William James On The Courage To Believe

Author : Robert J. O'Connell
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2018-09-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780823282814

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William James on the Courage to Believe by Robert J. O'Connell Pdf

William James’ celebrated lecture on “The Will to Believe” has kindled spirited controversy since the day it was delivered. In this lively reappraisal of that controversy, Father O’Connell contributes some fresh contentions: that James’ argument should be viewed against his indebtedness to Pascal and Renouvier; that it works primarily to validate our “over-beliefs” ; and most surprising perhaps, that James envisages our “passional nature” as intervening, not after, but before and throughout, our intellectual weighing of the evidence for belief.

Author : William James
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 1896
Category : Belief and doubt
ISBN : HARVARD:32044017068255

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The Will to Believe by William James Pdf

Author : Paul Jerome Croce
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 080784506X

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Science and Religion in the Era of William James: Eclipse of certainty, 1820-1880 by Paul Jerome Croce Pdf

In this cultural biography, Paul Croce investigates the contexts surrounding the early intellectual development of American philosopher William James (1842-1910). Croce places the young James at the center of key scientific and religious debates in Americ

Author : H. Rydenfelt,S. Pihlström
Publisher : Springer
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2013-06-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781137317353

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William James on Religion by H. Rydenfelt,S. Pihlström Pdf

A team of international experts present a collection of articles on William James's philosophy of religion and its current relevance. A new look at his philosophy of religion is crucially important for the development of this field of inquiry today.

Author : Charles Taylor
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2003-11-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0674012534

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Varieties of Religion Today by Charles Taylor Pdf

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.

Author : William James
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 82 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 1896
Category : Life
ISBN : UOM:39015026427263

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Is Life Worth Living? by William James Pdf

Author : Robert D. Richardson
Publisher : HMH
Page : 638 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2007-09-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780547526737

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William James by Robert D. Richardson Pdf

The definitive biography of the fascinating William James, whose life and writing put an indelible stamp on psychology, philosophy, teaching, and religion—on modernism itself. Often cited as the “father of American psychology,” William James was an intellectual luminary who made significant contributions to at least five fields: psychology, philosophy, religious studies, teaching, and literature. A member of one of the most unusual and notable of American families, James struggled to achieve greatness amid the brilliance of his theologian father; his brother, the novelist Henry James; and his sister, Alice James. After studying medicine, he ultimately realized that his true interests lay in philosophy and psychology, a choice that guided his storied career at Harvard, where he taught some of America’s greatest minds. But it is James’s contributions to intellectual study that reveal the true complexity of man. In this biography that seeks to understand James’s life through his work—including Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism—Robert D. Richardson has crafted an exceptionally insightful work that explores the mind of a genius, resulting in “a gripping and often inspiring story of intellectual and spiritual adventure” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “A magnificent biography.” —The Washington Post

Author : James C.S. Wernham
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 141 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 1997-06-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780773561175

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James's Will-To-Believe Doctrine by James C.S. Wernham Pdf

In 1896 William James published an essay entitled The Will to Believe, in which he defended the legitimacy of religious faith against the attacks of such champions of scientific method as W.K. Clifford and Thomas Huxley. James's work quickly became one of the most important writings in the philosophy of religious belief. James Wernham analyses James's arguments, discusses his relation to Pascal and Renouvier, and considers the interpretations, and misinterpretations, of James's major critics. Wernham shows convincingly that James was unaware of many destructive ambiguitities in his own doctrines and arguments, although clear and consistent in his view that our obligation to believe in theism is not a moral but a prudential obligation -- a foolish-not-to-believe doctrine, rather than a not-immoral-to-believe one. Wernham also shows that the doctrine is best read as affirming the wisdom of gambling that God exists, a notion which James failed to distinguish from believing and which, among other things, he explicitly identified with faith. James's pragmatism, a theory concerning the meaning of truth, is shown to be quite distinct from the doctrine of The Will to Believe. In concentrating on a careful analysis of this doctrine of the will-to-believe, Wernham not only makes a major contribution to understanding James's philosophy, but also clarifies issues in the philosophy of religion and in the analysis of belief and faith.

Author : Michael R. Slater
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2009-09-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781139480123

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William James on Ethics and Faith by Michael R. Slater Pdf

This book offers a new interpretation of William James's ethical and religious thought. Michael Slater shows that James's conception of morality, or what it means to lead a moral and flourishing life, is intimately tied to his conception of religious faith, and argues that James's views on these matters are worthy of our consideration. He offers a reassessment of James's 'will to believe' or 'right to believe' doctrine, his moral theory, and his neglected moral arguments for religious faith. And he argues that James's pragmatic account of religion is based on an ethical view of the function of religion and a realist view of the objects of religious belief and experience, and is compatible with his larger conception of pragmatism. The book will appeal to readers interested in the history of modern philosophy, especially pragmatism, as well as those interested in moral philosophy, religion, and the history of ideas.

Author : Krister Dylan Knapp
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2017-03-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781469631257

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William James by Krister Dylan Knapp Pdf

In this insightful new book on the remarkable William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, Krister Dylan Knapp provides the first deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James's psychical research. While showing that James always maintained a critical stance toward claims of paranormal phenomena like spiritualism, Knapp uses new sources to argue that psychical research held a strikingly central position in James's life. It was crucial to his familial and professional relationships, the fashioning of his unique intellectual disposition, and the shaping of his core doctrines, especially the will-to-believe, empiricism, fideism, and theories of the subliminal consciousness and immortality. Knapp explains how and why James found in psychical research a way to rethink the well-trodden approaches to classic Euro-American religious thought, typified by the oppositional categories of natural vs. supernatural and normal vs. paranormal. He demonstrates how James eschewed these choices and instead developed a tertiary synthesis of them, an approach Knapp terms tertium quid, the third way. Situating James's psychical research in relation to the rise of experimental psychology and Protestantism's changing place in fin de siecle America, Knapp asserts that the third way illustrated a much broader trend in transatlantic thought as it struggled to navigate the uncertainties and religious adventurism of the modern age.

Author : Gary J. Dorrien
Publisher : Westminster John Knox Press
Page : 710 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2003-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0664223559

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The Making of American Liberal Theology by Gary J. Dorrien Pdf

In this first of three volumes, Dorrien identifies the indigenous roots of American liberal theology and demonstrates a wider, longer-running tradition than has been thought. The tradition took shape in the nineteenth century, motivated by a desire to map a modernist "third way" between orthodoxy and rationalistic deism/atheism. It is defined by its openness to modern intellectual inquiry; its commitment to the authority of individual reason and experience; its conception of Christianity as an ethical way of life; and its commitment to make Christianity credible and socially relevant to modern people. Dorrien takes a narrative approach and provides a biographical reading of important religious thinkers of the time, including William E. Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Charles Briggs. Dorrien notes that, although liberal theology moved into elite academic institutions, its conceptual foundations were laid in the pulpit rather than the classroom.

Author : William James
Publisher : Read Books Ltd
Page : 29 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2015-12-22
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 9781473365421

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The Energies of Men by William James Pdf

This fascinating text concerns itself with the idea of a person's being able to beat fatigue and make the most of the 'second wind' that succeeds such barriers - barriers that prevent them from being as effective as possible in their various endeavours. The author argues that a "second wind" is a reality in the mental as in the physical realm, and that it can be found and used when needed. This text discusses the stages of fatigue apropos an undertaking or endeavour, and goes on to detail how battling past these 'fatigue-obstacles' can cause a surprising effect: the fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. This book is sure too appeal to collectors of antiquarian literature and those interested in the often surprising capabilities of human beings. William James was an American psychologist and philosopher born in 1842. This book is proudly republished here with a new introductory biography of the author.

Author : Forrest Baird
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 600 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2023-06-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000939880

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Philosophic Classics, Volume IV by Forrest Baird Pdf

This anthology of readings in contemporary Western philosophy focuses on 19th-century philosophers who represent a variety of responses to the issue of their day: whether or not there was a knowable, nonhuman rational order upon which thinking persons could willfully choose to act. The selections are readable and accessible, yet remain faithful to the original works. Accompanying the text are drawings, diagrams, photographs, and a timeline; all of which allow the reader to really study the major philosophical thinkers of the 19th-century: Bentham, Wollstonecraft, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Comte, Feuerbach, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, Peirce, James, and Nietzche. For anyone interested in owning a collection of works from the greatest philosophical thinkers in the 19th-century.

Author : Scott Aikin
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2014-05-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781780936444

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Evidentialism and the Will to Believe by Scott Aikin Pdf

Work on the norms of belief in epistemology regularly starts with two touchstone essays: W.K. Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief" and William James's "The Will to Believe." Discussing the central themes from these seminal essays, Evidentialism and the Will to Believe explores the history of the ideas governing evidentialism. As well as Clifford's argument from the examples of the shipowner, the consequences of credulity and his defence against skepticism, this book tackles James's conditions for a genuine option and the structure of the will to believe case as a counter-example to Clifford's evidentialism. Exploring the question of whether James's case successfully counters Clifford's evidentialist rule for belief, this study captures the debate between those who hold that one should proportion belief to evidence and those who hold that the evidentialist norm is too restrictive. More than a sustained explication of the essays, it also surveys recent epistemological arguments to evidentialism. But it is by bringing Clifford and James into fruitful conversation for the first time that this study presents a clearer history of the issues and provides an important reconstruction of the notion of evidence in contemporary epistemology.

Author : William James
Publisher : The Floating Press
Page : 824 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2009-01-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781877527463

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The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James Pdf

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."