ABSTRACT
Wittgenstein’s remarks on religious and magical practices are often thought to harbour troubling fideistic and relativistic views. Unsurprisingly, commentators are generally resistant to the idea that religious belief constitutes a ‘language-game’ governed by its own peculiar ‘rules’, and is thereby insulated from the critical assessment of non-participants. Indeed, on this fideist-relativist reading, it is unclear how mutual understanding between believers and non-believers (even between different sorts of believers) would be possible. In this paper I do three things: (i) show why the fideist-relativist reading of Wittgenstein is not wildly implausible (Sections 1–2); (ii) argue that, despite its initial plausibility, this reading fails to take into account Wittgenstein’s naturalism (Sections 3–4); and (iii) explain what sort of naturalism this is, and how it sheds light on Wittgenstein’s remarks on religious belief (Sections 5–6).
