Philosopher · Contemporary
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1889–1951 · Analytic philosophy; philosophy of language
Baptized and buried Catholic, with Jewish grandparents; said he could not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view, but never practiced the faith.
The Tractatus drew the limits of what can be said and consigned ethics, God and the mystical to what can only be shown (“whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”); the Philosophical Investigations replaced that picture with language-games, forms of life and meaning as use, dissolving the Cartesian inner theater. He read Tolstoy's Gospel in the trenches, confessed his sins to friends, and distrusted the spirit of progress.
Why he matters: Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Fergus Kerr and the Catholic analytic tradition descend from him; his “grammar” of religious language and his anti-Cartesian account of the soul (“the human body is the best picture of the human soul”) have been used to defend hylomorphism and the sacraments against reductionism.
Where to be careful
The fideism sometimes drawn from him (religious belief as a form of life beyond rational assessment) is contrary to Dei Filius ch. 3–4 on the motives of credibility; his silence about God goes beyond the Church's analogical speech (CCC 39–43); his nominalist “family resemblances” sit uneasily with real natures.
Reading
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Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicusLudwig Wittgenstein · Especially 6.4–7 on ethics, God and silence.
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Philosophical InvestigationsLudwig Wittgenstein · Language-games, private language, forms of life.
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Theology after WittgensteinFergus Kerr, OP · A Dominican shows what theology can learn from him.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.