Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard
RELIGION, INDIVIDUALITY AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD
Charles L. Creegan
First published in 1989 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
PDF release June 2021 by the author
© 1989, 1997, 2021 Charles L. Creegan
Original British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Creegan, Charles L. 1959-
Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard: religion,
individuality and philosophical method.
1. English philosophy. Wittgenstein,
Ludwig, 1889-1951 2. Danish philosophy.
Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855
1. Title
192
ISBN 0-415-00066-1
Original Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Creegan, Charles L., 1959-
Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard : religion, individuality, and
philosophical method / Charles L. Creegan.
P. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-415-00066-1
1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951-Contributions in methodology.
2. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951-Religion. 3. Wittgenstein,
Ludwig, 1889-1951-Contributions in individuality. 4. Kierkegaard,
Søren, 1813-1855-Influence. 5. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855-
Contribution in methodology. 6. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855-
Contribution in individuality. 7. Religion-Philosophy.
8. Methodology. 9. Individuality. 1. Title.
B3376.W564C74 1989
192-dc19
Numbers in brackets {0} in the text indicate pagination of the Routledge edition.
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................. 1
Relevant Biography.................................................................... 12
Methodology............................................................................... 55
Problems of Interpretation ........................................................ 98
Implications For Religion ........................................................ 140
Echoes And Repercussions ..................................................... 185
Now I Can Go On! ................................................................... 225
Bibliography ............................................................................. 234
Index .......................................................................................... 248
iii
{1}
Introduction
The works of Søren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein are
generally conceded to be of seminal importance for their
respective fields. But the mention of ‘respective fields’ already
shows that there is a radical gap between the spheres of
influence of the two authors.
A systematic consideration of the situation could result in a
variety of theories concerning the origin of this gap. For
example, it might seem to be justified by the disparity in the
two authors’ own fields of study. Kierkegaard explicitly claims
to be ‘a religious author,’ insisting that everything he writes
must be understood in relation to the problem of ‘becoming a
Christian.’ On the other hand, Wittgenstein is clearly a
philosopher: in his works the problems of philosophy are
addressed in terms of the relation between language and world.
These facts certainly document a substantial difference.
The impression that Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are not
participants in the same universe of discourse might be further
substantiated by the fundamental difference in their
motivations. Kierkegaard felt a vocation of religious edification,
which he discovered and expressed through his relations with
other people, his father, fiancée, and bishop being chief among
1
INTRODUCTION
these. His appeal to the categories of philosophy derives from
his psychological perception of the religious ‘need of the age.’
Wittgenstein came to philosophy through its connection with
fields far removed from religion. He began as an engineer, and
engaged certain technical questions in the philosophy of
mathematics and logic as a natural outgrowth of this interest.
Eventually his investigations into symbolism led to a more
general interest in language; the language {2} of religion is only
one of the examples he considered. Once again, there is a
considerable difference to be seen.
These differences between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein help
to explain the appropriation of Kierkegaard by ‘Continental’
existentialists and theologians, and the appeals to Wittgenstein
by ‘Anglo-American’ logical positivists, analytic philosophers,
and philosophers of language.
The separation between readers of Wittgenstein and
Kierkegaard has become even wider as a result of the logical
positivists’ well-known antipathy toward religion. The
association of Wittgenstein with their position, despite his
disavowals, has virtually ensured the propagation in the
scholarly world of the impression that he not only ignored
religion but positively abhorred it. Thus ‘Wittgensteinian’
philosophers might be inclined to disregard Kierkegaard, while
2
INTRODUCTION
some theologians and scholars of religion display actual fear of
Wittgenstein.1
The difference between the two authors can be briefly
summarized as follows: Kierkegaard is ‘the father of
existentialism,’ while Wittgenstein is ‘the father of analytic
philosophy.’ What greater difference could there be?
*
In the midst of their legitimate differences, there is one
similarity between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein which is
striking. This similarity cannot be expressed in systematic
categories: it is not a case of identity in academic specialization,
nor yet of correlation in factual discoveries. Instead, it is a
congruity of method. Both authors stress reliance on indirect
methods of communication; both rely on such methods
themselves.
The term ‘indirect communication’ was coined by
Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein’s parallel concept, which carries over
from the early to the later period, is the ‘showing’ of certain
1 It is worth noting in this context that a recent multi-volume
compilation of articles on Wittgenstein has in its composite index
only one reference to Kierkegaard. The reference is to a footnote in
an article by a European Wittgenstein scholar, who there issues a
general denial that anything about Wittgenstein’s methods or aims
has any relation to Kierkegaard’s project. (Joachim Schulte (1986)
‘Wittgenstein and Conservatism,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical
Assessments, 4 vols., ed. Stuart Shanker, London: Croom Helm,
4:69n.)
3
INTRODUCTION
essential ideas or distinctions which cannot be ‘said.’ Both
methods are based on the perspicuous presentation of evidence,
rather than the advancing of ‘theses,’ concerning the various
subjects under consideration.
Since both authors are communicating indirectly, it is not
surprising that some of the strategies of communication they
use are the same. Certain features are repeatedly evident in
their works. Among these are examples, reminders, repetition
of the obvious, notes on usage, and stories.
These elements are used in a unique way. They are
not {3} presented as factually significant ‘data.’ Rather, they are
proposed as clues to the solutions of certain problems, and to
the grasping of usage within the conceptual schemes of which
their original application forms a part.
Once this parallel in methodology is recognized, it quickly
becomes clear that there are a variety of important connections
between the two authors. Neither adopted ‘indirect
communication’ as a matter of chance. Rather, this strategy
arose from the nature of their particular concerns.
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein agree that there are areas in
which dialectical thought is simply incompetent. But neither
author is content to accept the limits of reasoned discussion as
ultimate. The particular problems which both address are in
areas which have always had uncertain but important relations
with reason: religion and the traditional ‘metaphysical’ realm.
4
INTRODUCTION
Both mark out the delineation (and not primarily the
examination) of these areas as their special province.
The use of new methods by both Wittgenstein and
Kierkegaard is closely related to their interest in religion and
metaphysical problems. One feature of much philosophizing
which both authors believe to be problematic is the effort to use
the wrong tools, that is, to carry through the techniques of
reason to these foundational areas. They agree that the use of
systematic categories in an attempt to ‘understand everything’
has led a drift away from fruitful thinking. Because metaphysics
and religion are foundational, this drift gains considerable
leverage in philosophy and everyday life.
Both authors propose to apply an influence which will serve as
a ‘corrective’ to the systematic drift. In order to counteract the
existing leverage, their influence may need to take a radical
form. But it is important to distinguish this radical therapy from
a radical position. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard agree that they
can do no better than to explicate what is already the case.
Both contend that the explication which they attempt gets
further than reasoned explanation does; they also agree that
nevertheless it too must ‘stop somewhere.’ But neither believes
that where he has stopped in his commentary is ‘the end.’ Both
are interested in transitions and activities which can only
start after the philosophical discussion is over. Problems may
have been eliminated, or at least clarified; but little has been
5
INTRODUCTION
settled. Yet to have {4} shown how little is settled when these
problems are solved is itself an important achievement.
The question of method takes on added importance in view of
the authors’ refusal to come to systematic conclusions. There is
little distinction to be made between the construction of their
work and its final results. Many strategies are both used and
recommended, often at the same time. A remark may be
germane to more than one discussion. Both authors make a
conscious effort to employ a suggestive, rather than a reductive
method. They prefer to expand discourse rather than to limit it.
The refusal to be systematic has one root in the indirect
method and the difficulties of expression that prompted its
adoption. But the connection between the method used and that
explicated is also connected with the personal dimension of the
two authors’ work. They were bound up in their problems.
Kierkegaard spoke of his authorship as a ‘task’; he often
agonized over the decision to publish a book. Wittgenstein’s
philosophical struggles were evident in his classes. He
rethought each problem as he spoke of it. The integration of life
and works is a feature which each author understood and
cultivated. Their lives are important reminders in the showing
of their purposes.
Readers of the two authors’ works are not spared the personal
involvement which the authors themselves felt. Indirect
communication demands that the ‘task’ of philosophy falls at
least as much on the shoulders of the audience as on those of
6
INTRODUCTION
the speaker. Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein hoped that
their work might have uses in the daily life of their audiences.
*
Most studies take on some of the flavor of the works under
review. But in light of the fact that both Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein look to their readers to continue in the appropriate
way, any work ‘about’ them must adhere to their categories
more closely than usual – must in fact become work ‘with’ or
‘after’ them. Three ideas about method, held in common by the
two figures, will be constantly adopted in this particular
investigation.
The first recommendation to be appropriated is that of
limitation of the task. Kierkegaard’s work was expressly
limited. He was constantly concerned with one problem: that of
‘becoming a Christian.’ 2 Wittgenstein too always had a
‘particular purpose’ in mind;3 once a specific problem was
solved, suggestions for general {5} (systematic?) improvements
were met with the imperative: ‘Leave the bloody thing alone!’4 So
while it would doubtless be possible to fill an encyclopedia with
2 Søren Kierkegaard (1962) The Point of View for My Work as an Author:
A Report to History, trans. Walter Lowrie, New York: Harper
Torchbooks, p. 6.
3 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., sec.
127.
4 Norman Malcolm (1984) Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn,
New York: Oxford University Press, p. 69.
7
INTRODUCTION
the catalogue of differences between Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein, it would hardly be in their spirit to make the
attempt.
The suggestion of an unrecognized parallel between
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein brings this study into another of
their categories, the ‘corrective.’ The many differences between
the two authors are generally obvious, like the religious/not
religious dichotomy, and are not likely to be forgotten. As a
corrective, this work will often be concerned with recalling
well-known facts about the two authors which have been
forgotten.
The investigation of these similarities will require the use of
another component of the method recommended by the two
authors – stressing certain parts of their work in a new pattern,
and thus altering the flavor of the synthetic understanding,
much like Kierkegaard’s ‘dash of cinnamon.’5 Such a project
will be concerned to ‘assemble reminders’ suggestive of the new
stress.6 As a result of this change in stress, some ‘obvious facts’
may be thrown into question.
5 Søren Kierkegaard (1967-78) Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7
vols, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, sec. 709 (X4 A 596). (The
number in parentheses is the standard reference to the entry, from
the Danish edition of the Papirer.)
6 Investigations, sec. 127.
8
INTRODUCTION
In order to bring the parallels between Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein out most fully, the above-mentioned tools must be
applied to several different areas.
In light of the fact that both authors felt close connections
between life and authorship, the first part of the ‘task’ must be
to establish more closely the extent of parallels between the
styles of their lives.
The results of this investigation can be one guide to a better
grasp of the methods which they used and set forth in their
works. Certainly such a grasp is necessary if the aim of these
methods is ever to be clarified.
Against the background of both life and method, some
previous attempts to ‘understand’ the positions they took on the
key subject of the individual will be examined. In making this
examination, it will be important to remember the close
relations each author felt between his own individuality and his
work, and their refusals to be systematic in their investigations
and categories.
With this example of the application and results of their
method in mind, some implications for the field of religion (in
which both had a personal interest) can be laid out. This
examination will {6} begin from the systematic categorization of
Kierkegaard as religious and Wittgenstein as non-religious.
Finally, the possibility of further work in the tradition of
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein will be explored. By this time it
9
INTRODUCTION
will be obvious that such a continuation could not be carried
out in the modes usually associated with philosophy.
*
No comparative and corrective endeavor can be perfectly
symmetrical. Different thinkers and different extrapolations by
varying communities of interpretation will naturally suggest
the need for varying reminders. In the particular cases of
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, difficulties are raised by the
different aims embodied in the two authorships. Kierkegaard
was primarily concerned to communicate. He had a sense of
urgency concerning the specific existential problem of finitude
and its possible working out in faith. In the course of this
communication he used certain tools. Wittgenstein spent more
time at the reflexive or recursive task of communicating about
communication, and investigating investigation. In the course
of this project he worked on some problems essential to the
method, and tested his tools on various other problems. Thus,
in order to grasp the direction of his approach, relatively more
synoptic presentation of his tactics may be needed.
Kierkegaard’s fixed goal simplifies the investigation of his
methodology; and his methods may serve as examples of the
kind of solutions which Wittgenstein recommended and tried to
use.
In the investigation of the relevance of Wittgenstein’s thought
for religion the same problem will occur. Kierkegaard’s interest
in religion is well known, and given this clue its influence can
10
INTRODUCTION
be ferreted out even where it is not obvious. But even the
possibility of applying Wittgenstein’s categories to religion in a
non-destructive way may have to be demonstrated; clues must
be sought before they can be used. To show that he himself
might have made such applications is yet another problem.
But irrespective of the relative amounts of reconsideration, this
study depends on a mutual relation of suggestiveness. Both in
the wider problem of method and the specific problem of faith,
the terms which Kierkegaard employed (such as ‘without
authority’ and ‘the individual’) often clarify a dimension in
Wittgenstein’s life and work. Wittgenstein’s categories (such as
‘form of life’ and ‘showing’) give new reach and grounding to
Kierkegaard’s project. {7} That two authors with such divergent
motivations might come to make such similar recommendations
at key points suggests that their new methodology has broader
implications than have yet been realized. In the final analysis,
even their irreconcilable differences make the similarities
between them more important.
11
{8}
Chapter One
Relevant Biography
The ‘particular purpose’ of this chapter and the next is to come
to an understanding of each author’s method and goals. Four
different kinds of material must be combed for ‘reminders’
germane to this task: biographical or autobiographical sources,
and passages from philosophical works which reveal
biographical events (intentionally or otherwise); the structure of
philosophical works, and direct statements in these works. The
first two, more ‘biographical’ kinds of evidence will be dealt
with in this chapter; the second two, more ‘philosophical’ kinds
must wait until the next chapter.
An important subsection of the biographical task is to show
(so far as possible) the extent of Kierkegaard’s direct influence
on Wittgenstein. Only a very few explicit references to
Kierkegaard exist in works by Wittgenstein, or memoirs of him.
But it is easy to see that this is one of the many cases in which
Wittgenstein was influenced by other thinkers in an amount far
out of proportion to the number of explicit references in his
works and notebooks.
WITTGENSTEIN
The texture of Wittgenstein’s life is itself an important clue to
understanding his work. He did not lead an organized and
12
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
settled existence, even by the standards of his time, which was
interrupted by two wars. Most of his life was episodic in
character. This was true even of his relatively settled Cambridge
academic periods. It is surely not a coincidence that his
philosophy is episodic and aphoristic. Both his life and
philosophy mirror the incredible breadth of his interests, as well
as the nervousness of his character.
The path by which he first arrived at Cambridge is an excellent
{9} example. His interest in aeronautics led him from the
Technische Hochschule at Berlin-Charlottenburg to England. He
enrolled as a research student at the University of Manchester
in 1908. There he pursued in rapid succession interests in kite-
flying, airplane motors, propellers, then the mathematics of
propellers, the foundations of mathematics, and mathematical
logic – all of which led him to a meeting with Bertrand Russell
in October 1911.1 He studied with Russell from then until the
outbreak of the First World War. This rapid succession of
interests, each of which he was competent to pursue (even
though they are connected only by the most tenuous of ‘family
resemblances’), is characteristic of Wittgenstein’s life.
It is inevitable that the reports of Wittgenstein’s life are also
fragmentary. Even information about his most settled periods
in Cambridge exists only in an anecdotal form. Various
1 G. H. von Wright (1974) Introduction to Letters to Russell, Keynes and
Moore, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
p. 1.
13
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
students and colleagues have recorded their impressions. But to
date there has not even been a synthetic study taking all of the
available material into account, let alone any attempt to tackle
the task (by now impossible) of filling in the gaps in this
material. These gaps are partly a product of his intensely
private nature. His dislike of publicity was sensed by many of
his colleagues; although they knew that he was an important
figure, they felt it would be a violation of his wishes to keep
notes about him.
Three foci are clear in the mosaic of impressions. One is
Wittgenstein’s dissatisfaction with the gap between his moral
ideals and his ability to fulfill them. This is repeatedly evident.
A second is his understanding of the nature of philosophy. His
own ideas of how to philosophize, and his disdain for academic
‘philosophy,’ help to make this attitude clear. The third, which
itself links the previous two, is his understanding of the close
connections between ethical, aesthetic, moral and philosophical
concerns. Again, this trait is demonstrated in the perfection he
demanded in life, in philosophy, and even in the house he
constructed.
These three features are all more or less evident in various
episodes from Wittgenstein’s life. To fully grasp the significance
of the whole, it is necessary to follow a method which he
suggested in the ‘Lecture on Ethics’:
I will put before you a number of more or less synonymous
expressions … and by enumerating them I want to produce
14
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
the {10} same sort of effect which Galton produced when he
took a number of photos of different faces on the same
photographic plate … so if you look through the row of
synonyms which I will put before you, you will, I hope, be
able to see the characteristic features they all have in
common. 2
In the following material, some of the synthetic work has been
done; but the most important episodes are presented whole.
One feature of Wittgenstein’s self-understanding was his
exaggerated sense of his moral imperfection, even
worthlessness. As his letters show, his hope for self-
improvement varied, so that he was at times more or less
cheerfully resigned, and at times positively suicidal. 3 This self-
image was not lightly arrived at. The high level of his standards
is illustrated by a term of approbation he used: ‘He is a human
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1965) ‘Wittgenstein’s lecture on ethics,’
Philosophical Review 74:4-5.
3 W. W. Bartley’s infamous biography of 1973, Wittgenstein
(Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott) attributes most if not all of this
‘self-hatred’ to the ‘fact’ that Wittgenstein was unhappily
homosexual. The depth of his despair and his conception of its
overarching effect on his life and work suggest that Wittgenstein’s
moral condition could not have been totally determined by such a
cause.
15
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
being!’4 Wittgenstein often felt that he himself failed to live up to
this high basic standard. He was sometimes criticized for undue
harshness toward others; but as his letters attest, his harshness
was equally directed toward himself. This trait influenced the
way in which he did philosophy; it may have been responsible
for the fact that he did not publish the Investigations during his
lifetime, although the manuscript of Part I was in more or less
its final form for several years prior to his death. In a letter to
Malcolm, he says: ‘it’s pretty lousy. (Not that I could improve
on it essentially if I tried for another 100 years.)’5 The
Investigations is only a small part of Wittgenstein’s Nachlaß.
Malcolm reports that between 1929 and 1951 he produced
roughly 30,000 pages of philosophical material, in notebooks,
manuscripts, and typescripts. 6 The sheer amount of this
material provides an important insight into Wittgenstein’s way
of thinking. Both the Tractatus and the Investigations began as
material collected in notebooks, in which the same general line
of thought was often explored several times in slightly different
ways. Preliminary attempts at a more definitive collection
followed. (These are published as the Protractatus and the Brown
Book.) The final material was carefully selected and polished,
down to the last individual word choice.
4 Norman Malcolm (1984) Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn,
New York: Oxford University Press, p. 52.
5 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 98.
6 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 84.
16
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
The pains taken in preparing written material were made
visible (literally) in Wittgenstein’s classroom style. He offered
‘lectures’ which resembled Platonic dialogues, with
Wittgenstein taking the part of Socrates and his students that of
the overawed foils. A {11} group of college students he once
visited exclaimed that they had ‘never seen a man thinking
before.’ 7 And this idea is echoed by many of his biographers:
even if the ground was familiar to him, he attacked it each time
freshly; he ‘did philosophy’ in each class.
One of Wittgenstein’s characteristic philosophical tools was
the use of outlandish examples to illuminate everyday life. At
the same time, he often noticed problems in other philosophers’
apparently more mundane metaphors. His sister Hermine helps
to explain this great ability to discriminate between good and
bad examples. She reports that the Wittgenstein children often
communicated in comparisons. For example, she once
suggested that his decision to teach in rural schools was like
wanting to use a precision instrument to open crates. He replied
that others were seeing the gyrations of his life as through a
closed window – not realizing that he was struggling to keep
his feet in a hurricane. 8 The inventiveness learned in this kind of
7 Karl Britton (1967) ‘Portrait of a philosopher,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein:
The Man and His Philosophy, ed. K. T. Fann, New York: Dell, p. 60.
8 Hermine Wittgenstein (1981) ‘My brother Ludwig,’ in Ludwig
Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, ed. Rush Rhees, Totowa, NJ:
Rowman and Littlefield, p. 5.
17
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
communication clearly carried over to Ludwig’s
philosophizing.
The active nature of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work made it
physically and emotionally demanding. After a lecture he
would often go to a movie. He preferred American westerns,
films that were undemanding and escapist. He sat in the front
row, filling his visual field with the screen. And while he paid
very close attention, sitting on the edge of his seat, and
demanding quiet from his companions (as Malcolm reports), he
was cleansed and relaxed by the experience. ‘This is like a
shower bath!’ he once exclaimed.9
Wittgenstein’s penchant for active philosophizing also helps to
account for the fact that he was not very well read in the history
of philosophy. He once assured a student that ‘no assistant
lecturer in philosophy in the country had read fewer books on
philosophy than he had.’10 He read a great deal of Plato, but no
Aristotle at all! Most of his favorite authors were suggestive and
moral, rather than rigorous and logical, in their writings; in
addition to Kierkegaard, Saint Augustine, Dostoevsky, and
Tolstoy are often mentioned. It was Tolstoy’s abridgement of
the Gospels that he discovered during the First World War, and
carried with him. He read George Fox with approbation.
Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea was one of his earliest
philosophical readings. He read, and was excited by, William
9 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 26.
10 Britton, ‘Portrait,’ p. 60.
18
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
James’s Varieties of Religious Experience as early as 1912. He
believed that it caused a moral improvement in him.11
The paucity of Wittgenstein’s philosophical reading was a {12}
conscious decision. It should not be taken as a sign of general
lack of culture; in fact, he was formidably cultured, as can be
seen in many of the examples used in his works. His talents in
music were considerable. When he was a schoolteacher, he was
required to play a musical instrument. He selected the clarinet.
He was also a virtuoso whistler, and displayed a conductor’s
memory and understanding of orchestral pieces.
Another reason why Wittgenstein read little philosophy was
that he disdained academia-for-its-own-sake. ‘Professorial
philosophy by philosophy professors,’ or non-genuine
philosophizing, was one of Wittgenstein’s greatest dislikes. 12 He
often tried to discourage his best students from becoming
professors. Several of them report that he seems to have been
afraid they would cheat their students – and themselves – by
offering a course in philosophy. (He seemed to believe that no
one could deliver what ‘philosophy’ promises.13) He suggested
that instead they should do useful work. This fits, not only with
his remarks on ‘philosophy’ in general, but with his expressions
of his own inadequacy as a teacher. He was sure that his
11 Letter from Wittgenstein to Russell, dated 22.6.12., Letters to Russell,
p. 10.
12 The phrase comes from Schopenhauer by way of M. O’C. Drury.
13 For example, see Malcolm, Memoir, p. 33.
19
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
teaching had done more harm than good to his students. He
twice left the academic scene because he felt he had nothing
more to contribute, and there is evidence that he had considered
leaving more often.
Wittgenstein’s moral stiffness was evident in his conduct of his
own life, as well as in his advice to his students. The family
fortune was quite large; through good management it survived
the First World War and the post-war depression. But upon his
return from the war, he insisted on deeding his share to his
brothers and sisters. Hermine Wittgenstein recalls that he wore
out the notary with his repeated demands that there must be no
way in which he could ever claim the money again! But she also
reports that he would never worry about asking for help from
them when in need – so he would always survive, like Alyusha
Karamazov. 14 If this is true, he was not nearly so forthright
about borrowing money from his friends. He was constantly
concerned that he might be a burden to them, as his letters
show. He never hesitated to lend, if he could.
Along with the giving up of his claim to fortune came a
general simplification of his lifestyle. When he was at
Manchester, he dressed stylishly; 15 but he came to be famous for
his unostentatious dress: an open necked shirt (never a tie),
14 Hermine Wittgenstein, ‘My brother Ludwig,’ p. 4.
15 According to Mrs. Eccles, the wife of a fellow student. Reported by
Wolfe Mays (1967) ‘Recollections of Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig
Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy, p. 88.
20
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
wool overshirt or windbreaker, more rarely a topcoat, and
sometimes a cloth cap. {13} His eating habits, too, were simple.
He was quite content to eat the same ordinary fare meal after
meal, even on occasion preferring such food to more elaborate
meals specially prepared. This seems to have been a conscious
ethical/aesthetic choice for simplicity. Complexity was allowed,
and energy was expended, only where necessary, in important
matters. Unnecessary energy and complexity could only be
distractions.
While at Cambridge, Wittgenstein did not dine at high table –
the conversation sickened him. The sparseness of his various
rooms is famous. There was in general only a cot, a table for
writing, and a few books; extra chairs were piled on the landing
for use during classes. He lived in an equally frugal manner
during his vacations (in rural parts of Norway and Ireland), and
during his schoolteaching days.
Wittgenstein’s sense of his moral duty showed itself very
strongly in his service during the two World Wars. If his status
as a member of a rich industrial family had not been enough to
excuse him from active duty during the first war, he could also
have claimed a medical exemption, for he had had a double
hernia. But he insisted on enlisting. Nor was he content with the
rear echelon duties that he was given; his continual attempts to
get to the front were finally rewarded when he was trained as
an artillery officer. He respected Russell’s pacifist stand; yet he
thought that such a position would not be right for him.
21
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
It is very interesting to note that at least some of the final work
on the Tractatus was done while he was at the front. He did not
find his military duty disagreeable, even though he was serving
in a tough mountain campaign. 16
During the Second World War Wittgenstein served as a lab
technician, first in a hospital dispensary, and later in a research
facility. The quality of his work was appreciated in both places.
Whatever his occupation, Wittgenstein undertook to do as well
as possible.
The reasons for Wittgenstein’s decision to become a rural
schoolteacher are much disputed. His sister Hermine reports
that she herself found it hard to understand, and he explained it
with the metaphor of the hurricane. This suggests a morally
based decision, perhaps a desire actually to earn his living and
to ‘serve’ as he could not in ‘philosophy.’ The idea that his
decision had to do with his moral self-understanding is
supported by the fact that {14} he spent some time as a gardener
at a monastery before taking up his teaching duties.
Wittgenstein spent several years at three different schools in
rural Lower Austria. He had better than average success in the
classroom. But his eccentricity and uncompromising nature, as
well as the project of school reform which his presence
symbolized, did not endear him to the parents of his students.
16 On this point see B. F. McGuinness, editor’s appendix to Paul
Engelmann (1968) Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, With a Memoir,
New York: Horizon Press, pp. 141- 42.
22
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
According to Bartley, Wittgenstein was even tried (on dubious
grounds) at one posting; though acquitted, he decided to give
up teaching. 17 Afterwards he again spent a few months as a
gardener at a second monastery.
The most enduring expression of Wittgenstein’s moral nature
is the house which he and Paul Engelmann built for Margarete
Stonborough. Assessments of the respective contributions of the
two men to the project vary widely. As the house is very much
in the style of Adolf Loos, it might be impossible to determine
the boundaries between common interest and influence. Both of
them had known Loos as early as 1914. Engelmann was Loos’s
student; Wittgenstein met Loos through an introduction from
the publisher Ficker, and Wittgenstein actually met Engelmann
through an introduction from Loos. The three men were in
substantial agreement about the principles of architecture, as
Engelmann makes clear in his memoir.18 Unfortunately, the
portion of the memoir which would have covered the period of
the construction of the house was never written.
There can be no doubt that the uncompromising nature of the
house as built suits Wittgenstein very well. It is
uncompromising both in its plainness and in the attention to
detail which emphasizes this plainness. No one disputes that
Wittgenstein had a lot to do with the execution of technical
details.
17 Bartley, Wittgenstein, p. 126.
18 Loos ‘once said to Wittgenstein: “You are me!”’ Engelmann, p. 127.
23
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
The plainness of the house is backed by a mathematical rigor
in the design, which again suggests Wittgenstein at work. On
the main floor, the size and placement of doors is in strict ratio
to the dimensions of the walls. The rooms themselves are
exactly proportioned in simple ratios. The geometrical
calculations were carefully done, and Wittgenstein went so far
as to have finished work torn out in order to correct fractional
deviations from the plan. This strictness, combined with the
lack of frills, might be expected to impart considerable severity
to the house, but instead it is very airy and pleasant. Hermine
Wittgenstein refers to it as a {15} ‘hausgewordene Logik’; but its
logic is the logic of a dwelling. She also reports that it suited the
grand and peculiar nature of her sister Margarete very well. 19
Pictures and drawings of the house as furnished show a variety
of unusual objects which are set off by the plainness of the
background.
Bernhard Leitner suggests that Wittgenstein was an architect
by virtue of (and not in addition to) his being a philosopher. 20
The connection between ethics, aesthetics, and logic expressed
in the Tractatus is made manifest in the house.
19 Hermine Wittgenstein, ‘Family Recollections,’ ch. VI, in Bernhard
Leitner (1976) The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein, New York:
New York University Press, p. 23.
20 Quoted in Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin (1973) Wittgenstein’s
Vienna, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 208.
24
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
One further kind of anecdote will illustrate Wittgenstein’s
sense of moral duty. On at least two occasions in the 1940s, he
had the opportunity to get a substantial amount of money
through ‘philosophy.’ He was asked to give the John Locke
lectures at Oxford for a fee of 200 pounds; he refused because
he could not imagine the lectures being any good. Again,
Malcolm interested the Rockefeller Foundation in providing
Wittgenstein with a research grant; he refused because he could
not guarantee that he would be able to produce anything, and
so the grant would have been accepted under false pretenses. 21
Wittgenstein’s deep concern with ethical matters is
reminiscent of many religious figures. Here again, Malcolm
sums up what becomes clear from the direct testimony of
Wittgenstein and his friends. Though Wittgenstein was not
religious, ‘there was in him, in some sense, the possibility of
religion.’ 22 As usual this possibility carried over to the thoughts
he wrote down; he remarked: ‘I cannot help seeing every
problem from a religious point of view.’23 He understood
religious impulses in a more than theoretical sense; and he ‘took
his hat off’ to them.24
21 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 78.
22 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 60.
23 Maurice O’C. Drury (1981) ‘Some notes on conversations with
Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, p. 91.
24 Friedrich Waismann (1965) ‘Notes on talks with Wittgenstein,’ trans.
M. Black, Philosophical Review 74:16. Wittgenstein’s religious
25
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
The ‘possibility of religion’ manifested itself in considerable
reading of religious works, and this in a person who chose his
reading matter very carefully. Drury’s recollections include
conversations about Thomas à Kempis, Samuel Johnson’s
Prayers, Karl Barth, and, many times, the New Testament,
which Wittgenstein had clearly read often and thought about. 25
Wittgenstein had also thought about what it would mean to be
a Christian. Some time during the 1930s, he remarked to Drury:
‘There is a sense in which you and I are both Christians.’ 26 In
this context it is certainly worth noting that he had for a time
said the Lord’s Prayer each day. 27
Wittgenstein’s last words were: ‘Tell them I’ve had a
wonderful {16} life!’28 Even as close a friend as Norman Malcolm
initially found this statement ‘mysterious’; he felt that it did not
square with the ‘fiercely unhappy’ character of Wittgenstein’s
emotionally and intellectually isolated existence. 29 Later,
however, Malcolm recalled some impressions of Wittgenstein’s
understanding (as far as he expressed it) will be discussed at greater
length in chapter 4.
25 Drury (1981) ‘Conversations with Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig
Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, pp. 112ff.
26 Drury, ‘Conversations,’ p. 130.
27 Drury, ‘Some notes,’ p. 109.
28 Reported by Mrs. Bevan, the wife of the doctor in whose house
Wittgenstein was staying. Malcolm, Memoir, p. 81.
29 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 81.
26
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
many friendships and his joy in his work. When these factors
are accentuated, his words do not seem so strange.
*
The picture of Wittgenstein we have built up so far can be
enhanced by an examination of his direct relations with
Kierkegaard. There are two kinds of material available which
can give clues in this area. Most of the references are in
memoirs by various friends and colleagues. Kierkegaard’s name
is also mentioned a few times in the selections from
Wittgenstein’s notebooks that have been published.
The first chronologically of the memoirs is this reminiscence
by Paul Engelmann. It recalls conversations that took place in
1916 in Olmütz, Moravia, Engelmann’s home town, where
Wittgenstein was in artillery officers’ training school.
He ‘saw life as a task’…. Moreover, he looked upon all the
features of life as it is … as an essential part of the conditions
of that task; just as a person presented with a mathematical
problem must not try to ease his task by modifying the
problem. 30
This formulation reflects exactly Kierkegaard’s position in the
Concluding Unscientific Postscript: ‘It is impossible that the task
[of life] should fail to suffice, since the task is precisely that the
30 Engelmann, Letters, p. 79.
27
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
task should be made to suffice.’31 If life itself is set as a task,
then it must be lived to the fullest.
What makes this reference particularly interesting is that
Engelmann quotes Wittgenstein’s exact words, which mirror
Kierkegaard’s both in letter and spirit; but there is absolutely no
indication that Engelmann was aware of this parallel. It is hard
to say whether Wittgenstein’s expression of this existential
understanding would be more striking if he had appropriated
Kierkegaard so completely, or if he had developed such a view
independently. 32
The next reference to Kierkegaard is the following remark by
Bertrand Russell, concerning his first meeting with Wittgenstein
after the First World War: {17}
I had felt in his book a flavour of mysticism, but was
astonished when I found that he has become a complete
mystic. He reads people like Kierkegaard and Angelus
Silesius, and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk. It
31 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans.
David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, p. 147; cf. pp. 365ff.
32 Another possible source of this orientation is Tolstoy. In 1915
Wittgenstein acquired his exposition of the Gospels. This work
reflects Tolstoy’s interest in the simple life as a religious duty; but if
Wittgenstein’s position was influenced by the work, it certainly
could not have been wholly inspired by it. The sequence of his
further acquaintance with Tolstoy is not clear.
28
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
all started from William James’s Varieties of Religious
Experience.33
Wittgenstein never became a monk, of course, though he
thought of doing so more than once, and did spend some time
at monasteries. He might have been influenced by
Kierkegaard’s conviction that monastic retreat is a shirking of
the ‘task,’ an abstraction from the conditions of existence.34 But
this report by Russell confirms that Wittgenstein was
dramatically changed during the war, through his readings and
perhaps through other events.
A rather later memoir comes from H. D. P. Lee, and dates from
the period 1929-31 when Wittgenstein had returned to
Cambridge. ‘He told me that he learned Danish in order to be
able to read Kierkegaard in the original, and clearly had a great
admiration for him, though I never remember him speaking
about him in detail.’35 Certainly learning a new language
suggests considerable interest!
An approving reference to the Philosophical Fragments finds its
way into a conversation between Wittgenstein and Friedrich
Waismann from December 1929: ‘We thrust against the limits of
language. Kierkegaard, too, recognized this thrust and even
33 Letter from Bertrand Russell to Lady Ottoline Morrell, December 20,
1919. In Letters to Russell, p. 82.
34 See for instance Postscript, pp. 359ff. Ironically, the Postscript is
attributed to a monastic pseudonym, Johannes Climacus.
35 H. D. P. Lee (1979) ‘Wittgenstein 1929-1931,’ Philosophy 54:218.
29
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
described it in much the same way (as a thrust against
paradox).’ 36
There is a direct reference to Either/Or in the lecture notes
(collated and published by students) from a course on religious
belief which Wittgenstein gave about 1938. In the context of a
discussion of religious pictures of the world, and how they are
manifest in life, he gave the following illustration:
A great writer said that, when he was a boy, his father set him
a task, and he suddenly felt that nothing, not even death,
could take away the responsibility [in doing this task]; this
was his duty to do, and that even death couldn’t stop it being
his duty. He said that this was, in a way, a proof of the
immortality of the soul – because if this lives on [the
responsibility won’t die.] The idea is given by what we call
the proof. Well, if this is the idea, [all right]. 37
36 Waismann, ‘Notes on talks,’ p. 13. Compare Søren Kierkegaard
(1985) Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 37. Wittgenstein
rejected this formulation only a year later (Waismann, p. 16); but this
rejection seems to be an instance of the ‘later’ Wittgenstein failing to
fully understand the possibilities of the ‘earlier’ position – of which
more in subsequent chapters.
37 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics,
Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, p. 70. (In this work square brackets
represent composite collations and editorial guesswork.)
30
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
This is a retelling of a story from the second part of
{18}
Either/Or.38 The depth of Wittgenstein’s interest in Kierkegaard
is reflected in his understanding of the anecdote as a piece of
Kierkegaard’s biography; scholars agree on this, but in the
original it is presented as part of Judge William’s letters.
Other details of Wittgenstein’s knowledge of Kierkegaard are
reported by Maurice O’C. Drury. During a discussion after a
meeting of the Moral Sciences Club (so presumably during
Wittgenstein’s 1929-36 Cambridge period) Wittgenstein
remarked: ‘Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker
of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.’ He went on to
mention the three stages of life. The stages are mentioned in
two works he had certainly read, Either/Or and the Postscript.
Drury also notes Wittgenstein’s dissatisfaction with the literary
style of the Lowrie translations of Kierkegaard. In later life,
Drury recalls, Wittgenstein found the indirect method of
Kierkegaard’s works too prolix. ‘When I read him I always
wanted to say: “Oh, alright I agree, I agree, but please get on
with it.”’39 This seems strange in view of Wittgenstein’s own
deliberately circuitous style!
Wittgenstein’s understanding of the connection of ‘proof’ and
‘picture’ is explored in chapter 4.
38 Søren Kierkegaard (1987) Either/Or, 2 vols., trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2:266-
70.
39 Drury, ‘Some notes,’ pp. 102-3.
31
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
A clue to his position here is provided by O. K. Bouwsma’s
recollections of a conversation with Wittgenstein in 1949.
Bouwsma reports that Wittgenstein said he read Kierkegaard
only in small pieces:
He got hints. He did not want another man’s thought all
chewed. A word or two was sometimes enough. But
Kierkegaard struck him almost as like a snob, too high, for
him, not touching the details of common life…. (I’m not sure
about his judgement here of Kierkegaard.) 40
One possible explanation is that Wittgenstein was at a different
‘stage’ from Kierkegaard’s intended audience.
The high esteem in which Wittgenstein held Kierkegaard is
again shown in a letter from Wittgenstein to Norman Malcolm,
dated 5 February 1948. Malcolm had mentioned Works of Love;
Wittgenstein replies that he has never read that work.
‘Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me
without working the good effects which he would in deeper
souls.’ 41 Wittgenstein’s low moral self-esteem, as well as his
admiration for Kierkegaard, is showing itself here.
40 O. K. Bouwsma (1986) Wittgenstein: Conversations 1949-1951, ed. J. L.
Craft and Ronald E. Hustwit, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing
Co., p. 46.
41 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 106. Malcolm indicates that Wittgenstein had
read the Postscript (p. 60).
32
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
In addition to these biographical notes, there are a few
passages {19} from posthumous collections that hint at a
knowledge of Kierkegaard. In particular, several sections from
the collection Culture and Value (which includes some of
Wittgenstein’s notes having to do with religion) mention him
explicitly.
One reference, from the year 1937, again shows familiarity
with the Fragments and Postscript. It is in the context of a
discussion of the problem of the connection of historical proof
and faith, and the possibility that the Gospels in all their want
of historical precision and agreement are nevertheless the best
possible form of communication of the Christian message.
There is also mention of forms of expression appropriate to the
various ‘levels of devoutness.’42 This again suggests familiarity
with the Stages or Either/Or, at least. The particular combination
of topics is also found in Training in Christianity.
Another context in which Kierkegaard is mentioned is that of
the distinction between ‘primordial’ and ‘tame’ talent:
In the same sense: the house I built for Gretl is the product of
a decidedly sensitive ear and good manners, an expression of
great understanding (of a culture, etc.). But primordial life, wild
life striving to erupt into the open – that is lacking. And so
42 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980) Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 31e-32e (1937) (In
references to this posthumous collection, the date given is the year in
which Wittgenstein composed the entry).
33
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
you could say it isn’t healthy (Kierkegaard). (Hothouse
plant.)43
The exact reference here is unclear. Several of Kierkegaard’s
less-read works contain thoughts suggestive of parts of this
remark. For example, the distinction between wild life and
cultured manners suggests Kierkegaard’s analysis, in his review
of Two Ages, of the difference between the (passionate) ‘age of
revolution’ and the (indolent) ‘present age.’44 Kierkegaard also
praises Adler for having precisely what Wittgenstein feels his
architecture lacks – some redeeming native spark. 45 Most
specifically, in the Christian Discourses there is a prayer asking:
‘if … we have lost our health, would that we might regain it by
learning again from the lilies of the field and the birds of the
air.’ 46 But the thought has an unusual feel; there seems to be an
admixture of original ideas, or ideas from another source:
perhaps Nietzsche?
Finally, there is a reference to Kierkegaard in a group of
entries from 1946. These notes have to do with having the
43 Culture and Value, p. 38e (1940).
44 Søren Kierkegaard (1978) Two Ages, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 61, 68.
45 Søren Kierkegaard (1955) On Authority and Revelation: The Book on
Adler, trans. Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, pp. 159-60.
46 Søren Kierkegaard (1971) Christian Discourses, trans. Walter Lowrie,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 11.
34
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
courage to change one’s life. Wittgenstein distinguishes here
between cold wisdom or doctrine, and the ability to embrace it.
He says: ‘Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what
Kierkegaard calls a {20} passion.’47 This point of view is
reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s own sayings in the late pages of
the Tractatus.
There are several interesting things about these direct
references to Kierkegaard by Wittgenstein. First, they evidence
a clear personal admiration for Kierkegaard as a thinker and a
persuasive author. Second, it is important to note that they
cover the whole length of Wittgenstein’s career. The first
references date from before the completion of the manuscript of
the Tractatus; and his admiration seems if anything to deepen
over the course of the 1930s. The last references, both from his
notes and from others’ recollections, are from the late 1940s. At
the least this is evidence of a continuity in Wittgenstein’s
interest in the subject of religion and personal faith. The
question of the relation between the Tractatus and the later
philosophy must be considered in the light of this continuity.
And there is also enough evidence to show that Kierkegaard’s
works can be a useful key to the understanding of Wittgenstein,
at least in the matter of religion.
In addition to the instances of direct connections between
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, there are two more very
incidental mentions of a connection between the two thinkers.
47 Culture and Value, p. 53e (1946).
35
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
These have more to do with Wittgenstein’s demeanor than with
any traceable influence. Yet they are not wholly without interest
when one remembers that Wittgenstein felt a close connection
between his lifestyle and his philosophizing.
One of these references is very brief. Allan Janik records that
Wittgenstein’s tendency to approach everything ‘from the
ethical point of view … reminded [an Austrian acquaintance]
directly of Kierkegaard.’ 48
Lastly, there is a more involved and fascinatingly indirect
connection. K. E. Tranøy, a Norwegian student who came to
know Wittgenstein in 1949, was impressed by Wittgenstein’s
knowledge of Ibsen’s dramas, particularly Brand. Tranøy
thought Brand’s moral severity and human fallibility quite like
Wittgenstein’s.49 But, as Lowrie confirms, Brand was a thinly
veiled caricature of Kierkegaard and some of his unwelcome
followers! 50
48 Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, p. 24.
49 K. E. Tranøy (1976) ‘Wittgenstein in Cambridge 1949-51, some
personal recollections,’ in Essays on Wittgenstein in Honor of G. H. von
Wright, Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., pp. 12-13.
50 Walter Lowrie (1962) Kierkegaard, New York: Harper Torchbooks, pp.
10-11.
36
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
Of course neither of these two references carries much weight.
They do serve to suggest the sense of absolute moral intentness
common to both thinkers. 51 {21}
KIERKEGAARD
At first glance, Kierkegaard’s life seems to be remarkably
different from Wittgenstein’s. The differences begin with the
form or texture of the two lives. While Wittgenstein’s
restlessness mirrors the aphoristic quality of his works,
Kierkegaard led a remarkably settled existence. He was born in
Copenhagen, and there he died. Aside from a few brief trips to
Berlin, and a pilgrimage to his ancestral home in Jutland, he did
not even venture from the province of Sjæland. 52
But the geographically settled nature of Kierkegaard’s life
must be put in context. Wittgenstein was alternately drawn to
the intellectual centers of Europe, and repulsed by them. He
51 Walter Lowrie’s assertion that Kierkegaard often thought of himself
under the name ‘Ludwig’ is surely worthy of no less nor more than a
footnote – which is in fact what he accords it. See his note to Søren
Kierkegaard (1941) Judge for Yourselves!, trans. Walter Lowrie,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 194.
52 It must be noted that this failure to travel was not due to financial
problems; Kierkegaard, like Wittgenstein, had a rich inheritance (and
unlike Wittgenstein he did not hesitate to spend it on luxuries). Nor
was it due to any social constraints; others in his circle, such as Hans
Christian Andersen, travelled widely in Europe. But Denmark suited
Kierkegaard, and travel did not.
37
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
was better able to work in private and secluded places.
Kierkegaard, for all his complaints that he was martyred as ‘a
genius in a provincial town,’53 had in Copenhagen his scholarly
retreat and town seat in one. As Lowrie points out, it was a
small city of 200,000, but also a royal capital, with theater,
library, and university.
Just as Wittgenstein’s apparently fragmented existence renders
biographical work a jigsaw puzzle, the stay-at-home character
of Kierkegaard’s life is reflected in the fact that his biographers
have succeeded in giving a unified picture of him. But the
reasons for this success are more complex than first appears. It
is not that any public record of Kierkegaard’s life was made;
like Wittgenstein he had an intense sense of privacy. Rather, he
was himself his own biographer. Nor does this autobiography
exist in a wholly connected and honest form. But the pieces of
the puzzle are, as it were, all collected in one box. There are also
sketches in his published works that make parts of the pattern
clear.
One work in particular gives an extraordinarily coherent
interpretation of the main features of Kierkegaard’s public
literary production – his ‘authorship.’ The Point of View for My
Work as an Author, written in 1848 (but published
posthumously), explains his writings up to that point, and their
53 Søren Kierkegaard (1962) The Point of View for My Work as an Author:
A Report to History, trans. Walter Lowrie, New York: Harper
Torchbooks, p. 100.
38
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
connection to his life as publicly known, as a result of ‘Divine
Governance.’ One of the questions which can only be answered
through biographical inquiry is how he came to this
understanding.
The intent of The Point of View is limited; and even within its
limits the work is perhaps not completely honest. 54 But the gaps
in {22} this published work are partly supplied by Kierkegaard’s
journals. Like Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard kept voluminous
notebooks. But while the former confined his notes to
philosophy (with a few exceptions), the latter made both
biographical and reflective entries. It is a measure of
Kierkegaard’s astuteness at self-observation – and also of the
close connection between his life and his literary production –
that Walter Lowrie’s biographies are nearly half direct quotes
from the journals and published works. 55
Because of this wealth of autobiography and reliable
biography, the task of interpretation of Kierkegaard’s life can be
carried out somewhat differently than is the case with
Wittgenstein. It is no longer mainly a question of assembling
primary material coherently, but rather of singling out certain
54 ‘For that I myself possess a more exact and purely personal
interpretation of my life is a matter of course.’ The Point of View, p.
98n.
55 Lowrie’s works could perhaps be called an ‘indirect communication’
insofar as he allows Kierkegaard to say what Lowrie wants(!). His
method of working certainly is that of ‘assembling reminders.’
39
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
connections and facts relevant to the present task. One part of
this project is finding clues to Kierkegaard’s own
understanding.
The journals are, among other things, a valuable document of
the way in which published material came into existence. As is
the case with Wittgenstein’s notebooks, the seeds of published
passages can often be seen in earlier journal entries; and indeed
multiple drafts of works are sometimes represented.
But the real value of the journals lies in the fact that often
biography and literary preparation are combined.
Kierkegaard’s talents as a psychological observer and ‘spy’ on
himself and others allowed him to find universal themes in the
particular happenings which he so astutely noticed.
The connection of the two most important personal relations
in Kierkegaard’s life with some essential categories used in his
work is illustrated by the oft-repeated dedication and preface –
which Kierkegaard published with each set of ‘edifying
discourses’ he wrote, beginning in 1843. The discourses were
dedicated ‘to the memory of my deceased father Michael
Pedersen Kierkegaard’; the preface emphasizes that the writer is
‘without authority,’ and indicates a desire that the works
should find ‘that individual whom with joy and gratitude I call
my reader.’56
56 Søren Kierkegaard (1943) Edifying Discourses, 4 vols, trans. David F.
Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Publishing House, 1:3,5.
40
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
Kierkegaard’s relationship with his melancholy father, and his
own melancholy – partly a result of his father’s melancholy –
bore a large part in the instigation of his authorship.
Kierkegaard summarized his father’s case:
How appalling for the man who, as a lad watching sheep on
the Jutland heath, suffering painfully, hungry and exhausted,
once {23} stood on a hill and cursed God – and the man was
unable to forget it when he was eighty-two years old.57
This incident (and his subsequent rapid rise from poor lad to
rich merchant, which convinced him that there really was a
good God) gave Michael Kierkegaard such a sense of his own
sin, and thus his son’s original sin, that all of their relations
were colored by it:
From a child I was under the sway of a prodigious
melancholy, the depth of which finds its only adequate
measure in the equally prodigious dexterity I possessed of
hiding it under an apparent gaiety and joie de vivre. So far
back as I can barely remember, my one joy was that nobody
could discover how unhappy I felt. 58
57 Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7 vols, ed.
and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, sec. 5874 (VII1 A 5).
58 The Point of View, p. 76.
41
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
Kierkegaard’s talent for dissimulation may have been partly
inherited from his father, who did not reveal the causes of his
melancholy. Søren’s sense of melancholy was heightened by his
glimpsing of another part of his father’s secret – his guilt over
his relationship with his second wife. Kierkegaard reports it
thus:
Then it was that the great earthquake occurred, the frightful
upheaval which suddenly drove me to a new infallible
principle for interpreting all the phenomena. Then I surmised
that my father’s old-age was not a divine blessing, but rather
a curse, that our family’s exceptional intellectual capacities
were only for mutually harrowing each other. 59
But this realization led Kierkegaard closer to his eventual task:
Inwardly shattered as I was, with no prospect of leading a
happy life on this earth, … devoid of all hope for a pleasant,
happy future – as this naturally proceeds from and is inherent
in the historical continuity of home and family life – what
wonder then that in despairing desperation I seized hold of
the intellectual side of man exclusively, hung on to that, with
the result that the thought of my eminent mental faculties
59 Journals and Papers, sec. 5430 (II A 805). Lowrie dates the ‘earthquake’
to 1830.
42
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
was my only comfort, ideas my only joy, and men of no
importance to me.60
Not only was Kierkegaard’s literary production shaped by these
circumstances of his youth; but his perception of his life’s task
was also molded by the sense that he was in some way
bounded by the family guilt. (His pursuit of theology was a
result of his father’s wishes.) Furthermore he was not able to
express this guilt and the religious purposes to which it led him
– he was a captive of his ‘inclosing reserve.’61 {24}
The second and more well known example of the intertwining
of Kierkegaard’s life and work is the literary reflection of
Kierkegaard’s engagement to Regine Olsen. In this case his
‘inclosing reserve’ had tragic consequences.
Kierkegaard’s involvement with Regine is related to his
authorship in several and complex ways. First, the composition
of Either/Or (the first work completed after the break), and
particularly the ‘Diary of the Seducer,’ was explained by
Kierkegaard himself as ‘a good deed’ in respect to her, to give
60 Journals and Papers, sec. 5431 (II A 806).
61 It is perhaps fortunate that W. W. Bartley has not written a
biography of Kierkegaard; surely the talk of a ‘thorn in the flesh,’
causing sin- and guilt-consciousness, and which he once asked his
physician about, to see if ‘the discordancy between the bodily and
the psychical in my constitution could be removed so that I might
realize the universal [i.e. marriage]’ (Lowrie, Kierkegaard, p. 405), is
excellent prima facie evidence of Kierkegaard’s homosexuality!
43
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
an account of his motivations which would allow her to get
over him. 62 The same might be said (in a more subtle sense) of
Fear and Trembling, which contains passages fully accessible
only to someone with an understanding which only Regine
could have possessed at the time.
Both Repetition and ‘Quidam’s Diary,’ a section of the work
Stages on Life’s Way, contain fairly direct references to Regine.
The ‘Diary’ is perhaps the most personal, as it chronicles the
deepest thoughts of the lover about his beloved – distanced by a
year in time from the actual events. A brief section of Repetition
reflects the relationship in an almost brutally dispassionate
sense. This passage sets forth a project of using deception in
order to break off a relationship, much more violent than
Kierkegaard himself employed in relation to Regine. The project
is proposed by a third party, and is so cold that the fictional
lover cannot bring himself to put it into force. 63
But the entire affair also had a more permanent effect on
Kierkegaard’s thought and work. This can be seen in the
development of the phrase ‘that individual.’ He reported that
the dedication to ‘that particular individual, my reader,’ which
he first affixed to the Edifying Discourses which accompanied
Either/Or in 1843, was composed with ‘her’ particularly in mind.
But ‘gradually this thought was taken over [assimilated],’ and
62 Lowrie, Kierkegaard, p. 239.
63 Søren Kierkegaard (1983) Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 142-5.
44
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
his concern for the individual rather than the crowd became an
essential part of his authorship. 64 This is clear from the content
of the two notes on ‘the individual’ which accompany The Point
of View.65
At one point in his journals Kierkegaard even says that the
development of the indirect method of communication was
partly a result of his concern for Regine:
Actually it was she – that is, my relationship to her – who
taught me the indirect method. She could be helped only by
an untruth {25} about me; otherwise I believe she would have
lost her mind. That the collision was a religious one would
have completely deranged her, and therefore I have had to be
so infinitely careful. 66
It was originally his ‘inclosing reserve’ which prevented the
truth from coming out. But he later found a maieutic use for this
reserve in the particular case of Regine; still later he generalized
that use into his authorship.
Finally, Kierkegaard also believed that the intensity required
for the completion of his literary/religious task was
incompatible with the demands of the ethical state of marriage.
His worries on this score are evident in a journal entry dated
64 Journals and Papers, sec. 6388 (X1 A 266).
65 The Point of View, pp. 105-38.
66 Journals and Papers, sec. 1959 (X3 A 413).
45
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
February 2, 1839 – a year and a half before the engagement.
Even then, he wondered: ‘Do the Orders say: March on?’67
So Kierkegaard’s literary production may have been enhanced
in several ways by the relation with Regine and its breakup:
those circumstances provided him with material, with method,
and also perhaps with the ability to concentrate (or lack of
distractions) so necessary to the use of that material and
method.
There is evidence of one other experience which decisively
turned Kierkegaard to a religious expression of his talents. An
entry in his journals runs thus:
There is an indescribable joy that glows all through us just as
inexplicably as the apostle’s exclamation breaks forth for no
apparent reason: ‘Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice.’ – Not a
joy over this or that, but the soul’s full outcry ‘with tongue
and mouth and from the bottom of the heart’: ‘I rejoice for my
joy, by, in, with, about, over, for, and with my joy’ – a
heavenly refrain which, as it were, suddenly interrupts our
other singing, a joy which cools and refreshes like a breath of
air, a breeze from the trade winds which blow across the
plains of Mamre to the everlasting mansions.
10:30 a.m., May 19, 183868
67 Journals and Papers, sec. 5368 (II A 347).
68 Journals and Papers, sec. 5324 (II A 228).
46
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
The generally agreed-on interpretation of this entry, dated with
uncharacteristic precision, is that it reflects a mystical
experience. Kierkegaard denied that he ever received authority
from any such experience (in contradistinction to Magister
Adler); but that is not to say that he did not have one. He
merely wanted to make clear {26} that he was not mystically
aware of God’s will, through revelation (as an apostle might be)
– he saw himself instead under the category ‘genius.’ 69
Mysticism presents the double dangers of elitism and easy
waiting for God to do everything.
At any rate the entry certainly reflects an experience of some
kind; it recalls Wittgenstein’s experience of ‘wonder at the
world.’ 70
The talent for dissimulation, first learned by Kierkegaard as a
mask for his melancholy (and which morbidly showed itself as
his reserve), was another of the distinguishing marks of his life.
He used it to good effect during the period of his ‘aesthetic’
69 Authority and Revelation, pp. 118-20. Kierkegaard published only an
abridgement of this work which did not mention Adler. This passage
is from the few pages Kierkegaard added when he published the
brief discussion ‘Of the difference between a genius and an apostle.’
70 Although no one would deny (given their respective contexts) that
Kierkegaard’s was a Christian religious experience and
Wittgenstein’s was not, it is interesting to note that neither this report
of the aftermath of an experience nor Constantin Constantius’s
parody of mystical experience (Repetition, p. 173) mention any
specifically Christian content.
47
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
production. The point was to have his apparent lifestyle in
accord with the tone of the works which he was producing. As
he reports in the Point of View, at times during the composition
of Either/Or he was so busy that he had just a few minutes a day
to spare; to get the best effect he would appear at the theatre for
five or ten minutes – and the gossips obligingly reported that he
did nothing else every night!71
Dissimulation had another place in Kierkegaard’s life. One of
his few pleasures was his daily walk through Copenhagen. As
Lowrie points out, the town was small enough for him to keep
up with all developments of importance. By posing as a man-
about-town, and exercising his considerable talents as a ‘spy,’
Kierkegaard gained the raw material which he transformed into
the literary works.
Another category of Kierkegaard’s authorship is his insistence
that he was ‘without authority.’ This reflects his own religious
status, which varied between his categories of ‘infinite
resignation’ and ‘Religiousness A.’72 He published a great many
‘edifying discourses.’ They were not ‘sermons’ because he did
not have the authority of ordination. He wrote philosophical
treatises (albeit well-disguised ones); but of course he lacked the
71 The Point of View, pp. 49-50.
72 A ‘Knight of Faith’ (in ‘Religiousness B’) ought to have been able to
be at once married and ‘in the service of the Higher.’ So
Kierkegaard’s break with Regine confirms the state of his
religiousness.
48
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
authority of the systematic professor, and even that of the
privatdocent. The Christian root of this category is clear: in his
authorship as a whole he called individuals to a renewed sense
of religiousness, but without pretending to lay claim to
authority, which in a Christian sense could belong to only one
Person (or at the very most three!). 73
Kierkegaard repeatedly stresses that the object of his work is
very limited. He is not a systematic philosopher, but has a
‘particular purpose.’ The purpose is the investigation of ‘what it
means to become a Christian.’74 It is essential to remember this
because it may mean that some cases may be polemically {27}
overstated, and that some analyses may be incomplete
(referring only to the religious use of a term).
The categories of ‘the individual’ and ‘without authority,’
which Kierkegaard derived from life, are closely related to this
purpose. His uses of these categories are limited and polemical.
Just as Kierkegaard did not claim any special status for himself
(being without authority) so he particularly directed his
writings to individuals regardless of their status. The next
chapter will take up the larger implications of this form of
address.
The relation between Kierkegaard’s life and his authorship is
the overriding example of his polemical task. Even in his
private life he may have given events too much significance
73 The Point of View, p. 75.
74 The Point of View, p. 6.
49
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
through reflection – it must not be forgotten that his diagnoses
were self-diagnoses, since he was ‘without authority’ in the case
of any other individual. But insofar as his public life was a
polemical potentiation – a caricature, in which the features
germane to the ‘task’ were emphasized – of his private life, it is
the prime instance of his use of ‘indirect communication.’
Finally, the relationship of ‘Governance’ to Kierkegaard’s life
must be discussed. In general, he understood his relation to this
‘Governance’ as like that of Socrates: ‘he attended to himself –
and then Providence proceeds to add world-historical
significance to his ironical self-contentment.’75 He felt in general
that he had a ‘task’; but the fulfillment of this task came through
the building up of a pattern, the individual pieces of which did
not make special sense at the time of their occurrence. 76
But he had some sense of the unusual nature of his vocation
quite early in his literary life. In Repetition, he used the category
of the ‘spy in a higher service.’77 This is a complex idea. As
articulated in the journals, it includes the notion of a
reprehensible (sinning) past, and consequent obligation to God
– as well as the more obvious ideas of dissimulation and the
gathering of information. 78 ‘The observer’s job is to expose
what is hidden,’ as Constantin Constantius remarks. Only after
75 Postscript, p. 132n.
76 The Point of View, pp. 71-2.
77 Repetition, p. 135.
78 Journals and Papers, sec. 6192 (IX A 142).
50
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
many things are exposed can he see the pattern which guided
these exposures.
PARALLELS
It remains to give some hints as to how the similarities between
Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s lives affect our present task.
The {28} most obvious and general of these similarities is the
understanding of the close connection of lifestyle and
philosophical ideas.
The style of continual reworking and rethinking carries
through to three areas of interest to us – the authors’ personal
lives, their literary production, and the style they advocated to
others. But this reworking is shaped by a grounding ideal. The
root of each man’s unease lies in religious concern.
It might seem odd to make the claim that religion is an
essential common feature of Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s
lives. Certainly Wittgenstein was not explicitly concerned with
religion as an author. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
that a religious search is a common element. Malcolm suggests
that Wittgenstein had many times reached the point of crisis –
at which Kierkegaard advocates the ‘leap’ – but ‘could not, or
would not, “open his heart.”’79 At least he had a conception of a
79 Malcolm, Memoir, p. 83.
51
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
higher ‘ethical’ standard for the ‘task’ of life – a standard which
he ‘believed in,’ but felt incompetent to fulfill. 80
Kierkegaard carries the connection of life and works to a
doubly-reflected extreme, since his works are rooted in his sin-
consciousness, then a false moral expression is invented to aid
in the proper interpretation of the works! Wittgenstein is not so
explicit about the connection, but carries it out nonetheless. His
philosophical ‘brush-clearing’ is partly an attempt to make
plain the moral foundations of life; his attempts (and failures) to
improve his own moral foundations have a great deal to do
with the events of his life. He also attempted to impart these
values to others – but not by explaining his own position; rather
he tried to bring about the same soul-searching in his students
that he himself had gone through. This method of working
shows forth the anti-academic (or at least anti-doctrinal) streak
which he shares with Kierkegaard.
Wittgenstein makes explicit a grasp of the close connection of
ethical and aesthetic concerns which is also apparent in
Kierkegaard’s life. For both thinkers, what one makes of life
depends in some measure on the ‘aesthetic’ principle or
perspective from which one connects the various facets of the
80 Wittgenstein did not think of this moral demand as a constraint; even
under the burden of his incomplete task, he still had a ‘wonderful
life.’ Kierkegaard’s description of the Knight of Faith’s freedom from
worldly burdens comes to mind. So does Wittgenstein’s house, with
its strange combination of strict design and free feeling.
52
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
world. Both believe that this principle cannot be communicated
directly.
Several similarities of method and understanding become
clear within the basic framework of life-works connection.
Kierkegaard, as the self-conscious biographer and psychologist,
can provide some of the categories for the comparison. These
categories will be {29} important again and again in succeeding
chapters.
Wittgenstein wanted to be ‘without authority’ in his teachings,
just as Kierkegaard did. Although his closest friends
understood him to be an extremely moral person, he did not so
understand himself, and his protestations of personal
inadequacy made him without moral authority. His rejection of
academic forms was an attempt to escape scholarly authority. In
the event, the ‘first generation of disciples’ allowed him both
kinds of authority, despite his protestations. The moral
component is now nearly lost, but unfortunately this is because
the scholarly authority has been strengthened – in a direction
opposite to that of morality.
‘The individual’ is an accurate category for Wittgenstein as
well. His works reflect this, as will be seen below. He always
preferred to deal with one interlocutor in his philosophical
talks. When Kierkegaard walked, he at least played the role of
the flâneur; to walk with Wittgenstein was to be involved in
serious philosophy, usually one-on-one. Even in his ‘lectures,’
he needed at least a friendly face to address.
53
RELEVANT BIOGRAPHY
Finally, Wittgenstein believed in ‘indirect communication.’
This category is best discussed in connection with his writings;
but it could be argued that his whole life was a communication
of the way in which basic philosophy ought to be thought out
and applied. At least he was conscious of the gap between the
actual course of his life and his ideals; and he was apparently
concerned that the actuality, rather than the ideals, would be
‘communicated.’ It must also be remembered that he
successfully communicated philosophy in a house.
‘Hausegewordene Logik’ is certainly an indirect communication!
So far the ‘Galtonian photograph’ showing a type of
philosopher is not complete. It is clear that both Kierkegaard
and Wittgenstein believed that their lives and philosophies
were intertwined more closely than usual. They also thought
this intertwining right, and fostered it consciously. In fact, many
of the tools which they brought to their authorships derived
from the course of their respective lives. In each case, this is true
of indirect communication, the address to the individual, and
the refusal of authority.
But in order to flesh out the picture, as must be done before it
can be fully evaluated, we should examine the works which
were the fruits of these lives. If our authors are true to their
principles, there will be a close connection between the methods
and goals implicit in their lives, and those expressed in their
works.
54
{30}
Chapter Two
Methodology
Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are well known for having
produced philosophical-literary works of an extraordinary
kind. An interpretation of their intentions ought to take this into
account.
Kierkegaard’s ‘authorship’ (as he himself called it) includes a
pseudonymous symposium in which various ideas and points
of view are presented. It also includes the ‘devotional
addresses’ and ‘edifying discourses,’ which are less often read;
while they are not a remarkable form of writing in themselves
(however remarkable they may be in content), when they are
understood in connection with the pseudonymous works which
they ‘accompanied’ – as part of the dialectic – they become part
of a remarkable pattern. A third part of Kierkegaard’s public
writings is the ‘attack’ of his last months, which must also be
seen in connection with the total opus. In addition to his
writings, he saw his life as an important part of his
communication (as has been suggested above).
The private material from his journals and papers
conveniently shows the connection between his personal
experience and the public works. As such it provides an added
perspective on his work.
The form of Wittgenstein’s writings is extraordinary for at
least two reasons. The first is that there seem to be two
55
METHODOLOGY
‘authorships.’ This idea is supported by Wittgenstein’s own
statements; in the later works he repeatedly refers to ‘the author
of the Tractatus’ as though he were another person. 1 The second
remarkable feature of Wittgenstein’s production is that both
parts of it are equally unusual experiments in communication.
The Tractatus is notable for the logical rigor of its presentation.
A unique point of view is single-mindedly presented – then
matters are made more complex {31} by the material on the
‘ethical’ and the ‘mystical,’ which (at first glance) does not fit
with this single-minded presentation. The Investigations (and
other collections published posthumously), on the other hand,
show a discursive diversity of opinions and side issues. They
also seem to be completely different in intention.
The private notes take on an added significance in
Wittgenstein’s case; since only the Tractatus was published by
him (although the Investigations, and some other collections of
notes, had clearly been edited with a view to publication) they
are not merely an interesting source for an understanding of the
private development of his thought. They are also the only
guidelines for an attempt to grasp the general outline of his
thinking in several related areas.
Neither author said much directly in the public forum about
the objectives of his writing. But hints exist in various parts of
1 This is certainly not to imply that there is no connection between the
two periods. See chapters 4 and 5 for a fuller exploration of this
connection.
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METHODOLOGY
the public works, and (particularly in the case of Kierkegaard)
more than hints are available in the Nachlaß. This chapter will
attempt to clarify the question of the authors’ goals, by an
investigation of the methods which they used. In both cases the
two are bound up together.
*
One of the most important influences on the methods used by
the two authors is their understanding of the place and
limitations of ‘philosophy.’ Wittgenstein provides a succinct
definition in the Investigations: ‘Philosophy is a battle against the
bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.’2 This
thought can be related to two different bodies of material. The
first connection is to the central battle which Kierkegaard
fought, against the illusion that in ‘Christendom’ all are by
definition ‘Christians.’ 3 Surely this is also a battle against
bewitchment by means of language! Despite the similarity in
appearance and derivation between the two words, they are
only slightly related in the concepts they express: they have a
‘family resemblance,’ but they are distant cousins. A metaphor
used by Wittgenstein is helpful here. The two concepts can be
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., sec.
109.
3 Søren Kierkegaard (1962) The Point of View for My Work as an Author:
A Report to History, trans. Walter Lowrie, New York: Harper
Torchbooks, p. 6 (and many other references in his works).
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METHODOLOGY
thought of as related in the same way as are the concepts
‘railway train,’ ‘railway accident’ and ‘railway law.’ Although
these all are complex concepts which have to do with railways,
they are thoroughly different: one indicates an object, one a
momentary event, and one a conceptual codification. 4 Similarly,
‘Christendom’ is a geopolitical relation, and ‘Christianity’ a
spiritual state. {32}
The second direction in which the definition from the
Investigations can be related is to the following passages from
the Tractatus:
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions,’
but rather in the clarification of propositions.
Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and
indistinct: its task is to make them clear and give them sharp
boundaries….
It must set limits to what can be thought; and in doing so, to
what cannot be thought.
It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working
outwards through what can be thought.
4 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1960) The Blue and Brown Books, 2nd edn, New
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960, p. 64.
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METHODOLOGY
It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly
what can be said.5
Thus at the very beginning, Wittgenstein’s definition changes
the idea of ‘philosophy.’ A boundary wall is erected in the
traditional subject matter of philosophy. Important things occur
on both sides of the wall; but direct statements (sayings) can
reach only one side. What is on the other side can only be
‘signified’ or ‘shown.’
Kierkegaard saw a similar wall. The attempt to reach the other
side of this wall is a constant temptation, as he notes:
[The] ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will
its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the
understanding to will the collision, although in one way or
another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is
the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover
something that thought itself cannot think. This passion of
thought is fundamentally present everywhere in thought, also
in the single individual’s thought. 6
5 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F.
Pears and B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, sec.
4.112, secs. 4.114-4.115.
6 Søren Kierkegaard (1985) Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
p. 37. Compare Moore’s report on Wittgenstein: ‘He said … that we
had to follow a certain instinct which leads us to ask certain
questions, though we don’t even understand what these questions
59
METHODOLOGY
For both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, philosophy is
inevitable. But another essential feature of their thinking is that
the place of philosophy is limited. It can do some preliminary
brush-clearing and straightening out; but when it comes to the
truly essential features, another kind of thinking is just as
inevitably needed. They are both dedicated to demonstrating
the presence of the wall, or {32}‘ugly ditch’ (Lessing); they are
also dedicated to working toward getting beyond it.
An important kindred feature of both Kierkegaard’s and
Wittgenstein’s thought at this point is their interest in limiting
the scope of their discussions. That is, philosophy has a limited
place within their total universes of discourse; but even these
universes are limited in size. Kierkegaard puts this limitation
most clearly; his entire work is
related to Christianity, to the problem of ‘becoming a
Christian,’ with a direct or indirect polemic against the
monstrous illusion we call Christendom, or against the
illusion that in such a land as ours all are Christians of a sort. 7
In reading his works this must never be forgotten. Apparent
gaps in his analyses may relate to the fact that they are only
mean; that our asking them results from “a vague mental
uneasiness,” like that which leads children to ask “Why?”….’ From
G. E. Moore (1954-5) ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures in 1930-33,’ Mind 63-64,
no. 253, p. 27.
7 The Point of View, p. 6.
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METHODOLOGY
constructed for this particular purpose. (For instance, he
explicitly says that his definition of truth as subjective only
applies to ‘the truth which relates to existence.’)8 The
authorship is a polemical corrective to the problems of the age.
It may be recognized as such because it is opposed to the ‘evil of
the age.’ Kierkegaard’s championing of ‘the individual’ is a
polemical result of the crowd mentality which he perceived in
his age. Any good that there may be in that mentality (from a
balanced view) is not his concern as a polemical, religious
author. 9
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the place of philosophy in his
task may be better understood when seen in comparison with
his description of the power and way of working of the ironist,
from The Concept of Irony: ‘As the ironist does not have the new
within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old,
and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality
8 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans.
David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, p. 178n.
9 The Point of View, p. 59. In fact, Kierkegaard’s polemic is redoubled,
since New Testament Christianity is already a polemical lifestyle,
established over against the world. See Søren Kierkegaard (1967-78)
Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7 vols, ed. and trans. Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, sec. 3336 (XI1 A 156).
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METHODOLOGY
by the given actuality itself.’10 The biographical root of the
method of indirect communication can be found in
Kierkegaard’s relation with Regine. But its philosophical
antecedent is his work on Socrates. Like Socrates, he is able to
demonstrate the inadequacies of philosophy by an ironic use of
its own categories.
This also recalls Wittgenstein’s way of working: ‘the work of
the philosopher consists in assembling reminders [“given” in
the world] for a particular purpose.’11 Wittgenstein’s projects
are also under a limitation similar to Kierkegaard’s. The
purpose of philosophy, according to him, is to eliminate itself!
Wittgenstein’s usual method {34} is to get clear about particular
‘philosophical’ problems, and in so doing to show some
features of philosophy in general. So his reminders may be
various in their form. There may be polemical-corrective
features in them; that is, if an idea is deeply entrenched, the
reminders may have to be sharp beyond ordinary usage. And
the reminders may also be incomplete. Wittgenstein’s purpose in
describing a situation or coining a term is not to give a
systematically complete explanation or definition. Often he only
notes the features germane to the point at hand. This arises
10 Søren Kierkegaard (1968) The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference
to Socrates, trans. Lee M. Capel, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 1968, p. 279.
11 Investigations, sec. 127.
62
METHODOLOGY
from his task-orientation, and does not constitute a ‘mistake’ or
oversight!
For both Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, one particular
problem demanding this unusual mode of thinking and
communication is the ethical dimension of life. Wittgenstein’s
works also include explicit consideration of another essential
feature requiring this other kind of thinking: the way in which
language, thinking, and understanding work.
The key to this unusual kind of thinking and representation is
contained in a brief statement by Wittgenstein: ‘What can be
shown, cannot be said.’12 The logical and ethical dimensions are
features which ‘show themselves’ in the world; but they are not
directly expressible. Kierkegaard used the term ‘paradox’ to
refer to human apprehension of such phenomena.
Paul Holmer suggests a way of looking at this inexpressibility
which connects the early Wittgenstein both with his later works
and with Kierkegaard. He points out that since certain
dimensions ‘cannot be said,’ then the locus of certainty about
them cannot be any doctrine. Instead, the thinker must be
certain. ‘Seeing is a capacity and can only be done by people,
not sayings.’13
The theme of important material that is inaccessible to
investigation is maintained through the later period. A key
12 Tractatus, sec. 4.1212.
13 Paul L. Holmer (1980) ‘Wittgenstein: “saying” and “showing”,’ Neue
Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 22:224.
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phrase used to refer to the problem is ‘explanations come to an
end somewhere.’14 Nothing could be more essential than the
features which do not require or permit explanation; it is
precisely the fact that they are basic that makes them resistant
to further analysis. As they are part of the framework of life,
there are no tools available to get at them. Another key phrase is
‘the limits of language.’ 15 The later philosophy is concerned, as
is the earlier, to show that there are certain games in which
these limits ought to limit us, and certain games in which they
may be (rightly) {35} transcended – but also certain games in
which they are in fact transcended, but wrongly or with
infelicitous results. As Wittgenstein remarks, the existence of a
wall or other boundary is not an unambiguous explanation of
its purpose. 16 This may even depend on circumstances; jumping
the tennis net is only a correct move after one wins the game.
Wittgenstein takes metaphysical and other second-order
attempts to explain the functioning of language to be
unwarranted transcendences in an impossible direction; but he
takes ethical statements to be permissible expansions.
Similarly, for Kierkegaard the attempt to philosophize sub
specie aeterni is a wrong transcendence. It is wrong because it is
forgetful of the existential situation and limitations of human
14 Investigations, sec. 1.
15 Investigations, sec. 119.
16 Investigations, sec. 499.
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beings. ‘An existential system is impossible.’17 On the other
hand, the leap of faith is permissible, to say the least. Its
permissibility is also rooted in the human existential situation –
our need for assurance.
*
There is a feature of Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s methods
which makes the task of studying them more difficult. This is
that statements about the method and uses of the method are
often intertwined. Paul Holmer observes concerning
Kierkegaard that there are two kinds of sentences in his works.
One of these types of sentence expresses in linguistic form the
immediate experience of a subject. In this kind of sentence,
Kierkegaard’s poetic bent shows itself. The other kind of
sentence is one which deals with ‘other sentences’ or concepts.
In this kind of work Kierkegaard is at his most philosophical
and analytic. 18
This distinction is easy to see in the case of The Point of View,
which consists largely of statements of the second kind. But the
‘authorship’ proper (both pseudonymous and acknowledged
works) does not by any means consist only of statements of the
first kind. Rather, in it they are liberally interlarded with
philosophical and programmatic statements. It is often difficult
to separate the two kinds. Indeed, sometimes the very same
17 Postscript, p. 107.
18 Paul L. Holmer (1955) ‘Kierkegaard and religious propositions,’
Journal of Religion 35:135.
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phrase seems to be both an existential or psychological
observation, and a philosophical comment. This close
connection of the two kinds of work reflects Kierkegaard’s
particular genius for rooting his writing in his own unified
existence as a ‘poet-philosopher.’
One of the best examples of this intertwining is the passage
from the Postscript in which Johannes Climacus explains the
principle of his ‘authorship.’ Climacus sets himself forth as an
indolent student of philosophy. But one day while smoking a
cigar in the public {36} gardens, he has realized what he might be
able to contribute to the well-being of the age. Since all the great
people are making things easier and easier, it only remains for
someone to make things more difficult, though of course not
more difficult than they really are. This ironic project will be his
life’s work.19
This passage combines the indirect communication of an
important principle of Kierkegaard’s thought with the picture
of Climacus, itself an indirect orientation as to how this work is
to be taken. By the superposition over the course of a work of
many such pictures and communications – a technique
reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s simile of the Galtonian
photograph – Kierkegaard brings precision to his delineation of
personality and philosophical position.
If this technique is a product of Kierkegaard’s particular
genius, certainly Wittgenstein shares his talent. Indeed, since in
19 Postscript, pp. 164-7.
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the case of Wittgenstein there is no parallel to The Point of View,
the puzzle is even more complex. It is clear that Wittgenstein’s
works combine attacks on particular philosophical problems
with his considerations of the possibility of philosophy; but the
two tasks are not divided. More often than not, the same
sentence does duty in the two endeavors. At least, the works
themselves constitute a ‘showing’ of the correct way to do
philosophy (while they ‘say’ things about various particular
problems); and this is not at all a trivial showing since the form
of the books is so radically different from that of previous
philosophical works. 20
An essential point about this method is that the same features
evident in ordinary language use are used in philosophy.
Holmer raises the question whether philosophical elucidations
of grammatical distinctions might be neither sayings nor
showings. He suggests that they constitute ‘pointers’ instead.21
(At any rate, they would remain indirectly communicated.) The
burden of this suggestion seems to be that philosophers call
attention to language in a way not done every day. But pointing
is a common phenomenon in which saying and showing are
intertwined. It is even used as a method of proof: Wittgenstein
was fascinated by the report that, for some Indian
20 Moore, ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures,’ 253:26-7.
21 Holmer, ‘Wittgenstein: “Saying” and “Showing”,’ p. 224.
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mathematicians, ‘Look at this!’ was a geometrical proof.22 So
there is no need to introduce philosophical ‘pointing’ as an
absolutely special phenomenon.
Holmer is trying to make a fine distinction between
philosophical and non-philosophical uses, one which
Wittgenstein might {37} not like, as it suggests a ‘second-order’
philosophical endeavor. Wittgenstein consistently denies that
there is a ‘second-level’ ‘philosophy of philosophy’; the
discussion in this instance may be recursive (that is, one of the
most common objects of philosophy is itself), but not second-
order. 23
*
One of the central methods used by the two authors is that of
‘leading’ the reader to a position. Wittgenstein remarks:
We must begin with the mistake and transform it into what is
true.
That is, we must uncover the source of the error; otherwise
hearing what is true won’t help us. It cannot penetrate when
something is taking its place.
22 This example is mentioned in Investigations, sec. 144; a longer
explanation is given in Ludwig Wittgenstein (1970) Zettel, trans. G. E.
M. Anscombe, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, sec. 461.
23 Investigations, sec. 121.
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To convince someone of what is true, it is not enough to
state it; we must find the road from error to truth. 24
Kierkegaard agrees ‘that if real success is to attend the effort to
bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take
pains to find HIM where he is and begin there.’25 Kierkegaard
stresses psychological reasons for this manner of working:
didactic prating is likely to make the listener ignore the
message, and in the case of the message of ‘becoming a
Christian’ this would be a tragedy. Wittgenstein’s motivations
are slightly different: keeping a solid anchor in reality is
important to him principally for reasons of philosophical
soundness, rather than due to any belief in the essential
importance of his message.
The Point of View explains in great detail how this idea applies
to Kierkegaard’s works. He was always a religious writer; but
he produced aesthetic works and philosophical works in an
attempt to appeal to various kinds of readers. The fact that the
‘Diary of the Seducer’ has been published separately from the
rest of Either/Or shows how successfully that part of the work
mirrors aestheticism. The Fragments and the Postscript ‘mirror’
philosophy, not so much by their character as by the
philosophical terminology and problems of which they make
use. But at the same time, the various Edifying Discourses,
24 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1979) Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough,’ trans.
Rush Rhees, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, p. 1e.
25 The Point of View, p. 27.
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written in an obviously religious form, exist as proof that he
was always a religious writer.
The application of the idea of ‘leading’ to Wittgenstein’s work
is not so clear. One way in which it characteristically shows
itself is within the individual works, or groups of notes. The
remarks on {38} the Golden Bough begin with Frazer’s mistaken
position, and attempt to show the outline of a better analysis of
the facts he reports. The Philosophical Investigations begins with a
passage from Augustine on language-learning. And On
Certainty begins as a discussion of G. E. Moore’s refutation of
idealism: ‘If you do know that here is one hand, we’ll grant you
all the rest.’26
What each of these works reflects is Wittgenstein’s penchant
for tackling one particular problem at a time, and worrying at it
until he had gotten everything he could out of it. The individual
works are not philosophies, or systems of philosophy: he once
reacted violently when someone proposed that he should
simply call the Investigations ‘Philosophy.’ 27 They are treatments
of specific subjects.
At first glance, it might seem difficult to fit the Tractatus into
this mold. It appears to be systematic and all-embracing. This
26 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969) On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G. E.
M. Anscombe, New York: Harper Torchbooks, p. 2e.
27 Maurice O’C. Drury (1981) ‘Some notes on conversations with
Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, ed. Rush
Rhees, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, p. 93.
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appearance is particularly fostered by the fact that it is
‘finished’; that is, it is not in the form of rough notes and
discussions, as are the later works. The decimal numbering of
propositions and the apparent purpose, to ground a scientific
logic on a complete metaphysics, also support this impression.
(And he himself calls it a ‘system’ in a letter to the publisher
Ficker. 28)
Several considerations militate in the opposite direction. First
of all, the Tractatus was written in reaction to the logical work of
Russell and Frege. (It is interesting to note that neither of them
understood it to Wittgenstein’s satisfaction.) So it must at least
start with logic if it is to follow his own methodology. Secondly,
there is the evidence of Wittgenstein’s own understanding of
the scope and goal of the work. This is different from the first
impression left by the text. The most straightforward expression
of this understanding is given in another letter which he wrote
to Ficker.
It will probably be helpful for you if I write a few words
about my book: For you won’t – I really believe – get too
much out of reading it. Because you won’t understand it; the
content will seem quite strange to you. In reality, it isn’t
strange to you, for the point of the book is ethical. I once
wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now
28 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1979) ‘Letters to Ludwig von Ficker,’ trans.
Bruce Gillette; in Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, ed. C. G.
Luckhardt, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 92.
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actually are not in it, which, however, I’ll write to you now
because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that
my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and
of everything which I have not written. {39} And precisely this
second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited
from within, as it were, by my book; and I’m convinced that,
strictly speaking, it can ONLY be delimited in this way. In
brief, I think: All of that which many are babbling today, I have
defined in my book by remaining silent about it. 29
Why would anyone write an ethical book that seems to be a
logical book, so that those who are most likely to agree with it
will not understand it? One possible explanation would be that
those most likely to agree are not the intended audience. The
audience suggested by the form of the book is logicians. If it is
precisely some mistakes in logic that are preventing the
logicians (and those influenced by them – in modern society,
potentially a huge group!) from ‘seeing things aright’ ethically,
and if the correct ethical view will have repercussions on their
logical ideas, then in order to help them to find out the truth
one must lead them from logic to ethics. 30
29 ‘Letters to Ficker,’ pp. 94-5. The negative part of Wittgenstein’s
method is clearly reminiscent of the via negativa of theology. But I
know of no evidence to settle the question whether he had studied
the classic sources in this area.
30 Wittgenstein’s complaint about Kierkegaard’s prolixity is worth
recalling here. He was ‘most likely to agree’ (he did agree, by his
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Without this understanding, the curious form of the Tractatus
seems even more curious when it is compared to the form of the
notebooks which Wittgenstein kept at the time he was
composing it. These notebooks are in the style which is familiar
in the works of the later Wittgenstein, rather than in any
systematic style. They reflect his discursive struggle to
understand the issues. The material on the ‘ethical’ in the final
form of the book is presented in a form most similar to that of
the notebooks. This suggests that the style of the Tractatus is
purposely artificial. Not only is it an expression of the best of
the material from the notebooks (or of the position finally
reached); this expression has been cast in a style which relates
to a particular purpose.31
own statement) with the goal of the project, but just this agreement
could make him impatient with it, since it was not pitched at his
level.
31 The gap between derivation and final form implies a danger for the
author. He might lose track of the derivation, and thus later be at a
loss to explain just what the point of each remark was. Indeed this
seems to have been the case with Wittgenstein and the Tractatus.
During 1929, Frank Ramsey discussed some points in this work with
him. He admitted ‘more than once’ to having forgotten the exact
meaning of statements. (Reported by Moore, ‘Wittgenstein’s
lectures,’ 249:3.) This is of course not to suggest that Wittgenstein
later had trouble with the central concepts of the Tractatus; but the
terse propositions are so tightly packed with meaning, derived from
a long discourse and a complex context, that it would be surprising if
he could unpack them exactly as originally intended.
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In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein
explains that he has been unable to develop that work into a
unified form, as he had at first wanted.32 But he realized that
the somewhat discombobulated style is appropriate to a
technique which consists in multiple methods for various
problems.33 The form of the Tractatus is appropriate to a
technique which promotes one understanding as the solution to
all problems. 34
All of these features point toward an expansion of the idea of
‘finding the reader where he is.’ Once one has done this, then
some technique must be devised for getting the reader to
progress. A didactic method will not be useful, since it assumes
the correctness of the speaker’s position. {40}
Kierkegaard called the method which he used in a similar
situation ‘indirect communication.’ As he claims in The Point of
32 Investigations, p. ixe.
33 Investigations, sec. 133.
34 A recent book by S. Stephen Hilmy (1987) The Later Wittgenstein,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, contains an extended discussion of the
question whether the aphoristic style of the Investigations was
intentional (pp. 15-25). Hilmy’s conclusion is that Wittgenstein did
want to write a ‘normal’ book, and that – no matter how complex the
phenomena under discussion – the burden of the Investigations
could in principle have been expressed in such a book. Nevertheless,
the ‘assembled’ style does lend itself to the presentation of an
assemblage of reminders. It certainly was Wittgenstein’s ‘working’
style.
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View, the whole of his work is related to the ‘problem of
becoming a Christian.’ But at first glance, the larger part of his
literary production has little to do with this problem. Instead,
he describes the life of the aesthete and the ethicist from within,
and apes the writings of the philosopher. The purpose of this
description is nevertheless consistent with his project.
In a series of notes for lectures on communication,
Kierkegaard distinguishes between the appropriate methods for
communicating ‘science’ and ‘art.’ Science or specific
knowledge of content must be communicated directly; art,
ability or potential competence, on the other hand, is already
within the subject, and hence must be taught in another way. It
is a question of ‘luring the ethical out of the individual,’ rather
than ‘beating it into him.’ The indirect communicator stands in
a ‘maieutic’ relationship to the listener. He is not imparting any
new knowledge; instead he is bringing something out in the
other. As Kierkegaard says, ‘the object of the communication is
… not a knowledge but a realization.’ 35
The ‘midwife’s’ role in this case is very delicate. It is a question
of maintaining the distinction between ‘standing by another’s
help alone’ and ‘standing alone – by another’s help.’ Clearly the
second, ironic alternative is the one aimed at. The midwife is
attempting to give an advantage – but if the one helped has any
idea that he is being helped, then that may become a
35 Journals and Papers, sec. 649 (VIII2 B 81), pp. 269, 272.
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disadvantage.36 So it is that the indirect communicator must
somehow manage to touch the intended recipient of the
communication without revealing himself. As Kierkegaard says
somewhere, he must pass him going in the opposite direction
and yet somehow manage to give him a push!
The expressed purpose of the Tractatus is to show that ‘what
can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk
about we must pass over in silence.’ In order to achieve this
purpose, problems of philosophy are discussed (said), and it is
shown ‘that the reason why these problems [of philosophy] are
posed is that the logic of our language is misunderstood.’ But
part of the value of the work is yet another showing: ‘it shows
how little is achieved when these problems are solved.’37 There
is a direct and an indirect part to the results.
Two very important explicit parts of the scheme of the
Tractatus (as well as the whole scheme of showing) have to do
with the need {41} for indirect communication. The first concerns
the status of logic. Logical form, as the form of propositions and
the world, does not exist in the world and cannot be expressed
in words. ‘Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror image of
the world.’38 It makes the whole scheme of language possible.
While occurrences within the world are ‘accidental,’ and could
be otherwise, the logical framework is fixed. It is nonsensical to
36 Journals and Papers, sec. 650 (VIII2 B 82).
37 Tractatus, pp. 3, 5.
38 Tractatus, sec. 6.13.
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make statements about something which cannot be otherwise:
there is no point of comparison. Thus logic cannot be discussed.
Ethical considerations are also bound up with indirect
communication. Here the indirection is double: not only are
ethical propositions not candidates for direct expression
(according to the Tractatus); but the very communication of this
fact is itself indirect. The ethical content of the world cannot be
expressed in words; like logic it is ‘not part of the world.’ Just as
logic cannot be ‘accidental,’ so values (if they are to escape
relativism) must not depend on ‘what is the case.’39 This
analysis squares with Kierkegaard’s thesis ‘attributable to
Lessing’ that accidental truths of history cannot serve as proofs
for eternal truths of reason. 40
Both the phenomena of logic and values are said to be
‘transcendental.’41 This is certainly not to say that they do not
exist; but they cannot be directly discussed. By discussing the
way in which the world is constructed and mirrored in
language, Wittgenstein is indirectly showing the importance of
those things which cannot be spoken about. The strictly correct
way of doing philosophy, he says, would be to say only what
39 Unlike logic, valuations of the world can nevertheless change. This is
an important difference! (In the Investigations, logic has the same
status as values: ‘standing fast’ yet without metaphysical necessity.)
40 Postscript, p. 87.
41 Tractatus, sec. 6.13, sec. 6.421.
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can be said. This method would be even more indirect that the
method which he actually uses.
Wittgenstein’s actual method is to make statements which are
(strictly speaking from within the final result) nonsensical. 42
The listener’s role is to ‘transcend’ these propositions, in order
to reach a vantage point from which he can ‘see the world
aright.’ 43 This remains an indirect mode of communication.
Thus there is a redoubled indirection in the communication of
the Tractatus. First of all, the ethical purpose is hidden behind
the logical appearance of the work. Secondly, the logical
apparatus is incapable of carrying its own weight. It does
appear to be a direct communication; but on the metaphysical
level it cannot be one. The foundations of logic, too, ought to be
indirectly communicated.
A modification of the doctrine of indirect communication is at
{42} work in Wittgenstein’s later works. He repeatedly denies that
philosophical points can be made by the advancing of ‘theses.’44
42 The fact that the essential parts of the Tractatus system are not self-
containing (that nonsense has at least a maieutic use) ought to have
been a clue to the positivists, that their idea of a self-containing
verificationism would turn out to be futile.
43 Tractatus, sec. 6.54.
44 For example, Investigations, sec. 128. Whether this position is in
agreement with the Tractatus position or not is a nice question – since
there theses were advanced, but only as a temporary scaffolding
around the putatively self-supporting crystalline reality. (Shades of
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Theses can only be about facts, and so everyone would agree to
them; it would be impossible to have arguments and various
positions. Philosophy is not concerned to give new information,
as do the sciences, for example. Instead, it is concerned with
‘putting everything before us,’ ‘assembling reminders,’ with the
aim of complete clarity. The ideal way of gaining clarity, for the
later Wittgenstein, is the method of ‘perspicuity’: ‘arranging the
factual material so that we can easily pass from one part to
another and have a clear view of it.’
For us the conception of a perspicuous presentation is
fundamental. It indicates the form in which we write of
things, the way in which we see things….
This perspicuous presentation makes possible that
understanding which consists just in the fact that we ‘see the
connections.’ Hence the importance of finding intermediate
links.45
If ‘a philosophical problem has the form “I don’t know my way
about,”’46 then perspicuous presentation is intended to suggest
an arrangement or map of the facts, to remove the confusions.
Kierkegaard’s critique of the systematists who build palaces and
dwell in hovels!)
45 Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough,’ p. 9e. Compare Investigations, sec.
122.
46 Investigations, sec. 123.
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Or, if philosophy is to be treated like a sickness, 47 then the
various methods of the philosopher, which clarify the problems,
are like various therapies. 48
That this is a doctrine of indirect communication should be
clear. Direct communication proceeds by the advancing of
theses. These are appropriate to science. But philosophy cannot
communicate directly. Instead, by arranging what we already
know 49 the philosopher makes problems disappear. Of course,
the satisfaction of the answer is not communicated; every
reader or listener must examine and agree with the proposed
‘solution.’
Kierkegaard shares with Wittgenstein the interest in a way of
working which stresses the transitions rather than the theses.
His interest in the polemical and corrective is a good indication
of this. But it is easy to forget the stress on transitions when
confronted with a ‘system’ like that of the ‘stages on life’s way.’
Kierkegaard takes care to delineate the operators of the
transitions between the stages. The transition between the
aesthetic and the ethical is marked by irony, and the transition
from the ethical to the religious by humor. {43}
47 Investigations, sec. 255. Kierkegaard says of ‘the sickness unto death’
that it nevertheless does not result in death, but continues
indefinitely. How like Wittgenstein’s philosophical sickness, which
consists in being unable to stop philosophizing!
48 Investigations, sec. 133.
49 Investigations, sec. 109.
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Both humor and irony depend on the clash of perspectives. To
see a situation as humorous depends on the ability to step out
of it, to see it as another might. The inclosing seriousness of a
perspective is shattered. Then there is the possibility that a new
perspective can be gained.
Kierkegaard places considerable stress on these transitional
categories, although in view of the fact that his dissertation was
about the concept of irony in both ancient and modern times,
this is not surprising. Wittgenstein has much less to say about
them in a theoretical vein. He does comment that the ‘depth’ of
grammatical jokes is like that of philosophy. 50 And Malcolm
notes that Wittgenstein had once claimed that it would be
possible to write a serious philosophical work consisting solely
of jokes.51 But the principal evidence of his understanding of the
importance of these phenomena in changing one’s way of
looking at the world lies in the (often heavy-handed) irony and
sarcasm of many of his remarks. For instance, in dissecting the
grammar of sensations, he answers the assertion ‘Well, I believe
50 Investigations, sec. 111. James C. Edwards cites the discussion of
‘nobody on the road’ from Through the Looking-Glass as an example of
an extended grammatical joke. See James C. Edwards (1982) Ethics
Without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life, Tampa, FL:
University Presses of Florida, pp. 120-1.
51 Norman Malcolm (1984) Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn,
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 27-8.
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that this is the sensation S again’ by remarking ‘Perhaps you
believe that you believe it!’52
The importance of disturbing presuppositions is also
expressed in Wittgenstein’s desire to transform ‘disguised
nonsense’ into ‘patent nonsense.’53 Once nonsense is recognized
as such, it will be much easier to reject. Humor and irony are
excellent methods of beginning this recognition.
The feature of language which Wittgenstein thinks susceptible
to these clarifying techniques is what he calls its ‘grammar.’ The
kind of reminders he uses are reminders of the way in which
the language is used every day; ‘philosophical problems arise
when language goes on holiday.’54 One basic type of
misunderstanding is that which arises when the surface
appearance of a linguistic structure is different from its actual
usage – a conflict between the ‘surface grammar’ and the ‘deep
grammar.’ 55 For instance one might be tempted to group
‘games’ together just because they all are given that name;
52 Investigations, sec. 260. The point is that there is no room for such an
external category as ‘belief’ here. (See chapter 3.) One recent
commentator who has noticed Wittgenstein’s use of sarcasm is
Fergus Kerr. There are several references in his (1986) Theology After
Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
53 Investigations, sec. 464.
54 Investigations, sec. 38.
55 Investigations, sec. 664.
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Wittgenstein reminds us of the variety of phenomena that lurk
beneath the common name. 56
Wittgenstein’s dependance on ‘everyday language’ is subtle.
He is interested in what he or others may be ‘inclined to say.’
But such an inclination or temptation is merely raw material;
the surface inclination may mask a deeper confusion, and this is
the province of philosophical ‘treatment.’57 {44}
Kierkegaard’s psychological investigations perform a similar
function. He is recalling people from flights of systematic or
religious fancy by recalling the forgotten circumstances of
everyday life. Although Christianity might seem to be just
another possible lifestyle, Kierkegaard reminds his audience
that it is ‘deeply’ different. It is different because it claims to
address the central existential question of finitude.
The mention of ‘intermediate links’ in the quotation on p. 42
deserves further examination. Such links are an important
feature of both Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s work. In both
cases the links proposed often take the form of stories or
invented situations. Two cases are shown to be similar in that
56 An excellent discussion of the uses of ‘grammar’ in the later
philosophy is Debra Aidun (1982) ‘Wittgenstein, philosophical
method and aspect-seeing,’ Philosophical Investigations 5:106-115. The
puzzlement expressed by Moore in his ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures’ is
also very instructive about the unusual nature of Wittgenstein’s use
of this term.
57 Investigations, sec. 254. ‘I am inclined to say…’ is a common
expression in the later works and notes.
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they share features with a third case. Here one might recall
Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘family resemblance.’ But it is not as
though these links have any real life of their own. It is the
formal connection between existing cases that is interesting; the
link calls attention to the similarity, and at the same time (like
‘family resemblance’) emphasizes the differences. The links and
parables are attempts to call attention to the way of seeing being
put forward. 58
*
Important reflections of this technique occur in two of the
central discussions of the Investigations: that of ‘now I
understand, now I can go on’ and that of the phenomena of
‘seeing’ and ‘seeing-as.’ These discussions also reflect the
typical intertwining of philosophical reflections on
methodology and the use of this methodology on other
problems.
The material concerning ‘now I understand’ begins at section
143 of the Investigations. One part of the point of this discussion
is an elucidation of the grammar of ‘to know’ and allied
concepts. The surface grammar makes us think that ‘knowing’
or ‘being able’ is a particular thing or experience that
accompanies the performance of correctly continuing a required
series. In fact (on closer observation) it is not even the case that
some particular content is connected with this performance. An
interesting example is the sudden grasping of a crossword
58 Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough,’ p. 9e.
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answer. The feeling of ability to write the correct word often
comes before the word itself; the pen starts moving toward the
paper before the word comes to mind explicitly.59 Being able to
continue is often the result of ‘having a technique,’ which of
course does not indicate any continuous state of conscious
mind. {45}
The point of this discussion as it affects the present argument
is that there is not necessarily any additional content which
suddenly makes understanding or continuing a series possible.
In making the correct arrangement of a jigsaw puzzle, the
‘scheme’ of the puzzle does not necessarily enter in; rather, the
arrangement simply is made. Reasons for choosing a particular
answer to a crossword need not be explicit or new information.
The usual way in which we solve problems is a good model of
the use of the idea of ‘perspicuous presentation,’ which works
for Wittgenstein both in everyday life and in philosophy.
Kierkegaard’s idea of the ‘perspective of faith’ fits well with
this model of problem-solving. When a thinker has encountered
the Absolute Paradox, there is no further factual information to
be gained. It is precisely for this reason that he experiences the
Paradox. This paradox cannot be abrogated or sublated
59 At least, this is true in my experience. Wittgenstein uses the similar
example of ability to continue a series. Many of the variety of
possible ways of getting the next number in an algebraic series
suggested in Investigations, sec. 151 have parallels in the ways one
might attempt to solve a crossword.
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(aufgehoben); it can, however, be transformed (by the perspective
of faith) from a negative to a positive phenomenon.
The discussion of the grammar of the word ‘see’ occupies most
of section xi, the longest section of part two of the Investigations.
Intertwined in normal usage are the photographic ‘seeing’
which would permit a copy to be made, and the gestalten
‘seeing’ (or fossilized ‘seeing-as’) which determines the place
assigned to a thing in our thought-world. While the first image
may remain the same, the second report may change. Such an
optical illusion as a two-dimensional representation of a cube,
for example, may be seen as first a cube, and then a concave
shape. On the other hand, sometimes only one aspect is noticed.
The phenomenon of aspects may recur on many different
levels. The most basic is that of applications of a picture. As
Wittgenstein points out, the same two-dimensional cube figure
might represent several things: a glass cube, a wire frame, three
boards nailed together. 60 Other clues in the context are
important in determining the interpretation.
Another level of aspects of situations and presentations is their
state of fluidity or solidity. Optical illusions are purposely
constructed with a lack of contextual cues, so that the
interpretation remains fluid. But we tend to see only one aspect
of everyday objects. One everyday object which may serve as an
example is a mirror. We do not ‘take it as’ a mirror (as we may
‘take’ the two-dimensional representation of a three-
60 Investigations, p. 193e.
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dimensional object in more than one {46} way); rather, it just is a
mirror. Yet once we had to learn that it was a mirror, and what
could be done with it (what Wittgenstein would call its
‘grammar’). A child or a primitive may fail to understand the
‘physical grammar’ of this object. For ordinary adult persons, at
some point the possibility of seeing it differently has been
eliminated. In the future, this possibility may need to be
reinstated, somewhat as, in a familiar animal-behavior
experiment, the monkey can reach the bananas if she can
understand a set of boxes as stairs.
Philosophical problems have many features in common with
the case of the mirror. They are traditionally seen in a certain
way. But the way in which they are seen may not be
appropriate; it may be problematic. Then the problem of the
philosopher is first to re-fluidize the understanding of the
problem, and then to change the way in which it is understood.
This must be done indirectly. A fork might well be used as a
garden tool, but one cannot simply claim that an heirloom silver
fork is a garden tool; one must be convincing. This is partially
because there is no separate ‘knowing’ which can be adduced to
prove the possibility of this use; there is no additional
information to be given. But certain aspects of the situation
must be emphasized – perhaps the urgent need for shipwreck
survivors to plant seeds for food on a desert island.
Kierkegaard’s objective with regard to the concept ‘Christian’
is of a similar kind. The understanding of the word has become
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canalized in a bad direction. Through his polemic, he hopes to
recall the Gospel grammar of the concept.61
Both Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard were interested in the
rejection of pat answers. The ‘task’ of Johannes Climacus,
quoted above, will serve as a convenient representation of
Kierkegaard’s thoughts on this matter. Those who were
‘making things easier’ in philosophy and religion in his time
were the Hegelian systematists. And Wittgenstein had the same
concern about the professional philosophers. They promised
complete understanding, a ‘crystalline system.’ But the twofold
problem with this idea is that the idea is flawed and (partly as a
result) ‘philosophy’ cannot deliver as advertised. The
Investigations are messier in appearance than the Tractatus;
things are made more difficult; but not more difficult than they
really are. The solution, while of a different kind than that
proposed by a system, is no less final once grasped. {47}
*
The ideal of the task of convincing brings up another important
point of contact between the methodologies of Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein. They both focused their efforts on the individual.
This focus can be clearly seen in the prefaces to Wittgenstein’s
works. That of the Investigations says: ‘I should not like my
61 He also speaks of rousing traditional Christian theological concepts
from their ‘enchanted sleep,’ restoring their ‘lost power and
meaning.’ Journals and Papers, sec. 4774 (II A 110), sec. 5181 (I A 328);
cf. notes on ‘Theologians, theology,’ 4:737.
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writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if
possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.’62 And
the first paragraph of the preface to the Tractatus reads:
Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who
has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it –
or at least similar thoughts. – so it is not a textbook. – Its
purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person
who read and understood it. 63
These formulations clearly recall the emphasis which
Kierkegaard places on the individual reader. There are good
reasons why they should. First, both authors are
communicating indirectly. As was suggested above, the nature
of that enterprise is such that every individual reader must be
independently convinced of the proposed improvements in
understanding. A directly communicated work – a scientific
text – can be relied upon. The material in it is factual, and has
been derived according to various laws and standards. As
Wittgenstein says, the content of ‘theses’ must be acceded to by
all. But a perspicuous presentation of the facts, designed to alter
someone’s view of the world, can only be accepted or rejected
by each individual.
Kierkegaard’s understanding of this method is demonstrated
when he talks of ‘appropriation’ and ‘double reflection.’ These
62 Investigations, p. xe.
63 Tractatus, p. 3.
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two categories stress the role of the person on the receiving end.
Indirect communication is doubly reflected. The communicator
reflects on the problem, and makes an attempt at
communication. The listener must also reflect, and his reflection
governs the way in which he will appropriate the material. The
dialectic of double reflection is explained in his material on ‘the
listener’s role in a devotional address’ in Purity of Heart.64 It is
also shown – in fact, perhaps best shown – by the development
of his own case. He remarks in a journal entry:
It must above all be pointed out that I am not a teacher who
originally envisioned everything and now, self-confident on
all {48} points, uses indirect communication, but that I myself
have developed during the writing. This explains why my
indirect communication is on a lower level than the direct, for
the indirectness was due also to my not being clear myself at
the beginning. Therefore I myself am the one who has been
formed and developed by and through the indirect
communication.65
This passage provides a link between ‘indirect
communication’ and the category of ‘the individual,’ which is
also closely related to ‘the problem,’ Kierkegaard’s task. It must
64 Søren Kierkegaard (1948) Purity of Heart is To Will One Thing, trans.
Douglas V. Steere, New York: Harper Torchbooks, p. 177ff.
65 Journals and Papers, sec. 6700 (X3 A 628).
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not be forgotten that his uses of this category is limited and
polemical.
Gregor Malantschuk provides an interesting analysis of four
terms which Kierkegaard uses for individual humans. The
lowest term is Exemplar, indicating a specimen, copy, or
member of a crowd. Next stands the individual (Individ), who is
not simply a member of the species or herd in an animal sense,
but nevertheless remains dependent on his heredity and
environment. Third is Individualitet, conscious self-choice. The
highest category is ‘the single individual’ (den Enkelte), who is
the ‘self grounded transparently in God’ of The Sickness Unto
Death.66 The flavor of this term accords well with Wittgenstein’s
term of approbation, ‘human being.’
Although Kierkegaard’s dedications are to Hiin Enkelte
(originally meant to refer to Regine), in the context of his own
understanding of his ‘task’ this term has a double meaning.
Many of the pseudonymous works effect their results through
pictures of extraordinary individuals, or archetypes. In the
Edifying Discourses, rather than the person of position it
indicates the potential within everyman. The thrumming of this
dialectical tension will at least serve, like a noisemaker, to call
attention to the importance of the category. 67 But even when
Kierkegaard is talking about ‘everyman,’ this is not to say the
66 Gregor Malantschuk, notes to ‘Individual’ in Journals and Papers,
2:597-8.
67 The Point of View, second note on ‘The individual,’ p. 124.
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‘crowd’; the mentality of the crowd, which easily does things
that no individual would do, is ‘untruth.’68 The authorship is
directed to each and not to all: to Hiin Enkelte and not to the
Exemplar.
The importance of the term for Kierkegaard’s ‘task’ is related
to the illusion he sought to destroy, that ‘all are Christians of a
sort.’ The category ‘individual’ is the ‘narrow defile’ through
which any Christian must pass. It is essential for those who
would become Christian, and so getting the category noticed
must be one of Kierkegaard’s highest priorities.69
The ‘Socratic’ nature of the enterprise being carried out by
each {49} author reflects another facet of the dedication to the
individual. Quite aside from the idea of ‘Socratic method,’ or
asking leading questions (which is practiced by both), there is a
similarity between the way in which they generated their
thoughts and the way in which Socrates worked. Kierkegaard
comments in his dissertation that the Academy essentially
consisted in a group of people sitting around watching Socrates
think.70 It is hard to imagine a more apt description of
Wittgenstein’s classes. His published works all follow the same
pattern. Even the Tractatus, which was polished so far beyond
the notebook form, is merely a compilation of ‘that which really
68 The Point of View, first note on ‘The individual,’ p. 110.
69 The Point of View, second note on ‘The individual,’ pp. 128-36.
70 The Concept of Irony, pp. 213-14.
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occurred to me – and how it occurred to me.’71 The
Investigations and some of the other works were polished to
some extent, but they retain the form of internal dialogue and
attempts at convincing oneself.
Kierkegaard’s works, of course, also follow the same pattern.
Through the intervention of ‘Divine Governance,’ the working
out of his personal thoughts and difficulties was projected into
the task of explicating ‘becoming a Christian.’
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the idea of Governance is an
ironical one. It involves his looking back over his life and noting
the plan. Like Socrates, he found ‘world-historical significance’
superimposed on his struggles by Providence. His doings had
one significance to him, but turned out to have an expanded
significance to the world. The same might be said of
Wittgenstein.
All this is of course not to deny that the works of Kierkegaard
and Wittgenstein have a larger relevance. In fact, this relevance
is stressed by both. Much of it is derived from the personal
relevance which the works had first. The authors felt that the
works could only acquire any possible larger relevance
piecemeal, by becoming relevant for individuals.
This is one of the roots of a final Kierkegaardian category,
‘without authority.’ Kierkegaard defines authority as ‘a specific
quality which, coming from elsewhere, becomes qualitatively
apparent when the content of the message or of the action is
71 ‘Letters to Ficker,’ p. 92.
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posited as indifferent.’72 As has been mentioned in chapter 1,
Kierkegaard did not claim any authority for his work. His was a
peculiarly dialectical position. He was without temporal
authority (because not ordained) and without eternal authority
(because not a prophet or an apostle). Nevertheless he found his
‘genius’ – his natural talent – to be ‘daimonically’ guided by
‘Divine Governance.’ His whole life was willy-nilly an indirect
communication. {50}
*
In the foregoing material some features of a method have been
presented. They center around various common themes: the
place of philosophy, the polemical task, the address to the
individual, the stress on transitions, the necessary use of
indirect forms of communication, the recognition of the
phenomenon of perspective, the refusal of didactic authority.
Some of these categories are more clearly articulated by
Wittgenstein; some are better expressed by Kierkegaard. Both
thinkers can be understood in these terms. Each did actually
understand his own work in these terms to some extent.
But the limits of the method which these features delineate
cannot be exactly specified. One more category may be useful in
explaining this vagueness.
A feature of phenomena that impressed Wittgenstein was their
almost infinite suggestiveness. He discussed this category
72 Søren Kierkegaard (1962) Of the Difference Between a Genius and an
Apostle, trans. Alexander Dru, New York: Harper Torchbooks, p. 96.
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explicitly in connection with two great interpreters of the
human experience, Frazer and Freud. He was critical of both
thinkers, and for a similar reason: they were reluctant to allow
the possibility of diverse interpretations of phenomena. Freud’s
insistence on the one correct interpretation of dreams and jokes
was discussed in various lectures and conversations. 73 Frazer’s
tendency to see magic as ‘wrong science’ and to claim that our
interpretations of traditions depend on their historical
development received similarly short shrift.74
This reluctance to agree to the existence of single correct and
causally based interpretations is reflected in the nature of
Wittgenstein’s own work – and in Kierkegaard’s. What is being
put forward is not one particular point of view, but many
suggestions that tend toward a kind of viewpoint. (Not one
face, but a Galtonian composite.) Only the reader can connect
the given examples into a way of thinking and life. Wittgenstein
remarks that he is attempting to change the ‘style of thinking’
(or to persuade others to change their style of thinking).75
The style of the two authors’ works clearly reflects their ‘style
of thinking.’ The same problem is often approached from a
variety of viewpoints. Quite ordinary phenomena become
73 For instance, see Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967) Lectures and
Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril
Barrett, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 48.
74 For example in Moore, ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures,’ 253:19-20.
75 Lectures and Conversations, p. 28.
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extraordinary when seen in the appropriate contexts. But the
immediate context of a remark is not always its only fruitful
context. This is certainly true of the ‘Diary of the Seducer,’ for
example. And it is also true of Wittgenstein’s remarks. His
struggles over their arrangement often {51} resulted in the
inclusion of the same remark in more than one manuscript. Nor
is it merely a question of weakness or indecisiveness; the
remarks actually contribute to a variety of discussions. The
decimal numbering of the Tractatus is an invitation to read the
remarks in a variety of sequences, or to a variety of depths. At
one time Wittgenstein actually thought of connecting the
remarks in the Investigations with a ‘network’ of numbers.76 In
short, both authors’ works are ‘hypertexts’ which guide the
reader, but require an active construction at the time of
reading. 77
But this shared understanding of the way in which ideas could
be communicated has led to problems in the understanding of
the upshot of their works. Kierkegaard has been called an
irrationalist and a fideist, and said to promote a purely
subjective ideal incompatible with social institutions like the
established church. Wittgenstein has been called a fideist and a
relativist, and seen to promote a purely social ideal in reaction to
76 Quoted in Hilmy, The Later Wittgenstein, p. 21.
77 See Hilmy, The Later Wittgenstein, pp. 10-13, for a discussion of the
dangers inherent in such a ‘hypertextual’ or ‘radically contextual’
interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work.
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the traditional concept of the subject. The next chapter will
attempt to sort out some of these assertions, and to give some
idea of the kind of position that one might come to by aid of
their methods.
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{52}
Chapter Three
Problems of Interpretation
The special nature of the methods used by both Kierkegaard
and Wittgenstein makes the task of interpreting and applying
their works particularly difficult. In fact, the first problem is
whether ‘interpretation’ and ‘application’ are the appropriate
categories in which to examine their concerns. Insofar as they
both spoke to particular individuals concerning the particular
therapies appropriate to particular problems, it would seem
ironic at best to attempt to abstract some general principles
which could be followed in various cases. It is especially hard to
imagine what an interpretation of such a particularized therapy
would be. Both authors stress the limits of possible explanation,
as will be seen below.
Two forms of ‘interpretation,’ which often create problems in
the attempt to understand other writers, are especially
dangerous in the cases of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein.
The first of these problematic methods is the tendency to think
of the works as containing, or at least sketching, a ‘systematic
philosophy.’ Such a system would have room for particular
theoretical positions on most of the traditional questions of
philosophy: a general ethics, an epistemology, a metaphysics,
and so forth.
The second dangerous principle of interpretation has in
common with the first that it tends toward ‘system.’ But rather
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
than interpreting the existing work as systematic, this method
operates in a more insidious way. It consists in taking some
fragments of the author’s work out of context, reifying a
systematic theory from them, and using that to generate ‘the
author’s position’ on a given topic. {53}
Both of these principles of interpretation can be seen at work
in the most common understandings of two points essential to
Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s authorships. One of these
points is the relative importance of the individual subject and
society. A closely related field is their understanding of the
relations between different societies or worldviews. An
investigation of the way in which the authors themselves
approached these issues may shed light, not only on the issues,
but also on the possibility of ‘interpretation’ and ‘extension’ of
their work.
*
The tendency to reify theories is especially evident in
interpretations of one of the most famous portions of the
Philosophical Investigations, the so-called ‘Private Language
Argument.’ It is particularly significant of the danger here that
there is some disagreement about the exact portion of the text
which should be counted as belonging to the ‘argument’! There
are no definite boundaries in the text. (This is a by-product of
the ‘Galtonian photograph’ writing style, in which the whole text
is needed in order fully to support any one portion of it.) But
the first indexed use of the term ‘private’ occurs at section 243,
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
and the discussion of rule following and ‘knowing how to go
on’ picks up after about section 320.
The mere fact that this discussion is called ‘the Private
Language Argument’ may well produce some expectations
about its content. Surely it must have to do 1) with language; 2)
with a private language – that is, one available only to a single
individual. Furthermore, a cursory knowledge of Wittgenstein’s
general disposition suffices for one to be fairly sure that he
would be ‘against’ the idea of private languages. He often
speaks of ‘language-games,’ and the paradigm of games is
social. 1 His term ‘form of life,’ which appears (among other
places) just before the beginning of the section on privacy, also
expresses a clearly social idea.
The expectation which this background information raises is
that the argument is a reaction to a thing which has been
proposed. This thing is a language, like languages we have all
experienced and used. It is also private – it is the protocol of an
internal dialogue. However, Wittgenstein is against it on
evidential grounds. He relegates it to the status of ‘the present
king of France,’ or better ‘the third eye in the middle of my
forehead.’ This physiognomic innovation would have its uses,
but – unfortunately – it does not exist. {54}
1 Wittgenstein uses the concept ‘game’ to demonstrate the idea of
‘family resemblance,’ so of course the counter-example of solitaire or
‘patience’ comes to mind. But – to ask a Wittgensteinian question –
why do we admit of the idea of ‘cheating’ at solitaire?
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
Such an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s position necessarily
reduces the value of the individual subject in her subjectivity. If
there is no language for internal reports, then (to take a
positivistic line of argument) there can be no ‘subject.’ Only
what is speakable is real, and only what is public is speakable;
so only what is public is real – only the social dimension counts.
This understanding of Wittgenstein’s intentions does not take
into account the nature of his interest in phenomena. He
remarks that philosophical investigations are conceptual in
nature, and the classic error of metaphysics is that it confuses
factual and conceptual work.2 Then if indeed Wittgenstein is
‘against’ ‘private language,’ it will not be that he finds such a
thing to be conceivable (but contingently nonexistent); rather it
will be because the whole conceptual scheme suggested by the
idea ‘private language’ is wrong. Then the question ‘can there
be a private language?’ will not be settled, but eliminated. This
will be true because the model of ‘language’ will be shown to be
inapplicable at this point.3
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1970) Zettel, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, sec. 458.
3 Compare the status of logical and ethical statements in
Wittgenstein’s (1974) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears
and B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press. There
‘nothing can be said’ due to the framework nature of these fields
(and not, as the positivists would have it, because something fails to
exist).
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
The difference between Wittgenstein’s method and factual
investigation is suggested by a metaphor he himself used.
Rather than resolving an argument as one would release the
tension from a spring, he proposes to dissolve the argument as
one would dissolve the spring in acid!4 The metaphor neatly
illustrates his intention to work in a different dimension.
A clue that the ‘Private Language Argument’ might reject a
whole conceptual scheme is already available in section 244 of
the Investigations, at the very beginning of the ‘argument.’ There
Wittgenstein remarks that ‘the verbal expression of pain
replaces crying and does not describe it.’ Both crying and
saying ‘Ouch!’ are ‘pain-behaviors’; but the verbal expression is
learned.
The problem addressed arises because of a conflict between
the surface and deep grammars of certain expressions of pain.
Exclamations are fairly primitive linguistic pain-behaviors. Far
more sophisticated ones exist. Even on the next possible level,
an instantaneous utterance such as ‘That hurts!,’ the apparent
form is that of a report. And a much used example, ‘I have a
toothache,’ even makes it sound as if there were a thing (genus
pain, species toothache) that is the object reported. From these
4 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980) Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 9e. This note was made
in 1931, well before the Investigations had reached even preliminary
form, and the conception carries through in the various ‘later’ works.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
cases it is easy to suppose that ‘Ouch’ and crying are also
‘reports’ about what ‘I know.’
A closer examination of the complex expressions (‘in the {55}
language game which is their home’) reveals that they do not
function like the simple declarative sentences they emulate.
This is easy to see if we assume they are sentences in the ‘game
of information’ and try to use them as such.
Jane: I’ve got five dollars. Paul: I’ve got a headache!
Harry: I’m from Missouri; Tom: Wow! Can I see,
you’ll have to show me! huh? Huh??
Jane: (taking out her wallet) Paul: ??!!?!?
Here they are.
Jane can easily produce physical evidence to back up her
assertion. But Paul could at best produce symptoms. This kind
of gap is totally unacceptable in sensation statements. Rather
than being the kind of propositions which can be objectively
only true or false (though perhaps psychologically or
statistically probable, uncertain, highly doubtful), statements
like Paul’s are indubitable – ‘that is how we use it. (And here
“know” means that the expression of uncertainty is senseless.)’5
5 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., sec.
247.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
As the ‘argument’ continues, Wittgenstein’s intentions are
clouded by his methodology. There is a long discussion of
whether it would be possible for someone to name privately a
sensation, ‘S,’ and keep track of the occurrences of this
sensation. This begins to look like a factual investigation. Why
is it wrong to say one could have such a diary? The temptation
is to suppose that there are factual reasons: our language does
not work like that; the concepts used in recognizing a sensation
are public ones; there would be no independent check on one’s
memory; and so forth. In short, ‘entries in a private diary’
cannot be verified. It is easy to approach this section of the
‘argument’ at such a level.
The sequence of observations concerning sensations makes a
different sense if it is seen in the light of the previous section. 6
In that case, it will hardly seem possible that it should be a
factual investigation. What else could it be? What objective is in
sight?
The ‘argument’ about private diaries seems to belong with
some material later on about ‘mental processes.’ The
grammatical similarity between psychological sentences and
external reports might lead one to think of the ‘mental theater,’
on whose stage these mental objects cavort. Once again, it is a
6 This sequence also can be understood in connection with the material
about private language learning – the ‘baby Crusoe’ debate. That is a
relatively separate strand, having more to do with the section on
rules and going on.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
question of eliminating the open space. There is no room
between the {56} toothache and the ‘Ouch!’; thus the ‘Ouch!’ is not
a report. But the same is true of the other mental processes; they
are holistic and not mechanical in nature. 7
In that case the concern about ‘private naming’ of a sensation
would not be intended to deny the occurrence of any behavior,
or indeed the possibility of ‘recognizing’ one’s pains, in an
ordinary sense. The point would be that the ‘private language’
use is an extraordinary sense. Once a space is opened up
between one’s pains and one’s recognition of them, an infinite
regress becomes possible: ‘“Well, I believe that this is the
sensation S again.” – Perhaps you believe that you believe it!’8
The dilemma can only be solved by recognizing that you do not
believe, in the ordinary sense, that the sensation reappears.
Rather, you simply have the same sensation; there is no
question about it. The same point is made by Wittgenstein’s
example of the mental timetable in section 265.
Some light is shed on this material by the following paragraph
from the Investigations.
That expression of doubt has no part in the language-game;
but if we cut out human behaviour, which is the expression of
7 The index of the Investigations lists ten separate phenomena which
are explicitly claimed not to be mental processes! In this connection
see also chapter 7 of Norman Malcolm (1986) Nothing is Hidden, New
York: Basil Blackwell.
8 Investigations, sec. 260.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
sensation, it looks as if I might legitimately begin to doubt
afresh. My temptation to say that one might take a sensation
for something other than what it is arises from this: if I
assume the abrogation of the normal language-game with the
expression of a sensation, I need a criterion of identity for the
sensation; and then the possibility of error also exists. 9
A philosophical problem is arising with the idea of sensation
simply because ‘language is going on holiday’; one has only to
look at the context in order to eliminate the problem.
The necessary complement to the above remark on context can
be gleaned from a single sentence found in the very next section
of the Investigations: ‘To use a word without justification does
not mean to use it without right.’10 One might be led to the
(mental or physical) ‘process’ theory of sensation reporting if
one were seeking to legitimize pain-utterances. But in ordinary
circumstances (in the language-game of sensations) there is no
need for such legitimization. The need for explanations has
stopped; the individual is for these purposes indivisible. As
Wittgenstein points out, an explanation could not be required
for every possible problem; the result of such a demand would
be the centipede’s dilemma. {57}
In the particular case of psychological language, decisions on
the need for observations are part of the ‘grammar’ of the terms.
9 Investigations, sec. 288.
10 Investigations, sec. 289. (An anti-positivist statement if ever there was
one!)
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The grammar of first-person present terms is not the same as
that of those in the third person: the former do not require
observation and do not permit of explanation; the latter do. 11
This is of course not to say that there are not extraordinary
circumstances in which some other proof might be required.
There is a language-game of lying; a language-game of play-
acting; a language-game of malingering. In some cases we
might be unsure just which of these language-games our
interlocutor is engaged in. Then the problem is compounded.
But these circumstances are extraordinary. There are particular
surroundings in which we might expect them – a poker game, a
theater, the prospect of a hard day’s work. Absent these
surroundings, there is no reason to assume that things are other
than they seem.
A last confusion on this point might arise in connection with
the simile of the ‘beetle in the box.’ If the outside of the box is all
that is ever seen publicly, then the supposed contents have ‘no
place in the language-game at all, not even as a something: for
the box might even be empty. – No, one can “divide through”
by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.’12 Compare
Zettel, section 550: ‘What purpose is served by the statement: “I
do have something, if I have a pain?”’ The aim here is again to
11 Zettel, sec. 472. In this entry and sec. 488, Wittgenstein makes an
attempt at writing down some of what ‘we all know’ about the use of
psychological terms.
12 Investigations, sec. 293.
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show that the deep grammar is different, even though the game
played looks like one where there is an object or a physical thing
I have.
This might be taken for behaviorism. The contents of the
person are irrelevant, only her behavior is worthy of note.
Wittgenstein’s association of words’ meaning with use has led
some interpreters in this direction. But Wittgenstein is careful to
point out that he is rejecting only a grammar, and not a
metaphysics. 13 If one understands sensation-talk on the model
of ‘object’ and ‘name,’ then the ‘object’ is irrelevant. But
whereas the behaviorist does so understand sensation,
Wittgenstein does not.14 ‘What greater difference could there be’
than between pain-behavior with pain and false pain-behavior,
he asks. The individual does have internality; but it does not
consist of objects which are then reported. He rejects the idea
that language only conveys thoughts concerning a variety of
internal and external existents. 15 ‘The meaning of a word’ is
often ‘its use in the language.’ This is not for any positivist,
verificationist, or behaviorist reasons; it does not {58} invite
13 Investigations, sec. 307.
14 On this point see for instance G. E. Moore (1954-5) ‘Wittgenstein’s
lectures in 1930-33,’ Mind 249:6-9.
15 Investigations, sec. 304. See also S. Stephen Hilmy (1987) The Later
Wittgenstein, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, ch. 2.
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factual inquiry. Wittgenstein appeals to use, or usage
(Gebrauch), where reasons come to an end.16
Wittgenstein’s disapproval of mechanical explanations is
further shown in the Zettel, where he discusses psychophysical
parallelism. In a way this is an extension of the various
arguments against ‘having mental objects.’ If ideas are things,
and they are processed by the brain much as a computer would
process them (for instance if human memory is thought of as
similar in function to computer memory), then the extreme
variety of possible human behaviors and results begins to make
the brain look like something ‘occult,’ as Wittgenstein puts it.
Thought can as it were fly, it doesn’t have to walk. You do not
understand your own transactions, that is to say you do not
have a synoptic view of them, and you as it were project your
lack of understanding into the idea of a medium in which the
most astounding things are possible. 17
But if this model is abandoned and thinking regarded as a
‘game’ similar to, but not exactly the same as computing, then it
16 The ‘definition’ of meaning as use is given in Investigations, sec. 43.
But the German phrase which has been translated as ‘it can be
defined thus’ is ‘dieses Wort so erklären.’ Wittgenstein is
not defining ’meaning,’ but explicating the employment, or use
(Benützung), of the word. The model of definition is precisely what
he is rejecting, and it would be horribly ironic to try to define it out
of existence!
17 Zettel, sec. 273. Compare sec. 606.
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no longer seems impossible. 18 It is not a question of rejecting
subjectivity, but of altering the model on which we base our
understanding of it. Wittgenstein’s effort in this direction is
conceptual and not factual.
*
Wittgenstein’s understanding of the irreplaceable nature and
importance of the individual comes to prominence in
connection with an important question concerning language-
games and ‘forms of life’ – the problem of inter-game
understanding and relativism.
As usual with Wittgenstein, there could be various
interpretations of the term ‘form of life.’ (J. F. M. Hunter
suggests four possibilities in one article!) 19 There is a continuing
debate over the scope of the phenomenon referred to by this
term. Both very broad and very narrow interpretations have
18 Anyone who believes in human free will must apparently admit
some non-physical causality in human thinking. (Wittgenstein goes
so far as to imply that ‘causal efficacy’ is a concept that does not
apply in the human mind.)
This suggestion also has ramifications for artificial intelligence
research. If the human mind does not function causally, then one
could not make a ‘thinking machine’ which duplicated its processes.
(But that would not show that there could be no mechanical creation
which behaved with enough of a family resemblance to ‘intelligence’
that we would wish to extend the term to include it.)
19 J. F. M. Hunter (1968) ‘Forms of life in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 5:4:233-43.
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been offered.20 Peter Winch has suggested that ‘humanity’ in
general is a form of life.21 Others have claimed that the only
coherent interpretation limits the scope to the social component
of individual linguistic practices (‘asking, thanking, cursing,
greeting, praying’ and the like), and that, in fact, ‘form of life’
and ‘language-game’ are nearly interchangeable. Recently,
Hilmy has attempted to show that a narrow interpretation is
correct on the grounds that ‘forms of life’ must be able to
generate or support the meaning of specific signs, and no wide
and {59} nebulous phenomenon would have the necessary
‘specificity.’22
All of these interpretations share the presupposition that when
Wittgenstein spoke of ‘forms of life,’ he was naming a
metaphysical entity which he discovered. It is thus very
frustrating to find it ill-defined. But this lack of definition may
be quite intentional. Rather, there may have been no intent to
define at all. As was noted in Chapter 2, Wittgenstein only
mentions the features of his invented concepts which are
necessary to the purpose at hand, leaving them somewhat
indeterminate. After all, they are reminders and not
20 See Hilmy, The Later Wittgenstein, pp. 179-84, for a representative
sample.
21 Peter Winch (1979) ‘Understanding a primitive society,’
in Rationality, ed. Bryan R. Wilson, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 107-
111.
22 Hilmy, The Later Wittgenstein, p. 189.
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metaphysical assertions. Indeed, this indeterminacy is an
important part of his methodology, which he explicitly defends
in the case of ‘language-games.’23 Nor is it an arbitrary choice or
an affectation on his part; the rules of natural languages are
always in transition. As he is at some pains to point out, there is
no such thing as a rule which fully specifies every application.
Every activity, including language use, is an exploration of
what the rules allow or suggest.
In keeping with this general observation, it is important to
remember that the term ‘language-game’ is not intended as a
systematic category (or worse, a metaphysical assertion about
how things must be). It reminds us, not only that language as a
human activity is subject to rules, but also that various rules are
possible, and that rules may change.
Language-games give general guidelines of the application of
language. Wittgenstein suggests that there are innumerably
many language-games: innumerably many kinds of use of the
components of language. 24 The grammar of the language-game
influences the possible relations of words, and things, within
that game. But the players may modify the rules gradually.
Some utterances within a given language-game are
applications; others are ‘grammatical remarks’ or definitions of
23 Investigations, sec. 65. Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1960) The Blue and
Brown Books, 2nd edn, New York, Harper Torchbooks, p. 81.
24 Investigations, sec. 23.
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what is or should be possible. (Hence Wittgenstein’s remark,
‘Theology as grammar’ 25 – the grammar of religion.)
The idea of the ‘form of life’ is a reminder about even more
basic phenomena. It is clearly bound up with the idea of
language. (Language and ‘form of life’ are explicitly connected
in four of the five passages from the Investigations in which the
term ‘form of life’ appears.) Just as grammar is subject to change
through language-uses, so ‘form of life’ is subject to change
through changes in language. (The Copernican revolution is a
paradigm case of this.) {60} Nevertheless, ‘form of life’ expresses a
deeper level of ‘agreement.’ It is the level of ‘what has to be
accepted, the given.’26 This is an agreement prior to agreement
in opinions and decisions. Not everything can be doubted or
judged at once.
This suggests that ‘form of life’ does not denote static
phenomena of fixed scope. Rather, it serves to remind us of the
general need for context in our activity of meaning. But the
context of our meaning is a constantly changing mosaic
involving both broad strokes and fine-grained distinctions.
The more commonly understood point of the ‘Private
Language Argument’ – concerning the root of meaning in
something public – comes into play here. But it is important to
show just what public phenomenon Wittgenstein has in mind.
He remarks: ‘Only in the stream of thought and life do words
25 Investigations, sec. 373; compare Zettel, sec. 717.
26 Investigations, p. 226e.
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have meaning.’27 But what this does not indicate is a rational or
consensual bestowal of meaning. That sort of move could easily
be the first step in an infinite regress. For the bestowal would
then stand in need of justification. One of Wittgenstein’s
favorite lines expresses this point perfectly. ‘In the beginning
was the deed.’28 Language – discussion – is secondary. This
ironic reversal marks him once and for all as something other
than a linguistic philosopher! The remarks on ‘pain-behavior’
have already suggested that it can be profitable to think of
language as a particularly complex form of deed. 29 His
emphasis is on the context, and not the words.
The idea of ‘seeing-as’ is clearly germane to the discussion at
this point. For the ‘form of life’ and language-games being
instantiated will be strong factors in determining how any
object or situation is seen, conceptualized, and understood. But
here is where the problem of relativism arises. How can anyone
27 Zettel, sec. 173. The thought is expressed many times in similar
words.
28 The line comes from Goethe’s Faust, part I. It appears in a note,
written in 1937, and published in Culture and Value, p. 31e; and again
in Wittgenstein’s (1969) On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M.
Anscombe, New York: Harper Torchbooks, sec. 402, written in 1951.
It also appears, in a remarkably different context, as the final phrase
of Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913).
29 Again see Malcolm’s comments in chapter 8 of Nothing Is
Hidden (1986), New York: Basil Blackwell.
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within one form of life and language-game communicate with
someone outside their community – much less convert them?
In some situations an artificial answer has been imposed from
above – a form of life which both parties share, though they
may have disagreements at another level. A good example of
this kind of resolution is the system of civil law. But a situation
much more difficult to resolve may arise when the conflict is
between a religious believer and a non-believer, or between a
‘westerner’ and a ‘primitive.’ It is in this last case that some of
the most famous battles over the application of Wittgenstein’s
thought have been waged. {61}
One possible position in this debate is that upheld by Alasdair
MacIntyre. 30 He maintains that, in order to escape the specter of
30 Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Is understanding religion compatible with
believing?,’ in Rationality, pp. 62-77. Sociological investigation of
other cultures is of course not the same problem as investigation of
religion by non-believers. But the analogies between these two
games are fairly close, and there is general agreement that the
comparison is valid.
How one understands this argument depends largely on the scope
one gives to the two concepts ‘language-game’ and ‘form of life.’
MacIntyre makes Christianity a totally different form of life from
Western science, so he can claim there is no contact at all. On the
other hand, his principle interlocutor, Peter Winch, argues that even
Nuer religion is merely a different language-game within a ‘limiting’
common form of life, that of ‘humanity.’ (See Winch, ‘Understanding
a primitive society’.)
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relativism, any ‘understanding’ of another group can only be in
the terms of the observer’s ‘criteria of rationality.’ This
understanding is to be based on an impartial observation of the
empirical facts. The observer will then go on to legitimize or
refute the ‘rationality of the criteria.’ Deviations from the
observer’s rationality on the part of the observed society are to
be explained, partly by the use of historical investigations into
their origins. 31 Thus it is possible for the modern western
scientist to explain the ‘irrelevance’ of both Zande and Christian
beliefs. Nor can the subjects object to the analysis, unless they
wish to be labeled cultural relativists (and dismissed). Thus
anyone who ‘understands’ Christianity cannot believe it; any
believer does not understand it.32
This analysis leaves one with a feeling of discomfort. Part of
the reason for this feeling is that it simply is possible to get from
Winch’s view is closer to that suggested in the discussion above,
though both suffer from the tendency to see the two concepts as
denoting objective facts, rather than suggesting fruitful ways of
seeing.
31 On the possibility that such investigations could make us understand
the historical development – and the question whether this matters
to the importance of the beliefs – see Wittgenstein’s (1979) Remarks on
Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough,’ trans. Rush Rhees, Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press, especially pp. 8e and 16e.
32 The idea also has the interesting corollary that Western scientists
(who believe in their disciplines) could never understand what they
are doing!
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one world view to another. One can imagine a Nuer tribesman
going to Oxford, and gaining an ‘understanding’ of Western
science and various other belief systems (including his own and
Christianity) – then becoming a Christian missionary and
returning home. How would MacIntyre explain this series of
changes in world view?
One obvious answer is the phenomenon of ‘conversion.’ The
convert learns to ‘go on’ in a different way than before, seeing a
different aspect of the world which presents itself to her. But
this is not a complete description of all the possibilities.
A further set of possibilities is suggested by the existence of
certain remarkable individuals who seem able to operate in
more than one world view, nearly at will. Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein are good examples. 33 It would be hard to dispute
that Kierkegaard both ‘understood’ and ‘believed’ Christianity.
Wittgenstein’s understanding of religion is also a far more
friendly one than MacIntyre’s. MacIntyre provides two more
examples, those of E. E. Evans-Pritchard and E. R. Leach. He
attributes the remarkable usefulness of their works to the fact
that, although their theories are nearly opposite, they do set out
their methods and prejudices, then give their reports (which are
subject to these prejudices). But this suggests that their grasp of
the other culture is separable from their (theoretical)
‘understanding’ of it. In other words, the way in which they
33 ‘(The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is
what makes him into a philosopher.)’ Zettel, sec. 455.
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understand, yet don’t believe, leaves open the possibility that
one might both understand and believe. 34 {62}
These few examples are reinforced by the ease with which one
slips from one language-game to another within a language and
culture. In writing these words, for instance, I am combining
facility in philosophy and in the use of the word-processing
program I am using. Examples from other games are imported
at need. In many cases, two concepts in different games are
accessed using the same word. (Compare Wittgenstein’s
discussion of ‘calling to memory,’ Kierkegaard’s existential
concern with memory from Either/Or, and my concern that this
chapter not grow too large to fit into my computer’s memory.)
Difficulties in accomplishing this function are the exception,
rather than the rule. They are often funny, like the Looking-
Glass discussion of Nobody.
This circuitous discussion is now ready to return to one of its
starting points – the importance of the individual in
Wittgenstein’s thought. Several examples will serve to show
this importance. How do examples from music come to the
service of philosophy? Wittgenstein uses them, and his readers
must participate in both games to get his point. How is it that
34 Wittgenstein’s ‘tip of the hat’ to religion is another example of such
an opening. In this connection it is also worth recalling Malcolm’s
idea that ‘there was in him the possibility of religion.’ Kierkegaard’s
ideas on ‘paradox’ in religion, which relate here, will be explored in
the next chapter.
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anti-Hegelian metaphysics comes to the service of religious
commitment? Kierkegaard relates them. How is it that
Gorbachev and Reagan communicate? A translator interposes
himself. How is it that the link between language-games is
made? I make it.
Each of these examples stresses the point, often made by
Wittgenstein, that language-games are activities (just as
philosophy is an activity). In fact, ‘the term “language-game” is
meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of
language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.’35 The
primary feature is that ‘this language-game is played’ – not that
‘the rules of this language-game exist.’ A great danger of
metaphors such as ‘language-game’ and ‘seeing-as’ is that they
will be understood to suggest subliminal processes in which
actions are chosen by mentally ‘looking up’ rules, or objects
recognized through comparison with a checklist of features
such as computer ‘perception’ uses. It is the action of playing
which is basic, and not a proto-metaphysical framework of
rules. 36 This is an extension of the claim that ‘in the beginning
was the deed.’ The active element of application is essential to
the very nature of rules, as Wittgenstein’s comments on ‘going
on’ also claim to show.
For this reason, any attempt to treat various cultures or
societies as scientific systems (that is, static sets of rules) is
35 Investigations, sec. 23.
36 Investigations, sec. 201.
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doomed to create {63} misunderstandings at the least. In reality,
the ‘rules’ are subject to constant reinterpretation. Compare
Kierkegaard’s dictum: ‘An existential system is impossible.’ It is
impossible partly because no codification can take all future
possibilities into account. How future events will be related to
the system is necessarily a matter for on-the-spot
interpretation. 37
A most important consequence of the examples above is that
the playing of (one or more) games is only possible for people,
not for theories. If various societies cannot be understood on the
model of ‘Hegelian’ static systems, but must be understood as
active and organic wholes (which at some level are not rule-
governed but rule-interpretive), then the obvious point of
connection and comparison between them is the individual.
Deeds require doers.38 Only the individual ‘player’ can provide
a connection between games without the need for a meta-
system which describes and classifies all games. There is a large
variety of ways in which we do in fact participate in more than
one game. Some were mentioned above. Consider also: a chess
player playing several games at once; an actor, in character,
37 David Pears has an interesting perspective on Wittgenstein’s
attempts to keep philosophy separate from science. See his
(1986) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, pp. 179-98.
38 The multi-layered nature of Wittgenstein’s analysis is again evident
here. The deed which shows understanding – the ‘seeing’ – can only
be done by people, not philosophical sayings. See chapter 2.
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‘playing’ chess in a play; the chess game in Through the Looking-
Glass, a novel created by Lewis Carroll (himself created by
Charles Dodgson!), and in which the pieces have personalities
and are characters in a story. After these examples, the work of
the simultaneous translator or the anthropologist no longer
seems so unusual – which is not to say that it is less
extraordinary – and the one-way trip of the religious convert
begins to seem simplistic!39
In the foregoing we have traced through one problem, in an
attempt to show how some interpretations of Wittgenstein’s
method can lead to difficulties in grasping his intentions, and
the breadth of phenomena in which he was interested. We
began with one heuristic device: the discussion of internal
dialogues, as an example of the rejected notion ‘mental process’.
This device has been reified into an ‘argument.’ When the
argument is applied systematically, it casts great doubt on
Wittgenstein’s appreciation for the individual. And his stress on
such social phenomena as ‘language-games’ can easily be taken
as additional evidence of this disdain. But in following
39 Kierkegaard makes a similar point concerning the difficulty – which
presupposes the possibility – of living in two spheres. ‘Diplomats
and police agents’ are his examples. (Søren Kierkegaard
(1941) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and
Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 365.)
According to him, it is the Christian’s task constantly to live in two
spheres, maintaining an absolute relation to the absolute telos and a
relative relation to relative ends.
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Wittgenstein’s own method – applying his tools to a problem,
namely that of the possibility of connections between language-
games or forms of life – we have seen that the individual has
great importance in playing and working out these {64} games.
Only when they are conceived as structured systems in which
the individual is trapped do problems of relativism arise.
Existing individuals feel no such bonds. To try to explain why
they don’t, do, or should is not appropriate – it is not a matter
for explanation, but for some other kind of grasping. As
Wittgenstein remarks, ‘I act with complete certainty. But this
certainty is my own.’40 The deed is foundational, and only
individuals are capable of deeds.
*
A systematic answer to the question ‘Is understanding religion
compatible with believing?’ is also at the root of a common
misunderstanding of Kierkegaard’s thought. Yet in this case the
problem is turned upside-down. For while applying ‘system’ to
Wittgenstein seems to make the individual subject disappear, in
the case of Kierkegaard it is the social dimension which
‘vanishes’ in his concern with subjectivity, once again leaving
the claim of total relativism. The stress on the subjective also
leads to the suggestion of irrationalism.
What makes Kierkegaard particularly interesting in the
context of the discussion of ‘forms of life’ is that he gives
remarkable literary evocations of several different ways of life
40 On Certainty, sec. 174.
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or language-games. The scheme of the ‘stages’ or ‘spheres’ of
existence, first seen in Either/Or, is taken up again in Stages on
Life’s Way and used as well in the Postscript. There can be no
disputing that his grasp of these stages is complete – the best
witness to this being that the ‘Diary of the Seducer,’ one of the
aesthetic sections of Either/Or, has been published separately as
a serious aesthetic work. 41 While this is a great compliment to
Kierkegaard’s skill, it is difficult to imagine a more absurd
abstraction from context.
Interpretations of Kierkegaard’s thought which begin from the
assumption that he is a ‘systematic’ philosopher are far more
common. One type of interpretation thinks of the stages as a
fixed, almost metaphysical hierarchy. 42 Another kind of
interpretation takes the idea of paradox and ‘irrationality’ as
paradigmatic of Kierkegaard’s thought (or at least of his
writings) and reacts to this idea.
A particularly useful facet of Kierkegaard’s thought in the
unravelling of these conflicting claims is his interest in the
transitions between stages of existence, language-games and
ways of thinking. Most of the interpretations center on static
features of his work; but his own method and goals were
41 In fact, this edition has recently been available in mass-market
bookstores, accompanied by a blurb describing it as ‘one of the
greatest fictional seductions’!
42 The ‘system’ of the Kierkegaardian stages has actually been
displayed in chart form on the end papers of a book.
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dynamic; the method {65} was pointing, and pointing toward
becoming rather than being. 43
The place of the philosophically oriented pseudonymous
writings (particularly the Fragments and Postscript), and the
weight to be given to the ‘theses’ contained in them, is a
disputed point. One particular school of thought is concerned to
save Kierkegaard from himself. For instance, Henry Allison’s
strategy is to show that if Kierkegaard’s ‘Climacus’ works really
mean what they appear to say, then Kierkegaard would indeed
be an irrationalist; hence it is ‘obvious’ that they are a peculiar
and one-dimensional kind of indirect communication –
parodies of serious Hegelianism.44 This interpretation is also
supported by Alistair McKinnon’s word-frequency studies,
which show that use of the term ‘Paradox’ is limited to the
pseudonymous works. His conclusion is that the category was
not Kierkegaard’s. 45
Some of this confusion can be resolved by a clarification of
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the relative importance of
43 While Wittgenstein was primarily concerned with classifying the
possibilities of such a scheme, though he worked with it too,
Kierkegaard used the scheme – though he classified parts of it too.
44 Henry Allison (1967) ‘Christianity and nonsense,’ Review of
Metaphysics 20:432-60.
45 For instance, see Alistair McKinnon (1967) ‘Kierkegaard: “Paradox”
and Irrationalism,’ Journal of Existentialism (Spring).
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logical understanding as against belief ‘by virtue of the absurd.’
An important part of his position is summed up this way:
Nonsense therefore he [the Christian] cannot believe against
the understanding, for precisely the understanding will
discern that it is nonsense and will prevent him from
believing it; but he makes so much use of the understanding
that he becomes aware of the incomprehensible, and then he
holds to this, believing against the understanding. 46
He contrasts this position with one which refutes accusations
‘by remarking that it is a higher understanding.’ That
distinction is designed to fend off the Hegelian imperialization
of religion by reason. But it also might serve as a response to
charges of fideism.
It is clear that one of the most important of the various tools to
be used in ‘becoming Christian’ is the ordinary kind of
rationality. This rationality is perfectly capable of dealing with
statements which abuse everyday language while pretending to
be part of it, such as ‘One equals three’ or ‘The Moon is made of
green cheese.’ To each of these our reply might well be
‘Nonsense!’ 47 But no one is comfortable with such a reply when
confronted with a statement like ‘God is three persons in one’ or
the Australian Aborigine’s ‘The Sun is a white cockatoo.’ These
smack of the ‘incomprehensible.’ {66}
46 Postscript, p. 504.
47 Compare Investigations, sec. 252.
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Kierkegaard clearly does not disdain rational thought. But
another part of his analysis probes the limits of this ‘everyday
rationality’ which the believer uses to distinguish nonsense
from the incomprehensible. The problem is set up in terms
borrowed from Lessing, who noted that ‘accidental historical
truths can never serve as proofs for eternal truths of the reason;
and that the transition by which it is proposed to base an eternal
truth upon historical testimony is a leap.’48 Kierkegaard
provides conceptual support for this claim by an examination of
the categories ‘possibility,’ ‘actuality,’ and ‘necessity.’ When
historical events ‘come into existence,’ they go from the
category of possibility to that of actuality. But necessity is a
separate category – necessary things are eternal existents. The
upshot of this discussion is that historical events are merely
immutable; they have certainly happened but not happened
certainly. In order to base reasoned understandings on them, it
is necessary to appropriate them. He certainly does not wish to
deny that we do appropriate them, but he does wish to point
out that historical knowledge is not ‘well-founded’ in a strictly
logical sense of the term. What is ‘objectively uncertain’ is ‘for
faith most certain.’ The subjective thinker sees it as certain. In
Wittgenstein’s terms, ‘this certainty is [his] own.’49
48 Postscript, p. 86.
49 Here Wittgenstein’s emphasis is in the opposite direction, although
he notes the same phenomena as does Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein
stresses that ‘well-foundedness’ is not an everyday criterion; thus
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There is, however, a sense in which the Postscript has to do
with Hegelianism. This sense relates to the idea of the ‘stages’
as a system. Kierkegaard’s disdain for ‘system’ of the Hegelian
type is proverbial; it would be astonishing if the stages he
discusses were to form such a system.
It would be much easier to think of them under the category of
heuristic (or ‘maieutic’) devices. What better way to ‘find the
reader where he is’ than by showing him how he looks in a
mirror! Then it will be possible to show the consequences of the
everyday life is secure. Kierkegaard’s emphasis on this point is
designed to gain a foothold whereby a transition away from
everyday life might be suggested (as well as to deny ‘scientific’
analysis its counterclaims).
There is also some question as to the compatibility of
Kierkegaard’s term and category ‘appropriation-process’ with
Wittgenstein’s understanding of the nature of an ability (which is
mostly latent). Some part of the resolution of this problem will be
undertaken in the next chapter.
Kierkegaard’s analysis here appears to depend on a metaphysics
which Wittgenstein would repudiate. His remarks in Zettel, sec. 59ff.
point out the dangers in ‘this comparison: a man makes his
appearance – an event makes its appearance. As if an event now
stood in readiness before the door of reality and were then to make
its appearance in reality – like coming into a room.’ Further reflection
on this difference of opinion might turn on the following points: 1)
the point of Kierkegaard’s discussion is not a metaphysical one; 2)
the philosophical sections of the Postscript go beyond what ‘can be
said’ existentially about reality; 3) there is a genuine difference here.
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reader’s choices in accelerated fashion – and perhaps even to
make him change his mind about those choices.
If the only existence-categories to be used are the three stages
from the Stages, this heuristic scheme might not be effective for
everyone. It just seems wrong to suggest that there are in the
world only aesthetes, ethicists, and religious persons.
Furthermore, for the project to be effective, the subjects to be
‘helped’ must understand themselves in the way suggested. In
that case, at least one more category must be proposed. In
Kierkegaard’s day of popular Hegelianism (and how much
more in the era of ‘secular {67} humanism’) there were many who
saw themselves under another description: as men of reason,
thinkers, even philosophers. What better way to communicate
the idea of ‘becoming a Christian’ to these persons, than by
presenting an argument which begins in reason – yet eventually
shows reason’s limits from inside. 50 In that case the Postscript
would not be a parody of Hegel, but a serious piece of
philosophy – albeit with an ulterior, non-philosophical
motive. 51 Kierkegaard might also be forgiven in that case for
using terms (such as ‘paradox’) which cast the problem in
philosophical language. His failure to use them elsewhere need
50 This attempt to guide oneself absolutely by a worldly scheme might
be subsumed under the category ‘ethical’ – but it would still remain
to show the philosophers that they ought to understand themselves
under this category.
51 Compare Wittgenstein’s statements on the point of the Tractatus.
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not indicate a repudiation – merely the playing of a different
language-game.52
This understanding of the ‘stages’ parallels the suggestion
made above concerning Wittgenstein’s ‘forms of life.’ In fact,
Kierkegaard’s fully evolved maieutic project makes the
application of Wittgenstein’s ideas clear in a way which
philosophical discussion cannot.
It might be pointed out (for example, by Alasdair MacIntyre)
that for all Kierkegaard’s insistence on the ultimate necessity for
the Christian faith, nevertheless he shows no ‘understanding’ of
it. In fact, he does not show even a grasp of it, at least in terms
which those not possessed of the Christian perspective can
understand. MacIntyre could say that this lack of objective
rational criteria leaves Kierkegaard without a foothold from
which to differentiate the form of life he recommends, let alone
any arguments for adopting it. How can it be that he really has
something to recommend?53
An answer to this question might be formulated along the
lines of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following and the
52 Kierkegaard was well aware of the possibility that the meaning of
words can be dependent on the game in which they are used. See
chapters 4 and 5 for a fuller exploration of this awareness.
53 MacIntyre’s analysis of Kierkegaard’s ‘ethical’ in (1981) After Virtue,
Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, pp. 38-43, does in fact take
this line. MacIntyre accuses Kierkegaard of hollow irrationality and
pure relativism. (It is interesting to notice that MacIntyre’s critiques
of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are very similar.)
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
continuation of series. Part of the response rests on
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the essential importance of
situation; this has ramifications distinctly similar to those of
Wittgenstein’s category of deed. Kierkegaard agrees that ‘how a
saying [ein Wort] is understood is not told by words alone.’54 He
notes that
all speaking with the mouth is a kind of ventriloquism, an
indeterminate something. The deception is that there is, after
all, a definite visible figure who uses his mouth. But take care.
Language is an abstraction.
In order for speaking actually to become human speech in a
deeper sense, or in a spiritual sense, something else is
required {68} with respect to being the one who speaks, two
points must be determined: the one is the speech, the words
spoken, the other is the situation.
The situation determines decisively whether or not the
speaker is in character with what he says, or the situation
54 Zettel, sec. 144. Wittgenstein appends the single word ‘Theology’ to
this entry.
The published translation, ‘How words are understood is not told
by words alone,’ is a fine example of the applicability of this
comment to translation. The doubling of Wort has been maintained,
but the important difference in the sense is lost.
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determines whether or not the words are spoken at random, a
talking which is unattached. 55
Thus ‘Christendom’ is pictured as a kind of ventriloquists’
convention, in which unappropriated statements of a religious
kind are in the air. In this context, Christians can be known by
the earnestness of their expression. Words said on Sunday must
show their application during the week. The ‘spy’ of the
Postscript seeks out examples of the ironical lack of such
application in Christendom.
Kierkegaard accents this visible side of Christianity at many
points in his acknowledged works. The idea central to the
expression of earnestness is imitation of Christ. ‘Imitation must
be introduced, to exert pressure in the direction of humility. It is
to be done quite simply in this way: Everyone must be
measured by the Pattern, the ideal.’56 The danger – the actual
event in Christendom – is that imitation is left to the
‘extraordinary’ person (for example, the medieval monastic),
and is no longer required of all followers. 57 But it is only this
55 Søren Kierkegaard (1967-78) Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7
vols, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, sec. 4056 (XI2 A 106).
56 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Judge for Yourselves!, trans. Walter Lowrie,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 207.
57 Journals and Papers, sec. 1914 (X4 A 556); Judge for Yourselves!, p. 207.
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imitation that can distinguish Christianity from verbally similar
mythology or poetry. 58
It is significant that in speaking of Abraham and Job,
Kierkegaard does not stress their words. Instead, he discusses
and describes their actions. It is true that in the case of Job, he
begins with a saying: ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ ‘But the expression
itself is not the guidance, and Job’s significance does not lie in
the fact that he said it, but in the fact that he acted in accordance
with it.’59 What is important about this saying is not its intrinsic
richness as a doctrine – if it were, then the words might be
remembered, but Job would be long forgotten – but instead
Job’s life as ‘pattern for succeeding generations.’
The importance of conforming actions to words is stressed in a
variety of other edifying discourses. The most explicit of these
are based on a passage from the Epistle of James: ‘But be doers
of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.’60
Kierkegaard {69} remarks that ‘every verbal expression is very
imperfect, compared with the precision of performance.’61 The
meaning of the Word is shown in the use to which it is put.
58 Journals and Papers, sec. 1915 (X4 A 626).
59 Søren Kierkegaard (1943) Edifying Discourses, 4 vols, trans. David F.
Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Publishing House, 2:7.
60 James 1:22 (Revised Standard Version).
61 Edifying Discourses, 2:84-85.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
It might seem sufficient merely to name another of
Kierkegaard’s discourses, Works of Love. The title already
suggests an external qualification of Christianity. This might
appear to be at odds with Kierkegaard’s demand for
inwardness. But he rejects the idea that inwardness can
properly be hidden.62 Works of Love explores the intricate
dialectic between the inward and the outward qualifications of
love’s work. The tension inherent in this dialectic is made plain
in the first section, on ‘love’s hidden life and its recognizability
by its fruits.’
Kierkegaard begins by reaffirming the essentially hidden
nature of the root of love. God’s love is the mysterious spring of
human love. 63 Kierkegaard decries the ‘conceited shrewdness’
of positivism, which denies the unseen, and only cheats itself of
the richness of life.64 In any case, a little patience will reveal an
outward expression. The hidden root is to be known by its
fruits. There is something to be seen!
But Kierkegaard protests against the ‘miserable mistrust’
which insists on seeing others’ fruits. The saying that love is to
62 Kierkegaard’s own ‘maieutic’ project has required that his
inwardness – his ultimate intent – be hidden, but this is not the
‘hidden inwardness’ which he criticizes. His hiding was for a
particular Christian purpose, and not for the sake of convenience.
See Journals and Papers, sec. 2125 (X3 A 334).
63 Søren Kierkegaard (1962) Works of Love, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong, New York: Harper Torchbooks, pp. 26-7.
64 Works of Love, p. 23.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
be ‘recognizable’ is not a claim about verification, but an
exhortation to be fruitful. It is a grammatical rather than a
factual remark. Love’s grammar differs from that of positivism;
it is charitable (a work of love) to believe the best about others
without demanding evidence.65 ‘Love’s recognizability’ does
not imply looking at others to judge their fruits, but looking to
oneself in concern over one’s own fruits. To undergo this
change in outlook would be a true fruit of love.
The relation between words and deeds is again addressed in
the section on love as ‘the fulfilling of the law.’ Kierkegaard
takes up a Gospel parable on the subject of promising. One
brother says ‘I go, sir,’ but does not; the other says ‘I will not,’
but finally goes. The danger lies in assuming that a
performative utterance is the whole performance; promising is
after all a mere engagement. The fulfillment of this word in
deeds is more important. Love is known by the deeds it
engenders.66
Kierkegaard finds a rigorous demand for action even in the
apparently mild statement, ‘Be it done for you as you have
believed.’ On the face of it, this saying does not impose any {70}
external standard of judgement on the individual – let alone a
standard of action. But it is the test of the action. Certainly, it
65 Works of Love, p. 33.
66 Works of Love, pp. 100-3. The parable is found in Matthew 21:28-31.
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cannot serve as a standard for the judgement of others. It is
one’s own actions that must conform to this demand.67
All of this could be considered as an extended grammatical
reflection on the status of Christendom and Christianity.
Everyone knows the words. But how are they to be understood?
Only one’s actions can show how they have in fact been
understood. The meaning of the word is shown by its usage, the
inward work of love by its fruits. 68
This teleological qualification of Kierkegaard’s understanding
of Christianity – a demand for outwardness – is powerful
ammunition against the charge of subjectivism. 69
Another part of the answer to MacIntyre’s question involves a
reminder about Kierkegaard’s purpose. It must be pointed out
once again that Kierkegaard’s concern is the problem of
‘becoming a Christian.’ His specific method is to present the
problem of becoming a Christian in such a way that his
67 Works of Love, pp. 346-50.
68 For an extended explication of this idea as it applies to Kierkegaard’s
work in general, see O. K. Bouwsma (1984) ‘Notes on Kierkegaard’s
“The Monstrous Illusion”,’ in Without Proof or Evidence, ed. J. L. Craft
and Ronald E. Hustwit, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press,
pp. 73-86.
69 The recognition of a Christian is made more problematic by the fact
that it is not the Christian’s purpose to be recognized as such. The
exemplary ‘Knight of Faith’ in Fear and Trembling does not deal
externally in specifically Christian words. The fulfilling of the law is
not in terms of words, but of deeds informed by the Word.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
audience sees the necessity for this problem to be solved. It is
not up to him to give a complete and anthropologically sound
description of the Christian life.
But indeed there is no reason why he should be able to give
such a description to his intended audience. He is trying to lead
them to the point where they are living this description for
themselves. He is not giving objective content, but at most
pointing out the way to continue in a certain game. As
Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following suggest, this teaching
is an uncertain business. What it is to become a Christian – the
direction to be followed – may be pointed out. What it is to
become a Christian, the experience of following that path, is
forever hidden from those who have not themselves followed it.
Johannes de Silentio, the author of Fear and Trembling, reports:
‘Abraham I cannot understand, in a certain sense I can learn
nothing from him except to be amazed.’70 Yet he has shown the
possibilities inherent in Abraham’s situation and decision as
well as they can be rationally presented.
*
Kierkegaard presents a theoretical justification for his method in
the Postscript: ‘Dialectics itself does not see the absolute, but it
leads, as it were, the individual up to it, and says: “Here it must
be, that I guarantee; when you worship here you worship
70 Søren Kierkegaard (1983) Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 37.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
God.”’71 {71} The beginning of a response to this final send-off is:
‘Now I can go on.’ Dialectical explanations come to an end
sometime: there can only be the exasperated repetition of the
prolegomena. What is particularly astonishing about
Kierkegaard – and about Wittgenstein and other thinkers who
have been able themselves to bridge the gap between language-
games of especially wide separation – is the incredible breadth
and depth of attempts they make to lead others to the point of
grasping the essential. 72 But, in a simile reminiscent of that
other Johannes Climacus, Wittgenstein says:
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way:
Anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as
nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb up
beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder
after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see
the world aright. 73
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein have different ends in view.
Wittgenstein is concerned to show the way out of theoretical
muddles related to the structure of the way we see the world.
71 Postscript, pp. 438-9.
72 An obvious example is the vast number of volumes expended by
religious mystics in the attempt to speak the ineffable and to aid
others in experiencing it.
73 Tractatus, sec. 6.54.
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
Kierkegaard is concerned to show the way between two ways
of viewing the world. A possibility largely latent in
Wittgenstein’s work, that there may be many prima facie self-
consistent ways of seeing the world, is taken for granted as the
basis of Kierkegaard’s whole project.
One aspect which ties the applications of their methods
together is a very high regard for the individual in his
subjectivity. Problems which appear insoluble when they are set
up as metaphysical situations in need of theory-laden
‘interpretation’ are handled as matters of routine by the existing
individual. Only with an appreciation for this occurrence can
either author’s points be grasped.
The importance of the individual is likely to be forgotten in
Wittgenstein’s stress on the social categories of deed, language,
and form of life. There is an equal danger that external aspects
may be forgotten in Kierkegaard’s stress on the individual’s
subjectivity. But both authors would agree that both aspects are
necessary – for there to be appropriation, someone must
appropriate something.
The maieutic method which both authors use and approve
clearly demonstrates this connection of individual and social.
To {72} ask an individual to see things differently presupposes
both the existence of communities of thought and the
individual’s freedom to move between them. If anything in
their work can be ‘applied’ in an extension of this work, such a
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PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
method must surely be part of that extension. It is fitting that a
tool, rather than a theory, is to be applied.
In Kierkegaard’s writings the application of the regard for the
individual has a clearer directionality. Everything the reader is
invited to notice is pointed in one direction – toward
Christianity.
Wittgenstein also has something to say about the field of
religion, however. The next chapter will explore how
Wittgenstein’s and Kierkegaard’s way of working can
contribute to the study and ‘understanding’ of (and not merely
conversion to) religion. In the course of this discussion the
questions of ‘fideism’ and ‘relativism’ will be addressed more
explicitly.
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{73}
Chapter Four
Implications For Religion
No investigation of the positions of Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein on the subject of religion can escape their
fundamental asymmetry on one point: Kierkegaard was ‘a
religious writer,’ and Wittgenstein was not. But this bald
assertion about the two authors’ ultimate concerns is likely to
come in for important qualifications when the authorships are
examined in detail.
The most obvious evidence in this case is the amount of
written material devoted to the subject. On this basis the first
suggestion holds true. The vast majority of Kierkegaard’s work
has something to do with religion, although he did publish
pseudonymously some works that could be taken for novels
and even literary criticism.
Wittgenstein, on the other hand, made public very little
material which has a prima facie connection with religious
issues. He gave one short paper, the ‘Lecture on Ethics.’ He also
spoke about religious belief in a course given around the year
1938; student notes from these sessions have been published. In
the manuscripts which he himself published or edited for
publication, there are only a few references to religion. These
include the remarks on the ‘ethical’ and ‘mystical’ at the end of
the Tractatus, and scattered comments on ‘theology as grammar’
in the Investigations, Zettel, and other later works. Some notes
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
culled from manuscripts on other topics have been
posthumously collected as Culture and Value; this is a small
volume, and by no means all of it is concerned with religion. 1
Kierkegaard’s ideas about authorship and the author’s ‘task’
are germane at this point. His report on his ‘point of view’ gives
a synoptic understanding of his works, including the ones
which are not overtly religious in tone. As evidence for the
appropriateness of {74} this understanding he proposes his
perception of his own religious situation. Thus he is able to
claim that he did not develop into a religious writer; he was
always one, and the apparently non-religious works will be
understood as religious when they are seen in context.
Wittgenstein also understood there to be a connection between
his life and his works. This understanding has been sketched
out in chapter 1. It is apparent from his biography that he had a
deep personal interest in religion. Thus, in trying to decide how
to apply Wittgenstein’s ideas to religion, it is necessary to take
into account his overall attitude toward religious phenomena; a
mere counting of occasions on which they are mentioned is not
enough.
Wittgenstein’s self-understanding suggests that his few
remarks about religion deserve to be taken seriously. But there
are so few of them that not much can be made of them alone.
1 All of the references to religion are consistent in one respect: there is
no indication of disdain for, or positivistic dismissal of religion. This
fact comes as a surprise to many.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
What is more interesting is that these remarks clearly follow
from the way of thinking evident in his philosophical work in
general. They suggest a line along which a religious
investigation might be continued.
*
Kierkegaard sets forward the idea that what is sought can find
its expression in how it is sought. He limits the use of this idea to
one specific occasion: the subjectivity of faith. Near the end of
the Postscript, he remarks that the ‘how of the Christian’ can only
correspond with the absolute paradox. 2 Thus maximal
subjectivity becomes objectively unique.3 In the pseudonymous
literature, Kierkegaard makes considerable play from the
compatibility of his subjective position (partially understood)
with various basic concerns. But The Point of View suggests a
particular understanding of how he has worked. Only in the
light of this understanding can the overall ‘what’ – the point of
his authorship – become clear. When the unity of his work is
understood, then his aesthetic and philosophical writings can
show their fullest implications.
2 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans.
David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, p. 540.
3 Søren Kierkegaard (1967-78) Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7
vols, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, sec. 4550 (X2 A 299).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
One of Wittgenstein’s sayings suggests a more general use of
this method. In discussing the nature of mathematical proof, he
remarks: ‘Tell me how you seek and I will tell you what you are
seeking.’4 What makes the application of this suggestion more
difficult in this particular case is the complex nature of
Wittgenstein’s methods. Discovering just how he is working is
itself a major task, some part of which has been attempted in
earlier chapters. 5 {75}
To obtain an ‘objective’ idea of Wittgenstein’s position on
religion, one would need to bear in mind his methodology and
its application in general, as well as his personal interest in
religion. One aspect of his methodology which will bear special
watching is the appeal to the individual. Any points of unity
between the earlier and later works would also be a great help.
Wittgenstein’s attitude toward religion (or the type of
problems for which religion is commonly a solution) is most
plainly illustrated in his understanding of the Tractatus. That
understanding has its clearest expression in Wittgenstein’s
letter to Ficker.6 There he claims that ‘the sense of the book is an
ethical one,’ and what is important is what is not written.
4 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974) Philosophical Grammar, trans. Anthony
Kenny, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 370.
5 Previous considerations of Wittgenstein and religion have of course
also entailed particular understandings of his methodology. A low
estimation of the relevance of his work for religion would follow
quite naturally from some of these understandings.
6 See chapter 2.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
Furthermore (according to the preface of the book itself) the
value of the work is partly that it shows how little is achieved
when the problems of philosophy are definitively solved. 7
What remains to be achieved beyond the solution of specific
problems of philosophy is the attribution of a sense to the
world. This might be a response to the experience of
‘wondering at the existence of the world’; it might take the form
of ‘feeling absolutely safe.’8
The need to impose some order on the world is also a driving
force in Kierkegaard’s existential dialectic. One way in which
this need is expressed is as ‘anxiety.’ Such anxiety is not an
‘imperfection,’ but rather a necessary first step. The feeling of
heterogeneity is a function of the human freedom which makes
Christian progress toward perfection possible.9 Kierkegaard’s
concern with the ‘maieutic’ and the category ‘becoming’ is
partly an attempt to cause anxiety, or recognition of anxiety, in
his readers. This reflects an interesting difference between his
task and Wittgenstein’s. For Wittgenstein, anxiety is already
present in philosophy; the correct vision may alleviate it. (It is
only in the task of redefining philosophy – Wittgenstein’s more-
7 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F.
Pears and B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, pp. 3,
5.
8 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1965) ‘Wittgenstein’s lecture on
ethics,’ Philosophical Review 74:8.
9 Journals and Papers, sec. 96 (III A 235), sec. 97 (V B 53:23).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
or-less permanent methodological contribution – that he must
first shake his readers loose from their pre-existing concepts.)
But for Kierkegaard it is first necessary to create anxiety in
order fruitfully to suggest the direction of Christianity.
Wittgenstein’s personal feelings of inadequacy could easily be
understood as an example of the kind of anxiety suggested
above. But while he discusses what resolutions of philosophical
anxiety would be like, it is not immediately clear what would
count as a resolution of his more personal, more ethical anxiety.
{76}
A distinguishing feature of all the suggestions for easing
anxiety made above is that they do not have to do with any
‘propositions’ or descriptions of how things are in the world.
‘Wondering at the existence of the world’ is not like
astonishment at the size of that Great Dane. The dog’s size
might be explained by facts concerning its breeding and diet.
Such factual explanations are not available concerning the
‘riddle of life.’ Thus skepticism is as much a category-mistake as
metaphysics – it tries to raise factual doubts where conceptual
problems are encountered. 10 Wittgenstein goes so far as to say
that he would reject any attempt to explain religion as factually
significant just because of the dimension in which the
10 Tractatus, sec. 6.51; compare Ludwig Wittgenstein (1970) Zettel,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, sec. 458.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
explanation is attempted.11 The ‘riddle of life’ is an existential
problem; facts are not transparently at issue.
Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety as a function of infinite
possibilities (and the subject’s realization that the possibilities
are indeed infinite) trades on a similar understanding. Faith’s
role in bringing a practical halt to the possibilities recalls the
more secular role of belief in assenting to historical facts. 12
Anxiety takes a piecemeal approach to the factual possibilities,
just as the skeptical attitude toward historical belief points out
the various points where a ‘proof’ could theoretically be
demanded. When anxiety or doubt is annulled, it is not merely
a question of asserting one particular fact, but instead depends
on a more profound change of the individual’s attitude toward
possibility. In Kierkegaard’s explication, Abraham’s actions – in
a situation which could never be factually reconciled – are
paradigmatic of the faithful attitude.
Wittgenstein’s call for an end to explanations mirrors
Kierkegaard’s analysis of the historical. And Wittgenstein too
sees a relation between ‘historical’ or everyday belief and the
religious. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein calls both logic and
11 ‘Lecture on ethics,’ p. 11.
12 Søren Kierkegaard (1980) The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar
Thomte and Albert B. Anderson, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, pp. 155-62. Compare Søren Kierkegaard (1985) Philosophical
Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, p. 83.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
ethics ‘transcendental.’ That is, neither deals with facts on the
propositional level. But he suffers from the straitjacket of the
attempt to explain language by the picture theory, with its
attendant metaphysics. Since all language is propositional, logic
(which underlies language, tying it to what is the case) and
ethics (which lies beyond language and alterations in what is
the case) are permanently separated. Language is ‘a cage’ which
resists attempts to talk significantly about things outside the
factual realm. Still, the thrust of this tendency ‘points to
something.’13
Wittgenstein’s analysis of this separation in the earlier works
{77} turns on a particular understanding of the possibilities of
language. This understanding is mirrored in the structure of the
Tractatus. Its numbered propositional form serves as a ladder.
Yet the purpose of this ladder is not ascent. Rather, it is to be
‘transcended.’
The Tractatus conception of the ‘mystical’ is connected with
Wittgenstein’s understanding of the self as transcendent. Only
something outside the world can have a full view of it. The self
marks the limit of the world. The world is mirrored in language.
The self’s transcendence of language implies a transcendence of
the world, and the possibility of new understanding not bound
by language.
13 Friedrich Waismann (1965) ‘Notes on talks with Wittgenstein,’ trans.
M. Black, Philosophical Review 74:13.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
A passage from the Investigations suggests a possible re-
evaluation of this ‘transcendence’ of language.
To say ‘this combination of words makes no sense’ excludes it
from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain
of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for
various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or
a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone
from getting in or out; but it may also be part of a game and
the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or it
may shew where the property of one man ends and that of
another begins; and so on. So if I draw a boundary that is not
yet to say what I am drawing it for. 14
At the time of the ‘Lecture on Ethics’ Wittgenstein did not
remark this feature of boundaries. There he speaks of the border
as having only one side. He explains the function of religious
language as akin to that of simile. But he claims that the ‘ethical’
use of language is informed by a ‘characteristic misuse.’ 15
A simile is an explanation of one structure by means of
another. That other thing ought in principle to be describable in
its own terms. For example, one might describe a tapestry as a
rug hung like a picture. This description would make clear both
14 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., sec.
499.
15 ‘Lecture on ethics,’ p. 9.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
the appearance and the construction of the tapestry. But it
would also be possible to give a description in terms of the
mechanics of design and weaving. This kind of description
would be ‘more fully analyzed.’
In the case of religion and ethics, however, the object of the
simile is not describable otherwise than by the simile. Nor is
this a contingent fact which is subject to remedy by further
scientific {78} investigation; rather the ‘simile’ is in this case an
attempt to use language to express something beyond the
linguistically definable world. Insofar as ethics and religion are
attempts to get beyond language, they are ‘hopeless’: they will
never be scientific.
It would be possible to understand Kierkegaard’s ‘leap’ to a
‘perspective of faith’ in these categories as well. Abraham was
involved in a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical.’ If this were
the complete story, the basis of the charge of ‘fideism’ would be
reasonably clear. If religion operates beyond the limits of the
definable world (in a ‘suspension of the logical’), then it is
necessarily inaccessible to reason. But the idea of multiple
‘stages’ suggests that a more complex analysis is required.
Wittgenstein’s later thought is at odds with the metaphor of
language as a cage. In fact, an important change in
Wittgenstein’s thinking seems to have occurred between
December 1929 and December 1930. Two conversations held in
those months are recorded. In the earlier conversation (and in
the ‘Lecture on Ethics’ of about the same date), he expands on
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
the idea of the cage, comparing it with Kierkegaard’s category
of paradox. But in the later conversation he rejects the whole
conception. Instead he remarks that ‘the essence of religion can
have nothing to do with whether speech occurs – or rather: if
speech does occur, this itself is a component of religious
behavior and not a theory.’16 If language is not essential to a
‘definition’ of religion, then the possibility of religion could
hardly be bounded by the inability to formulate a theory.
Speech which is a component of religion suggests the idea of the
primacy of activity explicated in the previous chapter. The roots
of the religious game might indeed be inexpressible in scientific
terms, just as the roots of science are, without religious life
being inconsistent or ineffable.
It is interesting to note that the idea of ‘running up against the
limits of language’ reappears in the Investigations, albeit in a
different sense. Philosophy is said to discover the ‘bumps’
which the understanding has got by running up against the
limits of language. But here what the understanding was
searching for was a (propositional) meta- understanding or
theory, and not a transcendental understanding in the ethical
sense.17 Insofar as reason encounters barriers to its theorizing,
the category of paradox is intact, at least in one sense.
In fact this understanding of the problems of reason is {79}
reminiscent in form and implications of the collision between
16 Waismann, ‘Notes on talks,’ p. 16.
17 Investigations, sec. 119.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
reason and the ‘thing that thought cannot think’ which
Kierkegaard mentions in the Fragments. This is also a case of the
propositional understanding attempting to assimilate the
inassimilable.
If the Tractatus were recast in terms of the later categories, then
the idea that logic and ethics are ‘transcendental’ might be
translated into the assertion that they are grammatical fields.
They ‘tell what kind of object anything is.’18 These grammars
are not explicitly laid out a priori, but they can be gathered from
the ordinary uses of language.
One part of Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s task is the
attempt to lay out some of what they have gathered about the
grammar of their fields of interest. Some of these presentations
relate to the place of the religious.
Various suggestions from the Investigations show how
‘grammar’ might take over the position filled by ‘logic’ in the
Tractatus. ‘Grammar tells what kind of object anything is’;
‘Essence is expressed by grammar.’19 (To the first of these
remarks Wittgenstein appends the parenthetical remark
‘Theology as grammar.’) Whereas in the Tractatus there is only
one grammar and attempts to get beyond it can only end in
hopeless running against a wall, in the context of the later
works there are multiple available grammars. Wittgenstein
even provides an example of a piece of theological grammar:
18 Investigations, sec. 373.
19 Investigations, sec. 373, sec. 371.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
‘You can’t hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him
only if you are being addressed.’20 Here the ordinary category
‘speech’ is modified in the grammar of religion. Whereas
anyone within earshot can hear an ordinary speech, God’s
speeches are quite different. This statement shows part of the
framework of a particular kind of religious belief. It might be a
reminder, or an attempt to redefine the concepts involved. One
can even imagine it being used as a purely factual statement (in
a catechetical situation, for instance). At any rate it has a
constructive grammatical connotation.
Wittgenstein’s statements on the mystical in the Tractatus and
the ‘Lecture on Ethics’ can also be construed as ‘grammatical.’21
He is talking of mystical experience, but at the same time
bounding the use of the word. No factual content can be
ascribed to a ‘mystical’ experience. The mystical is not within
the world nor is its expression within language; instead it
shows itself in the existence of the world and the existence of
language. 22 This showing can only be felt.23 {80}
Kierkegaard is performing a grammatical task in his ‘Book on
Adler.’ One of the constant themes of this work is that Adler is
confused about the sources of his understanding. First he says
20 Zettel, sec. 717.
21 Certainly the ‘Lecture on ethics’ is performing a grammatical
redefinition of the concept ‘ethics’!
22 Tractatus, sec. 6.44; ‘Lecture on ethics,’ p. 11.
23 Tractatus, sec. 6.45.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
that he has received a cleansing revelation, and consequently
has burned all of his Hegelian treatises. As Kierkegaard
remarks, this implies that he is ‘an essential author,’ one whose
works (like Kierkegaard’s) are grounded in his existence. 24 But
then he publishes some sermons from before the time of the
revelation. Some of these are said to be partially under the
influence of the Spirit. Later still, under the cross-examination
of the Church, he allows less and less scope to revelation, and
more to his own working-out. Now he has descended in
Kierkegaard’s view to the level of the ‘premise-author,’ who
may have a different premise for each book.25
What Kierkegaard finds particularly ridiculous about Adler
(and contrary to the spirit of Christianity, to say the least) 26 is
that he is unclear about the distinction between genius and
special revelation. He could have maintained a modicum of
authority and dignity if he had stuck to the idea of revelation. 27
In effect Kierkegaard accuses Adler of making a category
mistake – assuming that genius and revelation have enough in
common to be combined (or even mistaken for each other). The
clouds of Adler’s confusion on this point are condensed into a
24 Søren Kierkegaard (1955) On Authority and Revelation: The Book on
Adler, trans. Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, p. 7.
25 Authority and Revelation, p. 6.
26 As one ‘without authority,’ Kierkegaard specifically refuses to make
accusations of heresy.
27 Authority and Revelation, p. 13.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
drop of grammar – which is explicated in Kierkegaard’s
definition of authority as a qualitative difference, quite
independent of the content of a message.
Furthermore there is an ethical component to the definition of
the essential author. If nothing else, revelation confers an ethical
requirement. In confusing revelation and genius, Adler fails in
this ethical responsibility. Once authority is claimed, one cannot
escape it; this is again a grammatical point.
Kierkegaard’s reminder is both theoretical and practical. It
distances Kierkegaard from Adler (whose projects might at first
glance look similar). Kierkegaard is undoubtedly an essential
author, though not one with authority. But he does not shirk the
ethical dimension of his task.
Another grammatical idea in the Tractatus which relates to the
later philosophy is that ethics and aesthetics are the same. 28 (In
the ‘Lecture on Ethics’ Wittgenstein repeats this assertion.) One
similarity is that both are kinds of judgment which do not
modify anything at the level of fact or proposition, but only
something {81} ‘higher’ or out of the realm of propositions, that is,
something ‘transcendental.’ But it is difficult to understand
Wittgenstein’s assertion that they are not merely similar, but
actually the same.
A possible clue to an understanding is the obvious
resemblance between this ‘aesthetic’ conception of ethics and
the later material on ‘seeing.’ When the duck-rabbit is seen
28 Tractatus, sec. 6.421.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
alternately under each of its aspects, nothing propositional has
changed. The diagram serves as a proposition; the
interpretation is external to it.
In the same way one object may elicit different aesthetic
judgments. These do not depend on a change in the
propositional description of the object; it is merely evaluated
(seen) in different ways.
To say that ‘ethics and aesthetics are one and the same’
suggests a further extension of this process. The clear pattern of
aesthetics is offered as a paradigm for ethics. Wittgenstein
reminds us that when varying ethical judgments are made,
propositional facts are not usually at the center of the dispute.
The interpretation of these facts, or how they are seen, is crucial.
Wittgenstein makes yet another extension of the concepts
involved here when he makes ‘wonder at the world’ an
expression of ethics. This suggests not merely a series of
disconnected decisions on ethical issues, but a whole way of
living, unified in some sense by a quasi-aesthetic understanding
of the facts.
Wittgenstein’s remarks on color are illuminating here. He
discusses the phenomena of contextuality as they apply to the
painter’s choice of pigment. He remarks on the difficulty in
saying exactly what color-impression certain particular patches
of paintings give – for instance, the iris of an eye.29 As he notes,
29 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1977) Remarks on Colour, trans. Linda L.
McAlister and Margarete Schättle, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, sec. I-58.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
although there is such a thing as gold paint, Rembrandt did not
use it in painting The golden helmet.30
So the understanding of ethics as ‘the same’ as aesthetics is not
idiosyncratic, but a forerunner of Wittgenstein’s later
understanding of the phenomena of contextuality. He is
remarking (proposing?) a grammatical similarity between the
two fields.
This understanding of ethics is echoed by Kierkegaard’s
analysis in Either/Or of the inadequacy in the traditional
‘ethical’ life of Judge William. His duty-based ethics are
doomed to failure because, as an existing individual, he will be
unable to satisfy the absolute standard on a case-by-case basis.
This is made abundantly clear by the sermon included at the
end of the work, which {82} explicates the edification in the idea
that ‘in relation to God we are always in the wrong.’ The ethicist
thinks in terms of individual duties. But the infinite multiplicity
of these duties must overwhelm him in anxiety. The only
possible salvation from this wave of duties is a shift in
perspective. The endless stream of duties can only be faced with
faith’s ‘inner certainty.’31
When the ethical is removed from the propositional realm, the
possible consequences of an ethical decision seem to be
removed from this realm as well. Ethical laws in the traditional
sense clearly presuppose (or at least strongly suggest) rewards
30 Remarks on Colour, sec. III-79.
31 Concept of Anxiety, p. 157.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
and punishments. But if ethics is not within the world, it would
be odd for its consequences to be in the world. If there are to be
consequences of good or bad ethical willing, they will not be
propositionally expressible. 32 (A conceptual problem with a
conceptual solution will surely have conceptual consequences.)
What kind of non-factual effect could ethical willing have?
Wittgenstein speaks of the world ‘waxing and waning as a
whole,’ but another phrase he uses is more accessible. ‘The
world of the happy man is a different one from that of the
unhappy man.’33 This idea connects with the aesthetic view of
ethics (and thus with the later material). The happy man sees
the world under a different aspect from the unhappy man. This
need not suggest any complete doctrinal understanding, merely
that clarity which comes with complete disappearance of the
problems.34 This disappearance is not piecemeal answering, but
vanishing of life’s problems. 35 The answer makes itself manifest
(zeigt sich). This understanding of the world in its totality is
what Wittgenstein calls the ‘mystical.’
This conception of the difference between the happy and the
unhappy man is given substance in Kierkegaard’s description
of the difference between the ‘Knight of Faith’ and the ordinary
person. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard recounts a meeting
32 Tractatus, sec. 6.422.
33 Tractatus, sec. 6.43.
34 Investigations, sec. 133.
35 Tractatus, sec. 6.521.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
with the perfect Knight of Faith. ‘Good lord, is this the man, is
this really the one – he looks just like a tax-collector!’ 36 There is
no temporal indication that this might be a particularly
religious person, no propositional difference. But the Knight of
Faith has a personal confidence. He is ready to partake of the
world at its fullest – a fine meal, or even a capitalistic scheme –
but if these possibilities should fall through, it will be quite the
same to him. His is the world of the happy man, and whatever
the accidental facts of his life he remains a happy man. He
views the world from a ‘perspective of faith.’ {83}
The idea of possibilities is further articulated in Kierkegaard’s
remarks on Abraham. Abraham had neither surrendered Isaac
nor willfully retained him. His faith sustained an ‘absurd’
certainty that all would be well even though Isaac had been
required of him.37 This unrestrictive attitude toward what
might seem to be mutually exclusive possibilities might well be
cited as an example of the ‘waxing as a whole’ of the world of
the happy man.
It is essential to notice that the difference in these happy men
is not a purely inward qualification. It is not expressed
propositionally; one may still look like a tax-collector. But there
are consequences for the individual’s relations with the world.
36 Søren Kierkegaard (1983) Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 38-
39.
37 Fear and Trembling, p. 36.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
The perspective of faith is a locus of action and not merely of
vision.
The idea of a shift in perspective is clearly evident in the
Tractatus material about ‘the vanishing of the problem’ and
‘seeing the world aright.’38 A new understanding, compatible
with the idea of ‘language-games,’ is ushered in by the 1930
assertion that ‘language is not a cage.’ The possible uses of
language are extended substantially. Wittgenstein also
continues to reject the idea of a meta-system which can account
for these shifts in perspective. But consistent language-use with
its own rules is allowed for on both sides of the gap.
Once again this partial understanding could be seen as
complete. But once again the problem of fideism arises, joined
this time by the problem of relativism. If it is only a question of
various self-contained ‘games,’ then again faith must shun
reason. What remains to be shown is that the ‘games’ are open
to interaction.
*
One of the secular phenomena which Wittgenstein consistently
uses to show the presence of various forms of life even within
the standard western society is the coronation. Such a ceremony
does not have a purpose in the sense of financial transactions or
scientific experiments. Nevertheless it has its own rules and its
38 Tractatus, sec. 6.521, sec. 6.54.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
own importance within the everyday world. It is not ‘wrong.’ 39
This might be a simile for religious actions.
Confusion may arise because the forms of religious language –
the surface grammar – may seem to be like that of some other
kind of language. (A coronation is built around the everyday
action of putting on a hat. Many neighbors of the early
Christians had prima facie adequate reasons to suppose they
practiced cannibalism.) But the deeper grammar of religion has
a different slant. For instance, Christianity {84}
offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But
not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a
historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin,
which you can do only as the result of a life. Here you have a
narrative, don’t take the same attitude to it as you do to other
historical narratives! Make a quite different place in your life for
it.40
Wittgenstein suggests that the proper attitude to take is ‘the
attitude that takes a particular matter seriously, but then at a
particular point doesn’t take it seriously after all, and declares
that something else is even more serious.’ 41 It is hardly
surprising that one might be confused about such a demand.
39 Investigations, p. 227e. See also sec. 584 (and various other references).
40 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980) Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch, Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, p. 32e (1937).
41 Remarks on Colour, sec. III-317.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
Kierkegaard’s examination of the historical situation of
Christian claims is addressed to this confusion. His
understanding turns on the idea that the importance of
Christian historical claims is quite different from that of
ordinary historical claims. It has the ordinary significance and a
further dimension. Ordinary historical belief (suspension of
skepticism) is required in the case of belief in the historical
existence of the man Jesus of Nazareth. (Kierkegaard’s
insistence on this point is good evidence that he is not a fideist.)
But the importance of His existence is not merely that of
historical research. Rather, the importance lies in the claim that
He is the ‘eternal essential Truth.’ The evidence on which this is
to be believed is far more scant that the evidence of
Wittgenstein’s interest in religion! The problem is that the claim
does look like an ordinary historical claim, albeit an extravagant
one: ‘The Son of God walked among us as a man.’
Nevertheless there are clues to the proper understanding of
the demand to accept this claim, if one is willing to find them. It
is a question of examining the surroundings of the expression.
‘How words are understood is not told by words alone.’ 42 It is
only in the context of the application that one can understand
the meaning of a word. Wittgenstein provides the clever
example of a logarithmic system of measurement, related to the
English in that ‘1 W’ = 1 foot – but ‘2 W’ = 4 feet, ‘3 W’ = 9 feet,
and so on! Now, do ‘This stick is 1 foot long’ and ‘This stick is 1
42 Zettel, sec. 144.
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W long’ really mean the same?43 Only in the context of the
respective systems does either sign make sense; when we try to
compare them directly we are at a loss.
Wittgenstein declares himself to be at a loss in this sense when
{85} he is confronted with truth-questions about the religious
worldview. He remarks that he understands all of the words
used in describing the Judgement Day. But he is still not in a
position to affirm or contradict assertions concerning its
occurrence. And when he is asked about the relation between
believers and non-believers, he replies: ‘My normal technique of
language leaves me. I don’t know whether to say they
understand one another or not.’44
A first step out of this dilemma is to realize that an attempt to
categorize poetic (or religious) language in factual terms is
doomed to failure. We must not forget that ‘a poem, even
though it is composed in the language of information, is not
used in the language-game of giving information.’45 What is
interesting is that we are tempted to forget this. It might be
easier to come to terms with something factually very different.
No one would be surprised if some extra-terrestrial beings had
a form of life very different from ours. What is astonishing is
43 Zettel, sec. 141.
44 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics,
Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, p. 55.
45 Zettel, sec. 160.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
that human beings may be so different that one may hold a
scientific worldview and another a religious one. ‘Concepts
other than though akin to ours might seem very queer to us;
deviations from the usual in an unusual direction.’46 And indeed
they do seem queer. As Wittgenstein points out, concepts basic
to scientific studies and those used in religion cut across each
other at an angle. Scientific beliefs should be ‘well established.’
But the religious believer treats his beliefs as ‘well-established’
in a way, but again distinctly not so. 47
Wittgenstein’s conception of religion survives the change in
his concept of language and philosophy. The language in which
it is talked of changes, however. In the ‘Lecture on Ethics’ he
discusses the possibility that scientific investigation could
debunk miracles. He suggests that this is impossible. In science
there can only be facts, some of which have not yet been
subsumed under the scientific system. So ‘it is absurd to say
“Science has proved that there are no miracles.” The truth is
that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look
at it as a miracle.’48 Wittgenstein would certainly not have
disagreed with this statement in his later period.
The difference is that in the later philosophy, this other way of
looking is not ‘beyond language’ – although there is something
resistant to language about the transition between ways of
46 Zettel, sec. 373.
47 Lectures and Conversations, p. 54; compare Zettel, sec. 378-9.
48 ‘Lecture on ethics,’ p. 11.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
looking. The experience of the world as a mystical whole is not
good scientific evidence. Miracles are not believed on scientific
evidence. {86} But this belief is not a ‘blunder.’49 It is too far
different from science, while seeming strangely the same.
Religious concepts are ‘deviations from the usual in an unusual
direction.’ They seem akin to ordinary ways of speaking in form;
but they run in different directions. Wittgenstein cites the
difference between ‘possibly there is a plane overhead’ (which
is fairly near to ‘there is a plane’) and ‘possibly there is a Last
Judgement’ (which is very far from the belief-stance ‘there is a
Last Judgement.’)50 The ‘grammar’ of this statement is tied up
with the very different ways of verifying and using it.
*
The separation of religion from the categories of science
suggests that the essence of religion is not some system. In fact,
Wittgenstein himself separates the categories of system and
religion repeatedly in the fragments collected as Culture and
Value. In one set of remarks he talks about doctrine and passion.
I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound
doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life.
(Or the direction of your life.)
49 Lectures and Conversations, p. 62.
50 Lectures and Conversations, p. 53.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
It says that wisdom is all cold; and that you can no more
use it for setting your life to rights than you can forge iron
when it is cold.
The point is that a sound doctrine need not take hold of you;
you can follow it as you would a doctor’s prescription. – But
here you need something to move you and turn you in a new
direction. – (I.e. this is how I understand it.) Once you have
been turned round, you must stay turned round.
Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what
Kierkegaard calls a passion.51
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein both see an interesting
isomorphism or family resemblance between the passion
required for faith and the inspiration required to ‘go on’ even in
science. For at one level, even a historical assertion is not ‘well-
founded.’ And a doctrine cannot be grasped without some
extra-doctrinal understanding and commitment: ‘Now I can go
on!’ One can follow a doctor’s prescription, or a timetable; but
the method of following is not completely specified by the
written matter. In these cases, neither Kierkegaard nor
Wittgenstein would be inclined to claim that the {87} commitment
is a conscious one. Kierkegaard calls faith the ‘organ of the
historical’; it is an inevitable part of that kind of apprehension.
Wittgenstein claims that the very idea of doubting some
foundation ‘facts’ is merely a grammatical misunderstanding.
51 Culture and Value, p. 53e (1946).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
It seems that the case of religion requires another level of
grasping. In that case, going through the motions is not enough;
being able to go on is not sufficient. Many basic forms of life
‘stand fast,’ as Wittgenstein says; but there is something
slippery about religion. Kierkegaard asserts that the ‘stumbling
block’ of religion is quite intentional. He claims that religious
belief must be ‘held fast.’
Part of the added dimension is expressed by Wittgenstein in
his remark that religious instruction ought to include an ‘appeal
to conscience.’ 52 This would surely be a stronger appeal than
the appeal to reasonable consistency of the person giving
instruction in the application of a mathematical formula.
It is hard to make this suggestion square with Wittgenstein’s
own methods of instruction. Rather (since his objectives in
instruction were not wholly religious or ethical), it is hard to see
how under his categories an ‘appeal to conscience’ could have
any tangible form. A certain understanding (view) of the facts
might grab one’s conscience; but understanding in this sense
cannot be imparted. Kierkegaard explicitly suggests that such
an appeal would be doomed to failure for practical reasons,
because it would be viewed as obnoxious by the person
appealed to. Still, the idea of such an appeal ‘points to
something.’ Perhaps it might be just an urging to accept the
picture presented at a level deeper than that of abstract
52 Culture and Value, p. 64e (1947).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
thought.53 This level might be manifest as ‘always appealing to
the picture’ or ‘always thinking of it.’54
Kierkegaard’s idea of ‘reduplication’ has a similar import. ‘To
reduplicate is to be what one says.’55 There is a certain kind of
reduplication involved in the learning of some mechanical
competence; but true reduplication is a phenomenon of the
ethical and religious. 56 While competence in mathematics, for
example, relates both to logic and to subjective appropriation,
‘Christianity is related neither to thinking nor to doubt, but to
will and to obedience; you shall believe. Wanting to take thinking
along is disobedience, no matter whether it says yes or no.’57
One certainly could classify religion as a ‘form of life’ or
‘language game,’ in a quasi-metaphysical understanding of
these {88} terms, although this would lead inevitably to
accusations of ‘relativism.’ The idea of ‘stages’ suggests such a
conceptualization. But these last passages suggest that religion
considers itself to be at another level. Christian religion in
53 The closest Wittgenstein comes to making such an appeal is: ‘Go on,
believe! It does no harm.’ (Culture and Value, p. 45e [c. 1944]). Oddly,
this looks like Pascal’s Wager. But the pseudo-rational choice of
religion suggested by the Wager does not square with Wittgenstein’s
other remarks on religion or beliefs in general.
54 Lectures and Conversations, pp. 54-5.
55 Journals and Papers, sec. 6224 (IX A 208).
56 Journals and Papers, sec. 653 (VIII2 B 85:7). See the notes on
‘Reduplication,’ 3:910.
57 Journals and Papers, sec. 3049 (VIII1 A 331).
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Kierkegaard’s understanding claims to be unique – the only
right way of looking at the world. But Wittgenstein’s scheme of
language-games militates against the possibility of one
worldview with a privileged position. This appears to be a
serious difference between the two authors. But there are clues
to a rapprochement.
*
In this context it is worth remembering that the ‘stages’ do not
constitute a metaphysical scheme. They are not completely
separate. Rather, they are linked by the continuity of the
individual who passes along ‘life’s way.’ This phrase suggests a
linear metaphor, and the inevitable separation of the points
along the line. Either/Or’s Judge William proposes a better
metaphor, that of successive layers. He claims that the aesthetic
remains within the ethical, transformed by a superadded
‘concentric’ shell.58 And for the Knight of Faith, aesthetic and
ethical categories reappear, transformed, in paradoxical
religion.
Wittgenstein’s ‘forms of life’ and ‘language-games’ are also
non-metaphysical. The scope of their application is left
deliberately vague. Fergus Kerr argues that this scope is
bounded, and that nothing as complex and articulated as a
religion is the subject of this kind of analysis. It tends to turn on
58 Søren Kierkegaard (1987) Either/Or, 2 vols., trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2:57.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
small distinctions. 59 But of course the fundamental differences
between the Christian and the non-Christian are not so large
regarded factually, the principal dispute being a question of
heredity. Surely this is no more complex a difference than a
different color-system (which is the example Kerr uses), and
surely in both cases the consequences of the difference for
everyday life are potentially enormous!
The Tractatus analysis of the ‘ethical’ and ‘mystical’ suggests
the possibility of paradoxical religion outside the categories of
human grasping, and hence of a unique kind. The ‘absolutely
hopeless’ running against the walls of our cage is explicitly
linked to Kierkegaard’s category of ‘paradox’ by Wittgenstein.
He does not focus on the frustration, but on the repeated thrust
against the limits, which, he says, ‘points to something.’60
The situation is apparently changed when Wittgenstein rejects
the metaphor of the cage. The idea that religion might be a
‘form {89} of life’ is sufficient to give the ‘thrust’ of religion a place
of its own in which to be self-consistent; it no longer must suffer
as a misshapen appendage of logically pure language. So
‘paradox’ is no longer necessary; and apparently religion is no
longer unique.
This is perhaps a good place to invoke the idea, mentioned in
chapter 2, that the later Wittgenstein is not always the best
59 Fergus Kerr (1986) Theology After Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, pp. 28-31.
60 Waismann, ‘Notes on talks,’ p. 13.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
interpreter of his early writings. The idea of ‘paradox’ need not
reflect the permanent and absolute relations between two
language-games or forms of life. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s use of
the term is not in this vein. Rather, for him it is a transitional
category which arises from the inadequacy of the old language
game to the task at hand, and goads the individual into a closer
examination of the new language game. Kierkegaard’s
explication of the position of the ‘spontaneous believer’ gives a
good statement of his understanding of the dialectics of this
situation. What the spontaneous believer (in ‘Religiousness A’)
cannot understand is that what is for him obvious and certain is
for others the paradox. But Kierkegaard allows that for the
integrated, reduplicated believer (the true Christian, believing
the absurd by virtue of the absurd) this dialectical situation is
obvious in all its tension – and nevertheless livable. 61
Wittgenstein’s thoughts in this area center on the different
ways of ‘proving’ involved in science and religion. ‘Proof’ in
science has a lot in common with Kierkegaard’s ‘little cartesian
dolls’ – the form of the proof is rationally completed, but in
order for it to come into force, one must have done with
proving, ‘let go’ of the proof. 62 In science, Wittgenstein allows,
there are proofs, but the individual to whom the proof is
addressed must eventually see the proof as complete.
Explanations end somewhere.
61 Journals and Papers, sec. 8 (X2 A 592).
62 Fragments, p. 42.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
Already in this scheme of proof there is a hint of tension. If it is
a matter of ‘seeing the proof as complete,’ ‘coming to an
understanding,’ there always remains the possibility that one
may lose the new understanding. As long as one has the
experience ‘Now I see!’ this tension continues. But
understanding changes rapidly from an activity to an ability,
from happening to latency. Then the tension is removed, and
sometimes great force is needed to renew it.
‘Proof’ of God’s existence does not proceed the same way – or
if it does, it is doomed to failure as a convincer. Wittgenstein
remarks that a proof of God’s existence ought to serve to
convince one that God exists. That is what the surface grammar
of the {90} expression suggests. The model here would be
geometrical proof: ‘I will prove to you that there is no such
thing as the trisection of an angle with ruler and compass.’ But
he suggests that reasoned proofs of God’s existence are merely
attempts by believers to ‘give their “belief” an intellectual
analysis and foundation, although they themselves would
never have come to believe as a result of such proofs.’ 63
The reason for this is that the desire for ‘proof of God’s
existence’ is not a request for a causal explanation; instead, it is
a demand for the justification of an attitude. Both the search for
the answer and the result of finding the answer are only
expressible in terms of an individual’s life. So the answer must
be something having to do with the form of a life. As
63 Culture and Value, p. 85e (1950).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
Kierkegaard remarks, God becomes a necessary postulate, but
not in the usual sense; rather, ‘the individual’s postulation of
God is a necessity.’64
Kierkegaard is also concerned to show that intellectual proofs
are existentially inadequate. His crusade against nominal
Christianity stresses the idea of appropriation.
His exposition of this idea proceeds in two directions. One of
these trades on the point that even ‘purely objective’
understandings must have some subjective content, ‘for not
only is he mad who says what is meaningless, but quite as
certainly, he who expresses a correct opinion, when this has
absolutely no significance for him.’65 Two parallel examples
might illustrate this point: Kierkegaard’s madman, who feigns
64 Postscript, p. 179n. The following exchange between Norman
Malcolm and Wittgenstein may throw some light on this
formulation. Malcolm (quoting[?] Kierkegaard): ‘How can it be that
Christ does not exist, since I know that he has saved me?’
Wittgenstein: ‘You see! It isn’t a question of proving anything!’
(Norman Malcolm [1984] Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn,
New York: Oxford University Press, p. 59). See (1941) For Self-
Examination, trans. Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, p. 87ff, for a passage of which this might be a
paraphrase. See also Journals and Papers, sec. 3615 (X4 A 210).
65 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life,
trans. David F. Swenson, ed. Lillian Marvin Swenson, Minneapolis,
MN: Augsburg Publishing House, p. 111.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
sanity by incessantly repeating ‘Bang, the earth is round’;66 and
Wittgenstein’s talking lion, whose utterances we could not
understand.67 Only in the flow of a connected form of life,
which can only be an individual life (that of an individual in his
subjectivity), can objective expressions have meaning.
The second direction in which Kierkegaard’s exposition
proceeds is from the side of personal need. Christianity’s basic
claim is of an extreme improbability. Why should anyone
believe it? The reason which Kierkegaard supplies is that the
potential existential importance of this claim is immense. In
effect, if it is ‘true’ it eliminates (not solves) the ‘riddle of life.’ It
abrogates the problem of finitude, which is the highest and final
problem for any contingently existing being. 68 This problem is
so important that one has no choice but to grab at the solution.
Wittgenstein suggests that a wholly different kind of
instruction {91} is operating in coming to a belief in God. The kind
of understanding which this instruction promotes is a wholly
different kind of understanding from the seeing of any single
thing.
Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are
what bring this about; but I don’t mean visions and other
forms of sense experience which show us the ‘existence of this
66 Postscript, p. 174.
67 Investigations, p. 223e.
68 As has been suggested above, only a dissolution can be of any use in
this problem.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
being,’ but, e.g., sufferings of various sorts. These neither
show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an
object. Nor do they give rise to conjectures about him.
Experiences, thoughts, – life can force this concept on us.
So perhaps it is similar to the concept of ‘object.’69
The suggestion of the last sentence is very helpful. For
Wittgenstein the concept of ‘object’ is a complex one. It is
certainly useful, but it cannot be reduced to any metaphysical or
observational definition.70 It is almost paradigmatic of the
foundational, but nonetheless ‘not-well-founded’ concept.
This association is consistent with his remarks about the status
of religious belief in the lectures on religious belief. There the
believer’s view is said to show itself ‘not by reasoning or by
appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but rather by regulating
for in all his life [sic].’71 Christianity rightly understood is a
‘firmly rooted [not proven] picture,’ and in this sense has more
to do grammatically with superstition than with scientific fact.
For this reason, all philosophy written about it (under the
assumption that it is founded at a higher level of gaming) is
doomed to reach false conclusions. 72
Kierkegaard goes further along the same line, claiming that
religious life is radically grounded. So it could hardly be an
69 Culture and Value, p. 86e (1950).
70 Investigations, p. 180e.
71 Lectures and Conversations, p. 54.
72 Culture and Value, p. 83e (1949).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
occasion for giving grounds. The religiously aware self ‘rests [is
grounded] transparently in the Power that established it.’73
Citing the grammatical similarity of religion and superstition
as against the grammar of fact is not of course to suggest that
they are similar in application. Wittgenstein remarks an obvious
difference: superstition is a sort of ‘false science’ (an untrue
causal nexus) whereas religion depends on trust and at
important junctures rejects the causal nexus. 74 In this dimension
superstition is more similar to science than it is to religion. But
that only goes to show that the three ways of thinking cannot be
subsumed under a system. {92}
One way in which religion might claim to be unique is that it
lacks much of the superstructure of ordinary language-games.
Or rather, the superstructure exists, but it is not essential to the
continuation of the category. Science has not only a way of
looking at the world, but empirical methods and data derived
from this basic belief-structure. One cannot ‘do science’ without
both the way of looking and the experimental method. The
religious or ‘ethical’ way of looking at the world provides a
basic way of understanding things, but leaves the actual
activities (to be informed by this way of looking) unspecified. A
scientist is always called a scientist, but only ‘does science’
73 Søren Kierkegaard (1980) The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
p. 131.
74 Culture and Value, p. 72e (1948).
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
when he is actually experimenting, lecturing, and so forth. A
religious believer is always a religious believer, and cannot
choose to continue or stop ‘doing religion.’
In other words, the tension involved in the transition to
religion does not go away. The religious seeker or believer
remains at the stage of activity, and does not attain comfortable
latency.
Kierkegaard’s categories of ‘mystery’ and ‘paradox’ turn on
this continuation of activity. The religious believer is living in
two worlds at once. She has regard to two grammars, the
everyday grammar of the world and the grammar of religious
faith. These two grammars are not fully separate, but ‘cut each
other at an angle.’ Either might ‘stand fast’ in latency; but to
keep the two in tension requires the believer to ‘hold fast.’ Such
an existence in tension, with an ‘absolute relation to the
absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends,’ is
paradoxical.
Wittgenstein’s understanding of the connection of ethics, life,
and philosophical investigations is an example of a similar
tension. Unlike Hume, who could put away his reflections on
the ill-foundedness of causal connection in order to go to
dinner, Wittgenstein could not put away his philosophy. It
informed his everyday life, and he disliked intensely the type of
philosophers whose philosophy did not do so. The idea that
philosophy and religious life are activities (and not bodies of
doctrine) leads to this entanglement with ‘conscience.’
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
This suggests another facet to the phenomenon of religion: the
religious belief-scheme can be added on to other schemes. There
are, for example, religious physical scientists. There could
hardly be superstitious physical scientists.
Because of its unique status, religion cannot be completely {93}
separated from the ordinary world. For instance, the
explanatory language of religion owes a lot to the language of
ordinary life.
Could you explain the concept of the punishments of hell
without using the concept of punishment? Or that of God’s
goodness without using the concept of goodness?
If you want to get the right effect with your words, certainly
not.75
Anyone who has received a certain sort of education can
understand what is going on in religious truth-claims, in a
sense. Of course, the language of religious convincing, which is
aimed at the non-believer, must be pitched in terms which the
non-believer can understand. Otherwise, the ‘effect’ will be lost.
But this is merely another expression of the tension between the
believer and the world. 76
75 Culture and Value, p. 80e (1949).
76 This metaphorical tension is present between language-games in
general. Whenever the same word is used in varying circumstances,
there will be some disanalogy – some limits to the application of the
metaphor implied by the use of the term. See Investigations, p. 188e.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
Wittgenstein’s ‘ethical’ concern can be explicated in terms of
the special status of religion. His concern would not be to
eliminate science or even philosophy. Rather it would be to
make the ‘mystical’ understanding part of the perspective. Since
this understanding is at the most basic level (as fundamental as
the concept ‘object,’ if not more so) it need not conflict with any
factual information. Given the opportunity to ‘see the world
aright,’ an individual may come to a better understanding of all
facts.
This presents an added reason why the idea of any religion as
a ‘system’ must be rejected. The very idea of ‘system’ is a
category of scientific thought. To present ‘system’ or
‘understanding’ as an absolute is to make a category-mistake.
There is of course a way in which the ‘mystical’ way of living
is demonically aped. This is the ‘scientific’ trap of the ‘loss of
deep problems.’ Where the ‘mystical’ rests on a sublime
confidence in the dissolution of all such problems, this false
consciousness has a ridiculous confidence in their non-
existence. It is interesting to note that Wittgenstein quotes in
this connection a saying from Augustine: ‘quia plus loquitur
inquisitio quam inventio,’77 which parallels one of
Kierkegaard’s favorite mottoes, ‘attributable to Lessing:’ ‘If God
held all truth in His right hand, and in His left the lifelong
pursuit of it, he [Lessing] would choose the left hand.’78 This
77 ‘because the search says more than the discovery’ Zettel, sec. 457.
78 Postscript, p. 97.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
accentuates that the essence of religion lies in the form of the
religious life, and not in the factual content nor in the ‘results’
(scientifically understood) of that life. {94}
Even in the context of Wittgenstein’s later understanding of
the relation of language-games, then, there is at least one
feature of religion that remains unique, or at least highly
unusual. This is the religious individual’s intentional
maintenance in the tension of multiple language games –
because she participates in one particular game, the religious,
which looks over the shoulder of all others. The tension
inherent in the religious position is magnified in that the game
itself demands a paradoxical openness to change.
If there is another language-game that makes similar
demands, it is philosophy. The philosopher also applies the
toolbox which constitutes her specialty in an examination of
other games. Wittgenstein’s persistent understanding of the
connection between philosophy and lived ethics finds itself
justified by this point. But philosophy and religion diverge in
one essential way: the key to philosophy is ability to stop doing
it;79 whereas the key to religion is inability to stop doing it.
When the metaphysical framework of worldviews first
suggested by the idea of the ‘stages’ or ‘language games’ is
rejected, and this multiplicity of levels of grasping substituted,
then there is no problem admitting the usefulness (and at the
79 Investigations, sec. 133.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
same time inadequacy) of reason for religion. The problem of
fideism will not be solved, but dissolved.
*
In the course of unravelling Wittgenstein’s position on the
question of religion (and enlightening Kierkegaard’s), we have
uncovered two ironies. First of all, Wittgenstein’s earlier and
later positions seem remarkably unified on this question.
Certainly Wittgenstein always understood there to be an
essential connection between his earlier and later work. He
wanted to have the Tractatus and the Investigations published
together. Nor could this be entirely because the later work
served as a mere appendix of corrections to the earlier. It points
out fundamental errors in some underlying assumptions, but
what Wittgenstein called the ‘point of the book’ (the material on
the ethical and the mystical) goes unchallenged. In fact, the
framework of the later understanding is more felicitous to the
ethical points! To use Kierkegaard’s terminology, it has become
clear that Wittgenstein is not a ‘premise-author.’
The second irony uncovered is that Kierkegaard, ‘a religious
writer,’ and Wittgenstein, ‘not a religious writer,’ are close
enough on key points that (at the very least) examples from
each lend support to the understanding of the other. There is
now no way of {95} knowing how much of the material on
religion collected in Culture and Value, which has a distinctly
‘Kierkegaardian’ ring, was directly influenced by Wittgenstein’s
reading of Kierkegaard. Certainly it is not merely parroted, but
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
is further developed. What is more interesting is that the whole
scheme of Wittgenstein’s later works lends itself to congruity
with a Kierkegaardian analysis of religion.
This compatibility of Wittgenstein’s work with religion ought
to have been foreseen. Even though he did not feel a religious
vocation in any conventional sense, nevertheless his own
personal feeling of need in this direction informed his
philosophical work. It might even be suggested that his stress
on the individual appropriation of facts is based on an ethical
pattern. Ethical decisions cannot be forced on the individual;
they must be freely made. His understanding of the importance
of the ethical led inevitably to a philosophical conception in
which such free acceptance is not only possible but necessary. 80
The conception of religion suggested above has important
consequences for possible positions on some of the most
important arguments in philosophy of religion. One such
argument is theodicy.
Theodicies tend to depend either on metaphysical points or on
epistemologies. That is, either evil is justified as metaphysically
inevitable, or it is denied as a false perception following from
men’s limited understanding. (Many theodicies have strands of
both types). Classically, at least in the West, factual
80 Of course, his ethics is in turn based on aesthetics. It might be more
settling to say that his work displays recurring themes. Certainly
personal responsibility is one of these.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
(propositional) arguments are used and general solutions are
proposed.
The understanding promulgated by Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein demands a shifting of the ground of the argument.
In keeping with their way of working, conceptual revisions
might be suggested and the dimension of personal acceptance
stressed. Wittgenstein’s ‘world of the happy man’ and
Kierkegaard’s ‘perspective of faith’ are both implicit theodicies.
They constitute dissolutions (vanishings) of the problem of
evil.81 At the same time, the tension implicit in the religious
person’s participation in the world ensures that the problem
remains essential.
The appeal to the individual is a particularly important factor
here. Many theodicies fail to take it into account, with the result
that they cannot as effectively address the very personal nature
of evil as a life-experience.82 Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘proofs’
81 In 1930, Wittgenstein remarked to M. O’C. Drury: ‘For a truly
religious man, nothing is tragic.’ (Maurice O’C. Drury (1981) ‘Some
notes on conversations with Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Personal Recollections, Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 122.) Cf.
Kierkegaard’s remarks on the difference between the religious and
the tragic in Fear and Trembling, p. 59.
82 This is explicitly admitted by Alvin Plantinga. He remarks that
theists may find evil a problem; but this is not the ‘problem of evil’
which might lead to disbelief or show the logical inconsistency of
theism. ‘Such a problem calls, not for philosophical enlightenment,
but for pastoral care.’ See (1977) God, Freedom, and Evil, Grand
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
of God are not the reasons or causes for their authors’ belief in
God {96} stands as a pointer in the direction of more existential
theodicy.
Finally it is worth noting that Wittgenstein’s position on
religion has consequences for his ‘relativism.’ It has been said
that relativism is a position at which Wittgenstein arrives quite
consciously, and not one which he falls into or begins from
unconsciously.83 His stress on the ethical – his form of religion –
suggests a modification of the idea that he is a relativist. The
ethical as a superadded form of life would provide grounds for
the selection of language-games. As such it would act to limit
relativism. This is not to say that everyone will share in this
form of life. But here Wittgenstein is ‘leaving everything as it is.’
Relativists do exist. And relativism is surely not a mistake about
facts, but a question of interpretation. So relativists must be
shown the path to ethics. Wittgenstein might well subscribe to
Kierkegaard’s claim that the existential value of holding the
‘ethical’ or religious worldview is a substantial inducement to
accept it.
Granted that this is not a form of metaphysical absolutism. But
the form of relativism it is intended to combat is not
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, pp. 64-65. His suggestion presupposes a
discouraging gulf between philosophy of religion and religion.
83 Ernest Gellner, Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences, quoted in
Alan Keightley (1976) Wittgenstein, Grammar and God, London:
Epworth Press, p. 109.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
metaphysical either. It is an absolutism of values aimed at
making sense of the maze of existential possibilities and
problems. What drives it is the absolute value of the
individual’s life. The standard which the ‘ethical’ upholds is the
value for the individual’s life. 84 The postulation of this
existential either/or is the closest that either Kierkegaard or
Wittgenstein will come to admitting a metaphysical certainty
for existing beings.
84 Compare Nietzsche’s idea: ‘Truth is the kind of error without which
a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately
decisive.’ From (1968) The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R. J. Hollingdale, New York: Vintage Books, sec. 493.
184
{97}
Chapter Five
Echoes And Repercussions
In prior chapters, attention has been focused on some problems
with which Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein deal explicitly, or
with questions arising from their method of dealing with these
problems. But at the end of chapter 4, the possibility of a
theodicy implicit in the work of the two authors was suggested.
This possibility raises the specter of larger questions: What
features of the work of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein give their
conclusions a more general interest? What lasting impact might
their considerations have on the practice of ‘philosophizing’?
One essential part of an answer to these questions is an
understanding of what would count as ‘continuing to do
philosophy in the vein of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein.’
If either thinker propounded straightforward theories, such an
understanding would be easier to gain. For instance, triadic
structures, universal histories, and systematic phenomenologies
of spirit mark the ‘young Hegelians’ as disciples of Hegel.
Stylistic innovations are relatively unimportant. With
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, however, it is precisely the
innovations of style and method which must be considered.
Some similarities between the two authors’ work are
mentioned in chapter 2. But it can hardly be a case of
demanding exactly similar methods in the consideration of
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
other questions. Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are so
idiosyncratic – in fact their own methodologies are so internally
diverse – that it can only be a matter of searching for, or
attempting to adhere to, certain ‘family resemblances’ in the
working out of various problems. To demand more than this
would have the ironic consequence of – as Kierkegaard puts it –
turning their indirection into a ‘result.’1 {98}
A better criterion for the consideration of extensions might be
the sense of a new spirit in which both Wittgenstein and
Kierkegaard share. Their methodological innovations are often
bound up with this sense of new spirit. Provided that remarks
are offered in the appropriate spirit, their substance might be
given relatively little weight. But a question then arises as to
how a work is to be recognized as ‘in the spirit,’ if not by any
theoretical content or specific methodology followed.
A final criterion to be kept in mind, and one which may be
able to mitigate the problems implied by the previous two, is
that of personal involvement. Both authors were distinguished
by their involvement with their work, as well as their demands
that their readers should be similarly involved. Thus some
personal dimension may be the ultimate mark of adherence to
this new philosophical form.
1 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans.
David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, p. 72.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Of course, one important source to be considered in any
attempt to suggest that the two authors’ work has relevance for
further and larger questions is a review of their own ideas
concerning the possibility of such extensions. Both displayed a
well-founded pessimism concerning the likelihood, if not the
feasibility, of worthwhile continuations.
*
In the context of the current task, Kierkegaard’s remarks on his
own way of working, and on the way in which Christianity can
be communicated, are particularly relevant. The following
comment from the Postscript illustrates his conception of the
difference between the methods of the systematic philosophers
and those of the Christian tradition.
In relation to a doctrine, understanding is the maximum of
what may be attained; to become an adherent is merely an
artful method of pretending to understand, practiced by
people who do not understand anything. In relation to an
existential communication, existing in it is the maximum of
attainment, and understanding it is merely an evasion of the
task. It is a suspicious thing to become a Hegelian,
understanding Hegel is the maximum; to become a Christian
is the maximum, Christianity is suspect…. To seek to
understand an existential communication is to essay a
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
transformation of one’s own relationship to it into one of
possibility merely.2 {99}
Kierkegaard so stresses the category of ‘appropriation,’ both in
everyday matters and in the more essential pursuit of religion,
that it would be strange to abandon it in attempting to extend
his vision. Thus a first approximation at the road to be taken by
sincere followers of Kierkegaard might well read:
‘Understanding Kierkegaard is absolutely odd; to be a
Kierkegaardian is the ideal.’
This suggestion needs to be understood in the right sense,
however. In The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis
remarks: ‘There is an old saying that to understand and to
understand are two things, and so they are.’3 In the same vein,
to appropriate and to appropriate may be quite different things.
To borrow (appropriate) the idea of appropriation, to speak
systematically of it, and to attempt to formalize the possibilities
inherent in the category, would not be in the spirit of ‘existence-
communication.’ Kierkegaard tells the story of the drill sergeant
and the recruit who is talking in the ranks. The sergeant yells
‘Shut up!’; the recruit answers back: ‘Yes, of course, now that I
know you want me to, I’ll shut up!’ This is a prime example of
2 Postscript, p. 332n.
3 Søren Kierkegaard (1980) The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar
Thomte and Albert B. Anderson, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, p. 142.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
an existence-communication being misunderstood as an
academic lecture. 4
Kierkegaard stresses the appropriate attitude to existence-
communication in his comments on edification. In Purity of
Heart, he defines the listener’s role in a devotional address. The
listener is to take the address personally. The speaker is to do
the same. In one sense the speaker is a mere ‘prompter,’ giving
each listener pause and reflection; but he is himself also a
responsible individual – responsible for what he is saying. 5
Speaker and listeners reflectively appropriate the content of the
address.
The example of the devotional address is useful as an
illustration of Kierkegaard’s idea of ‘reduplication.’ To
reduplicate oneself is to ‘be what one says.’6 Dialectical truth is
‘raised to the second power’ in lived action. It is a question of
how as well as what.7
4 Søren Kierkegaard (1967-78) Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7
vols, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, sec. 649 (VIII2 B 81), par.
14.
5 Søren Kierkegaard (1948) Purity of Heart is To Will One Thing, trans.
Douglas V. Steere, New York: Harper Torchbooks, pp. 178-82.
6 Journals and Papers, sec. 6224 (IX A 208).
7 As is remarked in the notes to ‘Redoubling’ in the Journals and
Papers (3:908), for Kierkegaard the ultimate expression of this
reduplication is the self’s synthesis in religious faith.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
While Kierkegaard’s analysis applies specifically to the
religious sphere (although, thanks to his specific ‘problem,’ in
so doing it deals with human existence in general), Wittgenstein
had similar ideas in relation to the way in which philosophy
ought to be done. He once remarked that if a philosophy book
was any good, it should frustrate the reader so much that he
would want to throw it across the room and start on the
problems fresh for himself – thus ‘reduplicating’ the author’s
work. 8 A great work might even cause lived reduplication; it
might cause a change in the reader’s life {100} based on the results
of his deliberations. In several forewords and prefaces,
Wittgenstein expressed the hope – though not the expectation –
that his works might have this effect.
Wittgenstein displays an ambivalence toward the whole idea
of having his work continued. He could never found a school,
he says, because he is ‘by no means sure that [he] should prefer
a continuation of [his] work by others to a change in the way
people live which would make all of these questions
superfluous.’9 He also remarks that he does not want to be
imitated, at any rate not by philosophical writers. And he
harbors a fundamental pessimism concerning the idea of
important change caused by philosophical writing: it may be,
8 Karl Britton (1967) ‘Portrait of a Philosopher,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein:
The Man and His Philosophy, ed. K. T. Fann, New York: Dell, p. 58.
9 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980) Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 61e (1947).
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
he remarks, that the impetus for the kind of change
philosophers want must come from another direction entirely.
Only the most indirect influence has a fair chance of success. 10
This ambivalence accords well with his belief that philosophy
is not an end in itself – but something that, if properly handled,
clears up muddles then shuts itself off. But the more interesting
implication of these comments is the pointer toward what is
important, or an end in itself, if philosophy is not. Philosophy is
in the service of a larger goal: fundamental change in peoples’
lives. Here there is once again a reduplicated notion:
philosophy is a task, but merely a sub-task of the larger task.
Life itself is the larger task. (Recall Engelmann’s statement: ‘He
saw life as a task.’) If philosophy is not an end in itself, there is
no reason why its methods should be anything other than ad
hoc.
Commentaries on Wittgenstein’s remarks about the way to do
philosophy have been afflicted by precisely the sort of
misunderstanding satirized by Kierkegaard in the story of the
recruit and the drill sergeant. Wittgenstein once remarked that
he was afraid that the only result of his teaching was to sow the
seeds of a jargon; at least one interpreter has reluctantly agreed
with that gloomy assessment. Wittgenstein’s idea of eliminating
muddles in philosophy has been given lip service, but not
necessarily applied. Somehow ‘Wittgensteinian’ philosophy
seems a particularly good example of the complaint expressed
10 Culture and Value, pp. 61e-62e (1947).
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
by A in Either/Or: the sign in the philosophical shop window
reads PRESSING DONE HERE; but if you unpacked your
philosophical baggage on the counter in the expectation of
having the muddles expertly removed, you would be
disappointed – it is the claim to remove muddles which is being
retailed, and not the actual removing! 11 {101}
This parable suggests another pitfall on the opposite side from
the error of dogmatism which Kierkegaard so ably deciphers in
Hegel. Rather, it is the same error, but in another guise: the
failure to appropriate. Hegel espoused system at the expense of
existence and appropriation; to espouse appropriation, but at
the expense of existential appropriation, would be an ironically
potentiated error.
Kierkegaard’s understanding of his ‘task’ concerning
Christianity provides an exact parallel of, if not a model for,
Wittgenstein’s notion of philosophy. He uses a variety of tools
in carrying out the task. Some of his writings are aesthetic, and
others philosophical, in expression. An underlying form is
provided by his psychological analysis. This analysis suggests a
rationale for the form of the various writings. But even the
psychological framework is in the service of the ‘task’; it is not
an end in itself. Thus there is no motivation for the technique to
be maintained when another might be of greater usefulness.
11 Søren Kierkegaard (1987) Either/Or, 2 vols., trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1:32.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
The new methodology of the ‘attack,’ in the Fatherland and the
Moment, may be freely adopted.
Kierkegaard tended to set himself up as absolutely different
from other theologians and philosophers. But Wittgenstein did
give some account of a difference (which presupposes a
connection) between his way of philosophizing and traditional
philosophy. This account might serve as the basis for continued
philosophical work in a ‘Wittgensteinian’ vein. G. E. Moore’s
report on lectures and discussions held by Wittgenstein in the
academic years 1930-1 and 1932-3 contains a brief section
reporting Wittgenstein’s comments on this point. 12
In the lectures, Wittgenstein remarked that he thought there
had been ‘kink’ in the development of philosophy (presumably
in or as a result of his work), similar to the development of
chemistry from alchemy. This kink had made it possible that
there should be skillful philosophers, whereas previously
advances had only been made by ‘great’ ones.
Wittgenstein did not elaborate on this point, and his exact
meaning is not immediately clear. The difference between
alchemy and chemistry lies in the kind of questions asked, and
the kind of answers expected. Chemistry’s approach is
experimental and incremental, depending less on great leaps
and more on answers to particular questions. There is also a
12 G. E. Moore (1954-5) ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures in 1930-
33,’ Mind 253:26-27.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
fundamental change in the understanding of causality
underlying these questions and answers.
The difference between the Tractatus understanding of
philosophy {102} (which is expressed as an extension of the
tradition of logical analysis) and the later understanding is also
rooted in a change in the understanding of causality,
accompanied by a reduction in the scope of individual
questions. The Tractatus presupposes the ‘mental object’ and
even ‘mental process’ model. The later works deny this causal
nexus.
Some advances in chemistry and medicine were made by
alchemists – for example, by Paracelsus. But these were great
geniuses. They were able to make advances despite the
handicap of a relatively unfruitful model of reality. But the
basic laws of chemistry stand like signposts away from the
errors of alchemy. Thus it is easy to avoid error, if not to achieve
great breakthroughs. Wittgenstein’s suggestions about the
differentiation of language might stand as similar signposts in
philosophy. He may have believed that in their light it would be
possible to solve particular problems of an everyday kind with
some regularity, if not to make great advances.
The obvious connection between the new way and the old
consists in the continuity of basic subject matter, the
foundational (and nagging!) nature of the expressed concerns,
and the claim to offer a solution of these problems – even if the
solution turns out to be something not envisioned in the
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
original search. Here Wittgenstein used the simile of the
attempt to trisect an angle with ruler and compass. A proof that
this is impossible would satisfy a geometer who had been
attempting it, although it would not be the original or
envisioned object of his search. Kierkegaard’s remarks about
reason’s collision with the ‘thing that thought cannot think’
suggest the same kind of unexpected result. If reason is ‘seeking
its own downfall,’ it could hardly hope for a more felicitous
downfall than that promised by the Absolute Paradox. 13 Just as
the geometer seeks a positive result and is satisfied by a
negative demonstration, so reason, in seeking a negation,
encounters at the same time the ultimate positive claim.
Of course, while reason’s approach to the paradoxical
boundary is clear to see, the direction taken by faith in going on
from the boundary is not so clear. The same sort of difficulty
arises in the attempt to understand how Wittgenstein intended
philosophy to ‘go on’ from the cusp he had created. While it is
possible to see what is held in common (the goals) and what is
rejected by Wittgenstein (the old method and way of
expression), the positive {103} suggestions concerning the new
direction to be taken after the ‘kink’ are more difficult to nail
down, perhaps more difficult than he anticipated.
13 Søren Kierkegaard (1985) Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
p. 36.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Wittgenstein attached the greatest importance to the methods
used. In the 1930-3 lectures, he referred to his philosophizing as
being synoptic of trivialities, already known; ‘if we leave out
any, we still have the feeling that something is wrong.’ He
thought that this method required a kind of thinking different
from the scientific, and requiring discussion to be learned and
carried out. Most interestingly, `As regards his own work, he
said it did not matter whether his results were true or not: what
mattered was that “a method had been found.”’14 This assertion
is astounding when taken in comparison with the Tractatus
comment that the definitive solution to the problems examined
had already been found. Rather than claiming to have
completed the task of philosophy, the later Wittgenstein merely
claimed to have generated the mechanism by which one would
be able to desist when appropriate.
This claim is isomorphic with Kierkegaard’s discussion of the
kind of continuation which follows the leap of faith. Hegel
sought to go further than faith; Kierkegaard preferred the idea
of continuation in faith. The Knight of Faith does not ‘remain
standing,’ but holds fast in an active sense. 15 Having a
particular solution, he does not continue toward a chimerical
definitive solution.
14 Moore, ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures,’ 253:26.
15 Søren Kierkegaard (1983) Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 123.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
The scope of Wittgenstein’s claims of achievement is further
reduced when the actual working of the method he proposed is
recalled. The method is one of problem solving. There is not a
single problem (‘the riddle of life?’) but many difficulties. So
there cannot be a single method, but multiple methods: ‘like
different therapies.’16
This feature is clearly shadowed by Kierkegaard’s
‘authorship.’ For him there is of course a single problem; but
within this problem there are nevertheless many difficulties.
Each stage, and even each individual, must be addressed in a
slightly different way. The operators of change from the
aesthetic to the ethical are quite different from those provoking
the transition to the religious. The philosophically oriented
Fragments and Postscript, the psychologically expressed Concept
of Anxiety and Sickness Unto Death, and the more literary
Either/Or and Repetition each approach the task from a different
direction. The openly religious tone of the Edifying {104} Discourses
provides yet another supplement to the therapy.
Some clarification of the proposed change in methodology
may come from two remarks. One concerns the usefulness of
‘masks’ in the educational process: ‘an educator never says
what he himself thinks, but only what he thinks of a subject in
16 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., sec.
133.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
relation to the profit of him who he is educating.’17 But the
author of this statement nevertheless claims unity for his
authorship, though he despairs of anyone’s noticing it: ‘That the
long logic of a quite determinate philosophical sensibility is
involved here, and not a confusion of a hundred indiscriminate
paradoxes and heterodoxies; of that, I believe, nothing has
dawned even on my most benevolent readers.’18 These
comments made by Nietzsche quite fairly represent the schema
of the new methodology attempted by Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein. It ought to be remembered, though, that for our
two authors the audience of the educator always includes the
educator himself. So perhaps it would be more appropriate to
speak of metamorphoses, rather than masks. But this
methodology clearly requires that the audience miss the
speaker’s larger intentions, since the hearers must be brought to
the point at which they can go on. The speaker can expect little
glory. It is interesting to note that Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
(and Nietzsche, as the above material illustrates) were all
annoyed and saddened by the failure of their audiences to give
them due credit, even though this failure was accounted for and
expected according to their own explicit ideas.
*
17 Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in George Allen Morgan
(1941) What Nietzsche Means, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, p. 19.
18 Nietzsche, quoted in Morgan, What Nietzsche Means, p. 24.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s concern with methodology is
an expression of the fundamental difference in their conception
of philosophy. The idea of philosophy against which they are
reacting is that of the search for foundations and the
construction of a unified understanding of the world.
Metaphysical concerns are central to such a philosophical
system.
The philosopher’s use of multiple methods, masks and
metamorphoses is the last step in the breakdown of monolithic
‘Philosophy’ which begins with the transition from factual
investigation to conceptual investigation. As is usual with both
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, this transition has consequences
at many levels. One of these is the new understanding of
previously recognized similarities and definitions in terms of
‘family resemblance.’ Another is the recognition of many ‘forms
of life’ and {105} ‘language-games.’ While the challenge of
metaphysics is to unify the world in understanding, the new
challenge is to conceive a set of tools which are capable of
generating some useful results in many of the parts of the
fractured existing world.
Strategies of communication and the connections within
existential experience help to cross the boundaries of forms of
life in the new style of philosophy. For instance, Wittgenstein’s
extended notion of the concept ‘grammar’ serves (among other
things) as a convenient hook or common conceptual feature of
the various fragments. This concept serves both to connect
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
forms of life (to show their family resemblance) and to separate
them. It is a point of application for philosophical therapies. In
many cases, Wittgensteinian philosophical arguments take their
root in a comparison of the actual ‘grammar’ of deeds
(existential happenings, linguistic or otherwise) and the
understanding of these deeds reflected in language. For
instance, the surface grammar of ‘mental process’ words like ‘to
know’ and ‘to think’ is similar to that of ‘to have’ and ‘to do’. In
the Investigations, the actual features of ‘knowing,’ ‘expecting
someone,’ ‘calling someone to mind,’ and other phenomena of
experience are recalled. It becomes clear that these expressions
actually function in a wide variety of ways, mostly quite
different from the ways in which terms denoting external
actions do.
Many of Kierkegaard’s works use the same strategy of
revealing another grammar under the surface. The analysis of
life as ‘despair’ in The Sickness Unto Death and the revelation of
the aesthete’s pose in Either/Or are good examples. The
demonstration that many forms of life are nevertheless guises
for despair, the ‘sickness unto death’ which can never actually
result in death, shares many features with Wittgenstein’s
analysis of philosophy as a ‘sickness,’ which despite its constant
drive for explanations of the world never achieves its goal. 19
19 Further comments on this point may be found in the work of O. K.
Bouwsma. See for example his (1982) ‘A new sensibility,’ in Toward a
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
One important feature of Wittgenstein’s conceptual
investigations is the recognition of vast differences between
language-games in the meanings of basic words common to
many games. The motto which he had imagined taking, ‘I’ll
teach you differences,’ comes to mind.20 It is worth noting that
Kierkegaard’s work tacitly uses the same recognition. For
instance, in Either/Or the title term has distinct meanings for the
aesthete (who uses the term ironically), the ethicist (who
demands lawful choice) and the {106} religious figure of the
‘Ultimatum’ (who negates the ethical choice, which can only be
returned in faith through grace). A recognition of this
differentiation in usage is intended to shock the reader into a
reconsideration of his own use of the term.
Kierkegaard pursues this idea in several of the edifying works.
In Judge for Yourselves he notes that Christ is far more terrible
than any worldly robber or slanderer. For the one who takes my
money or my reputation is nevertheless agreed that money and
reputation are worthwhile. But Christ, by his life, denied the
value of goods and reputation. He has ‘taken’ these things from
New Sensibility, ed. J. L. Craft and Ronald E. Hustwit, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, pp. 1-4.
20 Maurice O’C. Drury (1981) ‘Some notes on conversations with
Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, ed. Rush
Rhees, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, p. 171. In addition to
this quotation from King Lear, he thought of the phrase ‘You’d be
surprised!’
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
us far more surely and decisively than any human enemy
could. 21
The discourse on the topic ‘The righteous man strives in
prayer with God and conquers – in that God conquers’
expresses a similar revision of the idea of worth in connection
with prayer. A Christian might describe prayer as ‘profitable’;
but it would scarcely benefit a sensualist to hear it so described,
since there would be no agreement between them on the
meaning of the word.22 The ‘result’ of prayer seems intensely
ironic in the worldly sense – it is no tangible result (no change)
at all. But from the perspective of faith it is a result.
Despite the anti-metaphysical bias of the two authors, there is
yet in both an important strategic place for empirical facts.
Kierkegaard’s empirical psychology is a fine example of this
place. (While many of his examples are overdrawn, they are
nevertheless closely enough rooted in reality to be able to serve
as mirrors for his readers.) His dependence on ‘reason’ to
separate ‘nonsense’ from the ‘absurd’ is another way in which
he contacts the empirical. So is his demand for Christian
consistency: doing as well as saying. Wittgenstein’s reliance on
examples from the real world is comparable. Both also used
21 Søren Kierkegaard (1941) Judge for Yourselves!, trans. Walter Lowrie,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 187-8.
22 Søren Kierkegaard (1943) Edifying Discourses, 4 vols, trans. David F.
Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Publishing House, 4:119.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
made-up stories – things which look like facts, and serve in a
role similar to that filled by facts, but which are at the closest
only exaggerations of actual situations. Wittgenstein refers to
them as ‘intermediate examples.’23
*
Because Wittgenstein proposes the idea of various ad hoc
philosophical ‘therapies,’ it is hard to think of any well-defined
philosophical movement as possibly ‘Wittgensteinian.’ (It is
even harder to imagine what might be ‘Kierkegaardian.’) In the
lectures reported by Moore, Wittgenstein mentioned in passing
two points that help to define his attitude toward two of the
directions in {107} which his work has actually been developed.
He rejects the idea that philosophy is ‘analytic.’ (He prefers the
term ‘synoptic.’) It is not a question of breaking down some
compound, as a chemist might. While the immediate and
obvious referent of this comment is Wittgenstein’s own earlier
work on the analysis of propositions, it might also serve as a
suggestion on the method to be followed in philosophy.
Individual instances cannot be analyzed; only systems, groups,
and multiple examples can build up the picture required.
23 Kierkegaard has constantly in view another kind of ‘fact’ entirely: the
positing of man by God. Here there may be a large difference
between the two authors. The epistemological and ontological status
of the ‘fact’ of man’s dependency would be the subject for a long
treatment. See chapter 4 for a brief discussion of his remark that God
is ‘a postulate’ – a non-metaphysical fact? – for the believer.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Wittgenstein also made reference to the philosophical study of
language. His own works remark on certain grammatical
constructions as fostering misleading pictures. But other
(material or visual) analogies may be equally misleading. (For
instance, object-metaphysics is surely based on features of the
sensible world, and not merely on subject/predicate grammar.)
He did not think that language in general was or should be the
subject of philosophy. 24 His extended use of the term
‘grammar,’ and the large role which language in fact plays in
many forms of life, may be misleading in this regard. In this
context, it is important to remember that he understood
language as merely one form of ‘the deed.’25
It would of course be presumptuous to reject ‘analytic’ and
‘linguistic’ philosophy as participants in the true Grail quest – if
any! – simply on the basis of these paltry references. They do
reflect a general tendency on the part of Wittgenstein to
appreciate wider variety in many areas. Not just language, but
all kinds of deeds are interesting.26 Not just one example, but
many are to be examined. The ‘one-sided diet’ was a
philosophical danger of which he was well aware.
24 Moore, ‘Wittgenstein’s lectures,’ 249:5.
25 See chapter 3.
26 Note that for Wittgenstein, in contradistinction to some interpreters
and/or borrowers of his work, ‘language’ is an extension of ‘the
deed,’ rather than most ‘deeds’ being an extension of language – ‘the
language of dance,’ ‘the language of facial expression,’ and so forth.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Kierkegaard certainly shared this tendency. He found grist for
his religious mill in areas as far afield as seduction, literary
criticism and a battle against yellow journalism. He also rejected
the pat answers of Hegelianism.
Despite (or perhaps on account of) the above-mentioned
tendency to breadth, there is a problem in determining just
what features one would look for in the search for the true
successors to Wittgenstein’s and Kierkegaard’s work.
Kierkegaard’s rejection of Hegel seems clear enough; but his
rejection of Adler clouds matters again. That is, dogma is clearly
rejected, and some sort of methodological recommendation put
in its place. But the source of guidelines for following this
recommendation is far from clear. The {108} same sort of difficulty
led the positivists to believe that Wittgenstein was denying the
importance of the unsayable.
This problem is a fine instance of the more general problem of
‘going on,’ which plays such a large part in the problems both
authors investigated. Different understandings of the acts
involved can lead to different assessments of the appropriate
way of continuing the series. It is more a question of continuing
in the same spirit than of hewing to any theoretical rules.
Wittgenstein’s Foreword to the typescript now published as
Philosophical Remarks gives some further clues as to a possible
working out of the process. He writes:
This book is written for such men as are in sympathy with its
spirit. This spirit is different from the one which informs the
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
vast stream of European and American civilization in which
all of us stand. That spirit expresses itself in an onwards
movement, in building ever larger and more complicated
structures; the other in striving after clarity and perspicuity in
no matter what structure. The first tries to grasp the world by
way of its periphery – in its variety; the second at its centre –
in its essence. And so the first adds one construction to
another, moving on and up, as it were, from one stage to the
next, while the other remains where it is and what it tries to
grasp is always the same.
I would like to say ‘This book is written to the glory of
God,’ but nowadays that would be chicanery, that is, it would
not be rightly understood. It means the book is written in
good will, and in so far as it is not so written, but out of
vanity, etc., the author would wish to see it condemned. He
cannot free it of these impurities further than he himself is
free of them.27
There are many dimensions to this statement. One of the most
obvious themes is a stress on the divorce between the methods
of Wittgensteinian ‘philosophy’ and those traditionally
associated with physical science. But at a deeper level this stress
presupposes the possibility of the divorce. The whole project of
extending factual understanding – ‘grasping the world at its
27 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1975) Philosophical Remarks, trans. Raymond
Hargreaves and Roger White, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 8.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
periphery’ – which might easily be (has in fact been)
understood as a paradigm for all advancement of human ends,
is radically relativised.
‘Understanding’ is relativised in one sense simply by the
introduction of the project of grasping at the center, with {109}
perspicuity. The mere fact that such a project could be
conceived, and an attempt made to carry it through,
demonstrates this relativising. As Wittgenstein remarked, what
is essential is that a method has been found.
The idea of ‘concentricity’ mentioned in Either/Or is worth
recalling in this context. It too suggests a centered mode of
development in which forward motion is not essential or even
desirable.
The second paragraph of the Foreword suggests another kind
of relativising. The author expresses an extremely personal
involvement with the work. He does not say that he would wish
to see condemned the parts of the book which are shown to be
inaccurate, factually misleading, or plain wrong. Rather, he
places a premium on the ‘good will’ with which the
investigation has been carried out. This shift in emphasis recalls
Kierkegaard’s claim about the individual’s relation to the
‘eternal essential truth’:
When the question of the truth is raised subjectively,
reflection is directed subjectively to the nature of the
individual’s relationship; if only the mode of this relationship
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is in the truth, the individual is in the truth even if he should
happen to be thus related to what is not true. 28
For Kierkegaard this analysis is part of an argument denying
the possibility of systematic religious knowledge. For
Wittgenstein, the parallel analysis is brought to a more secular
problem. It is not the case that Kierkegaard did not believe the
problem to occur at the mundane level. 29 But he thought that
the ‘approximation-process’ of rational discovery could provide
a sufficient solution to the problem at that level. The higher
degree of personal certainty provided by the ‘appropriation-
process’ ought to be unnecessary, or at least unconscious.
One phenomenon Wittgenstein noticed is that philosophy
dredges the question of personal certainty up from the
unconscious level. His project – to demonstrate the possibility
of being able to stop doing philosophy – seeks the reasons and
tools whereby this question can be dismissed again. He tries to
show that there are limits to objective inquiry, and that there is
nothing inherently wrong with the fact that there are limits. He
also tries to suggest what happens when traditional philosophy
tries to transcend these limits. The discussion of ‘going on’ is an
attempt to fathom {110} the appropriation-process, which takes up
where philosophy must leave off.
28 Postscript, p. 178.
29 See chapter 3.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Wittgenstein’s careful charting of the difference between his
spirit and that of western science mirrors a distinction made by
Kierkegaard. The Excelsior spirit of ‘moving on and up,’ to
which Wittgenstein contrasts his interest in constantly
reviewing the center, accords well with the Hegelian category
‘going further’ so disdained by Kierkegaard.
Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein recognize that abstaining
from ‘going further’ does not eliminate the necessity to ‘go on.’
For Kierkegaard this necessity is rooted in the essential
difficulty and existential necessity of faith. One cannot ‘remain
standing’ at faith, because being faithful is a full-time job.30
Wittgenstein’s reasons to ‘go on’ in philosophy are more
secular, if no less existential. New problems are always arising
in the course of life. Thus even if one is able to stop doing
philosophy when one wants – to call a halt to the infinite
regress of metaphysics – there will constantly be new occasion
to make philosophical decisions, and constant temptation to
return to metaphysical speculation.
The form of Wittgenstein’s writings, and the switch in
emphasis from ‘truth’ to ‘good faith,’ suggest another
dimension to the rethinking of intellectual activity.
Understanding has come to attain near-teleological status in
modern western thought. If ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing,’ the standard reasoning goes, the antidote to this danger
must be an increase in the quantity of knowledge. A continuous
30 Fear and Trembling, p. 123.
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effort is made to expand the periphery of the world. This
undertaking has a life of its own; it is understood as good in
itself.
Kierkegaard’s criticism of objectivity and Wittgenstein’s
project of re-grasping the world at its center both oppose
themselves to the ‘spirit’ of this project. Both take a very
complex view of factual knowledge.
For Kierkegaard, understanding prevents the assent to
nonsense, but it cannot force the assent to essential paradox. Yet
without appropriation, the most ordinary statements become
ridiculous; a madman can repeat every five seconds ‘the earth is
round,’ and this alone will mark him as mad.
For Wittgenstein, in one sense, the factual is merely
prolegomenon. The subjective interpretation of the facts is the
essential part. Philosophy ‘leaves everything as it is,’ but it
allows us to see {111} things differently. In another sense, the
‘factual’ is the end of the process. Only as a result of subjective
informing can there be any ‘facts’ at all. At the least, then, the
individual’s subjectivity is an equal partner with the facts.
At this point there is again a connection between the work of
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, and that of Nietzsche. He
remarks:
Against positivism, which halts at phenomena – ‘There are
only facts’ – I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is
not, only interpretations….
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
In so far as the word ‘knowledge’ has any meaning, the
world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no
meaning behind it, but countless meanings. –
‘Perspectivism.’31
In this succinct formulation, Nietzsche distills a large part of the
shift in perspective carried out by Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein, which is at the same time a proposal for a revision
in the understanding of philosophy and an attempt to be true to
this proposal.
It is important to understand that (at least in the case of
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein) this shift in perspective to a
recommendation of perspectivism is not a metaphysical
demand. Rather, it is a call for a shift in emphasis away from
the metaphysical (and the worldview in which it has its origins)
in general.
The revision away from facts and toward perspectives
suggests the need for a new source of certainty. If knowledge
cannot be based on metaphysical foundations, then it must have
some other foundation. It is at this point that the dimension
Kierkegaard calls ‘passion’ and Wittgenstein refers to as the
‘ethical’ comes into play.
A reminder is in order here that the point at which passion
becomes necessary is not so far down the path, even for
31 Friedrich Nietzsche (1968) The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann
and R. J. Hollingdale, New York: Vintage Books, sec. 481.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
Kierkegaard. In the Fragments, he remarks that (limited) faith is
already required as the ‘organ of the historical’ – to accept one
of the many possible versions of history. 32
This understanding is paralleled by Nietzsche’s solution to the
total perspectivism he claimed. In the face of this perspectivism
he postulated and approved a ‘will to power’ which might
impose its vision. Such a will and power was to be the mode in
which ‘free, very free spirits’ might become ‘the poets of [their]
lives.’33
At this point an important distinction can be made between {112}
what might be called ‘subjectivism’ and subjectivity. A term
coined by Michael Polanyi which can be of considerable use
here is ‘universal intent.’34 Some statements are intended as
purely subjective – ‘I have a toothache.’ Such statements are the
targets of one facet of Wittgenstein’s attack on private language.
Subjectivity, or subjective appropriation, is on another level.
Appropriated statements are made with universal intent; they
are claimed to hold for everyone. This sort of claim cuts across
the metaphysically generated distinction between subjective
and objective typical of Logical Positivism.
32 Fragments, p. 83.
33 Friedrich Nietzsche (1974) The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann,
New York: Vintage Books, sec. 299.
34 Michael Polanyi (1958) Personal Knowledge, Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, p. 311.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
It is worth noticing that both Kierkegaard’s ‘passion’ and
Wittgenstein’s ‘ethical’ are intensely individual, even personal
categories. The existential dimension has a great importance in
their ways of thinking. Wittgenstein expresses this in the
Investigations, when he says that the ‘real discovery is the one
that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I
want to.’35
This existential bias shows itself repeatedly. The most obvious
indication of it is the reduplicative address to the individual
reader. Kierkegaard conceived religious communication to be as
important for the speaker as for the hearer; in the case of his
speaking it undoubtedly was. But this importance could only be
an importance for the individual. Wittgenstein’s later
philosophy is in the first person. It reflects his own struggles,
and the expected struggles of those who attempt to follow
him.36 Only an individual decision can end the philosophical
process, as he suggests in On Certainty: ‘I act with complete
certainty. But this certainty is my own.’37
35 Investigations, sec. 133; emphasis added.
36 The systematic appearance of the Tractatus belies the personal
struggle that underlay it, as well. This struggle is clearly shown in his
notebooks and letters from the time when he was writing it. And it
also caused headaches for those (like Russell) who tried to follow its
development.
37 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969) On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G. E.
M. Anscombe, New York: Harper Torchbooks, sec. 174.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
An additional perspective on this existential dimension can be
gained by relating Kierkegaard’s and Wittgenstein’s
understanding to the solution proposed by Polanyi. The only
source for negation of doubt in his opinion – and in keeping
with his conclusion he stresses that it is his opinion, albeit with
universal intent – is a personal form of commitment. 38 This is
what Kierkegaard calls the ‘truth for me’ which ‘must come alive
in me.’ What gives this commitment significance is
Kierkegaard’s intention to shout his resolution to everyone he
meets.39
The existential and personal bias also shows itself in the switch
from the emphasis on correct theories in the traditional fields of
philosophy and theology to the examination of possible ‘forms
of life’ or ‘stages on life’s way’ and their consequences. Such a
shift suggests a radical change in the place of philosophical
thinking in {113} life. Rather than a formal and foundational
discipline, which sets the boundaries of possibility – in addition
to metaphysics, normative ethics comes to mind – it becomes a
tool to be used in the clarification of the problems that arise
38 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 315. Commitment looks like more
than certainty; the word stresses the active dimension of the choice.
This puts Polanyi closer to Kierkegaard (whose name does not
appear in Personal Knowledge).
39 Journals and Papers, sec. 5100 (I A 75), written August 1, 1835 – the
most famous Gilleleie entry.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
inevitably in life. It remains ‘ethical’ in a broad sense, but ceases
to be ‘normative.’
As such, while it may remain a technical discipline – in the
sense that a certain kind of critical and analogical thinking is
involved, and there will always be more and less skillful
practitioners – philosophy ought not to remain a domain
reserved for professionals. (This reflects Wittgenstein’s
comment that there must be room for the ‘skillful’ as well as the
‘great.’)
In fact it cannot remain so reserved, because a scheme in
which the individual’s appropriation plays such an essential
part reduces the importance of technical ‘understanding’
significantly.
Both thinkers suggest that some other concerns must be
ultimate. This is the most important relativising of the western
‘understanding.’ In an epistemological dimension, personal
appropriation is paramount. There is also for both authors an
‘ethical’ or ‘religious’ dimension. This dimension is masked by
the personal in such a way that it is very difficult to discuss. But
clearly both intend their work to lead to a re-conception of the
world in these terms. Certainly it had that effect in their own
lives.
*
Three categories mark the road to continuation of philosophy in
the mode of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. One of these
categories is that of ‘reduplication.’ As mentioned in chapter 2,
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
the lowest level of reduplication in the works is the combination
of the ‘theoretical’ and ‘specific’ levels in such a way that most
remarks bear on both at once. Another level – at which the two
authors explicitly call for reduplication – is the requirement that
the individual reader reduplicate in her life the specific
‘theoretical’ understanding gained from reading. This
dimension forms a link between the level of communication
and the final dimension in which reduplication is called for –
the level of personal life. The individual is required to live
authentically and passionately. She is informed by the form of
life chosen.
The second category is that of the individual. In chapter 3 it
has been shown how the individual plays an essential part in
the understanding of the world within individual language-
games and across the boundaries between them. In the present
context it will {114} suffice to remember that the philosophical is
in many respects a language-game like any other. The
philosophy student’s role must be like that of the listener in a
devotional address, and the lecturer’s like that of the preacher.
The final category is that of the task. This category has
multiple implications. It is of course connected to the individual
– a task is only a task for an existing individual. It is also
connected to the idea of reduplication: this is an important part
of the task. But the most important connection of the idea of the
task is an ethical one. It is in the ethical sphere that the
individual is fundamentally autonomous from the social
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
requirements of language-games. ‘The ethical’ is of course in
one sense a language-game. But the process of accepting
language-games which constitutes the ethical game can only
operate at the individual level. Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’ is an
ethical decision in this sense. It is a decision made by the
individual in despite (not to say in defiance) of the lack of
public information. Choices between language-games are only
possible in this mode, since the internal logic of a game
precludes such a choice. The material in chapter 4 gives a more
extended analysis of this point.
This willfully uninformed choice is the ultimate ‘relativising’
of the language-game of understanding. As against the
paradigm of objective conformity to the ‘truth,’ it represents an
ideal of passionate personal justification. As against the
mechanical conception of proof (borrowed from the scientific
method and formal logic), it suggests the need to accept on
inadequate evidence – daring to be formed, to reduplicate the
movements suggested. While at an everyday level (as
explicated in the ‘Private Language Argument’) the criterion of
certainty is simple inability to doubt, at the level of transition or
tension between games, the criterion is willful conquest of
doubt. This is where Polanyi refers to ‘commitment,’ and
Nietzsche to ‘will to power.’
Kierkegaard’s understanding of this feature is expressed in the
statement that ‘subjectivity is truth, subjectivity is reality’: 40
40 Postscript, p. 306.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
subjective existence is the mode of fullest actualization. In a
journal entry, he says that
the remarkable thing is that there is a How with the
characteristic that when the How is scrupulously rendered
the What is also given, that this is the How of ‘faith.’ Right
here, at its very maximum, inwardness is shown to be
objectivity. 41 {115}
Appropriation, which might seem to promote the ultimate in
relativity, becomes the approach to ultimate reality.
*
The remaining task is to suggest a direction in which the spirit
of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein can be reduplicated in the
extension of philosophy and theology. The danger in this task is
that there are certainly many methods and constructs in their
work which could have broader application.
For example, the idea of perspectivism and the address to the
individual has considerable consequences for the way in which
philosophy is done. Traditional philosophical arguments are
intended to be fully rational. But at some point there is a
threshold of acceptance at which the argument is
enthymematic. A good example of this threshold is Aquinas’s
repeated comment, ‘and this thing every man admits to be
God.’ If indeed every man admitted this point, at least one of
the Five Ways must succeed. But in fact this is the very place at
41 Journals and Papers, sec. 4550 (X2 A 299).
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
which the way swings off. It is quite possible that a difference in
perspective may lead to the reader following the argument
perfectly, but denying that it does in fact prove what is
claimed.42
The address to the individual shows its value at precisely this
sticky point. An explicit recognition of the problem of differing
perspectives must result in the ground of argument being
changed. Rather than stressing the factual content, the
argument will attempt to persuade. Thus one practical
advantage of the ‘new way’ is that a point at which leverage
needs to be applied has been found.
Another technical advance which can be derived from the two
authors’ work is the understanding of various conceptual
systems as more or less intertwined ‘stages,’ ‘language-games’
and ‘forms of life.’ Pace Alasdair MacIntyre, this understanding
can be used as a conceptual scheme to help clarify the confusing
issues of inter-societal understanding in a way sensitive to all
sides. It might also have profitable application in the
philosophy of physical science. The problem of progress
addressed by Kuhn and others seems particularly susceptible of
42 Terence Penelhum has expressed just this frustration – that his
airtight proofs in the field of natural theology should fail to convince.
(For example, in his comments on George Mavrodes’ paper ‘The
Prospect for Natural Theology,’ presented in the meeting of the
Society of Christian Philosophers at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the
Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, Boston,
MA, December 27, 1986.)
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
such an analysis. Polanyi’s work has already followed a similar
direction. 43
A field which might benefit from the conception of language-
games is Biblical hermeneutics. One application which has
already been made is based on the idea of multiple grammars.
Anthony Thiselton suggests that at least three different
grammatical levels {116} are represented in Paul’s letters. He
remarks that some of Paul’s distinctions are founded on
‘universal’ grammar – if anything is true, they are. Others
‘express the attitude of a particular tradition.’ They are
foundational for that tradition, though perhaps not clear within
some other traditions. 44 Thiselton suggests that a third class of
grammatical remarks made by Paul have an intention which
Kierkegaard would call ‘maieutic’; they suggest new pictures or
call new attention (positive or negative) to the old. 45
These technical advances, while interesting and useful, are
nevertheless not the reduplication of Kierkegaard or of
Wittgenstein. They can be appropriated without being
appropriated. They argue for or about a new way of seeing,
43 It is astonishing that Polanyi does not make more explicit use of
Wittgenstein’s work, although he does mention that work briefly
in Personal Knowledge.
44 Anthony C. Thiselton (1980) The Two Horizons: New Testament
Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to
Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, p. 392.
45 Thiselton, The Two Horizons, pp. 406-7.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
without arguing from such a new way. In order to be
existentially appropriated, they would need to be grounded in
the new spirit both authors propose. At that point, they might
almost be discarded as methods without being the less
appropriated.
The fundamental difference in philosophy proposed by the
two authors is the emphasis on the individual’s reduplication of
itself and of the world. This emphasis is perfectly clearly
presented by Kierkegaard: ‘The self is a relation that relates
itself to itself.’46 The emphasis in this relation is not on either
term being related, but on the quality of the relation itself. The
locus of subjective individuality is not placed in the existing self
or the ideal self, but rather in the ‘positive third term’ – the
constant task of integration. Thus even at the basic level of self-
constitution, reduplication is present.
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein presents a similar position in the
puzzling guise of an approval of solipsism. But Wittgenstein’s
approval of solipsism’s basic position is not nearly as puzzling
when seen in the light of Kierkegaard’s remarks. The solipsist
attempts to say what can only be shown: that ‘the world is my
46 Søren Kierkegaard (1980) The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
p. 13.
221
ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
world.’ 47 This statement does not reflect any fact about ‘the
subject that thinks or entertains ideas’; Wittgenstein denies that
there is any such ‘thing’ within the world.48 Rather, the
‘metaphysical subject’ is the ‘positive unity’ (to use
Kierkegaard’s term) in the self’s relation and bounding of the
world. Only in its relational capacity does this self enter
philosophy; only because ‘the world is my world.’49
As the flow of chapter 3 has suggested, even in his later period
Wittgenstein would still have accepted this part of the basic
idea {117} behind solipsism. Individuals and their actions are the
only source of instantiation of language-games, which are
fundamentally non-existent unless instantiated.
The ‘new spirit’ in philosophy would necessarily be involved
with this relational self in two ways. It would of course involve
an address to the individual self; only by addressing me can one
alter my world. That such an alteration in the direction of
address is part of the project proposed by Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein has been amply demonstrated above. But more
importantly, the new spirit would be a new qualification of the
relation which constitutes the individual self. Admitting
Kierkegaard’s claim that ‘man is spirit,’ the positing of a new
47 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F.
Pears and B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, sec.
5.62.
48 Tractatus, sec. 5.631.
49 Tractatus, sec. 5.641.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
spirit would actually be the positing of a new self. This new self
would be one for which the world has ‘waxed as a whole.’ In
Kierkegaard’s terms, it would find a new grounding by which
‘despair is completely rooted out.’50
Under such an active paradigm, philosophy could at most
only be called a task. It could more profitably be called a tool in
the service of a higher task. This ‘higher’ task is the task of life.
Seeing the world aright is not a possible achievement of an
article in a philosophical journal. Kierkegaard’s dread of being
turned into a ‘paragraph in the universal system’ by some
assistant professor, and Wittgenstein’s preference for the
elimination of the need for philosophy over a continuation of
his, are strong testimonials for this reduplicative reading.
Philosophy’s progress then becomes a continual process of
self-transcendence. But, like the Knight of Faith, the philosopher
who does not ‘remain standing’ at philosophy is nevertheless in
a dialectical tension which finds him returning to philosophy
often. The advantage gained is that this dialectical tension is no
longer demonically driven from the side of philosophy – a
philosophy which one cannot stop doing. Instead, the tension
arises naturally from the circumstances of life.
The richness of life is also more available to philosophy on this
model. The new balanced diet helps to eliminate the dangers of
anorexia (as in Logical Positivism) and bulimia (as in
MacIntyre’s social science, which swallows the factual content
50 Sickness Unto Death, p. 14.
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ECHOES AND REPERCUSSIONS
of other worldviews whole, only to reject them utterly as
unworthy). Such richness is amply demonstrated in the works
of Bouwsma. There literary allusions and horrible puns rub
shoulders with the most respectable philosophy. Nietzsche’s
omnivorous new ideal and his {118} multiply ‘masked’ style also
give some suggestion of this acceptance of the world’s richness.
Ironically, by being thus relativised, the philosophical
approach gains immeasurably in importance and importance
and in the scope of its action.
224
{119}
Chapter Six
Now I Can Go On!
This study has reached the point at which, according to
tradition, the conclusions reached ought to be presented. But it
is particularly difficult to imagine ‘presenting a conclusion’ to a
study of two figures who were concerned above all to keep
their work from culminating in a ‘result.’ Wittgenstein once said
of a student who declined to complete his dissertation that he
should be given his doctorate for that act alone! 1
The hunger for results, for a ‘contribution to scholarship,’
derives in part from the usages of science. In the scientific
scheme of factual investigation, a theory resulting from one’s
work is stated, and that theory constitutes one’s contribution.
The work of both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein is subversive
of the scientific scheme. Each hoped to have made
contributions. But a feature central to their projects – and thus
one of their contributions – is the establishment of the
possibility of contributing without presenting theoretical
results.
1 Maurice O’C. Drury (1981) ‘Some notes on conversations with
Wittgenstein,’ in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, ed. Rush
Rhees, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, p. 124.
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NOW I CAN GO ON!
If this possibility is to be realized, the reader must recognize a
deep congruity between her task and that of the author. Both
tasks are reinterpreted and considerably broadened.
One way of understanding the change in the author’s task is to
notice the transition from factual to conceptual investigations.
This transition does not imply a lessening in the quantity of
facts presented, but rather a shift in the use of these facts. They
are no longer divisible into data and results. Instead they are
presented as reminders, showings, and signposts in the indirect
communication of conceptual clarifications.
The author does not superimpose theories (which claim to be
results, newly created facts) on the world, thus solving larger {120}
factual problems. Instead he makes a perspicuous connection of
the facts, working out how he is inclined to ‘go on’
conceptually, in a therapeutic attempt to dissolve the particular
problem at hand.
The reader’s task also involves an attempt to ‘go on.’ The
movements of the author are to be reduplicated. Reading
becomes a training process. A successful communication would
culminate in the reader’s ability to continue as the author would
in a variety of situations. Another level of success (quite foreign
to theory-communication) might be reached when the reader
convinced the author that another way of going on was
preferable.
This understanding of the author and the reader as equals in
conversation involves an appreciation for the immense power
226
NOW I CAN GO ON!
and complexity of language, for the nonetheless inexpressibly
multi-faceted nature of the world, and for the individual who
alone can make sense of it all. 2 At first glance, there appear to be
firm boundaries between the works of Kierkegaard, the
Tractatus, and the later writings of Wittgenstein. Each of these
communications works from a different body of facts. But a
deep respect for the place and power of the individual
constitutes a strong bond between the works.
This respect and its ramifications are perhaps best shown in
the lives of the two figures. They each made an effort to be
readers as well as authors of their own works. They attempted
reduplication of life into works, works into life. This attempt
ought to be taken seriously as a part of their communication.
A new sense of the boundaries between Kierkegaard and the
‘two Wittgensteins’ would be a particularly appropriate
contribution to the study of these two figures. Some of the most
important objects of dissolution or reinterpretation for both
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are boundaries of various kinds.
This is one area in which the transition from the factual to the
conceptual has great impact. Factual boundaries do not seem
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F.
Pears and B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, sec.
5.62: ‘der Sprache, die allein ich verstehe.’ In this context, arguments
over the appropriate translation – ‘the only language which I
understand,’ ‘the language which I alone understand’ – appear
misplaced; both seem appropriate and necessary.
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NOW I CAN GO ON!
like good candidates for change. Conceptual boundaries are
much more fluid. This is not to say that they are arbitrary; they
are purposive, and purposes do not remain constant.
In fact, one individual may have multiple purposes at the
same time – for example, an absolute relation to the absolute
telos and a relative relation to relative ends. Both Kierkegaard
and Wittgenstein spoke of the boundaries between schemes of
thinking in ways which suggest that they conceived them as
fluid and capable of superimposition. {121}
This conception has many consequences for the study of
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, and for larger philosophical and
religious problems. The most immediate impact is that ‘stages
on life’s way,’ ‘language-games’ and ‘forms of life’ no longer
need be thought of as metaphysical constructs. All were first of
all heuristic or maieutic constructs. If they are to be accepted as
more broadly useful ways of grasping the world and thus have
continued life, they cannot be sclerosed into schemata of
distinct regions, permanently separated by quasi-physical
boundaries.
The implication of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein in two
general problems for philosophy and religion – fideism and
relativism – depends on the sclerotic understanding of these
constructs. The specific charge of fideism presupposes the
understanding of ‘reason’ – perhaps ‘factual’ reason – as a self-
contained system, which is opposable to the equally self-
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NOW I CAN GO ON!
contained system of ‘paradoxical religion.’ In this scheme, one
must be either a rational scientist or an irrational fideist.
The irony of this claim is that the very term ‘paradox’ implies
the holding fast of the collision between reason and non-reason.
In itself it denies the metaphysical boundary-scheme! It simply
claims that neither is sufficient when the task is life. Both are
essential, but in different ways corresponding to their different
possibilities. They are essential to the individual. If they were
not, the paradox would never arise.
A similar reminder is in order concerning the complaint of
relativism. This complaint is usually advanced by western
reason when it is frustrated by the inability to make adherents
of other worldviews hew instantly to its line. The complaint of
fideism is generalized into an accusation of general
invincibility, the possibility of cross-worldview understanding
is denied, and those who suggest validity for multiple self-
consistent systems are convicted of having no values.
This problem can be more productively understood in the
context of maieutic conceptual communication. Grasping the
multiplicity of language-games within societies which are
commonly understood as single units, and the participation of
individuals in various language-games, both synchronically
and diachronically, yields the beginning of a dissolution of the
‘problem’ of cultural relativism. The fact of participation in both
religion and reason by individuals is one example of this
multiplicity, as are such relatively simpler examples as the use
229
NOW I CAN GO ON!
of {122} computers (and the allied technical knowledge) in the
humanities. The idea of concentric accretions stands as a useful
corrective to the scientific idea of linear additions.
A central feature of this new pattern is the ‘task’ or ‘activity.’
The appropriateness of concepts depends on the context. So
noticing the point of actions becomes essential. There is a close
relation between meaning and usage.
The ‘absolutist’ scientific view can be undercut by recalling the
task-dependent multiple uses of such a simple term as ‘exact.’
Within one experiment, a scientist might note the duration of
neural impulses in milliseconds and the duration of resulting
activities in seconds. Neither standard of exactness would
prevent her from preparing a three-minute egg using a
sandglass, or arriving for dinner ‘fashionably late.’ In each case
she might have gotten the timing ‘exactly right.’ Exactness is a
term of praise, and not a single standard. 3
The appropriateness of concepts for their contexts (which is
itself a thoroughly complex notion) can profitably be extended
from such simple examples to complex social phenomena such
as religion and even magic. Schemes of this sort – like the
scientific project of ‘understanding’ – propose tasks and
concepts of an overarching importance. But at this level too, the
3 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., sec.
88.
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NOW I CAN GO ON!
meaning of one’s task can only become clear in the use made of
it.
*
It is difficult to separate recommendations aimed at
philosophers from the other aspects of the two authors’ work.
This difficulty is true to the multi-layered and recursive nature
of their task. But one possible line for extension of the present
study might be suggested.
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein have attempted to re-
conceptualize the appropriateness of certain activities for
religious writers and philosophers, and their respective
audiences. This new proposal opens up a connection between
the two fields which may easily be productive for both. It
remains for the connection to be continued by other writers,
and appropriated by their audiences. Such a continuation in the
conceptual spirit would be viewed as a success (or at least a
non-failure) by each. At a minimum, they might hope that the
friction between philosophical and religious thought could
produce new insights. But this possibility can only come to
fruition through an appreciation for the importance of several
concepts common to the two authorships. {123}
The potential in this connection derives from the possibility of
transition between two conceptual schemes. The chance to see
the world differently is an important step on the road to seeing
the world aright.
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NOW I CAN GO ON!
In such a transitional situation it would be inappropriate to
demand objective conformity to established rules. The point of
making connections between these two games lies precisely in
the opportunity offered to reexamine the rules of each. In such a
vulnerable situation, the emphasis must be on ‘good will.’
What here supplements rule-following and requires the
exercise of good will is the process which Wittgenstein called
‘going on.’ The potential to make various connections between
various ideas is not even latent until it has been actively tested.
Most importantly, this entire process of connection is radically
dependent on the perceptions and other deeds of individual
existing human beings. Transitions can only be made by people;
good will is a personal mode; only individuals can go on. Even
one system is lifeless without active application. Surely the
juxtaposition of two games can be made clear only if it has been
made in the first place. ‘Only in the stream of thought and life
do words have meaning.’ This is not a limitation of systems, but
an invitation to life.
*
The hopes of this attempt to ‘go on’ in the way which
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein attempted and recommended are
summed up in a remark Wittgenstein made in conversation
with Drury: 4 ‘Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbuchlein,
“To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may
4 Drury, ‘Conversations,’ p. 182.
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NOW I CAN GO ON!
be benefited thereby.” That is what I would have liked to say
about my work.’
233
{124-142: Endnotes in Routledge edition}
{143}
Bibliography
Bibliographies
KIERKEGAARD
Himmelstrup, J., assisted by Birket-Smith, K. (1962) Søren Kierkegaard;
International Bibliographi, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag.
Hong, H. V., Hong, E. H., and Malantschuk, G. (1967-78) Bibliographies
in Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7 vols, ed. and trans. H. V.
Hong and E. H. Hong, with G. Malantschuk, Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press. General bibliography, 1:481-488; topical
bibliographies included in notes to each subject heading.
Lapointe, F. H. (1980) Søren Kierkegaard and His Critics: An International
Bibliography of Criticism, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
WITTGENSTEIN
Fann, K. T. (1967) ‘A Wittgenstein Bibliography,’ International
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{152}
Index
{Page numbers refer to the Routledge edition}
Abraham: 68, 70, 76, 78; absurd 116; process, 109-10, 135n49;
faith of, 83 right and wrong, 99, 101, 116;
Absolute Paradox: 45, 74, 102 subjective, 112, 113
Absolutism: 96, 122 Approximation-process: 109
Absurd: belief by virtue of, 65, 89; Artificial intelligence: 58, 62,
certainty, 83; and nonsense, 106 133n18
Adler, Adolph P.: 19, 25, 80, 107 Assembling reminders: 22, 33, 42,
Aesthetic: principle of 130n34. See also methods
interpretation, 28; stage, 37; Audience: 4, 18, 39, 44, 70, 122;
works, 26, 37, 40, 64, 74, 101, 103 includes speaker, 104. See also
Aesthetics: and ethics, 9, 13, 15, listener, reader, speaker,
80-82, 88, 103 Aufgehoben: 45. See also
Anxiety: 75-76; ethical, 81-82 transcendence
Application: of Kierkegaard, 52; Augustine: 11, 38, 93
of language, 59-60, 62; of Authority: 80. See also without
philosophy, 29; point of, for authority
therapies, 105, 115; of Authorships: 6, 29, 30, 35, 94, 103-
Wittgenstein, 52, 60, 67, 100; is 4; ‘essential’ and ‘premise,’ 80;
wrong picture, 52, 54. See also and life, 21; religious, 33, 37, 73-
extension 74, 106, 107; unity of, 74
Appropriate: continuation, 108,
120, 122; explanation, 64 Bartley III, W. W.: 14, 124n3,
Appropriation: 47, 66, 71, 87, 90, 127n61
95, 114-15, 122; existential, 101, Becoming: 65, 75
248
INDEX
Becoming Christian: 26-27, 37, 40, Certainty: action with, 64; against
48, 49, 67, 70, 98; Kierkegaard’s anxiety, 64, 66, 82, 83, 114;
problem, 1, 4, 33 source of, 96, 111; subjective,
Behaviorism: 57 109, 112, 119
Being: 65 Christ: imitation of, 68; as thief,
Belief: Christian, scientific, and 106
superstitious, 90-92; everyday, Christendom: 31, 33, 68, 70
76; historical, 76, 84; as mental Christian: life, 70, 106; message, 19
process, 46, 54; is obedience, 87; Christian Discourses: 19
proof not cause of, 90; systems Christianity: as activity, 68-70, 92;
of, 61; and understanding, 65; appropriation of, 74, 83, 86-88,
Wittgenstein and Christian, 84, 90, 91; communication of, 83, 98;
86; well-founded, 85, 91. See also historical claims of, 84; point of,
faith, passion 31, 44, 46; prayer in, 106; spirit
Believers: 60-61, 90-93; religious, of, 80
85, 89 Christians: by definition, 31, 33,
Blunder. See mistake 48; by earnestness, 68 {153}
‘Book on Adler’: 80, 128n69 Color: 81, 88
Boundaries, conceptual, 120-21; of Communication: of Christianity,
forms of life, 105; in language, 83, 98; existential, 98-99, 112. See
77-79, 113; transcending, 35, 77; also indirect communication
and ugly ditch, 33. See also limits Concentricity: 88, 109, 122
Bouwsma, O. K.: 18, 117 Concept of Anxiety: 99, 103
Brown Book: 10 Concept of Irony: 33, 43
Concepts: communication of, 119,
Causality: 90, 101, 102, 133n18; 121; historical development of,
nexus of, 91, 102 50; not well founded, 91;
Center: grasping at, 108-10. See religious, 86; words and, 62
also concentricity Conceptual scheme: 3, 54, 60, 115,
123
249
INDEX
Concluding Unscientific Postscript: ‘Diary of the Seducer’: 24, 37, 50,
16, 18, 19, 35, 64, 68, 70, 74, 98, 64
103, 135n49; as parody of Hegel, Dissolution: 54, 93-95, 120, 121.
65-66; as philosophy, 37, 66-67 See also solution
Conformity: of actions to words, Double Reflection: 28, 47
68, 70; objective, to truth, 114; Doubt: 55-56, 60, 76; as
objective, to rules, 123 grammatical misunderstanding,
Conscience: 87, 92 87; inability to, 114; negation of,
Consequences: of actions, 66, 82, 112, 114
83; conceptual, of ethics, 82; of Drury, Maurice O’C.: 15, 18
forms of life, 112
Context: 45, 52, 56, 60, 68, 74, 81, Edification: 82, 99
84, 122; appropriate, 50, 122; of a Edifying Discourses: 22, 24, 26, 30,
task, 98 37, 48, 68, 103-4
Conversion: 60, 61, 63, 72 Either/Or: 17-19, 24, 26, 62, 81, 88,
Corrective: 3, 5, 6, 33, 42, 122; in 100, 103, 105, 109. See also ‘Diary
Wittgenstein, 34 of the Seducer’
Culture and Value: 19, 73, 86, 95 Elucidations: 32, 36, 44, 71
Engelmann, Paul: 14, 16
Deeds: 67, 71; foundational, 60, 64; Epistemology: 52
grammar of, 105; language as, Error: 56; starting with, 37. See also
60, 62, 107; require doers, 34, 63- mistake
64, 134n38; words and, 69, Essence: 108; and grammar, 78; of
136n69, 141n26 religion, 78, 86, 93
Definitions, incomplete: 34, 59 Ethical: dimension of life, 34, 111-
Depth: 43-44. See also grammar 14; stage, 103; teleological
Dialectic, existential: 75 suspension of, 78; willing, 82
Dialectical: tension, 48, 89, 117; Ethics: 15, 39, 76-82, 92, 94, 96;
thought, 3, 70, 71 absolute standard of, 81, 96; and
aesthetics, 9, 13, 15, 80-82, 88,
250
INDEX
103; is conceptual, 82; abusing grammar, 65; systems of
consequences of, 82; free measurement, 84; talking lion,
acceptance of, 95; general, 52; 90; tapestry, 77; toothache, 54,
normative, 113; in the Tractatus, 102; translation, 62; trisecting an
41 angle, 102; ventriloquism, 67-68;
Examples: westerner and primitive society,
Intermediate, 42, 44, 106 60; young Hegelians, 97
Misleading, 11, 107 Using, 2, 5, 6, 11, 44, 45, 50, 59, 93,
Used in text: alchemy, 101-2; 106, 107
Alyusha Karamazov, 12; Wittgenstein family and, 11
authors’ lives, 26, 29; beetle in Existentialism, and Kierkegaard, 2
the box, 57; brothers (Matthew
Explanations: end somewhere, 56-
21:28-31), 69; Christian cannibals,
57, 64, 71, 76, 89; limits of, 34, 52,
83; chess, 63; civil law, 60;
58
computer, 58; Copernican
revolution, 59; coronation, 83; Explication: 3, 76
crossword, 44; devotional Extension (of Kierkegaard and
address, 30, 47, 99, 114; Wittgenstein): 53, 72, 98-99, 122-
dissolving a spring, 54; drill 23; authors’ position on, 98; by
sergeant, 99; duck-rabbit, 81; family resemblance, 97; in the
Evans-Pritchard and Leach, 61; spirit, 98, 115; requires personal
everyday language, 43; games, involvement, 98; through
43, God’s speech, 75; golden reduplication, 99-100
helmet, 81; hausgewordene Logik,
14-15, 29; hurricane, 11; Job, 68; Facts: appropriation of, 93, 95,
Knight of Faith, 82; Last 110-11; foundational, 87;
Judgement, 85-86; madman, 90, historical, 76, 84; {154}
110; memory, 62; mirror, 45-46; propositional, 61, 81;
music, 62; Nuer at Oxford, 61;
perspicuous connection of, 42,
optical illusion, 45; railway
47, 110, 120; as results, 110, 119
terms, 31; showing objects, 55;
sign for sale, 100; statements
251
INDEX
Faith: as action, 83, 93; and Genius: 21, 26, 49, 80; and apostle,
certainty, 66; everyday, 76, 111; 26
‘how’ of, 74, 114; leap of, 35, 103; God: love of, 69; as postulate, 90;
as ‘organ of the historical,’ 87, proof of, 89-91, 95-96, 115;
111; personal, 20, 74-75, 114; relation to, 82
perspective of, 45, 95; and Going further: 103, 110. See also
waxing of possibilities, 82-83. See remain standing
also belief, passion Going on: 44, 52, 61, 62, 86, 87,
Family resemblance: 9, 31, 44, 86, 102, 104, 108-10, 120, 123
97, 104, 105, 133n18 Golden Bough: 38
Fear and Trembling: 24, 70, 82 Good will: 108-10, 123. See also
Ficker, Ludwig von: 14, 38, 75 spirit
Fideism: 51, 65-66, 72, 78, 83, 84, Grammar: 43-46, 57, 59, 91, 92;
94, 121 deep and surface, 43, 44, 54-55,
Finitude, problem of: 6, 44, 90 57, 83, 89, 105; Gospel, 46; of
Form of life: individual, 90; and love, 69; meaning of, 105,
language-games, 62-63, 64; 131n56; not metaphysical, 57;
meaning of, 58-60; not physical, 46, 105;
metaphysical, 59, 121; religion subject/predicate, 107; theology
as, 87; scope of, 60, 87-88, 105, as, 59, 73, 79, 116
115, 121, 134n30; as social, 53. See Grammatical: construction, 107;
also language-games, distinction, 36;
worldviews misunderstanding, 43, 62-63, 87;
Frazer, J. G.: 38, 50 reminders, 59, 69, 70 ,80;
Frege, Gottlob: 38 similarity, 55, 91; takes place of
Freud, Sigmund: 50, 133n28 ‘transcendental,’ 79; task, 80
Grasping: 86, 87, 94; at center or
Galtonian photograph: 10, 29, 36, periphery, 108-10; of usage, 3
50, 53
252
INDEX
Happy man: 82, 83, 95. See also Intent: 59, 102; universal, 112-13
Knight of Faith Intermediate links: 42, 44, 106
Hermeneutics: 115-16 Interpretation: 63, 71, 96;
Hilmy, S. Steven: 58 biographical, 21-23, 28; of
Holding fast: 85-87, 92, 103, 121. dreams and jokes, 50; of
See also standing fast Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein,
Holmer, Paul L.: 34-37 52-54, 58-59, 63-65, 89; of
Human being: 9, 85, 123 phenomena, 45, 50, 81, 110, 111,
Humor: 42-43. See also jokes 120; principle of, 52-53; of rules,
Hypertext: 51 63-64; of traditions, 50, 61
Investigations: conceptual, 54, 58,
Imitation of Christ: 68 76, 82, 104, 105, 119, 120, 119-23;
Inclosing reserve: 23-26 factual, 54, 55, 58, 76, 104, 119;
Indirect communication: 36, 46-50, historical, 61; psychological, 44,
65, 127n55; of art, 40; as common 101
method, 2-4, 119; Kierkegaard’s Inwardness: is objectivity, 114; not
life as, 27; in Wittgenstein, 40-42. properly hidden, 69, 136n62
See also methods Irony: 27, 33, 36, 40, 42-43, 49, 68
Individual: 6, 29, 33, 47, 48, 52, 54, Irrationalism: 51, 64-65, 121
57, 58, 63-64, 120, 121, 123;
address to, 29, 52, 75, 103, 105; Jesus, historical existence of: 84
appropriation, 88-90, 113; Job: 68
biographical root of, 22, 24-25; Jokes: interpretation of, 50;
instantiates language-games, philosophy through, 43, 131n50
117; reader, 112-13; Judge for Yourselves!: 106
reduplication, 69-72, 116; Judge William: 18, 81, 88
responsible, 99; self, 49, 117; Justification: of attitude, 90;
subjectivity, 111-17; task of, 114. personal, 114; of use, 56, 60; of
See also methods method, 70
Infinite Resignation: 26
253
INDEX
Kerr, Fergus: 88, 131n52 Knight of Faith: 82, 88, 103, 117,
Kierkegaard, Michael (Søren’s 128n72, 128n80, 136n69. See also
father): 22-23; reference by happy man
Wittgenstein, 17 Knowing: and being able, 42, 44,
Kierkegaard, Søren: See also 46; factual, 108, 110, 115;
individual works grammar of, 44, 105; how and
Biography: ‘attack on what, 99, 114; psychological
Christendom,’ 30, 101; reports of, 54-55
autobiography, 21-22; Divine Kuhn, Thomas: 115
Governance, 21, 27; engagement,
24, 25; genius, 21, 26; as Language: action as test of, 68-70,
psychologist, 44, 106; 99, 117; as activity, 59, 62;
melancholy, 22, 23, 26; mystical
bewitchment of thought by, 31;
experience, 25-26; obligation to
beyond, 76, 78, 79, 85; as cage,
God, 23, 27; private {155} nature,
76-78, 83, 88-89; as deed, 60, 105,
21; religious concern, 28; settled
life, 21; similarities with 107, 141n25; everyday, 43, 65;
Wittgenstein, 27-29; as ‘spy,’ 22; learning, 38; limits of, 17, 34;
theology student, 23 logic of, 40; practices of, 54, 58,
Divine Governance, 21, 27, 49 105; private, 53-58;
Journals, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30 psychological, 55, 57; of religion,
Life and literature, 21-22, 26, 27, 93; transcendence of, 35, 41, 71,
28; Michael Kierkegaard (father), 77-78; Wittgenstein and, 1, 2;
22-23; Regine Olsen, 22, 24, 25, world and, 41
128n72 Language-games: action of
Pseudonyms: Constantin playing, 62-63; as activity, 62,
Constantius, 27, 128n70; 117, 121; not metaphysical, 59,
Johannes Climacus, 35, 36, 46, 65, 62, 71, 88, 94, 121; not rule-
71, 126n34; Vigilius Haufniensis, governed, 62; not systematic, 59,
99
93; private language and, 55-58,
References by Wittgenstein, 16-20,
63; scope of, 58-62, 67, 88,
86, 95
254
INDEX
134n30; selection of, 96; as social, 32, 67, 109; of the world, 77, 78.
53; transcendence in, 34-35; See also boundaries
transition between, 63-64, 85, Listener: appeal to, 37, 40-42, 47;
113-14, 134n39, 139n76. See also role of, 99, 114. See also audience,
form of life, worldviews reader
Latency: 89, 92, 123, 135n49 Logic: 76, 79, 130n39; of language,
Leading: 37-39, 70-71 40; place of, 38-41; suspension of,
Leap of faith: 28, 35, 66, 78, 103, 78
114 Loos, Adolph: 14, 125n18
‘Lecture on Ethics’: 9-10, 77-80, 85, Love, fruits of: 69, 70
137n21 Lowrie, Walter: 18, 20-22, 26,
Lectures and Conversations on 127n55
Aesthetics, Psychology and
Religious Belief: 17, 73, 91 MacIntyre, Alasdair: 61, 67, 70,
Lessing, Gotthold E.: 33, 41, 66, 93 115, 117, 134n30
Life: as communication, 26, 29, 49; McKinnon, Alastair: 65
as despair, 105, 117; everyday, 3, Malantschuk, Gregor: 48
11, 43-45, 55, 56, 83, 88, 92, 99, Malcolm, Norman: 10, 11, 15, 16,
135n49; fruits of, 29, 69, 70; 18, 28, 43
reader’s, 99, 113, 120; stream of Manifest, making: 6, 82, 87
thought and, 50, 60, 69; as task, Meaning: as activity, 60; and
16-17, 28, 100, 110, 113, 117, 121; context, 70, 111; not consensual,
and works, 4, 6, 8, 9, 22, 24, 27- 60; in subject, 90; and usage, 122-
29, 74 23; is use, 50, 57, 133n16; of a
Limits: of explanation, 52; of word, 69-70, 84, 105, 106, 123
language, 17, 34, 66, 78, 88; not Mental: object, 55, 58, 102;
wrong, 109; of philosophy, 26, process, 55-56, 62-63, 102, 105,
27, 31, 34, 109; showing, 34-35; of 132n7; theater, 55
the task, 3, 21, 31-34; of thought, Metaphor: 11, 13, 139n76
255
INDEX
Metaphysics: error of, 54; incompleteness not, 34. See also
grammar not, 57; infinite regress error {156}
of, 110; of the Tractatus, 38, 76 Monasticism, medieval: 68
Methods: cloud intentions, 55; Moore, G. E.: 38, 101, 106
congruity of, 2-4, 28-29, 70-72, Muddles: 71, 100
97; diversity of, 39, 97, 100, 101, Mystical: 31, 73, 77, 79, 82, 88, 94;
103, 104; heuristic, 63, 66, 121; experience, 25, 26, 79, 85, 128n70;
innovation of, 97-98; of life, 88, 93
Kierkegaard, 2-4, 25, 64-65, 74; Mysticism: 17, 26, 136n72
maieutic, 25, 40, 66, 67, 71, 75,
116, 121, 130n42, 136n62; of Naming: of objects, 57, 59; private,
masks, 104, 118; of 56
metamorphoses, 104; not Nietzsche, Friedrich: 19, 104, 111,
systematic, 98, 102-4; of 114, 117, 139n84
Nietzsche, 104; of present work, Non-believers: 60, 85, 88, 93
4-6; reductive, 4, 50; synoptic, Nonsense: and the absurd, 65-66,
103, 105, 107; used and 106, 110; disguised and patent,
recommended, 3, 31, 35-37, 44, 43; Tractatus as, 71
135n43; of Wittgenstein, 2-4, 9,
63, 101-3, 107-9, 124n1, 128n6. Objectivity: 110, 114
See also assembling reminders, Objects: as foundational concept,
indirect communication 91, 93; grammar and, 79, 107;
individual particular purpose seeing of, 45-46; sensations not,
reduplication suggestiveness 54, 57, 79
task Olsen, Regine: 24, 25, 33, 48,
Miracles: 85, 86 128n72
Mirroring relation: 8, 16, 21, 37, On Certainty: 38, 112
41, 76-77
Mistake: 86, 96; begin with, 37-38; Pain-behavior: 54, 56, 57, 60
category-, 76, 80, 93;
256
INDEX
Paradox: essential, 110; scope of, of, 39, 49, 130n34; and the
78-79, 88-89, 92, 121; of thought, Tractatus, 32, 46, 79, 94, 130n44
32, 34; transformation of, 45; Philosophical Remarks: 108
uses of, 64-65, 67, 78. See also Philosophy: as activity, 11, 32, 62,
absolute paradox 92, 117; analytic, 2, 77, 105, 107;
Particular purpose: 4, 26, 33-34, desisting from, 94, 103, 109, 110,
37-38; of Tractatus, 38-39. See also 112; irony in, 33; limited scope
methods of, 31-34, 39, 42-43, 75, 78, 118;
Pascal, Blaise: 138n53 linguistic, 2, 60, 107; not a
Passion: 19, 20, 32, 86, 111-14. See doctrine, 19, 32, 34, 41, 92; not an
also belief, faith end, 100-1, 117; not
Pattern: Christ as, 68; of foundational, 104-5; of physical
interpretation, 5, 21, 30, 81, 95, science, 115; problems of, 42, 43,
122; Job as, 68. 46, 75; as recursive, 36-37; of
Personal involvement: 4, 5, 95, 98- religion, 95; as sickness, 42, 105;
99, 109, 112, 113, 123 sub specie aeterni, 35; synoptic,
Perspective: 28, 50, 93; of faith, 45, 103, 105, 107; systematic, 52, 99,
67, 78, 82, 83, 95, 106; shift in, 43, 101, 104, 109. See also methods
45, 82-83, 111, 115 ‘Philosophy’ (academic): 9, 12, 13,
Perspectivism: 115; not 15, 31, 52, 92
metaphysical, 111 Picture: 91; appeal to, 87, 107, 116;
Perspicuity: 42, 108, 109 application of, 45, 107
Perspicuous presentation: 2, 42, Picture theory: 76
45, 47, 120 Point of View for My Work as an
Philosophical Fragments: 17, 19, 37, Author, The: 21, 24, 26, 35-37, 40,
52, 65, 79, 103, 105, 111 73, 74, 77
Philosophical Investigations: 10, 31, Pointing: 36, 65, 89, 100; to
38, 44-47, 49, 51, 53-56, 59, 94, something, 76, 87, 88
105, 112, 130n39; purpose of, 47, Polanyi, Michael: 112, 114, 115
105; and religion, 73, 77-79; style
257
INDEX
Polemics: 26, 27, 33, 34, 42, 46, 48, Psychophysical parallelism: 58
50, 129n9 Purity of Heart: 47, 99
Positivism: 69, 111; logical, 54, 57,
69, 102, 108, 112, 117, 130n42, ‘Quidam’s Diary’: 24
132n3, 133n10; Wittgenstein and,
2 Rationality: criteria of, 61, 67;
Private: diary, 55; language, 53-56, everyday, 65-66, 114
60, 112; naming, 55-56 Reader: change in, 99, 106;
Private Language Argument: 53- finding, 39, 66; individual, 112-
58, 114; and public dimension, 13; involved, 42, 98-99, 47, 51; of
60; textual limits of, 53 Kierkegaard, 22, 24; task of, 72,
Problem: of the age, 33; of 119, 120. See also audience,
becoming Christian, 1, 48, 84, 99, listener
109; of evil, 95-96; existential, 6; Reason: 121; limits of, 3, 78-79, 83,
of finitude, 90; particular, 33-34, 102; and religion, 64-65, 76. See
38-39, 52, 63-64, 70, 94, 95; also understanding {157}
philosophical, 42, 46, 56, 109; Reasons: not new facts, 44-46;
vanishing of, 64, 82-84, 95. See come to an end, 58
also task Recursiveness: 6, 37, 122
Proof: as activity, 89-90; of eternal Reduplication: in life, 87, 89, 99,
truths, 66; geometrical, 36, 74, 90, 113-14, 120; in philosophy, 99,
102, 104; of God, 19, 41, 89-90, 100, 112, 113, 116; this work as,
95, 115; as justification of 4-5. See also methods
attitude, 90; seeing completeness Reflection: 27, 47, 99. See also
of, 89; of the soul, 17 double reflection
Propositions: analysis of Reification: 52, 53, 63
(Tractatus), 107; clarification of, Relation: to absolute telos and
32; as elucidations, 71; relative ends, 92, 120, 134n39; to
transcending, 41, 71 God, 82, 109; self as, 116, 117
Protractatus: 10
258
INDEX
Relativising: of factual Rules: 59, 62-63, 67, 70, 83;
understanding, 108-9, 113, 114; following, 67, 70, 123;
of philosophy, 117, 118 interpreting, 59, 63; theoretical,
Relativism: accusation of, 51, 61, 108; in transition, 59
64, 72, 87-88, 121; problem of, 41, Russell, Bertrand: 9, 13, 16-17, 38
58, 60, 64, 83, 96; of values, 41
Religion: as activity, 92; as beyond Saying: and showing, 2, 32, 34, 40,
world, 78; demand for action in, 41, 132n3. See also showing
69-70; grammar of, 59, 86; and Science: 91-93, 103;
language, 77-78, 83, 85; and communication of, 40, 42, 47;
reason, 64-65, 76; results of, 68- magic as, 50; physical, 108, 115;
70, 93; and science, 85, 86, 89, 92, roots of, 78; social, 60-64, 115,
93 117; teleological status of, 110;
Religious: commitment, 62, 86, 87; worldview of, 85-86, 122. See also
conversion, 61, 63; stage, 42, 99, understanding
103; task, 25-28 Secular humanism: 66-67
Religiousness: A, 26, 89; B, Seeing: active, 34; of aspects, 45-
128n72; paradoxical, 88; 46; in context, 50; as evaluation,
spontaneous, 89 81, 110; the world, 71, 116, 117
Remain standing: 103, 110, 117 Seeing aright: 39, 41, 71, 83, 93,
Remarks, grammatical: 59, 69, 107, 117, 123
113, 116 Seeing-as: 43-45, 50, 60, 62, 66, 89.
Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden See also latency
Bough’: 37 Self: grounded in God, 48, 91;
Reminders: 2-3, 34, 43, 59, 60, 70, relational, 116, 117;
79, 80, 81, 119. See also transcendent, 77, 117
suggestiveness Sensation: 43, 55-57; uncertainty
Repetition: 2, 24, 27, 103 about, 55
Results: 4, 5, 32, 35, 93, 97, 106, 119 Showing: 2, 4, 6, 67, 71; in
Riddle of life: 76, 90, 103 Christianity, 68-70, 79, 91; ethical
259
INDEX
and logical, 34; in philosophy, Stages of life: 64, 66, 67, 78, 88,
36, 40; and saying, 2, 32, 34, 40, 103, 112, 115, 121; not
41; in the Tractatus, 32, 40, 41, 79 metaphysical, 94
Sickness: 42, 105, 131n47 Stages on Life’s Way: 19, 24, 64, 66
Sickness Unto Death: 48, 103, 105 Standing fast: 87, 92, 130n39. See
Silence: 40 also holding fast
Simile: 36, 102; religion as failed, Stonborough, Margarete: 14, 15,
77 19
Situation: 43-46, 67, 68, 70; Style: appropriate, 39, 40, 42; and
existential, 35 content, 34-39, 44, 49; of
Skepticism: 76, 84 Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein,
Social: categories, 71; dimension, 28, 30, 130n34; of life, 28; of
54, 58, 114, 123; science, 60-64, philosophy, 10, 18, 50, 53, 97,
115, 117 105, 118
Society: 53, 121 Subject: individual, 51, 53, 54, 64,
Socrates: 10, 27, 33, 49 76; experience of, 35, 40; not
Solipsism: 116, 117 metaphysical, 116
Solution: 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 90, 94; Subjective: truth as, 33, 109, 114;
definitive, 5, 103. See also appropriation, 87, 109, 112;
dissolution thinker, 34, 45, 66, 116;
Speaker: 4, 39, 68, 99, 104, 112. See interpretation, 110-11
also audience Subjectivism: 64, 70, 111-12
Spirit: of Christianity, 80; Subjectivity: 54, 58, 64, 71; and
conceptual, 122; new, of objectivity, 74, 90; and
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, 5, subjectivism, 111-12; is truth, 114
98-99, 108, 110, 115, 116; of Suggestiveness: 4, 6, 50, 59, 116;
Western science, 110, 117. See incompleteness as, 34. See also
also good will methods, reminders
‘Spy in a higher service’: 22, 26, Superstition: 91, 92
27, 68
260
INDEX
System: crystalline, 46; existential, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
35, 63; religion not, 83, 93; drafting of, 10, 13, 39, 49, 130n31,
‘stages’ as, 42, 64, 66; static, 60, 141n36; ethics in, 41; and later
62-64; Tractatus as, 38-39 {158} works, 20, 30-32, 34-35, 46, 77,
79-80, 94, 101-3, 116, 120, 130n44;
Task: 32-35, 46-50, 114-17, 119-22; metaphysics of, 38, 76; as
biographical, 5, 8, 22, 27; of nonsense, 71, 130n42; purpose
‘Book on Adler,’ 80; of, 38-41, 47, 51; showing in, 32,
Kierkegaard’s, 4, 8, 23, 25, 27, 73, 40, 41, 79; as system, 38-39; view
75, 79, 80, 89, 101; life as, 16, 28, of religion, 75-77, 88
98, 100, 116, 121; philosophical, Training in Christianity: 19
4, 100, 103, 116, 119; of present Transcendence: of language, 41,
work, 4, 22, 27, 98, 115; 71, 77; philosophical and
Wittgenstein’s, 6, 8, 75, 79, 103, faithful, 35
109, 128n80. See also methods, Transcendental: 76, 78, 81;
problem ‘grammatical’ replaces, 79; logic
Technique: 36, 39, 43, 44 and ethics are, 41
Theodicy: 95-97 Transitions: personal, 123;
Theology: 112; extent of, 115; as problems of, 85, 89, 92, 114;
grammar, 59, 73, 79; via negativa stress on, 3, 42-43, 50, 64
in, 129n29 Truth: by appropriation-process,
Theories: as facts, 119; reifying, 109; by approximation-process,
52-53; as results, 78, 119, 120 109-10; dialectical, 99; as error,
Therapies: 3, 42, 52, 103-5, 106, 139n84; Eternal Essential, 84,
120; application of, 105, 115 109; of history, 41, 66; subjective,
Theses: 2, 42, 47, 65 33, 109, 114; for me, 112
Thiselton, Anthony: 115, 116 Two Ages: 19
Thomas Aquinas: 115
Through the Looking-Glass: 62, 63, Understanding: mystical, 82;
131n50 relativising of, 104, 108-11; and
261
INDEX
religion, 64-65, 70, 72, 78, 80; 12-13, 20; Lord’s Prayer, 15; at
synoptic, 5, 42, 44-46, 81, 86, 89, monasteries, 13-14, 17; moral
91, 95; theoretical, 3, 32, 39, 61, sense, 9-16, 18, 20, 29; music, 12,
67, 78, 85, 90, 93, 98-99, 104-5, 62; as ‘mystic,’ 17; ‘possibility of
110, 113. See also reason religion,’ 15, 134n34; private
Usage: 2-3, 43, 45, 55-59, 69-70; nature, 9, 21; schoolteacher, 11,
13, 14; similarities with
meaning and, 122-23, 133n16
Kierkegaard, 27-29; technical
Use: 56-58, 79, 77
interests, 9; wartime service, 13,
16
Vanishing of problems: 64, 82-84, Direct references to Kierkegaard,
95 16-20, 86, 95
Verification: 55, 57, 69, 130n42 Life and literature, 8, 11-16, 28, 29,
74; aphoristic nature, 8; disdain
Waxing of the world: 82, 83, 117. for philosophy, 9, 12; sewing
See also perspective of faith jargon, 100
Well-foundedness: 66, 86, 91, Notebooks, 8, 10, 16, 22, 39, 49,
135n49 141n36; as source for extension,
Will: 32, 87. See also good will 31
Will to power: 111, 114 Reading, 11-12, 15, 17, 19, 50, 123,
Winch, Peter: 58, 134n30 126n32, 126n41, 133n28
Without authority: 6, 22, 25-27, 29, Relation of early and late periods,
49, 50, 80, 138n26 30, 78, 79
Religious concerns, 15, 19-20, 28,
Wittgenstein, Hermine: 11-14
74-75, 78, 94
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: See also
Wonder at the world, 26, 75, 76;
individual works
ethical, 81
Biography: as architect, 14-15; in
Cambridge, 8, 9, 13, 17, 18; Works of Love: 18, 69, 70
classroom style, 10-11; culture, Worldviews: relations between,
12; episodic life, 8; exactitude, 14, 53, 85, 88, 94, 96; transitions
16, last words, 15-16; lifestyle,
262
INDEX
between, 61, 111, 121. See also
form of life, language-games
Zettel: 57, 58, 73, 135n49
263