Despite the recent renascence of pragmatism, and the corresponding interest in William James's volume of that name, The Varieties of Religious Experience is generally recognized as James's best-known book. William Clebsch even goes so far as to laud it as “the most famous of all American treatises on religion.” In spite of its renown, Varieties is also one of the most misunderstood of James's works – misconceived by readers in terms of its intended scope and method, its conception of religion and the religious, and particularly, in terms of its place in James's thought. The most common reading of Varieties is guided by obdurate attention to James's reputation as a psychologist and his self-characterization as such early in the text. This interpretation thus concentrates on his categorization of the empirically differentiable varieties of religious experience, leaving philosophical questions about religion to be merely circumscribed, if not circumvented, by these (no doubt valuable) empirical investigations. To read Varieties only in this way, however, is to miss the opportunity to understand more fully the place of religion in James's thought. More importantly, this interpretation also overlooks the philosophical ideas and underpinnings indicated, albeit sometimes obliquely, in his most thorough account of religion.

In this chapter I offer an alternative to these readings – a philosophical interpretation of the Varieties, which, taking a cue from James's shift in the 1890s, is attentive to explanation over mere description. This reading is intent on emphasizing aspects of James's view of religion in the text that are consistent with, and even dependent on, others of his philosophical views, particularly radical empiricism and its formally monistic thesis of pure experience.