Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-394-36080-2
Verlag: Wiley

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Illuminates Wittgenstein’s religious epistemology—bridging faith, reason, and cultural understanding across disciplines

Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion offers the first comprehensive exploration of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion through an explicitly epistemological lens. Fourteen newly commissioned essays from leading and emerging scholars examine how Wittgenstein’s later thought, especially his descriptive and grammatical methods, provides tools for understanding religious belief, practice, and diversity. This singular volume situates Wittgenstein within debates over cognitivism, non-cognitivism, and fideism, while also considering his subtle anthropological and ethnological insights into religion as a form of life.

Structured in five parts, Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion traces key themes that range from the tension between faith and reason to the role of evidence in religious life. Contributors engage with seminal figures such as Locke, Kierkegaard, James, and Malinowski to illuminate how Wittgenstein challenges scientific reductionism and opens new ways of understanding the lived experience of belief. The essays reveal how questions of meaning, context, and practice underpin the epistemic evaluation of religious commitments, as well as how Wittgenstein’s approach helps clarify conflicts that lack a shared evidential framework.

Combining historical sensitivity, conceptual rigor, and contemporary application, this landmark collection: - Systematically explores Wittgenstein’s religious epistemology across multiple thematic dimensions
- Challenges scientistic frameworks by emphasizing context and meaning in religious discourse
- Highlights the relevance of Wittgenstein’s thought for contemporary debates on faith, reason, and evidence
- Introduces the concept of quasi-fideism as a nuanced position between full rationalism and fideism
- Expands Wittgenstein’s philosophical reach by applying anthropological and ethnological perspectives to religious belief
- Addresses current teaching and research needs in epistemology and the philosophy of religion

Encouraging cross-disciplinary dialogue between disciplines, Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion is essential reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, and sociology. It serves as a core or supplemental text in upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses such as Philosophy of Religion, Religious Epistemology, Wittgenstein Studies, as well as courses examining belief formation, ritual, and the social dynamics of religion.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pritchard, Duncan

Venturinha, Nuno

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgments

Contributors

List of Abbreviations of Wittgenstein’s Works

List of Tables

Introduction: Removing Misconceptions

Nuno Venturinha and Duncan Pritchard

Part I Beyond Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism

1 Wittgenstein on Religious Faith and Beauty

Hanne Appelqvist

2 No Gaseous Vertebrates: Wittgenstein’s ‘Third Way’

Genia Schönbaumsfeld

Part II From Fideism to Quasi-Fideism

3 Was Wittgenstein a Fideist?

Gordon Graham

4 ‘Undermining Reason’: Logic, Exemplarity and Religious Belief

Edward Guetti

5 The Ghost of the Tractatus: Fideism, Scepticism and ‘Hinge’ Epistemology

Michael Williams

6 Honest Doubt: Quasi-Fideism and Epistemic Vertigo

Duncan Pritchard

Part III Anthropological and Ethnological Approaches

7 Wittgenstein on Religion as a Form of Life: From a ‘Jamesian Type’ to Remarks on Frazer

Mauro Engelmann and Juliet Floyd

8 Understanding Other Languages, Understanding (Other) Religion

Alois Pichler

9 Shall We Dance? A Non-Intellectualist Approach to Human Practices

Julia Tanney

Part IV Context over Scientism

10 Wittgenstein on Religion Paul Horwich

11 The Concept of Belief in Comparative Religious Perspective

Thomas D. Carroll

12 On Certainty and Religion: A Prolegomenon

Nuno Venturinha

Part V Evidentialism and Non-Evidentialism off the Fence

13Epistemology and Freedom of Religion: Locke and Wittgenstein

Gorazd Andrejc

14 Wittgenstein and the ABCs of Religious Epistemics

Guy Axtell

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Duncan Pritchard is UC Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Knowledge, Technology & Society at the University of California, Irvine. A noted expert in epistemology, he has authored numerous influential monographs, including Epistemic Luck, Epistemological Disjunctivism, and Epistemic Angst. His work frequently engages with skepticism, epistemic risk, and the thought of Wittgenstein.

Nuno Venturinha is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at NOVA University Lisbon. He is the author of Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology and editor of Wittgenstein After His Nachlass and The Textual Genesis of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. He is a recognized authority on Wittgenstein and contextualist approaches to belief and meaning.