Abstract

In "lectures and conversations" wittgenstein suggests that there is an "enormous gulf" between religious believers and non-believers, when the latter wish to dispute religious claims. d z phillips and others have interpreted his remarks as implying that non-believers cannot disagree with believers because different language-games are being played. i try to show that for wittgenstein the gulf exists for a different reason: non-believers take religious utterances as being truth claims, but they are not. they are really vehicles for conveying feelings that cannot themselves be expressed. for him, the understanding of religious utterances is not, in principle, confined to believers