What would Wittgenstein have said?

 A friend, commenting on the note “Are you spiritual?” (Oct. 6), said he thought that Wittgenstein, a philosopher I admire, would have poked me with a stick and accused of me being purposefully obtuse. As my friend said, “people communicate using the words ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’ all the time without any confusion.”

It’s fair criticism. It made me think further, particularly about what Wittgenstein would have said.

I think he would have said that the spiritual life is the only life worth living. Any other way of conceiving life just wasn’t worth it. He was a harsh and literal judge on that question. He considered suicide for years.

I’m interested in Wittgenstein because I’m interested in the philosophy of language, a field that is still under his influence, though he died before I was born.

Wittgenstein was training as an engineer when he got interested in philosophy. His biographer Ray Monk said Wittgenstein’s interest in science was more an interest in the philosophy of science. He was more interested in the fundamental questions than practical problems, about, e.g., what exactly that “force” is that Newton mentioned. Questions about the foundations of science involved questions about the foundations of mathematics, which led to logic.

One approach to ironing out the contradictions of scientific concepts such as force is to see if you can talk about the idea intelligibly without using the word. Can you discuss the concept of force without saying “force.” Is there a more productive way to talk about it?

I’ve long wondered about the words “spiritual” and “religion” — whether they have been used by so many people in so many ways that it would be better to start over.