Is anyone interested in reading through William James' THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? Is anyone interested in John Fowles?



Hi Gary,
Yes on the James. As for Fowles, didn't he write The Magus or something like that? I read it many years ago and liked it, if I remember correctly.

GARY C. MOORE TO JUD:

I am seriously going to try to get to know more about Tadeuz Czezowski and Tadeuz Kotarbinski.

TO Richard Sansom: You may, to know more about those philosophers, look up

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nominalism_contents.htm
http://www.fmag.unict.it/~polphil/PolHome.html
http://www.fmag.unict.it/~polphil/PolPhil/Czez/CzezEngl.html
http://www.fmag.unict.it/~polphil/PolPhil/Kotar/Kotar.html

TO BOTH:
John Fowles First. A magnificent biography has just come out about him by Eileen Warburton, JOHN FOWLES: A Life in Two Worlds. It thoroughly presents him in an English context Jud may be very familiar with. His later life revolves around Lyme Regis, Dorset, first at Underhill Farm, then at Belmont. Warbuton is a close personal friend and has full access to everyone who knew him and his diaries which I am proud to say are being kept at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The personal enduring center of his life is his 'secret garden' where he finds his solitude which he values tremendously, where he is thoroughly in contact with nature (both English and world wide since he has brought back plants from his travels), which is thoroughly loved by children (see the start of the first chapter "Voices in the Garden"), and which is where the book ends when he scatters the ashes of Elizabeth his first wife, there with his step-daughter Anna Christy.

"For a long time there was silence. Then, from the dense undergrowth, a blackbird burst into song." (461)

Those are the last sentences of the book. When Warburton first met Elizabeth she recognized her as "Alison" from THE MAGUS, "the character I most loved". The author says, "Elizabeth is at the center of the books, as she was of John Fowles' life. There were no publishable novels before her coming. There were none after her going." (xi)

Jud I seriously think you ought to read Warbuton's book. I think it will touch on many wonderful as well as sad but memorable points in your life. I think he was from the generation right before yours. He was born in March 31, 1926 at Westcliff-on-Sea. He was at school at Ipplepen when WWII started. He was a Royal Marine in 1944. At the end of Warbuton's book he is still alive.

Now, I have just really started the book other than looking through it. I thought, like most biographies I would be terribly bored, ESPECIALLY before one got to the points where he became "important" publicly. However, especially because of the diaries, I am entranced straight from the beginning. You will love and feel for his father, Robert Fowles, served in the artillery in WWI, became shell shocked but endured while losing all his friends in battle, stayed after the war in Germany, going to school there, learning German and the love of German poetry, especially Heine, and gained a taste for philosophy also. He especially liked Spinoza, Leibnitz, Charles Sanders Pierce, and William James, and Warbuton has some interesting things to say about the American Pragmatists that will be relevant to the forthcoming discussion of William James and religion. John Fowles favorite philosopher -- I think -- is Sartre!

Stanley Richards is his uncle, a school teacher at Alleyn Court, who constantly traveled over the English countryside with his wife on bicycles, studying nature, learning all the properties and latin names for the plants and teaching all this to John.

You do not at all have to had read Fowles novels to read his biography because his life is also his novel. His memory of objective facts always remained crystal clear, but his personal life was always confused with the fictional character he created of himself. Warbuton says that, with her initial interviews with him, "I confess that I was annoyed when I first became aware of this tendancy in his interviews with me." With interviews, depending on the situation, he replied as he thought the truth "ought to be", as he would like it, in each particular circumstance to the point of deliberately lying if he did not like the interviewer. "Warbuton goes on, "But when Anna Christty, Fowles' step-daughter, wrote me that Fowles was 'playing the god-game' with me, I had to laugh. I learned to feel rather honored to sit listening to the great novelist actually weaving his fictions in my presence. I use the interviews in the biography obnly with caution. But I'm very glad we did them" (xiii).
If Richard remembers, "the god-game" is crucially important to THE MAGUS.

TO Richard Sansom: I must leave now. But if you start THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, tell me how you regard his use of the word "pathology" as to religious experience. Baron Friedrich von Hugel also uses it in THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT OF RELIGION AS STUDIED IN SAINT CATHERINE OF GENOA AND HER FRIENDS and he certainly meant no direct debunking per se. William James talks in detail about the "existential judgement" versus the "spiritual judgment" approach to religion and says the average religious person confuses the two. The first, he says, is legitimate scientific exploration of religious phenomenon and in no way impinge upon the second and is therefore not intended as a threat to it.

Jud, if you have a copy, what do you think? The his a book by Ellen Kappy Suckiel, published by Notre Dame University Press I have only started like everything else, entitled HEAVEN'S CHAMPION: WILLIAM JAMES' S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION and she seems to take her title seriously.

TO EITHER OF YOU: I would love to get a copy of a film, THE MAGUS, and I think a BBC presentation of "THE EBONY TOWER", both by Fowles. Supposedly THE MAGUS Fowles intensely disliked the film even though he wrote the script, but I thoroughly loved it and HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD of a copy on vhs tape, much less DVD over at least a ten year period I have been searching. It starred several of my favorite actors including Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn. Also the same for THE EBONY TOWER even though BBC seems to have released everything else they show on vhs or dvd. It stars LAURENCE OLIVIER as the elderly artist living in France, constantly surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis and seems to have no problem keeping them around, while the narrator constantly blunders creating even the beginning of a relationship to even one of them.

My mind is going. Also, to intrigue both of you into reading or re-reading Fowles books, THE MAGUS is constantly compared in critical literature to the French novel LE GRAND MEULNES by Alan-Fournier (translated as THE WANDERERS in one version) and Charles Dicken's GREAT EXPECTATIONS, both worth reading, but I think

(blasphemy!) Fowles novel is better. But it literally shares one characteristic with Dicken's novel. They both revised their books, Dickens mainly the ending. There is much controversy with both authors as to which version is better.
'Sincerely' Gary C. Moore

Gary. C. Moore:

TO Richard Sansom: I must leave now. But if you start THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, tell me how you regard his use of the word "pathology" as to religious experience. Baron Friedrich von Hugel also uses it in THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT OF RELIGION AS STUDIED IN SAINT CATHERINE OF GENOA AND HER FRIENDS and he certainly meant no direct debunking per se. William James talks in detail about the "existential judgement" versus the "spiritual judgment" approach to religion and says the average religious person confuses the two. The first, he says, is legitimate scientific exploration of religious phenomenon and in no way impinge upon the second and is therefore not intended as a threat to it.

Richard Sansom:

James’ first use of the term “pathological” is about seven pages into the first lecture, and it is used as a term which defines certain behavior (visions, trances hearing voices, etc.) “ordinarily classed as pathological.” Since he is distancing himself here from the common application of that term (from what follows in this lecture) he is merely pointing out that certain odd behavior, or behavior that is out of the ordinary may be classed as pathological. As to the religious value or authenticity that flows from this kind of behavior, it is often the case that it is strengthened by it because of the propensity of “believers” to put much faith in it as a spiritual underscoring and truth-giving evidence. I read his use of “pathological” as simply abnormal.

What interests me in these first few pages is the distinction James points out between what one might call revelational “madness” and revelational religious experience – that is arguably not madness. (i. e. madness = a psychological or physiological pathology) His quotation of Fox, the founder of the Quaker faith, demonstrates the apparent source of Fox’s religiosity as something most would deem sheer madness. (Of course one must also make the impossible determination that Fox had true revelations and not simply very intentional inventions geared to solicit interest in him and his faith. The “mad” preacher, shaman or imam can easily stir up religious passion with lots of blood and angels.)

My question for you Gary, is what your opinion is on how James uses the term existential which he does frequently.

Gary. C. Moore:

At first it seems simple: "What is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, and history?" This is "existential judgment" a deliberate aligning of terminology.

But look at what it is immediately opposed to, the "spiritual judgment": What is its importance, meaning, or significance, NOW THAT IT IS ONCE HERE?" This is a "proposition of value , what the Germans call a Werthurtheil, or . . . a spiritual judgment. . . . Neither can be deduced immediately from the other . . . The mind combinds them only by making them first separately, and then adding them together."

There are actually a number of strange things going on here, hopefully to be clearly illucidated. I think he uses "existential" like Jud would. Jud? It is eliciting straightforward factual information. "Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from NATURAL antecedents." [I am glad you are making me concentrate on this -- it really seems new territory to explore -- like falling through the chinks of an everyday, boring floor into a very dark basement.] He relates this to "the higher criticism of the Bible . . . neglected too much by the earlier church. Under just what biographic conditions did the sacred writers" write? "And what had they EXACTLY in their several individual minds . . . ? These are manifestly questions of historical fact . . ." Fine . . . BUT "one does not see how the answer to them can decide offhand the still further question: of what use should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so DEFINED, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? To answer this question we must HAVE ALREADY in our mind . . . a general theoryas to what the particularities in a THING should be WHICH GIVE IT VALUE FOR PURPOSES OF REVELATION . . . This theory . . . would be what I just called a spiritual judgment. Combining it with our existential judgment, we might . . . dedeuce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth" which either "composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer" or "exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would . . . fare ill at our hands. But . . . a book may . . . be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and deliberate human composition . . . a true record of the inner experiences of . . . persons wrestling with the crises of their fate . . . The existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value; and the best adepts of higher criticism . . . never confound the existential with the spiritual PROBLEM."

Now, I may be reading something not there into this but my first impression it that the existential judgment IS NOT A PROBLEM! ONLY THE SPIRITUAL JUDGMENT IS! because James immediately then says "with the same conclusions . . . some take one view, and some another . . ." This, I think, is exactly the same problem David Hume dealt with when confronting the problems of his specifically culturally induced and particular individual experience he called "common sense", which provided him assurances of identity and causuality, with strict logic which could only provide him extreme Pyrronistic scepticism. Logic, then, could only be a tool -- NOT A PHILOSOPHY ITSELF!!!!! -- that helped define and give internal consistency to INHERITED (LANGUAGE AS CULTURE) common sense that could have no ultimate logical justification. Hume's culture was preserrvation of law and property, Calvinistic inherior examination he turned to his individual purposes, and the desire to put in factual order the facts of history as nearly to how they actually happened as he could which meant being conscious of his own prejudices and accounting for them. However, he knew determining any factuality to history itself was a morass built upon a morass, that is, you had to select which historical sources to rely on WHILE KNOWING THEY WERE FUNDAMENTALLY FALIBLE!!!! Hume could use logic to make REASONABLE judgments that, however, COULD NEVER BE STRICTLY RATIONAL.

What does this mean? It means someone with a radically different traditional cultural bias and different personal experience could, BY EXACTLY THE SAME 'EMPIRICAL' METHOD come to exactly opposit conclusions. This happened brilliantly with John Henry Cardinal Newman. "Materialism" as even Lenin says, but with just the opposit intent, is an obvious common sense thing. But Hume has totally destroyed all grounds for any kind of FOUNDATIONALISM, that is, a real philosophy that anyone and everyone can be FORCED to acknowledge as THE TRUTH!!! Now, Marx argues against the public power of religion to force its FOUNDATIONALIST values and points of view on others because of a number of countradictions in such behaviour. HOWEVER, Marx seems to have absolutely no argument with religion -- in fact, logically, how could he? -- if it is purely private. AND EVEN NEWMAN SAYS RELIGION IS THE OUTCOME OF ONE'S UPBRINGING!!!!!

And I think this is what James has done here . . . initially. Jud? Jud? Jud? Jud? You have an audience here that actually WANTS to hear what you have to say

Jud: I haven't got access to the work under discussion right now . . .

Gary. C. Moore: The William James should be easy to find in a cheap edition. Also, any good English used store -- and what English used bookstore would not be good? -- should have one. They are all going to be the same text though possibly different pagination. If you get a good critical text tell me. I have the hardback Library of America issue that has all of his writings 1902-1910 and notes in the back on the more obscure references in the text, but this is not a critical edition. Having just looked at "Notes on the texts", The Library of America editor, Bruce Kuklick, used William James' annotated copy of the first printing to give a fully authorized edition. The Library of America has issued a paperback version of THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE.

One of the issues here is how really religious William James was? Looking through the other writings in my book that postdate VARIETIES, he never seems to change his mind. All experience is a legitimate field of study, but no experience has more 'authority' than any other experience. Therefore religion as an object of scientific study is very interesting. But to him ANY CLAIM OF MORAL AUTHORITY would not have any separate status or truth-valid claim, but, instead, would simply become part of the already established field of scientific study FOR HIM PERSONALLY!!!!

Now, I need to harp on the Fowles biography also precisely because Alan Scult was so insulting about the boorishness and tiny intellectual capacities and extremely limited experience of Englishmen especially with astounishment at existence per se. I know you already know that is all ridiculously untrue, but what he said, though he never snobbishly bothered to say it, he also meant for everything I said about Hume and Marx. However, this biography is truly a marvel. I almost always am bored by biographies, especially the growing up to be someone worth taking note of. I have yet to finish either of the two main biographies of Hume, and, instead, now use them as reference books only. I am also always disappointed in the little or nothing the biographer does to analyze the growth of the author's thought.

Eileen Warbuton, right off the starting line, uses Fowles own insistence that a writer's biography HAS TO BE INTIMATELY INTEGRATED WITH WHAT THE WRITER WRITES! This is certainly necessary with Heidegger, but even Rudiger Safranski's biography, though very good and better than almost everything else written about Heidegger except Thomas Sheehan, does not come to the level of Eileen Warbuton's biography of Fowles.

Because John Fowles leads a life much more like Shelley and Byron and is the epitome of the super-exciting English intellectual adventurer who does hard experiencial things (he graduated training as a commando officer at just the time the war ended and almost became a professional soldier, being offered a commission in the regular army when everyone else was being de-mobbed -- but while escorting Issac Foot, the Lord Mayor of Plymouth around camp, he mentioned to him the proposal, the Lord Mayor replied, "Well, only a total and utter fool and idiot would even consider a career in the military, if he had the oportunity to attend Oxford University!" So Fowles went to Oxford and studied French, and finally, after ignoring his studies till literally the last minute, graduated with a "second". There are much greater detail to all the stories, evcen the Lord Mayor story -- you find out interesting things about Foot -- but Warburton makes EVERYTHING about Fowles exciting -- and does it with a great deal of intellectual originality and personally worked out methodology -- necessary in dealing with John Fowles!!!) and goes on real physical adventures (he goes as a outdoors expert with another friend from the military with four orinthologists from the north of Sweden to the farthest most extention of Norway next to the Russian border, and has one of his numerous 'astounding experiences' with nature -- another crucial one will occur in Poitiers, France at night -- that became a very important section of THE MAGUS -- if Richard remembers his MAGUS, he knows what I am talking about). As far as I have read, chapter five -- he has just arrived at the Greek Island of Spetsai just like Nicholas Urfe -- Warbuton makes everything about him not only interesting to exciting but brings to life the numerous wonderful, actually marvelous experiences he had that one finds constantly reflected in his books and are what made them bestsellers, something for once in the literary world well desrved. And she does it with a thoroughly critical eye because she is very aware of the 'deceitful' fiction-making aspects of Fowles memory. But read the book and you will find out what I am talking about! And England is portrayed by this American quite lovingly. Re-read the places I mentioned in my first letter.

Also, Richard, the biography is closely related to the themes of William James' THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. One very important point, related to his experience in Norway, is Fowles' dual discovery of French philosophy. He studies and falls in love with Pascal's PENSEES (so have I), and is especially effected by Pascal's TOTALLY SECRET religious experience that he wrote down and sewed up in his sleave, never telling anyone -- remember my statemnt about public and private religion in Marx!! -- and which was discivored only on the day he died when being made ready for burial. Now Fowles' never deviated from thinking himself an athiest, but like William James' -- and this MUST be somewhere in VARIETIES also -- was fascinated with it as an EXPERIENCE. Now, Fowles mainly studied the classic French philosophers at Oxford. Sartre and Camus and Simone de Beavoir were far too new in the late forties to be admitted to the teaching sylabus. On a trip to France, at lose ends and almost penniless, he is hitchhiking. A Citroen stops. It is driven by a millionaire from the south of France with his Communist mistress. They travel around France, and while doing so, the mistress teaches Fowles about Camus (whom he most loves -- I was mistaken about Sartre -- Iris Murdoch likes Sartre) and Sartre (Fowles' best friend back in England loved Sartre and they constantly debated the merits of both philosophers).

Now these wonderful stories -- with much more detail in the book -- may seem TOO fabulous. However, you need to read why Warburton essentially side-tracks all interviews and totally ignores anything else written about Fowles -- and concentrates on the diaries and journals where Fowles writes down his experiences immediately without fabrication it seems. "Without fabrication" because he records the really bad, shitty things he did to people also -- and the journals where he was a total bastard, as school 'head' before the war, as officer in the commandoes, he destroyed. But the actual doing of these things that survived editing by fire is fascinating in the analysis of his growth as a writer.

I cannot emphasize enough, and will not stop till someone breaks down and reads it, the importance of this book. It is about REAL ASTONISHMENT, not the totally bogus Heidegger-kind of Alan Scult.

JUD: These existential description are always informationally impoverished, for it would take from here to eternity to describe even the stalk of the apple — and it would constitute an impossible verbal task, for in the time given to making a start on describing the existential modalities of that part of the stalk where the moment of separation occurred from the parent tree, the rest of the existential modalities of the stalk-body [not even to mention the apple] would have changed, and if the foci of description was transferred to the body of the stalk, the existential modalities of that part of the stalk where the moment of separation occurred from the parent tree would undergo further change, due to the effect of interference from ultra violet, air humidity or dryness etc. and the describer would be back to square one. Human existential description therefore is only a faint inaudible scratching of the surface of actuality and is an impassability. Rough existential thumbnails are the only thing we can ever hope to provide.

Gary. C. Moore: I and David Hume both applaud your very precise statement of "the facts of the matter". Jud: You are right ALL RELIGION has its origins in attempts, [sometimes clumsy — sometimes more sophisticated] to provide explanations for natural occurrences — of course [grimace] if these explanations can be structured in such a manner that the explicator can include some claim that only HE can act as an intercessor between the PITS and the GOD, in order to gain societal status and goods from such an account from a naive hoi polloi longing for the answer to why the volcano erupts so much the better for him [the priest or shaman.]

Jud: An argument could be made out that the Bible/Koran/Torah have a practical and pragmatic value for purposes of revelation, and that the perceived rules of social behaviour that flow from it provide an ethical and moral behavioural framework, which in the absence of any tribal or state civil authority or meaningful system of justice provides an ethical foundation by which chaos can be avoided. If the state is incapable of putting the frighteners on the populace, then often the threat of a houri-less hell fire can. Of course if you get a fortuitous and workable combination of BOTH civil AND religious constraints — as in most western countries — then BINGO! you have absolute control. Offer this analysis model again the present situation in Iraq for purposes of comparison and a stable western [yet highly religious country like say Portugal or Poland.]

Gary. C. Moore: I would rather concentrate, as William James does, not on any possible practical benefits of religion -- I only need David Hume's meagre yet pragmatic estimation for that -- on the pure experience itself. After all, studied and defined in this way, ATHIESTS CAN HAVE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES ALSO as demonstrated by John Fowles.

Jud: This reminds me a lot of Husserl's claim is that whereas one can have an intuitive idea in relation to some project — say the establishment of a large barge converted into a dockside, city centre night club. The details, a mental image of the vessel in its position moored to the quay with strings of fairy-lights, the hordes of customers walking up the gangplank to spend their cash, and the noise of the tills as the cash crashes into the coffers can all be imagined. As he sees it the successful establishment of the project — the actual opening night with the crowds — and the ongoing success of the business was somehow teleologically present in its ideative inception. What is revealed in the success of the project is a realisation, [or even a concretisation of the original idea]. What he DOESN'T mention of course is that if the vessel collided with another ship and sank on the way to its berth, and the whole enterprise ended in complete failure with the loss of an enormous amount of money and possibly lives then THAT TOO could be described as being teleologically present in the inception of the "spiritual" idea or project concept.

Gary. C. Moore: Yes. I have either thought to write precisely about this or have written about it because this is precisely key to David Hume's sense of the accumulation of the 'beefits' of history that can be destroyed if one does not fight to preserve the best.

JUD: He further argues that the inception and success or failure of scientifically based projects works differently, for the inception-work takes place in the historical establishment of the science itself, with the gradual accumulation of proven rules and record of successful experimentation that goes to provide the investigative tools and theoretical entablature upon which the science was founded/grounded and the project initiated. In this similar way David Hume's specifically culturally induced and learned particular individual experience he called "common sense", which provided him assurances of identity and causuality, is based on a scientific appraisal based upon the lifelong observation of the nature and performance of the world around him. For me the scepticism which flows within ME and the similar sort of scepticism which flowed from HIM is not a scepticism which concerns the world in general — but a scepticism which results form observing HUMAN BEHAVIOUR within such a world.

Gary. C. Moore: Reading about the scientific accomplishments in classical Greece and China demonstrates all this knowledge has been found and lost before.

JUD: Bottom line? It is possible to be both an exultant, spiritually fulfilled, optimistic individual as far as the glory of nature is concerned, [as revealed in both of your poetry outputs] . . .

Gary. C. Moore: As also revealed abundantly in John Fowles.

Jud . . . and enjoy the intellectual delights that a contemplation of the cosmos provides, and luxuriate in the exchange of ideas with others of a similar nature, such as we all do on this list - AND AT THE SAME TIME - be an utterly disillusioned, disappointed, disaffected, and pyrronistically sceptical curmudgeon, which old Pyrron would have been proud of too, as far as the GENERALITY human nature is concerned. A logically arrived accommodation with this situation in the way that I believe us three have done - IS OUR KIND of philosophy - OUR WAY of looking at and coming to terms with the world during our all but too short time here.

Thanks Gary - that is thanks for the interest in my view of things. I have actually already outlined my current philosophical "way-station" a few paragraphs up the page. I see my [our] intellectual and philosophical development like the ascent of a mountain [say Everest] we climb for some hours, then pitch camp, rest, and take stock of our situation. Having had a breather and having had a little read and a chat with other climbers who have a different take on things, we shoulder our packs and continue the climb towards the next planned resting point — the next way station. My present way station is that which I explain above and to save time I will cut and paste it here too, for whereas it doesn't go into the details and quote the specific and various routes up the mountain by which Richard, you and I found our way to this resting place, it does I believe sketch in a gouache representation of what the three of us think in very general terms about our mutual Pyrronism and the ways in which we have come to an accommodation with the world through our love of nature and the consolation of philosophy? I would be grateful for both of your views on this question?

If I were asked to put a label on this philosophical way of seeing the world [philosophers LOVE to label philosophical views into philosophical categories] I choose to call it Experientialism, but the name written on the label is of no consequence — it could be called "Logical Accomodationalism" or "Logical Quietism" or any of a multitude or individually preferenced titles.

Here it is again: It is possible to be both an exultant, spiritually fulfilled, optimistic individual as far as the glory of nature is concerned, [as revealed in both of your poetry outputs] and enjoy the intellectual delights [as manifested in the depth of thinking you display] that a contemplation of the cosmos provides, and luxuriate in the exchange of ideas with others of a similar nature, such as we all do on this list - AND AT THE SAME TIME - be an utterly disillusioned, disappointed, disaffected, and pyrronistically sceptical curmudgeon, which old Pyrron himself would have been proud of as far as the GENERALITY human nature is concerned. A logically arrived-at accommodation with this situation in the way that I believe us three have done [by various routes] - IS OUR KIND of philosophy - OUR WAY of looking at and coming to terms with the world during our all but too short time here.

Gary. C. Moore: I would say, Let us do this by examining texts that we all apreciate as an objective and neutral BUT FIXED starting point. And, of course, the texts I choose will be the best ones. Reading Fowles' biography has already stired up a slight interest in my own poetry again other than total disgust and I am thinking, but just thinking, of sorting the ones out that precisely deal with 'astounding experiences' , almost always with specific objects or scenes or events of nature. But then maybe not.

Richard Sansom: Early in the lectures, James makes it clear that he will be dealing primarily with personal versus institutional religion – this is easy to understand since he is a psychologist who is more concerned with personal or subjective human religious behavior than he is in religious dogma, doctrine and history. While I certainly have no problem with this approach, and agree with his reasons, it brings to mind the idea of being born into a religious faith (i. e. and its corresponding belief system) as opposed to creating one out of either whole or partial cloth. In the case of the great “founders” of faiths, Christ, Buddha and Mohammed (the ones James mentions, omitting Abraham and Moses for reasons I think I understand) the cloth was not whole. Buddha came out of the Hindu religious background and practices; Christ from the Jewish, and Mohammed also mainly from the Jewish. All three supposedly had revelational experiences that elevated them above simple believers and followers of a faith. I imagine that there are religious experiences that are completely unique in the sense they have no dependence whatsoever on the system they are born into – and what about those “seers” who are not born into any system, or perhaps an atheistic one? Therefore, unless I have yet to find it, I don’t see James dealing with the differences in these types. If one has a religious experience that is adjunctive to scripture or dogma that is one thing; if it is entirely outside that system, that is another – a distinction I think important. Comments? Since James admits to the confusion or the agreement between the terms “religious” and “moral,” he admits to the inclusion of a secular dimension, or secular partaking of the religious question when it comes to the management of human affairs vis-ŕ-vis the transcendent management from a “divinity.” His applauding of the “Emersonian religion” as demonstrated by the Emerson quotation, demonstrates this. But this brings up the whole question of “morality” as to be distinguished from “religion” in human terms and in human applications. (And recall that he lumps in morality with religion) There are “good men” who do not accept a god; and there are “bad men” who do. “Morality” as he sees it, is bound to be something malleable in the hands of good and bad writers and thinkers, and something tortuously complex in the hands of theologians and philosophers. I think he is wrestling with the line of division between the secular and the non-secular pre- and proscriptions of how men must behave to their betterment. (And all this without any theory of his own since he eschews such theories – thus, the heart of his brand of pragmaticism)

I am forced to think about this line of demarcation between these two – the purely secular and the unquestionably religious take on how we should behave. Getting to the heart of his first few lectures, regarding revelation and the intrusion of the divine on one’s thinking, if they are a “seer,” I cannot think of a secular “seer” unless one might call Freud or Jung or Nietzsche examples. (Perhaps even the Buddha?) Unless we could find such a secular seer who might compete in the world of the fantastic revelations that pave the way for truth and goodness and the right values for living, then such revelations are left to the “religious” ones – and granted, they seem to have more power over the minds of the vulnerable and the innocent and the uninformed (i. e. the vast majority of the population) than do those who might preach what I would call the common sense and practical forms of morality. It seems that the outlandish forms of “truth” that arrive from the “pathological” regions of the mind strike home more quickly, effectively and permanently than do those that rely on the simple arrangements of the facts of life – like those that determine when an egg is cooked, or a bridge stable, or a stomach full. Give me a blessed seer (such as Fox) who can make my day easier and my nights more peaceful in sleep – there won’t be any. On the contrary, I would guess that the more fantastical and frightening the visions of the seer and the preacher, the more I would have terrible dreams and fears that would not leave me alone or give me aid in tending the simple and important duties of my life.

Getting sleepy…..

Gary. C. Moore:  John Fowles is once again relevant to this discussion. An atheist, his main moral value is personal rebellion (not political revolution). However, his male peers, especially his maternal uncle, help his natural love of nature that develops far beyond normal nature loving, greatly illuminating James’ notion that psychopathology in a very intelligent individual is productive of original, developmental action. Fowles makes a religion of nature deliberately made without God and all the following consequences thereof that goes far beyond any cultural influence and relies precisely upon experience unedited by what one should feel but as being able, like the mystics James talks of, of just letting the experience happen to him uninterpreted by any cultural framework other than the purely negative and unrestrictive one of atheism. And, with his atheism not being political in any sense but purely personal as the natural way he feels and responds to all things, then becomes a very positive force that lets things really be what they are. There is no purpose or pre-explanation given to them whatsoever. This then enables him to notice uninhibitedly any activity that becomes associated with it as totally independent of any expectations. Fowles has the ability – when confronted with wild and unrestrained nature uninterpreted – to be always SURPRISED by it! It is with GREAT difficulty he learned to extract this ‘methodology’ to be used in examining human beings, but, when he did, found himself again surprised by the situations he found himself in, many welcomed but some very emotionally confusing and disturbing which, however, being in a free context of methodological atheism, he could extract new understanding even from very unwelcome realizations.

Jesus, if you had not drawn this out of me, I would never have thought of it on my own: An atheist methodology as a phenomenological en-framing that frees experience, at least of nature because nature is that which is MOST without God, to be purely itself. This needs to be more thought through. For one thing, then, we sort of naturally think of other human beings always withy an inherited theological context – and this is precisely the point you bring up next with the confusion of the religious with the moral.

Richard Sansom: Since James admits to the confusion or the agreement between the terms religious and moral, he admits to the inclusion of a secular dimension, or secular partaking of the religious question when it comes to the management of human affairs via the transcendent management from a divinity. His applauding of the Emersonian religion as demonstrated by the Emerson quotation, demonstrates this.

Gary. C. Moore: Please quote. I have not found this yet – or – I did not catch it when I read it.

Richard Sansom: But this brings up the whole question of morality as to be distinguished from religion in human terms and in human applications. (And recall that he lumps in morality with religion) There are good men who do not accept a god; and there are bad men who do. Morality as he sees it, is bound to be something malleable in the hands of good and bad writers and thinkers, and something tortuously complex in the hands of theologians and philosophers.

Gary. C. Moore: I definitely need a quote.

Richard Sansom: I think he is wrestling with the line of division between the secular and the non-secular pre- and proscriptions of how men must behave to their betterment. (And all this without any theory of his own since he eschews such theories. Thus, this is the heart of his brand of pragmatism).

Gary. C. Moore: He does demonstrate the value of psychopathology over normal temperament because a psychopath is compelled to do and create while a normal person does nothing, “the different destinies of the ordinary sluggard and the psychopathic man.” Of course one MUST remember Dr. Hannibal Lecter here. “Thus when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce . . . we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age.”

Richard Sansom: I am forced to think about this line of demarcation between these two, the purely secular and the unquestionably religious take on how we should behave. Getting to the heart of his first few lectures, regarding revelation and the intrusion of the divine in thinking, if they are a seer, I cannot think of a secular seer unless one might call Freud or Jung or Nietzsche examples.

Gary. C. Moore: Nietzsche the Atheist definitely had a religious experience at a Swiss lake (whose name I cannot remember) and there is a bronze plack commemorating his vision of THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA and eternal recurrence.

Richard Sansom: (Perhaps even the Buddha?) Unless we could find such a secular seer who might compete in the world of the fantastic revelations that pave the way for truth and goodness and the right values for living, then such revelations are left to the religious ones, and granted, they seem to have more power over the minds of the vulnerable and the innocent and the uninformed (i. e. the vast majority of the population) than do those who might preach what I would call the common sense and practical forms of morality.

Gary. C. Moore: This positions the difference between conditional and unconditional, or foundationalistic, morality. Hume develops a conditional morality based on feelings, experience, and consequences. The BIBLE is unconditional, dictating what you shoul both feel and do. In fact, in the NEW TESTAMENT especially, even feelings can be sins.
There is also a problem with that I once again discovered in reading a sociological/practical self-help and realization book on death and dying. One of the basic things they all leave out and yet Albert Camus, John Fowles hero, constantly belabored is that if you know death is going to absolutely erase you, then you are perfectly uninhibited in committing any crime you have a desire for. Morality, then, is, at least with Hume, purely for practical living. However, Hume does see suicide as a moral virtue. If death is eminently present however, all bets are off.

Richard Sansom: It seems that the outlandish forms of truth that arrive from the pathological regions of the mind strike home more quickly, effectively and permanently than do those that rely on the simple arrangements of the facts of life like those that determine when an egg is cooked, or a bridge stable, or a stomach full. Give me a blessed seer

(such as Fox) who can make my day easier and my nights more peaceful in sleep, there will not be any. On the contrary, I would guess that the more fantastical and frightening the visions of the seer and the preacher, the more I would have terrible dreams and fears that would not leave me alone or give me aid in tending the simple and important duties of my life.

Gary. C. Moore: I am more and more amazed that I let my prejudices devalue William James. Of course the same thing happened with me and David Hume. Like Hume, James has to be read carefully, but one receives great rewards. I have now got out my GREAT BOOKS copy of James’ THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Just glancing over it, it seems eminently sane. Just because it is old does not mean it is at all invalid.




Richard Sansom:

It might have been noticed that James maintains a healthy distance from “–isms.” IMO, he keeps them at arms length, eying some with a conditional admiration, as the case with Emerson and even Plato. His asides are most interesting and for me, they are certainly the meat of the matter for this book – not who he quotes. As a pragmatist, he looks for results within the domain that is active – be it religion, morality, science or horticulture. Results in the domain of religion are hard to ferret out since they can become confused with other human intentions. Is a man good because he does good acts, or is he good because the results of his actions are efficacious for the broader area of humanity? Or, put another way, is “goodness” some kind of universal state to which one can aspire because it IS good and therefore desirable? Or does it, on the rare occasion, boil out of the human spirit as a unique thrust of some kind of cure-all that is manifestly efficacious as it is practical? These are the questions he seems to be dealing with. As for the visions and other manifestations signaling the “presence of another in our psyche, I believe he sees such phenomena in the context of a scientific and psychological milieu of human behavior, but not to the point (and here is a sort of kind nod to the “believers”) of disavowing the value and verity of the “religious experience.”

But while he is asking these questions, he gives no answers – it is not his mission to do so. A good question, a really good question. is as valuable as a good answer because it makes the reader and the listener probe the depths of the possibilities and that probing is what’s important. I find the same kind of psychological ambivalence in the writings of his brother, Henry – he gives out those complex intertwining of human relations and yet lays out no prescription for who is good and who is right – although I found myself siding with the naive and more undirected characters of his novels -- probably because they, like I, am pin balls in this life! This all sounds like what I have taken from James (both brothers) is moral relativism, and perhaps it is. I cannot find it in myself to latch on to some absolute surety in the matter of what is best for humanity. It is in the hands of moira, and that is not some “god” but rather where the chips fall – as they may.

One thing strikes me as telling in James’ account of what is a religious experience: he says: “There must be something solemn, serious and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious.” Doesn’t this seem a bit telling as to what he personally feels about religion, above and beyond his more erudite and clinical descriptions? After all, he is a human who has an opinion and a feeling about religion as HE sees it. But if I consider the great religious leaders and founders of religion in the past, solemnity and tenderness do not have to have applied – do they? When reading the Quran, or certainly the Bible, one might be drawn to solemnity or tenderness out of their personal interpretations, but not necessarily from the text. When reading the history of the Buddha, neither of these attributes need apply – what needs application is the cold blooded realization (in the case of Buddha) that to exist as a human is to suffer – this is neither solemn nor tender, but rather simply factual and stark. So, we see that James does have a personal stake in all this, or rather a personal take on the deep underpinnings involved. Solemnity, seriousness and tenderness are all states of mind HE associates with the religious experience – but this need not be the case. Surely there can be the Bacchanalian. fun loving, orgiastic, wildness that can be connected to the religious experience, leaving solemnity, seriousness and tenderness far behind as necessary ingredients.

Comments?

Gary, since I am not familiar with Fowles, or with his biography you mention, I have no take on his ideas save those you provide. Above you say his main moral value is personal rebellion – rebellion against what? Since I take morality to deal (though perhaps not exclusively) with human behavior vis-à -vis other humans how does his personal rebellion acquire a moral dimension?




Gary. C. Moore: As with Camus, or rather the earlier Camus from before THE PLAGUE, rebellion is itself the moral value. Rebellion is carried out against every inherited value, the only true value remaining being the purely negative one of freedom. What is the difference from adolescent rebellion? Absolutely none – except it is carried out with a growing knowledge of the drastic consequences, that with the greater knowledge one knowingly must choose if one is going to remain in that stance to the, literal, bitter end as Mersault in THE STRANGER or Caligula in the play, or Camus himself in his early notebooks and THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS. Then the total rejection of all the un-thought-through values of others either ends in death or some of those values go through a fully conscious personal evolution into an acceptable form that makes those values fully one’s own. With THE REBEL and THE PLAGUE Camus begins to take on a very uneasy and partial relationship with social conscience with the realization that, one the one hand, society has the obligation to save lives, while, on the other hand, society has the right to take life in the name of political ideals. Camus had a very compromised political position as a French Algerian who did not want France to give up the French-Algerian culture Camus grew up in and wrote such beautiful essays about. In fact, his accidental death is questionable because this problem had become irresolvable in his life.

The point is, such rebellion, if one persists in living, reaches a practical point where some common values held with others much be adapted to one’s own needs. However, this is dangerous because the choosing of those values on a one by one basis of actual need easily chooses values in fundamental conflict with each other as in “One should do the right thing politically for the Arab Algerians” versus “One cannot give up one’s homeland where all of one’s emotional ties remain.” Camus’ ties were not with the French Algerians but with the landscape of Algeria. So, essentially, he was allied with absolutely no one on the “Algerie Libre!” issue.

Fowles essentially eschews politics. His main moral conflict at the limits of freedom is resolving his relations with other people. Most of the time he can maintain his freedom by disassociating himself in one way or another with others, never committing himself to one person, exactly how Nicholus Urfe starts out in THE MAGUS or the disgusting Clegg remains in THE COLLECTOR or the hero of THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN evolves towards, away from Victorian conformity. Where I am at in his biography, so far Fowles has maintained his rebellious freedom essentially.

Now, he would not have got this far without some sort of adaptation, and his adaptation is savage discipline whether inflicted upon himself or his inflicting it upon others under his legitimate control. It is an adaptation to physical, natural limits, that is, simply to reality as it is. So this really poses no great problem to maintaining his rebellious freedom. He is not at all like Camus . . . supposedly . . . It seems at least he can take England or leave it. It is nature and landscape he loves and he finds that anywhere he goes. That may or may not change later into a fundamental commitment to the English countryside, but we will see.

Right now, in the book, he has an irresolvable problem and a very messy one. He has found the love of his life but does not want the child that must come with her. It is naked selfish self-indulgence meeting the savage limits of immovable reality. He is going to have to make a choice but the choice is clear cut and fully conscious, completely unlike the sorts of choices we make each day fuzzily. He knows what he wants and he equally knows he can not have it that way. And he has completely discarded the grounds of conventional morality, so any choice he makes is going to have to be fully conscious AND TOTALLY HIS OWN CREATION with all of its practical flaws. I know already the final decision will result in a close and loving relationship with the rejected child that is life-long. I just do not like the nasty process of realizing, as it really is in life, when one knows one has to construe one’s principles to mold with an imposed situation that does not come straight from the nature of the beast “man”. It will have to be physically and mentally humiliating to SUBMIT oneself to other’s demands, and I know he will not do so gently, but he will do so. Has he then compromised his only principle of morality, rebellion? We shall see.

This, however, has long ceased to be mere adolescent rebellion because the adolescent just ‘gives in’ to pressure finally and becomes a slave to common morality. Fowles has already gone far beyond that. He has already well demonstrated he does not hesitate to be a nasty and unmoral bastard in order to preserve his objective freedom. But now he is no longer in love with just himself but with another and he has never been THERE before in such a permanent sense.

Richard Sansom:

When you say that he makes a religion of nature, deliberately made without God, for me, a red flag goes up the pole when something is done with deliberate reaction to what one supposedly does not accept in the first place. The word -- deliberately -- is troubling.



Gary. C. Moore: Of course it is. You are perfectly right in your reaction. But – deliberately made without God – necessarily implies one essential premise: NO AUTHORITY!!!! Fowles does not even look at nature as a scientist does. A scientist has to look at nature through lenses of what he ought and what he ought not to0 do. Fowles just selfishly loves it. He has absolutely no compunction against killing birds, for instance, just for the fun of hunting. Overtly, he will change his attitude much later on, but not sincerely. I think he just realizes there is a logical contradiction of sorts between loving nature and callously murdering it – BUT THERE IS NO UNAVOIDABLE LIMIT OF PHYSICAL REALITY TO STOP HIM!! Therefore he equivocates and tries to have his cake and eat it since nothing can FORCE him here to fundamentally change his attitude.

It should be obvious this is NOT a systematic morality, but it would still accord with David Hume’s morality which is based on feeling, sympathy with other human beings’ feelings, and the consequences of one’s actions – the last being most fundamental. If there are no consequences to FORCE him to alter his behavior, he has several options as to action. You and I, definitely not I – I really hate the killing of any kind of animal – except human beings -- may not like the choice of action, but it is his and not ours.

Richard Sansom:

I am envious of anyone who is not jaded by living to the point they cease to be surprised by life in all its wonder and newness.




Gary. C. Moore: I feel the same way toward Fowles. But when you make commitments to compromise your freedom, you pay for them. This is not what your average moralist would say, that is, “The reward of virtue is virtue itself” or some such shit. When the love of Fowles life dies, he, to a large extent, also dies. Rather, When you dance to the tune, you must pay the piper.



Richard Sansom:

The Emerson quote (rather long) begins on the 7th page of the 2nd lecture (Circumscription of the Topic) Of this quote, James says: “Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul, of order, which soul is moral, being also the soul within the soul of man.” Emerson is quite clear to invoke God only as having existence in the heart of a good and just man. Or, put another way, God exists only in the heart of man. Emerson has been called a neoplatonist for good reason since he uses terms like love and justice as reified entities in the universe of which one can choose or not.



Gary. C. Moore: Found it. I have always hated Emerson. I could not get through the quote. But I was delightfully surprised by the Ernest Renan quote! It was wonderful! Jud will love it.




Richard Sansom:

. . . We are left to the vagaries of genes as to the ultimate value and social benefit of the so-called geniuses whose pathologies stand out in such strong relief against the back drop of us common folk.




Gary. C. Moore: In other words, we probably could not stand to be around them personally.






Richard Sansom:

Perhaps the Zarathustra was visionary, and came out of Nietzsche’s “madness” and on the other hand it might be the meandering prolixity of just bad writing – which it is, compared to his other works. One can rant with beauty and rant with jibberish. I know James would include the “vision” of Zarathustra in the context of a religious experience; do you think it really belongs there?





Gary. C. Moore: I agree with you. I can only take bits and pieces myself, and usually as being analyzed by someone else. But religious? Yes, as James’ explains how an atheist can be religious. I think he is quite brilliant here.





Richard Sansom:

You are touching on a point that has always given me a dizzying headache. Why is the awareness of one’s mortality automatic permission for moral laxity? Why should the two be related? It seems to me that this attitude (of freedom that results from being mortal) means that morality has no meaning.




Gary. C. Moore: Morality has no meaning outside physical consequences. Thomas Hobbes goes very thoroughly through that and defines morality precisely as necessary in the face of the physical consequences of death. It stiffens you up, put backbone into you because you know what will happen if you do not adapt. There is no – higher – ideal of morality existing up above the clouds in heaven. It is always hic et nunc. The feelings are physical. The sympathy for the feelings of others is based on physical understanding, and the real consequences are physical.

Richard Sansom: One cannot really base their actions on the imminence of their death since it is not really imminent until it happens.






Gary. C. Moore: I think there is a logical contradiction here, one I have fallen into myself. Death does not exist. All that exists are the physical consequences one knows leads to death. Now, in Kubler-Ross’s five stages of the realization of death, the final stage is peaceful BUT TOTAL apathy. As far as she goes, she makes this perfectly clear. She does note the person who fully understands they are dying AND HAVE ALREADY NECESSARILY GONE THROUGH THE OTHER FOUR STAGES of bargaining and denial and so forth, become indifferent to their no longer ‘significant others’. They die alone. There are moments of beauty they realize, and normally would not notice, precisely because all moments are coming to an end. What Kubler-Ross is dishonest about, and she knows full well happens on the occasion of violent, strong willed individuals, is that this can easily become THROUGH THIS PEACEFUL UNRESTRAINED STATE a time of unrestrained vengeance where one no longer has to fear the consequences of one’s actions.

Richard Sansom: Kubler-Ross wrote a book whose title says it all: To Live Until We Say Goodbye. This means our morality and our behavior is the sole purview of our living person. Death shall have no dominion.






Gary. C. Moore: Death absolutely erases the “purview of our living person”. In only THAT sense it has “no dominion”.

“Doomsday is near. Die all, die merrily!”, HENRY IV, Part One, IV, I, 133.

“How oft when men are at the point of death have they been merry!” ROMEO AND JULIET, V, iii, 88.

“He that dies pays all debts,” THE TEMPEST, III, ii, 136.

“Hector is dead; there is no more to say”, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, V, x, 22.

“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”, JULIUS CAESAR, III, ii, 77.

From a quotations dictionary, not memory obviously. I have read all these plays but recall little from them.

Richard Sansom:

I love James, both his writing style and what he has to say. But then Dewey, Peirce and James are heroes for me. I am amazed at their brilliance.







Gary. C. Moore: I find Pierce intolerable. But I will try out Dewey on your recommendation. What do you recommend?

Richard Sansom:
In the 4^th lecture,

The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness - James begins with a discussion of the relation between “happiness” and religion, and how a love of nature may instill or be connected to a moral attitude. After reading this section, I recalled seeing on TV a few months back, a very unsettling picture: a young black bear, that had climbed into a tree in front of someone’s house, slipped and fell – hitting the earth in an manner that belied what we believe animals possess in the way of balance and grace. The pity I felt for this animal (it was not not seriously injured) far exceed what I would have felt seeing a human experience the same mishap. Why is this? I think it is because we (or at least I) expect nature to be comprised of error free components. Sloppiness, carelessness and mistakes are human failings, and when an animal makes a slip-up, for me at least, it feels painful and quite out of place. Of course I don’t’ enjoy seeing a human fall from a tree either – but neither am I surprised nor especially pitying unless the injury is visible to me and serious. So, in general, this must mean that for me nature, especially in the absence of human intrusion, seems to work well, without “mistakes” and ungainliness. Perhaps this may be one reason why for Rousseau, along with many others of his era, nature is not only balanced, beautiful and bountiful – but also good. And “good” because it has no moral confinement based on religion. Everything nature does is good, and usually done well, if not perfectly.

Just some thoughts…..