Philosophy of Language via Wittgenstein and Kallenburg

Ludwig Wittgenstein (pronounced Victenstein) was one of the most important contributors to the development of a post-modern understanding of language. Brad Kallenburg has been heavily influenced by Wittgenstein. Wittengenstein’s understanding of language, life, and community are evident throughout Kallenberg’s “Live to Tell.” Some of these instances may be characterized in terms of reasonable associations between propositions, “rule-governed” language, and the question of a fundamental nucleus in which the meaning of a word is positioned.

Wittgenstein’s work may be categorized in terms of his early and latter work. Earlier writings were concerned with the reasonable associations between propositions and reality. All philosophical inquiries could be deciphered by presenting an explanation of the underlying reasoning of the relationship, which is one instance where the understanding of language is inserted into his philosophical views. He believed humans were limited by language. He said, “Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.” There was a disconnection between the realm of thought and expression through language. Wittgenstein’s early scholarship influences Kallenberg’s understanding of language as a limiting endeavor in need of decoding through a process of reasoning. This is especially observable within Kallenberg’s atriculation of conversion experience. Kallenberg said, “conversion is a process because it involves progress toward fluency in a whole new language.” (68) The convert undergoes a certain amount of logical interpretation when introduced to a new societal and communal language. Kallenberg indicates a notion of saving faith as expressed in suggestive or propositional terms limiting the convert to insider language. (75) Converts engage in learning to “think in a new language” implying objective observation of their own life events (81). The idea of language-learning is one of many issues that predicate Kallenberg’s view of progressive conversion as converts must dicipher the religious language code.  

 Wittgenstein also promulgated the notion of “rule-governed” characteristics of language and the “language game” without attempting to necessitate stringent systems of rules for each language-game but in terms of its conventional disposition. He questioned whether language rules were communally and overtly taught and enforced. This notion is evident in Kallenberg’s discussion of John 6 where Jesus says “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him” noting the disciples’ perplexed response. By saying, “in me” Jesus symbolically implies public participation with Christ rather than literally eating Jesus’ flesh. (73) Jesus’ use of the phrase “in me” is bound and governed by communal, social rules enforcing Wittgenstein’s question of taught and enforced linguistic regulations.

For Wittgenstein there was no fundamental nucleus in which the meaning of a word is located nor was meaning to be regularly attributed to all uses of a particular word. He said, “We should, instead, travel with the word's uses through ‘a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing.’” Kallenberg similarly explains a story of conversion that lacked a definitive moment of “salvation” discouraging the use of “evangelical jargon.” He claims it is easily misunderstood and often “sub-bliblical in its modernism.” (68)