Wittgenstein undoes Lutheran doctrine-olotry

I've been on a bit of a philosophical pilgrimage the last month or so into the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.  He is one of those great paradoxes in that most recognize him as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century yet most don't have any idea what he said, let alone what it meant.  I've been mucking around behind a few theologians I admire (Rowan Williams, Fergus Kerr) to understand their common mentor Donald MacKinnon. One of MacKinnon's key issues was epistemology and the debates between realism and idealism.  MacKinnon was, it turns out, was influenced by Wittgenstein and encouraged Kerr to read him leading to Kerr's excellent book Theology after Wittgenstein.  So since Christmas break I've been reading a book I've had for years but never read: Ray Monk's fantastic biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius.  I have grown in my admiration for this deeply troubled and brilliant man.  I'm especially interested in what I might describe as his practical bent in thinking generally and philosophy generally.  Here's a characteristic and punchy quote:

"What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausability about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious . . ." (In a letter to his friend Norman Malcolm)

This approach to thinking extended to his religious views, as well, and I would think ground a robust critique of (some) Lutheran tendencies to grasp after pure doctrine as our solid ground upon which to build our version of Christian life.  Here is is comment from the notes published as Culture and Value:

"I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless.  That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life). "

Yet despite this the paradox is that he remained a deeply religious person who could not bring himself to practice faith.  He could not pray; "it is as though my knees were stiff," he commented.  I feel myself being changed through this deepening study of W but I'm not altogether sure how, except that I know I have been drawn to his work over years, through many pointers including Charles Taylor and Pierre Bourdieu.  So while life goes on, I have this intellectual self-study going on that at every turn forces examination of the direction of my life.  More on this to come in this space.

Anon and peace,

Chris

Comments

[R Don Wright]

I am one of those people who have heard of Wittgenstein, but your quotes may be the first I've read by him.

I relish the paradox and tension between realism and idealism--often viewed as a crisis resulting in despair or delusion. I identify faith as the proper response and attitude; neither capitulating to despair and its concomitant nihilism, nor desperately swimming upstream against reality, like Quixote, dreaming the impossible dream.

The Old Adam's eternal temptation is to exceed himself, to be better than he judges himself to be (immoral, limited, mortal). Old Adam's motto is not unlike that of the Olympics: "Citius, Altius, Fortius." The Old Adam's motto is "castus," "infinitus," "aeternus" ("moral, unlimited, eternal").

The motto of faith is "God's power is manifest in my weakness. God's grace is sufficient for me." The prayer of the faithful--which Wittgenstein apparently found himself unable to pray--is not Lord, make me a better person than I am, but Reinhold Niebuhr (a realist par excellence): God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can do nothing about, the courage to change those things in my life than are in my power to change, and the wisdom to tell the difference.

[Mark Douglass]

Don't know if you've run across this in any of W.'s biographical info, Chris, but there's at least some evidence that he was on the (high-functioning) autism spectrum. My experience of his philosophy is that it lends itself to very concrete application - your quote above sums it up nicely.

Words, ideas, ideologies, theologies, philosophies, all fail. What matters is what you do with them in your context.

Looking forward to more of your musings! -md

[stephen]

I dabbled with Wittgenstein in my early days and even though I only understood it in part, it changed everything. I don't see how anyone who reads W can really come away unscathed . . .

[oscar macsweeny]

it is not coming to terms with this man's life that should shape and shake yur thoughts, beleifs, understanding of how the world turns around, but with his philosophy - that every idea is subtlely wrong, every thought distorted by the words we use for it, and every theory laughable. worries me how W can be used by all sorts to verify anything - but that was his point. he was wrong too, in a way.