Philosophy and Theology

Following a clarification of the nature of the “sightedness” and “blindness” which Wittgenstein associated with religious and mystical apprehenson, I argue that his account fails in both its visual and its religious senses. I close with an assessment of the extent to which descriptive language can be used to induce a religious perspective in someone who presently lacks it.

The history of Wittgenstein’s failed attempt at pure phenomenology illumines his later thought, both globally and in detail, as well as its relation to Husserlian phenomenology.

The aim of the following paper is, firstly, to provide the reader with a brief exposition of the critical response offered by some current french feminists of the largely American, compensatory approach to feminist historiography. Secondly, I wish to show why the french feminist alternative itself provides an inadequate methodology for the resolution of the problems that it raises in its critique. Lastly, I shall suggest that the Wittgensteinian concept of ‘family resemblance’ contains the seeds of a plausible alternative to either the compensatory or the french structuralist approach to feminist historiography. The upshot of this latter claim is that the historical subject may be most fruitfully conceived genealogically, that is, as the dynamic product of an inexhaustible complex of historical and contextual resemblances constructed on the behalf of a specific interpretational task.

An examination is offered of the claim that the possibility of religious belief is related to the possibility of lusus naturae, in the special sense of that phrase which many philosophers have adopted, in terms of its implications for the notion of the limits of intelligibility. The exposition includes a critical assessment of arguments offered by Peter Winch, R. F. Holland, Norman Malcolm, and H. O. Mounce.