Wittgenstein, Religious Belief, and Incommensurability

Abstract

Wittgenstein begins his Lectures on Religious Belief by saying that he would not contradict a religious person’s belief in the Last Judgement, even though he personally does not share such beliefs. Later, he expresses uncertainty about whether religious believers and non–believers truly understand each other. Some philosophers interpret these remarks as showing that Wittgenstein thought that the religious and the non–religious discourse are incommensurable, in the sense that a non–religious person cannot understand a religious person when they are talking about their beliefs, and that religious beliefs are immune to outside criticism as a consequence of the supposed incommensurability. Hilary Putnam claimed that Wittgenstein believed that the dialogue between religious and non–religious individuals involves talking past each other, not due to incommensurability but for other reasons. I propose an alternative perspective on the “no contradiction situation” and Wittgenstein’s stance on religious belief, while agreeing with Putnam that the incommensurability thesis cannot be attributed to Wittgenstein.