Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion

219 Pages·2014·0.991 MB·English

by  Thomas D. Carroll (auth.)

Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion
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Wittgenstein within the
Philosophy of Religion
Thomas D. Carroll
Xing Wei College, People’s Republic of China
© Thomas D. Carroll 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-40789-4
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DOI 10.1057/9781137407900
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For Don and Joy
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Contents
Acknowledgments i x
Introduction: On Reading Wittgenstein on Religion 1
1 Problems of Interpretive Authority in Wittgenstein’s
Corpus 13
1.1 Sources for Wittgenstein and philosophy of religion 14
1.1.1 S ources primarily concerned with phenomena
of religions 1 5
1 .1.2 Private sources of remarks on religions 2 2
1 .1.3 S ources that are otherwise relevant to
philosophy of religion 2 7
1 .2 Interpretive schemes and Wittgenstein’s corpus 33
2 Wittgenstein, Biography, and Religious Identity 4 1
2.1 The uses of biography in philosophical study 41
2.2 Wittgenstein and religiosity 43
2.3 T he Tractatus , the mystical and Wittgenstein’s
ethic of perspicuity 48
2.4 Perspicuity about Wittgenstein’s religious identity 54
2.5 Conclusion 67
3 A History of Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of
Religion 69
3.1 P hilosophy of religion during the first half of the
twentieth century 70
3.2 Philosophy of religion influenced by Wittgenstein 80
3.2.1 The influence of the T ractatus 8 0
3.2.2 The influence of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy 83
3.3 Criticisms of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion 91
3.3.1 Alvin Plantinga and analytic philosophy
of religion 9 1
3.3.2 N aturalist criticisms of Wittgensteinian
philosophy of religion 9 3
3 .3.3 C riticism of Wittgensteinian philosophy of
religion by scholars of Wittgenstein 9 6
3.4 Conclusion 100
vii
viii Contents
4 The Traditions of Fideism 101
4.1 The confusion around use of the term ‘fideism’ 102
4.1.1 ‘Fideism’ is commonly used pejoratively 102
4.1.2 Scholarship on fideism is largely ahistorical 107
4.1.3 The historical origins of ‘fideism’ are complex 109
4.2 Popkin and Penelhum on ‘skeptical fideism’ 109
4.3 A genealogy of ‘fideism’ 112
4 .3.1 The symbolo-fideism of Ménégoz and Sabatier 112
4.3.2 ‘ Fideism’ in nineteenth century Catholic
theology 1 18
4.4 Historical context and the traditions of fideism 121
5 On ‘Fideism’ as an Interpretive Category 1 23
5.1 The case of James 125
5.2 The case of Kierkegaard 134
5.3 The case of Wittgenstein 139
6 Religions, Epistemic Isolation, and Social Trust 1 47
6.1 T he promise and the problem: Wittgenstein and
contemporary philosophy of religion 148
6.2 The social aspects of meaning 151
6.3 Wittgenstein on intellectual distance and trust 157
7 Wittgenstein’s Ethic of Perspicuity and the
Philosophy of Religion 171
7.1 Perspicuity, clarity, and contemplation 172
7 .1.1 Wittgenstein and Price on clarity in philosophy 172
7.1.2 M ulhall and Phillips on the personal and the
philosophical 1 74
7 .1.3 J ohn Clayton and the clarification of defensible
differences 1 77
7.2 Wittgenstein and the ethics of philosophy of religion 181
7.3 Conclusion 1 83
Notes 1 87
Bibliography 1 95
Index 2 05
Acknowledgments
The motivation for this project began with questions I first asked as
an undergraduate at Occidental College, especially concerning the
relevance of philosophy to clarifying the ideals of multiculturalism in
education, ethics, and politics. It was also at Occidental that I first read
some of Wittgenstein’s writings. I will always appreciate the faculty
members of the Philosophy Department (at the time, Marcia Homiak,
Hal Lauter, William Neblett, and Saul Traiger) as well as Dale Wright in
Religious Studies for challenging me to express myself more clearly, to
read more carefully, and to work harder than I had ever worked before.
I would like to thank in particular Professor Lauter who supported my
plans to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. I also appreciate the
opportunities I had in the MA program at San Francisco State University
to study with Donald Provence and Peter Radcliff and to speak on many
occasions with fellow students David Dell’Agostino and Julian Friedland
about Wittgenstein and philosophy of language. I am especially grateful
to Dr. Provence for his painstaking attention to detail in supervising my
thesis on theories of truth.
The ideas and arguments that grew into this book emerged during my
doctoral studies at Boston University. I am indebted to Juliet Floyd, who
served as my dissertation director, for facilitating my exploration of the
historicity of interpretations of Wittgenstein within the philosophy of
religion and her extensive comments on multiple drafts. I am deeply
grateful to Alan Olson, my second reader and academic advisor, who has
guided me from my first semester to graduation and beyond. I am also
thankful to Diana Lobel, Allen Speight, and Robert Cohen for graciously
agreeing to serve as committee members.
During the years of my doctoral study, I also worked closely with John
Clayton, whose posthumous book, R eligions, Reasons and Gods (Clayton,
2006), Anne Blackburn and I prepared for publication. Clayton’s project
of tracing of the context-specific ends of theistic arguments throughout
history and showing their differences from other philosophical ends,
continues to inspire me in considering how contextually attentive
philosophy of religion may be helpful for understanding human diver-
sities. I am appreciative of conversations during these years with Anne
Blackburn as well as with fellow students Bradley Herling and Timothy
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