The phenomenon of religious belief poses many interesting and challenging questions: Those who don’t have the privilege of believing in miracles, divine providence, or resurrection often find it difficult to understand the meaning of religious concepts in a society characterized by a primarily scientific paradigm in fields like economy, technics, justice, or politics. A number of questions concerning religious belief seem to have puzzled also Ludwig Wittgenstein and he came up with interesting questions and answers to this effect. His concept of hinge beliefs, if applicable to religious belief, is a surprising and convincing explanation of the phenomenon of religious belief. But can it really be applied to religion and did Wittgenstein do that? This paper will try to find answers to these questions.
Here are a number of questions pertinent to religion to which Wittgenstein indirectly responded:
a) Are religious beliefs comparable to the hinge beliefs of a secular world-picture?
b) How can a religious world-picture coexist with the scientific world-picture which dominates today’s politics, economics and jurisdiction?
c) How is a religious belief acquired?
d) What exactly do the faithful believe, what do they know and what do they feel certain of?
e) What is the relation between religious belief and the conduct of one’s life?
Wittgenstein’s attitude towards religion has significantly changed in the course of his life, from his childhood in one of the richest and most influential families of Vienna to his voluntary engagement in World War I and, finally, to his late philosophy. This paper is looking at religious belief primarily from the perspective of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s latest work, posthumously edited under the title of On Certainty. Wittgenstein comes up with interesting insights into the philosophy of knowledge, belief, trust, doubt, and certainty. Moreover, Wittgenstein ‘s wrestling with religious belief and world-picture also underlines and enhances his epistemological thinking, as Michael Kober puts it: “Wittgenstein's peculiar account of religion improves our understanding of epistemic certainty. (Kober 2007: 225)
In order to set the scene for Wittgenstein’s reflections in On Certainty, I shall first briefly look at the development of his own attitude to religious belief as documented in his Notebooks and other sources.
In the following section I shall describe religious terms and phenomena as they appear in On Certainty.
Then I shall match appropriate aphorisms of On Certainty with the questions mentioned above and thus distill possible answers by Wittgenstein to the questions. I’ll argue that religious beliefs are hinge beliefs in Wittgenstein’s sense and that his concept of hinges opens an opportunity to better understand world-pictures different from one’s own.
Finally, I shall comment my findings from the epistemological point of view.