scholarly journals Transformationen der Kantischen Postulatenlehre im „Cambridge Pragmatism“ (Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce)

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-75
Author(s):  
Ludwig Nagl
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
The Will ◽  
Josiah Royce ◽  
Modern Experience

The “Cambridge pragmatists”, Charles S. Peirce, William James and Josiah Royce, are at least in two respects significantly indebted to Kant: first, as von Kempski, Apel and Murphey have shown, with regard to the epistemological issues investigated in pragmatism; secondly, with regard to the various pragmatic approaches to religion, something which has been long overlooked. These approaches are best understood as innovative re-readings of Kant’s postulates of freedom, immortality, and God. Since Hilary Putnam pointed out — in his 1992 book Renewing Philosophy — that James’s essay, “The Will to Believe”, in spite of having received a great deal of hostile criticism, is in “its logic, in fact, precise and impeccable”, James’s thoughts are considered by many contemporary philosophers (by Charles Taylor, e.g., and by Hans Joas) as particularly inspiring. James’s approach is based on the modern experience of secularism and interprets Kant’s “postulate” as the “option” to believe. A deepening of the debate on the relevance of Kant’s analysis of the horizon of religious hope with regard to human praxis for a pragmatism-inspired philosophy of religion can be expected from a detailed discussion of the thoughts of Peirce and Royce, of thoughts, which, in complex ways, relate to, as well as criticise, James’s individuum-focused interpretation of religious faith.

Pragmatist Truth in the Post-Truth Age

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Pihlström
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
William James ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
The Will ◽  
Concept Of Truth

It is commonly believed that populist politics and social media pose a serious threat to our concept of truth. Philosophical pragmatists, who are typically thought to regard truth as merely that which is 'helpful' for us to believe, are sometimes blamed for providing the theoretical basis for the phenomenon of 'post-truth'. In this book, Sami Pihlström develops a pragmatist account of truth and truth-seeking based on the ideas of William James, and defends a thoroughly pragmatist view of humanism which gives space for a sincere search for truth. By elaborating on James's pragmatism and the 'will to believe' strategy in the philosophy of religion, Pihlström argues for a Kantian-inspired transcendental articulation of pragmatism that recognizes irreducible normativity as a constitutive feature of our practices of pursuing the truth. James himself thereby emerges as a deeply Kantian thinker.

William James and the Ethics of Belief

Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (225) ◽  
pp. 353-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.L. Doore
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Main Principle ◽  
Insufficient Evidence ◽  
Widespread Agreement ◽  
The Will ◽  
American Style ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Ethics Of Belief

There is widespread agreement among philosophers that William James's well-known attempt to justify religious faith in ‘The Will to Believe’ is a failure. But despite the fact that James wrote his essay as a reply to the ‘tough-minded’ ethics of belief represented by such thinkers as W. K. Clifford and T. H. Huxley, the reasons commonly given today for rejecting James's position seem to be mostly based on the same principle of intellectual ethics that motivated Clifford and Huxley. Clifford, it may be recalled, maintained that ‘It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. Although this is a rather rhetorical way of stating it, the principle is basically the same one adhered to by most scientists and philosophers who consider themselves rigorous and ‘objective’ thinkers. Even philosophers not associated with the hardheaded modern Anglo-American style of empiricism commonly pledge their allegiance to such a principle. For example, Brand Blanshard (who is an epistemological idealist) holds that the ‘main principle’ of the ethics of belief is that one should ‘equate one's assent to the evidence’ and he then goes on to criticize James, on the basis of this principle, for advocating self-deception and intellectual dishonesty.

James, Clifford, and the Scientific Conscience

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
William James ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Ethics Of Belief

This chapter presents a comparative reading of W. K. Clifford's 1877 treatise, “The Ethics of Belief,” and William James' 1897 essay, “The Will to Believe.” It provides an interpretation of each in the distinctive contexts of England in the 1870s and New England in the 1890s. It argues that Clifford displayed more sensitivity than James did to the consequences of belief. This is an ironic reversal of roles in the story of a great pragmatist who insisted that “the whole defense of religious faith hinges upon” the action that faith requires or inspires. James' “The Will to Believe” should be understood not only as an artifact of its author's agony about the fate of Christianity in the age of science, but also as a product of his political complacency. Clifford had a much more modern understanding than James did of the function of belief systems in society and politics.

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.

The Hermeneutical Keys to William James’s Philosophy of Religion: Protestant Impulses, Vital Belief

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-316
Author(s):  
David J. Zehnder
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
William James ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
American Psychologist ◽  
Over Time

This essay argues that the American psychologist and philosopher William James should be viewed in the Lutheran Reformation’s tradition because this viewpoint offers the hermeneutical key to his philosophy of religion. Though James obviously didn’t ascribe to biblical authority, he expressed the following religious sensibilities made possible by Martin Luther and his contemporaries: 1) challenge of prevailing systems, 2) anti-rationalism, 3) being pro-religious experience and dynamic belief, 4) need for a personal, caring God, and also 5) a gospel of religious comfort. This essay asks, in one specific form, how religious concerns can hold steady over time but cause very different expressions of faith.

The Human Face of Naturalism: Putnam and Diamond on Religious Belief and the “Gulfs between Us”

The Monist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-414
Author(s):  
Sofia Miguens
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Cora Diamond

Abstract Hilary Putnam and Cora Diamond both wrote on Wittgenstein’s Three Lectures on Religious Belief. They did it quite differently; my ultimate aim in this article is to explore this difference. Putnam’s view of religion is largely a view of ethical life; I look thus into his writings on ethics and his proposals to face the relativist menace therein. Still, in his incursions into philosophy of religion, describing religious experience through authors such as Rosenzweig, Buber, or Levinas, Putnam deals with what Diamond calls, after Wittgenstein, “the gulfs between us.” Such gulfs, and the threat of relativism they bring, need to be accounted for. With that purpose in mind I complement Putnam’s reading of the Three Lectures with Diamond’s own reading.

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