Well, I just finished reading and taking the notes on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It is a slow read for such a short book (108 pages). Part of the reason why it took so long to read Witt’s work is that he writes in aphorisms (short and compact sentences). It is not something you can glance over, but something that demands a lot of time and attention. It was difficult reading this work because I know that Witt rejected a lot of the content in he later teachings and in the Philosophical Investigations. Yet I still found some interesting and useful ideas.
One idea is that everything must make some kind of consistent sense with everything else. In a church setting this is something that I think we neglect due to laziness. For example, we say it means something to be ordained, but we do not hold onto that meaning unless we find it helpful at the time. That is inconsistent. Or we say that we are called to a certain way of living as Christians, but we do not hold closely to that way of living. When we are inconsistent, we are projecting the true picture of Christianity that we ascribe to. Either we change the picture or we change our “grammar.” We need to be consistent. Witt broke down the parts to the bare examples, but I think we can apply his ideas to church life and beyond.
The other thing I (and other scholars) am interested in is Witt’s idea of the ethical. In 6.421 he claims that “ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is transcendental” In 6.422 he states “ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the ordinary action.” It seems like Witt is trying to connect with something greater than he can articulate. Why do people do good things? He then moves to the mythical, which he describes as inexpressible. I think this is a good description of God. Yet the problem arises when we still try to talk about God, knowing that we cannot talk about God. How can we talk about God when there is nothing we can say? In other writings, Witt claims that we are showing the nature of God when we talk about God. I wonder if this is true of all religious speech. When we claim that we are to love our enemies, are we showing the nature of God? When we claim that we go to church to praise God, what does that say about the nature of God, and our relationship with God. Finally, what would it mean if we claimed that all religious language falls short and only expresses the divine through a glass dimly? Then do we have any truth we can claim?
Are you lost yet?