Religious Belief and Metaphysics

Abstract

When Wittgenstein (2009, § 116) writes that “[w]hat we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use”, many will presumably read this is an anti-religious statement. According to the everyday use of the word “metaphysical”, religion is metaphysical, one would then argue. However, the target of Wittgensteinian investigations is language “on holiday” (2009, § 38), that is, when language does not do any job. This explains why Wittgenstein can claim that philosophy “leaves everything as it is” (2009, § 124): removing “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it” means removing something that is “not part of the mechanism” and therefore does not change the mechanism (2009, § 271). In other words, “metaphysics” does here not stand for a specific subject matter, such as religion. But what does it mean that something is “not part of the mechanism”? How does one show that something is not? Is it possible that religion is an instance of language on holiday? These questions are far more complex than they may seem at first, and the answer to the last question is not a general one—ultimately, it has to be answered in the first person. How do these difficulties manifest themselves? After a methodological discussion of the above points (sec. 1), two sections (2–3) discuss two examples of contexts in which these difficulties come into view. The discussions of these two examples thus aim to clarify what the distinction between the metaphysical and the non-metaphysical amounts to in two specific cases. In particular, the difference between a relation to a belief and to a person is highlighted. Paying attention to this difference is one way of getting out of the difficult constellation of religious belief and metaphysics.

Keywords

• Wittgenstein
• religious belief
• metaphysics
• divine command theory
• love