William James
1842-1910
Pragmatic American School of
Psychology:
Humanistic, Conscious Psychology
Key Questions
• What was James most concerned with?
• What is our basic existential problem?
• How did James view religion?
Intro William James
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Concern?
The worth and growth of the self
We need to become ourselves
Key insight?
b/c of our need for acceptance by others,
we are willing to deny the growth of true
self
Our Problem?
• Need so much to be loved by significant
other, we deny or distort or needs
• Therapy? A process of getting in touch
with what and how we actually feel about
our experiences
• Religion? Helps us get in touch with our
experience of God (which we distort);
something we cling to when desperate
Biography
• Famous family: brother, the novelist Henry
James, sister Alice
• Family: grandfather William one of
wealthiest in America: Father Henry bit of
mystic; did not work
• depressive
• Long interested in the paranormal
Biography continued
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Gifted artist
Graduated Harvard 1860
Medical Doctor; taught at Harvard 1872
Best known for Varieties of Religious
Experience (1901)
• Wrote Principles of Psychology (18831889): most used textbook in psychology
Characteristics of James
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Open-minded w/eye of scientist
Many friends but depressive; always sick
Deep need to understand experience
Asked: What is experience trying to teach us?
Father’s influence; “bizarre” but powerful religion
James puzzled/fascinated by this
Varieties attempt to understand this
Views on Religion
• Distrustful of organized religion
• Sensed something there (God), but no
strong sense
• Reduced religion to ideals: Goodness,
Truth, Simplicity
• saw as desirable and valuable but
incapable of inspiring any passion
Views on Religion cont
• Religion Man’s most important function
• Pragmatic: What does religion do for us?
• Believed nothing can do for a person what
religion can do for a person
James’ Philosophy
• How does James’ overall philosophy
influence his understanding of religion?
• Pragmatism and Pluralism
• Varieties of Religious Experience grew
out of series of lectures given in Scotland
(Gifford Lectures)
Goal of Gifford Lectures
• Understand experience of religion by the
person
• Scientific approach
• Approached as Non-believer
• Describes nature of conversionary
experience
Lecture #1
• Wants to distinguish (not separate)
between:
• Existential judgment (judgment of facts)
and…Spiritual fact (judgment of value)
• The “facts” of Bible and its value two
different things
• *judgment of fact cannot determine
judgment of value
Religion as “Acute Fever”
• Studied religious experience of founding
figures of religions
• Interested in religion as an “acute fever”
rather than dull habit
• So many living with “second hand
religion”, or someone else’s experience
What makes something True?
• “roots” of religion (facts) and fruits (value)
of religion
• To know one is not to know the other
• Truth of something is really a spiritual
matter
• Truth not in origins but in way it works out
as a whole over time (Pragmatic)
Three Criteria for Truth
• 1. Immediate luminousness: “Yeah, that’s
right!”
• 2. Philosophical reasonableness: Does it
coincide with most of what we already
know?
• 3. Morally helpful: Does it aid in living
more humanely
Lecture #2: What is Religion
Really?
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Not a universal term
God not universal concept
No universal religious emotion
Most think of institution, an organization
Really more personal
All religion founded on personal
experience
James’ Definition of Religion
• the feelings, acts, and experiences of
[individuals] in their solitude, so far as they
apprehend themselves in relation to the
Divine
• very American
• Religious person has surrendered to
‘Higher Power’
• Religious happiness very unique: no
happiness like religious happiness
Lecture #3: Conversionary,
“Mystical” Experience
• Heart of James
• We can all sense reality in way that
goes beyond the senses. Meaning?
• Extrasensory “sense of a presence”
• Leads to “deep understanding” of
reality
Religion About Feeling
• Need to understand God in conceptual
terms: God as Father, God as One, Trinity
• James: not how it works: is about feeling
• Connected to our body: “organismically”
connected to God
• *Note: opposite to what Freud says about
religious experience
Religion as Feeling: Four Keys
Things
• 1. Primacy of Feelings: concepts (reason)
ultimately based on feelings
• 2. Depth of Feeling: unreasoned, intuition,
“sense” of truth: concepts only a surface
manifestation of this deeper feeling
• 3. Feelings as Facts: by themselves
concepts have no meaning w/o being
based on deeper “felt experience”
Religion as Feeling cont.
• 4. Feelings as Knowledge and Truth:
feelings are “source of knowledge: Jung
took this from James
Two Paradigms of
• Paradigm of Control
• Mind: can be explained
• Can know about: Great
Mystery, Divine: puts God
“in a Box”
• Can learn tradition
• concepts used to control
• Religion: understood in
Mind
• Paradigm of Surrender
• Mind and Body: cannot
be explained
• Become one w/Greater
Mystery
• Feelings: relates
organism to community
• Spirituality: understood
through Body: becomes
experiential “door to the
world”
Two Orientations of Self: How can
we be religiously happy?
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Healthy-Minded
Born happy
World is good
Not much selfreflection: not needed
• Sick Souls
• Lasting happiness
impossible
• We are evil
• There is tragedy, loss,
pain
• Only hope is to be
“born again”
Models of Conversion
• From: feelings of loss, depression, lack of
meaning,
• To feelings of unity with self, God
Two Basic Temperaments (in
people)
• Tender-Minded
• Rationalistic (guided
by principles)
• Monistic (unity in all
things)
• Religious (belief in
principle of unity)
• Tough-Minded
• Empiricist (rely on
facts)
• Pluralistic (reality is
many, not one)
• Irreligious and
skeptical
• Philosophically, James was empiricist and
pluralistic
• Goal: combining tough-minded approach
(scientific, loyal to observable facts) with
tender-minded religious sensibilities
Monistic vs Pluralistic View of
World
• Pluralistic View:
• world is many
different things often
in conflict
• More empirical : factbased
• Evil seen as separate
from the Good and
God:
• Monistic View:
• assumes deeper
meaning to life’s
negative experiences
• Tends to resist
concrete facts;
• Evil seen as
mysteriously
connected to God and
the Good
Philosophical Context
• Pragmatism: adopted in U.S. more than
anywhere else: looks at practical
consequences of supposed truths and
actions
• What is a pragmatic view of life?
• What is a pragmatic approach to religious
truth?
• Practical consequences of viewing world
as one or many?
Nature of Truth: Religious and
Otherwise
• What difference does it make if this is true
and that is not?
– What is true is what works
• But what is goal of held truths (religious)?
– Answer must come from somewhere other
than reason and rational: deepest human
conviction
• What is true is what proves itself over time
Open-Book Quiz (10 pts)
• 1. Identify and describe the two conflicting
concepts of God in James
• 2. Which type (healthy-minded religion or
religion of the sick-souled) is attracted to which
image of God?
• 3. What is each type (person) expecting from
God?
• 4. Describe the religious experience of each
• What is the sick soul saved from?
• 5. How would you describe your religious
personality