Wittgenstein on Religious Belief

Perhaps the most common reason Jewish thinkers endorse Wittgenstein's philosophy is that his thought appears to offer a solution to the perennial problems surrounding Jewish theology. Theological reflection within Judaism has a unique form that scholars have yet to fully come to terms with. Some argue that it makes little sense to speak of theology in a religious context in which discourse about God is rarely systematic and the absence of dogmas means that belief is not salvific. Underscoring these points is the fact that classical Judaism has no term that corresponds to the Greek-derived word “theology.” One common strategy among Jewish thinkers to resolve these issues is to argue that the rabbinic term commonly identified with belief—’emunah—has etymological roots more closely associated with trust than belief. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Judaica begins its article on “Belief” with the following observation: “In the Bible there are no articles of faith or dogmas in the Christian or Islamic sense of the terms. Although trust in God is regarded as a paramount religious virtue … there is nowhere in Scripture an injunction to believe.”Footnote ¹⁷

This deeply entrenched view that belief has a minimal role in the Jewish context is at the heart of the symbiosis between Wittgenstein's philosophy and contemporary Jewish thought. From Wittgenstein's “Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough,” written in 1931, and throughout his subsequent writings, notes, and lectures, an account of religion emerges in which religious belief possesses no theoretical function and is thus sharply distinguished from other forms of belief, particularly science.Footnote ¹⁸ Wittgenstein's principal objection to Frazer is that in his effort to explain primitive and ancient religion, Frazer attributes a rationale to magic, ritual, and religion that causes them to appear deeply flawed from the perspective of the modern scientific worldview. For Wittgenstein, Frazer's approach makes religion precisely what it is not, a theory. As Wittgenstein sees it, theories rest upon opinions and are thus susceptible to error. Religions, he claims, are able to avoid such errors in that “No opinion serves as the foundation for a religious symbol.”Footnote ¹⁹ Frazer's rationalistic approach to religion misconstrues primitive and ancient religion and depicts its practitioners as holding “a completely false (even insane) idea of the course of nature.” Wittgenstein avoids this conclusion by disentangling religion and the intellect. As Wittgenstein says: “It was not a trivial reason, for really there can have been no reason, that prompted certain races of mankind to venerate the oak tree, but only the fact that they and the oak were united in a community of life, and thus that they arose together not by choice, but rather like the flea and the dog. (If fleas developed a rite, it would be based on the dog.)”Footnote ²⁰

While Wittgenstein may not have a theory of religion, his effort to minimize the intellectual component within the religious life while simultaneously elevating its social and practical elements serves as a unifying theme throughout his subsequent writings. It is not that Wittgenstein seeks to eliminate belief from religion—beliefs continue to guide the lives of religious practitioners—but by rejecting the theoretical function of religious belief Wittgenstein makes a significant modification to the role of the intellect in the religious life. In doing so, Wittgenstein sets forth a notion of religious belief that resonates deeply with contemporary Jewish thinkers.

In 1938 Wittgenstein gave a course on belief that included discussion of religious belief, the content of which his students preserved in their lecture notes. Through a variety of strategies, Wittgenstein seeks to show that religious belief is not like ordinary belief. One example he offers deals with possible responses to the assertion that “there is a German aeroplane overhead.”Footnote ²¹ In this case, one could legitimately reply “possibly,” a response that seems out of place in the religious context where belief takes a more comprehensive and demanding form. For Wittgenstein, to reply “possibly” to someone's belief in the Last Judgment indicates that the speakers are talking past each other.Footnote ²² As he sees it, the religious believer is in possession of an “unshakeable belief” that functions like a picture that guides her entire life.

While it is true that in his discussion of Frazer, as in these lectures, Wittgenstein seeks to defend religious belief, his method does not treat religious belief as a set of propositions secured by reason. Regarding the religious believer, Wittgenstein says: “… 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 in all his life. This is a very much stronger fact—foregoing pleasures, always appealing to this picture. This in one sense must be called the firmest of all beliefs, because the man risks things on account of it which he would not do on things which are by far better established for him.”Footnote ²³ The gap between religion and reason extends in two directions; not only does the “unshakeable belief” not produce rational arguments, it is also not supported by them.Footnote ²⁴ With respect to religion, Wittgenstein says, “reasons look different from normal reasons. They are, in a way, quite inconclusive.” Adopting a religious way of life requires an inner transformation that does not stem from the rational pursuit of knowledge. Wittgenstein continues “The point is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business. Anything that I normally call evidence wouldn't in the slightest influence me.”Footnote ²⁵ Religion and reason are so independent for Wittgenstein that he considers the effort to harmonize religion with philosophy and science a fundamental “blunder” that renders religion “ludicrous.”Footnote ²⁶

The practical implications of Wittgenstein's views on religious belief are most apparent in Culture and Value. There, in a discussion of religion, he says: “Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to describe what we are to do, not justify it. Because they could provide a justification only if they held good in other respects as well.”Footnote ²⁷ In this statement it seems that the unique features of religious reason restrict religion to telling us how to live with no recourse to rational justification. To the extent that belief functions differently within the religious context, Wittgenstein would not think that he has taken anything away from religion. It is startling how far Wittgenstein pushes his cognitively austere notion of religious belief. For instance, he says the following about Christianity: “I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life).”Footnote ²⁸ While there is much to like about Wittgenstein's emphasis on the transformative nature of the religious life, he advances this position by sharply delimiting the role of the intellect. In a telling comment collected in Culture and Value, Wittgenstein states: “But if I am to be REALLY saved,—what I need is certainty—not wisdom, dreams or speculation—and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind.”Footnote ²⁹ Religion is simply not a cognitive exercise for Wittgenstein; it does not impart knowledge about ultimate reality or anything else. Wittgenstein captures this fact in a powerful image. He says that “an honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker”; that is, like one who appears to float in the air relying on the least amount of support possible.Footnote ³⁰

At first blush it seems incongruous for Wittgenstein to speak of “unshakeable” religious beliefs while at the same time minimizing the role of the intellect in the religious life. The apparent contradiction disappears when one recognizes that it is not coercive supporting arguments that make a belief “unshakeable” according to Wittgenstein; rather, what secures our central beliefs is the fact that they arise as part of a system of belief. This idea comes to fullest expression in Wittgenstein's final writings, titled On Certainty. There he says: “When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions.”Footnote ³¹ Wittgenstein's point is crucially important for the study of religion and much else. Our beliefs are not a random assemblage of unconnected ideas, each contingent upon the evidence and arguments that we can marshal out in its favor. On the contrary, our beliefs are part of a vast web of interrelated beliefs. As he says, “the system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.”Footnote ³² The system not only supplies the necessary context for our beliefs to be meaningful and operative—it also provides cognitive support. In Wittgenstein's words: “It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and premises give one another mutual support.”Footnote ³³ Consequently, our central beliefs become “hinge” propositions around which all our other beliefs revolve.Footnote ³⁴ According to Wittgenstein, these core beliefs are beyond scrutiny. As he says, “If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.”Footnote ³⁵ Jewish thinkers have found it beneficial that on this account belief is secondary to both trust and action. Belief always begins with trust in something that has no independent rational support.Footnote ³⁶ In koan-like fashion, Wittgenstein says: “Doubting and non-doubting behavior. There is the first only if there is the second.”Footnote ³⁷ We acquire the underlying belief system that makes doubting possible through a complex social process that includes “observation and instruction.”Footnote ³⁸ On Wittgenstein's social and systematic account of belief, the religious practitioner is neither culpable for her beliefs nor is it incumbent upon her to provide arguments in support of them.Footnote ³⁹ This approach to belief relieves the religious thinker from the responsibility of defending the arguments for God's existence that have come under attack in modern and postmodern philosophy. In addition, Wittgenstein's antitheoretical account of religious belief would appear to immunize religious belief from criticisms that undermine its epistemic status.

Wittgenstein and the Jewish Wittgensteinians

Having sketched Wittgenstein's views on religious belief, I can now consider how the Jewish Wittgensteinians appropriate these ideas and deploy them in a Jewish context. I should note that many whom I am including under this banner would likely reject the designation, resisting both components of the phrase. Some would argue that their principal goal is to advance our understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy and that their own Jewish identity is incidental. Others would likely claim that while they are engaged in Jewish philosophy or theology, Wittgenstein's philosophy only represents one element of their work. Perhaps a few scholars would wear the badge proudly. There is nothing at stake in any of this. With the phrase “Jewish Wittgensteinians” all that I mean to indicate is that there is a group of scholars who in one way or another utilize Wittgenstein's thought in order to better understand Jewish belief and practice. This is a diverse group of thinkers who possess a wide range of philosophical and religious commitments. In identifying these thinkers as “Jewish Wittgensteinians,” it is not my intention to conflate their positions beyond their common appeal to Wittgenstein.

One such thinker is Yuval Lurie, whose book Wittgenstein on the Human Spirit makes him an outlier in several respects. Unlike the majority of Jewish Wittgensteinians, who utilize Wittgenstein's thought for the purposes of constructive Jewish philosophy or theology, Lurie's work makes a more general contribution to the study of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Nonetheless, Lurie belongs among the Jewish Wittgensteinians not only for his masterful treatment of Wittgenstein's views on Jewishness, which takes up a third of the book, but also because his subsequent discussion frequently addresses Jewish themes. The final section of the book is an extensive analysis of Wittgenstein's views on religion, particularly as they bear on his criticism of Frazer. Lurie describes Wittgenstein's approach to religion as being “inherently expressive and symbolic.” Understood on these terms, religion gives expression to human sentiments and commitments but does not make theoretical claims about the nature of reality.Footnote ⁴⁰ As an expressive and symbolic activity, religion is “akin to such ritualistic practices as shaking hands, dressing-up for a holiday dinner, or standing at attention during memorial services, which are symbolic social cultural expressions of friendliness, celebration and reverence.”Footnote ⁴¹ This is not meant to diminish the significance of religion. As Lurie goes on to say, “… in Wittgenstein's insight, Myth, Magic, and Religion are neither cultural practices manifesting an intellectual disposition for reasoning, nor cultural practices manifesting an expressive spiritual disposition that was exclusive to the ancients. When we buy into Frazer's explanation of the conceptual nature of Myth, Magic, and Religion as faulty, primitive, scientific-like ways of reasoning, our understanding of the expressive spiritual nature, needs, and inclinations of human beings falters. The failure blinds us to an important aspect of human spiritual nature and cultural life, underlying both the lives of the ancients and our own.”Footnote ⁴² Like my presentation of Wittgenstein's account of religious belief, Lurie argues that Wittgenstein defends religious life and practice by eliminating the theoretical element of religious belief.

The implications of Lurie's Wittgenstein-inspired views for Judaism become apparent when he turns to the subject of religious language. A central tenet of Wittgenstein's philosophy is that the meaning of our language is closely connected to its use.Footnote ⁴³ Following this injunction to attend to the use of language, Lurie offers an analysis of religious language used as prayer:

While Lurie is surely correct that practitioners use religious language differently in prayer and in theological debate, in itself that says nothing about whether prayer is propositional. At the conclusion of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein suggests that we make exceedingly fine distinctions between the uses of our language, and he takes two forms of religious language as an example, citing the differences between a funeral oration and a graveside prayer.Footnote ⁴⁵ The idea that prayer, taken as a whole, could have a single use violates Wittgenstein's most basic views about language. As I will discuss further on, Wittgenstein is adamant about the multiplicity of our language-games, which he believes constantly grow and change.Footnote ⁴⁶ What compels us to think that just because all the members of a congregation read from the same book of prayers they are using those prayers in a single manner? As a Jewish adage has it, “Schwartz goes to synagogue to talk to God and Friedmann goes to synagogue to talk to Schwartz.” Alongside the intentions of the practitioner (a mentalistic notion that does not fit well into Wittgenstein's philosophy), it is also necessary to consider the nature of the Jewish prayer book, known as the siddur. The siddur contains numerous types of prayer, including praise, blessing, supplication, thanksgiving, confession, and sanctification, to name just a few. It is doubtful that the propositional status of these diverse liturgical forms will yield to a single homogenous analysis. At the heart of the issue is the relationship between prayer and truth claims. Certainly some people (I would think the majority) use prayer to articulate their beliefs about God and the divine-human relationship. Nothing in Lurie's discussion legitimates the counter-intuitive argument that religious practitioners engage in prayer as a means of expressing a “spiritual attitude” that is independent of any truth claims about God and the world.Footnote ⁴⁷

In contrast to the philosophers and theologians doing constructive Jewish thought who borrow from Wittgenstein in order to advance their own arguments, Lurie's work as a contribution to the study of Wittgenstein assumes a more critical perspective. In the final pages of his book, Lurie renounces Wittgenstein's bifurcation of theoretical and expressive modes of communication. He rightly argues that many domains of human interest contain both forms of discourse, including religion. Particularly helpful is Lurie's effort to contextualize Wittgenstein's views.

Given the attacks on metaphysics and theology over the last two centuries, one can appreciate the inclination to preserve religious life and practice by isolating it from theoretical knowledge. Wittgenstein makes a suggestive remark in Culture and Value that could well apply to these issues: “At present we are combatting a trend. But this trend will die out, superseded by others, and then the way we are arguing against it will no longer be understood; people will not see why all this needed saying.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Wittgenstein was, of course, right that intellectual trends would shift, but what perhaps he did not foresee is that the climate of a scientistic culture combined with philosophical critiques of metaphysics and theology would not only persist but intensify.

These insights can help make sense of Wittgenstein's distinguished place in contemporary Jewish thought. Under political pressure to defend Judaism as a rational religion suitable for the modern world, Jewish thinkers from Mendelssohn forward have been eager to minimize the role of theology in Judaism. From a philosophical perspective, nineteenth-century Jewish scholars and thinkers were proponents of German idealism, while their contemporary counterparts typically draw their philosophical resources from continental philosophy; as a result, Jewish studies has had a long-standing affinity to philosophical critiques of metaphysics and ontotheology. Jewish studies has, so to speak, been primed to embrace an account of religion, such as Wittgenstein's, that places severe limits on belief.Footnote ⁵⁰ Whatever reasons Jewish thinkers might have for restricting the role of theology in Judaism, Lurie argues correctly that “a philosopher who denies that religious faith has any instrumental implications is making a normative assertion … one that expresses the kind of religious faith to which the philosopher aspires, rather than ‘a grammatical remark’ about the concept of religion in general.”Footnote ⁵¹ By affirming that religious language can be both instrumental and expressive, Lurie stands at a critical distance from Wittgenstein, which is uncommon among the other Jewish Wittgensteinians.Footnote ⁵²

The recent work of Hilary Putnam and Howard Wettstein represents the opposite pole, in which they applaud Wittgenstein and embrace his ideas precisely because of the cognitive limits that he places on religious belief. Wettstein's essays, collected in The Significance of Religious Experience, offer a Wittgensteinian reading of classical Judaism from the Hebrew Bible to medieval philosophy.Footnote ⁵³ Putnam's work, particularly Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life, puts Wittgenstein in conversation with modern Jewish thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas.Footnote ⁵⁴

Wettstein, in the introduction to his book, is explicit about his debt to Wittgenstein, where he writes “I am trying to think through religious commitment in a way that reflects what I have learned from him.”Footnote ⁵⁵ From the presentation of Judaism that follows, it is easy to see why he is drawn to Wittgenstein's account of religion. Echoing the sentiment expressed by the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Wettstein says “I repeatedly emphasize that Tanach has no native concept of belief and that the ‘theology’ of the ancients consists largely in a literary supplement to religious practice, a supplement meant to edify and instruct.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Wettstein's understanding of Judaism rests on several complementary and widely held views that together serve as the basis for what I have termed “Jewish antitheology”: ancient Judaism does not have a concept of belief; Aggadah (nonlegal discourse) is edifying but not true; and theology is necessarily systematic and dogmatic, neither of which is the case for Jewish belief about God. Along these lines, Wettstein says that “[t]he Bible's characteristic mode of ‘theology’ is storytelling, the stories overlaid with poetic language. Never does one find the sort of conceptually refined doctrinal propositions characteristic of a philosophical approach.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Not only is the Bible devoid of “theological doctrine,” Wettstein also seeks to distance the rabbis from the philosophical theology of the medievals. The rabbis, he argues, were “worried about Greek culture and its philosophy” and as a means of avoiding its influence they forswore systematizing their beliefs.Footnote ⁵⁸ Clearly, much hangs on Wettstein's conception of doctrine, which he defines as “the sort of relatively clear, non-imagistic propositional articulation of theological truths (or candidates for theological truth), the sort of thing we do not find in the Bible.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Even though the Bible and rabbinic thought do not contain doctrines, Wettstein admits in a footnote that the rabbis did possess beliefs (presumably he thinks the authors of the Bible did as well). As he sees it, what is distinctive about the rabbis’ approach to their religious beliefs is that they “never saw those beliefs as standing in need of the sort of conceptual clarification characteristic of philosophy.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Those familiar with the secondary literature on rabbinic theology will struggle to identify what is uniquely Wittgensteinan about Wettstein's presentation. Scholars of rabbinics from Solomon Schechter to David Weiss Halivni have argued along similar lines that rabbinic theology lacks conceptual rigor or that aggadic thinking is homiletic.Footnote ⁶¹ Yet, as Wettstein insists, his approach to Jewish theology is deeply informed by Wittgenstein. This is perhaps most evident in his discussion of the different types of understanding associated with theory and practice.

For Wittgenstein, it is always socially shared and socially learned practices that are at the basis of our language-games and forms of life.Footnote ⁶³ Wettstein also privileges the practical in his account of Jewish theology. “Religious language,” he says, “is born, historically, not in theological theory, but in poetry, narrative, and the like.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Like Wittgenstein's pictures that guide religious practitioners, Wettstein argues that the Bible and rabbinic literature utilize imagery to convey their religious commitments. Not only is this imagery rooted in life and practice, it is further set off from theoretical reflection by being nonpropositional and irreducible to belief.Footnote ⁶⁵ From this perspective, “the medieval tendency to make belief focal” becomes for Wettstein “an example of a kind of philosophic imperialism.”Footnote ⁶⁶

Wettstein's essays tend to conceal the philosophical arguments that support his views. For instance, when he claims that religious belief is nonpropositional, he only gestures toward his extensive critique of propositional language in The Magic Prism.Footnote ⁶⁷ His positions, thus, call for a more careful assessment than I can offer here. For present purposes, it will be enough to ask whether he gives an adequate account of biblical and rabbinic theology and to raise questions about his reading of Wittgenstein. Wettstein's claim that biblical and rabbinic theology are not doctrinal (in his use of the term) is, basically, unassailable. It is the conclusions that he draws from that fact that are problematic. Wettstein writes that “Jewish religious life proceeds in the absence of theoretically adequate theological ideas.”Footnote ⁶⁸ If what Wettstein means by “theoretically adequate” is a single and coherent theology, few scholars would object to his claim.Footnote ⁶⁹ However, it is only when one equates theology with doctrine that theology vanishes from the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature. Wettstein fashions biblical and rabbinic Judaism into the poetic and nonpropositional model that he favors by holding the tradition to a standard that it does not share. It is true enough that the Bible and rabbinic literature do not exhibit systematic and dogmatic thinking, but they are not, on account of that fact, any less theological. One could argue just the opposite: that what they give priority to is the production of creative and diverse theological orientations and not the apodictic doctrinal formulations that Wettstein thinks are essential to theology.Footnote ⁷⁰

Wettstein's account of Jewish theology radically circumscribes the role of belief in biblical and rabbinic Judaism. Whatever beliefs Jews held at these stages of the tradition were poetic images arising out of life and not the philosophically articulated views of the medievals. According to Wettstein, it is only with the transition to the rational approach of the medieval philosophers that “God's properties and His perfections (omniscience, omnipotence, ethical perfection, and so forth) along with doctrinal propositions take center stage.”Footnote ⁷¹ On his reading, the Bible shows little interest in “creating or protecting the image of a perfect being.”Footnote ⁷² He even wonders whether it is not the case that God in biblical and rabbinic Judaism “simply lacks some or all of the relevant perfections.”Footnote ⁷³ The Bible and rabbinic literature preserve a wide range of theological perspectives and it is certainly true that one can find challenges to God's knowledge, power, and justice. It is also the case that these strata of the tradition posit relationality as a divine attribute, a fact that disrupts the classical model of divine perfection constructed, as it is, on God's aseity. Nonetheless, we miss something important about biblical and rabbinic theology if we fail to acknowledge its abiding concern to understand and articulate God's perfection. How else can one account for the repeated claims about God's incomparability in Isaiah or the way in which God's knowledge, power, and benevolence permeate the Psalms? Regarding God's justice, David Flusser pointed out forty-five years ago that the concern to defend divine justice was common to both Jews and Christians in the ancient world.Footnote ⁷⁴ As for the rabbis, certainly Arthur Marmorstein's and Ephraim Urbach's rationalistic presentations of rabbinic theology, in which divine perfection plays a central role, cannot be entirely without basis.Footnote ⁷⁵ All of this is without mentioning the siddur, where praise of the divine and divine perfection go hand in hand, so much so that the prayer book repeatedly emphasizes the practitioner's inability to fully and properly praise God.Footnote ⁷⁶ Wettstein's effort to establish an absolute break between the lived and poetic theology of the earlier tradition and the philosophically debased form of medieval Judaism does not hold, because philosophy possesses no monopoly on the notion of divine perfection.Footnote ⁷⁷

One corollary of the antitheological approach to Judaism is that priority is always given to practice. Many of Wittgenstein's readers, Wettstein among them, attribute a similar view to him. A leading proponent of such a reading is Pierre Hadot, a thinker who has exercised considerable influence on scholars of Judaism, myself included. In Hadot's analysis of ancient philosophy, spiritual exercises always take precedence over philosophical discourse.Footnote ⁷⁸ When Wettstein seeks to impose a similar hierarchy of values on Judaism in the name of Wittgenstein, I am inclined to think he at least has Wittgenstein right. While it is not my objective in this essay to resolve interpretive problems internal to Wittgenstein's corpus, it is important to note that there is growing criticism of the expressivist interpretation of Wittgenstein that sees him minimizing the cognitive content of the religious life. Genia Schönbaumsfeld, for instance, reads Wittgenstein alongside Kierkegaard, which achieves the unexpected result of securing religious truth claims. In the course of her argument, she makes a distinction similar to Wettstein's practical and theoretical understanding, but she arrives at a very different position from his:

As an account of religious language, Schönbaumsfeld's position is highly compelling,Footnote ⁸⁰ but it is not evident that it accurately describes Wittgenstein's views. Although Schönbaumsfeld clearly demonstrates Wittgenstein's debt to Kierkegaard, that in itself does not justify filling out Wittgenstein's exceedingly underdeveloped statements on religion with Kierkegaard's prolific writings. Furthermore, her reading of Wittgenstein hangs heavily on a single passage in the lectures on religious belief, in which the student notes attribute to Wittgenstein the claim that by saying that a religious practitioner uses a picture Wittgenstein does not “want to say anything he himself would not say.”Footnote ⁸¹ Whatever the weaknesses of Schönbaumsfeld's argument might be, it is significant that the concept of belief that Wettstein attributes to Wittgenstein is far from uncontested. His Wittgensteinian approach not only fails to capture important elements of Jewish religious language, it arguably also does not reflect Wittgenstein's own views, or what we might have him say on a charitable and constructive reading.

In 1990–91, Hilary Putnam was invited to give the Gifford Lectures, which were published the following year under the title Renewing Philosophy. Putnam devoted two chapters of the book to Wittgenstein's views on religion, but made no substantive reference to Judaism, claiming that it is “not a dimension that I know how to philosophize about except by indirection.”Footnote ⁸² He returned to the topic of Wittgenstein and religion a decade and a half later with a work titled Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein. Despite the impression given by the title, Putnam does not present Wittgenstein as a Jewish philosopher. Instead he identifies points of similarity between Wittgenstein and modern Jewish philosophers, thus giving a Wittgensteinian reading of modern Jewish thought.

Putnam offers a nuanced presentation of Wittgenstein's views on religious belief that avoids the major pitfalls of deploying Wittgenstein's thought in a religious context. For instance, Putnam rejects the expressivist and noncognitive interpretations of Wittgenstein that deprive religion of its truth claims. He also does not read Wittgenstein as an epistemic relativist who believes religion is immune to philosophical critique. Putnam's appeal to Wittgenstein does not, then, require a comprehensive reconfiguration of Jewish belief that minimizes its role in Jewish religious life. However that may be, Putnam's vision of Jewish philosophy as a “guide to life” is not as cognitively rich as one might otherwise expect. Rosenzweig is the real test case, as his theological commitments set him apart from Buber and Levinas, both of whom place severe limits on theological language.

Like Wettstein, Putnam highlights Wittgenstein's antitheoretical approach to religious belief and the privileging of religious practice that accompanies it.Footnote ⁸³ In addressing his motivation for putting Wittgenstein into conversation with modern Jewish thinkers, Putnam says “what I found they had in common was related to what I had seen in Wittgenstein's ‘Lectures on Religious Belief’: namely, the idea that for a religious person theorizing about God is, as it were, beside the point.”Footnote ⁸⁴ For Putnam it is not just that religion derives little benefit from theoretical reflection; rather, theory is corruptive, particularly when it adopts a metaphysical form. He writes: “Like Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig viewed metaphysics as an exaggerated form of a temptation, indeed, a ‘disease,’ to which we are all subject.”Footnote ⁸⁵

Here, Putnam has in mind Rosenzweig's posthumously published book, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, for which Putnam contributed an introduction for the most recent edition.Footnote ⁸⁶ Rosenzweig wrote Understanding the Sick and the Healthy when asked by a publisher for an accessible introduction to his philosophy, but he withdrew the manuscript prior to publication. In the work, Rosenzweig is critical of the philosophical pursuit of essences, an activity that he depicts as leading to paralysis and the abandonment of common sense.Footnote ⁸⁷ It is important to point out that Rosenzweig does not direct his critique specifically at metaphysics, a term that occurs only twice in the work. That Putnam summarizes Rosenzweig's position in antimetaphysical terms undoubtedly stems from Putnam's own distaste for ontotheology.Footnote ⁸⁸ The issue is not a minor one, as it gets to Putnam's claim that Rosenzweig shares Wittgenstein's aversion to theory. Along these lines he writes: “Rosenzweig means to suggest that a proper relation to God no more depends on a theory, on an intellectual conception of what God ‘really is,’ or a grasp of the ‘essence’ of God, than does a proper relation to other human beings or to the world depend on a theory of man or the world.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Part of what Putnam says is surely correct. In both The Star of Redemption and in Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, Rosenzweig depicts God, the world, and the human person as irreducible to each other and as equally transcendent to human reason.Footnote ⁹⁰ Nonetheless, Putnam's conflation of Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein significantly misrepresents Rosenzweig's thought.

The negative impact of Putnam's Wittgensteinian reading of Rosenzweig is most evident in his comments about the structure of The Star of Redemption. Rosenzweig divided the Star into three parts. Part 1 is Rosenzweig's critique of idealism, in which he argues that God, the World, and the Human Person are fundamental “elements” that cannot be absorbed into reason. Parts 2 and 3 describe the relations between the elements in creation, revelation, and redemption and the eschatological process as it is enacted by the Jewish and Christian liturgical communities. The matter at issue deals with Part 1, the importance of which Putnam repeatedly deprecates. Putnam, for instance, claims that “the whole of Part I of the Star is self-undermining”Footnote ⁹¹ and that this is “the less important part of the Star … that brings us to the point of seeing that what we need is ‘experiential philosophy.’”Footnote ⁹²

If scholars fail to appreciate this section of the Star, much of the blame must fall at Rosenzweig's feet. Rosenzweig published an essay titled “The New Thinking” in 1925, in which he sought to help his readers better understand the main themes of the Star.Footnote ⁹³ In the essay he makes the following comment about Part 1: “What is said here is nothing other than a reductio ad absurdum and, at the same time, a rescue of the old philosophy.”Footnote ⁹⁴ On the basis of his antimetaphysical and antitheoretical inclinations, Putnam reads Part 1 as a reductio but ignores Rosenzweig's claim that it is also a corrective that preserves the philosophical tradition. Seeing Part 1 as “self-undermining” allows Putnam to conceal the deeply metaphysical elements of Rosenzweig's thought. Contra Putnam, if metaphysical claims are those that deal with what is universal and necessary, then Part 1—indeed all of the Star—is thoroughly metaphysical on the basis of Rosenzweig's persistent appeal to divine perfection.Footnote ⁹⁵ When Rosenzweig spoke of Part 1 as a reductio ad absurdum of the “old philosophy,” he certainly did not mean to suggest that the metaphysical layer of the Star could be elided. In a letter that Rosenzweig wrote to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy in 1921, he states twice that Part 1 is just as true as Part 2.Footnote ⁹⁶ Furthermore, Rosenzweig indicates that the part of the Star that lays out the “experiential philosophy” that Putnam takes to trump metaphysics—Rosenzweig's account of revelation as a personal encounter with God—is itself a matter of necessity that cannot be reduced to the “biographical.” What Rosenzweig seeks to communicate with these remarks is that the Star is a “systematic” work, a point he loudly insists upon again in “The New Thinking.”Footnote ⁹⁷

While it is true that Rosenzweig places limits on our knowledge of God, constructing his philosophical system requires that he say a good deal about God and the divine-human relationship. It is simply inconceivable that Rosenzweig could individuate the elements—God, World, Human Person—and then document their relationships leading up to and including the Eschaton with no reliance upon theoretical or metaphysical claims. Putnam is surely correct that there are points of similarity between Wittgenstein and Rosenzweig, but the rejection of theoretical reflection cannot be what unites the two thinkers. Putnam admits that his lack of commitment to a supernatural God would make him an “atheist theologian” in Rosenzweig's eyes.Footnote ⁹⁸ This introduces a significant gap between Putnam and Rosenzweig that Putnam can only bridge by stripping Rosenzweig's thought of its theoretical elements.

Unlike Yuval Lurie, who takes a critical stance against Wittgenstein in defense of religious belief, Wettstein and Putnam both see in Wittgenstein's philosophy a resource for curtailing theological reflection. It is hardly surprising that philosophers like Wettstein and Putnam would fashion Judaism according to their own philosophical commitments.Footnote ⁹⁹ In doing so, they are participating in the hermeneutic enterprise that has allowed Jews to preserve their tradition by reinterpreting it within new cultural and intellectual horizons. What some might find more perplexing is that Jewish thinkers working from a more explicitly religious orientation also advance a Wittgensteinian interpretation of Judaism that diminishes the role of belief. Alan Mittleman, for instance, expresses his Wittgensteinian approach to religious belief in the following terms: “The word God does not make a claim about the furniture of the universe. Rather, to speak of God is to underwrite a form of life that allows us to respond with love and courage and hope to the mystery out of which we come and toward which we progress.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Tamar Ross argues similarly when she suggests that theological claims occurring within the context of religious practice are not about God but instead indicate the practitioner's desire “to establish a much stronger claim that will regulate her entire life.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ She goes on to say that “The participants employing religious discourse are engaging a system of symbols that legitimate their most basic patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior.”Footnote ¹⁰²

There should be no illusions about the profound limits that the Jewish Wittgensteinians place on theological language. Avi Sagi is particularly explicit about this fact when he writes: “The key question concerning God, then, is not his objective character, his existence or identity, but the way in which human beings, in their language and in their lives, use the concept of God.”Footnote ¹⁰³ Wittgenstein and his followers are surely correct that the meaning of our religious language is closely connected to how we use it. What most of the Jewish Wittgensteinians refuse to accept is that Jewish theological language does more than inform a way of life; practitioners use religious language in a variety of contexts, including study, prayer, and blessings, as a way of articulating and activating their understanding of God and the divine-human relationship. As Yuval Lurie rightly suggests, to deny this is to impose a conception of religion on Judaism that reflects contemporary philosophical and theological prejudices.

It is evident upon reflection why Christian philosophers and theologians have largely ignored Wittgenstein's philosophy. Insofar as religion falls into error only when it sets forth a theory, theology is on the defensive with Wittgenstein from the start.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ His ideal religious practitioner relies on the least amount of support possible and thus has little need for the theologian or philosopher of religion.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ According to Wittgenstein, doctrine is “useless” and wisdom is “passionless” and “cold.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ He speaks of a theology that “gesticulates with words” because its object eludes it. In contrast, he says, it is practice that “gives the words their sense.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ For Wittgenstein, intellect only shapes a culture—as it does in Judaism—once the culture has succumbed to spiritual decline.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ On such terms, theology becomes a religious and intellectual illness. It is difficult to imagine a theology so self-effacing that it could thrive under such oppressive conditions.

Why are Jewish thinkers so enthralled with Wittgenstein's philosophy while their Christian colleagues rightly perceive the challenge to theology in Wittgenstein's philosophy? One likely reason is that Wittgenstein's antitheoretical take on religious belief mirrors the pervasive view that theology is not a central element of the Hebrew Bible or rabbinic Judaism. As I mentioned at the outset, Jewish thinkers have long been inclined to understand ’emunah as trust in God rather than as a marker for propositional beliefs about the divine.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ In the eyes of Jewish Wittgensteinians, Wittgenstein's account of religious language and belief lends support to this view.

Contemporary Judaism can ill afford such a radical narrowing of its theology to the category of trust. Political, sociological, and philosophical factors over the last two hundred years have destabilized Jewish theology. While theology is no panacea for the problems facing contemporary Judaism, continued reflection on God and the divine-human relationship are surely crucial to Judaism's efforts to find its way forward. Jewish thinkers have labored for millennia to keep the tradition—including its theology—meaningful within new cultural horizons. Contemporary Jewish thinkers abandon that responsibility at the peril of the tradition.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Nevertheless, Jewish thinkers continue to advance antitheological readings of Judaism and in this endeavor they have a partner in Wittgenstein, who consistently seeks to separate religious discourse from any theoretical basis.

At the same time that Wittgenstein minimizes the theoretical element in religious discourse, he also elevates the practical component of the religious life. In an oft-quoted passage from Culture and Value, Wittgenstein says, “It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it's belief, it's really a way of living, or a way of assessing life.”Footnote ¹¹¹ With statements like this it is easy to see why Jewish thinkers have been enticed by Wittgenstein's thought. Surely, giving charity or bowing during prayer are ways of pointing to God as much as theological assertion.Footnote ¹¹² For a theistic tradition that privileges practice, it makes sense to think of the entire way of life as a means of directing attention to God. As I mentioned earlier, Wittgenstein has been rightly lauded by Pierre Hadot for his effort to unify belief and practice. The problem for both Wittgenstein and Hadot is that they collapse belief into practice in a manner that deprives reason of its autonomy and conceals the possibility of the mutual flourishing of reason and life; an ideal that is reflected in the Jewish commitment to a religious life enriched by study.Footnote ¹¹³ Wittgenstein asks us to be attentive to the different ways we use language but then restricts religious language to a monolithic form by negating its theoretical function. It is no wonder that Nathan Rotenstreich identified in Wittgenstein's thought a strong propensity toward “intellectual asceticism.”Footnote ¹¹⁴

One irony regarding Wittgenstein's influence on contemporary Jewish thought is that an account of religious language that reduces belief to trust is a woefully inadequate tool for analyzing the multifarious forms of Jewish religious language. The diverse genres of the Hebrew Bible, the rabbis’ array of discursive strategies, and the competing discourses of philosophy, mysticism, and poetry in the Middle Ages cast doubt that a single account of belief is adequate to all the classical sources. Furthermore, why should we accept that evidence is never brought to bear on religious beliefs and that religious reason is a sui generis form of rationality? A more holistic approach would allow religion full access to all our cognitive faculties and methods of argumentation. Judaism has always utilized multiple ways of thinking about God, including exegetical and hermeneutical arguments, reflection on divine perfection, experiential claims and more.Footnote ¹¹⁵ On what grounds should contemporary Jews abandon the tradition's manifold approach to theology?Footnote ¹¹⁶ Some readings of Wittgenstein suggest that God's transcendence and the failure of ostensive reference compel the abandonment of theological truth claims.Footnote ¹¹⁷ On the contrary, at every stage of the Jewish tradition there has been a profound concern with the limits of theological language that arises from an awareness of God's transcendence. We misrepresent the tradition and flatter ourselves if we think we must refashion Jewish theology on the basis of our newly acquired epistemic scruples.

Judaism and Its Language-Games

In addition to Wittgenstein's cognitively constricted notion of belief, Jewish thinkers have also rallied around a second feature of his philosophy that resonates deeply with Judaism, his concept of the “language-game.” Wittgenstein defines the term “language-game” in paragraph 7 of Philosophical Investigations, but in doing so he introduces ambiguity that has remained a part of the term's reception history. Wittgenstein initially indicates that he will use the term to describe basic verbal interactions such as ostensive instruction. He then says that he will also refer to “primitive language as a language-game,” and he concludes by saying that he will “call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, a ‘language-game.’”Footnote ¹¹⁸ Given the expansive scope that Wittgenstein sets for the term, how to apply the concept within a Jewish context becomes a serious question.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Is there a single Jewish language-game or does each unique form of Judaism possess its own language-game? Do Halakhah and Aggadah constitute one language-game or two? For our purposes we can simply accept Wittgenstein's insistence on the multiplicity of language-games and set aside the difficult question of how the concept maps onto Judaism.

More important than the individuation of language-games for Wittgenstein is that they arise from specific “forms of life.” As Jewish thinkers are quick to point out, the overlap between language-games and forms of life has significant consequences for how we understand religious belief. For instance, justification and certainty look different across language-games.Footnote ¹²⁰ These views are of a piece with Wittgenstein's claims that evidence plays no part in religious belief and that reason has a distinct function in the religious life. As mentioned above, Wittgenstein contends that unshakeable beliefs, such as core religious beliefs, are held in place by the entire form of life that surrounds it.Footnote ¹²¹ For Wittgenstein, language-games are neither reasonable nor unreasonable; they are, as he says, “there—like our life.”Footnote ¹²²

Much in Wittgenstein's concept of the “language-game” speaks to scholars of Judaism. Aggadah in particular, with its highly developed forms of scriptural interpretation, seems aptly described as a language-game possessing its own linguistic and logical rules and criteria for knowledge.Footnote ¹²³ Eugene Borowitz has recently devoted a book-length study to conceiving of rabbinic theology as a language-game.Footnote ¹²⁴ Prior to this, Alexander Altmann undertook an analysis of the differences between the God of the philosophers and the God of religion, and argued that the concept of the language-game was a useful methodological tool for understanding both traditional religious discourse and the metaphysical inquiries of medieval philosophers. One advantage Jewish thinkers might see in Wittgenstein's concept of the language-game is that it undercuts the epistemological critique of religion that has been the hallmark of modern and postmodern philosophy. Borowitz speaks to this point in describing the impact of his first exposure to Wittgenstein's philosophy as a graduate student:

In line with the practical orientation of his thought, Wittgenstein says that propositions do not secure our language-games; rather, “it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.”Footnote ¹²⁶ Borowitz translates this view into a Jewish idiom and says that “rabbinic ‘theology’ is, as it were, less concerned with ‘theos’ than with the rabbinic ‘logos’ of the Written and, particularly, the Oral Torah, the beliefs that undergird and inform it, the life it enjoins as ideal and reality, and the scholarly community that transmits this to the people God has chosen to live by the Torah.”Footnote ¹²⁷ While one might think that the object of Jewish theology is God and the divine-human relationship, Borowitz advances a Wittgenstein-inspired view that Jewish theology serves the practical ends of supporting the Torah and the way of life it promotes.Footnote ¹²⁸

One last feature of language-games that helps to explain the concept's appeal to Jewish thinkers is the relationship between language-games and culture. Wittgenstein says in his “Lectures on Aesthetics” that “what belongs to a language-game is a whole culture.”Footnote ¹²⁹ Given the lack of a doctrinal system in Judaism, it makes sense to think of its religious language as grounded in the larger culture in a way that is both organic and amorphous.

Toward a More Theological Appropriation of Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's philosophy has exerted a seductive force on Jewish thinkers and the attraction is not without substance. A Wittgensteinian account of Jewish theology secures Jewish religious belief while minimizing the need for evidence and supporting argumentation, privileges action over belief in a way that many find salutary, immunizes Jewish theology from epistemic criticism, and roots theology in Jewish forms of life and culture. If one is of the mindset that theology has played a negligible role in Judaism or that the status of theology is seriously compromised by modern and postmodern philosophy, the Wittgensteinian approach is likely to be extremely compelling. For those committed to a more robust account of Jewish theology, they will need to be selective in how they appropriate Wittgenstein's thought. As the latter position is the stronger one in my view, I will offer some arguments why I think that to be the case.

Although Jewish thought about God has rarely taken a systematic or dogmatic form, I don't think we should join Wittgenstein in dissociating religious belief from evidence and argumentation.Footnote ¹³⁰ As I read classical Jewish literature, Jewish thinkers have been deeply concerned to understand and declare God's perfection. It is imperative to see that offering divine praise requires a prior cognitive act—one that is inherently theoretical—that identifies some aspect of God's greatness.Footnote ¹³¹ This doxological element that links divine perfection and divine praise permeates Jewish religious life. Reflection on divine perfection in Judaism also comes about through the hermeneutic interpretation of earlier layers of the tradition; what is fitting to say about God in one cultural context can cause severe cognitive dissonance when the intellectual and cultural horizon shifts. Such hermeneutic theology can be found in every strata of the Jewish tradition. These doxological and hermeneutic theologies assume an ineluctably propositional form through the assertion that God possesses some particular property. However, just because a given passage of rabbinic literature or the siddur has a propositional form does not mean that every practitioner uses the text in an assertory manner. Nonetheless, the onus is on those who seek to deflate the truth claims of classical Jewish texts to give an alternative account of how practitioners use theological language.

In my view, efforts to reconceive how Jews use theological language will fall short as long as these accounts place a blanket prohibition on theoretical claims about God and the divine-human relationship. Good hermeneutical, phenomenological, and logical arguments support this position. On the hermeneutic side, it is our responsibility as interpreters to hear the truth claims of the traditionary text and we must do so regardless of our own theological or philosophical commitments. This is the negotiation of “familiarity and strangeness” that Gadamer argues is inherent to the hermeneutic process.Footnote ¹³² From an alternative perspective, the dynamic divine-human relationship that is central to the Hebrew Bible and much subsequent Jewish theology requires, for phenomenological and logical reasons, that the practitioner have some knowledge about God. How is it possible to orient oneself toward that which one knows nothing about? Apophatic discourse has an important place in Jewish theology, but it rests upon ancillary kataphatic discourse that successfully puts the practitioner in relationship with God.

Despite these reasons for rejecting the antitheoretical view of Wittgenstein and his proponents, Jewish theology still has much to gain from Wittgenstein's philosophy. For instance, the important differences between the doxological and hermeneutic theologies that surface throughout classical Jewish literature are greatly enhanced when one acts on Wittgenstein's suggestion to consider how language is used.Footnote ¹³³ Such an analysis of Jewish theological language will lead us to renounce Wittgenstein's cognitively impoverished account of religious belief, while at the same time affirming that theological reflection in Judaism is inextricable from practice, forms of life, and culture. A reassessment of the relationship between practice and reflection in Judaism is already underway with new accounts of the interdependence of Halakhah and Aggadah, including the Wittgenstein-inspired work of Eugene Borowitz.Footnote ¹³⁴

As for the possibility of insulating Jewish theology from philosophical criticism, we should not take this to be the unreserved good that it appears to be on first blush. Inner-biblical exegesis shows that the Jewish tradition has never hesitated to shine a critical eye on itself and to refigure its most fundamental beliefs about God and the divine-human relationship. At every subsequent stage of the tradition, new theological and philosophical intuitions have brought about significant innovations in Jewish belief. Sheltering Jewish theology from philosophical criticism that attacks its epistemic status will not secure Jewish theology; it will render it otiose.Footnote ¹³⁵ Furthermore, it seems fundamental to the divine-human relationship that our knowledge of God is always partial and imperfect and thus in need of constant refinement. If Jewish theology is to stay vibrant and meaningful within new cultural contexts, it will have to be subject to all thoughtful criticism. Consequently, Jewish philosophy cannot go along with Wittgenstein and adopt the exclusively descriptive philosophical method that he recommends.Footnote ¹³⁶ Scholars of Wittgenstein debate whether he was an epistemic relativist with respect to language-games. Given the previous comments, we should join those who renounce epistemic relativism so that our beliefs about God can be tested and strengthened by the whole store of human knowledge and experience.Footnote ¹³⁷

Wittgenstein's most valuable contributions to Jewish theology occur at the structural level of the language-game. One of Wittgenstein's most important insights is that our language-games change over time, with the consequence that what appears to us as reasonable also changes.Footnote ¹³⁸ William Alston speaks of these changes in our language-games as changes in our belief-forming practices, and Eugene Borowitz uses the metaphor of a network to think about how our theological language evolves.Footnote ¹³⁹ Such dynamic approaches to theological language can help us identify and respond to the cognitive shifts that have shaped the tradition and that continue to transform Jewish religious life. A second feature of Wittgenstein's language-games that can inform our understanding of Jewish theology is his insistence that language-games possess internal mechanisms for the evaluation of beliefs. This idea can help dispel the views that aggadic thinking is completely unfettered and that Jewish theology is an edifying discourse that does not aim at truth.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Finally, language-games function within a system in which they provide mutual support. As I have discussed elsewhere, we would do well to consider Jewish theology as a constellation of theological language-games in which each form of theological reflection makes a unique contribution to our understanding of God and the divine-human relationship.Footnote ¹⁴¹

A frequently cited Wittgensteinian imperative is “Don't think but look!”Footnote ¹⁴² When we follow Wittgenstein's advice and look at the multiple forms and functions of Jewish theological language, we will not be satisfied with Wittgensteinian interpretations of religious language as expressive, indifferent to evidence and argument, as a self-enclosed form of life, or as thoroughly apophatic. In rejecting these aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, Jewish thinkers would join company with the vast majority of Christian philosophers and theologians. However that might be, there is still reason to think that Wittgenstein's philosophy provides crucial resources for the study of Jewish theology. If Wittgenstein can help us to understand the structure and function of Jewish theological language by encouraging attention to the forms and uses of theological expression, this is no small matter.

In paragraph 57 of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein describes the intellectual and linguistic consequences if we happened to lose the connection between a particular color and its name. The name, he says, would lose its meaning and would cease to function as an element within our language-game. The struggle over the last two hundred years to determine what—if anything—Jewish theology is has created a similar situation in which Judaism no longer sees theology as a central feature of its religious life. If scholars continue to put forward a view of Jewish theology that denies its theoretical component, they will transform Jewish practitioners into Wittgenstein's tightrope walker, floating in the air with no perceivable support. Should contemporary Jewish thought choose such a trajectory, God and theology will become increasingly absent from Jewish religious life. Like the name of a color that no longer refers to that which exemplifies it, theology will be separated from the source that motivates and sustains its discourse.

As I have sought to show, there are alternative ways of applying Wittgenstein's thought to Jewish theology that can enhance our understanding of Jewish theological language and its place within Jewish religious life. If contemporary Jewish thought opts for this route, it can set aside the tendentious claims about the systematic and dogmatic shortcomings of Jewish theology and begin to discover how theological reflection supports and shapes Jewish life and practice. With these caveats, I would join the growing consensus that Wittgenstein's philosophy can serve as a therapeutic to our understanding of Jewish theology and I would proffer that on such terms it has the potential to revitalize our theological practice.