Log24

Outside the World

(A sequel to the previous entry)

Title: The Point Outside the World:
         Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
         on Nonsense, Paradox, and Religion

Author: M. Jamie Ferreira
           (Love’s Grateful Striving) 
           (U. of Va., Charlottesville)

Appeared in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/97,
                    also in  Religious Studies,
                    Vol. 30, March 1994,
                    pp. 29-44.

See particularly the following passage:

The second rationale for the indirection of communication of the religious is also antitheoretical and a practical re-orientation (to acquire new skills, “to be able”) rather than the reception of information.

This appreciative understanding of the speaker distinguishes the austere view from that which rejects religious language, but the austere view also reveals an understanding of religious utterances as grammatical remarks, meaningful as rules of linguistic usage.  Wittgenstein points to “Theology as grammar” when he writes that “Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is” and that “The way you use the word ‘God’ does not show whom you mean — but rather what you mean.” ³⁰

He illustrates: “God’s essence is supposed to guarantee his existence — but what this really means is that what is here at issue is not the existence of something.” ³¹

Grammatical remarks are rules for use; they are neither empirical conclusions nor attempts to offer a perspective from “outside the world.”

³⁰ Philosophical Investigations, no. 373;
    Culture and Value, p. 50.

³¹ Culture and Value, p. 82.

As noted in the previous entry, the number 373 does seem to point, whether Wittgenstein meant it to or not, to “a point outside the world.”

Of course, the pointing is in the eye of the beholder… As, for instance, the time of this entry, 5:24, “points” to Kali, the Dark Lady, as played (yet again — see previous entry) by Linda Hamilton.