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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
While the resonances between classical Christian negative theology and the discourse of deconstruction have been explored for the last twenty years, there has been scant attention paid to the resonances between negative theology and the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. To be sure, theologians have shown much interest in Wittgenstein, but that interest often links Wittgenstein’s conception of forms of life to religious practice. Such writings have sought to view Wittgenstein in terms of philosophy of religion. In this essay, I am not concerned with Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion, but am interested in the connections between his writings on language and the view of language held in negative theology, specifically in the writings of the Pseudo-Denys. In the same way that Mark C.Taylor, John D.Caputo et al. see similar strategies at work in negative theology and in Jacques Derrida (specifically, the connection between apophasis and differance), I see similar strategies at work in Wittgenstein and Denys. I will argue that there are important points of intersection between the two, especially on the issues of the limits of reference in language, the necessity of communal understandings for meaning, and the view of the self within a community of shared practices and shared language.
One word of explanation before I continue. In making Denys and Wittgenstein interlocutors, I am not saying they were interested in the same things. Denys was concerned about liturgy and how liturgy does or dries not praise God properly, and Wittgenstein was interested in how language works and how proper use of language frees us from philosophical problems.
Thanks to Professor D.A. Turner, who helped guide this essay, and Mr M.J. Bullimore, who read over a late draft
1 Chesterton, G.K., Orthodoxy, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996), p. 31Google Scholar.
2 This work has been done largely in an American context, where Mark C. Taylor and John Caputo have sought to link Jacques Derrida’s writings with religion. Derrida has seen the connections himself. See especially Mark, C. Taylor, Erring a postmodern a/theology, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar, and About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). See also John, Caputo, The prayers and tears of Jacques Derrida: religion without religion, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997)Google Scholar and Radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). As for Derrida, see the collection of three of his essays in Jacques Derrida, On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995) and Harold, Coward and Toby, Foshay, editors, Derrida and Negative Theology, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
3 Thomas, A. Carlson, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 159Google Scholar.
4 Phillips, D.Z., Belief; Change and Forms of life, (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Ludwig Wittgenstein; Anscombe, G.E.M. and von Wright, G.H., editors, On Certainty, trans. by Denis, Paul and Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969)Google Scholar.
6 Phillips (as in n. 4). p. 28.
7 Pseudo-Dionysius, , The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 200Google Scholar, n.17.
8 Paul, Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols with the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), p. 117Google Scholar. I will be returning to the ‘less metaphysical’ reading of Denys in the section ‘Communal Understanding’ below.
9 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar.
10 Found in Pseudo-Dionysius (as in a. 7)
11 I will be explaining this return in further detail in the section ‘Social Self.’
12 I came to understand these points during a lecture Anna Williams gave in the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty on 27 January 2003. See especially EH 373C.
13 Conor, Cunningham, ‘Wittgenstein After Theology’, in John, Milbank, Catherine, Pickstock, and Graham, Ward, editors, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, (London: Routledge, 1999). p. 73Google Scholar.
14 Ludwig, Wittgenstein; von Wright, G.H., editor, Culture and Value, trans. By Peter, Winch (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980)Google Scholar.
15 Found in Pseudo-Dionysius (as in n. 7)
16 Fergus, Ken; Theology After Wittgenstein, 2nd edition. (London: SPCK, 1997), p. 65Google Scholar.
17 Ibid., p.69.
18 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. by Pears, D.F. and McGuinness, B.F. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974)Google Scholar.
19 Stanley, Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969), p.61Google Scholar.
20 Hans, Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume 2, trans. by Louth, A., McDonagh, F., McNeil, B. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1984). p. 165Google Scholar.
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