ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the views of R. B. Braithwaite, the empiricist Cambridge philosopher influential for his revisionist readings of religious language. It argues that some forms of analytical philosophy are compatible with, and indeed support, transcendent reinterpretations of the Christian tradition. The chapter aims to take ‘analytical philosophy’ to refer to a single movement with two related parts: logical positivism and logical analysis. The Vienna Circle were also influenced by Ernst Mach, who, in 1895, became professor of the philosophy of the inductive sciences at the University of Vienna, the chair later occupied by Moritz Schlick, the ‘focal point’ of the Vienna Circle. Interpretations of Wittgenstein’s later work also vary, particularly of the Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953. Like Braithwaite, Alastair Kee rejects supernatural interpretations of religious belief, but, unlike Braithwaite, he does attempt to analyse the way in which statements about God have been used.
