Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein K. C. Pandey Readworthy RehgioUd Behe~, Supel'dliliond and Willgen...

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Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

K. C. Pandey

Readworthy

RehgioUd Behe~, Supel'dliliond and Willgend lein

\ \

It is hard to understand yourself properly since something that you might be doing out of generosity and goodness is the same as you may be doing out of cowardice or indifference. To be sure, one may act in such and such a way from true love, but also from deceitfulness and from a cold heart too. Similarly not all moderation is goodness. And only if I could be submerged in religion might these doubts be silenced. For only religion could destroy vanity and penetrate every nook & cranny.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 54e

About the Author K.C. Pandey is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, DDU Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur. He also taught at the colleges of Delhi Univel'sity, B.R.A. Bihar University, and Himachal Pradesh University. Dr. Pandey successfully completed UG.c.-I.Uc. Associateship at IIAS, Shimla. The UGC selected him for JRF & Teacher Fellowship, and Government of India recommended him for Commonwealth Fellowship. With awarded writings to his credit, he has contributed research papers in journals and anthologies both in India and abroad such as Philosophical Investigations, Cadernos de

Filosofia, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, IIAS Summerhill Review, Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Paramarsh, Darshanik Traimasik, and Samaj Dharm Aur Dharshan. His published works include: Wittgenstein Ke Darshan Ki Ruparekha (An Outline of Wittgenstein's Philosophy) (2005),' Tulanatmak Darshan (Comparative Philosophy) (2005), Ecological Perspectives in Buddhism (2008), Perspectives on Wittgenstein' s Unsayable (2008), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Ethics and Religion (2008), and Nitishastriya Vimarsh Aur Mahakavya (Ethical Reflections and Epics) (2009).

( l

I

Religious Beliefs, Superstitions

and Wittgenstein

K. C. Pandey

Rea~wortb~ New Delhi

Copyright © Author All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, utilized, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The views expressed in this volume are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the publishers.

First published 2009

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Email: [email protected] Web: www.readworthypub.com Cataloging in Publication Data-OK Courtesy: D.K. Agencies (P) Ltd. <[email protected]> Pandey, K. C. (Kali Charan), 1970Religious beliefs, superstitions and Wittgenstein / KC. Pandey. p. cm. Study on the religious thoughts of Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, Austrian-born British philosopher. ). Includes bibliographical references (p. Includes index. ISBN 13: 978-93-80009-21-6

ISBN 10: 93-80009-21-6

1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951. 2. Faith. 3. Superstition. 4. Religion-Philosophy. I. Title. DOC218

22

Printed at OX Fine Art Press, Delhi - 52

Dedicated to my teacher and mentor Prof. S.R. Bhatt

"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"

Acknowledgement This work embodies the result of one and a half-decade of my association with the philosophy of Wittgenstein at Delhi University, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, B.R.A. Bihar University, Govt. College, Dharamsala, DDU Gorakhpur University and c.C.S. Meerut University. I formulated and reformulated my position in the light of new insights throughout my interpretation of Wittgenstein. I have passed through a zigzag terrain both professional and personal during this time. Not all of them are liable to be mentioned here for good or bad reasons. However, there are persons whose explicit mention I feel mandatory, notwithstan( ng Wittgensteinian viewpoint according to which e\ ery e"pression, which is about the 'inner', fails to depict the thought in its completeness. That is, even though my explicit acknowledgements are apparently incompatible with the Wittgensteinian inexpressibility viewpoint, I wish to acknowledge on the presumption that it, in essence, supports the inexpressibility thesis as I realise that the support of the persons to me are based on their inner feelings and commitments and are not just mere formalities as generally now-a-days we see in our professional career.

So, first of all I express a profound sense of gratitude to Prof. S. R. Bhatt, my teacher in post-graduation at Delhi University for saving my Ph.D. research from going astray by way of his help to get me registered at Meerut University and his timely encouragement. To me he is a true scholar of philosophy. I'm equally thankful to my supervisor Prof. D.N. Yadav, who has now joined DDU Gorakhpur University, for his friendly guidance and for his facing the tide of the anti-thesis that rippled during the course.

viii I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

I'm thankful to the Government of India for recommending me under its Commonwealth Fellowship to do Ph.D. in u.K. Likewise, I'm grateful to UGC for providing me JRF and SRF during 1994-98 and offering me Teacher Fellowship in 2004, and Education Department, H.P. Govt. for providing me permission to do Ph.D. I am grateful to various libraries and institutions, especially Delhi University, JNU, lIT Delhi, HAS Shimla, ICPR Lucknow, MaxMuller Bhavan Delhi, American Centre Delhi, Jabalpur University, Sagar University, Udaipur University, A1lahabad University, Rabindra Bharti University, Lucknow University, Madras University, and Gorakhpur University for inviting me either to participate in seminars and conferences or providing me material for research on Wittgenstein. Dr. Subhas Chandra Bhelkey has always been an instilling inspiration since the year 2001 when we first met at Udaipur. I have been writing for Parlimarsh since then and Dr. Bhelkey never complained against my oversights but only encouraged me to work unfailingly, I thank him for his being with me always. Prof. Bhuvan Chandel, Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, motivated me in my research for Associateship in 2003 and Prof. S. P. Dubey has always been kind and generous with professional help. I thank both of them. I have been benefitted from discussions with fellow Associates at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and am indebted to them for their inputs, as it is not possible to put on record all the names, I thank them all. Late Prof. Daya Krishna not only published my articles, discussions and book-reviews on Wittgenstein in JICPR but also provided me his advice with affection. He was a great philosopher and in fact a God's gift to the philosophical community. My heartfelt regard for him is reflected in dedicating my book Tulanlitmak Darshan (2005) to him. I fail to find exact

Acknowledgement I ix

words to express my feelings of gratitude for his critical but illuminating approach which helped a beginner like me to learn philosophising. Indian Wittgensteinians, Prof. RP. Srivastava, Prof. D.N. Dwivedi, Prof. RC. Pradhan, Prof. G.L. Pandit, Prof. Vibha Chaturvedi, Prof. H.S. Upadhyaya, Prof. Jata Shankar Tripathi, Prof. Bijoy Boruah, Prof. RP. Singh, Prof. P.R Bhat, Prof. S. Panneerselvam, Prof. Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty, et al. have provided me analytical insights. I take this opportunity to express my thanks for their help throughout my professional career. Likewise, I'm grateful to late Prof. V.P. Gaur and Prof. Jaidev Vedalankar as they have never disappointed me in rendering their professional help. I am also grateful to Dr. Narendra Awasthi, Principal, Goverment College Dharamsala, for creating an intellectual ambience in the college, and my colleague Dr. Charu Sharma for her discussions with me. My parents have never shown their troubles and have always looked forward to see that I get through my rough times. They have shown that their happiness lies in making me happier, despite my feeling that I have not been able to take care of them properly. I could not have expressed my reverence for them in any other form except by dedicating my book Wittgenstein Ke Darshan Kr Ruprekhii (2005) to them. In fact my study in general and my research on Wittgenstein in particular is the result of their sacrifices in shaping me into what I'm today. I'm not only thankful but also appreciative of the genuine concern and empathy of my wife Dr. Sudha Kiran who stood by me through thick-and-thin. As there is no fashion to thank one's wife in our traditional culture, perhaps in accordance with the above mentioned Wittgensteinian thesis of inexpressibility of the inner, I think that this proviso is sufficient to take care of my feelings. My little daughter Khyati has often provided refreshing

x I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

intervals during my onerous studies. To see her grow in verbal communication is to witness Wittgenstein's theories of language learning (ostensive definition and teaching), language-game and form of life. I do not have words to express my feelings beyond this.

K.C.Pandey

Contents Acknowledgement Introduction Abbreviations

vii xiii xviii

1. Religious Grounding or Groundlessness of Religion 1 (a) The Inexpressibility of Religion: Saying and 2 Showing Distinction 5 (i) Facts, states of affairs and objects 15 (ii) Picture, sense and nonsense (b) The Incomprehensibility of Religion: Religious 34 Transcendence 48 2. Mysticism and Private Language 49 (a) Nature of Mysticism 53 (i) What is mysticism? (ii) Distinctive features of mystical experience 65 (iii) Questioning the veracity of 75 mystical experience (iv) Logical positivism and the critique of mystic or 77 intuitive realisation. 87 (b) Wittgenstein on Mysticism (c) Wittgenstein's Rejection of the 115 Privacy of Experience 128 (d) Mysticism and Private Experience 132 3. Religious Beliefs and Language-games 134 (a ) Wittgenstein on Meaning 134 (i) Picture theory of meaning (ii) The lacunae of picture theory and its 139 replacement by use theory 142 (iii) Language-games 150 (iv) A restricted autonomy

xii I Religious Beliefs, Superst itions and WiHgenstein

The Distinct Language-game of Religious Beliefs 157 (c) Wittgensteinian Fideism and the Defense of Wittgensteinian Thesis 165 4. Religious Beliefs and Form of Life 195 (a) Malcolm and Winch on Wittgenstein's Religious Status 196 (b) Malcolm and Winch on Analogies 205 (c) Form of Life, God, Huma n Will and Happy life 218 5. Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Miracles 225 (a) Frazer on Superstition 226 (b) Wittgenstein on Superstition 238 (c) Wittgenstein on Miracle 243 (d) Wittgenstein's Criticism of Frazer 247 6. Conclusion 259 Select Bibliography 273 Index 286 (b)

Introduction Wittgenstein's religious point of view can be seen as having twinfold aspects: (i) religious beliefs are inexpressible, and (ii) the meaning and significance of religious beliefs can be seen in their own language-games and forms of life. Like the general division of Wittgenstein's thoughts into 'earlier' and 'later', his philosophy of religion also can be interpreted as having undergone a process of development from the above mentioned first aspect to the second. Notwithstanding the differences in these aspects, it will be argued that there is no dichotomy between them as they can be viewed in the context of the development of Wittgenstein's views on religious beliefs. Thus, although later Wittgenstein interpreted religious beliefs as having a distinct language-game and form of life, yet he refrained from writing directly about it as he kept on supporting the inexpressibility thesis of religion. Any writing on Wittgenstein's religious point of view undergoes the difficulty of exact formulation of his thoughts as: (i) he wrote little about religious matter; and (ii) there are multiple interpretations of his views on religion. Keeping in view these difficulties, this work tries to critically expound Wittgenstein's above described twin-fold aspects of religious beliefs through interpreting various concepts of Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. Whereas the first two chapters of this work deal with the first aspect, the last three chapters are devoted to the analysis of the second aspect. The first chapter Religious Grounding or Groundlessness of Religion is concerned with the lack of foundation of religion. One of the chief features of Wittgenstein's concept of religious beliefs is that it is not based on any evidence or reason. It has its own kind of support which is generally regarded as no-support.

xiv I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

This chapter is divided into two basic sections: (a) The Inexpressibility of Religion:; Saying and Showing Distinction, and (b) The Incomprehensibility of Religion; Religious Transcendence. This chapter concludes that religion is not based on any factual evidence and, therefore, it is groundless. In other words the realm of inexpressible and incomprehensiblesayable and showable (transcendence)-can be treated as its ground which, generally, is not regarded as a ground. The second chapter Mysticism and Private Language tries to abridge the alleged cleavage between Wittgenstein's acceptance of mystical experience and his rejection of the privacy of experience. On the one hand Wittgenstein upholds that there is no private experience, and on the other hand, he accepts the occurrence of a mystical experience which is essentially private. Here I have tried to show as to how Wittgenstein's notion of mystical experience is compatible with his rejection of the privacy of experience. This chapter is divided into four sections: (a) Nature of Mysticism; (b) Wittgenstein on Mysticism; (c), Wittgenstein'S rejection of the privacy of experience; and (d) Mysticism and private of Experience. The first section is divided into the following sub-sections: (i) What is Mysticism?; (ii) Distinctive features of mystical experience; and (iii) Questioning the veracity of mystical experience. The second section describes Wittgenstein's views on mysticism. The third section reformulates Wittgenstein's arguments for the rejection of the possibility of privacy of experience. And, the fourth section of this chapter argues for the compatibility between mysticism and privacy. The third chapter Religious Beliefs and Language-Game deals with later Wittgenstein's application of his concept of language-game into his notion of religious beliefs. It is divided into three basic sections: (a) Wittgenste,in on Meaning; (b) The

Introduction I xv

distinct language-game of religious beliefs; and (c) Wittgensteinian Fideism and the defense of Wittgensteinian thesis. In the first section I have elaborated Wittgenstein's theories of meaning which is further divided into following subsections: (i) Picture Theory of Meaning; (ii) The Lacunae of Picture Theory and its replacement by Use Theory; (iii) Language-game; and (iv) A Restricted Autonomy. Here I have explained the picture theory of meaning and Later Wittgenstein's dissatisfaction with it. I have explained the notion of language-game and have interpreted that the relativism or autonomy of language-game is restricted or limited. In the second section of this chapter, I have employed this interpretation ot'ianguage-game into religious beliefs and have shown the distinctness of meaning and justification of religious beliefs. The third section of this chapter deals with Wittgensteinian reply to fideistic criticisms, e.g. the allegation that Wittgenstein's notion of religious belief is esoteric and hence, it cannot distinguish between genuine religious beliefs and superstitious beliefs. The basic point of my reply is that the autonomy. of religious beliefs, like that of language-game, is a restricted one and thus religious beliefs are invariably conjoined with non-religious aspects Qf life. Thus, I have tried to show that fideistic cr,iticism does not apply on Wittgensteinian notion of religious beliefs as, a distinct language-game. In the fourth chapter Religious Beliefs and Form of Life, I have discussed Wittgenstein's' statement: .'1 am not a re,ligious manbut I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.' This statement has been in debate among Wittgensteinians for quite some time. Following are the basic points of the debate: firstly, what did Wittgenstein mean when he said 'I am not a religious man~? Was he religious or not? And secondly, what did Wittgenstein mean when he said, 'I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view; i.e.

xvi I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

whether Wittgenstein saw philosophical problems from religious point of view or not? Norman Malcolm and Peter Winch hold drastically opposite views on these issues. I have discussed these issues under the following headings: (a) Malcolm and Winch on Wittgenstein's religious Status; (b) Malcolm and Winch on Analogies; and (c) Form of Life, God, Human Will and Happy life. The fifth chapter Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Miracles investigates the relationship between religious beliefs, superstitions and miracles. It is divided into the following sections: (a) Frazer on Superstition, (b) Wittgenstein on Superstition, (c) Wittgenstein on Miracle, and (d) Wittgenstein's Criticism of Frazer. It begins with Frazer's notions of savages' religious beliefs as superstition and miracle. For Frazer, the religious beliefs of savages are unscientific. They are inferior as compared to the religiOUS views of the civilised world. For savages, there is no distinction between miracle and magic. Both of these are regarded as instruments to bring their desired goal on the basis of rituals. After Frazer's account of ritual, magic, miracle and superstition, I have delineated Wittgenstein's notion of superstition and miracle, and in this context, I have delved into the current debate among Indian Wittgensteinians about the exact position of Wittgenstein on these issues. The crux of this debate is: what is the defining feature of religious beliefs and superstitions for Wittgenstein? Is it fear or trust? That is, is fear the defining feature of religious beliefs or that of superstition? Here, I have also elaborated Wittgenstein's position on miracle. The last section of this chapter deals with Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frazer's position as described in The Golden Bough. In this context, I have analysed and responded to some major criticisms to Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer's application of scientific theorisation of religious beliefs.

Introduction I xvii

The Conclusion critically investigates Wittgensteinian's multiple interpretations of the unity/continuity/discontinuity of Wittgenstein's views on religious beliefs. It expounds the unity and continuity between the twin-fold aspects of Wittgenstein's religious point of view. Here, I have tried to critically expound that it is erroneous to maintain that Wittgenstein fathered two entirely different philosophies of religion in the similar manner as it is to hold that no development occurred in his religious point of view. Actually, his basic religious position of the nonsensicality and inexpressibility, to which he kept on giving paramount importance, has been juxtaposed to his later phases when he provided meaning to religious propositions in their own language-game and form of life.

Abbreviations BB: Blue and Brown Books CV: Culture and Value LC: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and

Religious Belief LE: 'Lecture on Ethics' NB: Notebooks 1914-16 OC: On Certainty PG: Philosophical Grammar

PI: Philosophical Investigations RF: 'Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough' RFM: Remarks on Foundations of Mathematics TLP: Tractatus Logico-Philosophiclls WL: Wittgenstein' s Lectures 1930-33. WWK: Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (Wiener Kreis)

Z:Zettel

1 Religious Grounding or Groundlessness of Religion The implication of Wittgenstein's thesis about 'the groundlessness of our believing,' (GC §166) is that our beliefs are so much groundless that it is difficult to gauge them. Wittgensteinians, such as Cyril Barrett and Norman Malcolm, have argued for Wittgenstein's concept of the groundlessness of believing in religion. Cyril Barrett's term religious 'grounding'l and Norman Malcolm's term 'groundlessness of beliefs'2 both refer to this thesis. It holds that, even though religious beliefs are not based on any evidence, they do not fail to impress so many people. Let us analyse this under the following sections: (a) The Inexpressibility of Religion: Saying and Showing Distinction; and (b) The 1 Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Beliefs (Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell,1991), pp.l78-208. Here, he has elaborated the concept of 'The Grounding of Religious Beliefs'. 2 Norman Malcolm, Thought and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 199-216. Here, Malcolm has argued in favour of the thesis of the groundlessness in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.

2 I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

Incomprehensibility of Religion: Religious Transcendence. The first section is again divided into (i) Facts, states of affairs and objects, and (ii) Picture, sense and nonsense. In order to distinguish between sense and nonsense, and to establish the inexpressibility of religious beliefs I have further elaborated Wittgenstein's position under following sub-sections: (i) Lacking-Sense, Nonsense and Religion, and (ii) Types of Nonsense.

(a) The Inexpressibility of Religion: Saying and Showing Distinction The issue of the religious grounding is in fact the issue of the expression of one's religious beliefs into language. In TLP Wittgenstein consistently maintained that religiOUS beliefs are inexpressible. Now, if religion is inexpressible, then the question arises: what is the ground of religion or religious beliefs? For the discussion of this issue here, first, we shall delve into Wittgenstein's distinction between saying and showing. Saying is describing or explaining or givirig information, i.e. all that can be described in language belong to the realm of saying. As different from this realm, all that cannot be expressed in language belong to the realm of showing. Religion, in Wittgenstein's view, belongs to the realm of showing. This is to say that it transcends the limit of the contingent world. This view is quite popular amongst Wittgensteinians as it is related to the famous distinction of TLP: the distinction between saying and showing. The point of debate, in this context, is: how, according to Wittgenstein, are there no religious propositions?, i.e. how does Wittgenstein establish that religion is inexpressible? As Wittgenstein arrives at his view that religious beliefs are inexpressible through the distinction between saying and shOwing, let us begin our analYSis with this distinction. The

Religious Grounding or Groundlessness of Religion I 3

saying and showing distinction is the cardinal principle of TLp 3 as well as the ground of early Wittgenstein's views on religion. His disclosure, in the preface of rLP, that sense of the book lies in the view that, "What can be said can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence," appears again as the seventh proposition which is regarded as the conclusion of his early philosophy. It has also been agreed upon that it expresses 'both a logico-philosophical truth and an ethical precept.'4 'TLP's preface recognises its purpose as to put a limit to 'thought' or 'expression of thought' and for this purpose it finds necessary to see the limit of thought which will reveal clearly that which can be thought and that which cannot be thought. What appears is that TLP is an enquiry of the two realms: first,

3(a) Russell in his introduction to TLP construed saying and showing distinction as a fundamental thesis of the book. According to him, "That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot, so he (Wittgenstein) contends, be itself in turn said in language. It can, in his phraseology, only be shawn, not said, for whatever we may say will still need to have the same structure" (p.x). (b) Wittgenstein in the preface of the TLP says: "the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather-not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (Le. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)." (c) Wittgenstein in his letter to Russell, dated 19.8.19, expresses his deep disagreement with Russell's view about TLP. Wittgenstein writes, "Now I'm afraid that you haven't really got of my main contention to which the whole business of logical proposition is only corollary. The main point is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by propositions, i.e. by language (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by propositions, but only shown (gezeigt); which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy." 4 Cf. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty Of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991) p. 156.


which is available to us in the form of language, and second, which cannot be expressed through language. The complex argument, which the above mentioned distinction involves, consists of certain concepts of which some are purely Wittgenstein's and some owe their origin to his predecessors, namely, Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. These latter kinds of concepts are left unexplained by Wittgenstein and thus, their meaning has to be grasped with the help of their origin. These concepts together with the 'silence', i.e. showing part of TLP, have been compared to the invisible part of an iceberg. The TLP, like an iceberg has rightly been regarded as consisting of two aspects: that part which is inside the water has to be construed on the basis of the iceberg on the floor of water. Thus, it can be said that TLP is an attempt to show something on the basis of saying something. Like the invisible part of the iceberg, its showing part is not insignificant. Rather, it is the showing part which is more important. The saying and showing distinction finds various expressions throughout the TLP and, as said above, involves various conceptions. Some of the obvious examples relating to the saying and showing distinction are as follow: (a) "What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly." (3.262) (b) "A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand." (4.022) (c) "Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of reality.


They display it."(4.l21) (d) "What can be shown, cannot be said."(4.l212) "Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing."(4.461) (e) "We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either."(5.61) The above described examples of Wittgenstein's saying and showing distinction can be reformulated under the following headings: LFacts, states of affairs and objects, iLPicture sense and nonsense. These concepts are inseparably related to each other and put together constitute the saying and showing distinction. James Griffin holds a similar view. He writes, "One cannot discuss atomic propositions without also discussing atomic facts (in the Tractatus, 'Sachverhalte' nor names without discussing objects (,Genestande'); nor names without also discussing how they differ from functions; nor names and functions without discussing types (in the Tractatus, the Doctrine of Showing); nor either atomic propositions or facts without discussing how they are related (in the Tractatus, the Picture Theory); nor anything atomic without discussing how and why we analyse the non-atomic."5 (i)

Facts, states of affairs and objects

FACTS

The first proposition, of the seven major propositions into which TLP consists of, deals with the nature of the world and fact. It proclaims that facts constitu~e the world and the world is determined by facts and nothing else. It says, "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" (TLP, 1.1), and "The world is 5 James Griffin, Wittgenstein's Logical Atoll/ism (London: Oxford University press, 1964), pp. 3-4.


determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts" (TLP, 1.11). Wittgenstein does not give any definition of fact. He explains it in terms of states of affairs and objects: "What is the case a fact is the existence of states of affairs"(2}. And, "A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things)" (2.01). Questions arise: What did Wittgenstein mean by a fact? Why, according to him, does the world consist of facts and not of things?, What is a state of affairs?, and What is an object? Bertrand Russell, in the very beginning of the Philosophy of Logical Atomism, which is a collection of eight lectures delivered by him in London in 1918, says that these lectures are largely concerned with explaining the ideas which he learnt from his pupil Wittgenstein. Although this remark of Russell should not be taken in its literal meaning as it was Russell's intellectual sobriety which is visible in his remarks of obligation and these lectures deal with same theses for which he is famous in the history of Western Philosophy, e.g. Descriptions, Incomplete Symbols, and Theory of Types, yet Wittgenstein's influence on Russell could easily be grasped from these lectures. This is also importapt to note that when Russell delivered these lectures (1918), Wittgenstein was struggling to publish TLP and for this he was in close contact with Russell. Thus, Russell's view about the nature of facts would be helpful in understanding those aspects of TLP about which Wittgenstein recommends keeping silence. However, one should be careful in taking help from these lectures for interpreting Wittgenstein's view on saying and showing and ensure that such interpretation is consistent with other concepts of Wittgenstein. That is, these lectures should only be taken to corroborate Wittgenstein's view. In the background of all this, it is not only a coincidence that Russell, like TLP, begins his first lecture of Tlte Philosophy of


Logical Atomism with the analysis of facts. Russell's analysis of facts reveals that he was dealing with similar philosophical problems with which Wittgenstein was occupied at that time. He says, "The first truism to which I wish to draw your attention ... is that the world contains facts."6 Russell defines a fact as "that sort of thing that makes a proposition true or false, the sort of thing which is the case when your statement is true and is not the case when your statement is false."7 He explains the nature of fact with the admonition as to what a fact should not be understood. Some of the peculiarities of facts, which are relevant here, are as follows: Facts are not subjective - thought or beliefs - but belong to the objective world. A certain thing, property or relation should not be taken as a fact. There is no dualism of true and false facts. A fact cannot be either true or false. It is a proposition which can be regarded as the vehicle of true and false facts. He describes several kinds of facts, viz. particular, general, positive, negative, particular facts concerning particular things or particular qualities or relations, completely general facts, for example, that of Logic where there is no mention of any constituent of the world whatsoever, facts about the properties of single things, and facts about the relations between two things, three things, and so on. Let us have a complete view of TLP about the nature of facts by taking into account the above views of Russell which will clarify those points where Wittgenstein prefers to keep his silence. We have seen that, for Russell, a proposition is true if it expresses a fact, otherwise, it is false. In other words, truth and falsity of a proposition depends upon its correspondence with a fact.

6 Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (Boston and London: Dordrecht, 1979), p.182. 7lbid., p.191.


Wittgenstein, does not endorse logical atomism of Russell. However, according to him: "A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it" (TLp, 4.01). He further says, "A proposition can be true or false only in the virtue of being a picture of reality" (TLP, 4.06). As there is no third case apart from agreement and disagreement between picture and reality-which is reiterated in TLP, 2.222; "The agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity,"-Wittgenstein could very well be regarded as holding the view similar to Bertrand Russell, namely, the view that a proposition is a vehicle of truth and falsity which is to be construed in terms of its representation of a fact or nonrepresentation of a fact. However, there are dissimilarities in the deeper analysis between Russell's and Wittgenstein's positions: namely, when Wittgenstein introduces the term sense of a proposition. But before coming to this point, let us point out another similarity regarding nature of facts between the positions of Russell and Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, like Russell, distinguishes between two kinds of facts: positive and negative. Russell accepted that facts are neither true nor false but only propositions are true and false. He described the world as a zoo where different kinds of facts reside, for example, positive facts, negative facts, etc. Even for Wittgenstein, there are two kinds of facts-positive and negativedepending on whether a proposition is true or false. He says, "The existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality (We also call the existence of states of affairs a positive fact, and their non-existence a negative fact),,(TLP, 2.06). Further, ".. .if a proposition has no sense, nothing corresponds to it, since it does not designate a thing (a truth-value) which might have properties called 'false' or 'true'" (TLP, 4.063). And "... why should it not be possible to express a negative proposition by means of a neg~tive fact?"(TLP,5.5151}.


These superficial similarities between Russell and Wittgenstein should not be stressed over and over again. Wittgenstein holds that the sense of a proposition is independent from its truth and falsity. The sense of a proposition is not accidental (We will deal with Wittgenstein's account of sense and nonsense in a little while). However, one thing which is clear so far is that Wittgenstein's view of fact is similar to that of Russell's, i.e. a fact is that by virtue of which a proposition comes out to be true or false. The question arises: why, according to Wittgenstein, does the world consist of facts and not of things? In order to get an answer to this question, we have to depend, again, on Russell. For Russell, "Facts are ...... plainly something you have to take account of if you are going to give a complete account of the world. You cannot do that by merely enumerating the particular things that are in it: you must also mention the relations of these things, and their properties, and so forth, all of which are facts, so that facts certainly belong to an account of the objective world, and facts do seem much more clearly complex and much more not capable of being explained away than things like Socrates and Rumania."s Wittgenstein's standpoint is not as precise as that of Bertrand Russell and, therefore, there is a need of interpretation. According to James Griffin, Wittgenstein holds that the world is the totality of facts and not of things because "facts are generically different from things; facts have things as constituents; but they are not just the set of these things; they are these things plus configuration."9 Mounce is of the similar view. He says, "To say that the world is a totality of things would be to leave out that things fit together. Things exist only in facts. Moreover, which facts a thing can fit into is predetermined; it is written into the nature of the thing. That is why it is not things but facts, and not just facts but 8 Ibid., p. 191-192. 9 lames Griffin, op.cit., p. 30.

10 I Religious Beliefs, Superst itions and Wittgen stein

facts in logical space, that constitute the world."lo By facts in the logical space, Mounce meant that for Wittgenstein, not the actual existing facts, but the possible facts constitute the world. He says that sentences like 'Socrates is fat' and 'Plato is thin', repre~ent the states of affairs, not because of this that Socrates actually was fat and Plato was thin, but because there is a possibility of such occurrences. The possible occurrence of fact Mounce calls logical and explains with reference to the TLP, 2.012: ".. .if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be written into the thing itself." For Mounce, "Thus, it is written into Socrates and into Plato that each can be fat and thin. There is a range of possible state of affairs into which Socrates and Plato fit. Which of these state of affairs are actual is not a matter of logic; but it is a matter of logic which states of affairs are possible. Whether Socrates is fat or thin is a matter of fact, but it is a matter of logic that he can be either one or the other.'rU. Thus, we can say that for Wittgenstein analysis of facts is necessary for a complete description of the world. He analyses facts in terms of state of affairs and objects. STATES OF AFFAIRS

Wittgenstein deals with the term 'states of affairs' in the second proposition of the TLP. The German word Sachverhalten is translated by Ogden and Ramsey as 'atomic facts' but by Pears and McGuinness as 'states of affairs'. Since the latter translation takes into account the comments of Wittgenstein on Ogden's translation, therefore, it is generally preferred by Wittgensteinians.

10 M.O.Mounce, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: An introduction (London : Basil Blackwell, 1981), p.l8. 11 Ibid.


The question which has to be considered at this stage is: what, according to Wittgenstein, is the relationship between facts and states of affairs? Wittgenstein says, 'What is the case-a factis the existence of states of affairs" (TLP, 2). This view has to be seen in the light of TLP's first proposition which proclaims that 'world' means 'all that is the case' means 'facts'. However, there is no relation of identity between facts and states of affairs and their differences were brought out by Wittgenstein in his letter to Russell dated 19.8.1919. According to Wittgenstein, the difference between Tatsache (fact) and Sachverhalt (states of affairs) is that Sachverhalt is "... what corresponds to an Elementatstz if it is true. Tatsache is what corresponds to the logical product of elementary props when this product is true"(NB, p.129). I will describe Wittgenstein's notion of elementary propositions in the next section, i.e. while dealing with picture theory. However, at this stage it can be said that if ai is a state of affairs which stands for a true elementary proposition, for example, bi, and aii is another state of affairs standing for another true elementary proposition bii and so on, then the logical product of bi, bii, biii is a fact. The above analysis brings out that, for Wittgenstein, a fact is a complex entity, Le. a fact consists of states of affairs. Further, since a state of affairs stands for a true elementary proposition, it shows the possibility of Ogden's translation of Sachverhalt as 'atomic fact', like its translation as 'state of affairs', being equally sound. It is so because by accepting this it can be shown that atomic fact corresponds to an elementary proposition in the similar manner as a fact is expressed by a proposition. The only confusion, of which Ogden's view is susceptible, is that it will face the problem of making a distinction between a fact and an atomic fact. On this analysis, a fact can be taken as a complex whole consisting of many atomic facts which is the same as to say that a fact consists of several states of affairs. Though Wittgenstein accepted the possibility of


actual existence of elementary propositions, he was not able to provide any example of it (We will see this in his account of picture theory). However, it is sufficient to say here that it might have been due to either of the following two reasons: (1) for Wittgenstein, expressions of the elementary propositions are not possible, or (2) he failed to provide any example of an elementary proposition. Whatever might have been the reason, his notion of atomic facts or states of affairs and atomic or elementary propositions remains nothing but a hypothesis which has to be postulated for sufficient account of facts and propositions. It is in this way, here for the first time, we come across Wittgenstein's account of something (namely states of affairs and elementary propositions), which cannot be expr.essed but which can be only shown or grasped. For further account of states of affairs we have to analyse Wittgenstein's concept of objects. OBJECTS

We have seen that states of affairs constitute a fact. Facts are a certain possible or logical combination of states of affairs. Not any combination of states of affairs produce a fact, but only the logical combination does so. Thus, we come to consider: what is the combination of states of affairs which produces a fact? This question boils down to another question: what things do constitute a state of affairs? TLP, 2.01 states: "A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things)." Thus we arrive at Wittgenstein's concept of objects. Objects of TLP have the following characteristics: 1. Objects constitute a state of affairs (TLp, 2.01). Here, no difference is made between objects and things like table, chair, pen, paper, roads, streets etc. But TLP, 2.02 states: "Objects are simple." Thus, there is a difference between what we ordinarily understand a thing and the object of Wittgenstein.


2. There is a form of each world: imagined as well as real (the forms of the imagined as well as that of the real worlds are identical). TLP, 2.023 says that objects constitute the form of the world. But TLP, 2.01 had already stated that things constitute states of affairs. So, how could consistency be established between these two expressions? Actually, there is no inconsistency between these two expressions. Objects constitute states of affairs or atomic facts and, as we have seen, states of affairs constitute facts. Again, we have seen that facts are not things of the world, but they make propositions true or false. Now objects could be regarded as constituting the form of the world, i.e. facts or logical occurrence of an event. For constituting the form of the world, objects have a certain form. And this form is defined as the objects' possibility of occurring in the states of affairs (TLP, 2.0141). And, space, time, and colour (being coloured) are forms of objects (TLP, 2.0251). 3. Objects are not complex entities like a fact and a state of affairs. They are simple. The reason why objects are not complex is that they make up the substance of the world (TLP, 2.021). Thus, Wittgenstein presumes that there are substances in the world and defines them as that which exists independently of what is the case, i.e. facts (TLP, 2.024). In answer to the question: why should we presume the existence of substances in the world?, TLP, says that if there are no substances, then the truth of a proposition cannot be established independently of any other proposition (TLP, 2.0211). And thus, if the existence of substances are not accepted, the world cannot be described in terms of truth and falsity. 4.

Form of the world is made by substances but the material properties are made by objects (TLP, 2.0231). But we have described earlier that objects constitute form of the world. Thus, in fact, the role of objects is twin-fold: on the one


hand they make substances of the world and, therefore, participate in making form of the world, and on the other hand, they compose the material properties of the world. But the problem is that if objects are form of the world, how can they make substances of the world? This problem is solved by TLP, 2.025 which says that substance-can be defined as form conjoined with content. Now, the content part of substance is made by objects and, thus, objects participate in making the substance and thereby making form of the world (apart from material properties, the objects are contents of the world as well). The above analysis of objects completes the analysis of the triad of facts, states of affairs and objects. These three are related to each other in a way that it is not possible to think of the one without the other. They are related to each other as if they are in inherence (samavaya) relation of Vaisheshika school of Indian Philosophy, and are like the relation of intentionality of the Phenomenologists such as Brentano and Edmund Husserl. Just as there is a relationship of inherence between the act of love and the object of the love, or as these two are related in the intentional way, similarly there is a chain relationship among the fact, states of affairs and objects. These three are not to be regarded as different units of the chain but each unit consists of all these three. Just as objects constitute states of affairs, states of affairs, in turn, constitute a particular fact. Again, since a fact consists of states of affairs which, in turn, consists of objects, therefore, a fact consists of objects. Further, although both a fact and a state of affairs are combinations of objects there is a difference between them as on the one hand, a state of affairs is atomic in the sense that it is a set of objects which further cannot be classified and, on the other hand, a fact is a combination of objects such that this combination could be rearranged to a certain extent to which the limit is drawn by the possible or logical occurrence of the event. Objects are simple, unalterable, subsistent but their configuration


is changing and unstable (TLP, 2.02 and TLP, 2.0271). To say that configuration of objects is changing is to say that the state of affairs, which is this configuration, could be altered. Thus, the same set of objects can produce a different state of affairs or atomic facts. Now the question is: can a set of objects produce any kind of states of affairs? No, they cannot. They can produce only logical or possible states of affairs. The relation of one set of objects to that of a state of affairs is determinate (2.031) and any change in the configuration of objects produces a different state of affairs. The limit of the varieties of the combination of objects is the logical limit of the varieties of states of affairs which could be produced through a set of states of affairs. This determinate relation between objects and a state of affairs is the structure of a state of affairs and this structure, in turnr makes the structure of a fact (TLp, 2.032 and TLP, 2.034). Thus, objects are the ultimate constituents of the world. If this is so, why didn't Wittgenstein say that the world consists of objects and not of facts? The answer is that perhaps because of the reason that he could not provide any example of objects. He neither provides any example of objects nor that of any elementary propositions. An atomic fad or a state of affairs is represented by a true elementary proposition. Wittgenstein neither defines a fact, nor gives any example of an atomic facts or a state of affairs. He does not give any example of elementary proposition but regards them as constituting a proposition, which represents a fact. How is this representation possible? It is the analysis of this to which the following section subscribes.

(iD Picture, sense and nonsense PICTURE

The idea that a proposition serves as a picture of a fact struck to Wittgenstein while he was at the fronts of the battlefield during the First World War. He read in a newspaper about the court hearing of a car accident case in which the situation of the


accident was presented on a paper as model-situation. Wittgenstein thought that just as a picture of a situation could represent the situation, a proposition can be regarded as a picture which represents a fact. Now let us see Wittgenstein's arguments for calling proposition a picture.

TLP says, "We picture facts to ourselves"(2.l). We have seen that fact is that which makes a proposition either true or false. A proposition is carrier of a fact. In other words, a proposition is a picture of the fact it represents. Now, picture of something can be either true or false. We say something as a true picture when it represents the pictured thing in toto. If, it does not do so, it is regarded as a false picture. Similar is the case here. A true proposition is the proposition which carries a fact and a false proposition, though does not carry a fact, still keeps it with itself. This is but logical possibility in the negative way. Now, a true proposition is true picture of a fact, and a false proposition is false picture of a fact. This is brought out by TLP, 2.21: "A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false." The question arises: how does a picture fail to be a picture, or how does a picture turn out to be a false picture? To answer this question, again, we have to remind ourselves that the form of the objects determine the form of the world. Thus, if a picture has to be a true picture of the world, then it has to picture the objects. For Wittgenstein, each picture could be divided into parts and these parts, which he calls elements, must correspond to objects. Thus TLP, 2.131 says, "In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of objects." Like there is a correspondence between a picture and a fact, in the similar manner, there is a correspondence between parts of a picture, i.e. elements, and parts of a fact, i.e. objects. The definite way in which. the objects are related to a fact, in the same way, elements are related to the

Religious Ground ing or Groundlessness of Religion I 17

picture. And if they are not so related, the picture would be a false one. The question arises: whether a false picture is a picture at all? In order to answer this question we have to bring, once again, Wittgenstein's account of proposition. We have seen that a proposition represents a fact in two ways: if it represents a fact truly, the proposition is true; if it represents falsely, the proposition is false. Corresponding to a true proposition there is a positive, and corresponding to a false proposition there is a negative fact. Thus, a proposition whether represents or does not represent a fact, remains meaningful. Truth and falsity are empirically related to a proposition and it is in this way that they are different from the meaning of the proposition. A proposition becomes meaningful, not only when there really exists a fact corresponding to it, but also when there is such a logical possibility. Similar is the case in respect of Wittgenstein's concept of picture. When a picture does not picture a fact it is a false picture, but it does not become non-picture. Elements of a picture are related to each other in the similar manner as the objects of the facts are related. If the picture pictures in the manner in which objects are related in a fact, the picture is true, otherwise the picture is false. Wittgenstein's above position regarding the possibility of the false picture could be gathered from his following views as well. Wittgenstein calls the definite order, in which elements of the picture are related to each other, as the structure of the picture (TLP, 2.15). Further, he calls the possibility of the structure of the picture as the pictorial form (TLp, 2.15 and 2.151). Thus for Wittgenstein, pictorial form is not the structure of the picture, but is the possibility of such a structure. The reason for this view of Wittgenstein is his acceptance of the false picture as a kind of picture. Had he not accepted this, he would have defined pictorial form not as a possibility of a structure but as a structure of elements of the picture. And since the structure of elements of


a picture means only a true picture, the false picture would not have been a picture. But this is not so. And thus, for Wittgenstein, false picture is a kind of picture. Here from the point of view of Wittgenstein's distinction ) between saying and showing, the consideration of two concepts, pictorial form and logical form, is important. Pictorial form is the form which is shared by both the picture and that which it pictures, and logical form is shared by proposition and the possible fact which the proposition represents (TLP, 2.18 and 4.12). Pictorial form, as we have seen, is the possibility of the structure: the way elements of a picture are related. TLP says that a picture depicts a reality but it cannot depict its pictorial form. "A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it"(TLP, 2.172). However, sometimes Wittgenstein treats pictorial form as the form of picture and logical form as the form of reality or fact, and emphasises that in order to picture correctly the picture must share the logical form of the reality. As each picture has a pictorial form, it must also share the logical form with the reality which it depicts. Wittgenstein says, "What any picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality, in order to be able to depict it-correctly or incorrectly-in any way at all, is logical form, i.e. the form of reality"(TLP, 2.18). Just as a picture cannot depict its pictorial form but only can show or display it, no proposition can describe its logical form. The reason given for this by TLP is that for the description of the logical form subject has to transcend himself out of the world, which is not possible. Wittgenstein says, "Proposition 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. In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have to be able to station ourselves with propositions somewhere outside logic, that is to say outside the world" (TLP, 4.12). This logical form is displayed in the proposition and cannot be described by it:


"Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it"(TLP, 4.121). Thus, whereas propositions and pictures belong to the domain of saying, pictorial and logical forms belong to the realm of showing. SENSE AND NONSENSE

We have seen that, according to the picture theory of meaning, a proposition is meaningful, if and only if, it is a picture of a set of states of affairs or a fact. The proposition is true if it represents a fact, otherwise it is false. But a false proposition is different from a senseless or a nonsensical proposition. A false proposition is a meaningful proposition and thus it has a sense (although it does not depict the intended fact). On the other hand, a meaningless, or a senseless, or nonsensical proposition is different from a false proposition in the way of not representing or depicting any actual or possible reality. Thus, that which has sense can be expressed through proposition and that which cannot be expressed in this way is nonsensical or senseless. Whereas the sense belongs to the domain of sayable, the nonsense belongs to what Wittgenstein said showable. Wittgenstein's showable or that 'which cannot be said' amounts to that which cannot be put into propositions or that which cannot be expressed in language. Any attempt of their linguistic illustration would inevitably result into a senseless or nonsensical expression. These expressions (which in fact are no expressions) lack meaning because there is nothing in the world of which they could possibly be regarded as being a picture. Before moving further, a brief account of Frege's concept of sense and reference and its similarities with Wittgenstein's


concept of sense stands in the working order. The logical thesis which Frege developed, basically for which he is known and which is the centrepoint of Fregian logic, is the sense and reference distinction. Frege was struck by such theorems of identity as 4=2+2 and 4=3+ 1. The same thing can be talked about in various ways - the same star is called 'morning star' as well as 'evening star'. Since it is possible to talk about the single object in multiple ways, the questions arise: ".. .is this statement about the object mentioned, or about the signs used in speaking of it? If it is about the object, then why is it informative to say this, but not informative to say that the evening star is the same as the evening star? If it is about the signs, then, once more, how can it be informative since we can make signs stand for what we like by arbitrary definition?"12 This led Frege to distinguish between sense and reference of a sign. For him such expressions as 4=2+2 and 4=4, on the one hand, and morning star=evening star and Venus=Venus, on the other, designate the same object. Whereas there is a cognitive value involved in the former, i.e. 4=2+2 and morning star=evening star, it is not in the latter, i.e, 4=4 and Venus= Venus. The former is true a priori and does not provide any information, and the truth of the latter shows that the same object can be talked about or presented in different ways. According to Frege, the object talked about is the reference of the words or signs and the 'mode of presentation' is its sense. This distinction enabled Frege to conclude that the sense of the word or sign can be grasped through the language concerned but the reference cannot be known in that way. Frege's conception of sense and reference is closely related to Wittgenstein's view of sense and nosense, showable and sayable. Anscombe is of the view that the translation of 'Bedeutung' as 'meaning' and 'bedeuten' 12 Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (England: Thoemmes Press, 1996), p.l3.


as 'mean' in TLP by C. K Ogden is not correct and it should have been 'reference' and 'sense' respectively. If it is translated in this way then we see that "Wittgenstein's conception of 'sense' may be called the same as Frege's, if we are careful to add that Wittgenstein had different theses about it: for he held that names had no sense but only reference, and propositions no reference but only sense; and also that a proposition could not have a sense without being true and false."13 After this comparison between Frege and Wittgenstein about 'sense', let us return to Wittgenstein's view on sense and nonsense. The point which is to be noted at this stage is that Wittgenstein does not recommend for the actual correspondence between proposition and reality as a criterion for the proposition to be meaningful. Rather he emphasises that it is not the actual but possible or logical picturing of the reality which is decisive in determining the meaningfulness of a proposition. That is why he regards proposition as a logical and not as an actual picture of a fact (NB, p.8e). In other words, sense of a proposition is independent to its truth and falsity. If a proposition refers to a fact or a state of affairs or objects, it is true, otherwise it is false. But to say that a proposition is false, is not to say that it lacks sense. Truth and falsity are the two aspects of the same reality. As stated in the beginning, Wittgenstein holds facts to be positive and negative. Thus, what Wittgenstein emphasises is not the actual depiction of a reality but it is the logical or possible depiction of the reality which determines the sense of a proposition. According to Wittgensatein, "A proposition can express its sense only by being the logical portrayal of it." (NB, p. 6e) The question which arises is: If logical picturing or possible picturing is our concern, how picturing could be regarded as a criterion? In order to find an answer to this question, let us 13Ibid., p.17.


discuss Wittgenstein's example of two pin-men (A and B) with sword. A is in the right and B is in the left. Wittgenstein says, "Let us think of hieroglyphic writing in which each word is a representation of what it stands for. Let us think also of the fact that actual pictures of situations can be right and wrong.

If the right-hand figure in this picture represents the man A, and the left-hand one stands for the man B, then the whole might assert, e.g.: 'A is fencing with B.' The proposition in picturewriting can be true or false. It has a sense independent of its truth or falsehood. It must be possible to demonstrate everything essential by considering this case"(NB 30.9.14). Take this picturing as a proposition. Now the following situations arise: 1. A picture pictures a fact or a state of affairs or objects-that of fencing A and B. If it actually represents the states of affairs then it is true, otherwise false. "Only in this way the proposition can be true or false: It can only agree or disagree with reality by being a picture of a situation"(NB p.8e). And, "A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality" (TLP, 4.06). In the above described propositional diagram, the proposition would be false if it does not depict fencing but something else. The diagram may be depicting some other states of affairs like a Cujarati Carba dance etc. and not the fencing between A and B. But being not true does not mean that it lacks sense. The proposition in the form of a picture in this example still has a sense though it is not true.


2.

Thus it is possible that a picture is misinterpreted, i.e. it may be regarded as depicting something other than it actually does. This is very much possible in case of modern painting or Rabindra School of painting. If a lay man with all his efforts interprets the painting, it may be that he could not have touch even the fringes of the subject matter of the painting. However, even for him the painting has a sense though it may be that his interpretation of it is false. For Wittgenstein, even if a picture fails to agree with reality it keeps a sense independent of its truth and falsity. As TLP's 2.21 and 2.22 say, "A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false" and "What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth and falsity, by means of its pictorial form." Thus, e.g. the proposition 'Person X accompanied me yesterday evening to the theatre' could be true as well as false. It is a true expression if corresponding to this there is a fact, namely, my going to the theatre with person X. Otherwise this statement will be false. The falsity, nevertheless, does express a negative fact and thus the statement makes sense. The statement would have been lacking sense or nonsensical if it had not expressed any fact or state of affairs. The proposition holds the logical or possible occurrence of the fact in question. However, there are problems in accepting this conclusion which could be expressed as follows:

(a) If possible or logical depiction is the criteria for making sense, then what is the criterion of a possible or logical depiction of the reality? In other words, how could a proposition be regarded as a logical depiction of a state of affairs? (b) Further, if a proposition is regarded as making sense even though it is interpreted as representing a states of affairs which is different from what it actually intended to represent -logically or possibly-then how to distinguish between


sense and nonsense? The problem becomes much acute if we consider this fact that, for Wittgenstein, nonsensical proposition means a proposition which does not represent a possible or logical state of affairs. Cyril Barrett is of the view that this does not possess a problem for Wittgenstein as "Wittgenstein is fairly broadminded in his use of the notion of pictures. "14 With the help of his notion of 'broadminded Wittgenstein' Barrett solves the above problem in relation to the above described example of pin-men fencing. Barrett says, "It is not the colour or relative size and thinness of the pin-men that is being correlated, but their shape, posture, spatial relationship and, perhaps, some other qualities. It should also be said that reaching out, sending our feelers and being laid against reality touches only the possibility of their being an actual state of affairs corresponding to the picture, not that there is one."lS In favour of his thesis Barrett quotes TLP, 4.014: "A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, and the sound waves, all stand to one another in the same internal relationship of depicting that holds between language and the world. They are all constructed according to a common logical pattern." But the problem is much more complex than anticipated by Barrett. The question is: If a proposition can be regarded as having sense and still may be false, like in the above example, then how could a distinction between such a proposition and a proposition which is nonsensical be drawn. That is to say, if a proposition does not occur in the real life situations but only the possibility of its attainability is the criteria of its being meaningful or nonsensical, then what would be criterion of decision as to whether its possibility is a possibility of its 14 Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p.6. 15 Ibid.


attainability or only a weak hypothesis? It is at this stage that we have to take into account Wittgenstein's distinction between lacking sense and nonsense.

LACKING SENSE, NONSENSE AND RELIGION Let us consider the following remarks of the TLP: "Tautologies and contradictions lack sense"(4.461), and "Tautologies and contradictions are not, however, nonsensical. They are part of the symbolism, much as '0' is part of the symbolism of arithmetic" (4.4611). Thus it is obvious that Wittgenstein makes a distinction between senseless or lacking sense and nonsensical expressions. As stated above, TLP says that logical propositions 'lack sense'. A tautology admits that everything is true and a contradiction says that everything is false. They do not picture any actual or possible fact. However, they are not nonsense because they play a part in symbolism. Wittgenstein regards logic as transcendental because it shows its sense by way of showing of the formal structure of the language and thus it is not nonsensical. Once again, since it does not depiit anything, i.e. it does not say any thing about the world, therefore, it lacks sense. Propositions of religion differ from logical propositions. On the one hand, logical propositions lack sense because they do not depict any possible or actual state of affairs but they are not nonsensical because they show the logical form of the language. They do not say anything because they do not picture anything but they display the reality behind. On the other hand, religious propositions, not only do not say anything but also show nothing. They do not picture any possible or actual state of affairs as well as they do not show any logical form of religion, and that is why Wittgenstein calls them to be nonsensical. Similar is the case with propositions of aesthetics, ethics and philosophy. In fact Wittgenstein treats religion as well as ethics and aesthetics as


concerning human value. These values are absolute values and, according to Wittgenstein, they are not factual. The propositions of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and religion are actually not propositions at all. They are nonsensical utterances. About philosophy, Wittgenstein says, "Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently, we cannot give any answer to the questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions arise from our failure to understand the logiC of our language" (TLP, 4.003). Criticising Wittgenstein's view that philosophical propositions are nonsensical, F.P. Ramsey quips: "Philosophy must be of some use and we must take it seriously, it must clear our thoughts and so our actions. Or else it is a disposition we have to check, and an enquiry to see that this is so, i.e. the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense. And again, we must then take it seriously that it is nonsense and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense.''16 In his reply to Ramsey's criticism, Cyril Barrett says, "Ramsey, alas, did not live to complete his inquiry. Perhaps if he had done so he might have come to see that Wittgenstein was not pretending that philosophy and value are important nonsense; that he was not, as the passage implies, deluding himself, and that the way in which he uses the terms 'nonsense' and 'nonsensical' cannot be reduced to the ordinary sense of the term, to which sentences such as 'Socrates is identical' or even 'Smith and Jones are not identical' belong."17 Likewise, propositions of religion are not nonsensical in the ordinary sense of the term. They do not say anything. They are not senseless or meaningless like an ordinary proposition. An ordinary proposition is senseless when it does not picture any actual or possible facts. There are no facts in religion. They transcend the world of facts. Further, they do not lack sense like 16 F.P. Ramsey, quoted in Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p. 22. 17 Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p.23.


the propositions of logic. Propositions of logic show their essences by their symbolism. Propositions of values are not only senseless or lack sense, they are nonsensical. The realm of values is the transcendental realm. TLP, 6.421 states that ethics is transcendental, hence, any attempt to depict transcendental, that which is showable, would result into nonsensical expression. As for Wittgenstein in CV ethics and religion converge at the same point, so religion turns out to be inexpressible. Let us consider Wittgenstein's treatment of nonsense in some more detail. It is well known that Wittgenstein denounced G. E. Moore's criticism of scepticism in the Oc. Wittgenstein was of the view that Moore was unsuccessful in his attempt to refute scepticism on the basis of such claims as 'I know that it is a hand.' Wittgenstein's criticism of Moore's claim does not mean that he embraced Humean scepticism. His purpose was to show that Moore's claim that such statements, like 'I know that it is a hand', are in fact not the cases of knowing but that of nonsense. Similar to Moore's example that 'I know that it is a hand', Wittgenstein takes the example 'I know that a sick man is lying here'. Let us consider OC §1O: "I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! 1 am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face-So I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense. Any more than the assertion 'I am here'... ff

TYPES OF NONSENSE Two kinds of views are discernible from the above remarks of OC in the contemporary research on Wittgenstein. One believes that Wittgenstein rejected 'I know' here because for him it is an attempt to say which cannot be said. On the other hand, the second opinion is that Wittgenstein rejected this claim of knowledge because it is an attempt to describe 'something' which in fact cannot be described. James Conant, in his recent article, 'Wittgenstein on Meaning and


Use' has attributed McGinn as a representative of the second kind of interpretation of Wittgenstein. He says, "Some philosophers will think that it helps to distinguish here between saying and asserting. So, they might say, it is clear what is being said is such an illegitimate employment of language; Wittgenstein's complaint is not directed against what is said; Wittgenstein's complaint is directed rather at the idea that the 'something' in question is the kind of thing that can be asserted here. The charge is thus not directed against the intelligibility of what is said, but against the intelligibility of the attempt to assert 'it' on such an unsuitable occasion. Nonsense as a term of criticism is thereby taken to apply to acts of assertion rather than propositions. On this reading, Wittgenstein holds that nonsense results when one attempts the assertion of something that cannot be asserted in a particular sort of context. Marie McGinn is a representative proponent of such a reading of Wittgenstein on nonsense."IS More precisely, the debate is between the following two interpretations of Wittgenstein's views on nonsense: (1) nonsense results because one's utterances are nonsense, and (ii) nonsense occurs because one tries to say 'something' which in fact cannot be said. First kind of nonsense can occur in two ways: (i) It may occur because of the meaninglessness of some words of the proposition, for example, tog abtc ul. Here it may be that a particular word of the proposition is meaningless or it may be that all the words are meaningless. (ii) It may be that words of the proposition are all meaningful but the expression is nonsensical because of syntactical mistakes, e.g. irrigate with fire. These kinds of mistakes are verbal mistakes where nonsense occurs because of the violation of the rules of syntax and semantics. 18 James Conant, 'Wittgenstein on Meaning and Use', Philosophical investigations, 21:3, (1998), 223-4.


The second kind of nonsense occurs when depth of grammar is not understood and thus it is violated. Here, the mistake occurs because 'something' about which the proposition is supposed to be a picture is, in fact, nothing sort of the thing which can find its expression in language. Thus, religious matters are not something which can be properly expressed in language. The emotion, feeling, grief, sorrow, happiness, pleasure, remorse, faith, trust, intimacy, etc. leave different impressions on a reader or a hearer. But these kinds of words, at times, are insufficient to communicate a proper message, and a writer or a speaker finds himself in a helpless situation for being unable to communicate. However, both of the views have been attributed to Wittgenstein. The early Wittgenstein is regarded as holding (a), and the later as (b). But, there is a need to see Wittgenstein as a composite of these two. This is perhaps vaguely hinted upon by James Conant. He says, "Most commentators on Wittgenstein's work-both early and late-understand Wittgenstein's deployment of 'nonsense' as a term of philosophical criticism to represent the conclusion of an argument to the effect that certain combinations of expressions or the employments of certain combinations of expressions in certain contexts-are inherently nonsensical. If you are a scholar of Wittgenstein's early work, you are likely to think that the trouble is to be traced to violations of logical syntax (i.e. the logical incompatibility of the parts of the proposition). If you are a scholar of his later work, you are likely to think it is to be traced to violations of grammar (which sometimes means the same thing as violations of logical syntax, and which sometimes means the incompatibility of certain meanings with certain contexts of use)."19 We began to consider Wittgenstein's distinction between an expression which is lacking sense and a nonsensical 19lbid., p.249.


expression in order to find out the solution of the problem as to how to decide whether, or the one hand, propositional expression of a fact is possible and hence have sense, or on the other, impossible and therefore nonsensical. Here, we come to conclude that the attainability of possibility or impossibility of the propositional expression could be seen in terms of the following: 1. Whether there is or is not any logical incompatibility among the parts of the proposition, and 2.

Whether there is or is not any logical incompatibility of the context of the use of the word or sentence.

An attempt to express religion into language results into nonsensical expression when one ignores the above-described second point. For Wittgenstein, attempt to express anything in language without taking into account the fact whether it can be expressed in a language or not, would be a futile attempt. He concludes TLP with the admonition that one should remain silent where one cannot speak. Religion, along with ethics and aesthetics, belongs to this realm of silence or showable.

The above account of different terms-facts, states of affairs, objects, pictures, sense and nonsense-is an attempt to reconstruct the logical framework which underlies the saying and showing distinction. We have construed that Wittgenstein analyses facts in terms of states of affairs and objects. Further, the picture theory says that a proposition is the picture of a fact and a fact is revealed through a proposition. If there is an actual or possible fact corresponding to a proposition then that proposition is meaningful, otherwise it is nothing but senseless, or lacking-sense or a nonsensical expression. Against Frege's view that only a well constructed proposition is meaningful, Wittgenstein says that all possible propositions are well constructed, i.e. the possibility of a proposition, according to


Wittgenstein, is the criterion of its meaningfulness. A proposition means 'a meaningful expression' which expresses a fact. The analysis, which we have done so far, leads us to the conclusion that a proposition which pictures a fact is a meaningful expression and thus it can be stated or said clearly. The proposition which pictures a fact qualifies Wittgenstein's criteria in TLP that 'what can be said, can be said clearly'. Thus, pictorial proposition belongs to the realm of saying. The description of the realm of which can be said shows that which cannot be said. Thus, that which does not find pictorial expression through proposition is to be shown. The invisible part of the iceberg. has to be shown by its visible part. Nonpropositional domains such as (i) logical form, (ii) pictorial form, (iii) logic, (iv) mathematics, (vi) tautology and contradiction, (vi) metaphysical self, (vii) ethics and aesthetics, and (viii) religion belong to the realm of showing. This can be explained in the following manner: (i)

(ii)

Propositions cannot represent logical form because it is not a part of the world and it is only reflected in the language. "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 from. In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have to be able to station ourselves with proposition somewhere outside logic, i.e. to say outside the world"(TLP, 4.12). Further, "Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of the reality. They display it" (TLP, 4.121). TLP, 2.17 defines pictorial form as that which is common between reality and the picture of reality. Further, TLP,


(iii)

(iv)

(v)

(vi)

2.171 admits that although a picture depicts reality, TLP, 2.172 states, "A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form-it displays it." Logic belongs to the realm of showing. TLP, 6.1 and TLP, 6.11 state that as the propositions of logic are tautologies, they say nothing. They are like analytic propositions. Further, TLP, 6.13 says, "Logic is transcendental." TLP, 6.2, 6.22 and 6.234 maintain mathematics as a method of logic. Logic and mathematics are on the same pedestal. Logical propositions do not express anything and likewise is the case with mathematical propositions: "A proposition of mathematics does not express a thought" (TLP, 6.21). The propositions of mathematics are actually not propositions. TLP, 6.2 says, "The propositions of mathematics are equations, and therefore pseudopropositions." We have observed that tautologies and contradictions lack sense because they do not express any actual or possible facts. Hence they are not propositions because "propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing" (TLP, 4.461). Thus, like the propositions of logic and mathematics, propositions of tautologies and contradictions are actually not propositions about the reality of the world. They show something and do not say anything. For Wittgenstein, metaphysical self is not a part of the world as it is not the human body. It lies outside the limit of the world as TLP, 5.641 states: "The philosophical self is not the human being, the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world-not a part of it." Thus, the world which is the totality of facts is the realm of saying and which lies outside of the world, such as metaphysical self, belongs to the realm of showing.


(vii) "It is clear that ethics cannot be put into world. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same)" (TLp, 6.421). (viii) Wittgenstein maintains that ethics and religion converge at the same point: "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics" (CV, p.5e). Hence, religion like ethics does not belong to the world but lies outside. The single criterion of the belonging of the above described domains, i.e. ethics and religion, to the realm of showing is that they cannot be expressed through a proposition which could picture a fact about them. Criticising Wittgenstein's view that the sense of TLP lies in showing (that which cannot be said), Russell in his introduction to TLP, which was disowned by Wittgenstein, says, "What causes a hesitation is the fact that, after all, Mr. Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the sceptical reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages, or by some other exit"(p.xxi). The point which Russell misses is that Wittgenstein himself regards TLP as nonsensical for those who understand it. TLP, according to Wittgenstein, serves as an elucidation and as a ladder which has to be thrown away once one has climbed up (TLp, 6.54). In his reply to a similar objection (similar to the objection put above by Russell) as to how one can say something that is unsayable, Cyril Barrett says, "If you attempt to say something that is unsayable you are talking about nonsense, so you might as well come clean and speak about the nonsensical as Wittgenstein does. It nevertheless finds 'unsayable', though odd, less open to misinterpretation and less shocking than 'nonsensical', and, because less traditional, more challenging than inexpressible. However, all three terms are necessary in order to convey Wittgenstein's thought, as are others such as 'transcendent', 'absolute' and the expression 'attempting to


go beyond the boundaries of language'."2o Further, Wittgenstein's position has been properly depicted by J. Hartnack. He says, "Wittgenstein's propositions are like the oral or written instructions which explain how a map depicts a landscape or a chart depicts a fever. Clearly, if one maintains that to say something is to depict something, instructions of this kind, however useful or necessary, say nothing. And since he does insist in this way that saying is depicting, it follows that, on his view, explanations of how the pictures depict the facts do not themselves say anything." 21 By way of putting aside the critics of the possibility of the realm of showable, such as Bertrand Russell and F.P. Ramsey, it can be argued, like Cyril Barrett, that Wittgenstein is consistent in his view that the realm of showable is inexpressible or unsayable and any attempt to express it could result into nothing but nonsensical expression. Thus, Wittgenstein distinguishes between the realm of saying and showing primarily in order to maintain that religious beliefs are inexpressible and are much more important than the beliefs of the mundane world. Such a religious inexpressibility shows that religion is not grounded in propositions-language is not significant for it. And it is in this sense that religion is groundless. (b) The Incomprehensibility Transcendence

of

Religion:

Religious

Saying and showing distinction of the previous section has established that for Wittgenstein religion belongs to the realm of showing and remains inexpressible because language fails to express that which is beyond the realm of physical world, i.e. saying.

20 Cyrit Barrett, op.cit., p. 26. 21 Justus Hartnack, Wittgenstein and Modern philosophy (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1965), p.23.


Now let us consider as to how, for Wittgenstein, religion remains transcendent, i.e. how it remains incomprehensible. Something which is inexpressible can be either comprehensible or incomprehensible. For example, even if I don't know how to express in language what the meaning of love is, I can still comprehend its warmth etc. However, before analysing this further, here it is to be noted again that although there is an explicit endorsement about ethical transcendence by Wittgenstein in rLP, nowhere did he directly announce the transcendence of religion. Wittgenstein's remark: "What is good is divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics" (CV; p.5e), forms the basis of my treatment of Wittgenstein's view of the transcendence of ethics and religion. Thus, in the light of the above view of CV; it should be noted that for Wittgenstein to talk about the transcendence of ethics means to talk about the transcendence of religion and vice-versa. There are many interpretations of 'transcendence'. Generally, it is regarded that "transcend' means to 'surmount, pass or lie beyond a limit, exceed'. Its use in philosophy has been multifarious. It usually means going beyond either conceptual or perceptual boundaries. Traditionally, the so-called transcendentals were regarded as those concepts or ideas which belong to no particular category but which can be applied to all categories, e.g. concepts such as 'being', 'something', 'unity,.,,22 Two kinds of the uses of the word 'transcendence' is discernible in the history of philosophy: (a) the word 'transcendence' means that there is a reality which exists beyond this empirical world, and (b) 'transcendence' means that which is beyond cognition. (a)

Antony Flew defines transcendent as: 'Beyond experience'. And, he further elaborates it as: "The word is often used by theists to describe the way in which God supposedly exists

22 Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p.30.


beyond and independent of the created world." As opposed to transcendent Flew defines the notion of immanent as "'In-dwelling'. The word is often used by pantheists to describe the way in which God dwells in, or is in some sense identified with, the created world. "23 (b) Frolov defines transcendent as "that which is beyond consciousness and cognition as opposed to the immanent."24 The difference between the above two denotations of 'transcendence' is that the first takes it to be beyond experience, whereas the second treats it to be beyond cognition. This difference is of great significance as it designates most of the philosophical discussions and debates regarding exact meaning of 'transcendence'. This can be understood in the context of the notions of absolute and God. Absolute is beyond cognition as well as experience as it is regarded in the Advaita Vediinta. We cannot know about Brahman as He is beyond all description, i.e. no description would be His appropriate depiction. The best way to describe Him is by negative terms such as neti-neti (not-this, notthis). God, on the other hand, is transcendental in the sense that He is beyond experience. Religion speaks about God as omnipotent etc. and thus He could be taken as beyond experience as we are unaware of what He wills or contemplates. But He is not transcendental in the sense of being beyond cognition. It is to assert that we can cognise that the world is an act of Maya which is the potency of Brahman. Likewise, Rudolf Dtto and Paul Tillich treat absolute as transcendent in both of the above senses. It is so because "the former speaks of the object to which the numinous state of mind 23 Antony Flew, Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Pan books Ltd., 1979), p.354 &164. 24 I. Frolov, Dictionary of Philosophy (Moscow: Progress Publishers,1967), p.428.


refers as inaccessible to the most concentrated attention of the conceptual understanding; and the latter speaks of the word 'God' as transcending its own conceptual content, whatever that may mean.,,25 Kant regards transcendence as both beyond experience as well as knowledge. For him we do not and cannot know the object of 'things-in-themselves' or 'noumena' such as God, Soul, Immortality etc; they are beyond the world of 'phenomenon'. Further, what appears certain from the above definitions of transcendence is that transcendent and immanent are opposed to each other. Like Kant, Wittgenstein endorses both kinds of transcendence. Thus, "Like Kant's transcendentals that not only transcended experience as the necessary conditions a priori of its possibility, but also attempt to transcend both space and time and the categories that make the world intelligible, Wittgenstein's transcendentals are an attempt to go beyond the bounds of language and say what cannot be said. Like Kant, who said of thoughts without content that they are empty, but unlike the Transcendentalists who believed we can hewe knowledge of what is beyond possible experience, Wittgenstein regarded these attempts to go beyond the bounds of sense as nonsensical. And yet, like Kant, who found it necessary to postulate Ideas of Reason, Wittgenstein found it necessary to regard ethics as transcendental. ,,26 For Wittgenstein God is transcendent as no one can understand purpose behind the creation of the world. Thus, ridiculing Schopenhauer's view about life span of a human being, Wittgenstein maintains that to assert this is to claim that one has understood God's system. He says, "(Schopenhauer: the real life span of the human being is 100 years.) 'Of course, it must 25 W.n.Hudson, Wittgenstein and Religious Beliefs (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1975), p.140. 26 Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p.30.


be like that!' It is as though you have understood a creature's purpose. You have understood the system. You do not ask yourself 'How long do human beings actually live then?', that seems now a superficial matter, whereas you have understood something more profound" (CV, p.30e). Thus, Wittgenstein takes transcendence in both of the senses described above, i.e. experience as well as cognition. He, therefore, endorses absolutists concept of transcendence. It is the transcendence of complete incomprehensible. Such a conception is more absolutist and less theistic. As "it is arguable that theistic necessity is served when the transcendence of God is interpreted differently. It can be interpreted as the possession in a surpassing degree of such characteristics as wisdom, goodness, or power. So interpreted, it does not state, or imply, that God is incomprehensible. To say that God has more wisdom than any being of whom we ever heard is to say something perfectly comprehensible. To affirm that he has all the wisdom we could imagine and more besides is also quite intelligible. We know what the meaning of the words 'wisdom' 'all' 'more' 'besides' are; and we can therefore form some idea of what it would be like to encounter a greater wisdom than we had hitherto encountered and to go on encountering greater and greater wisdom without limit. To speak of God as surpassingly wise in this sense is quite different form saying that his wisdom is incomprehensible."z7 Theistic concept of transcendence is comprehensible. Theism regards God as transcendent as well as immanent reality. To some extent at least it is comprehensible. For example, it admits some definite attributes of God. God is regarded as Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent reality. As opposed to this, VVittgenstein's complete incomprehensible notion of transcendence is closer to Absolutist concept of transcendence.

27 W.D.Hudson, op.cit., p.140.


Therefore, let us consider the points of resemblance between the views of Wittgenstein, Advaita Vedanta and Paul Tillich on transcendence. Advaitic aphorism 'Brahman satyam jagat mithya ... .' divides reality into two; Ultimate Reality (Parmarthic Satta) and Empirical Reality (Vyavaharic Satta). This empirical or phenomenal world is relatively true. The final truth is the Ultimate Reality whose description is not possible since language can describe only that which is accidental truth. Description is possible only to the extent of showing the real nature (svarupa lakshan) of Brahman. This position of Advaita Vedanta is described by Panneerse1vam as: "Shankara in all his commentaries tries to drive home the idea that Brahman can never be described, but can only be shown some-how approximately (aduraviprakar~e1Jtl).,,28 Murthy brings out the incomprehensible aspect of Brahman as follows: "While no description is possible of the Brahman, the task of the Vedanta is to teach about it, and so logically speaking it is an impropriety; but only in this way can the Vedanta emphasise the mystery of Brahman, which eludes all objective language; and yet it can be dealt with only in that way if

Brahman has to be talked about intelligibly.,,29 Wittgenstein, like Shankara, admits that there is a realm which is incomprehensible. Wittgenstein says, "Suppose someone said: 'What do you believe, Wittgenstein? Are you a sceptic? Do you know whether you will survive death?' 1 would really, this is a fact, say 'I don't know', because 1 haven't any clear idea what I'm saying when I'm saying 'I don't cease to exist,' etc." (Le, p.70). Wittgenstein's thesis of religious transcendence has striking similarities with Paul Tillich's view that "man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language 28 S. Panneerselvam, The problem of Meaning; with reference to Wittgenstein and Shankara: A Study in the meaning of Language (Madras: University of Madras, 1993), p.109. 29 Quoted in S. Paneerselvam, Ibid., p.l12.


alone is able to express the ultimate. ,,30 Tillich says that the cause of so much confusion about religious language is the confusion between 'symbol' and 'sign'. And this confusion regarding distinction between 'symbol' and 'sign' is because of the fact that both of them point beyond themselves something else. He says, "Symbols are similar to signs in one decisive respect: both symbols and signs point beyond themselves to something else. The typical sign, for instance the red light at the corner of the street, does not point to itself but it points to the necessity of cars' stopping. And every symbol points beyond itself to a reality for which it stands. In this, symbols and signs have an essential identity-they point beyond themselves.,,31 Tillich differentiates benyeen. symbol and sign on the ground that whereas sign denotes only that much as its connotation permits, a symbol denotes beyond its connotation. According to Tillich: "Language is a very good example of the difference between signs and symbols. Words in a language are signs for a meaning which they express. The word 'desk' is a sign which points to something quite different-namely, the thing on which a paper is lying and at which we might be looking ....but there are words in every language which are more than this, and in the moment in which they get connotations which go beyond something to which they point as signs, then they can become symbols; and this is a very important distinction for any speaker. He can speak almost completely in signs, reducing the meaning of his words almost to mathematical signs, and this is the absolute ideal of the logical positivist.'032 Thus, for Tillich, a symbol does stand for a reality in a different way as a sign stands for a reality. Tillich's sign is 30 F. Forrester Church, The Essential Tillich; All Anthology of the Writings of Paul Tillicll (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p.4l.

31 Ibid., p.4S.

32 Ibid., p.46.


Wittgenstein's picture of a reality. As stated above, for Wittgenstein, proposition is a picture of a reality. Thus, sign of Tillich could be regarded as equivalent to Wittgenstein's the notion of analysis of a proposition as a picture. Wittgenstein accepted that propositional explanation of religion is not possible on the ground that propositions refer to the things of this contingent world. And, once again, Wittgenstein says that description of that which could not find its logical or possible existence as states of affairs or objects which constitutes fact, is not possible. Wittgenstein's this view resembles Tillich's view that a sign becomes a symbol when it points out something more than the connotations which it refers as a sign. Thus, symbol is the tool of Tillich to express Wittgenstein's realm of the unsayable or showable. A word for Tillich is symbol to the extent it has left out its role as a sign, i.e. to the extent it goes beyond its connotations as a sign. For Tillich, the function of a religious symbol is to "open up a level of reality, which otherwise is not open at all, which is hidden.,,33 The reason why reality is not open is that "the wholly transcendent transcends every symbol of the Holy. ,,34 At the heart of bothWittgenstein and Tillich-lies the conviction that religion cannot be expressed through proposition (Wittgenstein) or sign (Tillich). Thus, for both Wittgenstein and Tillich, religion transcends the limits of language. When we take into account Wittgenstein's distinction between absolute and relative ethics in his LE, we find that it resembles Shankara's distinction between Brahman and Ishvara, and Tillich's distinction between the two levels of religious symbols-transcendent and immanent. Wittgenstein in the LE treats relative ethics as that which consists of statements of facts

33 Ibid., p.49. 34 Ibid.

42 I Religious Beliefs, Supersti tions and Wittgenstein

and in turn cease to be called ethics as such. It is absolute ethics which converges with religion at the same point, Le. nothing possibly can be said about them. Moreover, in the preface Wittgenstein reveals the aim of TLP as to put a limit 'to the expression of thoughts'. According to Anscombe: "the principal theme of the book is the connection between language, or thought, and reality."35 For this purpose it is necessary to know what can be thought and what cannot be thought. 'That which cannot be thought', according to Wittgenstein, puts a limit to 'that which can be thought.' Similarly, that which cannot be expressed in language puts a limit to that which can be expressed. Any violation of this limit commits nonse nse-bo th in the realm of thought as well as the expression of thought. Wittgenstein's main purpos e is to put a limit to that which can be thought. However, since it is the language in which any such limit could be drawn, he reformulates the aim of TLP as to draw a limit 'to the expression of thoughts'. That is why, in the preface of TLP he says, "It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense." This he maintains on the basis of the basic principal of the book that 'what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what cannot be talked about we must pass over in silence'. Wittgenstein says, "We keep hearing the remark that philosophy really does not progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. Those who say this however don't understand why it is so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there is still a verb 'to be' that looks as though it functions in the same way as 'to eat' and 'to drink,' as long as we stilI have the adjectives 'identical,' 'true,' 'false,' 'possible', as long 35 G.E.M Anscombe, op.cit., p. 19.


as we continue to talk of a river of time and an expanse of space, etc. etc., people will keep stumbling over the same cryptic difficulties and staring at something that no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And this satisfies besides a longing for the supernatural for in so far as people think they can see the 'limit of human understanding', they believe of course that they can see beyond it"(CV, p.22e). These remarks of Wittgenstein clearly show that for him there is a limit to thought beyond which philosophising must stop. Wittgenstein talks about the ethical and logical transcendence in TLP. However, there is a difference between the transcendence of ethics, religion and aesthetics on the one hand, and on the other, the transcendence of logic. This difference has been beautifully brought out by Cyril Barrett which is as follows: "In the context of TLP, 6.41 it is clear that in calling ethics 'transcendental' Wittgenstein is doing no more than reiterating the contents of that entry. What is outside the world, as value, and, hence, ethics is, transcends the world, and hence, is transcendental. Earlier (TLP, 6.13) he says: 'Logic is transcendental'. By this he clearly means that logic is concerned with the structure of the world as a whole; not with facts but with the totality of facts. The transcendentality of ethical, aesthetic and religious expression is not identical with that of logic and mathematics. They do not mirror the structure of the world. They treat the world as a whole: they transcend the facts of the world. They are, like the medieval transcendentals, applicable to everything and so to nothing in particular. They do not refer to classes, categories, genera or species that comprise the world of things.,,36

36 Cyril Barret, op.cit., p. 30.


Wittgenstein has expressed this view not only in NB and TLP, as described above, but there are his aphorisms in CV, 2

and LE also which indicate that he continued having the similar view. For example, he says, "The inexpressible (what I find enigmatic & cannot express) perhaps provides the background, against which Whatever I was able to express acquires meaning"(CV; p.23e). For him the criterion of nonsensicality is unimaginability, ''hence there is something right about saying that unimaginability is a criterion for nonsensicality" (2 §263). Thus, for Wittgenstein religion is inexpressible and incomprehensible. His 'Saying and Showing distinction' describes the former whereas his notion of transcendence maintains the latter. They both together establish that there is no religious grounding. Religion is not based on any ground of language or that of experience. It is beyond everything which belong to the physical world. The inexpressibility and incomprehensibility of religious beliefs also show that religion is not based on any evidence. It does not need the support of any factual evidence. Norman Malcolm, in response to the question as to what Wittgenstein means by 'beliefs in the sense of religious beliefs', says, "He explicitly distinguishes it from conjecture. I think this means that there is nothing tentative about it; it is not adopted as an hypothesis that might later be withdrawn in the light of new evidence. This also makes explicit an important feature of Wittgenstein's understanding of beliefs, in the sense of 'religious beliefs', namely, that it does not rise or fall on the basis of evidence or grounds: it is groundless.,,37 Here 'groundlessness' does not mean that religion is imaginary. It means that the evidence of religion is of a different kind: they are not factual

37 Norman Malcolm, op.cit., 204.


evidences-they are based on love, trust and unshakeable faith. Thus, take for example QC §239: "I believe that every human being has two human parents; but Catholics believe that Jesus only had a human mother ... Catholics believe as well that in certain circumstances a wafer completely changes its nature, and at the same time that all evidence proves the contrary. And so if Moore said 'I know that this is wine and not blood', Catholics would contradict him." It is so because a religious believer does not take his beliefs to be based on ordinary rationality or evidence. Wittgenstein says, "I want to say: they don't treat this as a matter of reasonablity. Anyone who reads the Epistle will find it said: not only that it is not reasonable, but that it is folly. Not only is it not reasonable, but it doesn't pretend to be" (LC, p.58). Not only that they are not based on ordinary evidences but in fact "if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business"( LC, p.56). Religious beliefs are so fundamental that they shape human life. Rather than being founded on something else, they are the grounds of life as such. Thus, Wittgenstein says, "Very intelligent and well-educated people believe in the story of creation in the Bible, while others hold it as proven false, and the grounds of the latter are well known to the former" (QC § 336). Even though religious beliefs are not based on any evidence, they are better grounded. In other words, the groundlessness of religious beliefs is in fact their grounding. Thus, Cyril Barrett says, "There are cases where beliefs are grounded-'we appeal again and again to certain grounds'-and at the same time we risk pretty little. The implication is that if it came to risking our lives on the grounds of these beliefs, we would not do so. On the other hand, a religious believer may base his life (making great personal sacrifices) on a belief such as that of divine retribution on Judgement Day, which, from a common-sense or a scientific


point of view, is based on the flimsiest of evidence. ,,38 It is because there is no need of rational foundation of religious beliefs, it is possible for Wittgenstein to assert that the essence of religion has nothing to do with doctrines and theories. Wittgenstein says, "Religion says: Do this!-Think like that! But it cannot justify this and it only need try to do so to become repugnant; since for every reason it gives, there is a cogent counter-reason. It is more convincing to say: 'Think like this!however strange it may seem.-' Or: 'Won't you do this?-repugnant as it is.-' " (CV, 34e). It is because of Wittgenstein's conviction about the groundlessness of religious beliefs that he admitted that there can be a "religion in which there are no doctrinal propositions, in which there is thus no talking. Obviously the essence of religion cannot have anything to do with the fact that there is talking, or rather: when people talk this itself is part of a religious act and not a theory,,39 (WWK, p.117). Therefore, for Wittgenstein, 'it does not matter at all if the words used are true -or false or nonsense.'40 The question can arise that if there is no ground of religion, then what is the ground of the groundlessness? In response to such a question, Malcolm's reply is pertinent. He says, "It is obvious that the wonders and horrors of nature, the history of nations, great events in personal experience, music, art, the ontological proof, and so on-can be responded to either religiously or non-religiously. Suppose there is a person who is untouched by any inclination toward religious beliefs, and another who wants to present him convincing grounds for religious beliefs. Can he do it? I don't see how. The first person can regard the present 'evidence' as psychologically, historically, mythologically, or logically interesting-perhaps fascinating or reasoning cannot have 38 Cyril Barret, op.cit., p. 180 39 Quoted in Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p. 186. 40 Ibid.


religious import for him unless he has at least an inclination toward a religious Weltbild. This is the necessary medium, the atmosphere, within which these 'evidences' can have religious significance. ,,41 Actually religion is one of those aspects of our life about which QC §192 says, "... there is justification; but justification comes to an end." Religion is groundless from the point of view of scientific evidences but grounded on something which actually is the basis of life-the depth of our conviction to live in a certain way. The religious groundlessness points towards a religious grounding which is different from ordinary grounds of beliefs. Wittgenstein says, "Suppose somebody made this guidance for his life: believing in the Last Judgment. Whenever he does anything, this is before his mind. In a way, how are we to know whether to say he believes this will happen or not? Asking him is not enough. He will probably say he has a proof. But he has what you might call an unshakeable belief. It will show, not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for beliefs, but rather by regulating for all in his life" (LC, p.53-54). Thus, there is a reason to conclude that the grounding of religious beliefs is its groundlessness. That is, the groundlessness or unreasonableness or lack of evidence does not weaken a religious beliefs. Rather, it enhances its worth and effectiveness.

41 Norman Malcolm, op.cit., p. 215-216.

2 Mysticism and Private Language It has been established in the last chapter that for Wittgenstein

religion belongs to the realm of the unutterable, hence, any attempt to provide their doctrinal description would be meaningless. Propositions of religion are of such nature that they do not describe any state of affairs. Language can express only that which belongs to this world and is unable to intrude into the realm of showable, (i.e. ethics,. religion, metaphysics, and aesthetics). Since showable is inexpressible, and religion belongs to this realm, therefore, it recedes into mystery-an arena which does not fall in the sphere of the influence of language. ,It is something which has to be expressed or realised by each one for oneself. Now, let us explore, the concept of 'mysticism', and Wittgenstein's refutation of privacy of experience. Wittgenstein upholds that there is no private experience. This position, at least according to some thinkers, like logical positivists, is the antithesis of a mystical experience which by its very nature is supposed to be utterly private. The notion of mystical experience and the notion of privacy of experience are fully compatible with one another. The critics maintain that the rejection of the privacy of experience sinks the possibility of mystical experience. On the other hand, for a mystic there is no question of doubting the authenticity of mystical language. For him the notion of privacy

Mysticism and Private Language I 49

of experience is not at all problematic as he regards his mystical feeling to be unique and different from ordinary feeling. In this chapter, I have discussed the notion of mystical experience in general and Wittgenstein's views on mystical experience and privacy of experience in particular. Here, I have shown how it is possible for Wittgensteinians to reject the possibility of privacy of experience and yet at the same time recognise the authenticity of the mystical experience. For accomplishing this purpose I have divided this chapter into four sections:

(a) Nature of Mysticism (b) Wittgenstein on Mysticism

(c) Wittgenstein's Rejection of the Privacy of Experience, and (d) Mysticism and Private Experience. The first section consists of the following sub-sections: (a) What is mysticism?, (b) Distinctive features of mystical experience, and (c) Questioning the veracity of mystical experience. In the second section I have analysed Wittgenstein's views on mysticism. The third section have presented Wittgenstein's arguments rejecting the possibility of privacy of experience. In the fourth section of this chapter, I have shown the compatibility between mysticism and privacy. (a) Nature of Mysticism As mysticism and religion are often understood as closely related concepts, it is pertinent to delineate their relationship, even before taking up the definition of mysticism and mystical experience. Let me begin with the trivial though important statement that there is a difference in religious and mystical experiences. It is: all religious experiences are mystical experience but not all mystical experiences are religious experience, i.e. mystical


experience includes religious experience but vice versa is not the case. In order to highlight this distinction let me explore the question: what is religion? Religion has been defined in many ways-each definition touches one or the other aspects of religion. Even those who attempt to define religion realise that religion is a complex phenomenon and any particular definition of it is bound not to comprehend the totality of what is represented by it. Following this difficulty in giving 'the' definition of religion, John Hick has classified various definitions of religion under following heads: phenomenological, psychological, sociological, naturalistic, and religious. 42 In order to highlight the fact that religion is a complex phenomenon, in what follows, I try to summarise different elements of various religions: 1.

In each religion there is a presupposition about the existence of some kind of an ultimate reality. Depending upon the fact that the religious system accepts this ultimate reality to be a God or not, it is termed as theistic or non-theistic.

2.

A distinction between sacred and profane objects and acts.

3.

A distinction between moral and immoral.

4.

Description of religious feelings such as awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt and adoration.

5. A goal of achieving communication or oneness of the devotee or follower with the Ultimate. 6.

A purported purpose of world and the individual.

7.

A goal of establishing social unity.

8.

Performance of one orthe other ritualY 42 John Hick, introduction to The Philosophy of Religion (New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India,1987), p. 2. 43 For details please see Paul Edwards E/lclyclopedia of Philosophy, vol.vii, MacmiHan Company and The Free Press, New York, 1967, p.151.


Different religions emphasise upon one or the other elements described above, e.g., symbols or rituals may form an integral part of one religion and may be regarded secondary by another religion. Hence, constructing an universal definition of religion is a difficult task as there is no definition which imbibes features of each religion in an indisputable manner. At this stage let me state that when I talk of 'definition' I do not look for any universal or unique definition of religion. Like Wittgenstein, I believe that religion is a 'family-resemblance' concept. It is used to refer or designate a number of different kinds of activities, attitudes, performances etc. These activities, performances and attitudes in different religions have criss-cross resemblance with one another. In some religions one aspect is emphasised while in others, other aspects are given predominance. Hence, the concept of religion like other concepts is a network of similarities and differences. Therefore, to the question what is religion?, there is no single and straightforward answer. There is no single, all comprehensive, and unique definition of 'religion'. Therefore, to understand the meaning of 'religion' we shall have to understand its cognates or its uses. Religion, like physical, psychical, emotional, scientific and other features of life, could very well be regarded as an aspect of life. It is a feature of life which exerts tremendous influence on the society as well as on the life of an individual in a significant manner. Whether the individual is a believer or non-believer it does play a role in his life - positive or negative. Patrick Sherry puts somewhat similar point when he says, "religion is essentially a response to experience like art, science and other spheres of life."44 The experience to which

44 Patric Sherry, Religion, Truth and Language-Game (New York: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1977), p. viii.


religion is regarded as a response is termed as 'religious experience' and in much broader sense as 'mystical experience'. Religious experience and religion are so closely related that the former is regarded as the essence of the latter. John Hick in

Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion declares: "Indeed, if there is no such thing as religious experience-which is, directly or indirectly and in one form or another, a putative experience of the divine-there would be no such thing as religion. Religious experience is the living spring out of which the vast and complex phenomenon of religion has grown and from which it continues to draw its vitality."45 From this it follows that religious experience forms an integral part of various religions. Just as religion is a family resemblance concept, the concept of religious experience is also a family resemblance concept. It belongs to the domain of non-sensory experiences. So all those experiences which are non-sensory such as 'religious experience', 'mystical experience', 'intuitive experience', etc. have close affinity to each other. They are often regarded as synonymous terms. However, it is notable that the mystical experience has a larger domain than that of religious experience. A mystical experience need not be necessarily religious. It has both religious as well as non-religious denotations. A mystical experience may be theistic, atheistic, poetic and so on. Thus, although mystical and religious experiences resemble each other in such a manner that all religious experiences are invariably mystical experiences, yet not all mystical experiences are religious experiences. William

45 John Hick, Classic and Contemporary Writings in the Philosophy of Religion (New Jersey: Prentice Hall,1990), p.513.


James has similar view. He says, "Personal religious experience has its roots and centre in mystical states of consciousness. "46 Thus, we come to the question as to what is a mystical state of consciousness? Let us discuss this under the following sections: i.

What is mysticism?

ii.

Distinctive features of mystical experience.

iii.

Questioning the veracity of mystical experience.

(i)

What is mysticism?

It is well known that the term 'mysticism' and its cognates such as 'mystical', 'mystical experience' 'mystic-realisation' have been used in a variety of ways, and have often been employed differently from its original meaning where it was used for some kind of unity between devotee and the deity in Christianity. Often, it is erroneously identified with that which is vague, uncertain, irrational, or non-rational, and magical etc. However, unity with the ultimate reality is the chief element of mystical experience. The literal meaning of the term 'mysticism' is 'to close' which is derived from the Greek root myeo. Even though the term has been used in a variety of ways but it generally stands for the closing of senses in order to obstruct external disturbances for the purpose of the unity of the individual with the Supreme. For arriving at the proper understanding of mysticism, let us begin with the following definitions of the term 'mysticism' : (a)

"Mysticism, in its pure form, is the science of ultimates, the science of union with the absolutes, and nothing else, and that the mystic is the person who attains to this union, not

46 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: The Modern Library, 1902), p. 370.


the person who talks about it. Not to know about but to Be, is the mark of the real initiate."47 (Evelyn Underhill) (b)

"Mysticism is a doctrine or discipline maintaining that one can gain knowledge of reality that is not accessible to sense perception or to the rational conceptual thought. Generally associated with a religious tradition, mysticism can take a theistic form as it has in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, or a non-theistic form, as it has in Buddhism and some varieties of Hinduism. Mystic claims that the mystical experience, the vehicle of mystical knowledge, is usually the result of spiritual training, involving some combination of prayer, meditation, fasting, bodily diScipline, and renunciation of worldly concerns." (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy)

(c)

According to Margaret Smith, "It (mysticism) is to be described rather as an attitude of mind; an innate tendency of the human soul, which seeks to transcend reason and to attain to a direct experience of God, and which believes that it is possible for the human soul to be united with Ultimate Reality when 'God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience' ... Mysticism has been defined as 'the immediate feeling of the unity of self with God-it is the religious life at its very heart and center-it is the endeavour to fix the immediateness of the life in God as such-in this God-intoxication, in which the self and the world are alike forgotten, the subject knows himself to be in possession of the highest and fullest truth."48

47 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (U.K.: Methun & Co. Ltd., 1911), p.72. 48 Margaret Smith, 'The Nature and Meaning of Mysticism', in Understanding Mysticism, ed. Rechard Woods (New York: Image Books, 1980), p. 20.


(d) According to 5.N.Dasgupta, mysticism is essentially an European concept. According to him, to define mysticism as "an intuitive or ecstatic union with the deity, through contemplation, communion, or other mental experiences," or as "the relationship and potential union of the human soul with ultimate reality," is to provide narrower denotation of the term 'mysticism'. He says, "I should like to define mysticism as a theory, doctrine, or view that considers reason to be incapable of discovering or of realizing the nature of ultimate truth, whatever may be the nature of this ultimate truth, but at the same time believes in the certitude of some other means of arriving at it."49 (e)

5t. Thomas Aquinas defines mysticism "as cognitio deo experimentaiis as the knowledge of God through experience."so

(f)

Distinguishing two aspects of mysticism-theoretical and practical, William Ernest Hocking says, "The term 'mysticism' has come to mean two distinct things in the occident-a theory of reality and a doctrine regarding the way in which the human individual may gain union with reality."s1

(g)

For W. T. 5tace, "The most important, the central characteristics in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves to mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension

49 S. N. Dasgupta, 'Sacrificial Mysticism," in Understanding Mysticism, op. cit., p. 118. 50 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, quoted by Gershom G. Scholem, 'General Characteristics of Jewish Mysticism," in Understanding Mysticism, op.cit., p. 146. 51 William Ernest Hocking, 'The Mystical Spirit and Protestantism," in Understanding Mysticism, op. cit., p.l94.


of an ultimate non-sensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate. In other words, it entirely transcends our sensory-intellectual consciousness. "52 (h)

Alois M. Haas says, "In its most general sense, mysticism can be understood as the sphere of religious experience in which an intense union occurs between the subject and the object of this experience in some or other indefinable way. "53

These definitions of 'mysticism' touch upon its different aspects. It shows the multiplicity of the ways in which it could be analysed. It is notable that mysticism is not a separate kind of religious doctrine as it is found in all religious traditions. It is the study. of mystical experience. And, as it has been seen that, mystical experience or religious experience is the essence of all religions. Let us state certain classical examples of mystical experience. Paramhansa Yogananda in his famous, Autobiography of a Yogi states his mystical experience as follows: "He (the master) struck gently on my chest above the heart. My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced the circumbient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote 52 W. T. Stace, 'The Teachings of Mysticism', in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Baruch A. Broady (New Jersey: Prentice Hall), p. 505.

53 Alois M. Haas, 'What is Mysticism', in Mysticism: In Shavism and Christianity, ed., Bettina Baumer (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld Pvt. Ltd.,1997), pp. 2-3.


periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soul; I discerned the inward flow of their sap. The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far down Rai Ghat Lane, and noticed also a white cow that was leisurely approaching. When she reached the open ashram gate, I observed her as though with my two physical eyes. After she had passed behind the brick wall of the courtyard, I saw her clearly still.

All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master's, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea: even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after shaken. The unifying light alternated witlt materialization of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation. The oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen after at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The dazzling light beyond the sharply etched global outlines faded slightly at the farthest edges; there I saw a mellow radiance, ever undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light. The divine dispersion of rays poured from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic


. reversion, sextillion words passed into diaphanous lustre, then fire became firmament. I cognized the centre of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendour issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. Blissful amrita, nectar of immortality, pulsated through me with a quicksilver like fluidity. The creative voice of God I heard resounding as Aum, the vibration of the cosmic motor. Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With the disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost. Once more I was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative to the Spirit. Like a prodigal child I had run away from my microcosmic home and had imprisoned myself in a narrow microcosm."S4 The occurrence of the above-described mystical experience was obtained through the mediation of another person and there was no effort on the part of the mystic. However there are instances of realisation which were obtained without any effort and without any mediation, and there are instances of realisation through rigorous meditation. Another classic example of mystical experience whose occurrence was sudden, effortless and without mediation of another person is as follows: "Suddenly... .I felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took possession of my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared in a series of rapid sensations which resembled the awakening from the anaesthetic influence. One reason why I dislike this kind of trance was that I could not describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words to render it intelligible. It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive

54 Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi (Delhi: Jaico Publishing House, 1946), pp. 141-143.


obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract self. The universe became without form and void of content. But self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed to find existence break as a bubble round about it. And what then? The appreciation of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that this state was the last state of the conscious self the sense that I had followed the last thread of being to the verse of the abyss, and had arrived at demonstration of eternal Mayii or disillusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. The return to ordinary conditions of sentient existence began by my first recovering the power of touch, and then by the gradual though rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal interests. At last I felt myself once more a human being; and though the riddle of what is meant by life remained unsolved, I was thankful for this return from the abyss-the deliverance from so awful an initiation into the mysteries of skepticism. This trance recurred with diminishing frequency until I reached the age of twenty-eight. It served to impress upon my growing nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which contribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness."55 Some epistemologically significant aspects of mystical experience, drawn on the basis of the above description, are as follows:

55}. A. Symonds, quoted by WiIliam James, op. cit., p. 481-82.


1.

Features of the mystical experience reveal that it is different from sensuous experience. We shall take up this issue in the following section.

2.

Although mystical experience is supersensuous experience, all supersensuous experiences are not mystical. Thus, magic and hypnotism, though supersensuous and ineffable, cannot be regarded as mystical as there is no unity with the ultimate reality (absolute or god) in these experiences.

3.

The duration of mystical experience varies from few moments to few hours. However, some mystics are said to be in samadhi for many days.

Following issues emerge out of the analysis of the above definitions and descriptions of mystical experience: First, it is pertinent to note that mysticism, a theory which explains the nature of a mystical experience, could be divided into two domains: religious and non-religious. These domains broadly correspond to what W. T. Stace calls as 'extrovertive mysticism' and 'introvertive mysticism' respectively.56 In its religious domain mysticism emphasises on the 'Union' of the soul with the Ultimate Reality. In the non-religious domain its chief concern is the unusual, non-sensory experience itself. So far as the religious account of mystical experience is concerned, the above two domains of mysticism are inseparable from each other because the 'Union' has to be obtained through non-sensory experience. As different from this in the non-religious account of mystical experience, such as an explanation of poetic experience, the emphasis is given not on the 'Union' but on the nature of mystical experience. Second, the descriptions of mystical experiences have been found in all world religions across all cultures. Since they are associated with different cultures, therefore, these experiences have been described differently. In fact, different mystics have

56 W. T. Stace, op. cit., p. 503-515.


emphasized on the different aspects of mystical experience. The question is: Is the difference in the content and description of mystical experience due to the difference in the life style of people who had these experiences?, or can one say that essentially all mystical experiences are the experiences of the One Ultimate Reality, and hence, they all are in reality identical? There is a viewpoint which holds that the alleged differences between these experiences in various traditions are only superficial. On the other hand, there are others who admit basic differences in these experiences. Generally philosophers and psychologists emphasize similarity between various mystical experiences occurring in different religions of the world. They do so because their concern is either epistemological or psychological. As against this, theologians highlight the plurality of mystical experience. This is due to the fact that theology and hence a theologian, in the traditional sense of the term, is invariably attached to a particular religious tradition. Philosophical concern is epistemological and it emphasises on the unity of different mystical experiences occurring in different religious traditions. That is why philosophers like W. T. Stace and William James emphasise on the unity and similarity underlying mystical experiences of different religious traditions. On the other hand, theologians such as Zehner, Maritain. and Knowles highlight and emphasise the plurality of mystical experience. Theologians are against the view that underlying various mystical experiences there is one essential element. Based on the theistic and atheistic religion, they make a distinction between the mystical experience of q theist and that of an atheist. They believe that contents and characteristics of mystical experiences of theistic and non-theistic mystics are different from each other. Moreover, they believe that the nature of mystical experiences differ from religion to religion. Thus, Zehner has given arguments tf) c;upport his contribution that mystical experiences


vary from one religion to the other. His arguments are: 57 (a) Establishing similarity among various mystical experiences is meaningless; until it is not described as to what constitutes a 'mystical experience'. (b) The view that all mystics speak the same language and propagate the same message is not true even with respect to one particular religious tradition. Zehner concludes: "Here, then, are two distinct and mutually opposed types of mysticism-the monist and the theistic ... thus it seems that theist and monist cannot ever agree."58 As far as the veracity of mystical experience is concerned, it is the unity and similarity, and not plurality, which is important from the point of view of epistemology. Hence, counter arguments against the above theological arguments could be formulated, and some of them are as follows: 59 (a) Knowledge of the constitutive elements of a mystical experience is not a necessary condition for establishing its similarity with another religious experience. It is so because metaphysical claims are not solely dependent on inner contemplative experience. For example, in Advaita Vedanta the claims such as that of identification of Atman with Brahman 'involves bringing together different strands of religious thought and life'. (b) For arriving at the real meaning of a mystic's language often one has to take facts lying beyond its literal meaning. For example, on the basis of the fact that Yoga system, unlike Advaita Vedanta, does not believe in the identification of Atman with Brahman, it would be hasty to conclude that mystics of Hinduism speak differently about their realisation. 57 R. C. Zehner, 'Mysticism Sacred and Profane', Understanding Mysticism, op. cit., p. 65.

58 Ibid., p. 74. 59 Ninian Smart

'Interpretation

and

Understanding Mysticism, op. cit, p.SL

Mystical

Experience',

in


The disputes, such as stated above, between Pluralism and Monism, or that of between philosophers and theologians are due to the fact that they emphasise on different aspects of mysticism. Third, the notion of mystical experience has not only been discussed by philosophers and theologians, but psycho-analysts and psychologists have also described it at great length. Psychologists and psycho-analysts uphold the view that there is no cognitive element in mystical experience. They maintain that 'mystical experience' is merely a psychosomatic phenomenon; its occurrence in a particular human body could be scientifically measured with the help of such instruments as ECG etc. ClinicalPsychology regards mystical experience a peculiar mental state and nothing else. Sometimes it is identified with schizophrenia-a kind of mental disorder. The question is whether a mystical experience is solely a subjective mental state, or does it have religious, epistemological and other contents as well. We shall discuss this aspect of mysticism in the fourth section. Fourth, it is generally maintained that a mystical experience is a non-sensory experience and hence the cognition arrived through it is different from 'rational conceptual thought'. Now, the question is: Is non-sensuous experience and non-conceptual knowledge possible? It is not possible in the sense in which we ordinarily define experience and knowledge. In ordinary experience there is subject and object contact. Any experience is invariably an experience of some object. Similarly, an ordinary or scientific knowledge is arrived at through some kind of relation between subject and object. Objectless consciousness is an impossibility. In order to admit that non-sensuous experience and non-conceptual knowledge are possible, one has to redefine the conception of objective reality. In every day experience objective reality is physical. Every day experience or scientific


consciousness does not admit the possibility of the existence of metaphysical or transcendental reality. But if the existence of some kind of metaphysical reality is admitted, it is possible to say that there are non-sensory experiences because the relation between the subject and the metaphysical reality could only be established in a nonsensory manner. And, finally, if all this is granted, it is admissible that there is a cognition which is different from scientific cognition. However, many problems arise along with the admission of the existence of metaphysical reality. The answers to such questions, as to what is the nature of the metaphysical reality etc., do not quench the rational thirst of the non-believer as these are devoid of scientific justification. A non-believer is never satisfied with non-scientific and nonrational arguments, and there is no scientific justification of the mystic's cognition. Fifth, the drug induced experience can, in the final analysis, be explained in terms of a physical state of the brain produced by a dose of chemicals. Many confuse mystical experience with drug experience. I uphold the view that drug induced experiences cannot be clubbed with mystical experiences. It is not an abnormal state. It is the supreme state of mind. It cannot be induced. It lies outside of the purview of any physical science. To brand drug induced experience as mystical experience is to assert indirectly that mystical experience is ultimately analysed in physical terms. Moreover, the drug induced experience, for example, a hallucination can be induced simultaneously in several persons at the same time by the inductor of the drug. It is an abnormal state of mind. It can be generalised and studied by abnormal psychology. On the other hand, there is an element in mystical experience which defies all naturalistic explanation. Further, even though such fields as occultism, magic, prophecy and astrology may be taken as the lowest levels of mysticism,


they are not mystical experiences. The German word for these fields is 'Mystizismus' as distinguished from the 'Mystik'.60 From the above it follows that there is no such thing as a final definition of mystical experience. Different definitions emphasise on its different aspects. One can say only this with certainty that there is a family resemblance in its various usages. However, certain questions, e.g. are mystical experiences genuine? do they represent a mental state?, remain unanswered. I shall take up these questions in the next section. (ii) Distinctive features of mystical experience

We have discussed some definitions and accounts of mystical experience in the last section. Now, let us see the distinction between mystical experience and every day experience. The question is: what features of mystical experience and knowledge differentiate it from every day experience and knowledge?, or what are the determining elements of a mystic realisation, or does the realisation consist of experience as well as knowledge of the mystic? In order to help one make the distinction one may point out the following characteristics of a mystical experience: (i)

The first and the foremost feature of mystical experience is that the content of the experience is supposed to be inexpressible. As contrasted with this the content of ordinary experience is not only expressible and communicable but is also inter-subjective in the sense that each one of us shares and partakes in the sense experience. According to William James, in case of a mystical experience, "no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred 60 Alois M. Haas, op. cit., pA.


to others. In this peculiarity, mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. "61 As against ineffability (inexpressibility) of mystical experience, discursive experience is expressible in language. The reason for ineffability of mystical experience is that its content transcends the physical world. And the expressibility of ordinary experience is due to the fact that its content is empirical or mundane. (ii)

Another reason for the communicability and ease in understanding ordinary experience is that in it there are components of subject, object and knowledge which are clear and distinct. Each one of them is separable from the other. Each one of them is capable of existence apart from the other. In the case of mystical experience, the above distinction between the three vanishes. In this sense mystical state of consciousness is a unitary consciousness where consciousness representing subject, object and knowledge is united into one single entity.

(iii)

The third characteristic of mystical experience is that in it, irrespective of whether we are talking about theistic or non-theistic mysticism, there is an element of the unity with the Ultimate Reality (God or Absolute). In this unity, there is a definite knowledge or the realisation of the transcendental reality. Underhill prefers to call mysticism as the 'Unitive State'. He defines it as "the act of establishing his (mystic's) conscious relation with Absolute."62 This unity of the soul with the absolute reality can be seen in Rudolf Otto's characterisation of the feeling of unity which 'liberates'. For Otto in such unity there is

61 William James, op. cit., p.371. 62 Evelyn Underhill, op. cit., p.81


"the element of feeling-stupor-which it liberates, and the character of 'mystery' and 'wholly otherness' which surrounds it."63 For Otto, in a mystical experience, there is an identification of the personal self with the transcendent reality which is the absolutely supreme and wholly nonrational. The unitive experience is sometimes referred to as 'ecstacy'-the liberating consciousness as the self transcends the vicissitudes of the empirical world. (iv)

The criteria for ordinary knowledge, namely, truth, certainty, and right to certainty are not applicable in the case of mystical knowledge. It is inapplicable because there is no objective justification for the mystical experience and therefore for mystical knowledge. Does the nonapplicability of the criterion of ordinary knowledge and discursive experience make mystical experience subjective? I will take up this issue in the next section. However, here it would suffice to say that the concept of subjectivity as belonging to the mystical experience is not the same as the concept of subjectivity in ordinary discourse. This is the kind of subjectivity whose nature is clarified by Kierkegaard, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, by calling it 'subjectivity as truth' where 'subjectivity objectivates', i.e. subjectivity forms the criterion for objectivity. Here 'subjectivity as truth' does not mean subjective truth but it aims at defining the content of realisation that baffles all expression. The 'subjectivity' of Kierkegaard is not subjectivity but it is inter-subjectivity which forms the basis for any objective truth. In defining truth as subjectivity, the reflection is directed not from outside but from the inside, i.e. the inner of human being. Whereas the reflection from the outside or the objective

63 Rudlof Otto, The Idea of the Holy, tr. John Harvey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p.l94.


reflection leads to abstract thought and does not take into account the importance of subject in the process of cognition, the subjective reflection leads to the concrete truth. That is why, according to Kierkegaard, truth "be defined not as something objective but as a process of assimilation, as inwardness or subjectivity, and if thus defined, the task of the subject will consist in becoming engrossed in that truth existentially."64 R. D. Ranade, supporting the subjective criterion of mystical experience says that the criterion of validity of mystical knowledge is "the mystic himself."65 And according to him there is no need of an objective criterion because whether one is having or had a mystical experience, can 'ultimately' be judged by 'his own self!' Bertrand Russell holds the same view. He says that mystical experience is "a way of knowledge which may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason, and analysis which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass of illusion."66 Thus, for him a mystic's knowledge is through "insight as against discursive analytic knowledge."67 Hence, as against discursive knowledge, iI:ltuitive apprehension or realisation is a better expression for mystical awareness. (v)

During an empirical experience, the subject keeps its control over the senses, whereas during mystical experience he can no longer guide his senses. The mystic's

64 Niels Thulstrup, Commentary on Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. Robert J. Widenmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1984), p.251. 65 R 0 Ranade, Mysticism in India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1933), p. xlii. 66 Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (U.K.: Unwin Paperbacks, 1917), p.27. 67 Ibid" p. 26.


control over his body is suspended and he is guided by the absolute reality. William James says, "... the mystic feels as if his own will is in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if ... he were grasped and helped by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomenon of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance."68 The mystic regains his control over his body after the recession of the mystical experience. However, the memory of the mystical experience remains with him. (vi)

One of the distinctive features of mystical experience is that its duration varies from few moments to few hours. However, some mystics are said to be in samiidhi for many days. Whatever may be the time span of a mystic's ecstacy, one point is patent: it is limited. It may be that the mystic lives under the virtual impact of his realisation in his postecstatic life but the actual time span in which the realisation takes place is limited. In this sense, a mystical experience is different from an ordinary experience where there is no such kind of time-restraint.

(vii) A mystic, after the recession of a mystical experience, lives under its virtual impact as a completely transformed individual. He lives for the service of humanity. SthitaPrajfia of Bhagavat GUa, Bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism, Jfiani of Jainism and Jfvan-Mukta of Advaita Vedanta are the ideal examples of the way a mystic lives. Let me state in brief about a mystic's way of living. As a mystic's way of living is remarkably different from the way a layman lives, a distinctive feature of mysticism would emerge out of the explanation of the mystic's way of life.

68 William James, op. cit., p. 372.


According to the Bhagvat Gfta, the state of steady wisdom or Sthita-Prajna is a state that follows realisation. In the Gfta, answering the query of Arjuna as to what is the description of a -man of steady wisdom (Sthita-Prajna), Lord Krishna says, "0 Partha, when one fully renounces all the desires that have entered the mind, and remains satisfied in the Self alone by the Self, then he is called a man of steady wisdom."69 Here, the term 'desires' stands for the desire of progeny, wealth and the worlds, i.e. the desire for all external gains. But renunciation of the desires of the world does not mean the renunciation of all activity to become inactive. Sthita-Prajna is not an inactive person. Gfta admits action itself as a path of realisation. Its action as a path of realisation is an action which is devoid of the desire for the fruit of the action, performed with the sense of duty and Loksangrah, i.e. welfare of humanity. Thus, Krishna announces that "0 scion of the Bharata dynasty, as the unenlightened people act with attachment to work, so should the enlightened person act, without attachment, being desirous of the prevention of people from going astray."70 Even while working, he is not defiled with the impurities of the material world as he has no desire for self-enjoyment. Thus Gftil's concept of renunciation of desire of the fruit of action actually means renunciation in action and not renunciation of action?l And the Sthita-Prajna is the enlightened person whose action is renunciation in action, i.e. action without desire for any fruit and with the sense of Loksangrah. The concept of Bodhisattva is said to be based on Mahayana Buddhist's presupposition that the reality of a particular object is ultimately grounded in the transcendent Reality (Alaya Vijnana or 69 BhagavadtGftii, 2.55 70 Ibid., 3.25. 71 M. Hirianna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy (Bombay: Blackie & Son Publishers, Pvt. Ltd.,1932, rpt. 1983), p.l21.


Sunyatli). Particular objects are impartial manifestations of the transcendent reality. Bodhisattva is the ideal state of a human being. The Bodhisattva is the one who has attained Bodhi (enlightenment). According to Radhakrishnan, "Bodhisattva

literally means 'one whose essence is perfect knowledge.' But historically it means 'one who is on the way to the attainment of perfect knowledge, a future Buddha'."72 The essential characteristic of Bodhisattva is his most compassionate soul (Mahlikarunli Chitta) for the well-being of humanity. He has no desire of his own but to liberate those human beings who are living under ignorance. A person after having had the mystical experience leads a perfect moral life. Such principles of moral life are enumerated by Buddhism as dlin (charity), vfrya (fortitude), sfla (morality), kslinti (patience), dhylina (meditation) and prajiili (wisdom ).73 Like Sthita-Prajiia and Bodhisattva , the ideal mystic way of life is embodied in the concept of /iilinf in Jainism. According to Jainism, unlike Ajiilinf, /iilinf is unattached and self-contended. Kundakundacharya, the founder of the concept of the /iilinf, says, "attachment ... causes a great danger to self-realisation ... one should absorb oneself in his-self, which is an embodiment of knowledge and thus be satisfied; that is excellent happiness."74 flvan-Mukta is the person who is free or enlightened while still alive. He, according to Advaita Vedlinta, is unattached to the

sense enjoyment of the empirical world. His desires are compared with burnt seed-devoid of fruit. Explaining the nature and the state of /zvan-Mukta, T. M. P. Mahadevan says, "The jfvan-mukta lives in the world, but he is not of it. He awaits 72 S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. I (Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks,1923), p. 600. 73lbid., p. 602. 74 Kundakundacharya, Pravachana Siira, Introduction, p. 46.


only the fruition of the residue of his priirabdha. Even in reaping the fruits of his karma he is unattached and does not lose his balanced deportment. He is compared to a child or a lunatic, since he has no conceit in his actions. To his synoptic vision there is neither action nor agent, neither enjoyment nor enjoyer. He has transcended the temporal process; and temporal categories have no meaning for him. He revels in the bliss of non-difference that has not come to be, but which was, is and will ever be."75 It should not be interpreted here that as a liberated being JfVanMukta lives in a secluded place like a hermit. He does not live a secluded life. He is a compassionate soul. Shankar has described the enlightened person as both 'Vimuktasanga' and 'Sadaparadayambudhama'.76 The enlightened person works for the upliftment of the humanity. In his attitude of social concern, he is compared by Shankar to a spring which is pleasant to everybody (Vasantavallokahitam).77 G. C. Nayak reiterates that flvan-Mukta "having themselves crossed this dreadful ocean of birth and death, helps others also to cross the same, without any motive whatsoever. "78 (viii) Underhill mentions a characteristic of mysticism, which

according to him is the corollary of its all other characteristics. It is: "true mysticism is never self-seeking. "79 It is not self-seeking in the sense that the conscious goal of the mystic is not an experience which will benefit him in any material or spiritual way. It is not even to get bliss. From this it follows that mysticism is not a search for any 75 T. M. P. Mahadevan, The Philosophy of Advaita (Dehi: ArnoldHeinemann, 1938, rpl. 1976, p. 285.

76 Vivekchuramani, 486, quoted in G. C. Nayak, 'Are Jeevanmukta and Bodhisattva Ideals Asymmetrical', Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Vo!. 22: 3 (1985), p.219.

77 Ibid., p. 37. 78 G. C. Nayak, op. cit., p. 219. 79 Evelyn UnderhilI, op. cil., p. 92.


material or supernatural joy for the experiencer. A mystic's journey does not begin with the aim of experiencing ecstasy which one purportedly has in having union with the Absolute. It is not the enjoyment of the happiness of the beatific vision etc. Those who keep such ambition, according to Underhill, are "magicians of the more highminded sort." For according to him, "the true mystic claims no promises, and makes no demands."BO He is indifferent to pleasures and pains, joys and unhappiness, and ecstasy. (ix)

One basic difference between mystical and other states of consciousness is that whereas the former stresses on the basic unity of the universe, the latter highlights individuality, opposition and contradiction of this world. Whereas the latter tries a reconciliation of the opposites, the mystic makes no such attempt at their reconciliation because for him there are no contradictions, no contraries and no opposites at all. He realises that there is an essential unity underlying all diversity. Diversity is only on the surface. When one delves into the depths, one finds everything as one. Diversity is only an appearance, unity is the reality. In this perception of the basic unity of the universe, a mystic realises mutual relatedness underlying paradoxical empirical realities such as light-dark, pleasure-pain etc. According to Bertrand Russell, in mysticism there is a 'beliefs in unity, and its refusal to admit opposition or division anywhere. We found Heraclitus saying 'good and ill are one'; and again he says, 'the way up and the way down is one and the same'. The same attitude appears in the simultaneous assertion of contradictory propositions, such as: 'We step and do not step into the same rivers: we are and are not', The assertion of Parmenides, that reality is one and indivisible, comes from the same impulse towards unity."St

80 Ibid. 81 Bertrand Russell, op. cit., p. 28.


(x)

The notion of 'beliefs' in mystical experience is quite different from the notion of 'beliefs' in ordinary experience. In our day-to-day life we believe in a particular statement on the basis of some kind of its conformity with the sense experience. It may be that we are deluded at times but it is only with the help of experience that we correct ourselves. On the other hand, there is no trial and error method in the realm of mystical experience. There is 'no place for illusion and hallucination in mystical experience. Either one succeeds in obtaining the mystic vision or he does not. So the notion of 'beliefs' in mysticism is based on mystical experience only for the mystic and not for the ordinary people. For ordinary people, i.e. those who have not had the mystical experience, the notion of belief in mysticism is based on faith in the mystic's pronouncements. Hence, the option for an ordinary person is wide-open: believe it, or do not believe in the existence of mystical state of consciousness. Now those who believe in the existence of such consciousness actually do so on the basis of faith. The non-believer questions the genuineness of faith. Rudolf Otto in his The Idea of The Holy admonishes such non-believer by saying that he will not understand the views as expressed in his book. He writes, "The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moment in his experience, is requested to read no further, for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who can recollect the emotions of his adolescence, the discomforts of indigestion, or, say, social feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings."82 Thus, 'beliefs' in mysticism means faith. Explaining this point Bertrand

82 Rudolf Otto, op. cit., p. 189.


Russell is of the view that a mystical philosophy is characterised by four beliefs: (a) belief in insight as against discursive knowledge, (b) belief in unity underlying the phenomenal world, (c) denial of the reality of time, and (d) belief that an evil is mere appearance. S3 Thus the answer to the question, whether there is any experience such as a mystical experience, would depend on faith for an ordinary person. The above mentioned characteristics of mystical experience and knowledge distinguish it from every day experience and knowledge. But the above account is far from being exhaustive because (a) the nature of a mystical experience eludes all categories of human understanding, and (b) mystical experience defies linguistic description. It is something about which Wittgenstein says in TLP (seventh proposition) "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." And (c) almost every mystic gives different account of his mystical experience. (Hi) Questioning the veracity of mystical experience

We have seen in the last section that mystical realisation differs from everyday experience and our discursive knowledge. So it would be appropriate to say that there is something unique in a mystical experience. The differences between an ordinary experience and a mystical experience are epistemologically significant. They have been used differently by believers and non-believers for establishing their point of view regarding the authenticity of a mystical experience. For believers the mystical experiences are so unique that the criterion of knowledge in everyday experience is not applicable to them; these experiences cannot be rejected or denied on the ground that they do not conform to the standards of scientific knowledge. Non-believers highlight these differences in order to deny not only the authenticity of mystical experience but also the 83 Bertrand Russell, op. cit., p. 26-28.


contention that there is some kind of an underlying transcendental reality behind these experiences. The critics of mystical experience can be put into two groups: 1.

There are those who are against the view that there is a distinct kind of experience which can be called mystical experience. They criticise the very nature of mystical experience enumerated by mystics. For them there is no such experience as mystical experience. According to them the socalled mystical experience can well be explained with the help of psycho=analysis which, in the ultimate analysis, shows these experiences to be a type of sensuous experience. The radical empiricists and logical positivists belong to this group of the critics.

2.

There are moderate critics of mystical experience, like C. B. Martin,84 who, although do not deny that there is the existence of such experience as mystical experience, reject the claim that in mystical experience a mystic realises Oneness with God or any other form of theistic transcendental reality. According to Martin, the alleged mystical way of knowing may be described as follows: 'I have direct experience of God, therefore God exists.' He argued that such theistic claims have no rational grounds. He says that such a claim consists of two parts: (i) 'I have direct experience of God' and (ii) 'God exists'. Martin shows that neither by induction nor by deduction (ii) can be derived from (i). Even if it is accepted that mystical experience is unique, the uniqueness of these experiences only shows that in order to apprehend what it is, one must have it. Mystical experience, in no way, proves that such experience is the direct apprehension of God.

This is a criticism not against the possibility of the mystical experience but against the use of 'mystical experience' as a proof 84 C. B. Martin, 'A Religious Way of Knowing' in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion op. cit. p. 516-528.


for the existence of God. This kind of criticism does not inflict much assault on the authenticity of mystical experience as there are non-theistic mystical experiences. As different from a theistic mystical experience in which the mystic is face to face with the Ultimate Reality and establishes communion with Him, in a nontheistic mystical experience, there is no such emphasis on the unity with Reality. In the non-theistic mystical experience, there could be realisation of one's self being merged into the Absolute (and not into some form of theistic deity such as God) as in Advaita Vediinta or it could be the experience or feeling of dissolution or melting away of one's own self such as espoused in the concepts of Nirviit;la of Buddhism and Kevalin of Jainism. Martin accepts that his critique of the mystic way of knowing is not applicable in the case of those "influential and subtle group of religious thinkers who would not insist upon any existential claim. My remarks are largely irrelevant to this group. It would be hasty to describe their religious beliefs as 'psychological' or employ any other such general descriptive term."85 Thus, the moderate critics do not pose any obstacle in the search of the cognitive content of mystical experience. From the point of view of the epistemology of mystical experience, it is insignificant whether underlying mystical experience there is or is not some kind of deity (such as God, Ishvara etc.). But the criticisms of the first kind such as that of logical positivists are worth noting. And they need a sound refutation so that the cognitive content of mystical experience remains intact. (iv) Logical positivism and the critique of mystic or intuitive realisation In order to establish the non-veracity of mystical experience, logical positivism brings out the distinction between scientific and intuitive knowledge. Most of the criticisms of logical 85 Ibid., p.518.


positivism, against the veracity of mystical experience, are based on the distinction between mystical experience and everyday experience, on the one hand, and on the other, the distinction between intuitive knowledge and scientific knowledge. On the basis of these distinctions the critics claim that there is nothing as intuitive cognition. Logical Positivists' criticisms presuppose that scientific criteria of knowledge is paradigmatic, hence, can be held as a gauge to measure each and every knowledge claim. According to him any beliefs which does not conform to the scientific criteria of knowledge is devoid of cognitive content. Some of their chief objections against the mystic or intuitive experience and knowledge, and responses to these criticisms, are as follows: In answer to the question as to 'what it is to really know?', Schlick says, "Knowing implies two factors: something known, and that as which it is known. If we encounter something new, it remains unknown to us, unexplained, so long as we can perceive in it no resemblance to anything otherwise experienced, and are thus unable to place it among our recollections of what we have so far met with, or to call it by a familiar name."86 The important factor in this definition to notice is that here there is an emphasis that in knowledge there is a knower and the known. It emphasises that "Whatever example we examine from any given science, wherever an indubitable, universally acknowledged advance in knowledge is to be found, knowing, grasping or explaining never means anything else but the pointing out of such a relation between two constituents."87 The relation between the two constituents, for Schlick, is the chief feature of entire 86 Moritz Schlick, Philosophical Papers: Vol. 1, 1909-1922, ed. Henk L.

Mulder and Barbara F.B. van De Velde-Schlick, tr. Peter Heath (Dordrecht: Holland, Boston: USA, London: England: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), p.l44. 87 Ibid., p. 145


scientific knowledge and is the 'ideal of knowledge'. Thus, Schlick brings out his notion of knowledge and delineates subject and object as the chief constituent of knowing, and says that this is applicable to both every day as well as scientific fields. On the basis of this feature of knowledge, Schlick establishes that intuition does not reveal any knowledge as in it there is no subject-object distinction. He explains intuitive knowledge as the insight which is arrived at not through "comparing, measuring and calculating ... but by the most immediate experience, by living and 100king."88 He says, "Whereas for knowing in the sciences it is essential for us to couple together two (or more) constituents in the manner described; so that an object is then determined or 'known', in contemplation or intuition we are confronted by a single object, without relating it to anything else. We are therefore dealing with a wholly different process; intuition has no resemblance at all to knowledge. "89 In this way, Schlick establishes that intuition and knowledge are completely different from each other. In his view, only that experience is said to have a cognitive content in which there is a clear-cut distinction between subject and object. Mystical experience, therefore, is non-cognitive since it draws no such distinction. This criticism of the logical positivists holds good on the presupposition that scientific knowledge provides the only paradigm for knowledge,p and every belief has to conform to it for being qualified as knowledge. But the axiom that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge and all others are to be treated as mere beliefs and the presupposition that any claim in order to be called knowledge claim has to conform to its criteria are questionable. Those who uphold the possibility of mystical experience have questioned the view of logical positivism on the following grounds:

88 Ibid., p. 142 89 Ibid., p. 146.


1.

They maintain that on the logical positivist's account there can never be knowledge of an entirely new thing. Some kind of recognition is involved in the process of knowing. The logical positivists argue that all knowledge, "comes about only by comparison of a new object with an old one, and a rediscovery of the latter in the former. "90 If we accept the views of logical positivism, then there can never be an experience or knowledge of something new or novel. As per the logical positivistic description of knowledge the novelty is not only absent but also logically ruled out. We can experience something only in terms of something else which we have already had experienced. The mystic, on the other hand, claims that his experience is of entirely new kind. It has no resemblance or similarity with the experiences he has had so far. This novel experience leads to knowledge which is entirely of a different kind and has no analogy with what has hitherto been known by him. The analogies used by him to explain this new knowledge or experience to those who have never experienced it is just an approximation to the real experience. The mystic claims that his experience and consequent knowledge have a cognitive content in it, though it is of a qualitatively different kind.

2.

Further, according to logical positivism, the analysis of the process of knowing shows that there is an important distinction between scientific and mystical knowledge. Scientific knowledge has essentially the components of comparing, relating and ordering. On the other hand, intuitive knowledge involves unification of the subject and the object. The unification principle put in the popular adage says 'to know the nature is to live with it.' Commenting upon it, Schlick says, "The uncivilized man and the animal probably see nature in a far more perfect way than we do,

90 Ibid., p. 144.


they are far more involved in it, live in it more intensively, because their senses are more acute; but they do not actually know nature better than we, for they do not know it at all."91 He concludes that intuition provides nothing but acquaintances and not knowledge. Schlick criticises William James, Bergson Husserl, Kant and Schopenhouer as they espoused intuitive knowledge in their philosophical deliberations. At this point, views of Husserl, Kant and Schopenhauer are worth mentioning. According to Husserl, "However, to the extent that philosophy goes back to ultimate origins, it belongs precisely to its very essence that its scientific work moves in spheres of direct intuition. "92 Schlick ridicules Husserl's pronouncements that intuitive insight discovers a new world of philosophyphilosophy as a rigorous science. How could the intuitive insight, exclaims Schlick, which is the anti-thesis of scientific outlook, turns philosophy into a rigorous science? He says, "I believe, on the contrary, that by intuition and contemplation we can obtain no knowledge whatsoever, that it is not only no method for a rigorous science, but not even a scientific method at all."93 The Critique of Pure Reason opens with the following words: "In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and from which all thought gains its material."94 Commenting on it, Schlick says, "Kant himself was deceived about the role of intuition'. Further, commenting on Schopenhauer's view: "in so far as the self apprehends itself in

91 Ibid., p. 147. 92 Husserl quoted in Moritz Schlick, op. cit., p. 143. 93 Moritz Schlick, op. cit., pp.l43-144. 94 Kant, Quoted in Moritz Schlick, op. cit., p.149.


self-conscious, it knows a reality as it is in itself.... "95, Schlick says, "But in becoming subjectively aware of mental processes, we do not in truth know them in any fashion-they are merely given, posited or experienced; as experienced they are the self, or form part of it. We describe this situation wrongly in saying that they are known as they are; we ought merely to say that they are as they are-and little enough is gained by that."96 Schlick presumes that unverbalised realisation does not attain cognitive status Non-propositional awareness, for him, is subjective feeling which cannot claim to be a cognition. He is unfazed in his criticism of intuitive way of knowing and maintains that "so long as an object is not compared, or in some way incorporated into a conceptual system, it is not known ... "97 Conceptualization is not possible in the case of mystical knowledge, and therefore, logical positivism maintains that "By intuition a thing is only given to us not apprehended. Intuition is merely experiencing, whereas knowing is something different, and more than this."98 He ignores the possibility that non-propositional apprehension could well be regarded as the initial stage of cognition. RusseIl maintains that there are two kinds of knowledge. The two kinds of knowledge are: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. These two kinds of knowledge have their distinct and separate domains. For Bertrand Russell apprehension of 'ego-centric particulars' is through knowledge by acquaintance. 3. The critics of intuition uphold that scientific knowledge makes life smooth and easy-going by way of making us prosperous, whereas intuitive knowledge does not do anything of that sort. According to them, scientific "knowledge brings us advantages 95 Pauisen, Quoted in Moritz Schlick, op. cit., p. 150. 96 Moritz Schlick, op. cit., p.l50. 97Ibid.,p. 146. 98 Ibid. p. 146.


in its wake, in life, in technology and in numerous ways; intuition, bare contemplation, is of no use whatever to us in all this."99 To counter Schlick's this argument against the utility of intuitive or spiritual knowledge, it is sufficient to note that in his zeal to establish the supremacy of scientific knowledge and worthlessness of intuitive knowledge, he ignores the fact that science and intuition belong to different domains. Science is related to material well being and intuition with spiritual wellbeing. 'Man does not live by bread alone'; the non-material plays a significant part in our every day life. Too much emphasis on material prosperity begets alienation of the person from the rest of the society and psychological disintegration of the personality. This, in fact, is the stark reality of the present day world-the over emphasis on material prosperity has generated many problems. Thus, no doubt wealth is an important factor in human well-being, the role of spirituality cannot be undermined. 4. Logical positivists maintain that intuition is a field of psychological and not that of epistemological analysis. According to Schlick in this scientific age those who resort to intuition "should not declare it to be philosophy, nor proclaim experiences to be knowledge; let them admit that it is artistic, not intellectual, satisfaction, which they seek and enjoy."lOO As against this view, Krishnamurti admits that 'insight' is invariably involved in every creative human activity. What Schlick terms as 'artistic' that is for Krishnamurti 'insight'. J. Krishnamurti, in one of his 'Last Talks', says, "... Practically every writer, painter, scientist, poet, guru-they all have a limited insight."lOl Krishnamurti's approach here to intuition

99 Ibid. p. 148.

100 Ibid. p. 15l.

101

J.

Krishnamurty, The Last Talks (Madras: Krishnamurti Foundation,

1989), p.6.


resembles that of Kant, 5chopenhauer, Husserl and all those who regard the role of intuition in each and every case of the possibility of knowledge. 5. According to logical positivism, either it is possible to describe a state of affair into intelligible terms or it cannot be described at all. The attempt to describe that which is unintelligible and indescribable would be nothing but an exercise in futility. There is no cognitive content of that which is unintelligible. In answer to the question: what is unintelligible and hence indescribable?, the logical positivist holds that only that is intelligible which is empirically verifiable. But could it not be possible that one had undergone certain experiences which cannot be put into words? After all, even in our everyday life, at times, one is baffled to say what one wants to say. For example, even if we try to explain as to what are the constituents of 'love', we see that our explanation lacks the exactitude. But on logical positivists' account there cannot be any such situation-either in our day to day life, or as a part of our religious experience. They hold that, that which is intelligible is describable and must conform to empirical verification. That which is unintelligible is, not only indescribable but also, nonsense-a non-existent entity; a meaningless phrase. So, A. J. Ayer says, "But the mystic, so far from producing propositions which are empirically verified, is unable to produce any intelligible propositions at all. And therefore we say that his intuition has not revealed to him any facts. There is no use of his saying that he has apprehended facts but is unable to express them. For we know that if he really has acquired any information, he would be able to express it. He would be able to indicate in some way or other how the genuineness of his discovery might be empirically determined. The fact that he cannot reveal what he 'knows', or even himself devise an empirical test to validate his 'knowledge', shows that his state of mystical intuition is not a genuinely cognitive state. So that in describing his vision the mystic does not give us any


information about the external world; he merely gives us indirect information about the condition of his own mind. "102 Ayer's argument faces the following criticisms: He presumes that there cannot be such thing as an unutterable reality. For him, the criterion of anything to be called reality is that it must be expressed verbally and it should be verifiable. But there can be situations in our daily life in which we may experience something but fail to express it for the lack of words. For example, our obsession with something. When we are obsessed with something, we neither ask to give a reason nor a description of it. This failure of expression belongs to both levels: experience as well as language. In the presence of the object of our obsession, we undergo an experience which can be confused with the mystic's experience. Neither the obsessed person nor the mystic, while undergoing their experiences, can utter anything about it. Both of them, after coming out of the peculiar state of mind, speak about their experiences. The narration of both the obsessed person as well as the mystic is fussy to some extent. The understanding of any particular report does not depend only on the hearer's state of mind but also on his own past experiences of the similar kind. Let us imagine a person who does not know the taste of sugar and never had tasted sugar-cane. Will he properly understand the meaning of 'sugar-cane' when he is told that the taste of sugar-cane is like sugar? The prerequisite, for understanding it, is the minimal sharing of form of life or (what amounts to the same thing) understanding the concepts. That is why a person, who does not share the form of life of the mystic, will have problem in understanding the report of the mystical experience.

J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic, pp. 114-120, rpt. in Philosophy of Religion: A book of Readings, ed. George L. Abernethy and Thomas A.

102 A.

Langford (New York: Macmillan Co., 1962), p. 242.


In fact, when one experiences something there are two possibilities regarding its non-expression: (1) he does not express it willingly, and (2) he is unable to express it. Ayer's position obliterates this obvious distinction because he holds that the inexpressible or ineffable is unintelligible. 6.

The method of empirical verification on which logical positivists, including A. J. Ayer, base their rejection of genuineness of mystical experience has itself been criticised. It has been questioned, including other things, on the ground that the criterion of empirical verification is vague.

The above mentioned responses to the criticisms of cognitive content of mystical experience primarily argue as follows: as these experiences are unique their evaluation from the criterion of ordinary experience is unjustified. The criteria of the veracity of every day experience is irrelevant and inapplicable in the case of mystical experience. Now, it is sufficiently clear that a mystical experience is not merely a subjective state of mind. Logical positivism may be right in their approach that intuitive experience is immediate. They also seem to be right in their view that in mystical experience a thing is only given and not apprehended. But they cannot remain to be unquestioned in their view that mystical experience is nothing but a subjective state of mind. The above described responses to logical positivism do not prove that mystical experience is objective like our day to day experience. However, it is sufficiently clear that mystical experience is different from illusory experience and it is not the figment of our imagination. It is something more than a mere subjective state of mind. This conclusion is supported by the post-realisation behaviour of the individual like in the case of /fVan Mukt. As a non-believer would never be satisfied with the arguments of the believer, it seems that William James' approach is a balanced approach, that is, mystical experience is cognitive,


at least, for the one who had undergone the realisation. For the rest of us it is a matter of debate whether there exists an extraordinary and non-sensory mystical experience or whether mystical experience is a subjective state of mind. (b) Wittgenstein on Mysticism So far we have seen that there are two mutually exclusive views on mysticism. First, some philosophers and theologians regard mystical experience as genuine, veracious and cognitive. These believers in mystical experience regard it as an experience which is different from sense experience, and for them a mystic is a completely transformed human being, such as sthith prajlia or bodhisattva. The mystic realisation arises out of the transcendental unification between the self and the ultimate reality. World religions have differently construed the nature of ultimate reality. Moreover, the mystic's ultimate reality might be non-religious such as the 'absolute' of Western Idealism and Brahman of Indian Idealism. Further, philosophers such as W.T. Stace and Underhill treat mystical experience as an 'Unitive' feeling; feeling of the unity of the entire world. In their account, there is no emphasis that the chief element of mystical experience is the union between the self and the ultimate reality. Thus, there are different strains of mysticism but they all hold that the mystical experience is an inexpressible experience as no rational justification can be given for it. However, all inexpressible experiences are not mystical experience. Mystical experience is such an inexpressible experience which results in the complete transformation of the outlook and insight of the realised individual.

Second, as opposed to the above viewpoint, non-believers, such as logical positivists, altogether reject the existence of mystical experience. For them, mystical experience is not inexpressible and ineffable but can be explained through psychoanalysis. The psychoanalysis of mystical experience,


according to this view, reveals it to be nothing but a kind of sense-experience which is devoid of certitude. They treat mystical experience as a subjective state of mind-somewhat like illusion and hallucination. This position regards mystical experience as obscure, uncertain and vague. Now, let us consider Wittgenstein's view on mystical experience and investigate whether his view belongs to the above described two viewpoints which are mutually exclusive. Let us begin with the negative thesis, i.e. whether Wittgenstein's views on mystical experience resemble that of logical positivism. In order to arrive at the precise position of Wittgenstein on mysticism, on the basis of such comparison, it is relevant to compare Wittgenstein's attitude to religion with logical positivistic views to religion. Wittgenstein, like logical positivists, asserts that 'the meaning of a sentence lies in the method of verification of the sentence'. Like a logical positivist, Wittgenstein admits that if one can not verify the sense of a proposition, then one cannot have meant anything by the proposition. Therefore, the proposition signifies nothing. On the basis of the verification criteria of meaningfulness, Wittgenstein like the logical positivists, seems to reject metaphysical statements as meaningless. Moreover, he says, "The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science-i.e. 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 (TLP,6.53). Wittgenstein maintains that propositions" metaphysical statements are meaningless or senseless. A proposition gains sense only when it is a linguistic representation of a possible or actual fact. As metaphysical statements do not represent any reality, they are meaningless. The TLP, 6.421


asserts that ethics cannot be put into words and that ethics and aesthetics are the same. He did not directly mention the meaninglessness of religious statements but in Culture and Value he admits that ethics and religion converge at the same point. So it can be assumed that his view of meaninglessness of metaphysical statements and inexpressibility of ethical statements could well be applicable to his views on religion as well. For logical positivism, religious statements are metaphysical statements which are meaningless. According to A. J. Ayer, liThe term 'god' is a metaphysical term. And, if 'god' is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be probable that a god exists. For to say that 'God exists' is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false." 103 Hence, Wittgenstein seems to be holding the logical positivistic thesis about the meaninglessness of religious statements. But in fact this is not the case. This is clear from Wittgenstein's following acceptance: "l used at one time to say that, in order to get clear how a sentence is used, it was a good idea to ask oneself the question: 'How would one try to verify such an assertion?' But that's just one way among others of getting clear about the use of a word or sentence. For example, another question which is often very useful to ask oneself is: 'How is this word learned?' 'How would one set about teaching a child to use this word?' But some people have turned this suggestion about asking for the verification into a dogma - as if I'd been advocating a theory about meaning. "104 Thus, for Wittgenstein verification principle has its limitation. It may be one of the methods of testing the meaningfulness of a proposition but it should not be taken as the only method of

103 A. J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 50. 104 L. Wittgenstein, quoted in Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991), pp. 287-8.


meaningfulness. Thus even if a religious statement fails to satisfy a verification criterion, it should not be rejected as a worthless enterprise. Religious statements may turn out to be meaningless when we judge them from the criterion of verification and also they may be meaningless because they fail to be a linguistic representation or picture of a fact. Still, these statements have their own significance. It is clear that Wittgenstein did not share the logical positivists' anti-religious attitude but then the question is: How is Wittgenstein's position of religion different from that of the logical positivists'? The difference lies in the following viewpoints of Wittgenstein: (i)

Wittgenstein, in a letter to his friend Ludwig won Ficker says that the sense of the TLP is ethical.lOs

(ii)

Unlike logical positivists Wittgenstein was not an atheist. Although Russell proclaims Wittgenstein to be an atheist,l06 it seems he did not understand Wittgenstein's religious attitude. He was not religious, as we have seen, and Malcolm admits, in the traditional sense of 'religious'. Wittgenstein, during the First World War, always kept with him Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief. His war time dairy is full of references such as 'God give me strength' and 'God is with me'.

(iii) TLP admits that the main purpose of the book is to draw a distinction between saying and showing. That which is 105 Wittgenstein's letter to Ludwig Von Picker is quoted in Paul Engelman, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), p.l43. 106 Ray Monk, op. cit., p. 44. Russell calls Wittgenstein as 'far more terrible with Christians than I am.' Russell in his letter to Ottoline mentions Wittgenstein's argumentation with an undergraduate student who was a monk: "He had liked F., the undergraduate monk, and horrified to learn that he is a monk. F. came to tea with him and W. at once attacked him-as I imagine, with absolute fury."


showable cannot be put into words and any attempt to put them into words would result into nonsense. Religious statements are attempts to put that into words which is unutterable because they are nonsense. But this is not to deny the worth of religion as such. Wittgenstein denies that there is any meaning in religious statements but does not deny its worth for human life. On the other hand, for the logical positivists religion is a worthless enterprise. (iv) There are admissions of philosophers such as A. J. Ayer and John W. Cook who said that they wrongly took Wittgenstein to be a positivist. Paul Engelman says that Wittgenstein's disciples wrongly took him to be a positivist. Thus, although Wittgenstein like the positivists regards religious statements as meaningless, unlike the positivists, he provides them higher status and regards them worthy. Hence, there is a reasonably sufficient evidence to conclude that Wittgenstein was not a positivist. If this is so then the logical positivist's criticism of mysticism would not be applicable to Wittgenstein. Max Black, in an answer to the question as to why did logical positivists regard TLP as their text and ignore all its leanings towards mysticism, says that it is because Wittgenstein's view on mysticism has an equivocal character. For Max Black: "It must be admitted that his attitude towards the 'mystical' is a vacillating one. On the one hand, it seems clear from remarks such as those of 6.522 that he conceives there to be the mystical. Yet, on the other hand, remarks like those of 6.5, 6.51, and 6.52 seem to say that any effort to express the mystical, whether by saying or by showing, must result in absurdity."lo7 For me, Max Black is not correct in his view that Wittgenstein's view on mysticism is ambiguous or equivocal. The TLP, 6.5 and 6.51 does 107 Max Black, A Companion to Wittgenstein's 'Tractalus', (Cambridge: The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press,1964), p.374.


indicate that any attempt to put the mystical into words would result into absurdity but they don't reject, as opposed to Max Black's view, that the mystical cannot be shown. Moreover, if TLP, 6.52 is to be seen in the right light and with reference to what Wittgenstein said in NB, it would be much clear that Wittgenstein instead of negating the mystical, in fact, talks in its support. In NB (p.51), as we will see, later Wittgenstein asserts that the need of the mystical arises because we feel that even if all scientific questions are answered the problems of life remain untouched. The TLP, 6.52 does indicate a similar thought. However, Max Black admits logical positivists' reading of the TLP as 'bowdlerized' and says that such a "reading cannot serve: Wittgenstein's 'mysticism' is far from being an irrelevant aberration. What he called 'the urge towards the mystical' .. .is one of the chief motive powers of the book."l08 Now, the question arises: if Wittgenstein, unlike the positivists, is not hostile to religion then was his views on mysticism similar to the kind of mysticism described in the last section? Wittgenstein, no where in his writings, has defined as to what he meant by the terms such as mysticism, mystical experience or its cognates-mystical, mysterious etc. Actually, "The term (mystical) appears in the Tractatus without preparation, as though it were a household word, as if everyone was expected to know what it meant. In fact it is extremely difficult to understand what it means or why Wittgenstein decided to use it."l09 Wittgenstein seems to have presumed the denotation of the word 'mystical'. He did not think it worthwhile to describe its meaning. In this context it is interesting to see that Cyril Barrett delineates two kinds of meanings of the word 108 Ibid. 109 CyriI Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Beliefs (Oxford u.K., and Cambridge U.S.A.: Blackwell, 1991), p.71.


'mystic': "One is the narrower, traditional, theological meaning. The other is wider and more easily intelligible: 'Spiritually allegorical; occult, esoteric; of hidden meaning; mysterious; mysterious and awe-inspiring'."llo The traditional usage emphasises on the union between the soul and the Ultimate Reality as the chief element of mystical experience. On .the other hand, for non-religious or non-theological interpretation, the nature and content of the experience and the inexpressibility of the experience is the core issue. In Wittgenstein, mysticism "is hardly being used in the traditional sense, that is, esoteric knowledge of and union with God or Being, Ultimate Reality or the Ground of Being. Yet this usage cannot be ruled OUt."111 This view gets its support from the evidence that Wittgenstein uses terms such as 'mystical', 'miracle', 'remarkable', 'inexpressible', 'mysterious' and 'wonder' to express his views on mysticism. Moreover, as McGuinness says, there are multiple aspects of Wittgenstien's views on mysticism: the powerlessness of the will, the nature of ethics, the vanishing of the problem of life, and solipsism. 112 Our treatment of Wittgenstein's views on mysticism will include these and other related aspects. Bertrand Russell in his article in 1951 in the Mind named Wittgenstein as a mystic. A mystic, as seen above, is the person who has had undergone some kind of mystical experience at some point of time. So the question is: did Wittgenstein have a mystical experience? It is widely believed that Wittgenstein had mystical experience in a theatre while watching a play

110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 B. F. McGuiness 'Mysticism of the Tractatus', The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXV, (1966), p. 307.


Die Kreuzelschreiber of Anzengruber. ll3 For McGuinness, Wittgenstien's this mystical experience would "have been associated with the scene in which one character describes the 'special revelation' or 'afflatus' (extraige offenbarung, Eingebung) that he has had: previously his life had been one of unalleviated misery but one day when he had thrown himself, at the point of death as he thought, into the long grass in the sunshine, he came to himself again in the evening to find that his pain had gone, to be visited with unreasoning happiness as if the earlier sunshine had entered into his body, and to feel as if he were being spoken to: 'Nothing can happen to you!' The worst suffering count for nothing once they're over. Whether you're six feet under the grass or know that you've got to face it all thousands of times more-nothing can happen to you!-you're part of everything, and everything's part of you. 'Nothing can happen to you !"'114 Wittgenstein mentions his experience of 'feeling absolutely safe' in his 'Lecture and Ethics'. Along with this experience, he mentions two more experiences in LE: 'wonder at the existence of the world' and 'feeling guilty'. Wittgenstein maintains that these experiences are the experiences of absolute value. He denies that these experiences could be expressed in language. It is so because "verbal expression which we give to these experiences is nonsense!" (LE p.8). Let us discuss these experiences. (1) The first feeling of the three feelings which he talks in LE as having absolute value is that. 'I wonder at the existence of the world'. He mentions this feeling in TLP and NB and says that it cannot be expressed in language. According to Wittgenstein, one could try to express this feeling in the 113 Erich Heller, 'Ludwig Wittgenstein, Unphilosophical Notes', Encounter, 72 (1959), 42. Quoted in B. F. McGuiness, 'Mysticism of the Tractatus', op. cit., p.327. 114 B. F. McGuinness, op. cit., p. 327-8.


manner such as 'how extraordinary that anything should exist' or 'how extraordinary that the world should exist'.' But such attempts would be futile. For Wittgenstein this feeling is inexpressible because there is no meaning in saying that 'I wonder at the existence of the world'. The word 'wonder' has no meaning here. It is a misuse of language. He says, "To say 'I wonder at such and such being the case' has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this case one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing"(LE,p.41-42). Max Black comments as to how Wittgenstein wonders at the existence of the world on the ground that one cannot conceive of the world as nonexisting. He indicates that if one takes the world as contingent, then Wittgenstein's above analysis of the word 'wonder' would not be correct. It will not be correct because if the world is taken to be contingent then it would be possible to construe it as non-existing and it would be meaningful to say that one wonders at the existence of the world. For Wittgenstein, wondering at the existence of the world is meaningless because it is not possible to think of its nonexistence. If the world is contingent then wondering at its existence will be meaningful, and hence, there would not be any element of inexpressibility in it and ultimately there would be nothing mystical in it. In Max Black's view, Wittgenstein believed in the eternal existence of the world "perhaps because in order to frame the supposition that the world does not exist, I must, as it were, refer to the world, and so presuppose that it does exist."1l5 As it is not possible to 115 Max Black, p. 375.


presuppose that the world does not exist, it is a tautology to wonder at the existence of the world. And for Wittgenstein wondering at a tautology is nonsense.116 There are two related expressions about the world in TLP which need consideration at this point of our discussion. These are: (a) not the order of the world but its existence is mystical, and (b) the mystical feeling of the world as a limited whole (6.45). (a) Wittgenstein talks about 'mystical' in terms of the existence of the world. For him, "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that is exists" (TLP, 6.44). This statement is related to Wittgenstein's distinction between sense or meaning of the world and constituents of the world. For him, as we have seen in the first chapter, the world consists of facts -that is to say, things and their interrelations constitute the world. Things of different kinds, their interrelations (i.e. the order of the world) are Wittgenstein's 'how things are in the worl'.d' That is different from the sense or meaning of the world which is mystical. The order of the world is not mystical. It is not mystical because it is something given. There is no orderly or disorderly world: if there is a world, there has to be some kind of order in it. Whether it is the world of earth or of any other planet such as that of Mars, there has to be some kind of order. He says, "There cannot be an orderly or a disorderly world, so that one could say that our world is orderly. In every possible world there is an order even if it is a complicated one, just as in space too there is not orderly or disorderly distribution of points, but every distribution of points is orderly" (NB, p. 83e). The order or the constituents of the world are different from the sense or meaning of the world. The questions such as 'how the world

116 This is Wittgenstein's bask contention in LE.


is?' 'how did the world evolve?' are in fact about order of the world. As against the above questions, for Wittgenstein, such questions as 'why does, after all, this world exist?' or 'what the world is ?' are mystical. They are related to the sense of the world and hence they are answerless. They are answerless because sense of the world lies out side the world (TLP, 6.41). As opposed to them questions about the constituents of the world are answerable. This is what Wittgenstein says in the TLP (6.432): "How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference to what is higher. "Thus, the sense of the world, which is 'higher' and beyond the world, is mystical, and different from the constituents of the world, i.e. 'how things are in the world'. Explaining this point, Cyril Barrett says that physical theories, such as the 'Big Bang', the Quantum Theory; biological theories, such as DNA helix and the Darwinian survival of the fittest; psychological theories such as those of Freud, Jung and Piaget, may explain, in Wittgenstein's term, how the world is, how it evolves as it is. But they will not explain why it is, why there is this world or any other kind. They may succeed in explaining the order of the world but they don't explain the existence of the world itself.117 (b) Wittgenstein states, "To view the world sub specie aeterni is to

view it as a whole-a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole-it is this that is mystical"(TLP, 6.45). The word 'sub specie aeterni' occurs in NB where Wittgenstein says, "The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis ....The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. In such a way that they have the whole world as 117 Cyril Barret, op. cit., p. 72.


background....The thing seen sub specie aeternitatis is the thing seen together with the whole logical space"(p.83). The word 'limited whole' could be interpreted as "to 'limit' anything is to contrast it with something else, as when in drawing a boundary line we contrast what is inside the line with what is outside. Thus to wonder at there being a world at all (6.44) is to conceive (per impossible) that it might not have existed, i.e. to think of something other than the world as excluded. There is nothing absurd, of course, in considering what might have been but is not the case: mysticism springs from wonderment at the substance of the world and might be expressed as the thought, 'How strange that there should be any objects!"'118 For Max Black the mystical feeling of the world as 'limited' is the feeling that there is something beyond the world."119 (2) The second kind of feeling which Wittgenstein mentions as having absolute value is the feeling of being absolutely safe. Explaining this Wittgenstein says that it is "the state of mind in which one is inclined to say 'I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens'" (LE, p.41). According to Wittgenstein, like in the above mentioned experience of absolute value where there was a misuse of the word 'wonder', here there is a misuse of the word 'safe'. He says, "To be safe essentially means that it is physically impossible that certain things should happen to me and therefore it's nonsense to say that 1 am safe whatever happens (LE, p.42). Here, the use of the word 'safe' like the above described word 'wonder' is nothing but a tautology and hence nonsense. That is, the feeling of being absolutely safe cannot be expressed in language because such an attempt is futile. But this is not to 118 Max Black, op. cit., p.375. 119 Ibid., p. 373.


deny the existence of the experience of absolute safety. As said above it is believed that Wittgenstein had undergone such experience while watching a play Die Kreuzelschreiber. Cyril Barrett explains that it is not the case that being absolutely safe excludes the possibility of happening any misery to the individual. Rather it is the case in which even if all kinds of things happen to the individual he is not affected by the vicissitudes of life. In a sense these vicissitudes occur to the individual and in another sense they do not. As the individual regards these vicissitudes as an accident of life, they do not hurt or surprise him. What is remarkable in Cyril Barrett's remark here is that he maintains that this notion of being absolutely safe is an oriental notion which Wittgenstein imbibed from Schopenhauer. l20 We have described the notion of Sthita Prajfla in the first section of this chapter. Wittgenstein's notion of being absolutely safe amidst the vicissitudes of life resembles the notion of Sthita Prajiia. Sthita Prajiia is the realised individual about whom it is said that he is in the world but he is not of the world. That is to say that in one sense he exists in the world and in another sense he is beyond it and mundane miseries and joys does not affect him. His actions are devoid of any motive of personal gain hence his action does not bind him in the bondage. It means all his actions are essentially ethical. Similarly, the !fVan Mukta of Advaita Vedanta, Bodhisatva of Mahayana Buddhism, and Arhat of Jainism are those individuals who feel absolutely safe and unaffected while living in the empirical world which is riddled with evils. Such notion as 'living in the world without being part of it' is a unique feature of oriental philosophy which, according to Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein had imbibed from Schopenhuer. Such a 120 Cyril Barrett, op. cit., p. 81.


notion is alien to the scientific understanding of B. F. Mcguinness who cannot see as to how one can live without any motive and how all the actions of the realised person transcend the laws of nature which are related to crimes. For him it is not true that such a realised man can will whatever and that laws relating to crime does not disappear for him. His conclusion is that "Wittgenstein's happy man will have no room for ethical maxims and precepts which proscribe a form of action as SUCh."121 Needless to say that had Mcguinness properly understood the above described Indian notion of the realised individual, as Barrett did understand, he would not have criticised Wittgenstein on trivial grounds. Questions such as how Sthita Prajfia can be allowed to transcend the rules of crimes, and how a Sthita Prajfia can be said to will anything (i.e. not only good but even seemingly evil acts also) does not arise in the case of a realised individual because his actions and thoughts inevitably lead to Loksangrah (welfare of all). (3) Wittgenstein's third mystical feeling which he refers in LE as 'having absolute value' is the feeling of guilt. Wittgenstein has not elaborated this but has said that it is similar to the other two kinds of feelings of absolute value: wondering at the existence of the world and feeling absolutely safe. On the similar line of argumentation it can be said that it makes sense to feel guilty about one's own mistakes and sins. But it does not make sense to say that one is in a permanent state of guilt without being guilty of anything. Cyril Barrett maintains that such a feeling like wondering at the existence of the world and feeling absolutely safe is basic to religious beliefs. He says that mystics and philosophers such as Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer 121 B. F. Mcguinness, op.cit., p.325-6.


describe such feeling of guilt. 122 However, any linguistic description of such kind of guilt is not meaningful as the 'feeling of guilt without being guilty' is a contradictory feeling-a feeling which is beyond the scope of language. The feeling of wonder at the existence of the world is tautological feeling whereas the feeling of guilt without being guilty is a contradictory feeling. In this sense the feeling of absolute guilt is reverse to the feeling of wonder at the existence of the world. l23 The feeling of absolute guilt is the distinctive mark of a religious man. Wittgenstein in Culture and Value (p.4Se) says, "People are religious to the extent that they believe themselves to be not so much imperfect, as sick. Any man who is halfway decent will think himself extremely imperfect, but a religious man thinks himself wretched." A religious man for Wittgenstein is so humble that he always feels about himself to be imperfect. Interpreting Wittgentein's remark, Cyril Barrett is of the view that the feeling of guilt is a mystical feeling in the sense in which Wittgenstein used the term. It is the feeling of realisation about oneself that he or she is insignificant without having an inferiority complex. 124 The above described feelings of absolute value are feelings which cannot be put into words because any such attempt results in the misuse of the language and it is in this sense that these are 122 Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p.81-2. 123 Cyril Barrett maintains that the feeling of guilty without being guilty of anything is reverse to the feeling of wondering at the existence of the world. He says about the feeling of absolute guilt as "the realisation that, in so far as we are facts, things, state of affairs that make up the world and have a psychological 'I' we are inadequate: that is our status. We realise our place in the scheme of things." [bid., p.82. 124 Ibid., p.82.


mystical feelings. A mystical feeling is not emotional feeling but it is an insight or intuition. l25 It is remarkable to point out that Wittgenstein didn't say them to be the only feelings of mystical experience. He says that these are the feelings which occurred to him and other feeling of the same nature can occur to other persons. He says, " ... this is an entirely personal matter and others would find other examples more striking. I will describe this experience, in order, if possible, to make you recall the same or similar experiences, so that we may have a common ground of investigation" (LE, p. 41). What is remarkable here is that he talks about a kind of 'experience' which has absolute value and which is inexpressible. It is this inexpressible which Wittgenstein in TLP 6.522 calls as mystical. In brief, the mystical is not a matter of reasoning but of feeling .. Wittgenstein's above mentioned view, i.e. the mystical or the sense of the world cannot be expressed, has been further questioned. The question is: why should we presume that there is any sense of the world at all? It may be that there is no sense and if there is no sense then there is nothing mystical. Such an objection has been formulated by Bertrand Russell in his introduction to TLP. Criticising Wittgenstein's view that 'the feeling of the world as a limited whole' is inexpressible and mystical, RusseIl says that for Wittgenstein not only values but totality of propositions also are admitted to be inexpressible. Russell states that Wittgenstein's position faces the problem of generality. He says, "In the theory of generality it is necessary to consider all propositions of the form ft where fx is a given propositional function. This belongs to the part of logic which can be expressed, according to Mr. Wittgenstein's system. But the totality of possible values of x which might seem to be involved in the totality of 'propositions of the form fx is not admitted by Mr. Wittgenstein among the things that can be spoken 125 Ibid, p.74.


of, for this is no other than the totality of the things in the world, and thus involves the attempt to conceive the world as a whole; 'the feeling of the world as a bounded whole is the mystical' ... " (TLP, p.xxi). It seems that Russell forgets to note that for Wittgenstein propositions of Logic lack sense and hence they belong to the realm of showable or inexpressible. The problem of generality which is mentioned by Russell might be applicable in the case of propositions which are about facts of the world but cannot be applied to an entirely different domain of propositions such as propositions of logic which according to Wittgenstein are tautologies and hence lack sense. Russell, at the end of his introduction of TLP, holds that Wittgenstein's entire edifice of hypotheses of mysticism could be abolished, if it can be maintained that there is a hierarchy of languages. The presumption of the hierarchy of languages for Russell will be helpful in such abolition as when a language, on Wittgenstein's thesis, would be unable to describe its own structure, such structure could be explained by another language-a metalanguage. Russell admits that Wittgenstein can say that his view that nothing can be said about the structure of language could be applied to the totality of all kinds of languages, meta-languages and their languages. But Russell says that one can deny that there is any such totality of the hierarchy of languages as any such totality would not merely be logically inexpressible, but also a fiction, a delusion, and hence, the supposed world of the mystical of Wittgenstein would be abolished. The debate between Russell and Wittgenstein, according to Russell, comes to the point: whether there is a totality of hierarchy of language or not? For Russell there is no such totality but for Wittgenstein there is. It seems that Wittgenstein's position is satisfactory as later Wittgenstein admits that the fictitious language is an impossibility. ,A language is always embedded in a form of life. We shall explain the notion of form of life in the third and fourth chapters. Here it will be sufficient to point out that for Wittgenstein


there are many forms of life and all of them can be subsumed under one form of life. Thus, 'There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical" (TLP, 6.522). But again question arises as to why to presume that there are things that cannot be put into words? For Wittgenstein, the need of this presupposition arises because of our feeling that science is not able to explain everything. The inability or limit of science is the proof that there is something mystical. He says, "The urge towards the mystical comes of the non-satisfaction of our wishes by science. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered our problem is not touched at all. Of course in that case there are no questions any more; and that is the answer" (NB, p.51e). Here, 'problem' does not mean problem of physical or psychological life. It is metaphysical life which he identified with the sense of the world. Wittgenstein maintains that meaning of life and that of the world are the same. Such meaning he calls God. God is the meaning of life as well as of the world. He says, "The meaning of life, i.e. meaning of the world, we can call God" (NB, p.73e). God is not the facts of the world but is the sense or meaning of the world. Belief in God, in a way, justifies that the world doesn't exhaust into facts: that is to say that belief in God shows that the world has some meaning which lies beyond the world of facts. Thus, "To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter" (NB, p.74e). Similarly, meaning of life lies beyond the physiological or psychological life. Life doesn't exhaust in physiological and psychological conditions and happenings. To believe in God, in fact, is to admit that life has a purpose or meaning. Wittgenstein says, "To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.... To believe in God, means to see that life has a meaning (NB, p. 74e). For Wittgenstein, "Physiological life is of course not 'life'. And neither is psychological life. Life is


the world" (NB, p. 77e). And here 'world' doesn't mean world of facts but it means meaning of the world. There is identity between life and the world. The relation between world and life is the relation of inherence. Life and the world are related like an eye is related to its visual field. Wittgenstein says, "I am placed in it (the world) like my eye in its visual field" (NB, p.73e). Although life is placed in the world like eye in its visual field, it is difficult to get the exact grasp of the world. Even though one knows that the world exists (NB, p.72e) its exact grasp is a mystery. He says, "that shadow which the picture as it were casts upon the world: How am I to get an exact grasp of it? Here is a deep mystery. It is the mystery of negation : This is not how things are, and yet we can say how things are not-"(NB, p.30e). Thus, what we fail to grasp is not the physiological world or the world which consists of facts (TLP, 1.1) but it is the sense or meaning of the world which is difficult to grasp. The meaning is difficult to grasp because it lies out of the factual world. He says, "something about it (the world) is problematic, which we call its meaning. That this meaning does not lie in it but outside it" (NB, p.73e). Similar is the case with life. As we are unable to get the exact sense of the world, similarly it is difficult to know as to how to live a happy life. Here, science can neither be helpful in explaining as to how to live a happy life nor can it be helpful in finding out the method to live a happy life. Like it is difficult to understand the sense of the world, it is also difficult to live happily because of the following reasons: (i) There is no criterion of a happy life. Even if there is any criterion, we cannot describe it. Wittgenstein says, "What is the objective mark of the happy, harmonious life? Here it is again clear that there cannot be any such mark, that can be described. This mark cannot be a physical one but only a metaphysical one, a transcendental one" (NB, p.78e).


(ii) It is obvious that a happy life is a good life and an unhapp y life is a bad life. But to the question as to why to live happily, there is no answer. Even if a happy life seems to be justified, it is mysterious to know as to why to crave for a happy life. For Wittgenstein, "... simply the happy life is good, the unhap py bad. And if I now ask myself: But why should I live happily, then this is itself seems to me to be a tautological question; the happy life seems to be justified, of itself, it seems that it is the only right life. But this is really in some sense deeply mysterious! It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed!"(NB, p.78e). Althou gh it is difficult to live happil y but there are some method s and examples of a happy life: (a) Living in presen t: One who lives in the present, for Wittgenstein, lives in eternity. The question is: What is the meaning of living in eternity? For Wittgenstein, "If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present." He further says, "The solution of the problem of life is to be seen in the disappearance of this problem. But is it possible for one so to live that life stops being problematic? That one is living in eternity and not in time?"(NB, p.74e). It follows from this question of Wittgenstein that though living in eternity is living happily but it is difficult to live in eternity. However, the question arises: why living in present or in eternity is to live a happy life? And, what does it mean to say that 1ive in present'? Wittgenstein defines that 'to live in present' means to live in accordance with the world. And when one lives in accordance with the world he lives a happy life: "In order to live happily I must be in agreement with the world. And that is what 'being happy' means"(NB, p75e). Here the meaning of 'in agreement with the world' means in agreement with the meaning of the world. And this means that one, in order to live in present and hence to live happily, should live in agreement with the will of God. This is so because the


meaning of the world is God. Thus, when I live a life which is in agreement with the world "I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: 'I am doing the will of God"(NB, p.75e). But the question is as to how one can live in accordance with the will of God? The answer is that when one lives in agreement with his conscience then one is said to live such a life because "Conscience is the voice of God"(NB, p. 75e). Thus, the conclusion is that when one lives in accordance with his conscience then he is said to live a happy life. (b) Living without fear:

/lA man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in face of death" (NB, p.74e). A happy life is a good life and an unhappy life is a bad life. Thus, one who lives with fear not only lives an unhappy life but also a bad life. "Fear in face of death is the best sign of a false, i.e. a bad life"(NB, p.75e). Both of the above points coincide at some point. That is to say that living in the present and living without fear are the same thing because "whoever lives in the present lives without fear and hope"(NB, p.76e). That is to say that one who lives without fear is the one who acts in accordance with his conscience. Now this conscience may be good as well as bad. Only the good conscience is the sign of living without fear and living happily. It is so because "the good conscience is the happiness that the life of knowledge preserves"(NB, p.81e). It is hard to live happily with sufferings but once one undergoes the realisation of the meaning of life, i.e. God, he can live happily. In fact the one who is enlightened can live happily with miseries. (c) Renouncing the amenities of the world:

The question is: how can one live happily with miseries? Wittgenstein believes that human beings are incapable of making any change in the world. Hence, there is only one way that one can live happily with miseries and that is that one should renounce the world. For Wittgenstein, by renouncing the world one can master it. He says, "I cannot bend the happenings of the world to my will: I am


completely powerless. I can only make myself independent of the world-and so in a certain sense master it-by renouncing any influence on happening." (NB,p.73e). This is the reason Wittgenstein maintains that the enlightened one doesn't give importance to the amenities of life. He, in fact, renounces these amenities in order to live happily. "The life of knowledge is the life that is happy in spite of the misery of the world. The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world" (NB, p.81e). Thus, Wittgenstein is in favour of asceticism for having a good and happy life. And, actually it is the crux of living a happy life. Wittgenstein's methods of a happy life are quiet related to his mystical feelings of absolute value which he described in LE and which, as we have seen, is inexpressible. The empirical life is fraught with different kinds of fears so it is never safe. One cannot live in absolute safety without getting rid of all kinds of fears. The feeling of being absolutely safe is related to wondering at the existence of the world which in turn is tied with the renunciation of personal interests. 126 That is, the realised individual does not live with fear and hope. Since he has understood the meaning of the world as a whole he lives without any purpose or expectation of future life - he lives in the present without any cravings. Further, living without fear is not possible as there are insurmountable miseries and fears unless one realises the meaning of life. Such realisation is the realisation of God, and is inexpressible. One can obtain such realisation through renouncing the amenities of the world. As attachment to materialistic pleasure is the cause of suffering, one can live a happy life only by the way of winning mundane desires. Bhagavat GUll preaches a similar way of life. It says that the state of Sthita Prajiia could be attained only after renouncing all the worldly desires that has entered into the rnind. 127 126 Ibid., p. 81.

127 Bhagvat GUn, 2.55.


In all the above described three kinds of mystical experiences of the absolute value of Wittgenstein, there is an involvement of a supernatural realization. The corollary of Wittgenstein's notion of mystical experience is that the realisation does not come through sense experience. For example, the feeling of 'being absolutely safe' cannot be obtained through an ordinary experience. One can feel safe in day to day life, but the feeling of absolute safety is such a rare feeling which is not only extraordinary but also indescribable. It is true that in our daily routine we often feel safe and secure from various uncertainties of professional, physical and psychological life. Human needs such as job, house, companionship, protection of self-esteem etc. breed insecurity and frustration. All human efforts are directed to overcome the hurdles in fulfilling these needs. However, the satisfaction which one gets at the fulfillment of these needs is never everlasting. The temporal satisfaction of such fulfillment results in safety which is always susceptible to be lost. As against the temporal and partial safety, feeling of permanent and absolute safety and security does not originate from the fulfillment of physiological and emotional needs. It results from the mystical realisation underneath which lies the belief in the immortality of soul. One can never feel to be absolutely safe unless one realises that there is something which will survive death of one's body.

Not only that mystical experience does not occur to us like our day to day experience, it is inexpressible as well. It cannot be put into words because any attempt to express them through language results into nonsensical expression. The mystical experience or the experience of absolute value does not belong to the empirical world, but to the realm of showable, and hence, remains inexpressible. The question is: can all inexpressible experiences be regarded as a kind of mystical experience? According to Wittgenstein, the inexpressibility of an experience is not the only criteria of any experience to be a mystical experience. The inexpressible experience has to belong to the


higher, i.e. to the realm of showable. There are inexpressible experiences in our day to day life, for example, when one is in rage, passionate love or hate. These experiences like mystical experience are irrational, inexpressible and can be realised only by the individual who undergoes them. But these experiences cannot be said to be mystical as they do not say something which is higher and they are not the experiences of absolute value. Further, a mystical experience is not a schizophrenic experience. It does not belong to the physical or psychological life of an individual. Its domain is metaphysical. Although it's a metaphysical experience, it does affect the empirical life of the realised individual as the individual of the play die Kreuzelschreiber of Anzengruber who had undergone the realisation that 'nothing can happen to him'. The day to day life of such an individual will not be inflicted with any vicissitude of life as he lives without fear and desire. Thus, for Wittgenstein, mystical experience is inexpressible, devoid of mundane content, and imbibes absolute values. The question arises: what is the ontological status of such an experience? Is it subjective or objective? It appears from the above description that Wittgensteinian mystical experience has twin aspects: ontological and linguistic. Anyone who has undergone Wittgensteinian mystical experience such as 'feeling absolutely safe' can never accept that his experience is subjective. But those who have not had experienced it would deny that there is any such experience. Thus, from the point of view of ontological existence, Wittgensteinian mystical experience seems to be something more than a mere subjective state of mind for at least those who have had them. From the point of view of the linguistic aspect, Wittgensteinian mystical experience turns out to be completely objective. It is not subjective as everyone can see that any attempt to put it in language results in nonsense and misuse of language.


For Cyril Barrett, although Wittgenstein would not endorse the subjective-objective dichotomy and his mystical experience cannot be said to be subjective in a particular sense, yet it is not an objective experience because: (a) it is not an universal experience, and (b) there is no independent criteria to check its validity. Barrett says, "If someone says he does or does not find the world problematical, that he does or does not find the existence of something a matter of wonder, something miraculous, marvellous, mystical, there is no independent criterion by which he can be proved right or wrong. In that sense the mystical experience as Wittgenstein describes it is not an experience of an objective reality as the term is popularly understood. "128 Cyril Barrett's both of the above described reasons for showing that Wittgenstein's mystical experience is not objective are weak. They could be countered quite easily in the following manner: (1) It would be erroneous to treat these experiences as lacking universality. Wittgenstein's mystical experiences are experiences of absolute value. For Wittgenstein the experience of absolute value is an ethical experience. Differentiating absolute value and relative value in LE, Wittgenstein treated experiences of absolute value as inexpressible because they are not about the world of facts. As opposed to this, experiences of relative value can be put into propositions because they are factual. While treating experiences of absolute value as indescribable Wittgenstein did not pronounce them to be not universal. In fact the universality of ethical propositions is different from that of factual propositions. Of course, it is debatable whether ethical propositions are universal or not. The relativists and absolutists differ on the issue of the universality of ethical 128 Cyril Barret, op.cit., p.78.


propositions. For a relativist, there is no universal ethical or religious belief. Whereas an absolutist maintains that there is a transcendental element underlying the apparent diversity of ethical and religious beliefs which combines these beliefs into one, and due to this element these beliefs differ from ordinary beliefs. Wittgenstein's position does not fall into the dichotomy of relativism and absolutism because for him ethical propositions are not propositions at all-they are nonsensical expressions. Above described twin aspects of Wittgenstein's mystical experience, i.e. transcendental and inexpressible, show them to be universal. From the point of view of ontology, they are universal in the sense that they are to be fotmd in all religious traditions the world over, albeit they might occur in different forms. The linguistic aspect shows these experiences to be universal as it would be agreed upon by everyone that any attempt to put them into words is futile. Hence, in no way it can be said that these experiences are not universal. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that the universality of Wittgenstein's mystical experience is different from sense-experience. (2) Cyril Barrett's second reason for treating Wittgenstein's mystical experience as not objective is also not quite valid. Linguistic aspect of these experiences shows that they could be checked whether they are authentic. It is a criterion of their validity that their linguistic expression is a misuse of language. Thus, even if someone denies that he finds the world problematical or does not wonder at the existence of the world, or he might have not undergone 'the feeling of being absolutely safe', he can still see the objectivity of the mystical experience which results from the awareness of the futility of any attempt to put them into words.


Even Barrett accepts that Wittgenstein's mystical experience is not a subjective experience. He says, "1 hardly think that anyone who had a Wittgensteinian mystical experience, as described above, would be said to have been idiosyncratically subjective ... Not everyone may share his 'experience'. But even if someone does not share his experience, and to that extent may not fully understand what he is talking about, that person cannot say that he contradicts any piece of sensory evidence or that what he says is manifestly contrary to available evidence of whatever kind. To that extent, though personal, it is not subjective."l29 Even the non-believers such as logical positivists, who regard traditional notion of mystical experience as subjective state of mind, would not disagree with Wittgenstein's notion of mystical experience, at least so far as its linguistic aspect is concerned. Although logical positivism altogether denounces that there exists any mystical experience, such as envisaged by Wittgenstein, but it could not reject Wittgenstein's thesis of the misuse of language which results from the attempt to express these experiences through language. There is more acceptability for Wittgenstein's notion of mystical experience as compared to the t.raditional notion of mystical experience because former differs from the later. Some prominent differences between these notions are as follows: (i)

The traditional notion of mystical experience, as described in the first section of this chapter, treats mystical experience as the union between the self and Ultimate Reality such as God. As opposed to this view, for Wittgenstein, a mystical experience treats the world as a whole. The unity element of traditional mysticism is different from that of Wittgensteinian position which is philosophical and not religious or theological. In this 129lbid. p. 77-78.


respect Wittgenstein's view resembles W. T. Stace's extrovertive mystical experience which has been described in the first section. (ii) Traditionally it is maintained that some kind of self discipline such as yoga etc. is essential in order to obtain the unity between the soul and the Ultimate Reality. But for Wittgenstein the mystical experience could occur suddenly as it occurred to him while watching a play. William James has described several instances of sudden occurrences of mystical experience. Wittgenstein's mystical experience could be categorised as one of these experiences. (iii) The traditional mystical experience is much susceptible to misinterpretation whereas linguistic aspect of Wittgensteinian mysticism brings it more closer to an objective explanation. There are some similarities between Wittgensteinian mystical experience and traditional mystical experience such as: a) both of them emphasise that there is some kind of element of unity in the mystical realisation. b) both treat mystical experience as different from sense experience, and c) for both of them the individual who has had undergone these experiences is a completely transformed one. The traditional mysticism pronounces them as Sthita Prajfla, IfVan Mukta, Bodhisattva etc. and believes that he is not affected by the vicissitudes of life. Similarly, Wittgenstein maintains that the realised individual lives happily, without fear and with 'the feeling of being absolutely safe.' Notwithstanding these similarities, the differences between traditional and Wittgensteinian notion of mystical experience sufficiently indicate that Wittgensteinian mystical experience is certainly not subjective. It may be debatable whether it is


objective, but it can be said that, in a way, it is more objective than the traditional notion of mystical experience. (c) Wittgenstein's Rejection of the Privacy of Experience

The ancient Hindi adage lake Panw na phatf biwaf so kif jane pfr paraf truly represents the idea of privacy of mental states such as thinking and experiencing. Such an idea of the privacy of mental states has been upheld by Cartesians. They maintained the thesis that mental states are private, and hence, only the persons who have had them have access to them. Likewise A.J. Ayer has endorsed the thesis of the privacy of mental states. He has differentiated the public object from the private object in the following manner: "... physical objects are public because it makes sense to say of different people that they are perceiving the same physical object; mental images are private because it does not make sense to say of different people that they are having the same mental image; they can be imagining the same thing, but it is impossible that their respective mental images should be literally the same."l30 Thus, for Ayer, the private object of mental states is different from the public object. The difference between public and private objects is that whereas the former is accessible to more than one person, the latter is different from this and is available to each human being separately. Here the word 'available' stands for physical as well as epistemic accessibility. That is to say each person is the owner of his own mental states and that no other person except him can know them. 131 As Wittgenstein's paradigm for mental states is sensation in general and pain in particular, the privacy of mental states can be described as follows:

130 A. J. Ayer, The Problems of Knowledge, p.200. 131 Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: A Survey (London: SinclairStevenson,1994), p.50.


(i) My sensations are private to me in the sense that nobody except me can know them. (ii) My sensations are private to me in the sense that nobody can

share my sensations. These are two senses in which sensation or experience could be said to be private. Wittgenstein in PI §246 mentions the first sense of privacy. He says, '1n what sense my sensations are private?-Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it." Further in PI §253 he mentions the second sense of privacy. He says, "Another person can't have my pains." Here it is obvious that "The first sense of privacy has to do with knowledge and the second sense has to do with possession: in the first sense, something is private to me if only I can know about it, and in the second sense something is private to me if only I can have it."132 The first sense is the epistemic privacy whereas the second sense is the privacy of ownership. The first sense of privacy of experience is about the knowledge of experience and the second sense of privacy of experience is about the possession of experience. The first sense of privacy of experience is about the knowledge of experience because it says that nobody except the subject can know his sensation, for example, feeling of pain. The second sense of privacy of experience is about the possession of experience because it claims that nobody can possess the sensation of any other person. Wittgenstein rejects both of the above described senses of privacy of experience. Let us first consider epistemic privacy, i.e. my sensations are private to me in the sense that nobody except me can know that I am in pain. The epistemic privacy envisages two presuppositions: (1) I know that I have a sensation, and (2) No

132 Anthony Kenny, Ludwig Wittgenstein (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 185.


one except me can know that I have a sensation. Let us take up the first presupposition first. The first presupposition of the epistemic privacy is that there is a genuine use of 'I know' in the case of first person psychological statements. It presupposes that the use of 'I know' is as genuine in the case of first person psychological statements as it's any other use. Thus, the use of 'I know' in 'I know that I am in pain' is as genuine as its use in 'I know that 2+2=4'. However, Wittgenstein's contention is that it is not the case. For Wittgenstein, the use of 'I know ' in the case of first person psychological statements is 'senseless'. The application of 'I know' in the case of first person psychological statements is based on confusion. It is confusion regarding the applicability of the verb 'I know'. 'I know', as Wittgenstein says, can be applied only in those situations where there is some kind of involvement of learning in getting knowledge and where there is a scope for doubt or uncertainty (PI §246 and PI §247). In such cases it is relevant to ask as to how do you know? For example I can say that I know how to prepare a pizza. Now my knowledge of preparing pizza has been obtained through a process of learning and it is meaningful to say that other people might doubt that 1 can prepare pizza. On the other hand, in the case of first person psychological statements, there is no scope for either doubt or uncertainty. Neither learning nor uncertainty is involved here. In the case of my sensations "I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them." (PI §246) Here there is no element of uncertainty. Wittgenstein explains that there is no uncertainty in the first person psychological statements. He says, "'Only you can know if you had that intention.' One might tell someone this when one was explaining the meaning of the word 'intention' to him. For then it means: that is how we use it. (And here 'know' means that the expression of uncertainty is senseless)" (PI §247). Thus, learning process and the element of uncertainty, which are present in any knowledge situation, are absent in the case of


the first person psychological statements. As there is no uncertainty or doubt, so one cannot say about his sensation as to how he knows that he has a p~ticular sensation. 'How do you know?' can be asked in all the cases of knowing. But it cannot be asked in the case of first person psychological statements. For example, it is meaningful to ask as to how do I know preparing pizza. It is meaningful because I can demonstrate my skill or knowledge of preparing pizza to the person who asks me as to how do I do it. On the other hand, it is meaningless to ask someone as to how he knows that he has a particular sensation. For example, 'I know that I have pain in my stomach', is a senseless expression because it would be senseless to ask as to how do I know that I have pain in the stomach. It would be senseless to ask so because here there is no element of doubt or uncertainty and no process of learning is involved. It may be contended that it is true that there is no process of learning involved in the first person psychological statements but that does not mean that one does not know about his own body. It may be said that there are things in whose knowledge learning process is involved and there is another group of things whose knowledge does not require any kind of learning. There are things which are immediately known and their knowledge is beyond doubt. Knowledge of one's own pain is such that it is beyond any kind of doubt. In reply, Wittgenstein argues that such contentions confuse empirical proposition with grammatical proposition. For Wittgenstein such contentions take the first person psychological statements such as 'I know that I am in pain' as an empirical proposition whereas it is a grammatical proposition. A grammatical proposition is the one which is concerned with explaining the meaning of a word.l33 The proposition 'I know that I am in pain', means it is senseless to say 133 Ibid., p. 18Z


that 'I doubt that 1 am in pain'. Wittgenstein accepts the contention that one's own pain is beyond any kind of doubt. In PI §288 he admits that one cannot doubt that one is in pain. As a grammatical proposition, the use of the word 'know' in 'I know that 1 am in pain' is senseless and avails nothing. Grammatically, the use of the word 'know' negates the existence of doubt or uncertainty. Such negation has meaning only where there is a possibility of uncertainty or mistake. For example, 'I know that 2+2=4', is a meaningful expression of the word 'know' because here there is a possibility that 1 am not certain that 2+2=4 (e.g. when 1 was a child). As there is no uncertainty in the case of propositions about mental states such as 'I am in pain" it would be meaningless to say that 'I know that 1 am in pain', It would be as senseless as saying that 'I know that good morning'. One may be tempted to answer the question: how do you know that you have pain? as 'I know that 1 have pain because 1 feel it'. For Wittgenstein, it is not an answer at all because there is no distinction between 'I feel' and 'I have'. He says, " 'How do you know that you have pain?' Because 'I feel them'. But 1 feel them means the same as 'I have them'. Therefore this was no explanation at all"(BB, p. 68). The answer to the question: 'how do you know that you have pain?' turns out to be 'I know that 1 have pain because 1 have pain' which in fact is not an answer but a tautological expression. Again, feeling something and having the knowledge of that thing are two entirely different things. For example, it is meaningful to say that 'there was a stone in my shoe but 1 did not feel it' but it is senseless to say that 'there was pain in my stomach but 1 did not know it'. Thus, the statement, '1 know that 1 have a particular sensation' is meaningless. The use of the word 'know' in the case of the first person psychological statements is redundant.


Wittgenstein rejects the above described second presupposition of the epistemic privacy on different grounds. The second presupposition of the epistemic privacy is about the scepticism of the knowledge of other minds. Wittgenstein in PI §246 puts it as 'other person can't know it', and denounces it as a wrong view. It is wrong because usually we agree that one often understands as to under what sensation the other person is going through. For example, one can understand that the person is in pain who had met with a car accident and crying and profusely bleeding. For Wittgenstein, "If we are using the word 'to know' as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know when I am in pain" (PI §246). There is no epistemic privacy in Wittgenstein's view, in the normal uses of the term 'to know'. Wittgenstein's appeal to the 'normal' uses of 'knowing' may be questioned on the ground that although it may be said quite correctly that one often knows others' state of mind but neither one can know others' state of mind with the same certainty with which one knows one's own state of mind nor one can always know whether the other person is not pretending. This scepticism about the knowledge of other minds claims that one can never be certain aboutany body's state of mind to the extent to which one can be certain about one's own. Moreover, no one can know whether the state of mind of others is a genuine one or a mere pretension; it may be that others' state of mind does not correspond to their behaviour. Often we are deceived by the pretentious behaviour of others-the concept of 'double face' is understandable to everyone. In other words, the objections to Wittgenstein's position that the 'other person understands when I am in pain' are: (i) there is no complete certainty in knowing the others' sensations, and (ii) one may be obstructed in knowing other person's sensations as it is always possible that the subject is pretending to have or not to have a sensation. Wittgenstein rejects both of the above objections.


About the first objection, i.e. one cannot know others' sensations with the same certainty with which one can know one's own, Wittgenstein says that such an objection presumes that there is only one kind of certainty and fails to distinguish between psychological and logical aspects of the concept of certainty. It chooses mathematical certainty as a paradigm and fails to note that there are different kinds of certainty. The certainty of the knowledge of other minds is different from mathematical certainty. For example, when I say that I am certain that my friend would like a particular gift, I am aware that my certainty is a psychological certainty which is different from my being certain that x+y = y+x. The difference between these two kinds of certainty is not psychological but logical. They belong to different language-games of certainty. It cannot be said that logical certainty is more certain than psychological certainty. Wittgenstein says, "I can be certain of someone else's sensation as if any fact. But this does not make the proposition 'He is much depressed', '25X25=625' and 'I am sixty years old' into similar instruments. The explanation suggests itself that the certainty is of different kind. This seems to point to a psychological difference. But the difference is logical" (PI, 11, p.224). The logical difference to be found in various kinds of certainty shows that there is no single criterion of certainty. The criteria of mathematical certainty cannot operate in the field of psychological phenomena. But this does not make the psychological certainty less certain. In fact, neither any comparison can be made between mathematical and psychological certainty nor the view that 'mathematical certainty is a paradigm', is correct. All this leads to the conclusion that knowledge about other minds could not be less certain than one's own state of mind. Against the second objection, which contends that one cannot know others' state of mind as there is always pOSSibility of pretension, Wittgenstein says that there are situations where the


possibility of pretension could be completely ruled out. For example, someone's cry whose hands are chopped off in an accident cannot be a pretension. Similarly, one can be certain that infants' cry cannot be pretentious. Well, the critic may contend that there are many cases where it is meaningful to talk that the behaviour is pretentious. To counter this, Wittgenstein says that the basis of pretentious behaviour is genuine behaviour. As one learns how to behave, one also learns how to lie, deceive and pretend. He says, "Lying is a language-game that needs to be learned like any other one" (PI §249). Lying, deceiving and pretending cannot be prior to the genuine behaviour. Rejecting the view that 'all behaviours might always be pretence', Wittgenstein says that in that case we cannot talk about pretence. Pretending has meaning only in the form of life of a genuine behaviour. The concept of pretension which lacks behavioural criteria is 'unusa ble' (Z §S71). It is unusable, not only because one distinguishes between pretentious and non-pretentious behaviours but also between a possible and not possible pretension. For Wittgenstein, 'it is a matter of experience' that 'one can't preten d like that' (Z §S70). As no pretension is possible withou t genuine behaviour in which that pretension is ground ed, it cannot be said that the possibility of pretension could make knowledge of other minds impossible. Thus, both presuppositions of the epistemic privacy thesis are unfounded. The use of the word 'know' in case of the first person psychological statements is redundant. And, often we know about the other person's state of mind on the basis of their behaviour. True, there is a possibility that we err, but that is not a defect as Wittgenstein would like to say, 'all money is not fake money and the fake money cannot convert good money into fake money'. Likewise, on the basis of the possibility that some one can preten d or hide his real feeling, it cannot be argued that all sensations are private. It cannot be argued because it is possible


to make distinction between fake behaviour and pretension, and the criterion of such distinction cannot be private. Thus, the view of epistemic privacy is untenable, i.e. the sensations are not incommunicable. Now let us examine the claims of alleged privacy of ownership. The privacy of ownership maintains that sensations are inalienable; 'no one can feel another person's sensations'. It maintains that it is logically impossible that one can feel another person's sensation. The view of the privacy of ownership of sensations wrongly presupposes that the concept of the ownership of a physical thing is applicable to the sensations. In fact such presupposition is baseless. For example, I am owner of a coat. There are other coats which are owned by other persons -my coat is mine and I am not the owner of other's coat. When we apply this kind of ownership of things to sensation's privacy, we are faced with absurd consequences. For example, it is meaningful to ask whether the coat, which I have put on, is mine or whether it belongs to someone else. But it is absurd to ask whether the sensation I feel belongs to me or not. This can be explained with the help of Wittgenstein's view that the distinction between numerical identity and qualitative identity which is applicable to physical objects, cannot be applied to sensations. PI §253's remark: "Consider what makes it possible in the case of physical objects to speak of 'two exactly the same', for example, to say 'This chair is not the one you saw here yesterday, but is exactly the same as it' ,If distinguishes numerical identity from qualitative identity. In the numerical identity there exists one object, but in the qualitative identity there are more than one object which are similar to one another. To say that 'I have a computer for the last five years' is an example of numerical identity whereas to say that 'I have bought a computer which is of similar configuration as the one I had earlier' is an


example of qualitative identity. Wittgenstein's example about chairs is about qualitative identity. It talks about a chair which is not the same (that is, there is not one chair) but which is similar to another chair. Thus, it is meaningful to talk about the criterion of identity about physical things such as a computer or a chair. It can be distinguished whether a particular identity is numerical or qualitative. Now, the question is: Can such distinction be made in the case of a sensation? Wittgenstein's purpose is to show that there is no such criterion of identity in the case of a sensation. The privacy of ownership presupposes that there is a distinction between numerical identity and qualitative identity in the case of a sensation. But the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity which is quite correctly applicable to physical objects, cannot be maintained in the case of sensation. The ownership of a thing is different from that of a sensation. For example, 'The kid has her mother's eye'. The advocate of the privacy of ownership may argue that there are cases where it is appropriate to talk about numerical as well as qualitative identity of sensation. For example, when one has pain in the stomach and headache simultaneously one can say that there exist two pains which are numerically and qualitatively distinct. In response to such criticisms Wittgenstein argues that there are cases in which it is possible to say that two persons feel pain in the same place such as Siamese twins can feel pain at the place where they are conjoined. The advocate of the privacy of ownership of sensation can argue at this stage that even in the case of Siamese twins it is possible to distinguish sensations numerically and qualitatively such as when the head of one kid of the Siamese twins is conjoined with the leg of other kid. Even Wittgenstein, anticipating this, in BB (pp.54-55) concedes that even if A and B have the same pain, it is possible to destroy one without the other. However, according to Wittgenstein, such contentions treat sensations as if they can exist


apart from human body whereas the fact is that they do not have any independent spatial location. We can say that there are two persons in the room with headaches but it cannot be said that there are two headaches in the room. It can be contended that the impossibility of the headache's independent spatial location proves its numerical and qualitative identity. In response to such views, Wittgenstein argues that there is a sense in which it is meaningful to say that two persons can feel the same pain. For example, consider the sentence: 'Due to walking bare feet on the snow, there is pain in my feet'. In response to it another person can say, 'Well, I understand what you mean, I do have similar pain when I walk bare feet on the snow'. Here the meaning of the word 'similar' is properly understandable. Wittgenstein says, "In so far as it makes sense to say that my pain is the same as his, it is also possible for us both to have the same pain" (PI §253). And, in so far as it is meaningful to say that two persons can have the same pain, it is right to say that there is no private sensation. More than one person can have the same sensation.

The protagonist of the privacy of ownership may argue at this point that what is proved above is not that two persons can have identical pain. As against this, what is proved above is that two persons can have similar pains. When two persons are undergoing headaches, according to the contender, we cannot say that their headaches are identical, almost what we mean when we say that two persons are undergoing headaches is that they are having similar headaches. These headaches are numerically different and qualitatively alike. In other words, whereas one can have a headache which is similar to the headache of another person but one cannot have another person's headache in the literal sense of the term. Such is the view expressed by A. J. Ayer in his Problems of Knowledge. l34 134 A. J. Ayer, op.cit., p.119


Such views presuppose that there is but one criterion of 'identity'it treats criterion of identity applicable to physical objects as a paradigm. In fact, the meaning and criterion of terms such as 'same', 'similar', and 'identical' differ from context to context. Emphasizing this point, John W. Cook rightly says, "It is rather that 'same' and 'exactly alike' are used interchangeably here, as in the case of colour we might say indifferently either 'The colour here is exactly like the colour over there' or 'This is the same colour here as over there'. Which ever we say, there is but one colour-red, for example, and it would be a mistake to say: there cannot be only one colour, for there is this colour here and also that colour there. The point is that there is no such thing as being just the same-no such thing as identity pure and simple. It would be a mistake to think that the same is the same whether we are speaking of builds or coats or gaits or sensations. 'Same' must always be understood together with some general term, such as 'build' or 'coat', and the criterion of identity in any particular case is determined by the general term involved."l3S Cook's point is that as it can be said that the wall and the chair are of the same colours, similarly, it can be said that two persons can have the same sensation. As it is not said that there are two colours, one on the wall and other on the chair if they are of the same colour, similarly, it is not correct to say that two persons are undergoing different sensations just because two persons and not one are involved. The identity of sensation is much similar to a colour's identity than to the identity of physical objects. Hence, it is a mistake to argue that no one can have another person's sensation in the literal sense of the term. It is a mistake because there is no literal sense at all. Such 'literal sense' makes sense in the context of physical objects and does not make any sense in the context of sensation. In the case of physical objects, there is no problem in the 135 John W. Cook, 'Wittgenstein on Privacy', in Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations, ed. George Pitcher (London, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1968), p. 312-313.


identification of the owner, and the difference between such expressions as 'His coat is too large for him' and 'That coat is too large for him' is quite conceivable. Whereas in the first expression subject is the owner of the coat, he need not be the owner in the second expression. Such distinctions cannot be made in case of sensations. For example, there is no distinction between 'He is in severe pain' and 'His pain is severe'. A person can have a physical object and at the same time may not be the owner of that object, as explained in the above example of coat, whereas no such analysis is needed in order to be in a position to use correctly the expression 'His pain'. Here, the words 'he' and 'his' perform a similar function and they do not symbolise any ownership. While explaining this point, Cook says that this was the reason "that Wittgenstein meant to bring out when, in reply to 'another person can't have my pains', he asked: 'which are my pains?' (PI §253). He did not intend that one should answer that question saying something like 'All the pains I have are mine'. He intended, rather, that that 'answer' and the question that prompts it should be recognised as spurious, as not belonging to the language-game. Hence, for the reasons adduced in the previous case, when it is said that no one can, literally, have another person's pain, the supposed literal sense is no sense at all."l36 We shall discuss the notion of language-game in the next chapter. Wittgenstein has explained such protest& as 'no one can have another person's sensation in the literal sense of the term', in PI §253: "I have seen a person in a discussion on this subject strike himself on the breast and say: 'But surely another person can't have THIS pain!'-The answer to this is that one does not define a criterion of identity by emphatic stressing of the word 'this'." Thus, for Wittgenstein, the word 'this' does not help in identifying any private pain. It does not serve as the criterion of the identity of pain in 136 Ibid., p. 304.


isolation. When someone is in pain in the nostril, for example, and points out that he is having this pain which is not sharable to anyone, he forgets that other persons also have had pain in their nostrils. Therefore, this cannot refer to someone's private sensation. About the pointing out and emphasising with the help of the word THIS, Wittgenstein says, "What the emphasis does is to suggest the case in which we are conversant with such a criterion of identity, but have to be reminded of it" (PI §253). In other words, for Wittgenstein, what the pointing out suggests is that the word 'this' is a general term which serves as different criteria of identity. There is no one use of 'this'. The pointing out will succeed "only if the alternative use of the general term is already well known to us, so that the emphatic 'this' has only to remind of it."137 Thus, for Wittgenstein, the privacy thesis-'no one can share another person's pain in the literal sense'-is in fact erroneous. The presupposed literal sense is not a sense at all. This, according to Wittgenstein, is sufficient to point out that it is erroneous to hold that sensations are inalienable. There is no special inalienability of sensations which could be compared to the privacy of physical objects. In this way we find that both the senses of privacy of sensations, i.e. epistemic privacy and the privacy of sensation, are erroneous. Sensations are neither incommunicable nor inalienable. One can understand and feel another person's sensation. (d) Mysticism and Private Experience So far we have seen that believers resort to the differences between sense-experience and mystical experience for maintaining the uniqueness and veracity of mystical experience. The critics construe it as something which is devoid of intersubjectivity and objectivity. The critics do not believe in the existence of mystical state of mind.

137 Ibid., p. 316.


They maintain that there is no difference between mystical experience and day to day experience. For them, the so-called mystical state of mind is, in fact, sense experience in its vague form. They not only question the authenticity of mystical experience but also maintain that even our ordinary experience, including sense data, is nothing but a private mental state. For them, the world of privacy of experience or mental images is different from the world of public objects. We have also seen that Wittgenstein rejects privacy of experience. For Wittgenstein, mental states such as sensations are neither incommunicable nor inalienable. That is, neither epistemic privacy nor the privacy of ownership is applicable to mental states. Hence, for Wittgenstein, it is erroneous to hold that mental states are private. Thus, on the one hand, at least one viewpoint (i.e. logical positivism) regards mystical experience as a subjective state of mind and on the other hand Wittgenstein rejects privacy of mental states. So, it seems inevitable that Wittgenstein would reject the veracity of a mystical experience. But, as we have seen in section (b), Wittgenstein endorses the authenticity of mystical experience. How could he do that? Is there any contradiction that on the one hand he rejects privacy of experience and on the other hand accepts mystical experience which allegedly has some elements of subjectivity or which at least for some thinkers is nothing but an illusion. Wittgenstein had no problem in rejecting the privacy of experience and yet accepting the existence of mystical experience. We have seen in the section (ii) that Wittgenstein's notion of mystical experience is different from the traditional notion of mystical experience. As opposed to god-soul union of the traditional mysticism, Wittgenstein's 'mystical' envisages experience of absolute value. And, although for Wittgenstein religion and ethics converge at the same point, his mystical is more ethical and less religious-if 'religious' is taken in its usual sense. Thus, there is no contradiction in Wittgenstein's rejection of a private experience and at the same time his acceptance of the


existence of mystical experience. Now, the question is: if Wittgenstein's mysticism is different from the traditional notion of mysticism whose chief feature is God-soul union and Wittgenstein's notion of mystical does not contradict his rejection of privacy of experience, then whether traditional notion of mysticism would be consistent with Wittgenstein's rejection of privacy of experience? Almost all religious and mystical traditions have recognised personal experiences of divine revelation. These experiences are such that, except for the subject, they are foreign to others. Wittgenstein's position can accommodate these experiences as well. it has been explained in the first section of this chapter that there is no standard mystical experience, as there are different kinds of mystical experiences and there is a family resemblance amongst them. It can be said that all of them are supernatural. As Wittgenstein's examples of mystical experiences are also supernatural there lies no dichotomy between traditional notion of mystical experience and Wittgenstein's notion of mystical experience. Further, we have seen that these experiences are not recognised as incommunicable or inalienable. The realised person has power to alienate and communicate his feelings. This we have seen in section (i) in the case of Swami Ramakrishna Paramhansa. Likewise, Wittgenstein in LE has asserted that like his examples of experiences anyone can undergo different kinds of the experiences of absolute value. That is, these experiences are communicable and alienable. So these experiences exactly do not infringe on Wittgenstein's rejection of privacy of experience. In this way, not only Wittgenstein's unique notion of mystical experience but also traditional notion of mystical experience survives his rejection of privacy of experience. Moreover, Wittgenstein recognised that experiences such as 'talking to God', 'melting away', and 'unitive experience' have their own form of life and language-game. He says, "You can't hear God


speak to someone else, you can hear him only if you are being addressed'.-That is a grammatical remark "(Z §717). Thus, for Wittgenstein, expressions of mystical experiences such as 'talking with God' are not merely private mental states. As these experiences are meaningful in the context of their own logical grammar, they have to be seen in their language-game and form of life. As the understanding of language-games and forms of life are required not only for grasping the meaning of the expressions of mystical experience but also entire religious beliefs, we turn to analyse them in relation to Wittgenstein's religious conceptions.

3 Religious Beliefs and Language-games Early Wittgenstein's saying and showing distinction makes it clear that religion belongs to the realm of showable, hence, cannot be expressed. It is part of the realm of mystical and value, and therefore, ineffable. It is ineffable because a proposition can express only a fact, as religion is not a fact, it cannot be expressed in language. Later Wittgenstein in his early phases, Le. when he returned from his recluse in 1929 and delivered his LE, still upheld the ineffability of religious beliefs. In LE he explains this point of view quite succinctly which, as we have seen, is in accordance with the picture theory of meaning. However, by the time of his lectures of BB he realised the inadequacies of this theory and then onwards in order to provide satisfactory account of meaning kept developing use theory, language-game, and form of life concepts. An impact of this change in his theory of meaning can be seen in his views on religious beliefs. Later Wittgenstein does not only emphasise on the central theme of his earlier views, namely, the notion that religious propositions are nonsensical, and hence, inexpressible. He also maintains that the meaning of a religious proposition has to be determined in the background of its language-game and form of life. This background sets the ground to explore Wittgenstein's notion of religiOUS beliefs in connection with his notion of language-game. The core issue of this chapter is: does a religious belief have its own criterion of rationality? An affirmative answer

Religious Beliefs and Language-games I 133

to this question leads to the acceptance of fideism or relativism. 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' is a criticism of later Wittgenstein's notion of religious beliefs. Wittgenstein's later views on religion are accused of holding fideism or relativism, which as we shall discuss in detail, maintains that religious beliefs are neither rational nor irrational as they have their own peculiar languagegame. A negative answer to the above question has to explain Wittgenstein's treatment of religious beliefs with reference to language-game and form of life on the one hand and has to establish its compatibility with the fideistically neutral position on the other. That is, one has to see the distinctness of religious beliefs and at the same time explain that such distinctness is not exclusive to the extent that it can be available for fideistic criticism. This, in fact, is the methodology which the defenders of Wittgenstein's views on religious beliefs can adopt. We shall survey these defenses along with their lacunae and would provide an alternative technique of the defense. In order to accomplish this task, this chapter is divided into the following sections and sub-sections: (a) Wittgenstein on meaning: i. Picture theory of Meaning

ii. The lacunae of picture theory and its replacement by use theory iii. Language-games

iv. A restricted autonomy (b) The Distinct Language-games of Religious Beliefs

(c) Wittgensteinian Fideism and the Defense of Wittgensteinian Thesis


(a) Wittgenstein on Meaning (i) Picture theory of meaning

In our discussion about the distinction between saying and showing, we have seen that, according to earlier Wittgenstein, meaning of an expression is determined as per the picture theory of meaning which holds that there is one to one relationship between a proposition and the fact which it represents. So on the one hand there is language and on the other hand there is reality. Every proposition is a compound of elementary proposition which in turn consists of names. Thus, NB, pp.26e-27e says, "One name is representative of one thing, another of another thing, and they themselves are connected; in this way the whole images the situation-like a tableau vivant.. .. 'The connection must be possible' means: The proposition and the components of the situation must stand in a particular relation ....in order for a proposition to present a situation it is only necessary for its component parts to represent those of the situation and for the former to stand in a connection which is possible for the latter." The meaning of these unanalysable names are the objects.

On the one hand there are facts, atomic facts, and objects and on the other hand there are propositions, atomic propositions and names which stand in one to one relationship to each other respectively. Thus, the structure of the reality and that of language resemble each other. This similarity of the structure Wittgenstein calls 'pictorial form'. Here it is relevant to elaborate Wittgenstein's notion of 'pictorial form' (Pears and McGuiness) or 'form of representation' (Ogden). A proposition is the picture of the reality. Now, this picture itself is a fact which consists of structure and pictorial relationship. The pictorial relationship is the feature which makes structure possible. Thus, 'pictorial form' is the possible structure of the picture. This concept can be clarified with the


example of the event through which the picture theory occurred to Wittgenstein and which has been mentioned in the first chapter. It is the event of the presentation of a car accident in a law court with the help of the model of toys. Thus, the actual spatial relationship of the toys is the structure of the picture. The three-dimensional character of toys is something which the model in court and the actual accident have in common. The commonness causes the model in court to become able to represent the accident on the road. For a picture, in order to become a picture at all, must have something is common with what it pictures. This commonness is 'pictorial form'. Further, "Because pictorial form is the possibility of the relationship between elements of the picture, and because pictorial form is common to picture and what it pictures, pictorial form is also the possibility that the things represented are related in the same way as the representing elements in the picture (TLP, 2.151). Thus a picture represents a possibility in the real world: as for instance an architect's drawing or model shows a possible arrangement of buildings"l38 (TLp, 2.202). No picture can depict its own pictorial form because, "in order for a picture to depict its own 'form of representation' it would need, per impossible, to 'place itself outside its form of representation' (TLP, 2.174), i.e. to use some other form of representation in order to depict its own original form. And this is plainly impossible. The self-reference necessitated is enough to render the attempt nugatory." 139 Now the question arises whether this inexpressibility of the pictOrial form is due to not finding the correct expression of the pictorial form or not understanding of the pictOrial form. Black 138 Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 55. 139 Max Black, A Companion to Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus', (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 87.


seems to opt for the first alternative. He says, "it should be noted that Wittgenstein is not saying that the 'form of representation is ineffable - for in understanding a picture we necessarily grasp its form of representation, though not in the mode of 'depicting' or 'saying'. A picture exhibits or 'shows forth' (TLP, 2.172) its form of representation."l40 But Black's above view can be contested as for him the ineffable cannot be grasped. In fact ineffable, as we have seen in the second chapter, can very well be grasped but cannot be expressed due to lack of proper expression. Thus, that which is ineffable is actually inexpressible, not because it is necessarily not understandable, such as it happens in the case of mystical experience. A proposition can picture a reality either correctly or incorrectly and depending on this it can be either true or false. The truth and falsity of the proposition is independent from its sense which depends on the logical form of the proposition. The logical form is the minimum similarity required between the proposition and the reality it depicts. That is to say, if a proposition has to be meaningful then it must have a logical form, otherwise it will not depict the reality even incorrectly. Thus, the logical form is the prerequisite of the pictorial form. For Kenny, logical form is the part of the pictorial form. He says, "Since every picture must have logical form in common with what it depicts,: logical form is part of the pictorial form of every picture; every picture is a logical picture in addition to being, e.g. a spatial picture, or whatever other particular kind of picture it may be. Every picture represents a possible state of affairs, which may be called its sense; it is a true picture if its sense agrees with reality, and otherwise a false picture. No picture will itself show whether it is true or false: for this it must be compared with reality (TLP, 2.201-2.225)."141 Thus, pictorial form of a proposition

140 Ibid.

141 Anthony, Kenny, Wittgenstein, op.cit., p.S8.


is related to its logical form. That is, truth and falsity of a proposition is related to its sense. However, the distinction between sense of a proposition and its truth value plays a major role in early Wittgenstein and its repercussions can be interpreted in later Wittgenstein as well. The distinction between sense of a proposition and its truthvalue plays a major role in the picture theory. Two basic features of the picture theory, which are its defining assumptions, are necessary to keep in mind as they have far reaching consequences in Wittgenstein's views on meaning. These features are: (1) the truth-value of a proposition is decided by its correspondence with the fact or reality, and (2) the sense of a proposition depends on its syntactical and semantic structure. For example, the proposition, 'Betty is pretty and clever' is a complex proposition which consists of two propositions: 'Betty is pretty' and 'Betty is clever'. If Betty is actually pretty and clever then these propositions will be true. It may be that one of these is true and the other is false. If both are true then the complex proposition will be true, otherwise it will be false. The truth and falsity of the complex proposition does not affect its sense as sense depends on the rules of syntax and semantics. However, truth-value and sense of a proposition are related to each other as a meaningful proposition is either true or false and if a proposition has truth-value then it must have some meaning. These features of the picture theory can also be elaborated in a different way. As for Hudson142 these features 'must be allowed for in any analysis of what it is for P to be a picture of 5'. His two features of the picture theory are: (1)

The picture is a definite picture. This feature is essential in order to decide that the picture is a picture of the definite object and it is not the picture of any other object. For this

142 W.D.Hudson, Wittgenstein and Religious Beliefs (London: The MacMillan Press Ltd.,1975), p.l9.


feature Hudson quotes TLP, 4.116, i.e., 'Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly' and interprets it as 'if language has meaning at all, that meaning must be determinate'. (2)

The picture theory may be an experimental picture. For the support of this feature, Hudson quotes NB, 29.9.14, i.e. 'in the proposition a word is as it were put together experimentally' and interprets it as: 'propositions make sense irrespective of their truth value and falsity.' These features of the picture theory, as Hudson has elucidated, turns out to be the features which I have described above, i.e. truth value and the sense of a proposition as a picture. A particular truth-value does not affect the sense of a proposition, i.e. a proposition with some sense can be either true or false.

Later on Hudson elaborated these features as 'two sorts of meaning which pictures must have': meaning as sense and meaning as reference. For, him, the sense and reference of a picture takes care of the requirement that its meaning should be both determinate and experimental. The reference meaning 'is the object in the definite situation to which it refers'. And the sense meaning is a possible situation in a logical space'. He elaborates that for a picture to have sense (sinn) it must be logically possible for its elements to be put together. The reference-meaning is related to the picture in a determinate way whereas sense-meaning is experimentally related to it. Thus for Hudson, "The meaning of a proposition is always a matter of both Bedeutung (reference) and Sinn (sense). Because its elements have objects corresponding to them, this makes it possible for the meaning to be determinate (cf. TLP, 3.23), and because these elements can be combined to represent a possible situation in I


logical space, this means that the meaning of a proposition can be experimental (cf. TLP, 4.027)." 143 Hudson's above description of the basic features of the picture theory, i.e. determinate and experimental in terms of the two kinds of meaning-sense and reference-assimilates it to Frege's distinction between sense and reference. For Frege, the object designated by the sign is its reference and the mode of the presentation (definite description) is its sense. l44 Frege's impact on Wittgenstein cannot be ruled out, hence, there may be a resemblance between Frege's sense and reference, on the one hand, and on the other, Hudsonian determinate and experimental features of Wittgenstein's picture theory. The lacunae of picture theory and its replacement by use theory (ii)

Wittgenstein's lectures in 1933-34, which is known as Blue Book, contains his dissatisfaction with the picture theory as well as the beginning of his new ideas about meaning. He begins PI §1 with the inefficiencies of the picture theory. He puts this theory as: "the individual words in language name objectssentences are combinations of such names.-In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands." Later Wittgenstein realised that the picture theory does not explain all the cases of meaning, and against this theory, 'use' of the particular word and sentence determines their meaning. Wittgenstein, while describing as to how the picture theory fails, 143 Ibid., p. 25.

144 Gottlob Frege, 'On Sense and Reference', tr. Max Black, in Peter Geach and Max Black, eds., Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952), p. 56-78.


and the use theory explains meaning, says that the picture theory fails to realise that the craving for the one-to-one relationship between object and word has to stop somewhere. That is to say that the picture theory's one-to-one looking up between word and object which determines the meaning of that word breaks down at some point and then one has to adopt some other methods of the determination of meaning. Thus he says., "Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked 'five red apples'. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked 'apples'; then he looks up the word 'red' in the table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers-I assume that he knows them by heart-up to the word 'five' and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.-It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.-'But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?' - Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.-but what is the meaning of the word 'five'?-No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used" (PI §1). So, for Wittgenstein the basic lacunae of the picture theory is that it fails to note that one-to-one relationship between object and the word stops working at some point. And it is at least the point where this theory breaks down. The scope of the picture theory is very limited. Wittgenstein admits: " .. .it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe" (PI §3). Thus, even in the case of the one-to-one relationship between object and the word, on which it is supposed to be based, this thesis fails to explain completely as to why a picture is the picture of reality. The process, through which a picture is determined as the picture, does not come into effect in the picture theory. It


ignores the making of the picture vis-a.-vis that which is pictured. This is what Wittgenstein brings out in his famous illustration of the pieces of chess. Wittgenstein says, "When one shows someone the king in chess and says: 'This is the king', this does not tell him the use of this piece-unless he already knows the rules of the game up to this last point: the shape of the king. You could imagine his having learnt the rules of the game without ever having been shown an actual piece. The shape of the chessman corresponds here to the sound or shape of a word" (PI §31). Moreover, the picture theory in fact presupposes that the relationship between picture and the pictured is already established through the process of 'use' of such relationship. Thus, Wittgenstein says, "Consider this further case: I am explaining chess to someone; and I begin by pointing to a chessman and saying: 'This is the king; it can move like this, ... and so on.'-In this case we shall say: the words 'This is the king' (or 'This is called the king') are a definition only if the learner already 'knows what a piece in a game is'. That is, if he has already played other games, or has watched other people playing 'and understood' - and similar things. Further, only under these conditions will he be able to ask relevantly in the course of learning the game: 'What do you call this?' - that is, this piece in a game"(PI §31). Thus, it is use and not picture theory which determines the meaning of words and sentences. So, in order to decide the meaning of any linguistic expression, its different uses have to be taken into account. Different uses of any linguistic expression or sign have to be taken into account because otherwise the context of the use of the sign does not get recognition. The recognition of the context is a necessity for proper derivation of meaning. The context of the use of any word or sentence (sign) is actually related to the use of the word.


(Hi) Language-games

The context of the use of a sign is what Wittgenstein calls language-game. As use is related to the context of use, so use is actually related to the language-game of the sign. Languagegames, "are ways of using signs simpler than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language. Language-games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language-games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages. If we want to study the problems of truth and falsehood, of the agreement and disagreement of propositions with reality, of the nature of assertion, assumption, and question, we shall with great advantage look at primitive forms of language in which these forms of thinking appear without the confusing background of highly complicated processes of thought. When we look at such simple form of language, the mental mist which seems to enshroud our ordinary use of language disappears" (BB, p.17). Here it should be emphasized that over and above direct usage of the concept, Wittgenstein employed it in 'Lecture on Religious B.elief' and his later writings including CV to discuss religious beliefs in particular, and ethics, life, culture and civilization in general. The basic problem in defining Wittgenstein's notion of language-game is that he nowhere has defined it. He described it with the help of examples, parables and even jokes. Wittgenstein employed the term in a variety of ways. Its variety of application has been brought out in PI §23 which is as follows: "Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others:


Giving order, and obeying them Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) Reporting an event Speculating about an event Forming and testing a hypothesis Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams Making up a story; and reading it Play-acting Singing catches Guessing riddles Making a joke; telling it Solving a problem in practical arithmetic Translating from one language into another Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. - It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatlls Logico-Philosophiclls)."

Now it has become a myth that the notion of language-game occurred to Wittgenstein when he was going through a football field. Wittgenstein realised that as in different games we play with certain rules and there is no rule which is common to all the games, likewise in language we play games with words and there is nothing common in different language-games. He says, "Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for ali,-but that


they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all 'language'. I will try to explain this" (PI §65). Wittgenstein explains this with the help of the resemblance between language and game. He says, "Consider for example the proceedings that we call 'games'. I mean board-games, cardgames, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?-Don't say: 'There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games"-but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look!-Look for example at board games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ringa-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear" (PI §66). Although there is nothing common amongst different language-games, they have a cri ss-cross resemblance with each other which runs through the entire system of language-games. This Wittgenstein calls family resemblance. For him, "We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-


crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail" (PI §66). And further, he says, "I can think of no better expression to characterise these similarities than 'family resemblance'; for the various resemblance between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.-And I shall say: 'games' form a family. And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a 'number'? Well, perhaps because it has a-direct-relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. But if someone wished to say: 'There is something common to all these constructions-namely the disjunction of all their common properties' -I should reply: 'Something runs through the whole thread-namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres"'(PI §67). In order to derive proper meaning of an expression one need not look at its various uses but only at the particular context of the use. As there are innumerable kinds of contexts of uses of an expression, i.e. language-games, so there are different kinds of sentences-the same word or sentence can mean differently in different contexts of use or language-game. Thus, Wittgenstein asks, "how many kinds of sentences are there? Say assertion, question, and command?" And, he himself answers: "There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call 'symbols 'words', 'sentences'. And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten" (PI §23).


Wittgenstein has employed the term in various ways. In order to clarify various implications of the concept of languagegame, Wittgensteinians have categorised it differently. Max Black145 clarifies language-games into three types in the following manner: 1.

Linguistic behaviour of a community follows a set pattern based on a definite language-game. There is an example of this language-game as 'Builder's Game' in PI §2. Some other examples of this language-game involved in the linguistic behaviour of a community are described in PI §21; 'the number of slabs of blocks in a pile', PI §48; 'combinations of coloured squares', PI §143; a pupil on the direction of his teacher extends the initial segments of a series of integers, and PI §630; a pupil following instructions of his gym instructor adopts a certain posture. These examples of the language-games are simple language-games.

2.

As different from the above kind of language-games, there is a set of language-games which are complex in which, according to Max Black, 'utterances and responses are less regimented than in the primitive games'. Thus, for instance, there is a language-game of dream-reports in which somebody responds to inquiries about his dream by saying 'yes' or 'no'. Other example of this kind of language-games involved in translating one language into another-asking, thanking, cursing, greeting and praying. This kind of language-game Wittgenstein has extensively cited in PI §23.

3.

Z §82 mentions language-games of using a stopwatch to time a visual image. Such a use of language-game can be classified as indicative which does not play major role in the event. 145 Max Black, 'Wittgenstein's Language-games', in Llldwig Wittgtllsteill: Critical Assessmellts, ed. Stuart Shanker, Vol. two (London, Sydney, Dover, Hampshire: Croom Helm,1986), pp.74-6.


For Max Black the above three kinds of language-games are primitive, sophisticated and d mere cliche respectively. It is significant to note the differences between (1) and (2). In this connection Max Black says, "Here there is no need to invoke special knowledge of the rules of the game in order to understand what is going on. That, I suggest, is why Wittgenstein in the Blue Book called the activities and reactions of the players 'transparent'. This case may be contrasted with that of a highly sophisticated language-game such as lying where we cannot literally see that a speaker is trying to deceive us, and could infer t~at he was lying only by relying upon the context and our general knowledge of how and when people lie. Similarly, inference may be needed in order to recognise that somebody is making a chess move-checking the king, for instance. Of course, the differences between the two types of cases are matters of degree: we do not recognise the building assistant's obedience as directly as a physical movement of, say, stumbling; we need more than a mens rasum to recognise even as simple a reaction as obeying an order." 146 Like Max Black's distinction between primitive and sophisticated language-games, George Pitcher has categorised language-games into the following two types: 1) pure language-games, and (2) impure language-games. In the first kind of language-game, according to Pitcher, Wittgenstein includes "pure speech activities - that is, activities which involve little, or nothing, except the use of words-such as telling a joke, reporting an event (PI §23), describing a room (PI §290), and giving an account of a dream (PI, §184). But he also includes such activities as constructing an object from a description, obeying orders, and play-acting (PI §23) which

146 Ibid., p. 77

148 J Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

involve certain modes of nonlinguistic behaviour as essential components, and not just as mere idle accompaniments in the way that gestures with the hand, say, figure in most (pure) speech activities." 147 In this category Pitcher also includes 'builders game' of PI §2. Distinguishing impure language-games from pure language-games, Pitcher says, "It might be thought that in such activities as these, (i.e. above examples), one ought to distinguish the linguistic from the behavioural aspect, and to refer to the former alone as a language-game; but Wittgenstein states that the nonlinguistic behaviour is also to be included in the language-game."l48 Thus we see that the basic difference between pure and impure language-game of Pitcher is that whereas the former is linguistic, the latter is nonlinguistic. However, it is significant to point out that (1) for pitcher the difference between these two kinds of language-games is not a difference of kind but only a difference of degree (We shall see in chapter five that in reference to language-games of superstitions and religious beliefs Wittgenstein asserts that in their languagegames there is no difference of kind.), and (2) impure languagegames are in no way inferior than that of pure ones. He maintains: "Wittgenstein considered impure language-games to be, in an important sense, basic and held that pure languagegames are parasitic upon them in a crucial way."149 Another kind of categorisation of language-games can be done. That is, all the language-games can be divided into two categories: (1) real language-games, and (2) imaginary languagegames. The examples of real language-games have been given in PI §23 which we have described above. On the other hand 147 George Pitcher, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein (USA: Prentice-Hall, 1964), p.239. 148 Ibid., p.240. 149 Ibid., p.240.


Wittgenstein in PI §6 talks about an imaginary builder's game in which the whole language consists of nothing but orders and obeying orders. The Brown Book (p.77) also talks about the same imaginary language: "Let us imagine a society in which this (the builder's four-word mini-language) is the only system of language." Over and above these distinctions among different languagegames and their above described categorisations, they can further be divided into religious and non-religious languagegames. As Wittgenstein in his early thought explicitly maintained religious and ethical to be one and the same, ipso facto it can be maintained that for him ethical language-games are religious language-games and vice versa. Notwithstanding the above distinction between the language-games which are primitive, impure, real and nonreligious on the one hand, and language-games which are complex, pure, imaginary and religious on the other, there is no watertight compartmentalisation between various languagegames as they all operate against the same background. Various language-games are conjoined to each other. No one can work in separation from the others. The above categorisation of languagegames is not very rigid. So, generally it can be held that primitive, impure, real and non-religious language-games provide basis for complex, pure, imaginary and religious language-games. But such thesis should be operated with precaution, as it may be that a religious beliefs is inexpressible, and therefore, belongs to the category of impure languagegames. And if that happens, religious language-game cannot be treated as the one which is dependent on non-religious or ordinary language-games. However, if handled carefully, there seems to be no harm in holding the view that religious languagegames depend on ordinary language-games as the terms and composition of the former takes place in the background of day to day life.


(iv) A restricted autonomy In the context of the above categorisation and distinction of various language-games, someone can maintain that Wittgenstein admitted autonomy of language~games. Wittgenstein in PI §6 talks about an imaginary builder's language-game which consists of order and obeying of order and no other terms. Similarly, in PI §19 he says, "It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. Or language consisting only of questions and expressions of answering yes and no. And innumerable others./I On the basis of such views of Wittgenstein as described above, the contention arises that Wittgenstein maintained, "that there is an irreducible diversity of language-games so that Language (with a capital L) is a mere congeries of mutually independent types of activity, connected only by shifting simIlarities and differences./llso Thus, each language-game is treated as complete in itself, i.e. as a game which "can be played as it is, without being considered a part of some larger game. Certainly this is true of the builder's game and, indeed, of any game that comes to mind. But it does not follow that a language-game that is complete in this sense might be the only language-game available./llsl A complete game is the game which is called autonomous. Thus, Max Black concedes, "Ordinary games are autonomous, because they are intended to be self-contained and artificially bounded: that is why there is no conceptual absurdity about supposing some real game to be the only game that is known or played by some group of persons. It is conceivable, as Wittgenstein says, that a tribe should be found playing chess and no other game whatever. This is, however, obvious not the case for such higher-order 'games' as the annotation or adjudication of chess games proper./lIS2

150 Max Black, 'Wittgenstein's Language-games', op.cit., p.78. 151 Ibid., p.79 152 Ibid., p.79


But such a sense of autonomy, which is based on the completeness of the language-games, has its own limitation. Thus, Black says, "In order for the builder's game to be autonomous, in the way that chess is, it would ha~e to be conceptually possible for that game to be played by persons who knew no other language-games. This would entail players of the builder's game being able to use only the four words of that game for any communication: all they could convey would be orders for moving building blocks! Ascription of autonomy to the builder's game or to any language-game, however primitive, seems very implausible. For players of that game will sometimes need to communicate desires, intentions, reports about matters of fact, and so on. And doing so, on Wittgenstein's conception, would require words, or at least expressive nods, smiles, and other gestures, belonging to other games."153 It should be noted here that it appears from the above

discussion that even if to a certain extent autonomy can be granted in the case of primitive, impure, real, and ordinary language-games, such an autonomy is insignificant. And that the other group of language-games, i.e. complex, pure, imaginary or unreal, and religious language-games can never be autonomous even to that extent as these depend on the former group of language-games. Thus, a complex language-game derives all its ingredients from the primitive language-games. An imaginary language-game depends on real language-games as any kind of imagination is always based on actual happenings. And finally, religious language-games derive their meaningfulness by being dependent on the concepts of ordinary discourse. Thus, the autonomy of this latter group of language-games is even more restricted, therefore, it cannot be asserted that they have complete autonomy. It is so because it is only such autonomy, which on the 153 Ibid., p.79


one hand, differentiates them from and makes them dependent on the more basic language-games, and on the other hand, provides basis for successfully arguing for their meaningfulness. With the grant of that little or limited autonomy to languagegames, specially to religious language-games, it seems plausible to agree with Max Black's contention in which he does not agree with the view that "'it is easy to imagine' Wittgenstein's language-games as existing independently of other languagegames," and his endorsement that, "Game-playing, as a special case of human interaction, presupposes much that is insufficiently emphasised in Wittgenstein's treatment."l54 The language-games are the contexts, which determine meaning of the expression, and here to a certain extent peculiarity of the context of the use of the expression comes to play its role. There are innumerable language-games of an expression. But these language-games are not cut off from each other. They do not operate in watertight compartments. Rather, all language-games are invariably conjoined with each other. Thus, Wittgenstein maintains, " ... the function of the word 'now' is entirely different from that of a specification of time-This can easily be seen if we look at the role this word really plays in our usage of language, but it is obscured when instead of looking at the whole language-game, we only look at the contexts, the phrases of language in which the word is used.,,155 But, the question arises: What does the whole language-game comprise of? Actually the phrase can be interpreted in the following two ways: 1.

It denotes all the interpretations of a sign. For example, the

word 'beliefs' has multiple applications such as scientific, religious, and ordinary. These applications of 'beliefs' have 154 Ibid., p.Bl. 155 Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991), p. 346.


different meanings. Actually, the domain of the use of 'beliefs' brings out the peculiarity of the meaning. But the peculiarity is not so peculiar that it is disconnected from the meaning of the term in other domains. That is to say, the meaning of ordinary beliefs is not so much different from religious and scientific beliefs that the former has nothing to do with the latter. In fact, all the instances of 'beliefs' are not only conjoined with each other but by way of their such conjunction they also help in deriving various kinds of meaning. Such conjunctions of all the instances of the use of the term act as the bottom rock through which each application of the term gets its meaning. Thus, this interpretation holds that each sign has a 'bottom rock' which need not be a bottom rock for other signs of the language. Thus, the 'bottom rock' of the term 'beliefs', which provides support for all the applications of the term whether religious, ordinary or scientific, does not act as a support for various applications of other terms such as 'table, 'cross-roads' etc. as the domain of these latter terms differ from that of the 'beliefs'. 2. The other interpretation of the 'whole language-game' could be 'the entire language as such'. That is to say that all the words and sentences of a language form the 'whole language-game' of that language and therefore they all are conjoined to each other. Thus, no word or sentence can be read in isolation from other words and sentences of the language. The whole language acts as the 'whole languagegame' under this interpretation. For example, the term 'beliefs' is not only related to its various applications such as ordinary beliefs, religious beliefs, and scientific beliefs, but it is also related to the entire language. So the domain of the 'beliefs' may be different from the domains of other terms such as 'table' etc., but still they all are related to each other as they are formed in the same language and consist of the


letters of the same language. Here, the bottom rock of the 'whole language-game' is not the all language-games of a particular term as described in the previous point, but it is the language as such. Whatever interpretation is taken, the particular languagegame of a term does not seem to be cut off either from all other applications of the language-games of the same term as in the case of the first point, or from all the applications of all the languagegames of the whole language as in the second case. Thus, whatever interpretation of the 'whole language-game' is taken into account, a particular language-game's autonomy is always restricted one, as it is always related to other language-games of the same term or different language-games of the entire language. This is asserted by Wittgensteinians such as Rush Rhees and D.Z. Phillips. Talking about Wittgenstein's concept of language-game, Rush Rhees says, "When he says that any language is a family of language-games, and that any of these might be a complete language by itself, he does not say whether people who might take part in several such games would be speaking the same language in each of them. In fact, I find it hard to see on this view that they would ever be speaking a language." 156 Commenting on this as to why Rhees says this, Phillips says, "One important reason, as he (Rhees) says, is that Wittgenstein takes it for granted that the same language is being spoken in the different language-games. But if this is so the sameness or unity of that language cannot be explained by describing the way in which any particular languagegame is played." 157 . Thus, the autonomy of language-game is restricted one. 156 Rush Rhees, 'Wittgenstein's Builders', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1959-60; repr. in Ludwig Wittgenstein: the Man and his Philosophy, ed. K.T. Fann (New York: Delta Books, 1967), p. 253. Quoted in D.Z.Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion (New York: St. Martin's Press), 1993, p. 67. 157 D.Z.Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, op.cit., p. 67-68.


The restricted autonomy of language-game can also be comprehended through the relationship between language-game and form of life. In its complete manifestation, language-game also includes form of life. Language-games are linguistic, whereas forms of life are the non-linguistic aspects of a language. Language-games are woven into non-linguistic activities, i.e. forms of life. That is to say, "a form of life is a language-game, and that there are countless forms of life, just as there are language-games."l58 Thus, PI §23 says: "Here the term 'languagegame' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life." The use of language is ipso facto related to language-game and form of life. A language-game cannot be cut-off from form of life. It is obvious because any use of language has to be done against the background of a form of life. So the existence of language cannot even be imagined beyond the form of life. Thus, "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life"(PI §7 and §19): The autonomy aspect of language-game is clear by the fact that the inhabitants of any community are guided by their agreement with each other and the reason for such agreement is form of life. It is form of life which makes possible for people to behave in a certain way. Such agreements take into account all aspects of life and it is not based on opinion of anyone. The complete autonomy will be based on the opinion of the people of the community. For Wittgenstein it is actually an agreement among their form of life which makes them behave as a cohesive unit. Thus, PI §241 holds: "It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life." So, language is not an arbitrary superimposition like a complete autonomy. It is natural

158 Hans-Johnn Clock, A WittgclIsteill Dictiollary (Oxford: Blackwell), 1996, p. 125.


and involved in all aspects of life. And because of this "justifications are internal to particular language-games. Hence, criticising a 'language-game' from the outside can never be a matter of rational argument, but only of 'persuasion' (QC §92, §262, §§ 608-12). Note, however, that language-game relativism should not be Wittgenstein's final word. Within the framework of a form of life it is possible to justify or reform particular language-games-a grammatical proposition like 'One cannot know the future' might be justified by the unreliability of our predications, or reformed if their reliability improved drastically. What cannot be so criticised is the linguistic practice (form of life) as a whole."159 As language-game is inseparable from form of life, it has limited or restricted autonomy. It is autonomous and selfcritical both at the same time. We come to conclude this section with the following remarks: 1.

The picture theory maintains that any sign is the picture of the meaning, i.e. words and sentences are pictures of reality and their meaning is decided as per the one-to-one relationship between them and reality or fact. In this picturing there is something common between the two which Wittgenstein calls 'logical form' or 'pictorial form' or 'general form'.

2.

Later Wittgenstein found that picture theory fails to sufficiently explain all the cases of meaning. Now, he prefers 'use' against picture theory as the deciding factor of meaning.

3.

The use of a sign is always performed in some context which, for Wittgenstein, is language-game. The basic feature of the language-game theory is that the meaning of a linguistic expression is determined in the context of its use. It is the use

159 Ibid., pp. 126-127.


of a particular word or sentence that determines the meaning of that expression. And there is nothing common amongst different uses of a sign (words or sentences). There is only criss-cross resemblance amongst various language-games or uses of a sign. 4.

The language-games can be divided in different categories. However, the distinction between religious and non-religious language-games is a superficial distinction, as all kinds of language-games are conjoined to each other.

5.

The different language-games are not completely autonomous-the autonomy of a language-game is a restricted one. In other words, each language-game is connected with the other, otherwise the meaning of any sign cannot be determined in isolation from other games. The restricted or limited autonomy is also obvious from the fact' that language-games and forms of life are like two aspects of the same coin. As one cannot criticise a form of life from outside, a language-game turns out to be autonomous. However, as each language-game envisages the scope for corrections and improvements, therefore, its autonomy cannot be complete but has to be limited with regard to other aspects of life. It is because of this limited autonomy that each language-game is related to all the aspects of human life. \

Here let me point out that the above described 3rd, 4th, and 5 points will play significant role in proving the thesis of this chapter, as in the next sections I argue for the limited distinctness of religious language-games and argue against the fideistic critique of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. th

(b) The Distinct Language-game of Religious Beliefs In the previous section, we have explained Wittgenstein's notion of language-game. Now let us explain as to how Wittgenstein describes the distinct language-games of religious beliefs. Even


before the publication of Wittgenstein's Le in which he applies language-game to religious beliefs, Wittgensteinians such as Norman Malcolm, Rush Rhees, D.Z. Phillips, Peter Winch and others applied the concept of language-game to religious beliefs and established that religion has its own language-game. And, they shown that so far as the meaning is concerned, religious beliefs have their own domain-they are autonomous in a definite way. Religious beliefs, so far as their meaning and justification is concerned, differ from ordinary beliefs. First let us analyse the meaning of religious beliefs. The meaning of ordinary beliefs or scientific beliefs is empirical in nature, whereas the meaning of the religious beliefs is spiritual. For example, compare the following three beliefs: 1.

the belief in 'the existence of love between two individuals',

2.

the belief in 'the immortality of soul or existence of God', and

3.

the belief that 'the cat is sitting on the mat'.

These are beliefs belonging to different domains. The first belief belongs to emotional domain, whereas the second and third are examples of religious and ordinary beliefs respectively. The meaning of all these beliefs is obvious to everyone. However, their meaning is determined in different ways. The third one is based on empirical experience, whereas the second is clearly not based on sense experience, and about the first there could be a debate. Moreover, the meaning of the same word differs when applied to different contexts. Thus, "when one says that God loves his creatures, the use of the word 'love' cannot be said to be exactly like its use in non-religious contexts as in the sentence 'Parents love their children'. Human parents' love for their children is, for example, manifested in certain kind of behaviour, certain attitudes and feelings, certain actions relating to taking care, making sacrifices and fulfilling the needs of the children to


the best of their ability etc. But the same does not apply to God's love for his creatures. He does not have a physical body, nor is he like any other empirical being."l60 Moreover, a religious belief has deeper after-impacts. Generally, a religious person is regarded as a moral one. A non-believer is generally regarded as the odd one. Admitting this Wittgenstein says, "If the question arises as to the existence of a god or God, it plays an entirely different role to that of the existence of any person or object I ever heard of. One said, had to say, that one believed in the existence, and if one did not believe, this was regarded as something bad. Normally if I did not believe in the existence of something no one would think there was anything wrong in this" (Le, p.59). A belief remains fantastic or baseless if there is no proof or evidence for its justification. For every true belief there is a proof. But the nature of proof differs from context to context. For example, compare the proof for the belief in 'the existence of love between two individuals' with the proof for the belief that 'cat is sitting on mat', and with the belief in 'the immortality of soul or the existence of God'. The proofs for the above three kinds of beliefs are of different nature. The evidence or proof in the belief in 'the cat sitting on the mat' is empirically verifiable. On the other hand, in the cases of ethical and religious beliefs such an evidence does not work. Sceptics and atheists believe in only empirically verifiable evidences and that is why for them there is no evidence or proof for ethical and religious beliefs. Thus, Kai Nelson says, lilt is indeed unclear what could count as evidence for the existence or love of God, for the very concept of God is troubling; but is also unclear what would count as evidence for the existence of other minds or for the existence of theoretical entities in physics. If philosophers admit this and yet are content 160 Vibha Chaturvedi, Wittgenstein's Fideism: Beliefs, Reason and Practice (New Delhi: Om Publications), 2002, p. 14.


to speak of other minds and photons, why shouldn't they have the same attitude about religious beliefs? This is an interesting and significant remark, but I think Plantinga overlooks an important difference between the cases. All of us can agree, at least for a large range of cases, whether somebody is in pain, whether he's thinking, feeling anxious or the like. We do in general agree about these things. Only a madman would claim that no one is ever in pain or that no one ever knows that another person is in pain. The same is true for thinking, feeling, anxious, or sad and the like. The first order discourse here is in place. Our puzzlement is about the correct analysis of what it is like to be in pain, to think, to feel sad and the like ....Now the situation is very different in religion, though as Mr. MacIntyre in effect pointed out, this wasn't so in the Middle Ages. During that 'Age of Faith' within Christendom (though surely not throughout the world), most people more or less agreed, at least in some fundamental respects, about first-order religious discourse, though they hotly disputed about the correct analysis of this same first-order talk. But in the last few centuries this agreement about the first order discourse itself has evaporated, and it is this big difference that Plantinga fails to notice and that wrecks his analogy."161 Wittgenstein does not hold this view. He differentiates different kinds of evidences. He says, "If I even vaguely remember what I was taught about God, I might say: 'Whatever believing in God may be, it can't be believing in something we can test, or find means of testing'. You might say: 'This is nonsense, because people say they believe on evidence or say they believe on religious experience'. I would say: 'The mere fact that someone says they believe on evidence doesn't tell me enough for me to be able to say now whether I can say of a sentence 'God 161 Kai Nelson, 'A Sceptic's Reply', in John Hick(ed.), Faith and Philosophers, (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 231-32.


exists' that your evidence is unsatisfactory or insufficient'" (Le, p.60). Wittgenstein reiterates as to what could be taken as a counter argument to Nelson's above view, "Suppose someone dreamt of the Last Judgement, and said he now knew what it would be like. Suppose someone said: 'This is a poor evidence.' I would say: 'If you want to compare it with the evidence for it's raining tomorrow it is no evidence at all'. He may make it sound as if by stretching the point you may call it evidence. But it may be more than ridiculous as evidence. But now, would I be prepared to say: 'You are basing your beliefs on extremely slender evidence, to put it mildly'. Why should I regard this dream as evidence - measuring its validity as though I were measuring the validity of the evidence for meteorologic~l events? If you compare it with anything in Science which we call evidence, you can't credit that anyone could soberly argue: 'Well, I had this dream ... therefore ... Last Judgement'. You might say: 'For a blunder, that's too big'. If you suddenly wrote numbers down on the blackboard, and then said: 'Now, I'm going to add', and then said: '2 and 21 is 13', etc. I'd say: 'This is no blunder'. There are cases where I'd say he's mad, or he's making fun. Then there might be cases where I look for an entirely different interpretation altogether. In order to see what the explanation is I should have to see the sum, to see in what way it is done, what he makes follow from it, what are the different circumstances under which he does it etc." (Le, p.61-62). So, religious beliefs have different proofs or evidences, if we can call them evidences. The proof or evidence of religious beliefs is different from ordinary or scientific beliefs. As religious beliefs are based on a different kind of evidence, the question arises: how does one compare their cognitive element with that of ordinary beliefs? What would be the ground of the comparison of different religious beliefs with each other? Wittgenstein has raised this issue in 'Lecture on Religious Belief'.


He says, "There are instances where you have a faith-where you say 'I believe'-and on the other hand this beliefs does not rest on the fact on which our ordinary everyday beliefs normally do rest. How should we compare beliefs with each other? What would it mean to compare them? .. An entirely different way of comparing beliefs is seeing what sorts of grounds he will give" (LC, p.54). The grounds of different kinds of beliefs differ. The religious ground or rationale certainly differs from the rationale behind the ordinary or scientific beliefs. The religious reason may appear to be unreasonable to a non-believer, as a non-believer may say that a believer's notion of 'reason' is wrong. To such a non-believer, Wittgenstein says, "You may say they reason wrongly. In certain cases you would say they reason wrongly, meaning they contradict" us. In other cases you would say they don't reason at all, or 'It is an entirely different kind of reasoning'" (LC, p.58). One ~an allege that such a kind of argument undermines the role of reason. And Wittgenstein's reply would be that such allegations are misplaced as they ignore the distinctive rationality behind religious beliefs. Thus, he says, "It might seem as though, if we asked such a question as: 'Does Lewy really mean what so and so means when he says so and so is alive?'-it might seem as though there were two sharply divided cases, one in which he would say he didn't mean it literally. I want to say this is not so. There will be cases where we will differ, and where it won't be a question at all of more or less knowledge, so that we can come· together. Sometimes it will be a question of experience, so you can say: 'wait another 10 years'. And I would say: 'I would disencourage this kind of reasoning' and Moore would say: 'I wouldn't disencourage it'. That is, one would do something. We would take sides, and that goes so far that there would really be great differences between us, which might come out in Mr. Lewy saying: 'Wittgenstein is trying to undermine reason', and this wouldn't be false. This is actually


where such questions rise" (LC, p.63-64). That is, such questions are not wrong but are misplaced. They arise only in this kind of situations where difference in the religious and ordinary rationality is not taken into account. From a non-believer's point of view a believer commits blunders, as a religious person calls unreasonable as reasonable. Wittgenstein contends such a point of view as a non-believer applies ordinary criterion of 'reasonableness' to the extra-ordinary case of religion. It does not recognise that the 'reasonable' and 'blunders' are related to the context or systems. What is blunder in one system may not be so in another system. Thus, Wittgenstein says, "Whether a thing is a blunder or not-it is a blunder in a particular system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in another. You could also say that where we are reasonable, they are not reasonable - meaning they don't use reason here" (LC, p.59). In fact, attempt to apply the criterion of 'reasonable' of ordinary domain into religious discourse results into superstitions. This I will clarify in the last chapter. Here it seems sufficient to say that any attempt to provide evidence to religious beliefs turns them into superstition. Wittgenstein has described it in the context of Q'Hara's criticism of tribe's religious beliefs as superstitious. Wittgenstein criticises Q'Hara on the ground that he applies ordinary criterion of rationality to tribe's religious beliefs. It is this reason that Wittgenstein, in the above quotation, says that he would dis-encourage to wait for a certain time, e.g. 100 years for the fruition of a r ligious beliefs into actuality. And, it is on this ground that he says, "I would definitely call Q'Hara unreasonable. I would say, if this is religious belief, then it's all superstition. But I would ridicule it, not by saying it is based on insufficient evidence. I would say: here is a man who is cheating himself. You can say: this man is ridiculous because he believes, and bases it on weak reasons" (LC, p.59). Thus, rationale or


justification of religious beliefs is of a distinct nature and therefore they need a distinct treatment. The meaning and justification of religious belief show that it has its own language-game and form of life which is different from ordinary beliefs. This is admitted in the very beginning of Wittgenstein's 'Lecture on Religious Belief': "Suppose someone were a believer and said: 'I believe in a Last Judgement,' and I said: 'Well, I'm not so sure. Possibly.' You would say that there is an enormous gulf between us. If he said, 'There is a German aeroplane overhead,' and I said, 'Possibly. I'm not so sure,' you'd say we were fairly near"( LC, p.53). Wittgenstein calls the use of 'belief' in religion as an extraordinary use of the term. He says, "There is this extraordinary use of the word 'believe'. One talks of believing and at the same time one doesn't use 'believe' as one does ordinarily. You might say (in the normal use): 'You only believe-Dh well .... 'Here it is used entirely differently; on the other hand it is not used as we generally use the word 'know'" (Le, pp. 59-60). The use of the term 'belief' in religion is an extraordinary use as here it is used in the sense which we ordinarily consider as a case of knowing. Here when one admits that one believes, in fact, one means that one has understood. There is a difference in 'belief' and 'knowledge' in the case of ordinary usage of the term. In religious domain both denote the same meaning. Thus, the word 'belief' has different meanings in the realms of religion and ordinary or day to day life. In the context of the different senses of the term 'ceasing to exist', Wittgenstein in 'Lecture on Religious Belief' says, "Are you clear when you'd say you had ceased to exist? You have six different ideas (of 'ceasing to exist') at different times .... I connect all sorts of complicated things with these words. I think of what people have said of suffering after death, etc." (Le, p.65). Thus, the same word or phrase denotes different meanings in religion and


ordinary usage. One can understand what a word stands for, only in a specific context or language-game. In brief, Wittgenstein maintains that the meaning and justification of religious beliefs is different from that of ordinary beliefs. And this is so because religious beliefs have their distinct language-game and form of life. But before conduding this section let me emphasise once again that the distinctness of religious language-games, like restricted autonomy of any language-game, which we have described in the previous section, is limited in the sense that the terms and symbols of a religious belief derive their meaning in relation to various aspects of human life. It is this point which I will argue for in the next section. Wittgensteinian Fideism Wittgensteinian Thesis (c)

and

the

Defense

of

Fideism is a thesis which maintains that religious belief is neither rational nor irrational as it has its own peculiarity with reference to language-game and form of life, i.e. it has its own criterion for rationality. It is generally agreed upon that Kai Nelson was the first to use the term 'Wittgensteinian Fideism'. Ever since its inception, Kai Nelson's162 term 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' has undergone a tremendous debate and discussion. Arguments and counter arguments are being made for and against this term by sceptic and believers. Following points are to be noted about Fideism: 1.

There are different terminologies of the fideistic criticism of Wittgenstein's later views on religious beliefs. Thus, 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', 'Wittgensteinian Religious Relativism' and 'Wittgensteinian Religious Autonomy view' 162 Kai Nelson, 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', PliIlosophy; The Journal of tlie Royal Institute of Pllllosopliy, VoL XLII, No. 161 (1967), pp. 191-209.


are different names of the similar strain of the criticism. Cyril Barrett 'calls it 'Wittgensteinian Religious Relativism'l63 and John HiCk mentions it as 'Wittgensteinian Religious Autonomy view. f164 Here, although we shall focus on Nelson's view, yet the position of other critics will not be ignored. 2.

Kai Nelson in his article 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' has categorically asserted that Wittgenstein's later thoughts tend themselves to what can be called 'Wittgensteinian Fideism,' and in this connection he targets Wittgensteinians such as Winch, Hughes, Malcolm, Geach, Cave!, Camron and Coburn who, according to him, 'serve as partial statement of this position, or can be readily used in service of such a statement.' Later on, in his books Contemporary Critique of Religion and An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion he includes Rhees, Holmer, Oilman, Holland and Mounce in the list of Fideists and envisaged O.Z. Phillips as the main Wittgensteinian who has established Fideistic theses. In An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion he takes on Phillips as the' arch-Wittgensteinian Fideist' .165

3. Nelson's position in his article 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' is that Wittgenstein himself did not give any fideistic theory and such a theory has originated from absurd readings of Wittgensteinians. He says, "the fideistic conclusions drawn by these philosophers from his (Wittgenstein's) thoughts are often absurd."I66 Further Nelson maintains, "Let me remark at the outset that I am not sure to what extent Wittgenstein 163 Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Beliefs (Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1991), pp.l45-162, 164 John Hick, op,cit. 165 Kai Nelson, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (London: The MacMiIlan Press Ltd.), 1982, p, 56. 166 Kai Nelson, 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', op.cit., p. 191.


himself would have accepted a Wittgensteinian Fideism. But Wittgenstein's work has been taken in that way and it is thought in many quarters that such an approach will give us a deep grasp of religion and will expose the shallowness of scepticism. For this reason I shall carefully examine the view I call Wittgensteinian Fideism. But do not forget, what I indeed hope would be true, that Wittgenstein might well wish to say of Wittgensteinians what Freud said of Freudians."167 But later on Nelson concedes that Wittgenstein himself is a Fideist. One can see the development of Nelson's conception through the passage of time. When he first formulated the conception of 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' in 1960s, he was not aware of Wittgenstein's Le as he himself has acknowledged this fact in his article. So, it was natural on his part not to recognise Wittgenstein as fideist and blame Wittgensteinians for wrongly interpreting Wittgenstein's views on religious beliefs. When he wrote An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion he blames Wittgenstein himself for Fideistic theses as then he had Le as his basic reference. Actually, it is Le which brings out Wittgenstein's application of language-game and form of life in the field of religion. About his motive of this book Nelson says, "1 shall argue that the general tenor of Wittgenstein's remarks cut in the direction of Wittgensteinian Fideism, though a few, depending on how they are interpreted, cut in my direction."l68 This he tries to establish in respect of the two questions: (a) Are Wittgenstein's own claims Fideistic? And (b) Is what Wittgenstein say about religion true and does it help in getting truth about religion? 4.

Kai Nelson himself is an atheist, non-believer and sceptic. He says, "1 can say that I honestly feel not the slightest need for 167 Ibid., p.193-94. 168 Kai Nelson, An Introduction to the Philosophy o/Religion, op.cit., p.45.


religious beliefs and I am not alone in that feeling .... there is no good anthropological or psychological evidence to believe that man must despair or remain basically unsatisfied until he can come to believe in God. We are not all hounded by the hound of heaven."169 5.

Now, let us draw the basic tenets of 'Wittgensteinian Fideism'. These tenets, according to Nelson are 'dark sayings' and when accepted they give rise to fideism. It is remarkable that 'dark sayings' appear both in 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' as well as in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. These 'dark sayings' or basic features or tenets of fideism are as follows: 17o

(1) The forms of language are the forms of life.

(2) The forms of life are given. (3) Ordinary language is all right as it is. (4) A philosopher's task is not to evaluate or criticise language or the forms of life, but to describe them where 1ecessary and to the extent necessary to break philosophical perplexity concerning their operation. (5) The different modes of discourse which are distinctive forms of life all have a logic for their own. (6) Forms of life taken as a whole are not amenable to criticism;

each mode of discourse is in order as it is, for each has its own criteria and each sets its own norms of intelligibility, reality and rationality. (7) These

general, dispute-engendering concepts, i.e. intelligibility, reality and rationality are systematically ambiguous; their exact meaning can only be determined in the context of a determinate way of life.

169 Ibid., p. 62. 170 Ibid., pp. 66-67, and 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', pp.192-3.


(8) There is no Archimedean point in terms of which a philosopher (or for that matter anyone else) can relevantly criticise whole modes of discourse or, what comes to the same thing, ways of life, for each mode of discourse has its own specific criteria of rationality/irrationality, intelligibility / unintelligibility, and reality / unreality. On the basis of the above features of 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', Nelson argues that a Wittgensteinian Fideist is the one who argues that religion is a unique form of life and has its distinct criteria, therefore, it can be criticised from within and not from outside. Such a fideist maintains that Philosophy cannot criticise religion but only 'displays' the style of functioning of religious discourse. The crux of 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', according to Nelson, is that religion has its own distinct language-game and form of life and thus it has its own criterion of rationality and irrationality. One has to partake in the religious form of life in order to understand or even for the purpose of genuine criticism of religion. A non-religious or irreligious person who does not partake in religious form of life can never understand religion, hence his criticism of religion is actually not a criticism. Thus, he says, "Such a conceptual relativism has to date-where it has had any use in relation to religion-been employed to support the rationality or at least the propriety of religious belief and to undermine philosophical attempts to criticise it. This has usually taken the form of what I have called Wittgensteinian fideism."171 Further, for Nelson, "The immediate effect of an acceptance of such a conceptual relativism is that it seems to free religious beliefs from legitimate philosophical Giticism."m 171 Kai Nelson, Contemporary Crillqlle of Religion (Glasgow: Macmillan, 1971), p.9S. 172 Ibid., pp.99-100.


John Hick, in his book Faith and Philosophers, has elaborated the notion of Wittgensteinian Fideism under his terminology 'Autonomy view' in religion. The application of language-game and form of life into religion, for Hick, actually results in Autonomy position which emphasises upon a selfauthenticating divine revelation which neither seeks nor permits rational support .... This view focuses attention upon the person who has a use for, and accordingly fends meaning in, distinctively religious language and who engages in distinctively religious practices."173 Further, according to Hick, this view holds that "there are no connections of logical implication between the realms of religious and philosophical language ... Religious language is autonomous, as the linguistic aspect of a distinctive form of life; and modes of question, distinction, affirmation and denial which have their proper places in other 'language-games' (for instance those of sciences) will, if intruded here, only give rise to false problems. The religious life, including its appropriate modes of speech, observably exists, and the external observer must be content to say, with Wittgenstein: 'this language-game is played," (PI §654). One effect of this position is to make religious utterances immune to philosophical criticisms. It is now not appropriate to ask for grounds for religious beliefs. "Neither it is appropriate to ask for the meaning of 'God exists'."174 And, "Again, it is not appropriate to ask how religious beliefs might be verified or falsified; for they are not that kind of belief. As Mr. Malcolm says, 'There are beliefs and beliefs. Some of them do not issue in expectations in such a way that their fulfillment or nonfulfillment would be a verification or falsification of the beliefs'."175 The basic picture which results from these features of 173 John Hick, op.cit., p. 237. 174 Ibid., p.238. 175 Ibid.


the autonomy position, for Hick, is that "religious language is autonomous, so that statements made within it are invulnerable to external criticism."176 Initially, i.e. before taking up fideism for criticism, Nelson raises the following doubts about fideistic presupposition: (a) He agrees with the viewpoint that in order to understand a religion one must have its participant's insight. But he denies that if someone belongs to a particular religious form of life then he must be a believer. (b) He denies the view that philosophy cannot criticise religion

or a religious form of life. Here let me point out that Nelson in the above (a) has a valid point as a Hindu can easily understand Christian religion although he need not participate in Christianity. But it is to be noted that Nelson mixes two points: (1) those who participate in a religious discourse truly understand it, and (2) those who do not participate in it cannot even surmise it. In fact, Wittgensteinians maintain (1) and deny (2). No one can deny that one can understand any religion as there are some common features running across all the religious traditions of the world. Therefore, in his above remark (b) also Nelson commits a blunder of mixing up two things: (a) philosophy as a critique of language, and (b) philosophy as a critique of religion. It is obvious that (a) implies (b) but vice versa is not the case. Wittgensteinians never deny (a). And something which is the very basis of language and which is given, cannot be criticised as it would be a category mistake to do so. To say 'Logic is boring' isn't a critique of logic as it does not take into account the form of life of logic. Now, let us analyse fideistic criticism of Wittgensteinian application of language-game and form of life into religious 176 Ibid.


beliefs. Apart from Kai Nelson, other critics of fideism such as Cook, Coplestone, Hick, Kenny, Mounce, Pasmore, Patric Sherry and others raise questions against Wittgenstein's view which holds that religion has its own language-game and form of life. The basic points of fideistic criticism of Wittgenstein's religious views are as follows: 1.

A scientific explanation of anything is better than any other kinds of explanation. Kai Nelson says, " ... a linguistic framework which is scientifically oriented is a more adequate linguistic framework than the others because it more adequately meets the goal of explanatory coherence ... Our lives presumably are better served if we favour a linguistic framework which yields a maximum explanatory coherence among all that turns out to be knowledge within that framework. Scientific and utterly secular linguistic frameworks score high on this test and religious ones poorly, so the scientific ones are the more adequate frameworks."177 However, Nelson himself rejects this on the ground that such pragmatic considerations do not work everywhere as "there are differing conceptions of rationality with different centres of interest."178

2.

Kai Nelson and John Hick question the fideistic division of the first order and the second order religious discourses and its view that there are no philosophical problems so far as the first-order religious discourse is concerned. The difference between the first order and the second order religious discourse is like the distinction between ethics and meta-ethics. The first order religious discourse is about religious statements such as 'God exists', whereas the second order religious discourse analyses the statements of the first

177 Kai Nelson, Contemporary Critique of Religion, op.cit., pp ..lOl-2. 178 Ibid., p. 103.


order religious discourse. Nelson, like CB.Martin and other sceptics, argues against the Fideists' position that there is nothing wrong with the first order religious discourse and that there is no scope for their philosophical scrutiny. Thus, Nelson says, "To argue, as I do and as CB.Martin has, that the very first-order discourse of this form of life is incoherent or irrational can be nothing but a confusion, for it is this very form of life, this very form of discourse itself, which sets its own criteria of coherence, intelligibility or rationality."I79 Similarly, Hick points out, "If it is not to the point to criticise talk about God on the ground that God does not exist, neither is it to the point to commend it on the ground that God does exist and that what is being said about him is true."I80 Further, " .. .if such first-order religious utterances as 'God showed his love for us ... ' do presuppose and imply that God exists, then religious belief cannot after all be immune from the familiar questions concerning grounds, meaning and mode of verification."lsl Thus, sceptics maintain that (1) the first order religious discourse is vague, and therefore, it is not beyond philosophical clarification, and (2) if the first order religious discourses are meaningful in their own contexts then they must be resorted to those criterion of meaningfulness under which the second order religious discourses undergo. 3.

To say that religious assertions have their own languagegame and form of life is to indirectly accept the relative existence of religious realities such as God, soul, immortality etc. as then there will be no ground to show the universalisability of these entities. Thus, Hick reiterates, "The unacceptable feature of the position is that by treating

179 Kai Nelson, An Introduction to the Philosophy of RelIgion, op.cit., p.67. 180 John Hick, op.cit., p.239. 181 Ibid.,P.241.


religious language as autonomous-as a language-game with its own rules, or a speech activity having meaning only within it own borders-it deprives religious statements of 'ontological' or 'metaphysical' significance." 182 And "The logical implication of religious statements do not extend across the borders of the SprachspieZ into assertions concerning the character of the universe beyond that fragment of it which is the religious speech of human beings. Religious language becomes a type of 'protected discourse', and forfeits its immemorial claim to bear witness to the most momentous of all truthS." 183 It forfeits its ontological and metaphysical claims because once this view is accepted then in the realm of atheism, which is beyond the particular religious tradition, no question arise about the existence of these entities. Thus, there is no significance of relative existence of ontological! metaphysical entities. 4.

According to Nelson, the stronger argument against Fideism that is: 'religious language-game and form of life are distinct and hence they cannot be examined as per the criterion of the non-religious meaningfulness but as per the criterion of religion itself', is inadequate because the so called religious language-game and form of life are not relative truths but are such that holds for 'all mankind'.l84 For Nelson religious language-game and form of life cannot be treated to be a subjective truth as they entail some kind of universal objectivity. Nelson grants that religion has its own language which is different from 'secular' usage of language. But he still maintains that even religious language has some kind of universal appeal as 'Christ is truth' holds for all mankind. To quote Nelson, "My point is that once he recongnises the

182 Ibid.,p.239. 183 Ibid., pp.239-240. 184 Kai Nelson, Contempomry Critique of Religion, op.cit., p.108.


truth of conceptual relativism, he will also recognise that such utterances as 'Christ is the truth and the way' cannot be taken at their face value.... Whatever their real or depth grammar, they, if conceptual relativism is true, can never meet the Christian's religious expectations and aspirations once he clear-headedly accepts conceptual relativism, for, however else he takes them, as a religious agent he must take them as making universal claims which are incompatible with conceptual relativism."185 The difference between the third and fourth criticisms is that whereas the third points out that relativism fails to meet the demand of universal ontological existence of metaphysical realities, the fourth holds that religious truths cannot be said to be a relative truth as such a view does not meet the expectations of the follower of a particular religious tradition.

5.

Not only the application of language-game and form of life into religion has been questioned, but the veracity of these concepts have also been criticised on the ground of their support to relativism. Nelson in his book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion points out: "I think there is also much to question and to criticise in Wittgenstein's account. In particular his claims about the autonomy ana uncriticisability of the forms of life need to be examined. We should also look with a cold eye at the very notion of 'a form of life'. Does it become in Wittgenstein's hands and in the hands of his followers an ill-defined term of art that leads us into the very kinds of conceptual confusion and philosophical evasion that Wittgenstein would have us avoid? Similar considerations apply to 'language-game'. What are we talking about here? And why should we accept the claim of conceptual sufficiency for all the forms of language? Indeed we must take as given the forms of

185 Ibid.


language, but why exactly must we believe that such forms of language with their forms of life are beyond philosophical criticism? Why can't a given language-game be incoherent or absurd or simply the carry-over of superstitious beliefs?"l86 6.

Another point of criticism of Wittgensteinian Fideism is that it fails to differentiate between superstitions and genuine religious beliefs as relatively both are justified in their own contexts.

7.

Further, against Wittgensteinian Fideism Nelson points out that its presupposition that one needs to have a religious viewpoint in order to understand a particular religion, is illogical as all the participants of a religious form of life do not believe in religious practices and doctrines. Thus Nelson says, "The need to start from 'inside' need not preclude the recognition of clefts, inconsistencies, and elements of incoherence in the very practice (form of life). Once magic and beliefs in fairies were ongoing practices in our stream of life. By now, by people working from the inside, the entire practice, the entire 'form of life', has come to be rejected as incoherent." lS7 Thus inner criticism, which fideism does not and cannot explain, actually exists in every religious form of life. Not everyone of a religious tradition is a believer. Apart from the existence of atheists and sceptics in every religion, the existence of even atheistic religions such as Confucianism, Therevada Buddhism, Compte's 'atheistical Catholicism' and Spinoza's Fromm shows that the fideistic treatment of religious beliefs in terms of language-game and form of life is misplaced. l88 Thus, for the critics of fideism, religious language is not autonomous or relativistic. Here, it is relevant to point out Nelson's argument: "Even if we grant 186 Kai Nelson, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, op.cit., p.57. 187 Kai Nelson, 'Wittgensteinian Fideism', op.cit., pp.205-6. 188lbid. p.197.


Wittgenstein his point that Christian and Jew, Buddhist and Moslem, Theist and Atheist, do not directly contradict each other and are talking on different planes, it does not follow that they are all equally right or that no significant argument between them is possible. Euclidean and Lobatchevskian geometry do not conflict either, but there can be argument about which is better to use for aerial navigation. There is plenty of room for argument in such a case about what framework to adopt even if there are no logical contradictions between statements in such different frameworks."189 And further Nelson says, "Faced with such considerations Wittgenstein might have said, as Phillips does, that whether they are or not is not a philosophical matter. Such an issue could never be settled by philosophy. But to say, 'It is not a Philosophical Matter' would be to engage in a persuasive definition of 'Philosophy' and this, in turn, would require justification. To say that philosophy could not settle such questions or that no rational measures could settle them, would itself require philosophical justification; a philosophical justification which would have to come to rest on a full-blown acceptance and justification of the central theses of Wittgensteinian Fideism... Even if we are ledthrough a persuasive definition of 'philosophy' -to accept a characterisation of philosophy that would lead us to the conclusion that philosophical reasoning cannot resolve such issue, it still remains the case that human ratiocination most certainly appears to be relevant to our beliefs here. Whether or not we call such reasoning or argumentation 'philosophical' is a comparatively trivial issue."l90 8.

Moreover, sceptics and atheists like Kai Nelson along with their general criticism of religion also question fideism from

189 Kai Nelson, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, op.cit., p.61. 190 Ibid., pp.63-4.


the pragmatic point view. Nelson says, "However, even if we accept religion as one of our units for 'a form of life', a Wittgensteinian fideist will still continue to encounter grave difficulties, for we can and should argue, as did J.5.Mill and William James, about the 'utility of religion'. We are not simply limited to neutrally characterising that form of life. Philosophers can and do ask: Do we or do we not need religion? Would our lives be pointless or even impoverished, would morality topple, would life together in society become impossible, if people ceased to be religious? Is some religious belief essential to give sense to a person's life or can, and should, people learn to live, as Marx and Freud thought, without religious beliefs? These are difficult questions, unclear questions, but no adequate grounds have been given by Wittgensteinian Fideists that no argument at all can be given concerning these questions. They can and, off course, will argue that these questions cannot be raised without being themselves part of a form of life. Once this is thoroughly taken to heart, they will claim, it will be realised that the above questions cannot be rightly asked, as though there were standards all things must match up to. But this again assumes that there are no such general standards of consistency, coherence or truth and it further assumes what I have challenged, namely that all criteria of appraisal are sui generis to particular forms of life."191 Likewise Ayer expresses surprise as to how religious beliefs as a distinct languagegame can satisfy believers. 192 9.

Another basic critique of fideism/relativism is that it supports scepticism about religious claims or beliefs. Thus, if fideism is accepted then one cannot correctly and intelligibly say of a whole mode of social life that it is either 11

1911bid., pp.l24-125. 192 A.I. Ayer, Wittgenstein (Great Britain: Penguin Books), 1985, p. 92.


logical or illogical or irrational. There is simply no way of appraising the practices themselves."193 Nelson argues that there is no scope for the justification of religious beliefs in fideism. For him if religion is 'subjective truth' and personal and thus, "if we take very seriously such relativity-that is, if we really take what is involved in such conceptions to heartwe will end up either as sceptics... or reductionists committed to a form of belief that is so transformed that it is in substance atheistic."l94 Thus, although fideism is interpreted as the protective shield of religious beliefs and practices, it actually questions religious beliefs and practices as it fails to justify a particular religious form of life. 10. Nelson's another basic objection to fideism is that it

compartmentalises social life as it judges institutions and practices in their language-game and form of life. 195 The above criticisms of Wittgenstein's application of languagegame and form of life into religious beliefs are based on the assumption of the complete autonomy of these concepts. Such an assumption treats Wittgensteinian application of language-game into religious beliefs as a form of fideism. But this presumption is actually misplaced. It is an erroneous assumption about Wittgenstein's concepts of language-game and religious beliefs because, as I have explained in the beginning of this chapter, the autonomy of language-game is not complete. It is a restricted autonomy. One's ignorance about this basic fact about Wittgenstein's language-game and religious beliefs results into some baseless presuppositions about these concepts such as: 196 193 Kai Nelson, Contemporary Critique of Religion, op.cit., p. 109. 194 Ibid., p.m. 19S For details refer to Brian C. Clack, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 1999, p.8S. 196 D.Z.Phillips in his book Beliefs, Change and Forms of Life (London: MacMillan, 1986), pp.5-1S.


1) Religious beliefs are logically cut off from all other aspects of

human life. 2) Religious beliefs can only be understood by religious believers. 3) Whatever is called religious language determines what is and what is not meaningful in religion. 4) Religious beliefs cannot be criticised. 5) Religious beliefs cannot be affected by personal, social or cultural events. D.Z. Phillips in his book Beliefs, Change and Forms of Life has maintained that all the above presuppositions are baseless: 1. Religious belief is not cut off from other aspects of human life. Concepts of religious language derive their meaning through ordinary language-words and sentences of ordinary language are employed in the religious realm. The critics, according to Phillips, treat religion in such a way that its concepts appear to have 'lost or changed their meaning'.197 Phillips in his book The concept of Prayer emphasises that, "religious concepts... are not technical concepts; they are not cut-off from the common experiences of human life; joy and sorrow, hope and despair. Because this is so, an attempt can be made to clarify their meaning. The idea of prayer as talking to God presents us with this task. After all, the purpose of the whole book is to explore the connections which do exist between prayer and the events of human life."198 2.

Rejecting the above-described second presupposition, Phillips points out that the implication of the application of language-game into religious beliefs shows "that anyone who did not practice such obedience in his life, lacked that 197 Ibid., p.lO. 198 Ibid., p.8-9.


understanding. But a philosopher can understand what I have just said about religious understanding and give an account of how obedience to God differs from other kinds of obedience, without being a believer himself, that is, in this context, without being obedient to God."l99 3.

Against the third and fourth points Phillips holds that rationalist philosophers' attempt to provide rational foundation to religious beliefs results into such fideistic allegations. He says that rationalist philosophers "are not content with the recognition that connections between religious beliefs and other aspects of human life may reveal confusions in religion. They want to say further, that the religious beliefs which are not confused, can be justified, inferred, or given a foundation by reference to these other aspects of human life. Indeed, it is claimed that these possibilities constitute the rationality of the beliefs. This suggestion I have resisted."2°O

4.

Resisting the fifth presupposition, Phillips says, ''It cannot be denied that religious pictures which are free from conceptual confusion may nevertheless be eroded by values and developments of other kinds. Such erosion does not imply that the religious beliefs were mistaken or irrationalities of any kind. Far from denying the effects of cultural change on religious pictures I have drawn attention to them. I said we have reason to distinguish between the case of the picture losing its hold for a given individual, with religious pictures losing their hold anyway, not through the fault of any particular individual, but because of changes in the culture."201

199 Ibid., p.l2. 200 Ibid., p.l4. 201 Ibid., p.lS.


The above demolition of the presupposition of fideism and rejection of its application to Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion shows that Wittgenstein's position is against the rational justification and explanation of religious beliefs. Such a position maintains, as we have described earlier in this chapter, that religious justification is different from ordinary or scientific justification. Wittgenstein's position is anti-intellectualism in philosophy of religion. This unfortunately has been wrongly branded as irrationalism or fideism. Wittgensteinians have vehemently opposed such branding. Thus, Phillips says, "Those influenced by yYittgenstein who have attempted to throw light on the nature of religious beliefs have been accused of wanting to shield religious belief against criticism. This alleged antiintellectualism and conservatism has been given the name 'fideism', a term which, unfortunately, seems to here to stay."202 However, despite the above Wittgensteinian demolition, as Phillips aptly puts it: "The attribution of these theses has persisted despite the availability of all the counter-evidence."203 The above described presuppositions or theses actually do not operate on Wittgensteinian application of language-game and form of life into religious beliefs. This becomes amply evident once the nature of language-game has been taken into account. That is, once it is recognised, as described in the beginning of this chapter, that the autonomy of language-game is not complete but a restricted one. It shows that language-games are neither cut-off from other aspects of life nor immune from alterations and criticisms. This interpretation of Wittgenstein's religious views can further be established by way of the division of the above mentioned ten criticisms of fideism into two basic categories, that is, the allegation that the application of the concepts of language-

202 Ibid., p.4. 203 Ibid., p.l6.


game and form of life in religion fails to explain (1) why people should adopt religious way of life, and (2) as no criticism can be applied to such a position, there is no criterion to judge whether it is genuine or nonsense. The application of these concepts in religion has been criticised on the ground that they act as a protective shield from any kind of criticism. This, in a different way, Brian C. Clack argues, "If this is the case, and if religion is indeed a language-game, then (at least) two things follows. First, religion cannot be understood, as it were, from without, for fully to understand religion is to engage in the religious life. Second, it will be illegitimate to criticise religion according to the standards and objectives of another language-game."z04 Phillips regarded these criticisms as 'misgivings'. He says, "What do these misgivings amount to? Partly, they amount to a feeling that if religious beliefs are isolated, self-sufficient languagegames, it becomes difficult to explain why people should cherish religious beliefs in the way they do. On the view suggested, religious beliefs seem more like esoteric games, enjoyed by the initiates but of little significance outside the internal formalities of their activities. Religious beliefs begin to look like hobbiessomething with which men occupy themselves at week-ends. From other directions, the misgivings involve the suspicion that religious beliefs are being placed outside the reach of any possible criticism, and that the appeal to the internality of religious criteria of meaningfulness can act as a quasi-justification for what would otherwise be recognised as nonsense."Z05 Phillips calls the above criticism as 'misgivings' and provides his argument as to why religious belief is regarded as belonging to a distinct language-game and form of life. Phillips regards the above criticisms as misgivings or confusions which arise due to

204 Brian C Clack, op.cit., p.82. 205 D.Z. Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, op.cit., pp.56-57.


misunderstanding of the thesis which treats religious beliefs as distinct language-games. He does not regard the above criticisms as criticism but treats them as confusions. However, he admits that these confusions are serious, and therefore, 'must he handled with great care'. It is so because some attempts at removing them lead to confusions about the logical grammar of religious beliefs. Thus, Wittgensteinians who treat religion as a distinct language-game does not accept fideistic criticisms as criticisms but treat them as confusions. And such a confusion should be avoided with careful consideration of the Wittgensteinian thesis, otherwise it would lead to further confusions. One such futile attempt to avoid the above fideistic criticism, according to Phillips, has been to show the importance of religious beliefs. Such an attempt tries to derive the rationality of religious beliefs from treating them as important. But the significance and reasonability belong to quite different domains. Thus, it further confounds the matter related to religious beliefs. As such an attempt 'distorts the nature of the values involved in such beliefs'. The value of the religious beliefs is 'absolute value' and not a 'relative value'. While differentiating absolute and relative values, Wittgenstein in his LE, pointed out that absolute value is required for its own sake whereas a thing of relative value is desired as an instrument for some other motive. Wittgenstein differentiates between these two kinds of values on the basis of his distinction between 'playing tennis' and 'behaving better'. Wittgenstein's says, "Supposing that 1 could play tennis and one of you saw me playing and said 'Well, you play pretty badly' and suppose 1 answered 'I know, I'm playing badly but I don't want to play any better', all the other man could say would be 'Ah then that's all right'. But suppose 1 had told one of you a preposterous lie and he came up to me and said 'You're


behaving like a beast' and then 1 were to say 'I know 1 behave badly, but then 1 don't want to behave any better', could he then say 'Ah, then that's all right'? Certainly not; he would say 'Well you ought to want to behave better'. Here you have an absolute judgment of value, whereas the first instance was one of a relative judgment"(LE, p.38-39). Commenting on Wittgenstein's position, Phillips points out as to why treating religious beliefs as an important phenomenon cannot save it. He says, "We cannot give a man reasons why he should be good. Similarly, if a man urges someone to come to God, and he asks, 'What if I don't?', what more is there to say? Certainly, one could not get him to believe by telling him that terrible things will happen to him if he does not believe. Even if it were true that these things are going to happen, and even if a person believed because of them, he would not be believing in God. He would be believing in the best thing for himself. He would have a policy, not a faith. Furthermore, if religious beliefs have only a relative value, one can no longer give an account of the distinction between other-worldliness and worldliness, a distinction which is important in most religions. The distinction cannot be accounted for if one assumes that the value of religious beliefs can be assessed by applying them to a wider common measure."206 Phillips further points out that " ... it is not the world's view of advantage which is to determine what is good, but what is good which is to determine what is to count as advantage."207 Thus attempts to treat religious belief as an important belief cannot save it from fideistic criticisms as the term 'importance' itself has only a relative value.

206 D. Z. Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, op.cit., p.59. 207 Ibid., p.60.


Further, like the above described fideists' futile argument, which treats religious beliefs as esoteric, Phillips considers another argument which "have tried to show... a certain course of action to be prudential; or have tried to show the rationality of religious beliefs by assuming that the existence of God is to be established by reference to criteria under which it falls as one appropriate instance among many."20B This argument like the previous argument from 'importance', which is based on Wittgenstein's distinction between absolute and relative judgments of values, tries to take support from his views in Le where he established the peculiarity of religious beliefs. For Phillips, this argument gains weight from Wittgenstein's views on religious pictures as different from ordinary pictures and his views on the Last Judgment. This argument takes the note of Wittgenstein's views on the peculiarity of religious 'evidence' and argues that in order to understand religion one has to leave his general cravings for evidence in the religious realm. This argument admits that, "Of course, where certain religious beliefs are concerned-for example, belief in authenticity of a holy relic-grounds and evidence for the belief are relevant. But one cannot conclude that it makes sense to ask for the evidence or grounds of every religious belief. Wittgenstein considers belief in the Last Judgement. Now, one way of proceeding is to ask what evidence there is for believing in the Last Judgement. One could imagine degrees of belief concerning it: some say they are sure about it, others say that possibly there will be a Last Judgement, others do not believe in it. But, despite these disagreements, we can say, as we did of our earlier examples, that the disputants are one in logic. The Last Judgement seems to be thought of as a future event which mayor may not occur. Those who feel sure it will occur, those who think it might possibly occur, and those 208 Ibid., p.66.


who do not think it will occur are all, logically, on the same level. They are all playing the same game: they are expressing their belief, half-belief, or unbelief in a hypothesis. So this religious beliefs is taken to be a hypothesis."209 Taking the peculiarity of religious domain as a premise, the above argument further argues that as different from ordinary beliefs, religious beliefs are not hypothesises. It can be established in relation to Wittgenstein's notion of picture as lithe difference between a man who does and a man who does not believe in God is like the difference between a man who does and a man who does not believe in a picture. But what does believing in a picture amount to? Is it like believing in a hypothesis? Certainly not ....A man's beliefs in the Last Judgement may show itself in the way a man has this before his mind when he takes any decisions of importance, in the way it determines his attitude to his aspirations and failures, or to the fortunes or misfortunes which befall him. In referring to those features of the religious person's belief, Wittgenstein is stressing the grammar of belief in this context. He is bringing out what 'recognition of a belief' amounts to here. It does not involve the weighing of evidence or reasoning to a conclusion. What it does involve is seeing how the belief regulates a person's life. 'Here believing obviously plays much more this role: suppose we said that a certain picture might play the role of constantly admonishing me, or I always think of it. Here an enormous difference would be between those people for whom the picture is constantly in the foreground, and the others who just didn't use it at all'."21O Thus, this argument establishes, on the basis of Wittgensteinian thesis that religious hypotheses are not testable, that the criterion of rationality of religious beliefs is different from the criterion which applies to ordinary beliefs. 209 Ibid., p. 63. 210 Ibid., p.64.


Phillips does not accept the above described arguments which try to save religious beliefs from fideistic criticism on the basis of their peculiarity in terms of importance or distinct role of evidence in religious realms. He does not accept these arguments as they "falsify the absolute character of many religious beliefs and values./ 211 In fact Phillips does not accept these arguments because

solely on the basis of these arguments it is difficult to provide a defence from the fideistic criticism of Wittgensteinian application of language-game into religious beliefs. The above described arguments only show the peculiarity and esoteric character of religious beliefs. They do not show as to how they could defend themselves from the above described two criticisms of fideism. Both arguments seem to address the first criticism as to why one adopts a religious way of life on the basis of importance and peculiar role of evidence of religious beliefs. These arguments, however, fail to reply to the second criticism, viz., why does a religious belief not act as mere nonsense? Phillips takes up this criticism in the following argument whose basic point is that religious beliefs are not entirely cut-off from others aspects of life. Phillips begins his argument with his endorsement that, "The point of religious beliefs, why people should cherish them in the way they do, cannot be shown simply by distinguishing between religious beliefs and other features of human existence. What I am saying is that the importance of religion in people's lives cannot be understood simply by distinguishing between religion and other modes of social life, although, as we have seen, there are important distinctions to be made in this way./212

211 Ibid., p.66. 212 Ibid., p.67.


Then he throws light on the notion of language-games. Discussing Wittgenstein's 'Builder's Language-game', which we have described earlier in this chapter, he highlights the interconnectedness of language-games. But the question arises as to why does Wittgenstein talk about the completeness of language-games? For an answer to this, Phillips argues, "One reason why Wittgenstein said that each language-game is complete is that he wanted to rid us of the supposition that all propositions have a general form. The different language-games do not make up one big game."213 As language-games are connected to each other, so religion is related to the other aspects of life. Thus, "Religion has something to say about aspects of human existence which are quite intelligible without reference to religion: birth, death, joy, miserly, despair, hope, fortune and misfortune. The connection between these and religion is not contingent. A host of religious beliefs could not be what they are without them. The force of religious beliefs depends, in part, on what is outside religion .... So far from it being true that religious beliefs can be thought of as isolated language-games, cut off from all other forms of life, the fact is that religious beliefs cannot be understood at all unless their relation to other forms of life is taken into account."214 So far so good. The fact that religious beliefs are related to other aspects of human life explains as to why does one believe in what one believes. This is a reply to the first criticism of fideism. But how to reply to the second criticism? That is, how to show that religious beliefs are not irrational and how to differentiate religious from superstitious beliefs? Here, Phillips' position is that a religious belief looses its rationality and becomes fantastic when it distorts or ignores what we already 213 Ibid., p.68. 214 Ibid., p.69.


know. He says, "Religion must take the world seriously. I have argued that religious reactions to various situations cannot be assessed according to some external criteria of adequacy. On the other hand, the connections between religious beliefs and such situations must not be fantastic. This in no way contradicts the earlier arguments, since whether the connections are fantastic is decided by criteria which are not in dispute. For example, some religious believers may try to explain away the reality of suffering, or try to say that all suffering has some purpose. When they speak like this, one may accuse them of not taking suffering seriously. Or if religious believers talk of death as if it were a sleep of long duration, one may accuse them of not taking death seriously. In these examples, what is said about suffering, and death can be judged in terms of what we already know and believe about these matters. The religious responses are fantastic because they ignore or distort what we already know. What is said falls under standards of judgement with which we are already acquainted. When what is said by religious believers does violate the facts or distort our apprehension of situations, no appeal to the fact that what is said is said in the name of religion can justify or excuse the violation and distortion."215 Thus, religious beliefs for Phillips are not esoteric but have their distinct domain. Their distinctness is related to other aspects of life. These non-religious aspects are significant to provide life-breath to religious beliefs. But they are not justification of these beliefs. Religious beliefs depend on these other non-religious aspects of life. But to take these non-religious aspects as rationale or justification or ground for religious beliefs is to commit a blunder and it is this blunder which is responsible for treating religious beliefs as esoteric. Thus, according to Phillips, for Wittgenstein, "the meaning and force of religious 215 Ibid., p.70.


beliefs depend in part on the relation of these beliefs to features of human existence other than religion. Without such dependence, religion would not have the importance it does have in people's lives. It is an awareness of these important truths which in part accounts for the philosophical objections to talking of religious beliefs as distinctive language-games. But these objections are confused, the result of drawing false conclusions from important truths. Having recongnised, correctly, that the meaning of religious beliefs is partly dependent on features of human life outside religion, philosophers conclude, wrongly, that one would be contradicting oneself if one claimed to recognise this dependence, and also claimed that religious beliefs are distinctive language-games. They are led to this conclusion only

because they assume that the relation between religious beliefs and the non-religious facts is that between what is justified and its justification, or that between a conclusion and its grounds. This is a far-reaching confusion. To say that the meaning of religious beliefs is partly dependent on non-religious facts is not to say that those beliefs are justified by, or could be inferred from, the facts in question."216 Thus, Phillips rejects the above mentioned two criticisms. This has also been clarified by Margaret Urban Walker in her review of Phillips' Wittgenstein and Religion: "Phillips sees the need to show that the language-games of religious beliefs are not esoteric games, sealed off from non-initiates' comprehension, from critical scrutiny and from the rest of culture and life."217 This is a very pertinent remark, as, for Wittgenstein, religious games are interconnected to ordinary language-games. That is why he denounces fideism. In his conversation with Drury, he says, "Now the essential fault of what has been called 'fideism' is that 216 Ibid., p.72. 217 Margaret Urban Walker, in her review of O.Z. Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, op.cit., Philosophical Investigations, 18:1(1995), p. 85.


it dodges all difficulties by adopting a too familiar acquaintance with holy things."218 Thus, Wittgenstein is against the esoteric characterisation of religious beliefs as fideism does. In the light of this remark of Wittgenstein, it is a mistake to call him a fideist. For WHtgenstein, religious beliefs are invariably related to other aspects of life, and they are dependent on them for their survival, but they are not to be justified on non-religious grounds. As they derive their meaning and value from the life as a whole, they cannot be separated from them. And it is this fact which draws the distinction between religious beliefs and superstitions on the one hand and on the other hand provides them value. Phillips reiterates that in order to differentiate between genuine religious beliefs and superstition "one must take account of the connection between the practices and other features of the lives people lead. It is such connections which enable us to see that...many religious practices can be distinguished from superstition, while other so-called religious practices turn out to be superstitious."219 Thus, the connection between religious and non-religious aspects of life, not only distinguishes religious from superstitious beliefs but also, shows the value of religious beliefs. The relation between religious and non-religious aspects of human life reveals the twin-fold character of religious beliefs: on the one hand, it helps to know which belief is genuine and which one is fake, and on the other, this shows the real character of religious belief which in Wittgenstein's term has 'absolute value'. Phillips emphasises this: "the main point I wish to stress is that it does not make sense to ask for a proof of the validity of religious beliefs, whatever that might mean. Consider, finally, the example 218 M. O'c. Drury, 'Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein', in his The Danger of Words and Writings on Wittgenstein (England: Thoemmes Press, 1996), p.94. 219 D.Z. Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, op.cit., p.76.


of the mother who reacts to the birth of her baby by an act of devotion to the Virgin Mary. It is true that act of devotion could not be what it is without the birth of the baby, which, after all, occasioned it. It is also true that the connection between the religious act and the baby's birth must not be fantastic. It must be shown not to be superstition. But having made these points, it is also important to stress that the birth is not evidence from which one can assess the religious reaction to it. People react to the birth of children in various ways. Some may say that the birth of a child is always a cause for rejoicing. Others may say that whether one rejoices at the birth of a child should be determined by the physical and mental health of the child, or by whether the family into which it is born can look after it properly. Others may say that one should always give thanks to God when a child is born. Others may condemn the folly of those responsible for bringing a child into a world such as this. All these reactions are reactions to the birth of a child, and could not mean what they do apart from the fact of the birth. But it does not follow that the various reactions can be inferred from the birth, or that they are conclusions for which the birth of the baby is the ground. All one can say is that people do respond in this way. Many who respond in one way will find the other responses shallow, trivial, fantastic, meaningless, or even evil. But the force of the responses cannot be justified in any external way; it can merely be shown. This is true of religious responses, the religious beliefs which have an absolute character and value."220 Above is the argument as to why facts of ordinary life or physical world cannot be taken as a proof or a justification of religious beliefs. Physical and religious worlds are conjoined to each other and this conjunction helps in distinguishing religious from superstitious beliefs. And, although to some extent religious belief is dependent on non-religious aspects of life, yet it would be wrong to look for some kind of justification for 220 Ibid., pp.76-77.


religious beliefs as it is a spontaneous reaction of the individual mind which differs from person to person. Thus, we have seen that the thesis of the restricted autonomy of language-games shows that religious beliefs are inevitably associated with the non-religious aspects of human life. Human life is like a language in toto-an organic whole. No aspect of human life like no language-game of any language could be completely segregated from other aspects or games. Each aspect of human life or each language-game of any language consists in its own peculiarities which are the reasons for calling a particular aspect as the aspect and a particular language-game as the language-game. But these peculiarities derive their meaning and significance only within the context of life or language. That is to say that all the peculiarities of language and life are conjoined with each other.

4 Religious Beliefs and Form of Life In the previous chapter we have seen as to how Wittgenstein and

Wittgensteinians respond to the criticisms of fideism in the context of language-game. Now let us discuss religious beliefs in connection with the notion of form of life. During the course of our discussion on the limited autonomy of language-games we have explained the notion of form of life and we have seen that language-game and form of life are invariably connected with each other. It is so because the use of any expression has to be made against the background of a form of life. Language-games are embedded in forms of life. There are innumerable languagegames and forms of life. But from the point of view of the determination of the meaning of an expression, what matters is particular form of life. Here I will discuss Wittgenstein's statement: 'I am not a religious man but 1 cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.'221 This statement has been in debate for quite some time. Wittgensteinians, such as Norman Malcolm, Peter Winch, Elizabeth Wolgast, Kai Nelson, have discussed it. Followings are the basic points of the debate in the current Wittgensteinian interpretation of the statement:

221 M. O'c. Drury 'Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein', in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, ed. Rush Rhees (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 19!>1), p. 94.


What did Wittgenstein mean when he said 'I am not a religious man'? What did Wittgenstein mean when he said 'I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view'? Here the relationship between these points is also significant. That is, how Wittgenstein could see every problem from a religious point of view even while accepting that he was not a religious man. For the purpose of this discussion 1 have divided this chapter into the following parts: a.

Malcolm and Winch on Wittgenstein's Religious Status

b. Malcolm and Winch on Analogies, and c.

Form of Life, God, Human Will and Happy life.

The first two parts deal with the above described two fold points of the interpretation of Wittgenstein's statement respectively. And, the third point of the chapter analyses the notion of form of life in relation to Wittgenstein's views on God, Human Will and Happy Life, as these concepts are integral to Wittgenstein's above described statement. (a) Malcolm and Winch on Wittgenstein's Religious Status

The above-described enigmatic statement was recorded by Drury during his conversation with Wittgenstein. Norman Malcolm was very concerned about the proper analysis of this statement. He wrote an essay on this statement and till the end of his life kept on improving and rewriting under the title Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View. He couldn't succeed in its publication during his lifetime. After his death in 1990, the publisher realised that it was 'substantially shorter' for publication in the form of a book. So Malcolm's philosopher-friend Peter Winch was asked to write 'a fairly lengthy introduction'. Winch preferred to write a preface and a critical discussion on Malcolm's essay. In his preface of the book, he writes about his usual discussion with

Religious Beliefs and Form of Life I 197

Malcolm. Winch writes that they understood each other's position 'pretty well' and expressed 'mutual disagreements' on most, if not all, of the topics of their discussions. The same disagreement can be observed in his critical discussion of the book as well. As Wittgenstein's above statement is the basic idea of the book, Winch's critical assessment of Malcolm's interpretation has quite been in the thick of discussion amongst Wittgensteinians. Thus, there have been many interpretations about Wittgenstein's exact position of his above mentioned statement. After a collection of the abundant evidences, Malcolm, in a nutshell, puts his view about Wittgenstein's religious orientation. Malcolm says, "Let me summarise what we know of the emotions, thoughts and deeds of Wittgenstein's life which had a religious meaning. The feeling of being 'absolutely safe', which first came to him at about the age of 21 exerted some hold on him throughout most of his life. The desire to become 'a decent human being' was vividly expressed in his prayers during the First World War, and in his volunteering for a dangerous post. The act of renouncing his inherited wealth probably had, in part, a religious motive. At the end of the war his first preference for a vocation was to be a priest. His discussions with Drury contained many reflections on religious matters. His 'confessions' belonged to a hope for 'a new life'. He expected and feared a Last Judgment. He read and reread the Gospels and knew them thoroughly. His desire for his philosophical work was that it should be 'God's will'. He thought it would be of value only if it received 'a light from above'. His conception of the meaning of Christianity stressed human 'wretchedness' and 'anguish'-and the necessity of 'turning around' and 'opening one's heart'. This surely expressed an awareness of his own state and his own need."222 222 Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? (London: Routledge, 1993), p.21.


On the basis of his above summarisation, Malcolm says, "Considering all of this, it is surely right to say that Wittgenstein's mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. 1 am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers."223

Now the question arises: If Wittgenstein was religious then why did he say that he was not a religious man? In the light of the above conclusion, Malcolm gives the following hypotheses as to how to interpret Wittgenstein's statement: 'I am not a religious man': 224 (1)

For Malcolm, partially, it might mean that 'he did not belong to a church nor engage in any formal religious devotions'. He admits that Wittgenstein definitely would not have liked such things.

(2)

As Wittgenstein had 'critical standards' for everything including music, art, literature, architecture, poetry, philosophy, he would have same severe standards for 'a religious life'. And, as his models of 'truly religious men were St.Augustine, John Bunyan, St.Francis and George Fox, in comparison with them he would have found his own religious life as 'mediocre'.

(3)

Another reason for Wittgenstein's calling himself as 'not religious', according to Malcolm, is that Wittgenstein believed that he himself 'did not give enough space to prayer and religious reflection'.

Now, let us scrutinise Malcolm's above hypotheses or reasons to prove that Wittgenstein was religious. First, take the third reason. Here the question arises: if he was religious then why did 223 Ibid., p. 21. 224 Ibid., pp. 21-22.


he not provide enough space to prayers and religious reflections? For an answer to this question, Malcolm cites Prof. Roy Holland's view on Wittgenstein's remark: "1 cannot kneel to pray because it's as though my knees are stiff. 1 am afraid of disintegration (of my disintegration), if 1 become soft" (CV p.63e). For Holland, a possible meaning or explanation of this remark can be gleaned from the fact that "Wittgenstein lived as if the philosophical work that wholly absorbed him, was demanded of him. His whole life was dedicated to it. He had the sense of a duty imposed on him ... Wittgenstein realised that if he gave himself to prayer with the intensity this would require, an intensity that was characteristic of every work he undertook-then he would 'disintegrate'. That is, his philosophical concentration would be disturbed. "225 This assumption of Ma1colm is open to objection. Wittgenstein's personality was multifaceted: he did so many non-philosophical things such as working as a soldier in the First World War, as a potter in the Second World War, as a gardener, as a recluse in a hut in rural Norway, as a school teacher, and as a builder of his sister's house. Were these activities not interfering with his philosophical concentration? Wittgenstein did not stop performing religious prayers which once he had liked as compulsory activity during his captivity as a war-prisoner not because he could not spare time for them but because he actually wanted not to perform those rituals. As such he was against rituals, if they were devoid of emotions. In CV he says, "Everything ritualistic (everything that, as it were, smacks of the high priest) is strictly to be avoided because it straightaway turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too & it isn't rotten; but no more ritual is permissible than is as genuine as a kiss" (p.lOe). Wittgenstein's this attitude to religion is reflected in one of Drury's anecdote of his conversation with Wittgenstein. Drury 225 Ibid.,p.22.


says, "That same evening we were walking back throug h the cathedral close as people were going in to Evensong. Wittgenstein: 'Let's go in with them.' We sat at the back of the nave listening to the service. When it came to the sermon the preacher chose as his text: 'It is expedient for you that 1 go away: for if 1 go not awaYt the Comforter will not come unto you.' After a few minutes Wittgenstein leaned over and whispered to me, 'I am not listening to a word he is saying. But think about the text, that is wonderful, that is really wonderful."226 So my point, as against Malcolm's regarding Wittgenstein's denial of prayer , is that it was based on his choice and not on the compulsion of the burden of the concentration of philosophising. Unlike a bonded labourer, Wittgenstein had a choice to kneel down or not. Winch also does not endorse Ma1colm's explanation. His criticism is based on the incongruity between Wittgenstein's phrase 'stiff knees' and Ma1colm's phrase resisting religiosity for securing 'philosophical concentration'. That is, according to Winch, Ma1colm fails to explain because when we compare these two phrases we find that the image of 'stiff knees' suggests something much less voluntaristic. It seems that Winch is alert to any possible criticism of his own position on the ground that there could be different degrees of voluntariness. Therefore he says, "... the fairly sharp contrast 1 am here trying to draw between being unable, and being unwilling, to kneel in prayer has its own problems ...the point 1 want to bring into focus here is the slipperiness in certain contexts of the difference between being able and being willing to do something. I think this difficulty certainly applies to the question of whethe r we should say that Wittgenstein was 'unwilling' or 'unable' to kneel in prayer."227 For 226 M. O'e. Drury, in Rush Rhees, op. cit., p. 146. 227 Peter Winch, 'Discussion on Malcolm's Essay', in Norman Malcolm , op.cit., pp.119-120.


me, Winch has dragged Wittgenstein's symbolic presentation of the problem a little too far. Malcolm's analysis of 'stiff knees' in terms of resisting religiosity for securing 'philosophical concentration' may be more voluntaristic but it after all conveys the sense. However, it fails, as I have said above, because it overlooks the fact that Wittgenstein did not find such matters as a distraction in philosophical concentration. The above described Malcolm's second hypothesis is also unsatisfactory as it is ambiguous. It is ambiguous as to what Malcolm means by 'critical standard' in religious life. The adjective 'critical standard' can well be understood in music, art, literature, architecture, poetry, and philosophy but its meaning is not clear in religion. As described above, Malcolm seems to indicate that due to his own moral weakness Wittgenstein did not consider himself to be religious. As different from Malcolm's view, it appears safe to argue that making someone a model is one thing and attempting to behave on the patterns of the role model is completely a different thing, especially when one is concerned with a different discourse. My role models in different games do neither force me to opt for those games nor develop a feeling of inferiority in me. So 'role models' as different from Malcolm's view need not necessarily have created a feeling of being 'mediocre' in Wittgenstein. As the above described second and third hypotheses of Malcolm about Wittgenstein's calling himself as 'not religious' are insufficient, it appears that his only first hypothesis is sound. But as Malcolm himself has asserted that this is only a partial reason, it doesn't completely explain Wittgenstein's calling himself as 'not religious'. In the absence of the soundness of the hypotheses, it appears to me that Malcolm's interpretation of the first part of Wittgenstein's above statement does not put things in proper


perspective. It appears that when Wittgenstein called himself as 'not religious' what he intended was that he could not be an orthodox follower who could bend his knees in prayer without 'stiffness'. But these things are not so essential aspects of a religion, at least from a universalistic point of view. What is common and essential in various religions of the world is their emphasis on humanitarian world-view. And in such a worldview Wittgenstein was not behind anyone. He was always ready to help everyone and even for trivial matters often underwent 'confession'. So, from this perspective Wittgenstein was a religious person. Now the question arises: was Wittgenstein wrong when he said that he was 'not religious'? Malcolm's reply to such a question is that such a matter "is not within our competence to determine. But we can say with confidence that he knew the demands of religion."228 However, as different from Malcolm's non-judgmental standpoint, here one can say that neither Wittgenstein was wrong in his confession that he is not religious nor he was lying. What he intended to convey in this assertion was the picture of conventional religious beliefs which tries to prove religious beliefs and performance of rituals as a routine work without emotions. However, from the point of view of the essence of religion or a universalistic point of view, Wittgenstein definitely was a religious person as our above analysis shows him as one who had no cravings for physical comfort or material attachment. The unique religious status of Wittgenstein has been aptly pointed out by Engelmann. Engelmann says, "Was Wittgenstein religious? If we call him an agnostic, this must not be understood in the sense of the familiar polemical agnosticism that concentrates, and prides itself, on the argument that man could never know about these things. The idea of God in the 228 Norman Malcolm, op.cit., p.23.


sense of the Bible, the image of God as the creator of the world, hardly ever engaged Wittgenstein's attention (as G.H.von Wright rightly points out in his Biographical Sketch), but the notion of a last judgement was of profound concern to him. 'When we meet again at the last judgement' was a recurrent phrase with him, which he used in many a conversation at a particularly momentous point. He would pronounce the words with an indescribably inward-gazing look in his eyes, his head bowed, the picture of a man stirred to his depths." 229 Thus, Wittgenstein's unique religious position is different from agnosticism. He can be said to be religious in a quite distinct sense of the term. It is a position which from traditional religious point of view is susceptible to be called, by at least some, as not religious. The distinct sense in which Wittgenstein can be called religious has been interpreted differently. For example, Kai Nelson takes liberty of this distinct sense of being religious and with the instrument of reduction turns Wittgenstein's religious point of view as similar to Marx, Engels, etc. Nelson says, "To try to reduce religion and religious belief to some basic deep commitment and a concern to be a decent human being, to really care about others and do good, even if we add-probably with very little understanding-'ultimate' to 'commitment' and 'concern', just takes what, as I have already observed, is a necessary condition for being genuinely religious (note the implicit persuasive definition here) and turns it into a sufficient condition. On such a view of things Marx, Engels, Luxembourg, Durkheim, Freud, Dewey, Weber, Gramsci all become religious. But this is reduction.,,23/) An admonition for such 229 Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein: With a Memoir (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), pp.77-78. 230 Kai Nelson, 'Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians on religion', in Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Religion, ed. Robert L. Arrington and Mark Addis (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p.l55.


a reading of Wittgenstein's religious point of view can be seen in Engelmann. For Engelmann, "He simply had for years led a life out of harmony with all this, and so he eventually decided to shed all the things, big or small, that he felt to be petty or ludicrous. So when from that time on he went about without a tie in an open-necked shirt, he was not donning a new garb (say, that of a penitent); on the contrary, he was trying (unsuccessfully) to go about without any garb at all."231 Engelmann's this description of Wittgenstein's attitude towards life in general correlates to Wittgenstein's attitude towards religion. That is to say that Wittgenstein's attitude towards religion, especially towards externalities of religion, e.g., mode of prayer, rituals etc. should not be forced as a conclusion that Wittgenstein was not religious or that he was agnostic. The attitude of not to sponsor any particular trend need not necessarily be branded as a peculiar fashion. For example, if someone enrobes necktie in a different style e.g. putting knot upside down (as different from the prevalent fashion) then that cannot be branded as a new fashion. So, Wittgenstein's unique attitude to religion need not be interpreted as irreligious or agnostic. It is certain that he was not religious in the traditional sense of the term in which prayer means standing and leaning in a particular definite posture. As different from this traditional notion of religious, in Wittgenstein's notion of religious, one's inner-feeling matters as it does not disappear in the externalities of religious practices. However, it is relevant to discuss as to what would not be a Wittgensteinian attitude towards religion. Such discussions are relevant for removing misconceptions regarding Wittgenstein's attitude about religion. Thus, for Engelmann "....he was never a mystic in the sense of occupying his mind with mystic-gnostic fantasies. Nothing was further from his mind than the attempt to paint a picture of a world beyond (either before or after death ), 231 Paul Engelmann, op.cit., p.78.


about which we cannot speak (He says in the Tractatus that the fact of a life after death could explain nothing). "232 (b) Malcolm and Winch on Analogies

Now, let us consider the second part of Wittgenstein's statement, i.e. 'I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view'. There have been disagreements among Wittgensteinians about the exact interpretation of the above statement. These disagreements are due to the ambiguity of the meaning of the statement, i.e. mainly due to various interpretations of the words 'problem' and 'religious point of view'. It is not clear as to what actually did Wittgenstein mean by 'problem'-whether it was a philosophical problem or personal problem, and what was his religious point of view? These are vibrant issues of discussion even after about two and a half decade of the publication of the report of Drury in Rush Rhees' Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollection and after about a decade of Malcolm's Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View. So let us begin with one of the latest remark on the issue. Elizabeth Wolgast in the journal Philosophical Investigations says, "To start with, it is unclear how a non-religious person could see things from a religious point of view-what 'seeing them' that way means, or even which problems he is referring to. Second, it is unclear how to connect this reference to 'seeing problems' with other things Wittgenstein says about his approach to philosophy. "233 For Malcolm, here 'problem' means philosophical problems. Thus, according to Malcolm, the statement shows that from Wittgenstein's point of view there is a resemblance (he prefers to call it 'analogy') between religious and philosophical reflections.

232 Ibid., p.79. 233 Elizabeth Wolgast, 'A Religious Point of View', Philosophical Investigations, 27:2, (2004),129.

206 1 Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein saw philosophical problems from religious point of view. On the other hand, for Peter Winch here 'problem' does not refer to philosophical problems but signifies Wittgenstein's personal problems, and therefore, the above statement shows the connection between a philosopher's religious point of view and his character and writings. There are Wittgensteinians who either lean towards the interpretation of Winch or that of Malcolm. Some Wittgensteinians, such as Elizabeth Wolgast, try to maintain a 'harmony' between these two approaches, and some others, like Kai Nelson, on the basis of their own interpretation, try to establish that Wittgenstein's point of view is religious in a unique sense of the term. In the context of Malcolm-Winch debate over the interpretation of Wittgenstein's above statement, Elizabeth Wolgast puts her position in the following way: "Norman Malcolm drew parallels between Wittgenstein's view of philosophy and religion: these were what he thought Wittgenstein had in mind. Peter Winch, commenting on Malcolm's essay, argued that what was meant was the close connection between a philosopher's writing and his character, and that the 'problem' referred to were not just philosophical but personal ... though my position differs from both Malcolm's and Winch's, it will be clear that it has points in harmony with both."234 Kai Nelson's interpretation is unique. He says, "In spite of Wittgenstein's statement 'I am not a religious man', I think that it is, as Malcolm puts it, 'surely right to say that Wittgenstein's mature life was marked by religious thought and feeling'. Kierkegaard had percipiently shown how difficult it is to be religious, how many people are deceived in thinking they are religious when they are not, and that some people who would honestly say they are not, and even some-say, militant 234 Ibid., pp.l29-30.


atheists-who would vehemently assert that they are not, are nonetheless religious, and indeed deeply so. It is also the case that with his clarity of intellect, together with his deep religious sensitivity, Wittgenstein is likely to have had a keen sense of what a religious form of life is.''235 Thus, Nelson in his above statement seems to appreciate Malcolm at the beginning of his remark but, in fact, its end, which shows the unique sense in which Wittgenstein can be called religious, is very close to atheistic understanding of religioun. As against these approaches, that is, either siding with Malcolm's or Winch's position or attempt to make a harmony between the two, it would be more appropriate to hold that here 'personal' and 'philosophical' do not signify different things but actually they hint upon the problem of living happily. I will argue for such an interpretation. It gets its weight from PI §106: "It is difficult ... to see that we must stick to the subjects of our every-day thinking, and not go astray and imagine that we have to describe extreme subtleties... " However, let us begin with Malcolm's position. For Malcolm, 'problem' in the above statement of Wittgenstein meant 'philosophical problems' and these problems of PI were seen from a religious point of view. He says, "Wittgenstein did much religious thinking: but religious thoughts do not figure in his detailed treatments of the philosophical problems. It would seem, therefore, that when he spoke of seeing those problems 'from a religious point of view', he did not mean that he conceived of them as religious problems but instead that there was a similarity, or similarities, between his conception of philosophy and something that is characteristic of religious thinking."236 Instead of the term 'similarities' between 235 Kai Nelson, in Robert L. Arrington and Mark Addis, op.cit., p.1S0. 236 Norman Malcolm, op.cit., p.24.


Wittgenstein's notion of philosophy and that of his religious point of view, Malcolm later on prefers to use the term 'analogies'. For him there are four such analogies which are as follows: 1.

The first analogy between religious and philosophical approaches of Wittgenstein is that both explanations 'reach a limit'. Malcolm says, "... reasons, justifications, explanations, reach a terminus in the language-games and their internally related forms of human life. The assumption that everything can be explained filled Wittgenstein with a kind of fury."237

Thus, language-game and form of life are inexplicable. Actually, for Wittgenstein, in philosophy what we need is not explanation but only description, i.e. to put everything as it isto put everything in its proper language-game and form of life. Religion, for Wittgenstein, has its own language-game and form of life. That is, "A religious practice is itself a language-game-a pattern in which words and gestures are interwoven in acts of worship, prayer, confession, absolution, thanksgiving. Religious practices are a part of the natural history of mankind and are no more explicable than are other features of this natural history. It is not an explanation to say that religious practice arises from 'a basic religious impulse'-any more than it is to say that bodies fall toward the earth because of the force of gravity. The existence of religious practicescan no more be explained than can the existence of sports, or of musical composition."238 This is clearer in the context of the religious phrase 'the will of God'. Therefore, Malcolm says, "In religious thinking there is frequent reference to 'the will of God'. These words put an end to the demand for explanation: at the deepest religious level there is no asking for God's reason or justification. But, is reference to the will of God 237 Ibid., pp.84-85. 238 Ibid.,p.85.


itself an explanation? It may look like one. But, is that the actual functioning of the words 'the will of God', in religious life? I believe not. To say 'it is the will of God' is not to offer an explanation of why your child died, or why the hurricane destroyed your home, or why you and your friends were cruelly tortured. If it were meant as an explanation, then the same explanation would explain everything: why the wind blew, and why it did not; why the rivers overflowed, and why they ran dry; why you became ill, and why you were spared. An explanation that explains everything that occurs in the same way, actually explains nothing. The reference to the God's will can, in a religious setting, give comfort; but not everything that gives comfort is an explanation."239 He further says, "The function of the words, it is 'God's will', when said religiously and seriously, in a time of trouble, is not to offer the final explanation, nor any explanation at all. Instead, they are an attempt to bring to an end the torment of asking 'Why did it have to happen ?'- an attempt to give the tormented one rest, to provide peace. In secular life, when something distressing occurs and there is a demand for explanation of why it happened-at some stage someone may say: 'It is pointless to continue seeking for an explanation. We are faced with a fact which we must accept. That's how it is!' The words, 'It is God's will', have many religious connotations: but they also have a logical force similar to 'That's how it is!' Both expressions tell us to stop asking 'why?' and instead to accept a fact !"240 Thus, for Malcolm, analysing religion into its own languagegame and form of life puts an end to the explanation in the analogous way in which there is no need of further philosophical explanation beyond language-game and form of life as 239 Ibid., pp.85-86. 240 Ibid., p.86.


enumerated in PI p.200: "What we have rather to do is to accept the everyday language-game."

2.

The second analogy between philosophical and religious reflections, according to Malcolm, is that religious wonder at the existence of the world, about which Wittgenstein tells in LE, is analogous to the wonder 'at the existence of the various language-games and their contained forms of human action and reaction'. Religious expression such as 'the miracle of God's existence' resembles such wonders on the existence of language-games and forms of life as PI p. 224 says, "Let yourself be struck by the existence of such a thing as our language-game of: confessing the motive of my action." Malcolm says, "The religious sense of seeing in the world as a miracle has its analogue in a kind of .astonishment at the inexplicable existence of the human language-games. This philosophical astonishment is not a religious sense of the miraculous-for it does not view the language-games as sacred. But in respect to the feeling of wonder and mystery, it is analogous to the religious sense of the miracle of the world and the miracle of human life."241 Thus, the feeling of wonder is common in both philosophical as well as religious reflections.

3.

The third analogy between philosophical reflection is actually the analogy between the religious attitude of regarding oneself as imperfect or 'sick' and the view that the philosophical problems are a symptom of a 'disease' of our thinking. For Malcolm, a genuine religious person regards himself as imperfect as for him, "There is a kind of moral or spiritual illness that possesses us, even when we think we are healthy."242 Here 'illness' signifies human weaknesses such as jealousy, resentment, hatred etc. Wittgenstein has brought 241 Ibid., p.87. 242 Ibid., p.87.


out a similar approach in CV p.51e: "People are religious to the extent that they believe themselves to be not so much imperfect as sick." This, for Malcolm, resembles Wittgenstein's terms such as 'illness' and 'disease' in 'philosophical theorising when searching for explanations' as BB p.l45 puts it: "There is a kind of general disease of thinking which always looks for (and finds) what would be called a mental state from which all our acts spring as from a reservoir." In order to estcblish this analogy, Malcolm quotes several references from BB, Cv, Z, and PI and concludes: "The analogy between the sickness of the spirit that is of religious concern and the intellectual diseases that philosophy would like to heal must not be exaggerated. The analogy only means that in both cases something is wrong with us-on the other hand, in the way we live and feel and regard others; on the other hand, in the way we think when we encounter a philosophical question. About the latter, Wittgenstein wrote; 'Our illness is this, to want to explain' (RFM p. 333)"243 4.

The fourth analogy is between Wittgenstein's insistence on the one hand that religion consists in doing good deeds and not in religious doctrines, and on the other hand his post-Tractarian philosophical view that 'our concepts rests on a basis of human actions and reactions', i.e. acting and doing and not on reasoning or interpreting. Thus, Malcolm says, "Clearly, there is an analogy between Wittgenstein's view that our concepts rests on a basis of human actions and reactions, and his view that what is most fundamental in a religious life is not the affirming of creeds, nor even prayer and worship-but rather, doing good deeds-helping others in concrete ways, treating their needs as equal to one's own, opening one's heart to them, not being cold or contemptuous, but loving."244 243lbid., pp.89-90. 244lbid., p.92.


Thus, there are four analogies between Wittgenstein's approaches to philosophy and religion. Summing up these, Malcolm says, "There are four analogies between Wittgenstein's conception of the grammar of language, and his view of what is paramount in a religious life. First, in both there is an end to explanation; second, in both there is an inclination to be amazed at the existence of something; third, into both there enters the notion of an 'illness'; fourth, in both doing acting takes priority over intellectual understanding and reasoning."245 Malcolm maintains that these analogies at least hint upon the fact that Wittgenstein 'saw philosophical problems from a religious point of view'. Peter Winch, as I have mentioned above, does not agree with Malcolm's interpretation of the above mentioned Wittgenstein's statement. For him, the term 'problems' in Wittgenstein's statement does not denote only philosophical problems. Winch says, "Certainly, Wittgenstein must have meant to include philosophical problems in what he said to Drury, but not to the exclusion of everything, or indeed anything else."246 Further, he says that the analogy does not exist between Wittgenstein's philosophical and religious reflections but "between religious problems and problems of decency in one's manner of life."247 That is why Winch says, ".. .it is perhaps a mistake to try to construe Wittgenstein's remark to Drury as proposing an analogy between philosophical and religious questions. "248 Winch has developed his own interpretation of Wittgenstein's remark or statement on the basis of the critique of Malcolm's all the above described four analogies in the following way: 245 Ibid., p.92. 246 Peter Winch in Norman Malcolm, op.cif., p.96. 247 Ibid., p.97. 248 Ibid.


a) Winch accepts that Wittgenstein endorses that explanations come to an end at some point but refuses to accept this as the premise of one of the analogies between his philosophical and religious reflections. For Winch, in the first analogy there are two points: "On the one hand it is said that the expression of religious belief is itself a language-game for which it makes no sense to ask for an explanation or rational justification. On the other hand it is said that, for a religious believer, a reference to God's will is 'an end to explanation'."249 Winch rejects both these points. Rejecting the first point he says, "As far as the first of these points is concerned, it is misleading to speak of any analogy to philosophy, since the point itself is simply a philosophical one. Malcolm has already, in the body of his essay, claimed that it is characteristic of all languagegames that they are, in this sense, beyond explanation. In so far as the expression of religious belief, therefore, is treated as itself language-game, then of course it too in the same sense must be beyond explanation. But in this respect it will be not different from, say, scientific investigation, which, to be sure, seeks explanations but is not itself to be explained!"250 Winch rejects the second point as well. He restates this point and says, "The second point is two fold: that for a believer-at least for a believer of a certain kind-to say that something is God's will is not itself to offer an explanation; and for him, moreover, it will make no sense to ask why it should be God's will. These are claims about a particular feature of a certain kind of religious language-game. As such they are themselves philosophical points, though points about religious belief. If one is to speak of any 'analogy' between philosophy and religion at this point, then, 249 Ibid., p.111. 250 Ibid., pp. 111-112.


1 suppose a case must be made for saying that the readiness to come to rest at a certain point and say, as it were, explanation stops here, plays a role within religion (regarding references to God's will) analogous to the role such a readiness plays in philosophy, as practiced by Wittgenstein (regarding references to language-games) ."251 For Winch this point is also problematic. He holds that for Wittgenstein 'practice' of certain terms plays its role in determining the meaning of any concept. And on this basis he rejects what he interprets as Malcolm's reading of 'the will of God' as an act of gratitude for life. Pointing out this Winch says," ... acceptance to things as they are, and recognition that, beyond a certain point, no explanation can significantly be required as to why they are like that, certainly need not be accompanied by gratitude."252 On the basis of his rejection of the above two points, on which for him the first analogy is based, Winch concludes, "I see no ground for thinking that Wittgenstein would have singled out the religious attitude as showing a particularly close analogy to his own philosophical attitude'."253 b) Criticising Malcolm's second analogy between religious wonder at the existence of the world and philosophical wonder at the existence of language-games, Winch says that the treatment is 'somewhat perfunctory' as "the surroundings of the wonder in the two cases are so very different as to make the force of any talk of an 'analogy' at best weak; even seriously vitiated by an apparent tendency to take 'the feeling of wonder and mystery' as a given as something common to the two kinds of contexts he is comparing."254 251 Ibid., p.112. 252 Ibid., pp.113-114. 253 Ibid., p.114. 254 Ibid., p.116


Thus for Winch, Malcolm's treatment fails to note the differences in different usage of the term 'wonder'. Winch holds: "Wittgenstein's philosophical insight into the limits of explanation, etc., even what one may rightly call his 'wonder' at what his investigations lay open to view, is an infinite distance from seeing the world, or human language-games, as the work of God. I do not believe that Wittgenstein would have taken such insight as a basis for saying he saw problems 'from a religious point of view'. "255 c)

On the same ground Winch rejects Malcolm's third analogy as it also fails to note the differences in different usage of the term 'illness'. He says, "The senses in which one can speak of an 'illness' in each of these contexts is far too heavily dependent on the extremely diverse contexts involved for any talk of an analogy to carry much weight."256

d) Winch rejects Malcolm's fourth analogy on the ground that "He does not make sufficiently clear the internal connection that exists between the nature of the 'works' that are in question here at the use of the language of faith in the life of the believer."257 That is, for Winch even the acceptance of Wittgenstein's thesis that the religious and philosophical concepts accrue their meanings in their usage, Malcolm's position does not sufficiently explain the religious perspective. Malcolm's treatment does not sufficiently make clear the internal relation between the philosophical acting, doing and religious doing good deeds. Thus, Winch rejects all the analogies of Malcolm which forms the basis of his view that Wittgenstein reflected upon philosophical problems from a religious point of view.

255 Ibid., p.ll8. 256 Ibid. 257 Ibid., p.l24


For me the gap between Malcolm's and Winch's approaches on the interpretation of Wittgenstein's statement under discussion is not unbridgeable. They differ on a trivial issue. For Ma1colm the term 'problem' denotes philosophical problems, whereas for Winch it denotes not only philosophical problems. And on the basis of this difference in their interpretation of 'problem' they interpret the entire statement differently. For Malcolm, in the statement Wittgenstein meant seeing philosophical problems from a religious point of view, whereas for Winch he meant seeing all the problems of life from a religious point of view. The points on which Winch criticises Malcolm's analogies are significant. However, Winch ignores the fact that Drury himself has asserted that in the context of the statement in discussion here, Wittgenstein was referring to the problems related to PI. About Wittgenstein's statement under discussion here, Drury points out that it had raised an issue "as to whether there are not dimensions of Wittgenstein's thought that are still largely being ignored. Have I seen that the Philosophische Bemerkungen could have been inscribed 'to the glory of God'? Or that the problems discussed in the Philosophical Investigations are being seen from a religious point of view?"258 Still, Winch's criticisms of the analogies provide an alternative standpoint and insight that the non-philosophical problems were also important for Wittgenstein. Moreover, Winch's analysis forms the basis of the future exploration of Wittgenstein's religious point of view. Here in the light of Winch's critique it seems pertinent to point out that Wittgenstein in the statement under discussion does talk about not only philosophical problems but also all the problems of life as such. However, philosophical, nonphilosophical dichotomy is not so much applicable in Wittgenstein. Some Wittgensteinians are of the view that he used

258 M.

O'c. Drury, in Rush Rhees, op.cit., p. 94.


to make all kinds of statements in all kinds of contexts. 259 Wittgenstein tries to stick to the concrete problems of life. He says, "It is difficult to see that we must stick to the subjects of our everyday thinking, and not go astray and imagine that we have to describe extreme subtleties" (PI §106). Moreover, as Engelmann points out that Wittgenstein "'saw life as task', and on that I agreed with him. Moreover, he looked upon all the features of life as it is, that is to say upon all facts, as an essential part of the conditions of that task; just as a person presented with a mathematical problem must not try to ease his task by modifying the problem. But-it may be asked-could it not be that for an individual of a suitable disposition such a modification of the data of the task may actually form part of the task, indeed, may be felt in his conscience as vital to the task itself? Yet, the person who conSistently believes that the reason for the discrepancy lies in himself alone must reject the belief that changes in the external facts may be necessary and called for."260 Actually, Wittgenstein's analysis of problems of routine life also becomes philosophical. For example, Wittgenstein says, "The solution of the problem you see in life is a way of living which makes what is problematic disappear. The fact that life is problematic means that your life does not fit life's shape. So you must change your life, and once it fits the shape, what is problematic will disappear. But don't we have the feeling that someone who doesn't see a problem there is blind to something important, indeed to what is most important of all? Wouldn't I like to say he is living aimlessly-just blindly like a mole as it were; and if he could only see, he would see the problem? Or shouldn't I say: someone who lives rightly does not experience 259 Suresh Chandra, "Some Remarks on 'Wittgenstein on Religious Beliefs and Superstion,"'JICPR, 14:3 (1997), p.154. 260 Paul Engelmann, op.cit., p.79.


the problem as sorrow, hence not after all as a problem, but rather as a joy, that- is so to speak as a bright halo round his life, not a murky background" (CV, p.31e). This shows that Wittgenstein's reflections on a seemingly non-philosophical matter of how to solve our problems of life becomes intensely philosophical. (c) Form of Life, God, Human Will and Happy Life

A scrutiny of Winch's criticisms of Malcolm's analogies between Wittgenstein's philosophical and religious reflections shows that the crux of the debate is Malcolm's view, described above in the second analogy, on 'the existence of the various language-games and their contained forms of action and reaction'. Here, 'forms of action and reaction' signifies the form of life. Our analysis of Wittgenstein's statement in the discussion here has been centred on the comparison between religious form of life and nonreligious form of life. The form of life is the crux of all the analogies of Ma1colm because the end of explanation, feeling wonder at the existence of world or that of language-games and forms of life, feeling of illness, and the requirement of the basis of everyday concepts in acting, doing or good deeds all are based in form of life. It is also clear from the fact that in all these analogies there is an element of inexplicability. This inexplicability again is due to the form of life which is rock bottom of every activity. Now, it is significant to note that in all these analogies, some way or the other, notion of God has been discussed. In the first analogy, 'God's Will'; in the second, 'God's world'; in the fourth, 'no proof for the existence of God' have been discussed. The third analogy also indirectly talks about God through the feeling of illness or imperfection. As such a feeling of imperfection in one's character comes from the realisation of responsibilities ordained by God for every individual. I have pointed out that in his criticism of Ma1colm's first analogy, Winch does not agree with Malcolm's interpretation of


'the will of God' as an act of gratitude for life. For Winch, 'the will of God' need not be accompanied by gratitude. Here it seems that Winch forgets that Wittgenstein recognises that there are different grammatical senses of the notion of God. Interpreting Wittgenstein's notion of God, G. E. Moore has pointed out: "About 'God' his main point seemed to be that this word is used in many grammatically different senses. He said, for instance, that many controversies about God could be settled by saying 'I'm not using the word in such a sense that you can say ... ', and that different religions 'treat things as making sense which others treat as nonsense, and don't merely deny some proposition which another religion affirms'; and he illustrated this by saying that if people use 'god' to mean something like a human being, then 'God has four arms' and 'God has two arms' will both have sense, but that others so use 'God' that 'God has arms' is nonsense-would say 'God can't have arms' "(WL, pp.103-104). Notwithstanding his recognition of different senses of the term 'God', Wittgenstein maintains that we all are dependent on the will of God, as we can make no changes in the world. Wittgenstein says, "I cannot steer the happenings of the world according to my will, but am entirely powerless"(NB, p.73). Further, "The world is given to me, i.e. my will enters the world entirely from the outside as into something already there ... Hence we have the feeling that we are dependent on an alien will. Be that as it /1/ay, we are at any rate in a certain sense dependent, and that on which we depend we can call God. God, in this sense, would be simply Fate, or, what comes to the same thing, the world independent of our will" (NB, p.74). Thus, it is obvious that (i) only God is responsible for making changes in the world, (ii) the will is of two kinds: human will and alien will or God's will, and (iii) Fate is God.


As against Winch's criticism of Malcolm's interpretation of Wittgenstein's notion of 'the will of God' as an act of gratitude for life, in this context, it appears that Wittgenstein does talk about the grace of God as everything is dependent on Him. This also gets endorsed by Wittgenstein's view that "Even if everything that we wish for were to happen, this would be only, so to speak, a grace of fate, since there is no logical connection between the will and the world that would guarantee this, and the supposed physical connection itself, in turn, is surely something we could not will" (NB, p.73). It is obvious from these remarks that Wittgenstein talks about God's will and human will as invariably in comparison with each other. For him, human will is dependent on God's will. It appears that for Wittgenstein there are two senses of

human will: (1) ethical will which is the subject and which does not exist in the world, and (2) the will which is psychological. As different from the psychological will, Wittgenstein says, "There really is a way in which there can and must be mention of the I in a non-psychological sense in philosophy" (NB, p. 80). This nonpsychological will, according to Wittgenstein, is the metaphysical subject. Thus, he points out: "The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body nor the human soul with which psychology deals, but the metaphysical subject, the boundary of-not a part of-the world" (TLP, 5.641). We have seen that for Wittgenstein the psychological will ' can make no change in the world. The ethical will can make changes by way of renouncing the world. Thus, "I can only make myself independent of the world-and so in a certain sense master itin so far as I renounce any influence on the happenings" (NB, p.73). Barrett calls the non-psychological will as i1ldependent will and makes it coterminous with the alien will or God's will. For Barrett both these wills transcend the world and give meaning to the


world. 261 The similar distinction has been made by Wittgenstein between physiognomic will and spiritual will. For him, "As I can infer my spirit (character, will) from my physiognomy, so I can infer the spirit (will) of each thing from its physiognomy" (NB, p.84). Now, here what is significant is that although this spiritual or non-psychological or independent human will is dependent on God's will, it also provides meaning to the world. So, not only God's will but also an independent human will, as well, gives meaning to the world. Like the psychological and non-psychological senses of the human will, Wittgenstein talks about physiological world and meaning of the world. 262 Wittgenstein identifies God's will and independent human will with the meaning of life. So, one cannot derive meaning of the world out of physiological world as it, like these wills, is transcended. As meaning of the world is different from the physiological world, likewise meaning of life is different from psychophysical life. Generally, there are four approaches to a happy life: (a) the beliefs in the immortality of soul provides meaning to life, (b) the beliefs in God provides meaning to life, (c) getting meaning of life out of putting some goal in life and in pursuit of and accomplishment of it, and (d) living in the present provides meaning to life. 263 One can search all these approaches of meaning of life in Wittgenstein. Thus, we see that in Wittgenstein there is a dichotomy between ethical will or nonpsychological will, God's will, meaning of the world and

261 Cyril Barrett, Wittgensteill 011 Ethics alld Religious and Cambridge USA: Blackwell,1991) p. 105.

Bcli~fs

(Oxford U.K.

262 K.C.Pandey, 'Wittgensteinian Perspectives on Life, World, Death visa-vis Living a Meaningful Life', JICPR, VO!. 20:4 (2003), pp.57-78. 263 Edward Craig, Routledge EllcyclopedIa (?f Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), Vo!. 2, p. 822.


meaning of life, on the one hand, and on the other, psychological will, physiological world, and psycho-physical life. In this scheme of things Wittgenstein talks about the notion of a happy life from various perspectives. Ronald Sutler has categorised these perspectives into seven parts which are as follows: (i) you must fulfil the purpose of existence and not be troubled by the purpose or meaning of life, (ii) you must live in the present, (iii) you must live without fear and hope, (iv) you must act according to your conscience, (v) you must lead a life of knowledge, (vi) you must not be dependent on the amenities or comforts of the world, and (vii) you must look at life aesthetically.264 For Sutler, these are according to Wittgenstein requirements of living a happy life. In my above mentioned article, I have criticised Sutler on the ground that he misses the point that these are actually not only requirements of happy life but they also constitute life as such. They are in a way synonymous with each other because they are carved out of Wittgenstein's scheme of analysis of God's will, human will and meaning of life. An analysis of Wittgenstein's notion of a happy life with regard to them, therefore, will reveal it.

I have maintained that "for Wittgenstein living a meaningful life consists in living happily. And a person lives happily if he lives in the present, i.e. in timelessness, fearlessness and acts according to his conscience-otherwise he lives an unhappy life. A happy life is meaningful life and it is this life which is inseparable from the sense of the world, i.e. it is a life which is lived in the sense of the world. Living such a life is like living a kind of immortality obtained in timelessness to which death does not belong."265 Wittgenstein's analysis of happy life in the context 264 Ronald Sutler, 'The Early Wittgenstein on Happiness', International Philosophical Quarterly, 29:2 (1989), pp.291-299. 265 K. C. Pandey, op.cit., p.76.


of human will differentiates good will from bad will. Thus Cyril Barrett says, "It is clear from the Notebooks ... that being happy is connected in Wittgenstein's mind consistently with good will and being unhappy with bad will."266 Here good will is the nonpsychological will which we have described above. Now, in connection with human will, the basic question which arises is: how to be happy? This question is a significant one as we have seen that human will has no interference in the happenings of the world. But, for being happy, one has to make the world according to what suits him. If this is so then the question arises: how to be happy with a will which can do virtually nothing. Wittgenstein asks: "How can Man be happy at all, since he cannot ward off the misery of this world?" and answers, "Through the life of knowledge. The good conscience is the happiness that the life of knowledge preserves. The life of knowledge is the life that is happy in spite of the misery of the world. The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate" (NB, p. 81). Thus, what has been emphasised here is that the life of knowledge, living in the meaning of world and life, and taking the world as the grace of God (since fate has earlier been identified with God) is actually living happily. This prescription for living a happy life is on the level of transcendental will or non-psychological will or nonphysiognomic will or independent will. At the level of psychological will the prescription includes all the above described seven requirements of Sutler which constitute a happy life. Like the inexpressibility of the religious form of life, for Wittgenstein, there is no justification of a happy life. It seems to be justified by itself. Wittgenstein says, "Simply the happy life is 266 Cyril Barrett, op.cit., p.35.


good, the unhappy life bad. And if 1 now ask myself: But why should 1 live happily, then this of itself seems to me to be a tautological question; the happy life seems to be justified, of itself, it seems that it is the only right life. But this is really in some sense deeply mysterious!" (NB, p.78). It is here that we see that there is an end of explanations. This could be taken as a religious point of view or a way to live life as such or philosophical point of view of life or religious point of view of philosophical problems. It also makes clear that there is no contradiction in interpreting 'problem' in Wittgenstein's statement in the discussion here as the problems of philosophy or the 'problems of decency in one's manner'. So the alleged dichotomy between the interpretations of Malcolm and that of Winch of Wittgenstein's statement, 'I am not a religious man but 1 cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view', can be reconciled. Even if, as per Winch's interpretations, the word 'problem' in Wittgenstein's statement meant problems of life or character, they turn out to be philosophical problems as well. And Wittgenstein was religious in unique sense of the term-the sense which is the essence of all religions.

5 Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Miracles The application of language-game and forms of life to religious beliefs, which we have analysed in the third and fourth chapters respectively, has another issue to address. It is the issue of the relationship between religious beliefs, superstitious beliefs and miracles. We have interpreted Wittgenstein's view on religious beliefs in relation to his concept of language-game and form of life which establishes that although religious belief has its own language-game and form of life, it is not segregated from language-game and form of life of non-religious aspects of life. Now, if this is so, then the question arises as to how to distinguish between different kinds of religious beliefs. In other words, how to distinguish religious from superstitious beliefs? For the purpose of taking up of such issues, this chapter is divided in the following sections: (a) Frazer on Superstition,

(b) Wittgenstein on Superstition, (c) Wittgenstein on Miracle, and

(d) Wittgenstein's Criticism of Frazer.


a) Frazer on Superstition Sir James Frazer's book The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion2h7 does not only state facts of the prevalent ritualistic practices amongst tribes but also draws conclusions on the basis of certain presumptions. It is basically an anthropological study of rituals, superstitions, magic, miracles and myths related with them. Its method is comparative and the criterion for judging the ritualistic practices is scientific rationality. At the time of its publication in 1890 the book was well received in Britain primarily due to the fact that it is based on a vast study.268 However, later on, this book lost its glamour as the inherent presumptions in its arguments could not be endorsed by everyone. The reason for that "is not that anthropologists today are uninterested in beliefs, nor that comparison is a useless method; what has been rejected is his way of collating items culled from literally everywhere and every age to produce sweeping synthetic results. The method declared inadmissible, we find an argument based on it to be largely beside the point. It seems safe to say that today literally no student of Roman religion in particular nor of primitive religion in general is sympathetic to the basic contention or method of The Golden Bough."269 Wittgenstein had his own reservations against Frazer's approach. We shall see that in the next section. Here let us elaborate the basic theme of the book. In this book Frazer tries to explain a ritual in classical antiquity-the succession of king Nemi or the priesthood of Nemi (as the king was inevitably the priest of his kingdom as 267 James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A study in magic alld religion (Great Britain: Wordsworth Reference, 1993). 268 Robert Ackerman, J.G.Frazer: His Life alld Work, (New York: Cambridge University Press,1987), p.98. 269 Ibid., p.lOS.

Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Miracles I 227

well) in ancient Italy. This he did with reference to similar rituals from all over the world. Thus Frazer says, "Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according to the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions. I have indicated. The object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi."270 He describes various rituals and deities, and admits that these are actually myths and not actual historical events. However, about succession ritual of the king at Nemi, Frazer points out, "If the sacred tree which he (the king of wood) guarded with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her special embodiment, her priest may not only have worshipped it as his goddess but embraced it as his wife. There is at least nothing absurd in the supposition, since even in the time of Pliny a noble Roman used thus to treat a beautiful beech-tree in another sacred grove of Diana of the Alban hills. He embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow, he poured wine on its trunk. Apparently he took the tree for the goddess. The custom of physically marrying men and women to trees is still practiced

270 James G. Frazer, op.cit., p. 2.


in India and other parts of the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Latium?"271 Frazer further explains the prayers and rituals of savages which were performed to bring 'fine weather and an abundant crop from gods'. There is description of these rituals in great detail which for our purpose of analysis is not so relevant. What is needed to be clarified, in connection with Wittgenstein's remarks, is Frazer's conviction that these rituals, which he calls superstitions, were performed on the basis of beliefs in sympathetic magic. He says, "The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition. In early society the king is frequently a magician as well as a priest; indeed he appears to have often attained to power by virtue of his supposed proficiency in the black or white art. Hence in order to understand the evolution of the kingship and the sacred character with which the office has commonly been invested in the eyes of savage or barbarous people, it is essential to have some acquaintance with the principles of magic and to form some conception of the extraordinary hold which the ancient system of superstition has had on the human mind in all ages and all countries. Accordingly I propose to consider the subject in some detail."272 For Frazer the magic of rituals which was performed on the supposition of bringing better life conditions was based on two principles of thought: (1) Law of Similarity, and (2) Law of Contact. The magic based on these laws is Homeopathic or Imitative Magic and Contagious Magic respectively. Thus, he says, "If we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its 271 Ibid., p.8. 272 Ibid., pp.lO-ll.


cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic."273 It should be noted here that for Frazer the principles on which magic is supposed to be based on are only baseless assumptions, a kind of false science. As he says, "Magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art."274 It is so because "The very idea of science is lacking in his (savages') undeveloped mind."275 Therefore, Frazer denounces the beliefs underlying these supposedly magical rites. For him, "If my analysis of the magician's logic is correct, its two great principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications (my emphasis) of the association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association of ideas of similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are the same: contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact."276 Both of these magical beliefs ultimately overlap each other and are called Sympathetic 273 Ibid., p.11. 274 Ibid. 275 Ibid., p.l2. 276 Ibid.


Magic because underlying assumption in both of these is that things act at each other at a distance throug h a secret sympathy. Frazer describes in detail the ritualistic practices underlying the systems of magic. Here a couple of examples will suffice our purpos e of grasping Wittgenstein's remarks on Frazer's account of rituals, magic and miracles. Thus, some of the examples of the Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic, i.e. 'like produces like' or 'an effect resembles its cause', which Frazer describes, are as follows: (1) " ... the North American Indians, we are told, believe that by drawing the figure of a person in sand, ashes, or clay, or by considering any object as his body, and then pricking it with a sharp stick or doing it any other injury, they inflict a corresponding injury on the person represented. For example, when an Ojebway Indian desires to work evil on anyone, he makes a little wooden image of his enemy and runs a needle into its head or heart, or he shoots an arrow into it, believing that wherever the needle pierces or the arrow strikes the image, his foe will the same instant be seized with a sharp pain in the corresponding part of his body; but if he intends to kill the person outright, he burns or buries the puppet , uttering certain magic words as he does so. The Peruvian Indians moulded images of fat mixed with grain to imitate the persons whom they disliked or feared, and then burned the effigy on the road where the intended victim was to pass. This they called burnin g his soul."2~7

(2)

"The same principle of make-believe, so dear to children, has led other peoples to employ a simulation of birth as a form of adoption ... At the present time it is said to be still in use in Bulgaria and among the Bosnian Turks. A woman

277 Ibid., p.13.


will take a boy whom she intends to adopt and push or pull him through her clothes; ever afterwards he is regarded as her very son, and inherits the whole property of his adoptive parents. Among the Berawans of Sarawak, when a woman desires to adopt a grown-up man or woman, a great many people assemble and have a feast. The adopting mother, seated in public on a raised and covered seat, allows the adopted person to crawl from behind between her legs. As soon as he appears in front he is stroked with the sweetscented blossoms of the areca palm, and tied to the woman. Then the adoptive mother and the adopted son or daughter, thus bound together, waddle to the end of the house and back again in front of all the spectators. The tie established between the two by this graphic imitation of childbirth is very strict; an offence committed against an adopted child is reckoned more heinous that one committed against a real child."278 (3)

"The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset on his marriage night a man should sit silent with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. When the polestar appears, he should point it out to her, and addressing the star, say, 'Firm art thou; I see thee, the firm one. Firm be thou with me, 0 thriving on!' Then turning to his wife, he should say, 'To me Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband, live with me a hundred autumns'. The intention of the ceremony is plainly to guard against the fickleness of fortune and the instability of earthly bliss by the steadfast influence of the constant star. "279

278 Ibid., pp.l4-15. 279 Ibid,. p.34.


Now, let us consider some examples of the Contagious Magic, which again like the Homoeopathic Magic, is the result of mistaken association of ideas and is based on the erroneous assumption that 'things which have once been conjoined must remain so ever afterwards, even when quile while dissevered from each other, in such a sympathetic relation that whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the other': (1)

"The Basutos are careful to conceal their extracted teeth, lest these should fall into the hands of certain mythical beings who haunt graves, and who could harm the owner of the tooth by working magic on it."280

(2)

"Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it is a worldwide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them. Thus the natives of South-eastern Australia think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are often attributed by them to this cause."281

Thus, Frazer explains rituals on the basis of the twin principles of the association of ideas. There are rituals in which both of these principles are applied, and in those cases these principles are intertwined in such a manner that it is not possible to discern as to which principle is predominant. For him, not only these two kinds of magic are bounded with each other in some cases but also they are often related to the religious beliefs of the community. Thus, he points out that magic and religion are conjoined. For Frazer these are the valid laws of science and

280 Ibid., pp.39 281 Ibid., p.44.


they are erroneously applied to superstitious beliefs and rituals. Thus, he says, "A mistaken association of similar ideas produces homoeopathic or imitative magic: a mistaken association of contiguous ideas produces contagious magic. The principles of association are excellent in themselves, and indeed absolutely essential to the working of the human mind. Legitimately applied they yield science; illegitimately applied they yield magic, the bastard sister of science. It is therefore a truism, almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessarily false and barren; for were it ever to become true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science."282 Further Frazer in Golden Bough discusses rites performed to control weather, recalling of souls etc. I have extensively quoted Frazer's points of view as they are relevant for the analysis of the remarks of Wittgenstein in the next section. However, before closing this section, it is also relevant from Wittgensteinian point of view to address such questions to Frazer, as to why savages didn't stop rites even if they happen to perceive their failures?, i.e. even after their perception that magical rites fail to achieve their intended results (which, of course, they must have observed through the passage of their practice of the rituals), why did they not stop performing them? Why did tribes act against their experiences and kept on performing? Why didn't they detect the fallacy of magic? In fact, Frazer touches upon these questions and his reply is as follows: "The answer seems to be that the fallacy was far from easy to detect, the failure by no means obvious, since in many, perhaps in most, cases the desired event did actually follow, at a longer or shorter interval, the performance of the rite which was designed to bring it about; and a mind of more than common acuteness was needed to perceive that, even in these cases, the rite was not 282 Ibid., pp.49-50.


necessarily the cause of the event. A ceremony intended to make the wind blow or the rain fall, or to work the death of an enemy, will always be followed, sooner or later, by the occurrence it is meant to bring to pass; and primitive man may be excused for regarding the occurrence as a direct result of the ceremony, and the best possible proof of its efficacy. Similarly, rites observed in the mornin g to help the sun to rise, and in spring to wake the dreaming earth from her winter sleep, will invariably appear to be crowned with success, at least within the temperate zones; for in these regions the sun lights his golden lamp in the east every morning, and year by year the vernal earth decks herself afresh with a rich mantle of green. Hence the practical savage, with his conservative instincts, might well turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical doubter, the philosophic radical, who presum ed to hint that sunrise and spring might not, after all, be direct consequences of the punctual performance of certain daily or yearly ceremonies, and that the sun might perhaps continue to rise and trees blossom though the ceremonies were occasionally intermitted, or even discontinued altogether. These sceptical doubts would naturally be repelled by the other with scorn and indignation as airy reveries subversive of the faith and manifestly contradicted by experience."283 Frazer's this hypothesis as a form of the answer to the above posed questions, as we shall see in the next section, is rejected by Wittgenstein. It is to be pointed out that Frazer uses 'magic' and 'miracle' in somewhat similar terms. As per the description of Frazer, the rites bring immediate result to change the existing state of affairs and if they are performed by a magician they are called miracles. Frazer discusses miracles in the seventh chapter, 'Incarnate Human Gods' of the Golden Bough. A miracle is generally 283 Ibid., pp.59-60.


regarded as the event which is beyond the explanation of natural law. It is taken as a deviation from the natural happenings of the world. For example, clouds are required for rain and if rain begins even without clouds it might be taken as a miracle. Similar is the case with the alleged miracle of the so-called drinking of milk by the stone idols of Lord Ganesh in the late 1990s in India. There are certain examples of miracles which we shall discuss in the next section. Here let us describe Frazer's position. According to Frazer, tribes didn't know science. They were not aware as to what is natural and what is unnatural or what is scientific and what is unscientific. So miracle as 'an event which is beyond the explanation of the natural law', could not operate in their case. For savages a miracle is the attainment of the desired goal. Thus, Frazer says, "We have to remember that by men at this stage of thought miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law. Not conceiving the existence of natural law, primitive man cannot conceive a breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common power. "284 Now, who has such a miraculous power? For Frazer the incarnated men or god-men-those people who have developed a skill to perform magic due to their accomplishment of the divine power-are endowed with power to perform miracles as per the world-wide prevalent beliefs of the savages. He distinguishes between fwo kinds of incarnated persons or godmen: (1) one who has temporarily acquired divine power, and (2) the one who has permanently gained divinity. It is the latter category of incarnated persons or god-men who are capable of miracles. Thus he says, "The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case, the incarnationcommonly known as inspiration or possession-reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power. In

284 Ibid., p93

236 I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittger.stein

other words, its usual manifestations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles. On the other hand, when the incarnation is not merely temporary, when the divine spirit has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles."285 Now, the question arises as to how, does a savage, who does not have the knowledge of the workings of the nature, know that someone has supernatural power to create miracles? Frazer does not touch directly upon the answer to such a question. For him savages didn't differentiate between deities and godmen with divine power, and thus those who were capable of producing some kind of magic on the basis of certain rituals were regarded as incarnated beings. Thus, magic of rites is the basis of pleasing deities and thereby getting the desired results, and on the other hand, magician became the incarnated godmen. Frazer says, "His (tribes') gods are often merely invisible magicians who behind the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incantations which the human magician works in a visible and bodily form among his fellows. And as gods are commonly believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers, it is easy for the magician, with his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire the reputation of being an incarnate deity. Thus beginning as little more than a simple conjurer, the medicineman or magician tends to blossom out into a full-blown god and kind in one."286 The basic features of Frazer's account of superstition and miracle, as described above, are as follows: (1) Savages who perform the rituals lack scientific knowledge. Therefore, on the basis of their opinion of causal 285 Ibid. 286 Ibid., p.92.


connection between rites and the desired goal, such as rain, they perform rituals. (2) These rituals are thus devoid of scientific knowledge and hence are nothing but superstitions. (3) So far as the practical result is concerned there is no difference between magic and miracle. (4) Both the forms of magic, i.e. homoeopathic and contagious are based on causal laws of similarity and contact respectively. (5) The concept of god of a savage is very different from that of 'a civilised man'. The gods of savages are magicians and such persons used to be kings and priests of the community as well. Such a magician, or the one who brings about miracles, is the person of permanent divinity. Only a person of such a divinity, on Frazer's account of tribes, is capable of bringing about rain etc. which is beneficial to the community. Such a person of permanent divinity or god-man does the magic or miracles on the basis of rites. About Frazer's methodology of the explanation of the rituals, it is to be noted that the basic point in his account of the ritualistic practices of tribe is that he looks for their scientific explanation. For this, he formulates his hypotheses which are intended to explain the very existence of these practices. In other words, he provides a causal explanation of these beliefs. These practices are performed on the assumption that they will lead to the desired results such as rain etc. These practices, according to Frazer, are performed as an instrument of magic or miracle which were believed to bring out the welfare of the community. Frazer doesn't bother to note the differences in the religious and scientific standpoints. He criticises tribes' religious way of life from scientific scrutiny. It is this scrutiny which Wittgenstein opposes in his 'Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough '. We shall deal with Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer's account of rituals but before that let us analyse Wittgenstein's views on superstitions and miracles.

238 I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein (b) Wittgenstein on Superstition

Before beginning to deal with Wittgenstein's criticism of Frazer's account of superstitions and miracles, it seems pertinent to delineate as to what according to Wittgenstein is superstition, and what is Wittgenstein's notion of miracle?, as such delineation will put forth proper perspectives of Wittgenstein. Let us begin with Wittgenstein's distinction between religious beliefs and superstitious beliefs which will provide us his notion of superstitions. Wittgenstein's distinction between religious beliefs and superstitious beliefs has been the issue of debate among Indian Wittgensteinians. We shall deal with the debate in this section which has recently appeared in the JICPR. SO it has been a debatable issue as to on what grounds Wittgenstein distinguishes between a genuine religious belief and a superstitious belief. In the third chapter we have analysed that Wittgenstein maintains that religious belief is related to non-religious aspects of life and it is this relatedness which, on the one hand, provides distinctiveness to religious beliefs and, on the other hand, saves them from fideistic/ relativistic/ autonomistic criticisms. Now, let us discuss Wittgenstein's distinction between religious and superstitious beliefs and in this context delve into the recent debate amongst Indian Wittgensteinians regarding Wittgenstein's exact position. Like Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein maintains that 'fear' is the sign of religious beliefs. Here, there is a kind of trust which is based on awe, and distress. He says, "The Christian religion is only for the one who needs infinite help, that is only for the one who suffers infinite distress ....Christian faith-so I believe-is refuge in this ultimate distress" (CV; p. 52e). He stresses on the same characteristic of religious belief and distinguishes it from superstition on the ground that in a superstitious belief there is


an emphasis on evidence. Wittgenstein clarifies this in the context of the 'Last Judgement'. He says, "I mean, if a man said to me after a dream that he believed in the Last Judgement, I'd try to find what sort of impression it gave him. One attitude: 'It will be in about 2,000 years. It will be bad for so and so and so, etc.' Or it may be one of terror. In the case where there is hope, terror, etc., would I say there is insufficient evidence if he says: 'I believe .. .'? I can't treat these words as I normally treat 'I believe so and so'. It would be entirely beside the point, and also if he said his friend so and so and his grandfather had had the dream and believed, it would be entirely beside the point"(Lc' p. 62). Thus, the religious attitude in an Ultimate Reality is beyond reason, whereas a superstitious attitude imbibes reason, e.g., an attitude of actualisation of the above described beliefs. Thus, in the 'Lectures on Religious Belief', Wittgenstein says that some people maintain religious reason to be a distinct kind of reason but for him there is no reason here. He says, "Father O'Hara is one of those people who make it a question of science. Here we have people who treat this evidence in a different way. They base things on evidence which taken in one way would seem exceedingly flimsy. They base enormous things on this evidence. Am I to say they are unreasonable? I wouldn't call them unreasonable. I would say, they are certainly not reasonable, that's obvious. 'Unreasonable' implies, with everyone, rebuke. I want to say: they don't treat this as a matter of reasonability. Anyone who reads the Epistles will find it said: not only that it is not reasonable, but that it is folly. Not only that it is not reasonable, but it doesn't pretend to be. What seems to me ludicrous about O'Hara is his making it appear to be reasonable ... I would definitely call O'Hara unreasonable. I would say, if this is religious belief, then it's all superstition. But I would ridicule it, not by saying it is based on insufficient evidence. I would say: here is a man who is cheating himself" (Le, p. 57-59).


So Wittgenstein, not only deplores Frazer's denouncement of tribes' rituals in his RF, but also criticises Father 0' Hara's justification of religious beliefs in his 'Lectures on Religious Belief'. Father O'Hara "tries to support religious beliefs with the help of rational justification whereas Frazer denounces tribal religious beliefs as superstitious because they are irrational or unscientific. As O'Hara and Frazer both introduce some kind of rational justification for religious beliefs Wittgenstein critises them."287 Although there are similarities in the treatment of Father O'Hara and Frazer, so far as both take recourse to rational justification of religious beliefs and Wittgenstein criticises both of them, there are differences in their approaches as well. "The difference between the two is that Wittgenstein criticises O'Hara's justification of religious belief qnd rejects Frazer's denouncement of religious belief. For Wittgenstein Frazer makes religious beliefs look like error as he searches Jor their scientific foundations and O'Hara's rational justification of religious beliefs makes them superstitious. For Wittgenstein a religious belief needs no rational justification as its support."28B Why is it so? Why is it that there is no role of reason in religion. For Wittgenstein: "Religion says: Do this!-Thillk like that! but it cannot justify this and it only need try to do so to become repugnant; since for every reason it gives, there is a cogent counter-reason" (CV; p.34e). Thus, the difference between a religious belief and a superstitious belief is that the former is based on awe, fear, terror etc. and the latter is based on reasoning and evidence. So, "h~ving belief in the Last Judgement does not necessarily mean that one has a religiolls belief. One may have a superstitious 287 K. C. Pandey, "Wittgenstein's Ullutterable: A Response to Suresh Chandra's 'Some Remarks 0/1 Wittgcllsteill 011 Religious Beliefs and Supcrstitioll', "JICPR. 29:1(2002), p.220. 288 Ibid., p. 221.


attitude towards the Last Judgement."289 The attitude which searches for reason and evidence is a superstitious attitude, whereas a religious attitude is based on fear, terror etc. In this context of the distinction between religious and superstitious beliefs, it is to be pointed out that there is a kind of disagreement among Wittgensteinians as to whether Wittgenstein changed his views on the above described defining features of religious and superstitious beliefs or didn't. Some Wittgensteinians maintain that Wittgenstein changed his viewpoint regarding basic features of religious beliefs and superstitious beliefs. Thus, for Suresh Chandra: "Wittgenstein did not stick to the position of the 'Lectures on Religious Belief' for a long time. Later what was the substance of religious belief became the substance of superstition. A conversion had occurred ... Just after ten years of his lectures, what was a genuine religious belief became a superstition. What was a duck has now become a rabbit; a change in his view has occurred, he is viewing the same thing now differently ... Thus fear, terror and torment which were the substance of religious belief have now become the substance of superstition."290 In support of this position, Suresh Chandra, quite controversially, cites Wittgenstein: "Religious faith & superstition are quite different. The one springs from fear and is a sort of false science. The other is trusting" (CV, p.82). So, for Suresh Chandra, Wittgenstein in 1948 changed his religious point of view. For him, what for earlier Wittgenstein (in LC) was the basic feature of superstitious beliefs, is not the basic feature of religious belief in 1948-religious belief is based on trust and superstitious belief is based on fear. He says, "In his 'Lectures on Religious Beliefs', Wittgenstein made fear as the ground for 289 Suresh Chandra, "Some Remarks on 'Wittgenstein on Religious Beliefs and Superstition',"JICPR, 14:3 (1997), p.158. 290 Ibid.


religious belief! because he wished to avoid a rational ground. Once a rational ground is introduced, rational explanation of religious belief cannot be avoided. He allowed superstition to have a rational ground. But in the Culture and Value remark of 1948 he has made fear as the ground of superstition. Then like religious belief, superstition too becomes free from any rational explanation. Of course, Wittgenstein is silent now about the question whether religious belief is based on a rational or nonrational ground. In saying 'Religious faith is trusting' ground of the religiOUS faith has not been made explicit. Suppose the ground of the religious faith is also non-rational, then the distinction between religious belief and superstition disappears. There is a third alternative to rational and irrational grounds, beliefs may be 'groundless'. Ouring the last years of his life Wittgenstein started developing the idea that certain beliefs must be accepted as groundless in order for other beliefs to have grounds. "291 I have contested such a viewpoint which is based on the interpretation of the above described quotation of CV. My point is this: "why not, on the basis of the above quote (of CV), could religious faith be treated as resulting from fear and superstition from trust? I do not find any reason as to why this could not be done. In fact the groundlessness of religious belief does not occur to Wittgenstein only in 011 Certainty or Culture and Value, i.e. during the last two years of his life, as Suresh Chandra thinks. The very beginning of Wittgenstein's philosophical journey, i.e. Notebooks and Tractatlls Logico-Philosophiclls, treats ethics and religious beliefs as transcendental in the sense that they are meaning of life and thus cannot be put into words. It is erroneous to say that for Wittgenstein religious beliefs, which were grounded in fear in 1938, relapsed into groundlessness in 1948. For Wittgenstein, from the Notebooks to On Certainty and 291 Ibid., p.l59.


Culture and Value, groundlessness or nonsensicality is the reason that they cannot be put into words; it is very essence of religious beliefs."292 In fact, fear can be taken as the ground of religious beliefs as it is the basic feature of such beliefs and experiences. The religious fear, awe trembling, reverence etc. have special significance in the life of a religious believer. On the other hand a superstitious beliefs is based on evidence and reasoning. It should be emphasised here that it is the attitude of a person towards a certain religious belief which makes that belief religious or superstitious. This I have explained in Diirshanik Traimiisi~93 in the context of a recent controversy regarding the so-called miracle that the idols of Lord Ganesha did actually drink milk. The answer to the question, as to whether such a belief in the divine miracle is justified or not, can be given in the context of the attitude of the devotee as such. And on this issue even two believer in the miracle can have different attitudes. One may take the miracle as fear, trembling and the like, and the other believer, after observance of the so-called miracle, i.e. drinking of the milk by the idol of Lord Ganesha, may believe that there is sufficient evidence to believe. The attitude of the first devotee is religious whereas that of the other devotee is superstitious. (c) Wittgenstein on Miracle

For Wittgenstein miracle is something extraordinary, something which cannot be explained by science. In LE he discusses his views on miracle in reference to the feeling of wonder. In such a feeling there is no fact as it is the feeling of absolute value. Therefore a feeling of miracle cannot be put into words. He endorses the general meaning of 'miracle' as something which is 292 K.c. Pandey, op.cit., p. 223. 293 K. C. Pandey, 'Wittgenstein Ka Andh-Vishvas Sambandhf Vicar', Darshanik Traimasik, 46:3-4, (2000), pp.90-97.


against the laws of nature and caused by the supernatural and analyses it keeping in view its spiritual or religious content. Thus he says, "... we all know what in ordinary life would be called a miracle. It obviously is simply an event the like of which we have never yet seen. Now, suppose such an event happened. Take the case that one of you suddenly grew a lion's head and began to roar. Certainly that would be as extraordinary a thing as I can imagine. Now, whenever we should have recovered from our surprise, what I would suggest would be to fetch a doctor and have the case scientifically investigated and if it were not for hurting him I would have him vivisected. And where would the miracle have got to? For it is clear that when we look at it in this way everything miraculous has disappeared; unless what we mean by this term is merely that a fact has not yet been explained by science which again means that we have hitherto failed to group this fact with others in a scientific system. This shows that it is absurd to say 'science has proved that there are no miracles'. That truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle. For imagine whatever fact you may, it is not in itself miraculous in the absolute sense of that term. For we see now that we have been using the word 'miracle' in a relative and an absolute sense. And I will now describe the experience of wondering at the existence of the world by saying: it is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle. Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself" (LE, pp.43-44). Thus, we see that a scientific way of looking at a miracle cannot completely explain it. A scientific analysis can explain the relative value of a miracle but it can never explain its absolute value. Further, a miracle is like wondering at the existence of the world and such wondering can be compared with wondering at


the existence of language as such because a miracle cannot be put into words. Now, if miracles cannot be put into words then the question arises as to how to know about the happening of a miracle. In his reply to such a question Wittgenstein says that about the inexpressibility of miraculous "all I have said is again that we cannot express what we want to express and that all we say about the absolute miraculous remains nonsense"(LE, p.44). Here nonsense does not mean 'inferior' but it only emphasises that any attempt to express the absolute value of the miracle, like absolute ethical or religious feelings, results into a meaningless expression. In the previous section we have seen Frazer's account of tribes' notion of miracle in which there is no distinction between a magic and a miracle as both are against the laws of nature. Frazer explains savages' notion of miracle in scientific terms. The savages believed the magician as the god-m an-the one who brings about magical or miraculous events. For Frazer, savages didn't have the abstract notion of God as we civilized people do. For them a miracle is something that can be caused by the godmen. Miracle, for these savages, is not something which is against the law of nature or as something which is brought about by God as, for Frazer, they were not aware of any law of nature. Here, it is to be noted that there is a distinction between the knowledge of the laws of nature and understanding of nature. It can be contested against Frazer that although the tribes might not have had knowledge of the abstract laws of nature, they might have had a sound understanding of the nature. The basis of such a reasoning is that their various festivals were held in a definite season and weather conditions.

If this reasoning is correct then even savages' notion of a miracle is not different from that of ours. They also, in a different way, held that miracles are against the laws of nature and are


caused by God. Whatever is the matter, Wittgenstein didn't believe that miracles could be caused by a god-man or by a saint. He says, "A miracle is, as it were, a gesture which God makes. As a man sits quietly and then makes an impressive gesture, God lets the world run on smoothly & then accompanies the words of a Saint by a symbolic occurrence, a gesture of nature. It would be an instance if, when a saint has spoken, the trees around him bowed, as if in reverence. Now, do I believe that this happens? I don't. The only way for me to believe in a miracle in this sense would be to be impressed by an occurrence in this particular way. So that I should say e.g.: 'It was impossible to see these trees & not to feel that they were responding to the words'. Just as I might say, 'It is impossible to see the face of this dog and not to see he is alert and full of attention to what his master is doing'. And I can imagine that the mere report of the words and life of a saint can make someone believe the report that the trees bowed. But I am not so impressed" (CV; pp.51e-52e). Thus, Wittgenstein endorses the spiritual explanation of the occurrence of a miracle and believes that it could have been caused by the Ultimate Reality. But he rejects the interference of any human being in the laws of nature. Probably, it is so because for him every human interference in nature can be explained, whereas a miracle which is supernatural in its occurrence cannot be explained. His readiness for marvelling at the occurrence of the miracle shows his conviction of praise for all that is supernatural and rejection of all that which is superstitious. So Wittgenstein rejects god-men etc. because they have no absolute value but only relative value which ultimately can be explained away as they are based on facts and nothing else. However, a scientist will not understand Wittgenstein's notion of the absolute value of miracles and Wittgenstein has admitted this. Criticising such a scientific standpoint, which also is a standpoint of the anthropologists such as Frazer, Wittgenstein says, "The


mathematician too can of course marvel at the miracles (the crystal) of nature; but can he do it, once a problem has arisen about what he sees? Is it really possible as long as the object he finds awe-inspiring or gazes at with awe is shrouded in a philosophical fog?" (CV; p.65e). Thus, Wittgenstein shows that in order to marvel at a miracle one has to come out of the scientific mode of thinking. And at the same time one has to be cautious about not elapsing into superstitions such as beliefs in god-men or saints. (d) Wittgenstein's Criticism of Frazer We have described Frazer's account of superstition and miracle and we have also described Wittgenstein's view about superstitious beliefs and miracles. Now, let us consider Wittgenstein's criticism of Frazer's position. Wittgenstein didn't endorse Frazer's scientific explanation of superstition and miracle. Frazer criticises savages' religious beliefs as superstition and their notion of miracle as nothing but magic. For Wittgenstein, Frazer has reduced savages' religious beliefs and their notion of miracle to superstition or magic. Now let us analyse Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer's account of savages' rites. We have described that for Frazer the division of savages' rites into Homoeopathic Magic and Contagious Magic is based on the law of similarity and the law of contiguity. As these two principles have been the basis of Frazer's account, therefore, Wittgenstein's remarks can be regrouped under these two heads. However, as Wittgenstein's most of the remarks apply to both of these so-called principles, here I will not create any kind of dichotomy among them. The basic theme of Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer's account of superstition and miracle is that Frazer's hypothesis that tribes perform their rites on the basis of their false belief of the causal connection between the rite and the desired goal, is misplaced.


For Wittgenstein, Frazer's causal explanation of rites is not satisfactory. It is not satisfactory because Frazer tried to prove that rites were based on faulty reasons. Actually, rites were not based on any reason. Wittgenstein is against the theorisation of rites. He is against Frazer's view that "religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please him. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him."294 Commenting on this position, Wittgenstein holds that such theorisation of religion is a mistake. Wittgenstein says, "Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory: it makes these views look like errors. Was Augustin in error, then, when he called upon God on every page of the confessions? But-one might say-if he was not in error, surely the Buddhist holy man was-or anyone else-whose religion gives expression to completely different views. But neither of them was in error, except when he sets forth a theory"(RF, p.61). At this point Ayer objects to Wittgenstein's view. Ayer says that here "the implication is that one need not be committing oneself to any theory when one engages in religious practices or when one expresses religious beliefs. Even when the members of different sects appear to contradict one another, neither party need be in error. That it is equally the case that neither party need be asserting any truth is a point that Wittgenstein fails to stress."295 One can counter Ayer as to what kind of truth he is talking about? How could his verificationist framework allow him to admit the universe of religious truth? It is Ayer's commitment to his verificationist framework which prohibits 294 James G. Frazer, op.cit., p. 50. 295 A.J. Ayer, Ludwig Wittgensteill (England: Penguin Books,1985), p.88.


him to distinguish between the realms of scientific and religious truths and therefore he cannot perceive that even two contradictory religious beliefs might express the same truth. Actually, here Wittgenstein tries to explain that Frazer's explanation that these rites are based on the stupidity of savages, is not correct. For Wittgenstein, "The very idea of wanting to explain a practice-for example, the killing of the priestking-seems wrong to me. All that Frazer does is to make them plausible to people who think as he does. It is very remarkable that in the final analysis all these practices are presented as, so to speak, pieces of stupidity. But it will never be plausible to say that mankind does all that out of sheer stupidity"{RF, p.61}. On the basis of theorisation that a religious practice is always based on some beliefs, Frazer denounces the savages' religious beliefs as uncivilised. Wittgenstein holds that there is no difference between religious faith of a civilized man and that of a savage as both of these are based on profound human feelings. A rational scrutiny will not reveal true nature of any kind of religious belief. Thus, for Wittgenstein, there is no dichotomy between religious beliefs of a civilised man and that of a savage. So it is not correct to criticise the savages' religious beliefs as superstition and endorse a civilised man's religious beliefs as something unquestionable. Wittgenstein rejects Frazer's dichotomisation of religious beliefs of savages and that of civilised humanity. For Wittgenstein, "The religious actions, or the religious life, of the priest-king are no different in kind from any genuinely religious action of today, for example, a confession of sins "{RF, p.64}. And, "All religions are wonderful, ... even those of the most primitive tribes. The ways in which people express their religious feeling differ enormously. "296 It is on this ground 296 Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991), p.310.


that Wittgenstein criticises Frazer: "What a narrow spiritual life on Frazer's part! As a result: how impossible it was for him to conceive of a life different from that of the England of his time! Frazer cannot imagine a priest who is not basically a present-day English parson with the same stupidity and dullness"(RF, p.65). It is to be noted here that commenting on Wittgenstein's this remark, Ayer's allegation is that Wittgenstein "does little to explain the symbolism (expressive value) which he blames Frazer for failing to discuss."297 Actually, Wittgenstein, as we shall observe later, does establish symbolic or expressive value of the rites. Even Ayer himself has asserted that "this is not to say that ritual is never purely symbolic."298 Ayer's mistake is that he forgets that here Wittgenstein is actually trying to establish the logical similarity between religious beliefs of a tribe and that of the civilised world. For Wittgenstein, qualitatively there is no difference between the civilised religious beliefs and the savages' religious beliefs as both need not be explained but they themselves get explained. Now if there is no logical difference between these beliefs then there is no ground to criticise one and endorse the other. Wittgenstein does not endorse Frazer's view that rites were based on certain beliefs and the beliefs caused the existence of rites. For him, "No opinion serves as the foundation of a religious symbol "(RF, p.64). Now, the question arises as to why a certain kind of belief cannot be regarded as the reason for rites? A Wittgensteinian response to such a query would be, as shown in the above view of Wittgenstein, that (i) one does a rite and gets satisfied, (ii) belief is not that aspect of rite which cannot be done away with, and (iii) generally our actions are based on either true or false beliefs, but "the characteristic feature of ritualistic action 297 A.J. Ayer, op.cit., p.92. 298 Ibid., p.91.


is in no sense a view, an opinion, whether true or false, although an opinion-a belief-can itself be ritualistic or part of a rite "(RF, p.68). Therefore; Wittgenstein concludes: "I believe that the characteristic feature of primitive man is that he does not act from opinions (contrary to Frazer )"(RF, p.71). Moreover, in cases of those rites where it is argued that they were certainly based on some beliefs or motives, Wittgenstein argues that in those cases it is not correct to hold that a certain belief caused a certain ritual. Rituals are performed on the basis of a fixed motive. Therefore, Wittgenstein holds that on the part of Frazer "it was a mistake to suppose that there was only one 'reason', in the sense of 'motive', which led people to perform a particular action-to suppose that there was 'one motive, which was the motive'. He gave an instance of this sort of mistake Frazer's statement, in speaking of magic, that when primitive people stab an effigy of a particular person, they believe that they have hurt the person in question. He said that primitive people do not always entertain this 'false scientific belief', though in some cases they may: that they may have quite different reasons for stabbing the effigy. But he said that the tendency to suppose that there is 'one motive which is the motive' was 'enormously strong', giving as an instance that there are theories of play each of which gives only one answer to the question 'Why do children play?'''(WL, p.106). Moreover, when rites are performed in order to get some desired result, there is also an involvement of religious faith which is a profound and inexpressible human response. Thus, "it was a mistake to suppose that the motive is always 'to get something useful'. He gave as an instance of this mistake Frazer's supposition that 'people at a certain stage thought it useful to kill a person, in order to get a good crop "'(WL, p.106). Frazer's instrumental or causal explanation of rituals shows that savages performed rituals on the basis of their unscientific notion of causal connection between rituals and the desired goal.


Tribes believed that if they perform certain rituals they would achieve certain results. Defending his causal, thesis, as we have seen, Frazer replies to such queries as to why in the long run it didn't occur to the tribes that there exists no such connection as certainly at some point of time they definitely would have observed that even their performance of ritual did not bring the desired result, and that sooner or later the result, e.g. rain etc., used to follow. Wittgenstein takes strong exception to such a view. He says, "Frazer says that it is very hard to disc'over the error in magic-and that is why it has lasted so long-because, for example, an incantation that is supposed to bring rain certainly seems efficacious sooner or later. But then it is surely remarkable that people don't realise earlier that sooner or later (my emphasis) it's going to rain anyhow" (RP, p.62). Criticising Frazer's above mentioned explanation, Wittgenstein points out, ".. .it is surely remarkable (my italics) that people don't realise either that sooner or later it's going to rain anyhow" (RP, p.62). For Ayer, Wittgenstein's above objection to Frazer's explanation is not correct. Ayer says, "I do not find this so remarkable (my emphasis). If the believers in the efficacy of the rain dance never omit to perform it, what ground do they have for concluding that the rain would arrive anyway? One might despise them for failing to experiment, omitting the ceremony for once and seeing what happened, but this could well be a risk that they were not prepared to take. If their survival depended on the rain, and they firmly believed that but for their performance of the rain dance the rain would not come, would it be rational for them to make the experiment? Is it always rational to test one's beliefs? The cost of the test has to be considered. Unless I wished to commit suicide, and did not command an easier way to die, it would not be rational for me to jump out of the window in order to test the


law of gravitation."299 It is plausible to hold Ayer's position that savages might have not been prepared to take risk by way of experimenting the efficacy of the causal connection between ritual and the rain and therefore they would have never stopped performing rituals. Hence, finally, there would not have been any ground to test whether their rituals were efficacious or not. But Ayer forgets to view the other side of his position. Even by way of having hypothetical grant that savages never left observing the rite, it cannot be maintained that they had never had occasion to guestion the efficacy of their rite as in reality observation of rite is not co-terminus with the attainment of the desired goal, e.g. rain. In other words, Ayer fails to see the hole in his argument that, even without unfailing observance of rituals, tribes could have known that rain is not the result of a rite as sooner or later it would have occurred to them that rain did not follow the rite and rain comes even without performing the rite. Further, let us take another aspect of the instrumental or causal argument. Criticising Frazer's causal hypothesis of the ritual to please the rain king Mata Kodak of Africa in which ritual was performed when the rainy period comes, Wittgenstein points out "that they do not really believe that he can make it rain, otherwise they would make it rain in the dry periods of the year in which the land is 'a parched and arid desert'. For if one assumes that the people formerly instituted this office of RainKing out of stupidity, it is nevertheless certainly clear that they had previously experienced that the rains begin in March, and then they would have had the Rain-King function for the other part of the year. Or again: toward morning, when the sun is about to rise, rites of day-break are celebrated by the people, but not during the night, when they simply burn lamps" (RF, p.72). Commenting on this Ayer, second time, argues, "We are not 299 Ibid., p.89.


bound to suppose that these people began with the observation that the rain fell only at certain seasons, and then limited their propitiation of the Rain-King to the times when they already had inductive grounds for believing that the rain would fall."300 Thus rejecting Wittgenstein's position Ayer applies his previous argument and says, "Once again, the crucial experiment would be their omitting to perform the ceremony at the appropriate time and finding that it made no difference, and again they might reasonably have been afraid to run the risk. "301 On the same ground, Ayer's second criticism also appears to be fallacious as it is based on the same premise. Ayer's this criticism also targets Wittgenstein's rejection of causal thesis. We have seen that for Wittgenstein tribes knew that there is no causal connection between their performance of ritual and attainment of the desired result, otherwise, they would have performed their rites even in a non-rainy season. We, in the connection of Ayer's previous criticism, have already observed that tribes definitely would sooner or later have known that there is no causal connection between the rite and the rain as earlier it might have happened that their performance of the rite didn't bring the rain and rain occurred even without performing the ritual. Thus, Ayer's this criticism of Wittgenstein's rejection of Frazer's account of rite goes in vain. The performance of rituals in the rainy season shows their expressive value than their casual value. Another aspect of Wittgenstein's rejection of Frazer's instrumental or causal theory has come under attack of Ayer. Demolishing Frazer's theorisation of rites, Wittgenstein says, "The same savage, who stabs the picture of his enemy apparently in order to kill him, really builds his hut out of wood and carves his arrow skilfully and not in effigy" (RP, p.64). Had tribes 300 lbid.,p.90. 301lbid.


believed in homoeopathic magic's causal connection, they would have made their hut out of effigy. Here Ayer's counter argument is that we do not "need to penetrate the jungle of anthropology in order to expose the weakness of Wittgenstein's argument. Technology in Europe was quite well developed by the seventeenth century, yet this did not prevent the existence of a widespread belief in the potency of witchcraft. Those accused of being witches were not tortured and burned of their performance of symbolic acts; they were thought to work actual mischief. Again, astrology is not scientifically respectable: yet it has commanded very wide credence down to the present day. The natives of southern India possess advanced technological and artistic skills yet there are many things that they will not do, such as celebrating marriages, unless the situation of the stars is thought to be propitious. Nor is this just a symbolic observance. It is believed that if the stars are flouted actual misfortunes will follow."302 In fact, this criticism does not apply on Wittgenstein's position. Wittgenstein himself, as we have described in the above sections, didn't believe in miracles such as bending of the bow of a tree by a saint etc. So, it cannot be attributed to him that he would defend witchcraft or astrology. However, there is another aspect to these things and that has to do with their expressive value. So far as people get satisfaction in such observances, there is nothing wrong in them. After all, our life does not always move in the direction shown by science. Further, Wittgenstein rejects Frazer's causal explanation about the origin of the rituals. He says, "it was a mistake to suppose that why, e.g. the account of the Beltane Festival 'impresses us so much' is because it has 'developed from a festival in which a real man was burnt'. He accused Frazer of thinking that this was the reason. He said that our puzzlement as 302 lbid.,p.91.


to why it impresses us is not diminished by giving the causes from which the festival arose, but is diminished by finding other similar festivals: to find these may make it seem 'natural', whereas to give the causes from which it arose cannot do this. In this respect he said that the question 'Why does this impress us?' is like the aesthetic questions 'Why is this beautiful?' or 'Why will this bass not do?"'(WL, p.106-7). Further, "He said that Darwin, in his 'expression of the Emotions', made a mistake similar to Frazer's, e.g. in thinking that 'because our ancestors, when angry, wanted to bite' is a sufficient explanation of why we show our teeth when angry"(WL, p.107). As against Frazer's account of the causal connection between beliefs and rituals, Wittgenstein maintains that in religious life both are just there and one should not be regarded as the cause of the other. Wittgenstein says, "Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved. That is obviously not based on the belief that it will have some specific effect on the object which the picture represents. It aims at satisfaction and achieves it. Or rather: it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied" (RF, p.64). Interpreting this, Clack says, "If I am away from the woman I love, I may carry a photograph of her with me. And when I feel the pain of her absence I may kiss that photograph, that image of her. But in kissing her image, I do not believe that she will feel the touch of my lips on her face. That kiss is simply an expression on my love. And if my love affair turns sour, if the woman hurts me, then I may tear her photograph to pieces, or burn it. But that would not be an attempt to kill her. In burning the photograph I would be expressing my anger and frustration. And there are all sorts of cases where such homoeopathic actions are performed and with


no instrumental motive."303 Wittgenstein emphasises on expressive element of certain rituals or human gestures. Thus, he says, "When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But 1 certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything. 'I am venting my anger'. And all rites are of this kind. Such actions may be called Instinct-actions.-And an historical explanation, says, that I or my ancestors previously believed that beating the ground does help is shadow-boxing, for it is a superfluous assumption that explains nothing"(RF, p.72). Thus, Wittgenstein's explanation for the association of the beliefs and rituals is that both are there, and none is the cause of other and the best way to see them is to look at their expressive element. But there are some critiques of this expressive view of Wittgenstein. Clack, for example, says, "Although this expressive interpretation of homeopathic magic and of rain-making ceremonies does have a prima facie plausibility, it has to be said that as a general account of magic it is inadequate. Frazer, for example, documents the case of an Abyssinian king, the Alfai, who is held to be able to cast down rain, and 'if he disappoints the people's expectation and a great drought arises in the land, the Alfai is stoned to death'. This suggests strongly that the ritualists do believe that the king has it within his powers to make rain, and that they are therefore not purely expressing hopes or fears. Otherwise, why would they be disappointed if he failed to make the skies open? So this is something of a stumbling block for the expressive thesis. While it does provide some effective rebuttals of gratuitous instrumentalism (placing flowers on a grave, for example, is not intended to gratify the sense of smell believed still to be possessed by the dead man), 303 Brain C. Clack, An Introduction to Wittgmstein's Philosophy of Religion (Edingburgh: Edinburgh University Press,1999), p.63.


expressivism fails fully to engage with the seriousness with which ritual is undertaken in primitive society."304 Such criticisms of Wittgenstein's expressive description of rites take it to be 'a general account of magic' or 'a thesis'. Wittgenstein is against any theorisation. Therefore, such criticisms do not apply on Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer's causal account of rituals. Thus, Wittgenstein's attitude on superstition and miracle is quite unique. He debunks Frazer on the ground that his scientific interpretation of savages' rituals and miracles presents them as superstitions. In order to grasp the inner structure or depth of the tribes' rituals, one needs to look into their context. There is no qualitative difference among various religious beliefs belonging to different people and sects.

304 Brain C. Clack, op.cit., p.64.

6 Conclusion We have taken up the following issues which are related to various aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion: 1.

What is the ground of religious beliefs in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion? Is there any ground for such beliefs or is it groundless?

2.

How does Wittgenstein deny the possibility of private language and yet accept the possibility of mystical experience?

3. Whether autonomy of language-games of religious beliefs is complete or restricted? And, what is the answer of the criticism of fideism?, i.e. how could it be shown that autonomous religious beliefs can be distinguished from superstitious beliefs? 4.

How could Wittgenstein's statement: "I am not a religious man, but cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view," be interpreted?

5.

How could Wittgenstein's response to Frazer's criticism of tribal rituals and religious beliefs be interpreted?

We have seen that all the above mentioned problems, in their order, have been analysed in the different chapters. I have tried to provide an alternative approach to solve the above-described problems which are quite alive in debate and discussions among Wittgensteinians. However, Wittgenstein is not anxious to solve these problems of philosophy of religion as nothing can be


achieved from such solutions. For Wittgenstein, 'how little is achieved when these problems are solved'. Quoting this from his memoir of Wittgenstein, Engelmann says, "What he wants to demonstrate is that such endeavours of human thought to 'utter the unutterable' are a hopeless attempt to satisfy man's eternal metaphysical urge."305 An analysis of the above issues shows that they can be divided into (i) inexpressibility of religious beliefs, and (ii) language-games and forms of life of religious beliefs. Now, the question is: did Wittgenstein keep on holding the unutterability or inexpressibility thesis of his earlier thought in the later phases of his religious point of view as well? Or did he, after his adoptation of the concepts of language-game and form of life relinquish it? In the context of such questions, here I will try to analyse the unity and continuity of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. Wittgensteinians disagree about this issue. Some Wittgensteinians are very sharp in their criticism of the view that there is one Wittgenstein. For such a Wittgensteinian: "To the admirers of Wittgenstein there has occurred no change in Wittgenstein's view. Their minds do not register significant changes. They try to introduce consistency and coherence where no such things are possible. For the sake of their stereotyped ideas, which lack all kinds of freshness, they do not hesitate in misrepresenting Wittgenstein. Like them too Wittgenstein should continue holding the same stereotyped views."306 The issue of the continuity of Wittgenstein's earlier religious thought into his later writings is actually related to the general distinction of Wittgenstein's philosophy of language into earlier and later. The basis of the earlier Wittgenstein is basically TLP

305 Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a MenlOir (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1967), p. 96. 306 Suresh Chandra, "'Some Remarks on 'Wittgenstein on Religious Beliefs and Superstition' "JICPR, 14:3 (1997) ,p.158.

Conclusion I 261

and NB and the later Wittgenstein is PI and his other writings. The foundation of such a cleavage in Wittgenstein's thoughts are his seemingly, but not actually, mutually incompatible theories of meaning. For earlier Wittgenstein the picture theory, whereas for later Wittgenstein concepts such as use theory, language-game and form of life determine meaning of an expression. Corresponding to these changes in his views about determination of meaning, there have been some significant changes in Wittgenstein's views on religious beliefs. These changes coincide with the changes in his views on theory of meaning. At the time when he endorsed picture theory of meaning he upheld the inexpressibility of religious beliefs and when he formulated language-game, he applied it to religious beliefs. Thus, clearly like philosophy of language, there seem to be two Wittgensteins in philosophy of religion also. The earlier Wittgenstein viewed the inexpressibility of religious beliefs on the ground that it cannot be expressed in language since language expresses its meaning as per the picture theory. For the later Wittgenstein religious belief has its own language-game and form of life. Therefore, the meaning of a religious proposition can be understood only in its context and out of that context the religious belief has no meaning. However, it is an oversimplified interpretation of Wittgenstein's religious point of view. The earlier and later dichotomy neither in Wittgenstein's philosophy of language nor in his philosophy of religion is straightforward. It is more ambiguous in his philosophy of religion as compared to his philosophy of language. That is, there are more arguments to show the unity and continuity of Wittgenstein's earlier thoughts into his later writings on religion than the continuity in his philosophy of language. This is what we turn to argue now.


The main issue is not whether Wittgenstein's views have undergone a change or not. No one denies that. There is no debate about it that Wittgenstein changed his earlier view about picture theory of meaning. But the basic point of debate is: whether he completely did away with his picture theory or does it play some role in the determination of meaning in later Wittgenstein as well. That is, whether there is any unity and continuity between the thoughts of earlier and later Wittgenstein or not. In other words, the question is: did Wittgenstein completely discard the picture theory of meaning or does this theory find its different role in later Wittgenstein? Wittgensteinians are divided on this issue as well. There are different interpretations of Wittgenstein on his approach to the picture theory of meaning. Some Wittgensteinians maintain that Wittgenstein completely rejected picture theory of meaning in his later writings. For such Wittgensteinians: "what Wittgenstein rejected in his later philosophy was the picture theory of meaning and everything connected with it."307 Kenny has quite succinctly reformulated and rejected this view. This view, as Kenny puts it, maintains that "whereas the Tractatus held that sentences had meaning or sense because they were pictures, the Investigations says that the meaning of a sentence is its use or employment or application; the conception that a significant sentence is a picture is replaced in the later thought by the view that the sense of a sentence is determined by the circumstances in which it is uttered and the language-game to which it belongs."308 Kenny immediately after reformulating this thesis maintains that

307 Irving Block, 'The Unity of Wittgenstein's Philosophy' in Language,

Logic, and Philosophy; Proceedings of The Fourth International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. Rudolf Haller and Wolfgang Grassl (Vienna: HolderPichler-Tempsky,1980), p.233. 308 Antony Kenny, Wittgellsteill (London: Penguine,19730), pp.219-220.

Conclusion I 263

such a view is 'wholly misleading'. For Kenny, " ...the picture theory survived the abandonment of the metaphysics of logical atomism... The development of the notions of language-game and family likeness necessitated the radical modification, but not the abandonment, of the theory.,,3Q9 For him: "...the picture theory needs supplementing, rather than that it is false; that the theory of meaning as use is a complement rather than a rival to the picture theory. "310 Similarly, Hudson argues for the space of the picture theory in later Wittgenstein. He quotes PI §43 which says that "for a large class of cases-though not for all-in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."311 And he argues, "It is important to note the 'though not for all' here; and also the remark which immediately follows that which I have just quoted in PI §43; viz. 'And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer'. Wittgenstein must not be taken to have said that language can never be used to name things, only that it is not exclUSively so used."312 Further, commenting on language-game, Hudson maintains, "... the essential point which Wittgenstein was concerned to make was that the meaning of language is not, or not simply, a matter of that to which it refers, but of the use to which it is being pUt."313 Here Hudson's expression 'or not simply' points towards the possibility of the scope of the picture theory even in later Wittgenstein's position of the determination of meaning on the basis of language-game. 309 Ibid., p. 224. 310 Ibid., p.226. 311 W. Donald Hudson, Wittgenstein and Religious Beliefs (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1975), p.44. 312 Ibid. 313 Ibid., p.47.


There are more evidences which favour the thesis that Wittgenstein did not actually completely denounce the picture theory but rather used it differently in his later theories of meaning. Some of these evidences are as follows: 1. On January 1930, Wittgenstein says to Waismann: "The essential thing in a proposition is that...it is a picture .. " (WWK §90).

2.

PI §520 clearly puts the role of the picture theory as a limited one and does not outrightly reject it: "If a proposition too is conceived as a picture of a possible state of affairs and is said to show the possibility of the state of affairs, still the most that the proposition can do is what a painting or relief or film does: and so it can at any rate not set forth what is not the case. So does it depend wholly on our grammar what will be called (logically) possible and what not, i.e. what the grammar permits?" -But surely that is arbitrary!-Is it arbitrary?-It is not every sentence-like formation that we know how to do something with, not every technique has an application in our life; and when we are tempted in philosophy to count some quite useless thing as a proposition, that is often because we have not considered its application sufficiently."

3.

"The picture was the key. Or it seemed like a key" (Z §240).

4.

"Let us imagine a picture story in schematic pictures, and thus move like the narrative in a language than a series of realistic pictures. Using such a picture-language we might in particular, e.g. keep our hold on the course of battles (Language-game). And a sentence of our word-language approximates to a picture in this language much more closely than we think" (Z §241).

5.

'''Sentences serve to describe how things are', we think. The sentence is as a picture" (Z §244).

Conclusion I 265

There are many more examples of the picture theory in almost all the later works of Wittgenstein. They suggest that later Wittgenstein did not completely denounce it. He admitted that it cannot explain all the cases of meaning but did not deny its limited role in language-game and forms of life. This theory has its role to play even in the application of use theory, languagegame, and forms of life. Now, let us discuss the implication of the above discussion on picture theory to Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. We have seen that the picture theory of meaning is the foundation of Wittgenstein's distinction between saying and showing. It is the criterion of meaningful and nonsensical expressions. Keeping in consistency with this view, earlier Wittgenstein maintained that religious expressions are nonsensical-they belong to the realm of showing. As different from this, we have analysed that later Wittgenstein believed in the use theory, language-game, and form of life concepts. And he viewed that religious expressions have their own form of life and language-game. I have construed in the third chapter that he adhered to the restricted autonomy of language-game and form of life which maintains that although religious expressions are meaningful in their own specific form of life and language-game, these expressions are not cut-off from the expressions of non-religious aspects of human life. Now, the unity and continuity of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion has to be construed in the context of the continuity of his picture theory of meaning in his later philosophical thoughts, and his conception of the inexpressibility of religious propositions into his view of the restricted autonomy of religious language-games and forms of life. Following are some points which establish the continuity of Wittgenstein's inexpressibility view of religious beliefs into his later thoughts:


(a) As the picture theory is responsible for the saying and showing distinction, and thus establishing that religious propositions are inexpressible, the acceptance of the continuity of the picture theory in later Wittgenstein, ipso facto, means the endorsement that there is a larger role for this thesis. That is, the picture theory's role in later Wittgenstein shows that even later Wittgenstein believed in the inexpressibility of religious expressions. Actually, picture theory of meaning is responsible for Wittgenstein's view that there are no religious propositions. Religious belief is inexpressible. It is so because any attempt to express religious belief into language results into nonsensical expression. Therefore, as there is a scope for the picture theory in later Wittgenstein, the conception of the inexpressibility of religious expressions has all encompassing roles in his philosophy of religion. Contrary to the general perception that when Wittgenstein came back to Cambridge in 1929 rejected his earlier views in philosophy of language, what happened in philosophy of religion is that his views resembled that of his earlier views. In LE Wittgenstein viewed ethical and religious realms as inexpressible and nonsensical. The LE seems to have endorsed his earlier view that ethics and religion belong to the realm of 'showing' and therefore anything about them cannot be said. So, "reading the 'Lecture on Ethics' (c.l930) one could hardly believe that Wittgenstein had altered his position on ethics and religious beliefs as expressed in the Notebooks and the Tractatus. If anything, the lecture expressed more forcefully and explicitly the views expressed in the earlier writings, particularly the view that ethical and religious expressions are nonsensical. We are told that it is their essence to be nonsensical. Admittedly the term 'mystical' is not used. It has been translated into 'experience of the absolute'. But all the rest is

Conclusion I 267

there and elaborated."314 The reason for such a resemblance can be that "around 1930, the ideas that were later to be expressed in Philosophical Investigations had reached no further than an embryonic stage. So there was no question at that stage of abandoning the previous theory of value. On the other hand, from the fact that the earlier ideas on value were being vigorously advanced in the late 1920s or early 1930s, it does not follow that these ideas persisted in Wittgenstein's thought to the end."315 Thus, even later Wittgenstein of LE seems to have held the earlier views of ethics and religion. (b) The

groundlessness of religious beliefs shows their inexpressibility. We have shown this in the first chapter. The later Wittgenstein in 'Lectures on Religious Belief accepts the groundlessness of religious beliefs. He says, "Suppose somebody made this guidance for his life: believing in the Last Judgement. Whenever he does anything, this is before his mind. In a way, how are we to know whether to say he believes this will happen or not? Asking him is not enough. He will probably say he has a proof. But he has what you might call an unshakeable belief. It will show, not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for beliefs, but rather by regulating for all in his life" (Le, p. 53-54). In the analysis in the fifth chapter, I have established that some Wittgensteinians maintain that during the last years of his life Wittgenstein believed that certain beliefs are groundless.

(c) Moreover, there is a scope for mystical experience, which is essentially inexpreSSible in later Wittgenstein. I have argued this in the second chapter. I have established that there is no

314 Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Beliefs (Oxford: UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1991), p. 111. 315lbid., pp.111-12.


dichotomy between Wittgenstein's acceptance of mystical experience and his rejection of privacy of experience. (d) The inexpressibility of religious beliefs can also be seen in the context of Wittgenstein's remark in 1930-33. G.E.Moore records that Wittgenstein "said that Darwin, in his 'expression of the Emotions', made a mistake similar to Frazer's , e.g. in thinking that 'because our ancestors, when angry, wanted to bite' is a sufficient explanation of why we show our teeth when angry" (WL p.l07). While dealing with Wittgenstein's criticism of Frazer's account of the savages' religious beliefs, in the fifth chapter, I have argued that Wittgenstein viewed that the irrationality of religious beliefs is their defining feature and any provision of reason turns them into superstitions. (e) In the fourth chapter I have established that Wittgenstein was a religious person in the peculiar sense of the term. His religiosity consisted not in talking so much about religion. In his conversation with Drury he says, "If you and I are to live a religious lives it must not just be that we talk a lot about religion, but that in some way our lives are different."316 (f) The demolition of the allegation that Wittgenstein supported fideism-a thesis which maintains that religious belief is neither rational nor irrational as it has its own peculiarity with reference to language-game and form of life, i.e. it has its own criterion for rationality-in the third chapter can also be construed as an argument for the extension of the inexpressibility thesis of earlier Wittgenstein into later Wittgenstein. Thus, as against the interpretation of Wittgenstein's views on religion that (1) he abandoned his view that religious propositions are ineffable, and (2) his later views on religion are a kind of fideism, it seems plausible to hold that (i) there is an element of his view of the 316 M.O'e. Drury, in Rush Rhees, op. Cit., p.109.

Conclusion I 269

ineffability of religious beliefs even in his later writings, and (ii) Kai Nelson's so-called Wittgensteinian Fideism is misplaced. However, such a kind of interpretation can be done only if we accept the concept of restricted autonomy of language-game and form of life. Although it seems that at the time of LE Wittgenstein did endorse his earlier religious views, i.e. inexpressibility of religious beliefs, his position in the theory of meaning had undergone tremendous transformation. Now, he did not depend solely on the picture theory for the explanation of meaning but actually at that time his concept of language-game was taking its shape. As Rush Rhees points out that Wittgenstein, at the time of LE, "did not think one could give a general account of propositions in terms of truth functions. Every proposition belongs to some system of propositions, and there are a number of these systems. The formal rules or internal relations of one system are not those of another. He spoke of them as 'systems of measurement' and as :independent co-ordinates of description'.'o317 This endorses the view, expressed in the beginning, that there is much scope for unity and continuity in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion than his philosophy of language. Not going into the intricacies as to when Wittgenstein changed his earlier views on religious beliefs, here it can be said that by the time he delivered the 'Lectures on Religious Belief' he was convinced that his later concepts such as language-games and forms of life could be operated in philosophy of religion. So, as different from his earlier view of the inexpressibility of religious and ethical expressions Wittgenstein in his 'Lectures on Religious Belief' brings out the application of the concept of language-game into religious beliefs. This lecture uses analogies 317 Rush Rhees, Discussions of Wittgenstein (London: Routledge and Kegan PauI,1970), p. 96.


of language-game to explain religious views. However, as we have seen in the above described second point that he did not reject his inexpressibility of religious beliefs even in his 'Lectures on Religious Belief'. Now, the inexpressibility of religious beliefs can be seen in either of the two ways: (a)

Seeing religious beliefs, like logical positivists, as insignificant. Wittgenstein did not accept the logical positivists' position. So, there is a difference between Wittgenstein's inexpressibility of religious beliefs and that of a logical positivists'. Pointing at this, Paul Engelmann says, "A whole generation of disciplines was able to take Wittgenstein for a positivist because he has something of enormous importance in common with the positivists: 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. "318

(b)

Seeing religious beliefs as an important aspect of human life - as the one which guides entire human life. I have analysed in the fourth chapter as to how, according to Wittgenstein, religious life consists in living in such a manner that problems of life disappear. For Wittgenstein, what is important for solving problems of life is not to change the physical facilities but instead to have a different attitude to the existing facilities. A mathematical problem cannot be solved by way of modification of the problem but it can be solved by taking the problem as it is. However, the

318 Paul Engelmann, op.cit., p.97.

Conclusion I 271

modification in the problem could be a part of or a step towards the solution of the problem, by way of taking such a step in conscience, which can help in reflection of the problem from a point of view which could eventually prove to be helpful in the solution or dissolution of the problem. Likewise, the problems of life can be dissolved not necessarily by way of making factual changes or renunciation of one's richness but a life can be made problem free by way of taking factual changes or renunciation as a step not in actuality but keeping that step in conscience. That is to say that for getting rid of problems of life what matters is the attitude to live happily. So Wittgenstein does not ridicule religious beliefs. He, rather, takes it as the guiding principle of life. He, in the penultimate end of LE, says, "What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it." Thus, we see that two seemingly incompatible conceptions of philosophy of religion can be accommodated in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. These are: (i) religious propositions are nonsensical and inexpressible, and (ii) the significance and meaning of a religious expression can be determined only in its context. These seemingly incompatible conceptions are actually not so incompatible conceptions and both simultaneously can be found in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. There is no dichotomy in the inexpressibility of religious beliefs and their contextual expression. Underlying differences about the inexpressibility of religious beliefs in earlier Wittgenstein and their contextual expression in later Wittgenstein can be interpreted as a development of his religious point of view. His conception of the contextual expression of religious beliefs envisages the inexpressibility of religious beliefs. At least some Wittgensteinians maintain that "throughout his career Wittgenstein tried to resist philosophical misconceptions concerning


what can and cannot be said. Here too his primary aim was to debunk metaphysical illusions that arise when we depart from ordinary language, in this case by detaching the distinction between sense and nonsense from our ordinary ways of talking."319 This is in conformity with what Wittgenstein asserted during his conversations with Drury about, among others, the thesis: 'There are, indeed, things which cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical'. Wittgenstein said, "My fundamental ideas came to me very early in life." Pointing at this assertion of 1948-9 when Wittgenstein was working hard at his manuscript of PI while he was in Dublin, in the context of the developments of his thought between TLP and PI Drury says, "I can vouch for the accuracy for the words."320 Hence, the twin-fold strains of Wittgenstein's religious point of view, viewed as earlier and later-religious beliefs as inexpressible and religious beliefs as having their own form of life and language-game-are actually complimentary to each other. Notwithstanding the significant changes in his religious views, when he viewed that as various aspects of human life and language have different language-games and forms of life likewise religion also has its own language-game and form of life, Wittgenstein didn't question the groundlessness (inexpressibility and incomprehensibility) of religious beliefs.

319 Medina Jose, The Unity of Wittgenstein's Philosophy (New York: State University of New York Press, 2(02), p. 2 320 M.O'C. Drury, The Danger of words and writings on Wittgenstein, eds. David Berman et. al. (England: Thoemmes Press, 1996), p. ix.

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-------'Wittgensteinian Perspective on World, Death vis-a-vis Living a Meaningful Life.' JICPR, Vol. XX, No. 4, OctoerDecember, (2003),57-78. -------Book Review: 'Vibha Chaturvedi, Wittgenstein's Fideism: Beliefs, Reason and Practice. ' Om Publications, New Delhi, 2002, Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. XXXII, No.4, October (2005),429-434. ----------'Philosophical Investigations.' Paramarsh, Vol. 23, No.1, December-February, (2001),3-18. --------'Wittgenstein: Vyaktittva and Kritittva.' (Wittgenstein: Life and Works), Paramarsh, Vol. 22, No. 2, March-May, (2001),3-14. ---'Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus.' Paramarsh Vol. 22, No. 3, June-August, (2001), 15-28. ------'Wittgenstein k4 Andh-Vishvas sambandhf Vichilr' (Wittgenstein's view on superstition), Darshanik Traimasik, Vol.46, No.3-4, July-December, (2000),90-96. -------'Wittgenstein Ka Dharmik Mat.' (Wittgenstein's Religious View), Darshanik Traimasik, Vol.46, No.1-4, JanuaryDecember, (1996) 93-98. Ramsey, F.P. 'Critical Notice of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.' Mind, 32:128 (1923),465-78. Redpath, Theodore. 'Wittgenstein and Ethics.' Aesthetics, Ethics and Religion. Ed. John V. Canfield, New York and London: Garland Publishing House, 1986,95-141. Robinson, Guy. 'What Lies Outside Language.' Philosophical Investigations, 23:4, October (2000),279-291. Springsted, Eric O. 'Faith, Beliefs and Perspective: Peter Winch's Philosophy of Religion.' Philosophical Investigations, 27:4, October (2004), 345-369. Sutler, Ronald. 'The Early Wittgenstein on Happiness.' International Philosophical Quarterly, 29:2 (1989), 291-299. Tejedor, Chon. 'The Metaphysical Status of Tractarian Objects', Philosophical Investigations, 24:4, October, (2001),285-303.


Thompson, Caleb. 'Wittgenstein's Confessions.' Philosophical Investigations, 23:1, January (2000), 1-25. Winch, P. 'Meaning and Religious Language.' Aesthetics, Ethics and Religion. Ed. John V. Canfield, New York and London: Garland Publishing House, 1986,289-317. Wolgast, Elizabeth. 'A Religious Point of View.' Philosophical Investigations, 27:2 (2004) 129-147.

Index absolute, 33, 36, 66, 77, 87, 94, 98, 102,111 absolute value, 101 absolutely safe, 94 absolution, 208 Absolutist concept, 38 accidental truth, 39 action, 70, 99, 100 adolescence, 74 Advaita Vedanta, 36, 39, 62, 71 Advaitic aphorism, 39 aesthetics, 25,26,43,48 Ajnanr, 71

Alaya Vijfiana, 70 Alban hills, 227 Alfai,257 amenities, 223 Analogies characteristic, 213 concept, 214 disease, 211 expression, 213 good deeds, 211 grammar, 212 imperfect',21O interpretations', 205 language-game, 213 mystery, 214 non-philosophical dichotomy, 216 notion, 208 philosophical problem, 207, 212, 215, 216, 224 religious attitude', 210 religious belief, 213 religious practices, 208 religious wonder, 214

routine -life, 217 anti-religious attitude, 90 Anzengruber,110 aphorism, 44 arbitrary, 264 Archimedean point, 169 Arhat, 99 Ascription, 151 assimilation process, 68 astrology, 64 Atman, 62 atomic fact, 11 atomic facts, 11, 12 atomic propositions, 5, 134 attitude, 187, 199, 204 Augustine, 100 Aum, 58 autonomous, 170, 171 autonomy, 151, 170, 171 Ayer, AJ., 84, 85, 115, 125, 248, 250,253,254,255 Barrett, Cyril, 1,24,26,33,34,43, 92,97, 99, 100, 101, 111, 112, 166 Basutos, 232 beatific vision, 73 Bedeutung, 20, 138 beliefs, 73, 74, 163, 165 believer, 51 Beltane Festival, 255 Bhagavad-Gftii, 69, 70, 108 Bharata dynasty, 70 Bible, 45 Big Bang, 97 biological theories, 97 birth,72 Black,~ax,91,92,95,98, 146, 147, 150, 152

Index I 287 Blissful, 58 Bodhi,71 Bodhisattva, 69, 70, 71, 87, 114 Brah~n,36,39,41,62,87

Brentano, 14 Brihaspati, 231 Buddhism, 54, 71, 77, 99 Bunyan, John, 198 Cambridge Dictionary, 54 Camron, 166 Cartesians, 115 Catholicism, 176 Catholics, 45 Cavel,166 certainty, 121 Chandra, Suresh, 241, 242 charity,71 Chitta, Mahakarunil, 71 Christ, 174, 175 Christendom, 160 Christian religion, 171, 238 Christianity, 53, 171, 197 Clinical-Psychology, 63 Coburn,l66 cognition, 68, 82 cognitive element, 63 cognitive value, 20 community, 146 compassionate soul, 71, 72 Compte, 176 Conan, James, 27, 29 confession, 208 Confucianism, 176 consciousness, 59, 63,74 Contact, 228, 229 Contagious Magic, 228, 229, 232, 233,247 contradictions, 5, 31, 32 Cook, John W, 126 Cook, John Wo, 91

Coplestone, 172 correctly, 136 creatures, 159 cryptic difficulties, 43 clan, 71 [)ar'Vin,256,268 [)asgupta, SoNo, 55 deceiving, 122 desires, 70 [)e'Vey, 203 dhyllna, 71 lliana,227 dichotomy, 112 [)ilman, 166 discipline, 54 diversity, 73 divine dispersion, 57 divine retribution, 45 divine revelation, 130 [)NA,97 drug experience, 64 [)ublin, 272 [)urkheim, 203 ECG,63 ecstacy,67 ego-centric, 82 emotions, 74, 197, 256 Engelman, Paul, 91, 204, 217, 260 Engels,203 enlightenment, 71 epistemic privacy, 116, 120, 122, 128 epistemologically, 59, 61, 63, 77 Epistle, 45 esoteric, 93,183,186,188,190,191, 192 Eternal Source, 57 eternity, 106 ethical experience, 111 ethical statement, 89

288 I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein ethics, 25, 26, 33, 41, 43, 48, 172, 266,267 existence, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 210 experience, 49, 93, 109, 115,268 expression, 42 facts, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 analysis, 7 expresses, 7 matter, 10 nature, 6 no dualism, 7 non-representation, 8 ordinary life, 193 peculiarities, 7 proposition, 7 representation, 8 totality,9 fallacy, 233 fantastic, 159, 190,193 fasting, 54 Fedeism religious discourses, 172 Fideism, 133, 165, 168, 169, 171, 174, 176, 191, 268 allegations, 181 criticism, 171, 176 demolition, 182 irrationalism, 182 presupposition, 182 Flew, Antony, 35 form of life, 171, 173, 178, 196, 218, 260,261,265,269,272 fortitude, 71 Fox, (;eorge, 198 Fraze~James,226

Frege, (;ottlob, 4 Freud, 97, 167, 178 Frolov,36 future Buddha, 71 (;anesh idol, 235

(;each,l66 generality, 102

Genestande, 5 Git4,70 (;od, 36, 58, 66, 77, 90, 160, 180, 185, 193, 196, 218 apprehension, 76 belief, 104, 168, 185, 187 communion, 77 direct experience, 76 existence, 159, 186, 210 experience, 54 Fate, 219 glory, 216 (;od's will, 106, 197, 208, 209, 213,218, 220 notion, 218 obedience, 181 realisation, 108 talking, 130 union,93 (;od ceases, 54 (;od exists, 76, 89, 161, 170, 172 (;od-intoxication, 54 (;od's love, 159 (;od-soul union, 130 (;ospels, 197 grammar, 29, 187 grammatical proposition, 118 (;ramsci, 203 (;reeks, 42, 53 (;riffin, James, 5 groundlessnes~ 1,45,46,242,267 guilty,lill (;uinness, Mc, 93 Haas Alois M., 56 hallucination, 74 happy life, 105, 196,223 methods, 108 Hartnack,J.,34

Index I 289 helix, 97 Heraclitus, 73 Hick, John, 50, 166, 170, 172 hierarchy, 103 Hinduism, 54, 62 Hocking, William Ernest, 55 Holland, Roy, 166, 199 Holmer, 166 Homoeopathic, 228, 232, 237, 247, 256 Hudson, WO, 137, 138, 139, 263 Hughes, 166 human will, 196,220,221 Husserl, Edmund, 14, 81, 84 Idealism, 87 identity,20, 105, 124, 128 illness, 218 illusion, 74 imaginary builder, 150 imaginary language-game, 151 Imitative Magic, 228, 229, 230, 233 immanent, 41 immoral,50 immortality, 37, 173 imperfect, 101 impure language-games, 147, 148 incarnated,235 Incomplete Symbols, 6 Incomprehensibility, 2, 34, 44 incorrectly, 136 independent, 221 indescribable, 109 individual, 51, 100 Inexpressibility, 1,93,261,265, 266,268,269,270,271 God exists, 35 inexpressible, 44 religion, 35 religious beliefs, 2, 46

religious form, 223 Showing, 2 transcendent, 35 inexpressible, 95 inherence, 14 intuition, 79, 81, 83 intuitive insight, 81 intuitive perception, 58 Intuitive Realisation, 77 Ishvara, 41, 77 Jainism, 69, 71, 77, 99 James, William, 53,61,65,69,81, 86, 178 Jfvan-Mukta, 71, 72, 86, 99, 114 Jflanf,71

Jones,26 joys, 73 Judgement Day, 45 Jung, 97 Kai Nelson, 177, 179, 195,203, 206,269 Kant, 37, 81, 84 karma, 72 Kenny, Anthony, 136, 172, 262 Kevalin, 77 Kierkegaard,67,68,loo,206,238 kingship, 228 Knowles,61 Krishna,70 Krishnamurti, J., 83 ksanti,71

Lacking-Sense, 2 Lacking-Sense, Nonsense and Religion, 25 Criticising, 26 distinction, 25 Logic, 25 nonsensical, 26 ontradictions, 25 philosophical propositions, 26

290 I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein Propositions, 25 Tautologies, 25 transcendental, 25 transcendental realm, 27 Language, 48, 103, 168, 260, 261, 262 hierarchy, 103 misuse, 101 structure, 103 language-game, 122, 127, 131, 133, 150,167,169,189,263,264,265, 269,272 autonomy, 155, 157, 265 Builder's Game, 146 categorisation, 148 expression, 145 family, 154 grammatical proposition, 156 implications, 146 multiplicity, 142 notion, 143 restricted autonomy, 155 sophisticated language-game, 147 system, 144 language-game of religious beliefs, knowledge, 164 ordinary domain, 163 reasonable, 163 religion, 164 religious reason, 162 symbols, 165 Last Judgement, 47, 161, 164, 186, 187, 197, 239, 240, 241 Latium, 228 learning process, 117 Lewy, 162 liberating consciousness, 67 Life, 105, 130

Linguistic behaviour, 146 linguistic representation, 90 Lobatchevskian geometry, 177 Logic, 7, 31, 32, 171 logical atomism, 8 logical depiction, 23 logical form, 18, 31, 136 logical positivism, 79, 80, 82, 84, 86,88,89,113,129 logical transcendence, 43 logico-philosophical truth, 3 Loksangrah, 70, 100 MacIntyre, 160 magic, 64, 226, 229, 232, 257 Mahadevan, T.M.~,71 Mahayana Buddhism, 69, 70,99 Malcolm, Norman, xvi; 44, 46, 90, 158,166,195,196,206 Maritain,61 Martin C. B., 76, 173 Marx, 178,203 Mary, Virgin, 193 Mata Kodak of Africa, 253 mathematical certainty, 121 mathematical problem, 217, 270 mathematical signs, 40 Maya, 36,59 McGinn, Marie, 28 meaning, 141, 261 medieval transcendentals, 43 meditation, 54, 58, 71 mental states, 115, 129 metalanguage, 103 metaphysical illusions, 272 metaphysical life, 104, 174 metaphysical self, 32 metaphysical statements, 88 metaphysics, 48 Mill, J.S., 178 miracle, 93, 244, 245, 247

Index I 291 misery, 223 Monism,63 Moore G. E., 27, 45, 162, 219,268 moral,50 morality,71 Moslem,177 Motunce, 10, 166, 172 Murthy, 39 mystery, 39, 210 mystic realisation, 65 mystic's ecstacy, 69 mystic's language, 62 mystical, 93, 97, 266, 272 mystical experience, 58, 61, 63, 65, 77, 102, 109, 111, 268 cognitive content, 77 communicable, 65 expressible, 65 mystical feeling, 96, 98 mystical knowledge, 67, 68 Mysticism and Private Language amenities, 107 concept, 48 consciousness, 53 experience, 48 features of, 65, 69 feelings, lOO, 101, 102 Logical positivism, 77 mystical experience, 48, 52, 58, 60,61,75 mystical language, 48 mystical states, 53 mysticism, 53, 87, 88 Nature, 49 notion,48 present, 106 privacy, 48 Private Experience, 128 religion, 50 Religion, 48

Renotuncing, 107 s rejection, 115 without fear, 107

Mystik,65 Mystizismus, 65 myths,226 natural science, 88 Nayak, G. C, 72 Nelson Kai, 159, 161, 165, 166, 167, 168,169,171,172,174,175 Nemi,226 priesthood, 226 neti-neti, 36 NirvafJ,77

non-believer, 51, 74, 75, 86, 87, 113, 167 non-difference, 72 non-expression, 86 non-propositional apprehension, 82 non-religiously, 46, 52, 60 nonsense, 2,26,44,94 non-sensory experience, 60, 63 non-theistic, 54 non-theistic mysticism, 66, 77 notion, 63 numerical identity, 124 O'Hara, 163 object, 12, 13, 15 analysis, 14 concept, 12 each world, 13 not complex entities, 13 role of, 13 set of, 14 Object, 2,5 objective reality, 63 occult, 93 occultism, 64 Ogden, 10, 11,21, 134

292 I Religious Beliefs, Superstitions and Wittgenstein O'Hara, 239, 240 Ojebway Indian magic, 230 omnipotent, 36, 38 Omnipresent, 38 Omniscient, 38 oneness, SO, 76 ontological,174,175 ontological and linguistic, 110 ontological status of experience, 110 order of the world is not mystical, 96 ordinary beliefs, 153, 158, 267 Ordinary games, ISO Otto, Rudolf, 36, 67, 74 ownership, 129 ownership, 116, 123, 124, 125 pains, 73, 127 Panneerselvam, ix

parmarthic SatM, 39 Parmenides, 73 Parthii,70 Pascal,loo Pasmore, 172 patience, 71 Pears, 10 perfect knowledge, 71 personality, 83 phantasmal unreality, 59 Phenomenologists,14 Phillips, D.Z., 154, 158, 166, 177, 180 philosophical problems, xvi, 42, 207, 212 philosophical reasoning, 177 philosophy, 25, 207 Philosophy Matter, 177 physical theories, 97 Piaget,97 pictorial form, 17, 18, 31, 135

picture, 90 representative, 16 structure, 17 Picture, 2, 5 falsity,17 Truth,17 picture theory,S, 132, 133, 134, 137, 138, 139, 156, 261, 262, 264 sign, 156 pin-men fencing, 24 Pitcher George, 147 Plantinga, 160 Plato, 10 pleasures, 73 Pliny,227 Pluralism, 63 plurality, 61 Positivism, 270 powerlessness, 93 prajfiii, 71 priirabdha, 72 prayer, 54, 199,208 present, 106 pretension, 122 primitive language-games, 151 privacy, 49, 115, 116, 123, 124, 125, 129,268 private experience, 129 private sensation, 125 prophecy, 64 psycho-analysts, 63 psychological, 61, 77, 104, 117 psychological certainty, 121 psychological life, 104 psychological will, 220, 221 psychologist, 63 pure language-games, 147, 148 pure speech activities, 147 qualitative identity, 124 Quantum Theory, 97

Index I 293 Radhakrishnan, S., 71 Rai Ghat Lane, 57 Ramakrishna Paramhansa, 130 Ramsey, EP., 10, 26, 34 Ranade, R. D., 68 real language-games, 148 Realisation, 70 reality, 73, 85, 88 realm, 34, 48 Reason, 37 Relativism, 133 Religion, L2,31,34,48,50 definition, 51 meaning', 51 Religion groundless, 47 religiOUS beliefs, 2, 44, 47, 100, 112, 132, 142, 153, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 170, 176, 178,179,180,181,182,183,184, 185,186,I88,189,19O,19L259 aspect,270 human life, 270 Religious Beliefs and Languagegames Fideism, 165 Lacunae, 139 Language-games, 142 meaning, 134 notion, 132 Picture Theory, 134 replacement, 139 Restricted Autonomy, 150 treatment, 133 Wittgensteinian thesis, 165 religious discourses, 172 religious expression, 271 religious feelings, 50 religious grounding, 44 religious language, 170, 171, 180

religious language-game, 149, 151, 152, 174 representation, 134 Rudolf Otto, 66 samadhi,6O samJlUilya, 14 schizophrenic experience, 110 sensation, 124, 126 sensations,58,120, 122 Shankara,39,41 showable, 34, 48 similarity,247 Similarity, 228, 229 Socrates, 9 solipsism, 93 Spinoza's Fromm, 176 I spiritual knowledge, 83 Spiritually allegorical, 93 Sthila-PrajM, 69, 70

sub specie aeterni, 97 subjectivity, 67, 129 supernatural,130,235,236 supersensuous, 60 superstition, 176 classical antiquity, 226 Frazer,226 sympathetic, 226 superstitious beliefs, 189, 192, 225 surpassingly, 38 survival, 97 Sutler, Ronald, 222 svariipa lakshan, 39 symbolism, 25,250 sympathetic magic, 228 synoptic vision, 72 syntax, 28 tautological feeling, 101 tautological nonsense, 96 Therevada Buddhism, 176 torment, 241


Tractatus, xviii,S, 10, 20, 91, 92,

Vimuktasanga, 72

93,94,135,143,205,242,262, 266,273,275,276,278,280, 282,283,284 traditional notion, 113, 115, 129, 130 transcendence, 38 transcendent, 37, 38 transcendental, 43 transcendental reality, 66, 76 transcendental unification, 87 troubling, 159 Types of nonsense, 2, 27 deployment, 29 expression, 28 nonsense occurs, 28 nonsensical expression, 30 pictorial expression, 31 utterances, 28 violation, 29 ultimate reality, 39, SO, 53, 54, 55, 66, 77, 87, 93, 113, 239 unintelligible, 84 Unitive feeling, 87 Unitive State, 66 unity,66 universality, 112 unsayable, 33 use theory, 132, 133,139,261,265 vacillating, 91 Vaisheshika school, 14

von Wright, G.H., 203 welfare, 70 Western Idealism, 87 whole language-game, 152, 153 Winch, Peter, xvi, 158, 195, 196, 206,212 Wittgenstein absolute value, 243 agnosticism, 203 analogies, 196, 208 distinguish, 235, 238 hostile, 92 incomprehensibility, 34 miracle, 210 mysticism, 48, 129 philosophical concentration, 199 religiOUS attitude, 239 Religious faith, 242 religiOUS man, 196, 206, 224, 259 religious position, 203 religious reflections, 199 savages' notion, xvi spiritual explanation, 246 superstitious beliefs, 233, 238 World religion, 87 Wittgensteinian Religious Autonomy, 165 Wolgast, Elizabeth, 195 won Ficker, Ludwig, 90 wonder, 243 world evolve, 97 Yoga system, 62 Yogananda, Paramhansa, 56 Zehner,61

Vasantavallokahitam, 72 Vedanta, 39, 77 veracity, 62, 75, 78, 175 verbal expression, 94 verification, 88 vicissitude, 67, 114

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