William James
- Created by: Awesomelyevil
- Created on: 10-10-16 16:16
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- William James
- Key aims
- Focus on primary-first-hand experience not institutional 'counsel's religion (secondary)
- James definition of religous experience: "the feelings acts, and experiences of [individuals] in their solitude, so far as the apprehend themselves in relation to the Divine
- Two lines of enquiry: origins (cause) and existential value
- Approach: pluralist, empiracal, rational
- Lecture 1: his criticism of medical materialism objections to the reductionist approach of Freud or Marx
- Pragmatic approach: focus the'fruits' or results oofreligious experience.
- Key findings/ conclusions
- Anhedonia (sick soul)
- 'A lack of taste and zest and spring'
- There are two souls: the sick and the healthy soul
- Some already embody the qualities of the healthy soul (they are once born)
- When someone loses purpose in life, they turn to a higher being to give them purpose and move to a more unified understanding of self (they are twice born)
- A conversion experience involves a transformation from a divided or imperfect soul to a more unified conscious or healthy minded soul - can be sudden or gradual.
- Saintliness: saint like behaviour after a conversion experience.
- A sense that the ideal power is friendly
- elation and sense of freedom
- willingness to surrender to said ideal power.
- A feeling of being in a world which has an ideal power.
- Emphasis on love and harmony
- Consequences
- Asceticism
- Strength of soul
- Purity
- Charity
- Four Fruits - the effects of a conversion
- 4. A feeling of ecstacy
- 3. A sense of perceiving things not known before (noetic quality)
- 1. A feeling of assurance (confidence)
- 2. A lack of feeling of loss and worry
- Saintliness: saint like behaviour after a conversion experience.
- Religious experiences on their own do not demonstate God's existence, although they suggest the existence of something bigger.
- Religious experiences are 'psychological phenomena and can be explained as part of a persons psychological make-up. However he did not believe that this was an argument against belief in God.
- Anhedonia (sick soul)
- Evaluation
- Weaknesses
- Bertrand Russell's objections to effects or 'fruits' of religious experience as grounds that such experiences must be genuine or a result of an experience of a higher reality.
- James's attack on 'systematic theology ' or institutional are not well grounded
- Logical positivism objections to a higher reality of higher power meaningless since such experience cannot be verified.
- James' bifurcation of the human personality into sick/healthy souls is cconsidered too reductionist, personality is much more complex.
- Other psychological explanations e.g. Freud's criticism that religious experience is illusionary.
- Limited approach - focus on a few individual ''patternsetters' excluded ordinary religious practitioners | Nicholas Lash
- Strengths
- Focus only psychological causes and existential meaning: not setting out to prove the existence of God.
- Pragmatic - focus on results.
- Pluralistic approach - does not favour one religion over another
- Empirical approach-first-hand testimonies oofferedas results
- Weaknesses
- Key aims
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