James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture III – The Reality of the Unseen
This Lecture is incredibly rich! And I mean that in the good sense of the word. The letters and comments that James quotes vividly describe various kinds of religious (or quasi-religious) experiences. Part of James’ point is that humans do behave in ways which indicate that people believe in the reality of the unseen. In other words, this is a genuine phenomenon James discusses. What’s brilliant about the Lecture, from my point of view, is the way James weaves actual philosophical views (Kant and Plato, for instance) in the mix. One of the significant things James does through this Lecture is to broaden the scope of discourse on this topic. The philosophical “problem” of the reality of the unseen is not only a problem with religious believers, as Freud would suggest. Rather, there seems to be a common tendency to posit some reality to the unseen. One of the conclusions we arrive at from James’ work is that science would have to be “guilty” of this belief in the unseen just as much as the religious person is.
If we accept this premise, namely, that whether true or not, the general run of humanity acknowledges an “unseen order” to the cosmos, then the criticism of religious belief merely on the grounds of belief in the unseen order loses its punch. Although James we know that by the end of Varieties James has had his thumb on the scales, he generally has a more open and inquisitive outlook with respect to examining religious experience. I’m not sure what Phillips has said about James. I would imagine that in some respects DZ would praise James’ contemplative impulses.