Spiritual Goods and the Content of Religious Belief

2020 ◽  
pp. 206-241
Author(s):  
Mark R. Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
William James ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
The Will ◽  
Perfect Being Theology

This chapter considers how the conception of spiritual goods that has been introduced in earlier chapters may provide a framework for the assessment of theological narratives. In brief, a narrative will make more of a demand upon us, in spiritual terms, to the extent that its truth would enable the realization of hybrid goods that run broad and deep. In this chapter, we call this the principle of spiritual good, and compare it with other ways of trying to map the basic structure of religious thought, notably the ‘great-making principle’ that has been propounded in perfect being theology. This second principle offers a divine-nature-focused route into the question of what we are to think in religious terms, whereas the proposal we are developing begins rather with the nature of spiritual goods, and is to that extent more human-nature-focused. We consider how the principle of spiritual good may enable us to integrate otherwise apparently quite disparate fields of enquiry, and how it may throw light on the entrenched character of some disagreements in philosophical theology. We also compare this principle to a related principle that William James presents in his essay ‘The Will to Believe’. James is also interested in the idea that prospective spiritual ‘benefits’ may provide a measure for the adequacy of religious thought, but the benefits with which he is concerned are, characteristically, psychological in nature, unlike hybrid goods, which have inherently a theological structure.

The Morality of Religious Belief

1985 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-557
Author(s):  
Clyde Nabe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
William James ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Ethics Of Belief

Van Harvey's The Historian and the Believer appeared nearly a century after W. K. Clifford's ‘The ethics of belief’. Harvey is critical of the epistemological supports of religious belief in a way strikingly similar to Clifford's criticisms. But Clifford's view did not go uncriticized in the intervening period. William James for instance used Clifford's essay as a foil for his argument in ‘The will to believe’. Now here is Clifford's argument again offered in twentieth century garb in Harvey's book. That a view so similar to Clifford's can arise again a century later, and after strong criticism, suggests that there is some important integrity to that view, and that that view strikes a responsive chord in the ear of many contemporary human beings. This paper intends therefore to examine Clifford's and Harvey's works in order to uncover what makes their shared view attractive.

Taking the appearances seriously: architectural experience and the phenomenological case for religious belief

2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-344
Author(s):  
MARK WYNN
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Internal Relation ◽  
The Will ◽  
Religious Thoughts

AbstractThis paper explores some implications of the idea that religious thoughts can enter into the sensory appearances of things. I begin by clarifying this idea, using some examples drawn from Roger Scruton's discussion of the phenomenology of architectural experience. Then I consider the bearing of the idea on the case for religious belief in pragmatic and epistemic terms. More exactly, I explore how the idea of an internal relation between religious thought and the sensory appearances of things can be used (1) to state William James's case in ‘The will to believe’ with new nuance, and (2) to set out an epistemic case for religious belief whose central claims seem quite commonly to weigh with believers, but which has not been much discussed by philosophers.

WILLIAM JAMES: “PESSIMISM OF THE INTELLECT, OPTIMISM OF THE WILL”

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-287
Author(s):  
CUSHING STROUT
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
William James ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Secular World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Point Of Departure

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, centenary edition, foreword Micky James, intro. Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette (Routledge, 2002)Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Harvard University Press, 2002)William James and a Science of Religions, ed. Wayne Proudfoot (Columbia University Press, 2004)William James has a secure reputation as a pioneer psychologist and as a founding father of the philosophy of pragmatism. In his own time, however, he was best known and most popular among the laity for “The Will to Believe” (1895) and for The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), which were defenses erected on behalf of religion in an increasingly secular world. Religious liberals treated the Bible as one human document among others and Christian faith as one tradition among many, but they “sought to salvage what they could of traditional belief, piety, and ethic.” James was part of this movement that took science, empiricism, and modern philosophy as a point of departure, but his contribution to it was distinctive, original, and (in his own idiom) unusually “tough-minded.”

scholarly journals Am Ende der modernen Sicherheit: William James über religiöse Erfahrung

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-75
Author(s):  
Markus Riedenauer
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
William James ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Epistemological Foundation ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The Will ◽  
Religiöse Erfahrung

Abstract At the End of Modern Security: William James on Religious Experience William James defends religious belief as a reasonable option against a kind of widespread agnosticism which he calls scientific absolutism, and against the dogmatism which he sees in the natural theology of his time. On the basis of his collection of essays “The Will to Believe”, the article reconstructs his arguments and the epistemological foundation of his famous treatment of religious experience in “The Varieties of Religious Experience”. James’ pragmatistic approach, which he calls radical empiricism, resists the exclusion of “mystical” experiences of conversion and redemption, and of religious faith from the realm of reasonable attitudes. Experiences of the astonishing gift of being, of trust and openness, courage and motivation to endure life’s evils can validate religious faith. In so far as modern rationality with its highest expression in the sciences is rooted in an existential quest for security, the underlying attitude towards life unnecessarily prevents personal experiences of the divine and salvation and unreasonably devaluates attitudes of faith. James defends the desiring nature of human beings and opens up the space for legitimate religious experience.

William James

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krister Dylan Knapp
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Professional Relationships ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Psychical Research ◽  
Third Way ◽  
American Psychologist ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The Will

In this insightful new book on the remarkable William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, Krister Dylan Knapp provides the first deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James's psychical research. While showing that James always maintained a critical stance toward claims of paranormal phenomena like spiritualism, Knapp uses new sources to argue that psychical research held a strikingly central position in James's life. It was crucial to his familial and professional relationships, the fashioning of his unique intellectual disposition, and the shaping of his core doctrines, especially the will-to-believe, empiricism, fideism, and theories of the subliminal consciousness and immortality. Knapp explains how and why James found in psychical research a way to rethink the well-trodden approaches to classic Euro-American religious thought, typified by the oppositional categories of natural vs. supernatural and normal vs. paranormal. He demonstrates how James eschewed these choices and instead developed a tertiary synthesis of them, an approach Knapp terms tertium quid, the third way. Situating James's psychical research in relation to the rise of experimental psychology and Protestantism's changing place in fin de siècle America, Knapp asserts that the third way illustrated a much broader trend in transatlantic thought as it struggled to navigate the uncertainties and religious adventurism of the modern age.

William James on the Act of Religious Belief

Bijdragen ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-435
Author(s):  
Friedo RICKEN
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
William James

Circumscription

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Modern Term

The concept of circumscription is central to the iconoclast argument against the icons: if the icon is a true image of Christ, it must represent his divine as well as his human nature. If it cannot do that, the image is an idol. The divine nature is uncircumscribed, therefore an image cannot be made of it. This is the challenge Theodore tries to counter. He develops a detailed Christological position in order to show that Christ somehow must appear in this world in a concrete (circumscribed) and visible form. The chapter presents an interpretation of both iconoclast Christology and Theodore’s Christology. Theodore manages to define his Christological position in such a way that he can show how Christ may be a subject of painting. The concepts of the eidos (appearance) and likeness allow Theodore to work out a doctrine of painting that is almost phenomenological, to use a modern term.

Society Needs Morality

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Robert A. Hinde
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
The Future ◽  
Current Reality

Morality must be resurrected in our societies. It must be a morality whose nature and sources are understood and are in keeping with current reality. Hitherto, morality has been seen as closely related to religion. That religious belief is helpful to many is indisputable, but religious narratives, treated literally, are unacceptable to modern minds, and the supposed nature of God, as discussed by sophisticated theologians, is inaccessible to everyman. Morality, based on an understanding of human nature as shaped by culture, offers hope for the future.

Deep Structure and the Comparative Philosophy of Religion

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-399
Author(s):  
Michael P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Religious Thought

Through various applications of the ‘deep structure’ of moral and religious reasoning, I have sought to illustrate the value of a morally informed approach in helping us to understand the complexity of religious thought and practice…religions are primarily moved by rational moral concerns and…ethical theory provides the single most powerful methodology for understanding religious belief. Ronald Green, Religion and Moral Reason

scholarly journals The Embodied Practical Ideal: Kant’s Ethicotheology and Godmanhood

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-94
Author(s):  
Andrey K. Sudakov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Moral Attitude ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
Actual Experience ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
Practical Reality ◽  
The Ideal

The metaphysical layer of what can be called philosophical Christology in Kant’s treatise on religion reflects his idea of the embodiment of the archetype of moral perfection. Kant raises the problem of the ontology of the ideal in the shape of the question about the conditions that make actual experience possible: the ideal of holiness resides in reason, i. e. in the human being, but the dominance of radical evil over the human will puts it out of human reach either in thought or in practice. For rational thought it is more natural to imagine the practical reality of the archetype as the embodiment of the authentic man proceeding from God. Using the Gospel narrative about Jesus, Kant interprets the human nature of the archetype in the light of his general notions about the properties of this nature. It is widely believed that Kant’s ethical theology eliminates the divine nature of the archetype by stating that an entirely holy will cannot be a moral example for the infirm human will. Kant however says, merely as a critical philosopher, that there are not enough rational grounds for thinking divine nature. Rational philosophy can think the archetype of perfection only as its pure and whole moral attitude through all the maxims and acts. Philosophy would transcend its boundaries if it claimed more and expected recognition of the prototypical theology of the ideal as the content of church faith. But it is not by chance that Kant sets forth the philosophical theory of the archetype as the content of faith in the subjunctive mood. According to Kant, the preaching of the divine character of the archetype as extra-philosophical supplement of the paradoxes and symbols of philosophical theology is only possible on condition that this statutory preaching does not obstruct the overall aspiration toward the actualisation of the pure moral attitude. If these conditions are observed the philosopher and the biblical theologian remain each with their theologies and within their rights.

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