La Rioja, 16 del 09 de 2015.

DEPARTAMENTO DE HUMANIDADES
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE LA RIOJA
JOS JATUFF

The relation between moral and religion in the early thinker of William James: an
historical perspective.

This investigation focuses on one especial aspect of the early thinking of William James,
not sufficiently addressed from a historical perspective: his reflection about morality and
religion, strongly based on personal experiences, on which I find information in his Letters,
and are reflected in his publications The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular
Philosophy (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) y Talks to Teachers on
Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899).
James concerns are the same as those of a group of European intellectuals who deal with
the crisis of end of the century XIX and the beginning of the XX. During this time a
culture of uncertainty is started by the fall of the antics metaphysical guarantees due to
many criticisms (Neo-Kantian, Positivist, etc.) which undermine the foundations of thought
and traditional ways of life and by the impact of the powerful natural scientific
development (Darwinism). In the absence of those ultimate certainties which sustain a
transcendent world of stable values, the challenge is try to discern ways of comprehension
and articulation not reductive and impoverishing of the experiences that are capable of
containing the complexity of the real as showed by the advance of knowledge.

In this scenario it is forbidden to insist on the validity and legitimacy of the traditional
foundations of values, as stated by Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (very influential in
Jamess work) in the only subjective certainty of a religious character. James knows how
to oppose to this regressive compulsion (present in many of his contemporaries) the Pathos
of an honest seriousness, who between the opposite attitudes of easy going and strenuous
mood, he does not hesitate to choose the latter. The fight against all forms of relaxation
induced by the lack of transcendent certainty is clearly present in the early period which
goes from his early writings to The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). It is a period
characterized by the pressing challenge of responding to the morbid and existential crises
that perhaps can be characterized as "religious" and whose consequences substantially
affect the moral life. The Bible1 and the Charles Removers

Essais2 constitute central

readings and intense stimulus for reflection of the religious experiences (mysticism) and of
the Promethean question of the liberty.3
At present the interest of this research is centers on the plexus of reflection and experience
of William James, epochal and personal crisis, in which the philosopher explores the
possibilities and philosophical understanding of moral and religious life being free from the
metaphysical constriction. In particular, we are interested in investigating the world of
reading that constitutes relevant material and stimulus for its own reflection. Among the
well-known thinkers in the English language, novelist and historian Thomas Carlyle is,
certainly, a source of greater importance concerning the peculiar "religious" authority of the
hero and faith in an "age without God." Another important figure is Shadworth H. Hodgson
with whom he discussed ontology and maintains a rich exchange of letters. The opportunity
of having access to libraries of the cultural background of northern Britain, such as the
1 James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. The Works of William James. Ed.
Frederick Burkhardt, Intr. John Smith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1985. Jamess
reference to his own role in the Varieties story is in the Appendix VI. See also Marchetti, Sarin A
Mannered Memory and Teachable Moment: William James and the French Correspondent in The
Varieties, William James Studies 4 (Fall 2009): 36-69.
2 James, William. Letteres. Ed. Henry James. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press. 1920. 147.
3 Gale, David. The Divided Self of William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

University College Dublin library, will give me the opportunity to deepen the study of these
references and test hypotheses of possible influences on our thinker.
Bibliography
Anderson, Doug. Respectability and the Wild Beast of the Desert: the Heart of Jamess
Varieties. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003): 1-13.
Croce, Paul. Mankinds Own Providence: From Swedenborgian Philosophy of Use to
William Jamess Pragmatism. Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society (2007) 43.3:
490-508.
Dorrien, Gary. The Making of American Liberal Theology, Idealism, Realism and
Modernity. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
Ebeling, Gehard. Luther, An Introduction to His Thought. Tran. R. A. Wilson. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2007.
Gale, David. The Divided Self of William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999.
Ginzo Frnandez, Arsenio. Protestantismo y filosofa. La recepcin de la Reforma en la
filosofa alemana.Madrid: Universidad de Alcal, 2000.
Habbeger, Alfred. The Father: A Life of Henry James Sr.. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1994.
Hinlicky, Paul R. Luther and the Beloved Community. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eedermans
Publishing Company, 2010.
Hegel, Georg. Philosophy of History. Tran. J. Sibree. New York: American Dome Library
Company,1902.
Hockenbery Dragseth, Jennifer. The Devil's Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the
Lutheran Tradition (Studies in Lutheran History and Theology). Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2011.
Hollinger, David. 'Damned for God's Glory': William James and the Scientific Vindication
of Protestant Culture. William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing The
Varieties of Religious Experience. Ed. Proudfoot, Wayne. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004.
James, William. Reason and Faith. The Journal of Philosophy. 24.8 (1927): 197-201.
----------Pragmatism. The Works of William James. Ed. Frederick Burkhardt, and Fredson
Bowers, Intr. H.S. Thayer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1975.

-----------The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. The Works of
William James. Ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Intr.
Edward H. Madden .Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.
----------A Pluralistic Universe. The Works of William James. Ed. Frederick Burkhardt and
Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Intr. Richard Bernstein. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1979.
----------Some Problems of Philosophy. The Works of William James. Forew. Frederick
Burkhardt, Intr. Peter Hare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.1979.
---------Essays in Religion and Morality. The Works of William James. Intr. John
MacDermott. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1982.
---------The Varieties of Religious Experience. The Works of William James. Ed. Frederick
Burkhardt, Intr. John Smith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1985.
-----------The Correspondence of William James. 10. Ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth
M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002.
Kuklick, Bruce. The Rise of American Philosophy. New Heaven: Yale University Press.
1977.
Levinson, Henry Samuel. The Religious Investigations of William James. Chapel Hill: The
University of North Caroline Press.1981.
Lundin, Roger. Natural Experience: Emerson, Protestantism, and the Emergence of
Pragmatism. Religion & Literature 32.3 (2000): 23-67.
Marchetti, Sarin. Unfamiliar Habits: James and the Ethics and Politics of SelfExperimentation
accessible:
https://www.academia.edu/385558/Unfamiliar_Habits_William_James_on_the_Ethics_and
_Politics_of_Self-Experimentation
------------ William James on Truth and Invention in Morality. European Journal of
Pragmatism and American Philosophy. II (2010)
Marty, Martin E. Righteous Empire, The Protestant Experience in America. New York: The
Dial Press.1970.
McDermott, John J. Introduction to The Writings of William James. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.1977.
-----------------Streams of Experience: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of
American Culture. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. 1987.
McGrath, Alister
Cambridge.1995.

E.

Reformation Thought.

Blackwell Publishers:

Oxford and

Myers, Gerald. William James. His Life and Thought. New Haven: Yale University
Press.1986.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Human Destiny, 2.New York: Charles Scribners and Son. 1943.
OShea, James. A Tension in Pragmatist and Neo-Pragmatist Conceptions of Meaning and
Experience European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy. VI (2014): 4063.
-------------- Sources of Pluralism in William James in Pluralism: The Philosophy and
Politics of Diversity, Maria Baghramian and Attracta Ingram eds. (London: Routledge,
2000): 17-43.
Pawelski, James O. The Dynamic Individualism of William James. Albany: SUNY Press.
Perry, Ralph Barton. The Thought and Character of William James. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.1967.
Pochmann, Henry A. New England Transcendentalism and St. Louis Hegelianism. New
York: Haskell House Publishers. 1949.
Porterfield, Amanda. The Protestant Experience in America. Westport: Greenwood Press.
2006.
Rubin, Julius H. Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America. New York:
Oxford University Press.1994.
Slater, Michael. Metaphysical Intimacy and the Moral Life: The Ethical Project of The
Varieties of Religious Experience. Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society 43.1
(2007a): 116-153.
-------- Ethical Naturalism and Religious Ethics in William Jamess The Moral
Philosopher and the Moral Life. William James Studies 2 (2007b).
Spohn, William C. William James on Religious Experience: An Elitist Account?
American Journal of Theology & Philosophy. 15.1 (1994): 27-41.
Sockness, Brent. Luthers Two Kingdoms Revisited: A Response to Reinhold Niebuhrs
Criticism of Luther. The Journal of Religious Ethics. 20.1. (1992): 93-110.
Troeltsch, Ernst. Protestantism and Progress: A Historical Study of the Relation of
Protestantism to the Modern World. London: Williams &Norgate.1912.
------------The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. New York: Macmillan. 1931.
Viale, Claudio Marcelo. Sacred/Profane- The Durkheimian Aspect of William Jamess
Philosophy of Religion. Pragmatism Today 3.1 (2012): 144-156.
Zehnder, David. The Hermeneutical Keys to William Jamess Philosophy of Religion:
Protestant Impulses, Vital Belief. Forum Philosophicum 15.2 (2010): 301-317.