Understanding a Suggestion of Professor Cavell's: Kierkegaard's Religious Stage as a Wittgensteinian "Form of Life"

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to follow a lead of professor stanley cavell's in his paper, "kierkegaard's on authority and revelation." the lead is: "to understand an utterance religiously you have to be able to share its perspective.... the religious is a kierkegaardian stage of life; and i suggest it should be thought of as a wittgensteinian form of life." i try to present "form of life" as a larger picture sometimes necessary for understanding language-games, and to suggest that what counts as a form of life will depend upon what particular language-game one is trying to understand. sometimes then a person's religious belief might figure into this process as a relevant form of life. i then try to represent kierkegaard's religious stage by discussing three related concepts: paradox, ideal interpretation, and subjectivity. paradox is one criterion for marking off the religious stage from the ethical and the aesthetical stages. in the religious stage, the talk of believers about god is such that it interprets the events in one's life according to that belief. (edited)