W I L L I A M JA M E S ON E T H IC S A N D FA I T H
This book offers a new interpretation of William James’s ethical an...
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W I L L I A M JA M E S ON E T H IC S A N D FA I T H
This book offers a new interpretation of William James’s ethical and religious thought. Michael R. Slater shows that James’s conception of morality, or what it means to lead a moral and flourishing life, is intimately tied to his conception of religious faith, and argues that James’s views on these matters are worthy of our consideration. He offers a reassessment of James’s “will to believe” or “right to believe” doctrine, his moral theory, and his neglected moral arguments for religious faith. He also argues that James’s pragmatic account of religion is based on an ethical view of the function of religion and a realist view of the objects of religious belief and experience, and is compatible with his larger conception of pragmatism. The book will appeal to readers interested in the history of modern philosophy, especially pragmatism, a well as those interested in moral philosophy, religion, and the history of ideas. . is Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Theology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
W I L L I A M JA M E S ON E T H IC S A N D FA I T H M IC H A E L R . SL AT E R Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ © Michael R. Slater Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Slater, Michael R., – William James on ethics and faith / Michael R. Slater. p. cm. ---- . James, William, –. . Religion and ethics. I. Title. .s –dc ---- hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For Erin
Contents
Acknowledgements
page ix
Introduction: a practical faith
The will and the right to believe
James’s Wager and the right to believe
James’s religious ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
A pragmatic account of religion
Epilogue Bibliography Index
vii
Acknowledgements
I could not have written this book without a great deal of assistance from a number of remarkable people. First thanks go to my teachers and graduate advisors at Brown University, Sumner B. Twiss and John P. Reeder, Jr., who first encouraged me to pursue this topic as a doctoral student and helped me to clarify and refine my views, on James and on many other matters besides. Special thanks are also due to Harold D. Roth for his stalwart support and wise counsel during my years at Brown, and to Philip J. Ivanhoe, who has given me invaluable feedback and career advice in recent years, including the excellent suggestion that I should forget about trying to publish my dissertation and write a new book instead. A number of people read drafts and offered helpful comments on the manuscript at various stages, including Erin M. Cline, Randy L. Friedman, Andrew J. Hunter, and Philip J. Ivanhoe. I offer each of them my most sincere and heartfelt thanks. I also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press, whose perceptive comments on my manuscript helped me to sharpen my reading of James on a number of points. I am grateful to Hilary Gaskin, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for her confidence in my project and her work in bringing this book into print. Special thanks are also due to Christina Sarigiannidou and Gillian Dadd of Cambridge University Press, who oversaw the material production of this book, and to Lyn Flight, who copyedited it. I also wish to acknowledge the generous support of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon, which covered the costs associated with using the image of James on the jacket of this book. Above all, though, I want to thank my remarkable wife, Erin M. Cline, for her constant love, understanding, and companionship. This book is dedicated to her. ix
x
Acknowledgements
Works by William James are referred to in the body of the text by abbreviations given in the Bibliography at the end of the book. Chapter is a revised version of “Metaphysical Intimacy and the Moral Life: The Ethical Project of The Varieties of Religious Experience,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, :, Winter , –. © Charles S. Peirce Society, and reprinted with the permission of Indiana University Press. Parts of the third section in Chapter originally appeared in “Pragmatism, Realism, and Religion,” Journal of Religious Ethics, :, December . © Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc., reprinted with the permission of Blackwell Publishing. I thank the publishers and editors involved for permission to reuse this material.
Introduction: a practical faith
Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world which they suggest were real. It is a fact of human nature, that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma or definition. “Is Life Worth Living?” ()
Faith thus remains as one of the inalienable birthrights of our mind. Of course it must remain a practical, and not a dogmatic attitude. It must go with toleration of other faiths, with the search for the most probable, and with the full consciousness of responsibilities and risks. “Faith and the Right to Believe” ()
In Part XII of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (), Cleanthes asserts that the proper office of religion is to enforce “the motives of morality and justice,” and that when it “distinguishes itself, and acts as a separate principle over men, it has departed from its proper sphere and has become only a cover to faction and ambition.” Only a philosophical or rational religion avoids such excesses, Philo replies, but it is not relevant to practical life. The Dialogues concludes by leaving us with a choice: between an intellectually credible but practically irrelevant type of faith, on the one hand, and a practically relevant but vulgar and even vicious type of faith, on the other hand. (The unstated third option, of course, is not to believe at all.) Hume’s way of framing the relationship between religion and morality and our options with respect to religious belief provides an illustrative contrast with William James’s views on these matters. Throughout his philosophical career, James
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Richard H. Popkin (ed.), nd edn. (Indianapolis: Hackett, ), p. . Ibid., pp. –.
William James on Ethics and Faith
devoted himself to showing that religious faith can be at once reasonable and practically valuable, that we do not have to choose. In order for faith to be reasonable, he believed, it must (among other things) reject dogmatism and practice tolerance toward other faiths. And in order to be practically valuable it must demonstrate its value for life, above all for what James called “the moral life.” These are two of the essential features of his pragmatic account of religion, an account that has been widely studied and criticized over the years but rarely well understood. This book offers an interpretation and critical analysis of the connection between James’s religious and moral views. It shows that James viewed religion and morality as related and in some cases interdependent matters, and argues that an adequate understanding of either his philosophy of religion or his ethics requires that we grasp their relation to each other. Although previous interpreters have recognized this connection to varying degrees – Bernard P. Brennan, Henry S. Levinson, Hilary and Ruth Anna Putnam, and Ellen Kappy Suckiel have all discussed it in their respective work on James – none have explored the issue at any great length or in very considerable detail. This is an issue of no small importance, for what is at stake here is nothing short of how we understand James’s philosophy of religion and his ethics, and, indeed, how we understand his philosophy as a whole. What I hope to show, in particular, is that the relationship between James’s religious and moral views ran in both directions, leading him to stress not only the moral value and function of religious belief but also the claim that the highest forms of moral agency and human flourishing can be achieved only through leading a religious life. Indeed, as we shall see in Chapters and , James would eventually combine his pragmatic views on religious belief with a commitment to a version of religious realism, a fact that has important consequences for virtually every area of his thought, including not only his ethics and philosophy of religion but also his epistemology and metaphysics. In addition to
See Bernard P. Brennan, The Ethics of William James (New York: Bookman Associates, ), pp. –; Henry S. Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Hilary Putnam, with Ruth Anna Putnam, “William James’s Ideas,” in, James Conant (ed.) Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –; and Ellen Kappy Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion: William James’s Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, ), pp. –. By religious realism, I mean the view that there are knowable, mind-independent religious facts, objects, or properties. Th is definition is broad enough to include the views of realist philosophers of religion such as D. C. Macintosh and John Hick, but it presumes no special connection with their views. For the definition of realism on which this definition of religious realism is based, see the entry for “anti-realism” in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, nd edn. (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
Introduction: a practical faith
showing that James was a religious realist, however, I shall also argue that James was a kind of metaphysical realist, and that a commitment to this variety of realism is not only presupposed by his religious realism but is also basic to his pragmatic theory of truth. I make a case for reading James along these lines in Chapter , and, if I am right, the widespread assumption that James’s pragmatism reduces truth to utility – including the reduction of religious truth-claims to their practical value – is mistaken. Before discussing these aspects of my interpretation in greater detail, it will be helpful first to survey James’s views on religion and morality and consider some of their more prominent features. James’s interest in religion was due chiefly to its practical value for life, but he did not believe that religion was a mere supplement to morality. Rather, he held it to be the most important of all human functions, and our only means of achieving the highest forms of happiness or human flourishing (VRE, –, see Bibliography for abbreviations of works by James). While we can lead moral lives without being persons of faith, James believed, “in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power” (WB, ). Beyond the practical benefit of increasing our “moral energy” or moral motivation, however, religious faith also provides an objective standard – an “infinite scale of values,” as James calls it – against which we can and, more importantly, should measure our moral values and ideals (WB, ). As James insisted, “the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands” (WB, ). If we want to achieve and sustain a truly “strenuous mood” in our careers as moral agents and account for the existence of objective moral values and ideals, James argues, we must postulate the existence of a divine thinker (WB, –). When James first advanced this argument in the early s he denied knowledge of the divine thinker’s existence and attributes, and instead held that “our postulation of him … serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood” (WB, ). Over the course of the next decade, however, James would come to believe that we could do more than merely postulate the existence of a divine thinker. Beginning with The Varieties
For other interpretations of James as a religious realist, see Ellen Kappy Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion (), and T. L. S. Sprigge, “William James as a Religious Realist,” in Jeremy Carrette (ed.) William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Centenary Celebration, New York: Routledge, ), pp. –.
William James on Ethics and Faith
of Religious Experience (), he would argue that religious and mystical experiences can provide access to and knowledge of such a being, and, just as importantly, provide a warrant for religious and moral beliefs based upon them. In the process, James’s moral views also underwent changes, the most significant of which was his coming to believe in the reality of an unseen ideal order, one that could produce real and positive effects in the lives of human beings (exemplified par excellence in the person of saints) and which was the source of most of our moral ideals (VRE, ). Thus, James came to believe that the content of morality is also dependent on religion to a significant degree, and that the moral improvement of human lives and societies is dependent on it as well. Indeed, he would come to believe that the perfection or salvation of the world itself depended on the beliefs and actions of religious persons acting in concert with the objects of their faith, a religious view that he called meliorism (P, –; SPP, –). While James usually emphasized the practical value of religious belief, he recognized that there was more to religious faith than this, and that the value of religion cannot be finally separated from the facts about religion. Writing of the objective truth of beliefs based on religious experiences, James makes clear that he understands the word “truth” as meaning “something additional to bare value for life, although the natural propensity of man is to believe that whatever has great value for life is thereby certified as true” (VRE, , note ). Hence, despite his deep interest in the psychology and practical value of religion, his understanding of the objects of religious belief and his account of religion more generally did not reduce either to human psychology or utility. For James, religious faith involves belief in what he variously calls a “more,” a “wider self,” an “unseen region,” or “the supreme reality,” one which not only grounds our moral values, but in relation to which we achieve our highest good (VRE, –). As I mentioned above, he believed in the existence of an unseen, supernatural order of reality – “God” was the name of his “overbelief” about it – and held that it can be not only the source of our moral values or ideals, but can also produce real effects in this world (VRE, –). As James makes clear, to hold such a view is to see the unseen order as a real, active, and ameliorating force in the world, as – in the
For James’s discussion of saints and the value of saintliness, see VRE, –. To my knowledge, Ellen Suckiel was the first interpreter to recognize that James’s ethical views underwent important and specifically religious changes subsequent to the publication of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (). See Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion (), pp. –.
Introduction: a practical faith
most general terms – a “wider self through which saving experiences come ” (VRE, ). Under the terms of this “pragmatic” or “piecemeal supernatural” view of religion, as James variously called it, the world is believed to have a different metaphysical constitution than a purely materialistic world would have: “it must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required” (VRE, ). James argued that religious belief can be reasonable under certain conditions, and can, when acted upon, produce valuable practical effects which cannot be obtained in any other way (WB, –, –; SPP, –). Indeed, he believed that “the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs” might conceivably help God to be “more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks” (VRE, ). But a practical faith of this sort need not be evidentially groundless, even if the evidence for it is of a different kind than other of our beliefs. As James maintained, “we may well believe, on the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own” (P, ). What this brief survey reveals, I think, is not only that James endorsed a realistic theory of religion , but also that he saw religious faith as an ethical matter, one that concerns not merely what a person believes but also how she lives. Although he viewed morality as autonomous in a basic sense, he also held – as we shall see, beginning in Chapter – that there are important moral goods which can be had or accounted for only through religious belief. But just as religion performs an important and irreplaceable function in the moral life, James suggests, so too do our moral values and judgements perform an important function in the religious life, providing an ethical criterion for the evaluation of religious beliefs and experiences (WB, –, –; VRE, –, –, –; PU, ). One of the basic challenges in exploring this topic is the apparent imbalance between James’s religious and moral views, specifically the fact that he seems to have written much more about religion than about morality. That James made important contributions to the philosophy of religion almost goes without saying, but his ethics remains one of the most obscure and understudied areas of his thought. The latter state of affairs is due, at least in part, to the difficulties inherent in even identifying James’s ethics. Although he wrote a number of popular philosophical essays on moral issues, he published only one essay on ethical theory, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (). James has much more to say about ethics than this, however, and, indeed, the closing section of the essay provides us with a clue about the subsequent direction of his ethical
William James on Ethics and Faith
thought. For having outlined a naturalistic approach to metaethics and a consequentialist moral theory in the first four sections of the essay, James proceeds to develop a practical argument for religious faith in the final section, one which aims to show why morality and any fully adequate account of ethics requires metaphysical and theological beliefs, the most important of which is belief in God (WB, –). Although much has been made of James’s views in the first four sections of the essay, especially his ethical theory, the significance of his turn to religious ethics in the final section has been largely and curiously overlooked in the secondary literature. This tendency is all the more glaring when one considers that the dependence of morality on some form of religious faith is the dominant ethical theme in James’s subsequent writings, and is especially pronounced in such works as The Varieties of Religious Experience (), Pragmatism (), and A Pluralistic Universe (). The fact is that James’s moral views are frequently bound up with his religious views. For this reason, it is not inaccurate to say that James has a religious ethics: that is, he holds certain moral views that are religious in nature, or are expressive of certain religious commitments. We shall encounter the specific content of James’s religious commitments as this study progresses, as well as the arguments that he gives in support of them. In brief, I hope to show not only that religion and morality are fundamentally interrelated matters for James, but that on his view the highest forms of happiness or human flourishing can be attained only through religious faith. More specifically, I hope to show that James’s ethics entails a pluralistic version of eudaemonism, one which conceives
Although early in his philosophical career James argued for the practical necessity of theistic belief, he eventually came to endorse a more pluralistic view in which belief in God is but one of many possible and legitimate overbeliefs that a person might hold. By “overbelief,” James means a religious or metaphysical belief which reflects a particular religious doctrine, and which exceeds the “more” of consciousness that he believes is encountered in genuine cases of religious or mystical experience (see VRE, –). As we shall see in Chapter , James’s view presumes that religious and mystical experiences are to some extent conceptually underdetermined and require interpretation in the light of a conceptual system or framework. Whether or not this is a defensible view is something that we shall have to consider. For now, it is enough to note that whereas James explicitly argued for a version of theism in such essays as “Reflex and Action and Theism” () and “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (), by the mid-s his religious views had begun to move in a decidedly pluralistic direction, as evidenced by such works as “The Will to Believe” () and The Varieties of Religious Experience (). There are notable exceptions, which I discuss in Chapter . Some exceptions to this rule are James’s essays “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” and “What Makes a Life Significant” in Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals () (TT) and “The Moral Equivalent of War” (). What James says about the moral life in such works as WB, VRE, P, and PU, however, explicitly connects morality with religious belief and experience.
Introduction: a practical faith
the chief aim of religion as the promotion of happiness or human flourishing, which in turn can take a variety of legitimate forms. I argue, furthermore, that James is committed to a pluralistic and religious version of ethical perfectionism, insofar as he develops a pluralistic religious account of the highest good for human beings, and insofar as he believes that any fully adequate account of moral obligation and moral agency requires us to hold certain types of religious belief. Indeed, James extends this eudaemonistic and perfectionist conception of the moral life beyond the flourishing of individuals to include that of societies and even the universe through his religious and metaphysical doctrine of meliorism, the belief that the world’s salvation is “a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become” (P, ). Here, as we shall see, James hypothesizes that our moral ideals and religious and metaphysical “overbeliefs” may – when resolutely believed and acted upon, and in conjunction with the efforts of higher powers – really contribute to the world’s salvation (P, –; see also WB, –, VRE, –, and SPP, –). Overall, what I hope to show is that on James’s view morality cannot be finally separated from religion, because there are moral goods that only religious faith – and in some cases, only the objects of religious faith – can plausibly bring about. When we examine what James says about morality in connection with his religious views, we find that he describes two fundamental requirements for leading an optimally successful and flourishing moral life, at least in the long term: () the possession of a morally strenuous attitude; and () the achievement of a saving or liberatory sense of intimacy with an unseen order or “wider self,” or what I term metaphysical intimacy. The first of these requirements refers to our ability to sustain a high level of confidence in and commitment to our moral ideals and capacities as moral agents, in particular the capacity to be “indifferent to present ill, if only the greater ideal be attained” (WB, –). The second, in turn, involves the sense that one stands in a relationship with a “more,” a “wider self,” or “unseen order” – James uses these terms interchangeably – which one believes to be the source of one’s salvation or liberation (VRE, –). The second of these requirements is necessarily religious in nature, as it involves holding religious beliefs (and possibly
James typically uses the term “intimacy,” though the kind of intimacy that he has in mind is invariably religious and metaphysical, in that it deals with a range of possible, intimate relations with an unseen supernatural order or “wider self,” such as those described in reports of religious and mystical experiences. In order to clarify James’s metaphysical use of this term and bring his meaning to the fore, I shall use the term “metaphysical intimacy” throughout this study.
William James on Ethics and Faith
having religious experiences). This is not necessarily true of the first requirement, and at times James suggests that one can possess it (albeit to a lesser degree) apart from religious faith (WB, ; VRE, ). But he also claims that we can attain the highest degrees of moral strenuousness only through religious faith, and that the history of religion bears this out, particularly in the person of saints (WB, ; VRE, , –). Indeed, James would eventually come to believe that it is through our experiences of and belief in an unseen supernatural order that personal moral transformation is most successfully accomplished and new and better moral ideals enter the world (VRE, ). This last point is especially significant, since it implies not only that religious experience potentially has practical value, but also has epistemic value, providing a potential source of moral and metaphysical knowledge. These requirements are basic to James’s account of the moral life, but unfortunately he did not subject them to rigorous analysis or systematic elaboration. Indeed, James’s informal approach poses a considerable challenge to anyone wishing to study his moral views. Given the difficulties inherent in identifying and interpreting James’s ethics relatively few studies have been produced, and most systematic treatments of James’s philosophy have failed to recognize the full importance of ethics for his overall philosophical project. Ralph Barton Perry, while not always the most sympathetic interpreter of James, provided a valuable but largely biographical treatment of James’s personal character in such works as In the Spirit of William James () and The Thought and Character of William James (). Gerald Myers devotes a chapter each to James’s moral and religious views in his intellectual biography of James, but like Perry he generally neglects the extent of their connection. Ellen Suckiel, one of the best contemporary interpreters of James, includes a chapter on James’s moral views in The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James () and a thought-provoking chapter on the moral significance of James’s account of religious belief in Heaven’s Champion: William James’s Philosophy of Religion (). The only book-length studies of James’s ethics to date are Bernard P. Brennan’s The Ethics of William James () and John K. Roth’s
See Ralph Barton Perry, In the Spirit of William James (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, ), The Thought and Character of William James, vols. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, ), and The Thought and Character of William James, Briefer Version (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). See Gerald Myers, William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), in particular chs. and . See Ellen Kappy Suckiel, The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James (University of Notre Dame Press, ), pp. – and Heaven’s Champion () pp. –.
Introduction: a practical faith
Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James (), but each has important shortcomings. Although Brennan correctly recognizes the interconnections between James’s metaphysical, religious, and moral views, and in particular the importance of James’s views on religion and morality, his analysis is too often superficial and overly expository. The chief merit of Roth’s study, on the other hand, is the improved rigor of its analysis over Brennan’s, though at times it pushes its “existentialist” reading of James too far. Its major shortcoming, however, is that it does not adequately account for the connection between James’s moral and religious views, and as a result leaves the reader with a distorted picture of James’s ethics. More recently Richard Gale () and Wesley Cooper () have published significant book-length interpretations of James’s philosophy. Both studies make important contributions to the literature on James’s ethics, and Gale’s in particular is outstanding for its attention to the ethical and religious aspects of James’s thought, in addition to being a model of analytical clarity and rigor. Yet, while each stresses the importance of James’s ethics in the process of developing a systematic interpretation of his philosophy, neither sufficiently accounts for the connection between James’s moral and religious views, in particular his views on the relationship between morality and religious faith. This leads to a gap in their respective treatments of these issues, with the consequence that the religious aspect of James’s ethics and the ethical aspect of James’s philosophy of religion go largely unnoticed. Although I agree with Gale on many points, I believe that one questionable feature of his interpretation of James in general and of James’s ethics in particular is the extraordinary weight it accords to “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” – specifically, the interpretive weight it assigns to James’s discussion of “the casuistic question” in ethics, which concerns the basic or supreme principle of morality. In the third and fourth sections of this essay James sketches the outlines of
See Bernard P. Brennan, The Ethics of William James (New York: Bookman Associates, ) and John K. Roth, Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, ). See Richard M. Gale, The Divided Self of William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), and Wesley Cooper, The Unity of William James’s Th ought (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, ). That ethics requires a basic or supreme principle of morality is an unquestioned presupposition on James’s part, and it is a feature that his ethical theory shares with many other principle-based theories, including Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. I call this an unquestioned presupposition because James does not consider, as contemporary virtue ethicists have asked, whether ethics requires such a principle, or even requires principles at all.
William James on Ethics and Faith
a consequentialist ethical theory, and these serve as the basis for Gale’s controversial interpretation of James as a desire-satisfaction utilitarian, not only in his ethics but also in his ethics of belief, a move that has far-reaching interpretive consequences. As we shall see in Chapter , this essay deals with a number of issues in moral philosophy, and ends with a practical argument for religious faith. James expands upon this argument in The Varieties of Religious Experience, which is the subject of Chapter , and I believe that it informs much of what he has to say about religion in Pragmatism, which I discuss in Chapter . While it is true that James never explicitly disowns his consequentialist moral theory in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” it is also true that he never explicitly discusses it again in his later moral writings, which are not obviously based on consequentialist principles and deal with other moral issues – above all, the practical need for religious faith and a moral view of the universe . The major failing of Cooper’s treatment of James’s ethics, on the other hand, is that he seldom provides the necessary textual support for his claims; indeed, the second of his two chapters on James’s ethics does not cite James at all. While Cooper makes clear that his larger purpose is to show that “there is a systematic philosophy in James’s writings, however it may have been with the philosopher,” this demand for coherence sometimes leads him to attribute claims to James which have little or no textual basis. Among the most problematic of these are Cooper’s claims that () James did not have a realistic interpretation of the objects of religious belief and experience, which starkly contradicts what James says in his most important work on these matters, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and () that “James had relatively little to say about ethics.”
See Cooper, The Unity of William James’s Thought (), p. . Regarding the first claim, I do not share Cooper’s view of James as a consistent instrumentalist about the objects of religious belief (see Cooper, The Unity of William James’s Thought (), Ch. , especially pp. –). On my view, James makes both realist and instrumentalist claims about religion, but he no more holds that the objects of religious belief and experience are reducible to the practical value of belief in such objects (whatever that would mean) than he holds that objects in general are reducible to their practical value. Th is is a common misreading of James’s pragmatic theory of truth, one that I discuss and refute in Chapter , and Cooper seems to extend it to his reading of James’s philosophy of religion. Beginning in Chapter and continuing in Chapter , I shall argue that while James held an instrumentalist view of the function of religious belief, he also held a realist view of the objects of religious belief and experience. So far as I am aware, there is no textual evidence to support Cooper’s contention that James understood the objects of religious experience as human “constructs” of pure experience. Rather, and as I show in Chapters and , James understood such objects as real and active mind-independent entities on which our salvation, and possibly the salvation of the world, depends. Regarding the second claim (see Cooper (), p. ), it should be pointed out that James discusses ethical issues in all of his major philosophical works, even if he did not devote any one of them exclusively to
Introduction: a practical faith
When we examine a broader range of texts than is commonplace in studies of James’s ethics, however, and when we stay close to the texts themselves, we arrive at a very different picture of James’s ethics, one that has far more religious content than has usually been recognized and is more integrated than many interpreters have assumed. As we shall see, under the terms of James’s religious ethics the fundamental requirements of human moral flourishing – moral strenuousness and metaphysical intimacy – are achievable only through the adoption of certain kinds of religious beliefs, which in turn can be acquired and are best realized through religious experience. The religious dimension of James’s ethics becomes, if anything, more rather than less pronounced over time, and as I show in Chapter it would eventually lead James to change his mind about certain key aspects of the moral theory that he had developed in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” If this is right, then one of the most pressing issues for understanding James’s ethics becomes whether, and if so how, James was able to account for the autonomy of morality from religion. Chapters , , and will show that James was able to offer such an account, albeit one that sees leading a non-religious moral life as inferior to leading a religious one. In a very general way, James agreed with Kant that while the basis of morality does not require religion, we nonetheless feel moral demands and have moral hopes which are unreasonable unless we hold certain religious and metaphysical beliefs. Unlike Kant, though, James believed that religious experience potentially has evidential value, and that it can, under certain conditions, provide a warrant for religious beliefs. Indeed, he believed that religious experiences could contribute to the process of our moral development and perfection in this life, and also provide us
such issues. Furthermore, and as this study will show, many of James’s moral views come into relief only when we examine his writings on religion. See especially Kant’s account of the highest good in Part I, Book II of the Critique of Practical Reason. For Kant, the practical demand to believe in the postulates of pure practical reason – free will, God, and the immortality of the soul – is subjectively rather than objectively grounded, since “there can be no duty to assume the existence of anything (since this concerns only the theoretical use of reason)” (p. ). Furthermore, the postulates have the status of hypotheses when considered from the point of view of theoretical reason, and beliefs (indeed, rational beliefs) when considered from the point of view of practical reason (see p. ). References are to the Cambridge edition of the Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge University Press, ). As we shall see, James also took certain religious and metaphysical beliefs to be practically necessary and subjectively rather than objectively grounded – albeit in our empirical or natural psychology, and not in a faculty of pure practical reason. The kind of “practical necessity” that James has in mind is grounded in the facts of our psychology, and as such is a generic rather than a universal claim; thus, while not all human beings feel compelled to adopt religious and metaphysical beliefs in the moral life, most human beings do.
William James on Ethics and Faith
with evidence that we might use to corroborate and justify our moral and religious beliefs. Although James did not believe that this evidence was or could be of the objective or neutral and non-question-begging sort, he nevertheless believed that it could serve as a reasonable basis for a person’s religious “overbeliefs” (VRE, –). This represents a significant point of difference between James’s version of a practical account of religious faith and Kant’s . As Chapter shows, James’s view is based upon a highly original combination of philosophical commitments, in particular his epistemological commitments to empiricism and anti-foundationalism and his metaphysical commitment to religious realism. Finally, one of the most important features of James’s practical faith, and one that I mentioned briefly in passing above, is its fallibilistic and progressive character. Against dogmatic ways of thinking about our religious and moral commitments, James consistently argued that we should see them (like all our beliefs) as open to criticism, empirical testing, and revision. Such a view stands in sharp contrast to many traditional forms of religion and to many widespread assumptions about the nature of religious faith, and I believe that it deserves serious consideration by religious and non-religious people alike. The long-term result of critically evaluating and revising our religious and moral beliefs, James hypothesized, would be a gradual improvement in those beliefs (WB, –, –, ; VRE, –, –, –; P, ). Although James himself usually endorsed a strong version of fallibilism, I believe that his views are also compatible with weaker versions of fallibilism . I discuss this feature of James’s views in Chapters , , , and . In summary, this study offers an interpretation of James’s account of a practical religious faith, a faith which encompasses both religion and morality. James judges religious belief, experience, and traditions according to moral and practical criteria, which, while not the only relevant criteria, are among the most important, especially for everyday religious believers.
James usually defends a very strong version of fallibilism, in which we can never say with certainty that any of our beliefs are incorrigibly or self-evidently true. There are, however, exceptions, such as James’s claim in “The Will to Believe” that there is in fact one “indefectibly certain truth,” namely that “the present phenomenon of consciousness exists” (WB, ). Although in his strong fallibilist moments James is committed to an equally strong rejection of foundationalism, in passages such as the one above he implicitly endorses a weak version of foundationalism. While James is quick to downplay the importance of this concession, immediately claiming that “no concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon” (WB, ; emphasis added), he has in fact conceded the crucial point that there is at least one incorrigible and self-evidently true belief. Presumably, even if my belief that I see a coffee mug is not incorrigibly and self-evidently true, my seeming to see one at present is, a point which a Chisholmian foundationalist would be quick to point out.
Introduction: a practical faith
I shall argue that, for James, while the content of religious beliefs and experiences does not reduce to their practical value – for truth-value is not the same sort of value as utility, even if the latter serves as our best indicator of the former – we nonetheless have a practical reason to be persons of faith if, and only if, such beliefs and experiences prove to be valuable for how we live. This distinction is important, I think, not only because it is James’s actual view, but also because it helps to establish the plausibility of his account of religious faith. I shall also try to show, however, that James saw religion as a practically necessary supplement to morality, one that is required if we are to achieve and sustain certain moral goods: namely, a morally strenuous attitude and a sense of metaphysical intimacy with a supernatural order of reality. This is a provocative view, for it entails the claim that morality or “the moral life” is not and cannot be complete apart from some form of religious faith. As we shall see, James’s view is that the highest forms of human moral agency and flourishing cannot be had apart from leading a religious life. While James never claims that the achievement of these moral goods is guaranteed by religious faith, he does hold that the possibility of their achievement is partly contingent upon our willingness to believe and to act upon our beliefs (WB, –; VRE, ; P, –). Partly contingent, that is, because the achievement of such goods depends not only upon our own faith, but also upon the existence and assistance of superhuman forces (P, –). James’s account of faith does not pretend to certainty in such matters, however. As long as our faith is tolerant of other faiths, James thinks, and is reasonable, personally illuminating, and morally helpful, we have a right to believe. Although it is not my intention to offer a comprehensive treatment of every aspect of James’s philosophy of religion and ethics in this study, it is my hope that by studying the connections between these areas of his philosophy we might improve our understanding of each, and put ourselves in a better position to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of his religious and ethical views. While I do not believe that James’s arguments are always well-formulated or successful, they are almost always thought-provoking and rich with suggestions. To mention a few of his many merits, James was perhaps the first philosopher to grasp the fact of, and the problems posed by, religious and ethical pluralism, and the first to recognize and explore the potential epistemological and
Ellen Suckiel has also observed that James defends this claim. See Heaven’s Champion (), pp. –, –.
William James on Ethics and Faith
ethical significance of religious experience. And, after Kierkegaard, he was among the first to reject classical foundationalism in the philosophy of religion. His insights into these and other related matters are highly original and frequently powerful, and promise rewards to those who are willing to consider them. Chapters and examine James’s will to believe doctrine and its basic role in his practical account of religious faith. I shall argue that we need to distinguish the psychological and the epistemological aspects of James’s doctrine, or his claims about the human will to believe from his claims about our right to believe, if we want to understand it correctly, and discuss how these distinct but not wholly separate aspects of the doctrine relate to one another. I also show how, properly interpreted, James’s doctrine minimally aims to warrant belief in cases where () the option to believe is live and () the evidence is inconclusive. I argue that this aim is modest and reasonable, even if it does not provide neutral, objective reasons for religious belief – which, in any case, is no failing on James’s part, since he does not undertake to show this and, indeed, believes that the very attempt to do so is misguided. In this connection, I show how James’s will to believe doctrine entails a modest version of perspectivism, insofar as it affirms that human knowledge has an irreducibly perspectival and non-absolute character, as well as a rejection of strong foundationalism, insofar as it denies the claim that justified belief can or must be self-evident or incorrigible. This has important implications for James’s religious epistemology, which I discuss more fully in Chapters and . After establishing these claims in Chapter , in Chapter I show that James eventually used his will to believe doctrine not merely to offer a justification for religious faith in general, but also for his own practical faith in a finite God and a “pluralistic-melioristic” universe, in which religious believers and God cooperate to bring about the world’s salvation. I also show how James undertook to supplement his will to believe doctrine with a prudential argument for religious belief (which I call “James’s Wager”), and highlight some of the problems which confront his account as a result. Chapter examines James’s ethical theory and religious ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” This essay provides James’s clearest and most focused discussion of a range of issues in moral philosophy, but it nonetheless poses a number of interpretive challenges. The most formidable of these concerns how to make sense of James’s view that the existence of a moral universe is ontologically independent of God’s existence or non-existence, but that “in the interests of our own ideal of
Introduction: a practical faith
systematically unified moral truth, we … must postulate a divine thinker, and pray for the victory of the religious cause” (WB, ). As we shall see, James develops an argument against the view that morality or a moral universe requires the existence of God, while also arguing that () without religious faith we cannot achieve and sustain a morally strenuous mood, and that () the most stable and systematic moral universe is one in which God is believed to exist, provide an objective ground for morality, and assist us in our efforts to lead moral lives. I show how James develops a naturalistic moral theory, one which does not appeal to or depend upon supernatural claims, while also pointing out the practical and theoretical limits of naturalistic approaches to ethics. In effect, I argue, James makes an argument for the naturalistic basis of morality, while also arguing that the best moral theory, both theoretically and practically speaking, will be “piecemeal supernatural” in nature: that is, it will have a naturalistic and a supernaturalistic dimension. While I believe that certain features of James’s account are problematic and should be modified or rejected, his basic argument that there are certain moral goods which cannot plausibly be accounted for, or are not plausibly achievable under the terms of a naturalistic moral theory is a good argument, even if it does not win universal acceptance. Chapter explores another of James’s moral arguments for religious faith in “Is Life Worth Living?”. Here, as we shall see, James offers a diagnosis of pessimism or Weltschmerz as an essentially religious disease which can be cured in one of two ways: either by eliminating our religious inclinations, or by coming to hold a better set of religious beliefs. Although James thinks both ways represent effective strategies for overcoming pessimism , the second is nevertheless superior to the first insofar as it enables us to achieve levels of happiness and moral strenuousness that are not available to non-religious persons. This argument, as well as his moral argument in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” would go on to play a central role in his pragmatic account and defense of religion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, which I discuss in Chapter . While I am not wholly satisfied with James’s line of argument in “Is Life Worth Living?” and highlight certain problems with his view, I acknowledge that a suitably modified version of his view might be correct. Chapter presents an ethical and religiously realist interpretation of The Varieties of Religious Experience. Building upon Chapters and , I argue that James is engaged in the service of a larger ethical project in Varieties, one in which leading a religious life is seen as a necessary
William James on Ethics and Faith
(though not a sufficient) condition of maximal human flourishing. I show how James’s views on the relationship between religion and morality inform his theory of religion and account of the value of religious experience; discuss his two moral requirements, moral strenuousness and metaphysical intimacy, and how religious experience can potentially satisfy them; and argue that James defends and successfully combines a realistic interpretation of religion with a pragmatic religious epistemology in the work. Although this chapter is mainly devoted to revealing the ethical dimensions of Varieties , it also examines James’s religious epistemology in some detail and outlines the basic features of his pragmatic account of religion, which I explore at greater length in the final chapter. Chapter situates James’s pragmatic account of religion in the context of his larger philosophical defense of pragmatism. It discusses the major features of his conception of pragmatism, including its metaphilosophical commitments (section I), the pragmatic method (section II), and the pragmatic theory of truth (section III), and shows how these bear on his evolving pragmatic account of religion (section IV). I shall argue that in spite of certain tensions and the occasional inconsistency in his views on such matters as meaning, truth, practical value, and reality, James’s pragmatism nevertheless manages to preserve a commitment to metaphysical realism, including a commitment to religious realism. I also hope to show that one of the overarching purposes of his pragmatism was to provide an epistemological and ethical justification for religious belief, including a justification for his own “pluralistic-melioristic” religious worldview (P, –). At the same time, I discuss some of the obstacles to full acceptance of James’s pragmatism and pragmatic account of religion, and propose some ways in which these problems might be addressed. I should also note here that section III, which deals with James’s theory of truth, can be read independently of the other sections in this chapter; readers who are particularly interested in this aspect of James’s thought, or who wish to know in advance how I deal with it are invited to consult it at their leisure. Finally, the Epilogue discusses some of James’s more important contributions to the philosophy of religion and ethics. It concludes by suggesting that his basic approach to the philosophy of religion is innovative, powerful, and virtually unrepresented on the current philosophical scene. It also suggests that James’s account of religion and morality in terms of human flourishing deserves further exploration, and that his view that religious persons can and should revise their religious and moral beliefs in the light of one another represents one of the most attractive and potentially useful features of his practical faith.
Practical faith and the will to believe
The will and the right to believe
With the possible exception of his pragmatism, none of James’s philosophical doctrines is better known or more characteristic of his thought than the will to believe. In the most general terms, this doctrine maintains that we can be justified under certain conditions in holding beliefs for which there is insufficient evidence, but which are of fundamental importance for how we live and how we make sense of the world. By far the most important of these – and the ones that James was most concerned to defend – are religious and metaphysical beliefs, including the belief in an objective moral order (WB, –; –). James argues not only that we can be justified in holding evidentially unsupported beliefs under certain conditions, but also that it is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, in practice to avoid doing so, and that making a decision may, in turn, be the only way to determine whether such beliefs are ultimately true or false (WB, –; –). To put off making a decision about whether God exists or whether there is an objective moral order, for example, is practically to decide in favor of unbelief – that is, it involves a choice to live one’s life as if God did not exist or there were no such order (WB, , ; –; –). In such cases, James argues, we not only do decide as our passions and wills incline us, but also have no objective reason to judge such decisions as epistemically unlawful. To permit ourselves to believe in accordance with our passional and volitional nature where reason proves insufficient is not an irrational rule, he thinks, but rather is more practically reasonable than a rule which would deny this right (WB, –). In this respect, then, James’s will to believe doctrine can be understood as providing rational support for his account of a practical faith.
As James made clear in Pragmatism, his argument in “The Will to Believe” () really concerned the right to believe (P, ), and in a subsequent restatement of the doctrine he used the phase “right to believe” as a way of clarifying his meaning. See “Faith and the Right to Believe” in SPP, pp. –. Although I think that James’s later usage is preferable, I shall bow to convention and refer to the doctrine as the “will to believe” so as to avoid confusion.
Practical faith and the will to believe
It would be a mistake, though, to think that James’s will to believe doctrine is important only for his philosophy of religion, for the doctrine influences his views on a wide range of issues. Its influence is evident not only in such works as Talks to Teachers (), The Varieties of Religious Experience (), Pragmatism (), and The Meaning of Truth (), but also in James’s final published books, A Pluralistic Universe () and Some Problems of Philosophy (), both of which conclude with a reaffirmation of the doctrine. This fact has been curiously lost on some interpreters, who have inferred that James’s proposed “science of religions” was intended to replace his will to believe doctrine. Most interpreters agree, however, that James’s will to believe doctrine is a fundamental and enduring feature of his philosophy. And yet in spite of this, little agreement exists regarding the exact nature of James’s claims and the consequences which follow from his doctrine. What I hope to show in the first two chapters of this book is that James’s will to believe doctrine not only undertakes to justify a pluralistic and practical form of religious faith, but also that its claims are at once more modest and more reasonable than many interpreters have thought. Indeed, and in contrast to how it is sometimes understood, I find no credible evidence to support the view that James’s doctrine amounts to a
Henry S. Levinson fi rst advanced this reading in Th e Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, ), and David A. Hollinger has subsequently echoed it in his essay “‘Damned for God’s Glory’: William James and the Scientific Vindication of Protestant Culture,” in Wayne Proudfoot (ed.), William James and a Science of Religions(New York: Columbia University Press, ), pp. –. On Levinson’s reading “the Will-to-Believe doctrine was a stopgap measure … until a science of religions could be sufficiently constituted to make its judgements on evidence for ‘the supernatural’” (p. ). Th is is not quite right. While it is true that James hoped that a future science of religions would tell us which religious hypotheses or “faith ventures” work best and are of enduring value (see, e.g., WB, pp. –), this does not necessarily entail – nor does James ever claim – that a science of religions will eliminate the need for faith, or that a science of religions will someday objectively determine which religious overbeliefs are true, and which false. What James holds is that a science of religions could potentially yield a common body of highly general religious beliefs, on which and around which “the ruddier additional beliefs on which the different individuals make their venture might be grafted, and flourish as richly as you please” (VRE, p. ). These additional beliefs, as James makes clear, are overbeliefs, and they have a different epistemic status than ordinary beliefs, insofar as they are not susceptible to objective verification or falsification. As Chapter shows, James’s science of religions should be understood not as a replacement but rather as a supplement to his will to believe doctrine, one which plays a complementary but nonetheless distinct role in his philosophy of religion. Th at role, I hope to show, is to generate agreement on certain empirically observable and generalizable features of religion, such as the fact that in religious experience individuals frequently tap into aspects of their personalities which produce therapeutic effects. The question of whether the “more” that is tapped into is merely psychological in nature, or rather both psychological and metaphysical in nature, is for James a matter of overbelief, and beyond the limits of science and philosophy to determine .
The will and the right to believe
“license for wishful thinking.” In the process of supporting these claims, I shall emphasize the way in which James’s doctrine provides an epistemic justification for his practical faith and a basic account of its ethical purpose, while noting that it leaves certain other issues underdeveloped or insufficiently explored. These other issues concern the content of a practical faith and the means through which it is acquired and tested. As we shall see in later chapters, James would eventually address these issues in later works such as The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism. Insofar as James’s will to believe doctrine specifies conditions for justified religious belief, it also provides an account of the ethics of belief. This aspect of the doctrine is fairly well known and has been widely discussed in the secondary literature, though little consensus has developed over the exact nature and scope of James’s claims. I shall argue that, properly understood, James’s will to believe doctrine articulates a pragmatic ethics of belief directed toward the realization of certain valuable practical ends. It is, put another way, a doctrine which specifies what we have an epistemic right to believe, in order that we might realize certain practical goods, above all religious and moral goods. For James this right is conditional, not absolute, and it is conditioned by epistemological as well as ethical criteria. At the epistemological level, James’s will to believe doctrine maintains that we have an epistemic right to believe whenever the option to believe is live and the evidence is inconclusive (WB, ). While James also defends beliefs which are additionally forced and momentous options, I do not believe that these qualifications are strictly necessary under the terms of his ethics of belief. At the ethical level, in turn, James maintains we are entitled to hold live, evidentially indeterminate beliefs on the condition that we extend the same right to others. In addition to satisfying certain epistemic criteria, then, our right
Dickinson Miller was the first, but by no means the only, critic to charge James with licensing wishful thinking. See Miller’s “ ‘The Will to Believe’ and the Duty to Doubt,” International Journal of Ethics, (–): . Others include John Hick, who has long maintained this view and given it widespread currency through his popular philosophy of religion textbook, Faith and Knowledge [] (nd edn reissued, London: Macmillan, ). Hick has recently come to think, however, that a sufficiently modified version of James’s doctrine – namely, one which substitutes “compelling religious experience for the mere desire to believe an unproved and undisproved proposition” is both justifiable and compelling. See Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ). For a defense of James against the charge of “wishful thinking,” see Stephen T. Davis, “Wishful Th inking and ‘The Will to Believe’,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Fall ), pp. –. For a helpful overview of this debate and another defense of James against the “wishful thinking” charge, see also Robert J. O’Connell, S.J., William James on the Courage to Believe (New York: Fordham University Press, ), especially pp. –.
Practical faith and the will to believe
to believe is also conditional on our practicing tolerance toward other faiths. This is a social and, just as importantly, deontological constraint on religious belief and practice that is analogous to Mill’s well-known “harm principle,” one that is aimed at the creation and preservation of what James calls an “intellectual republic” (WB, ). Indeed, it constitutes a more general deontological principle in James’s ethics, one that is common not only to what we might call his “religious ethical” writings but also to other of his ethical writings which have no obviously religious content. James’s doctrine appears more reasonable, I believe, when we clarify two distinctions that are implicit in his views but which are all too easily missed or misunderstood. A failure to observe these distinctions, I shall argue, can lead one to mistake James’s claims regarding the connections between two things for a claim regarding their essential identity. The first takes the form of an implicit distinction between the psychological and the epistemological aspects of his will to believe doctrine, or between the “will” and the “right” to believe. Much confusion has resulted from failing to distinguish these aspects of the doctrine, some of which is due to carelessness on James’s own part, and some of which is due to the carelessness of his interpreters. On the one hand, James defends an account of the psychology of belief, specifically of the perspectival nature and practical function of beliefs and the psychological processes by which they are formed. It is simply a fact of human psychology, James thinks, that most of us will hold fast to certain beliefs – particularly religious, metaphysical, and moral beliefs – irrespective of whether a rational justification can be provided for them. “Human passions,” as James bluntly states, “are stronger than technical rules” (WB, ). Interpretations of James’s doctrine that
For Mill’s harm principle, see “On Liberty” in The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill (New York: Random House, ), pp. –. While this is admittedly speculative, James’s notion of an ”intellectual republic” also seems to evoke a feature of Kantian ethics, specifically one of the formulations of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which Allen W. Wood terms “The Formula of the Realm of Ends”. As Kant writes, “Act in accordance with the maxims of a universally legislative member of a merely possible realm of ends” (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, :). Indeed, James’s notion also bears a resemblance to what Wood terms Kant’s “Principle of Right”: “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom according to a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law” (Metaphysics of Morals, : ). See Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), xx–xxi. See “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” and “What Makes a Life Significant” in TT, both of which argue for tolerance of other ways of life. Th is claim reflects a general theme in James’s religious writings, namely that religious faith is not based primarily on rational arguments or evidence, but rather on what he calls our passional and volitional nature (WB, –). Writing of his pragmatic account of religion in Varieties, James explains that “the most I can do is … to offer something that may fit the facts so easily that your scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true”
The will and the right to believe
stress its willful attitude toward belief or see it as issuing a license for wishful thinking are almost always based upon James’s claims about the psychology of belief. On the other hand, James also defends a special – as opposed to a general – account of the ethics of belief, one which specifically concerns evidentially inconclusive beliefs. The most important of these, as we shall see, are religious and moral beliefs. James’s ethics of belief allows for a great deal of latitude in matters of belief, but it does not warrant anything that one might wish to believe. James acknowledges, furthermore, that we have a general epistemic duty to seek evidence for our beliefs (this is a condition for our beliefs being justified). But this duty nonetheless has limits. To begin with, James thinks that we cannot provide neutral, non-question-begging evidence for any of our beliefs – even empirical evidence does not satisfy these austere conditions. For James, there is nothing about empirical evidence that could compel a philosophical skeptic to accept it, or to prevent her from calling it into doubt. Secondly, there is no necessary reason why all beliefs should be thought to have the same evidential conditions; our standards and criteria for what constitutes evidence need not be of a uniform sort. In particular, James argues that religious and metaphysical beliefs (along with certain moral beliefs, such as the belief in objective moral values or an objective moral order) differ in certain important theoretical and practical respects from other kinds of belief. Thirdly, it can be morally irresponsible or practically risky (or both) to forego making up our minds about and acting on some beliefs, such as moral and religious beliefs. Indeed, in order to confirm the truth or falsity of some of our beliefs we must act upon them. A second and related distinction implicit in James’s will to believe doctrine is that between belief and action, which on James’s view are psychologically as well as epistemically related matters. In an especially lucid footnote in “The Will to Believe,” James explains that the reason why the defense of religious faith hinges upon the defense of action is because belief is measured by action (WB, ). To claim that belief is measured by action, however, is different from claiming that belief and action are identical, or that the former is somehow reducible to the latter. James’s views on this matter can be misunderstood in a number of ways, but one of the most common is to assume (usually based upon a facile (VRE, ). Or consider his remark in Pragmatism that “in the end it is our faith and not our logic that decides [religious] questions, and I deny the right of any pretended logic to veto my own faith” (P, ). Finally, see PU, – and –, where James claims that the cognitive process involved in the human will to believe is one of “life exceeding logic” (PU, ).
Practical faith and the will to believe
understanding of his later pragmatism) that James is committed to reducing properties that are usually associated with belief, in particular truth, to properties associated with action, in particular utility. In an essay that ostensibly deals with James’s will to believe doctrine, for example, Richard Rorty asserts that James’s account of truth and knowledge is a “utilitarian ethics of belief” designed to replace talk about our responsibility to truth with talk about our responsibility to our fellow human beings, and that its point of departure is “Peirce’s treatment of a belief as a habit of action, rather than as a representation.” One of the consequences that Rorty derives from this assertion is that James’s argument in “The Will to Believe” was unconcerned with questions of religious truth and whether or not religious beliefs adequately represent reality. Now there are many problems with this sort of interpretation, not the least of which is its total lack of evidential support from James’s religious writings, but one of the most salient is that it badly misrepresents both Peirce and James. For while both philosophers held the view that beliefs are essentially “rules for action” or “habits of action,” neither held that true beliefs do not represent reality. In point of fact, James insisted that the agreement of beliefs with reality is basic to the concept of truth in general and his pragmatic account of truth in particular (P, ; MT, –; –), and he explicitly named the view that pragmatism reduces truth to utility as a misunderstanding of his pragmatic account of truth (MT, –). What is at issue in James’s account of truth is not whether truth involves agreement with or correspondence to reality (James insists repeatedly that it does) but rather what it means for a belief to “agree with” or “correspond to” reality. When we look at what James actually says about the connection of belief and action, we find him variously claiming that action is the measure of belief (WB, ), as we saw above, or that the test of belief is willingness to act (WB, ). For James, to believe or disbelieve in the existence of an unseen religious order involves taking a certain stance or attitude toward reality and to how one lives – and he is clear that taking such an attitude or stance involves not merely holding different beliefs about reality but also acting differently toward it as a result (WB, ; VRE, –). The justification of religious belief thus involves the justification of religious practice or action; without both there can be no life of faith. As James insists, “the whole defence
Richard Rorty, “Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility, and Romance,” in Ruth Anna Putnam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . See Rorty, The Cambridge Companion to William James (), pp. –.
The will and the right to believe
of religious faith hinges upon action” (WB, ), since faith involves not merely holding beliefs but also interpreting the world and living one’s life in the light of them. But such a position in no way entails the reduction of properties associated with belief (such as truth) to those associated with action (such as practical utility); James should not be misunderstood as claiming that having a true belief is identical to having a useful belief. I shall have more to say about these issues at various points throughout this book, but especially in Chapters and . The present chapter offers a re-reading of “The Will to Believe” (), the locus classicus for James’s will to believe doctrine and the essay in which James offers the fullest statement of his position. Chapter , in turn, considers James’s essay “Faith and the Right to Believe” (), where James reaffirms his will to believe doctrine and connects it to his later doctrines of pluralism and meliorism. What I hope to show in Part I is that James’s will to believe doctrine offers a credible, non-foundationalist defense of religious faith, one that defends the relative immunity and practical unavoidability of faith on psychological grounds, while also arguing that faith can be epistemically justified under certain conditions. In developing this model, I do not mean to suggest that psychology and epistemology do not overlap for James; they do. But James does not think that all beliefs are or can be epistemically justified (much less ethically justified), even if they are psychologically powerful or useful. Confusion over James’s will to believe doctrine inevitably arises, I argue, when we fail to distinguish between James’s claims about the human will to believe and his claims about our epistemic right to believe, and fail to acknowledge that for James we do not have a right to believe whatever we wish. When properly interpreted, however, I believe that there is nothing terribly controversial about James’s psychological claims, and nothing inherently unreasonable about his ethics of belief. *** James’s purpose in “The Will to Believe” was, as he put it, to offer “a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters,
See also James’s claim in “Is Life Worth Living?” that “our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world which they suggest were real” (WB, –). On this point see VRE, , note . See also MT, –, where James discusses what he calls “the seventh misunderstanding” of pragmatism.
Practical faith and the will to believe
in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced” (WB, ). This is an important point, but it alone tells us nothing about James’s reasons for offering such a defense. These, in turn, are expressed in James’s conviction that religion has a unique practical and ethical function to play in human life (WB, –; VRE, –), and in his melioristic view that the knowledge of religious truths and achievement of religious goods may partly depend upon belief and action on our part (WB, –; VRE, ; P, –; PU, –; SPP, –). Since James is not fully explicit about his reasons for defending our right to believe in “The Will to Believe,” it will occasionally be helpful to place the essay in the context of his larger defense of religious faith. Four basic claims are stressed in the essay: () that we have neither objective evidence nor certitude for any of our beliefs (WB, ); () that our passional and volitional nature plays a constitutive role in determining many of our beliefs (WB, –); () that we not only do but also have a right to hold evidentially inconclusive beliefs under certain conditions (WB, ); and () that in some cases the truth or falsity of a given belief is dependent upon our actions (WB, –). What James intends to challenge is not merely the view that the only beliefs we are entitled to hold are those supported by objective, neutral evidence, but also the very idea that there is or can be objective, neutral evidence either for or against religious beliefs. This is perhaps the least appreciated and most significant claim at stake in James’s will to believe doctrine, for it entails that the long-standing attempt to provide an objective, neutral demonstration of the truth or falsity of religious claims – one wholly uninfluenced by subjective as well as culturally and historically relative factors – is a mistake. And insofar as James thinks that we can be justified in holding religious beliefs in the absence of certainty or objective evidence, or without basing such beliefs on other beliefs which presumably meet those standards, he thereby rejects one of the tenets of classical foundationalism. For James, the facts about religion or reality in general are not wholly independent of the way our minds work or the various interpretations
The only belief to which James seems to grant foundational status is our belief in our own consciousness, which he concedes cannot be seriously doubted. James refers to this belief as “the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists,” and he describes it as an “ indefectibly certain truth” (WB, ). But while this belief is presumably self-evident and incorrigible, James thinks that it is of little philosophical consequence. He describes it as “the bare starting-point of knowledge, the mere admission of a stuff to be philosophized about,” and observes that “the various philosophies are but so many attempts at expressing what this stuff really is” (WB, ). In any case, although James seems to recognize that there is at least one foundational belief, he does not think that belief must have a foundation in order to be justified .
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that we bring to bear on them; they do not point in only one direction or settle matters of their own accord, and they can be taken or interpreted in a plurality of ways according to a plurality of purposes. While it is perhaps not right to say that James anticipates Sellars’s critique of the myth of the given, he does anticipate at least one feature of that critique: namely, he rejects the classical empiricist view that knowledge of reality is passively acquired by means of sense experience. James’s name for this view is humanism, and, as we shall see in Chapter , it is a basic feature of his eventual pragmatic theory of truth. With respect to his will to believe doctrine, James thinks that the particular beliefs we hold or are drawn to in religious matters, as well as the attitudes that we take toward religion, are not simply or passively determined by the evidence. Rather, they are also always conditioned by a range of contingent psychological and historical factors. These include but are not limited to one’s temperament, personal history, culture, tradition, and the society into which one is born. Religious belief (or disbelief) is not a wholly or even mainly rational affair, because religious matters are objectively inconclusive, and because rationality itself is inescapably bound up with the above-mentioned factors, which can and often do vary from one individual to the next. If James is right, then whatever evidence one finds or proof one arrives at in religious matters will inevitably be constrained and shaped by these partly relative factors. Indeed, we should expect that different individuals and groups will differ in their interpretations of what constitutes evidence or proof regarding religious beliefs, just as they differ in their attitudes towards religious belief and in the particular beliefs that they hold. While James does not endorse relativism in religious matters – at least not in any strong sense – he does think that uncertainty and what we might call “the fact of religious pluralism” are ineliminable features of religious belief, as well as of religious disbelief. James thinks that recognizing these truths about religion should instill a healthy dose of humility in us, and should lead us to treat the beliefs and practices of others with tolerance (WB, –). Indeed, James believes that we should not merely tolerate religious pluralism but celebrate it on account of the rich diversity of
James arguably anticipates another feature of Sellars’s critique insofar as he, too, rejects the classical empiricist view that sense experience is not itself part of the furniture of the world. Th is is one of the tenets of James’s radical empiricism, a doctrine that he develops in such works as MT and ERE and that he intended as an alternative to classical empiricism. Unlike Sellars, however, James did not reject the basic idea underlying concept empiricism, the view that concepts are ultimately derived from perception. For Sellars’s critique of the myth of the given, see Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind [] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ) .
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valuable beliefs and ways of life that it encompasses. As we shall see, James is committed not merely to religious pluralism but also to ethical pluralism, since he holds that different religious beliefs and ways of life are valuable and worthy of our respect. This commitment to religious and ethical pluralism is an inherent feature of James’s will to believe doctrine and, as we shall see, the practical faith that it aims to warrant. Understanding that James sought to warrant a pluralistic and practical account of religious faith, and not simply any sort of belief at all, is crucial to understanding his will to believe doctrine. In “The Will to Believe,” this effort centers on what he terms the religious hypothesis (WB, –), a generic and suitably broad formulation of the nature of religious belief which consists of two affirmations: first, that “the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word” (WB, ), and second, that “we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true” (WB, ). This may sound awfully thin, but James intentionally formulates his hypothesis in this way so as to include a wide range of religious overbeliefs – his name for the particular forms that religious belief can take – and to avoid engaging in apologetics for any one religious tradition. The unstated object of James’s religious hypothesis, and that which religious persons variously have overbeliefs about, is what James elsewhere calls an unseen order – a supernatural (but not wholly transcendent or extra-empirical) order of reality “in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained” (WB, ) and in relation to which we find our supreme good (VRE, ). The term “unseen order,” it should be noted,
James emphatically rejects the view that “the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds” is regrettable. Rather, he thinks that religious pluralism is valuable because our religious needs are not all the same; because it allows for a plurality of “worthy missions” in life; and because such diversity adds to “the total human consciousness of the divine” (VRE, –). See also P, and PU, , where James affirms that a person’s distinctive religious or philosophical vision is usually the most important and interesting thing about her. Th is claim is also basic to such essays as “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” and “What Makes a Life Significant” in TT. In VRE, James argues that while we will probably never be in a position to determine the truth or falsity of particular religious overbeliefs (for these are evidentially inconclusive), a ”science of religions” nonetheless might help us to determine the truth or falsity of certain highly general religious beliefs, such as the belief that many religions have that “we are better off even now” if we lead a life of faith. Th is sort of belief is empirically testable, and while it does not establish the truth or falsity of religious metaphysical claims – e.g., that God exists – it nonetheless helps us to determine the practical value of religious belief. If religious belief is objectively inconclusive but its practical value can be determined with reasonable accuracy – say, by showing that “doxastic practices,” such as prayer or meditation, can quantifiably reduce stress levels and promote a sense of well-being – then we have as independent and neutral a justification for religious faith as we can hope to have. For James, as we shall see, it was enough to create a space for faith and to show that religion plays an important and unique function in human life.
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is one of several terms that James uses to refer to the object(s) of religious faith, a choice which reflects his pluralistic religious sensibilities. Unfortunately, James does not discuss his pluralistic conception of an unseen order in “The Will to Believe,” which is one of many reasons why his doctrine has been so widely misunderstood. If we fill the gaps in his account in a charitable way, however, we find that the sort of religious beliefs that he intends to warrant are those which () help us to make sense of the visible world and our lives at a metaphysical level, and which () enable us to flourish. While James’s religious hypothesis is admittedly quite general, it is hardly without content. Indeed, it presupposes an underlying commitment to religious pluralism, for implicit in his view is the claim that many types of religious faith are capable of satisfying these conditions. James’s defense of religious faith is not a defense of a single set of religious beliefs or ways of life, then, but rather a defense of potentially many (but not necessarily all) religious beliefs and ways of life. As James makes clear in other writings, he believes that religion is the most important of all human functions (VRE, –), and that the good of individual human lives – and possibly the whole world – depends upon religious faith (WB, ; VRE, ). He also clearly affirms that there are many faiths which potentially can satisfy our spiritual and ethical needs, and that different faiths will appeal to different individuals and communities (VRE, –). James’s hope is that a friendly competition between these valuable faiths, held in check by principles of mutual tolerance and respect, will improve them and our world over time (WB, –; SPP, ). The question that he wants to ask at present is whether adopting the religious hypothesis can ever be justified, and if so how. James’s answer is that it can be, and he develops his will to believe doctrine in an attempt to show this. For the moment, then, let us set aside James’s religious hypothesis and focus our attention on the means that he uses in pursuit of this pluralistic religious end.
See “Is Life Worth Living?” in WB, pp. –, as well as VRE, especially pp. – and –, where it serves as one of several terms that James uses to describe the object(s) of religious belief and experience. Consistent with his “divided self ” interpretation, Richard Gale has argued that James actually develops two different versions of the will to believe doctrine, one predicated upon believing and the other upon “acting as if you believe or adopting a proposition as a working hypothesis” (p. ). Gale provides little or otherwise questionable textual support for this claim, however. For example, on p. Gale argues that James’s example of a leaping Alpine climber must be interpreted in the believing sense, whereas the Alpine climber mentioned in the final paragraph of “The Will to Believe” must be interpreted in the working hypothesis sense. The trouble is that the first example need not be interpreted in this way, and the second is not even James’s own example, but rather part of a larger quote by Fitzjames Stephen that James thinks resonates with his overall view. For Gale’s arguments, see The Divided Self of William James (), pp. –.
Practical faith and the will to believe James’s oft-cited thesis in “The Will to Believe” comes in section IV:
Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passional decision – just like deciding yes or no – and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth. (WB, )
This is probably James’s most well-known statement of his will to believe doctrine, but it is only one of two ways in which James formulates his doctrine in the essay. We shall consider the second (and I believe more basic) formulation of James’s doctrine later in this chapter, but in order to understand the first we need to clarify the meaning of two key ideas: the idea that we have a “passional nature,” and the idea of a “genuine option.” A good place to begin is with the latter. Some have interpreted James’s will to believe doctrine as providing a virtual carte blanche in matters of belief, but James himself expressly disavows this interpretation as a misapprehension (WB, ). In the passage above, James asserts that we not only may but must let our passional nature influence our decision in matters of belief () when the belief is a genuine option and () when the matter proposed to us cannot be decided on intellectual grounds, that is, when it is evidentially inconclusive. The second condition includes many religious beliefs, such as belief in God. Such matters cannot be conclusively decided by appealing to the evidence, because the evidence itself is inconclusive. Regarding the first condition, James defines an option as a choice between two hypotheses, and a genuine option as one that is live, forced, and momentous, as opposed to dead, avoidable, and trivial (WB, ). James’s notion of a live option is perhaps the easiest of the three to misunderstand, and the one that has raised the most strident objections. This is because a live option is a hypothesis that is credible for a given individual, and credibility for James has an irreducibly subjective dimension. As he puts it, “deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the individual thinker” (WB, ). Liveness and deadness are not intrinsic properties of beliefs or ideas, but extrinsic properties that are indexed to particular thinkers; what it means to be a live or dead option is to be live or dead relative to a given
As Richard Gale observes in The Divided Self of William James, the cast of characters who have wrongly interpreted James as arguing that having a genuine option is sufficient for having a right to believe includes Dickinson Miller, A. J. Ayer, Marcus Peter Ford, Arthur Murphy, and Giles Gunn. See Gale, The Divided Self of William James (), p. .
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individual and her particular psychological constitution, which for James has intellectual, passional, and volitional aspects. James gives no indication, however, that liveness and deadness are merely subjective properties. That is, he never claims that liveness and deadness are wholly non-objective properties, ones that are uninfluenced by any objective factors or reasons whatsoever; rather, he claims only that they have an irreducibly subjective dimension. While James thinks that liveness and deadness are partly determined by individual psychological factors (including one’s particular set of beliefs, desires, intentions, attitudes, etc.), he also thinks that they are partly determined by objective factors beyond an individual’s control, including broadly cultural, social, and historical factors. Some options are dead to an individual simply because they are not what she desires, and of these some have the additional property of being too outré relative to her cultural and social-historical background. James gives the example of becoming a theosophist or a Muslim (WB, ). While both options are dead for him, the first is an option that someone else living in late nineteenth-century Boston might seriously entertain, whereas the second is not. Other options, however, are effectively dead to a person regardless of her desires or her cultural and social-historical background. I cannot be a medieval knight, for example, no matter how romantic I might find the notion. Being a medieval knight is what we might call, following Bernard Williams, a notional rather than a real option. It is not a real option for me or for anyone else living today. Next, a forced option is one that involves an exclusive logical disjunction. “Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind” (WB, ). Asking someone to pronounce one’s theory true or false is an avoidable option, James observes, but asking her either to accept a truth-claim or go without it is not, since refusing to accept a claim as true is thereby to go without it (WB, –). Finally, a momentous option is a unique, significant, or irreversible decision, such as being given the opportunity to join an expedition to the North Pole (WB, ). Momentous options are opposed to trivial ones, such as whom I believe to be the greatest football player of all time. Most
See Williams’s essay “The Truth in Relativism,” reprinted in Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. It is interesting that James chooses an action rather than a belief as his example of a momentous option. One might object that this is a confusion on James’s part, but, as I have already suggested, James thinks (rightly or wrongly) that belief is a species of action. Even if one isn’t inclined to grant James this point, one might nonetheless affi rm that the belief that one is being offered the chance to join a real expedition to the North Pole is momentous.
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of the options presented to us in everyday life are trivial. Indeed, most of the options entertained in other spheres of life are trivial as well, including scientific practice. As James observes, “a chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done” (WB, ). Some options for belief, however – such as the choice whether or not to believe in God – are momentous on account of the consequences of their being true or false. When an option for belief is live, forced, and momentous it qualifies as a genuine option, and on the further condition that it deals with an evidentially inconclusive matter there is nothing unlawful about our passional nature leading us to believe or disbelieve it. This is an epistemic claim, though James also makes the psychological claim that we cannot avoid making up our minds in such cases. Let us put off dealing with the latter claim for the time being, though, and deal first with an ambiguity in this formulation of his will to believe doctrine. That ambiguity concerns whether or not we only have a right to hold religious beliefs which qualify as genuine options. In claiming that our passional nature lawfully may and must decide an option between propositions whenever it is a genuine option and is evidentially inconclusive, does James mean to claim that only genuine options may be believed, and that any belief which falls short of this standard is impermissible? This, I think, would be to misunderstand James’s argument in “The Will to Believe.” Let us begin with James’s thesis in section IV. On the one hand, James claims that our passional nature simply does influence our decisions in matters of belief as a matter of psychological fact. On the other hand, he claims that when conditions () and () have been met our passional nature has an epistemically permissible role to play in our decisions about what to believe. What James claims, as we saw above, is that in such cases there is nothing impermissible about allowing our passional nature to influence our beliefs. What James does not discuss here, however, are the basic conditions for justified religious belief under the terms of his ethics of belief. James does not state these until the final section of the essay (section X), when he writes that “in concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider” (WB, ). This passage, importantly, does not concern the will to believe but rather the right to believe, and it represents the second formulation of James’s will to believe doctrine in the essay. Although James does
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not clearly outline his arguments in the essay, we can easily express his argument about our right to believe in terms of the following conditional argument: If a belief is a live option and is evidentially inconclusive, we have a right to believe it. P is a live option and is evidentially inconclusive. Therefore, we have a right to believe P.
Note that this argument makes reference to only one of the three types of option that James discusses: namely, live options. Under the terms of James’s second formulation of his will to believe doctrine, a belief need not be forced or momentous in order to qualify as a will to believe option. In effect, it need not be a genuine option (though, we are left to infer, it may be so). Nor, importantly, does such a formulation appeal to the fourth of the basic claims advanced in the essay (see p. ), which Richard Gale has termed James’s “belief-helping-to-make-true condition.” On my reading, the latter is not a necessary condition for having a legitimate will to believe option. Although James devotes a fair amount of space to his discussion of genuine options in “The Will to Believe,” this fact alone should not lead us to interpret him as claiming that our right to believe extends only to them. Indeed, the claim that we only have a right to believe evidentially inconclusive genuine options faces a number of problems. As William Wainwright has astutely observed, it isn’t clear why an option must be forced if the other conditions have been met, why both alternatives for belief must be live options, or why the objective evidence for or against our options must be equally balanced. Wainwright argues that: James’s only requirement seems to be that the evidence should not clearly or conclusively point in one direction rather than another. Our passional nature can
Richard Gale formulates James’s will to believe doctrine somewhat differently, outlining nine propositions in what he admits is a friendly reconstruction of the doctrine. On my interpretation, though, James’s doctrine essentially reduces to a single proposition which can serve as the basis for a valid modus ponens argument. For Gale’s formulation, see The Divided Self of William James (), pp. –, in particular pp. –. In keeping with his “Promethean pragmatist” interpretation of James’s will to believe doctrine, Gale reads James as claiming that satisfying the belief-helping-to-make-true condition is a necessary condition for being a legitimate will to believe option. I interpret this feature of James’s doctrine, on the other hand, as not strictly necessary for being a legitimate will to believe option, but rather as concerning a special class of beliefs in which James was especially interested and which he thought helped to strengthen his case regarding our right to believe. For Gale’s view, see The Divided Self of William James (), p. . See William Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –.
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thus properly come into play not only in cases in which the evidence is evenly balanced but also in those in which the objective evidence does incline us to one belief rather than another but where, because of the evidence’s quality, our inclination to believe is inhibited by doubts and hesitations.
I agree with Wainwright that, strictly speaking, James’s argument concerning our right to believe seems to require only that the evidence should be inconclusive; once this condition is met, then our passional nature may legitimately come into play. This is an important point, because it entails (among other things) that James’s doctrine can be reduced to a minimal conditional argument consisting of two premises and a conclusion. I would add, though, that James’s claims about our epistemic right to believe can – at least in principle – be separated from his claims about our passional nature. Although his claims regarding the latter are obviously important for his account of the psychology of belief, James’s basic argument for our right to believe in religious matters does not directly depend upon them. This is because while a person’s passional nature is surely involved in her inclination to hold a given belief, it is not clear how a person’s passional nature determines whether or not her belief is justified. Presumably it is the evidential inconclusiveness of our options which gives us our epistemic warrant, and the liveness or deadness of the options which, according to our passional nature, guides our decision to believe one option rather than another. I do not mean to suggest that this is how James himself understood the matter; in point of fact, his claims can be interpreted in several different ways. But it is, I think, a defensible interpretation which has the additional advantage of making James’s will to believe doctrine available to those who do not agree with all the details of his psychology. One of the strengths of James’s second formulation is that it does not claim that religious beliefs must be forced, which seems right since an option being forced or avoidable has nothing to do with the content of the belief – it is simply a matter of logical form, namely stating the relevant options in terms of an exclusive disjunction. Likewise, it does not suggest that religious beliefs must be momentous in order to be justified.
Wainwright, Reason and the Heart (), p. . Consider this example. If I ask you to believe in James’s hypothesis of an unseen order or go without it I have presented you with a forced option, but if I ask you to declare James’s hypothesis true or false I have not. The way in which I have put the option to you is different in these two cases, but the content of the belief is the same. Does this mean that a person potentially has an epistemic right to believe in the first case, but never in the second? This consequence seems not only absurd but also wildly out of touch with James’s aims in the essay, and it is easily avoided if we do not interpret James as specifying jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for belief.
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Indeed, if we take being a momentous option as a necessary condition for justified belief, then presumably many common religious beliefs do not qualify as will to believe options. If you ask me to believe or disbelieve in God you have presented me with a momentous option, but if you ask me to make a decision about the theological correctness of the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed you have not. While we might disagree over particular examples, the larger point here concerns whether or not James means to deny the right to hold trivial religious beliefs. This strikes me as wildly implausible, and it certainly goes beyond anything that James claims in “The Will to Believe.” James clearly and quite sensibly thinks that momentous religious options are more important than trivial ones, and this is relevant to the practical rationality of religious belief. But he never makes the radical claim that we are absolutely forbidden from holding trivial religious beliefs. What James actually says is that in the case of trivial options we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds until objective evidence is available (WB, –). He never claims that we must do so. The foregoing discussion can help us to recognize a basic feature of James’s will to believe doctrine that is too often overlooked: namely, that it is concerned with evidence, and only aims to justify belief in matters where the option is live and the evidence is insufficient. The root of James’s famous disagreement with Clifford in “The Will to Believe” does not concern whether or not we have an obligation to attend to evidence. James agrees that we do. Rather, the disagreement concerns whether or not belief is lawful in cases where the evidence is inconclusive or unavailable. What James thinks is not only that it can be, but that our passional nature influences us even in cases where we might profess to be making purely objective and neutral judgements. As he explains: When the Cliffords tell us how sinful it is to be Christians on such “insufficient evidence,” insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind. For them the evidence is absolutely sufficient, only it makes the other way. They believe so completely in an anti-Christian order of the universe that there is no living option: Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start. (WB, –)
Peter Kauber makes a similar point in his essay, “The Foundations of James’s Ethics of Belief,” Ethics, : (January, ), –, where he formulates James’s basic position as follows: “There is only one duty with respect to belief, namely, the duty to attend to evidence; once one has met this obligation, and where external reality is not coercive over belief, one has the right to believe beyond the evidence – it is necessary to do so in some cases, and it remains rational to do so in others, even though in the latter cases it might not be strictly necessary” (p. ).
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If we are fully to appreciate this point, though, we need to know more about James’s views concerning the psychology of belief. While James’s idea of genuine options is bound up with his views on the right to believe, his views on our “passional nature” properly concern the will to believe, or what he calls “the actual psychology of human opinion” (WB, ). James’s will to believe doctrine is based on an account of human psychology that is distinct from, but nonetheless has important implications for, his ethics of belief. The following psychological claims, in particular, are basic to James’s doctrine, namely that: () passion and volition are ineliminable features of many of our beliefs, including our preference for and selection of particular moral, religious, and metaphysical beliefs; and () human beings have a natural tendency to hold and adopt beliefs which outstrip the evidence in order to satisfy their theoretical and practical needs. When it comes to moral, religious, and metaphysical beliefs, James thinks that what we are inclined and willing to believe is not a strictly rational affair, or a matter that is decided for us by something neutral and objective called “reason” or “the evidence.” Here, our reasons and interpretations of facts are always shaped by our passional and volitional nature (WB, ). While rationality and interpretation do not reduce to passion and volition, they nonetheless have an irreducibly perspectival dimension. James observes that the actual psychology of belief is an often messy and illogical affair, being driven more by the desire to satisfy our theoretical and practical needs than by a regard for the rules of valid inference and deduction. If we want to understand the psychological aspect of James’s will to believe doctrine, we need to examine () and () in more detail. James’s will to believe doctrine holds, among other things, that how we are predisposed to view certain matters and how we decide which beliefs to hold and which to reject is always influenced by our passional and volitional nature. In particular, our beliefs about religious and metaphysical matters are not grounded on objective evidence, because we have no such evidence at our disposal. Instead, our reasons for holding a particular set of views on these matters are largely determined by a range of individual and social factors. As James argues, “our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief, and it is only the latter that are too late for the fair; and they are not too late when the previous passional work has been already in their own direction”
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(WB, ). As he goes on to explain, this claim entails that “pure insight and logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not the only things that really do produce our creeds” (WB, ). Belief is not a strictly rational affair, but also is always a passional and volitional affair, or one which includes the emotions and the will as well as reason. Following Wainwright, I understand James as endorsing an account of passional reason, or a conception of rationality in which needs, interests, and sentiments both do and should play a role in the formation of adequate judgements. Since this aspect of James’s doctrine can be, and often has been, misunderstood, it stands in need of closer inspection. In claiming that belief is a jointly rational, passional, and volitional affair James is not thereby claiming that we either can or should believe anything we please. As he is careful to note, there are some things that we simply cannot bring ourselves to believe, at least in any serious or genuine sense of the term. James writes: Can we, by just willing it, believe that Abraham Lincoln’s existence is a myth, and that the portraits of him in McClure’s Magazine are all of someone else? Can we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars? We can say any of these things, but we are absolutely impotent to believe them; and of just such things is the whole fabric of the truths that we believe in made up – matters of fact, immediate or remote, as Hume said, and relations between ideas, which are either there or not there for us if we see them so, and which if not there cannot be put there by any action of our own. (WB, –)
Regarding the role of volition in moral and religious belief, see also Psychology: The Briefer Course (), where James claims that both morality and religion depend fundamentally upon human effort or acts of will (PBC, ). Indeed, he remarks here that our consents or non-consents seem to be our “deepest organs of communication with the nature of things,” and speculates that they might not only be “the measure of our worth as men” but also “the one strictly underived and original contribution which we make to the world” (PBC, ). James makes similar claims in “The Sentiment of Rationality” () (WB, pp. –), where he develops an account of rationality in which the sentiments and the will play indispensable roles, and in which a philosophy’s ability to satisfy our moral and spiritual demands (in addition to meeting logical demands) is counted as a mark of its rationality. Indeed, we also encounter here James’s view that our belief in the possible truth of certain events and state of aff airs (and our subsequent actions based on those beliefs) in some cases plays a role in determining the truth or falsity of statements about those events and state of affairs. In these respects, the essay serves as a precursor to “The Will to Believe” () and to James’s eventual will to believe doctrine. For Wainwright’s account of passional reason and his interpretation of James’s views on rationality and religious belief, see Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ), especially pp. – and pp. –. See also WB, –.
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Some beliefs cannot seriously be entertained or doubted, and others cannot sensibly be held at all. James’s point in discussing these cases is to make clear that his will to believe doctrine does not apply to them. While his ethics of belief admittedly gives wide latitude to belief in religious and metaphysical matters – indeed, it self-consciously aims to justify a plurality of religious and metaphysical beliefs – it is important to recognize that it does specify limits on what can be justifiably believed. James’s psychological view that our reasons are inseparably bound up with our emotions and will has important consequences for his epistemological views. One of the most salient is that if rationality is not purely objective or neutral in nature, then our selection and interpretation of evidence (a process which involves rationality, and whose purpose is to provide rational support for our claims) is also not purely objective or neutral in nature. “Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with,” James writes, “but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?” (WB, ). Insofar as James denies the possibility of objective evidence and certitude (at least for beings such as ourselves), and insofar as he maintains that rationality is inherently bound up with subjective factors such as passion and will, his views seem to entail a version of perspectivism, the view that knowledge is perspectival rather than absolute in character. James would appear to endorse a modest version of perspectivism, though, since he only claims that our interpretations of evidence or facts have an irreducibly perspectival dimension, and not, as a radical version of perspectivism would maintain, that there are no facts. Even though absolutism is false, James thinks, he observes that we are nonetheless “absolutists by instinct,” tending to believe that there is some kind of evidence – namely, an objective kind – to which we can appeal that will settle all doubt in matters of belief (WB, ). While he grants that we cannot seriously doubt the existence of our own consciousness, this is merely to acknowledge what he calls a “bare starting-point of knowledge” or “the mere admission of a stuff to be philosophized-about” (WB, ). At least when it comes to knowledge of reality, the history of philosophy painfully shows that we are unable
Kai-Michael Hingst offers an extended interpretation of James’s perspectivism in Perspektivismus und Pragmatismus: Ein Vergleich auf der Grundlage der Warhheitsbegriff e und der Religionsphilosophien von Nietzsche und James (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, ). See also The Principles of Psychology, where James writes that “the only thing which psychology has a right to postulate at the outset is the fact of thinking itself, and that must first be taken up and analyzed” (PP, ).
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to agree on what would constitute objective knowledge (WB, –). “The much lauded objective evidence is never there,” James remarks, “it is a mere aspiration or Grenzbegriff, marking the infinitely remote ideal of our thinking life” (WB, ). Indeed, the conviction that “the evidence one goes by is of the real objective brand, is only one more subjective opinion added to the lot” (WB, ). We have no infallible means of tracking the truth, or of knowing when we have it, even when it is within our grasp (WB, ). Since James thinks not only that absolutism is false, but also that “no concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon” (WB, ), he appears to doubt that we are capable of arriving at a criterion for absolute truth, presumably because such a criterion itself requires absolute certainty. Here, I think, we see how James’s will to believe doctrine entails not only a commitment to a version of perspectivism, but also a rejection of strong foundationalism. For James not only claims that our knowledge cannot be absolutely certain and objective; he also claims that we lack an absolutely certain and objective criterion for distinguishing absolute from non-absolute truth. While such a position does not rule out the possibility that we might be able to provide evidentially supported and corrigible foundations for our beliefs – indeed, James goes on to suggest that this is precisely what his own empiricism does – it denies that our beliefs can have absolutely certain and incorrigible foundations. By affirming a modest version of perspectivism and by rejecting strong foundationalism, however, James does not thereby endorse a thoroughgoing skepticism regarding knowledge. For while we have no infallible means of tracking the truth, we do nonetheless have reliable means: specifically, we have the pragmatic satisfactions which successful inquiry affords, such as the fulfillment of our desires or expectations, coherence among our beliefs, and the perceived agreement or fit of our beliefs with
I follow Alvin Plantinga’s distinction between strong and weak foundationalism. See Plantinga, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,” Christian Scholar’s Review (), reprinted in Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Ten Essential Texts in the Philosophy of Religion: Classics and Contemporary Issues (Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. Plantinga formulates the modern strong foundationalist’s criterion for justified belief or proper basicality thus: For any proposition A and person S, A is properly basic for S if and only if A is incorrigible for S or self-evident to S (p. 388). Weak foundationalism, in turn, is the view that “(1) every rational noetic structure has a foundation, and (2) in a rational noetic structure, non-basic belief is proportional in strength to support from the foundations” (p. 385). James is definitely committed to rejecting strong foundationalism. Whether or not he could endorse weak foundationalism, on the other hand, is unclear to me.
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reality. “To know is one thing,” James writes, “and to know for certain that we know is another” (WB, ). He continues: But please observe, now, that when as empiricists we give up the doctrine of objective certitude, we do not thereby give up the quest or hope of truth itself. We still pin our faith on its existence, and still believe that we gain an even better position towards it by systematically continuing to roll up experiences and think. (WB, –)
James thus rejects the view that there is objective, neutral evidence to which we can appeal in order to determine the truth about reality with objective certitude. But his view does not entail skepticism about the existence of facts or truth. As James makes clear throughout his writings, there are facts and truths to be discovered, but our knowledge of them is always shaped by our perspectives and the purposes that we bring to inquiry. Recognizing this state of affairs should not be a cause for despair. As James insists, “it matters not to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis may come to him: he may have acquired it by fair means or foul; passion may have whispered or accident suggested it; but if the total drift of thinking continues to confirm it, that is what he means by its being true” (WB, ). James extends this claim about the passional and volitional dimensions of rationality to our views about which norms should properly govern belief. After identifying the search for truth and the avoidance of error as our basic epistemic duties, James observes that these duties can sometimes conflict and that “by choosing between them we may end by colouring differently our whole intellectual life” (WB, ). Contrasting his own views on the ethics of belief with Clifford’s, James remarks that our feelings about these duties and how we rank them is at bottom an expression of our passional life (WB, ). He continues: Biologically considered, our minds are as ready to grind our falsehood as veracity, and he who says “Better go without belief forever than believe a lie!” merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe. He may be critical of many of his desires and fears, but this fear he slavishly obeys. He cannot imagine anyone questioning its binding force. For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world: so Clifford’s exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sound. (WB, )
The binding force behind our views on the ethics of belief, James suggests, is not “pure” or dispassionate reason, but rather reasons which are
I discuss these matters in greater detail in Chapter .
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underwritten by and expressive of our particular desires and inclinations. Although James does not draw this conclusion, it would seem that a further consequence of his account of the psychology of belief is that we should not expect there to be one set of epistemic norms on which all rational agents will agree. For if our reasons and norms are at least partly determined by non-rational psychological and social-historical factors, and if these factors differ in part from one individual and group to the next, then the reasons that underwrite our beliefs and the norms that govern them will partly differ as well. If James is right, an adequate understanding of the facts of human psychology should lead us to reject the idea that there is a “one-size-fits-all” account of the ethics of belief, or a single set of beliefs and epistemic norms that all rational persons would endorse. Now that we have a firmer grasp on James’s views concerning genuine options and our passional nature, we need to reconsider the four basic claims that I mentioned at the outset of this chapter. We have now examined () and (), but we have yet to consider () and (). Under (), James asserts that we not only do but also have a right to hold evidentially indeterminate beliefs under certain conditions. And under () he maintains that in some cases the truth or falsity of a given belief is dependent upon our actions. For James thinks that “not only as a matter of fact do we find our passional nature influencing us in our opinions, but that there are some options between opinions in which this influence must be regarded both as an inevitable and as a lawful determinant of our choice” (WB, ). The first thing to notice here is that James’s will to believe doctrine, again, does not apply to all options between hypotheses. Indeed, it does not even apply to most candidates for belief. As James states: Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come. In scientific questions, this is almost always the case; and even in human affairs in general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief to act on is better than no belief at all. (WB, –)
Most of the options presented to us in life are of the trivial and avoidable sort. Furthermore, James is fully in agreement with the common-sense realist view that the truth or falsity of most of our beliefs is not within our power to determine, such as what the objective facts are about the physical world (WB, ). “Wherever there is no forced option, the dispassionately judicial intellect with no pet hypothesis, saving us, as it does, from dupery at any rate, ought to be our ideal” (WB, ). This is not to concede that
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we can ever have perfectly dispassionate judicial intellects; rather, it is to say that this ought – in most cases – to be our regulative ideal. Not all options, though, are trivial or avoidable, and not all truths are wholly outside our power to determine. In the first case, James observes that it is not only religious and metaphysical beliefs that are evidentially inconclusive, but also certain moral beliefs, such as the belief in objective moral values (WB, –). He writes: Are our moral preferences true or false, or are they only odd biological phenomena, making things good or bad for us, but in themselves indifferent? How can your pure intellect decide? If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one. (WB, )
The belief that there are objective moral values or moral truths, James thinks, is one that cannot be decided on purely intellectual grounds. This leaves us in the position of choosing between moral skepticism regarding the existence of such values or truths, or a belief in “a world of moral reality” that is grounded not on objective evidence or arguments but rather on faith. Regardless of how we decide, though, the consequences for our conceptions of morality and moral agency are momentous, altering the way we think about ourselves and the world at a fundamental level. This, as James wrote in an earlier essay, is “the radical question of life – the question of whether this be at bottom a moral or an unmoral universe – and whether the method of faith may legitimately have a place there” (WB, ). Not only the belief in moral truth, but also the belief in truth itself is one that involves a passional commitment on our part, James thinks. “Moral scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can,” James observes, and “when we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with our whole nature, and resolve to stand or fall by the results” (WB, ). Two points are worth noting here. First, James is not saying that such decisions are grounded in nothing but passion and will; rather, he is saying that when we decide to adopt a certain attitude towards truth we do so with our whole nature, which includes the intellect as well as passion and will. Our interpretations of facts and the reasons that we give are shaped by the latter factors, but they do not reduce to them. Second, James thinks that it is pointless to try to refute the skeptic on purely intellectual grounds, not only because we cannot know the truth with absolute certainty, but also because the skeptic’s reasons for being a skeptic are not – in spite of what she might
See “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in WB, pp. –, especially pp. –.
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think – purely intellectual in nature. They are partly an expression of her passional and volitional nature and reflect her desire for a particular kind of world. In this respect, the moral skeptic is really on the same evidential footing as the believer in an objective moral order. The difference between them lies not in the evidence but rather in their different psychological constitutions and philosophical temperaments. But James also recognizes that in some cases our beliefs help to bring certain events or states of affairs about, thus making claims about those events or states of affairs true or false. That some truths depend upon personal action is among the most important claims in “The Will to Believe,” and it also underwrites other of James’s philosophical views, most notably his practical argument for libertarian free will in “The Dilemma of Determinism” () and his doctrine of meliorism, which plays a prominent role in such works as Pragmatism () and A Pluralistic Universe (). While James does not think that all genuine options fall into this class of beliefs, those that do are often of tremendous practical importance – indeed, he thinks that they show just how indispensable our passional and volitional nature is. When we turn from evaluative questions to certain questions of fact, James observes, we find that in some cases the truth or falsity of a given belief is dependent upon our action (WB, ). That is, James observes that in some cases a theoretical and epistemic property, truth, is dependent upon a practical property, action. To use one of James’s favorite examples, the truth of the statement “Do you like me?” often “depends, in countless instances, on whether
In Pragmatism, James argues that the history of philosophy is “to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments,” and that a philosopher’s temperament “really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises” (P, ). I consider James’s notion of philosophical temperament in greater detail in Chapter . For now, it should be sufficient to note that for James () our temperament loads the evidence one way or another (P, ), and () that we tend to trust our temperament, which is often the source of our most basic philosophical intuitions (P, ). See also, however, “The Sentiment of Rationality” (), WB, –, in particular pp. –, where James first makes this claim in order to show how belief outstrips evidence, and also “Is Life Worth Living?” (), WB –, especially pp. –, where the claim serves as the centerpiece of his argument against pessimism. Richard Gale has argued that the “belief-helping-to-make-true condition” applies to all will to believe options, but this is too strong a claim. See Gale, The Divided Self of William James (), pp. –. As we have seen, James does not think that the belief in moral truth or in truth itself is one that we have the power to make true (WB, –), and James is careful to distinguish what he terms “moral questions” or “wide questions of good” from “a certain class of questions of fact” in which we can influence the outcome of events or bring about certain states of affairs (WB, ). While some genuine options concern matters whose truth we can make or help to make (such as whether or not the world will be saved), others do not (such as whether or not God or an objective moral order exists).
Practical faith and the will to believe
I meet you half-way, am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation” (WB, ). James continues: The previous faith on my part in your liking’s existence is in such cases what makes your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until I have done something apt, as the absolutists say, ad extorquendum assensum meum, ten to one your liking never comes. (WB, )
Here, acting on the desire for a particular outcome helps to bring about the existence of that outcome, in the process determining the truth-value of relevant statements about that event or state of affairs (WB, ). This phenomenon obtains not only in such cases as friendship and romantic love, but in everyday life more generally (WB, –). James observes that the fate of social practices and institutions, whether large or small, is partly dependent upon the fact that “each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs” (WB, ). As James sums up this point: “Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned” (WB, ). While James is perhaps overstating his case in calling this phenomenon a “pure consequence” of our trust in and expectations concerning others – for surely this is not the only factor relevant to the success or failure of social practices and institutions – he is undoubtedly right that trust is a constitutive and practically indispensable feature of social life. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, James would eventually come to extend this claim about the success of social practices and institutions to the success of the universe with his metaphysical doctrines of pluralism and meliorism, in which the universe is conceived by way of a social analogy (PU, ; SPP, –) in which the faith and cooperative actions of its various members – both human and superhuman – are understood as the means of its possible deliverance and perfection (WB, ; VRE, ; P, –; PU, –). Given that there are cases where the truth of a proposition is dependent upon such factors as belief, desire, and action, James asserts that it is unreasonable to deny in those cases that we have a right to believe and
David Lamberth examines this feature of James’s thought in great detail in such works as “Interpreting the Universe after a Social Analogy: Intimacy, Panpsychism, and a Finite God in a Pluralistic Universe,” in Ruth Anna Putnam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ) and William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge University Press, ). What I want to consider, however, is the ethical significance of James’s religious worldview, particularly the way in which for James religious faith overcomes certain shortcomings of non-religious approaches to ethics and provides an account of optimal human flourishing.
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to act upon those beliefs. James formulates this point as follows: “In truths dependent upon our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing” (WB, ). His best statement of his views on this matter actually comes in “The Sentiment of Rationality,” however, and it is worth quoting in full: The future movements of the stars or the facts of past history are determined now once for all, whether I like them or not. They are given irrespective of my wishes, and in all that concerns truths like these subjective preference should have no part; it can only obscure the judgment. But in every fact into which there enters an element of personal contribution on my part, as soon as this personal contribution demands a certain degree of subjective energy which, in its turn, calls for a certain amount of faith in the result – so that, after all, the future fact is conditioned by my present faith in it – how trebly asinine would it be for me to deny myself the use of the subjective method, the method of belief based on desire! (WB, –)
If we are prepared to grant the latter point, James thinks that it is also reasonable to grant that some religious beliefs might be of this nature, and this leads us back again to his religious hypothesis. Although he does not think that our faith or “will to believe” can make the objects of religious belief exist (for example, God), James does think that some religious events and states of affairs are dependent upon these factors. For example, certain religious traditions teach that the final outcome of the universe can be affected by our beliefs and actions – for example, whether or not we choose to believe in and be saved by God, as some Christians believe, or whether or not we believe in and work for the liberation of all sentient beings, as some Buddhists believe. If we avoid making a decision about and acting upon such beliefs, we also avoid the goods that may come through religious faith. For James, these goods possibly include not only ethical goods but also epistemic goods, such as truth and knowledge. For we put ourselves in a position to confirm or disconfirm the truth of such religious beliefs only by actually choosing and attempting to live by them (WB, –). The upshot of this is that perpetual agnosticism in religious matters effectively denies our right to believe, and possibly prevents us from ever finding answers to our questions or achieving the goods that we want most. As James writes: I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truthseeking, or willfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there,
James also stresses this theme in such essays as “The Sentiment of Rationality” () and “Is Life Worth Living?” ().
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would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be. (WB, –)
When we apply James’s will to believe doctrine to his religious hypothesis, we find that the liveness or deadness of such a hypothesis will vary according to the individual and to the content of the particular beliefs in question. The decision whether or not to believe in God, for example, is not one that can be decided for us by objective, neutral evidence. The option to believe will be either live or dead for us not because of such evidence – for there isn’t any – but rather on account of our respective temperaments and on the particular background circumstances that have shaped us. While the former tend to influence the credibility of belief in God, the latter tend to influence the liveness or deadness of particular conceptions of God – say, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the God of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. In any case, the consequences of our decision are momentous, for they involve the possibility of obtaining or losing a vital good. The crux of James’s position in “The Will to Believe” is that if there is no objective, neutral evidence either for or against religious beliefs, and if such beliefs are live and momentous options for a given individual, then it is not reasonable for her to wait upon such evidence in making up her mind. To claim otherwise is, as James remarks, “the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave” (WB, ). It is not only unreasonable to deny our right to believe under these conditions, James thinks; it also runs counter to the facts of human psychology, which jointly impel us to adopt a believing or disbelieving attitude on account of our practical and theoretical needs and in accordance with our passional nature. Indeed, the very denial of our right to believe under these conditions is itself an expression of a particular psychological and philosophical temperament, and not a dictate of pure reason. James devotes the greater part of his efforts in “The Will to Believe” to making an epistemological case for religious faith. But as he makes clear toward the end of the essay, it is the practical value of the religious hypothesis that matters most. Anticipating a claim that he would later defend in The Varieties of Religious Experience, James writes that: If the action required by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure
Th is claim about the determining influence of temperament in our choice of philosophical and religious beliefs appears in early works such as “The Sentiment of Rationality” (see in particular WB, –), and also in later works such as Pragmatism () (see, for example, pp. –) and A Pluralistic Universe () (see especially pp. –).
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superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief. (WB, )
What is at stake is not merely understanding the world religiously, but living one’s life differently as a result of that understanding. If we really believe in the religious hypothesis – that is, if we really believe that the world has a supernatural dimension – then we should act differently as a result. In other words, if we do not act differently as a result of holding religious beliefs, then we do not really believe. This is why James rightly calls action the measure of belief (WB, ). But James is not merely pointing out a practical difference between these rival hypotheses; he also thinks (though he does not argue here) that it is practically better to believe in the religious hypothesis than in the naturalistic hypothesis. He will eventually argue that, all things considered, religious faith is demonstrably better for our well-being and for the moral life of individuals and societies than either atheism or agnosticism. Indeed, he will come to think that in the long run the religious hypothesis may even help to save the world. “Who knows,” James later writes, “whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?” (VRE, ). We shall encounter James’s reasons for holding these views in subsequent chapters. In the meanwhile, we need to clarify James’s connection of his will to believe doctrine with his doctrine of meliorism. In order to see this, it will be helpful to consider his essay “Faith and the Right to Believe,” where James offers his final statement of both doctrines.
Compare to VRE, –, where James adds that different events should be expected and different conduct required in a religiously interpreted world. In Chapter I examine James’s conception of the nature of and relationship between belief and action in his doctrine of pragmatism. I shall argue that a careful inspection of James’s pragmatic theory of truth reveals that it does not reduce truth (a property of beliefs) to utility (a property of actions); it shows, rather, that the latter serves as our best measure or indicator of the former. If, as James consistently argues, truth involves the fit or agreement of beliefs with reality (and falsity the lack thereof), then it cannot be the case that belief is reducible to action or is merely a species of action. Th is is because an important property of beliefs, truth or falsity, is partly determined by reference to something external to what we think and what we do. James argues the first claim in such essays as “The Dilemma of Determinism” () and “Is Life Worth Living?” (), and the second claim in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (). See, respectively, WB, pp. –; –; and – .
James’s Wager and the right to believe
The previous chapter examined James’s will to believe or right to believe doctrine, including its psychological and epistemological aspects and its defense of a highly generalized conception of religious belief which James terms “the religious hypothesis.” This chapter will concentrate on James’s final statement of his doctrine in the essay “Faith and the Right to Believe,” which serves as the appendix to his last book, Some Problems of Philosophy (). It shows that James did not rest content with merely defending our right to adopt any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will and is evidentially or intellectually inconclusive, but that he also used his doctrine as a means of justifying his belief in a “pluralistic-melioristic” universe – that is, his belief in an unfinished and essentially social universe that we can help to perfect through our good faith efforts and with the assistance of God or other superhuman forces (P, –; SPP, ). As Chapter will show, James’s idea of a pluralistic-melioristic universe presupposes not only the existence of superhuman forces (or what he here simply calls “the other powers”) but also their assistance in our moral efforts, for what is at stake is not simply the improvement of the world but its ultimate unification and salvation. What is especially interesting about James’s argument in “Faith and the Right to Believe,” though, is that in the process of undertaking to justify his faith in a pluralistic-melioristic universe he supplemented his will to believe doctrine with a Pascalian prudential argument for religious belief – or what I shall call “James’s Wager.” This argument faces a number of serious problems, as we shall see, not the least of which is its tension with James’s claims about the intellectually inconclusive nature of religious belief. I shall argue that his will to believe doctrine is better off without it. In the closing section of “The Will to Believe” James had issued an appeal to intellectual tolerance, which he conceived as the natural complement to tolerance in practical matters. It is only by practicing genuine tolerance and respect for one another’s mental freedom, he believed – that
James’s Wager and the right to believe
is, only by endorsing something like a liberal ethics of belief – that we shall be able to bring about an intellectual republic, in which a plurality of speculative beliefs about reality are justified on the condition that, when acted upon, they do not hinder the mental freedom of others (WB, ). This is where we see the practical application of James’s ethics of belief, for at issue is whether – and if so, on what grounds – we may legitimately deny warrant to a person’s speculative or evidentially inconclusive beliefs, including not only religious belief but also religious disbelief (for atheism and agnosticism are also evidentially inconclusive beliefs). In a Jamesian intellectual republic , religious believers may not deny an epistemic warrant to atheists and agnostics, and atheists and agnostics may not deny an epistemic warrant to religious persons, as long as these beliefs are live and evidentially inconclusive and as long as they go with tolerance of other speculative beliefs. In “Faith and the Right to Believe,” however, James moves beyond offering a liberal account of the ethics of belief to offering a defense of our right to believe in a pluralistic and melioristic universe, one in which we conceive ourselves to stand in intimate relations with a supernatural being or beings who assist our efforts to improve the world. While still championing intellectual tolerance and pluralism, James’s will to believe doctrine now also defends a comprehensive pluralistic and melioristic worldview that we may adopt or reject at our discretion (though with the dubious proviso that belief in a pluralistic and melioristic universe is more practically reasonable that its intellectualist alternative). In Pragmatism () James had argued that the alternative between pragmatism and rationalism is not merely a question in the theory of knowledge, but also a question concerning “the structure of the universe itself ” (P, ). He is not using “rationalism” here in the standard epistemological sense, but rather as a synonym for what he calls intellectualism, one of the chief targets of his later philosophical writings and the special focus of “Faith and the Right to Believe.” James begins the essay by defining “intellectualism” as “the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete
James rarely uses the terms “empiricism” and “rationalism” in their standard senses, as referring to two rival theories of knowledge. In the present essay, for example, he describes empiricism as “believing in possibilities” and rationalism as “believing only in impossibilities and necessities” (SPP, ). Th is is not only a highly idiosyncratic use of these terms, but one which seems to involve the denial that empiricism (in the standard sense) can admit of necessity or impossibility, as well as the denial that rationalism (in the standard sense) can admit of possibility. It is not at all clear that these claims are true; indeed, they seem to be false, at least if we understand them as universal claims. Even if many of the empiricists and rationalists that James had in mind held such views, there is nothing about these positions (again, in the standard sense of these terms) which requires it. Empiricists can surely affirm the impossibility of square circles, just as surely as rationalists can believe in all manner of possibilities.
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in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given” (SPP, ). The real issue at stake between his pragmatic outlook and its intellectualist alternative , as he sees it, concerns whether the universe is essentially finished and unaffected by human beliefs and actions or whether it is essentially unfinished, “growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work” (P, ). We have already seen James argue that there are some classes of belief in which truth is partly dependent upon personal action; in such cases the truth or falsity of the relevant claims is not fixed in advance, and can only be determined through action. Even if in most cases our beliefs and actions do not affect the truth-value of propositions, there are nonetheless some cases in which they do. In such cases, James thinks, it is simply unreasonable to require that we wait until neutral, objective evidence has come in before deciding what we shall believe, because the facts and the truth or falsity of claims about those facts are contingent upon our choices and their outcomes. If we are willing to believe that we possess free will and that chance is a real feature of the universe (following James’s will to believe doctrine), then it follows that we believe that our choices and their outcomes are not rigidly determined in advance. Furthermore, if
James sometimes speaks of “vicious intellectualism,” although his definition of this view makes it doubtful that he conceives it as a strong as opposed to a weak or moderate form of intellectualism. Vicious intellectualism, on James’s view, involves the “treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the name’s definition fails positively to include” (PU, ). Although James does not make this connection, vicious intellectualism would seem to name a kind of informal fallacy, one which denies that a given object, event, or state of affairs could possess properties other than those included in the definition of one of its properties. To use one of James’s favorite examples, to contend that “a person whom you have once called an ‘equestrian’ is thereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet” is an instance of vicious intellectualism (PU, ) . James associates this view with absolute idealism, in particular. James develops an argument for libertarian free will in “The Dilemma of Determinism,” one which argues against determinism not on the grounds that it is demonstrably false – for James does not think that we can show this – but rather on the grounds that it is psychologically and morally debilitating. His case against determinism essentially rests, à la Kant, on the grounds that exigent practical reasons should compel a rational person to reject it in the face of theoretical indeterminacy. By far the best analysis of James’s argument against determinism that I have seen is Richard Gale’s in The Divided Self of William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. While I do not take issue with Gale’s analysis of James’s dilemma of determinism argument, I do believe that his assessment of James’s defense of compatibilism at the end of the essay, namely, as pandering to his theistic audience, is not entirely charitable. Another interpretation of the “chess analogy” that James uses to illustrate how human free will might be compatible with the notion of Providence is this: that rather than being a case of pandering or of James having failed to be true to his “Promethean self,” what we have here is an early example of James’s “pluralistic-melioristic” worldview, one that is compatible not only with his “Promethean pragmatism” (James explicitly links pragmatism with pluralism and meliorism in Lecture VIII of Pragmatism), but also with his supposedly “Anti-Promethean mysticism” (for James explicitly
James’s Wager and the right to believe
our choices and their outcomes are parts of the world, then the world’s character is not complete in itself and not wholly beyond our power to determine. On this view, we have the power to shape not only the course of our own lives and the lives of other human beings, but also the power to influence the character of the world. This is the central argument of “Faith and the Right to Believe,” where James is concerned to defend the possibility of a melioristic and pluralistic universe, one conceived “after a social analogy, as a pluralism of independent powers” (SPP, ), and whose success or failure is contingent upon the efforts of its members and their faith in one another (SPP, –). Faith, in other words, can help to create the fact of the world’s salvation. Perhaps the chief merit of the essay, though, is its capacity to shed light on how James conceived the religious purpose of his will to believe doctrine, as well as how he connected it with other of his philosophical doctrines. As we saw in the quote above, the doctrines that James explicitly associates here with the will to believe are pluralism and meliorism: respectively, the metaphysical doctrine that reality is ontologically many rather than one (P, –, –; PU, –; SPP, –); and the religious metaphysical doctrine that the universe can be saved through the cooperative efforts of its members (WB, ; P, –, –; SPP, –). If metaphysical optimism is the view that the world’s salvation or perfection is inevitable, and metaphysical pessimism is the view that this is impossible, meliorism is the view which mediates between them, treating salvation as “a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become” (P, ) . A “pluralistic-melioristic” way of viewing the world, then, is one which sees the world’s perfection not only as a possibility (qua meliorism), but also as something that is achievable through the efforts of its many members (qua pluralism), which for James includes not only human beings but also superhuman forces (P, –; SPP, –). James’s pluralistic-melioristic worldview is thus a religious worldview, one which has what James elsewhere calls a “piecemeal supernatural” or jointly supernatural and natural constitution (VRE, –). We shall consider James’s pluralisticmelioristic worldview in greater detail in Chapter , section IV, and the details of his “piecemeal supernaturalism” in Chapter , section V.
connects his pluralism and meliorism to his “Promethean” will to believe doctrine in the conclusion of PU). Where Gale sees division and incompatibility, we might just as easily see unity: in this case, of free, finite beings collaborating with a providential unseen order to make a better world. See Gale , The Divided Self of William James (), pp. –.
Practical faith and the will to believe
Although much of his argument in “Faith and the Right to Believe” is devoted to a critique of intellectualism and a defense of the right to believe in a pluralistic-melioristic universe , it should be emphasized that James still defends the right to hold metaphysical and religious beliefs more generally (SPP, , ). As we saw in Chapter , James felt the need to argue for such a right against the scientific rationalists of his day, men like Clifford and Huxley who held that the only beliefs about the world that we are entitled to hold are those sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. Not only religious beliefs but also speculative metaphysical beliefs are illicit under the terms of such a strongly evidentialist view, which threatens to put both religion and philosophy out of business. James thought that there were many problems with scientific rationalism , but the most basic of these is that it fails to recognize that science is not an adequate substitute for philosophy and religion. Unlike science, he argues, philosophy and religion interpret “the total character of the world,” as opposed to merely the physical world (SPP, ). While restricting belief to what the empirical evidence shows or will support works well in the context of scientific inquiry, it is not clear that this and other “intellectualist” rules properly apply to philosophical and religious inquiry (SPP, ). At any rate, what James wants to reject is not scientific inquiry per se but rather certain intellectualist postulates which are sometimes wedded to it. These include the following: () the avoidance of error is our paramount epistemic duty; () in every respect the universe is finished in advance of our dealings with it; () knowledge of reality is best gained by a passively receptive mind; () evidence needs no good will or faith for its reception; and () while human belief and action may be parts of the world, they cannot alter the nature of the world. (SPP, ) Although James does not make the argument, it seems clear that this strong form of intellectualism must be false, if it is true that in some cases the existence of certain objects, events, and states of affairs is dependent upon our beliefs and actions. Whether or not a weaker form of intellectualism might be true is, unfortunately, not a possibility that James entertains. What he argues instead is that intellectualism is itself a kind
For an excellent discussion of James’s critique of scientific rationalism and the ways in which it arbitrarily delimits experience and what counts as evidence so as to rule out the supernatural, see Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion: William James’s Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, ).
James’s Wager and the right to believe
of faith, one which “wills to believe” in the truth of an intellectualist universe and to disbelieve in the truth of a pluralistic religious universe (SPP, ). His basic criticism is not that intellectualism is false, then, but rather that it is inconsistent . Both the intellectualist and the religious believer are guided by their respective (and presumably question-begging) “faith-tendencies.” The only salient difference between them lies in the character of those tendencies. We have already encountered James’s claim that “human passions are stronger than technical rules” (WB, ). James builds upon this claim in “Faith and the Right to Believe,” providing an account of the psychological process whereby we arrive at evidentially inconclusive or indeterminate beliefs. His name for this process is the faith-ladder, which he outlines as follows: () there is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing self-contradictory; () it might have been true under certain conditions; () it may be true, even now; () it is fit to be true; () it ought to be true; () it must be true; and () it shall be true, at any rate for me. (SPP, ) Now James is quick to admit that this is not an “intellectual chain of inferences,” even though it somewhat resembles a hypothetical syllogism; yet, in spite of its dubious logical credentials, he insists that it is nonetheless “a slope of good-will on which in the larger questions of life men habitually live” (SPP, ). It is also, he believes, the process by which both parties in metaphysical disputes actually tend to arrive at and hold fast to their visions of reality. “It is life exceeding logic,” as James explains in
James’s description of the stages of the “faith-ladder” in PU is essentially the same, though it is stated in the second-person and ends with claim that “And your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making it securely true in the end” (PU, ). James discusses this last claim elsewhere and at greater length in “Faith and the Right to Believe,” however. That James did not intend to describe or defend an alternative “logic” of belief is clear from his qualifying remarks about the faith-ladder in SPP. The process that James describes is psychological in nature, and is understood to be psychologically compelling, despite the fact that the chain of inferences involved does not constitute a valid argument. Unfortunately, some interpreters have failed to heed James’s qualifications and have erroneously ascribed to him an alternative conception of the “logic” of faith. In this regard see Gregory Pappas’s essay, “William James and the Logic of Faith,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society . []: –. Pappas not only ascribes a more radical claim to James than the relevant passages suggest; he also puts James in the difficult position of defending an alternative logic that is patently illogical according to the laws of first-order predicate logic .
Practical faith and the will to believe
another context, “it is the practical reason for which the theoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there” (PU, ). One of the points that James makes in his comments on this psychological process is that our reasoning about matters of faith is inescapably non-neutral and question-begging. We cannot objectively determine the truth or falsity of religious and metaphysical claims, and we usually already believe in the truth or falsity of certain conclusions in advance. The arguments that philosophers and theologians use to prove or disprove God’s existence, for example, are really designed to “prove” or “disprove” the truth of beliefs which they do not sincerely doubt, and which they presume from the outset and will not give up even if telling objections are posed to their arguments. The theist already believes in God, just as the atheist and agnostic do not; and the arguments that each gives for or against God’s existence are basically motivated – whatever their logical status might be – by these prior, objectively indemonstrable commitments. While this may pose a challenge to those who hope to provide objective arguments or evidence either for or against certain religious beliefs, James does not think that it is especially problematic or that it should worry the average religious believer. This is because our choice either to believe or disbelieve is not basically grounded on arguments but on life, on the “practical proof” afforded by our attempts to live, in the face of uncertainty, in light of some ultimate vision of reality, be it religious or irreligious. This is not fideism, because faith is not rationally groundless on James’s view. It is, rather, something like a pragmatic version of evidentialism, in which what it means to count as evidence for or against a religious or metaphysical belief is an ethical as well as an epistemological matter. It is an epistemological matter insofar as the beliefs in question must be evidentially inconclusive live options for belief. And it is an ethical matter insofar as the beliefs in question must make a significant difference to how we lead our lives. Since for James both
In Pragmatism James makes a similar claim – indeed, a more personal and forceful one – when he writes that “in the end it is our faith and not our logic that decides such questions, and I deny the right of any pretended logic to veto my own faith” (P, ). As we shall see in Chapter in our discussion of The Varieties of Religious Experience, James argues that religious experience can provide an epistemic warrant for religious belief under certain conditions, even though the evidence for supernatural religious claims is not – and for beings such as ourselves, cannot be – of a neutral, non-question-begging sort. Although James rejects strong versions of evidentialism, such as those defended by Clifford and Huxley, he does not suppose – as fideists typically do – that religious faith is rationally groundless. In Varieties he not only defends the rationality of religious belief based on religious experience, but also argues that some religious beliefs are disconfirmed by the evidence while others still are ruled out as plausible candidates for belief by our moral beliefs.
James’s Wager and the right to believe
theory and practice reflect our subjectivity, or our passional and volitional nature, any evidence that we discover will necessarily have a subjective dimension. It will not be objective in the neutral, non-question-begging sense of the term. James thinks, that, since there is no such evidence, we have to make do with what we have, even if that means that we won’t all arrive at the same conclusion – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Here again, we see how James’s views on the limits of religious and metaphysical knowledge and the perspectival nature of belief and rationality connect with his religious pluralism, for if the evidence in religious and metaphysical matters is objectively inconclusive and subjectively colored by our passional and volitional natures, then we should expect diversity in our religious and metaphysical views. This is the fact of religious and metaphysical pluralism. But to this descriptive claim James adds the normative claim that religious and metaphysical pluralism is a good thing, so long as our faiths (including atheism and agnosticism) go with “toleration of other faiths, with the search for the most probable, and with the full consciousness of responsibilities and risks” (SPP, ). As James remarks in a number of places, our visions of reality, our ideals and overbeliefs, are usually the most interesting and important things about us (see WB, ; P, ; PU, ) . James concluded his last two books with a discussion of the way in which “one’s general vision of the probable” usually decides one’s views on religious and metaphysical matters (PU, ). Where the evidence for or against a given belief is objectively inconclusive our active “faith-tendencies,” as James calls them, outstrip the evidence and impel us to adopt a believing attitude (SPP, –). Given that the evidence for religious and metaphysical beliefs is objectively inconclusive and that we cannot avoid adopting a believing or disbelieving attitude toward them – this is true even of agnosticism, which is itself a principled commitment – James thinks that it is unreasonable to deny a place for faith (WB, –; SPP, ). He writes that: Faith thus remains as one of the inalienable birthrights of our mind. Of course it must remain a practical, and not a dogmatic attitude. It must go with toleration of other faiths, with the search for the most probable, and with the full consciousness of responsibilities and risks … it may be regarded as a formative
James makes a similar point in Pragmatism, where he writes that a person’s temperament in philosophical and religious matters “loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it” (P, ).
Practical faith and the will to believe
factor in the universe, if we be integral parts thereof, and co-determinants, by our behavior, of what its total character may be. (SPP, )
Given the limits of our knowledge and the demands of our passional and volitional nature we have a right to believe, James insists, but this right is attended with tremendous risk and personal commitment. When it comes to our choice of metaphysical and religious alternatives we should recognize that “we have but this one life in which to take up our attitude towards them, no insurance company is there to cover us, and if we are wrong, our error, even though it be not as great as the old hell-fire theology pretended, may yet be momentous” (SPP, ). In questions concerning the ultimate character of the world, of whether there is an objective moral order, and of whether we have a “vital part” to play in the world’s outcome (to name but a few), James argues that faith cannot be fractional in nature – rather, a “certain wholeness in our faith” is necessary (SPP, ). This last passage is crucial for gaining a proper understanding of James’s will to believe doctrine, for it challenges interpretations which see the doctrine as defending a merely regulative conception of faith, or one in which we act “as if” we believed (but really do not). James made clear that this is a misunderstanding of his doctrine (see WB, ), but his denials have seldom been heeded. While James understands a practical faith to involve the adoption of a fallible and revisable hypothesis, one that we test by actually trying to live by it, this does not necessarily entail a denial of religious realism or that his doctrine advocates a tongue-in-cheek approach to religious faith. This misunderstanding of James’s doctrine seems to rest on the assumption that hypotheses are not really “beliefs,” and that by extension James’s “religious hypothesis” does not qualify as a belief either. But when I say that I believe in the theory of plate tectonics and the theory of evolution by natural selection, I clearly do believe that plate activity is responsible for continental drift and that organisms have been and are evolving. Simply because I might revise these beliefs in light of the data does not make them any less beliefs; it simply means that my beliefs are not incorrigible, or irrevocably fixed against future experience. James not only believes that there is a real world which science encounters and aims to understand (PP, ; WB, –; MT, –). He also believes that
James’s views regarding the nature of the real world are more difficult to sort out, however. In The Principles of Psychology James self-consciously took a natural scientific view of the mind and the world, assuming that both are essentially physical in nature (PP, Preface). James recognized that to go beyond this point of view was to venture into metaphysics, and this was something that he tried his best to avoid in Principles but readily embraced in his later philosophical writings, most notably in works such as A Pluralistic Universe and in the essays which became Essays
James’s Wager and the right to believe
there is a supernatural “wider self” or “unseen order” to which religious beliefs in general refer and which our religious “overbeliefs” variously interpret (VRE, –; P, –). We shall encounter the realist aspect of James’s philosophy of religion in greater detail in Chapters and . For now, it is enough to note that in rejecting a dogmatic understanding of religious faith James is not thereby rejecting religious realism or endorsing a duplicitous attitude toward religious faith. While someone might wish to object that dogmatism is basic to religious faith, this would be to beg the question . James’s claims about the risks involved in religious belief and the need for wholeness in our faith are important for another reason, however, insofar as they take the form of a Pascalian argument for religious belief which supplements his will to believe doctrine. In “The Will to Believe,” James criticizes Pascal’s Wager on the grounds that it reeks of desperation – he remarks at one point that when religious faith “expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming-table, it is put to its last trumps” – and because it seems to presuppose that Roman Catholicism is a live option for anyone (WB, ). Yet, only a few pages later we find James agreeing with Pascal’s claim about the determining influence of passion in matters of religious faith, and remarking that his argument is “a regular clincher” insofar as it is “the last stroke needed to make our faith in masses and holy water complete” (WB, ). James essentially develops a modified version of Pascal’s Wager in “Faith and the Right to Believe,” now arguing not only that we have a right to believe under certain conditions, but also that it is more reasonable to be a religious believer than not (SPP, –). The differences between James’s Wager and Pascal’s are subtle but nonetheless significant. Whereas Pascal famously argues for the reasonableness of belief in God (indeed, the truth of Christianity) on account of the probabilities involved and the infinite gains and losses at stake for the individual, James argues for the reasonableness of belief in a pluralisticmelioristic universe (which can be variously conceived) on account of the probabilities involved and the momentous gains and losses at stake for the universe. What is at stake in James’s Wager is not the eternal salvation or damnation of one’s immortal soul, but rather the ultimate salvation or damnation of the world. Exactly what James means in speaking of the in Radical Empiricism. As a scientist, James was willing to assume the existence of a physical universe and to treat that universe and its laws as explanatorily ultimate; as a philosopher, he was equally willing to dispense with materialism and entertain a wide range of supernatural and idealist theories about reality. I shall not venture much farther into this issue, but it seems to me that this is a striking instance of what Richard Gale has termed James’s “divided selves.”
Practical faith and the will to believe
world’s salvation is rather unclear, both here and in other writings, but, as Chapter will show, James’s vagueness is partly due to his pragmatic views on the meaning of religious and metaphysical beliefs and his desire to offer a pragmatic account of religion that is inclusive of a wide range of religious “overbeliefs.” In any case, the essential point to be grasped about James’s view at present is that achieving the world’s salvation requires not only our belief or faith, but also our action: we must do our part by leading moral lives, and so must the supernatural powers which constitute or dwell in the unseen order. Quietism and moral indifference are not an option, for reasons that we will consider more fully in Chapter . We can represent James’s Wager as follows, filling out the details of his doctrine of meliorism with a little help from his other religious writings:
I believe in it and act I don’t believe in it and don’t act
A saving unseen order exists
It doesn’t exist
momentous gain momentous loss
James’s Wager might seem rather bizarre, given its replacement of “God” with a fuzzy pluralistic substitute, but it potentially manages to avoid two important objections that have been raised against Pascal’s Wager. As Simon Blackburn has argued, Pascal’s Wager suffers from two serious problems: () it presumes to start from a position of metaphysical ignorance, one in which we can know nothing about the realm beyond ordinary sensory experience, and proceeds to present us with a case of false options (if we are really as metaphysically ignorant as Pascal claims, then we cannot know what God is like or how he might respond to our belief in him); and () it seems unable to account for the fact of religious pluralism, which renders our options for belief far more complex than Pascal’s Wager allows. Unlike Pascal’s Wager, James’s does not
What is not clear from his defense of meliorism in “Faith and the Right to Believe,” but which is clear from his defense of that doctrine in Pragmatism and A Pluralistic Universe, is that it presumes the existence of what James variously calls “superhuman forces,” “higher powers,” or more tellingly “a finite God.” The key idea here is that the object or objects of religious belief will assist us in bringing about the pluralistic-melioristic universe, but neither we nor they can do it alone. What the melioristic theist believes, as James names this view at P, –, is that a finite God (or the superhuman forces or higher powers) will cooperate with our efforts to bring about the world’s salvation, and that it is only through a combined human and superhuman effort that this end can be realized. I have elected to use one of James’s terms for the object of religious belief from Varieties, viz. “unseen order,” as a stand-in for these many terms in the model above, and have chosen it () because it is less recognizably theistic than some of James’s other terms and () because James did not intend to restrict his doctrine of meliorism exclusively to theistic accounts of religion. See Blackburn, “Pascal’s Wager: A Critique,” in Think (Oxford University Press, ).
James’s Wager and the right to believe
claim that we are in a position of complete metaphysical ignorance. Although he does not enlist his work on religious experience in this essay, James elsewhere makes a case for the reality of an unseen order and for believing that religious and mystical experience can put us in contact with it (VRE, –). While James thinks that our knowledge of the unseen order is quite limited, he also believes that it enables us to establish certain facts about that order, for example, that it is capable of producing “saving experiences” (VRE, ). He thinks, in other words, that we are in a position to know that belief in an unseen order has soteriological effects, for example, personal transformation. Furthermore, James’s Wager differs from Pascal’s in recognizing the fact of religious pluralism – that is, that there are many different faiths, many, if not most, of which make claims regarding human salvation or liberation. While not all of these faiths will be live options for a given individual, those that are should enter into a person’s decision about whether – and more importantly what – to believe. James’s Wager does face several problems, however. The first is that it is not clear why belief in James’s saving, unseen order and the melioristic universe that it makes possible should be more rational than other types of religious belief. For example, the notion of salvation that James seems to presume is decidedly this-worldly, insofar as it concerns the perfection of the world through the cooperation of human and superhuman forces (SPP, ). This is clearly not a view that all religious persons would be inclined to accept. Thus, a more traditionally minded theist might reject James’s suggestion that God needs our help (this view, as James readily admits elsewhere, entails a finite conception of God), or find the omission of such issues as the immortality of the soul and personal salvation in his argument troubling. While admittedly broad, James’s Wager seems to frame our options in a way that some (and possibly many) religious people would reject, and in any case it does not show why we should adopt it in favor of some other religious vision. It would seem, then, that while James’s Wager is capable of making significant concessions to the fact of religious pluralism, it nevertheless fails to include certain religious beliefs and demands which many religious people would insist upon, and fails to show why it is more reasonable to endorse its religious vision than another . In this respect, it too falls prey to Blackburn’s second objection. Second, it is not clear why James needs to defend his will to believe doctrine any longer if he thinks he can show that it is more reasonable, all things considered, to be a religious believer than not. Presumably our decision to believe or not in religious matters is not as intellectually undecidable as
Practical faith and the will to believe
James once suggested. While this is not a problem for his Wager per se, it does seem to represent an inconsistency in his larger account of religious faith, in particular an inconsistency between the epistemological presuppositions of his Wager and those of his will to believe doctrine. Finally, consider an assertion that James makes a few pages later, namely that we must take one of four attitudes with regard to supernatural beings or powers; we must either: () “Follow intellectualist advice: wait for evidence; and while waiting, do nothing; or () “Mistrust the other powers and, sure that the universe will fail, let it fail; or () “Trust them; and at any rate do our best, in spite of the if; or, finally, () “Flounder, spending one day in one attitude, another day in another”. (SPP, ) James believes that the fourth way provides no systematic solution; that the second involves faith in the failure of the universe; that the first way may be practically indistinguishable from the second way; and that the third way “seems the only wise way” (SPP, ). The first problem with this list of statements is that it is not necessary to take one of these four attitudes. For some reason James does not entertain the possibility that one might simply disbelieve in the existence of supernatural beings or powers, say, because one’s passional nature and standards for evidence render such beliefs implausible from the outset. This is different from (), which involves taking an agnostic stance, and it clearly rules out (), () and (). Perhaps what James means to claim, though, is that granted the existence of supernatural beings or powers, we must choose one of these four attitudes? This does not work either, because () does not grant this. What James really seems to be asserting is that if one already believes in the existence of supernatural beings or powers, then it is more reasonable to trust them and to be consistent in one’s faith than to mistrust them or be inconsistent in one’s faith. But in what sort of universe and in what sort of supernatural beings are we being asked to believe? It is possible that there are supernatural beings and that the universe is destined to perish in the end (the ancient Norse believed this, for example), and that there are supernatural beings that we would be wise not to trust (consider demons and malevolent deities, for example). Why is it wiser to follow James than to follow one of these other views? The first of these is a highly fatalistic view, of course, and one incompatible with the tenets of James’s pluralism; and the second
James’s Wager and the right to believe
is clearly not a view that James wants to endorse, since he wants only to advocate belief in good and helpful supernatural beings. But James has not said that the argument applies only to pluralists, nor has he given us any reason to believe that supernatural beings are, or must be, good and helpful (indeed, James was aware through his work on religious experience and psychical research that not all paranormal experiences purport to be experiences of benevolent beings; see, for example, VRE, –). Perhaps, then, James means only for his argument to apply to pluralists who share his views about the benevolent nature of supernatural beings? This may very well be right, but if so it trivializes James’s argument, for he is now simply preaching to the choir. In my view, James would have fared better if he had avoided arguing that belief in his melioristic universe is more reasonable than its alternatives, and contented himself with simply offering a defense of the right to believe. The failures of James’s Wager, however, do not constitute failures of his will to believe doctrine. Indeed, James’s failure to demonstrate that his melioristic, pluralistic worldview is objectively preferable to (because more practically rational than) other worldviews may actually confirm some of the basic tenets of his will to believe doctrine; namely, that the truth or falsity of religious and metaphysical theories is objectively indeterminate, and that the appeal or disappeal of a given religious or metaphysical theory is partly relative to one’s passional and volitional nature. If these claims are true, then any attempt to demonstrate the strictly rational superiority of one religious or metaphysical theory over another is bound to fail. As I mentioned earlier, and setting these philosophical difficulties aside for the moment, perhaps the most valuable feature of the essay is its capacity to shed light on how James connected his will to believe doctrine with other of his philosophical views. In particular, James’s connection of the doctrine with his later religious and moral views is revealing, and rules out interpretations which see his will to believe doctrine as occupying a transitional stage in his philosophy of religion. For the essay concludes with a discussion of the basic presuppositions and consequences of a pluralistic or melioristic universe, and how our active faith in such a universe might help to bring it about (SPP, –). What James says here amounts to a thickened version of the “religious hypothesis” that he had defended in “The Will to Believe,” still preserving a space for religious pluralism and tolerance while now offering a more concrete account of the worldview that is basic to his conception of practical faith. Such a universe, conceived in terms of a social analogy as
Practical faith and the will to believe
containing many different members who work in concert to bring about a desired result, is one that requires “the good-will of all of us, in the way of belief as well as of our other activities, to bring it to a prosperous issue” (SPP, ). Our individual decisions or “wills to believe” in such a universe and our good-faith efforts are necessary, in conjunction with the good-faith efforts of a supernatural being or beings, if the outcome of a pluralistic and unfinished universe is to turn out well. While James thinks that these are jointly necessary conditions for the success of a melioristic universe – one in which chance and choice are operative (thus, ruling out hard determinism) and which is inhabited by a plurality of finite beings, some of whom are perhaps vastly more powerful than others but not omnipotent (here, James wants to reconcile belief in supernatural beings such as God with the problem of evil) – he does not claim that they are evidently sufficient conditions, either singly or jointly. They may be sufficient, but we cannot determine the truth or falsity of this claim in advance (SPP, –). Yet, there is the chance of salvation in such a universe and a place for supernatural beings and human free will, and this, James thinks, provides an adequate basis for religious faith (VRE, –; P, –). As he writes elsewhere: the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all. (VRE, )
Th is represents a departure from James’s earlier, more humanistic view in “The Sentiment of Rationality” (), where James does not claim that a melioristic universe specifically requires religious faith and the assistance of supernatural beings for its achievement. James’s doctrine of meliorism and defense of faith in this essay are far more general than in “Faith and the Right to Believe.” Indeed, the latter encompasses a range of evidentially inconclusive beliefs, including belief in a moral universe (one that we can create through our collective will to believe) as well as such matters as God, free will, and the immortality of the soul. These differences are partly attributable to the earlier stage of James’s thinking on these matters – his writings become more rather than less religious over time – and also to the primary aim of the essay, which was to demonstrate the indispensability of our passional and volitional nature. I also suspect, however, that James became aware that his earlier conception of meliorism fell prey to a fatal objection; namely, that it is not plausible to believe that human beings could achieve the world’s salvation without supernatural assistance. For James’s earlier view, see WB, –, especially pp. –.
James’s Wager and the right to believe
To this statement James adds the following, also from Varieties, but relevant to our present discussion: For practical life at any rate, the chance of salvation is enough. No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference … between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope. (VRE, )
We are free, of course, to choose a different “faith-venture,” perhaps opting for a thoroughly disenchanted version of naturalism if we are temperamentally inclined towards atheism, or perhaps another version of supernaturalism, including but not limited to the “refined” supernaturalism of transcendental and absolute idealists and dualistic supernaturalisms such as popular Christianity and scholastic theism (VRE, –; P, ). James himself felt unable to accept these other options, but he allowed in other of his writings that they could be live options for others (VRE, ; P, ). What is ultimately unclear in “Faith and the Right to Believe,” however, is whether he still held that such beliefs could be rational in light of a reflective consideration of our options. James’s Wager seems to suggest otherwise, and in doing so it appears to conflict with his will to believe doctrine. The first two chapters of this book have shown that James’s will to believe doctrine is predicated upon the epistemological claim that we have the right to believe under certain conditions (namely, where the option to believe is live and the evidence is inconclusive), as well as the psychological claim that our “will” to believe in religious and metaphysical matters is virtually unavoidable and shaped by a wide range of perspectival factors. I believe these aspects of the doctrine need to be recognized and distinguished if we are to arrive at an adequate understanding of James’s view. But it is one thing to offer an adequate interpretation of a philosopher’s views, and another to show that his views are worth taking seriously. Having dealt with the interpretive issues at some length, I should now like to deal, albeit more briefly, with what I take to be the philosophical merits of James’s doctrine. As I mentioned previously, perhaps the most powerful claim entailed by James’s will to believe doctrine is that if we rightly understand the nature of religious belief and the nature of our psychology, we should not expect – nor shall we probably ever have – an objective demonstration of the truth
Practical faith and the will to believe
or falsity of basic religious claims. This is the case not simply because the evidence for basic religious claims (say, whether or not God exists) is inconclusive, but also because our judgements about such matters are not strictly determined by the evidence – rather, they are shaped in significant and ineluctable ways by a wide range of individual and social psychological factors. At the most basic level we are theists or atheists, for example, not because of what the “given” evidence shows (for evidence, as we have seen, is not simply given on James’s view), but rather on account of a wide range of personal, cultural, social, and other factors. Even religious experience is not exempt from these constraints, because our judgement as to whether such experiences should be taken as evidence for religious claims is itself bound up with these factors. What James’s position suggests is not that religious belief (or disbelief) is inherently unreasonable or evidentially groundless, however, but rather that our reasons for being religious (or irreligious) and our interpretations of the available evidence are inevitably perspectival in nature. The agnostic looks at the available evidence and decides to suspend judgement; the atheist examines the same evidence and decides positively to disbelieve; and the person of faith, perhaps (but not necessarily) looks at that same evidence and finds reasons to believe. For James, the differences between these decisions regarding faith are not primarily determined by the evidence – though, of course, different individuals may have more or less evidence at their disposal – but rather by what we bring to our interpretation of the evidence. If he is right, the traditional attempt to offer objective, foundational proofs or disproofs of religious claims is bound to fail. James’s argument, in essence, is that if there are to be purely objective arguments in religious matters, there must be purely objective evidence or reasons to which we can appeal and on which we can base such arguments; but there is no such evidence or reasons, at least not for beings like us, and therefore there can be no purely objective arguments in religious matters. We are left in the end, James thinks, with an irreducible remainder of perspectival factors, even if there are certain objective criteria on which we might agree (for example, a demand for logical consistency). These factors always partly shape our judgements about religion and, indeed, motivate us – at least in part – to make the judgements that we do.
Again, we shall see in Chapter that while James believes that religious and mystical experience can provide evidence for religious claims, he does not presume that this evidence is objective or neutral and non-question-begging in nature. While such experiences can provide rational support for religious belief, they do not self-evidently or incontestably establish the truth of religious claims. At best, James thinks, we might be able to demonstrate objectively that certain religious experiences and beliefs are practically valuable – at least as a general rule .
James’s Wager and the right to believe
This account of the epistemology of religious belief seems, to me at any rate, to be fundamentally correct. While I am not equally convinced of the correctness of James’s psychology of belief , his basic claim that our beliefs and attitudes regarding religion are always shaped in important ways by personal, cultural, social-historical, and other factors seems right as far as it goes. While we surely can alter our beliefs and attitudes toward religion and other matters besides, it seems implausible to think that we can altogether transcend these factors and approach the evidence from something like a God’s-eye point of view. Our desires, expectations, biases, and so on – in short, our passional and volitional nature – would seem to be an inherent part of the game, for even if we change these aspects of ourselves we acquire new ones in the process. It seems unnecessary, then, to add (as James does) that our passional and volitional nature has a legitimate role to play in our adoption of beliefs; it simply does, whether we like it or not. Taken together, the epistemological and psychological aspects of James’s will to believe doctrine provide not only a pluralistic ethics of religious belief, but also the beginnings of an explanatory account of the fact of pluralism in religious and metaphysical matters. James’s normative account of the right to believe undertakes to justify a plurality of religious and metaphysical beliefs, and his descriptive account of the will to believe aims to show that our decision to believe or disbelieve a given religious or metaphysical hypothesis is partly determined by a range of individual and social psychological factors . Not everything that we actually do or might wish to believe is justified or justifiable, however (WB, ). I submit that one of the major reasons why James’s doctrine has so often been misunderstood is that it has two fundamental aims: it aims, on the one hand, to provide a justification for religious belief, while on the other it aims to account for its psychological basis. While I do not pretend to have given a definitive interpretation of the will to believe here, much less a definitive defense, I hope that the foregoing discussion goes some way toward clarifying the nature of the doctrine and to showing that it is a reasonable candidate for belief . The following chapters deal with how James’s will to believe doctrine and interest in the practical value of religious faith lead him to grapple with the relationship between religion and morality, and ultimately with questions concerning the ultimate nature of reality. As we shall see, while morality is basically autonomous or independent of religion on James’s view, it nonetheless has significant limits. James thinks that there are moral demands and moral goods which cannot be accounted
Practical faith and the will to believe
for or realized within the context of purely naturalistic ethical theories, and if these demands and goods are to be accounted for and possibly achieved we must adopt and act upon certain religious or supernatural beliefs. Reflection upon these moral demands and goods leads us beyond the sphere of morality to that of metaphysics, and to questions concerning the nature of reality itself. What I want to show is that it is James’s interest in ethical issues and in the moral value of religion which lead him in the direction of a robust, supernaturalist metaphysics, one in which our highest moral values and ideals find a theoretical place and ground; in which it becomes reasonable to hope for certain moral outcomes; and in which religious experience can justifiably serve as evidence for one’s moral and religious beliefs.
Two moral arguments for religious faith
James’s religious ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
In the first two chapters we saw how James’s “will to believe” or “right to believe” doctrine informs his account of religious faith. More importantly, we saw that James’s doctrine is not unreasonable once we have taken care to distinguish and clarify the psychological and epistemological aspects of his position. The next two chapters examine two additional arguments that James makes for religious faith, the first of which is compatible with his will to believe doctrine and the second of which builds upon it. Both are practical arguments, because they assert that there are certain practical goods which can be obtained or realized only through religious faith. More specifically they are moral arguments, since James understands the goods in question as essential to complete moral agency and human flourishing. The first argument, which is the subject of the present chapter, appears in the concluding section of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (). Here, as we shall see, James argues that both moral philosophy and our attempts to lead “morally strenuous” lives are incomplete apart from belief in God. The basic idea underlying this argument is that while morality can exist in its essential features in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, we nevertheless cannot provide a plausible account of moral objectivity on purely humanistic and intersubjective grounds, nor fully awaken our moral capacities without measuring our moral values and ideals against an infinite standard ( WB, –; –). While James thinks that morality is autonomous from religion, in the sense that morality can exist even if God does not, he also thinks that accounts of ethics which postulate God’s existence are both theoretically and practically superior to those which do not. It is for these reasons, James argues, that morality needs to be supplemented by metaphysical and theological beliefs ( WB, ) . The second argument, which is the subject of Chapter and which concerns the practical rationality of belief in an unseen spiritual order,
Two moral arguments for religious faith
has antecedents in earlier essays, such as “The Sentiment of Rationality” (), but first takes an explicitly religious form in “Is Life Worth Living?” (). Here, James argues not only that we have an epistemic right to believe in an unseen spiritual order, but also that belief in such an order provides the best way of relief from a form of pessimism that he describes as “the melancholy and Weltschmerz bred of reflection” ( WB, –). Although James advances this argument in the context of providing a religious response to pessimism and “the nightmare or suicidal view of life” that it frequently produces, the basic idea developed here is that the highest levels of happiness and human flourishing cannot be achieved simply by leading a moral life, but rather only by leading a moral life sustained by a form of religious faith. These arguments, or some version of them, would inform James’s religious and moral views to the end of his life. Indeed, as I show at the beginning of Chapter , they comprise two of the main strands of his eventual pragmatic account of religion. Both arguments are unclear at certain points, however, and each faces serious challenges that James largely fails to anticipate. Accordingly, my aims in Part II of this study will be: () to clarify the nature of James’s arguments as best I can; () to show what role they play in the context of his philosophy of religion and ethics; () to discuss some of the more important objections that might be raised to them; and () to show how James either does or might conceivably address those objections. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” is widely considered to be the locus classicus of James’s ethics. It is, in any case, the one place in James’s moral writings where he develops and defends a moral theory – a version of utilitarianism – and one of the few places where he discusses metaethical issues, such as the nature of moral properties and the basis of moral obligation. The essay has rightly received widespread attention among interpreters of James, though it has also been plagued by widespread interpretive disagreement. Very few interpreters, however, have
James elsewhere makes similar arguments for belief in libertarian free will. For his most developed arguments, see “The Dilemma of Determinism” () in WB, pp. –. See also, however, “The Sentiment of Rationality” () in WB, pp. –, especially pp. –. A partial list of books that have offered an interpretation of the essay includes Bernard P. Brennan’s The Ethics of William James (New York: Bookman Associates, ); John K. Roth’s Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James (Philadelphia, PA: Westminister Press, ); John Wild’s The Radical Empiricism of William James (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, ); Ellen Suckiel’s The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James (University of Notre Dame Press, ); Richard Gale’s The Divided Self of William James (New York: Combridge University Press, ); and Wesley Cooper’s The Unity of William James’s Thought (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, ).
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
dealt with the religious aspect of James’s account of ethics in the essay, and virtually no one has recognized its connection to his later account and defense of religion in The Varieties of Religious Experience (). What I want to show here is that James begins to develop a religious ethics in the essay, the essential features of which are fully present in Varieties, and which would later influence such works as Pragmatism () and A Pluralistic Universe (). I say “begins”, because James’s religious ethics would undergo substantial modification in his subsequent writings, moving from a theistic account of the relationship between religion and morality to a religiously pluralistic one. Whether or not similar changes occurred in James’s utilitarian moral theory is something of an open question, since James never discusses his moral theory in print again. Nevertheless, in Chapter I shall discuss several ways in which James seems to have modified his moral theory along religious lines. One way of clarifying James’s account of ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” is to see it as consisting of two aspects: () a non-reductive naturalistic aspect, which characterizes James’s jointly humanistic and naturalistic views on moral psychology, moral properties, and the basis of morality; and () a supernaturalistic religious aspect, which serves both to identify the limits of the first aspect and to propose a way of overcoming those limits through the adoption of certain religious postulates. On the one hand, James argues that morality can be sufficiently accounted for by what he calls “the religion of humanity,” or a purely human system of ethics ( WB, ). Yet, he also argues in the concluding section of the essay (V) that the religion of humanity is motivationally insufficient and needs to be supplemented by certain metaphysical and
The list of interpreters who have analyzed the “religious turn” in the essay in any real depth is relatively short. Among major interpreters, see John Wild, The Radical Empiricism of William James, pp. –; Ellen Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion: William James’s Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, ), pp. –; and Richard Gale, The Divided Self of William James, pp. –. For two more recent interpretations of section V, see Todd Lekan’s essay, “Strenuous Moral Living” and my essay, “Ethical Naturalism and Religious Ethics in ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,’” both in William James Studies, : (). The reading that I offer here departs at several points from my earlier essay, and represents my current view. It is difficult to know how to interpret James’s silence on this issue. It could be that James did not change his mind about the essentials of his moral theory, as Richard Gale has suggested, but it seems equally likely that James’s ethical thought might have moved in a different direction subsequently and that he did not bother to think about the systematic coherence of his moral views. Ellen Suckiel, for one, has argued that James effectively modified his moral theory in such works as “Is Life Worth Living?” and Varieties, and that in the process he came to hold that some demands are qualitatively better (and more obligatory) than others and that the moral evolution or perfection of the world depends on religious commitment. See Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion, pp. –, in particular pp. –. I incline toward Suckiel’s view, and discuss some of my reasons for thinking so in Chapter .
Two moral arguments for religious faith
theological beliefs, in particular belief in God and what James calls an “infinite scale of values” ( WB, –). In calling the first aspect of James’s account “naturalistic,” I mean that it conceives morality as a natural phenomenon which does not require a supernatural or religious foundation. Under the terms of James’s ethics, the existence of morality and the existence of God or other religious objects are logically distinct, though their existence is not ruled out. James makes this point clear in the following passage: Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist, in yon blue heaven above us bent, we form at any rate an ethical republic here below. And the first reflection which this leads to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well. ( WB, )
We inhabit an ethical universe whether or not God exists, James maintains, because all that is required for the essential features of morality is the existence of at least two sentient, empathic beings ( WB, ). This is what we might call a commitment to a weak version of ethical naturalism, as opposed to a strong version which denies the existence of anything supernatural. Both forms of ethical naturalism entail a claim regarding the autonomy of morality from religion, understood as the claim that morality does not require a religious basis or foundation. In calling the second aspect of James’s account “supernaturalistic” and “religious,” on the other hand, I mean that it postulates the existence of supernatural religious objects, events, and states of affairs – specifically, the existence of God – and sees the existence of such objects, events, and states of affairs as somehow related to morality (how a given religious ethic conceives this relation can take any number of forms). There need be no contradiction involved in James’s commitment to a weak version of ethical naturalism and a religious ethics, so long as he restricts himself to claiming that religion supplements but does not necessarily ground morality. Whether James’s account of ethics is, indeed, consistent on this point is something that we shall have to consider in this chapter. For the sake of convenience,
Strong or reductive naturalism thus denies the existence of religious or supernatural objects, events, and states of affairs. James’s naturalistic views should be understood as amounting to weak naturalism, insofar as they merely hold that we can (and to some degree should) account for morality in naturalistic terms – that is, as an empirical, human phenomenon. Given James’s opposition to reductive materialism and defense of religious faith throughout his writings, it is safe to assume that he would reject reductive naturalism in ethics on the grounds that it unjustifiably rules out a possible religious or supernatural dimension to morality (and to reality more generally). As we shall see in Chapter , James’s explanatory commitment to naturalism is piecemeal, not total.
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
I shall henceforth refer to these aspects of James’s account simply as its naturalistic and religious aspects. I wish to focus primarily on James’s argument for religious faith in this chapter, and on what I have called the religious aspect of his account of morality. But if we are to understand that argument properly, it will first be helpful if we consider why James thinks it necessary to make such an argument. The best way of seeing this, I think, is to place the religious aspect of James’s account of ethics in relation to its naturalistic aspect. At the beginning of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James states that the main purpose of the essay is to show that “there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance” (WB, ). Such theories – and James seems to have both a priori and positivistic accounts of morality in mind – are impossible, he suggests, because the data or content of ethics is virtually inexhaustible (it appears to have no end) and indeterminate (much of it is unfinished, and we have a role to play in determining what it will be). The principal aim of the moral philosopher, on the other hand, is “to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and make of the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view” (WB, ). It is important to remember this claim, in particular, because while James spends the greater part of the essay arguing that ethics has a non-reductive naturalistic basis, he concludes the essay by claiming to have shown that “the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands” (WB, ). Although James argues that what he calls “the religion of humanity” affords as adequate a basis for ethics as does theism (WB, ), he also argues that purely human ethical systems or theories cannot satisfy the principal aim of moral philosophy as well as theism does (WB, ). The essay is organized mainly around James’s answers to what he identifies as three distinct and important questions in ethics, which he calls the psychological, metaphysical, and casuistic questions. The first question concerns human moral psychology, specifically what James calls “the historical origin of our moral ideas and judgments”; the second, in turn, deals with “the very meaning of the words ‘good,’ ‘ill,’ and ‘obligation’,” by which James means to include not merely the meaning of moral terms but also the nature of the properties to which those terms refer; and the third inquires into “the measure of the various goods and ills which men recognize, so that the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations” ( WB, ). Having offered constructive answers to each of
Two moral arguments for religious faith
these questions in the first three sections, James then devotes the last two sections of the essay to the limits of ethics. The first section of the essay deals with the psychological question in ethics. Here James sketches a “middle way” between a priori intuitionist accounts of ethics and a posteriori evolutionist accounts, defending the empirical approach taken by such philosophers as Alexander Bain and John Stuart Mill, while rejecting any tendency either to reduce moral psychology to the brute experience of pleasure or pain, or to the adaptive utility of our moral sentiments. Moral sentiments, ideas, and judgements are too complex to be reduced to either mere association or utility, James thinks, and furthermore the first-person standpoint from which we experience such feelings and form such ideas and judgements cannot be reduced to any physicalistic third-person analysis (WB, –). In short, James thinks that moral intuitionists are right insofar as they have recognized that moral psychology has an irreducible first-person aspect, but wrong insofar as they believe in the existence of an a priori moral order (see sections II–IV); and that moral evolutionists are right insofar as they think that our moral psychology is shaped by our biology and natural selection, but wrong insofar as they believe that science tells us the whole story about morality. Interestingly, though, one of the examples that James uses to illustrate why human moral psychology cannot be reduced to mere association or utility poses a problem for the utilitarian moral theory that he defends in sections III and IV. Our moral sentiments tend to recoil from certain consequentialist proposals, James thinks, such as a hypothetical scenario in which millions might be kept permanently happy on the condition that “a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture” ( WB, ). Even though we might be tempted to accept this application of the principle of utility, he writes, most of us would nonetheless tend to think that there is something wrong – indeed, hideous – with accepting the greatest good for the greatest number on these terms ( WB, ). James offers this as an example of what is right about moral intuitionism, but his point extends beyond issues in moral psychology to basic issues in moral theory. For he is not simply describing what he takes to be a widely shared moral sentiment that cannot be reduced to association or utility, but also expressing his disapproval of certain applications of the principle of utility. We get the impression from James that there is something inherently wrong about this sort of application of the principle, which is an unmistakably deontological view. Yet, he will later explicitly deny that there are any unconditionally wrong acts or absolute evils ( WB, ), and affirm the principle that we should
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
always act so as to satisfy as many demands as we can at the least cost ( WB, ). How James might have resolved this tension in his account of morality is anyone’s guess, but in any case his commitment to a version of moral intuitionism appears to conflict at points with his utilitarianism . The second section of the essay, in turn, deals with what James calls the metaphysical question in ethics, or what is sometimes called the metaphysics of morals. Here James is not simply concerned with the meaning of moral terms (a semantic issue), but also with the nature of the properties to which those terms refer (a metaethical issue). James confines his analysis to three terms, “good,” “ill,” and “obligation,” and claims that none of them can have application or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists (WB, ). This is the major claim of section II, and it constitutes a claim for the truth of moral anti-realism, the view that moral properties have a mind-dependent rather than a mind-independent ontology. In order to demonstrate its truth James asks us to consider a thought experiment, one which begins by asking us to imagine a universe in which only a single sentient being exists. With the existence of a single thinker or consciousness in the universe, James thinks, we have the possibility of what he calls a moral solitude (WB, –), a universe in which terms such as “good” and “ill” can sensibly come into use, but in which notions of moral obligation and moral truth have no real application. One of the interesting assumptions that James makes here is that a universe in which only a single thinker who makes judgements regarding the goodness and badness of things would be a moral universe, albeit a minimal one. While such a universe would seem to be one in which values or evaluative judgements can exist, it is not yet clearly a moral universe, since not all values or evaluative judgements are moral in nature. In any case, James next asks us to imagine the existence of a second thinker, which forms what he calls a moral dualism, which is not yet clearly different from a moral solitude since both thinkers can be solipsists (WB, –). We have not yet arrived at the source of moral obligation, since neither thinker is necessarily obliged to recognize or respect the other. James thinks that, in order to arrive at the concept of moral obligation, or rather in order to recognize that we have moral obligations, there must be thinkers who make claims on others. James begins his answer by asking what thinker could enjoy the “prerogative of obliging others to conform to a rule which it lays down” ( WB, ), and answers: “a divine thinker,” or God. He writes: If one of the thinkers were obviously divine, while all the rest were human, there would probably be no practical dispute about the matter [of moral obligation]. The divine thought would be the model, to which the others should
Two moral arguments for religious faith
conform. But still the theoretic question would remain, What is the ground of the obligation, even here? ( WB, –)
If God’s existence were obvious, James speculates, there would probably be no practical dispute over the matter of moral obligation – presumably because most people wouldn’t be inclined to disagree morally with a superhumanly good and powerful being. But we could still ask the theoretical question of what makes God’s rule morally obligating, or why we should be obliged to conform to it; simply appealing to practical considerations isn’t enough. James remarks at this point that we have an inevitable tendency to think that there is or must be an objective moral standard independent of the minds and wills of sentient beings, whether they be our minds or wills or those of a divine being or beings – that is, a tendency to think that there is or must be an abstract, pre-existing moral order which ultimately grounds morality ( WB, ). If we reflect carefully enough, though, he thinks that we will come to see that “without a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be no obligation” and that “there is some obligation wherever there is a claim” ( WB, ). “Claim and obligation,” he explains “are, in fact, coextensive terms; they cover each other exactly” ( WB, ). Why we should necessarily be led to this conclusion is entirely unclear – James does not have an argument – but his view seems to be that if we take a hard look at the matter we will discover that: Our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject to an overarching system of moral relations, true “in themselves,” is therefore either an out-and-out superstition, or else it must be treated as a merely provisional abstraction from that real Thinker in whose actual demand upon us to think as he does our obligation must be ultimately based. ( WB, )
James’s position entails at least two important consequences. The first is that moral realism is not a credible view. If we want to believe in moral objectivity, James thinks, then we really only have two choices: we can either unreasonably believe in “an out-and-out superstition,” namely, that there is a mind-independent moral order or mind-independent moral properties of some sort which ground morality; or we can reasonably believe that moral objectivity is ultimately grounded in the mind of a divine thinker, that is, God’s mind . To paraphrase G. E. M. Anscombe, for James there cannot be an objective moral order without an objective order-giver . The second important consequence of James’s position, and one that follows from his strict identification of claims with obligations, is that it entails an externalist view of practical reasons: namely, the view that there
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
are reasons for action that are external to and not dependent upon the agent and her motives. Externalism about reasons is opposed to internalism, the view that reasons for action must be internal to the agent, “in the sense that they are grounded in motivational facts about that agent, e.g. her desires and goals.” While James does not deny that there are or might be some reasons that are internal to particular agents, in the sense that they are dependent upon certain motivational facts about those agents, his claim that there is some obligation wherever there is a claim effectively denies that morally obligating reasons must be grounded in such motivational facts. If all claims are obligating to some degree – and this is clear when James writes a few pages later that “all demands as such are prima facie respectable” ( WB, ) – then it follows that I have at least some obligation wherever there is a claim, regardless of my desires and goals. On James’s view, then, while there can be neither claims nor obligations in a world in which there are no sentient beings, presumably there can be objective reasons for action which do not depend upon the internal states of particular agents, since the very act of making a claim on another person establishes at minimum a prima facie obligation. Thus far, James’s moral theory entails an anti-realist view of moral properties (as opposed to a moral realist view), and an externalist view of reasons (as opposed to an internalist view). In the very next step of his argument, however, James adds an important and potentially problematic qualification to his account of moral obligation: namely, that the only thing that makes a claim morally obligating is our affective response to it. He now claims that “the only force of appeal to us, which either a living God or an abstract ideal order can wield, is found in the ‘everlasting ruby vaults’ of our own human hearts, as they happen to beat responsive and not responsive to the claim” ( WB, ). The difficulty that James now faces is that in order for a claim to be obligating it must be more than a mere claim; it must also be one that motivates our sentiments, or which we feel to be morally obligating ( WB, –). What this means is that in addition to affirming an externalist view of reasons, James is also a motivational internalist : that is, he holds the view that there cannot be a moral obligation with a corresponding moral motivation on the part of the agent. In particular, James’s motivational internalism takes an anti-rationalist form, since basic to his view is that having a moral obligation necessarily involves having a
See the entry for “externalism” in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, nd edn. (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –.
Two moral arguments for religious faith
passional and volitional response to a claim, and not merely understanding the conceptual content or truth of a claim. And so for James there can, at least in principle, be objective reasons for action which do not depend upon the internal motives of individual agents, because some degree of moral obligation is established by the very existence of claims regardless of an agent’s desires and goals. Yet, at the same time, an agent cannot have a moral obligation without also having a moral motivation to act on or honor that obligation . The problem facing James’s account of moral obligation is that there can be cases where we have a reason to act simply because there is an externally obligating claim, but where we do not have a motivation to act because that claim fails to arouse our feelings or our wills, or both. James does not resolve this issue in section II, or even acknowledge that it poses a problem for his moral theory. But he does address it – albeit not very clearly – in the fifth and final section of the essay, where his account of ethics moves in a decidedly religious direction. Setting the issue of moral obligation aside for the moment, then, we find James making a claim regarding the autonomy of morality from religion at the end of section II. Here, James asserts that so long as there are at least two loving souls in the universe there exists a moral universe, or a universe in which moral properties exist. The moral character of such a universe is not dependent upon God’s existence, which is what James means when he claims that “ ‘the religion of humanity’ affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does” ( WB, ). He leaves open, however, the question of whether the religion of humanity can gratify what he calls “the moral philosopher’s demand” as well as theism does ( WB, ). Section III deals with the casuistic question in ethics, which asks what measure or standard we should use in order to evaluate competing moral claims and conceptions of the good. This is the point where James turns to consider issues in normative ethics and where he presents his own moral theory, which turns out to be a version of utilitarianism. Normative ethics is especially difficult, James recognizes, because while human beings tend to agree on many moral issues they also disagree about many others. The moral philosopher is confronted by the fact of ethical diversity and disagreement, he writes, “and insists that over all these individual opinions there is a system of truth which he can discover if only he takes sufficient pains” ( WB, ). Several commentators, including Richard Gale, have observed that this is where James seems to waffle in his commitment to moral anti-realism, since one of the defining features of moral realism is the view that moral statements can be true or false. James briefly mentions that a variety of moral theories or accounts of the “essence of good”
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
have been proposed which, we are left to infer, include Aristotelian virtue ethics, moral intuitionism, hedonism, consequentialism, deontological ethics, including Kantian ethics, natural law ethics, divine command theory, and evolutionary theories of morality ( WB, ). He acknowledges that none of these, however, has been generally agreed upon. Some fail to be universal in scope, he writes, and others are vague or indeterminate. While James thinks that the capacity to produce happiness is on the whole the best way of conceiving the essence of the good, even this standard fails to be sufficiently universal since not all acts aim at happiness ( WB, ). Since we do not all agree on what happiness is or how to achieve it, he says, the best measure of the essence of the good is “simply to satisfy demand ” ( WB, ). James conceives the essence of the good, then, in terms of the capacity to satisfy demands, and this conception will form the basis of his version of utilitarianism. James observes that in an ideal world all of our demands would be satisfied as soon as they were made – for all demands as such are prima facie good and respectable on his view – but this is not the world in which we actually live ( WB, ). He writes: But this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern, and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical. The actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire … so that the ethical philosopher’s demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal. ( WB, –)
The moral philosopher needs some way of subordinating some demands to others, but there seems to be no objective way of doing this and no way of doing it without loss. Indeed, James thinks that one of the lessons of history is that horrendous consequences can result when one person’s demands and moral values are imposed on others ( WB, –). These passages attest to James’s recognition of the fact of value or ethical pluralism, but importantly they also show his unwillingness to defend any particular conception of the good or way of life. “If the philosopher is to keep his judicial position,” he insists, “he must never become one of the parties to the fray” ( WB, ).
Two moral arguments for religious faith
Rather than becoming either skeptics or partisans in the face of ethical pluralism , James argues that we should instead become utilitarians, impartially seeking to satisfy as many demands as we can. “Since everything which is demanded is by that fact a good,” he asks, “must not the guiding principle for ethical philosophy (since all demands conjointly cannot be satisfied in this poor world) be simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can?” ( WB, ). The utilitarian “casuistic rule” that James finally arrives at holds that the best act is the one that makes for the best whole, “in the sense of awakening the least sum of dissatisfactions” ( WB, ). He writes: “In the casuistic scale, therefore, those ideals must be written highest which prevail at the least cost, or by whose realization the least possible number of ideals are destroyed” ( WB, ). It is fairly clear from such remarks, and as Todd Lekan has rightly observed, that James’s casuistic rule functions as a second-order moral principle. Whether it is designed to regulate first-order moral demands or ideals (or both), however, is not entirely clear. We can observe that while James uses the terms “demand” and “ideal” in describing the distinctive features of his moral theory, he does not seem to use these terms in the same way. On my view, James’s moral theory should be understood as a demandsatisfaction version of utilitarianism since demands are, properly speaking, what his version of the principle of utility aims to maximize. Satisfying
See Lekan, “Strenuous Moral Living”, William James Studies, : (), paragraph . Richard Gale interprets James as a “desire-satisfaction utilitarian,” which I take to be partly but not wholly equivalent to what I mean in calling James a demand-satisfaction utilitarian, since demands for James are partly but not wholly expressive of desires. James’s view is that in addition to being expressions of our passional nature, claims and beliefs are also expressions of our volitional nature, though not all claims and beliefs are reducible to mere passion and will, as we have seen in our reading of “The Will to Believe” (see WB, –). The truth or falsity of many claims and beliefs is not determined by our desires or our wills, James says here, but rather by the facts. As we will see in Chapter in our discussion of James’s pragmatic theory of truth, although James will later argue that humans make a contribution to truth in general through their interests and actions, he makes clear that reality also plays a determining role in this process. In any case, I use the term “demand” to describe James’s version of utilitarianism because James speaks of maximizing demands in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” and not desires. For Gale’s interpretation of James’s utilitarianism, see The Divided Self of William James, pp. –. Wesley Cooper has argued that Gale is wrong to characterize James as a desire-satisfaction utilitarian, and has argued that James’s principle of utility is “at most one among a plurality of principles that figure in a historical struggle for acceptance” (Cooper, The Unity of William James’s Thought (), p. ). Th is is not quite right. While Cooper is right to stress the importance of James’s recognition of the fact of ethical pluralism, he seriously underplays the importance of James’s demand-satisfaction principle and its role in realizing an ideally inclusive moral universe. What James actually claims is that we should seek to realize as many demands as we can at the least cost, and that this is the highest ideal that we can follow because it is the one that prevails at the least cost to other ideals (WB, ). James’s utilitarianism is not “at most one among a plurality of principles,” because James sees it as the best means of achieving the end of an ideally inclusive moral order in a pluralistic universe such as ours.
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
as many demands as we can at the least cost, on the other hand, should be understood as James’s moral ideal – and he seems to understand this utilitarian ideal as the highest and most inclusive one that we can imagine ( WB, ). Following this ideal, he thinks, is the best response that we can make to the fact of ethical pluralism, and it is also the path that we have really been following all along, which is how he understands moral progress to work in human societies – assuming, of course, as James does, that there has actually been historical moral progress ( WB, –). On James’s view, the moral philosopher should expect to see morality as an unfinished and revisable process, one in which inherited laws, customs, and conventional conceptions of the good are acknowledged as the starting points of ethical reflection and as presumptively valuable, but are not regarded as fixed or as immune from experimental testing and verification ( WB, –). While James grants that the immediate results of applying this utilitarian principle are far from perfect, he believes that it inevitably (albeit gradually) results in an ever more inclusive social arrangement, which he imagines as ultimately terminating in something like the kingdom of heaven here on earth ( WB, –). It is on account of the pluralistic and dynamic nature of ethics, then, that James thinks that there cannot be “an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance” ( WB, ). Indeed, in section IV we find him claiming that no “philosophy of ethics is possible in the old-fashioned absolute sense of the term” ( WB, ), since the moral philosopher must always wait on the facts about morality, which are irreducibly plural and open-ended in nature. On account of the fact of ethical pluralism , James seems to think, ethics can never be fi xed or final. If this is what he means, though, then his claim does not exactly cohere with his moral principle, because the latter is a principle in the old-fashioned absolute sense of the term: that is, it provides an abstract universal rule that we can apply to the concrete particulars of experience. Indeed, right after claiming that there are no absolute evils and
James at one point remarks that “the presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good,” and adds that “the philosopher must be a conservative, and in the construction of the casuistic scale must put the things most in accordance with the customs of the community on top” (WB, ). In claiming that conventionally recognized goods ought to possess a trump value in cases of conflict with non-conventional goods, James appears to presume that the former are generally reliable, which is a reasonable assumption to make. But his claim that the presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of conventionally recognized goods is surely too strong, for it rules out the progressive and experimental aspect of his ethics. While James’s approach to ethics is heavily informed by Mill, his claims here contrast rather sharply with Mill’s arguments in such works as On Liberty and The Subjection of Women.
Two moral arguments for religious faith
no non-moral goods (there is no argument in support of either of these claims) James proceeds to claim that “the highest ethical life – however few may be called to bear its burdens – consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case” ( WB, ; emphasis added). He continues: “There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see” ( WB, ). Th is would seem to represent a basic inconsistency in James’s account of morality: on the one hand, we have James’s claim that there can be no absolute account of ethics, and on the other hand, we have his claim to have offered just such an account, at least with respect to moral theory and the supreme principle of morality. James thinks that he has shown at this point that ethics cannot be final ( WB, –). There is a difference, however, between showing that there is no end to the number of ethical demands that might be made or ideals that might be held (this is essentially a descriptive ethical claim), and showing that no normative moral theory or principle could possibly provide a universal account of, or standard for, moral obligation. James surely does not think that it is impossible to provide the latter, because he thinks that he has done so with his utilitarian casuistic rule. If new demands come on the scene, then presumably his principle that we should seek to satisfy as many demands as we can at the least cost still applies; the whole point of having a universal principle, after all, is that it applies in all particular cases. In short, if James really believes that seeking to realize as many demands as we can at the least cost is the highest ideal that we can follow (not to mention the one unconditional moral commandment), it is hard to see how these aspects of his account of ethics are not “final .” This brings us at last to section V, where the religious aspect of the essay comes to the fore and where James develops a moral argument for religious faith. Although he has already told us some of the reasons why he thinks ethics cannot be final, James now announces that “the chief of all the reasons why concrete ethics cannot be final is that they have to wait on metaphysical and theological beliefs” ( WB, ). When we examine James’s reasoning carefully, however, we find that ethics must wait on such beliefs for two distinct but closely related reasons. The first reason is that even though moral properties and relations can exist in a merely human world, it is nonetheless the case that “in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power” ( WB, –). This claim does not so
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
much concern the theoretical requirements of ethics or moral philosophy as it does the practical requirements of morality, or what James calls “the moral life,” for it is essentially a claim about the practical challenges involved in our attempts to lead moral lives. What is at stake here is not the task of arriving at an adequate moral theory, but rather a practical demand faced by moral agents, namely, that of having an adequate level of moral motivation. While morality does not require a religious basis or foundation, James insists, he now asserts that what he earlier called “the religion of humanity” is ultimately incapable of inspiring an adequate level of moral motivation, or what he calls the strenuous mood ( WB, –). If we are to be morally strenuous persons, he argues, the religion of humanity is not enough; we need a supernatural religion, specifically one which involves belief in God and in what James calls an “infinite scale of values” ( WB, ). Recalling our earlier discussion of James’s account of moral obligation, we now find him attempting to bridge the gap which potentially exists between the external nature of practical reasons and the internal nature of moral motivation. That bridge is belief in God and God’s infinite scale of values, which (or so James thinks) together provide us with the necessary motivation for honoring moral claims that are objectively obligating but which we do not always feel to be obligating. Theism, then, functions as something like a kick in the pants when we fail to feel what we ought to feel with respect to our moral obligations. Yet, theism also provides a theoretical account of the objective ground of moral obligation, a possibility that James had suggested earlier in the essay ( WB, –) but that he does not address until the final section of the essay ( WB, –). This brings us to James’s second reason, which is that “the stable and systematic universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands” ( WB, ). If there is such a thinker, James
Henry Levinson, in The Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), misses this point in his discussion of James’s religious argument in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” In a passing remark, Levinson claims that what James argued in the essay – and which underscored his claims about the ideal Socius or social self in The Principles of Psychology – is that it is “possible to be morally strenuous without believing in a god, but impossible without believing in some sort of intimate, ultimate, permanent me. Belief in a god simply upped the ante” (p. ). The problem with this reading is that James does not claim here, as he would later claim in Varieties, that it is possible to be morally strenuous without believing in a god; rather, he asserts that the “religion of humanity” is incapable of awakening the strenuous mood and of grounding an infinite scale of values (see WB, ). For reasons that are not entirely clear, Ruth Anna Putnam ignores this crucial aspect of James’s views on moral objectivity in her otherwise admirable essay, “William James and Moral Objectivity,” William James Studies, : (), pp. –. On Putnam’s interpretation, James grounds his standard for moral truth or objectivity in what she variously calls “the opinion
Two moral arguments for religious faith
reasons, then contained in his mind must be “that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pattern which our own must evermore approach” ( WB, ). This claim does regard ethics or moral philosophy, and James specifically addresses it to moral philosophers, whose interest in arriving at a systematically unified and true account of morality, he thinks, necessarily leads them to “postulate a divine thinker, and pray for the victory of the religious cause” ( WB, ). While presumably all moral agents need to postulate the existence of God and God’s infinite scale of values in order to awaken the strenuous mood, moral philosophers in particular must hold these postulates in order () to have an adequate model or regulatory ideal against which to measure their own moral theories, and () in order to provide a plausible account of the objectivity of moral judgements and obligations. As we shall see, though, James does not claim that we can actually know that God exists or, just as importantly, what God’s moral values and infinite scale of values are. Ethics also requires metaphysical and theological beliefs for theoretical reasons, then, but these requirements turn out to be purely formal in nature. James provides us with two distinct, but nonetheless complementary, reasons for why ethics requires metaphysical and theological beliefs. In order to gain an adequate understanding of James’s account of ethics and the moral argument that he makes for religious faith, though, we need to consider these claims in greater detail. To begin with, James’s view is not simply that non-religious accounts of ethics have an important limitation, but also that human beings have a vital moral need which can be met (if it is to be met at all) only through the adoption of certain religious postulates. At times these claims seem to run together in his account, but James clearly wants to make a point
arrived at by fair discussion among all interested parties, meaning, ultimately, all of humanity” (p. ), or the complex of “all human experience as interpreted by human beings as the result of cooperative inquiry” (p. ). In other words, James grounds his standard for moral objectivity intersubjectively on Putnam’s reading. The problem with this essentially humanistic interpretation is that it simply ignores the fi nal section of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” where James explicitly claims that purely humanistic, intersubjectively grounded accounts of ethics are insufficient either for awakening the strenuous mood in human beings or for providing an infinite scale of values, both of which he takes to be indispensable moral requirements. Ellen Suckiel rightly observes that on James’s view: “the idea of God as the basis of morality is highly functional from a psychological perspective, since it generates in us a more strenuous attitude toward ethical obligation. From a theoretical perspective, however, God is nothing but an empty placeholder. God does not provide an explanation of, or justification for, a specific set of moral values. He is postulated as just a metaphysical foundation to support the idea that moral value is constituted by the most inclusive satisfaction of demand.” See Heaven’s Champion (1996), p. 108.
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
not only about the theoretical limits of non-religious accounts of ethics, but also about an important moral good that we ought to realize but are unable to under the terms of such accounts. James begins his case by observing that moral obligations are by their very nature imperative, whereas we are by our nature subject to such feelings as indifference, temptation, and weakness of will ( WB, ). There is an unavoidable tension, he thinks, between our sense of moral obligation and other aspects of our moral psychology. We are, to borrow one of James’s later terms, naturally “divided selves.” Crucial to his view is the idea that our “moral energy” or the intensity of our moral motivation can take different degrees and is subject to variation ( WB, –). James writes that “the deepest difference, practically, in the moral life of man is the difference between the easy going and the strenuous mood” ( WB, ). When we are in the former mood, he explains, our primary consideration is to avoid hardship and suffering, whereas when we are in the strenuous mood we are “quite indifferent to present ill, if only the greater ideal be attained” ( WB, –). In keeping with James’s normative ethical views in sections III and IV of the essay, we can think of the strenuous mood as the disposition required of a heroic utilitarian, one who always seeks to realize the greatest number of demands and ideals at the least cost, even in the face of apparently overwhelming odds. James speculates that probably all human beings have a capacity for the strenuous mood, though it is less easily awakened in some than in others ( WB, ). What is required to awaken this capacity, he thinks, are strong passions or the appeal of higher ideals, such as justice, truth, or freedom ( WB, ). This suggests that for James the strenuous mood is not merely the disposition required of a heroic utilitarian, but that required of all morally serious and committed persons. In any case, James speculates that a solitary person who had this capacity but who never had ethical relationships with other persons would probably never realize it, which seems to imply that there is a necessary social condition for actually having a strenuous mood ( WB, ). This claim seems to be
There is some disagreement in the secondary literature over whether James should be understood as a desire-satisfaction utilitarian or as an ideal-satisfaction utilitarian. Richard Gale has defended the former interpretation, and Wesley Cooper the latter. For Gale’s account of James’s utilitarianism, see The Divided Self of William James (). For Cooper’s, see The Unity of William James’s Thought (). I have argued elsewhere that James can be read as both a desire-satisfaction and an ideal-satisfaction utilitarian, and that his moral theory in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” does not clearly prioritize either demands or ideals. For my discussion of this issue, see “Ethical Naturalism and Religious Ethics in ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’” William James Studies, : ().
Two moral arguments for religious faith
perfectly sensible, and it is designed to rule out the moral sufficiency of a moral solitude by denying that a solitary, a-social individual could ever achieve such a disposition ( WB, ). Interestingly, however, James thinks that the necessary condition for the possibility of the strenuous mood is not the existence of other sentient, empathic beings – as one might expect from his earlier statements regarding the religion of humanity in section II – but rather the existence of God (WB, ). This is a controversial claim, to say the least. What is worse, is that it also appears to be an unwarranted inference from the claim that the strenuous mood cannot awaken in a moral solitude to the claim that it can awaken only in a universe in which God exists. As we shall see, though, James does have a valid argument to make on behalf of his view that moral philosophy and the moral life are incomplete apart from holding certain metaphysical and theological beliefs. Indeed, a close examination of the essay shows that James understands the strenuous mood to involve the possession of an infinite as opposed to a finite moral perspective. What James seems to mean by this, as we shall see, is that the morally strenuous person measures her moral values and actions against a divine standard rather than a merely human one, and by so doing potentially acquires a greater level of moral motivation than is possible apart from religious faith. While James never claims that belief in God and an infinite scale of values is guaranteed to awaken the strenuous mood, he nonetheless thinks that it is a capacity which can be awakened only in persons of faith. At least at this stage of his philosophical career, James believes that theism provides a practically superior alternative to “the religion of humanity” (and possibly even to non-theistic religious accounts of ethics, though he does not discuss other forms of religious faith in the essay) on account of its unique capacity to raise our moral energy or motivation to its “maximal stimulating power” ( WB, ). For James claims that while morality can exist in a merely human universe without a God, such a universe is morally inferior to one in which God exists. “Life, to be sure,” James explains, “is even in such a world a genuinely ethical symphony; but it is played in the compass of a couple of poor octaves, and the infinite scale of values fails to open up” ( WB, ). This claim should be understood as qualifying his earlier claim regarding the autonomy of morality (see WB, ). While morality can exist in a purely human universe without a God, whether in the form of a moral solitude or in the more complete form of a moral community which adheres to “the religion of humanity,” James thinks that we are unable to provide a plausible,
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
objective account of moral obligation on purely naturalistic or humanistic grounds. Presumably, then, even though we are able to achieve a measure of moral motivation apart from belief in God, we are only able to achieve the highest degrees of moral motivation or “the strenuous mood” if we believe in God and God’s infinite scale of values. Importantly, the idea that the strenuous mood could be awakened by merely human ideals or a “religion of humanity” is one that James finds implausible, because the object of the humanist’s devotion is finite rather than infinite and only an infinite object of devotion, he reasons, can supply an infinite scale of values and awaken the strenuous mood ( WB, ). James makes his considered view of the religion of humanity clear when he writes that he and many others “would openly laugh at the very idea of the strenuous mood being awakened in us by those claims of remote posterity which constitute the last appeal of the religion of humanity” ( WB, ). While James thinks that this finite moral perspective is admirable, he also seems to think that it is variously incapable of awakening or sustaining a strenuous mood. He adds: When, however, we believe that a God is there, and that he is one of the claimants, the infinite perspective opens out. The scale of the symphony is incalculably prolonged. The more imperative ideals now begin to speak with an altogether new objectivity and significance, and to utter the penetrating, shattering, tragically challenging note of appeal. ( WB, )
Although James maintains that the strenuous mood is a human capacity, he seems to think that only belief in God can properly awaken and sustain it. If this interpretation is right, then James’s strenuous mood is not a mood that could be experienced by someone who was not a theist, because the kind of moral strenuousness that he has in mind requires belief in an infinite scale of values, and only God (should God exist) can provide such a scale. James’s moral argument, then, can be stated as follows: () If one is to achieve and sustain the strenuous mood, one must believe in an infinite scale of values. () If one is to believe in an infinite scale of values, one must believe in God. Therefore, () If one is to achieve and sustain the strenuous mood, one must believe in God. Rightly or wrongly, James’s connection of the strenuous mood with belief in God is explicit in his argument for religious faith in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” Indeed, James goes as far as to assert that
Two moral arguments for religious faith
“even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a God, men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest” ( WB, ). While he allows that we are capable of moral agency and commitment apart from belief in God, James denies that our moral motivation can achieve its “maximal stimulating power” in this way. Thus, he writes that: Our attitude towards concrete evils is entirely different in a world where we believe there are none but finite demanders, from one where we joyously face tragedy for an infinite demander’s sake. Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life’s evils, is set free in those who have religious faith. For this reason the strenuous type of character will on the battlefield of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall. ( WB, )
As we shall see in the next chapter, James would later qualify his position so as to allow that non-religious persons can temporarily (but not permanently) sustain what he calls an “athletic attitude” in the moral life – an attitude that seems roughly equivalent, if not identical, to what he here calls the strenuous mood – while insisting that the highest forms of moral agency and human flourishing are open only to religious persons. This represents a relatively minor change in James’s views on moral agency (if it is a change at all), but an important change in his religious views, since he now maintains that religious faith more broadly – and not merely theistic religious faith – is a necessary condition for moral strenuousness and complete human flourishing. Indeed, the last claim represents a second moral good that James thinks only religious faith can bring about. In Varieties, as we shall see, James’s moral argument for religious faith concerns not merely the possible achievement of a strenuous mood, but also the possible achievement of the highest good, which James conceives of in terms of complete happiness or human flourishing . In the present essay, however, James’s view seems to be that the strenuous mood can be achieved and sustained only by a person who believes in God and an infinite scale of values. Even though James suggests at one point that the strenuous mood can be awakened by powerful passions or by such ideals as justice, truth, or freedom, he also suggests that the maximal degree of moral motivation in a person can be achieved only through religious faith; as he puts it, “in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power” ( WB, ). Again, while James grants that non-religious persons can have some degree of “moral energy” apart from belief in God, he also
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
makes clear that the level of their moral energy and the adequacy of their moral perspective fall short of the theist’s. None of this establishes that James’s claims are true, of course, but hopefully the foregoing discussion can help us to see his account of ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” in a clearer light. If I have represented James’s views correctly, then his moral argument for religious faith is valid. But are its premises sound? Anyone who is not inclined to accept James’s conclusion need only deny the consequents of () or (), or both, on the grounds that it is not necessary to believe in an infinite scale of values or God. One might reject these claims for a variety of reasons, but one is particularly interesting. This is what we might call the objection from religious pluralism: namely, that James’s argument presumes, without any further supporting argument or evidence, that only theism can enable a person to achieve and sustain moral strenuousness . While this objection grants that religious belief of some sort is necessary for achieving and sustaining moral strenuousness, it can deny the consequent of either () or (), or both, on the grounds that one need not believe in an infinite scale of values or a monotheistic God in order to realize this moral good. Many Buddhists, for example, might accept () while denying the consequent of () on the grounds that belief in the eternal Dharma (and perhaps also the assistance of certain Bodhisattvas or Buddhas) enables us to account for and possibly achieve and sustain the strenuous mood. Likewise, many Confucians might want to deny the consequents of () and (), arguing that belief in the Dao (“the Way”) – which grounds Confucian ethics but does not clearly presume an infinite scale of values, much less a monotheistic God – also enables us to account for and possibly achieve and sustain the strenuous mood. Why belief in a monotheistic God should be necessary for achieving and sustaining this moral good is simply not evident. Indeed, a religious pluralist might argue, following John Hick, that all of the world’s great religious traditions provide or are effective contexts of salvation, and that none of them evidently provides a more “morally strenuous” path than another.
Todd Lekan offers another interpretation of James’s argument for religious faith in section V of the essay, and argues that James should have formulated his claims in a more inclusive way so as to allow that religious belief is not a necessary condition for having or achieving a morally strenuous mood. See Lekan, “Strenuous Moral Living,” William James Studies, : (), paragraphs –. For Hick’s pluralistic account of salvation, see “Religious Pluralism and Salvation,” Faith and Philosophy, (), and also An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ).
Two moral arguments for religious faith
Although James fails to anticipate this objection in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” his subsequent argument in The Varieties of Religious Experience is effectively a concession to it. There, he argues not for the necessity of belief in an infinite scale of values or God in order to achieve and sustain moral strenuousness, but rather for the necessity of belief in a morally transformative unseen order, which can be conceived and experienced in a variety of ways. As we shall see in Chapter , by modifying his argument along religiously pluralistic lines James ceases to fall prey to this objection . Even if one accepts James’s argument, though, it nonetheless remains quite vague regarding the content of an “infinite scale of values.” We are left unclear about which moral ideals and values are supposed to be objective, and also about what God’s evaluative standards and criteria might be. Indeed, God’s connection to this infinite scale of values is most unclear as well. For James does not claim that the basic reason why we should perform a given action is because this is what God commands, or that we should strive to be a certain kind of person (for example, a morally perfect person) because this is what God is like. Rather, in line with his utilitarianism, James claims that God’s way of ranking demands would be the one that we should follow – assuming, of course, that God exists and that we can know his mind, both of which James denies that we can know ( WB, ) . The reason why we should adopt God’s infinite and presumably utilitarian scale of values, James thinks, is not because God’s moral values would be intrinsically good or right, but rather because his casuistic scale would be the finally valid one; because his claims would be the most appealing; and because his ideal moral universe would be the maximally inclusive one ( WB, ). But why should we believe that God is a utilitarian, should he exist? If we cannot know what God’s mind is like, then we have no compelling reason to believe this. James seems to be aware of just how tenuous his position is, which is why, after admitting that God’s mind is hidden from us even if God should exist, he claims that “our postulation of him after all serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood” ( WB, ). Belief in God thus functions only to awaken the strenuous mood in James’s account of ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” Exactly what God wants us to strive for or what his moral values really are, however, are questions that James leaves unanswered. He presumably thinks that, having believed in God,
Ellen Suckiel has also observed this limitation of James’s account. See Heaven’s Champion (), p. .
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
we should all strive to become morally strenuous utilitarians (and that believing in God somehow helps to accomplish this). This proposal seems rather dubious, though, if we have no compelling reason to think that God is or must be a utilitarian. Without some additional information about God’s nature and mind – say, the kind supplied by revelation or religious experience – we are left in the dark about God’s moral views. In this respect, James’s theism would seem to be too thin and indeterminate to provide the objective account of moral obligation that he wants. This brings us back to James’s second reason for why ethics requires metaphysical and theological beliefs. For James appears to think that his practical argument for religious faith should lead us to conclude that “the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands” ( WB, ). Indeed, he calls this the “final conclusion” of the essay. Yet, while James has offered an argument for belief in God on account of our (presumptive) need to lead morally strenuous lives, this is not the same thing as arguing that an adequate moral theory requires God’s existence, or even a divine pattern against which such a theory must be measured. Indeed, James has already claimed that ethics does not need a theistic foundation ( WB, ), and here he seems dangerously close to contradicting himself. Upon closer examination, however, there really is no additional argument in support of the “final conclusion” of the essay. It is worth quoting the lines which immediately follow the above-mentioned quote, where James writes: If such a thinker existed, his way of subordinating the demands to one another would be the finally valid casuistic scale; his claims would be the most appealing; his ideal universe would be the most inclusive realizable whole. If he now exist, then actualized in his thought already must be that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pattern which our own must evermore approach. In the interests of our own ideal of systematically unified moral truth, therefore, we, as would-be philosophers, must postulate a divine thinker, and pray for the victory of the religious cause. Meanwhile, exactly, what the thought of the infinite thinker may be is hidden from us even were we sure of his existence; so that our postulation of him after all serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood. (WB, )
James’s claims here roughly amount to the conditional statement that if God exists, then God must have the ideal moral philosophy (including the objective account of moral obligation) that we qua moral philosophers seek. But James is unwilling to assert that God exists, since he does not think that we can know this, and consequently he never affirms the consequent of this statement. We are primed for a modus ponens argument,
Two moral arguments for religious faith
in effect, but James is now unwilling to affirm the antecedent. Instead, he falls back on his first reason for why ethics requires metaphysical and theological beliefs and his practical argument for religious faith; the reason why we need to postulate the existence of a divine thinker is not because of a supposed requirement of moral philosophy, then, but rather on account of our need to lead morally strenuous lives . At this point it is hard to know what overall judgement to make regarding James’s turn to religious ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” Richard Gale has argued that James variously invokes God in the essay as “the biggest and knowingest kid on the block,” the one whose demands are strongest and whose knowledge of how to subordinate demands to one another is greatest. There are strong reasons for agreeing with Gale, especially when we read passages such as those quoted above. If Gale is right, then James’s “infinite scale of values” has nothing to do with the quality of God’s evaluative judgements, and everything to do with their quantity – that is, with how big God’s demands are and how much he knows about balancing competing demands. God enters the picture not to provide an objective ground for morality (say, an objective account of moral properties and moral obligation), but rather to provide a regulatory ideal for our own attempts to formulate and apply a utilitarian casuistic rule. It is not clear, though, just what James means when he asserts that God’s claims would be the most appealing. My own guess is that James says this not because he thinks that God’s claims are the biggest, or because he thinks that God knows how to rank demands in a maximally inclusive way, but rather because he thinks that God’s claims are inherently and objectively best. This seems to be either a deontological or an aretaic claim; it does not greatly matter which for our present purposes. To Gale’s credit, he acknowledges that James elsewhere endorses deontological moral values . But Gale may be wrong in claiming that such a view “clashes with the official position of ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,’ which invokes God only as the biggest kid on the block.” For it is not evident that there is a single official position on God’s role in the moral life in the essay, nor is it clear that James doesn’t smuggle some deontological assumptions into his argument. While such assumptions would admittedly conflict with James’s utilitarianism in the essay – indeed, they would wreck his utilitarian moral theory – they would also go some way toward addressing some of the fundamental objections that have been
See Gale, The Divided Self of William James (), pp. –.
Ibid., p. .
“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
raised against his moral theory , for instance, that it cannot distinguish good or morally legitimate claims from bad or morally illegitimate claims because it treats all claims as morally obligating. Fully addressing these problems might require, among other things, recognizing certain deontological values and principles or the importance of cultivating virtues in leading a good life, or both. This would be to push James’s ethics in a variously deontological or virtue ethical direction, and to force him to retract some of his earlier claims in the essay, such as that “ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well” ( WB, ), and that the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand ( WB, ). If one believes God to be supremely good, for example, and God’s demands to be objectively right, and that we have some knowledge of God and his nature, then, it is hard to see why God would not provide an objective standard for what sort of persons we should strive to be and what sort of actions we ought to perform. Indeed, this would also give James a way to account for his interest in moral truth, since moral statements could then be said to have an objective referent in God’s nature as a morally perfect being, and a version of moral realism, since moral properties such as “good,” “bad,” and “obligation” could then be said to have an existence independent of human minds (though not of God’s mind or nature). Since there are already deontological and virtue ethical elements in James’s moral views – for James elsewhere speaks of our relationship with God in deontological terms (PP, ; WB, ) , and he elsewhere discusses the importance of cultivating moral virtues (TT, –) – this may not be such an untoward imposition. Indeed, it may prove to be the best way
John K. Roth raises this objection in Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James () pp. –. I also raise this objection in “Ethical Naturalism and Religious Ethics in ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,’ ” William James Studies, : (). Interestingly, theistic metaethical accounts appear capable of blurring the lines between moral realism and anti-realism. For while one might theorize that moral properties are ultimately dependent upon God’s existence – and thus “mind-dependent” in a way, if one conceives of God (as most people do) as having a mind – this is arguably the case with all properties, including physical properties, assuming that one understands God (as many traditional theists do) as a necessary being and all other beings as dependent. If God’s existence is necessary and God is necessarily a morally perfect being, then it is impossible that moral properties could ever fail to exist: they would always have their ground in God’s being. Here we would seem to have an eternal moral order grounded in the divine person of God, one which is mind-dependent but also objective. The debate over moral realism and anti-realism tends to turn on the issue of whether moral properties are part of the objective “furniture” of the universe, or whether they are merely subjective “projections” of our minds. In the case of a theistic account of moral properties such as the one sketched here, though, this distinction appears to be of rather limited value, and may even rest upon a mistake – namely, that of thinking that only moral realism can provide an account of moral objectivity.
Two moral arguments for religious faith
of fleshing out James’s provocative suggestion that the only plausible way to account for an objective moral order is by postulating the existence of a divine order-giver. In the end, though, James does little if anything to establish the truth of his premises in offering a moral argument for religious faith. Since claims regarding human capacities are empirical in nature – in this case, our moral capacities – what is needed to verify or falsify James’s claims is a consideration of the empirical evidence. Although he provides few, if any, reasons in the current essay for thinking that his premises are true, James does undertake to provide some of the needed evidence in a subsequent work, The Varieties of Religious Experience. I say some, because the evidence that James considers in this work largely consists of the reports and biographies of religious persons, and is not arrived at through controlled psychological and neurological experiments. For anyone with reasonably high (and scientific) evidential standards, James’s claim regarding the unique and irreplaceable practical value of religion in Varieties is likely to be unpersuasive. More modestly, though, James also proposes that we can justify religious belief according to pragmatic criteria and on the basis of religious experience, which he conceives to be of a really existent, unseen supernatural order. The latter aspects of James’s account of religion are especially worth considering, and accordingly we shall revisit them in Chapter .
Overcoming pessimism in “ Is Life Worth Living?”
The therapeutic aspect of James’s approach to philosophy is nowhere more evident than in this essay, where James offers a diagnosis of the symptoms and causes of pessimism and prescribes an essentially philosophical cure. More specifically, he prescribes a religious philosophical cure based upon his will to believe doctrine, arguing that the best way of overcoming the “metaphysical tedium vitae which is peculiar to reflective men” is through the adoption of a practical, non-dogmatic form of religious faith, which he now characterizes in religiously pluralistic terms as faith in an unseen, supernatural order ( WB, –; –). As we shall see, James understands this type of pessimism as an essentially religious disease, one made particularly acute today by the advance of scientific knowledge and the erosion of traditional forms of religious belief ( WB, –). It consists, he thinks, “in nothing but a religious demand to which there comes no normal religious reply” ( WB, ). Having examined James’s account of pessimism and his reasons for thinking that its root causes are religious in nature, we shall then consider yet another Jamesian moral argument for religious faith, one which holds that while belief in an unseen spiritual order is not the only way of overcoming pessimism and despair, it is nonetheless the best way of doing so. The larger subject of “Is Life Worth Living?” is suicide, and whether there might be reasons we could offer a particular type of would-be suicide which might convince her “to take up the burden again” ( WB, ). The type of would-be suicide that James has in mind is someone who has fallen into pessimism and despair as a result of philosophical reflection – say, from having recognized the existential consequences of a rigidly deterministic universe, or from having read too much Schopenhauer. This was a topic close to home for James, for he had been such a person at one point in his life, and his own recovery came about (or so he believed) through
Two moral arguments for religious faith
practicing a form of philosophical therapy. His basic claim in the essay, which appears in section II, is that for those whose pessimism and despair are due to “too much questioning and too little active responsibility” and who have fallen into what he calls “the nightmare or suicidal view of life,” still further reflection of the right sort can offer an effective remedy ( WB, –). What is of special interest for our purposes, though, is the religious nature of James’s philosophical remedy, and the way in which it reflects his broader views on the relationship between religion and morality. As James himself puts it, his final appeal in the essay is “to nothing more recondite than religious faith” ( WB, ). It is helpful to observe that James uses the term “pessimism” in two distinct but related senses in his writings. In the first sense, pessimism refers to a metaphysical view which holds that the world’s salvation is impossible (see, for example P, –). For the sake of clarity, henceforth I shall call this metaphysical pessimism when distinguishing it from the second sense. James opposes metaphysical pessimism to optimism (the view that the world’s salvation is necessary) and to his own view, meliorism (the view that the world’s salvation is possible). In the second sense, and the one used throughout most (but not all) of the present essay, pessimism refers to a type of psychological temperament or constitution characterized by melancholy and despair (see WB, –). James uses the term temperamental pessimism to refer to this sense of pessimism, which he opposes to temperamental optimism , a psychological temperament or constitution characterized by an intense joy and affirmation of life ( WB, –). When I use the term “pessimism” in this section, I shall be referring to temperamental pessimism unless otherwise noted. While James sees a connection between these senses of pessimism, insofar as he holds that there is a general connection between an individual’s psychological temperament and the metaphysical views that she tends to find compelling, he does not explicitly claim that one sense of pessimism necessarily entails the other. That he used the term in these two different senses is apparent in the closing pages of the essay, where we find James moving
See James’s well known diary entries from February and April , , reprinted in John McDermott (ed.), The Writings of William James (University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. I discuss James’s views on these matters in greater detail in Chapter . James’s distinction between the religion of healthy-mindedness and sick-souled or morbid-minded religion in The Varieties of Religious Experience () builds upon this more basic distinction between different psychological types. For my treatment of this issue, see Chapter . For James’s views on the role of temperament in philosophy, see “The Will to Believe” in WB, –; “The Sentiment of Rationality” in WB, –, especially p. ; “The Dilemma of Determinism” in WB, –; P, –; and PU, –.
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
rather surreptitiously from the claim that the best way to relieve (temperamental) pessimism is through belief in an unseen spiritual order to the claim that the truth-value of (metaphysical) pessimism and belief in an unseen spiritual order might, in part, depend on our beliefs. Th is shift in the essay presents something of a challenge in making sense of James’s argument, but as I hope to show the difficulty is not insuperable. James views pessimism as an essentially religious disease because he locates what he terms its “reflective source” (as opposed to its additional biological sources) in a frustrated desire for communion or reconciliation with the universe, or what he calls “the total soul of things” ( WB, ). As he explains, the great reflective source of pessimism “has at all times been the contradiction between the phenomena of nature and the craving of the heart to believe that behind nature there is a spirit whose expression nature is” ( WB, –). Two points are immediately worth noting here. The first is that on James’s view the frustrated desire which gives rise to pessimism is essentially religious in nature (at least on his understanding of religion), and the sense of despair which results from the frustration of that desire is correspondingly religious as well ( WB, ). The second is that James thinks that the desire to relate to the world in spiritual terms can be frustrated in several ways, either by an inability to bring oneself to hold religious beliefs – for example, on account of one’s intellectual loyalty to “hard facts” ( WB, ) – or by coming to grips with the problem of evil ( WB, –), or both ( WB, –). However it occurs, this frustration tends to result in a state of inner discord and contradiction, one which James believes can be alleviated in either of two ways: “the longing to read the facts religiously may cease, and leave the bare facts by themselves” ( WB, ), or “supplementary facts may be discovered or believed in, which permit the religious reading to go on” ( WB, ). In short, there are two available and mutually exclusive prescriptions for relieving pessimism and despair on James’s view. One can either overcome the frustrated desire to interpret the world religiously which gives rise to the problem, which involves eliminating any residual tendencies in oneself toward religious belief; or one can find a way of satisfying that desire through religious belief – presumably by finding religious beliefs which are capable of relieving pessimism and despair. Yet, while both prescriptions work on James’s view, they do not work equally well. James identifies these different “ways of relief” with two hierarchical stages of recovery from pessimism and despair (WB, –). The first, and less complete, stage of recovery can be brought about, he thinks, by satisfying two conditions: (a) by rejecting the metaphysical or religious
Two moral arguments for religious faith
beliefs that are the source of one’s pessimism and despair; and (b) by leading a morally committed life (WB, ). Overcoming the religious sources of one’s pessimism and despair and resolving to lead a morally committed life, he believes, can make life worth living on a purely naturalistic basis for those who are incapable of religious belief. In other words, James thinks that life can be worth living on moral grounds even if one does not believe in God or an unseen order. The second and more complete stage of recovery, however, is one that cannot be achieved along purely moral lines. For it involves having, in addition to a renewed sense of moral commitment, a sustaining religious faith in “the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained” (WB, ). It is only by supplementing a morally strenuous attitude with religious faith, James believes, that the most complete stage of recovery from pessimism can be achieved, and this essentially involves not only satisfying condition (b) but also a new condition: namely, that of finding better or more adequate religious and metaphysical beliefs. One of the most interesting features of James’s account of pessimism and its tendency toward despair is its similarity at certain points with Nietzsche’s views on nihilism, though there are also some important differences in their accounts, particularly with respect to () their overall judgements of the theoretical and practical value of religious and metaphysical belief, and () the sort of therapy or cure that they propose as a way of overcoming nihilism and despair. In his illuminating study of Nietzsche, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (), Bernard Reginster gives a thoughtful account of the systematic relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophical doctrines organized around the central problem of overcoming nihilism and despair. On Reginster’s interpretation, Nietzsche views nihilism and its ensuing condition, despair, as a consequence of two beliefs: the belief that “ God is dead,” and the assumption that life has meaning only if God, or another, metaphysical world, exists. The nihilist is convinced that life can have meaning – and our highest values application in the world – only if God or a metaphysical order exists. Since God or a metaphysical order does not exist, it follows that life cannot have meaning and that our highest values cannot have application in the world. Nietzsche’s philosophical project centrally consists, on this reading, in an attempt to overcome nihilism by showing that our highest values are in fact nihilistic or life-negating in nature, and
See Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). Reginster, The Affirmation of Life (), p. .
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
an attempt to replace life-negating values and ideals with life-affirming ones. If Reginster is right, Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the attendant problems of nihilism and despair traces the root of these problems to our inherited religious and metaphysical beliefs (which are no longer credible, at least for many people) and to values and ideals that are based upon these beliefs (which are no longer tenable in light of the incredibility of our traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs); and Nietzsche’s remedy for these problems consists in an attempt to bring about a revaluation of values, or the attempt to replace life-negating values (for example, compassion) with lifeaffirming ones (for example, the will to power). Although James does not specifically use the term “nihilism,” his account of pessimism is similar to Nietzsche’s account of nihilism at least insofar as it, too, traces the reflective source of despair to an inability to hold certain traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs. Both philosophers, then, conceive of despair as symptomatic of a religious or metaphysical disease. This is an interesting and important similarity, I think, but the similarities largely end here. For Nietzsche’s therapeutic strategy for overcoming nihilism and despair entails not only the rejection of traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs, but also a “revaluation” of our moral values on the grounds that () the latter are dependent upon the former, and hence unrealizable independently of them, and that () both our traditional beliefs and values are inherently life-negating. James’s two-stage therapeutic strategy for overcoming pessimism, in contrast, entails only the rejection of some traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs and prescribes – for those who are capable of religious faith – the adoption of others, while defending at both stages the value of and need to awaken our natural moral sentiments. Nietzsche’s strategy is far more radical than James’s, and entails a very different set of judgements about the value of religious belief and the adequacy of our inherited moral sentiments and values. In order to understand James’s practical argument for religious faith in the essay, we first need to understand the two ways or stages of relief that he proposes for relieving pessimism. James begins his account of pessimism by discussing, first, what he takes to be its underlying religious and metaphysical causes, and, second, what he identifies as the first stage of recovery from this essentially religious disease ( WB, –). Pessimism, he thinks, has its reflective roots in a natural tendency of human beings, namely, our tendency to interpret the natural world in religious terms. This tendency involves not only seeing the natural world in personal or spiritual terms, as having mental attributes or an underlying spiritual dimension, but also craving a deeper communion or sense of intimacy
Two moral arguments for religious faith
with it ( WB, –). Yet, this natural tendency to interpret and relate to the world religiously inevitably encounters resistance, at least among reflective persons, in the form of the problem of evil. Upon reflection, James writes, we find that with “every phenomenon that we would praise there exists cheek by jowl with some contrary phenomenon that cancels all its religious effect upon the mind” ( WB, ). As he explains: It is in the contradiction between the supposed being of a spirit that encompasses and owns us, and with which we ought to have some communion, and the character of such a spirit as revealed by the visible world’s course, that this particular death-in-life paradox and this melancholy-breeding puzzle reside. ( WB, )
For those who believe in the existence of a benevolent spiritual order behind or within the natural world, recognizing the full force of the problem of evil can produce a powerful sense of disorientation and internal discord. Indeed, James believes that the discord involved is so profound that it leads him to pronounce natural religion a bankrupt enterprise, at least in its traditional forms ( WB, ). He writes: There were times when Leibnizes with their heads buried in monstrous wigs could compose Theodicies, and when stall-fed officials of an established church could prove by the valves in the heart and the round ligament of the hip-joint the existence of a “Moral and Intelligent Contriver of the World.” But those times are past; and we of the nineteenth century, with our evolutionary theories and our mechanical philosophies, already know nature too impartially and too well to worship unreservedly any God of whose character she can be an adequate expression. ( WB, –)
The real issue for James, however, is not whether belief in God or an unseen order is inherently implausible in the modern world – he believes that it is not. Rather, his issue lies with certain traditional ways of conceiving God, including not only the God of natural theology but also the God of Calvinist theology who “made the garden and the serpent, and pre-appointed the eternal fires of hell” ( WB, ). James thinks that these philosophical and theological conceptions of God are problematic on moral as well as intellectual grounds, on account of their incompatibility with both our experience of natural evil and with the worldview of the modern natural sciences. Accordingly, James insists that the first step toward getting into healthy ultimate relations with the universe is to disbelieve in the existence of a God who created the morally ambivalent universe in which we live ( WB, ). Emancipating oneself from morally and philosophically problematic religious beliefs is one way of relief from pessimism and despair. By giving
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
up belief in a “spirit of nature” or a God who is ultimately responsible for the problem of evil, James thinks, one thereby ceases to think about evil as a metaphysical problem in need of a metaphysical solution ( WB, –). Evil becomes, instead, a practical problem to be managed in the same way as other natural and social problems. He writes: Here, then, on this stage of mere emancipation from monistic superstition, the would-be suicide may already get encouraging answers to his question about the worth of life. There are in most men instinctive springs of vitality that respond healthily when the burden of metaphysical and infinite responsibility rolls off. The certainty that you now may step out of life whenever you please, and that to do so is not blasphemous or monstrous, is itself an immense relief. The thought of suicide is now no longer a guilty challenge and obsession. ( WB, )
But while a measure of relief from pessimism can be gained by giving up religious beliefs and coming to see evil as a this-worldly, practical problem, this step in the process of recovery does not provide a reason against suicide. Rather, it only provides a reason for thinking that suicide does not have future consequences that we should fear – say, burning in a lake of fire for all eternity or being tortured by demons. If we want a more complete form of relief from pessimism and despair through non-religious means, James thinks, we need to do more than merely reject the problematic religious beliefs which brought about our condition. We also need a positive reason for living, one provided by beliefs and ideals that are capable of sustaining us through difficult times and of giving our lives a greater sense of meaning. One way of making life worth living on a purely naturalistic basis, and the one that James recommends, is leading a morally committed life. Specifically, he recommends that the would-be suicide commit himself to fighting against the very evils that made him pessimistic in the first place, which the agent now understands in this-worldly terms (WB, ). While James allows that not all cases of pessimism and despair can be cured in this way, he nonetheless thinks that it can be a valuable form of therapy for those whose normal moral instincts are not decayed (WB, ). By appealing to the moral sentiments of this type of would-be suicide, one who is incapable of religious faith but capable of a life of moral engagement, James thinks we stand a good chance of convincing him that life is worth living even in a purely naturalistic universe (WB, ). Yet, while James sees this way of relief as potentially efficacious and the moral way of life that it advocates as a noble one, he also claims that it represents a less complete and joyous stage of relief from pessimism than that offered by the second or religious way ( WB, ). James’s reasons for
Two moral arguments for religious faith
holding such a view are not entirely clear, but his primary reason seems to be his conviction that a moral life supplemented by a simple, nondogmatic faith in an unseen spiritual order is capable of giving us a more hopeful and confident view of the world and the fruits of our moral efforts than one without it ( WB, ; –). Consider the following passage, which comes in the midst of James’s defense of his will to believe doctrine in the final section (IV) of the essay: And now the application comes directly home to you and me. Probably to almost every one of us here the most adverse life would seem well worth living, if we only could be certain that our bravery and patience with it were terminating and eventuating and bearing fruit somewhere in an unseen spiritual world. But granting we are not certain, does it then follow that a bare trust in such a world is a fool’s paradise and lubberland, or rather that it is a living attitude in which we are free to indulge? Well, we are free to trust at our own risks anything that is not impossible, and that can bring analogies to bear in its behalf. ( WB, )
The reason why the second way of overcoming pessimism is more complete and joyous than the first, James suggests, is because it provides a metaphysical consolation for suffering and grounds for believing that our moral efforts will not be in vain. Both ways of relief are moral in nature, insofar as each purports to offer a way of overcoming pessimism and despair through leading a morally committed or “ morally strenuous” life. But the second way of relief involves supplementing moral commitment with religious faith, and gives us a reason to be optimistic about the ultimate consequences of our actions that we would otherwise lack under the terms of a purely naturalistic worldview. While we cannot be certain that an unseen spiritual order exists, James thinks, the mere belief that the natural order is not ultimate and that “spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal” is enough to make life seem worth living “in spite of every contrary presumption suggested by its circumstances on the natural plane ( WB, ). Indeed, he suggests that this belief alone is capable of giving us an “unconquerable subjectivity” and a sense of joy in the face of even the most bleak and difficult circumstances ( WB, ). Up to this point James has been concerned with temperamental pessimism and with identifying two ways of overcoming it. In the closing pages of the essay, however, he suggests that the second way of relieving temperamental pessimism involves believing that metaphysical pessimism is false, and that an individual’s religious definition of the world and reactions upon it through her faith in an unseen spiritual order might help to verify her faith in that order ( WB, –). James is appealing here to
For a similar argument by James, see “The Sentiment of Rationality,” WB, –.
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
the “ faith-helping-to-create-a-fact” aspect of his will to believe doctrine, though in this case he has in mind not simply our ability to determine the truth or falsity of certain statements about reality through our ability to determine the outcome of certain events and states of affairs (for example, whether or not the statement “I can leap to safety” is true), but also our ability to determine, at least in part, the truth or falsity of statements about the ultimate nature of reality. Quite provocatively, he asserts not only that our belief in an unseen spiritual order can help to make our lives worth living by providing us with a way of relief from pessimism – here understood in the temperamental sense – but also that our faith might help us to verify or falsify statements about the unseen world itself ( WB, ). In other words, James now claims that our belief that metaphysical pessimism is false can help to make that view false, and that our belief in the existence of an unseen spiritual order might help to make that belief true. He writes: But will our faith in the unseen world similarly verify itself? … I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. ( WB, )
How, exactly, our belief in God or an unseen spiritual order affects the existence of either being or entity, however, is not entirely clear on James’s account. James can, of course, be read as claiming that we can make the objects of religious belief exist simpliciter by believing in them. Appealing to the principle of interpretive charity, however, I would suggest that what James really means to claim is that the continued existence of God or an unseen spiritual order may depend upon our faith, assuming (as James does) that this being or order is finite. In claiming that God might draw “vital strength” and “increase of very being” from our faith, James seems to suggest that God’s power and existence might be, respectively, increased and nourished by our faith, and correspondingly diminished or imperiled by our lack of faith. God feeds on our faith, if you will, and can be weakened by our disbelief. This reading has the virtue of making James’s claim intelligible, even if it is one that many religious as well as non-religious persons would reject. It also squares with other claims that James makes about God, such as his claim in Varieties that our faith might help God to be “more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks” (VRE , ).
Notice, however, that in Varieties James does not claim that God’s continued existence might be dependent on our faith. Rather, he claims there that our faith might assist God in carrying out his own greater tasks, which presumably includes working to bring about the redemption
Two moral arguments for religious faith
The basic idea here seems to be that we and God are engaged in a cooperative, social enterprise – that of creating a morally ideal or perfect universe – and that we and God need each other’s assistance in order to achieve this aim. What James’s practical faith maintains, in short, is that neither God nor we can achieve this common aim alone. Although James does not argue for a particular way of conceiving the unseen spiritual order in the essay, he does provide a rough sketch of the kind of supplementary, practical religious faith that he has in mind. James’s practical faith – which apparently constitutes his alternative to traditional, pessimism-inducing forms of religious belief – consists only of belief in a finite God and the possibility of a “half-wild, half-saved universe,” in which we believe that God draws strength from our faith and assists our efforts to bring about the redemption of an unfinished universe ( WB, ). It is a faith that involves little more than the rudimentary belief that we and God (or whatever it is that one takes to inhabit or constitute the unseen spiritual order) are engaged in a cooperative struggle to redeem the universe from evil and suffering, and provides no theological account of what this might mean or any assurance regarding personal salvation or liberation. By means of this sort of faith, though, James thinks that we can satisfy our craving to believe that the natural world has an underlying spiritual dimension and enjoy a metaphysical consolation for suffering, while getting round the problem of evil by conceiving God in finite rather than infinite terms. In short, we get the practical benefits of religious faith without any of the practical or theoretical burdens. It is worth noting here, though I reserve fuller treatment of this issue for Chapter , that James’s practical faith may not be as unburdened as he assumes. James’s key assumption seems to be that a God who is finite with respect to power and knowledge is not responsible for the problem of evil. This is chiefly what sets his practical faith apart from traditional
or perfection of the world. We do not get the impression in the later work that God might be diminished or even cease to exist without our faith. The theme of cooperation with God appears through James’s religious writings, and appears as early as “Reflex Action and Theism” (), where James writes that “to co-operate with his creation by the best and rightest response seems all he wants of us. In such co-operation with his purposes, not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him, not in any theoretic drinking of him up, must lie the real meaning of our destiny” (WB, ). Th is represents an early formulation of James’s doctrine of meliorism. For James’s later formulations of his doctrine, see VRE, ; P, –; PU, –; and SPP, –. On those rare occasions when James bothers to specify in what sense he conceives of God as finite, he describes God as finite either with respect to power or knowledge, or both (see, e.g., MT, ; PU, ). I suspect that James’s distaste for philosophical theology in general and discussions of God’s attributes in particular explain, at least in part, why he did not develop his idea of a finite God beyond the scope of his practical purposes.
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
versions of theism, and presumably what accounts for its ability to relieve pessimism rather than cause it. But if God is still vastly more powerful and knowledgeable than we are, he would still seem to bear a measure of responsibility for the problem of evil, since there are conceivably many instances of evil that such a being knows about and has the power to prevent but does not. If God does not bear a measure of responsibility for the problem of evil, though, then God is not vastly more powerful and knowledgeable than we are. In this event, however, we may justifiably ask whether God is a fitting object of religious devotion. Let us call this “ James’s Dilemma” for short: a God who is not omnipotent or omniscient, but is still vastly more powerful and knowledgeable than we are, still seems to bear some measure of responsibility for the problem of evil; but if we deny that such a God bears some measure of responsibility for the problem of evil, then we also deny that God is vastly more powerful and knowledgeable than we are, which seems to undermine God’s status as a fitting object of religious devotion. In other words, James’s dilemma is that the very qualities which make God a fitting object of religious faith also make him responsible for the problem of evil, and in this respect James’s pragmatic version of theism would seem to face essentially the same dilemma as traditional theism, only to a lesser degree. The rub, of course, is that James develops his pragmatic version of theism largely because he wants to believe in a benevolent God while avoiding the problem of evil. This is perhaps the major difficulty facing James’s pragmatic account of religion, and in particular the practical faith that he wants to defend. Applied to the present context, it gives us a reason to question James’s claim that there is a religious way of relieving pessimism that is unburdened by the problem of evil, which is the major source of reflective pessimism on his view. The adequacy of James’s second way of relief from pessimism, in short, would seem to hang in the balance.
While I do think that James faces a dilemma in this matter, I am less sure that both horns of the dilemma are equally problematic. It seems to me that the first horn is the more problematic of the two, because it makes God responsible for a significant portion of the world’s evils. Some unorthodox theists, though, might plausibly break the second horn of the dilemma by virtue of their willingness to devote themselves to a God who is exceedingly or even infinitely good, but not powerful or knowledgeable enough to prevent the occurrence of evil. But since even finite human beings are capable of preventing or ameliorating many evils, such theists would appear to be devoted to a God who is even less powerful and knowledgeable than they are. While it is not necessarily irrational to devote oneself to such an ineffective God (perhaps one is devoted to such a God in the way that Plato was devoted to the Form of the Good), this strikes me as undercutting one of the chief reasons for being a person of faith. In any case, this sort of move would still undercut James’s practical conception of faith, which is predicated in large part on the hope of divine assistance. On a related note, one of the analogies that James uses to illustrate his second way of relief from pessimism takes the form of a theodicy, though he does not seem to be fully aware that his own
Two moral arguments for religious faith
Setting aside this problem for now, and returning to the matter at hand, we find that one of the major aims of the essay is to provide a practical argument for religious faith based upon its (putatively) superior ability to relieve pessimism and despair. While James allows that this way of relief will not be open to every reflective pessimist – presumably it is not a viable option for “ religious anesthetics,” as he elsewhere calls them, or for those whose intellectual scruples will not permit them to believe – he views it as a more complete stage of relief for those who are capable of following it. His argument goes something like this: granting that we have an epistemic right to hold any belief that is () not impossible, and () can bring analogies to bear on its behalf ( WB, ), and that belief in an unseen spiritual world meets these two conditions, then it constitutes a viable will to believe option. And granting, in turn, that belief in an unseen spiritual world is better at relieving pessimism than a purely naturalistic scheme of belief on account of its capacity to provide a metaphysical consolation for suffering and grounds for believing that our moral efforts will bear metaphysical fruit ( WB, ), then we have a practical reason to prefer this option to its naturalistic rival. That is, it is more practically reasonable for the reflective pessimist to believe in an unseen spiritual world than in a purely natural world, because the former belief allows us to realize goods useful for relieving pessimism which the latter cannot. This is a rather tenuous argument, to say the least. Indeed, it simply asks us to grant what James most needs, but fails, to show: namely, that
practical faith might be burdened by the problem of evil. Likening our suffering at the “hands” of a benevolent unseen order to that of a dog being vivisected by medical researchers for the sake of medical progress, James offers a consequentialist justification for the existence of evil in which the suffering of human beings is justified by appeal to the ultimate end it achieves: the world’s eventual perfection and redemption: see WB, –. Th is would appear to represent a major inconsistency in James’s argument, since earlier in the essay he rejects the very enterprise of theodicy along with natural theology on the grounds that the beliefs they ask us to hold are not only implausible but also unhealthy (WB, –). I return to this issue in Chapter , where I consider James’s remarks in Pragmatism on what it means to be a genuine pragmatist in religious matters: namely, one who is “willing to live on a scheme of uncertified possibilities which he trusts; willing to pay with his own person, if need be, for the realization of the ideals which he frames” (P, –; emphasis added). Note that James’s formulation of his will to believe doctrine here differs from the one that we considered in Chapter . James seems to assume here, as in “The Will to Believe,” that religious beliefs cannot be certain. But he makes no mention of liveness or evidential inconclusiveness in the present essay, and instead lists logical possibility and the capacity to bear analogies as the conditions which need to be satisfied if we are to have an epistemic right to believe (WB, ). Th is is a much broader formulation of the doctrine, one that seems to license almost anything that a person might wish to believe, excepting belief in such things as square circles. There is nothing logically impossible about the existence of the tooth fairy, for instance, and it seems rather easy to manufacture analogies on behalf of belief in him – say, that the tooth fairy is like Santa Claus insofar as he, too, bestows gifts on sleeping children.
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
leading a religious moral life provides, if not for all persons then at least for most persons, a superior way of relieving pessimism and despair than leading a moral life alone. That James’s minimalist form of religious faith satisfies the terms of his will to believe doctrine is, I think, fairly straightforward, though the version of the doctrine presented here is insufficiently developed and potentially fraught with problems (see footnote ). But that it represents a “more complete and joyous” stage of recovery from pessimism than the first stage is anything but self-evident (see WB, ). While the second way of relief seems to have aided James in his own recovery from pessimism, this fact alone does not establish the stronger conclusion that he wants to draw. It may even represent a hasty generalization from his own case, although I suspect that James has more than his own case in mind – as he will later argue in Varieties, there is much evidence which suggests that religion can produce levels of happiness and moral energy in human beings that morality alone cannot (see, for example, VRE , –). In the present essay, however, James’s conclusion remains unsupported. Unless he can provide us with reasons for thinking that his practical faith in an unseen order is better at relieving pessimism (at least in most people) than belief in a godless universe we have no reason to accept his conclusion. This demand would seem to be all the more pressing in light of his view that pessimism is a religious disease, that is, one caused by having problematic religious beliefs. James’s argument appears to depend on the crucial assumption that his practical faith involves only pessimism-relieving, and not pessimism-causing, religious beliefs. If this turns out not to be the case, however, then James’s first, purely naturalistic and moral way of relief from pessimism would be the more practically reasonable of the two ways for the reflective pessimist to follow. Another potential problem facing James’s argument is his claim that it is “a fact of human nature, that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma or definition” ( WB, ). Both James’s practical argument for religious faith and his minimalist practical account of religious faith are based upon this empirical claim, which may or may not be true. Is it true, for example, that merely believing in a providential, unseen spiritual order is sufficient to relieve pessimism? Can one so easily dispense with rituals and other religious practices, with religious symbols, communities, and institutions, to say nothing of other supporting religious beliefs? Perhaps some individuals could manage to overcome pessimism along the religiously impoverished lines that James suggests, but it is perfectly conceivable that others could not. For these individuals, either the first way of relief or a more robust version of the
Two moral arguments for religious faith
second way of relief seems to be required. The force of this criticism goes well beyond the present argument to the very heart of James’s practical account of religious faith. Indeed, it calls into question the adequacy of a minimalist, practical version of religion for meeting the many different kinds of religious needs that human beings have, including not only practical but also theoretical needs. As we shall see in the next chapter, James does not think there is or can be a “one-size-fits-all” religion on account of the sheer diversity of practical needs and religious preferences that human beings have – and this concession to the fact of religious pluralism goes a long way toward addressing this criticism. But as we shall also see in Chapter , James’s theological minimalism and practicality would reach something of an apogee in the closing lecture of Pragmatism, where he defends a conception of religious faith that is so vague and so thin that probably only James himself could believe it. Upon closer inspection, then, we find that James’s argument for religious faith in “Is Life Worth Living?” stands or falls on the basis of empirical evidence which James does not provide. In the absence of evidence which would show that, all things considered and at least for most persons, religious faith provides a better way of relief from pessimism and despair than leading a moral life alone – one that is more complete and joyous than its purely moral alternative – we have no compelling reason to accept James’s argument. This argument, like his moral argument in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” entails the claim that there are certain moral goods that can only be achieved (if at all) through religious faith. In both cases, however, the truth or falsity of these claims can only be established inductively, which requires something James has not done: namely, engage in empirical investigation. As we shall see in the next chapter, this is precisely what James sets out to do in The Varieties of Religious Experience (), where he studies religion as an empirical phenomenon and marshals a considerable amount of data in support of his view that religion is “an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill” ( VRE , ). That function, as he makes clear, is to increase our moral energy and happiness beyond what morality alone can provide (VRE , –). As we shall see, James proposes a set of pragmatic standards and criteria for judging religious experiences and beliefs, and builds a case for viewing religion as “amongst the most important biological functions of mankind” on account of its “extraordinary influence upon action and endurance” (VRE , ). In addition to his views on the moral value of religious experience, however, James also thinks that religious experience potentially has
Overcoming pessimism in “Is Life Worth Living?”
epistemic value. In the latter regard, James undertakes to show that the “saving” or morally transformative effects of religious experience supply not only a reason to believe in the existence of an unseen order , but also a reason to believe in its essential goodness. As we shall see, James would eventually modify his religious views along religiously pluralistic lines, and attempt to provide empirical support for his claims about the practical value of religious belief. Indeed, he would come to believe that having religious experiences, and not merely holding religious beliefs, is needed for achieving the highest forms of human flourishing , and that an adequate religious explanation of religious experience and its capacity to improve the moral character of human beings entails a commitment to religious realism. As I mentioned at the outset of Part II, each of James’s moral arguments aims to show that there are important practical and specifically moral goods which can be obtained or realized only through religious faith. One of the difficulties common to both arguments, however, is that each involves certain questionable assumptions about the practical superiority of religious to non-religious moral ways of life and accounts of ethics. Although it may be true, as James suggests, that holding certain religious beliefs can enable one to achieve or account for certain moral goods that are otherwise unachievable or unaccountable without holding those beliefs – or, less strongly, that holding certain religious beliefs can enable one to achieve or account for certain moral goods more easily or more fully than if one did not hold those beliefs – this does not necessarily mean that, all other things being equal, it is objectively preferable to be a religious believer. There are a variety of intellectual impediments to religious belief which need to be reckoned with and which complicate what we can bring ourselves to believe. To borrow James’s language, religious belief is a dead option for many individuals, and surely these persons cannot (and following his will to believe doctrine, should not) will themselves to believe simply on account of the practical benefits that believing might afford. Perhaps even more importantly, there are also potential moral objections that one might make to certain religious beliefs, even ones that are practically useful or beneficial in other respects. Many religious traditions, for example, unquestionably excel at developing a sense of “ moral strenuousness” in their adherents, and may even be better on the whole at doing this than their secular moral counterparts, which typically lack
Two moral arguments for religious faith
the supernatural motives and warrants that religious traditions typically provide. So long as their ideals are morally good or virtuous we are apt to admire such morally committed individuals. But being strenuously committed to an ideal is in itself not a sufficient guarantee of having a morally good or virtuous ideal – medieval Christian crusaders and contemporary Islamist suicide bombers are cases in point. Indeed, it is surely worse to be strenuously committed to a bad or vicious ideal than to be lukewarm in one’s commitment to it; at least in the latter case there is hope that we might be able to persuade a person to modify or give up her ideal in favor of a better one. Another, closely related difficulty arises from the very nature of James’s claims regarding the practical advantages of religious belief. As we have seen, the success of each of James’s arguments depends on empirical evidence that he does not provide – specifically, evidence that would show that religious believers are on the whole quantifiably happier, more resilient, and more resolute in their moral commitments than their non-religious counterparts. While I do not believe that James’s moral arguments for religious belief are entirely successful – and do not see how they would be either of use or comfort to persons who cannot will themselves to religious belief, however advantageous it might be – I am prepared to grant that some of his basic intuitions about the moral psychological value of religion might be correct, for example, that religion can and often does help individuals to lead moral as well as happy lives. This does not strike me as an especially controversial claim, and most of us know persons whose lives are or have been variously sustained or improved through religious faith (though, of course, most of us also know persons for whom the opposite has been true). It is one thing, though, to claim that religion can have practical value for life, and another to claim that morality either requires religion or is impoverished without it.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
No account of James’s religious views would be complete without a discussion of his Gifford Lectures, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (). A groundbreaking work in both the psychology and the philosophy of religion, Varieties is widely and credibly regarded as James’s most accomplished and influential work on the subject of religion. What is seldom appreciated, though, is that James’s “study in human nature” also represents one of the major sources for his moral views, including his views on such important issues as the metaphysics of morals, moral psychology, and the nature of human flourishing. This chapter shows that, in addition to his primary aim of demonstrating the unique practical value of religion using empirical methods, and his secondary (but no less important) aim of offering a credible supernaturalist interpretation of religion, James also discusses a number of important issues in ethics in Varieties and comes to modify some of his earlier moral views in the process of developing a realistic and pluralistic account of religion. Some of the most important changes to be found in James’s moral views, as we shall see, are occasioned by changes in his religious views, specifically his views on () the morally transformative capacity of religious experience, () the possibility of religious knowledge through religious experience, and () his views on the source and ground of our moral ideals. More specifically, this chapter shows that ethical issues lie at the very heart of James’s study, a fact that is nowhere more evident than in its basic claim regarding human nature: namely, that the highest and most secure forms of happiness can be experienced only by religious persons ( VRE , –; –). As we shall see, one of the underlying arguments of Varieties is that while human
Portions of this chapter appeared in an earlier article, “Metaphysical Intimacy and the Moral Life: The Ethical Project of The Varieties of Religious Experience,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (), pp. –.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
beings can lead imperfectly moral and happy lives apart from religion, the highest and most complete forms of moral agency and human flourishing can be achieved only by coming to believe that one lives in a state of union or harmonious relationship with an unseen order or “ a wider self through which saving experiences come ” ( VRE , ). It is on account of its unique and empirically demonstrable practical value for human life, James argues, that religion stands vindicated (in spite of its excesses) as “the most important of all human functions … an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill” ( VRE , ). Although he does not think that the truth-value of religious beliefs can be similarly demonstrated, James nevertheless maintains that when we consider the practical value of such beliefs in the light of their objective indeterminacy, on the one hand, and their subjective force or authority, on the other hand (especially when such beliefs are formed on the basis of religious and mystical experiences), it is not unreasonable to be a religious believer ( VRE , –; –; –; –). In this respect, James’s account of religion in Varieties should be understood as building upon and enriching his will to believe doctrine. Not only do we have an epistemic right to believe under certain conditions on James’s view; we cannot lead the best life that is possible for human beings unless we do. In the most general terms, James understands religion to consist in “the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto” ( VRE , ). “This belief and this adjustment,” he explains, “are the religious attitude in the soul” ( VRE , ). Yet, for James leading a religious life is not simply a matter of believing in an unseen, supernatural order. It is also fundamentally a matter of adjusting oneself to that order through one’s life and actions – and this involves having a sense of its reality. As Varieties makes clear, leading a religious life involves not merely believing that one stands in a harmonious relationship with an unseen order, but also experiencing that relationship in the form of a “wider self” ( VRE , ), or a “more” of the same quality as the higher part of the self ( VRE , ). As we shall
I should note that while James does not specifically employ the term “metaphysical intimacy,” he frequently uses the term “intimacy,” especially in A Pluralistic Universe () when speaking of his own metaphysical theory, pluralism. A shared feature of both VRE and PU is James’s concern to develop a worldview capable of providing for a sense of intimacy with ultimate reality. I use the term “metaphysical intimacy” in order to capture the metaphysical sense of intimacy that James has in mind. James uses the term “unseen order” to describe a basic feature of religious belief and experience, and the terms “more” and “wider self ” to describe in general, phenomenological terms what is felt
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
see, it is the practical value of such metaphysically intimate experiences which make them so important on James’s view. Indeed, it is a basic feature of his view that the religious life meets practical needs which are of supreme importance for life, and meets them more completely than any other form of life. Given that James not only describes but also defends the claim that our supreme good can be achieved only through leading a religious life, it can reasonably be said that he has a conception of the highest good. Like other accounts of the highest good, James’s account is teleological in nature, and the end that it takes to be highest is happiness or human flourishing. In these respects, James’s account is formally similar to the accounts developed by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant. Additionally, and like Aquinas’s and Kant’s respective accounts, James’s account of the highest good has a supernatural orientation. James’s account is particularly close to Kant’s, insofar as both defend religious faith on practical rather than theoretical rational grounds and hold that faith has an indispensable role to play in the moral life. In short, both James and Kant hold that one cannot reasonably hope to attain the highest good for human beings without hypothesizing (James) or postulating (Kant) certain religious beliefs. James’s account differs from all of the above-mentioned accounts, however, in several important and substantive respects. It differs, first, in holding that the highest good can be realized and enjoyed in this life, and in this respect it is closer to a naturalistic account such as Aristotle’s. James, however, conceives the highest good in decidedly un- Aristotelian fashion: namely, in terms of a metaphysically intimate, soteriological relationship with an unseen, supernatural order.
or perceived in religious experience. What these are specifically conceived to be, however, varies from one religious tradition to the next, and sometimes even from one individual to the next. While Kant’s moral theory is, strictly speaking, deontological rather than teleological, his ethics nonetheless has a teleological dimension. For the teleological dimension of Kant’s ethics, see the “Dialectic of Practical Reason”, in Critique of Practical Reason (Cambridge University Press, ), and also Critique of Judgement, Appendix, “Methodology of Teleological Judgement” (Indianapolis: Hackett, ), especially §§ –. For an excellent analysis of the teleological dimension of Kant’s ethics, see Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). For Aquinas’s account of the summum bonum, see ST Ia IIae (QQ. –). For Kant’s account, see Critique of Practical Reason (), Part I, Book II. See Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I. For readers who are unfamiliar with the term, “soteriology” refers to accounts or theories of salvation. Following James’s understanding of such phenomena as conversion and salvation, I use the term in a broad sense to include not only accounts of salvation proper, but also accounts of “liberation” from delusion, attachment, etc., such as one finds in certain non-Western religious and philosophical traditions.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
James thinks that such relationships are possible through religious and mystical experience. As we shall see, James’s “ piecemeal supernaturalism” hypothesizes that in cases of genuine religious and mystical experience the self is really in contact with a causally effective, unseen order. While James grants that the claims to knowledge based on such experiences are not objective and publicly verifiable, he thinks that the experiences themselves are nonetheless both epistemically and practically significant. In this respect, James’s supernaturalist account of the highest good differs substantially from those of both Aquinas and Kant. Second, James’s account of the highest good also differs in that it conceives of human flourishing in the context of the self’s relationship or unification with an unseen order which can be experienced in a plurality of ways or guises. For in addition to being pragmatic, James’s account of the highest good is also pluralistic. Moving beyond the inherited monotheistic framework within which both Aquinas and Kant developed their accounts of the highest good, James devises a pluralistic religious framework capable of accommodating a variety of religious beliefs about, and experiences of, ultimate reality. What the unseen order is conceived to be, exactly, is a matter for what James calls overbelief : that is, belief which exceeds the theoretically indeterminate evidence provided by direct religious and mystical experiences, and which involves interpreting that evidence in light of a given set of religious concepts or doctrines (see VRE , –). While James understands this position to rule out the possibility of objective, publicly verifiable knowledge of the unseen order, it does not affect the practical value and subjective authority of religious and mystical experience. There exists a plurality of overbeliefs, and on James’s view so long as these meet certain pragmatic criteria, a person is justified in holding any of them. But that human beings have a fundamental need to experience
Aquinas argues for the possibility of an objective, intellectual apprehension of God’s essence through the use of our natural powers [see ST Ia IIae (Q. , Art. ; Q. , Art. , , )], though he also adds that such an apprehension and the happiness which it brings are of an imperfect sort in this life. True or perfect happiness, on Aquinas’s view, can be attained only in the afterlife. Kant, on the other hand, denies that we can have any objective intellectual apprehension – that is, objective knowledge – of God’s essence in this life on account of the limits of theoretical reason. But like Aquinas, he maintains the possibility of attaining the highest good – for Kant, happiness in proportion with moral worth – after this life (see Critique of Practical Reason (), : –). Both philosophers, however, would almost certainly deny James’s claim that while objective religious knowledge is impossible, subjectively grounded knowledge of an unseen, supernatural order is nonetheless possible through religious and mystical experience. “Overbeliefs” are of tremendous importance for James’s philosophy of religion. Indeed, they are essential features not only of religious worldviews, but of worldviews or philosophical
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
a relationship or even unification with this “more” or “wider self,” and that our highest good consists in experiences of this kind, are, he thinks, basic facts of human nature. It may be helpful to let James speak for himself on this issue. Writing of the process by which a person “identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself,” James states that: He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck. ( VRE , )
Insofar as James thinks that our highest good is of this kind and achieved in this way, his is an unmistakably religious conception. James’s view also has a realist character, however, insofar as it holds that the “more” which is of the same quality as ourselves is “operative in the universe” outside of us. Indeed, James’s arguments in Varieties, and the conception of the supreme good for human beings which he articulates there, are bound up with his views about the reality of the objects of religious experience, which he variously refers to as “the ideal order” or “the unseen order.” As James makes clear, “that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we have no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal” ( VRE , ). Beyond postulating the mere desire for intimacy with that order, James’s account is also predicated upon the possibility of its attainment through religious and mystical experience. The attainment of such intimacy, James thinks, brings about positive transformative effects in the self – “practical fruits,” as he calls them – which better enable one to lead a morally strenuous life. Genuine religious and mystical experiences not only help us to meet our practical needs, but at the same time also improve our natural capacity for moral agency.
visions more generally. It is a mark of James’s pragmatic pluralism that there exists a plurality of overbeliefs, and that “we should treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves” (VRE, ). James thinks that they are usually the most interesting and valuable things about a person, and all philosophical systems and religious traditions are constituted by them (see The Will to Believe, xiii; VRE, ; and Pragmatism, –). Indeed, we might say that on James’s view both our conceptions of self and our conceptions of reality are partially (if not mainly) constituted by our particular overbeliefs. For another reading of James as a religious realist, and one that is very close to the reading that I develop here, see T. L. S. Sprigge, “William James as a Religious Realist,” in Jeremy Carrette (ed.), William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Centenary Celebration (London: Routledge, ), pp. –. The only point on which I disagree with Sprigge’s reading has nothing to do with his interpretation of James’s views in Varieties. Rather, it concerns his understanding of James’s theory of truth, which he takes to entail a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth (p. ).
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
For James, while human beings are capable of moral agency by virtue of their nature, they are incapable of attaining the highest forms of moral agency, and similarly incapable of achieving complete human flourishing, without a supernatural reorientation and expansion of their nature. That reorientation and expansion, in turn, is to be had only through genuine religious and mystical experience , in which the self is unified with “a wider self through which saving experiences come ” ( VRE , ). Although James does not believe that religious experiences can be used to establish the objective truth of any particular overbelief, he nevertheless believes that the immediate experience of a wider self is “a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes” ( VRE , ). To be clear, James’s claim is that the highest good for human beings can be achieved only through a religious reorientation and expansion of one’s nature. The truth of such a claim is, of course, another matter, and James does not purport to have “proved” it in any neutral, non-question-begging way. This realist turn in James’s religious views, as we shall see, has important consequences for his views on the relationship between religion and morality. In The Principles of Psychology James had argued that human selfdevelopment requires not only that we judge the worth of our beliefs and actions against those of a “wider” or ideal social self, but also that we judge them against those of a Socius, or God, “the highest possible judging companion, if such companion there be” (see PP, –). And in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” as we saw in Chapter , James had argued that if the “strenuous mood” is to awaken in a person she must believe in God and the idea of an “infinite scale of values,” though he denied that we could know whether God exists or what the content of an infinite scale of values might be (WB, –). The crucial change in Varieties is that James now believes that the “wider self” or “unseen order” is a really existent entity capable of producing real and uniquely valuable transformations in the lives of human beings, a view that he variously describes as a pragmatic or “piecemeal supernatural” account of religion (VRE, –). It is no longer a mere psychological construct or regulative ideal, but a supernatural reality that we can potentially be acquainted with through religious experience. Specifically, we shall see that on James’s religiously
I note in passing here that James’s epistemology and theory of perception are based on the view that we possess immediate knowledge or knowledge by acquaintance, and that conceptually mediated knowledge or knowledge-about is secondary in the process of knowing (see MT, –, –, – and ERE, –). In normal sense perception, James thinks, we directly perceive the real objects and events to which our concepts refer and from which they are derived. To
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
realist hypothesis the unseen order is () an efficient cause of conversion and moral transformation, () the source and guarantor of our highest moral ideals, and () our helpmate in the moral life. To better understand James’s changing views on the relationship between religion and morality and his account of the highest good it will be helpful to follow the course of Varieties from beginning to end. Having done so, we shall be in a better position to assess the value of James’s views and the degree to which they cohere with other aspects of his philosophy. Before beginning that task, however, I should first like to discuss – albeit briefly – how my reading of Varieties differs from some of the more recent
use his expression, concepts are only “short cuts in our thinking” (MT, ). But to this claim James adds another, namely that “the cuts we make are purely ideal” (SPP, ). James also came to believe, however, that (having been so acquired) the human mind actively projects concepts onto the “sensible flux” of experience, and that it thereby shapes what is perceived to a significant degree (see P, –; MT, –). James is thus a concept empiricist, insofar as he understands concepts as being derived from experience, but also (following his own preferred usage) a “humanist” and nominalist about concepts as well. How these views relate to James’s account of religious experience in Varieties is most unclear, however; the closest we get to a connection is James’s claim that religious “overbeliefs” involve additional doctrinal or theological interpretations of the generic phenomenological features of religious experience that he identifies (see VRE, –). And what relation, if any, James’s radical empiricism plays in his account of religion in Varieties is equally if not more unclear, for James does not discuss this theory in Varieties and would not publish on it until (his earlier use of the term in the Preface to The Will to Believe, it should be noted, refers to a substantially different idea). For two recent works that interpret James’s philosophy of religion in light of his radical empiricism see David C. Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge University Press, ), and Hunter Brown, William James on Radical Empiricism and Religion (University of Toronto Press, ). A fundamental interpretive question is at issue here, namely whether or not James’s commitment to a version of realism in Varieties – namely, realism regarding the objects of religious and mystical experience – coheres with other of his philosophical commitments, most notably his pragmatism. Some recent interpreters, such as Richard Rorty, have tended to privilege James’s claims in such works as Pragmatism over such works as VRE, ERE and PU, and to read James as a thoroughgoing anti-realist. On such a reading, James should first and foremost be considered a pragmatist, and his pragmatism endorses anti-realism. The best recent interpreters of James have tended to hold more textually supported and balanced views, however. In The Divided Self of William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), Richard Gale argues that James variously defends both anti-realism and realism, depending on whether James was in his “Promethean pragmatist” or “mystical” mood. Against Gale, Wesley Cooper argues in The Unity of William James’s Thought (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, ) that the apparent contradictions in James’s philosophy can be reconciled if we interpret James in terms of a “twolevel” approach: the metaphysical level of pure experience, and the empirical level of science and everyday life. Both interpretations are textually defensible, though perhaps not equally so. Cooper’s interpretation, to my mind, provides insufficient textual support for its claims, and imposes a systematic unity on James’s philosophy which James himself strove for but ultimately failed to achieve. While I do not endorse all the details of Gale’s interpretation, I agree with him to the extent that I, too, believe that there are some fundamentally incommensurable claims at stake in James’s philosophy. I depart from Gale, however, in holding that James’s claims about the reality of the objects of religious and mystical experience – and about the reality of objects in general, which James explicitly affirms – are not incompatible with his pragmatism. For my views on this last issue, see Chapter .
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and influential interpretations of that work. By far the most important of these are the respective interpretations offered by Henry Levinson and David Lamberth, each of whom has done much to increase our understanding of James’s religious thought and the central role of religion in his philosophy. Like Levinson and Lamberth, I believe that Varieties is – among other things – a work of philosophy that should be read alongside such obviously philosophical works as Pragmatism () and A Pluralistic Universe (). I also happen to share with them the view that James’s religious hypotheses and approach to religion in Varieties represent crucial stages in the development of his epistemological and metaphysical views. Notwithstanding these important areas of agreement, the reading that I shall offer here differs from theirs in several key respects. With Levinson, but in contrast to Lamberth, I do not think that James develops a radical empiricist account of religion in Varieties, even though his thought was clearly beginning to move in that direction. This marks perhaps the most fundamental difference between my reading of Varieties and Lamberth’s, for whereas Lamberth presents a radical empiricist interpretation of that work and aims to show the dependence of certain features of James’s account of religion on his radical empiricism, I shall largely bracket the issue of James’s radical empiricism. I do so for the following reasons: first, James never discusses radical empiricism in Varieties; second, I believe that James’s account of religion in that work can be understood adequately without importing radical empiricism into the discussion, and that his omission of radical empiricism from that work is both significant and revealing; and third, I see no obvious dependence relationship between James’s account of religion and morality in Varieties and his radical empiricist metaphysics. Although I do not
See Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), and Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (). See Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James (), p. . Lamberth develops a radical empiricist interpretation of James’s religious views throughout William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (), but see pp. – for a general overview of his reading of Varieties. It is significant that James’s will to believe doctrine, moral theory, and moral arguments for religion do not obviously depend on his radical empiricism. Moreover, I do not believe that James’s moral interpretation of religion and pluralistic, religious account of the highest good in Varieties depend on that doctrine, nor do I believe that James’s conception of the “more” or unseen order in that work is a radical empiricist idea, i.e., one that depends on the tenets of James’s radical empiricism and his notion of “pure experience.” While it is true that James had already begun to develop his radical empiricist metaphysical views by the time he wrote works such as Varieties and Pragmatism, it does not thereby follow that those works are, or must be, radical empiricist in character. James does not bring radical empiricism into his pragmatic account of religion in Varieties, and also does not base his argument for pragmatism in subsequent works on that
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
share Lamberth’s particular interpretive strategy, I have found his reading of James to be novel and illuminating on a number of points and recommend it to the curious reader. Finally, like Lamberth but in contrast to Levinson, I shall offer a primarily philosophical – as opposed to intellectual historical – reading of Varieties. For better or worse, my interest lies almost exclusively with James’s arguments and their relation to other arguments that he makes in his published works. Readers who are interested in a more historical approach to James’s philosophy of religion would do well to read Levinson’s The Religious Investigations of William James (), which does this more effectively than any other book to date.
One of the unmistakable features of Varieties is its concern to demonstrate the practical value or “fruits for life” of religious experience. James’s approach to the subject is primarily psychological, though unlike most such accounts, it eschews any tendency toward reductionism. In the opening lecture of Varieties, “Religion and Neurology,” James argues at some length that “spiritual judgements,” or value judgements, are not reducible to “existential judgements,” or judgements about the causal origins of a given phenomenon. What this means, among other things, is that attempts to derive the value of a religious experience or belief from the causal origins of that experience or belief commit the genetic fallacy. James is unapologetically engaged in a normative project in Varieties, in which he aims to show that religious experience is of the highest value for the moral life, irrespective of its causal origins – though, as he also hopes to show, it is philosophically defensible to believe that religious experience puts us in touch with something which transcends human psychology. On this point, he rightly recognizes that while biological, environmental, and other factors are involved in having religious and mystical experiences, it is not necessarily the case that such experiences are caused or produced by those factors. More significantly, James
doctrine – indeed, he explicitly disavows such a reading (see P, and MT, –). For my case against interpreting James’s pragmatism along radical empiricist lines see Chapter , especially section III. Another recent book that offers an intellectual history of James’s religious thought – though less successfully – is Bennett Ramsey’s Submitting to Freedom: The Religious Vision of William James (Oxford University Press, ). Levinson’s analysis is more extensive and detailed than Ramsey’s, and in my view it is more philosophically astute as well.
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recognizes that while religious and mystical experiences are psychological phenomena, and can be studied using the tools of empirical psychology (or those of other natural sciences, as well as the tools of the social sciences), it is simply not the case that one could ever prove on empirical grounds that such experiences have no non-empirical or super-empirical causes. Among those who mistakenly believe that they have disproved religious and mystical experience on empirical grounds, James especially criticizes those who take the further step of trying to devalue or trivialize those experiences – he calls them “medical materialists” (see VRE , ). By rejecting accounts of religious and mystical experience that reduce these phenomena to the above-mentioned naturalistic factors, and by rejecting the claim that the objects of such experiences are mere psychological constructs, James effectively rejects anti-realist interpretations of religion. James’s interest in the practical value of religion did not begin with Varieties. As we saw in Chapter in our reading of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James had previously argued that both moral philosophy and the moral life require the adoption of certain metaphysical and theological beliefs, specifically belief in God and an infinite scale of values. While he insists in that essay that ethics can conceivably exist in a world in which God does not exist, he also holds that “in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power” ( WB, ). As we saw, James terms this “maximal stimulating power” the strenuous mood, which he contrasts to the “easy-going mood,” or the tendency to shrink from one’s moral ideals and obligations in the face of “present ill.” The strenuous mood, on the other hand, “makes us quite indifferent to present ill, if only the greater ideal be attained” ( WB, –). James writes:
James’s views on the relationship between religion and morality in general, and religion and moral strenuousness in particular, are not very well developed in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” What I should like to stress here is that James consistently holds that religious faith enables moral strenuousness. What it does not do is obviate moral strenuousness or make it unnecessary. While in a number of works James asserts that we have a right to take “moral holidays,” in which we entrust certain matters to higher powers or agencies in the universe (this is a basic aspect of religious faith, on his view), James connects this right to his larger doctrine of meliorism, in which human beings are charged with moral responsibility in the ultimate outcome of the universe (see Pragmatism, especially Lecture VIII). While James’s meliorism presupposes divine assistance in the moral life, it does not discharge us of our basic moral duties. Overall, James sought to balance what he saw as our obligation to lead morally strenuous lives with our liberty to take moral holidays, or what in Varieties he calls “the method of surrender” (see VRE, p. and especially pp. –). Such a view of morality stands at odds with what James sometimes called “moralism,” an obsessive and practically stultifying approach to the moral life which imposes the above-mentioned obligation without affi rming the above-mentioned liberty.
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
The capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in God, men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest. ( WB, )
It is evident in the foregoing passages that James believes human beings have both a practical need for religious faith, and a natural psychological capacity for meeting that need. It is also evident that he sees religious faith as bound up with questions of moral agency and human flourishing. Even in the absence of rational grounds for religious belief, human beings are naturally impelled to adopt such beliefs as a way of meeting their practical needs, and among these moral needs figure most prominently. As we shall see beginning in the next section, however, both James’s religious and moral views would undergo significant modification in Varieties, including his views on the relationship between religion and morality. That religion and morality are fundamentally connected phenomena, and that the ground of their connection is psychological, is basic to James’s account of religious experience and human nature in Varieties. Here, though, James does not rest content with a merely psychological account of the relationship between religion and morality. Indeed, he does not rest content with simply offering a pragmatic justification for religious belief, as he does in such earlier essays as “The Sentiment of Rationality,” “The Will to Believe,” and “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” While James’s psychological and pragmatic views are clearly and frequently at work in Varieties, his methodological decision to study the religious and mystical experiences of extraordinary individuals is driven by an additional, metaphysically realist hypothesis, namely that: In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one’s interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous system, forever off ering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking heaven that it hasn’t a single morbid fibre in its composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors ? ( VRE , –; emphasis added)
James focuses his study on the religious experiences of extraordinary individuals, then, because he believes that it is in them that we can plausibly expect to find the “requisite receptivity” ( VRE , ) for encountering
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
an unseen order. But as the passages above make clear, for James the unseen order is not merely that which underlies and generates our religious experiences. It is also that which essentially underlies and generates morality, in particular such phenomena as moral perception or discernment, moral vigor or strenuousness, and what we might call a moral Weltanschauung or a moral view of the world. Indeed, James suggests here that studying such religious individuals can shed light not only on the nature of ultimate reality, but also on the nature of morality and the moral life. In Varieties James defends the epistemic right of those who have had religious and mystical experiences to hold beliefs based upon them. Yet, James harbored no illusions about our ability either to prove or to disprove the truth-value of such experiences – at least with anything approaching certainty. James thinks we have a number of epistemic limitations, including not only the usual limits on knowledge (those which are due to the limits of our cognitive and perceptual capacities), but also limits of a temperamental or perspectival kind. That is, we naturally tend by virtue of our personal character and history to favor certain views rather than others, and some of us are more psychologically inclined to have religious, mystical, and psychical experiences than others. These epistemic limitations serve to render our theoretic judgements about religious and mystical experiences incomplete . How, then, can we proceed in the face of this apparent impasse? James’s answer to this question, in Varieties and elsewhere, is that we can proceed only by turning to practical considerations. As James colorfully puts the point: “By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots” (VRE , ). More concretely, James proposes a set of criteria for the evaluation of religious and mystical experiences. They are not unique to the evaluation of such experiences, however, but rather inform all of our existential and spiritual judgements. According to James, the value of religious experiences and beliefs, like the value of experiences and beliefs in general, “can only be ascertained by spiritual judgements directly passed upon them, judgements based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true … Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria” (VRE , ). The first criterion, immediate luminousness, denotes the power of a given experience or belief to convey a sense of what James calls “inner
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
authority and illumination.” While James allows that not all “immediately luminous” experiences and beliefs are true (VRE , ), he thinks that candidates for belief which lack this practically valuable psychological quality will tend not to be believed (and conversely, that those which possess it will tend to be believed, and taken as true). Given that James also refers to immediate luminousness as “immediate feeling,” and that he states that the feeling in question is primary in relation to other cognitive processes (see VRE , ), it seems sensible to interpret this criterion in light of his views on the “sentiment” of rationality. The point that James wants to make here is normative, however: namely, that spiritual judgements which fail to satisfy this criterion lack a crucial epistemic and practical value. The second criterion, philosophical reasonableness, denotes a belief’s or experience’s coherence with other things that we believe or have experienced. This criterion concerns an opinion’s experiential “fit” with our total worldview, or with our total set of beliefs and experiences. The third and final criterion, moral helpfulness, denotes the value of a belief or experience for the moral life, and in the context of James’s study of religious experience this may very well be the most important of the three. In particular, James thinks that it is the good dispositions ( VRE , –) produced by religious and mystical experience which provide us with the best indication of their truth, though such dispositions are valuable in their own right on moral grounds. While the noetic or informational character of religious and mystical experience is not publicly verifiable, the practical and moral value of such experiences is – and this, in turn, is relevant to questions concerning the value and justification of religious belief. James’s view is that given the impossibility of either verifying or falsifying religious truth-claims in an objective and public manner, practical value is the only public and reliable indicator of religious truth-value that we have. While this approach does not rule out the possibility of serious disagreement over what is practically valuable, it seems reasonable to suppose with James that a large measure of agreement on basic questions of practical value can be established.
For James’s account of the affective and volitional dimensions of cognition and their priority to such processes as conceptualization and theoretical reflection, see “The Sentiment of Rationality” in WB, pp. –. James is quite clear in Varieties that he recognizes and, indeed, affirms a distinction between truth and utility. Having a true religious belief is not the same as having a practically useful or valuable religious belief. See VRE , footnote .
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
Another distinctive feature of James’s approach in Varieties is his functionalist and moral interpretation of religion. James’s interpretation of religion is functionalist insofar as it holds that religion should be understood in terms of what it does, or what purposes it aims to meet. And it is moral insofar as it holds that what religion does is to establish a moral and soteriological relationship with the universe, or the divine as humans variously conceive it. In other words, religion exists because human beings have moral and soteriological needs, and it is valuable only insofar as it actually meets these needs. While there is an obvious theoretical dimension to such a project, James does not develop an interpretation of religion for mainly theoretical reasons. Again, James’s reasons are chiefly practical in nature: his primary interest in religious experience concerns its “fruits for life,” or its practical value for how we lead our lives. What we see beginning in Lecture II of Varieties is that the value of religion consists chiefly in its capacity to satisfy our moral needs and the virtually ubiquitous human desire for salvation or liberation. James thinks that it is upon these empirically discernible features of religion that our spiritual judgements of religious experiences and beliefs should ultimately be based. And yet, at the same time, religion is not reducible to morality on James’s view. Likewise, and unlike most functionalist interpretations of religion, James does not try to reduce religion to its sociological or biological utility, much less underlying sociological or biological causes.
One might object that for James (as for Kant) religious belief can be justified only on the basis of morality, or perhaps more broadly on the basis of practical reasons. The former construal is misleading, I think, because James has a much broader understanding than Kant of what is included in the class “moral,” and because he holds that the function of religion does not reduce to its moral function. Given this, one cannot rightly claim that for James religion ultimately has a moral basis in the Kantian sense. The latter construal of James’s view, however, could be rightly said to describe James’s view of justification in general: namely, that a necessary condition for any belief to be justified is that it should satisfy some practical need. I would not object to this characterization of James’s view, though I would point out that for James the function and value of religion consist in its capacity to meet broadly practical needs, some of which (such as a metaphysical need like intimacy) are incompatible with the tenets of Kant’s critical philosophy. A prime example of a reductive, sociological version of functionalism is Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press []), which offers an explanation of religion in purely social scientific terms. While biological versions of functionalism are less common (mainly because it is not clear on biological grounds whether religion is part of our “evolved cognitive architecture” – in which case it would have an adaptive function designed by natural selection – or whether it is merely an evolutionary by-product of that architecture), reductive biological and cognitive approaches to religion abound. One of
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
While he believes that religion does have such utility, James also does not want to rule out the possibility that religious experience is caused by an unseen, supernatural order. Early on in Lecture II, James states that “[religion] will prove to contain some elements which morality pure and simple does not contain” (VRE , ), and he devotes the latter half of the lecture – and indeed, much of the subsequent lectures – to making good on this claim regarding the uniqueness and moral value of religion. According to the moral interpretation of religion that I am ascribing to James, religion essentially perfects the moral life by providing it with an ultimate metaphysical ground of meaning and value which non-religious accounts of morality cannot provide, even if morality per se is autonomous from religion. As he explains: At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? … Morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place. ( VRE , )
“It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one,” James continues, “whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints” (VRE , ). He adds: Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may grow from one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other a “critical point” has been overcome. ( VRE , )
the most recent attempts to account for religion along the latter lines, and which sees religion as an evolutionary by-product, is Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books, ). One might object that James’s fallibilism and rejection of absolutes stand in tension with such a view. I would reply that there is no necessary contradiction involved in holding the above-mentioned views and the view that I am ascribing to James here. In holding this sort of religious and metaphysical view of the moral life James makes no claims whatsoever regarding infallibility or absolute certainty; indeed, he takes great care to stress throughout Varieties that his realistic interpretation of religion is a hypothesis, and not a dogmatic religious belief.
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On James’s view religious worldviews overlap with moral worldviews, then, and like the latter they provide for a moral view of the universe. Yet they provide more than this, and our relations to the universe are accordingly somewhat different from a religious standpoint. As James makes clear, the fundamental difference between religion and morality has to do not so much with a difference of doctrine or conceptual content, but rather with the “emotional mood” or quality of the affections at stake between them (VRE , ). Both religious and moral worldviews orient us in life: they provide a framework in which life becomes purposeful and valuable in some suitably strong sense; and they constitute the fundamental sources of moral identity and agency. For James, though, what distinguishes a religious from a purely moral worldview is the manner in which one relates to an “unseen” ideal order. A universal moral order or law, such as the Stoic conception of natural law or Kant’s conception of the moral law, may be submitted to out of respect or necessity. Our response to these, however, is ultimately not based on such powerful and potentially transformative emotions as love or joy. James writes: The anima mundi to whose disposal of his own personal destiny the Stoic consents, is there to be respected and submitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved; and the difference of emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much the same. ( VRE , )
But to say, with Matthew Arnold, that religion is merely “morality tinged with emotion” does not do justice to James’s conception of religion. As we have already seen, James thinks that religious experience puts us in touch with something which transcends our psychology – and with it our merely emotional moods. If one’s manner of relating to an unseen ideal order is attended by such emotions as love, joy, a desire for wholeness, etc., then it qualifies as religious under the terms of his account. While the Stoic’s fidelity to the natural law or the Kantian’s respect for the moral law may not qualify as religious on James’s view, Plato’s devotion to the Form of the Good or Emerson’s faith in spiritual laws most certainly does. One of the most significant changes in James’s account of religion and morality appears in Lecture II of Varieties. In an apparent departure from his earlier position in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James now explicitly claims that we can lead “morally strenuous” lives without the aid of religion. At the same time, though, and consonant with his
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earlier position, he also claims that our attempts to lead morally strenuous lives inevitably encounter limits that only religion can overcome (VRE , –). James writes: The moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so long as this athletic attitude is possible all goes well – morality suffices. But the athletic attitude tends ever to break down, and it inevitably does break down even in the most stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when morbid fears invade the mind. To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o’er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is. Well, we are all such helpless failures in the last resort … [and] whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substituted for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not. ( VRE , –)
Moral agency, including moral strenuousness, is most fundamentally a matter of the will on James’s view. But our wills can fail us, and when they are weak or broken the ethically voluntarist exhortation to will ourselves back into a strenuous mood – or what James here calls “the athletic attitude” – proves futile. What James thinks is required if we are to be delivered from despair and regain our capacity as moral agents is the religious conviction that the divine (which, he now allows, can and legitimately may be conceived in a variety of ways) ultimately grounds our existence and will come to our aid. To use a term that I mentioned at the outset of this study, what moral strenuousness needs as its safeguard and for its ultimate success is metaphysical intimacy – and neither morality nor philosophy alone can provide this assurance. When seen in this light, James’s account of religion is both moral and soteriological: religion fulfills vital moral needs which cannot be met in any other way, and in doing so it provides for our well-being by helping us to overcome our natural limitations and moral failures. It is when we have reached our psychological and practical limits, James holds, that religion reveals its unique, practical difference for how we lead our lives ( VRE , ). He writes: This enchantment, coming as a gift when it does come, – a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a gift of God’s grace, the theologians say, – is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of
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life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste. ( VRE , )
What these passages illustrate is James’s contention that religion is the most valuable function in human life. Neither morality proper nor philosophy can fulfill this vital function, James thinks; as we saw him put the matter previously, “we are all such helpless failures in the last resort.” While James thinks that we can all expect to experience failure and limitation at some point in our careers as moral agents and selves, he does not claim that we are all equally susceptible to religious experience. Only the “extremer types,” or those with the requisite constitution, are capable of living and understanding the religious life in this full sense, though James gives the impression that less extreme religious experiences are available to the rest of us. But the extremer types are also prone to eccentricities and excesses that ordinary religious persons are not, as in the case of the more extreme forms of asceticism ( VRE , –), and James recognizes that this poses a problem for his contention that religious experience is the most important of all human functions. James’s answer to this problem is that, having studied the more extreme examples of religious experience in order to better understand its ordinary varieties, we can then “subtract” and “tone down” its extravagances in the effort to “trace the boundaries of its legitimate sway” ( VRE , ). And it is James’s conviction that even in its “sobered” and “pruned down” varieties, religion remains the most important and valuable function in human life ( VRE , –). “For when all is said and done,” he writes: [We] are all in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute. It thus becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill. ( VRE , )
If it is true that religion can, and often does, provide psychological assurances and degrees of happiness and motivation that non-religious moral and philosophical theories either cannot or most often do not – and
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James presents a substantial amount of data in Varieties in support of this hypothesis – then religion should be of considerable interest to psychologists, neuroscientists, biologists, etc., irrespective of the truth or falsity of religious beliefs. This is why James writes that “from the merely biological point of view, so to call it, this is a conclusion to which, so far as I can now see, we shall inevitably be led” (VRE , ). While he does not deny that non-religious persons are capable of leading moral and even morally strenuous lives (albeit only for a short time), one of James’s basic claims in Varieties is that a careful consideration of the empirical evidence will show that religion – understood as a human phenomenon, whatever else it may be – enables human beings to achieve and sustain levels of happiness and moral motivation that no other aspect of human nature can rival. Although couched in psychological terms, it should be noted that this is a eudaemonistic claim, and one that is of considerable importance for understanding James’s moral as well as his religious views. Now many non-religious readers of James will probably find this eudaemonistic claim on behalf of religion objectionable, but whether we like it or not this really is James’s view – and in his defense, there is some recent empirical evidence which suggests that it (or rather some version of it) is true. James himself was not unaware of the implications of his view for non-religious persons. For we find him claiming not only that the highest and most secure forms of happiness can be had only through religion – and not through inadequate substitutes such as philosophy or morality (VRE , –); but also that not all human beings have a religious temperament or constitution (VRE ). When we combine these claims, the unavoidable conclusion is that some human beings are incapable of attaining the highest and most secure forms of happiness. This valid argument may be expressed as follows: All supremely and securely happy persons are (and must be) religious. Not all persons are (and must be) religious. Therefore, Not all persons are supremely and securely happy.
The best evidence for such a claim comes from religious contemplative practices such as Buddhist meditation. See, for example, James H. Austen, Zen and the Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ); Richard J. Davidson, et al., “Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation”, Psychosomatic Medicine () –; Richard J. Davidson and Anne Harrington (eds.), Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (Oxford University Press, ); and Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia University Press, ). For a critical and well balanced analysis of this body of literature, see Owen Flanagan, The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in Material World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ).
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Yet, while James thinks that not all human beings are capable of being religious, he also thinks that most human beings do have the capacity, even if to a lesser degree than the religious virtuosos whom he examines. Most non-religious persons are not “religious anaesthetics” by nature on James’s view, but rather variously have an inaptitude or distaste for religion (or both) that is the product of cultural and social factors (VRE –). Furthermore, James thinks that even if one is not susceptible to having “first hand” religious and mystical experience (and he includes himself here), most of us are still capable of being religious believers at “second hand.” Whether one is willing to believe at second hand, of course, is quite another matter. In any case, James believes that complete human flourishing can be had only through leading a religious life, and not simply a moral life. While non-religious folk are certainly capable of flourishing on James’s view, the degree of their flourishing cannot match that of religious persons. Importantly, James bases his view not simply on his own observations or religious sympathies (though these certainly inform his judgement, as he would have been quick to admit), but on a consideration of a broad sample of empirical data, in particular the firsthand reports of religious persons. Although we might wish to dispute certain features of James’s methodology or the evidence that he considers, it would be a mistake to claim that his view is evidentially groundless .
, ,
James opens Lecture III, “The Reality of the Unseen,” with the following observation: Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. This belief and that adjustment are the religious attitude in the soul. ( VRE , )
We have already seen how, on James’s view, the human capacity for religion is vitally important to human flourishing; indeed, on his view the psychological function of religion is precisely to provide for such flourishing. While James allows that other aspects of our nature are also important in this regard, in particular our moral capacities, he nevertheless believes that these fall short of religion (VRE , –). To interpret religion in this way, however, is not necessarily to rule out the possibility
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
that religion might have another, distinctly metaphysical function to play, as James vaguely suggests at the close of Lecture II and at various points throughout the work, culminating in his eventual defense of such a view in Lecture XX. What he now begins to explore in earnest are the roles that religious experience and religious commitment play in the religious life and the attainment of human flourishing. As we saw in the quote which began this section, for James having a religious attitude involves not merely believing in the reality of an unseen order, but also believing that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order (VRE , ). He understands these beliefs, quite sensibly, as basic features of what it means to be a religious person. What such a view entails, among other things, is that having a religious attitude presupposes belief in the reality of the object(s) of one’s religious beliefs. It seems rather difficult to dispute this realistic feature of religion. As the psychologist, Paul Bloom, has pointedly observed, “to say that religion does not extend over the domain of fact is true only of the most toothless and secularized belief systems.” Perhaps more controversially, though, James also observes that religion usually involves having a sense or feeling of the reality of the objects of one’s beliefs, or religious experiences of some sort. This is the essential claim of his third lecture and it is one to which James returns repeatedly in Varieties, especially in his later discussions of mysticism and prayer. Although at times he can give the impression that he is merely offering a descriptive, psychological account of this realistic feature of religion, it is important to bear in mind that James ultimately wants to defend religion – at least in its most fruitful varieties – on account of its practical value for life and its possible truth value. More to the point, and as James eventually makes explicit in the concluding chapter and Postscript of the work, he wants to defend a supernaturalist interpretation of religion over and against reductively naturalistic interpretations (VRE , –). Accordingly, James does not restrict himself merely to describing the religious belief in the reality of an unseen order; he also aims to defend the legitimacy of a belief that he himself holds. Thus far we have seen that James’s views on the nature and value of religion are discernibly pragmatic. Religion meets a vital human need, and meets that need better than any other human capacity. Given this fact of our nature, and so long as religious experiences satisfy certain empirical criteria – namely, those specified by James’s empiricist criterion – a person
Paul Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (London: Heinemann, ), p. .
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is warranted in believing their deliverances. But there is more to James’s account of religious experience and belief than this. For while religion has a practical function as well as practical value, the content of religious experience does not reduce to either of these. This is, quite simply, because James thinks that the objects of religious experience really exist, and like all realities their content is not exhausted by the ways in which we take or conceive them. For readers accustomed to thinking of pragmatism as opposed to any version of realism this may come as something of a surprise, but there is no obvious conflict between James’s pragmatic and realist views on religion in Varieties. First, we should be cautious about imposing James’s views in later works such as Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth onto his views in earlier works such as Varieties. James’s pragmatic views developed over time, not all at once, and in many cases he changed his mind about certain issues in the process. This is not to suggest that such impositions are never warranted, but rather only that in some cases they clearly are not. For example, James had not yet developed his pragmatic theory of truth when he wrote Varieties, and his invocation of “the principle of pragmatism” in Lecture XVIII serves the exclusive purpose of distinguishing practically relevant religious beliefs from practically irrelevant ones (see VRE , –). In Varieties, James’s account of religion is “pragmatic” in the sense that it sees religion as a fundamentally practical aff air (the primary function of religion is to do real work in the lives of human beings), and in the sense that it ascribes practical value to religion irrespective of its causal origins, whether those causes are natural, supernatural, or some combination of the two. Second, and more importantly, it is not at all clear that pragmatism and realism are mutually exclusive or incompatible views. James, for one, did not think so. When James calls his view of religion “pragmatic” in Lecture XX of Varieties, he clearly understands this view to entail a commitment to religious realism and a supernatural interpretation of religion – indeed, he sees himself as defending something like a “commonsense realist” view of religion in addition to a practical view (VRE , ). And when we examine what James has to say about the supposed conflict between pragmatism and realism, we find him arguing that his pragmatism in fact entails a commitment to realism. This is a matter of no small importance, and it is one that I shall discuss again later in this chapter and at greater length in Chapter .
James saw this as one of the most common and serious misreadings of his pragmatism, and he termed it “the fourth misunderstanding of pragmatism.” In rejecting a naive version of realism
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
On James’s view religion is a human phenomenon, insofar as it functions to meet vital human needs and reflects human conceptions and values. He never claims, however, that it is a merely human phenomenon. In the case of genuine religious and mystical experiences, James hypothesizes, one relates to something that is really there, something whose existence is independent of the human mind and is not reducible to it (VRE , –). The view that James’s pragmatism somehow rules out realism not only contradicts his own understanding of his views in such works as Varieties and The Meaning of Truth, but more importantly ignores his arguments against such a reading of his views. Moving on, we find that James takes issue not only with those who dismiss the possible truth of religious claims out of hand, but also with those who in principle deny that we can have either experience or knowledge of the objects of religious belief (VRE , –). James thinks that what such views particularly fail to account for is what he variously calls the sentiment of reality (VRE , ), or the sense of reality (VRE , ) regarding our ideal objects of belief. On James’s view, human beings not only conceive religious objects; they also frequently experience them. As James explains: The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life is polarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in, Yet, that thing, for purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mind at all. ( VRE , )
James likens this sentiment to a bar of iron under the influence of magnetism (see VRE , ). “Such a bar of iron could never give you an outward description of the agencies that had the power of stirring it so strongly; yet of their presence, and of their significance for its life, it would be intensely aware through every fibre of its being” ( VRE , ). But it is not simply religious objects that have this power upon us; rather, “all sorts of higher abstractions bring with them the same kind
which denies that our experience of, and engagement with, reality is shaped at all by the way our minds work, James did not thereby deny realism as such. Indeed, and as he makes clear, his account of truth presupposes a version of realism, insofar as it assumes that the reason why some of our beliefs about reality “work” or have “cash value” and others do not is due to the fact that not all of our beliefs “agree with” reality, or the world considered independently of our minds and purposes. See MT, pp. –, and also pp. –. With that said, it is also the case that our conceptions of religious objects are never perfect on James’s view, and in the case of mystical experiences we can form no definite conceptions of their objects whatsoever. Our moral ideals, however, seem to be more readily discursive, though they, too, are rooted in the structure of experience (and in particular, in feeling and will) rather than an a priori conceptual sphere.
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of impalpable appeal” (VRE , ). Abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, and justice permeate our experience of reality and “form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of” (VRE , ). Ideals – including values – form the background for our experience of a meaningful world, imparting sense to reality. Yet, they have a kind of reality themselves on James’s view, one which is at once both transcendent and immanent. “We can never look directly at [ideals],” James writes, “for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception” ( VRE , –). This has the ring of idealist theories like the Platonic theory of forms, Kantian transcendental idealism, and Emersonian transcendentalism, and James readily acknowledges such comparisons (see VRE , –). James’s view is, however, closer to views like Plato’s and Emerson’s than it is to Kant’s, insofar as it locates ideals not in the way our minds work (however conceived), but in a wider reality which transcends the mind and serves as a fund upon which our minds draw. Furthermore, it is not simply religious folk and metaphysicians who have this sentiment of the reality of their ideals. James observes that for many scientists science itself has taken the place of a religion, and that “[w]here this is so, the scientist treats the ‘Laws of Nature’ as objective facts to be revered” (VRE , ). For the very idea of a law of nature, we might add, is the idea of a norm to which nature conforms. From the foregoing examples James draws the following conclusion: It is as if there were in human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call “something there,” more deep and more general than any of the special and particular “senses” by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might similarly excite it, would have that same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally possess. So far as religious conceptions were able to touch this reality-feeling, they would be believed in in spite of criticism, even though they might be so vague and remote as to be almost unimaginable, even though they might be such non-entities in point of whatness, as Kant makes the objects of his moral theology to be. ( VRE , )
On James’s view, then, the sense of reality is, indeed, a faculty of sense, but one more primary than our ordinary senses. It affords direct perceptions
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of reality, though its perceptions of a “more” do not lend themselves readily to discursive formulation. So although the objects or the reality perceived by this sense are conceptually “undifferentiated,” as James goes on to state (VRE , ), they are nonetheless noetic or informational in a very fundamental way. They are informational, content-bearing experiences, even if that content is not fully or adequately conceptualizable. After giving a number of examples in the form of first-hand testimonials of such experiences (see VRE , –), James draws the following conclusion: We may now lay it down as certain that in the distinctively religious sphere of experience, many persons (how many we cannot tell) possess the objects of their belief, not in form of mere conceptions which their intellect accepts as true, but rather in the form of quasi-sensible realities directly apprehended. As his sense of the real presence of these objects fluctuates, so the believer alternates between warmth and coldness in his faith. ( VRE , )
This sense of reality, as James calls it, seems to be “more like a sensation than an intellectual operation properly so-called” (VRE , ). It is not rationally or intellectually grounded, but rather is directly grounded in sensation or perception – though what is sensed or perceived is not as readily conceptualizable as ordinary sense perceptions. Furthermore, its objects are “quasi-sensible,” as James puts it, rather than distinctly sensorial; but these nonetheless have the same felt reality as, and, indeed, sometimes have a greater feeling of reality than, more mundane objects. It is this sense of reality, James observes, which is operative in, and expressive of, religious experience, and beliefs formed on the basis of such experience have an unusually powerful hold on the mind and on conduct. Whether experienced in a transitory and alternating fashion (see VRE , –) or in terms of a constant state or feeling of presence (see VRE , –), such experiences are felt as absolutely convincing and authoritative to those who have them. As James will later argue in his account of mysticism (Lectures XVI and XVII), religious and mystical experiences appear to be informational states, but their epistemic authority is subjective rather than objective in nature: such experiences are strictly first-personal and, hence, not susceptible to objective, public verification or falsification. But so long as religious experiences produce good consequences for life, one might object, why should it matter whether or not such experiences actually put one in touch with an unseen order? And hasn’t James already claimed that the value of religious experience is independent of its causal origins?
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James’s response to this objection begins with the insistence that religious experiences seem not only to be good to those who have them, but also real and truthful. This is significant, not only because religious people testify to the reality and truthfulness of their experiences, but also because the reality of the objects of religious experience helps us to account for the efficacy (not to mention the truth-value) of religious experience and belief. Even though James is a religious realist – or so I hope to show – the pragmatist in him insists that religious experience is valuable even if it is produced by purely material causes. Veridical or not, religious experience produces valuable practical effects. But James’s position doesn’t rule out the possibility that there are certain goods which would be lost if the religious realist view of religious experience should prove false. Indeed, James never claims that there is no practical difference between veridical and non-veridical religious experiences. When we read Varieties in conjunction with other of James’s religious writings, we find that James holds that there are certain goods which can be realized only through religious belief or faith, and others which can be realized only if the world in fact has a different natural constitution than a materialistic world would have (see VRE, ). These qualifications are significant and should not be overlooked. In the former case, religious belief is clearly incompatible with the belief that religious claims are false and illusory; there can be no “will to believe” if religious belief is a dead option, and consequently there are no practical rewards to be reaped. In the latter case, we find that the goods hoped for by most religious people – and most if not all of the world’s major religious traditions – are impossible in a universe of purely brute material forces. In any case, supernatural aims and goods prove to be groundless in a purely material universe, and consequently both belief in, and actions based upon, supernatural ends and goods thereby become irrational. What these examples show us is that truth is an indispensable element of religious belief, even on a pragmatic view like James’s. Simply
Once again, by “religious realism” I mean the general view that there are knowable, mindindependent religious facts, objects, or properties. I have already provided some textual evidence from Varieties in support of this reading, and develop a more extensive argument in the concluding section of this chapter (section V). Readers who would like to see my justification for such a reading in advance may want to skip ahead and then return to the present section. James’s essays “The Will to Believe” and “Faith and the Right to Believe” provide his definitive views on this subject. The latter essay is found in the posthumously published Some Problems of Philosophy (see SPP, –) and is reprinted in John J. McDermott (ed.), The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition (University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. It is for these reasons, among others, that James endorses what he calls a “piecemeal supernaturalist” worldview, which not only postulates the existence of a supernatural order of reality, but also sees that order as continuous with the natural order. See VRE, –.
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put, both the theoretical and the practical rationality of religious belief seem to require belief in the truth of religious beliefs. Furthermore, James never claims that the only judgements which matter are spiritual judgements. While we should not commit the error of trying to derive spiritual judgements from existential judgements (for even if the objects of all religious experiences really exist, this does not necessarily mean that all religious experiences are good), it does not follow that existential judgements are wholly unrelated to spiritual judgements. While it is true that for James what it means for an idea to be true is that it “works,” he also insists that our ideas about the world work only insofar as they actually “agree with” or “fit” it. As he would later write in The Meaning of Truth (): The pragmatist calls satisfactions indispensable for truth-building, but I have everywhere called them insufficient unless reality be also incidentally led to. If the reality assumed were cancelled from the pragmatist’s universe of discourse, he would straightway give the name of falsehoods to the beliefs remaining, in spite of all their satisfactoriness. For him, as for his critic, there can be no truth if there is nothing to be true about. Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. Th is is why as a pragmatist I have so carefully posited “reality” ab initio, and why, throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemological realist. (MT, )
Such passages should lead us to reject the view that James’s pragmatism recognizes no connection between truth and reality. As we have already seen, the belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good is to be found in relation to it is basic to religious faith, or what James calls “the religious attitude in the soul” (VRE , ). If there are religious realities, as James believes, then one’s beliefs about those realities are, objectively considered, either true or false; and if we can have experiences of such realities, then some degree of knowledge of them should be possible (see VRE , –). The evidential value of religious experience and the truth-value of religious belief are inseparable from reality on James’s view – and in this respect, religious experience is not fundamentally different from other kinds of experience, a point that James stresses in the opening lecture of Varieties (VRE , ). Even if we cannot objectively prove (or disprove, for that matter) that the good fruits of religious experience are ultimately the effects of supernatural causes, James thinks, it is still
For a concise summary of James’s claims about truth in Pragmatism, see the Preface to The Meaning of Truth, pp. –. I discuss James’s pragmatic account of truth at length in Chapter , section III, and examine its relation to his pragmatic account of religion in section IV.
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the case that they are proximately the effects of psychological causes – for these fruits are facts of human psychology, and are themselves produced by other features of our psychology. What this entails is that both the truth-value and the practical value of religious experience and belief are bound up with the facts, even if they cannot be straightforwardly inferred from them. James’s discussion of these matters in Varieties reflects not only his pragmatist commitments but also his realist commitments, and helps us to see how these philosophical commitments are – or at least might be – interrelated. Indeed, his discussion of these matters arguably shows that he also recognized a general connection between facts and values, though I shall not belabor this point here. James’s pragmatic approach to religion is evident in both the functionalist and the realist aspects of his account. The functionalist aspect of James’s account of religion entails the claim that religion is a practically useful human capacity, irrespective of whether or not there is a religious dimension of reality, or an unseen order. James thinks that it is for this reason that even non-believers can form positive spiritual judgements of what he calls “the religious attitude.” James, however, does not believe that religion is merely a product (or a by-product) of the human mind. His investigations into the phenomena of religious experience led him to see that persons who have such experiences routinely report a sense of the reality of the objects of those experiences. We are, of course, free to disbelieve such claims, and to believe that the experiences and testimony of religious persons are neither truthful nor authoritative. But we are also free to keep an open mind, or to believe that at least some of these claims are true. While religious experience is undoubtedly a psychological phenomenon, in the sense that it involves human psychology, it is not clearly the case – and it is beyond the scope of psychology and other sciences to determine – that religious experience is merely the product of our psychology. This indeterminacy need not lead us to a gnosticism, however. (Indeed, and as we saw in Chapter , agnosticism is not a tenable position on James’s view, because while it purports to abstain from making a decision on religious matters it actually involves a practical decision in favor of unbelief.) Once again, this is the realist aspect of James’s account of religion. James builds his case for a realist interpretation of religious experience throughout Varieties, and expresses his considered view as follows:
Hilary Putnam has made a strong case for reading James along these lines. See, in particular, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, )
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The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely “understandable” world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal. ( VRE , )
One of the basic features of religious and mystical experience, James observes, is the belief that our ideals – both moral and religious – have their ultimate origins in an unseen order. James’s claim is that when we perceive that our ideals originate in a supernatural region (and let us include here, as James does, both moral values and religious beliefs), we find ourselves committed to them more intimately and powerfully than our commitment to any of our other beliefs. Indeed, these perceptions grip us in this way because they produce changes in us, in our thoughts, feelings, and dispositions, in ways we cannot fully control. While James denies that we are in an objective position either to prove or to disprove that such religious and mystical experiences are veridical, he affirms not only that such experiences are perceived to be real and truthful, but also that such experiences routinely produce real eff ects in those who have them. While this does not constitute objective evidence, it is nonetheless significant because it constitutes what we might call subjective evidence: that is, the reality and truthfulness of religious and mystical experiences are directly evident to the religious subject, even if those qualities are not susceptible to objective, public verification. The short answer, then, to the objection that we entertained above is that for James real goods – both moral and intellectual – are at stake in religious experience, and these goods are inseparable from such matters as truth and reality. I shall return to this issue later in this chapter, where I discuss the synthesis of pragmatism and religious realism which characterizes James’s approach to the philosophy of religion: piecemeal supernaturalism. For now, however, we should turn to consider James’s discussion of the many varieties of religious experience and their moral significance. Having seen how James deals with the data of religious experience, we
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shall be in a better position to understand and evaluate James’s account of the relationship between religion and morality.
Having treated the sensed reality of religious objects, James devotes the next twelve lectures (IV–XV) to a deeper analysis of the psychological states and attitudes which they awaken in those who experience them. Indeed, the greater part of Varieties is devoted to an analysis of these states and attitudes, in their various “quantitative mixtures” and in both their individual and social-historical manifestations (VRE , ). James identifies three basic types of religious selfhood, two of which also have corresponding forms of religion. These are: () “the religion of healthymindedness” (or, the once-born type); () “the sick soul” (or, the twice-born type); and () “the divided self,” which is the most common and unstable type, and also the one without a corresponding form of religion. James’s investigations of these types – and their typifications in phenomena such as conversion and saintliness – are not merely descriptive in nature. They are also decidedly normative, and reflect James’s views on the conditions of human flourishing and the variety of ways in which such flourishing can be achieved. More specifically, what James undertakes to show are human selfhood and agency in what he takes to be their most fully realized and efficacious forms. James’s operative assumption in organizing religious experiences in terms of these types is that individual religious experiences, as well as religious movements and traditions, are not only diverse, but also display recognizable and recurrent psychological characteristics over time and across traditions. In addition to their “sense of reality,” religious experiences and movements can be variously (and by no means exclusively)
It might be objected that James devises only two types of religious selfhood, healthy-minded and sick-souled, and that the “divided self ” is a psychological condition rather than a psychological type. On my view, these are not mutually exclusive claims. I take the divided self to be a mixed psychological type between the healthy-minded and sick-souled types, and understand such selves to be mixed precisely on account of their mixed psychological condition (the same can be said of the other types, which also manifest varying degrees of the healthy-minded and sick-souled conditions, respectively). It does seem to me, though, that James’s identification of healthy-minded persons with once-born types and sick-souled persons with twice-born types is somewhat problematic. In the case of religious movements and traditions, it is the appeal of various religious concepts and claims to different individual psychological types and needs which in large part explains their adoption on James’s view; and by the same token, their disappeal which in large part explains their rejection.
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optimistic or pessimistic, life-affirming or melancholy, and they tend to express and promote distinctive outlooks on life and the world. Religious experiences, movements, traditions, and the like can have significant theoretical differences while still displaying similar psychologies. Pantheistic and theistic beliefs, for example, differ markedly in how they conceive the nature of the divine, and yet both are equally capable of fostering either “healthy-minded” or “sick-souled” attitudes toward human life and reality. Understanding these various psychological states, James thinks, in their various admixtures and in both their pathological and their beneficial forms, can help us not only to better understand religion and human nature, but also to better appreciate the value of religion – at least in the aforementioned beneficial forms – for ameliorating human existence. While James does not do his philosophical heavy lifting in these lectures, they are nonetheless indispensable to his account. This is, quite simply, because in addition to satisfying the psychological and phenomenological aims of his study, they also provide the evidence upon which he bases his moral and philosophical claims. While I cannot possibly do justice to the virtual mountain of data that James analyses in these middle lectures, or to his subtle and detailed discussion of the varieties of religious experience which they exemplify, it is quite feasible to discuss James’s moral appraisal of the types and how they are typified in the phenomena of conversion and saintliness. Since James understands the “divided self” as a mixed type divided between the “pure naturalism” of the once-born type and the “pure salvationism” of the twice-born type (VRE , –), I shall discuss the latter types first. James tells us that what is at stake between the onceborn and twice-born types, and the varieties of religious experience in which they are found, is “two different conceptions of the universe of our experience” (VRE , ). For the once-born, natural good is sufficient for human happiness; and if natural evil is recognized, it is not sufficient for wrecking that happiness. For the twice-born, however, the finitude and transience of all natural goods renders them insufficient for providing any lasting satisfaction; our real good, however conceived, must lie elsewhere for this type. James insists that all of these types of religious experience are capable of bearing practical fruits and reconciling us to reality, and as such all potentially have value. Indeed, it is a feature of his religious pluralism that there is no one single religion or type of religious experience that is objectively best for everyone, because different individuals have different psychological constitutions, capacities, and needs (see VRE , –).
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
“Unquestionably,” James writes, “some men have the completer experience and the higher vocation, here just as in the social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience, whate’er it be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best” (VRE , ). Consequently, James’s account of the highest good should also be understood in a pluralistic light, insofar as it recognizes that that there is no single type of religious experience (or even a single object of religious belief) which is objectively best for all. As I mentioned previously, this pluralism is a distinctive feature of James’s account of the highest good, and it allows James to account for the fact that any number of religious experiences, beliefs, and traditions can satisfy our need to lead morally strenuous and metaphysically intimate lives. Nevertheless, when considered as types of religion, James believes that the twice-born religions or “religions of deliverance” are the most complete. This is because, unlike once-born religions (one of James’s favorite examples was the “Mind-Cure” movement of his day, one of the forerunners of the current New Age movement), twice-born religions such as Buddhism and Christianity have both optimistic and pessimistic elements. In particular, such religions recognize and formulate responses to a genuine feature of reality: namely, the facts of sorrow, pain, and death (VRE , –). Rather than denying or overlooking the reality of evil, the twice-born religions promise deliverance from it. While James devotes considerably more attention to the once-born and twice-born types of religious experience on account of their expression in religious movements and traditions, his discussion of the divided self nonetheless plays a pivotal role in his account. More specifically, James’s discussion of the divided self is important because it marks the point of entry for his reflections on conversion. The psychology of divided selves, James writes, is inherently discordant or heterogeneous, and manifests “an incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution” (VRE , ). This is an inherently unstable type, and the reason that this is so is because the psychological instability in question concerns character, or the constitutive traits of a person’s identity (VRE , ). Inconstancy of character can be a relatively benign phenomenon; but in its more pronounced forms, that is,
James’s account in VRE rejects the monistic presupposition common to both Aquinas’s and Kant’s accounts that belief in God is a necessary condition for the achievement of the highest good. In this respect, James should be understood as rejecting his earlier claim in “Reflex Action and Theism” () that God is the “only ultimate object that is at the same time rational and possible for the human mind’s contemplation” (WB, ). In place of belief in God, James now speaks of belief in a “wider self ” or “unseen order,” of which belief in God is but one of many rational and possible overbeliefs. Th is represents an important shift in James’s philosophy of religion, one which is reflected and in some ways extended in PU.
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
where there exists a greater degree of heterogeneity, pathology ensues and the self becomes radically disordered. “There are,” James relates, “persons whose existence is little more than a series of zigzags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes” (VRE , ). While the most extreme examples of this type are pathological, most instances of the type are not. Indeed, on James’s view most of us manifest some degree of division or inconsistency in our characters, and our development as persons involves undertaking the project of becoming a unified self (VRE , –). James makes it clear, however, that the divided self is not a uniquely religious psychological type. It can take either religious or non-religious forms, and, indeed, seems to characterize the process of becoming a unified or stable self in general, in which a person’s desires, habits, and other mental states are – to borrow a term of Charles Taylor’s – strongly valued, or ordered so as to subordinate lower values to higher ones. The divided self best characterizes the state of those persons who experience a significant degree of psychological conflict between competing ideals or values – and so long as those ideals or values remain disordered, the self remains in a state of internal division
One interesting problem suggested by James’s account of conversion concerns how healthyminded persons (who are also once-born types) can be “converted” at all. James seems to think that they can be (see VRE –), though he does not explain how. In the passages just mentioned, James describes the case (as related by one Horace Fletcher) of an apparently healthyminded person who converted to a healthy-minded religion, experiencing a kind of existential revelation in the process. It seems to me that James overlooks the fact that the subject in question has obviously been disturbed by feelings of anger and worry, and that this is a reason why he has sought a means for overcoming those feelings. While we might wish to say, with James, that this subject was “primed” to have a healthy-minded religious conversion due to a variety of individual and social psychological factors, it would nonetheless seem to be the case that the subject in question was not a true once-born type. Presumably anyone who converts at all has experienced some sort of division in the self which needs unifying or some sickness which needs healing; it seems misleading to describe a once-born type as “converting” to a healthy-minded outlook, because conversion seems to presuppose some sort of “rebirth” or reformation of the self. Rather than converting, presumably once-born types simply discover a language in healthyminded movements for describing their own healthy-minded experience of the world. Indeed, a similar phenomenon might obtain among innately sick-souled types, who discover rather than convert to sick-souled religion; if so, then not all once-born types are healthy-minded. What James ought to have said, on my view, is that all true converts – whether to religions of healthymindedness or to sick-souled religions – are twice-born types. If this is right, then James should not identify being healthy-minded with being once-born, as he does on p. of VRE, because not all healthy-minded persons are once-born types (some are twice-born), and not all once-born types are healthy-minded (it is possible that some might be sick-souled). Charles Taylor develops his account of strong evaluation in his magisterial Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ).
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
and discord. In its most pathological forms, the divided self would appear to be properly schizophrenic; but in its more moderate, and by far more common forms, the divided self would appear to involve what we might call a state of “ethical schizophrenia.” The divided self may be united in a variety of ways, and not all of those ways are religious in nature. The process of unification, James writes: [May] come gradually, or it may occur abruptly; it may come through altered feelings, or through altered powers of action; or it may come through new intellectual insights, or through experiences which we shall later have to designate as “mystical.” However it comes, it brings a characteristic sort of relief; and never such relief as when it is cast into the religious mould. ( VRE , )
The process of unification provides not only stability to the self, but also satisfaction. “But to find religion,” James notes, “is only one out of many ways of reaching unity; and the process of remedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process, which may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not necessarily assume the religious form” (VRE , ). James’s concept of the divided self and his observations on its process of unification thus have their place within the framework of general psychology, and in particular within the framework of moral psychology; he applies them only by extension to religious psychology. The self’s unification, however, is not guaranteed to proceed in a positive moral direction, much less in a religious direction. As James relates, the process can also involve a loss of faith or “counterconversion” from religious belief; can involve a turn from morality to immorality; or can involve one passion or ideal coming to predominate over all others, as in the case of love, ambition, or patriotism (see VRE , –). In all these cases, however, James holds that “we have precisely the same psychological form of event, – a firmness, stability, and equilibrium succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency. In these non-religious cases the new man may also be born either gradually or suddenly” (VRE , ). It is the religious cases, however, which most interest James, both because these cases are the most documented and also (and much more importantly) because of his interest in the transformative effects of supernatural ideals and goods. A religiously divided self can be converted either to healthy-minded or to sick-souled religion, and in either case the conversion can come gradually or suddenly. James’s principal interest, however, lies with those divided selves like St. Paul, St. Augustine, Bunyan, and Tolstoy (to use his most prominent examples) who became
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
religiously twice-born, and had the more profound transformations and more truthful insights into reality. In grasping this feature of James’s study of human nature, we see that while at a descriptive level James recognizes that the divided self and its unification can take either religious or non-religious forms, at a normative level he implicitly affirms the superior value of these religious ways of unifying the self over others. Simply put, if it is better on James’s account for a divided self to become unified, it is better still if that unification is of the twice-born religious variety. While a divided self can be unified non-religiously (for example, along exclusively moral lines), this sort of unification is not as complete as the self’s unification along religious lines, insofar as the latter provides for greater intimacy with one’s ideals and with reality as a whole, and tends to produce more lasting transformations. As we saw above, James holds that acquiring a stable, happy, and unified character is a fundamental requirement of successful living. And while James recognizes that the stable character or sense of self achieved through this process of unification need not be religious, he nonetheless sees the acquisition of a religious character – and in particular, of a twice-born religious character – as the most felicitous and fully realized expression of human nature. The process whereby one achieves a unified character James calls conversion, and the perfected state attained thereby he terms saintliness. It is to an analysis of these concepts, and of James’s evaluation of the saintly character in particular, that we must now turn. We begin with James’s discussion of conversion. James writes: To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. This is at least what conversion signifies in general terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring such a moral change about. ( VRE , )
Therapeutically considered, then, conversion brings happiness and psychological stability to the self. But it also brings about a moral transformation
In this respect James can be understood as a kind of ethical perfectionist, in the sense that he holds that one of the fundamental aims – if not the most important aim – in leading an ethical life is the pursuit of ethical perfection. James’s ethical perfectionism also has a religious character, however, insofar as the kind of perfection which it envisages is (at least in its most developed form) brought about through religious experience. In this regard, ethical perfection is not a merely human achievement on James’s view, since the agency (or at the very least, causality) of extra-human powers is understood to be a necessary condition for the self ’s attainment of ethical perfection.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
of the self, insofar as it ameliorates – from the subject’s point of view, at any rate – a person’s character in the process of reorganizing it. James holds that these are the basic phenomenological marks of conversion, quite apart from whether conversion itself is brought about by ultimately natural or supernatural causes. But what exactly is the mechanism of conversion on James’s view? James’s hypothesis is that the causal factors of conversion lie in the subconscious mind (VRE , –). But whether purely natural forces are at work in this subconscious region of the mind, or whether supernatural forces also have a part to play in conversion, is a matter which exceeds the evidence, and, hence, which also exceeds the explanatory scope of psychology. While granting that conversions may not necessarily be caused by “divine operations” – for there is a gap in our knowledge concerning the ultimate underlying causes of this and other religious experiences – James allows that conversion may (at least potentially) be brought about by an unseen metaphysical order. We should be clear that conversion is a psychological phenomenon on James’s view, and should be investigated using the explanatory tools of naturalistic psychology. But James also allows that our psychological constitution may very well be more than natural in kind; and if it is, then naturalistic psychological explanations will take us only part way toward explaining the phenomenon of conversion. What the process of conversion involves, according to James, is the reorientation of a person’s habitual centre of personal energy. James writes: It makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or another, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central or peripheral in him. To say that a man is “converted” means, in these terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims now form the habitual centre of his energy. ( VRE , )
In conversion, either gradually or suddenly, either consciously or unconsciously (or possibly both operating in conjunction), religious ideas and ideals become central and habitual in a person – they become at once the locus and the engine of a person’s thoughts and actions, and in doing so become the definitive constituents of that person’s character. Not all persons, however, are capable of religious conversion on James’s view. That is, not all persons are temperamentally or intellectually disposed to have religious ideas become “the centre of their spiritual energy”
See also James’s account of the self in chapter X of PP (“The Consciousness of Self ”), pp. – , in particular pp. –.
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(VRE , ). The formation of the self through the habituation of religious ideas and ideals is not something that all selves are capable of achieving, or are inclined to achieve (VRE , –). Yet, such temperamental and intellectual “anaesthetics” to religious faith are more often than not temporary rather than fixed inhibitions on James’s view. “Even late in life,” he writes, “some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in the barrenest breast, and the man’s hard heart may soften and break into religious feeling” (VRE , ). As we have seen him argue previously, James thinks that we are all “helpless failures in the end,” and if we are sufficiently reflective persons we shall in time have to come to grips with the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of natural goods. Natural goods, like natural selves, are all failures in the end; they stand in need of supernatural relief and transformation. What is practically and morally significant about conversion, on James’s view, is the possible attainment thereby of “an altogether new level of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things have become possible, and new energies and endurances are shown” (VRE , ). James continues: “The personality is changed, the man is born anew, whether or not his psychological idiosyncrasies are what give the particular shape to his metamorphosis” (VRE , ). More pointedly expressed, the affective experience of conversion is marked by what James calls the state of assurance, which has three features: first, a sense of peace in which all worry is lost, or a willingness to be is attained; second, the perception of truths previously unknown, especially those regarding “the mysteries of life”; and third, a changed, and, indeed, beatified, view of the world (VRE , –). Herein resides the value of conversion for life. Though the process of conversion itself is transitory, it positively transforms a person’s consciousness while altering and deepening her self-perception and perception of reality. In other words, through conversion the individual’s understanding of herself and the world is transformed through a newfound capacity for religious, moral, and aesthetic perception. The value of conversion thus consists in its capacity to bring about a moral transformation of the self, as well as evaluatively enriched perceptions of reality. And James
James continues to emphasize the practical and moral value of conversion in his later writings, especially in “The Energies of Men” (–). In this short essay James inquires into methods of training the will for moral and political purposes, and specifically advocates the use of spiritual exercises such as yoga and prayer as methods for training our moral volitions and increasing our stores of moral energy. He also, as in Varieties, continues to understand conversion in terms of the release and reorientation of psychological energies, and associates the phenomenon with a
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
believes that such value obtains, it is worth noting, irrespective of the ultimate causal origins of conversion. Indeed, the fruits of conversion can be accounted for either naturalistically or supernaturalistically without altering their practical fruits in any way ( VRE , –). While it might be argued that not all conversions are practically valuable in the ways that he enumerates, James provides overwhelming testimonial evidence to show that it very often is. While conversion denotes the process of moral and spiritual regeneration for James, saintliness denotes the achieved, morally and spiritually regenerate state. The saintly or sanctified character, transformed through the habituation of supernatural ideas and ideals, is the highest of all human characters for James, and on his view represents the pinnacle of moral and spiritual development. At the beginning of his lectures on saintliness (XI), James writes that the most important part of his descriptive endeavors in Varieties lies in his inquiry into the practical fruits of religious experience for life ( VRE , ). He reminds us that “we began all this empirical inquiry not merely to open a curious chapter in the natural history of human consciousness, but rather to attain a spiritual judgement as to the total value and positive meaning of all the religious trouble and happiness which we have seen” (VRE , ). Again, while description and explanation remain crucial aspects of James’s project in Varieties, his principal aim is of an evaluative nature, and concerns the formation of spiritual judgements appropriate to religious experience in its varied forms. In short, both James’s descriptive and explanatory accounts of religion stand in the service of his practical and ethical interests in the value of religion for life. Religious experience and belief do not guarantee happiness or virtue, of course; but on James’s view, the heights of natural human happiness and virtue are to be had only through becoming a religious self. James recognizes that saintliness does not always take morally laudable forms, and he also recognizes that what is morally praiseworthy in one society and age will not necessarily be praiseworthy in another. Saintliness sometimes shows human nature in a painful and pathetic light ( VRE , ), but on the main its fruits, being the best fruits of religious experience, “are the best things that history has to show” (VRE , ). Saints at all times have led more genuinely strenuous lives than the rest of us, and while their strenuousness sometimes takes morally unpraiseworthy unification of the self and enlargement of its agential and moral capacities. See McDermott, The Writings of William James (), pp. –.
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
forms, James believes that the best examples of saintliness uplift us and “wash us in better moral air” in a way in which no other form of human character can do (VRE , ). “The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves,” James writes, “have been flown for religious ideals” (VRE , ). Saints pursue religious ideals more strenuously and assiduously than other human beings; and while religious ideals are not always coincident with moral ideals, when they do coincide they bear the ripest practical fruits. As we have already seen, the religious person on James’s understanding is one whose habitual center of personal energy is formed by religious ideas and ideals. What separates the saint from the ordinary religious person, however, is that whereas the latter still has the occasional moment of resistance to what James variously calls “spiritual enthusiasms” and “melting moods,” the former exists in a permanently heightened state of religious affectivity (see VRE , ). In saintliness, the person’s habitual nature has been so thoroughly transformed by religious ideas and ideals that her previous character and motivations have been permanently annulled (VRE , ). Her self-centered and baser desires and habits are replaced by selfless and higher ones through relationship or continuity with the ideal power, however it be conceived (VRE , –). Rather than bringing about a contraction of the self’s freedom and happiness, the process of “unselfing” involved brings about an expansion of those qualities, and reorients the self’s emotional center around such affections as love and harmony. As James makes clear in his lectures on the value of saintliness (Lectures XIV and XV), the moral character of saints is such that it frequently transforms the lives of others, and over time such changes can even lead to the transformation of whole societies. While granting that not all saints are moral exemplars and that the charisma of saints does not always transform individuals and societies in positive ways, James nonetheless argues here for the generic claim that – at their best – saints are capable of being prophetic in a way that less ethically and religiously committed individuals are not (VRE , ). What this means, among other things, is that saints are capable of introducing new and, more importantly, better ideals into the world; and when we consider the history of religions, James thinks, we find that they have done so more frequently and successfully than any other class of human beings. James fully admits that the saintly virtues, like all virtues, are susceptible to excess, at which point they cease to be exemplary (VRE , ).
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
Saints, in short, are not incapable of vice. “When their intellectual outlook is narrow,” James writes, “they fall into all sorts of holy excesses, fanaticism or theopathic absorption, self-torment, prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet the world” (VRE , ). “By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him,” James adds, “a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would be in the same situation” (VRE , –). But James warns that we must not “confound the essentials of saintliness, which are those general passions of which I have spoken, with its accidents, which are the special determinations of these passions at any historical moment. In these determinations the saints will usually be loyal to the temporary idols of their tribe” (VRE , ). We must not, in short, reduce saintliness to its particular historical manifestations, or judge all saints on the basis of the excesses of some (see VRE , ). Consequently, James rejects wholesale critiques of saintliness and the saintly virtues, such as one finds in Nietzsche, whom he mentions by name. There is, James thinks, a needful and legitimate place for saintly virtues and ideals in both our and in any society. Any society whose values were organized on either exclusively this-worldly or exclusively other-worldly grounds – that is to say, on either an exclusively naturalistic or an exclusively supernaturalistic basis – would be very likely to destroy itself. We need, in short, natural goods just as surely as we need goods and ideals which are not in or of this world (VRE , –). And furthermore, we should avoid the error of presuming that there is only one “intrinsically ideal type of human character,” or one whose character is better considered independently of its psychological and social function (VRE , –). There is no single type of character which is absolutely superior to others; a society organized exclusively around levelling would falter just as surely as would a society organized exclusively around undemocratic, aristocratic virtues. In an ideally humane society, however,
See VRE, –. While James praises Nietzsche for recognizing that a basic conflict of values is at stake between the virtues of saintliness and strength, James rejects Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of saintliness in Zur Genealogie der Moral () on the grounds that it is simply too one-sided: we need both types of character, and both sets of virtues, and should not construct one type alone as ideal (while judging the other inherently vicious). For a more recent philosophical critique of saintliness, see Susan Wolf ’s “Moral Saints,” in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. And for a thoughtful reply to Wolf ’s essay, see Robert M. Adams, “Saints,” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. James, incidentally, shares Adams’s view that saintliness is not only admirable, but also an essentially religious phenomenon (a fact which Wolf curiously leaves out of account).
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the saintly virtues would be the best-adapted ones, though such a society may never be more than a regulative ideal (see VRE , ). Even if not all of us can or should be saints, James thinks, moral progress seems to require that there be at least some individuals whose moral strenuousness is capable of exhorting the rest of us to greater levels of moral commitment, and whose moral insights lead us to affirm qualitatively better moral ideals. One need only reflect on the remarkable achievements of such individuals as the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Gandhi to know what James means, even if one disagrees with James’s own, religiously realist view that moral saints ultimately derive their insights from an unseen, ideal order. James is rather slippery on this last point, for it does not become apparent that he holds such an “overbelief” about saints and the source of their moral insights until one reads the concluding lecture and Postscript of Varieties. When we take it into account, though, it leads us not only to reappraise his account of saintliness and its value, but also certain aspects of his moral theory. As Ellen Suckiel has astutely observed, in Varieties James’s religious ethics comes to transcend his earlier, non-religious ethical theory, both insofar as it comes to evaluate some moral ideals more highly than others (this is implicit in his views on the value of saintly ideals), and insofar as it comes to see the spread of saintly ideals as the mechanism of moral progress or evolution in history. What I would add to Suckiel’s observation, though, is that while this indeed represents a change in the non-religious aspect of James’s account of ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” it is also compatible with, and, indeed, may be read as a further extension of, his religious argument in section V of that essay. At any rate, one important consequence of James’s coming to believe in the existence of an unseen ideal order, one that is the most powerful source of moral transformation both in human lives and moral ideals (exemplified par excellence in the person of saints), is that he effectively rejects his earlier view in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” that human beings can have no knowledge of God’s mind or the content of God’s values. But if this change in James’s moral views follows as a necessary consequence of his changing religious views, so too does his related claim that our postulation of God “serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood” ( WB, ). Religious faith now serves not only to awaken and sustain moral strenuousness in human beings, but also
See Suckiel, Heaven’s Champion: William James’s Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, ), pp. –.
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provides an objective ground for our moral ideals as well as the means by which we come to acquire knowledge of those ideals. This represents a decisive change in James’s ethics in general and his moral theory in particular. Having now examined James’s phenomenology of religion and his account of the moral fruits of conversion and saintliness, we should turn once more to the issue of James’s religious realism and its significance for the moral life. Although it is highly interesting in its own right and of great importance for understanding his philosophy of religion, I shall forego a discussion of James’s account of mysticism here since it does not bear directly on his account of the relationship between religion and morality. It should, I hope, suffice to say that for James mystical experience can provide a warrant for believing in the truth of certain religious beliefs, although this warrant does not compel others to believe in the veracity of such experiences (VRE , –). In keeping with his will to believe doctrine, James argues that such experiences “open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith” (VRE , ). What I should like to focus our attention on, instead, are the fundamental connections between James’s religiously realist and moral views on religious experience. While these interconnections are evident at many points throughout Varieties, they are not fully articulated and synthesized until James turns to discuss his considered views on the philosophy of religion in Lecture XX and the Postscript of the work . It is not until the concluding lecture of Varieties that James declares his intention to defend a supernaturalist and realist interpretation of religion. The question that he now sets out to answer is this: Is the religious man’s experience of intercourse fit to be taken as evidence? Is he like the traveler, whose testimony about foreign countries we should be foolish not to believe? May he instruct us as to the actual existence of a higher world with which our world is in relation, even though personally he be in other respects no better than ourselves. To say yes to this question is to side with supernaturalism taken in a wide sense, in its world-old quarrel with naturalism … in the remainder of this hour I mean to side thus with supernaturalism, and to give you, in the almost absurdly brief compass allotted, the chief reasons for my faith. ( VRE , )
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
But why does James take so long to make his religious commitments explicit? There are several possible interpretations, but I take it that the choice is a strategic one on James’s part. The best explanation, I think, is that James is motivated by a desire to present as objective and empirical a case as he can for the practical value of religion, leaving the question of religion’s truth-value as an open question – and one that an empirical and impartial “science of religions” might seriously pursue within certain carefully circumscribed limits. James begins to develop his idea of a science of religions towards the end of the work, where he distinguishes it from theology, associating the latter approach to religion with speculative metaphysics and deduction from first principles and the former with criticism, induction, and the empirical testing of hypotheses (VRE , –; –). Although he appears rather sanguine about its prospects when he first raises the idea in Lecture XVIII, at one point declaring that he does not see why a science of religions could not “eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science” (VRE , –), in Lecture XX he adds two important qualifications which complicate the picture. The first qualification is that James does not think that a science of religions could ever serve as an equivalent substitute for a living religion (VRE , –). This may not seem to be a real problem at first glance, since there is no clearly compelling reason why a science of religions should be expected to perform a specifically religious function in the manner of theology. The trouble, however, is that James does think that one of the functions of a science of religions, indeed, its primary function, is to propose and test religious hypotheses for the purpose of forming adequate religious beliefs (VRE , –; see also WB, ). In other words, the purpose of a science of religions as James conceives it is not to explain religion as a natural and social phenomenon as, for example, the contemporary academic discipline of religious studies undertakes to do. Rather, its purpose is to apply the empirical and experimental methods of the modern natural sciences to theology in the hopes of making it into a genuine science in the modern sense of the term (as opposed to the older sense of a systematically unified body of knowledge). The second qualification, in turn, is that a science of religions would inevitably be limited in its ability to determine the truth of religious
In the Preface to WB, James discusses the possibility that a science of religions might one day help us to identify which religious hypotheses have proven themselves to be “truest” over the course of human history, in the sense of those hypotheses which work best. He does not, however, develop the idea at any real length here. See WB, .
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
beliefs on empirical grounds (see VRE , –). Not only would a science of religions be unable to reach dogmatic conclusions regarding the truth of religious beliefs, James observes; but the modern natural sciences themselves have materialistic metaphysical presuppositions, and tend to rule out supernatural explanations from the outset in favor of naturalistic explanations (see VRE , –). He writes: The sciences of nature know nothing of spiritual presences, and on the whole hold no practical commerce whatever with the idealistic conceptions towards which general philosophy inclines. The scientist, so called, is, during his scientific hours at least, so materialistic that one may well say that on the whole the influence of science goes against the notion that religion should be recognized at all. And this antipathy to religion finds an echo within the very science of religions itself. ( VRE , )
Although James himself was open to supernatural explanations and deeply critical of the scientism of his day, he was not so foolish as to think that a natural scientific approach to religion would straightforwardly yield conclusions favorable to religious believers. As he now concedes, “the conclusions of a science of religions are as likely to be adverse as they are to be favorable to the claim that the essence of religion is true” (VRE , ). For religious persons, then, a science of religions is bound to be unacceptable to some degree, even for those who – like James – are willing to subject their beliefs to critical scrutiny and revision. Th is leaves James in the interesting position of defending a place for theology alongside his defense of a science of religions. And what his position presupposes, as he soon makes clear, is what he calls a pragmatic view of religion and a piecemeal supernaturalist philosophy of religion (VRE , –). Criticizing what he terms “the survival theory of religion,” the view that religion is a primitive and anthropomorphic mode of thought that is destined to be replaced by the superior, impersonal, and objective view of science, James also rejects some of its underlying philosophical presuppositions, including the belief that the first-person standpoint is not “really” part of reality, and the belief that reality is, or must be, ultimately impersonal rather than personal in nature (VRE , –). If we are willing to count religious experience as a potential source of evidence, he remarks, then “the divorce between scientific facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown” (VRE , ). Less controversially, though, James also rejects the survival theory on account of a common
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
fallacy that its defenders commit: namely, the fallacy of thinking that “because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all” (VRE , ). Simply because many religious people have been wrong in their beliefs about the world, he rightly observes, does not necessarily mean that all religious beliefs are false or should be rejected . Rather than hypothesizing that religion is a merely natural phenomenon that can be explained along reductively naturalistic lines, James instead develops what he calls a “reconciling hypothesis” to be tested by a science of religions, one that is religiously pluralistic insofar as it identifies a common body of religious doctrine among the world’s religions and recommends it for belief, and which is religiously realistic insofar as it offers a realistic interpretation of the object(s) of religious belief ( VRE , ). By framing his interpretation of religion in hypothetical terms, James hopes to offer a plausible and – just as importantly – fallible candidate for belief (the latter way of regarding religious beliefs, on his view, is what separates a science of religions from traditional theology). As he explains: Who says “hypothesis” renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments. The most I can do is, accordingly, to offer something that may fit the facts so easily that your scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true. ( VRE , )
James frames his reconciling hypothesis in terms of the idea of a “more” of consciousness, or unseen order, and our possible union with it. The mechanism that he proposes to explain their possible union or connection, in turn, is subconsciousness, or the subconscious region of the mind. Whatever else religious experience is, James thinks, it is something that is bound up with the facts of human psychology; but the “more,” on James’s view, is ultimately something which is not reducible to, or a mere product of, our psychology. The following passage is worth quoting in full, especially since it can be easily misinterpreted: Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its farther side, the “more” with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its hither side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized psychological fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with “science” which the ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time the theologian’s contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region is that they take on objective appearances, and suggest to the Subject
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
an external control. In the religious life the control is felt as “higher”; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true. This doorway into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of religions, for it mediates between a number of different points of view. Yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties present themselves as soon as we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal consciousness carries us if we follow it on its remoter side. ( VRE , )
This passage can be read as supporting an anti-realist and reductively psychological interpretation of James’s views on religious experience, especially in the light of his suggestion that the human mind is constructed in such a way as to take certain mental phenomena as objective appearances, a phenomenon that we earlier saw him refer to as “the reality of the unseen.” The reason why it should not be interpreted in this way, however, is because – and as James suggests toward the end of the passage – there remains the further question of how far our “transmarginal consciousness” extends on the farther side. Considered simply as a matter of psychological fact, the conscious person is (or rather believes herself to be) continuous with a wider, subconscious self in religious experience; this claim, as James remarks, “is literally and objectively true as far as it goes” (VRE , ). Any metaphysical beliefs about the “wider self” that we hold beyond this fact, however, are what he calls matters of “ over-belief,” or beliefs which exceed the empirical evidence (VRE , ). The crucial point to observe is that, having identified this boundary between naturalistic and supernaturalistic hypotheses concerning the unseen order, James proceeds to take this farther step himself and affirm his own overbelief in the reality of an unseen order which produces real effects in this world (VRE , –). More specifically, he describes his overbelief as belief in God (VRE , –), though James’s God is hardly a deity of the traditional Abrahamic sort. In doing so, James embraces a realist interpretation of religion. As we have already seen, James’s considered view in Varieties is that “the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world,” and “that which produces effects within another reality
It is worth noting here that James understands “over-beliefs” as essential features of any adequate religion or religious life. They are “absolutely indispensable,” he writes, and we “should treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves” (VRE, ). James defended belief in a finite God in a number of works, including The Will to Believe, Pragmatism, and A Pluralistic Universe. He was also sympathetic to panpsychism, though, and developed a panpsychistic conception of God in such works as Human Immortality [] (Boston, MA: Houghton & Miffl in, ) and A Pluralistic Universe.
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal” ( VRE , ). This is an undeniably realist view of religion, but it may strike some readers as being too “thin” on theological content to be of much value. The problem of theological thinness, as we might call it, is probably unavoidable for anyone who aims – as James does – to interpret religion along pluralistic as well as supernaturalist lines. Yet, such an interpretation of religion is compatible with holding additional, “thicker” religious beliefs, or what James calls overbeliefs – in fact, he is quite explicit in claiming that overbeliefs of some sort are indispensable to leading a religious life, and that they are usually “the most interesting and valuable things about a man” (VRE , ). Not all religious overbeliefs are compatible with a pluralistic interpretation of religion, of course, but very many are; that such interpretations of religion would be rejected in principle by religious exclusivists hardly counts against their theoretical or practical value for those with more open-minded and inclusive religious sensibilities. In any case, James supplements his pluralistic interpretation of religion with another overbelief, which he describes in the following passage: God is the natural appellation, for us Christians at least, for the supreme reality, so I will call this higher part of the universe by the name of God. We and God have business with each other; and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The universe, at those parts of it which our personal being constitutes, takes a turn genuinely for the worse or for the better in proportion as each of us fulfills or evades God’s demands. As far as this goes I probably have you with me, for I only translate into schematic language what I may call the instinctive belief of mankind: God is real since he produces real effects. ( VRE , –)
If the unseen order produces real effects, then it must exist. This claim, or so James thinks, is instinctively assumed by religious believers. But
John Hick’s more recent pluralistic interpretation of religion arguably faces the same problem, though, like James, Hick is happy to grant that the purpose of his interpretation is not to replace existing religious traditions. Rather, its purpose is to provide a philosophical framework for understanding how the world’s various religious traditions – all of which are effective paths of personal transformation – might be oriented toward the same metaphysical reality. For Hick’s views on this subject, see “Religious Pluralism and Salvation,” Faith and Philosophy, (); and An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ). For a recent defense of religious exclusivism against religious pluralism, see Alvin Plantinga, “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism,” in Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker (eds.), The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
being a person of faith involves not merely believing that the reality of the object of one’s faith has subjectively important consequences, or consequences for the sort of life that one leads; it also involves believing that it has objective consequences for the nature of reality itself (VRE , ). It is only when religious faith takes on this objective dimension that it becomes what James calls a “real hypothesis” (VRE , ). Although it is doubtful that many religious persons have ever separated the two, the point that James wants to make is that believing in the existence of God, or a causally effective unseen order, has logical consequences for how one thinks about reality. To believe that religion is not merely a way of interpreting the natural world “in a rosier light,” but that it is also a postulator of new facts about the world is what James here describes as a “pragmatic” view of religion (VRE , –). As he explains, “the world interpreted religiously is not the materialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have, over and above the altered expression, a natural constitution different at some point from that which a materialistic world would have. It must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required” (VRE , ). Thus, James’s pragmatic view of religion is practical insofar as it recognizes a fundamental connection between religious belief and conduct; but it is also realistic insofar as it involves believing in the existence of supernatural facts about reality – for example, the fact that there is a supernatural unseen order or “wider self,” a religious object or entity which can be variously experienced and conceived. Moreover, as we have seen, James’s view is also pluralistic insofar as it holds that many religions (and not simply one) are capable of producing real and positive transformative effects in the lives of human beings, and that the unseen order can be interpreted in light of many different overbeliefs (VRE , –). This way of viewing religion stands opposed not only to reductively naturalistic interpretations of religion, which deny the reality of an unseen order; it also stands opposed to certain supernatural interpretations of religion: namely, those which deny that the unseen order can be experienced and can produce real effects in the world. As James explains: This thoroughly “pragmatic” view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave. It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, without adding any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression of absolute spirit, you make it more divine just as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. What the more characteristically divine facts are … I know not. But the over-belief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. ( VRE , )
A pragmatic view of religion, then, represents a kind of “middle way” between one-sidedly naturalistic and one-sidedly supernaturalistic ways of viewing the matter. Unlike the former, it is not predicated on the underlying assumption that religious claims are false, and unlike the latter it does not take the practically enervating view that the objects of religious belief cannot be known or experienced. To believe that God is real but unknowable, James thinks, is not only to part ways with the views of most religious persons; it is to have a faith that is practically useless, however theoretically satisfying it might be. It is for these reasons that James gives the name piecemeal supernaturalism to his “general philosophic position” in the philosophy of religion (VRE , ). Although it is customary (and not entirely misleading) to say that James defended a pragmatic philosophy of religion, it is significant that James himself chose another name for this aspect of his philosophy, one that emphasized its specifically supernatural orientation. “If one should make a division of all thinkers into naturalists and supernaturalists,” James remarks, “I should undoubtedly have to go, along with most philosophers, into the supernaturalist branch. But there is a crasser and a more refined supernaturalism, and it is to the refined division that most philosophers at the present day belong” (VRE , ). “Refined” or universalistic versions of supernaturalism, as he explains, “bar out ideal entities from interfering causally in the course of phenomenal events” (VRE , ). A “crass” or piecemeal version of supernaturalism, on the other hand, “admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty in mixing the ideal and the real worlds together by interpolating influences from the ideal region among the forces that causally determine the real world’s details” (VRE , –). In defending such a view, James self-consciously set himself against the naturalistic critics and debunkers of religion, but also against Kantian transcendentalists and Hegelian absolute idealists, both of which, on his view, removed the objects of religious belief beyond the realm of sensory experience. The differences between piecemeal supernaturalism and its alternatives, as one might expect, are not merely theoretical in nature but also practical. On the one hand, naturalism either eliminates the ideal region altogether, or else reinterprets and reduces it to fit its own materialistic framework.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
Both types of naturalism are morally and spiritually bankrupt on James’s view, and fail to provide a practically and existentially satisfying account of the questions in life that matter most. On the other hand, universal or refined supernaturalism either locates the divine in an unknowable noumenal realm (as in Kant’s philosophy), or else reinterprets it as an abstract philosophical “Idea” which plays little, if anything, more than an explanatory role in a speculative metaphysical system (as in Hegelian and post-Hegelian absolute idealism). The problem with this last type of supernaturalism, James thinks, is that it surrenders too much ground to naturalism by denying that the supernatural order causally intervenes in the natural world and produces empirically discernible effects in it (VRE, ). “In this universalistic way of taking the ideal world,” he explains, “the essence of practical religion seems to me to evaporate. Both instinctively and for logical reasons, I find it hard to believe that principles can exist which make no difference in facts” (VRE, ). Some examples may be helpful here. While Kant, for instance, may have sought to make a place for faith by denying knowledge of metaphysical reality, an unavoidable consequence of such a view is that one of the most epistemologically and ethically significant features of religious life, religious experience, is denied a place. While Kant’s philosophy of religion does take practical and moral considerations into account, it does not take them seriously enough from James’s point of view. Similarly, under the tenets of absolute idealism the Absolute is invoked to account for the world and its dialectical progression, but is not conceived as a personal being that causally intervenes in the world or has an interest in our individual problems. To replace the traditional conception of God with that of the Absolute, as James observes in a footnote, is to postulate a being “who can raise no particular weight whatever, who can help us with no private burden, and who is on the side of our enemies as much as he is on our own. Odd evolution from the God of David’s psalms!” (VRE, ). In contrast to both naturalism and refined supernaturalism, piecemeal supernaturalism admits not only the existence of an unseen, supernatural order, but also admits that it produces real, experienceable, and practically important effects in this world. It is for this reason that James writes: In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual tastes, I believe that a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism and a complete discussion of all its metaphysical bearings will show it to be the hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimate requirements are met. That of course would be a program for other books than this; what I now say sufficiently indicates to the philosophic reader the place where I belong. ( VRE , )
Religion and morality in The Varieties of Religious Experience
Unfortunately, James never went on to discuss all the metaphysical bearings of his philosophy of religion, though he made a tentative start in such works as A Pluralistic Universe (). What he did make reasonably clear, however, was his view that the primary – but not exclusive – function of religion is to meet the practical needs of human beings, and that a religiously realist explanation of how this works is not only possible but also religiously preferable to purely naturalistic explanations. Although the theoretical details of such an account are important, James was arguably right to insist that they are perhaps less important than many philosophers have assumed. On this point he writes that: Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. ( VRE , )
In keeping with his pragmatic view of religion, James seems to have been content to leave certain theoretical issues in the philosophy of religion vague or otherwise unsettled, not only because the evidence is insufficient to determine them, but also because he thought that they are relatively less important than the practical issues. What should be fairly clear at this point, however, is that James was not only a religious pragmatist but also a kind of religious realist, for he believed in the reality of a knowable, unseen supernatural order which can be variously experienced and conceived by different persons, and which furthermore produces real effects in this world. Although his religious “overbeliefs” presume that how the unseen order is experienced and conceived is at least partly dependent on the way our minds work and on individual and social psychological factors, they do not presume that the unseen order’s existence is dependent on our experiences and conceptions of it. If being a religious realist requires believing that there are at least some knowable, mind-independent religious facts, objects, or properties – a view that is compatible with the belief that some religious facts, objects, or properties are mind-dependent in nature, such as the property of being practically fruitful for an individual’s life – then James would appear to merit the title. There are, of course, stronger conceivable versions of religious realism, but these would not appear to be compatible with religious pragmatism, and in any case they would not have been endorsed by James. At the close of Varieties, in a line which at once reflects and builds upon his argument in the “Will to Believe,” James writes that “no fact
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance” ( VRE , ). In a very basic way, what James sets out to do in Varieties is not only to study the different kinds of chances or “overbeliefs” that different religious people take, but to lend philosophical support to our taking such chances under certain conditions. That philosophical support involves, among other things, engaging in a detailed empirical psychological study of human nature; offering a pragmatic justification of religious experience and belief; and developing a pluralistic, religious account of metaphysical reality and our relations to it. James bothers to do all of this, at bottom, because he believes that religion is capable of satisfying the most vital of human needs – namely, our need to lead morally strenuous, metaphysically intimate lives – and does so in a way that no other aspect of our nature can rival. This, in brief, is the jointly religious and ethical program of The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the driving purpose behind James’s study in human nature.
A pragmatic account of religion
In the last chapter we examined James’s case for believing that religion is “an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill,” and saw that for James this function is moral in nature ( VRE , ). Specifically, we saw that on James’s view the essential function of religion is to provide an extraordinarily secure form of happiness and levels of moral energy that morality alone cannot provide, which we analyzed in terms of two distinct but complementary moral needs: the need for metaphysical intimacy, and the need to lead a morally strenuous life. As in previous chapters, it was shown that James’s interest in religion was primarily practical in nature, and that he undertook to justify religious belief under certain conditions on account of its practical value for life. We also saw, however, that James was no longer content merely to provide a warrant for religious belief on practical grounds, and that in Varieties he began to deal in a serious way with questions concerning the reality of religious objects and the truth of religious beliefs. As James makes explicit toward the end of that work, his view is that religious experiences possess “enormous biological worth” irrespective of their possible truth-value; but he also claims that truth means “something additional to bare value for life, although the natural propensity of man is to believe that whatever has great value for life is thereby certified as true” ( VRE , ). Not only does James acknowledge here that questions of truth are distinct from questions of utility or practical value; he also acknowledges his preference for supernaturalist over purely naturalistic accounts of religion, and sketches the outlines of what he variously terms his own “pragmatic”
Parts of section III in this chapter originally appeared in “Pragmatism, Realism, and Religion,” Journal of Religious Ethics, . (December ). James anticipates his conclusion on VRE, , where he distinguishes the practical value of religion from a “merely biological point of view” from “the farther office of religion as a metaphysical revelation.”
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
or “piecemeal supernaturalist” account of religion ( VRE , –). This chapter situates James’s pragmatic account of religion in the context of his larger philosophical defense of pragmatism, with special attention given to Pragmatism (). It discusses the major features of his conception of pragmatism, including its metaphilosophical commitments, the pragmatic method, and the pragmatic theory of truth, and shows how these bear on his evolving pragmatic account of religion. It will be shown that in spite of certain tensions and the occasional inconsistency in his views on such matters as meaning, truth, practical value, and reality James’s pragmatism manages to preserve a commitment to realism, including a commitment to religious realism . It will also be shown that one of the overarching purposes of his pragmatism was to provide an epistemological and ethical justification for religious belief, including a justification for his own “pluralistic-melioristic” religious worldview (P, –). At the same time, this chapter also highlights some of the obstacles to full acceptance of James’s pragmatism and pragmatic account of religion, the most challenging of which are certain questionable features of his theory of truth (in particular its verificationism), and his attempts to show that pragmatism inclines toward a particular set of religious and metaphysical views. One of the most distinctive, but easily missed, features of James’s pragmatic account of religion is the relatively greater emphasis it gives to one of the two major aspects of his pragmatism, the pragmatic method. (The other and perhaps more well known aspect of his pragmatism is the pragmatic theory of truth.) When we consider James’s three major pragmatic treatments of religion – in “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” (), which inaugurated the pragmatist movement; in the last three lectures and the Postscript of Varieties ; and in Lectures II-IV and VIII of Pragmatism – we find that he applies his pragmatic theory of truth only in the last of these works, and even here he has much more to say about the pragmatic meaning and value of religious beliefs than he does about their truth-value. Th is is partly attributable to the fact that James had not yet worked out his pragmatic theory of truth when he published the first two works. But it is also due to the fact that his pragmatic account of religion focuses mainly on providing an account of the pragmatic meaning of religious beliefs, statements, and theories and a means of resolving religious and metaphysical disputes so as to clear the way for religious belief. Put somewhat differently, the overarching goal of James’s pragmatic account
A pragmatic account of religion
of religion was to offer a pragmatic justification for religious belief in general, and not to demonstrate the truth of particular religious beliefs or claims. While James readily acknowledged the importance of having true religious beliefs, he did not think that he could objectively prove God’s existence or the existence of any of the other putative objects of religious experience and belief – though he occasionally suggested that such a demonstration might be possible in the future ( VRE , –; P, ). James would eventually use his pragmatism, however, not merely to provide an account of the nature of religion and a way of justifying a plurality of religious overbeliefs, but also as a means for justifying his own personal overbelief in a finite God and a “pluralistic-melioristic” universe. As we shall see in section IV, what such a faith minimally involves is the belief that the world’s salvation is possible (as opposed to impossible or necessary) and that our various “overbeliefs” and several “faith-ventures” might – in conjunction with the assistance of supernatural forces – contribute to the world’s eventual salvation or damnation (P, –; see also VRE , – and SPP, –). We shall also see that in the process of defending this account of faith James’s religious views would not only acquire a more theological and confessional character, but would also appear to depart at times from his earlier claims about objective truth in religion. This shift is apparent in Pragmatism (), and by the time that James published A Pluralistic Universe two years later he had essentially moved from arguing that religious experience could (but need not) be taken as evidence for believing in the reality of an unseen order to arguing that the empirical evidence actually established a “decidedly formidable probability” in favor of a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe of the sort described by an obscure German thinker named Gustav Fechner (PU, ). In my view this was an unwise turn in James’s religious views, and in the final section of this chapter I shall discuss some of my reasons for thinking so. To put it bluntly, it was an unwise turn for James to take because the empirical evidence establishes no such probability, and because the Fechnerian belief that everything in
It is highly revealing to compare James’s claims about truth and their relation to utility on VRE, with those on P, and . In the first case, James explicitly distinguishes truth from utility in discussing the matters of true religious belief and the “practical fruits” of religious belief; in the second case, and having now developed his pragmatic theory of truth, he appears to identify the truth of religious beliefs with their utility. It is hard to know in the second case whether James has really changed his mind or is merely being sloppy, as he will later argue in The Meaning of Truth that his pragmatic theory of truth does not reduce truth to utility (see MT, ).
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
the universe is conscious and that we are “co-conscious” with such things as plants and planets is, I dare say, a dead option for all but the most credulous New Age believers. But we shall see that even James’s more modest defense of “melioristic theism” and a “pluralistic-melioristic” view of the universe in Pragmatism faces a number of serious challenges, and departs in certain important respects from his earlier – and I believe more defensible – pragmatic account of religion in Varieties. The reading that I shall offer, accordingly, is one that is consistent with many of James’s philosophical views and aims but which departs in places from others. I do not propose to do this arbitrarily or willfully, but rather only in those places where James’s views and aims come into conflict with one another. I shall try to point out where these points of departure occur along the way, and to discuss what is at stake in following some of James’s views rather than others. The plan of the chapter is as follows. Section I examines James’s metaphilosophical conception of pragmatism as a “mediating” approach to philosophy, focusing in particular on his claim that pragmatism is capable of reconciling a scientific and empirical view of the world with a religious and ethical view. Section II, in turn, deals with James’s conception of the pragmatic method and his application of it to religious and metaphilosophical issues. Th is section highlights certain problems surrounding James’s views on the meaning and truth of religious beliefs. In order to deal adequately with these problems I have included a somewhat lengthy discussion and analysis of James’s pragmatic theory of truth, which is the subject of section III. Readers who are not particularly interested in this issue may wish to skip ahead to section IV, which focuses on the religious aspect of James’s pragmatism and his defense of meliorism. As we shall see, and in spite of certain difficulties surrounding his religious metaphysical views, James manages to preserve a commitment to religious realism while also giving priority to the practical and ethical dimension of religious faith. This is a difficult balancing act, but at least in his more careful moments James manages to articulate a practical conception of religious faith which does not reduce the content of religious belief to its ethical and psychological value. While I do not believe that every aspect of James’s pragmatic account of religion is compelling, nor do I believe that his attempts to justify that account are fully successful, I do believe that certain features of his account are strikingly original and insightful, and particularly worthy of our consideration.
A pragmatic account of religion
One of James’s major aims in Pragmatism was to offer a philosophical justification for his pragmatic conception of religion, which he conceived as a scientifically respectable alternative both to traditional theism (which he wrongly believed to be on the wane) and to absolute idealism (which he saw as the chief religious competitor to his own view, but in hindsight turned out to be a passing intellectual fad). As James saw it, pragmatism provided a credible “mediating way of thinking” about religion between the extremes of pure naturalism and pure supernaturalism, as well as a more general way of mediating between what he famously called the “tough-minded” and “tender-minded” temperaments (P, –). It was an empirical approach to philosophy, but unlike other such approaches it “neither begins nor ends by turning positive religious constructions out of doors – it treats them cordially as well” (P, ). James explains the dilemma that he intends pragmatism to solve as follows: What you want is a philosophy that will not only exercise your powers of intellectual abstraction, but that will make some positive connexion with this actual world of finite human lives … You want a system that will combine both things, the scientific loyalty to facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of adaptation and accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic type. And this is then your dilemma: you find the two parts of your quaesitum hopelessly separated. You find empiricism with inhumanism and irreligion; or else you find a rationalistic philosophy that indeed may call itself religious, but that keeps out of all definite touch with concrete facts and joys and sorrows. (P, )
What many persons want, then, but do not find among their existing philosophical options, is a philosophy that can embrace certain features
James believed that the history of philosophy was largely a clash between these opposed philosophical temperaments, which could be exemplified in any number of ways but were seen most clearly in the conflict between empiricism and rationalism and the conflict between monism and pluralism. His claims about the role of temperament in philosophy in the opening lecture of Pragmatism echo his earlier discussion of the role played by our passional and volitional nature in such works as “The Sentiment of Rationality” and “The Will to Believe,” and foreshadow his later discussion of “the types of philosophic thinking” in the first lecture of A Pluralistic Universe (see PU, –). The key idea here is that which philosophical views or theories we find ourselves drawn to is shaped to a great extent by our temperament (which appears to be largely, if not wholly, given by the facts of our individual psychology), and not by impersonal reasons or facts. Indeed, James thinks that a person’s temperament usually “loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would” (P, ). He presents pragmatism as a philosophy for those who, like himself, want to affirm a mixture of “tough-minded” and “tender-minded” views.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
of a scientific way of viewing the world (including a commitment to empiricism and fallibilism) without lapsing into scientific positivism, which threatens many of our most cherished values and beliefs, including the belief in free will and various forms of religious belief (P, –). In other words, such persons want to view the world scientifically as well as religiously or romantically (say, in teleological terms as a cosmic drama about human progress), and find it difficult to reconcile the apparently conflicting presuppositions and demands of these very different worldviews. On the one hand, we have scientific positivism, which (or so James thinks) fails to offer an adequate account of human values; and on the other hand, we have not only traditional but also contemporary forms of religious philosophy, which have difficulty accommodating themselves to the empirical facts and scientific methods. As James observes, “you find an empirical philosophy that is not religious enough, and a religious philosophy that is not empirical enough for your purpose” (P, ). His solution to what he calls “the present dilemma in philosophy” is pragmatism, “a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts” (P, ). Pragmatism is thus a religious empirical philosophy as James conceives it – or, depending on one’s emphasis, an empirical religious philosophy (this flexibility being part of its appeal). Some terminological clarification is probably in order here, since James uses the terms “empiricism” and “rationalism” in a somewhat idiosyncratic and broader sense. By empiricism, James meant not a theory of knowledge per se but rather “going by facts,” or a philosophical preference for theories based on empirically observable facts; likewise, by rationalism he meant “going by principles,” or a philosophical preference for theories based on rational principles that are either abstracted from, or in some sense independent of, the empirical world (P, ). On James’s pragmatic view, a philosophy could be empiricist insofar as it was fallible and accountable to certain facts about the natural world, but it could also be religious insofar as it allowed that reality was not exhausted by or strictly identical with that world.
Compare with PU, , where James writes that when they are reduced to “their most pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes.” To this James adds, somewhat problematically, that “rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic views” (PU, ). The reason why this is problematic is because “empiricism” does not clearly incline any more toward pluralism than it does toward monism; empiricists can, and often do, incline toward metaphysically monistic views such as materialism or reductive physicalism. Simply because one believes that many different things exist does not mean that one is thereby committed to believing that those things are composed of many different ontological substances.
A pragmatic account of religion
How, though, does James propose to achieve this happy pragmatic marriage of science and religion? His account is not entirely straightforward, but as we shall see it consists of two basic parts. First, James proposes to sever the ties that “tough-minded” scientists and philosophers usually make between empiricism and materialism – and, having done so, to reject the latter view. By embracing empiricism and rejecting materialism, James thinks, pragmatism is able to preserve “the richest intimacy with facts” while taking a much broader view of what counts as a “fact.” As he declares, “pragmatism, devoted tho she be to facts, has no such materialistic bias as ordinary empiricism labors under” (P, ). Second, James develops a pragmatic account of the meaning of metaphysical and religious beliefs and a pragmatic theory of truth, which he uses, respectively, to identify what he takes to be the practical effects of such beliefs and to conceive of practically valuable beliefs as true – or as he puts it, “true in so far forth” (P, ). These are controversial views, to be sure, but they also represent highly creative attempts at a solution to one of the most important philosophical and theological problems of the modern era: namely, the conflict between science and religion. In order to understand and assess James’s complex and sometimes confusing views on this subject, we need to begin by placing those views in relation to his pragmatic method and his pragmatic theory of truth.
By the time he gave the lectures that would become Pragmatism in , James conceived his pragmatism as consisting of two essential features: first, a method; and second, “a genetic theory of what is meant by truth” (P, ). Pragmatism began, however, simply as a method whose invention
Although this aspect of James’s pragmatism is not necessarily connected to his radical empiricist and idealist doctrine of pure experience – to deny materialism is not thereby to affi rm idealism – it is certainly consistent with it. Whereas James’s doctrine of pure experience entails a version of objective idealism insofar as it maintains () that reality is most basically composed of “pure experience,” his name for the primal stuff or stuff s of reality (ERE, ; –) and () that the relation between knower and known or thought and thing is merely functional, both being essentially parts of pure experience (ERE, –; ), his pragmatic rejection of materialism in Pragmatism does not clearly deny that there is a material or physical world which exists independently of our actual or possible experiences of it. Rather, it only clearly rejects the materialist view that this is the only world there is, a claim that is also basic to his doctrine of piecemeal supernaturalism. Given that James’s immediate purpose here is not only to deny that an empiricist must take a materialist view of empirical facts but also to affirm the meaningfulness and possible truth-value of supernatural religious and metaphysical beliefs (about which his doctrine of pure experience is silent), I think that this aspect of his pragmatism is best interpreted along piecemeal supernaturalist lines.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
James credited to his friend Charles S. Peirce. But James’s variations on, and application of, Peirce’s method in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” () would eventually lead him to formulate a pragmatic theory of truth , and, indeed, a decidedly different conception of pragmatism altogether. In James’s hands the pragmatic method was not, as it was for Peirce, simply a rule for “making our ideas clear,” by which Peirce meant a rule for attaining a grade of semantic clarity beyond the mere ability to use a word or to offer a definition of it. It was, instead, “primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable” (P, ). As James explains: Is the world one or many? – fated or free? – material or spiritual? – here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right. (P, )
It is here, in the idea of settling metaphysical disputes by asking what practical difference it would make to some person if one of two opposing theories were true, that the differences between James’s and Peirce’s conceptions of the pragmatic method are most readily apparent. While James agreed with Peirce that the function of thought is to produce belief, and that beliefs in turn are essentially rules for action or habits of action; and while he similarly agreed with him that in order to arrive at “perfect clearness” in our ideas or “the whole of our conception” of a given object we need consider only “what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have,” James saw the value of the pragmatic method as consisting chiefly in its ability to resolve philosophical problems that have shown themselves to
See “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” () in McDermott, The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition (University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –; VRE, –; and P, –. It is worth noting that many of the basic features of James’s later pragmatic theory of truth are already apparent in “The Function of Cognition” (), an essay written some fourteen years before his first statement of his pragmatism in “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” (). James himself makes this observation in a note on MT, . For Peirce’s seminal essay on pragmatism, see “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (eds.), The Essential Peirce, vol. (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, [] ), pp. –. What Peirce would later term his “pragmatic maxim” he here refers to as “the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension”; see p. .
A pragmatic account of religion
be incapable of resolution on strictly theoretical grounds. Indeed, James seems to have understood the method’s key notion of practical eff ects in somewhat broader and looser terms than Peirce, who strictly identified the “practical bearings” of an idea with its sensible eff ects – which, we should note, involves taking a rigidly empiricist view of meaning. As Peirce insisted, “our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself.” This difference in how Peirce and James conceived the pragmatic method is quite telling in some cases, for it would lead Peirce to regard ideas such as transubstantiation as pragmatically meaningless (for there is no difference in the sensible effects of non-transubstantiated and transubstantiated wine and bread), and James to regard them as pragmatically meaningful (P, –). Why? Because on James’s view even though there is no difference in sensible effects in this case, there is still a practically meaningful difference: namely, whether or not we believe ourselves to “feed upon the very substance of divinity” (P, ). In order for there to be a meaningful difference between two ideas or theories, as James astutely observes, there need not be an empirically sensible or perceivable difference. This brings us to a contested point in the secondary literature on James, for there is some disagreement over whether his pragmatic method properly entails a pragmatic theory of meaning or a theory of pragmatic meaning. That is to say, there is no general agreement over whether James defended a pragmatic theory of meaning as such, as Peirce did, or rather a special
See Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” p. . It is when James expresses his essential agreement with Peirce’s formulation of the pragmatic method (or rather, what Peirce at the time called “the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness”) that he can be read as endorsing a pragmatic theory of meaning. For James’s understanding of what he called “Peirce’s principle” or “the principle of pragmatism,” see P, –; VRE, –, and “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” Ibid., pp. –. “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” pp. –. Ibid., p. . It is worth mentioning that James did not believe that the doctrine of transubstantiation was true any more than Peirce did; that is not the point. The point is, rather, that under the terms of Peirce’s pragmatic theory of meaning we should not be able to conceive of a possible theoretical difference between transubstantiated and non-transubstantiated wine, since their sensible or empirical effects are the same. The fact that we can do so reveals a problem for Peirce’s theory. No orthodox Catholic would deny that the accidents (or sensible effects) of the wine remain the same in the Eucharist; what she believes is that the substance has changed, which is of crucial theological importance. As James correctly recognizes – and Peirce does not – this is not only a meaningful idea, but also one with important practical consequences. It is somewhat surprising that Peirce would have chosen an example to illustrate his theory of meaning which actually challenges it, but this is nevertheless the case. What his failure shows us, I think, is the folly of trying to reduce the meaningful to the perceivable.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
theory of the pragmatic meaning of abstract concepts. Robert Giuffrida, Edward H. Madden, H. S. Thayer, and Ellen Suckiel have all interpreted James as holding the latter view, whereas Richard Gale has more recently argued for the former, while acknowledging certain inconsistencies in James’s view. For our purposes it will not be necessary to enter into the many complexities of this debate, but it should be clear from the foregoing discussion that James laid the emphasis on the pragmatic meaning of abstract concepts, in particular metaphysical and religious concepts. Although he occasionally claims that the “whole” or “sole” meaning of an idea is expressed by its practical effects or consequences, this is usually in moments where he is summarizing his understanding of Peirce’s pragmatic method, and does not always reflect how he actually used the pragmatic method for his own constructive philosophical purposes. If we take a specific example such as that of transubstantiation, however, we see that James did not in fact believe that the pragmatic meaning of an idea was wholly reducible to, or strictly identical with, its sensible effects. Rather, James observes here that there can be a difference in the meaning of two ideas even where there is no empirically observable difference between them, which is a significantly different view than Peirce’s and one that is incompatible with a general pragmatic theory of meaning. One of the central ideas underlying James’s defense of the pragmatic method – or as we should now call it, James’s version of that method – is that many religious and metaphysical problems cannot be resolved on strictly theoretical grounds. In particular, James thought (not without reason) that philosophical debates over such matters as determinism versus free will, materialism versus theism, and monism versus pluralism do not appear to be susceptible to any purely objective, theoretical solution. When we turn to consider the practical effects which follow from any of these beliefs being true, however, James thinks that we either find practical differences between them which will commend themselves to different persons based on their individual temperaments, or no such differences, in which case there is no difference in pragmatic meaning between the concepts or theories in question. This is not the end
For the former view, see Robert Giuff rida and Edward H. Madden, “James on Meaning and Significance,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, (), –; H. S. Thayer, “On William James on Truth,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (), –; and Ellen Suckiel, The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James (University of Notre Dame Press, ), pp. and . For the latter view, see Richard Gale, The Divided Self of William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ) –. In “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” () James had curiously argued that there was no pragmatic difference between materialism and theism, a view that he would quickly
A pragmatic account of religion
of the process of inquiry, however, but rather the point at which we set philosophical concepts and theories “at work within the stream of experience” (P, ). As James explains the pragmatic method: It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed … theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. (P, )
But what exactly does James mean when he speaks of “resolving” philosophical dilemmas by means of the pragmatic method, or of “changing” existing realities by applying theories to them? What James’s pragmatic method claims to provide is not a way of generating a special set of results – for example, establishing the truth of a given metaphysical theory – but rather a way of showing which practical differences, if any, obtain between rival philosophical theories (P, ). Indeed, it provides not only a way of identifying practical differences between beliefs and theories, but also a way of identifying practical similarities. James asserts that indeterminism and theism, for example, “have for their sole meaning a better promise as to this world’s outcome,” or what he calls meliorism (P, ). To be more specific, James understands the pragmatic meaning of indeterminism as the view that there are novelties and possibilities in the world, and the pragmatic meaning of theism (or “spiritualism,” as he also calls it) as the view that God is the guarantor of an eternal moral order (P, –). And he takes both theories to be melioristic, in turn, insofar as they like other religious doctrines are doctrines of relief (P, ). By extension, James assumes (wrongly, and quite without argument) that the pragmatic meaning of determinism is the denial of novelties and possibilities; that the pragmatic meaning of materialism is the denial of an eternal moral order; and that the common pragmatic meaning of both is a worse promise as to the world’s outcome (P, –).
come to reject. See the editor’s note in McDermott, The Writings of William James (), p. , and also MT, , note . It is highly significant that James here characterizes free will as a religious doctrine, one whose pragmatic meaning is essentially the same as other religious doctrines. What such doctrines function to do, on his pragmatic view, is to provide a way of relief from pessimistic views. Whether or not these doctrines are probably true, however, is something that James thinks can be determined only by actually attempting to live by them. In Pragmatism, as in other of his works such as “The Dilemma of Determinism” (see WB, –), James problematically identifies determinism with necessitarianism, a stronger version of determinism which denies that the world can possibly be other than it is. Determinism as such, however, is compatible with the belief in novelties (e.g., the appearance of new species
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
James’s off-handed claim to have identified the sole meaning of such beliefs is simply not tenable, however, for there are obvious semantic differences between them, whatever their practical consequences might be. For example, indeterminism is the view that we possess contracausal freedom, and theism is the view that God exists – and it is possible to hold one of these beliefs without thereby holding the other. Likewise, one can be a determinist without being a materialist (though not, perhaps, the other way around). Here we can observe that James has set the obvious cognitive or semantic differences in these beliefs aside in order to emphasize what he takes to be a practical consequence that they share in common. Insofar as these beliefs have the same practical consequence, James infers, they must have the same pragmatic meaning. But it might be argued that beliefs such as indeterminism and theism have more than one practical consequence, and if this is right then James has drastically oversimplified the matter. Indeed, strictly considered, indeterminism does not necessarily entail the belief that the world will have a better outcome, and for that matter neither does theism; both views are compatible with the belief that the world will end badly. At any rate, James thinks that clarifying the pragmatic meaning of rival philosophical theories is valuable, because it gives us a practical criterion for choosing one theory over another – theories which, when considered independently of their practical consequences, appear equally plausible on strictly theoretical grounds. He does not presume, however, that his pragmatic method shows that one of two rival metaphysical theories produces objectively desirable practical consequences, because he understands the desirability of certain practical consequences and the appeal or disappeal of different philosophical views as relative to different philosophical temperaments (P, –; PU, –). While James thinks, for example, that belief in God is a more optimistic way of conceiving and relating to the universe than belief in a godless, brute material universe, he does not think that when properly applied the pragmatic method will show that the former belief is more practically rational than the latter. “Temperaments with their cravings and refusals do determine men in their philosophies,” he writes, “and always will” (P, ). What James does not adequately
through the process of natural selection) and with the belief in possibility (e.g., it is possible that Homo sapiens will one day be replaced by a new species of hominid). James’s failure to appreciate this point, as we shall see, would lead him to construct a straw man out of determinism, to which he opposed his own metaphysical and religious doctrine of meliorism. James’s views on the role of temperament in philosophy, incidentally, would seem to pose a problem for his “overbelief ” in libertarian free will. For if, as James suggests, whether we believe
A pragmatic account of religion
discuss, but which surely also informs a person’s choice of theories, is the purpose for which that person holds a given theory or belief. For scientific purposes materialism is surely a better explanatory theory than theism , even if the latter is better for religious purposes. Should we have both purposes, though, we are in a bit of a quandary. Here, I think, we can identify a connection between James’s version of the pragmatic method and his will to believe doctrine, which as we saw in Chapter aims to warrant religious and metaphysical beliefs on the condition that they are live and intellectually undecidable and maintains that in some cases the truth or falsity of beliefs and statements about particular events and states of affairs is dependent upon our action. What James’s pragmatism provides, and his will to believe doctrine does not, is a method for determining the pragmatic meaning of such beliefs so as to clarify which of two competing religious or metaphysical beliefs produces the better practical consequences. As James writes, “the whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one” (P, ). The crucial qualification that James does not always make explicit, but which he almost always presumes, is that he is really interested in justifying world-formulas that are practically useful for our religious and moral purposes. In spite of his talk about the importance of keeping our views accountable to the facts, James does not seem in his later years to have been particularly interested in which world-formulas are most practically useful for scientific purposes (here materialism surely gets the nod), or in giving a detailed account of how we might actually reconcile these different purposes in an intellectually satisfactory way. But assuming that James’s method is really able to show that some “world-formulas” are more practically useful for our religious and moral purposes than their rivals – in particular, James thinks that indeterminism, theism, and ontological pluralism have demonstrably better religious
in free will or determinism is at least partly determined by our particular temperament, and if our temperaments are not wholly within our control, then whether we believe in free will or determinism is not wholly within our control. To some degree we seem to be determined by our respective temperaments to hold or be drawn to some philosophical views, e.g., belief in free will, and conversely to reject or have an aversion to others, e.g., determinism. Hence, our choice of such views is not strictly or even mainly rational (much less contracausally free), but rather determined by our individual passional and volitional natures. While James allows in other of his writings that our psychological constitutions are not necessarily fi xed, he does not anticipate the problems that his views on temperament pose for one of his most cherished beliefs. See also “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” in McDermott, The Writings of William James (), p. , where he makes an earlier and nearly identical claim.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
and moral consequences than determinism, materialism, and ontological monism – why does he think that believing and acting upon such theories can possibly change reality? We are no longer dealing with relatively straightforward cases such as those that we encountered in Chapter , which concerned such matters as our ability to influence the truth or falsity of statements about whether someone likes us or whether we can leap an icy chasm to safety. Rather, we are now dealing with the truth or falsity of metaphysical and religious theories about the fundamental nature of reality – for example, whether or not theism is true. In these cases it is simply not clear how our beliefs and actions can in any way affect the truth or falsity of these theories, but it is with precisely these sorts of cases that James’s pragmatic method is primarily concerned. What is at issue here is nothing short of the plausibility of James’s pragmatic account of religion, and, indeed, of his pragmatism more generally. We will revisit this question later in this chapter in our discussion of James’s theory of truth and his pragmatic defense of meliorism. In addition to providing a means of settling contentious metaphysical debates, James also thinks that the pragmatic method provides a way of justifying our belief that certain metaphysical and religious beliefs are true. Unlike “tough-minded” scientific approaches to philosophy which insist on tying belief to the available empirical evidence, pragmatism is willing to justify speculative metaphysical and religious beliefs insofar as they () produce practically valuable effects and () insofar as they cohere with other beliefs that we take to be true. Or as James puts the matter: “If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. For how much they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to other truths that also have to be acknowledged ” (P, –). This is where we begin to see the connection between James’s pragmatic method and his theory of truth, and it is also where his argument becomes somewhat tenuous. Without going into the details of James’s theory of truth just yet, we can observe that James is trying – albeit unsuccessfully – to use the term “truth” in a different sense than the tough-minded scientific philosopher does. This is clear from considering one of his examples: namely, that of belief in the Absolute (P, ). James claims that the pragmatic meaning of the Absolute is the right to take moral holidays, or “to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business” (P, ). From this, he goes on to claim that “if the Absolute means this, and means no more than this, who can possibly
A pragmatic account of religion
deny the truth of it? To deny it would be to insist that men should never relax, and that holidays are never in order” (P, ). Unfortunately for James, this bit of sleight-of-hand does not work. The reason why it does not work is because what is principally at issue is not whether or not people have a conditional right to relax in their moral efforts, but rather whether or not the Absolute exists. Indeed, what presumably grounds or guarantees the right to take moral holidays is the Absolute itself and not a person’s mere desire to relax – if she really believed that then she wouldn’t need the Absolute. When James says that belief in the Absolute is “true” in the passage above, what he actually means is that it is instrumentally useful (and furthermore, that we would be unreasonable to deny a person the right to hold a useful belief). This, however, is not what the believer in the Absolute (or God, or whatever) means when she claims that her belief is true, nor is it what the “toughminded” scientific philosopher means when she raises doubts about the truth of that person’s belief. What both mean is that there is some metaphysical object or entity to which the concept of the Absolute refers and which either does or does not exist, and that the truth or falsity of belief in the Absolute’s existence depends on whether or not the Absolute really exists. While it may be true that one of the most important practical and psychological consequences of believing in the Absolute is that it warrants the believer in taking moral holidays (or so the believer thinks), this does not necessarily mean (nor does it guarantee) that her belief is true, or as James glosses, “true in so far forth” (P, ). If pragmatism is really to provide a “mediating way of thinking” between the extremes of a tough-minded, scientific materialist view of reality and a tender-minded religious or romantic view, and if it is, furthermore, to avoid doing violence to the views of most religious and non-religious persons alike, then it presumably needs to square (among other things) with how both views understand what it means for a belief or theory to be true . That James understands truth in a decidedly non-traditional, consequentialist sense can be seen in his explanation of what he means by calling the Absolute “true.” He writes: But so far as it affords such comfort, it surely is not sterile; it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function. As a good pragmatist, I myself ought to call the Absolute true “in so far forth,” then; and I unhesitatingly now do so. (P, )
James infers here that if a belief affords comfort to some person then it has some measure of practical value; and that if a belief has some measure of
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
practical value then it has at least some measure of truth – which in this case, as he explains, means the “right ever and anon to take a moral holiday” (P, ). It follows, then, that if a belief affords comfort to some person then that belief has some measure of truth, which means that virtually all metaphysical and religious beliefs are “true” in James’s sense – presumably even ones that contradict each other. In conceiving the truth of metaphysical and religious beliefs in this way, James professes simply to be taking a widely shared scientific view of truth and applying it to philosophy (P, ). What he actually does, though, is to adopt a view of truth that patently flies in the face of the common-sense realism which underlies scientific investigation, and for that matter, which underlies traditional religious belief as well. It is one thing to regard a true theory (as scientists typically do) as an explanatorily useful approximation of objective reality, and quite another to regard any belief or theory that produces valuable practical consequences as thereby possessing a measure of truth. To hold such a view is to accord truth an ethical basis, or more specifically, to identify it with the capacity of a belief to produce valuable practical consequences. That James holds such a view is clear not only from the passages quoted above, but is made explicit in his claims that truth is “one species of good,” and that the true is “the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons” (P, ). One of the most important consequences of this conception of truth, we can observe, is that it provides an epistemic warrant to any belief that can be definitely shown to have valuable practical consequences, including speculative religious and metaphysical beliefs. Thus, to use two of James’s examples, we are warranted in taking belief in the Absolute or belief in God as true, insofar as these beliefs can be shown to be good in the way of belief for definitely assignable practical reasons – in this case, because they respectively ground our right to take moral holidays (P, ) or to
Atheism and theism, for example, are both potentially capable of providing comfort to persons (though not necessarily the same person): it can be a relief that God doesn’t exist just as assuredly as it can be a relief that God does. Under the terms of James’s pragmatic view, though, both beliefs are true insofar as they satisfy this comfort-giving function, even though they are logically incompatible. In this example, we see how James’s pragmatic method and theory of truth can come into conflict with the principle of non-contradiction. In this respect, I agree with Richard Gale’s claim that James attempted to ground truth in ethics, and that this attempt challenges the intellectualist tradition in Western philosophy. See Gale, The Divided Self of William James (), p. . One point of difference between my view and Gale’s, though, is that I think that James also attempted to ground truth in metaphysics at the very same time, and that this represents a fundamental inconsistency in his account. For my view on James’s divided “humanist” and “realist” commitments about truth, see section III of this chapter.
A pragmatic account of religion
believe in an eternal moral order, the last of which James calls “one of the deepest needs of our breast” (P, ). At least in these examples, though, what appears to make the beliefs in question true is not whether or not their objects exist, but rather whether or not they produce practical consequences that are valuable for life. Indeed, James suggests that the failure of materialism to produce such consequences counts as a legitimate practical reason against believing it. “We make complaint of it,” he writes, “… for what it is not – not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes” (P, ). James does have another qualification to make, however, and one that further reveals the consequentialist assumptions which underlie his conception of truth. He adds that: If there be any life that it is really better we should lead, and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it would be really better for us to believe in that idea, unless, indeed, belief in it incidentally clashed with other greater vital benefits. (P, )
These conflicting goods, as we might call them, can be either moral or intellectual in nature, but they usually take the form of other beliefs (P, ). If a given belief fails to cohere with other of our beliefs, it would seem, we should be warranted in believing it to be false. This is not what James says, however. What he says – somewhat vaguely – is that we are warranted in stripping that belief of what he calls its “supernumerary features,” which are presumably what conflict with our other beliefs, while continuing to affirm the truth of its essential pragmatic meaning (P, ). In the case of a morally and logically problematic belief such as belief in the Absolute , as James explains, we are warranted in continuing to believe that we have a right to take moral holidays (the pragmatic meaning of the Absolute) while disbelieving in the Absolute itself (P, ). What this means, though, is that James at once holds that belief in the Absolute is true while also disbelieving in the Absolute. But why should one disbelieve in the Absolute if one believes it to be true? This seems quite puzzling until one considers that what James really means is that he disbelieves in the existence of the Absolute (which involves using “truth” in its standard sense, and is inconsistent with his pragmatic usage), while affirming the pragmatic meaning or practical value of the idea itself (which is to
James’s claim at P, that the pragmatic meaning of “God” is the guarantee of an eternal moral order, and that the need to believe in such an order is among the deepest needs we have, repeats verbatim a passage from “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” (in McDermott, The Writings of William James (), p. ), part of which also appears at VRE, .
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
warrant our right to take moral holidays). As James explains his position, what he firmly believes in is the right to take moral holidays, and not the Absolute per se (P, ). The solution, as he sees it, is either to take our moral holidays without giving them any metaphysical backing, or to justify our right to take them along different metaphysical lines (P, ). What this shows, I think, is that James is primarily interested in the ethical or practically valuable consequences of holding certain beliefs, and not in the beliefs themselves – the belief, it seems, is merely a means to achieving a desired practical end, and in this regard it has purely instrumental value. In the case of religious and metaphysical beliefs, it is the “vital benefits” of belief that matter most; if there is another belief that has the same pragmatic meaning but which better coheres with my other beliefs and practical demands, then that is the belief I should hold. As we shall see, in both Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth James would defend himself against the charge that his theory of truth reduces truth to utility, but cases such as this one appear to contradict what he would eventually call his commitment to epistemological realism (MT, –, –). With respect to his pragmatic method, in any case, James seems to have been interested not only in clarifying what he took to be the practical differences between competing metaphysical and religious beliefs and the practically valuable consequences of some of those beliefs, but also in reconceiving the idea of metaphysical and religious truth in practical terms. There is, of course, nothing to stop a person from using a term in a new way and with a different meaning, and in some cases this is both desirable and defensible. What is philosophically objectionable, though, is not being sufficiently clear about when one is doing this. James is at least clear about this much: by taking its characteristically
Part of the background of James’s pragmatism can be found in his empirical psychology, in particular his views on the adaptive nature of thought. Indeed, his account of psychology in The Principles of Psychology is broadly teleological (and specifically Darwinian) in nature. As he argues at the outset of Principles, the “pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are … the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon” (PP, ). In developing his pragmatism James extended this adaptive view of thought to such matters as meaning and truth, but with a crucial difference: he no longer grounded his view on a materialist view of the mind and the nature of reality, which is one of the distinctive features of the naturalistic and empirical account of psychology that he developed in Principles (see PP, Preface). Although he apparently meant to retain an adaptive view of thought in his pragmatism, it is hard to see how such a view makes sense outside of a natural scientific view of the mind and the world (though this did not stop James, Peirce, Bergson, and others from trying). I suspect that while James’s views on the nature of thought remained teleological, his commitments to Darwinism and naturalism had weakened substantially by the time that he wrote Pragmatism. If anything, the justifying reasons that James offers there on behalf of certain beliefs tend to be consequentialist in nature, and at times have little, if any, obvious connection to the empirical data.
A pragmatic account of religion
“democratic” views of meaning and truth, pragmatism “widens the field of search for God” (P, ). As he explains: Rationalism sticks to logic and the empyrean. Empiricism sticks to the external senses. Pragmatism is willing to take anything, to follow either logic or the senses, and to count the humblest and most personal experiences. She will count mystical experiences if they have practical consequences. She will take a God who lives in the very dirt of private fact – if that should seem a likely place to find him. (P, )
By affirming a commitment to empiricism without embracing materialism, pragmatism is able to regard religious and mystical experiences as potential sources of evidence – namely, as evidence for the truth of a piecemeal supernaturalist view of reality.
’
In the concluding lecture of Varieties James had been careful to distinguish truth from utility in his discussion of religious truth-claims, writing in a footnote that he takes truth to mean “something additional to bare value for life, although the natural propensity of man is to believe that whatever has great value for life is thereby certified as true” (VRE , ). By the time that he wrote Pragmatism, however, he seems to have modified his view – or at least to have thrown caution to the wind. Although James was careful to add provisos when he famously claimed that truth was “the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief ” (P, ), and that it was “only the expedient in the way of our thinking ” (P, ) – in the first case he adds “for definitely assignable reasons,” and in the second case he adds “in the long run and on the whole” – these qualifications do not change the essential fact that he no longer viewed truth as a property distinct from utility. To claim that truth is not distinct from utility, though, is not necessarily to claim that truth wholly reduces to utility. How one interprets James’s theory of truth turns largely on how one understands his views on the connection between truth and utility, in particular his view of what makes a belief instrumentally useful. In this section I propose to examine James’s complex views on this issue, focusing in particular on its consequences for his views on the relationship
To the best of my knowledge, Hilary Putnam was the first to point out the significance of James’s remark about truth at VRE, for his theory of truth. See Putnam, “James on Truth (Again),” in Jeremy Carrette (ed.), William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Centenary Celebration (London: Routledge, ), pp. –.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
between truth and reality. This is an issue of some importance for the present study, for as we have seen James defended a version of religious realism and held that religious experiences could serve as potential sources of evidence for religious beliefs. If James in fact came to believe that having true beliefs meant only having practically useful beliefs, it is difficult to see how he could preserve his commitment to religious realism, or, indeed, how he could preserve any commitment to realism whatsoever. Although I do not presume to offer an exhaustive account of James’s theory of truth here, I believe that an examination of two of its key strands can shed light on his theory and help us to determine whether or not it is incompatible with his religious realism. Following James’s own usage, I shall refer to these respectively as the humanist and realist strands of his pragmatic theory of truth. To anticipate my conclusion, I shall argue that James’s theory of truth is not incompatible with his religious realism, and that it actually presupposes a modest (albeit highly unconventional) commitment to metaphysical realism. Indeed, I hope to show that James’s views on the connection between truth and utility are underwritten by his belief in a real, objective world which serves as the condition for the possibility of an idea’s being true and useful (MT, , , , –, –, –, , , –). As we shall see, James maintains that the instrumental value or “cash value” of certain beliefs is ultimately to be explained by reference to their agreement with a real world. Or as he puts it, that practically useful
Whether James understood truth as an absolute or a relative concept has been a point of some contention in the recent secondary literature. See, for example, Hilary Putnam’s essay “James on Truth (Again)” (), pp. –, where Putnam examines James’s remark in The Varieties of Religious Experience that the word “truth” means “something additional to bare value for life” – that is, that truth is not reducible to utility. Putnam argues here against David Lamberth, who in several works has argued that truth does not play a basic or first-order role in James’s philosophy (Lamberth instead assigns this role to James’s notion of “pure experience”) and that James did not hold an absolute notion of truth (Lamberth instead sees the notion of absolute truth as a merely regulative ideal for James). I side with Putnam on this issue. For Lamberth’s views, see Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge University Press, ) and also “James and the Question of Truth: A Response to Hilary Putnam,” in Jeremy Carrette (ed.), William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience (Routledge: London, ) pp. –. Again, in the most general terms metaphysical realism is the view that “there is a world of mind-independent objects” (Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, nd edn. (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), p. ). And realism proper means the view that “there are knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or properties” (Audi, ibid.). Th is stands opposed to what anti-realists believe, who “deny either that facts of the relevant sort are mindindependent or that knowledge of such facts is possible” (Audi, ibid.). If “naïve realism” means the view that what it means to know mind-independent facts, objects, or properties (or a world composed thereof) is to possess concepts or theories which copy or mirror those things, then James is not a naive realist.
A pragmatic account of religion
ideas “should be true in advance of and apart from their utility, that, in other words, their objects should really be there, is the very condition of their having that kind of utility – the objects they connect us with are so important that the ideas which serve as the objects’ substitutes grow important also” (MT, ). If I am right, James’s pragmatic theory of truth should not be understood as rejecting the correspondence theory of truth; rather, it should be understood as a version of that theory. Although I am not convinced that James’s theory of truth is always consistent, or that James succeeds in pulling off the attempted compromise between realism and anti-realism about truth that I shall ascribe to him, I will be satisfied if I can at least show that James’s theory is not inherently opposed to metaphysical realism and the correspondence theory of truth in the way that many interpreters have thought. While others have recognized James’s realism and its relation to his theory of truth over the years, including Ralph Barton Perry, Marcus Ford, Hilary Putnam, and Joseph Margolis, to my knowledge no interpreter has yet shown that James was () committed to metaphysical realism and () that his theory of truth was a type of correspondence theory, even though he was critical of other types of correspondence theories. Consider Putnam and Margolis. In recent years Putnam has argued that James was a direct (perceptual) realist, and has acknowledged his affinity with such a view. But Putnam has long argued against the correspondence theory of truth and metaphysical realism, and argued that
Henry Levinson has also recognized that James defended a version of the correspondence theory of truth, though he does not discuss this feature of James’s theory of truth in much detail. See Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), p. . The list of interpreters who have held such views is too long to mention here, but consider A. J. Ayer and Ellen Kappy Suckiel, for example. Ayer and Suckiel have very different estimations of James’s pragmatism, but both have interpreted James’s theory of truth as rejecting not only the correspondence theory of truth but also realist conceptions of truth as such. See Ayer’s Introduction to Pragmatism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. vi–xxx, especially xxviii-xxx, and Suckiel’s The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James (University of Notre Dame Press, ), p. . Among recent interpreters, Ford has probably been the most explicit in defending a realist interpretation of James’s theory of truth, but his interpretation of the realist strand of James’s theory is quite limited, dealing almost exclusively with James’s claims regarding truths about future actualities. See Marcus P. Ford, “A Realistic Understanding of James’ Theory of Truth,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Winter ), –. Ford has also argued that James was a kind of metaphysical realist, though what he specifically means by this is that James was a panpsychist. See Ford, “William James: Panpsychist and Metaphysical Realist,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Spring ), –. In this section I shall present a substantially different reading of James’s theory of truth and his commitment to metaphysical realism. See Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Oxford: Blackwell, ), pp. –.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
one of James’s major contributions was to have rejected both. Recently, however, Putnam has made some important concessions in the former respect, now endorsing a disquotational account of truth in which we can say that some terms (but not necessarily whole sentences) correspond to reality, an account which he also ascribes to James. This is a major concession indeed, as it is just one step short of endorsing a full-throated correspondence theory of truth, in which propositions are understood to correspond to reality; after all, it is a short step from saying that “rain” corresponds to a real event in the world to saying that “It’s raining” does so. In the latter respect, though, Putnam has remained firm, arguing against metaphysical realism on the grounds that it presupposes three problematic theses, namely: “() the world consists of a fixed totality of mind-independent objects (or, in other words, there is the world in itself), () there is exactly one true and complete description of the world, () truth is a sort of correspondence.” Putnam draws upon both James and Dewey in support of his rejection of metaphysical realism, but it should be noted that he defines the term in a highly controversial and burdensome way. In common philosophical usage, metaphysical realism is usually understood to mean only the view that “there is a world of mind-independent objects.” This is a far more modest and general definition than Putnam’s, and I suspect that it is what most realists mean when they use the term. While I agree with Putnam that James rejects theses () and () – though not thesis (), for reasons that I shall discuss shortly – I believe that his definition of metaphysical realism is not sufficiently general, and will show that James not only could but actually does endorse the modest sense of metaphysical realism discussed above. Margolis, in turn, understands pragmatism as incompatible with the correspondence theory of truth, and has claimed that James rejected such a theory in the process of endorsing what he calls a “constructive realism,” a type of internal realism that bears a number of similarities to Putnam’s earlier attempts at developing an internal realist theory. Margolis , unfortunately, does not provide textual support for these claims
See Putnam’s essay in James Conant and Urszula M. Żeglén (eds.), Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism (London: Routledge, ), p. . See Żeglén’s introductory remarks in Conant and Żeglén, Hilary Putman (), pp. –. See Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (), p. . See Margolis, Pragmatism Without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism, The Persistence of Reality I (Oxford: Blackwell, ), p. ; and also Reinventing Pragmatism: American Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –.
A pragmatic account of religion
about James’s philosophical views, and so it is difficult to know how to assess them. What I hope to show is that James presents a theory of truth which aims, successfully or not, to preserve certain realist intuitions about truth, including the view that truth entails some sort of agreement or correspondence between our beliefs and statements and a mind-independent world, while also doing justice to the modern scientific insight that our concepts and theories are essentially instruments or hypotheses that we – or in some cases our minds – use to deal with reality for various purposes. In its most basic features, I believe, James’s pragmatic theory represents an attempt to develop an account of truth which coheres with a modern scientific view of the world and the human mind, a mind which does not passively mirror the world but, rather, actively engages with it. As we shall see, however, his argument for the pragmatic theory of truth does not depend upon a metaphysical commitment to materialism, and is broadly compatible with a wide range of metaphysical assumptions. Indeed, and in line with James’s self-understanding of his views, I hope to show that – with a few notable exceptions – his account of truth does not depend upon his radical empiricist metaphysics. Although James’s theory of truth requires a minimal commitment to metaphysical realism and a commitment to humanism (James vacillates between endorsing a weak and a strong version of humanism, as we shall see), it does not presume to specify how one should conceive the nature of the real objects, events, and states of affairs with which true beliefs and statements agree. In this
In his recent book on James’s theory of truth, Harvey Cormier stops short of arguing that James is a metaphysical realist. While Cormier acknowledges that at times James’s claims tend “toward a kind of metaphysical realism” (p. ), he proceeds to argue that the truth-relation, for James, is “not really a relation” (p. ). What Cormier means by this, as he immediately explains, is that on James’s view the truth-relation is instead “a struggle – the struggle of the thinker or believer to develop a body of beliefs that can satisfy her” (p. ). As will become apparent, my reading of James diverges sharply from Cormier’s on this point. See Cormier, The Truth Is What Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of Death (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ). Although James maintained that his pragmatism and radical empiricism were logically distinct doctrines, and, indeed, saw the acceptance of the former as paving the way toward acceptance of the latter (see P, , and MT, –), a number of interpreters have rejected James’s own assessment of this matter in favor of a radical empiricist interpretation of his pragmatism. Notable recent examples of this trend include David Lamberth and Wesley Cooper. See Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (), and Cooper, The Unity of William James’s Thought (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, ). As in Chapter , I shall present a different reading here, one which closely follows the structure of James’s argument for pragmatism and takes seriously the fact that he did not explicitly appeal to his doctrine of radical empiricism in making that argument.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
respect, I think, James’s pragmatic theory of truth has a pluralistic aspect that is not unlike his pluralistic account of religion. Here is a brief outline of this section: (i) offers an overview of James’s theory of truth, and roughly follows the line of argument that James develops in the sixth lecture of Pragmatism; (ii) explores the humanist strand of James’s theory, which entails the view that truth is partly made by us through the process of verification and in accordance with our purposes, as well as the view that reality is not wholly independent of human thinking; and (iii) examines the realist strand of James’s theory, focusing in particular on his claim that a belief’s agreement with reality is a necessary condition for its being true, irrespective of its utility. As we shall see, James’s theory of truth is realistic insofar as it endorses a version of the correspondence theory of truth and takes reality to be partly resistant to human thought – indeed, reality serves as a conditio sine qua non for truth on James’s view. But it is also humanistic, insofar as it maintains that our beliefs and theories are instrumentally useful approximations of reality rather than absolute transcripts of reality; that truth is dependent on actual or possible processes of verification and does not exist ante rem; and that reality itself is not simply given, but is partly “malleable” to human thinking insofar as it can be taken or interpreted in different ways for different purposes (that is, it is conceptually indeterminate). James’s theory of truth thus represents an attempted compromise between strongly realist views of truth and reality which recognize no epistemic gap between reality and our true beliefs about it, and strongly anti-realist views which fail to account for any external constraint on human thinking. Couching James’s theory of truth in these terms helps us not only to grasp certain key features of his view, but also to situate it in the ongoing philosophical attempt to provide an adequate account of the relationship between mind and world. Although I do not find every aspect of James’s theory of truth plausible or compelling, I believe that his theory is far more plausible on the whole than many of its critics have recognized. Properly understood, James’s theory of truth preserves a commitment to realism while taking account of the human contribution to our experience of, and interaction with, reality. As we shall see in the final section of this chapter, rather than undermining his religious realism, the humanist strand of James’s theory actually strengthens certain features of his account of religion, in particular its religious pluralism about overbeliefs and its emphasis on judging religious experiences and beliefs according to humanly important practical and theoretical criteria.
A pragmatic account of religion
(i) An overview of James’s theory of truth The first step toward understanding James’s pragmatic theory of truth is to understand what sort of property it takes truth to be. When we turn to James’s lecture on truth in Pragmatism, we find that truth means neither the utility of a belief nor its coherence with other beliefs, but rather the correspondence or agreement of certain beliefs (or, as James most often calls them, “ideas”) with reality. Although many of his views on truth were decidedly untraditional, it is important to recognize that James did not reject what we might call “the very idea of the correspondence theory of truth.” Instead, he sought to offer a non-mysterious account of what it means for a belief or proposition to correspond to reality. As James explains: Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their “agreement,” as falsity means their disagreement, with “reality.” Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term “agreement,” and what by the term “reality,” when reality is taken as something for our ideas to agree with. (P, )
As this passage makes clear, James viewed the pragmatic theory of truth not as an alternative to the correspondence theory of truth, but rather as an alternative to what he calls the “intellectualist” way of understanding the idea of correspondence. This, incidentally, represents a notable point of difference between his and Dewey’s conceptions of the pragmatic theory of truth, since Dewey saw the latter as a third theory distinct from the correspondence and coherence theories of truth – though it would be misleading, I think, to make too much of this difference. Unlike the
James typically uses the term “ideas” in a broad sense that includes or is interchangeable with such things as beliefs, theories, and propositions. Although in contemporary philosophical usage it is more common to regard truth strictly as a property of propositions, James believed (like most of his contemporaries) that truth could be a property of mental states as well as a property of propositions. Replacing “ideas” with “propositions” does not alter the meaning of James’s claims in most cases, however, and readers who feel more comfortable using the latter term should feel free to make this substitution. One interesting reading of James’s theory of truth, first developed by H. S. Thayer, is to view it as not contradicting or competing with traditional theories of truth such as the correspondence and coherence theories. I find no basis for such a reading in James’s writings, however, and much that clearly contradicts it. See Thayer, “On William James on Truth,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Winter ), –. While Dewey conceived the pragmatic theory of truth in opposition to what he called the realist or correspondence theory of truth, on the one hand, and the idealist or consistency theory of truth, on the other hand, he also maintained – like James – that the correspondence of propositions with their objects is a mark of truth (though verification was still required if truth was
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
intellectualist view, which assumes that truth is “essentially an inert static relation” or something transcendent and ready-made in advance, the pragmatist view is that truth is made through the process of verification, and that the only way to define what we mean by the notion of truth as agreement is by reference to the means by which we confirm a statement or belief as true (P, –; MT, –). It is here, in its definition of truth in terms of verification, that the pragmatic theory of truth purports to offer an account of what truth as agreement with reality means. As James explains: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as. (P, )
What the pragmatic theory of truth purports to offer, then, is a way of clarifying the traditional definition of truth as agreement with reality by defining the notion of “agreement with reality” strictly in terms of the processes by which we confirm the truth of a given belief or statement. Aside from this, James thinks, there is nothing more that we could meaningfully say about truth, or rather, nothing more that we could ever know about it. This is a provocative and elegantly simple theory, but as Hilary Putnam has rightly argued we should not make the mistake of assuming that because James defines truth in terms of verification that he thereby conflates truth with verification. As Putnam observes, James does not, for example, deny that when “new experiences lead to retrospective judgments, using the past tense, what these judgments utter was true, even tho no past thinker had been led there” (P, ), nor does he claim that to have verified the truth of a belief is necessarily to have an absolutely true or incorrigible belief. Under the terms of James’s theory of truth we can speak of true beliefs about the past even if no one knew the truth at the
to be “made”), and that the search for consistent or coherent propositions was a valuable part of the process of inquiry. See John Dewey, “The Problem of Truth,” in Collected Works: The Middle Works, –, vol. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ), pp. –, especially pp. –. Hilary Putnam provides a helpful discussion of the classical pragmatists’ attempts to define truth in terms of verification in several works, including Pragmatism: An Open Question (), pp. – and “James’s Theory of Truth,” in Ruth Anna Putnam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –, especially pp. –. I agree not only with Putnam’s observation that Peirce, James, and Dewey held such a view, but also with his assessment of the problems occasioned by holding such a view. See Putnam, “James’s Theory of Truth,” ibid., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.
A pragmatic account of religion
time, and likewise we can allow that the beliefs that we have confirmed are not necessarily true (they could later be disconfirmed by future inquiry, in which case they were never really true, even if we were warranted in believing them to be true at the time). This is not to suggest that James’s connection of truth and verification is wholly unproblematic, of course, but rather only that there are certain objections that do not properly apply to his theory of truth. One of the keys to understanding James’s pragmatic theory of truth, then, is its connection of the idea that true beliefs agree with reality with the idea that truth is made through the process of verification, which James understands in terms of either actual or possible verification (see P, –, ; and MT, , , ). In short, if a belief or proposition is meaningfully to be called true, then it must be a belief or proposition whose truth we can actually or possibly confirm. And if we cannot in principle confirm the truth or falsity of a given belief or proposition, then that belief or proposition is pragmatically meaningless. What it means for a belief to “agree with reality” in pragmatic terms, James thinks, is the following: To “agree” in the widest sense with a reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or practically! And often agreement will only mean the negative fact that nothing contradictory from the quarter of that reality comes to interfere with the way in which our ideas guide us elsewhere. To copy a reality is, indeed, one very important way of agreeing with it, but it is far from being essential. The essential thing is the process of being guided. Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn’t entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality’s whole setting will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will hold true of that reality. (P, )
To have a belief that agrees with reality is to have a belief that (either actually or possibly) leads us to its object, or to what James variously calls
One criticism that does properly apply, I think, is the charge that verificationist views of truth as such are grossly anthropocentric, making the truth of claims about objects and events dependent on us and our evidential relation to those objects and events. For a pointed criticism of verificationism along these lines, see Mark Johnston, “Objectivity Refigured: Pragmatism Without Verificationism,” in John Haldane and Crispin Wright (eds.), Reality, Representation, and Projection (Oxford University Press, ) and “Verificationism as Philosophical Narcissism,” Philosophical Perspectives, (), –. It is worth noting that while Johnston mentions James in passing in the first of these essays his primary target is Hilary Putnam, specifically Putnam’s defense of internal realism.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
a “reality,” by which he means real objects, events, and states of affairs (MT, , , , –, –, –). Beliefs that satisfy this condition, or which put us into epistemically satisfactory relations with their objects are successful on James’s view – they are “instrumentally useful” or “expedient,” doing what beliefs are supposed to do from an adaptive, evolutionary point of view (P, , , ). It is here that James’s view that truth means the agreement of a belief with reality and his view that the truth is what is useful or expedient come together; what makes an idea “useful,” in his use of that term, is its ability to lead us successfully to its object (P, ; see also MT, , –, –, –). This is an important point, because James can be easily misread as claiming that what makes a belief true is its utility considered independently of its agreement with reality. That this is, indeed, a misreading of his view can be found at numerous points in The Meaning of Truth, for example, when he makes clear that while satisfactions are “indispensable for truthbuilding,” they are insufficient if they do not agree with reality. “If the reality assumed were cancelled from the pragmatist’s universe of discourse,” James explains, “he would straightway give the name of falsehoods to the beliefs remaining, in spite of all their satisfactoriness” (MT, ). As we shall see in our discussion of the realist strand of James’s theory of truth, James thinks that agreement with reality is a necessary condition for a belief’s being true, but he also maintains that agreement alone is not sufficient for knowing the truth. But what does James mean when he uses the term “reality,” which is what true beliefs agree with? This is not as straightforward as it might at first appear. In Pragmatism James had tried to approach this matter in a way that made no explicit reference to, and did not logically depend upon, his doctrine of radical empiricism, and despite the occasional
Another misreading is to see James as endorsing a coherence theory of truth. Strictly speaking, James defines truth in terms of the agreement or correspondence of ideas with their objects (though we only determine whether or not our ideas agree with their objects, he adds, through the process of verification); see P, –. He does not define truth in terms of the consistency or coherence of our beliefs considered independently of their agreement with reality because – and quite sensibly – he takes beliefs to refer to some part of reality and not to themselves. Yet, while James does not define truth in terms of coherence, he does maintain that coherence is one of the properties which makes an idea or theory satisfactory; see P, . In at least one place, though, James seems to regard coherence as a jointly necessary condition for a belief being true, in addition to its agreement with reality. As he writes on P, , a true belief “must derange common sense and previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to some sensible terminus or other that can be verified exactly.” Since this passage is the exception and not the rule, and since it is furthermore unclear that a belief must derange common sense and previous belief as little as possible in order to be true, I am inclined to interpret it as a moment of imprecision on James’s part.
A pragmatic account of religion
lapse – such as when he takes “the flux of our sensations” as the first and presumably most basic part of reality of which true beliefs must take account (P, ) – I think that he was largely successful in this regard. In any case, James’s claim that one can be a pragmatist without being a radical empiricist is surely right, at least if we take the latter doctrine in its full-blown sense (P, ). In this regard, Christopher Hookway has keenly observed that while James’s pragmatism and radical empiricism both appear to presuppose the claim that philosophical debate should be confined to items definable in terms of experience, pragmatism does not necessarily entail (as radical empiricism does) the view that relations among experienced items are themselves directly experienceable parts of experience. As Hookway explains: “The argument for pragmatism rests upon the hope that interminable debates be avoided; it does not rest upon any claims about the structure of experience, although acceptance of the position may make us more sensitive to its complexities.” Confining ourselves to James’s claims about the relationship between truth and reality in Pragmatism, then, we find that realities can be either sensible or mental on his view – that is, they can be either “outer” objects of sense perception or “inner” mental representations (P, –). In the first case, James controversially maintains that true beliefs or claims about empirical objects and events are mutable, just as our experiences of these realities are mutable (P, , –). Although he does not think that either our beliefs about reality or reality itself are radically mutable – reality resists certain ways of “taking” or conceiving it – he nevertheless thinks that we have a partial measure of freedom in how we deal with them (P, ). James’s name for this aspect of his pragmatic theory of truth, as we shall see, is humanism. In the second case, though, James holds that true claims about mental objects and relations have an eternal and immutable character, or as he puts it, “once true, always true, of those same mental objects” (P, ). James thinks that unlike our claims about the
See Christopher Hookway, “Logical Principles and Philosophical Attitudes: Peirce’s Response to James’s Pragmatism,” in Ruth Anna Putnam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (), p. . Ibid., p. . It is highly significant that James uses the term “sensible” rather than “physical” or “material.” Here, as we saw previously, while James’s pragmatism presupposes a commitment to empiricism it does not necessarily presuppose a commitment to materialism. Like Berkeley, James was quite happy to replace talk of a material or physical world with talk of sense perceptions or experiences. Although James’s pragmatism is officially non-committal on such ontological issues, under the terms of his doctrines of radical empiricism and pure experience we have no need to postulate the reality of a material world that underlies and grounds our sense perceptions. Rather, we need only postulate the reality of sense perceptions themselves. According to radical empiricism, “the
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
objects of sense perception, what we say about purely mental or abstract objects is “already true in advance of special verification, if we have subsumed our objects rightly” (P, ). Thus, to use one of James’s examples, “the hundredth decimal of π, the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined ideally now, tho no one may have computed it” (P, ). Yet, while James believes that true beliefs about mental realities are immutable, this does not mean that our dealings with such truths are wholly uninfluenced by our interests. As he insists, logic, geometry, arithmetic, and other symbolic systems are “flagrantly man-made,” and reflect not only certain arbitrary choices on our part but also our interest in classification and systematicity (P, , ). In the case of both sensible and mental realities, though, James maintains that truth is essentially “an affair of leading,” or of relating our ideas in the right way to their objects (P, ). But he thinks that realities can also take a third form: namely, “the whole body of other truths already in our possession” (P, ; see also P, –). It is not immediately clear why James regards truths or our stock of true beliefs as a third class of realities distinct from either sensible or mental realities. It is one thing to claim that our beliefs are connected to one another in something like a Quinean “web of belief,” which is a point that James makes on a number of occasions (P, –, –, and ). It is quite another to claim that true beliefs are a “tertium quid” with an ontological status distinct from either sensible or mental realities. The best explanation for why James holds such a view, I think, can be found in his idea that beliefs are not simply of reality, but are themselves realities or parts of reality. As he writes:
directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure” (MT, ). Although James saw the Humean denial of the reality of conjunctive relations or experiences as the great obstacle to the acceptance of radical empiricism, it seems clear that an equally great obstacle to its acceptance is materialism, or more generally the belief in a material world which underlies and plays a causal role in sense perception. Although James allows that truths concerning mental objects have an absolute or eternal character, at the same time he also conceives of mental objects as human artifacts, and not as something akin to Platonic forms (P, ; MT, ). Such objects are constructed by human beings, but true claims about them (such as that triangles have three sides) nevertheless hold true “timelessly” (MT, ). In Chapter XII of The Principles of Psychology (“Conception”), James had argued that concepts or conceptions have a unique ontological status, being “the one class of entities that cannot under any circumstances change” (PP, ). More pertinently, he held that concepts are neither mental states nor the things signified by such states, but rather “the relation between the two, namely the function of the mental state in signifying just that particular thing” (PP, ). In Pragmatism, James appears to claim a similar status for our stock of true beliefs, though why true beliefs should be classed in this way is not readily apparent.
A pragmatic account of religion
Men’s beliefs at any time are so much experience funded. Beliefs are themselves parts of the sum total of the world’s experience, and become matter, therefore, for the next day’s funding operations. So far as reality means experienceable reality, both it and the truths men gain about it are everlastingly in process of mutation – mutation toward a definite goal, it may be – but still mutation. (P, )
This seems to be one place where James’s radical empiricism leads him to hold a view that is not strictly required by his pragmatism, for there is no necessary reason why someone who believes () that truth means the agreement of certain beliefs with reality and () that truth is made through actual or possible verification processes must believe () that beliefs and the experienced relations between our beliefs and reality are themselves realities which, furthermore, can be directly experienced. The last of these claims is not basic to James’s theory of truth; it is basic to his radical empiricism , as is clear from his formulation of that doctrine in the preface to The Meaning of Truth (MT, –). In any case, the essential point to be grasped for understanding James’s theory of truth is that on James’s view it makes no sense to speak of truths apart from, or independently of, their objects, because truth is essentially a relation – namely, a relation of agreement – between a belief or proposition and its object. This relationship is not really mysterious or “spooky,” James thinks, because it consists in nothing more than the actual or possible means that we use in confirming a given belief or proposition. Truth, as he insists, “is simply a collective name for verification-processes” (P, ). More specifically, truth is “made” or becomes a property of the relationship between a belief and its object through the process of confirming or verifying that belief – it is “realized in rebus,” as James puts it (P, ). In the case of possible truths or what James calls truth ante rem, on the other hand, truth means only verifiability (P, ). That is, truth ante rem refers to a belief or proposition that would become true if one were to perform the actions necessary to confirm it. To treat this class of truths otherwise, James writes, is “the stock rationalist trick of treating the name of a concrete phenomenal reality as an independent prior entity, and placing it behind the reality as its explanation” (P, ). Truth may be what is good or expedient in the way of belief, but James holds that a belief is only good or expedient in the long run (and consequently, only true) if it actually or possibly agrees with reality. As James goes on to explain, “in the end and eventually, all true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere, which somebody’s ideas have copied” (P, ). He continues a few lines later: “The
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
‘absolutely’ true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths will some day converge” (P, –). These passages and others like them reflect what Hilary Putnam has called the “ Peircean strain” in James’s theory of truth, by which Putnam means James’s recourse to Peirce’s idea of an ideal end of inquiry. (They were also, incidentally, part of the inspiration for Putnam’s own defense of internal realism in such works as Reason, Truth, and History, where he offered a contemporary pragmatic account of truth in terms of idealized rational acceptability.) Why did Peirce and James feel the need to hold such a counter-intuitive view? Because to define truth in terms of verification, as they did, is to make truth ultimately dependent on the process of verification, as opposed to something independent of that process. In order to offer a final or absolute account of truth in pragmatic terms, one also needs to offer a final or absolute account of verification. But whereas Peirce defined both truth and reality in terms of what the community of scientific inquirers would believe at an ideal end of inquiry or the imagined end of the verification process (which is an unmistakably idealist view), James only used this notion to account for the idea of absolute truth. This marks a critical point of difference between Peirce’s and James’s views about an ideal end of inquiry, one whose significance extends far beyond their different versions of pragmatism to their widely divergent metaphysical views. Indeed, it represents a basic inconsistency in James’s pragmatic theory of truth – which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if one believes, as I do, that the very notion of an ideal end of inquiry is untenable. To put it briefly, whereas Peirce’s view was informed by
See also P, , where James writes that “the absolute truth will have to be made, made as a relation incidental to the growth of a mass of verification-experience, to which the half-true ideas are all along contributing their quota.” Similar claims can also be found on MT, –, –, and –. See Hilary Putnam, “James’s Theory of Truth” (), pp. –. See Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge University Press, ), especially pp. –. It should be noted, however, that Putnam now rejects his earlier account of truth in terms of idealized rational acceptability as an error. See, for example, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –. For Peirce’s first and most well-known defense of his view, see “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” in Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (eds.), The Essential Peirce, vol. (), pp. –. As Susan Haack has observed, Peirce’s attempt to account for truth and reality in terms of an ideal end of inquiry falls prey to a serious problem: The Problem of Buried Secrets. See Haack’s Introduction to Pragmatism, Old and New, Susan Haack (ed.) (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, ), pp. –. For a related critique of Peirce’s conception of truth and its bearing on the views of Jürgen Habermas and Karl Otto Apel, see Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (), pp. –, especially –.
A pragmatic account of religion
his scholastic realism and its correlate idea of the reality of “Thirdness” or representation, among whose consequences is the claim that reality itself is a semiotic representation (namely, that of an ideal community of inquirers), James’s view was informed by his nominalism about concepts and other representations and by his metaphysical realism, or his view that there is a real, mind-independent world that is distinct from, and irreducible to, our conceptions of it. I shall have more to say about James’s realist commitments in section (ii), but for now it is enough to observe that for James reality is one thing, and our conceptions of reality are another (MT, –, –). To deny this distinction is, on his view, to perpetuate an intellectualist misunderstanding of the relationship between concepts and reality that stretches back to Socrates and Plato (PU, –). Whereas Peirce’s “ideal-realist” philosophical commitments forced him to say that reality is ultimately dependent on the community of inquirers, even if it is independent of what any given individual thinks, James’s instrumental view of concepts and theories forced him to distinguish these mental instruments from reality itself, and to allow that the latter was not wholly reducible to, or identical with, the former (recall that on his view concepts and theories are instruments for dealing with reality for various purposes, not absolute transcripts of reality). But in the latter case the idea of an ideal end of inquiry simply does not work, because there will always be some aspect of reality that is independent of our minds and concepts – in other words, what would be believed by a community of inquirers at an ideal end of inquiry would not be identical with reality, and consequently this idea cannot serve as a fully adequate definition of reality. Moreover, if the idea cannot serve as a fully adequate definition of reality, then it also cannot serve as a fully adequate definition of “absolute” truth-claims about reality, or what it means for such claims to agree with reality. In this case the absolutely true, like
James uses the idiosyncratic term “epistemological realism” to describe his view, but upon closer inspection we find that what he really has in mind is what most contemporary philosophers call metaphysical realism. What James’s view entails is not the claim that truth or other epistemological properties really exist in a mind-independent sense, as its name might suggest, but rather the claim that there is mind-independent reality to which true beliefs refer. Under the tenets of James’s epistemological realism, then, to have a true belief is to have a belief that is true of reality, which James posits ab initio. See MT, – and –. “Ideal-realism” was the name that Peirce’s father, Benjamin Peirce, gave to his metaphysical position. As Susan Haack observes, Peirce also held a version of this view, however, insofar as he held that “the real is independent of what you or I or anybody believes it to be, but not of what the community of inquirers would believe it to be were inquiry to continue long enough.” See Haack, Pragmatism, Old and New (), p. . See also the editors’ Introduction to The Essential Peirce, vol. (), p. xxxv.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
the absolutely real, remains something which transcends inquiry and the process of verification; while this transcendence does not rule out the possibility of having approximate truths about or knowledge of reality, it does seem to rule out the possibility of our having absolute or total knowledge of reality, or a “God’s-eye view.” This is an attractive view to many realists – that is, realists in the contemporary philosophical sense, and not the medieval sense in which Peirce used that term – and it also happens to fit better with another of James’s philosophical commitments, his pluralism, which in its most basic sense refers to the view that reality always partly resists our attempts to “mediate” or capture it through rational or conceptual means (see WB, –; P, –; and PU, ) . Thus far, we have seen that James’s pragmatic theory of truth has a number of aspects, but that two claims in particular lie at its heart: first, that truth means the agreement of certain beliefs with reality, and second, that truth is made through actual or possible verification processes. James’s understanding of these claims, however, is influenced by two remarkably different strands of his epistemology, which he respectively termed his epistemological realism and his humanism. An architectural analogy may be helpful in illustrating their role in James’s theory of truth and their relationship to one another. We can conceive of the tension between the realist and humanist strands of James’s epistemology as providing support for his theory of truth, in much the same way that cables under tension support a suspension bridge. The truth of our beliefs and claims is partly something beyond our control, James thinks, insofar as what makes them true is their agreement with reality, which resists our thinking to a significant degree. But it is also partly something within our control, not only insofar as we actualize possibly true beliefs and claims through our activities, but also insofar as reality itself is not simply “given,” but is in part determined by how it is “taken” – and it can be taken in many different ways for many different purposes. James thus seeks to combine a version of realism with a version of ontological relativism in his theory of truth, with each providing a counterbalance to the other that (in theory, at least) prevents either from taking an excessively strong form. On the one hand,
I note here my disagreement with H. S. Thayer’s view that James’s claim that “truth is made” is not a central feature of his pragmatism. Rather than being a special development from and application of James’s theory, as Thayer holds, I view it as a basic (and, indeed, the most distinctive) feature of James’s pragmatic version of the correspondence theory of truth. Given that James defines truth in terms of verification, as we have seen, and that this is basic to his pragmatic account of the meaning of truth, it seems difficult to regard this claim as somehow extraneous to his theory. See Thayer, “James and the Theory of Truth,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Winter ), p. .
A pragmatic account of religion
truth names the agreement of beliefs with reality; but on the other hand, reality itself is partly (but not wholly) shaped by how we take it through our concepts and theories, which on James’s view are approximations of, and instruments for, dealing with reality rather than absolute transcripts of reality (see P, –, –, –, –, –). The difficulty that James faces, though, is that if either strand of his epistemology becomes either too strong or too weak then the entire bridge is threatened with collapse. How James fares in this delicate balancing act is a matter that we must now consider. (ii)
The humanist strand of James’s theory of truth
Humanism was the name that James’s friend, F. C. S. Schiller, gave to his own version of pragmatism, and James agreed with him that it was a better name for “the wider pragmatism,” which includes the pragmatic theory of truth, as opposed to “the narrower pragmatism,” which consists simply of the pragmatic method (MT, ). It is the view that our minds actively “take” and construct reality to an unascertainable extent, rather than passively copying a “given” and “ready-made” world; and one of its epistemic consequences is that true beliefs and claims about reality are to an unascertainable extent human products too (P, –). We receive reality in the same way that a sculptor receives a block of marble, James thinks, and just as the sculptor carves the statue so, too, do we “carve” or construct reality through our conceptual and theoretical activities (P, ). While humanism does not deny that there are “resisting factors” in experience or that reality is to some extent mind-independent in nature, it does deny that reality as we conceive and experience it is wholly uninfluenced by our minds and languages (P, –). Reality as human beings conceive and experience it, rather, is always marked by “the trail of the human serpent” (P, ). James captures the essence of humanism nicely when he writes: “Truth we conceive to mean everywhere, not duplication, but addition; not the constructing of inner copies of already complete realities, but rather the collaborating with realities so as to bring about a clearer result” (MT, ). As we already have seen, James thinks that reality consists of three basic parts: sensible realities, mental realities, and our stock of true beliefs (P, –, –). What he now adds to this picture are the following claims: first, that what we say about reality always depends to some degree on the perspective from which we view it, or which features of it we select and how we interpret them (P, –); and second, that we have virtually
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
no access to a mind-independent world (P, ). In the first case, James readily grants that reality is not wholly or even primarily determined by us. “The that of it is its own,” he explains, “but the what depends on the which; and the which depends on us” (P, ). Like Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit, what we take certain objects and events to be is a matter of selection and interpretation on our part. In the second case the qualification “virtually” is of crucial importance, because James does not claim that access to a mind-independent world is impossible, but rather that our direct perceptions of such a world are at best evanescent, being almost immediately overwritten by our concepts and categories (P, ). As he explains: When we talk of reality “independent” of human thinking, then, it seems a very hard thing to find. It reduces to the notion of what is just entering into experience, and yet to be named, or else to some imagined aboriginal presence in experience, before any belief about the presence had arisen, before any human conception had been applied. It is what is absolutely dumb and evanescent, the merely ideal limit of our minds. We may glimpse it, but we never grasp it; what we grasp is always some substitute for it which previous human thinking has peptonized and cooked for our consumption. (P, –)
The conceptualized and meaningful world that we experience is not wholly independent of our minds, James thinks, but, rather, is a construction of our minds from a real but nonetheless brute “sensible flux” (P, ). Although he does not develop this view further in the context of his defense of pragmatism, it appears elsewhere in James’s writings on radical empiricism under the name of pure experience, which James variously conceives as the basic, pre-conceptual substance or substances of which reality is made (ERE , –) and “the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories” (ERE , ). I cannot feasibly discuss the details of James’s conception of pure experience and his views on the relationship between perception and conception here, and in any case I do not believe that familiarity with his views on these matters is necessary for arriving at a basic understanding of the humanist strand of his pragmatic theory of truth. Two points are worth noting, however, about James’s treatment of the relationship between perception and conception in Pragmatism, as they bear directly on his discussion of humanism and its relation to the pragmatic theory
One of the best discussions of James’s conception of pure experience and its relation to his psychology is offered by Gerald Myers in William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ); see pp. – in particular.
A pragmatic account of religion
of truth. The first is that James conceives of the fundamental categories and concepts that our minds use in constructing a meaningful reality from sensible flux as hypotheses that have proven themselves useful over time in our dealings with the natural world, and have subsequently been transmitted to us not only through the process of natural selection but also through the process of cultural transmission (P, ). The second is that James combines a commitment to concept empiricism, the view that concepts are ultimately perceptually derived, with a commitment to conceptual pragmatism, or the view that concepts are instruments for dealing with reality for various purposes. Our most fundamental concepts and categories are essentially adaptive hypotheses about reality, or what James calls “mental modes of adaptation to reality” (P, ); and hypotheses or theories, in turn, are “instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest ” (P, ). Some of the ways in which we conceive reality are for all practical purposes “fixed” by natural selection, and are not up to us; but others are open to innovation and modification, such as the abstract concepts developed by philosophers and scientists. The larger point that James wishes to make is that truth, on a humanist view, does not mean “the simple duplication by the mind of a ready-made and given reality” (P, ), but rather “the collaborating with realities so as to bring about a clearer result” (MT, ). He expresses what he calls “the essence of the humanistic conception” as follows: This notion of a first in the shape of a most chaotic pure experience which sets us questions, of a second in the way of fundamental categories, long ago wrought into the structure of our consciousness and practically irreversible, which define the general frame within which answers must fall, and of a third which gives the detail of the answers in the shapes most congruous with all our present needs, is, as I take it, the essence of the humanistic conception. (MT, )
Whatever reality an sich may be, James insists, for us it is “an accumulation of our own intellectual inventions, and the struggle for ‘truth’ in our progressive dealings with it is always a struggle to work in new nouns and adjectives while altering as little as possible the old” (MT, ). To hold such a view is not necessarily incompatible with metaphysical realism – or at least not incompatible with a weak version of that position. Although
James’s tripartite formulation of the basic categories of humanism bears some resemblance to Peirce’s metaphysical categories of Firstness, or pure quality, Secondness, or struggle, and Th irdness, or representation. The major difference between them is that whereas Peirce took his categories to express the fundamental nature of reality itself, qua his doctrine of scholastic realism, James took his humanistic categories to express merely the basic features of our experience of reality.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
James is, I believe, wrong to think that our perceptions of objects do not roughly correspond to the way those objects really are at the level of what physicists call “medium-sized physical objects” (and this is considerably more determinate than “chaotic pure experience” or “sensory flux”), it would be a mistake to accuse of him being a radical anti-realist – that is, one who denied the very existence of a mind-independent reality in any shape whatsoever. As he insists, reality on the humanist view is at once something “resisting, yet malleable, which controls our thinking as an energy that must be taken ‘account’ of incessantly (tho not necessarily merely copied )” (P, ). Indeed, in some of his less rhetorical moments James makes clear that one of the major reasons why he rejects more traditional forms of metaphysical realism and the correspondence theory of truth is not merely because they (from his perspective, wrongly) assume the existence of a given reality that is wholly ready-made and fixed in advance, but also because they can easily fail to acknowledge that while reality would, indeed, remain if we and all our thoughts about it were annihilated, it would nevertheless be impoverished as a result (P, –; MT, ). We can, though, appreciate James’s view that human beings “enhance the universe’s total value” through their conceptual additions to it without following him all the way in viewing reality as malleable and “waiting to receive its final touches at our hands” (P, ). One of the concerns that most realists will have about James’s humanism is the degree to which it claims that our minds “construct” reality. Starting with the premise that our primary experience of reality is of a chaotic sensory flux, James infers that we create the perceptually and conceptually structured world of everyday experience – or rather, our minds partly create such a world for us through the operation of fixed categories, and we do the rest through the use of various symbolic systems, theories and the like (P, ). As James explains, “altho the stubborn fact remains that there is a sensible flux, what is true of it seems from first to last to be largely a matter of our own creation” (P, ). Not only our nouns
In truth, there are probably not very many radical anti-realists, at least among philosophers. I am not sure that even supposedly scandalous philosophers like Nelson Goodman and Richard Rorty ever held such a view. James thinks that the basic or “common sense” categories which structure our experience of reality, such as time, space, cause and effect, etc., are those that we have inherited from our ancestors (he is non-committal about how to explain this fact) and over which we have no control. But he also thinks that we can and do graft other conceptual systems, as he calls them, onto these categories, and further thinks that many such systems can potentially provide an adequate means of dealing with reality in accordance with (and relative to) our purposes. It is for the latter reason that James denies the view that there is only one true description of reality, or what he calls noetic monism, in favor of a view that he terms noetic pluralism. See P, –.
A pragmatic account of religion
and adjectives but also the things to which they refer are “ humanized heirlooms,” as James provocatively puts it (P, ). He writes: What shall we call a thing anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit human purposes … We break the flux of sensible reality into things, then, at our will. We create the subjects of our true as well as of our false propositions. We create the predicates also. Many of the predicates of things express only the relations of the things to us and to our feelings. Such predicates are human additions. (P, )
How radically should we interpret such remarks, though? It should be noted that James most often uses collections of objects to illustrate his view, such as constellations, audiences, and armies (P, ; MT, ). We construct “constellations” by grouping individual stars, just as we construct “audiences” and “armies” by grouping individuals in certain ways. But does James believe that we also construct stars and human beings from the sensory flux? Here we find him giving essentially two different and contradictory answers. At times (and let us call these his “strongly humanist” moments), James is willing to claim that what objects and events “really are” is fundamentally relative to which perspective we adopt for “taking” those objects and events. As he claims in Pragmatism, for instance, to ourselves we are really individual persons, but to the biologist humans are really composed of cells, and to the chemist they are really composed of molecules (P, ). On this view, what a thing really is, or what its essence or essential properties are, is relative to our perspective and purposes; just as meaning is relative to use on a Wittgensteinian view, so is ontology relative to use on this sometime Jamesian view. At other times, however (and let us call these his “weakly humanist” moments), James is careful to say that while our groupings or orderings of certain objects are minddependent, the objects themselves are not. For example, in The Meaning of Truth we find him explicitly claiming that while constellations such as Ursa Major depend in some sense on our perceiving and grouping stars in certain ways, it is “the stars (once the mind has considered them) themselves that dictate the result ” (MT, ; emphasis added). James continues: The counting in no wise modifies their previous nature, and, they being what and where they are, the count cannot fall out differently. It could then always be made. Never could the number seven be questioned, if the question once were raised. (MT, )
What is at stake in these different answers is the issue of whether James’s humanism about truth merely entails the uncontroversial claim that the truth of a statement such as “There are seven stars in the Big Dipper” can
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
be confirmed only through observation but does not itself depend on us, or whether it entails the radically anthropocentric and anti-realist claim that both the truth of such statements and the reality to which they refer are “made” by us. In its weakest imaginable version (which James, incidentally, does not defend) humanism would simply be the view that while reality has a mind-independent existence which exclusively determines the truth or falsity of beliefs and statements about it, beliefs and statements themselves have a mind-dependent ontology. That James does not hold such a view is clear from his claim above that objects only dictate the results of true beliefs and statements about them once our minds have considered them (MT, ). But why an object or event must be considered by us in order for beliefs and statements about those objects and events to be true is simply not evident. As Mark Johnston has rightly asked in a related context, “How did we get into the picture?” James seems to assume the necessity of this condition under the terms of his humanism, not merely because he views truth as having a mind-dependent ontology, but also because he assumes that objects and events must be constructed by our minds from a sensory flux in order to bear a truth-value. In doing so, however, James would appear to presuppose the very points that he needs to prove, which is, of course, to beg-the-question. (iii)
The realist strand of James’s theory of truth
As we have seen, one of the basic features of James’s theory of truth is its connection of the utility or instrumental value of true beliefs with the notion of their agreement with reality. Our beliefs cannot conceivably “work,” James insists, if they do not agree with reality in some way; but at the same time, it is only by attending to the “workings,” as he calls them, that we actually do or possibly can come to know that our beliefs are true. It is for this reason that James also connects truth with verification, or the processes that we actually or possibly follow in confirming a belief as true. The pragmatic theory of truth works, essentially, by offering an account of truth incidentally to offering an account of verification. In other words, it purports to explain what truth is incidentally to the process of explaining how truth is arrived at or confirmed. As James explains this point, “If I tell you how to get to the railroad station, don’t I implicitly introduce you to the what, to the being and nature of that edifice?” (MT, –). Under
Mark Johnston, “Verificationism as Philosophical Narcissism,” (), p. (emphasis in original).
A pragmatic account of religion
the terms of the weakest conceivable version of the pragmatic theory of truth this would simply amount to the claim that truth is discovered only through the process of verification (but is not reducible to it). James’s version of the theory is stronger than this, however, for as we have seen it claims that truth is made through the process of verification, and that the meaning of truth consists solely in how it is known. What James would add to this formulation in The Meaning of Truth is that the content of truth is wholly given in the experiences which actually or potentially connect our beliefs to their objects. As he now explains, “the links of experience sequent upon an idea, which mediate between it and a reality, form and for the pragmatist indeed are, the concrete relation of truth that may obtain between the idea and that reality” (MT, ). These “mediating events” or “mediating trains of verification,” as James calls them, “are all that we mean when we speak of the idea ‘pointing’ to the reality, ‘fitting’ it, ‘corresponding’ with it, or ‘agreeing’ with it” (MT, ). Although such passages can be interpreted as evidence of the “slippage” between James’s pragmatism and radical empiricism, they can also be interpreted simply as evidence of the common ground between those doctrines: namely, the fact that both have their basis in experience. Since James does not argue for a particular view of the nature of experience and its objects in such passages, however, I incline toward the latter reading.
See also MT, , –, –, –, –, –, –, –, and –. One of the reasons why James was concerned to distinguish his pragmatic theory of truth from his metaphysical doctrine of radical empiricism is that the latter makes a number of additional assumptions about the nature of reality and experience. Under the terms of radical empiricism, as James himself observes, “experience and reality come to the same thing” (MT, ). In other words, there is no meaningful difference (or ontological difference, for that matter) between reality and actual or possible experiences of reality under the terms of radical empiricism, which means that the doctrine entails a commitment to phenomenalism. Unlike traditional versions of empiricism, though, radical empiricism maintains that relations are directly experienceable and that anything that is directly experienceable is real (MT, ; ERE, –). (In addition to these claims, however, radical empiricism also entails the normative and metaphilosophical claim that philosophical debate should be confined to things definable in terms drawn from experience; see MT, –.) What James means by claiming that experience and reality come to the same thing, furthermore, is that reality (including both the subjects and the objects of knowledge, or both knowers and the known) is basically composed of experience, or what he calls “pure experience,” which he takes to be the primal “stuff ” or “stuffs” of which the tissue of experience – and hence, the tissue of reality – is made (see ERE, –, especially pp. –, and also MT, ). Thus, while he is admittedly a phenomenalist, James is also a kind of metaphysical realist, since he understands experiences as real features of the universe – indeed, as the basic substance or substances of which reality is made. What his doctrines of radical empiricism and pure experience effectively amount to, then, is a version of objective idealism, since they entail the view that reality is most basically composed of a mental substance or substances which transcend any individual mind. While admittedly counter-intuitive, it should be noted that this idealist way of conceiving reality is every bit as “realistic” as materialism. Indeed, James would argue that it offers a broader
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
This reading is confirmed, I think, by James’s remarks in the Preface to The Meaning of Truth, where he discusses not only a fundamental difference between rationalist and pragmatist views of truth, but also clarifies his view of the relationship between the pragmatic theory of truth and radical empiricism. He writes that: The pragmatist view, on the contrary, of the truth-relation is that it has a definite content, and that everything in it is experienceable. Its whole nature can be told in positive terms. The “workableness” which ideas must have, in order to be true, means particular workings, physical or intellectual, actual or possible, which they may set up from next to next inside of concrete experience. Were this pragmatic contention admitted, one great point in the victory of radical empiricism would also be scored, for the relation between an object and the idea that truly knows it, is held by rationalists to be nothing of this describable sort, but to stand outside of all possible temporal experience; and on the relation, so interpreted, rationalism is wonted to make its last most obdurate rally. (MT, )
If James’s pragmatic theory of truth presupposed a radical empiricist view of the nature of reality and experience, then any argument for radical empiricism based on that theory would obviously be question-begging. This implication is easily enough avoided, however, if we view the experiential commitments of pragmatism in more general terms, as I think the above passage suggests. It is one thing to claim that truth consists in the means by which we actually do, or possibly could, confirm the agreement between a belief or statement and reality, and another to claim – as radical empiricism does – that the relations between things are directly experienceable and that reality requires no “trans-empirical connective support” (see MT, ). The first claim is epistemological in nature, and the second is metaphysical; the argument for pragmatism depends only upon the first. Regardless of which interpretation one adopts, though, it would be misleading to think that James only introduced a realist strand into his pragmatism by connecting it to his radical empiricism. One of the basic features of his pragmatic theory of truth, as we have seen, is its endorsement of a version of the correspondence theory of truth, or the view that truth means the correspondence or agreement of a belief or statement with reality. Although the humanist strand of James’s theory of truth admittedly holds that reality is partly malleable to how we conceive it, this is different from claiming that reality is wholly malleable to thought or account of reality than materialism, since it treats experiences and experienced relations as real features of the universe and not as unreal “projections” upon it.
A pragmatic account of religion
wholly constructed by our minds. To return to the architectural analogy that we considered earlier in this section, just as a suspension bridge is held together by the tension of its cables, so too is James’s theory of truth held together by the tension between its humanist and realist strands. Without any commitment to realism, James recognized, his theory of truth would be unable to account for what true beliefs and statements are true of, and similarly unable to explain why certain beliefs and statements about reality “work” and others do not (MT, –, , –). In other words, and to use John McDowell’s language, our thought must be answerable to the world – it requires “external friction” against an independent reality if it is to avoid lapsing into a “frictionless spinning in a void.” Although James frequently made claims regarding the identity of truth with such matters as utility, expediency, and satisfactoriness, he also usually added qualifications that his critics ignored – such as that in calling a belief true or useful he means one that “gets fulfilled and can be verified” (see, for example, P, ; see also P, and MT, ). In an uncommonly careful passage in The Meaning of Truth, though, we find James departing from his usual claim that the true and the satisfactory are identical and claiming instead that to be useful is not necessarily to be true. While not all practically useful beliefs are true, he explains, in most cases practically useful beliefs are those that really acquaint us with, or lead us to, their objects, and it is precisely their capacity to do so which makes them useful (MT, ). “That these ideas should be true in advance of and apart from their utility,” he writes, “that, in other words, their objects should be really there, is the very condition of their having that kind of utility – the objects they connect us with are so important that the ideas which serve as the objects’ substitutes grow important also” (MT, ). In drawing this distinction James effectively distinguishes two different senses in which a belief can be “useful”: first, useful in the sense of merely satisfying some desire of ours independently of the reality
See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). In The Truth Is What Works (), Harvey Cormier argues that the notion of correspondence does not play a fundamental role in James’s theory of truth. On Cormier’s reading of James, the notion of correspondence is not only practically irrelevant – it is, to quote Cormier, “an idle wheel in the mechanism, unable to play the role that both rationalists and empiricists have wanted to assign it” (p. ) – but also subordinate to the satisfactoriness or utility of our beliefs. As Cormier writes, on James’s view “when we go to the trouble of seeking true beliefs, we are seeking satisfactoriness and manageability, or beliefs that work for us, not correspondence to inner or outer objects” (p. ). “We may insist that this correspondence must be there to account for the satisfactoriness,” he continues, “but if we look at our actual truth-seeking procedures, we see that correspondence is attributed on the basis of satisfactoriness, not vice versa” (p. ). I note here that the passage on MT, clearly contradicts such a reading.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
of the object of one’s belief; and second, useful in the sense of really acquainting us with their objects. In the first case, what makes a belief useful is merely its capacity to satisfy our wishes, or what we want to be true; in the second case, however, what makes a belief useful is its correspondence to, or agreement with, reality. If we take James at his word (which is admittedly not always easy to do), what he consistently means by identifying truth with utility is usefulness in the second sense, and not the first. Indeed, he makes this clarification in the context of trying to dispel what he calls “the seventh misunderstanding of pragmatism,” which is that pragmatism either ignores theoretical interests or reduces them to purely practical interests (MT, –). James offers what is perhaps his clearest and most concise statement of his theory of truth in the following passage, which is worth quoting in full: This notion of a reality independent of either of us, taken from ordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist definition of truth. With some such reality any statement, in order to be counted true, must agree. Pragmatism defines “agreeing” to mean certain ways of “working,” be they actual or potential. Thus, for my statement “the desk exists” to be true of a desk recognized as real by you, it must be able to lead me to shake your desk, to explain myself by words that suggest that desk to your mind, to make a drawing that is like the desk you see, etc. Only in such ways as this is there sense in saying that it agrees with that reality … reference then to something determinate, and some sort of adaptation to it worthy of the name of agreement, are thus constituent elements in the definition of any statement of mine as “true.” You cannot get at either the reference or the adaptation without using the notion of the workings. That the thing is, what it is, and which it is … are points determinable only by the pragmatic method. (MT, –)
As this passage makes clear, James’s theory of truth presupposes the existence of a real, mind-independent world with which true statements must agree. This is what James elsewhere calls his commitment to “epistemological realism” (MT, ), and it is perhaps the least well understood and most frequently disregarded aspect of his pragmatism. What he means in calling himself an epistemological realist, as he explains at several points in The Meaning of Truth, is that his epistemology in general and pragmatic theory of truth in particular presuppose the existence of a real, mind-independent world, as well as the further distinction between reality and our beliefs about it (see MT, , –, and ). In effect, then, what James is claiming is that his epistemology and theory of truth presuppose the truth of metaphysical realism – or at least a modest version
A pragmatic account of religion
of that view. There can be no truth, as he puts the matter, “if there is nothing to be true about” (MT, ). He continues: Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatist I have so carefully posited “reality” ab initio, and why, throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemological realist. (MT, )
James denies, then, that beliefs can be properly cognitive unless they are “of” or refer to reality. Indeed, true beliefs must not merely refer to reality, but must also agree with, or correspond to, the part of reality in question (MT, ). On the one hand, James maintains that the “satisfactions” or utility of true beliefs are indispensable for truth-building. If having true beliefs was not generally useful, he argues, we would probably never have acquired an interest in truth, and would have no plausible reason to seek it (P, ). Taking a natural selectionist view of the matter, James explains that: The importance to human life of having true beliefs about matters of fact is a thing too notorious. We live in a world of realities that can be infinitely useful or infinitely harmful. Ideas that tell us which of them to expect count as the true ideas in all this primary sphere of verification, and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty. The possession of truth, so far from being here an end in itself, is only a preliminary means towards other vital satisfactions. If I am lost in
James’s attempt to reconcile a humanist view of truth and reality with metaphysical realism marks a significant point of difference between his pragmatism and Hilary Putnam’s internal realism. On the one hand, internal realism maintains that truth, in Putnam’s words, is “some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability – some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences as those experiences are themselves represented in our belief system – and not correspondence with mind-independent or discourse-independent ‘state of affairs,’” and that the question “What objects does the world consist of?” makes sense only “within a theory or description” (see Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (), pp. –). On the other hand, James’s pragmatism defines truth in terms of correspondence with reality and holds that we can meaningfully talk about “a standing reality independent of the idea that knows it” (MT, ; see also MT, –, ). As James insists, “this notion of a reality independent of either of us, taken from ordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist definition of truth. With some such reality any statement, in order to be counted true, must agree” (MT, ). While it is true that James maintains (qua humanism) that reality is mind-dependent to a certain extent, he also maintains that reality is not wholly mind-dependent, and, indeed, regards this postulate not only as basic to his pragmatic theory of truth but also as basic to offering an adequate account of truth as such. In this regard, I believe, James should be understood as endorsing a modest version of metaphysical realism in conjunction with his humanism. For a recent argument in favor of a modest metaphysical realism over and against internal realism, see William Alston, “What Metaphysical Realism Is Not,” in William Alston (ed.), Realism and Anti-Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –. As I mentioned in a previous note, however, Putnam himself now rejects internal realism, and does so – at least in part – because he recognizes that it entails a commitment to metaphysical anti-realism, which he also rejects. See Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (), pp. –.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
the woods and starved, and find what looks like a cow-path, it is of the utmost importance that I should think of a human habitation at the end of it, for if I do so and follow it, I save myself. The true thought is useful here because the house which is its object is useful. (P, )
The upshot of these considerations, as he observes, is that “the practical value of true ideas is thus primarily derived from the practical importance of their objects to us” (P, ; emphasis added). Yet, on the other hand, James also insists that a belief being satisfactory or useful alone is not a sufficient condition of its being true (MT, ). Agreement with reality, then, is a necessary condition for a belief being true under the terms of James’s “epistemological realism” (MT, , , ). What is unusual about his brand of realism about truth, however, is that it does not grant that mere agreement with reality is a sufficient condition for a belief to be true. This follows as a consequence of his pragmatic and verificationist definition of “truth” as an event, as something which actually or possibly happens to a belief or statement through the process of verification (P, ; MT, –). On such a view it simply makes no sense to talk about truth or falsity as obtaining independently of the activities of inquirers in coming to confirm whether or not a belief or statement agrees with reality. “If there is to be truth,” as James summarizes this point, “both realities and beliefs about them must conspire to make it” (MT, ). Truth is an event, on James’s view, because it is partly brought about through our actions and social practices; but it does not reduce to our actions and social practices because it is also constrained by reality. To think about truth in this way is not to adopt a willy-nilly version of anti-realism. It is, instead, to think about truth from an anti-intellectualist and scientific point of view, specifically in terms of an organism’s engagement with, and adaptation to, its environment. In defending such a view, James aims to hold a commitment to realism together with a commitment to humanism, to see the agreement of beliefs and statements with reality as a necessary condition for their truth, while also seeing mere agreement as insufficient for actualizing the truth. Although he concedes that there is such a thing as truth “in posse,” or possible truths which may or may not ever be known – which means that James does not fall prey, as Peirce does, to the Problem of Buried Secrets – he nevertheless insists that “truth in posse means only truths in
Hilary and Ruth Anna Putnam nicely capture this feature of James’s thought when they write that for James “truth … presupposes community. But community is not enough” (p. ). See their paper “William James’s Ideas,” in James Conant (ed.), Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –.
A pragmatic account of religion
act; and [the pragmatist] insists that these latter take precedence in the order of logic as well as in that of being” (MT, ). In other words, under the terms of James’s pragmatic views on meaning and truth it makes sense to speak of actually and even possibly knowable truths, but it is simply obscure to speak of truths which could never possibly be known. While James may be guilty in the end of having an unworkable theory of truth, he is not, I think, guilty of denying metaphysical realism as such. Indeed, if we understand metaphysical realism simply as the view that there is a world of mind-independent objects, as I suggested earlier in this section, then he appears to qualify as a kind of metaphysical realist. What I should like to do now, at the close of this section, is to say a bit more about what kind of metaphysical realism is presupposed by James’s pragmatic theory of truth. James obviously did not endorse a strong version of metaphysical realism, for he rejected the view that concepts and theories are passive mirrors or transcripts of an absolute reality, rather than approximations of reality for human purposes. In point of fact, James explicitly calls the former view “naïf realism,” and he contrasts it to a newer and – to his mind – more plausible view of the mind-world relation that is presupposed by the modern natural sciences and by pragmatism (P, ). To deny that concepts and theories mirror or transcribe an absolute reality, however, is not necessarily to deny that they refer to a real, mind-independent world. Nor is it to deny the basic idea behind the correspondence theory of truth: namely, that truth involves a kind of agreement or “fit” between a belief or statement, on the one hand, and reality, on the other hand. What James’s pragmatic theory of truth rejects is not the claim that truth involves correspondence to reality, but rather () the tendency of correspondence theories to conflate truth with reality, and () the intellectualist view that correspondence is a mysterious, mind-independent property wholly uninfluenced by the actions and practices by means of which we arrive at truth. Regarding the first point, James traces much of our inherited confusion about truth – and much of the confusion surrounding his theory of truth – to the failure to distinguish between truth and reality. “Realities are not true,” he insists, “they are; and beliefs are true of them” (MT, ). What James’s pragmatism adds to this formula is that “if there
James makes the same point in Pragmatism, where he writes: “The ‘facts’ themselves … are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them” (P, ).
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
is to be truth … both realities and beliefs about them must conspire to make it” (MT, ). Realities, or rather many features of reality, exist independently of what we think or say about them. But true beliefs and claims exist only insofar as there are minded, language-using beings that can have beliefs and make claims about those realities. In this sense, truth is not an eternal, mind-independent property, because it does not exist independently of the existence of believers and claimants. Yet – and this is crucial – truth is still dependent upon the existence of a real world for James, for without actual or potential reference to, and agreement with, some reality no belief or statement can be true. James makes this point explicit in a number of passages, including the following: My account of truth is realistic, and follows the epistemological dualism of common sense … this notion of a reality independent of either of us, taken from ordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist definition of truth. With some such reality any statement, in order to be counted true, must agree. Pragmatism defines “agreeing” to mean certain ways of “working,” be they actual or potential. (MT, –)
James’s theory of truth thus presupposes a basic commitment to a minimal version of metaphysical realism – here expressed as the view that there is a knowable, mind-independent reality – while adding that truths and the realities to which they refer must be distinguished: a true idea or statement is not identical to the reality to which it refers. Although James appears to endorse a weak as opposed to a strong version of metaphysical realism, the significance of this view for his pragmatism should not be ignored. If we either can or (under the appropriate conditions) could verify that a given statement agrees with reality, then it is true under the terms of his pragmatic version of the correspondence theory of truth.
A careful reading of essays such as “The Meaning of the Word Truth” (MT, –) shows that James understood correspondence not merely as a relationship between many terms and reality, but also as a relationship between many statements and reality. James is clearly working with a propositional understanding of truth as correspondence in such passages, though he does not restrict truth-value to propositions alone, as has been common since the advent of the so-called “linguistic turn.” As we see here and in other places in James’s epistemological writings, ideas and beliefs may also correspond to reality and consequently possess truth-value. For James, truth is not an exclusive property of certain propositions alone – a point that has important philosophical consequences, most notably that James seems to understand truth as a broadly cognitive property, and not as a narrowly linguistic property. Th is feature of James’s account of truth may actually make it more relevant to epistemologists and philosophers of mind and language than it might have been twenty years ago, now that the linguistic turn is coming under serious scrutiny in these fields, largely due to the influence of recent advances in cognitive science and neurobiology.
A pragmatic account of religion
Regarding the second point, and as Hilary Putnam has rightly observed, for James: To say that truth is “correspondence to reality” is not false but empty, as long as nothing is said about what the “correspondence” is. If the “correspondence” is supposed to be utterly independent of the ways in which we confirm the assertions we make (so that it is conceived to be possible that what is true is utterly different from what we are warranted in taking to be true, not just in some cases but in all cases), then the “correspondence” is an occult one, and our supposed grasp of it is also occult.
On James’s view we cannot meaningfully separate truth from the means – the actions and practices – by which we come to know it. Truth and verification are inseparably bound up with one another; indeed, on his view they are practically indistinguishable. It is here that James’s commitment to realism connects with his commitment to humanism, for he frequently stresses that we cannot separate truth from what it is “known-as,” or the actions and practices by means of which we come to verify a given idea or statement as true. It is only by means of these concrete “workings” and “leadings,” as James variously calls them, and the “satisfactions” that they afford that we ever come into possession of truth. For example, on James’s view we confirm the truth or falsity of statements such as “It’s raining” by performing actions such as looking out of the window, walking outside, asking a friend to perform one of these actions for us, etc. When we
See Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (), p. . For James’s clearest statement of his views on this issue, see MT, –. Hilary Putnam offers an interesting variation on this pragmatic view of truth, which was shared in common by both James and Dewey. Like the classical pragmatists, Putnam wants to view truth as a human instrument; but unlike them, he rejects the strong claim that truth can be adequately defined in terms of verification. Putnam, rather, sees verification (and also justification) as being related to, but not strictly identical with, truth. Regarding the relationship between truth and verification, Putnam writes that “understanding what truth is in any given case and understanding what confirmation is are interwoven abilities.” Regarding the relationship between truth and justification, and with an eye on the Gettier problem, he writes: “All I ask is that what is supposed to be ‘true’ be warrantable on the basis of experience and intelligence for creatures with a ‘rational and sensible nature.’” For the latter quote, see Putnam’s “A Defense of Internal Realism,” in Conant (ed.), Realism with a Human Face (), p. . For the former quote, see “The Permanence of William James,” in Pragmatism: An Open Question (), p. . Th is is what James meant when he famously wrote that the “trail of the human serpent is thus over everything” (P, ). James makes this remark in the context of arguing that the idea of truth as a property wholly independent of our minds and activities is nonsensical. As we find two lines before, “purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatever, is nowhere to be found” (P, ). Contrary to how the first-mentioned passage is often interpreted – almost always out of context, I should add – James nowhere indicates that he thinks “the human serpent” is all there is, nor does he ever suggest that we can make sense of the concept of truth independently of its agreement with or correspondence to reality.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
perceive the rain – or any other real feature of the world – we thereby verify the statement, at least for all practical purposes. This is the pragmatic meaning of truth on James’s view, in particular what it means for a belief or statement to “correspond” to reality. In such cases, what we have done is to perceive a direct connection between our beliefs and statements and reality. James thinks there is nothing mysterious about this, nor any practical reason to suppose that a fundamental gap exists between our minds and the world. Of course, much of what we believe to be true depends upon confirmations performed by others and on our shared linguistic and social practices. As James remarks in another context, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that there are tigers in India even if we have not been there ourselves and seen them with our own eyes. The fact that our perceptions of, and propositions about, tigers point or refer to the tigers is, as James remarks, “a perfectly commonplace intra-experiential relation, if you once grant a connecting world to be there ” (MT, ). The correspondence or agreement of beliefs and statements with reality is “no special inner mystery,” he insists, “but only an outer chain of physical or mental intermediaries connecting thought and thing. To know an object here is to lead it through a context which the world supplies” (MT, –). Under the terms of James’s pragmatic account of truth the correspondence of thoughts and objects, whether physical or ideal, is a real feature of our everyday experience, even if it is not infallible or incorrigible. Indeed, James’s account presumes not only the existence of a knowable, mind-independent world, but also that perception is reliable under normal conditions and that total skepticism regarding our perceptually-derived beliefs is unwarranted. Without all of these presuppositions his view that true beliefs actually or potentially agree with (that is, lead us to) their objects would be seriously compromised.
Recall that for James realities, or the objects to which our ideas refer, can be either sensible or mental in nature (P, –). There is no fundamental difference, he thinks, between the agreement of true analytical statements with their objects and the agreement of synthetic statements and their objects. One consequence of this experiential model of correspondence, though, is that it becomes pragmatically meaningless to speak of unverifiable or unconfirmable truths, i.e., ones which in principle can never be verified or confirmed. But since James draws a distinction between truths and realities, his view does not lead him to deny that there are or might be unknowable objects, events, and states of aff airs. There very well may be such things, James grants, but it is idle to have philosophical debates about them (see MT, –). Although this consequence is implicit in James’s pragmatism, and follows from his experientially grounded view that true ideas are those which either do, or could, successfully lead us to their objects, it only becomes explicit in his radical empiricism. Th is aspect of James’s pragmatic theory of truth does not depend on his radical empiricism, however, because it does not depend upon a particular metaphysical theory of what ideas and objects are or how they relate to one another.
A pragmatic account of religion
It is significant that James does not propose to tell us exactly what substance or substances reality is composed of in the context of developing his pragmatic theory of truth. Although he had already begun to develop his metaphysical doctrine of radical empiricism by the time he began to develop his version of pragmatism, James makes clear in both Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth that his pragmatism is not dependent on his radical empiricism (P, ; MT, –). On my view, he was right about this, at least as it regards the essential features of his pragmatic method and pragmatic theory of truth. To recall Hookway’s point, “the argument for pragmatism rests upon the hope that interminable debates be avoided; it does not rest upon any claims about the structure of experience, although acceptance of the position may make us more sensitive to its complexities.” In any case, we should be mindful that in his arguments for pragmatism James never claims that true beliefs and the objects to which they refer are composed of “pure experience,” nor does he claim that in order to be a pragmatist one must accept the tenets of his radical empiricism (for the latter, see MT, –; ERE , –, ). Indeed, his central claims about truth in Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth – that true beliefs agree with reality and that truth is made through the process of verification – are compatible with metaphysical presuppositions which contradict those of radical empiricism, such as the common-sense realist view that there are mind-independent physical objects. Although James was critical of metaphysical theories such as materialism and absolute idealism, and, of course, partial toward his own radical empiricism, his defense of the pragmatic theory of truth neither requires one to reject the former nor to accept the latter. James’s attempt to combine a weak version of metaphysical realism with a commitment to humanism is one of the most important and neglected features of his pragmatic theory of truth, and is arguably one of the more innovative philosophical positions developed in the twentieth century. As we have seen, though, James’s vacillation between a weak and a strong version of humanism poses a number of interpretive and
We should not confuse a belief in mind-independent physical objects with a belief in materialism; unlike the latter, the former belief is perfectly compatible with the belief that there are immaterial aspects of reality. Although James’s pragmatism does not labor under a materialistic bias (see P, ) it also does not deny the existence of physical objects, events, and states of affairs. Pragmatism is compatible with a radical empiricist account of reality, of course, and this is how James personally viewed things; but he does not demand that in order to be a pragmatist one must be a radical empiricist in his metaphysics. In this regard, pragmatism is more “democratic” than radical empiricism – that is to say, it is more pluralistic, because it is capable of accommodating a wider range of philosophical views.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
philosophical difficulties, to say nothing of the problems associated with his verificationism and radical empiricism . I do not pretend to have resolved these many difficulties here, but I do hope to have shown that James’s theory of truth is less one-dimensional and less at odds with realism and the correspondence theory of truth than many philosophers have assumed.
:
Having examined James’s theory of truth in some detail, we should now be in a better position to evaluate his claims concerning religious truth. At the end of section II we were left with the strong impression that James identifies the truth of religious beliefs with their utility. We found him claiming that if a “theological idea” proves to have some measure of practical value, then it must also have some measure of truth (P, –). To hold such a view is to affirm a connection between truth and practical value; indeed, in the case of religious and metaphysical beliefs such as belief in God, free will, or the Absolute it is to affirm a connection between truth and ethical value, since the function of these “doctrines of relief ” is, respectively, to guarantee an eternal moral order, to account for the possibility that the world may be improved, and to ground our right to take the occasional “moral holiday” (P, ; –; , ). While James is careful to add qualifying clauses, such as that the belief in question must cohere with other of our beliefs and the “vital benefits” they provide, his view nevertheless seems to entail the untenable claim that any practically useful belief must be true to some degree (see P, –). Aside from the distinctly philosophical problems that such a view raises, it would also appear to sit uneasily with other of James’s claims regarding truth, such as his claim in Varieties that truth means “something additional to bare value for life” and his claim in The Meaning of Truth that utility alone is not a sufficient condition for truth ( VRE , ; MT, ).
James makes an interesting qualification in P, regarding the “moral holiday-giving” value of belief in the Absolute. What he claims here is that any religious view does this, and not simply the Absolute. Indeed, the function of religious beliefs is not merely to provide a justification for this form of moral relief, James remarks, but also to “incite our more strenuous moments” (P, ). Here, as in Varieties, we find evidence that James eventually came to broaden his view of the relationship between religious belief and moral strenuousness, which entails a modification of his moral argument for religious faith in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.”
A pragmatic account of religion
What should we make of these discrepancies? One plausible interpretation is simply to view them as glaring inconsistencies in James’s theory of truth, which has the consequence of making James look like a very poor philosopher. Another plausible interpretation, however, is to view James’s claims about the truth of religious beliefs in the second and third lectures of Pragmatism as properly being claims about the pragmatic meaning and value of religious beliefs. In other words, we can interpret the discrepancies between his more radical claims about truth (that is, that truth is identical with practical value), and his more moderate and nuanced claims (that is, that truth means agreement with reality, but we cannot get at truth apart from the means by which we come to confirm a belief or statement as true) as resting on an occasional and imprecise tendency on James’s part to run his pragmatic method and his pragmatic theory of truth together. On this reading, what James really means by calling certain religious and metaphysical beliefs “true” in these early lectures is that they are pragmatically meaningful, or that they satisfy some practical function or purpose. If this is right, then when James claims that religious beliefs are true “in so far forth” (P, ) he is not claiming that they agree with or correspond to their putatively supernatural objects, which is what we should expect him to claim in the light of his pragmatic theory of truth; rather, what he means is that such beliefs satisfy some practical function or purpose, which is what makes them pragmatically meaningful in the light of his pragmatic method. On either interpretation of such passages, however, the “reality” with which “true” religious beliefs agree is not their putative metaphysical object or referent, but rather a human psychological function such as the “holiday-giving” value of belief in the Absolute (P, ). This practical way of conceiving true religious beliefs is noticeably different, though, from how James conceives true beliefs in the sixth lecture of Pragmatism and in The Meaning of Truth, where agreement with some actually or possibly experienceable object is assumed to be a necessary condition for truth, and where utility alone is insufficient for truth. It also potentially has the absurd consequence of rendering a religious belief “true” in one sense (that is, the Absolute really does mean that we have a right to take moral holidays) and false in another (that is, it does not actually agree with or correspond to reality). While many of us might be prepared to grant that religious beliefs are, or can be, practically valuable because they function to satisfy certain practical needs and interests that human beings have, we can grant this point about the practical value of such beliefs without granting that they are true. Indeed, we would have no reason to think that such beliefs were
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
true unless we thought that they agreed with reality , as James himself is careful to insist elsewhere. The best way of getting James out of this problem, as I see it, is to read him as misconstruing the exact nature of the connection between truth and utility in the early lectures of Pragmatism, where his primary aim is to articulate and defend the pragmatic method. What James fails to recognize here, I think, but would later come to appreciate, is that while all true beliefs may be pragmatically meaningful, it does not thereby follow that all pragmatically meaningful beliefs are true. This reading admittedly runs counter to some of his apparent claims about truth in these lectures, but since these claims are not really tenable this seems a small price to pay. In taking such a view I do not mean to suggest that James cannot offer a plausible account of religious truth; rather, I mean to suggest that the account he gives is sometimes inconsistent with his own theory of truth and in need of revision. Since James himself provides ample resources for revising his more problematic claims about truth, especially in The Meaning of Truth, I feel that this is hardly an untoward imposition. Fortunately, James’s application of the pragmatic method to religious and metaphysical beliefs in the second and third lectures of Pragmatism does not represent his last word on the consequences of pragmatism for religion. For that we need to consider the eighth and final lecture of the work, where James undertakes to show how pragmatism – in particular, a pragmatic and melioristic version of theism – can provide what he terms “a religious synthesis” between the two extremes of a “crude naturalism,” on the one hand, and “transcendental absolutism,” on the other hand (P, ). This general framework for conceiving religion is roughly and noticeably similar to what James elsewhere calls a piecemeal supernaturalist view of religion (VRE , –), the details of which we considered in Chapter . What is significantly different is that he now characterizes his belief in a finite, melioristic God not merely as his personal “overbelief” about the unseen order, but as a live option that he is prepared to defend against its critics and to commend to those who might be temperamentally inclined to accept it. In one sense, James was merely making good on his promise to return to the religious questions that he had raised in the Conclusions and Postscript to Varieties ( VRE , ). But
In A Pluralistic Universe James adds that his account of religion also serves as a religious alternative to traditional forms of theism, which he takes to be implausible in the light of the modern natural sciences and ethically problematic in the light of the problem of evil. See PU, –.
A pragmatic account of religion
in another sense he was moving his pragmatic account of religion in a definitely theological direction, and aiming to justify belief in a particular conception of God rather than merely aiming to justify a place for religious belief in general. By the time that James gave the lectures which would become A Pluralistic Universe in this shift was essentially complete. With it, his interests in justifying a plurality of religious beliefs and in developing a truly empirical and comparative philosophy of religion effectively gave way to his newfound apologetic interest in defending an ontologically pluralistic and panpsychic version of theism, which he believed to be an intellectually and morally preferable alternative to what he saw as its only serious rival among religious philosophies, Absolute Idealism. To put it briefly, James had moved from offering a pluralistic and realistic interpretation and defense of religious belief in Varieties to offering an interpretation and defense of Pluralism with a capital “P,” or a particular religious metaphysical theory that he opposed to monism and came to associate with his pragmatism and radical empiricism . We can identify two distinct senses of pluralism at work here. The sort of pluralism that James defends in Varieties is religious pluralism , which is entailed by his view that there are many valuable and possibly true religious experiences and beliefs. What he does not defend there, but which he begins to defend in Pragmatism and A Pluralistic Universe is ontological pluralism, the view that reality fundamentally takes a pluralistic “each-form” (the Many) as opposed to a monistic “all-form” (the One). What I want to show is that this change in James’s pragmatic account of religion does not entail the abandonment of his commitment to religious realism, though it does entail the adoption of some additional claims
The most comprehensive study of this aspect of James’s philosophy of religion and metaphysics is David Lamberth’s William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). I have great admiration for Lamberth’s work, but I do not share his interest in or optimism about the prospects for James’s late pluralistic metaphysics. To be specific, James tried to develop a version of ontological pluralism that could combine monism and pluralism within a religious metaphysical framework, one that replaced the idea of an Absolute with that of a finite God who is a member of a pluralistic and panpsychic system (if this sounds bizarre, you are not alone). Exactly how this would work is not entirely clear, but James’s basic assumption is that on a pluralistic view we can still meaningfully speak of a universe (as opposed to a multiverse), insofar as we allow for the reality of relations between the many different things which exist (including ourselves, the material world, and God). The type of union characteristic of James’s pluralistic universe is not that of a monistic universe, which on his view entails “a universal co-implication, or integration of all things durcheinander,” but rather a synechistic or “strung-along” type of union which allows for both continuity and discontinuity (PU, –). Here, we can note, James effectively wed the religious and metaphysical ideas that he got from thinkers like Fechner and Bergson to Peirce’s metaphysical doctrine of synechism, or continuity.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
about the religious consequences of pragmatism and the superiority of a “pluralistic-melioristic” account of religion to its alternatives, the latter of which we first encountered in Chapter . In my view, James created an unnecessary obstacle to acceptance of his pragmatic account of religion by associating the latter with belief in a pluralistic and melioristic universe . If being a “genuine pragmatist” requires belief in such a universe, as he at one point suggests (P, ), then many persons who might otherwise be sympathetic to certain aspects of his account of religion will reject it tout court. With these guidelines in place, we now need to consider the final details of James’s account of religion in Pragmatism. James begins the concluding lecture, “Pragmatism and Religion,” by returning to the major theme of his first lecture, viz. that pragmatism can mediate between tough-minded and tender-minded approaches to philosophy. He writes: On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it. Universal conceptions, as things to take account of, may be as real for pragmatism as particular sensations are. They have indeed no meaning and no reality if they have no use. But if they have any use they have that amount of meaning. And the meaning will be true if the use squares well with life’s other uses. Well, the use of the Absolute is proved by the whole course of men’s religious history. The eternal arms are then beneath. Remember Vivekananda’s use of the Atman: it is indeed not a scientific use, for we can make no particular deductions from it. It is emotional and spiritual altogether. (P, )
What we find here is not only a return to the opening theme of the work, but also a return to James’s earlier and problematic claims about the truth of “theological ideas” in the second lecture. The Absolute is not a scientific theory, James explains, because it does not have predictive power (which is what I assume he means by claiming that no particular “deductions” can be drawn from it; if he means to use deduction in the strict sense then he is wrong, because many deductive inferences can be drawn from the concept of Absolute). But it nevertheless has the capacity to satisfy our emotional and religious needs, and in this respect it is pragmatically meaningful. Well and good, one might reply, but what does James mean by claiming that the Absolute also has reality? As we saw in section III in our discussion of James’s theory of truth, James believes that abstract ideas or concepts are one of the three basic types of realities (the other two being sense perceptions and our stock of true beliefs). Presumably, what he means in the present case is that the concept of the Absolute, like all abstract concepts, has a kind of reality insofar as we can perceive relations between it and other concepts (see, for example, P, ).
A pragmatic account of religion
What we want to know, however – and this is something that James’s pragmatic method does not tell us – is whether or not the concept has any existential import. It is one thing to claim that concepts are realities of a sort (though this is itself a dubitable claim), and quite another to claim that the objects and events to which concepts refer are realities, that is, whether or not they really exist. One of the problems facing James is that, having outlined his theory of truth, he now seems to be claiming once again that belief in the Absolute is true because (and precisely to the extent that) we can prove its usefulness. We seem to be back to the “truth-as-mere-utility” formula that he so strongly wanted to disavow in the sixth lecture of Pragmatism and in The Meaning of Truth. Indeed, a few pages later we find James claiming, this time about belief in God, that “on pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true” (P, ). I must confess that these passages strain my attempt to interpret the inconsistencies in James’s claims about truth in a charitable way; he seems to have one standard for the truth of religious and metaphysical claims (namely, that they be useful on the whole and cohere with other of our beliefs, though not necessarily with scientific ones), and another standard for the truth of other claims (namely, that they agree with reality and can actually or possibly be verified). But as we shall see, James does have a realistic understanding of the truth of belief in God in “Pragmatism and Religion.” As he pointedly insists, he believes in the reality of God and firmly disbelieves that “our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe” (P, ). If this is the case, though, then James is committed qua his theory of truth to believing that true religious beliefs are those that actually or possibly agree with their objects, which in turn means that they can actually or possibly lead us to or put us in “working touch with”
In claiming here that to be true means to work “satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word,” James seems to mean that a true belief is one that () has demonstrable practical value and () coheres with other beliefs that we hold to be true. As he explains of belief in God, “whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience shows that it certainly does work, and that the problem is to build it out and determine it, so that it will combine satisfactorily with all the other working truths” (P, ). The trouble is that in order for belief in God to be true (or, if one prefers, the claim “God exists” to be true), God must really exist. Th is realistic view is not only basic to our common-sense views about truth, but is also basic to James’s own pragmatic theory of truth, as we saw in section III. If we take James at his word, neither the practical value of a belief nor its coherence with other beliefs is a sufficient condition for its being true (see, e.g., MT, , ). But if it should prove impossible to verify whether or not God exists (at least objectively speaking), as James’s verificationist view of truth also requires, then the very idea of God is pragmatically meaningless. Since James is firmly committed to the view that belief in God is not pragmatically meaningless, he would appear to be guilty of begging the question regarding God’s existence.
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
their objects. How to make sense of the seeming discrepancies in James’s account will be one of the primary aims of this section. James’s reflections here on the pragmatic meaning of the Absolute serve to introduce one of the major shifts in his practical faith, namely, his connection of his pragmatic account of religion with his doctrine of pluralism, understood in its ontological sense, and his doctrine of meliorism, or his view that the world’s salvation is possible and partly contingent on our efforts. This shift was not wholly unprecedented – indeed, it represents a further development of his suggestive claim in the Postscript to Varieties that “for practical life at any rate, the chance of salvation is enough” (VRE , ). But it would have the effect of committing James’s account of religion to a particular set of metaphysical and religious “overbeliefs” that were not basic to his earlier pragmatic account in Varieties, or for that matter to his will to believe doctrine. As Chapter showed, James’s connection of his will to believe doctrine with his doctrines of pluralism and meliorism in A Pluralistic Universe and Some Problems of Philosophy actually creates more problems than it solves for his attempts to justify religious belief, as the failures of James’s Wager make clear. As we shall see, similar problems attend James’s connection of these doctrines to his pragmatic account of religion, and they threaten to undo much that is valuable about that account. The shift begins with James’s connection of his pragmatic account of religion with his ontological pluralism. Using Whitman’s poem “To You” as an example, James proceeds to argue that there are two fundamentally different but useful ways of interpreting “the world’s poem,” or of viewing the world religiously: we can either interpret the world along monistic religious lines, for example, by believing in the Absolute, or we can interpret it along pluralistic (or “pluralistic-melioristic”) religious lines, which is how the religious pragmatist views the world (P, –; –). ( Dualism would seem to be a viable third option, but James did not regard it as serious candidate for belief.) To use one of his later formulations, we can either view the world in terms of the “all-form,” as the manifestation of a unitary divine substance or principle (which James thinks tends towards quietism and indifference – it is all moral holidays and no moral strenuousness); or we can view it in terms of the “each-form,” as a kind of cosmic social system composed of many members (this is what James
Only some version of pantheism, James thought, was a live option for belief among educated people in his day. “Old-fashioned dualistic theism,” as he called it, could not satisfy our demand for “a more intimate weltanschauung,” or a view of our relation to God in which we are “insiders” rather than “outsiders.” See PU, –.
A pragmatic account of religion
calls a “moralistic and epic kind of universe,” and he regards it as ethically superior to the first view; see P, , as well as PU, –). Both ways of viewing the world are melioristic in a general way, because both entail “a better promise as to the world’s outcome,” which is what James takes the pragmatic meaning of all religious concepts to be (P, ). As he explains elsewhere, “Our interest in religious metaphysics arises in the fact that our empirical future feels to us unsafe, and needs some higher guarantee” (P, ). Only the second of these views is compatible with meliorism in its special or technical sense, however, because it alone makes the world’s salvation depend upon our efforts as well as the efforts of God or other supernatural entities (P, ). For the religious monist the world’s salvation is essentially guaranteed; nothing that she or anyone else does can change this. For the religious pluralist, on the other hand, the world’s ultimate salvation or ruination hangs in the balance; the world’s fate is not predetermined, and the final outcome will depend on the collective actions and omissions of its members. This pragmatic way of conceiving our religious options not only purports to reveal their fundamental ontological presuppositions, but also to boil them down to their practical, ethical essence: religious doctrines are doctrines of relief, and nothing more (P, –). What religious belief means, pragmatically speaking, is nothing more than the belief in the world’s salvation, which we can conceive either as a necessary principle, which James associates with monism, or as a possible terminus ad quem, which he associates with pluralism (P, –). In the first case, this involves coming to believe in the rational and ontological unity of all things, and that the world’s salvation is necessarily determined by supernatural forces or principles beyond our control; but in the second case it involves merely believing that the world’s unification or salvation may be possible and that it is contingent on the efforts of its members (P, –). He writes: One sees at this point that the great religious difference lies between the men who insist that the world must and shall be, and those who are contented with believing that the world may be, saved. The whole clash of rationalistic and empiricist religion is thus over the validity of possibility. (P, )
In a way, this characterization of our religious options simply reflects James’s application of the pragmatic method to religion. But he does not rest content with merely diagnosing our options; he also picks a side, and proceeds to argue that a pragmatic account of religion must hold the second of these views concerning the world’s salvation. In doing so, James
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
moves well beyond his usual defense of the right to believe to an apology for a particular religious worldview. It is at this stage that James connects his pragmatic account of religion to his religious and metaphysical doctrine of meliorism. James thinks that we have three basic choices that we can make regarding religious belief, which on his view means belief in the world’s salvation: we can opt for pessimism, the view that the world’s salvation is impossible (or conversely, that its damnation is necessary); optimism, the view that the world’s salvation is necessary (or that its damnation is impossible); or meliorism, the view that world’s salvation is “a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become” (P, ). In a very general and straightforward way, these views correspond, respectively, to the views of crude naturalists or toughminded empiricists, to the views of tender-minded religious rationalists or “refined” supernaturalists, and to the views of religious empiricists or pragmatists, or those who view the world in piecemeal supernaturalist terms like James himself. Conceptually speaking, then, meliorism occupies the space between the necessitarian extremes of pessimism and optimism; it is their modal “mediator,” in the same way that pragmatism mediates between the tough-minded and tender-minded or empiricist and rationalist types of thinking (see P, –). Now James allows that we can conceive of salvation however we like – he is not greatly concerned about what it means, exactly, to speak of the world’s salvation, which is an admittedly unclear notion – but regardless of our conception he thinks that these are essentially our options. Pragmatism, however, must incline towards meliorism, or so he believes (P, ). In order to be a genuine pragmatist, James presumes, one must hold a pluralistic-melioristic view of the world, though he is careful to specify that this does not require denying any pragmatic meaning or value whatsoever to monistic views, such as belief in the Absolute (P, , –). These claims form the crux of James’s modified pragmatic account of religion, but there are at least three problems facing his view. The first is that James construes our options with respect to religious belief or the world’s salvation too narrowly. For example, it is simply not the case that pessimism logically entails the view that the world’s salvation is impossible, at least on standard ways of defining that term. The view that the world’s salvation is possible but improbable would also seem to be a logical possibility, though James does not anticipate this. If this is right, though, then meliorism is not unique in viewing the world’s salvation as possible, which presumably makes this more modest version of pessimism a live
A pragmatic account of religion
option for the pragmatist (I suspect that James might not be prepared to admit this, however, as it makes a mess of the tidy framework that he wants to construct). A second, and related, problem is that it is not clear why pragmatism must incline toward one of these views (or toward pluralism, for that matter). James offers no explicit argument in support of this claim, and it would seem that pragmatism is prima facie compatible with any of the above views, at least if we understand the scope of pragmatism simply in terms of the pragmatic method or the pragmatic theory of truth (or both, which is how James understands it; see P, ). Why must a person who subscribes to James’s theory of truth , for example, adopt his religious views about the pluralistic and melioristic character of the world? This is a serious obstacle to acceptance of his pragmatism, I think, and anyone who views religious belief in general, or James’s religious beliefs in particular, as a dead option will part ways with him at this point. Lastly, the third problem facing James’s view is his dubious assumption that at least some conditions of the world’s salvation are “actually extant” and evident (P, ). This problem is related to the second, for the reason why James thinks that pragmatism must incline toward meliorism is because he thinks the evidence supports this view, or at least renders it more probable than its alternatives. (It should be noted, however, that James sometimes claims that our choice between monism and pluralism is underdetermined by the evidence and conditioned by our respective philosophical temperaments; see, for example, PU, –.) To be clear, what James has in mind here are our ideals and their complementary conditions, namely our acts to realize them (P, –). “Every such ideal realized,” he asserts, “will be one moment in the world’s salvation” (P, ). On James’s view, then, the world’s salvation is conditional on our moral efforts. But the problem facing his view is that it simply isn’t evident that whenever we realize one of our ideals we thereby contribute to the world’s salvation. What James needs to show is precisely that this is evident, and insofar as he assumes its evidence in his argument for meliorism he begs the question. At best, I think, meliorism is a legitimate will to believe option. But it is not evidently true or even more probably true than its rivals, nor is it evidently entailed by James’s pragmatism. So far as I am able to tell, James’s view that pragmatism must incline toward meliorism reflects his own deeply held religious beliefs and temperamental preferences, or what he wants the truth about the world’s outcome to be, and not an implicit commitment or logical entailment of pragmatism itself. Yet, in spite of the many philosophical problems which confront James’s “pluralistic-melioristic” worldview and his attempts to show that
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
it is required by his pragmatism, its potential psychological value remains untouched. Indeed, there are good reasons for thinking that James was drawn to this particular metaphysical view on account of its potential moral psychological effects: namely, its capacity to underwrite our picture of ourselves as moral agents and to motivate us to lead morally strenuous lives. In a fascinating thought-experiment toward the end of Pragmatism, James asks us to imagine ourselves in a conversation with God before the creation of the universe, and to consider whether we would be willing to accept the terms of participation in a pluralistic-melioristic universe. He writes: Suppose that the world’s author put the case to you before creation, saying: “I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own ‘level best.’ I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?” (P, )
James thinks that if we honestly perform this thought-experiment, most of us will find that we would be willing to accept the terms of participation in such a world. The reason why most of us would make this choice, he suggests, is because we tend to care more about fulfilling our moral obligations and exercising our capacities than about being safe (P, –). As he explains, “there is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit” (P, ). What James is suggesting, in effect, is that most of us are temperamentally inclined toward a pluralistic religious universe already, as opposed to a monistic religious universe. Those who are deeply afraid of life and its apparent contingencies, on the other hand, will be inclined toward some version of religious monism, or as he puts it, “a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father’s neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea” (P, ). To be clear, James thinks that this desire to entrust oneself to God or the Absolute and to take moral holidays is legitimate, as we have seen. But he also regards religious monism and the metaphysical optimism which accompanies it as a less noble way of viewing the world and living one’s life than a commitment to religious pluralism and meliorism, which entails real risk and the chance of real loss. “There can be no doubt,” he asserts, “that when men are reduced to their last sick extremity absolutism is the only saving scheme. Pluralistic moralism simply makes their teeth chatter, it refrigerates the very heart within their breast” (P, ).
A pragmatic account of religion
This contrast between monistic and pluralistic religion, as well as between monism and pluralism more generally, is what James regards as “the final question of philosophy,” and the most pregnant of all philosophical questions (P, ). What he means by this, as he explains, is that “if you know whether a man is a decided monist or a decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the rest of his opinions than if you give him any other name ending in ist ” (P, ). Although James allows that we can vacillate between more healthy-minded and sick-souled outlooks from one day to the next, he insists that the choice between religious monism and religious pluralism presents an exclusive disjunction (P, ). This last claim is not quite right, for there are other alternatives to the one and the many – for example, the two. (And this, incidentally, is no trivial example; it is hard to overestimate the influence that dualism has had in the history of philosophy.) In any case, James views the choice between monism and pluralism as a forced and momentous option. We can either believe in a monistic cosmic drama, one whose outcome is fixed and determined in advance; or we can believe in a “moralistic and epic kind of universe” whose outcome has yet to be decided and which is at least partly contingent on our beliefs and actions (P, ). For James, at any rate, the choice is a relatively easy one. He writes: In particular this query has always come home to me: May not the claims of tender-mindedness go too far? May not the notion of a world already saved in toto anyhow, be too saccharine to stand? May not religious optimism be too idyllic? Must all be saved? Is no price to be paid in the work of salvation? Is the last word sweet? Is all “yes, yes” in the universe? Doesn’t the fact of “no” stand at the very core of life? Doesn’t the very “seriousness” that we attribute to life mean that ineluctable noes and losses form a part of it, that there are genuine sacrifices somewhere, and that something permanently drastic and bitter always remains at the bottom of the cup? (P, )
What is somewhat curious, though, is that having spent a great deal of time arguing that pragmatism entails a pluralistic-melioristic worldview, James proceeds to claim that he is not speaking “officially” as a pragmatist when he raises his doubts about metaphysical monism and optimism (see P, –). In an apparent about-face, he once again restricts the scope of his pragmatism to include only the pragmatic method and the pragmatic theory of truth, and remarks that the most he can claim is that his pragmatism does not rule out holding a pluralistic-melioristic worldview or treating it as a serious hypothesis (P, –). Indeed, James not only falls back on his more modest conception of pragmatism toward the end of “Pragmatism and Religion,” but also falls back on his
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
will to believe doctrine in his attempt to justify his religious beliefs. “In the end it is our faith and not our logic that decides such questions,” he declares, “and I deny the right of any pretended logic to veto my own faith” (P, ). In a remarkable turn of events, especially for one who was so deeply critical of traditional theism in general and of Calvinism in particular, James rests his case for belief in a pluralistic-melioristic worldview on an old Calvinist test of faith: “Are you willing to be damned for God’s glory?” (P, ). The person who is willing to answer “yes” to this question, who is willing, as James writes, “to live on a scheme of uncertified possibilities which he trusts, willing to pay with his own person, if need be, for the realization of the ideals which he frames” is a genuine pragmatist – as opposed, presumably, to a sort of half-hearted pragmatist (P, –). Again, this is a dubious claim if one does not accept that pragmatism entails a commitment to ontological pluralism and meliorism, but it is nonetheless revealing. What it reveals, in particular, is that James viewed pragmatism as a means of justifying his practical faith in a religiously pluralistic and melioristic universe, even if not all pragmatists could or would endorse such a view. The really important thing which belief in God guarantees is not our personal salvation, James thinks, but rather the ultimate triumph of our highest moral ideals. I have already quoted his remarks concerning God as the guarantor of an “ideal order” or “eternal moral order,” but the following passage is worth quoting in full: A world with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely fi nal things. This need of an eternal moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast. (P, )
What we find in James’s “pragmatic” or “melioristic” theism, as he calls it, is an essentially moral conception of God, not in the sense of an omnibenevolent being (though James does not deny that omnibenevolence is one of God’s attributes) but rather in the sense of a being whose purpose is to safeguard an eternal moral order and bring our highest moral ideals to fruition .
See also PP, , where James observes the following: “The old test of piety, ‘Are you willing to be damned for the glory of God?’ was probably never answered in the affi rmative except by those who felt sure in their heart of hearts that God would ‘credit’ them with their willingness, and set more store by them thus than if in His unfathomable scheme He had not damned them at all.”
A pragmatic account of religion
The final question that James seeks to clarify at the end of Pragmatism is also the one that we need to clarify if we are to understand and assess the adequacy of his modified pragmatic account of religion. This is the question of what role God or an unseen order plays in bringing about the world’s salvation. If the pluralistic or melioristic universe is really to be achieved and the world is ultimately to be saved, then mere human beliefs and actions can hardly be sufficient to the task. For we are not talking about a task that humans could reasonably hope to achieve on their own, say eliminating nuclear weapons or curing cancer, but rather a task so enormous and truly universal that its achievement necessarily requires the assistance of a superhuman power or powers. James was well aware that his meliorism required him to postulate both the need for, and the availability of, supernatural assistance, and it is in the closing pages of the work that we finally see (albeit in an insufficiently developed way) how even his modified pragmatic account of religion presupposes a commitment to religious realism. If the world is to be saved in a pluralistic-melioristic universe, as James now makes clear, we must not only trust and cooperate with other human beings in seeking to realize this aim, but also trust and cooperate with “superhuman forces” or “higher powers,” whose existence and assistance is hypothesized under the terms of his account (P, –). Not only his pragmatic account of religion, then, but also his ontological pluralism and doctrine of meliorism entail a commitment to a version of religious realism: there are superhuman forces in the universe, and without their assistance we cannot plausibly hope to bring about its salvation . As James cautions his readers, “I fear that my previous lectures, confined as they have been to human and humanistic aspects, may have left the impression on many of you that pragmatism means methodically to leave the superhuman out” (P, ). Pragmatism is far from being “an atheistic system,” he insists, and it is not only compatible with the belief that “higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own” but is actually friendly to modest and practical conceptions of religious faith (P, –). In spite of his logical and ethical reservations about both the Absolute and more traditional conceptions of God – he would discuss these at some length in a later work, A Pluralistic Universe – James makes it explicit here that he believes in the reality of God (that is, a finite one) who is “one helper, primus inter pares, in the midst of all the shapers of the great world’s fate” (P, ). In this regard, at least, he does not think that his pragmatic or melioristic theism, as he now calls it, is fundamentally different from other versions of theism . Moreover, he reaffirms
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
that belief in the existence of higher powers or superhuman forces, which can be conceived in a variety of legitimate ways, can also be justified on the basis of religious experience (P, ). The task facing his pragmatic account of religion, he now suggests, is twofold: on the one hand, it must show how religious belief can cohere with other of our beliefs (and presumably our scientific and ethical beliefs are paramount here); but, on the other hand, it must be willing to revise itself in the light of future religious experience and the various “faith-ventures” undertaken by human beings (P, –). If we want to know which faith best coheres with the rest of our beliefs and which works best in the long run, we need to take an approach to religion that is at once both realistic and empirical. In this respect at least, James’s modified pragmatic account of religion does not depart substantially from his previous account in Varieties. Where it does differ from his previous account, as we have seen, is in its connection of a pragmatic interpretation of religion with certain metaphysical “overbeliefs,” specifically ontological pluralism and meliorism. This is a point on which James is rather slippery. As we saw above, James at times gives the distinct impression that he does not see these additional metaphysical commitments as required by his pragmatism. But as we have also seen, there are times when he gives the opposite impression. Within the span of a mere three pages towards the end of Pragmatism, for example, James declares that when he makes pluralistic and melioristic criticisms of religious monism he is not speaking “officially” as a pragmatist (P, –), yet he then goes on to claim that “pragmatism can be called religious, if you allow that religion can be pluralistic or merely melioristic in type” (P, ; emphasis added). Is pragmatism fundamentally incompatible with non-pluralistic and non-melioristic religious beliefs? James seems to suggest so, but he does not bother to say why. What I want to suggest is that James should have been clearer about the connections between these doctrines, and that his case for a pragmatic account of religion could have been stronger – or rather, could have been more theoretically accommodating and less theoretically demanding – if he had argued that his pluralistic and melioristic “overbeliefs” were merely compatible with, but not strictly required by, his pragmatism. We still need to make sense, though, of how James’s commitment to religious realism coheres with his apparently utilitarian claims about religious truth. To recall, James seems to violate the terms of his own pragmatic theory of truth when he claims that “on pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true” (P, ). Indeed, he seems to suggest that the way to verify this
A pragmatic account of religion
hypothesis is simply to show that it combines satisfactorily with “all the other working truths” (P, ). What these and similar passages suggest is that James’s pragmatic method, and in particular his pragmatic theory of the meaning of religious and metaphysical beliefs, reduces the conceptual content of such beliefs to their practical value: namely, their psychological capacity to provide relief from suffering and the hope of a better outcome for the world. The problem, however, is that the number of practically valuable religious and metaphysical beliefs would appear to outstrip the number of true beliefs. If this is right, then not all useful or practically valuable religious and metaphysical beliefs are or can be true; that a belief is useful or practically valuable, in other words, is not a sufficient condition for its being true. In order to do justice to his own religiously realist commitments, I think, James need not give up his pragmatic method or pragmatic theory of truth, at least not in any wholesale fashion. But he will need to modify his views on the pragmatic meaning of religious and metaphysical beliefs so as to allow that the practical psychological effects of such beliefs do not exhaust their content. In other words, he will need to qualify his position so as to allow that the practical psychological effects of such beliefs do not constitute their “whole meaning.” There are obvious conceptual or theoretical differences between many of these beliefs, and these, it seems, are traceable to the different referents of these beliefs and the different predicates attached to them. What James needs to allow, I believe, is that not all practically valuable religious and metaphysical beliefs possess truth-value, and that the agreement of these beliefs with their objects is a necessary condition for their being true. Again, this is hardly an unreasonable demand, as it is one that James makes in the context of defending his pragmatic views on meaning and truth. It is clear from James’s remarks at the end of Pragmatism that he remains a religious realist, and in order to square this view with his pragmatism he needs to clarify – and, indeed, restate – some of his claims about what it means for a “theological idea” to be true. While James is probably right
To recall the argument of Chapter , James’s views on the moral attributes and agency of the unseen order would seem to resist an anti-realist interpretation of his religious views. While overbeliefs for James are not objectively verifiable through religious or mystical experience – presumably because he thinks that such experiences are ineff able to a significant (but not necessarily absolute) degree, and can be interpreted in a variety of ways according to a wide range of conceptual systems – he clearly believes that certain general facts can be established about the object or objects of religious experience. These facts include, first, the superhuman but nonetheless humanlike character of the “wider self,” and, second, its moral quality insofar as it is perceived to be the source of “saving experiences.” The most accurate way of characterizing James’s view, I think, is to say that while religious and mystical experiences are partly shaped by human overbeliefs, insofar as they come to be interpreted in light of particular religious concepts and
Piecemeal supernaturalism and practical needs
to think that having true beliefs with respect to religious matters is of the utmost importance for how we live, the property of being practically important or useful is not unique to true religious beliefs; even false and unverifiable beliefs can do this. Yet, while James’s pragmatic account of religion is insufficiently developed in some ways and unclear in others, it is important to emphasize that James saw it as an open-ended program for religious investigation rather than as a mere object of intellectual assent. He would, I think, have welcomed the revision of many aspects of his practical conception of religious faith, especially those which, as friendly amendments, seek to render it more internally consistent and more adequate to the facts. I have tried to do this at a number of points in this chapter, as well as throughout this book . theories, they are not wholly “constructed” or “constituted” by human minds and their existence is not dependent upon them. What this means is that while some of the conceptual content of religious and mystical experiences is supplied by us on James’s view, not all of it plausibly is, nor is the existence of the objects of such experiences plausibly mind-dependent. Were James to say otherwise he would be unable to maintain without contradiction that, as a matter of fact and disregarding all overbeliefs, “we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes” (VRE, ). Likewise, he would be unable to claim without contradiction that the “unseen region” is the source of many human ideals rather than a mere “screen” on which some human beings project their ideals (see VRE, ). The textual evidence no more supports an anti-realist interpretation of James’s views on the epistemology of religious experience than it supports a “naïve realist” interpretation. In fact, it supports not only the claim that James was a realist insofar as he predicated the existence of religious objects, but also the more robust realist claim that he predicated certain real properties of those objects, specifically their “wider” and moral character. Th is is admittedly somewhat thin, but it is significant because it shows that James does not conceive the objects of religious experience as receiving all their properties from our interpretations of or judgements about them. Indeed, it is exceedingly hard to imagine how the unseen order could really be the source of saving experiences if it possessed no saving powers in its own right. That James believed that the unseen order was the source of such experiences indicates that he endorsed a modest version of religious realism.
Epilogue
Although I do not think that every aspect of James’s practical faith is equally plausible or compelling, much less that every aspect of his religious and moral views can or should be affirmed, I confess my admiration for the sheer originality and scope of his philosophical vision. James was among the first philosophers of religion to approach the subject from an empirical and humanistic point of view, though, as we have seen time and again, he resisted any tendency toward scientific positivism or toward what Paul Ricoeur famously called “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” James was also among the first philosophers to develop an anti-evidentialist and anti-foundationalist religious epistemology, rejecting not only the presupposition that religious belief cannot be warranted if it does not rest upon sufficient evidence, but also the presupposition that having religious knowledge requires having infallible and incorrigible religious beliefs. This stance is basic to both his will to believe doctrine and his pragmatic account of religion, and I am inclined to think that James was right (or at any rate reasonable) in holding such a view. But in my view the most innovative aspect of James’s philosophy of religion is its attempt to reconcile a commitment to religious realism with what we might call a commitment to religious humanism – that is, to combine a realistic view of the objects of religious belief with the view that human interests and purposes ineluctably shape our conceptions of and manner of relating to those objects. In short, religion is about an unseen order on James’s view, but it is also about us and our values. This sort of view and the concerns it expresses are almost wholly absent on the current philosophical scene. Indeed, contemporary work in the philosophy of religion tends toward one of two extremes: it either steers in the direction of anti-naturalist and exclusivist religious apologetics, availing itself of such resources as modal metaphysics and relativistic accounts of epistemic warrant in order to escape the implications of philosophical naturalism and the challenge of religious pluralism; or
William James on Ethics and Faith
else it steers sharply away from religious commitment altogether, and seeks to accomplish little more than to debunk religious faith. James’s pragmatic and piecemeal supernaturalist philosophy of religion resists both tendencies: it does not shy away from modifying traditional religious beliefs and assumptions in the light of what science and the study of other religions can teach us, but it also does not see religion as an intellectual and moral virus to be “cured” by science or a scientific philosophy. Insofar as it aims to avoid the extremes of an overly refi ned supernaturalism, on the one hand, and a spiritually enervating, reductive naturalism, on the other hand, it presents the possibility of a viable alternative view that might go some way toward overcoming the current divide. Wisely or unwisely, James also carried the attempt to give religious faith a practical and ethical basis farther than it had ever been taken before. While I believe that at times he took this attempt too far, we have seen that in his more careful moments he resisted the attempt to reduce religion to its practical value for life. Perhaps the most promising feature of James’s views on the relationship between religion and morality is his view that both of these matters concern human flourishing at a fundamental level, whatever else religion may be, and that each is capable of influencing the other in positive ways. On the one hand, James thinks, religion addresses important practical concerns that morality does not, and provides a way of accounting for and potentially achieving certain moral goods that cannot be had in any other way; indeed, there are good reasons for thinking that it has been a historic source of moral progress. But, on the other hand, James believes that our moral values provide a criterion for judging religious beliefs and experiences, and maintains that we can and should revise our religious commitments in the light of their practical and moral effects. When formulated as a principle, this last view can potentially be of value to the political life of a pluralistic and democratic society such as our own, for it asks religious persons to be open to modifying their religious commitments should they prove injurious to others or out of step with widely shared moral commitments. Since James does not give us a name for this principle, I would suggest that we borrow a term from Robert Audi, and call it James’s commitment to theo-ethical equilibrium.
For Audi’s idea of theo-ethical equilibrium, see Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ), and also Robert Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, ).
Epilogue
Another important feature of James’s religious and moral views, and one which I believe is worthy of further study, is their underlying recognition of what John Rawls has called “the fact of reasonable pluralism.” Both James’s philosophy of religion and his ethics are predicated on the assumption that there exists an irreducible plurality of legitimate religious beliefs and moral values. Indeed, James may have been the first modern philosopher to develop a pluralistic account of religion and conception of values, and these senses of pluralism run throughout his philosophical writings. While I am skeptical of the coherence and enduring relevance of James’s ontological pluralism, which he tried to develop in his later years as a means of reconciling “the One and the Many,” I believe that his views on religious pluralism and value pluralism in such works as The Varieties of Religious Experience and in such essays as “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” and “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (TT, –) have a place among his most lasting and important philosophical contributions. Long before John Hick developed a pluralistic interpretation of religion, James had devised a pragmatic and pluralistic theory of religion which offers a common phenomenological description of religious experiences and a way of accounting for their reality based upon their demonstrable practical value. Indeed, James’s view may be a preferable alternative to Hick’s insofar as it rejects the problematic Neo-Kantian assumption that in religious and mystical experience what we experience is always mediated by a conceptual scheme, rather than directly experienced. For those who view this assumption as epistemologically untenable or religiously inadequate, or both, James’s empiricist and perceptually modeled account of religious experience may provide a more fruitful resource. In any case, I believe that James’s pragmatic and piecemeal supernaturalist philosophy of religion offers a way of combining a commitment to religious pluralism with a commitment to religious realism, while also insisting that religious experiences and beliefs be evaluated in terms of practical and ethical criteria. Likewise, half a century before Isaiah Berlin developed his own views on value pluralism and long before pluralism became a topic of debate in ethics and political philosophy, James argued that there is an irreducible plurality of values and conceptions of the good, and that the practically reasonable response to this fact is tolerance of other values and ways of life. Indeed, as we saw in Chapter , James’s moral theory is largely
See John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (). Reprinted in Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, ), pp. –.
William James on Ethics and Faith
framed around the fact of value pluralism and the need to accommodate our moral principles and actions to it. Even if one is not inclined to accept James’s utilitarian moral theory (and I include myself here), his discussion of the fact of value pluralism can and should be appreciated on its own terms. As we have seen, James’s views on the relationship between religion and morality span a wide range, from the claim that religious belief can be measured in terms of action, which is basic to his will to believe doctrine; to his various arguments concerning the need for religious belief and experience in leading a fully realized and flourishing human life ; to his melioristic view that our religious beliefs and efforts to realize our moral ideals might plausibly contribute to the world’s salvation. These aspects of James’s thought are not only central to his religious views, but also to his ethical views and, indeed, to his philosophy in general. Although his contributions to ethics are probably more limited than his contributions to the philosophy of religion (though this is debatable), his arguments concerning the relationship between religion and morality and the role of religious faith in human flourishing are thought-provoking and worthy of serious reflection, even if they are not always sufficiently developed. But if most human beings in fact need some form of religious faith in order to lead flourishing lives, as James and many religious persons believe, then his claims regarding the interconnection of religion and morality are at least partly right. As with other empirical questions, this one can be settled only by turning to actual human experience – and James would have it no other way.
Bibliography
WOR K S BY J A M E S
All references to James’s works, unless otherwise noted, are to The Works of William James, Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis (eds.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, –). The original publication date appears in parentheses. These volumes are referred to in the text and footnotes by the abbreviations listed below. Quotations are unaltered unless otherwise noted. PP: PBC: WB: TT: VRE: P: MT: PU: SPP: ERE:
The Principles of Psychology, [] Psychology: The Briefer Course, [] The Will to Believe and Other Popular Essays in Philosophy, [] Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, [] The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, [] Pragmatism, [] The Meaning of Truth, [] A Pluralistic Universe, [] Some Problems of Philosophy, [] Essays in Radical Empiricism, [] E S S AY S
“Reflex Action and Theism” () “The Sentiment of Rationality” () “The Dilemma of Determinism” () “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” () “The Will to Believe” () “Is Life Worth Living?” ()
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Cormier, Harvey, The Truth Is What Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of Death (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ). Davidson, Richard J., Kabat-Zinn, Jon, Schumacher, Jessica, Rosenkranz, Melissa, Muller, Daniel, Sontorelli, Saki F., Urbanowski, Ferris, Harrington, Anne, Bonus, Katherine, and Sheridan, John F., “Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation,” Psychosomatic Medicine (), –. Davidson, Richard J. and Harrington, Anne (eds.), Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (Oxford University Press, ). Davis, Stephen T., “Wishful Thinking and ‘The Will to Believe’,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society : (Fall ), –. Dewey, John, “The Problem of Truth,” in Collected Works: The Middle Works, –, vol. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, ). Durkheim, Emile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, []). Flanagan, Owen, The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in Material World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ). Ford, Marcus P., “A Realistic Understanding of James’ Theory of Truth,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Winter ), –. “William James: Panpsychist and Metaphysical Realist,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, : (Spring ), –. Gale, Richard M., The Divided Self of William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Giuffrida, Robert and Madden, Edward H., “James on Meaning and Significance,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, (), –. Haack, Susan, (ed.), “Introduction: Pragmatism, Old and New,” in Pragmatism, Old and New (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, ). Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge, nd edn (London: Macmillan, ). “Religious Pluralism and Salvation,” Faith and Philosophy, (). An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ). Hingst, Kai-Michael, Perspektivismus und Pragmatismus: Ein Vergleich auf der Grundlage der Warhheitsbegriff e und der Religionsphilosophien von Nietzsche und James ( Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, ). Hollinger, David A., “‘Damned for God’s Glory’: William James and the Scientific Vindication of Protestant Culture,” in Wayne Proudfoot (ed.), William James and a Science of Religions (New York: Columbia University Press, ). Hookway, Christopher, “Logical Principles and Philosophical Attitudes: Peirce’s Response to James’s Pragmatism,” in Ruth Anna Putnam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, nd edn, Richard H. Popkin (ed.) (Indianapolis: Hackett, ).
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Johnston, Mark, “Verificationism as Philosophical Narcissism,” Philosophical Perspectives, (), –. “Objectivity Refigured: Pragmatism Without Verificationism,” in John Haldane and Crispin Wright (eds.), Reality, Representation, and Projection (Oxford University Press, ). Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge University Press, ). Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, ). Kauber, Peter, “The Foundations of James’s Ethics of Belief,” Ethics, : (January, ), –. Lamberth, David, “Interpreting the Universe after a Social Analogy: Intimacy, Panpsychism, and a Finite God in a Pluralistic Universe,” in Ruth Anna Putnam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge University Press, ). “James and the Question of Truth: A Response to Hilary Putnam,” in Jeremy Carrette (ed.), William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Centenary Experience (London: Routledge, ). Lekan, Todd, “Strenuous Moral Living,” William James Studies, : (). Levinson, Henry S., The Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). Margolis, Joseph, Pragmatism without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism, The Persistence of Reality I (Oxford: Blackwell, ). Reinventing Pragmatism: American Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ). McDermott, John J. (ed.), The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition (University of Chicago Press, ). McDowell, John, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). Mill, John Stuart, The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill (New York: Random House, ). Miller, Dickinson, “‘The Will to Believe’ and the Duty to Doubt,” International Journal of Ethics, (–), . Myers, Gerald E., William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ). O’Connell, Robert J., William James on the Courage to Believe (New York: Fordham University Press, ). Pappas, Gregory, “William James and the Logic of Faith,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society : (), –. Peirce, Charles Sanders, Th e Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. vols., Nathan Hauser and Christian Kloesel (eds.) (vol. ) and the Peirce Edition Project (vol. ) (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, (vol. ), (vol. )).
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Index
Absolute, the, , , –, , absolute idealism, see idealism absolutism, –, Adams, Robert, agnosticism, , , , , , , Alston, William, Anscombe, G. E. M., anti-naturalism, anti-realism, , , , ; metaphysical, , , , ; moral, –, , ; religious, , , Aquinas, – Aristotle, Arnold, Matthew, atheism, , , , , , , , Audi, Robert, Augustine, autonomy of morality, , , , , , , , , , Ayer, A. J., Bain, Alexander, belief and action, , , , , , ; as hypothesis , –, ; as rule of action, , , ; coherence of, ; ethics of, – , , , , –, , –, , ; instrumental value of, , , , , – ; psychology of, , , , , –, , –, , , , , religious , see religious belief Bergson, Henri, , Berkeley, George, Berlin, Isaiah, Blackburn, Simon, – Bloom, Paul, Boyer, Pascal, Brennan, Bernard P., , Brown, Hunter, Buddha, the,
Buddhism, , , , Bunyan, John, Calvinism, , character, – Chisholm, Roderick, Christianity, , , , , , Cleanthes, Clifford, W. K., , , , concepts and concept empiricism, , ; nominalist view of, , , , , Confucianism, Confucius, consequentialism, , , , conversion, , , – Cooper, Wesley, –, , , , Cormier, Harvey, , Davis, Stephen T., deontology, , , – despair, see pessimism determinism, , , , –, , Dewey, John, , , , dogmatism, , , , , dualism, , Durkheim, Emile, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, , ethical perfectionism, , ethics naturalistic aspect of, , , –; of belief, ; religious aspect of, , , , –, –; utilitarian theory of, , , , –, –, –, , –, – empiricism, , affinity with pluralism, ; as going by facts, , –, ; as theory of knowledge, , , , , ; as theory of meaning, ; concept, ; radical, see radical empiricism
Index
eudaemonism, –, – evidence duty to attend to, see will to believe doctrine; insufficiency of, see religious belief; objective, , , , , , , , , ; subjective, , , , , evidentialism, , , evil problem of, , –, , ; reality of, experience James’s conception of, , ; religious, see religious experience faith and epistemic goods, , ; and ethical goods, , , , , , –, , , , , ; and evidence, , ; as helping to create a fact, , , , , , –, –, , , ; loss of, ; moral arguments for, see moral arguments for religious belief; plurality of, see pluralism; practical conception of, , , , , , , , –, , , , –; reasonableness of, , , ; wholeness in, ; see also religious belief faith-ladder, the, – faith-tendency, – faith-venture, , , fallibilism, , , , –, , , , Fechner, Gustav, , fideism, Flanagan, Owen, Ford, Marcus P., foundationalism, , , , , , free will, , , , –, , functionalism as theory of religion, ; in James’s account of religion, , , , , , , –, , , , , Gale, Richard, –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , Gandhi, Giuff rida, Robert, Goodman, Nelson, God, , –, , , , , , , , –, , , –, –, , , , –; as infinite demander, –, , , –; as Socius, ; James’s finite conception of, , , , –, , , , , ; James’s overbelief in, , , –, ; panpsychist view of,
see panpsychism; pragmatic meaning of, , , –; see also theism Haack, Susan, , happiness, see human flourishing Hegel. G. W. F., – Hick, John, , , , , highest good, , , –, , , Hingst, Kai-Michael, Hollinger, David A., Hookway, Christopher, , human flourishing, , , –, , , , –, , –, –, –, , –, , , human nature, , , , , , humanism about truth, see truth; religious, Hume, David, , Huxley, Thomas, , idealism, , , ; absolute, , , –, , , , ; objective, , ideals, , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –, , , , indeterminism, see free will infinite scale of values, , , , –, , inquiry, conception of, intellectualism, –, –, , , ; vicious, ; see also rationalism intellectual republic, , James’s Dilemma, James’s Wager, , , –, ; as inconsistent with his will to believe doctrine, Jesus, Johnston, Mark, , Kant, Immanuel, , , , –, , , , –, Kauber, Peter, Kierkegaard, Søren, Lamberth, David, , , –, , , Leibniz, G. W., Lekan, Todd, , , Levinson, Henry S., , , , –, libertarian free will, see free will Macintosh, D. C., Madden, Edward H., Margolis, Joseph, – materialism, , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , ,
Index McDowell, John, Meaning of Truth, The, –, , , , , , , –, , , , , meliorism, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, metaethics, , metaphysical intimacy, , , , , , , , , Mill, J. S., , , Miller, Dickinson, Mind-Cure movement, monism as metaphysical view, , , , , , ; noetic, moral agency, , , , , , , –, , –, moral arguments for religious belief, , , , , –, –, , , moral holidays, , –, , , , moral life, the, , , , , , , moral intuitionism, – moral motivation, see moral strenuousness moral objectivity, , , , , , , , , , , , –, moral obligation, , – moral properties, –, moral psychology, – moral strenuousness, , , , , , , , , –, , , –, , , –, –, , –, , , , , moral transformation, , , , , , , motivational internalism, –, Myers, Gerald, , mystical experience, , , , , , –, , , , , naturalism, ; in ethics, , ; as account of religion, , , –, –, , ; strong, ; weak, natural religion, see theology natural theology, see theology necessitarianism, New Age movement, , Nietzsche, Friedrich, –, nihilism, – nominalism, see concepts norms, O’Connell, Robert J., optimism, , , , , , – overbeliefs, , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , ,
panpsychism, , , , pantheism, , Pappas, Gregory, Pascal, Blaise, , – Pascal’s Wager, – passional nature, see will to believe doctrine passional reason, Paul, Peirce, Benjamin, Peirce, Charles Sanders, , –, , , –, , , Perry, Ralph Barton, , perception, , , , , , –, , perfectionism, ethical, perspectivism, , , , , –, pessimism, , –, , , ; as religious disease, –; metaphysical, , , –, ; temperamental, –, phenomenalism, Philo, piecemeal supernaturalism, , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , Plantinga, Alvin, , Plato, , , , , pluralism, , , ; ethical and value, , , –, , –; noetic, , , ; ontological, , , , , , , , , –, ; religious, , , , –, , , –, , –, , , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , pluralistic-melioristic universe, , , , , , –, , , , , – Pluralistic Universe, A, , , , , , , , , , , , practical reasons externalist view of, –, ; internalist view of, – Pragmatism, , , , , , , , , , , , , – pragmatism, , , ; and materialism, ; as compatible with realism, , ; as empirical religious philosophy, –, ; as metaphilosophical view, , , ; as method, , –, , –, , , , , , , ; as theory of meaning, , , –; as theory of truth, see truth; conceptual, , , , , , see also concepts; connection to James’s will to believe doctrine,
Index
Principles of Psychology, The, , , , , , Problem of Buried Secrets, The, , problem of evil, see evil Psychology: The Briefer Course, pure experience, doctrine of, , , , , , , , Putnam, Hilary, , , , , –, , , , , , Putnam, Ruth Anna, , , Quine, W. V. O., radical empiricism, , , , , –, , , –, Ramsey, Bennett, rationalism affinity with monism, ; as going by principles, , , ; as intellectualism, see intellectualism; as theory of knowledge, Rawls, John, realism common sense, , , , ; direct, ; epistemological, , , , –; ideal, ; internal, , , , ; metaphysical, , , , , –, , –, , , , –; moral, , , ; naive, , , , ; religious, , , , , , –, , , , –, , , , –, –, , , , , , –, –, , , ; scholastic, , Reginster, Bernard, – relativism, , , religion and morality, , –, , , , , , –, , –; eudaemonistic claim for, –; functionalist theories of, see functionalism; moral interpretation of, , –, ; naturalistic accounts of, see naturalism; normative approach to, , , ; phenomenology of, –; pluralistic interpretation of, see pluralism; pragmatic account of, , , , , , , , –, , , , , –, , –; realist view of, see realism, religious; reconciling hypothesis of, –; reductionistic accounts of, –, , , , , –, , ; survival theory of, – religion of humanity, the, , , , , – religious anesthesia, , , religious belief
and action, see belief; and fallibilism, see fallibilism; epistemic warrant for, , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , ; ethical criteria for, , , –, ; evidentially inconclusive nature of, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , ; non-foundationalist view of, , ; pluralistic view of, see pluralism; practical rationality of, , , , ; practical value of, , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –, ; pragmatic meaning of, –; truth-value of, see truth religious ethics, see ethics religious experience, , , , , –, ; as psychological phenomena, –, , , –, ; evidential value of, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , ; moral and practical value of, , , , , , , , –, , –, ; practical criteria for evaluating, , –, , , ; types of, , religious hypothesis, see will to believe doctrine religious pluralism, see pluralism religious realism, see realism religious truth, see truth Ricoeur, Paul, right to believe, see will to believe doctrine Rorty, Richard, , , Roth, John K., saintliness, , , , , – salvation, , , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, ; see also meliorism Schiller, F. C. S., Schopenhauer, Arthur, science of religions, –, , – scientific positivism, scientific rationalism, self, the moral transformation of, , –, ; unification of, – Sellars, Wilfrid, “Sentiment of Rationality, The,” , sense of reality, the, –, skepticism epistemological, –, , ; moral, – Socrates, Some Problems of Philosophy, , –, soteriology, Sprigge, T. L. S., , Stoicism,
Index strenuous mood, see moral strenuousness subconscious, , – Suckiel, Ellen Kappy, , , , , , , , , , suicide, – superhuman forces, , , , , , , –, supernaturalism in ethics, see religious ethics; piecemeal, see piecemeal supernaturalism; refined, , –, , , synechism, Talks to Teachers, Taylor, Charles, temperament, , , , , , , , , , , , , , Thayer, H. S., , , theism, , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , –, , – theodicy, , theo-ethical equilibrium, theology natural, –, ; and the science of religions, – therapeutic philosophy, – tolerance, , , , , , –, , , , Tolstoy, Leo, transmarginal consciousness, see subconscious transubstantiation, doctrine of, – truth and action, –; and coherence, , , , ; and ethical value, , ; and justification, ; and utility, , , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, –; anti-intellectualist view of, , ; as agreement with reality, , , , , , , , , –, –, –, , ; as an aff air of leading, –, –; as distinct from reality, –, ; consequentialist conception of, –; correspondence theory of, , –, –, , , , , , , , , ; humanist commitments about, , , –;
moral, ; Peircean strain in James’s theory of, –; pragmatic meaning of, , , , , , , , ; pragmatic theory of, , , , , , , , , –, –, –, , , , , , ; realist commitments about, , –, ; religious, –, , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , , , –; verificationist definition of, , , , , ,
unseen order, –, , , –, , , , , –, , , –, , , –, , –, , , , , , , ., –, , , , –, , , , , utilitarianism, see ethics Varieties of Religious Experience, The, , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , –, , verificationism, , , –, –, , virtue ethics, , , volitional nature, see will to believe doctrine Wainwright, William, –, Whitman, Walt, wider self, see unseen order Williams, Bernard, Will to Believe, The, –, –, –, will to believe doctrine, , , –, , –, , , , , , , , , , ; and the duty to attend to evidence, , , ; and the ethics of belief, see belief; and the religious hypothesis, –, –, , ; and the right to believe, , , , , –, , ; and “wishful thinking,” , , , –, ; epistemological aspect of, , , –, , , , ; psychological aspect of, , –, , , , , , –, , ; role of faith in, see faith Wittgenstein, Ludwig, , Wolf, Susan, Wood, Allen, ,
