Murdoch Philosophy Research Seminars Semester 2, 2009

The role and reality of transcendence in Wittgenstein's early philosophy

Aaron Harrison (MU):

Abstract:

There is no consensus as to the importance of Wittgenstein's early considerations of religion - as present in the Tractatus, the Notebooks, and the Lecture on Ethics - to his broader philosophical project. Some philosophers have found nothing truly religious in Wittgenstein's early philosophy; even expressions like 'God', 'soul' and 'mystical' refer to other logical or metaphysical concepts, or are just rhetorical devices. Still, others have found a kind of religious mysticism, and gone so far as to characterise his entire project as religiously motivated. Religion can be all or nothing for Wittgenstein's early philosophy, or, of course, anything in between. The key to interpreting Wittgenstein's apparently religious remarks lies in what it means for something to transcend the world. Religion, as well as ethics and, in general, anything of value, lies outside the world. Anything outside the world, however, is nonsense. I will cautiously attempt to tease out Wittgenstein's difficult conception of transcendence and what it means for religion, while remembering at every step that what I say must be nonsense; the trick is to find just the right kind of nonsense.

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