Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies [1 ed.] 9789004408050, 9789004397927

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Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein

Philosophy of Religion WORLD RELIGIONS

Editor-in-Chief Jerome Gellman (Ben Gurion University) Editorial Board Richard Hayes (University of New Mexico) Robert McKim (University of Illinois, Urbana –​Champaign) Rusmir Mahmutćehajić (Međunarodni forum Bosna/​International Forum Bosnia)

VOLUME 9

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​prwr

Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Edited by

Gorazd Andrejč and Daniel H. Weiss

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration by Gorazd Andrejč. The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at http://​catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://​lccn.loc.gov/2019945553​

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 2210-​4 81X isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​3 9792-​7 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 0805-​0 (e-​book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. 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 printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

Preface vii Abbreviations of Works of Ludwig Wittgenstein ix Notes on Contributors xiii

1

Introduction: Interpretations of Wittgenstein, Religion and Interreligious Relations 1 Gorazd Andrejč

2

“Being Near Enough to Listen”: Wittgenstein and Interreligious Understanding 33 Mikel Burley

3

Wittgenstein and Ascriptions of “Religion” 54 Thomas D. Carroll

4

Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy as Foundation of Comparative Theology 73 Klaus von Stosch

5

Wittgenstein’s Religious Epistemology and Interfaith Dialogue 97 Nuno Venturinha

6

Showing the Fly Out of the Bottle: Wittgenstein’s Enactive Apophaticism and Interreligious Dialogue 114 Sebastjan Vörös and Varja Štrajn

7

Radical Pluralism, Concept Formation, and Interreligious Communication 135 Randy Ramal

8

Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism and Interreligious Communication 157 Guy Bennett-​Hunter

9

The God of the Intellect and the God of Lived Religion(s): Reflections on Maimonides, Wittgenstein and Burrell 174 Daniel H. Weiss

vi Contents 10

Multiple Religious Belonging in a Wittgensteinian Perspective 194 Rhiannon Grant

11

Names, Persons and Ritual Practices: Wittgenstein and the Way of Tea 213 Paul Cortois



Name Index 237 Subject Index 240

Preface Given the title of the present collection of essays, some potential readers who are knowledgeable about Wittgenstein’s work might approach it with some suspicion. Despite the fact that Wittgenstein’s scattered remarks and lectures on religion have been the object of much philosophical and theological interest during the last fifty years or so, Wittgenstein did not in fact write or say very much about religion. Even scarcer were his comments related to interreligious relations  –​including interreligious encounter, differences and similarities, communication or miscommunication, agreement and disagreement, dialogue, and so on –​topics which have gained increasing currency in philosophy and theology during the last couple of decades. Yet, together with the contributors to this volume, we believe –​and hope this volume will show –​that Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and his thought in general continue to be highly relevant for present and future research on interreligious relations. In the light of recent developments in interpretation of Wittgenstein on the one hand, and those in philosophy and theology of interreligious encounter on the other, there is an important and under-​explored potential for constructive and fruitful engagement between these academic fields. This book explores, and attempts to realize, some of this potential by involving both philosophers and theologians. Some of the contributors have previously explored intersections between Wittgensteinian philosophy and the study of interreligious relations, while others have decided to bring these streams of research together for the first time in their contribution to the present volume. We hope the essays will prove interesting and useful not only for those whose interests include both Wittgenstein’s philosophy and interreligious studies, but also those whose primary interest lies in only one of these or related fields. Through engagements with Wittgenstein’s thought and that of the thinkers strongly influenced by Wittgenstein, the present volume offers new and illuminating perspectives on issues such as: A. the usefulness of the abstract concept ‘religion’ in today’s global perspective and the value of the family-​resemblance understanding of the concept ‘religion’ in related academic contexts B. the problem of grammatical disparity between the central concepts of different religions for interreligious understanding C. the task of philosophy, understood as ‘grammatical investigation’ and linguistic elucidation, in the clarification of chosen aspects and examples of interreligious relations D. the potential of the Wittgensteinian critique of scientistic and evidentialist ‘misinterpretations’ of religious believing

viii Preface E.

the benefits and the shortcomings of establishing interreligious understanding on a shared philosophical discourse, or on similar religious or existential experiences, or on so-​called ‘primitive reactions’ (given their role in religious lives and concept ​formation) F. the significance of the logical peculiarity of theistic religious language, its ‘running against the boundaries of sense’, for interreligious understanding between Abrahamic traditions G. the significance for interreligious relations of the fact that some religious certainties are often deep-​seated and unquestioned within the ‘normal stream’ of religious lives H. the delineation of the roles of different academic disciplines –​especially theology, philosophy and religious studies –​in the pursuit of understanding interreligious encounter, perceptions, communication, and the like, in their multiplicity and multi-​faceted reality I. the increasing phenomenon of multi-​religious belonging The essays collected in this volume were developed from a selection of the papers presented at a conference entitled Wittgenstein and Interreligious Communication, which took place at Westminster College, Cambridge, UK, in June 2015, and subsequently updated with references to relevant new research that emerged after the conference between 2016 and 2018. We are thankful to the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, for making this conference possible and for funding Gorazd Andrejč’s research project on Wittgenstein and interreligious disagreement between 2013 and 2016, of which this conference formed a part. Special thanks goes to the founder and director of the Woolf Institute, Edward Kessler, who believed in and supported this project throughout. Thanks also to Westminster College, Cambridge, for enabling the conference to run smoothly, and Ben Humphris, whose administrative work for the conference was invaluable. We thank the Institute for Philosophical Studies at Science and Research Centre of Koper, and the Faculty of Divinity at University of Cambridge for their support in enabling us to complete the final stages of this project. We also thank Alexander D. Garton for his excellent and careful proofreading and editorial assistance. Finally, thanks are due to all those contributors to the conference whose essays we were not able to include here but whose ideas and contributions to the discussions also influenced the final shape of this book. Gorazd Andrejč, Maribor Daniel H. Weiss, Cambridge December, 2018

Abbreviations of Works of Ludwig Wittgenstein The date of composition is specified in square brackets where appropriate. Wittgenstein’s Published Works NL NB

GT

tlp

CV

CVR PR

MT

rfgb

Notes on Logic. [1913]. Edited in NB (pp. 93–​107). Notebooks 1914–​16. (1961/​1979). Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Second edition. Oxford:  Blackwell [German–​ English parallel text.] References are to dates of entries. Tagebücher 1914–​ 16. (1960). Edited in Schriften (Vol. 1). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. References are to dates of entries. Geheime Tagebücher, 1914–​1916. [Secret Notebooks, 1914–​1916.] (1991). Ed. W. Baum. Wien: Turia + Kant. [Contains transcriptions of coded remarks which have been omitted from NB, and which are of mainly biographical relevance.] Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus. (1922). Trans. C.K. Ogden. London: Kegan Paul. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections. Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus. ([1922] 1961). Trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1922.) References are to numbered sections. Logisch Philosophische Abhandlung, Kritische Edition. [Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus, Critical Edition]. ([1922] 1989). Ed. B. McGuinness and J. Schulte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains. (1977/​1980/​ 1984). Ed. G.H.  von Wright in collaboration with H.  Nyman. [German–​ English parallel text.] Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains. Revised edition (1998) by A. Pichler. Trans. P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell. Vermischte Bemerkungen. (1994). Edited in Werkausgabe (Vol. 8). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Philosophical Remarks. [1929–​1930]. (1975). Ed. R.  Rhees. Trans. R.  Hargreaves and R.  White. Oxford:  Blackwell. Philosophische Bemerkungen (1964). Edited in Schriften (Vol. 2). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Denkbewegungen:  Tagebücher 1930–​1932, 1936–​1937. [Movements of Thought: Notebooks 1930–​1932, 1936–​1937.] (1999). Ed. I. Somavilla. Frankfurt: Fischer. Translated in ppo. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. [1931, 1936]. (1979) Ed. Rush Rhees, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. First (German) edition published

x Abbreviations

rfgb R PG

BB PI

ppf

rpp i

rpp ii

Z

as ‘Bemerkungen über Frazers Golden Bough’ (1967), Ed. R.  Rhees. Synthese, 17, 233–​253. Bemerkungen über Frazers Golden Bough/​Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. (1993). Edited by James Klagge and Alfred Nordmann. Revised edition. Published in PO, 115–​155. Philosophical Grammar. [1932–​1934]. (1974). Ed. R. Rhees. Trans. A.J.P. Kenny. Oxford: Blackwell. Philosophische Grammatik. (1969). Edited in Schriften (Vol. 4). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. The Blue and Brown Books. [1933–​1935]. (1958/​1969). Ed. R. Rhees. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Philosophical Investigations. [1938–​1945]. (1953/​1958). Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell. References are to numbered sections of Part i (except for footnotes), and to pages of Part ii. Philosophical Investigations. (1953/​2009). Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and R.  Rhees. Fourth, revised edition by P.M.S. Hacker and J.  Schulte. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and J.  Schulte. Oxford:  Wiley‐Blackwell. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections; references to what was formerly known as “Part ii” are now to ppf. Philosophische Untersuchungen, Kritisch‐genetische Edition. [Philosophical Investigations, Critical Genetic Edition.] (2001). Ed. J. Schulte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Philosophy of Psychology –​A  Fragment. [1946–​1949]. In PI (1953/​2009, pp.  183–​243). Ed. P.M.S. Hacker and J.  Schulte. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and J. Schulte. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections. [Previously known as PI “Part ii.”] Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (Vol. 1). [1945–​1947]. (1980). Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H.  von Wright. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford:  Blackwell. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections. Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie. (1982). Edited in Schriften (Vol. 7). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. References are to numbered sections. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (Vol. 2). [1948]. (1980). Ed. G.H.  von Wright and H.  Nyman. Trans. C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections. Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie. (1982). Edited in Schriften (Vol. 7). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. References are to numbered sections. Zettel. [1945–​1948]. (1967). Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H.  von Wright. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford:  Blackwell. [German–​English parallel

Abbreviations

LW i

LW ii

OC

PO

ppo

xi

text.] References are to numbered sections. Zettel. (1984). Edited in Werkausgabe (Vol. 8). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. References are to numbered sections. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (Vol 1). [1948–​1949]. (1982). Ed. G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Trans. C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections. Letzte Schriften über die Philosophie der Psychologie (1984). Edited in Werkausgabe (Vol. 7). Frankfurt:  Suhrkamp. References are to numbered sections. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (Vol. 2). [1949–​1951]. (1992). Ed. G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Trans. C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell. [German–​English parallel text.] On Certainty. [1951]. (1969/​1974). Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Trans. D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. [German–​English parallel text.] References are to numbered sections. Über Gewißheit. (1984). Edited in Werkausgabe (Vol. 8). Frankfurt:  Suhrkamp. References are to numbered sections. Philosophical Occasions: 1912–​1951. (1993). Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann. Indianapolis:  Hackett. [German–​English parallel texts where appropriate.] Unless otherwise specified, writings in this anthology are cited after the original paginations, which are given in brackets. Public and Private Occasions. (2003). Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. [German–​English parallel texts where appropriate.] Unless otherwise specified, writings in this anthology are cited after the original paginations, which are given in brackets.

Lectures and Conversations wvc

LE

mwl

Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann. [1929–​1932]. (1979). Ed. and trans. B.F. McGuinness. Oxford: Blackwell. Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. (1967). Edited in Schriften (Vol. 3). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. A Lecture on Ethics. [1929]. (1965/​2014). Philosophical Review, 74, 3–​12. The 2014 edition:  Lecture on Ethics. edited by Edoardo Zamuner, Ermelinda Valentina Di Lascio and D.K. Levy. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. (2014). Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930–​1933, From the Notes of G.E. Moore (2016). Ed. D. Stern, B. Rogers, and G. Citron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. References are to the pagination of the notebooks reproduced in this edition.

xii Abbreviations awl LC lfw npl lpp

Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932–​35, From the Notes of A. Ambrose and M. MacDonald. (1979). Ed. A. Ambrose. Oxford: Blackwell. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. [1938 1946]. (1966). Ed. C. Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell. Lectures on Freedom of the Will, From the Notes of Y.  Smithies. [1939]. Edited in PO. Notes for the Philosophical Lecture. [1941]. Ed. D. Stern. In PO. Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946–​47, Notes by P.T. Geach, K.J. Shah, and A.C. Jackson. (1988). Ed. P.T. Geach. Sussex: Harvester.

Nachlass bee

Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition. (2000). Ed. the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [The most comprehensive published edition of the Nachlass to date]

Notes on Contributors Gorazd Andrejč is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and Senior Researcher at Scientific Research Centre of Koper Slovenia. His publications include Wittgenstein and Interreligious Disagreement: A Philosophical and Theological Perspective (2016) and Key Concepts in Religion (2018, in Slovenian). Guy Bennett-​Hunter is a writer, philosopher and independent researcher from London, UK. He is the author of Ineffability and Religious Experience (2014), and Executive Editor of Expository Times. Mikel Burley is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Leeds, UK. His publications include Rebirth and the Stream of Life: A Philosophical Study of Reincarnation, Karma and Ethics (2016) and Contemplating Religious Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips (2012). He has edited or coedited two volumes, including Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics: New Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology (2018). Thomas D. Carroll is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion (2014) and co-​ editor of Religions, Reasons and Gods:  Essays in Cross-​Cultural Philosophy of Religion (2006), co-​edited with J. Clayton and A.M. Blackburn. Paul Cortois is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium. His publications (in Flemish) include Symbolic Essences (2018), and, as an editor, Religion under Criticism: The Place of Religion in Secular Society (2016), co-​edited with G. Vanheeswijck, and Masters and Disciples. Reflections on a Forgotten Relationship (2010), co-​edited with W. van Herck. Rhiannon Grant is Lecturer in Modern Quaker Thought at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of British Quakers and Religious Language (2018) and Telling the Truth About God: Quaker Approaches to Theology (2019).

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xiv 

Notes on Contributors

Randy Ramal is currently a Visiting Researcher at the University of Zurich. He is the author of Metaphysics, Analysis, and the Grammar of God: Process and Analytic Voices in Dialogue (2012). Varja Štrajn is Researcher at the Ennoema (Institute for Linguistic, Philosophical and Social Research) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is the author of The Sense of Sentences in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (2017, in Slovenian). Nuno Venturinha is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Nova University of Lisbon. He is the author of Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology (2018) and the editor of Wittgenstein After His Nachlass (2010) and The Textual Genesis of Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations (2013). Sebastjan Vörös is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of Images of the Unimaginable: (Neuro)science, Phenomenology, Mysticism (2013) (in Slovenian) and the editor of Mysticism and Thought (2013) (in Slovenian). Klaus von Stosch is Professor of Systematic Theology and Head of the Centre of Comparative Theology and Cultural Studies at the University of Paderborn, Germany. His publications include Comparative Theology as a Guide in the World of Religions (2017, in German), and, as an editor, How to Do Comparative Theology (2017), co-​edited with F.X. Clooney. Daniel H. Weiss is Polonsky-​Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion (2012) and co-​ editor of Purity and Danger Now: New Perspectives (2016).

­c hapter 1

Introduction: Interpretations of Wittgenstein, Religion and Interreligious Relations Gorazd Andrejč In philosophical and theological perspectives on interreligious relations  –​ including interreligious encounter, perceptions, practices, differences and similarities, communication and miscommunication, agreement and disagreement, dialogue, and so on –​Wittgenstein is not among the most invoked thinkers. More often, one finds references and quotations of the likes of Buber, Levinas, and Gadamer, and perhaps also Krishnamurti, Abe, and Ikeda, if the religions involved include the Asian traditions. This is not to say that Wittgenstein does not feature at all. By certain authors, Wittgenstein has been used as one philosophical resource among others –​let’s call such approaches ‘Wittgenstein-​involving’. Others have referred to Wittgenstein when distancing their own approaches to interreligious relations from what they have perceived as Wittgensteinian. Finally, a few scholars have relied on, or expressed strong affinities with, Wittgenstein’s thought when interpreting interreligious phenomena, and might therefore be described as ‘Wittgensteinian’. We can find Wittgensteinian and Wittgenstein-​involving approaches dotted across the relevant subdisciplines, such as comparative philosophy of religion, world philosophy of religion, theology of religions, comparative theology, and interreligious theology. Given the notable variety  –​and quantity  –​of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work in general, it should not come as a surprise that across the aforementioned subdisciplines, Wittgenstein’s work and its relevance for understanding interreligious relations have been interpreted in different, sometimes contradictory ways. The present book reflects this diversity. It is not premised on an agreement in interpretations or applications of Wittgenstein’s thought to the study of interreligious relations. Rather, the contributors explore the relevance of Wittgenstein for this study from different interpretive, methodological and theological angles. There are, however, some common denominators across the essays in this book. One is a conviction that Wittgenstein’s work is an important intellectual resource for understanding and interpreting interreligious relations. Another is the conviction that, despite the exciting references to Wittgenstein in philosophical and theological scholarship on interreligious

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004408050_​0 02

2 Andrejč relations, Wittgenstein can and should be engaged further, in different and novel ways that illuminate the subject. His work has also been misunderstood by some, which calls for critical discussion. Accordingly, the essays in this volume bring together and contribute to the following bodies of scholarship: (1) Wittgenstein’s and Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion –​the essays offer some novel readings of Wittgenstein on religion, but even more so, original applications of Wittgenstein to matters related to interreligious relations; (2)  the aforementioned subfields of theology and philosophy: comparative philosophy of religion, world philosophy of religion, theology of religions, comparative theology, and interreligious theology; and (3) religious studies, particularly in relation to methodological questions of interpreting religious phenomena, as well as the meaning(s) and the utility of the concept ‘religion’ and other related concepts. The following section contains an overview of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and a brief look at influential ways of interpreting Wittgenstein on religion in philosophy and (mostly Christian) theology. Without this interpretive framework, it would be difficult to understand and develop the subsequent section, in which different ways of applying Wittgensteinian thought to the study of interreligious relations are described. Instead of concluding with brief summaries of all the essays in the present collection, however, such summaries will be introduced at different places throughout this introduction, in relation to the relevant topics in Wittgenstein or previous interpretations of his work.

Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion1

It is difficult to ‘map’ Wittgensteinian approaches in philosophy of religion. This is partly due to the nature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, partly to the style of his writing and lectures, and partly because of the vast and diverse amount of the interpretive work on Wittgenstein’s philosophy in general within which most of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion finds its place. A similar assessment can be made of the different theological readings of Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, I think an effort to ‘step back’ and give some overview of different interpretations is helpful and important, even if any such overview will have limitations and will itself necessarily assume some interpretation. A  way to do this which I have found helpful and which will, I believe, also shed light

1 Much of the introduction to Wittgenstein on religion and to the interpretations of Wittgenstein in this section is based on my Andrejč (2016).

Introduction

3

upon the essays in the current volume, is to look at the ways in which a Wittgensteinian or Wittgenstein-​involving approach to religion takes up or engages different depictions of religion –​religious language, beliefs, practices, or experience –​in Wittgenstein’s reflections. I suggest that we can call the four dominant ways in which Wittgenstein depicts religion nonsensicalist (early Wittgenstein), existentialist (both early and later Wittgenstein), grammaticalist and instinctivist (later Wittgenstein) (Andrejč 2016, 19–​64). I will describe these later in this section. In the first instance, it is good to point out that the ‘ist’ endings are not meant to suggest that these four are philosophical or scientific theses, let alone theories of religion, taken either individually or together. Rather, they can be seen as pictures or conceptions in a particular, later-​Wittgensteinian sense of the word.2 What are these later-​Wittgensteinian ‘conceptions’ or ‘pictures’? Following the later Gordon Baker’s reading of Wittgenstein, Oskari Kuusela gives a convincing account. Unlike mutually exclusive “theses about identity or essence”, a Wittgensteinian picture or conception is meant to articulate a way of seeing or looking at reality …; it constitutes a mode or form of representing or conceiving the object of investigation (Darstellungsweise or Betrachtungsweise). Importantly, because it is possible to see or look at something, to represent or conceive it in more than one way, Wittgensteinian conceptions are non-​exclusionary:  they do not exclude other conceptions in the way in which truth claims or theses do. kuusela 2014, 75

Sometimes, Wittgenstein uses the term ‘pictures’ to describe concrete examples of different but similar phenomena. By describing them alongside one another as “objects of comparison” (PI, §130), he hopes to achieve a “perspicuous representation” (übersichtliche darstellung) (PI, §122) and “see the connections” which would otherwise escape our understanding (rfgb R, 133). An example of such a comparison which, according to Wittgenstein, reveals

2 For the sake of simplicity, I include the early-​Wittgensteinian nonsensicalist picture of religion as one of such ‘conceptions’ which, although dominant in the early Wittgenstein’s thought, still has at least some ‘echoes’ in the later Wittgenstein’s thought. I am well aware, of course, that this would be deemed problematic by, both, many therapeutic readers of Wittgenstein, as well as more traditional readers focused mostly on the later Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion. I  address the interpretive question regarding the place of the nonsensicalist picture of religious language in the later Wittgenstein in Andrejč (2016, 35–​36, 187–​190).

4 Andrejč something about religion, is a comparison between “burning [an] effigy” and “kissing the picture of one’s beloved” (rfgb R, 123).3 At other times, a picture can be a fairly complex and abstract conception of a phenomenon, and sometimes it is very difficult to be aware that one is in a grip of it. One such picture, the later Wittgenstein suggests, was the conception of ‘proposition’ that his earlier self had used in the Tractatus Logico-​Philosophicus, according to which a form of all propositions is “This is how things are” (PI, §114). The later Wittgenstein, however, thought that this picture held him, as well as some others (he probably had Russell in particular in mind), “captive”. He adds: “we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably” (PI, §115). Treating pictures as objects of comparison, instead of taking one particular picture as capturing the supposed essence of the phenomenon, is part and parcel of the later Wittgenstein’s practice of philosophy as a descriptive endeavour. “Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is.” (PI, §124) We could call this rule Wittgenstein’s “methodological principle of non-​interference” (Plant 2005, 69). This principle constitutes the understanding of philosophy as descriptive or “grammatical investigation”: [Our] investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the “possibilities” of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about ­phenomena. Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. PI, §904

3 Cf. Mikel Burley’s analysis of this comparison in Wittgenstein on pp. 44–45 of the present volume. 4 We should add that philosophy as descriptive investigation for Wittgenstein does not mean to ‘merely describe’ in an uncritical manner the rules of use for a particular word or phrase. It is, in fact, quite natural to be deceived by the form of one’s own language, or syntax –​what Wittgenstein calls ‘surface grammar’, i.e. “the way [the word] is used in the construction of the sentence” (PI, §664), as opposed to ‘depth grammar’, which is manifested only when the form of life in which that word or phrase has its place is clear to us (its usage is revealed in both broader linguistic and pragmatic contexts). According to Wittgenstein, it is very hard not to be deceived by the surface grammar because of the immense power of language to bewitch our intelligence (PI, §109).

Introduction

5

In short, since the abstract concepts of philosophical interest, such as ‘proposition’, ‘language’, ‘religion’, or ‘game’, are used in a notable variety of contexts and ways, a grammatical investigation of such concepts will often have to describe and utilize different conceptions or pictures of the ‘thing’ in question in order to elucidate the grammar of the concept in question (Kuusela 2008, 160). In this way, “a clear view of the use of our words”, or perspicuous representation, is achieved (PI, §122), which should illuminate understanding and dispel the confusions normally caused, according to Wittgenstein, by philosophical or other misuse of language. As this is an introduction to diverse interpretations of Wittgenstein for a particular purpose, I am trying not to get entangled –​at least not too deeply –​ in the debates between the school of interpretation that is sometimes called ‘New Wittgensteinian’ or ‘therapeutic’ (James Conant, Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, Rupert Read, Stephen Mulhall) and the ‘traditional’ interpretations (Peter Hacker, Hans-​Johann Glock, Brian McGuinness, Genia Schönbaumsfeld). Such debates are whether Wittgenstein understood philosophy in an exclusively therapeutic fashion, as claim the former, or (ever) also suggested a philosophical or metaphysical theory or definite claims about language or anything else, as claim the latter; whether there is any ‘essential’ break between the early and the later Wittgenstein, as the latter have it, or there is a strong continuity, as the former claim; and the related debate between the resolute and the ineffabilist interpretations of the Tractatus.5 For the purpose of this introduction, I  can, I  believe non-​problematically, affirm that the therapeutic function is one of the most  –​if not the most  –​important functions of philosophy for both the early and the later Wittgenstein. About ‘perspicuous representation’, it seems warranted to say that, at least in the later Wittgenstein’s approach, it is not meant to achieve a total grasp of the grammar of the concept or the phrase under investigation (let  alone of a ‘language game’). Rather,

5 For a good introduction to different readings of both the Tractatus (the difference between the ‘resolute’ and the ‘ineffabilist’ interpretations), as well as Philosophical Investigations and Wittgenstein’s philosophy as a whole (the difference between ‘fully therapeutic’ and all other interpretations which see in Wittgenstein’s writing anything more than just an activity of intellectual therapy), see Stern (2004). For a shorter (article-​long) introduction to all sides of the debate and the necessary references for further reading, see Bronzo (2012). To get an overview of different therapeutic readings of Wittgenstein in particular, see Crary and Read (2000), which also includes a ‘traditionalist’ response by Peter Hacker. The most influential work arguing for the ‘resolute’/​therapeutic interpretation has probably been that of Cora Diamond, whose relevant essays have been collected in Diamond (1995).

6 Andrejč [like] good maps, [perspicuous representations] do not represent just any feature or features of their target terrain nor do they represent all its features, describing it completely or even accurately in every respect. Such devices highlight illuminating features as an aid to getting to grips with a particular domain and this is done for certain, clearly-​defined ­purposes. hutto 2007, 301

According to Wittgenstein, a common way in which we run into misunderstandings of something is to hold, or expect to arrive at, a particular conception of it as an exhaustive definition. In the case of ‘religion’, this can happen when philosophers or others take one particular aspect or picture of religion as a general and exhaustive thesis about ‘what religion really is’. Countering this, a number of scholars have been inspired by Wittgenstein to abandon, or substantially reframe, the project of establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be deemed religion or religious. Instead, the strategy has been to carefully establish a “complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-​crossing” (PI, §66) between phenomena deemed religious, with a limited scope of examples for comparison. This means treating ‘religion’ as a ‘family-​resemblance’ concept. Only then can a further critical and constructive work on ‘the nature of religion’ locally, if that is the aim, proceed appropriately. This Wittgensteinian move can be observed even in the works of philosophers who otherwise haven’t taken Wittgenstein as their main philosophical teacher, like John Hick (2004, 3–​5), Victoria Harrison (2006), and Hent de Vries (2008). (For more examples, cf. Burley, pp. 36–40 present volume) But, doesn’t declaring ‘religion’ to be a family-​resemblance concept mean merely to track all that is deemed religion or religious, giving up on any deeper or further understanding of either the language used or the phenomena being so described? And, what exactly does it mean to say that ‘religion’ is a family-​ resemblance concept anyway? In the current volume we find two essays that address these questions head on. Thomas Carroll agrees with the majority interpretation that the upshot of treating ‘religion’ as a family-​resemblance concept means a careful and persistent resistance against essentializing ‘religion’ or, what is equally misleading, reifying any particular tradition such as Buddhism or Christianity (Carroll, pp. 69–71 present volume). Discussing the theoretical work on the genealogy and the utility of the concept ‘religion’ in the field of religious studies (Nongbri, Schilbrack, McCutcheon), Carroll carves out the task of philosophy in relation to religion as distinct from religious studies and theology in a recognizably Wittgensteinian-​descriptive spirit: philosophy of religion(s) must begin with a

Introduction

7

reflective but disciplined attention to the actual discursive practices of ascribing the term ‘religion’ (or ‘Islam’, ‘Judaism’, etc.). What philosophical elucidation shows –​namely, that there is no sui generis essence to religion –​helps to establish a mutually clarifying communication between members of different religious traditions, which is always “framed by local conceptions of what religion [or ‘Islam’, ‘Judaism’, etc.] is”, whether we are aware of that or not (Carroll, pp. 70–71 present volume). In another interrogation of the family-​resemblance understanding of ‘religion’ in this volume, Mikel Burley relates it to Wittgenstein’s broader appreciation of the diversity of human practices (discursive or otherwise), as well as to what Burley calls Wittgenstein’s analogical method: “the method of bridging gaps in one’s comprehension of another’s activities by looking for analogically comparable activities” (Burley, p. 35 in present volume). Burley traces the uses of the family-​resemblance understanding of religion within philosophy of religion and religious studies with a focus on Hinduism. As a response to critical perspectives on the colonial resignification of ‘Hinduism’ by Christian missionaries and Indologists, who forced it into signifying a species of the genus ‘religion’, more recent scholars have adopted a family-​resemblance concept of Hinduism (Eichinger Ferro-​Luzzi calls it a ‘polythetic-​prototype approach’). Burley explains the distinction between sloppy thinking and the family-​resemblance approach:  the latter but not the former resists reducing Hinduism to a common feature in the name of a meticulous attention to the diverse reality of the practices and cultures usually associated with Hinduism. In terms of interreligious understanding, Burley concludes that Wittgensteinian method helps us listen “more attentively to one’s neighbours, both religious and nonreligious: not simply assuming that gaps of understanding will always be bridged, nor pretending that differences do not exist, but allowing both differences and commonalities to be themselves in a spirit of mutual discovery” (Burley, p. 47 in present volume). Returning to Wittgenstein’s own thought, we need to note that the foci of his religion-​related investigations were not so much the concept ‘religion’ itself but concepts used in relation to religion such as ‘belief’ (as Venturinha shows in his contribution to this volume), religious concepts such as ‘God’ and ‘soul’, and the concepts which Wittgenstein contrasts with (‘true’) religion, such as ‘superstition’ or ‘science’. In this way, Wittgensteinian pictures of religion are composed, so to speak, from different angles of investigation. Consider the meaning of ‘belief’: Wittgenstein suggests that primitive reactions are “part of the substance of the belief” (LC, 56), and that the verbal expressions of religious beliefs can only be understood in the context of “the connections” people make between them and their behaviour, experiences, and other claims

8 Andrejč they make. In religious contexts, ‘belief’ –​at least very often, in English and German –​has a notably different meaning than it has in most non-​religious contexts, according to Wittgenstein: [one] talks of believing and at the same time one doesn’t use “believe” as one does ordinarily. You might say (in the normal use): “You only believe –​oh well …”. [In religious contexts] it is used entirely differently; on the other hand, it is not used as we generally use the word ‘know’. … Whatever believing in God may be, it can’t be believing in something we can test, or find means of testing. LC, 60–​95

But, one might ask, is this still merely investigating ‘belief’ etc. and leaving it as it is, or do Wittgenstein’s remarks here have a normative side to them? He appears to be saying that an evidentialist belief-​attitude, even if deemed ‘religious’ by some, is not really that, i.e. evidence-​games are not properly part of what believing in God involves. For Wittgenstein, to use ‘belief’ in an evidentialist way in a religious context amounts to “superstition”.6 This seems to show that Wittgenstein’s commitment to philosophy as descriptive investigation does not mean that he does not have preferences in relation to the meaning of ‘religion’ and religion-​related words and expressions (Andrejč 2016, 50–​60). In other words, Wittgenstein’s reflections on religion (probably more than on any other topic) do manifest some normative elements. Wittgenstein’s reflections on ‘belief’ have been hugely influential beyond philosophy. Probably the most influential work on ‘belief’ in social anthropology, Rodney Needham’s Belief, Language and Experience (1972), has been heavily influenced by the later Wittgenstein’s de-​essentialization of the concept ‘belief’ as well as other mental concepts. Needham argues that this word does not have any single core or element of its meaning which is stable across time and cultures. Affirming Wittgenstein (Z, §113), Needham observes that most psychological verbs, such as ‘believe’, ‘think’, ‘know’, ‘feel’, etc. have “extremely ramified and extended uses” which often “appear confused” (Needham 1972, 123). But, as Wittgenstein wrote, despite their constitutive scientific imprecision, 6 Wittgenstein’s own example of a ‘religious evidentialist’ whose endeavour of evidence-​giving for God’s existence he disproves of is, of course, Father O’Hara, who argued that believing in Christ’s Resurrection is rationally defensible by considering the evidence for it as a historical event. “Father O’Hara is one of those people who make it a question of science. … I would definitely call O’Hara unreasonable. I would say, if this is religious belief, then it’s all superstition.” (LC, 57, 59).

Introduction

9

they continue to be useful and communicable (Z, §113–​115; PI, §69, 71). In relation to the concept ‘belief’ in particular, and in-​keeping with Wittgenstein’s later work, Needham claims there are two widespread errors plaguing both academic and everyday discourse:  “first, the assumption that there must be something in common to all instances of believing; second, the assumption that there must be a mental counterpart to the expression of belief” (Needham 1972, 122).7 Most relevantly for the topic of this volume, Needham comes to such conclusions about the concept of ‘belief’ on the basis of a comparative anthropology of religious discourses in European Christianity on the one hand, and the religion of the African Nuer tribe on the other. Needham’s work on ‘belief’ and the complications with its meaning has, in turn, influenced a generation of more recent anthropologists of religion and other Religious Studies scholars, such as Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Michael Lambek, who have applied Needham’s approach to the study of intercultural and interreligious encounters and attempts at communication and translation across (very) different cultures and religions. Before looking at some of the differences between the interpretations of Wittgenstein on religion which are relevant for understanding interreligious relations (including the interpretations represented in this volume), we need to lay out a bit further what the four Wittgensteinian conceptions of religion mentioned earlier consist of. Probably most influential in philosophy of religion and theology was the grammaticalist picture of religion in Wittgenstein. According to this conception, religious statements  –​in Christianity these are especially the “central doctrines”, like “God is the creator of all”, but also statements such as “God’s eye sees everything” (LC, 71) –​are to be understood as “grammatical remarks” framing the rules of grammar for talking about God. Since grammar “tells what kind of object anything is” (PI, §373), the doctrines of Christianity determine the grammar of the word ‘God’, i.e. they determine what we can or cannot say

7 Needham is, at times, an eliminativist regarding the very existence of belief and suggests that this is, more or less, also Witgenstein’s view: “If grammar tells us what kind of an object something is, then the grammar of belief tells us that there is no such object” (Needham 1972, 131). It is worth noting, however, that Wittgenstein does not abandon the concept of ‘belief’ as (still) useful for understanding Christianity as well as (at least some) other religions. He certainly criticized what we might call the Enlightenment-​propositionalist understanding of religion as “a set of interiorized, systematized propositional attitudes or beliefs” (Vries 2008, 29); however, instead of abandoning the concept of ‘belief’ per se, he substantially re-​framed (the possibilities of) its meaning in religious contexts in comparison with the ‘ordinary’ meaning of the term.

10 Andrejč about God and his relationship to the world.8 In this way, the doctrines at the same time frame and express the possibilities of Christian believing and living. Sentences which express central, life-​orienting religious beliefs are not like empirical-​factual statements about particular objects or processes in the world, but like grammatical propositions such as “objects exist”. Experiences do not show us God as a sense experience does an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, –​ life can force this concept on us. So perhaps it is similar to the concept “object”. CVR, 97

Just as the formal concept ‘object’ enables us to relate to empirical reality, while trying to prove that “objects exist” does not make sense, so the concept ‘God’ enables us to speak and relate to reality in a religious way (in monotheistic religions) while trying to prove that “God exists” does not make sense. The misunderstanding of the concept ‘God’ as referring to an intraworldly object of some sort is, according to Wittgenstein, largely a consequence of being deceived by the “surface grammar” of God-​sentences in which ‘God’ is almost always a noun. The later Wittgenstein was especially concerned with the ways our intelligence can get “bewitched” (PI, §109) by “analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language” (PI, §90). Sometimes the form of the sentence gives an appearance of an empirical proposition, but it “is really a grammatical one” (PI, §251). So, while nouns or “substantives” usually refer to “a thing or a substance” (mwl, 8:74), in God-​talk this is not the case, as indeed the “depth grammar” of “God” shows: if you ask believers “Does [the sentence] ‘God helps people in need’ mean that he has arms?”, most would respond “You can’t talk of god having arms.” (mwl, 8:77) Another Wittgensteinian conception of religion which can be found in both early and later Wittgenstein is the existentialist conception. This one has two ‘sides’, so to speak: one side is Wittgenstein’s affirmation of the role of experience in religion, and the other concerns the role of volition and persistence in faith. The sort of experience which ‘Wittgenstein the existentialist’ sees as central to religion are, first and foremost, particular kinds of feelings. Already in the 8 According to Alice Ambrose, Wittgenstein stated in the lecture on May 1, 1933: “Luther said that theology is the grammar of the word ‘God’ ” (awl, 32); G.E. Moore was not entirely certain, however, whether Wittgenstein on that occasion said “Luther said, ‘Theology is the grammar of the word of God’ ”, or “Luther said theology is the grammar of the word ‘God’ ” (mwl, 8:75).

Introduction

11

Tractatus we read that “Feeling the world as a limited whole –​it is this that is mystical” (tlp, 6.45). It is the feeling that the world as a whole is a miracle which the early Wittgenstein connects with the mystical, as well as with aesthetics and ethics: “Aesthetically, the miracle is that the world exists. That what exists does exist” (NB, 68). In his transitional period, in the Lecture on Ethics, Wittgenstein perhaps most clearly identifies feelings of particular kinds –​the experience of “wonder at the existence of the world”, “the experience of absolute safety”, and (at least some sorts of) “suffering” –​as central to religion and ethics (LE, 11–​12). The later Wittgenstein does not talk or write much about the experiential aspect of religion; in fact, he does not talk or write about religion or God very much. Nevertheless, he clearly expresses the importance of experience for religion in remarks such as the one already partly quoted above (this passage, taken as a whole, nicely expresses both the experiential-​existentialist and the grammaticalist conceptions of religion): Life can educate you to “believing in God”. And experiences too are what do this but not visions, or other sense experiences, which show us the “existence of this being”, but e.g. sufferings of various sorts. And they do not show us God as a sense experience does an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, –​life can force this concept on us. CVR, 97

So, while affirming the crucial role of experience in religious believing, Wittgenstein does not think any kind of experience constitutes ‘evidence for God’ or provides support for any other kind of religious belief.9 The kind of experience which he recognizes as having a role in religion appears (mostly) to be in the category of “existential feelings” (Ratcliffe 2008), i.e. non-​intentional, world-​or life-​encompassing feelings which “constitute a background sense of belonging to the world and a sense of reality” (Ratcliffe 2008, 39). They include “sufferings of various sorts”, the feeling of the existence of the world as a miracle, the feeling of radical or ‘existential’ guilt,10 and so on, and not quasi-​ sensory experiences such as visions or hearing voices. 9 10

Wittgenstein operated with a definition of ‘evidence’ according to which evidence is in principle public and shareable, according to which internal experience or thoughts should not be considered as such (lpp, 281–​282, PI, §243–​288). Matthew Ratcliffe, who has coined the category ‘existential feelings’, explains that “some [existential feelings] are referred to in terms of familiar types of emotion, such as ‘guilt’ and ‘hopelessness’. Although we usually feel guilty about something specific or feel that a

12 Andrejč The volitional side of Wittgenstein’s existentialist picture of religion says that “you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)” In Christianity, at least, “you have to be seized & turned around by something”, according to Wittgenstein, and “once turned round, you must stay turned round” (CVR, 61). From the fact that Wittgenstein emphasises ‘direction’ and ‘stay’ in this remark, we can conclude that Wittgenstein clearly recognizes the possibility of not staying “turned around” (ibid.). Since it is also possible to lose faith, the idea is that one needs to persist in it, which involves conscious effort and exercise of the will. The existentialist picture of religion in Wittgenstein also shows that, for the most part, Wittgenstein holds a “distinctly ethical interpretation of specific religious concepts” (Plant 2005, 108–​110). For the early Wittgenstein, ethical and religious discourses come from the “the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, absolute good” (LE, 11), while the later Wittgenstein emphasises the ethical role of religious pictures in one’s life, such as that of the Last Judgement (LC, 54). The third, instinctivist conception of religion in Wittgenstein is connected with his later remarks on the origins of language. The origins of language are presented, not as a result of an intellectual process, but as arising from primitive or instinctive reactions. In his words, “a language-​game does not have its origin in consideration [Überlegung]. Consideration is part of a language-​ game” (Z, §391); rather: The origin & the primitive form of the language game is a reaction; only from this can the more complicated forms grow. Language –​I want to say –​is a refinement, “in the beginning was the deed” CVR, 36

The word is taught as a substitute for a facial expression or a gesture. LC, 2

The main background to these remarks is Wittgenstein’s dissatisfaction with the way philosophers –​at least most philosophers whose work he was aware of in his day  –​have normally treated language, i.e. as primarily an abstract system of denotation and representation, logically interrelated statements, and so on. In this context, Wittgenstein often contrasts the intellectualist

particular situation is hopeless, guilt and hopelessness can also amount to ways of being in the world, which permeate all experience and thought” (Ratcliffe 2012, 24).

Introduction

13

misunderstanding of religious language and practices to the picture of it which recognizes and emphasises its primitive origins. Even when we seemingly have to do with religious-​theoretical explanations of phenomena, “this too would only be a later extension of instinct” (rfgb R, 151). His most extensive expression of the contrast between intellectualist and instinctivist pictures of religion can be found in the remarks collected in Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, where Wittgenstein criticizes the anthropologist James Frazer for his intellectualist distortion of religious beliefs and practices, especially in the ‘primitive’ religions. Magic rituals and native beliefs are not hypotheses or attempts to causally influence the world. Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one’s beloved. That is obviously not based on the belief that it will have some specific effect on the object which the picture represents. It aims at satisfaction and achieves it. Or rather: it does not aim at anything at all; we act in this way and then we feel satisfied. … In the ancient rites we have the use of an extremely ­developed gesture-​language. rfgb R, 123, 135

Notably, Wittgenstein also interpreted the religious belief-​impulse that appears to remain at the centre of highly complex systems of doctrines, ethics and practices, such as Islam or Christianity, to stem from instinct. The following­ comment during a lecture on religious belief concentrated on Christianity: A man would fight for his life not to be dragged into the fire. No induction. Terror. That is, as it were, part of the substance of the belief. LC, 56

Noting the parallels between the language of pain and the language of religion in the later Wittgenstein, Brian Clack writes that, just as “the language of pain is said to develop out of instinctual, non-​linguistic behaviour”, so too the language of religion (the articulation of religious beliefs) is an extension of certain primitive reactions, say a natural expression of wonder or of fear. Note, however, that the religious belief is not equivalent to that expression of wonder (the expressivist view). … What [Wittgenstein] is saying is that it is inconceivable that an elaborately worked-​out doctrinal system could come into existence without the initial, affective, primitive reactions he emphasizes. clack 1999, 85–​86

14 Andrejč Finally, there is the conception of religion that is characteristic of the early, but also the ‘transitional’ Wittgenstein (late 1920s and very early 1930s): the nonsensicalist conception, according to which all religious, as well as ethical, aesthetical, philosophical and other metaphysical ‘propositions’ are nonsensical. Such statements have the appearance of factual statements, but do not depict either possible or actual states of affairs in the world –​in this regard, the nonsensicalist conception is similar to the grammaticalist perspective. But the discursive regime of the Tractatus is strict and straight-​forward on the boundary between sense and nonsense: language is said to consist of propositions, and propositions are described as depictions of (possible) states of affairs (tlp, 2.202). Any linguistic endeavour which tries to do anything else/​ more than state propositions wants to do the impossible, i.e. to go beyond ‘what can be said’, and is therefore nonsensical. This includes all theistic utterances which strongly seem like statements of empirical fact but are not. The Tractatus connects the concept of God with “view[ing] the world sub specie aeterni”, which means to view it “as a whole –​a limited whole” (tlp, 6.44). But, “logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits” (tlp, 5.61), so saying anything about the world as a whole is impossible according to the Tractatus. So is saying anything ‘about God’, as “God does not reveal himself in the world” (tlp, 6.432). In the Lecture on Ethics, Wittgenstein is reported as saying, “[The] tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language” (LE, 11). He continues: This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it. LE, 11–​12

An attentive reader will have noticed that I already quoted from the very same pages –​and also the same context –​of the Lecture on Ethics when presenting Wittgenstein’s existentialist picture of religion. In fact, Wittgenstein’s expression of a deep appreciation of “the peculiar significance of uttering such nonsense” (Mulhall 2015, 33) in the final sentence above arguably goes beyond the ‘mere’ nonsensicalist conception and reflects more the existentialist understanding of religion. So why, one might ask, should we prise these apart at all? Why talk of different conceptions of religion in Wittgenstein if two or more of

Introduction

15

these conceptions are normally intertwined in Wittgenstein’s works, lectures or notes which touch on religion or ‘God’? I see at least two good reasons for this. The first is that each of these conceptions can stand on their own, so to speak, rather than necessitating the other(s). Staying with the above example from the Lecture on Ethics, where the existentialist and nonsensicalist picture of religion are very much intertwined, one can also recognize that the nonsensicalist understanding –​that religious statements necessarily run against the boundaries of language –​can stand on its own. It is a perfectly intelligible view, even without the existentialist perspective that this particular nonsense is in some sense important, that it expresses experience par excellence such as “wondering that the world should exist”, etc. Furthermore, it also works the other way around: one can affirm that volition has an important role in the life of faith and that religious language expresses existential feelings –​or, more pointedly and normatively, that what is most interesting and relevant about religious language is that it does this –​without holding the view that religious language is nonsensical.11 In a similar fashion, it is possible to take, say, the grammaticalist conception of religious language from the later Wittgenstein and affirm it without affirming, or with little attention to, the instinctivist, existentialist, or nonsensicalist understanding; and so on. The second reason for naming different conceptions of religion in Wittgenstein is that it helps us understand some of the differences between different interpretations of Wittgenstein better. Often, a philosopher or theologian will emphasise one or two of the Wittgensteinian conceptions of religion and use them as an interpretative framework (or, alternatively, as a target to criticize), while downplaying or even neglecting the other conceptions. The particular way in which this is done partly depends on whether the interpreter perceives more or less continuity between the earlier and the later Wittgenstein. We can compare two influential approaches in Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, those of D.Z. Phillips and Stephen Mulhall, to illustrate this point. Phillips puts the grammaticalist picture in the centre of his philosophy of religion. His life-​long preoccupation was to show why evidentialist and theodicy approaches to justifying theistic religious belief-​systems do not work. Rather, religious statements are to be understood as grammatical remarks:  “[Theological] or doctrinal statements [in Christianity] … are giving us rules for the use of the word ‘God’ ”; and “only [within] this use we may disagree about a 11

Such a position is advocated by Matthew Ratcliffe, who rejects the “nonsense charge” against the expression of existentially-​felt experiences, including the wonder of being or feelings of the loss of the meaning of life (Ratcliffe 2008, 57–​61).

16 Andrejč particular application of the concept” (Phillips 1988, 216), since the “[issues] of sense are logically prior to issues of truth and falsity. It is only when we appreciate the sense of religious beliefs that we can see what calling them true or false amounts to” (Phillips 2000, xi). This heavy emphasis on the grammaticalist picture of religious language was intertwined with Phillips’ understanding –​and promotion –​of philosophy as descriptive grammatical investigation only. Phillips also draws upon the existentialist and the instinctivist pictures of religion, in particular when reflecting on religious “concept formation” and the “place of mystery” in religious understanding (e.g. Phillips 1988, 273–​303), but puts less emphasis on them overall in comparison to his use of the grammaticalist picture. Finally, as a thoroughgoing later-​Wittgensteinian who sees a notable discontinuity between the early and the later Wittgenstein, Phillips was not impressed by the nonsensicalist picture of religion. Stephen Mulhall, on the other hand  –​especially in his recent position, which has developed under the influence of Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond as well as Wittgensteinian Thomism (see below) –​reads Wittgenstein on religion very differently. His approach takes the nonsensicalist conception of religious language as an interpretive framework that determines philosophy of religion as a whole. Both Diamond and Mulhall read not only the early but also the late Wittgenstein on religion and ethics through the lens of the nonsensicalist picture and the ‘resolute’ reading of both the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. Understanding “Wittgenstein’s view of ethico-​ religious utterances (early and late) … [as] … sheerly nonsensical” (Mulhall 2015, 21), Mulhall holds that affirming “deliberately nonsensical formulations”, and “imaginatively entering into the seeing” the religio-​ethical utterances as sensible, just is what constitutes a Wittgenstein-​inspired religious attitude that is exegetically credible (ibid. 33–​34). Regarding the grammar of religious language, it is most appropriate to say that religious sentences are “grammatically distinctive in that they have no grammar, but only a ‘grammar’ ” (ibid. 38). Unsurprisingly, Mulhall is critical of D.Z. Phillips’s unproblematized grammaticalist approach, which presupposes that “religious concepts are just like those non-​religious uses, only different –​distinctively religious, but equally viable”. For Mulhall, this is a serious misunderstanding (Mulhall 2015, 18). In short, then, the nonsensicalist picture of religio-​ethical language overshadows and re-​frames the grammaticalist aspect of religious language in Mulhall’s (recent) work, as well as the existentialist and instinctivist aspects. Yet another philosophy of religion results from taking the Wittgensteinian instinctivist picture of religion as central. An influential interpretation of Wittgenstein of this kind is that of Brian Clack, introduced earlier:

Introduction

17

Similarly … [as] the language of pain is said to develop out of instinctual, non-​linguistic behaviour … [,]‌the language of religion (the articulation of religious beliefs) is an extension of certain primitive reactions, say a natural expression of wonder or of fear. Note, however, that the religious belief is not equivalent to that expression of wonder (the expressivist view). … What [Wittgenstein] is saying is that it is inconceivable that an elaborately worked-​out doctrinal system could come into existence without the initial, affective, primitive reactions he emphasizes. clack 1999, 85–​86

This is not to say that Wittgenstein’s view was that “a fully developed religion essentially is a pre-​reflective response to the world” (Clack 1999, 85). But interpretations such as Clack’s do emphasise the instinctive aspect of religion more than they do the grammatical role of religious remarks, or the “running against the boundaries of sense” when expressing them, and it is the former that sets the tone for their overall interpretation of religion (instinctivist approaches do, however, often combine well with a strong emphasis on the existential aspect of religion). The anti-​intellectualist and anti-​evidentialist focus distils into seeing the “primitive, natural human activities … associated with mortality, the parental relation, and suffering” as central to religious lives and religious concept f​ormation (Plant 2005, 106). Such activities are also good candidates for salient commonalities across (most) cultures and religions, as demonstrated by the essays, in the present volume, of Ramal, Cortois, and to some extent Venturinha. It is probably ‘natural’ that most Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is concerned with Christianity (e.g. Phillips, Mulhall), and some of it also with ‘primitive religions’ (e.g. Clack). But there are well-​developed Wittgensteinian engagements also with other traditions, and comparing those with Wittgensteinian approaches to Christianity and tribal religions can be very informative in terms of the potentialities of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for comparative philosophy of religion. For the sake of brevity, I will briefly mention only two: Judaism and Buddhism, but we can also find Wittgensteinian perspectives on/​ within Hinduism and Islam.12 A Wittgensteinian interpretation of religious belief can be found in the work of one of the giants of analytic philosophy, Hilary Putnam, who in his later life expressed a commitment to his Jewish tradition. However, Putnam’s interpretation of Wittgenstein does not really engage with 12

See Choudhary (2007) for an examination of the parallels between the Advaita Vedanta philosophy and Wittgenstein, and Alpyagil (2010) for a reflection (in Turkish) on chosen themes of Islamic philosophy from a Wittgensteinian lens (among others).

18 Andrejč Judaism in particular, but rather warns against the common simplifications of Wittgenstein’s understanding of religion, such as “emotivism” or strict “incommensurabilism” (Putnam 1992, 152–​4). In agreement with D.Z. Phillips’ and other ‘mainstream’ Wittgensteinian interpretations of the day, Putnam reads Wittgenstein as emphasising that “religious discourse can be understood in any depth only by understanding the form of life to which it belongs” (ibid., 154). In his late work, Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life, Putnam finds commonalities between Wittgenstein and the Jewish philosophers Rozenzweig, Buber and Levinas, especially regarding “the idea that for a religious person theorizing about God is, as it were, beside the point” (Putnam 2008, 6). Beyond that, however, we do not find much that would be particular to a Wittgensteinian engagement with Judaism. A closer engagement with the Jewish traditions of reflection, prayer and other practices from a Wittgensteinian perspective can be found in Howard Wettstein’s work. Building on Jewish thinkers such as A.J.Heschel and Max Kadushin on one hand, and on Wittgenstein on the other, Wettstein claims that, in Judaism, “We should see the institution and its practices as primary, the interpretation secondary” (Wettstein 2012, 28). More precisely, the Jewish religion consists, firstly and most importantly, in a primitive “awe-​responsiveness” as that which is most fundamental, as k’neged kulam, suggests Wettstein. Secondly, it consists in faith and not cognitive ‘beliefs’, which are understood as intellectual and bipolar attitudes towards a propositional content (ibid. 29). From this, we can see that Wettstein takes from Wittgenstein the existentialist and the instinctivist conceptions of religion, as well as a strong emphasis on practice. Thus, faith in Judaism is understood to be nurtured within characteristic practices, including prayer and the study of the Torah and the Talmud, which are aimed at character development, achieving awe of God, yirat shamayim (38). According to Wettstein, Wittgenstein’s anti-​evidentialist and anti-​theoretical approach to religion helps us appreciate that Biblical, first-​order religious language –​normally poetic or narratival or expressive –​is alright as it is, but that the philosophical-​ theological explanations of religious statements and concepts are a misguided perversion. Wettstein laments the marriage between the Greek philosophical and Hebrew-​Biblical cultures of reflections which are “very different” (108). The bad result of that marriage can be seen in Maimonides, Wettstein explains, who delegitimizes the ‘ordinary’ Hebrew-​Biblical language about God, and correspondingly introduces philosophy as a necessary intermediary to explain the “possibility of meaningful discourse about God” (107). Accordingly, while Judaism includes a strong emphasis on study, including the study of the Torah and the Talmud, the “traditional rabbinic education makes little room for theology” (42):

Introduction

19

The rabbi is an expert then, not necessarily or primarily in theology, but in the practices –​both their details and their legal-​theoretic analysis –​ that constitute the life of the community. … The Bible’s characteristic mode of ‘theology’ is story telling, the stories overlaid with poetic language. Never does one find the sort of conceptually refined doctrinal propositions characteristic of a philosophical approach. (42, 108) In the present volume, a somewhat similar approach to Wittgenstein interpretation and Judaism,13 and an accordingly similar critique of ‘philosophical religion’ in relation to Maimonides, is taken by Daniel Weiss. His critical engagement with David Burrell’s use of Wittgenstein in comparative theology (Christian-​Jewish-​Muslim) is described in the next part of this introduction. Perhaps ‘the least religious’ are the Buddhist interpretations of Wittgenstein and, vice versa, the Wittgensteinian interpretations of Buddhism. The focus is normally on the parallels between Wittgenstein’s understanding of philosophy, which is interpreted as exclusively therapeutic, with the Buddhist conception of what it means to be(come) enlightened. Not surprisingly, we find a strong emphasis on practice alongside a sharp de-​emphasis on doctrines, and accordingly, Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalist picture of (anything resembling) religious or metaphysical claims dominates. Thus, John Canfield proposes a form of “secular mysticism” which, in his view, is compatible with scientism, since “the fact that enlightenment is ineffable … gives enlightenment a free pass through scientism’s barrier” (Canfield 2007, 164). Similarly, Rupert Read, a leading proponent of the therapeutic interpretation of Wittgenstein, sees an “extreme closeness of Wittgenstein and Zen” (Read 2009, 17): Zen and Wittgenstein alike find life and reality to be paradoxical, and they work intensely with that paradoxicality. … Exposing nonsense (delusions) to the light is necessarily paradoxical. … For one necessarily practices by means of doing things that are absurd (“answering” absurd riddles, thinking so as not to think, engaging with one’s temptations to speak what one is oneself inclined to judge as nonsense as if it were not). (ibid. 21) In the current volume, Sebastjan Vörös and Varja Štrajn take a related approach to Buddhism. They share the strongly nonsensicalist picture of religious language, a therapeutic understanding of philosophy and a strong emphasis on 13

See also Borowitz (2007), an influential work in Talmudic interpretation from a Wittgensteinian point of view.

20 Andrejč practice as opposed to religious doctrines. However, they suggest their “enactive apophaticism” as a grounding for interreligious dialogue between traditions, not merely as an interpretation of Buddhism (their examples are mostly Buddhist and Christian). Finally, we need to add that Christian Wittgensteinian theology, just like Wittgensteinian philosophy, consists of a family of different approaches and includes very diverse interpretations and applications of Wittgenstein, which can also be illuminated through noticing the Wittgensteinian conceptions of religion they tend to emphasise. The (mostly Protestant Christian) postliberal theology which today enjoys significant influence in Anglo-​American academia has, somewhat one-​sidedly, taken from Wittgenstein the grammaticalist conception of religion and theology, and largely neglected the other conceptions. We can see this in the writings of George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, and Stanley Hauerwas. An important reason for their neglect of the existentialist and the instinctivist conceptions of religion in Wittgenstein is, as I have argued elsewhere (Andrejč 2016, 65–95), their anti-​experiential approach to theology which arose as a reaction to the existentialist and experiential liberal theology that was dominant until early 1980s. It should not come as a surprise, then, that David Tracy, one of the main voices of liberal theology since the 1970s, has, conversely, been most impressed by Wittgenstein’s existentialist conception of religion and combined it with a revival and reinterpretation of the mystical theologies of being by Maister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroeck (Tracy 1990, 85; 1988, 86–​87). Another strand of Western Christian theology, called Wittgensteinian or Grammatical Thomism (mostly Roman Catholic), has produced yet another distinctive approach to Wittgenstein interpretation. Thinkers like Fergus Kerr, Herbert McCabe and David Burrell have combined Aquinas’ and Wittgenstein’s conceptual worlds and methodologies of investigation of language in ways which have brought to the fore especially the nonsensicalist and the grammaticalist conceptions of religion. David Burrell outlines the Grammatical Thomist’s understanding of the methodologically crucial Part 1 of the Summa Theologica, explaining that Aquinas is there engaged, not in establishing the arguments for the existence of God (as the Five Ways, in particular, have been interpreted very often), but “in the metalinguistic project of mapping out the grammar appropriate in divinis. He is proposing the logic proper to discourse about God” (Burrell 1979, 17). The grammaticalist reading of Aquinas in this particular theology, however, includes strong emphasis on the limitations of our very ability to form any sentences ‘about’ God –​the emphasis which, in the vocabulary I have proposed, we can safely call ‘nonsensicalist’ (despite the fact that theologians do not like this term as it is normally understood pejoratively). From the Grammatical Thomist perspective, Aquinas’ philosophical

Introduction

21

theology as a whole is premised on the understanding of religious language according to which we are not only “unable to say the right things about God, we can never even put our statements correctly” (Burrell 1979, 14).

Elucidating Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein

The examination in the previous section, of the ways in which Wittgenstein has been interpreted in philosophy of religion and theology, enables us to address with enough understanding the central question of the present volume: how can Wittgenstein’s thought –​beyond the relatively popular utilization of ‘religion’ as a family-​resemblance concept, noted earlier –​be applied to the philosophical and theological reflection on interreligious relations in an illuminating way? The contributors to this volume will demonstrate some of the creative and fruitful ways in which this can be done. Most of them, however, at least partly build on the previous relevant work. Therefore, I combine the summaries of the rest of the essays in this volume with brief presentations of the ways in which Wittgenstein’s thought has previously been applied to the topic of interreligious relations. Let us begin, this time, with Christian theological approaches. As noted above, George Lindbeck’s influential framework for understanding relationships between different religions is determined by his vision of the nature of religion and theology, which draws heavily on the Wittgensteinian grammaticalist conception of religious language and his understanding of grammar more broadly (as well as on Clifford Geertz). Rejecting the understanding of religion as essentially a set of propositional beliefs, Lindbeck bases his own understanding on a strong analogy between religion and a “cultural-​linguistic system” (Lindbeck 2009, 19). Religion is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities. (ibid.) To this, Lindbeck adds a thoroughly grammaticalist understanding of the central religious doctrines and theology as “second-​order activities”: Just as grammar by itself affirms nothing either true or false regarding the world in which language is used, but only about language, so theology

22 Andrejč and doctrine … assert nothing either true or false about God and his relation to creatures, but only speak about such assertions. lindbeck 2009, 55

The application of Lindbeck’s notion of religion to interreligious relations makes the categorial disparities between the forms of life in different religious traditions the defining features which determine (the limitations of) interreligious communication. Such communication or dialogue can hardly be theological –​Lindbeck contrasts interreligious with ecumenical in this regard –​since the position affirms both “incommensurability” as well as “untranslatability” between some of the central concepts and claims of different religions (ibid. 28–​39). Any similarities or analogies between religions are only “remote”, i.e. “a banality as uninteresting as the fact that all languages are (or were) spoken” (ibid. 28). Even less significant for Lindbeck are the seeming analogies in religious experiences across religions, as he conceives of the experiential as practically created and strictly limited by the conceptual and cultural. In other words, Lindbeck privileges the supposed depth-​grammatical differences between religions above anything else that we might want to say about interreligious relations. His application of Wittgenstein to interreligious studies is best encapsulated in Wittgenstein’s remark –​found in the recently published book of Wittgenstein’s lectures based on the notes taken by G.E. Moore –​that “different religions treat something as making sense, which others treat as nonsense: they don’t merely one deny a proposition which other affirms” (mwl, 8:78). Rhiannon Grant’s essay in this volume takes the Wittgensteinian understanding of theology as grammar along with Lindbeck’s analogy between religions and languages, and applies these conceptions to reflection on a phenomenon of multiple religious belonging (neither Lindbeck nor later postliberal theologians were particularly interested in multiple religious belonging, and were often theologically prejudiced against it). Grant finds particularly useful the Lindbeckian idea of ‘fluency’ (or a lack of it) in a religious tradition, which is a part of the bigger religion-​as-​language analogy. Analysing multiple religious belonging –​often seen as a legacy of a particularly ‘individualistic’ interpretation of religious meaning and life (cf. Schmidt-​Leukel 2009, 46–​89) –​through the lens of grammaticalist and socially-​oriented interpretations, according to which even a solitary prayer “is not a private matter” (Grant cites D.Z. Phillips), gives original results. It is hard to disagree with Grant’s conclusion that multiple religious belonging is “a form of interreligious communication and learning”, and that a careful application of the Wittgensteinian-​Lindbeckian perspective on the fluency of more than one ‘religion-​game’ makes multiple

Introduction

23

religious belonging more intelligible than most philosophical and theological perspectives allow. There is a specific later development of Wittgenstein’s grammaticalist picture of religious language which is also relevant for the theology and philosophy of interreligious relations and which receives scholarly attention in the present volume. In recent Wittgenstein scholarship, a focus on Wittgenstein’s reflections from the final few years of his life –​especially the remarks collected in On Certainty, but also Zettel and Remarks on Philosophy of Psychology –​ has produced a body of literature on the understanding of belief, knowledge and certainty by the so-​called ‘Third Wittgenstein’ (cf. Moyal-​Sharrock 2004). This work is relevant for our purposes also because of the parallels between Wittgenstein’s depictions in On Certainty of what has since become known as “hinge certainties” (Moyal-​Sharrock 2007) or “hinge commitments” (Bennett-​ Hunter, pp. 157–158 in present volume) on the one hand, and his depictions of religious beliefs on the other. Hinge certainties are so called because Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of hinges (Angeln) on which the door turns for those certainties on which all other beliefs, doubts, and even basic procedures of reasoning turn (OC, §341). Most clearly, convictions such as ‘I have a body’, ‘the world existed yesterday’, ‘I exist’, definitely belong to this category. We do not doubt these, at least not normally (and, the moment we do, they cease to function as ‘hinge certainties’), as trusting such things and keeping them ‘stable’ and beyond doubt makes intelligible doubting and believing, in fact any epistemic life and criteria that we might have, possible at all. In addition to those most basic hinge certainties such as ‘I exist’ and ‘the world has existed yesterday’, however, various kinds of beliefs which are not universally held can also work as ‘hinges’ more locally, for a certain civilization, culture, or, say, epistemic community within a culture. Wittgenstein describes the network of one’s hinge certainties as a Weltbild or world-​picture, and compares it to “a mythology” that is beyond epistemic justification: “propositions describing this world-​picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules” (OC, §95). It is not difficult to notice parallels between religious beliefs and hinge certainties in Wittgenstein’s remarks. Verbal expressions of both kinds of belief are described as “grammatical remarks”, both are manifested in acting or “simply doing”, and both are categorically different from evidentially justified and justifiable beliefs (OC, §174). This invites depictions of the networks of central religious beliefs as co-​constitutive of one’s –​or, perhaps, the believing community’s –​world-​picture. But, is this way of depicting the place of religious beliefs universally applicable, beyond certain forms of Christianity? Is this conceptual

24 Andrejč move useful for understanding interreligious relations or interreligious communication? In this volume, Guy Bennett-​Hunter proceeds from the perspective that some religious beliefs –​the central ones, like “God exists” in most versions of theistic traditions  –​are Wittgensteinian hinge certainties, while most other religious beliefs within the belief-​system are not. Bennett-​Hunter builds on Duncan Prichard’s “Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism” (Pritchard 2011), which is based a reading of On Certainty according to which “all rational evaluation (and therefore all rational support) is essentially and inherently local: it cannot take place ‘wholesale’, but only relative to hinge commitments” (Bennett-​ Hunter, p. 158 in present volume). Bennett-​Hunter argues that Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism of this sort constitutes a useful theoretical tool to address the complex reality of interreligious communication. On the one hand, it makes understandable the areas which are, in interreligious discussions and dialogue, non-​negotiable, while, on the other hand, it makes understandable that some beliefs and interpretations are matters for discussion, i.e. in the space of reason-​giving, since they are not hinge-​certainties but in-​principle dubitable for the members of one or the other tradition involved. A Wittgensteinian perspective that is based on the epistemology of On Certainty also, however, enables some flexibility, since what is religiously indubitable at one point or in one context can become dubitable in another, perhaps interreligious context –​ or the other way around. Finally, and most daringly, Bennett-​Hunter suggests a theoretical innovation: he introduces the concept of Über-​ hinge convictions which can enable rational interreligious disagreements and arguments even over some otherwise deeply-​held beliefs, that is, over “apparent hinge disagreements” (Bennett-​Hunter, p. 166 in present volume). In his contribution to this volume, Klaus von Stosch also considers the understanding of religious beliefs as hinge certainties, recognizing the parallels in Wittgenstein’s descriptions of the two. However, von Stosch points to the notable problem with this parallel –​and with the grammaticalist picture of religious language, if taken on its own, more broadly  –​from the majority of theologically-​committed perspectives on religious language (at least in Abrahamic religions, but also beyond). According to a Wittgensteinian grammaticalist picture, hinge-​beliefs or ‘grammatical remarks’ are not bipolar (i.e. they cannot be either true or false). If this were so for central religious beliefs always and in all contexts, such beliefs would be necessarily indubitable and “it would be silly to argue in favour of [or against] the truth of religious belief” (von Stosch, p. 76 in present volume). Von Stosch’s solution to this problem comes via an interpretation and use of Wittgenstein that balances the grammaticalist picture of religious language with a strongly existentialist aspect of religious

Introduction

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believing: essential religious beliefs are, at least within Jewish and Christian traditions, a peculiar kind of regulatory belief, such that they can, nevertheless, accommodate “internal doubt … without them losing their regulative status” (ibid.). He calls this the “double contingency” of religious beliefs, since such beliefs are dubitable, first, because of their “factual plurality” in today’s context of religious diversity, and second, because of “their universal need of compatibility with our experiences” which makes the internal questioning of them a constitutive part of religious life (ibid.). In the second part of the essay, Klaus von Stosch lays out methodological guidelines for the interpretation and practice of interreligious communication, based on the above-​mentioned interpretation of Wittgenstein and a particular theological perspective. A leading proponent of Comparative Theology,14 von Stosch introduces some unique foci into this theological research programme by suggesting:  that the comparative philosophical or theological enterprise “has to start from a concrete case study” and “deal with real problems”; that religious beliefs have to be understood firmly in the context of “their language games and forms of life”; that, similarly, all theological investigation needs to be “correlated with practice” in order to be intelligibly communicable across religious boundaries and to hold the promise of bringing fruitful results. Importantly, “Wittgensteinian enquiry will always be vulnerable to revisions” due to its dependence on “the fallible insights of our language games” (von Stosch, p. 85 in this volume). In accordance with the above guidelines, von Stosch advocates patient intercultural sensitivity in comparative theology, without sliding into cultural and alethic relativism. What kind of approach to interreligious relations do we get if we allow the Wittgensteinian nonsensicalist picture of religion to have a greater say in our overall understanding of religious language? In the present volume, Sebastjan Vörös and Varja Štrajn develop an approach to interreligious communication which they call enactive apophaticism. In it, a Wittgensteinian intertwinement between nonsensicalist and existentialist conceptions of religious language –​ examples given are from Buddhism and Christianity –​takes centre stage, and is combined with a strong emphasis on action. A religious endeavour can only

14

Comparative theology, in the sense which this term has acquired in interreligious studies and in which Stosch uses it, means “acts of faith seeking understanding which are rooted in a particular faith tradition but which, from that foundation, venture into learning from one or more other faith traditions” (Clooney 2010, 10). It is best pursued when guided by a theological theme and by then comparing, in-​depth, what two (or more) traditions have to say on that theme in the search for religious truth and interreligious understanding. See also von Stosch (2012a, 2012b).

26 Andrejč be respectable if it is compatible with Wittgenstein’s philosophical enterprise, understood as therapy that “shows the fly out of the bottle”, and involves “un-​ saying” and a “de-​construction or even un-​construction of the linguistic ‘web of beliefs’ ” (Vörös and Štrajn, p. 116 this volume). Vörös and Štrajn argue that such an approach can illuminate and, if followed, enable the sort of existential encounter which happens “beyond saying” even if the discourses of different religions have substantially different grammars. An existential encounter with the ineffable can show us that “there is, as it were, life ‘behind’ or ‘underneath’ the confines of our discursive activity and thus realizes the scope and limits of not only our own, but of all language games” (ibid. 131). A brief comparison with another approach to Christian-​Buddhist dialogue (not fully represented in this volume), likewise oriented towards apophatic mysticism, can help us appreciate how differently Wittgenstein can be used even within such a shared focus. David Tracy’s existential-​theological reading of Wittgenstein, instead of developing an overall Wittgensteinian-​ philosophical framework for interpreting mystical practices like that of Vörös and Štrajn, does it the other way around. Tracy sees not only a resemblance but a (indirect) genealogical link between the Christian apophatic-​mystical tradition of Eckhart and van Ruysbroeck on the one hand, and Wittgensteinian on the other, claiming that Wittgenstein’s “apophatic meditations” represent a “modernized remnant … of [these] traditions” (Tracy 1990, 85). Tracy sees a strong connection between Wittgenstein’s remarks of the character, “It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it is”, (tlp, 6.44) and the experience of “the sheer giftedness of reality” of which the Western mystics of the past wrote (Tracy 1988, 86–​87). In the interreligious realm, the family resemblances between the existential-​mystical writings of Christianity and Buddhism are taken, not as evidence that both Christianity and Buddhism have developed ways to transcend language altogether (Vörös and Štrajn), but as an invitation to develop an “analogical imagination” or mutual interpretation which notes both grammatical analogies and disanalogies. For Tracy, a dialogically-​involved Christian theologian, such analogical imagination facilitates deep interreligious learning not only about each other but, through this, also ‘about’ God/​the Ultimate Reality/​‘Emptiness’ (Tracy 1990, 73). If the above comparison shows how a theology that uses Wittgenstein’s existentialist conception of religion approaches interreligious communication, another example shows that an emphasis on the nonsensicalist conception also leads theologians towards a notably different approach to interreligious communication than it does for philosophers (with the possible exception of Mulhall). David Burrell, proceeding from a Wittgensteinian-​Thomist starting point, builds his vision of comparative theology on the nonsensicalist and

Introduction

27

the grammaticalist pictures of religion. Burrell’s contribution to interreligious studies consists especially in his comparative reflection on the central conceptual and doctrinal features of philosophical theologies in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. These three religions share many references to the same revelatory stories and theological motifs, of course. But equally or perhaps more importantly for Burrell, they also share much of their philosophical vocabularies, especially in their philosophically advanced varieties in the Middle Ages. Burrell’s approach proceeds as interreligious ‘grammatical investigation’ and hopes to achieve a philosophical-​therapeutic dissolution  –​instead of a doctrinal agreement or resolution –​of the central religious disagreements between the Abrahamic traditions (Burrell 2011, 166–​178). His perspective is determined by a programmatic emphasis on the ‘nonsensical’ nature of the monotheistic languages (although Burrell, as a theologian, rarely uses the concept ‘nonsense’): it is a structural feature of theistic religious languages, for Burrell, that “no Jew, Christian, or Muslim is in a position to make the final and definite judgement over whether our sentences about God are even sensible” (Andrejč 2016, 208). The logical peculiarity of theistic statements implies that the idea of ‘verifying once and for all who is right’ about God’s ways and will is, in fact, incoherent. This has important practical implications for inter-​Abrahamic communication: the only right way to communicate, agree or disagree across religions is with a genuine sense of intellectual humility, for “[neither] adherents nor interlocutors are in a position to assess the truth of a revelatory tradition, which is why doubt remains endemic even to a faith which regards itself as ‘strong’ ” (Burrell 2011, 180). Daniel Weiss’ essay in this volume examines Burrell’s approach critically in the light of a close reading of Maimonides and of Wittgenstein’s commitment to leave the ordinary (religious and other) language ‘as it is’. Burrell takes the interreligious communicability established by medieval philosophers, such as Ibn Sina, Al Ghazali, Maimonides and Aquinas, as a philosophical-​theological foundation for his own Christian-​Jewish-​Muslim comparative project. Weiss’s concern is that the “philosophical common discourse that bound these thinkers [mentioned above] together also had the similar effect of cutting each of them off from important elements of their inherited conceptual traditions” (Weiss, p. 179 in this volume). Perhaps most clearly in Maimonides, Weiss notices a tendency towards intellectual elitism which determines Maimonides’ religious epistemology and even his view of what the most appropriate relationship to God is: “the very notion of ‘proper love of God’ also becomes an intellectually elitist activity” (ibid. 190). Weiss argues that it is not so much the ordinary religious discourses of Abrahamic faiths that need Wittgensteinian intellectual therapy (understood as a philosophical-​critical awareness of the

28 Andrejč peculiar limits of all theistic language, as it is in Burrell’s work) but, rather, the philosophical discourse of the medieval Aristotelian philosophical theologians themselves, which assumes that there is something wrong with the ordinary religious language of their respective traditions. Finally, we have three essays in the present volume –​those of Randy Ramal, Nuno Venturinha and Paul Cortois –​that share overlapping foci but cannot easily be grouped together or in relation to the other essays. Two of them, those of Ramal and Cortois, take the Wittgensteinian instinctivist picture of religion in Wittgenstein as primary and offer it as elucidating of interreligious encounter, while two of them, those of Venturinha and Ramal, share a focus on religious pluralism. Randy Ramal takes on the challenge of ‘radical pluralism’ of irreducibly diverse religious concepts and languages for interreligious communication. The way to meet this challenge is, Ramal argues, via a careful investigation of “the unreflective, prior-​to-​rationalization primal reactions, as Wittgenstein describes them” (Ramal, p. 151 in this volume). This reveals the logical grounds of religious diversity which, in turn, show that the radical conceptual pluralism of religions is “ultimately rooted in the irreducible diversity and plurality of our primal responses to the world” (ibid, p. 145). Ramal combines his Wittgensteinian perspective on the significance of the primitive or ‘animal’ reactions with a Derridean view (and Derrida’s experience with the ‘cat’s gaze’) that the forms of life of humans and animals are even closer together than Wittgenstein seemed to have recognized. Furthermore, the observations of animal behaviour scientists such as Jane Goodall have shown that the occasional behaviour of some animals –​in Goodall’s case, chimpanzees –​exhibit strong family r​ esemblances to human ritual behaviour. Ramal stays cautious with his conclusions, however:  he does not argue that the shared similarity with non-​human animals observable in most human cultures, “constitutes a basis for finding necessary universal agreements in human reactions”. He does, however, propose that this similarity and the link between the primitive reactions and religious concept formation in humans does suggest a basis for interreligious communication across the radical diversity of religious languages. Ramal does not spell out how this should be done, however, instead leaving this task to the normative disciplines of ethics and theology. Paul Cortois’ essay, ‘Names, places and ritual practices –​Wittgenstein and The Way of Tea’, also proceeds from the Wittgensteinian interpretation of the primitive reactions and their place in religions both ‘primitive’ and ‘developed’. Cortois reminds us that, in order to illuminate magic and religious rituals, Wittgenstein points to the ritual-​like practice of “kissing the picture … [or] the name of the loved one” (rfgb , 21, 32). More generally, Cortois suggests, the

Introduction

29

name or a picture of a person represents that person in a “stronger sense … of being its representative, … in brief: its symbolic substitute” (Cortois, p. 215 this volume), which can be seen as a kind of a ‘magical view’ of proper names according to which revering someone’s name is an act of treating that person as “a soul” (ppf, §22). In Cortois’ application and broadening of this perspective, the attitudes towards particular religious names either of God/​gods or saints (‘Christ’, ‘Mary’, ‘Buddha’, ‘Francis’, ‘Mohamed’, ‘Allah’, ‘Jahweh’, ‘Abraham’, …), particular religious places (‘Rome’, ‘Lourdes’, ‘Mecca’ …), and even traditions or identities (‘Roman Catholic’, ‘Muslim’, …), are “comparable to the kind of attitudes we have towards persons as ‘souls’ ” (Cortois, p. 221 this volume). Cortois’ demonstration of the interreligious potency of the above interpretation of religious naming is very interesting and equally ‘particularist’. He examines the Japanese tea ritual or Chadô, cultivated especially within Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition, which embodies an in-​depth interreligious encounter between the Jesuits and Japanese Zen Buddhists (several elements of the Chadô ritual have ‘analogies of practice’ with elements of Christian liturgy, and at least some of the ‘Seven Sages’ of Chadô from the 16th Century have been Christians). The Chadô rituals are full of minutiae that are replete with significance: hospitality is cultivated and ritualized via symbolic representation, through naming the important objects used in the ritual with their ‘proper names’, of “those who have made them, admired them, broke them into pieces, glued them together, handed them over” (ibid. 232). To offer hospitality to someone through the tea ritual means to turn him from a ‘somebody’ into somebody close, a person ‘with a soul’. Cortois concludes by using his attentive description of Chadô as a kind of Wittgensteinian critique of the established dichotomy between pluralist religious universalism and religious particularism. Nuno Venturinha’s argues that, despite the strong Christian influence behind Wittgenstein’s reflections on religion, “There is not, from a Wittgensteinian point of view, the correct religion” (Venturinha, p. 111 in this volume). But neither does Venturinha take the family-​resemblance understanding of religion as programmatic, as do Carroll and Burley. Rather, he claims that it is “exactly what subsists [across religions] despite all differences that Wittgenstein is interested in”, affirming, according to Venturinha, a “shared sphere” which is said to underlie the “different interpretations and manifestations” found in different traditions (Venturinha, p. 104 in this volume). In other words, Venturinha reads Wittgenstein, especially on the basis of the Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, as a particular, anti-​dogmatic kind of religious pluralist. A particularly valuable contribution of Venturinha’s essay for the current volume is his contextualization of the Wittgensteinian approach to religion in its historical contexts of both philosophical (Frege, Bolzano) and theological

30 Andrejč (Newman) thought that influenced Wittgenstein and his contemporaries. We read that the conception of belief in Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy could not have originated with Frege but was, rather, notably influenced by Cardinal Newman’s anti-​foundationalist perspective in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Newman’s view of the three so-​called “modes of holding propositions” –​doubt, inference and assent –​find strong parallels in Wittgenstein’s affirmation of the variety of attitudes which we call ‘belief’ –​some dubitable and evidence-​sensitive, others, like religious ones, not so at all. Venturinha’s exegetical argument is that that this and other strong parallels between Newman’s and Wittgenstein’s thought can be traced back to Wittgenstein’s work of 1936, earlier than the more common view has it, which focuses on Newman’s influence on Wittgenstein’s work of the final few years, collected in On Certainty (Venturinha, pp. 107–111 in this volume).

Conclusion

While not representing all –​not even all the established –​interpretations of Wittgenstein on religion, the contributions to this volume, taken together, do represent a remarkable diversity of interpretations. More to the point, they teach us different ways of applying Wittgensteinian philosophy to the study of interreligious relations. Minimally, the essays show that the relevance of Wittgenstein for interreligious studies is much greater and wider than the declaration, based on a partial understanding of the later Wittgenstein, that different religious languages are ‘incommensurable’ because of their grammatical disparities. More ambitiously, we hope that scholars and students of interreligious studies –​and, especially, of their philosophical and theological aspects –​ will find the interpretations, arguments and constructive suggestions in this volume illuminating and useful.

Bibliography

Alpyagil, Recep. 2010. Fark ve Yorum. Istanbul: Iz Yayincilik. Andrejč, Gorazd. 2016. Wittgenstein and Interreligious Disagreement:  A Philosophical and Theological Perspective. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Borowitz, Eugene. 2007. The Talmud’s Theological Language-​Game: A Philosophical Discourse Analysis. Albany, NY: suny Press. Bronzo, Silver. 2012. “The Resolute Reading and its Critics.” Wittgenstein-​Studien 3:45–​80.

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Burrell, David. 1979. Aquinas, God and Action. London: Kegan & Paul. Burrell, David. 2011. Towards Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim theology. Chichester: Wiley. Canfield, John. 2007. Becoming Human:  Development of Language, Self and Self-​ Consciousness. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Choudary, Ravindra K.S. 2007. Wittgensteinian Philosophy and Advaita Vedanta (A Survey of the Parallels). Delhi: D.K. Printworld Pvt. Ltd. Clack, Brian. 1999. Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clooney, Francis X. 2010. Comparative theology: Deep learning across religious borders. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Crary, Alice, and Rupert Read (editors). 2000. The New Wittgenstein. Abingdon: Routledge. Diamond, Cora. 1995. The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Harrison, Victoria. 2006. The Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-​Cultural World. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 59(3):133–​152. Hick, John. 2004. An interpretation of religion, 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hutto, Daniel. 2007. “Getting Clear about Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein, Baker and Fodor.” In Perspicuous Presentations: Essays on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology, edited by D. Moyal-​Sharrock, 299–​322. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Kuusela, Oskari. 2008. Struggle Against Dogmatism:  Wittgenstein and the Concept of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kuusela, Oskari. 2014. “Gordon Baker, Wittgensteinian Philosophical Conceptions and Perspicuous Representation.” Nordic Wittgenstein Review 3(2):71–​98. Lindbeck, George. 2009. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 25th Anniversary Edition. Moyal-​Sharrock, Daniéle (editor). 2004. The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-​Investigation Works. Abingdon: Ashgate. Moyal-​Sharrock, Daniéle. 2007. Understanding Wittgenstein’s on certainty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mulhall, Stephen. 2015. The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theology and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Needham, Rodney. 1972. Belief, Language and Experience. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. Pritchard Duncan. 2011. “Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, 4, edited by Jonathan Kvanvig, 145–​159. Oxford: Clarendon. Phillips, D.Z. 1988. Faith After Foundationalism. London: Routledge. Phillips, D.Z. 2000. Recovering Religious Concepts:  Closing Epistemic Divides. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

32 Andrejč Plant, Robert. 2005. Wittgenstein and Levinas:  Ethical and Religious Thought. London: Routledge. Putnam, Hilary. 1992. Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 2008. Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2008. Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry, and the Sense of Feality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2012. “The Phenomenology of Existential Feeling.” In Feelings of Being Alive, edited by J. Fingerhut, J. Marienberg, 23–​54. Berlin: De Gruyter. Read, Rupert. 2009. “Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism: One Practice, No Dogma.” In Pointing at the Moon, edited by Jay L. Garfield, Tom J.F. Tillemans and Mario D’Amato, 13–​24. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidt-​Leukel, Perry. 2009. Transformation by Integration: How Inter-​Faith Encounter Changes Christianity. London: scm Press. Stern, David. 2004. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tracy, David. 1988. Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope. London: scm. Tracy, David. 1990. Dialogue With the Other:  The Inter-​ Religious Dialogue. Louvain: Peeters. von Stosch, Klaus. 2012a. “Comparative Theology as Challenge for the Theology of 21st Century.” Journal of the Religious Inquiries 2:5–​26. von Stosch, Klaus. 2012b. “Comparative Theology as Liberal Confessional Theology.” Religions 3(4):983–​992. Vries, Hent de. 2008. “Introduction: Why Still ‘Religion’?” In Religion: Beyond a Concept, edited by Hent de Vries, 1–​98. New York: Fordham University Press. Wettstein, Howard. 2012. The Significance of Religious Experience. New  York:  Oxford University Press. Zilberman, David B. 1988. The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought. Dordrecht: D. Riedel.

­c hapter 2

“Being Near Enough to Listen”: Wittgenstein and Interreligious Understanding Mikel Burley So we [Christians] must study what they [non-​Christians] mean in all the moods, the overtones and undertones, of their existence. It is our life task to make bridges into their minds. This means being near enough to be heard; getting near is a large part of our problem. cragg 1964, 274

…

It means also, I am sure, being near enough to listen. chatterjee 1967, 394 fn.

∵ In the essay from which I have borrowed the phrase that constitutes the main title of my chapter, the esteemed Indian philosopher Margaret Chatterjee remarks that unless the diversification of religions “is matched with understanding and with communication we face the future at our peril.” “It is for this reason,” she continues, “that the question of inter-​religious communication, the ground of its possibility, can be regarded not only as the most pressing of problems for the student of comparative religion … but as a matter of pressing urgency for all” (Chatterjee 1967, 391).1 Chatterjee proceeds to distinguish interreligious communication from comparative theology, observing that while the latter tends to be preoccupied with comparing propositions relating to the existence and nature of God, the former involves communication between individuals, each seeking to understand what the other’s “tradition and faith” 1 Chatterjee’s essay was “originally read at a Seminar on ‘Religion and Society’ held at The Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, in October 1965” (Chatterjee 1967, 391 fn. 1). It was subsequently republished in Chatterjee (2009, ch. 1).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004408050_​0 03

34 Burley mean for him or her (393). Although I am doubtful whether a clear distinction can be made between comparative theology and interreligious communication in the way that Chatterjee supposes, the emphasis that she places on understanding the meaning of tradition and faith in the lives of practitioners, as opposed to merely in the theological discourse of intellectual spokespersons, is significant. It is also a move in the direction of a Wittgensteinian approach. Ludwig Wittgenstein was not primarily concerned in his work with fostering interreligious communication, but he was undoubtedly concerned with deepening understanding of the multifarious forms that human life takes, including forms of religious life. So if, as seems hardly questionable, enriched understanding and enriched communication are internally related, there are likely to be resources in Wittgenstein’s work to be drawn upon for the cultivation of both. Understanding and communication—​as Chatterjee suggests in her pithy supplement to Kenneth Cragg’s remark on the need for “being near enough to be heard”—​require listening to one’s interlocutors, to the particularities of their words, observing the uses to which those words are put. A failure to hear the particularities goes along, Wittgenstein would say, with the “craving for generality,” a drive to emulate the methods of science—​all too often yielded to by philosophers (BB, 18). The phrase “I’ll teach you differences” is one that Wittgenstein considered borrowing from Shakespeare’s King Lear as a motto for his book, since unlike philosophers such as Hegel, who seemed to Wittgenstein “to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same,” Wittgenstein’s “interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different” (quoted in Drury 1984, 157). But Wittgenstein was also eager to develop philosophical methods that enable one to “see the connections” not only between aspects internal to a form of life, but also between one’s own form of life and those of others.2 It is the complex interweaving of these pursuits—​the pursuits of doing justice to particulars and of finding “connecting links” between those particulars—​that makes Wittgenstein’s philosophizing such a fertile resource for thinking about interreligious understanding. In this chapter I  focus on three interrelated dimensions of Wittgenstein’s post-​Tractarian work—​that is, ideas that came to fruition subsequent to his completion of the Tractatus Logico-​Philosophicus (1921)—​each of which brings out aspects of the particularizing and connecting impulses as applied to the understanding of religious forms of life. The first dimension is what is often referred to as Wittgenstein’s “anti-​essentialism.” For reasons to be explained 2 See, e.g., rfgb R, 133: “This perspicuous representation brings about the understanding which consists precisely in the fact that we ‘see the connections’. Hence the importance of finding connecting links.” Cf. PI, §122.

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in due course, I  refer to it rather as Wittgenstein’s appreciation of diversity, but the central motif is the same, namely the idea that “family resemblances”—​as contrasted with sharply definable conditions—​are the indicators of the semantic range of certain terms. The second dimension to be considered is Wittgenstein’s understanding of concepts and beliefs as being formed, at least typically, in the contexts of highly ramified forms of life involving the messiness of human interactions, rather than as being, for example, the products of refined intellectual deliberation. The third dimension is what I call Wittgenstein’s analogical method, the method of bridging gaps in one’s comprehension of another’s activities by looking for analogically comparable activities in one’s own life or in the lives of those with whom one is familiar. Each of these three dimensions, I  argue, contributes towards an approach to the study of human life, both religious and nonreligious, that brings us nearer to our interlocutors; not necessarily near enough to understand them as well as we might like—​for understanding another is no easier than understanding oneself, and understanding oneself is hardly a breeze—​but near enough to listen attentively to what they are saying, and not merely to be heard.

Appreciating Diversity

What I am here calling Wittgenstein’s appreciation of diversity is often characterized in terms of anti-​essentialism. This latter characterization is not inappropriate, though it has the potential to be misleading. It is not inappropriate because Wittgenstein is undoubtedly suspicious of philosophers’ aspiration to pin down the essences of things by devising—​or, as the philosophers themselves might wish to see it, discovering—​the definitions of the concepts that “apply” to the things in question. “When philosophers use a word … and try to grasp the essence of the thing,” writes Wittgenstein (PI, §116), “one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at home?” He then adds that “What we do”—​meaning, we may presume, what those who pursue Wittgenstein’s alternative methods do—​“is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.” From this remark, one could infer that Wittgenstein is anti-​essentialist in the sense of eschewing the task of grasping after essences. This would be somewhat misleading, however, given that Wittgenstein elsewhere asserts that “Essence is expressed in grammar” (§371), that “Grammar tells what kind of object anything is” (§373) and that “Our inquiry”—​the inquiry that Wittgenstein is embarked upon—​ is precisely “a grammatical one” (§90). What is being eschewed, therefore, is not essences or talk of essences or the search for essences per se, but rather

36 Burley the assumption that the essence of the object of inquiry can be grasped independently of attention to grammar—​to the forms of language and hence also to the forms of life in which the relevant concepts are characteristically used. What Wittgenstein is abjuring is the assumption that in the case of any given word, there must be something—​a property or set of properties—​that everything to which the word applies shares. So if what we mean by “anti-​ essentialist” is a rejection of the latter dogmatic assumption, then there is no harm in calling Wittgenstein anti-​essentialist. It is just that he is not, as it were, essentialist about his anti-​essentialism; there is room in his approach for exceptions—​for the fact that some things and some concepts may turn out to have essences after all. This becomes especially likely—​indeed, glaringly obvious—​once we notice that the word “essence” itself has a complex grammar, a range of overlapping but not homogeneous meanings or uses. In any case, it is Wittgenstein’s challenging of the assumption that all the items to which a given word refers must have something in common, over and above their being referred to by that word, that has inspired anti-​essentialist approaches within various areas of inquiry, both inside and outside of what normally gets called philosophy.3 In place of the assumption in question, Wittgenstein famously introduces the notion of family resemblances, remarking that “the various resemblances between members of a family—​build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth—​overlap and criss-​ cross,” much like those of different items that a general term such as “game” or “number” picks out (PI, §67). We extend the use of our concepts, Wittgenstein writes, “as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread resides not in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres” (ibid.; cf. BB, 87). Wittgenstein was neither the first to observe that concepts—​or many of them, at any rate—​grow and develop in this way, nor the first to mobilize the metaphor of family resemblances in a philosophical milieu,4 but it is his articulation of the idea that has vividly animated the observation, and which is most frequently cited both by philosophers and by scholars in neighbouring 3 Though too numerous to list in full, these areas include aesthetics (see Eldridge 1987), feminism (Heyes 1997) and critiques of essentialism about cultures (Modood 1998, 382). For a comprehensive Wittgensteinian polemic against essentialist tendencies in contemporary philosophy, see Hallett (1991). 4 See esp. discussions of a remark from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (1973, §20) in Needham (1975, 67 n. 1), Glock (1996, 120) and Sluga (2006, 10), and of William James’s treatment of the term “religion” in his Varieties of Religious Experience (1902, 26) in Pitcher (1964, 218)  and Goodman (2002, 53). On Wittgenstein’s fondness for James’s Varieties, see Drury (1967, 68).

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disciplines. Most relevant for our immediate purposes is the deployment of the family resemblances motif in discussions of religion and also of specific religions. The first to do so explicitly in print was Ninian Smart, who in a 1959 essay urges his readers to “abandon the old-​fashioned notion of definition and throw off the fascination of essences,” embracing instead the contention that “religion” is among the “general words” that “apply to a wide variety of things in virtue, not of some common property, but of ‘family resemblance’,” the latter comprising “subtle and overlapping similarities” (Smart 1959, 222–​23; 1986, 46–​47).5 Those who have since adopted some version of this approach to the term “religion” are numerous, including among them John Hick (1983, 3; 2004, 3–​5; 2006, 63–​64), William Alston (1967, 142), Peter Byrne (1988, 10–​ 12; 1989, 221–​22), Beverley and Brian Clack (2008, 4–​6) and Victoria Harrison (2006, 148–​49; 2007, 22–​35).6 Although it is extravagant to claim, as Harrison does, that “At one stage, the Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach was almost universally accepted as the best method for understanding ‘religion’ ” (2006, 151 n. 30), it would not be implausible to suggest that this “approach” of Wittgenstein’s has gained greater popularity in the study of religion than in other disciplinary areas. Among scholars of religion other than philosophers, the notion of family resemblance has often been mediated through or conflated with the idea of polythetic classification, which was introduced into anthropological discourse by Rodney Needham in the mid-​1970s (1975; 1979, 65–​66). Borrowing the term “polythetic” from the taxonomic practices of natural sciences such as botany, zoology, biology and bacteriology, Needham himself links it closely to Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance and also to comparable ideas from the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Needham prefers to speak of “sporadic” rather than “family” resemblances, noting that the metaphor of a family resemblance might be, and indeed has been, taken by some to imply a common feature possessed by all members of a given class, which is precisely the model from which Wittgenstein is trying to escape (Needham 1972, 112–​13; cf. Vygotsky 2012, 12). Critics of Needham’s have questioned the extent to which a parallel exists between the notions of polythetic classification and family resemblance, given that the former derives from scientific discourse whereas the latter merely describes an aspect of our everyday employment of concepts (Chaney 1978; cf. J.Z. Smith 1982, 136 n. 15). Needham’s treatment of the terms can be defended, however, by observing that his contention is not that the 5 See also Smart (1971, 31; 1995, 165–​66). 6 Other examples include McDermott (1970), Edwards (1972, 14–​38), Clarke and Byrne (1993, 7), Saler (2000, esp. ix–​xii, ch. 6) and McKinnon (2002).

38 Burley notions in question are identical, but rather that each of them promotes a change in thinking away from the assumption of essentially common properties and towards the recognition of diversity and partial overlap. With this in view, we can agree with Benson Saler that Needham has highlighted a notable “intellectual convergence” occurring within the history of ideas (Saler 2000, 159). One area of the study of religions in which talk of both polythetic classification and family resemblance has gained particular prominence is the ongoing debate over the concept of Hinduism. It has long been observed by Indologists and other specialists that common uses of the term “Hinduism” cover an assortment of cultural and religious phenomena that are so variegated as to place in question the coherence of the concept that the term is presumed to express.7 Among these multiple phenomena are, for example: the vibrant and colourful devotional movements whose forms of practice include exuberant singing and dancing; the lineages of ascetic practitioners who engage in austere disciplines of self-​mortification; the highly cerebral reformist movements such as the Brahmo Samāj and Ārya Samāj, which reject the use of idols (mūrtis) in religious ceremonies and look back to an idealized version of the ancient Vedic religion as the paradigm of Hindu orthodoxy; and, of course, the miscellaneous ways in which people who may or may not identify themselves as Hindus go about their daily lives, which are religiously inflected to varying degrees. Responding to this issue of the diverse applications of “Hinduism,” some scholars have argued that the term should be regarded as denoting not a single religion but a collection of more or less disparate religions, which are identifiable as, inter alia: Vaiṣṇavism (in which Viṣṇu is treated as the supreme deity); Śaivism (in which Śiva is the supreme); Śāktism (in which the principal deity is the Goddess, whose names or epithets include Śakti, i.e. “power,” “energy”); Smārta Brahmanism (whose followers, having traditionally worshipped five main deities, appeal to certain scriptures known as smṛtis to authorize this practice); and “Neo-​Hinduism” (a highly contested term used to denote a cultural movement that developed in India over the course of the nineteenth century in response to several influences, including the British colonial presence) (Stietencron 1997). Other scholars, arguing that the latter proposal, to treat “Hinduism” as denoting a cluster of distinct religions, illegitimately assumes that the so-​called Abrahamic faiths—​Judaism, Islam and especially 7 A now classic statement of the problem is that of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1963, 65–​66), who objects to the term “Hinduism” on the grounds “that the mass of religious phenomena that we shelter under the umbrella of that term, is not a unity and does not aspire to be.”

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Christianity—​typify the category of religion, maintain that there is no good reason for denying that a discernible religion is designated by the term “Hinduism” (Sweetman 2003). Still others have contended that although there was no such thing as Hinduism prior to the period of British colonial rule in India, a number of factors came together over the course of the nineteenth century that eventuated in “the construction of a single ‘world’ religion called ‘Hinduism’ ” (King 1999a, 184–​85; 1999b, 117), these factors including, most notably, the religious presuppositions of Christian missionaries, Indologists’ penchant for religious taxonomies, colonial administrators’ need for labelling their subjects, and Indian nationalists’ desire for a religious identity to enhance their struggle for Indian independence. Amid this controversy, a sobering intervention has been the recommendation by several scholars that the concept of Hinduism be thought of as applying to a multiplicity of phenomena, connected by family resemblances rather than by occupying a tightly bound category for which an all-​inclusive definition can readily be supplied. Initially proposed by Gabriella Eichinger Ferro-​Luzzi (1983, 4; 1997), who equates what she calls a “polythetic-​prototype approach” with an approach that speaks of family resemblances, variations on this way of characterizing Hinduism have subsequently been taken up by a dozen or more scholars.8 In some instances, the notion of family resemblances has been combined with other analogies such as Julius Lipner’s image of Hinduism as a vast banyan tree, which by “sending down aerial shoots” that themselves become like new trunks, comes to resemble “an interconnected collection of trees and branches without any obvious botanic centre” (Lipner 1996, 109–​10; cf. 2010, 6).9 Such imagery echoes that of Nirad Chaudhuri and others, who have represented Hinduism by reference to “the world of plants, where vegetation relentlessly proliferates and expands” (Chaudhuri 1979, 146) and where “cross-​pollination and hybridization” are plentiful (Saler 2000, 195). This latter reference to cross-​pollination is an important supplement to Lipner’s image of the banyan tree, which some might be tempted to view as implying, ultimately,

8 These include Hiltebeitel (1991, 28), Mahmood (1993, 726), Knott (1998, 113–​14), Olson (2007, 7), Doniger (2010, 28), Keppens and Bloch (2010, 9–​10) and Ganeri (2010, 6–​7; 2012, 71). See also Flood (1996, 7) on the “prototype theory” of George Lakoff (cf. Lakoff 1987, 16–​17) and Tilak (2007, 53; 2008, 108) on family resemblances between Hinduism and other Indic religions. 9 Lipner’s use of the banyan analogy was anticipated by Monier Williams over a hundred years earlier, though rather than celebrating Hinduism’s prodigious diversity, Williams decries the spreading of a “simple, pantheistic doctrine” into “an exuberant outgrowth of monstrous mythology” (1877, 11).

40 Burley a single origin or foundation of what has, in reality, grown out of the interplay of innumerable elements. Figurative talk of family resemblances and proliferating plants leaves unimpressed those critics who are seeking from a “theory of religion” some reliable criterion by which to identify a given religion such as Hinduism or to at least distinguish religions from nonreligious social phenomena.10 Insofar as these critics are urging caution about uncritically accepting images or analogies, such as that of family resemblance, that are adduced in academic discussions, they may well have a point. After all, scholars of a Wittgensteinian persuasion should concur that we ought to guard against allowing pictures to hold us captive.11 However, to oppugn the notion of family resemblance on the grounds that it fails to supply rules for determining boundaries between concepts is to criticize it for not doing something that it was never intended to do. Despite the prevalence of phrases such as “family resemblance definition” and “family resemblance theory” in the literature on religion, a definition or theory is precisely not what the idea of family resemblances was intended by Wittgenstein to provide. Rather, it is a means of freeing us from the craving for definitions and theories, a reminder that, in the case of many concepts, we operate with them perfectly competently without needing to define or theorize. With regard to the concepts of religion and Hinduism in particular, the claim that each of them is best characterized in terms of family resemblances is not, or ought not to be, a license for sloppy thinking. On the contrary, it prompts us to recognize the need for assiduous attention both to how the relevant concepts are applied across a range of contexts and to the particularities of the phenomena at issue. When thinking about interreligious understanding, it facilitates an awareness of the fluidity of the category of religion, of the lack of discrete demarcation lines both around what is and what is not a religion and around specific religions. In place of throwing up our hands in despair because we cannot even define the thing we are seeking to understand, it allows us to see that careful comparative analysis does not require a precisely worded definition in advance of the inquiry. What is required are, among other things, the willingness to listen and an appreciation of diverse patterns of religious discourse. 10 11

See, e.g., Fitzgerald (2000, 72): “[A]‌family resemblance theory of religion overextends the notion so badly that it becomes impossible to determine what can and what cannot be included.” Cf. PI, §115: “A picture held us captive. And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably.”

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The Lived Contexts of Belief Formation

In addition to his appreciation of diversity, which goes along with his emphasis on particularities and aversion to over-​generalizing claims, a second dimension of Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach that is conducive to deepening interreligious understanding is his attentiveness to the conditions of concept-​ and belief-​formation. Contrary to what is sometimes proposed, Wittgenstein in his later work does not devise a theory of concept formation. What he offers is a variety of suggestions and reminders to direct us away from the lazy assumptions that concepts must be the products of intellectual deliberation and that beliefs must be largely or exclusively a matter of “assenting to propositions.” To disrupt these assumptions, Wittgenstein stresses the importance of such things as the forms of life that we enact and inhabit, the various kinds of experience we undergo, and our “primitive,” “pre-​linguistic” or “instinctive” reactions to the world. Illustrative of Wittgenstein’s thinking in this area is a passage from one of his late notebooks in which he reflects upon the idea that someone might be convinced of the existence of God by means of a theoretical proof. In implicit accordance with Anselm’s famous dictum about “faith seeking understanding,” Wittgenstein acknowledges that although such proofs might instantiate post hoc attempts to justify the belief in God, and perhaps even to deepen it,12 it is not the proofs that generate the belief in the first place. Rather, “ ‘Convincing someone of God’s existence’ is something you might do by means of a certain upbringing, shaping his life in such & such a way. | Life can educate you to ‘believing in God’ ” (CVR, 97e). By the latter thought, Wittgenstein means that the experiences one goes through, including the sufferings one endures, can, within the context of a life as a whole, engender acceptance of certain concepts and of a particular way of thinking about things. The idea of its being our upbringing, and moreover the entire surroundings of our lives, that imbue in us the concepts through which we engage with the world is of a piece with Wittgenstein’s refocusing away from rational cognition as the source of many of our most deeply ingrained beliefs and towards the animal and instinctual

12

Admittedly, Wittgenstein (CVR, 97e) speaks of analysing and “mak[ing] a case for” one’s belief rather than of deepening it. But he leaves room for an extension of the idea in the direction of what Thomas Williams says in describing faith for Anselm as “the passion that sets [him] on the arduous road to understanding; and understanding, far from replacing that passion, feeds it, focuses it, and makes it all the more powerful” (Williams 1995, xiv).

42 Burley aspects of our nature.13 To have a religious belief, such as a belief in God, involves finding meaning in the concepts that constitute the belief, having a place for those concepts in one’s thought and action; and this, Wittgenstein emphasizes, rarely if ever comes about as a consequence of detached theorizing alone. This accentuation of the lived context of belief formation has struck a resounding chord with many anthropologists, not least in the anthropology of religion.14 A poignant example that supports Wittgenstein’s thinking on this matter is provided by Martin Southwold, who carried out fieldwork among Theravāda Buddhists in Sri Lanka from 1974 to 1975. Upon encountering the Buddhists’ talk of rebirth and karma, Southwold was initially surprised that such a “preposterous belief” could be so prevalent among people who frequently claim Buddhism to be “the most rational and scientific of religions” (1978, 373). After nine months or so of living with these people, however, he found that he was “virtually” believing or “half believing” the doctrine (ibid.; 1983, 45); having gained for him an “aura of factuality,” the concept had “entered into” him (1983, 48).15 For Southwold, it was not merely the fact of living in close proximity with Buddhists that enabled the belief in rebirth to take root in him. After all, he had previously lived among the Baganda people of Uganda for three years, two years longer than he spent with the Sri Lankan Buddhists, “but their concepts hardly penetrated me” (ibid.). What was different about his time in Sri Lanka was that a deeper attraction and affinity towards the people and their culture developed in him, facilitating a more pronounced receptivity on Southwold’s part (1978, 373–​74; 1983, 48–​49). Of course, neither interreligious understanding nor interreligious communication is primarily a matter of taking on the beliefs of the communities with which one engages; it is not necessary for the concepts to enter into one’s life in such a way that one finds oneself thinking, conversing and acting through the medium of those concepts. But it is necessary that one be open to recognizing how those concepts could enter into a life, how they contribute towards a way of comprehending the world and the place of human beings in it. In this regard, appreciating the extent to which religious beliefs are integrated into forms of life is central to seeing their intelligibility. It is often harder for philosophers to do this than for anthropologists, as 13 14 15

“I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination” (OC, §475). For general endorsements of Wittgenstein’s relevance to anthropology, see, among many others, Needham (1972), Das (1998), De Lara (2003; 2005) and Springs (2008). Southwold borrows the phrase “aura of factuality” from Geertz (1966, 4, 24).

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philosophers are accustomed to treating beliefs as endorsements of propositions, whose truth-​values can, supposedly, be appraised largely in abstraction from the rich cultural contexts in which the beliefs acquire the sense that they have, whereas anthropologists, and especially the ethnographers among them, tend to be more attuned to the need for contextualization and thick description.16 Wittgenstein’s own relationship to anthropology is ambivalent, as is his relationship to empirical methods of studying human life more generally. On the one hand, his emphasis on the need to contextualize words and concepts within the forms of life in which they have their natural homes both subverts the abstractive norms of much analytic philosophy and makes possible a fusion of philosophy and anthropology. In this light it comes as little surprise that Wittgenstein occasionally describes his own approach to philosophy as “anthropological” or “ethnological,” albeit without assuming that he is doing precisely what social or cultural anthropologists do (Rhees 1965, 25; CVR, 45e; cf. Hacker 2010). Nor is it surprising that certain anthropologists perceive their own deployment of ethnographic methods “as a process akin to Wittgenstein’s form of philosophical investigation” (Whitaker 1996, 8). On the other hand, we should not lose sight of the fact that Wittgenstein differentiates his own “grammatical” or “logical” modes of inquiry from those of any empirical discipline.17 When he speaks of returning words to their everyday contexts he is not concerned with carrying out empirical studies to establish how the words are used; rather, his methods typically involve reflecting upon the uses of terms with which he and his readers are readily familiar. Sometimes, as an “object of comparison” (PI, §§130–​31), he will imagine a context or form of life very different from the ordinary, and reflections upon other cultures may serve a similar end; but Wittgenstein’s philosophical interest in other cultures does not extend to anything approaching a detailed study of the minutiae of their lives. What he offers the anthropologist, therefore, are conceptual tools with which to think rather than exemplary studies of religious or cultural systems. One such tool is what I term his analogical method.

16 17

Ethnographers’ use of the notion of thick description derives from Ryle ([1968] 1971) via Geertz (1973). See also Ortner (2006, 105):  “Ethnographic understanding is built up through density, ‘thickness’ of observation, over an extended period of time.” “But if someone were to say ‘So logic too is an empirical science’ he would be wrong” (OC, §98); “[W]‌e are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history—​since we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes” (ppf, §365).

44 Burley

Seeking Analogies

Wittgenstein does not deny that there may be some peoples whose behaviour is so unlike our own or anything with which we are already acquainted that, unable to “find our feet with them,”18 they are liable to remain “a complete enigma” to us (ppf, §325)—​and, no doubt, we to them. For the most part, however, he maintains that human beings have enough in common for cross-​ cultural and interreligious understanding to be feasible. One of the principal methods he utilizes for enhancing such understanding is a comparative one. It involves identifying forms of behaviour in one’s own life, or in the lives of others with whom one is familiar, that are in some significant way analogous to the forms of behaviour displayed by the people whose lives one is seeking to better understand. Examples of this analogical method are especially salient in remarks that Wittgenstein wrote in response to reading portions of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a work which impressed Wittgenstein but also irritated him because of what he perceived as a narrowness of spiritual imagination on the part of its author.19 As an alternative to what he sees as Frazer’s misguided attempts at explaining ritual activities by reference either to theories or beliefs that supposedly underlie them or to chronologically earlier rituals from which they might conceivably have evolved, Wittgenstein advocates the cultivation of a “perspicuous representation” (übersichtlichen Darstellung), intended to engender “the understanding which consists precisely in the fact that we ‘see the connections’. Hence the importance of finding connecting links” (rfgb R, 133). One illustrative analogy or connecting link that Wittgenstein adduces is that between burning an effigy and kissing a picture of a loved one. Although there are obvious dissimilarities between these actions, the point of the analogy is to draw us away from the crude assumption that when someone in a traditional or small-​scale society burns an effigy, he or she must be acting on a false belief about the power of such actions. Without constructing a competing theory to explain why the action is performed, Wittgenstein is urging us to reflect upon certain things that we do, or that we could easily imagine ourselves doing, which we would not try to explain by reference to underlying beliefs or to some goal that one was aiming to achieve. The act of kissing the picture “aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied” (rfgb R, 18 19

A closer translation of Wittgenstein’s German (“Wir können uns nicht in sie finden”) would be “We cannot find ourselves in them.” Cf. Klagge (2011, 43). “What a narrow spiritual life on Frazer’s part! … Frazer cannot imagine a priest who is not basically a present-​day English parson” (rfgb R, 125).

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123). Similarly, a ritual activity such as burning an effigy, though no doubt requiring more premeditation than a spontaneous act of kissing a picture, might derive from unpremeditated reactions of a comparably instinctual sort, albeit patently with a very different emotional tone. The analogical method was subsequently taken up by other philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein’s work. Peter Winch, for example, applies it in a well-​known essay in which he challenges Edward Evans-​Pritchard’s contention that the practice of consulting oracles exhibited by the Azande of southern Sudan is part of a false system of belief that, unlike western science, fails to “accord with objective reality” (Evans-​Pritchard [1936] 1978, 70; cf. Winch 1964, 308). To assume that scientific procedures constitute a suitable analogue of divinatory practices, Winch argues, evinces a misunderstanding of the role that the latter practices have in the lives of those who perform them. He proposes that a more apt place to look for analogies would be Christian prayers involving an acknowledgement of one’s “complete dependence on God” (1964, 320). Such prayers and the oracular consultations are akin, Winch maintains, insofar as each of them expresses the “recognition that one’s life is subject to contingencies, rather than an attempt to control these” (321). Elsewhere I have suggested that even more apposite analogies may be found in divinatory practices that still go on in modern western societies, such as the consulting of astrologers and Tarot readers (Burley 2012a, 360–​61), which practices Winch (1964, 310)  regards as merely parasitic upon properly rational forms of discourse such as astronomy. More fundamentally, doubts could be raised about whether anyone lacking first-​hand experience of the sort of prolonged fieldwork that Evans-​Pritchard undertook is really well placed to make corrective recommendations, but it is not my immediate concern to enter into that debate. Rather, whatever we take the strength of Winch’s particular contentions to be, the important methodological point is that the search for analogies should be guided by a genuine effort to establish bridges of understanding; as Evans-​Pritchard himself was aware in his own criticisms of earlier anthropologists such as James Frazer and Edward Tylor (see Evans-​Pritchard [1933] 1973), assumptions of cognitive superiority on one side of the comparison are best guarded against.

Integrating the Dimensions

The tasks of developing interreligious understanding and communication demand more than simply seeking analogies for the beliefs and practices of one religion in those of another. As illuminating as analogies can occasionally

46 Burley be, they require supplementation by the other two dimensions that I  have highlighted from Wittgenstein’s thought. In the first instance, they need to be integrated with an appreciation of the diverse patterns of human belief and activity that fall within the fluid category of religion and that manifest in religious traditions which are themselves internally variegated. By expounding the notion of there being family resemblances between the various uses of a word or concept, Wittgenstein invites us to free ourselves from the grip of the assumption that a necessary condition of the meaningfulness of terms such as “religion” and “religious” is that there must be something common to all instances of the phenomena to which the terms are applied. So too are we thereby freed from the demand, whether explicit or implicit, that we “must define our terms” before we can engage in any fruitful dialogue about religious beliefs and practices. This is not to say that there is anything necessarily wrong with definitions: far from it. But it is to concur with Max Weber when he pronounces at the beginning of his Sociology of Religion that “To define ‘religion,’ to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a presentation. … Definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the study” (1963, 1).20 As it happens, Weber did not get round to venturing a definition even at the end of his study, and the study is none the worse for that fact. Once the grip of the craving for definitions and for broad generalizations has been loosened, we can more readily examine the phenomena in front of us and cultivate modes of listening that are relatively unconstrained by artificial stipulations of what a religion must be. The second dimension of Wittgenstein’s thought with which the analogical approach requires integration is, I have suggested, his repeated affirmation of the embeddedness of meaningful discourse within complex human environments. It is there, amid the streams or weave or patterns of life, that words have the sense that they do, for it is “Practice [that] gives the words their sense” (CVR, 97e).21 Anthropologists such as Southwold have thus observed that sometimes against one’s prior expectations, inhabiting a form of life can enable the concepts to enter one’s own thoughts and perceptions; one finds oneself believing, or “virtually” believing, doctrines that one previously assumed to be absurd. This infectiousness of concepts, though perhaps exactly what we should expect in view of Wittgenstein’s ideas about concept​and belief-​formation, may 20 21

The passage continues: “The essence of religion is not even our concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of a particular type of social behavior” (Weber 1963, 1). For the metaphors of streams, weave, patterns, etc., see, e.g., PR, §48; Z, §§173, 567–​568; LW i, §§211, 913.

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be unnerving for some religious believers. There is undoubtedly an element of risk here for those who would prefer to shore up their own modes of belief and practice against the influence of alternative traditions. But, as Southwold also notes, a degree of receptivity is required on one’s own part if the concepts are to take root. If that receptivity is there, then being near enough to be heard—​ and near enough to listen—​may turn into being near enough not only to understand but to change in the light of that understanding. As I  noted earlier, Wittgenstein’s purpose was not to foster interreligious communication, nor was he explicitly concerned to investigate contexts of interreligious encounter more generally. His primary interest was in unravelling “knots in our thinking” (Z, §452) and in clarifying the sense of what we say, for he regarded “clarity, transparency, [as] an end in itself” (CVR, 9e). On occasions, however, he wondered whether there is any point in doing philosophy “if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life” (see Malcolm 1984, 93). Among those important questions for many of us is how to live and flourish together without prejudice or hostility in a multi-​religious world. The philosophical methods devised by Wittgenstein are certainly amenable to utilization in the service of interreligious understanding and successful communication. By deploying the methods with which Wittgenstein supplies us—​including those of appreciating diversity, recognizing the deeply contextualized nature of belief-​formation, and being alert to analogies between what others do and the things that one does oneself—​the possibility is opened up of listening more attentively to one’s neighbours, both religious and nonreligious:  not simply assuming that gaps of understanding will always be bridged, nor pretending that differences do not exist, but allowing both differences and commonalities to be themselves in a spirit of mutual discovery.

Epilogue on Wonder

I shall end with a brief anecdote concerning Wittgenstein that was recounted by the Indian-​born philosopher Kanti Shah to his friend Ramchandra Gandhi (Gandhi 2007, 146–​47). Shah had been a student of Wittgenstein’s at ­Cambridge towards the end of Wittgenstein’s career in the 1940s; indeed, the notes that Shah took during Wittgenstein’s lectures from 1946 to 1947 contributed towards a published volume (see lpp, 117–​232). Outside of lectures Wittgenstein occasionally invited Shah to go on walks with him, on the idiosyncratic condition that no conversation should occur while they walked. During one walk, however, Wittgenstein breached the condition himself by asking Shah whether he

48 Burley was a Muslim, to which question Shah replied that he was not. Wittgenstein then asked whether he was a Hindu. “No,” replied Shah, “I’m a Jain:  neither Hindu nor Muslim.” Ramchandra Gandhi continues the story as follows: Wittgenstein knew something about Jainism from the Indian philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta, who had lived in Cambridge many years before. Wittgenstein said to Shah, “Isn’t it true that Jains believe that the enlightened ones after their death all gather together on a rock and meditate?” Now young Shah in those years was a typical, intolerant freethinker, intolerant of metaphysical beliefs. So he looked profoundly embarrassed and said, “I don’t believe in these foolish things now.” Wittgenstein was furious, and he said to Shah, “You think you are very clever, Shah, you think you know more than these ancestors of yours who have thought about these things for thousands of years?” gandhi 2007, 146–​47

According to Ramchandra Gandhi, “This remark of Wittgenstein’s completely changed Shah’s life and he dedicated himself to the study of tradition. He became tolerant of metaphysical, spiritual thinking” (147). Gandhi interprets Wittgenstein’s remark to mean “not that metaphysical and spiritual thinking cannot be doubted,” but that rather than summarily dismissing such thought, one “should be tolerant of [it] because of its antiquity” (147). Certainly, it seems, Wittgenstein would be averse to perfunctory dismissals of religious beliefs or pictures, though whether it would be right to identify their antiquity as the principal reason for this is doubtful. Also doubtful is the suggestion that Wittgenstein would say we should be tolerant of these beliefs; if, in his view, they have depth to them, he would be more likely to say—​as he did of the Grimm Brothers’ Rumpelstiltskin—​“Profound, profound” (Pascal 1984, 20). Admittedly, as Ramchandra Gandhi notes (2007, 151), one ought not to underrate tolerance; without it, attitudes such as honour and respect are unlikely to emerge. But still, it falls short of what I suspect was, on Wittgenstein’s part, more of a deep sense of fascination with the Jain belief that he cited. Although I have not in this chapter explicitly discussed the sense of fascination and wonder that pervades Wittgenstein’s thinking on human life and language, it is certainly there in his work, not least in his thinking about religion in all its varieties.22 Being what in large part spurs him to make bridges between 22

“All religions are wonderful” (Wittgenstein, quoted in Drury 1984, 102). Cf. Klagge (2011, 154): “It is clear that the capacity to wonder, and remain in wonder, was important for Wittgenstein.” I discuss Wittgenstein and wonder in Burley (2012b).

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ostensibly disparate aspects of life, this sense of wonder is, we might say, essential to all the dimensions of philosophical and interreligious understanding that I have been considering. Moreover, thinking back to Margaret Chatterjee’s search for the ground of the very possibility of interreligious communication, a sense of wonder seems a strong candidate for being that ground.23

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23

I am grateful to the editors for inviting me to contribute to this volume and to participate in the conference that preceded it in June 2015. Special thanks are due to Gorazd Andrejč for written comments and to Ankur Barua for his commentary on my paper at the conference.

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Smith, Jonathan Z. 1982. Imagining Religion:  From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1963. The Meaning and End of Religion. New York: Macmillan. Southwold, Martin. 1978. “Buddhism and the Definition of Religion.” Man, n.s., 13(3):362–​79. Southwold, Martin. 1983. Buddhism in Life: The Anthropological Study of Religion and the Sinhalese Practice of Buddhism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Springs, Jason A. 2008. “What Cultural Theorists of Religion Have to Learn from Wittgenstein; Or, How to Read Geertz as a Practice Theorist.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76(4):934–​69. Stietencron, Heinrich von. 1997. “Hinduism: On the Proper Use of a Deceptive Term.” In Hinduism Reconsidered, edited by Günther-​Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke, 2nd edn, 32–​53. Delhi: Manohar. Sweetman, Will. 2003. “ ‘Hinduism’ and the History of ‘Religion’: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 15(4):329–​53. Tilak, Shrinivas. 2007. Understanding Karma in Light of Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology and Hermeneutics, rev. edn. North Charleston, SC: BookSurge. Tilak, Shrinivas. 2008. “Cāturdharmya:  Hermeneutics of Integrative Differentiation.” In Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons, edited by Rita Sherma and Arvind Sharma, 95–​120. n.p.: Springer. Vygotsky, Lev. (1934) 2012. Thought and Language, rev. edn. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Weber, Max. (1922) 1963. The Sociology of Religion. Translated by Ephraim Fischoff. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Whitaker, Mark P. 1996. “Ethnography as Learning:  A Wittgensteinian Approach to Writing Ethnographic Accounts.” Anthropological Quarterly 69(1):1–​13. Williams, Monier. 1877. Hinduism. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Williams, Thomas. 1995. “Introduction.” In Anselm, Monologion and Proslogion with Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm. Translated by Thomas Williams, xi–​xx. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Winch, Peter. 1964. “Understanding a Primitive Society.” American Philosophical Quarterly 1(4):307–​24.

­c hapter 3

Wittgenstein and Ascriptions of “Religion” Thomas D. Carroll A precondition for participation in an interreligious encounter is that participants are in some sense religious. This much is obvious, but how someone or something qualifies as religious is not always clear.1 For this, criteria are needed that will help pick out those persons, practices, or institutions that are religious as opposed to non-​religious. We may have some contexts where common-​ sense is good enough to identify who the religious persons or communities are, but even so, globalization, immigration, varying legal systems, and the ongoing appearance of new candidates for religion-​status (what are sometimes called new religious movements) raise problematic questions about what is or is not a religion and thus for who the potential interlocutors are in interreligious communication. These problems are all the more complicated in places, like China, where religions are managed by the state and labeling something a religion has extensive political, cultural, and legal consequences. For these reasons, getting a bearing on the application of the term “religion,” and especially what I call in this essay “ascriptions of religion”2 (i.e. the acts of naming or otherwise identifying something as a religion, along with the varying criteria for religion-​status and the contexts in which these criteria operate) will be important for avoiding confusion and removing perplexity about religious diversity and interreligious encounters. Recent years have seen an increasing amount of studies of the history of the term “religion” and how it figures in conceptions of “the secular” and of cultural differences generally. A recurrent theme in these studies is that “religion” carries associations with Protestant Christianity and thus is not as universal a category as it might appear. The aim of this paper is to explore some resources in Wittgenstein’s philosophy to obtain greater clarity about the contexts of

1 While “common-​sense” notions of religiosity may be adequate for identifying some cases of interreligious communication, because of a lack of clarity surrounding the extension of terms like “religion” and “religious,” relying on common-​sense alone may result in other cases being excluded or erroneous instances being included among cases of interreligious communication (e.g. with respect to borderline situations, for which common-​sense does not provide a guide). 2 I borrow this expression from Kevin Schilbrack (2010, p. 1122).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004408050_​0 04

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ascription of religion-​status to various phenomena and thus to gain perspective on claims made by scholars who investigate the genealogy of the term. While there is good reason to be circumspect about uncritical use of the term “religion” (no less in philosophizing about religions or conducting interreligious dialogue), I argue that instead of abandoning the term or proffering a critical theory of religion, investigation of ascriptions of religion will help philosophers to perceive more clearly the social dynamics that have led to someone or thing being called religious and thus avoid equivocations that could obstruct the ends of philosophical inquiry or dialogue. 1

Critical Studies of “Religion”

When considering the social contexts in which religion-​status is ascribed, one might expect to find a variety. Some of these contexts include legal, political, economic, institutional, and academic discourses, and they may overlap or otherwise influence one another. A danger which Wittgenstein and numerous Wittgensteinian philosophers have pointed out is the risk, even the temptation, to unknowingly equivocate across contexts of use (e.g. when conducting “arm chair” conceptual analysis). In fact, this is much of the philosophical value of conceptual genealogy.3 It is easy to see how this tendency to conflate might operate for terms like “meaning” (e.g. as sense or reference) or “truth” (e.g. as predication of semantic ascent or expression or of heartfelt personal value), but the tendency appears also with other terms, such as “religion,” that are deeply important to human experience. We may be inclined to say that the diverse uses of “religion” possess a family resemblance. But what exactly does that mean? In order to answer this question, and again following Wittgenstein,4 it will be necessary to look and see how “religion” is used.

3 A risk in using genealogy in a philosophical examination of a concept is that a scholar may commit a genetic fallacy. For this reason, it is important to conceive of genealogy as an additional way of investigating the meanings of a term, some of which may be quite distant from contemporary meanings. At times, the lineage of a term may be helpful for resolving philosophical problems concerning the term. For more on this use of genealogy in conceptual analysis, see Carroll 2008 and 2014. 4 In this respect, I take a lead from Wittgenstein’s remark: “For a large class of cases —​though not for all —​in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” (PI, §43) Conceptual investigation would then proceed by examining the actual uses of a word in language, an activity that could be aided by genealogical investigations of the term.

56 Carroll 1.1 Sketching the Uses of “Religion” Given the wide variety of contexts of ascription, it would be very difficult in an essay of this length to offer a complete overview of the uses of “religion.” Instead, what is possible are glimpses into some of these contexts where the term may be defined or where a definition may be implied. These instances paint a picture and suggest a trajectory of the term through intellectual history up to the present. Drawing on varying sources5 for investigating the uses of the term, here are several approaches to defining “religion” or identifying religions: (1) “Action or conduct indicating belief in, obedience to, and reverence for a god, gods, or similar superhuman power; the performance of religious rites or observances … A particular system of faith and worship … A pursuit, interest, or movement, followed with great devotion … Belief in or acknowledgement of some superhuman power or powers (esp. a god or gods) which is typically manifested in obedience, reverence, and worship; such a belief as part of a system defining a code of living, esp. as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement.” (oed 2015) (2) “Religious faith and religious sentiment, along with religious ceremonies and organizations consonant with this faith and sentiment, are all products of the history of society. The earliest emergence of the religious mentality reflected the low level of production and the sense of awe toward natural phenomena of primitive peoples. With the evolution of class society, the most profound social roots of the existence and development of religion lay in the following factors: the helplessness of the people in the face of the blind forces alienating and controlling them in this kind of society; the fear and despair of the workers in the face of the enormous misery generated by the oppressive social system; and in the need of the oppressor classes to use religion as an opiate and as an important and vital means in its control of the masses. In Socialist society, the class root or the existence of religion was virtually lost following the elimination of the oppressive system and its oppressor class. However, because the people’s consciousness lags behind social realities, old thinking and habits cannot be thoroughly wiped out in a short period.”6 (MacInnis 1989, 8)

5 These sources include dictionaries, legal and governmental documents, academic discourse, intra-​traditional discourse, documents of international organizations, and educational institutions. This method is inspired by that used by Stanley Cavell in his inquiry into criteria in The Claim of Reason. See especially Cavell 1979, 8–​9. 6 See “Document 19: The Basic Viewpoint on the Religion Question During Our Country’s Socialist Period” (1982) translated in Donald E. MacInnis, 1989. Religion in China Today: Policy and Practice. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 8–​26.

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(3) “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (U.S. Constitution, Article 1) (4) “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” (The United Nations 1948) (5) “Churches  and religious organizations, like many other charitable  organizations, qualify for exemption from  federal income tax under  irc Section 501(c)(3) and are generally eligible to receive  tax-​ deductible contributions. To qualify for tax-​exempt status, the organization must meet the following requirements (covered in greater detail throughout this publication): the organization must be organized and operated exclusively for religious, educational, scientific or other charitable purposes; net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder; no substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation; the organization may not intervene in political campaigns; and the organization’s purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.” (Department of the Treasury 2015) (6) “[T]‌he past century and a half of religious studies scholarship has been marked by numerous and repeated undertakings to define religion  —​ that is, to identify its fundamental or core element. From Immanuel Kant (yes, even Rene Descartes) forward, the intellectual tradition is characterized by a series of methodological attempts to isolate a sine qua non (or a first principle) for religion, an element that is sometimes referred to as a religious a priori. Accordingly, the methods of these researchers and interpreters have been tailored to reduce all qualities, characteristics, and aspects of religion to those core elements that are understood to be absolutely fundamental … Whether the fundamental core element be Kant’s moral imperative, Friedrich Schleiermacher’s ‘feeling of absolute dependence,’ or Rudolf Otto’s ‘the numinous,’ the isolated first principle in each instance is regarded as ‘that without which religion would not be what it truly is.’ ” (Capps 1995, xviii) (7) “[A]‌ religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-​lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing the

58 Carroll conceptions with such an aura of facticity that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (Geertz 1973, 90) (8) “The pattern which I put forward is primarily directed towards what traditionally in English are called religions … But the schema also applies to worldviews other than religious ones. The schema has a double purpose. One is to provide a realistic checklist of aspects of a religion so that a description of that religion or a theory about it is not lopsided … The other [purpose] is to give a kind of functional delineation of religions in lieu of a strict definition.”7 (Smart 1999, 8–​9) (9) “ ‘Religion’ in the singular, as just one thing, is nowhere to be found; it is too maddeningly polyvalent and too uncontainably diverse for us to fit it all under one roof. There are Western religions, Eastern religions, ancient religions, modern religions, monotheistic, polytheistic, and even slightly atheistic religions; too many to count, too many to master, in too many languages to learn … Indeed the uncontainable diversity of ‘religion’ is itself a great religious truth and a marker of the uncontainability of what religion is all about.” (Caputo 2001, 1) (10) “The modern concept of religion is Western in origin. If you look up the word religion in a Chinese dictionary, you will find it translated as zongjiao, which comes from the Japanese shūkyō. But neither term is native to Asia: the Japanese word was actually translated from the German Religionsübung. Of course, both Chinese and Japanese already had words resembling religion before they decided to copy a German one, but the fact that someone felt that a new word was required suggests that the transformation of the idea was fairly fundamental. This is not simply a problem of terminology: some have argued that the Western concept of religion (for example, as scholars, governments, and human rights campaigners employ it) refers not merely to Christianity, but a particular kind of Christianity, the post-​Enlightenment interpretation of faith as a personal dialogue with God. Thus when scholars try to compare religions (for example, by teaching a course in world religions), they are implicitly comparing other religions against a Christian standard, one that would

7 The dimensions of religions that Smart indicates in Dimensions of the Sacred are: “1. The ritual or practical dimension … 2. The doctrinal or philosophical dimension … 3. The mythic or narrative dimension … The experiential or emotional dimension … 5. The ethical or legal dimensions … 6. The organizational or social component … 7. The material or artistic dimension. …” To these, Smart also adds two more dimensions: the political and the economic. (Smart 1999, 10–​11).

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consequently make non-​Western religions look either incomplete or primitive.” (DuBois 2011, 4f) Here, one sees a recurrence of themes such as religions as the free expression of conscience or belief (1–​4); the idea that religious practices follow from beliefs (1, 2, 4); and the social value of toleration of varying (including deviant or obsolete) beliefs, practices, or traditions so long as they do not harm others (2–​ 5). Scholars represent religion as something that can be defined (6, 7) or not (8, 9, and possibly 10). It is noteworthy that, with the exceptions of the academic discourses (especially 7–​10), religion is defined or identified in ways consistent with recent conceptual genealogies of religion; even in Document 19 of the Chinese Community Party (2), religion is conceived in a way that reflects salient themes in Protestant Christianity (especially in its focus on faith and sentiment as the core of religiosity, which ceremonies and institutions are held to develop from). Increasingly, worry over the application of “religion” appears in the work of scholars performing genealogical study of the concept, something to which (10) refers. What is notable when comparing all ten passages on “religion” is the apparent confidence of (1–​5) in the straightforward applicability of the term to phenomena and the general distance between governmental and scholarly conceptions of religion. Indeed, the trajectory one sees in (6)–​(10) is one of growing reticence over the academic adequacy of a pre-​theoretical concept of religion. On the basis of these observations, care over the use of “religion” in appraising cultural differences would be warranted, but when one further takes into consideration genealogical research on the term, this care is all the more helpful to avoid confusion. 1.2 Tracing the Genealogy of “Religion” Conceptual genealogy, memorably invoked by Nietzsche, holds the promise of revealing the contours of history and power in languages, contours that may otherwise be obscured from view in the everyday flow of language use. While Nietzsche is important in inspiring conceptual genealogical work, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is, to my mind, even more helpful in conducting such work. Not only does his focus on language having meaning in the circumstances of social life draw attention to the embeddedness of concepts in social and historical contexts, but this very same emphasis also suggests that if one wants to understand the language of another place or time, one would do well to understand the social and historical contexts in which that language figures. In this way, conceptual genealogy could be part of the work of identifying nuances of difference of meaning or of suggesting family resemblances between otherwise disparate instances of language (i.e. conceptual analysis or investigation). Thus, I approach critical studies of “religion” as

60 Carroll helpful resources for clarifying the roles the concept of religion has played in thinking about cultural, intellectual, ethical, and political differences among human beings. Conceptual genealogies of “religion” have been advanced by scholars such as Talal Asad (1993) and Tomoko Masuzawa (2005). Over the last two decades, a growing number of scholars have been exploring the genealogy of the term “religion.” These studies frequently trace the emergence of the term in early-​ modern European Christian thought and subsequent use in identifying “world religions” during periods of expanding political influence of European empires (Masuzawa 2005 and Nongbri 2013). While the term might appear to be culturally and politically neutral with respect to the phenomena collected underneath it, historical investigation reveals a different story. The tendency of the concept to privilege aspects of religiosity, such as private belief, personal faith, congregational membership, textual sources of religious teaching and authority, and separation from the political is what these scholars have in mind. For example, in China and Japan the term was introduced under political and military duress as part of an agenda by Western nations to expand Christian missionary activities where such initiatives had been previously opposed (Josephson 2012, 1). One effect of these genealogical studies is to undermine the sense that “religion” is a transhistorical, univocal category and thus the confidence that it refers to a natural kind; ascriptions of religion-​status are not straightforward, as with concepts bearing universal criteria. In response to concerns that religious studies scholars inadvertently projected features distinctive of Protestant Christianity onto other traditions, some scholars, such as Ninian Smart ((8), above), argue for an expansion of the category to account for a wide diversity of phenomena that these things called religions happen to possess. Thus Smart recommends an expanding series of dimensions of religiosity, none of which should be taken as definitive of religion. Smart’s approach has been very influential, but as any introductory level faculty member could observe, this theoretically-​rich conception of religion is not coextensive with the native concepts of religion most students bring to the classroom. A frequent contention made in connection with these studies is that while some theorists have sought to expand the meaning of “religion” to include traditions around the world, the term ineffaceably retains much of its original connotations of private belief and experience (and the primacy of these factors over other dimensions of religiosity) —​phenomena that are prominently featured in Protestant Christianity. While differences of focus divide the work of these historicists, a common theme in this area of scholarship is that “religion” is a relatively modern term that tends to distort what it classifies when applied to temporally distant phenomena (such as ancient practices

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or traditions)8 or to culturally distant phenomena (for example, Judaism, Buddhism, or Confucianism).9 The upshot of these genealogies of “religion” would then be that to conceive of an encounter as happening between partners of different religions, one is at risk of already framing the encounter in a non-​ neutral way; that is, one may have cast the encounter in a way that tends to favor salient qualities of Protestant Christianity (despite the best intentions of scholars) and that requires participants to embrace these qualities in order to join, for example, in a dialogue. This is the familiar problem of conceptual parochialism. In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, Brent Nongbri presents a conceptual genealogy of “religion” inspired methodologically, in part, by Wittgenstein. Nongbri traces the history of the concept from what he argues are its origins in early modern European Christian thought (particularly in response to the “Wars of Religion”) to its common use as a descriptive term inclusive of “world religions.” In so doing, he also explores its adequacy as a translation of terms that pre-​date it in Latin, Greek, and Arabic. Regarding the Latin word “religio,” Nongbri argues “that the word had a variety of meanings in antiquity and that none of those corresponds to the modern notion of religion or delineates ‘religious’ from ‘secular.’ ” (Nongbri 2013, 26) Nongbri finds the term “religio” in various ancient texts. In Plautus, it refers to “scruples” (27), in Cicero to “rules or prohibitions instituted either by gods or humans” (28), and in Lucretius to “a kind of force malevolent to humanity” (28). Nongbri observes of Latin Christian discourse: “In Christian writings of the third and fourth centuries, the idea of ritual practices is still present in the usage of religio, and the plural usage that causes modern translators of Cicero such difficulties persists in Christian writers.” (28–​29) In the writings of Christians such as Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Lactantius, and Augustine, “religio” is used to identify Christian worship practices; Nongbri writes, “What is most at issue for these Christian authors is the object of worship —​the one, true God or the many gods.” (30) In the fifth century, the medieval sense of religio referring to monastic life begins to appear (31), especially as one would see in the writings of Thomas Aquinas centuries later. Nongbri continues his genealogy of the Latin “religio” up to the cusp of the early modern period (and the writings of John Locke) —​where he locates the origin of the contemporary concept of religion —​but what is important to see is that the ancient meanings were significantly different from contemporary associations with the term.

8 See Nongbri 2013. 9 See Sun 2013.

62 Carroll Similar lessons can be derived from investigating the Greek word “thrēskeia,” frequently used to translate “religion.” Nongbri traces the history of “thrēskeia,” first appearing in Herodotus in the fifth century b.c.e. up through Greek Christian discourses in the tenth and eleventh centuries c.e. As with “religio,” the meanings of “thrēskeia” evolve and diversify over time. It’s range of meanings include “rituals” (Herodotus), “sacrifices” (Philo of Alexandria), “worship” (New Testament), “activities that go on in a temple or veneration of a god more generally,” but also “loyalty” to divine authority (Josephus), “sacrifice” (Origen), and “worship” (Eusebius). (36) As for Arabic, despite the occurrence of “religion” in popular English translations of the Qur’an, Nongbri argues that this is a problematic rendering of the Arabic word “dīn.” Examining Nessin Joseph Dawood’s 1956 translation, Nongbri indicates that “dīn” is also sometimes translated as “faith,” (sometimes in the same sentence). (39) Nongbri contrasts this with the earliest English translation of the Qur’an by Alexander Ross in 1649, where Ross uses the word “law” to render “dīn.” (41) Nongbri compares these translations with the Encyclopedia of Islam entry on “dīn,” which “proposes a wide semantic range for the word: custom, usage, judgment, direction, retribution.” (41) Nongbri then observes, “What ties these terms together is that they refer to social interactions, a far cry from the sort of private, internal, apolitical sense of ‘faith’ or ‘religion.’ ” (41f) Similar dynamics play out with respect to the words “milla” and “umma,” which also occasionally are translated by “religion.” Nongbri’s central thesis is that “religion” tends to distort its phenomena when it is taken to be a human universal (both culturally and temporally). Nongbri traces the development of “vera religio,” sometimes translated as “true religion” but which he translates as “genuine worship.” Expressions such as “vera religio” indicated that other traditions of worship were heretical, what would now entail an intra-​traditional defect and thus not a distinct tradition. Because of this polemical use of “religio,” the term indicates not an ancient or medieval consciousness of religion but rather a tendency to see other traditions as deviant forms of the speaker’s tradition. Indeed, the clarification of defensible differences, which predates the spread of the concept of religion had to do with differentiating between deviant claims and reasons within a tradition and those that originate within other traditions (Clayton 2006). What is at stake, in part, in interreligious encounters is recognition and comprehension in one’s otherness. Nongbri demurs at expanding the term beyond its Christian origins to somehow “include” all relevant phenomena around the world that some would say “ought” to fall under the concept; yet, he is not opposed to self-​ conscious use of the term in “redescription” of phenomena (Nongbri 2013, 158). Nongbri’s primary concern is the naive projection of the term on ancient (or

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even pre-​seventeenth century) practices and traditions, where he argues the term is likely to introduce associations alien to its phenomena. 1.3 Critical Realism about Religion Some critical theorists on religion (e.g. Russell T. McCutcheon 2003 and Timothy Fitzgerald 2003) argue that on the basis of genealogical studies, the term “religion” cannot be salvaged academically speaking, that the associations of the term with Christianity will tend to distort what it classifies (especially if what it is used to classify is distant from forms of early-​modern European Christianity). Thus, these critics of “religion” argue that scholars should employ a different vocabulary that might better do justice to the disparate phenomena otherwise collected together by “religion.” I will refer to this view as “eliminativism” about religion (as a parallel to eliminativism in the philosophy of mind). Kevin Schilbrack argues for a “critical realist” approach to the concept of religion in his recent book, Philosophy and the Study of Religions: a Manifesto. Schilbrack writes that “Critical realism” is the view that “the concept of ‘religion’ is socially constructed, but religion nevertheless exists, ‘out there’ in the world.” (Schilbrack 2014, 89)  Schilbrack argues further for a distinction between the identification and interpretation of something as a religion, wherein only participants can identify themselves or their practices or institutions as religious but others can interpret a phenomenon as religious in contexts beyond that of the term’s historical origin. The term “critical realism” originates in the reception of Roy Bhaskar’s critique of eliminativist social constructionism in social science. The idea is that one can accept the interpretive or epistemic value of a concept without claiming that the world really (ontologically) bears those properties predicated of it. Critical realism leaves it as an open question whether the concept really applies to the thing. When applied to the concept of religion, such a view would hold that something may be interpreted as religious without claiming that it really is religious. Critical realists thus aspire to be self-​aware of the use of concepts as tools for interpretation to be, perhaps, superseded by different concepts at a later date. While I  broadly agree with much in Schilbrack’s general approach to reconstructing the philosophy of religion, there are three dynamics concerning the ascription of religion-​status he did not address in the book: new religious movements, societies that accepted the concept of religion under unequal power dynamics, and societies that manage the social expressions of religious phenomena. I am thinking particularly of nations like China where the “religious marketplace” (Yang 2012) is under state management, where “religion” (zongjiao) entered the society and language via Japan amidst an unequal

64 Carroll power dynamic characterized by colonial or sometimes quasi-​colonial circumstances with the West (DuBois 2011), and where new religious movements (and quasi-​religious movements) jostle alongside the state-​recognized five religions (Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism) (Yang 2012 and Hendriks 2016). Of course, complete religious freedom is perhaps not allowed anywhere there is a state as various ethical and political values curtail or override its unimpeded development. All modern legal frameworks to some extent circumscribe what may or may not be ascribed religion-​status in so far as they treat of religions at all (compare with legal theory of religious rights). The point of critical realism is to recognize in the ordinary word “religion” viable academic applications while remaining circumspect about the ontological value of the term. What is helpful in critical realism is the registering of varying dynamics at play in ascriptions of religion-​status. It draws the scholar’s self-​ conscious attention to acts of interpretation and, possibly, to the social and political dynamics of language use; such scrupulousness about the application of an expression is also helpful for avoiding equivocation about the meaning of such a widely used term. While these social and political dynamics might not be important for all concepts, they are important for concepts, like religion, so close to conceptions of state authority, the secular, and human rights. Schilbrack’s critical realism would attend to the contexts of ascription of religion. It is unclear whether critical realism would be consistent with Wittgenstein’s post-​1929 philosophy; after all, it entails a position about the ­relationship between words and the world that is itself rather univocal. ­Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s remarks on seeing an aspect in Part ii of Philosophical Investigations (“Philosophy of Psychology  —​A  Fragment”) show an appreciation for entertaining multiple perspectives when considering the elements of a philosophical problem. Insofar as there are philosophical problems concerning the application of the concept of religion, flexibility regarding the use and revoking of a category may be helpful. There may be a sort of common cause between Schilbrack’s critical realist approach to “religion” and some of Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods. 2

Wittgenstein and Contexts of Ascription

In philosophical discourse, analysis of “ascription” arises most frequently in connection with the assigning of propositional attitudes —​such as beliefs or desires —​to other agents. Beliefs or desires (or other propositional attitudes) are ascribed to agents in order to describe their relationship to particular propositions and thus explain observable behavior. Thus, the variety of ways in

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which “belief” or “desire” are used could be investigated by attending to the contexts of ascription of belief or desire. Ascriptions of religion concern the saying of something that it “is a religion” or it “is religious.” Because of this overt interpretive connotation, “ascription” is a useful word for considering the acts of defining “religion” and of assigning religion-​or non-​religion-​status to an object. Accordingly, religion-​status is ascribed to persons, things, or traditions in order to compare them with other things labeled religious and thus explain observable behavior. In this way, one can approach the concept of “civil religion” (see Bellah 1970) as a redescription of phenomena, an interpretation that may be more or less hermeneutically illuminating. Yet, there are other reasons to ascribe religion-​status. It may be an honorific (praising the devotion of fans to a sports team), a pejorative (as in some instances of criticizing Confucianism as a religion),10 or a strategy to establish protected status where forms of political contention has not favored the movement (Falun Gong). Religion was not a major theme in Wittgenstein’s corpus, but one can find some examples of the ascription of religion-​status, particularly in texts he did not prepare to be published (such as the “Lectures on Religious Belief,” “Movements of Thought,” and “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough”). Because a number of relevant examples appear in the Lectures, I  will turn to these for the purposes of the present essay. The Lectures do not contain many abstract references to religion, per se. Wittgenstein refers to “religious persons,” “religious beliefs” or “religious controversies,” but these references occur in connection with a discussion of belief in “the Last Judgment” (LC, 55, 56) There are a few cases that do seem abstractive and generalizing: “In a religious discourse we use such expressions as ‘I believe that so and so will happen,’ and use them differently to the way in which we use them in science.” (57) Here, Wittgenstein is contrasting “religious discourse” with “scientific discourse.” While use of the term “religion” remains still within the context of considering belief in a Last Judgment, the statement is not fully (or unambiguously) abstractive; yet the opposition between it and “science” suggests that one type of human endeavor is being compared with another. The abstractive use of religion in description is found unambiguously a little later in the first lecture when Wittgenstein considers encountering an island with people whose beliefs “we are inclined to call religious.” (58) Of the

10

See, for example, Xiaomei Yang’s recounting of the various assessments of “Ru Jiao” by twentieth century Chinese intellectuals adhering to the principles of the May 4th Movement (Yang 2008, 555)  as well as Anna Sun’s history of late twentieth and early twenty-​first century Chinese Marxist scholarship on Confucianism (Sun 2013, 80).

66 Carroll statements these people make, some would just be sentences and others “religious statements” (58): 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. (58) The passage exemplifies what Nongbri and Schilbrack call “redescription.” Wittgenstein refers to being “inclined” to call the beliefs religious, that this ascription would be based on “connections” throughout a network of beliefs. Wittgenstein also indicates appreciation that while there would be clear-​cut cases of religion-​and non-​religion-​status, there would be examples about which we would not know what to say, what to ascribe. Following Schilbrack’s distinction between identification and interpretation (Schilbrack 2014, 94), there are two general types of ascription of religion: self-​ ascriptions and ascriptions done by others. Ascribing is similar to naming in that both indicate a relationship between an object possessing certain properties and a designation. Naming may further be involved with identification of grammatical features of a language-​game (as in a guide that one might follow to be able to participate in or at least understand the game). Wittgenstein writes, “What is the relation between a name and the thing named? —​Well, what is it? Look at language-​game (2) or at another one: there you can see the sort of thing that this relation consists in.” (PI, §37) Of course, ascription, like naming, is a practice that may be likewise inferred from context as much or more than when it is directly observed. Similarly, ascriptions of religion may be involved with identification of grammatical features of a language-​game and may seek to indicate similarities (such as with other religions) or differences (such as with non-​religions) with other instances of language. When surveying the shifting meanings of “religion” and the diverse phenomena sometimes grasped under its banner, scholars (Wittgensteinian or otherwise) at junctions like this often invoke the notion of family resemblances (PI, §67) to account for the diversity of meanings of “religion.” But such an approach would be not so much an account of the diversity of meanings as a placeholder for explanation. (Harrison 2006) It is not clear how the notion of family resemblance helps account for the different contexts of ascription

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of religion-​status. Indeed, Wittgenstein invokes the notion —​borrowed from Spengler —​to characterize the similarities amidst differences one finds when looking into how language works. But what produces these similarities? To help illustrate the question, consider somewhat similar problems relating to definitions and theories of art. For a long time in Western aesthetics —​ as Noël Carroll has described (Carroll 2002) —​representational theories of art were dominant (i.e., roughly, the view that artworks have representational content and that this is what makes such objects artworks). Later, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these theories were replaced or supplemented by expression theories of art (roughly, the view that the expression of an artist’s particular emotion is what confers art-​status on an object). In the mid-​twentieth century, formalism arose as a theory that defines “art” by its structural features (such as lines, shapes, vectors, rhythm, tones, and so on). Finally, in response to the recurrence of avant-​garde art exceeding the boundaries of old definitions and drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein, “open concept” approaches to art appeared (e.g. that of Morris Weitz). Open concept approaches treat “art” as a concept for which one will not find necessary and sufficient conditions; instead, new candidates for art-​status are identified by means of family resemblances with established artworks. How these resemblances are determined is a matter of similarities with paradigmatic instances of art or with previously indicated criteria (such as representation, expression, form); one might think of these as isomorphic features of the candidates and of the artworks. Open concept approaches to art were followed by institutional theories (such as George Dickie’s), where the “artworld” (e.g. an artist, a critic, or a gallery curator) confers art-​status on an object. The reception of the candidate for art-​status by an institution (the “artworld”) is what confers art-​status on the candidate. Institutional approaches have to do with the identification of functional features of candidates and artworks (institutional), where candidates play a similar social role and are thus welcomed by the artworld.11 Contra Carroll’s analysis, it seems to me that both “open concept” and institutional approaches to understanding the concept of “art” can be interpreted as Wittgensteinian in spirit. At stake between these different approaches is the question over whether family resemblances between candidates for art-​ status and artworks have to do with similarities between qualities they possess (e.g. representation, expression, or significant form), or whether family 11

In a similar vein, Victoria Harrison argues that because other vague or difficult to define concepts (e.g. “species” or “mind”) are still usefully analyzed in scholarly literature, it does not follow that “religion” should be abandoned because of difficulties surrounding definitions of that term. See especially Harrison (2006, 144–​145).

68 Carroll resemblances involve historical connections between established works and candidates for art-​status (perhaps mediated by institutions). The open concept approach treats art as a human universal where art-​status is determined by publicly observable properties, once one has the concept. The institutional approach treats art as a social construction, conferred on an object by someone acting on behalf of the art world (i.e. one who assesses the concept and is recognized by others as plausibly having the requisite judgment). To what extent do these same ways of thinking about family resemblances inform how we should think about hermeneutically useful ascriptions of religion? A disanalogy with the case of religion occurs because art has family resemblance qualities in part because of the propensities of artists to push the boundaries of prevailing criteria of art and in part because of the conviction of many thinkers and members of the artworld that art is a cultural phenomenon found throughout human history. If “religion” is a family resemblance term, it is in part because people think of it as a cultural universal, but note that, by and large, there is no parallel between the concepts of art and religion when it comes to the impulse to pursue the avant-​garde. The world religions and religious pluralism paradigms follow largely functionalist conceptions of the family resemblance of religions (i.e conceptions of paradigmatic qualities of religions are what theorists use to pick out the religions). Eliminativists about “religion”  —​those who hold that the term is unsalvageable because of its tendency to pick out properties prominent in Protestant Christianity —​embrace a genetic conception of family resemblance of religion (i.e. practices or traditions remote temporally or culturally from early modern Europe do not have a family resemblance) and thus should not be conceptualized as religions. That is, the term is unsalvageable as a universal type instantiated by a variety of tokens. Even so, it might still be useful, even for eliminativists, within Christian discourses. Critical realists would hold that ascriptions of religion-​status would always be answerable to questions of hermeneutical accuracy. Thus, as with ascriptions of art status in the contemporary world, it is possible that particular objects will satisfy some criteria for religion-​status while falling short of others. Ascribing religion-​status to a thing would be a “redescriptive” practice and would not be final. 3

The Landscapes of Dialogue and Comparison of Religions

While Wittgenstein used the term “religion” without evident concern about its genealogy, his philosophy supports being scrupulous about the universality

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and hermeneutical adequacy of terms; part of my argument is that this scrupulousness may be aided by attention to a term’s genealogy. It may be appropriate to abandon a concept in some situations (i.e. not to force its use); as McCutcheon and Nongbri advise, scholars might set aside “religion” from time to time in favor of different analytical concepts (even if one does so solely for the purpose of hermeneutical freshness —​in order to not reify a familiar descriptive category). Even so, adopting a purely genetic conception of family resemblance seems problematic. First, doing so, while preventing the errors of equivocation, would prescribe a starkly conservative approach to language use and the activities of the clarifying philosopher. While such an approach might be admirable in some respects, it would foreclose on the possibility of drawing imaginative connections between historically or culturally distant phenomena or instances of language. Second, Wittgenstein’s corpus supports a functionalist reading of family resemblance. This may be supplemented by genealogical investigation, but to embrace only a genetic approach to conceptual clarification would be to move away from Wittgenstein. Third, insofar as there are social practices that participants identify as religious and that others might interpret as religious, scrupulous, critical use of the term may be helpful. To forego use of the term would be to miss an opportunity for philosophical clarification of that which is inchoate or confused, a key impetus for much of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work. As with Schilbrack, I would hold that the term is sometimes useful for indicating similarities or differences among human social practices. Encounters between religions are encounters between specific people grouped together under a particular conception of religion, by themselves and/​or others, for a variety of reasons (including pragmatic, idealistic, and even “religious” reasons)12 in distinct times and places. Thus, it does not make sense to speak of interreligious dialogue without at the same time spelling out the relevant contextualizing factors. In some contexts, this information may be implicit, but more often it is helpful to make it explicit. Thus for example there is no sensible interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Islam (simpliciter); instead, what is sensible would be interreligious dialogue between particular (or particular groups of) Christians and Muslims and even then with critical scrutiny for how the dialogue may already be framed by social or political dynamics hidden from view. That way, conceptions of religiosity would be traceable to their contexts of ascription. The descriptions and clarifications of concepts, practices, or institutions achieved at these locations of dialogue may 12

I am grateful to the editors for helpful commentary on this point.

70 Carroll extend beyond those particular times and places (if the times and places bear a family resemblance —​genetic or functional), but then again, they may well not. The situatedness (within different landscapes) of particular standpoints may affect the dynamics of conversation and comparison. But there are resources in Wittgenstein’s corpus for addressing circumstances like these. If, as Wittgenstein writes in Philosophical Investigations, “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’ ” (PI, §123), then any time one encounters conceptual confusion about the application of a term, like “religion,” one can conduct conceptual investigation (perhaps aided by genealogical investigation). Clarification of differences of meaning can then help one avoid equivocation and (perhaps just as problematic) the erosion of trust that can stem from one party being misinterpreted. Future study connecting the circumstances of ascriptions of religion with research on Wittgenstein and aspect-​seeing (and in particular, the role of the will in imagination) would be helpful as it might aid in construction of a Wittgensteinian ethics of interpretation suitable for addressing conceptual confusion in diverse social contexts.13 The history of use of “religion” suggests that future use of the term will involve both ascription and withdrawal of ascription of religion-​status, that this will be open to debate, both over evidence and the hermeneutical adequacy of ascriptions of the term. To do otherwise risks participating in the reification of religions, the reinforcement of the obscuring idea that there is a sui generis essence to religion that two particular actors automatically enjoy if they happen to identify with one religion or another. In addition, such reification about religion also creates the possibility for reification about particular religious traditions. Theologians or pundits at times participate in this essentializing of traditions (or border constructions between traditions), but the role of the philosopher —​at least in the Wittgensteinian sense —​is to describe in an illuminating way the similarities and differences between instances of language use or social practice. Thus, what applies to the predicate “is religious” also applies to predicates like “is Christian” or “is Buddhist.”14 In a Wittgensteinian vein, it is not the business of the philosopher to decide who or what belongs to these categories; that job falls to pundits or theologians. In describing the contours of existing and historical language use, philosophers can show how interreligious communication is not just one kind of interreligious encounter but is instead that which may happen in particular times and places, framed by local conceptions 13 14

In connection with this point, I am grateful to the editors for drawing my attention to the work of Day and Krebs 2010 and Mulhall 1990. See Harrison (2006, 148–​149) for more on family resemblances within religious traditions.

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of what religion is. Neglect of these landscape features of conversations over boundaries of difference may only issue in more confusion and thoughtless reification of another’s tradition as well as one’s own. Given the importance of mutually clarifying communication between those who may identify or be identified as religious for living well in our diverse and crowded world, that would be a missed opportunity.15

Bibliography

Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Bellah, Robert N. Beyond Belief:  Essays on Religion in a Post-​Traditional World. New York: Harper &Row, 1970. Capps, Walter H. Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Caputo, John. On Religion. New York: Routledge, 2001. Carroll, Noël. Philosophy of Art a Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2002. Carroll, Thomas D. “The Traditions of Fideism.” Religious Studies 44.1 (2008): 1–​22. Carroll, Thomas D. Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave-​Macmillan, 2014. Cavell, Stanley. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Clayton, John. Religions, Reasons, and Gods: Essays in Cross-​Cultural Philosophy of Religion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Day, William and Krebs, Victor J. Seeing Wittgenstein Anew:  New Essays on Aspect-​ Seeing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations (August, 2015). https://​www.irs.gov/​pub/​irs-​pdf/​p1828.pdf (accessed January 05, 2015). DuBois, Thomas David. Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Fitzgerald, Timothy. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2003. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

15

This essay has benefitted from critical questions and comments from the editors of this volume, an anonymous reviewer, and participants at the conference in Cambridge. Remaining problems are the responsibility of the author.

72 Carroll Harrison, Victoria S., “The pragmatics of defining religion in a multi-​cultural world.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 59 (2006): 133–​152. Hendriks, Eric C. “China’s Self-​Help Industry: American(ized) Life Advice in China.” in Handbook of Cultural and Creative Industries in China, ed. Michael Keane. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016. Josephson, Jason Ananda. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2012. MacInnis, Donald E. Religion in China Today: Policy and Practice. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989. Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2005. McCutcheon, Russell T. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Mulhall, Stephen. On Being in the World: Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects. London: Routledge, 1990. Nongbri, Brent. Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. oed Online. “Religion.” December, 2015. Oxford University Press. http://​www.oed. com/​view/​Entry/​161944?redirectedFrom=religion& (accessed January 05, 2016). Schilbrack, Kevin. “Religions: Are There Any?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 78/​4 (2010): 1112–​1138. Schilbrack, Kevin. Philosophy and the Study of Religions:  A Manifesto. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell Publishers, 2014. Smart, Ninian. Dimensions of the Sacred:  An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Sun, Anna. Confucianism as a World Religion:  Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. The United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18. http://​www.un.org/​en/​universal-​declaration-​human-​rights/​ (accessed January 05, 2016). U.S. Constitution. Amendment I. http://​www.archives.gov/​exhibits/​charters/​bill_​of_​ rights_​transcript.html#text (accessed January 05, 2016). Yang, Fenggang. Religion in China:  Survival and Revival under Communist Rule. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Yang, Xiaomei. “Some Issues in Chinese Philosophy of Religion.” Philosophy Compass. 3.3 (2008): 551–​569.

­c hapter 4

Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy as Foundation of Comparative Theology Klaus von Stosch There are two streams of reception of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and his contributions to interreligious communication. On the one hand, his contributions are greatly appreciated because he seems to be in favor of religious pluralism. For example, he says to M. O’C. Drury that “[a]‌ll genuine expressions of religion are wonderful, even those of the most savage peoples” (Rhees 1984, 93). Moreover, in his whole philosophy he tries to highlight and appreciate differences and diversities. It is paradigmatic for his way of thinking that he considered the expression of the Earl of Kent in Shakespeare’s King Lear as an epigraph for his Philosophical Investigations: “I’ll teach you differences!” Thus, the respect for religion and for religious diversity seems to be a central concern for Wittgenstein. On the other hand, this respect seems to be grounded in neglecting the cognitive dimension of religious beliefs. Although Wittgenstein wants to approach religious phenomena in a purely descriptive way, he does not significantly emphasize the cognitive dimension of religions. For example, Wittgenstein states, “Was Augustine mistaken, then, when he called on God on every page of the Confessions? Well –​one might say –​if he was not mistaken, then the Buddhist holy-​man, or some other, whose religion expresses quite different notions, surely was. But none of them was making a mistake except where he was putting forward a theory.” (rfgb, 1e). In most interpretations of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, this critical attitude towards theories in the realm of religion has been understood as a defense of a non-​cognitivist interpretation of theology. However, Wittgenstein’s critique of theories does not only concern religions but also every kind of philosophy, and has roots in a specific understanding of philosophy (von Stosch 2001a) and of religious language. If we want to understand his concern here, we have to take a closer look at his investigations concerning religious beliefs. In my contribution, I try to develop a closer look at Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, in which I argue for the possibility of a cognitivist interpretation of religious beliefs. This interpretation opens up a peculiar dimension of interreligious communication through its sensitivity for the expressive dimension of religious beliefs. Both the awareness of expressive

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74 von Stosch dimensions of religious beliefs and the respect of its cognitive elements are foundational for the methods of comparative theology which I try to develop in the last part of this article.

Religious Beliefs as Elements of World-​Pictures?

Many Wittgensteinian philosophers seem to claim that Wittgenstein’s reflections on religious belief lead to a relativistic or fideistic understanding of religious beliefs (cf. von Stosch 2010). This way of understanding Wittgenstein is, unfortunately, a kind of ‘canonical view’ in many circles of Wittgenstein’s interpretation. If this interpretation is correct, Wittgenstein would not be of much help for interreligious communication, as his approach would disrespect the self-​understanding of most religious believers. The main argument for this ‘canonical view’ –​or at least the most powerful one in my view –​is that Wittgenstein seems to treat propositions expressing religious belief as grammatical propositions or even as hinge propositions. And it is true: religious beliefs, or at least some elements of them, are, as Wittgenstein supposes, part of our grammar or our world-​picture (cf. OC, §107, §239f., §336; Lütterfelds 1998, 143). If at least the basic elements of religious beliefs belong to the world-​picture of a religious person, it would seem to be absurd to give any reasons for them. Likewise, it would appear to be impossible to discuss them with people who do not share the same religious form of life. For it makes no sense, in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, to give reasons for the world-​picture, as it is the instance which is presupposed in all reasoning. My world-​picture, as “the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting” (OC, §162), is “the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false” (OC, §94). It is impossible to lay a foundation for it because it is the ground of all foundation. You cannot argue for or against it because it is, as Wittgenstein puts it, “the element in which arguments have their life” (OC, §105). However, the grammatical propositions of our world-​pictures not only give a framework for the question of the validity of all arguments, but are also the basis of their meaning. The striking point in this context is that the meaning of the grammatical propositions themselves is not accessible without reference to our practice, and our practice is not accessible in isolation from our language-​games. Thus, we only understand the meaning of our world-​pictures by referring to their embedding in our language-​games, since, in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, our ways of acting and their understanding are originally connected (cf. Schulte 1987, 26, 31). For this reason, the grammatical propositions of our world-​pictures cannot be understood without reference

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to these language-​games as enacted in practice. This also explains why people who use the same terms cannot contradict each other when these terms play different roles in their language-​games, especially when these terms are embedded in the (often tacit) level of grammatical propositions of the world-​ pictures. Accordingly, understanding the main elements of religious belief as participating in our grammar or world-​picture allows us to see why Wittgenstein, in his Lectures on Religious Belief, claims that believers and non-​believers are often unable to contradict each other. They are not only playing different language-​games, but the meaning of the hinge propositions, which ground all possible argumentation between them, differ. They can, at least, differ to such an extent that they are simply talking about different things, although using the same terms. A lack of awareness of the regulative role of religious belief can lead to complete darkness in philosophical enquiry. According to the later Wittgenstein, ignoring the difference between grammatical or regulative propositions on the one hand, and encyclopaedical or empirical propositions on the other hand, is not only the “essential thing about metaphysics” (cf. rpp, i §949; Z, §458), but also and especially the main cause of errors in philosophy of religion. Insight into the grammatical or regulative status of at least some elements of religious belief also explains why Wittgenstein criticizes any foundation of religious belief that is not aware of this status.1 Wittgenstein makes clear that any giving of a reason already presupposes belief or unbelief, such that there cannot be any reason which forces somebody to change his religious (un)belief, since the change of an element of a world-​picture cannot be forced by arguments on the encyclopaedical level. As religious belief, considered as part of our world-​pictures, sets the parameters of our actions, it seems possible to have access to it only by changing one’s life. Religious belief in Wittgenstein’s view is not pure doctrine, cold wisdom or superficial repetition of formulas, but rather passion, since “life … and religion are full of colour” (CVR, 71); in religion, as he puts it, one has to be “Ergriffen und Umgedreht werden”/​“seized and turned around” (CVR, 61). As a “passionately committing oneself to a system of coordinates” and as a “way of judging life” (CVR, 73), it cannot be founded on a neutral independent grammar shared by everybody. Instead, it lies at the ground of all argumentation for and understanding of religious belief. The only possible way to access it seems to be a leap of faith, making any argumentation about it superfluous and useless. 1 Cf. the attack against Father O’Hara in Wittgenstein’s lectures on religious belief.

76 von Stosch If this account of religious belief was the last word on the matter from a Wittgensteinian perspective, it would be silly to argue in favour of the truth of religious belief, and interreligious communication would be very difficult. At least, notions like “truth” or “rationality” would no longer have a meaning independent of a language-​game. Any claim to absolute truth and any question as to its universal validity would be a complete misunderstanding of religious belief, which would have to be cured by philosophical investigations (cf. Kroß 1998, 287). However, at the very core and origin of monotheism are claims to universal validity (cf. Stosch 2011) which seem to understand themselves as true in all circumstances, times and contexts. Therefore, a philosophical theory which makes it impossible to have rational universal claims is not very helpful in the religious realm. It is, furthermore, contrary to the descriptive attitude which the later Wittgenstein adopted in his philosophy.

Propositions Expressing Religious Belief as Hinge Propositions?

Having examined this ‘canonical view’ of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion, let us take a closer look at the grammatical status of propositions expressing religious belief. This will clarify if it really is useless to try to give reasons for religious belief and to communicate across the borders of different religions. To present any further approach, it is first necessary to clarify whether all grammatical propositions of our world-​pictures are unable to be doubted within their religious framework, because it is precisely this undoubtability which is the foundation of our world-​pictures in Wittgenstein’s approach. Naturally, it is not possible to doubt the rules of a language-​game while playing it. For instance, you cannot play soccer and at the same time doubt its fundamental rules within the game. At the very least, if your doubt manifests itself practically and you pick up the ball with your hands (unless you are the goalkeeper), you would not be asked whether you have good motives for your actions. Instead you will be punished according to the rules of the game. Hence, you cannot stop following the rules and still be understood to be playing the same game. Nonetheless, you can, in other circumstances, start a discussion about the most fundamental rules of soccer; when discussing them you are playing a different language-​game. These discussions can lead to new rules, whereas, within the language-​game of ‘soccer’, the grammar is fixed and cannot be doubted in any practically relevant way without stopping the game. Now, the rules of soccer are (at least usually) not part of our world-​pictures, but the status of all regulative or grammatical propositions is similar. Normally, you cannot doubt regulative or grammatical propositions in any practically

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relevant way while still following them in all your actions. You are not playing soccer when you do not follow its rules, and you do not have certain elements of a world-​picture except if you live by them. The regulative status of a sentence depends on whether it regulates your life or not. If it regulates your life, any practically relevant doubt is excluded because, otherwise, it no longer actually regulates your life. At this stage, the given factors lead to an important distinction  –​there are regulative propositions which only regulate certain language-​games and which can be doubted in other language-​games. Concerning these grammatical propositions, it is possible to ask, in a practically relevant sense, whether we should follow them or not. This is so because there are situations in which you do not follow them and in which you can ask, even if you are currently following them, whether you should really do so. This means you can doubt these propositions without changing the central features of your world-​picture. For example, in Germany you shake hands when you meet somebody, or you say “Enjoy your meal” before eating with somebody, whereas many Americans tend to think that these particular conventions are not very important. Thus, as a German you can stop following those rules when you are in America. Maybe this becomes more difficult when you go to Iran and realize that men are shaking hands with each other, but that as a man you are not allowed to shake hands with a woman. Nonetheless, it is possible for a German to follow those rules as well and, at the same time, to reflect which rules are better and which rules are preferable. Conversely, however, there are regulative propositions that you cannot doubt in any practically relevant sense without doubts arising concerning your entire world-​picture. These propositions are normally called ‘hinge propositions’, a term referring to the propositions Wittgenstein discussed with George E. Moore in On Certainty. For instance, no matter what, I am not able to doubt the fact that I am a man, that the earth already existed long before I was born and that I have never been to the sun. Such propositions belong to our system of reference and are presupposed in our language-​games. It makes no sense to give reasons for them because they are presupposed in all reasoning. It is not possible to isolate one of these beliefs without shaking the world-​picture as a whole. The crucial element here is to note that not all grammatical or regulative propositions are hinge propositions in the sense of propositions introduced by Moore in order to refute scepticism. Thus, it can be useful to give reasons for regulative propositions in instances where they are not hinge propositions. For example, it is a regulative proposition for me that men and women should be allowed to shake hands with each other if they want to do it. Arguments could be made for this from the perspective of gender equality.

78 von Stosch At the same time, both rules are deeply conditioned with culture and can be doubted. If you were raised in Iran and had never seen a man and a woman shaking hands, it might be a hinge proposition that such a rule is followed by everybody. However, as a European who has been in the U.S. and Iran, the rule is still important but its contingency is accepted. With this distinction in mind, we can take a closer look at our topic by asking whether propositions expressing religious belief are hinge propositions or not. Regardless of whether Wittgenstein himself accepted such propositions as hinge propositions,2 I intend to give my answer in a purely descriptive way (cf. PI, §109, §124). The question is whether it is true (or even more radically: possible) to say that religious believers cannot doubt their religious convictions in a practically relevant way. Can religious convictions be part of our world-​picture in the sense that they regulate the entire life of religious believers? Are they such a fundamental part of the grammar that religious believers have no other alternative than to follow them? Obviously, the answer for contemporary believers is ‘No’, and this is why we should not think that they are hinge propositions. Religious believers sometimes doubt their religious beliefs, just as they also know that they have alternatives to turn to. They are aware of the possibility of doubting propositions expressing religious belief even without changing their grammatical status. At least in our pluralistic society this is obviously the case. Both religious and ethical convictions are not only shaken and endangered by the ‘paper doubts’ –​ doubts which are expressed in an academic context but not lived –​of some hard-​core skeptics; in addition, the forms of life establishing ethical and religious values and convictions in our postmodern world are so diversified that greater diversification can scarcely be conceived. Diversification is not a sign of the absence of truth, but it clearly indicates the absence of necessity. If rules are different in different cultures and language-​games, it is clear that they are contingent, and it is possible to have doubts. That is why I would like to speak of a factual contingency of the regulative status of propositions expressing religious belief. However, the relevant facts here can and perhaps should change.3 As such, in a philosophical enquiry, it

2 Regarding the evaluation of Wittgenstein’s point of view concering this question, I agree with Hilary Putnam’s view presented in Putnam (1992). But as it would be next to impossible to give sufficient reason for this position in a short paper, I prefer to exclude this question here. 3 Undoubtedly, one can imagine a society in which there do not exist any alternatives for a certain religious belief. In this sense, Anthony Kenny tries to establish the possibility of a society in which the belief in God “is deeply embedded in everyone’s noetic structure in such a way as to be implicit in every kind of inquiry” (Kenny 1992, 35). As I will try to show below, it is not

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would not be enough to demonstrate contingency on an empirical level. It is therefore important to see that, at least for a religious belief articulated in the tradition of Western philosophy, there are good reasons to speak, not only of a factual, but also of a grammatical contingency of the regulative status of religious belief (cf. von Stosch 2001b, 269–​275). Central to my approach here is the fact that not all actions of a human being can be regulated by belief in God in a manner that excludes internal doubts on the matter. If the propositional expression of belief in God were a hinge proposition, it would be impossible even to question from an internal perspective whether it should always be followed. This means it would be impossible to doubt the regulative proposition in a practically relevant sense without converting it into an encyclopaedical proposition. For instance, a man, having consumed a good amount of Belgian beer, finds himself in the middle of a drag-​show at 2 o’clock in the morning in a London night-​bar with everybody around him claiming that he is a woman. Perhaps then he himself –​at least at this very moment  –​will become uncertain of his sexual identity. In that case the (undoubtable) hinge proposition “I am a man” has been converted into a (doubtable) encyclopaedical proposition. The striking phenomenon with propositions expressing religious belief is that it is possible to doubt them without leaving the language-​game which is regulated by them. At this point it has occasionally been objected that a world-​picture-​internal doubt on elementary religious beliefs is not possible.4 From this point of view, doubts indicate the absence of assurance of faith and therefore an indication of the fact that religious beliefs have lost their regulative, world-​picture-​ constitutive status. Concerning this thought, it is certainly true that doubts can be a sign of religious beliefs having lost their regulative status. However, there are acts of faith which include these doubts without invalidating the regulative status of the religious components of one’s world-​picture. As an example, one could mention the act of praying, which certainly has a constitutive status for a whole set of religious beliefs. It seems to me that, in our context, it is an important characteristic of Jewish and Christian prayers that one can doubt essential religious beliefs without them losing their regulative status. “Also, the prayer has been affected by doubt. It cannot and may not deny its place of living; the faith founded by praying cannot abolish the doubts in God. The prayer is the place of truth, the possible to imagine this situation when you consider the notion of God as it is conceived in the tradition of Western philosophy. 4 Cf. Brümmer 1999, 446; Herck 1998, 223. The following paragraph has been published already in Stosch 2010, 129f.

80 von Stosch hour of truth –​and precisely, therefore, not a place of unquestionable and unquestioning assurance.”5 Thus, prayer is not the removal of doubts concerning fundamental religious beliefs. Rather, it helps to articulate these doubts without invalidating the world-​picture-​constitutive meaning of religious beliefs. It would be a great misunderstanding of religious beliefs to consider them undoubtable in their regulative status. On the contrary, it seems –​as the example of the doubtfully-​searching praying man shows –​characteristic to have regulative status without abolishing the internal possibility of doubting. The peculiarity of religious beliefs seems to have all characteristics of world-​ picture-​constitutive, regulative beliefs without taking part in their internal undeniability. Indeed, it is possible to doubt all sort of regulative sentences regarding their semantic meaning. In those (internally indubitable) regulative sentences, such a doubt results in either a pure paper doubt, or the doubt leads to a change of status heading towards encyclopaedical belief. For instance, the proposition, ‘that is a hand’, gains encyclopaedical status temporarily when pointing at one’s own hand after a traffic accident. Usually, such a regulative sentence is only doubtable in scepticism. Such a doubt can indeed be used methodically, but it loses its power when used in real life because it deprives itself of its own grammatical foundation. On the contrary, even without turning to a general scepticism and without being in extreme situations, you can always internally doubt religious beliefs. This internal questionability is, for example, shown in the act of praying. It shows that religious beliefs –​because of their universal demand to state something about the last reality –​do not endure anything which is not compatible with this demand. A religious proposition can only be valid if it is compatible with everything we know about reality. Hence, problems emerge from two points of view: On the one hand, the religious view of life is questioned when it is confronted with alternative ways of interpreting reality as a whole. This factual plurality of religious and non-​religious views of life means that the regulative importance of a view of life can never be accepted unquestioningly.6 On the other hand, religious beliefs are not only dubitable because of their factual plurality. They are dubitable because their universal need for

5 Werbick 2001, 32, own translation. 6 However, there are other subjects without reasonable alternative approaches, for example the idea that the world did not exist before my birth. Perhaps in a certain discussion we will have no more arguments against this idea and –​after three years in the dungeons of a king, who thinks that the world started with him –​we will be so acquiescent that we would admit anything to him. However, we cannot help calling such a king mad, while we take alternative religious or naturalistic interpretations of the (last) reality seriously.

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compatibility with our experiences makes it possible to question them again and again. Religious beliefs want to be compatible with all experiences and all ideas of the world; doubt can never be forced to come to an end because there are always new ways of perceiving reality. Said in a more technical way, religious beliefs represent last orientations in relation to the last reality. They want to refer to something unconditioned in a conditioned life and world. This correlation cannot be unambiguous because the unconditioned cannot be unambiguously expressed in the conditioned world. That is why, in religious matters, there is a never-​ending possibility and need of interpretation, and why doubt can never be excluded.7 Thus, the strategy to explain religious beliefs as undubitable parts of our world-​pictures not only fails because of the factual plurality of religious beliefs but also because of their grammatical structure. From this it does not follow that religious beliefs do not have or should not have a constitutive role in our world-​pictures. It only reminds us of the contingency of this role. The insight as to the contingent nature of the regulative status of religious belief and of religious language-​games leads us to the task of rational justification of religious belief.

Interreligious Communication in the Awareness of Double Contingency

As I have shown, a purely philosophical-​descriptive way of dealing with the grammar of propositions expressing belief in God, conceived as an unconditional being, reveals something I suggest we call the double contingency of the regulative status of religious belief. I speak of a double contingency because the validity of the regulative power of a religious conviction is contingent, not only for empirical reasons in our postmodern world, but also for grammatical reasons within all conceptions of God in the tradition of Western philosophy. The regulative status of religious convictions is unextinguishably contingent, but it does not follow that they all have to be transformed into empirical or encyclopaedical propositions. As we learned above, it is the peculiarity of religious beliefs that they can be doubted without eliminating them from our grammar. What can be seen is that their regulative status is free neither from the possibility of doubt, nor from the necessity of foundation, nor from a check through communication. 7 Cf. Stosch 2001b, 268–​274; Stosch 2003, 124–​139.

82 von Stosch This necessity of foundation becomes even more obvious when propositions expressing religious belief are taken as empirical or encyclopaedical propositions. In Wittgenstein’s descriptive approach to philosophy, the question whether propositions expressing religious belief are grammatical or encyclopaedical propositions cannot be answered without reference to the language-​game-​practice of religious believers. It seems to be clear that religious believers treat a religious conviction sometimes as a regulative element of their world-​picture and sometimes as an encyclopaedical proposition. Since philosophy leaves everything as it is (PI, §124), it makes no sense to try to teach religious believers that their belief cannot have a cognitive-​propositional dimension. In a similar manner to Wittgenstein scholar Severin Schroeder (cf. 2000, 150), I will try to go beyond the opposition of grammatical or expressive dimensions of religious belief, on the one hand, and of encyclopaedical or cognitve-​propositional dimensions, on the other. Religious belief can have both dimensions, and, as a philosopher, one has to take a very close look at the respective language-​game in order to clarify its status in a concrete situation. Philosophical insight into the grammatical structure of propositions expressing religious belief can only be gained through a turn of focus to the individual case and to the concrete language-​game. Therefore, philosophy of religion, like every philosophy that seeks to follow Wittgenstein, has to be established as a collection of examples. Unfortunately, I cannot develop such a collection here. Let me simply mention briefly one example which I have tried to develop elsewhere in greater length (cf. von Stosch 2016, von Stosch 2018). The discussion of the problem of evil has an obvious cognitive dimension. Theology has to show how belief can be defended against the logical and the evidential argument from evil. Theology has to explain how belief in an almighty, omniscient and omnibenevolent God can be reconstructed in the face of evil. However, such attempts at theodicy lead to challenges from the perspective of practical reason. For a convincing defense of religious belief in the face of evil it is not enough to refer to theoretical arguments. We also have to look at the moral and practical implications, i.e. at the regulative dimension, of religious beliefs. This will also shape our examination of the cognitive meaning of our theoretical concepts. Hence, theoretical and practical reason have to work hand in hand. A defense of religious belief has to be aware of the different dimensions of the meaning of religious belief. I cannot explain my example further in this context, and I cannot add others. But what I will try to do is to give some formal hints at such a collection and to exclude certain evaluations of religious belief and its relationship to reason. So far, it can be concluded that the given insight into the grammatical

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structure of propositions expressing religious belief helps to avoid four mistakes when investigating the possibility of giving reasons for religious belief: 1. First, fideism contradicts the grammar of propositions expressing religious belief. In other words, in my definition, fideism is a position that claims the regulative status of propositions expressing religious belief without considering the necessity of grounding this regulative status. Such a position has to be avoided because of its unawareness of the double contingency of the regulative status of religious convictions. Although religious convictions are often correctly treated as parts of our world-​pictures, fideism mistakenly concludes from the regulative status of many propositions expressing religious belief that they can be considered as hinge propositions. 2. Second, neither can we approve of the opposite conception, which takes all propositions expressing religious belief as encyclopaedical, empirical or cognitive propositions, and therefore supports the illusion that religious belief can be defended or offended in a neutral grammar. I call this conception rationalism. Its problem is that it does not consider that religious convictions often have a regulative status in the life of religious believers. This means that the validity of religious belief cannot be evaluated on a purely cognitive-​propositional level. The regulative-​expressive level needs to be looked at as well. Otherwise, one fails to understand the meaning of the cognitive propositions of religious believers, because the meaning of all encyclopaedical propositions depends on the used grammar, i.e. on the regulative level. 3. The third conception we have to exclude from a philosophy of religion following Wittgenstein is relativism. Relativism, from a Wittgensteinian perspective, is a position which, from the double contingency of the regulative status of religious belief, draws the conclusion of its arbitrariness. However, contingency, as I suggest, does not preclude the possibility of a well-​founded choice. On the contrary, contingency demands and enables well-​founded choice, and is the presupposition of a free and ethically significant relation to religious belief and to what we call God. 4. Finally, fundamentalism has to be rejected within my approach because it contradicts the grammar of religious belief. There are two forms of fundamentalism which try to eliminate the contingency of religious belief. One strategy is an individual fundamentalism that attempts to ignore the diversity of religious beliefs and world-​pictures by withdrawing into a sort of (intellectual) ghetto. The other takes the form of an attempt to eradicate contingency by enforcing a certain religious belief, as a system of reference, onto a society or part of it. Even if fundamentalism did

84 von Stosch succeed in eliminating the empirical contingency of religious belief, it could not eliminate the contingency of the regulative status of religious belief. Grammatical reasons will not allow it. To sum up, in a philosophy of religion that builds upon Wittgenstein, one has to avoid any position that ignores two grammatical insights concerning the structure and status of propositions expressing religious belief: a. insight into the regulative status of at least some religious convictions, or rather their being-​embedded in the bedrock-​level of our world-​pictures, and b. the notion of the double contingency of this regulative status (that is to say, this embedding), opening religious convictions to rational evaluation and ethically significant free choice. If one is cognizant of these points, it is not only possible but necessary (cf. b) to give reasons for religious convictions, and it makes a lot of sense to discuss them in interreligious communication. It is clear that these reasons are highly menaced by errors or misunderstandings. First, because the meaning of religious convictions cannot be understood without reference to our diversified language-​game-​practice and, second, because the meaning is often dependent on tacit elements of our world-​pictures. Thus, interreligious communication can shape religious beliefs, and it is therefore a complicated enterprise. If we want to be rational in our religious beliefs, it can be extremely helpful to have communication across the borders of our world-​pictures and religions, because interreligious communication in many situations can help us to gain awareness of the tacit elements of our own world-​picture. If interreligious communication is so important for a better understanding of our own position and world-​picture, it is important to use appropriate methods for it. In the following pages, I try to develop six methods which should be followed in interreligious communication for it to lead to a significant and meaningful self-​ articulation in theology. These methods are identical with the basic methods of comparative theology and can be developed with the help of Wittgenstein.

Methods of Comparative Theology Developed from Wittgenstein8

If we take Wittgenstein’s considerations seriously, it is clear that each philosophical and theological enterprise has to start from a concrete case study (1)9 8 In the following chapter I am using some passages from my article, Comparative Theology as Challenge for the Theology of the 21st Century (von Stosch 2012a). For further explanations, cf. von Stosch 2012b. 9 This numbering corresponds to the six methodological points expanded below.

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and has to deal with real problems (2). It is also clear that a lot of work has to be done to understand the religious beliefs within their language-​games and forms of life (3), and that all theological investigations have to be correlated with practice (5). A Wittgensteinian enquiry will always be vulnerable to revisions because it is highly dependent on the fallible insights into our language-​ games (6). Therefore, it is crucial to take into account different perspectives and language-​games from different contexts and cultures (4). Thus, the following six-​point methodology for comparative theology and interreligious communication can be developed from Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Comparative Theology Is Characterised by Its Micrological Approach and Its Attention to the Particular One of the basic insights of Wittgenstein’s philosophy concerns the dependence of the meaning of religious beliefs on the use of religious language, or language-​games. The understanding that the meaning of religious convictions depends on a particular language-​game compels dialogue between different religious traditions to refer to concrete examples and interrelations. Since the sentence, “God is love”, can point to different meanings depending on to whom and in what context it is said, one can understand it adequately only by perceiving it as embedded in particular language-​games and integrating it in dialogue. Therefore, comparative theology can never result in a universal theory about religions and truth.10 Since the meanings of basic religious beliefs within particular traditions are heterogeneous and can lead to fruitful discussions (only if related to single cases and language-​games), comparative theology focuses on a cautious observation of selected details within particular case studies.11 Comparative theology is also recognizable by a focus on an interreligious and intercultural comparison of exactly-​specified theological, literary or confessional writings, concrete rituals, defined beliefs, and certain theological concepts within limited contexts and chosen historical eras.12 Every act of (1)

10 11

12

Cf. Clooney 2001, 14: “Working by examples also has the advantage of making it clear that I am not attempting a general theory about theology and religion nor about Christianity and Hinduism in order to explain everything, all at once.” Clooney talks about a “careful consideration of some details of a few particular cases” (2001, 15). Accordingly, he requires that every kind of critique of his ideas and statements are illustrated with examples (ibid.). Clooney’s critique of Dupuis’ strongly a priori critic of religion is symptomatic (cf. ibid., 23). Cf. Knitter 2004, 207:  “They (comparative theologians; author) generally try to limit themselves to comparing specific texts, concrete rituals, focused beliefs, particular theologians, limited contexts, or historical periods.”

86 von Stosch comparison follows an internal logic and provides theology with interesting insights by addressing the concrete.13 In order to respect people in their fears, afflictions and queries, it is vitally important to remember the question of truth even within this micrological approach. Considering this, the second basic principle follows suit. Comparative Theology Is Concerned with Contemporary Problems and Intends to Give an Orientation on Actually Posed Questions Although comparative theology has compiled different examples of contemporary problems, the selection of questions should not be arbitrary. It must be geared toward theological and existential problems, concerned with lay questions about sense, salvation and truth, as well as critical challenges by specialists. Otherwise, comparative theology would become a playground for detail-​loving eccentrics to meticulously compare totally irrelevant subjects. Just as it is not analytic philosophy if one comments arbitrarily on some random detail of our language, commenting capriciously on correct observations for comparing religious traditions is not automatically comparative theology. Therefore, it is important that, as a first step in comparative theology, problems are drafted according to the different viewpoints of religious and non-​ religious traditions, in which context the critiques of religion appear quite meaningful. Of course, one should not expect that there will be a uniform canon of questions for all comparative theologies in the world. Nonetheless, such questions should at least identify shared problems at the point of concrete research and assess the given examples with a view to offering clear solutions. In relation to this important problem of choice and the need of orientation towards real problems, we can learn a lot from Wittgenstein. His philosophical starting points are always existential or intellectual problems. He starts with the insight, “I don’t know my way about” (PI, §123), and tries to show “the fly the way out of the fly-​bottle” (PI, §309). Thus, the aim of comparative theology cannot be simply an abstract overview of a comparison of religions, but rather must be to realize how this comparison is shaped by the questions of religious believers. It must show how these questions can be addressed instead of perpetuating metaphysical debates within the battle-​fields of abstract theories (as exclusivism, inclusivism or pluralism) (cf. von Stosch 2007). (2)

13

Cf. Hintersteiner 2007, 484, with reference to Clooney: “Each act of comparison bears its own internal logic and reveals intriguing insights into Christian theology.”

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Comparative Theology Wants to Appreciate Differences and Tries to Learn from Them for Its Own Development If we want to have meaningful interreligious communication, we have to take seriously the internal perspectives of the language-​games of our conversation partners. A  precondition would thus be a detailed knowledge of one’s own theological position in addition to those of others. This knowledge is opened up solely if theologians try not only to understand another position from a (religiously examined) external perspective but also to look at it from the perspective of the dialogue partner’s inner-​confessional theology. The ideal case would involve a comparative theologian who has studied more than one theology and would be able to switch back and forth between inner-​confessional perspectives. As a minimum, he or she should have experiences with the ideas and rules of other religious traditions to almost the same extent as he or she does of his or her own tradition, and should be able to develop an adequate inner perspective in dialogue with other beliefs.14 Since a factual statement of the other is only adequately understood within the context of the theologian’s own world-​picture, the meaning of the different elements of belief will remain unclear if the theologian abstains from referencing their inner perspective. Thus, in interreligious communication we need a significant amount of time simply to understand the meaning of the words and signs of people who use other language-​games. This venture seems to be complicated enough, but the enterprise becomes even more difficult because religious convictions are often embedded in the regulative level of our language-​games. Since many elements of our world-​pictures are tacit, and since the rules we follow in our language-​ games are only visible in our actions –​sometimes without explicit knowledge of them15 –​different interpretations of our actions are possible. So, the first step must be to search for a common interpretation of actions embodying religious convictions between the dialogue partners in a concrete situation –​an enterprise which sometimes seems to be hopeless because it is so difficult to understand religious convictions of people from another culture. However, it is not the case that no link between different world-​pictures or language-​ games exists. In Wittgenstein’s philosophy, language-​ games are not completely autonomous and they are never inaccessible. Language-​ games as forms of life and world-​pictures are not hermetically separated from each other. Instead, they are constituted by their “open boundaries and fuzzy (3)

14 15

Cf. Hintersteiner 2007, 478, with reference to Clooney: “To understand and evaluate a religious text of another tradition requires a reader to become deeply and holistically engaged in that tradition.” Cf. PI, §219: “Ich folge der Regel blind.”

88 von Stosch borders” (cf. Schneider 1999, 145). This permeability is the reason for our ability to move between different language-​games without appealing to a sort of super-​language-​game or a transcendental level. All that we can refer to in these movements is what Wittgenstein calls the “common behavior of mankind” (PI, §206). This common human way of acting is not a distinct pattern of actions shared by everybody (cf. Hintikka and Hintikka 1990, 244, note 8). It is the praxeological reason for the possibility of moving between language-​games. Wittgenstein does not claim that there are certain ways of acting common to all human beings. Instead, in our understanding of foreign language-​games and forms of life, we refer to those ways of acting in the foreign form of life that are analogical to our own (cf. Kober 1993, 322). For this process of understanding is sufficient to understand the “gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise”/​“common behavior of mankind” as a notion of family resemblance in the sense in which Wittgenstein uses it in PI, §65–​67, i.e. it is necessary to find only (partly different) similarities and analogies in the different forms of acting to be able to speak of the common way of acting as a ‘system of reference’. In Wittgenstein’s view, it is not a philosophical but an empirical question whether there are culture-​invariant patterns of human behaviour. He points out that it is an interesting and important fact that we all think it is possible to understand people who speak another language (cf. PI, §206). Nevertheless, there is no guarantee either for the possibility of this understanding or for the common way of human acting. Furthermore, the praxeological grounding of understanding has to be discovered anew each time. The universal validity of it as a ‘system of reference’ cannot be secured a priori but can only be shown by successful mutual understanding. In actuality, we sometimes fail in our attempt to understand each other and then simply give up on understanding. These failures are the basis of Lyotard’s objection to any reasoning that tries to ignore or to eradicate “le différend” (cf. Lyotard 1983). Unlike Lyotard, Wittgenstein does not believe that it is philosophy’s task to show “le différend” but to search for ways of moving from one language-​game to another without ignoring its individual characteristics and without eradicating any “différend”. Showing this kind of respect for the variety and diversity of language-​games (cf. PI, §23) does not mean giving up on the idea of understanding the other. It only makes clear how carefully we have to look at his/​her practice if we want to understand. The outcome of the attempt to articulate one’s own position and beliefs within a foreign language-​game is unpredictable, and success cannot be guaranteed by a super-​language(-​game). Expressed in biblical language, humankind does not succeed in building the tower of Babel; people have been dispersed throughout the world and are

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forced to communicate within the context of a large diversity of languages and forms of life. Universal truth or validity cannot be established by building a tower or a super-​language(-​game). The only way is to speak many different languages and to live in many different forms of life. Is it not this story of being able to articulate personal experiences with God in each language that paved the way for the first Christians to leave their hiding-​places at Pentecost? It is not only confidence in the Holy Spirit which invites us to turn to other language-​games. It is also a very simple philosophical insight which we can learn from Wittgenstein: only if we deal with the otherness of other people and live with them can we identify blindly followed rules of our grammar and thus better and more easily understand the meaning of our convictions. Therefore, the meaning and certainty of religious convictions are rooted in culturally and individually determined (various, particular) practical dimensions which must be considered for religious convictions to be understood –​whether those of other people or one’s own. Even if one is aware of all of Wittgenstein’s insights, it will still be difficult to put oneself in the theological position of the other, and the result of this attempt will be unpredictable. As Wittgenstein seeks to teach us differences, this attempt remains indispensable. Hermeneutically it appears equally difficult to the problem every apologetic theology has to face if it is willing to make its claims understandable beyond the borders of its own language-​games (cf. von Stosch 2001b, 307–​320) –​a challenge that should not be neglected as long as theology is expected to look for the truth. Following Catholic apologetics theology as a whole cannot forget to include the religious and cultural self-​and world-​interpretation of others as a locus alienus in one’s own epistemological concept.16 For example, we can find this expressed in the work of Melchior Cano, who emphasized the meaning of loci alieni as an epistemological source for theology, and thus always made an effort to comprehend the thoughts and concepts of philosophy and the humanities within contemporary interreligious and intercultural contexts. According to a statement from James Fredericks, to practice comparative theology means to raise oneself from the armchair of one’s own tradition, to find a way into the world of the other and to become elated and enriched by their discovered truths.17 At the same time, we are supposed to remember 16 17

Cf. the respective references to modern loci alieni in Hünermann 2003. “Doing theology comparatively means crossing over into the world of another religious believer and learning the truths that animate the life of that believer. Doing theology comparatively also means coming back to Christianity transformed by these truths, now able to ask new questions about Christian faith and its meaning for today” (Fredericks 2004, xii.). Cf. ibid: The religious other would help to pose new questions and thus would

90 von Stosch that the other is equally legitimized to put him or herself in our position and appreciate our truth from his or her own perspective. Therefore, theologians must expose themselves to a mutual process of understanding by continually attempting to value the perspectives of the other with particularity while at the same time not neglecting to understand the other from the theologian’s own position. (4) Comparative Theology Needs the Instance of a Third Position The mutual processes of understanding are at risk of making reciprocal arrangements and agreements that exacerbate certain problems. If two religious inner-​perspectives deal with a particular problem using similar strategies, the risk of trivializing the problem on the basis of shared convictions grows. As Franz Kafka puts it, they run the risk of becoming a ‘community of scoundrels’. Modern theology tends to underestimate this threat with reference to the autonomous philosophical reason and the attempt to develop a religion-​ external criteriology. Although, as a Wittgensteinian, I think of metaphysical and transcendental-​philosophical oriented attempts to develop such a criteriology as rather unhelpful, since from my point of view they can be destroyed philosophically, I would still recommend that on a very formal level such criteriology can and should be developed. At least to some extent, the instance of a third position could, in fact, be established by the position of a philosophical, autonomous, critical, external perspective. Unfortunately, two opposing problems appear. One the one hand, this criteriology is too pluralistic since it cannot answer orientation problems and has to permit contradicting truth claims as equally rational. On the other hand, this criteriology is not pluralistic enough since it is based on a reasonable understanding within a certain philosophical tradition, and therefore rejects religious positions from a philosophical point of view which actually should be taken more seriously than the philosophical prospective allows. The third position, therefore, cannot simply be an abstract philosophy or criteriology, but must be concrete and able to observe the dialogue of the other two as a controlling element. To avoid an expanded ‘community of scoundrels’, it seems essential that the selected third position is able to offer a continuing critique of the problems that arise and are being discussed. This third position could thus be either atheistic or agnostic. Depending on the dialogue context, a follower of a third religious tradition could be consulted if the first holds a

enrich our way to Christ. “I propose that Christians get up out of the armchair and cross over into another religious tradition” (ibid., xiii).

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sufficiently different basic idea of the processed question and the second is able to confront it with critical and skilled arguments. One way that Wittgenstein uses the instance of the third is the way he develops his case studies. He argues that it is important to present these case studies in such a way that we can get an overview (“übersichtliche Darstellung”/​ “perspicuous representation”, PI, §122). At the same time, we can be in danger of simplification through an “einseitige Diät”/​“one-​sided diet” (PI, §593) in the choice of case studies. Thus, the only way out seems to be interreligious communication with different partners within and outside religions. Such a communication is the only way of becoming aware of our simplifications and biases. The case studies and investigations presented in comparative theology should witness these movements across religious borders. (5) Comparative Theology Always Needs to Return to Religious Praxis Comparative theology follows the idea that the cognitive content of religious convictions is understood fully only if debriefed for its ‘depth grammar’. A substantial part of comparative-theological methodology is to clarify the connection between the regulative-​expressive and the encyclopaedic level of religious convictions. In this way, comparative theology can point to functional equivalences and regulative homogeneity beyond semantic differences.18 For this, a return to the praxis of different religious traditions and a reflection upon further developments within the interreligious dialogue is needed. “A religious question is either a ‘life question’ or (empty) chatter”, Wittgenstein states (cf. BEE, 183, 202). Hence, the return on religious praxis is absolutely necessary to give meaning to religious struggles. Insisting, in the Wittgensteinian sense, that religious doctrines and theological theories have to refer to life and practice does not imply that there is no cognitive dimension in religious beliefs. Alternatively, as Kellenberger has already put it, “having the truth of doctrine is religiously nothing, while living the truth of a godly life is all. This lesson … is not the noncognitivist’s lesson that there is no truth or falsity to religious belief” (1972, 275). It just wants to make clear that there is no truth in religious belief which has no implications for practice. Therefore, if we want to understand religious convictions in interreligious communication, we always have to check how they are rooted in practice. 18

This way, it is possible to find  –​despite the huge differences between Bhartrhari and Bonaventura –​on the level of explicit revelation theories that both, according to their historical context, have similar reasons and aims for the same intentions. Cf. Carpenter 1995, 176: “They are in fact doing some very similar things, relative to their own respective historical contexts”.

92 von Stosch Comparative theology is not a theology for dialogue, but a theology of dialogue, as Michael Barnes (cf. 1994) states. It is a cooperative concept in which followers of other religious traditions are to be included.19 It is not simply reduced to writings and scriptures but requires a concrete dialogue between people of other world-​pictures in order to find and develop adequate access towards their own level of world-​pictures along with those of others. This makes the consistent return and reference to the basic elements of religious praxis within different traditions indispensable. Already on the Basis of This Dialogical Open-​Mindedness, Comparative Theologians Are Aware of Their Own Vulnerability and the Reversibility and Fallibility of Their Judgements This vulnerability, which can be reasoned christologically,20 is related to the language-​game bondage of all speech and thought. It reaches beyond general hermeneutical self-​relativization in the context of eschatology or the admission of an epistemically ambivalent reality reasoned by religious and philosophical coherences. According to Wittgenstein’s previously mentioned notion, we follow the important parts of our religious ‘depth grammar’ unconsciously. Furthermore, the relation between the regulative level which is presupposed within religious speech, and the cognitive level structured by it, is contingent in two ways, and is thus exposed to human fallibility as well as human freedom (cf. von Stosch 2001b, 268–​274). Therefore, the enterprise of comparative theology is a continuing activity, which makes it very similar to the way in which Wittgenstein conceives philosophy. As Fredericks correctly diagnoses, within this moment is not a weakness but a great opportunity.21 (6)



Epilogue: Enabling the Appreciation of Otherness

I started this paper with the observation of how much Wittgenstein wants to teach us to see and appreciate differences. During my investigations, I tried to argue that, from Wittgenstein, we can appreciate diversity without giving up our own claims to validity. Let us summarize how Wittgenstein can help us to 19 20 21

Cf. Ward 2000, 339: “Comparative theology is a co-​operative enterprise. It is a way of doing theology in which scholars holding different world-​views share together in the investigation of concepts of ultimate reality, the final human goal, and the way to achieve it.” Cf. Knitter 2004, 209, with reference to Fredericks and Clooney: “For to be loyal to Christ, one must be vulnerable to others.” Cf. Fredericks 1999, 179. In Fredericks there is no reference to Wittgenstein’s concept.

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appreciate the otherness of the religious other without giving up the standards and criteria of our own world-​picture. First of all, we can learn from Wittgenstein that we are not aware of all parts of our world-​pictures. Our world-​pictures are not identical with our religion, and contact with people from other religions and cultures can help us to get a better understanding of our deepest beliefs and shed new light on our forms of life. Through this better understanding, we can get a fresh look at our own religious beliefs and their connection with the beliefs of others. Thus, the first way to appreciate the difference of other religions is mediated through the dynamic understanding of our world-​picture. Tacit elements of our world-​ picture can become perceptible and can help us get a deeper understanding of other religions. These elements can also help us establish criteria which are independent of our own religion and can lead us to appreciate something which we alone cannot understand from our religious framework. Then, as a second important point, the insight regarding the regulative role of religious beliefs can help us appreciate parts of other religions, helping religious believers lead a good life even if the encyclopedical understanding of their beliefs is something which we are not in favor of. Thus, Wittgenstein encourages us to have a pragmatic look at other religions and their impact on the lives of religious believers without giving up our interest in the cognitive dimension of religious speech acts. However, this cognitive dimension is not the only dimension of religion. Especially in non-​Christian religions, the aspect of the impact of religious law and of regulative-​expressive dimensions of religion is very important. Thus, the appreciation of claims to validity in the realm of life-​governing rules is one of the most fruitful means of acknowledging religions. There is no problem with being fascinated by the Muslim way of practicing ritual prayer without following these rules in one’s own language-​games and without agreeing to the cognitive claims which are connected with these practices for Muslims. It is possible for me to respect the rule-​following practice of the other without giving up the dignity of the rules I am following myself. Through looking at the praxis of the other and through learning to appreciate it, we can discover the hidden convergences on the level of depth grammar; we can learn to see functional equivalences on the regulative level of religious beliefs without eliminating encyclopedical differences. Finally, as a last point which I would like to mention here, consistent and intense contact with people of other religions and committed, intense interreligious communication sometimes leads to the overcoming of obstacles between us. Better knowledge can help us to understand and understanding can help us to appreciate. In this respect, there is no automatism. If interreligious

94 von Stosch friendships begin to arise, those friendships can teach us to love how the other person is living and how his religion rules his or her life. They can also help us look with appreciation at the cognitive dimension of other religions –​especially if we are aware of the fact that there is no cognitive dimension (no meaning) without reference to our language-​game-​praxis. Thus, friendship with theologians can help us to find ways of mutual understanding and appreciation of the theologies of different religions.

Bibliography

Barnes, Michael. 1994. “Theology and the Dialogue of Religions”. The Month 28 (1994): 270–​274; 325–​330. Brümmer, Vincent. 1999. “Wittgenstein and the Anselmian project”. Bijdragen 60 (1999): 436–​455. Carpenter, David. 1995. Revelation, History, and the Dialogue of Religions. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. Clooney, Francis. 2001. Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries Between Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fredericks, James L. 1999. Faith among Faiths:  Christian Theology and Non-​Christian Religions. New York/​Mahwah: Paulist Press. Fredericks, James. L. 2004. Buddhists and Christians: Through Comparative Theology to Solidarity. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. van Herck, Walter. 1998. “De Taak van de Godsdienstfilosofie”. Bijdragen 59 (1998): 428–​ 452. Hintersteiner, Norbert. 2007. “Intercultural and Interreligious (Un)translatibility and the Comparative Theology Project.” In Naming and Thinking God in Europe Today edited by Norbert Hintersteiner, 465–​491. Amsterdam/​New York: Rodopi. Hintikka, Merrill B. and Jaakko Hintikka. 1990. Untersuchungen zu Wittgenstein. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Hünermann, Peter. 2003. Dogmatische Prinzipienlehre: Glaube –​ Überlieferung –​ Theologie als Sprach-​und Wahrheitsgeschehen. Münster: Aschendorff. Kellenberger, James. 1972. Language-​game view of religion and religious certainty. In: CJP 2 (1972): 255–​275. Kenny, Anthony. 1992. What is faith? Essays in the philosophy of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knitter, Paul F. 2004. Introducing Theologies of Religions. Maryknoll, New  York:  Orbis Books. Kober, Matthias. 1993. Gewißheit als Norm. Wittgensteins erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen in Über Gewißheit. Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter.

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Kroß, Matthias. 1998. “ ‘Glaube Du! Es schadet nicht’. Ludwig Wittgensteins Vermischte Bemerkungen zur Religion.” In:  Wittgensteins Spätphilosophie. Analysen und Probleme, edited by Wulf Kellerwessel and Thomas Peuker, 257–​291. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Lütterfelds, Wilhelm. 1998. “Wittgensteins Weltbild-​Glaube  –​ein vorrationales Fundament unserer Lebensform?” In Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis, edited by Jesús Padilla Gálvez and Raimundo D. Baldrich, 115–​152. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-​La Mancha. Lyotard, Jean-​François. 1983. Le différend. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Putnam, Hilary. 1992. Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rhees, Rush, ed. 1984. Recollections of Wittgenstein: Hermine Wittgenstein, Fania Pascal, F.R. Leavis, John King, M.O’C. Drury. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schneider, Hans Julius. 1999. “Offene Grenzen, zerfaserte Ränder. Über Arten von Beziehungen zwischen Sprachspielen.” In Der Konflikt der Lebensformen in Wittgensteins Philosophie der Sprache, edited by Wilhelm Lütterfelds and Andreas Roser, 138–​155. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Schroeder, Severin. 2000. “ ‘Eine Art, das Leben zu beurteilen’. Wittgenstein über Glaube und Vernunft.” In Globales Ethos, Wittgensteins Sprachspiele interkultureller Moral und Religion, edited by Wilhelm Lütterfelds and Thomas Mohrs, 146–​156. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Schulte, Joachim. 1987. Erlebnis und Ausdruck. Wittgensteins Philosophie der Psychologie. München/​Wien: Philosophia Verlag. von Stosch, Klaus. 2001a. “Der Philosoph als Fremdenführer. Anmerkungen zur Selbstbezüglichkeit von Wittgensteins Philosophieren.” In Wittgenstein and the future of philosophy. A reassessment after 50 Years (Proceedings of the 24th International Wittgenstein-​Symposium. Vol. 2), edited by Rudolf Haller and Klaus Puhl, 357–​363. Kirchberg am Wechsel: öbv&hpt Verlagsgesellschaft. von Stosch, Klaus. 2001b. Glaubensverantwortung in doppelter Kontingenz. Untersuchungen zur Verortung fundamentaler Theologie nach Wittgenstein. Regensburg: ­Pustet. von Stosch, Klaus. 2003. “Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen?” In Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen?, edited by Hans Joas, 103–​146. Göttingen: Wallstein. von Stosch, Klaus. 2007. “Comparative theology as alternative to theology of religions.” In Naming and thinking God in Europe today. Theology in global dialogue, edited by Norbert Hintersteiner, 507–​512. Amsterdam/​New York: Rodopi. von Stosch, Klaus. 2010. “Wittgensteinian Fideism?” In The Contemplative Spirit. D.Z. Phillips on Religion and the Limits of Philosophy, edited by Ingolf U. Dalferth and Hartmut von Sass, 115–​134. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. von Stosch, Klaus 2011. “Vollendungsgewissheit und Gewalt.” In:  Glaubensgewissheit und Gewalt. Eschatologische Erkundungen in Islam und Christentum, edited by

96 von Stosch Jürgen Werbick, Muhammad Sven Kalisch and Klaus von Stosch, 105–​116. Paderborn: Schöningh. von Stosch, Klaus. 2012a. “Comparative Theology as Challenge for the Theology of the 21st Century.” In Journal of the Religious Inquiries 2 (2012): 5–​26. von Stosch, Klaus. 2012b. Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der Religionen. Paderborn: Schöningh. von Stosch, Klaus. 2016. “Developing Christian Theodicy in Conversation with Navid Kermani.” In Comparing faithfully. Insights for systematic theological reflection, edited by Michelle Voss Roberts, New York: Fordham University Press 2016 (Comparative theology: thinking across traditions), 89–​106. von Stosch, Klaus. 2018. Theodizee. 2nd revised edition, Paderborn: Schöningh/​Brill. Ward, Keith. 2000. Religion and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Werbick, Jürgen. 2001. Gebetsglaube und Gotteszweifel. Münster: lit Verlag.

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Wittgenstein’s Religious Epistemology and Interfaith Dialogue Nuno Venturinha

Mysticism, Reason and Beyond

The philosophical study of religious belief has a long tradition in Western thought, going back to Plato’s reflections in many of his works on the immortality of the soul and man’s relation to the divine. Neoplatonism extended this framework by introducing some key philosophical categories that helped shape Christianity. Saint Augustine of Hippo provides a well-​known example of the assimilation of Neoplatonic principles by Christian theology (see O’Meara 1982), but Saint Anselm of Canterbury, seven centuries later, may likewise be seen as a Neoplatonist (see Rogers 1997). Interestingly enough, Neoplatonism has, at the same time, exerted a profound influence on both Islamic and Jewish philosophy of religion, with Avicenna and Maimonides as leading figures (see Owens 1992 and Ivry 1992). Although Neoplatonists are usually described as mystical thinkers, a common feature of all these authors is the attempt to reconcile mysticism and reason in their avowal of God as the ultimate meaning of life. However, with the advent of modern science in the Renaissance, this way of looking at reality as including a mystical element gradually gave way to a restricted form of rationality based on logical argumentation. Pascal was the first modern philosopher to contend against the reduction of reason to scientific reasoning, even though he was a brilliant mathematician and physicist. In his unfinished apology of Christianity, the Thoughts, Pascal tries to show that human cognition necessarily tends towards an upper sphere of life which is paradoxically recognized as the source and the end of our individual lives. According to Pascal, the only means to achieve such an understanding is, as Kant will also realize, to make room for belief within reason. In doing so, Pascal takes human rationality to be incomplete until we acknowledge its limits and regard the spiritual laws of faith to be as constringent as logical laws are when they apply to their specific fields. For Pascal, reason enters into the realm of religious belief in the sense that it opens the way to a seemingly unjustified, yet justifiable, leap of faith. Its justification is found by Pascal in the prophecies of the Old Testament, which he sees confirmed through the

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98 Venturinha figure of Jesus in New Testament theology. This justification has been interpreted as strict fideism, attracting little attention from epistemologists more concerned with solid groundings for our knowledge. Thus, Wainwright (1999, 157) asserts that, while “Pascal’s fideism doesn’t intentionally violate principles of practical rationality”, it “involves few if any departures from epistemic rationality”. This view has been recently challenged by Peters (2009), who offers a defence of Pascal’s non-​fideism. Still, his conviction that the Christian faith is the only one that is complete leaves little space for religious pluralism, something naturally assumed by the different mystical traditions. An important reaction to the idealization of the “epistemic rationality” that Wainwright refers to, and at the same time to exclusivism in religion, was given by Wittgenstein in the 20th century. Having been influenced by authors from different backgrounds, Wittgenstein’s work discusses important issues belonging to religious epistemology and provides new insights into interreligious understanding. If, in his celebrated Tractatus Logico-​Philosophicus and notebooks from the First World War,1 it is possible to find a revival of mysticism (see Lazenby 2006, Atkinson 2009 and Venturinha 2012), Wittgenstein’s so-​called later philosophy, in particular the notebook published as Movements of Thought which was only discovered in the 1990s, presents extensive commentaries on sacred texts and elaborates a grammar of religious belief. This grammatical approach is unique in the sense that it does not promote a particular religion. Quite the opposite, it opens the way to an interfaith dialogue that is not only anthropologically or societally sound but is also epistemologically grounded. In what follows, I shall discuss the advantages of taking a Wittgensteinian perspective on religion, such as that exposed in his mature thought, and how it responds to epistemological foundationalism.

No Theories, Nor Even Religious Dogmas

One of Wittgenstein’s main claims is that one should avoid theories or theses of any sort. Already in the Tractatus, philosophy is seen as providing nothing but “clarification” and therefore cannot be “a theory”; what it amounts to is “an activity” and its textual materialization “consists essentially of elucidations” (tlp, 4.112). After his return to the philosophical scene in 1929, Wittgenstein found the Tractarian accounts themselves dogmatic. In a conversation held on 1 These include both NB and GT. The latter were written in code and have not been translated into English so far. For their relevance as a whole, with religious questions serving as the bridge between them, see Somavilla 2010, 30–​43, and Venturinha 2011.

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9 December 1931 about dogmatism, he said that one of the greatest mistakes in the book “is the conception that there are questions the answers to which will be found at a later date” (wvc, 182). There are reasons to think that the ineffability vindicated in the final propositions of the Tractatus was included in Wittgenstein’s self-​criticism.2 The fact is that our minds inevitably form one-​ sided representations when we bring to the fore entities that are not objects of acquaintance, and the danger lies in believing that we are already grasping or will eventually grasp what they involve. This is indeed what happens with religious concepts and that is the reason why any theoretical position in this domain is bound to fail. In the “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough”, we find the following statement which testifies to Wittgenstein’s striving for non-​ dogmatism in religion: Frazer’s account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory: it makes these views look like errors. Was Augustine in error, then, when he called upon God on every page of the Confessions? But –​one might say –​if he was not in error, surely the Buddhist holy man was –​or anyone else –​whose religion gives expression to completely different views. But none of them was in error, except when he set forth a theory. rfgb R, 119

Later in the 1930s, Wittgenstein continued to struggle against this inexorable tendency to form a comprehensive account of what cannot really be understood. In a diary entry from 15 February 1937, he writes the following about the role of images in religion: These images thus impose themselves upon me. And yet I am reluctant to use these images & expressions. Above all these are not similes, of course. For what can be said by way of a simile, that can also be said without 2 Here I shall not go into the debate, initiated by scholars such as Cora Diamond and James Conant, about the possibility of the metaphysical propositions of the Tractatus, namely those concerning ethics and religion, consisting of mere nonsense instead of views that are in the end ineffable. I agree with Hacker (2001 and 2003) that there is enough evidence to admit that, when Wittgenstein said that “[t]‌here is indeed the inexpressible”, that “[t]his shows itself”, that “it is the mystical” (tlp, 6.522), a view we find reaffirmed in his notebooks and letters, he was not simply playing a game, directed at making patent a purported void, but he was talking seriously. I set forth my arguments against the so-​called “resolute” reading of the Tractatus in Venturinha 2010a.

100 Venturinha a simile. These images and expressions have a life rather only in a high sphere of life, they can be rightfully used only in this sphere. All I could really do is make a gesture which means something similar to “unsayable” & say nothing. –​Or is this absolute aversion to using words here some sort of flight? A flight from a reality? I don’t think so; but I don’t know. And then he states in the same code he began to use in the wartime diaries: Let me not shy away from any conclusion, but absolutely also not be superstitious!! I do not want to think uncleanly! MT, 181

In these passages, written when the Philosophical Investigations were being sketched out, we can see that Wittgenstein did not put aside his Tractarian conviction that there are things we cannot put into words. His effort is now to keep our representations in sight and not to succumb to taking them as corresponding to definite apprehensions of what they are supposed to capture. This constant attentiveness to our language and its riddles is the backbone of Wittgenstein’s later method of philosophizing. In the Investigations, we find Wittgenstein rejecting “theses in philosophy” for the simple reason that “it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them” (PI, §128). The kind of “investigation” proper to philosophy can only be “a grammatical one” (PI, §90) and that means an exercise of continuous elucidation. If we now take into consideration that, in the Investigations, the essences corresponding to our concepts constitute something that “is expressed in grammar” (PI, §371), and that this alone “tells what kind of object anything is” (PI, §373), the connection between a theological inquiry and a grammatical one expressed in the parenthetical remark “Theology as grammar” (ibid.) becomes clearer.3 What we can say about the divine, whatever it may be, only makes sense in our language drills. Words in themselves mean nothing. Like philosophers, theologians can thus never aspire to offer a complete picture of what they attempt to explain. Their job should actually be a modest one, in the midst of which any dogmatization would be avoided for the sake of clarity. But while, in philosophy, the rejection of dogmatism seems to be easily supplanted by the admission of a relativist or sceptical attitude, the same does not seem to hold true of religion, for the believer is in fact expected to 3 The relationships between theology and grammar are expressed in many different ways by Wittgenstein. See Citron 2013, where the author also examines material from Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures in the early 1930s which have recently been published in mwl.

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accept certain dogmas. It will be a contention of this paper that Wittgenstein’s undogmatism does not necessarily lead to relativism or scepticism, nor does the refusal of religious dogmas undermine the practice of religion when this is regarded from a perspective of diversity.

Only Believe

A central point in Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion is the rejection of historical evidence as a condition to believe in the Gospels, something that has also been questionably dubbed by various scholars as fideism.4 He writes in a remark included in Culture and Value: Queer as it sounds: the historical accounts of the Gospels might, in the historical sense, be demonstrably false, & yet belief would lose nothing through this: but not because it has to do with ‘universal truths of reason’! rather, because historical proof (the historical proof-​game) is irrelevant to belief. This message (the Gospels) is seized on by a human being believingly (i.e. lovingly): that is the certainty of this “taking-​for-​true” [Für-​ wahr-​halten], nothing else. The believer’s relation to these messages is neither a relation to historical truth (probability) nor yet that to a doctrine consisting of ‘truths of reason’. CVR, 37–​38

This dates from 9 December 1937. In a remark written down earlier that year, namely on 27 January, Wittgenstein asserts in his code: With the Bible I have nothing but a book in front of me […] a document which, if it remains alone, cannot have greater value than any other document. […] If I am to believe these doctrines I should do so not because this & not something else was reported to me. Instead they must be evident to me: & with that I don’t just mean doctrines of ethics but historical doctrines. Not the letter, only conscience can command me –​to believe in resurrection, judgement etc. To believe not as in something probable

4 Instructive expositions of the issue of Wittgenstein’s fideism can be found in von Stosch 2010 and Mulhall 2011. I  will come back to this topic below when discussing reformed epistemology.

102 Venturinha but in a different sense. […] Believing begins with believing. One must begin with believing; from words no belief follows. Enough. MT, 157 and 159

In Wittgenstein’s view, belief has its own epistemic value, one that cannot be diminished by comparison with the value of other intellectual capacities. This leads him, in contrast to Pascal, to conceive of religious facts such as miracles or apostolic lives in an eminently symbolic way, allowing for the sharing of key values by individuals outside that particular confession. Albeit focused on the Christian faith, taking a Wittgensteinian approach to religion actually means to look for the essence of life in the various “forms of life” –​a pivotal notion in his philosophy –​we are in contact with. Justifying universalism is not an easy task in philosophy and religion. We can understand that basic cognitive schemes must be common to mankind in order to accommodate the psychological variations we find among human beings. No one doubts that we must possess the same optic nerves in order to render visual perception possible, just as no one will take issue with the fact that our skeletal system is something all humans share. However, when it comes to matters of aesthetics, ethics or religion, there seems to be no way to defend communal values. Of course these exist but merely within certain groups of people, be they larger or smaller. That the greatness of Munch’s The Scream results in a universal aesthetic value is something only admissible for those who were educated according to certain views of art criticism. For someone who has never heard about Expressionism and its exteriorization of the most powerful inner feelings, the painting could actually appear to be ugly. Pictorially speaking, The Scream is not an example of fine technique. It is simply the claustrophobic emptiness of life described in the painting that is remarkable. But for whom is this existential experience remarkable? Imagine that you were to explain Munch’s chef-​d’oeuvre to someone who had never studied art history or philosophy. You could try to teach her that what the painting reproduces is the situation of someone suffering from what in philosophy is called angst. You could add that this angst is not to be taken psychologically, as if the angst of Munch’s character were just proper to him, due to events in his life, etc., but that what is at stake in this work is a representation of a state of mind that can invade any of us if we seriously reflect upon the meaning of life and the seeming lack of a teleological purpose. If you succeed in your explanation, maybe the person will pay attention to these questions and will eventually look at Munch’s The Scream and other related works in a way that authorizes her to join the group of admirers of Expressionism. But there will always be many that remain outside that group.

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In ethics and religion, things work in exactly the same way. We are confronted every day with cases that lead us to mistrust the idea that there is a common ground for human actions. Heinous behaviours shock those who do not accept the imposition of counter-​values, that is, values that do not belong to our civilization or culture. But the problem is not a civilizational or cultural one, as if, in another status quo, a justification could be found for acts of such a nature. This is something that relativists need to admit, though it is at odds with an understanding of man as this thing that each of us is. In Aristotelian terms, this thing is an animal rationale, one that can actualize its potentialities using reason to regulate passions. If we declare that each of us can lay down our own principles and only accord sometimes with other principles, namely when it is normatively advantageous to do so, we will simply be establishing an expedient that enables us to get rid of what Wittgenstein conceives as the command of conscience. No established rules can distract our conscience since each of us knows at every moment what we are supposed to do. If we do not do that, it is simply due to the fact that we do not want to do what we should do  –​because the present moment speaks louder and it will be easier to do something else. When Wittgenstein talks about what is at issue in being an apostle, that it consists of “a life” (MT, 81), one that can provide an example of conduct for us, he also says that it is not relevant what he puts into words but only that he does it. Apostles, prophets, holy men, all of them express an existence that carries their “verification” along with it (MT, 83). For that reason, it is not crucial whether the things they say are true or not, namely whether there is a correspondence between their propositions and reality. What matters is that their lives are true. When Wittgenstein discusses miracles, he emphasizes not the extraordinary resulting fact but the “gesture” behind it, the “symbol” that corresponds to it (MT, 91). It is consequently irrelevant whether the events believed to have happened by this or that religion have really happened. No one should believe such and such –​this is Wittgenstein’s view –​simply by virtue of its historicity. What makes a religion appealing must be something that, in its practice, can be universally recognized as coherent and overwhelming. And it is Wittgenstein’s conviction that these factors are by no means exclusive of a particular religious perspective. Few philosophers have made such a tremendous contribution to religious diversity, but, strangely enough, it has taken a long time for this to be acknowledged and, more importantly, to be used. Wittgenstein’s mature views on religion were substantially revealed through the publication of his “Lectures on Religious Belief”, given at Cambridge in the late 1930s (LC), and of Culture and Value, first released in 1977. However, it was only in the 1980s and 1990s that the debate around a Wittgensteinian understanding of religion enjoyed

104 Venturinha considerable development. Mainly thanks to the works of Kerr (1986), Phillips (1988 and 1993) and Malcolm (1993), Wittgenstein’s later thought came to be regarded as an important inspiration for a new theological approach. This line of research was then pursued with important approximations made between Wittgenstein and different religious traditions. Some scholars have emphasized the role played by Wittgenstein’s criticism of Frazer’s explanatory hypotheses in anthropology for the understanding of mythology in primitive societies (see Clack 1998 and Graham 2014). What Wittgenstein proposes is that we describe the practices of primitive societies with the aim of illuminating our own, and not to take these as the standard for an explanation of everything. Other authors have traced relevant connections between Wittgenstein and Judaism, which is contemplated as much in his writings as Christianity is (see Chatterjee 2005 and Labron 2006). As is characteristic of his philosophy, he does not see unbridgeable gaps but encouraging similarities. Moreover, the notion of form, or forms, of life has been central in a number of studies on Wittgenstein. As I have shown elsewhere, the different ways he uses this expression in the late 1930s include a religious dimension, one that maintains the mystical search for the meaning of life present in his notebooks from the First World War and the Tractatus. However, this religious dimension is now fundamentally societal in the sense that the individual looks at the world within the social practice of language (see Venturinha 2010b). Following Phillips’s lead, Burley (2012, 8) accurately observes that the core of Wittgenstein’s conception will be “to observe the surroundings, the socio-​cultural contexts within which religious forms of language and activity have their natural places if we want to improve our understanding of those forms of language and activity”. The diversity of forms of life is not to be taken simply as cultural pluralism. What the plural manifestations of religiosity offer is in fact a shared sphere that receives different interpretations and manifestations. As long as a common ground is maintained, none of the variations we can find represent definite ruptures with our own perspective. To conceive of forms of life as essentially closed within themselves is to forget that social practices are observable and understandable. Fully alien practices would be absolutely unrecognizable by us. We can call such and such claims into question, or have the right to refuse such and such practices, because they may appear to us as misleading. The contemporary view that everything must be acceptable, which is the social appropriation of philosophical relativism, intrinsically rejects the possibility of seeing ethics or religion as fundamental. Wittgenstein, who was deeply concerned about the advent of a society without values, spent a great part of his life studying what makes us human, despite the enormous differences between us. And the answers he found lie fundamentally in the exteriorizations we make,

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as becomes clear in his writings on the philosophy of psychology –​the happiness or the sadness, the calmness or the suffering, felt in regard to someone else. It becomes clearer now why the main religious operator for Wittgenstein is conscience: a good or bad conscience does not depend on anything external, nor does it have any epistemic foundation. As stated in a remark collected in his Last Writings: But what is the difference between an attitude and an opinion? I would like to say: the attitude comes before the opinion. (Isn’t belief in God an attitude?) LW ii, 38

One may wonder whether this anti-​foundational approach to religion is not a case of “reformed epistemology” of the kind proposed by Plantinga and others since the 1960s. Plantinga’s resistance to the exclusion of faith from any perspective that claims to be rational has decisively contributed to a reconsideration of the epistemic schemes of human belief. For Plantinga, believing in God is such a basic mental operation that it needs no more justification than believing in the existence of physical objects or in other people’s minds. It is also Wittgenstein’s view that these kinds of beliefs are accompanied by their own foundations as long as they are operating, and therefore that there is no need to test them against foundationalist criteria of external evidence –​ as if these were the only admissible ones. Both Wittgenstein and reformed epistemologists thus cannot be seen as defending simple fideism, since this encompasses the admission of irrationality as an answer where reason itself has none. In a recent book, Carroll (2014, 92) points out that, due to the lack of sources published at the time, Plantinga’s initial claims in favour of a reformed epistemology did not take Wittgenstein’s position into much consideration –​something Carroll finds “ironic given that Wittgenstein’s corpus might well have had something to offer Plantinga in his argument”. However, as Carroll himself recognizes and Phillips (1988, ch. 4) had already explained, there are differences between the status attributed by Wittgenstein and the reformed epistemologists concerning what is basic or fundamental and how it relates to the rest of our cognition. Even disagreeing with Phillips’s critical evaluation of reformed epistemology, Helm (2001) admits these differences in regard to a “Wittgensteinian religion”, although he also stresses numerous points of contact. Recent work on reformed epistemology has little exploited these similarities with Wittgenstein’s religious perspective. Kim (2012), for instance, deals with the question of “religious diversity” but does not even address Wittgenstein.

106 Venturinha Another example is Webb (2015), who builds on Alston’s own version of “reformed epistemology” to analyse not only Jewish, Christian and Islamic doxastic practices but also Buddhist ones; he offers some reflections on Wittgenstein’s thought and his notion of “forms of life” when discussing what he calls “the cognitivity of religious language”, though these are too restricted in scope. The case of Baker (2007) is somewhat different. Prior to the appearance of these works, he had proposed complementing the analytic setting of reformed epistemology with Taylor’s “moral phenomenology”, testifying to affinities between the author of A Secular Age and Wittgenstein. Taylor (1995, 78) has himself written about “the deeply puzzling and enigmatic religious dimension of Wittgenstein’s thought”, which he envisages “as the basis for a new humanism”. But how does the Wittgensteinian proposal really work? Is it just a question of believing? At this point it is important to have a closer look at the matter. Assent and Truth Let us return to the passage from Culture and Value mentioned above and to what Wittgenstein calls “the certainty of this ‘taking-​for-​true’ ” that constitutes religious belief.5 The notion of Fürwahrhalten was first introduced by Kant but it made its way into Wittgenstein’s writings through Frege’s logical works. What is more interesting is that Frege himself did not use it with Kant specifically in mind; he was basically retrieving an idea found in Bolzano.6 In the third book of his Theory of Science, the “Theory of Knowledge”, Bolzano criticizes Kant precisely for having identified certainty with a necessary taking for true, which constitutes the corollary of a threefold mechanism of “having an opinion”, “believing” and “knowing” (see Bolzano 2014, §§317 and 321). For Bolzano, our process of judgment should not be seen as stringently dependent on us since it is in some sense constringent. He actually describes knowledge as a judgement that is ultimately independent of our holding something for true. On the contrary, Bolzano explicates, belief is inexorably dependent on us, although not held as merely subjective; and only those beliefs about which we are not absolutely confident constitute opinions, that is to say, expressions of our holding for true as such. What Bolzano wants is to eliminate a confusion he sees in the Kantian reduction of certainty, as the upshot of knowledge, to an objective and subjective sufficiency, with belief possessing only a subjective 5 There is another remark in the Wittgenstein papers where he associates “believing” to “taking for true”. See bee, MS 116, 345, and Venturinha 2015, 162 ff. 6 It remains an open question among scholars whether Frege really did read Bolzano. I side with Sundholm (2000, 164), who claims that there is a “strong evidence that Frege did read Bolzano late 1905 or early 1906”, but I would place that reading much earlier.

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necessity. Frege, who was mainly interested in establishing logic as a science, could not be more in agreement with Bolzano. His criticism of Kant made it possible for Frege to conceive of logical laws as inherently objective, the laws of taking to be true being characterized as simply psychological. The reception of Frege’s anti-​psychologism by Wittgenstein is problematic. While the Tractatus has clear anti-​psychological features in regard to logic, its mystical part, pace the resolute reading of the work, already denunciates a quasi-​psychological frame, which becomes evident in Wittgenstein’s attempt in his later writings to locate logical processes in the multifarious spheres of human experience. Frege thus cannot be the origin of the conception of belief we find Wittgenstein defending in his mature philosophy  –​one that, paradoxically, agrees with that of Bolzano on relevant aspects. It is probable that it was Newman’s thought, particularly his An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, that is behind Wittgenstein’s religious epistemology, with all its anti-​foundationalism. The influence of Newman on Wittgenstein has received some attention, but this has concentrated almost exclusively on Wittgenstein’s last writings dealing with certainty (see Bottone 2005, Kienzler 2006 and Pritchard 2015). The fact that these writings essentially explore issues in general epistemology has reduced the range of Newman’s influence, which, as Drury (1996, 130) documents, had an effect on Wittgenstein’s understanding of religion from as early as 1936 –​before the remark in Culture and Value was written or his “Lectures on Religious Belief” given. As Ricken (2007, ch. 2) hints, the idea of “natural religion” vindicated by Newman is totally in line with the response given by Wittgenstein to Frazer, who looked at religious practices from the perspective of Newman’s apt notion of “religion of civilization”. According to Newman, the spiritual laws of a “natural religion” can be illuminated by theology, but no version of the latter can be imposed on any culture on the basis of non-​religious grounds. It might not be coincidental that it was also in 1936 that Wittgenstein started to develop his notion of “form of life” which he identified with “culture” (see Venturinha 2010b). To trace all the similarities between Newman and Wittgenstein in regard to religious belief would require another paper specifically addressing this topic. In the remainder of this paper I will content myself with exposing what I deem to be the main affinities. At the beginning of his Grammar of Assent, Newman presents three “modes of holding propositions”, namely: doubt, inference and assent (see 1874, 3 ff.). He refers to them as “three distinct states or characters of mind”, all of which are “natural to the mind” in the sense that they respect “its legitimate constitution” (1874, 6–​7). We can immediately see a parallel between the three Kantian modes of taking to be true and Newman’s tripartite conception, with assenting corresponding to believing. Newman then establishes

108 Venturinha a distinction, when talking about the “modes of apprehending propositions”, between what he calls “notional propositions” and “real propositions”, with the latter being a “stronger” mode in virtue of its direct, and not simply intellectual, contact with reality (1874, 11). What Newman claims is “that inferences, which are conditional acts, are especially cognate to notional apprehension, and assents, which are unconditional, to real” (1874, 12). The reason, Newman explains, is that, in our process of assenting to a proposition, “we consider it for its own sake and in its intrinsic sense” (1874, 13). This is the cornerstone of Newman’s differentiation between a religious and a theological approach, something that is truly reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s view. Here is how Newman, introducing the question of the dogma, presents his point: To give a real assent to it [viz. to the dogma] is an act of religion; to give a notional, is a theological act. It is discerned, rested in, and appropriated as a reality, by the religious imagination; it is held as a truth, by the theological intellect. 1874, 98

Wittgenstein’s rejection of a theoretical attitude in regard to matters of religion finds an echo in Newman’s emphasis on “the religious imagination” over the “intellect”. It is through imagination that we are able to form pictures that accompany the nonsensical words we use. These pictures can never be taken as distinct representatives of the entities at stake. They work as projections that are supposed to guide us in that effort of illumination. Like Wittgenstein, Newman is convinced that the representations we make of exemplary lives and works will have a “real” effect on us. He writes: Thus the life and writings of Cicero or Dr. Johnson, of St. Jerome or St. Chrysostom, leave upon us certain impressions of the intellectual and moral character of each of them, sui generis, and unmistakable. […] And so of any great man whom we may have known: that he is not a mere impression on our senses, but a real being, we know by instinct; that he is such and such, we know by the matter or quality of that impression. 1874, 103

Newman also shares with Wittgenstein the idea that “[c]‌onscience has a legitimate place among our mental acts” (1874, 105) and has a decisive role in our decision-​making, not in its “moral sense”, understood in a normative way, but as “a sense of duty” (ibid.), which is an imperative that comes from within. Newman writes:

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Half the world would be puzzled to know what was meant by the moral sense; but every one knows what is meant by a good or bad conscience. Conscience is ever forcing on us by threats and by promises that we must follow the right and avoid the wrong […] 1874, 106

He makes his point more explicitly a bit further on: If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must be Supernatural and Divine; and thus the phenomena of Conscience, as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-​seeing, retributive, and is the creative principle of religion, as the Moral Sense is the principle of ethics. 1874, 110

Wittgenstein, for whom ethics and religion were virtually the same thing, also talked about the “supernatural” in his Lecture on Ethics and the notebook entries that accompany it (see Venturinha 2010c). Not only does he say in the Lecture that “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts”, but also talks about “the paradox that an experience, a fact, should seem to have supernatural value” (LE, 7 and 10).7 This “supernatural” has nothing to do with paranormal experiences. It involves the acknowledgment that any valuation one can impose on the world, if it is not simply a moral or normative principle, transcends the factual and assumes the role of a decisive commitment for the subject. Such a commitment does not obviously derive from a specific doctrine that can be learnt, be it philosophical or theological. It is something anyone can find in herself or himself since it is based on the voice of conscience. Newman is very clear when he asserts that this is not for him a question of “tracing the image of God in the mind of a child or a man to its first origins, but showing that he can become possessed of such an image, over and above all mere notions of God, and in what that image consists” (1874, 115). As a consequence, it is not by any means essential that someone must be educated in such and such a way to have a religious point of view. Of course, different theologies, like different philosophies, can help us become clear about what 7 As the editors of the recent edition of the Lecture point out in their introduction, the “paradox” of the “supernatural value” reinforces Wittgenstein’s first reference to it in terms of “absolute value”, with this being the outcome of the work (see Zamuner, Di Lascio and Levy 2014, 6 ff.).

110 Venturinha we are looking for. But these various “language-​games”, in the Wittgenstein vocabulary, constitute “objects of comparison, which, through similarities and dissimilarities, are meant to throw light on features of our language” (PI, §150). Accordingly, Newman claims: This vivid apprehension of religious objects, on which I have been enlarging, is independent of the written records of Revelation; it does not require any knowledge of Scripture, nor of the history or the teaching of the Catholic Church. It is independent of books. 1874, 118

Newman evidently does not dispute that the “notional apprehension” proper to theological inquiry can illuminate certain matters (see 1874, 119). What he, like Wittgenstein, suggests is that it is only by means of our imaginative capacities that the religious can be fully apprehended. The possibility of understanding an intricate concept like that of the Trinity in Christianity depends precisely on not taking a “notional” approach to it. We shall never arrive at a clear picture of what is implied in the Divine Trinity but, Newman argues, one can grasp the meanings of the concepts that underlie it by reference to the real role they play separately in our lives. Everybody knows the meaning of the words “father”, “son” or even “Ghost”; everybody knows, for example, what is expected of a father. Wittgenstein, avoiding the fragilities of Pascal’s somewhat circular attempt to justify the Christian faith and its ethics through a belief in the historical narratives of Scripture, as well as Frazer’s intellectualism, exhibits an attitude of religious tolerance, certainly inspired by Newman, in which the essential is what this or that belief symbolically expresses. Instead of explaining beliefs, we can describe them and measure their epistemic value by comparing the “family-​resemblances” they encode in different cultures or forms of life. Wittgenstein’s refusal of what he calls “the historical proof-​ game” in religion is intimately connected with his idea that the religious sphere cannot be accessed by reason alone. It is highly significant that, in the “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough”, Wittgenstein somehow redefines the Aristotelian definition of man, stating that, in a certain sense, “man is a ceremonial animal”, adding that this is “partly wrong and partly nonsensical, but there is also something right about it” (rfgb R, 129). The ceremonies implied in this remark are of many different kinds. We tend to think of collective rites in these terms, but individual prayer and reflection are also “ceremonial”. It is a landmark of Wittgenstein’s thought, both early and late, that the religious sphere manifests itself in our lives through conscience, and this is

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why the different formulations of faith, be they more or less primitive, more or less sophisticated from a theological point of view, ultimately converge. The prospects of such an understanding for overcoming interreligious disagreement and promoting interfaith dialogue and encounter are huge (see Andrejč 2016). There is not, from a Wittgensteinian point of view, the correct religion. What we find throughout history is a plurality of religious views, representative of an amazing cultural diversity, that nevertheless have many aspects in common. It is precisely what subsists despite all differences that Wittgenstein is interested in. And the application of such a comprehensive philosophy of religion seems to be, in the world we live in today, absolutely crucial.8

Bibliography

Andrejč, Gorazd. 2016. Wittgenstein and Interreligious Disagreement:  A Philosophical and Theological Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Atkinson, James R. 2009. The Mystical in Wittgenstein’s Early Writings. New  York: ­Routledge. Baker, Deane-​ Peter. 2007. Tayloring Reformed Epistemology:  Charles Taylor, Alvin Plantinga and the de jure Challenge to Christian Belief. London: scm Press. Bolzano, Bernard. 2014. Theory of Science, vol. 3, translated by Paul Rusnock and Rolf George. New York: Oxford University Press. Bottone, Angelo. 2005. “Newman and Wittgenstein after Foundationalism”. New Blackfriars 86: 62–​75. Burley, Mikel. 2012. Contemplating Religious Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips New York: Bloomsbury. Carroll, Thomas D. 2014. Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chatterjee, Ranjit. 2005. Wittgenstein and Judaism:  A Triumph of Concealment. New York: Peter Lang. Citron, Gabriel. 2013. “Religious Language as Paradigmatic of Language in General: Wittgenstein’s 1933 Lectures”. In: The Textual Genesis of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, edited by Nuno Venturinha, 19–​36. New York: Routledge. Clack, Brian R. 1998. Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave M ­ acmillan.

8 This paper is part of the research project “Epistemology of Religious Belief:  Wittgenstein, Grammar and the Contemporary World” (PTDC/FER-FIL/32203/2017), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

112 Venturinha Drury, Maurice O’Connor. 1996. “Conversations with Wittgenstein”. In: The Danger of Words and Writings on Wittgenstein, edited by David Berman, Michael Fitzgerald and John Hayes, 97–​171. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Graham, Gordon. 2014. Wittgenstein and Natural Religion. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Hacker, P.M.S. 2001. “Was he Trying to Whistle it?” In: Wittgenstein. Connections and Controversies, 98–​140. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hacker, P.M.S. 2003. “Wittgenstein, Carnap and the New American Wittgensteinians”, The Philosophical Quarterly 53: 1–​23. Helm, Paul. 2001. “Wittgensteinian Religion and ‘Reformed’ Epistemology”. In: Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Religion, edited by Mark Addis and Robert L. Arrington, 101–​118. London: Routledge. Ivry, Alfred L. 1992. “Maimonides and Neoplatonism:  Challenge and Response”. In: Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by Lenn E. Goodman, 137–​156. Albany, NY: suny. Kerr, Fergus. 1986. Theology after Wittgenstein. Oxford:  Blackwell; 2nd edition:  1997 (London: spck). Kienzler, Wolfgang. 2006. “Wittgenstein and John Henry Newman on Certainty”. In: Deepening our Understanding of Wittgenstein, edited by Michael Kober, Grazer Philosophische Studien 71: 117–​138. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kim, Joseph. 2012. Reformed Epistemology and the Problem of Religious Diversity: Proper Function, Epistemic Disagreement, and Christian Exclusivism. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Labron, Tim. 2006. Wittgenstein’s Religious Point of View. London: Continuum. Lazenby, J. Mark. 2006. The Early Wittgenstein on Religion. London: Continuum. Malcolm, Norman. 1993. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, edited by Peter Winch. London: Routledge. Mulhall, Stephen. 2011. “Wittgenstein on Religious Belief”. In: The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, edited by Oskari Kuusela and Marie McGinn, 755–​775. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newman, John Henry. 1874. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. London: Burns, Oates, & Co. O’Meara, John J. 1982. “The Neoplatonism of Saint Augustin”. In: Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, edited by Dominic J. O’Meara, 34–​41. Albany, NY: suny. Owens, Joseph. 1992. “The Relevance of Avicennian Neoplatonism”. In: Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought, edited by Parviz Morewedge, 41–​50. Albany, NY: suny. Peters, James R. 2009. The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Phillips, D.Z. 1988. Faith after Foundationalism. London: Routledge. Phillips, D.Z. 1993. Wittgenstein and Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pritchard, Duncan H. 2015. “Wittgenstein on Faith and Reason: The Influence of Newman”. In:  God, Truth and other Enigmas, edited by Miroslaw Szatkowski, 197–​215. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Ricken, Friedo. 2007. Glauben weil es vernünftig ist. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Rogers, Katherin A. 1997. The Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Epistemology of Anselm of Canterbury. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Somavilla, Ilse. 2010. “Wittgenstein’s Coded Remarks in the Context of His Philosophizing”. In:  Wittgenstein After His Nachlass, edited by Nuno Venturinha, 30–​50. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sundholm, Göran. 2000. “When, and Why, did Frege Read Bolzano?”. In: The Logica Yearbook 1999, edited by Timothy Childers. Prague: Filosofia. Taylor, Charles. 1995. Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press. Venturinha, Nuno. 2010a. “Ethics, Metaphysics and Nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”. Wittgenstein-​Studien 1: 1–​20. Venturinha, Nuno. 2010b. “Introduction”. In: Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience, edited by António Marques and Nuno Venturinha, 13–​19. Bern: Peter Lang. Venturinha, Nuno. 2010c. “Beyond the World, Beyond Significant Language”. In: Language and World –​Part One: Essays on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. Proceedings of the 32nd International Wittgenstein-​Symposium, edited by Volker A. Munz, Klaus Puhl and Joseph Wang, 387–​399. Frankfurt: Ontos. Venturinha, Nuno. 2011. “Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche: The Roots of Tractarian Solipsism”. In: Unsocial Sociabilities: Wittgenstein’s Sources, edited by Esther Ramharter, 59–​74. Berlin: Parerga. Venturinha, Nuno. 2012. “Demystifying Mysticism:  Brouwer and Wittgenstein”. In: Doubtful Certainties: Language-​Games, Forms of Life, Relativism, edited by Jesús Padilla Gálvez and Margit Gaffal, 203–​211. Frankfurt: Ontos. Venturinha, Nuno. 2015. “The Epistemic Value of Holding for True”. Journal of Philosophical Research 40: 155–​170. von Stosch, Klaus. 2010. “Wittgensteinian Fideism?”. In:  The Contemplative Spirit:  D. Z. Phillips on Religion and the Limits of Philosophy, edited by Ingolf U. Dalferth and Hartmut von Sass, 115–​134. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Wainwright, William J. 1999. Philosophy of Religion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Webb, Mark Owen. 2015. A Comparative Doxastic-​Practice Epistemology of Religious Experience. New York: Springer. Zamuner, Edoardo; Di Lascio, Ermelinda Valentina; and Levy, D.K. 2014. “Introduction: The Content of the Lecture on Ethics”. In: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lecture on Ethics, edited by Edoardo Zamuner, Ermelinda Valentina Di Lascio and D.K. Levy 1–41. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell.

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Showing the Fly Out of the Bottle: Wittgenstein’s Enactive Apophaticism and Interreligious Dialogue Sebastjan Vörös and Varja Štrajn

Introduction

At least since the 1960’s, the concept of “dialogue” has played an increasingly prominent role in specifying the nature of relationship between religions. Unlike other approaches, which try to transcend the confines of individual confessions, either by taking on a non-​confessional (religious studies) or trans-​ confessional stance (syncretism), the proponents of religious dialogue foster cooperative and constructive engagement between members of different religious groups. However, how one construes dialogue in the interreligious context depends heavily on which encounters and interactions one feels are the most valuable in such a context, as well as how one conceives of their nature and dynamics. One of the central elements in promoting constructive engagement between religions is, of course, language. But religious languages come in many stripes, and understanding how they operate and what they convey can have important implications for interreligious dialogue. The main aim of this paper is to engage in such an analysis and show how certain strands of Wittgenstein’s philosophy may help us gain better insight into the workings of religious language and thereby into further possibilities for interreligious dialogue. Specifically, it will be argued that a Wittgenstein-​inspired approach to language can shed light on the intricate interface between religious language games and their existential background, and thus pave new ways for interreligious communication.

Enactive Apophaticism: Some Methodological Preliminaries

It will be prudent to begin our discussion with a short methodological proviso. The very mention of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is likely to furrow many an academic brow, for there has been an ongoing, and often quite heated, discussion as to whether it is even permissible to speak of “Wittgenstein’s philosophy” in the singular, designating a unified and internally coherent philosophical “system”,

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or whether it would be perhaps more appropriate to speak of “Wittgenstein’s philosophies” in the plural. With respect to the issue of purported (dis)continuities in Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought, there is thus talk of one Wittgenstein (the so-​called “new Wittgensteinians”, e.g. Crary and Read 2000), two Wittgensteins (the “standard interpretation”, e.g. Hacker 2001), or even three Wittgensteins (e.g. Moyal-​Sharrock 2004) (cf. Tyler 2011, 30–​35). Similarly, the nature of his philosophy has been described variously as therapeutic (Cavell 1979, Diamond 1991), metaphysical (Anscombe 1996, Hacker 2001), or elucidatory (Hutto 2003, McGinn 1999; cf. Hutchinson and Read 2006), etc.1 However, since the main purpose of this paper is not expository, but constructive –​i.e., its aim is not to provide a coherent account of Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought (if there even is such a beast), but to, by means of a creative use of certain aspects and themes in Wittgenstein’s writings, shed light on interreligious dialogue –​, it does not try to argue for any of these particular views. While more sympathetic to therapeutic approaches, it leaves open the question as to whether Wittgenstein’s philosophy forms a unified whole, and focuses instead on whether, and how, we might creatively engage with certain strands in Wittgenstein’s thought, however broadly construed, to help us address the topic of interreligious dialogue from a fresh perspective.2 Thus, our use of terms such as “early” and “late Wittgenstein”, or even “Wittgenstein’s philosophy” for that matter, should not be construed as endorsing any particular interpretation en masse. So, what are some of the strands in Wittgenstein’s philosophy that we would especially like to focus upon? First, throughout Wittgenstein’s work (albeit with different emphases) one finds the idea of philosophy as activity, i.e. of philosophy that is not a “body of doctrine” (tlp, 4.112) or a “theory of metaphysics” (Atkinson 2009, 33), but a practical endeavour –​something that needs to be done. Secondly, 1 Note that the two classifications overlap but are not completely coextensive. 2 An instructive parallel can be drawn with recent (re)appropriations of phenomenology by the so-​called enactivist and neurophenomenological approaches within contemporary cognitive science (Gallagher & Zahavi 2003, Varela et al. 1991, Varela 1996,). Although not trying to diminish the importance of expository work –​nobody would deny that there remain numerous pressing issues as to whether Husserl’s conception of reduction or embodiment is consistent throughout his oeuvre, etc. –​, these approaches are vehement in their opposition to the idea that such work exhausts Husserl’s philosophy. Instead, they argue that Husserl (or Heidegger or Merleau-​Ponty) never intended for phenomenology to become an exegesis of his philosophical thought, but emphasized that phenomenology should be, above all, practiced –​applied to new problems and thereby constantly improved upon. Similarly, it might be claimed that the most Wittgensteinian approach to Wittgenstein’s philosophy would be to try to put it to creative use in tackling different areas of inquiry (even if this entails transcending and/​or revising certain aspects of original Wittgenstein’s thought). For an interesting attempt of this nature in the field of enactivist cognitive science see e.g. Hutto 2013.

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at least occasionally, this “doing” seems to be construed as an attempt not to erect a new metaphysical system or conceptual framework, but to dismantle the befuddlements arising from our metaphysical theories and to thwart the impulse to engage in metaphysical speculation. Philosophizing can thus be said to “unravel the knots in our thinking” (PO, §183); it helps us “destroy the houses of cards” and clear up “the ground of language on which they stood” (PI, §118). Thirdly, the “unravelling” of the metaphysical house of cards is not carried out for its own sake, but “consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose” (PI, §127) –​ a purpose which is therapeutic or existential in nature. In other words, philosophy seems to be understood as a dismantling activity aimed at solving existential problems. A philosophical problem is not resolved by means of a theoretical or conceptual solution, but by means of an existential dis-​solution: “The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word –​like a lump of sugar in the water” (PO, §183). Put differently, one dis-​solves existential problems by living them away, by embodying a way of being that enables them to wither and fade away: The solution of the problem you see in life is a way of living which makes what is problematic disappear. The fact that life is problematic means that your life does not fit life’s shape. So you must change your life, & once it fits the shape, what is problematic will disappear. CVR 31

These three elements, which are reflected in the perhaps somewhat cryptic title of this chapter, shed light on what we mean by “enactive apophaticism”. Enactive, in this particular context, signifies the active, performative quality of philosophical endeavour; it denotes philosophy as a “doing”, not as a “concept”. Conversely, apophaticism literally stands for “un-​saying” or “saying away” (Sells 1994, 2), for a de-​or even un-​construction of the linguistic “web of beliefs”, a negation that is brimming with existential meaning. Taken together, they point to, and embody, the “existential”: that which cannot be grasped in words but can only be lived through. Now, how do these strands relate to the interreligious dialogue? Wittgenstein reminds us that language is much more than representative theories take it to be. Language not only refers and denotes, but also “languages”,3 as some contemporary authors would put it (Cowley 2011; Cuffari 2015; Thibault 2011): it acts, it dismantles, it cures. In this sense, different religious traditions, in their constant “urge to run up against the limits of language” (Wittgenstein in Waismann 1979, 3 The term was initially introduced by the Chilean biologist, Humberto Maturana (1978), and signifies a shift away from representational theories of language and the “code view” of

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68f) –​to utter what, in the last analysis, cannot be (fully?) uttered –​seem to be especially strongly embedded in the enactive-​existential “languaging (!) games”. “Is talking essential to religion? I  can well imagine a religion in which there are no doctrinal propositions, in which there is thus no talking. 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 also does not matter at all if the words used are true or false or nonsense.” ibid., 117f; emphasis added

Wittgenstein’s approach to language can serve as a reminder that “religious language” doesn’t always “represent” or “designate”, but instead (or even predominantly so) acts (Donovan 1982, 78 ff): it doesn’t seek a (theoretical) solution, but helps to embody and enact an (existential) ab-​solution. With this in mind, it becomes easier for us to envision how and why different religious discourses (different doctrines, symbols, etc.) might express a similar, yet not necessarily identical, under-​and in-​lying “existential structure”: although encapsulated in different bodies of doctrine they may be said to embody similar, if not identical, “existential truths”. In what follows, we will try to elucidate how these strands of Wittgenstein’s philosophy reflect one aspect of religiosity that seems to be especially suitable for this type of analysis, namely mysticism. In order to avoid some of the pitfalls that have traditionally plagued the academic study of mysticism in general and mystical experience in particular,4 we intend to narrow the scope of our analysis to mystical discourse, conceived primarily as a set of specific (linguistic and non-​linguistic) practices that help the reader/​listener to break through (“un-​ say”) the discursive web and realize (“embody”) the ineffable dis-​solution of existential problems. This is not to say that the discursive aspects stand for linguistic communication, towards the conception of language as doing, or more specifically, as a “dynamic, adaptive, inter-​bodily activity of coordinating meaning during interaction” (Cuffari 2015, 211). 4 In the past 50 years, the field has been punctuated by a series of embittered disputes between the advocates of two opposite schools of thought (Vörös 2013, esp. ­chapter 1). On the one side of the spectrum, one finds perennialists (Forman 1999; Stace 1960), who claim that there exists a phenomenological core of mystical experiences that is identical across cultures, traditions, etc. On the other side, one finds constructivists (Katz 1992; Proudfoot 1985), who maintain that no such core exists and that all experiences are culturally constructed. The all-​or-​nothing terminology in which the dispute has often been framed, coupled with the lack of clear standards by which the two alternatives might be weighed, has caused much exasperation and has pushed the field almost to the brink of oblivion.

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either mysticism or religious discourse in toto, but merely that they naturally lend themselves to Wittgenstein-​inspired reflections on “running up against the limits of language”. In other words, mystical discourse will help us exemplify how our broadly construed Wittgenstein-​inspired approach to language might shed light on, and thus help us better understand, certain structural similarities between different religious discourses, especially their often tortuous attempts to “express the inexpressible”. The paper consists of three parts. In the first two parts we will try to underline and illuminate those elements in early and late Wittgenstein that may be of special interest to the study of mysticism in particular and of interreligious dialogue in general. Then, in the last part, we will, by focusing on concrete examples from Buddhist and Christian traditions, try to sketch how these elements could be used to analyze and systematize different ways of the “un-​ saying”, and why this might be of interest to the interreligious dialogue.

Showing, Not Saying: the Early Wittgenstein

The reason why the early Wittgenstein makes for an appropriate entry point into our discussion is, of course, not merely chronological. It is well-​known, although frequently ignored and/​or undervalued,5 that, towards the end of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein makes explicit references to “the mystical”. Much ink has been spilt over how the term is to be construed in the overall context of Wittgenstein’s philosophy (see e.g. Atkinson 2009; Barrett 1991; Fronda 2010; Tyler 2011), but what is especially important for our purposes, is its relation to the aforementioned practical aspects of language(ing). The term itself appears three times in the text: It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. tlp, 6.44

Feeling the world as a limited whole –​it is this that is mystical. 6.45

5 The tendency to shun everything “mystical” in relation to Wittgenstein is even more surprising when we consider how he was perceived by some of his contemporaries. Thus, in one of his letters to Lady Ottoline, Russell remarks: “[Wittgenstein] has become a complete mystic” as he “reads people like Kierkegaard and Angelus Silesius, and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk” (McGuinnes 2008, 112). Also, it has been suggested that “Wittgenstein received deeper impressions from some writers in the borderland between philosophy, religion, and poetry than from the philosophers” (Malcolm 2001, 19).

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There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. 6.522

Taken by themselves, these propositions conceal as much, if not more, than they reveal, and are therefore in dire need of further specification. As suggested by Barrett (1991), one way to proceed is by taking into account the following passage from the Notebooks: The urge towards the mystical comes of the non-​satisfaction of our wishes by science. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered our problem is not touched at all. Of course in that case there are no questions anymore; and that is the answer. NB, §51

In light of this quotation, the first thing to notice is that tractarian propositions 6.44 and 6.45 stand in obvious relation to the proposition 6.52, which reads: “We feel that when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched”. In other words, scientific theories tell us “how the world is” and explain “how it comes to be as it is”, but they don’t tell us “why it is, why there is this world and not any other kind” (Barrett 1991, 72). Leibniz’ famous question as to why there is something rather than nothing –​the question of sense –​eludes science: “The sense of the world must lie outside the world” (tlp, 6.41), “The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time” (6.4312) and “How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher” (6.432). Science is limited by the (factual) contours of the world –​by “all that is the case” (1), with “the totality of facts” (1.1). The world, in turn, is limited by the (logical) contours of our language: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (5.6), or more specifically: “Logics pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits” (5.61). I can therefore, strictu sensu, answer questions pertaining only to matters of fact –​to states of affairs in the world –​for it is only those questions that can be genuinely asked: “When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it” (6.5). The solution to the deepest existential problems –​to the why’s of our existence –​is thus not on par with solutions to scientific problems, for here “the facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution” (6.4321). On the contrary, the solution lies in the dis-​solution of existential problems, in the realization that they are not really problems at all, but pseudo-​problems

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(Scheinprobleme): “The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)” (6.521). It is this dis-​appearance of the problem that is das Wunder –​the wondrous, the mystical. The mystical, Wittgenstein contends, cannot be said, but it can show itself: “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical” (6.522). But doesn’t this mean that we are bound to keep silent about the mystical, for “[w]‌hat we cannot speak about we must pass in silence” (7)? This would be true if the mystical were completely other-​worldly, if it were to completely transcend the limits of the world and language. However, the mystical does manifest itself, and it manifests itself as a “feeling” of “the world as a limited whole” (6.45). Thus, while not in and of this world, it shows itself through the world (as a limited whole). This, in turn, would mean that, while we cannot speak about the mystical, we can, by running up against the limits of language, help it show or dis-​close itself. In Wittgenstein –​and as we shall see, in much mystical literature –​, the (mystical) speech can un-​speak itself –​it can break through its conceptual framework and manifest the mystical: “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) (6.54)” To put it differently, although “the mystical” cannot be “put into words”, it can be shown –​or it can show itself –​with and through words. Thus, it is through this self-​negating “crack” in the conceptual edifice of language that we reach the very top of Wittgenstein’s (in)famous ladder and move from a descriptive to a performative level, from representing (“saying”) to doing (“showing”). In itself, the realisation that words not only describe but also act is neither particularly novel nor particularly extraordinary. Think of the phrase “I do”, (m)uttered at the altar. Once (m)uttered, it drastically changes our self-​ perception and our subsequent actions (Forman 1999, 96–​97). Similar examples include: “You are under arrest!” or “I quit [this job]!”. In all these cases it seems clear that to utter the sentence (in, of course, the appropriate circumstances) is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it. […] I propose to call [a sentence of this type] a performative sentence. […] The name […] indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action –​it is not normally thought of as just saying something. austin 1962, 6–​7

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When I say, “I do”, or hear “You are under arrest!”, my (social) role, identity, and consecutive modes of behaviour, etc. change dramatically. A performative is a verbal extension of bodily action –​it is a speech act, an utterance used to act or perform. Also, it is crucial to note that, in addition to positive performatives, i.e., performatives that con-​join or “tie a knot” –​, there are also negative performatives, i.e., performatives that dis-​join or “untie a knot”: the opposite of “I do” is “I don’t love you anymore and am leaving” (Forman 1999, 97). What was connected in the first example (marriage), became disconnected in the second (divorce). Put more generally, positive performatives entangle their referents into a conceptual framework, while negative performatives disentangle them from this very network. Are we, then, suggesting that the mystical “showing” is simply identical with the performative use of language? Not quite. Performatives, whether positive or negative, still operate “in the world”, in the domain of meaning: the action that is performed by the issuing of an utterance connects or disconnects the referent to or from a specific conceptual framework. In other words, performative actions are still rooted in description: individual speech acts are meaningful only insofar as they are anchored in concepts and meanings. The phrase “I do” performs an act only if I know what it means to “get married”, “become a man/​wife”, etc. Similarly, the phrase “I’m leaving you” only rings a bell if I know what it means to “get a divorce”, “end a relationship”, etc. In mystical “showing”, on the other hand, not only is saying acting, but it is also (and even more so) un-​saying, it is “saying away” or, more precisely, “saying away in-​and-​ through action”. For while positive performatives en-​tangle their referents into a conceptual framework and negative performatives dis-​entangle them from the conceptual framework, they both presuppose this very same framework. Mystical showing, in our view, goes one step further: it disentangles the very act of entanglement, i.e., it severs the performative dimension of a language from its descriptive or conceptual dimension. In this sense, mystical “showing” or “manifesting” might be termed as an absolutely negative performative  –​ a “transreferential act”, as Sells might put it, an act that uproots all referentiality (Sells 1994, 8).

Of Existential Bumps and Hidden Hinges: the Late Wittgenstein

How do these reflections relate to the late Wittgenstein, particularly to his move away from the (ideal) picture of language towards his well-​known theory of language games? At first glance, one may wonder whether talk of the (in)effability of the mystical may still be of any relevance in the context of

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the enlarged and pluralized conception of language, which includes not only “statements of fact”, as in the Tractatus, but also: Giving orders and obeying themDescribing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurementsConstructing an object from a description (or drawing)Reporting an eventSpeculating about an eventMaking up a story; and reading itMaking a joke; telling itTranslating from one language into anotherAsking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. (PI, §23)Given the fact that the linguistic substratum, branched out as it is in multifarious language games, includes not only factual, but also numerous performative functions, it seems reasonable to ask whether “mystical” showing, construed as an “absolutely negative performative”, has not thereby been grounded in, and fully relegated to, the “linguistic domain” (i.e., the domain of one or more language games; see below). Note, however, that this would be true if language games exhausted human existence, i.e. if the human mode of being fully coincided with its linguistic nature. But this is clearly not the case: Wittgenstein emphasizes that the term “language-​game” is intended “to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life” (PI, §23). Put differently, “language game” –​the speaking of a language –​is not identical with, but is only a part of, a “form of life”, ein Lebensform: “I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the a ‘language game’ ” (PI, §7). There is thus a broader horizon against which language games emerge –​but what, one may inquire, constitutes this horizon and how can anything be said about it? The concept of “form of life” is notoriously abstruse and has given rise to a wealth of different, often mutually exclusive, interpretations (see Boncompagni 2015, 160–​166 and Moyal-​Sharrock 2015, 26–​35 for a comprehensive overview). The central bone of contention seems to revolve around the question as to whether there is one single form of life or a multitude of different forms of life. In a recent article, Moyal-​Sharrock (2015) argues convincingly that, instead of opting for either a biological/​organic single-​form account or a cultural/​historical plurality-​of-​forms account, Wittgenstein’s uses of the term are best construed in terms of “a single human form of life characterized by innumerable forms of human life” (ibid., 21). That is to say, whereas “all humans share in a fundamental form of life, there exist, within this shared way of

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living […] possibilities for diversity and variation; for, that is, various forms of human life” (ibid., 27). This “ ‘universal grammar’ of mankind” is said to consist of “breathing, walking, hoping, dying, but also speaking, thinking, giving orders, asking questions, telling stories, having a chat” –​of basic behaviours “which, if absent, would alter what is meant to be a human being” (ibid., 34). We concur with Moyal-​Sharrock, but add a minor, although not insignificant qualification: instead of referring to the single human form of life as biological, it would, in our view, be much more suitable to construe it as existential, for it relates to the distinctly human mode of being that is given to me prior to, and often aside from, theoretical reflection. In other words, this mode of being is closer to the phenomenological notion of life, conceived in terms of “lived body” (Leib), “lived world” (Lebenswelt) and “being-​in-​the-​world” (In-​der-​Welt-​sein), than to the objectified notion of life and the world in the natural sciences, with the former being the condition that makes the latter possible. Despite the innumerable variety and plurality of language games, they are not completely unrestrained. There is, in words of Conway, “a multiplicity within a fundamental unity, a plurality within limits” (in: ibid., 93). In fact, all language games require certain (unquestioned, existentially grounded) “certainties” that enable them to function in the first place. These “foundation-walls” (OC, §248) or “hinges”(OC, §341–​343) must stay put in order for the edifice of language to function properly –​they are “the axis around which a [linguistic] body rotates” (OC, §152), and are, as such, normally connected with silence: “[H]‌inge-​ certainty is not said, and only by not being said, can it be shown” (Boncompagni 2014, 52). The crucial distinction between “saying” and “showing” is thus retained in the later Wittgenstein, although embedded in a different (broader) context of language games. But what happens when one stumbles across, and unearths, these pre-​ ­supposed “foundation walls” which normally remain hidden in the (unreflected) background? One possibility is to try to incorporate them into the ­structure of a given language game itself. But this necessarily leads to nonsense, for it is “hinges” that make the game possible and imbue it with meaning, so, as soon as they are un-​earthed and then (re)fashioned in the context of the rules of the game they are meant to sustain, they become something else and cannot function as “hinges” any longer: “[W]‌hat works in the background cannot be put in the foreground without losing its nature” (ibid., 55). In the best case scenario, the blurring of background and foreground results in uninformative trivialities of the type: “Human beings have two arms”, etc.; in the worst case scenario –​if the blurring is severe and persistent –​it may result in madness (ibid., 60–​61): radical (existential) scepticism, i.e. the inability to

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set one’s foot on anything solid, translates into what the existential psychiatrist Blankenburg called “the loss of natural self-​evidence” (der Verlust der natürliche Selbstverständlichkeit), which is said to be characteristic of psychosis (Blankenburg 1971; cf. Boncompagni 2014, 60–​62). But Wittgenstein seems to hint at another way out of the predicament: “The uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and bumps that the understanding has got by running its head against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of the discovery.” (PI, §119; emphases added). There are, to be sure, bumps that one acquires when one runs against the “foundation walls” of language and tries to say what (literally) “goes without saying”, but these bumps carry important (existential) insights in that they enable us to discover that our utterances and their meanings are, in fact, embedded in a certain linguistic structure –​a certain language game. It is only by first becoming aware that it is trapped within the (linguistic) bottle (PI, §309) that the fly may hope to find its way to freedom. Just as someone who has been suddenly deprived of air becomes aware of its prior taken-​for-​grantedness, so too running up against the limits of language –​to try to say what can ultimately only be shown –​ awakens us to the fact that, all this time, we have been imbued with the “familiar unseen –​what is always before our eyes but is unnoticed because of its familiarity” (Moyal-​Sharrock 2015, 22), a linguistic structure with its unique rules and limits. Moreover, we realize that these limits do not exhaust our (uniquely human) mode of being –​for otherwise how would we be able to experience them? –​, but are actually shaped by it. More precisely, one learns that [t]‌he meaning of an utterance is embedded in its uses; uses are embedded in language-​games; and language games are in turn embedded in the human form of life and the different forms of human life. (ibid., 38) In doing so –​and this is the crucial point –​one acquires certainty: “What has to be accepted, the given, is –​one might say –​forms of life” (PPF, §345). Since a “form of life” constitutes the ultimate horizon that justifies all possible language games, it is itself neither justified nor unjustified, but rather manifests itself as a very rudimentary (almost “animal”) existential stance towards things: “But that means I want to conceive as it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal.” (OC, §357–​359) It is for this reason that philosophizing can be conceived as a therapeutic activity –​it enables us not only to see, but predominantly, to act or be aright. In confrontations with the limits of language, philosophizing helps us acquire a clear or perspicuous view: “Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. –​Since everything lies open to view

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there is nothing to explain.” (PI 126)  Note, however, that this “perspicuous view” is not a passive and theoretical stance (a Nagelian “view of nowhere”), but is inherently dynamic and practical: “… the end is not certain ‘propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game” (OC, §204). In other words, a perspicuous view is not abstract and disembodied, but a whole-​ bodied, blood-​and-​bone affair. The newly acquired “rootedness” in the fundamental certainty is therefore, as pointed out by Moyal-​Sharrock, “an enacted certainty, exhibiting itself in the smoothness of our normal, basic operating in the world” (Moyal-​Sharrock 2015, 23; our emphasis). However, this existential “escape from the bottle” does not imply an absolute negation or transcendence of all linguistic liminalities (the bottle, after all, remains intact), but rather an ability to “command a clear view of the use of our words” (PI, §122), a way of being that frees us from entanglements of language games and allows us to live in and through them, without being imprisoned by them. In other words, we are not condemned to absolute silence, but to en-​worded silence –​mindful utterings of non-​sense. Seen from this perspective, mystical “showing”, construed as the “absolute negative performative”, translates into systematic ways of cultivating existentially pregnant confrontations with non-​sense:  it uses resources available in different language games to disentangle the speaker from their frameworks and thus embody (i.e., realize) the existential. In other words, various modes of mystical discourse function as pragmatic means that, by freeing us from linguistic entanglements, dis-​close and thereby “existentially anchor” us in our underlying life-​form. Mystical un-​saying is thus the enactment of Wittgenstein’s admonition: “Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! Only don’t fail to pay attention to your nonsense” (CV, 64e). In this regard, we concur with Knepper that too little attention has been given to the possible implications of the late Wittgenstein for the philosophical investigations of ineffability (Knepper 2009, 66); however, we disagree with Knepper’s claim that mystical discourse needs to be construed as yet another language game (ibid., 68). Instead, we feel that what is typical of mystical discourse is to teach us how to mindfully “pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense” (PI, §464), i.e., to use the elements of a given language game in a way that brings the speaker (more or less forcibly) to the limits of this very game and free her from its “entrapments”. In the words of Barrett: “Nonsensicality arises when words are used, not just contrary to the rules […], but, in fact, have no rules, and, consequently, no home, no language-​game, in which to dwell” (Barrett 1991, 123; emphasis added). As soon as mystical discourse “finds its (way) home” and solidifies into yet another language game, it loses

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its impetus: it no longer functions as a means for the intentional cultivation of nonsense, probing the borders of the (un)sayable, but becomes a new linguistic structure with its own particular set of rules and limitations. As such, mystical discourse seems to be of special interest for interreligious dialogue, as its “homelessness” not only enables, but actually requires the reflection of individual language games against broader contexts of action and behaviour.

Mystical Discourse: Means of Living and Saying Nonsense6

So, how can one cultivate mindful encounters with non-​sense? In this last section, we outline six such means used in mystical literature: silence, action, evocative non-​sense, paradox, negation, and metaphor (cf. Vörös 2014). The inclusion of silence and action may seem strange at first, as they formally fall outside of language, but they actually prove to be indispensable once we realize that they constitute the “limit phenomena” of every language game and therefore provide the “existential performative substratum” for languaging. In this sense, mystical discourse can be said to span the linguistic/​non-​linguistic divide by firmly anchoring language in its existential horizon. The six means can be classified according to two mutually exclusive criteria: consistency and suggestivity. The stronger the non-​sensical dimension of a given means, the more it en-​acts (em-​bodies) the mystical, and the more it is consistent with its existential/​experiential ab-​solution; the stronger the sensical dimension of a given means, the more it is embedded in the internal rules of a given language game, and the more it is linguistically suggestive for the recipient. On the other hand, the more consistent a given means, the greater the likelihood it will be denounced as sheer nonsense and therefore dismissed; and the more suggestive a given means, the more likely it is to be subsumed under the framework of a given language game and therefore distorted. Silence is the most consistent, but the least suggestive means; metaphor is the most suggestive, but the least consistent means. The other four means fall somewhere in-​between the two extremes, with the performative component gradually diminishing, and the descriptive component gradually rising, from top to bottom. An important thing to note is that different language games can harbour similar structural and functional elements, so let us now have a somewhat

6 The account in this section draws on, but also significantly modifies, the analysis first propounded in Vörös (2014).

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closer look at each of these means in turn, with concrete examples from Buddhist and Christian tradition: Silence In one of his sermons, the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart writes the following: And in the same ground, where He has His own rest, we too shall have our rest and possess it with Him. The place has no name, and no one can utter a word concerning it that is appropriate. Every word that we can say of it is more a denial of what God is not than a declaration of what He is. A great master saw that and it seemed to him that, whatever he could say in words about God, he could not really say anything which did not contain some falsehood. And so he was silent and would not say another word, though he was greatly mocked by other masters. Therefore it is a much greater thing to be silent about God than to speak. eckhart 2009, 223; emphasis added

Similarly, in “Ananda Sutta” in Samyutta-​Nikaya (44.10), Buddha replies to all questions about the (non)existence of the Self posed by the ascetic Vacchagotta with silence. When he later explains this extraordinary exchange to his disciple Ananda, Buddha states that, by remaining silent, he wanted to help Vacchagotta free himself from the snares of this type of (metaphysical) questioning, as it is not possible to speak of (ultimate) reality without falling prey to inconsistencies and contradictions (Ananda Sutta). Silence has always been the central aspect of mystical discourse. It is the unsurpassable limit of every language game, the “non-​point” where every languaging begins and ends. In a sense, mystical discourse is not so much about en-​wording silence, as it is about en-​silencing words:  Silence is what makes it not only the expression of the limit of sense, but also (and primarily) the expression of (existential) certainty, which is why it is the most consistent and the least suggestive of the means in our analysis. Action The other non-​verbal means of expressing the mystical is slightly more suggestive and less consistent than silence, because every act as act –​i.e., in contradistinction to sheer movement –​has to be carried out against the background of a specific (meaningful) language game. However, due to its embodied nature, it is not rooted in language but is rather the root of all languaging. Its significance is most vividly expressed in Zen koans, for example, in the famous koan of Buddha and the flower:

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Once when the World-​Honoured One, in ancient times, was upon Mount Grdhrakuta, he held up a flower before the congregation of monks. At this time all were silent, but the Venerable Kashyapa only smiled. The World-​Honoured One said, “I have the Eye of the True Law, the Secret Essence of Nirvana, the Formless Form, the Mysterious Law-​Gate. Without relying upon words and letters, beyond all teaching as a special transmission, I pass this all on to Mahakashyapa.” blyth 1974, 76

Sometimes these exchanges takes on a rather dramatic form (e.g., the koan of Gutei’s finger, in which one of Gutei’s students experiences enlightenment after having his fingers cut off; ibid.: 57), underlying the severity of their existential “message”. Evocative Nonsense Evocative nonsense is an expressive amphibian of sorts, as it occupies the middle ground between linguistic and non-​linguistic means. According to its form, it belongs to the (strictly) linguistic domain; but according to its content and function, it is anchored in the “the existential”. It is, in other words, the prime example of languaging, as it traverses the shadowy border of language and its existential horizon. Evocative non-​sense is also probably best exemplified by Zen koans, e.g. Tozan’s Three Pounds of Flax: A monk asked Tozan: “What is the Buddha?” He replied, “Three pounds of flax.” blyth 1974, 22

As seen from Tozan’s reply, evocative nonsense shows, but does not say: Questions pertaining to the “ultimate ground” transcend the realm of sense, and the only way to free oneself from them is to allow them to dissolve –​“like a lump of sugar in the water” (PO, §183) –​against the background of non-​sense. However, the overall rise in suggestivity –​the inclusion of the linguistic dimension –​has a downside, as it opens up the possibility of taking the reply at face value and thus distorting its prime function. Paradox This becomes even more pertinent in the paradoxical use of language, a very common feature in mystical literature. For example, Meister Eckhart writes: “When the soul is blind and sees nothing else, she sees God, and this

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must be so” (Eckhart 2009, 141). And in Diamond Sutra we read: “The world is not the world, therefore it is the world. […] All dharmas are not all dharmas, therefore they are all dharmas. […] A thought of truth is not a thought of truth, therefore it is the thought of truth.” (Diamond Sutra, sections 13c, 17a, 14a) Paradox is more firmly embedded in a specific language game than evocative nonsense:  the two constituent elements in the paradoxical expression (e.g., “unknowing knowing”, “everything and nothing”, “here and there”, “always and never”) are taken at “face value”, but by being effectively juxtaposed they exhaust the realm of the meaningful and embody the inexpressible. However, since the nonsensicality of the paradox is not as pronounced as in evocative nonsense, it is open to manoeuvres that try to blunt its edge. For example, Jones suggests that mystical utterances are paradoxical only “on the surface”, as the two key terms are used in two different senses  –​they don’t express differences between, say, “the shape versus the colour of an object, but what is perceived in normal awareness and what is realized in mystical awareness”. For this reason, he feels it is possible to provide non-​paradoxical para­phrases for mystical utterances without any loss of their “assertive import” (Jones 1993, 115–​117). It is our contention, however, that the meaning of a given term is of secondary importance: what is crucial, is not so much what the individual word denotes, but the semantic clash between the two antonyms. Put differently, it is not the meaning of this or that term, but the exhaustion of semantic space that manifests the mystical. Negation Even more open to possible misconstrual is negation, succinctly expressed in St. John of the Cross’ nada nada (“not (this) not (this)”). Take, for instance, a well-​known passage from Pseudo-​Dionysius the Areopagite: We therefore maintain that the universal Cause transcending all things is neither impersonal nor lifeless, nor irrational nor without understanding: in short, that It is not a material body, and therefore does not possess outward shape or intelligible form, or quality, or quantity, or solid weight; nor has It any local existence which can be perceived by sight or touch; nor has It the power of perceiving or being perceived. […] It is not soul, or mind, or endowed with the faculty of imagination, conjecture, reason, or understanding; […] nor can It be grasped by the understanding since It is not knowledge or truth; nor is It kingship or wisdom; nor is It one, nor is It unity, nor is It Godhead or Goodness;

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nor is It a Spirit, as we understand the term, since It is not Sonship or Fatherhood. rolt 1920, 103

Similarly, in the “Nibanna Sutta” (Udana 8.1) we find the following (de)characterization of Nirvana: There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-​perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of suffering. Nibanna Sutta

Being directed towards the mystical by systematically stripping it of all positive qualifications, the recipient may wrongfully conceive of it as “sheer nothingness”. Taken literally, via negativa implies an outright denial of the mystical; but on the Wittgensteinian reading, it can be seen as the affirmation of the nonsensicality of the mystical, of its ongoing transgressing of linguistic boundaries. Metaphor The last means is the most suggestive and least consistent:  although metaphorical sayings such as “the cloud of unknowing”, “the silent desert”, “the far shore”, “the taintless”, “the unaging”, etc., still embody the mystical, their “showing” (“manifesting”) traverses thick layers of meaning/​signifying. Their greatest strength is their greatest weakness: being the most “homely” of the expressive means, they are most likely to make us overlook the “homeless” nature of the mystical. Metaphorical sayings may therefore appeal to the recipient, but may also lead her astray if she fails to en-​live the trans-​referential modality they embody and tries to ground them in the context of a given language game.

Conclusion

In the preceding section, we have tried to provide a very general outline of how the Wittgenstein-​inspired enactive apophaticism might be used to help us

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identify, compare, and systematize different ways of “expressing the inexpressible”. More generally, we have tried to indicate how aspects from different language games (taken from Buddhist and Christian traditions) could be understood as being used in similar ways (running up against the limits of language) and for similar purposes (manifesting the ineffable). Ours is, of course, but a preliminary analysis, and does not sufficiently explicate the particularities and dynamics of such processes. However, it is our hope that it sets up a potentially useful and illuminating conceptual framework, and it would be interesting to see what results might be obtained if it were used in further studies of mystical traditions as well as in other aspects of religious life. Wittgenstein’s reflections on language, it has been argued, open up creative ways of understanding how certain elements of religious discourse could be used when confronting “the ineffable”. In this sense, they might enable members of different religious groups and traditions to acquire –​to phrase it in a genuinely Wittgensteinian way –​a clear or perspicuous view into the existential dynamics of other, and seemingly quite different, religious groups and traditions, whose languages seem to differ substantially from their own. This newly acquired view, however, is not an objectifying “view from nowhere”, but rather an involved, mindful, and open stance that allows for a greater appreciation as to how a given symbol, doctrine or ritual in a given religion A (with its unique set of language games La) can play a similar existential role as a seemingly different symbol, doctrine or ritual in a given religion B (with its unique set of language games Lb). By this, we mean that it is only when we have personally confronted the ineffable existential depths that we can learn to appreciate that there is, as it were, life “behind” or “underneath” the confines of our discursive activity, and thus realize the scope and limits of not only our own, but of all language games. Once we start taking seriously the idea that religious discourse is just as much, or perhaps even more, about languaging as it is about language, a more open and empathic take on interreligious dialogue becomes possible, a take in which “dialogue” is no longer concerned solely with what different religious discourses are saying, but also with what they are doing. Such a dialogue is no longer concerned solely with what different symbols are supposed to designate, but also with what they manifest; it is no longer concerned with “semantics” of a given ritual, but also with its (ineffable) existential import. The Wittgensteinian approach to religious language can teach us not only that “actions speak louder than words”, but also that “words are actions” issued from elusive existential depths.

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­c hapter 7

Radical Pluralism, Concept Formation, and Interreligious Communication Randy Ramal 1

Introductory Remarks

The importance of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for the question of interreligious communication could be pursued from different angles. In this essay, I argue that although the radical pluralism endorsed in his philosophy can be used to argue against any necessary incommensurability between the world religions, a case for pursuing normative forms of interreligious communication could be made when the logical grounds of affirming radical pluralism are properly understood. By ‘normative’ here I simply mean theological, ethical, or political forms of interreligious communication that aim to initiate contact and dialogue between the world religions. I  do not mean to suggest that radical pluralism is the outcome of normative thinking, however. Rather, I argue that when radical pluralism is logically framed in a proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s accounts of concept formation and primitive reactions, the resulting grammatical elucidations place normative forms of interreligious communication on stronger logical grounds. As is, these grammatical elucidations are based solely on Wittgenstein’s method of looking at meaning through the use made of concepts, and they do not advance interreligious communication beyond providing reasons for the absence of incommensurability between the world religions. The term ‘radical pluralism’ is well-​suited to describe the outcome of the philosophical attention Wittgenstein pays the radical diversity of people’s discursive practices, both within and outside of religion. In his explication of this term, D.Z. Phillips uses it to mean a grammatical concept that describes the irreducibility of people’s diverse discourses and concepts into a set of common meanings and truths, and he credits Wittgenstein for the idea (Phillips 2007: 204–​5). I follow Phillips in this description but, since the idea of radical pluralism has been mainly popular in political philosophy, I  give a brief account of that context in the next section to show the unique sense it has in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The link between the philosophical idea of radical pluralism and the possibility of pursuing interreligious communication and dialogue is indirect and

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136 Ramal requires several argumentative steps. The first step is to acknowledge a robust distinction between the philosophical interest in religion and normative interests that presuppose that philosophical interest. I make use of Phillips’s discussions of Søren Kierkegaard and Richard Rorty to demonstrate the importance of maintaining this distinction. I show that there is a normative-​prescriptive similarity between political forms of radical pluralism and theological forms of pluralism that sets them apart from Wittgenstein’s grammatical-​descriptive version of radical pluralism. I further show how certain theological forms of pluralism presuppose radical pluralism in their promotion of interreligious forms of communication, focusing on the works of Miroslav Volf and David Tracy to make this point. The sharp distinction Wittgenstein makes between philosophy and normative practices leads him to distrust any attempt to justify the affirmation of radical pluralism by means other than conceptual analysis and, on the surface, he seems to reject the idea of tracing the origins of concepts to the natural world when explicating pluralism. Yet this is precisely the next step I take in justifying the relevance of radical pluralism to the question of interreligious communication. I do so, however, with certain qualifications that compensate for Wittgenstein’s distrust. In particular, I critically evaluate the distrust Wittgenstein maintains by revisiting his accounts of concept formation and primitive reactions. I argue that it is possible to avoid the mistake Wittgenstein warns against in the attempt to trace concepts to the natural world, namely the mistake of producing one-​sided causal explanations for radical pluralism, and I do so with help from Derrida’s reflections on non-​human animals and the recent research from primatology. Derrida argues that the encounter with the other, including the religious other, is an opportunity to let one be seen by this other while letting the other speak for itself. Derrida came upon this idea through an encounter with his own cat, an ‘other’ completely different than him, and discovering that they share a similarity of reaction to one another. In this essay I build on this idea with the help of Wittgenstein to show how the encounter with a religious other opens up a door to seeing the logical origins of the world religions in similar primal responses to the world. Derrida’s reflections reveal a strong similarity between the reactions some non-​human animals exhibit in response to the natural world and the animalistic reactions people exhibit. In my discussion of this topic, I argue that this similarity has clear relevance to religious concepts and primal reactions, and that Wittgenstein himself hints at this similarity in his reflections on human beings in primitive, animalistic forms of existence. My overall argument is that an investigation of the role that unreflective and primal religious reactions play in shedding light on the origins of religion elucidate the irreducible diversity of religious concepts in the various religious

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discourses we now have. This is possible, I show, because religious concepts are the outcome of these primal reactions, whether directly or indirectly. Radical pluralism describes this irreducible diversity of concepts within the religious language-​games played in the world religions. But the justification given through discussing the link with primal reactions should provide the theologian, or any other normative thinker, with sufficient grounds to initiate communication and dialogue with other religions should that be the objective. My essay is methodological in orientation and I see my task as philosophical rather than theological. I therefore do not provide detailed theological, ethical, or political examples of interreligious communication. Still, towards the end of my essay I briefly discuss how a theological-​ethical attempt to dialogue between Christians and Jains on the question of shame might ensue. My hope is to show that the proposed clarification of Wittgenstein’s radical pluralism could be built upon by theologians who do engage in interreligious communication and dialogue. This should be done, hopefully, without denying that certain radical differences between the world’s religions do exist. .

2

What Is Radical Pluralism?

2.1 Radical Pluralism in Political Discourse The term ‘radical pluralism’ has become dominant in political philosophy since the early 1990s (Wenman 2003, 57). But this dominance does not constitute a monopoly on the use of the term, and the language of radical pluralism also makes significant appearance in economic theory, environmental studies, postmodernism, and philosophy of religion (See, respectively, Garnett, Olsen, and Starr 2010, Schlosberg 1999, Lyotard 1984 [1979], and Tracy 1987). Since my aim in this essay is to discuss the kind of radical pluralism Wittgenstein’s work suggests and how to justify its potential contributions for interreligious communication, I look at the term’s use in political philosophy to show the differences between them. Wenman’s lucid essay “What is Politics? The Approach of Radical Pluralism” provides an in-​depth discussion of the variety of forms of radical pluralism in political and legal theories (Wenman 2003). He carefully lays out the differences between conventional pluralism, neo-​or reformed pluralism, and radical pluralism on questions such as the nature of politics, social identity, the rules of political and legal language-​games, and the relation between politics and ethics. For my immediate purpose here, which is to identify what kind of pluralism is radical pluralism in political and legal discourses, I only look at Wenman’s suggested differences between conventional and radical pluralism.

138 Ramal Wenman explains that conventional pluralists treat the institution of politics as the outcome of a competition between a plurality of legitimately organized groups whose social and ethical identities precede any political shaping of that identity. Although these groups seek to influence the outcome of political decisions, they see themselves as mere participants in already established political and legal practices, and they do not challenge the established rules of these practices (ibid., 58). Pluralism here simply signifies the diversity and plurality of voices within the extant political and legal practices. In contrast, radical pluralists argue that one’s social identity and one’s conception of the good are politically constructed in and through one’s relations to other social beings (ibid., 62). This means, Wenman explains, that the socio-​political other to whom one is related in society is the condition for the possibility of one’s social identity. Furthermore, according to this view one’s identity is not complete on its own and the other is also the condition for the impossibility of that identity. This leads radical pluralists William E. Connolly and Chantal Mouffe to argue that antagonism towards the other without whom one cannot obtain one’s own social identity is, and should be, expected (ibid., 59–​60). But conventional pluralism is allegedly blind not only to this antagonistic structure, which it does not challenge, but also to the question of how identity is constructed. Wenman traces the radical pluralism of Connolly and Mouffe to influences from Derrida and Foucault (ibid., 59), but his analysis reveals the ultimately prescriptive nature of this kind of pluralism. Mouffe also credits Wittgenstein for her position on pluralism (2000, 11–​12, 60–​67; 1992, 94–​99, 200–​201) but, like other radical pluralists who deal with the question of democracy, she is not content in leaving the political-​legal games to be played out without interference. She seeks to overcome antagonism with agonism, an attitude that promotes seeing the other with whom one is in socio-​political relations not as an enemy to be destroyed but as a legitimate adversary to be respected and tolerated (Wenman, 62). As I show in the next section, this prescriptive-​normative attitude makes political and legal forms of radical pluralism akin to theological pluralism, rather than to Wittgenstein’s descriptive forms of radical pluralism. 2.2 Theological Pluralism and Wittgenstein’s Radical Pluralism The ideas of tolerance and respect lie at the heart of affirming radical pluralism in discussions of political and legal discourses. The sentiment behind these ideas is similar to the one found in various forms of theological pluralism, namely the advocacy of human flourishing in a world divided by religious, political, and other socio-​cultural differences. By theological pluralism here I mean broadly the advocacy of any form of pluralism, religious or otherwise,

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from a theological perspective. If political pluralism is advocated from a theological perspective, as my discussion of Miroslav Volf below suggests, then it is a form of theological pluralism even though Volf himself is religiously an exclusivist.1 The radical pluralism of Connolly and Mouffe is not theological, however, because it is not based on theological reasoning. Volf is one example of a theological pluralist who advocates respect and tolerance for religious otherness, and openness to interreligious communication between the different world religions. Taking the 17th century Reformed theologian Roger Williams as his model, he argues that one could be a religious exclusivist, as he is, while advocating a political form of pluralism where “freedom of conscience is guaranteed to all people, irrespective of their faith or lack of it, and [where] they all have equal voice in running the affairs of common public life” (2011, 11–​12; 2015, 141). Volf realizes that “there may be some affinity between certain kinds of religious pluralism and political pluralism” –​ where religious pluralism represents equal truth and effectiveness in reaching the divine and fostering human flourishing –​but emphasizes that “there is no incompatibility between religious exclusivism and political pluralism” (2015, 140; 151). Volf’s political pluralism is theologically motivated even though he is partially indebted to John Locke’s political Letter Concerning Toleration for his position. In his book Flourishing, he explicitly describes Locke’s essay on tolerance as theological in motivation and acknowledges that his own views are rooted in reflections on both Christianity and other religions (2015, 104–​106). Volf reveals the theological nature of his views when he states, for example, that “life marked by love for God and neighbors, flourishing human life, is the end; globalization is a means, valuable insofar as it enables us to achieve that end” (2011, 16). Also, when he addresses the possibility of a final reconciliation between the world religions, he claims that “the final reconciliation is not a work of human beings but of the triune God” who will usher an eschatological new beginning of this world (1996, 109–​110). It is possible to disagree with Volf about whether or not Christianity is ultimately concerned with human flourishing, or that “whatever else world religions may be, they are fundamentally accounts of human flourishing, of the self, social relations, and the good” (2015, 41), without glossing over the theological nature of his claims. Phenomenologically, Volf argues that it is wrong to treat the world religions as “mutually exclusive, nontransparent, 1 I want to thank Deidre Green for her help in researching the work of Volf for this essay. I also want to thank Gorazd Andrejč for his probing questions about Volf that led to the mentioned research, and for his excellent editorial comments on the essay.

140 Ramal nontranslatable, and nonoverlapping cultural systems, balls that bump into each other but cannot occupy any shared space”; he also claims that all religions “share some basic principles that guide human interaction, such as the commitment to truthfulness, justice, and compassion as well as the conviction that ethical norms apply universally, to coreligionists and outsiders” (ibid., 92–​93). But it is clear that Volf’s overall perspective is theologically motivated. In addition to the above references, think of his claim that we should embrace the religious other prior to, and regardless of, the truth of his or her religion. When discussing Islam in particular, as he does in Allah: A Christian Response, Volf argues that in spite of the differences between Christians and Muslims on the questions of God and love, they worship the same God and this should be a good basis for pursuing communication and acceptance between them (2011, 10–​11). My aim in discussing Volf is not only to demonstrate the theological nature of his political pluralism but, as I hopefully have shown, to illustrate the similarity between its normative nature and the prescriptive-​normative nature of political and legal forms of radical pluralism. This similarity is crucial for distinguishing Volf’s theological pluralism from Wittgenstein’s radical pluralism, which is descriptive rather than normative-​prescriptive. Although there is evidence of an indirect influence from Wittgenstein on Volf –​e.g., in Volf’s approval of Jean-​François Lyotard’s argument, based on partial influence from Wittgenstein, that our various discourses, religious or otherwise, are not answerable to external, universal, notions of truth –​his advocacy of political pluralism is not grammatical. But how is this relevant to the question of radical pluralism and interreligious communication? The distinction between philosophy and theology is often ignored in theology and philosophy of religion, but it is one that lies at the heart of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and D.Z. Phillips’s designation of radical pluralism as its outcome. As I already mentioned, Phillips sees radical pluralism as a grammatical concept that issues from the kind of contemplative attention philosophy –​in this case Wittgenstein’s philosophy –​gives to people’s diverse language games, whether in religion, morality, aesthetics, politics, or other areas of existential import. The hubbub of voices within these games often converges in shared ways of thinking and living, Phillips concludes, but in many cases it also diverges into opposite and irreducible directions (2007, 204–​207). As a philosophical concept, radical pluralism elucidates rather than prescribes the irreducibility of these games and concepts into a set of common meanings and truths. From this perspective, radical pluralism is not a moral, religious, theological, or political recommendation that has specific pragmatic implications.

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Rather, it is the outcome of the grammars inherent in these recommendations. One could say that the normative affirmations of pluralism –​theological forms of pluralism and radical forms of political and legal pluralism –​presuppose the affirmation of radical pluralism to the degree that it could rightly be described as the necessary condition for their possibility. How else, one might ask, does Volf reach the conclusion that Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Does he not make use of conceptual clarification and grammatical analysis to see the radical similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam? The same point applies to his claims that the world religions are not “balls that bump into each other but cannot occupy any shared space” or that they have “distinct metaphysical frameworks, readily distinguished accounts of life worth living, and different notions of the human predicament and salvation” (Volf 2015, 92). Although the reference to worshipping the same God does not stipulate that conceptual analysis must be prior to any engagement in interreligious communication and dialogue, it is clear that, for him, the communication cannot ensue at all without conceptual understanding. When Phillips distinguishes Wittgenstein’s radical pluralism from theological pluralism, he defines the latter as “a specific attitude to world religions,” one that “advocates respect for them” and “insists on a spiritual affinity between the religions it praises” (2007, 205). But since theological pluralism is theologically selective, he states, it “has no interest in doing conceptual justice to religions, no matter what their character” (ibid., 204). This is a rushed conclusion that has pluralistic positions such as that of John Hick in mind. Phillips’s references to theological pluralism show that he equates it with religious pluralism, particularly when he further describes it as an attitude that advocates seeing the world religions as different paths to the same God. Regardless, his remark that there is no interest in theological pluralism for doing justice to religious discourse is unfair to theological perspectives that seek to be normative but simultaneously acknowledge the importance of conceptual clarification. This is true not only of Volf’s position but also of that of David Tracy, as I show next. In a remark that could be cited from Phillips’s own work, for example, Tracy writes: “There are family resemblances among the religions. But as far as I can see, there is no single essence, no one content of enlightenment or revelation, no one way of emancipation or liberation, to be found in all that plurality” (1987, 90). Tracy is clearly aware of the radical plurality and ambiguity inherent in language, history, and religion, and his anti-​essentialist remark is based on grammatical considerations of religious discourse within the world religions. This is precisely what leads him to advocate a theological-​normative form of pluralism that encourages conversation between members of the different world religions. For Tracy, praxis is as essential as the conceptual understanding

142 Ramal needed to make sense of the differences between the world religions, and the contemplative task cannot be the end of discussion. This point comes across in the following paragraph: Pluralism –​more accurately, perhaps, a pluralistic attitude –​is one possible response to the fact of religious plurality. It is an attitude I fundamentally trust. But whenever any affirmation of pluralism, including my own, past and present, becomes simply a passive response to more and more possibilities, none of which shall ever be practiced, then pluralism demands suspicion. tracy 1987, 90

It could be argued that the practical approaches recommended by Tracy and Volf, not glossing over the significant differences between them, are precisely how interreligious forms of communication and dialogue would have to take place if one takes Wittgenstein’s radical pluralism seriously. Understandably, Phillips does not think the philosopher’s task entails tidying up the radical differences between the world religions but, rather, one that elucidates these differences by investigating how the concepts embodying them have their varied uses and applications in people’s lives. Often citing Wittgenstein on this point, Phillips describes the philosopher’s differences from the normative thinker as ones where the former is not a citizen of any community of ideas when acting as a philosopher. But this in no way entails that theology, or theological pluralism, has no interest in doing conceptual justice to religion. I find no logical reasons, however, as to why Phillips would reject a particular form of theological pluralism as a legitimate theological affirmation of respect and tolerance for the differences between the world religions. The theology would have to be conceptually true to its sources, of course, but then an additional, normative step could be taken based on a desire for communication and dialogue. In an appreciative critique of Richard Rorty’s pragmatism, for example, especially his idea of hermeneutic conversation, Phillips insists that the clarification provided by philosophy need not lead to any openness towards the kind of conversation Rorty advocates, or to personal appropriation of the democratic values of communication, dialogue, open inquiry, and tolerance (Phillips 1999, 82–​83). But, by the same token, neither should clarification prevent such openness from occurring. Phillips’s discussion of Kierkegaard’s differences from Wittgenstein proves as much. Phillips considers Kierkegaard to be a religious thinker rather than a contemplative philosopher, and when acting as such, Phillips suggests, it is logically

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permissible for him to employ conceptual analysis and grammatical distinctions to promote clarification (1999, 13–​14). As Phillips puts it, “Kierkegaard thought that the Denmark of his day cried out for clarity with respect to what it means to become a Christian. He did not, of course, think that such clarity was a sufficient condition for becoming a Christian, but he thought it a necessary one” (Ibid., 60). Kierkegaard does not confuse the conceptual clarity he achieves regarding Christianity with the idea that this clarity must lead people to appropriate the Christian faith on a personal level. If anything, Kierkegaard insists that there is an infinite distance between grammatical clarity and religious appropriation (ibid., 14). Still, if the former is a necessary condition for the latter then this conditionality could also be true regarding the relation between philosophical contemplation and theological pluralism. In other words, this pluralism presupposes conceptual clarification as a necessary condition for its possibility if it is to be done properly and successfully. If my reasoning thus far makes sense, then explaining and elucidating how radical pluralism makes its appearance in religion is crucial. I do so in the next section although I do not consider philosophy, including Wittgenstein’s philosophy, to be a handmaiden, or an underlaborer, for theology or other normative practices in the sense that this is its intended purpose. Still, there is no reason as to why a normative thinker could not use the clarification achieved to promote communication and dialogue in cases of interreligious encounter. 3

Radical Pluralism and Interreligious Communication

3.1 Wittgenstein on Concept Formation and Primitive Reactions In the previous section I distinguished Wittgenstein’s grammatical form of radical pluralism from normative forms of pluralism and argued that the grammatical-​ contemplative work from which radical pluralism emerges is a necessary condition for the normative tasks of interreligious communication and dialogue. In this section I proceed to argue that the grammatical-​contemplative task does not provide the affirmation of radical pluralism with the full justification needed to support the normative feasibility of interreligious communication and dialogue if that justification is restricted to conceptual analysis. I suggest that looking critically at Wittgenstein’s accounts of concept formation and primitive reactions should provide radical pluralism with a fuller context for this needed justification. Let us look first at how Wittgenstein addresses the question of the origins and roots of concepts in the natural world. In a well-​known passage on this question from Culture and Value, Wittgenstein states the following: “The origin and the primitive form of the language game is a reaction; only from this can

144 Ramal more complicated forms develop. Language –​I want to say –​is a refinement, ‘in the beginning was the deed’ ” (CV, 31). When this passage is juxtaposed with other passages from On Certainty, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” and the Investigations, it becomes obvious, as I  show next, that Wittgenstein meant to speak of originating primitive reactions in all language-​games, religious language-​games included. Thus, in his remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough we find Wittgenstein making a distinction between verbal and gesture languages, attributing the latter to primitive magical and religious rites that developed in response to significant events in the lives of primal peoples (Wittgenstein rfgb R, 129, 135). These gesture languages are the origins of more complicated language-​games that later developed and, as should become clear in what follows, they are part of the primitive reactions mentioned by Wittgenstein in the above quote from Culture and Value. Also, the idea that ‘the deed’  –​the various practices and rites characteristic of primal cultures –​is the context within which a verbal language develops is at the heart of the entirety of Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer. This is evident in Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the ceremonial aspect of primal forms of existence and in his references to primitive people and rites as “ceremonial animals” and “animal activities,” respectively (ibid., 129). Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the animalistic reactions people share with animals, both in the past and the present, comes to the surface also when he discusses the question of how to go about investigating the origins of concepts and their use in On Certainty. He writes: “I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state” (OC, §475). There are also various references in the Investigations to imaginative linguistic scenarios of other forms of language, including less sophisticated languages –​e.g., “It would be possible to imagine people who had something not unlike language: a play of sounds, without vocabulary or grammar. (‘Speaking with tongues.’)” (PI, §528). I later link these and other interesting remarks in Wittgenstein with certain philosophical points that Derrida makes on instinctive reactions and responses, and also with the recent research on non-​human animals in primatology and ethology. But, first, there is a hermeneutical difficulty that needs to be addressed. Wittgenstein asks:  “If the formation of concepts can be explained by the facts of nature, should we not be interested, not in grammar, but rather in that in nature which is the basis of grammar?” (ppf, §365). In his response to this question, Rush Rhees argues that Wittgenstein himself would not be ready to say that concepts could be explained by looking into the natural world (Rhees 2003, 12). His response is connected with Wittgenstein’s points above about

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regarding humans as non-​human animals and language as not emerging from reasoning. Rhees states that Wittgenstein was not making a reference to actual non-​human animals but to human beings in a primitive, communicative state of living together, which is not the case with non-​human animals (ibid., 95). He emphasizes that Wittgenstein was not forwarding an explanatory theory of language but only describing it. The forms of life within which language makes sense, Rhees claims, require no further explanatory context beyond description (ibid., 95). But when Wittgenstein’s response to his own question is considered, accurate exegesis is not as easy to establish as Rhees thinks. Wittgenstein writes: Our interest certainly includes the correspondence between concepts and the very general facts of nature. … But … does not fall back upon these possible causes of the formation of concepts; we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history –​since we can invent fictitious natural history for our purposes. ppf, §365

What does Wittgenstein mean by “very general facts of nature,” and if these facts are the “possible causes of the formation of concepts” then why not investigate the conceptual relation between these causes and concepts? Gravity is perhaps one example of a very general fact of nature, but most likely Wittgenstein meant facts he later associated with hinge propositions in On Certainty –​e.g., that the earth existed a long time before one’s own birth or that we all have parents (OC, §89, §152–​53). It seems, however, that Wittgenstein might be limiting his objection to investigating the “possible causes of the formation of concepts” to seeking causal explanations that supposedly connect concepts to the world. But the nature of the relation between the mentioned causes and concepts is not causal; it is conceptual, and it warrants investigating further for any grammatical benefits that might come from seeing how it reflects the diversity of primal reactions. After all, Wittgenstein affirms that our diverse language uses are part of our natural history, just like walking, eating, and drinking are (OC, §25). My aim is not to be polemical. I offer a constructive framework in which it would be possible to see the logical grounds of the diversity of our primal reactions and concepts as further support for pursuing normative interests regarding interreligious communication. My contention is that the affirmation of radical pluralism is ultimately rooted in the irreducible diversity and plurality of our primal responses to the world, that these responses are the source of the diverse and radical conceptual schemes we use in everyday life, religious

146 Ramal conceptual schemes included, and that this explains not only the absence of an objective viewpoint to which this plurality is held accountable but also the logical openness to theological, ethical, and political attempts at interreligious communication and dialogue. I do not mean to argue that religious primal reactions and religious concepts had to emerge, as if by necessity, from our responses to the natural world. They simply did and I am merely considering the potential logical lessons to be drawn from their diversity. I agree with Rhees that Wittgenstein did not intend the reference to origins and primitive reactions to be explanatory in the sense that one could look to the natural world to find their specific causes (Rhees 2003, 25–​26). This is evident from Wittgenstein’s explicit rejection of seeing philosophical investigations as anything but grammatical investigations, and also from his critique of Frazer’s Golden Bough. Thus, in the Investigations, Wittgenstein writes: We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena. … Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. … And we may not advance any kind of theory. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. PI, §90, 109

This critique of theoretical explanations is applicable to Frazer’s intellectualist attitude regarding primal religious and magical rites. Of his account of the priest-​king in the Nemi myth, for example, Wittgenstein writes: “The very idea of wanting to explain a practice –​for example, the killing of the priest-​king –​ seems wrong to me. All that Frazer does is to make them plausible to people who think as he does” (rfgb R, 119). A few pages later we read: “Every explanation is after all an hypothesis” (ibid., 123). In addition to pointing out the grammatical nature of the philosophical investigation when it is directed towards possibilities of phenomena, there are indications in the Investigations that the reference to possibilities is meant as a way of avoiding the one-​sidedness of explanatory frameworks. Thus, when elucidating the concept of intention, Wittgenstein provides different ordinary examples of intending something –​e.g., drawing a breath and holding it when meaning to raise an objection to something said, looking at a cat stalking a bird, or observing an animal when wanting to escape (PI, §591, §647). He then states: “But let us really think out various different situations and conversations, and the ways in which that sentence –​‘I intend to go away’ –​will be uttered in

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them,” and adds: “A main cause of philosophical disease –​a one-​sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example” (§591–​592). All of these are good points to keep in mind when investigating the origins of our concepts and language games, religious or otherwise. But why take all interests in origins as only explanatory in nature? The kind of justification I have in mind need not be undertaken in an explanatory fashion. Is not Wittgenstein’s focus on explicating the conceptual link between language and the natural world in the Investigations, including whether or not it is a causal link, itself a grammatical endeavor? When he discusses how the concept of the broom gains the sense it has, for example, Wittgenstein rejects both the atomistic approach that finds meaning in the breakdown of the broom into its constituents –​e.g., the head and the shaft –​and the causal approach that traces that sense to the causal influence the broom has on us (PI, §44–​64). The concept of the broom gets its sense from the use and application we make of it in our lives, Wittgenstein argues, and this is how the grammatical analysis of the concept of the broom ought to take place. But, as indicated above, Wittgenstein also extends the grammatical investigation to include “the correspondence between concepts and the very general facts of nature.” Wittgenstein is certainly aware of the logical dependence that concepts have on our reactions to the natural world, mediated as it is by diverse forms of life, and he explores this dependence in various examples that illustrate the animalistic reactions forming the agreements people find themselves having in aesthetic, religious, and other areas of their lives. Wittgenstein gives these examples for grammatical reasons –​e.g., common pain, fear, and joy gestures (PI, § 142, §244–​45, §281–​89), instinctive smiling or rubbing one’s stomach (LC, 3), aesthetic reactions demonstrating discontent, disgust, or discomfort (LC, 13) –​in that his interest is in how they lead to the formation of concepts as a result of the mentioned agreements in reactions. That this interest is grammatical, and therefore linked to justifying radical pluralism, is also clear from his wanting to regard humans as animals in On Certainty. As mentioned above, Wittgenstein elevates the importance of instinct over reasoning when discussing how language emerges from primal reactions, and states in that context that “[a]‌ny logic good enough for a primitive means of communication needs no apology from us” (OC, §475). Interestingly, the various examples discussed by Wittgenstein in connection with animalistic behavior reveal both differences and similarities between human beings, on the one hand, and between humans and non-​human animals, on the other hand. It is true that the main intention behind these examples is to draw attention to the importance of agreements in human reaction rather than to the differences between humans and non-​human animals. After all,

148 Ramal Wittgenstein describes these types of agreement as agreements in forms of life rather than in opinion or convention (PI, §241–​42), indicating that concepts are not arbitrary (ppf, §367). But it is also beneficial to look at the differences and similarities between human and non-​human reactions for logical grounds that elucidate the radical pluralism Wittgenstein’s philosophy endorses. Whether or not Wittgenstein himself ventures into the topics of concept formation and primal reactions, as well as the link between language and the world, out of interest in seeking a deeper form of justification for affirmning radical pluralism, I argue that this venture makes sense. I also argue that looking at how humans in an animalistic state of existence developed the radically diverse concepts they have, which unfortunately does not get fully developed in Wittgenstein, is a beneficial justificatory move. For example, although Wittgenstein admits that non-​human animals might enjoy “the most primitive forms of language” (PI, §25), by which he most likely meant gesture forms of language, should a lion speak, he states, we would not be able to understand it (ppf, §327). “[T]‌o imagine a language means to imagine a form of life,” Wittgenstein states (PI, §19), but lions do not have forms of life in which the application of human concepts is a reality. Nor would a squirrel infer by inductive reasoning that it is going to need stores for next winter, Wittgenstein states (OC, §287). In these and other examples, Wittgenstein diminishes the similarity we have with non-​human animals to the point that any lessons to be learned from them about radical pluralism are absent and even obstructed. Wittgenstein is right, of course, about the specific demands he has of the lion and squirrel to include them in human forms of life. He makes similar demands of dogs –​e.g., “We say a dog is afraid his master will beat him but not, he is afraid his master will beat him to-​morrow. Why not?” (PI, §650). As Rhees states, although a primitive form of communication with a dog is possible through signals and responses (1999, 170), dogs do not have the kind of communication we have between people –​e.g., a dog that burns his nose on a hot brick draws away quickly but it cannot tell another dog about the danger or express concern for the well-​being of another dog (Rhees 2003, 95–​96). Also, non-​human animals generally do not face making hard choices and, therefore, do not show weaknesses and strength in the matter or feel helpless in the face of circumstances, Rhees states; they cannot say, think, or feel that they could have done things differently in their lives, and they have no goals that are gauged based on success or failure; there is no cynicism, tragedy, or comedy, gratitude or ingratitude, no ambition or aspirations, and definitely no religious feelings (1999, 167–​82). These are powerful examples that, on the surface, should dissuade us from looking into the animal world to seek clarification for the kind of radical

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pluralism that could contribute to interreligious communication and dialogue by theologians or ethicists. But, in addition to the logical reasons for doing so, there is an empirical aspect to this topic that demonstrates the existence of primitive forms of life in non-​human animals. The research from primatology and ethology demonstrates that animals not only have empathetic emotions and moral feelings in animalistic forms (See e.g., Bekoff 2007; 2009), a topic I do not have the space to develop here, but also primal responses akin to the primitive reactions discussed by Wittgenstein. The realization that there is much about non-​human animals that Wittgenstein and Rhees did not know should dissuade us from following them on not seeking further clarification and justification for the endorsement of radical pluralism. 3.2 Derrida, Primatology, and the Animals That We Are In “The Animal that Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” Derrida criticizes major philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Levinas, and Lacan for not allowing non-​human animals to speak for themselves when philosophizing about them. In their demand that non-​human animals exhibit the kind of knowledge and reason present in humans to treat them as subjects of experience, rather than as objects of experience, these philosophers reduce the rich diversity of animal lives into something called ‘the animal’, Derrida complains (2002, 382–​83).2 He compares these philosophers to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland who overlooks the similarities between humans and non-​human animals when she judges that cats cannot be conversed with and that they purr the same way no matter what you say to them (ibid., 378). Based on the previous section, Derrida would have easily added Wittgenstein to the list of philosophers he criticizes, although more so for not taking seriously the idea that non-​human animals might have forms of life within which something could be said than for denying them subjectivity, which Wittgenstein does not do. Derrida develops a different perspective on non-​human animals and he credits this perspective to his personal experience with his cat, an experience that emerged, he states, because he allowed himself to be seen by the cat. This is not a form of consent by conscious choice, however,

2 Although I do not have the space to discuss it here, this point is one of the interesting themes in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals. Coetzee presents us with a fictional character by the name of Elizabeth Costello who delivers two lectures targeting philosophy’s bias in relying solely on reason to judge animal subjectivity. The book also contains a powerful response to Coetzee’s book by the anthropologist-​psychologist Barbara Smuts who shows how a personal relationship with animals –​in this case baboons and a dog –​reveals our shared animality with them.

150 Ramal but consent through finding himself reacting and responding in the way he did to his female cat’s seeing him naked. In particular, Derrida discusses his instinctive responses of embarrassment and shame as a result of facing the concentrated gaze of his female cat upon his genital area. He distinguishes the idea of a response from the idea of a sheer passive reaction and argues that his cat’s gaze was an active response akin to his responses of embarrassment and shame. Derrida leaves it open as to the specificity of the cat’s response –​e.g., whether one of surprise, cognizance, benevolence, or even pitilessness (ibid., 372)  –​but it is certainly more than a passive reaction, he states, a response that suggests a conscious “other” or a neighbor who is looking with intent, an animal seeing a different animal naked (ibid., 379). Derrida knows he makes strong claims, and so he tries to justify them with the following argument. Animals are naked but they are unaware of their nakedness, he states, whereas human beings feel embarrassment and shame because they know they are naked (ibid., 373–​74). This suggests that knowledge of one’s own nakedness is not only necessary for designating nakedness as what it is, but also for the feelings of embarrassment and shame to have come about in those who are prone to feel them. Derrida’s cat does not know that she is naked and therefore does not feel the kind of embarrassment and shame Derrida feels. Others who know they are naked might not feel embarrassed or ashamed, however, if they are part of a form of life where these feelings are either absent or simply appropriated in ways beyond embarrassment and shame. Below I mention the Jains as one example of a community that appropriates nakedness in a way where shame is no longer felt. Yet this only makes the difference between humans and non-​human animals more evident, so how could Derrida suggest they could be ‘neighbors’ to us in the way humans are? Derrida does not deny that there are substantial differences between humans and non-​human animals. Although his cat looked at him to see, as he puts it, and although she may have been surprised, cognizant, benevolent, or pitiless regarding his nudity, she does not know good and evil, Derrida states (ibid., 372–​375). His wonder as to why he should feel embarrassed before a non-​human animal that does not know what nakedness or embarrassment or shame is (ibid., 372) adds to the strong differences we know to exist between humans and non-​human animals. Here I will conjecture that Derrida thinks his response of embarrassment is logically constitutive of the neighborly otherness of the cat in the same way that the cat’s gaze is constitutive of Derrida’s otherness for the cat. In Derrida’s instinctive acknowledgement of his cat as a neighbor, so to speak, the cat becomes a neighbor and, similarly, in the cat’s instinctive acknowledgments of Derrida as an ‘other’, Derrida becomes a neighbor for the cat, at least in

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Derrida’s consciousness. But even if Derrida did not intend the justification to be along the lines I just suggested, it is clear that his embarrassment shows itself in his act of covering himself in the same way that the cat’s interest in Derrida’s nudity is shown in her intentional, concentrated gaze. In both cases, we have the presence of primal, or primitive, reactions that are, as Wittgenstein puts it, not only unreflective and prior to any reasoning among humans but also constitutive of concepts that emerge from these reactions. It is in cases such as Derrida’s responses that we can make sense of Wittgenstein’s philosophical desire to look at humans in an animalistic state of existence. What I focus on next is how Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s accounts of the animalistic encounters with the natural world, and with one another, constitute an occasion for envisioning a possibility for interreligious communication and dialogue. I repeat that I am in disagreement only with the Wittgensteinian hesitation to provide fuller justification for affirming radical pluralism through considerations of how concept formation and primitive reactions are linked with the natural world. I am in agreement that it is the task of the theologian, or the ethicist, or the politician, but not that of the philosopher, to proceed with normative suggestions. If an actual philosopher wants to suggest specific ways for open communication and normative bridging of differences between the world religions then, from this perspective, he or she is not doing philosophy anymore. Derrida shows how embarrassment and shame belong to complex language-​ games that have a long history in Western religions and cultures. He traces this history back to Genesis, to Adam’s and Eve’s discovery of their nakedness after their eyes were opened and they gained knowledge of good and evil, an event that led simultaneously to their discovery of their shame for being naked. I would think that although it is uncertain which comes first, and that most likely they had arisen together, the immediate, instinctive reaction of Derrida’s covering of his nakedness is not the same as the accompanied response of shame. Derrida rightly suggests, for example, that people who know the story of Adam’s and Eve’s supposed awakening, as he did, might find themselves ashamed for having felt embarrassment and shame for being naked in front of an animal. This is a second-​tier level of shame because it emerges from reflection on the previous shame in response to the embarrassment for being naked. We might want to describe this second-​tier form of shame as intellectual shame. Intellectual shame was occasioned in this case by the realization that at one point humans were akin to non-​human animals, naked without knowing they are naked, and without the religious, or moral, shame that Adam and Eve felt or that Derrida experienced when he was caught naked. But in the same way

152 Ramal that not all cats need to find Derrida’s nudity of interest and not all human beings need to feel embarrassed or ashamed if gazed upon by a non-​human animal, or even by another human being, so the encounter with the other, any other, need not be set a priori with either agreement or disagreement. If we agree with Wittgenstein that our primal reactions are agreements of judgement, or agreements in forms of life, rather than agreements of convention, then the metaphorically “naked” encounter with the other, particularly the religious other, is an occasion to be seen as a neighbor willing to communicate, a neighbor who is a member of a community to which we can belong. I agree with Phillips, against Rorty, that the desire for communication cannot be guaranteed when the other is encountered and seen for what it is. Certainly we could see the potential for positive impact in some of the primitive reactions Wittgenstein discusses –​instinctive smiling upon seeing an ‘other’, empathy towards others who are in pain, feelings of comfort, etc. –​but there is also the potential for negative impact: discomfort, disgust, etc. All responses are open to human beings and no a priori response is guaranteed. But theological, ethical, and political attempts at persuasion should be available when these similarities and differences are seen for what they are: representations of genuine forms of being human. I am suggesting that when the logical grounds of radical pluralism are appreciated for what they are, albeit philosophically, positive normative attitudes that lead to communication and dialogue could develop. This is more so when we realize that some of our religious, or spiritual, reactions to the natural world are shared by some non-​human animals, as my next example demonstrates. In her research on Tanzania’s Gombe National Park’s chimpanzees, Jane Goodall describes how some of them become animated during rainstorms and around waterfalls to the point where a ritual can be discerned in their behavior. She reports how some chimpanzees simply sit and watch a waterfall in silence, listening to its roaring sound as their hair stiffens, and how during intensive rain they initiate a natural, automatic swaying from one foot to another, as if without a choice, and/​or hang from tree ropes, break a tree branch, and sway it in different directions. On one particular occasion, Goodall reports, an alpha male chimpanzee by the name of Freud stood upright in the vicinity of a loud waterfall and swayed rhythmically from foot to foot for about 10–​15 minutes, stamping in the shallow, rushing water while picking up and hurling big rocks. He then climbed up vines that hung down from the trees and, with bristling hair, began swinging out into the spray of the falling water (Goodall 2005, 1303–​1306). Goodall’s videographer witnessed this and similar behavior several times in other chimpanzee groups in Africa and in zoos, as did the well-​known

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primatologist Frans de Waal when a rainstorm advanced onto a zoo in Netherland’s Arnhem (De Waal 2003, 199–​200). De Waal gives a powerfully detailed account of this ritual, adding that having witnessed the same behavior several times before, he agrees with those who call it a “rain dance” (2003, 199). It was Goodall who first called it a rain dance and, albeit rhetorically, asked the following probing question: “If the chimpanzee could share his feelings and questions with others, might these wild elemental displays become ritualized into some form of animistic religion?” (Goodall 2005, 1304). This is not a claim or an argument on Goodall’s part. It is simply a speculation that is not only interesting in itself but one that also brings the relation between religion and primal reactions into focus. As indicated above, Derrida and Wittgenstein connect primal responses to religion and, together with Goodall, they all corroborate the idea that primal reactions constitute the basis of emerging concepts and rituals. This is true not only in regards to our past but also the present and future, as the cat and chimpanzee examples demonstrate. Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer’s explanatory attitude brings forth this point in the following remark: “The religious actions, or the religious life, of the priest-​king are no different in kind from any genuinely religious action of today, for example, a confession of sins” (rfgb R, 123). I do not read Goodall’s account as an explanatory endeavor akin to how the natural sciences conduct their investigations but as a logical attempt to make sense of something that demands sense. Although obvious and significant differences exist between how human beings and chimpanzees respond to waterfalls and intensive rain, there is some similarity in the responses as well. One only needs to observe how some people gather around roaring waterfalls and sit there in silence to notice this similarity. One could also imagine how an Adam and an Eve would have similarly responded to the presence of a similar waterfall prior to their acquisition of a culture in which new concepts and new rituals formed. Diverse spiritual and religious responses to the natural world could have emerged and led to the formation of diverse and different religious experiences and concepts. If the above elucidations make sense, it should be clear that I am not arguing that our shared similarity with non-​human animals constitutes a basis for finding necessary universal agreements in human reactions in regard to religious concepts or behavior. Rather, I am pointing out the possible lessons to be learned from a similarity in how religious concepts initially emerge, ­albeit in radically different outcomes in some cases. This similarity could constitute a basis for initiating interreligious communication by a normative thinker –​ e.g., a Kierkegaardian thinker, a Volf, or a Tracy. “Nothing is so difficult as

154 Ramal doing justice to the facts,” Wittgenstein writes of religious and magical rituals (­r fgb R, 129), and this has been true of this essay as well. But I hope that an understanding of how radical pluralism works and how it came to be what it is helps reflective theologians, ethicists, and politicians see how communicative and dialogical persuasion may ensue. Here is a brief example that hopefully illustrates what I mean. If we imagine the topic of shame as that upon which communication is desired, say between Christians and Jains, then a normative move in this case would be, first, to understand how two conceptions of shame –​a biblical association between nudity and embarrassment, on the one hand, and a Digambara association between nudity and spiritual advancement and salvation, on the other hand –​came to attain the complexity they have through similar dependence on original primal responses to other human beings (or non-​human animals, in some cases). Obviously, Derrida’s acculturation into the biblical association between nudity and shame is not shared by Digambara Jains even though there are some similarities as well. For example, the fear of feeling shame as a result of being naked for Jain monks includes the fear of being seen naked although, in the case of women, there is also the fear of being attacked sexually (Long 2009, 17). But since members of each religious group have good reasons, or good “telling grounds,” as Wittgenstein puts it, for believing what they believe (OC, §107), this realization, which is really a realization of how two notions of shame are rooted in similar primal responses to the world, could help those interested in communication to move beyond seeing only incommensurability between their different forms of life. I do not think that Wittgenstein’s methodology could be stretched to say more than this. 4

Concluding Remarks

In this essay I argued that there is room to give justificatory support for Wittgenstein’s endorsement of radical pluralism beyond grammatical analyses of discourse. Without this support, Wittgenstein’s form of radical pluralism is still helpful insofar as it could be used to demonstrate a lack of incommensurability between the world religions, but the support I hopefully provided gives the theological, ethical, or political task of interreligious communication better grounds to initiate communication and dialogue. My essay was methodological in nature and it looked into Wittgenstein’s account of primal reactions and their role in constituting primal concepts upon which more sophisticated concepts have been, and could be, built. I suggested that the irreducible diversity of these reactions explains the irreducible

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diversity of religious concepts in the various religious discourses we have. With help from Phillips and Derrida, I attempted to show that this diversity not only precludes the logicality of subjecting them to essentialist thinking that reduces their differences to a commonality of meaning and truth, but also that if we let the world religions speak for themselves, occasions for communication emerge –​e.g., where we see the other as a neighbor. The idea behind discussing animal responses in non-​human animals was meant to show how the non-​arbitrary but diverse reactions we share with some non-​human animals elucidate the diversity and plurality of the practices in which these responses have application. Showing the similarity with animal responses was also meant to raise the awareness of the presence of occasions for seeing the other as a similar animal and a similar neighbor. As I mentioned towards the end of the last section, citing Wittgenstein, nothing is so difficult as doing justice to the facts. This essay is a modest attempt in that direction.

Bibliography

Bekoff, Marc. 2007. The Emotional Lives of Animals. Foreword by Jane Goodall. Novato, CA: New World Library. Bekoff, Marc and Jessica Pierce. 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. De Waal, Frans. 2013. The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company. Derrida, Jacques. 2002. “The Animal that therefore I am (More to Follow).” Critical Inquiry 28 (2): 369–​418. Drury, M. O’. C. 1966. “Conversations with Wittgenstein”. In The Danger of Words and Writings on Wittgenstein, Part II, edited by David Berman, Michael Fitzgerald, and John Hayes, 71–​97. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Garnett, Robert, Erik K. Olsen, and Martha Starr, eds. 2010. Economic Pluralism. London and New York: Routledge. Goodall, Jane. 2005. “Primate Spirituality.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited by Bron Taylor, 1303–​1306. London and New York: Continuum. Long, Jeffrey D. 2009. Jainism: An Introduction. New York: I.B. Tauris and Co., Ltd. Lyotard, Jean-​François. 1984 [1979]. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mouffe, Chantal. 1992. “Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community.” In Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, edited by Chantal Mouffe, 225–​39. London and New York: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox. London and New York: Verso.

156 Ramal Phillips, D.Z. 1999. Philosophy’s Cool Place. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Phillips, D.Z. 2007. “Philosophy’s Radical Pluralism in the House of Intellect: A Reply to Henk Vroom.” In D.Z. Phillips’s Contemplative Philosophy of Religion: Questions and Responses, edited by Andy F. Sanders, 197–​212. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Rhees, Rush. 1999. Moral Questions, edited by D.Z. Phillips. Swansea Studies in philosophy. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Rhees, Rush. 2003. Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: There Like Our Lives, edited by D.Z. Phillips. Oxford: Blackwell. Schlosberg, David. 1999. Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tracy, David. 1987. Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. Volf, Miroslav. 1996. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Volf, Miroslav. 2011. Allah: A Christian Response. New York: Harper Collins. Volf, Miroslav. 2015. Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Wenman, Mark Anthony. 2003. “What is Politics? The Approach of Radical Pluralism.” Politics 23 (1): 57–​65.

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Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism and Interreligious Communication Guy Bennett-​Hunter In this essay, I draw out some implications of a position called “Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism” for the theory and practice of interreligious communication. After setting out the main tenets of that position, I  articulate what its theoretical and practical implications in this area would be if it were true. I thereby sketch a new, Wittgensteinian model of interreligious communication, concluding with a number of critical suggestions as to some points of focus for further work in this area.1

Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism

Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is an interesting and suggestive way of cashing out Wittgenstein’s late epistemology in philosophy of religion, which has been developed in a number of recent papers by Duncan Pritchard. The central text is Wittgenstein’s fascinating and challenging work from his final notebooks—​the posthumously edited and published volume entitled On Certainty. It is important to preface any remarks about this text with the caveat that Wittgenstein did not prepare or sanction it for publication, so there are open questions about the extent to which the ideas and arguments that have been extracted from it can confidently be attributed to Wittgenstein himself. With that in mind, in this essay, I shall refer to these ideas as though they are indeed Wittgenstein’s own. Central to Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is the concept of “hinge” commitments, in other words, the kind of commitment that is codified in a “hinge” proposition. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein articulates the nature of these propositions without reference to religion. The classic statement is at §341, where Wittgenstein says, “the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges 1 I am grateful to Gorazd Andrejč for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004408050_​0 09

158 Bennett-Hunter on which those turn”. As he goes on to explain this famous metaphor, “[w]‌e just can’t investigate everything and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.” (OC, §343). The point about our epistemic practices is that, whenever we believe or doubt something, there is always something taken for granted as the indubitable background against which the belief or doubt arises. If we doubt something, we may engage in the practice of checking or testing it. As Wittgenstein (OC, §163) illustrates, “We check the story of Napoleon, but not whether all the reports about him are based on sense-​deception, forgery and the like. For whenever we test anything, we are already presupposing something that is not tested.” Later on, he makes the same point by pointing out that, when I conduct an experiment to test the truth of some proposition of which I am doubtful, “I do not doubt the existence of the apparatus before my eyes.” (OC, §337). The practice of testing certain propositions, the truth of which is not beyond doubt, presupposes that the truth of certain other propositions is beyond doubt: that the documents about Napoleon are not forged, that the apparatus really exists, and so on. A doubt about a hinge commitment, Wittgenstein (OC, §613) says, would “drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos”. He illustrates this fundamentality by arguing that, if I were to doubt the commitment expressed in the Moorean proposition, “I have two hands”, and were to test its truth by looking for my hands at the ends of my arms, I would in that case have no good reason not to doubt the reliability of my eyesight (and that of my other senses) as well, because of the fulcrum role that hinge commitments play in rationally grounding beliefs (OC, §115, §125). In epistemically normal circumstances, moreover, such propositions are rarely questioned, or even explicitly formulated. According to Pritchard (2012), the picture of the structure of reasons that Wittgenstein is offering here implies that, whether positive or negative, all rational evaluation (and therefore all rational support) is essentially and inherently local: it cannot take place “wholesale”, but only relative to hinge commitments. The latter, moreover, must be more certain than the beliefs (or doubts) which they rationally support: for something to be a ground for a belief or a doubt in the way that hinges are supposed to be, it must be more certain than the target proposition. Otherwise we would, absurdly, have more reason to doubt the grounds for belief or doubt than we would to believe or doubt the target proposition. Contra G.E. Moore, it follows that that of which we are most certain cannot be a special type of belief or knowledge with maximal rational support. It cannot itself be rationally evaluated, supported, believed, or doubted but is rather a “hinge” that we take for granted and relative to which we evaluate beliefs. Importantly, for Wittgenstein, this is a matter of

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logic: to have arational hinge commitments is just what it is to be rational. So hinges do not represent an optional feature of our epistemic practices; they are essential to any belief system (OC, §325, §342). So, in formulating Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, Duncan Pritchard applies this non-​epistemic reading of hinge commitments in philosophy of religion. As we shall see, there is evidence that Wittgenstein modelled his late epistemology in general on the structure of religious epistemology in particular. But it also seems intuitively the case that some religious commitments play the same foundational role in their adherents’ lives. As Pritchard formulates it, Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism states that “God exists” be read as a hinge proposition of religious belief,2 expressing the kind of commitment a doubt about which would drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos (Pritchard 2000 cf. OC, §613). And, as Pritchard clarifies, “only one’s belief in God … is excluded from rational evaluation”, while religious beliefs more generally are held be rationally grounded (Pritchard 2011, 149). We might be less willing than Pritchard to specify a theistic proposition as a hinge proposition of “religious belief” in general, which must surely include non-​theistic religions. But the key point is this: in parity with “ordinary”, non-​religious cases, some religious proposition(s) should be understood as codifying an indubitable and arational religious hinge commitment that rationally grounds religious beliefs. More thoroughgoing forms of fideism suggest that, unlike ordinary beliefs, religious beliefs can be rightly held without rational support, epistemically ghettoizing religion in the process. By contrast, Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism insists on epistemic parity between religious and non-​religious beliefs. Both are, by their very nature, founded on hinge commitments that are immune to rational evaluation, doubt, and support. It is important to note, therefore, that it is not the view of religion that makes Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism Wittgensteinian, but the epistemology. According to Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, the certainty with which hinge commitments are held accounts for the relative psychological stability of the religious commitment; it explains why introducing a religious person to counter-evidence doesn’t typically cause her to abandon or suspend her commitment. At the same time, the arational nature of hinge commitments explains the theist’s difficulty in producing independent rational support for her commitment to theism—​support, that is, which does not presuppose that that commitment is already a rational one (Pritchard 2011, 147). For example, 2 As I shall elaborate at the end of this essay, I am less sure than Pritchard about which specific propositions could defensibly be regarded as codifying “religious hinge commitments”, especially in the context of interreligious communication.

160 Bennett-Hunter evidential appeals to scripture or religious experience presuppose the rational nature of one’s commitment to theism. It is only because one is committed to the existence of God in the first place that one thinks that scripture or experience have any evidential bearing on religious belief. The circularity of such appeals to revelation, which are sometimes taken to constitute a self-​sufficient alternative to rational arguments in support of religion, was notably pointed out by Freud. In The Future of an Illusion, Freud wrote of the assertion of divine revelation, “that assertion itself forms part of the teachings that are to be examined as to their credibility—​and no proposition, as we know, can prove itself.” (Freud 2008, 31–​2). The threat posed by this circularity is mitigated by the Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideistic thought that neither the acquisition nor the loss of a religious hinge commitment is a rational process. I  will not be convinced to commit to, or abandon my commitment to, theism by being persuaded with rational arguments, any more than I  need arguments to be convinced of the existence of my two hands. Pritchard (2000, 137) implies that, given the impossibility of wholesale rational evaluation, there is an analogy between the way in which the notion of hinge propositions in general defuses global scepticism of the Cartesian kind and the way in which Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism might defuse scepticism about religious belief in particular. Wittgenstein draws a sharp distinction, in On Certainty, between the sceptical practice of universal doubt and ordinary epistemic practices, including everyday doubting. As Pritchard (2011b, 524) explains Wittgenstein’s implicit claim, “the philosophical picture that the sceptic uses is completely divorced from the non-​philosophical picture that we ordinarily employ”. In ordinary life, claims to knowledge are connected with the practice of resolving doubts. In order for a doubt to be resolved, as we have seen, the reason that supports the relevant belief must be more certain than the belief itself, otherwise it would be unable to play the required supporting role (Pritchard 2012, 527). Wittgenstein’s picture of the structure of reasons as it operates in everyday life applies to doubt as well: a reason needs to be offered to motivate the doubt and, crucially, such a reason must be more certain than what is doubted since otherwise one would have more reason to doubt the reason for doubt than to doubt what is doubted. pritchard 2011b, 527

In other words, the point of Wittgenstein’s (OC, §110–1, §125) claim that if, in the absence of a reason to doubt this, I  need to check by looking to see whether I have two hands, I may as well doubt my eyesight too, is that doubts

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always require motivating grounds that are more certain than the doubts themselves—​and these are hinge commitments, which are “in deed not doubted” (OC, §342). The sceptic denies the existence of such certainties, demanding that we doubt even what is most certain. But if Wittgenstein is right, and there are hinges “on which any epistemic evaluation must turn”, this sceptical project is incoherent (Pritchard 2011b, 530). If doubt were applied universally, not bound by the same constraints as our ordinary epistemic practices, such a doubt could have no supporting grounds, no practical significance and, in Wittgenstein’s (OC, §450) words, “would not be a doubt”. So Wittgenstein defuses global scepticism by exposing it as illogical; his response to the Cartesian problem is to expose it as a pseudo-​problem. Regarding scepticism, however, it is important to note that, although Wittgenstein dismisses it as incoherent, he preserves what Cavell (1979, 241) has called the “truth” or “moral” of scepticism, namely, the insight that our beliefs are rationally grounded on hinge commitments that are not themselves rationally grounded. This insight into the ultimate “groundlessness of our believing” (OC, §166) may indeed generate what Pritchard and Boult (2013, 33–​4) have referred to as “epistemic vertigo”. For Wittgenstein, the ultimate groundlessness of our believing is a matter of logic. The kind of improvement of our epistemic situation that we might be inclined to seek in the form of ultimate rational grounds is simply unavailable—​thus there is no real “epistemic danger”. But, just as an acrophobe on the roof of a high building may experience vertigo in the absence of real danger, the epistemologist’s experience may be similarly vertiginous. The positive side of this insight, made by Cavell (1980, 145) in relation to Emerson’s thought, is that the human relationship to the world is “closer than the ideas of believing and knowing are made to convey”. (It is at this point that there are instructive parallels between Wittgenstein’s perspective and those of classical and contemporary pragmatist philosophers (OC, §422; Bennett-​Hunter 2012)). If Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true, and there are distinctively religious hinge propositions, Wittgenstein’s defusing of global scepticism could legitimately be applied to defuse scepticism about religious belief. Just as it is illegitimate to isolate the practice of doubting from the context of ordinary epistemic practices, and to apply doubt to our commitments wholesale, so it is illegitimate to isolate the religious doubts that might arise in the context of “ordinary” religious epistemic practices and apply them to religious commitments wholesale. Religious doubts, like ordinary doubts, require grounds that are more certain than the doubts themselves. If Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true, these grounds will not just be more certain, but will be indubitable religious hinge commitments that, once acknowledged, defuse the attempt to

162 Bennett-Hunter apply religious doubt universally to a given set of religious commitments, or even all sets of religious commitments. It is partly for this reason that Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism has potential to provide a new, Wittgensteinian account of the epistemology of religion with significant apologetic potential—​ hence the technically inappropriate label “fideism” (Pritchard 2011, 158). Indeed, in recent papers, Pritchard (2015; 2017) argues that a major source for Wittgenstein’s picture of the structure of reasons was Cardinal Newman’s Grammar of Assent, in which, in dialogue with Locke, Newman sought to establish epistemic parity between religious and non-​religious belief. If Wittgenstein’s inspiration for his account of epistemic structures in general was a theological one, then we might think it particularly appropriate to apply that general account to the epistemic structure of religion in particular. Yet, it is important to be clear about the kind of epistemic parity with which Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism leaves us. Just as global scepticism can be defused, so can scepticism about religion. But Wittgensteinian anti-​scepticism proceeds not by establishing knowledge, but by exposing the sceptical problem as a pseudo-​problem. In the religious case, too, therefore, scepticism’s “moral” will be preserved: the ultimate groundlessness of religious beliefs, which leaves us with a concomitant sense of religious epistemic vertigo. Having briefly summarized Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, I now examine two implications that it would have, if it were true, for interreligious communication: one theoretical, the other practical. I aim thereby to sketch what a new, Wittgensteinian model of interreligious communication might look like.

The Implications of Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism for the Theory and Practice of Interreligious Communication

To start with the theoretical implication: Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is a philosophical position that presents religion as involving the kind of delicate balance between certainty and doubt that is essential for genuine interreligious communication. This becomes especially clear when we consider the other two options between which Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism steers an intermediate course. On the one hand, if religion were understood as entirely a matter of dubitable belief, involving no specific hinge commitments at all, it would not appear as psychologically stable as it in fact does. In this case, rational beings would revise or abandon their religious beliefs in the face of the doubts generated by counter-​evidence:  the kind that might be adduced by those committed to other religions or to a secular position. In this case, we would expect dramatic changes in people’s religious commitments to be much

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more frequent and uncomplicated than they actually are. Interreligious communication would then be reduced to the trivial matter of clearing up religious misunderstandings on which there should really be widespread rational agreement anyway. But if, on the other hand, religious commitments were taken to be entirely constituted by indubitable hinge commitments, we would have a more thoroughgoing, full-​blown form of fideism. In this case, people’s religious commitments would be wholly unassailable by rational criticism, and the principle of epistemic parity would be compromised. Religious commitments would not, in this case, be subject to the same rational criticism as other commitments but would enjoy a ghettoized or protected epistemic status. In light of the apparently incommensurable differences between religions, genuine interreligious communication would be equally impossible. Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism maintains a distinction between a religious hinge commitment, which is indubitable, and religious beliefs, which, like ordinary ones, are amenable to rational support, criticism, and revision in light of evidence and rational argument. This distinction entails a balance between religious certainty and doubt that is not only a requirement for meaningful interreligious communication, but also makes such communication a necessary part of the search for religious truth. In parallel to ordinary communication, people engage in it hoping that discussion with a person with conflicting, and equally fundamental, commitments might lead them both to a closer approximation to the truth. However, the Wittgensteinian picture entails some added complexity, with implications for the actual practice of interreligious communication, which is worth closely examining. Firstly, although there must always be a distinction between what is open to doubt and what is beyond doubt, Wittgenstein is clear that this distinction is not a sharp or a permanent one but is constantly shifting and in a continuous state of flux, with interaction between each level. This is illustrated by one of a number of illuminating metaphors that Wittgenstein uses to illustrate the nature of that distinction. He compares the certain, indubitable background of hinge commitments to the bedrock of a river, the river itself being the flux of our dubitable beliefs, which are constantly open to question (OC, §97, cf. §498). However, in metaphorical terms, parts of the bedrock may break off and become part of the flux of the river, while parts of the river itself may harden and become bedrock. So even what we take to be most certain is impermanent and might be subject to change over time, however slow and imperceptible. Wittgenstein (OC, §99 cf. §96) writes, “And the bank of that river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away or deposited.”

164 Bennett-Hunter The impermanence and instability of this distinction appear to allow that, on Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, interlocutors who disagree (interreligious communicators in this case) could be committed to incommensurable hinge propositions. How else could we make sense of the disagreement between interlocutors who are respectively committed to a theistic and a non-​theistic religion, or atheism? But, secondly, Wittgenstein (OC, §94, §156, §233, §262) suggests, in several passages, that there is a necessary commonality to people’s hinge commitments, and that a set of such commitments is integral to a whole shared picture of the world. It is against the background of this shared picture that disagreements (in this case, interreligious disagreements) take place. As Pritchard (2011a, 279) reads them, these passages imply that the idea of wholesale error in one’s commitments, which is entertained by scepticism, is incoherent. If this is so, then it follows that one can never wholly lack common ground with one’s fellow human beings. Most disagreements will concern dubitable beliefs, taking place against a backdrop of shared hinge commitments, and will in principle be rationally resolvable, though there may be considerable practical difficulties in achieving such a resolution. Therefore, if Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true, most religious disagreements will take place against a backdrop of shared hinge commitments, which may be religious or non-​religious, depending on the specific beliefs in question and the particular ways in which these are rationally grounded. As Wittgenstein (OC, §156) says, “In order to make a mistake, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind.” But, to move on to Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism’s practical implication: from the point of view of interreligious communication, how do we deal with religious disagreements of the most fundamental kind? Here, I am not referring to the kind of religious disagreement which is sensitive to rational considerations, such that people committed to different religions could potentially reach rational agreement. I am speaking of the fundamental kind of disagreement whose resolution would necessarily result in religious conversion and would require at least one of the interlocutors to abandon or radically revise their religious commitment. As an example, consider interreligious communication between adherents to monotheistic, henotheistic, polytheistic, and non-​theistic religions, in any combination. On Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, these will look very like hinge disagreements, where the interlocutors seem unable even to communicate and make themselves understood, let alone rationally resolve their differences. It will be as though they are committed to radically different pictures of the world. How should we understand and deal with religious disagreements of such a fundamental kind as this?

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There is a clue, I think, in some remarks where Wittgenstein (OC, §611–12, cf. §495; §92; §262 cf. §233) describes fundamental disagreements in general being resolved not by argument, but by a kind of admonishment and persuasion modelled on a particular kind of religious discourse. Wittgenstein (OC, §612) writes, “At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)”. He again suggests that the arational way in which specifically religious disagreements are typically resolved is the paradigm for the resolution of fundamental disagreements in general. Following Pritchard (2012, 267–​8), we can distinguish between various hinge commitments (codified by various propositions), and a general, immutable “Über-​ hinge” conviction that we are not fundamentally in error about our picture of the world. For Pritchard, the former non-​Über-​hinge propositions, which are subject to imperceptible change as our beliefs change, just codify the latter immutable Über-​hinge commitment, to which we are always committed. Also, as a matter of logic, the Über-​hinge must be groundless because it would have to be presupposed by anything offered in support of it. As Pritchard (2011a, 282) explains, “since we do not all share the same beliefs, then it will follow that our general hinge commitment may manifest itself in a commitment to a differing set of specific propositions. When this occurs, we will have disputes that look as if they are epistemically irresolvable.” In reality, however, “one of the parties will over time cease to regard a certain proposition as codifying the hinge conviction but as rather being a belief that is open to epistemic evaluation in the normal way.” The reason that the Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideist needs to introduce the idea of the Über-​hinge commitment is to resolve the dilemma between two thoughts: (1) that we do not all share the same beliefs (if everyone held the same set of hinge commitments in common, it would appear that they could not rationally disagree over the shared set of beliefs that would be rationally founded upon these shared commitments) and (2) that, if hinge disagreements were possible, so would be epistemically irresolvable disputes, which would appear to license epistemic incommensurability and therefore epistemic relativism (Pritchard 2011a, 269). A convincing account of interreligious communication could not deny the obvious fact that not everyone shares the same beliefs. Indeed, awareness of this is surely a large part of what motivates interreligious communication in the first place. But neither could it allow for the possibility of epistemically incommensurable hinge disagreements, because a relativistic (religious) epistemology would make interreligious communication equally redundant, since all religious perspectives would in this case be equally true. Therefore, both to account for apparent hinge disagreements, which explain the obvious fact that we do not all share the same beliefs and to avoid the

166 Bennett-Hunter unwelcome relativistic implications that real hinge disagreements would have, the concept of the Über-​hinge conviction must be introduced. This makes it possible to account for apparent hinge disagreements without having either to make the patently false claim that everyone shares the same beliefs or to license epistemic relativism, with its unwelcome theological implications. So while Wittgenstein’s river metaphor suggests that hinge commitments can change over time, it does not follow that there can be irresolvable hinge disagreements, religious or otherwise. Apparent hinge disagreements should be viewed as second-​order disagreements over which specific propositions codify a general (i.e., Über-​) hinge commitment, as opposed to those which express beliefs. And while disagreements of this sort are not rationally resolvable, they are resolvable by other, “missionary” means. To extrapolate: on Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, interreligious communication can quite defensibly aim at resolving religious disagreements, even of the most fundamental sort. At the first stage, the interlocutors will initially have missionary-​style admonishment and persuasion at their disposal. We are quite familiar with discussion of this kind, which takes place, for example, between the most rhetorically virtuosic public representatives of Christianity and atheism. At this first stage, communication would aim at agreement on which specific religious propositions should be regarded as religious hinge propositions, codifying the general, shared Über-​hinge commitment, and which ones should be taken to express beliefs. In metaphorical terms, the aim of this process would be to cause part of the bedrock to break off and become part of the flux of the river, or part of the river to harden end become bedrock, or both at once, in each interlocutor. Wittgenstein (OC, §262) describes this process of effectively imparting a whole picture of the world to another person as being wholly non-​rational: I can imagine a man who had grown up in quite special circumstances and been taught that the earth came into being 50 years ago, and therefore believed this. We might instruct him: the earth has long … etc. —​We should be trying to give him our picture of the world. This would happen through a kind of persuasion. Regarding the mode of receptivity that is required from the interlocutor: when one receives such a world-​picture (as one does as a child), this is not a process of acquiring beliefs about the world, nor of being convinced by arguments. Rather, Wittgenstein (OC, §143 cf. §167) tells us, one “swallows … down” the world-​picture together with the facts that one learns and the beliefs that one acquires. If Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true, then the religious case is strictly analogous. The lack of an obvious answer as to which religious (or

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non-​religious) picture would prevail just makes such discussion a particularly urgent and interesting matter. When agreement is reached over the general world-​picture (over which specific religious propositions codify hinges, and which express religious beliefs), a second stage can follow, consisting in rational discussion as to the truth and falsity of those beliefs. This second stage involves the familiar process of each interlocutor’s adducing evidence and rational arguments in support and criticism of beliefs that could be doubted or modified without profoundly affecting a religious believer’s faith—​their religious picture of the world as a whole. While the first, “missionary” stage of agreeing on a fundamental world-​ picture is theoretically straightforward, this step has obviously significant practical difficulties that are sensitive to context and other psychological factors, as well as ethical considerations. For example, are there reliable means of discerning whether the agreement is being arrived at through a morally dubious process of coercion, as when missionaries did, in fact, convert natives? And, while it is theoretically rather difficult to agree on the rationally resolvable religious questions, there is probably enough scholarly consensus to make this second step in practice a more straightforward matter than we might fear. For practical purposes, moreover, agreement on some of the more arcane religious questions may even turn out to be unnecessary. It will be clear from the foregoing that Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism does not suggest an analogy between religious beliefs and Wittgenstein’s hinge certainties, still less does it identify the former as a subset of the latter. As Gorazd Andrejč (2015, 69, 73–​4) has perceptively pointed out, such moves are extremely problematic, both from the point of view of Wittgensteinian interpretation and on philosophical grounds, owing, not least, to their implication that doubt is logically excluded from religious belief. On this view, “[d]‌oubting one’s own religious beliefs is then equivalent to ceasing to be religious at all” (Andrejč 2015, 69). Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism rather claims epistemic parity between religious beliefs and ordinary beliefs:  both are rationally founded on hinge propositions, which do not express beliefs and for which it makes no sense to demand further rational justification. This claim about religious beliefs is just entailed by Wittgenstein’s late epistemology (given that religions are epistemic structures) and finds further hermeneutical justification in the fact that this general epistemology was heavily influenced by Cardinal Newman’s epistemology of religion, in particular, his parity argument (Pritchard 2015, n. 10; 2017, 113–​8). The more controversial and questionable claim is that the set of hinge propositions, which codify the immutable, anti-​sceptical Über-​ hinge conviction, may include a distinctively religious proposition, or set of propositions—​in Pritchard’s view, the single proposition “God exists”. I discuss

168 Bennett-Hunter the main problem that this claim creates for Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism in the final section.

Three Features of Interreligious Communication according to Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism

In this section, I  expand on the implications of the Wittgensteinian Quasi-​ Fideistic model of interreligious communication that I have been describing, highlighting three features of its actual practice that follow from this model. It follows, firstly, that the aim of interreligious communication cannot be global religious doubt or certainty. We have seen that, if there are religious hinge commitments, then the idea of wholesale rational evaluation of a given religious conviction (whether positive or negative) is incoherent. Since, therefore, religious conviction cannot be rationally evaluated wholesale, it cannot be believed or doubted wholesale, either. Logically, interreligious communication can legitimately aim either at missionary-​style persuasion, which may result in changes in interlocutors’ views about which specific religious propositions codify their general, shared Über-​hinge commitment, or rational argument regarding the truth or falsity of the religious beliefs that are founded on it. However, it cannot legitimately aim at arriving at a shared religious picture of the world by means of rational argument. Neither would it be legitimate to attempt to compel one’s interlocutor to accept, revise, or abandon any religious beliefs by means of missionary-​style persuasion or admonishment alone. A rational interlocutor is always entitled to demand evidence or argument in support of any proposed changes to their beliefs, including their religious beliefs. The role of “missionary” activity is therefore strictly limited to the arational demesne of communication about hinge certainties. Secondly, Wittgenstein’s river metaphor illustrates that, especially in epistemically normal circumstances, changes in people’s assessments of what counts as a hinge proposition will most often be extremely slow and gradual. Recall that, although the Über-​hinge conviction that I am not fundamentally in error is necessarily held in common, there may not be widespread agreement on which specific set of propositions codifies that conviction. If Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true, then that set may include certain religious propositions. The lack of widespread agreement between adherents to different religions implies that apparently fundamental religious disagreement may exist. We have seen that, while such disagreement is not epistemically irresolvable, it looks epistemically irresolvable and is insensitive to the influence of evidence or rational argument. Therefore, a resolution to a disagreement of this kind

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will take the form of a change in a person’s picture of the world: not so much a change in what a person sees as a change in their way of seeing (OC, §291). In epistemically normal circumstances, I suggest, it would be excessively optimistic to expect the innumerable small changes in perspective required to be effected simultaneously or swiftly. Finally, the first “missionary” stage of interreligious communication (at least), will always be a two-​way, dialectical process. I have been suggesting that, on Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, genuine interreligious communication will involve admonishment and persuasion at its first stage, as “when missionaries convert natives” (OC, §612). However, in the context of interreligious communication (which is often also intercultural communication), we may well be uneasy about the colonialist resonances of Wittgenstein’s simile. We should be clear that the primary aim of interreligious communication must be communication, a dialectical conversation between the interlocutors, rather than the conversion of one’s interlocutor to one’s own religion. Engaged in with epistemic hubris, persuasion could easily lapse into coercion of the kind too much in evidence throughout human history—​or worse. An extremely important implication of the Wittgensteinian perspective in this context is the dialectical character of (at least) the first, missionary stage of interreligious communication. It is impossible to impart a shared picture of the world effectively and ethically without also being genuinely prepared to receive one.

Worries about Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism and Remarks on Further Research

Having sketched what a new, Wittgensteinian account of interreligious communication might look like, I draw attention to some questions on which future work might fruitfully focus. In this essay, I have been rather circumspect. I have set out the implications that Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism would have, if it were true, for the theory and practice of interreligious communication, without committing myself to the truth, or otherwise, of Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism. Perhaps the most pressing question to be addressed, therefore, is whether Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is, in fact, true. To be clear, the essential question (a full treatment of which is beyond the scope of this essay) is: should one or more religious proposition(s) be included in the set of propositions that are taken to codify the general, shared Über-​hinge commitment that I am not fundamentally in error about my picture of the world? In short, are there distinctively religious hinge propositions?

170 Bennett-Hunter There are good reasons to be doubtful. Firstly, a significant problem for the person who wishes to affirm that Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true is the difficulty of specifying a proposition that is both distinctively religious and a good candidate for being a hinge proposition. Pace Pritchard (2000), for whom the sole religious hinge proposition, “God exists”, is at the heart of Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, this proposition appears far too theologically restrictive to be applicable to religion in general—​or even to Christianity in particular. While some Christians (and perhaps also Jews and Muslims) could accept this proposition, it would be unacceptable to adherents to the more apophatic strands of the Christian tradition, to say nothing of those committed to non-​theistic religions like Buddhism and Taoism (Bennett-​Hunter 2014, 13–​ 15; Cooper 2002, 4; 2009, 55). Straightforward denials of the existence of God, and insistence that talk of God’s existence is intractably non-​literal, have been part of Christian theology from pseudo-​Dionysius and Meister Eckhart to Paul Tillich and John Macquarrie (Bennett-​Hunter 2014, 13–​15, 43–​6). In its present formulation, Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism looks equipped to handle, at best, a subset of actual religious traditions, which compromises its ability to provide a convincing, comprehensive philosophical account of religion in general. It certainly begins to look less useful for application to the theory and practice of interreligious communication. But if, on the other hand, “God exists” were replaced with a proposition that a religious non-​theist could accept, there seems no good reason why such a proposition could not codify a hinge commitment of a secular atheist as well. At this point, Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism would appear to dissolve because there would no longer be anything distinctively religious about the hinge propositions that are so central to the theory. In this case, thanks to epistemic parity, epistemology of religion would appear to dissolve into plain old epistemology. Secondly, we might wish to question Pritchard’s important assumption that religious commitment is best treated as an epistemic matter and the rather intellectualized picture of religious commitments and doubts that this assumption implies. We might think that his defence of Wittgensteinian quasi-​fideism does not do enough to ease the delicate process of transplanting the Wittgensteinian idea of hinge commitments from the context of empirical inquiry to that of religious commitment. Finally, there is a significant worry about the rational status of Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism itself. Pritchard tells us that an apparent hinge disagreement is in fact a second-​order disagreement over which specific propositions should be included in the set of propositions taken to codify the Über-​hinge commitment (that we are not fundamentally in error). But when one asks whether Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism is true (i.e., whether there are religious hinge

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propositions), this is the very point at issue. For one is asking whether or not some religious proposition(s) should be included in the set of propositions taken to codify the Über-​hinge commitment—​a question about which there is clearly some disagreement. We have already seen that apparent hinge disagreements of this kind are not rationally resolvable. This carries the unwelcome implication that, insofar as Pritchard’s attempts to convince his readers of the truth of Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism are rational, they are redundant. Assuming that these fundamental worries could be satisfactorily addressed, from the point of view of interreligious communication, there may be mileage in a strategy of revising Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism, the prospects for which would be worth assessment by future research. It would be worth investigating whether the finally agreed-​upon religious hinge propositions (or single hinge proposition) could be ones that are compatible, not only with the beliefs of theists but also with those of the adherents of non-​theistic religions and, by implication, secular atheists. What could such propositions be? Rather than suggesting, with Pritchard (2000), that “God exists” be regarded as a hinge proposition of religious belief, we might evaluate, instead, whether such hinge propositions may be sufficiently inclusive to refer to an experience that is shared by both theists and non-​theists, yet whose significance may still be interpreted in a religious light. One possibility worth investigating is that such propositions refer to experiences of ineffability (Bennett-​Hunter 2014; 2016; Jonas 2016). The possibility of such experiences is admitted even by such prominent atheists as Christopher Hitchens, and (arguably) Jean-​Paul Sartre (de Beauvoir 1985, 434–​5). Yet, although they can be interpreted in secular terms, such experiences are also often interpreted in a religious light, both theistic and non-​theistic. Recent philosophical work on ineffability has drawn attention to the potential of this concept to facilitate continued conversations along these lines between theists and atheists, which have perhaps been prematurely cut short (Jonas 2016, 184; Bennett-​Hunter 2016a). The problematic question for this revisionary project would be: “What counts as a religious proposition?” Is the religious interpretation of the significance of an experience of ineffability (as opposed to the atheist’s denial of such significance or refusal to interpret it—​notwithstanding the experience itself) sufficient for the resultant (inevitably inadequate and non-​literal) utterances to be called “religious”? Such questions will be central to any project of revising Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism along these lines. In order for Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism to withstand such radical modification and remain intact, it would require a conception of what counts as a distinctively religious proposition that is both philosophically acceptable and broad enough to be theologically acceptable to the adherents of non-​theistic religions as well as theistic ones. If the truth of Wittgensteinian

172 Bennett-Hunter Quasi-​Fideism is established, or if its implications for this area are justified by other means, it may prove necessary for effective interreligious communication to move in such an inclusive direction. Even if the question of the truth of Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism were answered in the negative, it would still be worthwhile for future research to investigate whether the intuitively true Wittgensteinian observations about the theory and practice of interreligious communication that I have presented in this essay might be justified on other grounds. Fruitful appeal has already been made, in philosophy of religion, to other relevant Wittgensteinian texts than On Certainty, for example, Culture and Value and the Lectures and Conversations. Future research could profitably assess the extent to which these texts suggest a model of interreligious communication in harmony with the one implied by Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism. If the question were answered affirmatively, there are still some further questions regarding interreligious communication that would repay close scholarly attention from a Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideistic perspective. For example, how should the ethical implications of interreligious communication be construed and dealt with, beyond the bald insistence that the first, missionary stage of interreligious communication be dialectical? It would be most essential for further work in this area to develop more concrete and detailed suggestions about how this dialectical process may be safeguarded from the influence of hegemony, so that the interreligious encounter can be engaged in ethically and interreligious coercion prevented.

Bibliography

Andrejč, Gorazd. 2015. “Reading Wittgenstein (on Belief) with Tillich (on Doubt).” Neue Zeitschrift fuer Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 57(1): 60–​86. Bennett-​Hunter, Guy. 2012. “A Pragmatist Conception of Certainty: Wittgenstein and Santayana.” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 4(2):  146–​ 157. Bennett-​Hunter, Guy. 2014. Ineffability and Religious Experience. Oxford: Routledge. Bennett-​Hunter, Guy. 2016. “Ineffability: Reply to Professors Metz and Cooper.” Philosophia, 44(4): 1267–​87. Bennett-​Hunter, Guy. 2016a. “New Work on Ineffability.” Expository Times, 128(1): 30–​2. Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 1980. “An Emerson Mood.” In The Senses of Walden. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

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Cooper, David E. 2002. The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cooper, David E. 2009. “Mystery, World and Religion.” In Philosophers and God, edited by John Cornwell and Michael McGhee, 51–​62. London: Continuum. De Beauvoir, Simone. 1985. Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, Patrick O’Brian (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Freud, Sigmund. 2008. The Future of an Illusion, J.A. Underwood and S. Whiteside (trans.). London: Penguin. Jonas, Silvia. 2016. Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion, and Philosophy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pritchard, Duncan H. 2000. “Is ‘God Exists’ a ‘Hinge Proposition’ of Religious Belief?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 47(3): 129–​40. Pritchard, Duncan H. 2011. “Wittgensteinian Quasi-​Fideism.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, 4, edited by Jonathan Kvanvig, 145–​159. Oxford: Clarendon. Pritchard, Duncan H. 2011a. “Epistemic Relativism, Epistemic Incommensurability, and Wittgensteinian Epistemology.” In A Companion to Relativism, edited by Steven D. Hales, 266–​285. Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell. Pritchard, Duncan H. 20011b. “Wittgenstein on Scepticism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, edited by Oskari Kuusela and Marie McGinn, 523–​549. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pritchard, Duncan H. 2012. “Wittgenstein and the Groundlessness of Our Believing.” Synthese, 189(2): 255–​72. Pritchard, Duncan H. 2015. “Wittgenstein on Faith and Reason: The Influence of Newman.” In God, Truth and Other Enigmas, edited by Mirosław Szatkowski, 197–​215. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Pritchard, Duncan H. 2017. “Faith and Reason.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 81: 101–​18. Pritchard, Duncan H., and Boult, Cameron. 2013. “Wittgensteinian Anti-​Scepticism and Epistemic Vertigo.” Philosophia, 41(1): 27–​35.

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The God of the Intellect and the God of Lived Religion(s): Reflections on Maimonides, Wittgenstein and Burrell Daniel H. Weiss In this essay, I  argue that Wittgenstein’s criticism of certain dangers in philosophy can help us to distinguish between two different approaches to the question of interreligious communication. I will focus here on communication among the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, although the argument could also be extended to other traditions. Within each of these three traditions, one can discern a sub-​tradition that finds certain aspects of the ‘everyday religious or scriptural language’ of its own broader received tradition to be problematic. Often shaped by criteria influenced by Aristotelian or Neoplatonic modes of thought, or a combination of both, this sub-​tradition seeks to produce an intellectually purified reinterpretation of religious language and concepts. Notably, because such thinkers in the sub-​traditions within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have in many cases been shaped by similar philosophical criteria, their accounts can be put into fruitful conversation with one another. Among recent theologians, David Burrell can be viewed as a prominent example of someone who has promoted interreligious communication on this type of foundation, and who has done so in interesting and illuminating ways. However, through analysis of the thought of Maimonides, I will argue here that interreligious communication on this basis runs a strong risk of turning the endeavor into a project largely restricted only to the intellectual elite within in each tradition. In contrast to this tendency, we can employ Wittgenstein’s thought to show why the supposed need for intellectual purification may in fact rest on a mistaken, or at least unnecessary, approach to the traditions’ religious concepts. Instead, it may be that the concepts are, at least in many regards, ‘in order as they are.’ That is to say, although approaches shaped strongly by certain philosophical presuppositions may see certain traditional texts or religious formulations as at best perplexingly vague, and as seeming, in their outward sense, to put forth notions that conflict with a certain understanding of philosophical reason, and thus as in need of philosophical clarification, it may be that certain types of philosophical clarification in fact

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distort, rather than truly clarifying, the concepts in question. Conversely, the elements that are seen by philosophical readers as problematic and unclear may indeed be problematic from the perspective of the specific assumptions of those approaches; however, rather than a problem to be removed, this seeming unclarity and resistance to ‘full theoretical clarity’ may in fact be an important part of the concepts and need not impair their practical and even intellectual functioning within the religious traditions. In this regard, we can draw parallels to the ways that Wittgenstein criticizes the ways in which certain philosophical approaches distort concepts by seeking to subject them to an external standard of clarity which is not, in fact, either appropriate or necessary. Drawing upon Burrell as an interlocutor is useful for this exploration, for multiple reasons. First, Burrell himself already references Wittgenstein as an important intellectual guide in Burrell’s own project. Thus, rather than a wholly external application of Wittgenstein, building upon Burrell will enable a further extension of an already-​Wittgensteinian project. Secondly, Burrell recognizes the risk entailed in applying philosophically-​derived criteria of clarity and intelligibility to concepts native to religious traditions, and he emphasizes that the basic picture of God as presented in the scriptural texts and subsequent interpretive tradition should norm the practice of philosophical theology.1 In this regard, he points specifically to figures whose use of philosophical approaches, in his estimation, functioned to provide actual clarification, rather than distortion, of religious concepts. Accordingly, he highlights thinkers whose philosophical approaches were more able to distance themselves from certain Neoplatonic-​emanationist tendencies, which he sees as often resulting in conceptual departure from traditional religious conceptions, by forcing the latter to ‘fit’ with philosophically-​specific presuppositions. In this sense, these thinkers may already be more attuned to the Wittgensteinian insight that the presuppositions of certain philosophical approaches can create misleading understandings. However, by examining more closely the positions of the exemplary figures that he praises, particularly Maimonides, we will show that the philosophical approaches of these more self-​aware thinkers also result in fundamental conceptual transformations of the religious notions, with significant practical implications. Thus, if even these more critical medieval employments of philosophical tools run the risk of distortion in the form of ‘over-​intellectualization’, it may be that a more sensitive approach is needed,

1 For a good account of these aspects of Burrell’s thought, see Gorazd Andrejč, Wittgenstein and Interreligious Disagreement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 177–​180, 198–​199.

176 Weiss one that can aim to provide clarification while also better preserving the conceptual core of the traditional ideas. This recognition also means that a different approach to interreligious communication is required. Towards the end of the essay, we will consider possibilities of what such an alternative approach might look like. While intellectualized forms of religious concepts can more easily be directly compared through abstract or general methods, this other form of interreligious communication will require a more anthropological, on-​the-​ground examination of the ways in which the concepts are used by particular individuals in their daily life. Although such an approach may be more ‘messy’, it has the advantage of being open to everyday practitioners of the religious traditions, and is not restricted to intellectual ‘experts.’ Furthermore, rather than being anti-​intellectual, this posited approach, drawing upon Wittgenstein’s insights, still seeks to provide an intellectual form of clarification, while nevertheless steering clear of the problems posed by over-​ intellectualization characteristic of certain philosophical approaches.

Burrell, Philosophy, and Interreligious Engagement

In his recent book, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, David Burrell states, “[E]‌ach tradition will privilege certain scriptural texts, which coalesce to offer a portrait of the God they worship in a catalog of ‘names’ or ‘attributes’. From that initial platform, we shall observe how each of these traditions elaborates its original revelation, struggling to articulate features of the relations between the freely creating God and creatures, cumulatively displaying each to be wrestling with features leading to the one God.”2 He further notes that “the form of the struggle in one tradition will often mirror that of the other.”3 A bit later, he identifies the ‘form of the struggle’ with a turn to philosophy: “[E]ach tradition found itself having recourse to philosophical strategies to help unravel aporiae (or persistent conundrums) left by their respective revelations.”4 In addition, he argues that they tended to employ these strategies in similar ways, particularly noting that “philosophy exhibits its usefulness … in mediating disputes lingering from oppositions (or even contradictions) latent in revelational texts.”5 Explicitly alluding to Wittgenstein, he describes the employment of 2 David B.  Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology (Oxford:  Wiley-​Blackwell, 2011), xii. 3 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, xii. 4 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, 5. 5 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, 5.

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philosophy in these traditions as examples of “intellectual therapies,” in that they seek to put to rest anxieties that have arisen with regard to seemingly problematic elements of the received scriptural texts.6 In the picture painted by Burrell, there are worryingly unclear or ambiguous aspects of the received scriptural traditions. For instance, God may be described in terms of speaking or hearing –​does this mean God has a voice or ears akin to human, material features? Or, how precisely did God create the world –​was it from nothing, or from a pre-​existing chaos? These questions do not appear to have any clear answer readily available from the text of the scriptures themselves, and indeed, different passages within the same scriptural corpus may appear give quite different responses. However, by employing the tools of philosophical thought, thinkers in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic medieval traditions were able to construct a more coherent interpretive account of God that sought to overcome the ambiguities or contradictions in the scriptural presentations. Burrell rightly notes that in employing these tools, the thinkers from the different traditions arrived at accounts of the ‘one God’ that are in many ways remarkably similar to one another.7 While they still sometimes employ different formulations from one another, Burrell argues that contemporary scholarly interpreters, by employing “creative hermeneutics” in reading these medieval thinkers, can draw out those core similarities, and thus enable communication across the different traditions.8 In this manner, the real theological differences that remain need not prevent an appreciation of deep commonalities that might otherwise have been less apparent. While Burrell’s efforts at drawing out these commonalities are valuable, his own previous work has pointed to potential risks inherent in the application of external or etic philosophical criteria to ‘native’ or emic concepts within religious traditions. In his Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions, he indicates that thinkers such as Maimonides, Aquinas, and al-Ghazali were aware that in applying philosophical tools to traditional concepts of, e.g., creation, those who produce or engage with such analysis must remain cognizant of the fact that “the very form of discourse will be misleading.”9 Yet, even beyond these risks of misleading form, a further risk is that those who employ such tools may also end up producing a significantly changed content as well. Burrell 6 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, 5. 7 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, xi–​xii, 3–​4. 8 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, xiv. 9 David B. Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1993), 12.

178 Weiss states that these thinkers, in drawing upon philosophical tools, were aware of competing philosophical tendencies, linked with Neoplatonic emanationism, which differed from their own approaches. These Neoplatonic approaches tended to elide “ ‘the distinction’ of the creator God from all that is created,” and that instead characterized the created world as a series of emanations from ‘the One.’10 In this manner, Burrell is able to distinguish thinkers whose use of philosophical-​conceptual tools helps preserve the traditional notion of God’s distinction from creation, and thus God’s freedom, from thinkers whose use of conceptual tools drawn from a more Neoplatonic-​emanationist philosophical orientation functions problematically to blur this distinction. He thus is able to uphold the approach of al-​Ghazali over that of al-​Farabi and ibn Sina, and that of Maimonides over that of Gersonides.11 In this analysis, the problem vis-​ à-​vis traditional conceptions lies not in the recourse to philosophical tools per se. Rather, certain ways of employing philosophical tools preserve and clarify traditional conceptions and thus remain, content-​wise, within the traditional framework, while other ways of employing philosophical tools transform the content of the concepts in order to make them fit into an alien and external conceptual framework. However, while accepting Burrell’s claim that the thinkers like Maimonides, al-​Ghazali, and Aquinas may indeed have sought to defend traditional scriptural concepts from the distinction-​eliding approaches of Neoplatonic-​ emanationist approaches, we can also ask whether own ‘philosophical’ approaches may themselves, as part of their basic methodological assumptions, similarly have the effect of changing certain elements of the traditional conceptions in significant ways. That is to say, these thinkers were certainly aware of the need to defend their religious traditions from the dangers of some

10 Burrell, Freedom and Creation, 12; see also 29–​30 ((referring to Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed [hereafter GP], trans. Shlomo Pines [Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1963], i:58)), 101–​103, 187. 11 Burrell, Freedom and Creation, 53–​56, 56–​60. It should be emphasized that even the ‘non-​emanationist’ medieval thinkers were influenced by various aspects of Neoplatonist thought. My argument in this essay is not based on distinguishing between ‘Neoplatonist’ and ‘non-​Neoplatonist’ thinkers, or between ‘Neoplatonist’ and ‘Aristotelian’ thinkers. Rather, the main point in the present context is that some thinkers sought more actively to retain the distinction between creator and creation, while other thinkers adapted traditional conceptions more closely to emanationist schemes. As we shall see, thinkers that uphold traditional conceptions in one regard (e.g., creation) may simultaneously, under the influence of philosophical presuppositions, depart from traditional conceptions in other regards.

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philosophical approaches (e.g., the ways in which emanationism can blur the notion of free creation), and so cannot simply be accused of an uncritical blanket acceptance of philosophical presuppositions. However, might it also be the case that they nevertheless accepted certain other philosophical presuppositions and significantly reshaped traditional understandings in light of them? In this sense, the philosophical approaches would be functioning not simply as tools for clarifying understanding while preserving traditional content, but as external norms to which traditional content must submit. If so, might even the more self-​aware engagement with philosophical tools displayed by these thinkers contain a problematic relation to received tradition? In exploring this question, I will focus below primarily on Maimonides, although the same analysis may apply to a greater or lesser degree to thinkers like Aquinas or al-​Ghazali. In focusing the thought of al-​Ghazali, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas in the 11th through the 13th centuries, Burrell notes that these figures and their era “enjoyed a relatively homogenous philosophical culture, so adherents of diverse religious traditions were able to share a common discourse.”12 What if, however, this same philosophical common discourse that bound these thinkers together also had the similar effect of cutting each of them off from important elements of their inherited conceptual traditions, as well as cutting them off from ‘everyday people’ within each of their respective traditions who were not conversant with that elite philosophical culture? In other words, while such thinkers may have arrived at similar approaches to overcoming scriptural conundrums and contradictions by means of their shared employment of philosophical tools, what if it was their immersion in a specific mode of philosophical thought that led them to see their scriptural texts as problematic in the first place? Here, we can draw upon Wittgenstein’s notion that everyday language is generally ‘in order as it is’,13 but that immersion in certain habits of ‘philosophical’ thought can lead some people to imagine that there is something problematic going on in our everyday forms of expression, to which they then propose various philosophical solutions. Wittgenstein’s approach is to say that these solutions will never be satisfactory, because the problems to which they aim to respond stem from misunderstandings about how language works. Rather than trying to ‘solve’ the philosophical problems, Wittgenstein’s aimed to ‘dissolve’ the problem by showing that the problem arose in the first place from specific philosophical assumptions about

12 Burrell, Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology, 14. 13 PI, §98.

180 Weiss language, and that these assumptions were neither necessary nor, in general, beneficial.14 Thus, even in the case specifically ‘non-​emanationist’ philosophical thinkers like Maimonides, Aquinas, and al-​Ghazali (as well as, differently, the case of thinkers influenced by Neoplatonic-emanationist frameworks), the assumptions that they brought to the text of Scripture may have generated their sense that there is a problem in need of a philosophically-​shaped solution. If the different thinkers shared similar such assumptions, they may have seen similar problems, and may have employed similar strategies in seeking to ‘solve’ these problems, and so may have arrived at similar accounts of God. However, seeing the scriptural texts as problematic in this manner should not be understood as an automatic or ‘natural’ phenomenon; someone who approaches the same texts without those specific assumptions and/​or with a different set of intellectual assumptions would not inherently view the texts as problematic in the same ways. Accordingly, if they did not see the same problems in the first place, such a person would not need to employ the same type of philosophical strategies for solving them, and so might not arrive at the same conception of God as did Maimonides, Aquinas, and al-​Ghazali.

Maimonides, Classical Rabbinic Literature, and the Intellectualization of God

To illustrate these way in which these thinkers might be reshaping inherited theological conceptions or scriptural formulations in order to make them ‘fit’ with assumptions that they bring to the text/​tradition, let us first call into question the notion of ‘human intellect’ employed by Maimonides. In his introduction to part i of his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides states that his intellectual therapy (as Burrell terms it) is intended specifically for those who are committed Jews and who have also “studied the sciences of the philosophers 14

Cf. PI, §133. We can distinguish Wittgenstein’s ‘dissolving’ approach from Maimonides’s by the following contrast: For Maimonides, the outward-​apparent meaning of scriptural formulations is philosophically problematic, and the problem is ‘solved’ by showing that this outward meaning is not scriptural text’s ‘true inner meaning,’ and that this latter, esoteric meaning is philosophically non-​problematic. In light of the Wittgensteinian approach that we will explore below, the ‘problem’ of scripture’s outward-​apparent formulations can be ‘dissolved’ by showing that, if one does not bring philosophical presuppositions to the text, many of those formulations need not be treated as problematic in the first place. On Maimonides’ approach, see his Introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed, discussed below.

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and come to know what they signify.”15 After engaging in the study of philosophy, such a person will likely come to feel “distressed by the externals of the Law [i.e., the text of scripture]” and by the meaning of the terms that it uses in reference to God.16 In response to those perplexities, Maimonides offers philosophical interpretations of the scriptural texts in order to ease such concerns and put forth a more intellectually sophisticated understanding of God. However, while Maimonides describes this state as arising from a person having been spurred on simply by “the human intellect”,17 we can resist his presentation and say that it is a certain type of intellectual training that produces these specific perplexities. What he calls “the sciences of the philosophers”, which in his context meant a specific Aristotelian philosophical tradition, contain specific assumptions that will tend to make certain aspects of the scriptural text problematic. While Maimonides would say that those who have not been trained in these supposed ‘sciences’ are by definition less attuned to intellectual truth, we can posit that there may be other types of engagement (notably, as we will see, those displayed by classical rabbinic literature) that can be equally described as ‘intellectual,’ but that do not contain those specific Aristotelian-​assumptions. Again, this parallels Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy: those who have become habituated to certain philosophical ways of thinking and thus find certain things ‘problematic’ are not necessarily more intelligent than those who do not; indeed, the finding-​problematic may in fact be a sign of intellectual confusion on a deeper level, rather than a sign of intellectual superiority. One prominent instance of the received scriptural and religious tradition to which Maimonides seeks to apply his therapy is the question of anthropopathism, namely, forms of thought or expression that ascribe or appear to ascribe passion or emotion to God. While many biblical passages talk in terms of God’s compassion or God’s anger (a trend continued in classical rabbinic literature), Maimonides holds that such formulations will inherently be viewed as problematic by a person properly trained in ‘the sciences of the philosophers.’ This is the case because, in Maimonides’s view, it is a demonstrable philosophical truth that God is not “subject to affections. For affection is a change, and He, may He be exalted, is not touched by change.”18 Thus, Maimonides’s 15 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed [hereafter GP], trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), Introduction, 5. 16 GP Introduction, 5. 17 GP Introduction, 5. 18 GP i:35, 81. Notably, Aquinas also asserts that God free from all passion; see his Summa Theologiae i, q. 1.

182 Weiss ‘therapeutic’ approach is to find ways of reinterpreting the problematic scriptural texts so as to make their meaning acceptable to a person who knows that affections are incompatible with a true conception of God. Notably, Maimonides immediately follows his assertion of God’s ‘dispassionate’ character with an expression of Burrell’s praised ‘distinction’ between creator and creation: “He is not like unto any thing of all those that are other than He, nor is He comprehended together with one of these things in any definition whatever.”19 Thus, it appears that, for Maimonides, a key part of maintaining the sharp distinction between creator and creation requires likewise maintaining a sharp distinction between the unchanging creator and the elements of creation that can be subject to change, passion, and affection. Furthermore, this conceptual stance also carries with it significant practical implications.20 In order to most closely place oneself in alignment with such a dispassionate God, a human being should strive, to the extent possible, to achieve a similar state of dispassion in one’s life and actions.21 Entanglement with elements of matter prevent a person from achieving true relation to God, which is found in non-​material intellectual apprehension, so a person should strive to separate his existential orientation from elements of ‘material’ passion or desire. Moreover, interaction with other human beings, since it occurs in the world of change and materiality, likewise serves to interfere with a person’s relation to God. With regard to true relation to God, which Maimonides describes as ‘love for God’ and which he equates with intellectual apprehension, he writes, “Mostly this is achieved in solitude and isolation. Hence every excellent man stays frequently in solitude and does not meet anyone unless it is necessary.”22 Even the mitzvot or commandments, which appear to consist of dynamic bodily actions and which often involve material objects and functions, are understood by Maimonides not as means of relating to God per se, but rather as special exercises for training a person to separate himself from connection to materiality: “[t]‌he commandments and prohibitions of the Law are only intended to quell all impulses of matter.”23 Thus, the commandments, although they involve material action, serve as preliminary training for true

19 20

GP i:35, 81. See also GP i:54,125–​128. On the ethical-​ practical stance encouraged by Maimonides, see Kenneth Seeskin, “Maimonides’ appropriation of Aristotle’s ethics,” in The Reception of Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Jon Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 107–​124. 21 Cf. GP i:54, 126–​128. 22 GP iii:51, 621. 23 GP iii:8, 434.

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relation to God, which takes place solely through the intellect.24 In addition, because true relation to God occurs through intellectual apprehension, it can be achieved only by those “men of knowledge” who have “attained perfection in the divine science” of philosophical reflection.25 Notably, in putting forth this stance, Maimonides specifically excludes those “jurists,” or scholars of Talmud and halakhah, who have not attained this specifically philosophical understanding of God.26 Again, while it downplays, deprioritizes, or relativizes the significance of practical commandments and of Talmud study, this understanding of how to relate to God is nevertheless consistent with the philosophically-​shaped notion of God as dispassionate and disembodied. Thus, Maimonides’s ‘intellectual therapy’ not only consists of a reinterpretation of scriptural texts, but it also corresponds to a revaluation of traditional conceptions of study and practice. However, while Maimonides’s conceptual and practical reworkings of the ‘problematic’ elements of inherited tradition may indeed necessary if one adopts the Aristotelian-​influenced conception of God, it may be that another view of that same material is possible, in which those elements are not viewed as ‘problematic’. While Maimonides’s stance corresponds closely to the Aristotelian notion of God as the ‘unmoved mover’, Abraham Joshua Heschel has argued that the conception displayed in the biblical text, and especially in the prophetic books, is rather that of God as the ‘most moved mover.’27 In this conception, God’s ‘passionate’ concern for human beings is viewed not a problem to be removed, but as a core component of how God is to be understood and related to.28 Classical rabbinic literature, moreover, appears actively to affirm 24

25 26 27

28

Cf. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, x:7–​8, on the superiority of contemplative mode (theoria) over the practical mode, and on the contemplative mode as the way of relating to God and to blessedness. However, as Kenneth Seeskin points out, while the prioritization of the contemplative over the practical may be traced to Aristotle, Maimonides’s ascetic aversion to ‘impulses of matter’ does not seem to accord with Aristotle’s view. Yet, Maimonides may still have viewed his own stance as in accord with the Neoplatonically-​ infused understanding of Aristotle prominent in his own time. See Seeskin, “Maimonides’ appropriation,” 121–​123. GP iii:51, 623, 620. GP iii:51, 619. Cf. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New  York:  Harper Perennial, 2001), 288ff, on the ‘God of Pathos’, in contrast to the Aristotelian ‘God of the philosophers.’ The phrase ‘most moved mover’ is applied by Fritz Rothschild to Heschel’s conception of God; see Rothschild’s “Introduction” to Heschel, Between God and Man (New  York:  Harper, 1959), 25. For a defense of the rational value and coherence of an anthropomporphic/​anthropopathic conception of God, see Edmond Lab. Cherbonnier, “The Logic of Biblical Anthropomorphism,” Harvard Theological Review 55:3 (1962): 187–​206.

184 Weiss this biblical notion, and does not generally seem to treat ‘affectional’ descriptions of God as problematic. As Max Kadushin puts it, “The fact is that the Rabbis and the philosophers simply do not inhabit the same universe of discourse. Whatever the Rabbis do, they do not really qualify or mitigate either biblical anthropomorphisms or their own. The very problem of anthropomorphism did not exist for them.”29 In other words, the classical rabbinic texts treat affectional descriptions of God as ‘in order as they are,’ and they do not display a need to enter into debates over whether or not those terms should be ‘taken literally.’ While they are no strangers to debate and dispute, and while they reflect critically on any number of issues, they simply do not appear to view affective formulations concerning God a constituting a ‘problem’ in the first place. This understanding of God, which may indeed be incompatible with Aristotelian-​philosophical orientations, places much greater emphasis on relating to God through practical everyday commandments, ranging from food practices to love of neighbor, and including prayer and repentance. While there is also strong emphasis placed on study of Torah, there is a much stronger sense a that ‘everyday people’ can relate fully to God, as indicated by the statement in the Babylonian Talmud, “this one does much [in the study of Torah], and this one does little; both are equal, provided one directs one’s heart to heaven,”30 or in its statement, “the goal [takhlit] of wisdom is repentance and good deeds.”31 Here, intellectual training is thus not an end in itself, whereas Maimonides, it would seem, would be likely to reverse this latter position, and would instead hold that the goal of ‘good deeds’ (actions in the material world) is ‘wisdom’ (intellectual apprehension of God). Whereas Maimonides’s stance excludes most Jews, who lack perfected philosophical training, from true relation to God, the classical rabbinic stance, again in continuity with the biblical orientation, holds that a non-​philosophical life of piety and action, alongside engagement in Torah, can enable a wide range of people to relate directly to God. Notably, the classical rabbinic stance can be seen as upholding the basic distinction between creator and creation, steering clear of Neoplatonist emanationism, yet without slipping into the ‘dispassionism’ characteristic of

29 30 31

Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind (Binghamton: Global Publications, 2001 [1972]), 280; see also Yair Lorberbaum, In God’s Image: Myth, Theology, and Law in Classical Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 13–​45. Babylonian Talmud [hereafter BT] Berakhot 17a. BT Berakhot 17a. Notably, even when, as in BT Kiddushin 40b, it is proclaimed that study (talmud) is greater than practice (maʿaseh), it is immediately clarified that the reason that study is greater is because it leads to action!

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Maimonides’s philosophically-​shaped account.32 Instead, the rabbinic conception of God is both personal-​relational and transcendent:  one relates to God through embodied and thus ‘material’ action, yet without God becoming an object in the created world, and love of God is thus not equated with non-​ material intellectual contemplation.33 Yet, a key question remains:  how can this be possible? Does this not produce an intellectually incoherent or contradictory conception? Doesn’t positing ‘true relation’ to God through material actions result in God becoming ‘materialized’? And won’t this in turn result in the loss of the important distinction between creator and creation? If anything, Maimonides was at least consistent in seeing the need to distance relation to God from materiality in order to maintain the distinction between God and that which is other than God. By contrast, the classical rabbinic stance, while perhaps admirably avoiding intellectual elitism, seems instead to reinforce the very conceptual problems that gave rise to Maimonides’ perceived need for ‘intellectual therapy’ in the first place. In seeking to address this dilemma, recourse to Wittgenstein’s thought proves especially useful. Wittgenstein repeatedly highlights the fact that certain concepts can function perfectly well even when, from certain philosophical perspectives, they may appear ‘problematic.’ For instance, Wittgenstein writes: Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”. I mean board-​ games, card-​games, ball-​games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?  –​Don’t say:  “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’ ” –​but look and see whether there is 32 In comparing Aquinas to Maimonides, Burrell (Faith and Freedom:  An Interfaith Perspective [Oxford: Blackwell, 2004], 232) states that “the nuance with which Aquinas can accept Maimonides’ axioms regarding ‘the distinction’ as it governs the semantics of language about God, yet still find ordinary human expressions which will bear the freight, suggests once again that the incarnation offers a way of putting this distinction to which the Rambam had no access.” However, in light of the analysis here, we can see that the rabbinic texts can likewise be said to maintain “the distinction” between creator and creation while also finding “ordinary human expressions” concerning the possibility of relationality between human beings and God –​yet without needing to have recourse to the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. For ways in which classical rabbinic conceptuality could be said to have an ‘incarnational’ understanding of God (though significantly different from the Christian conception), see Jacob Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). 33 For a discussion of the combination of transcendence and pathos in Abraham J. Heschel’s rabbinically-​influenced conception of God, see Shai Held, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2013), 135ff.

186 Weiss anything common to all. –​For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that.34 Here, the imaginary interlocutor assumes that different things that are called ‘games’ must have ‘something common to them all’, if the same term is used for all of them. Under this assumption, for any given term, one must either be able to produce the ‘something common’ that unites the different uses of the term, or one must conclude that there is something problematic or unsatisfactory about the term itself. By contrast, Wittgenstein asserts that in fact there may be no single ‘something common’ uniting the different uses of a term –​and yet such a term (as in the case of ‘game’) may be perfectly unproblematic. The problematic nature thus arises only if you assume that there must be a ‘something common’: with this assumption, such a term is indeed problematic, but without this assumption, it need not be. In this regard, the term ‘game’ may indeed contain certain elements of ‘definitional vagueness’,35 but this particular type of vagueness need not be a problem to be overcome or removed, nor need it cause significant problems in the everyday use of the term. Conversely, if one did assume that such vagueness is inherently problematic, one might be compelled to cut away and eliminate certain common uses of the term ‘game’ in an attempt to make the concept fit to one’s predetermined assumptions. Likewise, in the case of God, the particular philosophical approach that shapes Maimonides’s thought assumes that, before the practical use of affective-​sounding terms can be judged to be legitimate, one must first clearly determine whether the terms are ‘meant literally’ or not. In order for the use of the terms to be legitimate, one must assert that they are to be understood strictly metaphorically, and that God is not subject to any passions. For Maimonides, unless God is specifically dispassionate, it will be difficult to uphold the idea that God is distinct from the created world. However, just as (despite the protestations of certain philosophers) one can in fact use the term ‘game’ perfectly well without needing a single clear definition of the term, so too it is possible to speak or conceive of God in affective terms, without needing to assert that God is dispassionate, and yet also without drawing the conclusion that God is not distinct from the created world. It may be the case that certain ways of drawing out deductive conclusions could, if one sought a certain type of propositional consistency, lead one from notions of God’s compassion or God’s

34 PI, §66. 35 cf. PI, §98, §100.

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anger to a problematic non-​distinction between the creator and the creation. However, such forms of deductive-​propositional ‘drawing out to logical conclusions’ need not be an inherent component of every realm of discourse.36 It is a component of a certain philosophical discourse, but there can be equally intellectual or rational forms of discourse that do not employ that assumption, and in which attempts to apply that assumption can in fact lead to reduced, rather than increased, clarity and understanding.37 Rather, the classical rabbinic framework is able to use and employ certain concepts in a coherent and consistent manner, even if those concepts do not correspond to the specific form of propositional-​definitional consistency found in the philosophical orientation that seems to be governing Maimonides’s response to scriptural language. Just as, as Wittgenstein points out, it is often the case that a term or concept can be used even without being able to assign it a single clear definition, so too there may not be a way of formulating in clear and distinct propositions the way in which God’s compassion and anger is compatible with God’s distinction from creation. But the latter need not be seen as inherently problematic, any more the former is. The ‘problem’ arises not from the concept itself, but in applying certain assumptions of propositional consistency and logical deduction to a sphere of discourse that simply may not hold to such assumptions.38 In other words, if one assumes a certain notion of propositional ascription, then one may feel compelled to engage the problem of whether affective terminology for God should be taken ‘literally’ or 36

37

38

In this regard, Arif Ahmed argues that Wittgenstein held that “the possibility of deriving a contradiction from certain rules does not make those rules unusable if we do not in fact derive the contradiction.” See Ahmed, Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’: A Reader’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2010), 55. Cf. PI, §71: “And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way.” In response to such examples, a person could in principle attempt to ‘derive’ a common feature from among them (even though this attempt might fail). However, such attempts are not in accord with the intention of the person giving the ­examples –​the person can give the examples without wanting the listener to seek to ‘draw conclusions’ in this manner. Moreover, if someone does attempt to ‘draw out conclusions’, this may in fact lead to a misunderstanding of the concept that the initial utterance was intended to convey. While this need not preclude in principle attempts to draw out logical conclusions, one must remain aware of the ways in which such attempts can often require great care in order to avoid distorting the concept under consideration. Cf. PI, §244: “How do words refer to sensations? –​There doesn’t seem to be any problem here; don’t we talk about sensations every day, and give them names?” Here, in response to a questioning imaginary interlocutor who sees as a difficult problem that requires an answer, Wittgenstein indicates that, from another perspective, the matter need not be seen as ‘problematic’ in the first place.

188 Weiss ‘non-​literally’, but in the absence of those specific philosophical assumptions, the binary option of needing to determine between literal and non-​literal uses of a term simply may not arise. While some today (especially if they share presuppositions similar to Maimonides’s) might attribute the ‘failure’ on the part of rabbinic readers of scripture to see affective descriptions of God as ‘problematic’ to a lack of intellectual sophistication, another approach would be to say that they were quite intellectually sophisticated, but were simply working with conceptual assumptions other than those of Maimonidean-​Aristotelian thought.39 Notably, in discussing the type of ‘vagueness’ that can accompany many everyday concepts without impairing their non-​problematic functionality, Wittgenstein also asserted that “this is the position you are in if you look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics”.40 In this manner, the concept of God in classical rabbinic understanding can be seen as retaining an intellectual and conceptual coherence, even if not propositional consistency, just as a term like ‘game’ can be seen as retaining a conceptual coherence, even though no single definition of the term can be given. It is generally accepted that, on a practical level, people are capable of praying to God daily for mercy and compassion without needing to determine whether their use of those affective terms is ‘literal’ or ‘non-​literal’, and Wittgenstein’s observations can help us to see that the same may also be true on the level of intellectual-​theoretical reflection as well.41 By contrast, if one is led to raise the ‘problem’ and accordingly feels the 39

For a modern philosophically-​attuned rejection of the binary between literal and non-​ literal understandings of biblical ‘anthropomorphic’ language, see Franz Rosenzweig, “A Note on Anthropomorphisms:  in Response to the Encyclopedia Judaica’s Article” [1928], in his God, Man and the World: Lectures and Essays, ed. and trans. Barbara Galli, (Syracuse:  Syracuse University Press, 1998), 135–​145. For ways in which Hermann Cohen’s account of ‘religious love’ in Jewish sources displays a similar dynamic, see Daniel H. Weiss, Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 141–​159. 40 PI, §77. 41 Howard Wettstein’s criticism of Maimonides vis-​à-​vis classical rabbinic thought echoes aspects of my argument here, including the recognition of the relevance of Wittgenstein in this regard; see his The Significance of Religious Experience (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2012), 105–​106. However, his tendency to assert the ‘poetic’ or ‘literary’ character of the biblical and classical rabbinic texts (see, e.g., 107–​116), as contrasted to Maimonides ‘philosophical’ approach, may result in problematically ‘de-​intellectualizing’ biblical and classical rabbinic thought. By contrast, I maintain that one can view the rabbinic texts (as well as the biblical ones) as putting forth ideas that stem from coherent intellectual reflection, and that the poetry/​philosophy binary may itself be a reflection of the type of specific philosophical assumptions prevalent in the Platonic-​Aristotelian tradition that characterizes Maimonides’s own thought. Cf., in this regard, Daniel Boyarin,

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need to ‘deny passion’ in God, one is likely to be led to various religious and ethical consequences that depart in various ways from biblical and classical rabbinic orientations.42

Therapy, Distortion, and Intellectual Elitism

We can now consider the implications of this Wittgensteinian critique for interreligious engagement. Burrell rightly noted the way in which Aquinas, Maimonides, and al-Ghazali engaged in similar types of philosophical reworkings of problems or conundrums within their received traditions, and the way in which the results of their efforts pointed to a remarkably similar conception of the ‘one God.’ Such commonalities could serve as guiding examples for contemporary efforts at interreligious communication: while the traditions may employ different or even seemingly contradictory theological vocabularies that may seem to hinder cross-​tradition dialogue, the ‘philosophical therapy’ of the type employed by the medieval thinkers could enable those from different traditions to see the underlying commonalities in their respective conceptions of God. Yet, it must also be pointed out that the medieval ‘therapies’ highlighted by Burrell requires a high degree of scholarly-​philosophical training of those who would engage in such forms of dialogue. While ‘everyday believers’ may be able to speak and communicate within their own community, the requirement of philosophical sophistication means that communicating across communities becomes an elite intellectual project. On this face of it, this need not be an inherently damning feature, as there may be certain domains of culture –​for instance, rocket science –​that do require a type of intellectual specialization. If we understood the medieval philosophical therapies simply as rising above potential misunderstandings in order to come closer to a true conception of God, the elitist framework of the project could be more forgiveable.

42

Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1990), 1–​21. Here, saying that one should avoid ‘denying passion’ to God does not mean that one should instead ‘affirm passion’ regarding God in a propositionally-​ascriptive sense, as this is simply the flip-​side of the binary choice that seems to arise when one approaches the formulations with a certain set of philosophical assumptions, and can lead to equally problematic results. In this sense, I am largely in agreement with many of Burrell’s criticisms of tendencies in process theology, as expressed, for instance, in his “Does Process Theology Rest on a Mistake?”, Theological Studies 43 (1982):125–​135.

190 Weiss However, the analysis above raises the concern that –​at least in the case of Maimonides, and potentially, to a greater or lesser degree, applicable also to Aquinas and al-Ghazali –​this philosophical reworking does not simply express the same concepts in a different discourse, but constitutes a substantial transformation of the previous tradition, with both theoretical and practical implications. While perhaps retaining the ‘distinction’ between creator and creation, we have seen that Maimonides’s philosophical orientation leads him to an intellectualized and dispassionate conception of God that corresponds to an intellectualized and dispassionate conception of human relation to God. Accordingly, those who lack philosophical sophistication cannot properly relate to God. Thus, it is not simply the project of interreligious comparison that is restricted to an intellectual elite, but the very notion of ‘proper love of God’ also becomes an intellectually elitist activity. Thus, while intellectual elites within the three different religious traditions may indeed end up sharing a common conception of the ‘one God’, it may be that co-​religionists who lack such philosophical training may be cut off from that same God. Accordingly, what results may be not only an intellectualized religion, but also a substantially different ‘God of the intellectuals,’ a conception that may be in marked conflict with the values and orientations of the earlier tradition. While Burrell rightly criticizes the transformations entailed by Neoplatonic-​emanationist renderings, the assumptions underlying the more self-​aware ‘therapeutic’ renderings that he affirms may entail similarly ‘distorting’ conceptual effects. The interreligious commonality that is achieved thus comes at a price that calls into question the value of the therapy. Yet, Burrell’s basic approach remains valuable. In pointing to the ways in which the approaches of Maimonides, Aquinas, and al-Ghazali do a better job than Neoplatonic-​emanationist approaches in preserving the distinction between the creator and the creation, he points to the basic goal of intellectual engagement with received religious traditions:  namely, to arrive at new ways of presenting or formulating received concepts, in ways that produce clearer understanding and reduce potential or actual confusions, yet while remaining faithful to the content of the concepts. To the extent that a certain approach can succeed in such re-​presentation without distorting or transforming the substance of the concepts in question, it constitutes a successful form of intellectual therapy. To be sure, in engaging in such a process, one must take care not to unconsciously impose onto the texts and traditions problems that are not native to them.43 That is to say, one should seek a clarification that does not, at the 43

Peter Ochs refers to such tendencies, prominent in contemporary engagement with scriptural and religious traditions, as ‘colonialist’; likewise, Howard Wettstein describes

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same time, distort the concepts or ‘over-​clarify’ them in accord with assumptions external to the discourse in which the concepts have their life and use. Thus, while Burrell sought to portray Maimonides, Aquinas, and al-​Ghazali as employing a ‘Wittgensteinian’ form of intellectual therapy, it may be that those figures were, at the same time, also guilty of some of the problematic assumptions that Wittgenstein saw as afflicting many philosophers in his own day. Accordingly, some of the ‘problems’ that they discerned in the texts and traditions need not, in fact, inherently be seen as problematic, as the orientation of classical rabbinic literature demonstrates. Yet, because many theologians and philosophers today do retain assumptions, similar to those of Maimonides, that render scriptural texts problematic, the efforts of the medieval thinkers remain important for contemporary consideration, both in terms of their value as a model and in their value as an anti-​model. By learning from Wittgenstein about the ways in which certain ways of seeking definitional unity and propositional consistency can create confusions, we can attempt new approaches of theological comparison across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. In these approaches, it may still turn out that a common notion of the ‘one God’ could be found in the three traditions, but the forms of comparison would, hopefully, be able to refrain from grounding this potential commonality on ‘shared distortions’ of their respective traditions. Notably, it may also turn out that such endeavors are able to avoid the intellectualization and elitism that mark the medieval forms of ‘intellectual therapy’. While in some cases a form of intellectual specialization may be helpful in developing the skill of re-​formulating received traditional concepts in different ways, the basic concepts should still be in accord with the ‘everyday understanding’ of those within the traditions who lack philosophical training.44 Or, at the very least, if one does want to depart from the ‘everyday understanding,’ one should try to make sure that one is not doing so unnecessarily, due to a restrictive application of external philosophically-​specific assumptions to the inherited conceptions.45 While there are certainly ways in which a lack of

44

45

similar patterns as ‘imperialistic.’ See Ochs, “Comparative Religious Traditions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no. 1 (2006): 125–​128, at 126, and Wettstein, The Significance of Religious Experience, 105–​106, 128. Again, Burrell himself is attuned to this general orientation, and warns against the danger of uncritical philosophical approaches producing “a more or less official notion of God which bore little relation to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures it was supposed to embody.” See his “Does Process Theology Rest on a Mistake?”, 127, and see also 131. This approach does not mean that one cannot engage in criticism of received tradition or that one must simply submit uncritically to all aspects of the traditions as one has received it. There is certainly room for critique of received tradition and for pointing

192 Weiss philosophical training can make someone susceptible to certain types of misunderstandings, there are also ways in which the possession of philosophical training can make someone susceptible to other types of misunderstandings. As such, the project of interreligious communication may benefit from the joint efforts of those whose specialized training can provide new intellectual insights alongside those whose common sense expertise in the everyday use of the language of the religious tradition may serve as a corrective to the distorting intellectualizations that can sometimes accompany intellectual specialization. In this regard, the example of classical rabbinic literature is notable. While the rabbinic authors or redactors of such texts may themselves have been highly specialized members of an intellectual elite, the basic theological conceptions of God that they put forth were generally ‘accessible’ also to those who lacked such specialized training. Thus, while the form of their theological discourse may require expertise in order to engage, the content of the theological conceptuality of their understanding of relation to God was something that non-​experts could also put into practice. Such an orientation stands in contrast to Maimonides, for whom not only the form of his discourse, but also the substantive practice of relation to God, was accessible only to an intellectual elite. Likewise, while the sub-​tradition of Judaism represented by Maimonides finds parallels in Aquinas and al-​Ghazali, there may likewise be similarly useful parallels in Christianity and Islam to the less-​elitist sub-​tradition of classical rabbinic literature. Accordingly, if we seek to join Burrell’s basic approach to interreligious communication with Wittgenstein’s warnings against wrongly imposing assumptions upon received discourse, such sub-​traditions could, at least in certain regards, serve as a signpost of the type of contemporary ‘intellectual but not elitist’ project that could result.

Bibliography

Ahmed, Arif. Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’:  A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum, 2010.

out potential conceptual or ethical deficiencies or problems. The point, however, is that one should seek to be aware of situations wherein certain elements seem problematic specifically when viewed through the lens of certain philosophical presuppositions. In such cases, the ‘problems’ may result from being ‘held captive to a certain picture’ (cf. PI, §115) rather than from an inherently substantive inadequacy in the received conceptual formulations.

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Andrejč, Gorazd. Wittgenstein and Interreligious Disagreement. New  York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Boyarin, Daniel. Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Burrell, David B. “Does Process Theology Rest on a Mistake?” Theological Studies 43 (1982):125–​135. Burrell, David B. Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions. Notre Dame, IN:  Notre Dame University Press, 1993. Burrell, David B. Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Burrell, David B. Towards a Jewish-​Christian-​Muslim Theology. Oxford:  Wiley-​ Blackwell, 2011. Cherbonnier, Edmond Lab. “The Logic of Biblical Anthropomorphism.” Harvard Theological Review 55:3 (1962): 187–​206. Held, Shai. Abraham Joshua Heschel:  The Call of Transcendence. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2013. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001. Kadushin, Max. The Rabbinic Mind. Binghamton: Global Publications, 2001 [1972]. Lorberbaum, Yair. In God’s Image: Myth, Theology, and Law in Classical Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Maimonides, Moses. Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Neusner, Jacob. The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. Ochs, Peter. “Comparative Religious Traditions” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74:1 (2006): 125–​128. Rosenzweig, Franz. “A Note on Anthropomorphisms: in Response to the Encyclopedia Judaica’s Article” [1928]. In his God, Man and the World: Lectures and Essays, edited and translated by Barbara Galli, 135–​145. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998. Rothschild, Fritz. “Introduction.” In Abraham Joshua Heschel, Between God and Man, edited by Fritz Rothschild, 7–​32. New York: Harper, 1959. Seeskin, Kenneth. “Maimonides’ appropriation of Aristotle’s ethics.” In The Reception of Aristotle’s Ethics, edited by Jon Miller, 107–​124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Weiss, Daniel H. Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Wettstein, Howard. The Significance of Religious Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

­c hapter 10

Multiple Religious Belonging in a Wittgensteinian Perspective Rhiannon Grant

Introduction

If we should think of “theology as grammar” how should we understand the relationships between different theologies and the practice of multiple religious belonging or simultaneous membership of more than one religious tradition? Using George Lindbeck’s idea that religions are like languages, in this chapter I explore interreligious communication in the context of a multi-​faith society which includes people who belong to more than one religious tradition. In order to do this, I  first discuss multiple religious belonging from a sociological perspective –​what is it, who does it? I then consider some ideas drawn from Wittgenstein, which lead into Lindbeck’s religion-​as-​language analogy, and will help to suggest the outlines of a Wittgensteinian approach to multiple religious belonging. At the end, I explore the ways in which the two strands, Wittgensteinian and Lindbeckian, might come together into an understanding of ‘religion-​games’, which can help us to think through multiple religious belonging and interreligious encounter, especially communication between religions.1 I use Wittgenstein’s own work for this task, and not just Lindbeck’s, because Lindbeck establishes the idea that religions can be seen as analogous to languages on the back of a Wittgensteinian view of what language is and how it works. The particular concerns of Lindbeck’s most substantial work are about doctrine and the continuity of Christianity through time, and he uses his ‘cultural-​linguistic model’ of religion to offer an approach to these topics not encompassed by the other models he considers:  the cognitive-​ propositional and experiential-​expressive understandings. However, I  will be using Lindbeck’s model together with some ideas from the Wittgensteinian basis on which it draws in order to think not just about Christianity, but 1 This paper thus explores the origins of the concept of the ‘religion-​game’, which I considered further in ‘Playing Many Religion-​Games: a Wittgensteinian Approach to Multiple Religious Belonging’, Open Theology, January 2017, Volume 3, Issue 1, page 1–​9.

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about religious traditions more generally and their relationships. The key ideas from Wittgenstein are about the nature of language –​and hence, within the religion-​as-​language analogy, about the nature of religion. They relate to language as necessarily public, as rule-​guided, and as reliant on a community of agreement. I use these in an exploration of multiple religious belonging which will support my contention that the existence of multiple religious belonging and the challenges it poses can be seen more clearly through the lens of the religion-​as-​language analogy.

Religion as Language: a Brief Introduction

The concept which I term the ‘religion-​as-​language analogy’ is first fully developed in George Lindbeck’s book, The Nature of Doctrine. He sets up the ‘cultural-​ linguistic model’ of religion in contrast to the ‘cognitive-​propositional’ and ‘experiential-​expressivist’ models. Although all three models can capture some aspects which are important in a study of religion, he argues that too strong a focus on intellectual or cognitive content, usually expressed in the form of propositional claims, or on the emotional and expressive character of religious language and imagery both distort our understanding of religion. In order to see clearly how religion changes and yet maintains a core coherence through time, comparing religion to a language or a culture is more fruitful. The cultural aspect of this model has been thoroughly explored by Kathryn Tanner; in this chapter, I focus on the linguistic aspect. Taking natural language as an analogy for religion  –​not expecting them to be identical but holding them alongside one another for comparison –​is illuminating; it enables us to look at religion in a new, and deeply Wittgensteinian, way. Despite Wittgenstein’s struggle with the idea of a ‘language’ –​especially when it was framed in technical ways, such as the ‘totality of propositions’ –​the term ‘natural language’ has a stable enough pattern of use (in relation to languages such as English, Arabic, etc.) that it can be profitably deployed in this analogy. Although Lindbeck spins off from the concept of “theology as grammar” and does not spend much time using Wittgenstein’s work directly, his view of language is based on ideas which are more fully articulated in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (PI), something I explore further later in this chapter. The religion-​as-​language analogy gives rise to some useful but unusual ways of describing religion and religious belonging. Lindbeck talks, for example, about “fluency” in religion, remarking that “doctrines acquire their force from their relation to the grammar of a religion”. In the context of the issue of religious belonging, the idea of different levels of fluency in religion is especially

196 Grant useful, and I will be applying this outworking of the analogy at several points in this chapter. I will also be returning to a more detailed consideration of the analogy after laying out some points about multiple religious belonging and discussing the ideas from Wittgenstein about language which are key to making the analogy work.

Multiple Religious Belonging

Multiple religious belonging –​being in membership, in whatever sense is applicable for the traditions involved, of more than one religion –​is in a certain respect very common, and in another respect very unusual. In some situations, that is to say, it is so familiar as to go unremarked; in other ways, it is invisible to much traditional scholarship. The term was coined to describe the current situation in Japan, where almost everyone participates to some extent in two or three religions: usually Buddhism, Christianity, and Shinto. However, dual or multiple religious belonging in the West has rarely been identified and even less often ‘measured’ by methods such as surveys and interviews. Indeed, many standard questions asking for the religion of the recipient, such as those on censuses and diversity monitoring forms, are structured by an underlying assumption that only one answer can be given at once. Despite this, multiple religious belonging is now becoming visible in a range of sociological and theological literature. Key texts in the field include Gideon Goosen’s (2007) study of “hyphenated Christians” (people who combine Christianity with other religions), Catherine Cornille’s edited collection (2010), comprising essays describing a variety of forms of and Christian perspectives on multiple religious belonging, and Rose Drew’s (2011) detailed study of a selection of individuals who practice both Christianity and Buddhism. Other publications describe multiple religious belonging from the practitioner’s point of view. Indicative of a bias towards the pairing of Buddhism and Christianity in much of the academic and practitioner-​focussed literature in English is the fact that Buddhist-​Christian Studies is the only journal regularly publishing material on multiple religious belonging. There thus tends to be a lack of material on other possible combinations for multiple religious belonging, especially in adulthood. Although Susan Katz Miller (2013) considers mainly Jewish-​Christian multiple belonging, the focus on families and raising children leaves the experience of being within more than one religious tradition as an adult underexplored. Before going further into an exploration of multiple religious belonging, it is necessary to say a few things about what it is not, and why I am choosing

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to deal with it as a singular phenomenon. Multiple religious belonging is not in most cases a formal practice; it exists at the level of popular engagement with religion, and not usually at the level of the teaching of religion. (There are some exceptions, for example the welcome which Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn gives to Christian and Buddhist dual belonging.) I begin with the observation that multiple religious belonging does happen, from which I deduce that it can happen. For many religious communities, this fact presents a challenge –​not least in cases where they have strict membership requirements, which may include an explicit or de facto claim that membership of one religious community is inherently incompatible with simultaneous membership of another religion. However, this is a debate which needs to be held within religions because the people practicing multiple religious belonging are also members of that religious community in at least some senses –​in their own opinions, and from a sociological point of view. It is outside the scope of this chapter to tell religious believers what to think about this issue (although when it arises within my own community, I  advocate a Wittgensteinian approach such as the one outlined here). Furthermore, this debate will take vastly differing forms in different religious communities. It is already visible within the literature on multiple religious belonging that some combinations of religious (such as Christianity and Buddhism) attract more time and attention than other apparently possible combinations (such as Islam and Christianity). That said, this lack of attention does not indicate that such cases never appear, only that they pose more of a challenge to conventional thinking about religion. In theorising religion as a whole, scholars –​including some of those whose work I find useful, such as Lindbeck –​can fall into the trap of considering all religions as working in similar ways to their own, usually Christian, tradition. In order to try and overcome this, I do not begin with a single tradition or example and work outwards, but aim to take an overview of many possible combinations, abstracted as ‘multiple religious belonging’, and their origins and move towards an understanding which will incorporate them all. Ultimately, although it derives from work on multiple religious belonging, the concept of a ‘religion-​game’ which I develop could be used to describe exclusivist practices too: refraining from an action, or proclaiming disbelief, could be analysed in this way. Following this clarification about the role of ‘multiple religious belonging’ in my argument, I now proceed to review the literature on this topic and apply to it my concepts from Lindbeck, as described above. Multiple religious belonging can come about in a variety of ways. The available literature suggests that two types of situation are common: firstly, cases in which children are raised in an interfaith family with parents from different

198 Grant religions, and secondly, cases in which adults adopt elements from another religious tradition into their existing practice, rather than simply converting to that other religion. The former –​raising children in two religions as an open and deliberate choice, rather than at least nominally committing to one or the other –​is a relatively recent development in most of the West. Miller’s recent study of Jewish-​Christian interfaith families in the United States suggests that raising children to be fully in both traditions –​rather than trying to choose one or the other for them –​produces better results: less conflict within families and the children’s lives, and greater religious understanding. Individuals raised in families where the religion of one parent is subordinated to the other often experience this as a tension in the family. They are likely to have questions about and a desire to be involved in the religious practices of both parents. If raised to be fully conversant with both traditions –​that is (to use Lindbeck’s terms), to be competent speakers of both religions –​they experience this as a benefit. Even if, in adult life, they go on to choose one tradition over the other, or another religion entirely, the background of interreligious understanding is seen as positive. Miller says in her conclusion that children raised equally in two religions can “feel inspired and motivated by their interfaith heritage” and “have a sense that the benefits of the birthright outweigh the challenges”; as “interfaith communicators” they can be “ambassadors for peace”. This is a strong claim, but one which I find plausible, about the potential for children raised with multiple religious traditions to undertake and support interreligious communication –​ both that which is necessary for their understandings of their own traditions, and that which is necessary to build peace in the world as a whole. Other people actively choose multiple religious belonging as adults for a variety of reasons, including: curiosity, a partner from another religion, a perceived deficiency in their current religion, a desire for greater interfaith understanding, or a spiritually-​grounded leading to participate in both traditions. Some of these situations are commonplace, and we can see obviously analogous situations in language. For example, having a partner from another religion might sometimes lead to a full conversion, just as having a partner with another native language would provide both opportunity and motivation to learn to speak that language. Even without full conversion (or “fluency”), this is an experience which usually leads to a fuller appreciation of the partner’s religion and to a range of opportunities to participate with the partner and his or her family in religious practices not always otherwise accessible. The desire to explore other religions as part of a spiritual path is perhaps rarer, but hardly unknown. It can begin with a more traditional missionary attitude which moves, over time, towards an appreciation and even acceptance of the other religion. Alternatively, an exploration of other religions (which

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may begin as an interfaith dialogue or similar) can become a situation of multiple religious belonging, if something is found in the other tradition which is especially illuminating or useful to the seeker. This seems to be the case with a number of the Christian theologians who have embraced Buddhism as well, such as Paul Knitter, whose “engagement with other ways of being religious … has turned out to be an unexpected but immense help” to him in his attempts “to figure out what the message of Jesus means in our contemporary world”. Knitter makes it explicit that he did not set out looking for tools in Buddhism to help him understand Christianity, but now that he and others have conducted such an exploration and reported this result it becomes increasingly more likely that others will follow the path of multiple religious belonging with this possible result in mind. In some cases, as in Knitter’s, this will be at the theological level; in others, it might be at the level of practice, as, for example, when Christians find Buddhist meditations helpful. Knitter goes on to lay out his grammatical concerns: he asks the Christian community reading his work to assess whether it is orthodox, but, while hoping that he is doing “good ‘Buddhist theology’ ”, acknowledges that Buddhism is not his primary scholarly field and does not take Buddhist orthodoxy as a specific aim. The religion-​as-​language analogy, then, is helpful in developing our understanding of multiple religious belonging. In particular, the idea that we can have varying levels of fluency in different religions helps to explain how children can be raised in more than one religion (finding both benefits and challenges it in, as bilingual children do), and how adults can –​with sustained, but never purely intellectual, effort –​become fluent in a second religion. In the case of Knitter, Christianity remains his native language and the one in which grammar is a concern, while Buddhism provides new concepts and vocabulary, though he remains aware that he is not as fluent in it. Speaking both languages, he is enabled to move ideas between one tradition and the other, comparing their ways of seeing the world and creating an interreligious dialogue which might enrich both sides: Knitter only comments on the enrichment of Christianity, but there is no reason in principle why there should not be benefits to both. Before further exploring the religion-​as-​language analogy and the possible implications of multiple religious belonging for interreligious dialogue, let us first examine some of the Wittgensteinian ideas behind it.

Ideas from Wittgenstein

The religion-​as-​language analogy rests on a Wittgensteinian understanding of language –​as something which cannot be truly private, as something which

200 Grant requires implicit community-​agreed rules in order to function, and as something which can change as the community changes. In this section, I take these three ideas and briefly outline their origins in Wittgenstein’s work and their significance for the consideration of religion within the religion-​as-​language analogy. The first idea –​that language must be public rather than private –​is indicated by Wittgenstein in the so-​called ‘private language argument’ (PI, §256–​274). The second, that language is guided by rules which are agreed –​not explicitly, but in practice –​by the community, is also reached by a consideration of the private-​language problem. This problem can most quickly be illustrated and explained in relation to specific language-​games. One version, famously discussed by Saul Kripke concerns rule-​following in mathematics, in which Kripke introduces the strange form of addition called ‘qaddition’, which uses the ‘quus’ function instead of the familiar ‘plus’. ‘Quus’ follows the ‘plus’ function until it doesn’t, the user having no way to tell which version she is using until she has the chance to compare certain results with those produced by people using the other function. This problem generalises to natural language as a whole: how do we know that we are using words correctly? Wittgenstein’s answer to this –​in as much as he presents an answer –​is that we are guided by rules which are agreed and taught, albeit often implicitly, by the community. We can say that we “know how to go on” when we can follow the rule; but following the rule cannot be private, “otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it”. Wittgenstein’s examples, such as the person B learning a formula for producing a series of numbers, focus on teaching, and hence on the role of others in sharing and correcting the use of such rules. Rule-​guidedness is important to a central Wittgensteinian concept for understanding language, namely that of language-​games. Wittgenstein says that he uses the term “language-​game” “to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or form of life”, which it certainly is. However, the idea of a game also includes the concept of rules, whether these are explicit or implicit.2 Working from the list of language-​games which Wittgenstein provides in PI, §23, it seems wrong to describe anything so large and complex as a whole religion as a ‘language-​game’ –​“giving orders” or “describing an object” are much smaller and simpler tasks, and “praying” is a language-​game firmly within religion. Rather, I take a language-​game to be a pattern of language use 2 Even I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’s nonsense game ‘Mornington Crescent’ actually has rules –​it is possible to try and play it and do it wrong –​although the rules which govern correct play aren’t the rules which are named as ‘rules’ during play.

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in which a set of implicit rules are established by the community and can be used to share information or undertake an action through language. When we look at further and more complex examples of language-​games –​ ‘prayer’ is included in Wittgenstein’s own list of examples and is of particular interest in the context of interreligious communication –​we can see the aforementioned features of language-​games at work. What are the implications of describing prayer as a language-​game? One is that we might be tempted to focus on spoken prayer at the expense of other forms of prayer, such as silent or contemplative prayer, although I do not take this to be an intended or useful implication. Another, more positive implication, is that we see whether or not a particular act (possibly, but not automatically, a speech act) counts as praying by looking at whether it follows the rules agreed by the community for that action. If prayer is a language-​game, it is not truly private –​language-​games cannot be –​and it is made into prayer by the role that it plays in the community within whose rules it takes place. For spoken prayer this is easy to see; even if the words are recited under the breath, they are no more inherently private that a diary which I write in English and never happen to show anyone: i.e., not actually private within Wittgenstein’s use of that term in the Philosophical Investigations. For forms of prayer not involving words, I would argue (although the point probably deserves more investigation than is possible within this chapter) that there are social clues which would enable members of a religious community to know whether or not someone is praying; some may be obvious, such as posture, and others are more subtle and may include timing, location, and other contextual factors. As D.Z. Phillips says, “prayer is not a private matter”, and these clues enable a community to agree about who is praying and who is not, who is praying correctly and who does not ‘know how to go on’ with their practice of prayer. Another place where the importance of community agreement is obvious is the case where a word changes meaning over time or in different contexts: the word ‘gay’ is perhaps the most commonly given example of this at present, but a word like ‘mouse’ or ‘icon’ will do just as well. These examples highlight not only change through time but the importance of context for our use of rules: “I saw a mouse in the kitchen” and “I need a replacement for my rollerball mouse” do not produce confusion about whether a rodent or a digital input device is being discussed, because although the same term is being used in both cases, the other information in the sentence leaves little if any ambiguity. Perhaps a comparable example in religion would be the use of Christian-​origin terms to explain religious concepts in English: several different religious groups may use the term ‘priest’ to designate religious professionals, and depending on the context we usually know which specific

202 Grant role is meant. Here, a religious community have agreed, for the time being or for a specific purpose, to use English terms; English terms for religious concepts are, for historical reasons, heavily influenced by Christianity; and just as speakers of English can use the word ‘mouse’ for more than one object, the term ‘priest’ can be used for more than one role so long as the context clarifies which is indicated in a particular case. Lindbeck is especially interested in the way in which community agreed rules can change through time, because the continuity of doctrine through time even when expressed in new ways is a particular concern of his. In other settings, this may not be such an overarching concern –​although, since the disruption or potential ‘contamination’ of a religious tradition’s continuity is often at issue when the possibility of close interfaith work or detailed interreligious communication is raised, and even more often at issue when multiple religious belonging is discussed, it is important to consider it as an issue here. If religions are like languages in the ways in which they develop and change through time, inventing new expressions and changing their vocabulary and grammar gradually while retaining an identity as a single language through time and across a wide variety of sub-​communities of speakers, this may be an important factor in answering the questions raised about the changes made to religious traditions when they connect with other traditions. Languages which meet often borrow words from one another, so within the analogy it is not a surprise if religions sometimes do the same; however, it is also the case that the languages put their own stamps on the words they borrow (changing pronunciations and using their own grammar, for example, so that the Japanese plural of ‘ninja’ is ‘ninja’ and the English plural is ‘ninjas’ despite the existence of the English singular/​plural ‘sheep’), and there is no reason to expect that religions will not do the same. This is not the same as saying that religions, or languages, are commensurable; rather, the religion as language analogy gives rise to the image of untranslatability between religions or religious contexts, and thus embeds Lindbeck’s concern with incommensurability. Towards the end of this paper I will expand on this issue by considering mindfulness as an example of a religion-​game, and it will become clear that mindfulness practised in a Christian or secular context is significantly differently from mindfulness practised within a Buddhist context. Obviously, there are many ways in which religions are not like languages; however, they have enough in common that the religion-​as-​language analogy produces useful results, especially when the key ideas about language from Wittgenstein, described above, are taken seriously in relation to religion. I will work these through in relation to some examples in the next section, but before I move on, I want to address ways in which the analogy might fail. There

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are points at which all analogies fail:  the most significant of these is when they are pushed too far, when a claim of similarity becomes a claim of identity. For example, this specific analogy fails to capture some of the political implications of divisions between religions –​there are many cases of religious affiliation dividing a society in which everyone speaks the same language. (There are also communities which practice the same religion but are divided by language –​in the UK, Islamic communities are often split into sub-​groups as much by traditional languages as by religious differences –​and these may, although not dealt with fully in this paper, help to mend the analogy in the long run.) In order not to allow these to damage my argument, I will avoid pushing this, or any other analogy, too far. Religions are not languages, and although they have much in common, it would be foolish to lose sight of their very real differences: religion plays a very different role in many people’s emotional lives, for example, and it has a different role in society, too. However, any analogy would have similar flaws –​religion is also both like and unlike a game, an ethnicity, a fandom –​and I aim to demonstrate through my use of examples that the analogy between religion and language is strong enough to produce some interesting results.

Multiple Religious Belonging in Analogical Perspective

In the religion as language analogy, practising multiple religious belonging might be seen as being like speaking multiple languages. This puts a fresh complexion on some of the things which are said about the possibility of practising more than one religion at once:  in religion, there is often a perception that ‘speaking’ more than one will be dangerous or create impurity. In languages, being able to speak even a small amount of a second language is rarely if ever held to be dangerous to the first language. However, what of people who claim to be practising two religions at the same time? Even the very fluently bilingual usually use one language at a time, depending on the context and audience, switching from one grammar and vocabulary to another. Multiple religious belonging can be like this, but the evidence gathered so far suggests that very few people manage to refrain from bringing together ideas from both their religious traditions –​one of Drew’s interview participants describes trying to keep Christianity and Buddhism entirely separate but found it unsustainable, as a result of which he began to work to bring them together, and Drew’s other participants all deliberately used both traditions in some way. This can make multiple religious belonging seem more like mixing language, anywhere from borrowing a new term to capture an idea not expressed in the target language,

204 Grant to importing a new grammatical form which may not work well with the vocabulary of the language in question. This bothers some speakers –​even in English where it has historically been very common indeed –​and in the arena of religion, it can have serious implications. To illustrate this, I turn to some examples. Firstly, an example of religious borrowing which might be claimed as ‘multiple religious belonging’: imagine a Christian who is interested in South Asian religions. Having heard of the practice of chanting ‘Om’ as a mantra, this Christian decides to experiment with it, and finding it spiritually helpful, she includes it in her otherwise entirely Christian morning prayers. The context will and should affect our evaluation of this situation: Has the practice been learnt from someone rooted in a Hindu or Buddhist tradition which uses it? Is this Christian a person with Indian family or connections? How does the Christian involved understand the theological and cosmological claims which might go with this practice? Is this part of a genuine attempt to ‘cross over’ and understand a tradition as a whole, or born of a desire to have something exotic and exciting to do? The last of these questions points towards broader and equally important issues, such as that of how this act of ‘borrowing’ a practice relates to the history of orientalism and how this ‘borrowing’ reflect or re-​enact patterns of colonialism and cultural imperialism. This final issue is obviously relevant in the Indian context and pressing in the Native American situation, as well as many others, where communities are often lacking self-​determination and the resources needed to continue practising and developing their own culture and religion. In seeking to answer it, some Native American groups have issued clear statements –​even declarations of war –​against white Western people who take Native traditions and sacred artefacts out of context, especially where they are used for profit, but also where they are used to add ‘flavour’ to spiritual practices.3 There are analogies for this kind of problem in language, too, usually focussed on the appropriate context of particular words and the speakers who can rightfully use them: consider, for example, non-​Native lgbt people who use the culturally-​ specific term ‘Two-​Spirit’. Because the term ‘Two-​Spirit’ is distinctive to the gender-​nonconformity found in North American First Nations communities, its use by white lgbt people who do not share the relevant social background is misleading and continues damage done to First Nations groups by European

3 Perhaps the most wide-​spread of these borrowings is the use of the dream-​catcher as a decoration, but other examples show more clearly that Native American materials are considered especially ‘spiritual’ –​the use of sage ‘smudge’ or smoke sticks in Neo-​Pagan and New Age rituals would be one such.

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colonisers.4 Some practices which come under the broad term ‘multiple religious belonging’ are morally and socially problematic in these ways; others, perhaps in some ways very similar, are beneficial. A defence of the practice of multiple religious belonging, like the one from Susan Katz Miller quoted earlier, might focus on the benefits for interreligious communication. This point can be put clearly within the religion-​as-​language analogy. Having at least some people in a society who speak more than one language facilitates communication between the two cultures associated with those languages: if some native English speakers learn French, and some native French speakers also learn English, we expect this to improve relationships between the English and the French generally  –​especially in contrast with a situation where there is nobody at all who can translate. In the same way, someone fluent in more than one religion might be better placed to negotiate the differences between the religions than someone deeply familiar with only one of them. Consider an example: a child raised in a joint Christian-​Jewish household, who practises Judaism with her mother and maternal grandparents, and Christianity with her father and paternal grandparents. A division between the two can be maintained in some ways, with perhaps Judaism emphasised on the High Holy Days and Christianity emphasised at Christmas; but what happens when the whole family comes together? A coherent approach to multiple belonging either designates each single occasion as belonging to one religion or the other –​or, possibly, as secular and using no religious practice –​ or incorporates both religions. In language, the incorporation of both tongues can happen often enough to form a new, third language –​technically speaking, a creole –​or it can be a temporary event in which a speaker uses words from more than one language, perhaps because the vocabulary is unfamiliar to the speaker or absent from one of the languages. (A position somewhere between these, where the third language produced is very limited, is also possible and can be called a ‘pidgin’ language.) At a meal with the whole family, it can either be designated one or the other (so Pesach is Jewish even if Christians are present, for example), or it can be both, seeking in some way to maintain both religious traditions. Raising a child in this way may well increase the interfaith understandings of both sides of the family, and the child herself will have access to perspectives on both religions, and hence potentially a penetrating insight into their similarities and differences, which is unavailable to people raised only in one tradition.

4 For some starting points on two-​spirit identities, see Lori Ross, “Two-​Spirit Community,” http://​lgbtqhealth.ca/​community/​two-​spirit.php.

206 Grant

Language-​Games and Religion-​Games

The multiple religious belonging situation can be described in terms of language-​games, and this process will illuminate some potentially confusing situations. In the joint Jewish-​Christian household, saying a blessing or having grace before meals would both be language-​games appropriate to that context. Before I can advance this line of thought further, a comment about language-​ games is necessary. The language-​games which are played within religion, like those in any other context, can be played in different orders or according to different rules at different times: Wittgenstein gives “making up a story” as an example of a language-​game, but the same activity will vary dramatically depending on the context. Telling a bedtime story to a child and writing an ‘anecdote’ for a stand-​up comedy routine are both forms of “making up a story”, and both clearly count as language-​games, but the content it would be appropriate to include is likely to be very different. Even where religions include language-​ games which are related in this way, the religious context within which a language-​game takes place will affect the community who agree on the rules and hence the rules which are appropriately followed. To borrow an example from D.Z. Phillips, prophecy can consist of a variety of language-​games –​commanding, exhorting, foretelling, and so forth –​as well as being regarded as a religious language-​game in its own right. “Prophecy is put to the test by the community”, as Phillips says, and there are limits to, or rules about, what can be accepted as a true prophecy:  not just any speaking, or interpretation of someone’s speaking with tongues, is “admitted as being a message from God”. If we used the ‘bigger’ picture of a language-​game, thinking of the whole religion as a language-​game, this looks like mixing language-​games, playing two at once; but if we return to Wittgenstein’s list of language-​games in PI, §23, which includes ‘telling a joke’ and ‘praying’ as specific items, we can see that the blessing and the grace are presented as two different games. If the family use a Christian grace before meals on some occasions, a Jewish blessing over food on other occasions, and sometimes both, what can be said about them? If the blessing and the grace are two different games, then it is clear that the two games can operate with different sets of rules: the blessing operates within Jewish rules, the grace operates within Christian rules, and the family can be said to be using both sets of rules. If this sounds confusing–​like trying to play chess and draughts at the same time –​remember that the ‘rules’ of language are more flexible than those of a game such as chess, and that switching between languages or modes of language is instinctive once you have got the hang of the situations involved. Bilingual speakers switch between languages, speaking, for example, English to one parent and French to the other; and

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almost everyone can switch between styles of speech, speaking more formally to an employer and more casually to friends. If a religion is like a language, and a language can be understood as a series of language-​games, religion might be broken up into a series of smaller religion-​games which can be learned more or less independently of one another. This does not imply the view that worried Rush Rhees, namely that a single language-​game or religion-​game can be separated from, or taken to be the whole of, the rest of the language or religion. Rhees is right that it would not make sense to regard to language-​game as a whole language, in particular that it would be nonsensical “to talk of translating from one language game into another” –​and it would also make no sense to speak to translating from one religion-​game to another. Rather, the view that a religion can be broken down into a series of smaller religion-​games reflects our experience of coming to learn a language a bit at a time (and never, even as native speakers who have been practising for many years, mastering every single vocabulary item or grammatical pattern). Furthermore, the picture of many religion-​games within a tradition, related to one another in many ways but which can be learned one at a time, gives a powerful way of describing some of the situations which are familiar in the context of interfaith dialogue and multiple religious belonging –​both forms of interreligious communication, the former very explicitly and the latter implicitly in the life of the individual or group who practise it. Some examples will help to illustrate this. I already looked more than once at the Jewish-​Christian family, who use a Christian grace before meals on some occasions, a Jewish blessing over food on other occasions, and sometimes both. ‘Saying grace’ is itself a language-​game, akin to ‘praying’ which appears in Wittgenstein’s original list. However, ‘saying grace’ is also, within the religion-​ as-​language analogy, a religion-​game, a devotional practice with rules within which some moves are acceptable (adding ‘amen’ after someone has recited a traditional grace formula, for example) and others are not (children who start eating before the grace is finished are likely to be disciplined if the household is serious about teaching them how to play the game). Just as bilingual children learn to switch between languages –​using one with each parent, or one at home and one at school –​so the children of the household which is both Jewish and Christian will learn to play both sets of religion-​games. They will, of course, sometimes make mistakes, or try to apply the grammar of one to the vocabulary of the other –​these can be true errors or playfulness, and both are ordinary parts of the learning process (as they are in language). Another example of a religion-​game might be the practice of lighting a candle for someone –​in many parts of the Christian tradition, this is an act of prayer for someone who is ill or of remembrance for someone who has died.

208 Grant It is not just lighting a candle, which can have many significances (invoking the element of fire in a Neo-​Pagan ritual; marking a point in the passage of Advent elsewhere in the Christian tradition; wanting light or starting a science experiment –​this basic action, lighting a candle, has significance given by the context in which it happens). The vocabulary of this action as a religion-​game is given by the options available to shape the context:  the choice of candle (plain tea-​light, votive, or decorated pillar candle?), the location (a particular space in the home or church?), and other accompanying actions (including speech or writing: “Please help Sam get better”, “I miss my grandma”). It might be ‘translated’ into another religion by seeking its closest equivalent, although that equivalent may not be very close: lighting a candle in remembrance of someone is both comparable to, and very different from, saying the Mourner’s Kaddish. A further and more complex example of learning to participate in a religion-​ game is a staple of the local interfaith circuit –​the visit to a place of worship. ‘Visiting another place of worship’ has itself become a religion-​game within the practice of interfaith work, undertaken with school children and adult interfaith groups. The rules of the game have embedded within them some assumptions about religions –​an obvious one is that religions have places of worship, and that most of them own buildings which can be visited. Including groups who do not conform to this expectation (such as many new religious movements, neo-​Pagan groups, and minority religions –​even well-​known religions such as Buddhism often do not own property in British towns and cities) presents a challenge to many interfaith groups, and the failure to make the first move in the game –​having a dedicated place of worship –​can lead to exclusion from it. Once this first move has been made, and some players gathered, the game can begin in earnest. The ‘visiting places of worship’ game is intended to be both an educational one and an inclusive one, so it is often played repeatedly in several places each ‘representing’ a different religion or denomination, either in the course of a single day (the ‘interfaith pilgrimage’) or as a series of visits over several weeks or months. How can ‘visiting places of worship’ be identified as a specific religion-​ game, distinct from non-​religious but similar practices (such as ‘visiting places of work’) and from the religion-​games which are usually practised in the places of worship which are being visited? There is both an assumption here about the practice of worship, and one about the owning of buildings for communal activity. The mistake here is of a “one-​sided diet” which only contains examples from one form of religion. Although it is possible to think of traditions usually described as religions which do not conform to this model, the use of the term ‘religion’ or ‘faith’ in much interfaith work does contain these assumptions; it

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is part of what it is to be a religion who can participate in this kind of interfaith activity. To distinguish it from other religion-​games, there is the particular situation of the visitor. At each place, the visitors are expected to follow some, but often not all, of the rules for ordinary worshippers: to remove their shoes but not to perform wudu before sitting quietly at the back of the prayer hall, for example. This marks out ‘visiting places of worship’ as a religion-​game, or even an interfaith-​game, distinct from the standard religion-​games which the place of worship normally houses. Islamic prayer is a religion-​game, about which one learns some things by visiting a mosque within the rules of the ‘visiting places of worship’ game  –​but one does not learn from a visit the things one would need to know in order to participate fully, even if visiting can be the first step in that learning process. The ‘visiting places of worship’ game gives the players some knowledge about the places of worship and the religious practices which are undertaken in those places, and about the visiting game itself, but this knowing-​about should be understood as distinct from the kind of knowing-​how which would enable one to actually participate in those practices. These considerations can be further illustrated in one final example of a religion-​game. At the moment, mindfulness is increasingly popular as a psychological technique, one which is being put forward as the answer to problems in classroom discipline, cases of depression and anxiety, and workplace productivity. There are various language-​games played around mindfulness (there are clear rules becoming established within English about describing the process of trying to become more mindful, for example, and other rules about how to sell training courses to people). Mindfulness itself does not look like a typical example of a language-​game, although some meditation practices would be language-​games especially under a broad conception of what counts as language, but it might be regarded as a religion-​game. At first glance, this is odd, because mindfulness is often described as something private: practised by the individual alone, within, as the name implies, their own mind. However, if Wittgenstein’s suggestions about the impossibility of private language stand, then I argue that by analogy, private religious practices are impossible. Mindfulness is learned, and learned specifically through the medium of language from other people. Some aspects of it can also be learned by imitation, but because simply sitting still or walking slowly does not alone constitute mindfulness, there is a need for a linguistic element to carry the more complex aspects of the practice. This means that when the teaching is translated from one natural language, and its surrounding culture, to another, changes in the practice itself take place.

210 Grant What about mindfulness makes it a religion-​game, rather than a language-​ game broadly understood or simply a method or practice? Despite the attempts of many to popularise mindfulness completely disconnected from the traditions from which it arises, it cannot be meaningfully undertaken without accepting some rules from the religion which inspired it. As such, it is descended from, and I argue remains, a religion-​game. A few forms are currently being taught based on Christian or Jewish contemplative prayer, usually with a relatively explicit religious connection, but most are drawing on resources from various forms of Buddhism, mostly modern although usually citing ancient roots, and it is on these I focus here. I have already mentioned that mindfulness is sometimes understood as an endeavour to regain a prelinguistic psychological state. Others describe the aim as clearing or emptying the mind. In both cases, the purpose of mindfulness practice –​engaging in the religion-​game –​hinges on accepting a core ‘rule’: the idea that achieving the state described is possible and desirable, for any length of time and without self-​delusion (such as ignoring some thoughts). Whether it is actually possible or not is not the question here; in order to find a reason to engage in mindfulness, to attempt to play the game repeatedly, is to accept that some form of the aim can be achieved –​that the ‘win condition’ is in principle reachable. It does not have to be achievable by the individual in practice for a player to accept this as a rule –​I cannot score baskets but I can accept that this is the scoring condition in basketball. The rule is a fact about the game, but also, in this case, about the nature of reality and specifically human psychology. Someone from a Christian background who learns mindfulness from a Buddhist group and thus becomes more or less aware of the claims it makes about the ways in which the world works is an example of the lower end of a ‘spectrum’ of multiple religious belonging. Goosen, for example, would include this person as having some level of multiple religious belonging. Such a person would fit neatly into many interfaith settings –​she could have begun her exploration with a game of ‘visiting the Buddhist meditation class’ and progressed to playing the religion-​game of mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness makes sense as a religion-​game in the context of a Buddhist practice where its central rules are supported by other claims and practices; disconnected from this context, as when it is used in corporate settings as an attempt to suppress stress or anxiety, it is not supported by the surrounding rules. The emphasis on taking time for meditation is likely to be in direct conflict with other elements of corporate culture such as expectations about long working hours, for example, while claims about generating ‘positive energy’ by mindfulness are likely to seem, from the Buddhist perspective in which it originated, nonsensical, or be

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reinterpreted in very different ways. In this new context, any sense the practice of mindfulness makes is based on its usefulness as a productivity increaser and not on its religious or spiritual value. That being so, it seems that the movement of mindfulness into some parts of mainstream Western culture –​not exclusively, but mainly, a Christian-​derived or post-​Christian society –​does not constitute a form of multiple religious belonging, and may not even count as a meaningful form of interreligious learning. Although the boundaries between adaptation and appropriation are rarely sharply defined, the take up of mindfulness among non-​Buddhists in Western corporate culture could be regarded as a form of appropriation because of the distortion produced when the practice is removed from the community context in which it originated: corporate mindfulness training does not teach anyone accurately about Buddhism. For interreligious encounter to be productive, the Wittgensteinian lens shows, it must be undertaken through a true learning of another religion-​as-​language and participation in the religion-​games which constitute that tradition.

Conclusion

People who practise multiple religious belonging –​whether they have two religions from childhood or become fluent in more than one religion as adults –​ have important lessons for those interested in the study of religions and especially the issue of interreligious dialogue. It is possible to be participating in, and in Lindbeck’s terms, speaking, more than one religion at once: this opens the possibility for a greater level of mutual understanding than is often held possible when religious identity is considered to be singular, one religion for one person at one time. A step beyond the insights given by conversion, multiple religious belonging is a form of practice which, although hidden in some ways, both clearly exists and deserves scholarly attention. Multiple religious belonging, then, is itself a form of interreligious communication and learning, both important elements in human encounter. We can also understand other forms of interreligious communication better having reflected upon multiple religious belonging. We can understand this firstly by contrast –​interreligious communication short of multiple religious belonging needs to be treated differently and attention given to the boundaries at which involvement in two religious traditions becomes multiple religious belonging. Secondly, as I have done in this chapter, we can understand this by using the tools which multiple religious belonging requires of us to understand important further aspects of interreligious communication. Primary among these is the concept of a religion-​game, descended from the idea of a language-​game

212 Grant by way of the religion-​as-​language analogy. Multiple religious belonging demands that one person play religion-​games from more than one religious tradition; interreligious communication may form religion-​games of its own (such as the practice of ‘visiting places of worship’) or take the form of learning something about the religion-​games of other traditions. Seeing these as religion-​games will prevent us from falling into certain common traps: feeling that we know what there is to know about a religion once we have understood the propositional belief claims which it makes, for example, or on the other hand feeling that we know what it is like to be a Muslim hijabi woman because we once tried on a headscarf. A Wittgensteinian reading of multiple religious belonging, then, is a useful tool to have to hand when attempting interreligious communication of many kinds.

Bibliography

Drew, Rose. Buddhist and Christian? An Exploration of Dial Belonging. Oxford: Routledge, 2011. Knitter, Paul F. Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian. Oneworld, 2009. Kripke, Saul A. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1982. Krupka, Zoë. “How Corporates Co-​Opted the Art of Mindfulness to Make Us Bear the Unbearable.” https://​theconversation.com/​how-​corporates-​co-​opted-​the-​art-​of-​ mindfulness-​to-​make-​us-​bear-​the-​unbearable-​47768. Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. London: spck, 1984. Miller, Susan Katz. Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family. Beacon Press, 2013. Nhat Hanh, Thich. Living Buddha, Living Christ. London: Rider Books, 1995. Phillips, D.Z. The Concept of Prayer. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. Rhees, Rush. “Wittgenstein’s Builders.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 60 (1960): 171–​86. Ross, Lori. “Two-​Spirit Community.” http://​lgbtqhealth.ca/​community/​two-​spirit.php. Tanner, Kathryn. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997. Van Bragt, Jan. “Multiple Religious Belonging of the Japanese People.” In Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity, edited by Catherine Cornille. 7–​19. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002.

­c hapter 11

Names, Persons and Ritual Practices: Wittgenstein and the Way of Tea Paul Cortois In this contribution, I have three aims. First, I want to sketch the attitude of a religious person toward his own religion in terms that, among others, Wittgenstein would have endorsed. In order to achieve this, I point to certain symbolic aspects of proper names, images, persons, and ritual/​religious practices that are all connected with an attitude of reverence. Second, I want to show that this view may have some consequences for questions about interreligious encounter. However, I also argue that a fatal consequence this view is supposed to have (which constitutes the main objection to this way of viewing things), does not in fact follow. It only follows, and only endangers interreligious encounter and exchange, when making either a specific ‘particularist’ or, on the contrary, a specific ‘universalist’ assumption that are equally open to serious criticism. Third, I  argue that another understanding of Wittgensteinian particularism may be seen as a precondition for, not a threat to, interreligious encounter. This is subsequently illustrated by a concrete case.

An Analogy between Names and Magical Symbols

“Why should it not be possible that a man’s name be sacred to him?” This is a well-​known quote from Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough.1 It is more than an occasional negative response expressing Wittgenstein’s irritation in view of some specific utterance of Frazer. Here, as elsewhere, one would surely think of Frazer’s way of downplaying the beliefs of primitive folks:  roughly, presenting those beliefs as being held with a literalist sérieux while at the same time being childish in character. The remark clearly calls into question the whole intellectualist scheme of Frazer’s way of reading anthropological data. The sentence appears quickly after other salient pronouncements on pictures and names: “Kissing the picture of a loved one. This is obviously 1 rfgb, 5.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004408050_​0 12

214 Cortois not based on a belief that it will have a definite effect on the object which the picture represents (…) One could also kiss the name of the loved one, and here the representation by the name would be clear.”2 What Wittgenstein wants us to take seriously is the idea that we misunderstand ‘primitive’ folks or religiously minded people and cultures when we see their attitude towards a name or a picture as involving a literal belief about the world. Specifically, we do not take the name or the picture in question as an ingredient of a magical belief in real consequences of the use or occurrence of the name or picture. We need not attribute to these people a magical belief in the ability to influence the real workings of nature through the name or the picture. Does this mean that magic is rejected, in Wittgenstein’s view of religion, as an element even in ‘primitive’ religion? It surely means that we should refrain from attributing to magic the belief in ‘real magic’, or more specifically the belief that names and pictures embody real, i.e. causal (the way we understand that concept), magical powers. But there seems to be a different sense of magic that could be envisaged here. “Kissing (…) the name of the loved one, and here the representation by the name would be clear”. Why would one kiss a picture? Perhaps one would tear apart a picture of a hated individual, but why would one be tempted to do such a thing as kissing a name? And what does it even mean to do such a thing? What is it that is ‘clear’ about these things? That it is more than a gratuitous act is about the only thing that seems to be clear. Furthermore, when Wittgenstein talks about a representation here, the notion seems open to misunderstanding. He could mean: the name is a representation in the same way an ordinary word or image is a conventional representation of the thing represented. But he seems to mean more than that. One can say it is a symbol, but then one should add: a symbol in a stronger sense than in our view of symbols being conventional means of denoting or describing some object out there. There would be little point in kissing a conventional sign. But in what sense of a symbol then? It seems relevant here that ‘representation’ in “representation by the name” may not only be contrasted with ‘conventional sign’ but also with ‘abbreviated description’, as in a descriptivist theory of reference and denotation.3 2 rfgb, 4. 3 Roughly, in the ‘classical’ or Fregean view, reference (Bedeutung) is mediated and determined by sense (Sinn). That is to say, the references of proper names (‘Obama’) and kind terms (‘tiger’) are determined and fixed by their senses, which are specified by uniquely determining descriptions (‘the former president of the US’, ‘the largest cat species’). So, the name is in fact an abbreviated description (according to Bertrand Russell’s variant of the view). There have been several extensions and adaptations of this view, for example, in Searle and, according to Kripke, Wittgenstein. Kripke famously challenged the classical view in his lecture series,

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That a linguistic expression is a representation of a thing or state of affairs may generally suggest that it is a description of the latter –​that it picks out the referent by means of such a description. Wittgenstein has been said (by Kripke) to hold a descriptivist view of sorts in his theory of proper names (and names in general)4; a view that Kripke has purportedly overthrown with his ‘direct’ or ‘causal’ view of reference. But there may be other aspects to Wittgenstein’s view that fit in much better with Kripke’s own view than with the classical Fregean one. Let us take a closer look at this possibility. “Representation” (by the name) in the sense of kissing the name or the image surely is not meant as a description picking out the referent and determining the name’s meaning by (i) giving such a [family of] description[s]‌and then (ii) showing that there is some object (or set of objects) out there, satisfying the description. The notion of ‘representation’ is meant here as a symbol in a special sense by virtue of the symbol being linked, again in a stronger sense than via a convention, to the object it represents. This stronger sense, I suggest, is the sense of being its representative, its delegate; that is, its symbolic substitute. Being a symbol in this stronger sense implies that somehow there is a kind of physical or quasi-​physical link between the name and the named (likewise, between the picture and the named) –​at least in the sense that the namer sees a physical or quasi-​physical link between the name and the named. This is the way we could talk about a ‘magical’ view of names or other symbols, and attribute a magical view of such a kind to Wittgenstein. It is not, to repeat, a magical belief in the real efficacy of names (which might or might not be present in the mind of the native believer). It is rather the view that there is, in certain cases, in all the arbitrariness of the connection between a name and its referent, something which is not merely arbitrary, despite the fact that we all understand that meanings have a conventional relation to the signified that is logically arbitrary. This is surely what Wittgenstein had in mind when Naming and Necessity (1970). In his view, reference is not determined by sense, but fixed directly or causally in an act of baptism, which is then confirmed and transferred through a causal chain of language users. Names, then, would be ‘rigid designators’, not descriptions of some sort. Kripke (and Hilary Putnam, in his own way) managed to solve a number of puzzles left open by the classical view, but it is still an open question to what extent the ‘direct’ or ‘causal’ view of reference manages to solve all puzzles accounted for by the classical one (for example, with respect to the meaning of terms for fictional entities). (‘Mixed’ views have been developed in the meantime.) 4 Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Blackwell: Oxford, revised ed. 1980, 2002), 31, 33, 66. The Wittgensteinian variety of the classical theory would concern the conception of names in terms of families of descriptions, according to the family resemblance view.

216 Cortois he made an elliptic remark in the same connection: “Magic always rests on the idea of symbolism”.5 What kind of notion of symbol is being expressed here? To begin with, let us notice that it is not unimportant here that the referents (the object) in the examples adduced are persons –​perhaps they might also be places, as might be expected with proper names of individuals? I mean, what else could they be6? Well, they are not kinds –​the referents of kind terms –​ since they are singular rather than general in nature. Here, one might already think of a deeper affinity between Wittgenstein’s and Kripke’s view. Not because of the kind terms, of course –​Kripke’s view that the latter also designate essences is one of the things that differentiates their respective views –​but because of the special role that proper names and individuals play in Kripke’s argument, wittingly or unwittingly. Rigid designators are especially convincingly explained with examples of individuals. The thought experiment of twin earths, with water and twater, is an intuitive story, to be sure, but it leaves more room for doubt about essences than with the question whether and under what conditions Obama is Obama in all accessible, possible worlds. This is, I surmise, tantamount to saying that the link between a proper name and the individual it names is somehow stronger than between ‘water’ and water. It is easier, at least for me (and for most philosophers throughout the history of philosophy of language) to believe that there are such things as individual essences than to believe in general essences. Let us descend deeper into the analogy: There is, indeed, more to it, since it is not just persons that we are talking about in Wittgenstein’s case, but specifically persons we know well, or at least persons to whom we are somehow attached (and perhaps then also places to which we are attached). What could it mean to say that there is a more than arbitrary link between the thing named and its symbolic substitute? It could mean that, somehow, the name is seen as a part of the object named (and the image as a part of the object imaged). ‘Part’ may not be the proper term: the substitute is itself an object of attachment that brings one in touch with the original object in its absence. There is a kind of causal connection here, but not in the sense of the symbol producing new and direct causal effects (except perhaps in one’s mind or brain). The causal link is akin to that of a photograph, which is authentic only if the person represented was really present, and not merely someone who resembles him or her very closely. This is what makes us think of a physical link, and of being a physical part.

5 rfgb, 4. 6 In §5 we will see that there are other possibilities indeed.

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Here, we are going beyond Kripke, while at the same time remaining in his territory by extending it. Think of the experiment of persuading someone to pick out the eyes of a photograph of a loved one. Why do we feel we cannot do that? Why the taboo? Are we unwitting voodooists, secretly believing in a causal connection which would have real effects and so cause real damage? Analogously, we would not scratch out the name of a loved one from our diary if there were no special grounds for doing so (such as protecting her from persecutors, or having decided to hate her). That means that the name is just as an image, or even a lock of hair or a finger nail: it is taboo and sanctified, because it is a pars pro toto –​either physically or as a symbolic representative. It is a relic! Or, at least, these names work the way relics do; they relate to their object the way relics relate to what they are part of (represent, substitute). This is, in a nutshell, the understanding which the Leuven philosopher, Arnold Burms, developed and linked with Kripke.7 What about this way of relating Wittgenstein to Kripke? Such an anthropological interpretation or extension of his view was surely not intended by Kripke. What is clear is that Kripke sees naming as establishing direct reference by means of an act of ‘baptism’, which inaugurates it, and is to be continued through a causal chain of language users. This reminds one of John Austin’s performatives as ritual acts having to be performed by the right person in the right circumstances:  is it causal? Is it somehow symbolically creative of a fact? It surely creates an institutional fact. The idea that reference is a matter of a causal chain was also anticipated by Peter Geach’s sketch of an understanding of reference in his essay, “The Perils of Pauline”.8 Geach spoke about the judgdement as to whether particular naming practices manage to refer to something by a name as a “sacramental form” performed in something like “apostolic succession”, going back to an initial baptism in the presence of the object. That is, I manage to validly refer to the girl I dreamt of last night by the name ‘Pauline’ –​I manage to dream of Pauline –​only if there is or has been a girl that had been baptized Pauline and called such by the communities she belonged to, the same way as a bishop is ordained validly “if there is in fact a chain of consecrations going back to the Apostles”.9 In any case, it is not definite descriptions that settle the matter through identity or similarity of mental content. Dreaming of a girl who looks like Pauline and shares her 7 Arnold Burms, “Proper Names and Magical Symbols”, Leuvense Bijdragen/​Louvain Studies 67:3 (1978): 309–​317. See also Roland Breeur and Arnold Burms, “Persons and Relics”, Ratio 21:2 (2008): 134–​146. 8 Peter Geach, “The Perils of Pauline”, The Review of Metaphysics 23 (1969): 287–​300. 9 Ibid., p. 288.

218 Cortois other properties will not do. What does determine the validity of naming is social practice including an ingredient that goes beyond simple convention: the right person in the right place, and with a crucial role for something that really appears as ‘external’ with respect to descriptive or mental content, just as in the authenticity we ascribe to a relic. Not similarity on the basis of internal or other descriptive properties being shared, but the sameness of origin (or any other means of ascertaining identity of the individual) determine whether this is really the name of x, the image of x, the relic of x. And that is what gives the ‘representative’ its valid or ‘consecrated’ character.

Names and Persons, Persons and Souls

One of the best-​known Wittgenstein quotes in the philosophy of psychology concerns having an attitude towards a person as a soul: “My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul” (ppf, §22). Connecting this with questions of personal identity, one could come to the view that what makes me see that person as that person has to do with seeing him or her as a soul. Or rather: not just as a soul, but as that soul. Seen in that light, beyond the issue of viewing persons in general as something that does not coincide with machines or brains, such a remark could also be connected with individuality. Individuality could be phrased in terms, again, of individual essence. ‘Essence’ is not prominent in Wittgenstein’s vocabulary, to say the least, but here I take it as shorthand for something that remains the same throughout the history of an individual. That might be, in the case of an individual, some condition involving bodily continuity. This would bring us back to substantive metaphysics, in some sense, however. To remain closer to Wittgenstein, we might think of anything that indicates identity of an individual –​as in ‘Obama is Obama’ because ‘Obama’ is the name given to the individual with such-​and-​ such parents: the idea of essentiality of origin. This would refer us back to the theory of names. Of course, it would be preposterous to look for the criterion of identity of an individual as a person in the proper name: without at least something like bodily continuity, we could not take the mere practice of naming someone by the same name as sufficient for ascribing identity (unless we are willing to slide into extreme forms of social constructivism). Nevertheless, isn’t it plausible to say that we use, in social practice, the proper name as a partially constitutive condition (or a mark, at least) for ascribing personal identity? If that is the case, it would mean that we don’t merely use proper names to reflect ascriptions of personal identity, but that, conversely, we also ascribe identity

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to someone on the basis of the continuous practice of naming him or her –​by that name. So, in that case, we connect views on personal identity with views on proper names. In that case, how would the connection turn out in view of the Kripke-​Burms-​Geach reinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks sketched out above? Short-​circuiting the link: naming is, in origin, a (symbolically) magical practice, and it still turns out to have its magic ‘powers’ in our ordinary use, especially if we focus on persons and places named that have a special significance for us. That something of this way of viewing symbolic magic is still present, not just in our naming practice, but in our naming practice as (partly) constituting the identity of persons that are significant for us, is powerfully illustrated in a passage written by Roger Scruton: When John loves Mary, he loves her for the particular person that she is  –​irreplaceable. Her being Mary conditions the intentionality of his feelings, and provides him with reasons for all that he does for her. It is because she is Mary that he sends her flowers, courts her, desires her and marries her. (…) The [characterizations] under which Mary is perceived by John make essential reference to her name, and to the individuality that is captured in it.10 That is to say, contrary (again) to what we as spontaneous descriptivists would tend to say, what makes Mary so special for John is not, or not primarily, explained in terms of her perceived properties, impressive as these might be. That constitutive factor is only captured by the individuality that goes beyond her qualities (which might always be compared to those of other women); and this individuality, in turn, is only captured in her name. To the reason why it cannot be captured otherwise I will turn in a moment. If that is plausible, it follows that there is an irreducible aspect in the concept of a person, that escapes rational justification in terms of psychological or even moral characteristics (such as courage, sense of responsibility, etc.). The decisive step, for me, is the following one: that aspect that escapes rational justification has to do with reverence. Why, however, reverence, and not just respect? And how could such an attitude be ‘founded’? To answer the first question: the reason has to do with the rationally unfounded exclusiveness of the relation to one person. Think of John loving Mary

10

Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (London: Pimlico, 1994), 246–​250.

220 Cortois in the scenario that Mary has an identical twin sister, who presumably possesses the same properties as her, phenomenal as well as internal.11 Wouldn’t it be perverse to consider that, if Mary came to die or disappear, John might be equally pleased to go on living with Mary’s sister? This is an indication of the fact that what fascinates us in a person is intrinsically linked to a uniqueness supposed to inhere in her while escaping all attempts at description. Not just because it is too mysterious to be captured in language, but because it does not consist in the sum or even the synthesis of her properties, even if we could describe them. This fascination for someone merely because she is what she is12 is what I call reverence. Its ‘object’, again, has something of the fetishistic character of a relic. There is a balance here, to be sure, between this fetishistic aspect in exclusive relations and the role of properties. After all, if Mary’s properties change too drastically over time, John might become unable to go on loving her the way that he did. That doesn’t mean that she has therefore lost the value that inspired John’s reverence, manifested perhaps in the need to take care of her or keep their shared history intact. The need to do so might also often reduce to a matter of respect, but even here there is more to it: reverence is rooted in the historical continuity and dignity of Mary’s ‘body-​and-​ soul’, once invested with uniqueness; respect would be founded, on the one hand, on the remaining moral and psychological properties and, on the other hand, on the dignity Mary shares with other human beings. The latter attitude is prominent in the sphere of social relations at large (respecting people as such, respecting rights as inviolable). But, in the sphere of affective relations with single persons, mere respect appears like a watered down remnant of the more primitive need to revere.13 The second question, on the ‘foundation’ of reverence, becomes even more pressing when we see that there is no rational justification. One might add, in a Wittgensteinian mood: it would escape even a metaphysical foundation in terms of uniqueness of the individual, since the uniqueness, in order to be ascribed, requires the calling of the person (and I  mean also in the vocative mood) by her name. I  ‘remind’ you of your being Mary, I  ‘restore’ and

11 12 13

The fact that this is materially impossible only means that we are, of course, setting up a thought experiment, idealizing real possibilities. Think here of Montaigne’s phrase on Etienne de la Boétie: “Et si l’on me demandait pourquoi je chérissais mon ami, je ne pouvais que répondre: «parce que c’est lui, parce que c’est moi».” Which is not to say that we can leave out respect, also in the case of our loved ones. Without this background of respect, reverence might turn into idolatry or into relations of authority.

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confirm your being Mary, by calling you ‘Mary’. Reverence is not ‘founded’ on the uniqueness of an entity as a metaphysical feature, let  alone on the object’s internal properties. Rather than attempting to neutralize the response-​ dependent character of Mary’s uniqueness for John through a metaphysical justification, what makes Mary special for John is better understood, the other way around, in terms of reverence. At least in the case of persons who are of decisive importance for us, these ways of speaking express the same thought as what is expressed in saying that we revere them.

Religion as Source and Object of Reverence

The concept of reverence would qualify as a typically religious attitude. We discovered that this concept is also rooted and exemplified in social and linguistic practices of naming persons or places, caring for images, and even considering someone as one and the same person throughout the thorough changes of her internal properties. Starting from everyday practices, we showed that they have this ‘religious’ aspect. If we now take it the other way around, asking ourselves what kind of attitudes are evoked by religious traditions as such, we come to a similar point. What makes our attitudes towards certain practices or traditions religious, and what makes these practices themselves religious, is, among other things, the fact that they evoke reverence. This is not intended as a definition of a religious practice, of course; that would make all of the said attitudes in the everyday case strictly religious. I just mean that one basic attitude towards religious objects and practices, including whole traditions, is reverence, as might be expected from the above example of relics. In this sense, the former point about persons throws light on the issue of religions and vice versa: religious attitudes in general and attitudes specifically towards a religious tradition as such are comparable to the kind of attitudes we have towards persons as ‘souls’. Thus, religious attitudes also have a core aspect that does not have to do with justification, justified belief, propositional content, etc., but with reverence. For example, the ritual/​magical-​symbolic role of names in religion is (at least) as crucial as with persons in ordinary life: ‘Christ’, ‘Mary’, ‘Buddha’, ‘Francis’, ‘Mohamed’, ‘Allah’, ‘Jahweh’, ‘Abraham’ and so on. But also, for some people, even the force of ‘holy’ places and their names, such as ‘Rome’, ‘Lourdes’, ‘Mecca’ …; as well as of ‘Roman Catholic’, ‘Muslim’, and so on  –​the very sound of the words as names awakens a fitting attitude of ­reverence. Now, the next question imposes itself: what, if anything, is the privileged object of this reverence, when restricting our focus to religion(s)? It is to be

222 Cortois expected that we mean our own religious tradition and its ingredients in the first place: those objects and practices we are familiar with; that, after all, is what makes –​has always made –​religion a tradition that people feel they can belong to. Just as with Mary’s history being mingled with John’s own history, we are connected with the religious history: our own life, also when seen from that angle, is a link of a definite chain of meaning bestowing elements. And that, in consequence, is what gives religious traditions their traditionalist or, perhaps better, ‘traditionist’ outlook.14 In any case, it might look as if we have been developing a particular argument for traditionalism and religious particularism here. And an obvious consequence might turn out to be that other religions and interreligious encounters, not being objects of this attitude, cannot have a very substantive meaning when seen from this point of view. Is this so?

Consequences for some Current Views: Particularity and Contingency

Reverence is an attitude which implies some form of exclusiveness. The uniqueness of the revered person implies a certain kind of exclusiveness of our relation with her/​him. That exclusiveness may be relative in at least a double sense: every far-​reaching relationship one entertains may, in its own way, be unique and exclusive in some respect (I may revere my piano master in a very special way); and second, exclusiveness does not always mean you have an absolutely privileged relationship, e.g. with your partner in life on all scores: there may easily be topics for conversation you can better share with some other person. But privileges, taboos and restrictions are legion. At least within the limits of a certain view of life that tries to balance individual flourishing with embeddedness in circles and levels of sociality, it is senseless to think you can handle every personal relationship according to a uniform behavioral code and degrees of freedom and intimacy. That would amount either to extreme individualism (‘I am the master and manager of all my relationships’) or extreme cultural collectivism (‘there are no just claims for a privileged relationship’). Analogously, if it is the case that religious practices and traditions are objects of reverence (besides being objects of discourse, reasoning, negotiation, fear, 14

In the sense that it is only claimed that traditions are the frameworks within which meanings live and die. The kind of authority and interpretation we give to the past of that tradition is an issue that is just being raised (not solved) by our reverently belonging to that tradition.

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trust, respect, and, perhaps sometimes, disrespect or dissent, etc.) as much as persons are, then it is to be expected that a certain exclusivity is implied here as well. Reverence is due and feels ‘natural’ in an obvious sense with respect to one’s own religious tradition –​if one feels that one belongs to such a tradition. Can one belong to two (or more) at the same time, in the same sense? Seen from this perspective, it is as hazardous to claim to be in an equally exclusive relation to two traditions at the same time (because they lay a claim for a privileged commitment on the individual), as it is with partners in life. Things tend to become significantly more complicated, to say the least. So, we have come in a difficult position with respect to the topic of interreligious encounter here, or so it seems. How to talk of interreligious communication in any farther-​reaching sense, if the point of departure of the preliminary analysis is the following reasoning: as far as we are participants or inhabitants of a religious tradition, we cannot but have an exclusive relation of reverence and belonging to that tradition, just because it is our own? Is being one’s own a ground for being bound to draw such a consequence? Before answering this question, we have to try to dig a little deeper into the type of meaning construct called ‘religious meaning’, and into the nature of the exclusiveness claim. This part of the story is about particularity and contingency. Reverence is an attitude that only makes sense with respect to particular objects (‘particularity’ of an object implying that it belongs to a set of objects interrelated in the same network of traditional practices), sometimes even singular objects (the singular object standing on its own, in its ‘fetishistic’ uniqueness, imposing itself, for example, in a one-​time encounter). That means that reverence, if it is ineliminable from religious attitudes, excludes an attachment of that kind to practices or objects from other traditions. That is to say, we might ‘universalize’ other –​for example, cognitive, moral, or alternate emotive –​attitudes towards religions, looking at what they have in common, but not our very aspect of reverence. The role and importance of the attitude of reverence (and thus of one crucial aspect of religion) can only be understood if one understands at the same time that this attitude is targeted at particular objects (religious names, figures, images, …) that derive their meaningfulness from their belonging to particular contexts. These objects are marked with the contingency that is typical of historical narratives and other origins (in ritual for instance). This way, the respective attitude and correlative meaning relation are also branded with ineradicable contingency. It is constitutive of the very type of meaning that characterizes religious language and practice. Burms calls the meaning pattern characterized by such precariousness a context of ‘strongly embodied

224 Cortois meanings’15 –​which is to say that the bond between the content expressed and the way of materially embodying it is so tight that the meaning to be transmitted can only fade away such that it also threatens the bond; for example, when an unfitting paraphrase of a religious metaphor is offered as an explanation of a story. Paraphrases are typically invoked to ‘universalized’ meaning by translating it to a general level where it is accessible for anyone devoid of the particular context of origin. As in a poem, however, this attempt is the best way to annihilate the meaning in its evocative force. In short: the role and importance of particular and contingent objects (names, relics, images …) and attitudes condition religious meanings. Their role cannot be understood if their particularity and radical contingency are seen as a threat to religion’s meaningfulness, rather than as a condition for it. But then, what about our attitudes to other, ‘foreign’ religious traditions and practices? Can we at best approach them with respect, from a distance? The first standard answer that lies at hand is that there really is no such thing as a religious tradition in isolation from an indefinite range of other traditions, influences, mixtures: what would be its criteria of identity? This is not a very effective answer to our problem, however. First, because it applies to all traditions, even those lacking any criteria of identity, we cannot forgo the notion of a tradition as such. Second, we do not require the notion of the purity of origin of a tradition to see it as particularized. Whatever the well-​known mixtures of traditions in history, it always comes down to particularizing these mixed meanings so that they can become or re-​become invested as our ‘own’, if we want to really relate to them from within. And taking an internal point of view indeed seems to be decisive for it to qualify as a religious attitude. There is, and has long been, a second standard answer to this condition of possibility story, countering its role as a condition of impossibility for interreligious meaning. This is the universalistic story, which claims that there are, in fact, universal meanings behind all these different religious cultures, and that the fact that these are ultimately shared opens the possibility of looking through the differences  –​which are understood to be, in principle, superficial –​to the shared core meanings behind appearances (of rituals, of texts, stories, cultural sensitivities and taboos).There is a common message underlying 15

For example, in Arnold Burms, “The Sound of Words:  a Neglected Perspective in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language”, in Tradition and Renewal:  The Centennial of Louvain’s Institute of Philosophy,Vol. 1, ed. David A.  Boileau and John A.  Dick (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 167–​180. In fact, this characterization of meaning contexts is also the larger framework that helps to explain what has been said previously in connection with symbols such as names and relics.

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all religions. Unfortunately, such universalism has a very long history and looks quite problematic today. I will only point to the fact that it would destroy the idea of strongly embodied meanings, which leaves little room for universalism in religious meaning. Universally shared core meanings would bring religion too close to philosophy, while it is (also in a Wittgensteinian vein) closer to art and aesthetics. Attempts to explain particular meaning effects by universal concepts, hidden or not, reduce the decisive condition of strong embodiment to surface phenomena. There can be no such thing as a duality between surface and core here. It would contradict the strong bond between expression and the expressed, which, if I am right, is part of the essence of religious and every thoroughly symbolic meaning. So, we find ourselves in a dilemma. Either we have religious particularity connected with attitudes such as reverence, and hence we have no interreligious communication worthy of that name; or else we do have interreligious communication, but we lose the constitutive feature of religious meaning: its character of strong embodiment. Is there a way out of this dilemma?

Religious Hospitality: the Way (In and Out) of Tea

Rather than developing an abstract argument, I would like to offer a historic case study, in the hope that this will show what is at stake. Studying real contacts often provides more insight, at least when properly framed, than mere academic speculations and debates. So, I will describe in some depth, in this last section, not so much an instance of verbal interreligious communication, but a kind of inter-​ritual encounter –​which embodies, of course, communication on a deep, substantial level (arguably more so than an instance of theological, intellectual exchange between ideas of the religions concerned). In 2007, the Benedictine monk Pierre-​François de Béthune published an important book, L’Hospitalité sacrée entre les religions.16 It is about hospitality as a central category for thematizing the relations between religious traditions. De facto, de Béthune is focusing on Christianity and Buddhism here (with a stress on Zen Buddhism, which had been popular for several years in Benedictine circles.) De Béthune’s book is not on history, but on possible and real encounters between Zen and Christianity today. It builds on experiences of exchanges taking place in both directions: on Benedictine monks’ stays in Zen

16

Pierre-​François de Béthune, L’Hospitalité sacrée entre les religions (Paris:  Albin Michel, 2007).

226 Cortois monasteries in Japan, and on Japanese Zen monks’ stays in European monasteries. Of course, the theme of hospitality refers not just to these exchanges. What it stands for is the idea that hospitality, if understood in its deepest sense, is a central category in both religions, and perhaps, in de Béthune’s view, in religion as such. Thus, it has to be exercised in exchanges if we want to discover its real content, as well as to find out how far the encounter on the basis of this core value can reach, because religion really is about opening up one’s heart for another, especially where and when it is not obvious that people would wish to break through their own circle of interest. It is about granting asylum, in the deeper sense of the word. In his book, de Béthune introduces his theme by presenting a Zen Buddhist practice which cultivates hospitality as one of its core values, indeed as one of its raisons d’être: the Japanese tea ritual or Chadô (literally: the Way of Tea).17 This is a ritualized, even thoroughly formalized, way of receiving a guest or a few guests by making and serving tea, in order to honour them and to share a precious moment of time just being together, outside of worldly concerns. The practice is well-​documented and well investigated.18 It originated between the 12th to 14th centuries, when monks (Eisai as a founder of the Rinzai sect, and Dôgen in the same role for the Sôtô sect) brought tea and tea practice along with Zen/​Chan from China to Japan, just as Chinese Chan was dying out. Over three centuries, Japanese tea developed in several mainly aristocratic and artistic/​poetic milieux as well as in monasteries, among samurai, and even in merchant circles, until it took its definitive codified form around the end of

17 18

Also called Chanoyu, i.e., literally ‘hot water for tea’. The best-​known book is Okakura Kakuzô, The Book of Tea (New  York:  Duffield & Company, 1906). Among the most thorough book-​length studies in European languages are A.L. Sadler, Cha-​no-​yu:  The Japanese Tea Ceremony (London:  Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1933); Jennifer Anderson, An Introduction to Japanese Tea Ritual (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); Dennis Hirota, ed. Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path (Fremont: Asian Humanities Press, 1995); Sen Sôshitsu, The Japanese Way of Tea: From its Origins in China to Sen Rikyû, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998); Herbert Plutschow, Rediscovering Rikyû and the Beginnings of the Tea Ceremony, (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2003); Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao, eds., Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989). There has been an international academic journal for tea between 1970 and 1999: Chanoyu Quarterly, consisting mainly of English-​language studies and translations of Japanese studies. An attractive smaller book is Horst Hammitzsch, Zen in the Art of the Tea Ceremony (Tisbury: Element Books, 1977; originally in German). There is a significant tea novel by Inoue Yasushi, Honkakubô ibun, translated in French as Le maître de thé (Paris: Stock, 1995), which is also the basis for the 1989 movie, Death of a Tea Master, by Ken Kumai.

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the 16th century. In a moment, I will come back to the latter period, which was decisive in the development of tea practice. In a way, Chadô, or the Way of Tea, is in itself already a prototype of encounter and hospitality, since it embodies the encounter between four religions19 or ways of life that have been known to co-​exist in Japan for centuries: Taoism, Confucianism, Shintô, and Buddhism. This is reflected in the four crucial values or principles of the Way of Tea, as laid down in the contemporary and later writings transmitting the ‘doctrine’ of the way: harmony (for Tao, in itself already meaning ‘the way’), respect (for Confucianism), purity (for the typically Japanese way of the kami or spirit gods), and serenity (for Buddhism: tea is also a collective and applied form of meditation). Wa, kei, sei, and jakû are the four words so often drawn in calligraphy on the hanging scroll in a tea room. (In Chadô, many Japanese and Chinese arts come together, and the event is not just formalized but extremely aestheticized, yet in a special way that emphasizes simplicity, and even austerity and asperity.)20 All of these values are applicable to aspects of the ideal relation between host and guest in the space and time of tea. De Béthune focuses on the four values as specifying the content of the encounter between religions and between people who meet as friends or as strangers, as strangers become friends, in an encounter that is itself spiritual or religious in character. This encounter epitomizes the practice of what de Béthune calls –​using the marvelously simple (yet, in this connection, hardly translatable) French terms –​accueil and recueillement: the openness of a heart that is ready to receive and give, to share. In this sense, it is only natural for him to add a fifth value, typically and especially manifested in the encounter with Christianity. In his encounter with Zen monks, he sees that a value is present in Tea that is also key to experiencing the spirit of Christianity: fraternity, namely the full meaning of the equal dignity of all men. He notes that Tea is probably 19

20

This paper leaves open the question to what extent the concept ‘religion’ is applicable to all of these traditions and ways of making sense of things. The question is especially difficult to answer for Zen –​just as the question to what extent the general concept of ritual is applicable to practices such as the Way of Tea. In any case, it should be clear that Tea is a (very) ritualized way of sharing common spiritual values and that Zen fulfills a lot of roles religions also fulfill. According to an aesthetic ideal developed from the 14th to the 16the century and called wabi: this ideal (or rather anti-​ideal because it strives to a natural expression of imperfection, perfect imperfection) is embodied as well in haiku and related forms of poetry, in no-​theatre and in some forms of architecture and garden design. This is the aesthetic, anticipated by Jôô, that Rikyû rigorously applied to tea, and that in turn is the significance of his ‘work’.

228 Cortois unique in Japanese culture in deploying the spirit of equality within an otherwise strictly hierarchical society: in the tea room everybody practices humility and bows before each other without distinction of rank. Universal fraternity is inseparable from the openness of the encounter which is the openness of the heart for everybody, the core of Christian (and perhaps also Buddhist, when understanding ‘emptying’ as opening) religion and ethics. Fraternity may, in this sense, be said to symbolize universally the value of universality (of humanity) as such. To what extent is this the most adequate way to articulate the spiritual meaning of Tea and of the encounter between Zen tea and Christianity? I want to address this difficult question by concentrating on a particular phase in the history of Chadô. Around 1550, Portuguese merchants and Jesuit missionaries arrived in Japan. The missionaries were impressed by the culture and thought they had found, for the first time, a very foreign culture that would open itself to the truth of Christianity. Several aspects of the Japanese moral system and psychology, besides the finesse of the rituals and a general sense for refined civilization, seemed to suggest that the Christian message would find a fertile ground there. And indeed, for half a century, serious advances were made, before the tragedy of power plays, suspicion, threats and persecutions started around 1600. Nearly 200,000 Japanese had converted21  –​the ‘Kirishitan’ –​before the disaster arrived and drove them underground. One of these kakure Kirishitan –​clandestine Christians –​was Takayama Ukon, not a martyr but an exile to Macau (he was beatified by Pope Francis in 2017). “Dom Justo” Ukon had been one of the ‘Seven Sages’, i.e. the most prominent disciples of the great Tea master Sen no Rikyû. Rikyû (1522–​1591) was the final codifier of the tea ritual and head tea master of Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi was, in turn, the general of the shôgun and the man in power between 1570 and 1595. Rikyû is considered in Japan as a kind of a cultural hero, a tea saint who, after serving Hideyoshi, was compelled by him to commit suicide –​for reasons that are not really clear and remain the object of speculation up to this day. Although Rikyû was definitely not the founding father of the Way of Tea, he is considered to be the greatest of the three arch fathers of the Way, after Murata Jukô (1422–​ 1502) and Takeno Jôô (1502–​1555). Indirectly, Sen no Rikyû is the founder of the three main tea schools that remain active today (Urasenke, Omotesenke 21

Of course, one must realize that strategic policies played a role. Jesuits started by approaching aristocratic elites –​several daimyo were converted, themselves often motivated by strategic interests (commerce, firearms, etc.: it was the period of the Warring Provinces that ended in the final unification). Subsequently, the daimyo’s subordinates followed.

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and Mushanokojisenke), and the prime object of veneration in the tea world, mainly as a moral example and because he gave the ritual a definite twist that was considered decisive for its significance: the wabi aesthetic referred to in the footnote above. Of the ‘Seven Sages’, four or five are Christians. Among them is the aforementioned former samurai, Takayama Ukon. The most famous of the disciples, Furuta Oribe –​successor of Rikyû as head tea master –​is not himself known to have converted, but the family of his wife were Christians. Rikyû does not himself seem to have converted, but his also was a convert, and according to reliable sources he was quite impressed by Christian liturgy. As such, the circle of tea people and literati surrounding Hideyoshi were well infected with Christian influence. Some scholars think this may have been one of the origins of Rikyû’s disgrace with Hideyoshi. (It is probable that, amidst all power intrigues, Hideyoshi became extremely suspicious about the Portuguese and the Jesuits being involved in conspiracies and, ultimately, in attempts to colonize Japan). In general, Japanese sources regarding the extensive contacts between Tea and Christianity are scarce, despite the fact that the existence of these contacts is undisputed. One might surmise that the official history of Japanese tea ought to remain maximally and uniquely Japanese. However, there are other good studies, many of them by Jesuit scholars. The study by the historian Michael Cooper is undoubtedly among the most important. In his study, “The Early Europeans and Tea”,22 the whole story is reconstructed in detail.23 22

23

Michael Cooper, “The Early Europeans and Tea”, in Varley and Isao, Tea in Japan, 101–​ 133. See also his work on, and translations of, João Rodrigues, This Island of Japon: João Rodrigues’s Account of 16th Century Japan (New  York:  Kodansha International, 1973); Michael Cooper, Rodrigues the Interpreter:  An Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York: Weatherhill, 1974). Consult Cooper’s work for details on sources. If we add the essays and text fragments by Heinrich Dumoulin, Kumakura Isao (about the ‘Seven Sages’), John Dougill, Benoît Jacquet, Takahashi Toshio and a few others, we get a rather intriguing picture. A few further titles and references: Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: Japan (Bloomington : World Wisdom, 2005), 244–​6; Benoît Jacquet, “Dans les secrets du pavillon de thé, d’hier et d’aujourd’hui”, Sigilla 28 (2011):  91–​104; John Dougill, In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians: a Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2012), 72ff.; Kumakura Isao, “Kan’ei Culure and Chanoyu”, in Varley and Isao, Tea in Japan, 137–​142. A few Japanese studies may be mentioned: Muan Yamada, Kirishitan Sen no Rikyû: 7 jiken no nazo o toku [The Christian Rikyû: Explaining the Riddle of the Seven Sages], 1995; Takahashi Toshio, [The Bible as Seen Through the Japanese Tea Ceremony], Forest Books; Nishimura Tei, Kirishitan to Chadô [The Christians and the Way of Tea]; Okada Akio, “Kirishitan bunka to sadô” [Christian Culture and Chadô] in Sadô bunkakenkyû (1988), p. 13–​30. Sôshitsu Sen xvi (see note 19) is one of the ‘official’ Japanese authors (and the previous iemoto (grand master) of the Urasenke school) to have recognized the Christian influence. These twentieth century scholars could rely on

230 Cortois In terms of the particular way in which interreligious encounter is embodied in Chadô, a few details deserve mention which suggest that the tea ritual, in its ultimate codification, was influenced by the catholic liturgy of the Eucharist. I do not claim, of course, that the rules of Chadô have been altered on decisive points due to contacts with catholic liturgy. That would be implausible, given the well-​documented facts about the evolution of the ritual between the fourteenth century and, say, 1560. Before the Jesuits entered the scene, most of the formal rules, objects and procedures had been given their ‘definitive’ shape. It would be important here to know the exact state of the art just before Rikyû’s arrival on the scene, however. Takeno Jôô, following Murata Jukô, had laid down well-​determined rules about which objects to use and how to handle them, in quasi algorithmic ways, with a lot of attention for details; the use of the chawan (tea bowl), natsume (thin-​tea container), chaire (thick-​tea container), chasen (whisk), kama (hot water kettle), etc. were clearly defined, leaving little to chance or improvisation. Nevertheless, the more specifications that exist, the more possibilities arise to fill in as yet unspecified details: no ritual action can be so over-​determined that no choices or room for variation are left open. No doubt, the fact that the already-​consigned ritual of tea (of which a number of historic performances have been handed down in notation) displayed rather striking resemblances with the newly discovered Eucharistic ritual, must have stimulated performers to look for closer contacts. Crucially for our concerns, it appears that some of these novel details introduced between 1560 and 1600 strongly suggest ‘analogies of practice’ with elements of Christian liturgy; I sum up but a few: –​ The chakin is a small white linen cloth used to wipe the bowl to purify it before ritual use, in between uses, and after use. It appears that the object and the gesture performed with it are very similar to what happens with the linen cloth used by the priest to wipe the chalice at the end of the Eucharist. –​ The tea bowl is treated during the ritual (just before drinking, and also while inspecting after drinking) with a gesture of respect that is similar to the way the chalice is uplifted at the Eucharistic consecration.

source materials from missionaries who were in direct contact with Rikyû and his circles. In the second half of the sixteenth century, João Rodrigues, Alessandro Valignano, Luis de Frois were among the Jesuits who got most involved in tea culture and its description. They left important source materials, especially Rodrigues (to be consulted via Cooper). The picture that emerges points to a rather interesting exchange of practices, values, and ritual details (as well as … utensils).

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–​ The kashi, or sweet, that is consumed along with the macha (powdered) tea may have been related by association with the host that goes together with the wine. –​ The stone lanterns in tea gardens (next to the tea house) often display something like the (three-​dimensional) shape of a cross; moreover on the surface they often carry images of a Madonna-​like figure as well as cross-​shaped markings; here the explanation is quite telling and obvious:  it has been established that the tea room served as the sacred space for clandestine Eucharistic gatherings in the time of the kakure kirishitan. –​ It is known that even before the persecutions, Jesuits performed religious ceremonies in tea rooms.24 This is understandable within the same framework that explains the lack of taboos they had in approaching tea culture: tea practice was not considered by them to be a religious rite, so they could risk acculturation there. One could say, they could allow themselves to be fascinated without risking being carried away into reverence for ‘pagan’ elements. –​ A number of historical chawan known to have been used in kakure kirishitan settings, as well as other chawan, have a cross marked on one face (namely the one designated as ‘the face’ of the chawan)25 of the ceramic ware on the outside. –​ The fukusa, or silk cloth, which is used to purify all dry objects during the ritual performance, is folded with a sequence of formal gestures displaying a similarity with the treatment of a purificator cloth used by the priest to cover the chalice when finishing the liturgy of the Mass. Now these are mainly formal details. De Béthune is of course aware that these similarities exist, and that they must point to some influence. He stresses that these examples are not exhaustive and, moreover, that they are perhaps not the main things worth mentioning. De Béthune is certainly right to point to the crucial role of common values, and to look for a ‘deeper’ influence or interaction on that level. Nevertheless, rituals are full of minutiae that are replete with significance. Especially where meanings and actions are ritualized, it is impossible to oppose form and content –​just as in poetry, when a genre defines the formal rules of rhythm and rhyme that the poet has to submit to: it would be implausible to consider requirements of form as mere ‘formalities’ dissociated from the evocative force and meaning of the poem. 24 25

See Dougill, In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians, 72. Chawan always have one side marked (by some sign or special characteristic) as ‘the face’, which is then treated as an object of special respect in the interaction between host and guest.

232 Cortois There may be a paradox here, to be sure, or a contrast, between opposing forces or tendencies, between the creative élan of the poem or of the ritual act and its strictness. The point is, these forces have to collude in one verse or gesture in order to be what they are: strongly embodied meanings. To take but one example of the way in which symbolic substitutes are at work in Chadô, in accordance with what was pointed out earlier on: important objects such as the chashaku (tea scoop), and the natsume or chaire (tea containers), become bearers of a proper name, which has to be mentioned while they are handled, while paying reverence. This means they have somehow become personae, participants in the ritual: they represent (in Wittgenstein’s sense) the lives and times of all those masters and disciples, in the whole chain of apostolic succession –​those who have made them, admired them, broke them into pieces, glued them together, handed them over. Beyond places and persons, even individual objects may share in the ‘symbolic magic’ invoked earlier. So, it will not do to oppose the spiritual value (fraternity, purity …) to its formal expression and declare the latter to be mere exteriority. It is because the Japanese –​and probably the Jesuits –​felt (rather than conceptualized) a close affinity between expressive gestures and details that they allowed themselves from both sides to open up to the other. But wait a moment. Haven’t we been saying that what strikes us as fascinating is the similar, the familiar, what we feel to be our own? Or perhaps not just that which is our own but the familiar in so far as it may be extended to the whole of humanity? In the case of Japan, the Jesuits thought they had found a culture that approximated the best values that Christian culture also embodied in a more perfected form. So, they saw these resemblances and were fascinated by them, while at the same time supporting the strange mixture of universalism (all cultures) and particularism (Christianity being the one true religion to be universalized) they stood for. To us, such a mixture has become extremely problematic. Yet, the late modern form of universalism, seeing all (higher?) religious traditions as converging towards one universal wisdom, is a hopeless alternative, even more at odds with the recognition of the particular value of traditions. Finally, would the way out be found in a mere recognition of plurality and diversity? That would water down reverence to respect, and the sources of fascination would dry up and leave a mere legal or rational discourse of tolerance and recognition. So, were we perhaps wrong to look for the sources of fascination and reverence in the similar –​in something that binds us with what others have also found in their own ways? On the other hand, were we equally wrong to look for the familiar in that particularity that could only grow from our own soil? That would preclude any real encounter; nevertheless, it did take place, as we

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are, hopefully, now able to see. When describing what happened to the Jesuits as guests and the Japanese as hosts, we see that, in their encounter, the real mixture was between the strangeness of the foreign and the recognition of affinities with one’s own tradition, rather than between universality and what resists it. After all, both the Portuguese and the Japanese cannot but have been struck by the realization that such similar gestures could belong to such divergent ‘systems of reference’,26 each passionately lived by their adherents and admiringly regarded by their new discoverers. Both of them had their privileged objects (chalices, bowls), their solemn gowns, their venerated names (Jesus, Rikyû), their holy places (churches, tea rooms). Sometimes these objects of reverence converged in touching something like a common cord, sometimes they must have looked closed off from each other and from the ordinary world. All this works only by the grace of a “moment décisif”,27 i.e. in an encounter that has not been orchestrated with the purpose of finding common ground, but just ‘happened to happen’. Moreover, just as the Japanese and the Jesuits were not able to disclose to themselves the true nature of their encounter at the moment they met, and perhaps even denied that it took place, we may be able only later, as in the biblical story of Emmaus, to recognize who we met, and indeed that we have met. Taking this view, I will come to a conclusion, although I feel that much more is left to be said in order to explain in what way fascination towards the Other and towards the sources of one’s self are inextricably linked to each other. It is as if someone in the midst of a walk through the city of glass at once sees someone standing before him who looks strangely like himself. Then, all of a sudden, he realizes that he stands before his own image in a mirror: that moment he realizes how strange a person he is to himself, and all the obvious familiarity is lost. I am shown to myself in my strangeness. Real encounters between religions somehow may remind us of these strange confrontations with ourselves, at least to the extent that we may discover there not only the similar in the Other, but the Other in ourselves. Realizing this does not mean abandoning the exclusive relation we entertain with our own practice of belonging, and we do not explicitly mix the host’s rituals with our own. That would mean that we undo the foreign of its strangeness, and thus also of its fascination, just for the sake of our own practice. Yet, our encounters with other, foreign, distant religious names, figures, objects, images, practices, and traditions as a whole, may 26 27

Compare Wittgenstein’s description of religious belief as “a passionate commitment to a system of reference” (CV, 64). To quote Henri Cartier-​Bresson’s phrase about the nature of a revealing photograph. See his Images à la sauvette (Paris: Verve, 1952), passim.

234 Cortois become relations of hospitality, even reverence. And indeed, even the metaphor of the exclusiveness of love works both ways, and not just in support of a privilege for the familiar-​particular. The loved one, my object of fascination, even awe, ‘my own’ beloved, is, after all, not the one I recognize as the same, but that Other that strikes me as so different yet speaks to me and sounds with me in the tone spectrum of my unfamiliar self. It is the distant-​particular, close by or far off, and both at the same time, that eternally “zieht uns hinan”.

Bibliography

Akio, Okada. “Kirishitan bunka to sadô” [Christian Culture and Chadô]. In Sadô bunkakenkyû (1988), 13–​30. Anderson, Jennifer. An Introduction to Japanese Tea Ritual. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. de Béthune, Pierre-​ François. L’Hospitalité sacrée entre les religions. Paris:  Albin Michel, 2007. Breeur. Roland and Arnold Burms. “Persons and Relics.” Ratio 21:2 (2008): 134–​146. Burms, Arnold. “Proper Names and Magical Symbols.” Leuvense Bijdragen/​Louvain Studies 67:3 (1978): 309–​317. Burms, Arnold. “The Sound of Words: a Neglected Perspective in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language.” In Tradition and Renewal: The Centennial of Louvain’s Institute of Philosophy, Vol. 1. Edited by David A. Boileau and John A. Dick, 167–​180. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992. Cartier-​Bresson, Henri. Images à la sauvette. Paris: Verve, 1952. Cooper, Michael. Rodrigues the Interpreter:  An Early Jesuit in Japan and China. New York: Weatherhill, 1974. Cooper, Michael. “The Early Europeans and Tea.” In Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, edited by Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao, 101–​133. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Death of a Tea Master. Directed by Ken Kumai, 1989. Dougill, John. In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians: a Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2012. Dumoulin, Heinrich. Zen Buddhism: Japan. Bloomington : World Wisdom, 2005. Geach, Peter. “The Perils of Pauline.” The Review of Metaphysics 23 (1969): 287–​300. Hammitzsch, Horst. Zen in the Art of the Tea Ceremony. Tisbury: Element Books, 1977; originally in German. Hirota, Dennis, ed. Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press, 1995.

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Isao, Kumakura. “Kan’ei Culure and Chanoyu.” In Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, edited by Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao, 135–​160. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Jacquet, Benoît. “Dans les secrets du pavillon de thé, d’hier et d’aujourd’hui.” Sigilla 28 (2011): 91–​104. Kakuzô, Okakura. The Book of Tea. New York: Duffield & Company, 1906. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Blackwell: Oxford, revised ed. 1980, 2002. Plutschow, Herbert. Rediscovering Rikyû and the Beginnings of the Tea Ceremony. Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2003. Rodrigues, João. This Island of Japon: João Rodrigues’s Account of 16th Century Japan. Translated by Michael Cooper. New York: Kodansha International, 1973. Sadler, A.L. Cha-​no-​yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1933. Scruton, Roger. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey. London: Pimlico, 1994. Sôshitsu, Sen. The Japanese Way of Tea: From its Origins in China to Sen Rikyû. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. Tei, Nishimura. Kirishitan to Chadô [The Christians and the Way of Tea]. Toshio, Takahashi. [The Bible as Seen Through the Japanese Tea Ceremony]. Forest Books. Varley, Paul and Kumakura Isao, eds. Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Yamada, Muan. Kirishitan Sen no Rikyû: 7 jiken no nazo o toku [The Christian Rikyû: Explaining the Riddle of the Seven Sages]. 1995. Yasushi, Inoue, Le maître de thé [Honkakubô ibun]. Translated by Tadahiro Oku and Anna Guerineau. Paris: Stock, 1995.

Name Index Abe Masao 1 al-​Farabi 178 Alpyagil, Recep 17 Alston, William 37, 106 Ananda 127 Andrejč, Gorazd 2–​3, 8, 27, 111, 167, 175 Anselm 41, 97 Aquinas, Thomas (see also Thomism) 20, 27, 31, 61, 177–​181, 185, 189–​192 Aristotle (see also Aristotelianism) 183 Asad, Talal 60 Augustine 61, 73, 97, 99 Avicenna (Ibn Sina) 27, 97, 178

Citron, Gabriel 100 Clack, Beverley 37 Clack, Brian 13, 16–​17, 37, 104 Clooney, Francis 25, 85–​87, 92 Coetzee, J.M. 149 Cohen, Hermann 188 Conant, James 5, 99 Connolly, William E. 138–​139 Conway, Gertrude 123 Cooper, Michael 229–​230 Cortois, Paul 17, 28–​29 Cragg, Kenneth 33 Crary, Alice 5, 115

Baker, Deane-​Peter 106 Baker, Gordon 3 Barnes, Michael 92 Barrett, Cyril 118–​119, 125 Bennett-​Hunter, Guy 23–​24, 161, 170–​171 Béthune, Pierre-​François de 225–​227, 231 Bhaskar, Roy 63 Boétie, Etienne de la 220 Bolzano, Bernard 29, 106–​107 Bronzo, Silver 5 Borowitz, Eugene 19 Boult, Cameron 161 Boyarin, Daniel 188 Buber, Martin 1, 18 Burley, Mikel 4, 6–​7, 29, 45, 48, 104 Burms, Arnold 217, 219, 223–​224 Burrell, David 20–​21, 26–​27, 174–​180, 185, 189–​191 Byrne, Peter 37

Dasgupta, Surendranath 48 Day, William 70 Derrida, Jacques 28, 136, 138, 144, 149–​155 Descartes, René 57, 149, 160–​161 Diamond, Cora 5, 16, 99, 115 Dickie, George 67 Dôgen 226 Drew, Rose 196, 203 Drury, M. O’C 36, 73, 107 DuBois, Thomas 59, 64

Caputo, John 58 Carroll, Noël 67 Carroll, Thomas 6–​7, 29, 55, 105 Cartier-​Bresson, Henri 233 Cavell, Stanley 16, 56, 115, 161 Chatterjee, Margaret 33–​34, 49 Chaudhuri, Nirad 39 Cherbonnier, Edmond 183 Choudhary, Ravindra 17 Chrysostom, John 108 Cicero 61, 108

Eckhart 20, 26, 127–​129, 170 Eisai (Myōan Yōsai) 226 Eusebius 62 Evans-​Pritchard, E.E. 45 Eichinger Ferro-​Luzzi, Gabriella 7, 39 Fitzgerald, Timothy 40, 63 Foucault, Michel 138 Frazer, James 13, 44–​45, 104, 107, 110, 144, 146, 153, 213 Fredericks, James 89, 92 Frege, Gottlob 29, 106–​107, 214–​215 Frei, Hans 20 Freud, Sigmund 152, 160 Gadamer, Hans-​Georg 1 Gandhi, Ramchandra 47–​48 Geach, Peter 217, 219 Geertz, Clifford 21, 42–​43, 58 Gersonides 178

238 Name Index Ghazali 27, 177–​180, 189–​192 Glock, Hans-​Johann 5, 36 Goodall, Jane 28, 152–​153 Goosen, Gideon 196, 210 Grant, Rhiannon 22 Gutei (Jùzhī Yīzhǐ) 128 Hacker, Peter 5, 43, 99, 115 Harrison, Victoria 6, 37, 66–​67, 70 Hauerwas, Stanley 20 Heidegger, Martin 115, 149 Helm, Paul 105 Herodotus 62 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 18, 183, 185 Hick, John 6, 37, 141 Hick, John 228–​229 Hitchens, Christopher 171 Husserl, Edmund 115 Hutto, Daniel 6, 115 Ikeda, Daisaku 1 Jerome 108 John of the Cross 129 Johnson, Samuel 108 Jones, R.H. 129 Josephson, Jason 60 Josephus 62 Kadushin, Max 18, 184 Kant, Immanuel 57, 97, 106–​107, 149 Kellenberger, James 91 Kenny, Anthony 78 Kerr, Fergus 20, 104 Kierkegaard, Søren 118, 136, 142–​143, 153 Kim, Joseph 105 Knepper, Timothy 125 Knitter, Paul 85, 92, 199 Krebs, Victor 70 Kripke, Saul 200, 214–​217, 219 Krishnamurti, Jiddu 1 Kuusela, Oskari 3, 5 Lacan, Jacques 149 Lactantius 61 Lambek, Michael 9 Levinas, Emmanuel 200, 214–​217, 219 Lindbeck, George 20–​22, 194–​195, 197–​198, 202, 211

Lipner, Julius 39 Locke, John 61, 139, 162 Lopez, Donald 9 Lucretius 61 Lyotard, Jean-​François 88, 137, 140 MacInnis, Donald 56 Macquarrie, John 170 Maimonides 18–​19, 27, 97, 174–​192 Malcolm, Norman 47, 104, 118 Masuzawa, Tomoko 60 Maturana, Humberto 116 McCabe, Herbert 20 McCutcheon, Russell 6, 63, 69 McGuiness, Brian 5 Meister Eckhart (see Eckhart)  Merleau-​Ponty 115 Miller, Susan Katz 196, 198, 205 Minucius Felix 61 Montaigne, Michel de 220 Moore, G.E. 10, 22, 77, 100, 158 Mouffe, Chantal 138–​139 Moyal-​Sharrock, Daniéle  23, 115, 122–​125 Mulhall, Stephen 5, 14–​17, 26, 70, 101 Munch, Edvard 102 Nagel, Thomas 124 Needham, Rodney 8–​9, 36–​38, 42 Newman, John Henry 107–​110, 162, 167 Nietzsche, Friedrich 36, 59 Nongbri, Brent 6, 60–​62, 66, 69 Ochs, Peter 190–​191 Origen 62 Okakura, Kakuzô 226 Otto, Rudolf 57 Pascal, Blaise 97–​98, 102, 110 Phillips, D.Z. 15–​18, 22, 104–​105, 135–​136, 140–​143, 152, 155, 201, 206 Philo 62 Plant, Robert 4, 12, 17 Plantinga, Alvin 105 Plato 97, 188 Plautus 61 Pritchard, Duncan 24, 31, 107, 157–​165, 167, 170–​171 Pseudo-​Dionysius 129, 170 Putnam, Hilary 17–​18, 78, 215

239

Name Index Ramal, Ramal 17, 28 Ratcliffe, Matthew 11–​12, 15 Read, Rupert 5, 19, 115 Rhees, Rush 144–​149, 207 Ricken, Friedo 107 Rikyû (see Sen no Rikyû)  Rodrigues, João 229–​230 Rorty, Richard 136, 142, 152 Rosenzweig, Franz 188 Ross, Alexander 62 Russel, Bertrand 4, 118, 214 Ruysbroeck, Jan van 20, 26 Saler, Benson 37–​39 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 171 Schilbrack, Kevin 6, 54, 63, 66, 69 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 57 Schönbaumsfeld, Genia 5 Scruton, Roger 219 Searle, John 214 Seeskin, Kenneth 182–​183 Sen no Rikyû 226–​230, 233 Shah, Kanti 47–​48 Shakespeare, William 34, 73 Smart, Ninian 37, 58, 60 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 38 Smuts, Barbara 149 Southwold, Martin 42, 46–​47 Stern, David 5 Štrajn, Varja 19, 25–​26 Stosch, Klaus von 24–​25, 73–​74, 76, 79, 81–​82, 84, 86, 89, 92, 101

Tanner, Kathryn 195 Taylor, Charles 106 Tertullian 61 Tillich, Paul 170 Tozan (Dongshan Liangjie) 128 Tracy, David 20, 26, 136–​137, 141–​142, 153 Tylor, Edward 45 Ukon, Takayama 228–​229 Vacchagotta 127 Venturinha, Nuno 7, 17, 28–​30, 98–​99, 104, 106–​107, 109 Volf, Miroslav 136, 139–​142, 153 Vörös, Sebastjan 19, 25–​26, 117, 126 de Vries, Hent 6, 9 Vygotsky, Lev 37 Webb, Mark 106 Weber, Max 46 Weiss, Daniel 19, 27, 188 Weitz, Morris 67 Wenman, Mark 137–​138 Wettstein, Howard 18, 190–​191 Williams, Monier 39 Williams, Roger 139 Williams, Thomas 41 Winch, Peter 45 Yang, Fenggang 63–​64 Yang, Xiaomei 65

Subject Index Advaita Vedanta 17, 38 African religions 9, 45 analogy 7, 10, 21–​22, 26, 29, 35, 39–​40, 44–​47, 88, 160, 167, 194–​196, 199–​205, 207, 209, 212–​213, 216, 230 analogical method 7, 26, 35, 44–​47 animal 28, 41–​42, 103, 110, 124, 136, 144–​155 animalistic behavior 136, 144, 147–​151 anthropology 8–​9, 13, 37, 42–​46, 98, 104, 149, 176, 213, 217 anti-​essentialism 34–​36, 141 anti-​evidentialism 17–​18 (see also evidence) apophaticism 20, 25–​26, 114, 116, 130–131, 170 Aristotelianism 28, 103, 110, 174, 178, 181–​184, 188 art, theories of 67–​68, 102, 225

91, 93, 114, 117, 135–​155, 157–​172, 174–​177, 188–​189, 192, 194, 198, 201–​202, 205, 207, 211–​212, 223, 225 concept formation 16–​17, 28, 41–​42, 135–​136, 143–​145, 147–​148, 151, 153 conception, Wittgensteinian (see also picture) 3–​12, 14–​16, 19–​22, 25–​26, 30, 54, 59–​60, 64, 68–​70, 99, 104, 107, 117, 122, 171​, 175, 178, 180, 189–​192, 209, 215 conceptual genealogy 6, 55, 59–​63, 68–​70 conversion (religious) 164–​165, 167, 169, 198, 211, 228–​229 creation, the doctrine of 9, 177–​187, 190 critical realism 63–​64

Bible, Hebrew or Christian 19, 18, 88, 101, 154, 181, 183–​184, 188–​189, 229, 233 belief, concept of/​grammar of 7–​9, 13, 17, 23–​25, 30, 42, 56–​60, 65, 74–​76, 78–​87, 91, 97–​98, 101–​102, 105–​107, 110, 158–​162, 165, 167, 171, 214–​215, 221, 233 belief-​formation 35, 41–​42, 46–​47 Buddha 29, 127–​128, 221 Buddhism 6, 17, 19–​20, 29, 25–​26, 42, 61, 64, 70, 73, 99, 106, 118, 126–127, 131, 170, 196–​197, 199, 202–​204, 208, 210–​211, 225–​229 Buddhist-​Christian relations 19–​20, 25–​26, 29, 118, 126–​131, 196, 225–​233

descriptive investigation (see grammatical investigation)  dialogue 1, 20, 22, 24, 26, 46, 55, 58, 61, 68–​69, 85, 87, 90–​94, 97–​98, 111, 114–​118, 126, 131, 135, 137, 141–​143, 146, 149, 151–​152, 154, 162, 189, 199, 207, 211 disagreement (see interreligious)  diversity (see also pluralism) 1, 7, 25, 28, 30, 35, 38–​41, 47, 54, 58, 60, 62, 66, 73, 83, 88–​92, 101, 103–​105, 111, 123, 135–​138, 145–​146, 149, 154–​155, 196, 232 dogmatism 36, 98–​100, 108

Cartesianism 57, 149, 160–​161 Catholicism (see Roman Catholicism)  Christianity 2, 6–​7, 9–​13, 15, 17, 20–​21, 23, 25–​29, 39, 45, 54, 58–​63, 68–​70, 79, 85–​86, 89, 97–​98, 102, 104, 106, 110, 118, 126–​127, 130, 139–​141, 143, 166, 170, 174, 177, 185, 191–​192, 194–​197, 199, 202–​208, 210–​211, 227–​230, 232 Christian-​Muslim relations 13, 27, 29, 38, 64, 69, 93, 97, 106, 140–​141, 170, 174–​180, 190–​192, 197, 203, 209 communication 1, 7, 9, 22–​28, 33–​34, 42, 45, 47, 49, 54, 70–​71, 73–​76, 81, 84–​87,

embodiment 29, 87, 115–​117, 125–​130, 142, 182–​183, 185, 191, 223–​225, 227, 230, 232 emotions (see also feelings, guilt, shame) 11, 45, 58, 67, 109, 131, 149, 152, 155, 181, 195, 203, 223 emptiness (see also nothingness) 26, 210, 228 enactivism 20, 25, 114–​117, 125–​126, 130 Enlightenment (Buddhist or Jain) 19, 48, 128, 141 epistemology 23–​24, 27, 63, 89, 92, 97–​98, 101–​102, 105–​107, 110, 157–​170 evidence 8, 11, 26, 30, 70, 99, 101, 105–​106, 140, 159, 163, 167–​169, 203 exclusivism 86, 98, 139, 197, 222–​223, 233

241

Subject Index experience (religious or religion-​related) 3, 7–​8, 10–​12, 15, 20–​22, 26, 28, 36, 41, 55, 58, 60, 81, 87, 89, 102, 107, 109, 117, 124–​128, 149, 153, 160, 171, 188, 191, 194–​196, 198, 207, 225, 227 family resemblance 6–​7, 20–​21, 26–​29, 35–​40, 46, 55, 59, 66–​70, 88, 110, 141 feelings 8, 10–​11, 13, 15, 21, 44, 57, 102, 118–​120, 146–​154, 161, 181–​190, 198, 204, 206, 212, 219, 222–​223, 232 fideism 71, 74, 83, 98, 101, 105, 159, 162–​163, 168–​169 form of life 4, 18, 22, 25, 28, 34–​36, 41–​44, 46, 74, 78, 85, 87–​89, 93, 102, 104, 106–​107, 110, 122–​124, 131, 145, 147–​154, 200, 207 God 7–​11, 14–​15, 18, 20–​22, 24, 26–​27, 29, 33, 41–​42, 45, 56, 58, 61–​62, 73, 78–​83, 85, 89, 97, 99, 105, 109, 127–​129, 139–​141, 159–​160, 167, 170–​171, 174–​192, 206 grammar 4–​5, 9–​10, 15–​16, 20–​27, 30, 35–​36, 66, 74–​84, 89–​93, 98, 100, 107, 111, 122–123, 140–​144, 147, 162, 194–​195, 199, 202–​204, 207 grammatical investigation 4–​5, 7–​8, 16, 20, 27–​28, 43, 55–​59, 69–​70, 76, 85, 92, 100, 135–​136, 142–​147, 201 guilt 11–​12 Hinduism 7, 17, 38–40, 48, 85, 204, 128–129 hinge(s) (or hinge propositions/​ commitments/​certainties) 23–​24, 74–​79, 83, 121, 123, 145, 157–​171, 210 history 8, 29, 38, 43, 54–​56, 59–​63, 65, 68–​70, 85, 91, 94, 101–​103, 110–​111, 122, 141, 145, 151, 169, 202, 204, 216, 218, 220–​233 human flourishing 47, 138–​139, 222 humanity 28, 44, 61–​62, 68, 88, 122–​124, 141, 148, 152, 228, 232 inclusivism 86, 172 incommensurability 18, 22, 30, 135, 154, 163–​165, 202 (see also interreligious disagreement) India 7, 33, 38–​39, 47–​48, 204 ineffability 5, 19, 26, 99, 117, 125, 131, 171

instinct (see also primitive reactions) 3, 12–​18, 20, 28, 41–​42, 45, 108, 144, 147, 150–​152, 206 interfaith (see interreligious)  interreligious  agreement 1, 27–​28, 90, 147–​148, 152–​153, 163–​168, 171, 195, 200–​202, 206 communication 1, 7, 9, 22, 24–​28, 33–​34, 42, 45, 47, 49, 54, 70–​71, 74, 76, 81, 84–​85, 87, 89, 91–​93, 114, 117, 135–​155, 157, 159, 162–​172, 174, 176–​177, 189, 192, 194, 198, 201–​202, 205, 207, 211–​212, 223, 225 disagreement 1, 9, 15, 24, 27, 54, 62, 69, 93, 111, 152, 164–​168, 170–​171, 175 encounter 1, 28–​29, 42, 47, 54, 61, 65, 70, 111, 114, 136, 143, 152, 172, 194, 211, 213, 222–​228, 230, 232–​233 intellectualism 12–​13, 27, 110, 146, 170, 174, 176, 180–​185, 188–​192, 213 Islam 7, 13, 17, 27, 29, 38, 48, 62, 64, 69, 93, 97, 106, 140–​141, 170, 174, 177, 191–​192, 197, 203, 209, 212, 221 Japan 29, 58, 60, 63, 196, 202, 226–​233 Jewish-​Christian relations 19, 25, 27, 79, 97, 176–​179, 188, 191, 196, 198, 205–​207, 210 Judaism 7, 17–​19, 27, 38, 61, 104, 106, 174, 184–​185, 188, 192, 205 karma 42 knowledge 14, 23, 87, 93, 98, 106, 110, 129, 149–​151, 155, 158, 160, 162, 183, 209 language game 12, 66, 74–​79, 81–​82, 84–​85, 88–​89, 92–​94, 110, 122, 124–​25, 144, 200–​201, 206–​207, 209, 211 liberal theology 20 mindfulness 125–​126, 131, 202, 209–​211 mission 7, 39, 60, 165–​169, 172, 198, 228, 230 Muslim-​Christian relations (see Christian-​Muslim relations) multiple religious belonging 22, 194–​199, 202–​207, 210–​212 Muslim-​Jewish relations 27, 97, 177, 191

242 Subject Index Neoplatonism 97, 174–​175, 178, 180, 183–​184, 188, 190 Nirvana (see also enlightenment) 128, 130 nonsense 3, 14–​16, 19–​20, 22, 25–​27, 99, 108, 110, 117, 123–​131, 200, 207, 210 nothingness 130 On Certainty 23–​24, 30, 42–​43, 74, 77, 123–​125, 144–​145, 147–​148, 154–​169, 172 otherness 62, 89, 92–​93, 139, 150, 182, 198–​199, 207, 212, 233–​234 Paganism (or Neo-​Paganism) 204, 208, 231 parity arguments 159, 162–​163, 167, 170 performatives 116, 120–​122, 125–​126, 217 particularism 29, 34, 40–​41, 131, 213, 222, 224, 232 perspicuous representation 3, 5–​6, 34, 44, 91, 124–​125, 131 phenomenology 106, 115, 117, 123, 139 Philosophical Investigations 3–​6, 9–​11, 16, 34–​36, 40, 43, 55, 64, 66, 70, 73, 78, 82, 86–​88, 91, 100, 110, 116, 122, 124–​125, 144, 146–​148, 179–​180, 186–​188, 192, 195, 200–​201, 206 picture (Wittgensteinian; see also world-​ picture) 3–​7, 9, 12–​16, 19, 23–​29, 40, 44–​45, 48, 56, 93, 108, 100, 110, 121, 158, 160, 162–​170, 175, 192, 214–​215 Platonism (see Neoplatonism)  pluralism (sociological or theological) 25, 28–​29, 68, 73, 78, 81–​82, 86, 98, 104, 111, 135–​155, 232 political theology 54–​60, 64–​65, 135–​141, 146, 154–​155 politics 54–​69, 135–​141, 146, 151–​152, 154–​155, 203 postliberal theology 2, 20–​22, 194–​198, 202, 211 pragmatism 93, 140, 142, 161, 172 primitive reactions (see also instinct) 7, 12–​13, 17–​18, 28, 41–​42, 104, 135–​136, 143–​146, 149, 151–​152, 214, 220 Protestantism 10, 20, 54, 64, 59–​61, 68 radical pluralism 28, 135–​155

rationality 8, 24, 41–​42, 45, 76, 81, 83–​84, 90, 97–​98, 105, 144, 158–​171, 183, 187, 219–​220, 232 reason (see rationality)  rebirth 42 religion, definition of 6, 35, 37–​40, 46, 54–​59, 65, 188, 221 religion, concept of 2, 5–​16, 21, 27, 46, 55, 58–​69, 194–​195, 197, 211, 221, 227 religion-​games 22, 194, 197, 202, 207–​212 religion-​status, ascription of 54–​55, 60, 63–​70 ritual 13, 28–​29, 44–​45, 56, 58, 61–​62, 85, 93, 110, 131, 144, 146, 152–​154, 182–​184, 204, 208, 213, 217, 221, 223–​233 Roman Catholicism 20, 29, 64, 89, 110, 221, 230 salvation 86, 141, 154 secularity 19, 54, 61, 64, 106, 162, 170–​171, 202, 205 saying/​showing distinction 26, 86, 99, 118–​126, 128, 130 science 3, 7–​8, 14, 28, 34, 37, 42–​43, 45, 57, 63, 65–​66, 97, 106–​107, 115, 119, 123, 145, 180–​183, 189, 208 scientism 19 shame 137, 150–​151, 154 speech acts (see also enactivism) 93, 120–​121, 201 syncretism 114 Talmud 18–​19, 183–​184 theodicy 15, 82 therapy (philosophical or intellectual) 3, 5, 19, 26–​27, 115–​116, 124, 177, 180–​185, 189–​191 Thomism (see also Aquinas) 16, 20 tolerance 48, 110, 138–​139, 142, 232 Torah 18, 184 translatability (interreligious or intercultural) 9, 22, 58, 61–​62, 202, 205, 208–​209, 227 Tractatus Logico-​Philosophicus 4–​5, 11, 14, 16, 26, 34, 98–​100, 104, 107, 115, 118–​119, 122 Trinity 110, 129–130

243

Subject Index truth 3, 16, 24–​27, 43, 55, 58, 76–​80, 85–​86, 89–​91, 101, 106, 108, 117, 129, 139–​140, 155, 158, 161, 163, 167–​172, 181, 228 Two-​Spirit 204–​205

vagueness 186, 188

universalism 29, 102, 213, 224–​225, 232

Zen 19, 29, 127–​128, 197, 225–​229

Wonder 11, 13, 15, 17, 47–​49, 150 world-​picture 23, 74–​84, 87, 92–​93, 164–​ 167, 169