Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion

Abstract

It is now almost platitudinous to state that there is a profound reli­gious dimension to the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, this attribution of a religious quality may seem bizarre when one is confronted with his two masterpieces — Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations — which seem to have little application to life, let alone to affairs of the spirit. Yet Wittgenstein’s work became associated with religion when sympathetic philosophers applied his notions of ‘language-games’ and ‘forms of life’ to religious belief and practice. Closer attention to Wittgenstein’s philosophy (and how he perceived it) then revealed that much of his writing was conditioned by religious considerations. For instance, his correspondence with Paul Engelmann and Ludwig von Ficker regarding the contents of the Tractatus reveal his conviction that ‘the point of the book is ethical’ (Wittgenstein 1979a: 94). And there is good reason to think that he regarded his other works as such: for example, the foreword to the Philosophical Remarks states ‘This book is written to the glory of God’ (Wittgenstein 1975: 7).