In theology, a doctrine condemning all human effort and involvement with the world, in favour of passive devotional contemplation. In philosophy, the doctrine doubtfully associated with Wittgenstein that there is no standpoint from which to achieve the traditional philosophical goal of a theory about some concept or another (e.g. truth, experience). Wittgenstein sympathised with this, but his own practice included a relentless striving to gain a ‘perspicuous representation’ of perplexing elements in our thought. See minimalism.