{"id":9970,"date":"2012-02-04T16:42:14","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T16:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/04\/a-kierkegaardian-passage-in-wittgenstein\/"},"modified":"2012-02-04T16:42:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-04T16:42:14","slug":"a-kierkegaardian-passage-in-wittgenstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/04\/a-kierkegaardian-passage-in-wittgenstein\/","title":{"rendered":"A Kierkegaardian Passage in Wittgenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Ludwig Wittgenstein, <strong>Culture and Value <\/strong>(<em>Vermischte Bemerkungen<\/em>), ed&#0160; von Wright, tr. Winch (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 53e:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; the direction of your life.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; It says that all wisdom is cold; and that you can no more use it<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; for setting your life to rights that you can forge iron when it is<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; cold.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; The point is that a sound doctrine need not take hold of you; you<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; can follow it as you would a doctor&#39;s prescription. &#8212; But here you<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; need something to move you and turn you in a new direction. &#8212;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; (I.e. this is how I understand it.) Once you have been turned<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; around, you must stay turned around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; calls a passion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Sound doctrines are useless? It would be truer to say that faith as a mere subjective passion is useless. The fideisms of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein fall far below the balanced positions of Augustine and <\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Aquinas. The latter thinkers understood that sound doctrine, though insufficient, was an indispensable guide. They neither denigrated reason nor overestimated its reach. Reason without faith may be <\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">existentially empty and passionless, but faith without reason is blind and runs the risk of fanaticism.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Vermischte Bemerkungen), ed&#0160; von Wright, tr. Winch (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 53e: &#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or&#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; the direction of your life.) &#0160;&#0160;&#0160;&#0160; It says that all wisdom &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/04\/a-kierkegaardian-passage-in-wittgenstein\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Kierkegaardian Passage in Wittgenstein&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343,275],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kierkegaard","category-wittgenstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}