Wittgenstien and Tolstoy: Thomas 1997

Question 1

because religious belief does not relate to any empirical entity or person then the belief element in it is conceived of as…

Answer 1

directed to some trans-empirical or metaphysical realm

Question 2

we can best appreciate their shared conception in terms of what I shall call

Answer 2

an ‘authentic orientation to the world’

Question 3

I shall look at the similarity in the structure of the model

Answer 3

of authentic religious belief which both shared

Question 4

the Absoluteness- Element in Wittgenstein is the idea that…

Answer 4

ethics and religious belief involve that which is an absolute

Question 5

in his ‘Lecture on Ethics’ Wittgenstein distinguish between

Answer 5

an absolute and a relative judgement of value

Question 6

when we make a relative judgement of value we assess something’s

Answer 6

fitness relative to some further end

Question 7

example of a chair

Answer 7

a chair is good if it fits a certain predetermined purpose

Question 8

an absolute judgement of value implies

Answer 8

no further reference to anything at all

Question 9

what is something absolute?

Answer 9

it is itself an end, one which admits of nothing further

Question 10

it is a consequence of the myriad of acting that

Answer 10

language emerges in the way it does

Question 11

we are not neutral contemplators of an external world of discrete elements

Answer 11

unaffected by our viewing of them

Question 12

the world for us is mediated in and through our

Answer 12

categorisations which in turn are derivative from and moulded by our action in the world

Question 13

what is particular about ethical and religious reactions?

Answer 13

that they cannot be captures in a paradigm involving observer- neutral contemplation of the world

Question 14

what do religious beliefs contribute to?

Answer 14

they determine the configuration of the believers world

Question 15

Wittgenstein’s notion of absolute value relates to the reactions of

Answer 15

the particular human subject- his or her orientation to the world- rather than an objective grounding in reality that supports it

Question 16

religious belief as a picture is, for Wittgenstein,

Answer 16

something the self subjects itself to, to the extent that everything is coloured by it

Question 17

religious belief developed by Wittgenstein…

Answer 17

it ‘carries’ a sense of what is valuable that determines the value and regales the individual’s assessment of everything else

Question 18

the absolute and endurance for Wittgenstein

Answer 18

a type of endurance which puts aside all sense of personal benefits.

Question 19

what is religious and ethical response devoid of for Wittgenstein?

Answer 19

self- congratulation

Question 20

Wittgenstein is averse to any idea that something can be

Answer 20

an avenue to personal consolation

Question 21

[Wittgenstein] the religious picture inspires total

Answer 21

relation of the self’s reactions. this means that religious belief determines what a believer takes to be worth while.

Question 22

[Wittgenstein] the authentic religious orientation has no place for any motivation

Answer 22

separable from what the religious framework sanctifies as permissible

Question 23

Wittgenstein sees no place for

Answer 23

relative judgements of value in ethics or religion

Question 24

[Wittgenstein] an ethical stance involves not a kind of intellectual comprehension- something that involves relative value judgements

Answer 24

but an entirely non-verbal, not articulative apprehension of the world as a whole

Question 25

‘Lecture of Religious belief’ it is something visual- orientating one’s life around a picture-

Answer 25

that is given as the paradigm example to illustrate the nature of religious belief

Question 26

‘seeing’

Answer 26

expressed as a form of knowledge that is too fundamental to be reflected upon or to be ordinarily subject to deliberative assessment

Question 27

Genuine religious belief is to be understood along the lines of such a

Answer 27

non-articulative orientation to the world

Question 28

‘the way you use the word “god” does not show whom you mean-

Answer 28

but rather what you mean”

Question 29

‘what’ [in terms of God]

Answer 29

the sense of this ‘what’ shows itself in the course of a person’s life, in his or her reactions, values, actions, hopes and fears

Question 30

For Wittgenstein the genuine ethics-religious response involves the subject being regulated by the

Answer 30

absolute value in question: he or she sees the world according to the perspective of that value

Question 31

independence involves a capacity to do the following:

Answer 31

(a) accept the finality of death and the non-survival of the self beyond it
(b) accept pointless suffering
(c) accept life as it comes without trying to desperately manipulate its events
(d) accept this world and not hanker for some metaphysical realm transcending it

Question 32

(a) accept the finality of death and the non-survival of the self beyond [Wittgenstein on independence]

Answer 32

by this he seems to have meant a desire not to break down in the face of an externally imposed fate which would end his own existence

Question 33

(c) accept life as It comes without trying to desperately manipulate its events [Wittgenstein on independence]

Answer 33

it involves the ability to accept the intrusions if fate without them being overly dependent on mitigating that intrusion by trying to manipulate it away

Question 34

what is genuine prayer for Wittgenstein?

Answer 34

non-petitionary (makes life meaningful)

Question 35

eternal life ‘belongs to those

Answer 35

who live in the present’

Question 36

[Wittgenstein] religious belief is ‘a

Answer 36

way of living, or a way of assessing life’

Question 37

why are doctrines useless for Wittgenstein?

Answer 37

It is the spirit in which life is lived that is important

Question 38

The difference between the believer and the unbeliever is, in ‘Lecture on Religious Belief’ …

Answer 38

a matter of drawing from different pictures rather than about picturing reality

Question 39

Wittgenstein himself refused to worship a God viewed as directing a grand design,

Answer 39

a metaphysical world where evil has meaning

Question 40

for Wittgenstein genuine religion is orientated

Answer 40

to the present and not to some metaphysical schema

Question 41

what is religion for Tolstoy?

Answer 41

it is something that naturally springs from a particular ‘position in the world’

Question 42

how many relationships to the universe is there for Tolstoy?

Answer 42

3

Question 43

first of Tolstoy’s relationships to the universe?

Answer 43

a person existing in the world for the purpose of attaining the greater possible well being

Question 44

second of Tolstoy’s relations o the universe?

Answer 44

‘recognising the meaning of life not in the well being of one individual but in that of the family, tribe, the state of some other aggregate of people’

Question 45

Tolstoy insists that every person has a relationship to the universe and therefore

Answer 45

a religion

Question 46

link to relationship to the universe [Tolstoy] and Wittgenstein’s absolute

Answer 46

Absoluteness is given to us through the ‘position in the world’ which we occupy. That position is not optional

Question 47

[our position in the universe is not]

Answer 47

something we can move to to from through intellectual analysis

Question 48

what is our position in the universe

Answer 48

the way we are engaged in the world- and the type of ethical stance which result from this- determines what we take to be absolute

Question 49

connect between Tolstoy and Wittgenstein’s religious ‘picture’

Answer 49

the particular relation to the universe that a person is in determines his entire reaction to contingencies

Question 50

similarity about the good only being found to exist in the individual.

Answer 50

what has genuine value cannot exist as something socially valuable because people’s self- interest would arise and polite it

Question 51

what would a socially accepted thing become?

Answer 51

a means to socially esteem and prestige

Question 52

what is of absolute value must exist within the

Answer 52

individual and be mediated through that individual’s relationship to the universe as a whole

Question 53

a believer is never

Answer 53

motivated by something

Question 54

for Tolstoy is not talking about a range go options from which the potential believer chooses

Answer 54

the most attractive

Question 55

[tolstoy] is talking about someone who comes to a particular relation with the universe,

Answer 55

a relation in which the usual worldly standards are seen as exposed and hollow

Question 56

for such an individual there is only one direction he can follow: the stance of an absolute acceptance

Answer 56

of the claims deriving from his relation to the world

Question 57

deliverance [is not]…

Answer 57

is not a matter of the most acceptable among a set of options set out in terms of a series of propositions

Question 58

deliverance [is]…

Answer 58

that absolute response which derives from a particular relation to the world

Question 59

Wittgenstien and Tolstoy on views of relative values

Answer 59

only concerned with matters of fact and therefore unable to change a person’s relationship to the world

Question 60

mental effort automatically proceeds to establish the

Answer 60

self’s relation to the world

Question 61

no amount of linguistically enshrined analytical mental effort can

Answer 61

asses that relation

Question 62

what motivates both’s understanding of religion?

Answer 62

the relationship to the whole of life and the consequent alleviation from suffering and meaninglessness that it provides

Question 63

Tolstoy like Wittgenstein, has no place for religion conceived of

Answer 63

as a system of beliefs because such a conception is seen thoroughly given to self orientation

Question 64

Tolstoy insists that to try to justify the superiority of one form of relation to the universe to another through reason is

Answer 64

an expression of self interest

Question 65

[tolstoy] saw the genuinely religious stance as an unreflective view

Answer 65

of the world as a whole

Question 66

[tolstoy on belief systems] involving a form of knowledge to fundamental to be reflected upon or to be

Answer 66

subject to deliberative assessment

Question 67

[tolstoy] saw the notion of God as some sort of entity conceived within a belief system as

Answer 67

an inherently self-affirming notion

Question 68

[relationship to independence] Tolstoy believed that the peasants possessed a superior knowledge to that of Russian upper classes

Answer 68

This was supposedly manifested in the peasants’ ability to live without any concern for the fact that individual life ends in death and total oblivion

Question 69

for Tolstoy, the capacity to accept the self’s finality at death is fundamental sight of the

Answer 69

self’s capacity to be independent of the world and to be able to live within it

Question 70

in both Wittgenstein and Tolstoy we find a view of religious belief

Answer 70

as characterised by an absoluteness that involves the individual believer having a perspective on life as a whole

Question 71

perspective on life

Answer 71

this perspective in turn leads to the believers reaction being one of independence to the world