p.s. - This objection becomes central for Josiah Roycehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/royce/, the (quasi-)pragmatist who comes closest to espousing orthodox Christianity. But since I've never read Royce -- only read about him -- I can't say much about that.
On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Jesse Raber jesse.raber@gmail.com wrote:
In the Varieties, James limits his attention to the experience of the individual person communing directly with the divine. So he doesn't attend to the ways in which those experiences are mediated by the experiences of other people, as reflected in personal conversation, books, institutions such as schools, monasteries, and churches, etc. In other words, he doesn't have an account of religious *culture*. In Lecture II he talks about this, and argues that "personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than [...] ecclesiasticism" because "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." I think he's just wrong about that, and that, to use an academic buzzphrase, no matter how far back you go in search of a founding prophet, there was "always already" a religious culture shaping their vision. Even Abraham was shaped, if only via opposition, by the polytheistic religious culture of his tribe. And if it's true that religious culture is *always* an ingredient in "personal religion," and not a later grafting, then James distorts his account of personal religion by leaving that out.
On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Elizabeth Topczewski bethtop@gmail.comwrote:
On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 1:31 PM, Jesse Raber jesse.raber@gmail.comwrote:
As freelance prophesies go this really isn't that bad. It's an interesting alloy of neoplatonism, absolute idealism, and the kind of info-messianism you see in devotees of the singularity (all ideas that I strongly disagree with, but whose appeal I think I understand), mixed with Dick's very personal issues with sibling survivor guilthttp://www.amazon.com/Am-Alive-You-Are-Dead/dp/0312424515. If he had somehow written this before 1900 I think James would have quoted from it in the Varieties -- it's just the kind of extreme and idiosyncratic testimony he loves to work on.
At the same time, it's hard to imagine anybody actually converting to Dick's religion. Partly that's because of specific weirdnesses in it, but, even more importantly I think, it's because Dick doesn't make a strong effort to place himself within an existing religious tradition. (He talks about Jesus, but only in a superficial way.) This is a point that I think James makes a serious mistake in overlooking: the really successful prophets in world history -- Jesus, Mohammed, Joseph Smith -- didn't start from scratch, but turned an existing tradition inside out.
Everyone: Are there any major world religions that do not have a prophet figure?
With his laserlike focus on the purely individual experience, James can't offer a good account of why that is, or whether it's a good thing.
Wait, how come? Say more?
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Eric Purdy epurdy@uchicago.eduwrote:
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