Phenomenology of Religion and the Grammar of “God”

Abstract

A probably trivial truth is that Wittgenstein invented a particular technique for philosophical clarification, known as ‘grammatical analysis’. What, on the other hand, is probably not so trivial is the fact that this kind of analysis emerged out of a different method that Wittgenstein for some time adopted and of whose limitations he little by little became aware until he finally rejected it. I have in mind the phenomenological method or approach. Regardless of how historically phenomenology has been understood and practiced, for Wittgenstein it was always the study of “immediate experience”, that is, the study of what is given to consciousness in a straightforward way. It seems to be an established fact that towards the end of the 20s, after his return to Cambridge, and probably under the influence of Russell’s thought and in particular of his crucial notion of “knowledge by acquaintance”, Wittgenstein toyed for a while with the idea of a “phenomenological” or “primary” language.