What Ludwig Wittgenstein Actually Said About Faith
All 3 Ludwig Wittgenstein passages on faith, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Ludwig Wittgenstein returns to faith three times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. Austrian-born philosopher who twice changed the course of analytic philosophy — first with the Tractatus, then with the Philosophical Investigations.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is faith for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Ludwig Wittgenstein passage on faith
“Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God.”
“Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein: To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby. That is what I would have liked to say about my work.”
“Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Ludwig Wittgenstein is not offering three opinions about faith; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Ludwig Wittgenstein applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts one such case to Ludwig Wittgenstein.
A convenient tool wants more of your attention and data.
Argued as self-reliant restraint: You are protecting attention as a condition for thought. The risk is romanticizing refusal when adaptation would be wiser.
Work through these yourself
- A convenient tool wants more of your attention and data. — argued from self-reliant restraint and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Søren Kierkegaard, Carl Jung, Confucius and Henry David Thoreau all address faith too, and they do not converge. Reading Ludwig Wittgenstein alone gives you a coherent position; reading Ludwig Wittgenstein against Søren Kierkegaard shows you what the position is actually choosing against.