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Truth and the “Religious Language-Game”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Patrick Sherry
Patrick Sherry
Affiliation:
Memorial University, Newfoundland.
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Extract

The publication of two new books by Professor D.Z. Phillips (2) provides a suitable opportunity to consider some recent attempts to apply Wittgenstein's philosophy to religious issues. I shall concentrate mainly on Phillips' work, with particular reference to his treatment of the question of religious truth, but I shall also discuss some other writers and topics.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 47 , Issue 179 , January 1972 , pp. 18 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1972

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References

1 I am very grateful to Professor D. M. MacKinnon for comments on two earlier drafts of this article.

2 Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London, 1970)Google Scholar

Death and Immortality (London, 1970)Google Scholar

I shall refer to these two works henceforth as FPE and DI respectively. I shall also refer to his The Concept of Prayer as CP, and to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as PI.

3 Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Bearing of his Philosophy upon Religious Belief (London, 1968), p. 69.Google Scholar

4 Speaking of God (New York, 1964), p. 75Google Scholar, Hordern also speaks of “personal” and “convictional” language games (pp. 152, 180), and of the “scientist's whole language-game” (p. 78).

5 Bell, R. H., “Wittgenstein and Descriptive Theology”, Religious Studies, 10, 1969, pp. 5, 12–14.Google Scholar

6 Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, V, 15Google Scholar. Blue and Brown Books, p. 81.Google Scholar

7 “Anselm's Ontological Arguments”, Philosophical Review, 1960, pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Hick, John, “Necessary Being”, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1961, p. 357.Google Scholar

9 See Hick, John (ed.), Faith and the Philosophers (London, 1964), p. 237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Stephen Toulmin, whom Phillips quotes, also uses this parallel when discussing the question of whether we can justify our ultimate moral principles. See An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 99–101, 160–3.Google Scholar

11 The Concept of a Person and other Essays (London, 1963), p. 18.Google Scholar

12 “Wittgensteinian Fideism”, Philosophy, 1967, pp. 206–208Google Scholar. Hudson, W. D. (op. cit., p. 68)Google Scholar makes a similar objection, using the parallel of belief in Santa Claus.

13 “Understanding a Primitive Society”, in Wilson, Bryan (ed.), Rationality (Oxford, 1970), pp. 83–4Google Scholar. All the papers in this volume are highly relevant to Winch's and Phillips' claim that religion has its own standards of rationality.

14 See, for example, Pole, David, The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein (London, 1958), pp. 53–7, 92–7.Google Scholar

15 See my paper “Is Religion a ‘Form of Life”?’, forthcoming in the American Philosophical Quarterly for 1972Google Scholar, for a rejection of the view that religion is a form of life; it may, however, embody forms of life (in the plural).

16 The Idea of a Social Science (London, 1958), pp. 100–2.Google Scholar

17 See Malcolm, Norman's “Memory and the Past”, in his Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1963), especially pp. 198–9Google Scholar, for a somewhat similar kind of argument.

18 See Urmson, J. O., “Some Questions concerning Validity”, in Flew, A. (ed.) Essays in Conceptual Analysis (London, 1956), pp. 120–133.Google Scholar

19 I think, however, that Toulmin is right to insist that not just any principle can be regarded as a moral principle, and that not just any argument constitutes a “good reason” in ethics, because morality, by its very nature, has certain limits. Unfortunately, however, he goes beyond such a purely functional analysis and advocates a species of Rule Utilitarianism.

20 I owe this neat suggestion to Blank, J., “Der johanneische Wahrheits-Begriff”Google Scholar (Biblische Zeitschrift, 1963, pp. 163–73Google Scholar). This article is very helpful in connecting St. John's concept of truth with his ideas on Revelation and the logos doctrine.

21 Motives, Rationales and Beliefs, Religious, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1966, pp. 111–13.Google Scholar

22 Questions of Religious Truth (London, 1967), pp. 76–7, 81, 68, 71–2.Google Scholar

23 Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (ed. Barrett, C., Oxford 1966), p. 55Google Scholar. Phillips does actually quote this passage in DI, p.76, to make the point that a believer and an atheist are not necessarily contradicting each other.

24 See Smart, Ninian, Philosophers and Religious Truth (2nd ed., London, 1969), pp. 177–81Google Scholar. It is worth noting here that it can be irrational to view something as a divine punishment: what if I were to recover speedily from my illness without repenting, and then continue happily in my sins? cf. Williams, Bernard “Tertullian's Paradox”Google Scholar (in Flew, and Maclntyre, , New Essays in Philosophical Theology, London, 1955), pp. 200–1Google Scholar for a similar example, that of a people regarding a famine as a punishment.

25 Theological Writings (ed. Chadwick, H., London, 1956), p. 54Google Scholar. Wittgenstein remarks that Christianity is founded on historical facts, but says that these are not ordinary historical facts, subject to doubt and empirical test; moreover, Christians “base enormous things on this evidence” (Lectures and Conversations, p. 58Google Scholar). His last comment invites the comment “Well, why shouldn't they?” After all, a single event may completely change a person's life, while history is full of single lives and indeed single events which have decisively affected the future of whole nations.

26 “Theology and Belief”, Theology Today, 10, 1965Google Scholar. See McLain, F. M. “Analysis, Metaphysics and Belief”, Religious Studies, 10, 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for criticisms of Holmer and others for their depreciation of metaphysics.

27 Wilson, Bryan, op. cit., pp. 92–3.Google Scholar

28 See note (16) for reference.