Seeing-as and Religious Experience

Abstract

Much has been written during the last twenty years or so under the stimulus of Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion. Indeed we have in the writings of D. Z. Phillips and others what is often referred to as the neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, according to which religious language constitutes an essentially autonomous language-game’ with its own internal criteria of truth, immune to challenge or criticism from those who do not participate in that language-game. From a religious point of view it is an attractive feature of this position that it acknowledges the right of the believer to his/her beliefs and practices. On the other hand, however, in doing this it (in my view) cuts the heart out of that religious belief and practice. For the importance of religious beliefs to the believer lies ultimately in the assumption that they are substantially true references to the nature of reality; and the importance of religious practices to the practitioner lies in the assumption that through them one is renewing or deepening one’s relationship to the transcendent divine Reality. The cost, of course, of making such metaphysical claims in the secular world of today is that they inevitably provoke controversy; and a corresponding benefit of the contrary view is that such controversy is avoided.

Reprinted, with permission, from the Proceedings of the Eighth International Wittgenstein Symposium (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1984), held by the Österreichische Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft at Kirchberg-am-Wechsel, Austria, in August 1983.