William James was an American philosopher and psychologist, famous for his open-minded analysis of religious experience and celebration of mysticism, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). In fact, it was James who coined the phrase "religious experience".
James was a pragmatist, which means he wasn't concerned with whether language was true or false so much as whether it was useful and solved problems. This outlook is reflected in his approach to religious experience. He reserves judgment about whether religious experiences are objectively true or just subjective feelings; instead, he focuses on the positive psychological impact they have on people. |
James identifies four features of mystical religious experience:
These can be remembered by the abbreviation P.I.N.T.
|
Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see "the liver" determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist - William James
The feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine - William James
The experiences of great religious figures (particularly mystics) form a pattern for others to follow. James believes we can learn from the religious experience of others whether we have such experiences ourselves or not.
For example, he describes the Christian mystic Teresa of Avila as. one of the ablest women, in many respects, of those whose life we have the record - William James |
two different conceptions of the universe in our experience – healthy-mindedness and the sick soul - William James
Healthy-mindedness is characterized by joy, optimism and an inability to feel evil. The healthy-minded person may choose to focus on the good in things or just feel happy and positive and refuse to acknowledge bad things in life.
The healthy-minded tend to feel at one with the world and with the divine; they take the view that if the world is good, then they must be good also. James called such people the ‘once born’.
A feeling of one-ness with the world is a characteristic of mystical experiences, but James doesn't think the healthy-minded are naturally drawn towards mysticism. He thinks mystics are created by a different sort of experience of life. |
Pollyanna is a children's novel (and 1960 film) about a girl who is determined to see the positive side of every situation. The name "pollyanna" is sometimes applied to people with an outlook so positive it's almost naïve.
|
The world now looks remote, strange, sinister and uncanny. Its colour is gone and its breath is cold - William James Although the healthy-minded are happier, James thinks that sick souls have greater insight into the human condition; faced with the apparent meaninglessness of the world, they turn to religion to find an answer. James highlights the link between the sick soul and the "religions of deliverance" like Christianity and Buddhism::
|
The novelist Victor Hugo liked to write about sick souls: there's Inspector Javert in Les Miserables and Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (especially the 1996 Disney version)
|
The most complete religions would therefore seem to be ... the religions of deliverance; the man must die to an unreal life before he can be born into the real life - William James
A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s little interests; a conviction... of the existence of an Ideal Power...
A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control...
An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down...
A shifting of the emotional Centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards "yes, yes" and away from "no," where the claims of the non-ego are concerned - William James
YES
James brings psychology to bear on religious experience, analysing what it does to people and why. He's talking about Christian religious experiences but his ideas are so insightful they apply more widely. James manages to discuss these experiences without getting bogged down in trying to prove or disprove God.
James pioneers a new approach to religious experience, rooted in Kant's ideas about the unknowable Noumenon. James argues for religious experiences being subjective, but still meaningful. He thinks revelation is non-propositional. His ideas are the basis for Hick's Pluralistic Hypothesis - that all the different religions are made up of people experiencing the same thing but describing it in different ways.
|
NO
James is too credulous about religious experience - he's too willing to believe 'there must be something to it' just because it's widespread and it makes people happy. A better psychological explanation comes from Freud, who points out the religious experience is often unhappy and rooted in internal turmoil and distress.
James gives a sort of intellectual respectability to some very woolly ideas. This is because James is pragmatic and happy to ignore the question of whether God in fact exists. But religious people can't be pragmatic like this. If God doesn't exist, then religious feelings are illusions, even if they're cheerful ones. As philosophers, we should try to understand what is or isn't true and James ignores this vital question.
|