The ‘possible’ role of the imagination in philosophy and theology

Abstract

This paper will examine Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1889–1951) idea that philosophy is a matter of the will more than of the intellect. This means that much of what we battle, in philosophy, is the propensity of so many to deceive themselves. It also entails that what, in effect, is to be offered as a cure is a therapeutic practice that, in its persuasive aspect, facilitates a gestalt-shift in which the imagination plays a central role. For, from the point of view of the person caught in self-deception, there is no reason to change; any reason must come from a partly different world-picture. Such a person must be persuaded to accept a different way of seeing things in the particular circumstances. Of course, this will appear artificial to the person and he will experience stumbling and hesitation as he lives in what, to him, is a more or less foreign' way. However, it will, perhaps, not be long before living in such a manner becomes second nature to him so that he would have brought an appropriate quality of smoothness in his relation to the particular sector of reality. Hence, such a position would mean that a good number of obstacles and problems within philosophy are related to the manner in which we want to see things or, rather, to the manner in which we refuse to countenance otherwise. This paper will also attempt to show that, even within the arena of natural theology, while arguments, reasons, evidence, and the like, that are brought forward certainly do not lack pertinence, normally, one's belief in the existence of God is not, in reality, arrived at by deductive inference. The suggestion is that, whereas one world-picture may be seen to comprehend a wider range of experience better, and to a fuller degree, than another, one's decision' plays a certain role in one's philosophical conversion; a person can refuse to occupy herself with reality under a given conception and make such a vision her own.