WITTGENSTEIN’S MYSTICAL METHOD

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Elizaphanian

(My MA thesis, without footnotes – it’s the argument that’s important!)

This is my MA thesis on Wittgenstein – the pinnacle of my academic career. (So far 😉
Having just re-read it, six years after production (now ten years!), I feel rather proud of it. Certainly my thinking hasn’t changed, and I think I make a solid case – but then, I would, wouldn’t I?

My essay can be summarised as an argument for the following theses:
a) Wittgenstein had a consistent purpose in his philosophical work, composed of two elements –
i) a belief in the ineffability of the mystical, that value cannot be spoken; and
ii) a consequent need to put limits to the realm of philosophy, in order not to distort our understanding of what is of value; and
b) the change from the early to the later Wittgenstein is only concerned with part ii) above, viz. Wittgenstein’s understanding of the nature of philosophy changed (the division between sense and nonsense in the Tractatus mutated into the development of a new method for philosophy in the Investigations) but the rôle of philosophy within his overall thinking remained constant.

Introduction

1. Wittgenstein once infamously observed: ‘I am not a religious person but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view’1. It is now approaching common knowledge that Wittgenstein was deeply interested in religion in general, and Christianity in particular2; as Norman Malcolm put it, ‘it is surely right to say that Wittgenstein’s mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling’3. I am concerned in this essay to explore the way in which Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings were governed by a religious perspective. I argue that although the understanding of language changed drastically from the Tractatus to the Investigations, the role that language played (however understood) within Wittgenstein’s overall Weltanschauung stayed the same, and that overall Weltanschaaung is one that can legitimately be described as religious – in fact, as mystical. My thesis is that throughout his life Wittgenstein wished to enjoin upon philosophy a silence about questions of value – an apophatic, mystical silence.

2. My essay can be summarised as an argument for the following theses:
a) Wittgenstein had a consistent purpose in his philosophical work, composed of two elements –
i) a belief in the ineffability of the mystical, that value cannot be spoken; and
ii) a consequent need to put limits to the realm of philosophy, in order not to distort our understanding of what is of value; and
b) the change from the early to the later Wittgenstein is only concerned with part ii) above, viz. Wittgenstein’s understanding of the nature of philosophy changed (the division between sense and nonsense in the Tractatus mutated into the development of a new method for philosophy in the Investigations) but the rôle of philosophy within his overall thinking remained constant.
I should say at this point that I do not consider the main points of my argument to be original4, although I do not think that this point of view is well known, and therefore a summary of the evidence and relevant points may have some merit.

3. In order to bring these theses out clearly, my argument will proceed in the following stages. Firstly, I argue that the Tractatus was a philosophical work directed by a religious concern, specifically, an outlook that can be described as mystical. Secondly I shall argue that the Investigations was governed by the same outlook, and can only be fully understood in that light, arguing that the Investigations can best be understood as advancing an apophatic method. In order to do this I will outline Wittgenstein’s method, as described in the Investigations, and show how it has the same function within Wittgenstein’s overall perspective as the theory put forward in the Tractatus. My contention is that Wittgenstein’s over-riding concern, in both the Tractatus and Investigations, was to stop philosophy, or more precisely, metaphysics, going ‘beyond itself’ and usurping the role of religious language. I end with some criticisms of the understanding of mysticism that underlies Wittgenstein’s project, and offer some thoughts on the implications for both philosophy and theology.

A definition of the mystical

4. In order to be clear about Wittgenstein’s overall purpose, then, I first need to make a brief digression into the nature of mysticism, in order that there is some clarity about my use of the word for the purposes of this essay. William James, in ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’5, defines mysticism with four characteristics, two of which he considers to be the most important: a) ineffability: ‘it defies expression…no adequate report of its contents can be given in words’; and b) mysticism has a noetic quality, ‘states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect’6. Furthermore, James states that these mystical experiences are foundational for religious life7, and that they are opposed to rationalism8. He argues that rationalism ‘insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds [which] must consist of four things: (1) definitely statable abstract principles; (2) definite facts of sensation; (3) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and (4) definite inferences logically drawn.’ He continues, the ‘inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it…The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion.’ To summarise James’ position, one might say that the mystical provides knowledge which cannot be spoken of, and that it is opposed to the tendency in human thinking to prioritise the rational (ie it argues that religion is founded on mystical experience, not upon thinking). In this essay, when I use the word mystical, I am using it in this Jamesian sense.

5. I am using James as my model for understanding mysticism, not because James has the best understanding of what mysticism is (he does not) but for two other reasons: his understanding provides a close fit with Wittgenstein’s position, and there is some evidence to suggest a direct influence on Wittgenstein from James. It is clear that Wittgenstein read James, and was greatly impressed by his work, recommending him to Drury as ‘a real human being’9. There is a lack of clarity in dating when it was that Wittgenstein read James, but it was in the period before the First World War. In connection with this, it is worth pointing out that he once said to Drury that all his fundamental ideas came to him early in life10, and his fundamental concerns were always ethical and religious in character. He wrote to Russell that ‘This book does me a lot of good. I don’t mean to say that I will be a saint soon, but I am not sure that it does not improve me a little in a way in which I would like to improve very much: namely I think that it helps me to get rid of the Sorge [worry, anxiety] (in the sense in which Goethe used the word in the 2nd part of Faust)’.11 Monk explicitly links this description with a change in Wittgenstein’s religious sensibilities, noted by Russell in 1912, provoked (perhaps) by a play he watched in Vienna before that time. It therefore seems legitimate to use James, from the close conceptual fit between his work and Wittgenstein’s, and because there is good evidence of influence from James to Wittgenstein.

The mystical motivation of the Tractatus

6. The Tractatus is considered by many to be one of the major achievements of twentieth century philosophy. The main thrust of its argument concerns the picture theory of language. According to this conception, language mirrors reality, and can be used with sense to talk about reality, because there is a direct correspondence between the formal relationships within our language and the formal relationship between objects in the world. Wittgenstein was apparently inspired to this conception by an account of a trial in France, following a car accident, which involved a scale model of the road, vehicles, and individuals concerned. In just the same way as there was a one on one correspondence between the models and the real objects being discussed, so too is there a correspondence between a word and the object denoted by that word in reality. Furthermore, not only is there a correspondence between objects and words, but there is a correspondence between the logical form of the language, and the relationship between the objects being represented.

7. According to Wittgenstein’s conception, the world is the totality of facts12. These facts are understood (by us – ie we present facts to ourselves) as pictures, models of reality13 – a picture is a fact14. For a picture to be able to represent a fact, it must have something in common with the world, or reality, which is its form15. This form cannot itself be represented, it can only be displayed16 (it is therefore transcendent). This form is logical form, and the totality of facts exist within logical space17. A picture represents a possible situation, one that has a location within logical space (and can therefore be either true or false), and this representation is the sense of the picture18. In order to establish the truth of a picture, it must be compared with reality, for there are no pictures which are true a priori19. A picture which is correctly formed, a logical picture, is a thought20, and a thought is a proposition with a sense21 – that is, it is capable of representing a fact in logical space. The totality of propositions is language22, and propositions are the only forms of language which have sense23.

8. This understanding of language was intended to be restrictive: it restricted the ways in which language could be used with sense, that is, it put boundaries around what forms of language were to be considered meaningful. The only propositions which are capable of bearing sense are the propositions of natural science24: a proposition is a thought which can be perceived by the senses25, they represent the existence and non-existence of states of affairs26. Wittgenstein wrote: ‘The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, ie propositions of natural science – ie something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions’27. On this conception of the nature of language, only the propositions of natural science have sense; all other propositions, in particular, ‘most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works’, are lacking in sense, they are nonsense. For Wittgenstein, ‘Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language’28. In this way, Wittgenstein restricted the role of philosophy, and separated it from the natural sciences29, arguing that it ‘sets limits’30 to natural science. Philosophy ‘is not a body of doctrine but an activity’, which ‘aims at the logical clarification of thoughts’31.

9. The argument of the Tractatus continues beyond the limiting of meaningful language to the propositions of natural science, and states that the propositions of natural science are ultimately trivial – ‘propositions can express nothing that is higher’32. The principal topic which Wittgenstein discusses, which is set apart from the realm of the natural sciences, is logic. Logic is completely separate from reality: ‘all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing’33; ‘Logic is prior to every experience’34; ‘Not only must a proposition of logic be irrefutable by any possible experience, but it must also be unconfirmable by any possible experience’35. Logic must be separate to the conclusions of natural science, for ‘propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it – logical form’36. This logical form is mirrored in the language, it is not (cannot be) represented or stated in the language37 – ‘what can be shown, cannot be said’38. This distinction between showing and saying is at the heart of Wittgenstein’s argument, and this leads to the conclusion ‘Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental’39.

10. The division between showing and saying also governs his conception of philosophy as a whole, and is at the centre of the overall project of the Tractatus – ‘There are, indeed, things which cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.’40. Philosophy is able to set limits to what can be thought, and by so doing, set limits to what cannot be thought41; it ‘will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said’42. That is, propositions can say nothing about questions of value, for all propositions are of equal value43 (or equally value-less), they can express ‘nothing which is higher’44. Philosophy, according to the conception of the Tractatus, is an activity designed to limit what can be said, in order to gain clarity45 and by so doing, it must rule out the possibility of any propositions of value or meaning – ‘the sense of the world must lie outside the world…in it no value exists’46. All questions of ethics and aesthetics are ruled outside of the realm of philosophy, for ‘It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental’47. Wittgenstein continues ‘The solutions of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time’48 – and therefore outside the realm of what can be expressed in propositions, ‘How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world’49.

11. At the heart of Wittgenstein’s work in the Tractatus, therefore, is a concern with mysticism: ‘It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists’50. Wittgenstein has outlined a conception of logic and philosophy that prevents natural science from gaining a foothold on questions of value – ‘We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.’51 And this leads into the conclusion of the work: ‘What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence’52. The overall argument of the work is therefore to enjoin upon philosophers a silence about value, for nothing meaningful can be said about it. And this argument applies to the Tractatus itself; in the penultimate paragraph of the work Wittgenstein writes about using his work as a ladder, which needs to be thrown away after use. The reader ‘must transcend these propositions [of the Tractatus] and then he will see the world aright’53. Once the reader has realised that nothing meaningful can be said about value, or the problem of the meaning of life, then the reader is liberated to see the world clearly – they can gain an insight into the meaning of life, ‘(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 constitued that sense?)’54. The argument of the Tractatus can therefore be seen as a form of therapy, ‘to draw a limit to thought’, in order that the important questions of life, of ‘what is higher’ can then be clearly seen.

External evidence
12. It would help, at this point in my argument, to bring in some evidence for from outside the text to support this reading of the Tractatus. It is indisputable that Wittgenstein was passionately interested in religious questions whilst developing the arguments of the Tractatus: In his notebooks, written while involved on the Eastern Front in the First World War, there is a continual interleaving of remarks on logic and remarks about religion. Most important, however, is the letter which Wittgenstein wrote to Ficker, the publisher of the Tractatus: ‘The point of the book is ethical…my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, by my book, and I’m convinced that, strictly speaking, it can only be delimited in this way.’55 The limit to thought, which Wittgenstein is trying to draw, should therefore be seen as an attempt to inhibit rationalism, in something like the sense described by James. Wittgenstein continued in his letter to Ficker,, ‘All of that which many are babbling [about] today, I have defined in my book by remaining silent about it.’ The point which Wittgenstein is making here is well brought out by Engelmann: ‘A whole generation of disciples was able to take Wittgenstein for a positivist because he has something of enormous importance in common with the postitivists: he draws the line between what we can speak about and what we must be silent about just as they do. The difference is only that they have nothing to be silent about. Positivism holds – and this is its essence – that what we can speak about is all that matters in life. Whereas Wittgenstein passionately believes that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about. When he nevertheless takes immense pains to delimit the unimportant, it is not the coastline of that island which he is bent on surveying with such meticulous accuracy, but the boundary of the ocean.’56

13. To summarise this section, therefore, the argument is that Wittgenstein’s work in the Tractatus was governed by a mystical objective – to indicate knowledge which cannot be spoken of, and to put limits around the work of philosophy to stop it misleading people about the nature of that knowledge. The ‘two parts’ of the work to which Wittgenstein referred are these, and it is the second which dominates the text of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein is addressing the question of the meaning of life, questions of value and ethics. He wishes to say something about it, to indicate the solution, but part of his solution is the realisation that nothing can be said about questions of value. In this he is acting as a mystic, in the Jamesian sense – he is arguing that questions of value are ineffable, and that rationality (logic and natural science) is incapable of answering these questions. He is therefore engaged in putting limits to what can be said – in order that what cannot be said can be seen clearly. This distinction into two parts, of what can be said and what cannot be said, represents a ‘framework’. It is my contention that the method of philosophy developed in the Investigations was a reforming of the second part of Wittgenstein’s mystical objective. In the Investigations Wittgenstein was still concerned with putting limits to the project of philosophy, of stopping it going beyond the bounds of sense, and this was because he still believed that what was most important could not be stated, that questions of value were ineffable. So although the content of his philosophy changed, the framework within which that philosophy was held stayed the same.

The Method of the Investigations – Clarity, not Truth

14. As is well known, in the Investigations Wittgenstein develops a new account of the nature of language. However, it would be misleading to characterise this as a new theory about language, for that would be to give theory a certain foundationalist primacy which Wittgenstein is concerned to disavow. Rather, in the Investigations, it is more correct to think of Wittgenstein advancing a new method of doing philosophy, which has the investigation of language at its centre, rather than as simply providing a new theory of what language is and does.

15. Wittgenstein wrote57: ‘Philosophy can in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.’ The philosopher’s role, therefore, is essentially non-deductive; it is not concerned with offering proofs for particular positions, it is concerned with achieving clarity. Philosophical problems are the result of conceptual confusion and to meet these problems what is needed is conceptual clarification. The task of the philosopher is carefully to depict the relationships between different concepts. The concepts are the ones used in our everyday language, and it is the fact that the concepts are used in our language that gives them their importance. When philosophers ask how it is that we know that there is an external world, how we can be assured of the independent existence of other people and so on, this is evidence that the philosophers do not understand the words that they are using. In these examples, the philosopher’s questions appear to be grappling with profound truths, deep and important issues58. For Wittgenstein, however, these are not genuine questions, rather they are confusions felt as problems. The philosopher should be concerned with what sense it makes to say certain things, not whether something is true or false. What is needed is an overview (űbersicht) of the language being used, the concepts employed, and once this is done then the questions cease to trouble us. Wittgenstein at one point59 employs the analogy of a potato growing shoots if it is left in the dark. He considered that this was what happened in philosophy: philosophers were searching for the light, and just as the potato sent out tendrils which stopped as soon as they found light, so also philosophy built up great metaphysical works in an attempt to gain insight into how things were. What Wittgenstein wanted to do was to shed light on the potato to stop the tendrils from growing in the first place.

16. The easiest way to get a quick grasp of the mature Wittgenstein’s view of language is to talk about the difference between what he calls surface grammar and depth grammar. Surface grammar is the explicit content and form of a sentence: the division into nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on. It is what we normally think of as grammar. Depth grammar is the function that a sentence plays within the life of the person speaking the sentence. (For the purposes of this paper I am just going to consider the spoken word). In other words, an investigation of the depth grammar of a word will indicate the use that the words have. Think of the expression ‘I need some water’. This seems quite straightforward, but depending upon the context and the emphasis placed upon different words, it could have all sorts of different senses. For example, it could be a straightforward description of thirst, or an expression of the need for an ingredient in making bread, or preparing water colours. So far, so straightforward. But think of something more interesting. Perhaps it also contains elements of an insult: I am a mechanic, and I am working on fixing a car radiator. My assistant knows that I need some fluid, but passes me some left over orange squash: ‘I need some water’ – where the expression also means: why are you being so stupid? In all these examples, although the literal meaning of the word ‘water’ remains constant – referring to the fluid with the chemical composition H2O – the overall sense of the words, and therefore the meaning of the expression as it is actually used, varies greatly. In order to understand the words properly, we need to situate them into their natural context.

17. Now, for Wittgenstein, the point of this grammatical investigation was that you achieved clarity about any questions that are at issue. If there is a philosophical discussion, then the way to proceed is to conduct a grammatical investigation of the words and concepts that are in dispute. To look at how different words are used in their normal context. For Wittgenstein, philosophical problems are the result of conceptual confusion and to meet these problems what is needed is conceptual clarification. The task of the philosopher is carefully to depict the relationships between different concepts, in other words, to investigate their grammar. The concepts are the ones used in our everyday language, and it is the fact that the concepts are used in our language that gives them their importance. A grammatical investigation in the Wittgensteinian sense is one that looks at how words are used within a lived context. Hence there is the need to investigate the nature of language games and forms of life. This is a method, and it is with this method that Wittgenstein’s true genius lies. In contrast to almost all philosophers within the Western tradition Wittgenstein was not concerned with providing answers to particular questions. Rather, he wished to gain clarity about the question at issue, in order therefore to dissolve the controversy.

18. How then should a philosopher work? In any philosophical investigation, the examination of language has a preeminent role. For Wittgenstein many of our problems arise because we expect our language to be logical and clear, when in fact it is complex and opaque. We are misled by the grammar of particular concepts. For example, on the surface the following two sentences would appear to have the same grammar: ‘Birds flew by’; ‘Time flew by’. The first word in each sentence functions as a noun. For the first sentence, when we ask what the word ‘Birds’ means, we can point to an external reference and say ‘Those are birds’, and thus we can explain what the sentence refers to. But what of the second sentence – and a traditional philosophical question might well be ‘What is time’? We want to know what the word means, and because the word is a noun we look to see what it is that is referred to. Yet there is nothing to which we can point and say ‘That is time’. Thus philosophers are puzzled, and trying to answer questions such as this is the epitome of the ‘deep and meaningful question’ which a philosopher is meant to consider. And in developing an answer, a metaphysical system can be generated – like potato shoots looking for the light.

19. For Wittgenstein, though, this question, when asked by a philosopher, is literally without sense. Why do we assume that there must be something tangible to which the word refers? To follow Wittgenstein’s method, we should look at how the word is actually used in our language, and see if that is enlightening. Thus, when we look at the contexts in which we use the sentence ‘Time flew by’ they would tend to describe times when we are particularly absorbed in a piece of work, or where we are with friends having an enjoyable evening. The phrase has its meaning in that context, and only in that context. To then ask, ‘But what is time?’ is absurd. For Wittgenstein, what we must always have at the forefront of our minds is the contingent basis of the language that we use. Language has evolved for particular purposes, it has various distinct uses, and there is no necessity that there is a clear and logical basis for it60.

20. What Wittgenstein does, therefore, is try and get us to examine what language actually is, and to try and forget for a moment our preconceptions, or our desires for what we want language to be61. In setting up the different language games, for example at the beginning of the Investigations, Wittgenstein is attempting to raise our awareness of what language actually does in different situations. Wittgenstein wants to release philosophers from the ‘mental cramp’ that comes when we try and ask meaningless questions like ‘What is time?’

Concrete differences
21. For Wittgenstein the ability to be a good philosopher depended upon the ability to think up good analogies or counter-examples which allow for a new way of seeing connections (PI §122). For example, another way in which Wittgenstein tries to release us from ‘mental cramp’ is through an emphasis on the importance of the particular case. Wittgenstein is here trying to resist the urge to give an overarching theory, an explanation of different phenomena. The urge to give explanations to cover every case is actually neurotic, and it is this urge to generalise with which Wittgenstein takes task. Thus in PI §11-14 there is the discussion of language as like a tool box, with different tools to perform different functions. Why should there be something which all tools have in common? And why are you so concerned to find it? Wittgenstein is very concerned to ease the philosophical mind away from its tendency for abstract theorising, and to focus it on everyday details. Thus there can be no clear argument in the Investigations or else it could be summarised and generalised. The Investigations can be thought of as being an exercise book, or, as a form of therapy62. If you work through the book then you will be cured of the tendency to generalise.

22. This is something that Wittgenstein was very concerned with: the urge to find the essence of something, and then to generalise and explain it. Another element in Wittgenstein’s course of therapy is the notion of ‘family resemblance’. Consider games – board games, ball games, Olympic Games and so on. What is it that makes them all games? In fact there is no common element; rather there is a network of overlapping similarities which allow us to group these activities together. What is important is that the notion of family resemblance provides a new analogy with which to categorise things, one that doesn’t try and reduce games to a single vital constituent, without which a game would cease to be a game. We should focus on the differences involved with different games (that we normally would accept are games) in order to avoid coming up with a new definition of what a game is that would actually exclude various forms. Rather than trying to look below the surface, we should simply observe the practice, and accept that the practices cannot be shoe-horned into a particular intellectual framework – our minds need to switch off. Wittgenstein felt that this urge was the result of the obsessive worship of science in our culture, and the desire to apply scientific methods to other fields. Wittgenstein emphasises that this desire is often inappropriate and generates confusion – there is no essence of a game, of which actual games are examples. Rather, there are simply games that we play.

The role of philosophy
23. When describing language, Wittgenstein uses the analogy of an old city63, which has small twists and byways in the medieval centre, and as you move out through the suburbs the roads become straighter and the houses more standardised. What philosophy must do is provide an accurate road map, which can be a reliable guide as you travel around the city. (What it cannot do is build houses). Wittgenstein wrote64 ‘The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of the discovery.’ I understand the first part of this to be like pointing out that, in the centre of the city, there isn’t in fact a mountain, there is a market square. We do not need a grand metaphysical structure to tell us about time (for example) we need to see how people live, to observe how language is sewn into the way that they behave. The second part is the more interesting, and I understand it to mean that, if we are using the map and find that we crash, there is something wrong with the map. This is important because if we crash, we are forced to look up from the map and see what the state of play actually is. (I think that, for Wittgenstein, this can be related to his advice to most of his students not to study philosophy: it is more important to look around than to make maps – unless you were a genius at map making, like Wittgenstein).

24. The analogy can be developed further. In opposing the tendency to offer essentialist or scientific style explanations of phenomena, it is rather like map makers from the city resisting those from the suburbs, who are trying to say that the city centre is also built along long straight roads. When you use a suburban map, therefore, and bump your head, you realise that there is more to life than suburbia. I think that, in throwing us back from our mental maps and making us look at what actually takes place, what Wittgenstein is trying to do in the Investigations has the same motive as the Tractatus – to focus our attention on what is really important. To go back to the analogy, if we bump our heads in the town centre then it is probably because the road has diverged to go round a large obstacle – a cathedral, perhaps, or a football ground – places that have importance in people’s lives. I think that what Wittgenstein is trying to do is to get us to focus on what really matters in our life. He once said ‘What is the importance of studying philosophy if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?’ At each stage Wittgenstein in the Investigations is trying to provoke us to remember the bodily nature of our life, and the way in which our physical existence shapes our thinking.

25. Wittgenstein wrote that ‘Philosophy simply puts everything before us’65, and also that philosophy ‘leaves everything as it is’66. If we gain a clear view of what is at issue, and our problems are therefore dissolved (our minds cease to be troubled) then no new knowledge has been provided. It is not that we now know the truth, rather it is that we now have clear minds. Whatever it is that we knew before, we know now; the difference is that now our minds are content with that knowledge. The account of language in the Investigations can therefore be seen as being governed by a particular method; and this method is one that undermines traditional metaphysical speculation. It puts limits to the nature of philosophy, in an attempt to ‘show the fly the way out of the fly bottle’. At this point, we can bring the method of the Investigations into harmony with the purpose of the Tractatus. As said above, the purpose of the Tractatus was two fold: to indicate that we cannot speak of value (it can only be shown), and to put limits to the scope of philosophy. The method of the Investigations reforms the second part of that project: instead of the division between sense and nonsense, ruling out metaphysical speculation, we have the method of grammatical investigation – ‘Don’t think! Look!’ – which accomplishes the same mystical objective: ‘The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions that bring itself into question’67. In both the Tractatus and the Investigations Wittgenstein is putting limits to philosophical endeavour.

26. In the Tractatus, this objective is given a specific mystical focus, and it is clear that this was his purpose, as revealed within the text and in his letter to Ficker. However, there is no such clarity about the purpose of the method of the Investigations – Wittgenstein is now silent about mysticism. It could be argued that this mysticism is part of what Wittgenstein has outgrown in the Tractatus, and that he is now free of these ‘delusions’. In order to counter that argument, I need to look at Wittgenstein’s readings of JG Frazer’s Golden Bough. They are crucial for my endeavour in this paper, for as Fergus Kerr has argued, Wittgenstein’s philosophical method ‘originated in his objections to Frazer’s reductively rationalistic accounts of primitive religious practices.’68 That may be putting the case too strongly, but, as I hope to show below, it is clear that there are strong conceptual links between his approach to religion, as shown in his remarks on Frazer, and his approach to philosophical problems.

‘The character of depth’
27. Wittgenstein wrote his Remarks69 in two periods, the first around 1931, the second after 1948. These remarks have been described as one of the ‘most radically instructive sources for the critical comprehension of ritual’70, and they are certainly the most extensive comments that Wittgenstein compiled on religious belief. Frazer’s account of ritual in the Golden Bough was concerned to demonstrate an evolution in human consciousness from a state of magical belief, through a state of religious belief, to a final enlightened state of scientific belief. Wittgenstein took great exception to this, principally because it made religious beliefs look like an error, and thus portrayed religion as something that was essentially rational in character. Consider his remarks on the practice of sun worship; whereas on Frazer’s account the rite is a supposedly magical process, undertaken in order to summon the sun, Wittgenstein simply points out that ‘toward morning, when the sun is about to rise, rites of daybreak are celebrated by the people, but not during the night, when they simply burn lamps’71. In other words, it is not the case that the people of this culture were trying to manipulate the sun by their actions, in a pseudo-mechanical fashion. If that were the case then the community would try and apply this mechanism at a time when it was more useful to them. Instead, their rites of daybreak need to be seen as a form of worship, not science, and not as something reducible to science either. Wittgenstein wrote ‘I believe that the attempt to explain is already therefore wrong’, and later, ‘No opinion serves as the foundation for a religious symbol. And only an opinion can involve an error’72. Elsewhere73 he writes, ‘I believe that the characteristic feature of primitive man is that he does not act from opinions (contrary to Frazer).’ He invites us to consider other examples of similar actions: ‘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 aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied’74. For Wittgenstein, religious expression is something that is wholly natural, ‘One could almost say that man is a ceremonial animal…men also perform actions which bear a characteristic peculiar to themselves, and these actions could be called ritualistic actions… the characteristic feature of a ritualistic action is not at all a view, an opinion’75. On Wittgenstein’s account, then, people undertake ritual actions in order to appease something like a religious instinct, not because of their acceptance of a particular theory. In all these remarks Wittgenstein is trying to provoke an awareness of the way in which large areas of human life are not founded upon reason or theory, and here, the correspondence with James’ attack on rationalism is manifest.

28. The way in which Wittgenstein develops this understanding is by talking about ‘depth’. In his consideration of the Beltane fire festival, Wittgenstein wrote76 ‘Besides these similarities, what seems to be most striking is the dissimilarity of all these rites. It is a multiplicity of faces with common features which continually emerges here and there. And one would like to draw lines connecting these common ingredients. But then one part of our account would still be missing, namely that which brings this picture into connection with our own feelings and thoughts. This part gives the account its depth.’ Then, later, when considering the part of the ritual which involved a make believe thrusting of a man into the fire, ‘It is now clear that what gives this practice depth is its connection with the burning of a man’. The important thing about a ritual action, that which allows it to have the character of a ritual action, is this dimension of depth. Depth is the engagement with a person at a non-rational, non-theoretical level – a response which is not consciously mediated by our intelligence. Wittgenstein develops this idea further when he considers the distribution of pieces of a specially baked cake – the recipient of one particular piece is the person who is to be sacrificed, ‘We see here something that looks like the last vestige of drawing lots. And, through this aspect, it suddenly gains depth’77. Wittgenstein considers a historical explanation for this ritual, but for him such an explanation is thin, ‘I want to say: the deep, the sinister, do not depend on the history of the practice having been like this….the deep and the sinister do not become apparent merely by our coming to know the history of the external action, rather it is we who ascribe them from an inner experience’78.

29. Before the remark on man as a ceremonial animal referred to above, Wittgenstein wrote

‘How could fire or the similarity of fire to the sun have failed to make an impression on the awakening mind of man? But perhaps not “Because he can’t explain it” (the foolish superstition of our time) – for will an explanation make it less impressive?… I don’t mean that just fire must make an impression on every one. Fire no more than any other phenomenon, and one thing will impress this person and another that. For no phenomenon is in itself particularly mysterious, but any of them can become so for us, and the characteristic feature of the awakening mind of man is precisely the fact that a phenomenon comes to have meaning for him.’

Thus for Wittgenstein, the explanation for ritual lies not in a mistaken hypothesis, which falsely elevates rationality, but in the way in which a rite can be perceived as ‘deep’, ie as something which provokes a sense of awe and connectedness, or a sense of the transcendent. As Fergus Kerr has put it, ‘What it is that is deep, about religious rituals as well as magic, is evidently that they bring us into significant relationship with these earthly mundane phenomena.’79 What is distinctive, then, about a religious ritual or belief, is the dimension of depth that is involved, and by this Wittgenstein is thinking of the way in which such a belief is intimately connected with the life of the religious participant, and the way in which the activity provides meaning for the participant. These are not activities which ‘proceed from ratiocination’, rather they are activities which are rooted in our biological and instinctual inheritance.

Metaphysics as a kind of magic
30. At this point, we can make a clear link with the method of philosophy that Wittgenstein develops in the Investigations, for it seems that there is a connection between the depth of a religious ritual, and the depth involved in a grammatical investigation: the ‘depth’ is the same thing in both cases, indicating the way in which the activities have a mystical aspect – a degree of meaning which cannot be articulated or theorised80. As §111 of the Investigations puts it ‘The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language – Let us ask ourselves, why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (and that is what the depth of philosophy is).’ In both cases Wittgenstein is looking to wean us away from our predilection for theory-driven explanations, which allocate a foundational role to rationality. Neither language nor religious ritual are based upon a particular conception or theory, they are simply dimensions of human existence, they shape what it means to BE human. As such they do not stand in need of theoretical justification: language does not proceed from ratiocination81.

31. The link with his wider philosophy becomes clear when we consider some remarks that Wittgenstein wrote at the same time as his remarks on Frazer, which are worth reproducing in full82:

‘I now believe that it would be right to begin my book with remarks about metaphysics as a kind of magic.
But in doing this I must not make a case for magic nor may I make fun of it.
The depth of magic should be preserved. –
Indeed, here the elimination of magic has itself the character of magic.
For, back then, when I began talking about the ‘world’ (and not about this tree or table), what else did I want but to keep something higher spellbound in my words?’

32. There is much that needs to be unpacked in these remarks83, but for the purposes of this essay it is enough to point out that Wittgenstein sees metaphysics as having a similar function to magical rites (ie they engage with us at a deep level) and that ‘back then’ – ie in the Tractatus – Wittgenstein was trying ‘to keep something higher spellbound’. Rather like the potato shoots searching for the light the metaphysical systems are seeking to appease a thirst for depth – the ‘immortal longings’ that Kerr describes in his recent book. It is in this sense that metaphysics is a kind of magic, for the metaphysical systems are the intellectual equivalent of the rites considered by Frazer – they can provoke a sense of awe and reverence, they engage with our need for the transcendent: ‘And what’s more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because in so far as people think they can see the ‘limits of human understanding’ they believe of course that they can see beyond these’84. Wittgenstein saw the search for an overarching metaphysical explanation as something which could not be sustained philosophically. However, at the same time he saw the great metaphysical systems of the past as among the noblest works of mankind85, akin to religious art: metaphysics understood as a poetic or magical ‘this is where I stand (and this is how it looks from here)’ is ultimately religious, a form of theology, and it allows for a proper recognition and validation of our human nature which does not prioritise ratiocination. It is in this sense that ‘all that philosophy can do is destroy idols’ for an idol is that which is put into the place of God and given divine authority, whether a golden calf or a metaphysical system. By limiting, from within, what philosophy can actually do Wittgenstein is denying any metaphysical system that stature. Metaphysical systems cannot provide final answers for ‘the questions that trouble us’, because the form of ‘objective truth’ which they are attempting to attain is impossible – in just the same way that it is impossible to say in an aesthetic question that, for instance, Rembrandt’s portraits are more ‘true’ than Caravaggio’s.

Wittgenstein’s real need
33. Wittgenstein’s purpose, throughout his philosophical career, from the Tractatus through the Investigations, to On Certainty, was to show philosophy that it has limits, and that it cannot go beyond them. In doing this, he hoped to make clear what the status of philosophy was, and why it was of ultimately little importance86. It is in this light that I think we should interpret PI §108:

‘…but what becomes of logic now? Its rigour seems to be giving way here. – But in that case doesn’t logic altogether disappear? – For how can it lose its rigour? Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigour out of it. – The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination around. (One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)’

The ‘real need’ which Wittgenstein was always concerned to meet was the need to stop philosophy going beyond its limits, and confusing people about the nature of value. The ‘crystalline purity’ of the Tractatus needs to be removed by changing the focus of the enquiry, onto the way in which language actually works, but keeping constant the mystical outlook which prevails over the whole.

34. In his lecture on ethics in 1929 (when he was given carte blanche to discuss whatever he wished and chose ethics because he wanted to talk about something which had general importance) Wittgenstein argues

‘not only can no description that I can think of therefore do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but…I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the grounds of its significance. That is to say: I see clearly now that these nonsensical expressions [the Tractatus] were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was of their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world, that is to say, beyond significant language. My whole tendency, and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk ethics or religion was to run against the boundaries of language.’87

Wittgenstein is rejecting the method of the Tractatus because the account in the Tractatus is still one that is dominated by an intellectual approach, wholly governed by theory, which has a ‘crystalline purity’. Moreover, he was still trying to say something about value, he was still trying to capture the essence of the mystical in words – ‘to keep something higher spellbound’. In the Investigations, not only has the understanding of language been changed to something deeper and more human, but Wittgenstein himself has stopped trying to say anything, to ‘conjure up’ something by his words, and he remains much more authentically – mystically – silent.

Conclusion

35. In this essay I hope to have shown that Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook was governed by a commitment to mysticism, understood in the Jamesian sense. In both the Tractatus and the Investigations Wittgenstein is attempting to put limits to the realm of philosophical enquiry, in order that what is of most value – ‘the higher’ – is then able to be seen clearly. He is opposed to an over-emphasis on, and mis-application of, scientific modes of enquiry – rationalism. His philosophy changed when he realised that the outlook of the Tractatus lacked depth, and was still a metaphysical work – he was trying to ‘whistle it’. The Investigations is a much more successful and rigourous attempt to achieve the same end: the undermining of metaphysical speculation and the attainment of an authentic mystical silence.

36. It seems to me that there are two lines of enquiry which would be fruitful for further investigation:

a) Is the Jamesian understanding of mysticism satisfactory? James can be criticised on philosophical grounds, but also (much more interestingly) on religious grounds, for misrepresenting the character of mystical discourse. If James did have the determining influence on Wittgenstein which I suggest, it would be worth considering if flaws in James were echoed in Wittgenstein. Furthermore, does the method of the Investigations stand independently of the mystical perspective which formed the framework for its development? Are there ways in which Wittgenstein’s understanding of language, particularly with respect to religious discourse, is compromised by his apophatic stance? I would argue that Wittgenstein’s method can stand independently of his mystical perspective, but it is a moot point;

b) If the method of the later Wittgenstein is accepted as valid, what is the status of religious doctrine, especially within Christianity, with its emphasis on creeds and doctrinal formulations? It seems clear to me that an acceptance of Wittgenstein’s method throws open a new way of understanding the creeds which is both more devotionally fruitful, and more in tune with the Church Fathers, but in any case, a simple statement that ‘the creed is true’ seems impossible, after Wittgenstein. Fergus Kerr has written that ‘The history of theology might even be written in terms of periodic struggles with the metaphysical inheritance’88 and it does seem as if there is something intrinsic to metaphysical endeavour which is inimical to the practice of theology, certainly on a post-Wittgensteinian account of metaphysics.

Sam Norton
Summer 2000
Heythrop College
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This bibliography lists all works that I have read in the course of researching the paper. Not every work proved to be relevant for my thesis. I would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude firstly to Dr Brian Clack, for his teaching as well as his writings, and also to Dr Stephen Law.

Works by Wittgenstein:
Notebooks 1914-1916, Second Edition, Ed G H von Wright and GEM Anscombe, University of Chicago Press, 1979
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP), Routledge, 1995
Philosophical Investigations (PI), Blackwell 1991
On Certainty, Blackwell 1993
Culture and Value, Blackwell 1994
Philosophical Occasions, ed Klagge and Normann, Hackett 1993. (This contains the Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, the Lecture on Ethics and ‘Philosophie’.)

Commentary on Wittgenstein
Ray Monk, Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius, Vintage 1990
Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: a Religious Point of View?, Routledge, 1993
Fergus Kerr, Theology After Wittgenstein, Blackwell, 1986
Paul Johnston, Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, Routledge, 1989
D Z Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, Macmillan 1993
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, Elephant Paperbacks 1996 (1973)
Brian R Clack, Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion, Macmillan 1999
Brian R Clack, An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion, Edinburgh University Press, 1999
Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief, Blackwell 1991
M O’C Drury, The Danger of Words and writings on Wittgenstein, Thoemmes Press 1996
PMS Hacker, Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy, Blackwell 1996
Fergus Kerr, Wittgenstein’s Kink, included in Beyond Secular Reason, ed Philip Blond, Routledge, 1997

Other works cited
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Penguin Classics 1985
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Does Anglo-Catholicism have a future?

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Elizaphanian

I’ve written before about where I think the CofE is headed (see especially here, here, here and, most simply, here). And I’m just wondering… I wonder what future the TEC-sympathetic clergy and congregations have in the CofE? Which is really one way of asking: what is the future for those of us who are Anglo-Catholic in theology and worship and spirituality, but who neither want to go to Rome nor embrace liberal-ish evangelicalism?

I read this post a while back, which made me think a lot. I know the church and people concerned (close to where I did my curacy) and the vitality of that sort of Anglo-Catholicism has surely vanished – rightly, on many things.

If I were to dream up a recipe for ‘my’ sort of Anglo-Catholicism, what would it look like?

At the heart – and what would qualify it as ‘Anglo-Catholic’ – would be the three-fold emphasis flowing from the theology of the Incarnation. That means: a eucharistically-centred spirituality (worship); a commitment to the orthodox creeds (doctrine); and a passionate engagement with the world, seeking social justice (service). These three I see as aspects of a single commitment, that is, logically, you can’t have one without the other two; or, at least, you can’t have full-bodied versions of one without the others, as they each support the other and give them purpose, focus and strength.

Theologically, it means a commitment to the catholic faith, understood in the traditional way as ‘what has been believed everywhere by all Christians’ – which I know is an ideal that has never been actualised, but ideals are important. In practice what this means is an acceptance of the teachings promulgated by the united councils of the church, ie through the first millenium. It involves reference to and reverence for the teachings of the church fathers as holding great weight for how we are to understand the faith. It means classical theism and an embrace of Christian mysticism. It means the approval of icons and incense – worship embracing all the senses!

With respect to the church in England, it means that we see the Anglican church as a part of the catholic church – not a sect but simply the gathering of believers in this territory. It means not claiming any doctrinal distinctives, nor any exclusive possession of the truth. It means rejecting the claims of foreign popes, and certainly the Modern doctrinal corruptions associated most especially with Vatican 1. No to Marian dogmas, but certainly an acceptance of Marian devotion such as hymns to the Theotokos.

It means a profound scepticism about the established nature of the church, and a settled intent to seek disestablishment in so far as that pursuit does not undermine more immediately important goals. It means putting flesh on the bones of ‘episcopally led, synodically governed’; that is, obedience to our bishops is still a virtue ardently to be sought, but it would be better if the bishops were elected.

It means – in the words of +Richard Chartres when he once gave a charge to ordinands – not getting caught up with the ‘festoons‘ of the faith: particular manners of dress or address; and also abandoning the whole panoply of eucharistic devotions that derive from the theological corruptions symbolised by Corpus Christi.

It feels good to get all that off my chest. However I suspect that, sadly, those who share this understanding are doomed to live out our ministries in a state of exile.

TBTE20101012

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Elizaphanian

Something about the new Bishop of Southwark
Last minutes with ODEN (dog lovers prepare to cry)
Stanley Cavell’s philosophical improvisations
13 theses on writing
What classical theism actually is (“if one hasn’t grappled seriously with the arguments of the great classical theists, then one simply cannot claim to have dealt a serious blow to theism as such. Not even close.”)
The case for living with uncertainty
As Western Civilisation lies dying
If you build it (cycle-friendly transport) they will come
Verifying the Export-Land model (people really should become aware of this…)
Opinion warning signs

Idolatry and Science – chapter 3 of my book

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Elizaphanian

(Shorter – 4500 words – and easier to read than the transcript!)

Chapter three – idolatry

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6)

“Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 19)

Jesus repeats and amplifies this when he says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22.37)

If this is the first and greatest commandment – so that, if we fail to keep this commandment, we fail in our duty as Christians – what does it mean? How are we to keep it? Answering those questions is the burden of this chapter.

I would like to begin an explanation by talking about an obscure rail road foreman from the nineteenth century by the name of Phineas Gage1. Gage was working in the Vermont area clearing land for the building of a new rail road when he had a rather dramatic accident – a tamping rod (used in the controlled explosions) was propelled up through his head, entering at the eye and leaving through the top of his skull. Those who were with him thought that it must have been a fatal accident, but Gage survived. That is, the physical form of Gage survived, for following the accident his personality seemed to be completely different. Whereas previously he had been sober and responsible, now he could not hold down a job and was delinquent and uncouth. He ended up being part of PT Barnum’s travelling circus, where he was exhibited – with the tamping rod – as a modern miracle.

According to a modern neuroscientist’s reconstruction, what had happened to Gage was that his capacity to exercise judgement had been destroyed. Consider what happens in a game of chess. There are a vast number of moves that are possible at any one point in the game and a competent player will immediately discount some of those moves as being ones likely to cause a defeat. Unlike with a computer, this is very rarely done on the basis of a full analysis of all the permutations that might follow (our brains are not that efficient); rather it is done on the basis of a judgement about what constitutes good and bad moves.

In the same way, in order to function in our normal, daily human lives we have to exercise judgement regularly, from when we get up in the morning, through all our daily interactions and deciding when to go to bed. Without that capacity to judge and decide we relinquish something essential. Antonio Damasio describes dealing with one patient [suffering from anasognosia#] and trying to establish a time for a next appointment. The patient deliberated for over half an hour about the various different options and only concluded the analysis when Damasio himself expressed a clear preference for one date.

The particular area of the brain that was damaged in Gage, and with the patients suffering from anasognosia, related to the ability of the brain to process information from the body, especially the viscera – in other words, our emotional reactions. Damasio writes that ‘it makes no sense to exclude emotions from our conception of the mind’. What seems to be happening in some neuroscientific circles today is a return to the classical understanding of human understandings and cognition – that our emotions are an essential part of the process, that our emotions are the means by which we evaluate information and make decisions. This truth was obscured by the Enlightenment perspective that reason and emotion are necessarily opposed, and that the path to Enlightenment lay in repressing and controlling our emotions wherever possible. (In contrast to this the great spiritual traditions have always been concerned with educating our emotions – a very different thing.)

What I am describing here can be easily shown. Compare these two statements:
a) your spouse is a teacher;
b) your spouse is an adulterer.

Most normal people would react differently to these two statements, simply because one is more ‘value laden’ than the other. In other words, we care about some things more than other things. In terms of deciding what is most important in life, our reasoning can’t give us answers on its own. We have to involve our whole bodies, our whole souls – and hence, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul”.

Now two analogies, to bring out what I am trying to describe. First, imagine a map, imagine that it represents our understanding of the world, with different areas of the map corresponding to different areas of our lives, and some areas are given more space than others – so our immediate families get more space than distant relatives and acquaintances. That might be a normal map. Now imagine that someone who is really, really interested in castles is forming their map, and on their map there is a tremendous area given over to castles. If we were able to compare maps, this map would stick out because it had so much space given over to this one element, emphasised well beyond a true proportion. In other words, their map is distorted – this person actually understands reality differently, as if they were wearing lenses that blurred their vision.

The second analogy is of a spider’s web, whereby the spider’s web is the map of an area. There was a series of experiments where spiders were fed certain substances and they saw what difference it made to the web they spun. A normal good spider’s web is fairly uniform, regular and it covers the area where the spider is trying to catch food. So that’s that’s a true spider’s web, it’s a sensible, realistic spider’s web. However, spiders that had been fed different substances all had things wrong with them. The spider fed LSD spun a disconcertingly perfect web; the one fed marijuana did not complete the web; the one fed caffeine had the worst web of all. This is a good symbol for what can go wrong when our judgement is impaired.

The point is this: we can think of our reasoning ability, our logical processing ability, as being like a blanket spread over our emotional understandings. If the emotional understandings change, then the reasons follow it, the shape of the reason will follow it. Our emotional life is the bedrock and our reason simply flows over the top. There is a wonderful book by Martha Nussbaum, an American philosopher, called “Upheavals of Thought,” where she goes through great classical literature describing how this happens. It is something which is very much a current interest of contemporary philosophy and neuroscience. But it’s not a new insight.

The philosopher David Hume once said that “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” So reason is a tool; our logic, our reason is a tool, and it rests upon our emotional constitution – and our emotional constitution is concerned with values, with what is perceived as important. Some things are perceived as more important than others, and we react differently due to those emotional differences.

Now I can explain what idolatry is. Idolatry is making something more important than it really is. Simple as that. Contemporary theologians have a phrase about “making the penultimate, ultimate”. It comes from a mid twentieth century theologian called Paul Tillich, and this was the academic insight which I grasped when I was an atheist (I am sure it was one of the major reasons why I moved away from atheism because once you realise what idolatry is, then of course you don’t want to make things more important than they really are and logically, once you have accepted that you can’t get away from the reality of God). Making something which is penultimate, ultimate, making something which is important but not the most important, into the most important thing – this is what idolatry is. It is getting our priorities wrong.

For the faithful, God is the single most important thing in life. Moreover, if God is at the centre then everything else falls into its proper place. This is not an insight restricted to Christianity, or even restricted to Judaism and Islam as well. The beginning of the Tao Te Ching says “The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao” If it can be named or described it is not the ultimate. Anything which we can specify in words, anything that we can point to is not the ultimate. We cannot capture God. God always eludes us. Our brains cannot capture Him.

One abstract rule for this is: “God is never the member of a class.” We can think of a class of objects, a class of things which are green, a class of things which are wonderful, a class of things which exist. God is never the member of a class. So in strict terms, God does not exist. We have got a very good idea of what it means to exist: we have myriad objects within the universe as examples. However, God is not an object within the universe. God’s existence underlies everything else, but to say strictly philosophically speaking that God exists is to go beyond what we can actually say. This is very important: God is always beyond us.

A different way of putting this is to say: only the holy can see truly, it is only the saints who can see the world clearly. In so far as our hearts are set on God then we see the truth. If we don’t have our hearts set on God and God alone then our vision of the world is more or less distorted. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

What are the ways in which this idolatry can form? Monolatry is when you worship one thing, that is, give highest value to it, and that one thing then becomes the most important thing in your world and everything else has to shift around it. You might be an absolutely dedicated football fan and you have to go to every match that your team plays. You might be obsessive about a television serial and insist on watching every episode no matter what else is happening. Once you have grasped what this is you can see it everywhere. The golden calf is a wonderful image for this. For most people, it’s not as clear and you have polytheism, many gods. It might be – oh, my family has this much importance, my work has this much importance, my friendships have this much importance, my pleasures in life, this has this much importance and there is nothing beyond them. This is where most people actually live, navigating between different competing interests, muddling along, but there is nothing which integrates them. There is nothing which puts them all in their proper place and actually allows them to flourish fully, to be fully human. Another option is simply chaos. Which is the position that Phineas Gage ends up in. They are driven by the momentary impulse, it becomes a biological thing. Rather like the dogs in ‘Up’ whenever a squirrel is mentioned, the dog will just pursue whatever the impulse is. Again, there are many people who function like that.

Everyone has a hierarchy of values – the truth is that everyone worships something. It’s impossible to be human and not have a sense of some things being more important that others, everyone builds their life around something. Now it could be that they build their life around various things, like polytheism, but everyone has a sense of what’s important. This is the sense in which it is true that everyone has a religion, and some religions are not as helpful, as holy as others. To quote Bob Dylan, “You’ve gotta serve somebody.”

Where the value system is severely distorted it is often described using the language of addiction – a clear example is an heroin addict – the process of being addicted to something where the life, the wider richness of life gets drained out and all that the junkie can do is think about their next fix. They gear their life around getting the money to get their next high. That is a very good image of what idolatry is. It doesn’t have to be a physical addiction, it can be a mental addiction as well.

An important truth about idols is that idols give what they promise. If an idol is worshipped, the idol will grant the worshippers’ requests. Heroin, to take that example, does give a tremendous high – it gives what it promises – but it takes away life in exchange. That is what an idol is. Mammon, for example, the god of money or wealth (an idol which Jesus talks about which is still very prevalent in our society) – if you worship Mammon, if you structure your life around Mammon, you will gain wealth. That is a spiritual, practical law, if you worship wealth, you will become wealthy. The kick is that you will lose your life in the process. Your life will be drained away. For what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?

Jeremiah: “Everyone is senseless and without knowledge, every goldsmith is shamed by his idols, his images are flawed they have no breath in them, they are worthless, the objects of mockery and when their judgement comes, they will perish. But he who is the portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the maker of all things including Israel the tribe of his inheritance, the Lord Almighty is His name.”

In other words, if you worship the living God you gain life, life in all its fullness. This is what Jesus came to grant us. To reveal the living God and to give us that life, life in abundance, which is His intention for us. However, if you worship any other God, you will get what those gods can provide, and they will take your life in exchange; they will destroy life. It is only the living God who grants life, that is why the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said: “We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered the problems of life remain completely untouched.”

How is it, then, that in a culture with such a long and profound Christian history, we have forgotten about idolatry? In a word: science. Science is the predominant idol of our age. There are two ways in which science can become a idol. One is to say that scientific truth is the only truth, and that’s called positivism. This approach took shape in the nineteenth century but it is implicit in much that goes on for a hundred years before then. Positivism argues that only things which can be established by reason or by empirical proof and investigation are valid knowledge. Anything else gets kicked out. Hume, who in other ways is quite sensible, says, “If we take take in our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” That’s the attitude of positivism.

The other way of turning science into an idol is to say that scientific truth is the most important truth, to say that what we gain from these processes of scientific investigation, this is more important that anything else. This is actually the idolatry of fundamentalism, and it has had a pernicious effect upon Christian faith. It is not commonly understood that Biblical fundamentalism springs from the scientific revolution, because it interprets the Bible through a scientific lens. The Bible is put through a meat grinder because what you want out from the end is a scientific sausage. Particular forms of knowledge are seen as higher than others – science is seen as the most valuable – and so, in order to preserve the value of the Bible it has to be seen as the most authoritative scientific text. That is what fundamentalism is, that is how it functions.

Wittgenstein again: “People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians etc., to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them, that doesn’t occur to them.” In other words, scientific knowledge and awareness, compared to the knowledge and awareness that can come through understanding poetry or art or great fables and stories, one form of knowing is considered vastly more important than the other. In fact narrative is the most important. Our way of telling stories to each other is the means by which our emotional bedrock is formed. This is why the Old Testament says to the people of Israel that they must tell their children this story about the Lord leading them out of Egypt, why Passover is important, “why is this night greater than any other night”, and they tell the story. This is why we have the Bible as it is, because the Bible is a story. It’s not because we can extract scientific facts from it, it is because this story governs our story. That is how and why the Bible is inspired by God. This is the story of God’s actions in the world, within which we fit and that is why the Bible is the supreme text.
Romans 12 v 32: “Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.”

This idolatry of science is something that our culture has recognised repeatedly, but the criticism has only been able to be voiced at the margins of society, amongst the poets and playwrights – those whose academic credibility is not strong. The mythology of Faust developed when the scientific revolution was taking off, and it captures the truth: Faust sells his soul to the devil in order to gain some scientific knowledge and only realises at the end that it was a bad bargain. Or the the legend of Frankenstein, or any of the myriad stories when you have got this white-coated mad scientist, “Aha, I’m going to discern the truth of the world”, and terrible consequences follow. They are all describing consequences of an idolatry, where science is given more value, more importance than it deserves, and life becomes damaged or destroyed in consequence.
In the film “The Matrix”, the heroes are kept within a machine world. They have electrodes implanted in their brain which give them the illusion of living in a real world and our hero, Neo, breaks out from this. In order to break out from it (because he realises that something is wrong) he goes to see Morpheus who is the terrorist, who the authorities are trying to correct and suppress. Neo has this conversation with Morpheus, and Morpheus says: “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain but you feel it. You have felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

We know that there is something profoundly wrong with our world, but we have not been able to put our finger on it. What’s wrong with our world is that it is profoundly idolatrous, it is not built upon the love of the living God. Our society, the things which our society values and esteems and rewards, these are all idols. None of them in themselves are intrinsically wrong, Mammon, for example, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with material wealth, God promises the Israelites the Promised Land which is a land flowing with milk and honey – this is a vision of material wealth. But our society has elevated material wealth above God; it has been given too much importance. Now because our society has forgotten God, has turned it’s back on God, we are living in a profoundly distorted and dehumanising system, and in so far as we live and share in this society, we are sharing in that distorted life, and deep down we know that it’s wrong. Do you know what I’m talking about?

I am talking about the idolatry of science – that scientific knowledge is seen as either the only valid knowledge, or the most important knowledge. Both of those attitudes are idolatrous and destroy life. However, what we need to remember about idols is that they begin life as something good, they have simply been elevated beyond their proper importance. So what is the original goodness and holiness in science? I would say that the holiness in science rests upon setting the emotional desires of the investigator to one side. There is a Greek word apatheia – think of the word apathy, which is what that word has now come down to us as. It means being uncommitted or uninvolved emotionally – an emotional distancing. This happens in science because the scientist is pursuing the truth about the world. What they are after, what they are trying to attend to, is what the world is actually like – not what they want the world to be like. So a true scientist will put their own desires to one side, they will submit to the process of scientific method, in order to pursue the truth. This requires a discipline, a training. You have to be trained in the attitudes of science, you have to learn what I call the apathistic stance. In order to become a scientist you have to be trained in how to investigate. I remember my ‘O’ Level Physics and Chemistry, where the scientific method was spelt out: this is what you do in order to ensure that your own biases, your own emotional desires, are put to one side. There was a particular method, a process in order to investigate things.
Now this is a spiritual discipline, it is a form of holiness. It is one of the core spiritual disciplines about keeping our own emotions and desires in check. I talked earlier about ‘only the holy can see truly’, and that is the Christian expression of this spiritual truth, but there are parallels in other faiths. In Buddhism, for example, this teaching is much clearer than it is in most forms of Christianity – in Buddhism it is described as the elimination of desire, for they see desire as the root of all suffering. The Buddhist’s aim is ‘a perfect state of non-attachment’, to become completely unattached to the world and when you gain this state of being unattached to the world, you see the world clearly. (By way of a side track, Christianity is about the formation of desire, it is not about the elimination of desire.)

Let us return to the apathistic stance. Remember: emotions are cognitive. In other words we learn things about the world through our emotional reactions, and our emotional reactions can teach us. This process of apatheia, the apathistic stance, is a way of learning more about the world, of learning in particular more about the physical and natural world, because the physical and natural world doesn’t really depend upon our emotional reaction to it. Our emotional reactions do not govern the truth. As with all tools, however, we need to learn how to use them properly – and this has not happened with regard to science. This process of emotionally disengaging from what we are trying to discover in order to discern more truth, learning how to put our own desires to one side, this discipline is a tool, and we need to learn how to use the tool, how to put it into a broader framework, a broader vision. We are not here to worship the tool. That is what the idolatry of science is. When Positivism says that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge, this is worshipping the tool: it is the intellectual equivalent of walking around with a hammer chanting “this hammer’s going to save me, this hammer’s going to save me.” Once you understand it, it is obviously ridiculous behaviour. The use of a tool requires power over a tool and the ancient language which talks about how to gain power over a tool is the language of virtue (virtue simply means power). We need to change our desires, our will, and become virtuous again. We need to will towards the highest virtue: the love of God.
What the prophets teach is that God doesn’t allow idolatry to continue forever, that he will bring to an end such idolatry in wrath and fury. Our present way of life cannot continue, exponential growth within a finite environment cannot continue. This is good, for our present way of life is a terrible, terrible pestilence on creation. Our way of living – the western way of life, with its excess consumerism, all the things which it holds up to be of value – this way of life destroys life. The vision of Christian life, of full humanity, is that there is a way of life shown to us by Christ which allows us to be all that God wants us to be. However, in order to get to that Promised Land, we need to see and perceive the truth about the present way of the world, in order to reject it, in order to say this is false, this is idolatrous, this destroys life – and I choose life.

“I have set before you this day a choice, choose life that you and your descendants may live.” That is what God says through Moses to the Israelites in the desert. I think we have to hear those words today. The crisis which will break our civilisation down has begun.

Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Elizaphanian

Excellent, highly recommended.

I now want to write blogposts about global warming, on the having of too many opinions, and why Sarah Palin will make an excellent President.

Maybe later…

Film notes

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Elizaphanian

Big Fish – 4.5/5 – rather wonderful, though not at all the family entertainment that I was expecting (children were ushered out from the film half way through…)
Pandorum – 4/5 – better than expected, a collage of classic sf tropes
Horton Hears a Who – 5/5 – tho’ I haven’t read the book, just before watching it I read Michael Connelly’s ‘Chasing the Dime’ which features the motifs. I want to say ‘My name is Sam and I approve this message!’
Sherlock Holmes – 4/5 – great fun, look forward to the sequel

I also rewatched A History of Violence the other day. It’s climbing into my ‘top ten all time favourites’…

PS – am enjoying Dexter series 4, and Fringe has returned! Saw the first episode of series 3 last night (thank you Sky+) – all sorts of interesting paths lined up to follow.

Friendship and faith

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Elizaphanian

Had a good session continuing to explore the Rule of St Benedict last Sunday, this time looking at what conversatio morum means.

The language of ‘should’ and ‘ought’

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Elizaphanian

I think I’ve written about this before but can’t think where…

When I hear the words ‘should’ and ‘ought’ alarm bells go off. So often the language is used to reinforce social pressure to do certain things – because that is the way that the community does them, it reflects what the community expects and considers “right”.

Christians need to exercise extreme caution when dealing with such worldliness. I use this corrective: when considering an action that ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to be done, try to rephrase it in terms of the great commandments, ie:
– will this action give glory to God, or
– will this action show love to a neighbour?

If the answer is ‘No’ then the Christian is free from any obligation, no matter how strenuous the efforts to say ‘you should be doing this!!’

Sadness

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Elizaphanian

A cartoon (from here) that really spoke to me. This is a good relevant article.

And then there is this (found here):

The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross … Here we touch the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future. It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest … To come to Christ is to come to the crucified and risen One. The life-giving apostle embodies in himself the crucifixion of Jesus in the sufferings and struggles he endures as he is faithful and obedient to his Lord. So Paul preaches the crucified and risen Jesus, and he embodies the dying of Jesus in his struggles to further point to the Savior. His message is about the cross and his life is cruciform, shaped to look like the cross … I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence.

Elizaphanian

“I come not from Heaven, but from Essex.”

Monthly Archives: October 2010

WITTGENSTEIN’S MYSTICAL METHOD

Does Anglo-Catholicism have a future?

TBTE20101012

Idolatry and Science – chapter 3 of my book

Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)

Film notes

Friendship and faith

The language of ‘should’ and ‘ought’

Sadness