The Will to Believe, Human Immortality, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Throughout his writings as a psycholgist and philosopher, William James was preoccupied with questions of religion. Put simply, James wrestled with questions about whether Darwin's theory of evolution and mechanistic, physiologically -based psychology (which he himself had done much to develop in his "Principles of Psychology) were inconsistent with a spiritual view of life. These questions came to the fore for James in the mid-1890s. In 1896, James wrote to a friend: "I am more interested in religion than in anything else, but with a strange shyness of closing my hand on any definite symbols that might be too restrictive. So, I cannot call myself a Christian, and indeed go with my father in not being able to tolerate the notion of a selective personal relation between God's creatures and God himself as something ultimate." (Quoted in Robert Richardson's "William James in the Maelstrom of American Modernism" at 364-365) The book under review is a reasonably-priced edition of two works that James edited or wrote contemporaneously with the letter quoted above. In these works, James delved into religious questions and considered the consistency of a spiritual approach to life with a scientific outlook. The first "The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy" is a collection of nine essays written over a course of seventeen years -- from 1879 -- 1896 together with a Preface. The last of the essays is the controversial essay for which the collection is named, "The Will to Believe" which, James admitted, might better have been called "The Right to Believe." The second book, "Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine" consists of the text James delivered as the Ingersoll Lecture on Human Immortality at Harvard in 1897. James subsequently published this lecture as a short book in 1898. Both "The Will to Believe" and "Human Immortality" predate James's masterpiece in the study of religion, "The Varieties of Religious Experience" (1902). The essays in "The Will to Believe" originated as lectures which James delivered to philosophical or theological clubs at various universities. The book is dedicated to James's friend, the philosopher Charles Peirce, to whom James says he owes "more incitement and help than I can express or repay." I was struck by how many of James's lasting themes had been developed in this relatively early book -- including his pluralism and what he calls in the Preface to the book his radical empiricism. The book illustrates James's efforts to weave together insights from psychology, philosophy, and religion without great regard for narrow lines of professional specialization. The book tries to make a place for and show the importance to life of a belief in transcendent reality. James is far from endorsing any specific creed. In the Preface, James points out that his lectures had been addressed to sophisticated college audiences whose members would be troubled by the possibility of religious f

I can't help but think that the two reviewers from Los Angeles have got it wrong. Their claim seems to be that James allows us to believe whatever we desire despite evidence to the contrary. This couldn't be more wrong. One of James' central ideas is that the rational elements of man can only take him so far, that they can't answer all of life's questions, but this is not to say that we ought to do away with rationality. James argues that we have the "right" to make certain decisions (ones that are not answerable by reason alone) on passional grounds (given certain criteria that he goes into in more detail than I can here). In other words, we're using reason as an important guide before taking a non-rational or passional leap. It is important to understand that this is not restricted to matters of religion and in this regard a bit of an example might be helpful: Is it appropriate to wait for incontrovertible proof that someone loves you before you act to extend yourself and love them in return? Of course not, and I think this is the type of thing James is getting at. So, to conclude, I think this is a truly inspiring read and that James would be as critical of adopting beliefs that have little or no rational basis as our previously mentioned reviewers. But hey, maybe I'm wrong too.

An excellent rebuttal to the intellectualist assault on religion. William James, one of the greatest minds in Philosophy and one of the most important influences in psychology, uses his knowledge and dialectical skill to attack philosophers and scientists who belittle those who choose to believe in God. He defends the belief in God as being philosophically sound, and not the basis for condemnation or belittlement.