Abstract

This study is addressed to the significance of suffering in relation to religious belief. Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein suggest that certain types of suffering, termed inward suffering, lead to belief in God and characterize the life of the religious believer. This investigation is situated within the context of human ontology and the quest for meaningful existence. ;An examination of Wittgenstein's early work reveals an interest in the questions of meaningful existence and theistic belief. The larger Wittgensteinian corpus expresses specific Kierkegaardian motifs such as levels of religiousness, a subjective approach to religious belief, and the fundamental role of suffering in relation to religious belief. ;Based upon Kierkegaard's ontology of the self, anxiety and despair are discussed as a manifestation of a dysrelationship to God, the ontological ground of the self. The individual's despair and anxiety are alleviated only by establishing a proper relationship to God through faith. Wittgenstein's characterization of the movement of the individual toward religious belief parallels Kierkegaard's analysis. ;Kierkegaard's Abraham is the paradigm case for the discussion of the religious existence. Abraham not only suffers alienation from the finite, but through what Kierkegaard designates the double-movement, Abraham exists happily in the finite. The early Wittgenstein is a type of Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Wittgenstein expresses a personal interest in the highest form of religious existence, but nevertheless he exists outside of it. ;The epistemological reorientation found in the later Wittgenstein roots theistic belief at the level of what he considers "stand fast" beliefs. Through inward suffering, understood as arising from human ontology, theistic belief has the same status as other beliefs which are natural to the human species. The inwardness fostered through despair and anxiety is a condition of religious belief. ;For Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein to a lesser extent, inward suffering is normative, but transformational. In contrast, the position is here argued that inward suffering is a manifestation of the human search for meaning, and while one cannot establish such suffering as normative, it is actual for most