Gabriel Citron | Princeton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Gabriel Citron

The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy, 2022

There is no single Jewish philosophical conception of God, and the array of competing conceptions... more There is no single Jewish philosophical conception of God, and the array of competing conceptions does not lend itself to easy systemization. Nonetheless, it is the aim of this chapter to provide an overview of this unruly theological terrain. It does this by setting out ‘maps’ of the range of positions which Jewish philosophers have taken regarding key aspects of the God-idea. These conceptual maps will cover: (i) how Jewish philosophers have thought of the role and status of conceiving of God in the first place; (ii) what Jewish philosophers have understood to be definitive of God or Divinity; (iii) Jewish philosophical conceptions of God’s oneness; (iv) Jewish philosophical conceptions of God’s transcendence or immanence; (v) Jewish philosophical conceptions of God’s personhood or lack thereof; (vi) Jewish philosophical understandings of why God created (or caused) a world; and (vii) Jewish philosophical understandings of God’s relationship to the Jewish people. Jointly, these seven conceptual maps outline the broad range of vying conceptions of God that have been held by Jewish philosophers over the centuries, while also enabling the reader a bird’s-eye-view of how these multiple conceptions relate to one another. The chapter concludes by touching on what Jewish philosophers have made of this immense diversity of theological conceptions included within the tradition.

What qualities do we need in order to be good philosophers? Wittgenstein insists that virtues of ... more What qualities do we need in order to be good philosophers? Wittgenstein insists that virtues of character – such as honesty, humility, courage, and strength – are more important for our philosophizing than the relevant intellectual talents and skills. These virtues are essential because doing good philosophy demands both knowing and overcoming the deep-seated desires and inclinations which lead us astray in our thinking, and achieving such self-knowledge and self-overcoming demands all of these virtues working in concert. In this paper I draw together many of Wittgenstein’s seemingly offhanded remarks on these issues in order to reconstruct his understanding of philosophy’s ‘difficulties of the will’ and the virtues needed to overcome them.

*Faith and Philosophy*, published 'Online First' at the journal's website

This paper appeals to the phenomenon of dreaming to provide a novel defense against arguments fro... more This paper appeals to the phenomenon of dreaming to provide a novel defense against arguments from evil. The thrust of the argument is as follows: when we wake up after a nightmare we are often filled entirely with relief, and do not consider ourselves to have actually suffered very much at all; and since it is epistemically possible that this whole life is simply a dream, it follows that it is epistemically possible that in reality there is very little suffering. This epistemic possibility decisively undermines a key premise of both logical and evidential arguments from evil.

Apophaticism - the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable - is one of the great me... more Apophaticism - the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable - is one of the great medieval traditions of philosophical thought about God, but it is largely overlooked by analytic philosophers of religion. This paper attempts to rehabilitate apophaticism as a serious philosophical option. We provide a clear formulation of the position, examine what could appropriately be said and thought about God if apophaticism is true, and consider ways to address the charge that apophaticism is self-defeating. In so doing we draw on recent work in the philosophy of language, touching on issues such as the nature of negation, category mistakes, fictionalism, and reductionism.

In Mikel Burley (ed.), *Wittgenstein, Religion, and Ethics: New Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology* (London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), pp. 33-47

*God, Mind, & Knowledge*, ed. Andrew Moore, Farnham, Ashgate, 2014, pp. 67-86

There has been much recent debate over the meaning of the claim that God is good and loving. Alth... more There has been much recent debate over the meaning of the claim that God is good and loving. Although the participants in this debate strongly disagree over the correct analysis of the claim, there is nonetheless agreement across all parties that there is a single correct analysis. This paper aims to overthrow this consensus, by showing that sentences such as ‘There is a good and loving God’ are often used to express a variety of beliefs with quite different logico-grammatical characteristics. Belief in a good and loving God might range from being an evidentially grounded and empirically falsifiable ontological hypothesis, all the way to being a belief which is both ungrounded and unfalsifiable, and more akin to an attitude than to an hypothesis.
The logical variety exhibited by the belief in a good and loving God often gives rise, in turn, to people holding that belief in a way that is indeterminate, mixed, or fluid between those different varieties. That is, someone’s belief in a good and loving God may hover indeterminately between more than one logical variety of the belief; or it may mix together some of the logical characteristics of different varieties of the belief; or it may change from having one logical character to another and perhaps back again. These properties are often masked by the fact that the belief is always expressed by the same sentence regardless of any indeterminacy, mixedness, or fluidity.
Though these properties are rarely discussed by analytic philosophers of religion, logico-grammatical variety, indeterminacy, mixedness, and fluidity are pervasive in religious beliefs and utterances, and account for much of those beliefs and utterances' real-life complexity. This paper will make a start at an examination of these important properties by using the belief in a good and loving God as a representative case study.

*Philosophical Investigations*, 35:1, Jan 2012, pp. 18-42

The predominant interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later remarks on religion takes him to hold that... more The predominant interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later remarks on religion takes him to hold that all religious utterances are non-scientific, and to hold that the way to show that religious utterances are non-scientific is to identify and characterise the grammatical rules governing their use. This paper claims that though this does capture one strand of Wittgenstein’s later thought on religion, there is an alternative strand of that thought which is quite different and more nuanced. In this alternative strand Wittgenstein stresses that religious utterances and beliefs can come in both scientific and non-scientific varieties. More than that, he claims that the grammar of religious utterances, and the logic of religious beliefs, is often complex – in that individual utterances and beliefs will often be mixed between, indeterminate between, or fluid between being scientific and being non-scientific. This complexity means that it will often be unhelpful to try to pin down one particular grammar or logic for a given utterance or belief. Wittgenstein therefore suggests a new method of grammatical and logical investigation, which is less likely to distort complex grammars or logics by being overly simplistic or rigid. This method is to use simple examples of utterances and beliefs as objects of comparison, so as to illuminate the different aspects of the more complex actual utterances and beliefs under examination. This alternative strand in Wittgenstein’s later remarks on religion is a manifestation of a broader strand of Wittgenstein’s later thought as a whole, which was first described by Friedrich Waismann, and later developed by Gordon Baker and Oskari Kuusela. The paper concludes by providing examples of religious beliefs which are logically mixed, indeterminate, and fluid, and showing how simple objects of comparison can be used to illuminate them.

Nordic Wittgenstein Review 2 , Apr 20, 2013

The co-authors of this paper are currently editing G. E. Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s Cambridg... more The co-authors of this paper are currently editing G. E. Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s Cambridge lectures, 1930-1933, for a book to be published by Cambridge University Press. In this paper we examine the importance of Wittgenstein’s 1930-33 lectures in the context of the development of his philosophy more generally, and in the context of contemporary scholarly debates about how best to understand Wittgenstein’s later thought; we describe the text of Moore’s notes, explaining their unique value as records of Wittgenstein’s 1930-33 lectures; we briefly review the varied and wide-ranging content of the lectures; we discuss Moore’s role in the lectures themselves and in responding to their content; and finally, we outline the principal editorial challenges that these materials present, and provide a brief outline of our editorial project.

Scholarly Editions of Wittgenstein Texts by Gabriel Citron

*Mind*, vol. 124, Jan 2015, pp. 1-71

Between 1937 and 1951 Wittgenstein had numerous philosophical conversations with his student and ... more Between 1937 and 1951 Wittgenstein had numerous philosophical conversations with his student and close friend, Rush Rhees. This article is composed of Rhees’s notes of twenty such conversations — namely, all those which have not yet been published — as well as some supplements from Rhees’s correspondence and miscellaneous notes. The principal value of the notes collected here is that they fill some interesting and important gaps in Wittgenstein’s corpus. Thus, firstly, the notes touch on a wide range of subjects, a number of which are only briefly addressed by Wittgenstein elsewhere, if at all. The subjects discussed include: explanation, ethics, anarchism, contradiction, psychoanalysis, colour, religion, concepts, classification, seeing-as, evolution, the relation between science and philosophy, and free will, amongst others. Secondly, the notes contain references to, and brief remarks about, philosophers of whom Wittgenstein otherwise says very little, if anything — such as Brentano, Heidegger, Aquinas, and Marx, amongst others. And thirdly, the notes provide us with valuable examples of Wittgenstein’s use of some key ‘Wittgensteinian’ terms of art which are surprisingly rare in his written works, such as ‘surface-’ and ‘depth-grammar’, and ‘centres of variation’.

*Mind*, vol. 124, Jan 2015, pp. 73-84

In April 1939, G. E. Moore read a paper to the Cambridge University Moral Science Club entitled ‘... more In April 1939, G. E. Moore read a paper to the Cambridge University Moral Science Club entitled ‘Certainty’. In it, amongst other things, Moore made the claims that: (i) the phrase ‘it is certain’ could be used with sense-experience-statements, such as ‘I have a pain’, to make statements such as ‘It is certain that I have a pain’; and that (ii) sense-experience-statements can be said to be certain in the same sense as some material-thing-statements can be — namely in the sense that they can be safely counted on. When Moore later read his paper to Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein took violent exception to it, and the two entered into a heated exchange. The only known notes of this exchange are a previously unpublished verbatim record of part of it, taken by Norman Malcolm. This paper is an edition of Malcolm’s notes. These notes are valuable for both philosophical and scholarly reasons. They give us a glimpse of a sustained exchange between Wittgenstein and a real-life interlocutor; they contain a defence by Wittgenstein of the idea that a word’s use can illuminate its meaning; and they provide evidence of Wittgenstein’s philosophical engagement with the topic of certainty, and with Moore’s thought on it, long before he began to write the notes which make up *On Certainty*, in 1949.

Cambridge University Press, 2016

This edition of G. E. Moore's notes taken at Wittgenstein's seminal Cambridge lectures in the ear... more This edition of G. E. Moore's notes taken at Wittgenstein's seminal Cambridge lectures in the early 1930s provides, for the first time, an almost verbatim record of those classes. The presentation of the notes is both accessible and faithful to their original manuscripts, and a comprehensive introduction and synoptic table of contents provide the reader with essential contextual information and summaries of the topics in each lecture. The lectures form an excellent introduction to Wittgenstein's middle-period thought, covering a broad range of philosophical topics, ranging from core questions in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and mathematics, to illuminating discussions of subjects on which Wittgenstein says very little elsewhere, including ethics, religion, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume also includes a 1932 essay by Moore critiquing Wittgenstein's conception of grammar, together with Wittgenstein's response. A companion website offers access to images of the entire set of source manuscripts.

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*Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer: The Text and the Matter*, eds. Lars Albinus, Josef GF Rothhaupt & Aidan Seery, De Gruyter, 2016, pp. 85-97, 2016

Wittgenstein Source Facsimile Edition of Moore’s Notes of Wittgenstein’s Lectures (MWN) provides ... more Wittgenstein Source Facsimile Edition of Moore’s Notes of Wittgenstein’s Lectures (MWN) provides online access to the manuscripts containing G.E. Moore's almost verbatim record of Wittgenstein's classes, Cambridge, 1930-1933.
These lectures are an excellent introduction to the middle Wittgenstein, illustrating the development of his thought away from the Tractatus and towards what would become the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein discusses a wide range of core questions in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and mathematics. There are also illuminating discussions of subjects on which Wittgenstein elsewhere says very little, including ethics, religion, aesthetics, psychonalysis, and anthropology. Also included are facsimiles of Moore’s later summaries of his lecture notes, and a 1932 essay by Moore critiquing Wittgenstein's conception of grammar.
The three editors have also produced a book edition of these materials: Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933, From the Notes of G. E Moore Cambridge University Press (2016). The facsimiles are reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, Perry Moore, and Thomas Baldwin.

Forthcoming

Wittgenstein occasionally read with pen in hand, and as a result he has left us a small but fasci... more Wittgenstein occasionally read with pen in hand, and as a result he has left us a small but fascinating assortment of marginalia. These range from simple underlinings or single-world exclamations jotted in a margin, to long and involved paragraphs running all the way round the borders of a page.
These markings and comments give us a sense of Wittgenstein’s immediate reactions to the ideas of other thinkers. Some of Wittgenstein’s notes touch on topics about which he rarely or never wrote elsewhere (such as social theory or the Eucharist), whereas some of the marginal remarks form the first germ of remarks which he went on to develop in greater detail in his notebooks (such as his detailed comments in GH Hardy’s *Course of Pure Mathematics*).
This edition will include Wittgenstein’s marginal comments on works by John Bunyan, Matthias Claudius, Ludwig Hänsel, GH Hardy, David Hilbert, James Jeans, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Rush Rhees, Moritz Schlick, Thoralf Skolem, George Thomson, and others. Where possible, the marginalia will be reproduced in facsimile, transcription, and translation. They are to be published on the 'Wittgenstein Source' website (http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/). We will be adding the material to the site slowly, over the next few months, so please check back periodically.

Papers in Progress by Gabriel Citron