What’s a flybottle?
This site is called “Faith in the Flybottle” and is obviously about the practice of the philosophy of religion. But what is a “flybottle” anyway and what does it have to do with religion?
In his Philosophical Invenstigations, the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein posed a rhetorical question to himself: “What is your goal in philosophy?” After a pause, he answered himself: “To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” (Wittgenstein 2009: section). “Fly-bottle” is how Elizabeth Anscombe translated the German word Fliegenglass. A Fliegenglass, or Fliegenfalle, or a Fliegenfalle aus Glass is a kind of flytrap. You can see a picture of a flybottle to the right, from the Moschiera Archaeological Ethnographic Museum in Ollegio Italy (via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0). Wittgenstein likely encountered these types of flytraps in rural Austria.
As indicated, the flybottle flytrap is a metaphor for how Wittgenstein understood philosophy, only we (who do philosophy) are the flies trying to escape before we die of exhaustion or starvation.