Clarity Is Perfection: Religion and Philosophy in the Last Wittgenstein

Abstract

This paper explores some of the issues related to Wittgenstein’s famous comment to Drury —that he himself, while not a religious person, could not avoid contemplating all questions from a religious perspective— that might contribute to an understanding of the final meaning of the philosophical practice distinctive of Wittgenstein’s last period. This paper aims at showing that final meaning is the immunization of the religious form of the life . In order to reach this conclusion we will first recall the importance of clarity as an absolute goal of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and see how it is connected to a specific attitude toward the explanatory claims of conventional philosophy. Then we will summarize the essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophical analysis of religious discourse and review some crucial texts that highlight the peculiar religiosity unique to Wittgenstein.