Alt Text

HomeTimelineSearch
Show parent replies
willow
i have so many thoughts about this passage
william james, the will to believe, section 4
willowApr 15, 2024
i’m feeling somewhat sympathetic for those who feel the pull of the metaphysical need. how else is one to cope with weakness in the face of monstrosity and no power to overcome the conditions this horrific world is predicated upon? for most it is too much to bear.
willow
entirely contrary to james' point, this is the unpragmatic conservative political consequence of religious belief: it has the power to arbitrarily justify any amount of gruesome pointless suffering and give it cosmic purpose
2 replies
willow
if i were a neoliberal: religion is game theoretically dire because the short term utility maximizing play is horrid in the long run and because it's treated like a private matter but has externalities
willow
also though - i hope people don't get the wrong idea that i support "religious tolerance" or any such nonsense because of this. i'm sympathetic in the sense that i see frail humans confronted by suffering, gasping and flailing for respite, and i feel sorry for them
willow
oh and as a final word - the real issue is that religion in any form simply isn't a "live hypothesis" for me (to use james' jargon). that is of course unless you uses religion in the broad and empty supernatural sense that only the most ardent positivist would object instead of his other definition.
william james, is life worth living
william james, the will to believe
willow
honestly even his most hollowed-out and non-committal versions are far too much for me
willow
alt text backfill
william james, the meaning of truth, the will to believe, is life worth living Consider a poor dog whom they are vivisecting in a laboratory. He lies strapped on a board and shrieking at his executioners, and to his own dark consciousness is literally in a sort of hell. He cannot see a single redeeming ray in the whole business; and yet all these diabolical-seeming events are often controlled by human intentions with which, if his poor benighted mind could only be made to catch a glimpse of them, all that is heroic in him would religiously acquiesce. Healing truth, relief to future sufferings of beast and man, are to be bought by them. It may be genuinely a process of redemption. Lying on his back on the board there he may be performing a function incalculably higher than any that prosperous canine life admits of; and yet, of the whole performance, this function is the one portion that must remain absolutely beyond his ken. come to what is the soul of my discourse. Religion has meant many things in human history, but when from now onward I use the word I mean to use it in the supernaturalist sense, as declaring that the so-called order of nature that constitutes this world's experience is only one portion of the total Universe, and that there stretches beyond this visible world an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive, but in its relation to which the true significance of our present mundane life consists. A man's religious faith
broad. What then do we now mean by the religious hypothesis? Science says things are; morality says some things are better than other things; and religion says essentially two things. First, she says that the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. "Perfection is eternal,"-this phrase of Charles Secrétan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically at all. The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true. 'THE TRUE, to put it very briefly, IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF OUR THINKING, JUST AS THE RIGHT IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF OUR BEHAVING. Expedient in almost any fashion, and expedient in the long run and on the whole, of course; for William James January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and the "Father of American psychology."
willow
but james can't even appeal to the short term lol
william james, the meaning of truth