A History of Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

The association of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion with fideism did not develop overnight. Today, this association proves quite strong, especially among philosophers who are not primarily Wittgenstein scholars. It is commonplace to find characterizations of fideism that identify Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion as exemplifying the category¹, just as it is common to see characterizations of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion that invoke the category of fideism². When Kai Nielsen first categorized Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion as fideistic (Nielsen, 1967), philosophy of religion influenced by Wittgenstein had been emerging in published and unpublished form for nearly a decade. By the time Nielsen used the term to classify what he saw as a movement, it seemed to many readers to name a real phenomenon in middle to late twentieth-century analytic philosophy of religion; thus the name ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ remains with us to the present day.