Wittgenstein and Gandhi on Culture and Value 1

B.Sambasiva Prasad
b.sambasivaprasad@gmail.com

I
Both Wittgenstein and Gandhi are saint philosophers. They advocated the ultimate meaning
of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable. However, while Wittgenstein is an
academic philosopher, Gandhi was not. Gandhi was more a social reformer and led several
satyagraha movements against social injustice. But we find some similarities in the thoughts
of both Wittgenstein and Gandhi. Wittgenstein and Gandhi did not meet each other.
Probably Gandhi might have not known that a genius par excellence like Wittgenstein
existed. However, Wittgenstein advised Prof.K.L.Shah at Cambridge, to meet Gandhi when
the latter goes to India.

The objective of this paper is to expound Wittgenstein’s views on culture and value
and compare them with that of Gandhi. Wittgenstein focused upon the importance of
religion, ethics and aesthetics, as values. However, he said that they go beyond the
boundaries of language. According to him language is adequate to expound the empirical
truths and scientific facts. However, they cannot express values, as they go beyond the
realm of language. Any attempt of explaining them through language is not complete. It
amounts to “misuse of language”. In his view, ethics and religion have to be realized or
“shown” rather than verbally expressed or talked about. In this sense Wittgenstein is like
that of the Budddha , who preferred silence on all metaphysical questions. Wittgenstein had
also criticised the European culture and civilization on the ground that they are purely
materialistic. Though Gandhi did say similar to Wittgenstein, on culture and value his
analysis is “conceptual” rather than linguistic. Like that of Wittgenstein, Gandhi also felt that
beyond science and its material values, one should seek after moral and spiritual values. In
fact, the whole of Gandhian philosophy focuses upon this aspect. According to him, along
with material goods, moral and spiritual goods are to be pursued. They constitute an
integral whole. According to him material values, bereft of moral and spiritual values are
blind and moral and spiritual values bereft of material prosperity are lame. They are
complimentary but not contradictory. Both Wittgenstein and Gandhi criticised western
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culture and civilization. Their view point is that one should go beyond science and
technology and seek after value. This is the sum and substance of my paper. Permit me to
discuss in detail.

II

For Wittgenstein, culture does not merely mean tools of civilization and the
technological advancement reflected in industrial development and scientific inventions.
Culture for him comprises of morality, decorum of the society, religion, ethics and language.
They are intimately related. In this context, Wittgenstein expressed his displeasure on
western culture. He said:

“A culture is alike a big organization which assigns each of its members a place
where he can work in the spirit of the whole; and it is perfectly fair for his power
to be measured by the contribution he succeeds in making to the whole
enterprise. In an age without culture on the other hand forces become
fragmented and the power of an individual man is used up in overcoming
opposing forces and frictional resistances; .... I realize then that the disappearance
of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of
certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no
sympathy for the current of European civilization and do not understand its goals,
if it has any” (Wittgenstein, 1980, p.6).

For Wittgenstein, scientific propositions are factual. They expound certain facts. But
value statements are not factual. Values go beyond science. As science relates to facts, it
can be expressed through language. However as value goes beyond science, it cannot be
strictly expressed through language. In his “Lecture on Ethics” (1929), Wittgenstein
observes that ethics “is supernatural but our words will only express facts”. He viewed that
just as a tea-cup will only hold a tea-cup full of water even though one would pour out a
gallon over it, any amount of facts cannot express the ethical value, which is transcendental.
In short, ethical and religious values cannot be expressed in scientific propositions. All
Wittgenstein wanted to do with them was just to put them beyond the world, that is to
say beyond significant language.

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 To Wittgenstein, while science is empirical and factual, values are transcendental.
Therefore, they are to be sought after for their own sake. They have “intrinsic value”.
While science is extrinsic, value is intrinsic. Values, like goodness are indefinable in the
Moorean sense. Wittgenstein remarked, good is divine. “Queer as it sounds, that sumps
up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the supernatural ... The good is
outside the space of facts” (Wittgenstein, 1980, p.3). He added : “ You cannot lead people
to what is good; you can only lead them to some place or other. The good is outside the
space of facts” (ibid). Values, Wittgenstein opined, have totally different utilitarian aspect
from scientific facts. According to him, ethics and religion though cannot be expressed
through language, we cannot stop the temptation of expressing them through language. In
this sense it is a “misuse of language”. In ethical and religious discourse, we use language in
a metaphorical or allegorical ways. Throughout we find a misuse of language. “ All these
expressions seem, prima facie, to be just similes” (Wittgenstein, 1929). “Similes” are not
“pointers”. Pointers refer to facts, but similes cannot. This is one of the differences
between ordinary symbols and ethical and religious similes. But the fault of the people lies
in considering similes as ordinary symbols and apply them in religious and ethical
understanding. This is a clear misuse of language. Wittgenstein remarked : “ My whole
tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or
Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of
our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say
something about the ultimate meaning of the life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable,
can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a
document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting
deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it” ( Wittgenstein, 1929).

Religion, ethics, morality, aesthetics and culture are forms of life. These can be
apprehended through their language games. “Within a language-game of ethics, the basic
building blocks are ‘values’ which are relative to the other constitutes of their language
game, but outside the language game, these values have transcendental existence” (Panda,
2013). Through language games, Wittgenstein maintains both the relative and
transcendental aspect of values. The point of Wittgenstein is that there are language games

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in ethics, religion and aesthetics, however they could only express the relative aspect of
value, but not its transcendental value as the latter surpasses language.

According to Wittgenstein, values can only be “shown”, not said. This is implicitly
expressed, when he said in his Tractates that “Where of one cannot speak, there of one
must be silent”. Therefore, it is obvious that to Wittgenstein, ethics cannot be validly
spoken about like scientific propositions about the world. It can at best gives us metaphors
or similes which can point to higher truth. These cannot be analyzed in the manner of
scientific facts. It is their inexpressibility that lends values a transcendental character.
Wittgenstein said : ‘Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express
facts” (Wittgenstein, 1980, p.7). Thus to him , ethics cannot be a science. It remains only as
a therapeutic study only. A similar view is expressed by Ayer when he said that that ethical
statements are not empirical in nature. They are neither true nor false but are only
emotive. In his short but stimulating paper entitled “Limits of Science”, Einstein remarks
that as long as we are in the realm of science, we never encounter with a proposition like
“Thou shalt not lie”. Thus like Wittgenstein, thinkers like Ayer and Einstein pointed out the
limits of science. For them, ethics is something that surpasses the field of science.

III

Like Wittgenstein, Mahatma Gandhi too focuses upon ethical and religious values. The
whole of Gandhian philosophy is oven round two values- truth and nonviolence. Let it be
his ideas and practices in politics, economics, religion, education etc., truth and nonviolence
constitute their basis. What is untruth and violence is non-Gandhian. Gandhi said that
there is an intimate relation between truth and nonviolence- they are just like the two sides
of the same coin. They are inseparable. Like Wittgenstein, Gandhi said that the true
religion cannot be expressed through language. Gandhi demarcated between absolute,
universal, essential, true religion (Religion) on the one hand and actual, relative, historical,
organized institutionalized religion ( religion or religions) on the other ( Allen, 2011, p.149).
Relative religion or religions include specific scriptures, authoritative leaders, rituals, and
practices. On the contrary, the absolute and true religion is the underlying sprit of all the
relative religions. Gandhi considered the latter as the Truth of all religions. True religion,
says Gandhi, is beyond speech.

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 As explained earlier, we find in Wittgenstein a disapproval on the Western
civilization as it is based upon material growth alone. He wanted to go beyond science and
search for value. A similar approach, we find in Gandhian thought too. In his seminal work
Hind Swaraj (1919), Gandhi wrote that western civilization which is principally based upon
machinery “is like a snake-hole which may contain from one to hundred snakes” ( Gandhi,
1939: p.83). So also, in his speech at Muir College Economic Society, Allahabad, which he
delivered on December 22, 1916, Gandhi refers to two kinds of progress- economic
progress and real progress. For him real progress consists in moral progress. He said that
real progress and economic progress do not clash with other, but one is complementary to
the other. Like Wittgenstein, Gandhi said that one has to seek value beyond material
progress.

Gandhi prescribed eleven vows to his ashramites. They denote his list of values. They
are satya, ahimsa, asteya, aparigraha, brhamacharya, sarira-shrama, aswadha, sarvadharma
samabhava, aspryata nivarana, swadeshi and abhaya. To put them in English, they are
truth, nonviolence, non-stealing, non-possession, control of carnal pleasures, bread-labour,
control of the palate, equal respect to religions, removal of untouchability, economic
neighbourhood and fearlessness, respectively. These are the social, political, religious and
economic values to Gandhi. The first five values- satya, ahimsa, asteya, aparigraha and
brahmacharya are derived from Patanjali’s list of “yama” and Gandhi had expanded them
into eleven to suit to the political and social situations of his time and age. Satya and
ahimsa are the basic values, upon which all other values are derived.

According to Wittgenstein, there are divergent cultures which are relative and many.
However, there is one absolute culture that underlies all these relative cultures. A similar
approach, we find in the writings of Gandhi. According to him, one must understand the
essence of all cultures.

Gandhian conception of culture is not basically different from that of his religion.
Just as he said that every religion is true from its own view point, so also every culture is
true from its standpoint. In this context, Gandhi took the cue from the Jaina theory of
“svadvada”, the theory of many-ness of reality. Gandhi opposed cultural exclusivism.
According to him, one should not live in his culture in isolation, because proper

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understanding of other cultures would broaden one’s understanding of his own. He wrote,
“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive in existence (Harijan, 9-5-1926, p.100). He
pleaded for intercultural understanding. In one of his moving passages, Gandhi wrote: “ I
do not want my house to be walled on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the
culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be
blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar
or a slave (Young India, 1-6-1921, p.170).

IV

To conclude, both Wittgenstein and Gandhi focused upon culture and value. They consider
them as higher to science. Unlike science, they are transcendental in nature. Gandhi as well
as Wittgenstein do not want us to be caged in material richness. According to them one
must go beyond them and inquire into higher values. They do not completely reject material
growth, but pleaded that they must supplemented with moral and spiritual values. They
together constitute an integral whole . While Wittgenstein attempts to highlight this point
from linguistic perspective , Gandhi explains the same through his theory and practise.

Note

1. Paper submitted to the UGC sponsored seminar on “Buddha and Wittgenstein on Culture and Values”, to

be held at the Centre for Mahayana Buddhist Studies, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur.

References

Allen, Douglas. (2011). Mahatma Gandhi. London: Reaktion Books td.

Gandhi , M.K. ( 1938). Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Ahemedabad: Navajivan Publication House.
Panda, Ratikanta. (2013) . On line paper “Wittgenstein on Culture”.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1980). Culture and Value. Ed. By G.H.Von Wright. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
--------------------------. (1929). “A Lecture on Ethics”. Delivered in November 1929, to the Heretics
Society, Cambridge University.