Philosopher · Modern
William James
1842–1910 · Pragmatism; psychology of religion
Raised in his father's Swedenborgian religiosity; a theist of “over-beliefs” and experience who belonged to no church.
James, physician and psychologist, founded American pragmatism with Peirce and Dewey: an idea is true insofar as it “works,” and the will may rightly believe where evidence is silent. The Varieties of Religious Experience treated religion through personal experience rather than institutions, and his later metaphysics was a “pluralistic universe” with a finite God.
Why he matters: Pius X's Pascendi (1907) and Lamentabili saw in pragmatism and religious “experience” the philosophical face of Modernism, and Fides et Ratio 89 names it; yet his honesty about the religious sense, and Charles Taylor's Catholic re-reading of him, keep him in the conversation.
Where to be careful
Truth as what works is the pragmatism rejected in Pascendi and Fides et Ratio 89; religion grounded in subjective experience and over-beliefs is the immanentism condemned in Lamentabili; his finite God is not the God of Dei Filius; his indifference to doctrine and sacraments is foreign to the faith.
Reading
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PragmatismWilliam James · “Truth is what works,” in its friendliest form.
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The Varieties of Religious ExperienceWilliam James · Religion as personal experience.
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Varieties of Religion Today: William James RevisitedCharles Taylor · A Catholic philosopher's sympathetic critique.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.