Introduction: On Reading Wittgenstein on Religion

What is it about?

Introduction to the Book: The approach to reading Wittgenstein on religion advanced in this book is a variation on the ethical-therapeutic interpretations developed by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond and Stephen Mulhall. This reading involves three movements that are spread across the seven chapters of the book. The first movement is the thorough application of an historicist epoché. The idea here is that sometimes longstanding presuppositions and questions can get in the way of understanding the aims of a text, especially when that text is historically or culturally distant from the reader. The second movement holds that Wittgenstein’s corpus is directed to a particular philosophical end; that end is a searching clarity or perspicuity. His concern for clarity of expression in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the place of language within the flow of human social life in later sources such as Philosophical Investigations exemplify this pursuit of what I term his ethic of perspicuity. The third movement is the reformulation of philosophical projects and problems through conversation with Wittgenstein’s texts. Through reading his texts Wittgenstein emerges as a philosophical conversation partner, much like Plato’s Socrates. What are the problems of philosophy of religion? The question is not to be read as ‘what are the classical problems?’ Instead, it is where is there conceptual confusion regarding religions?

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