Wittgenstein:
Metaphor and Metaphysics
Roughly at the beginning of the 20th century
a new type of philosophy began to develop, a type that was to distinguish
20th century thinking from all previous types of philosophical thought. This
type is usually called "Analytic,” sometimes also "Linguistic” philosophy.
Among its most prominent founders were Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein,
and among its most noted characteristics is the idea that philosophers do
not talk about the world directly anymore, but only about statements about
the world. The immediate subject matter of "Analytic" or "Linguistic"
philosophy is not reality, but language.
The explicit exploration of the facts of the world is deliberately left to
disciplines that specialize in the collection of empirical data, such as the
natural and social sciences. Philosophy, by contrast, confines itself to the
painstaking clarification of concepts, and it does so through the logical
and semantic analysis of the language by means of which we communicate about
facts and the world. Traditional philosophers would ask such things as “Is
the life of the mind superior to the physical life?” Analytic philosophers
by contrast ask: “What exactly does ‘life of the mind’ mean? And what does
‘superior’ indicate—a fact or some emotional or social valuation?” Traditional
philosophers, according to their Analytic colleagues, were far too careless
in their pronouncements and generalizations, and a whole new procedure or
method was called for if philosophy was to make any significant contributions
to human knowledge in the future.
This is not to say that recent philosophers have simply become linguists or
lexicographers. Analytic philosophers still try to shed light on such perennial
philosophical problems as the nature of the mind, the basis of morality, the
ultimate purpose of art, and so forth. But they do so by paying attention
to the details of language in a way that earlier philosophers would have found
excessive. Analytic philosophers are convinced that no valid insights about
the world can be gained without scrutinizing the way language mediates and
shapes our perception and understanding—or misunderstanding!--of the world.
Of particular importance to early Analytic philosophers was the critique and
eventual demolition of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate
nature of reality, and traditionally it has embraced highly speculative theories
of the supernatural, theories that are usually as riddled with imprecision
as they are lofty. In an age that was largely shaped by the success of the
exact and evidence-based sciences, philosophers as well as the reading public
at large had become wary of the precariously formulated assertions of metaphysicians,
and they had increasingly begun to ask for reliable proof and other forms
of substantiation. Analytic philosophers radicalized this skepticism by arguing
that metaphysical statements are not just murky, unproven, or outright untrue,
but altogether vacuous and literally void of sense.
Wittgenstein in particular maintained that metaphysical statements have no
cognitive content whatever—that, indeed, they are composed of meaningless
terms in much the same way in which Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” is
composed of “words” without sense. In the interest of cleaning up a discourse
that was riddled with hazy notions and conceptual confusions, Wittgenstein
recommended that the murky and pretentious propositions of metaphysics be
replaced by a clear-headed silence. At the end of his trailblazing Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus he wrote:
The right method in philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what
can be said, i.e. ,the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that
has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished
to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had not given
a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would not be satisfying
to the other --he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but
it would be the only strictly correct method. ... Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent. (1)
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born and grew up in Vienna, but received
the professional part of his education in England, where he first studied
engineering, and then mathematics and Analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell,
his teacher and friend, soon came to think of Wittgenstein as a philosophical
genius who effected more than one break-through in the theory of logic and
philosophical analysis. During World War I, while fighting in the Austrian
army, Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus, a slim
volume which became one of the classics of 20th century philosophy. It inspired
the group of rebellious philosophers that came to be known as the "Vienna
Circle," and it provided the main basis for Logical Positivism, the school
of thought that was most vociferously engaged in the elimination of metaphysics
from professional philosophy.
After the war, Wittgenstein (a millionaire by inheritance) gave away all his
money, abandoned philosophy, considered becoming a monk, spent two years designing
and building a radically modernistic house for his sister, and finally decided
to make a living as a grade school teacher in the Austrian country side. It
was not until the end of the 1920s that he could be persuaded to return to
the University of Cambridge and to academic philosophy. He spent the rest
of his life teaching and critiquing his own earlier work, significantly radicalizing
his deconstruction of metaphysics and traditional philosophy. Although he
became ever more dissatisfied with academia as a way of life and inquiry,
his influence was enormous among young philosophers and other intellectuals.
His Philosophical Investigations, posthumously published in 1953,
can easily be classified as one of the most incisive and important works of
20th century thought.
The bulk of Wittgenstein’s work, like that of most early Analytic philosophers,
deals with logic, language, concept formation, and questions that are today
discussed under the heading of cognitive science. The critique of religion
and religious language was a by-product of these endeavors. Still, Wittgenstein’s
radical critique of metaphysics has significant implications for the understanding
of religious language, and it is these implications that will be considered
in what follows.
The heart of traditional critiques of religion had always been the contention
that religious beliefs are a sort of illusion, and that the central statements
of any creed are either wildly speculative or downright false. While theologians
spent much time on such projects as proving the existence of God, and while
atheists did their best to show how incompatible religious claims are with
the evident truths of common sense and science, both sides always took it
for granted that basically religious statements are either true or false.
The Analytic critique of religion differs from its traditional predecessors
in that it does not say that religious assertions are unproven or false, but
that they are impossible to understand. And they are impossible to understand
not because they are difficult or too complex, but because they literally
have no sense. Religious statements are neither true nor false, according
to this Analytic critique, but literally non-sense. Strictly speaking they
are not statements at all, but just so many noises or marks that signify nothing.
To illustrate: The statement "Pigs eat corn" is true. The statement
"Pigs fly by flapping their ears" is false. The statement "Pigs
gorban toves" is neither true nor false, but nonsense. According to the
above Analytic philosophers, key statements of religion are essentially like
"Pigs gorban toves"--sentence-like utterances without any sense.
Nobody can either believe or disbelieve "Pigs gorban toves" or utterances
like it. Because before one can either believe or not believe a statement,
one has to understand what it says--and that, according to Analytic philosophers,
is an impossibility in the case of metaphysical propositions.
Statements can be nonsensical in a number of ways. "Pigs gorban toves"
is nonsensical on the face of it. So, presumably, is Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky":
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
..." Other statements are nonsensical as well, but at first sight they
look as if they had some meaning. "My feelings weigh 1.74 pounds"
may be an example, and "The inflation rate is without water” another.
At first sight certain religious statements look like regular statements as
well. Propositions like "The dead warrior is passing on to another world,"
or "God sees everything" certainly do not look as nonsensical as
"Pigs gorban toves." Yet they are, according to the above Analytic
philosophers. Their lack of meaning, however, has to be shown by a certain
amount of careful analysis.
"Pigs gorban toves" is unintelligible because two of its "words"
have no meaning. That is one way in which a sentence can fail to have sense.
It is often argued that that is the case with one of the key statements of
many religions, namely "God exists." This statement is said to be
nonsensical because one of its words cannot be satisfactorily defined--the
word "God." God is often defined as a non-physical person who is
omniscient, omnipotent, and universally good. The words in this definition
sound alright, but can one really think such a being? Is being physical in
some way not indispensable for being a person? Can one conceive of a scolding,
wrathful, loving, or talking being who does not have a human-like body or
other appropriate physical attributes? And can one conceive of someone as
omnipotent and universally good if he permits all the atrocities and immense
pain that have been perpetrated on children and other innocent creatures throughout
history? What do such words mean? Obviously we can mouth words like
“non-physical person” or “universally good,” but can we really think what
we seem to be saying? Are such words not expressions that sound familiar and
solid, but that fail to convey any thinkable content?
The Analytic challenge is that the word “God” is not sufficiently defined
to have meaning, and that statements containing it fail to make sense. To
say "God exists" is like saying "Purlik exists." Nobody
can say whether that is true or false, because nobody knows what it says.
Nobody can thus either believe or refuse to believe such a statement. If "God
exists" is nonsense, however, then the key statement of atheism is nonsense
as well--"God does not exist." Even the agnostic "I do not
know whether God exists" does not make sense. Neither theists nor atheists
nor agnostics know what they are talking about; their "statements"
are all senseless sounds.
It will not be necessary here to get into the discussion of whether "God"
can be satisfactorily defined or not. The case is worth mentioning as a schematic
illustration of the way in which the Analytic critique of religion is different
from traditional critiques, and how Analytic philosophers talk about statements,
instead of talking about God and the world. To further indicate, however,
the peculiar approach of Analytic philosophy, the following controversy is
worth mentioning.
There has in recent years been a discussion among theologians about whether
God is male or female (a discussion that is similar to the one about whether
God is "black,” "white," or “red”). Many feminist theologians
find the description of God as "father" as offensive as earlier
thinkers found the description of God as an authoritarian "lord"
(which seemed to validate the discredited feudal world of monarchs and serfs).
In certain circles the determination of God's gender has therefore become
a matter of political and emotional importance. The question at the center
of this controversy is, whether the traditional or the feminist description
of God is true.
Analytic philosophers would have trouble entering the fray on either side.
An Analytic philosopher's first question would not be whether the assertion
"God is male" is true or false, but whether it can be understood.
How can God have a gender? Since presumably it is not a matter of physical
details such as a beard or voice, is it a matter of social role or emotional
disposition? Are there things that a male or female God would not do because
of his or her gender? What exactly would make God male or female? How would
we know God’s gender if we encountered the deity?
The question of God’s gender is bound to leave philosophers at a loss—not
because it is difficult to answer, but because we do not know what an answer
would be like. It is like the question whether Lake Huron is male or female:
it is no real question at all. It is a senseless utterance in the form of
a question—"language on a holiday,” as Wittgenstein sometimes called
this sort of talk.
To further exemplify the problems of meaning that arise in connection with
religious statements it will be helpful to take a closer look at a seemingly
unproblematic statement like "God sees everything." The statement
seems clear and easy to understand; it could be uttered in church or in ordinary
conversations. Yet, upon closer inspection it reveals all the difficulties
that Analytic philosophers have had with metaphysical statements. The difficulties
in question are, in fact, such that they inspired a whole theory of meaning
concerning religious statements, a theory meant to solve these philosophical
difficulties.
It is obvious why a sentence like "God sees everything" might be
puzzling to someone who gives thought to its meaning. Seeing is something
that involves persons, i. e., beings with functioning eyeballs, suitable viewing
positions, and other physical details that cannot very well be connected with
God--God as a non-physical being. How can a non-physical being see? What would
“seeing” be in such a case? To see without a body seems as impossible as sneezing
or having cramps without a body, or as impossible as smiling without a face
or a mouth. The word "see" does not seem to mean anything in connection
with non-physical beings, as little as such words as "sneeze”, "smile”,
or "shudder.” To say that someone sees and is non-physical appears to
imply an outright contradiction.
A way out of this difficulty seems to be the idea that religious propositions
are not straightforward statements, but rather "metaphors," "similes,"
“allegories,” or “symbols.” Sentences like "God sees everything,"
according to this theory of meaning, cannot be understood literally, but only
as symbolic pictures of something that can only be conveyed indirectly. God's
"seeing" would then somehow be like the seeing that human
beings perform, but also different in that it is not physical. The question
is: Does this solve the problem of the intelligibility of religious statements?
Does it help us to understand how a non-physical being can see--or be watchful,
wrathful, loving, and so forth? Does it help us to see how a non-physical
being can be black or male?
In his "Lecture on Ethics" of 1929 Wittgenstein offers the following
critique of the idea that religious statements are similes or metaphors:
For when we speak of God and that He sees everything, and when we kneel
and pray to Him, all our terms and actions seem to be part of a great and
elaborate allegory which represents Him as a human being of great power whose
grace we try to win, etc, etc. ...Thus in ethical and religious language we
seem constantly to be using similes. But a simile must be a simile for something.
And if I can describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop
the simile and to describe the facts without it. Now in our case as soon as
we try to drop the simile and simply to state the facts behind it, we find
that there are no such facts. And so, what at first seemed to be a simile
now seems to be mere nonsense. (2)
The gist of Wittgenstein's criticism is his reminder that a simile has to
be a simile for something. Consider the following case: It is possible
to describe the automated security system of a building as if it were a superhuman
person. One could say of it that "it is behaving very oddly tonight,"
or, on account of its electronic eyes, that "it sees everybody entering
and leaving the building." One can also say that it "admits"
or "refuses entrance" to visitors, depending on whether the latter
insert the proper cards into the appropriate slots. The regulating computer
of the system can be said to be "startled" when fed with unforeseen
data. It is clear that in this and similar cases anthropomorphic expressions
like "seeing," "behaving," or "being startled” are
not used in a literal sense, but rather metaphorically. A building's security
system does not really see, get startled, etc., but rather functions in a
way which in certain respects is analogous to what human beings do when they
see, refuse entrance, get confused, and so forth. Thus, such expressions as
"seeing" can be considered similes when they are used outside the
sphere of those human activities in connection with which they are developed
and normally learned and applied.
What is important here for Wittgenstein's contention is the fact that the
metaphorical expressions can be replaced by literal descriptions of what is
actually happening in the above security system. Instead of saying that the
system "sees" people entering or leaving one can describe the functioning
of photosensitive cells, impulses transmitted through wires to the regulating
computer, and similar mechanical operations. One can, in other words, describe
the functioning of the security system by using either metaphorical or non-metaphorical
terms, and whenever there are questions about the intelligibility of the metaphor,
one can have recourse to the non-metaphorical description. It is the possibility
of such recourse to non-metaphorical language which Wittgenstein finds lacking
in the case of religious language. Thus, while it is clear that God does not
see in the way human beings do, it is not at all clear what God does do when
he "sees."
In his Tractatus Wittgenstein writes: "To understand a statement
is to know what is the case if it is true." (3). But we do not know what
is the case when someone says that "God sees." It follows that we
cannot understand a text which says that "God sees everything."
It also follows that we do not understand whatever else is said about God's
activities, dispositions, and plans, as all these anthropomorphic reports
fail to be translatable into direct, non-metaphorical descriptions of the
alleged metaphysical facts. We simply do not know what seeing without eyes
could possibly be, or feeling without a body, or planning for a future without
an appropriate social and physical context. In trying to think such things
as God seeing we may momentarily call up all sorts of pictures (like Michelangelo’s
picture of God looking down at Adam ), but none of the pictures will show
what needs to be shown. A non-physical being cannot float, speak out in anger,
or touch human beings with his hand. Try as we may, we have no idea as to
what that would be like. In the end a sentence like "God sees everything"
can do nothing but baffle us--provided we pay attention to the supposed meaning
of the statements that people seem to bandy about so carelessly.
Images are important in religion; people’s feelings, resolutions, and commitments
are often prompted by and intertwined with vivid imagination, powerful visions,
or overwhelming dreams. The whole idea of "another world," of a
spiritual realm "beyond" the physical world, is largely sustained
as a series of pictures—by what seems to be an elaborate metaphor. Certain
burial rites, present in human civilizations for thousands of years, are instructive.
In many cultures chieftains and warriors were buried with all their weapons,
together with food, drink, and sometimes slaves that would help the deceased
to survive during their journey to and in the Other World. Vikings fitted
a boat in which a dead warrior was sent on his way. Such burial customs indicate
that both the journey and the Other World were imagined on the model of traveling
and surviving in this world. Life after death was pictured as something that
strongly resembles life before death. All the elements of the imagined life
in the Other World are images of life as we know it here and now. This is
why as early a philosopher as Xenophanes (born around 570 BCE) cautioned us
about our readiness to construe divine matters on anthropomorphic models--to
glibly create gods in the image of men:
Mortals, however, believe that the gods are born and wear clothes and
have voices and a build like themselves.
If oxen and horses and lions had hands and could paint and produce works
as human beings do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and
oxen like oxen, and they all would create them in the image of their own kinds.
The Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black; the Thracians say
theirs have blue eyes and red hair. (4)
Seemingly metaphoric images and anthropomorphic models are systematically
misleading when it comes to metaphysics. They invoke a world that they could
not possibly represent. The world in which we live and learn language is physical
in many ways, a world of the eyes in particular, while the Other World is
said to be a non-physical realm. That Other World is even said to exist "beyond
space and time." This means that there is no possible boat that could
make the passage from our world to the other, and no equipment that would
help a dead person to survive. Even the Vikings must have been aware that
a boat and a corpse could not land in the Other World in the way boats and
passengers might land on the shores of other continents. One can call up the
image of a passage, but the image means nothing once one tries to think of
it as a depiction of a metaphysical state of affairs. The image can be called
a metaphor for metaphysical events only as long as one does not acknowledge
the details that would be involved in a passage to another world, details
that involve space, time, and physical conditions. Images and anthropomorphic
imagination, in other words, can maintain their suggestive power only in the
absence of careful reading and critical attention. In the end they are just
images, not images of something metaphysical.
Once critical questions are asked, the entire conception of “another world”--of
a metaphysical transcendence--is bound to fall apart. Not, again, because
there is no corroborating evidence of its existence, but because one cannot
even imagine what it would be. People who talk about “life after death” regularly
invoke images of three-dimensional spaces and times in which such a life,
rather like on earth, can take place. But given that the “other world” is
non-physical and “beyond space and time,” none of their attempted descriptions
makes sense. As long as one thinks of the Other World as something like another
country or region, or some sort of place that involves physical features,
there is something one can call up in one’s imagination. But as soon as one
is serious about the meta-physical nature of the “beyond,” all thought
and imagination will cease. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be
silent.”
Since the unthinkable cannot be thought, there is nothing to confirm or deny
with respect to “another world;” there literally is nothing to argue about.
The problem with which theologians and their atheist opponents have wrestled
so hard and for so long, the question whether there is a God and a metaphysical
transcendence, has thus not been answered or solved, but dissolved--dissolved
by exposing the very notion of a metaphysical transcendence as a logical impossibility,
as something that nobody can think. There is no conceptual foothold for trying
to prove or disprove the existence of married bachelors or non-physical persons,
nor is there one for wondering about metaphysical transcendence. Once this
is clear, a great deal of chatter will stop, and a clear-headed silence prevail.
Notes
(From Jorn K.
Bramann: Educating Rita and Other Philosophical
Movies)