consciousness, can I have contact with a reality independent of it? In a discussion
between American analytic and nonanalytic philosophers of religion, the former claimed
to possess a robust conception of truth (Wainwright 1996).^8 Wolterstorff (1996) criticized
neo-Kantians for their “interpretation-universalism,” but with what right? Do not all these
schools suffer the same epistemological fate? Reidians have suggestions that we are in
contact with reality. Reformed epistemologists offer us beliefs that we have such contact.
Both schools say that we must trust the faculties that produce these beliefs. Neo-Kantians
offer us interpretations of reality. None offers us certitude about our everyday world.
Given their own epistemological inheritance, it is little wonder that we find many
adherents of these movements offering an epistemologised caricature of Wittgenstein's
thought, in which he, too, is seen as denying that we can come into contact with how
things really are. Here is the caricature which has been accepted all too readily by many
nonreaders of Wittgenstein:
Wittgenstein turned from a concern with reality to a concern with language. As language
users we are locked in our language games. We cannot get outside them to see how
things really are. Of course, within the games we can talk of “facts” and “truths,” but
these turn out to be facts and truths about language, not about a reality that is independent
of anything we do or say. In fact, what is said in one language game has no implications
for what is said in any other. Religious language games, like all others, can be understood
only by those who participate in them. They are immune to external criticism. Such
immunity, however, is bought at a high price. It leads to a radical perspectivism and
relativism, where things can be true or false only from some point of view. Given these
views, it is impossible to believe in a God who exists prior to language. This is but one
example of the way in which Wittgensteinians, who claim to be describing religious
belief, distort what believers actually say.
So much for the caricature. Even if it were true, all the others should say is, “Welcome to
the Cartesian epistemological club.” To see through the caricature we need to appreciate
that Wittgenstein's deepest questions, like Descartes', are questions in logic rather than in
epistemology.
end p.453
The Return from Metaphysical Reality
Talk of a revolution in twentieth-century philosophy can be misleading. Wittgenstein
insisted, again and again, that his problems were the same as Plato's. In fact, these
problems begin when the Presocratics ask, “What is the nature of all things?”^9 According
to Aristotle, they sought a first philosophy, a science of being qua being. This suggests
that the difference between philosophy and science is one of generality. Whereas the
sciences investigate aspects of reality, philosophy investigates reality as such. But what is
“reality as such”?
Can we say that reality exists? If we say that something exists, we can speak of the
conditions of its existence, which are independent of it. But how can we say this of
reality? What is independent of it? According to most of the Presocratics, all one can say
of reality is that “it is.” We cannot think of it as any kind of substance, since we can ask