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Fox and Cat

And if I told you there was a field where if you planted money ... Pinocchio and philosophy.

Examples are the only master in philosophy. That statement is not quite correct, but principles (concepts) without examples are empty of meaning.

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Note: There is a later brief revision of these ideas.

Sense, nonsense, and reason

'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature II, iii, 3)

Having recourse to Plato's method of tautologies: If the wise man says that, then what does the fool [foolish man] say?

The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing. (OC § 166)

Weighing Objects

But the question here is not of "the groundlessness of belief" -- but of whether sense and nonsense, of whether language meaning is groundless. (Do all words have the ruleless grammar of the word 'beautiful'?) Wittgenstein says that a language game is without grounds (OC § 559: "a language game is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable)" -- yet he gives the example of weighing cheese on a scale (PI § 142), i.e. an example where there are indeed grounds for the language game, namely the repeatability of an experiment [experience]). Rather than grounds, according to Wittgenstein, there is agreement in action, coincidental agreement in way of life (ibid. § 241).]

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. (ibid. § 124)

The continuity of the results of weighing cheese on a scale; doesn't that very general fact of nature belong to philosophy's description of language use -- and is that fact not the foundation of that language game? And is not the pointing out of that fact giving that game a philosophical foundation? For compare the procedure of a rain dance.

Reason evaluating experience

Indeed, doesn't it seem obvious that the possibility of a language game is conditioned by certain facts? (OC § 617)

Isn't the repeatability of e.g. weighing cheese on a scale what we would call grounds for using the concept 'weight'? The justification for weighing is experience; experience is our reason [grounds] for weighing things (PI § 481). And if experience isn't grounds here, then what would be?

As we live our life, both as individuals and as a community of language users, some concepts lose their point or usefulness in our life and fade away (as e.g. 'God' and 'gods' may do). When Wittgenstein warns against the "concepts that are common currency" (CV p. 74), that shows that we clarify, revise and discard concepts, and we use reason evaluating experience to do this. Words are tools but we don't use all the tools in our tool chest; some are so covered with dust through disuse that they might as well not be there, while new ones are added from time to time (as e.g. Wittgenstein's revision [redefinition] of the concept 'grammar', as well as academic kant).

F.M. Cornford uses the expression "groundwork of current conceptions", which W.K.C. Guthrie frames with "No scientist ancient or modern is entirely free from the ... which are the common property of his age and country" (The Greeks and their Gods, rev. ed. 1954, Appendix to Chapter XII, ii, p. 374).

The distinction between 'wisdom' and 'foolishness'

"There is no reason why I should not prefer that a child be murdered to ..." If there is no way to distinguish between wisdom and foolishness, reason and thoughtlessness, which is what Hume is saying, by the use of reason, reasoning ... What would a reason look like, a way to distinguish, why you shouldn't prefer that the world be destroyed? Is this like "If the good man does this, then what does the evil man do? If the good man murders, rapes and tortures, then what does the evil man do?"

If the words 'good' and 'evil' are to have any meaning, if the words 'wise' and 'foolish' are to have any meaning, then they have to be defined by examples. The word 'cruelty' is defined by examples of cruelty; the word 'good' by examples of goodness; 'wisdom' or 'reasonable' by examples of wisdom. And their antitheses. However, their grammar is not the same as the grammar of the word 'beauty': we do not say that cruelty is in the eye of the beholder. We don't say that torture may not really be cruel, that it is only cruelty in some people's eyes. [About the class of all chairs: "What is or isn't a chair is in the eye of the beholder." But the concept 'chair' is used as an example of objectivity. The proposition 'Every judgment is subjective' is nonsense.]

We speak of proportion, of a sense of proportion, of having no sense of proportion. Having a sense of proportion is wise; having no sense of proportion is foolish. What would a reason look like here? What would be an example be? A counter-example be? Would terrible pain be an example of a reason [a tooth extracted with anesthesia or without anesthesia]? What do we mean by 'common sense'? Is common sense not a reason, a justification? Not that cases of common sense are not disputable [but so is everything else; but it doesn't follow from disputability that there is no truth, no correctness], of course. How else is 'common sense' defined other than by examples of sound judgment?

What would a reason look like here?

"There is no reason why I should prefer to be wise to being foolish." What would a reason look like here? What would justify that statement, what refute [de-justify] that statement -- the inability to offer a reason? Could you say, "If there cannot be a reason, then there also cannot not be a reason, i.e. that it is not a question of reasons"? No, I do not believe that Hume was merely being perverse, but I do believe that he is wrong, mistaken. The grammar of 'good' and 'wise', etc., is not the same as the grammar of the word 'beautiful' -- wisdom and goodness are not in the eye of the beholder any more than 'chair-ness' is: there are irreplaceable axioms [indispensable paradigms] in ethics just as there are in logic. The rule 'P and not-P is false' is not arbitrary or replaceable by its opposite: it is an example, a definition, of what we mean by the word 'logic'.

[You cannot ask -- i.e. it is nonsense: What if everyone were mad? because the word 'madness' gets its very meaning from everyone's not being mad. Antitheses. "It is not unreasonable that ..." -- but something must be unreasonable. (Cf. Drury: in every investigation, something must stand fast, undoubted.)]

"If the reasonable man does that, then what does the man who lacks the ability to reason ["discourse of reason"] do?"

A fact is only a fact within some frame of reference (to amend Goethe's 'theory' in the quotation). A justification is only a justification in some language game type.

The kind of justification is the kind of language game. The propositions of ethics are not justified [in the same way] by the same methods as empirical propositions are, or as mathematical propositions are, although ethical propositions are more akin to mathematical propositions than to empirical -- i.e. testable by experience -- propositions. Why does 1 + 1 = 2? Because that is the rule of arithmetic [which is like a game played according to strict rules]. Tautologies in ethics are rules, but they are both grammatical rules and rules of conduct. In ethics, grammar [definition] justifies conduct.

Axioms and "the passions"

Justification is what makes a thing stand firm. If there were no end to justification, e.g. if there were no axiom or first principle, then nothing could ever [logically] stand firm. ["Justification by experience [or by anything else, for that matter] comes to an end [Justification (grammatically) must come to an end]. If it did not it would not be justification" PI § 485). "To be sure there is justification; but justification comes to an end" (OC § 192). The question here is not of "the groundlessness of belief" [or of "the groundlessness of actions [deeds]"] (PI § 217)] -- but (1) of whether grammar is groundless, as Wittgenstein says (see above), and (2) of whether grammar can serve as justification [grounds] for anything more than the use of language.

Where there is a justification, there has to be a method of justification, or standard. Hume would say that there is no such standard. And not only in ethics does he say that there is nothing for reason to base itself on other than what "the passions" provide. But that is wrong: the basis of what is reasonable is something that is not reasonable, but only because an axiom is the final reason in a steps of reasons, not because the final step is an emotion.

What are examples of "passions" -- love, anger, hatred, jealousy? These are the very things that what we call 'wisdom' says should not overrule ("enslave") reason. The word 'wisdom' is not "mere sound without meaning" because it is defined by one unshakable example: not everything about is "debatable". If it is not wise to be guided by reason, then it is not wise to be wise.


Earlier related discussions that may be worse or better: The concept 'ought' in ethics, and Why tautologies are important, and Plato's useful tautologies.


To let the theories fit the facts | The true master in philosophy

Isaac Newton wrote that "experiments are the true masters to follow in physics" (i.e. not speculation, not Aristotle). In philosophy examples are the true master, not general remarks [generalities]. Theories are to be fitted to the examples, not the examples fitted to the theories (Myson, Diog. L. i, 108). Theories exist to serve the facts. It is self-deception to theorize in their absence.

Vagueness is the mortal enemy of knowledge and understanding; speaking in generalities is the vaporization of philosophy.

I want to get something done, to get somewhere in philosophy, to reach conclusions. For that, examples are needed and they have to be very specific. (When I was at school I did not [could not] understand when the professors talked in generalities. I would have to think of examples to give a meaning to their words. Most often I could not.)

There are many ways to slice a pie, i.e. many possible classification systems.

But the classification system should be fitted to the individual facts, not the individual facts to the system. [Examples of misfitting.]

That is a blunder it is easy to make, forcing the facts into Wittgenstein's formulas; I may have done this often enough in earlier days: "Philosophical problems are really conceptual confusion caused by a failure to understand the grammar or logic of our language" (cf. PI § 109). If that is so, then why take Plato's arguments, e.g. "definitions of piety", seriously?

These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings ... (ibid.)

"... of course"? Remember to ask yourself: Is this the only possible way to see this, the only possible way to look at [understand, classify] this? Is that the only possible explanation? "Can it only be explained one way? Can't it be this or that?" (LC ii, p. 60-61; cf.PG i § 83, p. 130)

I want to say and will say: Examples are the only masters in philosophy (Isaac Newton said, Experiments are the true masters in natural science). Theories [conceptions] made in the absence of examples are "empty" (cf. "concepts without precepts"). You make up a story, and then you believe that's what happened. Never mind that there are no facts to base your story on.


About superstition and religion, a distinction

Note: this continues and supplements the discussion Philosophy of Western Religion.

I have not read any philosophical or theological books about the religious meaning of the existence of evil, but have just thought about this for myself over the years. Then I have taken a few ideas about religion from various writers, especially Albert Schweitzer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and used these to revise my own thoughts.

When thinking about God and the existence of evil what is most important is to love the truth = the logical and the verifiable ("reason") above all else.

No one lights a candle to place it under a basket. No, he places it on the table so that its light may shine forth. (Matthew 5.15)

Man has been endowed with reason; it is the excellence that is unique and proper to man. Logic and experience are the light man has to guide his thinking and life. To silence these is to put that light under a basket, to blind oneself.

We can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. (2 Corinthians 13.8)

To revere the truth, to want to know regardless of the outcome [the conclusion comes at the end of an investigation, not at its beginning] is to love God, because God is truth.

And I don't think it is possible to live by contradictory standards, one rational, the other irrational ("Here I do not use reason"), because one is going to be at war with oneself. How can one practice historiography selectively, exempting so-called sacred texts from even the lowest test, namely everyday plausibility?

I would, therefore, say that belief in revealed truth is superstition, because it is belief that is not put to the tests of reason and experience: it presumes that there is a better path to the truth, namely magic.

Averroes on Philosophy and Theology

The same truth can be expressed in more than one way, e.g. as a proposition in philosophy or allegorically ("picture-teaching") as in religion.

What Averroes did was to make theology subordinate to philosophy, to make the latter the judge of the former, so that it belongs to the philosopher to decide what theological doctrines need to be allegorically interpreted and in what way they should be interpreted. (Frederick Copleston, History of Philosophy, Volume II, IX, 4)

Ethics (knowledge of good and evil) can be used as a standard for deciding which way a text about God should be read (literally or figuratively [allegorically]) based on the principle that God does not do evil or command that evil be done.

The limit of metaphysics -- is experience

Philosophers make many deductions about the nature of God, deriving one proposition from others. "God, being perfect, must be all-powerful and all-good", even if experience demonstrates the contrary, namely that God cannot be both.

If metaphysics says otherwise, this shows the limit of metaphysics, that is, of speculation, namely that metaphysics can create a God [a concept 'God'] that floats free of the facts of our life [the world of our experience].

How does thought come to such a meaningless proceeding as making man enter into a spiritual relation with an unreal creation of thought? (Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics 2e, xx; cf. Bonhoeffer: "an abstract belief in the conceptual forms of the absolute, metaphysical, infinite, etc.")

[Variation 1: Metaphysics may demonstrate that God is all-good and all-powerful -- and why not, for it is not logically impossible. The demonstration only contradicts experience, not itself.]
[Variation 2: "That than which nothing more perfect can be imagined", Anselm's most perfect being, would indeed be all-powerful and all-good, which proposition shows the limit of metaphysics if that limit is set by our verifiable experience of life, as I myself judge it should be.]

If theories are invented to fit the facts, then, as with scientific theories, metaphysical theories must be consistent with the facts.

Logic when answerable to experience ("reason") is the judge in philosophy. Thus, the truth limit of metaphysics is the same as the truth limit of logical possibility (i.e. of what is describable and not self-contradictory) -- in other words, not everything describable or deducible is real.

Given the choice between trusting my own eyes or the speculations of metaphysicians, I will trust my own eyes. (The two tests of Socratic philosophy: logic and experience.)

Plato, metaphysics versus experience

And that seems just the opposite of Plato's view, of Plato's axiomatic method in philosophy. The limit of Plato's philosophy -- is preconceived ideas.

I feared that my soul would be altogether blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and tried to grasp them ... So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of things by means of words.... I started in this manner: taking as my hypothesis in each case the theory that seemed to me the most compelling, I would consider as true ... whatever agreed with this, and as untrue whatever did not so agree. (Phaedo 99d-100a, tr. Grube)

But I cannot have one standard of truth in day to day life and a different and contradictory one in philosophy, with pure reason (deductive argument) telling me that God must be this way while experience ("my eyes") tells me that He is not. I cannot affirm by reason a proposition that verification by experience refutes.

Metaphysics and the closed mind

It's not "the appearances" that need to be saved -- it is metaphysics. It is not only some religious "controversies [that] no longer carry conviction" (Bonhoeffer), but any method that runs counter to "natural science", i.e. that claims to be independent of verification by public experience, that needs to be saved.

Even at school I was unable to take arguments (proofs) for and against the immortality of the soul ("attunement") or the existence of God ("unmoved mover") seriously. It's not that it's logically impossible to believe that metaphysics ("pure reason", Rationalism) is a path to the truth; it's that we don't believe that it is.

But it's counter-philosophical not to give ideas a serious hearing, as if one had a superior wisdom that made that superfluous ("pretensions are a mortgage" (OC § 549)). That reminder should be an antidote to thinking you know what you don't know, namely that metaphysics is idle. [Nonetheless, even if Saint Anselm's "God is that than which nothing more perfect can be imagined" is a valid argument -- e.g. if to be perfectly good is to actively do good, which entails existence -- the argument amounts to no more than deriving one proposition from other propositions, and this method "no longer carries conviction" with us.]

At school I wanted clarity from philosophy, not speculation, particularly about things I thought had to be left to natural science ("metaphysics as a working-hypothesis"), and I thought the language of metaphysicians very unclear. [I am no more able to believe in metaphysics than I am to believe in God or in the immortality of the soul -- even as a child I lacked "imagination", an ability to believe in what I could not see [perceive with my senses]. I can't "believe in all things ... invisible" as the Profession of Faith requires.]

Science: enrichment and impoverishment. The "one method" shoves all the others aside. (CV p. 60-61, remark from 1947)

What other methods? The loss of methods that are not answerable to verifiable experience (e.g. astrology, soothsaying and other magics), as experimental science is, is not impoverishment. Superstition is not enrichment. Fantasy is not enrichment in the context of seeking knowledge.

Further thoughts (many confused) about religion and evil

2,500 years ago Euripides wrote, "If the gods do evil, they are not gods." Just as, if man does evil, he is not good. There cannot be two moralities: one for man, another for God, because evil is evil regardless of who does it or who commands that it be done. God cannot be held to a lower standard than man is held. If God does evil, well, that is not what we mean by the word 'God' in religion [Job 1.22: "Job did not accuse God of wrong-doing"], although metaphysics or superstition ["God as a working-hypothesis"] might attribute any character whatever to God.

We are looking for a conception of God (a concept 'God') that is apt for the author of all that is -- but is at the same time a conception of a moral God. Is there such a conception? [The kingdom of God is what this world would be if God were what we think He should be.]

In the world of our experience, children are born with birth defects, raped and murdered, earthquakes bury whole families alive ... Nothing whatever can justify this cruelty: it cannot be explained away. Absolute evil -- both committed by man and by nature -- exists. And that it exists must be faced.

And yet God has not said a word! (Robert Browning, Porphyria (1836))

Albert Schweitzer said that Christianity had a choice between being an ethical religion and being an explanatory religion. He said that it chose to be an ethical religion: it does not try to explain the relationship between God and nature (the that-ness and how-ness of the world). It speaks of Jesus's Ethical God and how man should live his life.

"... they are not gods." No, they are demons. Or they don't exist. But saying that the gods don't exist amounts to discarding the concept 'God', and we don't want to do that. (Whatever we mean by the word 'God', it is not (1) something empirical -- i.e. testable by experience -- or (2) "God as a working-hypothesis" in natural science. Nonetheless, the concept 'God' is essentially connected with the unexplainable, namely our existence itself. And we don't want to lose our awareness [sense] of that unexplainable.)

"The Goal of Life"

When we identify God with everything that is true, good and noble, we are not identifying God with the natural world. When we say the words of the psalm "Thank the Lord for He is kind, and His goodness is everlasting", we are not talking about nature. How do I know that "God is love" (1 John 4.8)? What I know is that love's opposites [antitheses] (e.g. hate, envy, greed, lust) are evil.

[If "whatever is not done from love is not done as it should be done" (Augustine), then a Christian is one who aims to be growing in love daily (cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia i, 6, 9; iv, 8, 6).

[Is there a difference between saying that God is love and saying that God is goodness? or between growing in love and growing in goodness? (The interrelationship of moral concepts; cf. Plato, Protagoras 329c-d) No, e.g. both truth and love belong to {the class of goods}, but truth ≠ love and love ≠ truth.]

What duty does soberly, love does with joy. (Why one might feel lost without Christ, despite having philosophy.)

"... grasped as something that stands to reason"

Everything must be subjected to reason, even the most exalted ideas of religion. (Schweitzer, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, tr. Campion (1925))

From my youth I have held the conviction that all religious truth must in the end be capable of being grasped as something that stands to reason. (Christianity and the Religions of the World, tr. Powers (1923))

When Christianity says, "You must love God with your whole heart, and you must love other people as you love yourself", it says nothing about the relationship between God and nature. Likewise:

The true goals of life are "to know God, to love God, to serve God, and to achieve happiness in heaven". (Takashi Nagai, Leaving My Beloved Children Behind [1948] (tr. Tatsuoka, Takai, 2008), xxxiv, p. 163)

The good for man -- which is, or in other words is, the goal of life -- is to live in accord with the excellence that is proper and unique to man (namely rational moral virtue), or in other words to be a good = morally virtuous human being. That is "to love and serve" God, but it is not "to know" God or "to achieve happiness in heaven". The Socratic answer to "What is the good for man?" is not metaphysical, but the Christian answer, because it is directed towards God, is: it is a world-view. So even if Christianity is ethical rather than explanatory, it doesn't consist solely of precepts.

Why is there evil?

The Catholic Christian catechism has a simple-minded formula: "Disasters constitute trials, atonement for our sins, warnings, and the basis for our happiness in the afterlife." That is God as a "working-hypothesis" to explain the existence of evil, but in no way does it explain or justify the existence of evil and the suffering of innocents (both human and animal) -- not unless God does evil. When Pope Francis was asked about the existence of evil, his answer was: "No on can explain it." I think that answer is the religious answer.

Saint Augustine, if I recall aright (and I may not recall aright), wrote that evil is the absence of God, or in other words, the deprivation of goodness, and as such evil has no real existence.

It is a general fact of nature that everything functional is also dysfunctional. If evil is a deprivation of goodness, then what are you going to say -- that a thing's dysfunctioning is God going out of it? A snake swallowing a live mouse is not a dysfunction of nature, but it is unspeakably cruel, an evil that has real existence.

Augustine in Copleston

... the teaching of the Manichaeans ... seemed to offer [Augustine] a rational presentation of truth, in distinction from the ... illogical doctrines of Christianity. Thus Christians maintained that God created the whole world and that God is good: how, then, could they explain the existence of evil ...?

The Manichaeans, however, maintained a dualistic theory, according to which there are two ultimate principles, a good principle ... and an evil principle ... These principles are both eternal and their strife is eternal, a strife reflected in the world which is the production of the two principles in mutual conflict.

... the Plotinian conception of evil as privation rather than as something positive showed [Augustine] how the problem of evil could be met without having to have recourse to the dualism of the Manichaeans. (History of Philosophy, Volume II, 3, 1)

It is hard not to see the Manichaeans' two "principles" as two gods at war with one another. If the principles are not persons, then the Manichaean doctrine of good and evil is metaphysics (cf. laws of nature) unrelated to religion], but can there should be a god for whom the good is to create evil (Aristotle: "the good is that at which all things aim")? if good and evil are personified. That is hardly a solution, any more than Plotinus's idea is a solution: the "privation" would have to be an act of God, but to deprive anything of the good is surely an evil act. That in this world there are both good and evil things and events is only too evident, but it hardly follows that good and evil are therefore active principles [agents] causing them, the words 'good' and 'evil' names of things rather than characterizations of them.

Thomas Aquinas in Copleston

According to Aquinas, as for Augustine, evil does not have positive existence [my metaphor: it is like empty space], but is only a privation of goodness. God allows this privation "for the sake of the greater good", e.g. man's freedom. To that philosophical account of evil Aquinas adds the theological account of the fall of man. (History, Volume II, XXXVI, 8) These explanations for the existence evil are an absurd consolation to its child victims. You cannot say here that the end justifies the means. This is a monstrous god.

Berkeley held that "many things which appear to us to be evil, because they affect us painfully, can be seen to be good if they are regarded as part of the whole system of things" (Copleston, History, Volume V, XIII, 4. Or the whole system can be seen as evil; good cannot be purchased at the price of evil. And, by the by, how does imperfection come out of Perfection? Surely if God is perfect, then what He creates must also be perfect (for if not then God is not that than which nothing greater can be conceived).

If I am told that a perfect creation must include imperfections in order to be perfect, that idea is too paradoxical for me. And in any case, wouldn't a "that than which" that can create a perfect world without imperfections be greater than a "that than which" that cannot?

"Darkness is a privation of light"

Evil is a privation of goodness, just as darkness is a privation of light. Evil is like darkness; it has no positive existence (darkness is substanceless); it is a privation of light = good. (Alexander of Hales, c. 1170-1245). (Copleston, History, Volume II, XXIV, 7).

For Socrates, ignorance is a privation of knowledge; it is not, as it were, a form of knowledge. Misunderstanding is not a kind of understanding; it is not understanding.

But then the question: why hasn't God illuminated every corner of His creation? And if evil is a privation, then what or who is responsible for the depriving? Why shouldn't light be regarded as a deprivation of darkness?

Incomprehension

Among the divine attributes, Alexander of Hales lists "incomprehensibility" (ibid.) This I would call self-mystification. They hypostatize an abstraction, and then worship it. Imaginary existence is given to a concept, a mere idea.

"God as a working-hypothesis" (Religion and Superstition)

I think that to be religious is to live without explanations. I would call most of what is called religion, not religion but superstition, a false science -- i.e. trying to explain the natural world by introducing supernatural forces, namely gods or God.

What Bonhoeffer called "God as a working-hypothesis" is superstition. At first this was God as an explanation for events natural science could not yet explain; now it is God as an explanation for events from a moral point of view.

The notion of divine providence is an example of God as a working-hypothesis: whatever man does not understand he attributes to the action of God. God as a working-hypothesis is God as a refuge for ignorance, the word 'God' as an incantation that can explain anything by explaining nothing. I would call that superstition, not religion.

Bonhoeffer's idea can be used to make that distinction. "God as a working-hypothesis" is superstition.

Then what is left? Takashi Nagai writes, "... a yearning for higher things .... eyes that were looking at eternity" (Op. cit. xxiv, p. 121). I don't think you can understand religion if you do not understand this.

"The death of God" | The death of concepts

Remember that "With the idea, now is always" (Drury): philosophical ideas are forever, not just for today or yesterday. What may happen, however, is that ideas = concepts [i.e. rules for the use of words, definitions] may fall out of use, the concept 'God' for example, as e.g. the concept 'gods' has fallen out of use in the West (except when talking about the Greek and Roman myths): there is no longer a viable religion centered on gods in the West. When Nietzsche proclaimed "the death of God", he proclaimed it to the very people who had killed God, because they lived as if there were no God. They had made the concept 'God' cease to be a tool used to do important work in their life; the word 'God' had became mere mouth honor (air).

[(Variation.) Nietzsche announced "the death of God" to the very people who had killed God by living as if there were no God, as if God did not exist. Concepts too have lives and a concept may fall into disuse [die], the concept 'God' for example. Wittgenstein in this context asks about "concept blindness" (RPP i § 213), but there is also concept indifference: people can become indifferent to certain questions, ideas.]

Wittgenstein speaks of being held in the grasp of a particular concept, e.g. 'beauty' (CV p. 79), as Schubert's circle was. But one might also speak of the concept 'God' in this context: what Wittgenstein says about the word 'fairy' (Z § 413) applies to the word 'God' as well. Concepts can lose their grip on people [although maybe not all concepts, e.g. 'object', 'space']; and people may stop teaching them to their children.

As to Leibniz's question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" people can become indifferent to this question. People may be persuaded to stop asking philosophical questions, to stop speculating metaphysically, as Wittgenstein wished they would, passing over in silence anything non-empirical [TLP 7; Wittgenstein's later empiricism: "It is there -- like our life" (OC § 559)].

"Unlike everything in it, the existence of the universe itself doesn't need to be explained; it just is." That is the method of natural science, but also the metaphysics of an atheistic ideology like scientism.

Perennial Philosophy

The ideas -- i.e. ways of looking at things, of explaining and organizing things -- of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Russell, Wittgenstein, cannot be refuted by changes that take place in our knowledge. They are like the geocentric and heliocentric systems; they contrast with falsifiable hypotheses.

The following I would call examples of eternal questions in philosophy:

Physics has no place for God in its system, because its system is materialism (God is supernaturalism. Religion may offer a supernatural explanation, but not science, because the aim of science is to give only natural [materialistic] explanations, i.e. for every event a natural cause).

I myself do want a supernatural explanation, but I can see that none is forthcoming that is acceptable to me. If I am told that God manifests or does evil, that is simply not what I mean by the word 'God' (CV p. 50). (I myself have no use for the word 'God' in metaphysical speculation -- "the God of the philosophers and schoolmen" -- nor in alleged mystical experiences ("knowledge of what lies beyond the knowable"). It should be remembered that the concept 'God' exists for man, not man for the concept 'God'. It exists to do some work for man. Concepts are human tools.)

I would like an answer to Leibniz's question. I would like to know why our concept 'God' is so inconsistent with the world of our experience (Schweitzer); I would like to know the relation between God and nature. [A philosophical in contrast to an, as always, unverifiable psychological explanation.]

The riddle is the ultimate question in philosophy

The existence and nature of God is the ultimate question in philosophy, because by 'God' we mean the ultimate cause (not of this or that thing but of the whole [TLP 6.45]). The ultimate question in philosophy is metaphysics. Of course Socrates would not have said that, but I think Aristotle and the Stoics would have said that (Plato: the ultimate object of philosophy is knowledge of the Good, which is the ultimate cause). According to Wittgenstein, however, there is no ultimate question of philosophy; philosophy is merely a dysfunction of the understanding [or, intellect] caused by language, and the only function of the philosopher is make this clear by making the meaning of language clear [TLP 4.111, 4.112].

"The existence and nature of God." In the beginning there is a sense that there is more to existence than meets the eye: our astonishment that anything exists (although: is it not possible not to be astonished? Well, but describe that). Of course the existence and nature of God is a question for metaphysical speculation, and Socrates did not make metaphysical speculations, but for Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics it seems to be so -- although maybe not for the pre-Socratics; Thales did not identify water as God. [Wittgenstein would have to say that such speculation is nonsense, that is, language without meaning, although it seems that Wittgenstein would only be right if "nonsense" or "language without meaning" is defined in Wittgenstein's eccentric way: to be the only possible object of language with meaning is to be perceptible, which the supernatural, which is the subject of metaphysics, is not.]

Paths to and from Atheism

Religious atheism, i.e. the rejection of religion, has as its source several objections, one of which is the existence of evil. But another is the question of revelation, because belief in revelation is foreign to the empiricism and skepticism that dominates our lives today. If someone nowadays came to us with the claim that he had witnessed miracles or that God had spoken to him, say, in a dream, we would not believe him. So why should we believe in revelations that are said to have been made centuries ago -- why, just because they are old? And which revelation should we accept, for the Jews claim theirs, Muslims another, Christians still another? Then there are Buddhists, Hindus, and so on. The Soviet communists used to say: Pray to God -- which God? And that is why "reason is given us" (Schweitzer); it is reason [philosophy], and reason alone, which must determine "which God to pray to".

Indifference is another path to atheism: not wanting to be bothered. If animals are not bothered, why must all human beings be? Need everyone awaken to the need for a world-view?

About Philosophy (and me)

I have not read many philosophy books. I have thought about what I have read though, and maybe had a few thoughts of my own.

After fifty years of this, I am without doubt that I am never going to understand the point of existence (Believing that existence has a point, I would call [DEF.=] religious faith). What I suspect is that we can always go deeper into this question, and that means we never touch bottom.

So I go on thinking about these questions (as if I had a choice! Philosophy is like God: we don't so much seek it as it seeks us, we are told).


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