Wittgenstein comments on both religion and on the false analogies that people often draw when they use language, but I have yet to read any passage in which he puts those two ideas together. However, I think that bringing the notion of false analogies to bear on religion yields an interesting analysis that is perhaps more revealing than Wittgenstein’s own classification of religion as “nonsense”.
Wittgenstein believes that the same philosophic problems will plague human beings “[a]s long as there is a verb ‘be’ which seems to work like ‘eat’ and ‘drink’; as long as there are adjectives like ‘identical’, ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘possible’” (WR 55). I would argue that the same religious problems (or rather, the same problem of religion) will continue to plague us as well for the same reasons. In another statement of the same problem, Wittgenstein says, “The primitive forms of our language – noun, adjective and verb – show the simple picture to which it tries to make everything conform” (WR 61).
Due to the fact that we almost always formulate our linguistic utterances as arrangements of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, many false analogies arise. For example, we talk about both singing and existing as verbs. However, singing is an action and existence is a state; these two things are very different, but they appear to be connected by a false grammatical analogy. This false analogy, then, leads to the apparently deep (but actually meaningless) question that many philosophers seek to answer, such as, “What is being?”. After all, if we can answer, “What is singing?” we should be able to answer, “What is being?”. Unless, of course, the analogy between them is false.
There is another kind of false analogy that Wittgenstein does not mention explicitly, which deals with nouns rather than with verbs. The fact that we say both, “The cat is in the cupboard,” and “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” seems to suggest that both ‘the cat’ and ‘beauty’ are entities that exist, and that have the power to move from place to place. (If beauty is in my eye, couldn’t it conceivably go elsewhere?) However, since cats are entities and beauty is just a concept, the analogy is false. This, it seems to me, is the sort of false analogy that leads to religion.
When we talk about the world and the thoughts that we have about it, we always use nouns. Thus, we say things like, “We must seek justice,” or “Where has kindness gone?”, yet none of the things to which we are referring are actual existents that can be sought or that can leave us. It seems to me that some ideas of the divine might stem from an attempt to combine all of the (non-)entities that are assumed by the false analogies of language into one agent who provides the motive power that our language has implied that these concepts have. Thus, a god becomes the absolute manifestation of love, justice, power, generosity, etc.: by uniting these supposed entities, the god helps people answer the bad questions that Wittgenstein’s notion of false analogies identifies, such as “Where is justice?”. I suppose one could say that religion is a way of dealing with bad questions without allowing them to drive one crazy because it provides simple, all-inclusive answers to them in the form of one or several god(s).
Certainly this insight about religion is in keeping with Wittgenstein’s identification of religion as nonsense. It does, however, add a greater understanding of exactly what kind of nonsense at least some aspects of religion might be, and it makes it much more difficult for Wittgenstein to consistently maintain the kind of respect that he sometimes shows toward religion and other nonsense.
Wittgenstein believes that the same philosophic problems will plague human beings “[a]s long as there is a verb ‘be’ which seems to work like ‘eat’ and ‘drink’; as long as there are adjectives like ‘identical’, ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘possible’” (WR 55). I would argue that the same religious problems (or rather, the same problem of religion) will continue to plague us as well for the same reasons. In another statement of the same problem, Wittgenstein says, “The primitive forms of our language – noun, adjective and verb – show the simple picture to which it tries to make everything conform” (WR 61).
Due to the fact that we almost always formulate our linguistic utterances as arrangements of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, many false analogies arise. For example, we talk about both singing and existing as verbs. However, singing is an action and existence is a state; these two things are very different, but they appear to be connected by a false grammatical analogy. This false analogy, then, leads to the apparently deep (but actually meaningless) question that many philosophers seek to answer, such as, “What is being?”. After all, if we can answer, “What is singing?” we should be able to answer, “What is being?”. Unless, of course, the analogy between them is false.
There is another kind of false analogy that Wittgenstein does not mention explicitly, which deals with nouns rather than with verbs. The fact that we say both, “The cat is in the cupboard,” and “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” seems to suggest that both ‘the cat’ and ‘beauty’ are entities that exist, and that have the power to move from place to place. (If beauty is in my eye, couldn’t it conceivably go elsewhere?) However, since cats are entities and beauty is just a concept, the analogy is false. This, it seems to me, is the sort of false analogy that leads to religion.
When we talk about the world and the thoughts that we have about it, we always use nouns. Thus, we say things like, “We must seek justice,” or “Where has kindness gone?”, yet none of the things to which we are referring are actual existents that can be sought or that can leave us. It seems to me that some ideas of the divine might stem from an attempt to combine all of the (non-)entities that are assumed by the false analogies of language into one agent who provides the motive power that our language has implied that these concepts have. Thus, a god becomes the absolute manifestation of love, justice, power, generosity, etc.: by uniting these supposed entities, the god helps people answer the bad questions that Wittgenstein’s notion of false analogies identifies, such as “Where is justice?”. I suppose one could say that religion is a way of dealing with bad questions without allowing them to drive one crazy because it provides simple, all-inclusive answers to them in the form of one or several god(s).
Certainly this insight about religion is in keeping with Wittgenstein’s identification of religion as nonsense. It does, however, add a greater understanding of exactly what kind of nonsense at least some aspects of religion might be, and it makes it much more difficult for Wittgenstein to consistently maintain the kind of respect that he sometimes shows toward religion and other nonsense.
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