The Role of Religious Experience in American Naturalism

1. The Role of Religious Experience in American Naturalism Dr. Christopher Kirby

2. My General Concern… • Our “life-problem” • knowing ourselves and our place in the world around us. • The Reflexivity of Philosophy • Where is the “I” that knows “me”? • Dialectic • understanding the interplay and unity of opposites • The Allegory of the Cave

3. Why Breaking “INTO” Dialectic? • Breaking the bonds of ignorance and convention? • Yes, but not by transcending (i.e. stepping out of) the world. • Rather, by recognizing one’s immanence (i.e. that one is in and of that world) • How do we do this? • Accident? • Miracle? • Even naturalists often couch this moment in terms of religious experience.

4. Example of a Philosophical Account • Phenomenology & Existentialism • “In moving into the phenomenological [or transcendental] attitude we get ‘nudged upstairs’ in a way that is unique. To move into the phenomenological attitude is not to become a specialist in one form of knowledge or another, but to become a philosopher.” – Robert Sokolowski • Problem with this view? Separation: • Of transcendental and natural • Of subject and object • Of experienced and experiencer. • Hopeful in this view: the possibility of personal growth • Human Becomings, not Human Beings

5. The Basic Tenets of Naturalism • The phenomena of the world have definable traits. • The traits of these phenomena can be understood. • Understanding is always conditioned and perspectival. • Human interaction with the rest of the world, cognitive or otherwise, is active and creative. • Cf. Ryder, John. “Reconciling Pragmatism and Naturalism.” In Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism. Ed. by John R. Shook (Prometheus, 2003) pg. 64 The early American naturalists would have embraced all four, whereas the scientistic, epistemically-centered naturalism of Dennett, Dawkins, et al. would only accept the first two.

6. Nature as Dynamic and Temporal • Universe composed of events, not objects • Transactions between organism and environing conditions • Occur in chorus, not serially • Organic point of view • Greek physis, not Roman natura[Function, not essence] • Yet, religious experience still seen as essential to human condition

7. Religious Experience and Tolerance? • If one inquires why the American tradition is so strongagainst any connection of state and church, why it dreadseven the rudiments of religious teaching instate-maintained schools, the immediate and superficialanswer is not far to seek. The cause was not, mainly,religious indifference, much less hostility toChristianity, although the eighteenth century deism playedan important role. The cause lay largely in the diversityand vitality of the various denominations, each fairly surethat, with a fair field and no favour, it could make itsown way; and each animated by a jealous fear that, if anyconnection of state and church were permitted, some rivaldenomination would get an unfair advantage. • John Dewey, "Religion and Our Schools, The Hibbert Journal, VI (July,1908), 800

8. William James “Radical empiricism consists first of a postulate… that the only things debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms of experience…. The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience.” • The Works of William James. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 17 vol., 1975. – The Meaning of Truth, pp. 6-7 “One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness.” • The Varieties of Religious Experience. (New York: Dover, 2002) pg. 379

9. “What Makes a Life Significant” • Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill's existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anæsthesia as regards Jill's magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill's palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. • The Writings of William James:A Comprehensive Edition. Ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) pg. 645-646

10. John Dewey 3 ways organisms cope with environments Accommodation • Submission to the conditioning environment Adaptation • Changing the conditions to meet one’s needs Adjustment • “There is a composing and harmonizing of the various elements of our being such that, in spite of changes in the special conditions that surround us, these conditions are also arranged, settled, in relation to us.” • A Common Faith, LW 9:12-13

11. Adjustments might be called “religious” • Religious experience need not be tied to a god-concept • Accordingly, the term god should not denote a divine being but rather: • “a unifying of the ideal and the actual” in human development

12. George Santayana “Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.” “How Religion May Be an Embodiment of Reason” “There must need be something humane and necessary in an influence that has become the most general sanction of virtue, the chief occasion for art and philosophy, and the source, perhaps, of the best human happiness.” “How Religion May Be an Embodiment of Reason”

13. None of these engender tolerance • James’s view is too subjective • Truth as a personal matter  philosophical impasse? • Dewey’s view puts too much pressure on educational institutions • Disputes over definition  culture wars? • Santayana’s view is unrealistic • Taking one’s beliefs less seriously not an option for most

14. A way out? • Dewey on Growth • An extension of the growth of nature itself. • Perception and cognition are only different in degree • Reason not over and above nature, but immersed within it. • Not the tenant of a reified mind • A natural part of the transaction between organism and environment • Culture is formalized experience , contiguous with nature

15. Democracy as a Way of Life • … to treat those who disagree - even profoundly - with us, as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends… To cooperate by giving differences a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one's own life-experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life… It is to realize that democracy is a reality only as it is indeed a commonplace of living. “Creative Democracy • – The Task Before Us” [LW vol. 14 pg. 228]

16. A Democratic Being • Seeing the connection of ourselves to the world around us • Reconstituting ourselves • Reconstructing our habits • Naturally breaking into dialect • We are who we are by virtue of the world around us.

17. The End Thanks!