This first post is partly inspired by an interesting book review by Jennifer Frey. While I am neither a Catholic nor well versed in Catholic philosophy, I have always been interested in Wittgenstein’s nascent philosophy of religion. The connection to Anscombe’s theological concerns is always something I’ve meant to look into. So it is my good luck to see a bit of discussion of both topics in Frey’s review of Goodill’s new Nature as Guide: Wittgenstein and the Renewal of Moral Theology.
Frey explains that Goodill’s task is to restore the alignment of reason, faith, and nature found in Aristotle, using Wittgensteinian means. The Wittgensteinian means he takes at hand is a reconceptualization of metaphysics:
Metaphysics is not the project of constructing static systems of reality; rather, it is a lived praxis whose defining aim is wisdom.
Frey, paraphrasing Goodill
Frey questions whether this reorientiation of metaphysics will provide any benefit to the Catholic theological project. Are not our practices (often) conventional in a way which belies the aim of unified faith, reason, and nature. As Frey notes Anscombe noting, “some essences are products of human intelligence.”
I do not attempt to address the issue directly here; this project is not my own. Reading this book review did remind me of a brief note I wrote up while sitting in on Ed McCann’s Wittgenstein course a couple of years ago. Maybe there is something of use in a fuller understanding of Wittgenstein’s grammar-first conceptualization of metaphysics—perhaps what is needed for Catholic theology is a naturalization (or rationalization?) of Wittgensteinian grammar.
“Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)”
Wittgenstein PI 373
This remark states two things:
- The grammar of a language (game), grammar being a generalization of and a successor concept to logic, determines the sort of object, the appropriate essence, for anything in that language
- Theology is one special case of a grammar, which we can use to flesh out the idea further.
Let us start with the second and move back to the more general statement.
Consider a bit of theology: the sacrament of the Eucharist and the doctrine of transubstantiation. (Anscombe’s essay “On Transubstantiation” is a much better treatment of this case along these lines.) In the Eucharist the bread and the wine become, via the process of transubstantiation, the body and blood of Christ. How is this possible? On the Aristotelian hylomorphic model, all objects consist of a substance (matter) and form, or more to our point, essence and accident. The substance or essence of a thing is what it is, it determines the genus it falls under. The accidental features of a thing may change and are in this way, superficial. That Socrates is tan or pale is a mere difference in his accidental features, that he is a ensouled human being is his substantial, essential nature, that could not be different. Transubstantiation is a changing of the substance underlying the accidental, phenomenal features of the bread and the wine. This is why it empirically remains the same, the same taste, the same feel, even the same chemical composition, as these are all mere accidental features. How is such a change possible? One might say it is not. If one is a believer one must believe that it is and (perhaps) accept it as one of God’s mysteries. If we accept theology as grammar we may accept it as an essential part of a language game that is determined by the Catholic form of life.
In 370 Wittgenstein describes the difficulty in answering the question of what imagining is or what calculating or following a rule is. We must ask rather how the relevant words are to be used. “But that does not mean that I want to talk only about words.” On the contrary, the rules of use of the words, their grammar, will answer the first-order question about what sort of thing an imagining or a calculating is. This is what is meant by 371: “Essence is expressed by grammar.” The application of the language tells us what sort of objects we are dealing with, whether or certain things are possible or impossible, what sort of properties they can take and so on. It also shows what kinds of things exist, as is suggested from one of the quotations (82e) from Culture and Value below. The language game of (substantive) theology, and the form of life from which it springs, have a prior commitment of the existence of God, just from his essence, from the grammar of the usage of “God”. Likewise the essence of colour, in a language game in which we, say are distinguishing varieties of reds and blues, implies its existence as e.g. colours are the sorts of things that can be here or be there.
This point is much more speculative, but if one accepts that grammars in the PI are a weakening and a generalization of the idea of logic in the TLP, one might think that this essence determining role is an extension of Wittgenstein’s elimination of type theory (as a distinct theory of types) through the use of a perspicuous notation. We need not wonder whether “a” or “P” apply to objects or predicates or propositions, the working of the logic will show us that. Likewise we need not worry that we need some distinct account of what the bread and the wine become, the grammar of the language surrounding the Eucharist will show is: it is the body and the blood.
Some suggestive quotations from Culture and Value:
“The only way for me to believe in a miracle in this sense would be to be impressed by an occurrence in this particular way. So that I should say e.g.: ‘It was impossible to see these trees and not to feel that they were responding to the words.’” (45e)
“It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s belief, it’s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It’s passionately seizing hold of this interpretation.” (64e)
“Religious faith and superstition are quite different. One of them results from fear and is a sort of false science. The other is a trusting.” (72e)
“God’s essence is supposed to guarantee his existence – what this really means is that what is here at issue is not the existence of something. Couldn’t one actually say equally well that the essence of colour guarantees its existence?” (82e)