Considered one of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century, James’s influential book seeks to shift the emphasis in the study of religion and psychology from the dogmas and external forms of religion to the unique mental states associated with it.
This notable and influential study of the psychology of religion asserts that instead of the tenants of organized religion, we should look to the individual religious experiences as the foundations of religious life. As such, James makes his case with the religious accounts of various well-known thinkers throughout history, applying an analytic clarity to their stories and developing a pluralistic framework that defines the divine as a group of, rather than one single, qualities.
The Varieties of Religious Experience presents readers with an intellectual, rather than emotional, call for both religious tolerance and respect.
The culmination of William James' interest in the
psychology of religion, "The Varieties of Religious
Experience" approached the study of religious phenomena in a new way -- through pragmatism and experimental psychology. The most important effect of the publication of the Varieties was to shift the emphasis in this field of study from the dogmas and external forms of religion to the unique mental states associated with it. Explaining the book's intentions in a letter to a friend, James stated:
"The problem I have set myself is a hard one: first, to defend...'experience' against 'philosophy' as being the real backbone of the world's religious life...and second, to make the hearer or reader believe what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind's most important function."
Drawing evidence from his own experience and from such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Whitman, Emerson, Luther, Tolstoy, John Bunyan, and Jonathan Edwards, "The Varieties of Religious Experience" remains one of the most influential books ever written on the psychology of religion.
