Rethinking Philosophy of Religion with Wittgenstein

In June, my new book, Rethinking Philosophy of Religion with Wittgenstein: Religious Diversities and Racism, will be published with Bloomsbury. It is part of the book series Expanding Philosophy of Religion, which is edited by J. Aaron Simmons and Kevin Schilbrack. Here is the table of contents: 

Introduction

1 Crisscrossing Landscapes of Religiosities

2 “Grasping the Difficulty in Its Depth”: Wittgenstein and Globally Engaged Philosophy

3 Wittgenstein and Ascriptions of “Religion”

4 The Problem of Evil in Critical and Comparative Philosophy of Religion

5 Epistemology and Acknowledging Religious Differences

6 Chinese Religious Diversities and Philosophy of Religion

7 Baldwin and Wittgenstein on White Supremacism and Religion

8 Religious Diversities, Racism, and the Ethics of Clarification

Conclusion

Some of these chapters were previously published (2, 3, and 7), but they've been adapted somewhat to explicitly connect with the themes of the book (especially Chapters 2 & 3).

Talking with someone a few days ago, I said that the book began in many ways with reading and rereading works like the "Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough" (RFGB), the "Lectures on Religious Belief" (LRB), Philosophical Investigations (PI), and On Certainty (OC) while living and teaching in China and also when finding myself unexpectedly back in the US during the Covid pandemic. The insights that I gained from studying the RFGB, especially concerning ritual practice and what is "natural," helped me to reframe how I thought about the possibilities of engaging with religious traditions, particularly in China. On top of that, rereading the PI and OC in these contexts drew my attention to various sorts of problems concerning language, understanding, and background conditions to our epistemic endeavors. This is turn was helpful for thinking about secularism in China (and how it is different from forms of secularism linked with liberal democracies) and the interconnections between some forms of religiosity in the US and the ideology of white supremacism.

Perhaps the core motivation for the book is the idea that reading Wittgenstein's works while thinking through a particular range of philosophical problems can provide fresh insights into those problems, how one is framing them, or what one expects philosophy itself to do. This "dialogical" way of reading could be performed with any of a number of problems. (For example, these days I'm thinking about technology and ethics.) But the book itself is about philosophy of religion and how it might be transformed by taking seriously insights that come from Wittgenstein's writings. This in turn may lead one to be attentive to one's social contexts and what people do with "religion." (I put "religion" in quotes to signal that Wittgenstein's philosophy could be taken to suggest that critical investigation into the uses and constructions of a term that gives rise to philosophical problems is itself something that can be part of philosophy.)  As I put it in the Introduction:

    Wittgenstein describes his approach to philosophy in Culture and Value this way: “Work on philosophy—like work in architecture in many respects—is really more work on oneself. On one’s own conception. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.)” (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 24). This book contends that Wittgenstein’s way of approaching philosophy not only leads to shifting one’s theoretical perspective but also has ethical entailments and that these entailments are relevant to the ways scholars interpret forms of religiosity. Work on one’s conceptions having to do with religiosities, on one’s purposes in doing philosophy, or on ways of thinking that are prevalent within one’s social contexts—including ideologies of race and religion—is also work that aims to unravel the conceptual knots that may make it difficult for people to see and understand one another and to imagine communities that acknowledge diversities. (RPRWW: Introduction, p. 17)

In the coming weeks, I'll be posting a little about the book. Next time, I'll post something about the theme of "landscapes" and how it is useful for considering diverse contexts and forms of religiosity.

Family Resemblances and Political Movements

Pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral

I find that Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances is most apt when thinking about things that are socially constructed. So, when thinking about fascism, my tendency is to think of it as a family resemblance term, rather than a term with necessary and sufficient conditions. According to this way of thinking, one doesn’t search for identical features between different instances but instead one looks for links between aspects of possible cases. 

Doing a little looking around, I see that Dimitris Gakis has written an insightful chapter, "Wittgenstein’s 'Family Resemblances' and Their Political Potential," on this topic, and more, in the recent collection Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics, edited by Lotar Rasiński, Anat Biletzki, Leszek Koczanowicz, Alois Pichler, and Thomas Wallgren (Routledge 2024). At one point in the chapter, Gakis writes: "Fascism, viewed as a family‑resemblance concept, i.e. as dynamic and open‑ended, is not a historical relic or a reified, historically limited, ideal type to which today’s reality either conforms or not, but a complex and diverse, continuously developing living reality that many experience (and understand as such) first‑hand today." (Gakis 2024, 187)

This sort of approach to thinking about fascism is sensitive to differences small and large between different instances; however, what is true of one historical form of fascism will not necessarily be true of a new instance. A key difficulty in this is that if one labels Trumpism as a form of fascism, one thereby knows some *possibilities* for the future for which we need to prepare ourselves, not necessarily that there will be some sort of historical repetition of a prototype (as, say, with a Spenglerian conception of history). But two features of Trumpism that are abundantly clear are its cruelty and cronyism. Directly or indirectly, these features are already leading to considerable fear and suffering.

But we can still prepare for these uncertain times. To that end, grounding oneself psychologically, ethically, and emotionally may be helpful. For me, among other things, this means I am listening a lot to John Coltrane these days and writing.

John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard, "Spiritual" (1961)

Like a great many people, I was struck by Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon last week (was it just last week!?). I found it to be grounding in its way. It was a heartening instance of moral and spiritual call, even if it could not and would not be heard by its intended audience. I hope her appeal for mercy will inspire others to make their own appeals for mercy as well as empathy and humaneness. 

Bishop Mariann Budde's Sermon at the Washington National Cathedral on 1/21/25

It is necessary to reach deep into our wells of empathy and centeredness if we are going to be able to face the cruelty emerging in Washington and around the country. While I have no illusions about the efficacy of empathetic speech when hearts have been “hardened,” to use what seems perhaps an apt Biblical expression, they are not the only audiences out there. There are significant numbers of people who are scared by cruel power, who are depressed in the face of it, or who feel it is pointless to resist tyranny. Budde’s plea shows it is not pointless. 

Living in concert with one’s higher values and aspirations and in solidarity with those who are vulnerable is what makes one truly free. Acts of daring love are needed to make our society worth living in and, if one were to speak as a Christian, churches worth supporting.

Whatever movements for freedom and resistance to cruelty are called for in these Trumpist times, they too will bear family resemblances to movements of the past. We may take inspiration from figures like John Lewis, Ella Baker, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but our times call for new artists, leaders, and critics—and ordinary people just trying to live lives of decency—who will offer their own improvisational variations on tactics and strategies of the past. In anticipating the democratic movements of near future, attending to the patterns of the past may help us to have an ear for where, when, and how to act.

Detail of the "Human Rights Half Boss" at the Washington National Cathedral.

The sign for this small sculpted piece included this passage from Amos 5:24: 

"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream."

Reference

Gakis, Dimitris. 2024. "Wittgenstein’s 'Family Resemblances' and Their Political Potential," in Lotar Rasiński, Anat Biletzki, Leszek Koczanowicz, Alois Pichler, and Thomas Wallgren, eds, Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics, New York: Routledge.

"In Dialogue with Humanity"

This semester, I am teaching a required course of all undergraduates at CUHK-Shenzhen, called "In Dialogue with Humanity." It's basically a global core texts course, with readings such as Plato's Symposium, Biblical texts such as Genesis and the Gospel of Mark, the Analects, the Zhuangzi, Sura 2 from the Qur'an, the Heart Sutra, Adam Smith and Karl Marx (among others). From time to time, I've also added other texts such as Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, the Bhagavad-Gita, Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and Elie Wiesel's Night to the itinerary. In moving from text to text from week to week, the course never stays put for very long. 

In many ways, the course is like one of those epic trips you might go on where you stay just a night or two in a variety of different cities or towns. While you don't get the benefit of lingering in one place for an extended time (which is often the way I prefer to travel), you have a different sort of travel experience, one of testing your skills as a traveler (did you pack efficiently? did you remember all your chargers?) and your ability to make sense of a place and what you are looking for in your stay. On such trips, it is good also to be flexible and go with the flow. You might not get to see and do everything you'd like, but if you're open to it, you might get to glimpse a window into a historical period or event, perhaps an expansion of your concept of what it is to be human, that you had no idea about prior to the journey.

In many ways, the course is an introductory course in cross-cultural textual hermeneutics. How does one approach so many different texts that each come from distinct historical periods and cultural locations? What background knowledge do you need to have before attempting to read one of these texts?

The course is structured in a discussion oriented way (hence the importance of "dialogue" being in the title of the course). We spend twice as much time in "tutorial"--think discussion section in the US--as we do in lecture. (Even in lecture, I prefer to incorporate discussion among students and with me; I suppose I'll always be a product of my experiences at Occidental College, where discussion oriented class time was more or less the norm.) The course is modeled on the course of the same name offered at our parent campus in Hong Kong. So, discussion and student leadership of exploration of the texts is built into the design of the course. 

I conceive of my own role in this course as being a facilitator of student investigation of the texts. I'm no specialist, not on these texts texts at least (see Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations). The point is not to completely understand these texts (whatever that might mean), but to gain confidence in struggling with them and in talking with classmates about them. Learning to tolerate uncertainty--perhaps in tune with Zhuangzi--in the process of learning how to read carefully and critically is central to the spirit of the course.