Augustine and Wittgenstein

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This collection examines the relationship between Augustine and Wittgenstein and demonstrates the deep affinity they share, not only for the substantive issues they treat but also for the style of philosophizing they employ. Wittgenstein saw certain salient Augustinian approaches to concepts like language-learning, will, memory, and time as prompts for his own philosophical explorations, and he found great inspiration in Augustines highly personalized and interlocutory style of writing philosophy. Each in his own way, in an effort to understand human experience more fully, adopts a mode of philosophizing that involves questioning, recognizing confusions, and confronting doubts. Beyond its bearing on such topics as language, meaning, knowledge, and will, their analysis extends to the nature of religious belief and its fundamental place in human experience. The essays collected here consider a broad range of themes, from issues regarding teaching, linguistic meaning, and self-understanding to miracles, ritual, and religion.

Reviews

This wide-ranging and provocative collection of essays highlights the many connections between Augustine and Wittgenstein on language, memory, confession, and religion. While it was W. himself who said that A. was one of his favorite writers (along with Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky), exactly why that is so and how that admiration expresses itself in his writing has never before been so clearly and broadly presented as in this collection. I found myself understanding better each author through the other. This book is a must read for anyone interested in either of these deeply original and profoundly personal thinkers, or simply in thinking about the eternal questions that they raise. -- John Verdi, St. Johns College
Wittgenstein, who thought religiously but not from within a religion, had, to say the least, a complex debt to Augustine, whose surprisingly unsettled religiosity still manages to disturb the peace of a secular aesthetic. The ten essays that comprise Augustine and Wittgenstein stake out the terms of their arresting conjunction in inventive ways. There is no single paradigm of approach that the writers follow: along the way, we get manicured lawns, hot-house flowers, wild germinations, and ambiguous weeds. This is philosophy at the edge of reverence. Dig in. -- James Wetzel, Professor of Philosophy and Augustinian Endowed Chair, Villanova University
This excellent collection of essays is poised to become the standard first resource for scholars and students examining connections between Augustine and Wittgenstein. These ten essays (one classic and nine newly written for the volume) address a diverse set of problems linking the two thinkers, including Wittgensteins interpretation of Augustine, the role of ostention in language learning, difficulties concerning meaningful speech about ultimate reality, the perception and interpretation of miracles, human sexuality and the ritual imagination, the origins of religiosity, the relation between time and memory, and understanding the recalcitrant will. The collection provides a much needed scholarly resource for those interested in Wittgensteins relation to Augustine as well as creative and critical examination of links and divergences between the two philosophers. -- Thomas D. Carroll, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Author Bio

Kim Paffenroth is professor of religious studies and the director of the Honors Program at Iona College. John Doody is professor of philosophy and Robert M. Birmingham chair in humanities at Villanova University. Alexander R. Eodice is professor of philosophy and chair of the Philosophy Department at Iona College.