A Tragic Tale of Magic and Philosophy

In recent years, an initiative is underway to reclaim Wittgenstein's reflections on religion from those who are said to have distorted them.(1) Brian Clack's essay "Wittgenstein and Magic" represents a distressing turn in the current discussions of Wittgenstein and religion. His argument is roughly as follows: first, Wittgenstein's early followers tragically misappropriated his work by attributing to him the "expressivist thesis"; second, although Wittgenstein does sometimes write in a way suggestive of an expressivist theory, his later philosophy shows that he has no such theory; third, Wittgenstein actually offers a theory of the "unratiocinated nature of religion" (25), which I characterize as "instinctualism." In this paper I argue that Clack is correct that Wittgenstein never held an expressivist theory, but wrong to blame such a theory on Wittgenstein's followers and equally wrong to attribute to Wittgenstein the theory of instinctualism.