structural:scholar_edition, linguistic:voice_change, information:classification
Faith

Wittgenstein was baptized as an infant by a Catholic priest and received formal instruction in Catholic doctrine as a child, as was common at the time. In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein says that their grandfather's "strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity " was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children. While he was at the Realschule, he decided he lacked religious faith and began reading Arthur Schopenhauer per Gretl's recommendation. He nevertheless believed in the importance of the idea of confession. He wrote in his diaries about having made a major confession to his oldest sister, Hermine, while he was at the Realschule; Monk speculates that it may have been about his loss of faith. He also discussed it with Gretl, his other sister, who directed him to Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. As a teenager, Wittgenstein adopted Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism. However, after his study of the philosophy of mathematics, he abandoned epistemological idealism for Gottlob Frege 's conceptual realism. In later years, Wittgenstein was highly dismissive of Schopenhauer, describing him as an ultimately "shallow" thinker:

Schopenhauer is quite a crude mind... Where real depth starts, his comes to an end.

Wittgenstein's relationship with Christianity and with religion in general, for which he always professed a sincere and devoted sympathy, changed over time, much like his philosophical ideas. In 1912, Wittgenstein wrote to Russell saying that Mozart and Beethoven were the actual sons of God. However, Wittgenstein resisted formal religion, saying it was hard for him to "bend the knee", though his grandfather's beliefs continued to influence Wittgenstein – as he said, "I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." Wittgenstein referred to Augustine of Hippo in his Philosophical Investigations. Philosophically, Wittgenstein's thought shows alignment with religious discourse. For example, he would become one of the century's fiercest critics of scientism. Wittgenstein's religious belief emerged during his service for the Austrian army in World War I, and he was a devoted reader of Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's religious writings. He viewed his wartime experiences as a trial in which he strove to conform to the will of God, and in a journal entry from 29 April 1915, he writes:

Perhaps the nearness of death will bring me the light of life. May God enlighten me. I am a worm, but through God I become a man. God be with me. Amen.

Around this time, Wittgenstein wrote that "Christianity is indeed the only sure way to happiness", but he rejected the idea that religious belief was merely thinking that a certain doctrine was true. From this time on, Wittgenstein viewed religious faith as a way of living and opposed rational argumentation or proofs for God.With age, a deepening personal spirituality led to several elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion — attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God's existence as a matter of scientific evidence. In 1947, finding it more difficult to work, he wrote:

I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God's will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God's will.

In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes:

Is what I am doing really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above.

His close friend Norman Malcolm wrote:

Wittgenstein's mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers.

Toward the end, Wittgenstein wrote:

Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein, 'To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.' That is what I would have liked to say about my work.