Much of philosophy of religion is currently undergoing a paradigm shift, or perhaps more than one, as increasing numbers of philosophers work to expand the field from a near exclusive focus on the rationality of “theism” to include a multitude of religions as well as varied philosophical problems relating to religions…If one approaches different religions, or different contexts in which religions may be embedded with a rigid conception of what a religion must be or what the central questions of philosophy of religion are, then one is likely to miss salient features of that larger world one is trying to investigate. (Carroll 2025, 1)
Wittgenstein’s philosophical concern for clarification will be helpful then is developing ways of approaching religious diversities so that one does not miss critical features of them.
In working out a Wittgensteinian approach to expanding philosophy of religion, the book has two points of focus: Chinese philosophical and religious traditions and the intertwining of racism and religion in the United States:
Attending to these foci for rethinking philosophy of religion highlights two related features of Wittgenstein’s philosophy: the importance of contextual backgrounds to the interpretation of ways of life and the value of reflection on the purposes, including existential commitments, implied in philosophical inquiry. Attention to two ways of altering one’s perspective in philosophy of religion is valuable so as to forestall reification of a particular alternate mode of inquiry into diversifying the field. Instead, across eight chapters this book presents a composite portrait of the relevance of Wittgenstein to cross-cultural, critical, and self-critical philosophy of religion that remains open and interested in additional perspectives that are being brought to reconsiderations of the field. (Carroll 2025, 1-2)
Wittgenstein’s Ethic of Perspicuity
In Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion, I argued that a certain philosophical theme is present across the various works, manuscripts, and discussions Wittgenstein had throughout his career, what I call his “ethic of perspicuity” (Carroll 2014, 3). The idea, while expressed and implemented in different ways across his life, is that perspicuity, the sort of clarification that resolves confusion, is what Wittgenstein is after, from the Notebooks 1914-1916 and Tractatus, to the Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough and Lectures on Religious Belief, to Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty.
Consider the following short passages, which come from the Tractatus, a conversation with Maurice O’Connor Drury, “Movements of Thought,” the “Lectures on Religious Belief,” and Philosophical Investigations:
1. What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we
must pass over in silence (Wittgenstein 2001, 3).
2. I’ll teach you differences (Drury 1984, 157).1
3. As in philosophy so in life we are led astray by seeming analogies (to what
others do or are permitted to do). And here, too, there is only one remedy
against this seduction: to listen to the soft voices which tell us that things here
are not the same as there (Wittgenstein 2003, 97).
4. If some said: “Wittgenstein, do you believe in this?” I’d say: “No.” “Do you
contradict the man?” I’d say: “No.” (Wittgenstein 1967, 53).
5. A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of
the use of our words. Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable
representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists
in “seeing connections.” Hence the importance of finding and inventing
intermediate links (Wittgenstein 2009, §122, 54; emphasis in the original).
Passages like these, and many, many more from across Wittgenstein’s oeuvre, show a high level of concern for fine distinctions of meaning across expressions and in forming one’s own words. It is this concern that I describe as an “ethic,” a guiding principle that often has moral overtones for Wittgenstein. At one point in his draft “forward” for a book he was envisioning, Wittgenstein writes:
Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form, it is not one of its properties that it makes progress. Typically it constructs. Its activity is to construct a more and more complicated structure. And even clarity is only a means to this end & not an end in itself.
For me on the contrary clarity, transparency, is an end in itself[.] I am not interested in erecting a building but in having the foundations of possible buildings transparently before me. (Wittgenstein 1998, 9)
Here we see a key instance of Wittgenstein describing his approach to philosophy as valuing clarity (“transparency”) intrinsically. While much of philosophy across history and cultures might be thought of as valuing clarification, typically, this would be for instrumental reasons. Conceptual clarification can help in building a theory of something. In Wittgenstein’s case, however, clarification is a matter of philosophical integrity.
View of Wittgenstein's grave, from the Ascension Burial Ground (Cambridge, UK)
As I explore in Rethinking Philosophy of Religion with Wittgenstein, When one brings the ethic of perspicuity to bear on philosophy of religion that is focused on religious diversities, four lessons emerge. First, focus on the contexts in which something is labeled as a religion or as religious will be helpful when it comes to understanding the concept of religion. In this way, a Wittgensteinian approach to philosophy of religion could make common cause with critical studies of “religion” insofar as they reveal the history and range of uses of the term. For a globally engaged approach to philosophy of religion, this focus on problems relating to the application of "religion" is much needed. Second, Wittgenstein’s attention to religious practices and “lived” religion mean that philosophy of religion need not direct its attention solely to the epistemic aspects of religious life. We might include here not just beliefs but practices, institutions, and material culture as phenomena for study. Third, as with the appeal to context when it comes to understanding the concept of religion, Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion could direct its attention to social and historical contexts in order to better understand other phenomena relating to religions. Lastly, this work of philosophical clarification should be thought of as having ethical and even existential aspects. The work of clarification is not just on the object of study but also on the subject who is conducting the study.
Chinese Religious Diversities
Themes relating to Chinese philosophies and religions appear across the book, but the chapter that addresses the theme most directly is Chapter 6, “Chinese Religious Diversities and Philosophy of Religion,” which I wrote about previously while it was in draft form. This chapter offers an exploration of the relevance of Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods, especially as found in Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” to see aspects of Chinese religious diversities that might otherwise elude the scholar’s grasp. These include the significance of the reception and use of concepts of religion; the plurality of ways that religiosities may at times be combined; the pragmatic ways that people may adopt religious practices, beliefs, and values; the plausible combination of avowed atheism with nontheistic religious ideas and practices; and the impact of state power over social manifestations of religions as well as what may even be classified as a religion.
These five forms of religious engagement stand out to me from the experience of teaching philosophy of religion at CUHK-Shenzhen, something I have written about previously on this blog. Presuppositions that are often found within mainstream theistic philosophy of religion—such as that practices are downstream from beliefs, that pragmatic considerations are irrelevant to religiosity, and that atheism is incompatible with religious practice—are challenged by common attitudes within contemporary Chinese society. By paying attention to these varied forms of religious engagement, philosophers of religion will avoid confusion based on unwarranted generalizations about what religiosity must be and contribute to opening scholars’ imaginations to the wide range of human possibilities when it comes to religiosities. This may, in turn, potentially generate new insights on similar phenomena in other social contexts.
The Intertwining of Religions and Racism in the United States
Hinge epistemology—a somewhat recently developed area of Wittgenstein studies, philosophy of religion, and contemporary epistemology—has emerged out of studies of Wittgenstein’s late work, On Certainty (1969). I approach hinge epistemology with an eye to religious diversities in Chapter 5 “Epistemology and Acknowledging Religious Differences,” arguing that Wittgenstein's philosophy should steer us away from the view that any one account of fundamental religious commitments--such as hinge epistemology--would be adequate for approaching a wide diversity of religious traditions.
Instead, I recommend a contextually-focused, piecemeal approach to exploring the epistemic aspects of religions. Furthermore, I argue that hinge epistemology may be "helpful for considering the different sorts of epistemic commitments that may exist alongside forms of religious identity, practice, and indeed, even conceptions of what religiosity is or must be." (Carroll 2025, 107) This helps set up the argument I develop in subsequent chapters concerning the interconnection between racism and local forms of religion in the United States.
Similar to the impact of state power of forms of religion in China, forms of religion in the United States are entangled with ideologies of race in ways that may be unacknowledged and which call out for clarification. While the theme of links between racism and religion in the U.S. appears frequently in the book, the topic is the central focus in two chapters, Chapter 4, “The Problem of Evil in Critical and Comparative Philosophy of Religion” and Chapter 7, “Baldwin and Wittgenstein on White Supremacism and Religion.” Both chapters consider how understanding and contending with powerful ideologies are part of liberatory forms of philosophy of religion.
The ongoing resilience of white supremacism in the United States and its ambiguous relationship to religious traditions is a vexing problem for those committed to egalitarian ethics and pluralist democratic society. To shed light on this problem, I argue that James Baldwin’s exploration of racism and religion in The Fire Next Time may be put into constructive conversation with Wittgenstein’s consideration of fundamental epistemic commitments in On Certainty. From this, I argue that white supremacism in the United States may be interpreted as being like a Wittgensteinian grounding or “hinge” commitment and that this viewpoint illuminates some of the ways in which white supremacism may interact with various kinds of religious commitments. Putting Baldwin and Wittgenstein into constructive conversation depicts the extent to which fundamental commitments about race affect people deeply, including the formation of their ethical and civic values, existential and religious commitments, and range of empathetic capacity. Clarification of how these commitments may be functioning in one's midst can thus be part of an ethical practice of care for others and "work on oneself."
Conclusion
The purpose in selecting these two points of focus, aside from their existential proximity to me, is to consider how expanding philosophy of religion cannot and should not be thought of as one thing. At the moment, numerous voices call for a diversification of philosophy of religion, from methods, to objects of study, to ethical and existential values informing philosophical investigation. This means that expansive philosophy of religion should be cosmopolitan, fallible, and humble, open to new topics for investigation, open to listening to interlocutors, and quick to self-correct when it becomes evident that an unacknowledged bias has obscured one’s judgment. In the Conclusion to the book, I write:
For many people today, philosophy is not disciplinary; it is itinerant. And so it is, potentially, for large swaths of philosophy of religion. Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy, as I have presented it here, is occasional and reactive to the world and its sources of confusion. Someone may say something that reflects a bias, that seems half true, senseless, or true but in a trivial way; if we think of philosophy arising anywhere people find themselves with conceptual confusion or not knowing their way about, then it really opens up the field to where people may be.
In a sense, this is a personal book; the chapters presented here stem from occasions of thought over problems relating to philosophies and religions that I have been seeking to grasp better, especially those situations relating to Chinese religious diversities and the entanglement of forms of religion and ideologies of race in the United States. As I mentioned in the introduction, this is a book rooted in making journeys; it is not a guide. This era is a time of unprecedented contact, migration, communication, fear, and misunderstanding among peoples throughout societies and regions of the world. Wittgenstein’s philosophy, especially in dialogue with other figures (like Baldwin), can instruct one in how to clarify the contexts of forms of religiosity and also in how to self-correct; the challenge is to do both. Thus, the goal of this book is to reflect, occasionally rather than systematically, in “criss-cross” fashion, on encounters of clarity and confusion with respect to philosophies and religions in China and the United States. My hope is that this itinerary might be relevant to others who are making journeys beyond these landscapes. (Carroll 2025, 180-181)
References
Carroll, Thomas D. 2014. Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carroll, Thomas D. 2025. Rethinking Philosophy of Religion with Wittgenstein: Religious Diversities and Racism. London: Bloomsbury Publishers.
Drury, Maurice O’Connor. 1984. “Conversations with Wittgenstein.” In Recollections of Wittgenstein, edited by Rush Rhees, 97–171. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1969. On Certainty, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, translated by D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. London: Blackwell Publishers.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1998. Culture and Value, edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman, revised edition of the text by A. Pichler, translated by P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness. London: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2003. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009. Philosophical Investigations, Fourth Edition, Revised Edition by P. M. S.Hacker and J. Schulte, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and J. Schulte. London: Blackwell Publishers.
