William James

William James
The Will To Believe and other essays in popular philosophy

Preclass Notes and Quotes

The Will to Believe

A discussion of reason and logic – will and heart of religious belief vrs empirical methology and evidence of skeptic

“Live” and “dead” ideas or theory as considerable in the mind of an individual

faith is found in action

the skeptic would prefer “to risk loss of truth than chance of error” 26

p27 “Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery though hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?”

a further discussion of the idea of the wager – if we believe and religious faith is truth than we win – if it is not truth than we have not lost. However if we chose not to believe and we are wrong we lose everything.

if we are empiricists or absolutists, would the argument or discussion be relevant?

the idea of “inner tolerance” where we can have a truly “intellectual republic”

p 31 “in all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark”

essentially as none of us can know, foresee, or prove the “truth” of the matter – we must live the best we can and as what we believe to be right

Is Life Worth Living?

A relevant question.

A discussion of suicide as a willful exit to an unjustifiably miserable existence, of polarized perspectives on life optimism vrs pessimism and again the unknown, the leap of faith of religion which can offer a person a reason to live or give them perspective to the scope and transience of their strife. An argument for a battle worth fighting. That is if we decide to make it so. The key to life is in the living. It is up to the liver.

Pessimism = disease, Religion = recovery. 39

James argues that the “nightmare view of life” or the reflective melancholy is centered upon the mental anguish of reconciling the hardness of nature without meaning vrs the reassurance of the reward of a life and spiritual power beyond this earth.

Mentions Rousseau (states of delight in living), mentions Paley indirectly –
“Moral and Intelligent Contriver of the World” 43 he dismisses the use of nature to convince of god in a time when hardness of nature and science prevails –inadequate

the human intellect too well informed to “worship unreservedly”
nature as a “moral multiverse”

history of battles/sufferings for religious belief in France
worth fight and pain to achieve ideal or integrity of spirit
“Life is worth living, no matter what it bring, if only such combats may be carried to successful terminations and one’s heel set on the tyrant’s throat.” 49
kind of revenge/revolutionary mantra

the pain of others preceding us : “does indeed, put our relation to the universe in a more solemn light.”
“are we not bound to take some suffering upon ourselves, to do some self-denying service with our lives, in return for all those lives upon which ours are built?” 50

Definition of faith by James

“a man’s religious faith (whatever more special items of doctrine it may involve) means for me essentially his faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained.” 51

science opposes or vetoes a trust in the unseen or seemingly mystic propositions of faith
but
“our science is a drop, our ignorance is a sea” 54

so basically again as in The Will to Believe we have the right to believe in the unknown – in fact it exists because we believe it – our trust makes it possible – which is leading to his final argument that to live is to make life worth living. To fight a battle is to make it possible to win.

He is also arguing, like Paley and several others, that our ignorance, or lack of knowledge does not disprove what we don’t know or undermine God.

His definition of the counter argument

“We must always wait for sensible evidence for our beliefs; and where such evidence is inaccessible we must frame no hypotheses whatsoever.” 54

inaction is a kind of action (this relates to his essay The Will to Believe” where he discusses that belief is active

“what in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic “thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence” is simply an expression (free for any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind.” 56

spirituality gives a reason to live in spite of:

MAYBE

“not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or textbook, that may not be a mistake.” 59

here is a resurfacing argument of James which could be noted in many self help/success mantras of today.

“often our faith beforehand is the only thing that makes the result come true”

very relatable material about leaping the void – strong message religious or not
refuse to believe – you perish
believe – save yourself

KEY – “you contributed”

“what sort of a thing would life really be, if it only brought fair weather and gave these higher faculties of yours no scope?”

this is really important argument to justify difficulties of life – however I doubt if it speaks to the depressive depth of the mental state of someone suicidal.

He delves into a complex romantic and poetic description of the internal depths of the mind and of belief that is heavily inundated with body and nature imagery 62

“the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists”