Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion as A Kind of Apophatic Theology
Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion as A Kind of Apophatic Theology

Summary/Abstract: In my article I present a conceptual model of classification of philosophical and theological conceptions of religion within Western philosophy and the Christian religious tradition. The model has four independent dimensions: the factual, the metaphysical, the ethical and the apophatic. The first and the second dimensions are cognitive, while the third and the fourth are non-cognitive. The fourth dimension should not be identified with the old tradition of apophatic theology because, according to the model, the latter is a mixture of two (or even more) dimensions. The second part of my paper is devoted to the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion developed by the members of the so-called Swansea School. My thesis is that, despite of their self-characterisation as philosophers, they present an extreme version of apophatic theology because their view on religion is, in the light of my conceptual model, one-dimensional.

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