Nonsense

Abstract Wittgenstein maintained that religion was central to his thinking, yet the concept is distinctly absent from his magnum opus, the Philosophical Investigations. This article explores this apparent paradox by reading Wittgenstein alongside Talal Asad. In doing so, it reveals how Wittgenstein's encounter with non-Western “religion” was critical to what many have identified as the shift from his early to his later work. Moreover, by reading the two thinkers together, the article illuminates crucial moments and notable parallels in their respective oeuvres, particularly with respect to their engagement with the valences of “nonsense.” The article intervenes by contending that the category of religion elucidates the ways in which our ordinary language works in “nonsensical” ways. While this blurs the supposed boundaries between “religious” and “nonreligious” forms of life, nevertheless the article argues that the former might be understood as paradigmatic of how we operate in the latter.