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Ludwig Wittgenstein—A Religious Point of View? Thoughts on Norman Malcolm's Last Philosophical Project*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

William James Deangelis
William James Deangelis
Affiliation:
Northeastern University
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Extract

Do Wittgenstein's late philosophical writings represent a religious point of view? There is a good deal of evidence—including a number of Wittgenstein's own avowals—for an affirmative answer. Against this, there is the stark fact that Wittgenstein's late philosophical writings never directly discuss questions of God and religion. So, if they do represent a religious viewpoint, a correct account of it would, it seems, need to address subtleties and hidden tendencies. While a number of philosophical authors have offered such accounts, nothing resembling a consensus has so far emerged.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , Fall 1997 , pp. 819 - 842
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1997

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References

Notes

1 Rhees, Rush, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections (Totowa, NJ: Bowman and Littlefield, 1981), p. 94.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Engelmann, Paul, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), p. 74.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., pp. 76–77.

5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and Value, edited by von Wright, G. H. in collaboration with Heikki Nyman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), p. 27e.Google Scholar

6 Malcolm, Norman, Ludwig Wittgenstein—A Memoir, 2nd ed., with a biographical sketch by G. H. von Wright and Wittgenstein's letters to Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 93–94.Google Scholar

7 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 2e.

8 For example, see my “Wittgenstein and Spengler,” Dialogue, 33 (1994): 41–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar