Fideism

Some critics, in assessing Wittgenstein`s contributions to the philosophy of religion, label his views as ``fideism.`` Without being fully aware of it, they seem to have two different things in mind by ``fideism.`` Some confuse the two. In one sense of fideism, it is not at all clear how such a criticism could be applied at all to Wittgenstein. In the other sense, it is possible to see how the misreading of Wittgenstein`s PI came about. In this note, I would like to examine the general, critical accusation that Wittgenstein`s work amounts to fideism. I need first to distinguish the two sense of ``fideism,`` as best I can. Briefly put, Sense 1 of ``fideism`` is expressed as follows: Religious statements – statements of faith – mean by referring to religious experiences. If one has not had those experiences, one is thereby blocked from understanding the statements of that person`s faith. Sense 2 of ``fideism`` is not based directly upon the privacy of experiences, but upon the uniqueness of the conceptual framework of a particular religious community. It may be expressed as follows: Religious statements are, like other statements, understood in the context that surrounds them. (They mean nothing standing on their own.) Therefore religious statements can only be understood inside the context of the community of the faithful. In Sense 2, only the acquisition of the concepts in that faith community enables one to understand the statements of the faithful. Hence, no one outside the faith community can understand those statements.

In this note, I want to show why Wittgenstein is not a fideist in either sense. He is not a fideist in Sense1 because the intention of his whole private language thought project is to show that a private experience is not the meaning of a word. And he is not a fideist in Sense 2 because, though he does show the role of context in meaning, there is no reason, given nor apparent in Wittgentein`s work, why a non-believer cannot understand the sentences of a believer. Conceivably, both believer and non-believer have access to the same contextual framework of a given faith community, i.e. the sacred texts, the lives of the believers, the teaching of the concepts, the creeds, and the documents of various assemblies called to clarify doctrine, etc. In my remarks aimed at freeing the reader of this misreading of Wittgenstein`s PI, I will not address, directly at least, the paradoxical aspect of religious language – the aspect that acknowledges that certain beliefs of Christianity are beyond belief as belief is ordinarily come to and justified.

Sense 1 Fideism

To my knowledge, no one calls himself a ``fideist.`` It is a term of disapprobation. It is a problem to be avoided. To label someone a ``fideist`` is to point out that the view he is espousing, by implication, leads to fideism and thereby should be rejected.

Again, the general problematic notion of fideism is that religious statements are only understood by the community of faith – that religious language is a private language. So while one on the outside says: ``I don`t understand,`` one on the inside says: `` Outsiders cannot understand, only insiders – faithful – can understand.`` Faith, in this view is the condition for understanding.

A more specific account of how this comes about is that the experience of faith – an inner, private experience (on the model of a sense experience) – is what enables one to understand the language upon which that private experience rests. The experience of faith becomes a light for other private experiences that allow one to assent to the basic propositions of the faith. This idea, full blown, becomes a philosophical theory. (Perhaps, in a popular form, it might be called ``Gnosticism.``) I suspect that the more fully developed philosophical version is one held by many who would not want to call themselves ``fideists;`` To them, it looks as though the idea of a specialized religious experience is precisely what is necessary to give meaning to the statements of faith. It seems to be a philosophical way of rescuing religious language from the positivist charge of ``nonsense.`` Of course, the analogy for a religious ``experience`` is ``sense experience`` in empiricist epistemology. As an empirical statement makes sense because it refers to sense experiences, religious statements make sense because they refer to religious experiences.

The charge of fideism under this conception of fideism looks as follows: If one holds a position that implies that a faith experience is necessary to understand the statements of faith, then only those who have had that experience are privy to the meaning of their statements. But this is an untenable philosophical position. The whole point of such a philosophical position would be to give an explanation to and defense of the religious view. If the language of a religious community is, at the end of the day, unintelligible to the philosopher, an outsider – then the whole idea of a philosophical explanation is defeated. Now, it may be that some in certain religious groups might relish the privatization of their faith`s beliefs, but this would be a colossal misunderstanding of the idea of credo ut intelligensium. The Augustinian view that faith comes before reason is not a statement fideism. It merely asserts the primacy of faith – that one does not come to the articles of faith by philosophical arguments; but, rather, one – a person of faith or not – may aspire to an understanding of that language by means of the clarity which philosophical skills bring to the table.

What does Wittgenstein`s work have to do with any of this? It is not as if he speaks of it directly or even connects his reflections on language by implication to religious language, here in the PI. Consider, first, these general points of understanding of the nature and function of language that Wittgenstein makes: 1) That meaning is not found in reference, as widely presupposed, by the use of words, expressions, sentences, in their natural contexts; 2) That while ``language-games`` are the immediate contexts for words, one must consider even wider contexts – ``forms of life`` – to get a better understanding of some language-games; 3) To understand a word for philosophical purposes, it is often helpful to remind ourselves of how one came to learn that word as a child or foreigner; 4) Learning a language is mastering techniques for the use of words; 5) To understand a sentence is to understand a whole language; 6) It is impossible to conceive of a private language: our words referring to our personal mental life – perception, sensations, emotional states, etc. – are learned, used, and understood in public ways that do not depend on each person`s experiencing the same things or, for that matter, anything at all. There are more such general points, but these will do for now.

These general points connect to the philosophical problems of faith, reason, and fideism. For the present, consider only the idea of fideism in Sense 1, namely, that religious statements are dependent upon faith experiences for their meaning, and hence that only the people of that faith are privy to the understanding of their language. Wittgenstein is charged with fideism. The reasons for this have never been entirely clear. They have to do with his appreciativeness of, his sensitivity and openness to, a variety of religious experiences, rituals, and symbols.

The charge of fideism is made by those who misread the Philosophical Investigations. For now, with respect to Sense 1, I will pass over how I believe the misreading occurs. Consider rather the ways in which the charge is incompatible with these general points of understanding that Wittgenstein has advanced. The central theme of the PI as laid out in Section#1 is that philosophers have mistakenly presupposed that language means by referring to mental objects – sense ideas, general concepts, apriori universals, etc. Now what is a religious experience and what is its role in giving meaning to religious statements? It is a mental object that is supposed to stand as the meaning of the word. The aim of the private language thought experiment is to show that it is not necessary to have a private experience in order to understand the language of that experience – that it is not necessary to have another`s experience to understand that person. One does not need to have had the experience of crucifixion to grasp its horror. One does not need to have had St. Paul`s vision on the road to Damascus nor his epiphany dream of extending Christianity beyond the Jews to understand their meaning and significance. Joseph was brought in to explain Pharoah`s dream. He did not have the dream himself. Etc. Notice that in all these cases, the issue of not understanding because of the privacy of the experience does not arise. The language of these cases is understandable. Of course, we are aware that they are taken from the Scriptures and from various contexts within the Scriptures. Joseph is a Jew in prison in Egypt, has a reputation for interpreting dreams, has a pretty good grasp of weather and economics, and knows the difference between a pharaoh and a baker – a good grasp on certain forms of life. The same is true with St. Paul`s vision and dream. We know the context. He has been persecuting Christians as a leader of the Jews. If we do not know this context, we cannot grasp the magnitude of his change of heart. He is blinded by light. He is turned completely around – 180 degrees. He, further, in the dream, comes to see the universal applicability of Christ`s redeeming sacrifice. The understanding of such language expressing these ideas is not dependent upon private experiences but upon the form of life and particular details of the contexts in which they are presented in the Scriptures. Christ the redeemer – the teaching that he died for the sins of all, the dream of the pharaoh, the description and significance of Paul`s vision, and the like – is not an understanding privy only to those who have experiences of faith. They are understandable to the non-believer and person of faith alike. Even the inexpicablity of St. Paul`s vision is equally inexplicable to the believer and doubter alike, and, for that matter, to St. Paul himself.

Sense 2 Fideism

Those who accuse Wittgenstein of fideism are misreading him on issues that lead to what I am calling ``Sense 2 Fideism,`` namely, that because statements of religious belief must be understood contextually, only those who share the context of faith can understand those statements. Those who make these objections may or may not think that he is committed to Sense 1 Fideism as well, most probably do not make the distinction. One hears this accusation currently from what are called ``reformed epistemologists,`` but the charge is not exclusive to this group. Though John Cook is not a reformed epistemologist nor does he use the word ``fideism,`` he presents a form of the accusation in his book, Wittgenstein, Empiricism and Language. Here is a summary of Cook`s account of and objection to Wittgenstein`s implied views on these matters.

While Cook believes that in general in philosophy we should be guided by the ordinary language principle of returning the philosophical words – ``see,`` ``know,`` ``appears,`` ``believe,`` – to the contexts in which we use them, it will not be helpful to do this with religious words – ``God,`` ``miracle,`` ``sin.`` The statements in the religious community regarding these words are, he believes, metaphysical statements. The religious person is already making metaphysical claims – claims about reality – and therefore it will not help to return to them to their religious (metaphysical) contexts. In the final analysis, these religious statements are without sense, as are all metaphysical claims. Cook: `` So in the end one is forced to admit that we don`t know what we are talking about when we use religious terms.``

Cook says that Wittgenstein does not see the words and statements of religion in this way. Wittgenstein rather, according to Cook, sees that there is a special language called ``religious language`` and in it words are used in a special religious manner. In this special manner, religious words and statements are located in their own conceptual network and understood only in and by means of that network (fideism). And as such, they are protected from all ``conflict with reality,`` i.e. they are not metaphysical claims and do not make claims about reality.

Cook then goes on to point out how devout believers are ``unnerved`` by this view, because God and His manifestations in the life of believers are a logical fiction – the language describing these supernatural beings and events are meaningful within the conceptual world of the faith community but have nothing to do with a real God outside of the talk of that community. This would make religious language compatible with atheism and equivalent to agnosticism.

There are two aspects of Cook`s account that need attention. The first is Cook`s account of Wittgenstein`s view and whether it amounts to fideism. The second is whether that view should disturb the devout believer as Cook has claimed it does. The second issue, of course, may depend upon whether Cook has accurately described the first.

The question comes to: Do Wittgenstein`s views imply fideism? Particularly, in keeping with his descriptions of language in the Philosophical Investigations, does his ``meaning as use`` theme imply that the language of the ``devout believer`` can only be understood as it is used within the community of devout believers?

We should remember at the outset that the community of believers can be identified in various ways. There is a community of those who have the Holy Bible as their language base. But, of course, within this community there are those – Jews – whose community centers around the Hebrew Scriptures. They too have divisions within that community – sub-communities. And there is a community whose center is the New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That community too has a history of interpretations collected in the councils, creeds, bishops etc. But this community, over time, has divided and sub-divided. Those subdivisions have differences within them, each with its own respective interpreters – Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, etc. Each subdivision, in turn, has, while sharing much with all, councils, confessions, and writers that build a language unique to those communities. There are also communities of Islam, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, with their subdivisions as well. Why am I saying all this? – Only as a reminder to us as philosophers, when we turn to a community to understand the language of those believers. It will be important to put the language back in the right community, and we should, at the same time, be aware of what a community of believers is.

Now what of Cook`s account of Wittgenstein that portrays him as a fideist in the manner described? Wittgenstein`s central idea of ``meaning as use`` – ``language-games`` philosophy, does recommend that we locate the language of faith in a particular community of believers and consider it there in its conceptual framework. For Wittgenstein this means that we must see what the ``devout believer`` does with it in his life. How does he appropriate it? What does he do? What in his life is different as a result of his believing it? What else does he say, ask, or refrain from doing or saying as a result of it? All this is included in the concept of ``meaning as use`` in the practice of language-game philosophizing. Cook, incidentally, is right, as we can see from this description of language-game philosophy, that Wittgenstein does not regard religious language as metaphysics. Neither does he regard theology as metaphysics. Theology he says, as you may remember, is grammar – the working out of what it makes sense to say of God by attending to the language of the community in which faith has its home.

Again, does this make Wittgenstein a fideist? Consider the parallel case of physics. To understand a word or statement in physics, one must know the conceptual framework of – the language and techniques etc. – of the physicist. One, that is, must understand the words and statements of the physicist in the community of those who speak physics. ``Matter,`` ``atom,`` ``spectrometer,`` ``light wave,`` and ``photon`` have a place in a conceptual framework. Surely the words and statements of the physicist are not thereby ``logical fictions`` and excluded from ``conflict with reality.`` There is, to be sure, a difference between a faith statement and a physics statement, and this can be seen quickly through contrasting statements of faith to statements involving experiments and verification. The lack of possible experiments and verification is not brought into the accusation of fideism by Cook and others. They say, rather, that fideism is implied by Wittgenstein`s contextual account of meaning. However, in identifying statements of religious belief with metaphysical statements, Cook does invite the application of experiments and verification into the sphere of faith statements where they then play havoc with such statements making them look like nonsense.

No. Wittgenstein`s great break with metaphysics and with his own Tractatus, by means of the language-game method of asking for the ordinary uses of a word, does not imply that only those in a unique community are able to understand the language of that community. Neither does it imply, by extension, that the language of the devout believer can only be understood inside the particular community of faith of that devout believer. Wittgenstein suggests that we call to mind the language-games and forms of life that surround the words and expressions that have given us philosophical concerns. In this recommendation, he presupposes that the recalling of the relevant language-games and forms of life is possible for anyone who speaks the language and is, conceivably, available to all. If one on the outside of some group such as a special physics research group or the Catholic community, etc. is not familiar with the language-games and details of the forms of life of that community, then one can, with patience, learn what he needs to know in order to understand the language of that community. No special experience is required. It is not necessary to be a believing or confirmed Catholic to understand how the language is used – what the language means. This does not mean that paradoxical ideas such as the Trinity or the Incarnation will no longer be paradoxical. But it may mean that one will have to probe deeply into the lives of individuals and into the life of the whole community to see how their language relating to such ideas actually play out. The understanding of language in such cases by outsiders is in no way blocked by Wittgenstein`s language-game method. In fact, to the contrary, returning the problematic language to its language-game and form of life, presupposes the possibility of understanding by all who have mastered the techniques of the language – English, German, Italian – they speak.

Consider now the second aspect of Cook`s Wittgensteinian fideism – that the ``devout believer is unnerved`` by the idea that his talk of God is a logical fiction. I am not sure what ``unnerved`` comes to here. I would think that the devout believer would flat out deny that his God was a logical fiction. But maybe Cook only meant that if the devout believer in tracing out the supposed implications of Wittgentein`s philosophical investigations, saw that they might be misunderstood as a logical fiction –not necessarily referring to an objective reality – he would be uneasy with that possibility. In any case, Wittgenstein is neither claiming nor implying that ``God,`` is a logical fiction. To point out that theology is grammar – that the language that faith uses – must be understood in a conceptual framework is not at all equivalent to saying that it is not about anything nor referring to anything. Any word, any sentence, any language-game must be understood in its conceptual framework. This is simply an observation about how language works. If such an observation makes ``God`` a logical fiction, then every noun, proper or common, would be logical fictions.

A quick way to see this is to actually try what Wittgenstein recommends with the word ``God``: Put the word or expression under investigation into its logical framework. The word `` God`` from its earliest uses in Genesis through the letters of the apostles, is used to praise and identify a being wholly other than the natural beings we come across daily. God is praised and identified as the creator of nature and we are identified as his creatures. God is praised for his glory and majesty and for his creation. God appears to, speaks to, and guides Abraham, Moses, St. Paul. He appears in the burning bush, but is not the bush. He promises Abraham what no person could promise and Abraham follows God in faith as he would not follow any man.

Now what is the point in this? It is that the word ``God`` when understood in this conceptual network is the name of something whose reality is quite beyond, transcendent of, any ordinary natural person or thing. The very word ``God`` grammatically requires a reality outside our natural world. We cannot think the word ``God`` as it is used in the Judeo-Christian faiths without thinking God as existing beyond our natural world and our language. Is this the element of truth that St. Anselm captured in his argument?

When one pays attention to the role of religious beliefs in his conceptual surroundings – the language of the community of faith in which they set – one sees immediately that they are neither spoken nor received as logical fictions and never could be. Abraham could not leave the land of his ancestors for another and be willing to sacrifice Isaac for something he suspected was a logical fiction. This is not to say that he had no doubt – no fear and trembling. Likewise St. Peter`s confession and St. Paul`s conversion and mission to the gentiles are shinning exemplars of a confidence in unseen realities. Wittgenstein`s proposed case-studies of these saints and exemplars – their language in the framework of their faith communities – are the very thing that show the reality of things unseen. The grammar of faith as unpacked in Hebrews 11: ``Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at Gods command … By faith Noah built an ark … By faith Abraham obeyed and went… By faith Moses chose to be mistreated along with the people of Israel …etc. Grammar is not logical fiction. Rather, ``Grammar tells what kind of object anything is.``

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