ABSTRACT
One distinctive feature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in all its phases is that, unlike nearly all of his contemporaries, he grants a philosophically privileged status neither to science nor to religion although both were important to him albeit in different ways. Wittgenstein’s view of the matter, like Pascal’s, puts science and religion on two entirely different, if legitimate, planes of human discourse. Wittgenstein could develop this view of the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion because his way to religion was rooted both existentially and philosophically in the conception of philosophy of science that he inherited from Heinrich Hertz. The “Secret Diaries” clearly indicate that Wittgenstein personally considered the War an ordeal by fire of his character. Knowledge is gray for Wittgenstein and only science really counts as knowledge in the strict sense; whereas religion is colorful—and philosophy remains something else, and/or science but also different from religion.
