Wittgenstein and the justification of religious belief

Abstract

The thesis consists of seven chapters, the first six give an analysis of Wittgenstein's philosophy with the consequences this has for religious belief and Chapter Seven suggests an alternative to Wittgensteinianism. Chapter One shows that it is necessary to understand the cultural milieu of Vienna from 1900-1918 if the point of the Tractatus is to be grasped, which is the separation of the factual from the ethico-religious spheres. A brief exposition of the Tractatus is given in Chapter Two to show that Wittgenstein fulfilled his intention of justifying the factual/mystical distinction and how, on logical grounds, religious beliefs are relegated to the unsayable. Chapter Three unpacks Wittgenstein's two different doctrines of showing and argues that his first attempt to deal with religious beliefs as intuitions of the inexpressible is unacceptable. Chapter Four describes Wittgenstein's constructivist approach to philosophy and his mythological explanation of religion. This interpretation is also rejected on the grounds that it presupposes some form of conceptual relativism. Chapters Five and Six are concerned with Wittgenstein's third approach to religious belief. In Chapter Five Wittgenstein's later philosophy is described and evaluated. Chapter Six discusses Wittgenstein's lecture on religion and an exposition of Wittgensteinian Fideism is given. It is shown that this method of understanding religious belief is also inadequate. Having exposed the deficiencies of Fideism Chapter Seven argues that it is necessary to invoke a non-pictorial view of 'A religiously believes p' and shows that certain claims made by religious believers do refer to specifiable states of affairs and are testable. The conclusion is drawn that a proper understanding of religious belief implies that justification of such beliefs should be sought.