Abstract

I have previously argued that John Henry Newman’s seminal monograph, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, was an important influence on the notebooks that make up Wittgenstein’s final work, On Certainty. In particular, I’ve argued that Newman’s brand of anti-evidentialism is a major stimulus for the radical ‘hinge’ conception of the structure of rational evaluation that Wittgenstein offers in these notebooks. I’ve also contended that taking this influence seriously lends impetus to the application of hinge epistemology to the religious case (a position I call quasi-fideism). Having made the case for Newman’s influence, I here consider some of the ways in which Newman’s anti-evidentialism diverges from a Wittgensteinian quasi-fideism, especially once we take seriously Newman’s proto-virtue epistemological remarks about how real assent can be the product of what he terms the illative sense. In an irenic spirit, I also consider what an epistemology of religious belief might look like that aims to incorporate insights from both Newman and Wittgenstein.