William James and a Science of Religions

William James and a Science of Religions PDF

Author: Wayne Proudfoot

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2004-08-04

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 0231506945

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The "science of religion" is an important element in the interpretation of William James's work and in the methodology of the study of religion. An authority on pragmatism and the philosophy of religion, Wayne Proudfoot and a stellar group of contributors from a variety of disciplines including religion, philosophy, psychology, and history, bring innovative perspectives to James's work. Each contributor focuses on a specific theme in The Varieties of Religious Experience and suggests how James's treatment of that theme can fruitfully be brought to bear, sometimes with revisions or extensions, on current debate about religious experience.

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature PDF

Author: William James

Publisher: Xist Publishing

Published: 2015-09-04

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1681950898

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The Best Nonfiction Masterpiece of the 20th Century? “There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.” - William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is not a book about a specific religion. The author, psychologist Williams James does not try to convince the reader one religion is better than the other. He doesn’t even make a case for atheism and the scientific approach. The book is in fact about human nature and how we experience religion at a psychological level. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes

The Varieties of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience PDF

Author: William James

Publisher: Modern Library

Published: 1902

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13:

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"The Varieties of Religious Experience is certainly the most notable of all books in the field of the psychology of religion and probably destined to be the most influential [one] written on religion in the twentieth century," said Walter Houston Clark in Psychology Today. The book was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in June 1902. Reflecting the pluralistic views of psychologist-turned-philosopher William James, it posits that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life. James's discussion of conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hope of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter--as well as his observations on the religious experiences of such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Whitman, Emerson, Luther, Tolstoy, and others--all support his thesis. "James's characteristic humor, his ability to put down the pretentious and to be unpretentious, and his willingness to take some risks in his choices of ancedotal data or provocative theories are all apparent in the book," noted Professor Martin E. Marty. "A reader will come away with more reasons to raise new questions than to feel that old ones have been resolved."

Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science

Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science PDF

Author: Jody Azzouni

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1134593430

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Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: in what sense, and of what, does science provide knowledge? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Can the language of science be used to adequately describe the truth? In this book, Jody Azziouni investigates the technology of science - the actual forging and exploiting of causal links, between ourselves and what we endeavor to know and understand.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience PDF

Author: William James

Publisher: The Floating Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 824

ISBN-13: 1877527467

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Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."

William James and a Science of Religions

William James and a Science of Religions PDF

Author: Wayne Proudfoot

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 0231132042

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The "science of religion" is an important element in the interpretation of William James's work and in the methodology of the study of religion. An authority on pragmatism and the philosophy of religion, Wayne Proudfoot and a stellar group of contributors from a variety of disciplines including religion, philosophy, psychology, and history, bring innovative perspectives to James's work. Each contributor focuses on a specific theme in The Varieties of Religious Experience and suggests how James's treatment of that theme can fruitfully be brought to bear, sometimes with revisions or extensions, on current debate about religious experience.

Varieties of Religion Today

Varieties of Religion Today PDF

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2003-11-30

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780674012530

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A hundred years after William James delivered the celebrated lectures that became The Varieties of Religious Experience, one of the foremost thinkers in the English-speaking world returns to the questions posed in James's masterpiece to clarify the circumstances and conditions of religion in our day. An elegant mix of the philosophy and sociology of religion, Charles Taylor's powerful book maintains a clear perspective on James's work in its historical and cultural contexts, while casting a new and revealing light upon the present. Lucid, readable, and dense with ideas that promise to transform current debates about religion and secularism, Varieties of Religion Today is much more than a revisiting of James's classic. Rather, it places James's analysis of religious experience and the dilemmas of doubt and belief in an unfamiliar but illuminating context, namely the social horizon in which questions of religion come to be presented to individuals in the first place. Taylor begins with questions about the way in which James conceives his subject, and shows how these questions arise out of different ways of understanding religion that confronted one another in James's time and continue to do so today. Evaluating James's treatment of the ethics of belief, he goes on to develop an innovative and provocative reading of the public and cultural conditions in which questions of belief or unbelief are perceived to be individual questions. What emerges is a remarkable and penetrating view of the relation between religion and social order and, ultimately, of what "religion" means.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience PDF

Author: William James

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2009-12-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1598530623

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"A milestone in religious thought. . . . James combines a positive approach to religion with a non-dogmatic and thoroughly empirical approach to the religious life. The combination is not only rare but creative." -Reinhold Niebuhr Philosopher and psychologist William James championed the value of individual experience with an eloquence and zeal that placed him beside Emerson and Whitman as a classic exponent of American democratic culture. In The Varieties of Religious Experience he takes on "the very inner citadel of human life" by focusing on intensely religious individuals from different cultures and eras, in order to explore from within how religion enriches human lives. For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes. The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from William James: Writings 1902-1910, volume number 38 in the Library of America series. That volume is joined in the series by a companion volume, number 58, William James: Writings 1878-1899.