Studies in Religion and Philosophy: Wittgenstein's Religious Thought

When Bertrand Russell met with Wittgenstein after the First World War, he wrote: "I... was astonished when I found that he has become a complete mystic. He reads people like Kierkegaard & Angelus Silesius, and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk". This course investigates Wittgenstein's religious thought - and its profound existential ramifications. From its roots in James, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others; to the early mysticism of the Tractatus and its Notebooks; to his later understanding of religion as a life-orientating attitude summed up as "to love with hope, and not to despair when the hope is not fulfilled".