Faith in the Flybottle

Promoting philosophical inquiry through the study and appreciation of peoples and persons, lives and languages, cultures and communities, reasons and religions.

The painting at the top of this page is the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1455-1450) by Rogier van der Weyden (1400-1464). Beside being a fabulous piece of Early Netherlandish painting, I was drawn to it by philosopher Tim Crane’s book The Meaning of Belief (Harvard University Press, 2017). I love Crane’s book because it expresses, albeit in a slightly different philosophical idiom to my own, the goal understanding the meaning of religion (and what it means to people) rather than only obsessing over whether this or that religion or religious belief is true or false (let alone intellectually respectable). The painting itself, perhaps the greatest symbolic depiction of the seven Christian sacraments, illustrates the central fact that more than mere ideology or abstraction, religion weaves itself into all aspects of human life and lives: their births, their naming and claiming by a community, their shortcomings and confessions, their daily nourishment and domestic intimacies, their interpersonal unions and relationships, their accomplishments, infirmities, and finally deaths.

My name is David. I’m currently a doctoral student studying to become an academic philosopher. This website, blog, and podcast is my attempt to stay in touch with my philosophical past, present, and future, as well as a space and resource for fellow philosophers interested in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wittgensteinian and Wittgenstein-inspired philosophy of religion, and (extra-) ordinary language philosophers. I hope you’ll find something edifying of interest and be spurred to philosophical investigations of your own!