Religious Vertigo

Our overarching concern is mapping out the ramifications of the Wittgensteinian conception of hinge commitments to the religious case. More specifically, our aim is to use this conception to understand certain core features of fundamental religious commitment. Drawing on two important literary depictions of religious conviction – Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers, Shusaku Endo’s Silence – it is argued that a common phenomenon emerges, that of religious vertigo. This arises out of the recognition that one’s religious commitment, in its most fundamental form, is not like a regular belief at all, but rather plays a fulcrum, arational role in one’s worldview. Moreover, this recognition is usually occluded in everyday life. Fundamental religious commitment is thus revealed to be in a sense uncanny. It is argued that religious vertigo is a form of the more general epistemic vertigo that I have claimed is akey element of the later Wittgenstein’s conception of the structure of rational evaluations.