Wittgenstein On Religious Belief

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said: 'I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.' This study, the last work of the distinguished philosopher Norman Malcolm, is a discussion of what Wittgenstein may have meant by this and its significance for philosophy. The book concludes with a critical discussion of Malcolm's essay by Peter Winch.

Wittgenstein published next to nothing on the philosophy of religion and yet his conception of religious belief has been both enormously influential and hotly contested. In the contemporary literature, Wittgenstein has variously been labelled a fideist, a non-cognitivist and a relativist of sorts. This Element shows that all of these readings are misguided and seriously at odds, not just with what Wittgenstein says about religious belief, but with his entire later philosophy. This Element also argues that Wittgenstein presents us with an important 'third way' of understanding religious belief – one that does not fall into the trap of either assimilating religious beliefs to ordinary empirical or scientific beliefs or seeking to reduce them to the expression of certain attitudes.

Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship of their ideas. Genia Schönbaumsfeld closes this gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. In chapter four, Schönbaumsfeld develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism' and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.

An exciting introduction to the contribution which Wittgenstein made to the philosophy of religion.

Religion Within the Limits of Language Alone provides a critical examination of the Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion who claim that the word 'God' cannot be understood as referring to a metaphysical being who may or may not exist. McCutcheon traces the arguments offered by these philosophers of religion back to Wittgenstein's own criticisms of speculative metaphysics, arguing that in its religious usage the concept of God does not fall under Wittgenstein's anti-metaphysical gaze. In presenting a detailed account of Wittgenstein's own philosophical method, including his criticisms of metaphysics, McCutcheon shows that it is possible to accept Wittgenstein's criticisms of metaphysics whilst retaining the metaphysical content of religious language. This book offers a fresh understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophical method and a new critique of religious discourse for those studying philosophy and religious studies.

The papers in this collection are concerned with the epistemology of religious belief. The contributors disagree on such issues as whether philosophers have a role to play in determining the reasonableness or intelligibility of religious beliefs, or whether philosophy properly understood is a descriptive task. But all the papers are informed by the belief that philosophical discussion should proceed by giving attention to the character of the religious beliefs and practices under consideration.

Gordon Graham presents a bold new account of Wittgenstein's philosophy, which argues for its relevance to the study of religion and aims to revitalize the philosophy of 'true religion'. He uses Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy to argue in favour of the idea that 'true religion' is to be understood as human participation in divine life.