ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issue of the limits of language from the point of view of Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion and the Wittgensteinian tradition in philosophy of religion. I will argue that, by contrast to how the notion has been treated in the Wittgensteinian tradition, Wittgenstein’s conception of the “limits of language” ought to be taken seriously in any Wittgenstein-inspired attempts to illuminate the nature of religious language and religious belief. I will suggest that Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion have not been fully aware of the way in which the “limits of language” issue arises in the philosophy of religion as a Kantian issue, requiring a transcendental analysis. Nor have they sufficiently appreciated the ways in which Wittgenstein ought to be interpreted as presenting something like transcendental arguments. In fact, some core arguments in Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, identifiable in the work of D. Z. Phillips, among others, can be reinterpreted as transcendental (pace Phillips himself). As an illustration, I will briefly discuss the problem of evil and suffering, suggesting that Wittgensteinians like Phillips can be taken to have offered transcendental considerations in favour of what I call antitheodicism, refuting theodicies as violations of genuinely religious language-use.
