein thought, inhibited from grasping ‘solutions’ like
real. But he fails to see that certain mathematical mysteries are linked with just
those of the differential calculus to the problem of the infinite‘fluxional’ approach
 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 177
176 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

But Bruno and Spinoza stül left actual infinity as the presence of an immanent
this primacy, whereas the modern attempt to supress these mysteries is equally
deity: it had not yet consistently invaded the domain of human mathematics as
linked to a denial of the real primacy of the ordinary number series and the
something that might be unproblematically dealt with. That began to happen
irreducible difference between the arithmetic and the geometric.
after Descartes had algebraicized geometry and Leibniz and Newton were then
able to algebraicize and numerize in their ‘Calculus’ the ‘fluxions of curves as
tending to straight lines or perfect circles, even though they do so by infinitesimal
Infinity an4 calculation
degrees.
We need, however, to note here that the link between the downgrading of
Ihe invocation in Platonism and Neopt^to^ism of the principle of repeated
geometric construction and the algebraic invocation of abstract infinity is not so
applicatipn of-proj)ortionate operation allows that one might approach an
obvious as some historians think. For in the case of Proclus, so influential on
inexpressible quantity in a consistently ordered way without abolishing the
Cusa, the Neoplatonic gloss on Euclid held the abyssal mysteries and paradoxes
aporia of this advance, gr invpking.a kind of phantom exaqt quantity after the
of the metaphysical to be reflected in the imagined arithmetic one and in the
manner of Leibnizian or NewtopiaHîCalculus - a quantity virtually present and
drawn point, fine and circle, and in this fashion had already intimated the
entertained as a «ghostly (non)possibility that is taken to command our
phenomena of continuum and calculus ras many Renaissance thinkers realized
conception of.the mathematically actual.
- yet still in entirely myst^ogic, aporetic terms.“ Even in ekrly Enlightenment
Repeatability raises the issue of the infinite, but only with Plotinus and some
Naples, Giambattista Vico and Paolo Mattia.Doria continued to be able to give
of;the Church Fathers did the unbounded as qualitative and simple, because
Proclean renderings of the new incorporations oflthe infinite viMe^deßnding
beyond all quantitative bounds, emphatically become an attribute of the absolute,
the primacy of geometry over algebra and the primafUy synthetic arid physically
in a climate influenced by the general late antique exaltation of initiatory
constructed character of the former.“ The genuine Platonic tradition« m
darkness and mystery.*’’ It was this metaphysical development that made
mathematics, because it believes, after Plato, that perceived mathematical
transçendently actual infinity respectable,*® and slowly it began to creep into the
realities only invoke the forms through dim.i;ecollection of a forgotten, spiritual
immanent sphere also.
realm (not an a priori interior grasp) and therefore require the use of the senses,
The latter development was therefore plainly not, contra some accounts, at
sustains the role both of inteUectual intuitipn of numerical essence and ratio, or
first a> secularizing one. Thus several of the scholastics already intimated the
theoremata, and of concrete imaginary or physical construction, or problemata.
teaflty pfjtr^ixsflnites, because they oj>served, for example, that the infinite series
This approximately accords with the way that there was, as we have seen,
of even numbers is equal in length to the infinite series of prime numbers,
originally for Plato, and still more radically than for later Neoplatonism, a
although^the.latter must be simultaneously of a seemingly greater size. Robert
'theoretical logistic’, or a reflexively operational ‘theoretical application’ to the
Grosseteste, the twelfth-century statesman and Bishop of Lincoln, even
constructed m ontology of light which construed it as mediating in a series pf material of arithmoi themselves.
Partly because of the tension between a Cartesian formalist and pragmatic
tr^sfinite descents between the infinite God and finite creation.*® Nicholas of
attitude to the calculus, and this more realist, ultimately Platonic metaphysical
Cusa (fqllowed later by Blaise Pascal) finally embraced the infinity of the
interpretation, there were heated debates in the eighteenth century about the
universe, holding, with Giordano Bruno soon after, that it, too, was ‘an infinite
‘infinitesimal’ or an infinitely small number that is still more than zero.“ These
sphere whose'cpntre is everywhere and circumference nowhere’.^® But in the
alsp correspond to the inevitable modern hesitation between the seeming
former case there was no blasphemy, because Nicholas effectively saw this
opposites of mathematical conventionalism on the one hand, and a newly literal
infinity as transfinite: it is extended or‘e3q)licated’and not‘simple’ or‘complicated’,
physicalization of mathematical truth consequent upon Descartes’ attempted
meaning‘inft)lded’in Cusan ternjinology.^* There arc,rnoreover,forhim different
identification of arithmeticized geometric space with physical space itself, on the
degrees of infinity in respectively the intellectual, the psychic and the material
other. The formalist view was that the infinitesimal was a convenient fiction; the
spheres. In this way we can see that the positive consideration of the actual
realist view was that the infinitesimals really exist. That view would effectively
infinite in Bruno and Spinoza is a post-Christian development.
 178 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
provide us with other examples of transfinites. Ihis same spectre hovered over
the new application of infinitesimal calculus to number theory in the nineteenth
century by Bernhard Riemann’and others.^®
Platohizing-Cahtor, rendering Wittgenstein realist
But all this held-back mathematical hot ain'was as nothing to the gas clouds
released in the same century by Georg Cantor. Be'broke with the intuitive
primacy of ordinal numbering in time by making spatial cardinality central: not
the“series 1, 2, 3 ... but;“for example, themumber ‘three’ standing alone and
indicating the ‘sef of all'things' that contain three items.“ This new move has
proved Incredibly ambivalent Was it about ending or rekindling mystery? It
Might seem to awaken certain Platonic and realist echoes, re-invoking the
unique integrity of every arithmos}'^ But, conversely, the set can be construed,
not as'a reversion to eidos, but rather as inviting a subordination of mathematics
to a nominalistic logic, such that number becomes a sheerly conventional
grouping of random singularities, brought together by a spatializing gesture to
produce ‘every three;‘every four’ and so forth, rather than Being conceived of as
the unique result in due order of an inexorable process of addition. In that case
it is rather ordinality that would stand Platonic sentinel over the integrity of each
unique linguistic arrival. By contrast, a nominalist conception of cardinality
points to a formalism that encourage« us to stop thinking of numbers as either
artful construct'Or strange intuition of psychic essences, or else both at once.
Yet, on the other hand, Wittgenstein complained'ift his notebooks that Cantor
had invented sets precisely because he was a mystery-monger, in love with the
pseudo-reli^ous (as Wittgenstein'debatably saw it) consolation of paradox (e g
RFM II §§18-38).
How can this accusation be“half-plausible? How cah sets favour mystery as
much as series? Or mystery lurkin space as much as in tirne?'How can sets prove
to-be jusr as primitive and indefinite as-serial ordinals? These strange
circumstances arise betause Cantor discovêred two key contradictions. First, the
set of all sets contained within a set, the so-called ‘power-set’ is bigger than the
original set. All the sets of component parts of three are more than three; all
the complexities of a seed exceed its visible oneness. We have already seen
how the Plaionic primacy of multiplication over division would, however,
interpret this circumstance in terms of the aporetic relationship between the real
transcendent numerical One and any purely finite unity.
Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 179
Secondly, he vastly exacerbated the medieval examples of transfinitude. At
least the series of all even and the series of all prime numbers are ‘denumerable’
in the sense that we can draw a series of‘bijecting’ lines between each step of the
two advancing series: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 ad infinitum can be made in this way
equivalent to 2,3,5,7,11,13 ad infinitum, as we saw was observed by Grosseteste.
So in one sense they are the same size after all, for they remain always strictly
proportionate to each other.
But Cantor now showed that, in the case of infinite sets of real, decimalized
numbers, all the endlessly diminishing or advancing horizontal series which we
can display in a square diagram and which should be exhaustive, are always
‘exceeded’ by a disproportionately non-equivalent ‘larger infinite’ since a diagonal
series drawn across them will exhibit an alternatively ordered series to that of
every instance of the horizontals by the simple device of changing in turn by one
position the decimal place of tjie firstjiumber pn the first line, then the second on
the second line and so forth, a procedure \yhich can go on indefinitely, because
decimal fractions are infinitely divisible. Even if the pewly emergent diagonal can
be re-inscribed as a new horizontal, and so bijected, theid^opaUzing procedure
can always resume beyond this .bijecting inclusions.And this means that the
infinite sum of aU real numbers is greater than the infinity sum of all».rational
numbers, which can be exhaustively $pecifie4> eyen ip the instance of their infinity,
by the set contained in the square of their exhaustive succession.^® 3uch a‘diagonal’
excess can be equally and undecidably seen as the excess of the power-set over the
original one, or else the excess of that set itself over any possible sub-settings.
‘Diagonalization’ is a geometric metaphor, and perhaps irreducibly so, to the
point of real analogy. Sudi a geometrization of Cantor would be a Platonic,
Proclean or Cusan move, a§ it would imply that his mathematical mystery is
‘logistically’ traversed within the real but contradictory structures of the
geometric realm as finitely, physically embodied. By this same token, however, it
jvould contend that his proof can after all also be performed with the infinitized
positive multiples of prime numbers, omitting any decimal points, but now
arranged in random, not regular advancing series, since regular series could still
he denumerated through bijection. Since the series lacks any principle of
construction, and since in any infinite series of whole numbers there, must be
always ‘yet more’ unfilled numerical gaps to come, each number can be arbitrarily
shifted a horizontal place forward on the diagonal, instead of shifting the decimal
point ‘one more step - which though a more regular procedure, is also an
arbitrarily adopted one. In either case one is showing that there is a paradoxical
‘more’ within a seemingly exhaustive square container.
180 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Alternatively, one could no doubt devise (or a computer could no doubt
devise) a procedure whereby, even given regular horizontal series of whole
numbers, the diagonal operator continuously altered the rule of succession for
each line, giving àn alternative logic-tb the succession achieved so far, since, in
principle this always remains possible: e.g. 2; 2,2,*2 might be completed by 4, if
the rule* has now become, not ‘repeat’ but ‘double at the fifth stage’, while at the
tenth it might be ‘double’, or it might be ‘quadruple’ and so on. It is always possible
alternatively to compietela series by shiftiitg the rule of composition and yet
maintáining consistency.“
These presentations would be m 'accordaiidè with the linked Platonic
principles‘of the primary.of the p'ositive añd niultiple over the negative and
divisory, and of the deteröiinatiön of the infinite as equally ‘great’ and ‘small’. But
in that Case the excess ofthe real over the rátiOnal infinite in the case of decimals
is qualified;'ïbr it is only after all an instance of an excess pertaining also in the
case of infinite primes, but with die additional Cantorian discovery - beyond
Grosseteste - that this excess is no longer one of mere quantity, but also of
measurable, denumerable ratio.
Such an incommensurate and utterly paradoxical excess of infinite primes
over the entire set of infinite primes is no longer simply an incommensurate
excess of thé-real over the rational numbers, but rather of infinite natural
numbers or integers over themselves. And since all calculations with real
numbers can only use conventiohal permutations of die integers, one can argue
that the instance of excess of the infinitesimals over the set of all rational numbers
is secondary and parasitic. Looked at in*’thiíí revised way (which is at least
logically possible) Cantor’s discovery much more emphatically points to the
actuality'OÍ transfinitude and the paradoxicality of the 're^ limits of the world.
And indéed, at bottohi. Cantor might'not havê been averse to this development,
since as a devout Catholic he wished to 'read his. transfinites as signs of the
partícipatioñ of the finite in the ’real, absolute simple infinite of God, enfolding
all transfinites'together in his ideas.”
'Neither Wittgenstein nor Cantor would then turn out to be wholly right: the
former’s semi-finitism would have failed to allowfor this ilewincommensurability
(or even to admit Grosseteste’s medieval paradox); but-the latter would have
appatrendy foiled tò' Sée the primacy of the instance of the diagonal’paradox in
the series of mere infinite prifhes, given the imaginative and so arguably
transcendental primacy òf thè òrdinary countable number series, which
Wittgenstein, curiously like the Platonic tradition, so much insisted upon. In that
case, Cantor’s argument assumes a much more immediately realist complexion.
Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 181
In saying that real numbers are only analogous to cardinal numbers, thereby
affirming in some sense the latter’s cognitive primacy, Wittgenstein was precisely
gesturing towards realism in a Platonic fashion in a way that he did not, of
course, suspect. However, he failed to allow that, even given such a primacy.
Cantor’s claim can still hold good, since it does not, once ‘Platonically’ revised,
really depend upon the equally numerical character of infinitesimal fractions
and decimals (along with zero and irrationals) along the modem ‘real’ number
line.
Wittgenstein and Aristotle: Infinity and motion
But do we really need to-take Cantor sériously? Some of the intuitionists and
constructivists, who fovoured time“, series and" ordinality, thought not. These
included Brouwer, Poincaré dkd Bergson. But also Wittgenstein,fwho heard
Brouwer lecture, with approval.^® Wittgenstein, however,-in'order to reject the
realism of Cantor and of Kurt Gödel, went to very extreme lengths. There is for
him, in the strong ontological Sènsi, ito potential infinite for mathemátics, never
mind any actual one (RFM II §45, V §14; LFM 255). He reduces the potential
infinite to the logical or grammatical rule to ‘carry oh’, niaking it ‘the property of
a law, not of its extension’ (WLC 13).
Mathieu Marion in my view wrongly equates this reduction with Aristotle’s
denial that potential mfinity could ever be actually realized, in the way that a
potential statue can eventually come about.^* But for Aristotle potential infinity
still clearly denotes an indefinite power that is extensionally ‘out there’ in the
world, something that can be ever further actualized, though never completed in
its full actuality, which for him is impossible. Thus time and human generation
are both actually without limit, although this lack of limit ‘is not (like the statue-
potentialities of the bronze) all actualized at once, but is in course of transit as
long as it lasts’ {Physics III, 6, 206a22-4). The same applies to division of a
magnitude, exfcept that in this case the discarded parts remain to rebuke in their
persisting actuality the infinitely destructive ambition of the divider and do not
vafiish down the abyss of the more successful destroyer, time (III, 6, 206a30-
206b2).
Marion equally fails to see that for Aristotle apeiron is a kind of ontological
chaos and not just a heuristic instruction. Indeed, since an infinite hovéring
between act and potency is for Aristotle the condition of motion, which as
moving is never ‘over* (as recent commentators have stressed),*^ the apeiron, as
182 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
with the later Plato, is even implicitly shifted beyond chaos in its linkage to the
ontologically real condition of motility. For Aristotle is forced to begin to see this
condition as almost as real as tìie condition of substance, if potential belongs to
being as much as act does, and the transition between the two which is movement
is infinitely continuous, so long as motion remains in the condition of transition.^^
Otherwise, one could reduce every motion to a series of initial and final states of
actuality and the reality .of motion would be denied. It follows that, insofer as
motion for Aristotle is real, then there is an as it were ‘actual’ state of infinite
potentiality that really exceeds, just as ‘mediating* motion does, the contrast of
potential and act.^^ For this reason above all, infinity in Aristotle has an
ontological import, since even-the mere potentiality of the infinite as motion is
for him more than an ordinary potential for act cancelled by the realization of
the act (like a municipally proposed statue by the completed edifice); rather, it
denotes an ‘actuality* of this aporetic indefinition. Just as real potential is for
Aristotle not a mere logical possibility, but a real ontological latency, so also for
him the dynamic potential that is movement is a still more mysterious latency
already halfway to act.
But Marion> with Wittgenstein, in effect reduces potential to possibility, and
with reference to mathematics he thereby yokes it in a.still Fregean fashion- to
logic, rather than maintaining a certain proximity of mathematical things to
physical filings, which the pertinency of mathematics to physics might surely
suggest as natural. If one rather allowed this kinship, then the mysteries of
mathematical potency, generatiye motion and infinitude of process might seem
less the results of mystification as Wittgenstein tends to suppose, than as rather
r^ulting from the fact that mathematical entities are, at least in one respect (as
for* Aristotle and Aquinas), abstractions from physical reality which itself
presents to us this triple mystery, to deny which would be to deny moving‘nature’
as ft always presents itself to us.
Cantor versus Wittgensteins Fregeanism
In the same way that Wittgenstein refuses any ontological reality to the infinite,
likewise for him, after a mathematical theorem is constructed, there is nothing
‘lurking* within the theorem waiting to be discovered. Nor should one think of
the theorem itself as ‘lurking’ in the first.place, prior to its invention. This ultra
anti-PIatonism in the conventional modern sense - which rejects even ‘a
Platonism of the second phase’ (or the fated logical implication of an arbitrarily
/
Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 183
willed foundation, as with Descartes) demands that 2 plus 1 = 3 in no way follows
consistently from 1 plus 1 = 2, except by adopting the same merely conventionally
transcendental rule of‘count one’, which one has to keep reiterating at various
stages of the counting process, because every rule admits of some degree of
ambiguity. Though we happen to build 2 plus 1 = 3, upon 1 plus 1 = 2, we mi^t
build something else incompatible with 2 plus 1 = 3, under another schoolmaster
who might even keep dianging the rule at every step. Therefore ‘in mathematics
it is just as impossible to discover anything as it is in grammar’ (W VC 63); 'What
we find in books on mathematics is not a description of something but the thing
itself. We make mathematics’ (WVC 34). Likewise, ‘The proposition: “It is true
that this follows from that” means simply: this follows from that’ (RFM I §5).
Here the redundancy of the word ‘true’ redounds to the benefit of a convention
that must be forever reiterated if it is to remain in force. Therefore Wittgenstein
goes to the extremity of arguing that the instruction to ‘add 2’ to 1000 will not
necessarily produce 1002, either according to rule-foUowing or to continuing to
follow the rule in the same way (PI §185). In either case there remains a margin
of interpretation which only brute imposition of the standard mode of reiteration
can prevent. Yet by contrast to this extremity, the real Platonic tradition
concerning mathematics, whirir culminated in Cusa, and ‘STco’s Christian
Trinitarian radicalization, was able paradoxically to regard making as also a
seeing, also a describing, yet thereby able also ‘to cleave to common sense.
Wittgenstein was too conservative to be able to entertain this paradoxical
alternative.”
It is in this context especially diat we can see why Alain Badiou today regards
Wittgenstein as a sophist.” For surely the integral content of 1 plus 1 = 2 is
jilready itself the patterned rule that leads next to 3, since 1 remains 1 as a
transcendental reality in the older medie^^ sense with every arrival at a new
unity? There is no duality of number and function, such as Wittgenstein appears
to imply. Otherwise we could not envisage ‘2’ or‘3’ at all. Simply to make/envisage
the number ‘1’ is already to envisage that 1 plus 1 makes 2,2 plus 1 makes 3 etc.
The endless sequences simply require an elaborative ‘unfolding*, and endlessly
recursive -reiteration, not just of a rule, but of the logic of numerical imity, which
is also, and uniquely, an ontologie.
It is this same arbitrary transcendentalism (in a Kantian sense, now
anarchized) about rules which disqualifies Wittgenstein’s argument against a
strong realist understanding of set theory in general, as, for example, espoused by
Frank Ramsey, who defended the real instances of contradictory or ‘impredicable’
sets and the actual extension even of their infinite instances, with some
 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 185
184 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethks

referential relevance. A projected construction is inseparable, as for authentic

anticipation of the contemporary dialetheism of Graham Priest.^^ Wittgenstein
Platonism, from an always obscurely (and so rhetorically or persuasively)
thought that botii Cantor and Ramsey, together with Richard Dedekind, had
confused the deliberate ‘intension’ or meaning-input involved in constructing a envisaged end result.
In fact, set theory does not really tolerate the duality of intension and
set (as when one puts only recyclable itemsdn the eco-green rather than the grey
extension that Wittgenstein imposes on it. Despite its initial logicist aspirations,
bin), with ndhocfextension (as when 101 random items go in the any-old grey bin
it confirms that a number is more than a sign of a number, given that a sign is
in order to form‘the set that, without diiè care, might be our weekly unsorted
always a rule, like a signpost, that points away from itself to another content. For
planetarily-irrespohsible human rubbish). Ihis, he considered, was to confuse a
a number is rather itself a content that constitutes a rule: the number one, for
set made By the rule of (‘arithmetic’)' intension with a set ‘composed by
example, has cardinal content, but also commands us ordinally to ‘count one’ in
(‘geometric’) extension which-cbuldtiientbntain unkno^ infinite things which
subtraction from the numerical pluriverse. Thus it is the very extension of
we have not really selected (RFMII §§17-Í4,V |§34-40).^ The numbers in a set
number as a ‘picture’ which exposes - as for Neoplatonic, Cusan and Vichlan
are only there for Wittge'nstein becàusè'of the ‘rule’ of inclusion:
geometry - the prospect of extension to die infinite, not die illegitimate breaking
A.picture<is.con)ured up which appears to fix the sense unambiguously. Ihe of the bounds of an arbitrary transcendental rule, as Wittgenstein in ^ Kantian
actual-use, compared with that suggested by the picture, seems like something lineage supposed. If, for example, ‘l’,deiJotes,a single set of all unities, then this
muddied. Here again we get the same thing as in set theory__ In the actual use can legitimately be a set of an infinite n;imbpr, while an .ordinal series - for
of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway example a series comprised by constant doubling - of itself must fovoke infinity,
before us, biit of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. and therefore point to the fact that the ‘temporal’ series is also' an open-ended
PI §426 ^spatial’ set. Otherwise it is not a seÿes - defined for example by doubling, not by
any limit of die items to be doubled - and, there ism.o rule, which, derives from
Wittgenstein here wishes to contrast what he takes to be a vicious dualism of set
theory between unambiguous meaning and impossibly infinite application with the settcd content of seriality.”
So while not all the paradoxes of number arise fropi the contagion qf the
a pragmatist use of ad hòc initiäl definitions ceaselessly governed, yet ceaselessly
■infinite, it is nonetheless true that it is the very nature of numbei;:s, not hubristic
quálified by realistic rules that take us down the ‘forking paths’ which we can
overreaching, that incites this contagion. Only quantification .leads us to the
possibly take, while the ‘dead end’ which we cannot take is oxymoronically
unquantifiable, and without this approach we would not be able to envisage the
construed as sublimé absolute openness.
unconstrained power to quantify. We take the marked turnings one by one
Yet one could argue, just to the contrary, that while such pragmatism still has
a duality of rules such as ‘go there’ over against the riietorically anticipated, and because we forever proceed up the open road.
Moreover, the attempt to treat set theory merely intensionally, as with Frege
then presently pictured content of‘where you can really, finitely get to’, that set
and Russell’s use of logical quantifiers (Boole’s ‘or’, ‘and and if, plus Frege s own
theory - with a greater allegiance to the inherited ontology of number, for which
‘for ever/ and ‘there is a') lamentably failed to banish paradox, because it turned
content and rule, essence and method coincide - in its fully realist version
out that the ambitions of a neo-Leibnizian mathesis universalis (explicitly
implies no such duality. Tliis is partly because the invoked or'mentioned‘picture’
envisaged by Russell, as equally by Husserl with his ‘phenomenology’) which
is no less ambiguous and indeterminate than a rule for usage, as the paradoxes
tries to extend logic into existential adjudication, cannot even deal
resultant froin apparently clear definitions of numerical entities always expose.
comprehensively with the most abstract level of objective reality, which is the
Some of these paradoxes result from recursion and not fit>m infinitude, and so it
is not manifestlythe case that the problem is alwa)^‘the projection of a delimited mathematical.
It is for this reason that, after Ernst Zermelo, set theory has been ordered
sense‘Upon an unlimited referent whose meaningful scope oné can therefore
more randomly within the grey bins of extension, according to ad hoc rules of
nèver deteltaine. To the contrary, the problem is often tíiat one cannot readily fix
empirical limitation designed to head off paradox. Yet this, as Graham Priest
the intensional sense, and that this cannot be done at all without (‘geometrically
argues, would appear to surrender both logical and mathematical consistency in
and problematically*) trying at least provisionally to determine its extent of
186 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
the name of avoiding the inconsistencies that this very consistency tends to
generate.^
It is, in fact, most of all mathematics itself that should suggest to us (for
reasons that we have 'already se'en)' that there is no v^^rrant for any absolute
intension/extensioh duality any more than there is for the almost identical
dualities of sense and reference and mention and use, since here what we ‘intend
by making* so exactly coincides With the ontological truth that we ‘seel In keeping
with this itìathematical paradigm of \>erum-factum (after Hobbes and Vico) one
can suggest, indeed after all in coìicutrencè with much ofWittgenstein’s thinking,
that we can only refer to what has a locatably different serìse for us.^‘ On the other
harid, and also with Wittgenstein for much of the time, one can inversely and
additionally suggest that the specific meanings of things out there in the world
only disclose themselves to us in endl’essly different aspects of real extension. The
senses of'evening star’ and ‘morning star’ alone locate the referent Venus, but it
is Venus herself, along with the entire cosmic order, who shows herself to us as
the sense-referents ‘evening star’ and ‘morning star’ equally, though in diurnal
perspectiva! oscillation.^
However, it would seem that Wittgenstein did not entirely subordinate his
account of‘rule’ to his crucial account of‘aspects’ (as rightly advertised by Stephen
Mulhall), thereby risking an absolute, transcendentalist divide between rule and
content. Herein is heard still an echo of the sense/reference dividfe which sustains
the Fregean programme of logicist determination of the existential. The Fregean
programme was in turn gènealogically derived (as was the Husserlian notion of
what is ‘intended’) from the Scotist and neoscholastic isolation of a known ‘object’
(which may equally be possible or actual and eventually, for later Spanish Jesuit
thought, as equally a nullity as a reality). This isolation relies on a dichotomy
between the có'gnizing subject and a reality that is independent of the act of
judgenrtent, in contrast to the Thomistic view that what we know is the known
reality in a transmuted, ontologically ‘intellectual’ guise and that this reality as
truth m the full sense is only ontologically present for z judging and living mind.^^
The more they iñvoke knowledge as knowledge of‘aspects’ of the real, the more
both Husserl aîid Wittgenstein veer towards a kind of more relativistic and
perspe'ctival, yet authentic construal of an Aristotelian-Thomist theory of
understanding, but the more they qualify ‘aspects’ as tied to controlled, fuUy-
survepble intention (Hussérl) or as subordinate to an imposed transcendental
rule (Wittgenstein), then the more a neoscholastic perspective - ultimately
traceable to the eighteenth-century Iberian peninsula via Austria and Bolzano, as
Jacob Schmutz has now shown - remains to the fore.^
Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 187
From number to the divine, from motion to metaphysics:
Against Wittgenstein's transcendentalism
It is in terms of this latter perspective that, in his philosophy of mathematics,
Wittgenstein exhibits a lingering Fregean and positivist conservatism en dépit de
tout. For all his apparently drastic refusal of all mathematical formalization, and
so all reduction of maths to logic, the retained intension/extension duality
remains allied to such a programme. It is because of this retention, I would argue,
thatWittgenstein erroneously tried to contradict Godel’s (perhaps authentically)
Platonizing demonstration of mathematical incompleteness.*® For this retention
led him to deny in general (indeed'in a disappointingly Anglo-Saxon-Lockean
feshion) that there are any real ontologital conundra,or openings for unavoidable
speculation, as if ordinary language is after all well policed, and we must realize
that there is no evading the ineluctable and so transcendental bounds of
Tanguage games’ and ‘forms of lifel
For even if his ‘rules’ for language games other than those of mathematics
are by no means so 'fixed’ in distinction from the content they govern, they
still, as Conor Cunningham has argued, close themselves against speculation
in a way that suggests an immanently controlling or regulative boundary
which, could it be identified, as Wittgenstein explicitly realizes, would thereby
have been transgressed.*^ Yet since Wittgenstein rightly insists that it cannot
be finally or rigorously identified (precisely because ‘knowing how to carry
on’ is given by prudential practice, hot pre-given regulation), his nonetheless
persisting supposition of a finite boundary to which we might appeal against
illegitimately speculative, metaphysical and infinitizing uses of both sign and
number remains itself speculative, and implausibly so, given the mathematical
paradigm.
It then follows that Wittgenstein’s entire tendency to exile matters of ethics
and religion to the sublime margins is questionable. The tendency is manifest:
Tt is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics
and aesthetics are one.)’ (TLP^ 6.421); ‘Ethics, if it is anything is supernatural
and our words will only express facts’ (LE 7), Inversely our theoretical
knowledge is secure in its own transcendental circumscription which has (as
for Kant) no bearing on things in themselves and so not really upon truth or
knowledge at all:
[I] f I say... “I know that I am now sitting in a chair”... In its language-game it
is not presumptuous.... But as soon as I say this sentence outside its context, it
 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 189
188 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

the mathematical conclusions which Wittgenstein tries to circumvent, suggest

appears in a false light. For then it is as if I wanted to insist that there are things
that it cannot. This involvement rather suggests that in feet there is no non-
that I know. God himself can’t say anything to me about them.
speculative human discourse, no ‘sef of verbal usages safely corralled against
OC §§553-4
indefinite and sometimes paradoxical extensions, by virtue of the inherently
open and dynamic character of this setting. Such a more rigorous ‘metacritical’
Theoretical language games then have a bounded, pragmatic context, however
outlook thereby renders metaphysics a natural extension of ordinary language
multifarious. which has always been taking festive holiday time-off in order to do its job
The error of metaphysical language for Wittgenstein is to ignore this context
and to stretch words beyond^ their, natural t^age. But its equal error in at all.
By the same token, one should contend against Wittgenstein that there is no
consequence is to regard religious ^d ethical limguage as such stretched natural
religious ritual that is not always already mythical or theological conjecture: the
usagCj whereas in reality such language serves to underwrite both ethical
practitioners are thinking just as much about the meaning of the saaificed king
imperatives and a certain stance upon reality, which may indeed involve
as are the ethnographers, whose theories need not, of course, be as reductive as
commitments to the transcendent and ^e miraculous (since there is nothing in
those of lames Frazer. And to a degree they ^so may hold such conjectures to be
Wittgensteins approach to justify a reductively'anti-re^lisf approach to religion).
subject to a necessary debate. Thus.it.is not that religious speculation is an
‘Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to
aberrant swerve away from%the .primacy of practice (as tends to be implied in
describe what we are to do, not justify if. (CV 29e) Similarly,‘A religious symbol
work by Karen Armstrong, for example), but.that, as in theurgic Neoplatonism,
does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion’ (GB„ 3e).
ritual always has to be returned toas a further carrying through of thèoretical
Thus religious affirmation is for Wittgenstein originally and properly removed
reflection which always comes up against not just the ineffable but-also the
from the modes of speculation and argumentation that are proper only to our
practical unavoidabÜity of taking a Pascalian partial wager as to its character.
pragmatic experience of the things we daily move amongst. Though even in that
The paradoxical mysteries of mathematics are not then the preserve of
case, conjecture and debate are silenced at the transcendental boundary of the
pseudo-religion. Instead, Wittgenstein^ feüure to conjure them away at the very
rules of a language game and the modes of a form of life, however elusive it may
beginning and core of aU his reflection on number, whose apparent surety he, as
prove to state them outright. In this way then, the immanently moving and
much as Plato, sees as the gateway to philosophy, reveals the spunousness of
infinite character of thought in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions is
trying to divide the existential mysteries of human life from the mysteries of
squeezed out^of legitimacy by the imposition of an absolute boundary between
reason, and human practice (both artisanal and ethical) from the speculative
finitude and a sublime exterior no Jongerjiecessarily accorded even the attribute
work of thought which fundamentaUy insists that, in order to engage with the
of a qualitative infinitude which would retain some andogical link with an actual
real, we perforce have to try approximately to grasp its nature. Much better than
infinitude of mathematics and physics.
Wittgenstein, Soren Kierkegaard, whom he professed to admire, as ultimately
But, in critidsm of Wittgenstein, one might say that there is nothing inherent
and unlike Wittgenstein an avowedly Platonic thinker, had already with much
to human language, which is itself in endless indeterminately open motion, to
greater clarity seen that in the case of religious faith, trust in the infinite and
justify an absolute divorce between the theoretical and the ethical-aesthetic,
conjectural mediation of its nature stay naturaUy in step with each other.
which would amount to another version of an absolute cleavage between fact
and valile. Nor to justify the assumption that our ordinary language is really free
of collective speculation.. Nor that physical things can be practically handled
jvithout some working metaphysical hypotheses as to their nature t?eing always Notes
already enshrined within grammar itself.
And Wittgenstein’s position assumes without warrant both that the ‘beyond’ 1 George Boole, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic: Being an Essay Towards a
Calculus of Deductive Reasoning (Cambridge: Macmillan, Barclay and Macmillan,
is non-mediable by our discourse concerning things and that the aporetic
involvement of the finite in the infinite can be evaded, whereas, as we have seen, 1847).
 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 191
190 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

proportion of a quantity reaches a null terminus, repeated removal of the same

2 François Viète (Vieta),‘Introduction to the Analytic Arf [1591], in Jacob Klein, Greeft
^proportion of a quantity, first from that quantity and then from the remainder and so
Mathematical Thought and the Origin ofAlgebra (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
forth, can never be concluded and so points to an infinite. For technical reasons of
1968), 313-53, esp. 315-35; Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 150-224; René
his own physics concerning a single bounded umverse, Aristotle denies even a
Descartes, The Geometry (Chicago, IL; Open Court, 1925); David Rapport
potential infinite of addition, but he does admit a potential infinite of division. And
Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity (New York:
this infinite is even to be considered ‘actual’ in the sense that ‘the games’ and ‘the da/
Routledge, 1989), 124-205.
(of the games - which could be any day of any length) can be considered actual even
3 Giambattista Vico, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians: Drawn Outfrom the
though they are of indefinite potential duration. Plato is here somewhat
Origins of the Latin Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010),
problematically invoked, but on the arguably essential affinity between Aristotle and
Cap. I [14-28], pp. 16-29.
Plato’s tììinlfing about indeterminacy and the infinite, see further in the main text.
4 Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 46-99.
15 Klein. Greek MathemaHcal Thou^t, 17-25.'Iheprimacy of the actual and the
5 See Wesley Trimpi, Be« Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University fress,*1962), 87-129. positive in premodem western mathematics shows us how naturally Christian
theological theses such as the privative theory of evil could be grafted onto what the
6 See Marshall McLuhkn, Thè Classical *Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the
Learning of His Time (¿orte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2005); Claude Lafleur, student would have learned in the quadrivium.
16 See Lachterman, The Ethics of Çeçmetry, 124-205; Dimitri'Nikulin, Aíaííer,
'Scientid et ars dans les introductions à la philosophie des maîtres ès arts de
Imagination and Geometry: Ontology. Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in
rUniyersité de Paris au XIIle siècle*, in Scientia und ars im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter,
Plotinus, Proclus and Desi^rtes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 63-8,210-60.
ed. Ingrid Craemer-Ruegenberg and Andreas Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994),
17 Plotinus, E««eflíís V.5.10; '[The Good’s] being is not limited; what is there to set
45-65; John Milbank, *Writing and the Order of Learning’, Philosophy, Theology and
bounds to it?... All its infinitud^ resides in its power: it dpes not change and will not
the Sciences 4, no. 1 (2017), 46-73.
foil; and in it all that is unfailing finds duration’; V.5.11: ‘It>s infinite also by right of
7 Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 117-224.
being a pure unity with nothing towards which togdirect any partial content’; VI.9.6;
8 D. H. Fowler, The Mathematics of Plato’s Academy: A New Reconstruction (Oxford:
‘We must... take the Unity as infinite not in measureless extension or mjmerable
Clarendon Press, 1987), 108-17.
quantity but in fathomless depths of powei" (Stephen Mackenna’s translation). Note
9 In disagreement here with Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Fifih Hammer: Pythagoras and
here the implied equality of potency with act.
the Disharmony of the World (New York: Zone, 2011).
18, Though it is arguable that this transcendent infinity lies in Neoplatonism‘actually*
10 See Hans Joachim lO’ämer, Plato and the Foundations ofMetaphysics (Albany, NY:
beyond the contrast of the actual and the possible. See further in the main text.
State University of New York Press, 1990).
19 Robert Grosseteste, De Luce, in Iain M. Mackenzie, The ‘Obscurism’ of Light:
11 Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 150-85.
A Theological Study into the Nature of Light (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1996), 25-33.
12 René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (New Delhi:
20 See Jorge Luis Borges,‘The Fearful Sphere of Pascal’, in Labyrinths (London: Penguin,
Mxmshiram Manoharlal, 2000), 7-69.
1971), 189-92. But for a corrective of Borges see Karsten Harries,‘The Infinite Sphere:
13 See Catherine Pickstock,A/ler Wnii«^ On the Liturgical CónSummatìon of
Comments on the History of a Metaphor*,/owrnai of the History of Philosophy 13,
Philosophy (Oxford; Blackwell, 1998), 49-57.
no. 1 (1975), 5-15. Harries rightly says that Cusa preceded Bruno; that early modem
14 Fowler, The Mathematics of Plato’s Academy,25-7,31-^66,191-2,364-71.
cosmology altered in the wake of this transference of metaphorical application rather
Anthyphairesis, a procedure also found in Euclid, literally means‘reciprocal
than the reverse; and that the shift itself is not a secularizing cosmic appropriation of
subtraction’ because the resultant remainder was then further reduced ad infinitum
a divine attribute, but rather a following through of the frill cosmological implications
- again through multiplying fragmentation of a unity - by measure of the
of this attribute of an infinite creative God. As with Grosseteste, if God is infinite,
proportionate difference between the first remainder and the initially given unit.
then his productions, though finite, cannot themselves be finitely bounded. The
(Repeated application of this process is also carried out by modem mathematics but
closed universe was specifically pagan, not uninflectedly religious.
in terms of pure division and divisors.) See Aristotle, Physics III, 6,206al4-b35 for a
21 Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ig^iorantia,1.Ì2.33; 23; De Visione Dei, 13-15. See Jasper
slightly differently inflected account of the reciprocal analogy between division and
Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and Appraisal of De
addition. He argues here that whereas repeated removal of the same definite
192 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
docta ignorantia (Minneapolis, MN: Banning Press, 1981); Nicholas of Cusojs
Dialectical Mysticism: Teilt, Trarislation, and Interpretation of De visione dei, 2nd edn
(Minneapolis, MN: Banning Press, 1988).
22 Proclus, A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (Princeton, N J:
Princeton University Press, 1992). For the ontological role'of problema in Proclus,
see Part One, §§201,243-4. His insistence ontte essential initial role of problematic
in producing the geometric field can be»seen as consonant with his overall *theurgic’
perspective which, in tohtrastio Plotinüâ, sÎïesSed the full descent of the human
soul into the human body and consequently the nêéd for sensory and material
mediation and the merciful descent of the göds to öür realm, drawn dowh through
and as myriad modes of ritual attraction.
23 Vico, On the MostAnéient Wisdom of tì\e Italians, Cap. IV, l,pp: 57-71. And see David
R- Lachterman, ‘Mathèmatics and Nominalism in Vico’s Uber Metaphysicus', in
Sachkommentar zu Giambattisa Vico's ‘Liber Metaphysicus’, ed. Stephan Otto and
Helmut Viechthauer (Munich: Fink, 1985), 47-85; Robert Miner, Truth in the Making
CreativiKnowledge in Theology and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2004), 96-125.
24 See Amir Alexander, Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped
the'Modern World (London: Oneworld, 2014).
25 See Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero (London: Penguin,
1999), 144-74; Charles Seife, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (London:
Souvenir, 2000), 131-56; Florian C9.joú,AHistory of Mathèmatics, 2nd edn (New
York: Macmillan, 1919), 367-447.
26 Georg Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers
[1895-7] (New York: Dover, 1955).
27 See Fowl6r, The Màthehîatics of Plato's Academy, 14: ‘a much more faithful impression
of the very concretosensë of thé ôreék arîthmbi is given by* the sequence: duet, trio,
quartet, quintet
28 For a clear and simplê suinmary of Cantor’s diägonalization'proof and its immediate
intellectual aftermath. See Seife, Zero, 147-53.
29 See Joseph Warren Dauben, Georg Cantor: His MatÏÏèfnatics'and Philosophy of the
Infinite (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Walter Purkert and Hans
Joachim Ilgauds, Georg Cantor 1845-1918 (Baseli-Birkhatiser, 1987); Anne Newstead,
'Cantor on Infinity in Nature, Number, and the Divine Mind’, American Catholic
Philosbphical Quarterly 83, no. 4 (2009), 533-55.
30 Mathieu Marion, Wittgenstein, Finitism, and the Foundations of Mathematics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 18-19,38-40,84-5,162-8,202-5.
31 Aristotle, P/iysics III, 6,206al0-207a30; Marion, Wittgenstein, Finitism, and the
Foundations ofMathematics, 26-7,181-8,200-1. And see note 14 above.
32 See, for example, Joe Sachs,‘Introduction’ to Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995).
Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor 193
33 This was the nineteenth-century insight of Félix Ravaisson, in his Essai sur la
Métaphysique íá’An'síofe [1837] (Paris: Cerf, 2007).
34 It is partly along this trajectory that Plotinus will eventually see‘the One’ as infinite,
since it exceeds the ontological contrast of act and potential, rest and motion.
35 See Marion. Wittgenstein, Finitism, and the Foundations of Mathematics, 1-20, esp. 14:
‘[Wittgenstein] insists that we never discover fects about structures that we have
already set up: any new theorem is in feet a new extension of mathematics.’ See also
V H. Klenk, Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), 8-17.
36 Alain Badiou, Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy (London: Verso, 2011), 75 aid passim.
The sophistic label is not meant to be entirely negative.
37 See Wittgenstein,RFM II §§21-2; Marion, WiUgenstein, Finitism. and the
Foundations ofMathematics,6,187,200-1. Cf. Graham Priest,Beyond the Limits of
Thou^t (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
38 See also Marion, Wittgenstein, Finitism, and the Foundations of Mathematics, 12-13,
63-4,181-9,200-1.
39 As Jacques Lacan showed, even the sign-operation, in order to avoid anarchy, has to
occur within certain loosely ‘setted’ parameters. In this way number interferes with
the field of sign, ensuring that it concerns always ‘numbers of things’ just as, in the
case of number, sign and reality coincide, though in ontologically thin air. See John
Milbank,‘The Double Glory, or Paradox versus Dialectics: On Not Quite Agreeing
with Slavoj Ziiek*, in Slavoj 2iiek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ:
Paradox or Dialectic? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 110-233. at 118-20.
40 Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought. I am grateful to discussions with my son,
Sebastian Milbank on Priest and the ontological reality of paradox.
41 See Miner, Truth in the Making, 78-125.
42 On the phenomenon of aspect-seeii^ more generally, see Stephen Mulhall, On Being in
the World: Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects (Abingdon: Routledge, 1990).
43 See John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the
Representation of the People (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 31-4.
44 Jacob Schmutz, ‘Der Einfluss der böhomischen Jesuitphilosophie auf Bernard
Bolzanos Wissenshaftslehre’, in Bohemia Jesuítica, 1556-2006, ed. Petronilla Cemus
and Richard Cemus. Voi. 1 (Würzburg: Echter, 2010), 603-15;'Réalistes, Nihilistes et
Incompatibilistes; Le débat sur les negative truthmakers dans la scolastique jésuite
espagnole’. Cahiers de philosophie de Wniversité de Caen, no. 43 (2007), 131-78.
45 The fact that Gödel did not see his demonstration of the undecidability of the
continuum hypothesis as problematic for his Platonism might suggest its genuine
character.
46 Conor Cunningham,‘Wittgenstein after Theolog/, in Radical Orthodoxy: A New
Theology, ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstodc and Graham Ward (London:
Routledge, 1999), 64-90.
 10

What Have I Done?

Sophie Grace Chappell

What is the natural expression of an intention? - Watch a cat when it is stalking

a bird; or a deer, whén it wants to escape.
PI §647; my trans.*

Double eíFect and the limits of negative responsibility

ky project in this chapter is to use Wittgenstein to illuminate a femiliar

Thomist thesis. I argue that there is a thesis in philosophical psychology
Which is true, which has real ápplication in ethics, and which deserved to
bear the name ‘the doctrine of double effecf (DDE), duplex effectus as
Aquinas calls it in ST 2a2ae.64.7. Here is DDE in Joseph Mangan’s classic
statement:

A person may licitly perform an action that he foresees will produce a good and
a bad effect provided that four conditions are [satisfied]: 1) that the action in
itself from its very object be good or at least indifferent; 2) that the good effect
and not the evil effect be intended; 3) that the good effect be not produced by
means of the evil effect; 4) that there be a proportionately grave reason for
permitting the evil effect.^

DDE does an important part of the work of showing us something ethic^ly

fuiidamental, namely the limits of our negative responsibility. We w^t to
know, for instance, what makes the moral difference that we intuitively see there
jpust be between the terrorist who kills the hostages because no ransom is paid,
and the authorities that refuse to pay this ransom. Or we want to know why,
when Sir Thomas More resisted the government of Henry VIII over the
divorcing of Catherine of Aragon, in the full knowledge that his so doing would
 What Have I Doneî 197
196 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

very probably deprive his wife of a husband, his children of a father, and his The publicity of the mental
estate of an inheritance, it was not thereby correct for his wife Alice to protest
The reason is that intentions are, like meanings and emotions and suspicions and
(as she does in Robert Bolt’s play) that Sir Thomas More was so depriving
thoughts and sensations and other mental phenomena, basically and essentially
them, rather than Henry VIII and his minions. If the true structure of our
public. Anything about them that was not so public would not and could not be
intentional action was simply what pure ^nsequentialists say it is - that we
what we were talking about when we talked about intentions, meanings, sensations,
should make all and ouly-thosehödily movements that will bring about the best
etc. Like the unseen beeüe in the box (PI §293), thç hidden part of the mental
overall consequences - then Alice More’s accusation would be right, and so
phenomenon would simply drop out of consideration. The point of that famous
would the terrorist who says that the authorities left him with no alternative’.
analogy is not, as some interpreters seem to think, that the box is empty, Le. that we
Quite generally: if pure consequentialism were true, our negative responsibility
have no inner processes. The point is rather that we do have inner processes, but
would be unlimited; even if - as consequentialists find it comforting to add - we
they are not hidden. So to speak, we see each other’s beetles all the time; cp. PI §313.
would not then do best to believe that our negative responsibility is unlimited.
Here is one simple example of the publicity of the mental. When my daughter
DDE w^ds off this prospect, by dealing with the question of philosophical
Róisín was four. I once saw her leavfther finger r unintentionally - in a slamming
psychology that lies at the heart of the issue, namely the question ‘What have I
door. I did not infer her agony. I saw ft (and heard it). Her pain was as directly
done?’
perceptible to me as the slamming dogr was. And how. directly perceptible is
I say pure consequentialists, meaning to imply that impure ones, indirect
that? Completely directly, I would say. It is certainly a whole lot more natural to
ones for instance, might find a use ft>r DDE. Joseph Bo)de apparently thinks
egli this directly perceptible .than any ‘senge-data’, *quali¿ or ‘phenomenal
that uses of DDE by any non-absolutists at all are not only gratuitous but
geemings’ that we might likç to,talk about.’
illicit: ‘Outside the absolutist context of the Catholic tradition, DDE is not
A second example of the publicity of the mental. Suppose Anna, who, is
peeded; and those who reject this context are not entitled to use if.’ But so far
married to K, is watching Alexei compete in.a horse race. Her fervour in.urgmg
as I can see, DDE makes a point about the nature of intention tha( has no
Alexei on has something excessive about it, something that tells everyone around
intrinsic connec^on at all with the idea of a moral absçlute (i.e. an exceptioidess
her, including K, that she is in love with Alexei. Anna then realizes what those
or virtually exceptionless moral prohibition). So anyone who is not a pure
around her have realized. Yet it is only now, and by‘reflection’ from their reactions,
consequentialist at least can deploy DDE, perhaps should, in any case surely
that she realizes it herself, as if she were to find out that she is blushing only by
may. (Conversations with them suggest that Brad Hooker, Tim Mulgan, John
looking in a mirror. What is manifest in Anna’s behaviour is more manifest to
Skorupski, and Michael Ridge all accept that there is some kind of moral
distinction between the intended and the merely foreseen: indirect consequen­ pthe^ than it is to her.®
Because intentions too are normally public in this way, the right answer to the
tialists to a m^.)
question *How do we know what someone’s intention is?’ is normally ‘Nothing
Is my intentional action always really just anpther instance of the only
simpler’. A cat stalks a bird. A deer runs toward a fence and then, seeing it, shies
fundamental action-type that Äe (pure) consequentialist recognizes, namely a
away. A man, as in the jokes, walks into a bar. Nothing is more natural for us. and
better or worse pursuit of overall good?* Or are there other, more limited and
fpw things are easier, than seeing simply from its public behaviour that some
less profoundly counter-intuitive, answers that we can offer to the question what
creature means to get something, the cat means to get the bird, the deer means to
I, 'Or ányone, has done? The answers to these»two questions are, respectively, No
get out (and then discovers it can’t), the man means to get a beer. In cases like
and Yes, and Rshall show how DDE is part of what we need to spell out these
these, involving humans,^ talk about intentions is at home, and (philosophy
answers. Tirst, however^ Î Shall also argue that, for a reason made clear by
Wittgenstein ih my epigraph, DDE cannot do anywhere near all the casuistical notwithstanding) uncontroversially available to us.
I said above that my daughter’s pain was directly perceptible. When the
work that it has often been recruited for by Thomists - though not, so far as I 'can
aforementioned man walks into a bar, normally his intention to get a beer is
see, by Thomas.
198 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
directly perceptible too. (Imagine him wiping the back of his hand across his
mouth as he crosses the street, licking his lips, feeling in his pocket for his wallet
as he pushes at the bar-room door.) It is not, as the behaviourists used to claim,
that his intention is his walking’-into-a-bar behaviour, any more than Róisíns
screaming and clutching ofher finger inTiei other hand is her pain. The behaviour
expresses the intention, as petfectly as a dock face shows the time. It’s not that the
time is redutibk to or identical with the state of the clock fece; that would be a
catégory níistaké. Yet we can normally look at the clock face and, from it, simply
recognize the time. Just likewise, we can 'norrnally simply recognize what other
agents intênd,’what sensations they hav^, and the rest of it, just by observing
them. Tf someoné sees the behaviour of a living being, he sees his soul’ (PI §357;
my trans.).
‘But Róisín mi^t not have been in pain at all - she might have been tricking
you with a grisly rubber finger she’d just bought in a joke shop. And the man
wdlking'into the bar might not intend to get a beer at all - he might be an actor,
or an undercover detective. What are you directly seeing thenV Apparent pain, of
course, or an apparent intention. The fact that these can be seen is no evidence
that real pain and real intentions cannot also be seen, any more than the feet that
there are forged fivers is evidence that there are no real fivers, or the fact that we
seem to be able to see the right time from wrongly-set clocks is evidence that we
cannot actually see the right time from rightly-set docks. Normally with a dock,
we just look and see the time. The possibility of a mistake arises afterwards.
Likewise with sensations ând intentions, the cases where we simply and directly
obsferve them arethe primary ones. Just as the very idea of a forged fiver depends
upon the prior idea df a gènuihe fiven so the idèa and the possibility of a mistake
about a sensation or an intention happening sometimes is built upon the prior
feet that normally there isn’t a mistake.
‘But surely the man himself knows better than anyone else what he really
intends!’ If you genuinely think diat, think again about my example of Anna. Or
try saying it to the man’s wife; shê’ll soon put yòu right. Of course there is a sense
in which eách person is, when things go well, peculiarly intimately related to his
own intentions: as Anscombe argues in Intention, the normal way for us to know
oùr own iñtentions is directly and non-observationally, just like the normal way
in which we know our other mental states, or know what we are doing with our
own limbs and musdes. The directness and non-observationality of such self-
knowledge doesn’t imply its incorrigibility from other, more indirect sources.
There is a kind of pragmatic absurdity about a question like ‘Are you sure you
have hands?’; there is no such absurdity about ‘Are you sure this is what you
What Have I Done? 199
mean to do?’ I cannot, except in very special circumstances (a phantom limb
case, say), be unsure whether I have hands; though if I was, I would check by way
OÏ an observation. But I can be unsure about what I really intend and about what
I am doing, even though checking that is not a matter of observation.®
Again, the point is not only about intentions; it generalizes across the realm of
the mental. In my quasi-Karenina example, it would be futile for Anna to deny
Vhat everybody else can see about her emotional state - even if it is only because
they see it that she comes to see it for herself. We can even imagine people being
corrected about their own pain-sensations: the St John’s Ambulance men might
rush a fired~up rugby-player off the pitch, saying to her ‘Come on. you’re in a lot
of pain’ - and they might be right even though she sincerely denies it, and even
though here, too, she cannot check whether she is in pain via any observation. So
with intentions, it is similarly futile for themân walking into the bar to deny his
beèr-purchasing intention, even to himself He might say to himself 111 just pop
my head round the door and ask “Jeff been in? That is what he says, but then
that is what he has said e\?ery evening for the last'twenty-five .years and on
every such occasion he has ended up staying in Said-bar till chucking-out time.
‘Thus even the most explicit expression of an intention, òn its own, is not
sufficient evidence of an intention (PI §641; mÿ trans.).
Ih a host of ordinary-life cases the qùestion arises *What have I done?’; and as
the posing of the question often contêxtually implies, the person who ásks it is
not always the one best-placed to answer it. One person says to another: *You
intended X (adultery, tò set the building on fire, to plagiarize another student’s
work, to get drunk...). You ob'^iously intended X, so don’t bother den)dng if -
and is absolutely right to say so. Absolutely right, no matter what the accused
claims to the contrary. Absolutely right, too. even if the accused quite sincerely
tells Jiimse//that adultery or arson or plagiarism etc. was not his intention. He can
ntake little speeches in his head if he likes: ‘I am comforting Jean after John’s
demise’,! am maximizing our insurance return’, or whatever. These little speeches,
if others get to hear them, are not irrelevant to determining the agent’s exact set
of mind; but as is obvious from the practice of law courts the world over, they are
not the sole or even the main evidence of anyone’s intentions.
‘But there are cases and cases. Of course sometimes we can tell someone what
his intehtion is, even if he self-deceivingly denies it. That’s quite different from
the case where something is a necessary concomitant of what he actually intends.
He might simply feil to see it. Or like Anscombe’s man pumping poisoned water,®
he-might see it and not care about it.’ I quite agree. My pdint is absolutely not
to deny this, but rather to build on it. What I am showing here is just that the
 200 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
in-advance question from others ‘Don’t you see what you’re doing?’, and/or the
ex-post-facto question to myself ‘What have I done?’, give us the means of
unpicking and unpacking the detail pf such cases, and the different ways in
which our actions may relate to or embody our intentions.
‘But sometimes the only way you can tell what someone’s intention is is by
asking him - ifeven that is possible. Imagine someone, John, whose intention is
to rescue a woman, Emma, from the rapist. George, whom he sees charging
towards her from her left. John charges towards Emma himself, from her right,
to pull her physically out of harm's way; she looks right and so sees John coming,
but not George; Emma takes John for a rapist, and shoots him dead. Meanwhile
George sees this happening and make^ himself scarce. Such cases show that two
people can make e^factly the same external movements - rushing towards Emma
fromone side or the other - with completely different intentions. They .therefore
show that intentions are internal, not external.’Again, I quite agree that sometimes
quite different intentions dictate identical external movements, and that there
could in principle be cases where no one can tell what someone’s intention was
because many different intentions were compatible with his external movements,
and he is no longer around to ask. (Think for instance of the controversies about
Mallory and Irvine’s last known movements on Mount Everest.) To think that
such cases show th^t intentions are never discernible from external movements
is simply a crude overgeneralization. Usually, in fact, they are so discernible.
Think here about the other evidence that might be relevant to settling what were
the intentions in the John and George case. John’s relatives might protest ‘You’ve
got the wrong man - .John was no rapist’, and cite all sorts of evidence from his
former life to prove that this was not the sort of thing that John would ever have
intended. Or suppose George was apprehended after the fact, and he protested
his innocent intentions; it would be quite possible for others to defeat his protests
by showing e.g. how habitual rape was for him. or that he was both violent and
obsessed by Emma. A court would call such evidence presumptive, because
George does not actually perform his rape and John does not actually perform
his rescue. But is it merely secondary^ No; it is just the kind of evidence that we
are always amassing about intentions. And after all. as our disbelief of George’s
protestation shows, a report of an intention is only presumptive evidence too.
Suppose then that I point a gun at your head and pull the trigger. Unless I
don’t understand guns, or have bizarre causal beliefe, or think this is only a
replica, or (...), this means that I intend to kill you. And no speech, inner or
outer, on my.part professing that something else is my action or my intention
can make any difference to that
What Have I Done? 201
It is true that if I don’t aim at your head, but (say) at your knee, then my
intention is to shoot you but - probably: unless I e.g. want you to die slowly - not
to kill you. (Sometimes in films, you see a gunman first level a gun at someone’s
head, and then pause and move its muzzle downwards-to a different target: a nice
example of the publicity not only of intentions, but of changes in intention.)
Npne of that even begins to justify Germain Grisez in writing this: ‘The rapist’s
death is not what is chosen as a means or sought as an end when the woman
shoots him in the head to stop his attack (the shooting is not direct killing). Her
end is to avoid being raped’.^° If shooting a man in the head isn’t direct killing,
what on earth is? How could it be more obvious that she intends to kill the rapist,
and that if she does kill him, she does it intentionally? Of course it may also be
true (in real-life cases it very often will be) that she acts in the heat of the moment,
that she would not shoot him if she could, see any alternative, that she will help
get him to hospital if he is still breathing after she has shot him, that she will feel
terrible about it afterwards, that if guns were not so readily available then neither
the rapist nor she would have Been in their awful preciicament in the first place,
arid'so on. All of this is relevant to the moral chal^cter of what she doés. None of
it affects the description of her intention as to kill, and her action as intentional
killing - and, I should say, entirely justified intention^ killing too.
Or suppose that I crush and cut' off an unborn bab/s head. Unless I am
bizarrely ignorant of human physiology, or derangedly mink it is a plastic model
not a real baby, or think that God will intervene miraculously to keep the baby
^ive, (...), this means that I intend to kill the baby, and that what I have done is
killed it. Here too I raáy profess to do and/or intend not killing but something
else, but it makes no difference. Any competent observer can see that my action
and intention are killing ones - even if I cannot see it myself.”
In an insufficiently discussed paper on double effect, Elizabeth Anscombe
says this:
At this point the Doctrine of Double Effect helps itself to an absurd device, of
choosing a description under which the action is intentional, and giving the
action under that intention as the intentional act. ‘I am moving what blocks that
egress’__ The suggestion is that that is alii am doing as a means to my end—
(But] an act does not merely have many descriptions, under some of which it is
indeed not intentional: it has several under which it is intentional'”' —Nor can
you simply bring it about that you intend this and not that by an inner act of
‘directing your attention’. Circumstances, and the immediate facts about the
means you are choosing to your ends, dictate what descriptions of your intention
you must admit.”

202 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Circumstances dictate what descriptions of your intention you must admit:
notice the cogency and externality of these correct descriptions. Whatever else
DDE may involve, it canñot include a permission or an exhortation to redescribe
our intentions-‘from the inside’ in whatever* way we like. For the correct
descriptions of our ‘inner processes’ quite generally, including our intentions, are
made externally, not ‘from the inside’, and objectively, not at our whim. As John
Finnis, to cite one distinguished autìiority on these matters, apparently agrefes:
[H]owever ‘certainly foreseeable’ [the very good consequences] may be, they
cannot be used to characterize the act itself as, in and of itself, anything other
than an intentional act of, say, man-killing. This is especially obvious when a
blackmailer’s price for'sparing his hostages is ‘killing that man’; the person who
complies with the demand; in order to save the lives of the many, cannot deny
that he is choosing an act which of itself does nothing but kill.'^
Bad philosophical psychology leads to bad ethics; bad ethics has further, femiliar,
bad consequences. Internalism about intention, the thesis that our intentions are
whatever we choose to say they are, or set ourselves to make them byway of little
speeches inside our own heads, is false. This false idea in philosophical ps)^hology
leads us straight into a false idea in ethics: that we can excuse ourselves in, say,
the craniotomy case by adopting an intention only to rearrange some physical
stuff and not to cut off a bab)^s head, even though the rearranging is the
decapitating (as we perfectly well know). Or that we can excuse ourselves in a
self-defence case by adopting an intention only to shoot a bullet through an
attacker’s brainstem and not to kill him, even though the shooting is the killing
(as we also know).
The irony is that those who most frequently appeal to an internal view of
intention have a decisive tactical reason not to. They usually do so while defending
absolutist views about killing against one or other sort of consequentialist attack.
But die move leads them straight into checkmate, because of course the
consequentialist can help himself to exacdy the same sort of double-effect
reasoning - and generalize it in a way that is fatal to absolutism. If we may say,
with Grisez,*^ that the craniotomy is not an act of killing but only an act of making
certain physical alterations in certain material, and stress the good intentions
with which (or the good plan as part of which) this neutral physical procedure is
performed, dien pari passu the abortionist may say that she is clearing an obstacle
from the mother’s womb, not killing the foetus, and stress her good intentions.
Also pari passu, the nuclear bomber may say that he intends to end the war by
pressing a button, not by annihilating Nagasaki. Even the concentration camp
What Have I Done? 203
guard may say that his intention is to keep his job by mixing one chemical with
another, not by releasing poison into a gas chamber. (A fortiori, then, there need
be no moral difficulty at all about unplugging oneself from Judith Jarvis
Thomson’s violinist, and the reason why, as John Finnis immediately suspected, is
indeed to do with DDE.)“
In each case there is no doubt some possible description of what the agent
does under which - in supposed compliance with DDE - what is done is not
bad in itself but either good or indifferent, and under which no bad effect is
allowed to be a means rather than a mere side-effect. In fact the only part of
DDE. so understood, that puts any substantive limits at all on what is permitted
is the proportionality clause. Which of course is grist to the consequentialisfs
mill, since his starting point was the claim that the absolutist went wrong
precisely in trying to attach moral significance to actions just as such, and not to
the proportion between good and evU in-their consequences. To put it another
way - Anscombe’s'^ - DDE. so understood, does not stretch a point on the
circumference of ethics; it destroys the .centre.
What intentioii isht
‘But if our intentions are not determined by what we set ourselves to make them
ix^side our own heads, then how are.they determined?’ I speculate that at least
part of the reason why the literature on DD E keeps coming back to the internalist
picture is because its defenders have not seen clearly enough how to give any
other answer to this question. They think the internal view of intention is the
only way to avoid saying what they know they don’t want to say - namely, what
Sidgwick says:
[i]t is best to include under the term ‘intention’ all the consequences of an act
that are foreseen as certain or probable; since it will be admitted that we cannot
evade responsibility for any foreseen consequence of our acts by the plea that we
felt no desire for them, either for their own sake or as means to ulterior ends:
such undesired accompaniments of the desired results of our voUtions are dearly
chosen or willed by us.'*
If we don’t say that the intention of the action is the inner speech I make to
myself before doing it, then isn’t Sidgwid^s position the only coherent alternative -
ffiat what I intend in doing it is every consequence of doing it that I ‘foresee as
¿chain or probable’? Far from it. There are usuaUy intermediate points available
 What Have I Done? 205
204 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics

I also foresaw that going for a bike ride would certainly make it true that if
between any two extremes! And that common sense takes an intermediate point
anyone rang me whUe I was out, I wouldn’t get the call. Nonetheless. I wasn’t
between these extremes is something that homely examples will quickly teach us.
intending to avoid phone calls when I went out for my ride. You w« intend that
Here is one: earlier this afternoon I went for a bike ride. When I did this it was,
when you go for a bike ride. On occasion I have intended it. But not today. So this
for a start, primarily the bike ride”ifsfelf that I intended, not its consequences. The
is a certain foreseen consequence of my action of going for a ride which, again
consequentialist’s picture of action always seems to be an instrumental, button­
pace Sidgwick, is only sometimes part of what I intend by actions of that type.
pushing one, in which What we do is no moïe than a means of securing a state of
Anyone who says to me ‘Since going for a bike ride is avoiding phone caUs, you
the world. Indeed some non-coniequentialists seem to use the same picture.
must have been avoiding calls toda/ is wrong today - even though another day
Joseph ShaW 'defines intention like this: ‘Of the upshots which agent A believes
he makes' inore likely by acting or omitting to act, A intends those the anticipation he would have been right.
I foresaw these consequences as certain, yet I did not intend them. Conversely.
of which provide motivating reasOhs-for his action or omission.^’ This seems to
I foresaw some other consequences as far less than certain, and yet I did intend
be, at best, a" definition of what it is to intend an upshot, not of what it is to intend.
them. For instance. I was trying to go as fast as I could. Now I foresaw that it was
It feces Other difficulties too: why, for example, can I only intend upshots that I
actually pretty unlikely that I would break my personal best for this cycling route
think what I do will make more likely? When I ask my counter-suggestible pupils
today.since today was windy andiwas tired and unfit, andlset my personalbest
to stop teasing their classmate, I may well think that asking them will be likelier
orfa still day when I was feeling really strong. Nonetheless, anyone who says to
to make the problem worse than better (since they are counter-suggestible).
me - should I need cajoling on this point - something like ‘Come on, riding as
Nonetheless, my intention in asking them to stop is indeed that they shoùld stop.
fest as you can is trying to break your personal best, so if you broke it. you broke
What I do may be objectionable on the grounds that it is not very phronimos of
it intentionaUy* is quite correct. Compare entering lotteries: I’d say thar if you
me, but it surely isn’t objectionable on the grounds that by definition, tr)ing to
win a lottery, you win it intentionaUy iff you entered it intentionally, even though
get them to stop can’t be what I’m doing.
the chances of your winning were miniscule. More evidence here that the line
There are of course some kinds of action that fit the consequentialist’s button­
between the intentional and-the unintentional is not a line between any two
pushing picture; button-pushing, for instance. But not all do. My bike ride today
didn’t. I didn’t do it mainly because of how things would be once it was over. levels of probability.
(‘Don’t you mean “the line between the intended and the unintended, not
There is exercise like that, of course, as when what you want is not to do 100
“the line between the intentional and the unintentional”?’ My point is, precisely,
press-ups, but to have done 100 press-ups. But noT this bike ride of mine. I did it
that - at least where the attempted action is completed - these are the same line.
for its bwn sake, as an activity, not as a means to any state of affairs. (Not even the
One way of putting my thesis in this chapter is that I think ‘What was x’s
state of affairs that I should be engaged in the activity.)
intention?’ can be a misleading question; to redress its misleadingness, we are
Secondly, when I went for my bike ride I foresaw, indeed foresaw as certain,
often better off with the question ‘What did x do intentionally?’, or indeed just
aU sorts of consequences which were no part of my intention. For example, I
“What has x done?’ Compare a pair of questions that are conceptually very close
foresaw (let us say) that my going for a bike ride would create a slight alteration
to these questions about intention, namely *What was x’s trying?’ and ‘What did
in Tayside NHS’s health and exercise statistics. No,netfieless,p<3ce Sidgwick, that
X do by tr/ng?’ The idea of a conceptual divorce between a trying and an action
certain and foreseen consequence of my choice was not something I intended by
which is done by that trying is not a happy one. Yet some such divorce is precisely
going for a bike ride. So far from intending this certain consequence, I wasn’t
the upshot of trying to keep our talk about intentions strictly separate from our
remotely interested in it. In possible worlds where no such consequence held,
that wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to .any of my choices. Anyone talk about our intentional actions.)
Notice here that my act fell under a number of intentional descnptions, not
who says to me ‘Since going for a bike ride is affecting regional health statistics,
just one. (As Sidgwick perhaps accepts, and as Anscombe repeatedly insists.) If
you must have intended such an effect’ is simply wrong. And anyone who says to
you ask me 'What was your intention in going for a bike ride? I might just
me ‘Since you knew that this consequence had a probability of (more or less) 1,
respond ‘To go for a bike ride. Nothing else’ - especially if you are a police officer.
you must have intended it’ is wrong as well.
 206 Wittgenstein. Religion and Ethics
But further questioning will swiftly dispel any impression that there was really
just one intention on whidi it is uniquely correct to see me as acting. If you ask
me ‘Did you intend to get some fresh air?’ I will say Yes. If you ask me “Were you
intending to test out your new bike?’ I will also say Yes. 'Were you out for the
exercise?’ will get a Yes too, as will Were you trying to set a new personal best?’
So too will ‘Did you intend to have another passing glimpse of that fine church
hall in Fowlis village?’ (Not all cydists are afflicted just by Boardmania or just by
Be^emania; some of us have both conditions.) Indeed, if you ask me ‘Did you
leave the house intending to think through double effect from a quite different
perspective, viz. that of the saddle?’. I’ll say Yes to that too. Or if you question me
in a Kammian manner,^“’ to see if there is a third sort of effects alongside the
intended ones and the side-effects, namely effects of my choice without which I
would not intend it, even though they are neither (directly) intended nor side-
effects, I’m sure there will be. I would not, for instance, form the intention to go
for a bike ride unless I knew that, if I do, motorists will do their best not to kill
me. But I do not go for a bike ride in order that motorists may do their best not
to kill me.
Here, as surprisingly often elsewhere in philosophy, we suffer from the curse
of the. definite article. The question 'What is the intention of your action?’ seems
so natural; but it imports into our thinking, and right under our noses too, the
contraband assumption that there must be just one intention.^' (Compare 'What
is explanation of why killing is wrong?’ - a question I have complained about
before.^^) Quite generally, the contrary is true; to take Anscombe’s own example,”
if someone is intentionally moving his arm up and down with his hand round a
pump handle,-it is bound to be the case that he is also intentionally doing
something else (operating the pump, replenishing the house water supply,
poisoning the household, or the intentions in some other list). That is why it
should cut no ice with us for a theorist of double effect to say, as too many of
them do, things like His intention is to injure the miner whose body he uses to
block the trolley, and therefore not to kill him’. For this simply doesn’t follow. Of
course there are some intentions which, barring gross confusion, exclude each'
other: if I intend to go sailing on Loch Katrine for the next hour, then I cannot
intend to go sailing on Conisten Water for the next hour. But in general, to show
that someone has one intention is by no means to show that he is innocent of
another.
So, in sum: I deny (on Wittgensteinian grounds) the internalized view of
intention, as a speech I make to myself inside my own head before acting. One
way to put this is to deny that there is a significant distinction -between two
What Have I Done? 207
questions about x’s completed action (where there is a completed action): *What
was x’s intention?’ and *What did x do intentionally?’ And I deny (by appeal to
examples) the claim that often goes with the internalized view, explicitly or
implicitly, that there must be some one intention in any action which is uniquely
the intention of that action. I deny too (also by appeal to examples) the
Sidgwickian claim that what I intend is all the consequences of my intentional
action that I foresee as certain or probable: as my examples have illustrated, one
can both fail to intend what one takes to be a certain consequence of one’s
intentional action, and also intend what one takes to be a far from certain, even
a far from probable, consequence. So if I am right, intention is not a matter of
speeches in the head; and not a matter of foreseen consequences, certain, or
probable above some given level, or otherwise.
Against closeness
Another familiar suggestion in* the literature at this point is closeness', what I
intend is the action under the intensional4escription,under which I actually do
it.-and also that action under whatever other.intensional descriptions are close
enough to that first description. But what is ‘close’ here, and what is ‘enough’? A
cottage industry in metaphysics has grown up to answer these questions. I myself
have contributed to that cottage industry the suggestion that nothing is close
enough, except intensional identity: the intensional description under which I
do the action is, strictly speaking, the only description under which it is
intentional.” I recant. For one thing: as argued earlier, in normal circumstances
it is entirely wrong to say that if I knowingly and intentionally pull the trigger on
a loaded gun pointed at your head, then I don’t intentionally kill you. For another:
as argued just now, there isn’t in general any such thing as the unique 'intensional
description under which I actually do it’.
A further problem for closeness is that an action can be intentional under
both of two descriptions, one very‘dose’ and one very ‘distant’ indeed - while not
intentional under some third description which (so to speak) lies in between as
to ‘doseness’. Example: we plant a time capsule in the ground. It’s packed with
interesting goodies from our time, and on the outside it says ‘Not to be opened
till 2350 ad’. Our action is intentional under the known description ‘Digging a
hole in the ground and sticking a tin in if, which presumably is a‘dose’description
on most if not all intuitive accounts of doseness. And it is intentional under the
known description ‘Telling the people of 2350 about life in 2017, which
 208 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
presumably is a very ‘distant description. But it is not intentional under the
known description‘Providing twenty-second-century looters with some possible
spoil’ - even though we are clearly doing that as well, and even though that
description <may well be intermediate in closeness between the first and the
second. (Ihis remains'possible pretty much whatever we take closeness to be -
temporal’ closeness, spatial co-location, coincidence across possible worlds, the
entailmeht of one descr^tion by another, the probability of one description
being true if the other is, normal cáusal separability,^ some mix of these factors,
or whatever.) If you think this is‘art isoIated'CXample, consider what happens
every time you write a letter or~ art email, or make ^ phone- call. Or consider a
tyrant who signs < death warrant andiiartds it to ^ runner, who takes it to the
hangman, who waits till the joiner has finished^building the gallows, and then
hangs the tyrant’s victim. On most accounts of closeness that I can think of. both
the runner and joiner perform actions that are closer to the death of the victim
than anything the tyrant does. Nonetheless,’ intuitively, the hangman and the
tyrant both kill the victim (in different senses), while the runner and the joiner
do not. ('Ihey might of course do things that make them culpably compliant in
killingihe victim, but that is another matter.)
To understand what counts as an' intention or^’ an intentional action and
what does not, we do not need the bad philosophical psychology of intemalism
about intention; nor Sidgwick’s clearly mistaken claims about the intentionalness
of whatever is foreseen as certain or probable; nor do we need the fanciful
pseudo-metaphysics of closeness. Ihe contours of our category of intentional
action are not the same as the contours of any of these* other Categories. What
then do wé need?
Intention and convention
In one' word, cônvention. (Recall, again, AnscOmbe as quoted above:
Circumstances, and the unmediate facts about the metms you are choosing to
your ends, dictate what descriptions of your intention yon'must admit.’) Or to
use Wittgenstein’s phrase, what grounds our judgements about agents’ intentions
is ‘[t]he common behaviour of mankind’ (PI §206; cp. §415).
There'are ways in which it is fruitful to think of actions as analogous to
linguistic -utterances. (There aré alsö disanalogies, most -obviously (a) that
utterances are actions of one sort, and (b) that utterances typically have just one
meaning (at any rate one semantic meaning), whereas actions, as I’ve already
What Have I Done? 209
stressed, typically fit more than one intentional description. These differences do
no harm provided we keep them in mind.) To understand another person’s
actions - indeed to understand them as actions, and her as a person - is to
categorize them within a repertoire of possibilities which - like the vocabulary
of a language - is both set and familiar, but also extensible and flexible in
indefinitely many new ways. He is arguing, sewing, voting; she is listening,
ploughing, deciding; they are computing the nth place of Pi, hauling on the main
brace, dancing Swan Lake... and so on indefinitely. The frame of reference for
our understanding of each other as agents - if you like, the lexicon of action - is
this repertoire of possible things that other people could be doing. The same
repertoire is also the constitutive backdrop to all our own choices; just as the
same vocabulary guides both my interpretation of. others’ utterances, and my
composition of my own .utterances.-When I act,-as-much as, when I speak, I
almost always choose to come out with something intelligible. And what it is for
an action to be intelligible is.for it to be rèlatable in some way or other, as novel
in some respects and formulaic inQÜiers,to the pomplex network of circumstance
and presupposition that constitutes the background' repertoire, the lexicon
of action - just as utterances-.are, intelligible .in virtue,‘of. their partly novel,
partly formulaic relation to-a literal lexicon, namely .the language’s vocabulary
(PI §337).
Quite generally, what counts as a given.- action is settled.by convention: by how
that performance fits into the known pragmatic lexicon. Sjnce to intend is simply
to set oneself to do an action, the fact thatthç nature of actions is conventionally
determined entails that the nature of intentions is conventionally determined
too. Why, when I go for a bike ride, do I intend the bike ride, and the exercise, and
the breath of fresh air, and the attempt on my personal best, and the sightseeing
round Angus villages, but not (ever) the change in the NHS Tayside exercise
statistics, and not (on this occasion) the avoiding of lunchtime phone calls? The
answer is: because that is how our common frame of reference categorizes and
interprets my behaviour. This is how any competent user of that framework will
interpret me. It is also, insofer as I am a competent user of the framework, how I
myself will understand what I intend and what I do.
Just the same applies when we say ‘Come off it - if you intend to fire a bullet
through someone’s head then you intend to kill him’ or ‘Come off it - if you
intend a craniotomy then you intend the baby’s deathl or make the various other
come off it remarks that I (at any rate) find myself longing to make so much of
the time in so many of the most typical debates about double-effect reasoning.
{Come off it is not, formally speaking, a logical refutation. I increasingly suspect
 210 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
that, most of the time, in most interestihg philosophy, even non-trivial logic,
come off it is about as close to refutation as we can hope to get.)
"Ihe force of these rtmärks is of the come off it kind: it lies in their appeal to
our shared framework for understanding Actions. It is part of that frame of
reference that e.g. cutting'off a bab/s head is inseparable from killing it. And that -
not anything about foresefeft consequeflcés, or ‘closeness’, or little speeches inside
the head - is whythe fwo intentions are inseparablfe.
Intention, convention'.and some familiar old chestnuts
The samé éônventioïi-%as'ed approach does good explanatory work elsewhere.
For e^Cample, I’think irgives thé right answer to the old Tramp vs. Trolley
chestnut. What is the moral difference between diverting the famous trolley so
that five'lives are saved and one isn’t, and dissecting the femiliar tramp for
transplant organi that will save five lives at the cost of his life? The difference
can’tbe centrally to do with action and omission; if the doing/allowing distinction
is morally relevant to Tramp, theñ it is hard to’see why it isn’t equally relevant to
Trolley. Nor can the difference be centrally uboút where ÿou direct your ‘inner
acts of intending*; if you can give your inner acts some suitably harmless target
in Trolley, it is hard to see, for Reasons explained above, why you can’t do the
same in Tramp. Nor again, to knock away another of my Own earlier attempts,2«
is the key difference really a point about whether we are confronted by an
âlready-èxisting problem', or as it wäre Create the problem for ourselves - though
that Is thè dosest of these failed ^ttenlpts: The'réal moral difference between
Tramp afid Trolley. I suggest, is simply that in Tramp I kill,dn Trolley I don’t.'!
don’r kill in Trolley, b'ecause I don’t hâve a'killing intentioii there;'! don’t have
that sort of-intention in Trolley, because in that Êàse no inteipreter of my áction
who had a decent competence'Mth the relevant converitioris would interpret my
action'as having a killing intention. But ! do have a killing intention in Traihp,
because no cômpetenf interpreter .of my actiort there would or indeed could
interpret my action as having anything but a killing intention. That my action in
Trolley is a reaction to something confroñtin'g me, and a deflection of causal
processes already under ^ay, whereas my action in TrWnp is an initiation of a
causal process, is also relevant: it helps us seetv/jy,any competent interpreter of
my actions will so interprét thèm. But the central poiht is the point about how
we determine, in line with our shared human conventions, what counts as an act
of intentional killing, and what doesn’t.
What Have I Done? 211
‘But conventions are society-relative (they vary from place to place) and
history-relative (they vary from time to time). So conventions can’t (Objectively
determine the facts about what you intend!’ One might as well say that ‘orange’
can’t objectively be the modern English word for orange. There is an interesting
and-important mistake in this inference, one whidi is entirely characteristic of
contemporary analytic’ethics. The mistake is the background assumption that
■what things really are’ - actions, for example - can’t be historically conditioned.
Nothing is a bigger obstacle to real progress in the theory of action than this
ahistorical assumption about the nature of action.'Rejecting it, we should take
seriously the possibility that there are action-kinds which are not accessible to us
purely for historical reasons. No one now, for example, can sacrifice his daughter
to Hera to placate her and get a following wind to sail to Troy; and no European
has ever been able to commit hara-kiri. (Perhaps even the Japanese cannot
tohimit hara-kiri anymore.) Tf thè categoriès which demarcate our ethical
Concepts are, as the jargon has it,‘thitk’, it follows logically that the categories that
demarcate our actions must be'thick'as well.
So if we are asked ‘Why couldn’t it be «that intentions which were ins^arable
within one social framework* werè*separable within another?’ the answei is: It
hot only could be, it is. Deliberately belching at the end Of a* meal is, inescapably,
ân insult to your host in Reigate, and a complimentary act in Riyadh - or So I’m
told.
None of this implies^ that the* action-lexicori of one culture caniibt be
translated, at least roughly, into the action-lexicon of another; no more than we
should think that, because different cultures have different languages, there can
be no shared reference point by which to translate one language into another.
This is the ‘common behaviour of mankind’ of which Wittgenstein speaks as a
necessary condition of understanding humans from other cultures. (It is also
■^hy,pace C. S. Lewis, we could not understand talking lions: PPF §327.)
‘But conventions are partial and incompletely determinate. So they can’t fix
what it is that we intend in every case.’ I have two replies to this: (a) maybe it is
also incompletely determinate what we do and do not intend, so that our standard
accurately matches the vaguenesses that are actually there in what it is measuring.
And (b) to echo what Austin said about ordinary language - my claim is not that
the pragmatic conventions that together constitute the lexicon of action are the
last word. It is only that they are the first word.
' Besides its use in analysing the Tramp vs. Trolley chestnut, the convention-
based approach helps us with some other chestnuts too; Loop and Fat Man, for
instance. In Fat Man, it is not a question of diverting the trolley away from the
212 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
five miners by pressing a button; it is a question of stopping the trolley by
throwing a fat man onto the track in front of it. No sane or normal person,
following the ordinary conventions about how we use action-descriptions,
would unqualifiedly describe what I do in the straight Trolley case as an action
of killing (and so of intentional killing), even though the one miner’s death is a
certain and foreseen consequence of my-action. By contrast, every such person
would call throwing the fat man onto the track an act of killing, or attempted
killing. (And as above, if it is objected that the intention is only to injure him, the
best response seems to b^ ‘Yes, you intend to injure him tool) Likewise in Loop,
diverting the trolley away frorti the five miners and towards the one only saves
the five miners provided that the trolley, hits the one; if it doesn’t hit him, the
trolley will carry on round the Loop and mow down the other five miners from
behind. So if you intentionally divert the trolley in Loop, you must be intending
it to hit. the one-miner. In the original Trolley case, if you found out that the
trolley had not in feet hit the one miner, you would be delighted an,d relieved; in
the Loop variant, you would think ‘My plan has misfired’. That shows that hitting
the miner - which, at least as the story is usually told, means killing him - is part
of your plan in Loop; killing him is a means to the end of saving the others, not
a side-effect of pursuing that end. So here it looks to me, on the whole, as if you
do have a killing intention. Loop is not straightforward, because it is an even
more unusual case than most of the others in the modem casuist’s panoply; but
under the conventional approach, it comes out, on reflection, as pretty clearly a
case of intending to kill.
Does that mean that, diverting the trolley in Loop is wrongi It does if you
think that ffie content of the relevant absolute prohibition is that ‘It is always
wrong to intend to kill an innocenti But that, it seems to me, is the wrong way
for an absolutist 4ike Aquinas, or Anscombe, or Bo)de, or Grisez, or Finnis,
or Shaw or myself to understand the prohibition on murder - a prohibition
which, it is agreed on all sides, is exceptionless only once we have made certain
important exceptions, perhaps just war or capital punishment for instance.
This is partly because so understanding it can very quickly lead us to want a
sense in which we don’t intend to kill an innocent in Loop, and this is almost
certain to be the internalized-intention sense once more. There are possible
cases where whatever I intentionally do - in the conventional sense of
‘intentionally do’ that I have been developing - I will intentionally kill an
innocent. The Crashing Aeroplane case, where my only serious options are to
crash the aeroplane of which I am the pilot into more innocent civilians or fewer
innocent civilians, is like that. Craniotomy is like that too - or at least those
What Have I Done? 213
particular types of craniotomy case where the diild’s death is certain in any case,
and the mother’s death is certain without craniotomy, and I am the attendant
doctor (so that, given my special responsibility to my patients, intentional
abstention on my part here also counts as intentional action). So are most of
the cases involving uterine cancer in a pregnant woman that get described
in the literature. In such cases, where it simply isn’t open to me to kill no
innocents, the reasonable thing to do is not determined by DDE at all. The
reasonable thing there is to kill as few innocents as possible; which suggests in
turn that the wording that we should have in the relevant absolute prohibition is
something like ‘It is always wrong to intend to kill an innocent where it is open to
you not to\
In any case, where I do have to kill, and in so killing am not flouting the
absolute prohibition against murder, however exactly that should be defined - in
such cases it is also reasonable, of course, for me to do this killing with deep
repugnance and horror, and utterly unreasonable for me to do it with delight, or
as part of a plan to get rid of the baby, or ‘to kiU someone to see what it feels likel
So such cases do show that there can be some place in ethics for making speeches
to myself inside my head about what I am doing, and the aspects of it that I find
morally repulsivè; after all, from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics onwards it is a
femiliar enough thought that character is revealed by our attitudes, ranging from
regret to delight, to the things we in one sense or another “have to’ do. Even then,
however, such speeches are not intentions; nor, on their own, are the plans that
suchspeeches mightexpress.They may capture my moÜves.ormoraUy important
aspects of the intentional choices, aspects that can make the difference between
permissibility and impermissibility. But as I have argued, the test of the common
way of behaviour of humanity* shows that these speeches do not typically capture
intentions.
What comes out in that last paragraph, I think, is how overworked DDE has
been. Cases like Craniotomy and the Crashing Aeroplane - and, I would say.
Loop - have been analysed using DDE; as if the feet that DDE is sometimes the
appropriate casuistical tool impUed that it is always appropriate. But it is the
usual philosopher’s disease, the disease of overgeneralization, to think that a
principle that works perfectly well in some cases must be stretched and contorted
so that it covers all, or as many as possible. What I am proposing here - in
different respects following Wittgenstein, Anscombe and Aquinas^® - is simply
that we not overreach ourselves. Like any other moral principle, the DDE cannot
do everything. Trying to make it do too much will only lead to trouble. Indeed it
already has.*°
 214 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Notes
1 Sed contra: ‘[A] caf§ movements in stalking a bird are hardly to be called an expression
of intention.... Wttgenstein seems to me to have gdne wrong in speaking of the
“natural expression of an intention”’ (G. E. M. Aflscombe, Intention, 2nd edn [Oxford:
Blackwell, 1963], §2; thanks to Roger .Teichmarm for reminding me of the passage).
Anscombe seems to me to be reding Wittgenstein rather uncharitably here. We c^
say both that my involuntary and non-convention-govemed sigh is an ejq)ression of
relief, and also that my voluntary and convention-governed remark 'I’m relieyed’ is an
expression of relief. The sigh betrays my relief, just as the cat’s movements betray its
design on the bird. We might want a word to capture the distinctive way in which this
sort of behaviour counts as expression. If we do, ^\4iy not ‘naturaf?
2 Joseph T. Marigan, S J, ‘An'Historical Analysis of the Principle of Double Effect’,
Theological Studies 1Ò, no. 1 (1949). 41-!61, at 43. Virtually identical statements of the
doctrine are given by. among others, Germain Grisez,'The Way of the Lord Jesus,
Volume 1: Christian Moral Principles (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983),
239-41, and Joseph M. Boyle; Jr,‘ToWard Understanding the Principle of Double
EfiFecf, Ethics 90, no. 4 (1980). 527-38, at 528-30.1 don’t know whether any statement
of it is in any sense authoritative for Catholics.
3 ÎQseph Boyle, *Who Is Entitled to Double Effect?’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
16, no. 5 (1991), 475-94, at 477.
4 For a clear instance of this limitation, see Jonathan Bennett, The ^ct Itself(O^ord:
Oxford University Press.,1995).
5 On this see further my‘Moral Perception’, Philosophy 83, no. 4 (2008), 421-37.
6 I got this example long ago, from a class that David Pugmire gave in Southampton in
1989. The story is almost but not quite in Anna Karenina, Part 2, Ch. 28 - hence my
names. (There Karenin and other spectators at a horse race do ’realize Anna’s passion
for Vronsky from her behaviour.’But Anna herself knows aTready.)
7 PI §647 is not, of course, about whether non-human animals have intentions too,
though it is about animal-kingdora-widé continuities. From evidence elsewhere it is
clear that Wittgenstein thought not. as did Aquinas (ST Ia2ae:i2.5), but that is not
the issue here.
8 On non-observational-knowledge of one’s own actions,-and how it might be a species
of Anscombean practical knowledge, see Adrian Haddock.'“The lijiowledge that a
has of His Intentional Actions”’, in Essays on Anscombe's Intention’, ed. Anton
Ford, Jennifer Hornsby and Frederick Stoutland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011), 147-69.
9 See esp. Anscombe, Intention §§23-7. ^ Ethics and Natural Law, ed. David S. Oderberg and Timothy Chappell [Basingstoke:
10 Germain Grisez, The Way of thp Lord Jesus, Volume 2: Living a Christian Life
(Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1993), 473.
What Have I Done? 215
11 Perhaps this is the thought that lies behind the Vatican’s condemnation of
craniotomy.
12 Cp. G. E. M. Anscombe,'Modern Moral Philosoph/, Philosophy 33 (1958), 1-19, at 5:
‘pçetty well any action can be so described as to make it fall under a variety of
principles... if it falls imder an/ Cp. ST Ia2ae.l2.3.
13 G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘Action, Intention and “Double Effect”’, in Human Life, Action
and Ethics: Essays, ed. Mary Geach and Luke Gormally (Exeter: Imprint Academic,
2P05), 207-26, at 223.
14 Jphn Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 123.
15 ‘[T]he bab/s death need not be included in the proposal adopted in choosing to do a
craniotomy. The proposal can bp simply to alter the child’s physical dimensions...’
(Grisez, Uving a Christian Life, 502). Cp. Boyle,‘Who Is Entitled to Double Effect?’,
480: ‘the death of the one who is Idlled by the cr^iotomy in. Hart’s femous example
is not intended in the [prpspnt] sense of intention’.
ip „See Judith Jarvis Thomson^A Defense of Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1,
i jio. 1 (1971), 47-66; Joljij Finnis,‘TJie lUghts and Wrqngs of Abortion: A* Reply to
Judith Thomson’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, up. 2 (1973), 117-45.
17 ‘[TJhere are always borderline cases in ethic?, hlowif you aye either an Aristotelian,
or a believer in divine law, you ynll deal \y%k ii borderline c§se by considering
whether doing such-and-sucK in such.-ajad-such circumstances is, say, piurder, or is
an act of injustice; and according as you decide it js or^t isn t, youjudge it to be a
thing to do or not. This would be the method of casuistry; and \ybile it may lead you
to stretch a point on the circumference, it will not permit you to destroy the centre
(Anscombe,‘Modern. Moral Philosoph/, 12).
18 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics [1874], 7th edn (London: Macmillan, 1907), 202.
19 Joseph Shaw,‘Intention in Ethics’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36, no. 2 (2006),
187-223, at 206; emphasis added.
20 See Frances M. Kamm, ‘The Doctrine of Triple Effect and Why a Rational Agent
Need Not Intend the Means to His End’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
Supplementary Volumes 74 (2000), 21-39.
21 We should be simüarly suspicious of talk of‘ffte action^ which crops up in aU sorts of
unexpected places, e.g. in Gerard Hughes, who even while being much more
negative about DDE than I would want to be, is to be found talking of'ifte (perhaps
complex) action-type which that individual piece of behaviour instantiates’ (italics
mine), and of Vhich action [singular] it is that the agent can properly be said to have
performed’ (‘“Double Effect” or Practical Wisdom?’, in Human Values: New Essays on
Paigrave Macmillan, 20041.217-35, at 220,232). As if there must (reaUy, after due
analysis) always be just one.
216 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
22 See my‘Ethics Beyond Moral Theory’, Philosophical Investigations 32, no. 3 (2009),
206-43.
23 Anscombe,/nfóMíion §23, p. 40.
24 One recent exartiple is Lawrënce Masek,‘Intentions, Motives and the Doctrine of
Double Effect’, Philosophical Quarterly 60 (¿010), 567-85, at 570: ‘Removing Otto’s
organs saves fi^e peof>le by providing organs, not by killing him. According to the
sttict’defiriition of intention, therefore, Lily do‘eS not intend Otto’s death. I would
find the strict definition mad or absurd if it permitted Lily’s action, but it does no
such thing. She does not act immorally by intending Otto’s deáth, but she does act
immorally... by stealing — I would also reject the strict definition if it entailed that
Lily could be legally punished only for stealing and not for murâèr. Fortimately,
nothing about the strict définition‘denies the possibility, or the prudence, of
classifying actions somewhat differently iniegal'and moral contexts’ Masek does not
explain what is supposed to justify these diÔerent classifications; on the face of it,
jurists have typically gone in for räther a lot of very moral-looking reasoning in
reaching their legal conclusions. Again, why can’t Lily avoid moral blame for stealing
too? Another recentexample is Joseph Shaw,‘Intentions and Trolleys’, Philosophical
Quarterly 56 (2006), 63-83, at 67, commenting on Glanville Williams’ case of a
surgeon who ‘takes a fancy to* [a] patient’s heart’, and ‘removes it, not with the
intehtion of killing the patient, but just to be able to... examine it.... Williams then
points out that a constraint against killing formulated in terms of intention would
not forbid this action. | This, of course, is perfectly true’ (italics miné). No it isn’t. As
any court would find, the surgeon who does what Williams describes is either of
unsound mind, or does intend to kill his patient.
25 In my‘Two Distinctions that Do Make-a Difference: The Action/Omission
Distinction and the Priñciple'of Double Effecf, Phitosophy 77, no. 2 (2002), 211-34.
26 I tried out this suggestion in ‘The Polymorphy of Practical Rèàson’, in Human Values,
102-26.1 now think it’s hopeless.
27 Some remarks made by söme writers on DDE, e.g: Joseph Shaw, suggest that they
think th'at intentions and intentional actions are separate categories which should
not be confused. In some senses no doubt this is true. In pîuticular, and obviously
enough, because something can always stop you acting, there can be an intention
without ah intentional action, butthere can’t be an intentional action without an
intention. Still, the intention’s telos is always thè iiiteiltional action; ah intention is in
potentia what ahintentional action is in actu.
28 I did^ try this ideâ odt, in various drafts. I am not sûre any of them ever made it into
print. I got the idea partly from Bernard Williams’ talk of‘confrontation’ in Ethics
and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985), ¿h. 2, and i)artly from
Philippa Foot’s talk of the'difference between ‘initiating* and ‘deflecting’ in ‘The
Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect*, in Virtues and Vices and
What Have I Done? 217
Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1978), Ch. 2.
29 In this chapter I have not been able to cite Aquinas as much as I would have liked to,
as a source for the externalism about intention that I develop. I think he is such a
source, and that this can be shown by a careful reading of (in particular) Questions
12-20 of the Prima Secundae. (It is striking how often modern debates about double
effect cite ST 2a2ae.64.7c and not Ia2ae.l2. It is the latter which is the set-piece
disquisition on intention; the former is barely more than an obiter dictum.) However,
to develop such a reading properly would take a long time, especially because a lot of
what Aquinas says at least looks patient of either an externalist or an internalist
reading. In the present context I remark only that the starting points for the
externalist reading are a close look at Aquinas’ notion of the obiectum of an action,
which so far as I can see is best translated as the objective description of that action,
its genus and its species, and the intrinsic and essential relationship that Aquinas
sees between obiectum and voluntas - a relationship which the intention mediates.
30 This chapter had its origin in a contribution to an Anscombe Centre for Bioethics
day conference in Blackfriars, Oxford, in 2011; an earlier version was published in
the online journal Diámetros in 2013. My thanks for’discussion, commentary, and
help to Vivienne Brown, Adrian Haddock, John Haldane, Sir Anthony Kenny (my
commentator at the Blackfriars conference), Erasmus Mayr, Eleonore Stump, Tom
Pink, Anthony Price, Roger Teichmann, Ralph Wedgwood and especially Joseph
Shaw, who has generously shown me extensive drafts of his book-in-progress on
DDE. None of these discussants is in any way ctilpable for the present chapter,
unless it is culpable of them to allow me to write it while foreseeing, but not
intending, what would be in it.
 11

Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity

Duncan Richter

Two potentially competing values in communication are clarity or understanding,

on the one hand, and achieving (other) particular goals, on the other. In this
chapter I address Wittgenstein’s concern with clarity, and consider some
examples of undarity, especially deliberate’ unclarity. I also discuss George
Orwell’s well-known attack on thoughtless and imprecise language, before
turning to Rowan Williams’ recent updating of Orwell’s argument. My condusion
is not that clarity is more important than^anythihg else, but that it makes sense
to value it (rather than simply cäring about the more practical results of language
use) and that in some cases we might have to choose between achieving our
desired results and being dear. The goodness of darity does not guarantee that
dear communication will always have the best effects.

Wittgenstein against reduction

In 1930, Wittgenstein wrote that:

Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form, it is

not one of its properties that it makes progress. Typically it constructs. Its ^ctivj^
is to construct a more and more complicated structure. And even clarity is only
a means to this end & not an end in itself.
For me on the contrary darity, transparency, is an end in itself.
I am not interested in erecting a building but in having the foundations of
possible buildings transparently before me.
CV^ 9e; Wittgenstein’s emphasis

He does not say why he regards transparency as an end in itself, what is so good
about it, but he does say something about what he means by darity. It means, at
least here, having a transparent, junobscured, view of possibilities, or at least the
220 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
foundations of possibilities. If the clarity Wittgenstein describes is an end in
itself then it will not simply be a means to some other end, but it might also serve
as such a means and have value for this reason too. It might, for instance, help to
end unnecessary problems arising from false ideas about what must or cannot be
the case.
In 1931, with reference fo-FriedricK Waismanrfs work, Wittgenstein writes:
As long as there is a possibility of hayjng different opinions and disputing
about a question, this indicates that things have not yet been expressed
clearly enough. Once perfectly dear formulation - ultimate clarity - has been
reached, there can be no second thoughts or reluctance any more, for these
always arise from the feeling that something has now been asserted, and I do
not yet know whether I should admit it or not. If, however, you make the
grammar dear to yourself, if you proceed by very short steps in such a way that
every single step becomes perfectly obvious and natural, no dispute whatsoever
can arise.
WVC 183
It is striking that Wittgenstein says that no dispute can arise once things have
been expressed dearly enough. Surely two people might know all the relevant
facts of some matter and yet have different ideas regarding, say, ethical or
aesthetic judgements or about what should be done. But Wittgenstein is not
talking about this kind of dispute here. He is talking about philosophy, which he
did not take to include the making of value judgements or practical decision
making. Grammatical clarification should disentangle alternative positions or
claims, and show what does and does not follow, from what else. Philosophy then
involves differentiation, and Wittgenstein thought of using the line *ni teach you
differences’ as a motto for the Philosophical Investigations.^
In line with the desire to differentiate, he also rejected attempts to boil one
thing down to another. In the notes taken by students at his lectures on aesdietics
we find this, for instance: ' to natural phenomena. Richard Dawkins is a possible example of someone with
If we boil Redpath at 200“ C. all that is left when the water vapour is gone is
some ashes, etc; This is all Redpath really is.” Saying this might have a certain
charm, but would be misleading to say the least.
LC 24
Reduction of this kind can be misleading and is hence unclear. Clear expression,
on the other hand, prevents disputes but also (allegedly) has value simply in
itself. If it does, then there is value in the transparent presentation and recognition
of all possibilities. Wittgenstein seems to want to respect differences,^ unlike
Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 221
misguided, misleading reductionism, which shrinks, or pretends to shrink, the
world (cf. TLP 6.43).’ He implies also that he wants to do justice to concepts.'* So
there is an ethical aspect to his method or approach to philosophical problems.
Clarity for him has intrinsic value and aiming for it is a matter of something like
respect or justice. For this reason Wittgenstein’s clarificatory method, if I can caU
it that, should not be judged, or at least is not supported, solely by reference to its
efficacy.®
If we use his method(s) we are concerned with grammar, but not mere
surface grammar. What matters is the kind of grammar that makes a difference.
The kind that allows us to distinguish religion from science, say. In the 1929
‘Lecture on Ethics’, Wittgenstein says that if someone suddenly grows the
head of a lion and I seek to find out why, perhaps by means of surgery, then I
am responding scientifically, in a way that leaves no room for the possibility of
a miracle. At most a miracle in, this case .would be an unlikely hypothesis, but
that is not (what Wittgenstein takes to be) the religious view of \yhat a miracle
is. If instead I fall to my knees and pray then I am responding religiously and
not scientifically. It is not that I rule out various hypotheses as highly unlikely.
They simply do not arise for me in this example. So the scientific response
and the religious response are not (best thought of as) rival versions of the
same thing. They are different kinds of, response, involving different concepts
and behaviour. Observing this multiplicity,-part of the richness that the world
contains, is a way of respecting it. Pointing out deep grammatical differences
can be regarded as a kind of duty, while actively trying to deny or blur such
differençes would, on one view, be impious or philistine. This is a strike against
such denial or blurring, but not in itself reason to believe that nothing could
possibly justify it.
Who commits such blurring or denial? One group might consist of people
who deny Wittgenstein’s distinction between religious and scientific approaches
whom Wittgenstein might seriously disagree. Some Christian fundamentalists
might be another, or perhaps Father C. W. O’Hara, SJ, whom Wittgenstein
criticizes in his lectures on religious belief for treating a religious question as a
question of science (see LC 57).® And another possible group would include
those who engage in what are often called politically correct uses of language,
but that might be better called forms of semantic blinkering. In each case there
is a rejection or denial of differences involving concepts. In order to avoid vague
or misleading generalizations myself, ! will turn now to some specific examples
of unclear, sometimes deliberately unclear, language.
 222 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Examples of blurring distinctions
When I mention political correctness, what I have in mind is any attempt to
promote a debatable political cause, good òr bad, left or right, simply by insisting
that certam terms be used in place of others. I take it that insistence on the use
or non-use of certain terms is all right in some cases. There are words we should
not use, for mstance because of their offensiveness. One important reason for
preferrmg a term such as ■African-American- to ■black’, or more obviously
msultmg terms, though, is clarity. .The Word ■black’ need not always be avoided
when speaking about people, but it has connotations that might. especiaUy in
conjunction with human history, mislead Someone into thinking of-black people’
as worse than other people.? A person s6 misled lacks clarity in their thinking. A
more neutral term, such as ■African-American’, on the other hand, does not have
e same connotations, and has similarities with such terms as ’Irish-American’
*at might help people see the equal humanity of African-Americans and other
Americans. Not all attempts at semantic persuasion are like this, however. For
mstance in a column in The New York Times, Paul Krugman claimed that ’right-
wing political correctness’ msists that wealthy people should instead be referred
to as job creators’.® Could an insistence such as this be all right?
A consequentialist will care only about the effects, or the probable effects, of
word choice. Others will care about clarity and accuracy. Most of us, I suspect
will care about both accurate concepmalization and the consequences of such
conceptualization. For example. Sally Haslanger offers analyses of gender and
race ™th she says.’botft the goal of understandmg racial and sexual oppression,
and of achievmg sexual and racial equalit/ (my emphasis).» One pomt I want to
make is that these kinds of goals (i.e. understanding and achieving practical
goals) are not the same and can conflict
The very idea of accurate conceptualization might be questioned though Can
any concepts be wrong or worse than others except m terms of their effects? I
*.nk they can be because of the question of seeing, or obscuring, possibilities.
A term such as killer whale’ tends to hide the possibility of a sympathetic
member of this species. The word ’orcÿ on the other hand, is more neutral,
tending to rule nothing out about what an orca might be like. Similarly, it is
harder (though not impossible) to think of a bad Job-creator, but fairly easy to
imagine a wealthy person being either good or bad. So fer as we care about
transparency of possibilities, then, we will tend to prefer terms such as ’orca’ and
wedthy person’. Which is not to say, however, that other concerns will never
push against this tendency.
Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 223
I have mentioned reduction, but the blurring of distinctions can also come
from expansion. Indeed, these might be seen as two sides of the same coin.
Expanding what counts as a physical object, for instance, might also be regarded
as reducing some things to physical objects. Another example is expanding the
concept of violence to cover more than it usually does. Johan Galtung draws a
threefold distinction between what he calls direct, structural and cultural
violence. ‘Direct violence’ is what we might call actual or literal violence (or
simply violence); ‘structural violence’ is, roughly speaking, systematic injustice;
and ‘cultural violence’ is a matter of norms that support such injustice.“"
In these cases, we have an extension of a concept from the universally
abhorred evils that it clearly indudes to other bad things that are less obviously
induded. Hiis is done quite consciöusly by Galtung, who writes that:
[I]t will soon be dear wl\y we are rejecting the narrow concept of violence -
according to which violence is somatic incapacitation, or deprivation of health,
alone (with killing as the extreme form), at the hands of an actor who intends
this to be the consequence. If this were all violence is about, and peace is seen as
its negation, then too little is rejected when peace is held up as an ideal. Highly
unacceptable social orders would still be compatible with peace. Hence, an
extended concept of violence is indispensable but that concept should be a logical
extension, not merely a list of undesirables."
Speaking of the task of defining ‘violence’, Galtung writes that ‘it is not so
important to arrive at anything like the definition, or the typology - for there are
obviously many types of violence’. His immediate concern ‘is to indicate
theoretically significant dimensions of violence that can lead thinking, research
and, potentially, action, towards the most important problems.’^^ In other words,
his concern is much more with practical consequences than with providing an
accurate analysis of the concept of violence.
Others who extend concepts in a similar way may do so either unwittingly or
else with good intentions (or perhaps a bit of each), the aim being to encourage
action against these other bad things. An example might be using the expression
‘white supremac/ to refer not only to a relatively rare openly racist ideology but
also to a much more common kind of racial inequality. Sometimes people use
the term ‘white supremac/ in a somewhat technical sense, but it is at least
possible that its suggestion of violent hate-groups gives the term a borrowed
rhetorical power that appeals to some of its users. If words are chosen because
they ha^^ this kind of power, then the means chosen to promote the relevant
cause, belonging to the mode of presentation, are indirect and therefore
 224 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
somewhat manipulative, the idea apparently being to change people’s thinking
without their noticing or consenting to it. This may be manipulative towards a
good end, but it is manipulative all the same.
And the justification of such linguistic manipulation is likely to be slightly
odd, appealing both to the gogd intentipns of the manipulators and to the
consequenti^ist idea that intentions do not matter. Direct violence is intentional,
while structural violence need npt be. In> talking of ‘structural violence’ the
concept of violence is extended on the ground that intention matters far less
than effects, and the effects of structural or cûltuçal violence might be just as bad
as those of direct violence. But then the persuasive force of the word Violence’,
rather than, ^y‘injustice’, seems to depend on a sense that intentions do matter.
Violence is more active than injustice, and agency implies intention.
Galtung talks about violence because he is concerned with peace, which
he wants to identify'as the absence of violence. But why talk about peace rather
than goodness or justice or perhaps some combination of terms? As we have
seen, he gives essentially consequentialist reasons for doing so. The word ‘peace’
is widely and deeply accepted as the name for something of great value. Galtung
writes of:
the generally widespread use of the term ‘peace* - so widespread and so generally
acknowledged that it possibly presents some kind of substitute in this secular
age for feelings of devotion and community that in former ages were invoked by
reference to religious concepts.^*
Despite what he acknowledges as ‘the many possibiUties for semantic confusion’,”
Galtung wants to use the word ‘peace’ because of its broad and deep emotional
appeal.
He and o^er similarly motivated linguistic innovators can seem to want both
the inherited meanings of the words they use and the neiy meanings that they
want to associate with them. This, as he recognizes, can lead to confusion, but
this is a price he is willing to pay for die sake of the benefits he anticipates.
Whether the actual effects will be good is unknown, however. What we know is
that taking a word such as ‘violence’ and applying it to a phenomenon to whidi
it has previously not applied stretches the meaning of the word, making it cover
more than it did before. It might be in some sense (and in some cases of this
phenomenon) what Galtung calls a logical extension of the concept in question,
but it is an extension all the same. This might have highly beneficial consequences,
but we cannot know in advance that it wiU do so. and using language to imply
similarities both obscures differences that were previously more evident and
Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 225
works by implication rather than by rational or clear explication. For example, if
we call people ‘differendy abled’ then, whatever advantages thiS'might have (and
both reducing prejudice and calling people what they prefer to be called are
significant advantages), this also has the disadvantages of making disabled
people sound as though they have unusual talents (which may or may not be
true in any given case) and of reducing prejudice, if at all, by means other than
rational persuasion or, at least arguably, reference to reality. (Some people would
insist that the so-called disabled are in fact merely differendy abled.) These
terminological disadvantages certainly might be outweighed by the advantages,
but they are worth noting all the same, and might not be so outweighed in other
cases (such as substituting the term ‘job creators’ for‘wealthy people’). And if we
value clarity in a non-consequentialist way then this weighing of advantages and
disadvantages will not be the only consideration we çare about.
It might be asked whether extensions of concepts such as that of violence
necessarily dilute meaning or blur disdnctions. If I extend a concept that
formerly covered only A and B so that h now covers Gas well, then qf course I
have done something to’çeducç the distinction betwgejn A and C. But I might
also have brought out the sfinilarity betweeri A and C that yas formerly obscured.
The value of this revelation might outweigh the badness of any hiding in,what I
have done. So extending concepts is not necessarily ^something that proponents
of clarity should oppose. It will depend on the particular case. My point is simply
that it can reduce clarity. Expánding the concept of violence, for instance, as
Galtung does appears to reduce clarity even on his own admission. Expanding
the concept of marriage to include same-sex relationships, on the other hand,
might improve understanding of these relationships.^^
Orwell versus vagueness
Speaking of blurring distinctions brings to mind George Orwell’s femous attack
on vague and stale language in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’.”
Orwell argues in favour of simplicity and clarity, saying that:
one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the
decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by
starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the
worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and
when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.*^
 226 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Ulis is close to something Elizabeth Anscombe says in ‘Modern Moral
Philosoph/. Tliere shenvrites that:
It would be a great improvement if, instead of “morally wrong,” one always
named a genus such as “untruthful,■’“unchaste,”“unjust.” We should no longer ask
whether doing something was “wrong,” passing dijectly from some description
of an action to this notion; we should ask whether, e.g., it vras unjust; and the
answer would sometimes be clear at once.‘*
One problem with talk about what is ‘morally wrong’, as Anscombe sees it, is that
its meaning is not cleat, and therefore it is hárd to see whether a given act is right
or wrong. If we use more precise language, words* that are both more specific and
more clearly me^ingful, we will be in a bettef position to see what we should do.
This is very close to Orwells idea that if we use simpler language, by which he
means, at least in part, moré specific language, the stupidity of certain remarks
will be niiore obvious.
Orwell^emphasizès the political consequences of decayed language, but he
sees a human cost too. Watching a political speech full of the usual expressions
thoughtlessly mouthed, one can, he says, feel as though it is a dummy or machine,
not a human being, that is speaking. And there is some basis in fact for this,
according to Orwell, because:
A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward
tuming^himself into a machine. Tfie appropriate noises are coming out of his
larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words
for himself.*®
But worst of aU. Orwell seems to think, is the political cost. Political uses of
euphemism and vagueness act as a kind of inteUectual smokescreen for gross
injustice.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible.... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism,
question-begging and sheér cloudy vagueness. Defenseless vülages are
bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven* Out into the countryside,- the
catüe machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called
pacification.... Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without
calling up mental pictures of them.“
Itiseasy to sympathize with OrweU. but harder to foUowhis recommendations
in practice. One problem is that Orwell recommends focusing on concrete
Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 227
objects and examples as much as possible, but not everything is concrete. He
never defines what he counts as meaningless language, but he comes close when
he says that:
Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental natural vitality, as
used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do
not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the
reader.^'
As Wittgenstein points out in the ‘Lecture on Ethics’, and as might be obvious
anyway, ethics and religion are full of words that do not point to any discoverable
object and should not be expected to do so by their audience. Moral rights and
obligations are not discoverable objects. Perhaps on Wittgensteinian or
Anscombean grounds we might reject talk of these things’, but what about justice
or God? Are they discoverable objects? Perhaps in some sense they are, but they
are not concrete objects in the sense that Orwell seems to have in mind. So there
is a problem here, or at least a challenge, for anyone who does not want to reject
Orwell’s view. How can we talk about ethical, reli^ous, aesthetic and related
political issues without resorting to the kind of language that Orwell apparently
regards as meaningless and that Ijrings with it the problems he identifies? I think
the answer is: very carefully. Orwell especially rejects imprecision and laçk of
imagination. It is not necessarily more difficult to speak and write imaginatively
about ethics than it is to speak and write imagiilatively about anything else.
There is a problem, though, concerning precision, and specifically with what
precision means, or can mean, in these cases. It cannot mean what it means in
specifying what matWials are needed for constructing a building. But it is
perfectly possible to try to say exactiy what one means, and to avoid both clichés
and misleading generalizations.
It might be objected that while the language Orwell rejects is vague, referring
to nothing in particular and thereby obscuring our view of reality, it does
not necessarily obscure the specific kind of distinctions that Wittgenstein was
concerned with. We might obscure our view of particular facts widiout obscuring
our view of possibilities. If we want to see our options clearly, though, and
see what each involves, then we will want to avoid obscurity of both kinds. And
I think that in spirit if not in letter this is a Wittgensteinian ideal. Attaining
Orwell’s ideal of concreteness and specificity is not always possible, though, it
seems to me. Which is not to say, of course, that we should not be as concrete as
is possible. And it is not to say, either, that obscurity or lack of dear meaning is
just all right.
 228 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Williams on power
In his 2015 Orwell Lecture, Rowan Williams compares Orwell’s position on
these matters with that of Thomas Merton:
The trouble with what Merton characterisés as‘double-talk, tautology, ambiguous
cliché, self-rfghteous and doctrinaire pomposity and pseudoscientific jargon’ is
not just an aesthetic problem. It renders dialogue impossible; and rendering
dialogue impossible is the ultimately desirable goal for those who want to
exercise absolute power.^
According to Merton: ‘on top of the obligation to write “disciplined prose”, a
writer has "Ae duty of first writing nonsense... to let loose what is hidden in our
depths, to expand rather than to condense prematurelyT’ This is also very
Wittgeristeinian, and it is hard to imagine Orwell seriously disagreeing.^^ He was
not in fevour ofpremature or distorting condensation. Less obviously true is this
idea of Williams’ though:
If we talk and write badly, dishonestly, unanswerably, what we are actually doing
is getting ready for war. The habits of mind that make war inevitable are the habits
of bad language - that is to say, the habits that grow from uncritical attitudes to
power and privilege: contempt towards the powerless, towards minorities, towards
the stranger, the longing for an end to human complexity and difference.^
The kind of bad criticism that Orwell quotes need not involve these largely
right-wing vices. Bad language is not always bad because it grows from contempt
or uncritical attitudes to privilege. It might just be stale and unimaginative, or
thou^tless, or perhaps (Orwell is not very clear on this) carefully constructed to
conceal the costs of a political agenda (of any persuasion). The most interesting
item on Will|ams’ list, to my mind, is the last onç; ,the longing for an end to
human complexity. Thi^ is not the same thing as dishonesty or getting ready for
war, but there is a connection. The longing for an end to human complexity can
express itself in denial of such complexiti^, refusal to acknowledge it. and attempts
to conceal it. It pushes towards simplification and obscuring. And this kind of
non-rational manijjulation is a step in the direction of violence, as Williams
brings out and as I will try to explain below.
Drawing on Orwell and Merton, Williams says that in a certain kind of bad
writing:
everything is so organised that you are persuaded not to notice what it is
you are talking about. And when that happens, you cannot intelligently
Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 229
converse or argue: all there is is the definitive language imposed by those who
have power.“
The essence of‘really bad and poisonous writing’, he says, is ‘trying to make the
reader see less.’ In contrast, good writing is open to possible diallenge by
reference to an independent, uncontrolled reality; it ‘insists that the wprld is
larger than the reader thought’, and it‘comes from a sense of conversation already
begun.
One key point is that it is bad to speak or write in ways that cannot be checked
against any recognizable reality. On the fece of it this is problematic, seeming to
leave little or no room for ethical, religious or aesthetic judgements, as I have
noted. But what it leaves room for depends on what we count as diecking
language against reality. ‘How can.you possibly not like this? Taste it again’ could
be (considered, accepted as) a way to .cjieck a claim against reality. Jhat is, when
we think about checking a claim,against reality we are likely to think in terms of
the discoverable objects^that OrweRmentions, so that where no such object is
involved there can be no reality check. But it does not have to be this ,way. Reality
does not need to be understood only as. a set o£ concrete objects. It could also
include experiences, and perhaps other things needed to make sense of this
experience (such as numbers, atoms, love or God).^®
Bad writing and speech, Williams says, silence, shrink or blind. They evade
response, make the world seem smaller, and encourage us tp ignore at,least some
features of reality. Good uses of language do the opposite: they not only invite
but presuppose response (they belong to a conversation that has already begun),
they increase awareness, and insist that the world is larger than we had thought.
Proposed ways to check statements against reality that are good in this way, that
invite response and increase awareness, will also be good on Williams’ view.
Politically motivated innovations in language can do this, but they can also do
the opposite.
Silence imposed by choice of terms is what Steven Poole calls ‘unspeald.^^ To
describe an anti-abortion position as ‘pro-life’, he says, is to imply aq argument
(roughly, that the life of a fetus has the same \^ue as that of a human being and
diat therefore abortion is wrong) without stating it explicitly and therefore
without having to defend it. At the same time, he says, it tries to silence any
opposing position by suggesting that there is only one way to think about
abortion, as an issue that turns on the question of the value of human life. One
can be either pro-life or else, the implication is, pro-death or anti-life, which no
one is, apart from the odd philosopher.
 Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 231
230 Víittgcnstexn, Religion and Ethics

obvious in that case. Because mission statements are not about missions. They do
As Williams brings out, this kind of‘unspeaking" does not depend only on the
not only exist in order to give sincere or accurate expression to the goals of an
choice of words and phrases used. It can also be done by talking (or thmking) as
organization.^** They exist, at least partly, to make that organization look good.
if only certain issues or questions, whatever words we use to pose them, are
This is why they involve a redescription of reality. And because they aim at giving
relevant. In the case of the military examples that he gives, the key issue is victory.
a particular kind of impression, they aim at having a certain effect, at producing
‘Saving the village’ means saving it from felling into the hands of the enemy. The
a consequence, not at telling the truth or describing reality. So they neither invite
concern is all with the results of action, not with what the action itself is. This is
questions or challenges nor treat their audience as rational beings, welcome to
why it is possible to be ‘persuaded not to notice what it is you are talking about.
ask questions or perceive reality for themselves. They thereby disrespect their
Not necessarily because anyone is out to trick you, but perhaps because it is
simply taken for granted that whafyou are tàlking about (e.g. killing civilians) audience and the truth, treating both as tools to be either ignored (if the truth is
inconvenient) or used for making a profit, or else achieving whatever other goal
does not matter.^Only the implications for the mission are assumed to matter.
the organization in question happens to have. This is all part of the shrinking
Of course, both consequentialists and soldiers do usually care very much
about whether civilians are killed. But the commander who said that it was and blinding that Williams identifies as essential to bad writing.
If we focus too much (or in the wrong way) on the idea that words are deeds^*
necessary to destroy the village in order to save it cannot have cared very much
and care only about their effect and not their meaning - pr if we focus too
about the people who lived there, at least while he was saying those words. And
much on what we can achieve-by mçans of wprds and not enough on the
his way of thinking comes from focusing exclusively on the accomplishment of
reality that corresponds with them, pn^wfiat they are abouti then we,may find
a given mission, without (sufficient) regard for how it is accomplished.
ourselves ignoring reality and truth. This approach to communication„we might
A complicating feet here is that there are arguably things about which we
say. is like a low-grade kind of violence, using words to 'piove without much
shouldhe silent, unthinkable‘options’ that should not be discussed or considered.
understanding, thought or imagination. As-such it cojdd be said'to invite a
Torture comes to mind, but ‘mass killing in a nuclear war’ could be another
violent response, partly because that would be a response in kind and partly
example.^* Careful and reasonable calculation of such things treats them as
because those who communicate in this way treat their audience as an object
serious options and thereby makes difficult any insistence that no reasonable
and not a subject, as something to be exploited rather than reasoned with, and
person would even consider them. This suggests a doubt about Williams’ idea
so to respond with reason is likely to be a waste of one’s time. It is alsp insulting
that bad uses of language shrink what we see or know, because the bad use here
to treat people this way, so violence might be closer to being justified than it
actually seems to be more open-minded than the good alternative. But the
usually is. This is why there is some truth in Williams’ assertion that,‘If we talk
appearance is deceptive. The ‘fearless’ or ‘open-minded’ position is not a realistic
and write badly, dishonestly, unanswerably, what we are actually doing is getting
one for anyone whose imagination and conscience are both fully functioning. So
although it may appear brave or opeñ-minded, it actually involves a flight from ready for war.’
Alternative, better ways of talking and writing would, in contrast, be good,
reality and a closing of key parts of the mind.Tt is not feasy to torture or kill
honest and answerable. But what does such communication require? For one
someone, especially if you are seeing and thinking clearly about what you are
thing, concern with truth or fidelity to reality. For another, respect for ones
doing. So treating torture as an option encourages blindness or squinting or
audience as rational, as capable of understanding and questioning rather than
unclear thinking, not more or better perception.
Returning to the problem of focusing excessively on accomplishing a mission simply being moved. And not minimal respect, as if there were some amount
that is sufficient for decent or acceptable communication. Rather, the greater
brings up what Williams calls the ‘particular kind of bureaucratic redescription
the respect for (or concern with) truth and ones audience, the better the
of reality, language that is designed to be no-one’s in particular, the language of
communication will be. In short, good communication means communication
countless contemporary manifestos, mission statements and regulatory policies,
that is not corrupted by excess egoism (instead showing concern for its audience),
the language that dominates so much of our public life, from health service to
higher education.’” This too is focused on accomplishing a mission. That might that respects language as having meaning, as something more than a mere
tool, that respects reality or truth, and that respects other people as rational
seem obvious in the case of mission statements, but actually it might be least

T
 232 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
agents, not passive objects.^^ In order to avoid excessive egoism I think it might
be necessary to write with personality, oddly enough, so as to avoid giving the
impression (if only to onèself) ihät one’s writing is coming, unanswerably, from
nowhere. Resptct for reality and'truth, though, requires that I do not overdo the
extent to which my writing is personaUt should be about reality, not ‘my realit/.
So writing, and certainly writing philosophy, is añ ethical task. If, that is, people
such as Williams are right.
What dôes all this have to do with Wittgensteün? Perhaps not very much. I
believe that he Would have been sympathetic to what I have said here, but it is too
prescriptive an'd too^ unrelated to problems of specifically philosophical
confusion to qualify as what he wotild likely count as philosophy. This does not
make it any the less “trüe, however. And* noting the ethical difference between
someone like Gaitting-and Orwell is, it seems tò me, Wittgensteinian in spirit.
Wittgens'teiif wrote in his diary (in' 1931) that Kierkegaard teases and tricks his
readers into doing what Kierkegaard wants them to do. So fer as this is something
important it is good that people are made to do it But even so, it is ‘unpleasant*
tó trick people in this way, Wittgenstein writes. Using such a trick is a bold move,
hfe suggests, but‘would also take a lack of love of one’s fellow human being* (PPO
131). It is this love that seems to be missing from the manipulative (though
possibly beneficial) consequentialist ethic of communication- that I have
described.
Galtung is not unconcerned with people or-with truth. What he is not
concerned about is conceptual accuracy - perhaps because he would question
the very idea of such a thing - or conceptual darity - because he regards other
things as more important. He does, or at lêast might, care about what we say and
whether it is true or hot. But he does not care very much about whether the way
we say it results in what he calls semantic confusion. Orwell, and quite possibly
Wittgenstein, would care about this.
Conclusion
In condusion, I am suggesting a contrast between two views of the etìiics
of communication.'One is consequentialist, judging uses of language solely by
their actual or expected consequences. People on the left arguably eftiploy such
tactics'by branding themselves as pro-choice or as Friends of the Earth, and
by rebranding injustice as violence- Tliis need -not be dishonest. Presenting a
pro-legal-abortioh position as pro-choice is more a case of accentuating the
Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity 233
positive than out-and-out dishonesty. There is, nevertheless, a downside to this
kind of use of language. I take it as uncontroversial that blurring conceptual or
verbal distinctions in some ways reduces the distinctness of our thought and
language about the relevant phenomena. What is controversial, however, is
exactly what the relevant phenomena are, and hence what is a blurring and what
is a refocusing. Concepts involve distinctions, and changing a concept changes
the distinctions made, in ways which could be entirely good, entirely bad, or a
mix of both.
The non-co'nsequentialist view I am describing wants to get the focus right,
which need not mean being linguistically conservative. New, politically
progressive terminology, such as ‘white privilege’, for instance, is often introduced
partly in order to increase just the kind of clarity I am talking about. Nor need
concern with clarity involve-posifivism, as if seeing things as they are could not
include seeing such things as the mord equdity of all people. Nor is it absolutist.
As Thomas Carroll, who, compare? Wittgenstefi^ian clarification with Confucian
rectification of names, puts.it: ‘clarityis not one thing, to be. described in one
(ideal) language, but rather something that is local, based omthe context of the
people in question who are'deTiberating.’^* '
Non-consequentialists can care about consequences, but they might also
care about both clarity and distinctness in our thinking. This, it can be thought,
is a matter of doing justice to our concepts and' to the varied and complex
phenomena to which they refer. The victim of a hate crime and the victim of a
badly designed housing policy are both victims, but not of the very same thing.
Arguably they deserve to have the particular quality of the wrong done to
them recognized. This particularity, as limited as it is bound to be, requires (or
seems to require) that we not simply lump both cases together into the category
of violence or of racism. Doing justice to concepts is part of doing justice to
people.
Another aspect of this concern with justice is a concern with being human.
Orwell compares the person who speaks in politically convenient clichés to a
machine. The less we make distinctions the poorer our world becomes. And to
care only about ftie consequences of linguistic acts is to ignore their meaning,
which is to ignore precisely what makes them linguistic. To ignore the meanings
of one’s words is to become, or to try to become, machinelike. And this in itself
can be regarded as unethical, as showing insufficient respect for the value of both
our own humanity and the world that we are capable of perceiving and
appreciating, and for the value of the language we have inherited for talking
about this world.^
234 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Notes
1 The phrase is spoken by the Earl of Kent in King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. See
M. O’C. Drury, ‘Conversations with Wittgenstein’, in Recollections of Wittgenstein,
ecLRush Rhees (Oxford:* Oxford University Press, 1984), 157.
2 An example of such respect, which might help to bring out its importance, can be
found in a remark of Karl Kraus’in the December 1913jssueof Die fhclte/:‘Adolf
Loos and I - he literally and I grammatically - have done nothing more than show
that there is a distinction between an urn and a chamber pot and that it is this
distinction above all that provides culture with elbow room. The others, those who
fail to make this distinction, are divided into those who use the urn as a chamber pot
and those who use the chamber pot as an urn’ (quoted in Allan Janik and Stephen
Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna [Chicago, IL: Dee, 1996], 89).
3 In my translation, this reads: ‘If good or evil willing alters the world, then it can only
alter die limits of the worlà, not the facts; not that which can be expressed through
language. | In short, the world must then thereby become an altogether different one.
It must, so to speak, wane or wax as a whole. | The world of the happy is a different
ohe than that of the unhappy/
4 A chapter of the section headed ‘Philosophy in TS 213 is titled: ‘The Method of
Philosophy: the Clearly Surv^able Representation of Grammatical Facts. The Goal:
the Transparencyof Arguments. Justice’ (BT 306e).
5 On whether Wittgenstein has a method, see PI §133.
6 However, on Father O’Hara’s identity and whether he thought what Wittgenstein
seems to have believed he thought, see Brian Davies, OP,‘Scarlet O’Hara: A Portrait
Restored’, Philosophy 57 (1982), 402-7.
7 For an example of when.'black’ might be the better term to use, see Sally Haslanger,
‘Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?’, Noûs 34,
no. 1 (2000). 31-55. at 47.
8 Paul Krugman, ‘The New Political Correctness’, New York Times, 26 May 2012.
9 Haslanger, ‘Gender and Race’, 47.
10 Galtung himself accepts ‘social injustice’ as a synonym for what he calls structural
violence in his‘Violence, Peade, and Peace Research’,/ourna/ of Peace Research 6,
no. 3 (1969), 167-‘91,at 171. He defines cultural violence as‘those aspects’of culture,
the symbolic sphere of our existence - exemplified by religion and ideology,
language and art, empirical science apd formal science (logic, mathematics) - that
can be used to justi^ or legitimize direct or structural violence’ in 'Cultural \ToIence’,
Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990), 291-305^ at 291.
11 Gaining *Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’, 168; his italics. He also says that‘the
present definition of violence is entirely located on the consequence side’ (171-2); i.e.
it ignores intention. It is worth nóting that in the later paper, ‘Cultural Violence’,
Wittgenstein and the Valúe of Clarity 235
Galtung approvingly quotes Gandhi saying: ^ake care of the means and the ends will
take care of themselves’ (see 302). However, even here Galtung does not reject
consequentialism but rather the idea of doing harm now for the sake of very
long-term benefits. He aims to ‘xmify’ means and ends by bringing them closer
together, rejecting ‘distant goals’ and ‘long causal chains’ (‘Cultural Violence’, 302).
12 Galtung,‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research^ 168.
13 Ibid., 185.
14 Ibid.
15 For discussion of this example, see Thomas D. Carroll,‘Wittgenstein and the Analects
on the Ethics of Clarification’, Philosophy East and West 66, no. 4 (2016). 1148-67, at
1161, and Reshef Agam-Segal,‘Aspect-Perception as a Philosophical Method’, Nordic
Wittenstein Review 4, no. 1 (2015); 93-121, at 102-3.
16 George Orwell,‘Politics and the English Lañguage’, in The Orwell Reader; Fiction,
Essays, and Reportage (Sàn Dìegó,’CA: Harcòùrt, 1984), 355-66.
17 Ibid., 366.
18 G.E.M. Anscombe,‘Modern Moral*^Philosoph/, J^hi/oSophy 33, ilo. 124 (1958), 1-19,
at 8-9.
19 Orwell,‘Politics and the English Langûa^é’,'362-3.
20 Ibid., 363/
21 Ibid., 359.
22 Rowan Williams,‘War, Words and Reason: Orwell and Thomas Mdrtoft on the Crises
of Language’, The Orwell Lecture 2015, https;//www.orwelIfoûndation.cofn/the-
orwell-prize/projects/the-orwell-lecture/2015-dr-rowan-williams/ (accessed 1 June
2017).
23 Cf. Wittgenstein: ‘Don’t/or heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must
pay attention to your nonsense’ (CV 56e, from 1947).
24 Williams,‘War, Words and Reason’.
25 Ibid.
26 Charles Taylor suggests that reality might include everything we find we need to
refer to in order to make sense of experience, and this (it seems to me) might include
such non-concrete items as numbers, atoms, and God; see Taylor, Sources of the Self.
The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989), 59. Stanley Cavell, in his writings on Shakespeare, talks about our reaction to
a play or other work of literature as a guide to, or test of, its meaning. 'This is a kind
of testing against reality, but it is a subjective kind of test, and not the kind that
immediately comes to mind when we speak of the empirical method or pointing
to a discoverable object. See Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of
Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 65.
27 See Steven Poole, Unspeah Words are Weapons (London: Abacus, 2007), 1 -2. The
subtitle of Poole’s book is problematic. The non-consequentialist, broadly
236 Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
Wittgensteinian view that I want to describe insists that words not be used as
weapons.
28 Williams»‘War, Words and Reason’.
29 Ibid.
30 Just as some organizational codes of ethics exist as defensive measures against
possible law suits rather than as actual, or even'sincerely intended, guides to
behaviour.
31 Cf.CV^53eandPI §546.
32 The Philosophical Investigations might be seen as an example of such writing. It is not
a ladder or any other kind of tool so much as an invitation to think in dialogue with
its author.
33 Carroll,‘Wittgenstein and the Analects on the Ethics of Clarification’, 1162. Compare
Oskari Kuusela,‘Wittgenstein’s Comparison between Philosophy, Aesthetics and
Ethics’, in Aesthetics Today: Contemporary Approaches to the Aesthetics of Nature and
ofArts: Proceeding^ of the 39th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. Stefan
Majetschak and Anja Weiberg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 333-48, at 339:
‘Wittgensteinian philosophical orderings of the knowledge of language use are
problem relative’. Kuusela is especially talking about clarification by means of placing
objects, including thoughts, side by side in order to see similarities and differences.
34 I am grateful to Mikel Burley and audiences at the Eighth British Wittenstein
Society Annual Conference in Leeds, the Regional Wittgenstein Workshop at West
Virginia University, and at Virginia Tech for helpful comments and questions on
earlier versions of this chapter.
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127 n.5,133-4 see also Bergson, Henri 181
MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). Berkeley, George 152,153
ontological ailment
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Zettel, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. anthropocentrism 50,58,63^ Bible, The 54,69 n.§4
G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd edn (Oxford: BJackwell, 1981). anthropology, anAropologists 1,5,49,65 Biblical phrases 135,136,137
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, and Friedrich Waismann, The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna anti-realism (about religion) 188 see also Exodus 136,137
Circle, ed. Gordon Baker, trans. Gordon paker, Michael Mackert, John Connolly and realism Gospels 80-3,84,85,86,89,157
anxiety, angst, anguish 34-41,44-6,83,84, Job 69 n.34,93,94,98,106,107
Vasilis Politis (Abingdon: Routledge, 20p3).
171-2 Leviticus 55
Wolgast, Elizabeth,‘Primitive Reactions’, Philosophical Investigations 17, no. 4 (1994), Mark 99
grammatical anxiety 86
587-603. apophaticism 147,152 Nahum 46 n.5
Aquinas, Thomas; Thomism 116,129, New Testament 104
134-8,140,141-2,145,169,182, Revelation 135,137
186.195.196.212.213.214 n.7, Romans 83
217 n.29 biological
Grammatical Thomism 113-14,118, inheritance 66
121-7,134 and social life 122
Aristotle,AristoteUan 169,181-2,186,188, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 88,91 n.l2
190-1 n.l4,213,215n.l7 Boole, George 169,185
aspect-seeing 186 Boyle, Joseph 196,212,215 n.l5
atheism 50,58,59,62,63,64,65,66,151, Braithwaite, R. B. 151,153
152,158.160,164 Brouwer, L. E.J. 181
256 Index Index 257

Bruno, Giordano 176-7,191 n.20 Dawkins, Richard 221 ethics of wonder/astonishment 26,42,77,116
BurreU, David 113,116,118,119-21,122, Dedekind, Richard 184 and aesthetics 25,77-82,84,89.115. see also wonder
123,124,127,134,137 depression see anxiety 122,123,187,188,220,227,229 expressivism 60-1,73 n.65,156,160
Dérrida, Jacques 166 n.25 borderline cases 215 n.l7
Calvinists 173 Descartes, René; Cartesianism 14,108 n.7, choice-less 27 fece value theory (of religious language)
Canfield, John 74 n.75 169,173,175,177,183 of communication 232 148-56,160-4,165 n.4
Cantor, Georg 178-81 desire consequentialist 100-3,196,202-3,204, fect/value distinction 86,188
diagonalization proof 172,179 abandonment of 13,14,17-20,25,27 222,224,230,232,235 n.ll faith 81-2,84-6,88-9,93-4
and Wittgenstein 184 and choice 27,29 n.3 and fects 26,77,80,130,187 defending/immunizing 49-50,57-8,64
Carroll, 'Thomas 233 clarifyihg 121 non-consequentialist 225,233,235 n.27 grammar of 61
CaveU, Stanley 66,113,118,119-23,124, às a mental fact 18,26,27-8 and nonsense 77 Kierkegaard on 84-5,93,106-7,125,
126-7,138,235 n.26 sublimation of 106 and philosophical psychology 202 189
Chalcedonian Definition 86-7,89 Dewey, John 122 and politics 163,227 knight of 106-7
Chomsky, Noam 117 Diamond, Cora 31 n.25,113,114-18,123, propositions of 2 lack of 15,22,82
Christ, Jesus 69 n.36,81,86-9,99,104,149 124,126,127,130,133,134 and religion see and ethics/morality moral 51
Crucifixion 55 ‘ Diamond, Malcolm 65 under religion and nonsense 137
Resurrection 8Í, 82,83,86,90 n.4 dignity 37 and similes 78 paradoxical character of 125
Christianity, Christians 55,80-9,99,105, dispositions, dispositional attitudes 6,13, as supernatural 187 subverting/undermining 59,65
108 n.3,114,125,146,152,153, 21,22-6,77 andtiieology 171 see also religious belief
161 Doria, Paolo Mattia 177 as transcendental 2,187 femily resemblances 4,11 n.5,49,144
Atonement 55 double effect, doctrine of (DDE) 195-6, utilitarian 102 fate 45,105,106,161
becoming a Christian 125 201-3,206,209,213,215 n.21, see also ethical; moral amorfati 111 n.39
fundamentalists 221 216n.27,217n.29 e\dl Festinger, Leon 163
mysteries 153 drugs 38-9 abhorred 223 Ficker, Ludwig 22
theologians see theologians: theology Drury, M. O’C. (‘Con’) 83,85 and double effect 195,203 Firmis, John 202,203,212
Trinitaiian 183 horrendous/te;rible 95,100-1,130,131 Floyd, Juliet29 0.11 _
Church Fathers 176 Emerson, Ralph W. 122 incomprehensible 115,131 Foot, Philippa 216 n.28
Churchill, John 71-2 n.56 Emersonian perfectionism 120,121 privative theory of 191 n.l5 form(s) of life 3,4-5,37^49-52,54,65,66,
Ciofii, Frank 5 emotion, emotive attitude 14,17,26 problem of 93-111 see also theodicy 113,118,119,121-2,144,187,188
Clack, Brian 55.58,61,63,65 and wonder 26 will(ing) 131,234 n.3 religious 52,57.58,61.65,144
clarity emotivism see expressivism experience Fowler, D. H. 172,175,192 n.27
and accuracy 222,232 Engelmann, Paul 15-16,22,25,27 of absolute safety 2-3 Frazer, James 5,58,59-60,63,72 n.56,189
and distinctness 233 Eriugena, John Scotus 169 of absolute value 114,130 Frege, Gottlob; Fregeanism 22,182,185,
as an end in itself 219-26 ethical and belief 15 186.187
and showing 20 approach to philosophical problems of discontent 78 Frei, Hans 90 n.5
and simplicity 225 221,232 of God 145
ultimate 220 concepts 211 of guilt 3 Galtung, Johan 223-5,232,234 n.l0,
value of 219-33 demands/imperativeá 28,188 of human life 52 234-5 n.ll
and wonder 26 discourse/utterances 3,77-8,130,149, as mental representation 15 Gandhi. M. K.235 n.ll
Cloud of Unknowing, The 152 150,188 of non-being 46 God
education/improvement 28,80 pragmatic 188 anthropomorphic conception of
concepts
doing justice to 54,221,233 judgement(s) 77-8,80,81,84,88,89, of the real 118 93-104,107,108 nn.3,4 and 9,
darifying/elucidating 65,156 163,220,229 and reality 229,235 n.26 109 n.l7
expanding/extending 223-5 propositions 25 religious 162 Aquinas on 135-7
family resemblance see family relation to the worid 126 of remorse 55 belief in 61,83,103,105,157
resemblances religiousness 13,22,26 and thought 15 call/command of 5,125
‘thick’211 -religious transformation 23,28 senseless 42 as consequentialist 100-3
Copleston, Frederick 68 n.20 value 26,115 of supernatural events 96 as Creator 3,42,96,102,117,149,
Cunningham, Conor 187 see also ethics; moral of terror/torment 38,43 see also anxiety 191 n.20

258
denial of 61
existence/reality of 51,61,73 n.70,
103-4,116,124,147,156,171
and experience 145,229,235 n.26
‘the god’ (in Kierkegaard) 84-5,87,
104
grammar of 86-9,98
hands of 3
as iniinite 176,180,191’n.20
language/thou^t about 83-4,89,
115-18,120-2,124,126,129,138,
140-1,143-6,149-56,160,227
love of 99,106
and nonsense 114
simplicity of 95-7
understanding of 52,65
ways/purposes of 83,86,93
will of 105.16Í
God’s-eye view, God’s perspective 85-6,
125,126,131
gods 63,64,65,192 n.22
Greek 83
Gödel, Kurt 181,187,193 n.45
Goethe, J. W. von 59
grammar
clarification/description of 73 n.68,86,
88,89,114,156,220
and conflation/confusion 5,56
depth surface 59,61,221
of‘God’86-9,98
grammatical connections/relations 132,
134,142-3
grammatical inquiry/method 3,56,
64-5,171,221
grammatical rule 181
and language-games 113,118,119,
121-2 see also language-games
and mathematics 183
and physical objects 188
of religious language 113
and riddles 115-17,132-7
surveyability of 1
theology as 83
Grammatical Thomism see under Aquinas
Grisez, Germain 201,202,212
Grosseteste, Robert 176,179,180,191
n.20
Guénon, René 174
guilt 3,60
Index
happiness (and unhappiness) 34-5,36,106,
131,234 n.3
Harries, Karsten 191 n.20
Harris, Sam 38-9
Haslanger, Sally 222
heaven 54,82,100,170
Heidegger, Martin 105
hell 38,43,54
Hepburn, Ronald 153
Herêtics, the 2
Hick, John 68 n.20,110 n.29
Hindus 90 n.7,173
Hobbes, Thomas 186
Hodges, Michael 74 n.77
Holócaust, the 93,100-2
Hoyt, Christopher 55-6,71 n.52
Hughes,Gerard215 n.21
human
activity/behaviour 50,58,59,66,
72 n.56,74 n.80,137,189,208,
211,213
beings 5,6,37,43,55,59,66,86,87,93,
95,98,99-100,102,105,116,125,
132,140,157,226,229,232,233
culture(s) 51,211
existence/predicament 107,132
history 169,222
‘ life 1,3,5,37,50,52,53.54,58,59,66,
87,88,115,117,132,189,229
nature/natural history 61,63,66,124,
126
suffering 103,105,106,107
Hume, David 58 ' Johannes de Silentio 106-7, 111 n.43,
Husserl, Edmund 185,186
imagination
lack of 227
leap of 137
and understanding 141
ineifability 14,25,189
infinity
actual 176,177,188,191 n.l4
of the Good 191 n.l7
infinite agency 88,145
infinite distress/torment 43-4
infinite God 176,180,191 n.20
infinite power 95,98,108 n.ll
infinite resignation 106-7
in mathematics 174-89,191 n.l4
Index 259
and motion 182 and human life/practice/behaviour 1,3,
of the One 193 n.34 5,58-9,63,73 n.63,74 n.80 see
potential 181-2,191 n.l4 also language-games
of the universe 176 imprecise/unclear/vague 219,221,225,
insanity 39 227 see also vagueness
instinct 4,5-6,50,58-60,61,63,64-5, limits of 2,78,114,145
72 n.60,73 n.63 see also primitive meaningless 227 see also nonsense
reactions metaphysical 188
intention 60,109 n.l2,153,186,196-213, modes/pattems of 3,132,144
214nn.l and7,215n.l5, nonsensical/unintelligible see nonsense
216 nn.24 and 27,224,234 n.l 1 and philosophy 1,113,118,120,123,
Aquinas on 217 n.29 127,236 n.33
and convention 208-13 and politics 221,225-30
internalism about 202-3,206-7 and projection 120-2
natural expression of 195,214 n.l religious see religious language/
‘pri^ßlte’ 97 vocabulary
publicity of 197-203 sensefiil 17,20,25
Islam 108 n.3,173 and thought 21,*23,'25,123
see also grammar; langu^e-games
James, William 11 n.5,38 language-games 4-5,49,52, '68,72 n.60,84,
Judaism 108 n.3 113,116; 118,119,120,121-2,
126,133, Í44,148,155-6,160,
Kamm, Frances 206 187-8
Kant, Immanuel; Kantianism 14,51. Leibniz, G.W. 174,177
68 n.l3,107,152,183,185, Leibniziah calculus 176
187 neo-Leibnizian 185
Kaufman, Gordon 153,167 n.34 Lerner, Berel Dov 55
Kenny, Anthony 52,114,137! 138,154 life
Kierkegaard, Soren 84-9^91 n.l2,93,97, form of sec form(s) of life
103,106-7,125-^^6,189,232 ff^ility/insecurity of 39-46
Anti-Climacus 97-8 meaning of 105,134
Johannes Climacus 103-4,125 problem of 34,36,39-46,93,105-6
rules of 161,188
125 logic 18-24,77,81.115-16,117,132,
Klein, Jacob 170,172,174,175 169-70,171,173,180-3,185,
know-how 21,23,24,25 210
knowing how to carry on 187 logical clarification 24
Kraus, Karl 234 n.2 logical contradiction 98,114
Krugman, Paul 222 logical extension 223-4
Kuusela, Oskari 236 n.33 logical form 80
logical necessity/possibility 41,78,180,
Lacan, Jacques 193 n-39 182
language logical positivism see under positivism
and action 209 logical refutation 209
and culture 211 logical space/room 37,63,89,102,125,
describing 56 133,141
everyday/ordinary 122,124,126, and mathematics/number 169-70,178,
128 n.24,187,188-9,211 183,185,187,234 n.l0
good vs. bad uses 228-31 logicism 186
260 Index Index 261

love in literature 235 n.26 deterioration 130 pain 26,35,38,63,100,106,116,197-8,199

and belief 81 obscure 227 difference/distinction 195-6,210 the word 59
and experience 229 ordinary/familiar 115,132 equality 233 Palamas, Gregory 152
and ^th 84 promissory 134 faith 51 paradox 114,125,153,177,178,179,183,
of fate 111 n.39 reductive approach to 71 n.55 imperative/obligation/summons 78,94, 189,193 n.40
of the finite 107 of religious concepts/utterances 52,147, 111 n.38,227 absolute (Kiericegaard) 84
and fq^veness 99-100 149-50,159 perfection 102 in mathematics 180,184,185,189
of God 99,106 semantic 208 principle 213 and metaphor 141
and intelligence 140 of a text 9Q n.5 understanding 131 Pascal, Blaise 43,176
lack of 232- theorigs of 151 see also ethical; ethics Pascal’s w^er 43,189
and obedience 89" ‘to qiean’ 61 Mulhall, Stephen 5,113-28,186,193 n.42 Paul, St 82-3
Lovibond, Sabina 90n-1 meaning (in life) 42,105,134 mtisic 79,171 Pears, David 58
Luther, Martin 54 loss of 38 mysticism, the mystical 11 n.3,22,88,107, perfections 120-3,125-6
Lyas, Colin 68 n.l9 meaning (in mathgmatics) 133 152 phenomenology 185
Ménégoz, Eugène 51 myth 171,189 Phillips, D. Z. xi-xii, 5-6,49-50,52-5,57,
Mackie, J.L. 151 mental mythologizing 89 64,66 n.l, 100-2,107 n.l,
Maimonides, Moses 152 fects 18,26,27-8 109 n.l6,110 nn.27 and 29,114,
Malcolm, Norman 11 n.6,52,59,72-3 n.63, health/constitution 38-9 N^el, Thomas 75 n.81 119,144,147-8,151,155-6,
H4 pictures 226 naturalism 49-50,58,62-3,66,71 nn.52 167 n.37
Mangan, Joseph 195 publicity of the 197-9 and 55,122,126,130,153 phÜosophers 1,6,16,23.34,49,51,55,57,
Marion, Jean;Luc 166 n.25 representations/signs 15,23-4,26 Newton, Isaac 174,177 85,86,88,89,123.151.229
Marion, Mathieu 181-2 states 167 n.34,198 see also mind, Newtonian calculus 176 and nonsense 21,24
Masek, Lawrence 216 n.24 state of New Wittgenstein debate 21,30 n.l4 and overgeneralization 213"
Masterman, Margaret 141 substance 108 n.7,109 n.l2 Nicholas of Cusa 169,176,177,179,183, of religion 4,93
mathematics 115,129,132-4,141,148,150, Merton, Thomas 228 185,191 n.20 and theologians 1,4,148,160
169-93,234 n-10 metaphor 22,79,80,118,120,141,147, Nielsen, Kai 49,51-3,119 Wittgensteinian 52-3
algebra 169,174,177 149-50,153-4,156,160,179, Nietzsche, Friedrich 111 n.41,115,119, philosophy
arithmetic 170,172-6,177,178,184, 191 n.20 128 n.13,132 as an activity 23-4
192 n.27 metaphysics 13-16,24,25,41,42,56, nonsense 3,14,16,17,20-1,23,24-5,77-8, analytic 93,94,147,149,151
calculus 172,174,176-8 68 n.20,109 nn.l2 and 15,114, 114-18,126,130,132,137,144, as clarification/elucidation 3,23,24,25,
geometry 170,173-7,179,184-5, 139,171,174,175,176,177, 161,228,235 n.23 64-5,70 n.46,221,233
192 n.22 187-9,207 number, numbers 169-89,229,235 n.26 contemplative 54,57-8
set theory 183-5 metaphysical subject 13-16 cardinal 172,178,181,185 Continental 147,151,156
see also number metaphysical vs. everyday use 122 natural 180 as descriptive 3,56-8,164
McCabe. Herbert 113,116-17,118,126, pseudo-208 prime 176,179,180 history of 14
134,142 suspicion of 85 rational 179,180 philosophical theory 3,24,148,164
McDowell, John 71 n.55 mind, state of 26,33,35 real 172,175,179,180,181 philosophical understanding 16,124
McFi^e, S^ie 154 miracles, the miraculous 42,61,78,80, super-170 of religion 49,52-3,56-7,64,93,94,
McGinn, Marie 71 nn.52 and 55 84-5,88,188,201,221 as timeless 109 n.l5 113,127,147,149,151
meaning (in language) 61,158,231, moral transfinite 176,178,179,180 self-overcoming of 124
233 absolute 196 words 132 as self-therapy 69 n.33
absence of 24,35 acceptance 110 n.38 zero 172,173,177,181 and theology 1-2,113-14,123-5,148,
broad vs. najrowconstrual 163-4 actions/practice 84,201,203 see also mathematics 151-2
and context 119-20,124,126 agency/responsibility 93,98-103 Plantinga, Alvin 152
desçriptive 143 attitudes/reaction 6,213 Ogden,C.K.lln.1 Plato, Platonism 170,171-3,174-83,
dilution of 225 certainties 6 O’Hara, Father 221,234 n.6 185.187.188.189.191 n.l4,
inherited 224 community/universe 93,98-103 Ollé-Laprune, Léon 51,68 n.l3 193 n.45
-input/intension 184 consequentialism 100-2,196,202-4, ontological ailment 52,133 Neoplatonism 170,175,176,177,185,
literal/primary 121-3,126,151 222-4,230,232 OrweU, George 219,225-9,232,233 189.191 n.l8 see also Plotinus
262 Index Index 263

Plotinus 176,191 n.l7,192 n.22,193 n.34 rationality and revelation 135 and scientiflc languie 149,150,151,
see also Neoplatonism under and feith 50 universal truths of 157 155.158.159-60
Plato finitized rationalism 174 relativism 66,186 as symbolic 154
Poincaré, Henri 181 and God’s choice 109 n.l5 religion, religions 50t9, 61-5,68 n.l9, religiousness, religiosity 4,13-15,17,21,27,
politics no n.36,162,163,222,225-9,233 and intelligibility 51 70 n.46,81-2,105,113,127,143, 28 n.l
political correctness 221-2 rational agents/beings 231-2 156,160-4,187-9.221.234 n.lO religious studies, study of religion xi. 1,
Poole, Steven 229 rational explication/persuasion 225 et passim 11 n.5,49,51,57,64,65,66
positivism 187,233 universal 54 concept of 4,11 n.5 Rhees,Rush33,55,73 n.63
logical 78,151,153 realism and ethics/morality 1-2,4-7,11 n.2,13, Richter, Duncan 53,56,57,70 n.46
prayer 73 n.70,156,166 n.25,221 about mathematical entities 170,177, 20,22-3,26-8,78,81.89,187, riddles 85,115-18,122,123,125,126,129,
Preller, Victor 143 •178,18Ö-4 188,227,229 et passim 132-8,140-1,144-5 see also
Priest, Graham 184,185 about religious language 148,155-6 monotheistic 108 n.3 puzzles
primitive reactions-50,59-60,61,63,64 see realistic spirit 116,118,127 see also philosophy of see under philosophy Riemann, Bernhard 178
also instinct Diamond, Cora pseudo-178,189 ritual 5,58,59-63,72 n.56,171,189,
Pritchard, Duncan 74 n.80 reality 116,123-4,133,146 religious attitude/impulse 17,26-7,52, 192 n.22
privately following a rulé 97 see also acceptance of 17,27-8 119 scapegoat 55-6
rule-following of affliction 46 religious behaviour/practice 52,55-6, rule-following 79,97-8,181,183
Proclus, Procleand70,‘177,179,192 n.22 of the Church 89 58,62,65.72n.56 Rundle, Bede 114,137
see also Neoplatonism under contingency of 27-8 religious concepts 52,62,65,224- Russell, Bertrand 14,21,22,185
Plato difficulties/demands of 138,139 religious confusion 54
prophecy 163 divine/God’s 61,156 religious insights 20 Satan 94,108 n.2
propositions 2,3,18-20,23-5,28,153,155, of evil 103 religious li^ 30^.18,50..51.54,55,145 saying/showing distinction 20-1
158,183 and experience 235 n.26 religious point of view 58,72 n.57 scepticism 51,61,68 n.l3,82,90 n.5
instruction- 31 n.24 flight from 230 and science 4; 51,139,149,150,151, Schmutz, Jacob 186
mathematical 133 of forms (Plato) 173 155,157,158,159-60.221 Schönbaumsfeld, Genia 85,88
nonsensical/unintelligible 14,16,20-1, God’s-eye view of 85-6 Western and*Eastern 139 Schopenhauer, Arthur 13,14-18,27,29 n.9
23,25,115-17 see also nonsense and mathematics 169,173,176, religious belief/commitment/judgement 6, science, scientists 4,95-6,139,148,149,
propositional attitudes 151 177,182,183,185,186, 49-50,57-8,61-6,70 n.46,81-2, 150.451.155.159-60,161
propositional cdntentél, 149,152,153 193 n.39 88-9,144,157-64,189,221 ancient 174
(Pseudo-)Di‘on)^ius 152 norms of 51 Christian 80-5,90 nn.4 and 5,158,161 empirical and formal 234 n.l0
psychological of paradox 193 n.40 see also Christianity natural 24,31 n.24
comfort 154 physical 182 and superstition 167 n.37 and naturalism 58,122
discourse/expressions/terms 56,130 redescription of 230-1 see also faith pseudo-228
explanation 79 reference to 225,229 religious language/vocabulary 2-3,5,53, and religion see under religion
naturalism 58 responsiveness to/stànce upon 140, 56,61-3,65,68 n.20,70 n.46, scientific hypotheses 157
projection 64 145,188 74 n.77,78,86,89,113-27, scientism 65
understanding 131 transcendent(al)/ultimate 61,63,64, 128 n.24,129-67,188 self
psychology 124 172,173,183 emotivist/expressivist theories 60-1, -awareness/knowledge 5,85,86,119,
philosophical 195,1^6,202,208 and truth 141,143,186,231-2 73 n.65,156,160 123,198
Putnam, Hilary xii, 71 n.52,155-6 understanding of 140,141,229 face value theory 148-56.160-4, being a 125
puzzles 24-5,31 n.25 see also riddles vision of 135,139 165 n.4 -centredness 103
Pythagoras, Pythagorean 170,172,175 wonder at 85 and historical language 81,148,149, -deceit 84,199
of the world 131 150,151,155,157-61 -defence 202
Quine,W.V. 0.170 reason and metaphor 118,147,149,150,153-4, -deprecation 28
downfall of 84 156,160 -disgtxst 82
Ramée (Ramus), Pierre dé la 174 and God’s frefedom 109 n.l5 non-cognitivist theories 148,156,160-1 -dispossession 86
Ramsey, Frank 22,25,31 n.26,183-4 and the gospels 81 realist accounts 148 perfecting 120,121,127
Ramsey, Han 154-5 mysteries of 189 reductionist theories 150,153,156, -respect 37,130-1
ratiocination 6,59 and religious language 86 167 n.34,188,189 -revelation 152
 264
-therapy 69 n.33
thinking 14
-torture 38
as totality of possible thoughts 16
see also subject
Shaw, Joseph 204,212,216 nn.24 arid 27
Sidgwick, Henry; Sidgwickian 203-5,207,
208
Smart, Ninian "52
social theory, sociology 1,49
Sophie’s Choice (Styròn) 101-2
Sorel, Georges 33,46
Spengler, Oswald 58,72’n.58
Spinoza, Bènedictus de 153,16^ n.34,
176-7
Steuer, Daniel 73 n.68
Stokhof, Martin 29 n.3
subject
cognizing 186
human 84'
metaphysical 13,14,16
thinldng/representing 14,16,85,139
transCfendental 14-20,27
willing 14-17,20,25
see also self
supernatural
^ents 90 n.7
causes/events/working 46,95,96,
110 nn.33 and 34
ethicsas 187
supernaturalism 71 n.55
Surin, Kenneth 110 n.36
Swinburne, Richard 94-6,98,100,108 nn.7,
11 and 12,109 nn.l5and 17,
H0nn.29and32-4,151
Szabados, Béla 68-9 n.28
Ta>ior, Charles 235 n.26
Tejedor, Chon 11 n.2
theism 95-6,100-3,109 n.l8,110 n.32 see
also God; theology
theodicy 93-5,100-1,103-5,109 n.23,
110 n.36
theologians 4,51,87-8,90 n.5,445,148,
152,160
theology 1,80,89,93,108 n.3,113-14,117,
123-7,128 n.24,133,145-6,
151-2,155,189,191n.l5
as grammar 83
Index Index 265
natural 146 deprivation of 38 Culture and Value 3,33,34,39,43,
negative 127 n.5,145 see also discourse of 86 59.72 n.58,79,80.81-3,85,
apophaticism ethical 2,26 90 n.4,157,159,161,188,219,
and philosophy 1-2,113-14,123-5, grammar of 86 235 n.23,236 n.31
151-2 van Inwagen, Peter 152 Koder Diaries 35,42 see also: Public
rational'171 verificationism 151 and Private Occasions (below)
revealed 146,171 Vico, Giambattistiu Vichian 169,177,183, Last Writings on the Philosophy of
Thomson, Judith J. 203 185,186 Psychology 11 n.4
Tilley, Terrence 94 Viète (Vieta), François 169,173,174 ‘A Lecture on Ethics’ 2-3,13,26,
Tillich, Paul 154 violence 223-5,228,231,232,233,234 n.lO 28 n.l, 42,77,80,90 n.2,114-15,
transcendence 50,61,65,188 von Wright, G. H. 33 116,129,187,221,227
God’s 114,124,145 Lectures, Cambridge, 1930-1932
transcendent infinity 176,191 n.l8 Waismann, Friedrich 220 181
transcendent numerical unity 173,178 Weil, Simone 45-6 Lectures and Conversations on
transcendent(al) reality/realities 61,63, will, freedom of 17-18,109 n.23 Aesthetics, Psychology and
64,172,183 see also Williams, Bernard 216 n.28 Religious Beliefs, 78-9,98,157,
transcendentalism Williams, Rowan 129,138-46,219,228-32 158,159,220,221
transcendentalism 13-20,25,173; 183,187 Winch, Peter 5-6,50,62-6 Lectures on the Foundations of
about ethics 2,11 n.2,187 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Mathematics 132,181
about rules 183,185,486,188 and Cantor 178,180,184 Notebooks 1914-191613,14-16,
transcendental necessity 28 and clarification 23,221,233,236 105-7
transcendental subject see under subject early 13-31,106,131 On Certainty 6,11 n.l2,50,59,66,
‘transcendental twaddle’ 15-16 and Engelmaim 15-16,22,25,29 n.6 187-8
transcendental verum 169 influence of 1,4,6,49,52,54,57, Philosophical Grammar 70 n.41
transcendentals 120,123,125-6 68 n.20,90 n.5,113,127 Philosophical Investigations 1,3,5,
trolley problems 206,210-12 and Kierkegaard 84-9,93,103-7,189 11 n.5,37,47 n.lO, 56-7,59,61.
truth 155-:6,157,159,160,161,163 later 33-47,56,58-9,98,114,126 66,71 nn.48 and 55,74 n.80,79,
ánd affliction 46 life of 34 80,83,97,99,164,183,184,195,
and deséription 138 methods of 1,4,16,21,53.57-8,65. 197,198,199,208,209,214 n.7,
disrespecting 231 234 n.5 see ako Wittgensteinian 220,234 n.5,236 nn.31 and 32
encountering 85,89 ideas/methods ‘Philosophy of Psychology - A
of the gospels 81 and metaphysics 42,188 Fragment’ll n.4,211
historical 161 and naturalism 49-50,58-62,71 nn.52 Prototractatus 13,14,16,22
mathematical 177 and 55 Public and Private Occasions 34-8,
of numbers 170-1 ‘not a religious man’ 72 n.57 39,42,43,45,232
and obedience 82 and Plato 175,180-1,189 Remarks on the Foundations of
ontological 186 and quietism 54,69 n.33 Mathematics 172,178,181,183,
and reality 141,143,186,231-2 return to philosophy 2 184,193 n.37
and representation 139,140,143 and Russell 22 Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough’
and revelation/scripture 134-5 and Schopenhauer 27,29 n.9 5,58,59-60,63,74 n.79,188
unconditional 84 as a sophist 183,193 n.36 Remarks on the Philosophy of
and witness 125 and the study of religion 49-75 et Psychology 11 n.4,59
truth-functional structures 18,19-20 passim Tractatus Logico-Philosophictis 2,3,
Turner, Denys 142 works cited: llnn.land 3,13,14,16,17-25,
The Blue and Brown Books 11 n.5, 28,29 nn.3 and 11,30 n.l7,
vagueness 211,221,225-7 70 n.41 31 n.24,34,47 n.lO, 78,80,93,
value The Big Typescript yj, 55,234 n.4 105,107,114,116,117,124,
absolute (vs. relative) 2,78,114-15,116, 'Cause and Effect: Intuitive 126,130,131,134,137,187,
117,119,129-32 Awareness’ 59 221
266
Wittgenstein's Nachlass 69 n.37
Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court
Lectures 90 n.3
Zettel lln.4,59,72 n.60
Wittgensteinian fideism 49-57,64-6,113,
119,148
Wittgensteinian ideas/methods 5,49-57,
64-6,69 n.33,70 n.46,90 n.l,
113,116,129,134,147,206,227,
228,232,233,236 nn.27 and
33 et passim
Wittgensteinians 50,51-5,64-5,137,150
etpc^im
wonder, wondering 50,,66,155
and emotions 26
Index
at the existence of the world 2-3,26,
42,77
of faith 85
world, the
as given 105
limits of 14-15,180,234 n.3
miraculousness of 42,80,85 see also at
the existence of the world under
wonder
state of 93,204
taking the world seriously 54
as totality of fects 27
transcendental condition of 16
and one’s will 105-6,130-1,234 n.3
Zermelo, Ernst 185