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Wittgenstein and the Majesty of Death
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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Frazer begins his work The Golden Bough with a brief treatment of the priesthood at the sanctuary of Diana at Nemi in classical times, concentrating on the rule of succession: ‘A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he himself was slain by a stronger or a craftier.” Frazer is apparently troubled by this rite, finding it so bizarre and difficult to understand that it calls for clarification at a deep level. This is surely an understandable reaction. The rite is bizarre and repugnant, and provokes the questions: How could such a practice have arisen? How could people have lived like this and done these things? Though he does not say so explicitly, it seems to be such questions that send Frazer off in search of an explanation, a search that will take him several volumes and hundreds of pages. When he sets out to find an explanation of the rite of Nemi, Frazer thinks above all in terms of constructing a hypothesis as to the historical origins of the rite. An important stage in this process is to link the rite with other practices, particularly ones which depend on magical beliefs. These magical beliefs are in turn explained as primitive scientific hypotheses. Since we are familiar with the idea of a scientific hypothesis, understanding magical beliefs as primitive scientific hypotheses makes it readily intelligible to us why people in less advanced societies should have held such beliefs.
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- Copyright © 2001 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Frazer, G., The Golden Bough, London, Macmillan, second edition, 1900, VOl.1, p.2Google Scholar.
2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, translated by Miles, A. C. and revised by Rush Rhees, Retford, Brynmill, 1979.Google Scholar
3 ?or evolution [translator's note]
4 ?or evolution [translator's note]
5 Drury records an occasion on which he suffered similar criticism from Wittgenstein. During a discussion of The Brothers Karamazov occurred the following exchange: DRURY: I thought the incident where a man murders a woman because she has chosen another man for her lover rather far‐fetched. WITGENSTEIN: You don't understand anything at all. You know nothing about these matters. DRURY: I suppose that is just my narrowness. WITGENSTEIN: [now much more sympathetically] Narrowness won't matter as long as you know that you are narrow. ('Conversations with Wittgenstein, in Rhees, Rush, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford, OUP, 1984, p. 108Google Scholar.
6 His procedure here is analogous to that which he attributes to Freud in the Lectures on Aesthetics: Freud wrote about jokes. You might call the explanation Freud gives a causal explanation. ‘If it is not causal, how do you know it's correct?’ You say: ‘Yes, that's right.’ Freud transforms the joke into a different form which is recognized by us as an expression of the chain of ideas which led us from one end to another of a joke. An entirely new account of correct explanation. Not one agreeing with experience, but one accepted. You have to give the explanation that is accepted. This is the whole point of the explanation. (in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief; Oxford, Blackwell, 1966, p. 18Google Scholar). Similarly, Wittgenstein's explanation of the rite of Nemi (though he rejects the word ‘explanation’ in this context) by introducing the phrase ‘the majesty of death’ is not one agreeing with experience; this phrase simply seems right to him; it satisfies him.
7 Wittgenstein is in any case quite clear that there is a lot we do not know about the religious people of past ages, and that this puts a limit on our understanding of them M. O'C. Drury reports that in one of his conversations with Wittgenstein he criticized the Desert Fathers: I said something to the effect that they might have made better use of their lives—rather than, for example, the extreme asceticism of St Simeon Stylites. WIIITGENSTEIN: That's just the sort of stupid remark an English parson would make; how can you know what their problems were in those days and what they had to do about them? (Drury, M. OC., ‘Conversations with Wittgenstein’, in Rhees, Rush, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford, OUP, 1984, p.1 13.)Google Scholar Why does Wittgenstein have such a low view of English parsons?
8 The idea that explanations and reasons come to an end, that ultimately we simply act as we do, is a well‐known theme in Wittgenstein; see, for example, Philosophical Investigations, 0 1. Here he puts it to use to counter a desire for explanation. Another place where he does the same thing is in the Lectures on Aesthetics. He refers to a scene in Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe in which the children imprison a live fly in the head of a doll, bury the doll and run away. Then, in parentheses: ‘Why do we do this sort of thing? This is the sort of thing we do do’(Lectures and Conversations, p.25).
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