The Point of Wittgenstein’s Religious Point of View

It has become commonplace to mention that Wittgenstein’s philosophy has an ethical point, and to consider how this contributes to his conception of philosophical method. Less attention has been given to how his admission to not being able to “help seeing every problem from a religious point of view” permeates his understanding of philosophy. Although there are ways in which the ethical and religious dimensions of Wittgenstein’s thought intersect, most notably in the way he illuminates absolute uses of ethical language by turning to religious experience in the “Lecture on Ethics”, I argue that the religious elements of his thought cannot be reduced to considering the ethical questions it raises. In the first part, I consider what it might mean to speak about, first, the point and, then, the ethical point of a practice, and how this shows in the importance, rather than the purpose, of what we see ourselves as doing. I then turn to the religious point of view and suggest that although it appears from a point, as it were, out of time, it should not be considered to reside outside of space. Rather, it involves a way of placing myself within the midst of my life, and considering my surrounding context, from a position from which I am able to think of myself as absolutely safe.