ABSTRACT
James’s nineteenth-century theory of emotion was radical in its day and remains so today. It has received a great deal of renewed interest in the twenty-first century thanks in part to developments in neuroscience and the philosophy of emotions. This chapter explains James’s account of emotion, which identifies emotion with bodily states and changes. By rejecting the claim that a causal relationship exists between emotion and the body, James’s psychology provides a powerful philosophy of the body that rejects mind-body dualisms. While James’s theory of emotion has important implications for his entire corpus, this chapter will focus on its significance for James’s account of religious experience. James’s equation of emotion and bodily states means that his account of religion tightly intertwines physiology and spirituality.
