Wittgenstein's Misunderstood Religious Thought 9004186093, 9789004186095

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Wittgenstein’s (Misunderstood) Religious Thought

Philosophy of Religion World Religions Editor in chief

Jerome Gellman, Ben Gurion University Editorial Board

Pamela Anderson, University of Oxford Robert McKim, University of Illinois

VOLUME 1

Wittgenstein’s (Misunderstood) Religious Thought By

Earl Stanley B. Fronda

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fronda, Earl Stanley B. Wittgenstein’s (misunderstood) religious thought / by Earl Stanley B. Fronda. p. cm. – (Philosophy of religion. World religions, ISSN 2210-481X ; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18609-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. 2. Religion—Philosophy. 3. Negative theology. I. Title. II. Title: Wittgenstein’s religious thought. III. Series. B3376.W564F755 2010 210.92–dc22 2010023736

ISSN 2210-481X ISBN 978 90 04 18609 5 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Dewi Zephaniah Phillips (University of Wales, Swansea) and Professors Silvino and Nieves Epistola (University of the Philippines)

CONTENTS

Volume Foreword ............................................................................. Preface ................................................................................................ Acknowledgement ............................................................................ List of Initials and Abbreviations ..................................................

ix xi xiii xv

Introduction .......................................................................................

1

Chapter One: Wittgenstein’s Religious Point of View ............... I. To take or not to take Wittgenstein’s remark at face value ........................................................................................ II. Mysticism as Wittgenstein’s religious point of view ...... III. The merits of positing mysticism as Wittgenstein’s religious point of view .........................................................

5

17

Chapter Two: The Theology of the Early Wittgenstein ............. I. The mystical Wittgenstein ................................................... II. Wittgenstein’s apophaticism ............................................... III. The Pseudo-Dionysian theology ........................................ IV. Wittgenstein’s theology is Pseudo-Dionysian ..................

27 27 38 44 51

Chapter Three: The Mature Wittgenstein on (Religious) Language ........................................................................................ I. On language ........................................................................... II. On the limits of language .................................................... III. The trouble with speaking of the unspeakable ................ IV. On religious language ..........................................................

53 54 61 65 69

Chapter Four: The Mature Wittgenstein on Seeing and (not) Speaking of God ........................................................................... I. Speaking of the mind ........................................................... II. Speaking of God .................................................................... III. Some objections .................................................................... IV. Wittgenstein à la St. Thomas Aquinas .............................. V. Seeing God .............................................................................

79 79 87 92 98 99

5 14

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contents

Chapter Five: ‘God exists’ after Wittgenstein after St. Thomas Aquinas .......................................................................................... I. ‘God exists’ after Wittgenstein ............................................ II. God exists as a grammatical hinge .................................... III. St. Thomas Aquinas on ‘God exists’ .................................. IV. Wittgenstein à la St. Thomas .............................................. Chapter Six: Wittgenstein on the (Supposed) Evidence for God’s Existence ...................................................................... I. On miracles as evidence of the divine .............................. II. On religious experience as evidence of the divine .......... III. The orderliness of the universe as evidence of the divine ...................................................................................... IV. Faith creates the evidence that justifies faith ................... Chapter Seven: Wittgenstein’s Religious Realism with Attitude .......................................................................................... I. Cupitt’s idealist Wittgenstein ............................................. II. From behaviourism to religious non-realism .................. III. Wittgenstein’s anti-realism and his realist attitude ........ IV. Realism/non-realism and Wittgenstein’s God ................. V. ‘God’ and ‘colour’ ................................................................. VI. Apophatic theology and God-universe bi-conditionality .................................................................... Chapter Eight: The Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion is misunderstood .......................................................................... I. The criticisms against the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion ............................................................................... II. Two discursive traditions about God as (not) a being .... III. Wittgenstein in line with the Plotinian tradition ............ IV. The criticisms are borne of nescience or obliviousness ............................................................................ Chapter Nine: Concluding remarks: The difference it makes in understanding Wittgenstein’s religious point of view ...... I. Wittgenstein’s religious point of view and other non-religious matters ........................................................... II. Wittgenstein’s religious point of view and the conduct of philosophy of religion .....................................................

109 110 115 121 128

129 130 140 144 149

157 157 163 170 176 180 185

189 190 195 201 205

213 213 220

contents

ix

III. Concluding remarks on non-realism, crypto-atheism and fideism .............................................................................

221

Bibliography ....................................................................................... Index ...................................................................................................

231 239

VOLUME FOREWORD

Brill is pleased to begin its series in Philosophy of Religion—World Religions with this book by Earl Fronda. The series is dedicated to studies in particular religions, cross-religious explorations, and examinations of divergent traditions within religions. In this work Fronda examines the philosophy of religion of Ludwig Wittgenstein while taking note of two divergent theological traditions in Christendom, one oriented towards cataphatic theology, the other towards apophatic theology. Fronda presents an outstanding analysis of Wittgenstein’s writings on religion and an insightful placing of Wittgenstein squarely in the apophatic tradition. Jerome Gellman, Series Editor Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

PREFACE

This book (hopefully) would prove useful to undergraduate and postgraduate students of philosophy, to instructors of philosophy of religion and Wittgensteinian studies, and even to philosophically inclined theologians and lay persons who are familiar with the issues in analytic philosophy of religion. This book’s evolution commenced when, while doing research on another topic, I noticed that not a few well-noted philosophers of religion—some of whom I admired very much—glaringly misread Ludwig Wittgenstein. I thought—or hoped—that some of them might have reconsidered their (mis)reading, so in an e-mail I asked one of them if he still stood by what he wrote several years previously. He replied in the affirmative, even referring me to a few of his subsequent works where he repeated what he said in his earlier writing. That unsettled me a bit. Then I recalled that I had presented a paper in the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society Symposium that was implicitly critical of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. I had a discussion with someone in the audience who said that I spoke as though God was a “being among other beings.” I did not give much thought to that until I realized how badly critics of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion misrepresented Wittgenstein. So I revisited Wittgenstein’s works and other relevant materials and became increasingly convinced that I myself had misunderstood the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, and more disturbingly, that the philosophers whom I admired very much who were critical of it misunderstood it just as badly. I thought that I should do something to help address this misunderstanding. As a result, I wrote an essay and a portion of it I presented at the British Society for Philosophy of Religion conference in 2005 (where a few people asked me if I had previously worked with Dewi Phillips because he kept on nodding his head in apparent agreement as I was making my presentation, though the truth was that until that time I never knew how he looked like and all his books and articles that I previously read sent me seething in disagreement—thanks in large part to my Evangelical Protestant theological background and my early philosophy of religion education that largely consisted of the usual proofs for God’s existence.) That essay morphed into a series of essays that make up this book. My

xiv

preface

intention here is less an attempt to convince philosophers of religion to adopt a Wittgensteinian position than to seek a fair hearing for it by showing that Wittgenstein’s religiously relevant remarks, and its extension, the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, make good sense from a perspective that gives serious consideration to apophatic theology. If they see Wittgenstein’s religiously relevant remarks and the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion from such a perspective, then they would be in a better position to criticize it fairly. If I am right that the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is misunderstood, and present the said philosophy of religion in a respectable perspective that would do it justice, then that should be this book’s significant contribution to the field of philosophy of religion.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This book would not at all have seen production without the help of individuals and offices, especially the following: 1. The Office of the President, the Office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs, the Office of the Chancellor, and the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development, of the University of the Philippines in Diliman for funding support through the U.P. Modernization Program and the Ph.D. Incentive Award. 2. The Department of Theology and Religious Studies and the library of the University of Wales in Lampeter, the National Library of Wales, the libraries of the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, University of Wales in Swansea, Cardiff University, University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, and Loyola School of Theology for the use of their resources. 3. Simon Oliver, Fergus Kerr, and Johannes Hoff, Yehuda Gellman, and (most especially) David Cockburn for the expert comments. This book would have turned out differently without a little help from friends, such as Lalaine Siruno who supplied certain articles, James Klagge and Ilse Somavilla who helped in tracking down a copy of an obscure letter to Wittgenstein, and Wystan De La Peña and Frances Cruz who helped out with the German-to-English translation.

LIST OF INITIALS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Wittgenstein’s Works AWL BB BT

CE CL

CV LC LE LPE LPP

LSD LW I

LW II

LWL

Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge, 1932–35. Edited by A. Ambrose. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979. The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972. “Big Typescript.” Philosophical Occasions [German-English parallel texts where appropriate]. Edited by J. Klagge and A. Nordmann. Indianapolis: Hacket, 1993. “Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness.” Philosophia 6 (1976): 409–25. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters, Correspondence with Russell, Keynes Moore, Ramsey and Sraffa. Edited by B. McGuiness and G. H. von Wright. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Culture and Value. Translated by G. H. von Wright. Edited by P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Beliefs. Edited by C. Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. “Lecture on Ethics.” Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 3–12. “Wittgenstein’s Notes for Lectures on ‘Private Experience’ and ‘Sense Data’.” The Philosophical Review, 77 (1968): 275–320. Wittgenstein’s Lectures in Philosophical Psychology 1946–47, notes by P. T. Geach, K. J. Shah, and A. C. Jackson. Edited by P. T. Geach. Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1988. “Language of Sense-Data and Private Experience—I.” Philosophical Investigations 7 (1984): 1–45. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology [1948–9, German-English parallel text], Volume I. Edited by G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology [1949–51, German-English parallel text], Volume II. Edited by G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930–32. Edited by D. Lee. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.

xviii NB

list of initials and abbreviations

Notebooks 1914–1916. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979. OC On Certainty. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. Wright. Translated by D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969. PG Philosophical Grammar. Edited by R. Rhees. Translated by A. Kenney. Oxford: Blackwell, 1974. PI Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958. PR Philosophical Remarks. Edited by R. Rhees. Translated by R. Hargreaves and R. White. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975. PT Prototractatus. Edited by B. F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg and G. H. von Wright. Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971. RC Remarks on Color. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe. Translated by L. L. McAllister and M. Schätte. Oxford: Blackwell, 1977. RPP I Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology [1945–7, GermanEnglish parallel text], Volume I. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. RPP II Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology [1948, GermanEnglish parallel text], Volume II. Edited by G. H. Wright and H. Nyman. Translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. RFM Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics. Edited by G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1978. TLP Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by K. C. Ogden. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955. Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. WLPP Wittgenstein’s Lectures in Philosophical Psychology 1946–47, notes by P. T. Geach, K. J. Shah, and A. C. Jackson. Edited by P. T. Geach. Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1988. Z Zettel [1945–8, German-English parallel text]. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1967.

list of initials and abbreviations

xix

Classic Literature St. Anselm Pros

“Proslogion.” In Anselm of Canterbury. Edited and translated by J. Hopkins and H. W. Richardson. London: SCM Press, 1974.

Berkeley, George HK TD

Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Dionysius, the Areopagite DN L MT CH

“Divine Names.” In Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Translated by C. Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987. “Letters.” In Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. “Mystical Theology.” In Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. “Celestial Hierarchy.” In Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works.

Duns Scotus MNKG “Man’s Natural Knowledge of God.” Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings. Edited and translated by A. Wolter. London: Thomas Nelson, 1962. Hume, David HN HU

Treatise Concerning Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

xx

list of initials and abbreviations

John Scotus Eriugena Peri

“Periphysion.” Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon (De Devisionae naturae), Liber 1/Liber 2. Edited by I. P. Sheldon-Williams with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler. Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968/1972.

Kant, Immanuel CPR Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by N. K. Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929. Locke, John EHU Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Moses Maimonides GP

The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by S. Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Nicholas of Cusa ADI

DDI

DA

“Apologia Doctae Ignoratiae.” Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa. Translated by J. Hopkins. Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1988. (http://jasper -hopkins.info/Apologia12-2000.pdf ) “De Docta Ignorantia.” Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa. Translated by J. Hopkins. Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985. (http://jasper-hopkins.info/ DI-Intro12-2000.pdf; http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-I-2000.pdf; http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-II-2000.pdf; http://jasper-hopkins .info/DI-III-2000.pdf ) “De Deo Abscondito.” Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa. Translated by J. Hopkins. Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1994. (http://jasper-hopkins .info/DeDeoAbscon12-2000.pdf )

list of initials and abbreviations

xxi

Plotinus En

Enneads V. English and Greek. Translated by A. H. Armstrong. Cambridge: Heinemann, 1984.

St. Thomas Aquinas De Pot

SCG ST

“Questiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei.” Excerpted in Aquinas Selected Philosophical Writings. Translated by T. McDermott. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by A. C. Pegis. London: University of Indiana Press, 1975. Summa Theologiae, Vol. 3/Vol. 4/Vol. 14. Edited and translated by H. McCabe O. P./Edited and translated by T. Gornall S. J./Edited and translated by T. C. O’Brien. London: Blackfriars, 1964/1964/1968.

INTRODUCTION

To many analytic philosophers of religion—philosophical theists or otherwise—the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is nothing more than a platform for the propagation of fideism, or religious non-realism, or even of insidious crypto-atheism. These charges are bad enough; however, its lot is even worse than being charged with the aforementioned unorthodoxies: It—not to say Wittgenstein’s own thought on religion—is badly misunderstood by notable critics, and even by some sympathetic commentators. It is this misunderstanding that the aforementioned charges are borne of. Certainly the critics do not owe the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion any appreciation; but if they have to pass judgment on it, they owe it fair understanding. From a Wittgenstenian point of view, the appropriate way to deal with the criticisms is to issue clarifications to iron out the misunderstanding that had borne them. And with the misunderstanding ironed out, it would not be so difficult to ease the aforementioned charges out. It is noteworthy that Wittgenstein’s religiously relevant remarks are, it so happened, very much in tune with apophatic theology—the theology of the Eastern (Orthodox) Church and of the thirteenth-century pre-Thomist Thomas Aquinas. In contrast, the critics who make these charges are typically scientistic in cultural orientation, mostly Protestant—or at least Western Christian—in theological education, and rigorously rationalistic in disposition. Their background is such that they do not easily see the kind of theological underpinnings of the religiously relevant remark of Wittgenstein and of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, and they therefore fail to see it as it really is, never mind appreciate it. The critics show no indication whatsoever of being reminded of apophatic theology by Wittgenstein’s religiously relevant remarks. It is most unlikely that this could happen to anyone who understands Wittgenstein’s thought or who possesses a modicum of awareness of apophatic theology. So it is most likely that the critics are either nescient or oblivious of apophatic theology. To a significant extent this nescience or obliviousness accounts for the misunderstanding of—never mind the lack of appreciation for—Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion.

2

introduction

This work is intended to help clear the misunderstanding of which the aforementioned charges are borne. Though what is herein presented is a defence of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, it is a defence by exposition, which is in accordance with the classic Wittgensteinian way of dealing with philosophical problems by showing the philosophical fly (i.e. philosophical theism, in this particular case) out of the fly-bottle (i.e. philosophy of religion). Or to use another metaphor, this book defends Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion by, so to speak, pulling the rug under the critics’ feet rather than by engaging them in a vigorous duel. It is only apt that the tone of this work is in most parts expositional rather than polemical. From the constellation of remarks Wittgenstein made an attempt is made to limn the religious dimension of his thought which, hopefully, would uncover positions that may have been somehow overlooked or so far left hardly discussed, put into perspective his religiously-significant or theologically-relevant remarks, expose probable misunderstandings about them, and lead to a better understanding of his religious perspective. In expounding Wittgenstein’s religiously relevant remarks, this work (a) shows that the main positions of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion strikingly resembles some of the defining positions of apophatic theology; (b) argues that the refusal of Wittgenstein and those following him, like D. Z. Phillips, to engage in some of the usual fare in philosophy of religion, such as proving the existence of God or showing that religious belief is rational, is perfectly understandable from the perspective of apophatic theology; and (c) suggests—as if to apply a reductio ad absurdum against the charges of the critics—that if they persist on their aforementioned charges against Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, then they may as well direct similar charges to the apophatic theology of the Eastern Christian Church, of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of other respectable thinkers in Western Christendom. Each chapter in this work tackles an issue regarding either Wittgenstein’s own religiously-significant or theologically-relevant thought, or else the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. The issue a chapter tackles may be different from, or may seem to be discontinuous with, the issues in other chapters; but nonetheless the chapters are bound together by a single theme: Wittgenstein’s religious thought (or theology) and its off-shoot, the so-called Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, are not too far removed from the Christian theological

introduction

3

tradition but have a precedent, or at least bear striking resemblance with, and thus can draw backing from, certain respectable positions in the Christian apophatic theological tradition—and as such, general misgivings about Wittgenstein’s religious thought or about the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion would probably also be misgivings about this tradition.

CHAPTER ONE

WITTGENSTEIN’S RELIGIOUS POINT OF VIEW

Wittgenstein once remarked to his student and confidant Maurice Drury: “I am not a religious man, but I can’t help see every problem from a religious point of view” (Drury 1996b, 79). This remark has since been subject to many interpretations and comments. To Drury it raises “the question as to whether there are not dimensions in Wittgenstein’s thought that are still largely being ignored” (Drury 1996b, 79). By it Norman Malcolm confesses to being puzzled and his understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophy threatened. It bothered him enough to prompt him to find out what Wittgenstein might have meant by it. This remark must be that significant and as such it merits another look. And this chapter takes such a look. Section I deals with the issue of whether or not his claim to see problems from a religious point of view should be taken at face value. Section II touches on the religious traditions linked to the thought of Wittgenstein, and which might have to do with what he says is his religious point of view, and suggests that the most felicitous of all the traditions thus far suggested is mysticism. Section III weighs the merits of positing mysticism as Wittgenstein’s religious point of view.

I. To take or not to take Wittgenstein’s remark at face value Malcolm, it turns out, is unwilling to take Wittgenstein’s remark at face value. His take on this remark at issue is: [T]here is, not strictly a religious point of view, but something analogous to a religious point of view, in Wittgenstein’s later philosophical thought. For Wittgenstein certainly did not bring religious ideas explicitly into his studies of troublesome concepts. Most students of Wittgenstein’s work would be bewildered by the suggestion that he saw those problems from a religious perspective. Yet his remark to Drury would seem to mean that at least Wittgenstein was aware of some point or points of analogy between his philosophical outlook and a religious one. (Malcolm 1993, 1–2)

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chapter one

This point he reiterates: Wittgenstein did much religious thinking: but religious thoughts do not figure in his detailed treatments of philosophical problems. It would seem, therefore, that when he spoke of seeing those problems ‘from a religious point of view’, he did not mean that he conceived of them as religious problems, but that there was a similarity, or similarities, between his conception of philosophy and something that is characteristic of religious thinking. (Malcolm 1993, 24)

Right at the very start Malcolm already seems to hit a snag. He apparently does not refer to a particular religious tradition’s outlook, but to a general religious outlook, or thinking, or view of the world (Malcolm 1993, 2, 24, 84). But defining ‘religious outlook’, ‘religious thinking’, and ‘religious view of the world’ are not easier than defining ‘game’. One can suspect that if a Malcolm were to be given a list of a hundred diverse outlooks, thinking, or views of the world from around the world that are considered to be religious by peoples of diverse backgrounds, and look for that common trait that qualifies them to be so considered and be set apart from the non-religious, he, as a good pupil of Wittgenstein, would dismiss the notion of a common trait and instead contend that those one hundred outlooks or thinking or views of the world are bound together by family resemblance (cf. PI §67). Also, it is very possible for an outlook to be considered religious by some group of people but not by others. So, while there certainly is such a thing as a religious outlook, it is not clear that there is such a thing as a general religious outlook. Be that as it may, Malcolm sees four points of analogy between Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook and a religious one: (1) In both Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook and a religious one reason comes to an end—their respective end comes “at the existence of the languagegame and its associated form of life” (Malcolm 1993, 82), and in the given practices of religion; (2) There is a sense of astonishment at the inexplicable existence of the human language-games as there is in the religious experience of seeing the world as a miracle (Malcolm 1993, 86–7); (3) Philosophical problems as disease of the mind is an analogue of sins as sickness of the spirit (Malcolm 1993, 87–90); and (4) Human actions and reactions are the foundation of concepts just as acts of love is the foundation of religious beliefs (Malcolm 1993, 90–92). These are all the points of analogy between Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook and a religious one that Malcolm bothers to see or

wittgenstein’s religious point of view

7

mention. But nothing prevents anyone from seeing more. If the claim that something is seen from a religious point of view is taken as though it amounts to the claim that that something has some points of analogy with a religious outlook, then it may as well be that anybody who sees some analogy between someone’s whatever-sort-of-outlook x and said-to-be-religious-outlook may as well say that x is seen by that someone from a religious point of view. Almost anybody can possibly find almost any sort of analogy between almost any sort of religious outlook and almost any sort of thing. That given, what is likely to happen is that almost anything can be said to be seen from a religious point of view. Malcolm takes language-game to be the given of Wittgenstein’s philosophy (Malcolm 1993, 81) and as such is not to be subjected to further justificatory explanation. He takes this as an analogue of an article of faith, such as the belief that whatever happens in one’s life is always by the will of God.1 This, being an article of faith, is a given in religious thinking and as such is not to be subjected to further justificatory explanation. Incidentally, any physicist in practice takes the reality of the physical universe as a given not to be subjected to further justificatory explanation—i.e. there is absolutely no need for the physicist to justify belief in the reality of the physical universe, or to examine critically reasons why the scientific community believe that the universe is a real entity, and so on. If Wittgenstein’s confession that he sees philosophical problems from a religious point of view amounts to no more than saying that there is an analogy between his attitude towards language-games and a religious person’s attitude to an article of faith, then a physicist who takes the reality of the physical universe as a given and as such is not to be subjected to further justificatory explanation can also be said to see problems in physics from a religious point of view, because there is also an analogy between the practice of a physicist with regards to the reality of the universe and the practice of a religious person with regards to, for example, the will of God. Perhaps there are more points of analogy between Wittgenstein’s thought and religion. Rudolf Carnap recalls his impression of Wittgenstein:

1 “In religious thinking there is frequent reference to ‘the will of God’. These words put an end to the demand for explanation: at the deepest level there is no asking for God’s reason or justification” (Malcolm 1993, 85).

8

chapter one His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or seer. When he started to formulate his view on some specific philosophical problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at the very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged and arduous effort, his answer came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically . . . But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through a divine inspiration, so that we could not help that any sober rational comment or analysis of it would be a profanation. (Quoted in Monk 1990, 224)

Based on the revelation of Carnap, maybe one can add to Malcolm’s list a fifth point of analogy: Wittgenstein’s way of arriving at a philosophical insight is an analogue of a prophet’s way of arriving at a religious insight. If the analogy of “givenness” between language-game and a religious article of faith were significant to the issue surrounding Wittgenstein’s confession of seeing problems from a religious point of view, one can suppose that Wittgenstein’s prophetic style of philosophising can be just as significant to the issue. And perhaps there can be a sixth point of analogy: the literary styles and tone of Wittgenstein’s works are reminiscent of the Holy Scriptures. Eli Friedlander suggests that the division of the Tractatus into seven main sections is reminiscent of the seven days in the biblical creation-myth, a work that “opens with the world as such, appearing out of nothing, and . . . ends with the withdrawal and silence of the creator, after all that could be done has been done” (Friedlander 2001, 15). The tone of the Tractatus is “dogmatic and quasi-biblical” (McGuinness 1988, 299). If this sort of analogy is significant, then perhaps it could offer a possible legitimization for anyone to say that the division of the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty into sections is reminiscent of the division of the Bible into chapters and verses and on that basis claim some significance. And still, perhaps, there can be a seventh analogy: Tim Labron goes further than Malcolm by linking Wittgenstein’s philosophy not just with religion in general but in particular with a certain strand of Judaic tradition. But Labron’s point, like Malcolm, is only to show that there is an analogy between the mature Wittgenstein’s philosophy and a strand in Hebrew thought. He does not venture into trying

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to identify what Wittgenstein’s religious point of view might be. The farthest he is willing to go is to say that a certain strand of Hebraic thought is an analogue of the mature Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook.2 But even in this case there is an eminent danger that this sort of analogizing can go wild in the mind of an imaginative joker. This joker could argue something like the following. “There is, not strictly a religious point of view, but something analogous to a religious point of view, in Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophical thought. There is a striking analogy between the Tractarian philosophical outlook and conservative Christianity, and also between the mature Wittgenstein and some strands of Hinduism. As his own way of dealing with the then nagging philosophical issue of how meaning is constituted, Wittgenstein posited that a word is a name of an object (whatever this might be)—each word belongs to an object—and that coupling relation of sorts is fixed by reality for all eternity. This is analogous to the conservative Christian view that God made woman for man, and that it is imperative for a man to copulate with one and the same woman only and ever, and vice versa. However, Wittgenstein, after going through a retreat in the isolated fjords of Bergen, changed his mind. This change is analogous to a conversion, such as that of Saul of Tarsus later known as Paul, who converted from pharisaic Judaism to what later became known as Christianity. From believing that a word couples with one and the same object only and ever, he shifted to believing that a word is actually promiscuous. (Though it actually was Ferdinand De Saussure who characterized the word as ‘promiscuous’, Wittgenstein’s idea amounted to that of Saussure’s). A word is not immutably joined with a meaning; it can have multiple meanings, depending on the occasion of its use. This belief is analogous to the view of some strands of Hinduism that it is permissible for a woman to copulate with different men as part of certain religious rituals. Wittgenstein’s change of mind from the Tractatus to the Investigations is analogous to a conservative Christian converting to a certain sect of

2

The title of Labron’s work, Wittgenstein’s religious point of view, turns out to be a teaser, for Labron goes on to say what amounts to a disclaimer: “The aim . . . is not to discern in any absolute sense what Wittgenstein’s ‘religious point of view’ is, but what religious point of view can be said to be analogical to his later philosophy” (Labron 2006, 99). For the purpose of determining Wittgenstein’s religious point of view, it does not look like Labron has much to offer.

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Hinduism. It is possible that the later Wittgenstein was a closet Hindu. He was led to become religious in a Christian sort of way by Tolstoi, but his love for a play by that Indian Rabindranath Tagore may have led him to Hinduism. It is also possible that his early Christian sensibility subconsciously inspired him to think of word and object as having a connection that nature joined together such that no man can put asunder, but his possible conversion to Hinduism may have inspired him subconsciously to accept the view that words are promiscuous.” If talk of Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is just about seeing points of analogy between his philosophy and any religion one can think of, then this joker’s analogy will do. The gap between what Malcom and Labron are doing on the one hand and what the joker is doing on the other is too close for comfort. This should, as it were, raise a red flag about the significance, or the lack thereof, of mere analogizing. Analogising a la Malcolm is like, as it were, riding a run-away raft drifting towards one analogy that Malcolm probably would not want after another equally unwanted analogy. One, therefore, can—or ought toask (to lift some words from Eli Friedlander 2001, 15): “should [these features] be dismissed as coincidence, or at best a joke in bad taste on the part of [the Wittgensteinians], who thereby relates [Wittgenstein’s] text to [religion]?” On can wonder, if Wittgenstein’s remark can be taken at face value, why it should be taken analogically: an analogical take of it would seem superfluous, if not whimsical. Positing a specific religious or theological position—pantheism, rabbinical Judaism, or whatever—as the possible point of view of Wittgenstein allows for taking his remark “I can’t help but see all problems from a religious point of view” at face value, rather than merely analogically, even if the problems considered are confined to the philosophical. The statement ‘Wittgenstein sees problems from a point of view wherein the limits of articulatability is given the highest importance (i.e. a mystical point of view)’ seems to be a more felicitous translation of ‘Wittgenstein sees problems from a religious point of view’ than is ‘There are analogies between Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook and a religious one’. If between two translations one seems more felicitous than the other, then the more seemingly felicitous one is certainly to be preferred. It must be noted that Wittgenstein did not say that he sees every philosophical problem from a point of view analogous to a religious point of view. If Drury quoted him correctly, what he said was simply

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that he sees “every problem from a religious point of view.”3 Malcolm cannot bring himself to believe that there really is that religious point of view. The only apparent reason he gives is that Wittgenstein did not bring religious ideas explicitly into his studies of troublesome concepts. This reason, however, cannot hold water. Suppose there is a cookbook author who confesses to approaching her work from a religious point of view. One cannot say that she does not really mean what she says simply because in her cookbook there is no explicit mention of religious ideas. The fact is that her religious point of view can somehow profoundly influence her work. The influence will be manifest in the kind of ingredients she prescribes and eschews, in her instructions on what ingredients to mix and what not to mix and in how and how not to mix them, and so on. Readers who are knowledgeable about, or at least familiar with, certain religious practices would probably take notice of these prescriptions and implicit prohibitions and take them as the author’s expression of her religious attitude or as indicators of her religious point of view—and if some other readers would be completely oblivious to the cookbook’s tacit religious dimension it may be because they have no inkling at all about those religious practices. In a similar manner, one cannot say for the reason Malcolm provides that when Wittgenstein said that he sees every philosophical problem from a religious point of view he could not have meant it literally. Even if not obviously manifested, his religious point of view could have lurked in the background providing bearing to, and profoundly influencing, his work. Malcolm fails to provide a compelling reason why Wittgenstein’s words should not be taken as they are. This failure offers one a justification to suppose that the point of view that Wittgenstein characterizes as “religious” really is a religious point of view and not just something analogical to it. One, therefore, need not subscribe to Malcolm’s claim that Wittgenstein “religious point of view” is not strictly religious but only something merely analogous to a religious point of view. One is not compelled to water down—a la Malcolm—Wittgenstein’s remark. So, indications are that there must be more than just analogy that is involved here.

3 There is a disagreement between Malcolm and Winch as to what sort of problems Wittgenstein was referring to. Malcolm takes them to be philosophical problems. Winch thinks it includes life’s other problems, too (Winch 1993, 95–7, 124f ).

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There are other ways of reading it in such a way that it is taken simply as it is. It can be taken to mean something like the following. (1) Take a scholar, who may or may not be religious, who sets out to write a commentary on the Gospel of Luke. On the one hand, he or she can be driven by purely scholarly interest and deal with the texts in a purely technical manner without regard to its religious function. On the other hand, he or she can deal with the text as a sacred writing, keep himself or herself within the perspective that it is a text with a religious function, consider his or her technical concerns as concerns about primarily religious matters, and even write his or her commentary primarily to serve a religious function. If he or she opts for the latter, then he or she can be said to be seeing the text from a religious point of view. Likewise, in the Tractarian Wittgenstein, language is the ladder by which one climbs towards that which cannot be spoken of. It is when one reaches the limits of language that one is made aware of the ineffable. Language, thus, is a necessary vehicle for the attainment of the state of ineffability, an instrument for religious enlightenment of sorts. Thus, it could be the case that, to Wittgenstein, technical concerns about language are, in effect, technical concerns about a religious instrument. One who deals with the technicalities of language from the perspective of it being a religious instrument is one who deals with it from a religious point of view. (2) A non-religious task undertaken to serve a religious end is one undertaken from a religious point of view. A Calvinist who sees prosperity as a mark of election would work his farm from sunrise to sunset so he could be prosperous and acquire the assurance that he is an elect, a Mother Teresa who nurses a dying sore-saturated old stranger convinced that she does what she does as a matter of dutiful obedience to God, and a Johann Sebastian Bach who deals with the technical intricacies of harmony and counterpoint and suchlike driven by the belief that the ultimate end of real music should be for the glory of God and the recreation of the soul—all of them can be said to see their respective non-religious work from a religious point of view. Likewise, it could be that the not-officially-religious Wittgenstein saw his task as something that could serve a religious end of sorts—for him a religious exercise and for others a possible source of religious insights. Of one of his works he said he would have liked to say after Bach “To the glory of the most high God, and that may neighbour may be benefited thereby” (PR, Preface), but then in the end he was unable to bring himself to do

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so because he felt that his work was too tainted by his sinfulness. This is an indication that he took his dealings with philosophical problems as itself as much a religious exercise as confessing his sins to friends. If this is so, then no wonder he can say that he sees even non-religious philosophical problems from a religious point of view. (3) Even issues that are not necessarily religious in nature can be appreciated from, and conversations about it directed by, a point of view that is recognizably religious. The religiousness of one’s point of view, or the particular type of religiousness of it, or even the lack of religiousness of it, shapes one’s concern and determines to a significant extent the content of the conversation one would bother to engage in about an issue. The issue of family planning and population growth may be seen by many from an economic or political or an ecological point of view; but a conservative Catholic normally sees it from a religious point of view. The conservative Catholic typically believes in the doctrine that every sexual act should be for the purpose of procreation. Given that point of view, having as many children as one can have is a virtue, and in effect, a high population growth through having huge families is somewhat a positive development. While secular economists would worry about high population growth, a conservative Catholic would be bothered less by a human population growing exponentially than by a promotion of artificial methods of birth control. The conservative Catholic’s religious point of view offers an appreciation of the issue distinct from what a secularist point of view offers, and precludes certain concerns that may appear eminent from a secularist point of view. Perhaps the case of Wittgenstein could be seen in a similar manner. He, as he claimed, really had a point of view that could be characterized as religious. His religious point of view—or his particular type of religious point of view—could have shaped his attitude to, or directed his stand on, philosophical issues. And this point of view could have shaped his attitude towards, directed his stand on, or provided the content to his conversations about certain philosophical issues that are not obviously religious (e.g., his insistence on reticence regarding certain matters that philosophers like Descartes are notably loquacious about). The above are three plausible glosses that could be put on Wittgenstein’s remark at issue. Though these glosses are not so easily justified, they are entitled to as much hearing as Malcolm’s gloss for they are no less plausible. And it is certainly not impossible to come up with a

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justification that may be no worse off than Malcolm’s justification of his own gloss. Sufficed to say, there are plausible ways of interpreting Wittgenstein’s remark at issue that—contra Malcolm—take it at face value.

II. Mysticism as Wittgenstein’s religious point of view Winch suggests that “in considering what Wittgenstein meant by seeing problems ‘from a religious point of view’, it would seem natural for us to raise the question of what particular sort of religion, or religious belief, he had in mind” (Winch 1993, 108). But to determine the answer to such a question is not an easy task. It is probably this realization that leads Winch to say that “the phrase ‘from a religious point of view’ cannot be interpreted in terms of any particular theological doctrine” (Winch 1993, 108). Whether or not one can agree with Winch depends on what one takes of the phrase ‘in terms of any particular theological doctrine’. However, if this phrase is turned into ‘in terms of any particular theological tradition’ then one can disagree with Winch. As he himself says “we need only consider the forms of religious belief towards which Wittgenstein himself was most sympathetic or felt himself most inclined” (Winch 1993, 109). Chances are that one who discerns and identifies such form is a step closer to interpreting the phrase ‘from a religious point of view’ in terms of a particular theological tradition. The Wittgenstein people know about is a philosopher, and is neither a religious figure nor a theologian; nonetheless there is no shortage of religious, even theological, presupposition and implications in his thought. It is indeed reasonable to suppose that the writing of the Tractatus was conditioned by a religiosity of sorts. Wittgenstein’s letter to Ludwig Ficker whom he hoped would publish the Tractatus gives a hint to that effect: The book’s point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which in fact is not there now, but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be the key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent

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about it. And for that reason, unless I am very much mistaken, the book will say a great deal that you yourself want to say. Only perhaps you won’t see that it is said in my book. For now I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion because they contain the most direct expression of the point of the book. (PT, 16; quoted in Janik and Toulmin 1973, 192)

The point of the Tractatus is an ethical one. Maybe the word ‘ethical’ does not readily translate to ‘religious’. However, a good case can be made that the ethos endorsed in the Tractatus is borne of religiousness. Wittgenstein speaks of the world as limited. It is limited by the totality of objects (TLP 5.5561), logic (TLP 3.031f ), and value (TLP 6.43). Objects are so mysterious such that not even an example of them can be given, and it makes no sense to speak of quantities of objects (TLP 4.1272); so it is a wonder that Wittgenstein could even speak of the “totality of objects.” But be that as it may, he nonetheless suggests that the bounds of empirical reality are dependent on the totality of objects. Logic dictates how objects can concatenate to form facts. All facts that could possibly be are only those that conform to the laws of logic. There cannot be a world that is exempted from it. Value, while not whatsoever affecting facts in the world, infuses it with significance for the subject who beholds it. Depending on the attitude of the beholder, i.e. whether or not the beholder is given to accept what is given in the world, the world fills with significance and radiates or becomes bereft of it and sulks. Value makes the world “so to speak wax and wane as a whole” (TLP 6.43). The realization of that limit inevitably reveals an “outside” of the world, an “outside” so far removed because its border is even way beyond the limits of the real world. There is a gap between the borders of the real world and of the “outside” for its border is not where the real world ends but where the logical space ends. The real world is but one alongside innumerable possible worlds that occupy the logical space (cf. Stenius 1964, 42–3). The “outside” is that which is beyond logical space, beyond what one may call the “superworld”—the sum total of all possible worlds. It is this superworld whose limits correspond to the limits of language (TLP 5.6). Outside this superworld, beyond its limits, is the eternal (aeterni) from the standpoint of which the limits of the world can be contemplated and a sense of mystery can be felt but cannot be articulated (TLP 6.42, 6.45). Some commentators are quite cavalier about the significance of the mystical aspect of the Tractatus. But it must be noted that it comprises half of Wittgenstein’s own summation of his work: “What can be said at all can be said

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clearly; whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” This half of the summation expresses the Tractarian ethos. One can take this as an ethos of articulation. In the activity of articulation, keeping silent before that which cannot be spoken of is the ethical thing to do. Paul Engelmann—a close friend of Wittgenstein “with whom [he] discussed the Tractatus more than he did with any of the other people who have since written about it” (Janik and Toulmin 1973, 24) and who was one of those (along with Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell) whom Wittgenstein hoped and expected to understand his work, but who it turned out was the only one who understood his work well enough (Monk 1990, 148–51, 163)4—comments: If we are to understand this author and his work, the following point seems particularly important to me: Wittgenstein was stimulated to write the Tractatus by his study of the works of Frege and Russell . . . But Wittgenstein’s system of thought, born of deep personal experience and conflicts and setting entirely original methods to present a comprehensive philosophical picture of the world, diverges in some points from the logical systems conceived by those teachers, the founders of modern logic. As a result of such divergences special attention came to be focused on those particular elements in the rational exposition of that complex pattern of mystical experience which were at the same time corrections of errors made by those teachers whom Wittgenstein held in such high esteem . . . Yet we do not understand Wittgenstein unless we realize that it was philosophy that mattered to him and not logic, which merely happened to be the only suitable tool for elaborating his world picture.

*

*

*

How little the meaning of the Tractatus is understood can be seen from a remark in A Dictionary of Philosophy (by Dagobert Runes), which says that in the last part of his book Wittgenstein had arrived at ‘certain mystical conclusions’ from his view on logic. One can see the writer of this passage shake himself in shocked surprise that Wittgenstein, having established himself as a thinker to be reckoned with, should in the end

4 Wittgenstein writes to Russell: “Now I’m afraid you haven’t really gotten hold of my contention, to which the whole business of logical prop[osition]s is only a corollary. . . . I also sent my M.S. to Frege. He wrote me a week ago and I gather that he doesn’t understand a word of it” (CL, 124). And, again, in another letter to Russell acknowledging the receipt of the manuscript which was to be the introduction to the TLP, Wittgenstein writes: “Thank you very much for you manuscript. There’s so much of it that I’m not quite in agreement with—both where you’re critical of me and also where you’re simply trying to elucidate my point of view” (CL, 152).

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have fallen prey to a nebulous subjectivism. But irrespective of the process of growth of his system of thought, logic and mysticism have sprung from one and the same root, and it could be said with greater justice that Wittgenstein drew certain logical conclusions from his fundamental mystical attitude to life and the world. That he should have chosen to devote five-sixths of his book to the logical conclusions is due to the fact that about them at least it is possible to speak.

*

*

*

A whole generation of disciples was able to take Wittgenstein for a positivist because he has something of enormous importance in common with the positivists . . . The difference is only that they have nothing to be silent about. Positivism holds—and this is its essence—that what we can speak about is all that matters in life. Whereas Wittgenstein passionately believed that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about. (Engelmann 1967, 96–7; Engelmann’s emphasis)

While there is not an obvious reference to a commonly recognized religion either in Wittgenstein’s letter to Ficker or in Engelmann’s recollection, there is an explicit recognition in Engelmann of Wittgenstein’s mysticism. He speaks of the “one and the same root” from which Wittgenstein’s logic and mysticism have sprung, and of the “fundamental mystical attitude to life and the world” from which Wittgenstein drew logical conclusions. It is interesting to know what exactly this “root” is, or this “fundamental mystical attitude.” It seems that that which Engelmann refers to as Wittgenstein’s “mysticism” that sprung along with logic is the mystical position of which the ethos of articulation is a part; and that that root from which these sprung is that fundamental mystical attitude to life and the world. It also seems that this fundamental mystical attitude was the driving force behind Wittgenstein’s circumscription of the realm of logic that in effect showed that which cannot be spoken of and his issuance of an ethical injunction on keeping silent before that which cannot be spoken of. Going by Wittgenstein’s letter to Ficker and Engelmann’s recollection, the Tractatus is undoubtedly an advocacy of mysticism.5

5 The Tractatus became to the Vienna Circle a textbook of sorts. Moritz Schlick, their leader, wanted very much to have its author be in their meetings. Monk writes, “To persuade Wittgenstein to attend these meetings Schlick had to assure him that the discussion would not have to be philosophical; he could discuss whatever he liked. Sometimes, to the surprise of his audience, Wittgenstein would turn his back on them and read poetry. In particular—as if to emphasize to them, as he had earlier explained

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The term ‘mysticism’ itself is strongly and almost always suggestive of something religious. Though the word ‘mystery’ need not connote something religious, sufficed to say that it has a religion-associated root. The evolution of the word ‘mystery’ is traced (e.g. in the Oxford English Dictionary; also in Boyer 1981, 42–55) to classical Greece where it is believed to denote certain secret religious ceremonies where only those allowed to witness are the mysteses, those who have taken a vow of silence, i.e. be silent about and keep the secrecy of the ceremonies—like, one might suppose, the omerta of the Cosa Nostra. Now, as ever, when one is faced with something that is totally inexplicable and unrecognizable one is said to face that which is called “mystery” and, precisely because it is inexplicable and unrecognizable, one is nonplussed: about the mystery itself one can say nothing informative and on that score can only either avow ignorance or maintain silence. The cognate word ‘mystical’ in Neo-Platonism is used to denote wordless contemplation, and such activity can only be characterized by silence. So silence of sorts is what characterizes the mystical. It is said that one meaning of ‘mysticism’ that evolved in the Occidental world is that it is a theory of reality positing that “there is one all-inclusive real being, but that this being can have no further description. It is ‘ineffable’ in the sense that all descriptives falsify its nature” (Hocking 1981, 194). The point of note in this notion of mysticism is the suggestion of indescribability and ineffability. Where there is indescribability and ineffability, silence is called for. This is not a silence borne of inarticulateness or of any abnormal disability but of a principle: That which looms before one is in principle ineffable such that one can only behold it but not speak of it. One can suppose that any philosophy, school of thought, or discursive activity (e.g. poetry) that highlights that which is ineffable and calls for silence over it is “mystical.” That philosophy, school of thought, or discursive activity need not be borne of an obviously religious environment or of the mind of a notably religious individual; but the fact is that anything that deserves the label ‘mystical’ or ‘mysticism’ always has religious association. NeoPlatonism is one. This school of thought is not a product of individuals who are known to be religious; but, arguably, by the nature of its to von Ficker, that what he had not said in the Tractatus was more important than what he had—he read them the poems of Rabindranath Tagore . . . whose poems express a mystical outlook diametrically opposed to that of the members of Schlick’s circle” (Monk 1990, 243).

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concerns, this school of thought belongs to—or at least is very much of positive interest to—theology as it does to philosophy. Poets engaging in mystical poetry are always notably associated with a religion or religious movement (Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, even New Age). The terms ‘idealism’, ‘rationalism’, ‘empiricism’, and ‘positivism’ by themselves usually do not bring to mind positions that are easily recognized as religious; but ‘theism’, ‘deism’, and even ‘atheism’ are terms that are always strongly suggestive of a religious—or, otherwise, anti-religious—position. The term ‘mysticism’ belongs more to the latter group than to the former—and this is attested to by modern English dictionaries. The point of the Tractatus is an ethical one. On Engelmann’s account, the root of the ethical is that “fundamental mystical attitude.” This attitude, as the label suggests, is a religious one. The root of the point of the Tractatus is a religious one. If the creation of the Tractatus as a philosophical work is rooted in some form of religiosity, one can be easily tempted to wonder whether this religiosity (which one can aptly call “mysticism”) is that point of view from which Wittgenstein sees philosophical problems. But, before one gets carried over by the said temptation, it must be noted that it was during his mature—i.e. post-Tractarian—stage that he claimed to “see all problems from a religious point of view.” The mature Wittgenstein is supposedly different from the Tractarian one—supposedly he matured and repudiated his own ideas in the Tractatus. This could give the impression that even if the creation of the Tractatus was conditioned by a religiosity of sorts, the story might not be the same with the Philosophical Investigations. However, this impression cannot hold water for long. It is true that Wittgenstein repudiates many of the ideas he proffered in the Tractatus, such as the picture theory of language. But it is most noteworthy that the ethos of the Tractatus is carried over to the mature Wittgenstein. Drury recalls Wittgenstein saying “My fundamental ideas came to me very early in life” (Drury 1996c, 158). This utterance was made in the autumn of 1948, about the time when he was finishing his work on the Philosophical Investigations. It was the mature Wittgenstein that made this utterance. Certainly, he could not have referred to ideas he already repudiated in the 1930s. And he could not have referred to ideas he later proffered in lieu of those he repudiated. He must then be referring to ideas that were too basic to let go even as he made a shift of position from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations which

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not a few consider to be radical. If so, then he himself implicitly admits to some continuity on the fundamental level between the early and the mature stage of his thought. It makes perfect sense to suppose that if there are ideas that could qualify as fundamental to Wittgenstein it must be those that are prominent in the thought of the Tractarian Wittgenstein but are also a major theme in the thought of the mature Wittgenstein in spite of the famously radical repudiations made by the mature Wittgenstein of major points in the Tractarian Wittgenstein. It is not difficult to identify some of these ideas. Drury hints at one: Now I am going to venture to state that all the subsequent writings continue this fundamental idea [of drawing the limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside]. They all point to an ethical dimension. And they do this by a rigorous drawing of the limits of language so that the ethical is put firmly into place. This limitation has to be done from the inside so that whereas nothing is said about the ethical it is shown by the rigour of the thinking. . . . This rigorous drawing of the limits of language demands a form of self-denial, an ethical demand, a renunciation of a very strong tendency in our nature. I believe that the difficulty that should be found in understanding Wittgenstein’s writing is not merely an intellectual difficulty but an ethical demand. The simple demand that we should at all times and in all places say no more than we really know. (Drury 1996b, 83)

What Drury is suggesting is that one of those ideas that came to Wittgenstein early in life that stays up to the mature stage of his thought, albeit in a different form, is the ethos of the Tractatus. This ethos presupposes a limit to the articulatable realm. This idea of such a limit re-emerges in the mature Wittgenstein.6 The mature Wittgenstein, not 6 In 1921 Wittgenstein read Tagore’s play The King of the Dark Chamber. Though at first he was unimpressed, he realized a few month later “that there is indeed something grand” in it and became one of his favourites (Monk 1990, 408). Monk notes that Wittgenstein reread this play with Yorick Smithies “at about the time of his lectures on aesthetics”—this should be sometime in the summer of 1938. He did his own version of the said play because he was unsatisfied with Tagore’s own English translation. Monk writes: “After Sudarshana has been saved, she remarks to the King: ‘You are so beautiful, my lord—you stand beyond all comparisons!’ To which the King replies: That which can be comparable with me lies within yourself.’ ‘If this be so’, says Sudarshana, ‘then that too is beyond comparison’ . . . And so, one wants to ask, is ‘that that which lies beyond all comparison’ within us or not? . . . Perhaps here we run against the limits of meaningful language, and go beyond the applicability of the Law of Excluded Middle and the Law of Contradiction.” (Monk 1990, 412). One is led to think that what Wittgenstein finds to be “something grand” in Tagore’s play is the suggestion of the transcendent. Apparently, his appreciation of this play is one

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unlike the Tractarian Wittgenstein, contends that metaphysical statements are nonsense because they transgress the limits of language. The difference between the two stages of Wittgenstein lies in their respective formulation of the way the transgression of the limits of language can happen. So, this idea of the limits of language and, concomitantly, of senselessness in case of a transgression of such limits must be among those fundamental ideas that came to Wittgenstein early in life and stayed with him for good. While it was during the mature stage of his thought that Wittgenstein remarked “I can’t help but see all problems from a religious point of view,” it is clear that seeing problems in that way did not coincide with the maturation of his thought. His early thought looks too religious to be taken as unconnected with the said remark. It is interesting to note that it is “a religious point of view” that Wittgenstein sees problems from: the indefinite article in this phrase, to mention the certain, is an indication that the Tractarian and the Mature Wittgenstein, notwithstanding their much-noted differences, see problems from a singular and identical point of view. There is no fundamental difference of position between the Tractarian and the mature Wittgenstein on matters of religion. Thus, if the Tractarian Wittgenstein’s religious position qualifies as mysticism, then so does the mature Wittgenstein’s.

III. The merits of positing mysticism as Wittgenstein’s religious point of view It is worth looking at the merits of the idea that mysticism could be that which Wittgenstein refers to as his “religious point of view.” It matters not if he did not know that his religious position is called “mysticism,” or that he was ever conscious that his religious position can at all be labelled. What matters is that it can be gleaned from his remarks (either written by him personally or recorded by friends

of “someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar thoughts” (to borrow a phrase from the opening lines of the TLP preface). Even in 1938, when Wittgenstein had already moved on from his picture-theory-ofmeaning stage, still was held in awe of that which lies beyond the limits of language, of that which is beyond the applicability of the Law of Excluded Middle and the Law of Contradiction.

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and acquaintances) that he did have a religious position, and that this position exhibits characteristics associated with what is called “mysticism.” (This particular point is the theme of the foregoing chapters.) To see the merits of the suggestion that mysticism is Wittgenstein’s religious point of view, it would help if it were to be compared with probable competing ideas. Wittgenstein’s thought is linked with specific religious or theological traditions; any such tradition linked with Wittgenstein’s thought qualifies as a probable competing idea. There is Tim Labron’s attempt to link Wittgenstein’s later thought with a certain strand of Judaic tradition, citing a remark which Wittgenstein made to Drury that went as follows (Drury 1996c, 161): Drury: I had been reading Origen before. Origen taught that at the end of time there would be a final restitution of all things. That even Satan and the fallen angels would be restored to their former glory. This was a conception that appealed to me—but it was at once condemned as heretical. Wittgenstein: Of course it was rejected. It would make nonsense of everything else. If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with. Your religious ideas seemed to me more Greek than biblical. Whereas my thoughts are one hundred percent Hebraic.

Apparently, Wittgenstein’s admission that his thoughts are “one hundred percent Hebraic” leads Labron to think that Wittgenstein’s later thought is an analogue of a certain strand of Judaic tradition that “originates in the classical rabbinic Judaism of Judea and continues, for example, through . . . Solomon Schechter [who] is closer to the ‘Talmudist of the age of Hillel and Rabbi Akiba, than that of Rabbi Saadia Gaon and Maimonides’” (Labron 2006, 100). It is tempting to think that Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is this strand of Hebraic tradition. There also is Philips Shields’ attempt to link Wittgenstein’s thought with certain theological traditions in Christianity. He does something similar to what Malcolm does. Shields sees points of analogy between Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought and certain theological traditions. There is, as Shields sees it, an analogy between the arbitrariness of grammar and the will of God, and between philosophical malfeasance and sin. But he goes beyond Malcolm in that he does not just refer to religion in general but identifies particular religious traditions that share affinities with Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought: They are those that “emphasize our finitude and utter dependence on the

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will of God, traditions exemplified by the likes of Augustine, Pascal, Luther, and Kierkegaard” (Shields 1993, 51). In other words, these traditions are distinguished by their highlighting of the absolute preeminence of the will of God and the limitedness of the human being. While Shields does not say explicitly that the sort of position in which these Christian traditions belong is Wittgenstein’s point of view from which he cannot help but see all problems, one is tempted to entertain the idea that this could be it. (However, there is one bump on the road: Shields does not have a name for these traditions.) So, besides the idea that mysticism is the point of view from which Wittgenstein might have seen problems (philosophical or otherwise) are the competing ideas that the point of view (a) is rabbinic Judaism and (b) is this yet-unnamed point of view identified with traditions represented by St. Augustine, and others. These competing ideas need to be evaluated vis-à-vis each other, and the following criterion seems acceptable enough for the purpose: The idea that most plausibly accounts for Wittgenstein’s overtly religious remarks is the best option. The rabbinic Judaism option does not look too promising. It is most likely wise, in taking up Wittgenstein’s admission that his thoughts are “one hundred percent Hebraic,” to factor in the following: (a) Wittgenstein avowedly owes his religious sensibilities to the Christians St. Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Leo Tolstoi; (b) if he was acquainted with any Scriptures it was the Christian Bible—there is hardly any indication that he read the Torah or the Talmud, save if having read the Old Testament counts as having read the Torah; and (c) the Christian Bible, which is the basic source of religious insights and of theological ideas of St. Augustine and Kierkegaard and Tolstoi, can be said to be one hundred percent Hebraic, notwithstanding the fact that one of its authors, Luke, was a Gentile, and that one of the Gospels used an apparently Stoic terminology (“In the beginning was the Logos.”). The same remark that leads Labron to think that Wittgenstein’s later thought is an analogue of a strand of Hebraic thought leads him also to posit that Wittgenstein’s later thought is incompatible with Greek thought. He points out that “the aspect of Greek thought that Wittgenstein refers to is set in the context of Origen’s idea of re-establishment, which focuses upon a future spiritual realm that does not depend on our past or present spiritual activities,” then he goes on to claim that “Origen’s notion of an ideal beyond the world can be shown to be

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similar to, or perhaps influenced by, Plato” (Labron 2006, 75). Labron makes it appear like a rejection of Origen is in effect a rejection of Greek thought. But Origen does not represent Platonic thought, let alone all of Greek thought. A rejection of Platonic thought is not a near plenary rejection of Greek thought. And even if such a rejection is nonetheless a rejection of a huge chunk of Greek thought, it is very doubtful, to say the least, that Wittgenstein rejects that much Greek thought. On another conversation with Drury, Wittgenstein said of the Parmenides: “That dialogue seems to me among the most profound of Plato’s writings” (Drury 1996c, 158). It is very hard to believe that Wittgenstein would characterize as “most profound” something that he rejects. If he shows far more admiration for Plato (or at least for Parmenides) than for Schopenhauer whom he characterizes as “not deep in the sense that Kant and Berkeley are deep” (Drury 1996c, 158), then it does not take more to consider the possibility of his acceptance of Platonic thought (or at least the thought presented in the dialogue of Plato that he finds most profound) than to take seriously the suggestion that Schopenhauer did exert an influence on him. (Perhaps Wittgenstein finds the Parmenides “most profound” partly because, as succeeding chapters here show, the theology therein and his theology are so much alike—he had thought the thoughts found in the said dialogue.) So it seems fair to suppose that what Wittgenstein rejects in this context is not everything that comes under the heading ‘Greek thought’—certainly not everything Platonic—but one particular teaching of Origen which has no biblical basis. So it seems fair to suppose that Wittgenstein’s declaration that his thoughts are one hundred percent Hebraic amounts to no more than saying that all his religious thoughts are consistent (albeit not in a literalist way) with the teachings of the Christian Bible.7 And, just as St. Thomas Aquinas’ thought about God cannot be said to be incompatible with the Christian Bible even as it is heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism, Wittgenstein’s thoughts need not be incompatible with Platonic thought even as it can be said to be consistent with the Christian Bible.8

7

Fergus Kerr thinks that this Wittgenstein remark about his thought being onehundred percent Hebraic “which may in any case have been a joke, could be no more than a conventional view about the Hellenization of Christianity” (Kerr 1986, 35). 8 Compare the argument of Philip Shields (1993, 51): Since Wittgenstein was attracted to traditions in Christianity which “place great emphasis on the sovereignty

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The yet-unnamed religious point of view option is more plausible than the rabbinical Judaism because it has more textual basis—or so it seems. However, one has to ask how far it could go. How good this option is can be gauged by how adequate it accounts for, among other things, Wittgenstein’s principled refusal (a) to give any value to the philosophical theistic business of proving the existence of God, and more crucially, (b) to recognise the philosophical theistic God—i.e. the God who is a being among other beings. This point of view is distinguished by its highlighting of the absolute pre-eminence of the will of God and the limitedness of the human being. The Reformed tradition very much belongs to this group of traditions singled out by Shields, and is, therefore, well-positioned so as to have this point of view. And yet from within this tradition came out the likes of Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff who made a distinguished career doing the very things that to Wittgenstein are not worthwhile. And for sure Richard Swinburne believed in the absolute pre-eminence of God and the limitedness of the human being all the while that he composed some of the most technical versions of proofs for the existence of God known to the analytic philosophy of religion cognoscenti. And Blaise Pascal, whom Shields singles out as a representative of this bunch of Christian traditions that highlight the absolute pre-eminence of God and the limitedness of the human being, is most famous for his socalled Pascal’s Wager. Roughly, the Wager goes: It is probably more advantageous to believe in God than not to because there is more to lose if one does not believe in God and it turns out one is wrong than to believe in God and it turns out one is wrong—in the former case one passes into eternal perdition, as compared to the latter case wherein one misses no more than the naughty pleasures in life. This Wager suggests the conceivability of being wrong about God’s existence. This suggestion is to Wittgenstein nonsensical. So, it seems that taking this yet-unnamed religious point of view does not prevent one from engaging in philosophical chatter that Wittgenstein detested. This, therefore, could not be his religious point of view.

and inscrutability of the will of God,” and that “the notion of the absolute sovereignty of God has its roots in ancient Judaism,” it seems, therefore, that “Wittgenstein was attracted to the dimension of Christianity which most resembled the faith of his (Jewish) ancestors.” The claim of the indisputably Christianity-orientated Wittgenstein that his thought is “one-hundred percent Hebraic” does not appear to be too hyperbolic if taken in the light of this argument.

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In comparison, positing mysticism as Wittgenstein’s religious point of view makes a lot of sense in ways that the other two aforementioned options do not. It better accounts for Wittgenstein’s overtly religious remarks, and casts light on seemingly controversial religious, theological or philosophical positions attributed justifiably or otherwise to him (or to the Wittgenteinian philosophy of religion), such as the Wittgensteinian rejection of the philosophical theistic arguments for God’s existence, Wittgensteinian crypto-atheism, Wittgensteinian religious non-realism, or Wittgensteinian fideism. (And the succeeding chapters are about these issues.)

CHAPTER TWO

THE THEOLOGY OF THE EARLY WITTGENSTEIN

There is a universal recognition that there are two developments of Wittgenstein (although some speak of a third Wittgenstein), namely, the early one of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and the mature one of the Philosophical Investigations (and the supposed third one is that of On Certainty). But however different the early Wittgenstein is from the mature one (and also the supposed third one), there is a single unvarying theological theme that runs through all of them. In discussing this theme it is certainly apt to start with the early Wittgenstein. This chapter argues that there is a theology of sorts that underpins the thought of the early Wittgenstein (i.e. the pre-1930 Wittgenstein of the Notebooks, Tractatus, and Lecture on Ethics), and that theology is mysticism (and, contrary to what some leading commentators say, not pantheism). To prove this point, significant parallels are drawn between the early Wittgenstein’s theology and the mystical theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite and those that followed in his footsteps such as John Scottus Eriugena and St. Thomas Aquinas. The manner of presenting this point is as follows. Section I argues that the early Wittgenstein is a theologian of sorts inasmuch as his philosophical thought is underpinned by a theology, and this theology is mysticism, not pantheism, as some respected commentators see. Section II presents features of the early Wittgenstein’s theology. Section III presents features of the Pseudo-Dionysian mystical theology. Section IV concludes this chapter with the claim that the theology of the early Wittgenstein belongs in the lineage of the Pseudo-Dionysian theology.

I. The mystical Wittgenstein The following are among the earliest passages to give a glimpse of Wittgenstein’s theological position: The world is given me, i.e. my will enters into the world completely from the outside as into something that is already there.

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chapter two (As for what my will is, I don’t know yet.) That is why we have the feeling of being dependent on an alien will. However this may be, at any rate we are in a certain sense dependent, and what we are dependent on we call God. In this sense God would simply be fate, or, what is the same thing: The world—which is independent of our will. (NB 8.7.16) How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand. (NB 1.8.16) How the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world. (TLP, 6.432)

The God presented in the Notebooks appears to be the God of pantheism. But Wittgenstein seems to reverse himself in the Tractatus as the God he presents there appears to be of deism. In the early Wittgenstein there are two polar opposite theological positions that can be seen. In an intellectual culture that cannot tolerate contradictions, the sympathetic reader’s reflex action, quite understandably, is geared to find a way to make a coherent reading. There are three possible ways to go: (1) take Wittgenstein to have started as a pantheist in the Notebooks and end up a deist in the Tractatus; (2) take him to have remained a pantheist and the seemingly deist comments he makes in the Tractatus must be read through pantheistic lenses; and (3) take him as neither merely a pantheist nor merely a deist but that the Notebooks and the Tractatus express two opposite sides of a dialectical position. It is interesting that at least three commentators who are recognized to be among the most authoritative, Newton Garver, Brian McGuinness, and Eddy Zemach see Wittgenstein to be a pantheist of sorts. [NB 1. 8. 16: “How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand”] express what God is in terms very like those used in the Tractatus to say what the world is or what a fact is, and therefore they suggest either a pantheism of sorts or else a change of mind in the intervening two years. The second alternative has a superficial plausibility, but in the absence of other evidence of a change of mind it must be wrong. . . . Wittgenstein, although unwilling to allow it in print, continued to hold on to that pantheism and to the ethical views associated with it. (Garver 1971, 124 and 136) If . . . God is the essence of the world, the world’s meaning and form, then we know much more about God than we thought we knew. For the essence of the world, its form, etc., is nothing but the general form of the proposition. Let us consider the following propositions: ‘The general

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propositional form is the essence of a proposition’ (TLP 5.471); ‘To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence of all description, and thus the essence of the world’ (TLP 5.4711). ‘The general form of the proposition is: This is how things stand’ (TLP 4.5). ‘How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand’ (NB 1.8.16). . . . The general form of the proposition and God are one. . . . The general propositional form . . . is a variable name (4.53) which is the proper sign for the pseudo-concept God. . . . The general form of the proposition is identical with the concept God. (Zemach 1966, 364, 366, and 367) True, there are references to God in the Notebooks and even in the Tractatus but clearly to a God who is identical with nature: Deus, sive Natura. At best Wittgenstein allows a form of pantheism: in the spirit of Whitehead’s remark about unitarianism, he might be said to hold that if there is any God, then the world is God. (McGuinness 1966, 321)

There is a noticeable predisposition on the part of these commentators towards the elision of Wittgenstein’s clear expression of the transcendence of God. But some key statements in the Tractatus simply do not fit the pantheistic mould. The result of trying to fit them in is inconsistency. Pantheism is out of place with some key statements that are, if not explicitly made, clearly implied in the Tractatus (e.g., 6.41ff, 6.432 and 6.44). The following are those key statements awkwardly phrased to fit the standard form of propositional logic (the use of which is resorted to here only because it provides a way of making the point that needs to be made here in a way that is detailed yet succinct). A. A matter is a how-the-world-hangs-together if and only if it is not a that-the-world-exists matter. (H↔¬T) B. A matter is mystical if and only if it is a transcendent matter. (M↔R) C. If a matter is a that-the-world-exists then it is a mystical matter. (T→M) D. If a matter is a how-the-world-hangs-together then it is not a mystical matter. (H→¬M)

Together they can form a premise set. But add to it (as the commentators quoted above do) a statement obtained from the Notebooks: E. It is a God matter if and only if it is a how-the-world-hangs-together matter. (G↔H)

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Thus the chain of inference: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

(H→¬T)∧(¬T→H) (M→R)∧(R→M) (G→H)∧(H→G) T→M H→¬M H→¬T G→H G→¬T M→R T→R

(A, ME) (B, ME) (E, ME) (C) (D) (1 Simp) (3 Simp) (7, 6 HS) (2, Simp) (4, 9 HS)

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

¬R→¬T ¬T→H ¬R→H H→G ¬R→G R→M ¬M→¬R H→¬R G→¬R ¬T→G

(10 Trans) (1 Simp) (11, 12 HS) (3 Simp) (13, 14 HS) (2 Simp) (16 Trans) (5, 17 HS) (7, 18 HS) (12, 14 HS)

The chain of inference contains lines that are not consistent with the given premises: Line 15: ‘If a matter is not a transcendent one then it is a God matter’. Line 19: ‘If it is a God matter then it is not a transcendent one’. Line 8: ‘If a matter is a God matter then it is not a that-the-world-exists matter’. Line 20: ‘If it is not a that-the-world-exists matter then it is a God matter’.

It is very unlikely that anyone who reads mere pantheism into Wittgenstein’s position would want to grant that there is inconsistency in it. Inconsistency, after all, is a ground for rejecting a position. Without E in the premise set above there would have been no problem of inconsistency. If one were to go for consistency, the seemingly pantheistic statement E should not have a place alongside those seemingly deistic statements of the Tractatus because if it is given that place there will inevitably be a contradiction. It is clear that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus negates that of the Notebooks. So the thesis that Wittgenstein—assuming for the sake of argument that he takes a pantheist position in the Notebooks—did not shift position up to the Tractatus does not stand to scrutiny. The direction to go, therefore, is that either he did shift his position, or that his position to start with is one other than mere pantheism—one that can see the Tractatus negating but not necessarily repudiating the Notebooks. There is one other point that makes the ascription of mere pantheism to Wittgenstein very awkward, to say the least. If facts are identical with the existing state of affairs, then Tractatus 1.1 can be rephrased thus: “The world is the totality of existing state of affairs, not of things (objects).” Actual states of affairs (or facts) form the reality (TLP 2.06). Thus, to speak of reality is to speak of state of affairs. Reality can be spoken of either truthfully or falsely. If the state of affairs spoken of

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happens to exist, then reality (or a piece of it) is spoken of truthfully; and if the reality spoken of happens not to exist, then reality (or a piece of it) is spoken of falsely. To speak of reality truthfully or falsely is to speak of either existing or non-existing states of affairs. What is notable is that to speak of reality is to speak on the level of state of affairs (or facts), not on the level of objects. Objects form the substance of the world—the world as the totality of real state of affairs (TLP 2.021). The suggestion then is that objects are not within the realm of reality but beneath it. And to speak of objects is to speak not of reality but of that which is beneath it. Speaking of objects is speaking at a different level from what is or what possibly could have been or could be reality. Thus, if objects are said to exist, it cannot mean that objects exist as concrete objects in reality do. So, as Wittgenstein points out, “one cannot e.g. say ‘There are objects’ as one says ‘There are books’ ” (TLP 4.1272). And McGuinness explains: All questions of existence are questions about what configuration of objects actually obtain. Thus we might say that all existence is a matter of fact, a matter of what is in the world. . . . This seems to yield a moderately complicated ontology: the world or reality consists of facts, that is to say in the Bestehen (in one sense), the obtaining, of states of affairs. States of affairs themselves, on the one hand, are combinations of objects, which bestehen or exists (subsists) in another sense. The existence as normally spoken of is equivalent to the Bestehen in the first sense of a certain state of affairs. (McGuinness 1981, 62)

So objects, it turns out, are something mysterious. Wittgenstein’s objects are not concrete objects which may sensibly be said to exist or not. Nor are they properties of concrete objects, since that makes the self-contradictory assumption that there is something simpler than the simplest thing that can be referred to. . . . [I]t is easily seen that an example of an object cannot be given. We cannot grasp anything other than a concatenation of objects. . . . Objects are the form of [the realm of the world, thought and language], and our acquaintance with objects (or contact with them, to borrow a metaphor from Aristotle) is not an experience or knowledge of something over and against which we stand. Thus it is not proper experience or knowledge at all. Objects are eti epekeina tēs ousias (beyond being). (McGuinness 1981, 72)

It is noteworthy that McGuinness understands objects, inasmuch as they are the ground of existence, to precede existence. For if that is the case, and it is also the case that Wittgenstein is a mere pantheist—that he holds that God is the totality of facts, of existing state of affairs, of that which exists, of reality in its plenitude—then, to say the least,

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McGuinness, as he ascribes pantheism to Wittgenstein, is in a very awkward position: McGuinness would have to admit that there is that which precedes God. The pantheist Wittgenstein’s God is grounded rather than the ground. That obviously is not acceptable. With due respect to the above-quoted eminent Wittgensteinian scholars, there is a reading of the theology of Wittgenstein that is evidently better than that which they provide. This reading takes Wittgenstein’s position to be, as it were, at once pantheism and deism. This obviously is a contradiction. But the contradiction is deliberate—though perhaps it is more appropriate to use ‘paradox’ in lieu of ‘contradiction’.1 One may wonder how in any possible world polar opposites, such as pantheism and deism, can coincide. But one may remember Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidence of opposites.2 Notions such as these characterize Christian mysticism. Paradox is a basic characteristic of mysticism, Christian or otherwise. One can take Wittgenstein’s position to be a Christian mysticism of sorts. As a person, the closest he gets to mainstream Christianity is his having been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church; yet it is not too difficult to consider the religious position that can be discerned from him to be within the pale of Christianity. Christianity is the only religion that he was ever sufficiently acquainted with. His religious conviction was informed by Christianity. His personal religious life was stirred by Christian scripture-based literature. His notion of religious faith evidently germinated after he read, and was deeply impressed by, Tolstoi’s The Gospel in Brief. If Wittgen1 Interestingly, McGuinness (1981, 73), with regards to Wittgenstein’s position on objects, points out: “His position is one as indeed he tells us, from which realism, idealism and solipsism can all be seen as one.” There seem to be some sort of recognition of a paradox here. 2 Ludwig Hänsel is the earliest on record to recognize the Cusanus-Wittgenstein connection. Hänsel sent his namesake and friend a copy of De Deo Abscondito by Nicholas of Cusa. In his covering letter dated 30 August 1920 (collected in Hänsel und Wittgenstein 1994), Hänsel expresses the belief that Wittgenstein will enjoy it. The apparent reason for this belief is that he, Wittgenstein, “already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar thoughts” (to borrow words from the preface of the TLP). Nicholas, speaking in the work through the Christian in dialogue with the pagan, says of God: “It is not the case that He is nothing . . . He is not a something, either . . . God is beyond nothing and something” (DA 9). Hänsel sees kinship between what Wittgenstein shows in the Tractatus and what Nicholas says in the dialogue. Yet, interestingly, the mature Wittgenstein suggests that God, like the mind, is spoken of as “not a nothing, but not a something, either.” It is the mature Wittgenstein, rather than the Tractarian Wittgenstein that Hänsel knew, who characterizes God in terms that are almost identical to Nicholas’ characterization. This is one indication of some continuity of thought between the Tractarian and the mature Wittgenstein.

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stein’s position is taken to be Christian mysticism—not pantheistic mysticism, as McGuinness would have it3—then perhaps there is some measure of justification to the ascription of contradiction—or, more appropriately, paradox—to his position. There is another indication that Wittgenstein’s mysticism can be associated with Christian mysticism as against pantheistic mysticism. Norman Malcolm mentions in passing that Wittgenstein presented him with a copy of the Journal of the Quaker founder George Fox that Wittgenstein “read with admiration” (Malcolm 1958, 71–2). Perhaps the admiration of Wittgenstein for Fox can be attributed to their being like-minded. Garver (2002, 62–3) points out that “Wittgenstein, like Fox (and perhaps Socrates), experienced highly unusual mental states, such as are likely to be seen as slightly mad by ‘normal’ folks.” Perhaps it was similar temperament and experience that brought them to a similar philosophical position. More significantly, Garver lists a number of commonalities between Wittgenstein’s philosophical position and that of the Quakers, and among them are “respect for silence” and an “intertwining of rationalism and mysticism” (Garver 2002, 69). Quakerism is one Christian sect; and it is not known for pantheism. There is reason to believe that Wittgenstein took the mystical position early on. He confesses to have had experiences that may be characterized as mystical (LE, 8; cf. TLP 6.44–6.45).4 The mystical experiences that Wittgenstein confesses to have had he describes to be “experience par excellence” (LE, 8): the experience of wondering at the existence of the world, of feeling absolutely safe, and of feeling guilty. These are suggestive of what Rudolf Otto famously terms numinous experience. This experience is about having a glimpse of the mysterium tremendum—that that which is awesome, overpowering and infinitely magnificent—with the effect of the experiencing subject contracting the creature-feeling, of having the ego effaced, “submerged and

3 D. Z. Phillips (1970, 61), for one, evidently takes Wittgenstein to be a Christian mystic and is “puzzled as to why McGuinness thinks that Wittgenstein’s remark is not consistent with theistic mysticism.” Another reader, J. Mark Lazenby, is in agreement with Phillips “pace McGuinness that Wittgenstein’s mysticism is some sort of theistic mysticism” (Lazenby 2006, 42). 4 Wittgenstein’s own mystical experience aside, his thinking is deeply influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer. It is clearly from him that Wittgenstein draws some key ideas that somehow serve to express mysticism (see e.g. Glock 1999, 437–443; Weiner 1992).

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overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures” (Otto 1973, Ch. I–IV).5 That the world exists at all is itself an awesome wonder. Even the world by itself is an awesome wonder—so much so that Wittgenstein goes (initially) to the extent of identifying it as God. But infinitely more of an awesome wonder is that the world even in its plenitude is limited; and this limitedness is suggestive of that which is infinite in magnitude and in all other aspects: the eternal. Contrasted against the grandeur of the world is the exiguity of the world-bound human subject. It has to live with the world “that is already there” and bear the “feeling of being dependent on an alien will” (NB 8.7.16). The subject feels impotence in the face of the forces that are already at work in the world, accepting that “even if everything we wished were to happen, this would be, so to speak, a favour of fate” (TLP 6.374).6 And in the 5 William J. Wainwright (1981, 5), who duly notes that “Otto believed that mystical experience was a species of numinous experience,” nonetheless thinks that numinous experience should be differentiated from mystical experience. He argues: “A sense of unity is in the heart of mystical experience. Distances are annihilated, and distinctions overcome. If experience has an object, the mystic experiences identity or union with that object. By contrast, a sense of absolute otherness, or distance, or difference is built into the very fabric of numinous experience.” If Wainwright is suggesting that no numinous experience can also be a mystical experience, or that experiences of Christian mystics could not be numinous experience, or that it is unreasonable to hold that a sense of being embraced by and be dissolved into the Awesome Other can be an integral part of numinous experience, then he is clearly mistaken. 6 This seems to express a fatalistic attitude but not quite a case of recklessly indifferent que sera sera fatalism. Wittgenstein could not be advocating such indifferent fatalism for he was not one who was given to leaving things that concerned him to chance; on the contrary he did his tasks—tackling a philosophical problem, fighting a war as a volunteer rather than a conscript, designing a geometric house, lecturing in extremely deliberated thoughts—with religious intensity bordering on neurosis. One can suspect that Wittgenstein takes a cue from Schopenhauer in going into this seemingly fatalistic line. One can also deem this to be of Stoic provenance (Glock 1996, 108–9). But it could be Christian, too. A line of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples goes: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). And in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus, knowing his inevitable awful rendezvous with destiny is nigh prayed “My Father . . . if this cup (i.e. sorrow and suffering) cannot pass by without my drinking it, your will be done!” (Matthew 26: 42). This is an expression of an attitude that one in terms of significance and otherwise is not the centre of the universe, not above the circumstances that everything in the universe are naturally subjected to, and that there are those which are greater and infinitely more important than oneself. (Cf. “Leaving things to God involves ceasing to see events as partial to oneself ”—D. Z. Phillips 1986b, 61).What ever this attitude is—one can call this “humility”—it is certainly the opposite of egotism, hubris and narcissism. In fact there are innumerable things that, whether one likes it or not or can accept it or not, one can do nothing about. Such things, one can suspect, are what Wittgenstein refers to. Humility enables one to accept them and carry on with life; egotism, hubris and narcissism only leads one to

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face of the eternal, the subject gets totally effaced, or as some would describe it, dissolves into indistinctness and merges with the greater world,7 as a doll of salt that touches the ocean dissolves into indistinctness and merges with the ocean.8 The feeling of absolute safety is the feeling of being loved that, at least in the Christian tradition, is an essential element of the divine experience.9 The feeling of absolute safety, of being loved, is a deepseated acknowledgement of the absolute dependence of everything on that which is supreme and loving. Though this absolute dependence can be fatally dreadful for it can mean being absolutely helpless and ever at the mercy of an infinitely majestic will that can be full of fire and fury signifying absolute damnation, yet it is the feeling of being loved by an everlasting love that gives the beloved the supreme confidence in God who is in supreme control and is supremely good. Hence resent them or despair over them. There is a difference between humility and fatalism: the latter is an attitude that sees everything to be beyond one’s help, while the former recognizes that there are things that can be helped and that it is one’s responsibility to help what can be helped. Thus the prayer attributed to the German-American pastortheologian Reinhold Niebuhr: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” 7 Cf. “Most definitions of mysticism refer to it as union: in Wittgenstein’s case . . . the union will be the union with the world, with Nature, particularly well expressed by such phrases as ‘I am my world—the world and life are one’” (McGuinness 1966, 321). Evidently for Wittgenstein, uniting with the world ought to be sought after, for a happy man is one whose will is in unity with the will that is at work in the world (NB 8.7.16). 8 “I am like a doll made of salt. I went to measure the depth of the ocean full of saline water. I was dissolved completely and became one with the ocean. How can I measure the immeasurable?”—The Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (as presented in Matilal 1992, 151). 9 Otto makes a presentation that hardly touches on the aspect of love while emphasising the dreadful aspect of the mysterium tremendum. Even Wittgenstein does not actually mention love in the context of religious experience in his early writings—at least not in the early writings that survived. But looking at the testimonies of those who had a glimpse of it shows the overwhelming dominance of the loving aspect over the dreadful part of it—a few of these testimonies are noted by William James (1982, 274f.) Presumably Wittgenstein was aware of this feeling-of-love as part of religious experience for he read James’ book well and, as he claimed, did him a lot of good and helped him get rid of the sense of futility, the Sorge (CL, 14) Drury recounts, that this James opus “was one of the few books [Wittgenstein] insisted I must read” (Drury 1967, 68). Though in the much-later-logged remark (CV, 32–33) one sees Wittgenstein suggesting the importance of love’s role in (as he puts it in the LE) the feeling of absolute safety in the hands of God: Wittgenstein reasons that if Christ did not rise from the dead then there would be no salvation; but then it takes love for one to believe in the resurrection and thus feel the assurance of salvation: because of love one is able to believe, and because of belief (faith) one feels absolute safety in the hands of God, which is what the assurance of salvation essentially is.

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the attitude of the beloved is that whatever happens, it will turn out to be the best, an attitude that is well-expressed by St. Paul: “. . . all things work together for good to them that love God. . . . We are more than conquerors through him that loves us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus” (Romans VIII: 37–9). St. Paul may have a weltanschauung that is much dissimilar to that of Wittgenstein, but the latter nonetheless expresses the same attitude as the former: “I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens” (LE 8).10 The particular feeling of guilt that Wittgenstein refers to is suggestive of an awareness of that which is holy.11 The holy is that which essentially is supremely moral. To be holy is certainly to be sacred; but then it could be better taken that, especially with reference to the divine, that which is sacred is so because it is supremely moral. It appears in the Judeo-Christian tradition that to be made morally excellent is the prerequisite of consecration. A paradigm case of this is Isaiah who, when he encountered the divine with intentions of consecrating him to be a prophet, he felt dread as he was “a man of unclean lips” and had to be made holy before anything else (Isaiah VIII: 1–8). Wittgenstein’s feeling of guilt may be seen as being overwhelmed by that which is supremely moral. This is part of creature-feeling (Cf. Otto 1973, Ch. VIII). Wittgenstein’s experiences may be numinous experiences; still one can ask what makes them mystical. John Wesley had a numinous experience, too. The ground for it had been laid when he was on board a ship on his way to America to serve as a religious missionary. The ship sailed through a storm and was in danger of sinking. He was terrified, not least because he was faced with feelings of guilt and the accompanying uncertainty of his fate as a sinner. In contrast his fel-

10 Hans-Johann Glock (1996, 108–9) attributes the genesis of this feeling to the position that the will and the world are mutually independent and thus cannot have any effect on each other. Glock’s take is bereft of any reference to Wittgenstein’s experience of the mysterium tremendum. 11 Wittgenstein’s sins preoccupied him as much as logic did. And for him moral shortcomings and logic went hand-in-hand such that to overcome one is to overcome the other (McGuiness 1988, 155–6).

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low passengers who were Moravians “calmly sung on.”12 It was as if in their demeanor the Moravians were saying “We are safe; nothing can harm us whatever happens.” That got him wondering. Years later he heard a reading of Martin Luther’s exposition of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans one night in Aldersgate Street. It sparked an epiphany. He felt that his heart was strangely warmed. That experience bore similar characteristics with those that Wittgenstein confessed to have had, but Wesley’s has not earned a reputation of being mystical.13 Silence characterizes mysticism. Silence is the poignant feature of Wittgenstein’s Tractarian philosophy and theology. The so-called mystical that concerns half of Wittgenstein’s own summation of the Tractatus is that which must be passed over in silence. Thus the term ‘mysticism’ in Wittgenstein means principled silence. The difference between the numinous experience that takes a mystical reputation and that which does not is that those that get to have such a reputation are those that by all accounts have—aside form a much greater degree of emphasis given to God’s transcendence and radical dissimilarity with the world—a much greater degree of importance given to silence. Silence is a sibling of mystery. With little else to go with other than a very brief description by Wittgenstein, the character of what he refers to as his experiences par excellence can only be subject to speculation. One can imagine those experiences to be a shamanic-like consciousness-wrenching ecstatic fit that suddenly seized him at a point in his early lifetime.14 Or it could have been just as relatively unspectacular as Wesley’s religious experience: an epiphany that was the climax of a sustained intellectual and emotional struggle compounded by his World War I experiences.15 12 In his diary entry for January 24, 1736 Wesley writes: “I ask one of them afterwards, ‘was you not afraid?’ He answered, ‘I thank God, no’. I asked, ‘But were your women and children not afraid?’ He replied mildly, ‘No; our women are not afraid to die’ ” (Wesley 1909, 1: 143). 13 But Evelyn Underhill points out in that “no deeply religious person is without a touch of mysticism” (Underhill 1960, 70). If mysticism “is the art of establishing conscious relation with the Absolute” (p. 81), then Wesley qualifies as a mystic. 14 Russell Nieli (1987, 69n, 95–96n) suggests that this was the experience Wittgenstein had that led him to the feeling articulated in the line “Nothing can happen to you” in that play he saw in Vienna. Nieli is usefully informative about Wittgenstein’s early mysticism notwithstanding his unsatisfactory grasp of the vital concepts of the later Wittgenstein. 15 Brian McGuinness (1966, 308) cautions that “it would be rash to infer” that among those that changed Wittgenstein’s outlook was a mystical experience. He may be referring to the miracle-play shamanic-type experience. This notion of the mystical

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Whatever his mystical experience might have been like, it undoubtedly helped shape his philosophy.16 And however the experience was it must have given Wittgenstein a glimpse of the inexpressible: “[the experience of wondering at the existence of the world] is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle . . . we cannot express what we want to express and all that we say about the absolute miraculous remains nonsense” (LE, 8). He implies an urge to speak of his experience, and yet he cannot speak meaningfully. He is, as it were, flabbergasted and nonplussed by what he beholds. That experience must have made in him an impression so deep as to make him regard what is inexpressible extremely highly such that he would find it necessary to offer an account of the inexpressible in his rigorously thought philosophy. Such experience, going by the injunction of the Tractatus, is more properly consigned to silence; hence it is mystical.

II. Wittgenstein’s apophaticism Wittgenstein is remarkable for his inability to say what God is. Even on occasions where he seemingly manages to do so he more than matches it with a reversal. His theology is much more impressive for its negative suggestions than it is for its affirmative ones. The theological tenor in the Tractatus clearly is that God is transcendent and thus cannot be named, predicated or described. A name is a designation of an object; a predicate is ascribed to an entity; and a proposition describes a fact. But God is neither an object, nor a complex entity, nor a fact. All objects, complex entities and facts belong within the logical evokes spectacular altered states of consciousness, necromancy, having visions of the other-world, and so on—a notion that, to start with, should not in any way be linked with Wittgenstein. If he is said to be not a mystic, it is in relation to this said notion of the mystical. (Cf. Engelmann 1967, 79) 16 How much influence it lent is subject to dispute. On the one side, it is pointed out that “while ‘the mystical’ was extremely important to Wittgenstein, it is not the essential core of the Tractatus. The mystical themes appear only in 1916. . . . This happened under the influence of experiences during World War I, which led him to read Tolstoi’s Gospel in Brief, and to re-read Schopenhauer. Wittgenstein grafted mystical themes onto the logical trunk” (Glock 1996, 251). On the other side, it is claimed that in such experience “lay the real driving force behind Wittgenstein’s opposition to metaphysics, the force which sustained him throughout the 7-year period in which he composed the Tractatus, and which very likely moved him to take up the study of logic in the first place” (Nieli 1987, 139). But if Engelmann were made to break the impasse, it would clearly be in favour of the latter (cf. Engelmann 1967, 96–7).

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space. God belongs beyond it. So, the more appropriate talk about God is that which touches on God being not such-and-such. Thus, unlike in the Notebooks where there are entries declaring God is this or is that, the only theologically significant mention of God in the Tractatus is in a statement that makes a negative declaration about God. It is Wittgenstein’s way to show the mystical. (a) Wittgenstein’s God is beyond sense. Following him one can go no farther than to identify God with but not as. If x is identified as y, then that is to say that x is y. If x is identified with y, then that is to say that x somehow shares a property or belongs to a domain common with or otherwise is somehow related to y; nonetheless x has a distinct identity from y. While in the Notebooks and the Prototractatus Wittgenstein does say what God is (e.g. the world is God, and God is the world) which is to say that God is identified as the world, in the Tractatus he does not, and indeed declares that he cannot, and even ought not, to say what God is. One commentator quoted above tries to say what God is (‘God is the general form of the proposition’) and succeeds in suggesting that God is like a genome to the universe (and to push the suggested analogy further, theology is like genetics). But three points need to be considered about this commentator’s argument. First: it must be noted that what completes the inferential connection of the identification of the general form of the proposition with God is lifted from a passage outside the Tractatus; in the Tractatus itself no connection can be made between God and the general form of the proposition. Second: the clause ‘How things stand’ refers only to the world as it really is, the sum total of the actual formation of objects (i.e. facts) that the natural science—being the sum total of true propositions (TLP 4.11)—depict. This clause excludes from its reference the myriads of propositions of how the world could have been. The general form of the propositions depicting how the world could have been is shared with the propositions depicting how the world really is. Yet propositions that depict the world as it could have been are, unlike those that depict how the world really is, not true propositions. What Wittgenstein categorically says is that “God is, how things stand” and “How things stand, is God.” The repetition of the same statement but in differing sentences is significant: That the subject and predicate are interchangeable suggests a case of identicalness. God is the actual How of the standing of things; that God is also the myriad of possibilities of How is precluded (cf. Glock 1996, 252). So only the totality of true propositions could be matched with such a God. The domain of true

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propositions is smaller than, and thus not identical with, that of the general form of the proposition. That makes for a smaller God. Third: one must eventually face the deafening silence that creeps in starting in the Tractatus 6.41. At this stage it is shown that nothing affirmative can be said about God any more. The God that once was the plenary world no longer is. Though there is one relevant mention of God (TLP 6.432), it is not about what God is, but about what God does not do, viz. reveal himself in the world. These three points at least suggests that Wittgenstein’s God is so intractable that one cannot presume to know so much about God. One cannot, to say the least, be so sure then that Wittgenstein is a pantheist who can say with ease what God is. The attempt at identifying God could be pursued further. Beyond logical space that is the realm of sense, in the realm of the transcendent, belong being, logic, value, and the metaphysical subject. Being (that there exists), logic (that so-and-so can be such and such but not otherwise), and value (that such-and-such has significance) are essential conditions for the world to be. This notion lends itself to theological speculation. One commentator proffers that the metaphysical subject “is, as it were, that outside of the world on which the existence of everything depends—it might as plausibly be identified with God as with my very self ” (Black 1964, 308–9). The metaphysical subject and the essential conditions for the world to be are identified with God on account of their transcendence. With such arrangement God is in the position of that which makes the world, ordains its possible orders, bestows its significance, accounts for contingencies, recognizes truth and falsity, and beholds its worth. God, in other words, is shown in the position from which the plenary world with all its necessities, contingencies, and possibilities is drawn. But it should be noted that all those identified as belonging to the transcendent realm can only go so far as to be identified with God, i.e. they somehow are associated with a domain that God belongs to, but are never identified as God—i.e. they never are identical with God. Wittgenstein shows he is—to borrow a metaphor from Denys Turner (2002a, 20)—unable to impale God on any world-bound descriptive hook. He shows that nothing can be said about what God is. God transcends the limits of the expression of thought. God transcends the realm of sense. God is beyond sense, and in that sense a non-sense. (b) Wittgenstein’s negative theology evidently predominates over his affirmative theology. Wittgenstein does make notable affirmative theological statements in the Notebooks. But, as is said above, there is a

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complete reversal in the Tractatus. These passages, by all appearances, present mutually negating positions on God. In the Notebooks, God is immanent; in the Tractatus, transcendent. Immanence and transcendence, to state the obvious, are polar opposites. That the supposed pantheist Wittgenstein in the Notebooks must have remained so in the Tractatus, and that those passages therein that suggest other than pantheistic ideas can only be interpreted to cohere with a pantheistic position, is a procrustean bed that Wittgenstein is being laid on, and this would not do justice to the nuances of his position. Wittgenstein, even in the Notebooks, could be better taken as not quite a pantheist, notwithstanding that what he says about God is obviously what a pantheist would typically say. Understanding him to have already taken a mystical position at those times he made the Notebook entries provides a good reason to suppose that the theological themes in the Notebooks are but one side of a theological position yet to be fully shown—the Tractatus subsequently shows the other side. If in the Notebooks the position of Wittgenstein is pantheistic, then clearly it shifts to something else in the Tractatus. If he does make a shift of position, then that makes the Notebooks entries significant only insofar as they are a record of the evolution of his thought and probably not much more. If the Notebooks, despite appearances, does not simply advocate pantheism, then one plausible supposition is that the seemingly pantheistic entries in it could be considered as merely initial sketches of Wittgenstein’s attempt at presenting his position on God. That those sketches do not make it to the Tractatus may then just be a consequence of the refinement of his presentation. It should be kept in mind that the Notebooks to Wittgenstein is just a receptacle in which ideas that flow, spurt or drip out of his mind are caught; and that these ideas may not be taken as final pronouncements but as preliminary ideas to be considered, ruminated, refined or rejected. The Notebooks may be seen as a ladder on which Wittgenstein climbs up towards the Tractatus, and once he gets there the ladder can be thrown away. 17 Thus, one

17 Indeed Wittgenstein had wanted the original notebooks literally destroyed. This is an indication that he cannot endorse, or he could even have disowned, many of the lines he wrote there. Unfortunately for him the notes were inadvertently spared and later discovered, and “the philosophic content of the notebooks was, with a few slight omissions, edited by Miss Anscombe and [G. H. von Wright] and published in 1961” (von Wright 1971, 3). In a stark contrast, Wittgenstein “was very anxious to publish his [Tractatus]. The many difficulties and obstacles must have depressed him deeply” (von Wright 1971, 12).

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sensible attitude to assume may be that in the event of a discrepancy in the presentation of a point the Tractatus has the presumption. This means that rather than reading the Tractatus through the pantheistic lens that seems to be suggested by the Notebooks, the Notebooks either should be considered superseded or read through the non-pantheistic lenses of the Tractatus. If read through as here suggested, there could be more significance to be given to the Notebook entries than would be gleaned from them if taken as mere record of the evolution of his thought. The seemingly discrepant positions in the Notebooks and the Tractatus could be seen as a dialectical pair that forms a single theological position. (However, there is a point that must be noted. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein abstains from speaking of God in the affirmative. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” says he. But language is the ladder by which one climbs towards that whereof one cannot speak. It is when the limits of language are shown that one is made aware of the ineffable. Language, thus, is a necessary vehicle for the attainment of the state of ineffability. Negative theology may predominate over affirmative theology, but the latter is necessary to arrive at the former.) (c) Statements about God are not propositions with sense. Language correlates with the world isomorphically: names match with objects; true propositions with facts; language, which is the sum total of propositions, with logical space, which is the sum total of all possible facts. Still there are statements made in attempts at articulating the mystical, at describing the boundless ineffable beyond. These are the aesthetic, ethical and theological statements. Statements such as these are nonsensical18 and determining truth or falsity in them is irrelevant because, rather than picturing some possible fact within the logical space covered by language, the statements in question instead run against the boundaries of language and try to move into a realm that is beyond sense. If all statements, including theological statements, can be superimposed upon logical space, theological statements will have nothing to match with. They are, in this sense, excess statements. Propositions about God may, and even have to, be made; but one must beware that this is not the mundane use of propositions and cannot therefore deliver in the mundane way. Propositions are “vessels capable only of

18 Albeit they are an illuminating nonsense, statements that try to say what can only be shown (see, e.g. Glock 1996, 259).

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containing and conveying meaning and sense, natural meaning and sense” (LE, 7). They cannot convey what is transcendent—at least not in a way they can with facts. Wittgenstein likens a proposition to a teacup that would hold only a teacup of water even if a gallon were poured over it. This comparison may not be good enough though: a teacup of water still holds water and the difference between a teacup and a gallon is quantitative not qualitative. A better comparison then would be a cobweb: If anything at all, it will hold only a faint smell of smoke even if it is smoked all day. The proposition can no more be projected onto a transcendent sense than can a cobweb be made to hold the volumes of smoke belched onto it. Humans have, at best, deigned representations of the divine, their mode of representation being like a vessel that does no better to grasp what they are supposed to represent than the cobweb to hold smoke. Nothing that can be said about God will hold when taken in the mundane way. If Wittgenstein does make any claim about God at all, it is via negativa: “God does not reveal himself in the world” (TLP 6.432). And even this claim he eventually dismisses as nonsensical (TLP 6.54). He nonetheless issues such nonsensical statements. He apparently cannot help it; he simply has the urge “to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language” (LE, 11). He sees that as a natural “tendency in the human mind” (LE, 12). Humans, observes Wittgenstein, have “the urge to thrust against the limits of language. . . . the tendency, the thrust, points to something” (LE, 12–13). That “something” being pointed to is eternity, i.e. the boundless ineffable beyond. God, the supposed sense of theological statements, belongs there in the boundless ineffable beyond. Propositions may be used as a ladder to try to go beyond the world: One can climb “out through them, on them, and over them,” and then when one has climbed up one “must, so to speak, throw away the ladder” (TLP 6.54). (d) The Tractarian discourse is paradoxical. All that language can picture, it is said, are facts. A picture is supposed to have something in common with the pictured: the logical form. But the logical form itself cannot be pictured by the picture: “What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language” (TLP 4.121). Other than the logical form are other “inexpressibles”—i.e., those that transcend the logical space. They can all be shown only but not expressed (TLP 4.1212). However, to say that x is inexpressible is to express something about it. Thus Bertrand Russell retorts, “Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said . . . The whole subject of

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ethics, for example, is placed by Mr Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region. Nevertheless he is capable of conveying his ethical opinions” (Russell 1955, 22; 1969, xxi). Wittgenstein manages somehow—or rather attempts—to suspend the paradox by declaring all his expressions of the inexpressible nonsensical. Yet, again, this very declaration that is supposed to suspend the paradox is itself nonsensical. (e) Apophasis is the highest attainment. Even the very statements about God must be transcended for it is only then that one can see it sub specie aeternati (TLP 6.45), the point of view from which one “will see the world aright” (TLP 6.54). This is the point of mystical enlightenment. When all is transcended nothing more can be spoken about. And what one cannot speak about one must pass over in silence.

III. The Pseudo-Dionysian theology Long before Wittgenstein there was that mystic who wrote in the name of Dionysius the Areopagite but whose real identity remains a mystery. This Pseudo-Dionysius blazed the trail that others such as John Scottus Eriugena, St. Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa followed, and is a theological thoroughfare for the Eastern Orthodox faith.19 This Pseudo-Dionysian theology—apophatic theology, or alternatively, mystical theology—has the following features. (a) God is entirely transcendent to being. It is of course not just in the Pseudo-Dionysian theology that the doctrine of the transcendence of God can be found. The fact is that this is a standard doctrine of any theistic theology, mystical or otherwise. The difference, however, lies in the particular notion of transcendence. That God is transcendent means that there is an ontological distinction between God and the universe. In what may be called the typical theistic orthodoxy, an ontological distinction is understood as a distinction in the state of being—i.e. God is purely spiritual as opposed to the universe which in most part is material—and in the degree of being—i.e., only God, and no one else, possesses a perfection of all noble characteristics and

19

Anyhow within Christendom the Pseudo-Dionysius blazed the trail although previously Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine may have pointed in the direction that the he took. It also must be considered that the Pseudo-Dionysius’ theology is Christianized Plotinian theology, and some even see it to be more Plotinian than Christian. (See Carabine 1995, Chs. Five to Nine.)

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virtues of being such that God is not impeded by any limitations that less-than-perfect beings suffer from. But this distinction is, from the Pseudo-Dionysian viewpoint, not that radical, for this God, unlike the material universe, may be spiritual but still a being. This God may be unlimited but only because God is at the top of the pecking order of beings. In the Pseudo-Dionysian theology God is not a being. PseudoDionysius, it is pointed out, “never refers to the divinity as a being . . . never speaks of a divine essence or being” (Jones 1980, 123). He does the contrary by denying that God is a being of some kind, that God belongs within the realm of being, or that God belongs to the being/ non-being binary category (DN 817D, 824A, and MT 1048A). God is beyond being, the supra-being beyond every being, precedes essence, being and eternity (DN 648C, 824A). God is be-ing—not the highest being, not even one with an excess of being, but “beyond every manner of being” or “beyond beingly” (Jones 1980, 123–6). Be-ing is not like anything—not even like a spiritual (i.e. non-material ) thing.20 It is not an entity of a sort, does not exist in some state or another: “does not possess this kind of existence and not that;” “is . . . nonexistent” (DN 824B and L, 1065A). Be-ing “is no thing” (DN 825B). Be-ing, for John Scottus Eriugena, is Nothing. The nothingness of Nothing has nothing to do with privation for “it is impossible that there should be privation while there is not possession of essence . . . privation is the privation of possession, and therefore where possession does not precede privation does not follow” (Peri III, 686A). Nothing transcends the binary categories of existence/non-existence (“beyond all things that are and that are not”); and also transcends the state of having to be in possession of an essence—or perhaps to be possessed by an essence (“found in no essence;” “the total negation of . . . essence”)— nor can God be identified as essence itself (“strictly speaking He is not essence: for to being is opposed not-being”); and indeed transcends conceivability (“the total negation . . . of all things that can be said or understood . . . Who by not knowing is the better known”) (Peri III, 686D, 681C; Peri I, 459D).. Be-ing is Nothing—beyond ontology of any sorts (“above and beyond speech, mind or being itself ”) (DN 588A).

20 Indeed it seems more apt to use ‘be-ing’ to refer to God than “‘being’”—in added quotation marks—as in Colm Luibheid’s rendition of DN 649B (“God is a ‘being’ in a way beyond being”) as the word ‘be-ing’ seems to convey better the idea that God and being are in a significant sense mutually exclusive.

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(a) Negative theology takes pre-eminence over affirmative theology. If God is not a being, not even being itself, then God is conceptually intractable for “whatever transcends being must also transcend knowledge” (DN 593A). Thus, “the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up with the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra-existent Being, Mind beyond mind, Word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name” (DN 588B). Still, even if God is conceptually intractable it is necessary to speak of God affirmatively. Speaking affirmatively of God “offers images which are appropriate and helpful to believers in their particular stages of their spiritual life” (Williams 1999a, 158). One cannot teach a child, or anyone for that matter, about the God who causes being but also transcends being by enumerating what God is not; nor does one worship God for what God is not. And in a way there cannot be a negative way of speaking about God without the affirmative way, for if there is a negation there must be something negated.21 The Scripture “applies . . . the numerous attributes associated with every kind of being” (DN 824A) to God who is beyond being yet is alone the source of all being. Affirmations about God—as opposed to negations—number more in Scripture, and indeed they are found in great number in the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus. Indeed the conceptually intractable God per se can be spoken of inasmuch as God is the cause of the universe and it, as the caused, provides some ideas about the cause: “[We know God] from the arrangement of everything, because everything is in a sense, projected out from him, and this order possesses certain images and semblances of his divine paradigm. . . . God therefore is known in all things. He is known to all from all (DN 869C-872A). But that is just half—and seemingly the less significant half—of the Pseudo-Dionysian theology. The Pseudo-Dionysian theology is underpinned by two basic themes: God as cause of being and God as transcendent of being. Its depiction of theology makes it look like a conical ladder (Williams 1999a, 158). To engage in theology would be like going up and down such a ladder.

21 And for Denys Turner (2002a, 17), “the way of negation demands prolixity; it demands the maximization not the minimization of talk about God; it demands that we talk of God in as many ways as possible . . . that we use the whole stock-in-trade of imagery and discourse in our possession, so as to thereby discern ultimately the inadequacy of all of it . . . the silence of the negative way is the silence only achieved at the point at which talk about God has been exhausted.”

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On the downward path, more and more can be said about what God is, as “an ever-increasing number of ideas which [multiply] at every stage of the descent” are taken in; and at the base is a collection of affirmations about God that is just as wide as the collection of “all affirmations [made] in regard to beings” (MT 1000B, 1033C). Since it is by and from God that all beings are projected, they are then in a sense God’s epiphany. Thus it is justified that “we should posit and ascribe to [God] all the affirmations we make in regard to beings” (MT 1000B). This assembling of affirmations (kataphasis) about God is affirmative theology. On the upward path the tier of affirmations left behind are negated (aphairesis), the collection of affirmations becomes narrower, more and more is said about what God is not, and less and less is said about what God is, up till the apex where appropriate affirmations run out, and nothing else can be affirmed but that God is not like anything. Then after all denials are made they are overridden before the supra-being who is beyond affirmative or negative representation. This negation and the negating of the negation (apophasis) is negative theology. Between affirmation and negation the latter has pre-eminence: It, the Pseudo-Dionysius claims, is the preference of scripture writers (DN 981B). From a theologico-philosophical viewpoint, presenting God as dissimilar to any being, in the way of negation—e.g. “invisible, infinite, ungraspable, and other things which is not what he is but what in fact he is not”—seems to the Pseudo-Dionysius to be “much more appropriate . . . more suitable to the realm of the divine” compared to the way of affirmation which is “always unfitting to the hiddenness of the inexpressible” (CH 141A). A statement about God in the negative is definitely true; one in the affirmative can only be provisionally true. The ideas provided by the caused (world) about the cause (God) are just ideas for the finite imagination to pursue and make use of for edification purposes and do not quite do justice to the cause if intended for description. This is inevitably so because humans can only think of God using human concepts and speak of God in human terms. In the Pseudo-Dionysius’ own words: “the things of God are revealed to each mind in proportion to its capacities; and the divine goodness is such that, out of concern for our salvation, it deals out the immeasurable and infinite in limited measures (DN 588B). From a devotional viewpoint, the way of negation serves to keep humans from being lazily satisfied by base images (CH 141B) and pushes them away from finite representations of the infinite, and “guides the soul through all

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the divine notions, notions which are themselves transcended by that which is far beyond every name, all reason and all knowledge (DN 981B). The way of negation is the penultimate way of theology for it is the way towards apophasis that is the ultimate human experience of divine enlightenment and is the way to praise “the Transcendent One in a transcendental way” (MT 1025A). Crucially, St. Thomas, too, subscribes to the idea of the pre-eminence of negative theology over the affirmative. It may be that he is inclined to be less reticent than the Pseudo-Dionysius in legitimizing affirmative knowledge-claims about God.22 Nonetheless, St. Thomas still stands by the position that the most proper way to know God is by remotion because “the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some knowledge of it by knowing what it is not. Furthermore, we approach nearer to a knowledge of God according as through our intellect we are able to remove more and more things from him” (SCG 1, 14, 2). And elsewhere he makes the same point: “Now we cannot know what God is, but only what he is not; we must therefore consider the ways in which God does not exist, rather than the ways in which he does” (ST 1, Intro. to Q. 3). So, after all is said and done, one still would have to note that St. Thomas “concludes that our most noble knowledge is to know that God is wholly unknown” (O’Rourke 2005, 53). (c) Language is stretched. Language is for beings and does not apply as fittingly to God who is “gathered by no discourse . . . by no name” (DN 588B). To be named or gathered in discourse is to be differentiated, delineated or categorized. Aristotle, to whom John Scottus Eriugena makes reference (Peri I, 463A), lists ten categories within which everything that could be spoken of can be placed: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, state, action and passion. To find a place for a thing in this set of categories one may have to “distinguish different questions which may be asked about something and to notice that only a limited range of answers can be appropriately given to a particular question” (Ackrill 1963, 78). One can name anything, and

22

As Fran O’Rourke notes: “Aquinas rejects, however, an outright negativism or agnostic attitude. The aim and intention of his negative theology is eminently positive and requires initially a positive foundation. St Thomas thus reduces at every opportunity the negative or ‘agnostic’ character of Dionysius’ thoughts where this appears exaggerated” (O’Rourke 2005, 55).

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one can ask of what substance it is, or of what quality, quantity, relation, and so on; and one can always somehow find a sensible answer to the questions. But it makes no sense to ask what substance God is made of since God is the cause and is thus prior to substance, or to ask what quantity is God constituted by for God is above differentiation, and so on (cf. Peri I, 464Bf ). One can seemingly speak qualitatively of God (“God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent”), or locally (“The Lord is in his Holy temple”), but certainly such a manner of speaking can have no more than an analogical sense, or otherwise can only at best be vague.23 The utilization of human concepts and terminology is but, says the Pseudo-Dionysius, a “concession to the nature of our human mind . . . to uplift our mind in a manner suitable to our nature” (CH 137B). But given their nature humans cannot know and make representations of God as they can the world and the things therein. And no one realizes this more than St. Thomas Aquinas who reiterates the Pseudo-Dionysian point that it is only through their knowledge about creatures that humans are enabled to refer to God. There is no other way to speak of God “except in the language we use of creatures” (ST 1a, 13, 5). So words used to describe the perfection of creatures may be used of God, too. But it should be kept in mind that the “resemblance of creatures to God is not a perfect one” (ST 1a, 13, 5). And there cannot in the current state of existence be an understanding of God per se and so there cannot be linguistic representations of God per se (ST 1a, 13, 1–2). Inevitably, predicates ascribed to God do not quite mean the same as when they are ascribed to creatures. Speaking of God qualitatively is significantly different from speaking of creatures on that score for “words are used of God and creatures in an analogical way that is in accordance with a certain order between them” (ST 1a, 13, 5). Thus one can understand the statement ‘God is wise’ for one has an idea what it takes for a creature to be wise; but God transcends creaturely wisdom so one can only suppose that one cannot comprehend fully, except by analogy, how it is for God to be wise.

23 For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas explains that “ ‘God is good’ . . . means that what we call ‘goodness’ in creatures pre-exist in God in a higher way” (ST 1a, 13, 2). But what he gives is a vague phrase after another.

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(d) Logic is paradoxical. The so-called laws of thought that seem so fundamental to thinking about beings do not apply to God. The Pseudo-Dionysius cannot seem to emphasize enough the point that God is beyond assertion and denial (e.g. MT 1045A–B). He is caught in a paradoxical position: stating such a point would be stating what it says cannot be stated, namely, making an affirmation and a negation about God. This shows the Pseudo-Dionysian reasoning to be simply beside the two-valued logic that much of Christendom is and were always accustomed to. For the Pseudo-Dionysius and those that followed his thinking such as John Scottus Eriugena there is hardly any qualm about getting into apparent contradictions. Assertions and their respective negations are issued with ease. There is an unmistakably cavalier regard for the law of non-contradiction. And as regards such a cavalier attitude Nicholas of Cusa beats them all. He derisively tags his detractors who regard the coincidentia oppositorum to be heretical as “Aristotelian sects” (ADI 6). Nicholas identifies God as the Maximum and Minimum in whom all oppositions are reconciled in perfect harmony. The Maximum, being all that which can be, is that than which there cannot be a greater, but precisely for being all that which can be, there cannot be a lesser, therefore it is also the Minimum (DI 11). Another instance of paradoxical reasoning in Nicholas is thus: “. . . the greatest truth is the absolute Maximum. Therefore, (1) it is most greatly true that either the unqualifiedly Maximum exists or that it does not exist, or (2) . . . both exist and does not exist, or (3) neither exist nor does not exist” (DI 16). Having such a cavalier attitude, it must be noted, is not a case of being absurd, outrageous, frivolous, fantastic or obscure. It is just that the logic underpinning such an attitude is a serious one that just happens to be different from the Aristotelian logic that most in Christendom are accustomed to. As one commentator points out (Moran 1989, 227; the words in quotation marks in the foregoing line in this paragraph are the commentator’s own), Eurigena “is breaking from the domain of ontologic, a logic founded on being and predication, and trying to think infinity through the concept of negation and otherness, identity and difference.” So his discussion cannot be boxed into the “narrow boundaries of predicate logic.” Predicate logic, while it is a vast improvement on the long-reigning Aristotelian syllogism, still does abide by the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle that for a long time were passed off as laws of thought with the implication that sound reasoning is not possible without them. But the Pseudo-Dionysians are dealing with that which transcends the limits

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of thought and therefore have to utilize a logic “where the affirmations and denials are not necessarily contradictions” and “the negation of a false statement is not necessarily a true statement,” and as such this logic passes up on the so-called laws of thought.24 (e) Silence is the terminus of theology. Union with God is the climax of the theological pilgrimage. God, one is reminded over and over again, is beyond assertion and denial. As one denies assertions about God, one gets closer to, so to speak, a higher understanding of God, and “the more we take the flight upward, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming . . . we shall find ourselves . . . actually speechless and unknowing . . . the more it climbs, the more language falters, and when it has passed up and beyond the ascent, it will turn silent completely, since it will finally be at one with him who is indescribable” (MT 1033B-C). At the ascent the soul is, as it were, “being stripped naked before its God” (Williams 199b, 238) leaving behind everything perceived and understood, everything perceptible and understandable, all things that are and all things that are not, including the self (MT 1000A). Thence nothing more can be said as nothing is left of the pilgrim as it goes to become one with Nothing.

IV. Wittgenstein’s theology is Pseudo-Dionysian Wittgenstein’s theology in all appearance is apophatic theology. It may not be a theology as well emphasized in the Roman/Latin branch of Christianity as it is in the Byzantine/Orthodox branch. St. Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa—both of whom cannot be said to

24

One may then suppose that the logic underpinning the Pseudo-Dionysian discourse may be better accounted by non-classical logics such as dialetheism. Its development is motivated by the realization that certain contradictions are true. While the motivations that led to the development of these logics differ, they intersect at certain points, the most noteworthy of which is their rejection of the absolute applicability of the law of non-contradiction; there are, they hold, some contradictions—i.e. statements with the form A∧¬A—and/or contradictory theories that are true (and yet not trivial ). The Liar’s paradox (‘This statement is not true’) and Russell’s paradox (roughly: A set r cannot be a member of itself, but if r is a set of all sets then it must include itself as member) are the most often cited by advocates of dialetheism, such as Graham Priest. Incidentally he argues that the law of non-contradiction is an Aristotelian dogma that can and should be challenged—an attitude reminiscent of Nicholas of Cusa. (See Priest 2002; also Priest and Routley 1989a, 1989b, and 1989c).

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be at the fringes of Roman/Latin Christian thought—are themselves assiduous propagators of negative theology and give the PseudoDionysian corpus an apparently blanket endorsement. Their reception of the Pseudo-Dionysian theology is enough proof that this theology cannot be simply dismissed as an aberration and consigned to the fringes of theological thought, even in Roman/Latin Christianity. So this theology itself is not quite beyond the pale of Christian tradition.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MATURE WITTGENSTEIN ON (RELIGIOUS) LANGUAGE

The mature Wittgenstein reputedly repudiates the earlier Tractarian Wittgenstein. Language, rather than having a sempiternal status, is now seen as an organic constitution of the human form of life, modelled after some human activity (e.g. game), is much more than a collection of appellations and not anymore presented merely as consisting of fact-picturing propositions. The theory that there is an isometric relationship between language and world is refuted. There are a myriad of functions that language has beyond naming things. Therefore, portraying language as picture-like does not do justice to language with all its complexities. Yet there is in the Tractarian Wittgenstein a prominent theme that re-emerges in the mature Wittgenstein. The Tractarian Wittgenstein speaks of that which cannot be spoken of, and as such is mystical. The philosophy of language of the mature Wittgenstein, however different from that of the Tractarian Wittgenstein, still delineates a limit to what can be said, and there still is that realm of the ineffable, albeit redrawn. Such is what this chapter is all about. The flow of its presentation goes as follows. Section I presents the mature Wittgenstein’s view on language. Section II shows that such philosophy of language leaves room for the ineffable, and that while Witt-genstein is famously averse to speaking about that which lies beyond the limits of language, he is not averse to all such ways of speaking so long as it is not a metaphysical chatter. Section III suggests that the trajectory of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language is towards theological positions that in some significant ways remain true to that of the Tractarian Wittgenstein, and is still consistent with the mystical Pseudo-Dionysian theology.

I. On language Language, Wittgenstein suggests, is rooted in the human form of life.1 There are different accounts of what Wittgenstein might mean by the 1

The mature Wittgenstein does not mean to offer a general theory of language beyond making general characterizations of it: i.e. that it is an organic part of the

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term ‘form of life’. He speaks of “forms of life” (PI II, 226) or “facts of living” (RPP I §630). This means that the term ‘form of life’ has an anthropological or a sociological meaning. A particular form of life is equated with culture or social formation (Glock 1996, 125). This is an ethnographic account of ‘form of life’. Humans, to mention the obvious, exist within particular environments. This natural environment provides the resources, including stimuli, necessary for the development of human natural potentials. Humans themselves are part of the natural environment so they provide stimuli among themselves; and among these stimuli are their very own instinctive as well as socially-developed activities. The human pattern of behaviour is moulded by human-to-environment interaction as much as it is by human-to-human interaction. Since in fact human habitation spans different natural environments, this means that dif-

human form of life and is rule-governed. The notion of a general theory of language is too much suggestive of the essence of language, one of those recherché notions that he explicitly dismisses. The viability of a general theory of language hinges on there being an essence that can be grasped. The Tractarian Wittgenstein thinks he has a grasp of the essence of language and of the reality which language supposedly represents. But the mature Wittgenstein thinks this notion of essence must be rejected. He realizes that the very notion of an object as the simplest constitution of reality is an intractable one (PI §47). Words no longer are taken to be mere nomenclature of metaphysicsposited substances, but are taken as tools. The mature Wittgenstein, finding it more appropriate to portray language as game-like, introduces the notion of language-game. The term ‘language-game’ refers to any specific linguistic act (PI §23) and also to the totality of human linguistic activity (cf. BB, 108; PI §7). The same term is also used to refer to any discursive system such as science (the language-game of science) and religion (the language-game of religion), and indeed to any mode of speaking (e.g. the language-game that is mind-talk). Deeming the search for a general theory of language a hopeless endeavour, the mature Wittgenstein’s aim then is much more modest. He aims for an explication of the grammar of language-games. This explication may, in turn, deal with issues that have been bugging philosophers for ages. “Philosophy,” so says Wittgenstein, “is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (PI §109). It is his view that a good number of the issues in philosophy are borne of what he calls “grammatical illusions” (PI §110). In the case of the early Wittgenstein, grammatical illusion came as a result of recherché notions such as ‘object’ and ‘logical form’—notions that, the mature Wittgenstein realizes, are more a product of a philosophical contrivance than a result of an investigation on how language works (PI §107). Misconstruing the workings of language is the main cause of grammatical illusions, and thus, of many a philosophical problem. Exposing and exploding grammatical illusions that underlie philosophical issues is the way to go in resolving such issues. The initial step towards exposing and exploding grammatical illusions is to look and see how language really works, or how a language-game goes naturally. The foregrounding of the grammar of language-games is for the purpose of clarification and disentangling misunderstandings from which many a philosophical puzzle proceeds in the hope of easing out these puzzles (PI §§124–133).

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ferent groups of humans have different objects available within their respective range of experience, different ways of life from one another, different ways of coping with the environment, different ways of perceiving and speaking of the world, and different techniques of articulation. The development of language is also pegged on culture (BB, 134). Accordingly, there can be as many forms of life as there can be cultures. Even within a common human nature there can be an evolution of an incalculable array of diverse patterns of living, and with it incalculably diverse ways of articulation. The technique of articulation one learns depends on what technique is practiced by others with whom one lives. But the said technique, it may be reiterated, evolved within, and is resourced from, the natural and social environment with all its givens, including human nature itself—humans being part of the environment.2 Actual linguistic capability is acquired through training (PI §§5, 6, 27, 441). In this sense language is on a par with most other cultural human activities. As one is brought up, one naturally acquires the patterns of behaviour of the people one sees and hears. One sees and hears others do this and that. One instinctively imitates them doing this and that. Sometimes one is told and guided to do this and that. The first uniquely human pattern of behaviour one becomes proficient in is speaking the language that is regularly spoken in one’s surroundings. One subconsciously picks up the regular linguistic behaviour of the people in one’s surroundings and in time one, too, behaves in accordance with that linguistic regularity. The regularity of one’s individual linguistic behaviour would be consistent with that of everyone around, even of the greater community. The fact that there is regularity in linguistic behaviour is suggestive of rules of sorts. Speaking a language, which normally is learned as part of a person’s natural development rather than as a result of an intention to learn it, is a rule-governed activity. The linguistic rules, though, need not be codified (PG, §§62–3).3 The natural teaching of

2 The environment—i.e. habitat—definitely influences at least the vocabulary of the local language. But, as cautions Edward Sapir, “the physical environment is reflected in language only insofar as it has been influenced by social factors.” (Sapir 1968, 90; italics added) 3 G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker (1988, 49) warn of the downside of codifying: “The practice of codifying is prone to distort our philosophical vision, for it encourages a mythology of rule-discovery. It fosters speculation about the real form of a rule, which is really a complete rule and what is only part of a rule; so one may think that

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linguistic rules by native speakers to their children makes no use of dictionaries, manuals and the like.4 And to be more precise, it is not linguistic rules that are taught but names of objects, uses of words and expressions, and the like (PI §§6–7, 208). Normally this rule-teaching process is characterized by informality and lack of any rigidity—especially so in the case of teaching children where it is much more naturally spontaneous and often unstructured. Nonetheless, the result is that the learner will behave with regularity relative to the use of words. Rule-followers need not even be, and usually are not at all, conscious that they are following rules. Reflecting on the rules of a game is not to play the game. When one makes a move in a game, one, as it were, puts the rules at the back of one’s mind. A chess tyro may try to recall how to move a knight correctly before making a move, but the act of recalling an appropriate rule is not counted as obeying a rule. The act of thinking about a rule, and even the act of thinking that one is obeying it, is not the same as obeying a rule—much as the act of reflecting on an order and even assenting that the order is right are not the same as carrying it out. Obeying a rule is making a move in accordance with that rule (PI §§202, 205)—but, of course, a move must be one that is done in competence for it to constitute obedience to the relevant rule; a move that is done in accordance with the relevant rule only by happenstance is not a move done in competence, and thus done not in obedience to a rule. Rule followers are not at all obliged, and more often are unable, to articulate the rules they follow (BB, 25).5 Rules are embedded in the followers’ reflexes and following these rules is usually a matter of reflex action (PI §§189, 206, 211–2, 217, 219). A violation

the systematizing activities of the codifier mirror objective structures in the ‘normative sphere’.” 4 Cf. “When grammarians began the task of tabulating rules of Latin grammar for foreigners who wished to learn the language, they imposed order upon linguistic usage by complex system of classification of declensions, conjugations, moods, etc. The rules they formulated were not rules anyone had hitherto used or enunciated (no Roman mother had ever corrected her child’s mistakes by pointing out that avis belongs to the third declension and therefore has a genitive plural ending in—ium)” (Baker and Hacker 1988, 49–50). 5 As Wittgenstein points out, there are even “calculating prodigies who get the right answers but cannot say how” (PI, §236). And one can also look towards the direction of illiterate people who use words of their native tongue with easy regularity and can even show to a non-native—say, an anthropologist—the regularity of their way of using words, so regular that it is easy for the stranger-anthropologist to codify, a codification that the illiterate native speaker can do without.

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of a rule normally would immediately be noticed, even by those who have no ability to explicate the rules in a minimally articulate way. Grammar, as those linguistic rules are dubbed, governs in matters of regulation of the use of words and expressions, of determination of meaning, of the stipulation of definitions, and of the delineation between the sensical and the nonsensical (PG, §60). Thus, to speak of the grammar of an expression is to allude to the rules relevant to the expression’s employment in the language-game, its meaningbearing capacity, and so on. Grammar is not something that speakers pay much attention to. Under ordinary discursive instances language players are not aware of the grammar of their language as it is just—as it were—too far down the back of their minds for them to notice. Grammar has no ontological or universal basis that is beyond and above the contingencies of human existence. Rather, as suggested above, grammar is a product of natural human circumstances—i.e. biological, environmental and historical factors surrounding human existence. Thus, grammar is not an immutable linguistic calculus but a gamut of flexible and evolving rules. As an organic part of a culture, grammar can stagnate or evolve along with the said culture. The grammar of a language-game is underwritten by the culture of which the said language-game is an organic part. Grammar therefore ultimately supervenes on, is within the constraints of, and yet is made flexible by, human nature. Grammar is normally merely exhibited in linguistic expressions rather than explicated—its explication, if done at all, would be for a technical or academic purpose. Just as there are statements whose primary use is to make truth-claims, so are there statements whose primary function is to exhibit grammar—i.e. they serve as paradigm statements exhibiting the use of certain linguistic expressions, hinting at the conceptual constitution of certain expressions, suggesting what expressions or combination of expressions make sense and what do not. As grammatical statements they exhibit rules. They do appear to describe facts and as such appear to make substantive truth-claims; but they have traits that make them different from mere truth-claiming statements.6 6 Take the following: ‘Every rod has a length’, ‘Yellow is brighter than violet’, ‘A pentagon has more sides than a triangle’, ‘In the sport of boxing no sword is used’, ‘In chess the king moves one square at a time except when castling’. It is acceptable to say that they express facts, but, for one thing, unlike some other kinds of fact-expressing

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Grammar is a mere convention (PI §355; PG, 190). This means, among other things, that there is no natural, necessary or intrinsic connection between words and the objects they designate, between statements and state of affairs they describe, between inner processes and words that express them, or between ideas that are related. Contra the “nomenclaturist” view that words and objects they stand for somehow have natural connection (see e.g. Harris 1988, 7f ), a given word designates a particular object, expresses a particular feeling, or evokes a particular idea simply because of habits and practices deeply embedded by training (AWL, 89). The connections are, in a sense, arbitrary (PI §372). Grammar, just like rules in chess, is neither patterned after nor accountable to anything beyond it. So there is no question of second-guessing grammar, or of finding any point in justifying it. Every meaningful word and statement has a grammar, has rules that govern its use. These rules are the very ones that insure the stability of meanings of words or statements. However, beyond—or beneath—diverse human conventions, cultures, or forms of life is a common core: human nature.7 So, inasmuch that there is a common human nature, there must be the common human form of life. Beneath the forms of life of different peoples is the human form of life. In this sense the term ‘form of life’ connotes more of human nature than of culture. So the extent of the meaning of ‘form of life’ should cover not the sociological but also biological life. Along with the natural environment humans are in and the conventions they have developed therein are the physiological characteristics that predispose human to behave in certain ways. So, besides the ethnographic account, there is the so-called “organic account.”8 On this account, the term ‘form of life’ refers to the “complicated organic adaptation that enables [humans] to use a word” (Hunter 1968, 237).

statements—such as ‘It rains everyday in a tropical forest’—whatever is inconsistent with grammatical statements is inconceivable (PI §251) and as such a normal reply by anyone familiar with them when they are asserted would be ‘Of course!’ (PI §252). 7 This point is at least suggested in the remark “The common behavior of mankind is a system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (PI §206). Moreover, if Wittgenstein speaks of the “pre-linguistic” basis of a languagegame (Z §541), then one can construe this to be suggesting that language is, as it were, a superstructure that stands on a base, that animalistic form of life (OC §§358–9). 8 This typecasting of form(s) of life is shared by Stanley Cavell (1989, 41f ) as he refers to the ethnological sense and the biological sense of the term ‘form of life’.

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But the expression ‘complicated organic adaptation’ is itself in need of definition. Considering that Wittgenstein speaks of language as part of human natural history, one is tempted to think of human biological nature. Humans, by evolutionary happenstance, became what they are: animals with a large brain, extremely complex nervous system, highly flexible vocal chords, dexterous upper limbs, and so on. Obviously, human physiological characteristics are among the necessary conditions to doing, or to learning to do, certain activities, such as conceptualizing and articulating. All these are among the enablers that humans need in order to use, or to learn to use, words. Accordingly, the term ‘form of life’ refers to “that which forms part of our nature, that which determines how we spontaneously find ourselves reacting . . . our natural propensities” (McGinn 1984, 55, 57; italics added). The capability to conceptualize and to be articulate is natural to the human species, its naturalness on a par with walking, eating, drinking and playing (PI §25). It is a biological endowment that a human being is at all capable of acquiring capabilities such as—or especially— complex linguistic capability. This capability includes polysyllabic vocalisation, gesticulation, emotion, symbolization, ratiocination, and so on. To be able to do all these, one must have certain physical equipments that only nature provides. Thus, no cat can ever be trained to read chess books and revisit the moves of grandmasters because cats do not have, among other things, the suitable brain for such an activity. Or, chimpanzees can never chant “a-ring-a-ring-a-roses” because they do not have, among other things, the suitable vocal organs. Only humans can be trained to read chess books and chant limericks, or indeed write philosophical essays because only they, of all beings, are endowed by nature for such activities. Going with learning to stand, walk and play are learning to demand, talk and pray. For humans to master techniques for going about living a human life means, among other things, to master techniques of articulation. Linguistic capability is actually developed as part of the development of the pattern of behaviour of humans, the most highly-evolved animal. Language is a refinement of animal behaviour (CV, 31e). Words are a product of biology. “To imagine a language,” thus says Wittgenstein, “is to imagine a form of life” (PI §19). Articulate behaviour—speaking meaningfully, using words with intention—is interwoven with other non-articulate aspects of human behaviour. The first acts of an infant immediately upon exiting her mother are

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to breath and wail. Whenever she is hungry she wails. When she gets her immunization shots she feels pain and she cries and screams, jerks and shakes, flinches and grimaces. Childish behaviour such as these, inarticulate as they may be, is as much a self-expression as the mother effusing “She is really beautiful!.” Once she learns to speak she would say, besides resorting to the aforementioned behaviour to express herself, “I want to eat” and “Ouch! Painful!.” Her way of self-expression has by now progressed to an articulate stage. The ability to wail and grimace may be naturally given right from the start while the ability to speak must be cultivated over time, but the latter ability is nonetheless a function of nature as much as it is of culture. Birds chirp and dogs bark as a matter of course to express their wants, or to communicate their sense, to someone or to no one in particular. Birds and dogs just are being what they are when they respectively chirp and bark (and barks and chirps concomitantly go with other gestures such as wagging of tail and spreading of feathers respectively). Similarly, when humans use words, they are just being what they are. Just as chirps and barks are meshed respectively with the avian and the canine ways of living, words are meshed with the human way of living (PG, 66)—or, one may rather say, the human act of living. In that sense, then, words, just like chirps and barks, are a product of biology. Concept formation has a biological background (Z §364). One can imagine that had humans evolved to be slightly different than what they actually are, they would be having a form of life slightly but significantly different from what they currently have (PI II, 230), with slightly different capabilities and interests. Language-games of virtually all things are characterized both by natural human capabilities and inabilities (Z §§345, 368) as much as by human interests (PI §570; Z §388). One can imagine that had humans evolved in such a way that rather than see vivid colours they see only shades of grey and black, there would have been a different concept of colour ranges from what could be learned from the current colour wheel; and colour terms would be fewer; and the colour language-game much less complicated; and so on. One can imagine, too, that humans could have evolved in such a way that their ability for colour discrimination could be much more acute than it currently is and their colour vocabulary much more complicated: as Wittgenstein suggests (Z §357), colour-differentiation is dependent more on human form of life than on anything else. And one can again imagine that had humans evolved the ability for mental telepathy and thus, among other results, had the capability to read

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someone else’s mind, the sense of the terms relevant to talk about someone else’s inner processes would have been different from what it currently is. Had humans evolved as differently as described above, they would have formed a different conception of the world. And one can even say that the more different the form of life is from the current human form of life the more different its conception of the world would be, even to the point of incommensurability.9

II. On the limits of language Immanuel Kant famously proposed that knowledge of the world is necessarily mediated by the categories of human understanding, and as a necessary consequence the world that humans could ever know is, as it were, the world that is re-presented by, and in accordance with, the said categories; thus, the world as it appears to humans is quite different form the world per se. The human take on the world is already a re-presentation, and such a representation may not be the only legitimate take on the world: one can only imagine how the world might look in some remote future when what are now humans have evolved into a “higher” form of being—e.g. homo suprasapiens, if one may call it that. By replacing the Kantian buzz word ‘categories’ with ‘form of life’ a position analogous to Kant’s can be plausibly read into Wittgenstein; and this is a tempting prospect when one considers Wittgenstein’s remark: “We are involved here with the Kantian solution of the problem of philosophy” (CV, 10e).10 The suggestion is clear that there is, for Wittgenstein (a la Kant), the human-supervening reality on the one hand, and human-independent natural reality on other.

9

As the Hintikkas point out: “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him, Wittgenstein avers. . . . The reason may well be that the sense-data which constitute the world of a lion are different from the sense-data of human beings. Playfully expressed, Wittgenstein perhaps ought to have used as an example, not lions, but organisms like flies whose perceptual apparatus is more blatantly different from the human one” (Hintikka and Hintikka 1986, 252). 10 And if the Hintikkas are to be believed, “Wittgenstein’s philosophical enterprise is not only analogous to but intrinsically similar to Kant’s” (Hintikka and Hintikka 1986, 17). There are a few others who do read a Kant-Wittgenstein analogous position of sorts: e.g. Bernard Williams (1974, 76–95); Jonathan Lear (1984, 219–242); P. M. S. Hacker 1997, 206f ). Although Meredith Williams (1990, 69f ) cautions that for all the similarities there are significant differences that get in the way of linking Wittgenstein with Kant.

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One can imagine the difference it would make had the organic human form of life evolved differently. One can go with Wittgenstein on this score: I am not saying: if such-and-such facts of nature were different people would have different concepts (in the sense of a hypothesis). But: if anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the correct ones, and that having different ones would mean not realizing something that we realize—then let him imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to, and the formation of concepts different form the usual ones will become intelligible to him. (PI II, 230)

He is not interested in making a sort of scientific point (RPP I §48); rather, his business is grammatical investigation. Nonetheless he does suggest that it makes sense to think of alternative realities coinciding with alternative forms of life (Stroud 1984, 255), and that concepts, or conceptual systems, are contingent on “certain very general facts of nature.” One can presume that “certain very general facts of nature” includes facts about human nature. If one imagines that only human nature, and not the rest of nature, differs from what it currently is, then one can arrive at the position that humans will have: e.g., a different colour system, and even that humans will perceive the world differently in terms of colour.11 Accordingly, one can say that to imagine beings whose nature is different from that which humans currently have, is to imagine that to them the world will appear differently coloured. And one can push the matter a little further by positing that not only in terms of colour but also in terms of shapes, consistency, temperature, and other qualities that the world will appear differently. One can be certain that colour, shape, consistency, temperature, and other qualities in the world are not contingent on human linguistic practice; but this only means that, for instance, regardless of the status of human existence marble slabs would still reflect light in the usual way, spherical objects would still roll on level surfaces when applied with sufficient force, a falling meteor would still crush a coconut fruit equal its size, and lava would still burn lines of trees they flow over. Still, this does not preclude one from also granting that the colour, shape, consistency, temperature, and other qualities of objects would

11 To take Wittgenstein’s own words: “We have a colour system as we have a number system. Do the systems reside in our nature or in the nature of things? How are we to put it?—Not in the nature of things” (Z §357).

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be perceived differently and would convey different significance to beings whose nature differs from humans in their current nature. It thus appears that the aforementioned qualities of objects, as humans can ever be cognizant of them, are contingent to a significant extent on human nature. The organic human form of life determines what is of interest to an organism. What is of interest is (as said in the OED) that which excites natural attention, affectation or concern, especially in respect of beneficence or detriment: anything that could possibly be within the realm of human sensual perception, knowledge, imagination, appreciation, desire, will, or way of articulation is of human interest.12 Thus the human form of life sets the limits of human interest—just as the ethnographic form of life sets the limits of a people’s interest, i.e. their sensual perception, knowledge, imagination, appreciation, desire, will, or way of articulation.13 If there is a limit, then there is that which transcends it. The transcendent, on this score, is that which is beyond the reach of the normal provisions of the organic form of life (the given of a form of life: e.g. the range of a species’ physiological equipments, capabilities, adaptation, and behaviour.)14 All that humans, and all sentient beings, can be interested in are those things that can be given to them, which means those that are already mediated by their organic form of life. The contingency of reality as humans grasp it

12

Wittgenstein suggests (in Z §388) that interest is contingent on the form of life. This particular passage cited at least suggests the ethnographic form of life as directing human interest, but one can take by extension that the organic form of life, too, directs human interest, and do so in an even more fundamental way. 13 This goes against the position of the Tractarian Wittgenstein where the limit is set by the internal property of objects (TLP 4.22f ) which determines their combinatorial possibilities (TLP 2.01231, 2.0141), all of which make up the logical space, the articulatable realm. 14 The normal provisions of the frog’s form of life is such that it is confined to a reality that is, if one may say, far less shapely and differentiated: “The frog does not seem to see or, at any rate, is not concerned with the detail of the stationary parts of the world around him” (W. S. McCulloch, et al. 1988, 230). The frog’s perceptive capability is comparatively limited and some dimensions of reality given to, say, humans would be beyond the frog, such that it even “will starve to death surrounded by food if it is not moving.” If there are limitations to the frog’s natural horizon so is there with the human’s. For example, to normal humans (someone else’s) inner process per se would be transcendent: while it is not right to suggest that mind (or perhaps more aptly, the other mind) is beyond knowledge or articulation, it is the case that by fortuity of nature humans is such that its provisions allows for knowing and speaking of the inner dimension of the mind (i.e. inner processes) only through criteria, or otherwise this inner dimension cannot be given to knowledge and language.

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on human nature opens up a temptation to posit a dimension of the world that humans are cognizant of, and a dimension of that same world untincted by the mediation of the human form of life.15 The position may be stated thus: “The world per se is different from the world as it appears.”16 Therefore, there is definitely that which transcends human—or, indeed, creaturely—discourse.17 It cannot be

15 The position not only makes sense but even seems to be scientifically “confirmable,” i.e. some scientific presentations seem to reinforce one’s hunch about this matter. A science article (Freeman 1991) concludes that “an act of perception is not the copying of an incoming stimulus. It is a step in a trajectory by which brains grow, reorganizing themselves and reach into their environment to change it to their own advantage.” The author here writes as a practicing scientist making a scientific presentation and not just a philosopher, such as Karl Popper (1979, 71–2) who happens to be science-trained, using science to make a philosophical point. 16 But this statement may not actually have a basis in empirical observation and may not strictly qualify as scientific. Firstly, it does not make sense to suppose that there can be any comparison between the states of the world per se on the one hand and the state of the world as it appears to the human perceiver on the other, and so there cannot be any basis for making an empirical claim about the two aforementioned dimensions of the world being different. And secondly, it can be that to be an empirical statement means to be a scientifically significant one, and to be scientifically significant means that it is at least in principle falsifiable—at least this is how Karl Popper (1980, 34–9; 40–2) demarcates science from non-science (i.e. metaphysics), a point that Wittgenstein seems to share (PG, 83). If, as just suggested, there is absolutely no way to compare the state of the world per se with the world as it appears to the human perceiver, then there is no way even in principle that the claim at issue could be falsified. These considered, the statement at issue may not after all be an empirical statement but could just be one whose role is simply to make a grammatical point— i.e. describe, or show the limit of, human language. One may recall Wittgenstein’s comment: “The limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe the fact which corresponds to (is the translation of ) a sentence, without simply repeating the sentence” (CV, 10e). Just like one pointing to a chair on a corner and uttering “We KNOW there’s a chair over there!”: When challenged how one knows the matter one can only reply “Well, we see someone sit on that thing over there,” or “We see a chair over there,” though the least funny reply would be “Well, we just know”. It is impossible to describe the fact corresponding to the statement ‘We KNOW there’s a chair over there!’. Uttering such a statement (in the context given) “is simply describing a game” (CE, 413). Similarly, it is impossible to describe facts that make the difference between, on one hand, the world per se and, on the other, its appearance; yet a statement which states that there is such a difference nonetheless makes sense so long as it is not construed as a scientifically significant one as empirical statements are. The similarity of features of ‘We KNOW there’s a chair over there!’ and ‘The world per se is different from the world as it appears’ suggests that, just like the former, the latter makes a grammatical point. 17 Meredith Williams (1990, 79f ) points out that Wittgenstein, unlike Kant, does not seek to describe a transcendental limit to language, let alone delimit once and for all that is actually and potentially intelligible. Maybe so: from such a description and delimitation may flow statements that flaunt the limits of language and end up offering nonsense. But while there is no description of “transcendental” limits, there

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helped that that which is transcendent cannot simply be dismissed as “nothing.”18 To posit a transcendent not only makes sense but is called for: It does not make sense to speak of a limit without that which transcends it. Yet that which is transcendent is of no epistemological interest for it is in principle inscrutable; and it is of no semantic interest for statements that purport to refer to it cannot really do so (as would be shown below). Thus is the transcendent: it transcends scrutability and expressibility.

III. The trouble with speaking of the unspeakable It must be noted that the main concern of the mature Wittgenstein is a linguistic matter: the description or clarification of the nature of language. It may seem appropriate to characterize Wittgenstein’s linguistics as “anthropocentric” as well as “sociocentric,” for it is that social activity called “language-game” that projects language to the referent (Hintikka and Hintikka 1986, 212f ). It is even plausible to read into Wittgenstein some form of relativism. There are, beyond the common human organic form of life, different forms of life and the language-games they engender whose development is more properly a social matter than it is biological. Different forms of life see the world differently, have different systems of reference, for they divide the world into individual units of referent differently, and so speak of the world differently. And Wittgenstein refuses to believe that one form of life or a language-game is inherently superior to another. But while Wittgenstein lays down his position on matters that are for all intents and purposes linguistic matters, points that properly belong to ontology (i.e. the inquiry into the foundations of reality) rather than mere

is a clear suggestion of a limit of sorts which, to use a Tractarian phrase, can only be shown but not said; and if there is no suggestion of a once-and-for-all delimitation of what is intelligible and what is not, it is probably an acknowledgment that evolution of human nature did not end with Charles Darwin’s death, or that human imagination is too powerful not to be able to imagine alternative highly sciential forms of life where limits of language may be drawn differently. 18 A “nothing” in this sense is a purported entity that actually does not exist; its opposite is “something,” an existing entity. As a seeming confirmation that inner processes per se are transcendent (in the sense laid down above), Wittgenstein sees no valid way of speaking about them (albeit does not discount the possibility that one day there could evolve one) yet does not see it fit to dismiss them as nothing (PI §§304, 308).

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linguistics are, rightly or wrongly, drawn from his position. It seems fair enough to take his positions in linguistics to be carrying implications relevant to ontology. But it also seems easy in representing him to confuse linguistic matters with ontological ones. (Hence there are those misguided issues about him being an “idealist,” or “anti-realist,” or “fideist”—labels that carry heavy philosophical connotations which he avows unwillingness to bear.) All he wants to do is to show how language re-presents reality, and apropos to that, how far language can represent reality. He shows not to be inclined to deal with the issue of how far reality goes. Language, in the view of the mature Wittgenstein, has its roots in the organic human form of life; and so too is the referent of language, for humans can only refer to that which is within their realm of interest. Any chatter about that which is beyond the normal provisions of the human form of life, such as talk about the transcendent—the so-called Ultimate Reality, or the Essence of the World, or even the Other Mind—is metaphysical chatter. It is chatter about that which cannot be of meaningful human interest, given the human form of life. Wittgenstein shuns it not because of the lack of truth of the statements that are issued in it but because the said statements are otiose, as speaking of the transcendent is ultimately futile. One can imagine this futility to be like the attempt of Putnam’s brains in a vat to try to speak of the world beyond its virtual world.19 Putnam’s thought experiment goes something like the following. Suppose that internees in a detention camp are subjected to an operation by a mad scientist. The brain of each one is removed from their bodies and placed in a vat of nutrients that keep the brains alive. The nerve endings are connected to a supercomputer that sends electronic impulses intended to give the subjects/brains an illusion that everything is perfectly normal. The brains, other than being separated from their respective bodies, function virtually normally: i.e. streams of thoughts still flow through them, volitional capability can still be exercised, personal intention-

19 This is Hillary Putnam’s thought-experiment (Putnam 1981, 5ff ) and not Wittgenstein’s. But, aside from the fact that Putnam gives credit to Wittgenstein for the philosophical points he makes in the brains-in-the-vat thought experiment, it seems that the chasm between the world transcendent to human interest—i.e. the world per se—and the human world is in some ways analogous to the chasm between the actual world and the virtual world of a brain in a vat. So it seems helpful to imagine the plight of those brains in a vat if only to have any idea of what it means to speak futilely of the transcendent.

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ality remains intact, and so on. This means that each brain still can think on its own, respond to stimuli in its own unique way, and so on. Each of the brain in the vat virtually gets the same kind of experience that it got previously. However, the reality it perceives, no matter how much of a simulation of actual reality, is manufactured by the supercomputer. One can imagine their conversations to be sounding nothing out of the ordinary. But although they may be “speaking” a language spoken in the real world, they are no longer seeing sights, hearing sounds, feeling the normal sensations, and facing the usual states of affairs seen, heard, felt, and faced in the real world precisely because their “form of life” is such that they are completely imprisoned in their virtual world and are totally cut off from the actual one. While they may be playing a language-game that is identical to that which they played before they were removed from their natural place (call this language-game vat-language), they are unable to refer to the actual world and so it is not the same language-game they are playing (Putnam 1981, 12ff )—theirs merely is a language-game of a virtual world. Furthermore, they will be unable to claim meaningfully that they are brains in a vat. Supposing one of the brains is somehow led to say “Really, we are just brains in a vat.” (Say, in their virtual world the brains are shown video footages of their former self being straitjacketed and injected in the base of their spine and their brains removed from their bodies and placed in a vat and connected to the supercomputer, and so on, and they are told that they are, at the very time they are viewing the video, merely brains in a vat and what they perceive is a reality that is an accurate simulation of, but not identical to, that which they perceived previous to their transfer from their original situation to the vat.) One who says that would come up against the limits of one’s language, violate its grammar, and end up in semantic failure or in paradox or in nonsense. Besides the failure of language to refer to the transcendent, talk about the essence of things only leads to positing of purported entities that either bear mutually incompatible characteristics, or have no practical purpose to serve, and have no bearing whatsoever on human interest. (For example, the essence of colour: one can wonder without end what difference it might make if humans gain any sort of understanding of it. The fact is that humans speak of it as essentially a visual phenomenon—that is how the human form of life provides for interest in it. The essence of colour—whatever that might be—would have nothing to do with visual phenomena; so one arrives at a queer

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notion of an unvisualizable essence of an essentially visual phenomenon.) Such talk is constituted by statements that by all appearance straightforwardly make claims like a typical scientific statement but, unlike it, cannot be tested for truth or the lack thereof.20 There cannot be any point at all in making them, and they are worse off than being trivial because, at least, trivial empirical claims can in principle be tested for verisimilitude—and if these trivial claims be used in a game of trivial pursuit, one can make a bet on them and see the result. (For example, ‘Possibly everyone is in pain but does not show it’—if a pain cannot be known to exist by anyone other than the subject who feels it, then there is in principle no way this claim can be checked for verisimilitude, and as such can never be useful as a claim. Any bet made on them can never produce results.) It does not matter if there is or there is not an essence of an object (or of colour, or whatever), or whether or not a number signifies an entity in some trans-material realm, or that a certain unexpressed inner process is occurring—they are of no interest to humans: i.e. they have absolutely no bearing on their natural, including scientific, concerns. Making a stand on these matters, whether it is an affirmative or a negative one, produces claims that are otiose. If the essence of an object, of a number, or of whatever else, happens to be a “something,” then at best it is a “something about which nothing could be said” and for all significant human interest and purposes could serve no better than a “nothing” (PI §304). Wittgenstein does unmistakably suggest that the world is independent of human perception; and his position clearly leads to the further suggestion that reality may have dimensions other than that which is humanly perceived. But about explicitly making declarations that appropriately belong to ontology his philosophy dictates that he must be very reticent, for “[w]hat belongs to the essence of the world cannot be expressed in language. . . . Language can only say those things we could also imagine otherwise” (PG, 83; BT, 92). So to extend the characterization of his linguistics to ontology is going a parlous step too far. (That his linguistic declarations are mistaken for ontological ones is crucially why he is sometimes gotten wrongly.) If his position, 20 Among the features of a metaphysical statement according to Wittgenstein (and as interpreted by Gordon Baker) is that it has the appearance of a scientific one (a statement that makes a substantive claim that can be tested for similitude) when it really is not (Baker 2002, 289–302).

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whatever one may call it, leads him anywhere at all, it is not towards ontological pluralism or a proliferation of ontologies but towards—as it were—ontological aphasia. About the transcendent, the mature Wittgenstein simply opts for silence. Or rather, amid circulating talk about the transcendent, he calls for silence. Being unable to make any affirmation or denial about metaphysical matters without straying into otiosity, the mature Witttgenstein, on this instance not unlike the Tractarian Wittgenstein who sought for the “transference of all metaphysical essences to the realm of the unutterable . . . without a denial of metaphysical beliefs” (Engelmann 1967, 143; italics added), simply consigns ontological (or metaphysical) matters to silence.

IV. On Religious Language The Wittgensteinian philosophy of language presented above carries implications for religious language. Within the practice that is religion are multiplicities of language-games, including praising, petitioning, exhorting and indoctrinating. Indoctrination is the teaching of religious doctrines. Oftentimes the doctrines are handed out in formulaic versions. It is the task of theology—or more specifically, the branch of theology dubbed ‘dogmatics’ or ‘systematics’—to formulate religious doctrines. The resulting statements—‘theological statements’ as they will here be henceforth called—are by all appearance indicative statements. Instances of this type of statement include ‘God exists’, and ‘God created the universe’ (but by technicality excludes avowals, e.g., ‘I believe in God’). As supposed indicative statements, theological statements are thought to refer to substantive facts. Some of these (supposed) facts belong within the spatio-temporal realm (e.g. the virgin birth of Jesus) but others are said to transcend that realm (e.g. God’s existence). The later facts are said to be metaphysical facts. Part of theology’s (supposed) concern is to make inquiries into the said facts. In this sense Theology is said, or can be said to be, a science of sorts. However, the view that theological statements, particularly those that are about metaphysical facts, are indicative statements is one that Wittgenstein rejects. He, just like a typical Jew, a typical Christian, or a typical Muslim, and not to say a certain type of Hindu, holds that God is transcendent. To say that God is transcendent means, among other things, that God is not like anything. As the Hindus say, Brahma is nyeti, nyeti—not this, not this. And as for Wittgenstein himself, God

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per se, like mind per se, is “not a something, but not a nothing either.” God is transcendent to humans in that, as one might imagine, the epistemological position of humans to God is like the epistemological position of those brains in the vat to the mad scientist, the vat and the “real” world as a whole; so the human’s language about God is in some significant ways analogous to vat-language. (a) Terms cannot refer to their supposed referent in the transcendent realm. Vat-language, though it may be using words identical to those in actual reality language-games, cannot refer to objects in actual reality (Putnam 1981, 14–5). If one of those subjects says “We are merely brains in a vat,” the words ‘brains’ and ‘vats’ cannot be referring to the brain and the vat that the scientist who in actual reality put them there would be referring to. Ask in actual reality the scientist and all the camp personnel what brains and vats might they be referring to and they would point at objects before them; they can, in other words, provide an ostensive definition of the words ‘brain’ and ‘vat’. Ask in the virtual world what one might be referring to and one would not be able to point to the brains and vats that those in actual realty would point to. And (recalling the above-given narrative about a video shown to the brains) though one can point to those brains shown on video, still one cannot without humouring one’s fellows utter the statement ‘Those brains are how we really look right now’. Likewise, a transcendent God is not ostensible. One cannot point to something and issue the statement ‘That is God’. Nor can one point indirectly to God by pointing to certain phenomena and issue the statement ‘That indicates the presence of God’—the presence of God cannot be ostended in a way one would, say, electrons via the traces they leave in a cloud chamber, or, say, ghosts via spooky activities in a convent chamber. Also, God cannot be assigned a locus, thus one cannot point to a direction where God might be present and issue the statement ‘God is somewhere there’. God cannot even be reified—or, at least, no soundminded person in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic tradition takes any reification of God seriously or literally—and as such one cannot point to an image and issue the statement ‘God is something like that’. The referent of the word ‘God’—if it makes sense at all to speak of the referent of such a word—is nowhere within the range of human sensual, intuitive or conceptual experience. ‘God’ has no referent within the human discursive realm. If God is beyond such realm, then ‘God’ cannot refer to God.

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(b) Claims made about the transcendent are self-refuting or paradoxical. Vat-language, being a perfect simulation of actual reality language-games, still is presumably governed by a grammar that is identical to that of its actual reality counterpart. So, presumably, coherence is still an imperative that governs their acts of making assertions. Naturally driven by this grammatical imperative, a brain in a vat whose reality is manufactured but a supercomputer and as such is in a state of complete illusion cannot claim to be in such a state without falling into a paradox. If one really is in a state of complete illusion, then one would not have the faintest idea that one is in such a state, for even the very idea that one is under illusion would itself be an illusion—nothing could be real, and none of one’s claims could be proven true. The language-game of the brains does not provide any allowance to speak non-paradoxically of their state of being trapped in a virtual world. Similarly, theological discourse is trapped in a paradox. Some understand a paradox to be generally “a result of an encounter with a reality which our concepts are inadequate to deal with, a reality which ties us in a conceptual knot. When we try to understand it we find ourselves saying self-contradictory things” (Evans 1989, 353). One basis for attributing this point about talk of the transcendent being paradoxical to the post-Tractarian Wittgenstein is his reference to Søren Kierkegaard (LE, 12), and the fact that his subscription to Kierkegaard’s thinking is unwavering throughout his philosophical development.21 Kierkegaard (1944, 29) speaks of “the supreme paradox of all thought” which he says is “the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.” In this connection Kierkegaard (1944, 35) primarily speaks of God, whom he refers to as “the Unknown” that is “the limit to which the Reason repeatedly comes . . . the absolutely different.” The attempt to discover—and, it follows, to speak of—God, the Unknown, is the supreme paradox of all thought. The more one tries to discover God, the more one discovers how God is absolutely unlike anything knowable. One’s sound knowledge of God consists in one’s knowing that one cannot know God.

21 H. D. P. Lee recalls Wittgenstein claiming that “he learned Danish in order to be able to read Kierkegaard in the original,” and Lee furthermore observes, “[Wittgenstein] clearly had a great admiration for him . . .” (Lee 1979, 218). The Wittgenstein being referred to here is the post-Tractarian Wittgenstein.

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(c) Statements that purportedly are about transcendental facts are vague so as to be nonsensical. The one who issues the statement ‘We are brains in vats’ may be asked why one can say that they all are brains in vats. In answer to that, one may cite—again to recall the account given above—the video recording. But if one says such a thing and knows what one is talking about, one must know what it takes to claim plausibly that one and one’s fellows are brains in a vat; and if one knows that, then one must concomitantly know how different it is for them to be brains in a vat from how it is for them to exist normally. In other words, one must have a criterion for being a brain in a vat and perhaps another for being a normal-bodied being, and with these criteria as basis, tell the difference between the two. But it is very difficult, if not impossible, even to contrive a criterion for ‘We are brains in a vat’. To find out if there is any plausibility to the suspicion that one is a brain in a vat, someone might ask for all of one’s peers to gather together and (a la G. E. Moore) raise their hands before their eyes, stomp their feet, rub their bellies, pat their derrieres and bang their heads against each other’s. They see and feel themselves as normal-bodied beings and not as mere brains (what ever ‘see or feel themselves as mere brains’ means). All they can obtain are criteria for a normal-bodied existence. They can perceive no relevant difference between their current state of being brains in a vat and their state before they were interned. Without that difference it is not possible for them to have any idea what it takes to say that they are brains in a vat that still perceive themselves and their surroundings no differently. If one claims to be a brain in a vat but does not know the difference between being such and being a normal-bodied person, then one does not know what one is talking about. Similarly, theological discourse is trapped in latent nonsense. This discourse purportedly speaks of the nature of God who is beyond human scrutiny. Statements about God are made supposedly in the indicative mood. But, as philosophers throughout the ages say, to know an affirmative proposition is to know what counts as its negation. For an honest-to-goodness indicative statement there is a conceivable state of affairs which if it obtained would count against the claim of that statement to truth. The problem with statements purporting to be about ultimate reality is that it is impossible to lay down conditions under which they can be false. If a purported indicative statement is always deemed true no matter what the case is, then the assertion is bound to suffer “the death by a thousand qualifications” and as such it would be impossible to determine

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its meaning. If so, then it is nebulous, uninformative, and is a failure as an indicative statement. Take, as a case in point, the metaphysical statement ‘Everything is illusion’. As Wittgenstein says: “It is often possible to show that a proposition is meant metaphysically by asking ‘Is what you affirm meant to be an empirical proposition? Can you conceive (imagine) its being otherwise?’” (PG §83). As an instantiation of the point of the second question in the case of ‘God loves humanity’ one can ask what might the case be if not everything is illusion. One can bet that it is impossible to say what the case might be. One who makes the assertion that everything is illusion cannot really show the difference between a state where everything is illusion and one where not everything is. Thus the statement at issue makes no sense. Similarly with the religious statement ‘God loves His children’. One religious sceptic observes rightly that it is “as if there was no conceivable event or series of events the occurrence of which would be admitted by sophisticated religious people to be sufficient reason for conceding . . . ‘God does not really love us then’” (Flew 1969, 98). Believers are assured that God loves “His” children; but then one sees intolerable suffering of innocent children of God everywhere, so some qualification is made: e.g. it may be pointed out that God loves in mysterious ways. As an indicative statement, ‘God loves His children’ suffers from the erosion of its sense by a thousand qualifications. As an instantiation of the point of the second question of Wittgenstein cited above (PG §83) in the case of ‘God loves His children’ one can ask: “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute . . . a disproof of the love of . . . God?” (Flew 1969, 99). Actually there is nothing that could conceivably happen in the world that for the believer can count against the belief that God loves “His” children. The believer cannot conceive of God not loving “His” children. That only shows that the statement at issue does not really make sense in the way an indicative statement should. Perhaps the nadir—or maybe height—of religious language nonsense is attained by Kierkegaard (1992, 326) when he declares that “it is not a dogma but a fact that God exists;” but since, as he insists, God is absolutely unknowable (“the Unknown”), the fact of God’s existence is incomprehensible. In effect he is saying that ‘God exists’ is a true statement, but what that statement means is something that is beyond comprehension. If this is the case, then ‘God exists’ is nonsensical as a substantive statement. Yet despite the propriety of consignment to silence of metaphysical matters, there is nonetheless always that predisposition to speak of

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the transcendent. As Wittgenstein sees it, humans have “the urge to thrust against the limits of language” and indeed do thrust against the limits of language (LE, 12–13). He himself, notwithstanding his call to consign to silence that which cannot be spoken of, not only admits to being given to speaking of the transcendent (LE, 11–12), but also thinks that one should not be afraid of speaking of it so long as one does not fail to pay attention to its nonsensicality (CV, 56e). Perhaps one cannot help but be given to speak of the unspeakable transcendent, because, paradoxically enough, the realization of the limitations of human interest and of its appurtenant human language-game compels one to get the sense of that which lies beyond those limitations. With that sense one is predisposed, or one would even find it necessary, to speak somehow of the transcendent. Often the result of speaking of the transcendent is an objectification and modelling of the transcendent and a composition of a system of (purportedly) speaking of it (theology); but otherwise, the result is pure religion.22 If it is Wittgenstein’s suggestion that the supposed referent of theology is absolutely beyond semantic reach, and any attempt to speak of it is necessarily caught up in a paradox and proves ultimately to be nonsensical, then he is up to something very controversial and unpal-

22 To Wittgenstein there is a difference between theology and the practice of religion. The latter involves actions linked to religious commitments (i.e. there is a recognized authority—e.g. tradition, belief system, or a cult figure—and one lives a life consistent with the peremptories of that authority) or to a sense of a divine of sorts (i.e. there is a sense of wonder at the greater world and there is a reaction which often is ritualized—and it could be that that sense of wonder would erode through time but the rituals are institutionalized enough to persist). But theology is a grammatical activity (PI §373). It is a business of reflection on and explication of the rules governing religious practices. Theology is extraneous to religious practices. One need not be religiously committed or have a sense of a divine of sorts to engage in theology. And one who is religiously committed may be totally theologically inarticulate—like a native speaker of a language can be so inarticulate about the grammatical rules of his language. That for Wittgenstein theology is a grammatical exercise is noteworthy. That theology is a grammatical exercise means that the statements issued therein do not refer to objects like substantive statements do but are exhibits of the use of words or are delineations of concepts—pure linguistic or conceptual investigations. Often theology is seen to be some sort of a study of the being of God. Since God transcends the physical universe, the study of God then transcends the physical sciences. Nonetheless theology issues substantive statements—statements referring to objects which transcends the physical world. Theology is supposedly about metaphysical realities and issue metaphysical statements. Theology, in this sense, is religious metaphysics. But theology viewed this way, as far as Wittgenstein is concerned, “obliterates the difference between factual and conceptual investigations” (Z §458), causing many of the philosophical problems associated with religion.

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atable to many a learned and pious theist. It would seem that he is not only subverting the claim to truth of theological statements but also is effectively reducing theological statements to something akin to psycho-babble in a way reminiscent of the logical positivists (see Ayer 1946, 72–83; Carnap 1959, 66–7).23 It then comes as no surprise that he is portrayed as a religious non-realist, a crypto-atheist, or even a positivist in disguise. But even if it is granted that he bestows upon theological statements the status of being “babble” it is for reasons and intentions as alien to logical positivism as they are familiar to apophatic theology. The logical positivists are so dismissive of Godtalk that they beat even the avowed atheists on this score—at least, precisely by contending that there is no such thing as God, atheists still find God-talk meaningful enough to be falsified. But the logical positivist position cannot be more different than Wittgenstein’s. Language, in the view of the mature Wittgenstein, has limits—just as it has, albeit conceived differently, in the view of the Tractarian Wittgenstein. One is made aware of the ineffable when language shows its limits; it seems therefore that it is a necessary vehicle for the attainment of the state of ineffability. This position holds true for the mature Wittgenstein as much as it does for the Tractarian Wittgenstein. The only way to have any glimpse of the ineffable is through the effable. It is only when language falters, as indicated by a paradox or a plausible-looking nonsense, that one is faced with the limits of language, and subsequently, with the ineffable. It is as if one must get carried away by volubility before one gets nonplussed. It is worth noting that even if the position that theological statements are a kind of babble is imputed to Wittgenstein, he still would not be beyond the pale of Christian theology. The Tractarian and the mature Wittgenstein’s way towards ineffability does not differ much from the Pseudo-Dionysian theology. Apophaticism is a result of the excesses of cataphaticism: “. . . the silence of the negative way is the silence achieved only at the point at which talk about God has been exhausted. . . . Theology, one might say, is an excess of babble” (Turner 2002a, 18).

23

Astonishingly, there is even the allegation that, on theological matters, there are in the mature Wittgenstein to be found more kinship with logical positivism than with the Tractarian Wittgenstein (e.g. Laura 1981, 161f ). It seems, though, that this allegation is an example of a result of confusing Wittgenstein’s linguistic pronouncements for ontological ones.

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Apophatic theology is underpinned by an attitude: That God is. Wittgenstein’s position has that underpinning, too. As Brian Davies points out: In the Remarks on Colour, Wittgenstein asks ‘Where do we draw the line here between logic and experience?’ (III, 4). In the case of God I do not think he has a clear answer. Hence he significantly adds that theology, ‘so to speak, fumbles around with words, because it wants to say something and does not know how to express it’. . . . [H]e partly means by this that theology does not merely tell us how to speak about God; it wants to talk about something—God—but does not know how to do it. In this case it seems that theology does, after all and certainly paradoxically, have a subject matter. (I think here of a remark Wittgenstein made to Engelmann in a letter dated 9 April 1917: ‘And this is how it is: if you do not try to utter the unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably—contained in what has been uttered!’ ‘Contained’ is significant; it suggests the existence of something apart from language.) Such an approach has a lot in common with mystical writers in the very Christian tradition which critics of the socalled ‘neo-Wittgensteinians’ in philosophy of religion often accuse their opponents of neglecting. It even has something in common with Aquinas and his remark about knowing that God is but not what he is. . . . (Davies 1980, 107)

Apophatic theology is characterized by themes such as the transcendence of God, the inscrutability of the divine nature, and the indescribability of it. And, despite the indescribability of the transcendent, the apophaticists find it a necessity to strain to describe the indescribable God, for they, too, like Wittgenstein—and like everyone else, if he is to be believed—have the natural inclination to try to reach for that which transcends the limits of language, and straining to describe the indescribable God is their way of doing so. And Wittgenstein has encouraging words for them: “Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of speaking nonsense! Only don’t fail to pay attention to your nonsense” (CV, 56e). And, indeed, they do pay attention, for they admit that ultimately their theologically-necessary descriptions of God are terribly inadequate. “It is far from being the case that describing God . . . gives [one] some firm purchase on the divine nature,” says Denys Turner re-presenting the position of St. Thomas Aquinas who probably bears the heaviest ecclesiastical gravitas of all apophaticists in Western Christendom, so “one may go as far as to say that talking about God thus is a kind of ‘babble’” (Turner 2004b, 142). But, of course, one should take note that the terms ‘nonsense’ and ‘babble’ could easily be

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misleading. Statements supposedly referring to God are “nonsense” or “babble” only in the sense that they are ultimately a failure as indicative statements. In this context ‘nonsense’ and ‘babble’ qualify as technical terms. Given a theological twist, Wittgenstein’s remarks “Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of speaking nonsense!” can be taken to mean “Go ahead, speak of the unspeakable God.” It is not likely that he is urging anyone to speak godly nonsense for nonsense’s sake. This must be significant nonsense that he is talking about. Wittgenstein once remarked: “Obviously the essence of religion cannot have anything to do with the fact that there is talking, or rather: when people talk, then this itself is part of a religious act and not a theory. Thus it does not matter at all if the words used are true or false or nonsense” (recorded by Friedrich Waismann 1979, 117; emphasis added). From this remark one can get a hint about what this significant nonsense is. To speak of God nonsensically but significantly is cultus.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MATURE WITTGENSTEIN ON SEEING AND (NOT) SPEAKING OF GOD

The mature Wittgenstein is less reticent about God than the Tractarian Wittgenstein. God may, and even ought to be, spoken of, even affirmatively, and not just negatively as is the case with the Tractarian Wittgenstein. Yet speaking about God is not like speaking about any being, but more like speaking about the mind. “God is not a nothing, but not a something either”—this Wittgenstein does not explicitly say, but in effect says so nonetheless. The characterization “not a nothing but not a something either” is ascribed by Wittgenstein to mind per se (PI §304). But since he likens the concept of sensation—or mental or inner processes in general—to the concept of colour (RC III-71), which, in turn, he likens to the concept of God (CV, 82e), the characterization might as well apply to God. The presentation of this chapter goes as follows. Section I discusses how, according to Wittgenstein, the mind can be meaningfully referred to. Section II draws a parallelism between speaking of the mind, of colour and of God. Section III deals with some likely objections to the position drawn in the previous section. Section IV discusses further the point suggested in the previous section which is that God is referred to only via the universe.

I. Speaking of the mind It is crucial that one should be sufficiently clear about what it means to be “not a something.” What he is suggesting, apparently, is that they are not sensically spoken of substantively—i.e. spoken of as a thing or entity of sorts. To be a something is to be an entity (or ens). Anything material is an entity. But ghosts and the like are also regarded as entities; some contend that numbers are. So there should be such notions as “spiritual entity” and “metaphysical entity.” That something has extension in space (a material object), or that it has sentience or will (a ghost), or that it exists somehow in some realm of reality distinct from the material universe (a number?) seems to be the qualifying mark

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for that something to be spoken of substantively. And anything that can be spoken of substantively is a substantive or entity.1 That which can be spoken of substantively is that which is ostensible or inferable. An ostensible object or entity is that which can be presented to the senses and the sensor can then refer to it by, especially, pointing to it in one way or another. An inferable object or entity is that which cannot be presented to the senses directly but whose presence can however be inferred from other objects or phenomena that are presented to the senses, and the sensor can then refer to it.2 Wittgenstein argues that, unlike ostensible and inferable objects, mental processes—in effect the mind per se—is in the natural human way of speaking neither referred to by ostension nor by inference but by some other way. It is via bodily behaviour that mind can be referred to. Bodily behaviour is conceptually integrated with mental or inner processes (henceforth M/I-processes): The inner is tied up with the outer not only empirically, but also logically. The inner is tied up with the outer logically, not just empirically. “In investigating the laws of evidence for the mental, I am investigating the essence of the mental.” Is that true? Yes. The essence is not something that can be shown; only its features can be described. (LW, 63e–64e) If one sees the behaviour of a living thing, one sees its soul. (PI §357) 1 The OED defines substantives as [h]aving an independent existence or status; not dependent upon, or subsidiary to, or referable to something else. For ‘entity’ the OED has the definition “the existence, as distinguished from the qualities or relations or anything,” or “that which constitutes the being of a thing; essence, essential nature;” and ‘ens’ is “an entity regarded apart from anything predicate but that of mere existence.” One can suppose that ens is perhaps one of those hard-to-define-but-youknow-it-when-you-see-it thing. In ordinary language, events attributes, feelings, and impersonal force (e.g. electromagnetic) are not recognized as entity. One can go on to enquire what makes these different from those recognized as entity, but one cannot necessarily expect a once-and-for-all definition of ‘entity’ or ‘ens’ here: after all Wittgenstein did not feel it incumbent upon himself to define once and for all certain notions such as ‘game’ (PI §§71–77). 2 The phrase ‘inferable from something else’ should not be confused with ‘referable to something else’. On the one hand, poltergeists and electrons, for example, are inferable from something else: when stones are hurled by an unseen force from a yard to the rooftop of a nearby house and the dogs nearby are spooked by nothing in particular, and when streaks are registered on a cloud chamber, the presence of a poltergeist and electrons are inferred respectively. To infer to a poltergeist and to electrons is to refer to supposed entities that are said to be responsible for the phenomena from which they are inferred. On the other hand, to certain behaviourists (see e.g. Gilbert Ryle 1949), mental or inner processes are referable to something else: i.e. to bodily behaviour. Thus, when one purportedly refers to a mental or inner process, one is actually referring to no more than a set of bodily behaviour.

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 81 There is no such thing as learning to speak of M/I-processes sans criteria—primarily the bodily behaviour that naturally accompanies them.3 The process of naturally learning to speak of M/I-processes ineluctably involves associating M/I-process words with M/I-process criteria. Wittgenstein paints a typical scenario where a child—the paragon of a natural language learner—comes to learn the use of the M/I-process word ‘pain’ (PI §244). The child falls hard and cries and an adult rushes to comfort him and says something like “Painful?” and points to certain bruises and says “Do you feel pain here? Where else do you feel pain?.” This introduces the child to the use of the word ‘pain’. This introduction puts him on a course towards associating the word ‘pain’ with a certain unpleasant physical sensation. Thenceforth the child, as he becomes articulate and with the association of pain-sensation with the word ‘pain’ deeply ingrained in him, does not just cry when he hurts himself but also says “painful”—or he may not even cry but simply say “painful.” This utterance of the child, as Wittgenstein would have it, is less an act of naming a certain M/I-process than an expression or avowal of a feeling being felt at the moment. What the child does, in other words, is less like saying “Such and such is the case” than saying “Ouch.” For the child the word ‘pain’ is probably used first as expression of a feeling—an avowal—rather than a name of a sensation. In a different scenario, the child’s playmate falls hard and cries, and an adult comes over and tells the child “She feels pain.” Here the child is taught to use the word ‘pain’ in a way closer to a name of a sensation. The process through which the child learns to use the word ‘pain’ always involves behaviour such as crying, screaming, grimacing, bleeding, and so on—not to mention certain kinds of events that precede or prompt the crying and the like. By no other means can he sense other people’s pain, and (when he becomes capable of articulation) associate with it the word ‘pain’, but via pain-behaviour. The game of pain-recognition and labelling serves as the paragon of the game of M/I-process recognition and labelling. The formation of the concept of M/I-process ineluctably involves criteria. It is only by their criteria that M/I-processes are recognized. The manner of pain-recognition

3 While ‘criteria’ primarily refers to the bodily behaviour that naturally accompanies an M/I-process and by which this process is recognized, Wittgenstein also speaks of external occasions which belong together with behaviour (Z §492). Happenings that prompt or precede pain behaviour may well count as among those external occasions and do figure in the learning of the use the word ‘pain’. (Also cf. RPP II §29: “The occasion [on which pain occurs] determines the usefulness of the signs of pain.”)

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and association of pain with the word ‘pain’, or for that matter of M/I-process recognition and association of the appropriate words to them, is one that the child basically never outgrows. Certainly the manner of recognition of pain, or of any M/I-process, and the use of the word ‘pain’, or of some other M/I-process words, becomes much more sophisticated as he grows to maturity; but the fundamentals of the game of pain-recognition and labelling are never supplanted. Bodily behaviour is an integral part of the common concept of M/Iprocesses, and without it there can be no M/I-process concept. And if there is anything that gives conceptual content to an M/I-process term, it is nothing other than the bodily behaviour which is the criterion of the relevant mental process. It plays an essential part in the formation of the concept of M/I-processes, of the process of learning to recognize (i.e. sense and identify) M/I-processes, and of the application of M/I-process words. Once the child becomes articulate he or she would not just smile in response to a friendly gesture or cry in response to a hostile one, but would utter the words used by everyone else to name M/I-processes. Now added to his range of ability to sense M/I-processes is the ability to recognize articulately and explicitly the processes. He starts sensing M/I-processes via bodily behaviour, and nothing fundamentally changes even as he or she becomes articulate and more ratiocinative: he or she still would ever recognize M/I-processes primarily via bodily behaviour. Bodily behaviour is integrated into his fully-developed natural (i.e. non-academically-influenced) concept of M/I-processes. When he or she hears that so-and-so is in pain, what first comes to mind is so-and-so’s contorting face and those other behaviours that go with being in pain—that, basically, is his or her idea of someone else being in pain. And his normal application of M/I-process terms is always in association with bodily behaviour. When he or she sees so-and-so bloodied and moaning and the face contorting and the hand twisted in an awkward position he or she is prompted to say “So-and-so is in pain.” That, basically, is how by reflexes he or she is prompted to deploy the word ‘pain’. Sans criteria there can be no meaning to M/I-process terms. A thought-experiment of Wittgenstein illustrates this point thus: Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.—Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.—But suppose the word

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 83 “beetle” had a use in this people’s language?—If so it would not be used as a name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.—No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. (PI §293)

The nature of the issue here is neither ontological nor epistemological but conceptual and semantic (cf. Hintikka and Hintikka 1986, 259–61). Given a congregation of individuals commonly sharing the word ‘beetle’ as a name of what is in his or her box, and that each one is certain that he or she knows what that word exactly means, but that only the owner of a particular box is acquainted with what is in the box and each owner has absolutely no access to and no way of getting acquainted with that which is in the box not his or her own, then the commonly shared word ‘beetle’ would be used in each and every individual’s own idiosyncratic way. That single word could thus name as many different things as there are many box owners, could name almost anything, and (if a box were empty) even nothing. If that which is named is the determinant of the meaning of a word, then the meaning of ‘beetle’ would be hopelessly as intractable as the object supposed to be named is inscrutable. That is what would happen to M/I-process terms bereft of association with their criteria. As Wittgenstein points out, sans criteria there is no way a learner could get a picture of, say, being in pain, and so will not acquire the minimal competence in using M/I-process terms such as ‘pain’. And if there happen to be a congregation of child geniuses who each would invent symbols as labels for unpleasant sensations they would feel and keep a diary to record what they feel (cf. PI §258), it would certainly be the case that there could be as many meanings for an M/I-process symbol as there are individuals with M/I-processes.4 Since it is by

4 And this is only the best-case scenario. The assumption here is that each diarist is able to recognize his or her own sensation with reasonable consistency so that the same symbol can be applied to the same kind of sensation with reasonable consistency. There must, of course, be a way, at least in principle, to test the consistency of recognition of sensations. Without any objective criterion for recognizing sensations the diarist can only appeal to memory. But even memory itself stands in need of an independent review (cf. PI §265). Thus, there is no sufficient assurance that the diarist correctly recognizes and remembers that the sensation he or she feels this day is of the same kind as that which came a fortnight previously and a week before that and thus must be labelled identically with the earlier ones. For all he or she knows, his or her memory fails him or her from time to time and as a result he or she gets to label the same kind of sensation differently and different kinds of sensations identically—

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criteria that M/I-processes are commonly recognized and named, sans common recognition of M/I-processes there cannot be the relevant common concept, thus no common meaning to the relevant terms. People, therefore, cannot speak to others of their own M/I-processes and be understood, let alone speak of some other’s M/I-processes. M/I-processes are, one may say, goings-on in the mind; but without the corresponding readily-observable bodily goings-on there cannot be mind-talk at all. So the picture that emerges is that to speak of the mind meaningfully is to speak of the body, for bodily behaviour is the only reference in sensical mind-talk. It is in reference to bodily behaviour—and to bodily behaviour only—that an instance of mind-talk can be said to be sensical or appropriate, and the statements issued therein true or false. There could not have been a sensical mind-talk without reference to the body, for the mind per se is beyond public observation,5 and as such, as the beetle-in-the-box thought-experiment shows, there could never be a viable way to refer to mind per se, even privately, but more importantly, publicly. So an assertion about the mind, if it were to make sense, not to say be informative, should be transposable into assertions about the body. The transposition should somehow constitute an answer to the question ‘What do you mean by x’—x being the assertion. For example, ‘Her mind is sharp’ could be transposed into behavioural statements such as ‘She can form a nine-letter word from a jumble of nine letters in less than ten seconds and work out the square root of 378 in less than three seconds’—and the latter statement is among those that can serve to answer the question ‘What do you mean by “Her mind is sharp”?’. Transposability in this way is the mark of sensicality. Though this can easily be mistaken for behaviourism, this is not really that (cf. PI §307). It is crucial to note that the point of interest here is purely grammatical, not ontological: bodily behaviour is ever conceptually integrated with M/I-processes and as such is absolutely indispensable to mind-talk. Since M/I-processes and bodily behaviour are conceptually integrated there has to be some specifiable bodily behaviour that can be associated with an M/I-process state.

all without the benefit of oversight whatsoever. The result will be that there could be more meanings for a symbol than there are boxes and box-owners. In this case any tractable meaning of symbols is effectively precluded. 5 And if Wittgenstein would have it, even ‘I can’t observe my own [mental phenomenon] in the proper sense of “observe”’ (WLPP 1946–47, 235).

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 85 ment if it were to be meaningful. To transpose an M/I-process statement simply means to state explicitly the behaviour, or patterns of behaviour, that are necessarily associated with the statement without necessarily meaning to say that the statement and the statements it is transposed into have an identical meaning. If it is the case that bodily behaviour is conceptually integrated with M/I-processes, then there is no place for the notion of inference from one to the other. There is a place for inference from x to y only if x and y are correlates but y is not already given in x. This is not the case with the correlation between bodily behaviour and mind. In normal discourse bodily behaviour are never treated as an index of M/I-processes.6 Unlike in the case of the indexical relationship between smoke and fire, a normal speaker does not infer an M/I-process from bodily behaviour of which the process is a natural expression (Z §537; cf. OC §287); rather, one immediately recognizes an M/I-process upon presentation of the relevant bodily behaviour. That is why bodily behaviour is tied with the term ‘criteria’: it is itself taken as a feature that gives identity or recognizability to, and not—as a symptom is—a mere indicator of the presence of, M/I-processes (BB, 25). And it must be noted that the immediacy of recognition is not a result of acquired cognizance of the causal relationship of or correlation between certain bodily behaviour on the one hand and M/I-processes on the other. It is a given in nature that a child, even in infancy, instinctively senses some basic M/I-processes, such as pain, in other people’s facial expressions and other bodily movements even before she is capable of articulating that which she senses; and this natural ability is shown by the appropriateness of his responses to facial expressions and bodily behaviour. (Though she would need to be tutored to name or speak of specific M/I-processes.) It is noteworthy that the infant child is able to sense M/I-processes in others though she is still far from being articulate, and farther still from being able to infer. This only shows that even at such an early stage there is already a trace of the attitude that the mind is already given in bodily behaviour. Bodily behaviour is, as it were,

6 The term ‘index’ is here used after C. S. Peirce: if there is a natural or direct physical connection between a sign and its signified, then the sign is an index (as opposed to an icon or a token). Thus, a natural sign such as smoke is an index (of fire) and physical symptoms such as swelling of the wrist is also an index (of wrist bone fracture) (see e.g. Peirce 1993, 163, 245, 379). The counterpart of ‘index’ in Wittgensteinian talk is ‘symptom’, referring to an indicator of an occurrence or condition.

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the façade of M/I-processes. One who sees the façade of an edifice and recognizes the presence of an edifice is not taken to be inferring the presence of an edifice—for seeing the façade of an edifice is taken to be nonetheless seeing an edifice. So, also, one who sees the façade of M/I-processes and expresses recognition of the presence of M/Iprocesses is not taken to be inferring the presence of M/I-processes, for seeing the façade of M/I-processes is taken to be nonetheless seeing M/I-processes. The basis of the claim that bodily behaviour is the façade of M/Iprocesses is, as Wittgenstein would have it, the human form of life. It is a given in the human form of life that one is not of the opinion that the other fellow has a mind; rather, one is of the (natural ) attitude that one’s fellow has a mind (PI II, 178). An attitude is a more or less fixed mental disposition. The type of attitude that Wittgenstein is concerned with is the natural—or, as it were, animal—attitude. Natural attitude precedes opinion (LWPP II §38). One does not chose to have this attitude and cannot consciously change it (Winch 1980–1, 11–12). One’s opinion can be changed without necessarily affecting one’s personality or one’s sanity; but any changes to the natural attitude would mean a change in the personality—or, perhaps, a change of personality—or even a subversion of sanity. As a case in point, anyone sane and reasonable instinctively and immediately takes it that a baby who falls off the crib onto the hard floor face first and screams actually feels pain. What there is in such a case as this is a recognitive gut-reaction. One does not form an opinion, however quickly, that the baby feels pain. If what one has about the baby feeling pain is an opinion then in principle one should be able to tell the difference between a baby who fell from the crib and hits the floor hard face first and screams and actually feels pain from another baby of the same nature and in the same situation and behaving similarly but does not feel pain. One does not sanely entertain the possibly that this incident or any incident similar to this could be a case where the baby is actually not feeling pain despite the baby’s behaviour and the circumstances that surrounded that behaviour. And if someone happens to express that one is of the opinion that the baby might not be feeling pain at all despite his behaviour, one would likely be deemed unhinged. Such can only be the case because it is a given human attitude to take it that at the flip-side of behaviour is a mind—a case other than this (where there is only behaviour but no mental correlate) is never a matter for consideration. However one is given to ratiocination and scepticism, if—as it were—push comes to

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 87 shove, one instinctively and immediately takes behaviour to be a manifestation of mind. This alone shows that one never actually infers that the other fellow has a mind from the fact that he or she is behaving. Moreover, the fact that one is neither of the opinion that the baby in the above-situation is in pain nor is given to wonder whether or not the baby actually is in pain is not as much a case of one simply not bothering to form an opinion or not bothering to wonder whether a baby in the above-given situation actually feels pain than it is a case of one being unable to find a proper room for mere opinion or for scepticism. One just instinctively and immediately takes behaviour as a manifestation of the mind. One instinctively and immediately recognizes a mind in the fact that there is behaviour. As far as the given human attitude is concerned the mind is given in behaviour. That being the case, inferring the existence of someone else’s mind from bodily behaviour or a particular M/I-process from a set of behaviour is something that is never a part of the natural human language-game of mind and behaviour: no one in any way actually teaches such acts of inferring, no one in any way learns to do it, and no one in any way really does it, and for one to engage in it is to do something that goes against the grain of normal human behaviour. So what one arrives at is thus: Mind is referred to via the body, but is not inferred from it.

II. Speaking of God If, as Wittgenstein would have it, the concept of God is like that of the concept of colour (CV, 82e), which in turn is like that of the concept of mind (RC III-71), then speaking of God requires criteria to be meaningful. Speaking of God, like speaking of the mind, can be done meaningfully only via criteria. Strictly speaking, though, the term ‘criteria’ refers primarily to bodily behaviour that is the natural manifestation of M/I-processes which serve as the signposts that give bearing to the application of statements about the said processes; but if Godtalk is like mind-talk, then the said term can be applied to whatever are those signposts that give bearing to the application of statements about God. There should not be too much trouble in identifying what the criteria of God-talk are. After all it was the venerable St. Thomas who said that God can be known only by God’s effects—and that means everything that had, that has, or that can ever have, being (for every

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being is a creation of God). Everything that had, that has, or that can ever have, being is what makes the universe. It was Simone Weil who uses the term ‘criterion’ while suggesting to the effect that the universe that the scientist scrutinize, the poets speak of, and ordinary mortals toil in to live and die, is the criterion for God-talk: “Earthly things are the criterion of spiritual things. . . . Only spiritual things are of value, but only physical things have a verifiable existence. Therefore the value of the former can only be verified as an illumination projected on the latter” (quoted in Winch 1977, 210). Still, while Wittgenstein does not explicitly mention the universe as the criterion for Godtalk, or as a repository of criteria for statements about God, he—or at least the early Wittgenstein—makes a suggestion to that effect. He writes: “What do I know about God . . .? I know that this world exists” (NB 11.6.16). Knowing that the world exists is closely connected with knowing anything about God. What gives Wittgenstein “knowledge” about God is the existence of the world itself (that the world exists). The very existence of the world, rather than the state of the world, is the basis for “knowing” God. This suggests a point that could be expressed by the statement ‘The world is, therefore God is . . .’. This statement looks like God is inferred from the fact that the world is. If there is a case of inference here, then it means that the existence of the world is to be deemed as proof—or, to use Wittgensteinian terminology, symptom—of the existence (or nature) of God. It would be just like the case of a biologist stumbling upon a huge ape-like footprint embedded on a rock atop a Himalayan mountain: the biologist would most likely infer that there was at least one yeti that existed. The footprint serves as proof to the claim of the existence of a yeti. However, in the case of the statement ‘The world is, therefore God is . . .’, a closer look reveals that there could not be an inference. It is worth noting is that this statement is in some ways akin to ‘I think, therefore I am’. Thinking is not an evidence of existence: it is a function of existence— one’s “awareness” of one’s act of thinking is no less than a criterion for one’s “awareness” of one’s existence. Or like ‘I am speaking English, therefore I know English’. The act of speaking English is not an evidence of knowing English: it is a function—a (or the) criterion—of the state of knowing English. The state of awareness of one’s existence is inherent in one’s act of thinking, just as the state of knowing English is inherent in the act of speaking English. There is no real inference if what is (seemingly) inferred is inherently a part of the premiss from which the (supposed) inference is drawn—there is only tautology of sorts. The Notebooks remark “What do I know about God . . .? I know

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 89 that this world exists” suggests that, for Wittgenstein, that the world is is a function of—as it were—God’s “isness.” The state of “knowing” God is inherent in the state of “knowing” that the universe exists. Thus Wittgenstein’s remark cannot be taken to be suggesting an inference from world to God. The non-involvement of inference in this case is a good reason to suppose that in Wittgensteinian thought that the world exists is properly not a truth-confirming proof but a criterion of the statement affirming the existence of God. The statement ‘God exists’ is a paragon of a statement that purportedly refers to God per se. Given the likeness of the concepts of God, colour and mind, the statement ‘God exists’ can be likened to ‘colour exists’ or ‘red exists’. The surface grammar of ‘Colour exists’ (or for that matter ‘Red, etc., exists’) gives the impression that this statement is a substantive one, and is about a something, that it is about a universal, that what it is about exists distinctly and independently. This impression, in turn, gives rise to sublime notions, such as the essence of colour or of the colours red, blue, etc. But Wittgenstein argues: . . . we can say “the colour brown exists” means nothing at all; except that it exists here or there as a colouring of an object . . . (Z §69; PG, 137) The word “being” has been used for a sublimed ethereal kind of existence. Now consider the proposition. “Red is” . . . Of course no one ever uses it; but if I had to invent a use for it all the same it would be this: as an introductory formula to statements which went on to make use of the word “red”. When I pronounce the formula I look at a sample of the colour red. One is tempted to pronounce a sentence like “red is” when one is looking attentively at the colour; that is, in the same situation as that which one observes the existence of a thing (of a leaflike insect, for example). (RFM, 64)

Another version of this same passage (as presented in Baker and Hacker 1980, 119) presents more poignantly the point relevant here: ‘Red is’ has no use. But if it were to be given one, it would be appropriate to use it as an introductory formula to be pronounced to statements about real objects—a formula to be pronounced when looking at a red sample, i.e. reminding oneself that ‘red’ has meaning. What is misleading about this pseudo-sentence is that one is tempted to pronounce it when looking attentively at a sample, i.e. in a situation similar to one in which one observes the existence of an object, e.g. an insect. And so one thinks that one is plumbing metaphysical truths about the necessary existence of universals.

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The fact is that colour-words and coloured objects are grammatically concomitant. It is a feature of the grammar of colour that colour-words are ascribed to visually-perceived commonsensical material objects and not to philosopher-postulated entities. One learns of colour not as an abstract entity but as a property of material objects, and of colourwords not as names of abstract entities but as properties that material objects posses. One learns to discriminate between colours, and to match colours to colour names, only by actually being shown objects or surfaces and having their colour pointed to and its name given (RC III-110; PG, 89, 208, 209). The sublime notion of colour per se, or of red qua red and of blue qua blue, etc, comes later, if at all. Such a notion is an academic contrivance and is practically idle for it removes colour, the colours red, blue, etc, from the familiar discourse of visual impression to a strange discourse about the colour that can never, even in principle, be seen by the eye or visualized in the imagination. Entertaining such a notion amounts to no significance whatsoever (cf. RC III-67); it leads to no useful consequence beyond directing the chatter of, say, literary café habitués. For all humanly useful purposes such a notion is otiose. So, idle contrivance beside, “there is no such thing as the pure colour concept” (RC III-73). ‘Colour exists’ may look like a substantive statement—i.e. an indicative statement expressing the existence of something, like ‘Cows exist’— but, if Wittgenstein has his way, it is not. But instead this statement can be used “as an introductory formula to statements which went on to make use of the word [‘colour’].” If it has a use, then it has a grammar. And if its grammar were to be understood, it is necessary to ask what counts as criteria for the said statement (cf. PI §572)—or what the case would be if the said statement were true. The obvious answer is: there would be at least one thing that possesses colour, or reflects colour on its surface, that a normally sighted person could see under appropriate conditions. This is all that counts for the truth of ‘Colour exits’. One who is sane and reasonable and untainted by philosophical academism, if asked what exactly is meant by ‘Colour exists’, would have no answer other than to the effect that there is colour on visible things. That there is colour to be seen on material things is exactly what one would care to mean by ‘Colour exists’. It is not a normal practice—indeed it is a queer practice—to refer to an ethereal entity or to a state in the ethereal realm and deem colour reflected on objects’ surfaces merely as manifestation of the said ethereal reality, or as evidence that bolsters the claim in question. (This notion of manifestation

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 91 of the universal colour suggests a colour that by nature is graspable only abstractly by the mind and never perceived by the physical eye, i.e. a colour that is inherently invisible. An inherently invisible colour is an oxymoron; the notion of evidence for the existence of colour makes a fine material for a joke.) The case that would be if ‘Colour exists’ were true is the very same case that would be if ‘Something that has colour exists’ is true. These two statements at issue are therefore interchangeable: ‘Colour exists’ amounts to ‘Something exists that has colour’ (PI §58), or better, ‘Something that has colour exists’. Parsing this sentence highlights its syntactical form: Sentence{Subject[Head(Something) Relative Clause(that has colour)] Predicate[exists]}

The key word ‘colour’ is shown to be still part of the subject of the sentence; but the significant point to be noted is that the head noun, which names what is being talked about is not ‘colour’ but ‘Something’. ‘Colour’ is but part of the relative clause whose function is to provide information about the entity named by the head noun—information which, in this case wherein the relative clause is restrictive, is essential in identifying what precisely is being talked about. What emerges is that ‘colour exists’ is not quite about the ontological status of colour per se, but really about material objects that have a certain visuallyperceivable-only property. If ‘God exists’ were to be taken similarly, then it could be rephrased as follows: ‘Something _______ exists.’

The blank in the above rephrase stands for a phrase that expresses relation with God, as in, for example, ‘Something that is God-created exists’.7 It is not obvious that such statement says what ‘God exists’

7 This should disqualify ‘that is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.’ or ‘that possesses the qualities of omnipotence, etc.’ because these phrases are definite descriptions that are effectively interchangeable with ‘God’—they are meant to indicate God rather than to express relation with God. But Denys Turner (2004a, 172) offers something that might be worth noting here. He points out that for St. Thomas Aquinas, the word ‘God’ is not used as a proper name but a descriptive, predicative expression. ‘God exists’ is not about predicating existence of God but about predicating ‘God’ of something or other. So, ‘God exists’ may be rephrased into ‘Something or other is God’, which is not significantly different from ‘Something exists that is God’. This looks like less of a statement that tells of something being somehow related to God than of one that tells of something having certain characteristics, the possession of which merits that

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says. Though, one way of telling whether a proposition and its supposed rephrase mean the same is to check whether their respective negations also mean the same. Taking it that [p] ‘God exists’ and its proffered rephrase—or one of the possible rephrase that can be proffered—[p’] ‘Something that is God-created exists’ have for their respective negations [¬p] ‘God does not exists’ and [¬p’] ‘Nothing exists that is God-created’, the relevant question is whether [¬p] and [¬p’] mean the same or not. If the two are taken not to mean the same, then [¬p’] must mean ‘Either God exists or not’ and ‘Something (distinct from God—if God exists) exists’ and ‘(Whether or not God exists) God did not create whatever else exists’. But this is queer. God, by intension, is the source of everything that exists, and it follows that the existence of anything cannot be said to be not caused by God; and if it is said that God did not create anything at all, it can only have a coherent conceptual content if what is being said is that God does not exist. So if [¬p’] is to have a coherent conceptual content at all, it has to be taken to mean the same as [¬p].

III. Some objections This, of course, cannot pass without consideration of some objections. (a) An objection to the above-paraphrase can go thus: It seems that those who naturally speak of God, reverently or otherwise, when they

something the designation ‘God’. There are some points that can be raised about this. First, this still is a statement about God per se. If “there is no such thing as the pure colour concept,” then likewise there is no such thing as the pure God concept. God, as St. Thomas insists, cannot be known by mortals. That which merits the designation ‘God’ is by character not conceivable. Thus, ‘Some thing or other is God’ is not obviously cognitively informative. The point of rephrasing that is to uncover the sense of the statement being rephrased. No sense is uncovered in rephrasing ‘God exists’ into ‘Some thing or other is God’. Second, for Turner, ‘God exists’ is similar in logical form to ‘Cows exists’ which he says can be paraphrased into ‘Some things or other are cows’. But there are matters to consider here. One is that those things that have certain characteristics that merit them the designation ‘cow(s)’ are not only easily conceivable—any toddler who has seen a picture of a thing called ‘cow’ knows what a cow is—but also straightforwardly ostensible; while that which merits the designation ‘God’ is by character not conceivable, let alone ostensible. So the statement about something answering to the word ‘cow’ is obviously cognitively informative, while that one about something answering to the word ‘God’ is not obviously cognitively informative— this latter statement stands in need of analysis. Another, and perhaps more crucially, is that ‘Some things or other are cows’ can be false, in case all things that have the characteristics that merits them the designation ‘cow(s)’ cease to exist; but ‘Something or other is God’ cannot be conceded to be false for God’s existence is necessary.

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 93 say ‘God exists’, do not mean the same as, say, ‘Something that is Godwilled exists’. But an argument that is good enough to show that saying ‘Colour exists’ means ‘Something that has colour exists’ would probably be just as good to show that ‘God exists’ means ‘Something that has Godly characteristics exists’. One need only ask for the criterion of ‘God exists’—ask what the case should be if this statement were true. To answer the question “What should the case be if ‘God exists’ were true?” one could end up giving either a criterion or mere evidence. Those given to saying that the statement in question must not be true because evil pervades in the world imply that the answer is: The case where all possible worlds are totally free of evil. Those others who accept the teleological argument suggest the answer to be: The case of the orderliness and purposefulness of the extremely complex universe. There are discursive situations where criterion and symptom (or evidence) fluctuate: what are considered symptoms at one time are altogether considered the defining criterion at another, and vice versa.8 Be that as it may, one should consider that the above-given answers are connected with talk of evidence for God’s existence. So one can then take it that they merely provide evidence for the truth of the statement in question rather than suggest a criterion. It is clear to all who believe in God that the universe has a genesis, and if it has a genesis, then there must be that which is responsible for that genesis. Many of them speak of the existence of the universe as evidence of God’s existence; but the existence of the universe itself can be taken not as mere evidence for the truth of the statement ‘God exists’ but as criterion of that statement. As per rule of the worshipper’s languagegame—and even irreligious philosophers do grant that as per linguistic rule—inherent in the concept ‘God’ is ‘creator of the universe’. To play the religious language-game is to grant this; and to grant this is to grant that the universe is a creation—or the Creation. As there cannot be a creation to speak of if there were not a creator, so there cannot be a creator to speak of if there were not a creation. If x is said to be a creator it is precisely because x created something; sans that created something x would not qualify to be spoken of as creator. It

8 For example, since tonsil inflammation is caused by bacterial infection, the former is in that way just a symptom of the condition called ‘tonsillitis’. But sometimes ‘tonsillitis’ means inflamed tonsils, and sometimes bacterial infection of the tonsils (BB, 25; PI §354).

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is the creation that makes the creator a creator. To say that there is a creation is to say necessarily that there is a creator, and conversely, to say that there is a creator is to say that there is a creation. To phrase it in bi-conditional form: There is a creator if and only if there is that which is (or was) created. Thus, the work of a creator is conceptually more properly not evidence for the existence of a creator qua creator: it is itself the criterion of the existence of the creator qua creator. The universe is not evidence that God is a creator: it is that which gives God the credential to be spoken of as Creator. The existence of Creation is not a proof of the existence of the Creator: the existence of Creation is itself the criterion for the existence the Creator. Thus, it seems fair to take it that the very existence of the universe itself is the criterion of ‘God exists’. A religious language-game player (i.e. the worshipper) who, upon stating ‘God exists’ is pressed for its meaning, replies “Well, this universe would not have existed sans God; but it does—that alone makes me say that God exists” offers just as much sense as someone who upon stating ‘Pain exists’, is pressed for its meaning, replies “Well, there are always humans and other animals who feel pain—that alone makes me say that pain exists.” The sense of ‘God exists’ is hinged on the existence of the universe as much as the sense of ‘Pain exists’ is hinged on the existence of creatures in pain. The interrogative statement ‘How can one say that mind exists?’ is one that asks for the criterion of a statement. The most sensible answers would be statements like ‘There are beings with minds’, or, ‘There are beings who behave in such a way that the applicability to them of the statement “He/she/it has a mind” is taken for granted by every sane and reasonable person’. Similarly, to the interrogative statement ‘How can one say that God exists?’ the answer would most sensibly be the statement ‘The universe exists—there cannot be a creation, which the universe is, without a creator’.9 These answers state the criterion of 9 At least this would be the answer of a Wittgensteinian (cf. NB 11.6.16). And, possibly, also the answer of some—if one may—Thomasians. Some who thoroughly study and seriously believe St. Thomas hold that his Five Ways are meant not to tell anything about God at all but to show that the world is created (Turner 2002b, 8–9; see quotation at the end of the next section). That the extant world, or any world that could possibly come into existence, is—or would have to be—a creation is a basic premiss in St. Thomas’ thought. So, in principle, to grant that there exist anything at all is to grant that there is creation—and to grant that there is creation is to grant that there is a creator. It seems that that the world is is sufficient to make some Thomasians say there is God. But ‘The universe exists—there cannot be a creation, which everything that exists and will ever exist is, without a creator’ is a statement not likely to be used by philosophical theists when answering the question at issue. Instead they

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 95 the statements in question. As ‘Pain exists’ and ‘There are beings who feel pain’ share a criterion and therefore do not essentially differ in meaning, so if ‘Something that emanates from God—and from God alone—exists’ share a criterion with ‘God exists’, then it seems fair to say that these two statements do not differ that significantly. (b) Another objection can go thus: It seems that even to common folks untainted with metaphysical muddle ‘red’ and all the rest of colour names are not normally thought to name substantives; but ‘God’ is to them a name for a personal self-existent being, and so ‘Something ______ exists’ when deemed logically equivalent to ‘God exists’ poses a problem for the folks that ‘Something that has colour exists’ when deemed logically equivalent with ‘Colour exists’ would not. But Wittgenstein cannot be said to be denying colour-as-substance— if at all there is such a sempiternal existence—because as far as he is concerned it cannot be spoken of, its existence can neither be meaningfully affirmed nor denied. So if there is anything he wishes to elide in rephrasing ‘Colour exists’ to ‘Something exists that has colour’ it is the colour-as-substance notion. Just as he does not deny mind per se and colour per se, he does not deny God per se. He simply finds the notion of God per se—i.e. thought of God bereft of reference to worldly things—as empty as he does the notions of mind per sethought of mind bereft of references to behaviour—and colour per se. As to God per se Wittgenstein sees no good option but maintain silence. (c) Still another objection can go thus: It seems that if nothing else exists but God, ‘God exists’ would still be true while, say, ‘Something that is God-willed exists’ would be false—and this indicates simply that these two statements cannot mean the same. But this objection seems self-subverting. First, granting this objection would in principle commit one to the possibility of the truth of ‘Nothing else but God exists’: If this can in principle be true then it must have a sense to start with, and if there is a sense, then there must be a criterion; but it seems there cannot be, for it seems it is nonsense to speak of a description of a “state” of total absence of everything, of

likely would use statements like ‘There is such wonderful order in the universe that cannot be had if there exists no grand designer’. The implication seems to be that if the universe existed sans certain features—e.g. wonderful order—then they may not say that there is God, or they may even say there is no God. That there is anything at all that exists is seemingly not sufficient to make them say that there is God. For example, Swinburne (2004, 277) considers the existence of the universe as evidence for God’s existence.

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absolute nothingness, because there will be no state to speak of, and absolute nothingness means ineffability. Second, if nothing else exists but God, then there will be no propositions at all, no ‘God exists’ and ‘Something that is God-willed exists’ to speak of. Third, this objection evidently is underpinned by some sort of metaphysical realist theory of language—perhaps Platonic realist (see e.g. Katz 1981). Propositions, as this position goes, are abstract and sempiternal substantives, and therefore their sense or meaning is human-independent. The implication is that if everything else in the universe but propositions melt into nothingness ‘God exists’ will still have a sense and be true. This precisely is the kind of position that Wittgenstein rejects not for its lack of truth but for its otioseness. The Platonic realist claim that propositions are sempiternal substantives—i.e. propositions are abstract objects, nontemporal and non-spatial but not less objective than physical objects and immutable to boot—is something that can neither be proven nor disproven. It would be interesting to see a stipulation of how different the universe would be in which propositions exist as substantives from the one where they happen not to. Sans such stipulation the claim that propositions—numbers and words included therein—are substantives cannot conceivably be tested for truth-content. It is safe to say there is no such stipulation proffered and one can bet nothing will be forthcoming that could stand scrutiny. On that account establishing the truth of the above-mentioned Platonic realist claim is therefore out of the question. So humans—other than those given to idle academism such as philosophers—could not care less about it. One that does not believe that propositions are substantives does not employ them differently in any significant way from, and are not in any way disadvantaged relative to, one that does. (And maybe it is the one that does believe who is disadvantaged: If one accepts that ‘Nothing else but God exists’ can in principle be true, then on one is the burden to stipulate its criterion and show that it has sense.) All said, the significance of the proposition ‘God exists’ is exclusively a human one; cats, critters and crows and the rest of creation—and, one may even say, God—could not care less about it. If at all it should in any way matter, it must be because humans see sense in it; and if there is to be sense in it, it must be one given in human language, evolved by humans and employed for humans. (d) And another objection can go thus: It seems that the phrase needed to fill in the blank would differ from that of the statement about colour, i.e. the phrase cannot be ‘has God’, because while colour

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 97 is a property that things possess, God is never anywhere near being likewise spoken of. But two things should be considered. Firstly, it is the case theologically that everything there is and could ever be is spoken of as being organically related to God: e.g. taking from St. Thomas Aquinas, the relationship of the universe to God are, among others, God-willed beings, emanations of God, or an image of God (SCG 1, Ch. 75; ST 1a, 44–5; and SCG 1, Ch. 29), as, according to the PseudoDionysius, participants in God’s being (DN 820 A–C). These bring to mind phrases like ‘is God-willed’, ‘is God-emanated’, ‘is a God-image’, and ‘is a God-participant’—it seems these can be appropriately used to fill in the above blank and come up with statements that do not appear in any way to be theologically objectionable. Secondly, there is a seemingly theologically-sound sense in which all things have God, e.g. in St. Thomas saying “God exists in everything” (ST, 1a, 8, 1). Even if “having” God in this sense has to do with belonging to rather than possessing God, as God is spoken of as ever the possessor, as possessing everything there is and could ever be, it is nonetheless sensible to say that such and such “has God.” (e) And still another objection can go thus: In the rephrase ‘God’ belongs to the relative clause and is merely one among the words of a phrase needed to fill in the blank on the part where the relative clause is; thus ‘God exists’ becomes more about things than about God. But, again, two points need to be considered. First, God per se, technically speaking, cannot anyhow be referred to. To be able to refer meaningfully to an object one has to have that object in mind; and to have it “in mind” means to conceptually delineate it. And to do so means to place the object in some class. But “God, says St. Thomas, falls in no general class (ST 1, 3, 5; de Pot., 7, 3). God cannot be located within the logical space in terms of which we make significant references. There can be no conceptually significant intention of what God is, how he exists, or how he is related to things of which we can have meaningful intentions. It is not clear that we can have ‘God’ in mind when we say “God”—it is not therefore clear what we have in mind” (Preller 1967, 10). In the cases of colour, sensation, and abstractions such as number, one can point, say, to areas on a colour wheel while issuing the statements ‘This is colour, and this, and this . . .’, do things that inflict pain on someone successively and each time say ‘This is pain . . .’, and point to the figure ‘3’ or raise three fingers while saying ‘This is number three . . .’. But one who speaks of a non-entitative God

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cannot point to any object or state in the universe, not even to the universe as a whole, and issue the statement ‘That is God’. So it is, to St. Thomas, theologically untenable, and for Wittgenstein, communicatively idle, to speak of God per se. Second, any knowledge about, and any meaningful reference, to God is only an appurtenant to knowledge about, and references to, the universe and its objects therein. It takes a prior attitude to have any interest in, and to bother to make positive references to, God. If one has a why-is-there-something-ratherthan-nothing attitude and is given to the thought that the universe must have a cause, then, one will be interested in entertaining the notion of an uncaused cause. But if one has a Russellian the-universeis-just-there-and-that-is-all attitude, then, interest in God would be precluded. All said, the significance of the rephrase at issue is not just its categorical declaration of the existence of something but also its suggestion that there is a God and that something is of God, thereby serving as a paragon of a meaningful medium of reference to an otherwise unreferable God.

IV. Wittgenstein à la St. Thomas Aquinas The foregoing analysis shows the Wittgensteinian position that God may be meaningfully spoken of only via the universe. And this is not without backing from St. Thomas Aquinas. His stand is that “we speak of God as we know him, and since we know him from creatures we can only speak of him as they represent him” (ST 1a, 13, 2). God in himself (God per se) cannot be known—at least not in this life (ST 1a, 13, 11). So about God in himself there is nothing that could be said. Nonetheless, inasmuch as the universe—the Creation—bears some likeness with the Creator in that in the Creator is contained the perfection of the attributes of Creation (ST 1a, 4, 2), ideas about God can be formed and some predicates ascribed to Creation can be ascribed to God. Thus, what is said about something in Creation, like ‘x is good’ or ‘x is living’, can be said also of God. Still, Creation can never be like the Creator perfectly. Any predicate ascribed to God names an attribute found in nature. But predicates ascribed to Creation, when ascribed to God, can thus only signify imperfectly (ST 1a, 13, 2). So, interestingly, to St. Thomas ‘God is good’ or ‘God is living’ may have—in Wittgensteinian terminology—similar surface grammar to ‘Nature is good’ and ‘Humans are living beings’ but have different depth gram-

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 99 mar. The difference between God and creation is as radical as could be. God is not ostensible. Attributes of God, such as, goodness and life are inherent in God but not necessarily in nature (which can turn evil) or in humans (who can die). The statement ‘God is good’ and ‘God is living’ are rephrased by St. Thomas to ‘What we call “goodness” in creatures pre-exists in God in a higher way’ and ‘Life does pre-exist in [God] the source of all things’ (ST 1a, 13, 2). In the sentences expressing the former statements the word ‘God’ is the subject and the words ‘good’ and ‘living’ are the predicate. In the rephrase, the subjects turn out to be ‘Goodness in creatures’ and ‘Life’ while ‘God’ is relocated to the predicate. One can suppose that following what St. Thomas does with ‘God is good’ and ‘God is living’ one can rephrase ‘God exists’ to ‘The existence of the universe—every thing that was, is, and will be—pre-inheres in God in a higher way’. This is not exactly like the earlier-proffered Wittgensteinian paraphrase; but nonetheless they have something significant in common: ‘God exists’ is about the existence of earthly things. One commentator of St. Thomas, Denys Turner, confirms this point thus: “Thomas thinks that those [five ways of proving God’s existence] are not meant to tell you anything about God at all, for rather they tell you something about the world, namely that it is created. Of course, what shows it to be created shows that we need to speak of its Creator” (Turner 2002b, 8–9; italics added).

V. Seeing God If the universe is conceptually integral to the sense of speaking of God, then it is not appropriate to speak as though God can be inferred from the universe.10 In Wittgenstein’s reckoning belief in God’s existence is

10 This position is, however, not a very widely shared one. Most philosophers of religion, religious apologists, and ordinary religious believers speak as though God’s existence can be proven substantively and as if religious belief can be epistemically justified in some quasi-scientific ways. Most of the proof for the existence of God— which have become usual, if not the sine qua non, fare in English language philosophy of religion textbooks—are arguments that start with seemingly easily, if not universally, acceptable logical or factual truths and from there infer the existence of God. Supposedly, among the greatest arguments to prove that God exists was supplied by St. Thomas Aquinas: it is widely thought (and taught) that he intended his Five Ways to serve as proof for God’s existence—notwithstanding the fact that there are highly reputable scholars who see that what St. Thomas is doing in his famed Five Ways is less to prove the existence of God than to delineate the concept of God. Be that as it

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expressive of an attitude towards the universe—an attitude that recognizes divinity (LW II §38). Much like the aesthetic attitude so essential to aesthetic appreciation, it is virtually impossible to describe completely what this attitude consists in, or how it is acquired: to describe what aesthetic appreciation consists in one would have to describe a whole environment (LC, 7) and indeed a whole custom and upbringing (PI II, 201). So also with the numinous attitude: most people are primed by their culture and upbringing to have it, while others by some unusual experience. But the fact is that some people just happen

may, it is worth noting how the word ‘God’ is used therein: It designates the mover that nothing else can move, the cause that nothing else can cause, the origin that has no origin, the source that cannot be sourced, the designer that no one else designed. These characterizations can be summed up in one word: ‘aseitic’. That which deserves such designation is that which exists non-derivatively; that which exists non-derivatively is most appropriately describable as being “just there.” Incidentally, Bertrand Russell, in refuting theism and promoting atheism, declares the universe to be just that—“just there.” The human mind is accustomed to think in terms of causation. The thought that every particular thing always has something that precedes it is, according to David Hume, merely a custom or mental habit reinforced by the cumulative past experiences of mankind (HN I, 4–5). It is a belief that is audacious, pre-theoretical, unanalyzed, implanted in the human mind by nature, and cannot be defended by reason (Pears 1990, 74). So it is but just a custom or mental habit to believe that the universe has a cause—a belief that cannot be defended by reason. It could be just as plausible to believe that the universe actually has no cause at all. Suppose everything that came into human cognizance were observed to have proceeded from something else, and that the totality of these things is the universe. It may be reasonable to think that any more particular thing that would subsequently come into human cognizance would have proceeded from something else. But, argues Russell, to think that the universe must have proceeded from something else commits the fallacy of composition: It is like saying that the human race must have a mother since every man is part of the human race and every man has a mother (Russell 1964, 175). Accordingly, there is no good reason to suppose that the universe has a cause; so, there is no other sound recourse but to suppose that the universe is “just there.” To say that the universe is “just there” is to refuse in effect to consider whether the universe has a genesis or not, or that it might not have existed as it actually does. So by default the universe is deemed in a sense aseitic. So it seems that an atheism that posits the universe to be “just there” effectively bestows on it a divine-like character, and thus may not be too different from pantheism. Pantheism recognizes the universe in its entirety as divine. Whatever is recognized as divine—be it the universe in its entirety, or that which transcends the universe, or that which permeates the universe—is recognized as God. But, to give atheism the benefit of the doubt, there must be a difference between it and pantheism. Atheism refuses to recognize any God whatsoever, whether such a God is identical to the universe (pantheism), or is the universe and more (panentheism), or is distinct from the universe (theism and deism) or is all of the foregoing and none of them (mysticism). Although often understood as an anti-thesis to theism specifically, atheism is essentially non-recognition of any divinity whatsoever.

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 101 to have the numinous attitude.11 It is this attitude that predisposes one to see “divine physiognomy” from the data that is the universe. It takes this attitude to recognize divinity. For some reasons not everyone shares this attitude; so not everyone is given to recognizing any divinity whatsoever. If recognizing divinity takes an attitude, so is not recognizing it. While it can be granted that there is no sufficient evidence to prove that the universe has a cause, it can also be granted in equal measure that—as the cliché goes—absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. One must ask what evidence is there to prove that the universe is “just there:” it seems that only the lack of evidence to the contrary can be cited. If there is any rationale at all to take the universe as divine or as permeated with divinity, the rationale will not convince an atheist; but, similarly, if there is any reason at all to deny any sort of divinity to the universe, the rationale will not likely convince a believer in divinity. So the disputed matter boils down to attitude. Where someone sees merely the sensible and measurable, the one with the numinous attitude recognizes divinity. From the difference in attitude follow a difference in characterizations of the relevant data; or, one may say, a difference in attitude equates to a difference in language-games. Imagine that a twenty-first century secular-minded journalist were able to travel back in time and stand side-by-side with, say, an Old Testament prophet, to witness the unfolding of an event of historical proportions, and broadcast the event “live from the past” spontaneously, extemporaneously, without the benefit of hindsight, and with minimal or no punditry or historiography, insuring the descriptions to be mere recognitions rather than well-thought out scholarly interpretations. The journalist’s account would then be on a par with the prophet since a prophetic account “is not an interpretation in a sense of a theory imposed retrospectively upon remembered facts” (Hick 1988, 143), but rather an earnest recognition of the event

11 And, it must be noted, the superstitious and the simpleton do not have a monopoly of it. Albert Einstein, not exactly noted for superstition and simple mindedness, hints at having himself a numinous attitude of sorts: “The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer stand and rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest and most radiant beauty which dull faculties can be comprehended only in their most elementary forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness” (quoted in Frank 1948, Ch. 12, §5).

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as the prophet actually experienced it. But the journalist’s description would surely be significantly differently from the prophet. The journalist would see a mundane event—even if historiographically significant event—where the prophet would see the proverbial hand of God. The prophet recognizes divinity in the unfolding of the event. This way of seeing surely can be attributed to the prophet’s numinous attitude, a well-entrenched world-view of which belief in divinity is an integral part, or otherwise a predisposition towards belief in divinity—an attitude that the journalist presumably does not share. Recognizing divinity is, as John Hick would have it, a case of experiencing-as—a notion that obviously takes off from Wittgenstein’s seeing-as. In the case of seeing-as, what is recognized is a function of the attitude (LW I §§667, 670). A switch in attitude would entail a dawning of a distinct recognition, a switch in the visual image, an emergence of a different picture to the seeing subject (RPP I §§1110–12; Z §204–5; PI II, 205, 208; cf. Mulhall 1990, 31). Two observers sharing a datum but not an attitude would see things differently (LW I §770). However it may be, it takes an attitude to see-as.12 Transposing this theme to a much grander scale one would have thus: what one recognizes in a phenomenon or cluster of phenomena is a function of one’s attitude. And a difference in attitude between two subjects observing the same phenomenon makes two distinct recognitions of it. Indeed, there is plausibility to Hick’s transposition of the notion of seeing-as to experiencing-as. After all, everyone encounters the world as “always already saturated with human meaning” (Mulhall 1990, 124). Certainly, the “world” here include not only pictures, words, sounds and animal behaviour but the flow of history, and even the universe

12 And there is such a thing as an inability to see-as, or aspect-blindness—and along with this is meaning-blindness. Such blindness can be supposed to be constitutive of a failure of imagination, of a lack of a sense of aesthetics and even of humour—not that there is here a case of mental retardation (RPP I §189). An aspect-blind subject may be keen enough to describe a line-drawing to the most minute of details and with impeccable terminological precision but would be unable to limn a configuration beyond that which is of technical interest. Where a perceptive subject sees figures and happenings, an aspect-blind subject sees no more than lines, curves and shades; where lines, curves and shades evoke beauty, feeling vivacity, and even personality in a perceptive subject the same lines, curves and shades evokes almost nothing to an aspect-blind subject. Says Wittgenstein about the person afflicted with this blindness: “We should want to designate him as, say, ‘prosaic’” (RPP I §343); in some idiom such a person is designated as “square.” This state of flairlessness can also be characterized as a lack of attitude.

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 103 in its plenitude. All perceptions, claims Hick, are a case of experiencing-as. His main concern, though, is perception of the religious kind. Accordingly, if some people speak of a God at work behind such and such phenomena whereas others speak of it in purely scientific or secular terms it is because the former experience the phenomena in question as a divine manifestation. One can nitpick on the details and soundness of this claim that all perceptions are a case of seeing-as (see e.g. Scott 1998, 93–107), but Hick cannot be that wrong from a Wittgensteinian standpoint. It is clear that what he calls experiencing-as is roughly the same as what Stephen Mulhall (1990, 150) calls continuous aspect perception which on “Wittgenstein’s view . . . picks out the basis or fundamental way in which humans relate to the world around them through their linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour.” The standard human relationship with the world is one of continuous aspect perception. Experiencing-as is roughly the same as continuous aspect perception because experiencing-as seems to also encompass aspect dawning, the dawning of recognition of an object to a subject in a moment of encounter between subject and datum; the accompanying expression of that dawning is an exclamation of recognition—i.e. Äusserung (avowal)—as much as it is a report of what is seen (PI II, 198; cf. Mulhall 1990, 19). Aspect dawning is differentiated from continuous aspect perception in that the former “is not a specific visual experience [and its expression is not an avowal]. Rather it involves an immediate, spontaneous reaching for the relevant form of description; [words that describe the experience are employed] as a single perceptual report, without any awareness that it is one of the several options” (Mulhall 1990, 20). Whether a perception is a case of aspect dawning or continuous aspect perception, it invariably fundamentally involves recognition. Recognition involves two sides. On the one side is the datum or are the data from which certain objects are identified. There are objects that are practically universally identifiable from certain data or are otherwise easily identifiable from certain data as certain objects by every normal human given the opportunity of prior acquaintance with them. There are also objects that are immediately recognizable from certain data only within a cultural, ideological or institutional conceptual matrix. On the other side is the subject, who is biologically and environmentally constructed—i.e. made up of neural systems and sensory organs and attitude (perhaps the condensation of upbringing, custom, personal experiences, and temperament, and possibly even testosterone level). There are degrees of complexity

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in object recognition. There is the simple recognition: the immediate identification of an object from an unambiguous datum. A child who is shown the portrait of her mother and immediately responds with the utterance “mama” is an instantiation or manifestation of simple recognition. There is the complex recognition: the immediate identification of an object from an ambiguous datum—or data, as the case may be—with the ambiguity of datum indicating that more than one plausible recognition can be made of it. Identifying either a duck or a rabbit in a line drawing, or either passive coyness or subtle flirtation on the face of the Mona Lisa, are instantiations of a manifestation of complex recognition. Even more complex is that which calls for reading significance into what ordinarily would be otherwise taken as an inchoate mass of data. In Wittgensteinian parlance, complex recognition is seeing-as or aspect perception. In this regard, one may speak of aspect dawning—for instance, in cases where there is a sort of unexpected recognition or a noticing of a new aspect and whose expression is one of surprise of sorts, e.g. ‘Oh, it’s a duck!’—or of continuous aspect perception—for instance, in cases of a not-unexpected recognition (PI II, 194–5). Transposing the notion of seeing-as from the physiognomy of a human face and body language to a much grander scale, where instead of lines, curves and shades in a frame as data there is a natural phenomenon, or a cluster of phenomena, or the totality of all phenomena (i.e. the universe), one arrives at experiencing-as—a continuous aspect perception at a grand scale. However, it is most noteworthy that Hick presents a supposed Wittgensteinian idea in the most un-Wittgensteinian way. Experiencing-as, he claims, is an end product of a “first-order interpretation . . . an unconscious and habitual process resulting from negotiations with our environment in terms of a set of concepts constituting our operative world of meaning” (Hick 1984, 50). (There is a second-order interpretation where the interpreter consciously utilizes theory, analytical and extrapolative methods, e.g. an historian interpreting data, a detective the clues, or a metaphysician the universe.) His association of the term ‘first-order interpretation’ with, as he claims, the Wittgensteinian notion of experiencing-as is crucially wrong. Explicitly excluding the element of interpretation, or making differentiations with it, is how Wittgenstein characterizes seeing-as: e.g. “To interpret is to think, to do something; seeing is a state” (PI II, 212). Interpretation involves a method that includes knowingly presupposing a theory, doing analysis and extrapolation; but seeing is a whole course of thought coming to

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 105 mind in a flash (RPP I §206), or simply dawning on one who sees (cf. PI II, 194f, 206, 210; Mulhall 1990, 124). Interpretation involves laying down the evidence clearly upon which a judgment would be arrived at; the evidence for seeing-as, e.g. subtleties of glance, of gesture, of tone, degrees of curvature or slants of lines, darkness of shades, is imponderable (RPP I §243)—“imponderable” because one can correctly discern a genuinely loving look from a feigned one, but one may not be able to describe clearly the difference such that an aspect-blind observer can make the same discernment; and the indescribability is, however, not because one is just inarticulate or that one’s language lacks the right vocabulary (PI II, 228), but because the evidence is right there for all to see yet the most technically accurate and detailed description of them would not be sufficient to lead one who is aspect-blind to see them as evidence. Seeing-as is characterized by immediacy of identification— identification that dawns in a flash. There certainly are psychological or neurological processes that lead to seeing-as and Wittgenstein does not in any way deny such occurrence. But it is irrelevant to the matter in question (cf. PI II, 212; LWL §51). Everyone knows what it is to see something as this or that, yet hardly anyone knows what actually happens in one’s brain during the moment of seeing-as. Seeing as, whether it is a case of aspect dawning or continuous aspect perception, is recognition: i.e. the state of immediate identification of a familiar object; or the admittance of x to consideration or to a status as being y. The identification or admittance is characterized by an element of certainty; the lack of analytical and inferential processes; and a prior acquaintance, at least, with the object identified (cf. PI §§602–4; Z §202). So, if recognizing divinity is a case of seeing-as, or more particularly, continuous aspect perception, then there is no interpretation and inference involved—just like recognizing one’s child when she comes home from school: one recognizes one’s child when one sees her, but one does not infer from her facial and other bodily features that she is one’s child, nor does it dawn on one that she is one’s child; and if she arrives unhappy one recognizes unhappiness in her, or it could dawn on one that she is unhappy upon having a glimpse of her face, but one does not infer unhappiness from her face, much less take a measurement of her facial dimensions and enter it for analysis into a computer running on an emotion-recognition program. Divinity is recognized in the universe—what this means is just like what one means when one says that in a line-drawing one recognizes

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a duck or a rabbit, or in a cluster of lines and loops and curves and circles one recognizes a sketch of Don Quixote, or in that sketch of Don Quixote one recognizes the personal flair of Picasso. Of course it takes one to have the numinous attitude to recognize divinity. This attitude includes the attitude that the universe has a genesis. The attitude that the universe has a genesis is concomitant with another attitude, which is that there is that which made the universe come into being. Taking the universe as everything there is and was and could be brings one to the recognition that that which brought the universe into being is not among the things that made up and make up and will ever make up the universe. Thus there is the attitude that that which brought the universe into being transcends the universe ontically as well as epistemically, i.e. that it is wholly-other in terms of being and knowability. Given that that which brought the universe into being is per se beyond the universe and therefore beyond knowledge, then the only way that anyone can have any notion at all of that which brought the universe into being is through the universe itself. The universe—as it were—serves as the face of that which brought it into being. Taking the universe in such a way is a matter of attitude. One does not know that the universe is the face of that which brought it into being; rather, one is of the attitude that the universe is the face of that which brought it into being.13 Thus, if one sees the universe, one sees the 13 One may then be tempted to say that the universe’s characteristic of being “the face of God” (i.e. being of divine provenance) is merely a “projected/spread-into-theworld property,” a property which has “no independent-of-us existence in the world; they arise from our habitual, emotional, sentimental and attitudinal reactions to the world” (Insole 2006, 15–6). And, it seems, to say that the divine provenance of the universe is merely a human projection is to say in effect that God is merely a human projection and is not real in itself. But, if Hume is right, one can also say the same thing with causation (for it is not really “out there” but is merely in the mind); and with beauty (for, as the cliché goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder); and, perhaps, with colour, too, (for how can one know that colours are not merely a function of the human perceptual act?) So, accordingly, one will have to be prepared to say matter-of-factly that the world of cause and effect, of beauty, and of colour are not real in themselves but merely human projections. This is one kind of talk that Wittgenstein would dismiss as idle talk, for it, aside from providing a talking point for those who engage in academism, would not make any significant difference whatsoever to human existence. (Would any philosophy lecturer who plays competitive billiard, is passionate about Chopin and Dvorak, and drives a taxi for extra income one day cease playing billiards, quit listening to romantic music, and disregard traffic lights if he or she comes to a conclusion after years of research that cause and effect, beauty and colours are not real in themselves but are mere human projections? And would there be any progressive consequences in scientific practices and technological operations if scientists and technologists all agree with him or her?) To differentiate between prop-

mature wittgenstein on seeing & (not) speaking of god 107 face of that which brought it into being. One gets a glimpse of God by seeing the universe—and it is only by seeing the universe that one gets a glimpse of God—which is to say that it is the universe that one sees when one sees God. And given the right attitude, as one sees the universe, one recognizes God. In that sense one does not infer to God from the universe.

erties that have no independent-of-us existence and those that are merely projected/ spread-into-the-world is—if at all possible—not a task as neat as some metaphysical realists think.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘GOD EXISTS’ AFTER WITTGENSTEIN AFTER ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

The statement ‘God exists’ expresses the most basic doctrinal belief in theistic religions. However, it means different things to different theological and philosophical schools of thought. In philosophical theism it is taken to be a substantive statement: i.e. a statement with a subject term or phrase that refers to a (purported) substantive entity or entities and a predicate term or phrase that provides information about that which the subject term or phrase refers to; or a statement that states (correctly or incorrectly) that such and such is really the case; or simply, an empirical statement (albeit with an out-of-thisworld referent).1 So, accordingly, the subject term ‘God’ must be a

1 One can get stuck in finding a watertight once-and-for-all definition of ‘substantive statement’. The logical empiricists called substantive statements “empirically significant.” Their (failed) search for the criterion of cognitive significance was in effect a search for such a definition. First they proffered the verifiability criterion: “A sentence is cognitively significant if and only if it is not analytic and is capable, at least in principle, of complete verification by observational evidence” (Hempel 1965, 105). Seeing that this criterion rules out sentences which they were not prepared to dismiss as cognitively insignificant, such as ‘All storks are red-legged’ and ‘For any substance there exists some solvent’, they shifted to the falsifiability criterion which goes thus: “A sentence has empirical meaning if and only if its negation is not analytic and follows logically from some finite logically consistent class of observation sentence” (Hempel 1965, 106). Again this criterion rules out sentences they were not prepared to dismiss as cognitively meaningless, like universal statements such as ‘All swans are white’. Then they came up with the confirmability criterion: “A sentence S has empirical import if from S in conjunction with suitable subsidiary hypotheses it is possible to derive observational sentences which are not derivable from the subsidiary hypotheses alone” (Hempel 1965, 106). This criterion is so liberal that it accommodates the obviously non-empirically meaningful statement ‘The absolute is perfect’ so long as it is coupled with a clearly empirically meaningful statement such as ‘The apple is red’: the statement ‘The absolute is perfect and the apple is red’ makes possible the deduction ‘This apple is red’. To make a long story short: The logical empiricists failed in their venture. But that does not necessarily make ‘substantive (or empirically significant) statement’ a vacuous notion. The problem was not with the notion itself but with the definitions proffered, or maybe with the demand for a watertight once-and-for-all definition. Wittgenstein acknowledges that there cannot be a watertight once-and-forall definition of the notion ‘game’ by refusing to give one; and yet such notion cannot be dismissed as vacuous. So should the case be with the term ‘substantive statement’.

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nomenclature of an entity and the predicate term says something about the status of what is named by the predicate term. This view had since come under a cloud of suspicion after Immanuel Kant pointed out that the second word in it is not a logical predicate. What is not often said, though, is that the statement at issue may not be a substantive statement. And this is the Wittgensteinian take on it: it cannot function properly as a substantive statement. What follows below is a grammatical explication a la Wittgenstein of the paragon theological statement ‘God exists’. The aim of this chapter is show that the statement at issue does not function as substantive statement but is grammatical one. Section I shows from the Wittgensteinian point of view why ‘God exists’ cannot function as a substantive statement. Section II argues that ‘God exists’ is a grammatical statement. Section III suggests that St. Thomas Aquinas had anticipated to a significant extent Wittgenstein’s position. Section IV concludes that St. Thomas’s position is an endorsement of sorts of Wittgenstein’s take of ‘God exists’.

I. ‘God exists’ after Wittgenstein Notwithstanding what Kant had said, it is nonetheless still most widely thought that the function of the statement ‘God exists’ includes being a substantive statement. It is taken to be a knowledge-claim and is deemed bi-polar.2 As such, it is understood to refer to a state wherein a being named ‘God’ supposedly exists as a matter of fact, and its truth thought to stand or fall on whether or not it is a fact that God exists: ‘God exists’ is true if and only if God exists. On these points both the philosophical theist and atheist are in agreement. Both, notwithstanding their polar disagreement about the ontological status of God, more or less take for granted that the word ‘God’ refers to an entity which is knowable even if disembodied and can be proven to exist (or not to exist). The theist claims to know that God exists because (as one may say) God revealed Himself (e.g. to Moses through the burning bush), or that God’s existence explains best the origin of the universe and the order and purposefulness in nature. The atheist claims to know that

2 The principle of bi-polarity goes: “Every proposition must be capable of being true, and capable of being false” (Glock 1996, 63)—which is to say that the proposition’s negation is perfectly meaningful.

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 111 God does not exist because (as one would say a la Yuri Gagarin) men have searched the heavens and found no God there, or because the God-hypotheses have been discredited beyond recovery as there are more parsimonious yet more adequate explanations for the origins of the universe and of order in nature. They accuse each other of believing a false proposition. But, crucially, hardly do they accuse each other of talking nonsense. Philosophical theists believe that there were times in the history of humankind that God “Himself ” appeared before man. (God is usually addressed in the Judeo-Christian and in the Islamic traditions as though God is a male, and usually it is a male member of the human specie that sees God personally). The suggestion is that humanity came to know of the existence of God because a handful of its select members in one way or another literally had an empirical experience of God per se (God “Himself ”), and since then the existence of God has become as certain as the existence of, say, coelacanths. Of course, unlike in the case of coelacanths, God cannot be empirically experienced directly because God is not an embodied entity but a spirit (a disembodied mind). Even so the philosophical theists would point out that there can be an indirect empirical impression of God. They would argue that “it is coherent to suppose that there is an omniscient person. There would be no reason why it is incoherent to suppose that a spirit (i.e. a disembodied person), omnipresent and creator of the universe, is omniscient. Such a spirit, if asked, could give you the answer to any question, if he chose to do so” (Swinburne 1993, 172). One can imagine a philosophical theist’s answer if asked how the spirit would, if “he” chooses to do so, reply to questions: God the omniscient spirit can have a pen write answers on a paper—a phenomenon where the observer sees the pen moved by an unseen force. In such a scenario the observer can say ‘That is God’. Also, the philosophical theists would consider as instances of extra-ordinary theophany the cases of God appearing to Moses in the form of fire on the bush, and to the Israelites in the form of an alternating pillar of fire and cloud that led their way out of the land of the pharaoh. One, in a sense, is ostending to God by referring to, say, the burning bush that (so said the biblical narrative) Moses saw with his own eyes and heard making sounds that were clearly discernible statements of a language that he spoke, or to the pillar of fire or cloud that led the way for the Israelites. In such cases one can just as appropriately say ‘That was God’. The philosophical theists have no problem with speaking of both the existence and

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the non-existence of a transcendent yet entitative God. Cognizant of the significance of the principle of falsification, the theists think that a state-of-affairs wherein God does not exist is conceivable: e.g. a world overwhelmed by evil is a world without God. To them the statement ‘God exists’ is just as substantive a statement as ‘Ghosts exist’. To some cultures ‘Ghosts exist’ is a factually true statement, and to other cultures a factually false one. But it does not matter whether or not a culture is right in believing that ghosts in fact exist: what matters is that the statement expressing the existence of ghost is taken to be a substantive statement. If ‘Ghosts exist’ is indeed a substantive statement, then it could be rephrased thus: ‘There is at least one entity in the universe (the sum total of all entities and forces—whether material or immaterial, temporal or maybe sempiternal—which have existed, are existing, and will exist) that is designated by the word “ghost”’. Some believe this statement to be true, while others believe it to be false; whatever the case is, it makes no less sense for it to be false than for it to be true. If it is true it is because it so happens that there is in the universe at least one ghost (i.e. a ghost is one among existing entities and forces, material or immaterial, temporal or sempiternal, though it could have been that a ghost were not among the existent entities or forces), and if it is false it is because it so happens that there is not even one ghost therein (i.e. a ghost is not one among existing entities and forces, material or immaterial, temporal or sempiternal, though it could have been that a ghost was one among existing entities or forces). If ‘God exists’ is a substantive statement like ‘Ghosts exist’ then it may be rephrased similarly: ‘There exists at least one entity and that entity is designated by the word “God”’ or ‘Of all the entities that exist, one of them is designated by the word “God”.’ Indeed, some believe these statements to be true, while others believe them to be false. Needless to say, for those who believe these statements to be either true or false, it makes no less sense for these to be false than for these to be true. It seems that, to the believers, if the said statements were true it is because it so happens that there is besides the universe, or besides all the entities that make up the universe, a God; and if the said statements were false it is because it so happens that among the existent entities there is no God to be found. The suggestion is that while God exists, it however could conceivably have happened that there was no more being besides all the beings that make up the universe.

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 113 But, as far as Wittgenstein’s thinking goes, it is a mistake to take ‘God exists’ as a substantive statement. First, God does not just happen to exist. If God happens to exist, then a state-of-affairs wherein God does not exist is conceivable; but, as Wittgenstein points out, it is not: “There can be a description of what it would be like if there were gods on Olympus—but not: ‘What it would be like if there were God’” (CV, 82e). Second, unlike the concept of ghosts wherein existence is not part of their intension, existence is part of the intension of ‘God’ and as such it is conceptually awry to suggest that God does not exist. Third, to construe ‘God exists’ to have a sense in the category of ‘Ghosts exist’ is to construe God to be a being among other beings. Wittgenstein takes the rejection of a “God” who is a being among other beings as a matter of duty (Drury 1996c, 108). The trait of being a being among other beings does not go well with another trait which is transcendence—and transcendence is part of the intension of ‘God’. To be transcendent does not just mean to be outside the universe, but also to be wholly-other—in other words, to be radically unlike the universe or anything therein. Thus God cannot be an entity. From Wittgenstein’s point of view, the philosophical theistic position that knowledge about God came via some sort of empirical experience of God, and hence belief in God can somehow be validated in some sort of (quasi)scientific way, cannot be accepted on grammatical grounds. It is not only that the existence of God ought not to be put to test for religious or moral reasons: it cannot be put to test even if one dares to. God must be ostensible directly (like a solid object visible to the naked eye) or indirectly (like electron in a cloud chamber) if one is to test God’s existence. Many think God is ostensible: the God who appeared to Moses and the Israelites would have to be ostensible. But if one says that God is “there” (e.g. pointing to the burning bush that Moses faced or to the pillar of cloud in front of the marching Israelites), then God is not at the “other than there” (e.g. anywhere else but the burning bush or anywhere but where the pillar of cloud or fire is). This assigns God a particular ubiety in the universe. But if God is transcendent, then God cannot have a particular ubiety. God cannot be somewhere in the universe—God is supposed to be everywhere. If that is the case, then one can neither point towards somewhere and say “There is God” nor point to something and say ‘That is God’. Thus, for Wittgenstein (contra philosophical theism), it cannot be the case that ‘God exists’ is said to be proven true because certain people had

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empirical impressions of God per se, or that people posited God to explain certain phenomena (just like some scientist positing ether to explain light’s ability to travel through empty space) and tested their position and found it to be scientifically warranted. There simply cannot be any specific empirical datum that can be said to be God or unarguably a special manifestation of God. The case of the philosophical theists—and no less of the atheists—is not helped by the fact that, while they agree that a substantive claim stands or falls on the relevant facts, they do not agree clearly enough what the relevant facts are that could decisively prop up or bring down the claim ‘God exists’. They both draw their facts from the same scientific pool but they cannot agree on what the facts make of the existence, or the lack thereof, of God. Philosophical theists have proven themselves good at marshalling substantive and ratiocinative knowledge drawn from the most fancied empirical sciences and mathematical or logical techniques of the day. Yet no substantive proof has so far been offered that has not been shown to be without serious flaw.3 Even devout philosophical theists give hints—though, of course, they do not explicitly admit—that the proofs they offer really do not fully convince them that God exists: if, after presenting proof so rigorous as to need mathematical tools and so elaborate as to take about a dozen thousand words or so, all that one can show is that God’s existence is “quite likely” (Swinburne 2004, 342) and one knows that that which one tries to prove calls for an absolute affirmation, then one cannot honestly say that one’s own proof is good enough.4 Surely, they are convinced that God exists; but the proofs they proffer are hardly a factor in bringing them to, and strengthening, that conviction.5 Philosophical atheists are just as good at marshalling the substantive and ratiocinative knowledge from the same fancied empirical sciences and mathematical or logical techniques. Yet, just as there is no substantive proof so far proffered that succeeds in showing every sane and reasonable person the existence of God, there is no substantive proof so far proffered that succeeds in showing them the non-existence of God. 3 Never mind what atheists have to say about the matter; one need only consult the God-believing Richard M. Gale (1991). 4 Wittgenstein’s reply to Swinburne would be: “Can you imagine St Augustine saying that the existence of God was ‘highly probable!’” (quoted in Drury 1996b, 90). 5 The following remarks give a hint to that effect: “[It] does seem that theistic proofs are very much optional for theists. . . . The reason I am a theist has almost nothing to do with theistic proofs” (Davis 1997, 192–3).

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 115 The fact is that many sane and reasonable persons with the finest education not only continue to believe in God despite the best proofs that atheism could offer, but also offer elaborate and rigorous rebuttals to atheism. And if there are those who turn to atheism because they find the belief in the existence of God intellectually untenable in the light of certain scientific accounts, there are also those who retreat from atheism because it is the belief in the non-existence of God that they find intellectually untenable in the light of certain scientific accounts. The same sort of facts can turn one into either a theist or an atheist, depending on how one sees them—or rather, one can say, depending on the attitude through which one sees them. This is a good indication that it takes something beside facts to make one affirm or deny God’s existence, which in turn is an indication that ‘God exists’ may not really be suited in its supposed role as a substantive claim. Thus, Wittgenstein takes ‘God exists’ as other than a substantive statement.

II. God exists as a grammatical hinge Wittgenstein, whose idea of philosophical business is that of highlighting the normal (i.e. paradigmatic) use of words and statements, no doubt would want the statement ‘God exists’ to be taken within its natural situation which is the theistic language-game. Within this language-game the statement at issue is a hinge proposition, a proposition expressing a certainty. 6 Certainty is something that is not like knowledge; and the difference is not that one is more highly regarded to be true than the other, or that one elicits a greater degree of conviction than the other, but that they belong to different categories (OC §308). A claimed item of knowledge can be doubted without risking silliness, can be wrong and not compromise reasonability, its need for a warrant can be demonstrated and the warrant can at least in principle be provided. None of these is a description appropriate for a certainty. This certainty is not something borne of irrefutable evidence (evidential certainty) but something borne of attitude (psychological certainty).

6 Significantly, even theists who professionally and professorially treat ‘God exists’ as a substantive claim also characterize it as a basic postulate of theism (e.g. Swinburne 2004, 105ff ), which means that even to them the existence of God is a certainty.

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Evidential certainty goes: p is certain if there is conclusive evidence for it. Certainty, in this sense, is a property of a proposition rather than a person’s attitude to it. Psychological certainty, in contrast, goes: S holds the belief that p with more or less tenacity (Klein 1981, 194). Certainty, in the latter sense, has more to do with a person’s attitude towards a proposition rather than a property of the proposition itself. Evidence could not quite be made to figure in S’s holding of p. S simply holds on to p. It is unimaginable for him or her that p could ever go wrong, or p holds such a pivotal role in his or her discursive world that if he or she grants that it could go wrong he or she would have to do likewise to other beliefs, and this is something which he or she cannot conceivably do without losing rational equilibrium. Certainty is an attitude, a settled mode of behaviour or a mentality that are a given in the human way of living. A certainty is so assured that it is silly for one in possession of (or, perhaps, who is possessed by) that certainty to ask for a warrant for it. The point of a warrant is to lend assurance to a supposition. Obviously the provider of the assurance must itself be more assured than the recipient of it. But nothing could be more assured than a certainty. Any warrant that could conceivably be provided for it would be at best no more assured than the supposition it is supposed to lend assurance to (OC §§111, 307), could only be at best its appurtenance, and in such a case an attempt at warranting would end up with no more than a pleonasm. It is so assured that it is an aberration for one in possession of that certainty to doubt it. It precedes the game of doubt. Indeed, it is a prerequisite to playing the doubting game (OC §341). Of course, there is a possibility that a certainty (of some type) can lose its status. Just as an empirical proposition can harden and become a certainty, one that was previously a certainty can liquefy to become contestable belief (OC §§96–99), or even belief that ought to be contradicted and supplanted (OC §262)—a move that most likely would require the help of others who no longer share that certainty.7 But those who own up

7 This indicates that, as Norman Malcolm has it, certainty is not necessarily tied with truth: “Being perfectly certain (i.e. objectively certain) of something—in the sense of regarding it as unintelligible that one might be wrong—is an attitude, a stance, that we take towards various matters; but this attitude does not necessarily carry truth in its wake” (Malcolm 1986, 216). It is possible that though everyone is certain that such-and-such is the case yet it could turn out to be not so: “. . . even in the examples of contingent propositions about which you cannot be mistaken, or where your certainty is as well founded as any certainty can be, where you cannot conceive how you

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 117 to that certainty would not be able to bring themselves to doubt it and will likely deem those who do not share it as deviants of some sort, people who are not simply wrong, but fundamentally wrong (even if in fact the reverse may be the case). This is because certainty is something deeply embedded in the substructure of a person’s natural thoughts and actions. It constitutes the “starting point of belief,” “foundation of all operating with thoughts,” “riverbed of thoughts,” “scaffolding of [human] thoughts,” “substratum of all my enquiring and asserting,” “[an immovable hinge] upon which . . . [doubt and] dispute can turn” (OC §§97, 162, 209, 211, 341–3, 401, 655). It is buried underneath superstructures of knowledge and activities, and its placement is such that it is obscured beyond notice, “withdrawn from circulation,” and “shunted onto an unused siding” (OC §§88, 210). It is so basic that it can be characterized as “something animal” (OC §359), or it can be said, virtually instinctive, buried deep beneath consciousness, both preceding and underlying reasoned knowledge, and maybe even beyond the ken of one beneath whose consciousness it is embedded. A certainty cannot be undermined without causing a radical disruption. It takes a profoundly disruptive cause, like the occurrence of “something really unheard-of ” (OC §§513)—i.e. something very bizarre, indeed—to cause an undermining of a certainty.8 And even a not-quite-bizarre occurrence, such as the realization that the earth is not the centre of the universe, would be disruptive in many significant ways, for it will entail re-writing of texts everyone had for quite some time taken for granted. There are four types of hinge propositions (or certainty-expressing propositions) said to be listed by Wittgenstein (Glock 1996, 79): (1st) could be wrong, it is nevertheless not impossible that you are wrong!” (Malcolm 1986, 232–3). 8 Like the case of the athletic twenty-seven-year-old Christina, who after being anaesthetized in preparation for a relatively minor surgery said “I can’t feel my body. I feel weird—disembodied”. Oliver Sacks, her attending neurologist, notes that her parietal lobes were working, but had nothing to work with. She is able to perceive her body visually, but if she closes her eyes, her body literally disappears from her. After eight years, Sacks describes her situation as “Wittgensteinian” as “she does not know ‘Here is one hand’—her loss of proprioception, her de-afferentiation, has deprived her of her existential, her epistemic basis—and nothing she can do, or think, will alter that fact. She cannot be certain of her body.” Sacks wonders, “What would Wittgenstein have said in her position?” (Sacks 1985, note 10, chapter 3; in this chapter, aptly entitled “The Disembodied Lady,” Sacks comments that Wittgenstein’s On Certainty might as well have been entitled On Doubt, for it is marked by doubting, no less by affirming).

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those that are trans-historical, (2nd) those discovered empirical facts that once had to be bolstered by evidence but subsequently had occupied a pivotal role in relation to other propositions, (3rd) those that are generally applicable propositions about which each person is certain for himself, and (4th) those person-specific propositions which are part of a person’s subjective world. There is an alternative classification proffered (Moyal-Sharrock 2002, 295; Moyal-Shorrock 2003, 129): (a) Linguistic hinges: e.g. ‘2 + 2 = 4’, ‘A is a physical object’ (this classification does not seem to match well with any of those in the previous classification); (b) Personal hinges: e.g. ‘I have never been to the moon’, ‘I have just had lunch’ (this matches the 4th type, although it can be supposed that this kind of hinge encompasses the 3rd type, too); (c) Local hinges: e.g. ‘It is impossible to get to the moon’, ‘The earth is round’, ‘Trains normally arrive in a railway station’ (this matches roughly the 2nd type); and (d) Universal hinges: e.g. ‘The earth exists’, ‘I exist’ (this matches the 1st type). (These propositions cited as examples are recognized as hinge propositions not because of certain intrinsic characteristics that are supposed to mark them as hinge but because undoubtedly their paradigmatic use is that of a hinge proposition. They can, however, be grafted in contexts where their use is other than a hinge proposition—such as, e.g. in a theatrical situation—but these non-hinge functions are, as it were, only parasitic to the paradigmatic function.) ‘God exists’ does not quite fit in with the features of a 1st type (universal) hinge. A universal hinge is probably the most fundamental of all above-identified types of certainties in the sense that they are certain for all people at all times, and its negation would be for everyone under any circumstance absolutely bereft of conceptual content. A denial of a universal hinge hardly differs in appearance from statements issuing out of a seriously unhinged mind: it resembles a case of a full-blown Cotard delusion, a “rare condition of which the central symptom, in its complete form, leads the patient to deny his own existence, and that of the external world” (Enoch and Trethowan 1991, 163). The afflicted would say “I am dead” or “I am not alive, I cannot move . . . I have no mind, and no feelings; I have never existed, people only thought I did” (quoted in Sass 1994, 52n). But denying ‘God exists’ does not carry a similar suggestion as denying, say, ‘The universe exists’ or ‘I exist’. Such denials made in earnestness would have no chance of anyone sane and reasonable agreeing with it, would be described as “insane” or at the mildest “strange,” will not likely

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 119 draw a reproach from the well-informed, but instead sympathy from the kindhearted and laughter from the less sympathetic. To an assertion such as ‘God does not exist’ some perfectly sane and reasonable persons would agree, while others who are equally sane and reasonable would reproachfully describe it as an “erroneous” and “morally repugnant” statement but hardly “insane” or “strange.” Every sane and reasonable person is never uncertain about whether the universe or he or she exists, but not every one of them believes, let alone is certain, that God exists. ‘God exists’ cannot be a 2nd type (local) hinge, either. (This type may also be called substantive certainty.) Certainties of this type are about empirical facts. Some certainties of this type were once upon a time not certainties but mere beliefs about things being such-andsuch. Some of the facts the certainties are about were once unknown, then discovered, likely disputed, and then accepted to the point of being hardly challenged so as to become a paradigm against which other beliefs are measured for belief-worthiness. Some though are not of the kind that start as discoveries: e.g. it is hardly meaningful to talk of the discovery of the regularity of the rising and setting of the sun or even of the (now-defunct certainty of ) flatness of the earth as these are matters that were given to common sense empirical impression from the very start—by the time organisms on earth were beginning to develop sentience, one may surmise that some of these certainties were being imbibed, too. The existence of God, it is widely believed, is one such matter that presumably was previously unknown, then was discovered, and now is a matter of substantive certainty to many people. But if one were to follow the Wittgensteinian line of thought, ‘God exists’ is not even a substantive statement. So, accordingly, it cannot be a substantive certainty. ‘God exists’ evinces unmistakable characteristics of a linguistic hinge (or, as it will from hereon be called, grammatical hinge). Wittgenstein speaks of statements whose opposite cannot be imagined (i.e. an informative answer to the question ‘What it would be like if any of this type of statements were false?’ is unimaginable): for statements such as this type, an informative answer to the question ‘What would it be like if any of this type of statements were true?’ is equally unimaginable (PG §83; cf. PI §§251–2). For example, there cannot be a sensical, let alone informative, answer to the question “What would it be like if ‘Every rod has a length” is false?.” And any answer to the question “What would it be like if ‘Every rod has a length’ is true?” would at

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best be uninformative. If (mis)taken for a substantive statement (i.e. used as substantive statements) statements of this type become meaningless (i.e. they will fail to function in the way they are intended to, which is to make claims that can in principle be tested for factual truth or falsity). They have a use, though: as grammatical statements. Such statements serve to regulate the use of words as though a rule. For example they ascribe length to a rod but never to a sphere, hinting at a rule that the concept ‘length’ dovetails with ‘rod’ but never with ‘sphere’. These statements’ real function is to show the rules for the use of words and on the dovetailing of concepts. These statements are characterized by their being self-evidently true, by being pleonastic: all that its predicate has to offer is some characteristic(s) that is (are) inherent in the subject. So obvious it is that a normal reply by anyone familiar with them when they are asserted would be “Of course!.” Also, if it is negated the result would be something absurd (as absurd as the denial of a universal hinge; the difference between the two is that a universal hinge, unlike a grammatical hinge, is not employed to model linguistic use). Such is the case, for example, with ‘A rod has length’. Similarly, in the case of ‘God exists’, there can neither be a description of what it would be like if there were no God nor what it would be like if there were God. ‘Existence’ inheres in the concept ‘God’, or, is (if it were not pleonastic to say) a sine qua non intension of ‘God’ (cf. Malcolm 1960, 45f ). By intension God exists.9 It is thus in the interest of conceptual coherence that God be thought of as that which cannot not exist.10 One can even lay the case that ‘that which cannot not exist’ is a definite description of God, and as such is interchangeable with ‘God’. That may be disputable (for there may be other so-called sempiternal objects that can be spoken of as that which cannot not

9

This point may not be of much use to the issue engaged in by philosophical theists with atheists. Malcolm may say that “once one has grasped Anselm’s proof of a necessary existence of a being greater than which cannot be conceived, no question remains as to whether it exists or not” (Malcolm 1960, 52). But, granting that by intension God exists, the atheists would then want to be guided to the extension of ‘God’. St. Anselm admits (tacitly in Pros XV) that there cannot be that extension of God that the atheists are demanding to see. 10 This essentially is St. Anselm’s point, if Malcolm is to be believed. But this is Wittgenstein’s point, too: “God’s essence is said to guarantee his existence . . .” (CV, 82e). With this point goes the suggestion that the quintessential atheistic statement ‘God does not exist’ is awkward, if not incoherent. God necessarily exists. Therefore to say that God does not exist is to say that that which necessarily exists does not exist. Atheism, it seems, is itself a discourse caught in a paradox.

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 121 exist), but there can be no dispute that ‘that which is worthy of the highest praise and deepest reverence’ is also a definite description of God. That being the case, ‘God exists’ is interchangeable with ‘that which is worthy of the highest praise and deepest reverence exists’. The negation of the latter statement is queer, for there cannot be a coherent concept wherein privation of existence with worthiness of the highest praise and deepest reverence dovetail. It ought to be noted that it is a religious truism that only that which cannot not exist can be said to be worthy of the highest praise and deepest reverence. If x is worthy of the highest praise and deepest reverence, then it must be that x is that which cannot not exist; but if x is not that which cannot not exist, then x is not that which is worthy of the highest praise and deepest reverence. Issuing the statement ‘There is no x that is worthy of the highest praise and deepest reverence’ is tantamount to issuing ‘There is no x that cannot not exist’; and this latter statement can be rephrased ‘That which cannot not exist does not exist’. This statement is obviously paradoxical, not to say incoherent. All indications, then, are that the statement ‘God exists’ is really a grammatical hinge.

III. St. Thomas Aquinas on ‘God exists’ It is widely thought that what St. Thomas intended to do in his Five Ways was to prove substantively that God exists. He, supposedly, presents five factually undeniable premises, and from these premises makes logically unassailable inferences towards establishing that there is in fact that which can be designated as ‘God’. Those who think that such is the case also, in effect, takes it that ‘God exists’ is to St. Thomas a substantive statement. But a case also can be made that what St. Thomas does in the Five Ways is less offering an argument for God’s existence than delineating the concept ‘God’.11 On other words, what

11 There are those in the know who read him to be doing such delineating task. For example, Rudi te Velde, who reads St. Thomas in such a way writes: The real issue for Thomas is not whether God exists as a matter of fact, or even whether we may consider ourselves to be rationally justified in believing that God exists. His focus is in a certain sense not epistemological at all; that is, he is not looking for some sort of reason that may justify assent to the proposition that God exists. What Thomas is looking for is not so much rational certainty as intelligibility, to wit the intelligibility of the truth expressed and ascertained by the proposition ‘God exists’.

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St. Thomas is doing in the Five Ways is proffering not really a substantive proof for God’s existence but a philosophical analysis a la Wittgenstein of the statement ‘God exists’. Apparently Wittgenstein read St. Thomas. As goes the report of Garth Hallet: Among the few philosophical works in W.’s possession when he died Rush Rhees lists two volumes of the Summa Theologica, in the Pustet edition (Salzburg and Leipzig, 1934), which gives the German on the top half and Latin on the lower half of the page. The first volume, given to W. by Ludwig Hänsel in 1938, contains Part One, Articles 1 to 13; the second, which Hänsel gave him a year later, contains Articles 14 to 26. ‘The only remark of Wittgenstein’s about Aquinas that I can remember,’ adds Rhees, ‘was that he found him extremely good in his formulation of questions but less satisfactory in his discussions of them’. (Hallet 1977, 761)

And there is this other report of Wittgenstein making fun of his landlord in Swansea, the Reverend Wynford Morgan “for having his walls lined with books the he never read, accusing him of having them there simply to impress his flock” (Monk 1990, 463). If he found it ridiculous to put a book that one has not read on one’s shelf, and if he was honest with himself, then whatever books he had when he died, he must have read them. If Wittgenstein had the work of St. Thomas with him personally until the day he died, then he must have read it. Maybe St. Thomas influenced Wittgenstein—or maybe not so significantly.12 Whatever the case may be, it is interesting that Wittgenstein went the way of St. Thomas—or, seen in another way, it is interesting that St. Thomas seems to have anticipated Wittgenstein’s position.

* * * It is important to acknowledge the proper theological context and aim of the Five Ways in the Summa. They are but a small, though necessary, first step in the systematic exposition of the scientia of sacred doctrine inasmuch as they provide the initial access to the intelligibility of the subject of this scientia. The arguments are basically-object oriented, that means, they address the question of how the truth (or reality) of God is accessible to human understanding, and not that different epistemological question of how my (our) belief that God exists may be rationally ascertained in its reference to objective reality. (te Velde 2006, 38–9) 12 Fergus Kerr thinks that Wittgenstein’s remarks “God’s essence is supposed to guarantee his existence . . .” (CV, 82e) is an allusion to the celebrated thesis of St. Thomas that essence and existence is identical in God (Kerr, 1986, 154). If Kerr is right, then that is an influence significant enough.

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 123 The very first statement in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures that St. Thomas certainly subscribes to is ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’. God, before anything else in this narrative, is introduced as originator of the universe. Being such an originator suggests that God is the precedent of, is greater than, and is distinct from the universe. All these, in turn, suggest transcendence. The word ‘God’ is often taken to be a proper noun, and as pointed out above, thought to have a referent. Those who take that word to have a referent are in one way or another and to a lesser or greater extent expected to know what its referent is. A referent is known, or knowable, if at least in principle it, or its criteria, can somehow be ostended. But whether God, the referent of ‘God’, can somehow be ostended or not is the operative question here. Some give an affirmative answer to this question, while others (such as Wittgenstein) give a negative one. No less a thinker than St. Thomas does give a negative answer. Something can be ostended if it can be observed, calculated, located, delineated, configured, or even reified—or (to put it in more classically-sounding terms) if it falls into any of Aristotle’s ten basic categories of things, can be assigned a proper genus and species. In other words, there has to be some positive knowledge about that which is to be ostended.13 As St. Thomas would have it, God cannot come close to being observed, calculated, located, delineated, configured, or reified (save in cases of “corporealizing” the incorporeal God). He points out that “[w]e know of [God] only as transcending all creatures, as the cause of their perfections and as lacking anything that is merely creaturely . . . and is distinct from them all” (ST 1a, 13, 8). God is unlike the universe: “God . . . is not in the same class as material realities, either in logical order or in the natural order—for God is not in any sense in a class” (ST 1a, 88, 2); or, to put it in another way, “God cannot be a species within a genus” (ST 1a, 3, 5); “is not even a prototype within the genus of substance, but the prototype of all being, transcending all genera” (ST 1a, 3, 6). So no positive knowledge can be had about God: “In this life our minds cannot grasp what God is in himself; whatever way we have of thinking of him is a way of failing to understand him as he really is” (ST 1a, 13, 11). What St. Thomas is saying essentially is: God cannot 13 Cf. “According to Aquinas, we know what something is (quid est) when we can single it out as part of the material world and define it. More precisely, we know what something is when we can locate it in terms of genus and species” (Davies 1997, 516).

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be conceptualized. If so, then God cannot be referred to meaningfully, let alone be ostended (cf. Preller 1967, 8–10; Davies 1987, 61): “[God] cannot be pointed to . . . there is no way of referring to God” (ST 1a, 13, 1). Thus, if the word ‘God’ were to be a designator at all, it would be for that which humanly speaking is absolutely unknowable in itself but is thought to be the cause of everything that is knowable (cf. ST 1a, 13, 8). To make matters more complicated, the second word of the statement ‘God exists’, as Immanuel Kant most notably points out (CPR II, III, 4), is not a logical predicate. This Kantian position can be read into St. Thomas, too. A logical predicate is supposed to provide information about the subject that is not inherent to it. But “ ‘is a being’ (or ‘exists’) for Aquinas . . . does not tell us anything about anything . . . cannot serve to tell us what something is” (Davies 1987, 51). In other words, St. Thomas agrees that ‘exist(s)’ does not provide information about whatever grammatical subject it is a grammatical predicate to. And that may serve as a clue as to what St. Thomas takes the nature of ‘God exists’ to be. Be that as it may, ‘exists’, either in ‘Ghosts exist’ or ‘God exists’, may not say anything about ghosts or God in terms of providing information about their respective attributes. ‘Ghosts exist’, however, does suggest rightly or wrongly something about the composition of the universe, or that some state of affairs obtains (e.g. somewhere, sometime, somehow someone is bound to hear heavy footsteps and banging closet doors in some empty room). So ‘Ghosts exist’ can be translated into ‘Among the objects that make up the universe are ghosts’. But God, to St. Thomas, is not another object among other objects—is not like any object in the universe, is not even an object. If God exists, it is an existence distinct from the universe which is the sum total of all objects that had, have and will have existence. Anyone sane and reasonable certainly has a good idea what ‘The universe exists’ means—for one thing, the universe is somehow ostensible. (One can stand on the summit of Mt. Everest one starry night and, with outstretched arms making a sweeping motion, say ‘This is the universe’, or one can say the same statement while pointing to an astronomer’s model of the universe.) But ‘God exists’ is different. Nonetheless St. Thomas reckons that ‘God exists’ is self-evident in itself: A self-evident proposition, though always self-evident in itself, is sometimes self-evident to us and sometimes not. For a proposition is selfevident when the predicate forms part of what the subject means. . . . If

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 125 therefore it is evident to everybody what it is to be this subject and what it is to have such a predicate the proposition itself will be self-evident to everybody. . . . But if what it is to be this subject or have such a predicate is not self-evident to some people, then the proposition, though selfevident in itself, will not be so to those to whom its subject and predicate are not self-evident. I maintain that the proposition ‘God exists’ is self-evident in itself, for . . . its subject and predicate are identical, since God is his own existence. But, because what it is to be God is not evident to us, the proposition is not self-evident to us, needs to be made evident. This is done by means of things which, though less evident in themselves, are nevertheless more evident to us, by means, namely, of God’s effects. (ST 1a, 2, 1) A proposition that is self-evident in itself need not be so to this or that person: to someone, for example, unaware that its predicate forms part of its subject’s definition . . . Now the proposition that God exists is selfevident in itself since its subject and predicate are identical, but it isn’t self-evident to us because we don’t know what God is: so it needs to be made evident to us, but not to those who can see God’s essence. (de Pot. 7, 2, R11)

If ‘God exists’ is self-evident, then there can be no supposing that it can be false, there can be no need whatsoever to show that it is true, and those who say it is false may be dismissed outright as less than sane. But in fact such is not the case. As noted above, many take the statement at issue to be false and they are not deemed insane—fools, perhaps, but not insane—and the pious, and many say even St. Thomas himself, are only too willing to deploy the most rigorous, sophisticated and sustained arguments to prove that the statement at issue is true, thereby tacitly but unmistakably recognizing that their antagonists are not only sane but also intelligent. St. Thomas tries to explain away this conceptual dissonance by positing that the statement at issue is “self-evident in itself ” but not “self-evident to us.” Evidently, by ‘self-evident’ here means analytically self-evident: the subject and the predicate are logically identical, or else the predicate forms part of the subject’s definition. Clearly, what is being characterized here is a statement. He, though, mentions the need to make its self-evidency evident to humans. As his reasoning goes, ‘God exists’, while self-evident in itself, is not self-evident to “us” because the essential nature of God is not evident to “us”. (Presumably, by “us” St. Thomas means human beings; but those whom he refers to as “those who can see God’s essence” and to whom making evident the nature of God is superfluous are, presumably, non-humans.) Only when it is somehow made evident to humans that, among other things, existence forms part of

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the essential character of God, would they realize the self-evidence of the statement at issue. So, coming to this realization is a matter of having some ideas about the essential character of God. To make evident the inherent self-evidence of the statement ‘God exist’, one, says St. Thomas, needs to look at what he says are “God’s effects,” i.e. creation (the universe). What he seems to say is that the existence of the universe, of the things and happenings therein, which he speaks of as God’s effects, makes evident the self-evidence of the statement ‘God exists’. He describes God’s effects (the universe), as “less evident in themselves [or itself ], [but] are [or is] nevertheless more evident to us.” One can wonder whether by “less evident in themselves” he is referring to the fact that the so-called effects of God—the universe, with the things and happenings therein—exist, or to the statement ‘The universe—the totality of the effects of God— exists’. Statements may be spoken of as “less evident in themselves.” Thus it is sensible to speak of statements such as ‘The universe exists’ and ‘motion exists’ as “less evident in themselves” (vis-à-vis the statement ‘God exists’) in the sense that the word ‘exist’ is not identical with, nor does it form part of the definition of, the words ‘universe’ or of ‘motion’. But, unlike the statement affirming the existence of the universe, it does not seem sensible to speak of the fact of the universe’s existence as “less evident in itself.” It is sensible to speak of the universe’s existence as “more evident to us” than God’s existence: The existence of the universe is an ineluctable substantive fact that no sane and reasonable person would bother to dispute, while the existence of God, even though granted as certain by many, is disputed by many a sane and reasonable, not to say extremely intelligent, person. So, when St. Thomas refers to that which is “less evident in themselves” he cannot be referring to the fact of the existence of the universe if he were to make sense: he must be referring to statements about the existence of that which God supposedly caused, such as ‘The universe exists’. If the statement ‘The universe exists’ is more evident than ‘God exists’ it is because the former states an undisputed empirical truth; but if the statement ‘God exists’ is said to be more evident than ‘The universe exists’ it is because the former states an analytic truth. There is, on St. Thomas’ part, an equivocation in the use of ‘evident’: analytically evident and empirically evident. The question that needs to be raised at this point is whether the self-evidency of ‘God exists’ can be made evident by making God’s

‘god exists’ after wittgenstein after st. thomas aquinas 127 existence evident. It is ironic indeed that, such as in this case, there can be talk of making evident that which is self-evident. But be that as it may, St. Thomas’s reasoning evidently parallels the following: ‘Bees are honey-producing insects’ is self-evident in itself but may not be self-evident to those who do not have a sufficient idea of what bees are; but when facts about bees are made evident to them—that bees are the only insect, indeed the only creature in the world, that produce honey—they will realize that both ‘bees’ and ‘honey-producing insects’ can only have an identical referent, and as such ‘Bees are honey-producing insects’ becomes to them self-evident. But making God evident is, of course, far more complicated than making bees so. For one, unlike bees God cannot be observed in any way and any inkling of sorts humans can claim about God could at best be hinted at only by God’s effects. St. Thomas (ST 1a, 2, 3) proffers five ways in which the existence of God can be made evident and thereon make evident the self-evidency of ‘God exists’. In a nutshell the five ways go: (1) If there is motion, then there must be a force that set the motion; (2) If there is causation, then there must be a first cause; (3) If there is being, then there must be an originator of being; (4) If there is value, then there must be a provider of value; and (5) If there is purposefulness, then there must be a mastermind. It is, at least on St. Thomas’ reckoning, a matter of logical necessity that if there is x, then there must be a cause of that x. And the same reckoning necessitates that that which exists cannot be thought to flow from that which is deprived of existence; to think otherwise is to think incoherently. Thus if, for example, a being exists, its origin must be thought of, at the very least, as not deprived of existence. One is compelled by common sense logic to think that the originator of that which exists must exist. And on St. Thomas’s account, that which must exist because some other thing exists may be called ‘God’. God is the ultimate cause. If thought of as an ultimate cause, then it cannot be helped that God must be thought of as no less than aseitic—one whose existence is underived. To present in another way St. Thomas’ account: ‘exists’ (or more precisely ‘exists necessarily’) is an intension of ‘aseitic’, which if used as either a noun (‘the aseitic’) or an operative word in a definite description (‘that which is aseitic’), it can stand in lieu of ‘ultimate cause’, a phrase which is synonymous with ‘God’—in short, ‘exists’ is an intension of ‘God’. Thus is shown that ‘God exists’ is self-evident.

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chapter five IV. Wittgenstein à la St. Thomas

Against the tide of philosophical theism the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion takes ‘God exists’ not to be a substantive statement—it is a grammatical one. A grammatical statement is a self-evident statement. While this Wittgensteinian position may be acceptable only to a minority in the analytic philosophy of religion and Western (especially Protestant) Christian theological communities, it is not easily dismissible as anomalous for it appears to have a backing in traditional Christian thinking, especially in the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas. Between Wittgenstein’s theologically-relevant philosophy and St. Thomas’ philosophically-relevant theology (or at least the theology that emerges when his apophaticism is underscored) there is family resemblance, if not commonality. St. Thomas certainly takes the statement ‘God exists’ to be true. Yet he realizes that the referent of the subject term of the statement ‘God exists’ cannot in any way be conceived and the predicate term is not really a logical predicate and does not at all provide any substantive information about the subject. He, who takes God to be in principle beyond human scrutiny, finds it inappropriate to treat the existence of God as a substantive matter, and take the statement ‘God exists’ to be unlike other statements that make a substantive claim, i.e. as making either an empirically confirmable or falsifiable claim. Therefore, it cannot be that the statement in question is true because it corresponds to certain facts, as true substantive statements do; rather, it is true in the way a self-evident statement is true. A grammatical statement is a self-evidently true statement. It is as if St. Thomas endorses the Wittgensteinian position—a position that, in effect, says that with the statement ‘God exist’ God per se is not spoken of.

CHAPTER SIX

WITTGENSTEIN ON THE (SUPPOSED) EVIDENCE FOR GOD’S EXISTENCE

It is widely thought in the circle of believers and unbelievers alike that a religious belief is worth holding on to if it is true, and that a belief can be proven, or at least can be shown to have a good chance of being true, if supporting evidence can be mustered, or if it is demonstrated to be rationally tenable. Belief in the existence of God is one basic religious belief. Among the most cited (supposed) evidence for the existence of (the philosophical theist’s) God are the following: miracles, extraordinary religious experience, and the orderliness in the universe. It seems that the atheists agree with the theists that these are relevant evidence for God’s existence. The atheists at least implicitly concede that had miracles actually occurred, had there really been extraordinary religious experience, or if the universe were as orderly as the theists portray it to be, then the case of the theists would have been laid down successfully. However, Wittgenstein, with all his avowed respect for religious belief, is very skeptical about the evidentiary value of those (supposed) evidence for God’s existence. The supposed body of evidence that is supposed to justify religious belief is itself a product of the same sort of religious belief that it is supposed to justify. Section I shows that miracles can only be seen through, as it were, a religious lens, which means that a phenomenon is a miracle to someone who wears that lens and not to someone who wears another kind of lens. Section II shows that the status of extra-ordinary religious experience is exactly like that of miracles, that is, that an experience can be said to be “religious” only if seen through a religious lens, and from another lens is something else. Section III argues that the argument for the existence of God using the perceived orderliness of the universe, while often presented in scientific-like form of argumentation, goes only so far as to serve a psychological need, and does not pass the standard of a scientific proof. Finally, Section IV argues that religious evidence is created by the very faith that it is supposed to serve as evidence for.

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chapter six I. On miracles as evidence of the divine

According to a familiar theistic worldview there are two realms of reality: the natural and the supernatural. At times the supernatural intervene in the state of affairs of the natural realm. Occurrences of miracles are the result of the said intervention. The fact that miracles occur is itself proof that supernatural entities exist, or that certain entities situated within the natural realm possess supernatural characteristics. It has therefore become very important for some advocates of theism to establish that miracles did in fact occur, for if these were established, then proof of the existence of the supernatural, or of supernatural entities, would be established. As much as some theists would like to establish the factuality of miracles, there are those who deny that miracles occur, or will in fact ever occur. But usually, the affirmers and deniers of miracles more or less agree what miracles are: they more or less agree on the definition of ‘miracle’ and they agree that the act of Jesus turning water into wine is an example of a miracle. Moreover, they more or less agree on the evidentiary significance of miracles: i.e. those who deny that miracles did in fact occur agree with those who affirm that miracles did occur that, for instance, the resurrection of Jesus, if in fact it did occur, constitutes a proof of his divinity, or a proof of the existence of some supernatural entity. On the matter of whether or not Jesus in fact literally turned water into wine, or some such occurrences, Wittgenstein appears to be on the side of, if one may, the miracle deniers. He tells his student and close friend Drury: For me too the Old Testament is a collection of Hebrew folk-lore—yes, I would use that expression. But the New Testament doesn’t have to be proved to be true by historians either. It would make no difference if there had never been an historical person as Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels; though I don’t think any competent authority doubts that there really was such a person. (Quoted in Drury 1996c, 101)

And on another occasion he writes: A miracle is, as it were, a gesture which God makes. As a man sits quietly & then makes an impressive gesture, God lets the world run on smoothly & that accompanies the words of a Saint by a symbolic occurrence, a gesture of nature. It would be an instance if, when a saint has spoken, the trees around him bowed, as if in reverence.—Now do I believe that this happens? I don’t.

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The only way for me to believe in a miracle in this sense would be to be impressed by an occurrence in this particular way. So that I should say e.g.: ‘It was impossible to see those trees & and not feel that they were responding to the word’. Just as I might say ‘It is impossible to see the face of this dog & not see that he is alert & full of attention to what his master is doing’. And I can imagine that the mere report of the words & life of a saint can make someone believe the reports that the trees bowed. But I am not so impressed. (CV, 45e)

He was at best insouciant about the historicity of those extra-ordinary theophanies as they are described in the Bible (cf. LC, 57). He takes those biblical narratives that tell of incredible happenings as myths that impart spiritual values. It does not matter to him whether or not those events really occurred as described: it is the Spirit of the biblical narrative that counts, not its historical accuracy (CV, 32e–33e). However, Wittgenstein is not fully on the side of the miracle deniers. There is a significant difference between his position and theirs. For him the non-factuality of the narrative of, say, Jesus turning water into wine, or the like, cannot be a point counted against the Christian faith, nor can their factuality be counted for it. He sees no evidentiary significance that miracle affirmers and other miracle deniers see in the occurrence where Jesus tuned water into wine, or the like. That is what’s unique with, and interesting in, his take on miracles. The following remark is the key to understanding that take: We all know what in ordinary life would be called a miracle. It obviously is simply an event the like of which we have never seen. Now suppose that such an event happened. Take the case that one of you suddenly grew a lion’s head and began to roar. Certainly that would be as extraordinary a thing as I can imagine. Now whenever we should have recovered from our surprise, what I would suggest would be to fetch a doctor and have the case scientifically investigated and if it were not for hurting him I would have him vivisected. And where would the miracle have to go? For it is clear that when we look at it in this way everything miraculous has disappeared; unless what we mean by this term is merely that a fact has not yet been explained by science which again means that we have hitherto failed to group this fact in a scientific system. This shows that it is absurd to say “Science has proved that there are no miracles.” The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not a way to look at it as a miracle. (LE, 10–11)

To expound on this remark it would help to refer to another remark:

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chapter six Suppose I went to somewhere like Lourdes in France. Suppose I went with a very credulous person. There we see blood coming out of something. He says: “There you are, Wittgenstein, how can you doubt?” I’d say: “Can it only be explained one way? Can’t it be this or that?” I’d try to convince him that he’d seen nothing of any consequences. I wonder whether I would do that under all circumstances. I certainly know that I would under normal circumstances. “Oughtn’t one after all to consider this?” I’d say: “Come on. Come on.” I would treat the phenomenon in this case just as I would treat an experiment in a laboratory which I thought badly executed. (LC, 60–1)

Here Wittgenstein hints at an attitude in which the concept ‘miracle’ is not relevant. Perhaps it would help bring the point across if this sort of illustration given by Wittgenstein is updated into the far future. Suppose there is a Doctor Howard Hugebrain, an amateur magician, licensed electrical engineer, oft-cited medical researcher, and former astronaut with doctorate degrees in biochemistry, particle physics, and philosophy of science. He also is the founder and chairperson of the board of Miraculoso PLC, a firm with subsidiaries engaged in futuristic scientific research. One such subsidiary is operating a cryogenics research laboratory where humans put to sleep some years back and frozen are revived. And another subsidiary is operating an aerospace vehicle engineering laboratory where eccentric scientists are testing a time machine. Hugely ambitious and audacious visionary and already immensely profiting from the cryogenic and space travel tourism businesses, Hugebrain dreams of venturing into the time travel business. His firm is able to invent a prototype time travel machine and he insists on testing it himself. He asks a political ally (in the American Republican Party), the Pentecostal evangelist and professor of apologetics Reverend Jimmy Braggart, to join him. Braggart suggests that they go back in time to Palestine and have a close look at the miracles Jesus of Nazareth performed. Hugebrain, who does not actually believe that Jesus actually turned water into wine or walked on water or let alone rose from the dead, goes with Braggart’s suggestion. They travel back in time. They observe closely as Jesus turns water into wine (that they even get to taste), multiplies loaves of bread (which they get to eat), walks on water (they observe from a rented sail boat), raises the daughter of Jairus (whom Hugebrain had examined and declared clinically dead), and calls out of the tomb Lazarus (whom Hugebrain had also examined and declared clinically dead). They watched intently as Jesus is bleeding on the cross, as he is being entombed, and

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as he is walking out of the tomb. Each time Jesus performs a wondrous act the religious Braggart falls on his knees and exclaims “My Lord and my God!!” while the irreligious Hugebrain pumps is fist and fumes “Damn, it really happened!.” And Braggart says “There you are, Hugebrain, how can you doubt that miracles occur?.” But Hugebrain retorts: “Call this a miracle, or whatever, I’d rather say that these are phenomena that pose absolutely marvellous challenges to the scientific community.” “What’s the matter with you, Hugebrain?” asks Braggart, “You’ve seen signs and wonders with your very own eyes! Now how can you not believe that Jesus is divine, and mock the idea that He is a part of the One Triune God?.” The heathen Hugebrain replies “Oh, Reverend Braggart, please! If only I can figure out how Jesus did it, my company’s stocks would soar to high heavens!.” The difference that the scientist Hugebrain has with the religionist Braggart is not like the difference that a believer in miracles, such as C. S. Lewis, has with a non-believer in miracles, such as David Hume. The difference between Lewis and Hume is on whether or not it is a historical fact that Jesus literally turned water into wine and walked on water and so on. The difference between Hugebrain and Braggart is not on whether or not Jesus made things happen as the Gospels describe them but on their take of what happened. They have a radically divergent appreciation of what really happened. Braggart calls the occurrences “miracles” but Hugebrain speaks only of “phenomena that pose absolutely marvellous challenges to the scientific community.” From the occurrences Braggart infers divinity, but Hugebrain sees “nothing of any consequences” save great scientific and entrepreneurial potentials. To Braggart those works of Jesus are wonders that were a call to worship, but to Hugebrain they are wonderfully odd phenomena that called for scientific attention. The fundamental difference between the two observers of the works of Jesus is their respective attitude—let one, for the purpose of the foregoing discussion, be called “religionistic attitude” and the other “scientistic attitude.”1 1 Dr. Hugebrain may have the scientistic attitude but that does not necessarily mean that he subscribes to scientism—if ‘scientism’ means that (a) there ought to be a common scientific method necessary for the physical sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, or worse (b) science is the panacea to human shortcomings and the main highway to wisdom and enlightenment. Let it just be said that he is like Wittgenstein who gives extremely high regard for the scientific practice but is all too aware of the pitfalls of science overreaching itself. There are matters that, though can be spoken of

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A miracle can be defined as a phenomenon that violates, or supersedes, or are exempt from the laws governing the operations of nature— and it is understood that this violation, superseding, or exempting, or adding a new twist to is attributed to that which is supernatural.2 A phenomenon is said to violate, or supersede, or be exempt from a law governing the operations of nature if and only if its occurrence runs inconsistent with, or otherwise cannot be accounted for by, the aforementioned laws. It is crucial to note that essential to the concept of miracle is the element of absolute inexplicability in purely mundane terms: one can deem a phenomenon a miracle if and only if it is absolutely inexplicable in purely mundane terms. But then a question about how a phenomenon can be deemed “inexplicable in purely mundane terms” arises. It is, to say the least, an extremely challenging matter to ascertain how to be certain about the future; and so, too, it goes with how to be certain about whether or not a phenomenon that today is so inexplicable that it even defies common sense will forever remain inexplicable. Epistemologically-speaking, the assurance that a common sense-defying phenomenon will always remain inexplicable is no greater than the assurance that the sun will rise ten thousand days after tomorrow. There is no proof that it will do except that it always did for eons and eons. So everyone simply takes for granted that the sun will as usual rise ten thousand days after tomorrow. But while one

in purely scientific terms, ought not to be spoken of in such terms alone. The fact is that humans naturally relate to, and need to relate to, the world not just technically (i.e. in mechanical and utilitarian terms), but also “spiritually” (i.e. in religious, aesthetic or other value-related terms). A remark by Wittgenstein is worth remembering here: “Man has to awaken to wonder—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending them to sleep again. . . . the spirit in which science is carried on nowadays is not compatible with fear [of the forces of nature]” (CV, 5). It is not that Wittgenstein is saying that nature should be feared again in the way the ancients reputedly did; it is just that nature for him should not only be a subject of scientific inquiry but also of—if one may—humanistic appreciation. Such appreciation cannot be articulated in purely scientific terms. 2 The definition of David Hume has become almost a standard in the philosophical discourses on miracles, especially in analytic philosophy of religion circles: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature by a particular volition of a deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent” (HU, X, I, 90n). But C. S. Lewis sees a miracle not as something wherein the pattern of nature is violated, or even suspended, but where a new event is feed into that pattern. The pattern can be expressed in conditional of sorts: ‘If A, then B’. However, in an instance of a miracle, what happens is that God creates a situation where A1 instead of A stands as the antecedent to B. There is no violation of the pattern ‘If A, then B’ to speak of; there is only a new sub-pattern—as it were, a new twist is added to the laws of nature (Lewis 1947, Ch. 8).

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can justifiably take for granted that the sun will rise ten thousand days after tomorrow, one cannot know for sure that it will. Still, one can go on living as if certain that indeed it will. One cannot really know with absolute certainty, but can nonetheless be of the attitude, that the sun will rise ten thousand days after tomorrow. If, epistemologicallyspeaking, there is little assurance that a daily-recurrent event such as the rising of the sun will continue to occur tomorrow and the days afterwards, then less assurance is there that a common sense-defying phenomenon will ever remain inexplicable. Lacking such assurance, one who believes that today’s hopelessly inexplicable phenomenon is forever inexplicable can at best only be of the attitude that that phenomenon will remain forever inexplicable. It is the religionistic attitude that predisposes one to deem certain phenomena inexplicable in principle. This is an attitude that is given to take certain phenomena to be inherently mysterious and to relish in their mystery. It takes this attitude to recognize a phenomenon as absolutely inexplicable in purely mundane terms and as such label it ‘miracle’. And the direction that this attitude takes is towards the state of being held in worshipful awe by the mystery. The mystery itself becomes a source of edification. One with this attitude, when confronted with a common sense-defying phenomenon somehow linked with what is recognized to be a religious figure (such as Jesus Christ or the Blessed Virgin Mary or Mother Teresa), and where all attempts at providing a natural explanation of such phenomenon fail, would be given to attributing the occurrence to the workings of the religious figure it is linked to. The phenomenon would be called a ‘miracle’. In contrast, the scientistic attitude holds that in principle all phenomena that really occurred can be explained in terms that are free of any religious or magical overtones.3 If this attitude is in any way

3 It is most likely that one with a scientistic attitude subscribes to methodological naturalism, a “method of inquiry, which consists in setting out to explain and understand the world by finding the natural causal processes by which natural objects come into being, produce their effects and pass away” (Campbell 2006, 492). It is crucial not to confuse methodological naturalism with ontological naturalism: the former is a method of inquiry, while the latter is a belief about the constitution of reality. Methodological naturalism does not necessarily have anything to do with (pre) judging what could possibly exist and what could not, or what can possibly happen and what cannot, while ontological naturalism has everything to do with all of that. Whether or not one believes that sometime in the history of humankind there were witches riding on broomsticks, poltergeists throwing stones, fakirs levitating, preachers walking on water, cadavers coming back to life, and so on, so long as one holds

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dismissive of miracles, it is not necessarily dismissive of the possibility of the occurrence of such and such an inexplicable phenomenon (like the resurrection of Jesus) but of the attitude that such a phenomenon is intrinsically inexplicable (which is what a miracle is supposed to be: an intrinsically inexplicable phenomenon). Even if the accounts of Jesus turning water into wine, multiplying loaves of bread, walking on water, even resurrecting, were proven beyond reasonable doubt to be factual, they would be taken not as eternal mysteries but as extremely fascinating phenomena that generate puzzles that are extremely tough—but, in principle, not impossible—to solve. No phenomenon that had actually occurred is to be taken as inherently mysterious; and if there is mystery shrouding a phenomenon, it is to be taken as something less an object of relish or a source of edification than an enigma to be cracked. They would not at all be termed ‘miracles’. From the standpoint of one with the scientistic attitude, the concept ‘miracle’ itself is not only alien to the scientific discourse, but worse, considering it is a bane to the spirit of progressive science, and as such is an anathema. But the spirit of science is by nature predisposed to searching for explanations to anything that draws human curiosity, and if necessary, break taboos in the process of the search. The progress of science depends to a large extent on the assumption that no phenomenon that in fact occurred is beyond scientific explanation. It is possible, even in the age of space exploration and nanotechnology, that some scientists would declare some phenomenon a miracle. A case of miracle is declared when the scientists concerned have given up searching for a scientific explanation.4 To say that such and such is

that any object or phenomenon that was, is, or will be observed, no matter how odd, eerie or incredible, can be explained in purely mundane, or, if one may, naturalistic, terms, then one subscribes to methodological naturalism; but, presumably, one who subscribes to ontological naturalism cannot believe in what are somehow associated with the so-called supernatural, e.g. witches riding on broomsticks, poltergeists throwing stones, fakirs levitating, preachers walking on water, and cadavers coming back to life. Ontological naturalism is an anti-thesis to supernaturalism, as such the former is partly defined by its polar opposition to the latter. But methodological naturalism can conceivably have nothing to do with supernaturalism at all; supernaturalism is just too irrelevant to be placed within the purview of its consideration. 4 St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “. . . the word miracle comes from wonder, but wonder arises when the result is manifest and the cause obscure . . . Miracle suggests something full of wonder, whose cause is unknown simply and absolutely. This cause is God” (ST 1a, 105, 7). He believes that there are phenomena that are absolutely inexplicable. This expresses the tenor of the Roman Catholic view of miracles. Having performed a miracle is a necessary condition for sainthood. For example, Mother Teresa is consid-

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a miracle is in effect to suggest that such and such can never ever be taken up scientifically. Calling a phenomenon that defies all current understanding a “miracle” effectively puts an end to scientific activity. But scientists who proffer miracles as explanation betray the spirit of science. The proffering of miracles is an indication of the failure of scientists qua scientist, not an indication of the failure of science.5 One who takes the scientistic attitude to a phenomenon looks at it with cold, calculating, even brazen, inquisitiveness. Those phenomena referred to by the term ‘miracles’, including the resurrection of Jesus itself—granting for the sake of argument that these phenomena really happened—are things to be scrutinized, explored and explained in a way that is completely free from any religious or magical undertones. All plausible explanations must be tested and re-tested and rejected, except for the best of them. Of course, ultimately, the best explanation is that which opens the way for the replication of the phenomenon being explained—there is an instance of replication of phenomenon p if, given that there is an explanation for p that stipulates, for example, that a combination of o and m under condition c would result in a phenomenon identical to p, a researcher combines o and m under condition c, and as a result obtains a phenomenon identical to p. The replication of the phenomenon being explained as a result of an explanation is the best proof of the correctness of that explanation. Replication aside, the best of all explanations is, among other things, the simplest of them. The simplest of them is the one that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the least entities. So, all things being equal, an explanation that does not make an assumption of the existence of other-worldly beings and does not postulate ‘God’ is, for its comparative simplicity, considered better than

ered for sainthood. In that connection, a woman in an Indian village comes out with a story that she was diagnosed by a medical doctor with ovarian cancer and given a few months to live. She then prays to Mother Teresa and then, to the amazement of her doctor, she was in a very short time healed—perhaps virtually instantaneously healed, considering the nature of the condition. A panel of medical experts appointed by authorities in Vatican looks into the case. They do rigorous tests and engage in vigorous debates among themselves and with colleagues around the world, some of whom are not religious believers. After years and years of research they are unable to come up with a “natural” explanation. They finally decide to give up the investigation and turn in their report. The case is officially declared inexplicable in naturalistic terms. There is therefore a case of miracle. 5 Cf. “Failure to achieve a solution discredits only the scientist, not the theory” (Kuhn 1970, 80).

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the one that does. Beyond wanting to explain phenomena, one would want to drive towards controlling or exploiting them for profit, or at least making them transparent and predictable for the sake of serving human interests. So one can imagine that if a scientist was able to come up with an explanation for the water-into-fine-wine miracle, or for the Jesus-walking-on-water miracle, or for the resurrection miracle and the explanation is so good that it leads to a replication of the miracle, then that scientist would likely set up a company dealing in miracle wine and make a fortune out of it, or could become a celebrity just by walking on water and earn substantial royalties from television appearances, or might just set up a spin-off company offering resurrection services that could irresistibly draw fast-living investors and slowly-dying clients. There is a sense in which miracle is like magic. One can say “No awe and wonder, no magic.” But here the awe and wonder is contingent on the unexpectedness and inexplicability of the occurrence of a phenomenon. There is magic precisely because there is a phenomenon whose possibility one is not primed to expect, and its occurrence is to one inexplicable. Without the sense of unexpectedness and the impression of inexplicability there would be no elicitation of awe and wonder. However, in the matter of appreciating magic there is a difference between a magician and a non-magician. A magician can be awed and taken in wonder at the trick of a Houdini, but this is not the same kind of awe and wonder of a non-magician who witnesses an instance of magic. While a non-magician could only express marvel, or in some instances scream in a mixture of fright and delight, a magician would say “Damn, how could that be! If only I could figure out how it is done, I’d be as great as Houdini!.” When a clown in a children’s party stretches his hands sideward and levitates, that to a non-magician, especially a child, is magic, but to a Houdini is a trick. In a way, magic is in the eye of the beholder. Miracle, like magic, is in the eye of the beholder.6 An inherent part of the intension of the term ‘miracle’ is

6 Mark Corner points out that a “miracle is not like a conjuring trick which can be followed up with a behind-the-scene explanation of ‘how it works’. A miracle can never be explained, however sophisticated our scientific awareness becomes” (Corner 2005, 201). This makes a good grammatical remark. Absolute inexplicability is part of the intension of ‘miracle’, so to say that “a miracle can never be explained, however sophisticated our scientific awareness becomes” is merely to define the concept of miracle—it in itself does not say anything about whether or not there were phenomena that occurred in the history of the universe that can never ever be explained in

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awe and wonder—the awe and wonder of the numinous kind. This kind of awe and wonder is accompanied by a sense of sacredness, of impotency, stupefaction, and of eternal mystery. One can say: “No numinous awe and wonder, no miracle.” Of course, where there is (said to be) a miracle there is that phenomenon that elicits numinous awe and wonder. But even if there is that phenomenon, if those who behold it are not awed and not moved to wonder by it in a numinous way, then there is no miracle to speak of—there is a flabbergasting puzzle maybe, but not a miracle. Science has a good track record of uncovering the mechanism of the workings of, and then controlling and utilizing the, things that were previously mysterious and terrifying. Science has proven very successful in turning the mysterious and terrifying into something banal and utilizable. Science is in the business of demystifying old wonders and replacing them with new ones. Out with the old wonders go gods and demons that are worshipped and feared. In with the new wonders come impersonal phenomena and postulates that, instead of being worshipped or feared, are speculated on, scrutinized, explored, and sought to be brought under human control as much as possible. Out with the old wonders goes taboo. In with the new wonders comes brazen inquisitiveness. Out with the old wonders goes magic. In with the new wonders comes technics. The result is the scientistic attitude that terms free of magical or religious suggestions. However, Corner has a substantive remark added: “There is nothing observable in the event itself—however striking it may be—that compels us to call it a miracle. It certainly doesn’t have to be called that . . . But just as there is nothing in the event itself to demand that it be explained as a miracle, so also there is nothing in the nature of any event that can stop it from being a miracle.” This is an effective admission that to call something a miracle—or to refuse to call it so—is all attitude-based, an act of faith of sorts. Contra the convention set by Hume, Corner refuses to define ‘miracle’ in relation to the laws of nature because “whilst a miracle involves the absence of a natural explanation, it is impossible to know for certain that a natural explanation is absent. There may be disagreements concerning the laws of nature themselves. . . . what some people claim to be a miracle might be the working of an as yet undiscovered natural law” (13). His definition thus is a purely theological one: “a special or immediate act of God, as opposed to God’s continuous work of creating and sustaining the world” (15). This definition is perfectly appropriate in the language-game of theology. However, when taken outside this language-game, like to treat it as a substantive statement and thus opening it to substantive test even by non-believers, it will show itself to be untestable. One would be led to ask: “How could it be known that such and such is a special or immediate act of God?” The answer would likely be: “If it cannot be accounted for in terms of the laws of nature.” And then one would be asking further: “How can it be known that it cannot be accounted for in terms of the laws of nature?” Of course, it cannot be—it can only be believed to be.

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though awed it is never crushed, though caught in wonder it never ceases to be inquisitive, though stupefied it refuses to be silenced, though overwhelmed it refuses to be passive or impotent. Though not impervious to awe and wonder, this attitude is bereft of the sense of the numinous. Within the discursive world where this attitude is the standard, what to others discursive world is a miracle would here be a mere intellectually challenging oddity. The very concept of a miracle would have no place in this discursive world.

II. On religious experience as evidence of the divine Extraordinary religious experience (ERE) is also deemed a proof that supernatural entities exist. To the minds of the philosophical theists, if it is established that certain individuals did in fact have ERE, then a proof of the existence of God would be established. The typical theistic notion of ERE is an experience—sensory or otherwise—by a human being of that which is divine, or of an object or event that is of divine provenance (and it is understood that in the case of a real divine experience that which is experienced, or the source of the experience, or that which initiates the experience subsists independently of the experiencing subject). Something can be said to be an experience of that which is divine, or of an object or event that is of divine provenance, if it exhibits something supernatural, and it proves uplifting and emendatory. The case of Saul of Tarsus hearing a voice and seeing a blinding light on the road to Damascus is one example of an ERE. This experience changed his life—a change that, from the point of view of Christians, was certainly for the better. More crucially, to the eyes of conservative Christians, this experience was so anomalous that no “naturalistic” explanation could account for it adequately, and so it could only be something supernatural that made it possible. The Christian narrative goes something like the following (Acts 9). One day Saul was on the road to Damascus to go about his business of persecuting the followers of what he thought was the departed cult leader Jesus of Nazareth when, out of nowhere, Jesus sort of accosted him. He saw a blinding light and he heard a voice saying “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?.” Saul answered “Who are you, Lord?.” “I am Jesus” was the answer. As far as he was concerned Jesus spoke to him, and he spoke to Jesus. Saul’s experience, the conservative Christian think-

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ing goes, was initiated by factors that subsisted independently of him. He spoke to a being that existed independently of him. The light that blinded him was shining independently of his visual faculties, just as the voice he heard sounded independently of his auditory faculty. And this was not the only incident where Saul (later known as Paul) had such extraordinary experience. He writes of being caught up to the third heaven—but adds he was not sure “whether in the body or out of the body” and “heard inexpressible things that man is not permitted to tell” (2 Corinthians 12: 1–5). From Paul’s epistles it can be gleaned that he suffered from chronic throbbing headache and serious visual problems (2 Corinthians 12: 6–10; Galatians 4: 15). The experiences of Paul—including that one on the road to Damascus where he saw flashing of lights and then was unable to see for three days, and that incident he describes as being “caught up to the third heaven—is consistent with the condition that in modern medicine is called “migraine (with aura and without)” (Göbel et al. 1995); symptoms of this condition include temporary motor weakness, temporary blindness, visual and auditory and olfactory hallucination. Or he could also be said to have suffered from “temporal lobe epilepsy” (Landsborough 1987); symptoms of this condition include hearing a voice or voices, being in a dream-like state, feeling of detachment from oneself, seeing one’s own body from the outside. People in the days of Paul (and conservative Christians in modern times) spoke of his condition in terms suggestive of divine things. But imagine that something similar happens in modern times. Suppose there is Sergei, a KGB officer. His first assignment is to bust clandestine churches inside Russia. He is so good at his job that his superiors give him an extremely delicate assignment. He is given a list of globally influential Christians to be eliminated. Included in the lists are Pope John Paul II who the bosses in Kremlin believe to be exerting a great moral influence on the staunchly anti-communist labour union in Poland, and American evangelist Billy Graham who is talking of going back to Hungary not long after the government there allowed him in to preach and as a result galvanized the local Christians to the point that they are now flaunting their faith and are posing a clear and present danger to the ruling party. On the way to deliver specially designed ammunitions to a Turkish assassin whom he contracted to shoot the pope, Sergei suddenly feels his head pulsating, and loses control of half of his body, and sees dazzling multi-coloured light, and smells what seemed to be roses, and hears a voice saying “Sergei,

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Sergei, why would you harm my vicar?.” His car careens off the road but he survives to remember the experience. (Meanwhile, the Turkish assassin fails to get the specially designed ammunition and resorts to Plan B and ultimately fails on his mission.) Incredibly, Sergei is given a second chance and allowed to keep his assignment. Later, in the United States, he is on the way to deliver a radioactive material to be placed on Billy Graham’s drink when, again, he had a similar experience, though the voice this time said “Sergei, Sergei, why would you want to kill my servant?.” His car rams a tree. He is brought to Mayo Clinic and, after a series of tests, is found to have suffered no remarkable injury, except that he is unable to see and he feels terribly nauseated. He begins to doubt himself. He seriously entertains the thought that maybe there is a God, that maybe the Christians were right and he better abandon communism and atheism and be a Christian himself. He demands that the hospital chaplain see him immediately. He tells the chaplain everything, including who he is and his missions to kill Christian leaders. Meanwhile, a neurologist is summoned to examine him further. Both the chaplain and the neurologist initially think they are talking to a lunatic until FBI agents swarm the ward, interview the doctors and the chaplain, and warn about a minute radioactive material retrieved from the scene of the accident. The chaplain, who is a Baptist like Billy Graham, is then convinced that Sergei has had divine visitations. The neurologist, one of the world’s most renowned, who is also an Episcopalian, writes on the patient’s file: “Migraine with aura.” Later, Sergei, who had since regained his sight, seeks political asylum, joins the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and dedicates his life to testifying about the reality of divine visitations. One day, while on a speaking engagement in an Evangelical church in London, he collapses not long after taking a sip from a cup of coffee, and soon after dies in hospital of radioactive poisoning. In a memorial service Billy Graham hails him as a true martyr in the mould of the Apostle Paul. The neurologist continues to discuss Sergei’s case with physicians undergoing specialist training in neurology. He employs terms like ‘cephalalgia’, ‘photophobia’, ‘depersonalization’, ‘autoscopy’, but none of the terms that carry any suggestion of divine visitation—he is, after all, too much of a professional neurologist and, as an Episcopalian, presumably is too theologically liberal to resort to the God-of-the gaps hypothesis.7

7 The case of Sergei, while obviously fictional, depicts the reality about the status of religious experience in modern times. Wittgenstein’s student and confidant, Maurice

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The evidentiary value of religious experience can be dismissed in the same manner that the evidentiary value of miracles can be. Between those who see divine, or even demonic, visitation in an experience and those who see the same experience as a medical matter there is a gestalt-switch of sorts. They may be faced with the same phenomenon, but they have a radically different appreciation of that same phenomenon. The difference between a discursive practice that associates a phenomenon with conditions such as migraine aura, bi-polar disorder, or frontal lobe epilepsy, or even schizophrenia and psychosis, from another discursive practice that associates the same phenomenon with supernatural experience is not just one of polar opposition but of incommensurability. In a case of incommensurability, a single phenomenon may carry completely different significance in two different discursive practices: the phenomenon P which in the discursive practice A is understood to be evidence for S is in discursive B understood to be a symptom of M (as there is no concept S in B, let alone an understanding in B that S is an educt of P, and there is no concept M in A, let alone an understanding in A of the connection of P with M). What in the Christian religious narrative are spoken of as instances of supernatural experience are in a modern secular culture informed by twentieth-century science or later deemed a medical matter. The sort of phenomenon that in bygone years was ordinarily recognized as “religious experience” is not recognized as such in a secular, scientifically informed discursive practice. What was in the bygone years ordinarily understood to be evidence for the existence of the supernatural, whether divine or demonic, is not understood as such in a secular, scientifically informed discursive practice.8

Drury, a would-be priest turned psychiatrist, shows how the concept of religious experience has through the flux of time and cultural evolution become too intractable for everyone to take for granted. He treated patients exhibiting symptoms that are nearly identical to the described experiences of people in the not-so-distant past which were then (and now) seriously regarded as religious experience. He is convinced that the distinction between religious experience and madness is nothing but a will-o’-the-wisp (Drury 1996a, 136). He can see that even mental illness can be a religious experience for both the afflicted and those that loved him. Thus, he argues, the problem is “not how as external observers we are to distinguish between madness and religion, but how we are to reconcile the existence of madness, and the ever present threat of madness, with our religious convictions and beliefs” (134). 8 This discursive practice need not be associated with atheism. Atheists speak of miracles and the supernatural with ease, proving that the word ‘miracle’ has a place in their discursive practice that is atheism. If, as Wittgenstein proposes, the meaning of a word is its use in language (PI, §43), then, since there is a use for the word ‘miracles’ and ‘supernatural’ in the language of atheists, the said word is perfectly meaningful

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chapter six III. The orderliness of the universe as evidence of the divine

One of the most oft-cited substantive evidence for God’s existence is the extremely complex and delicate orderliness of the universe. It is said that it is most unbelievable that this universe could be so orderly without someone having deliberately set it to such order. (That which is responsible to the order must be a “someone” and not a “something” because it cannot be other than supremely sentient.) So, one who believes that there is a God can point to the orderliness of the universe when asked for proof of the existence of such a God, just as someone who believes that there was once upon a time inhabitants on a desolate island can point to the orderliness of the layout of stones across a wide field when asked for proof of the existence of those inhabitants. The assumption is that those stones could by sheer chance roll and fall into such distinctive pattern and symmetrical layout across a wide field without any agent with a sense of consistency and symmetry that only humans are known to have. This reasoning is sometimes presented with a seemingly scientific twist. Some smart fellows in some academic institutions reflect on an empirical phenomenon: the extremely delicate orderliness of the universe—an orderliness best instantiated in the existence of living entities, especially sentient ones. They wonder how come the universe is as orderly as it is. They come up with theories to account for it. They test the adequacy of their theories, rejecting one after the other as a result, but coming to a consensus on one particular theory. This theory explains in a way free of any religious or magical suggestions how the universe came to order as it did. Then another smart fellow who happens to be a theist comes along and claims that this one particular explanation is shot full of holes and that his own explanation with God as the focal point is without those holes. He argues that a purely “naturalistic” explanation attributes too much to chance the coming to order of the universe. The odds of the universe coming to order as it did by sheer chance is just about equal to the odds of the debris from a junk yard explosion falling into place to produce a finely tuned watch or a macaque banging on a typewriter coming up with a

in that language. What atheists have a problem with is the belief that what they and the theists agree to call as “miracles” in fact occurred and that there is such a thing as “supernatural.” They have no problem with the concepts ‘miracle’ and ‘supernatural’.

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novel as enormous, emotionally moving, and intellectually provocative as Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Just as it takes no less than the finely honed skill of a watchmaker to create a watch from materials created by other skilled artisans, or a genius of a Dostoevsky to create a literary magnum opus, it takes no less of a supremely sentient being to cause the universe to come to the order that it did. Accordingly, no less than a supremely sentient agency is the best explanation for the orderliness of the universe. A supremely sentient agency is posited to explain the order of the universe just like the ether was posited to explain the phenomenon of light travelling through apparently empty space. A supremely sentient agency is utilized as an explanatory hypothesis and is set up to compete against theoretical constructs—the God-hypothesis against other hypotheses. The question of the adequacy of the competing hypotheses aside, what is worth noting here is that the orderliness of the universe can be spoken of from both the religionistic standpoint and from the scientistic standpoint. That the planets maintain their course thus avoiding collision, that conditions fell into place so as to make the Earth (and who knows what other planets in other galaxies) conducive to life, etc., could conceivably be accounted for both in ways that have and that have no religious or magical overtones. To the philosophical theists (who take the religionistic standpoint) the God-hypothesis is the most plausible of all explanations. To those who disdain the notion of the God-of-the-gaps (and many of them are pious believers in God) the God-hypothesis raises a red flag. If anyhow the issue of God is relegated to a scientific one then they would need a more positive scientific confirmation of the existence of that supremely sentient force. It is one thing for a hypothesis to be plausible; it is another thing for it to withstand scientific tests. As with anyone who posits a substance or entity to account for a phenomenon, one who posits a supremely sentient agency to explain the orderliness of the universe is faced with the mother of all challenges: How to test the explanation substantively. For the hypothesis that a supremely sentient agency (SSA) exists is to be tested, there has to be a “test implication” of it: i.e. if the said hypothesis is true, then there should be certain observable events that can be expected to occur under specified conditions. For example, for quite a while it was believed that there is some medium called ‘ether’ which enables light to travel through visibly empty space. But scientists, curious and critical as they naturally are, went on to test the ether hypothesis. They thought: If ether exists, then the speed of light would

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depend on the direction of the earth’s motion. The statement ‘the speed of light depends on the direction of the earth’s motion’ expresses the test implication to the hypothesis ‘ether exists’. Thus, to test the SSA hypothesis, one, perhaps, would need to fill in the following blank: ‘If an SSA exists, then _______’. If at all one can think of something to fill up this blank, one would still have to devise an appropriate experiment (also perhaps, just like those ether hunters inventing the interferometer to detect ether flow, one may have to invent a device to detect or record “SSA traces”), and perform that experiment to see if the result would be as expected. Without such sort of experiment, the existence of an SSA would remain at best an idea with tantalizing plausibility, for hypotheses that have no test implications, like the SSA hypothesis, may “give the questioner a sense of having some understanding; they may resolve his perplexity and in this sense ‘answer’ his question. But however satisfactory this answer may be psychologically, they are not adequate for the purposes of science, which, after all, is concerned to develop a conception of the world that has a clear logical bearing on our experiences and is thus capable of objective test” (Hempel 1966, 47–48). The God-hypothesis remains tantalizingly plausible at best. At best it is not good enough as a scientific hypothesis. Thus, so far in the real world that is about as far as the orderliness-of-the-universe-toGod argument can go—if that argument is taken to be a substantive attempt at proving God’s existence. But suppose, again, there is Dr. Hugebrain and his magnificent time machine: he goes back in time to that day when, and place where, Moses was said to have seen fire enveloping a bush. Indeed, as it turns out, Dr. Hugebrain observes Moses apparently conversing with that voice from the fire on the bush. He follows Moses around and eavesdrops as Moses is conversing with a voice from nowhere. He is able to sneak into the royal palace unnoticed and install surveillance equipment to capture Moses’ argument with the pharaoh. He witnesses all the curses that visited the land of Egypt. He ingratiates himself to a Hebrew family and goes with them as they cross the sea of reeds. He sees the pillar of cloud leading the marching people at night and the fire leading them by day. He eats manna for breakfast. He states on record: “There appears to be a sentient force that manifests itself by morphing into fire or cloud. . . . Let this force be called, as the JudeoChristian tradition does call it, ‘Jehovah’ or ‘God’—the terminology does not matter now. This manifestation could explain why the Zoro-

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astrians worship fire . . . ” Thereafter he pioneers a scientific discipline with this sentient force as the main object of study. He calls this field “theophysics.” He enlists physicists, theologians, religious studies scholars and anthropologists to work with him collaboratively. He sees that the discipline he is pioneering could progress to the point that theology would be to theophysics like astrology is to astronomy. He is a hard-core scientist—and an irreligious one (though not necessarily anti-religious). His interest in the force (Jehovah, as most people prefer to call it) is purely scientific. He would want to unlock the secrets of this force. For instance, he just would want to know certain things, like how an immaterial force could muster atoms and put these together to form non-singeing fire and intelligible sound, or how such force could impregnate a woman. He has no plans to go to a temple to burn incense to the force, except if doing so would further his scientific agenda and prospective commercial interest. There is absolutely no religious activity involved; there is only scientific activity, i.e. physics and scholarship dealing with religious practices. He is motivated purely by intellectual curiosity and the thought of technological and entrepreneurial potential, not any sort of religiosity. There would be little doubt that philosophical theists, whose distinction essentially is pegged on their claim that there is such a thing as a disembodied mind that controls the universe, would be happy with the discovery of Dr. Hugebrain that the burning bush incident really happened as described in the Bible. The theist who posits the SSA hypothesis would find not only his test implication in Dr. Hugebrain’s exploration (it would go: ‘If an SSA exists, then Dr. Hugebrain will witness the burning bush incident as described in the Bible’) but also a confirmation of sorts of the hypothesis.9 To the theologians, the result of this exploration could constitute the apex of the success of apologetics. For the evangelists, the scientific establishment of the existence of the sentient force mentioned in the Bible would make it easier to persuade every sane and reasonable person that there is a 9 Of course it does not necessarily mean that if ‘The burning bush incident really occurred’ is shown by Dr. Hugebrain to be true, then ‘There is a supremely sentient agency’ follows. Still the theist can take consolation that his hypothesis had undergone test and it was not falsified and may thus be provisionally accepted, and can say that “while [Dr. Hugebrain’s finding] does not afford a complete proof of the hypothesis, it provides at least some support, some partial corroboration or confirmation of it” (Hempel 1966, 8).

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being bigger than the universe that hears prayers, rewards the righteous, and punishes the wicked. This finding would vindicate them— philosophical theistic philosophers, theologians, and laypersons—and effectively shut up atheists, not to say the Wittgensteinians who cannot bring themselves to believe that God is another being beside all beings that altogether make the universe. (“I told you so!” may become the philosophical theist’s motto.) The atheists and the Wittgensteinians could finally be made to acknowledge that the God the philosophical theists insist exists really does exist. And with that, the agnostic or atheist whose proverbial heart is not as “hardened” as the legendary Pharaoh whom Moses faced may be brought to his or her knees and worship God. Be that as it may, inference to divinity is not logically ineluctable. Some UFO guru can provide some explanation of sorts about the burning bush incident without inferring divinity: e.g. they could say with earnestness or even fanaticism equal to that of a fundamentalist theist that Moses spoke to an extra-terrestrial being. And if UFO buffs would become as numerous and socially influential as Christians, Jews and Muslims are, then the Moses-spoke-to-an-ET narrative would be a formidable one vis-à-vis the narratives of the mainstream religions. In this UFO narrative the burning bush will be thought of as confirmatory evidence for the existence of extra-terrestrial life. The same test implication for the God-hypothesis of the philosophical theist can also serve as the test implication for the ET-hypothesis of the UFO buff. What to make of Dr. Hugebrain’s discovery that the burning bush incident is for real depends on one’s web of basic presuppositions (i.e. world-view). Without the relevant web of presuppositions, one cannot in principle recognize anything to be evidence for divinity. This web of basic presuppositions is imbibed by nurture rather than by conscious assent after a careful critical ratiocination. As Wittgenstein says, “I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness” (OC §94). That is to say that this web of presuppositions is connected with this state known as “faith.” Be that as it may, the failure of the God-hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis does not matter at all from the Wittgensteinian point of view for it does not really qualify as a scientific hypothesis and should not be taken as such. The orderliness-of-the-universe-to-God argument is like an argument in aesthetics where its correctness is gauged by ones agreement with it (AWL, 40). But when spun with scientific

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phraseology and made to appear as though it is a scientific hypothesis, this argument becomes an exercise of confusion of supplying of reason with investigating for cause. “The investigation of a reason entails as an essential part one’s agreement with it, whereas the investigation of a cause is carried out experimentally” (AWL, 40). The Godhypothesis, like a Freudian hypothesis, “is an idea that has a marked attraction . . . The attractions that mythical explanations have . . . And when people do adopt or accept this, then certain things seems clear and much easier for them” (LC, 43). The scientific standard of testing hypothesis with evidence and counter-evidence is here not relevant. The issue of the orderliness of the universe being accounted for by positing God is not a scientific issue—it is (for lack of a better term) a “humanistic” one. Religious belief says Wittgenstein “is a passionate commitment to a system of reference” (CV, 64e; italics added). The committed subject has a deep emotional attachment to this system of reference. Sometimes this system is challenged or threatened. In response to this existential challenge or threat the committed subject would want to know that he or she is right about his or her commitment and would want to let others know it too. This existential challenge or threat can be likened to an itch—and existential itch. The God-hypothesis, like all academic arguments for God’s existence, serves, as it were, as a way of scratching that itch.10

IV. Faith creates the evidence that justifies faith Modernism highlighted the importance of critical thinking and led to the formation of the concept ‘science’. Critical thinking has been shown to be an antidote to delusion and superstition, both of which, rightly or wrongly, are often associated with religion. Science, which, rightly or wrongly, is seen to be in conflict with religion, is typically thought to be a body of suppositions justified by empirical evidence or by reasoning, and deemed to be the paragon of intellectual respectability. In cultures that have witnessed the awesome achievements 10 “Philosophy hasn’t made any progress?—if somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we see some progress? . . . And can’t this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?” (CV, 86e).

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of science, if any belief, or belief-systems, were to have intellectual respectability it would have to have some semblance of being scientifically sanctioned. Accordingly, if religious belief is to be intellectually respectable it has to be able to withstand critical scrutiny by showing itself to be justified by scientifically accreditable evidence and reason. It is a presupposition in philosophical theology and analytic philosophy of religion that religious belief can be subjected to a religiouslyneutral examination and can be justified by appealing to scientifically accreditable evidence; and it is a function of philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to point out the relevant body of evidence and show how it supports the claim to truth of the relevant religious belief. Even beyond the circles of believers, it is widely thought that a religious belief is worth holding on to if it is true, and that a belief can be proven, or at least can be shown to have a good chance of being true, if supporting evidence can be mustered, or if it is demonstrated to be rationally tenable. However, Wittgenstein, with all his avowed respect for religious belief, is notoriously averse to the business of philosophical theology and analytic philosophy of religion. To subject religious belief to the kind of doubt and justification that philosophical theists and atheist subject it to is simply wrongheaded. This opens him to the charge of fideism. Some accusers, perhaps out of deference to his stature, exempt him from that charge and are careful to disassociate him from the neo-Wittgensteinians; but others do not extend him that courtesy.11 They take him to be insulating religious belief from some religiously neutral and scientifically accreditable test. This attempt at insulation is unacceptable because, from the religious believer’s point of view, or the philosophical theist’s at least, it obviates any opportunity to demonstrate the intellectual respectability of holding on to religious belief, and from the unbeliever’s point of view, it is simply a lame attempt at evading critical scrutiny and, in effect, an insurance for intellectual dishonesty. Yet it is not easy to believe that the venerable

11 One of the grossest examples is this: “Is Wittgenstein right to insulate religious beliefs from ‘the historical proof-game’? I doubt it. It is certainly impossible to insulate religion entirely from rational criticism: ‘If Christ be not risen, our faith is in vain’ implies ‘Either Christ is risen or our faith is vain’ for exactly the same reason as ‘If the weather is not fine, our picnic is ruined’ implies ‘Either the weather is fine or our picnic is ruined’. But if religious beliefs and systems of religious beliefs are not invulnerable to logic, why should they be cocooned from other sorts of scrutiny?” (Hyman 2001, 8).

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intellectual Ludwig Wittgenstein and the ordained cleric and professional academic D. Z. Phillips can in any way be obstructionists to the cause for the respectability of religious belief, or, worse, accessory to intellectual dishonesty.12 It is, therefore, necessary to look carefully at why Wittgenstein and the neo-Wittgensteinians refuse to subject religious belief to test, and examine see closely what, if any, is behind this accusation of fideism. The term ‘fideism’ refers to the notion that “one’s fundamental religious convictions are not subject to independent rational assessment” (Carroll 2008, 3). It seems fair enough to suppose that the phrase ‘independent rational assessment’ here suggests that: (a) the relevant body of evidence, or its acceptability as such, is not furnished by, or not contingent on, religious conviction; and (b) the basic criteria for validity or soundness of reasoning are shared, or can easily be shared, by virtually all sane, reasonable, and educated persons, without regard to their religious conviction, or the lack thereof.

12 Phillips is sometimes portrayed as saying that the acceptability of religious belief cannot be gauged by standards alien to the religious form of life, and that the religious language-game is autonomous. This latter point is sometimes taken to mean that the religious language-game has its own standard of justifying itself, or that it has its own unique way of using words. One of the more gross representations goes as follows. “The fideist position [exemplified by the writings of D. Z. Phillips] is that religious language is intelligible only to those who participate in the religious form of life. Fully understanding the language of a religious believer is inseparable from comprehending a religious form of life. . . . Religious language constitutes a distinct linguistic practice which non-participants in the form of life could not grasp or show to be incoherent or erroneous . . . . Religious concepts are available only to those who partake in the form of life that they are used in. Cognisance of a religious form of life is necessary in order to perceive what it means to apply the ideas of truth and falsehood to religion” (Addis 2001, 85; cf. Nielsen 1967, 198ff). This is, of course, a very crude representation of Phillips’s position (see Phillips, 1986a, Ch. 1). It is hard to believe that Phillips is that stupid. And certainly, whatever he could have said, he is entitled to the principle of charity—i.e. when attacking a position in an argument the best version of that position ought to be taken on. It does not take the IQ of a rocket scientist to know that even an atheist who does not participate in a religious form of life may be familiar with the concepts therein, e.g. ‘miracle’. Familiarity, not necessarily participation in the religious form of life, is the key to understanding the religious language-game. (But, of course, those who have the opportunity to participate in a game are the ones who are most familiar with it—nothing understands football better than one who has experienced football as a player. And between a commentator in the art of love-making who is a virgin and one who has actually made love the latter is the more knowledgeable—he has had the “existential” insight against the other who has no more than an academic one. First-hand knowledge is the best form of knowledge. It’s like saying “One doesn’t really know what an orgasm is until one has had it.”)

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The obvious reason why Wittgenstein is accused of fideism is his notorious aversion to subjecting belief in God to evidentiary test. Actually, contrary to what some critics say, he does not even try to insulate religious beliefs from evidentiary test. What he does is to dismiss the viability of such a test, as is hinted at in the following remarks. We come to an island and we find beliefs there, and certain beliefs we are inclined to call religious. . . . They have sentences, and there are also religious statements. These statements would not just differ in respect to what they are about. Entirely different connections would make them into religious beliefs, and there can easily be imagined transitions where we wouldn’t know for our life whether to call them religious beliefs or scientific beliefs. You may say they reason wrongly. In certain cases you would say they reason wrongly, meaning they contradict us. In other cases you would say they don’t reason at all, or “It is entirely different kind of reasoning.” The first, you would say in the case in which they reason in a similar way to us, and make something corresponding to our blunders. Whether a thing is a blunder or not—it is a blunder in a particular system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in another. You could say that where we are reasonable, they are not reasonable— meaning they don’t use reason here. If they do something very like one of our blunders, I would say, I don’t know. It depends on further surroundings of it. It is difficult to see, in cases in which it has all the appearances of trying to be reasonable (LC, 58–59).

Wittgenstein is saying something that is already suggested in earlier sections above. But perhaps a reiteration is here called for. In conceptual system A, from some phenomena, members of phenomena set I (P1, P3, P5, P7 . . . Pn), can be logically drawn N, and from some others, members of phenomena set II (P2, P4, P6, P8 . . . Pn), can be logically drawn S. In conceptual system B, from all phenomena (i.e. all instances of Pn) can be logically drawn only N—there is no concept of S whatsoever in this system. It is only in conceptual system A where ‘Pn→S’ is a recognized inferential sequence, where some Pn may be recognized as indicators of S. Supposing that P2 is observed to have occurred, observer X, whose orientation is, or whose conviction is informed by, system A, is given to make an inference to S; but observer Y, whose orientations is, or whose conviction is informed by, system B will never make an inference to S simply because it is not

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part of the domain of concepts in system B. Between X and Y there is a chasm of difference as to what to make of phenomena set II. Suppose X is trying to convince Y, and a third observer, Z, of the existence of S. Z asks for evidence of the existence of S. X points to the occurrence of phenomena set II members as indicators of the existence of S. Z agrees that if indeed any set II phenomenon occurred it would constitute an indication of the existence of S (though is very skeptical nonetheless that any set II phenomenon could have occurred at all—i.e. he is not convinced that the evidence has not at all been obtained). But as far as Y is concerned the occurrence of the phenomena cited are indicators of anything but S. Wittgenstein is not so much concerned with the matter between X and Z as to the one between X and Y. His concern is not the matter of there being or not being indicators to warrant an inference to S but the lack of such “neutral” indicators. It takes the prior adoption of system A to recognize that certain phenomena— e.g. set II—are indicators of S. That such and such are indicators of such and such is conceptual system-dependent. Such and such may be an indicator of such and such in one system but not in another. So, about any neutral test for the existence of S would, from the point of view of Y, not be conceptually viable at all—while Z could say that the evidence for S has not been obtained, Y could say instead that the “evidence” is not evidence at all. The point to be drawn here is that a conceptual system has its own ways of connecting something with something else—ways which may not be appropriate to another conceptual system. In the case of the religious conceptual system (or language-game, or system of reference) certain phenomena are connected with divinity, and as such may be recognized as evidence of divinity, while in another conceptual system (or language-game, or system of reference) the same phenomena may be connected with something else. Clearly, what is said to be evidence for divinity is only recognized as such within a religious conceptual system or language-game. What turns a phenomenon into a proof of some religious belief is a web of no less religious presuppositions. It takes a prior acceptance of these presuppositions to recognize that such and such is evidence of such and such. The evidence is, as it were, manufactured by religious presuppositions. There is no such thing as religiously-neutral evidence. If there is no recognized religiously-neutral body of relevant evidence for the religious belief that supposedly needs proving, then there cannot be an independent rational assessment for religious belief, and for an honest-to-goodness proof of the

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existence of God. The point is well-illustrated in the case of the divinity of Jesus (which obviously is directly related to the question of the existence of God). The difference between the scientistic view of Jesus’ ability to perform incredibly extra-ordinary acts and the religionistic view of the same is not that certain scientifically-interesting facts are given to one and not to the other but that one appreciates the same sets of facts differently from the other, and thus is not the sort that can be resolved by a substantive test. This is like the dispute between one who sees in a line drawing an outline of a duck and another who sees an outline of a rabbit. No amount of technical description of the line drawing can to one who sees an outline of a duck be a proof that it is actually an outline of a rabbit, or to one who sees an outline of a rabbit be a proof that it is actually an outline of a duck. It is possible for one to see in the line-drawing a duck at first and then a rabbit later. But this switch in seeing is not a result of discovering or noticing a line or dot or some other detail not seen previously but a result of a dawning of a new configuration. Wittgenstein refers to this switch in perception as “grammatical movement” (PI §401)—as opposed to a substantive discovery. Kuhn characterizes this sort of switch as a “conversion experience” (Kuhn 1970, 150) that “cannot be forced by logic and neutral experience,” and “must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all” (Kuhn 1970, 149). On this score the notion of subjecting the divinity of Jesus to a substantive proofgame is conceptually improper. The recognition of a phenomenon as evidence for God’s existence ultimately hinges on religious presuppositions—the very same presuppositions that the evidence is supposed to be a proof of. This recognition, in other words, is borne of a prior religious faith.13 Faith

13

Apparently John Henry Cardinal Newman beat the Wittgensteinians to the draw on this particular point. In a homily entitled “Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind” he argues: “The system of physical causes is so much more tangible and satisfying than that of final, that unless there be a pre-existent and independent interest in the inquirer’s mind, leading him to dwell on the phenomena which betoken an intelligent creator, he will certainly follow out those which terminate in the hypothesis of a settled order of nature and self-sustained laws. It is indeed a great question whether Atheism is not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the physical world taken by themselves, as the doctrine of the creative and governing Power. But, however this be, the practical safeguard against Atheism in the case of scientific inquirers is the inward need and desire, the inward experience of that Power, existing in the mind before and independently of their examination of his material world” (Newman 1900, 194; italics added). To be able to make an inference from the universe to divinity, the

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(whether religious in nature or otherwise) comes before reason. A faith determines what reasonable belief is. If belief is said to be reasonable because it is supported by evidence, it is faith that shapes the relevant evidence. The evidence is only relevant to and recognizable within the faith that shapes it. If that is the fact of the matter, then, unfortunately for the philosophical theists, belief in God is inevitably fideistic in one way or another. If—and this is a big “if ”—the idea of proving God’s existence could be conceptually viable at all, it could be so only if God is what the philosophical theists portray it to be. (As the Hugebrain-observesMoses thought experiment suggests, the existence of such a God can in principle be tested, i.e. falsifiable in principle, if not verifiable.) If it is that God one believes in but refuses to subject that belief to test, then that can be pejoratively called a case of fideism—an irrational, or at least an intellectually dishonest sort of fideism. But it takes belief in the literality of biblical narratives—e.g. Moses and the burning bush—to make the philosophical theistic model of God plausible. Unless it is possible to travel back in time, this belief is impossible to test. So far this is a belief based purely on nothing but sheer faith. The just, says the Holy Scripture, shall live by faith. But apparently living by faith is not just for the just—it is also for the philosophical theist who believes that there ought to be a way to demonstrate the justifiability of religious belief but just could not come up with one that is convincing enough to everyone, for the atheist who believes that the universe is “just there” but just could not test his belief, for the Wittgensteinian who insists that religious language-games be left just as they are but is just not able to persuade the philosophical theists, and others who just could not care less but just the same are in need of justice.

suitable attitude, or “habit of mind” as Newman calls it, is prerequisite. There cannot be that inference sans that habit of the mind.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WITTGENSTEIN’S RELIGIOUS REALISM WITH ATTITUDE

Ludwig Wittgenstein is sometimes thought of as a religious non-realist, as one who thinks that that which is called “God” has no existence independent of the human imagination, and is in opposition to the religious realist who thinks that God’s existence is independent of the human imagination. The basis for the supposition that Wittgenstein is a religious non-realist is (what is alleged to be) his linguistic idealism, or otherwise, his behaviourism. But in this chapter it is argued that the behaviourist and linguistic idealist positions ascribed to Wittgenstein bear implications not consistent with his philosophy, or are otherwise outright misrepresentations of what he is saying. So there is something awry about the ascription of non-realism to Wittgenstein—in matters religious or otherwise. The arguments in this chapter are presented as follows. Section I shows that Cupitt has not gotten Wittgenstein correctly enough. Section II shows why Wittgenstein cannot be correctly said to be a behaviourist. Section III argues that it is Wittgenstein’s wish to dismiss “philosophical academism,” such as idealism and philosophical realism. Section III argues that Wittgenstein’s attitude to God is not like one proper to that which is non-real. Section IV shows Wittgenstein’s parallelism between colour-talk and God-talk, which is to suggest that if to say ‘colour is non-real’ is nonsensical, then so is ‘God is non-real’. Section V shows points of similarity between the position of Wittgenstein on the one hand and John Scottus Eriugena and St. Thomas Aquinas on the other, which then leads to the suggestion that, given such similarities, if Wittgenstein is cast as a religious non-realist, then the aforementioned theologians may as well be cast similarly. Section VI states the conclusion that it is not correct to cast Wittgenstein as a religious non-realist.

I. Cupitt’s idealist Wittgenstein Partly responsible for this impression that Wittgenstein is an idealist is Don Cupitt, the most notable advocate of religious non-realism. He portrays Wittgenstein in the following way:

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chapter seven He is not a behaviourist or a materialist for whom an objective physical reality comes first, nor is he an empiricist or idealist for whom private sensations or material process come first. For him, language comes first. In our materialist-object language we postulate and constitute a public physical world, and in our language about sensations, mental processes and the like we postulate and constitute an inner world of mind: but in the last resort there is nothing but the facts about our linguistic practices, and the ways in which they are interwoven with the forms of life they have been developed to serve. (Cupitt 1994, 233–4)

What appears here is that Wittgenstein differs from the realists and idealists and others in their respective accounts of Reality rather than on the merits of bothering about such accounts. He is placed in the very same philosophical arena, and shown to engage in metaphysical duels with, metaphysical knights. They jostle for a trophy: the privilege of being deemed to have the most correct account of Reality. On this portrayal, it is language for Wittgenstein, rather than matter or substance or idea, which is the basis of reality—which is the Reality. And such is the case because language prescribes the shape of various ‘realities’ amongst which we move, and not the other way around. Reality does not determine language: language determines reality . . . when we have become conscious of language (a most rare and difficult feat, which Wittgenstein achieved . . . ) then we see that language is the creator of everything. (Cupitt 1994, 228; italics added)

Wittgenstein, as a philosopher, seems determined to push us into accepting that it is futile to try to go beyond the human realm and the limits of language. Philosophy, in his view, is a sustained attempt to cure ourselves of transcendent illusions and persuade us to be content with what is—and what is, is language and the human realm and nothing else. Wittgenstein’s mature outlook is linguistic naturalism (there are in the end only facts about language), voluntarist, (we, through language, constitute our world), and radical humanism (there is no sense in supposing that we humans might be able to transcend the limits of our own humanity while yet somehow retaining it). And Wittgenstein extends these doctrines to cover logic, mathematics and natural science. Everywhere he is a thoroughgoing constructivist and voluntarist: logical necessity is created by the rules governing language. If he is a non-realist about religion, he is also a non-realist about everything else. . . . [he] wished his new position to be understood against the various forms of realism for which it is the cure. (Cupitt 1994, 230)

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Thus appears the main point of religious non-realism that allegedly issues out of Wittgenstein: If, p (language is everything there is), then, q (God is merely a function of language rather than an aseitic being). Since Wittgenstein posits p, then by inference he so does q. Cupitt, in portraying Wittgenstein, unfortunately resorts to misleading rhetorical excesses, to subtle wresting out of context, to straightforward misrepresentation. The rhetorical excesses have the effect of putting Wittgenstein on the same discursive boat with the idealists. What is, says this Wittgenstein, is language; and that there is nothing but facts about linguistic practices; and that language is the reality. One need only take typical idealist statements, replace the word ‘idea’ with ‘language’—and voila! Thus, “To be is to be in language,” “Only language can be properly said to be real,” “Only language can be perceived.” Wittgenstein comes out as just another esoteric academic chatterer, only with a slightly different buzzword. The Wittgenstein presented by Cupitt is one espousing the primacy of language, a position that must be clearly pointed out as not the same as one that takes language to be neither parasitic on nor accountable to a supralinguistic reality in a way a realist portrait of a face is to the face of the one who poses for the portrait, or that language re-presents reality, i.e. it refers to reality on its own terms. Indeed there is a temptation to read an idealism of sorts in Wittgenstein even if he actually finds ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ to be labels for idle philosophical positions. One can suspect that among the most likely statements that can be cited to support such position are “Essence is expressed in grammar” (PI §371) and “Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is” (PI §373). But to determine whether Wittgenstein really is a linguistic idealist as some have claimed, one must ask “Does this existence, or this truth, depend upon human linguistic practice?” (Anscombe 1981, 116). A litmus test such as this would qualify Wittgenstein as a linguistic idealist with regard to certain things, e.g. concepts, rules, and games (Anscombe 1981, 118 and 122). But, on the other hand, he unmistakably acknowledges that there is such a thing as human-independent reality: e.g. that the earth existed long before sentient beings on it did, that the physical universe is independent of human perception, and so on, are, he argues, certainties. Wittgenstein takes care to differentiate certainty from knowledge (OC §308). Among the traits of knowledge is that it is one where the ground is surer than the assertion it is a ground of (OC §243), that it makes sense to speak

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of believing it or making it certain, and that it is possible for one to be mistaken about it. A certainty cannot have a surer ground, cannot be made more certain, and cannot be a subject of mistake (except in cases of insanity). When a G. E. Moore holds up his hands and asserts “I know I have two hands” he does not come up with a proof more compelling than his assertion. It makes no sense to think that he needs any more proof (such as waving his hands before his eyes) to convince himself that he has two hands, and it is funny to suggest that he might possibly find out and be convinced after testing himself that he has no hands at all. Certainties are immune from doubt and have no need for justification for they precede both doubt and justification. They are the scaffolding of human thought, the foundation of language-games, the inherited background against which true and false is distinguished, the hinges against which questions and doubts turn (OC §§94–5, 136, 211, 308, 341–3, 401–3, 614, 655). It is a matter of certainty, rather than knowledge, that the world, and all the things that might constitute it, exists independently of human perception. So “the existence of [horses and giraffes, colours and shapes] is not [a product of human linguistic practice], either in fact or in Wittgenstein” (Anscombe 1981, 121)—as far as Wittgenstein goes, their substantive existence is a certainty.1 It is most crucial to note that in the Wittgensteinian context, what is relevant to the talk of autonomy of language is not Reality— with a capital ‘R’—but meaning. “Essence is expressed by grammar” (PI §371), says Wittgenstein. Meaning finds its basis in language

1 As to what it means to say that in Wittgenstein colours, and for that matter shapes, are not a product of human linguistic practice, his remark that colours reside not in the nature of things but in human nature (Z §357) should be taken kept in consideration. With that in perspective, it would emerge that to say that colours are not a product of linguistic practice amounts to saying that the actual sensing of colour does not necessarily depend on the plethora of colour vocabulary available to one, and that it cannot be just a matter of commonly held opinion or even of linguistic convention that colours and shapes exist, for their existence is given in nature that humans are acquainted with—i.e. the nature made available to humans by their biological form of life (PI §241). There is a difference between saying (a) that colours and shapes are a product of linguistic practice, and (b) that colours and shapes are a product of the human form of life—i.e. a result of the interaction between “the world” (of which humans are anyhow a part of) and the human sensory faculty. In the former case, there is the implication that without the relevant linguistic practice there can be no colours and shapes—Wittgenstein is nowhere close to endorsing this notion, and this is so not because he thinks that this is not true, but because it slips beyond the bounds of what is sensical.

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itself—or more precisely, in the grammar of language, its implicit rules governing practices of its employment. The manner of referring to objects is dictated by linguistic practices. When one speaks of horses, for example, one, and everyone else, certainly knows what is being referred to given everyone’s familiarity with the relevant linguistic practices. When one wants to know the meaning of an expression, one has to familiarize oneself with the relevant linguistic practices. But it is vital to note that this position has nothing to do with the notion that the being of objects in the world are dependent on linguistic practices; thus, as Elizabeth Anscombe points out, “if there never had been humans around talking about horses, it is not the slightest reason to say there wouldn’t have been horses” (Anscombe 1981, 114). If only this perspective is maintained—and one may perhaps consider this to be a subject area of philosophy of language or linguistics or even semiotics—there would not be too much wresting of some key pronouncement of Wittgenstein. Unfortunately, those pronouncements in question, whose natural setting is in philosophy of language or linguistics or even semiotics, are subtly twisted towards metaphysics and end up being used to establish an ontological point. The notion of the primacy of language being advocated by linguistic idealists (like Cupitt) amounts to saying, contra Wittgenstein: “Essence is created by grammar” (Anscombe 1981, 112). Language is, unimaginable as it seems, turned from a re-presenter of reality to a creator of it. Hence, the primacy of language means that everything supervenes on language. Thus the slogan that is being ascribed to Wittgenstein: In the beginning was the Word (Cupitt, 1994, 228). But in fact Wittgenstein (borrowing from Goethe) says something else: Im Anfang war die Tat—In the beginning was the deed (OC §402; cf. Clack 1994, 116ff ). This line is so well-noted as to be a cliché in Wittgensteinspeak; so it is a wonder why Cupitt presents something different. It is clear with Wittgenstein that preceding language is animal behaviour (OC §475). Babies wail, grunt and coo to express their wants. Only later will they take on easily-pronounceable words to do the same. And still later will they learn names of commonly-encountered objects and persons (except perhaps for mama whom they recognize before anything/one else). And even later will they learn to use sensation and judgment words (e.g. while earlier in life they wail when in pain and bang their palm when displeased they will subsequently accompany their actions with pronouncements of ‘painful’ and ‘bad’). Language is

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but a refinement of animal behaviour, a part of the natural history of humans as are walking, eating, drinking and playing (PI §25).2 Obviously, animal behaviour is an inherent constitution of a form of life— the animal form of life.3 And this form of life is a by-product of the dynamics of the universe, i.e. it evolved in, and out of what was in, the universe. So, if language is the highest refinement of animal behaviour, then, quite literally, language is the latest development in human evolution. In this sense, there was something—i.e. the universe—long before there were living beings, more so before there were sentient beings, and even more so before there were articulate beings.4 Others already were before the beginning when the Word was. Nonetheless, it is grammar that delineates—or one can even say, creates—object-referents (cf. PI II, 193ff ). The grammar of one’s language-game helps shape one’s perception that leads one to ‘see-as’. Take Robert Jastrow’s line drawing (in PI II, 194): one may see it in one aspect as an outline of a duck, and on another an outline of a rabbit. If one sees a rabbit, then one would identify as constituent objects a couple of ears and a small mouth. But if one sees a duck then one would identify, among other constituent objects, a beak. Different ways of seeing means different objects are identified. Seeing-as can be taken as an analogue to the position that objectification of the world depends on the language used to speak of it. In the notably objectivity-valuing field of physical science, Thomas Kuhn (1970, 121–2) tells of scientists who, though faced with the same phenomenon, see differently: for example, one sees oxygen, where another sees dephlogisticated air, while some others see nothing at all. There are these discrepancies because of differing paradigms. It may be the very same world that

2 Anyhow this is Wittgenstein’s account of language. There are others, certainly. Jerrold Katz (1981) takes sentences to be abstract objects—i.e. a-temporal and a-spatial, but no less objective than physical objects, and immutable—and thus are humanindependent, even human-preceding, entities. It is perhaps in this case that one can say ‘In the beginning was the Word’. But it is the talk entities such as these that Wittgenstein dismisses as idle: That sentences, numbers, and the like are independentlysubsisting objective entities can neither be proven to the unbelievers nor be disproved to the believers, and absolutely makes no difference to the life of all the others who are blissfully ignorant or simply indifferent to the issue. 3 The term ‘form of life’ is here used in the naturalistic, i.e. biological, sense (organic form of life) which, if Glock (1996, 125–6) is to be believed, is quite different from Wittgenstein’s own anthropological use. 4 This claim, for Wittgenstein, is more than just an item of knowledge: it is a certainty (cf. OC §§89–92).

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scientists work on no matter what paradigm they happen to adopt; but they who work with different paradigms work in different worlds. Kuhn argues that this difference “is not fully reducible to a reinterpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place the data are not unequivocally stable. . . . Consequently, the data that scientists collect from these diverse objects are . . . themselves different”. And a scientist who embraces a new paradigm may confront “the same constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, nevertheless finds them transformed through and through and in many details.” If “what a man sees depends upon what he looks at and also upon his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see,” and if visualconceptual experience differs from one individual scientist to another, from one community of scientists to another, different individual scientists and communities of scientists will see and speak of different things in the same domain. Reality is re-created by grammar, i.e. the reality as it is spoken of is humanly delineated. Wittgenstein’s position does not mark him in any significant way to be different from a commonsense realist—such as a scientist too preoccupied with his experiments to dabble in paradigm bashing— who could not care less about Platonic entities. Therefore one may think that there is nothing much to the thought of Wittgenstein being a linguistic idealist. As David Bloor sees it, “the idealism imputed to Wittgenstein is not a subjective or Berkeleyan idealism” nor does he offer “a spiritualist ontology;” rather, “the so-called idealist strands in Wittgenstein . . . are really the sociological strands in his thinking under another name” (Bloor 1996, 356 and 358).

II. From behaviourism to religious non-realism Religious non-realism is also ascribed to Wittgenstein on the basis of his (alleged) behaviourist position. For Wittgenstein speaking of God is like speaking of the mind. If he happens to speak of the mind as non-real, then he would have to speak of God as non-real. As a nonrealist with regards to the mind (in other words: a “behaviourist”) he is on the slippery slope to non-realism (Trigg 1989, xxv–xxvi). Some of the positions explicitly and implicitly ascribed to Wittgenstein, or issues raised about or associated with him are (Trigg 1989, 8–9, 49–51): (1) that his emphasis on the public condition of the teaching and learning of the meaning of expressions will inevitably restrict what

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can be counted as real to what is publicly accessible, counting out, for example, instances of pain which are not at all expressed in behaviour; (2) that he denies the relevance of a person’s subjective feeling of pain to the acquisition or understanding of the concept of pain, and such a denial actually leads to a denial of the reality of that pain; (3) that he brought it upon himself to be dubbed a behaviourist in some quarters because he actually denies the reality of mental states which is a typical anti-realist position. Wittgenstein gets the blame for (what is alleged to be) the non-realism of Wittgensteinians, most notable of whom is that of D. Z. Phillips.5 Accordingly ‘there is a clear parallel between Wittgenstein’s reluctance to treat pain as a private object which our language attempts to label, and Phillips’ position that God is not a being. Both fear that a privatised object “may recede beyond grasp, pain into the inner recess of the private world and God into the higher reaches of a metaphysical one” (Trigg 1998, 144–5). The metaphysical world of theism that posits a transcendent God and the private world of introspection are both “verification transcendent, if verification implies intersubjective checking” (Trigg 1998, 146). But just as a mental process has a reality that is distinct from its publicly accessible behavioural manifestation, so similarly does God have a reality distinct from human methods of referring to God. Accordingly, an argument against such a reality of mental process also serves as an argument against such a reality of God. If only that which is publicly accessible is to be deemed real, then the transcendent God, just as well as unmanifested mental processes, would be deemed non-real. Thus, as the reasoning goes, Wittgenstein has consigned God to a certain realm of the non-real. Be that as it may, while certain versions of behaviourism offer points that resemble those of Wittgenstein,6 those who take him to be a behaviourist have a lot to explain. The most able of Wittgenstein’s

5 D. Z. Phillips, whom Trigg specifically refers to as a religious non-realist, would certainly dismiss this ascription (see e.g. Phillips 1993, 85–108). 6 Take the following remarks by B. F. Skinner, the pillar of behaviourism: “Human beings attend to or disregard the world which they live . . . They generalize . . . discriminate . . . solve problems . . . describe . . . analyze . . . they are simply behaving, and that is true even when they are behaving covertly. Not only does a behavioural analysis not reject any of these ‘higher mental processes’; it has taken the lead in investigating the contingencies under which they occur. What it rejects is the assumption that comparable activities take place in the mysterious world of the mind. That assumption, it argues, is an unwarranted or dangerous metaphor” (Skinner 1974, 223).

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commentators who are in the best position to follow and evaluate his thinking deny him that label (e.g. Glock 1996, 55–8; Hacker 1990, 239ff ), and even categorically assert that he “denied the intelligibility (not the truth) of behaviourism” (Hacker 1997, 334). Of course, there is nothing like letting Wittgenstein speak for himself. He lodges a complaint: “The ‘private experience’ is a degenerate construction of our grammar. . . . And this grammatical monster now fools us; when we wish to do away with it, it seems as though we denied the existence of experiences, say, toothache” (LPE, 314; cf. PI §305). He clearly denies he is a behaviourist (PI §307). He makes it clear that he does not deny mental processes (PI §306). He does not allow for pain to be reduced to talk about pain-behaviour (PI §244); on the contrary he contends that talk about pain is talk about both the feeling of pain and the concomitant pain-behaviour (RPP I §288; PI II, 179). And moreover, he affirms that the concern of psychology is more than just behaviour but both behaviour and state of mind; “not side-by-side, however, but about one via the other” (PI II, 179). He points out that it makes perfect natural sense to “use the words ‘seeing red’ in such a way that we can say ‘A sees red but doesn’t show it’ . . . the language game which we play . . . people . . . also sometimes more or less conceal what they see” (LPE, 286; italics added).7 These obviously are an explicit recognition that it does make perfect natural sense to talk even of particular unmanifested mental process.8 Wittgenstein is adamant that in an

7 But of course this would not change the position that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of an outward criteria” (PI §580), without which idle musing cannot be distinguished from relevant assertion; those criteria may be behavioural (e.g. A who sees red says so or indicates so by some reactions) or if, as the relevant assertion goes, A shows none of these, then circumstantial (i.e. some publicly accessible clue to lead one to suppose it is not idle to issue the statement ‘A sees red but doesn’t show it’: e.g. in a test A is supposed to push a button if he sees a red dot on the screen before him but, uncooperative as he is, he does not do anything whenever the red dot appears even though all the while he is staring at the screen, and that he is not known to be colourblind, etc.). Wittgenstein refers to this as external occasions which, he declares, belong together with behaviour (Z §492). One can deal with the criteria-begging interrogative statement ‘How do you know that A sees red?’ by, for example, stating the relevant circumstances surrounding A and pointing out that any normal person in his position would see red (cf. BB, 24). 8 Though one can doubt gravely that there is such a thing as the feeling of pain—or for that matter any sensation—which absolutely cannot be manifested, and thus is absolutely publicly inaccessible, owing to the absolute lack of natural physical manifestation (e.g. wincing) or of conventional one (e.g. avowal). It seems incoherent to talk about physical pain absolutely bereft of any physical manifestation—something like a disembodied physical pain. It is banal to say that one can hide one’s pain; but it

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instance of a normal pain expression “the possibility of . . . expression without the feeling behind it mustn’t enter my game” (LPE, 293). This is to say that the feeling of pain is as real as the pain-behaviour that manifests it. Thus, clearly, Wittgenstein’s position is inconsistent with the only-the-publicly-accessible-is-real position. And not only that, he asks rhetorically, “What would it mean to deny the existence of pain?!” (LPE, 314). Clearly, he is suggesting that a statement denying the existence of pain is nonsensical. It is thus unfair to ascribe to him the position that an unmanifested mental (or inner) process (e.g. understanding a word, or seeing the colour red, yet without one showing any sign of understanding or seeing) is necessarily not real. Clearly, to take Wittgenstein as a behaviourist is to skew him. It is a gross misrepresentation to say that Wittgenstein denies the relevance of a person’s feeling of pain to the acquisition and understanding of the concept of pain. Far from being irrelevant, actually-felt sensation is the inseparable flip-side of the publicly observable behaviour that figure in the formation of the concept of pain. This inseparability, one can suppose, is a given in what Wittgenstein refers to as the natural history of human beings (PI §415); and this is attested to by the grammar of pain itself: It dictates that pain-sensation and painbehaviour together form a concomitant pair, neither allowing for a talk of pain-sensation which is absolutely bereft of pain-behaviour, nor accepting pain-behaviour sans pain-sensation as correct talk of pain. The suggestion here is that humans have come to know pain, have evolved a concept of pain, through both pain-sensation and pain-behaviour. Thus, from the point of view of the natural grammar of pain which Wittgenstein advocates, to deny the relevance of pain-sensation to the learning of the concept of pain is to subvert the natural grammar of pain itself. Imagine a baby born into a congenitally anesthetized race but adopted into a normal society and who, for utilitarian purposes, is taught psychological verbs (cf. LPP, 280). He does not know first-hand how it is to be in pain. But he often sees other children stumbling hard, banging their heads against hard objects, being bitten by ants, etc., and

does not follow that if a pain felt by someone shows no apparent physical or behavioural manifestation there cannot be any manifestation at all. Wittgenstein makes a reference to “certain psychological phenomena [that] cannot be investigated physiologically, because physiologically nothing corresponds to them” (Z §609); but, considering state-of-the-art scientific research on physiology of sensation, pain should not be one of them.

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then they grimace, scream, and cry, and adults come over to them and utter the word ‘painful’, and some of them nod and utter the word ‘painful’. Adults, too, tumble hard, clip their fingers on door jambs, etc., and they grimace, scream and cry, and utter the word ‘painful’. And other adults turn to this adopted boy and, while pointing to the pained adult, utter ‘painful’. He, a precocious boy, is able to learn that ‘painful’ is x + y (x being any of the type of occurrence that includes stumbling, etc., and y being any of the type of behaviour that includes crying). The next time around, he sees a child stumble and cry, he utters the word ‘painful’ as he goes to help the child up to her feet and offer her encouraging and sympathetic words, etc. He sees boys roughhousing and they tumble hard but laugh instead of cry, he shakes his head side-to-side uttering ‘not painful’. Playfully he pinches an adult and the adult grimaces, he utters the word ‘painful’. He tickles an adult who guffaws, he utters ‘not painful’. He is the paragon practitioner of extreme behaviourism. One can wonder whether he really had learned the grammar of ‘painful’. He definitely is unable to use that word as an avowal, as those who feel pain themselves do at the time they feel pain. Nonetheless, he apparently knows how to use it as a referential statement, limited and not-so-nuanced a use as it may be. From this case one can say that it is possible to learn to a certain extent how to use the word ‘pain’ or its adjectival cognate ‘painful’ even without the capability of feeling pain first-hand.9 But suppose that generations later everyone left on earth are people like this anesthetized man who was once an adopted-by-normal-people baby. By then no one feels pain anymore; and no one cries, winces or screams when they stumble hard or accidentally handle a glowing ember. The word ‘painful’ will likely fall into disuse and disappear completely. But, say, the once-adopted baby who had learned to use ‘painful’ tries to teach it to his fellows by re-enacting the situation when it was employed (e.g. bangs his head and pretends to cry in such a realistic way—say, he is a great actor—and utters ‘painful’). One can still imagine that word in question being used, but one can be sure that the use of that word will never be the same again as before. There will be no use of it as an avowal. And while there might be excellent re-enactment of pain-behaviour, there will be no pain and no genuine pain-behaviour. A genuine pain-behaviour is necessarily a concomitance of actually

9 Wittgenstein suggestively acknowledges that this could possibly be so (PI §315). See also P. M. S. Hacker 1990, 269–70.

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feeling pain; both concomitantly form the grammar of ‘pain’. As Wittgenstein would have it ‘Toothache is not a behaviour’ is a grammatical sentence (LSD, 10): This is to say that the concept of toothache, or for that matter any type of pain, in the normal language game is not and cannot be merely identical with the concept of pain-behaviour, and that the negation of the said sentence is patently nonsensical. Wittgenstein, while allowing for the possibility of learning to use the word ‘pain’ correctly despite the lack of first-hand pain experience, certainly knows the importance of actually feeling pain to learning how to use the word ‘pain’ correctly: “. . . if anyone . . . does not know what the English word ‘pain’ means . . . we should explain it to him. How? Perhaps . . . by pricking him with a pin and saying: “See, that’s what pain is!’ ” (PI §288). Wittgenstein’s pain teacher is to teach the meaning of pain by inflicting pain on the uninitiated, letting him feel pain for himself. Quite obviously, in this case, the pain teacher is to lead the uninitiated to associate the word ‘pain’ with a sensation, not with the act of pricking someone, or being pricked, with a pin. That says a lot about how crucial, nay essential, Wittgenstein takes pain-sensation to be to the meaning of that word. In a world bereft of pain-sensation, and where ‘painful’ is used in a re-enactment of pain-behaviour, such a word can have no more than an operational meaning, merely referring to behaviour. But this interlocution shows what he thinks of it: “ ‘Do you mean that you define pain in terms of behaviour?’ But is this what we do if we teach the children to use the expression ‘I have a toothache’? Did I define ‘Toothache as such and such a behaviour’? This obviously contradicts the normal use of the word!” (LPE, 296). The lesson here is: To sustain Wittgenstein’s position it is expedient that the reality of pain be a given and not be denied. If behaviourism is about reducing mental or inner process statements to statements merely describing overt behaviour on the supposition that talk of mental states is merely talk about behaviour or dispositions of behaviour, then Wittgenstein would have nothing but aversion to it. It does not mean that since it is his position that bodily behaviour is the only reference in sensical mind-talk, he therefore countenances the analytical behaviourist reduction of mind-talk to mere body-talk.10 He is never an advocate of such a way of speaking of

10 Wittgenstein is given credit for “analytical behaviourism.” It is said that “analytical behaviourists hold that there is a conceptual connection between behavior and

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the mind, believing that it is the natural way that is the privileged way of speaking and ought not to be subordinated to, let alone supplanted by, ways of speaking invented for academic purposes.11 So, Wittgenstein, it turns out, does not speak of the mind as nonreal. (It is true that he insists that the mind per se bereft of bodily

mental states. Talk about mental states is just talk about behavior and dispositions to behavior” (Braddon-Mitchell 1998, 689–90; italics added). Wittgenstein agrees with the analytical behaviourist on the first point; but on the second point (expressed in the italicized sentence) Wittgenstein begs to differ. The behaviourist would say “If . . . private states can have no role in fixing meaning, then behaviour is the only game in town” (Braddon-Mitchell 1998, 690). To Wittgenstein, this is a non sequitor. Behaviour is not the only game in town; it is in itself not even the game that he is concerned with—it is but just part of that game. And the game that he is concerned with is that natural human language-game of the mind that is learned by everyone in early childhood as part of one’s natural individual growth. 11 In fact he does not believe there can at all be any substitute for natural ways of speaking of mental or inner processes. His aversion to the substitution of the natural human way of speaking of the mind for any sort of “techno-talk” is shown even in his hopeful surmises that if there is any notion of a definite correspondence between specific thought and specific brain processes, it will someday be proven mistaken (LWPP I §504; RPP I §§903–95; Z §§608–69). Imagine neurology-related sciences to advance to the point that statements in English (or for that matter in any language) that one thinks in one’s mind could be read off by a machine scanning one’s brain. Imagine that the machine is able to record brain activities and is able to transpose specific activities with specific statements. Let x be a set of statements describing specific set of brain activities c at a given moment when one is thinking ‘You’re the loveliest girl I’ve ever met’, and y a specific set of statements describing a set of brain activities u at a given moment when one is thinking ‘Thank you’. It is plausible to speak of x being translated into ‘The subject thinks “You’re the loveliest girl I’ve ever met” ’ and y into ‘The subject thinks “Thank you” ’—one can imagine the observing researcher saying “The machine is registering brain activities c, that means what is on the subject’s mind is ‘You’re the loveliest . . . ’ and now its u, which means that what is now in the subject’s mind is . . .’. Suppose there are two people who are unable to move and speak but have their mental faculty intact. Through this machine they can communicate. One says in his mind while looking at the other “You’re the loveliest . . .” The machine collates his brainwaves and on the screen goes ‘You’re the loveliest . . . ’ The other, after reading the message on screen, looks at the man who started the conversation and says in her mind “Thank you” and the machine collates her brainwaves and on the screen goes ‘Thank you’. This is conceivable but, rightly or wrongly, Wittgenstein would have nothing of it. This is probably a result of his position that language evolved in such a way that it is naturally enmeshed with human behaviour that always was publicly observable. The part of human behaviour that is observable only with the help of technology played no part in the evolution of the natural language that is currently spoken. Thus the meaning of the word ‘pain’ is pegged to crying, moaning, flinching, and the like, rather than to the secretion of certain brain chemicals. One can disagree with Wittgenstein that bodily behaviour accessible only through technological ways cannot be included as part of the criterion of M/I-process terms. But the point is that he, rightly or wrongly, believes that there cannot be a substitution of the natural ways of speaking of the mind.

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behaviour as criterion cannot be spoken of, but his is not the same as saying that the mind is non-real.) If speaking of God is like speaking of the mind, then, considering that Wittgenstein does not actually speak of the mind as non-real, would not be speaking of God as non-real.

III. Wittgenstein’s anti-realism and his realist attitude If Wittgenstein is not a non-realist with regards to the mind and God, then it is not too difficult to suppose that he is a realist of sorts. But what that means needs to be sorted out because “realism, as implicitly characterized by the opinion of writers, in whatever area of philosophy, who regard themselves as realists, is a syndrome, a loose weave of separable presuppositions and attitudes” (Wright 1993, 3–4). But there is one kind of realism that Wittgenstein definitely rubs against: that one whose significance does not extend beyond academism, i.e. beyond being academic philosophy chatter fodder. Such is the realism that makes reference to metaphysical matters such as the so-called substance, and gets itself embroiled in metaphysical disputes with, for example, idealism. Both academic realism and idealism purport to uncover the absolute truth about the world. A certain strand of realism has it that only ideas are and can be the object of human awareness, but nonetheless one can suppose that behind ideas are substances. They are never given to human perception, and in that sense never knowable; but, as goes John Locke (EHU 2.23, 3.6), if only to account for the fact that from a constellation of simple ideas there are entities formed from them—i.e. simple ideas bind together such that they form into distinct and unitary individual entities and are given names that denote single entities—the mind-independent existence of substance must be supposed. Much intellectual effort was invested, and volumes upon volumes were recorded, speculating about its nature, about how ideas might conform to it, and so on. Idealism, though, has no place for the mind-independent but unperceivable substance. All that exists, as far as idealism would grant, are things that are perceived, i.e. ideas. The objects supposedly out there in the world that humans perceive are actually formed in and by the perceiving human mind. The dispute between realism and idealism has—or so it seems—to do with the facts about the nature of the world, i.e. whether the world is made up of objects formed by substance or objects formed in and by the mind. Notwithstanding their differences, they both are protagonists

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in the same game, the game conventionally referred to as metaphysics. Notes Wittgenstein: “From the very outset ‘Realism’, ‘Idealism’, etc., are names which belong to metaphysics. That is, they indicate that their adherents believe they can say something specific about the essence of the world” (PR §55). Wittgenstein’s point, however, transcends this issue that pits idealism against realism. He actually raises an issue against the idealismversus-realism issue. For him the issue has really less to do with facts about the nature of the world than about norms of expression (PI §402). The difference between, say, commonsense realism and idealism is less on the matter of whether the statement ‘Such and such object really continue to exist when no longer perceived’ is true or not, than on the manner of speaking of the world. The said statement has its proper place and could only make sense in one form of expression, namely idealism. In another form of expression, namely common sense realism, there is just no place for it. It cannot even be said that common sense realism deems the said statement to be factually false (as there is absolutely no way to determine whether or not it is a fact that objects disappear when not perceived): it is just too queer even to be factually false. A debate between idealism and common sense realism would be no more than an exchange of words without any real clash of claims; much of the exchange would be nothing more than a confused case of talking past each other. The vacuity of the realist-versus-idealist dispute is exposed when both the academic realist and the idealist attitudes to the world are considered. Take a materialist-realist who believes in substance: He perhaps, a la Hylas of George Berkeley (TD First Dialogue, par. 190ff ), at times would refrain from speaking about clouds being really white or grey, red or purple, but would only go so far as to speak of them as apparently of such-and-such colour on the grounds that at a nearer approach, say, at a microscopic level, the colours vanish; or, perhaps, once in a while he would emphasise that real sound—i.e. sound per se—is a vibrating and undulating motion in the air, and that which one hears is just that motion’s impression on perception. But other than his idiosyncratic manner of speaking, his way of going about in his moment-by-moment life would not be fundamentally different from that of anyone else, even from that of the most dogmatic idealist and the most naïve common sense realist. If, for example, on his way outdoors he is told that at the moment dark clouds are surging he may make the correction that the clouds are not really dark but only

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apparently; but nonetheless, like anyone else, he would reach for an umbrella. The idealist camp, on the other hand, issue statements such as ‘To be is to be perceived’, ‘Only sensations or ideas can be properly said to be real’, or ‘Only sensations or ideas are immediately perceived’. Clearly, neither the philosophically cultured nor the vulgar nor those in between go about with their quotidian discourse in a way such as this; rather, all of them will speak spontaneously of perceiving objects other than ideas: outside of academic chatter it is hardly idiomatic to say in English that an idea is perceived. But academism aside, even idealists are not in practice different from common sense realists. Idealists, when taking time off from their academism, play the common sense realist’s language game as naturally as anyone else: when asked to share their experiences in a safari they will speak of hearing lions roar, smelling buffalo dung and seeing rhinos graze, rather than speak of perceiving auditory, olfactory and visual sensations of seeming material objects that the cultured, the vulgar and those in between designate as ‘lions’ ‘buffalos’ and ‘rhinos’. This is an indication that the chatter of idealism either is lunacy or is fancifully distinct from that of quotidian discourse which is the normal form of expression that Wittgenstein refers to (e.g. in PI §402), or both. The intellectual kindred of the stone-kicking commonsense realist Dr. Johnson would be tempted to throw stones at the idealist’s head if only to prove that stones are not mere figments in the human mind. But that would hardly prove anything against idealism. Any argument that the Dr. Johnson-type realism can come up with against idealism can be reframed in such a way as to be congenial to idealism. That one could kick a stone or grab an apple could be accounted for in purely idealistic terms. These said acts are simply ways of having a perceptual experience: When one looks, one sees colours and shapes; when one kicks or grabs, one feels consistency and texture. A realist could counter that, hallucinations aside, one cannot perceive colours, shapes, consistency, and texture without the objects having them being there. Still, an idealist could ask what is there without anyone having any perceptual experience whatsoever. The only feasible answer is that one can only suppose something is there. Ergo, no one can really know at all. This, for the idealists, says a lot about the independence, or the lack thereof, of objects beyond perception of some kind. The common sense realist will find that dubious: a red stone buried in a yard of an abandoned shanty in an isolated location in Irian Jaya will not dis-

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sipate into nothingness just because no one is aware of its existence anymore. The idealist will have no problem with the realist’s position about the stone not dissipating into nothingness: the stone will continue to exist even if no sentient creature in the universe is aware of it because there is a God, an omniscient Supermind, who perceives. Anything that creatures in the universe have perceived, currently perceive, and will perceive is perceived by God. That red stone was perceived by some creatures in the universe. Therefore, that red stone is perceived by God. Inasmuch as it is the case, even though creatures no longer perceive it, the stone does not dissipate into nothingness. Or alternatively, they can say that, the stone, being mere idea, will dissipate into nothingness when not perceived, but will reappear whenever there is a perceiver. The idealists are able to have their proverbial cake and eat it, too: They manage to speak idealist shibboleths without really contradicting the commonsense realists because at the end of the day everyone will have to concede that there can be no test to prove who between the realist and the idealist is right and who is wrong. But idealism, as it is with academic realism, is philosophical chatter that may or may not be about the existence of the external world that any sane common person is certainly aware of—chatter that is quite beyond the purview of the discourse of the common person, the so-called vulgar, which includes both the illiterate peasant with common sense and the scientist who simply sticks to her trade and avoids philosophising. The fact is that no conceivable state of affairs could possibly falsify both the idealist and the academic realist claims that objects exist only in perception or that it does beyond perception. This is an indication that both realism and idealism cannot really be wrong about the factual world that the vulgar refer to. The issue of realismversus-idealism is not exactly an issue about the nature of the world but about something else that the vulgar cannot be bothered with: Academic realism and idealism are language-games that are simply different from that played by the vulgar, forms of expression that are not quite in synchrony with the quotidian form of expression of the vulgar. Both academic realism and idealism are forms of expression that, by affirming or denying supposed facts beneath quotidian facts, refer to something other than what commonsense realism refer to, then both the former are not really inconsistent with the latter, but only are distinct forms of expression. “The common-sense man,” Wittgenstein points out, “is as far from realism as from idealism” (BB, 48; cf. BB, 56–7).

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Yet Wittgenstein would rather refrain from these academic chatters in favour of quotidian discourse. For one, he sees this academism as abnormal discourse. But then this raises the question as to why he is partial to quotidian discourse, as to why it should be taken as the norm. But answers are quite easy to come by. This academism simply sounds queer. For instance, as Philonous12 points out to Hylas, if his position is granted, then it should be said that real sounds are never heard. Or one can say that the colour of red blood corpuscles is apparently red—and one may as well insist that the name of that thing referred to should be “apparently red blood corpuscle.” Besides, there is no point in engaging in academism. If substance is beyond the scope of the cognitive faculty of humans, then, more than just a something-we-know-not-what, it is a something we-cannot-knowwhat; if so, then neither is there a point in supposing it, let alone making inquiries into it, nor in denying it. And even if one may grant that substance in not unknowable in principle (Ayers 1991, II, 15)— perhaps one can imagine humans being transformed into something else, like into beings living a life-after-death, freed from the physical limitations that as embodied humans they were trapped in, and thus are able to perceive the world as, one may say, angels do, and so imagine a possibility of somehow perceiving substance—there still is no point engaging in substance or something-we-know-not-what chatter in the current human state. Supposing substance cannot in any way have a bearing on anyone’s purposeful activity; an enquiry into it cannot have any of the purposes that an enquiry into, say, subatomic particles have: one can hope to create something from whatever knowledge one gets out of an inquiry into the subatomic world but one cannot hope to get anything out of supposing, let alone inquiring into, substance. It cannot without irony be said, even by believers in knowledge for knowledge’s sake, that the point of enquiring into that something-wecannot-know-what is knowledge itself. But, just like the realism it pits itself against, idealism engages in abnormal chatter. It insists, against academic realism, that there is no mind-independent substance, but only aggregates of ideas and minds on which they supervene—that is all there is to reality. This appears 12 Despite being apparently an idealist mouthpiece, Philonous is, Cora Diamond claims, like Wittgenstein, a figure driven by the “realistic spirit” that is as realist as could be but is “not in the thrall of metaphysical requirements” (See Diamond 1991, Introduction I; II; Chapter 1).

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headed toward queer assertions. If ideas and minds are all there are, then, as the idealists could readily concede that, to borrow words from George Berkeley (HK 1, 38), “we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas.” And moreover, the physical body itself may have to be reduced to an aggregate of perceived qualities that, like everything else, supervene on the mind; granted that, then one must also speak harshly of the mind eating, drinking and being clothed. But then the idealist would respond that what is really being denied here “is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance” but that “the things I see with mine eyes and touch with mine hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question” (HK 1, 35). Here appears a discursive dissonance. It is said that the objects of human knowledge are none but ideas. If, as the vulgar understands, an apple is an object of human knowledge, then an apple is an idea. This sounds queer to the vulgar. The idealist may say that an apple is none but an aggregate of perceived qualities such as colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence (HK 1, 1). This only perhaps means that beyond these said aggregate of perceived qualities there is no universal apple, and not that there are no such things as apples that both the vulgar and the most lunaticlike philosopher sometimes mindlessly munch. But really, the world of universals is something the vulgar, and even the philosopher who values knowledge for its own sake, can do without and not miss anything significant (except perhaps, in the case of philosophers, to make a living out of idle chatter). Academic realism supposes another reality beyond that which can be known by both the vulgar and the philosopher. Idealism rejects that supposed reality and goes on to posit that nothing exists but minds and ideas, and that things cannot exist without a mind perceiving them. But unless one makes a living out of academism, it makes no difference if one opts to go the way of idealism and reject academic realism or reject idealism and go the way of academic realism. One may insist to death that “we are fed and clothed with (nothing else but) those things which are perceived immediately by our senses” (HK 1, 38). Another may, contrariwise, insist with equal vehemence that behind that which is eaten, drunk and worn are substances. Other than their chatter, their respective lifestyles will show no fundamental difference: they will conduct themselves in the very same way as the rest of the non-academism-chattering humanity do. As Wittgenstein points out:

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Academism’s manner of speaking is not in any way more advantageous than the quotidian way of speaking. One can then simply do away with both idealism and academic realism without actually or potentially gaining or missing anything significant outside a purely academic setting. In the final analysis, one simply gets to find out that these academic chatters are all idle cogs in the engine of human discourse.

IV. Realism/non-realism and Wittgenstein’s God The contention between the realist position that God is real but transcendent and the non-realist position that such a God is not real is parallel to that of the contention between the academic realist position that substance, though transcendent of perception, is real and the idealist position that it is not. One may object to this parallelism, may suggest that perhaps this metaphysical dispute is not merely verbal, by pointing out a lack of analogy between the dispute about the reality of material objects and that of the reality of God. One may say “I have no use for talk about God because I have become convinced that there is no God” but not “I have become convinced that there are no material things, therefore I have given up talk about tables and trees.” There is an “intelligible link between becoming convinced that God is a fiction and giving up talk about God,” but “does the one who asserts [‘I have become convinced that there are no material things’] really no longer talk about tables?” (Byrne 2003, 97). But this way of presenting the relation between the positions itself rests on a mistaken analogy. In this case there should have been no matter of analogy to start with. One must keep in mind that the dispute at issue here is that between the realist and the idealist. But someone who has no use for talk about God on the basis that God is non-existent is not an idealist but a realist who is an atheist and is embroiled in a dispute with a fel-

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low realist who is a theist.13 While someone who refuses to talk about tables and trees because of the conviction that material things do not exist is again not an idealist but a lunatic who may or may not be up against anyone. It really looks to be the case that the dispute between the religious realist and the non-realist is merely one of differing forms of expression. If Wittgenstein can dismiss this contentious realism/ idealism divide as idle academism, so it can be said that this dismissal extends to the religious realism/non-realism divide. Cupitt engages in an idealist form of expression that anyhow Wittgenstein sees as a disease of the understanding, being a deviant form of expression. They are, so to speak, playing two different languagegames. And Cupitt apparently does not realize that. Religious nonrealism, as represented by Cupitt, seems to have a God who is thought to be a se but whose reality is such that it is a being among other beings; and the God who is not a se but is merely a function of language. One is, as Cupitt has it, the God of medieval Christianity whose “traditional and philosophical outlook . . . was Platonic, making a sharp contrast between this changing and corruptible material world below and the eternal controlling intelligible world above” (Cupitt 1993, 48). But Cupitt proclaims that he has “completely . . . reversed the traditional outlook of Christian Platonism. The world above and the absolutes are gone. The whole of our life and our standards are now inside language and culture” (Cupitt 1993, 49). He repudiates what he says is the old concept of God to affirm a new one: the non-realist God. It appears that there is a false dilemma being floated. The concept of God to choose from need not be confined to the two that Cupitt flashes. And if he has dismissed the notion of the God of what he refers to as Christian Platonism, it does not follow that he has dismissed all notions of an aseitic God that is essential to an other-than-a-non-realist theology. Apophatic theology offers a third option which Cupitt seems oblivious of. As Deny Turner points out, Cupitt’s “polemics against theological ‘objectivism’ [does not even begin] to get to grips with the resolute

13 There certainly is a difference between an atheist-versus-theist dispute and a realist-versus-non-realist one. For example: “While Richard Swinburne and Quentin Smith disagree over whether God is real, they agree in a realist interpretation of theistic discourse. Contrariwise, while Smith and Cupitt both agree that the God of traditional theism does not exist, the former gives a realist interpretation of theism while the latter does not. What Smith and Swinburne agree on is that the governing intent of theistic discourse and belief is a realist one.” (Byrne 2003, 4)

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apophaticisms of the medieval theological, mystical and spiritual traditions” (Turner 1997, 119). In the apophatic tradition, God is neither seen as an object that only the metaphysical realist could be bothered to contemplate about, nor a mere verbal mumbo-jumbo in some upscale hocus-pocus that only the post-graduate-educated linguistic idealist could be bothered to chatter about. God, quite simply, defies human categorization. God, says the Pseudo-Dionysius, “does not posses this kind of existence and not that.” Nicholas of Cusa expresses the same point about God: “It is not the case that He is nothing . . . He is not a something, either . . . God is beyond nothing and something” (DA 9). (Interestingly, Wittgenstein’s unmistakable suggestion of how God is appropriately spoken of is almost identical to what Nicholas says about God: like the mind, God is “not a something, but not a nothing either.”) This is a God who is not only taken to be not deprived of reality but also exceeding reality itself, and yet somehow it is a God that any layperson with at least a modicum of familiarity with the relevant linguistic conventions can meaningfully speak about, and speak with no less of a realist attitude that they would have as they speak of what to them are real objects in the universe. Such a God is the God of Wittgenstein. So, given the different forms of expression Cupitt and Wittgenstein engage in, there is a case to submit that the God being denied and the God being affirmed by religious non-realism may have hardly any bearing on Wittgenstein’s concern. Or to put it bluntly: Wittgenstein could not care less about what religious non-realism denies reality to. That makes Wittgenstein not a religious non-realist—but it also makes him not an academic realist who believes in a God who is said to be real yet is transcendent in a sense akin to that of a transcendent Cartesian mind, or of empiricist substance, or of Platonic forms. Wittgenstein’s rejection of academic realism—be it representationalist realism, naïve realism, metaphysical realism, or whatever strand of academic realism—is the flipside of his affirmation of common sense realism—the rough-ground realism of the common person, the “vulgar” as Berkeley calls them, which includes the scientist who steers away from supposed realities behind the reality that a scientist cannot hope to stumble into. Wittgenstein champions the form of expression of the commonsensical person who speaks in the normal commonsensical language. Wittgenstein, who realizes that he too “belong with the rest of the world” (NB 15.10.16) is a realist in the same way any sane,

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commonsensical, reasonable person in the world is. He is by attitude a realist. He has the attitude of Philonous who personifies the realistic spirit. Philonous’ attitude “to the world as he knows it in sense perception is an attitude to the real: to the real real enough that there is no question of something missing from it, no question of something else beyond it in virtue of which it is perception of the real” (Diamond 1991, 44). This is the attitude of the vulgar, the sane and reasonable person who stays clear of academism, and whose form of expression Wittgenstein champions. It only makes sense to suppose that this attitude extends even to God: the vulgar who believes in God is a religious realist. If Wittgenstein and the vulgar share an attitude towards the commonsensical universe, then again it only makes sense to suppose that they share an attitude towards God, even if they would not necessarily share a concept of God. It has been suggested that belief in God is in the same epistemological boat as belief in other minds (Plantinga 1967; cf. CV, 73e: “If someone can believe in God with complete certainty, why not in other minds?”). The issue of the other mind has a considerably long history, and no proof for the existence of the other mind has been offered that is incontestable. This nonetheless hardly matters to Wittgenstein. That the other fellow really has a mind is for Wittgenstein, as much as for anyone not mired in academism, a matter of attitude, not of opinion (PI II, 178). One relates to the other fellow instinctively in the manner exhibiting a certainty that the other has a mind. One does not first gather data about the other fellow and then (perhaps after employing Bayesian calculations) infer that the fellow most probably has a mind. One does not even make a provisional, even if decisive, choice to suppose that the other has a mind with the understanding that the supposition is one subject to validation, or falsification as the case maybe. One may opt to demonstrate that belief in the other mind is rationally justifiable. Be that as it may, one could wonder what the point is of going through such a tedious exercise: beyond being a mere academic exercise, no one would seriously consider proving that, for instance, the stranger one meets one dark rainy night in a deserted alley has a mind like one’s own, and the extremely rare fellow who would may be doing so out of lunacy. As one has a realistic spirit/attitude towards the other mind, so can one have a similar attitude towards God. One may say: My attitude towards the universe is an attitude towards a divine creation; I am not of the opinion

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that it is a divine creation. This is to say in effect that an aseitic divine creator is.

V. ‘God’ and ‘colour’ There is one more point to consider with regards to the issue of Wittgenstein as a (an alleged) religious non-realist: He likens the concept of God to the concept of colour. He notes: God’s essence is said to guarantee his existence—what this really means is that here what is at issue is not the existence of something. For could one not equally say that the essence of colour guarantees its existence? As opposed, say, to the white elephant. For it really only means: I cannot explain what ‘colour’ is, what the word “colour” means, without the help of a colour sample. So in this case there is no such thing as explaining ‘what it would be like if colour were to exist’. And now we might say: There can be a description of what it would be like if there were gods on Olympus—but not: ‘What it would be like if there were God’. And this determines the concept ‘God’ more precisely. (CV, 82e)

But Wittgenstein also treats colour concepts like the concept of sensation (RC III-71). Just as learning and speaking about sensation is not possible without criteria—i.e. publicly observable sensationbehaviour—he argues that learning and speaking about colour in absolute abstraction—i.e. sans concrete samples and visuals aids—is not possible (RC III-73 and 135). If Wittgenstein treats colour concepts like sensation concepts, and if sensation is, as Wittgenstein puts it, neither a something nor a nothing (PI §304), then it may as well be said about colour. A something is an entity; a nothing is a non-entity, i.e. a purported entity that actually does not exist. If a mental process or sensation—for instance, a thought or toothache—were treated as if they were a something, then it would get a similar discursive treatment as other “somethings,” such as teeth, tongue and tonsils. But since, obviously, toothache is not a material something, so it must be another type of something, perhaps a something that only lurks in the mind/soul which is an entity that is immaterial. Colour will likewise merit the treatment of an entity, like the Egyptian pyramids would: Just as one can speak of them as ancient and durable, one can do likewise with colour as timeless and indestructible (cf. PI §§57–58). But then again, colour is not a material entity. An entity that is not of the

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mundane material world must be one belonging to another dimension of Reality—now the notion of metaphysical entity crops up to add to the mundane one.14 On the flip-side of this matter: if mental processes were deemed a nothing, then one, like a fundamentalist behaviourist, would refuse to speak of a thought passing through someone else’s mind (if not one’s own) or of the toothache someone else (if not oneself ) is suffering from. And if colour were deemed likewise, then one will have to do lots of explaining as everyone else speaks of blue skies, green leaves and red blood. (One may wonder if the statement ‘Colour does not exist; only coloured things do’ can be made without sounding funny.) In the passages relevant to the issue of sensation (PI §§243–315) Wittgenstein is concerned with the concept of pain, the teaching and acquisition of such concept, the conveying of pain by someone of the fact that one is having it, and the knowing about it by another; he is not concerned with the reality of pain. And while he discusses private sensation, his discussion is not about its reality or the lack of it but about the conceptual intractability of a certain way of representing it. His point is that it is not possible to learn to speak meaningfully about mental processes without referring to their relevant criteria, i.e. any publicly observable behaviour that is the signification or expression of mental processes. Nowhere does he express a denial of the reality of sensation per se, or of inner processes, as his imaginary interlocutor suggests that he, Wittgenstein, is actually denying them. In fact he explicitly denies that he is denying them: “Why should I deny that there is a mental process? To deny mental process would mean . . . to deny that anyone remembers anything” (PI, §306). And obviously he by no means denies the act of remembering. What he actually denies reality and ascribes fictional status to is not mental process but a certain picture of their grammar (PI §§304, 307): the name/object model of discourse about mental processes that effectively discursively treats the mind like an entity.

14

And one may wonder now if, just as it is perfectly alright to say “I have something in my mouth: teeth, or tongue,” it would not be too far out of order to say “I have something in my mind: a thought” or even “I have something in my mouth: a toothache” (Hacker 1990, 254). After all, Descartes considered something like “I have something in my pineal gland: my soul.” And if the soul is the true self, then perhaps: “My true self is in my pineal gland.”

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If in saying that sensation is neither a something nor a nothing Wittgenstein does not mean to declare it as non-real (as its reality, or the lack thereof, is not the issue of the matter) then again this may well be said about colour: It may be said to be neither a something nor a nothing, but that does not mean to say anything that would in effect declare it as non-real (as its reality, or the lack thereof, is not the issue of the matter). He points out that “natural history of colours would have to report on their occurrence in nature, not on their essence. Its propositions would have to be temporal ones” (RC III-135). What he is saying is that naturally visible objects are indispensable to learning about colour and engaging in colour-discourse. One can learn the concept of colour only by actually seeing coloured objects and being told that such-and-such objects have such-and-such colours, and can talk about colours only in reference to visible objects. Colour cannot be learned about or conceptualized in absolute abstraction, i.e. completely without concrete samples or visual aids. If there is anything being denied here, it is the possibility of a meaningful discourse on colour per se, or in Wittgenstein’s own words, on colour “in its own right” (PI §58), i.e. the universal colour that only belongs to some sempiternal realm and completely bereft of any reference to naturally visible objects. Wittgenstein says nothing substantive about colour per se because about such there simply is no grammatically viable way to say anything substantively meaningful. But again Wittgenstein cannot by any means be suggesting that colour is non-real. He just does not, and cannot, say anything to the effect that colour per se is a nothing, just as he cannot say that it is a something. The question of realism or non-realism about colour per se, just as of sensation per se, does not arise and cannot be raised in this respect. Similar points can be made about God: God is neither a something nor a nothing.15 This claim should provide a hint on how Wittgenstein’s statement that “what is at issue [about the matter of God’s existence] is not the existence of something” is to be taken. Some see this as an endorsement of the position of the non-reality of God (e.g. Cupitt 1994, 232). But if that is really so, then, considering that the concept of sensation, colour and God are placed by Wittgenstein in 15 Cf. “Wittgenstein says of the sensation of pain what Aquinas, where he writing today, might say of God: ‘It is not a something, but not a nothing either’ ” (Davies 1992, 57n). And, of course, Nicholas of Cusa also says exactly what St. Thomas Aquinas says.

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parallel positions, it might as well be said that Wittgenstein endorses behaviourism (which on the contrary he dismisses as nonsense), and that he endorses the non-reality of colour (which in fact is an obviously ludicrous thing to say). On the other hand, if God were a something, then God is just a being among other beings. On this score God is an entity, but an immaterial entity, and as such is in the same ontological boat as the hypostasised mind/soul, the universal colour and all the other Platonic entities. Yet, if Wittgenstein could find no grammatically viable way to speak meaningfully of the mind per se, and of colour per se, then likewise is the case with God per se. And it is precisely for this reason that the question of realism/non-realism about God does not arise, nor can it be meaningfully raised. Imagining the kind of existence of God, according to Wittgenstein, is like imagining the kind of existence of colour. That certain things are coloured is not something that ever comes up for doubt means that nothing more beyond the trivially obvious and obviously trivial can be said substantively about “what it would be like if colour were to exist.” As Fergus Kerr puts it, “[t]here is no position from which the existence of the colour system might have been a discussable hypothesis. We could not answer the question ‘What difference does the existence of colour make?’ by pointing to an item in the environment” (Kerr 1986, 154).16 On the flip-side, it is not possible to conceive of a state of colourlessness in a material world, to imagine a material universe absolutely bereft of colour. No substantially meaningful statements can be made about a state of absolute colourlessness. Colour is manifested in every visible or visualizable object. So long as there is anything visible or visualizable, there is colour. And though it is not unusual in quotidian conversation to speak of visible but colourless objects, still, to say that a visible object is colourless simply means that it is not pigmented. On this score “colour is darkening, and if such is removed from the substance, white remains, and for this reason we call it ‘colourless’ ” (RC I-52). Or if an object that is not pigmented which is otherwise called by the word ‘colourless’ is not actually white, it may be diaphanous. But being colourless in this sense is not actually a state of absolute colourlessness. Light may be a necessary condition for vision and for colour, i.e. the colours seen on a hue. The absence of

16 For this particular Wittgensteinian gloss Kerr credits Rowans Williams (1984, 15–6).

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light is total darkness, and to be in total darkness means to see nothing at all. But even the word ‘dark’ is a colour-related word, and the state of total darkness is sometimes described using the word ‘pitch black’. While one can say one sees nothing in the dark, yet it can at the same time be said that one sees nothing but darkness. Thus, colour is ubiquitous: everything has, and everywhere is, colour. Where there is colour, there is something visible/visualizable. There is a bi-conditional truism here: If there is something visible/visualizable, then there is colour; and if there is colour, then there is something visible/visualizable. Given that something is visible/visualizable, colour is logically ineluctable; and given that something has colour, visibility/ visualizability is logically ineluctable. Colour and something visible/ visualizable are to each other a grammatical sine qua non. The grammar of colour mandates that colour cannot be meaningfully conceived as non-existent. If imagining the kind of existence of God is like imagining the kind of existence of colour, then it must go for Wittgenstein that the grammar of God also mandates that God cannot be meaningfully conceived as non-existent.17 It is a basic tenet of virtually all religions that bear belief in the Divine (e.g. Brahma, Tao, Yahweh or Allah) that existence is sourced from the Divine. As far as such religions are concerned, the Divine— “God”—is the sine qua non of existence. Accordingly, if there were no God, there would have been no existence to speak of whatsoever. So it follows by transposition that if there is existence, then there is God. Here there is unquestionably a conditional relationship between God

17 This resembles St. Anselm’s argument (Pros. III) that “God cannot be thought not to exist.” By definition God is the being “than which nothing greater can be thought.” It is understood “that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot be only in the understanding.” Hence “something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in the understanding and in reality.” The objection to this is well-noted: It does not really follow that if a being’s existence is guaranteed by definition then that being does in fact exists. If the said objection is sufficient to bring down St. Anselm’s position, it may delight the atheist but would not necessarily be a point scored for non-realism and against religious realism. One can easily imagine an objection to the position of Wittgenstein that is similar to that raised against St. Anselm. Yet, just like in the case of St. Anselm, this does not affect the point being made here about Wittgenstein because the issue is less about God’s existence than it is about having a realist or a non-realist position on God.

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and existence. But significantly, Wittgenstein suggests that the grammar of God is like that of colour. If so, then God is spoken of as though there is a bi-conditional relationship between God and existence, just as there is between colour and visibility/visualizability. Thus: If there is existence (i.e. there is something in existence), then there is God; and if there is God, then there is existence. In this case, existence is just as much the sine qua non of God as vice versa. There cannot, therefore, be talk of God without involving existence (or objects in existence). And, as existence is a certainty, there cannot be a description (beyond the trivially obvious and obviously trivial) of what it would be like if there were existence. If existence and God are bi-conditionals, it follows that there cannot be a description of what it would be like if there were God beyond reiterating the trivially obvious and obviously trivial point that there is existence. If Wittgenstein, like any sane and reasonable person, has a realist attitude toward existence, then there is no way that he could be seen not to have the same attitude towards God who is spoken of as both the antecedent and the consequent of existence.

VI. Apophatic theology and God-universe bi-conditionality Many theists would likely take issue with the God-existence biconditionality position on account of it appearing to be pantheism of sorts. That Wittgenstein, as he is shown (above) to be not a non-realist, is exposed as a pantheist of sorts and not a theist who believes God to be distinct from creation is rather disappointing. Notwithstanding the pantheistic impression that it gives, this God-existence bi-conditionality may be, like almost any other theological position, contestable but probably not too far removed from orthodox Christian tradition. Wittgenstein unwittingly echoes a theology thought out by PseudoDionysius the Areopagite and espoused by, among others, John Scottus Eriugena and St. Thomas Aquinas. For John all things are made by God and exclusively from God. God, it is said, created the universe out of nothing; but he points out that “in the Scriptures God Himself is called by that name of Nothing” (Peri III, 685A). Thus, as Dermot Moran puts it: “God is all in all, and creature and Creator are said to be one . . . Creation ex nihilo means God’s own self-creation . . . There is no ‘other’ to God, although God can be considered as ‘other’ than the world. God is really not ‘other’ than the world, and creation is not

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‘other’ than God” (Moran 1989, 236). Or better to take it from John’s own words: . . . we ought not to understand God and the creature as two things distinct from one another, but as one and the same. For both the creature, by subsisting, is in God; and God, by manifesting Himself, in a marvellous and ineffable manner creates Himself in the creature, the invisible making Himself visible and the incomprehensible comprehensible and the hidden revealed and the unknown known . . . the Creator of all things created in all things and the Maker of all things made in all things, and the eternal He begins to be, and immobile he moves into all things and becomes in all things all things. (Peri III, 678C)18

If God and the universe is “one and the same” then to consign God to the non-real is to do likewise to the universe. The notion of the universe as non-real is something even a religious non-realist would likely find queer. That Wittgenstein happens to share a strikingly similar position with the clearly religious realist John Scottus Eriugena is one more reason why he, Wittgenstein, should not be placed outside the religious realist line. If there is still any doubt left about the standing of John as an orthodox theologian, there is none whatsoever about St. Thomas Aquinas. It so happens that he, as Norman Kretzmann duly takes note, is a subscriber to the Pseudo-Dionysian principle that “Goodness is by nature diffusive of itself and (thereby) of being” (Kretzmann 1997, 224; cited by Byrne 2003, 13). This seems to suggest that the existence of the universe is a necessary consequence of God’s very nature. This version of St. Thomas’s theism entails (and this is Peter Byrne’s gloss on Kretzmann) “that God’s very existence is a sufficient condition for the existence of a material universe, and thus that the existence of a material universe is a necessary condition for God’s existence, and thus that God depends upon the universe for God’s existence” (Byrne 2003, 13). This may be disputable, not the least because it makes St. Thomas appear too close to pantheism.19 But something disputable is

18 This looks like pantheism; but of course John’s theology is much more nuanced than what could be portrayed in this paragraph (See Moran 1989, 84ff ). 19 Creation is sometimes spoken of as emanation and sometimes as a work of divine art (Te Velde 1995, 103ff ). Kretzmann seems to portray St. Thomas as subscribing to the emanation model; however, this model comes too close to suggesting that (a) the creator was more spontaneous than deliberate in creating or even that the creator was not capable of deciding not to create, and (b) the mode of being of the created is not quite radically distinct from that of the creator. But Te Velde portrays

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not necessarily untenable or implausible. Kretzmann’s position is not without plausible reason (Kretzmann 1997, 224–5). He takes a quote from SCG I: The sharing (communicatio) of being and goodness proceeds from goodness. This is of course evident, both form the nature of the good and from its definition (ratione) . . . It is for this reason that the good is said to be diffusive of itself and of being. Now this diffusion is attributable to God, for it is shown above [I.13] that he is the cause of being for other things (37.307).

Kretzmann then points out: “God is perfect goodness itself, and goodness is essentially—from its nature and from its definition—diffusive of itself and of being. Doesn’t it follow that the volition to create is a consequence not of God’s free choice but of God’s very nature?” There is evidence, according to him, that the answer to this question is affirmative. He takes another quote: [E]very agent, to the extent to which it is in actuality and perfect, produces something like itself. That is why this, too, pertains to the essential nature of will—that the good that anyone has he shares with others as much as possible. Moreover, it pertains above all to the divine will, from which every perfection is derived in virtue of a kind of likeness (ST Ia.19. 2c).

Wittgenstein seems to have an unimpeachably orthodox theological underwriter in St. Thomas Aquinas—or at least Kretzmann’s Thomas. If Wittgenstein were to be accused of pantheism, he would then be in the company of Duns Scottus Eriugena and Meister Eckhart, and perhaps (Kretzmann’s) St. Thomas Aquinas.

a St. Thomas who subscribes to the divine work of art model, a model that is more suggestive of deliberateness on the part of the creator and of radical distinctiveness of mode of being between creator and creature. A creature can be called an ‘emanation’ of God, but not a natural emanation as the rays of the sun are to the sun that could not help but emanate rays.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE WITTGENSTEINIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IS MISUNDERSTOOD

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s contribution to philosophy of religion is not very widely appreciated.1 From among those who bother themselves with such contribution critics are so easy to come by. Though it is D. Z. Phillips, rather than Wittgenstein, who bears the brunt of the criticisms.2 This is so probably because he is the most prolific of all those who dealt with religious matters in a Wittgensteinian manner— which makes it probably right to designate him the doyen of the so-called neo-Wittgensteinians, the propagators of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion—or because his interest in philosophy of religion and theology is a lot more focused than that of Wittgenstein whose concern is less on matters within religion or theology proper than on how religious matters are spoken of, and whose most significant contribution is providing philosophical materials to those who would care to specialize in philosophizing about religion (cf. Barrett 1991, 258). However the criticisms against the Wittgensteinian

1 One commentator points out that “the impact of Wittgenstein in [analytic philosophy of religion] has been minimal is self-evident. . . . philosophy of religion goes on as if [he] never existed, or as if he had never written anything on the philosophy of religion. . . . [He] and his followers have certainly not succeeded in changing the agenda in philosophy of religion” (Moore 2005, 210). But, to put this claim in perspective, this case in the philosophy of religion is probably representative of the case in philosophy as a whole: as suggested by one other commentator, mainstream Anglophone philosophy has become practically anti-Wittgensteinian (Hacker 1996, 272). 2 Perhaps one of the most galling of these criticisms is the accusation that Phillips, Peter Winch, Normal Malcolm are “being most un-Wittgensteinian” as they are “clinging too closely to some assumption that Wittgenstein was rightly opposed to;” and to top it all is the hope expressed following the accusation that they “could correct an important error in their positive characterization of religion if they were more loyal to the insights of Wittgenstein” (Brambough 1977, 16 and 19). It is as if the critic understands and respects Wittgenstein more than the Wittgensteinians like—of all people—Malcolm. The critic’s absolution of Wittgenstein from blame sounds patronizing to a Wittgensteinian philosopher of religion. And there are others, too, who are almost as patronizing, like Kai Nielsen (1967, 193–4) who makes explicit his unwillingness to lay his criticisms on what he calls “Wittgensteinian fideism” at Wittgenstein’s door, Patrick Sherry (1977, 28ff ), and John Hick (1984, 46).

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philosophy of religion have a dubious provenance—this is what this chapter argues. Section I presents a selection of these criticisms. Section II shows two distinct traditions where one speaks of God as a being and the other does not. Section II argues that Wittgenstein belongs to the tradition where God is not spoken of as a being. Section IV suggests that criticisms against the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion are borne of a misunderstanding owing to the lack of cognizance on the part of the critics of the tradition in which it belongs.

I. The criticisms against Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion The general issue against the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion— with Phillips at the focal point—is that it propagates theological positions that are so unorthodox as to be bizarre even. One such charge of unorthodoxy—or more bluntly, heresy—is expressed by Renford Brambough thus: It is true that some who have called themselves Christians, and not only in recent times, have repudiated such beliefs [in the substantive existence of God, the historical roots of the Christian religion, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ at a particular time and place], even when they have continued to use for other purposes the language that was designed to express them: but at least until recently they were set down as heretics. Are the modern reinterpreters, including [Phillips, Winch and Malcolm], willing to face . . . the recognition that their understanding of the Christian religion is profoundly unorthodox? Do they cheerfully accept the consequences that all or nearly all Popes and Cardinals, and Luther and Milton and Donne and Saint Thomas Aquinas profoundly misunderstood their faith or faiths? (Brambough 1977, 16–17)

Two of those theological positions of the neo-Wittgensteinians are here identified.3 One position—if proof-texting is to be called for—is suggested supposedly in, for instance, declarations such as this:

3 Albeit D. Z. Phillips (1986a, Ch. 1) identifies five positions attributed by critics to the Wittgensteinans, and most of all to him: (a) Religious beliefs are logically cut off from all other aspects of human life, (b) Religious beliefs can only be understood by religious believers, (c) Whatever is called religious language determines what is and what is not meaningful in religion, and (d) Religious beliefs cannot be criticized. However, these five positions seem to share a single theme such that they can be subsumed under ‘fideism’.

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[‘There is a God’] looks like a statement in the indicative mood but in fact it is not. . . . Philosophically, it would be better to point out that the word ‘God’ is not a name at all. Once we see this, we stop thinking of an object, the “thing in itself ”, to which the name refers. (Phillips 1986b, 119)

This, to critics, affirms either religious non-cognitivism or non-realism or even crypto-atheism, for it is suggested that belief in God has no extensional content or that statements about God are non-referential or are bereft of extra-linguistic, factual and objective reference. The following are some representative remarks of notable critics John Hick and John Cook respectively:4 I take it that he [Phillips] denies the existence of an all-powerful and limitlessly loving God. I take it, that is, that he denies that in addition to all the many human consciousness there is another consciousness which is the consciousness of God, and that this God is the creator of the universe and is both all-powerful and limitlessly loving. I take it that he rejects this belief as a crude misunderstanding of religious language and holds that, rightly understood, the “existence of God” consists in man’s use of theistic language within the context of a pattern of religious life. (Hick 1977, 122) Wittgenstein and some of his followers have attempted to reduce religious belief to ethical attitudes solemnized and memorialized in ritual, and they think this entitles them to use religious terms and phraseology despite their denial of the transcendent. . . . [A]n unbiased look at the actual use of religious terms show that Wittgenstein and his followers have no right to continue (as they do) using such terms. It is time for atheists to talk like atheists, for when they do otherwise, they only mislead. (Cook 1987, 219)

The other position is suggested in declarations such as this: God’s reality is not one of a kind; He is not a being among beings. . . . Thus, the reality of God cannot be assessed by a common measure which also applies to things other than God. (Phillips 1970, 85)

This, to the critics, is expressive of fideism for supposedly the neoWittgensteinians hold that religious belief is insulated from outside criticism and that believing is prerequisite to a proper understanding

4 Remarks to the same effect but not quoted here are given by, among many others, Hugo Meynell (1971, 127), and Patrick Sherry (1977, 53). Of course there are others worth citing.

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of the statements that proceed from such belief. The following are some of the notable remarks of critics John Hick and K. C. Grant: The unacceptable feature of the [neo-Wittgensteinian] position is that by treating religious language as autonomous—as a language-game with its own rules or a speech activity having meaning only within its own borders—it deprives religious statements of “ontological” or “metaphysical” significance. . . . The logical implications of religious statements do not extend across the borders of the Sprachspiel into assertions concerning the character of the universe beyond that fragment of it which is the religious speech of human beings. Religious language has become a kind of “protected discourse,” and forfeits its immemorial claim to bear witness to the most momentous of all truths. (Hick 1964, 239–40; quoted in Phillips 1986a, 5) [Phillips] maintains that religion can be understood from the inside, that is, from the position of religious commitment; there cannot be an inquiry into the nature of religious beliefs and concepts from an external standpoint. It is not even sufficient for the philosopher to have been a religious believer; by ceasing to believe he disqualifies himself from understanding. . . . According to Phillips the believer is in effect saying “Either you are one of us or you do not understand what we believe even though you may have done so once”, and he is saying this not only to the philosopher, but to the anthropologist, the historian and the student of comparative religion—a large number to be unemployed at a blow! (Grant 1967, 161–2)

These issues against neo-Wittgensteinians have to do with their denial of certain suppositions that are basic to philosophical theism—a denial that is seen to serve practically as a denial of theism itself. The notable suppositions whose denial by neo-Wittgensteinians are rejected by (most?) theists are the following: (a) God is a being and God’s existence is a matter of fact; (b) ‘God exists’ is a substantive claim and theology or theistic philosophy of religion are a science-like substantive discourse which has to do with systematic inquiry into the nature of God and with the justification of the claims of religion; (c) Substantive proof, i.e. proof derived from non-religious sources such as philosophy and the empirical sciences, is relevant—nay necessary—to the issue of God’s existence. The aforementioned issue raised against the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion which Phillips represents is very serious indeed—so serious that if this matter occurred sometime in the Middle Ages there would have been a good chance that he and others who think like him and even Wittgenstein himself would find themselves counting straws in a dark dungeon, or worse, squirming in the middle of a fiery faggot. Critics are certain that Phillips, if

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not Wittgenstein himself, misrepresents religious belief and practices. Phillips, in turn, suggests that his critics are certainly misrepresenting him. Accusations and denials are issued back and forth. It is likely that the aforementioned criticisms directed at Wittgenstein and the Neo-Wittgensteinians largely stem from a misunderstanding borne of a difference in discursive culture within Christendom.5 The critics proceed from one discursive culture; yet there is one other discursive culture that the thoughts of Wittgenstein and Phillips have an affinity with but of which the critics seem to have not given sufficient cognizance. That there is this misunderstanding is suggested in another issue raised against Phillips: It is said that he can be vague, or otherwise, is elusive or easily goes out of order. This is reflected in some of his critics’ complaints. For example this one expressed by Stephen T. Davis: Phillips is not an easy writer to interpret. Like many philosophers of religion who read him with interest and respect, I confess to years of puzzlement as to what his position actually is on the existence of God and allied issues. I frankly do not even know whether he would accept my characterization of him as a religious nonrealist. Perhaps he would say that the Wittgensteinian critique of religion entails that both religious realism and religious nonrealism are products of conceptual confusion. So I would not at all be surprised if he were to call my interpretation of him . . . confused and my own position . . . incoherent. (Incoherent, confused, muddled, unintelligible—these are words that we find frequently in his writings.) (Davis 1995, 85; italics on the first three sentences added; also Davis 1997, 52).

And another one by Patrick Sherry: [Phillips] says that ‘Religious language is not an interpretation of how things are, but determines how things are for the believer. The saint and the atheist . . . see different worlds’. . . . Some elucidation of this puzzling statement is provided by his account of conversion, according to which coming to see that there is a God involves discovering a new set of concepts or ‘universe of discourse’, rather than establishing a new fact within the familiar one. . . . Plainly Phillips is concerned to deny that religious belief is a deduction or conclusion from non-religious facts. . . . But

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Peter Byrne, one of the keenest observers of the philosophy of religion landscape in the English-speaking world, thinks this is the case: “My feeling is that many of Phillips’ contemporaries do not understand what he is on about . . .” (Byrne 2000, 17–18). Apropos to this, Richard Amesbury argues that certain Wittgensteinian sympathizers criticize the neo-Wittgensteinians out of misunderstanding (see Amesbury 2003).

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chapter eight I must confess that I fail to understand much of this: Phillips often seems to be reducing God to a mere concept. (Sherry 1977, 45; italics added)

And still another by Renford Brambough: Phillips and Winch are not so clear. They continue to use the traditional language of religion, and to speak of it as expressing religious beliefs, religious conviction. Yet they reject both the idea that such beliefs and convictions are about the nature of this world and the idea that they are about another world. They do not seem to me to have made plain what they think such beliefs are about. (Brambough 1977, 15; italics on the first and last sentences added)

Critics, to put it bluntly, sometimes do not know what Phillips is talking about; or do not understand why he does not see much value in the points which they take to be of utmost interest to both philosophy of religion and to apologetics, and why he refuses to engage them at those points but would rather reframe the discussion. They do not understand why Phillips insists that the word ‘God’ is not a name of a substantive entity, that the statement ‘God exists’ does not state (accurately or otherwise) a fact, or that it is not appropriate to try to prove or disprove the existence of God. These critics’ impressions are extremely significant for it says something crucial about the nature of the debate between him and his critics. This is a debate between two sides who speak different idioms. One side has qualms about saying that God is “an entity” or “a being.” The other side does not seem to understand what the qualms are all about.6 As, again, Stephen T. Davis goes: Phillips claims that if God is an object among other objects, then God is the sort of thing that comes to be and passes away. But what exactly is there that Phillips detects in the grammar of the word ‘object’ that requires that all objects be contingent? Why can there not be eternal objects? One way to approach this question is to ask whether there are any generic nouns that satisfy these two criteria: (1) they cover or can refer to both God and contingent things, and (2) they do not rule out or lessen God’s transcendence over all contingent things. Of course

6 Perhaps there is something to the fact the critics—those that are noted here at least—are English-speaking and, more importantly, oriented in the analytic philosophy tradition. Fergus Kerr (2002, 74) notes (in the context of—if one may—Thomist studies) that “the hardest thing for English-speaking readers . . . is to cope with the talk of Being. The word simply does not have the semantic charge, the metaphysical aura, that the esse has in Leonine Thomism, or l’être in French philosophy in general, let alone das Sein in Heidegger’s German.” Perhaps this explains why the critics do not see any problem with saying that God is a being.

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there are (or so I think): terms like ‘object,’ ‘thing,’ or ‘being’ (Anselm’s preferred term) will do nicely. I simply do not detect as Phillips does anything in the grammar of these terms that makes them applicable to contingent things but not God. That is, I see no theological or philosophical danger in saying that God is an object, that God is a thing, or that God is a being. (Davis 1995, 86)

II. Two discursive traditions about God as (not) a being Fingers are pointed at Duns Scotus as being largely responsible for the practice of referring to God as “being” in the same sense that creatures are—although for this practice Duns Scotus himself gives credit to St. Anselm (MNKG Arg. IV).7 While St.Thomas the apophaticist applied the terms to God only analogically, Duns Scotus meant to apply them to God univocally, including the term ‘being’: I say that God is conceived not only in a concept analogous to the concept of a creature, that is, one which is wholly other than that which is predicated of creatures, but even in some concept univocal to Himself and to a creature. (MNKG 2nd Statement). Now, in this life already, a man can be certain in his mind that God is a being. . . . [T]he concept of “being” as affirmed of God is . . . univocal. (MNKG Arg. I; italics added)

What Duns Scotus is saying when he says that terms apply to God univocally is something like the following. Among the predicates ascribed to God are ‘omnipotent’, ‘omniscient’, ‘omnipresent’, and ‘absolutely good’. One acquires concepts of potency, scientiality, presence, and goodness by having observed or heard a graphic account of things or happenings being ascribed the relevant predicates; and then having acquired the relevant concepts, one can then say that something is “potent,” or “sciential,” or “present,” or “good” if that speaker 7 There are others, too, who give St. Anselm much of the credit for the fact that God is spoken of in modern Western Christendom in the way God is spoken of: “the most perfect being” or “the highest being.” For instance, it is St. Anselm who gets Tillich’s blame for transforming God from the primus ens into an ens realissimum from Beingitself to the highest being, from the principle which is beyond essence and existence to something that exists (Paul Tillich 1964, 15). But something looks quite awry with this representation of St. Anselm. While it is true that he calls God “the highest of all beings” (Pros V), he goes on to say “O Lord, thou art not only that than which a greater cannot be conceived, but thou art a being greater than can be conceived” (Pros XV). It looks like, for St. Anselm, God cannot be spoken of in the same way that creatures can be, because the latter, unlike God, are obviously conceivable.

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can conceive, and therefore knows, that that something is capable of doing such and such (e.g. pulverize a ten-ton boulder in a split second), or of knowing such and such (e.g. the secret thoughts of the Queen of England), or of being somewhere (e.g. at a point between the Earth and its moon), or of choosing to do some things (e.g. feed hungry children) and not do other things (e.g. murder children). In other words, one learns to ascribe predicates properly only by seeing how they are ascribed to things in the world. However, God, unlike the things in the world, is not observable. So an issue arises about what sense Earth-bound predicates can make when ascribed to God. For St. Thomas predicates ascribed to the never-at-all-observable God can only be taken analogically; but for Duns Scotus an analogical use of predicates such as ‘potent’ simply evokes no sense. If the above predicates ascribed to God were to evoke any sense at all, they must be used univocally. The statement ‘God is potent’ should evoke the same kind of sense as ‘Mr. Creature is potent’, except that the predicate ascribed to God evokes the sense that is to the superlative (or, more precisely, infinite) degree: e.g. if Mr. Creature is said to be “potent” it is because people imagine him, say, pulverizing a ten-ton boulder in a split second, then God is said to be “potent” because people imagine God, say, pulverizing the whole universe in an even shorter duration. Apparently, Duns Scotus—who was of the belief that humans can have a concept of God per se, “concept in which he is conceived by Himself and quidditatively” (MNKG 1st Statement)—felt confident that he could speak of God as simply as he could of any conceptualizable objects in the universe. In effect he speaks of God as if “the difference between God and creatures, at least with regards to God’s possession of pure perfections, is ultimately one of degree” (Cross 1999, 39). And this way of speaking somehow became the norm. Meanwhile, St. Thomas’ influence eroded through the centuries that followed his death. The weakening of St. Thomas’s theses and reversal of their intended meaning in the hands of the Thomists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries meant “in essence the victory of Duns Scotus over Thomas” (Marion 1998, 267). It appears that the path that modern-day philosophical theists follow is that which Duns Scotus walked.8 The term ‘being’ in its mod-

8 Richard Swinburne explicitly admits this to be the case (see Swinburne 1993, Chs. 4–5). He may or may not be speaking for his fellow philosophical theists, but they do not appear to differ significantly from him in the way they talk about God.

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ern use is a designation for an entity (or ens): under ‘being’ can be subsumed any (supposedly) substantive object, whether concrete (a material object), abstract (e.g. a number, supposedly), or spiritual (e.g. ghost, supposedly), but excludes, among others, impersonal forces (e.g. gravity). The term at issue is also used roughly synonymously with ‘existence’, and its seeming antonym ‘non-being’ is interchangeable with ‘non-existent’. Thus, to speak of God as ‘being’ in the modern sense is to mean that God is not a mere impersonal force but is a personal one (or, to be more exact, most personal or supersciential ) and has a real substantive existence (cf. Pelikan 1991, 182). Of course, God is a unique being but only inasmuch as God, and no other, possesses superlative attributes; nonetheless God is still a being, albeit with superlative attributes. God is marked off from other beings most significantly by the absolute perfection of God as a being. If God is wholly-other, it is just that God is not a material being: God is still a being among other beings, albeit not a material being. This manner of speaking is standard in philosophical theism: God, it is said, is that being which none can conceivably be greater than, the “Greatest Conceivable Being” (Davis 1995, 81) or that “being with one or more of the following properties: being a person without a body (i.e. a spirit), present everywhere . . . able to do everything (i.e. omnipotent), knowing all things, perfectly good. . . .” (Swinburne 1993, 2). God, according to philosophical theism, is a being—the highest being. This, in effect is to say that God, though the most perfect of all beings, is just another being among beings. Yet there is another intellectual culture in Christendom—far stronger in Eastern than in Western Christendom—where apophaticism is the quintessential theological position.9 In this culture God is spoken

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There is the side of Christendom to the west of the Adriatic and Ionian seas, and the side to the east of them. Ages ago the patriarchate of Constantinople had differences with the patriarchate of Rome that led to mutual excommunication and schism. In Eastern Christendom apophatic theology “stood in the most venerable Eastern tradition, as represented not only by the Dionysian corpus and by Maximus the Confessor, but by orthodox theologians in every age” (Pelikan 1974, 264, 258–9). Gregory Palamas, arguably the most authoritative systematic theologian of Eastern Christianity, identifies “theology as apophaticism” as one of the three basic themes of Eastern Christian spirituality (the other two being “revelation as light” and “salvation as deification”). But while Western Christianity saw great personalities that made very important contributions to apophatic theology, this theology did not take the center stage; and worse, some of these personalities were badly misunderstood and got into trouble—some posthumously—as a result. John Scottus Eriugena—who translated into Latin the unmistakably neo-Platonist Dionysian Corpus which itself was spared

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of as “not a being.” (This manner of speaking would here be dubbed the ‘Plotinian manner of speaking of God’ because apophatic theology, the theology that Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion finds affinity with, owes much of its distinctive ideas to Plotinus.) Plotinus adopted the Parmenidean-Platonic concept of being: In this concept true being is that which is immutable.10 Thus, before and during his time, being became primarily identified with Form. It is said that “in the tradition of classic Hellenic metaphysic being is the intrinsically intelligible, the highest proper object of intelligence . . . identical with the highest divine intelligence, an Aristotelian Divine Intellect which is also the Platonic World of Forms” (Armstrong 1975, 80). The World of Forms is, in Plotinian terms, Noūs, which is “the totality of being. . . . The organic world of ideas, the objects of knowledge, and at the same

from destruction by the Western Church only because it was erroneously believed that the author was Dionysius the Areopagite whom the Apostle Paul himself led into the Christian faith, thus guaranteeing the supposed author’s authority on theological matters (Pelikan 1987, 21f )—came up with works that appear to have used the Dionysian Corpus almost like an intellectual template, and was sometimes thought to be a heretic because in some matters “he has wandered from the path traced out by the Latin Fathers in his eager concentration on the Greeks” (O’Meara 1988, 216). His Periphyseon was later officially condemned in 1225 and all extant copies were ordered by Pope Honorius III to be brought to Rome and solemnly burned, and in 1684 was put on the Index—all for its supposed advocacy of pantheism (O’Meara 1988, 217; Moran 1989, 84f ). Meister Eckhart took on the dubious distinction of being the first theologian of major rank, and the only Dominican ever, to be charged with heresy (see e.g. Davies 1991, 31f ). The motivation that sparked this charge appeared to be largely political; but his (misunderstood) mysticism was used as tinder on him. Among those taken against him were his words that notably suggest mysticism and which, like many a mystical position, could easily be mistaken for pantheism: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, and one vision or seeing, and one knowing and one loving” (Meister Eckhart 1941, 288). The Protestant side of Western Christianity hardly has a custom of high regard for apophatic theology, either. Thus it was inevitable that, in the words of one Western Christian thinker, “to many Western Christians today Denis [the Pseudo-Dionysius] is at first acquaintance almost incomprehensible and certainly distasteful. We look in vain for the Jesus of the Gospels and even the Son of God of the Creed. Neo-Platonism is unfamiliar . . .” (Knowles 1975, 87–8). Save for a few specialist scholars, Christians in the West hardly hear of, let alone appreciate, apophatic theology. 10 In Ivor Leclerc’s reckoning, Plato used the term ‘being’ in such as way that it merged two previously differentiated concepts, namely toʾon (the being) and ousia (property or essence of a being): toʾon and ousia became to Plato synonymous (Leclerce 1984, 70). From thereon, ‘being’ in the Parmenidean-Platonic sense took on conceptual content that involved (a) that thing which is present, i.e. it is “there somewhere,” (b) the properties or essence of that which is present, and (c) a differentiation from ‘becoming’ (Leclerc 1984, 68). The true being is that which always is (i.e. is present or subsistent somewhere), always will be, and never will become (i.e. immutable).

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time the mind that knows them” (Armstrong 1967a, 2). And those that are of the Noūs, “the beings of the world of Intellect, the Forms, are . . . the best of beings and the only real beings” (Armstrong 1967b, 238). Noūs, says Plotinus, is the totality of “the genuine reality and true substance” (E V, 3, 4).11 But Noūs is not God. Noūs is preceded by the One. Noūs is only an emanant of the One. The absolute One was before any “something” (E, V, 3, 12), is “higher than what we call ‘being’” (E V, 2, 14), and “is said to be ‘beyond being’ ” (E V, 4, 1)’: The One is sequentially precedent to Noūs, hierarchically preeminent to Noūs, positionally transcendent to Noūs. God, to Plotinus, is the One. The Plotinian One/God precedes, outclasses and transcends all that which is deemed being. “A being for Plotinus” explains a commentator, “is always limited by form or essence. . . . perfect or absolute being is the unified whole of all forms which is the divine Intellect: therefore that which is beyond the limitation of form [and such is the One/God] is beyond being” (Armstrong 1967b, 237). Thus, in the Plotinian schema it is most apt to be said “God is not a being.” The Plotinian God-is-not-a-being notion permeated into Christianity through the Pseudo-Dionysius—via Proclus (Louth 1989, 10–14, 20–24). One may say that if “Denys the Areopagite, the Athenian convert, (not the author of Divine Names) stands at the point where Christ and Plato meet” (Louth 1989, 11), so also it can be said that the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus stands where the Gospels and Enneads meet. He (presumably he was a he) was as Plotinian as to border on being a plagiarist (of Proclus, if not of Plotinus). He had no problem designating God as “Being” for the inherently unknowable and unnamable God may nonetheless be named after noble facets of creation which are reflective of God from whom it has its being. But the term ‘Being’—significantly with a capital ‘B’—is connected with God not as a predicate. The term God is designated as “Being” but not predicated with the word ‘being’. There can never be a predicate that could be properly ascribed to God as one would be to a being. The reason is, in the Pseudo-Dionysius’s own words, “[God] is the substantive Cause and maker of being, subsistence, of existence, of substance and of nature. . . . God is not some kind of being. . . . Rather, he is the

11 Ivor Leclerc’s rendition of the above-quoted phrase is interesting: ‘the beingly being and the true ουσία’ (Leclerc 1984, 71).

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essence of being for the things which have being” (DN 817C–D), or “He is not contained in being. . . . He does not possess being. . . . He precedes being, essence. . . .” (DN 824A–B). The statement ‘God is not a being’ itself expresses a denial of a predicate to God and within the Pseudo-Dionysian schema makes perfect sense. The Pseudo-Dionysius is given legitimacy in Western Christendom by St. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the highest regarded of all theologians in Western Christendom—at least in the Roman Catholic Church— since at least the nineteenth-century, was himself an apophaticist. (But alas, he is not widely recognized for his apophaticism). As a theologian in Paris he (as did his colleagues) subsisted on the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus. He took it as an auctoritas (privileged or authoritative text) and his citations of it number over one thousand seven hundred, more than any citation he made to any other single auctoritas (O’Brien 1975, 182–3).12 By virtue of the pre-eminent stature bestowed (belatedly) on

12 But somehow St. Thomas the Pseudo-Dionysian was overlooked. One can suspect that this historical overlooking began just three years after St. Thomas’ passing. Certain church authorities initiated a purge of what they said were “Averroist errors.” Supposedly, thought influenced by the pagan Aristotle was Averroist thought. So St. Thomas, reputedly an Aristotelian, was somehow associated with Averroist thought. Two hundred nineteen supposedly Averroist propositions were condemned, some of which were attributed to St. Thomas “even though almost none are found verbatim in [his] works” (Weisheipl 1974, 336). Predictably, the said condemnation cast a shadow on his philosophy and theology (McCool 1994, 16). Obviously there were other thinkers of note besides St. Thomas between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries, and their thought stood in competition with his. The condemnation of St. Thomas is likely to have retarded the standing of his thought vis-à-vis those of his competitors. In a century or so after the condemnation, St. Thomas’ thought—as it were—almost totally went out of style (cf. e.g. O’Meara 1997, 156). There were times of renewed appreciation of St. Thomas up until the Counter-reformation; but even among those who appreciated him there were vehement disagreements about how to interpret and appropriate what he said. Some representations of St. Thomas by some were to others not the St. Thomas they recognize. And then there was again the revival of interest in St. Thomas starting in the 1860s and bore a virtually canonical school of thought, Neo-Thomism; but by the early twentieth-century it differed from St. Thomas significantly. Among the differences, according to one account, are Neo-Thomism’s “interest in syllogism and proof to the detriment of a dialectical and synthetic contemplation of theological ideas and sources,” and “lack of knowledge of the historical context of Aquinas’ career, or of development in his writings; a focus on the Aristotelianism in Aquinas which overshadowed the Platonic influences of his work” (O’Meara 1997, 172–3). To put it bluntly, Neo-Thomism is characterized by, among other things, its obliviousness to the apophaticism of St. Thomas. For a century—from the 1860s up to the 1960s—the study of St. Thomas’ work was predominantly mediated by Neo-Thomism. This was, some say, an era when St. Thomas was placed “under house arrest” (O’Meara 1997, 197). It comes as no surprise, therefore, that all those times Western Christendom, which learned a great bulk of all there was to learn in Christian philosophy and theology from St. Thomas, did not at all learn about apophatic theology from him.

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St. Thomas, what was good enough for him should be good enough for Christendom. His recognition of the authoritativeness of the PseudoDionysian corpus makes it considerably good enough for Christendom. Considering that “he was deeply affected by the Dionysian vision of God and God’s world” (O’Brien 1975, 193), he certainly can be said to have gone along with the Pseudo-Dionysian position on the non-being of God. Regarding this matter he comments: “Non-being is affirmed of the supreme God and is moreover present in it, not by defect, as is said of prime matter and pure negation or sheer privation, but supra-substantially. God is indeed called non-existent, not because he is lacking in existence, but because he is beyond all existing things” (quoted in O’Rourke 2005, 95). He, consistently along the PseudoDionysian line, held that God is wholly other in all conceivable ways: “God . . . is not in the same class as material realities, either in logical order or in the natural order—for God is not in any sense in a class” (ST 1a, 88, 2); “it is plain that God does not belong to the genus of substance” (ST 1a, 3, 5); “God transcends all that is there” (ST 1a, 12, 1). Whatever glosses St. Thomas may have put on the PseudoDionysius’s affirmation of God’s non-being, it is nonetheless the case that he, St. Thomas, was far from being ill at ease with the Plotinian/ Pseudo-Dionysian statement ‘God is not a being’.13

III. Wittgenstein in line with the Plotinian tradition There could hardly be any doubt as to which of the above-mentioned discursive traditions Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion belongs to—or does not belong to. The Rev. Wynford Morgan, a Welsh

13 This manner of speaking of God found an advocate in the twentieth-century English-speaking theological world in the German-speaking Paul Tillich. He insists that God cannot be spoken of as if a being among or above other beings for there is no proportion or gradation between God and beings; rather, there is only an absolute break, an infinite gap. To speak of God the way philosophical theists do—as an existent something—is to demote God to the realm of being, of existents, and is in effect, as far as Tillich is concerned, not much better than atheism (Tillich 1951, 235–7). Tillich’s theological concern—indeed his “ultimate concern”—is the “God above the God of theism” (Tillich 1965, 52). This God is being-itself. God, the prius of everything that has being, is not a being. William L. Rowe (1968, 62ff) thought back in those days when Tillich was not well understood by his non-existentialist-oriented audience (assuming that he has since then been well understood) that Plotinus’s concept of the One can serve as a fruitful model for understanding Tillich’s being-itself.

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Methodist minister in whose house Wittgenstein for some time boarded while in Swansea asked him if he believed in God; his reply: “Yes I do, but the difference between what you believe and what I believe may be infinite” (quoted in Monk 1990, 463). Wittgenstein must have presumed that Morgan’s notion of God was that of a being distinct from other beings and possessing all the positive qualities of beings albeit to a superlative degree. That is not the God of Wittgenstein: “If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, and infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him” (quoted by Drury 1996b, 108). One remark of Phillips the Wittgensteinian that is part of the commentary-cum-endorsement of priest-poet R. S. Thomas’s poems is worth noticing: “What we are concerned with here is the possibility of a via negativa theology” (Phillips 1986b, 128). This remark is one he could have said regarding his own essays for Thomas’s poems show what his essays say. Phillips sees that the God that can be gleaned from natural religious discourse—or at least the natural religious discourse of Judaism, Christianity and Islam—is the Deus absconditus (see Phillips 1988, Chs. 19–20), the God that is only suitably spoken of in the Plotinian manner. A Wittgensteinian that he is, Phillips takes natural religious language, the worshipful language of the religious pedestrian as opposed to the philosophical and technical religion-related language of the academic, as the given which philosophy must work with—not work on, such as refining it according to the demands of logical sleekness or seeking any justification for it to satisfy certain philosophical requirements (see e.g. Phillips 1992, 135–50). So it is important that the Plotinian manner of speaking of God is not merely an academically contrived way of speaking but is also borne of the workings of natural religious language that ordinary religious folks engage in. One can debate with Phillips on the point he makes about the notion of God in natural religious language. But it should be noted that the Judeo-Christian God is ordinarily spoken of as necessarily pre-eminently holy. The Hebrew equivalent for ‘holy’ is kaddosh, a term that connotes, among other things, separation or apartness or uniqueness. To say that God is “holy” is to say that “God is wholly other, distinct and separate from everything that he has made, and different from the gods of human imagination” (Alexander and Rosner, eds., 2002, 154). To say that God is holy is to say that God is absolutely distinct—i.e. transcendent. To say that God is transcendent means, among other

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things, that God is not like anything.14 God is, in other words, ontologically transcendent. So, apparently, there is something in Phillips’ suggestion that even in ordinary religious language it is most appropriate to say “God is not a being.” If God is not a being, then God is beyond knowledge, and thus beyond referability. This position is more radical than atheism. To Wittgenstein, a “God” who itself is a being and differs with all other beings only in the degree of perfection of possessed characteristics is not God at all. Wittgenstein refuses to conceive of God the way philosophical theists do. That being the case, he becomes, to the eyes of philosophical theists, an atheist. But if the term ‘atheism’ means a denial that there exists a God who is a being among other beings whose main distinction from the other beings is that it possesses maximum sentience, potency, ubiquity and moral excellence, then perhaps the neo-Wittgensteinians would not mind being atheists—Phillips, just like Tillich, is happy to confirm the necessity of some form of atheism: a purgative atheism (Phillips 1986b, 170–1; Tillich 1964, 25). Anyway, what they want to deny is the God of philosophical theism. This is one kind of “God” that not just Wittgenstein but also not a few others think ought to be purged for it is no more than a mythological figure (cf. Marion 1982, Chs. 1–2; Turner 2002b, Ch. 1). But the good old-fashioned atheism and philosophical theism are two sides of the same coin: philosophical theism conceives God to be a being, albeit the greatest of all beings, and atheism subscribes to that conception, too—the only significant difference between the two is that one believes that such a being exists and the other believes the opposite. Wittgenstein rejects the whole coin as he recognizes that God is neither an existent being nor a non-existent being. There is no commonly shared category and no point of comparison whatsoever between God and beings for God is wholly other. God is so wholly other that it is not right to place God in a set where that which is other than God can be also placed, not even if the set concerned were a set of beings. The 14 Moses Maimonides, provided what seems to be a most appropriate gloss on God’s absolute distinctness: ‘Similarity is based on a certain relation between two things; if between two things no relation can be found, there can be no similarity between them, and there is no relation between two things that have no similarity to each other. . . . Since the existence of a relation between God and man, or between him and other beings, has been denied, similarity must likewise be denied’ (GP I, 56; quoted in Cohen 1927, 86).

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God Wittgenstein recognizes is not a being, but is beyond being and beyond existence. This God transcends the being/non-being and existent/non-existent binary oppositional categories. This God, in short, is ontologically transcendent. If God is ontologically transcendent, then it follows that God is also epistemologically transcendent, i.e. God is not anything like humans can think God is. And if God is epistemologically transcendent, then it follows that God is semantically transcendent. Thus, to Wittgenstein, one cannot speak literally of the transcendent God. It is futile to try to speak literally of the transcendent God. That which is designated by a nomenclature is its referent—whether the referent exists substantively or not does not matter, for what does is that it has a recognized referent. A recognized referent is either ostensible (e.g. ostrich) or imaginable (e.g. golden wyvern) or calculable (mathematical figures) or explanatorily functional (abstract scientific/theoretic constructs such as anti-matter and meme). A word—or rather a letter or phoneme or a cluster of words or phonemes—is a nomenclature if it has a recognized referent. But if God is not a being, then God belongs neither to the set of “ostensibles” nor of “imaginables” nor of “calculables” nor of “explanatorily functionals.” In short, God does not belong to the set of “referables.” (Or, to put it a la St. Thomas, something can be referred to if it can be located in terms of genus and species, but God cannot be located in such terms, so God cannot be referred to.) Thus ‘God’—save if this refers to an anthropomorphic God—does not have a truly recognized individual entitative referent.15 Actually, this idea, bizarre as it may seem to many a philosophical theist, is not without an indisputably respectable precedent in Christian theological tradition; for instance, several centuries before Wittgenstein St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: We name things as we know them. We do not know what kind of thing God is. Therefore the name ‘God’ cannot signify what he is. * * * Now God is not known to us in his own nature, but through his works or effects, and so . . . it is from these that we derive the language we use in speaking of him. Hence ‘God’ is an operational word in that it is an operation of God that makes us use it. . . .

15

This point is argued much more thoroughly by Victor Preller (1967).

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* * * But from divine effects we do not come to understand what the divine nature is in itself, so we do not know of God what he is. We know of him as transcending all creatures, as the cause of their perfections, and as lacking in anything that is merely creaturely. . . . It is this way that the word ‘God’ signifies the divine nature: it is used to mean something that is above all that is, and that is the source of all things and distinct from them all. (ST 1a, 13, 8)

The suggestion that can be drawn from St. Thomas’ position is: If humans “do not know what kind of thing God is,” then humans do not have a recognized referent for the human-coined word ‘God’. One Christian commentator (who is probably no less devout than the critics of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion and who apparently knows something that they do not) has this to say: Aquinas’s doctrine . . . is that things somehow point to something unclassifiable and that in talking of God we use words to mean more than we can understand. A proper understanding of Aquinas depends on seeing that although he wants to talk of God he holds that we do not really grasp what ‘God’ means, and his reasons for saying this seem not entirely unconnected with the sort of considerations about language and meaning offered in the Tractatus . . . In that case Wittgenstein’s approach to God, far from being ‘reductionist’ as is commonly claimed, is in obvious respects ‘traditional’. (Davies 1980, 108)

So, after all, the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion—especially its take on the wholly-otherness of God—is not as aberrant to the Christian intellectual tradition as critics portray it to be.

IV. The criticisms are borne of nescience or obliviousness This now begs the question why, if it has a long and respected theological tradition behind it, Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, is still faced with criticisms that are very serious to the pious, namely, nonrealism, crypto-atheism, and fideism, and even stupidity.16 The answer

16 One remark of a critic goes: “The Wittgensteinian view of religion is obviously reductionistic in character—or obviously reductionistic, I should say, for most philosophers. Wittgensteinians themselves, however, insist that they are not reductionists. . . . Why are the Wittgensteinians blind to the reductionism that is so apparent to their critics?” (Cook 1988, 441). The suggestion is that the Wittgensteinians do not know what they are doing.

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must be either (a) that the critics sincerely think that the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is non-realist or crypto-atheist or fideist or even plainly stupid while fully aware but not caring for the fact that the Wittgensteinian position is so much like what is there to be found in the apophatic tradition in Christendom, or (b) that they are either nescient or just oblivious of the existence of the apophatic tradition with its long and respected history in Christendom. If the answer is (a), then the critics are in an awkward position as questions raised and misgivings expressed about the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion could in effect likely be questions and misgivings about apophatic theology, and a dismissal of the said philosophy is probably in effect a dismissal of that theology, and not only would Wittgenstein and the neo-Wittgensteinians have to answer the questions and address the misgivings of philosophical theists and suffer their dismissal, but so also should St. Thomas Aquinas and all the other Western Christian mystics, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity in general. It is unlikely that the critics would risk appearing being so disingenuous by suggesting that St. Thomas, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Eastern Orthodox Church are religious non-realist or crypto-atheist or stupid. So (b) is the more plausible answer: the critics are either nescient or oblivious of the apophatic tradition in Christendom.17

17

A great wonder are the cases of Richard Swinburne and John Hick. Swinburne joined the Russian Orthodox Church from the Church of England in the middle 1990s. He learned to speak Russian long before he became a famous apologist. He must have been familiar with the traditional Russian religion. He must have been sufficiently acquainted with apophatic theology, maybe even before he converted. Unfortunately, at the stage when his scholarly reputation as a philosophical theist was already well made and his remarks about Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion already widely circulated, it was too late for him to undo or redo his position. He is still known for his rigorously logical defense of the Christian faith rather than for what he knows about apophatic theology. John Hick formally became a Quaker very late in life. One would assume that he had familiarized himself with apophatic theology. But even then he nonetheless still saw Phillips as a non-realist, albeit one who is not as honest about it as Don Cupitt (see Hick 2007). That is a sure indication that he still remained clueless as to what Phillips was up to. It should not be the case if he were familiar with apophatic theology. Swinburne’s student, Christopher Insole, himself a critic of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, realizes that there is this movement in Christendom called ‘mysticism’ and that Phillips stands in line with this movement, but almost disparagingly characterizes its following as a “minority” (Insole 1998, 157). Apparently he forgot to factor in his mentor’s fellow Christians in the Eastern churches; otherwise, that minority would not appear to be as miniscule as he presents it to be.

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These critics are all philosophical theists—or, for that matter, philosophical atheists (Kai Nielsen, for one)—who engage in analytic philosophy of religion, and are likely to be scientistic in cultural orientation, Protestant in theological inclination,18 and rigorously rationalistic in temperamental disposition. Theirs is a brand of theism that has “a context-free enlightenment concept of God” (Dalferth 2005a, 310). Western philosophical theism (WPT)—‘Western’ is added to ‘philosophical theism’ because this theism flourished within the pale of Western Christendom—was drawn and maintained by Western European Christian thinkers who aimed to rebut “the atheistic implications of modern mechanical and mathematical science . . . on its own ground” (Dalferth 2005a, 306). To rebut atheism they resorted to what is called “dogmatic philosophical theology” (DPT), whose history “began with Bacon’s scientific methodology, Galileo’s discoveries, and Descartes’ search for epistemic certainty” (Dalferth 2005a, 307). But while DPT “had declined with the philosophical critiques of Hume and Kant . . . it has found its continuation and even revival in the analytic theism in the second half of the twentieth century” (Dalferth 2005a, 307). During this time, in areas where analytic philosophy flourished and religion or theology was an area of interest, the God conceived by philosophical

18 The Protestant tradition has not had a custom of high regard for apophatic theology. Martin Luther, as he matured, had only negative things to say about it (see Froehlich 1987, 41f ). For example he remarks (which in the Table Talk is entered with the title ‘The Defects of Speculative or Mystical Theology’): “The speculative learning of theologians is altogether worthless. . . . Bonaventure . . . he almost drove me mad. . . . Such theologians are nothing but fanatics. . . . The mystical theology of Dionysius is nothing but trumpery” (Luther 1967, 112). As for John Calvin, he comments: “None can deny that Dionysius (whoever he may have been) has many shrewd and subtle distinctions in his Celestial Hierarchy; but looking at them more closely, everyone must see that they are mere idle talk” (Calvin 1953, 144). John Wesley refers uncomplimentingly to mystical theology, or to matters related therein, as “the very bane of brotherly love,” and ironically enough declares “I dare in no wise join with the Moravians . . . [b]ecause their general scheme is Mystical, not scriptural;” and he saw mysticism as that “which stands in opposition to plain old Bible divinity” and even wrote a letter to his Moravian friends to chide them for, among others, what he saw was their unscriptural mysticism (Wesley 1931a, 276, 353; Wesley 1931b, 218; and Wesley 1931a, 350 respectively). With the attitude that these great pillars of the Protestant faith had towards mysticism, it is not surprising that—Anabaptists and Quakers aside—Protestants in general are not comfortable with anything that smacks of “mysticism,” and thus, give apophatic theology not much regard—if any at all—in their theology textbooks. (This, of course, is not to suggest the total absence of apophaticism in the Protestant theological world. It may be the case that there are mystical elements that can be read into the biography and writings of Protestants, ironically including Martin Luther and John Wesley [See Dockrill 1981, 91–106; and Freemantle 1964].)

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theism was the crux of the discussions. WPT, like all ways of thinking, is a product of geographical, historical, and cultural contingencies. It evolved partly as a reaction to the rise of modern science and its philosophical appurtenant, scientism. It has an agenda of its own: primarily to rebut scientistic atheism. It draws as many conceptual resources from the science of its time as from the theological heritage it happened to have: the theological heritage of Western Christendom that, unlike that of Eastern Christendom, was molded partly out of a preoccupation with “the interplay between revelation and reason (Fitzgerald 2005, 2582). It is thus unlikely for the distinctive theological themes of Eastern Christianity, or those of the apophatic strand of Western Christendom, to fall within the purview of serious consideration of these philosophical theists and atheists, given their orientation. On the one hand these philosophical theists do not necessarily deserve an indictment: their nescience, like anyone else’s, is perfectly understandable, not to say reasonable, for all “are citizens of a living community of ideas and tend (quite rightly) to address themselves to the philosophical problems and traditions(s) of their own cultural matrix” (Dalferth 2005b, 274). But, on the one hand, they can be faulted for their ignoring the fact that all human thoughts and beliefs are a product of a milieu, borne of some particular historical circumstance, and are community-bound. These theists—not unlike their opposite, the philosophical atheists—do not fail to give the impression that their philosophical theistic concept of God is the concept of God—or perhaps more appropriately, ought to be the concept of God—for all people at all times, and exhibit a lack of awareness of, or just do not give enough regard to, other ways of conceiving God.19 Thus Phillips complains that his critics are never able to get his point for they never bothered to look out of their “igloo”—it being that “analytic philosophy of religion rooted for most part in late seventeenth and eighteenth century epistemology, and in an uncritical equation of realism with metaphysical realism” (Phillips 2007, 34)—and be informed of what else is going on outside. It is William Hasker that

19 Or if someone does know about another way God is spoken of, it is other than the way that Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips speak of God. For example, Stephen T. Davis, who knows a thing or two about Process Theology, is unable to understand why Phillips refuses to speak of God as being (Davis 1995, 86f). And another is Christopher Insole, who pooh-poohs the apophatic way of speaking of God as one of a fringe movement.

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Phillips is specifically referring to as someone who needs to look outside his igloo—albeit it is clear that, to Phillips, Hasker is representative of the philosophical theists. He, after criticizing Phillips, goes on to say: This does not mean that Phillips is entirely wrong. It remains open that there is another community, and another set of religious practices, within which the assertions made by [philosophical theists] are as meaningless as Phillips says they are. . . . And it may be that it is this latter sort of community in which D. Z. Phillips participates, and which Wittgenstein would have participated if he had been religiously affiliated. The important step we would need to take, then, would be precisely to recognize that we have two distinct religious communities, and two significantly divergent sets of religious practices, such that from the standpoint of one of the communities Phillips’ objections are compelling and from the standpoint of the other they are not. Once this is recognized, we could go on to ask further questions about these communities. We could conduct separate, and parallel, analyses of the religious concepts employed by the communities, in order to see how (in some cases) the same or similar words are incorporated in quite different religious practices. Some would wish to go further, and make comparisons between the respective sets of beliefs with respect to rationality, warrant, and even truth. But however that may go, recognizing the disparity between the communities and their practices is already a first, major step on the road to philosophical clarification. (Hasker 2007, 159–160)

Hasker’s granting of the possibility of a community that can share the position or welcome the insights of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is indicative of a lack of awareness, or at least an uncertainty, that there is actually such a Christian community. There certainly is such a community—not necessarily a community in the sense of officially fellowshipping members but in the sense of being of kindred mind. If there are those in the Dominican Order who are true to the teachings of their fellow, the pre-Thomist Thomas Aquinas, then they too can be counted as members of the community. The Eastern Orthodox Church, inasmuch as apophaticism is one of the three basic themes of its spirituality, contributes the biggest bulk of the community’s membership. It is a wonder how Hasker could not be aware that such a community actually exists. Maybe there is something in Phillips’ claim about the igloo confinement. Nicholas Wolterstorff, a hardcore philosophical theist that he is, in effect admits that Phillips is on to something. In his account of why analytic philosophy of religion is the way it is, Wolterstorff says:

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“I concede that analytic philosophy in general often wears a completely a-historical face; I likewise concede that, until this same past quarter century, its interest in the history of philosophy and its competence at dealing with that history is minimal” (Wolterstorff 2000, 155). The unfortunate consequence of wearing “a completely a-historical face” is not only that one would surely miss information and insights that only historical knowledge can provide, but also that—just like an iceman who never bothered to look out of his igloo and thus never became aware of other people coming into the neighborhood who dressed and ate differently—one would be led to forget that one’s concerns and suppositions are bound by a historical context, that there were other suppositions and concerns that preceded one’s own, and that there are other concurrent suppositions and concerns that are radically distinct from one’s own. Thus, just like the iceman who sees people peeping into his igloo and thinks that they are a threat to him as they would compete against him in the hunt for seals and walruses and whales when in fact they are animal rights activist who are indeed a threat to him but in the sense that they would obstruct him from hunting and not that they would compete against him in hunting, one who wears an a-historical face who happens to come across a concern or supposition distinct from one’s own, one may not have the perspective to grasp the kind of distinction there is. And it seems that is the case with the critics: Lacking the relevant historical knowledge of the discursive practices they are engaging in (including their own), and lacking the historical perspective relevant to the position they are averse to, the critics of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion are unable to give justice to the points they are criticizing (cf. Kerr 2005, 252–72). It is most noteworthy that of all those who notably paid attention to the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, ranging from the philosophical theists, atheists, sceptics, agnostics, heretics and whatnot, to the most pious Christians who belong to the most mainstream religious orders or congregations or societies in Christendom, those who are most cognizant of the Christian apophatic tradition have exhibited the most sympathy and appreciation for the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion.20 There clearly is a correlation between being cogni20 Among them are Herbert McCabe, Fergus Kerr, Brian Davies, and Gareth Moore—all members of the Dominican Order, all of them experts in the thought of their fellow Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas (see Davies 2003). And the Jesuit Michael Buckley can also be counted in (see Buckley 2004, 123–5, 135).

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zant of the apophatic tradition in Christendom and being sympathetic to, or appreciative of, the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, and between being oblivious of such tradition and being hostile to, or dismissive of, such philosophy of religion.

CHAPTER NINE

CONCLUDING REMARKS: THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES IN UNDERSTANDING WITTGENSTEIN’S RELIGIOUS POINT OF VIEW

It is not an insignificant shortcoming that Wittgenstein’s remark “I see every problem from a religious point of view” is not well understood because the best probable way to understand Wittgenstein is to see the issues he dealt with from what he said is his own point of view. It makes a big difference to know what that point of view is, for only then can one assume it and have a look at relevant matters from there. Not knowing what this point of view is could easily translate to not knowing how to see matters the way Wittgenstein sees it. Not seeing matters the way Wittgenstein sees it almost certainly means missing certain dimensions that he sees. This is what this chapter is all about, and it runs as follows. Section I argues that it makes a difference to know what Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is mysticism, and that the difference may possibly extend even to matters that are not obviously religious in nature. Section II makes concluding remarks about criticisms against Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion being misconceived because of a lack of cognizance of Wittgenstein’s religious point of view. Section III makes concluding remarks about the issues raised against Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, namely religious non-realism, crypto-atheism and fideism.

I. Wittgenstein’s religious point of view and other non-religious matters Drury’s concern about the possibility of there being dimensions in Wittgenstein’s thought that are being overlooked is likely not a trivial matter. The appreciation of any issue, of insights on it, or of conversations regarding it, is shaped by a point of view. In the case of Wittgenstein the point of view is, as he himself puts it, a “religious” one—a point of view that is particularly religious, and a particular religious point of view. His appreciation of issues is shaped by this religious

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point of view. So, identifying and characterizing this religious point of view may be crucial to understanding Wittgenstein’s thought. It is reasonable to suppose that ignorance of, or obliviousness to, Wittgenstein’s religious point of view might be a cause for missing something about his philosophy. In the preface to the Tractatus can be read: “This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts.” The suggestion Wittgenstein himself is making is that those who have not yet thought the thoughts, or similar thoughts, expressed in his work will perhaps not understand it. It is not too outrageous to take it that to have thought the thoughts of Wittgenstein, or something similar to his thoughts, is to have seen matters from the point of view, or from a similar one, of Wittgenstein. And, quite likely, to have not seen Wittgenstein’s point of view, or one similar to it, is to have not thought the thoughts of Wittgenstein, or thoughts of the like—and, if he is right, to be unable to understand his work in the way he wishes it to be understood. His suggestion is such that there is too much to be missed if one misses his point of view. It is that crucial to know what exactly is this point of view is. The logical positivists did not understand Wittgenstein in the way he wanted to be understood. Their interest was skewed to that which can be spoken of and never gave any importance at all to that which was most important to him, i.e. that which he says one ought to be silent about. And he complains that even Bertrand Russell did not understand him well enough. It is almost certainly the case that it is not the logical side of the Tractatus that Russell insufficiently understood, but the philosophical side—the side that, if Paul Engelmann is to be believed, mattered most, nay, the only thing that mattered, to Wittgenstein. The symptom of Russell’s insufficiency of understanding is the tinge of flippancy in the tone of his remark (in his introduction to the Tractatus) about Wittgenstein managing to say a great deal about that which cannot be spoken of. The point is not that Russell can be faulted for inaccuracy in his observation of Wittgenstein saying a great deal about that which cannot be spoken of, but that the flippancy of his tone indicates that he takes Wittgenstein managing to say a great deal about that which cannot be said to be a sort of flaw in his philosophy. What to Russell is a flaw of sorts is to Wittgenstein a most important feature of it. That there is that which cannot be spoken of is the most grave of all the Tractarian points, and to treat it with levity seems like the philosophical equivalence of sacrilege.

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More likely, a more adequate understanding of Wittgenstein’s religious point of view would affect one’s understanding of some points in areas that in all appearance have little to do with religious issues, and would expose certain understandings of him even on non-religious matters or of certain non-religious positions ascribed to him as misguided. There is at least one example that demonstrates the difference made when factoring in what in all appearance is a religious position in interpreting Wittgenstein on an issue that is not obviously religious. Newton Garver (1971) ascribes to the early Wittgenstein a position he dubs “pantheism of sorts.”1 This label—‘pantheism (of sorts)’—cannot be any more overtly religious. If Wittgenstein stands on a position that is pantheism (of sorts), and if this really is a position that is as religious as its name sounds, then one can at least surmise that this is the religious position from which he sees philosophical problems. (Wittgenstein may well have said “I . . . see all problems from a pantheistic point of view.”) Garver shows that it does make a difference to suppose that Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is pantheism of sorts, even to matters that are not obviously religious. Garver takes note of a couple of lines from the Notebooks: “How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand.” And this Garver takes alongside a passage in the Tractatus: “How things stand in the world is a matter of complete indifference to what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.” This, says Garver, “suggests either a pantheism of sorts or else a change of mind in the intervening two years. The second alternative has a superficial plausibility, but in the absence of other evidence of a change of mind it must be wrong” (Garver 1971, 124). He is suggesting that the Tractarian Wittgenstein takes a pantheistic position and from this draws some points. First, there is the controversy about whether the metaphysics of the Tractatus is realistic or nominalistic. On this matter he comments: “I shall have nothing to say about this difficulty, for I cannot see that Wittgenstein’s being a pantheist throws any light on the problem” (Garver 1971, 132). One wonders, though, what Garver might have said, or not said, had he thought of Wittgenstein as other than a pantheist, or whether or not there would be light to be thrown on the problem were it the case that Wittgenstein’s point

1 It is remarkable that he and at least two other commentators who are recognized to be probably among the most authoritative in the world—Brian McGuinness (1966) and Eddy Zemach (1966)—explicitly declare Wittgenstein a pantheist. They must have missed something.

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of view is other than pantheism. Second, there is the puzzle resulting from Wittgenstein giving primacy to facts rather than objects. Objects make up facts; but this raises the question as to why facts must have a primacy over objects and as to how the ontology of the two might be related. Garver takes it that “the pantheism of the Notebooks succeeds in providing an explanation for one of the prominent puzzles about the metaphysics of the Tractatus” (Garver 1971, 136). He argues: If God is identified with the world, and if the idea of God is to continue to play the role it does for Wittgenstein in the Notebooks, then the world must be composed of facts rather than of objects. The reason for this is that facts are the hard, unalterable data we must accept and come to terms with in our lives. It is true that objects are, in a certain sense, unalterable. But what is unalterable about objects is their form, and the possibilities they comprise; whereas the hard data we have to accept and cope with are never mere possibilities but actualities. Since the actualities, reality, must be determined by what facts there are rather than by what objects there are, the world must be composed of facts rather than of objects, if the Tractatus is to be compatible with the pantheism of the Notebooks and with the ethical insights on which the pantheism is founded. (Garver 1971, 134)

Garver believes he has found in Wittgenstein’s pantheism an explanation for the aforementioned puzzle. If it makes a difference to suppose that Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is pantheism of sorts, it also makes a difference to suppose that it is other than pantheism. For example, Brian McGuinness notes that it is “misleading to regard Wittgenstein as a realist” because Wittgenstein’s position is that “from which realism, idealism and solipsism can all be seen as one.” On the issue of whether or not the metaphysics of the Tractatus is realistic or nominalistic Garver admits that he cannot see Wittgenstein’s pantheism throwing light on it. But it seems that McGuinness manages to call to attention a position of Wittgenstein in such a way that some light is cast on the said issue: he at least suggests that, given Wittgenstein’s position, the said issue is a false one. The way Wittgenstein characterizes his position makes it look like one that is other than, or at least not merely, pantheism. So, it is not necessary to contend with Garver’s non-religious puzzle if it is the case that Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is other than pantheism: the puzzle, it seems, would simply be irrelevant. Clearly, ascribing a religious point of view to Wittgenstein makes a difference that extends to issues beyond that which is obviously reli-

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gious. Garver and McGuinness provide what can serve as examples of how a particular religious point of view—Garver’s Wittgensteinian “pantheism of sorts” or McGuinness’ whatever-one-may-call-it—can give rise to, shape, or pre-empt philosophical issues that are not obviously religious. So, apparently, being cognizant of what Wittgenstein said was his religious point of view has far reaching significance. One can suspect that it would have made a difference in the history of contemporary Western philosophy if Russell and the logical positivists had some clue that the writing of the Tractatus was conditioned by a religious point of view. But, obviously, it is in the field of philosophy of religion that an understanding of the remark “I cannot help but see all problems from a religious point of view” could have made, and would make, the biggest difference. As such it should be worth all the effort finding out what he might have meant by what he said. Looking closely at Wittgenstein’s early thought one can glean what seems to be a theological underpinning that in all appearance is mystical theology (also known as negative theology, or apophatic theology), a theology is not unlike the Pseudo-Dionysian theology in that (a) God is regarded as not a being—God is Nothing: the Pseudo-Dionysian theology says it, but Wittgenstein just shows it by tantalizingly identifying God with certain transcendental concepts but not identifying God as any of them; (b) negative theology is placed on a pre-eminent position over affirmative theology to evince a stronger emphasis on the transcendence of God over human comprehensibility of God; (c) statements about God have a stretched sense—i.e. are literally nonsense, and transcend even the so-called laws of thought—and they ought to be so owing to the wholly-otherness of God, even if, nonetheless such statements necessarily have to be made for spiritual purposes as they are conveyors of the transcendent to the human spirit and the human spirit to the transcendent; (d) it is given to paradoxical discourse as a result of running against the limits of expression of thought, and (e) in it can be found an advocacy of apophatism, i.e. the highest spiritual attainment is that which only calls for a resounding S.I.L.E.N.C.E… Though the mature Wittgenstein had radically changed his views on language, the theological position that can be limned in his post1930 writings remain consistent with the early Wittgenstein’s apophatic theology. One can say that if for the Tractarian Wittgenstein says “The limit of my language is the limits of my world,” the mature Wittgenstein shows what can be expressed as “The limits of my world

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is the limits of my language.” There still is in the mature Wittgenstein a limit to what can be said, and there is still the suggestion of a realm that cannot be spoken of, the realm of the transcendent. What sets the limits to what can be said is the human form of life. The reality that humans can be cognizant of is supervenient to the human form of life. The reality re-presented by the human form of life is the reality that can be humanly spoken of. Yet there is no denying that there is reality per se, a reality independent of humans. It is just that this reality is beyond human interest and thus cannot be spoken of. The philosophical insights of the mature Wittgenstein, like those of the Tractarian Wittgenstein, yield theological insights. Among these are that the Divine is beyond that which can be spoken of, and any attempt to speak of that which cannot be spoken of results in paradox and latent nonsense. Yet in some ways speaking of that which cannot be spoken of can be a religious exercise. Ultimately, though, consigning the transcendent to silence is still called for. These insights find interesting affinities, again, with the Pseudo-Dionysian theology, i.e. mystical theology. Speaking of God, Wittgenstein posits, is like speaking of the mind. The mind qua mind per se is obviously not ostensible, whether directly or indirectly. The mind qua mind per se is not naturally spoken of as objects and entities are. In that sense the mind does not qualify as a “something.” Speaking of the mind in a natural non-academic way is always done in reference to bodily behaviour. The mind is referred to via bodily behaviour. Yet the mind is not inferred from bodily behaviour. What Wittgenstein says about the mind could, he suggests, be said of God as well. God cannot be spoken of as a “something.” God qua God per se is obviously not ostensible, whether directly or indirectly. God qua God per se is not naturally spoken of as objects and entities are. As bodily behaviour is the criterion for mind-talk, so the universe is for God-talk. As bodily behaviour is conceptually an integral part of the mind, so the universe is conceptually an integral part of God. Thus, to speak of God is to speak of the universe in the sense that God is referred to via the universe. And one may say about God something like what Wittgenstein says about the mind: “The transcendent is tied up with the immanent logically” and “If one sees the universe, one sees the epiphany of God.” Speaking about God makes sense only in reference to the universe. But while God is referred to via the universe, God is not inferred from the universe. The universe is not an evidence of God’s existence or a repository of evidence to bolster the truth-

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claim of statements about God, but is the criterion of God-talk or the repository of criteria for statements about God. To speak of God is not to speak of God per se but to speak of the universe from the viewpoint of an attitude that takes the universe to be an epiphany of God. In the way God-talk is being characterized here there is something that is being shown: In God-talk God per se is not being spoken of. Even in the case of the statement ‘God exists’ Wittgenstein, contra the philosophical theists, effectively takes it to be not a substantive statement. The subject term of the statement in question does not refer to an entity and the statement itself does not refer to a state of affairs; rather, it is a grammatical one. That is to say, most notably, that the said statement is about the concept ‘God’ and not actually about God per se. So, from the Tractarian Wittgenstein through the mature one there is principled silence about God per se. This is Wittgenstein’s mysticism. Mysticism is principled silence; and, in the case of Wittgenstein as is in most, it is certainly a religious position. Malcolm thinks that Wittgenstein’s “religious point of view” is not really a religious one but something analogous to one. But, crucially, Malcolm appears to have overlooked the steep mystical bent of Wittgenstein. There are others who see affinities between Wittgenstein’s thought and certain theological traditions, but again, they make almost nothing of Wittgenstein’s steep mystical bent. But if this mystical bent were to be seriously considered, one would be led to suppose that of all the theological traditions that could be liked with Wittgenstein’s thought most felicitously, it is mysticism. There are sufficient indications that Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is mysticism. Wittgenstein had informed Drury that his (Wittgenstein’s) fundamental ideas came to him early in life (Drury 1996b, 158). Mysticism is likely to be one such fundamental idea: in spite of those loudly trumpeted changes in Wittgenstein’s philosophical position, mysticism is discernible all throughout. If one considers that (1) Wittgenstein sees all problems from a religious point of view, (2) to him mysticism is fundamental, and (3) in his case as in almost all others mysticism is a religious position, it would look most likely that mysticism is that religious point of view.

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chapter nine II. Wittgenstein’s religious point of view and the conduct of philosophy of religion

Drury, in reaction to Wittgenstein’s claim to be seeing all problems from a religious point of view, is most likely right to have wondered whether there are dimensions in Wittgenstein’s thought that are still largely being ignored. There, indeed, is a configuration that emerges when mysticism is considered to be that point of view. If this could be true with matters that are not obviously related to religion, then the more it could be so for matters related to it. There is indeed a humongous difference between those who somehow are aware of Wittgenstein’s religious point of view and those who are nescient or oblivious of it. Those who are nescient or oblivious of this point of view would likely see the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion to be an advocacy of religious non-realism, or crypto-atheism, or even stupidity; but those soundly informed about such point of view, or those who posit that the religious point of view from which the Wittgenstein sees all problems is mysticism—the kind of theology that resonates in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and other Western Christian theologians such as Nicholas of Cusa and Meister Eckhart and in Eastern Orthodox Christianity—would find those religion-related remarks that Wittgenstein made and the positions taken by the neo-Wittgensteinians which to some seem so controversial to be making good sense. This suggests that serious criticisms raised against the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion are misconceived because they flow out of a discursive tradition where Wittgenstein’s religious point of view is not in any way given consideration. This is more than just an idle conjecture: Of all those who notably paid attention to the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, those who are most cognizant about the Christian apophatic tradition have exhibited the most sympathy and appreciation for such philosophy of religion. It stands to reason to say that they are sympathetic, even appreciative, because of their cognizance of the Christian apophatic tradition—the tradition to which belongs Wittgenstein’s religious point of view. They understood what—though they may not necessarily agree with all that— Wittgenstein and the neo-Wittgensteinians’ are pointing at, because they understood Wittgenstein’s religious point of view. So Drury was almost certainly on to something significant to Wittgensteinian studies as he wondered about whether there are dimensions in Wittgenstein’s thought that are being ignored in the light of

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Wittgenstein’s revelation that he sees all problems from a religious point of view. Those who are ignorant or oblivious of Wittgenstein’s religious point of view are probably missing something. One is tempted to suppose that had the critics of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion realized that Wittgenstein saw all problems—and certainly including all philosophical issues that crossed him—from a religious point and view, and had they been aware that that religious point of view is mysticism, they likely would not have gotten to the point of ascribing fideism, non-realism or crypto-atheism to Wittgenstein or the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, and they would not have wasted their intellectual effort in engaging a Wittgensteinian straw man they themselves have created.

III. Concluding remarks on non-realism, crypto-atheism and fideism Non-realism, crypto-atheism, and fideism—these (barring stupidity) are the most serious accusations raised against the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. However, looking at it from the perspective of apophatic theology no configuration emerges that merits such accusations, or otherwise, it would emerge that such accusations would also have to be directed to the position of certain venerable thinkers in Christendom, or even to the accusers own. (a) The allegation that the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is non-realist is made either on the ground that it is a position parallel to Wittgenstein’s behaviourism or that it is a strain of linguistic idealism. But Wittgenstein’s position is far from being behaviourism. And the linguistic idealism ascribed to him—that there is no reality but language—is precisely one of the philosophical nonsense he wishes would go away. He cannot even be an academic realist in search of substance behind appearance that a normal sane and reasonable lay person could not care less about. But as an advocate of the commonsensical way of thinking and speaking, he cannot be other than a realist like any sane and reasonable person is. And so, in the realm of religion, Wittgenstein cannot be the non-realist that some portray him to be. The question ‘Is God real?’ that both religious realists and non-realists alike ask—as are the answers that each of them gives to that question—is as nonsensical as ‘Is colour real?’. Wittgenstein cannot bring himself to say ‘Colour is non-real’ because he does not know what it might mean. He would need to know how a visualizable universe where colour is non-real

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might be different from one where colour is real for one to know what ‘Colour is non-real’ means. He cannot imagine the difference—and neither can anyone else, perhaps. One can imagine that Wittgenstein’s reply if someone were to say to him “Colour is real” would be just like the reply of a normal, sane and reasonable person sans philosophical hang-ups: “Oh, of course!.” (This shows then that ‘Colour is real’ is not a substantive proposition but a grammatical one.) If Wittgenstein does not know what ‘Colour is non-real’ means, then, since his position on colour-talk runs parallel to his position on God-talk, he is suggesting that he does not know what ‘God is non-real’ means. He, in effect, is suggesting that the position ascribed to him that is religious non-realism is one that he finds nonsensical. One can take it that if told “God is real” Wittgenstein’s reply would be a reply that a normal, sane and reasonable believer would likely give: “Of course! A ‘God’ who is not real—is less than real—is not God.” (This suggests that ‘God is real’ is a grammatical proposition and not a substantive one.) Just as it is the case that colour cannot be said to be non-real so long as there is anything (even darkness itself ) that is visible/visualizable (for to say that there is something visible/visualizable is to say that colour is real), then so long as there is anything in existence it cannot be said that God is non-real (for to say that something exists that is real is to say that God is real). Besides, it is ungrammatical to say that God—from whom all real things flow—is less real than things. As it is, Wittgenstein’s position on God is not too different from that of John Scottus Eriugena and St. Thomas Aquinas. If they can have a view of God presented above (or, perhaps more appropriately, if they can be taken to have such a view of God) and yet are never placed anywhere close to religious non-realism (which is not the same as apophatic theology), then, in fairness to Wittgenstein, he, too, should not be placed any nearer to it. (b) Crypto-atheism is a twin sibling of religious non-realism. Religious non-realism is non-belief in the substantive reality of God; and non-belief in the substantive reality of God is atheism. According to some critics, the neo-Wittgensteinians, if not Wittgenstein himself, are non-believers in the substantive existence of God. On this account, they must be atheists. Moreover, neo-Wittgensteinian atheism is worse than the usual atheism: it is a dishonest duplicitous atheism because it insists on appropriating theistic vocabulary. To Wittgenstein, a “God” who itself is a being and differs with all other beings only in the degree of perfection of possessed characteristics is not God at all. Wittgen-

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stein refuses to conceive of God the way philosophical theists do. It is this which makes him in the eyes of philosophical theists an atheist. It is, however, crucial to note that theologians of apophatic persuasion or those who stand in line with the Plotinian discursive convention from whence the likes of the Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Thomas Aquinas come insist that God is not a being. God’s existence cannot be substantively proven, or for that matter disproven, as can that of beings. God cannot be placed within the set of “provable existents” (i.e. those whose existence can be proven). The apophaticists may, and often actually do, say that God exists, but it is understood that the word ‘exists’ is placed “under erasure.”2 The term ‘to exist’ means to be “there somewhere” subsisting within the spatio-temporal order. But God transcends the spatio-temporal order, and thus, does not belong to the set of “existents within the spatio-temporal order.” If God is said to exist, the word ‘exist’ must have an absolutely distinct sense. Thus, God cannot be construed to exist in ways similar to, say, ghosts, gourds or goats. Apophaticists also sometimes say that God “does not exist,” for if God, as they say, is not a being, then indeed God does not exist as substantive beings do. God does not belong within the set of “existents,” but neither does God belong within the set of “nonexistents”—God does not belong within a set that counts as its members unicorns, leprechauns, ether and the gods of Homer, for God is absolutely distinct such that there is nothing in common between God and all the other non-existent objects. God does not exist; but God’s non-existence is not in the same category as the non-existence of, say,

2 To put a word or words under erasure is to indicate the presence of a necessary awkwardness of or irony in the speech-act or an inevitable aporia or paradox in the expression. Putting a word or words under erasure is quite common in mystical discourse where, for example, attempts are made to express the inexpressible. The early Wittgenstein’s version of putting words under erasure was simply to recant them in the same train of discourse where he asserts them: “He who understands me finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless” (TLP 6.54). Plotinus has his hoion (‘as it were’) to serve as (what Michael Sells calls) an “apophatic marker.” The One is not appropriately predicable, but for the sake of inquiry it is predicated, so Plotinus goes on to predicate it, but proximate to the predicate is attached the phrase ‘as it were’ (cf. Sells 1994, 24–5). Martin Heidegger’s version of an apophatic marker is a cross drawn right on the word being placed under erasure. It was the Heideggerian Jacques Derrida who made the term ‘under erasure’ (sous rature) a buzz-word in academic (largely literary) circles. Following Heidegger exactly, a word under erasure is, in Derrida’s case, a crossed-out word (see Spivak 1976, xiiiff ) Asterisks, or even quotation marks, or qualifying phrases can also serve as apophatic markers, indicators of words placed under erasure.

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the gods of Homer. God, the source of existence, does not exist—but not for lack of existence. (An analogy would help illuminate this point. Liquid makes anything wet. Yet liquid itself, the sine qua non for wetness, is not normally said to be wet. And it is not said to be wet not for any lack of wetness: it is just that the concept/term ‘wet’ and ‘not wet’ are never properly ascribable to it. It does not belong to the set of “wetables” nor of “non-wetables.” Likewise, the apophaticists—who are never remiss in reminding their audience that God is the source of existence—sometimes say that God does not exist, but do not mean a lack of existence on the part of God. It is just that God does not belong to the set of “existents” or, for that matter, of “non-existents.”) If Wittgenstein and the neo-Wittgensteinians are actually standing in line with the Plotinian discursive convention, then they must be saying something far more radical than the atheism they are accused of—to wit: If God is not a being, then God is beyond knowledge, and thus beyond referability.3 The God of St. Thomas, and of Wittgenstein after him, is a mystery. Wittgenstein’s and the neo-Wittgensteinians’ aversion to the business of proving the “existence” of God makes perfect sense from the perspective of apophatic theology. They, therefore, cannot easily be dismissed as crypto-atheists. Rejection of philosophical theism does not necessarily make one an atheist. Actually, from Wittgenstein’s perspective, philosophical theism and the good old-fashioned atheism are two sides of the same coin: philosophical theism conceives God to be a being, albeit the greatest of all beings, and atheism subscribes to that conception, too—the difference between the two is that one believes that such a being exists and the other believes the opposite. Wittgenstein rejects the whole coin as he recognizes that God is neither an existent being nor a non-existent being. In effect, not only does he

3 One can call this Wittgensteinian position “agnosticism.” Be that as it may, it is far from being a religiously indifferent agnosticism; it is a pious sort of agnosticism. It is an agnosticism that, while disavowing knowledge about how it is for God to exist, avows certainty that God exists. The certainty about God’s existence can only be attitudinal, never epistemic. God cannot be known to exist, especially not in the way that, say, gourds and gold, are known to exist. God does not belong to the set of “knowables.” One can only be of the attitude that God exists in ways like no being does, in ways unknowable. (Thus ‘God exists’ is a statement that must be put under erasure.) It is noteworthy that the prime example who admits to this pious sort of agnosticism is, of all people, a canonized corpulent 13th century monk named Thomas Aquinas (Davies 1996, 342).

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reject philosophical theism, he also rejects its anti-thesis, positive atheism. The Wittgensteinian’s denial of God’s existence is far more radical than the atheist’s denial of it. (c) If Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion escapes the accusation of non-realism or crypto-atheism, it may still stand accused of fideism. Belief in the Deus absconditus, the God of the apophaticists, is necessarily uncheckable (i.e. it is in principle neither verifiable nor falsifiable). That provides Wittgenstein all the incentive to be dismissive of any talk of proving God’s existence. And for being dismissive, he stands accused of fideism by many. But for all his notoriety as a supposed fideist, there is this observation by Drury that is worth noting: “Kierkegaard spoke of faith as ‘immediacy after reflection’ and I do not think Wittgenstein would have found fault with this expression” (Drury 1996b, 94). Wittgenstein is not averse to a reflection of religious faith, even a critical reflection—he apparently is critical of religious fundamentalism and/or biblical literalism. He just wants criticality to be in the right place. He once warned: “Drury never allow yourself to become too familiar with holy things.” In this connection Drury remarks: “Now the essential fault of what has been called ‘fideism’ is that it dodges all difficulties by adopting a too familiar acquaintance with holy things” (Drury 1996b, 94). One must keep in mind that Wittgenstein, being a mystic that he is, puts much importance to that which cannot be known and thus cannot be spoken of. Speaking of—or more appropriately, making positive claims about—that which cannot be known is evidence of presumptuousness, which in turn is evidence of a lack of critical reflection. It takes critical reflection to know that one does not know. (This is one fault with religious fundamentalism: its incapability, or built-in refusal, to reflect critically.) One who knows that one does not know will not be so presumptuous as to be making facile claims about that which one does not know about. One who uncritically presumes that one knows one’s “divine object of faith” and goes on to make claims about it is one who is being “too familiar with holy things.” Such is being presumptuous; such is being fideistic. The fideism that Drury criticizes is one that is easily given to speak of that which is epistemologically and semantically transcendent as though one is so familiar with it—this amounts to presuming that one knows without checking whether or not one really knows. (One could now ask whether the philosophical theists and atheists, in their supreme confidence to make claims and counter-claims about God, are not in danger of falling into this kind of fideism.)

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Wittgenstein’s refusal to entertain any thought of subjecting belief in God to evidentiary test has hardly anything to do with the fideism that the philosophical theists and atheists pejorate. His case is a refusal to subject to evidentiary test that which cannot be appropriately subjected to it. (It takes a lot of critical reflection to know that that which is widely presumed to be subject to such test cannot actually be subjected to it.) Wittgenstein recognizes that the existence of God cannot be subjected to the said test. Philosophical theists obviously disagree with him, but there is this interesting confession by an avowedly antiWittgensteinian philosophical theist, Stephen T. Davis: . . . it does seem that theistic proofs are very much optional for theists. The fact of the matter is: I enjoy discussing theistic proofs, consider the enterprise valuable, and even consider that there do exist successful theistic proofs. Nevertheless the reason I am a theist has almost nothing to do with theistic proofs. It has a great deal to do with experiences I have had that I interpret in terms of the presence of God—experiences I find myself interpreting in terms of divine forgiveness, divine protection, divine guidance. That is why I would be extremely suspicious of any apparently successful atheistic proof. That is why I claim to know that God exists. (Davis 1997, 191)

The above-quoted confession brings to mind a couple of remarks by Wittgenstein: It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s belief, it’s really a way of living, a way of assessing life. It’s passionately getting hold of this interpretation. Instruction in a religious faith, therefore, would have to take the form of a portrayal, a description, of that system of reference, while at the same time being an appeal to conscience. And this combination would have to result in the pupil himself, of his own accord, passionately taking hold of the system of reference. It would be as though someone were first to let me see the hopelessness of my situation and then show me the means of rescue until, of my own accord, or not at any rate led to it by my instructor, I ran to it and grasped it. (CV, 64e) A proof of God’s existence ought really to be something by means of which one could convince oneself that God exists. But I think that what believers who have furnished such proofs have wanted to do is to give their ‘belief’ an intellectual analysis and foundation, although they themselves would not have come to belief as result of such proofs. Perhaps one could ‘convince someone that God exists’ by means of a certain kind of upbringing, by shaping his life in such and such a way.

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Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; but I don’t mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the ‘existence of this being’, but e.g., sufferings of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts,—life can force this concept on us. (CV, 85e–86e)

Davies unwittingly confirms that Wittgenstein was right all along. First, Davis’s commitment to theism is a result of instruction, nay indoctrination, and not a result of encountering a very convincing proof of the existence of God. He says that it was certain experiences that led him to accept theism. (What those experiences are and how they led him to where they had led him he does not specify.) Though it is just incredible that out of the blue he was able to interpret experiences in theistic terms. It is most likely that he grew up receiving religious instructions underpinned by philosophical theism. His mind was, as it were, wired by training to flow in a way consistent with philosophical theism. That wiring also made him interpret certain experiences in terms of the presence of God. This interpretation may be taken to be something like the following. When someone experiences head and bodily aches, chills, and the like, one would interpret it in terms of the presence of, say, a virus. One does so because one is oriented in the concept of modern Western diseases. But someone else who is oriented in, say, the ancient Chinese concept of diseases, would be interpreting those aches in terms of the yin and yang. One’s interpretation depends on one’s orientation, on the wiring of one’s thought pattern, on the system of reference that one was indoctrinated into. Second, he shows that the theistic proof-game business is a rigmarole going in circles. So, it seems, how one interprets this or that experience depends largely on one’s orientation. But, many would argue (philosophical theists among them) that there ought to be an enlightened orientation and an ignorant one, and a right interpretation and a mistaken one. It is right to interpret certain unpleasant experiences in terms of the presence of virus, rather than, say, evil spirits. One can say that viruses are real entities, while evil spirits are fictional entities left over from the age of superstition. So could it be the case with interpreting certain experiences in terms of the presence of God. The same experiences can possibly be interpreted in more mundane terms. And one may be a right interpretation and the other a mistaken one. But it is crucially important to note that the interpretation in terms

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of the presence of God could be the right interpretation if and only if God exists. If asked why his interpretation should be deemed right, Davis would have to say that it is because God exists. If asked why he believes that God exists, he would have a problem on his hands. His actual answer is that he had certain experiences which he apparently cannot help but interpret in terms of the presence of God. His reasoning obviously goes in circles. What is demonstrated is that his belief in God is not really founded on a plausible, let alone scientificallyattested, proof that God exists, but on his prior orientation imbibed unconsciously into the subconscious by nurture and indoctrination, and this prior orientation makes him interpret certain experiences in terms of the presence of God. Third, as to the one proof that may be able to break this holy intellectual circle he is caught in, Davis says he “consider[s] that there exists successful theistic proofs,” but he does not indicate clearly that he or any other has found them—and probably he has not. To take it from another philosophical theist of note, John Hick: “The theist cannot hope to prove that God exists”—the best that could be done is to show that belief in God is wholly reasonable (Hick 1970, 109). The case of Davis, one can almost be certain, is typical of the philosophical theists’. They believe in God’s existence as a result of being nurtured into doing so, of imbibing subconsciously the religious instructions they had received as part of their education in life (most likely outside the academe). They become philosophical theists by sheer nurtured faith (which they subsequently articulate in highfalutin and formulaic terms in the academic ivory towers in an attempt to show how intellectually respectable their faith is) and remain philosophical theists by sheer faith (and by sheer faith they believe that there is at least one successful proof for the existence of God even as they concede that after all the years and decades and scores and centuries of searching for it they have yet to find it). So, it takes as much faith to be a philosophical theist as to be a Wittgensteinian apophaticist. This admission, however, cannot be in any way a vindication of, say, the atheist Kai Nielsen whose main claim to fame is his coining of the notorious term ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’. The Wittgensteinian religious position is no more untestable than atheism. This is shown in, for instance, Bertrand Russell who, in an attempt to dismiss the argument of theists that the existence of God is indicated in the fact that the universe has a genesis, contends that the universe is “just there.” The assertion that the universe is “just there” is no less untest-

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able than the assertion that the universe has a genesis. It takes as much faith to believe that the universe is just there as to believe that it has a genesis. If the word ‘fideism’ means having a faith that is untestable, then in that way atheism is no less fideistic than the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. So it turns out that everyone is in one way or another a “fideist”— the neo-Wittgensteinians, the philosophical theists, and the atheist. It is, therefore, most disingenuous for the philosophical theists and the atheists to use ‘fideism’ as a term of pejoration and reproach on Wittgenstein and the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion.

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INDEX

academism, 90, 96, 106n, 157, 170, 172–9 aesthetic, 42, 100, 102n, 134n affirmative theology (see also cataphatic theology), 40, 42, 46–7 agnostic/agnosticism, 48n, 224n animal behaviour, 161 Anselm, 120n, 184n, 195 apophasis, 44, 47–8 apophaticism, 75, 128, 178, 197, 200, 207n, 209 apophatic theology, 1, 2, 44, 51, 75–6, 172, 185, 197n, 198, 200n, 206, 207n, 217, 221–2 Aristotle, 31, 48, 123, 185, 197n, 200n Aristotelian syllogism/logic, 50, – divine intellect, 198 – dogma, 51n Aquinas (see Thomas Aquinas) aspect-blind/blindness, 102n, 105 aspect-dawning, 102–5 aseitic, 100n atheism/atheist, 19, 110, 114–5, 120n, 129, 143n, 148, 150–1, 155, 176, 177n, 184n, 191n, 193n, 203, 207–8, 210, 222–3, 225–6, 227, 229 – crypto, 1 26, 75, 191, 205–6, 213, 220–2, 224–5, 229 – purgative, 203 attitude (see also ‘numinous’), 7, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 34n, 36, 42, 48n, 50, 76, 85–7, 98, 100–3, 106–7, 116, 132, 155n – mystical, 17, 19 – realist, 170, 179 – religionistic, 133, 135 – scientistic, 133, 135–7 Augustine, 23, 44n, 114n Avowal, 69, 81, 103, 165n, 167 behaviour (bodily), 80–7, 168–9n, 218 behaviourism/behaviourist, 80n, 84, 157–8, 164–8, 181, 183, 221 being (see also God), 18, 25, 40, 195–6, 198n, 199 – beyond, 31, 45 – Parmenedian-Platonic concept of . . . , 198n

being/non-being binary category, 45 Be-ing, 45 Berkeley, George, 24, 171, 175, 178 Bi-polar, 110 Boundless ineffable beyond, 42–3 Brains in a vat, 66, 10, 172 Brambough, Renford, 190, 194 Carnap, Rudolf, 7–8 cataphaticism, 75 certainty, 105, 115–9, 121, 159–60, 162n, 178–9, 185, 207, 224n Christianity/Christian – Roman/Latin, 51–52, 197 – Byzantine/Orthodox, 51, 197 coincidence of opposites/coincidentia oppositorum, 50 colour, 60–1, 89, 91, 95, 96, 160n, 180–4, 221 – per se, 90–1, 95, 182–3 – concept of, 60, 79, 87, 180, 182 continuous aspect perception, 103–4 contradiction, 28, 30, 32–3, 50–1 convention, 58 Cook, John, 191 creature-feeling, 33, 36 criterion/criteria, 64, 72, 81–5, 87–8, 90, 93, 123, 165n, 180–1, 219 cultus, 77 Cupitt, Don, 157, 177 Davis, Stephen, 193–4, 208n, 226–88 Davies, Brian, 76, 210n Deism, 19, 28, 32 Deus absconditus, 202, 225 dialetheism, 51n divine, 8, 35–6, 45–7, 48, 74n, 76, 106n, 130, 133, 140–4, 175, 184, 186n, 187, 198–9, 205, 218, 225–6 – physiognomy, 101 – manifestation, 103 divinity, 45, 100–2, 105–6, 148, 153–4, 207n Drury, Maurice, 5, 10, 19, 20, 22, 24, 130, 143n 219, 220, 225 Duns Scotus, 195–6

240

index

Eastern Orthodox Church, 44, 206, 208–9, 220 Engelmann, Paul, 16–7, 19, 38n entity, 38, 45, 65, 68, 79, 80n, 90–1, 109–13, 130, 145, 180–1, 183, 194, 197, 219 Eriugena (see John Scotus Eriugena) Eternal, 15, 34 Ethical, 15, 19, 42, 44 evidence for God’s existence, 93, 129ff ethos of articulation, 16–7, 19, 20 existence, 45, 185, 197 experience, (see also ‘numinous’) – mystical, 38 – Religious, 37, 140–3 experiencing-as, 102–4 faith, 148–9, 154–5 family resemblance, 6 Ficker, Ludwig, 14, 17 fideism, 26, 150–2, 155, 191, 205, 221, 225, 229 Five Ways, 121–2 form of life, 6, 53–4, 55, 58–9, 60–7, 68, 86, 151n, 160n, 162, 218 Fox, George, 33 Frege, Gottlieb, 16 Friedlander, Eli, 8, 10 Garver, Newton, 28, 33, 215–7 General form of the proposition, 28, 39 God (see also ‘evidence for God’s existence’), 7, 9, 12, 22, 25, 28, 34–5, 38, 40–2, 49, 70–7, 79, 87–107, 158–9, 163–4, 170, 173, 176, 177ff, 195–6, 223 – source of all being, 46 – transcendent of all being, 44, 46, 70, 202, 204 – Be-ing, 45 – neither a something nor a nothing, 182 – not a being, 197–9, 200–4 – not an entity, 113 – beyond being, 45–6 – beyond sense/nonsense, 40 – per se, 46, 70, 89, 95, 97–8, 111, 114–5, 128, 183, 218–9 – universe bi-conditionality, 185 – cannot be conceived as non-existent, 184 – entitative, 112, 194 – non-entitative, 97

‘God exists’, 73–4, 89, 91–7, 99, 109–28, 192, 194, 219 God-hypothesis, 111, 145–6, 149 God-of-the-gaps, 142, 145 God-talk, 75, 87–8, 219, 221 Grammar, 22, 57–8, 71, 89–90, 98, 159–63, 165–8, 181, 184–5, 194–5 Grammatical illusions, 54n Grammatical statements, 57–8n, 120 Grammatical movement, 154 Grant, K. C., 192 Greatest conceivable being, 197 Gregory of Nyssa, 44 Gregory Palamas, 197n Halleth, Garth, 122 Hänsel, Ludwig, 32, 122 Hasker, William, 208–9 Hebrew/Hebraic thought (see also ‘Judaic tradition’), 8 Hick, John, 102–4, 191–2, 206n, 228 hinge propositions, (see also ‘certainty’) 115–21 holy, 212 Hume, David, 100, 133 Hylas, 174 idealism/idealist, 158–9, 170–5, 221 Immanent/immanence, 41 Imponderable, 105 Inconsistency, 30 independent rational assessment, 151 indescribability, 18 ineffable/ineffability (see also ‘boundless ineffable beyond’), 12, 18, 75, 76 inexplicable, 134, 136 inexpressible, 43–5 inner processes, (M/I-processes), 58, 61, 64n, 65n, 68, 79–80, 169, 181 inscrutability, 76 interest, 63, 65, 68 James, William, 35n John Scotus Eriugena, 27, 44–5, 48, 50, 185–7, 222 Judaic tradition/Judaism (rabbinic), 22, 25 Kant, Immanuel, 24, 61, 110, 124 Kerr, Fergus, 25n, 122n 183, 194n, 210n Kierkegaard, Søren, 23, 71, 73, 225 Labron, Tim, 8–10, 22 language(religious), 69, 73

index language-game, 6–8, 54n, 60, 65–7, 71, 153 – of theology, 139n – worshippers, 93 – religious, 94 – theistic, 115 law of excluded middle/(non) contradiction, 20n, 21n, 50 Lazenby, J. M., 33n Lewis, C. S., 133–4n limits – of language, 12, 15, 20–1, 42–3, 53, 61, 64n, 65n, 67, 74–6, 158, 217–8 – human interest, 63 – of the real world, 15 – of thought, 50–1 logic, (see Aristotelian, see also ontologic) logical form, 43, 92n logical positivism/positivist, 19 75, 214 logical space, 15, 40, 42–3, 63n, 97 Locke, John, 170 Luther, Martin, 23, 37, 207n Malcolm, Norman, 5–8, 10, 11, 13–4, 22–3, 33, 116n, 120n, 189n, 190, 219 maximum and minimum, 50 Maximus the Confessor, 197n meaning-blindness, 102n Meister Eckhart, 187, 198n mental processes (see also ‘inner processes’), 80–7, 158, 164–8, 181 metaphysical – beliefs, 69–70 – chatter, 53, 66 – realist/realism, 96, 208 – subject, 40 – statements, 21, 74n metaphysics, 38n, 64n, 74n, 161, 171, 215–6 mind per se, 38n, 70, 80, 84, 95, 169, 183, 218 miracle(s), 38, 129–40 – seeing the world as a, 6, 38 Morgan, Rev. Wynford, 122, 201–2 Moses Maimonides, 22 Mysterium tremendum, 33, 36n mystery/mystical, 15, 18, 39, 42 mysteses, 18 mystical experience (see ‘experience’) mystical theology, 27, 44, 207, 217–8 mysticism, 5, 14, 17, 19, 21–3, 26–7, 32–3, 35n, 37, 100n, 198n, 206n, 207n, 213, 217, 219, 220–1

241

naturalism, 135–6 negative theology (see also ‘apophatic theology’), 40, 42, 46–7, 317 Neo-Platonism, 18 Neo-Wittgensteinians, 189–93, 206, 220, 222, 224, 229 Newman, John Henry, 154 Nicholas of Cusa, 32, 44, 50–1, 178, 220 Nieli, Russell, 37n Nielsen, Kai, 189n, 207, 22 non-realism/non-realist, 26, 75, 159, 163, 185, 191, 205, 220–2, 225 nonsense/nonsensical, 21–2, 25, 38, 40, 42–4, 57, 65n, 67, 72–7, 95, 111, 157, 166, 168, 183, 217, 221–2 nothing/nothingness, 32, 45, 51, 65, 68, 70, 79, 96, 180, 185, 217 Noūs, 198–9 Numinous, 140 – experience, 33, 34n, 36 – attitude, 100–2, 106 objects, 15, 31, 38–9, 54 One, the, 46 Ontologic, 15, 50 ontology/ontological, 66, 69 opinion, 886 orderliness of the universe, 144–9 Origen, 22–4 other minds, 64n, 66, 179 Otto, Rudolf, 33–4 pantheism/pantheist, 27–32, 40–1, 100n, 185–6, 215–6 paradox/paradoxical, 32, 43–4, 50, 67, 71, 75, 120 Parmenides, 24 Pascal, Blaise, 23, 25 Phillips, D. Z., 33n, 34n, 151, 164, 189–94, 202–3, 208–9 Philonous, 174, 179 philosophical theism/theist, 110, 113, 120, 145, 150, 155, 207–9, 224–9 Plato, 24–5 Platonic realist, 96 Plotinus/Plotinian, 198–202, 223–4 possible facts, 42 possible worlds, 15, 93 Proclus, 199 Pseudo-Dionysius, 27, 44–50, 178, 185, 199–201, 223 Pseudo-Dionysian theology, 44–6, 75 psycho-babble, 75–7

242

index

Quaker, 33, 207n realist/realism, 158, 170–6, 208, 221 reality, 30, 158, 160, 163, 218 recognition (simple and complex), 104 Reformed tradition, 25 religious belief, 6, 150–3 religious experience (see ‘experience’) religious language (see ‘language’) religious point of view, 1, 5, 7–13, 19, 21, 26, 213–6, 317–19, 220 remotion, 48 Russell, Bertrand, 16, 43, 100n, 214, 217, 228 Schlick, Moritz, 17n Schopenhauer, Arthur, 24, 33–4n seeing-as, 102–5 science, 140, 149 scientific explanation, 136 scientism, 133n sense, 37, 40, 42 Sherry, Patrick, 193 Shields, Phillip, 22, 25n silence, 18, 33, 37–8, 40, 44, 46n, 51, 69, 74–6, 95, 217–8, 219 something, 32n, 79 statements – indicative, 69, 70, 73, 77 – theological, 43, 69, 70, 75, 110 – religious (see ‘language’) substantive (entity/facts), 69, 95–6, 109, 197, 223 – certainty, 119, 122 – claim/statements, 59, 68n, 74, 89–90, 110, 112–5, 119–21, 128, 192, 219, 222 – proof of God’s existence, 114, 145–6, 192 supernatural, 130, 140, 143

superworld, 15 symptom, 85, 88, 93 Swinburne, Richard, 25, 206n Tagore, Rabindranath, 10, 17n, 21n test implication, 145 theology, 39, 69, 74 theological tradition, 14, 42 Thomas Aquinas, 27, 44, 48–51, 76–7, 87, 91n, 94n, 97–99, 121–7, 136, 185–7, 195–6, 200, 204–6, 210n, 220, 222–4 Thomas, R. S., 202 Tolstoi, Leo, 10, 24, 32, 38 transcendence, 29, 37–8, 40, 76, 113, 194, 217 transcendent, 20n, 29, 30, 38, 40–44, 46, 48, 63–7, 69, 70–2, 74, 76, 112–3, 158, 164, 176, 178, 191, 199, 202–4, 217–8, 225 Turner, Denys, 40, 46, 91n, 99, 177 Ultimate Reality, 66 universe is “just there,” 98, 100n, 101, 155, 229 Underhill, Evelyn, 37n Value, 15, 40, 127, 134 vat-language, 67, 70–1 via negative, 43, 202 Vienna Circle, 17n Wesley, John, 36–7, 207n Winch, Peter, 11n, 14 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 25, 209 World per se, 61, 64, 66n Wordless contemplation, 18 Wholly-other, 106, 113, 195, 197, 201–3, 205, 217 Zemach, Eddy, 28