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In recent years there have been those who assert that the philosophy of Wittgenstein resembles Zen Buddhism and those who deny it on the ground that any supposed resemblances are only apparent. But, so far as I know, neither party has made any serious attempt to substantiate his claim. Normally this is understandable because their main purposes lie in a different directions. It is, for instance, quite common for the latter merely to locate Wittgenstein in a different philosophical tradition and pin a label such as Logical Positivism or Logical Empiricism on him. I think the matter is much more complex than this or indeed than either party seems to allow. I want to try to see to what extent either position can be supported. Any errors and confusions of which I am guilty may perhaps stimulate someone to give a more thorough treatment or to attempt further clarification by way of correction. [1]

　　 In one of his typical dissertations Wittgenstein himself pointed out that its spirit was different from the mainstream of European and American civilization. [2] About this K. T. Fann comments: "It is not surprising that we should find striking resemblances between Wittgenstein's methods and those of Zen Buddhism -- a philosophy from a very different culture." [3] Because it is not relevant to his main purpose Fann does not proceed to clarify or support his assertion about these resemblances. He merely contents himself with one or two general remarks about the well-known ability of Zen masters to show the nonsensical character of metaphysical questions along with a remark about a resemblance between the enlightenment attributed to the Buddha and the state of complete clarity for which Wittgenstein was striving. This seems as good a starting point as any other, and I will begin negatively by challenging some of the resemblances mentioned by Fann.

　　 At the outset one of his assertions must be rejected and another regarded as seriously misleading. In the first place Zen is described as "a philosophy from a very different culture." That Zen is the product of a very different culture cannot be disputed; but that it is a philosophy has to be denied, and Zennists have always done so. Indeed Zen is a deliberate and clearheaded rejection of the propriety of importing philosophizing of any kind into the types of situation where the person is directly concerned with the attainment of the enlightenment and liberation attributed to the Buddha. This may well give Zen a certain philosophical interest, especially when some of the methods used by Zen

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H. Hudson is a member of the Philosophy Department, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

1. Whenever I write about Buddhism I include Zen Buddhism, and instead of "Zen Buddhism" I have used the term "Zen" for convenience. The Wittgenstein of whom I write is the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations and other associated works, not the earlier Wittgenstein who wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

2. Cf. Wittgenstein's Foreword to his Philosophische Bermerkugen.

3. K. T. Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 110.

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masters have the purpose of helping the individual to realize the absurdity of doing this. One may also, of course, philosophize about the "aim" of Zen and its methods but as has often been pointed out, this is not to practice it.

　　 Secondly, Fann speaks of Zen masters showing the nonsensical character of metaphysical questions. This is true, but misleading. It might be interpreted as meaning, for example, that Zen masters hold implicitly at least some general thesis about the nonsensicality of such questions and assertions. But this is not so, either in Zen in particular or in Buddhism in general. When the Buddha was asked the famous Four Questions we are told that he refused to answer, saying that they were profitless because they are irrelevant to the problem of freeing us from suffering and are unanswerable or undecidable. By the latter he has to be taken as meaning just what he says and exhorting us to leave what is undecidable as undecidable. By abstaining from any kind of yes or no answer he takes the Middle Way or the freedom of no position on such matters. The questions have been said to be like asking whether the hair of a tortoise is smooth or hard; but whatever we may think of this analogy, the error involved seems to be that of confusing the Transcendent with what is empirical in the ordinary sense of the latter word. [4] Alternatively it amounts to confusing what is beyond all conceptualization with what is conceptualized, or confusing two different categories. Later in the Maadhyamika dialectic, there is a systematic effort to show that if we abandon the Buddha's position on such questions and relapse into dogmatism or giving a yes or a no answer, the result is self-contradiction and nonsense. But the dialectic is an attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of dogmatic attitudes to propositions rather than the absurdity of the propositions themselves. There is nothing wrong in conceptualization, the fault lies in us when we confuse it with what is beyond conceptualization and take a dogmatic attitude about the truth of the consequences of our mistake or about the falsity of someone else's. In Zen, where the chief concern is with the practice of meditation, a Zen master may indeed show the nonsensical character of metaphysical questions and assertions, but when doing so he speaks from the position of the Buddha, with such points as those mentioned in mind, to those who are actively and directly engaged in attaining enlightenment.