„[I]ch sehe jedes Problem von einem religiösen Standpunkt.”

Abstract “I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.” Does Wittgenstein offer a religious critique of progress? This article examines Ludwig Wittgenstein’s critique of the modern ideology of progress and its relation to religion. Wittgenstein, having a deep interest in the Christian religion, sees his philosophical quest for clarity as a self-sufficient ethical act, rather than a means to an end, and understands this attitude not only as fundamentally opposed to modernity, but also as ‘religious’ in some sense. Against first appearances, however, Wittgenstein’s criticism of modernity cannot be attributed to a Christian-conservative type. His decidedly anti-dogmatic understanding of the Christian religion, mainly shaped by dissident Christian thinkers such as Tolstoi and Kierkegaard, is anything but traditional. The article concludes by suggesting that Wittgenstein’s ideas of Christianity and of being ‘religious’, though ethically powerful, remain disengaged from the habitual, ritual and narrative character of lived Christian practice.