Augustine and Wittgenstein by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

Chapter 6

Wittgenstein and Augustine on Seeing Miracles

Espen Dahl

In the modern historical period, miracles came to be defined as violations of natural law. As a consequence, “miracles” currently bring to mind a host of dubious associations that are hard to square with a scientific outlook. Whether defended or criticized, discussions of miracles tend to revolve around the possibility of miracles, as in Hume, and hence also the credibility of testimonies thereof. Long before such modern problematics, Augustine had worked out what might be the first sustained philosophical reflection on miracles in the Christian tradition. While recognizing miracles as an inextricable part of Christian faith and Biblical heritage, there is for him no question of violations of natural laws. Likewise, in the twentieth century, both the early and late Wittgenstein also sidestepped the typical modern problem in his reflections on miracles and wonders. What interests both Augustine and Wittgenstein is not miracles’ clash with natural laws, but the particular way that miracles present themselves to us in the world that we inhabit, a sense of wonder of what is there, that in different ways strikes the religious register. Such wonder might come to the fore in extraordinary happenings that challenge our expectations, but both Augustine and Wittgenstein emphasize that it can arise in response to the context of the most ordinary occurrences as well.

In this chapter, I want first to provide an outline of the young Augustine’s rather skeptical attitude toward miracles, which, as I will show, develops into a far more affirmative attitude during his mature period. This change is probably due to his turning the religious gaze not solely inward and upward, influenced by Neoplatonic ideals, but also downward and outward, corresponding to the mystery of incarnation that takes on growing significance for him. The latter includes the heightened attention to material, bodily dimensions along with the acknowledgment of repetitions and the familiarity of the everyday as theologically significant (1–2). There are two tensions operative in Augustine’s thinking as a whole that inform my reading of Wittgenstein: First, the tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary, which is not only present in Augustine’s reflections on miracles, but which is also highly significant to Wittgenstein’s thinking generally and to his writings on miracles especially (3). Second, I will focus on the way miracles correspond to a way of seeing, in light of this tension, in Augustine’s vocabulary, either with the eyes of the body (entailing outer sensation), or the eyes of the mind (as some form of inner knowledge, sometimes called the eye of the heart, soul, or spirit).1 The categories of seeing appropriate to miracles, I will claim, takes both these “eyes,” a position which can be conceptually elaborated with Wittgenstein’s notion of aspect perception (4). I will finally point out that for the old Augustine, seeing and ordinary embodiment are entailed in the promised vision of God, which should encourage the ordinary and bodily dimensions to be recognized in the perception of miracles within our present finite condition (5).

Eyes

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