The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theology and Philosophy

by Stephen Mulhall

Can we talk meaningfully about God? The theological movement known as Grammatical Thomism affirms that religious language is nonsensical, because the reality of God is beyond our capacity for expression. Stephen Mulhall critically evaluates the claims of this movement (as exemplified in the work of Herbert McCabe and David Burrell) to be a legitimate inheritor of Wittgenstein's philosophical methods as well as Aquinas's theological project. The major obstacle to this claim is that Grammatical Thomism makes the nonsensicality of religious language when applied to God a touchstone of Thomist insight, whereas 'nonsense' is standardly taken to be solely a term of criticism in Wittgenstein's work. Mulhall argues that, if Wittgenstein is read in the terms provided by the work of Cora Diamond and Stanley Cavell, then a place can be found in both his early work and his later writings for a more positive role to be assigned to nonsensical utterances--one which depends on exploiting an
analogy between religious language and riddles. And once this alignment between Wittgenstein and Aquinas is established, it also allows us to see various ways in which his later work has a perfectionist dimension--in that it overlaps with the concerns of moral perfectionism, and in that it attributes great philosophical significance to what theology and philosophy have traditionally called 'perfections' and 'transcendentals', particularly concepts such as Being, Truth, and Unity or Oneness. This results in a radical reconception of the role of analogous usage in language, and so in the relation between philosophy and theology.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

148 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2016

Reviews

[Daniel Crouch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can the 20th century philosophy of language of Ludwig Wittgenstein cohere with the 13th century theology of Doctor of the Church Thomas Aquinas? This—and perhaps more relevantly, can we speak sensibly of God?—is the question at the heart of Grammatical Thomism and Stephen Mulhall’s 2014 Stanton Lectures (adapted here). Each chapter makes for rigorous but illuminating reading.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drawing upon Cora Diamond's resolute reading of the Tractatus, Mulhall offers a sympathetic reading of the 'grammatical Thomists,' especially the work of David Burrell (whose Aquinas: God, and Action is exemplary) and Herbert McCabe. These are, in Mulhall's usage, philosophical theologians heavily influenced by the Wittgenstein. The grammatical Thomists' key insight, according to the author, is that Aquinas can be seen to be doing something similar to Wittgenstein (on Diamond's reading) in the Tractatus. Through his discussion of the analogical use of language to speak of God, and especially in the five ways, Aquinas is not attempting to picture a field of sense beyond ordinary human meaning. Instead, he is quite literally talking nonsense but in a specific way aimed at showing God's incomprehensibility to be something that is demanded by our ordinary ways of making sense of the world. Along the way, Mulhall adeptly draws upon Cavell to show that ordinary linguistic practices already involve a substantial element analogous usage such that their are no grounds for ruling out analogical discourse about the divine .

The final chapter nicely draws these themes together in a way that encapsulates the argument of the book as a whole. One question is raised by the text: Just how novel or different is the reading of Aquinas proffered by the grammatical Thomists. In one sense is it quite as some neo-Thomists have often sought to domesticate Aquinas such that his strictures against comprehending God are downplayed, making Aquinas into something of an onto-theologian. But in another sense, their is a strong case to be made that the grammatical Thomists are not novel at all, at least not in substance, despite the novelty of their mode of argument. But in that sense, it could be claimed that they accurately capture Aquinas's aim in speaking of God.

[Harrison Glaze · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5