—Peter Belly—

Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief
Ludwig Wittgenstein
University of California Press

An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion
Brian Clack
Edinburgh University Press

[ I N T E N T and

S T R A T E G Y ]

“On one such evening, after an hour or two of dead silence, I said to him, ‘Wittgenstein, are you thinking about logic or about your sins?’ ‘Both,’ he said, and then reverted to silence” —Bertrand Russell on the young Wittgenstein[1]

A couple interesting things at work in the “Lectures on Religious Belief”[2] are not touched on by Clack in his Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion.[3] I would like to use my space here to examine these unacknowledged nuances, namely, 1] Wittgenstein’s employment of picture theory of meaning in the lectures as a curious sort of analytical tool and 2] the more far-flung implications of Wittgenstein’s analysis of comparing beliefs across systems of reference. Concerning the latter, I feel Clack privileges the scientific/empiricist perspective, albeit in the interest of offering a cleaner account, in a way that Wittgenstein does not necessarily.[4]

I will be briefly rehearsing the relevant material both from the Tractatus, to aid in our first objective, the development of the use of the picture theory in the “Lectures,” and from the Philosophical Investigations to note the encompassment and range of implementation of ‘meaning-as-use.’ Following the rehearsal and our ‘depiction’ of the critical employment of the picture theory, we will jump into some points in Clack’s reporting of the “Lectures” that seem to suffer from a bit of ‘aspect-blindness,’ themselves.

[1] Cited in Clack [26]: ‘Philosophers and Idiots’, The Listener, 55, February 1955, p. 247

[2] Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, ed. C. Barrett, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966. Hereafter, “Lectures [page number]”.

[3] Clack, Brian R.. An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Print. Hereafter and retroactively, “Clack [page number]”.

[4] I feel ultimately that religious belief for Wittgenstein’s theory serves as an example, and probably the most important one, but not the example. I have scanned over some debates concerning Wittgenstein’s possible fideism, and don’t care to give these views the satisfaction of a full rehearsal and critique.

[ P I C T U R E T H E O R Y ]

“A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it.”

—Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus[1]

For our purposes here, the thrust behind the Tractatus can be taken as twofold, 1] to offer an explanation for how language comes to “relate to the world,” and 2] by this explanation, offer a criterion for meaningfulness. Both of these inquiries are addressed in Wittgenstein’s delineation of his ‘picture theory of meaning,’ which puts forward the idea, and subsequent criterion for meaningfulness, that language serves as a way by which we “‘picture’ (possible or actual) factual situations in the world.”[2]

The elaboration of this model’s claims give rise to several important implications, and I will be charting them as our characterization grows in complexity.

So, if language is a model of the world, what’s the scalar or translational method used in its ‘picturing’? Wittgenstein’s theory holds fast to a hierarchical isomorphism, the idea that language shares or possibly mirrors the logical form of the world, which would be a much more interesting idea if it were reversed.[3] But in hopes of making this rehearsal as painless as necessary, there are ‘facts’ about the world, which can be said to be made up of ‘states of affairs,’ which can be said to be made up of ‘objects,’ and these three levels of complexity correspond to the Tratatus’ severing of language into propositions, elementary propositions, and names, respectively.

Language, as model or ‘picture,’ is in a position of exteriority to the ‘world’ of which it is representing, and also language has an essential purpose, which is ‘essentially’ mimetic. As Clack puts it, “the purpose of language is to describe situations as we find them in the world, to depict and to report facts.”[4] This is where the theory asserts its criterion for meaningfulness, namely that language is meaningful only insofar as it conforms to its purpose of ‘picturing’ at least possible facts about the ‘world’.

Two final considerations that are of importance to our first objective are 1] sense’s independence from ‘truth’ and 2] the self-proclaimed self-effacing status of the Tractatus. In order for language to ‘picture’ something, one must be able to say the ‘picture–proposition’ asserts a claim about the ‘world’. It is of no consequence whether this claim is true or false, but only that it has sense, in order to be meaningful. In section 6.54 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein says, in reference to the entirety of the propositions he has made thus far, “anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical.”[5] The acknowledgement of this section’s necessity, the necessity for self-effacement for the plausibility of a hierarchical metaphysic, has to be one of the most insightful passages in all of the Tractatus, if not in all of Wittgenstein, the import of which we will be taking for granted as we move forward.

[1] Cited in Clack [xii]: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1961.

[2] Clack [4-5] This is for the latter quote as well.

[3] In fact, this is what I believe Wittgenstein to be doing in the “Lectures” with the conception of ‘picturing’ serving as analytical crowbar, that our understanding of the construction ‘the world’ mirrors the logic and form of our language.

[4] Clack [6]

[5] Cited in Clack [xii]: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1961. [§6.54]

[ D I S S O L U T I O N ]

“What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.”

—Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations[1]

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein’s theory of language is no longer essentialist, nor does it have a general form, nor is it fulfilling an immediate purpose, in fact, language is “an infinitely extendable collection of linguistic practices”[2] Words and sentences are not asked to correspond hierarchically to the logical forms of ‘the world,’ rather their use within a culture is the source of their significance and meaning. Language is always an activity and a social one at that, and only is it significant within a shared “form of life.”[3] Language-games serve as the characterization of the matrix of relations and similarities between different systems of reference, namely different cultures/contexts or other groupings of semi-idiosyncratic usage.

Important to our upcoming sections, is Wittgenstein’s later mode of analysis, I’m calling it dissolution, wherein his approach to philosophical problems is not to solve, but to dissolve them. This is accomplished in a manner conducive to the portrayal of language in the Philosophical Investigations, as Clack puts it, “reminding us of the everyday use, practical employment (the depth grammar) of philosophically problematic language.”[4]

This practice of analysis, in conjunction with the various implications of the ‘picture theory,’ the notion from Culture and Value of religious belief as “a passionate commitment to a system of reference,”[5] and the stipulation that one cannot judge a language-game according to the standards of another language-game, will propel us through the next, and final, two sections.

[1] Cited in Clack [xii, 23]: Philosophical Investigations, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953. [§116]

[2] Clack [51]

[3] Cited in Clack [xii, 18]: Philosophical Investigations, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953. [§23]

[4] Clack [23]

[5] Cited in Clack [xi, 66]: Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright in collaboration with Heikki Nyman, trans. Peter Winch: Basil Blackwell, 1980.

[ R O L E of ‘P I C T U R I N G’ in the “L E C T U R E S on R E L I G I O U S B E L I E F” ]

“If I showed him the picture of Michelangelo and said: ‘Of course, I can’t show you the real thing, only the picture’…. The absurdity is, I’ve never taught him the technique of using this picture.” —Wittgenstein in the “Lectures on Religious Belief”[1]

This section will serve not only as a ‘depiction’ of how Wittgenstein uses a modified ‘picturing’ of his earlier theory of language as an analytic tool within his larger project of dissolution, but also function as an expository transition of my reading of the “Lectures” in service of our second objective, namely comparing my reading with Clack’s to show his account to be privileging the empiricist perspective in a way that is not necessarily accurate to Wittgenstein’s statements. However, the argumentative bulk of this second objective will be put forward in the following, final section.

So—what the hell am I talking about when I say that Wittgenstein is using a moded conception of the ‘picture’ from the Tractatus as an analytical tool? Vital to my holding is the ‘criterion of meaningfulness’ from the Tractatus, that language, and this only applies to empirical/scientific language as it turns out, in order to be meaningful must ‘picture’ possible or actual factual situations in a ‘world.’ However, if reversed, as is proposed on page 4 above, and our construction of the ‘world’ is to mirror the form, structure, and ‘logic’ of our language the criterion for meaningfulness becomes contingent upon the language-game in which we are participating. This while falling in line with the later Wittgenstein, supplies a pretty radical set of infrastructural glosses for analyzing metaphysical systems of reference.

Accordingly, in the same fashion that the assertion of a ‘picture’ can be said to have an empirical sense of ‘sense,’ regardless of its correspondence with the empirical construction of ‘truth’ in scientific language, other language-games exhibit an independence between their ‘meaningfulness’ and their ‘truth,’ as well. Of course, it is entirely possible that, the criterion of picturing,[2] “possible or actual factual situations in a “world,’” is flexible in it’s terminology, and also that terminology’s meaning, under the umbrella of alternative metaphysical systems of reference.

So in an analysis by dissolution across different metaphysical systems of reference, in which we knock philosophically problematic language off the pedestal and take its meaning to be its practical employment, the role of language’s ‘picturing’ of a system’s ‘world’ is to provide access to the system of reference’s previously effaced conditions of possibility. It is in this way that we can spelunk down into the caverns, whose exit ladders were thrown away by our progenitors after climbing, and examine the stratification of our collective foundations.

To sum up, in this analytic usage of the picture theory of meaning, language still functions to picture the ‘world,’ but the ‘world’ mirrors the forms, structure, and ‘logic’ of the language that makes it up. This offers us the glosses necessary to map a system of reference’s constitutive matrix of relations and similarities, the rules of the game as it were, while also avoiding the creation of a metaphysic that needs effacing later.

In the next section, I will compare accounts of the “Lectures” with Clack, who does not make the interpretive leap that I do regarding Wittgenstein’s use of pictures.

[1] Lectures [63]

[2] I guess I don’t really need scare quotes anymore

[ R E A D I N G the “L E C T U R E S” with C L A C K ]

“In general, there is nothing which explains the meaning of words as well as a picture, and I take it that Michelangelo was as good as anyone can be and did his best, and here is the picture of the Deity creating Adam.

“If we ever saw this, we certainly wouldn’t think this the Deity”

—Wittgenstein in the “Lectures on Religious Belief”[1]

The “Lectures” is a rigorous problematization of assessing terms across systems of reference. Wittgenstein is trying to dissolve the philosophical problems of translating notions such as belief and evidence, through a reminding of everyday use. He consistently applies the picture method of analysis in hopes of characterizing religious discourses’ semi-idiosyncratic ‘criterion of meaningfulness,’ namely the relation of its language-game’s manifested pictures to its constructed ‘world.’ Before we get to the Clack, I’d like to state my opinion once more that Wittgenstein’s use of religious belief is an example, and not the example of his thinking on working across systems of reference, that is, the “Lectures” stand more as an illustration of technique than a consummation of that technique.

I will be using Clack’s pulled quotes, but for wont of space we will only be addressing the first couple after he finishes rehearsing and transitioning and then prompting us forward from the previous sections of the chapter, dedicated to Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value and Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,[2] which he sums up with the following, “the central elements of Wittgenstein’s later view of religion… are, first, that religious belief is discontinuous with science and should not be evaluated in scientific terms…. Second, religion is not to be regarded as emerging from a rational contemplation of the world, nor does it function as a super-empirical explanation of the world. ”[3] This science vs. religion narrative is the characterizing feature of Clack’s portrayals of Wittgenstein’s ‘Later Thoughts on Religion,’ which I am not claiming to be wholly incorrect, merely inaccurate to the extent that results from fact that Wittgenstein is not circumscribing himself, or the use of his analytical toolbox, in this way. Here is the first of his quotations following his transition into the “Lectures,”

“Suppose you had two people, and one of them, when he had to decide which

course to take, thought of retribution, and the other did not. One person might, for

instance, be inclined to take everything that happened to him as a reward or

punishment, and another person doesn’t think of this at all.

“If he is ill, he may think: ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ This is one way of thinking of retribution. Another way is, he thinks in a general way whenever he is

ashamed of himself: ‘This will be punished.’

“Take two people, one of whom talks of his behaviour and of what happens to him in terms of retribution, the other one does not. These people think entirely differently. Yet, so far, you can’t say they believe different things.”[4]

So, I plan to proceed by simply citing Clack’s analysis and stating mine. Clack immediately following the passage,

“The belief in the Last Judgement, in future divine retribution, is what Wittgenstein calls a ‘picture’, something which is constantly before the believer’s mind, entering his deliberations when he is tempted towards wrongdoing. ‘Whenever he does anything, this is before his mind’ (LC 53). The religious belief has, then, a central, action–determining role for the believer, ‘regulating for all his life (LC 54)’”[5]

My reading of the Wittgenstein passage at issue conflicts in two ways with Clack’s, 1] obviously my interpretation of Wittgenstein’s usage of ‘picture’ differs from Clack’s in certain ways and 2] because of this my understanding of the quotes that Clack has chosen, diverges in such a way that they don’t backup what he is saying about his ‘picture.’

With regards to what Wittgenstein is referring to when he’s speaking of ‘pictures’ around this quote, I hold that it is not ‘the belief in the Last Judgement, in future divine retribution,’[6] but the manifest story of the Last Judgement, either from the religious text or the sermon to which the believer learned and has come to understand it. The language of the story of the Last Judgement functions to picture a part of the constructed ‘world’ of Christians, and Wittgenstein is investigating through dissolution the associated problematic terms, such as its status as a prediction.

As for Clack’s splicing of phrases into his analysis, for both quotes he uses, I continue to hold fast to my claim that Wittgenstein is referring to the story of the Last Judgement and not the belief, the use of antecedents makes both the cases unclear however so I won’t press this point too hard for fear of abusing the language.

However, and more generally I feel if the use of ‘picture’ is merely the figurative for belief, and exclusively a religious belief as Clack holds, than it’s just a kind of impotent metaphysical object that obfuscates the investigative dissolution. As previously stated, the next pulled quote from the “Lectures” immediately follows the previous pulled quote,

“Suppose someone is ill and he says: ‘This is a punishment,’ and I say: ‘If I’m ill, I don’t think of punishment at all.’ If you say: ‘Do you believe the opposite?’ — you can call it believing the opposite, but it is entirely different from what we would normally call believing the opposite.

“I think differently, in a different way. I say different things to myself. I have

different pictures.

It is this way: if someone said: ‘Wittgenstein, you don’t take illness as punishment, so what do you believe?’ — I’d say: “I don’t have any thoughts of

punishment.’”[7]

Clack uses this quote to reinforce his secular empiricist vs. religion narrative by furnishing us with a discussion about the status of atheism,

“Atheism is simply the absence of religious thoughts…. It is not a contradiction of belief…. so religion and atheism should not be understood as rival theories. They seem more like different ways of thinking than different systems of thought.”[8]

I don’t really understand the distinction he is making in this last sentence, but because it parallels the middle paragraph of the excerpt from the “Lectures,” and I find that paragraph to be a very important chunk as well, let us try and figure it out. What I feel is that when Wittgenstein is saying ‘I say different things to myself. I have different pictures,’ he is once more making the connection that the characteristic role of these pictures, is their linguistic component, religious doctrine, which by way of its form, structure, and ‘logic,’ constitutes the believer’s constructed ‘world.’ And following this train, it can be said that this relation is concretized in that,

“‘Whenever he does anything, this is before his mind’ (LC 53)…. The religious belief has, then, a central, action–determining role for the believer, ‘regulating for all his life (LC 54)’”[9]

Yet the ‘picture’ is always active, it is a ‘picturing,’ and this activity along with the constitutive relational baggage of its conditions of possibility within its system of reference can be said to be the belief, the belief is not the ‘picture.’ To gloss the two as equitable, or interchangeable, is to forgo the richness of this genius’ winding argument with himself.

The larger question that directly precedes both these quotes that goes unacknowledged is “How should we compare beliefs with each other? What would it mean to compare them?”[10] Wittgenstein’s performative discourse is illustrative of a technique to accomplish this tricky endeavor. What is troubling to me about Clack’s statement speaking with regards to the atheist and the believer, that ‘they seem more like different ways of thinking than different systems of thought,’ is that it seems to me that the entire point of Wittgenstein’s talk on systems of reference and the relation between different language-games is completely lost in hopes of using Wittgenstein’s theories of language to characterize specifically religious discourse. This is what I mean when I say that he is privileging the scientific perspective, that Clack doesn’t seem to realize that empirical belief ‘has a central action-determining role for the ‘believer’,’ or that understanding empirical belief is “a matter of appreciating how it dictates or informs the actions of the ‘faithful’.”[11]

In my title, I say Clack’s account of the “Lectures” exhibits an ‘aspect-blindness,’ as Clack himself puts it, “an inability to discern alternative patterns in an image.”[12] This figurative claim, in reference to his reading of the ‘pictures’ of the “Lectures,” as simply figurative language for belief in the Last Judgement, I hope has been shown to be limiting in a number of ways and inaccurate in a number of others.