Wittgenstein on miracles

Abstract

In this essay, three passages in which Wittgenstein discusses the theme or question of the miracle are illustrated and analysed. These are a passage from the Notebooks 1914-1916, a longer and more articulate passage from the Lecture on Ethics and an entry from the diary published under the title Movements of Thought. The aim is to understand the significance of these references to miracles that Wittgenstein makes at different stages and moments in his philosophy and to show that what Wittgenstein says about miracles and the miraculous is closely linked to his way of seeing and practising philosophy as distinct from science and its causal explanations.