Wittgenstein’s Account of Religion as a Desire to Become a Different Man

Ivana Noble 

During one of the conversations with M. O'C. Drury about prayers, liturgies and ministry and their ability to carry on a Christian tradition Ludwig Wittgenstein stated:

'For all you and I can tell, the religion of the future will be without any priests or ministers ...we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church ...Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic; and by this I don't mean just going without food and drink.' (Drury, M.O'C., 'Conversations with Wittgenstein' in RW, 114)[i]

This comment Wittgenstein probably made in 1930 while lecturing in Cambridge, whose comfort filled him with restlessness and strengthened a desire to escape from the form of life Western civilisation offered to the middle class[ii]. Organized religion in this period was seen as a part of such a comfortable life that in Wittgenstein's eyes had nothing to do with the living God [iii] and ‘the consolation of belonging to a Church' prevented one from being religious.Wittgenstein was convinced that such mechanic understanding of religion had no future and instead emphasized: 'Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.' (ibid, 102) [iv]. Besides these criticisms, however, there are two positive impulses in Wittgenstein's initial comment that remained vital throughout his life: First, his understanding of religion not as entrenched in the past, but as directed towards the future; second his desire for asceticism as a change of oneself and an ability to act upon one's beliefs. They provide two main areas of interest for this article which will examine in which sense Wittgenstein saw religion as something vital for human life and what can his position contribute to a contemporary situation. We will draw on notes of dialogues with Wittgenstein taken by his friends, in partticular by M.O'C. Drury, by his letters and remarks from his notebooks, and by other texts of his related to religion.

When we link Wittgenstein and religion, it must not be forgotten that Wittgenstein never considered himself to be a theologian[v]. His perspective was that of a philosopher. Then it is important to note that philosophy in his understanding was not just a way of thinking, but a way of arranging the whole of life. From his early age Wittgenstein (1889-1951) the child of a wealthy Viennese family of Jewish descent had a good cultural education. Thus he appreciated the value of access to a musical life, in particular, and to acquaintance of classic German literature, nevertheless he found it difficult to belong among the socially privileged. The young Wittgenstein was impressed by Karl Kraus's insistence on persona integrity[vi]. His studies of engineering and mathematics led him finally to logic and on Frege's advice he moved to Cambridge and from 1912 studied with Russell. In a prisoner of war camp, after World War I, he finished the manuscript of his first philosophical writing, in 1921 he published Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, still greatly influenced by Frege and Russell, fathers of modern formal logic. There Wittgenstein closely linked logic and ethics (see TLP 6.13, 6.421) and stated that philosophical mistakes were signs of character defects[vii]. After publishing Tractatus he withdrew from academic discussion untill 1929. In these years he moved step by step from a position that all fundamental problems of philosophy had been solved and what needed to be done was to live up to it [viii]- to a recognition that a creative philosophical work could be a part of his life-style[ix]. Wittgenstein, carrying with himself a copy of Tolstoy's edition of the Gospels and at the same time despising theology for its theoretical approach to religion[x] decided on his return from captivity to give away all property he inherited from hisfather[xi] and to take the job of a teacher in tiny villages of Lower Austria. Then, after an incident in a classroom[xii] he moved back to Vienna where he first worked as a gardener in a neighbourhood monastery and then designed a house for his sister. In 1929 he returned to Cambridge where in 1930 he submitted his Tractatus as a doctoral thesis, was awarded a research fellowship and started to lecture. There he made his life-time friends, his first students, in particular Francis Skinner and M. O'C. Drury, Rush Rhees, Norman Malcom, Prof. G. E. Moore, Fania Pascal and others who in their honesty and closeness of relationships, shared values which to some extent resembled for Wittgenstein an ‘apostolic community'[xiii]. Here Wittgenstein's notion of religion as a matter of practice developed and found expression . As Ray Monk emphasizes, this group of close friends and especially Drury, after Wittgenstein's death counteracted the effects of ‘well meaning commentators' who missed out the spiritual and moral depth of Wittgenstein's attitudes (see Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, 265).

When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, Maurice Drury[xiv] was an undergraduate reading philosophy. During their first conversations he mentioned to Wittgenstein his desire to become a priest in the Anglican Church. Wittgenstein step by step pointed out the weakness of the system Drury was ready to accept. In the conversation from 1929 Wittgenstein commented as follows on his vocation:

'I don't ridicule this. Anyone who ridicules these matters is a charlatan and worse. But I can't approve, no I can't approve. You have intelligence; it is not the most important thing, but you can't neglect it. Just imagine trying to preach a sermon every Sunday: you couldn't do it. I would be afraid that you would try and elaborate a philosophical interpretation or defence of the Christian religion. The symbolism of Christianity is wonderful beyond words, but when people try to make a philosophical system out of it I find it disgusting. At first sight it would seem an excellent idea that in every village there should be one person who stood for these things, but it hasn't worked out like that. Russell and the parsons between them have done infinite harm, infinite harm.' ('Some Notes to Conversations' in RW, 86)[xv]

Why did Wittgenstein find philosophical interpretations or defences of Christianity so offensive? To be able to answer this question, we must first look at the kind of philosophical interpretations Wittgenstein had in mind. A good example is provided in his critical study Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (ed. by Rush Rhees in 1979)[xvi]. The subject matter of the book is religion and Wittgenstein is approaching it philosophically. Nevertheless, there is a difference between philosophical interpretations of Christianity (or other religions) that he finds offensive and his own method, which also approaches religion philosophically. Wittgenstein defines his method right at the beginning of the Remarks:

'We must begin with the mistake and transform it into what is true. That is, we must uncover the source of the error; otherwise hearing what is true won't help us. It cannot penetrate when something is taking its place. To convince someone of what is true, it is not enough to state it; we must find the road from error to truth.' (1e)

In order to avoid a first misinterpretation, namely that finding a way from error to truth is a straightforward process, Wittgenstein adds: 'I must plunge again and angain in the water of doubt.' (ibid)

This methodological doubt had in Wittgenstein a different place than in Descartes[xvii] or Hume[xviii]. It is preceded by certainty and works as its corrective and not the other way round [xix]. Doubt is seen as a method that can recognize a false certainty. And this method is applied not to religion "in general" but to Frazer's interpretation of it. Wittgenstein driving our attention to a difference between living religion and a theory claiming to describe what religion is about, continues:

'Frazer's account of the magical and religious notions of men is unsatisfactory: it makes these notions appear as mistakes.

Was Augustine mistaken, then, when he called on God on every page of the Confessions?

Well-one might say-if he was not mistaken, then the Buddhist holy-man, or some other, whose religion expresses quite different notions, surely was. but none of them was making a mistake except where he was putting forward a theory.' (ibid)

What Wittgenstein finds offensive is the substitution of explanation of theory, for religious practice, in other words, thinking that religion can be understood by means of explanation as much, if not more, as by means of practicing it. Wittgenstein thus criticizes the notion of 'knowing' as Frazer applies it to religion:

'I think one reason why the attempt to find an explanation is wrong is that we have only to put together in the right way what we know, without adding anything, and the satisfaction we are trying to get from the explanation comes of itself. And here the explanation is not what satisfies us anyway... But for someone broken up by love an explanatory hypothesis won't help much. - It will not bring peace' (2e.3e).

Coming back to the conversation with Drury concerning ministry, it can be concluded that for Wittgenstein even prayers and services can be explanatory in the sense that they present religion as a theory and do not satisfy as they do not bring peace. Conversations on this theme continued. Later, probably in 1930, when Wittgenstein sees Drury is troubled he states:

'But remember that Christianity is not a matter of saying a lot of prayers; in fact we are told not to do that. If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find way to God.' (Not. in RW 94).

Wittgenstein did not just speak of practising a ‘different manner of life' but tried to find it for himself. During his stay in Norway he grasped that an indispensible condition for it was honesty: if he were not truthful to himself and about himself, his writings would be deceitful. Therefore he reflected on the whole of his life and decided to confess his failures to those closest to him. Norman Malcom in the Introduction to Recollections of Wittgenstein points out the importance of Wittgenstein's decision to make a confession to his friends [xx]': ‘For Wittgenstein the importance of a confession was that it should produce a change in him. In 1931 he wrote in a notebook: "A confession has to be a part of the new life"' (Introduction to RW, xviii). Confession was to help him to 'become a different man' (ibid, xix), a phrase he used often, by means of recognizing his own nature[xxi]. In a notebook of 1938 Wittgenstein writes: 'If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing.' And in the following year: 'The truth can be spoken only by one who rests in it; not by one who still rests in falsehood, and who reaches from truth to falsehood to truth just once.' (ibid)

His desire to become a different man is at the same time a desire to become more completely himself. The clarity he aimed at in his writings had to become one and the same clarity with which the whole of his life was perceived. Thus when he speaks about descending into oneself and the pain that it involves, it is seen as a parallel to the hard intellectual labour of recognizing illusions and finding ways out of them in order to see and express things as they are. Wittgenstein's intellectual standards were extremely high and so were the moral and spiritual ones he applied to himself as well as to others. Wittgenstein often used the expression ‘intolerable', but what he found intolerable were not moral and spiritual failures, but when people tried to appear as different personalities from those they were. Wittgenstein was convinced that unless there were honesty and integrity, there was no progress anyway. Fania Pascal in her 'Personal Memoir' mentions Wittgenstein's intolerance:

'Though he was a shrewd judge of character and free of self-righteousness, he applied to others the stern standards he applied to himself. If you have committed a murder, if your marriage was breaking up, or if you were about to change your faith, he would be the best man to consult. He would never refuse to give practical help. But if you suffered from fears, insecurity, were badly adjusted, he would be a dangerous man, and one to kept away from. He would not have been sympathethic to common troubles, and his remedies would be all too drastic, surgical...If only he has been less imperious, less ready with prohibitions, more patient with another person's character and thought. Alas, he was no pedagogue.' (in RW, 32.33).[xxii]

Also, his notion of religion developed as a combination of ascetic strictness, of compassion and sensitivity. A good example is found in a letter that Wittgenstein sent to Drury working in the Dublin hospital, when he mentioned being overworked and lacking peace. Wittgenstein writes:

'The thing now is to live in the world in which you are, not to think or dream about the world you would like to be in. ...Look at your patients more closely as human beings in trouble and enjoy more the opportunity you have to say "good night" to so many people. This alone is a gift from heaven which many people would envy you. And this sort of thing would heal your frayed soul, I believe. ...I think in some sense you don't look at people's faces closely enough.' (Not. in RW, 96)

'Religion of the future' as Wittgenstein mentioned in the early conversations with Drury, was taking more and more the form of finding God in present events, where hope rather than strictness remained the driving force - in terms of 'desiring something you haven't yet found' (Conv. in RW, 164).[xxiii] That could not be formed into a system, although the late Wittgenstein ascribed a certain logic to it. From the negative descriptions of what religious life was not, as we saw in the conversations, as well as with the example from the Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough Wittgenstein moved to a positive expression. The man who criticized religion as a matter of seeking consolation in belonging to a crowd, said of himself: 'I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.' Not. in RW 79) .

As was said, for Wittgenstein honesty and purity of personal life was a condition for a clarity of thought: only the one who purify oneself is capable of thinking clearly and does not live in illusions. This emphasis created a context in which Wittgenstein's notes gathered in the last philosophical book ‘On Certainty' were written. Here Wittgenstein relates religion to different types of certainty, once again, in his terms, trying to show a way from a mistake to truth. Having rejected what he saw to be false certainties which tried to defend religion as if from outside he found a certainty on which religious life could be based. By means of analysing different types of certainty Wittgenstein arrives at the following distinctions:

(i) There are some statements we can explain and prove, like mathematical truths: 2+2=4 proof: 4-2=2, as in ordinary circumstances we agree on a certain system in which these operations work. He speaks of a rule and an exception: ‘ We just do not see how verz specialized the use of "I know" is. - For "I know" seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression "I thought I knew".' (OC §11.12)

(ii) 'At some point we have to pass from explanation to mere description' (OC §189), where the distinction comes from a difference between knowledge and belief. Both are related to the notion of certainty, but neither of them is synonymous with it. Wittgenstein points out the difference: 'If someone believes something, he needn't always be able to answer the question "Why does he believe it", but if he knows something, then the question "How does he know", must be capable of being answered.' (OC § 550). However, he is also aware that there are difficult cases for distinction, where there does not seem to be a clear distincive line between belief and knowledge.[xxiv]

(iii) Then there are things that can be recognized but not described. He says: 'We can see from their (people's) actions that they believe certain things definitely, whether they express their belief or not.' (OC §284) We act on trust, according to Wittgenstein, it may or may not have a form of propositional belief, and even if it had such form, that would not be enough for willingness to stick one's life on it.

Thus, Wittgenstein sees the certainty upon which one acts as a test and a decisive element of religious belief. It does not allow for pretence and, therefore, gives currency to the certainty of belief and of knowledge. The hierarchy of certainties goes from practice to theory. A.C. Thiselton points out that Wittgenstein in The Blue Book, where he analyses the connections between language and life, or in other words, what gives power to our words, concludes that it is human behaviour which gives 'backing' for the paper currency of language[xxv]. If we apply it to Christianity and try to look at its perspectives, it can be said with Thiselton that: 'In Wittgensteinian terminology the deeds of Jesus give transactional currency to the meaning and truth of his words. Hence he himself may be called "truth" (John 14:16), since the personal 'backing' of his deeds gives meaning and credibility to his words.' (Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self, 1995, 36). As was already said, for Wittgenstein the religion of the future is as much religion of presence. Our deeds create currency for our words, as they disclose things as they are and not as one wishes them to be. These are permanent emphases of Wittgenstein. His desire to become a different man involves unselfishness and freedom to be the person one really is, to live in truth and not in illusions, to be gentle and helpful to other people, etc. Thus, Wittgenstein's philosophical approach to religion recognizes four elements: a conversion of life (just remember his return from captivity and his desire to break with the past, giving away his property, taking a much lower social status, etc.); giving some account of this conversion that produces analogical effects in those who encounter it (not in terms of ‘giving a homily every Sunday' as he discouraged Drury, but in dialogues with his friends and in allowing them to have an insight into the deepest level of ‘certainties' upon which he acted, his doubts and fears); building up a community of disciples; and finally expressing ‘the new life' in terms analogical to virtues (emphasizing the value of honesty, freedom, compassion, etc.). What starts as an individual conversion has a communitarian element, indeed, the late Wittgenstein is much less critical of a public ecclesiastical expression of religion, though he points out that belonging to a church does not mechanically make the person better[xxvi].

Joe Laishley and I often discussed why from the time of Enlightenment so much of the struggle for honest religious expression moved from the field of theology to philosophy Especially in the Roman Catholic tradition, where theologians, such as Loisy, Tyrrell, Teilhard, Kung were marked as unorthodox and often forbiden to write, theology often seemed to lose its potential for honesty of expression. Philosophers like Wittgenstein saw the problem and therefore had a tendency to despise theology as such (see n.4) . They criticised the authority theology demanded for itself as unjustified or made fun of it. Hume, Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, Derrida and many others saw in theology's claims to revelation an instrument to deprive people of their freedom. As we saw in his comments on Frazer, Wittgenstein sucseeded in distinguishing between claims to revelation and claims to theories based on revelation (see GB 1e) and attempted by means of practice to ‘begin with the mistake and transform it into what is true' (ibid). Before Lonergan or Metz and before theologies of liberation he emphasized that one must start with practice and not with contemplating ideas. With the freedom of a philosopher he tried to live out his conviction that a religion of the future will have to practice an asceticism of words, of big claims and statements, of theories and catechetical justifications of ‘the one true faith' and not to theorize but to see the direction that one recognizes under one's feet.

Notes

[i]. Drury adds: 'I seemed to sense for the first time in my life the idea of an asceticism of the intellect; that this life of reading and discussing in the comfort of Cambridge society which I so enjoied, was something I would have to renounce.'(´Conversations with Wittgenstein´ in RW, 114).

[ii]. Fania Pascal in 'A Personal Memoir' comments on Engelmann's statement that Wittgenstein did not care particularly where he lived and accepted most primitive conditions and the lowliest social milieu (see L 60), stating: 'Precisely: these he did accept. But from the conditions he was born and where he "naturally" found himself, from these he was in constant flight - an attitude he shared with many contemporary intellectuals of Central Europe, except that in his case it assumed an extreme form. When Wittgenstein wished to flee from civilization, no place was remote or lonely enough. ('A Personal Memoir', in RW, 42) In the correspondence from 1920's he mentioned a possibility to move to Russia, but after visiting the country in 1935 he changed his mind. Nevertheless, two years later in his letter to Engelmann he again considered the option..

[iii]. In this period Wittgenstein was still greatly influenced by Kierkegaard, whom he considered to be ‘the most profound thinker of the last century' and ‘a saint' (Drury, ‘Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein' in RW 87).

[iv]. Similarily to Church Wittgenstein regarded theology as useles, stating that there was no such thing as 'theology'. Later in his life Wittgenstein marked this statement as 'the sort of stupid remark I would have made in those days' (Not. in RW, 98).

[v]. Wittgenstein's impact on theology is elaborated in Fergus Kerr's Theology after Wittgenstein.

[vi]. Hans-Johann Glock in ‘Sketch of an intellectual biography' mentions two influences of Karl Kraus, cultural critic of the late Habsburg Empire, on young Wittgenstein: first is the stress on a personal integrity and second is his polemical analysis of language (see in WD 11).

[vii]. See ibid, 12.

[viii]. Wittgenstein's comment from Culture and Value reflect on this recognition. He states: ‘Someone who does not lie is already original enough. Because after all, any originality worth wishing for could not be a sort of clever trick, or a personal peculiarity, be it a distinctive as you like.' (C 60)

[ix]. It is significant that the very last converation with Wittgenstein recorded by Drury ends: ‘Just before the train pulled out he said to me:' Drury, whatever becomes of you, don't stop thinking.' These were the last words I ever had from him.' (Con. in RW 170).

[x]. See n.4.

[xi]. Glock points out that it was ‘not for altruistic reasons, but to break with his past' (Sketch in WD 19).

[xii]. See n. 20.

[xiii].

Ray Monk in Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius summarizes: ‘there is an important aspect of Wittgenstein's influence that is not, and cannot be, covered in the large body of academic literature which Wittgenstein's work has inspired. The line of apostolic succession, one might say, extends far beyond the confines of academic philosophy.' (265).

[xiv]. Rush Rhees gives a following account of Drury's life: 'Drury came up to Cambridge intending after his BA to study theology and become ordained as an Anglican priest. He spent one year in a theological college at Cambridge (Westcott House), and decided he ought not to go on. For about two years he worked in various projects with unemployed people in Newcastle and in Merthyr Tydfil. He began to study medicine in 1933, when he was twenty-six, and he qualified in 1939, a few months before the outbreak of war. He worked for few months as a general practitioner in the Rhondda Valey. Then he served in the RAMC for the duration of the war (and I think, for a short time after the end of hostilities in the army's 'reconstruction' work in Germany). It was only in 1947, on the advice of the head of St Patrick's Hospital in Dublin, that he went on to specialize in psychological medicine. From 1947 to 1969 he was Resident Psychiatrist with St Patrick's Hospital; and from 1969 to 1976 he was their Senior Consultant Psychiatrist. He had not retired when he died.' (Preface to RW, xii). It is important to mention that almoast every major decision in Drury's life from the time he met Wittgenstein till Wittgenstein's death was influenced by him.

[xv]. Five years later, when Drury spoke of withrowing from the church services Wittgenstein dissapproved of that saying: 'These ceremonies do not have the importance you once you attached to them - but that does not mean that they have no importance.' ('Conversations with Wittgenstein, in RW, 129).

[xvi]. N/ Wittgenstein wrote remarks on Frazer in his manuscript in June 1931, they were typed alongside with his other manuscript books in the same year, having c. ten pages of the text, but were rearranged later on (probably in 1936 and then 1948) and first published (in German) in the Netherlands in 1967, that is 16 years after his death.

[xvii]. Descartes's recognition 'cogito ergo sum' is treated by him as a certainty at which one arrives after having doubted everything else (Principles of Philosophy, I,1.7).

[xviii]. Hume's ‘rational acceptability' and an ‘agreement of experience' as criteria for a certainty treat certainty as a result of what cannot be doubted. In other words: doubt comes first, certainty, if at all, second (See Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1991, 149). See also Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, 322.

[xix]. In On Certainty Wittgenstein states: ‘But what about such a proposition: "I know I have a brain" ? Can I doubt it? Grounds for doubt are lacking!' (§4). Instead looking for grounds of certainty Wittgenstein is asking on what ground it makes sense to doubt propositions.

[xx]. In 1931 he had written down a confession for Drury to read it, in 1937 he came to Professor G.E. Moore and to Fania in order with the same request, reactions he left on their decision. The subject matters were apparently two, as Malcom summarizes: 'first that he had more Jewish ancestry than his friends realized, and he has done nothing to remove this misapprehension; second that when he was a schoolmaster in Austria in the 1920s he had struck one of his pupils in anger and later denied it.' (Introduction to RW, xviii). Drury comments it as follows: 'When he (Wittgenstein)

returned from Norway he told me that he had done no writing there but had spent his time in prayer. He had felt it necessary to write out a confession of those things in his past he was most ashamed. He insisted on my reading this.' (Conv. in RW, 120).

[xxi]. Rush Rhees summarizes Wittgenstein's attitude in a following way: 'We can see that if he gave himself the precept: "Don't want or try to be what you are not!" and also: Try to become a different man!", there need be no conflict between these. "Try to become a different man!" would often be: "Try not to deceive yourself about what you are!"' ('Postscript' in RW, 190).

[xxii].

She explains why she decided to include also negative memories: 'The danger is that he may appear altogether inhuman to future generations. Those who knew him could never see him in this light. The more that is recorded of him, including any faults and frailties, the better it seems to me.' (Pers. in RW 37).

[xxiii]. This comment Wittgenstein made in 1949, two years before his death, when himself and Drury looked back at their conversations concerning what it meant to live a religious life.

'Wittgenstein: Drury, you have lived a most remarkable life. First those years in Cambridge studying philosophy; then as a medical student; then the war experiences - and now all this new work in psychiatry.

Drury: There is one thing about it that I feel is all wrong with me: I have not lived a religious life.

Wittgenstein: It has troubled me that, in some way I never intended, your getting to know me has made you less religious than you would have been had you never met me.

Drury: That thought had troubled me too.

Wittgenstein: I believe it is right to try experiments in religion. To find out, by trying, what helps one and what doesn't. ...Now, why don't you see if starting the day by going to mass each morning doesn't help you to begin the day in a good frame of mind? I don't mean for one moment that you should become a Roman catholic. I think that would be all wrong for you. It seems to me that your religion will always take the form of desiring something you haven't yet found.' (Conv. in RW, 165-166).

[xxiv]. In Lectures and Conversations Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief Wittgenstein distinguishes between 'religious beliefs' and 'scientific beliefs' stating: 'These statements would not just differ in respect to what they are about. Entirely different connections would make them into religious beliefs, and there can be easily imagined transitions where we wouldn't know for our life whether to call them religious beliefs or scientific beliefs. (LC 58).

[xxv]. See BB 48-55; Z sects.143.145.

[xxvi]. ‘Again at a later date Wittgenstein told me that one of his pupils had written to him to say that he had become a Roman Catholic, and that he, Wittgenstein, was partly responsible for this conversion because it was he that had advised the reading of Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein told me that he had written back to say: "If someone tells me he has bought the outfit of a tight-rope-walker I am not impressed until I see what is done with it."' (Not. in RW 88).