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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
The work of Ludwig Wittgenstein counts among the most significant philosophical influences on Gordon Kaufman's recent theology. Yet important convergences between Kaufman's theological worldview and Wittgenstein's philosophical teaching remain unexplored. In this essay I shall examine a number of such convergences connected with the concept of the human. The thought of Stanley Cavell will play a central role in the discussion. Kaufman shares with the skeptical Wittgenstein revealed in Cavell's writings an abiding concern with the ordinary in human life—for example, everyday language, the human body—but both are interested in this ordinariness as the locus of ineradicable mystery. A richly textured treatment of the ordinary (and mysterious) situation of face-to-face human encounter emerges when relevant passages of Wittgenstein's, Cavell's, and Kaufman's writings are compared. This article will develop some of the implications of this comparison that hold particular promise for theological anthropology. The orientation and concerns of the paper are thus primarily constructive.
1 By adopting Kaufman's concept of a “trajectory” of ideas, I mean to underscore the creative and constructive dimension of the reading I propose. To read Kaufman, Wittgenstein, and Cavell together, as I undertake to do here, is both to focus attention on shared insights embedded in these authors’ texts and carry the development of these ideas a modest step further, articulating them in a way not anticipated in any single source.
2 Kaufman, Gordon, An Essay on Theological Method (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1975) 11.Google Scholar See also idem, In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1993) 301–41Google Scholar.
3 See Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, §§ 124–33 (trans. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret; New York: Macmillan, 1968) 49–51.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., §116 (p. 48). See Stanley Cavell, “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture,” in idem, This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein (Albuquerque: Living Batch, 1989) 34-35.
5 Wittgenstein, Investigations, §109 (p. 47).
6 Kaufman, Essay, 3.
7 See especially the essays in Cavell, Stanley, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
8 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 109.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., 112.
10 Wittgenstein, Investigations, §§283-86 (pp. 97-98); §§536-37 (pp. 144-45); §539 (p. 145); II.iv. (p. 178).
11 Ibid., II.iv. (p. 178).
12 Beam, Gordon C. F., “Wittgenstein and the Uncanny,” Soundings 76 (1993) 39.Google Scholar
13 Wittgenstein, Investigations, II.iv. (p. 178).
14 Ibid., and compare the remark that “the face is the soul of the body.” Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and Value (ed. Wright, G. H. von; trans. Winch, Peter; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) 23Google Scholar.
15 Ibid., §286 (p. 98).
16 Ibid.
17 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 332.Google Scholar
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 333.
20 Ibid.
21 A comparison of Wittgenstein's and Kaufman's interpretations of the moral and theological dimensions of the face-to-face relation with the work of Emmanuel Levinas is fruitful. See in particular Levinas, Emmanuel, Difficile Liberté (Paris: Michel, 1976)Google Scholar ; idem, Humanisme de I'autre Aomme (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1972)Google Scholar ; idem, Totalite et Infini (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961)Google Scholar ; and the essays in Cohen, Richard A., ed., Face to Face with Levinas (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986)Google Scholar.
22 , Cavell, “Declining Decline,” 38.Google Scholar
23 , Wittgenstein, Investigations, II.iv. (p. 178).Google Scholar
24 , Cavell, “Declining Decline,” 37.Google Scholar
25 Stanley Cavell, “The Fantastic of Philosophy,” in idem. In Quest of the Ordinary, 186.
26 Stanley Cavell, “Being Odd, Getting Even (Descartes, Emerson, Poe),” in idem, In Quest of the Ordinary, 116.
27 Ibid., 138.
28 , Cavell, “Declining Decline,” 39.Google Scholar
29 , Cavell, “Being Odd,” 149.Google Scholar
30 Ibid., 106.
3 Ibid., 110.
32 Ibid.
33 Cavell, “The Uncanniness of the Ordinary,” in idem, In Quest of the Ordinary, 158.
34 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 60–64.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., 57.
36 Ibid., 333.
37 Kaufman, Gordon, Theology for a Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985) 47–63.Google Scholar I do not intend to claim that Kaufman has himself sought to present a fully elaborated treatment of the face as a theological symbol, or that he has been entirely systematic in his use of the image. My concern is to demonstrate that the face and related metaphors constitute a useful heuristic tool for approaching Kaufman's anthropology and understanding some of its constructive implications.
38 Endo, Shusaku, Silence (trans. Johnston, William; New York: Taplinger, 1976) 270–71Google Scholar , quoted in , Kaufman, Theology for a Nuclear Age, 48Google Scholar.
39 Ibid., 54, 52.
40 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 63.Google Scholar
41 , Cavell, “Fantastic of Philosophy,” 186.Google Scholar
42 See , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 163–75.Google Scholar
43 Ibid., 17.
44 Cavell's reading clashes with interpretations that have tended to give exclusive emphasis to the more conservative strands in Wittgenstein's later thought. While his view is sometimes idiosyncratic, Cavell has demonstrated in the text of the Investigations the presence of “voices” and dynamic complexities ignored by commentators who have been content to see Wittgenstein as simply conservative.
45 Cavell, Stanley, The Senses of Walden (San Francisco: North Point, 1987) 127.Google Scholar
46 , Cavell, “Declining Decline,” 39.Google Scholar
47 Ibid., 37.
48 Ibid.
49 , Cavell, “Being Odd,” 105, 111, 114.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., 111.
51 Cavell, Stanley, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 49.Google Scholar
52 , Cavell, Conditions, 59.Google Scholar
53 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 283–84.Google Scholar
54 , Kaufman, Theology for a Nuclear Age, 39.Google Scholar
55 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 173–74.Google Scholar
56 Ibid., 308.
57 Ibid., 318.
58 Ibid., 123-24.
59 , Kaufman, Theology for a Nuclear Age, 20.Google Scholar
60 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 5.Google Scholar
61 , Kaufman, Essay, 32.Google Scholar Wittgenstein seems to be making a similar point when he writes with reference to religious belief and practice: “The words you utter or what you think as you utter them are not what matters, as much as the difference they make at various points in your life” (quoted in Phillips, Dewi Zephaniah, Wittgenstein and Religion [New York: St. Martin's, 1993] 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar ). One can legitimately gloss this “difference at various points in life” with the idea of a change in orientation. The ability of a religion to effect such changes is of central importance, Wittgenstein suggests.
62 , Kaufman, Essay, 54–55.Google Scholar
63 Wittgenstein, Investigations, §123 (p. 49). Cavell remarks (“Declining Decline,” 36): “I am naturally attracted by the implication of the German here—Ich kenne mich nicht aus—that the issue is one of a loss of self-knowledge"; losing one's way in the world and losing one's self are inextricably linked aspects of the skeptical problematic with which Wittgenstein struggles.
64 , Cavell, “Declining Decline,” 36.Google Scholar
65 , Wittgenstein, Investigations, §116 (p. 48).Google Scholar
67 See in particular Kaufman's treatment of “Serendipitous Creativity” in In Face of Mystery, 264-80. Compare also idem. Essay, 17, where Kaufman suggests that the dynamic of an “open-ended questioning, always pushing on beyond what is presently known” animates human consciousness as such.
68 , Wittgenstein, Investigations, §124 (p. 49).Google Scholar
69 , Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, 79-102, 245–47.Google Scholar
70 , Cavell, “Declining Decline,” 43.Google Scholar
71 Ibid.
72 , Cavell, “Being Odd,” 118.Google Scholar
73 Ibid.
74 , Cavell, “The Uncanniness of the Ordinary,” 166.Google Scholar
75 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 57 (my emphasis).Google Scholar
76 Ibid., 60-61.
77 , Cavell, “Being Odd,” 118.Google Scholar
78 Ibid.
79 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 237–50.Google Scholar
80 Stanley Cavell, “The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy,” in idem, Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 72.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.
83 Ideas and practices “contribute to our further humanization” to the extent that they “augment [our] powers of creativity and freedom and the capacity to take responsibility for ourselves and our world” ( , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 309)Google Scholar.
84 , Wittgenstein, Investigations, §109 (p. 47).Google Scholar
85 , Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 237–50.Google Scholar
86 Malcolm, Norman has stated (Knowledge and Certainty [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1963] 119Google Scholar ) that “comforting a suffering person” represents a particularly appropriate example of the type of practice Wittgenstein wished to designate with the term “form of life” (quoted in Kerr, Fergus, Theology after Wittgenstein [London: Blackwell, 1986] 30)Google Scholar.
87 See, for example, Brock, Rita Nakashima, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroad, 1988)Google Scholar ; Harrison, Beverly with Robb, Carol, Making the Connections (Boston: Beacon, 1985)Google Scholar ; Heyward, Carter, Touching Our Strength (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989)Google Scholar ; Williams, Delores, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993)Google Scholar.
88 Among the numerous treatments of the topic, see in particular Incandela, Joseph M., “The Appropriation of Wittgenstein's Work by Philosophers of Religion: Towards a Re-evaluation and an End,” Rel 21 (1985) 457–74Google Scholar ; and , Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein, 28–52Google Scholar ; and , Phillips, Wittgenstein and Religion, xi-xii, 56-78, 79–102Google Scholar.