Ars Disputandi

Volume 7 (2007)
issN: 15665399
William Brenner
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Wittgensteinian Fideism?
By Kai Nielsen and D.Z. Phillips
London: SCM Press, 2005; 383 pp.; pb. 35.00; isnN:
9780334040057.
[1]
This book is recommended both to philosophers of religion, most of
whom have marginalized Wittgensteinian contributions to their subject, and to
students of Wittgenstein, who will appreciate Phillips account of why the deistic
position Nielsen attributes to Wittgenstein isnt really Wittgensteinian.
[2]
Most chapters are papers preparedby the authors for the 2003 Claremont
Conference onthe Philosophy of Religion. There are also a fewreprints, beginning
with the 1967 paper in which Nielsen coined the term Wittgensteinian deism
(WF for short). In addition, there is a helpful introduction by Bla Szabados and
critiques by Nancy Bauer and Stephen Mulhall.
[3]
Central to WFis the distinction, familiar fromCarnap, betweencriticisms
that can be made within a framework and the framework itself, which is immune
from fundamental criticism. Accepting this distinction, WF concludes that a
religious framework is as immune to criticismas any other. Aframework consists
in framework beliefs embedded in what Wittgensteinians call "forms of life.
The basic problem with this, according to Nielsen, is that There are no forms of
life . . . that are forever and that in any context are just given and must just be
accepted. . . . And with this WF collapses (p. 328). Phillips agrees with this but
argues that the Carnapian distinction on which WF depends is not the considered
view of Wittgenstein or of the Wittgensteinians Nielsen targets. Phillips explains
that what is basic in a form of life is our practice: Wittgensteins radical position
calls into question the sharp distinction between the logical and the factual. It is
not, as Nielsen thinks, that the questions make sense, but for pragmatic purposes
are not asked, but that in practice, certain questions and responses simply do not
arise, and we wouldnt call them, say, doubting, if they did. . . . Wittgenstein
allows for a uid change of circumstances in which what was not questioned
is questioned, but the circumstances are never . . . completely open-ended in
the way Nielsen suggests (p. 360). [T]he claim that, in certain circumstances
questions simply do not arise, in no way depends on holding, as Nielsen thinks it
does, a distinction between framework and other kinds of belief (p. 359).
[4]
Disavowing WF, Phillips sums up his philosophy of religion as follows:
[A]fter perspicuous representations have been given, religious beliefs may turn
out to be metaphysical confusions, superstitions, examples of a magical view of
signs, creators of harm, and contradictions of science and history. . . . [A]t any
time religion is a mixed bag. . . . Further, in the case of religious beliefs that are
c May 31, 2007, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:
William Brenner, Review of Wittgensteinian Fideism?, Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 7 (2007), para-
graph number.
William Brenner: Review of Wittgensteinian Fideism?
not confused, there can still be external criticisms of them, for example, the kind
of criticism made by Nietzsche (p. 368). Unlike Nielsen, Phillips is not prepared
to say that religious beliefs must involve metaphysical confusions. This appears
to be their most stubborn point of contention.
[5]
Nielsen thinks that the only alternative to traditional, metaphysical ac-
counts of religious belief is being able to see such belief as a passionate orientation
of ones life (p. 323). Phillips agrees that if there is no God (or other spiritual
reality) as the object of this passionate orientation, it is a secular or worldly rather
than religious or spiritual way of living and assessing life. What he denies is that
the object of the believers orientation must be construed on the model of object
and designation, as something just like a visible, natural objectexcept that it
is invisible and supernatural. Every object of belief is not an object. . . [T]he
existence of God is . . . the element in which believers live, move and have their
being (p. 370) When the Israelites came out Egypt, they are said to have traveled
as people who had seen the invisible. What does that mean? . . . The invisible
refers to the things of the spirit. To travel in that spirit, for a believer, is to travel
with God, for God is Spirit. It is that element in which believers live, move, and
have their being (p. 221).
[6]
Phillips, following Wittgenstein, appears to think of religious belief
(when unconfused and not superstitious) as an extension of ethics rather than of
natural scienceas meta-morals rather than meta-physics. But he denies that he
or Wittgenstein is reducing religion to anything: When Wittgenstein says, in his
Notebooks, to pray is to think about the meaning of life . . . [I]t cannot be said
[however, pace Nielsen] that Wittgenstein is trying to reduce prayer to something
else called the meaning of life. Rather, Wittgenstein is showing . . . that in
the language of prayer we are oered a language in which to understand the
whole of life. To pray is one form of recognition that life is a gift of the gods or
God (pp. 28788). At this point Nielsen would say that prayer obviously has a
metaphysical (if not anthropomorphic) presupposition, namely the existence of
God or gods. Phillips, in reply, would say that it is only through understanding
spiritual practices such as prayer that we understandwhat believing in the reality
of God or the gods amounts to. The following Wittgensteinian analogy may be
helpful here: it is only through understanding the various practices involved in
human relations that we come to understand what believing in the reality of
other minds amounts to. In neither case do we need to get behind the practice
to its transcendent groundsome inaccessible and therefore otiose Beetle.
[7]
What makes a practice a spiritual practice? While Nielsen seems to want
a denition (in terms of the sort of beliefs it presupposes), Phillips only provides
examples. It is at this point, laments Phillips, that we come to the real problem
in my dispute with Nielsen. When I provide the elucidations he rightly demands,
providing example after example in my work, Nielsen fails to see any sense in
them, though plenty of [other] nonbelievers do. Phillips and Nielsen may now,
after their long discussion, be fairly close intheir viewof Wittgensteiniandeism,
they are still far apart on the role of examples in philosophy of religion: [W]hen
I provide religious examples, drawing on the power of literature, Nielsen says
Ars Disputandi 7 (2007), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org
William Brenner: Review of Wittgensteinian Fideism?
that they do no philosophical work. There is no denying the enormity of this
diculty (p. 349).
[8]
In previous proceedings of the Claremont Conference, there was usually
one or more sections in dialogue form by the coordinator, D. Z. Phillips, entitled
Voices in Discussion. Its a pity that no one was found take over the dicult but
valuable task of providing a similar dialectical overview for this volume.
Ars Disputandi 7 (2007), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org