Religions, Epistemic Isolation, and Social Trust

Abstract

Over the last two decades, scholarship on Wittgenstein has progressed significantly. Wittgenstein’s compelling life story has received thorough study across book-length biographies as well as essay collections. Volumes exploring Wittgenstein’s connections with and possible contributions to areas as varied as political philosophy, feminist philosophy, literary theory, and ethics have joined more traditional studies of Wittgenstein’s import for topics in logic and the philosophy of language. During this same period, disputes over how best to interpret Wittgenstein’s varied philosophical corpus have persisted. So-called traditional and resolute readers have debated one another over how seriously to interpret Wittgenstein’s famous remark near the conclusion of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: ‘6.54: 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’ (Wittgenstein, 2001, p. 88). One result of this dispute has been very close study of Wittgenstein’s corpus, this during a time in which numerous texts from his Nachlass as well as other sources have become more widely available, either through electronic media or traditional publication. Because of these developments, it is a time ripe with potential for exploring the insights Wittgenstein’s work might bring to problems in disparate areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of religion.