ABSTRACT
William James’s (1842-1910) philosophy of religion is deeply embedded in his radical empiricism and in his pragmatism. I cannot present James’s arguments for these views here; I shall state some of the key elements as they become relevant to James’s developing views in the philosophy of religion. At the turn of the twentieth century, as again at the turn of the twenty- rst, science and religion – beliefs resulting from empirical methods of inquiry and faith – appeared to be in con ict, especially for philosophers and other re ective persons. For James this con ict is illusory; he will attempt to show that empiricism as he understands it is compatible with religion as he understands that. Relatively early in his philosophical career James argued repeatedly for the intellectual legitimacy of religious belief. Later, in his best known, most widely read book, The Varieties of Religious Experience (delivered as the Gifford Lectures in 1901-2), he offered accounts of religious experiences as evidence for the existence of the divine and ends with some philosophical re ections. Some years later, in Pragmatism (delivered as Lowell Lectures in 1906), he offered Pragmatism as a pluralistic and melioristic (philosophy of) religion, but, as in Varieties, he devotes only one lecture to this subject. Only late in his life, in A Pluralistic Universe (delivered as Hibbert Lectures in 1908), did he develop his philosophy of religion in detail, arguing speci cally against the reigning Absolute Idealism of his time but rejecting also conventional theism. I shall take up these issues in historical sequence. Some additional preliminary remarks are, however, in order. In 1870, James experienced a severe psychological crisis from which he recovered when the writings of the French philosopher Renouvier persuaded him that humans have free will. Henceforth any metaphysical conception and a fortiori any philosophy of religion that James can accept must be compatible with our having free will. Free will would not exist in a purely material world, and it would be meaningless in a world whose future (or whose ultimate salvation, to use James’s language) is guaranteed. James often uses such traditional Christian, speci cally Protestant, expressions, although he stated explicitly that he was not a Christian. Finally, James distinguished between the religion of common people and
the philosophy of religion without ever saying how these relate, but he mentions his interpretation of the former when it seems to agree with his own philosophical religious views.
