Some researchers maintain that one of the primary functions of religion is to help individuals develop a strong sense of connectedness with other people. However, there is little research on how a sense of connectedness arises. The purpose of this study is to examine this issue. A conceptual model is developed to test the following key hypotheses: blacks are more likely than whites to affiliate with Conservative Christian denominations; Conservative Christians attend worship services more often than individuals in other faith (...) traditions; people who go to church more often are more likely to receive informal spiritual support ; individuals who receive more spiritual support are more likely to read religious literature and watch or listen to religious programs; and people who engage in these private religious practices are more likely to feel a close sense of religiously based connectedness with others. Data from a nationwide longitudinal survey provides support for each hypothesis. (shrink)

The “Cambridge pragmatists”, Charles S. Peirce, William James and Josiah Royce, are at least in two respects significantly indebted to Kant: first, as von Kempski, Apel and Murphey have shown, with regard to the epistemological issues investigated in pragmatism; secondly, with regard to the various pragmatic approaches to religion, something which has been long overlooked. These approaches are best understood as innovative re-readings of Kant’s postulates of freedom, immortality, and God. Since Hilary Putnam pointed out — in his 1992 book (...) Renewing Philosophy — that James’s essay, “The Will to Believe”, in spite of having received a great deal of hostile criticism, is in “its logic, in fact, precise and impeccable”, James’s thoughts are considered by many contemporary philosophers as particularly inspiring. James’s approach is based on the modern experience of secularism and interprets Kant’s “postulate” as the “option” to believe. A deepening of the debate on the relevance of Kant’s analysis of the horizon of religious hope with regard to human praxis for a pragmatism-inspired philosophy of religion can be expected from a detailed discussion of the thoughts of Peirce and Royce, of thoughts, which, in complex ways, relate to, as well as criticise, James’s individuum-focused interpretation of religious faith. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualism.” Examining the (...) use of the terms “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism” in the first half of the 20th century, in a wide-ranging debate in the social sciences as well as in philosophy, I show that Ryle was not criticizing a straw man, but a live historical position. In the context of this controversy, Ryle’s position represents a third way between “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism,” an option that has largely gone missing in the 21st century discussion. This argument illustrates how history can inform the history of philosophy, and how the history of philosophy can inform contemporary philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The popular mind is deep and means a thousand times more than it knows.It is fitting that the Royal Institute of Philosophy series on American philosophy include a session on the thought of Josiah Royce, for his most formidable philosophical work, The World and the Individual, was a result of his Gifford lectures in the not too distant city of Aberdeen in 1899 and 1900. The invitation to offer the Gifford lectures was somewhat happenstance, for it was extended originally to (...) William James, who pleaded, as he often did in his convenient neurasthenic way, to postpone for a year on behalf of his unsettled nerves. James repaired himself to the Swiss home of Theodore Flournoy, with its treasure of books in religion and psychology, so as to write his Gifford lectures, now famous as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In so doing, however, James was able to solicit an invitation for Royce to occupy the year of his postponement. Royce accepted with alacrity, although this generosity of James displeased his wife Alice, who ranted, ‘Royce!! He will not refuse, but over he will go with his Infinite under his arm, and he will not even do honour to William's recommendation.’ Alice was partially correct in that Royce, indeed, did carry the Infinite across the ocean to the home of his intellectual forebears, although on that occasion as on many others, he acknowledged the support of his personal and philosophical mentor, colleague and friend, William James. (shrink)

The popular mind is deep and means a thousand times more than it knows.It is fitting that the Royal Institute of Philosophy series on American philosophy include a session on the thought of Josiah Royce, for his most formidable philosophical work, The World and the Individual, was a result of his Gifford lectures in the not too distant city of Aberdeen in 1899 and 1900. The invitation to offer the Gifford lectures was somewhat happenstance, for it was extended originally to (...) William James, who pleaded, as he often did in his convenient neurasthenic way, to postpone for a year on behalf of his unsettled nerves. James repaired himself to the Swiss home of Theodore Flournoy, with its treasure of books in religion and psychology, so as to write his Gifford lectures, now famous as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In so doing, however, James was able to solicit an invitation for Royce to occupy the year of his postponement. Royce accepted with alacrity, although this generosity of James displeased his wife Alice, who ranted, ‘Royce!! He will not refuse, but over he will go with his Infinite under his arm, and he will not even do honour to William's recommendation.’ Alice was partially correct in that Royce, indeed, did carry the Infinite across the ocean to the home of his intellectual forebears, although on that occasion as on many others, he acknowledged the support of his personal and philosophical mentor, colleague and friend, William James. (shrink)

Is pragmatism, as focused on a future considered producible by our finite actions, ill equipped to analyze religion (or “Erlösungswissen”, as Max Scheler said); is it unable, as Stanley Cavell writes, to sufficiently explore “skepticism” and negativity? This paper argues that William James succeeds in pragmatically re-thematizing “Erlösungswissen”, and that Josiah Royce—who develops a post-pragmatic, pragmaticist concept of; religion—carefully re-investigates “negativity”, in a Peirce-inspired mode, by focusing on the “mission of sorrow”.