Abstract While in recent decades there have been interpretations of Wittgenstein’s philosophy as naturalistic, this possibility has not yet been fully explored in the philosophy of religion. The main obstacle to this seems to be twofold. First, it is often claimed that Wittgenstein’s philosophy was anti-scientistic in spirit (and thus cannot be naturalistic by definition) and, second, his views on religion left room for supernaturalist claims. I argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophy is naturalistic precisely because of its anti-scientistic underpinnings, which stem from the idea of the autonomy of philosophical practice. On this basis, I show that Wittgenstein’s allegedly acknowledging the supernatural content of religious utterances does not lead him to incorporate this content into his philosophical practice. Moreover, in the light of his anti-scientism, the established distinction between cognitivist and non-cognitivist approaches to religion might be reconsidered. Based on Wittgenstein’s anti-scientism, I show that although his philosophy of religion may be characterized as cognitivist, it still does not allow for supernaturalism. In the end, I demonstrate how Wittgenstein’s combination of anti-scientism and non-supernaturalism can contribute to rethinking methodological naturalism in philosophy of religion.
Aleksei Yuryevich Rakhmanin (Mon,) studied this question.