Transcript The Role of Religious Experience in American Naturalism

Dr. Christopher Kirby
 Our “life-problem”
 knowing ourselves and our place in the world around us.
 The Reflexivity of Philosophy
 Where is the “I” that knows “me”?
 Dialectic
 understanding the interplay and unity of opposites
 The Allegory of the Cave
 Breaking the bonds of ignorance and convention?
 Yes, but not by transcending (i.e. stepping out of) the
world.
 Rather, by recognizing one’s immanence (i.e. that one is
in and of that world)
 How do we do this?
 Accident?
 Miracle?
 Even naturalists often couch this moment in terms of
religious experience.
 Phenomenology & Existentialism
 “In moving into the phenomenological [or transcendental]
attitude we get ‘nudged upstairs’ in a way that is unique. To
move into the phenomenological attitude is not to become a
specialist in one form of knowledge or another, but to
become a philosopher.” – Robert Sokolowski
 Problem with this view? Separation:
 Of transcendental and natural
 Of subject and object
 Of experienced and experiencer.
 Hopeful in this view: the possibility of personal growth
 Human Becomings, not Human Beings
The phenomena of the world have definable traits.
2. The traits of these phenomena can be understood.
3. Understanding is always conditioned and
perspectival.
4. Human interaction with the rest of the world,
cognitive or otherwise, is active and creative.
1.
 Cf. Ryder, John. “Reconciling Pragmatism and Naturalism.” In Pragmatic
Naturalism and Realism. Ed. by John R. Shook (Prometheus, 2003) pg. 64
The early American naturalists would have embraced all
four, whereas the scientistic, epistemically-centered
naturalism of Dennett, Dawkins, et al. would only
accept the first two.
 Universe composed of events, not objects
 Transactions between organism and environing
conditions
 Occur in chorus, not serially
 Organic point of view
 Greek physis, not Roman natura [Function, not essence]
 Yet, religious experience still seen as essential to
human condition
 If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong
against any connection of state and church, why it dreads
even the rudiments of religious teaching in state-maintained
schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not far to
seek. The cause was not, mainly, religious indifference, much
less hostility to Christianity, although the eighteenth century
deism played an important role. The cause lay largely in the
diversity and vitality of the various denominations, each fairly
sure that, with a fair field and no favour, it could make its own
way; and each animated by a jealous fear that, if any
connection of state and church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
 John Dewey, "Religion and Our Schools, The Hibbert Journal, VI (July, 1908),
800
William James
•“Radical empiricism consists first of a
postulate… that the only things debatable
among philosophers shall be things
definable in terms of experience…. The
generalized conclusion is that therefore
the parts of experience hold together from
next to next by relations that are
themselves parts of experience.”
•
The Works of William James. Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press, 17 vol., 1975. – The Meaning of
Truth, pp. 6-7
•“One may say truly, I think, that personal
religious experience has its root and centre
in mystical states of consciousness.”
•
The Varieties of Religious Experience. (New York: Dover,
2002) pg. 379
 Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and
perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers
are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the
absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight
into the nature of Jill's existence, as a fact? Is he in excess,
being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being
victims of a pathological anæsthesia as regards Jill's magical
importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the
profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill's palpitating little
life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of
this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest
of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and
we do not.
 The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition. Ed. John J.
McDermott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) pg. 645646
John Dewey
•3 ways organisms cope with
environments
•Accommodation
•
Submission to the conditioning
environment
•Adaptation
•
Changing the conditions to meet
one’s needs
•Adjustment
•
“There is a composing and
harmonizing of the various
elements of our being such that, in
spite of changes in the special
conditions that surround us, these
conditions are also arranged,
settled, in relation to us.”
•
A Common Faith, LW 9:12-13
 Religious experience need not be tied to a god-concept
 Accordingly, the term god should not denote a divine
being but rather:
 “a unifying of the ideal and the actual” in human
development
George Santayana
•“Each religion, so dear to those whose
life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so
necessary a function in the society that
has adopted it, necessarily contradicts
every other religion, and probably
contradicts itself.”
“How Religion May Be an
Embodiment of Reason”
•“There must need be something
humane and necessary in an influence
that has become the most general
sanction of virtue, the chief occasion
for art and philosophy, and the source,
perhaps, of the best human happiness.”
“How Religion May Be an
Embodiment of Reason”
 James’s view is too subjective
 Truth as a personal matter  philosophical impasse?
 Dewey’s view puts too much pressure on educational
institutions
 Disputes over definition  culture wars?
 Santayana’s view is unrealistic
 Taking one’s beliefs less seriously not an option for most
 Dewey on Growth
 An extension of the growth of nature itself.
 Perception and cognition are only different in degree
 Reason not over and above nature, but immersed
within it.
 Not the tenant of a reified mind
 A natural part of the transaction between organism and
environment
 Culture is formalized experience , contiguous with
nature
 … to treat those who disagree - even profoundly - with
us, as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as
friends… To cooperate by giving differences a chance to
show themselves because of the belief that the
expression of difference is not only a right of the other
persons but is a means of enriching one's own lifeexperience, is inherent in the democratic personal way
of life… It is to realize that democracy is a reality only
as it is indeed a commonplace of living. “Creative
Democracy
 – The Task Before Us” [LW vol. 14 pg. 228]
 Seeing the connection of ourselves to the world
around us
 Reconstituting ourselves
 Reconstructing our habits
 Naturally breaking into dialect
 We are who we are by virtue of the world around us.
Thanks!