Book: ‘Advanced Buddhist Metaphysics: Exercises in Sceptical Spirituality’

Wittgenstein and ‘Certainty’

And the implications for ‘spiritual exploration’ as well as for philosophical metaphysics

Wittgenstein in an uncertain mode (Artwork by the author.)

Introduction:

The purpose of this article is to sketch out a contrast between the kind of ‘philosophising’ practiced by the likes of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) and those of a similar mindset; and ‘philosophising’ in the pursuit of an accurate understanding of one’s ordinary experiential existence, specifically with a view to achieving an insight into it, such that one might proceed in the direction of resolving the mystery at the core of our experience. (Whether or not this latter approach is any way ‘meaningful’ or ‘sensical’ or ‘practicable’ etc will not be discussed here, but left for elsewhere.)

Now to many of those whose ability to observe and analyse ‘objectively and impartially’ the metaphysical facts of their own experiential existence may have been damaged and corrupted by exposure to academic philosophy, this whole project will surely seem both wrong-headed and absurd, as well as most likely poisoned by New Age silliness and conceptual naivete. This is seriously mistaken, and, as will be demonstrated, the kind of observational…