Epilogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
Summary
Although I do not think that every aspect of James's practical faith is equally plausible or compelling, much less that every aspect of his religious and moral views can or should be affirmed, I confess my admiration for the sheer originality and scope of his philosophical vision. James was among the first philosophers of religion to approach the subject from an empirical and humanistic point of view, though, as we have seen time and again, he resisted any tendency toward scientific positivism or toward what Paul Ricoeur famously called “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” James was also among the first philosophers to develop an anti- evidentialist and anti-foundationalist religious epistemology, rejecting not only the presupposition that religious belief cannot be warranted if it does not rest upon sufficient evidence, but also the presupposition that having religious knowledge requires having infallible and incorrigible religious beliefs. This stance is basic to both his will to believe doctrine and his pragmatic account of religion, and I am inclined to think that James was right (or at any rate reasonable) in holding such a view. But in my view the most innovative aspect of James's philosophy of religion is its attempt to reconcile a commitment to religious realism with what we might call a commitment to religious humanism – that is, to combine a realistic view of the objects of religious belief with the view that human interests and purposes ineluctably shape our conceptions of and manner of relating to those objects. In short, religion is about an unseen order on James's view, but it is also about us and our values.
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- William James on Ethics and Faith , pp. 233 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009