Ludwig Wittgenstein: a religião que dá sentido à vida

Abstract

The development of the doctoral research entitled: "Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Religion that gives meaning to life" aimed to try to dissolve the problem of evidentialism and its repercussions on the contemporary philosophy of religion. Clifford's principle is known as a critique of the justification of religious belief. Even without making direct reference, Clifford's text is full of biblical allusions, and according to Hick 1983 has been a ballast for the so-called Analytic Philosophy of Religion. This research includes consideration of the specific use of terms in religious statements and the logical relations between religious assertions and between these and other types of assertions; the legitimacy of interpreting them as factual or, on the contrary, the possibility of reinterpreting them as purely expressions of mystical, aesthetic or moral attitudes. The evaluation of the limits and the very complexity of the way of life in which the concepts of religious belief and meaning of life find their application. The methodology used in this research had a bibliographic focus. In the first chapter we try to show that in the dynamics of analytic philosophy, there is the possibility of being able to speak of an analytic philosophy of religion and, in this field, to refer to Wittgenstein's philosophical tendency where we can locate the nuances of his religious thought in each of the phases of his philosophical development and his complex relationship with an epistemology of religion. In chapter two, our aim was to present the post-Tractatus conception of religion through the demonstration of how Wittgenstein's ideas were developed by the commentators: Micheletti (1972; 2007;2002), Child (2011; 2013) D.Z. Phillips (1970; 1976; 1981; 1993; 1995. 2001; 2006; 2013), Nielsen (1967; 2001; 2005), Duncan Pritchard (2012;2016;2017; 2018) who defended a "moderat fideism" inspired by Wittgenstein. In the third chapter of this thesis, we aim to specify how Wittgenstein's concept of "religious beliefs" can shift the subjects of language from the pole of their epistemological certainties to a grounding of the meaning of life. In order to see why, however, there is another piece of the puzzle that we need to put in place, about the nature of our religious beliefs. On this path, we embark in the fourth chapter on the foundation of the conception of life lived sub specie aeterni, Wittgenstein points to the man who can even feel the suffering, the anguish of life, but the desire for eternity cannot be explained by any theory. The research pointed to the limitations of the discourses of theology, science and philosophy itself for the foundation of religious discourse. But what would be the philosophical basis for thinking about secular spirituality and dissolving the problem of evidentialism? Wittgenstein's answer is that it would be the Good Life, the happy life, namely: the life lived sub specie aeterni. When we mention the expression: Life lived from the perspective specie aeterni, we indicate that life must be lived with acceptance of our existence, that is, to live according to the facticity of the world. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus states: "The intuition of the world sub specie aeterni is its intuition as totality – limited" (TLP, 6.45). Further on he points out: "The sense of the world must be outside of it."