In the Silence of the Heart: Wittgenstein and the “Inner”

Abstract

Wittgenstein’s philosophy has influenced the philosophy of religion quite considerably. This is hardly due to his rather few remarks on religion. Instead, Wittgenstein’s influence seems to be connected to a certain, without doubt common, interpretation of his later philosophy, mainly of Philosophical Investigations. I speak about one interpretation because in my view the purportedly different interpretations of the sense in which certain key-concepts in the Philosophical Investigations are supposed to be fruitful for understanding religious language, in fact have a common, unacknowledged presupposition: that Wittgenstein’s account of language rotates around the quite traditional, philosophical concepts of subjectivity and objectivity. In the interpretations at stake, these concepts form the backdrop of questions about what “can” intelligibly be assessed by an individual and what “has to be” accounted for in “our” common language. There are discussions in the Philosophical Investigations that do give rise to such questions. However, what I take to be the main direction in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is the movement away from the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity. Most clearly, this is visible in the second volume of Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, where Wittgenstein dissolves the idea of the inscrutable inner of the other. As I will show, these remarks are in tension both with the views that his followers, such as Peter Winch, put forth and with his own remarks on religion in Culture and Value.

1. Introduction

In the field of philosophy of religion, few modern philosophers have acquired an importance that equals that of Wittgenstein. Considering how little he wrote about religion, this might appear surprising. An obvious explanation for this state of affairs comes to mind: Wittgenstein’s critical stance towards science and rationality together with his emphasis on the centrality of forms of life for establishing grammar and intelligibility, seem to suggest that questioning religious belief on the grounds of empirical evidence and rational coherence misses the mark. His remarks on religion seem to tally with these features of his philosophy. On this view, religion has its own grammar that cannot be judged on the basis of scientific and logical discourse (See Malcolm 2002; Phillips 1995, for typical expressions of this view). Whatever truth such an, as it is sometimes called, fideist interpretation of Wittgenstein may have (see Mulhall 2012 for a critique of it), it is a fact that Wittgenstein is much quoted by religious thinkers, and they often refer to this feature in his thought.

I will in the present paper take a critical look at certain things Wittgenstein says about religion and religious belief. However, my aim in this paper is not to try to assess whether or not his later philosophy supports fideism. Rather, I want to show that there is an internal incoherence between Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion and his philosophical views, and that this incoherence removes the ground of posing the question concerning fideism.1 What Wittgenstein says about religion in the mid 1940ties goes against the grain of his thoughts in LWPP II (Wittgenstein 2004). In CV (Wittgenstein 1984), he speaks about the inner in a way that is clearly in tension with what he says in LWPP II. In his later philosophy Wittgenstein has only few remarks on religion.2 However, they outline a quite distinct idea about religion; an idea that is common and that among others Peter Winch, whom I will discuss too, seems to embrace. I will also mention St. Augustine, whom Wittgenstein read, and whose ideas about the human soul resemble what Wittgenstein says in the remarks at stake. Bringing in St. Augustine, Winch and his reference to Kierkegaard will show how Wittgenstein’s remarks are in line with Christian thinking and the problems it suffers from.

I will begin by discussing Wittgenstein’s remarks on the notions of consciousness of sin and feeling wretched. What is their relation to guilt and conscience? Moreover, what does Wittgenstein mean when he says that it is difficult to know the real motives of one’s action? And what does he mean when he says that only religion can penetrate the “nooks and crannies” of the soul? (CV: 48) How is this “ability” provided by religion related to one’s conscience? Is conscience, being something all human beings “have”, something that is distinct from feeling sinful? What Wittgenstein says about consciousness of sin, seems to suggest this. Discussing these questions leads me to inquire about the notion of “inner life” that seems to be presupposed in these remarks. It seems, that Wittgenstein gives a quite striking, special ability to religion: a privileged access to the innermost core of the soul. As I will show, this religious idea about the human soul that Wittgenstein seems to endorse, is, firstly, incoherent and, secondly, in tension with the remarks in LWPP II. A central religious idea about the human soul contains the assumption that deep down the human soul is knowable only to God. In some of his remarks on religion, Wittgenstein appears to embrace and elaborate on this idea; however, in LWPP II, he takes a significant step toward dissolving the notion of the unknowable inner, calling it an illusion. I cannot argue for it here, but I will take it that, even if Wittgenstein is not using the word subjectivity (he is talking about the philosophical idea of the inner), the issue is about the concept of subjectivity. I think it will be illuminating to relate my discussion to certain features of Hegel’s take on subjectivity, conscience and moral meaning. This is because Hegel was the first to undertake a systematic effort to reconcile the respective shortcomings of subjectivity and objectivity—a trend that remains influential and also permeates Winch’s philosophical outlook. Moreover, Hegel’s dialectic centres around a certain conception of conscience. In other words, he sees the problem concerning subjectivity and objectivity as a moral problem. He thinks that conscience is pure subjectivity in the sense of pure conviction, which is opposed to objectivity in the sense of abstract morality. The dialectics between these two poles is redeemed by actual moral life in society.3 However, and as I hope will be clear, the emptiness of pure subjectivity cannot be redeemed for it is, in the words of the later Wittgenstein in LWPP II, a delusion. (LWPP II: 84)

What I want to show is that Christian thinking is based on a subjectivist view of the inner life of human being, and that Wittgenstein, even later on, endorses this view when it comes to his remarks on religion: the remarks from CV that I will discuss are from the mid 1940ties. Secondly, I show that, despite this, Wittgenstein shows in his later philosophical remarks how the philosophical idea of an isolated inner life is incoherent. This analysis is in obvious tension with his endorsement of the idea of an inner that only God can see. My discussions of the concepts of conscience, guilt, repression, and collectivity are central because, as I see it, what we are facing are moral issues—not issues concerning logic, grammar and linguistic practices. Moreover, what underlies the Christian view of the inscrutable inner life is part of an unfortunate though common view of conscience, seen as a relation to God (see for instance Kierkegaard 2009, pp. 143, 151). Apart from this religious aspect, the secular view of conscience is largely identical with the religious one: in Kant’s words, conscience functions as an “internal judge” that “pronounces the sentence” of guilt or innocence. (Kant [1797] 2000, p. 189) This idea is virtually universal at least in the Western world. (See Stoker 2018 for more). I will try to outline how this unfortunate view of conscience is related to the idea of the secluded inner that is prevalent in both Christian thinking and philosophy. Thus, I must also shortly outline my alternative account of conscience, for as I see it, the meaning of “conscience” makes nonsense of the philosophical and Christian ideas of the inscrutable inner of the human soul.—This discussion is important because Wittgenstein seems to embrace certain religious ideas about the inner. These Christian ideas cannot be defended by saying that they are religious—not philosophical—conceptions. Subjectivity is a problem whether it is understood philosophically or religiously. The idea of a secluded inner obscures the meaning of personal responsibility, and promote subjectivist conceptions of self-understanding and understanding others, views that the Wittgenstein of LWPP II criticises extensively.

2. A Real Event?

“Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For ‘consciousness of sin’ is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith.”

(CV: 28)

What Wittgenstein here says is certainly true in some sense, but in what sense?4 What is the reality of becoming conscious of one’s sins? My concern here is not how to distinguish between a simulated acknowledgement of sin and a genuine one, but with becoming clear about the meaning of “feeling sinful”. For instance, it supposedly cannot be the same as feeling guilty. Nor can it be completely different either. What is the relation between moral guilt and being conscious of sin? This is a complicated issue for as I will show, guilt is not the same as bad conscience. We have to clarify the relationships between the above-mentioned concepts. Here it might be asked whether I am not confusing religious concepts with moral ones. But certainly it must be possible to give some account of what the religious notion of feeling sinful and wretched is about. And certainly it must be possible to ask how such a feeling is related to “bad conscience”. For instance, it would be completely odd to say that the religious “feeling bad” is something completely else than “feeling bad” in the moral sense. As I will show, even the Bible contains warnings against such separation. In fact, part of what I will show, is that it is not possible to separate “feeling sinful” from “bad conscience”. My discussion of Winch’s way of using Wittgenstein’s views on religion aims at a further clarification of this issue and its relation to conscience.—Now, back to Wittgenstein.

In CV (45) he says that any “half-way decent” man “will think himself extremely imperfect, but a religious man thinks himself wretched.” What is this wretchedness about? How does it show? One answer would probably be “Feeling a constant guilt and shame about one’s temptation to violate God’s law”, but that is not helpful. If a person would say that she feels wretched because she eats pork even if it is forbidden by God, one would think that she does not know what “feeling wretched” means. Violating God’s laws is not, as such, an intelligible reason for feeling wretched. And if a person would say that she feels wretched because she, in her despair, cursed God, that would not be intelligible either. You cannot act against God in such a way that it makes you feel wretched. It seems that there is in the Bible a recognition of this fact, when John says that you cannot hate your brother, whom you have seen, at the same time as you say you love God whom you have not seen (John 4:20). What I am after is the fact that “feeling wretched” becomes intelligible only in terms of how one behaves towards—and what one thinks about—other human beings, or what one does to oneself.

Given this, does the religious person who violates another person, or herself, feel more wretched than a non-religious person? In other words: does religious belief give you a sense of love against the backdrop of which your violation will strike you as more terrible than it can strike the non-religious person? I get the impression that Wittgenstein’s thinking goes in that direction: “only religion would have the power to destroy vanity and penetrate all the nooks and crannies” (CV: 48). How does religion do that? How does religion “make” you able to do this—for I suppose that it is you who have to see your vanity? Is it because religion makes you feel wretched that you acquire this power to destroy vanity? Or is it, more particularly, the belief that Jesus died for your sins? The problem with these suggestions is that, as far as I can see, there is no specifically religious concept of either feeling wretched or having belief that would make it intelligible how a person could acquire such an exclusive power to destroy vanity. The whole idea that there could be anything at all that gives you the power to be honest, etc., is confused. Only if I realise something about myself can that realisation have a significance that leads me to want to change my life. Only I can change my life—even Christianity acknowledges that, but then forgets about it when it says that Jesus will change your life. Feeling wretched is a real event but unless something more comes up, the idea that only religion could make you feel wretched seems confused.

Let us now see how feeling sinful relates to knowing oneself. This question arises in that Wittgenstein makes a distinction between a “half-way decent” man and the religious person. He seems to assume that the former cannot reach a self-understanding that is as strongly self-critical as the self-understanding of the latter. This seems to imply further, that the conscientious understanding of the former cannot be critical in a sense that can be equalled to the self-understanding of the religious person. As I am about to show, this suggestion is not intelligible.

3. A Revelatory Power?

Wittgenstein thus seems to embrace the idea that religion deepens your self-understanding in a way that is otherwise impossible (and as we shall see later, this is a central, Christian idea):

Understanding oneself properly is difficult, because an action to which one might be prompted by good, generous motives is something one may also be doing out of cowardice or indifference. Certainly, one may be acting in such and such a way out of genuine love, but equally well out of deceitfulness, or a cold heart. Just as not all gentleness is a form of goodness. And only if I were able to submerge myself in religion could these doubts be stilled. Because only religion would have the power to destroy vanity and penetrate all the nooks and crannies

(CV: 48)

Generally speaking, the difficulty is understanding oneself. More particularly, the problem is that one can, according to Wittgenstein, act in a given way out of “genuine love” but “equally well out of deceitfulness”. It is this kind of difficulties that according to Wittgenstein only religion could clarify. What Wittgenstein here says is not that a given action can, by an observer, be taken both as an action of love and as a deceitful action. What he says is, instead, that “I” (the agent) have difficulties with knowing whether my action is performed out of love or deception. It is this obscurity that supposedly only religion can penetrate. My question is: how are we to understand this revelatory power of religion?

In posing this question, we must assume that the subject has at least some degree of responsibility for the revelation we are talking about. Even if one would endorse a radical view of grace as an account for acquiring self-understanding, such understanding simply cannot “just happen” without the subject contributing in any sense at all. It is after all I who am supposed to understand myself—and understand myself better than I did before! Moreover, in order for that self-understanding to be genuine, I must be honest. What does it mean to be honest—if that is the word to be used here? If I have difficulties with “knowing” whether I am acting out of love or deception, do I not have the same difficulties with knowing whether I am honest? Is it thinkable that I would be “able” to be honest and know my motives only when it comes to religious belief; belief in God, while I, at the same time, do not know my motives when it comes to my acting towards other people? And is it thinkable that I can know my motives when acting towards other people only if I am religious? These suggestions strike me as completely nonsensical.

My concern here has been to show that no matter what one thinks of religious belief, “I” “must” be honest if there is to be any honesty in religious belief. But “honesty” is a problematic notion, for in repression one is honest in the sense that the accounts of events that one tells oneself and believes in, are the same as the accounts that one tells others, and yet everything is deceitful. The issue thus is not about honesty, but about repressing and not repressing one’s conscience. This is a big theme, but I hope I will be able to outline its relevance for the present discussion on religious belief.

Put shortly, conscience is, in my view, a painful awareness of being, or having been, loveless towards another person. This painful awareness is neither a blind feeling nor a deliberative insight about having violated some norm, but a feeling-understanding where the aspects of feeling and understanding cannot be separated.5 This awareness can be repressed, but one cannot erase it completely. It is impossible to imagine what it would be for someone to lack it altogether. Human beings have some degree of concern, love, for each other, but in this connection I cannot enter the question how sever repression of love: grievous evil, should be understood.

“Having love” means among other things “being open”, no matter how repressed that openness in various cases may be. “Being open” again means much more than being honest and truthful. Put shortly, openness involves a readiness to be oneself and to meet the other’s being herself. It is hard to do this because as Wittgenstein, speaking of openness in terms of revealing one’s inner being, notes, “it’s not a pretty sight in there”. He also notes that “[h]ate between men comes from our cutting ourselves off from each other” (CV: 46). But as I see it, such cutting ourselves off from each other does not take place with conscious intention. This closedness is characterised by a kind of multiple denial, a repression, where one denies that one hides anything, denies that there is any need to hide anything, and denies that, therefore, one denies anything. Repression means that love’s openness is closed by means that are at once intentional and denied, and in this sense subconscious. One rejects, distorts, ignores, transforms, misdescribes, etc., love without acknowledging this.

Conscience is the painful awareness—a kind of felt understanding—of one’s own lovelessness. Repressing this feeling-understanding that is conscience amounts to trying to distort, ignore and, perhaps comfortably, numb it. I do not have the space to discuss the “shame” that Wittgenstein encourages us to feel, but let me just note that the ultimate source of repression is self-disgust which, as I take it, is the background to Wittgenstein’s remark in CV: 46. Shame, being an aspect of self-disgust, is a repression of openness; of one’s being oneself.

Let us now go back to Wittgenstein’s remark on the difficulty of self-understanding. He does not say that it is impossible to understand oneself, but that it is difficult. I take it for granted that he meant that it is morally difficult. In my view this means that the difficulty is about hearkening to one’s conscience. Thus, to the extent that you are tempted to repress your conscience, you will “find it difficult” to understand your own behaviour. You may ask yourself questions like “Was it loveless of me not to…? May be, but did I not also do it out of a concern for…?” Moreover, Wittgenstein does say that only religion can give me the power to still such doubts. That seems unintelligible to me.

When you act out of love—and that is possible—you most certainly do not ask yourself whether you really act out of love, for there simply is no reason to do so. Nor is there any reason for conscience to make itself felt. The “difficult” questions arise only when there is some reason to ask them, when one’s conscience has made itself felt. The sense of having difficulties with understanding one’s motives signals that one is tempted by lovelessness and it shows itself as repression, that is: as a misrepresentation of the moral issue at hand. This is what “moral difficulty” in my view means (For more on this, see Nykänen 2015). In the present case, the relevant misrepresentation is the presumed difficulty of understanding one’s motives, and it is a misrepresentation caused by one’s unwillingness to heed one’s conscience.6 To assume that even despite one’s being completely prepared to be loving towards a person, one still does not know whether one’s acting was loving or deceitful, makes “being loving” meaningless, for it now appears as if my loving attitude or acting is loving only with a certain probability: “As far as I can see, what I did to her was an act of love.”

Wittgenstein does not say that one can never be sure whether one’s relating to another person is loving, but he does say that only religion can—must one say “give”?—me clarity concerning this question. At least two problems arise with this assumption about religion: First of all, one wonders what “capabilities” religion “gives access” to the moral agent. Secondly, moral problems here acquire an epistemological character, in that only religion is supposed to make it possible for us to know whether we have acted lovingly or deceitfully.

As to the first mentioned problem, it seems that whatever Wittgenstein is thinking about here, he does not seem to think of conscience, for conscience announces itself whether or not you are religious. If it is said that only religion can give clarity and knowledge, then the question “How does it do that?” has been invited. Some religious persons might answer: “It is a miracle of God”, but actually this does not answer the question because according to the quite central, Christian doctrine of freedom of the will, there must be some, in fact decisive, contribution from the agent. How is that contribution to be accounted for? If, without religion, I cannot distinguish between being loving and deceitful, then how is it that with the help of religion I can? How are those two I:s related? And how is the genuineness of my religious belief to be understood? Can I, “with certainty” love only Jesus? That is completely confused.

All sorts of accounts of how religion might help can be imagined, but they are inadequate because opening oneself to love is, and thus means, that I do it wholly so to speak on my own account and for its own sake. This means that I am opening myself to you, without any other reason than for the sake of being in love’s openness with you. That is: without any reason. Thus, when it comes to being, dwelling, in love, it is all about my free and devoted (wholehearted) being with you (and my receiving your openness). Any kind of influence that supposedly pushes (drags, seduces…) me in the direction of love, either makes nonsense of love or is merely an associative inspiration which does not reduce the centrality of my own understanding. In the latter case, what “makes” me open myself to love might be seeing a movie, reading a poem or book, thinking of a person, listening to music…or being struck by a religious meaning. This does not in the least interfere with the fact that it is I who open myself to love. There is nothing about religion that could, over and above my own understanding, give me a capacity to decide whether or not I act out of love or deceitfulness. Nor is that needed, for when I am in love’s openness I know it (or rather: there is no question), while when I close myself and become hateful, I want to think that I “do not know” myself and my motives. This “not knowing” is an aspect of closedness. In other words: the idea that there is in ethics something to be known, and hence something that is possibly not known, arises only in closedness; in repression. Someone might here object that I am not speaking about religion but about, perhaps, moral psychology. That would be a misunderstanding. What I want to show is that a certain fundamental notion of something like “being responsible” must be in place in order for any action or understanding of mine can be said to be mine. One might say that this is a moral point, but even so, religion cannot do without it.

4. Religion and Knowledge About Good and Evil

One side of the problem with Wittgenstein’s idea about the difficulty of self-knowledge and its bearing on ethics and religion is that he has taken over a strategy that is typical of Christianity. What I mean is that Christian theology secretly borrows features from basic, human, ethical responses and then goes on to claim that the features in question only “can” be comprehended in religious terms.7 In fact, however, the meanings of all concepts for moral goodness are familiar to us only from cases of human action.

There are countless examples of the above-mentioned confusion, but I think that for my present purposes there is one example that is particularly fitting, namely Peter Winch’ discussion of the concept of prayer. Winch discusses a case from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Here, Huck is confused in that he has, on the one hand, been taught that runaway slaves must always be caught, punished and sent back to their owner and, on the other hand, that one must always be truthful. The confusion arises, because his good friend, Jim, is a slave who has run away, and Huck knows where he hides. Huck tries to pray in order to get strength to turn in Jim, but it did not work: “deep down in me I knowed it was a lie—and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out” (in Winch 1972, p. 194). Winch thinks that what Huck here finds out is an “analytic truth” about the concept of prayer (Winch 1972, p. 196). At this point Winch refers to Kierkegaard, who according to Winch gives a more specific account of that analytic truth, the realisation of which involves hearing the “voice of eternity”:

Kierkegaard expresses this point by saying that the voice of eternity can be heard only in the silence of the individual’s own heart; and this ‘silence’ is to be understood by contrast with the ‘busyness’ of ‘the world’. It is not enough that it is something that I think to myself privately, for my own thoughts can be thought from the world’s point of view, too, a situation which is a paradigm of Kierkegaard’s ‘double-mindedness’.

(Ibid.)

Interesting and important issues come up here. (I can here only point at the similarities between what Winch says and the way Heidegger, who also read Kierkegaard, accounts for conscience and its foreignness to the busyness of the world. See Heidegger 1996, §56). Perhaps the most striking point here is the one that it is not enough to think of something privately, because one’s own thoughts can be thought from the point of view of the business of the world. The voice of eternity, God’s voice, is able to redeem the individual’s thought from the business of the world. (For Heidegger it is Being that, in the call of conscience, performs that task (Heidegger 1996, §60)). Winch’s Kierkegaardian account is more specific than the above discussed account of Wittgenstein, but the basic point is the same: only religion can provide you with genuine self-understanding. And, of course, this Winchian–Kierkegaardian specification suffers from the same problem as Wittgenstein’s account, for if there would be no honesty, or rather: love’s openness, in human being, how could she, the particular human being, ever be loving? Indeed: how could she so much as hear and recognise this “voice of eternity”, if there is such a thing? Notably, Huck says that he himself, “deep down”, knew it was a lie, and that God knew that he knew. The issue is in fact not about prayer but about conscience, and no one, whether God or Devil, can make Huck acknowledge anything at all. If Huck would acknowledge his conscience only because he thinks God sees his inner, then he, in fact, would not have acknowledged conscience.

Another point emerges here: talk about sin is, in fact, a repression of conscience. Focusing on sin involves overlooking one’s lack of love toward another human being and instead projecting one’s attention onto “God” and His will, and how one has violated it. Huck is said to have realised the deceptiveness of his prayer when he thought of Jim and how kind he was. If, by contrast, he would have thought that giving in Jim would have amounted to being disobedient to God, he would have repressed his conscience. Why? Because he would not have understood the deceptive character of his prayer in the light of his love for Jim—and Jim’s for him—but instead as a violation against God’s law. The way I see it, conscience not a mental faculty that possesses, possibly hidden, moral knowledge but, rather, an alarm against lovelessness. What conscience reveals can therefore not be mediated.

But are not Kierkegaard and Winch right in saying that one’s private thoughts could be instances of the busyness of the world? And is not Wittgenstein hinting at this account too? Yes. But despite that, the individual person must also “be able” to be in love’s openness, if there is to be any such thing as love at all. It may now seem that we have run into a paradox. This indicates that we are dealing with repression. In order to see this, we must take a closer look at “conscience”, and the sense in which it is neither subjective nor objective.

Hearkening to one’s conscience means, in the strongest possible sense, that “I” understand what I am about to do or already have done. “Strongest sense” means only that if “I”, the morally responsible agent, am to understand and take responsibility for some action, then this can have meaning only to the extent I understand it. This conscientious understanding is neither an intellectual insight nor a blind emotion, for understanding and feeling cannot be separated here. Conscience is a painful insight about my lovelessness towards you. (Consider a case where Huck would first repress his conscience and give in Jim and then later on acknowledge his conscience. This would mean that he understands what a terrible thing he has done to Jim.) We are much inclined to repress this insight. What is repressed in repression is not that I have done wrong but that I have been loveless to you. In this betrayal I have closed myself to you and, hereby, to myself. Thus, without going further into it, denying one’s guilt does not involve repression, for feeling guilt is itself a repression of one’s conscience. Feeling guilt means that one has not acknowledged one’s lovelessness. (One can also feel guilt for violating collective norms. I will shortly deal with this below.) Correspondingly, admitting one’s guilt does not mean that one acknowledges one’s conscience, for that would mean that one realises one’s lovelessness.

My conscientious insight as to my lovelessness is not subjective, it is not hidden in the depth of my heart. Heeding one’s conscience means that one wants to re-enter into the openness with the other; the openness that one turned down. (One could speak of searching for forgiveness). That openness is anything but hidden and inner. But neither is my conscientious insight objective. It is not an insight of something that anyone can see and assess. Conscience reveals a general character of I–you understanding, namely that it is neither subjective nor objective.

Remaining in repression, that is: to continue ignoring one’s conscience, means continuing to deny one’s I—and “you”. One dwells in the mood of being “one”, to borrow an idiom from Heidegger (whose account of conscience is flawed in my view, see Nykänen 2005). To be in this mood, is to dwell within what I call collective morality, where the inescapability of conscience takes on the by repression distorted mode of guilt, which Kant, Freud, Buber, Scheler, H. G. Stoker, Heidegger and many others mistake for genuine conscience (See Scheler 1985, p. 322; Freud 1962, p. 72; Buber 2021). The idea that conscience is characterised by guilt could be called the standard view of conscience. However, guilt is an impersonal mood in the sense that guilt is assessed by reference to common norms. The assessment of guilt unfolds as a reasoning of no-one in particular and it specifies how “one” is to behave and whether or not “one” is guilty. In collectivity, this way of dealing with moral issues is the only possibility, for common, objective, criteria are needed for assessing guilt, while matters of conscience cannot be dealt with publicly or objectively. However, this does not mean that matters of conscience are subjective.

When conscience and, by that, I–you understanding is repressed, it is split up into two confused perspectives: objectivity and subjectivity, both of which have specific, repressive functions. The former perspective trivialises my moral violations by treating them as mere errors in understanding moral rules, and further, by assuming that it is inherently difficult to know what is right and wrong. The second perspective “protects” my most intimate thoughts and feelings in conceiving them as categorically unreachable to others. The essential feature of this repression is that human being’s most important way of relating to other human beings and to oneself: I–you understanding (of which conscience is an aspect), is ignored as much as it can be ignored. Instead, moral issues are taken to be issues where one’s unknowable, subjective thinking and feeling meets common, collective, and thus objective, norms, values and modes of reasoning. What I have done to you is absent. This repression characterises the Winchian–Kierkegaardian account of prayer.

Thus, in repressing one’s conscience, two perspectives are concocted—perspectives that are both sharply divorced from each other and yet inescapably linked. In my view, this paradoxical, repressed, relationship between subjectivity and objectivity is the source not only of Hegel’s dialectic, but of philosophical dialectics more broadly. It is clearly visible in the Winchian–Kierkegaardian account of ethics and prayer, even if the elements of the dialectic are slightly different from those of the Hegelian dialectic: we have the voice of eternity instead of abstract moral truth and we have silence of the hearth instead of subjective conviction (see Hegel 2001, §129 ff.), but the subjectivity-objectivity structure and the absence of I–you understanding is common to both.

Just as in Wittgenstein’s account, Winch’s account assumes—albeit in a thoroughly incomprehensible way—that the honesty of the moral agent is guaranteed by an external entity, while simultaneously insisting that this honesty is, precisely, that of the agent herself. What is at stake is, after all, not the honesty of the external entity, but that of the moral agent. The relation between the external insurance and the agent’s “own” honesty is, in other words, left completely obscure. To say that the external entity “helps” the subject clarifies nothing, for what is unclear is precisely how such a help should be understood. If God is assumed to be necessary for Huck’s heeding to his conscience, then exactly how is this to be understood without nullifying the importance of Huck’s role? As I have pointed out above, the whole idea here is a confusion caused by repression. But such a confusion is not just a result: the confusion itself functions as a repression. It is an instrument for deflecting and distorting your awareness of conscience and I–you understanding. The external entity is given a pompous and awe-inspiring (not to say, with Kant, “humiliating”, Kant [1787] 1996, p. 95) status in order to create the impression—for the guilt-ridden mind—that such an entity must be the essence of honesty. But the fact remains that the sense in which someone or something external could in any sense, whether by humiliation or persuasion, make a person to be honest, loving and conscientious, is plainly nonsensical in the most obvious way.

If I do not want to be honest; if I repress that understanding where honesty is one aspect, then any apparently honest action or utterance of mine is a result of my being pressured (tempted, seduced, allured, etc.) by some external entity. If, by contrast, I open myself up to that understanding, then the understanding is my understanding. Nothing and no one can do the understanding “for me”.

Love and conscience are issues precisely for “me”, for it is I who can close myself and become as cruel and evil as anything, hence making myself into something thing-like (responding along the lines of normative algorithms) and denying my “I”. This is noted by Wittgenstein when he says, as already quoted, that we hide ourselves from each other because what is within us is “not a pretty sight”. Wittgenstein’s observation in fact reveals that one in a certain sense already has the needed self-understanding without any religious belief, for how else would one know what inner things to hide from others? And to continue with Wittgenstein’s observations, how indeed does one know that there exist such inner things (Wittgenstein 1988a, PI: §293)? And if they are as inner as supposed, then no hiding is needed, for then no one can see into me.

Winch clearly thinks that this supposedly inscrutable interiority constitutes the core of not only religious but also moral understanding. According to Winch, the deepest moral understanding occurs within a person’s moral outlook, and the only role a philosopher can play is to highlight the different outward features of various moral outlooks—that is, different moralities (Winch 1972, p. 200). Thus, the only thing that can be said about such deep moral understanding is its objective, collective, aspect. The subjective and, to allude to Hegel, life-giving aspect of morality is inscrutably embedded in the subjectivity of the moral agent. The philosopher should, Winch says, resist the temptation to judge which moral outlook that is the one that one should adopt.

I have a hard time understanding what Winch means even on his own terms. Does he mean that if someone’s moral understanding comes from the “silence of the heart”, one nevertheless cannot say that the understanding of this person is any more moral than someone else’s superficial understanding? If, on Winch’s view, the characterisation “deep” has got nothing to do with “being moral”, and “shallow” nothing to do with “immoral”, what do they have to do with? What is it that can be said about such attitudes? Is it only about the external signs (words, facial expressions, end so on)? Is this not a perfect example of Wittgenstein’s beetle in the box—secretly resurrected by a notion of depth whose meaning is simultaneously nullified? On Hegel’s view things become even worse, for he thinks evil lurks precisely in the workings of pure subjectivity which uses high-flying but abstract moral notions to legitimise its intentions (Hegel 2001, §140). Winch can do nothing more than assume that this subjectivity “also” can opt for the good. The gravest “difference” there is: the one between good and evil is beyond human understanding.

5. Repression and the Salvation Through Obscurity

The idea of the isolated and unknowable heart of hearts of the human being is essential to religion, for it is considered one of God’s mysteries: “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) Christian philosophers from St. Augustine onward affirmed and propagated the idea of the unknowable soul of the human being, and one may wonder how far the philosophical idea of subjectivity—and indeed objectivity—is influenced by this Christian idea. In his Confessions St. Augustine says that “some things in man” are such that only God can know them. Not even the person herself can know them. (See Augustine 1961, Book X, chapter 5). Ignoring here the question how St. Augustine came to know these facts about God and himself I just want to point out how the Christian view of the soul’s knowability suggests a fundamental split between the presumed inscrutability of inner subjectivity and the transparency of publicly observable behaviour. Thus, both Wittgenstein’s and Winch’s thoughts about the hidden nooks and crannies of the human soul are completely in line with Christian theology. My intention in this paper is to try to show the problems with this way of thinking. (Here I must shortly note that my view of the task of philosophy is that it is about showing how the unfortunate dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity arises. This dichotomy arises in connection to repressing one’s conscience or, more broadly, I–you understanding. More on this in Nykänen 2019).

When it is assumed that only religion can give you a proper self-understanding, then it is also assumed that self-understanding is something mysterious that cannot be dealt with in any humanly intelligible way. Correspondingly, those moral issues that can be dealt with in an intelligible way will appear rather superficial and trivial. We saw how far this idea went with Winch. Here someone might ask: If that idea is so confused, how is it that it still seems to hint at something that feels quite right? Well, as I have pointed out: if you want to hide yourself because it is not a pretty sight in there, then surely the idea that no one—except God—can see inside you is quite comforting. And surely, the idea that the nastiness of one’s actions can be assessed only in a trivial sense is quite comforting, too. These are the ideas one clings to when one tries to escape from one’s conscience which is an awareness of the lovelessness of one’s actions.

Repressing conscience does not mean that morality as such is abandoned—no one wants such an anarchy. Instead, repression of conscience means that morality is understood in what I above called a trivial sense. Having acted immorally means here that one has violated common norms: one is guilty. Heeding one’s conscience means here that one feels guilty. In Kant’s words, conscience is an “internal judge” that observes me and prosecutes me. Then he goes on to say: “Our reason cannot pursue further his [the prosecutor’s] power (as the ruler of the world) in his function; we can only revere his unconditional iubeo or veto [“I command” or “I forbid”] (Kant [1797] 2000, p. 189).

Kant gives us no reason for thinking that the prosecutor’s power could not be further analysed. Instead, he alleges that one should only revere his unconditional power. This implies that one should not inquire about the justification for the prosecutor’s power. Here again, we meet a moralising mystification of inner moral life (on Kant’s terms the “subjective principle” of morality, Kant [1797] 2000, p. 190). I hope it has become clear that there is a strong inclination, both public and private, to accept this mystification of the inner with its corresponding trivialisation of the outer. This inclination is as strong as one’s inclination to repress one’s conscience. Another thing that has become clear is that the “need” to mystify the inner—that is: to repress conscience—is independent of the distinction between religion and morality. Whether you feel guilty, wretched, or sinful, this involves a repression of conscience, as it entails rejecting the will to forgiveness that goes with conscience. Instead, you are wallowing in your bad feeling, hoping that you can somehow—perhaps by way of self-sacrifice—compensate your guilt or sin. Or have it erased by God’s grace. If by contrast you search for forgiveness this means that you will open yourself to the other. You share with the other the bad feeling caused by your betrayal and the good feeling of re-entering into openness with the other.

Repressing conscience generates a particular form of togetherness—one in which individuals subconsciously agree on shared forms of repression, that is, on the central norms that dictate how one ought to act. I call such togetherness collectivity, though I also use the expressions “collective morality”, “common morality” and “normative morality”. As I see it, Kant reveals, in the above quotation, a subconscious awareness of the violence that goes with repression. What is repressed is violently guarded from exposure. Guilt is an affirmative response to that violence—power—of common norms. In short, the standard view of conscience has a normative character: one should not question it; one should adopt it.8

Much more should be said about the common, normative morality, and the sense in which it is a repression of conscience, but here it hopefully satisfies to show in what sense affirming common morality is itself taken to be part of moral behaviour (For more on this, see Nykänen 2015). This of course also goes for the idea of the hidden inner. When Winch says that the philosopher should not try to say anything about this interiority, it is in line with the norms of the moral perspective he is describing. All in all, we see how the tendency to mystify and isolate—to subjectify—the inner human soul can be traced from the Bible, through early Christian philosophers, to Kierkegaard and into our own time.

What is particularly striking here is that when interiority is mystified and conscience is trivialised as mere guilt over breaking norms, both love and morality are, in effect, lobotomised. If I cannot “see into your heart”—nor you in mine—then this means that there can be no such thing as love, for love means opening one’s heart to the other. And if I cannot open myself to you, then neither is there any sense in saying that I close myself to you. Nor does it make sense to say that in love one comes to know oneself and the other more and more. The only thing one can learn about the other is the other’s habits. Of course, according to the common view of love, this precisely is the case. Moreover, on this view love means only that a person experiences strong positive affects in response to another. That is how love appears when the idea of an inscrutable heart is adopted. No distinction can be made between infatuation and love, and given this it seems to make sense to say that a person kills her beloved one out of love! The common idea of love suggests that, in the depths of our hearts, we remain—inescapably—strangers to one another. If that would be true, then it would of course also be the case that we cannot know ourselves either—except in a trivial sense. The implausibility of this idea becomes even more evident if we follow the trajectory of this thought. For if we cannot see into our own hearts or each other’s hearts, how can it be intelligible to speak of “knowing the heart” at all? Whence the whole idea? Is it not a beetle in the box? And in this case not “even” God could see into anyone’s heart, for there is no heart to be seen.

Openness is what is repressed in repression, and conscience is the painful awareness that we are about to close ourselves off—or already have. As is obvious, openness is not a matter of your own, private thoughts and feelings. It is in openness that you are loving, tender, honest, courageous, truthful, etc., towards “you”. Neither is there any uncertainty concerning the openness. This is acknowledged also by Wittgenstein. When he discusses the inner and the outer he says among other things: “In the first place, ‘I cannot know his feelings’ does not mean:…as opposed to mine. In the second place, it does not mean: I can never be completely sure of his feelings.” (LWPP II: 89) Wittgenstein moves to and fro in his struggle with the concepts of the inner and the outer but, apart from eggshells, it seems to me that he is moving in the direction of dissolving the typical, philosophical discourse where the very existence of the other is “uncertain”. He sees that what I call I–you understanding does not refer to any object in the sense of: certain facial expressions, verbal exclamations, gestures, etc.: “Or: I can know that he is in pain, or that he is pretending; but I do not know it because I ‘look into him’” (LWPP II: 31). There are no internal or external objects—no specimens of meaning—that, as it were, contain the content which “bestows” meaning and truth upon my knowledge. I understand you, not something, some thing, about you (Cf. PI 1: §304).

6. Religion and the Beetle in the Box

Wittgenstein did not seem to have any consciously elaborated idea about I–you understanding.9 However, and as I have shown in many places, it is quite clear that in his later philosophy he everywhere makes use of what I call I–you understanding. (See for instance Nykänen 2018). What is striking is that he dissolves philosophical thought-cramps precisely by pointing to cases where one person is addressing another person. There are plenty of such examples in the PI (PI 1: §303): “Just try—in a real case—to doubt someone else’s fear or pain.” Moreover, in LWPP II his main theme concerns the concepts of the inner and the outer. One important finding of his is that being certain about how another person feels, does not mean that one has criteria for one’s certainty or that one “knows” it in the epistemological sense of the word (p. 87). The general movement of LWPP II is towards dissolving the radical, philosophical separation between my inner life and your inner life. Wittgenstein’s discussion does not touch much on moral issues, except in the sense that he often takes up concepts like pretence, lying, and hiding one’s thoughts and feelings. What interests me here, is his dissolution of the idea of an essential, logically hidden inner life: “[T]here is no such thing as an outer mediated and inner unmediated evidence for the inner” (p. 67). There are plenty of similar remarks.

Wittgenstein’s above discussed remarks on religion seem to go against the drift of the thought in LWPP II. What is going on here? One reason for thinking that religious belief has a central role in human life is when ethics is seen as one specific area in human life, comparable to aesthetics and politics, and hence as insufficient to touch upon “deeper issues”. Whatever thoughts the later Wittgenstein had on the relation between religion and ethics, he seemed to think that religion is about something “bigger” that is inexpressible; about a way of seeing life as a whole. The above discussed remarks on religion, written between 1944 and 1946, invoke an idea of an inscrutable inner subjectivity which only God can illuminate. This seems to tally with his earlier views, for instance when he claims that to try to write something about ethics or religion is to “run against the boundaries of language” and this is because “the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science” (Wittgenstein 1965, p. 12).

In his later philosophy, however, Wittgenstein clearly takes distance to the idea that there would be something important that cannot be said. Is there an internal contradiction in Wittgenstein’s philosophy? It might appear so, but then the meaning of Wittgenstein’s idea that everything can be said in language is not quite clear—even, I think, to Wittgenstein himself. Here I have in mind his reflections on and puzzlement at what can be said about “knowing” and “not knowing” the inner of the other. The puzzlement rotates around the fact that one can often be quite certain about the inner feelings and thoughts of the other and yet there can be no criteria for being certain (LWPP II: 87). Sometimes he says that it is “false to say that I know his mood” (88), and that there is no proof for one’s certainty (92). In other places he seems to think that one can say that one knows the inner of the other (32).

The issue is about the grammar of “knowing”, “proof”, “certainty” and “criteria” in connection to knowing the “inner” feelings and thoughts of the other. Wittgenstein is wavering between thinking on the one hand that one cannot speak about knowing the other’s feelings, for certainty of knowledge presupposes common criteria which are here lacking and, on the other hand, thinking that one can often say that one is certain about the other’s feelings. What is this certainty about? Is it about “imponderable” evidence consisting of “subtleties of glance” and similar things (PI 2: §360)? Does it make sense to speak about imponderable evidence? More importantly, are glances, gestures, tones of voice to be seen as pieces of evidence here? When we speak about evidence, it is clear what kind of language-game we are using. One, namely, where certainties and uncertainties are determined by pieces of evidence that are interpreted according to common criteria. What is stated is understood by anyone who understands the meaning of the signs used. Philosophers (and indeed scientists) may be prone to ask whether there exists any other meaningful language-game.

Wittgenstein by contrast, alludes himself to another language-game. He speaks about a “more primitive” language-game of “genuine utterances”, contrasting it with “feigned” utterances of feelings (LWPP II: 39. Wittgenstein speaks about primitive language-games and reactions in many places: Wittgenstein 1998b, RPP I, §§915–916; Wittgenstein 1982, LWPP I, §§133–134, PI 2 §§ 161, 289). I will not here discuss his unfortunate specification “primitive” but instead focus on the other specification: genuineness. Describing a whole language-game as being genuine sounds quite odd. Can one not feign feelings and utterances in it? What prevents one? “Genuineness”? Of the language? These are absurd suggestions. I think that Wittgenstein here touches upon the fact that when we are “genuine” we do speak in a way that is different from the “usual” language-game (though the “primitive” language-game is in fact more usual than the one Wittgenstein characterises as usual). This way of speaking is, like all language use, internally connected to our way of living.

But this internal connection between language and way of living also goes for what Wittgenstein calls a language-game of hiding. He contrasts the language-game of genuine utterances with a language-game of hiding, envisaging a society where “the ruling class speaks a language which the serving class cannot learn” (LWPP II: 37). But how should one understand the idea that in a certain language-game genuineness prevails? And that in this language-game one “knows” the inner of the other? Moreover, if there is such a language-game, what should one make of Wittgenstein’s idea that only religion can penetrate the nooks and crannies of one’s soul? As to the first question, it is obvious that it is the human beings involved who are genuine—not the language-game. But why then speak about a language-game? Well, perhaps because words and sentences have a different role when people do not hide themselves from each other. Having said this, I will interpret genuineness as openness.

In what sense, then, do words and sentences play a different role in openness? In the sense that being open with one another means revealing yourself—and your “inner”—to the other. This possibility shows that the ordinary notion of the inner “is a delusion” (LWPP II: 84). The inner is a delusion formed by our fear of being seen by the other; it is a fear of openness. Here, the inner is assumed to be inaccessible to the other, which means that the truth of what the other says about your deepest, inner being can be based on nothing more than a guess or conviction based on experience. If our words are to have any meaning, language cannot, on this view, have its source in what you and I say about each other. Rather, the meaning of words is established by common agreement. The character of meaning is here public—or, as I would say, collective. The meaning and truth of this language is established by common criteria of agreement between our words and what they signify. Collective agreement is established with reference to external objects, that is: with reference to what anyone can observe. Collective language denotes the public agreement between word and object. In I–you understanding the meaning of words is established in the openness of me talking to you. There can be a use for criterial agreeing about the meaning of words also in I–you understanding, but its role is trivial: “What do you mean when you say…?—Oh, I see…”Without entering any longer discussions about objectivism, it can be noted that there are different views about its meaning. One, heavily metaphysical view is that the correspondence between word and object is determined by some purely logical qualities. A somewhat milder, broadly Hegelian, view is that the objectivity of the correspondence in question is determined by collective judgements, but that such judgements are developing historically towards “truth”. Finally, we have the postmodern notion of objectivity which could be characterised as collectivised Hegelianism. It states that “objectivity” cannot have a meaning that transcends common, collective judgement. Postmodernism rejects in other words any idea where the collective agreement about the meaning of words is assumed to have an underpinning that goes beyond collective agreement.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy is frequently understood in a way that largely coincides with my characterisation of postmodernism, the idea being that language presupposes common rules and criteria, while what is subjective is beyond the realm of common criteria (See for instance Winch 1991, p. 33; Kripke 1982, p. 89; Schatzki 1996, p. 22). Wittgenstein is wrestling with this duality, but in the end he rejects it: “It is only in particular cases that the inner is hidden from me, and in those cases it is not hidden because it is the inner” (LWPP II: 33). However, there are passages—utilised by Kripke—that seem to point to what I called a basically postmodern view.10 I have ignored those passages here and instead focused on Wittgenstein’s religious remarks, where the idea of the “hidden inner”, the subjectivist counterpart to the passages on social agreement, seems to surface.

In terms of collective language, there is a—secretly wished for—problem of establishing the truthfulness of the feelings and thoughts of the other. I noted above that contrary to what Wittgenstein says, genuineness cannot be something that is harboured in a specific language-game. In question is, rather, the openness of the persons that are talking with each other. The openness of the I–you perspective cannot be determined in terms of collective language. For what is at stake is the understanding between “I” and “you”—not knowledge, criteria, or certainty. To correct an earlier inaccuracy, when I am open with you, I do not understand myself as “revealing” my feelings and thoughts to you, nor are you “estimating” how certain you are about the content of them. I am open which means that I express my feelings and thoughts. You are “with me” in these expressions just as I am with you in what you express. It seems to me that Wittgenstein did realise the character of I–you understanding when he writes (LWPP II: 86):

This is important: I might know from certain signs and from my knowledge of a person that he is glad, etc. But I cannot describe my observations to a third person and—even if he trusts them—thereby convince him of the genuineness of that gladness, etc.

The important thing here is the realisation that the communication that takes place between I and you cannot be grafted into a context of collective language. No description of observations of I–you communication can—no matter how reliable the description is—reconstruct the meaning of that communication. Wittgenstein speaks about “knowledge” of “certain signs” and of “convincing” the third person, which may give the impression that he talks in terms of collective language. But I think that the gist of his remark points at what I call I–you understanding.

The remark points to the fact that speaking to another person involves an aspect that cannot be understood in terms of linguistic practices and grammar. Exactly this is why one cannot convey the genuineness to a third person. What Wittgenstein here notices is in my view not a feature of language usage but of I–you understanding. Since the issue is an understanding between “me” and “you”, it cannot be expressed in terms of any discourse, though it can of course be described in language. For similar reasons, if “I” ask “you” for forgiveness for something said or done, this understanding between us cannot be expressed to a third person. It can only be described. The relation between me and you is a moral relation; it is a relation where the perspective (if that is the word) of love and openness (gladness, genuineness, etc.) is constantly present. Falling out of this relation announces itself as bad conscience, while refusing to re-enter it occurs by way of repressing conscience. I think that Wittgenstein’s remarks about the language-game of genuine utterances and about speaking a language where one hides oneself (LWPP II: 37) point in the direction of what I call I–you understanding and repressing it. Moreover, the fundamentally moral character of I–you understanding together with the difficulty of opening oneself up to that understanding tallies well with Wittgenstein’s conception of the character of philosophical problems. According to Wittgenstein, overcoming philosophical difficulties is “not a difficulty of the intellect, but of the will” and he compares the difficulty of not using an expression with the difficulty of holding back tears. (Wittgenstein 1999, PO: 161)

The important observation here is that Wittgenstein notes the different role of language use when it comes to I–you relationships and public language use. The latter is a discourse established and regulated by common rules and criteria, while the former must be seen as an integral aspect of interpersonal understanding; “words can be wrung from us—like a cry”. (PI §546) The importance of these observations for our present purposes is that the idea of the secluded inner is a delusion; that the idea that the concept of language is exhausted by public language or “language as discourse” is mistaken, and that the movement of Wittgenstein’s thought in LWPP II goes in a direction that supports these findings. Thus, the religious claim that “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” is confused.

What is to be noted is that I–you understanding is neither subjective nor objective. Insofar as you and the other dare to be open, there are no nooks and crannies, and thus no subjectivity.11 “Is that possible?” Well, who is to say how far it is possible? One thing is obvious: the more open you dare to be, the less nooks and crannies there are. You may be tempted to say “Surely it is not possible to be entirely open!” But ask yourself what this “conviction” is all about. If you yourself are not open, how do you know that it is not possible for others? And what about the supposedly unavoidable “residue” of closedness? Does it constitute a principal impossibility to openness? For in that case it cannot be reached by anything, including religion. And then one wants to ask: How do you know that such a thing exists? Isn’t it a beetle in the box (cf. PI §293)? Perhaps you just want that beetle to exist? For the idea of the beetle in the box is so powerful only because you want to promote that idea (PI §298). Whether you like it or not, that idea implies that religion, too, cannot be assumed to have special access to your inner life—for it cannot reach what is, in principle, unreachable. (“Even” God cannot create a round square). Thus, either it is impossible to be entirely open, in which case neither religion nor anything else can reach your deepest subjectivity, or then you can be as open as you dare to, in which case religion has no privileged access to your subjectivity. Either way, there is nothing special with religion except in the sense in which you give it a privileged status. Why would one want to do that? Quite obviously because it gives you a pretext for avoiding the hardest thing there is, to be open with the other. For religious persons with this inclination I recommend a serious reflection at John 4:20.

From what I have tried to show above, it appears that there is a certain discrepancy between Wittgenstein’s late remarks on the inner and the outer and his, admittedly few, remarks on religion. This discrepancy cannot be dispelled by referring it to a tension between his early and late philosophy, for the relevant remarks on religion are dated to the mid-1940s. One could view the remarks on religion as egg-shells from his early philosophy, but even so they seem to be symptoms of a mixture of confusions and insights in his remarks on the inner and the outer. In these remarks Wittgenstein is bending and twisting words in many ways, in order to try to clarify the confusing problem at hand. Let me give one more example: “The inner is tied up with the outer not only empirically, but also logically. The inner is tied up with the outer not only logically, but also empirically.” (LWPP II: 63–64) One can understand the movement of Wittgenstein’s thought here, and it does point to a dissatisfaction with both remarks but, here, he does not see that the inner is not tied up with outer either empirically or logically. This is because, as he does see in another place, “The ‘inner’ is a delusion” (LWPP II: 84). But the meaning of this latter remark remains rather unclear, even if the remarks that follow it do have a different character and there is no longer any talk of a distinct inner that is bound up with the outer.

Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion are, as we have seen, inextricably interwoven with the central problems of his philosophy. Nevertheless, it seems clear that his later philosophy makes nonsense of the idea that the soul has secret nooks and crannies, an idea that Christian conceptions seem to presuppose in their theological doctrines. Moreover, considering the I–you perspective will reveal that love cannot be outsourced. There can be love only to the extent that “I” open myself to “you”. Still further, collective morality with its norms is a repression of conscience, so any religious view that builds on norms and laws builds on a distortion of love. Moreover, in this case religious views also coincide with collective norms and hence collectivity as such—something that should be a problem to Christianity in its professed separation from “worldliness”.

The myth of the inscrutable inner is a Christian myth that has become a central part of the intellectual tradition of the West. (I have here ignored its role in other traditions). It would be important to discuss Wittgenstein’s late remarks on the inner and the outer. The reason why these remarks have been more or less ignored is obvious: The way Wittgenstein dissolves this dichotomy runs counter to the core myth of Western—and thus also Christian—thought.