Wittgenstein on Happiness: Harmony,Disharmony and Antitheodicy

This paper investigates Wittgenstein's remarks on happiness and harmony in the context of Wittgensteinian antitheodicy. Philosophers of religion inspired by Wittgenstein's philosophy often criticize theodicies seeking to justify apparently meaningless evil and suffering within God's overall harmonious plan. The paper analyses Wittgenstein's early views on happiness as harmony with the world, examining whether they are incompatible with an antitheodicist approach abandoning the very project of theodicy by acknowledging a certain kind of disharmony. However, antitheodicy may also, at the transcendental meta‐level, be considered a “harmonious” way of “seeing the world aright,” which raises a reflexive problem for any Wittgenstein‐inspired antitheodicy.