Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951). Austrian philosopher. He studied mathematical logic with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge in 1912–13, fought in the Austrian army in the First World War, and wrote his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; tr. 1922) whilst a prisoner of war in Italy. He gave up philosophy for several years, but resumed work in it in the late 1920s. He returned to Cambridge, and became Professor of Philosophy there in 1939. Apart from a single article, he published nothing further in his own lifetime: his later works were all published posthumously, starting with the Philosophical Investigations (1953).

Wittgenstein's later philosophy took a different direction from that of the Tractatus, and was critical of it in many respects. But in both cases he was concerned with the relation between language and the world. The Tractatus sees meaningful language as ultimately analysable into basic propositions, which picture the world. Since ethics, aesthetics, and religious language do not picture anything, they are relegated to the realm of the mystical and inexpressible. In his later work, however, Wittgenstein disclaimed any attempt to give a unitary account of the nature of language. Instead, he saw language as composed of many different ‘language-games’, a term used to indicate that uses of language are rule-governed and go with activities and practices; he also compared language to a set of tools, each having its own use.

Wittgenstein wrote little about religion as such, though interesting observations about it are scattered throughout his works. In 1938 he gave some lectures on religious belief, in which he presented the distinctiveness of such beliefs as lying in the ways in which they express certain reactions and regulate our lives.

It is Wittgenstein's later philosophy in general, however, that has had more influence on the philosophy of religion and theology than his few writings on religion as such. Whereas the Logical Positivists (who were much influenced by the Tractatus, though it can be argued that they misunderstood it) dismissed religious language as meaningless because unverifiable in empirical terms, Wittgenstein's later philosophy seemed to offer a more tolerant approach which would permit the inclusion of religious language amongst meaningful uses of language. For religious language-games are just as much parts of human life as other uses of language, and indeed Wittgenstein includes ‘praying’ in his list of common language-games, in Philosophical Investigations § 23; and there is no superior vantage point from which this, or any, language can be assessed.

If this account is correct, the philosophy of religion and much theology should be concerned more with coming to understand the distinctive nature of religious beliefs and practices, through a perspicuous description and analysis of them, than with shoring them up with intellectual defences. We are, however, left with the questions of what kind of truth religion and theology might have, and how it is discerned.