Warming up the cool place: Kierkegaard, wittgenstein and D.Z. Phillips

Faith and Philosophy

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 127-143

  Rudd, Anthony ^a  

^a ST OLAF COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 79954969103     PISSN: 07397046     EISSN: 21533393     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/faithphil200522244     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. See Philosophy's Cool Place (Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1999), Ch 4
2. Phillips, 'Religion in Wittgenstein's Mirror' in his Wittgenstein and Religion (Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, 1993) 245.
3. Ibid 238-41, 245. This claim has some analogy to Davidson's argument that we cannot suppose that the whole set of our beliefs might be false. See D. Davidson, 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' in his Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984)
4. See e.g. Johannes Climacus' polemic against the ideal of detached objectivity - a polemic which I take to express Kierkegaard's own view. (Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Section II, Ch 1.)
5. D.Z. Phillips, 'Self-Deception and Freedom in Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart' in Kierkegaard and Freedom (ed J. Giles, Palgrave, 2000) 163.
6. S. Kierkegaard, 'An Occasional Discourse: On the Occasion of a Confession, Purity of Heart is to Will one Thing', in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (ed and trans H. and E. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1993) 33.
7. M.J. Ferreira, 'Normativity and Reference in a Wittgensteinean Philosophy of Religion', Faith and Philosophy (18.4, 2001) 449.
8. cf L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans E. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1958) # 66 ff
9. See M. Weston, 'Evading the Issue: The Strategy of Kierkegaard's Postscript' (Philosophical Investigations, 22.1, 1999)
10. and 'Kant and Kierekegaard on the Possibility of Metaphysics; a Reply to Prof. Evans' in D.Z. Phillips and T. Tessin (eds) Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion (Macmillan, Basingstoke/St Martin Press, New York, 2000)
11. The interpretative line that Weston follows is developed in detail in J. Conant, 'Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense' in T. Cohen, P. Guyer and H. Putnam (eds) Pursuits of Reason (Texas Tech University Press, Lubbock TX, 1993)
12. and 'Putting Two and Two Together: Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and the Point of View for their work as Authors' in T. Tessin and M. von der Ruhr (eds) Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1995)
13. and in S. Mulhall, Faith and Reason (Duckworth, London, 1994).
14. This interpretation, though undeniably ingenious, is deeply flawed. See my 'On Straight and Crooked Readings; Why the Postscript does not Self-Destruct' and J. Lippitt 'On Authority and Revocation' both in P. Houe, G. Marino and S. Roussel (eds) Anthropology and Authority: Essays on Soren Kierkegaard (Editions Rodolphi, Amsterdam and Atlanta, 2000)
15. also Lippitt's Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought (Macmillan, Basingstoke/St Martin Press, New York, 2000) Ch 4.
16. Weston, 'Kant and Kierkegaard⋯ ', 34.
17. St. Augustine, Confessions (trans H. Chadwick, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991) 3.
18. See his Death and Immortality (Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, 1970)) Ch 1
19. and 'The Dislocated Soul and Immortality' in his Recovering Religious Concepts (Macmillan, Basingstoke and London/St Martin's Press, New York, 2000)
20. Phillips also allows for a further category - of beliefs that are genuinely religious, ramer than superstitious, but which are nonetheless "low" or "shabby". But he insists that the distinction between "high" and "low" religious beliefs has to be a personal one, unlike the supposedly objective distinction between religion and superstition. See 'Religion in Wittgenstein's Mirror', 247-50.
21. See The Dislocated Soul⋯', 155-6.
22. Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, trans J. Crawford Flitch (Dover Pubs, New York, 1954) 221
23. Phillips, 'On Giving Practice its Due - a Reply', Religious Studies (31.1, 1995) 123
24. 'Religious Beliefs and Language Games', 72, 3. Phillips' later introduction of the distinction between blunder and confusion would not, I think, lead him to repudiate this example as an illustration of the superstition/religion distinction.
25. L. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans P. Winch (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980) 72
26. Thus going against Wittgenstein's dictums: "Philosophy⋯leaves everything as it is" and "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them." Philosophical Investigations #s 124, 128.
27. He does not however, adopt the radical perspectivism (sometimes) advocated by Nietzsche, which would repudiate the idea that there is a independent reality on which the different perspectives are all perspectives. In the Postscript (which I take, contra Weston and Conant, to represent Kierkegaard's own epistemological opinions) he claims that "Existence is itself a system - for God; but it cannot be a system for any existing spirit." (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans H. and E. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1992, 118.) Reality as seen by God thus serves for Kierkegaard much the same role as the thing-in-itself does for Kant - it prevents the collapse from an epistemological skepticism about the intrinsic nature of independently existing things into an ontological idealism which would deny their reality. I am grateful to Noel Adams for pressing me to clarify this point.
28. See 'On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle' in Without Authority (ed and trans H. and E. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1994)
29. See A. Maclntyre, After Virtue, (Duckworth, London, 1981) 39
30. There is some irony in the fact that Kierkegaard's account of the rationality of movement between the stages has some marked similarity to Maclntyre's own account (in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Duckworth, London, 1988)
31. and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Duckworth, London, 1990))
32. of how there can be rational debate between rival traditions. I comment on the similarities, and also on the significant remaining differences, in my paper 'Reason in Ethics: Kierkegaard and Maclntyre' in Kierkegaard After Maclntyre, eds J. Davenport and A. Rudd (Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, 2001) This volume contains essays not only replying in various ways to Maclntrye's charge that Kierkegaard is an irrationalist, but also exploring possibilities for positive dialogue between Kierkegaard's thought and MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelean virtue ethics.