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Wittgenstein, Theology and Wordless Faith
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
The inexpressible (that which appears to me mysterious and which I cannot express) gives perhaps the background against which what I was able to express gets its meaning.
Culture and Value, p. 16
To look at Wittgenstein’s influence on our contemporary religious thought raises all sorts of problems. The first is that, as a philosopher, he gave little attention to religion; his main writings contain no more than a few enigmatic references here and there. Nevertheless it is hardly possible to pick up a book on philosophical theology (in English at least) which does not refer to him. That might perhaps be explained by the pervasive influence that he has exerted on philosophical thought generally. But we must recognize that the leads which emerge from his thought in both periods of his philosophical activity seem to be predominantly negative. He offers two successive challenges to us to examine the ways in which we use language and what we communicate in doing so, each of which seems radically to question the language of theology.
The first came in the Tractatus, when he set out to show that the method of formulating the problems of philosophy rests on a misunderstanding of the logic of language (Preface). He was concerned, as Pears puts it, ‘with the general theory of factual language, and with the general theory of reality which he believed that he could deduce from it.’ The structure of reality determines the structure of language, and the structure of language is such that ‘What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak on that one must be silent’ (Preface). He was not prepared, like the logical positivists, to deny the existence of mysteries of which he did not think it possible to speak; ‘We feel that even if all questions in the field of scholarship are answered the problems of our lives are still quite untouched.
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- Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The works to which I have referred (in the English editions) and the abbreviations of titles that I have used are:
Tractalus Logico‐Philosophicus, (TLP)
Philosophical Investigations, (PI)
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, (IX)
Lecture on Ethics (The Philosophical Review, 1965)
Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (The Human World, 1971)
Zettel, (Z)
Culture and Value, (CV).
I have usually given the references to Wittgenstein's writings within the text, in order to reduce the number of footnotes.
2 D.F. Pears, Wittgenstein, 1971, p. 85.
3 Pears and McGuinness translate the latter part of this quotation as ‘what we cannot talk about we pass over in silence’. This raises an important point. The translation implies a power of decision which does not exist in the situation as W. sees it, and which the German text (“dartiber muss man schweigen”) does not justify. The point is that we have no option but to be silent.
4 There is much continuing debate on the definition of language‐games and forms of life. The terms are inescapably ambiguous, but they have great practical value in drawing our attention both to the variety of cultures, and to the variety of ways in which we use words within a culture, and this, I think, is why W. finds them important. Cf. Kenny's judgement: ‘The speaking of language is part of a communal activity, a way of living in society which W. calls a “form of life” (PI, 1.23). It is through sharing in the playing of language‐games that language is connected with our life’. Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein, 1976, p. 163.
5 The Two Horizons, 1980.
6 Religion, Truth and Language‐Games, 1977.
7 W., Grammar and God, 1976.
8 Theology after W. 1986.
9 The Edges of Language, 1972, pp. 131, 167f.
10 ‘Wittgenstein's Fideism’, in Philosophy, July 1967, with exchanges of comment in later numbers.
11 A Philosophical Approach to Religion, p. 185.
12 See, for example, Religion without Explanation, 1976, chs. 9–11.
13 Essay in N. Malcolm, LW, A Memoir, 1967, p. 22.
14 P. Engelmann, Letters from L W with a Memoir, 1967: R. Rhees (ed.) L W: Personal Recollections, 1981; G.H. von Wright, Wittgenstein, 1982; B.F. McGuinness, W., a Life, vol. 1, 1988.
15 See his essay on ‘W. in relation to his times’ in his book.
16 In the numerous and thoughtful comments which form so important a part of CV he speaks with reverence of Bach; with sensitive respect of Mozart and Brahms; with qualified appreciation of Schubert; with reserve of Bruckner and Mahler. He refers to Wagner with a critical questioning that ultimately rejects him. But the greatest of all, for him, is Beethoven. The only modern composer to whom he refers is the Bohemian Labor, a friend of the family.
17 He does not identify Shakespeare as part of this epic of Western culture. He finds in him a diffuse and incoherent variety of experience which baffles him and which he does not find true to life. Shakespeare is, for him, a kind of phenomenon whom he can only view with astonishment; he cannot get to grips with him apparently because Shakespeare does not point towards any kind of truth (CV 36, 49, 84–5). He had more natural sympathy, it seems, with those who were committed to the search for meaning, though he did not himself claim to discern or to express such a meaning.
18 The dislike of what he regarded as superficial cleverness was expressed in his withdrawal from the Apostles, the exclusive Cambridge society in which Russell, Keynes and Moore had induced him to accept membership (See McGuinness, p. 146ff.)
19 He himself often doubted what influence he might have. In one particular entry in CV (61) he doubts that he will have any but the most indirect of effects on other people's thought. But this is not an inclination to decline the challenge.