Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Force of Life

In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein makes the statement that “life can force [the concept of God] on us” (WR 266). Wittgenstein thinks that people begin to believe in God not because they are rationally convinced that God exists by some sort of theological proof, but rather because of the experiences they have. With reference to the doctrine of predestination, Wittgenstein says that “[i]t is only permissible to write like this out of the most dreadful suffering” (WR 259). I would like to explore this idea of life and pain “forcing” the concept of God on someone in terms of the connections between this idea and the writings of Paul Tillich as well as the implications for the ways in which frames of reference can be altered.

In the statements quoted above, Wittgenstein seems quite clearly to be saying that religious belief is not an ordinary kind of belief, as when I “believe” that it is raining outside when someone walks in with a wet umbrella. Belief in God is not a matter of the rational assessment of evidence to come to a valid conclusion; rather, it is something that is “forced” upon us by experiences of great suffering. When one has an experience of great suffering that leads to a belief in God, it is “as though someone were first to let [one] see the hopelessness of [one’s] situation and then show [one] the means of rescue” (WR 263). In other words, when a painful experience makes us realize the fragility of our lives and happiness, belief in God becomes entirely plausible and perhaps even necessary to us.

This position on religion is quite similar to that of Paul Tillich. I am not sure whether Wittgenstein read Tillich’s writings, but it would be very interesting to know Wittgenstein’s opinion of them. Tillich believed that the best way to convince (force?) someone to believe in God was to make her aware of the “threat of non-being”, i.e., of the inevitability of her own death. Once a person was reduced to a state of terror at the thought of dying, she would be able to “ground” herself in God, who is the only thing “ultimate” enough to carry the weight of her existence. Thus, through experiences of suffering and the threat of non-being, Tillich, like Wittgenstein, believes that life can force the concept of God upon us.

But what does it mean for our lives when such a concept as God becomes probable to us because of the suffering that we have experienced? Wittgenstein seems to be certain that religious belief affects the entirety of our existence when he says that “a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference” (WR 263). In other words, belief in God changes that which stands fast for us, thereby altering the way we understand and live in the world.

Further, the fact that this shift in the frame of reference occurs as a result of an extremely emotional experience of suffering seems to suggest that the way in which systems of reference can change for an individual is not by means of rational persuasion, but rather by means of emotional experiences. Thus, our forms of life seem to be startlingly precarious in that our entire way of thinking and being could be altered at any moment by an experience of “the threat of non-being”, to use Tillich’s language. To me this situation seems to be a highly dangerous one because it leaves human beings as passive victims of whatever suffering someone else might choose to inflict on them. If Wittgenstein is right, so is Tillich, and all it takes is one encounter with “non-being” for us to be “forced” into a religious and self-sacrificial frame of reference.

It seems to me that the truly human thing to do would be to resist the force of life, however great our suffering might be, and to stay within a frame of reference that uses rational criteria for belief. As soon as we allow ourselves to be mindlessly driven by experiences, we are far less than human, and we are the perfect prey for people like Tillich.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Family Resemblance and Language Games

Wittgenstein's method of defining "language games" in terms of family resemblances seems to be useful and interesting at first, but a serious problem appears as soon as one tries to make any real use of the concept.

The root of the problem with defining "language games" in terms of family resemblances is that any activity whatsoever can be made to fit into the concept "language game". All that is required for x to be a language game is for it to share characteristics of some kind with some of the other language games. Let x be "organizing my closet". Organizing my closet resembles the language game of a teacher explaining a conceptual error to a student because they both involve a kind of organization or arrangement of a formerly disordered phenomenon (i.e., the things in my closet or the student's thoughts). Organizing my closet also resembles the language game of giving fashion advice to someone because they both involve clothing. So, it seems that organizing my closet is a language game because it resembles other members of the "family".

To deal with this problem, Wittgenstein cannot simply say that turning on a lamp is not a language game because it does not involve language. If Wittgenstein made this claim, he would be identifying an essential feature of all language games, which would mean that he is no longer using the notion of family resemblances to define "language game".

Yet, it seems that there is a form of essentialism present even in the identification of my actual family. There are many people whom I resemble but whom I do not consider to be part of my family; it would certainly be strange if I walked down the street and invited everyone whose hair looks like mine to come over for Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of my family. Rather, the people who are part of my family are the ones who share a genetic similarity to me, or who are married to people who share a genetic similarity to me. There are many people in my family whom I do not resemble at all, but I still consider them to be part of my family because of our genetic similarity. Thus, the essential criterion for fitting into my concept of "family" is genetic similarity, not just any similarity whatsoever.

It seems that, like my family, Wittgenstein's family of language games needs to have an essential feature that unites them so that he can avoid producing a concept that can include any activity whatsoever. The best definition for a language game would be "an activity that is driven by or composed of language use". This definition includes everything that Wittgenstein calls a language game, and it excludes things like organizing my closet or turning on a lamp. The other ways in which the language games "resemble" each other are unimportant as long as they all share this essential feature.