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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
To talk of a logic of mysticism may sound distinctly odd. If anything, mysticism is alogical; it would be uncharitable if not false, on mature consideration, to call it illogical—though many, without due deliberation, might be tempted to use that term. Wittgenstein comes close to calling it illogical. In his lecture on ethics he draws attention to the logical oddity of statements of absolute value (Wittgenstein 1965). But he does not accuse the mystics or prophets or religious teachers of contradicting themselves or of invalid reasoning. What he accuses them of may be something worse, namely, talking nonsense, of not giving sense to the words they use or the expressions they utter. Russell (1921) and Ayer (1936) come to much the same conclusion but by a different route.
1 Translated in the Penguin edition by R. S. Pine—Coffin (Augustine 1961: 23): ‘Yet woe betide those who are silent about you! For even those who are most gifted with speech cannot find words to describe you.’
2 Particularly Die kirchliche Dogmatik. Barth is referred to (by name) at Wittgenstein 1980: 85.
3 Later Scholastics were to describe analogy as aequivocato e concilio, thus placing emphasis on the equivocal element.
4 Apologists such as Fr J. O' Hara (1931: 107–116).
5 Positivists such as Comte, Taine, the Vienna Circle, Ramsey, Ayer and, more recently, Kai Neilsen.