Wittgenstein and Christianity: 1914–1938

Abstract

In “Notes on Talks with Wittgenstein”, Waismann reports Wittgenstein saying that in speaking about ethics “I can only appear as a person speaking for myself.” If we combine this with another remark, “What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics”, it suggests that an understanding of Wittgenstein’s personal involvement with the teachings of Christianity is fundamental for an interpretation of his “Lecture on Ethics” (1929) and “Lectures on Religious Belief” (1938). From the evidence of his personal writings, in particular the coded notebooks of 1914–16 and MS183, which record remarks made in 1930–32, 1936–37, Wittgenstein’s relationship to the teaching of Christianity is complex. During WW1, Wittgenstein found a form of Christian teaching immensely helpful, it seemed to him the only sure way to happiness. This influence is still apparent in “Lecture on Ethics”. Remarks made in 1936–37 show Wittgenstein’s relationship with Christianity becoming more troubled, as his critical self-consciousness arising from thoughts about the teaching of the New Testament become increasingly debilitating. He begins to find that the Christian teaching is becoming a source of madness rather than one of happiness. He accepts that a life of faith would require him to live a completely different life from the one that suits him. He begins to think that an ordinary life and his philosophical work might be the solution to his state of unhappiness. In “Lectures on Religious Belief”, Wittgenstein’s remarks are made from a position which is more personally disengaged. Wittgenstein is now investigating religious belief as a human phenomenon and not as something with which he is any longer personally involved, but his personal experience, particularly his experience of loss of faith, is still fundamental to how he understands the phenomenon.

1. Introduction

In a conversation that took place in Vienna in 1930, Friedrich Waismann records Wittgenstein making the following remark: “At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe this is quite essential. Here, nothing more can be established. I can only appear as a person speaking for myself.” (Waismann 1965, p. 16; 2003, p. 117). If we couple this with Wittgenstein’s sense that the ethical and the religious are essentially intertwined—“What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics” (CV:5/MS107/196/15.11.29)—the combination suggests that, insofar as it is possible, an understanding of Wittgenstein’s personal involvement with religion, and Christian teaching in particular, is fundamental for an interpretation of “A Lecture on Ethics”, given in Cambridge in 1929, and “Lectures on Religious Belief”, given in Cambridge nine years later. It suggests we should see him in both as speaking for himself, as speaking from personal experience, and as speaking to others in the expectation, or hope, that they will be able to connect his experiences with their own, and thereby understand what he is saying.

It is impossible, however, not to be struck by the difference in style between the lectures, delivered almost a decade apart. In “A Lecture on Ethics”, Wittgenstein makes it clear that he is speaking for himself and from personal experience. He speaks frequently in the first person: “It seems obvious to me…”, “Then what have all of us who, like myself, …”, “If I want to fix my mind on what I mean by…”, and so on. He draws heavily on his personal experiences, hoping they will prompt the members of his audience to recall similar experiences, “so that we may have common ground for our investigation.” (PO:41). There are tacit references to Christian beliefs and the main burden of the lecture is to show that “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural.” (PO:40). The descriptions of the experiences which he connects with ethics and the idea of absolute value, which he holds ethics essentially involves, make clear allusions both to the Tolstoyan ideology that sustained him when he served at the Russian Front in WW1, and to the mysticism of the Tractatus, written while he was a serving soldier and published in 1922. There is a powerful sense throughout the lecture that Wittgenstein is trying to communicate something to which he feels a degree of personal commitment.

By contrast, in “Lectures on Religious Belief”, Wittgenstein has put the beliefs he is concerned with at arms-length. He is above all addressing himself to the question of whether he understands the beliefs of another, beliefs he says he does not share, and towards which his relation is at one moment critical and at another empathetic. One needs to work harder to discover the personal voice in these lectures, the voice that is speaking from personal experience, but it is clearly there to be heard. What Wittgenstein says about Christian belief is not only profoundly influenced by his own personal understanding of what constitutes a life of faith but also by his attempt to come to terms with his experience of a profound change in his relation to Christian teaching, which took place in the winter of 1937.

One of the beliefs he focuses on in these lectures is a belief in the Last Judgement. Paul Engelmann, recalling conversations with Wittgenstein when he was stationed in Olmütz in Moravia in 1916, writes:

…the notion of a last judgement was of profound concern to [Wittgenstein]. ‘When we meet again at the last judgement’ was a recurrent phrase with him, which he used in many a conversation at a particularly momentous point. He would pronounce the words with an indescribably inward-gazing look in his eyes, his head bowed, the picture of a man stirred to his depths.

(Engelmann 1967, pp. 77–78)

Yet, in “The Lectures on Religious Belief”, Wittgenstein says:

Why shouldn’t one form of life culminate in an utterance of belief in a Last Judgement? But I couldn’t say “Yes” or “No” to the statement that there will be such a thing. Nor “Perhaps,” nor “I’m not sure.”

(LC:58)

It is clear that something has changed. Ideas or images which played a significant role in Wittgenstein’s life in 1916 no longer do. This change is reflected in the different styles of “A Lecture on Ethics” and the “Lectures on Religious Belief”. The question is how is the difference brought about by this change to be understood. The question of the nature of this difference—the difference between faith and unbelief—is central to the “Lectures on Religious Belief”. Wittgenstein first confronts the question, however, not as an abstract philosophical question, but as a matter of personal experience, in the crisis of the winter of 1937.

During these winter months, Wittgenstein is gradually made to realise that he no longer believes that the teachings of Christ, as he understood them, promise a path to his salvation. His reflections, often painful, in which he is brought to this realisation express insights about the nature of the change in his life which is taking place. In a sense, the “Lectures on Religious Belief” can be seen as an occasion for Wittgenstein to recall the nature of the change in his own relation to the teachings of Christ, which occurred in the winter of 1937, although he casts them in the third-person. It is unsurprising, therefore, that we can find in his remarks moments in which Wittgenstein is speaking for himself, in the sense that what he says is directly related to his own experience of faith and the loss of it.

2. Tolstoy and the Private Notebooks: A Time of Faith: 1914–16

Wittgenstein enlisted as a volunteer in the Austrian army on 7th August 1914, the day after Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war against Russia.1 He was excited by the prospect of going to war, not through nationalistic motives, but for purely personal reasons. He believed that the war would be “a test of fire of one’s character”2 and that the chance to face death might make him a better person: “Now would be my chance to become a decent human being since I am face-to-face with death.” (PN:45/15.9.14). He was assigned to an artillery regiment serving at Krakow on the Eastern Front, where he was appointed to the post of searchlight orderly on the gunboat Goplana. He served on the Golpana until December 1914, operating up and down the river Vistula and at times coming under heavy fire from the Russians. Wittgenstein then transferred to military workshop in Krakow, but he came under heavy fire again in summer of 1916, while serving as an artillery man in Moravia, where he manned an Observation Post during a major Russian offensive.

Within weeks of arriving in Krakow, Wittgenstein bought his copy of Tolstoy’s The Gospels in Brief, the only book available in a bookshop that otherwise contained only picture postcards, and started reading it almost immediately. Tolstoy presents his interpretation of the Gospels as something he arrived at in the course of a spiritual journey he undertook at a moment of crisis, when the question of the meaning of life was forced upon him. Tolstoy understands this question as a search for the right path in life, for the manner in which one should live. His search eventually led him to set out to uncover the essence of Christianity—stripped of all the accretions of theology, sacraments, rituals and ceremonies—through a careful and rigorous examination of the teachings of Christ, as it is presented in the Gospels.

Tolstoy claims to show that it is Christ’s teachings, properly understood, that contain the path to a true life. No one, he points out, has ever comprehended God and there is no need to prove God’s existence. It is only necessary to understand Christ’s teaching, understood as the word of God. He calls this understanding “Divine comprehension”. Divine comprehension is, he claims, the “fundamental principle”; it is unveiled in Christ’s life and teachings; and Christ alone is the means to achieve it. Someone who achieves Divine comprehension proves it in his life, by living his life entirely according to God’s will. To live a life according to God’s will is to live a life of the spirit, practising goodness. What Christ’s life and teaching show, Tolstoy claims, is that the person who wants to receive true life and practise goodness must reject all his personal desires, abandon all idea of building his life the way he wants to, and be prepared to endure every depravation and suffering.

There cannot be, on Tolstoy’s reading, any proof of Christ’s teaching, except the teaching itself. Someone who understands and acts in accordance with it—that is to say, someone who lives a life of goodness—will recognise that they are living in the light, that they are on the path of a true life. For anyone living a life of true goodness, the meaning of life is no longer a question. A person who achieves a life of the spirit will thereby be “completely transformed,” but not in a way that he can communicate what it is he now sees to someone who does not see it: “He can only say, ‘I have been reborn. I have become a different person, I was earlier blind, I did not see true goodness, but now I see’.” (Tolstoy 2022, p. 92). Giving his account of Christ’s words, Tolstoy writes: “People devote themselves to my teaching not because I prove it to them, and it is not possible to prove truth. …But people devote themselves to my teaching because it alone promises life.” (Tolstoy 2022, p. 93). It is part of Christ’s teaching that nothing bad will ever occur to the person who understands it and lives by it: “something bad will occur only with that person who leaves the light of truth for the darkness of the deception of the body.” (Tolstoy 2022, pp. 109–10).

Within days of acquiring the book, Wittgenstein recorded in his Private Notebooks that he has “read a good deal in Tolstoy’s Gospel.” (PN: 43/8.9.14). He was soon regularly quoting Tolstoy’s words: ‘Over and over again I say to myself the words of Tolstoy, “Man is helpless in the flesh but free in the spirit.” (PN:43/12.9.14). “May the spirit be within me.” “God be with me.” “But not my will but Thine be done.” “God stand by me.” “God enlighten me.” These words became the constant refrain of the Private Notebooks, especially at times of stress, and during the times of greatest danger, in particular during the Brusilov offensive in the summer of 1916, when Wittgenstein manned an Observation Post at the Russian Front and came under direct fire from the Russians. Wittgenstein’s constant repetition of the words conveys the intensity with which he said them; there is a powerful sense of his need to say them.

It is clear from the WW1 notebooks that Wittgenstein, ascetic and self-critical by nature, rapidly absorbed Tolstoy’s ideology and was trying to live a life that was guided by it.3 He accepted, above all, Tolstoy’s view that “Christianity is the only sure path to happiness.” (PN:113/8.12.14). He was convinced that in order that his life should not be lost he “must always—be conscious always—of the spirit.” (PN:113/8.12.14). There was nothing in his life, particularly at times of crisis, that made him doubt that a life of the spirit, understood in the way Tolstoy understood it, was his only hope of a good life, which is to say, a happy life. By a happy life, Wittgenstein did not mean the sort of happiness we associate with the satisfaction of worldly desires, but the happiness which comes through freedom from earthly desires and the achievement of a devout spirit which lives in harmony with God’s will. Brian McGuinness describes the view of Christianity which Wittgenstein found in Tolstoy as follows:

Man must renounce the flesh, the gratification of his own will, must make himself independent of outward circumstances, in order to serve the spirit which is in himself and in all men. This spirit makes all men the sons of God and the only true life for a man is communion with that spirit, without concern for his own wishes or for the past or future: the only true life is life in the present. For a man living not the personal but the common life of the spirit, there is no death.

(McGuinness 1988, p. 221)

Central to Tolstoy’s ideology is the separation of bodily life and bodily desires from the life of the spirit and the practice of goodness. Wittgenstein worked on the ideas that would eventually be published in the only philosophy book published in his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, throughout his time at the front, whenever time away from his duties permitted; the final version of the book was finished in the summer of 1918, while he was on leave from fighting in Italy, having been transferred there after the collapse of the Eastern Front. It seems clear from the way he speaks about it in the Private Notebooks that Wittgenstein connected his philosophical work unequivocally with the life of the spirit and that he associates progress in his philosophical work with spiritual progress. He speaks of his endeavours in logic in the same terms in which he speaks of his spiritual struggles. He was searching for “clarity of vision” and, he complained, “my spirit is simply blind to [the solution].”4 Wittgenstein speaks of his philosophical work in explicitly ethical and even religious terms: “The blessing of work” was a frequent refrain. He speaks constantly of seeking “the redeeming word”, when searching for the solution to problems in logic, and one feels that the ethical connotations of “redeeming” were intended. Being able to do work on his philosophy was, moreover, one of the things that could be relied on to conquer his depression and bring about the sense of peace and tranquillity, of a harmonious life, which he associated with ethical goodness. On one occasion, when he reported that he had “Worked hard”, he also says “I am all spirit & therefore I am free.” (PN:63/13.10.14).

There is a clear sense that Wittgenstein believed there is a connection between being a good philosopher and being a good man; that, for Wittgenstein, seeing things aright concerning language and logic and seeing things aright concerning ethics are closely intertwined. In March 1916, Wittgenstein was transferred to a regiment stationed in Olmütz in Moravia. His notebooks show that in the period that followed he experienced the hardest times of his life: he was required to carry out heavy work and undertake long marches to the front, while suffering from poor health and alienated from his colleagues; it was also the period in which he faced the greatest danger. His notebooks are full of self-exhortation and prayers expressing his distinctive understanding of Tolstoy’s teaching, with its particular emphasis on a preparedness to face death. Philosophical work in these circumstances was difficult, but in July 1916, Wittgenstein began a series of reflections on life, ethics and religion, in which it appears he succeeds in making explicit the connection between his logical and his ethical reflections, which he had long felt was there. As McGuinness says, “[i]t is as if he had bridged—or was about to bridge—some gap between his philosophy and his inner life.” (McGuinness 1988, p. 245) Wittgenstein writes:

Ethics does not deal with the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.5

Ethics is transcendent.6

The outcome of Wittgenstein’s logical reflections on the nature of the proposition was to show that the propositions of logic make the logical properties of propositions clear by combining them in such a way that they say nothing, that is, in tautologies. In this way, it is made clear that the propositions of logic do not themselves have a content, but they put the formal properties of the symbolism, in virtue of which it signifies possible states of affairs, on show. Wittgenstein believed that his investigation into the essence of a proposition had succeeded in making clear that “logic is not a body of doctrine.” (TLP 6.13) Logic has nothing to do with how the world is; it does not express general truths; it has no subject matter. This is what Wittgenstein means when he says, “[l]ogic is transcendental.” (TLP 6.13). This suggests that we should understand the idea that “Ethics is transcendent” in terms of ideas that are central to Tolstoy’s ideology: that ethical understanding cannot be put into words, but is made manifest in living a life of the spirit, a life that has put aside all earthly concerns. This is the life that Wittgenstein believed is the only sure path to happiness. Logic presupposes the existence of propositions with sense, and ethics presupposes the existence of the world, but they are neither of them concerned with how things are in the world. It is the world as a whole that is transformed by living in the true path of a life of the spirit, but, as Tolstoy says, not in a way that can be communicated in senseful propositions.

It is Wittgenstein’s attempt to live in accordance with the demands of his understanding of an ethical life of the spirit in the months leading up to July 1916 that allowed him to make the essential connection between ethics and logic and transform the Tractatus from a work on logic and language into an ethical work. Making the connection between logic and ethics secured the place of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work on the side of a life of the spirit. He could now pour into his philosophical writings everything that his experience at the Russian Front and his study of Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Gospels had taught him:

It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

Ethics is transcendental. TLP 6.421

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. TLP 6.43

…[E]ternal life belongs to those who live in the present. TLP 6.4311

How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher, God does not reveal himself in the world. TLP 6.432

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.

(Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have been unable to say what constituted that sense?) TLP 6.521

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. TLP 6.522

Wittgenstein, like Tolstoy, holds that ethics—ethical or religious understanding—has no content that can be expressed or communicated in propositions: there is no science of ethics. Ethics, like logic, is contentless: it makes itself manifest. It makes itself manifest in living a life of the spirit, that is to say, in living devoutly in the present, free from a concern with worldly outcomes. God does not make himself manifest in the world, in particular events. Rather, through living life in accordance with God’s will—“Not my will but Thine be done”—the question of the meaning of life evaporates and happiness comes from the disappearing of the problem. Nothing within the world changes, in the sense that the world is still a place of suffering, but the world as a whole is utterly transformed in a way that cannot be described: it this that is mystical. It is an idea of faith and religious understanding which comes from Wittgenstein’s own personal experience of crisis while he is at the Front and face-to-face with death, and from his engagement with the works of Tolstoy. The idea is immensely demanding insofar as it requires that personal desires must be put aside in the concern with what is higher. Having made the connection between his personal life and his philosophy, Wittgenstein writes about it in entries that are not in code, but, recognizing their personal significance, Perloff includes the remarks as some of the final entries in her translation of the Private Notebooks:

How can man be happy anyway since he cannot ward off the misery of this world?

Precisely through the life of understanding.

A good conscience is the happiness that the life of understanding preserves.

The life of understanding is the life that is happy despite the misery of the world.

The life that is happy is the life that can renounce the conveniences of the world.

To it, the conveniences of the world are only so many gifts of fate.7

An important focus of Wittgenstein’s ethical life, therefore, was not simply what he achieved in his philosophical work, but also what he lived through in his active, everyday life as a soldier in the Austrian army, first on the gunboat Golpana, and later as a member of the infantry. His circumstances frequently placed him, as he says in his diaries, in a position of “utmost need.” (PN:45/16.9.14). Tolstoy’s work had responded to that need by presenting him with the promise of a path to a life that freed him from the horrors that surrounded him, and, above all, able to come face-to-face with death without fear. Paul Engelmann describes the insight he believes Wittgenstein had achieved by the time of their conversations in Olmütz in 19168 as follows:

If I am unhappy and know that my unhappiness reflects a gross discrepancy between myself and life as it is, I have solved nothing; I shall be on the wrong track and I shall never find a way out of the chaos of my emotions and thoughts so long as I have not achieved the supreme and crucial insight that that discrepancy is not the fault of life as it is, but of myself as I am. Any attempt to put the blame on life since I ‘am as my Creator made me’ is mistaken because … [i]t is plain—and should be self-evident—that this is not the truth.

(Engelmann 1967, pp. 76–77)

Engelmann believes that the person who has achieved this insight and tries to live up to it in the way that Wittgenstein clearly did should be described as “religious”. He should even be said to “have a faith”, as long as that is understood in a way “from which it does not follow by any means that he must use mythological concepts … to buttress and interpret his fundamental insight into the fundamental relationship between himself and human existence in general.” (Engelmann 1967, p. 77). Although he insists that this should also not be taken to “imply that religion is here reduced to what is commonly described as morality.” (Engelmann 1967, p. 77).

One of the things Engelmann’s remark again makes clear is that Wittgenstein has an idea of what it is to practise the Christian faith, which comes from personal experience and hard-won insights that were achieved in circumstances of “utmost need”, as well as through his engagement with the works of Tolstoy. Although it seems that Wittgenstein did indeed find this idea of a life of the spirit sustaining in the extreme circumstances in which he found himself in WW1, the evidence of the Private Notebooks does not suggest that he ever fully achieved, at least not for any length of time, the life of faith that he believed would bring him the peace of mind he craved. It seems more accurate to say that he had a conviction, as he said, that “Christianity is the only sure path to happiness” (PN:113/8.12.14) and that he struggled to follow that path, as he understood it, in his own life. This conviction was manifest in his need to pray and to call on God to give him the strength to endure, to stand by him, to enlighten him, and so on.

While serving on the Golpana, Wittgenstein found it easier to detach himself from the physical discomforts and dangers of life on board the ship than to become indifferent to the people he was forced to live and work with. Surrounded by men whose boorishness appalled him, he was quite unable to control his anger: “Again and again I resolve to suffer [their boorishness] silently & again and again I break my resolution.” (PN:97/17.11.14). He said that “[i]t is difficult to serve the spirit on an empty stomach and without sleep;” (PN:47/18.9.14) and “[w]hen I am tired and cold I soon lose strength to bear life as it is.” (PN:59/8.10.14). Above all, he longed for the company of affectionate friends and people with whom he could communicate. Reading the diaries, it is impossible not to sympathise with these human emotions, but Wittgenstein saw them not only as weaknesses but as signs of a bad life, of a bad conscience; he took them as a sign that he was not living in the true path.

Wittgenstein never gave up on the idea that the true path required him to struggle against his weaknesses and he constantly called on God to help him to become a better person. But as his conversations with Engelmann show, he held that ultimately everything was down to him. It was part of his Tolstoyian ideology that “[e]very person has in himself the capability to exalt the spirit and become a participant in the kingdom of God.” (Tolstoy 2022, p. 59). In the end, however, life on the Goplana became unbearable and he applied for a transfer. In December 1914, he was moved to an artillery workshop in Krakow, where he found a flat with “a real room of my own!!” (PN:111/10.12.14) and was allowed to use the officers’ dining room. In very un-Tolstoyan spirit he noted: “I am enjoying this luxury.” (PN:115/10.12.14).

Wittgenstein could not, however, in good conscience stay permanently behind the front lines. He applied for a transfer, and, as was noted earlier, he was sent to Olmütz in Moravia, where after a period in the artillery training school in the city, he was soon to face the greatest test of his life. Beginning in June 1916, the Brusilov Offensive was one of the most significant Russian victories of the war. Wittgenstein took part in a battle early in the offensive and was then part of a long retreat in which he was caught up in further fighting. There is no doubt that Wittgenstein acted bravely in battle. Brian McGuinness notes that there are two surviving reports recommending Wittgenstein for a decoration, which record his coolness under fire and his calming effect on his comrades; he eventually received two decorations for valour for his actions in this battle.9 It is Wittgenstein’s own view of his conduct, however, that we are interested in.

Wittgenstein had volunteered to man the Observation Post while he was stationed at Olmütz precisely because it would put him in a position of great danger. He accepted the hardship involved as “a great blessing”. This is the period, just prior to his writing the remarks on ethics which appear in the Tractatus, when his notebook shows the greatest influence of the Tolstoyan ideology: “God be with me! For eternity Amen. I am a weak human being but He has sustained me thus far. God be praised in eternity, Amen. I give my soul to the Lord.” (PN:173/16.5.16). As McGuinness says, “He was putting himself into danger in order to force himself to be a decent human being as he conceived it.” (McGuinness 1988, p. 240). And as he conceived it, under his distinctive interpretation of Tolstoy, “Only death gives life its meaning.” (PN:173/9.5.16).

There were the usual difficulties with uncongenial colleagues: “My fellow soldiers disgust me against my will. …I do not hate them but they disgust me…I should be happier. Oh, if only my spirit were stronger.” (PN:175/28.5.16). But worse than that, he found he could not fully control his emotional reactions to being under fire: “We’re being shelled. And at every shot my soul contracts. I would like so much to keep living.” (PN:183/24.7.16). There is a still more anguished entry a few days later, when he records the animal life in him completely overcoming the life of the spirit and distracting him from the true path:

Yesterday, I was fired at. I fell apart! I was afraid of death! I now have such a strong wish to live! And it is hard to renounce life once one is fond of it. That is precisely what “sin” is, an unreasonable life, a wrong view of life. From time to time I become an animal. Then I can think of nothing but eating, drinking, sleeping. Terrible! And then I also suffer like an animal, without the possibility of internal salvation. I am then at the mercy of my appetites and aversions. Then an authentic life cannot even be considered.

(PN:185/29.7.16)

This irresistible upsurge of animal life, like his uncontrollable irritation with his fellow soldiers, was seen by Wittgenstein as weakness and “sin”, or, as McGuinness says, “as a sign of a false conception of life.” (McGuinness 1988, p. 240). McGuinness raises the question at this point whether, as his sister Mining sometimes thought, Wittgenstein was a saint. McGuinness thinks he was not, “but”, he writes, “he had the concept of being a saint and was aware of how far he fell short.” (McGuinness 1988, p. 241). This does not seem quite right, however. For while the evidence of the diaries shows that Wittgenstein’s conduct, and his personal reflections, are undertaken in the light of an ideal, Wittgenstein does not appear to connect this notion of an ideal with an idea of sainthood. He saw himself as striving to achieve “a good life”, “a happy life”, to become “a decent human being”. He did not speak in terms of sainthood, but simply of what it would be to live on the “true path”, that is, the kind of life he believed it would be good for a human being to live. It is simply Wittgenstein’s conception of what it is to practise a life of faith, the “only sure path to happiness”, as Tolstoy’s understanding of the Christian faith communicated it to him. It is, as I said, and as McGuinness’s question implies, immensely demanding. It is perhaps unsurprising that his engagement with it eventually led him to a crisis.

3. “A Lecture on Ethics” and the Beginning of Conflict: 1930–31

Although “A Lecture on Ethics” does not have the moral intensity of Wittgenstein’s reflections in the Private Notebooks or the Tractatus, it has a clear affinity with them. The influence of Tolstoy is apparent, for example, in Wittgenstein’s characterising the subject matter of Ethics as “the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living,” (PO:38). The main burden of the lecture is to show that “Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense.” (PO:44). It is in this sense that “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural.” (PO:40). To show this, Wittgenstein draws on experiences that he claims to have had and which one feels go back to his time at the Russian Front during WW1. It is important that these experiences drew from him descriptions he says are essentially nonsensical and which naturally employ religious language. These are the words, he says, which one naturally calls on when one tries to communicate the incommunicable: these ways of experiencing the world require nonsensical talk of absolute good or absolute value, of seeing the world “sub specie aeterni” (TLP:6.45)– hence the connection, which he still draws, between Ethics and Aesthetics.

Wittgenstein lists three kinds of experience that he believes essentially draw from us descriptions which employ religious language. First, “I wonder at the existence of the world,” (PO:41) which he also describes as “the experience of seeing the world as a miracle,” (PO:43) or which he suggests is what people meant when “they said God had created the world.” (PO:42). Second, there is ‘the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the state of mind in which one is inclined to say “I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens”.’ (PO:41). This experience of absolute safety has also “been described by saying that we feel safe in the hands of God.” (PO:42). The third kind of experience is that of feeling guilty: “again this was described by the phrase that God disapproves of our conduct.” (PO:42).

The ethical and the religious are seen as essential intertwined: “What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.” (CV:5/MS107/196/15.11.29). He sees this intertwining of ethics and religion as grounded in the fact that Ethics is concerned with the meaning of life and the right way to live, in much the way he understood this in the Private Notebooks and the Tractatus. One feels that Wittgenstein still believes that there is a religious path into the right way of living, which is the means to become a decent human being, and to living a happy life. A happy life—that is to say, a good life—is still seen by Wittgenstein as a life of the spirit, based on his understanding of Tolstoy’s interpretation of Christ’s teaching. What he seems anxious to convey in his lecture is his respect for someone who concerns himself with this particular kind of ethical or religious comprehension, with a life of the highest kind.

Wittgenstein’s private writings of the period confirm this. MS 183, also known as the Koder diaries, record remarks made in 1930–32 and 1936–37.10 The entries from 1930 to 32 were written during Wittgenstein’s stays in Cambridge; those from 1936 to 37 were written when he was living in his hut in Norway, with the exception of the entries for 27.01.37—30.01.37, which were written on the ferry from Bergen to Skjolden. In entries from 1930, Wittgenstein recorded that he was “very often or almost always full of anxiety.”11 Over a number of entries, he recorded that he was anxious that he will lose his gift for philosophy, that he is weak and too dependent on the opinion of others, that everything he does is tinted by vanity, that he is moody and incapable of collecting himself, and that he is cowardly. Apart from problems with his work and his colleagues, he was greatly exercised at this time by the difficulties surrounding his abortive relationship with Marguerite Respinger. The diaries show that he took a religious view of what he saw as his weaknesses and he repeatedly called on God’s help: “If I remain strong, with the help of God…;” (PPO:40/49/4.10.30). “Genuine modesty is a religious matter;” (PPO:52/61/18.10.30). “A being that stands in contact with God is strong.” (PPO:56/65/16.11.30). It seems as if he still has a conviction that a life of faith, understood as a life of the spirit, offers the promise of a path out of his difficulties.

In the entries of 1931, however, things began to change. Wittgenstein began to sense a conflict between his current life and the demands of faith. He reflected on the division between the life he actually leads, which he believed manifested only his weaknesses, and “a religious plane onto which I flee from the dirty basement of my pleasures & displeasures. This flight is right when it happens out of fear of the dirt. That is, I am doing right when I proceed to a more spiritual plane on which I can be a human being.” (PPO:86–7/95/6.5.31). He suggested that others “can be human also on a less spiritual [plane]” than him. There was something about his particular weaknesses that required, in order for him to be a decent human being, that he “must be in a more rarified atmosphere and belong there; & should resist the temptation of wanting to live in the thicker layer of air with the others, who are allowed to do so.” (PPO:87/95/6.5.31). And it seems clear that what he was thinking of here in particular is what he saw as his tendency to vanity: “Soiling everything with my vanity.” (PPO:84/93/6.5.31).

There is a sense that Wittgenstein was beginning to enter into a completely new kind of struggle, quite different from the one he engaged in at the Russian Front. During WW1, his conception of acting according to Christ’s teaching appeared to him as a promise of a path out of the horrors that surrounded him. Even though it was hard for him to follow this path, there was nothing in tension with his idea of what the true path was, except of course the animal life that made him want to live and find comfort—impulses which he deplored. In particular, he never appears to have seen his work on philosophy as spoiled by vanity, but rather always as a blessing. It is clear, moreover, that he saw his early philosophical work as an ethical enterprise and believed that in it he gave expression to important ethical views. As he said in a letter to Fricker, “The book’s point is an ethical one.” Now, however, he was beginning to see his work as a distraction from the right life: “My philosophical work now seems to me like a diversion from the difficult, like a distraction, an enjoyment to which I do not devote myself with an entirely good conscience. As if I were to go to the cinema instead of nursing a sick person.” (PPO:135/143/11.1.32).

In 1931/32, when he was no longer in a position of “utmost need”, no longer face-to-face with death, the life he was living did not call on him to dedicate himself to a life of the spirit. He was committed to his earthly life: his work, his companions, his everyday worldly existence. Tolstoy’s injunction not to establish your life on earth, to be meek and humble in heart, to do nothing for the purpose of gaining praise from people, to live only for the present day, and so on, were becoming more and more irksome. It only appeared to show him that, in living the life he did and which he did not want to give up, he was “a poor sinner”, full of vanity, concerned with his own projects, desperate for affection, cowardly, and unable to give up enjoyment: “I cannot (that is, do not want to) give up enjoyment. I don’t want to give up enjoying & don’t want to be a hero.” (PPO:119/127/7.11[or12].31).

It is no surprise, perhaps, that he found himself less and less willing to expose himself to the rigours of self-examination: “Know thyself & you will see that you are in every way again and again a poor sinner. But I don’t want to be a poor sinner & seek in all manner to slip away (use anything as a door to slip away from this judgement).” (PPO:102/111/13.10.31). It no longer appeared clear to him how Christ’s teaching, which he felt sustained him during WW1, meshed with his life. It appeared only to be a source of tension: “Christianity is really saying: let go of all intelligence.” (PPO:130/139/15[11 or 12.31]). But on the other hand, he felt how terrible it would be to give up striving for what is highest. There is a sense that his idea of Christian faith, as he’d absorbed it through the writings of Tolstoy, was beginning to add to his mental torment, rather than relieving it.

4. The Koder Diaries: A Time of Crisis: The Winter of 1937

The real crisis came in the winter of 1937. In an entry written on the ferry from Bergen to Skjolden, Wittgenstein described himself as confronting the Bible in a state of unbelief. On the one hand, he writes that his conscience “presents me as a miserable human being to myself: weak, that is unwilling to suffer, cowardly: in fear of making an unfavourable impression on others.”. On the other, he felt that when he looked at the Bible “I have nothing but a book in front of me … a document which …cannot have greater value than any other document.” (PPO:148/157/27.1.37). He raised the question whether he could be reproached for his state of unbelief. He suggested, rather, that “[a] dispute about religious belief cannot exist for you since you don’t know what the dispute is about (aren’t acquainted with it).” (PPO:150/159/27.1.37). It seems that he intended to acknowledge that the life he was living was somehow inimical to religious belief; that in order to attain religious belief he would have to live completely differently: “Believing begins with belief. One must begin with belief.” (PPO:151/159/27.1.37). That would mean living a different life, one that enacted the Christian teaching. Wittgenstein was acknowledging that, unhappy though he was, he didn’t want to change his life. As he is living now, the Bible is just words and “from words no belief follows.” (PPO:151/159/27.1.37).

The completely different life which Wittgenstein envisaged was a life of the spirit, a life that put away all earthly concerns. If he lived a life of the spirit, then he could hear and understand, and respond to, the summons of the New Testament. What could bring him to make this change, he believes, is not mere words: “only conscience can command me—to believe in resurrection, judgement, etc.” (PPO:149/157/21.1.37). It is only if he was filled with remorse for the life he is leading, or was overcome with a sense of sin, and was thus brought to a crisis in which he felt compelled to change his life, that he could be brought to know anything of beliefs which now mean nothing to him. Although he was unhappy, he did not feel this compulsion: “This means, so it seems to me, that I should say: You cannot know anything about such a belief now, it must be a state of mind of which you know nothing at all and which is of no concern to you as long as your conscience does not reveal it to you.” (PPO:150/159/27.2.37).

In the weeks that follow, Wittgenstein becomes more and more troubled by Christianity in this new way: “I may well reject the Christian solution of the problem of life (salvation, resurrection, judgement, heaven, hell) but this does not solve the problem of my life, for I am not good & not happy. I am not saved.” (PPO:160–61/169/4.2.37). He may have felt disinclined to change the way he lived, but he could not accept that giving in to what he saw as his weaknesses and abandoning the idea of a true life, a life lived in the right way, was a way to achieve happiness. And so, Christianity began to be a source of torment to him, as it appeared to present him with something which he could not, from the perspective of the life he was living, envision or enact, but also with something which he felt he might become acquainted with if he lived completely differently: “After all, another life shifts completely different images into the foreground, necessitates completely different images. Just like trouble teaches prayer. That does not mean that through the other life one will necessarily change one’s opinions. But if one lives differently, one speaks differently. With a new life one learns new language games.” (PPO:161/169/4.2.37).

There now began a struggle between what might be called Wittgenstein’s ordinary, everyday life, in which he was not completely happy but which he was reluctant to give up, and what he saw as the demands of Christianity; it was a struggle which, as he said, drove him almost to madness. The fundamental problem, as he saw it, was the tension between the irresistible appeal of a life devoted to his philosophical work and which included the comforts of friendship and certain modest pleasures, and the demands of the Christian teaching. He could not fool himself that these could be reconciled. He held Tolstoy’s view that “[i]t is impossible to have on eye towards heaven and the other towards earth. It is impossible to dedicate your heart toward the earthly life and still think about God.” (Tolstoy 2022, p. 64).

It is as if Christianity had gone from being something that sustained him in the life in which he found himself in WW1, to being something deeply unsettling: “My conscience plagues me & won’t let me work. I have been reading in the works of Kierkegaard & that unsettled me even more than I already was, I don’t want to suffer: that is what unsettles me. I don’t want to let go of any conveniences or of any pleasures…But I also don’t want to oppose anyone & involve myself in discord… In addition an irradicable immodesty dwells in me.” (PPO:166/175/13.2.37). He feels the pressure of the demand that he abandon the life he has made for himself and take up another in which all the things that he cares about are put aside: “The demand is high. That is, whatever may be true or false in regard to the New Testament, one thing cannot be doubted: that in order to live right I would have to live completely differently from what suits me. That life is more serious than what it looks like at the surface. Life is frightfully serious.” (PPO:167/175/13.2.37).

Wittgenstein appears to be entangled in this fundamental tension, unable to silence an inner voice that perpetually raised the question of whether he could, or should, choose the life of a believer: “Would I”, he asks, “be able to sacrifice my writings for God?” (PPO:176/185/18.2.37). His response was to feel outrage at the thought that “everything can be demanded of me.” (PPO:178/187/19.2.37). He then asks himself what it means that something so difficult should be demanded of him: “It means …: It can be that tomorrow I feel I must burn my manuscripts (for example); that is, that if I don’t burn them my life will (through that) turn into fleeing. And through this I am cut off from the good, from the source of life.” (PPO:178–79/187/19.2.37). Although Wittgenstein never gave up a concern with honesty and integrity in his philosophical work, it is clear that he now placed it unequivocally on the side of his worldly life: “No reasons of this world could prove, for example, that my work is important & something I may and should do, when my heart says—without any reason that I have to stop it. …I cannot & shall not convince myself through any reasons, that my work, for example, is something right. (The reasons people would tell me—utility, etc.—are ridiculous).” (PPO:179–80/188–89/19.2.37). This is not only a major source of the tension. Wittgenstein also sees that his happiness now rests on something, a fact,—his gift for philosophy—that could be taken away from him at any moment, and this increases his suffering even further.

There appear to be two ways out of his torment. On the one hand, ‘One could tell me: “You shouldn’t get so involved with the N[ew] T[estament], it may drive you crazy.” (PPO:186/195/20.2.37). He wondered if a change of surroundings would allow him to become reabsorbed in life and to forget his dependency on things that are mere facts and beyond his control. Perhaps he would then cease to look into the abyss and turn his attention to the world once again. Wittgenstein saw, however, that this was not a true solution to his problem. He would have done nothing that guaranteed he had silenced the inner voice that was concerned with his doing the right thing, with his being able to die with a sense that he had lived in the right way: ‘The horrible instant in an unblessed death must be the thought: “Oh if only I had … Now it is too late” Oh if only I had lived right.” (PPO;176/185/17.2/37). It might still happen that “God visits me”, as he put it. (PPO:189/197/20.2.37). On the other hand, there was the possibility of choosing the life of a believer: “Were I a believer…would I intrepidly do what my inner voice asks me to do, this suffering would be over.” (PPO:183/191/19.2.37).

Towards the end of the long entry of the 19.2.37, Wittgenstein seemed on the verge of choosing the second path: “Submit your heart & don’t be angry that you must suffer so! This is the advice I should give myself. When you are sick, accommodate yourself to the sickness; don’t be angry that you are sick.” (PPO:183–4/191/19.2.37). But then his worldly life reasserted itself: “just as soon as I can barely breathe a sigh of relief, vanity stirs in me.” (PPO:184/193.19.2.37). When he speaks of “vanity stirring”, it seems clear from his other comments that what he has on mind, above all, is his abiding sense that he is somehow an exceptional human being—“an irradicable immodesty dwells in me”—his belief in his talent for philosophy and his desire to do his philosophical work. He went on to describe what happened next: ‘Let me confess this: After a difficult day for me I kneeled during dinner today & prayed & suddenly said kneeling & looking up above: “There is no one here.” That made me feel at ease as if I had been enlightened in an important matter…I feel relieved.’ (PPO:184/193/19.2.37).

Wittgenstein went on to say that he was not yet sure what this means. He was sure, however, that it did not mean “I had previously been in error.” (PPO:184/193/19.2.37). Wittgenstein did not see the completely different way of living that would necessitate religious imagery as a matter of changing his opinions: “But if one lives differently, one speaks differently.” (PPO:161/169/4.2.37). Yet he felt, when he said “There is no one here”, as if he had been “enlightened” about something important. How is he to understand this sense of enlightenment? What was the change that took place in that moment? It cannot be understood as the uncovering of a false opinion, for it is not a matter of opinions. If it was an error concerning an opinion, what is the evidence that he now has that exposes his former opinion as wrong and prevents him from falling back into error? He saw that he had established nothing when he said “There is no one here”: “Thus there can be no talk of error here & the overcoming of this error.” (PPO:184/193/19.2.37). Wittgenstein sees that he has, rather, made a choice.

The entries in the Private Notebooks show that Wittgenstein had at last made the decisive shift in favour of his ordinary life as something he is prepared to cling to in the face of the madness that came on him when he was forced to face the question of whether his life is right or wrong: “This striving for the absolute which makes all worldly happiness appear too petty, which turns our gaze upward & not level, toward the things, appears as something glorious, sublime to me; but I myself turn my gaze towards the worldly things.” (PPO:188–89/197/20.2.37). He will no longer strive for what is higher, but settle for a life more ordinary: “Am base & low & doing all too well.” (PPO:221/229/21.3.37). And insofar as the crucial decision has been made, all the questions that have been tormenting him will now cease: “I want to say: If eternal bliss means nothing for my life, my way of life, then I don’t have to rack my brain about it; if I am to rightfully think about it, then what I think must stand in a precise relation to my life, otherwise what I think is rubbish…—An authority which is not effective, which I don’t have to heed, is no authority. If I rightfully speak of an authority, I must also be dependent upon it.” (PPO:203–4/211–13/23.2.37).

Wittgenstein acknowledged that he may still occasionally be overcome by thoughts that make this new form of tranquillity impossible, but given the life he is now living, and to which he is committed, he does not see the Christian faith as any sort of solution: “I don’t have a belief in a salvation through the death of Christ; … I also don’t feel that I am on the way to such a belief.” (PPO:193/201/21.2/37). It is important, however, that he did not entirely rule it out “that one day I will understand something here of which I understand nothing now, which means nothing to me now & that I will then have a belief I now don’t have.” (PPO:193–94/203/21.2.37). But it is crucial that he understands that this would involve a complete change in how he lives. It is vital that he sees belief as involving this kind of fundamental change in how he lives and that he does not allow himself to become merely “superstitious” and “perform magic on myself with words I may be reading, that is, … [I] must not talk myself into a sort of faith.” (PPO:194/203/21.2.37). He goes on: “I believe that human beings can let their lives be guided by inspiration entirely in all their actions and I must believe that this is the highest life. I know that I could live like that if I wanted to, if I had the courage for it. But I don’t have it and must hope that this won’t make me unhappy unto death, that is, eternally.” (PPO:194–95/203.21.2.37).

Wittgenstein repeated a number of times the reminder, “There is no one here”, as a means of relieving his mental torments. And as he repeats it, he gradually appears to reconcile himself more and more to his ordinary life, a life he saw as inimical to religious belief, in which he could not enact a life of faith: “There is no one here. But there is a glorious sun here & a bad person. I am like a beggar who sometimes reluctantly admits he is no king.” (PPO:222/231/21.3.37). Yet religion continued to disturb his thoughts. He could not, and did not wish, to silence his inner voice that raised the question whether his way of living is false, whether he ought to be living a completely different life, one that sees the petty concerns of his present life for what they are and bids him to put them aside:

If you are not willing to sacrifice your work for something still higher there is no blessing with it. For it attains its height only when you place it at its true altitude in relation to the ideal.

That is why vanity destroys the value of the work.

(PPO:205/213/24.2.37)

Christianity says: Here (in this world) …you should not be sitting but going. [M]y work … is only sitting in the world. But I am supposed to go & not just sit.

(PPO:207/215–17/27.2.37)

It is for this reason that Christianity, even though he no longer seeks to enact its teaching as he understands it, continues to exercise a certain power over him. The idea that he has of faith is still essentially the immensely demanding idea that he took from Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Gospels: “A religious question is either a question of life or it is (empty) chatter;” (PPO:203/211/23.2.37). “[i]t is impossible to dedicate your heart toward the earthly life and still think about God.” (Tolstoy 2022, p. 64). This is his state of mind just prior to his delivering the “Lectures on Religious Belief”. He no longer counts himself a believer, but he is still to some degree exercised by Christian faith. He sees the believer as living a life of faith, which his current life is inimical to. This could change, however. The change would not be a matter of a change in his opinions, but a complete change in how he lived. Such a change could only be commanded by his conscience, arising at a moment of crisis in his life: if he felt filled with a sense of remorse or shame for how he is living, so that he had to turn his life around. In such circumstances, if he completely changed his life and submitted himself to the demands of faith, then words and images which currently mean nothing to him might come to have a sense for him:

After all, another life shifts completely different images into the foreground, necessitates completely different images. Just like trouble teaches prayer. That does not mean that through the other life one will necessarily change one’s opinions. But if one lives differently, one speaks differently. With a new life one learns new language games.

(PPO:161/169/4.2.37)

5. “Lectures on Religious Belief”: Their Roots in Personal Experience: 1938

Wittgenstein begins the “Lectures on Religious Belief” with a question: “Suppose that someone believed in the Last Judgement, and I don’t, does that mean I believe the opposite to him, just that there won’t be such a thing?” (LC:53). Clearly, this can be read as a question about Wittgenstein’s relation to someone else, a current believer in the Last Judgement. This interpretation is encouraged by how the ensuing discussion unfolds, for example: ‘If some said: “Wittgenstein, do you believe in this?” I’d say: “No.” “Do you contradict the man?” I’d say: “No”.’ (LC:53). It appears that Wittgenstein is setting himself over and against another. And, of course, this is in a sense the case: at the time of writing the lectures Wittgenstein sees himself as living a life that is inimical to Christian faith: ‘I could say: “I don’t believe in this,” and this would be true, meaning I haven’t got these thoughts or anything that hangs together with them.’ (LC:55).

There is, however, a question who Wittgenstein has in mind when he speaks of a believer in the Last Judgement. He refers to someone—Father O’Hara—whom he regards as an example of someone who “performs magic on himself with words” and falls into superstition. His main concern, however, is to clarify what is involved in being a believer who avoids making faith unreasonable by trying to make it appear reasonable and it is here that the personal element that is present in the lectures begins to emerge. Wittgenstein’s understanding of the non-superstitious believer in the Last Judgement derives, in part at least, from his personal experience. It is true that much of what he says in the lectures is expressed in the form of general philosophical reflection on the phenomena of religion and religious belief. But it is also clear that what lies at the root of at least some of these reflections is his understanding of the experience of his earlier self and his current relation to it, as he worked it out during the crisis of the winter of 1937.

In Section 1, I quoted a passage from Engelmann in which he recalled Wittgenstein’s “profound concern” with the notion of the last judgement in conversations they had in 1916. In a remark in MS183 made in 1936, Wittgenstein again records the depth that the idea had for him and gives some sense of what the notion might have meant to him in 1916:

A sentence can appear absurd & the absurdity at its surface be engulfed by the depth which as it were lies behind it.

This can be applied to the thought concerning the resurrection of the dead & to other thoughts linked to it,—What gives it depth, however, is its use: the life led by the one who believes it.

For, this sentence can be, for example, the expression of the highest responsibility. Just imagine, after all, that you were placed before the judge! What would your life look like, how would it appear to yourself if you stood in front of him. Quite irrespective of how it would appear to him & whether he is understanding or not understanding, merciful or not merciful.

(PPO:147/155/1.12.36)

In his exploration of the difference between himself and the believer in the “Lectures on Religious Belief”, Wittgenstein rejects the idea that it can be captured by a proposition which the believer asserts and he denies. The difference here is not a matter of opinion. He wants to say that “[i]t isn’t a question of my being anywhere near him, but on an entirely different plane.” (LC:53). It is not a matter of the words concerning the last judgement that the believer says, “but the life led by one who believes it”. Wittgenstein immediately goes on in the lectures in a way that alludes to the ideas expressed in Englemann and MS183: “Suppose somebody made this guidance for his life: believing in the Last Judgement. Whenever he does anything, this is before his mind.” (LC:53) He goes on:

In a way, how are we to know whether to say he believes this will happen or not?

Asking him is not enough. He will probable say he has proof. But he has what you might call an unshakeable belief. It will show, not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but rather by regulating for all his life.

This is a very much stronger fact—foregoing pleasures, always appealing to this picture.

(LC:54)

It is impossible not to hear this as a case of Wittgenstein speaking from experience. He is not speculating about how a belief in the last judgement might be enacted but recalling how the notion preoccupied him and governed his life in the years around his conversations with Engelmann. He is recalling what gave sentences which appeared, on the face of it, to be absurd their depth; a depth which Engelmann clearly appreciated. It would, as Engelmann saw, not only have been crass to ask Wittgenstein what evidence he had that such an event as the last judgement would occur, it would have entirely missed the point of what Wittgenstein was saying.

It is not certain that Wittgenstein in 1916 would have described himself as a believer in the Last Judgement, even though the notion played such a profound role in his life. Nevertheless, the role it played in his life appears to be the source of his conception of how an unshakeable belief in the Last Judgement is manifest. And this raises the question whether it should even be called a belief. For its place is secured neither by reasoning nor by appeal to evidence, but “rather by regulating for all in his life”. Drawing on his own experience of his “profound concern” with the notion of the last judgement, Wittgenstein recognises, as Engelmann recognised, he did not need metaphysical concepts to buttress and interpret the experiences he expressed by means of the absurd sentences he uttered. He stood by his faith that he gave expression to in religious language, as Engelmann says, “without justification or explanation.” (Engelmann 1967, p. 77). It was an element in his commitment to a life of the spirit, which had no justification outside of itself. The words played an essential role in his life—his life necessitated the use of these words and images—but there was nothing outside the life itself which gave them a content.

This is how Wittgenstein now sees the non-superstitious believer: “What we call believing in a Judgement Day or not believing in a Judgement Day—The expression of belief may play an absolutely minor role” (LC:55). The difference between the non-believer and the believer “needn’t be expressed by one person saying one thing, another person another thing” (LC:55). It is rather, as Wittgenstein’s own experience shows, that “believing obviously plays much more this role: suppose we said that a certain picture might play the role of constantly admonishing me, or I always think of it” (LC:56). In the winter of 1937, when Wittgenstein had the thought “There is no one here”, he had made a choice. The life in which certain thoughts, questions and images played a role was put aside; he was going to get on with his ordinary life and no longer rack his brains about eternal bliss. This is how he now expresses his understanding of the difference between the believer and the unbeliever. Immediately following the sentence just quoted, he continues: “Here, an enormous difference would be between those people for whom the picture is constantly in the foreground, and others who just didn’t use it at all.” (LC:56).

In emphasising his distance from the believer Wittgenstein implicitly raises the question of how the gulf between them is to be breached. What could move someone to enter into a form of life which “culminate[s] in an utterance of belief in a Last Judgement”? (LC:58). One of Wittgenstein’s principal concerns in the lectures is to show that it is a mistake to make religious beliefs “a question of science,” (LC:57) in the way that Father O’Hara does. Wittgenstein says of Father O’Hara, “if this is religious belief, then it’s all superstition.” He goes on: “here is a man who is cheating himself. You can say: this man is ridiculous because he believes, and bases it on weak reasons” (LC:59). Wittgenstein gives one example in which he believes the charge of insufficient evidence would be quite inappropriate:

[I]f a man said to me after a dream that he believed in the Last Judgement, I’d try to find out what sort of impression it gave him. One attitude: “It will be in about 2000 years. It will be bad for so and so and so, etc.” Or it may be one of terror. In the case where there is hope, terror, etc., would I say there is insufficient evidence if he says: “I believe…”? I can’t treat these words as I normally treat ‘I believe so and so’. It would be entirely beside the point…

(LC:62)

What is the criterion for meaning something different? Not only what he takes as evidence for it, but also how he reacts, that he is in terror, etc.

(LC:62)

The remarks point back to Wittgenstein’s conversations with Engelmann, when it was clear that Engelmann’s asking him what evidence he had for believing in a Last Judgement would have been completely beside the point. They also point back to the intensity of the Private Notebooks, when Wittgenstein repeatedly felt the need to pray, to call on God to give him strength, to enlighten him, and when, about to come face-to-face with death, he gave his soul to the Lord. They reveal the way in which, even after his loss of faith, Wittgenstein continues to connect a life of faith with a situation of “utmost need”, with a form of life in which one is driven to use, or which necessitates, religious imagery. It is the idea he expressed in 1937: that “just like trouble teaches prayer”… “[w]ith a new life one learns new language-games.” (PPO:161/169/4.2.37). It is a view that Wittgenstein appears to have held at least well into the 1940s, where one finds it expressed in a remark in which echoes of his Tolstoyan ideology can still be clearly heard:

The Christian religion is only for the one who needs infinite help, that is only for the one who suffers infinite distress.

…

Christian faith—so I believe—is refuge in … ultimate distress

Someone to whom it is given in such distress to open his heart instead of contracting it, absorbs the remedy into his heart.

Someone who in this way opens his heart to God in remorseful confession …thereby loses his dignity as someone special & so becomes like a child. That means without office, dignity & aloofness from others.

(CV:52:MS128/49)

It is also clear that Wittgenstein still holds to the view that Christianity, properly understood, is not doctrine, but that this does not mean, as Engelmann observed, that it can be “reduced to what is commonly called morality.” To suppose that it can is to miss the essential connection that Wittgenstein saw between the need for religious imagery and what takes place when a human being is filled with the despair that comes from a sense of one’s own wretchedness. The “ultimate distress” that he speaks of is the distress that comes from the despair that is connected with a “recognition of sin”, which Wittgenstein believed was a real phenomenon in human life, and the ultimate ground for true Christian faith:12 “People are religious to the extent that they believe themselves to be not so much imperfect as sick. Anyone who is half-way decent will think himself utterly imperfect, but the religious person thinks himself wretched.” (CV:51/MS128 46:ca.1944). He also believed that it was only Christianity that offered a path out of this state of ultimate distress, if one had the courage to overcome one’s vanity and seize “the rescue anchor” Christianity offers. It is not a matter of sound doctrine, for “a sound doctrine need not seize you”. The crucial thing is that you have to change your life completely and that means “you have to be seized & turned around by something- (I.e. this is how I understand it.) Once turned round, you must stay turned round.” (CV:61:MS132 167:11.10.1946) This, the suggestion is, is Wittgenstein speaking from experience and for himself.