A Turning of the Spade: Wittgenstein and Buber on Religion and Religiosity

A

T

URNING OF THE

S

PADE

:

W

ITTGENSTEIN AND

B

UBER ON

R

ELIGION AND

R

ELIGIOSITY

Supervisor: M.J.B. Stokhof

Second readers:

G. van Donselaar, V. Kal

Jurre Lagerwaard

MASTER THESIS

1

“‘Thy will be done’, he says, and says no more;

but truth adds for him ‘through me whom Thou needest’”.

Ich und Du, III.16/83

2

Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Martin Stokhof, for his unwavering support and keen watchful eye the past five months. Without his knowledge, patience and guidance, this thesis would never have reached the point that it is at now.

Secondly, I am greatly indebted to the courses and personal help given by Victor Kal, whose almost infallible expertise and commitment, not only to for the life and works of Martin Buber, but that of Kierkegaard and Heidegger as well, has been of great help and inspiration to me - not only over the course of writing this thesis, but during the past four years as such.

Furthermore, I would like to thank my bandmates for their support in bad times, not only in the course of writing this thesis, but for everything they have done for me the past five years – the bad as well as the good. I want to thank Tom for being my brother through thick and thin. My parents, who have always supported me in my life and studies. And everybody else, who shall remain unnamed here.

But, above all, I would like to acknowledge my absolute indebtedness to both Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as Martin Buber, for being absolutely relentless sources of inspiration, amazement, wonder, as well as humility, humiliation, frustration, restless nights and waking dreams. Without them, I would not have been the person I am today.

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Table of Contents

Note on references and word count – page 4

Introduction – page 5

Chapter 1. Wittgenstein and Philosophy – and Religion – page 8

Chapter 2. Martin Buber: Man and the Dialogical – page 23

Chapter 3. A Turning of the Spade: Wittgenstein and Buber on Authentic Religion – page 35

Conclusion – page 44

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Note on references and word count

*

List of abbreviations

PI* (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953) Lectures (Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations, 1978) CV (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 1977)

I&D** (Buber, I and Thou, 1937)

* In alignment with common standards, all references to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations refer to paragraph numbers. These numbers run parallel in all translations.

** All references to Martin Buber’s I and Thou have the following format: part (in roman numerals).paragraph/page (of Roland Gregor Smith’s English translation of 1937). Although Buber did not specifically number each his sections, I and Thou is split into three parts, containing 30, 13 and 18 paragraphs, respectively, separated by an asterisk. Because the R.G. Smith translation was used for all citations, and this particular edition does not remain faithful to the original German division of paragraphs (as presented in (Buber, Ich und Du, 1973a) as well as (Buber, Ik en Jij, 2010)), I have chosen to include both page as well as part/paragraph numbers (as found in the German and Dutch editions).

*

Word count: 21,651

The word count includes the entirety of the main body, including the introduction and conclusion, including opening quotations and paragraph titles, excluding chapter titles.

The word count does not include the motto, acknowledgement, this specific section, the table of contents, and the bibliography.

The word count does not include footnotes. Insofar as they are not references, the footnotes are not a necessary element of a proper understanding of the text but rather provide supplementary background information.

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Introduction

*

“An enclosure with a hole in it is as good as none. – But is that true?”

(PI §99)

An exhaustive description of any phenomenon is as much an ideal to be strived for and sought after, as it is impossible to achieve in concreto. But does a description need to be exhaustive – on the pain of apparent imperfection, that is: failure to answer to the ideal – in order to make sense? Likewise, does an analogy need to be perfect in order to be meaningful? Is it necessary, in order for a parallel between lines to be shown, that these lines are infinitely parallel? Surely, the mathematical object as well as the perfect analogy cannot be established within the confines of human reason. With this in mind, the following investigation will attempt to establish parallels through the explicit confrontation of two forms of thought – parallels which have been left disregarded almost completely for the better part of six decades - could not possibly be perfect, nor need the parallels be infinite in order to be meaningful. This confrontation between two forms of thought which, at first sight, appear to be as vastly dissimilar as those of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Buber, will undoubtedly raise eyebrows - especially if the tentative conclusion of such an investigation holds that the two parties, in fact, are in unanimous agreement regarding the most fundamental ideas regarding specific themes. This, however, is the precise aim of the following investigation: to show that the accounts of religion that Buber and Wittgenstein offer are not only somewhat alike, but that their most fundamental positions and ideas regarding this theme run almost entirely parallel to each other.

The genesis of the idea that there is a deeper connection between these two philosophers occurred some two years ago. Ever since I and Thou was introduced to me, there has been a nagging voice in the back of my head constantly telling me “but that’s exactly what Wittgenstein does there-and-there”. The comparison itself, however, remains virtually unprecedented. There are, to my knowledge, only two published articles which draw together Buber and Wittgenstein’s thought – neither of which are satisfying investigations, as both fail to relate the core ideas of these two thinkers, instead opting to focus on a single remark, in the case of Richard McDonough’s article ‘Wittgenstein’s Zettel 608 from a Religious Point of View’,1 _{or just briefly teasing the extended connection between Wittgenstein and}

Buber in a simple segue to Martin Buber’s treatment of the concept ‘world’, in the case of Remi Brague’s ‘How To Be In The World’.2 _{Works on the relation between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard and}

Heidegger – two thinkers closely related to Buber – have become more commonplace since the past twenty years or so.3 _{These particular philosophers will, however, not play a big role in the following}

investigation. In the course of this process, it will become clear that no intermediaries are required in order to establish the relation between Buber and Wittgenstein.

2 · (Brague, 2002)

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Even if one agrees with all the above, the intuition that there are many differences between Buber and Wittgenstein is easily accounted for. Buber wrote avidly not only about contemporary religious and philosophical issues, but (in cooperation with his life-long friend Franz Rosenzweig) translated the Hebrew Bible into German, and wrote autobiographical pieces4 _{as well as literary retellings of Jewish}

myths and sages. Furthermore, he was a public figure in Germany as well as Israel, and gave lectures at a multitude of universities. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, was an intensely private person. In-depth details of his private life have only ever been recorded and recounted by third parties. There are biographical clues and remarks in publications such as Culture and Value, and Wittgenstein held diaries (some of which have also been published),5 _{but detailed biographical accounts only appeared after his}

death. Buber wrote in a poetic style, riddled with religious allusions and symbols. Wittgenstein wrote (even in his earlier works) in a sober, straightforward manner, unconcerned with common academic standards, and the vast majority of his writings were never meant to be published.

The dissimilarities run further than biographical differences. Given the almost esoteric form in which Buber wrote I and Thou, it seems easy to construct a thorough Wittgensteinian critique6 _{on Buber’s}

treatment of notions such as ‘world’, ‘man’, and Buber’s coinage of the notions of the Thou’ and ‘I-It’ relationships as well as the ‘It-World’. The rigidity with which Buber employs these notions is bound to raise questions, and might even lead to a rejection of attempts to draw the thought of these two philosophers closer together. Expressly rejecting any essentialist claims,7 _{the Wittgensteinian would need}

to reject Buber’s division of the life of man into two distinct modes-of-being (i.e. I-Thou/I-It), since it comes eerily close to positing a essentialist claim regarding the constitution of human life. When approaching Buber from this point of view, it would seem that Buber is simply misled by the use of the notions ‘I’, ‘it’, and ‘you’, resulting in a warped account of the relation between individuals and others around him. The interaction with the world knows many forms, and cannot be reduced to two simple attitudes towards it.

The connection between Buber and Wittgenstein doesn’t seem to be apparent at all, seeing how both were simply concerned with matters that, on a surface level, are simply different from the other’s. Wittgenstein’s most influential writings are about the nature of language; Buber’s most influential writings are about religion and theology. Wittgenstein has gathered a considerable following in the philosophy of language, semantics, and methodology of philosophy, whereas Buber’s writings are mostly read in a religious or theological context. One might be inclined to wonder if an investigation into the relation between such apparently vastly different fields of research is worthwhile. It will be shown, however, that Wittgenstein and Buber have a lot of themes and ideas in common. Religion did play a major role in Wittgenstein’s life. Analogously, philosophy did play a major role in Buber’s works. To hold that their respective ideas about religion or philosophy are but accompanying melodies to the main theme of their thoughts on religion or philosophy, respectively, inevitably leads to a one-sided

5 · See, for example, (Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-1916, 1961)

6 · That is, from the perspective of the Philosophical Investigations – the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus may very well be regarded as esoteric in its own right!

7

perspective upon their life and works, a perspective which is itself, in turn, irreconcilable with what can properly be shown to be the case.

In what follows we will first be confronted with Wittgenstein and Buber’s philosophies as stand-alone projects. Starting with Wittgenstein, and specifically with the posthumously published Philosophical

Investigations, we will attempt to elucidate his religious thought by relating the ideas put forward within

the Investigations to works such as the Lectures on Religious Beliefs and Culture and Value. Then moving on towards Buber, we will again take a look at his religious thought through a discussion of his primary work I and Thou, subsequently involving other writings to strengthen our account. In the third and final chapter, the two threads of thought will be tied together and the aim of this investigation – that there are considerable parallels between the most fundamental ideas that these two philosophers put forward – will take its final shape.

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Chapter 1

Wittgenstein and Philosophy – and Religion

*

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an Austrian philosopher. Mostly concerned with the relation between language and reality, he is often hailed as one of the most influential thinkers in the field of philosophy of language and science, and epistemology. Wittgenstein undoubtedly left a great mark on many academic fields of research. A proper grasp of the true scope and essence of his thought, however, remains an elusive treasure – though not for a lack of trying. Although there is no such thing as a defined ‘Wittgensteinian school’ (that is to say: no such thing as a basic set of tenets which comprise the bulk of Wittgenstein’s thought and through which other philosophers after Wittgenstein have continued his work), the interest in Wittgenstein has grown, diminished, and re-grown over the past six decades. The goal of the following chapter is not, however, to provide a once-and-for-all overview or interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work. The approach in this particular chapter does not seek to end all discussion but seeks to bring to the attention a certain perspective of his thought that can prove helpful in relating Wittgenstein to other philosophers, as well as helpful to remind other scholars of certain aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought that cannot simply be passed over as secondary themes or ideas.

Wittgenstein’s philosophical relation regarding religion is somewhat ambiguous. The problematic aspect of relating Wittgenstein and religious thought is that he was ‘methodically ambiguous’ in his thinking. The issue at stake here is that even though many personal diary-notes are laden with (philosophically oriented) religious observations, such religious themes seem entirely absent from the more philosophically inclined writings such as the Tractatus or the Philosophical Investigations8_{. While the}

notion of ‘the mystical’9 _{gets a somewhat explicit treatment within the former, serious concrete thought}

about religion or religious problems are entirely absent from Wittgenstein’s later published philosophical works, as well as manuscripts which he had intended to publish at some point, save a single remark in the Philosophical Investigations.10

Taking this absence of systematic thought about the philosophy of religion at face value, one might argue that Wittgenstein in no way intended his philosophy to be connected to the specific philosophy

of religion. On the other hand, personal diaries and notes, published in collections such as Culture and Value,11 _{are filled with religious observations and allusions, and lecture notes from several of}

Wittgenstein’s students have been compiled into the Lectures on Religious Belief.12 _{Finally, there exists the}

collection of (highly critical) notes on James Frazer’s monumental anthropological study of primitive religious practices in his series The Golden Bough, mentioned earlier. These notes were written over the course of several years, and they were collected and published posthumously (as are all but two of

8 · (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953)

9 · Wittgenstein’s position regarding mysticism will be further elaborated upon in chapter 3 (section C). 10 · PI §373 reads: “Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)”

11 · (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 1977) 12 · (Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations, 1978)

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Wittgenstein’s writings).13 _{Moreover, several of Wittgenstein’s students have recounted Wittgenstein’s}

profound interest in religious matters and a religious attitude toward life.14

The absence of concrete remarks on religion within Wittgenstein’s philosophical texts, contrasted with the many religiously laden ones in other sources, may lead one to conclude that there really isn’t a whole lot to be said about a Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. Could it be that philosophy and religion are so radically different that the former cannot possibly hope to say anything meaningful about the latter? Or is it perhaps the case that Wittgenstein did not find these problems worthwhile to investigate? The latter position would neatly explain away the complete absence of direct religious ruminations within the Tractatus and the Investigations. The former accords to a line of interpretative thought dubbed ‘fideism’ by Kai Nielsen.15 _{But in taking this approach one is in danger of putting those}

cases where Wittgenstein does talk about religion aside as mere anecdotal stories; interesting perhaps from a biographical perspective, but, in the end, fruitless in regards to what may be called proper philosophy. Nonetheless, this approach is useful where it gives precedence to Wittgenstein’s own actual philosophical writings rather than secondary sources.

Generally, interpreters interested in the connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophical and religious thought start out by reminding us of a remark that Wittgenstein made to M. O’C. Drury: “I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.”16 _This

has led Norman Malcolm to investigate several possible analogies between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and religious points of view in his aptly titled (and posthumously published) essay ‘Wittgenstein: A Religious point of view?’. This approach has been picked up by several subsequent Wittgenstein-interpreters, but this method is by no means exclusive; interpreters have put forward a number of methods or starting points to advance a Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. Nevertheless, the remark may serve as solid anecdotal evidence through which the profound influence of religious themes upon Wittgenstein’s thought comes to the fore. Since the remark by itself offers no substantial information about Wittgenstein’s thought on religious themes, we will have to start our own investigation elsewhere. Our primary point of departure is the Philosophical Investigations. After establishing the basis from which we will approach Wittgenstein’s religious thought, we will proceed with a discussion of the way the thoughts expressed therein are applied in or consistent with Wittgenstein’s religious thought (as exemplified by Culture and Value and the Lectures on Religious Belief), as well as a discussion of the reception of these texts within scholarly debates about Wittgenstein’s corpus.

a. The Philosophical Investigations

The Philosophical Investigations, when taken at face value, is a very curious book. It calls itself philosophy, but doesn’t seem to make a direct point. Devoid of proper, linear structure, and without extended argumentation, those who read the book in search for direct and easily consumable explanations of, or

13 · Wittgenstein published two works during his life: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the paper ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’.

14 · See, for example, (Malcolm, 1993).

15 · Fideism will be discussed in section b of the current chapter. 16 · Cited in (Malcolm, 1993, p. 1).

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solutions for, deep philosophical problems, will be thoroughly disappointed. Nevertheless, something is happening within its confines, something far more profound than simplistic explanations of linguistic phenomena. Through his treatment of these phenomena (those of the everyday use of our language) Wittgenstein offers us a picture of language and meaning which aims to achieve a radical shift in our approach to philosophical problems.

In order to see what the profoundness contained within the Investigations consists of, we will let ourselves be guided by two themes. These are Wittgenstein’s treatment of first- and third person knowledge of mental phenomena, and Wittgenstein’s account of the interaction between humans and the world that they live in. Although these points can by no means be separated from each other, distinguishing between them will thoroughly clarify the problems at stake, as well as the insights that Wittgenstein offers. Even though there is no system to work with, his remarks give us insight into several essential characteristics of language use which, in turn, offer us a better view of the profound interconnectedness of man and the world that he lives in. With this exegetical approach we will establish certain core elements and recurrent themes within Wittgenstein’s thought.

Even though it is not directly our task to account for Wittgenstein’s ‘theory’ of linguistic meaning (if such a thing can even be deduced from the Investigations in the first place), care must be taken to see what the primary problems that Wittgenstein discusses are in the first place, if we wish to see how he approaches philosophical problems altogether. Wittgenstein’s main theme throughout the Investigations remains language and language use, which means that any interpretation will have to account for this focus – if only to see the driving force behind the work. The Investigations starts with a response to a passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions. As a matter of fact, it starts with a quotation from this book. Augustine presents us with a certain picture of the way language is supposed to work.: “the individual words in language name objects – sentences are combinations of such names. – […] Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.”17

Wittgenstein, however, is critical of this account. It can accommodate only for those words which have a direct referent. But language has an extension far greater than just words with direct referents.18

One might give a meaningful ostensive definition of a chair or table, but what such a definition would entail in the case of ‘five red apples’ is wholly unclear. One might be able to point out apples, but how does one point at ‘red’, or ‘five’, in the way that one points at a table? To be sure, ‘red’ and ‘five’ still have a clear and functioning meaning. The problem that presents itself is that the meaning that these words have seems to be established in a way wholly different than the way we point out apples. What this tells us that the Augustinian conception of language is limited, at best. Ostensive definitions might very well play a role in such games, but in the case of learning words such as ‘red’ and ‘five’, this method simply cannot work.

Instead of claiming that every word must have a referent – something that it depicts, something that can be pointed at in order to explain its meaning, or something that it represents – Wittgenstein tells us that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language”.19 _{That is to say: the meaning of a word can, in}

most cases, be explained through looking at its use in ordinary language games. This holds for many (‘if

18 · PI §3 19 · PI §43

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not all’) cases in which language is used.20 _{What, in turn, gives such language games meaning are forms of}

life. That is to say: in order for language to be meaningful, it must be a concrete practice within human

life. What gives use its meaning is the form of life in which a language game is played: “To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.”21 _{For any conceivable language, a form of life}22 _{will be conceived}

along with it. One cannot conceive of a language without conceiving of a form of life that goes along with it. This idea can be rephrased as such: for any conceivable language, a concrete practice in which this language is used will be conceived along with it. Forms of life are so closely interwoven with language that one cannot meaningfully conceive of a language without automatically conceiving of a form of life that it is embedded in. To imagine a language means imagining a world in which this language is used along with it.

Without said use – that is: without said world – any language conceived of would be dead and devoid of meaning. If the meaning of a words depends upon the language game in which it is used, and these language games in turn only have meaning when they are part of a form of life, it then follows that the meaningfulness of language is directly dependent upon the presence of a form of life itself.23 _A

disconnection between language and its use, in the form of, say, a language used to describe a wholly private sensation (for example, the feeling of pain that I experience, as opposed to the pain-sensations occurring in others), or a language whose sole purpose is to represent states of affairs as they are ordered within logical space (which exists independent from any human experience),24 _{each are trying to}

conceive of a form of life that is wholly incommensurable with those forms of life that human beings have and share together.

As such, one either has to transgress the boundaries of their own being-human, or grant that each individual human being already lives within a life-form that is incommensurable with that of others. Both options create a radical disjunction between any individual and the others that he lives among –

his life-world and their life-world are, at their core, completely different. But neither approach makes any

sense, precisely because – at the very least in normal cases – such a disjunction goes completely unsupported by the practice of ordinary language use. Language use simply wouldn’t make sense if it, at first, needs to originate from a wholly individuated point time and time again. No meaning can be

20 · PI §43 – that is not to say that language will function perfectly in all cases. These are the cases in which meaning might, in fact, not be explainable through looking at its use. Specifically, if a failure to do so presents itself, a language game will often have gone awry. It will do so if certain words, terms, concepts are used in a way that has no place in the language game being played at that point. The cogs of the use of the words that we employ at that moment do not quite fit those of the engine that comprises ordinary language use. - cf. §132 where Wittgenstein compares the notion of ordinary language use to a running engine. When language is doing its job, the engine is running along fine, one might say; it is only when the engine is idling that problems arise.

21 · PI §19

22 · Although it may be argued that a form of life as it is envisioned here necessarily implies the presence of a biological lifeform – rocks and trees, for example, do not appear to use language - the notion ‘form of life’ may still be understood without a thorough investigation of its biological range, so this thread of thought will be left for what it is.

23 · The question ‘what is it that gives rise to a form of life’ will have to remain unanswered. The question itself presupposes a language in which one could express such origins – yet one would have to take recourse to a form of life in order for such expressions to be meaningful. This would either posit a meta-form of life, which leads to an infinite regress, or lead to utterly nonsensical propositions being put forward. This problem will be discussed in relation to Descartes’ philosophy below.

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attached to any utterance in such cases. This is the main point put forward in the course of what is often called ‘the private language argument’.25 _{Through the construction of this argument, Wittgenstein is}

taken to hold that cases of completely individuated – and thus disconnected - forms of life meaning cannot exist in the first place.

Of special interest in light of the private language argument is Wittgenstein’s discussion of pain and pain-behavior and its implications for the idea of knowledge of ‘inner’ sensations and the experiencing of an ‘outer’ world; a topic brought to light through a discussion of rule-following. After asking the question what a world in which no pain-behavior existed would look like, Wittgenstein proposes that we keep a diary wherein every time a certain sensation occurs, we write down the sign S.26 _{The very first}

thing Wittgenstein wants to remark is that no proper definition of this sign can be given. That is to say: if only I have access to the sensation that I call S, - that is: what it is supposed to refer to - we can never meaningfully talk about this sensation. This is because whatever it is that I call S, as long as only I have (apparent) access to this sensation, I can never justify calling that sensation S.

Without external manifestation there is no way to talk about these sensations in the first place. If the sensation is completely ‘interior’, there simply is no standard or measure by which one can judge the

correctness of connecting this sensation with the sign S. Because there is no explicit behavior linked to

one’s having-this-sensation,27 _{the naming of the sensation cannot play a meaningful role in a language}

game. Calling S a sensation needs justification through our ordinary language; the use of this word needs its proper place within a language game,28 _{which in turn needs a form of life as a backdrop in order to}

beget meaning. Moreover, ascribing knowledge of my inner sensations to myself is impossible, since it is impossible to doubt whether or not I am in pain in the same way that one can doubt whether it will rain tomorrow. The knowledge that I have of my own sensations is the same that I would as that of anybody else’s, but the access to my own sensations is not intermediated by knowledge. Rather, my access is immediate, and the connection between this sensation and its concrete expression is as immediate. This means that ascribing knowledge of my sensations that stands on an equal footing with the knowledge that I have of someone else’s pain is impossible. There is an asymmetry between first- and third person perspectives, but not in first- and third person knowledge, because there is no such thing as first person knowledge of my own sensations.

In a remark in Culture and Value, dating back to 1931, Wittgenstein tells us that “it is humiliating having to present oneself as an empty tube only inflated by the mind.”29 _{Wittgenstein would hold that}

25 · What has been called the ‘private language argument’ has been constructed from a series of remarks occurring within the Investigations. The title has been coined by Wittgenstein-scholars and does not actually occur within the Investigations itself, and even the exact paragraphs marking the beginning and end of the argument are disputed. Compare, for example, Kripke (1982): “a common view … assumes that it begins with section 243 […] In my view, the real ‘private language argument’ is to be found in the sections preceding §243” with Ayer (1968), who implicitly holds the bulk of the argument to occur – roughly – between §258 and §270.

26 · PI §§257-258.

27 · The ever-present lure of behaviorism sneakily enters the stage at this point. here. However, Wittgenstein resolutely rejects a behaviorist perspective. Behaviorism posits a meaning behind behavior, one that we can clearly distinguish from the behavior itself, whereas Wittgenstein holds that meaning and behavior cannot be separated in the first place. What Wittgenstein shows is not that there is only meaning in behavior, but rather that there would be no meaning without it.

28 · PI §261 29 · CV, 13e

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all aspects of one’s ‘inner’ sensations are fundamentally connected with the world that we live our ‘outer’ lives in, and connected in such a way that the entire idea of first person knowledge becomes untenable. ‘Inner’ processes can be characterized by a form of openness at play in the response of any human being to the confrontation with the world that he or she lives in. One’s so-called ‘inner’ sensations are - in most cases - really out in the open, because the expression of these sensations is directly connected to the sensation itself. The sensation cannot go without its expression. When someone is in pain, we don’t consider doubting the reality or accessibility of his sensations but we act – in most cases – in order to help him: “If there were … no characteristic expression of pain, of fear, of joy […] this would make our normal language-games lose their point.”30 _{Furthermore, it is “in one way wrong, and in another}

nonsense” to hold that “only I can know whether I am really in pain”.31 _{There are many cases where}

others can indeed know that I am in pain.

The point here is twofold: it is an exercise in futility to attempt to hold a distinction between knowledge of the ‘inner’, let alone distinguish such knowledge with that of the ‘outer’. It makes no sense to say that ‘I know that I am in pain’ because our access to these sensations occurs not through silent introspection, but rather through having learned to replace our primitive utterances with linguistically complex ones,32

“for how can I go so far as to try to use language to get between pain and its expression?”33 _{Here, there}

really is no knowledge to speak of. The access to my pain-sensations is direct, and the utterance stands in a direct relation to this sensation. No ‘knowledge’ stands between the sensation and my utterance. What is accessible to others is my pain-behavior, and this behavior is directly connected with my sensations. And, to be sure, there is such a thing as common behavior and this common pain-behavior does get expressed through linguistic utterances. Primal cries are themselves replaced and refined through our employment of language, but the connection between the expression and the sensation remains untouched. The cave-man crying out in pain really stands on the same level as the child that yells out ‘ouch! – that hurt!’, as taught by his parents or other surroundings.

There is no principal difference between primitive pain-behavior (particularly physically expressive examples would be grimacing, grinding one’s teeth, applying pressure to a painful spot with one’s hands, etc.) and linguistically complex utterances (‘ouch! – that hurt!’) that communicate said pain: the latter is a natural extension of the former, and is thus as much part of the ‘primitive’ experience and accompanying behavior. We cannot say that the utterance itself could theoretically be entirely separate from the instance of pain, since the utterance does not describe the experience34 _{– the utterance complements}

the experience, and is, as such, just as ‘primitive’ as the howling of a caveman with a broken leg. Moreover, if there were no such things as normal and regular pain-behavior, all our language games involving such concepts would prove pointless!35

Access to this experience – that is to say: access to the knowledge of the fact that one is in pain – does not proceed through an introspective examination of one’s body. ‘Knowledge’ of sensations only enter the stage when a third party observes my behavior. There is an asymmetry between first- and third

14

person access to sensations, but this asymmetry is not one informed by the type or form of knowledge that one has of these sensations. This is the point of the range of paragraphs that constitute the private language argument: to show that introspective knowledge of one’s inner sensations is impossible, precisely because in the first-person case, there is only the pain. The utterance does not describe this pain or its primitive manifestation36 _{- it is a direct expression thereof. Nothing stands ‘in between’ pain and its}

expression. I don’t know that I feel pain. I (simply) feel the pain. Here, knowledge does not stand between sensation and utterance – they are direct, unmediated extensions of one another. The sign ‘S’ in the language, constructed to describe a sensation without an accompanying concrete expression, can never be meaningful.

When placed within a philosophical context, Wittgenstein appears to shows an immediate connection between man and the concrete world in which language is employed that precedes knowledge of this connection. If the expression of an ‘inner’ sensation is as immediate as Wittgenstein imagines it to be, it follows that the person making the utterance is directly embedded within the practice in which this expression is employed. Our use of language shows us that we stand in a direct relation to the world in which we play our ordinary language games. In order to see the scope of the idea that Wittgenstein has in mind, it is useful to provide a contrast with precisely those forms of thought that posit a precedence of first-person knowledge over third-person knowledge.

Exemplar for such an approach to the role of consciousness in establishing this knowledge would be the philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650). Cartesianism characteristically entails a division between mind and body, thus seeing consciousness as something wholly different from anything that we encounter within the boundaries of the (material or physical) world. While Wittgenstein may not have been in direct opposition to the entirety of Descartes’ own thought, and while it can be doubted in what sense Descartes truly separates mind from body, the method that Descartes uses (in his

Meditationes de Prima Philosophia,37 _{specifically) to arrive at his conception of a ‘first philosophy’ (one that}

grounds all further philosophical undertakings), can be thoroughly criticized through Wittgenstein’s conception of language.

Descartes, in search of grounds for unquestionable knowledge, holds that if one wishes to arrive at a proposition that one cannot doubt no matter what, one cannot rely on the things you were taught during your lifetime, one cannot trust the opinions of others, one cannot trust sense-experience, 38 _{and even}

one’s very thoughts may be deceived by an evil demon,39 _{changing any true proposition that the mind}

puts forward to a falsehood. Nevertheless, Descartes argues, given all these problems, one cannot possibly doubt that there is something that has these doubts.40 _{Even the demon would be unable to take}

this truth away from us. Because if these doubts exist, there must, consequently, be something that has these doubts. And what has these doubts, is a form of consciousness – a thinking thing. Therefore, Descartes concludes, the first, most primary, and undoubtable thing that one can have knowledge of, then, is the fact that there is something that doubts, and thus that there is something that thinks: ‘cogito,

36 · PI §244 (“The verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it”) 37 · (Descartes, 1641/1996)

38 · (Descartes, pp. 39-40) 39 · (Descartes, p. 47) 40 · (Descartes, p. 46)

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ergo sum’ – I think, therefore I am.41 _{Descartes clearly argues in favor of a picture of consciousness}

where an individual ‘I-point’ is established, which first of all knows itself, and only then is able to ‘connect’ to the world that it lives in. In other words: Descartes gives precedence to first-person knowledge, whereas such precedence simply does not hold, if we follow Wittgenstein’s remarks.

We must take care to see that the everyday use of language does not establish the embeddedness of man within the world that he lives, but serves as a reminder thereof. We must keep ordinary language use in clear sight when doing philosophy, since the nature of our utterances do mislead us in a way. We

are able to draw ‘the queerest conclusions’ from and with language,42 _{which is exactly why one must,}

first and foremost, look, and not think.43 _{We must look at the way everyday practices unfold if we are to}

understand the meaning that they express, instead of forcefully disfiguring them through a systematic approach bereft of the possibility of any posterior influence. If ordinary language is alright as it is,44 _then

Philosophy (consequently) “must leave everything as it is”45 _{(emphasis added).}

It is through this approach that Wittgenstein’s position becomes most apparent. Wittgenstein holds the world to be, first and foremost, open for man to live his life in: the world shows itself to us as a more or less steadily available playing field, ready to be used directly, without intervention of rational thought and a carefully calculated plan de campagne in one’s mind before one sets his or her body into motion. No intermediate knowledge or theory is required in order to connect one’s self to this world or in order to act within it. Man, in the entire constellation of his everyday practices, finds himself inextricably entwined with this world (or rather: entwined with a form of life). This is shewn especially through Wittgenstein’s description of the way we approach supposed ‘inner states’ - both those of ourselves as well as those of others around us.

When contrasted with Descartes, it becomes clear that methodological introspection is not the path to walk if one wants to go about and think meaningfully about oneself, the world one lives in, or even the nature of one’s own consciousness. Anything that we would call a ‘philosophical investigation’ cannot concern itself purely with what goes on within my own self but must attempt to focus its attention on the world – the language games or practices that it wishes to describe – as a whole: it cannot disregard the everyday practices that humans rely on in order to navigate themselves around the world. Put stronger still, it is precisely these everyday practices that philosophy should concern itself with. For what other life would there be to describe?

b. Wittgenstein on religious belief

So far, we have seen several concepts and terms pass the revue. Utterances beget meaning through language games. A form of life is the context in which a language game is played. The way we employ language in our everyday lives shows a connection between man and world that is both inextricable as well as unmediated. Our topic, however, remains the relation between these ideas and the philosophy of religion. In order to establish the proper relation of the previous section to the philosophy of religion,

16

we need to look beyond the Investigations, and see what Wittgenstein writes about religion in other sources. The first are the Lectures on Religious Belief. In it, we can see the concept of language whose meaning is begotten through a supposed connection to something that lies outside this language (in other words: assuming that language has the sole purpose of pointing out objects or describing states of affairs), applied to a very specific form of utterances: those of religious ideas such as ‘Christ has been resurrected’ or ‘a last judgement will occur’. As we have seen, the meaning of words and sentences are determined through the language game in which they are used. By extension, both these claims could each be used in multiple ways in a multiplicity of language games. Failure to recognize this fact inevitably results in language games going awry: communication fails if different parties are, quite literally, not playing the same game as the other.

In order to determine what role these exemplary religious utterances could play in language games, Iakovos Vasiliou,46 _{attempts to extract a Wittgensteinian position regarding the status and justification}

of religious utterances through a comparison of the Lectures with On Certainty. Vasiliou suggests that the statement “Christ has been resurrected” really does attempt to describe a certain state of affairs. His interpretation of religious discourse focuses itself on (what he dubs) the ‘factuality’ of religious claims.47

Christ could have been resurrected, or he could not have been, “and [this proposition] is surely more naturally understood as making a claim about the occurrence of a particular event rather than as expressing an attitude.”48 _{However, Wittgenstein contends that however obvious it may seem that a}

statement about Christs’ resurrection attempts to describe a factual state of affairs, as obvious it should be that treating such claims as if they really do attempt to describe matters of fact simply marks a failure to recognize the game being played when these utterances are meaningfully employed.

If ‘Christ was resurrected’ is seen as a factual statement, then it becomes simply untrue: it is absurd to claim that a historically real person has physically risen from the dead. It is precisely binary oppositions such as the one Vasiliou presents (Christ either rose from the dead – or he did not) against which Wittgenstein agitates – the meaningfulness obviously does not rely upon an accurate description of a state of affairs. This, in turn, means that assuming that religious utterances may be either true or untrue just doesn’t work in cases like this. In the Lectures on Religious Belief, Wittgenstein discusses precisely this way of treating religious utterances. If someone holds that a last judgement will occur, then

“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 proof. But he has what you might call an unshakeable belief. It will show, not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but rather by regulating for in all his life.”49

If we want to see if someone truly believes in a last judgement, then we need to look at the way this belief regulates his life. If a last judgement will occur (and if it is going to be anything like the Christian telling of this tale) then this person will (surely!) regulate his life in a certain way, have this picture in mind always, leading his every step. The grounds for his belief are ‘quite different’ from the grounds that we have to believe that, for example, the Sun will rise somewhere in the morning and set again

47 · (Vasiliou, p. 30) 48 · (Vasiliou, pp. 30-31) 49 · Lectures, 54

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somewhere in the evening. Wittgenstein cannot contradict the believer in the last judgement because “reasons look quite different from normal reasons”.50 _{Evidence in the sense of experiential or empirical}

facts cannot be provided in these cases since the reasons given in the first place “are, in a way, quite inconclusive. The point is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business. Anything that I normally call evidence wouldn’t in the slightest influence me.”51

In order to strengthen his own account, Vasiliou points out the following observation from Culture

and Value: “What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s resurrection? I play as it were with the thought.

– If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like every human being.”52 _Vasiliou

quickly concludes that this shows that Wittgenstein is committed to the factuality of religious beliefs.53

However, here he makes precisely the mistake described above, caused by a failure to see that Wittgenstein is indeed playing with the thought. Vasiliou holds that the claims surrounding Christ’s resurrection binds one to a binary opposition. Both asserting as well as downright denying of the statement ‘Christ resurrected’ would seem to commit one to the position that Christ did die, and decomposed in the grave. However, it is precisely the commitment to this opposition that is given an ironic twist in the remark quoted above (Wittgenstein truly plays with the thought). More interesting still, this very commitment is downright rejected within the Lectures: “If you ask me whether or not I believe in a Judgement Day … I wouldn’t say ‘No. I don’t believe there will be such a thing.’ It would seem to me utterly crazy to say this. […] I can’t contradict that person.”54

The game that Wittgenstein plays with Christ resurrecting is this: if Christ arose from the grave – mind you, this is a description of a state of affairs - then surely the description of the opposite state of affairs must entail Christ dying and decomposing in a grave like any other man. Yet this approach makes no sense, precisely because it approaches the claim as if it does attempt to describe a state of affairs. This renders the claim futile, as it would turn ‘Christ resurrected’ into an analytical truth. If the claim is taken to necessitate the cogent counter-claim ‘or decomposed in the grave’, we do no justice to the actual content of the expression itself. Wittgenstein is playing a game: he posits a claim (‘Christ resurrected from the grave’) and asks us whether it is truly meaningful to imagine the opposite (‘Christ decomposed like any other man’). In the case of the religious believer making the claim, this opposition wouldn’t make sense in the first place – as much as the initial claim of the believer would make no sense to a person trying to interpret religious utterances as if factual statements.

In the Investigations, Wittgenstein makes this point using the phrase ‘every rod has a length’55 _{– “Now}

can I imagine ‘every rod having a length’? Well, I simply imagine a rod.”56 _{Can we meaningfully imagine}

the opposite state of affairs? This would be the case if we said: ‘these two tables have the same length’. However, in the case of the rod, there is no meaningful contrary state of affairs imaginable. What this shows is that the sentence ‘every rod has a length’ has a use dissimilar from that of ‘these tables share

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the same length’. Similarly, the opposite of Christ’s resurrection does not entail him decomposing in the ground – we really play with the thought.

In the Lectures, we learn that believing or not believing in a Judgement day is not a matter of having opposing points of view regarding matters of fact. Much in the same way, the binary opposition that we are presented with here is nonsensical. The justification of a religious belief – providing evidence for it – “can only be the last result – in which a number of ways of thinking and acting crystallize and come together.”57 _{If evidence will only ever be the last result of a belief, then this evidence may very well play}

a role in the justification of said belief. But failing to obtain such evidence – or, even stronger, obtaining evidence of a quite contrary state of affairs (e.g. Christ decomposing in his grave, or not having existed as a historical person in the first place) – will not touch the legitimacy of the belief, since it never obtained its legitimacy through a correct description of certain states of affairs in the first place. A belief may go unjustified (that is to say: may not have factual evidence to speak for it), yet still be legitimized through a way of life.

Wittgenstein himself provides the key to this idea in Culture and Value: “Religion says: Do this! – Think

like that! But it cannot justify this and it only need to try to do so to become repugnant; since for every

reason it gives, there is a cogent counter-reason.”58 _{This thread of thought is reiterated throughout the}

Lectures. The religious claim cannot be contradicted, since such a contradiction would make the claim a

factual proposition. Yet in establishing their meaning – that is to say: when we look at the use of such utterances – these utterances rest neither on empirical or historical descriptions of some state of affairs. Their meaning lies in the way these utterances are incorporated into one’s way of life - in the way these claims play a role in one’s life. As such, they simply cannot be taken to be simple descriptive statements: they do not describe a state of affairs, but rather a far greater scope: they show us an attitude that one has towards such a state of affairs as exemplified through one’s way of life. The way in which these claims are exhibited and ‘lived’ within one’s own life is what we have to work with - our playing ground, so to speak. Trying to make sense of these claims as descriptive completely misses the whole point in the first place!

What Wittgenstein is arguing is the following: the reasons for someone to have a certain belief cannot (perhaps we can even say should not) be justified through pointing out certain facts or states of affairs. To hold that any propositional statement could meaningfully capture the essence of this belief is useless; belief is legitimized through a way of living one’s life. It is not through an appeal to factuality or the being-true of a determined state of affairs that religious utterances beget their meaning. It is through living a life in light of a certain belief – whether the belief is ‘true or false’ or not - that religious belief may properly be ascribed, and a description of such a belief will necessarily have to directly involved this life lived. Any approach focusing exclusively on the factual content of religious utterances fails to take precisely this aspect of religious belief into account.

Even so, what status Wittgenstein actually would give to such utterances is still disputed among scholars. Many different attempts have been made at providing means of a ‘Wittgensteinian justification’ of such utterances. The strongest current within this school of thought holds that Wittgenstein would endorse a form of fideism. Fideism will be taken to hold those forms of thought which claim that the

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distinction between religious and scientific utterances indicates an insurmountable gap between their respective life-worlds. That is to say, the fideist is taken to hold that scientific and religious discourse are so dissimilar, that only an insider – someone who is completely embedded within the form of life that informs this discourse - can fully grasp the meaning of the utterances made within them. Thomas Carroll, in his concise but genuinely enlightening attempt to provide a historical, philosophical as well as theological context for Wittgensteinian forms of religious thought,59 _{notes that “one need not search}

far to see how extensive this association is, and it has affected what philosophers understand fideism to be. Definitions and explorations of fideism … rarely fail to mention Wittgenstein’s thought on religion.”60 _{Attempting to provide an overview of the Fideism-debate, Carroll, in turn, notes that}

“investigation into the genealogy of fideism shows that the meaning of the term is not at all clear in either philosophical or religious discourse.”61 _{The association of Wittgenstein and fideism was first}

introduced by Kai Nielsen in his essay ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’.62 _{Interestingly enough, this essay was}

written before the publication of almost all texts available to us today, with the exception of the

Investigations.63

But there are difficulties in the debate: Nielsen, for one, does not offer us a clear-cut definition of the term. Moreover, as Carroll notes, the term is often used as an accusation towards philosophers either failing to account for openness of (religious) practices, or to one who denies the possibility of rational discourse or justification within these practices.64 _{Nielsen himself appears to hold fideism to entail those}

positions which hold that, in a Kuhnian turn of phrase,65 _{religious discourse takes place within a}

paradigm that is radically different from that of scientific discourse: “Religious concepts can only be understood if we have an insider’s grasp of the form of life in which they are an integral part.”66

Consequently, in alignment with the previous Kuhnian perspective, religious and scientific practices appear to be incommensurable: they can only be understood from within themselves and are immune to scrutiny from the ‘opposing’ point of view. Moreover, many have taken the content of the Lectures,

Culture and Value and the Remarks on Frazer to verify Wittgenstein’s fideism.

We will take this view of fideism to guide our own further remarks. Present at the very least within the thought of the scholars that Nielsen finds this position to be exemplified by (e.g. Winch, Cavell, and Malcolm),67 _{the use of this specific definition holds sway insofar as they are representative of the thought}

of these scholars. Providing a characterization of the path most of these interpreters take to arrive at

60 · (Carroll, p. 101) 61 · (Carroll, p. 101)

62 · (Nielsen, 2005), cf. (Carroll, p. 123)

63 · First published in 1967, Nielsen’s article predates the publication of Culture and Value, Lectures and Conversations and the Remarks on Frazer.

64 · (Carroll, p. 102)

65 · The use of this terminology is my own, not that of Nielsen, but does not go unsupported by other Wittgenstein-scholars, cf. (Mulhall, Inheritance and Originality, 2001, pp. 37-42), for example. I believe that capturing the debate in Kuhnian terms proves illuminating when trying to capture the essence of the debate at stake. However, as Mulhall himself notes, there is a “fundamental danger inherent in the very idea of comparting Wittgensteinian pictures and Kuhnian paradigms – the danger of assuming that Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical practice aligns it, as opposed to rendering it discontinuous with, scientific enterprises.” (Mulhall, 2001, p. 42)

66 · (Nielsen, p. 21) 67 · (Nielsen, p. 21)

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their positions, Nielsen sums up eight ‘dark sayings’, which, “when they are accepted, [have] a tendency to generate what I call Wittgensteinian Fideism”.68 _{We will not go through all of these characterizations,}

but the first four stand out especially because they are almost direct quotes from the Investigations:

“1. The forms of language are the forms of life. 2. What is given are the forms of life.

3. Ordinary language is alright as it is.

4. A philosopher’s task is not to evaluate or criticize language or the forms of life, but to describe them where necessary and to the extent necessary to break philosophical perplexity concerning their operation.”69

When seeing this list as such, we cannot help but stop and look back at our own description of Wittgenstein’s position regarding language, forms of life and ordinary language use. They do not differ at all. As Nielsen would have it, we are now committed to further claims: forms of life ‘are not amenable to criticism; each mode of discourse is in order as it is’ and ‘the meaning of rationality can only be determined in the context of a determinate way of life’.70 _{Consequently, it appears we must conclude}

that religious discourse is on a level quite of its own, one which can only be truly understood when participating in such and such a form of life or way of speaking.

If we look back at Wittgenstein’s Lectures, it is indeed apparent that rational justification and evidence-gathering for religious claims completely misses the point that these claims express in the first place. Yet Wittgenstein is quick to add: “we do talk of evidence, and do talk of evidence by experience.”71

One’s life can most certainly take a turn for the through adopting a religious attitude, and in such cases it will not be hard to provide examples of a person’s life being influenced by this newfound faith. Moreover, “[Religion] does not rest on an historic basis in the sense that the ordinary belief in historic facts could serve as a foundation.”72 _{The certainty that we have of the Sun rising in the morning is not}

quite the same certainty that a religious person has in the occurrence of a Last Judgement.73 _{But this}

new appreciation for the status of religious utterances does not exempt these utterances from critique, nor does it entail that this criticism can only be offered from within the form of life in which a specific form of religious discourse takes place.

Religious discourse does not abide by the same rules as that of rational (reasonable or ‘scientific’) discourse, but certainly isn’t unreasonable either.74 _{It does not stand in direct opposition to scientific}

discourse or commonly accepted scientific facts because faith is exemplified through the way someone’s life is affected by his belief, not through the truth or untruth of a state of affairs which has, may have, will, might, or might not occur. Such a belief would be mere superstition as opposed to a guiding force behind one’s way of life. Superstition holds supernatural occurrences to factually occur within the world. A religious belief, even in proclaiming that a Judgement day is coming soon, does not necessarily rely on factual content for its meaning. The notion of Judgement day will pervade every step that this believer takes anyway: “Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to describe what

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we are supposed to do, but not to justify it.”75 _{This idea is strongly corroborated by another from the}

Lectures: “In a religious discourse we use expressions […] differently to the way in which we use them

in science. Although there is a great temptation to think we do [not use them differently].”76 _{A given set}

of verifiable statements cannot do justice to the essence of the belief that a person preparing for judgement day has. They do no justice to the actual content of these beliefs. These contents are found not in the description of some historical occurrence, but in the way people live their lives in light of this occurrence.

But, given that one takes this account of religious expression to hold, does immunity from critique follow, as Nielsen would have it? Are we confronted with two forms of discourse so dissimilar that no mutual understanding can be achieved? Yes, and no. Yes - religious utterances will never make sense scientifically, but no, this does not mean that they are immune from critique, since the understanding of these utterances do not depend upon a scientific framework in the first place, but a one that is entirely different from it. The understanding itself stands untouched when the scientific framework proves unable to account for it. The framework itself is, however, neither immune from scrutiny nor inaccessible to those who do not directly participate in the ways of life that this framework informs. Factuality plays no role in the meaning of religious utterances. Yes, religion and science are dissimilar, since religious utterances never answered to scientific standards in the first place. This is why they will never make sense when confronted by the rules of ‘rational discourse’. Scientific analyses or attempts to verify religious utterances simply miss the point, and when trying to understand religion from such a perspective, one will be unable to make any sense of the practices that religious people employ as a result of their world-view. But nevertheless, this ‘fideistic’ challenge need not pose a challenge at all.

There are two strong points left unattended to when comparing religious to scientific discourse. First off, Wittgenstein himself was, critical of several religious tendencies; critiques which follow directly from his philosophical considerations regarding precisely this topic. A disjunction in language games or forms of life – a scientific one as opposed to a religious one – do not necessitate a rejection of all mutual understanding, or the possibility of criticism. Recall, for example, the passage from Culture and Value quoted and stressed before.77 _{Furthermore, Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the idea that religious}

utterances can be reduced to verifiable statements about facts or states of affairs. This approach would “destroy the whole business”.78 _{Thus, Wittgenstein directly offers us several distinct critiques on}

conceptions of religion that he finds rejectable. To hold that a Wittgensteinian critique of religion and religious utterances is not possible (or is only possible when one has ‘insider knowledge’ of a particular religious way of doing things) is simply naïve.

Secondly, we do not seem to be able to equate a religious way of life with a distinct religious form of

life, with its own language games, meaning, practices, et cetera. At the very least, the religious person will

not only be religious within this form of life. There may very well be religious language games, but because these language games do not beget their meaning through the backdrop of a form of life that is entirely alien to those who do not hold the same beliefs, there is no reason to assume that access to

76 · Lectures, 57 77 · Cf. CV, 34e 78 · Lectures, 56

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the meaning of such utterances is only attainable through participating in such and such a form of life. Wittgenstein gives an example of such a disjunction between forms of life where the language game being played is unaffected in the Lectures. Talking about a spiritualist trying to describe his ideas, Wittgenstein tells us that even if he doesn’t have a clear idea of what it would mean to say “I don’t cease to exist [after death]”, he might still get an impression of the spiritualist’s idea of the immortality of the soul through asking the spiritualist about his ideas. These ideas not being subject to verification in the way that factual propositions would be, in no way impedes on their communicability:

There is, for example, no disagreement between the person who believes that he might see his friend after death, and the friend who cannot quite make sense of such a statement. 79_{The difference here}

seems not to lie in the meaning of the utterance itself, but in the way that it plays a role in someone’s life in the first place. Here, there are only differences in way of life, not in opinions. And even then, these differences do not point at faults or defects. Rather, they are simply the way things are. In fact, to attempt to hold these different points of view to a univocal standard of meaning in this way, is precisely the philosopher’s mistake that Wittgenstein so ferociously agitates against. The way of life that one exhibits cannot contradict or verify another. There simply are ways of life, each as meaningful as the other.

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Chapter 2

Martin Buber: Man and the Dialogical

*

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was a Prussian-born Jewish scholar, theologian and philosopher. His works are, perhaps even more so than Wittgenstein’s, unconventional in an academic-philosophical sense.80

Lacking the proper academic ‘distance’ from his subject, the poetic nature of Buber’s writings are often more reminiscent of great literary works such as Goethe’s Faust rather than Kant’s Critiques. Even so, many of the questions Buber poses, as well as themes he touches upon, are relevant within philosophical circles even today; the breadth of his work is considerable. Buber wrote on the philosophy of religion, intersubjectivity, esthetics, theory of culture, philosophy of language, epistemology and ontology. Resistant of a systematic approach towards any subject matter, Buber’s writings are very diverse. Nevertheless, there is a single thread to be discerned within all his writings: the event of the meeting between man and world. First laid out in the short book I and Thou,81 _{and further explored throughout}

all of his subsequent philosophically oriented writings, Buber, some five years before the end of his life, Buber summarizes the main insight that he has attained and attempted to explain in his life as follows: “a tentative answer which might then be the chief conclusion expressible in conceptual language of my experiences and observations, I can give no other reply than confess to the knowledge comprehending the questioner and myself: to be man means to be the being that is over and against.”82 _{The following}

chapter will investigate Buber’s notion of ‘being over and against’, and place Buber’s religious thought within this context. What exactly does ‘being over and against’ entail? And how does this notion influence Buber’s conception of a religious life?

To answer these questions, attention must first be paid to the method of approach to take regarding Buber’s works. Unconventional in more than one way, Buber’s eccentric style, both academically, philosophically, as well as in his writing and prose, pose a real challenge to any interpreter seeking to place Buber within a framework that is not quite his own. In our case, such a framework could be called Wittgensteinian. This approach is itself, however, by no means conventional. Often read from within a Kantian or Heideggerian framework,83 _{Buber is interpreted as being concerned with an authentic way}

of living in the world and connecting with others. While these connotations make sense (and are extremely helpful to place Buber within a philosophical context), the fertility of placing Buber within a Wittgensteinian framework may prove as great as the other two (still viable) options. To be sure, the

81 · For full details on references and citations, see page 4.

82 · (Buber, Autobiographical Fragments, 1967, p. 35). The original German reads: “Mensch sein heiβt, das gegenüber seiende Wesen sein.” I have chosen not to alter Maurice Friedman’s translation of gegenüber as ‘(being) over and against’, but it must be noted that this translation does not seem to capture the essential togetherness that the German word implies. ‘Over and against’ appears to make one’s other into an antithesis of one’s self, which, to Buber, isn’t the case. Selfhood is, rather, defined through being over and against, since it is only when faced with one’s ‘Thou that one’s self can come to full fruition (“through the Thou a man becomes I,” I&D I.28/28). 83 · There are, in fact, strong biographical connections between Buber and Heidegger. For an excellent introduction to both the biographical as well as philosophical relation between Heidegger and Buber, see (Mendes-Flohr, 2014).