PHIL/RS 335

1. PHIL/RS 335 Varieties, Pt. 6

2. Lecture 18: “Philosophy” • As we saw last time, the analysis of the mystical group leaves us without a means of resolving the question of the ‘truth’ of religious experience. • The turn to philosophy is motivated by the question, “Can philosophy do what the analysis of mysticism could not?”. • A typical strategy at this point is to similarly discredit philosophy and move in the direction of fideism (469-70). • Though James does insist that religious sentiments, like those revealed in the analysis of the mystical group (470), are the origin of religion, he is not thereby dismissing the significance of philosophy (471). • Philosophy is the key to moving from the private warrant offered by mystical experiences, to an appropriately intersubjective warrant (to Big T truth).

3. Where Philosophy has gone Wrong • That’s not to say that philosophy has always served such a salutary role. • There are species of “intellectualism” which have ignored the wellspring of religious experience with the aim of deducing the truth of religion from reason independent of feeling. • James identifies two versions of this “apriorism:” dogmatic theology and the philosophy of the absolute (Hegel). Common to both is the assumption that what is required for religion to be true is some sort of absolute warrant. • Cf., the passages from Caird and Newman (473-5). • As we have already seen, James thinks this assumption is dubious (475-6).

4. A Catalog of Errors • This bad intellectualism is clearly evident for James in the history of systematic or natural theology. • This history, as it is exemplified by Christianity, is characterized by the two-fold attempt to prove the existence of God and to specify God’s nature. • As we ourselves have seen, much of this effort has been fruitless.

5. Philosophy’s Proper Ground • As James presents it, the basis for this history of error is the failure to recognize something that has become the operative assumption of the tradition(s) of philosophy with which James allies himself (Empiricism and Pragmatism), “…the fact that man’s thinking is organically connected with his conduct” (482). • In James’s ‘radical’ form, this assumption is realized in the insistence that the value of a theory is its practical consequences (its “cash-value”). • Consider the summary of Pierce’s pragmatism (484-5).

6. Theology Reconsidered • From this pragmatic perspective, what can we make of the project of systematic/natural theology? • Considering the various attempts to specify God’s attributes (and leaving aside for the moment the moral ones), James insists that the truth or falsity of any specific claim about these attributes makes not one bit of difference to our lives (486). • God thus pursued is a “metaphysical monster” (487).

7. The Moral Attributes • In connection to the moral attributes typically attributed to God, James thinks the situation appears different. • If it could be established that there was a God who exhibited the morally significant attributes of omnibenevolence, omnipotence, omniscience, justice, etc., that would make an obvious and concrete difference to our lives. • But just as with the metaphysical attributes, the attempts by systematic/rational theology to produce such a proof have failed.

8. What’s Left? • Despite the apparent optimism with which James opens the lecture, there doesn’t appear much for philosophy to contribute to our discussion, at least insofar as the question of warrant is understood as requiring absolute warrant as an answer. • What if that requirement was lifted? What if instead of demanding a priori truth, we were content with a critical, inductive truth? • Instead of calling for dogmatic theology, we would be demanding a “science of religion.” • What would such a science look like? (496-7). • What would truth look like for such a science?

9. Lecture 20: Conclusions • What picture of the religious life has James revealed for us in these lectures? • One structured by the following beliefs (528-9): • The visible world is just one part of a ‘spiritual universe’ from which the visible gets its ultimate meaning; • Union with this universe is our proper end; • This union is a locus and source of real psychological and material effects. • These psychological effects include: • The transformation of moods suffusing experience; • Peace and Love.

10. One Religion? • Does this unifying account suggest that there is one and only one authentic religious experience? • James insists emphatically: NO! • Plural characters and plural divine qualities requires plural religious forms and expressions (530-531). • This is true even when we take seriously the idea of a science of religion. Such a science is not a master/ideal religion. It can only be a sort of threshold. Any practitioner still has to make a spiritual judgment: that what the science demarcates is true (532-3).

11. Two Competing Spiritual Judgments • As James acknowledges, there seems to be a judgment that has won the field: that religion is an anachronistic prejudice that has been appropriately overcome by the naturalistic world-view. • We have already developed the resources for understanding why for James, this judgment is false: it fails to take account of the admittedly private dimensions highlighted by the discussion of mysticism, but clearly central to any consideration of religious experience (542). • Lest we fall prey to the distorting and reductive tendency to reduce the subjective to the objective, we must keep open, as a live possibility, another judgment: that religion marks a distinct and unique field of experience, a field that has a subjective as well as objective warrant.

12. Subjective and Objective Warrant • As we’ve seen repeatedly, it is clear that religion can make a profound difference in the lives of believers. It is this fruit which serves as the subjective warrant for the truth of religious experience. • On the objective side, two questions press themselves: • Is there a common core at the bottom of the diversity of creeds; • Is this core true? • In response to the first, James answers affirmatively, identifying it in the common insistence that we are incomplete or flawed as we are, but that we can be completed in a relationship with something greater than us.

13. The ‘Greater’ is the Truth • In what sense can we ascribe objective significance to this insistence that our limitation can be overcome in relation to the greater? • James first returns to the idea of the subconscious, which serves as the chthonic, encompassing ground of our conscious experience. Employing this idea, James ventures a hypothesis (556-7). • Mysticism is one of the names we give to a connection to this ‘more’ of consciousness, but even if we are unwilling to accept the warrant of mystical experiences, the encompassing of the subconscious has an objective significance which must be acknowledged (559). • As we know from our earlier encounter with James, he is willing to go much further (563). • Why? “…the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow ‘scientific’ bounds…the real world is of a different temperament—more intricately built than physical science allows” (564).