![]() ![]() But none of these ‘consequences’ follow in the case of being shown a ‘picture of God’ (e.g. ![]() ![]() ![]() If a child is shown a picture of her aunt, for example, then she can ask herself whether this picture is a good likeness of the aunt she has seen in the flesh, what age her aunt was when she was photographed or painted, whether she still looks like she did in the picture etc. In the Lectures on Religious Belief (LC), which Wittgenstein held in Cambridge in 1938, he points out that while the word ‘God’ is amongst the earliest learnt, and instruction in its use often occurs by means of pictures, the role that these pictures play is not representational. In other words, the ‘surface grammar’ of the word ‘God’ tempts us to think that ‘God’ names a human-like, disembodied, entity, when, really, Wittgenstein is suggesting, the ‘depth grammar’ is quite different.īut how do we work out what the ‘depth grammar’ is – that is, how can we avoid being taken in by the surface appearance of how words seem to function? By attending to practice and use, rather than focussing primarily on reference. Hence, we assume instead that ‘God’ must be the name of a disembodied, purely ‘spiritual’ being: something very much like a ‘gaseous vertebrate’ (a phrase that Wittgenstein borrows from Häckel). For the word ‘God’ looks like a proper name, but clearly cannot refer to something that is empirically locatable, otherwise God would be a spatio-temporal object, something that most monotheistic religions would deny. Relatedly, philosophers of religion, theologians and ordinary religious people believe that the word ‘God’ is the name of a supernatural object or entity. Similarly, many mathematicians (including philosophers of mathematics) think that since number words cannot refer to empirical objects in the world, they must refer instead to abstract objects. Arguably, this temptation is behind Plato’s theory of the Forms – the ‘Form of the Good’ or of ‘Beauty’ can never be found in the myriad different objects we actually apply the words ‘good’ or ‘beautiful’ to, but only in a metaphysical realm of ‘Forms’ populated by the abstract objects that are the alleged referents of these unadulterated essences. Because language is full of substantives, for example, and we naively assume that the meaning of a word is the object it refers to – Wittgenstein calls this Augustine’s picture of language – if we are unable actually to find such an object in the world, we take it that there must be a ‘supernatural’ object or spirit that the word can refer to instead: ‘Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit ’ ( Philosophical Investigations §36). Wittgenstein aims to liberate us from the spell that language casts by freeing us from the conceptual confusions and illusions that hold us in thrall. Philosophy is not a body of knowledge for Wittgenstein, but an activity of grammatical (conceptual) clarification or elucidation. Wittgenstein not only invented a new philosophical method – which he once described as similar to the shift from alchemy to chemistry – he also used it in an iconoclastic manner, in order to dissolve, rather than solve, the great philosophical problems of the past. SUGGESTED READING Wittgenstein's Tractatus at 100 By IAI Editorial Doing so will help one recognise why contemporary debates around religion, like the one surrounding the so-called new atheists, mistakenly conflate religion with other practices, like science. To understand why, one has to appreciate Wittgenstein’s unique philosophical approach. Both characterizations are wide of the mark. The former think that Wittgenstein has eviscerated religious belief of serious content, while the latter believe that what Wittgenstein is offering is a recherché form of apologetics for religion. ‘If Christianity is the truth, then all the philosophy written about it is false’ This pronouncement has not served to endear Wittgenstein to many philosophers of religion or militant atheists seeking to debunk religious belief. ![]()
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