Letters -21 July 2023
From Wittgenstein’s views to Karl Popper
Wittgenstein’s views
I commend the Friend for waxing philosophical (7 July), but Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views diametrically contradict Quakerism. He sought to reform philosophy, and thereby counter the chaos of the first world war, by insisting on clarity of definition – in other words ‘first define your terms’. In the absence of precise verbal definitions, he advocated saying nothing. The operative word in his summary in his first and clearest book is ‘schweigen’, which would be colloquially translated as ‘shut-up’. Unruly schoolchildren are (or were) regularly reprimanded in German – ‘Hinsetzen und Schweigen’ – in other words ‘sit down and shut up’. It happened.
Wittgenstein was the prime source of linguistic analysis and logical positivism in general – for which he is still revered today. But this was the bane of my philosophy studies in the 1950s, as it is of our psychiatry today.
The invaluable Quaker wisdom of an unwritten creed has been most helpful for me, but it would instantly perish if Wittgenstein held sway. Wonderful phrases such as ‘the things which are eternal’ or ‘a gathered Meeting’ could not survive under his verbal strictures. More widely, his views currently masquerade as ‘the Science of the Mind’, which reduces us all to clockwork – something Quakerism happily asserts we’re not.
Bob Johnson
Theism/nontheism
The debate among us Friends about theism and nontheism is in some ways at the heart of who we are. At the same time, it is so multi-layered in our actual personal experience that the definitions are in some respects unreachable. I am lucky to know two Friends who are on either side of this spectrum. My love and respect for both is equally profound. Both are guided by the dictum ‘What does love require from me?’, and both have given unerringly to the life of Quakers.
We speak of the need for diversity and inclusion. How impoverished we would be if that legitimate need was to be compromised by another legitimate need, the need to feel that the organisation to which we belong is secure and of one mind.
So long as that one mind is securely connected to its one expansive and loving heart, love will prevail and our Religious Society of Friends will expand as we continue to put deep listening at the very centre of our Meetings.
Barbara Robinson
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