Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Religious-Cosmological Reading of Zettel 608

  • Published:
Sophia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. *Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: From a Religious Point of View? New York: Routledge, 1997.

  2. * Z608 and related remarks are reproduced in RPP-I (903-909). See note 12 for the abbreviation key. The seed analogy is discussed in CE. A few comments are in order on the special difficulties interpreting Zettel. Since Zettel is a collection of scraps found after Wittgenstein’s death in a box file, the date of their production often uncertain, with some remarks clipped together, but some loose in the box, so that the arrangement in published form is not due to Wittgenstein, but rather to Peter Geach, with supplementary editorial work by Anscombe and von Wright (G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Editor’s Preface, Zettel, pp. v-vi), it is difficult to determine their precise significance in Wittgenstein’s corpus. Nevertheless, Anscombe and von Wright conclude that these remarks, continually refined by Wittgenstein, have an entirely different look from casual scraps (op cit). Their ultimate value depends on the degree to which a case can be made that they shed light on Wittgenstein’s views (the present paper being a step in that direction). Finally, the present author does not presuppose strict consistency in Wittgenstein’s works. The claim is the weaker one that by looking at Z608 from a religious-cosmological point of view, an illuminating new perspective on Z608 and Wittgenstein’s philosophy in general can be developed.

  3. *For simplicity, the case is argued for language, but one might equally well argue it for thought.

  4. *Colin McGinn. Wittgenstein on Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell. 1984, pp. 12-13, 112-114. Martin Davies, ‘Concepts, Connectionism, and the Language of Thought,’ Philosophy and Connectionist Theory. W. Ramsey, S. Stich, D. Rummelhart (Eds). Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1991, pp. 229-257. Christopher Mills, 1993. ‘Wittgenstein and Connectionism: A Significant Complimentarity,’ Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Richard Scheer, ‘Wittgenstein’s Indeterminism,’ Philosophy. Vol. 66. No. 255. 1991, pp. 5-23. Hark, Ter. 1995. ‘Electric Brainfields and Memory Traces: Wittgenstein and Gestalt Psychology,’ Philosophical Investigations. (1): 113-138. Hanoch Yami, ‘The Hercules in the Machine: Why Block’s Argument against Behaviorism is Unsound.’ Philosophical Psychology 18(2) 2005, pp. 179-286. Whereas McGinn thinks Z608 holds there may turn out to be sawdust in the neural cavity, Yami states the more cautious view that ‘as far as our psychological concepts are concerned, there may be chaos inside [the head].’

  5. *Richard McDonough. 1989. ‘Towards a Non-Mechanistic Theory of Meaning,’ MIND. 98 (389): 1-22, and Richard McDonough. 1991. ‘A Culturalist Account of Folk Psychology,’ The Future of Folk Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 263-288.

  6. *Richard McDonough. 2004. ‘Wittgenstein, German Organicism, Chaos, and the Center of Life,’ The Journal of the History of Philosophy. XLII (204): 297-306. Naomi Scheman (‘Forms of Life: Mapping the Rough Ground.’ The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Hans Sluga and David Stern, Ed’s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. p. 403) also refers to ‘centers of forms of life.’

  7. *McDonough, op cit, 2004

  8. *McDonough, op cit, 2004, pp. 313 n 71, 326 n 131.

  9. *Aristotle, Metaphysics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Trans. Richard McKeon. 1941,1091a-1091b9. By the theologians Aristotle primarily means Hesiod and Homer (John Mansley Robinson. 1968. An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, p. 3). Similar imagery is also found in early Eastern cosmologies (Barbara Sproul. Primal Myths: Creation Myths around the World. New York: HarperOne, 1979). Thus, the claim that these concepts trace to the ancient Greeks is not meant to imply that they may not be traced further back into the ancient East (F.M. Cornford. From Religion to Philosophy, New York: Harper and Row, 1965, p.5). However, the exposition of this possibility must be left for another occasion.

  10. *There are non-cosmological species of religious language in Wittgenstein, e.g., his image of the ‘darkness’ at PI (Preface, pgh. 635) is probably derived from Augustine, who moves freely between the abyss, darkness, chaos, evil, and sin (Emile Zum Brunn, 1988. St Augustine: Being and Nothingness. St. Paul: Paragon House, pp. 17, 56, 99). The present paper focuses on cosmological-religious imagery because this is suggested by the language in Z608, but a more embracing account of Wittgenstein’s religious language can be given. Finally, there is non-religious cosmological language in modern scientific theories, but Wittgenstein rejects invoking scientific theories in philosophy. The present interpretation focuses on religious-cosmological language because only that fits both WR2D and Z608.

  11. *The picture of the emergence of a cosmos from chaos traces, in the West, to Hesiod’s Theogony (Grace Ledbetter. Poetics before Plato. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 55). The picture of ‘the Western tradition’ in the present paper is painted, as Wilfrid Sellars used to say, ‘in very broad strokes.’ One might make numerous distinctions involving the possible roots of the Western tradition in the East, diversity within the Western tradition, etc., but these fall beyond the scope of this paper.

  12. *Wittgenstein’s early philosophy includes the Tractatus-logico-philosophicus (Pears and McGuiness, Trans. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961) and Notebooks, 1914-16, 1st edition (Anscombe, Trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1969)—TLP and NB, respectively. His later philosophy includes Philosophical Investigations (2nd edition. Anscombe, Trans. Oxford: Blackwell. 1958); Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper, 1965); Zettel (Anscombe, Trans. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1970); ‘Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness.’ Winch, Trans. Philosophical Occasions. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Anscombe, Trans., Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972); Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I (Anscombe, Trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1988); On Certainty (Paul and Anscombe, Trans. New York: Harper, 1972); ‘Lecture on Ethics’ (Philosophical Occasions, op cit)—PI, BB, Z, CE, RFM, RPP-I, OC, LE, respectively. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Remarks (Hargreaves and White, Trans. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975); Philosophical Grammar (Kenny, Trans. Oxford: Blackwell, 1974)—PR and PG, respectively, are transitional works cited here in connection with the later philosophy. The remarks from Culture and Value (CV) cited here are more akin to the later philosophy. References to the Tractatus are by proposition number, to the Notebooks, Blue and Brown Books, Culture and Value, and ‘Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness,’ by page number, to the Philosophical Investigations, Zettel, On Certainty, and Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, I, unless indicated otherwise, by paragraph number, to Philosophical Remarks, Philosophical Grammar, and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, unless otherwise indicated, by section and paragraph number.

  13. *McGinn, op cit, p. 114. However, if the surgeon opened Jack’s skull and discovered nothing but sawdust, it is a good bet she would not inform Jack that there is, ‘so to speak,’ chaos in his brain. Furthermore, at OC (281), Wittgenstein rejects the view that there may be sawdust in the heads of normal people as ‘madness.’ McGinn would have us believe that the philosopher who asks ‘What gives the impression we want to deny anything?’ (PI, 305) wants to deny that normal human beings need a brain to think.

  14. *McDonough, 1989, pp. 4-5; McDonough, 1991, pp. 282-284.

  15. *David Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind, New York: Routledge, 1993.

  16. *McDonough (2004, pp. 313, 326). One might argue that Wittgenstein’s notion of a religious point of view in the present case is better captured by the notion of a spiritual point of view. The present paper, however, employs the notion of a religious point of view for two reasons: (1) WR2D specifically mentions a religious point of view, not a spiritual one, and (2) at least some of Wittgenstein’s images are specifically religious rather than more broadly spiritual. Nevertheless, following McDonough’s suggestion, an analogous reading of Z608 from a broader ‘spiritual point of view’ is both possible and desirable (see notes 9, 10, 11).

  17. *Wittgenstein’s Manuscript 110 refers to ‘my person’ as the ‘centre’ of the world (Rush Rhees. ‘Postscript’, Recollections of Wittgenstein. Rush Rhees, Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1984, p. 189).

  18. *John Traupman. German & English Dictionary, New York/London/Toronto/Sydney: Bantam Books, p. 17. The etymology of ‘center’ traces to the Greek, kentron, or ‘prick point,’ i.e., the point of a compass around which a circle is drawn. See Online Etymological Dictionary (hereafter OED) http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=center+point&searchmode=none

  19. *Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, (Ed’s) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 2009.

  20. *‘Cosmetics’, derives from the Greek ‘kosmos.’ Ronald Schenk, The Soul of Beauty, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1992. The beautiful face is, as it were, a cosmos, where every part is perfectly located and proportioned relative to the whole. Homer also used kosmeo to refer to the social act of marshalling an orderly arrangement of troops. OED http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=cosmos&searchmode=none. See note 63.

  21. *Robinson, op cit, p. 77.

  22. *Charles Kahn. Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960, p. 213. See also Aristotle, De Caelo, Trans., J.L. Stocks. McKeon op cit, 285a29.

  23. *Robinson, op cit, pp. 48-50. See David Avraham Weiner (Genius and Talent; Schopenhauer’s Influence on Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy. Rutherford/Madison/Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press. 1992. pp. 57-8, 77-9) and David Pears. (The False Prison. Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 171, 177) on Wittgenstein’s microcosmic doctrine.

  24. *See Bruce Goldberg, ‘The Correspondence Hypothesis.’ The Philosophical Review. Vol. LXXVII. No. 4., Pp. 438-454; Donald Davidson. ‘Mental Events,’ Essays on Action and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; Ted Honderich. Mind and Brain: A Theory of Determinism. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; McDonough, op cit, 1989, etc.

  25. *Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I, Trans, Charles Atkinson. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. p. 68. See Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 29. The claim is not that Wittgenstein fully accepts Spengler’s views. In any case, Spengler’s point is not that a surveyable cosmos presupposes a God’s eye point of view (Compare PI , 352, 426), but that, for man, the Greek cosmos is, as Spengler (op cit, p. 67) puts it, confined to ‘the comprehensibly present.’

  26. *The picture of a an isolated symmetrical limited sphere comprising all reality is found in Parmenide Reginald Allen, Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle. New York: Free Press, pp. 11-12. See also Kuhn (op cit, p. 79).

  27. *Max Black, op cit, p. 268

  28. *Boerhaave belonged to the Galen-Hippocrates tradition that accepted the microcosmic conception of the human body. Wesley Smith, ‘The Hippocratic Tradition’, URL: http://ebookee.org/Wesley-D-Smith-The-Hippocratic-Tradition_555180.html (Cornell University Press, 1979).

  29. *Robinson. op cit, p. 48.

  30. *Otto Weininger, Sex and Character. Ithaca: Cornell University Library. 1906. Pp. 169-73, 188, 229, 290-294. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and as Rrepresentation, Vol. II, p. 642. David Pears. The False Prison. Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 166 and Monk, op cit, pp. 18-19, 137, 142-44.

  31. *McGuiness, op cit.

  32. *McDonough, op cit, 1989, p. 4; Ilham Dilham, Wittgenstein’s Copernican Revolution: The Question of Linguistic Idealism. Palgreave Macmillan, 2002.

  33. *Sheila Rabin, ‘Nicolaus Copernicus,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/

  34. *Cicero’s Tuscan Disputations note that Socrates was the first to ‘call philosophy from heaven down to earth, … introduce her into men’s homes, and compel her to investigate life, customs, [etc.].’ Paul Vander Waerdt, ‘Socrates in the Clouds,’ The Socratic Movement. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, p. 48.

  35. *Frege’s image traces to Plato (Second Letter, Trans. L.A. Post. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 1566). If one combines the view of the Second Letter with Plato’s view that the mind is most akin to the heavenly bodies (Republic, Hamilton and Cairns, 508b-d), which became the crystalline spheres of Medieval cosmology, Hallett’s remark points towards the possibility of a cosmological reading of Wittgenstein’s crystal image.

  36. *Michael Sharratt, Galileo: Decisive Innovator. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, pp. 174-5.

  37. *Plato. Republic, op cit, 509a. Plato, ‘Letter II’ (op cit, 321e). Can all of Wittgenstein’s imagery, such as his remark, ‘We want to walk. So we need friction. Back to the rough ground!’ (PI, 107), be given a cosmological interpretation? Recall that Ancient and Medieval cosmologists viewed the celestial crystalline spheres as frictionless (Owen Gingerich, The Eye of Heaven, College Park, MD: American Institute of Physics Press, p. 27). Thus, to bring philosophical questions down to earth is to bring them from the perfect frictionless heavens to the chaos of earthly imperfections. As difficult as it is to believe for philosophers from Plato to Frege, whose occupational sin is to see meaningL as ‘sublime’ (PI, 89), the point in PI (107) and BB (1) is that meaningL is at home in the chaotic world of human imperfections.

  38. *The Latin primus and aevuum signify, respectively, first and age. OED. URL: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=primeval&searchmode=none.

  39. *Goethe (Scientific Studies. Douglas Miller, Trans. New York: Suhrkamp. 1988. pp. 22-23) suggests that ‘beauty is perfection in combination with freedom’ applied to living organisms.

  40. *See RFM, II, 11, II, 14; II, 22; II, 45; II, 50; II, 55; III, 41; V, 17; etc. The idea that mathematical proofs must be surveyable is usually associated with Hilbert, but is also found in Wittgenstein (Richard Zach. ‘Hilbert’s Program’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hilbert-program/)

  41. *See Peter Winch, ‘Im Anfang war die Tat,’ Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981, pp. 175-177.

  42. John Barton and John Muddiman. The Oxford Biblical Commentary Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 963.

  43. *Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, pp. 611-12.

  44. *Even ordinary dictionary definitions explain the ‘primeval’ by reference to ancient ‘forms of life’ (Online Dictionary. URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/primeval). An age is a period of life OED: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=age&searchmode=none

  45. *John Smart. ‘The Mind/Brain Identity Theory.’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2007. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

  46. *Hark (op cit, pp. 117-118) correctly notes that Z608 refers to a dynamic process, but fails to notice that the direction the process contradicts is the opposite to the direction he assumes.

  47. *Aristotle (op cit, 297a). The language of movement ‘towards the center’ is also found in the Stoics. Brad Inwood, (Ed.). The Stoic Reader. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008, p. 73. Isaac Newton, describing the emergence of the universe out of chaos, invokes his principle of ‘gravitation towards [italics added] a center’ (Letter to Thomas Burnet. Newton’s Philosophy of Nature. New York: Hafner. 1965. p. 62).

  48. *See the plethora of references to the goal, purpose, use, or point of words in PI.

  49. *Kuhn. Copernican Revolution, p. 6. See also note 34.

  50. *Karl Hempel, Philosophy of Science, Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1966, p. 71.

  51. *Plato. Timaeus. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Hamilton and Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 1151-1211.

  52. *O.K. Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations, 1949-51. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986.

  53. *Charles Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 213. Although Plato’s creation myth takes the form of a temporal process, this is not meant literally. His point is that ‘if, per impossible, one could remove the order inducing activity of God from the cosmos, one would be left with mere chaos’ (A.E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928, pp. 79-80).

  54. *It is noteworthy that Hesiod’s gods are created, not creators (Robert Lamberton, Introduction to Hesiod, Works and Days & Theogony. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993, p. 13).

  55. *Renford Bambrough, ‘Demiurge’, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 2. Ed. Paul Edwards. London: Collier-Macmillan. 1967, Pp. 337-338.

  56. *Gregory Vlastos, Plato’s Universe. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 7, 28. 30, 65, 97, etc.

  57. *F.M. Cornford. Plato’s Cosmology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1966, pp. 39, 244, 328 n 4: Gabriela Carone, Plato’s Cosmology and its Ethical Dimensions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 97-100, 140, 153, 158; Richard McDonough. Plato’s Organicism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010. Sec. 2.b. URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/

  58. *J.A. Levy, The Myths of Plato. Southern Illinois University Press, 1963, p. 316. Cornford, op cit, 1966, p. 293.

  59. *Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 81.

  60. *Colin McGinn (‘Can we solve the ‘Mind-body’ Problem?’ Mind. April, 1989) holds that neural structure places limits on what human beings can think and express in language. Richard McDonough, ‘The Last Stand of Mechanism’, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. VI. No. 3, pp. 211-215.

  61. *Plato. Critias. Hamilton and Cairns, op cit, pp. 1212-1224.

  62. *The Greeks saw the center of the cosmos as a sacred place (Robert Brumbaugh, The Philosophers of Greece. Albany: SUNY Press, 1981, p. 22).

  63. *Human populations are like flocks of beasts that must be coerced to behave in an orderly fashion by controlling their souls (Critias, 109b-d). Since Plato ((Statesman, Hamilton and Cairns, op cit, pp. 1018-1085. 261d-e) compares human groups to herds of animals), it is also a social metaphor. See note 20.

  64. *Rosemary Wright (op cit, p. 72).

  65. *Cf. Wilfrid Sellars, ‘The Soul as Craftsman.’ Philosophical Perspectives, Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, p. 14.

  66. *Gregory Vlastos, ‘The Disorderly Motion in the Timaeus,’ Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics. Ed. Reginald E. Allen. 1968, pp. 379-420, p. 398 note 2.

  67. *P. Diamandopoulos. ‘Chaos and Cosmos.’ The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 2. Paul Edwards., Ed. London: Collier-Macmillan. 1967, Pp. 80-81. See Spengler, op cit, p. 63.

  68. *For a description of the general structure of Fodor’s RTM brain see Fodor, op cit, Part III.

  69. *See note 53.

  70. *Very few commentators mention Wittgenstein’s endorsement of Plato’s world-soul doctrine. One exception is Brian McGuiness (Approaches to Wittgenstein: Collected Papers. New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 138), but McGuiness does not attach any major importance to this connection.

  71. *The microcosmic doctrine is usually traced to Pythagoras (John Mansley Robinson. 1968. An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 3). See also G.P. Conger. Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms in the History of Philosophy. Charleston: BiblioBazar. 2009.

  72. *M. O’C. Drury. ‘Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein.’ Recollections of Wittgenstein. Rush Rhees, (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1984.

  73. *McDonough, op cit, 1989, pp. 4-5.

  74. *Whereas classical mental representation theory holds that mental states are encoded in the brain in discrete states, connectionism holds that information is encoded ‘holistically’ in a ‘neural-net.’ Terrance Horgan. ‘Connectionism,’ The Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Supplement. Donald M. Borchet. New York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996, Pp. 95-96.

  75. *See Putnam’s (1981, pp. 7, 41, 67) point about connection between the morals of the Skolem-Löwenheim theory and the argument in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

  76. *Given Wittgenstein’s mention of thought as a ‘gaseous’ entity nearby Z608 at Z611, Bouwsma’s (op cit, pp. 47-8) remark that Wittgenstein emphasized to him that ‘gas’ is etymologically derived from ‘chaos’ is most suggestive. Furthermore, Wittgenstein was correct. OED. URL: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gas&allowed_in_frame=0

  77. *Fredrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil. Walter Kaufmann, (Trans.). New York: Vintage Books, p. 2) is with Hesiod and Wittgenstein and opposed to Plato here.

  78. *Newton Garver (This Complicated Form of Life. LaSalle: Open Court. 1999. pp. 11, 60, 131) might say social or human.

  79. *The attempts to provide neurophysiological explanations of language are precisely an attempt to place extra-linguistic (causal) limits on the range of meaningL.

  80. *If the price of a product is fixed in the ‘chaos’ of the market place, not by some committee operating independently of the marketplace, then, of course, there is no reason why there must be any correspondence between the market value and the price set by the governmental committee.

  81. * McDonough (2004, p. 298). One might think that organicism sounds too much like a positive theory, and, in some forms, it could be. However, organicism, as in Goethe, can be construed on a descriptive, rather than a theoretical model, whereby the ‘inner’ nature of the organism is expressed in its outward form and behavior (See PI, 580 and Rudolph Steiner, Nature’s Open Secret: Introduction to Goethe’s Scientific Writings. John Barnes, Trans. Herndon, Va: Steiner Books. 2000. pp. 1, 22-3, 44, 53, etc.), thereby yielding a descriptive phenomenology of life.

  82. * McDonough (2004, p. 298). One might think that organicism sounds too much like a positive theory, and, in some forms, it could be. However, organicism, as in Goethe, can be construed on a descriptive, rather than a theoretical model, whereby the ‘inner’ nature of the organism is expressed in its outward form and behavior (See PI, 580 and Rudolph Steiner, Nature’s Open Secret: Introduction to Goethe’s Scientific Writings. John Barnes, Trans. Herndon, Va: Steiner Books. 2000. pp. 1, 22-3, 44, 53, etc.), thereby yielding a descriptive phenomenology of life.

  83. *Peter Brown. Introduction to Augustine’s Confessions. Indianapolis: Hackett. 1999, p. xxiii. See also note 10. Indeed, Wittgenstein may have acquired his religious-cosmological imagery from Augustine rather than the Greeks per se, but that is another story.

  84. *One can think of a language game as, sozusagen, a microcosm of a natural language that enables one to dispel some of the chaos attending natural languages.

  85. *See David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason: Toward a Platonic Conception of Logos, New York/London: Routledge. Pp. 196-201) and Garver, op cit, p. 85.

  86. *See notes 9 and 11.

  87. *See note 10.

  88. *Indeed, the ‘religious-cosmological’ reading of Z608 does not merely concern a few paragraphs in Zettel, but suggests a ‘religious’ reading of Wittgenstein’s entire later philosophy, including his non-cosmological religious imagery, e.g., his remark that a ‘good angel’ is always needed in mathematics (RFM V.13).

  89. *Malcolm, pp. 2, 4.

  90. *Winch, pp. 128, 132.

  91. Malcolm, pp. 2, 4, 92; Winch, p. 111

  92. *Winch, p. 124.

  93. *Malcolm, p. 1.

  94. *Daniel Dennett. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1987.

  95. *Arguably, Einstein is not religious, but adopts a religious point of view in his scientific formulations (‘God does not play dice with the world’). See Albert Einstein. ‘Autobiographical Notes,’ pp. 4-5, and Max Born, ‘Einstein’s Statistical Theories,’ p. 176, both in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Paul Arthur Schlipp. La’Salle: Open Court, 1991.

  96. *This is not contradicted by the fact that a hypothesized fundamental particle, the Higgs boson, that ‘explains everything,’ is sometimes called ‘the God particle’ (Leon Lederman, The God Particle. New York: Dell. 1993). The point of the grandiose name is that a mere physical particle purports to ‘answer’ all the questions formerly assigned to God.

  97. *Winch, pp. 97, 112.

  98. *Winch, p. 124.

  99. *Winch, 128, 129-30.

  100. *Winch, pp. 131-2.

  101. *Winch, p. 132. In fact, looking at philosophical problems from a religious point of view is not the same as philosophical problems having a ‘religious dimension.’

  102. *Paul Tillich (Systematic Theology. Readings in 20 th Century Philosophy. Alston and Nakhnikian, Ed’s. New York: Free Press. Pp. 729-31) emphasizes the religious character of ultimate concerns. Further, Tillich’s view is not self-evident. See William Wainwright. ‘Concepts of God.’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010. Sec. 1. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts-god/

  103. *Malcolm, p. 92.

  104. *Winch, p. 132.

  105. *Brown, op cit, p. xxiii. See note 83. Further, Milton and Blake were admired by Wittgenstein (CV, 48; Monk, pp. 540, 569), and it is possible that Wittgenstein obtained this imagery from literary sources. The religious-cosmological picture of the emergence of order from chaos, with the ethical dimension that would have appealed to Wittgenstein (Monk, op cit, p. 265; Garver, op cit, pp. 76, 91, 97, 100-101), is present in Milton’s Paradise Lost and in Blake’s works (S. Foster Damon. William Blake: His Philosophy and his Symbols. Whitefish: Kessinger. 2006).

  106. *The present paper is dedicated to Normal Malcolm, who raised the issue.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 52 Bukit Batok East Ave 5, Regent Heights Tower B #12-04, Singapore, Republic of Singapore, 659802

    Richard McDonough

Authors
  1. Richard McDonough
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard McDonough.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McDonough, R. The Religious-Cosmological Reading of Zettel 608. SOPHIA 52, 259–279 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0320-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0320-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation