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“Transcending the World: Wittgenstein, God, and the Usayable"

Mario Von Der Ruhr, Mario Von Der Ruhr

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Swansea University Author: Mario Von Der Ruhr

Abstract

“I know nothing of religion”, Wittgenstein once told his friend Heinrich Groag, “but there is surely something right in the concept of a God and of an after-life – only something quite different from what we are capable of imagining.” The remark is part of a comprehensive spiritual self-assessment o...

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Published: London/Berlin/New York Springer 2012
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa458
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Abstract: “I know nothing of religion”, Wittgenstein once told his friend Heinrich Groag, “but there is surely something right in the concept of a God and of an after-life – only something quite different from what we are capable of imagining.” The remark is part of a comprehensive spiritual self-assessment or credo, at the end of which Wittgenstein has to acknowledge: “I don't have a belief in a salvation through the death of Christ”. At the same time, he expresses the hope that he may come into a relation with God that will sustain him in his work, and continues to invoke God even in his late diaries and correspondence. This paper traces the development of Wittgenstein’s conception of God or ultimate reality from the time of his early Notebooks and the Tractatus to some of his last remarks on God in Culture & Value, so as to render more perspicuous his relation to traditional Christianity, on the one hand, and his attitude towards atheism or secular humanism, on the other.
Item Description: The paper is part of a collection of (specially commissioned) articles on MODELS OF GOD AND ALTERNATIVE ULTIMATE REALITIES, ed. Jeanine Diller and A. Kasher. The publication is forthcoming late in 2012 or early in 2013.
Keywords: Wittgenstein, God, Transcendence, Ethics
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Start Page: 1