Wittgenstein on ethics and religious belief - Cyril Barrett

Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief both expounds and relates the ethical and religious views of a philosopher more usually discussed in terms of language, science and logic. Cyril Barrett addresses three principal issues. First, the over-riding importance Wittgenstein attaches to value, ethical, religious and aesthetic. Second, his conviction that these matters cannot be expressed in the language of scientific or everyday discourse. Third, the thesis that Wittgenstein's views on value did not alter between the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, in spite of his rejection of the picture theory of language and his seeming relativism. The book goes on to show that Wittgenstein's views on ethics and religious belief, though expressed in unorthodox terms, are in fact in line with at least some traditional philosophical and theological tenets with their roots in the Middle Ages and Early Christian Fathers, as well as in more abstract literary sources of Christian belief.