{"id":3247,"date":"2006-10-21T14:19:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-21T14:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=3247"},"modified":"2006-10-21T14:19:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-21T14:19:00","slug":"wittgenstein-plato-and-pickstock-the-sense-of-religious-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=3247","title":{"rendered":"Wittgenstein, Plato and Pickstock: the sense of religious language"},"content":{"rendered":"

(I wrote this whilst at Westcott, researching for a PhD at Cambridge; the writing of it led directly to the decision to abandon the PhD and concentrate on spiritual formation. If you follow the argument, you will understand why\u2026)<\/span><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/span>
1. In her book \u2018After Writing\u2019 [After Writing, Catherine Pickstock, Blackwell, 1998] Catherine Pickstock advances the thesis that \u2018liturgical language is the only language that makes sense\u2019 and that \u2018the event of transubstantiation in the Eucharist is the condition of possibility for all human meaning\u2019. In this essay I intend to show 1) that the Scotist metaphysics identiifed by Pickstock are the subject of an implicit critique by Wittgenstein; 2) that the wider philosophy developed by Wittgenstein as a result offers considerable support to the principal conclusions of Pickstock\u2019s thesis; and 3) that there are significant differences between the understanding of Socrates offered by Wittgenstein and Pickstock, and that these differences point up a fundamental disagreement over the place of philosophy within theology which has practical consequences.<\/p>\n

The Argument of After Writing<\/span><\/span>
2. Pickstock begins her thesis with an examination of the Phaedrus<\/span>, a mid to late Platonic dialogue. The argument is conducted through an analysis and rejection of the Derridean interpretation of this work, ie Pickstock contends against Derrida that Plato assumed that language was primarily doxological in character, \u2018ultimately concerned with praise of the divine\u2019 (p37). According to this view, Socrates \u2018attacks sophistry not on the grounds of its linguistic mediation of truth, but because of its undoxological motivation\u2019 (p37). Sophism is therefore identified with the \u2018practices of demythologisers… who are concerned only with superficial matters rather than substantive content\u2019 (p5). Through Part 1 of the book Pickstock traces a line of descent from this sophistry through to modern secularism, showing how, for example, the Cartesian elevation of rationality, with all its consequences, owes its origin to \u2018the beginnings of a technocratic, manipulative, dogmatically rationalist, anti-erotic, anti-corporeal and homogenising society undergirded by secularity and pure immanence\u2019 (p48), against which Socrates contended. According to Pickstock it is this move away from a transcendent understanding of language which prepares the way for secular modernism: \u2018\u201csophistic\u201d immanentism is the ultimate foundation of these illusions\u2019 (p49). Part 2 of Pickstock\u2019s work is concerned with a detailed analysis of the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Liturgy, and is concerned to show how it expresses this non-sophistic understanding of reality, such that \u2018The words of Consecration \u201cThis is my body\u201d therefore, far from being problematic in their meaning, are the only words which certainly have meaning, and lend this meaning to all other words<\/span>\u2019 (p263, original emphasis). However, in between the two parts of the thesis is a \u2018Transition\u2019, which is a key part of the whole thesis, and it is with this that I would like to begin my analysis.<\/p>\n

3. According to Pickstock the liturgical polity was sundered from within by an excess piety, principally through the work of Duns Scotus (d. 1308). I would like to pick out the following characteristics of Scotist thought, as presented by Pickstock:
a) the primacy of rationality: \u2018And since the \u201cpossible\u201d, as distinct from the \u201cactual\u201d is by definition only realised in thought, or in some prior or virtual realm, the place given to the \u201cpossible\u201d by Scotus inaugurates the logical basis for privileging epistemology over ontology, and the rational over the actual, thereby opening the way for modern metaphysics\u2019 (p127);
b) the elevation of divine sovereignty: \u2018The supremacy of God\u2019s will, according to Duns Scotus, is such that it can realise all possibilities, even those which contradict the actual necessities of the particular created order in which we live\u2019 (p132); and
c) the consequent change in our understanding of the miraculous: \u2018Scotus\u2019 departure from analogia entis<\/span>, which distances God from the world, precipitates a necessary preparedness to undergo at any moment a radically discontinuous and arbitrary alteration caused by God, whose presence in the world is now viewed more ontically, in terms of a willingness to intervene. The miraculous is no longer to be found in the analogical resemblances of the physical order, but in the possible radical discontinuities of that order\u2019 (p131-2).
It is my contention that these elements of Scotist thought are implicitly criticised by Wittgenstein. I will begin by considering his Remarks on Frazer\u2019s Golden Bough [Included in Philosophical Occasions<\/span>, ed Klagge and Norman, Hackett, 1993, pp119-155].<\/p>\n

Wittgenstein\u2019s Remarks on Frazer\u2019s \u2018Golden Bough\u2019<\/span>
4. Wittgenstein wrote his Remarks in two periods, the first around 1931, the second after 1948. These remarks have been described as one of the two \u2018most radically instructive sources for the critical comprehension of ritual\u2019[Brian Clack, review of Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief, Religious Studies<\/span> 1993, p577, quoting Rodney Needham. I owe my analysis here to Dr Clack, whose book Wittgenstein and Magic is forthcoming in 1998.], and they are certainly the most extensive comments that Wittgenstein compiled on religious belief.<\/p>\n

5. Frazer\u2019s 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. He wrote \u2018I believe that the attempt to explain is already therefore wrong\u2019, and later, \u2018No opinion<\/span> serves as the foundation for a religious symbol. And only an opinion can involve an error\u2019 (p120-1). On Wittgenstein\u2019s account, people undertake ritual actions in order to appease something like a religious instinct. He invites us to consider other examples of similar actions: \u2018Kissing the picture of one\u2019s beloved. That is obviously not<\/span> 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\u2019 (p123). For Wittgenstein, religious expression is something that is wholly natural, \u2018One 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\u2019 (p129).<\/p>\n

6. Wittgenstein\u2019s understanding of Christianity is of a piece with this. In 1937 [Culture and Value<\/span>, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Blackwell, 1980, pp28&32.] he wrote \u2018The historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this: not, however, because it concerns \u201cuniversal truths of reason\u201d! Rather because historical proof (the historical proof game) is irrelevant to belief…A believer\u2019s relation to these narratives is neither the relation to historical truth (probability) not yet that to a theory consisting of \u201ctruths of reason\u201d\u2019. Most clearly, towards the end of his life [In 1950; Culture and Value<\/span> p85.], he wrote \u2018A proof of God\u2019s existence ought really to be something by means of which one could convince oneself that God exists. But I think that what believers<\/span> who have furnished such proofs have wanted to do is give their \u201cbelief\u201d an intellectual analysis and foundation, although they themselves would never have come to believe as a result of such proofs.\u2019 It seems clear then, that for Wittgenstein, any form of Scotist prioritisation of the rational is misconceived: religious belief is not a consequence of ratiocination.<\/p>\n

7. A key notion used by Wittgenstein when discussing these issues is \u2018depth\u2019. To return to his Remarks on Frazer, in particular the consideration of the Beltane fire festival, Wittgenstein wrote (p143) \u2018Besides 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.\u2019 Then, later, when considering the part of the ritual which involved a make believe thrusting of a man into the fire, \u2018It is now clear that what gives this practice depth is its connection with the burning of a man\u2019. The important thing about a ritual action, that which allows it to have the character of a ritual action, is this dimension of depth.<\/p>\n

8. Before the remark on man as a ceremonial animal referred to above, Wittgenstein wrote \u2018How 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 \u201cBecause he can\u2019t explain it\u201d (the foolish superstition of our time) – for will an explanation make it less impressive?… I don\u2019t mean that just fire <\/span>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.\u2019 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 \u2018deep\u2019, ie as something which provokes a sense of awe and connectedness. Or, as Fergus Kerr has put it, \u2018What 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.\u2019 [In \u2018Wittgenstein\u2019s Kink\u2019, p257 of Beyond Secular Reason<\/span>, ed Philip Blond, Blackwell, 1997]<\/p>\n

9. This leads to a different understanding of the nature of miracles. Consider his remarks on the practice of sun worship; whereas on Frazer\u2019s account the rite is a supposedly magical process, undertaken in order to summon the sun, Wittgenstein simply points out that \u2018toward 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\u2019 (p137). Or consider these remarks [Culture and Value<\/span>, p56], on the \u2018miracles of nature\u2019: \u2018One might say: art shows us the miracles of nature. It is based on the concept of the miracles of nature. (The blossom, just opening out. What is marvellous about it?) We say: \u201cJust look at it opening out\u201d.\u2019 It seems clear that Wittgenstein\u2019s conception of miracles was explicitly not one of \u2018divine intervention\u2019, rather it concerned events within the natural process that provoked a sense of depth in the observer. This conception is most explicit in two further remarks, the first from his Lecture on Ethics given in 1929 [Lecture on Ethics, in Philosophical Occasions<\/span>, ibid, p43.], the second from a reported conversation [Taken from Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief<\/span>, Blackwell 1991, p202.]:
a) following a discussion of experiences such as wonderment at the existence of the world, and the experience of being absolutely safe, Wittgenstein considers \u2018what in ordinary life would be called a miracle\u2019, such as a person growing a lion\u2019s head. Wittgenstein suggests that if this happened then people would send for doctors and have the situation investigated, \u2018And where would the miracle have got to?\u2019. He continues, \u2018This shows that it is absurd to say \u201cScience has proved that there are no miracles\u201d. The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle\u2019.
b) Wittgenstein is considering a report of a \u2018faked miracle\u2019, an account of a statue of Christ which bleeds. He comments \u2018I have a statue which bleeds on such and such a day in the year. I have red ink etc etc. \u201cYou are a cheat but nevertheless the deity uses you. Red ink in a sense, but not red ink in a sense\u201d.\u2019 [Presumably the final clause is using the words \u2018in a deeper sense\u2019 – Cf remarks on p87 of Culture and Value<\/span>.] Although this is something that is created by human endeavour it is still something that can provoke the \u2018depth\u2019 or sense of awe which Wittgenstein sees as essential to religious ritual and as underlying a correct understanding of miracles.<\/p>\n

10. To conclude this section, then, the Scotist understanding of religion, particularly in respect of its prioritisation of the rational and its understanding of the miraculous, is the implicit subject of Wittgenstein\u2019s critique of Frazer. I would now like to consider how this relates to Wittgenstein\u2019s wider philosophical project, for as Fergus Kerr has argued, Wittgenstein\u2019s philosophical method \u2018originated in his objections to Frazer\u2019s reductively rationalistic accounts of primitive religious practices.\u2019 [In Wittgenstein\u2019s Kink<\/span>, p257.]<\/p>\n

Wittgenstein\u2019s understanding of philosophy<\/span>
11. Wittgenstein at one point 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.<\/p>\n

12. 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 to carefully 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. Thus Wittgenstein wrote: \u2018Philosophy can in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.\u2019(PI 124) The philosopher\u2019s role, therefore, is essentially non-deductive; it is not concerned with offering proofs for particular positions, it is concerned with achieving clarity.<\/p>\n

13. 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\u2019s questions appear to be grappling with profound truths, deep and important issues. (Cf PI 111) 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 of the language being used, the concepts employed, and once this is done then the questions cease to trouble us.<\/p>\n

14. Why then is philosophy important? When describing language, Wittgenstein uses the analogy of an old city, 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).<\/p>\n

15. Wittgenstein wrote \u2018The 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.\u2019 (PI 119) I understand the first part of this to be like pointing out that, in the centre of the city, there isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

16. 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 (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).<\/p>\n

17. 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 suburbs 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\u2019s 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 \u2018What is the importance of studying philosophy if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?\u2019<\/p>\n

18. Wittgenstein wrote that \u2018Philosophy simply puts everything before us\u2019 (PI 126), and also that philosophy \u2018leaves everything as it is\u2019 (PI 124). 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.<\/p>\n

19. An important element in Wittgenstein\u2019s thought is the notion of \u2018family resemblance\u2019. 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 groups these activities together. What is important is that the notion of family resemblance provides a new analogy<\/span> with which to categorise things, one that doesn\u2019t try and reduce games to a single vital constituent, without which a game would cease to be a game. For Wittgenstein the ability to be a good philosopher depended upon the ability to think up good analogies or counter-examples (PI 122) which allow for a new way of seeing connections, or which provoked the observer to \u2018change the aspect\u2019 under which a phenomenon was seen.<\/p>\n

20. One thing that Wittgenstein wishes to emphasise is the importance of the particular case. Wittgenstein is trying to resist the urge to give an overarching theory, an explanation<\/span> 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 should be thought of as being an exercise book, or a form of therapy. If you work through the book then you will be cured of the tendency to generalise.<\/p>\n

21. This gives an insight into something that Wittgenstein was very concerned with: the urge to find the essence of something, and possibly then to explain it. We should focus on the differences involved with different games (that we normally would accept are <\/span>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.<\/p>\n

22. The way that philosophers should work is to examine language, and to ensure that their ideas have a natural home in the way that people live. In any philosophical investigation, language has a pre-eminent 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: \u2018Birds flew by\u2019; \u2018Time flew by\u2019. The first word in each sentence functions as a noun. For the first sentence, when we ask what the word \u2018Birds\u2019 means, we can point to an external reference and say \u2018Those are birds\u2019, and thus we can explain what the sentence refers to. But what of the second sentence?<\/p>\n

23. A traditional philosophical question might be \u2018What is time\u2019? 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 \u2018That is time\u2019. Thus philosophers are puzzled, and trying to answer questions such as this is the epitome of the \u2018deep and meaningful question\u2019 which a philosopher is meant to consider. For Wittgenstein, though, the question is nonsensical.<\/p>\n

24. Wittgenstein would say, why do we assume that there must be something tangible to which the word refers? Look at how the word is actually used in our language, and see if that enlightens your consideration. Thus, when we look at the contexts in which we use the sentence \u2018Time flew by\u2019 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 derives its meaning from that context. To then ask, \u2018What is time?\u2019 would be absurd. 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 it. (PI 116)<\/p>\n

25. 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 be (PI 131). Wittgenstein wants to release philosophers from the \u2018mental cramp\u2019 that comes when we try and ask insoluble questions like \u2018What is time\u2019. Hence he employs the examples of language games. 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.<\/p>\n

26. It should now be clear in what way Wittgenstein\u2019s work can be seen as offering a support for Pickstock\u2019s thesis. Where Pickstock claims that it is the event of the Eucharist which provides sense, because it is only in the liturgical context that the words have meaning, Wittgenstein would concur and say that it is in the practice of Christian life as lived – paradigmatically in the Eucharist – that a proper understanding of Christian language can be found. If Christian liturgy is the summation of what Christianity is about then in follows, for Wittgenstein as well as Pickstock, that (for Christians) \u2018the liturgical words of consecration are the only words which have meaning, and lend this meaning to all other words\u2019. [There is an issue here about Christianity and other faiths, which needs to be addressed. Pickstock\u2019s thesis that outside the mass there can be no meaning can be understood as saying 1) the mass exemplifies the deepest meaning of Christianity, but also 2) non-Christian liturgy is meaningless. The latter is a metaphysical thesis in so far as it claims that meaningis restricted to Christian language. However, an argument could be made for the latter in post-Wittgensteinian terms, along the lines that Christian liturgy is \u2018deeper\u2019, ie it allows for more human integrity, but unfortunately there is not space to do so here.] However, the extent of the overlap can be overstated and I want to now examine the areas of disagreement between the two approaches, and what the implications of this might be.<\/p>\n

Wittgenstein\u2019s critique of Socrates<\/span>
27. For Wittgenstein the source of the traditional approach to philosophy was Socrates [Wittgenstein didn\u2019t distinguish between Plato and Socrates (nor do I in this essay); he sometimes called the source of confusion \u2018Plato\u2019s method\u2019.]. He once said to his friend Drury [Quoted in The Danger of Words<\/span>, M O\u2019C Drury, Thoemmes Press, 1996, p115.], \u2018It has puzzled me why Socrates is regarded as a great philosopher. Because when Socrates asks for the meaning of a word and people give him examples of how that word is used, he isn\u2019t satisfied but wants a unique definition. Now if someone shows me how a word is used and its different meanings, that is just the sort of answer I want.\u2019 Or consider these remarks, the first made in 1931, the second in 1945: \u2018Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What\u2019s the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?\u2019; \u2018Socrates keeps reducing the Sophist to silence, – but does he have right <\/span>on his side when he does this? Well it is true that the Sophist does not know what he thinks he knows; but that is no triumph for Socrates. It can\u2019t be a case of \u201cYou see! you don\u2019t know it!\u201d – nor yet, triumphantly, of \u201cSo none of us knows anything\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n

28. I expect that Wittgenstein had in mind a passage such as this one, from Socrates\u2019 first speech in the Phaedrus: \u2018in every discussion there is only one way of beginning if one is to come to a sound conclusion, and that is to know what one is discussing… Let us then begin by agreeing upon a definition\u2019. In the conclusion of the Phaedrus Socrates restates this: \u2018a man must know the truth about any subject that he deals with; he must be able to define it.\u2019<\/p>\n

29. For Wittgenstein it is this emphasis upon definability in words which is the source of all our metaphysical illusions. Whereas for Pickstock Socrates was a doughty fighter on behalf of a doxological account of language, for Wittgenstein Socrates was the source of all our metaphysical troubles, and that, contrary to Pickstock\u2019s account, the source of (for example) Descartes\u2019 \u2018clear and distinct ideas\u2019 lies much deeper than Duns Scotus, \u2018they lie as deep in us as the forms of our language\u2019. It seems clear that, as Baker and Hacker put it in their commentary on the Investigations [GP Baker and PMS Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Understanding<\/span>, Blackwell, 1997, p350], \u2018Wittgenstein noted that some of the deep distortions of meaning, explanation and understanding originate with Plato\u2019.<\/p>\n

30. As a consequence one can take issue with Pickstock\u2019s claim that Scotus\u2019 thought \u2018permitted the return of a spatialized sophistic outlook which Socrates might appear to have banished forever.\u2019 Instead I would argue that it is precisely the reintroduction of Platonic philosophy to Medieval Europe in the 12th century that inspired and enabled Scotus to develop his philosophical system (this would also make more sense of other historical events, such as the controversies over the Creed in the Patristic period – why expend so much time unless the definition was vital? – and the understanding of the Koran in the Muslim world). Both Plato and Scotus are developing metaphysical systems. Consider this remark of Wittgenstein\u2019s from 1931: \u2018People say again and again that philosophy doesn\u2019t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say that don\u2019t understand why it has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there continues to be a verb \u2018to be\u2019 that looks as if it functions in the same way as \u2018to eat\u2019 and \u2018to drink\u2019, as long as we still have the adjectives \u2018identical\u2019 \u2018true\u2019 \u2018false\u2019 \u2018possible\u2019, as long as we continue to talk of a river of time, of an expanse of space etc etc, people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And what\u2019s more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because in so far as people think they can see the \u201climits of human understanding\u2019 they believe of course that they can see beyond these\u2019.<\/p>\n

31. Rather like the potato shoots searching for the light the metaphysical systems are seeking to appease a thirst for depth – the \u2018immortal longings\u2019 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. On Wittgenstein\u2019s analysis this is something that is inevitable given the structure of our language. Accordingly, \u2018Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language\u2019; as para 111 of the Investigations puts it \u2018The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth<\/span>. 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).\u2019 I would thus argue that any Platonic metaphysical system is inherently flawed, and that Scotus was simply \u2018bewitched\u2019 by the reintroduction of the Greek perspective. It is thus not the case that \u2018Scotus inaugurated a metaphysics independent of theology\u2019 [John Milbank, The Word Made Strange<\/span>, Blackwell, 1996, p45] for this tendency was implicit in Platonism from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

32. We are left to consider the question of how far theology can be reconciled with philosophy, and what the relationship between the two should be. Fergus Kerr has written that \u2018The history of theology might even be written in terms of periodic struggles with the metaphysical inheritance\u2019 [Fergus Kerr, Theology After Wittgenstein<\/span>, Blackwell, 1986, p187.] 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. For on Wittgenstein\u2019s account metaphysics is the expression of the desire for the transcendent, a natural theology: in theological terms it is a desire to attain the divine from human efforts. In this way, all such metaphysical systems are idolatrous, for all such natural theology must be subordinate to that derived from the revelation in Christ [NBThis is not the same as the critique of metaphysics offered by John Milbank – \u2018the domain of metaphysics is not simply subordinate to, but completely evacuated<\/span> by theology, for metaphysics refers its subject matter – \u2018Being\u2019 – wholesale to a first principle, God, which is the subject of another higher science, namely God\u2019s own, only accessible to us via revelation\u2019 (The Word made Strange, p45)].<\/p>\n

33. This is where the deepest disagreements between the Wittgensteinian approach and that of Pickstock are to be found. Pickstock\u2019s argument that only liturgical language has meaning is prefigured by her contention that Socrates accepted an understanding of language as primarily doxological. If my understanding of Wittgenstein is correct, however, there is a contradiction between this understanding of Socrates and the main contention of her thesis, for the metaphysical project that she denounces in Scotus is bound up in our language and created when we are seduced by the metaphysical impulse (and that was what Socrates and Plato succumbed to); as Kerr puts it \u2018our way of talking easily generates Platonism\u2019 [Wittgenstein\u2019s Kink<\/span>, p248]. The argument ultimately concerns the nature of language and how far it can express religious truth. For Wittgenstein \u2018the words you utter or what you think as you utter them are not what matters, so much as the difference they make at various points in your life\u2019 [Culture and Value<\/span>, p85] and I think that this is wholly in tune with Pickstock\u2019s desire for a \u2018revolutionary reinvention of language and practice which would challenge the structures of our modern world\u2019 (p171), particularly given Wittgenstein\u2019s comment that he would by no means prefer a continuation of his work to a change in the way people live which would make all these questions superfluous.\u2019<\/p>\n

34. For Wittgenstein it is always action which is primary – \u2018In the beginning was the deed\u2019 – and our language gains its sense from being embodied in certain practices. Consider the following passage (written in 1937): \u2018Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For \u2018consciousness of sin\u2019 is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.\u2019<\/p>\n

35. Wittgenstein is always concerned to emphasise the practical importance of a religious belief. He distinguishes between the character of religious beliefs and other beliefs: \u2018Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe through thick and thin, which you can do only as a result of a life. Here you have a narrative, don\u2019t take the same attitude to it as you take to other historical narratives! Make a quite different place in your life for it.\u2019<\/p>\n

36. A religious belief is not analogous to a belief about a matter of historical fact, or scientific theories. It is one which makes a difference in terms of how you live your life and can only be understood in such contexts \u2018it strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it\u2019s belief, it\u2019s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It\u2019s passionately seizing hold of this <\/span>interpretation.\u2019<\/p>\n

37. There are also his remarks that \u2018I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless, that you have to change your life (or the direction of your life)…the point is that a sound doctrine need not take hold of you, you can follow it as you would a doctor\u2019s prescription. But here you need something to move you and turn you in a new direction\u2019 [Culture and Value<\/span>, p53]; and \u2018A theology which insists on the use of certain particular words and phrases, and outlaws others, does not make anything clearer…It gesticulates with words, as one might say, because it wants to say something and does not know how to express it. Practice<\/span> gives the words their sense.\u2019<\/p>\n

38. This element of Wittgenstein\u2019s thought is one that is continuous throughout his life, and is normally overshadowed by the contrast between the metaphysics of the Tractatus and the non-metaphysics of the Investigations. He once said to Drury that all his fundamental ideas came to him early in life, and his fundamental concerns were always ethical and religious in character. Although he certainly wasn\u2019t an orthodox Christian – he couldn\u2019t bring himself to believe the sorts of things that Christians believed – I would claim that Wittgenstein had a deeply mystical sensibility, and that this was why he \u2018always looked at things from a religious point of view\u2019. As Norman Malcolm put it, \u2018it is surely right to say that Wittgenstein\u2019s mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling\u2019 [Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: a Religious Point of View?<\/span>, Routledge, 1993, p21.]. Consider his remarks concerning the Tractatus when he was seeking a publisher: \u2018The 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\u2019m convinced that, strictly speaking it can ONLY be delimited in this way.\u2019<\/p>\n

39. Similarly in his lecture on ethics in 1929 (when he was given carte blanche<\/span> to discuss whatever he wished and chose ethics because he wanted to talk about something which had general importance) he argues \u2018not 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<\/span>, 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.\u2019<\/p>\n

40. This concern remains in the Investigations: \u2018The 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.\u2019 (PI para 119)<\/p>\n

41. I would suggest that there is still a residual metaphysical ambition in the argument of After Writing. Pickstock\u2019s argument is that \u2018only a realistic construal of the event of the Eucharist allows us to ground a view of language which does not evacuate the body, and does not give way to necrophilia\u2019 – as such she gives the view of language a role in grounding the rejection of necrophilia, and this is to repeat the metaphysical illusions of Platonism, whereby language on its own can achieve religious meaning. For Pickstock, \u2018Plato will already have anticipated or hinted at\u2019 [After Writing<\/span>, p270] the answers that Christianity can offer, and this is why liturgy \u2018consummates\u2019 philosophy, for it brings it to completion. For Wittgenstein, however, it is not that liturgy consummates philosophy, for philosophy is sterile and is not a fit partner for liturgy. The two operate in different spheres. I would contend, therefore, that at the heart of the argument of After Writing Christianity is subordinated to an intrinsically idolatrous Platonism.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/span>
42. This argument is emphatically NOT saying, however, that Wittgenstein\u2019s critique of metaphysics should be accepted \u2018because it makes a certain type of theology possible\u2019 [Beyond Secular Reason<\/span>, Introduction, p40]. Blond\u2019s critique of Wittgenstein repeats a common misunderstanding – indeed a metaphysical misunderstanding – of Wittgenstein\u2019s project, and one, moreover, that Kerr\u2019s article in his volume was trying to overcome. For Wittgenstein philosophy was essentially non-substantive, it was not concerned to offer explanations, nor was it concerned to show \u2018the nature of existence\u2019 for these are metaphysical questions. As such they belong in the realm of theology, which is where the \u2018really important\u2019 questions are considered, and hence, if you accept Wittgenstein\u2019s conception of philosophy it doesn\u2019t interfere with religious beliefs. Not <\/span>because it makes theology possible or gives it a foundation, for those are metaphysical claims, but because it reduces philosophy to its proper sphere, which is the search for clarity in our understanding. For Wittgenstein \u2018All that philosophy can do is destroy idols\u2019 [Philosophical Occasions<\/span>, p171]; it cannot say anything about God, and hence \u2018If Christianity is the truth then all the philosophy that is written about it is false\u2019 [Culture and Value<\/span> p83]. It is therefore a serious misreading of Wittgenstein to say that \u2018he repeats a metaphysical account of the physical in that he also actualises the ontological and transcendental occlusion of the possibility that God is to be seen in the visible world\u2019 [Beyond Secular Reason<\/span>, p41] for this analysis still assumes that it is possible to say something substantive about God in metaphysical terms.<\/p>\n

43. In On Certainty<\/span>, Wittgenstein writes: \u2018The child learns to believe by a host of things, ie it learns to act according to those beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.\u2019 When a child is taught the use of religious language the existence of God is not something which is rationally demonstrated, rather it is the precondition for the way of thinking and living being taught to the child. I would say that the awareness of God comes about gradually through being inducted into a form of life <\/span>– \u2018Light dawns gradually over the whole\u2019.<\/p>\n

44. For Wittgenstein \u2018What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics\u2019, and furthermore \u2018Ethics, in so far as it springs form the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolutely valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense.\u2019 It is always a mistake to try and think of theology as something that enables us to add to our store of knowledge because, on his analysis, religious truth (and what is theology if not the search for religious truth?) is ultimately something that must be shown<\/span>. It is not a matter of cognitive knowledge, separate from life, but of a fully embodied existence – a life lived in all its fullness. It is not something that can (or needs to) be argued for or justified by argument; it can only be seen by \u2018a change of aspect\u2019, and that can only be provoked by a life.<\/p>\n

45. After Wittgenstein, with Pickstock, liturgy must be seen as the locus of meaning. But the corollary of this, against Pickstock, is that we shouldn\u2019t be ultimately concerned with establishing an orthodoxy<\/span>, whether radical, neo- or otherwise. The Christian – whether a theologian or not – is called to orthopraxy<\/span>, for it is only in living the life of love that our words will make sense.<\/p>\n

Sam Norton
<\/span>Westcott House<\/span>
February 1998<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(I wrote this whilst at Westcott, researching for a PhD at Cambridge; the writing of it led directly to the decision to abandon the PhD and concentrate on spiritual formation. If you follow the argument, you will understand why\u2026) Introduction1. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-Qn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}