This paper offers an account of Wittgenstein’s treatment of ‘the world’. As will be seen, this requires explanation of his view of religious attitudes in general, and of wonder at the world in particular. His religious position may appear to be unsystematic, or even inconsistent. Contrary to this impression, this paper will show that the same view of the world underlies his religious position, which manifests itself in different forms at different stages of his philosophy. For the world, as the logical limit to the expression of the human will, is a unifying idea in his philosophy. We shall be concerned with his early endeavour to express himself to the limit of the world and then with his later analysis of religious thought and action which construe as real that which lies beyond the world.
The world has always been a limiting concept in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. According to him, the world as reality presents itself to us as an unquestioned and necessary experiential fact. All of us believe in the world that has been handed down to us. It is the condition that makes possible every questioning and doubting. It is the background against which we judge in general between true and false. Its existence is so selfevident that it is even unnoticed, and its nonexistence is inconceivable. Language means only the world and can mean only it. In his endeavour to understand the world and man in it, Wittgenstein always holds on to the view that we should be concerned with things and events and situations in the world, and investigate it from within, taking the world as unquestioned and necessary.