the varieties of religious experience a study in human nature

The second is his understanding of the meaning of religious experience, and religion in general, in human life. The first is James's psychological method for approaching the topic of religious experience. In this discussion of Varieties, I want to examine four general issues. In his Gifford Lectures in Natural Religion, delivered in two series between May 1901 and June 1902, James said little about Royce's latter point but much about the importance of religion to human life. Here he pointed to the array of contending faiths whose sectarian pursuits have resulted in an endless stream of misunderstandings and conflicts.

On the other hand, Royce complained that 'in human history, Religion in proportion to its importance, characteristically appears as amongst the worst managed, if not the very worst managed, of all of humanity's undertakings' (1903, 280-81). Royce noted that, on the one hand, 'Religion, in its higher sense, constitutes the most important business of the human being.' By this he was referring to his conviction that man's present and worldly life, as experience shows it to us, is, even in the most fortunate cases, a comparatively petty affair, whose passing joys and sorrows can be viewed as of serious and permanent importance only in case this life means what it at present never empirically presents to us, namely a task and a destiny that have, from some higher point of view, an absolute value. Shortly after the appearance of William James's volume, The Varieties of Religious Experience, in June 1902, Josiah Royce commented on contemporary religious life at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association. A Study in Human Nature Entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience James Campbell The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003) 14-29

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The varieties of religious experience a study in human nature