La Rioja, 16 del 09 de 2015.

DEPARTAMENTO DE HUMANIDADES

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE LA RIOJA

JOSÉ JATUFF

The relation between moral and religion in the early thinker of William James: an

historical perspective.

This investigation focuses on one especial aspect of the early thinking of William James,

not sufficiently addressed from a historical perspective: his reflection about morality and

religion, strongly based on personal experiences, on which I find information in his Letters,

and are reflected in his publications The Will to Believe and Other Essays  in Popular

Philosophy (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) y Talks to Teachers on

Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899).

James’ concerns are the same as those of a group of European intellectuals who deal with

the crisis of end of the century XIX and the beginning of the XX. During this time a

“culture of uncertainty” is started by the fall of the antics metaphysical guarantees due to

many criticisms (Neo-Kantian, Positivist, etc.) which undermine the foundations of thought

and traditional ways of life and by the impact of the powerful natural scientific

development (Darwinism). In the absence of those ultimate certainties which sustain a

transcendent world of stable values, the challenge is try to discern ways of comprehension

and articulation not reductive and impoverishing of the experiences that are capable of

containing the complexity of the real as showed by the advance of knowledge.

In this scenario it is forbidden to insist on the validity and legitimacy of the traditional

foundations of values, as stated by Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (very influential in

James’s work) in the only “subjective certainty” of a religious character. James knows how

to oppose to this regressive compulsion (present in many of his contemporaries) the Pathos

of an honest seriousness, who between the opposite attitudes of easy going and strenuous

mood, he does not hesitate to choose the latter. The fight against all forms of relaxation

induced by the lack of transcendent certainty is clearly present in the early period which

goes from his early writings to The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). It is a period

characterized by the pressing challenge of responding to the morbid and existential crises

that perhaps can be characterized as "religious" and whose consequences substantially

affect the moral life. The Bible1 and the Charles Remover’s Essais2 constitute central

readings and intense stimulus for reflection of the religious experiences (mysticism) and of

the “Promethean” question of the liberty.3

At present the interest of this research is centers on the plexus of reflection and experience

of William James, epochal and personal crisis, in which the philosopher explores the

possibilities and philosophical understanding of moral and religious life being free from the

metaphysical constriction. In particular, we are interested in investigating the world of

reading that constitutes relevant material and stimulus for its own reflection. Among the

well-known thinkers in the English language, novelist and historian Thomas Carlyle is,

certainly, a source of greater importance concerning the peculiar "religious" authority of the

hero and faith in an "age without God." Another important figure is Shadworth H. Hodgson

with whom he discussed ontology and maintains a rich exchange of letters. The opportunity

of having access to libraries of the cultural background of northern Britain, such as the

University College Dublin library, will give me the opportunity to deepen the study of these

references and test hypotheses of possible influences on our thinker.

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