WITTGENSTEIN AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE)

This dissertation is a critical analysis of the development of philosophy of religion. The later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein is used to evaluate both analytic philosophers of religion and those philosophers and theologians who used Wittgenstein's concepts in their own work. I argue that many of the so-called Wittgenstein philosophers of religion failed to understand the radical quality of Wittgenstein's philosophy and this had a negative effect on their account of religion.;The dissertation has five chapters. The first two chapters are a map of the literature focusing on analytic philosophy of religion in the first chapter and Wittgensteinian-influenced philosophy of religion in the second. The third and fourth chapters are a discussion of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, with the fourth chapter exclusively devoted to a discussion of On Certainty. The final chapter is divided into four sections: (1) a summary of the radical import of Wittgenstein's later philosophy; (2) a summary of criticism of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion; (3) an outline of some features of a genuinely radical Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion; and (4) a discussion of the importance of Wittgenstein for religion, philosophy and Western culture.