Download Project on `Kai Nielsen and Wittgensteinian Fideism`

Received on Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 10:12 AM by Email
F. No. 4-5/1 3-14/PR/ICPR
Project on ‘Kai Nielsen and Wittgensteinian Fideism’ from 01.10.2014 to
30.09.2016 awarded to Prof. K. C. Pandey, Dept. of Philosophy, University of
Lucknow, with ICPR support of Rs. 2.00 Lakhs.
The second report of the project for the period from 01.10.2015 to 31.03.2016
is in progress and I will send it to you soon.
Six-Monthly report of I.C.P.R. Project on ‘Kai Nielsen and
Wittgensteinian Fideism’ (01.04.2015 to 31.10.2015)
Professor K.C.Pandey, Department of Philosophy, University of Lucknow, Lucknow-226007
Email: [email protected]
Kai Nielsen’s argument in ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ (1967)
Kai Nielsen’s essays ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ in the first section mainly expresses three points about
Wittgenstein’s view on religion:
1. Wittgenstein didn’t write on the Philosophy of religion.
2. The fideistic conclusions drawn by Wittgensteinians from Wittgenstein’s thought are often absurd.
3. Wittgenstein himself would not have accepted Fideism.
In brief, Kai Nielsen holds the view that Wittgensteinian Fideism is the product of the thoughts of
Wittgensteinians and not of Wittgenstein himself. He admires Wittgenstein precisely for this reason
that he did not espouse such a thought.
Kai Nielsen relinquished these views in his latter writings. However, the debate between
Wittgensteinians on the one hand and Kai Nielsen on the other, from the time of publication of
‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ in 1967 and till 2005, i.e. till the publication of Wittgensteinian Fideism?
about Wittgensteinians’ rejection of Kai Nielsen’s allegation of Wittgensteinian Fideism, and Kai
1
Nielsen’s renewed attacking-arguments in his many publications, in which Wittgenstein has also
been criticized as a fideistic, is very much alive today.
Notwithstanding Kai Neilsen’s not sticking to his views about Wittgenstein’s position on fideism,
‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ remains a seminal and path-breaking essay and therefore there is a need
to understand the argument inbuilt there. Here my concern is to bring out the ideas of Nielsen’s this
essay which originated a revolution in Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion called Wittgensteinian
Fideism.
The essay brings out a mosaic of features of Wittgensteinian Fideism whose basic points could be
gleaned as follows:
a. Forms of life are given.
b. Forms of life are forms of language and ordinary language is ‘all right as it is’.
c. Forms of life/language are beyond criticism/evaluation. They can only be described to break
philosophical perplexity.
d. The different discourses are different forms of life having their own logic – the criteria of
intelligibility, reality and rationality.
e. The meaning of intelligibility, reality and rationality can be accrued only in the particular form of life
in which they are being used.
Kai Nielsen has made as many as eight points. As there are many repetitions, so the above points
come out as the points which could be regarded as the points of basic structure or presuppositions
of Kai Nielsens’s idea of Wittgensteinian Fideism. He holds them as a ‘cluster of dark sayings’ which
gives rise to the idea of Wittgensteinian Fideism. According to Nielsen, Wittgensteinians who are
responsible for creating confusion of the thought called Wittgensteinian Fideism are: Norman
Malcolm, G.E. Hughes, Peter Winch, Peter Geach, Stanley Cavell, J. M. Cameron, and Robert Coburn.
Kai Nielsen brings out the views of Malcolm, Hughes and Peter Winch in detail shows how and why
they could be branded as Wittgensteinian Fideistic thoughts. Thus it is pertinent to understand
Nielsen’s deconstruction of the views of Malcolm, Hughes and Winch.
Nielsen points out that he prefers to begin with Hughes, although he had already countered the
thoughts of Norman Malcolm. Kai Nielsen says, “As Malcolm puts it, the very genesis of the concept
of God grows out of a certain ‘storm in the soul’. Only within a certain form of life could we have the
2
idea of an ‘unbearably heavy conscience’ from which arises the Judeo-Christian concept of God and
of a ‘forgiveness that is beyond all measure’. If, as Malcolm maintains, one does not have a grasp of
that form of life from ‘the inside not just from the outside’ and, if as an insider, one does not have
‘at least some inclination to partake in that religious form of life’, the very concept of God will seem
‘an arbitrary and absurd construction’. There cannot be a deep understanding of the concept of God
without ‘an understanding of the phenomenon of human life that gave rise to it’.”1 Kai Nielsen
counters Malcolm on the point that partaking in a religious belief could be regarded as essential so
far as understanding of that religious belief is concerned. For Nielsen the presupposition of the
condition of sharing a religious belief for understanding it does not exclude the possibility of criticism
of the particular religious belief by a non-believer. In this context Kai Neilsen, quoting Swedish
philosopher Axel Hagerstrom says, “…the concept of God is ‘nothing but a creation of our own
confused thought’ growing out of our need to escape ‘from the anxiety and wearisomeness of life’.
And this comes from a philosopher who, as C.D.Broad’s biographical remarks make evident, was
once thoroughly immersed in the religious stream of life.”2
So Nielsen’s point is that even if one does not believe in a religious form of life, one can very well
criticize it. As an atheistic point of view also gets proper space in exactly the same place where a
theistic point of view holds its ground, there is no point in Malcolm’s’ view that insider’s grasp of the
religious form of life is a necessity for understanding it. In brief, the theistic defense of the rationality
of religious beliefs - viz. only a theistic person can truly understand and appreciate a religious belief,
rituals etc. – can very well be questioned from an atheistic point of view.
So Nielsen differentiates between two models of reasoning: 1. The model adopted by Normal
Malcolm, G.E. Hughes, Peter Winch and other Wittgensteinians whom Nielsen calls as
Wittgensteinian Fideists. 2. The model adopted by C.B.Martin and Kai Nielsen himself, i.e. the model
of atheistic philosophers.
The distinction between these two models can be understood in the context of Kai Nielsen’s remarks
on Hughes’s point of view. According to Hughes, philosophy of religion involves “an alternative
programme for meta-theology…that…consists in allowing the actual use of religious terms and
1
Nielsen, Kai, ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ in Wittgensteinian Fideism? ed. By Kai Nielsen and D. Z. Phillips, SCM Press,
London, 2005, p. 21
2
Op.cit. p. 22.
3
statements to determine their logic, rather than trying to force an alien logic upon them’.”
Commenting upon this Kai Neilsen says, “Hughes remarks that if we adopt this programme rather
than the one Martin adopts (a programme similar to the one I have adopted) our philosophical
arguments about religion can be seen in a quite different light.”
Nielsen exposes the fideists’ argument that aims at ascribing the peculiarity of their own kind to
religious beliefs on the ground that such a model of reasoning resolves the problem of the generation
of contradictions in the analysis of religious statements through scientific reasoning.
Thus the debate between Wittgensteinian Fideists such as Hughes and Nielsen boils down to the
adaptation of two models of reasoning, one may be termed as a religious reasoning and the other is
scientific reasoning.
Finally, Kai Nielsen takes up Peter Winch’s views expressed in his essay ‘Understanding a Primitive
Society’ (1964) and his famous book The Idea of a Social Science. In his essay Winch argued against
Evans-Prichard’s scientific explanation of religious beliefs and rituals. Winch held that science could
not be taken as a paradigm to examine religious modes of discourse. According to Winch the nature
of the reality can be adjudicated only within a particular form of life.
Nielsen summarizes Winch’s view in the following way:
“Science is one such mode and religion in another; ‘each has criteria of intelligibility peculiar to itself’.
Within science or religion an action can be logical or illogical. It would, for example, be illogical for a
scientist working in a certain area to refuse to take cognizance of the results of a properly conducted
experiment; and it would also be illogical for a man who believed in God to try to pit his strength
against God. But it makes no sense at all to assert that science or religion is logical or illogical, any
more than it would make sense to speak of music as either well-coloured or ill-coloured or of stones
as either married or divorced.”3
Now Nielsen begins to attack Winch for espousing Wittgensteinian Fideism, inbuilt in the above
quote, which is baseless idea. According to Nielsen, the basic problem with Winch’s view is that it
involves a kind of compartmentalization of the modes of discourse or forms of life which is not
genuine. For Nielsen, “Winch in indeed saying that we cannot criticize science or ethics by criteria
appropriate to religion, and vice versa. Like Hughes, Winch is claiming that each mode of discourse
3
Op.cit. p. 29.
4
must be understood in its own terms and that relevant criticism of that mode of discourse cannot be
made from outside of that discourse, but can take place only from within it, when some specific
difficulty actually arises in science or in religion.”4 This is not a correct position according to Nielsen:
“There is no ‘religious language’ or ‘scientific language’. There is rather the international notation of
mathematics and logic; and English, French, German and the like. In short, ‘religious discourse’ and
‘scientific discourse’ are part of the same overall conceptual structure. Moreover, in that conceptual
structure there is a large amount of discourse, which is neither religious nor scientific, that is
constantly being utilized by both the religious man and the scientist when they make religious or
scientific claims. In short, they share a number of key categories.”5
Further, according to Nielsen, Winch’s treatment of religious point of view as a fact is
unacceptable. Nielsen says, “…when it is claimed – as presumably people who seriously utter certain
religious propositions claim – that the facts asserted by these religious propositions are such and
such, their claims must be publically testable….That is to say, it is a claim that purports to assert a
fact, yet it is devoid of truth-value. People who use such religious talk – partake of such a form of life
– cannot determine how, even in principle, they would establish or disestablish such religious claims,
but they still believe that they are factual assertions: that is to say that they have truth values.” 6
Finally, Nielsen concludes against Winch’s position, while understanding that his own argument
as stated above, is exposed to the critique as the critique of verificationist’s argument. And therefore
in his defense he says, “This verificationist argument can, perhaps, be successfully rebutted, but it is
far less vulnerable than the claim that only scientific ideas correspond with reality…To count as a
factual statement, it must assert a certain determinate reality.” 7 Nielsen adds that the defense of
religious propositions as a kind of ‘grammatical remark’, i.e. ‘a proposition holding in virtue of
linguistic conventions governing the crucial terms in question’, is baseless as there is no factual
content in religious claims such as God created the world, etc.
Thus, the crux of the essay ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ is that Nielsen is not ready to concede the
ground for the idea that to understand religious conceptions one must share the form of life of that
4
Op.Cit. p. 29-30.
Op.Cit. p. 30.
6
Op.Cit. p. 31.
7
Op.Cit. pp. 31-32.
5
5
religious tradition. For Nielsen, to understand a religious tradition, we must learn the rules of the
form of life and not necessarily partake in it as otherwise there would have been no atheist in a
particular religion. And, for Nielsen, compartmentalization of various forms of life is the false
pedestal on which Wittgensteinian Fideism has been erected as various discourses of a human being
– scientific, religious, personal, cultural, social, legal, etc. – are intertwined into each other
6