AMERICAN PRAGMATISM

TTha Varieties of Religious Experience:A Study in Human Nature

By William James

Genre:Novel

Synopsis:

               The Varieties of Religious Experience is actually a collection of lectures James delivered in Edinburgh, Scotland. The lectures were sponsored by Adam Gifford, who was interested in promoting a series of studies of what he referred to as a natural theology. James’s lectures became by far the most popular in the series. James also received international attention and praise as one of the first American philosophers to have his ideas welcomed and respected in Europe. Although not cited as James’s best book, The Varieties of Religious Experience continues to be referred to as one of the best books on religion. In his day, intellectuals tended to categorize religious experiences as no more than a nervous condition or a reaction caused by indigestion. The Varieties of Religious Experience portrays the need for a sense of the spiritual as a natural and healthy psychological function.

These lectures concerned the nature of religion and the neglect of science, in James' view, in the academic study of religion. Soon after its publication, the book entered the canon of psychology and philosophy and has remained in print for over a century.
James went on to develop his philosophy of pragmatism. There are many overlapping ideas in Varieties and his 1907 book, Pragmatism.

Analysis:

             The book's great service was to make the religious reader see spiritual matters from a more rational, objective, perspective, and to persuade the scientifically-minded that religious experience had its value and was a fact. These lectures concerned the nature of religion and the neglect of science. James studied cases of religious inspiration and concluded there were specific aspects of human consciousness that contained energies that could come to a person’s assistance in time of great need. The result is what he refers to as the religious experience. Science could only ever talk in the abstract, but personal spiritual experience was the more powerful precisely because it is subjective. this book emphasize the relationship of religion to science.