source Giles Fraser, Guardian

Many of us have a dim and distant memory of early childhood gaffes with words, of those occasions when you thought you had grasped the meaning of a word only to discover, sometimes in a rather embarrassing way, that you had got the wrong end of the stick and were using the word in an odd and completely different way. My wife recalls one such tricky occasion with her use of the word “stoned”.

Interestingly, it is perfectly possible to have a mistaken understanding of a word and yet use it correctly for quite a while. Imagine, for instance, a person who was taught the word “Everest” by having it pointed out to him in a book. Initially, he seems to have grasped the word correctly, using the word “Everest” appropriately in conversation. But then, when he refers to Mount Blanc as “Everest” it is clear something is amiss. Perhaps he took the pointing out of “Everest” in the book to mean that “Everest” is a big pile of rock with snow on top?

So how then do we ever know that we have properly understood the words that we use? Saul Kripke famously developed this line of inquiry with his book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke suggested that there can be nothing in my mind or intention or behaviour that fixes the correct meaning of a word.

There is much disagreement if this was actually what Wittgenstein had in mind in his discussions of rule following. Despite this, Kripke’s understanding provides a useful lens through which to approach his conclusion – that there is actually no way of fixing meaning unless there is, between those who speak, a shared sense of common purpose that grows out of a) the basic preoccupations of what it is to be a human being and b) the various social enterprises that make up our every day commitments. Roughly, a) he calls forms of life and b) he calls language-games.

In other words, meaning is only possible when embedded in these common pursuits that are, in the case of a) shared by all, and in the case of b) shared by some. This is the background against which any sort of sense is possible.

To call religion a language-game is to insist that certain sorts of practices – church attendance, praying, lighting candles, going on pilgrimage – are the background against which religious claims make sense. “Practice” he says in Culture and Value, “gives the words their sense”.

Obviously, on one level this is deeply counter-intuitive. Surely religion, like other language-games, ought to be built on reasons and justifications. But Wittgenstein’s point is that justifications have to come to an end somewhere, and they come to an end in what we actually do. And in this respect, says Wittgenstein, religion is in no way unlike any other language-game.

“Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we should see the facts as primary phenomena. That is where we should say: this language game is played.” (Philosophical Investigations, 654)

This, then, is Wittgenstein’s extraordinary conclusion:

“Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; in the end it can only describe it. Nor can it give it any foundation. It leaves everything as it is.” (PI 124)

Religion, it seems, is without ground or explanation. It just is.