Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Religious Belief

Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are "maverick" philosophers in the sense that they revolutionised philosophy`s own conception of the nature of its subject matter and produced works whose unconventional style challenged the philosophical assumptions prevalent in their day and age which are still widespread today. Although this cannot be said for most philosophers, Wittgenstein held Kierkegaard in incredibly high regard and considered him to be one of the deepest thinkers of his age. His influence both on Wittgenstein`s conception of philosophy and on his views on the nature of religious belief has been considerable, but until recently, this philosophical kinship has gone largely unnoticed. It is the aim of my research to explore the similarities in philosophical approach between these two great thinkers and to elucidate in particular what they have to say about religious belief. It will be shown that both philosophers refuse to construe religious belief in either of the two traditional ways - as a "propositional attitude" (asserting that something is the case) on the one hand, notoriously taken to be grounded in insufficient evidence, or as a mere "emotional response" with no reference to the "real" world, and hence with no "objective validity", on the other. This refusal to play by the "orthodox dichotomies" has led to gross misrepresentation of their thought by numerous commentators. Neither Wittgenstein nor Kierkegaard have been immune to allegations of both "relativism" and "nihilism", although both charges could not be wider of the mark. It will be shown that what the "father of existentialism" and the "father of analytic philosophy" have in common is not an "irrationalist", "fideist" stance that rejects reason in both religion and philosophy, but rather that both thinkers try to undermine from within certain common assumptions about the nature of both religious faith and the point of philosophical activity that make us believe that the traditional dichotomies (rationalism / irrationalism, theism / atheism) exhaust all the available options. This is especially relevant in a time where people seem to believe that the only viable response to "Western" "scientism" and "consumerism" is religious fundamentalism. It will also be shown that Kierkegaard`s and Wittgenstein`s work shares a common ethical point - the stringent requirement of being constantly vigilant against seduction by philosophically enticing pictures. A task for which a life-time may not be enough.