- WilliamJames - moomers.org

Lecture 2, third and final chunk
by Eric Purdy 25 Jan '14

25 Jan '14

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood. 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. If we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more than a difference of doctrine; rather is it a difference of emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on the eternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frosty chill about his words which you rarely find in a Jewish, and never in a Christian piece of religious writing. The universe is 'accepted' by all these writers; but how devoid of passion, or exultation the spirit of the Roman Emperor is! Compare his fine sentence: "If gods care not for me or my children, here is a reason for it," with Job's cry: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" and you immediately see the difference I mean. 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. "It is a man's duty," says Marcus Aurelius, "to comfort himself and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but to find refreshment solely in these thoughts first that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and secondly that I need do nothing contrary to the God and deity within me; for there is no man who can compel me to transgress.[6]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…>He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature, through being displeased with the things which happen. For the same nature produces these, and has produced thee too. And so accept everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus. For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it were not useful for the whole. The integrity of the whole is mutilated if thou cuttest off anything. And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way."[7]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…> Compare now this mood with that of the old Christian author of the Theologia Germanica:— "Where men are enlightened with the true light, they renounce all desire and choice, and commit and commend themselves and all things to the eternal Goodness, so that every enlightened man could say: 'I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man.' Such men are in a state of freedom, because they have lost the fear of pain or hell, and the hope of reward or heaven, and are living in pure submission to the eternal Goodness, in the perfect freedom of fervent love. When a man truly perceiveth and considereth himself, who and what he is, and findeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth into such a deep abasement that it seemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. And therefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release; but he is willing to be unconsoled and unreleased; and he doth not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in his eyes, and he hath nothing to say against them. This is what is meant by true repentance for sin; and he who in this present time entereth into this hell, none may console him. Now God hath not forsaken a man in this hell, but He is laying his hand upon him, that the man may not desire nor regard anything but the eternal Good only. And then, when the man neither careth for nor desireth anything but the eternal Good alone, and seeketh not himself nor his own things, but the honour of God only, he is made a partaker of all manner of joy, bliss, peace, rest, and consolation, and so the man is henceforth in the kingdom of heaven. This hell and this heaven are two good safe ways for a man, and happy is he who truly findeth them." [8]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…> How much more active and positive the impulse of the Christian writer to accept his place in the universe is! Marcus Aurelius agrees *to* the scheme—the German theologian agrees *with* it. He literally *abounds* in agreement, he runs out to embrace the divine decrees. Occasionally, it is true, the Stoic rises to something like a Christian warmth of sentiment, as in the often quoted passage of Marcus Aurelius:— "Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear City of Cecrops; and wilt thou not say, Dear City of Zeus?"[9]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…> But compare even as devout a passage as this with a genuine Christian outpouring, and it seems a little cold. Turn, for instance, to the Imitation of Christ:— "Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be according as thou wilt. Give what thou wilt, so much as thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do with me as thou knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honour. Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all things. … When could it be evil when thou wert near? I had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell."[10]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…> It is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an organ, to ask after its most peculiar and characteristic sort of performance, and to seek its office in that one of its functions which no other organ can possibly exert. Surely the same maxim holds good in our present quest. The essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else. And such a quality will be of course most prominent and easy to notice in those religious experiences which are most one-sided, exaggerated, and intense. Now when we compare these intenser experiences with the experiences of tamer minds, so cool and reasonable that we are tempted to call them philosophical rather than religious, we find a character that is perfectly distinct. That character, it seems to me, should be regarded as the practically important *differentia* of religion for our purpose; and just what it is can easily be brought out by comparing the mind of an abstractly conceived Christian with that of a moralist similarly conceived. A life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say, in proportion as it is less swayed by paltry personal considerations and more by objective ends that call for energy, even though that energy bring personal loss and pain. This is the good side of war, in so far as it calls for 'volunteers'! And for morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers. Even a sick man, unable to be militant outwardly, can carry on the moral warfare. He can willfully turn his attention away from his own future, whether in this world or the next. He can train himself to indifference to his present drawbacks and immerse himself in whatever objective interests still remain accessible. He can follow public news, and sympathize with other people's affairs. He can cultivate cheerful manners, and be silent about his miseries. He can contemplate whatever ideal aspects of existence his philosophy is able to present to him, and practice whatever duties, such as patience, resignation, trust, his ethical system requires. Such a man lives on his loftiest, largest plane. He is a high-hearted freeman and no pining slave. And yet he lacks something which the Christian *par excellence*, the mystic and ascetic saint, for example, has in abundant measure, and which makes of him a human being of an altogether different denomination. The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show. But whereas the merely moralistic spurning takes an effort of volition, the Christian spurning is the result of the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, in the presence of which no exertion of volition is required. 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. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. 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- *being* as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not. And here religion comes to our rescue and takes our fate into her hands. There is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing" in the floods and waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety, and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away. We shall see abundant examples of this happy state of mind in later lectures of this course. We shall see how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. 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 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. If religion is to mean anything definite for us, it seems to me that we ought to take it as meaning this added dimension of emotion, this enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. It ought to mean nothing short of this new reach of freedom for us, with the struggle over, the keynote of the universe sounding in our ears, and everlasting possession spread before our eyes.[11]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…> This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find nowhere but in religion. It is parted off from all mere animal happiness, all mere enjoyment of the present, by that element of solemnity of which I have already made so much account. Solemnity is a hard thing to define abstractly, but certain of its marks are patent enough. A solemn state of mind is never crude or simple—it seems to contain a certain measure of its own opposite in solution. A solemn joy preserves a sort of bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we intimately consent. But there are writers who, realizing that happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogative of religion, forget this complication, and call all happiness, as such, religious. Mr. Havelock Ellis<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Havelock_Ellis>, for simple, identifies religion with the entire field of the soul's liberation from oppressive moods. "The simplest functions of physiological life," he writes, "may be its ministers. Every one who is at all acquainted with the Persian mystics knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument of religion. Indeed, in all countries and in all ages, some form of physical enlargement—singing, dancing, drinking, sexual excitement—has been intimately associated with worship. Even the momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise. … Whenever an impulse from the world strikes against the organism, and the resultant is not discomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyous expansion or aspiration of the whole soul—there is religion. It is the infinite for which we hunger, and we ride gladly on every little wave that promises to bear us towards it."[12]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…> But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are 'reliefs,' occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice—inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. If you ask *how* religion thus falls on the thorns and faces death, and in the very act annuls annihilation, I cannot explain the matter, for it is religion's secret, and to understand it you must yourself have been a religious man of the extremer type. In our future examples, even of the simplest and healthiest-minded type of religious consciousness, we shall find this complex sacrificial constitution, in which a higher happiness holds a lower unhappiness in check. In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, *so long as we keep our foot upon his neck*. In the religious consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend, the negative or tragic principle, is found; and for that very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the emotional point of view.[13]<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture…>We shall see how in certain men and women it takes on a monstrously ascetic form. There are saints who have literally fed on the negative principle, on humiliation and privation, and the thought of suffering and death,—their souls growing in happiness just in proportion as their outward state grew more intolerable. No other emotion than religious emotion can bring a man to this peculiar pass. And it is for that reason that when we ask our question about the value of religion for human life, I think we ought to look for the answer among these violenter examples rather than among those of a more moderate hue. Having the phenomenon of our study in its acutest possible form to start with, we can shade down as much as we please later. And if in these cases, repulsive as they are to our ordinary worldly way of judging, we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge religion's value and treat it with respect, it will have proved in some way its value for life at large. By subtracting and toning down extravagances we may thereupon proceed to trace the boundaries of its legitimate sway. To be sure, it makes our task difficult to have to deal so much with eccentricities and extremes. "How *can* religion on the whole be the most important of all human functions," you may ask, "if every several manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down and pruned away?" Such a thesis seems a paradox impossible to sustain reasonably,—yet I believe that something like it will have to be our final contention. That personal attitude which the individual finds himself impelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine—and you will remember that this was our definition—will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall have to confess to at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The constitution of the world we live in requires it:— "Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren! Das ist der ewige Gesang Der jedem an die Ohren klingt, Den, unser ganzes Leben lang Uns heiser jede Stunde singt." For when all is said and done, we are 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 submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice 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 becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill. 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, and led moreover by following the purely empirical method of demonstration which I sketched to you in the first lecture. Of the farther office of religion as a metaphysical revelation I will say nothing now. But to foreshadow the terminus of one's investigations is one thing, and to arrive there safely is another. In the next lecture, abandoning the extreme generalities which have engrossed us hitherto, I propose that we begin our actual journey by addressing ourselves directly to the concrete facts. -- -Eric

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Lecture 2, second chunk
by Eric Purdy 22 Jan '14

22 Jan '14

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us 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. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. In these lectures, however, as I have already said, the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all. We escape much controversial matter by this arbitrary definition of our field. But, still, a chance of controversy comes up over the word ’divine,' if we take it in the definition in too narrow a sense. There are systems of thought which the world usually calls religious, and yet which do not positively assume a God. Buddhism is in this case. Popularly, of course, the Buddha himself stands in place of a God; but in strictness the Buddhistic system is atheistic. Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address to the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance. "These laws," said the speaker, "execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance: Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie—for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance—will instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear your witness. For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. In so far as he roves from these ends, a man bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries. His being shrinks … he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The perception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. When he says 'I ought'; when love warns him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul from supreme wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. All the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. [They] affect us more than all other compositions. The sentences of the olden time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. And the unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion."[2] Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul of order, which soul is moral, being also the soul within the soul of man. But whether this soul of the universe be a mere quality like the eye's brilliancy or the skin's softness, or whether it be a self-conscious life like the eye's seeing or the skin's feeling, is a decision that never unmistakably appears in Emerson's pages. It quivers on the boundary of these things, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other, to suit the literary rather than the philosophic need. Whatever it is, though, it is active. As much as if it were a God, we can trust it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's balance straight. The sentences in which Emerson, to the very end, gave utterance to this faith are as fine as anything in literature: "If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil."[3] Now it would be too absurd to say that the inner experiences that underlie such expressions of faith as this and impel the writer to their utterance are quite unworthy to be called religious experiences. The sort of appeal that Emersonian optimism, on the one hand, and Buddhistic pessimism, on the other, make to the individual and the sort of response which he makes to them in his life are in fact indistinguishable from, and in many respects identical with, the best Christian appeal and response. We must therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless or quasi-godless creeds 'religions'; and accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual's relation to 'what he considers the divine,' we must interpret the term 'divine' very broadly, as denoting any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not. But the term 'godlike,' if thus treated as a floating general quality, becomes exceedingly vague, for many gods have flourished in religious history, and their attributes have been discrepant enough. What then is that essentially godlike quality—be it embodied in a concrete deity or not—our relation to which determines our character as religious men? It will repay us to seek some answer to this question before we proceed farther. For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way of being and power. They overarch and envelop, and from them there is no escape. What relates to them is the first and last word in the way of truth. Whatever then were most primal and enveloping and deeply true might at this rate be treated as godlike, and a man's religion might thus be identified with his attitude, whatever it might be, towards what he felt to be the primal truth. Such a definition as this would in a way be defensible. Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life, so why not say that any total reaction upon life is a religion? Total reactions are different from casual reactions, and total attitudes are different from usual or professional attitudes. To get at them you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious, which in some degree every one possesses. This sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, "What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?" It expresses our individual sense of it in the most definite way. Why then not call these reactions our religion, no matter what specific character they may have? Non-religious as some of these reactions may be, in one sense of the word 'religious,' they yet belong to the general sphere of the religious life, and so should generically be classed as religious reactions. "He believes in No-God, and he worships him," said a colleague of mine of a student who was manifesting a fine atheistic ardor; and the more fervent opponents of Christian doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal. But so very broad a use of the word 'religion' would be inconvenient, however defensible it might remain on logical grounds. There are trifling, sneering attitudes even towards the whole of life; and in some men these attitudes are final and systematic. It would strain the ordinary use of language too much to call such attitudes religious, even though, from the point of view of an unbiased critical philosophy, they might conceivably be perfectly reasonable ways of looking upon life. Voltaire, for example, writes thus to a friend, at the age of seventy-three: "As for myself," he says, "weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred pike-thrusts, I return two hundred, and I laugh. I see near my door Geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and I laugh again; and, thank God, I can look upon the world as a farce even when it becomes as tragic as it sometimes does. All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over." Much as we may admire such a robust old gamecock spirit in a valetudinarian, to call it a religious spirit would be odd. Yet it is for the moment Voltaire's reaction on the whole of life. Je m’en fiche is the vulgar French equivalent for our English ejaculation 'Who cares?' And the happy term je m'en fichisme recently has been invented to designate the systematic determination not to take anything in life too solemnly. 'All is vanity' is the relieving word in all difficult crises for this mode of thought, which that exquisite literary genius Renan took pleasure, in his later days of sweet decay, in putting into coquettishly sacrilegious forms which remain to us as excellent expressions of the 'all is vanity' state of mind. Take the following passage, for example, we must hold to duty, even against the evidence, Renan says, but he then goes on:— "There are many chances that the world may be nothing but a fairy pantomime of which no God has care. We must therefore arrange ourselves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be completely wrong. We must listen to the superior voices, but in such a way that if the second hypothesis were true we should not have been too completely duped. If in effect the world be not a serious thing, it is the dogmatic people who will be the shallow ones, and the worldly minded whom the theologians now call frivolous will be those who are really wise. "In utrumque paratus, then. Be ready for anything—that perhaps is wisdom. Give ourselves up, according to the hour, to confidence, to skepticism, to optimism, to irony, and we may be sure that at certain moments at least we shall be with the truth. … Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous; but we have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal reprisal. In this way we return to the right quarter jest for jest; we play the trick that has been played on us. Saint Augustine's phrase: Lord, if we are deceived, it is by thee! remains a fine one, well suited to our modern feeling. Only we wish the Eternal to know that if we accept the fraud, we accept it knowingly and willingly. We are resigned in advance to losing the interest on our investments of virtue, but we wish not to appear ridiculous by having counted on them too securely."[4] Surely all the usual associations of the word 'religion' would have to be stripped away if such a systematic parti pris of irony were also to be denoted by the name. For common men 'religion’ whatever more special meanings it may have, signifies always a serious state of mind. If any one phrase could gather its universal message, that phrase would be, 'All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.' If it can stop anything, religion as commonly apprehended can stop just such chaffing talk as Renan's. It favors gravity, not pertness; it says 'hush' to all vain chatter and smart wit. But if hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy grumbling and complaint. The world appears tragic enough in some religions, but the tragedy is realized as purging, and a way of deliverance is held to exist. We shall see enough of the religious melancholy in a future lecture; but melancholy, according to our ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious when, in Marcus Aurelius's racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietsche,—and in a less degree one may sometimes say the same of our own sad Carlyle,—though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats. They lack the purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth. There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. It is precisely as being solemn experiences that I wish to interest you in religious experiences. So I propose—arbitrarily again, if you please—to narrow our definition once more by saying that the word 'divine,' as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal and enveloping and real, for that meaning if taken without restriction might well prove too broad. The divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest. But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a field of experience where there is not a single conception that can be sharply drawn. The pretension, under such conditions, to be rigorously 'scientific' or 'exact' in our terms would only stamp us as lacking in understanding of our task. Things are more or less divine, states of mind are more or less religious, reactions are more or less total, but the boundaries are always misty, and it is everywhere a question of amount and degree. Nevertheless, at their extreme of development, there can never be any question as to what experiences are religious. The divinity of the object and the solemnity of the reaction are too well marked for doubt. Hesitation as to whether a state of mind is 'religious,' or 'irreligious,' or 'moral,' or 'philosophical,' is only likely to arise when the state of mind is weakly characterized, but in that case it will be hardly worthy of our study at all. With states that can only by courtesy be called religious we need have nothing to do, our only profitable business being with what nobody can possibly feel tempted to call anything else. I said in my former lecture that we learn most about a thing when we view it under a microscope, as it were, or in its most exaggerated form. This is as true of religious phenomena as of any other kind of fact. The only cases likely to be profitable enough to repay our attention will therefore be cases where the religious spirit is unmistakable and extreme. Its fainter manifestations we may tranquilly pass by. Here, for example, is the total reaction upon life of Frederick Locker Lampson, whose autobiography, entitled 'Confidences,' proves him to have been a most amiable man. "I am so far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it is the Divine Will, and my appointed destiny. I dread the increase of infirmities that will make me a burden to those around me, those dear to me. No! let me slip away as quietly and comfortably as I can. Let the end come, if peace come with it. "I do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this world, or our sojourn here upon it; but it has pleased God so to place us, and it must please me also. I ask you, what is human life? Is not it a maimed happiness care and weariness, weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, the strange cozenage of a brighter to-morrow? At best it is but a froward child, that must be played with and humored, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."[5] This is a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state of mind. For myself, I should have no objection to calling it on the whole a religious state of mind, although I dare say that to many of you it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name. But what matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind religious or not? It is too insignificant for our instruction in any case; and its very possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not have used unless he had been thinking of more energetically religious moods in others, with which he found himself unable to compete. It is with these more energetic states that our sole business lies, and we can perfectly well afford to let the minor notes and the uncertain border go. It was the extremer cases that I had in mind a little while ago when I said that personal religion, even without theology or ritual, would prove to embody some elements that morality pure and simple does not contain. You may remember that I promised shortly to point out what those elements were. In a general way I can now say what I had in mind. "I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!": 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? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission,—as Carlyle would have us—"Gad! we'd better!"—or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? 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. It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood. 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. -- -Eric

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Lecture 2, first chunk
by Eric Purdy 19 Jan '14

19 Jan '14

Eric: here is the first chunk of lecture 2. My hope is that I can send the chapters out in chunks and people can just read them at the pace I send them out. Let me know if they are too long or too short or whatever. __________________ MOST books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what its essence consists of. Some of these would-be definitions may possibly come before us in later portions of this course, and I shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them to you now. Meanwhile the very fact that they are so many and so different from one another is enough to prove that the word 'religion' cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name. The theorizing mind tends always to the over-simplification of its materials. This is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested. Let us not fall immediately into a one-sided view of our subject, but let us rather admit freely at the outset that we may very likely find no one essence, but many characters which may alternately be equally important in religion. If we should inquire for the essence of 'government,' for example, one man might tell us it was authority, another submission, another police, another an army, another an assembly, another a system of laws; yet all the while it would be true that no concrete government can exist without all these things, one of which is more important at one moment and others at another. The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening. And why may not religion be a conception equally complex?[1] Consider also the 'religious sentiment' which we see referred to in so many books, as if it were a single sort of mental entity. In the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion, we find the authors attempting to specify just what entity it is. One man allies it to the feeling of dependence; one makes it a derivative from fear; others connect it with the sexual life; others still identify it with the feeling of the infinite; and so on. Such different ways of conceiving it ought of themselves to arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific thing; and the moment we are willing to treat the term 'religious sentiment' as a collective name for the many sentiments which religious objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it probably contains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific nature. There is religious fear, religious love, religious awe, religious joy, and so forth. But religious love is only man's natural emotion of love directed to a religious object; religious fear is only the ordinary fear of commerce, so to speak, the common quaking of the human breast, in so far as the notion of divine retribution may arouse it; religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge; only this time it comes over us at the thought of our supernatural relations; and similarly of all the various sentiments which may be called into play in the lives of religious persons. As concrete states of mind, made up of a feeling plus a specific sort of object, religious emotions of course are psychic entities distinguishable from other concrete emotions; but there is no ground for assuming a simple abstract 'religious emotion' to exist as a distinct elementary mental affection by itself, present in every religious experience without exception. As there thus seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions upon which religious objects may draw, so there might conceivably also prove to be no one specific and essential kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential kind of religious act. The field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly impossible that I should pretend to cover it. My lectures must be limited to a fraction of the subject. And, although it would indeed be foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion's essence, and then proceed to defend that definition against all comers, yet this need not prevent me from taking my own narrow view of what religion shall consist in for the purpose of these lectures, or, out of the many meanings of the word, from choosing the one meaning in which I wish to interest you particularly, and proclaiming arbitrarily that when I say 'religion' I mean that. This, in fact, is what I must do, and I will now preliminarily seek to mark out the field I choose. One way to mark it out easily is to say what aspects of the subject we leave out. At the outset we are struck by one great partition which divides the religious field. On the one side of it lies institutional, on the other personal religion. As M. P. Sabatier says, one branch of religion keeps the divinity, another keeps man most in view. Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions o the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. And although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts, the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. The relation goes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and his maker. Now in these lectures I propose to ignore the institutional branch entirely, to say nothing of the ecclesiastical organization, to consider as little as possible the systematic theology and the ideas about the gods themselves, and to confine myself as far as I can to personal religion pure and simple. To some of you personal religion, thus nakedly considered, will no doubt seem too incomplete a thing to wear the general name. "It is a part of religion," you will say, "but only its unorganized rudiment; if we are to name it by itself, we had better call it man's conscience or morality than his religion. The name ’religion' should be reserved for the fully organized system of feeling, thought, and institution, for the Church, in short, of which this personal religion, so called, is but a fractional element." But if you say this, it will only show the more plainly how much the question of definition tends to become a dispute about names. Rather than prolong such a dispute, I am willing to accept almost any name for the personal religion of which I propose to treat. Call it conscience or morality, if you yourselves prefer, and not religion under either name it will be equally worthy of our study. As for myself, I think it will prove to contain some elements which morality pure and simple does not contain, and these elements I shall soon seek to point out; so I will myself continue to apply the word 'religion' to it; and in the last lecture of all, I will bring in the theologies and the ecclesiasticisms, and say something of its relation to them. In one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. Churches, when once established, live at second-hand upon tradition; but the founders of every church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet, but all the originators of Christian sects have been in this case;—so personal religion should still seem the primordial thing, even to those who continue to esteem it incomplete. There are, it is true, other things in religion chronologically more primordial than personal devoutness in the moral sense. Fetishism and magic seem to have preceded inward piety historically—at least our records of inward piety do not reach back so far. And if fetishism and magic be regarded as stages of religion, one may say that personal religion in the inward sense and the genuinely spiritual ecclesiasticisms which it founds are phenomena of secondary or even tertiary order. But, quite apart from the fact that many anthropologists—for instance, Jevons and Frazer—expressly oppose 'religion' and 'magic' to each other, it is certain that the whole system of thought which leads to magic, fetishism, and the lower superstitions may just as well be called primitive science as called primitive religion. The question thus becomes a verbal one again; and our knowledge of all these early stages of thought and feeling is in any case so conjectural and imperfect that farther discussion would not be worth while. Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us 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. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. In these lectures, however, as I have already said, the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all. -- -Eric

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reboot?
by Eric Purdy 19 Jan '14

19 Jan '14

I was talking to some jamesians last night, and the idea was raised that we might reboot the project, either entirely, or after the first chapter. Is there anyone who hasn't read the first chapter? -- -Eric

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Re: [WilliamJames] how many people are caught up in the reading?
by Gabriela Russek 18 Jan '14

18 Jan '14

By "could we plan to take a week off", I meant, could we have Jesse take a week off from lecturing. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:52 AM, Gabriela Russek <grussek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > By "could we plan to take a week off", I meant, could we have Jesse take a > week off from lecturing. > > > On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:51 AM, Gabriela Russek <grussek(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> Same here. >> If at least 5 of us are in the same boat, could we plan to take >> a week off from lectures to give us time to read and comment on past >> chapters? However, if no comments from delinquents emerge by >> Sunday evening, Jesse should assume we're not really committed to catching >> up and just send the next lecture as usual. >> >> >> On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:10 AM, Andrew Kyser <andrew.kyser(a)gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> As am I. My apologies for not keeping up. That's why I've been so quiet >>> on here. >>> On Jan 17, 2014 8:09 AM, "Max Shron" <max.shron(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> I am several weeks behind. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> www.shron.net >>>> Please excuse brevity, sent on the move. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Eric Purdy <epurdy(a)uchicago.edu>wrote: >>>> >>>>> Thought it might make sense to poll people. Speak up, lurkers! >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> -Eric >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> WilliamJames mailing list >>>> WilliamJames(a)moomers.org >>>> http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames >>>> >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> WilliamJames mailing list >>> WilliamJames(a)moomers.org >>> http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames >>> >>> >> >

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the last few months of someone's life, on twitter
by Eric Purdy 17 Jan '14

17 Jan '14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aaYXu_qzg0 -- -Eric

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how many people are caught up in the reading?
by Eric Purdy 17 Jan '14

17 Jan '14

Thought it might make sense to poll people. Speak up, lurkers! -- -Eric

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Week V thinksheet
by Jesse Raber 16 Jan '14

16 Jan '14

In this week's *Varieties *lectures, James explores a topic of great personal interest to himself: the relationship between religion and depression (or other kinds of chronic psycholgocical distress). The religion of healthy-mindedness asks the believer "to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the universe by systematically declining to lay them to heart," but there are people "who cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to suffer from its presence." These "sick souls" require a different relationship with the universe, based on "their own peculiar form of consciousness." As Lecture I would suggest, James does not object to giving a physiological explanation for the religious life of the sick soul. He notes that people randomly vary regarding various psychological "thresholds": some people feel unpleasantly cold sooner than others, some feel worried sooner than others, and so on. There is no particular rhyme or reason to where our thresholds fall. Some unfortunate people "seem to have been born close to the pain-threshold, which the slightest irritants fatally send them over," or even beyond the pain-threshold, destined for near-constant misery. Such people are sensitive to wrongnesses that don't trouble the healthy-minded. In particular, they are unable to ignore the "great spectre of universal death." "If life be good," James reasons, "the negation of it must be bad. Yet the two are equally essential facts of existence; and all natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it." The robustly healthy, living high above the pain-threshold, feel no need to dwell on this conclusion, but James warns that in time "a little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians." The lower our pain-threshold becomes, the more we will feel a "sadness" that a "merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy" cannot address. James offers an elegant (but debatable) proof of the inevitable sadness of a merely naturalistic worldview. In light of "recent cosmological speculations" about the inevitable heat death of the universe, he observes, "mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature's portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation." One might argue that it isn't worth caring very much about an extinction that is still so far in the future, but, James argues, "the lustre of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of possibilities it goes with"; if mere naturalism puts an outer limit on these possibilities, there is then an outer limit to our present happiness, a limit which the sick soul will feel as painful. QUESTION: Do you accept this proof? The sick soul can only be at peace if all the evils of the universe, including the evil of its ultimate ending, are negated by being absorbed into a universal goodness. Since nature taken by itself is shot through with at least a tincture of evil, the good that negates that evil must for them be supernatural, above and distinct from nature. As long as there are sick souls, James predicts, "the coarser religions, revivalistic, orgiastic, with blood and miracles and supernatural operations, may possibly never be displaced. Some constitutions need them too much." James calls the religion of the sick soul "coarse," yet in the next breath he argues that it is superior to the cultivated optimism of the religion of healthy-mindedness, because it takes in a wider view: > > In our own attitude, not yet abandoned, of impartial onlookers, what are > we to say of this quarrel? It seems to me that we are bound to say that > morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its > survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one's attention > from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it > will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally > than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its > successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious > solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and > even though one be quite free from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt > that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because > the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine > portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's > significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest > levels of truth. This apparent contradiciton, that the religion of the sick soul is both better and worse than the religion of healthy-mindedness, is only fully resolved in James's later book, *A Pluralistic Universe*. This week's supplementary essays, "Pragmatism and Religion" and "The Absolute and the Strenuous Life," give some glimpses into his solution. But this thinksheet is already long enough -- maybe anyone who wants to talk about the essays could introduce them themself?

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correction on "will to believe, etc."
by Ruth Raubertas 12 Jan '14

12 Jan '14

...this last email should end at the words " *help and reinforcement in following the road ahead." Everything after that is a duplicate and I was trying to delete when somehow it got sent.* *Thanks,* *RR*

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Re: [WilliamJames] the will to believe etc.
by Ruth Raubertas 12 Jan '14

12 Jan '14

*There was a lot in the James writings here that I did not understand, or didn’t strike a chord, but here are a few thoughts:...he (James) identifies a sense in which, in spite of whatever may be happening in their communities, individuals remain free to build a relationship with the universe on their own terms. Along with Emerson, James believes that one's influence over others is always a matter of inspiration, provocation, bearing witness -- but never, especially where ultimate things are concerned, commanding agreement. You can lead a horse to water, as they say, but you can't make him drink. Absolutely! (if I may use such a word?)...and even faith groups must watch out lest the whole group goes awry...thus the checks and balances of the church: the Bible, the community’s discernment, and the leading of the Holy Spirit within each person (and, in the more well-organized churches, people from outside who come in to observe and advise). None of those things alone are adequate.I’d be interested in what the concern is about “commanding agreement”...in the case of managing children, for instance, some rules are necessary for the safety of all...but those rules are simply a “scaffolding,” if you will, set up to protect and nurture the children because we care for them and love them. The same can happen in “institutions,” such as schools or workplaces, and the same thing happened in ancient Israel as they struggled to forge a community in a wild and hostile environment.We often shrink at the idea of “commands,” usually because we don’t trust whoever the “commander” is, and often because in this sinful world there have been way too many “commands” that have been issued from prideful, self-serving, and even cruel humans. It is a reminder to us all (any one of us who could find themselves in a position of “commander” for various reasons) to stay humble and compassionate and to always act out of love....Emerson would say that each group has built a different scaffold to reach what is ultimately the same truth (once you look past the different particularities); thus each group is right to the extent that it takes its teachings loosely and symbolically, and wrong to the extent that it takes them too literally. James, on the other hand, would say that the different groups have reached really different ultimate truths, all of which are valid for those who believe in them, despite their contradictions. Clearly James's position is the more paradoxical and complex.This reminds me of the “many hands on the elephant” analogy in which several blind people are feeling an elephant and saying “an elephant is a trunk” or “an elephant is a tail” or “an elephant is a tusk”, etc., not realizing that they are all simply experiencing different aspects of the same thing. So, people use this as an analogy of different people explaining what God is like. So, Emerson would probably agree with using this analogy for all religions, whereas James would say that there could also be different animals being touched, such as fish or cheetahs, that feel even MORE different, but that all these “animals” are just as real as the elephant. Christianity would say that there is only one true elephant - let’s say a special pack elephant that alone knows the way up the mountain - and that fish or cheetahs just won’t fit the bill. (I guess this analogy breaks down in that Emerson interprets all animals as being elephants??? : ) : ))When you use the words “valid for those who believe in them,” it sounds like relativism...so, no absolute truth? (...and if that’s the case, are you absolutely sure?? : ))No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things.I feel sad that this no longer seems to be the case in public discourse. It just seems like people on BOTH sides of various debates ENJOY bashing each other (makes them feel superior) rather than approaching such discourse “delicately and profoundly.” This lack of love and empathy for others of differing viewpoints does not bode well for future public discourse. …(James quotes from Fitz James Stephen:) “If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."This analogy of being on the road of life in a winter storm seems grim in the sense that we are given little hope of discerning the right road, and that we are totally alone with no one else to tell us if we are on the right road or not. Although we can’t totally lean on others in these matters, we are not alone either. I believe the Spirit of God is available to any one of us who asks for help in choosing the right path, and that that spirit, as well as a community of true believers, can provide help and reinforcement in following the road ahead.and saying “an elephant is a trunk” or “an elephant is a tail” or “an elephant is a tusk”, etc., not realizing that they are all simply experiencing different aspects of the same thing. So, people use this as an analogy of different people explaining what God is like. So, Emerson would probably agree with using this analogy for all religions, whereas James would say that there could also be different animals being touched, such as fish or cheetahs, that feel even MORE different, but that all these “animals” are just as real as the elephant. Christianity would say that there is only one true elephant - let’s say a special pack elephant that alone knows the way up the mountain - and that fish or cheetahs just won’t fit the bill. (I guess this analogy breaks down in that Emerson interprets all animals as being elephants??? : ) : ))When you use the words “valid for those who believe in them,” it sounds like relativism...so, no absolute truth? (...and if that’s the case, are you absolutely sure?? : ))No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things.I feel sad that this no longer seems to be the case in public discourse. It just seems like people on BOTH sides of various debates ENJOY bashing each other (makes them feel superior) rather than approaching such discourse “delicately and profoundly.” This lack of love and empathy for others of differing viewpoints does not bode well for future public discourse. …(James quotes from Fitz James Stephen:) “If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."This analogy of being on the road of life in a winter storm seems grim in the sense that we are given little hope of discerning the right road, and that we are totally alone with no one else to tell us if we are on the right road or not. Although we can’t totally lean on others in these matters, we are not alone either. I believe the Spirit of God is available to any one of us who asks for help in choosing the right path, and that that spirit, as well as a community of true believers, can provide help and reinforcement in following the road ahead.* On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 4:51 PM, Jesse Raber <jesse.raber(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Ultimately we are responsible for our own personal choices. However, we >> also have a responsibility to engage in community. If nothing else, those >> of us who become parents are responsible for “training up a child in the >> way he(she) should go.” We don’t have perfect knowledge, but we are >> accountable for what small knowledge we may have, which may not be so small >> in the grand scheme of things (tipping point and all that). But even >> beyond that, we are designed to live in some sort of community, not as lone >> individuals as might have been the ideal in the United States at one time. >> We need to help each other out. Mental instabilities such as may occur >> with people who commit violent acts can be prevented with the help of a >> community of trusted friends and family. If we see someone suffering with >> such delusions, and don’t seek to lead them out with a spirit of >> compassion, we are neglecting our duty. > > > I agree, and I think you've hit on a -- maybe the -- central weakness in > James's philosophy. He goes too far in his elevation of the individual > above the community, or culture. (As I mentioned in my introduction email, > developing a pragmatist theory of community fell to others such as Dewey.) > The value that remains in James's position, though, is that he identifies a > sense in which, in spite of whatever may be happening in their communities, > individuals remain free to build a relationship with the universe on their > own terms. Along with Emerson, James believes that one's influence over > others is always a matter of inspiration, provocation, bearing witness -- > but never, especially where ultimate things are concerned, commanding > agreement. You can lead a horse to water, as they say, but you can't make > him drink. > > Is the Bible like a scaffolding that will “fall away” or more like a >> skeleton which by itself has no life but without which we vertabral animals >> will not survive? It is clearly not enough by itself, but for many people >> it is a solid platform on which to stand in life. In the African American >> church that I attend, there is never any question about this. For many >> people it is enough just to keep body and soul together; they don’t have >> the leisure to debate what is or is not true about the Bible. They just >> seem to have an inner knowledge, passed down perhaps through their virtuous >> mothers and grandmothers, that what will make for a satisfying life is the >> God of the Bible. They don’t consider any other options...they trust in >> the community in which they were raised, because they have seen the fruits >> (past tense) and know the best path to follow. > > > This makes a lot of sense. The trouble that Emerson, and to some extent > James, would have is that Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc., can all arrive > at the same conclusions about their sacred texts and traditions. On what > pragmatic basis can one say that one of these groups is right and another > wrong, if each group finds good fruits in its own things? In answering this > question I think Emerson and James would part ways. Emerson would say that > each group has built a different scaffold to reach what is ultimately the > *same* truth (once you look past the different particularities); thus > each group is right to the extent that it takes its teachings loosely and > symbolically, and wrong to the extent that it takes them too literally. > James, on the other hand, would say that the different groups have reached > really *different* ultimate truths, all of which are valid for those who > believe in them, despite their contradictions. Clearly James's position is > the more paradoxical and complex. Rather than continuing to try to > paraphrase "The Will to Believe," let me just paste in the climactic > section (which will make more sense in the context of the whole essay, but > time and attention span are finite): > > Religions differ so much in their accidents that in discussing the >> religious question we must make it very generic and broad. What then do we >> now mean by the religious hypothesis? Science says things are; morality >> says some things are better than other things; and religion says >> essentially two things. >> > > >> First, she says 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. "Perfection is eternal,"—this phrase >> of Charles Secrétan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of >> religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified >> scientifically at all. >> > > >> The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if >> we believe her first affirmation to be true. >> > > >> Now, let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are in >> case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true. (Of >> course, we must admit that possibility at the outset. If we are to discuss >> the question at all, it must involve a living option. If for any of you >> religion be a hypothesis that cannot, by any living possibility be true, >> then you need go no farther. I speak to the 'saving remnant' alone.) So >> proceeding, we see, first, that religion offers itself as a momentous >> option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by >> our non-belief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a forced >> option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining >> sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error >> in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as >> certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should >> hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was >> not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. >> Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as >> decisively as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism, then, is >> not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. >> Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,—that is your faith-vetoer's >> exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer >> is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the >> believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach >> scepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be >> found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the >> religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser >> and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not >> intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion >> laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this >> passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery >> through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear? I, for one, can see >> no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to >> imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important >> enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk. If religion be >> true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by >> putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had >> after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life >> of getting upon the winning side,—that chance depending, of course, on my >> willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the >> world religiously might be prophetic and right. >> > > >> All this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and right, >> and that, even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is a live >> hypothesis which may be true. Now, to most of us religion comes in a still >> further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more illogical. The >> more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our >> religions as having personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to >> us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible >> from person to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one >> sense we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious >> autonomy, as if we were small active centres on our own account. We feel, >> too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active >> good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met >> the hypothesis half-way. To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who >> in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every >> concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would cut himself off >> by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting >> spirit would earn,—so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling >> logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or >> not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity >> of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling, forced on us we know not >> whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to >> do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing the >> universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of >> the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesiswere true in all its parts, >> including this one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making >> willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some participation of our >> sympathetic nature would be logically required. I, therefore, for one >> cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or >> wilfully 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, 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. >> >> I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped. But sad experience >> makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with >> me, in abstracto, that we have the right to believe at our own risk any >> hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however, that >> if this is so, it is because you have got away from the abstract logical >> point of view altogether, and are thinking (perhaps without realizing it) >> of some particular religious hypothesis which for you is dead. The freedom >> to 'believe what we will' you apply to the case of some patent >> superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the >> schoolboy when he said, "Faith is when you believe something that you know >> ain't true." I can only repeat that this is misapprehension. 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. When I look at the religious >> question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all >> the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, >> then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and >> courage, and wait—acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion >> were not true[4]—till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and >> senses working together may have raked in evidence enough,—this command, I >> say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic >> cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had >> an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel >> ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to >> it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we are >> empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for >> certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle >> fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. >> Indeed we may wait if we will,—I hope you do not think that I am denying >> that,—but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In >> either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to >> issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on >> the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental >> freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then >> only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our >> outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only >> shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things. >> > > >> I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation >> from him. "What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the >> world?... These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to >> them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal >> with them.... In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap >> in the dark.... If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a >> choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever >> choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back >> altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show >> beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and >> acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. >> Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for >> him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding >> mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be >> deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the >> wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether >> there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' >> Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.... If death ends >> all, we cannot meet death better." > > > Moving on to other things ... > > It seems to me that there is way too much emphasis on results here. Does >> pragmatism mean that the ends justify the means? I thought we had all >> learned from the various world wars that this is simply not true and is in >> fact a dangerous idea. > > > Pragmatism is definitely against the idea that the ends justify the means. > Pragmatism cares for consequences, but while ends are consequences, so are > means. People sometimes say "you can't make an omelette without breaking > eggs" to illustrate the idea that the ends justify the means -- but the > broken eggs are just a much consequences as the omelette itself. What > pragmatism excludes are ideas that seem to have no consequences at all, or > ideas that one embraces *despite* the net balance of their consequences. > This doesn't mean, of course, that the pragmatist can't be principled in a > certain way. To go back to your earlier example of going to jail for one's > beliefs, the pragmatist reading of that situation is that one has chosen to > care about some types of consequences -- consequences for one'e sense of > self, and for the well-being of others -- more than other consequences -- > consequences for one's body. > > As Clara pointed out in her Moomers Journal article on chaos, it is >> practically impossible to predict the outcomes of a given action. There >> are just too many variables. It also seems presumptuous. Who are we to >> know what will or will not happen as a result of a given action? But to >> simply do what is right to the best of our knowledge is really all we can >> do. > > > Relative to a standard of absolute certainty, any prediction about the > future is presumptuous. Even saying that the sun will rise tomorrow would > be presumptuous -- some unpredicted asteroid might stop the rotation of the > earth, who knows? This is why pragmatism dispenses with the standard of > certainty (one of Dewey's books about what is wrong with most philosophy is > called *The Quest for Certainty*), and thinks in terms of bets with > reality. Predicting how actions will affect the world is a chancy thing; > pragmatism counsels us to accept that element of chance as part of the > fabric of reality. But, of course, this means acknowledging that our lives > are ultimately at the mercy of forces beyond our control -- and for James > this acknowledgment is where religion begins. > > Does James think that the “will to believe”, being an “unsafe bet,” is a >> wrong choice? > > > Hopefully the excerpt above answers this question, but in case it doesn't, > I'll try to summarize. In religious matters, including *both* belief and > unbelief, we have no choice but to make an unsafe bet. Atheism is just as > unsafe, for James, as theism. And yet make a choice we must. The one idea > that comes out worst in "The Will to Believe" is wait-and-see agnosticism. > Basically James has arrived at a proto-existentialist position in which we > must make the supremely important choice about what life and the universe > ultimately mean, even while knowing that nothing can ever prove to us that > our choice is better than the choice of our neighbor, provided that our > neighbor is just as satisfied with her view as we are with ours. > > > On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Ruth Raubertas <ruthraubertas(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> *Here are some responses to Jesse’s last couple of emails...I hope this >> is not too wordy. ...it's important for James that religion continue to >> base itself on this *personal* experience of surrender to the divine, which >> can certainly affect our judgments and actions, but which cannot presume to >> dictate the nature of religion to other people, much less to directly lay >> down rules for their behavior. (This gets back to James's denigration of >> religious institutions of all kinds as less significant than individuals' >> direct experiences of the divine.) Not to put too fine a point on it, but >> James would not approve of, say, today's Religious Right trying to >> translate specific biblical commandments into laws that apply to everybody. >> Ultimately we are responsible for our own personal choices. However, we >> also have a responsibility to engage in community. If nothing else, those >> of us who become parents are responsible for “training up a child in the >> way he(she) should go.” We don’t have perfect knowledge, but we are >> accountable for what small knowledge we may have, which may not be so small >> in the grand scheme of things (tipping point and all that). But even >> beyond that, we are designed to live in some sort of community, not as lone >> individuals as might have been the ideal in the United States at one time. >> We need to help each other out. Mental instabilities such as may occur >> with people who commit violent acts can be prevented with the help of a >> community of trusted friends and family. If we see someone suffering with >> such delusions, and don’t seek to lead them out with a spirit of >> compassion, we are neglecting our duty. But who do we trust? That is a >> good question. We also have a responsibility to choose a worthy community >> to help us through life. Again, ultimately we are responsible for our >> choices as individuals. But we also have the power to influence and be >> influenced by others, and that is another choice we must make. No one is >> an island. If we can find a community in which people truly strive to love >> one another, and are not just out for themselves alone, that is a first >> step. But we also are responsible to teach others, when called to do so, >> with humility and compassion. We need to have compassion and forgiveness >> for everyone, not just the people we agree with. Whether the various >> moralities of various groups should be legislated is not the main question. >> True morality does not rest with any particular political party. >> **************** ...Emerson sees the bible in this way, as a kind of >> inspired scaffolding that helps people approach religious experience but >> whose particularities fall away once the experience is truly grasped -- and >> this is one of the views that cost him his Unitarian ministry and sent him >> down the road of freelance prophesy. Is the Bible like a scaffolding that >> will “fall away” or more like a skeleton which by itself has no life but >> without which we vertabral animals will not survive? It is clearly not >> enough by itself, but for many people it is a solid platform on which to >> stand in life. In the African American church that I attend, there is >> never any question about this. For many people it is enough just to keep >> body and soul together; they don’t have the leisure to debate what is or is >> not true about the Bible. They just seem to have an inner knowledge, >> passed down perhaps through their virtuous mothers and grandmothers, that >> what will make for a satisfying life is the God of the Bible. They don’t >> consider any other options...they trust in the community in which they were >> raised, because they have seen the fruits (past tense) and know the best >> path to follow. *********** ...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 any one 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. It seems to me that there is way too much emphasis on results >> here. Does pragmatism mean that the ends justify the means? I thought we >> had all learned from the various world wars that this is simply not true >> and is in fact a dangerous idea. As Clara pointed out in her Moomers >> Journal article on chaos, it is practically impossible to predict the >> outcomes of a given action. There are just too many variables. It also >> seems presumptuous. Who are we to know what will or will not happen as a >> result of a given action? But to simply do what is right to the best of >> our knowledge is really all we can do. And how do we know what that is? I >> think it is here where the Bible comes to our aid: we are to love God with >> all of our being, love our neighbor as ourself, we are to pray continually, >> and we are to trust God to do what we cannot. These are the major themes >> that run through the Bible. All apparent contradictions can be resolved in >> this light. *********** Now for James what makes this idea religious, and >> sets it apart from philosophy, morality, and science, is that it can be >> accessed only by a leap of faith that nothing outside the self can >> corroborate -- in Jamesian terms, by an assertion of "the will to believe." >> The final section of "The Will to Believe" goes into this in more depth, >> but basically he argues that "we have the right to believe at our own risk >> any hypothesis [e.g., that God exists] that is live enough to tempt our >> will" (my emphasis). Wherever we rely on the will to believe, we are making >> a radically unsafe bet with reality. To say that God is the root of all >> things is such a radical bet. However, he argues, both theism and atheism >> grow out of the will to believe -- the will to believe can also be the will >> to disbelieve, and neither option is privileged over the other. I have not >> read “The Will to Believe.” Does James think that the “will to believe”, >> being an “unsafe bet,” is a wrong choice? Why? What would be a right >> choice? The so-called “leap of faith” is not necessarily made in a vacuum. >> It can be very much based on evidence: the evidence of the natural world, >> the evidence of humanity’s incessant search for meaning (as indicating that >> we have a missing puzzle piece in our hearts that can be found), the >> evidence of the intangible facts of love and appreciation of beauty. A >> detective or scientist, trying to solve a case, gathers the evidence, makes >> a hypothesis (leap of faith?), and then tests the hypothesis to see whether >> further evidence supports the hypothesis. Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see >> that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” We’re >> all invited to the banquet to sample the goods and see how we like them. I >> suppose as we go along in the Varieties these issues will resurface. * >> >> >> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Jesse Raber <jesse.raber(a)gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> Thinking some more about this question, I don't think I addressed it >>> head on: >>> >>> Does he ever try to define God or recognize him as being at the roots >>>> of all good fruits? >>> >>> >>> The answer I gave in my last email is really focused on the question of >>> definitions. Language, for James, is a tool that we use to get to fruitful >>> thoughts, and ultimately to a fruitful relationship with reality. If >>> "defining God" is really a matter of asking "what should we mean when we >>> say 'God'?" then, as with other words, that will be relative to the fruits >>> that will result from our meaning one thing or another. But setting this >>> definitional angle off to one side, there is a substantive question about >>> what it means to attribute all things to one divine agency. That question >>> would bring us back to Lecture I, where James writes: >>> >>> Gods are conceived to be first things in the way of being and power. >>>> They overarch and envelop, and from them there is no escape. What relates >>>> to them is the first and last word in the way of truth. Whatever then were >>>> most primal and enveloping and deeply true might at this rate be treated as >>>> godlike, and a man’s religion might thus be identified with his attitude, >>>> whatever it might be, towards what he felt to be the primal truth. >>> >>> >>> This sounds more or less equivalent to the idea of recognizing God as >>> being at the roots of all fruits. Now for James what makes this idea >>> religious, and sets it apart from philosophy, morality, and science, is >>> that it can be accessed only by a leap of faith that nothing outside the >>> self can corroborate -- in Jamesian terms, by an assertion of "the will to >>> believe." The final section of "The Will to Believe" goes into this in more >>> depth, but basically he argues that "we have the right to believe *at >>> our own risk* any hypothesis [e.g., that God exists] that is live >>> enough to tempt our will" (my emphasis). Wherever we rely on the will to >>> believe, we are making a radically unsafe bet with reality. To say that God >>> is the root of all things is such a radical bet. However, he argues, both >>> theism and atheism grow out of the will to believe -- the will to believe >>> can also be the will to disbelieve, and neither option is privileged over >>> the other. >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Jesse Raber <jesse.raber(a)gmail.com>wrote: >>> >>>> Ultimately, the "law" of God DOES lose its fixed, lawlike character by >>>>> the incarnation of Christ. ... Thus the "New Covenant" does not demand the >>>>> following of laws, but rather the acceptance of the Spirit of Christ >>>> >>>> >>>> This is much closer to what James think religion should be than the >>>> idea of following explicit divine commands<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory>. >>>> As we've seen, the surrender of the self into the "willingness to be as >>>> nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God" is the basic religious act >>>> for him. However, it's important for James that religion continue to base >>>> itself on this *personal* experience of surrender to the divine, which can >>>> certainly affect our judgments and actions, but which cannot presume to >>>> dictate the nature of religion to other people, much less to directly lay >>>> down rules for their behavior. (This gets back to James's denigration of >>>> religious institutions of all kinds as less significant than individuals' >>>> direct experiences of the divine.) Not to put too fine a point on it, but >>>> James would not approve of, say, today's Religious Right trying to >>>> translate specific biblical commandments into laws that apply to everybody. >>>> >>>> A related issue is the status of religious scripture for James. He >>>> doesn't say much about scripture in the *Varieties*, but I think he >>>> would agree with what Emerson says, in his essay "The Poet,"<http://www.emersoncentral.com/poet.htm>about all inspired texts: >>>> >>>> [A] book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us >>>>> through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive at the precise sense of >>>>> the author. [...] If a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought, to >>>>> that degree that he forgets the authors and the public, and heeds only this >>>>> one dream, which holds him like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you >>>>> may have all the arguments and histories and criticism. All the value which >>>>> attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, Kepler, >>>>> Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other who introduces questionable facts >>>>> into his cosmogony, as angels, devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, >>>>> mesmerism, and so on, is the certificate we have of departure from routine, >>>>> and that here is a new witness. [...] How mean to study, when an emotion >>>>> communicates to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature: how >>>>> great the perspective! nations, times, systems, enter and disappear, like >>>>> threads in tapestry of large figure and many colors; dream delivers us to >>>>> dream[.] >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> [...] >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> The quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet >>>>> did not stop at the color, or the form, but read their meaning; neither may >>>>> he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new >>>>> thought. Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the >>>>> last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but >>>>> soon becomes old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language is >>>>> vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for >>>>> conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists >>>>> in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. >>>>> The morning-redness happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob >>>>> Behmen, and comes to stand to him for truth and faith; and he believes >>>>> should stand for the same realities to every reader. But the first reader >>>>> prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child, or a gardener and >>>>> his bulb, or a jeweller polishing a gem. Either of these, or of a myriad >>>>> more, are equally good to the person to whom they are significant. Only >>>>> they must be held lightly, and be very willingly translated into the >>>>> equivalent terms which others use. And the mystic must be steadily told, — >>>>> All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as >>>>> with it. [...] The history of hierarchies seems to show, that all religious >>>>> error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and, at last, >>>>> nothing but an excess of the organ of language. >>>> >>>> >>>> Inspired texts, for Emerson, are significant not because what they say >>>> is literally true, but because, by using symbols that the authors find to >>>> hand, they bring us to the gates of deeper experiences that cannot be >>>> comfortably lodged in language. "Dream delivers us to dream" by way of >>>> language, and it's a mistake to focus on the literal language rather than >>>> the only semi-communicable experience behind it. Emerson sees the bible in >>>> this way, as a kind of inspired scaffolding that helps people approach >>>> religious experience but whose particularities fall away once the >>>> experience is truly grasped -- and this is one of the views that cost him >>>> his Unitarian ministry and sent him down the road of freelance prophesy. >>>> >>>> Fruits typically come from roots...so I'm wondering why James is >>>>> focused on the fruits but not that interested in the roots? Does he ever >>>>> try to define God or recognize him as being at the roots of all good fruits? >>>> >>>> >>>> You could say that what pragmatism *is* is the elevation of fruits over >>>> roots. That's one of the bedrock claims for James. He arrives at it not by >>>> an arbitrary decision, but by noting the inadequacy of the quest for solid >>>> roots, especially regarding ultimate questions. From "What Pragmatism >>>> Means": >>>> >>>> The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical >>>>> disputes that otherwise might be interminable. 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 any one 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. >>>> >>>> >>>> In that essay he introduces his famous squirrel example, about whether >>>> a man has gone around a squirrel or not: >>>> >>>> The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel – a live squirrel supposed to >>>>> be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree’s >>>>> opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries >>>>> to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no >>>>> matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite >>>>> direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that >>>>> never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is >>>>> this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? He goes round the tree, >>>>> sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the >>>>> squirrel?" >>>> >>>> >>>> A roots-based approach would look to the past, to the origins and >>>> accumulated meanings of the word "around." What does "around" *truly* mean, >>>> the root-seeker asks; what is its fundamental significance? Clearly this >>>> approach is hopeless here. James can only resolve the dispute by dismissing >>>> the question of roots and asking the disputants to unstiffen their use of >>>> the word "around" and tie it to specific practical outcomes. They can make >>>> the word mean something that implies the man did go around the squirrel, or >>>> something that implies he didn't. They have had a specific experience, and >>>> they must adjust their ideas to that experience if they want to understand >>>> it and talk about it. Now, if this goes for a simple idea like "around," it >>>> goes even more for a big idea like "God." >>>> >>>> (The second author is from Glastonbury...someone you know?? : ) ) >>>> >>>> >>>> No, I didn't even notice that! Crazy, small world. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 9:23 PM, Ruth Raubertas <ruthraubertas(a)gmail.com >>>> > wrote: >>>> >>>>> Of course, you could follow a good "law," such as the command to love >>>>> one another (for instance, refusing to kill someone in war) and end up in >>>>> jail or worse. So you wouldn't have "freedom" in the literal sense, but >>>>> you would be free in a spiritual sense. (I believe Victor Frankl writes >>>>> about this.) >>>>> >>>>> Ultimately, the "law" of God DOES lose its fixed, lawlike character by >>>>> the incarnation of Christ. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law. God sent >>>>> us (who are in the Jewish tradition) the Law and the Prophets, but we >>>>> didn't get it, so he send his own flesh and blood to teach us and to die in >>>>> our (deserved) place. Thus the "New Covenant" does not demand the >>>>> following of laws, but rather the acceptance of the Spirit of Christ (for >>>>> some reason the image of "swallowing God" comes to mind) within which >>>>> creates in us the desire and ability to do what is right. (I know that's a >>>>> lot right there, and not well explained...) >>>>> >>>>> Fruits typically come from roots...so I'm wondering why James is >>>>> focused on the fruits but not that interested in the roots? Does he ever >>>>> try to define God or recognize him as being at the roots of all good fruits? >>>>> >>>>> Regarding the "Euthyphro Dilemma," both of the articles you quoted >>>>> ended up resolving the "dilemma" satisfactorily to my mind. (The second >>>>> author is from Glastonbury...someone you know?? : ) ) >>>>> >>>>> Some of this makes my head spin around and am tempted to just plead >>>>> Psalm 131 (the second shortest chapter in the Bible): >>>>> >>>>> Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I >>>>> exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. >>>>> >>>>> Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of >>>>> his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. >>>>> >>>>> Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:43 PM, Jesse Raber <jesse.raber(a)gmail.com>wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> "The Psalmist seems to have encountered some kind of "law" that, >>>>>> rather than restrict freedom, actually BESTOWS it." >>>>>> >>>>>> I think James would be sympathetic to this idea. But he'd probably >>>>>> insist that the law is good *because* of the fruit of freedom that it >>>>>> bestows ... meaning that if it stopped bestowing that fruit, it would no >>>>>> longer be good. If the fruit of freedom is really paramount, we therefore >>>>>> have to allow ourselves the possibility of abandoning the law in the name >>>>>> of that fruit. Once this caveat is admitted, the law loses its fixed >>>>>> lawlike character. >>>>>> >>>>>> This train of thought is related to Plato's famous "Euthyphro >>>>>> dilemma." <http://seattlecriticalreview.com/Volume4/Euthyphro.html>Many Christian apologists have addressed Euthyphro's dilemma; one example >>>>>> is here<http://augustinecollective.org/augustine/euthyphros-dilemma-and-the-goodnes…> >>>>>> . >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Ruth Raubertas < >>>>>> ruthraubertas(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> I just realized I made a significant typo a few days ago in posting >>>>>>> this: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> (me)...Just wondering what folks think about whether James >>>>>>>> successfully shows that religion is "wholly debunked by science." >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> ...I do understand that James is NOT trying to debunk religion, >>>>>>> quite the opposite, but anyway the conversation continues.... Sorry for >>>>>>> the confusion. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> (Jesse) Religion, too, must accept the common standard of judging >>>>>>> beliefs by their fruits. According to that standard one can never be bound >>>>>>> by eternally fixed commandments or creeds. ... You might say, then, that >>>>>>> for James science and religion humble each other (or "unstiffen" each >>>>>>> other, to use a Jamesian word.) >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Can fruits inform commandments, and can commandments produce fruits? >>>>>>> For instance, Jesus said "This is my commandment, that you love one >>>>>>> another as I have loved you." (John 15:12) One could argue which came >>>>>>> first, love or the commandment to love, but can't it still be an "eternally >>>>>>> fixed commandment"? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I like the idea that science and religion can "humble" or >>>>>>> "unstiffen" each other. The word "commandment" perhaps turns people off >>>>>>> because it does have a "stiff" sort of sound to it. But listen to Psalm >>>>>>> 119:45-48: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I will walk about in freedom, >>>>>>> for I have sought out your precepts. >>>>>>> I will speak of your statutes before kings >>>>>>> and will not be put to shame, >>>>>>> for I delight in your commands >>>>>>> because I love them. >>>>>>> I reach out for your commands, which I love, >>>>>>> that I may meditate on your decrees. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The Psalmist seems to have encountered some kind of "law" that, >>>>>>> rather than restrict freedom, actually BESTOWS it. He goes on and on, for >>>>>>> 176 verses, singing the praises of the "law" of God. In James 1:25 we also >>>>>>> read: "But whoever looks intently into* the perfect law that gives >>>>>>> freedom*, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, >>>>>>> but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do." So, again, it is >>>>>>> possible for "law" to produce freedom (whereas "freedom" to do whatever we >>>>>>> like can sometimes lead to enslavement, another subject). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >> >

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