"Any half-way decent man will think himself extremely imperfect,

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On the subject of the writing talent of philosophers, Redpath asked Wittgenstein which philosophers he considered the most impressive authors. Wittgenstein’s prompt reply was “Nietzsche”. Redpath goes on to say: “When I told him I had read a certain amount of Nietzsche and asked what he thought of his general world view, he said that he didn’t think there was much ‘consolation’ to be had from it – it was ‘too shallow’”

>>8126014
So Witty wanted to be a Christian but couldn't find faith?

"There is a sense in which you and I are both Christians"

"The way you use the word 'God' shows not whom you mean -- but instead what you mean"

"If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him"

"All religions are wonderful ... The ways in which people express their religious feelings differ enormously."

I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church....
Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink.

"I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view"
The symbolisms of Catholicism are wonderful beyond words. But any attempt to make it into a philosophical system is offensive.

"If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God."

"It is true that we can compare a picture that is firmly rooted in us to a superstition, but it is equally true that we always eventually have to reach some firm ground, either a picture or something else; so that a picture which is at the root of all our thinking is to be respected and not treated as a superstition."

Goethe defined 'a Christian' as 'one who calls Jesus his master'.

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What inclines even me to believe in Christ's resurrection? I play as it were with the thought.–If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like every human being. He is dead & decomposed. In that case he is a teacher, like any other & can no longer help; & we are once more orphaned & alone. And have to make do with wisdom & speculation. It is as though we are in a hell, where we can only dream & are shut out from heaven, roofed in as it were. But if I am to be REALLY redeemed,– I need certainty–not wisdom, dreams, speculation–and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart, my soul, needs, not my speculative intellect. For my soul, with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, must be redeemed, not my abstract mind. Perhaps one may say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: it is love that believes the Resurrection.

We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption. Holding fast to this must be holding fast to that belief. So what that means is: first you must be redeemed and hold on to your redemption (keep hold of your redemption) - then you will see that you are holding fast to this belief. So this can come about only if you no longer rest your weight on the earth but suspend yourself from heaven. Then EVERYTHING will be different and it will be 'no wonder' if you can do things that you cannot do now. (A man who is suspended looks the same as one who is standing, but the interplay of forces within him is nevertheless quite different, so that he can act quite differently than can a standing man.)

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More stimulating was a writer whose view could not have been more antithetical to the Tolstoyan Christianity that Wittgenstein had come to embrace: Friedrich Nietzsche. Wittgenstein had bought in Krakow the eighth volume of Nietzsche's collected works, the one that includes the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche's blistering attack upon Christianity. In it, Nietzsche rails against the Christian faith as a decadent, corrupt religion, 'a form of mortal hostility to reality as yet unsurpassed.' Christianity has its origins, according to him, in the weakest and basest aspects of human psychology, and is at root no more than a cowardly retreat from a hostile world.

This hatred of reality, the idea to which it gives rise, of the need for redemption through the love of God, are, in Nietzsche's view, the consequence of: 'an extreme capacity for suffering and irritation which no longer wants to be "touched" at all because it feels every contact too deeply . . . The fear of pain, even of the infinitely small in pain - cannot end otherwise than in a religion of love.'

Though 'strong affected' by Nietzsche's hostility towards Christianity, and though he felt obliged to admit some truth in Nietzsche's analysis, Wittgenstein was unshaken in his belief that: 'Christianity is indeed the only SURE way to happiness':

. . . but what if someone spurned this happiness? Might it not be better to perish unhappily in the hopeless struggle against the external world? But such a life is senseless. But why not lead a senseless life? Is it unworthy? -L.W.

Even from this it can be seen how close Wittgenstein was, despite his faith, to accepting Nietzsche's view. He is content to discuss the issue in Nietzsche's psychological terms; he does not see it as a question of whether Christianity is TRUE, but of whether it offers some help in dealing with an otherwise unbearable and meaningless existence. In William James's terms, the question is whether it helps to heal a 'sick soul'. And the 'it' here is not a BELIEF but a practice, a way of living. This is a point that Nietzsche puts well:

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"It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a 'belief', perchance the belief in redemption through Christ, the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian PRACTICE, a life such as he who died on the Cross LIVED, is Christian . . . even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times . . . Not a belief but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things, a different being . . . States of consciousness, beliefs of any kind, holding something to be true for example - every psychologist knows this - are a matter of complete indifference and of fifth rank compared with the value of instincts . . . To reduce being a Christian, Christianness, to a holding of something to be true, to a mere phenomenality of consciousness, means to negate Christianness." -F.N.

This, we may feel sure, was one of the passages in The Anti-Christ that persuaded Wittgenstein that there was some truth in Nietzsche's work. The idea that the essence of religion lay in feelings (or, as Nietzsche would have it, instincts) and practices rather than in beliefs remained a constant theme in Wittgenstein's thought on the subject for the rest of his life. Christianity was for him (at this time) 'the only sure way to happiness' - not because it promised an after-life, but because, in the words and the figure of Christ, it provided an example, an attitude, to follow, that made suffering bearable.