Metaphysical beliefs as boundary

In opposition to Logical Positivism both Wittgenstein and Collingwood insist on the necessity of metaphysics as a terminus ad quem; metaphysical beliefs, in other words, establish a logical limit to the extent and possibility of rational, scientific thought, as well as a limit to ordinary language and common sense. I show that Collingwood's presuppositional way of thinking about metaphysics helpfully interprets comments Wittgenstein makes regarding metaphysics as a horizon that establishes a limit to reason, science, and common sense. Collingwood points toward metaphysics as terminus when in An Essay on Metaphysics he famously distinguishes relative and absolute presuppositions, a distinction roughly parallel in Wittgenstein's Tractatus to the distinction between ‘propositions’ and what he calls ‘the metaphysical subject’ (T, 5.633, 5.641),Footnote ⁸ the latter of which constitutes, for Wittgenstein, ‘a clear and acknowledged terminus’ that cannot be ‘explained’ (T, 6.372).

Collingwood's treatment of ‘propositions’ or what he often calls ‘relative presuppositions’, in An Essay on Metaphysics, provides exegetical help for interpreting Wittgenstein's treatment of ‘propositions’ in The Tractatus. However, Collingwood places ‘propositions’ (relative presuppositions) explicitly in a context only implicit in Wittgenstein. First, he links ‘propositions’ with ‘presuppositions’:Footnote ⁹ ‘Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question’ (EM, 23). ’Let that which is stated (i.e. that which can be true or false) be called a proposition . . .’ (EM, 25). This is to say that every proposition is in answer to a presupposed question; that which a proposition states is its answer, the statement of which can be determined to be true or false. Second, ‘A presupposition is either relative or absolute.’ A ‘relative presupposition’ is ‘one which stands relative to one question as its presupposition and relative to another question as its answer.’ It is in its role as an answer to a question that a relative presupposition functions as a proposition, a statement that can be determined to be either true or false. If you asked a pathologist about the cause (X) of a certain illness (Y), for example,Footnote ¹⁰ you are presupposing relative to Y that it has a cause and that the pathologist is propounding X as its cause; that is, ‘X is the cause of Y’ is the propositional statement the pathologist gives in answer to your question about the cause of the illness. The pathologist might further add that ‘X is the cause of Y’ verified by a series of experiments conducted by research group Z at such-and-such a time. Indeed, ‘To question a [relative] presupposition’, says Collingwood, ‘is to demand that it should be ‘verified’;’ to verify a presupposition is to ask a question of it, whether it is true or not, the affirmative of which is the ‘presupposition itself, now in the form of a proposition’ (EM, 29–30).

Similarly, Wittgenstein's treatment of ‘propositions’ amounts to something like Collingwood's treatment of relative presuppositions; as a totality, they (propositions, relative presuppositions) constitute a limit to language (thought); they identify the boundary of ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’ and the contours of empirical reality. That boundary is itself composed of beliefs that are metaphysical and are not themselves relative propositions picturing empirical reality. Wittgenstein says of propositions, for example, that with them ‘We picture facts to ourselves’ (T, 2.1); ‘A picture is a model of reality’ (T, 2.12); ‘In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of objects’ (T, 2.131); ‘The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that the things are related to one another in the same way’ (T, 2.15); ‘That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it’ (T, 2.1511); ‘It is laid against reality like a measure’ (T, 2.1512). Accordingly, ‘There must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts, to enable the one to be a picture of the other at all’ (T, 2.161); ‘A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it’ (T, 4.01); ‘A proposition shows how things stand if it is true,’ says Wittgenstein, ‘and it says that they do so stand’ (T, 4.022). ‘A proposition can be true or false’, and it is true or false ‘only in virtue of being a picture of reality’ or not (T 4.06). In short, the proper use of ‘propositions’ in language and thought is to picture or depict reality. In his later writings Wittgenstein came to see rightly that this is only one of a multitude of uses to which language can be put; but is nevertheless still one of its uses.

In this use of language Wittgenstein establishes a principle on the basis of which language as the totality of propositions has ‘sense’. For example: ‘A thought is a proposition with a sense’ (T, 4); ‘The totality of propositions is language’ (T, 4.001). ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’ (T, 5.6). Wittgenstein's point, at least in the Tractatus, is that only what can be ‘said’ or propounded, only language picturing reality or ‘what is the case’, has ‘sense’; all else, all other uses of language (e.g. philosophy, metaphysics, morality, religion) yields ‘nonsense’, but nonsense only if we try to put such beliefs in the form of propositions, as if they picture some object in the world. Although Ayer seems to, neither Wittgenstein nor Collinwood argue that metaphysical/religious beliefs themselves are nonsense. Wittgenstein's point in the Tractatus is, or at least should be, to insist that such beliefs comprising the boundary are nonsense only if they are propounded as they are in conventional metaphysics, as if they are ontological propositions. Instead, in the manner of Collingwood, Wittgenstein seems to treat metaphysical beliefs as epistemological, as presuppositions constituting a terminus ad quem, beliefs that ‘show’ themselves but do not ‘say’ anything about what is the case. Properly, then, the metaphysical subject, the mystical, does not say or picture anything in the world; they only ‘show’ the limit of the world, of language/thought – a boundary that for Collinwood consists of a constellation of absolute presuppositions. What they ‘show’ is the boundary of a ‘limited whole’, a terminus ad quem. ‘To view the world sub specie aeterni’, Wittgenstein insists, ‘is to view it as a whole – a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole – it is this that is mystical’ (T, 6.45); metaphysics ‘shows’ the horizon of language, thought, and science. It is philosophy's task in part to clarify this boundary and its precise location: ‘Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of natural science. It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought’ (T, 4.113–114). Moreover, by identifying this boundary philosophy identifies what Wittgenstein refers to as ‘a metaphysical subject’ (T, 5.633) and what Collingwood refers to as ‘the science of absolute presuppositions’ (EM, 41).

Those familiar with Wittgenstein's argument in the Tractatus will immediately recognize the parallel there to Collingwood's argument in An Essay on Metaphysics, albeit each with his own terminology and style. What Wittgenstein claims about propositions parallels what Collingwood claims about relative presuppositions, namely, that properly in the form of propositions they are answers to presupposed questions. For both, ‘propositions’ picture sensual events and are susceptible to verification, susceptible to criteria by which their truth or falsity can be determined. Furthermore, both insist that propositions or relative presuppositions in their totality reach a terminus ad quem, a horizon of metaphysical beliefs or absolute presuppositions that make possible drawing a distinction between ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’, as Wittgenstein puts it, and between ‘verifiability’ and ‘unverifiability’, as Collingwood puts it. The ‘metaphysical subject’, as Wittgenstein calls it, like Collingwood's absolute presupposition, is the logical limit of ‘propositions’, a limit that makes it possible for propositions to depict (or not) what is the case. Understanding the nature and role of absolute presuppositions in Collingwood's metaphysics, then, helps us ‘see’ this role of the ‘metaphysical subject’ in Wittgenstein.

For Collingwood absolute presuppositions constitute a terminus ad quem of the totality of propositions (relative presuppositions), of what is determined to be the case. He explains that in contrast to a relative presupposition, ‘An absolute presupposition is one which stands, relatively to all questions to which it is related, as a presupposition, never as an answer’; this is to say that it can never be a proposition that is either true or false; it can never assert a statement that is verifiable. An absolute presupposition, like ‘a metaphysical subject’ or ‘the mystical’ in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, ‘is a thing we take for granted’, says Collingwood. Unlike a relative presupposition or proposition, ‘We don't question it. We don't try to verify it. It isn't a thing anybody has discovered, like microbes or the circulation of the blood. It is a thing we just take for granted’ (EM, 31). It ‘shows’ itself, as Wittgenstein might say, but is not and cannot be ‘said’. ‘Absolute presuppositions’, in other words, ‘are not propositions’ (EM, 31), and therefore are not in the world, so to speak; rather, they are the boundary of what is in the world; they establish a terminus that is not susceptible to ‘verification’, not subject to criteria for determining a proposition's truth or falsity, not subject to the usual criteria that establishes a proposition's meaning or ‘sense’, and hence, in the jargon of the Tractatus, cannot be ‘said’. Indeed, Wittgenstein argues similarly in referring to ‘a metaphysical subject’ (T, 5.633), or ‘what is mystical’ (T, 6.44–45, 6.522) or ‘transcendental’ (T, 6.421). Things like ‘God and Fate’ form a ‘clear and acknowledged terminus’ (6.372), a terminus ad quem. These words are telling; they constitute for Wittgenstein not what is in the world and propositional but what is at the boundary of the world and metaphysical. Just as for Collingwood absolute presuppositions indicate the limit of relative presuppositions or propositional language, of thought and reason, of true and false, of verification, for Wittgenstein the limit of language and thought, as the limit of the world, establishes a boundary at which lies the metaphysical subject that is ‘outside the world’, which cannot be ‘said’, but only ‘shown’. Everything that is and has ‘sense’; everything that happens, happens ‘in the world’ and can be pictured; but the ‘sense’ of the world as a whole, as ‘a limited whole’ (T, 6.45), the ‘value of the world’ cannot lie in the world because ‘sense’ and ‘value’ do not happen, cannot be pictured. In other words, ‘sense’ and ‘good’ and ‘God’ do not exist as things in the world exist; they are not pictured as things in the world are pictured; instead, as absolute presuppositions they make possible judgements that picture things in the world.

For Wittgenstein these metaphysical beliefs are ‘transcendental’ in the way Collingwood insists presuppositions are ‘absolute’. They do not propound propositionally and hence do not have sense; accordingly, they are not subject to verification or explanation or justification or valuation, but make such activities possible. This is what Wittgenstein means to say, I think, when he says that the metaphysical, transcendental subject ‘shows’ or ‘manifests’ but does not ‘say’. It ‘shows’ itself, for example, as the logical form of the world in its nature as a limited whole; it shows itself in ethical and aesthetical and mystical patterns that make possible judgments about the worth of the world. All valuations – ethical, aesthetical, religious – are manifestations of absolute, transcendental beliefs that make possible judgements regarding ‘sense’ and ‘value’ (T, 6.41–6.421). As Wittgenstein puts it: ‘Feeling the world as a limited whole’ is what is ‘mystical’. Accordingly, it makes sense that the value or ‘solution to the riddle of life in space and time’ is presupposed and ‘lies outside space and time’ (T, 6.4312), that ‘the riddle does not exist’ (T, 6.4); but as absolute and transcendental, it ‘shows’ metaphysically, a boundary that is logically, aesthetically, morally, and mystically (T, 6.41–6.4312) presupposed; indeed, it ‘shows’ the worth of what does exist and how to value it. All of this – the world as a limited whole, what is mystical, value, sense – all of these judgements constitute the ‘metaphysical subject’ as a terminus that limits the world as a whole. Although Wittgenstein would later discard the narrow, dogmatic notion of ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’, even his Philosophical Investigations nevertheless retains ‘propositional’ meaning along with the notion of a metaphysical subject as horizon of the world and as boundary of language and thought. Of Philosophical Investigations Norman Malcolm says ‘that reasons, justifications, explanations, reach a terminus in the language games and their internally related forms of human life. [Even here] the assumption that everything can be explained filled Wittgenstein with a kind of fury.’Footnote ¹¹ What is presupposed as ‘absolute’ in Collingwood's treatment of metaphysics, is in Wittgenstein a metaphysical subject that shows itself at ‘the limit of the world’ but never as ‘a part of it’ (T, 5.641). In both treatments metaphysical beliefs lie at the boundary of language and thought, at the horizon of the world, in such a way that they ‘cannot be put into words’, as Wittgenstein says, and hence are not propositions to be explained and justified, as both Collingwood and Wittgenstein insist. Both agree that metaphysical beliefs cannot be proposed, justified, verified, explained; instead they ‘show’ or ‘make themselves manifest’ (T, 6.522), as Wittgenstein puts it, and as such are only apprehended or ‘presupposed’ (EM), as Collingwood puts it.

What then is the nature and status of ‘show’ and its relation to ‘sense’? What does Wittgenstein intend? It is difficult to say. But what Wittgenstein does say about ‘nonsense’ and ‘show’ is commensurable, in any case, with what I think he could and should mean, namely, that metaphysical subjects (logic, aesthetics, morality, religion/mystical) ‘show’ the worth of the ‘world as a totality’, which cannot be propositionally ‘said’. For example, the Mona Lisa ‘shows’ beauty in a way that artists and art critics cannot describe or depict propositionally; E = MC2 ‘shows’ a logical structure of the cosmos, which no collection of propositions can otherwise picture; an act of mercy, instead of vengeance, ‘shows’ Goodness that no propositional description can describe or depict; the sacrament of communion ‘shows’ the mystical and sacred poetically, theatrically. Although propositional ‘sense’ cannot be made of these metaphysical subjects, and although they speak ‘nonsense’ if one tries propositionally and ontologically to propound them, they do nevertheless ‘show’ profound meaning and endow language and thought and indeed the world as a totality with worth. Some such interpretation of metaphysical belief is perhaps not what Wittgenstein originally intended; but it is consistent with what he does say and by extension suggests an approach he could and perhaps should have made explicit. At any rate, such ‘showing’ is significant for explicating, as we will see, the character of ‘practical justification’.

Both Wittgenstein and Collingwood identify the law of causality as a prime example of metaphysical belief as terminus ad quem. Consider again Collingwood's example of a pathologist who identifies X as the cause of illness Y, verified by the research of team Z. But what if you ask Z why the team conducted experiments in quest for a cause of Y? The team might answer, according to Collingwood,

‘“Because everything that happens has a cause.” If you are importunate enough to ask, “But how do you know that everything that happens has a cause?” [the researcher] will probably blow up . . ., because you have put your finger on one of his absolute presuppositions’, on a metaphysical subject. But if the researcher is more reflective, he would explain that the belief

It is a terminus ad quem on the basis of which we make judgements regarding the way events situate themselves in relation to each other in the world. Similarly, Wittgenstein argues that ‘The law of causality is not a law but a form of a law. “Law of causality” – -that is a general name.’ So, in physics, for example, there are causal laws, but they are actually ‘laws of the causal form’ (T, 6.32–6.321). What Wittgenstein distinguishes here is the difference between the actual statement of a particular law, like a law of mechanics, and the ‘logical form’ of the law of causality underwriting it. It is this ‘logical form’ that functions for Wittgenstein as metaphysical belief or an absolute presupposition, as something we do not and cannot verify, but something we take for granted. Wittgenstein puts it this way: the idea of the ‘law of causality’ is actually ‘a priori knowledge of the possibility of a logical form’ (T, 6.33). This logical form is like Collingwood's absolute presupposition for doing science, for verifying specific physical laws; it is itself not verifiable as if it were ‘in the world’ but must be taken for granted as a presupposed transcendental ‘metaphysical subject’ at the limit of the world, a subject that does not depict or ‘say’ anything, but only ‘shows itself’ as a limit on the basis of which judgements regarding specific instances of causality are rendered possible. So, all physical laws propounded as propositions of science, ‘including the principle of sufficient reason, the laws of continuity in nature and of least effort in nature, etc. etc. – all these are a priori insights about the forms in which propositions of science can be cast’ (T, 6.34). Moreover, ‘If there were a law of causality, it might be put in the following way: There are laws of nature. But of course that cannot be said: it makes itself manifest’ (T, 6.36), as absolute presupposition.

Another metaphysical subject that interests both Collingwood and Wittgenstein is ‘God’ and belief in God. Consider the absolute presupposition ‘God Exists’, as Collingwood does. It is a prime example of a metaphysical subject that constitutes a terminus ad quem, a horizon of thought and a boundary of language. He argues, and Wittgenstein I think would concur, that ‘God exists’ should not be treated, as for example A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic treats it, as if it is an ontological ‘proposition’ subject to a principle of verification. Indeed, for Collingwood, ‘God exists’ is not an answer to a question; it is not subject to any principle or presupposition more fundamental than itself and on the basis of which its truth or falsity can be proven or disproven, verified or falsified. That ‘“God exists” is not a proposition’ is a claim with which both Collingwood and Wittgenstein would agree. ‘God exists’ does not depict anything existing in the world and so cannot be propositionally propounded, insists Collingwood; rather, ‘it is a[n absolute] presupposition . . . Because it is not a proposition it is neither true nor false. It can neither be proved or disproved’ (EM, 188). Accordingly, ‘the fool’ who ‘hath said in his heart “there is no God” ’ is a fool ‘not because he was blind to the actual existence of un nomme Dieu, but because he did not know that the [absolute] presupposition “God exists” was a presupposition he himself made’ (EM, 189). It is a transcendental belief on the basis of which judgements are made regarding the world as a limited whole; judgements about cosmos (order), holiness, goodness, beauty, truth, origins, and so on. These transcendental beliefs (God exists, causality) are logical forms that make possible our judgements about a world that is the case, that exists. It is only when we add the rubric ‘“We believe . . .” to “God exists”’, says Collingwood, that we have not an absolute presupposition but a historical proposition that is ‘capable of proof’. Only then ‘It is either true or false. If true, it can be proved: if false, it can be disproved.’ ‘The proof must of course be a historical proof, and the evidence on which it is based will be certain ways in which ‘somebody’ thinks’ (EM, 188).

Wittgenstein would agree, I think, with Collingwood's representation of ‘God exists’ as absolute presupposition, and not as proposition. Recall that for Collingwood absolute presuppositions are not answers to questions like relative presuppositions. The fool, not understanding this, wants ‘God exists’ to function as a proposition, as an answer (‘Yes, reason can prove God exists’) to a question (‘Can reason prove that God exists?’). Instead, the fool should treat ‘God exists’ as a metaphysical subject that ‘shows’ the horizon of language and world. Lying outside the visual field of the world, it allows him and the community to which he belongs ‘to see’ and to value the world as a whole, even to have a visual field at all. To prove or disprove ‘God exists’ is to presume spuriously that it is a proposition, as does A. J. Ayer, to be verified or not, like any other proposition. Of course, the metaphysical belief might very well be something else, like ‘God does not exist’ or ‘Matter is all that exists’, but in any case qua metaphysical these are presupposed absolutely and not proved; they are not answers, as Collingwood argues, to questions; they are not propositions within the visual field, as Wittgenstein might say; they cannot be explained or justified or verified, only presupposed as absolute. The scepticism of ‘the fool’ in a sense cannot be addressed, according to Wittgenstein; for regarding that which is mystical ‘Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical’; and it is nonsensical in so far as it ‘tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said’ (T, 6.51). Scepticism wrongly regards ‘God exists’ as a proposition, as if it depicts something existing in the world, as if it is an answer to a question, a question that cannot be asked, insists Wittgenstein, except spuriously; so that scepticism in this sense is itself spurious. These remarks by Wittgenstein parallel what Collingwood says regarding the fool. The fool's scepticism is ‘spurious’ because he treats ‘God exists’ as a proposition to be justified and not as a metaphysical presupposition, and ‘foolish’ because he is unaware that this metaphysical belief is one that in some form or another (‘the world is one and coherent’, ‘the world is a totality’) he must in his scepticism make. Indeed, Wittgenstein elsewhere indicates that the sceptic (i.e. the fool) suffers from an illness: ‘Our illness is this, to want to explain’ (RFM, 333). In this case the illness is the desire to translate metaphysical beliefs that are epistemological into ontological propositions that are susceptible to explanation and justification. This attitude towards ‘explanation’ of religious beliefs as ‘illness’ illuminates Wittgenstein's ‘remark to Drury: “Russell and the parsons between them have done infinite harm, infinite harm”.’ Why?

Wittgenstein and Collingwood both agree: this cannot and should not be done; metaphysical beliefs establish a terminus ad quem, that makes possible propositional thought and language but are themselves not susceptible to propositional justification. In short, both agree that ‘metaphysical beliefs’ establish ‘a clear and acknowledged terminus’ (T, 6.372) of ‘absolute presuppositions’ (EM, Part I), a terminus ad quem. Metaphysical beliefs, like the law of causality and belief in God, are absolute and transcendental; they are presuppositions that establish the possibility and extent of thinking rationally and scientifically and of valuing the world as a whole. For both philosophers, accordingly, such beliefs are not propositions that are true or false; they cannot be ‘said’ or justified, as Wittgenstein puts it; they cannot be ‘verified’, as Collingwood puts it.

Metaphysical beliefs as bedrock

Second, in opposition to irrationality and barbarity in general, and their manifestations in Fascism and Nazism in particular, Wittgenstein and Collingwood jointly insist on metaphysics as a terminus a quo, on the basis of which is established the possibility of moral community and ‘a civilized way of life’.Footnote ¹³ Treating metaphysical beliefs as epistemological presuppositions, as does Collingwood, provides a way of ‘seeing’ some of Wittgenstein's comments on metaphysics as constituting a terminus a quo, or what Wittgenstein refers to as a ‘bedrock’ foundation for a particular way of life. Metaphysical beliefs establish not only a boundary of thought and language, then, but they also establish a bedrock, epistemological foundation on the basis of which envisioning and practicing a particular, civilized way of life is possible. As ‘bedrock’ they display a double function – as source and regulatory channel for practising that way of life, for inspiring and shaping the character of communities, how they think and behave.

Having critiqued psychology's anti-metaphysical tendencies as a ‘propaganda of irrationalism’ (EM, ch. XIII) and positivism's critique as ‘naïve’ and ‘suicidal’ (EM, chs XIV & XVI), Collingwood, in Part Three of An Essay on Metaphysics, shows how metaphysical beliefs function as source and ‘catalytic agents’ of human thought and culture. ‘It is because absolute presuppositions are not “derived from experience”, but are catalytic agents which the mind must bring out of its own resources to the manipulation of what is called “experience” and the conversion of it into science and civilization, that there must be institutions for perpetuating them’ (EM, 197). In the next few chapters he traces how modern science emerged from certain metaphysical beliefs and how ‘The guardianship of the European “scientific frame of mind” is vested in the religious institutions of European civilization’ (EM, 198). He traces its beginning in primitive societies, its evolution through polytheistic and monotheistic religions (Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle), and finally its emergence from bedrock Christian beliefs. I am not so much interested here in Collingwood's historicist claim that the modern ‘scientific frame of mind’ is dependent on certain metaphysical beliefs rooted in the Christian tradition and protected by its institutions. What is of interest is his logical claim, which at the time (in the second quarter of the twentieth century) many philosophers and scientists dismissed, namely, that modern science and civilization itself are rooted in the soil of certain metaphysical beliefs and so regulated by those beliefs that modern civilization would wither and die if, like ancient Rome, it fails to keep alive its foundational beliefs. To understand most fundamentally the nature and character of a society, its endeavours and habits (science, democracy), one is compelled to trace them to a certain aggregate of metaphysical beliefs that act as their source and catalytic agent, shaping and regulating a distinct form of civilized life.

Collingwood's treatment of metaphysics as source of a civilized way of life, I am arguing, can function as an interpretative tool for understanding and extending some of Wittgenstein's fragments about metaphysical beliefs. Especially in his later writings, certain metaphors suggest that metaphysical/religious beliefs establish an originating, presuppositional source and catalytic agency for a particular, civilized way of thought and life. But even in the earlier Tractatus Wittgenstein uses, in this regard, an apt analogy: ‘the case of the eye and the visual field’ (T, 5.633). ‘Where,’ he asks, ‘is the metaphysical subject to be found?’ In a sense it cannot be found, he replies, because ‘really you do not see the eye’, you do not see the metaphysical subject, but only see with it. This visual deficit is not unlike Collingwood's ‘fool’ who, positivist that he is, is blind to the absolute presupposition which allows him to see his ‘visual field’, his version of the world and way of life. As Wittgenstein insists, ‘nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye’ (italics are Wittgenstein's). Although the visual field does not include the eye (metaphysical subject) itself, we must presuppose that there is some originating organ capable of seeing the visual field, else no field would be visible at all. The eye as source and catalytic agent of the activity of seeing makes a visual field possible, even though the eye is not itself part of the visual field that is seen. This ‘eye’ is analogous to Collingwood's aggregate of absolute presuppositions; they are as necessary and inevitable to thinking and living as Wittgenstein's ‘eye’ is necessary to ‘seeing’ a visual field. And yet the eye, says Wittgenstein, cannot be inferred from but only presupposed by that field. Metaphysical beliefs are not ‘at the same time a priori’, he insists, because ‘Whatever we see could be other than it is’ (T, 5.634). Collingwood concurs; presuppositions being absolute does not mean that they could not be replaced by another aggregate that is equally absolute and equally capable of originating a new world version and (un)civilized way of life. Indeed, any set of metaphysical beliefs as terminus a quo presupposes ‘We believe . . .’, which anchors a particular, historical civilized way of life that will necessarily be different when a society presupposes otherwise.

Another image employed by Wittgenstein assumes that metaphysical beliefs are absolute presuppositions establishing a terminus a quo. ‘Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface might be’ (CV, 53e).Footnote ¹⁴ Wittgenstein's emphasis here is on religious beliefs as sturdy and durable, able, like absolute presuppositions, to anchor and secure a way of life even in the midst of turbulence. These ‘unshakeable beliefs [are] . . . 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.’ These ‘unshakeable’ or ’absolute’ beliefs anchor an entire way of civilized life; they ‘will show, not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but rather by regulating for in all his life’. As such, the strength of a metaphysical belief ‘is not comparable with the intensity of pain . . . [It] isn't like a temporary state of mind. “At 5 o'clock he had a very bad headache”’ (LC, 54). Accordingly, we do not, or at least should not, talk about metaphysical or religious beliefs like we ‘talk about hypothesis, or about high probability. Nor about knowing. In a religious discourse we use such expressions as: “I believe that so and so will happen,” and use them differently to the way in which we use them in science’ (LC, 57). In other words, as unshakeable terminus a quo, as ‘the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point’, metaphysical beliefs are transcendental and absolute, originating and regulating a way of thinking and living in the world, a way of seeing and behaving.

Wittgenstein employs several additional images to depict the function of metaphysical beliefs as presuppositional, originating, catalytic agents. Metaphysical/religious beliefs provide, he says, a cumulative ‘picture of the world’ as a whole; the ‘wholeness’ of this picture is however an inherited legacy, not a picture I draw because of ‘satisfying myself of its correctness’. Instead, it originates in a constellation of transcendental presuppositions bequeathed to me: ‘the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false’. Moreover, ‘The propositions describing this world picture might be part of a kind of mythology’ (OC, 94), says Wittgenstein, whose foundational origin regulates a particular way of being and living inspired by that mythology. Elaborating on these remarks Monk quotes Wittgenstein:

and from which arises a way of visualizing the world and living in it.

Yet another image Wittgenstein uses to picture the presuppositional, regulatory nature of metaphysical beliefs is of a river, its bed, its bank, its sand and deposits, and its rush of water. The hard rock of the river bank/bed is analogous to the steadfastness of metaphysical beliefs; the rush of waters is analogous to the flux of propositions describing the details of the world. ‘The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other’ (OC, 97). Consider that ‘the bank of that river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place and now in another gets washed away. Or deposited’ (OC, 99). Wittgenstein seems to suggest that metaphysical beliefs are like the hardened bed and banks that shape the river's channel; they are fixed foundational beliefs without which there would be no river at all. Descriptive propositions are like water flowing between the hardened banks; they are fluid and fluctuating, the empirical power of their movement may very well wear away the softer, sandy parts. So, while the hard rock of the bank is generally steadfast and subject only to slight, largely imperceptible alterations, sometimes the water's flow is of such power as to alter the course of the river's banks, like the powerful scientific discoveries that shift our picture of the world, from Ptolemy to the Copernicus, for example, or from Newton to Einstein.

Wittgenstein's treatment of metaphysical beliefs here parallels Collingwood's view of absolute presuppositions as catalytic agents. Such beliefs originate a kind of mythology that regulates the way we see and live in the world; a mythology that forms a framework for crafting rules by which a people play a civilized version of the game of life. What rules? Rules that determine truth and falsity, sense and nonsense, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, holy and diabolical, sacred and secular, and so on. Metaphysical beliefs, in other words, regulate what counts as civilized and what does not. As Wittgenstein remarks: ‘Whether a thing is a blunder or not – it is a blunder in a particular system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in another’ (LC, 59). Indeed, a society's mythology generates rules, and each of its rules functions as a kind of signpost that people follow ‘only in so far as there exists a regular use of signposts, a custom’ (P, I, 198). ‘The application of the concept of “following a rule” presupposes a custom’ (RFM, 322),Footnote ¹⁶ and ‘custom’ is a public, not private, activity regulated by the form of life in which it is used and which along with all forms of life is anchored ab initio in a constellation of metaphysical beliefs. For Wittgenstein, then, metaphysics functions presuppositionally, logically – both as ‘bedrock’ origin of rule-following and civil life (terminus a quo) and as boundary establishing the horizon of all language and thought (terminus ad quem): ‘If I have exhausted the justification I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do”’ ((P, I, 217). Moreover, ‘What has to be accepted, the given is – so one could say – forms of life’ (P, II, 226).Footnote ¹⁷ Not only, then, do explanations and justifications ultimately come to a delimiting boundary, Wittgenstein insists they come to a metaphysical bedrock in the mythology that originates and regulates them in the first place, in the aggregate of absolute presuppositions presupposed by the community whose language we use and whose civilized life we practice.

The rule-following that bedrock metaphysical beliefs originate and regulate suggests a number of things, two of which are especially important for purposes here. First, as Grayling points out, rule-following is no private or mysterious process at all; for Wittgenstein ‘it shows itself in our practice, it is manifest’.Footnote ¹⁸ Second, ‘rule-following is essentially a social practice’, that is, an activity undertaken by a community; it entails an agreement by members of a ‘community which establishes the rules we follow’.Footnote ¹⁹ The word ‘agreement’, says Wittgenstein, is related to the word ‘rule’, like cousins (P, 224); repeated rule-following generates ‘customs’ that manifest in practice what a community tacitly at least has agreed to. How so? What is the basis for agreement in the first place? Although Wittgenstein does not seem explicitly to answer this question, the answer can, I think, be extrapolated. Rule-following and custom establish patterns that a community subscribes to; these patterns reflect a community's social practice and presuppose certain metaphysical beliefs that make agreement and therefore rule-following and custom possible.

That a particular kind of rule-following is compelling in a society testifies to the power of metaphysical beliefs to originate agreement and regulate obedience. This is the force of Wittgenstein's claim that ‘When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly’ (P, 219). A community does not question these bedrock beliefs, this ground; for they are not propositions to be explained or justified or not as one wishes. Practising them, obeying them, is their own and only justification. In them ‘Giving grounds, . . ., justifying the evidence, comes to an end; – but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.’ This ‘bottom’ of language-games, these metaphysical presuppositions, as Collingwood names them, ground what is true but are not themselves susceptible to being true or false. ‘If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false’ (OC, 204–205). These grounds, these absolute presuppositions make agreement and rule-following possible and justifiable; but the grounds themselves are not justifiable, or are justified only by a community's custom of practising them. One image Wittgenstein employs for the metaphysical subject is an ‘axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not fixed in the sense that anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility’ (OC, 152). What justifies the axis? Nothing, but the collective practices its radiating force irresistibly disperses throughout the life of a community. Put differently, social practices, as a function of presupposed metaphysical beliefs, are the ‘hinges on which [questions and doubts] turn’. They are ‘indeed not doubted . . . If we want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put’ (OC, 341–343).

In what sense, then, are these metaphysical beliefs for Wittgenstein ‘bedrock’ or ‘foundational’ (OC, 401, 411, 413)? He does not mean, as Grayling points out, ‘what philosophers normally mean . . . Typically the conception of “foundational beliefs” is taken to mean beliefs which are fixed and permanent; thus some philosophers claim that there are beliefs which are logically necessary conditions for anything that can count as thought or experience.’ This is not what Wittgenstein means by ‘bedrock’. He means, rather, that bedrock beliefs are ‘only relatively foundational – they are like the bed and banks of a river which determine the course along which the waters flow’ (OC, 96–99).Footnote ²⁰ This presupposed, apparently rock hard, regulatory river bed and bank may over time and with resistance change; and when it does, that change alters the way a people think about and live their lives.

I have tried to show that for all their differences Collingwood's metaphysics of absolute presuppositions is a plausible way of understanding and extending Wittgenstein's notion of beliefs as ‘bedrock’. Although their treatments of metaphysical and religious beliefs differ markedly in language and style, the convergence of their ideas on this matter is really quite remarkable, as if both were addressing common historical conditions and intellectual questions. Against the prevailing cynicism of positivism and the irrational barbarity of Nazism, they commonly insist on metaphysical beliefs as not only inevitable but morally necessary, if societies are to sustain some semblance of civilized life. Logically, metaphysical beliefs establish a boundary of thought and meaning, a terminus ad quem, consisting not of propositions to be explained and justified but of absolute presuppositions that make justification possible. Historically, metaphysical beliefs function as a terminus a quo, bedrock beliefs that originate a visual field and mythology of the world as a whole, which beliefs, as catalytic agents, regulate habits and customs of rule-following that shape the distinctive character and culture of persons and communities.

The above analysis, however, does not exhaust the remarkable convergence of these two very different philosophers. There remains, it seems to me, further common ground that is suggested, but only suggested, by both Collingwood and Wittgenstein. Both intimate that metaphysical beliefs are in fact susceptible to a certain kind of ‘practical justification’.

Practical justification

Finally, in opposition to scientific rationalism and its insistence that all beliefs, including metaphysical ones, submit to the hegemony of ‘explanation’ and ‘justification’, both Wittgenstein and Collingwood exempt metaphysical beliefs. They agree that metaphysical beliefs are not propositional and hence cannot be justified as if they are. In contrast, they both suggest, at least, that metaphysical beliefs are nevertheless susceptible to a certain kind of ‘practical justification’. ‘Practical justification’ is the logical inference of treating metaphysical beliefs as boundary and bedrock foundation. It entails two traits – cumulative case and praxis. ‘Cumulative case’ is a phrase employed by Basil Mitchell to refer to the persuasive power of any comprehensive, metaphysical interpretation of the world, a ‘world version’. As ‘case’ ‘It does not take the form of a strict proof or argument’ or explanation or verification; rather, it ‘makes better sense of all the evidence available than does any alternative on offer’.Footnote ²¹ In other words, presupposing metaphysical/religious beliefs raises the question: ‘How are “world versions” explained or justified, if at all?’ Conventional scholarly opinion usually regards Wittgenstein as a fideist of some sort; that for him metaphysical world versions are susceptible to no justification of any kind at all. I am arguing, on the contrary, that although they are not susceptible to ordinary empirical, rational justification, Wittgenstein at times suggests that they are susceptible to a kind of ‘practical justification’. My premise here is that for Collingwood and Wittgenstein any comprehensive aggregate of metaphysical beliefs, the ‘world as a whole’, establishes not only a terminus, but simultaneously a plausible, practical cumulative case, a way of life that justifies itself by a sustained practice of those beliefs. What makes a metaphysical ‘totality’ a plausible case, then, is not any ordinary empirical, rational explanation/justification, but only the passion to practise the civilized way of life inspired by it. Hence, a case is cumulative in so far as its totality forms a world version that is plausible; and it is plausible in so far as it persuades and empowers a community with passion sufficient to practise and sustain its benevolent, civilized way of life.

Collingwood's work in metaphysics reflects these two characteristics of ‘practical justification’, cumulative case and praxis. He argues, for example, that the modern scientific way of life presupposes a certain aggregate of metaphysical beliefs that has its historical origin in the Christian notion of a Trinity. Believing in ‘Father’ means ‘absolutely presupposing that there is a world of nature which is always and indivisibly one world’. Believing in ‘Son’ or Logos means ‘absolutely presupposing that this one natural world is nevertheless a multiplicity of natural realms’. And believing in Holy Ghost means ‘absolutely presupposing that the world of nature, throughout its entire fabric, is a world not merely of things but of events and movements’ (EM, 225–226), of energy; hence, a modern, scientific frame of mind and way of life. The extent to which these metaphysical ways of ‘believing’ inspire the actual practice of our modern civilized way of life is a historical question and hence susceptible to ordinary, rational justification. The philosophical question, however, is the extent to which those metaphysical beliefs persuade those who claim them to practise the civilized way of life to which they give rise. For words like ‘justification’ and ‘verification’ Collingwood, as does Wittgenstein, substitutes words like ‘saved’ and ‘preserved’; and for words like ‘unjustifiable’ and ‘not verifiable’ he uses ‘disease’, ‘corrupt’, and ‘bankruptcy’. Any aggregate of metaphysical beliefs proves itself, in other words, to the extent that it ‘saves’ and ‘preserves’ a civilization and provides people with a ‘viable’ way of living, or not. Such an aggregate disproves itself to the extent it suffers a disease that is fatal, a disease from which the vitality of a civilization's moral and intellectual life (e.g. the Graeco-Roman world, Nazism, democracy) is so diminished that it is no longer a compelling way for a society to live. ‘A civilization is a way in which people live,’ says Collingwood,

Ancient Roman civilization, argues Collingwood, eventually showed itself finally to be an impractical, if not uncivilized, way of living. Even Modern Enlightened, European civilization, he argues, is unsustainable because its tendency to prefer scientific reason (scientism) to the exclusion of passionate, religious sensibilities cannot survive.Footnote ²²

Any constellation of metaphysical beliefs, Collingwood argues, implies a cumulative totality that properly inspires a way of living. If that way is able to sustain itself in practice as civilized then it justifies itself. This totality is justified to the extent that it saves and preserves a practical, civilized way of life for the people who claim it. Collingwood underscores this point rather oddly if not vividly in his interpretation of Anselm's ontological proof. The ‘fool’ of Anselm's argument and of the Psalmist (14:1) is a fool ‘not because he was blind to the actual existence of un nomme Dieu. But because he did not know that the presupposition “God exists” was a presupposition he himself [and his community] made’ (EM, 189). Anselm does begin his argument with ‘We believe . . .’ in such a way that for Collingwood the belief ‘God exists’ constitutes the rubric of a metaphysical belief that the fool and his community, whether they know it or not, presuppose; it is a belief that is susceptible to two kinds of justification – historical and practical: historical/empirical in so far as the fool is a member of a community who actually claims ‘God exists’ as a belief it presupposes; practical in so far as that metaphysical belief persuades it to live in and sustain the civilized way of life implied by that belief, in so far as it makes a difference in how that community behaves. Any aggregate of metaphysical beliefs (absolute presuppositions), any world version, then, justifies itself ‘cumulatively’ and ‘practically’; justifies itself by ‘the totality of a particular way of thinking and living’ that presupposes it; justifies itself existentially and historically in the civilized way of life to which it gives rise. The persuasive power of a benevolent, civilized way of life to sustain itself as a totality is its own practical justification. The success or failure (e.g. democracy, Nazism, socialism) of a civilization depends on keeping alive its own metaphysical presuppositions; and doing so depends on the extent to which its presuppositions can bear and sustain or not a particular way of life, one that is morally persuasive and sustainable by those who claim it.

In An Autobiography Collingwood indicates that all along in his philosophy he was working not only on a rapprochement between philosophy and history but also between theory and practice (147), both of which rapprochements are ways of representing humans in the world. One of many points he makes seems somewhat trivially true today: that by altering ‘theory’, ‘practice’ is at the same time altered. But in the first quarter of the twentieth century, ‘realists’ attempted to deny this; that is, not only did realists assume that ‘mind and subject’ is independent of ‘fact and object’, but that the activity of mind (theory) is independent of the way one lives in the world (action). Indeed, Collingwood argues that any moral analysis justifies itself practically, existentially; he ‘felt a call to resist the moral corruption propagated by the “realist” dogma that moral philosophy does no more than study in a purely theoretical spirit a subject-matter which it leaves wholly unaffected by that investigation’. He goes so far as to insist that thought justifies itself in so far as it brings social and political change. The moral agent

Although Collingwood's concern here is with the power of moral theory to change social practice, implied also, I think, is the inverse: the retrospective power of practice to justify the moral theory it presupposes. Collingwood's subsequent discussion of Marx bears this out. What was remarkable about Marx, he says, was not that he was ‘convinced by Marx's metaphysics or by his economics’, but that ‘the man was a fighter . . .; and no mere fighter, but a fighting philosopher’ whose philosophy was meant ‘to solve a “practical” problem’ and fulfil its aim, namely, ‘to “make the world better”’, as Marx himself said.Footnote ²⁴ Although Collingwood did not subscribe to Marx's metaphysics, he did affirm Marx's belief that any metaphysics worth its salt justifies itself by making better the life of those who claim it.

Collingwood's development of practical justification as cumulative case and praxis provides a model for exegeting and extending comments by Wittgenstein in support of a notion of practical justification. Whereas Collingwood's treatment of practical justification tends toward the social and historical, Wittgenstein's treatment tends towards the personal and individual; whereas for Collingwood the extent to which a set of metaphysical beliefs persuades a society to cultivate a particular civilized way of life justifies it, for Wittgenstein the extent to which a metaphysical subject persuades an individual to act and change one's life for the better justifies it. Collingwood suggests that by practising a particular, civilized way of life a society justifies the aggregate of metaphysical beliefs it presupposes; Wittgenstein suggests that ‘the metaphysical subject’ not only makes possible ‘seeing’ a world in its totality but also ‘showing’ a way of life that for the individual justifies that totality. Here again I am extending comments and metaphors Wittgenstein makes in ways that although coherent are perhaps not always intended.

Since metaphysical subjects, for Wittgenstein, do not ‘say’ but ‘show’ themselves, then their ‘justification’, if there is any such thing, consists of the extent to which they ‘show’ themselves plausible in a moral way of life lived by those who claim them. In other words, ‘showing’ as a way of life constitutes a ‘practical justification’ for a particular aggregate of metaphysical beliefs. This seems to be what Wittgenstein suggests, at least, in a series of comments and metaphors. For example, those who seek explanation for religious beliefs, such as ‘Where does all this come from?’, are expressing, according to Wittgenstein, ‘a certain craving’, a certain kind of desire and ‘attitude to all explanations’. Such cravings, at least for religious persons, are misplaced. What they should crave and concern themselves with is a different question, namely, ‘showing’; ‘But how is this manifest in [my] life?’ (CV, 85e). As Wittgenstein goes on to say of religious belief, ‘the words you utter or what you think as you utter them are not what matters, so much as the difference they make at various points in your life’. Explaining or clarifying beliefs like ‘God’ or ‘Trinity’ ‘does not make anything clearer (Karl Barth). It gesticulates with words, as one might say, because it wants to say something and does not know how to express it. Practice gives words their sense’ (CV, 85e) and practice, I might add, gives words their meaning and justification. Wittgenstein is distinguishing here between a kind of ‘reasonableness’, to which religious beliefs are not susceptible, and ‘seriousness’, where the former (reasonableness) is mistaken for the latter (seriousness). The attitude that craves metaphysical explanation is really a craving for practical, existential justification, for taking my beliefs seriously, a craving for saying that they make a difference in how I live my life. Putting forth proofs for God's existence, in other words, is an awkward, evasive way of trying to convince myself and others of the importance of God's existence for me; when really the only honest way to do so is by ’showing’ or cultivating certain kinds of habits, ‘by shaping [one's] life in such and such a way’ (CV, 85e). Accordingly, in metaphysical beliefs ‘justifying the evidence, comes to an end; – but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game’ (OC, 204–205). Metaphysical/religious beliefs, in other words, have persuasive power in so far as they ‘show’ themselves, which is to say, lend themselves to a practical, existential justification, by ‘acting’ in certain ways. Accordingly, such beliefs liberate one from the ‘fly bottle’, from the trap of trying to prove religious beliefs so that one might ingenuously ‘catch hold of one’ and ‘follow it like a doctor's prescription’. Rather, religious ‘faith is what Kierkegaard calls a passion’ that justifies itself practically; that is, it must ‘grasp one and turn one around . . . Once turned around, one must stay turned around.’ Indeed, ‘One of the things Christianity says’, insists Wittgenstein, ‘is that all sound doctrines are useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life)’ (CV, 53e).

The certainty or, as Wittgenstein puts it, the ‘firmness’ of a metaphysical/religious belief is a function of ‘practice’ or ‘acting’ or ‘showing’; of the extent to which it makes a dramatic, existential difference in how life is lived. In his ‘Lectures on Religious Belief’ he says that the ‘unshakeable’ character of a belief

There are different ways of establishing the certainty of beliefs. The certainty of scientific beliefs is established on empirical grounds; but the certainty of metaphysical beliefs is not and cannot be on the basis of empirical or ordinary grounds or on what I argue or ‘say’. ‘What you say [or try to explain and justify] won't be taken as the measure for the firmness of a [religious] belief? But, for instance, what risks you would take?’Footnote ²⁶ Rush Rhees's reflections confirm the trajectory of Wittgenstein's remarks here. In a conversation with him Wittgenstein comments:

Practising a compassionate, benevolent way of life, in other words, is the only kind of justification to which a constellation of metaphysical beliefs are susceptible; if a particular ‘world version’ is unable to sustain itself with benevolence (i.e. Fascism, Nazism) then it will die of its own wickedness or change in order to survive.

This notion that I refer to as of ‘practical justification’, Norman Malcolm notes, is in Wittgenstein commensurate with biblical narratives: referring to passages such as Jeremiah 7:3–4, 8. ‘Thus says the . . . God of Israel, “Amend your ways and your doings . . . Do not trust in those deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord. [For] you trust in deceptive words to no avail”.’ Or the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospels; such as: ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”’ (Matthew 7: 21); and ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord,” and not do what I tell you’ (Luke 6:46); and ‘“Truly I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do”’ (John 14:12); and ‘“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead”’ (James 2:17).Footnote ²⁸ Malcolm concludes, ‘For Wittgenstein the essential thing in a religious life was not the acceptance of doctrines or creeds, but works.’Footnote ²⁹ So, his

Indeed, we might say that Wittgenstein treated his work in philosophy as practising and thereby justifying his religious sensibilities.