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Fergus Kerr's Wittgensteinian ‘Philosophy of Theology’: An Appreciation and a Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Francesca Murphy
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, St Martin's College, Lancaster LAI 3JD

Extract

Toward the conclusion of his Theology After Wittgenstein, Fergus Kerr states that,

The rationalistic attempt to find the deeper psychological or evolutionary significance of ceremony only distracts us from the deep significance that a description of the event already communicates…

The sacrifice of the priest-king is no different in kind from religious actions that we might ourselves perform …, confessing one's sins…, baptism…

…The phenomena of the natural world, of birth, of death, and of sexual life… none of which is especially mysterious but any of which can become so to us prompt certain human reactions. …these customs are not adopted because of views that people have; they are too primitive and unreflective for that, they are reactions, in certain situations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1992

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References

page 449 note 1 Kerr, Fergus, Theology After Wittgenstein (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986), p. 160.Google Scholar

page 450 note 2 Kripke, Saul, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar.

page 450 note 3 McGinn, Colin, Wittgenstein on Meaning (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.

page 450 note 4 Kerr, p. 121.

page 451 note 5 Ibid., pp. 14–16.

page 451 note 6 Cupitt, Don, Taking Leave of God (S.C.M., London, 1980), p. 8.Google Scholar

page 451 note 7 See the discussion of Augustine's Confessions with which the Philosophical Investigations commences. The author states, for example, that ‘…we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And “think” would here mean something like “talk to itself”.’ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, edited by Anscombe, G. E. M. and Rhees, R., translated by Anscombe, G. E. M. (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953), (p. 32)Google Scholar.

page 452 note 8 Kerr p. 125, quoting from the Philosophical Investigations, p. 275.

page 452 note 9 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and Value, translated by Winch, Peter (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1980, 1989), p. 85.Google Scholar

page 453 note 10 Ibid. p. 83.

page 453 note 11 Kerr, p. 92.

page 453 note 12 See, for example, Maritain, Jacques, Art and Scholasticism, translated by Scanlan, J. F. (Sheed and Ward, London, 1930, 1943), pp. 511.Google Scholar

page 454 note 13 Johnston, William, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History 1848–1938, (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972), p. 304Google Scholar; Smith, Barry, ed., Parts and Moments: Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology (Philosophia Verlag, Munich, 1982), p. 21.Google Scholar

page 454 note 14 Wittgenstein, , Zettel, quoted in Kerr, p. 92.Google Scholar

page 454 note 15 Kerr, p. 169.

page 455 note 16 Ibid., p. 150.

page 455 note 17 Waardenburg, Jacques, Reflections on the Study of Religion (Mouton, the Hague, 1978), pp. 88 & 99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 456 note 18 Scheler, Max, The Nature of Sympathy, translated by Heath, Peter (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1954 [first published 1913]): critique of ‘knowing others through inference, pp. 4046, 246Google Scholar; on the ‘givenness’ of emotions, pp. 10 & 243.

page 457 note 19 Kerr, pp. 75 and 95–96.

page 457 note 20 Ibid., p. 162. Kerr's emphasis.

page 458 note 21 Ibid., p. 183.

page 458 note 22 Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy, translated by Harvey, John (Pelican, London, 1923, 1959), p. 24.Google Scholar

page 458 note 23 Ibid., p. 59.

page 459 note 24 Wittgenstein, , Culture and Value, p. 85.Google Scholar

page 459 note 25 Kerr, p. 153.

page 459 note 26 Geach, Peter, ‘On Worshipping the Right God’, in God and the Soul (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969, 1970), pp. 100116.Google Scholar

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page 459 note 28 Cupitt, p. 34 and 69.

page 460 note 29 Kant, Immanuel, Crirtique of Pure Reoson, translated by Meiklejohn, J. M. D. (Dent, London, 1934, 1988), pp. 460469Google Scholar; McRae, Robert, The Problem of the Unity of the Sciences from Bacon to Kant (University of Toronto, 1961), pp. 141143Google Scholar.

page 460 note 30 Walsh, W. H., Kant's Criticism of Metaphysics, (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1975), pp. 239241.Google Scholar

page 460 note 31 Robinson, John, Exploration into God (Mowbrays, London, 1967), pp. 1718.Google Scholar

page 461 note 32 Kerr, p. 94.

page 462 note 33 Keightley, Alan, Wittgenstein, Grammar and God (Epworth Press, London, 1976), p. 146.Google Scholar