Fergus Kerr on Cornelius Ernst and Herbert McCabe as readers of Wittgenstein

How, as theologians, did Cornelius Ernst and Herbert McCabe read Wittgenstein’s Investigations? Neither held the standard view that the Investigations is intended as a contribution to something  called “philosophy of language.” That (Ernst would have thought) is [a] kind of “trivialization” of Wittgenstein … . That only corrals Wittgenstein in a crowded field of professional philosophy. His work is much more revolutionary and iconoclastic than that. Neither Ernst nor McCabe believed that the Investigations was any more responsible for ordinary language philosophy, linguistic analysis, and so on, than the Tractatus for logical positivism. Such outgrowths they regarded as the product of radical misunderstandings. They did not believe that his advice to “Let the uses of words teach you their meaning” was the cure-all for philosophical problems. They believed, as we have seen, that the later work initiated “the demise of the Cartesian epoch,” as McCabe said and, as Ernst said, offered relief from “the absurdity of the empiricist theory of meaning.” They held that the point of Wittgenstein’s distinction in the Tractatus between what can be said and what we must be silent about was made in order to protect the realm of ethics and religion — the mystical — from misapplied ideals of science.

from “Anscombe, Ernst, and McCabe: Wittgenstein and Catholic Theology.” Josephinium Journal of Theology 15/1 (2008): 67-86.