James "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

In James’, “Conclusions” from The Varieties of Religious Experience, James states that, “Knowledge about a thing in not the thing itself” (532). To know about religion does not necessarily mean to be devout. If a person who is researching and studying about different religions is devout, he/she might have a stronger bias and not be able to interpret those religions as carefully and neutral as one that is not devout. Throughout his lecture, James states the theme of truth.

According to James, all religions have truth. The one thing that matters is that a religion has an effect on the devoted person. The experience and belief of the person is what makes a religion true. To James, truth is not merely a thing, but rather, something that a person can do. If a person has a religious experience, then they have healthy minds. Later he speaks of religion as a mere survival and how religion can be associated with the most primeval thought (538). He mentions the “Survival theory” and how religion has become an interest of the individual in his private personal destiny (534).

The individual, being as egotistical as he/she is, according to James, say that, “the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns”, this tells us that religion is personal. Science, unlike religion, is seen as impersonal by, “utterly repudiating the personal point of view” and like science, nature is seen as impersonal as well because it has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency (534-35). James speaks about a God and how it is seen different in science and in religion. There is a God, and the God that science recognizes is one that must have universal laws executively, not accommodating to the conveniences of individuals. James later speaks about how both thought and feelings are determinants of conduct.

James states that thought and feelings are almost always the same and that the theories which are generated by Religion, are secondary. One must look to the feelings and conduct as being the more constant elements in religion. The theory of Religion is not made up of the feelings and conduct but must be looked into in order to understand it. According to Professor Leuba, “God is not known, he is not understood; he is used…”, and if this God proves himself useful, according to Leuba, he religious consciousness asks for no more than that (550). James states that Religion must exert a permanent function, whether with or without intellectual content. He lists two things that he believes is a uniform that religions all appear to meet.

The uniform that religions all appear to meet is uneasiness and its solution. James reduces this meaning by saying that the uneasiness is a sense that there is something wrong with us and the solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers. The lecture moves on to talking about the “more” and “union”.

The “more”, according to theologies, really exists and that it acts as well and that something really is effected for the better when you throw your life into its hands, and it is subconscious and literal. The “union” might be the beliefs that bring the religion together.

The idea of subjectivity and objectivity is also mentioned in the beginning. Our experiences consist of both subjectivity and objectivity, according to James. The objective is, “the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we be thinking of”, what happened without the part of experience. On the other hand, the subjective is what happened including the experience. Both of these are needed in order for experience to be possible. This lecture by James undertakes the religious experience and goes in depth in what that experience consists of.

Late post