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God as Pragmatic Postulate

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An Idealistic Pragmatism

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Abstract

Through some of the ideas expressed in The Varieties of Religious Experience, in the last of the Lowell Institute lectures, and in his essay “The Will to Believe,” William James left himself open to Royce’s translation of his views into absolute pragmatism. In all three places James’s pragmatic characterization of truth as that which works, as that which leads to verification in experience, is utilized in support of the value of religious experience and belief.1 For James himself, of course, the “absolute” remains a finite god. There is no need to postulate a highest being, since all that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do if only it be large enough to trust for the next step.2

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Notes

  1. Note, e.g., in Prag, 192: “On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true…. I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe.” Also, cf. Royce’s doctrine of the Absolute with the characteristics with which James, in “The Will to Believe,” claims a genuine option is endowed, viz., that it be forced, living and momentous. Another pertinent remark of James in this regard occurs in a letter to Mrs. Glendower Evans, from Cambridge, Dec. 11, 1906, quoted in Perry, The Thought…, Vol. II, 474: “There may be an Absolute, of course; and its pragmatic use to us is to make us optimistic.”

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  2. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Random House, Inc., 1929), p. 515.

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  3. PL, 346.

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  4. PL, 376.

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  5. SRI, 157. Note the attribution of the term opinions to the content of absolute truth.

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  6. Cf. Vol. 83, Philadelphia Lectures, 1910 or later, Lecture I, “The Nature and the Use of Absolute Truth” (second copy), 1.

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  7. Ibid., 8.

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  8. Cf. WJO, 237: “We can define the truth even of relativism only by asserting that relativism is after all absolutely true.”

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  9. Vol. 83, Philadelphia Lecture I, “The Nature and the Use of Absolute Truth,” (second copy) 8.

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  10. PC, 311.

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  11. Ibid.

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  12. Ibid.

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  13. PC, 329.

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  14. SRI, 157.

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  15. PC, 357.

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  16. Cf. PC, 358.

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  17. PC, 358.

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  18. PC, 350.

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  19. SRI, 157. Cf. WJO, vi: “As to the defense of the concept of “absolute truth”… I may at once say that “the absolute” seems to me personally not something remote, impractical, inhuman, but the most pervasive and omnipresent and practical, as it is also the most inclusive of beings. “Absolute truth” has therefore a distinctly and intensely practical import.”

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  20. PL, 357. (Italics omitted.)

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  21. PL, 390. (Italics omitted.)

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  22. See Chapter I, section B supra.

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  23. SRI, 20.

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  24. SRI, 19.

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  25. Cf. SRI, 266–268.

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  26. SRI, 25.

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  27. SRI, 41–42.

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  28. SRI, 21.

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  29. SRI, 43.

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  30. SRI, 32.

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  31. Ibid.

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  32. Ibid. Note again the pantheistic strain of thought in Royce.

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  33. SRI, 33–34.

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  34. PC, 318.

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  35. Josiah Royce, “What is Vital in Christianity?” Harvard Theological Review 2 (1909), 418. Hereafter, WVC.

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  36. WVC, 419.

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  37. Cf. PC, 64.

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  38. Cf. PC, 59–61.

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  39. PC, 65.

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  40. Ibid.

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  41. PC, 66.

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  42. PC, 50.

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  43. PC, 74.

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  44. Cf. PC, 94, 95.

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  45. PC, 100. Royce’s mention here of original sin portends what was suggested earlier, that although he intends to keep his reflections within the realm of philosophy he does not succeed in doing so.

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  46. Royce uses both of these terms in describing the Christian idea of redemption in PC, Ch. IV. It is apparently another indication of departure from philosophy into theology.

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  47. Rom. 7:22, 23.

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  48. Cf. PC, 111 and 113.

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  49. PC, 73.

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  50. PC, 165. Actually the empirical rooting of the idea stems not from moral conduct in itself but from man’s consciousness about that conduct. Cf. PC, 110: “Paul’s main thesis about our moral burden relates not to our conduct, but to our consciousness about our conduct.”

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  51. For a more extended treatment than that given here, see PC, Chapter V.

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  52. PC, 180. (Italics omitted.)

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  53. PC, 177.

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  54. PC, 186.

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  55. Cf. PC, 50.

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Authors
  1. Mary Briody Mahowald
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© 1972 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

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Mahowald, M.B. (1972). God as Pragmatic Postulate. In: An Idealistic Pragmatism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2736-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2736-6_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-247-1184-0

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