volume 19, no. 32 1. Introduction1 august 2019 Henry James Sr. must have cut an unsettling figure. His body was burned so severely as an adolescent that his leg had to be amputated at the thigh. The burns came from playing what he later described as “the then not unusual game of fire-ball,” where kids would kick a flam- ing, turpentine-soaked orb through the streets of his native Albany (James 1884a, 147.n). He spent the next two years bedridden, in agony.2 Between Anarchism and Suicide: Young Henry’s ordeal began — one might even say his intellectual life began — with his own clothes literally engulfed in flames. The event was transformative. In his mature theological writings, Henry Sr. often referred to “an amputated” part of the self, suggest- On William James’s Religious Therapy ing that the soul must undergo therapeutic “mortification” (Habegger 1994, 66), and especially urging readers to remember what he called “the morbid” side of life.3 Of all his five children, William in particular internalized the lore of his father’s pain. Not only did the son emphasize suffering in his own philosophical writing about religion, but he also borrowed specific ter- minology from his father (for example, religion as a balm for “morbid melancholy,” as at VRE 1902, 74, 168, 243).4 The inherited terminology

1. This paper began life as an invited commentary for NYU’s twelfth annual His- tory of Modern Philosophy conference. I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me, and I also thank Cheryl Misak, whose provocative and inter- esting paper provided the subject matter for my commentary. I am very grate- Alexander Klein ful to two anonymous referees for this journal, as well. They both provided careful and perceptive critical feedback. California State University, Long Beach 2. For a full treatment of the accident, including consideration of several differ- and McMaster University ent eye-witness accounts of the fire-ball incident, see (Habegger 1994, ch. 6). 3. In his autobiography he wrote that his “boyhood experiences […] exerted a most unhappy bearing upon my intellectual development. They could not fail to do so in stimulating in me as they did a morbid doctrinal conscience” (James 1884a, 178, italics added). Also see (James 1863, 127, 1850, 32). William James also quotes passages where his father uses the term; see (James 1884b, 57, 61, 78). © 2019 Alexander Klein 4. References to James’s texts work as follows: ERM = (James 1982), This work is licensed under a Creative Commons where the year given is the year of original publication of the referenced ar- ticle; MT 1909 = (James 1909/1978); P 1907 = (James 1907/1975); PU 1909 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. = (James 1909/1977); SPP 1911 = (James 1911/1979); WTB 1897 = (James 1897/1979); VRE 1902 = (James 1902/1985). References to The Correspondence of William James (James 1992–2004) are given as CWJ yyyy, v.p, where “yyyy”

alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide was only a small part of the substantial philosophical debt the son felt true. James’s emphasis on the comforting power of religion is evident he owed his father.5 in passages like this: “When the outward battle is lost, and the outer The melancholic father’s influence might be thought to be of mere- world disowns” a person of faith, her religion “redeems and vivifies ly antiquarian interest. But attending to the father’s influence helps an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste” (VRE reveal a framework that ties together an extensive and unusual set of 1902, 46). And elsewhere, James might appear to claim quite outright philosophical concerns in William James’s reflections on religion. It that the subjective comfort of religious belief is evidence of truth: “the is precisely by failing to understand how these varied concerns are uses of religion, its uses to the individual who has it, and the uses of related to one another, in fact, that one of the oldest and most com- the individual himself to the world, are the best arguments that truth mon criticisms of James has gained traction. Many critics have granted is in it” (VRE 1902, 361). that religious faith might bring comfort to the melancholic, a point Quoting several of the passages just reproduced, Cheryl Mi- upon which James often insisted; but one also finds lurking in his sak has recently put the worry this way. James’s account of religious work intimations that there might be epistemological import to faith’s consolation (purported) therapeutic benefits, and this is where even sympathetic is fine if what we are inquiring into is what would help readers have typically balked. For example, according to (Rorty 2004, this or that person. But it is not fine if we are inquiring 86), James took seriously the (absurd) notion that “supernaturalism into whether there in fact is a God, or a hell or everlasting might be true because it might be good for you” to believe that super- damnation. The consensus [about the capacity of faith to naturalism is true. console] that might arise from the science of religion as In fairness, it is not hard to see why James has been read as en- James conceives it cannot, it seems, tell us about what ex- dorsing what we might call a “wishful thinking principle”: viz., that ists. (Misak 2017, 67) the comforts of religious faith provide evidence that God exists. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, for example, he entertains the hy- To begin with, we must distinguish two different projects James in pothesis that “God is real since he produces real effects” (VRE 1902, fact pursued with respect to religion. The first had a therapeutic aim. It 407). But most of the “real effects” that book documents are subjec- sought to identify the potential practical effects (salubrious or harm- tive, comforting effects stemming from an agent’s belief in God, not ful) of adopting one or another system of value-beliefs. The second effects one would expect if the hypothesis “God is real” were actually project had a theoretic aim. It asked which systems of value-beliefs are epistemically permissible. As Misak frames it, the question whether is the year the cited letter was composed, “v” is the volume number in which the letter appears, and “p” is a page range in the cited volume. God actually exists belongs to this second, theoretic project, a project with which therapy can have nothing to do. Or so she and many com- 5. While his father lay on his deathbed, William James wrote a moving, final letter to him from London (dated Dec. 14, 1882), which includes these lines: mentators have asserted. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present soon will fall In this paper I take issue with the usual estimation of both the rela- and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. All my intel- lectual life I derive from you; and though we have often seemed at odds tive importance and the relationship between these two projects. On rela- in the expression thereof I’m sure there’s a harmony somewhere, & that tive importance — Misak exemplifies a common attitude about James’s our strivings will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating, — so early, so penetrating and so constant has been therapeutic aims when she says it is “fine” if all he is interested in is the influence. (CWJ 5.327) what beliefs would sooth the “sick soul.” But the therapeutic project

philosophers’ imprint – 2 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

is itself richer and more philosophically interesting than readers have educated, despairing audience with which he is primarily concerned recognized. And on the relationship between the two projects — Mi- (WTB 1897, 7) would permit entertaining a hypothesis just in case it sak says James’s attention to believers’ needs is “not fine if we are in- is testable, and not contradicted by available evidence. James devel- quiring into whether there in fact is a God.” On its face that is an emi- oped a distinctive conception of God — what he called the “pluralis- nently plausible thought. James turns out to reject it and, I shall argue, tic hypothesis.” This hypothesis proposes a plurality of entities in the to reject it for good reason. Let me explain. universe, only one of which is God, and the hypothesis is meant to James’s religious writing displays a therapeutic concern for two key contrast with what we would call “pantheism” (James more often uses social problems, I will argue: an epidemic of suicide among educated “monism”). In contrast to this latter view, the pluralistic hypothesis Victorians who worried (he thought) that a scientific worldview left no is meant to be testable in principle, and is underdetermined by any room for God; and also material poverty and bleak employment pros- evidence available now. This purported, in-principle testability would pects for others. James sought a conception of God that would comfort make religious pluralism epistemically permissible to entertain (and his melancholic peers while also girding them to fight for better social so potentially a source of consolation for the educated). And the hy- conditions. Both of these are therapeutic goals. pothesis is self-consciously crafted in such a way as to discourage so- What is perhaps most unique about James’s approach to religion cial and political quietism (and so it is also a potential spur to fight emerges when we consider his treatment of epistemic issues. For material poverty). James takes his suicidal peers to need more than tea and sympathy. While James’s defense of religion is ultimately vulnerable to some They need to be convinced, through rational argument, that religious important objections, this paper seeks to leave readers with two over- faith is epistemically permissible in light of their methodological natu- arching points about his program. First, he actually rejected the wishful ralism.6 That is to say that theoretic success in James’s reflections on thinking principle, and so contrary to reputation, his key vulnerability religion is to be measured by therapeutic success. lies elsewhere. He insisted that any religious hypothesis be in principle Here is James’s argument for the epistemic permissibility of faith, in subject to “experimental tests,” and in fact himself deployed a wishful a nutshell. He often characterizes religious faith as a “hypothesis” (e.g., thinking objection against a rival “monistic” hypothesis. Where James VRE 1902, 359, 402–403, 405, 407, 411– 412, 414). The scientifically finally did have trouble is in clearly articulating just what experimental 6. Marchetti has rightly emphasized James’s therapeutic aims, particularly in tests his pluralistic hypothesis could be expected, realistically, to pass. moral philosophy. But Marchetti, who draws his notion of philosophical But his heart was in the epistemological right place, so to speak, even therapy from Benedetto Croce (Marchetti 2015, 15), denies that James’s philo- sophical therapy employs “arguments [for] trying to convince us about the va- if the substance of his theological ideas contained important defects. lidity of some views set forth by James himself; rather, they are invitations to Second, I suggest that what is of enduring interest in James’s program operate and perform ourselves some change in the way we look and react to the is his strategy for employing philosophical argument as an instrument concepts and experiences that hold a grip on us” (Marchetti 2015, 25, italics original). In contrast, I see James as regarding reason and argument as suit- for combating real world social ills — in this case, melancholy and ma- able tools for affecting therapeutic change in some cases. See the passage terial poverty. The capacity of philosophical ideas for improving so- from (WTB 1897, 39) reproduced on p. 11, below — James asks of the person contemplating suicide, “What reasons can we plead that may render such a cial conditions does not stem from their providing the downtrodden brother (or sister) willing to take up the burden again?” (my italics). I propose with a merely soothing story, on James’s view. For he imagines the that we take James’s words seriously in this passage. He thinks that particu- larly for educated Victorians who fear that a scientific worldview is logically deflated and the despairing as responding to reasons. So whether or incompatible with religious faith, reason is an entirely apt tool for therapy. not one thinks James was successful in defending the permissibility of

philosophers’ imprint – 3 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

religious faith, his strategy of employing rational argument for thera- “nature and society” (James 1850, 40), or as bearing obligations to God, peutic purposes provides his work with lasting relevance. This aspect but not both. of his work has too often been overlooked, especially by his critics. The sense that there is a battle between religion and moral (or I begin with what James’s therapeutic project owes to his father’s political) theory only intensified through William’s own lifetime. But legacy. what is distinctive about the son’s contribution is that he transformed the character of the battle. Where his father’s generation saw a theoretic 2. James’s Therapeutic Project fight over the metaphysics of value, William was more fundamentally William was seven in 1849, the year his father burst onto the public concerned with a therapeutic dispute about whether belief in religion scene as a religious thinker. Henry Sr. had been gaining quiet infamy or in moral theory is more practically beneficial. during the prior years, especially for newspaper articles that advocat- Why did William see a therapeutic dispute at all? He was concerned ed divorce and openly rejected monogamy. The father counted Em- about two different social problems, primarily. He held that moralistic erson as a friend, but even Emerson had been taken aback by Henry convictions pull us towards solving one of these problems quite to the Sr.’s championing of sexual freedom, and of Fourier-inspired utopian detriment of the other; and that religious convictions pull us just the socialism to boot (Habegger 1994, ch. 18). The elder James anchored opposite way. the activist left wing of American transcendentalism, often connecting The social problems were material poverty, especially among his reformist agenda to Emanuel Swedenborg’s Christian mysticism. workers; and emotional poverty (neurasthenia, anxiety, etc.), espe- It is often said that Henry Sr.’s extensive theological writing was cially among intellectuals. Moralist convictions spur us to fight mate- deeply heterodox, which it was (even to Swedenborgians; see James rial poverty, he held, but provide cold comfort in sad times. Religious 1884b, 112). But his writing was animated by a decidedly 19th-century convictions give comfort during emotional turbulence, but encourage vision of the relationship between religion and moral theory. The 1849 political quietism or apathy. James sought to develop a conception of lectures that really launched his career pitted religion against what he God that could satisfy both therapeutic demands at once. This was his called “Moralism,”7 using the latter word in a now-archaic sense. Here fundamental religious question, I submit — a question I will now ex- is a dictionary definition from the era: moralism is “[t]he practice of amine in more detail. morality as distinct from religion; the absorption of religion in mere mo- To get a sense of the first social problem, consider that the opening rality” (Whitney 1890, IV.3856, my emphasis, quoting from the second gambit of the Pragmatism lectures sets Leibniz’s theodicy against Mor- usage). For Henry Sr. and many others in his generation, moral theory rison Swift’s anarchism. Swift was a writer, but above all he was an is not just independent of religious faith. The two are in direct competi- organizer, having led virtually every unemployment protest in Boston tion, so that one can either understand agents as bearing obligations to from 1894 to 1914 (Coon 1996, 70). James quotes sympathetically from a newspaper account (one Swift himself had reproduced) of a worker’s suicide. The worker was 7. “Two doctrines exist in the world, that of Moralism, which affirms man’s right- ful subjection to nature and society; and that of the Christ, or Divine Man, fired from two successive jobs, the second because he was too sick to which affirms man’s rightful subjection only to God; and these two are so shovel snow. An eviction notice awaited upon his return home to his contrary one to the other as to fill the whole earth with the dust and the noise of their contention. Let us enquire to which of them the eventual triumph is wife and six kids. He finished his day (and his own life) by drinking due” (James 1850, 40). carbolic acid (P 1907, 21).

philosophers’ imprint – 4 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

Here is the lesson Swift draws, in a passage quoted by James. Tragic about what we might call emotional poverty. To bring this second social cases like these cannot be problem in focus, consider his discussion of a rather different suicide epidemic10 in his 1895 essay “Is Life Worth Living?” glozed over or minimized away by all the treatises on God […]. These facts invincibly prove religion a nullity. That life is not worth living the whole army of suicides de- Man will not give religion two thousand centuries or clare — an army whose roll-call, like the famous evening twenty centuries more to try itself and waste human time; gun of the British army, follows the sun round the world its time is up. (Swift 1905, 9–10, quoted at P 1907, 22) and never terminates. (WTB 1897, 38)

When Swift says the facts of poverty “invincibly prove religion a nul- lity,” he is primarily making a practical point.8 His goal was social re- luxurious classes now are blind, to man’s real relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently solid and hard foundations of his higher form, and he worried that religious practice engendered political qui- life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, etism. Thus he saw religious accounts of value as competing with his to dish-washing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-build- ing and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames own anarchism, but not (in the first instance) for a correct account of of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their reality — the two were competing for converts who would remake the choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back social and political environment in starkly different ways. into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. (ERM 1909, 171–172) Now James was concerned not just about material poverty,9 but also Concerns about social justice are very much evident in James’s treat- 8. At any rate, James presents Swift’s point as fundamentally a practical one. ment of religion in the Varieties as well. For instance, see his discussion Swift himself may also have intended the theoretic claim that ours must be a of “social righteousness” and the need to fight “for the world’s welfare” godless universe, since no god would allow the evils we routinely read about at (VRE 1902, 277, 283), passages whose significance is emphasized in in the morning paper. But his real target was the God of the philosophers. In- (Bush Forthcoming). deed, here is the opening line of his book: “There is nothing that a religious 10. He cites a figure of 3,000 per year at (WTB 1897, 39). This works out to about philosopher keeps at such a distance as the actual facts of life” (Swift 1905, 4.37 suicides per 100,000 in 1895, the year James published his essay. If the 3), a line James himself could have penned. Swift’s main line of attack was to figure can be taken at face value, it is actually considerably lower than more recount a string of harrowing suicides, all of which are in some way linked to recent rates — for 2014 the National Institutes of Mental Health reports a na- poverty or unemployment, and then to contend that religious philosophers tional rate of 13 suicides per 100,000 (see http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/ simply ignore all these tragedies when they attempt to explain away the prob- publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention/index.shtml). The lem of evil. two figures are difficult to compare for several reasons, though. First, I know 9. For another striking example of his concern with material poverty and social of no good estimates of relative reporting rates for suicide during the two eras. stratification generally, see “The Moral Equivalent of War.” We remember that Second, without knowing James’s source for his figure, I have no way to know late address as proposing mandatory conscription into a manual labor corps whether it includes or excludes any deaths coroners might have marked as because it would provide a peaceful outlet for militaristic sentiments among suspicious, but not as suicide. In part because of the use of suspicious death the young. But James also emphasized a second important benefit — con- diagnoses, data from Victorian coroners’ offices likely underestimated the ac- scription would produce a new generation of elites who would be more tual number of suicides; for such considerations as they relate to the U.K., sympathetic to the fundamentally unfair treatment of working persons, who see (Bailey 1998). In any case, what is important is that Victorians like James “should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain and hardness and inferiority apparently perceived suicide rates as rising rapidly. (My 1895 figure assumes imposed upon them, should have no vacation, while others natively no more an American population of about 68.6 million, which is an estimate based on deserving get no taste of this campaigning life at all” (ERM 1909, 171). He the U.S. Census data for population size in 1900, the earliest year for which continued: such figures are available. I assume a population growth of 1.5 million per The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into year, which was typical at that time. See http://www.census.gov/popest/data/ the growing fibre of the people; no one would remain blind, as the national/totals/pre-1980/tables/popclockest.txt.) philosophers’ imprint – 5 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

This piece focused not on workers but on those he called “reflecting poverty had been a longstanding focus for him, and an 1884 treatment men” (WTB 1897, 39) — intellectuals (like his father and perhaps him- of it is particularly instructive. self as well) who might battle suicidal thoughts stemming from a dark In his “Introduction” to his father’s literary remains that year, the outlook. James thought these intellectuals were pushed to suicide by son drew a distinction between healthy- and morbid-mindedness, a “an uncanny, a sinister, a nightmare view of life [… which produces distinction now more familiar from The Varieties of Religious Experience. a] peculiar unheimlichkeit, or poisonousness.”11 But Swift would have Emotional poverty — best exemplified by the suicide epidemic among been appalled at James’s solution: “my final appeal” for comforting “reflecting men” — is a collective result of many individual persons these morbid-minded souls, he wrote, “is to nothing more recondite who are not able to cope with “morbid melancholy,” a mood that the than religious faith” (WTB 1897, 40). father himself had laid heavy emphasis on. Here is a striking passage The problem of material poverty came to the fore in James’s writing on melancholia that the son quotes from Henry James Sr.’s Christianity: only in the late 1890s, around the time he began preparing his Gif- The Logic of Creation: ford Lectures — the economic depression of that decade, along with When our worthless ships […] go down at sea, what the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, roused him to participate in street shrieks we hear from blanched and frenzied lips peopling protests, to pen a series of letters-to-editors, and to join the nascent the melancholy main, perturbing the somber and sym- Anti-Imperialist League (Coon 1996).12 But the problem of emotional pathetic air for months afterwards! When our children

11. WTB 1897, 41. James famously battled suicidal thoughts of his own as a young die, and take back to heaven the brimming innocence man. His oft-discussed diary entries of February 1, 1870 (“Today I about which our corrupt manhood feels no use for, and there- touched bottom”) and April 30, 1870 (“I think that yesterday was a crisis in fore knows not how to shelter; when our friends drop off; my life”; Perry 1935, I.322–323) have long been supposed to show a James in suicidal crisis. See (Croce 2009) for a careful historical account of how the when our property exhales; when our reason totters on Varieties passage about a “French correspondent” in despair came to be seen its throne, and menaces us with a downfall; who then is as cryptically describing this difficult period in James’s own life. And for more on James’s early crisis, also see (Leary 2015b, a). Thus I am not suggesting strong? [… O]ur ennui and prevalent disgust of life […] that James’s interest in melancholia stems strictly from a fatherly influence. lead so many suffering souls every year to suicide, […] He endured, himself, long and recurring periods of what Victorians called “neurasthenia.” What he owes his father is an initial theoretical framework for drive so many tender and yearning and angel-freighted thinking philosophically about melancholia. natures to drink, to gambling, to fierce and ruinous ex- 12. It is worth a word about James’s political circumstances to help make sense cess of all sorts. (James 1857, 133–134, quoted with minor of his sympathy for figures like Swift. By the time James wrote Pragmatism, alterations at James 1884b, 16–17.n) he had lived through the assassination of two American presidents, notably William McKinley in 1901 at the hands of an anarchist. During the’90s, James Son and father alike both worried that morbid-mindedness can push had been concerned about a crippling economic depression, and was horri- fied at the growth of American imperialism, particularly in the U.S. invasion us, ultimately, to suicidal despair. of the Philippines. There is a long history of mistakenly portraying James as In contrast, when we are “healthy-minded” we feel “life […] tin- an apolitical individualist. But scholars like Deborah Coon very plausibly ar- gue that James was being sincere when he wrote to William Dean Howells gling through us,” as the son puts it; we feel ourselves to be “a match in 1900 that “I am becoming more and more an individualist and anarchist and believer in small systems of things exclusively,” quoted at (Coon 1996, see (Livingston 2016). And consult (Bush Forthcoming) for the view that so- 80, emphasis mine). For another useful corrective to the apolitical picture cial activism played an especially important role in James’s thinking about of James that flourished especially during cold-war era secondary literature, religion.

philosophers’ imprint – 6 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

for whatever evils actually confront us.” Healthy-mindedness is charac- of action,” and to our optimistic sense that we are “a match for what- terized above all by “the feeling of action” (James 1884b, 117). ever evils actually confront us” (James 1884b, 117). But moralism offers This distinction between two moods would come to feature promi- only cold comfort in times of emotional turbulence. As he would later nently in The Varieties of Religious Experience. There James characterizes put it in Pragmatism, for people feeling morbid, “moralism […] refriger- the healthy-minded person as someone “whose soul is of this sky-blue ates the very heart within their breast” (P 1907, 140). At such moments tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchant- we do not want to be called to activism; we “want a universe where ing innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no we can just give up, fall on our father’s neck, and be absorbed into the ill of man or God” (VRE 1902, 73). And the “morbid-minded” person absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea” (P 1907, has more than “the […] intellectual perception of evil, but the grisly 140). blood-freezing heart-palsying sensation of it” (VRE 1902, 135).13 Some James therefore writes of moralism and religion that “what is meat are prone to healthy-mindedness, others to morbid-mindedness (VRE to the one is the other’s poison” (James 1884b, 118). He sees a deep and 1902, 114–115), a mood that can “even lead to suicide” (VRE 1902, 59); abiding impasse. but most of us can flip between them from day to day (P 1907, 141). Readers might wonder whether these three distinctions really James is particularly keen to insist that whatever disposition we might get linked in this way in the Varieties.14 In fact, crucial elements of incline to, however, morbid-mindedness sometimes, eventually, takes hold of us all (James 1884b, 118; VRE 1902, 46; P 1907, 140). 14. An anonymous referee, whom I thank for raising the objection, worries in particular whether the Varieties really portrays healthy-mindedness as engen- Taking stock, then, we have on the table James’s guiding social dering activism in the manner we have just seen in James’s “Introduction” to problems (emotional vs. material poverty); we have his father’s two, his father’s literary remains. It is true that Lectures IV and V in the Varieties open with an initial sketch of healthy-mindedness as a mood exemplified by supposedly incompatible belief-systems (religion vs. moralism); and (among others) Walt Whitman, whose remarkable gift is not activism but an we have a distinction between two moods or constitutions (morbid- “inability to feel evil” (VRE 1902, 75). A Whitman student is quoted as saying that the master writer never spoke ill of any person or nationality, “nor even vs. healthy-mindedness). against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of na- Here is how James links the three distinctions of his “Introduction.” ture, or any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity or death.” If we want to fight emotional poverty we should encourage people to James depicts Whitman’s writing as aiming at “persuading the reader that men and women, life and death, and all things are divinely good” (VRE 1902, adopt religious faith, which can sooth our unheimlichkeit and deliver 76). This sounds awfully close to Panglossian quietism, which contradicts my a sense of “well-being” when we feel morbid-minded; but the cost is reading. But this “inability to feel evil” turns out to be an initial sketch only. James encouraging social and political quietism, which stands to exacerbate goes on to distinguish between “a more involuntary and a more voluntary or material poverty (hence “to satisfy the religious demand is to deny the systematic way of being healthy-minded” (VRE 1902, 78), and the latter blos- demands of the moralist”; James 1884b, 118). If we want to prioritize soms into an activism that harkens back to the “Introduction.” Whereas the involuntarily healthy-minded person is “bent on self-protection by ignoring” fighting material poverty, on the other hand, we should encourage peo- actual evils, for the voluntarily healthy-minded person “higher inner ideals” ple to adopt moralism, which appeals to our healthy-minded “feeling come to “have weighty words to say” (VRE 1902, 79). He describes such per- sons this way: The common penalties cease to deter the patriot, the usual prudences are 13. Crucially for my story, the healthy-minded are portrayed as yearning for a flung by the lover to the winds. When the passion is extreme, suffering pluralistic conception of God (VRE 1902, 113), while the morbid-minded are may actually be gloried in, provided it be for the ideal cause, death may portrayed as desperately needing a monistic God (VRE 1902, 135). See below lose its sting, the grave its victory. In these states, the ordinary contrast for James’s distinction between a pluralistic and monistic God. of good and ill seems to be swallowed up in a higher denomination, an

philosophers’ imprint – 7 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

this framework structure the Varieties as much as the “Introduction.” consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit For instance, before introducing the distinction between “healthy-” of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and “morbid-mindedness” (in Lectures IV–VIII), James prepares the and failing as he is […]. There is a state of mind, known ground by comparing “an abstractly conceived Christian with that of to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to as- a moralist similarly conceived” (VRE 1902, 45) — that is, he compares sert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a a religious with a moralistic attitude. He writes that “for morality, life is willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the war” in that morality is a fight for “objective ends that call for energy, floods and waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what even though that energy bring personal loss and pain” (VRE 1902, 45). we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety, He continues: and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiri- tual birthday. (VRE 1902, 45–46, my italics) The moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so long as this athletic attitude is possible all In keeping with the framework I have been discussing, here James goes well — morality suffices. But the athletic attitude associates moralism with an “athletic attitude” in which we are willing tends ever to break down, and it inevitably does break to wage “war” for our “ideals.” This attitude is clearly meant to prefig- down even in the most stalwart when the organism be- ure healthy-mindedness, which James depicts (using similar language gins to decay, or when morbid fears invade the mind. To later in the book) as helping cultivate a “‘muscular’ attitude” (VRE suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o’er 1902, 81). Here he adds an important point to our framework — not with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest only is there a tradeoff between healthy- and morbid-mindedness, but the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be the former tends to decay into the latter over time, as a matter of hu- man psychology.15 So when finally, mired in morbid-mindedness, we omnipotent excitement which engulfs the evil, and which the human be- ing welcomes as the crowning experience of his life. This, he says, is truly submit to religious consolation, our “will to assert ourselves” actually to live, and I exult in the heroic opportunity and adventure. (VRE 1902, gets “displaced” by an attitude of spiritual surrender. 80) James does not give much detail about what kind of “adventure” the volun- To return now to the 1884 “Introduction,” there is one more distinc- tarily healthy-minded person prefers — canoeing? helping the poor? — but his tion to extract, and it is the most important. James distinguishes be- reference to the pursuit of “higher inner ideals” suggests adventures in good tween two broadly different ways of understanding God’s metaphysi- deeds, not adventures in the woods. What is more, he goes on to call the most interesting form of a “deliberately optimistic” attitude the so-called mind-cure cal relationship to his creation. Monism treats God as nothing but the movement, exemplified by sects like Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science. totality of all that exists, such that each element (including “the Devil, James credits mind-cure with the following “practical” achievements: “The blind have been made to see, the halt to walk; lifelong invalids have had their 15. Michael Slater has remarked that James thinks a theistic way of “overcoming health restored. [… R]egeneration of character has gone on on an extensive pessimism is more complete and joyous” than a naturalistic way of overcom- scale; and cheerfulness has been restored to countless homes” (VRE 1902, ing it, but that James’s “reasons for holding such a view are not entirely clear” 84). We are distracted by the apparent quackery; but to James, mind-cure ex- (Slater 2009, 101–102). My reading provides an answer. James contends that emplifies voluntary healthy-mindedness precisely because it actively seeks to the theistic response to despair is preferable because it is more durable — as a improve practical conditions, including improving physical health. Thus the psychological matter, James thinks the strenuous mood that spurs moralistic Varieties presents a spectrum of healthy-mindeness, with activism increasing good deeds inevitably wanes, for example through the aging of our bodies towards the “voluntary” end. The notion of healthy-mindedness we get in the (“when the organism begins to decay,” as in the passage quoted in the text). Varieties is therefore not a rejection but an enrichment of the older version of The right kind of theistic outlook can sustain our moralistic enthusiasm for this concept from the 1884 “Introduction.” good deeds, James contends.

philosophers’ imprint – 8 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

Christ, the Saints, and we”)16 only has being in virtue of taking part in So how does James propose to resolve the therapeutic impasse I this all-encompassing God. Today we would simply call this panthe- have been describing, between a quietistic but soothing religious out- ism. In contrast, what James calls pluralism treats God as one among look versus an activist but anxious moralistic outlook? The answer, as I many independent elements in the universe. see things, is that James effectively replaced his father’s opposition of James associated monism with academic or rationalistic conceptions religion and moralism with this metaphysical opposition of pluralism of God, and with various Asian religions. He occasionally cited Spi- and monism.19 noza in connection with monism (as at PU 1909, 27), as one would Let me explain how this moves the son towards a solution. He ar- expect, along with Leibniz (P 1907, 18–20); but his most important gued that a monistic approach to God required an all-or-nothing ac- monistic targets were the absolute idealists T. H. Green, Josiah Royce, count of salvation.20 Suppose (with monists) that none of the world’s and F. H. Bradley (as at P 1907, 16, 70), and Hegel (as at VRE 1902, 113). elements have their being independently of any other. If one is saved, In contrast, James associated pluralism with “[c]ommon-sense the- on this picture, then all must be; and if one is not saved, then none can ism, the popular religion of our European race” (James 1884b, 113).17 be. And since God is in charge of everything, he will surely choose to Pluralism offers a picture of a God who is “like a personage in a drama, save, rather than damn, all. Salvation is guaranteed for everyone, on this the lightning of dramatic interest” rather than an encompassing be- view (P 1907, 55, 61, 135), which is a tremendously comforting thought ing. This God is an independent and yet dominant element in the uni- for those “moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of verse — a “primus inter pares” who “it does not take a scholar to love and self and tired of vainly striving” (P 1907, 140). This is what James some- make sacrifices and die for” (James 1884b, 114; also see P 1907, 143).18 times calls the “All-in-All” conception of God (VRE 1902, 112). James’s central move, however, was to contend that the threat 16. This quotation, as well as the pluralism/monism distinction, can be found at (James 1884b, 113). of quietism is endemic only on the monistic, and not the pluralistic 17. Another place where James claims that philosophy and other academic ap- by a majority of our race until the race’s mental constitution change.” The proaches have typically championed a monistic conception of God, while strategy was to link high-minded, Western academicians with the supposedly “common sense” has typically championed pluralism, is his preface to inferior cultures of Asia. One finds a similar argument from supposed racial Lutosławski’s World of Souls (ERM 1899, 106). The distinction between the two superiority in G. H. Howison’s response to Royce (in Royce et al. 1897, 92). conceptions of God also became the focus of a dispute with G. H. Howison Incidentally, the debate between Howison and Royce had taken place in front and other critics (see ERM 183.n75.2) upon the publication of James’s Human of U. C. Berkeley’s philosophical union in 1895; three years later the same Immortality lecture (ERM 1898). In letters and an eventual paper, Howison union would hear James’s “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” contended that James had at best only defended the prospects of there being the lecture that first brought public attention to pragmatist philosophy. On human immortality given the pantheistic view endorsed by absolute idealism. James’s relationship to Howison, see (Perry 1935, vol. 1, ch. 48). So James quickly added a preface to the second, 1899 edition in which he de- clared himself “anything but a pantheist of the monistic pattern,” attempting 19. That James jettisoned his father’s notion that religiosity and moralism are to show that his own defense of human immortality is perfectly compatible deeply opposed is clear from the closing section of “The Moral Philoso- with a pluralistic God (see ERM 1899, 75–76). For more on the Human Immor- pher and the Moral Life,” where we read passages like this: “It would seem, tality lecture, see fn. 28, below, and for further discussion of James’s notion of too — and this is my final conclusion — that the stable and systematic moral a “finite God in a pluralistic universe,” see (Lamberth 1997, esp. sec. iv). universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands” (James 18. That is, James thought it was easy for most European people to be so devoted. 1891, 353). That is not a thought Henry Sr. could have countenanced. At his worst, he argued on racist grounds for the superiority of the pluralis- tic view, which he said one should not reject unless one is prepared to say 20. Terminology note: James used the word “salvation” to mean something much that “the spirit of Europe is all wrong, and that of Asia right” (James 1884b, broader than deliverance from sin — he meant something like, things working out 114). And again on the same page: a monistic God “never can be worshipped for the best. See (P 1907, 137). philosophers’ imprint – 9 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

conception of God. If I espouse monism and believe my fate to be tied substantial oversight. James goes as far as to call it “the final problem up with the fate of everything else, then I hardly have reason to strug- of philosophy” (P 1907, 141).21 gle against the evils I read about in the morning paper — such things are, ultimately, out of my hands. But if I espouse pluralism, I must be- 3. The Theoretic Project lieve there to be at least a metaphysical possibility of piecemeal salva- This brings us back to readers like Misak, Rorty, and others who worry tion — and this is what (James thinks) appeals to the healthy-minded, that James considers the purported therapeutic benefits of religious reformist spirit. Salvation is possible — evils can be overcome — but faith to somehow provide epistemic warrant for claims like “God exists.” only one by one, through real-world protest, organizing, and political Are their worries well founded? reform (P 1907, 139–144). James complained bitterly about the reception of his own “[e]ssay Admittedly, religious comfort is somewhat compromised on a plu- unfortunately called the Will to Believe (it should have been the right ralistic view, because salvation is not guaranteed for anyone. But here to believe)” (CWJ 1904, 10.449).22 There is a long-standing tendency James took his stand. “[T]he chief call for a God on modern men’s part,” to read James as offering “reason to believe in the existence of” God he wrote, is for a being who sees us even when we are struggling, one (Rorty 2004, 87). And yet there is scant evidence that he intended to who offers “inward sympathy and recognition, love and admiration” advance any such argument.23 (MT 1909, 103.n). This is precisely the kind of comfort we can gain Instead, James had likened “God exists” to an underdetermined or through faith in the anthropomorphic God of popular religion, accord- simply unconfirmed hypothesis in science; and just as emotions, like a ing to James (James 1884b, 115). 21. There have been treatments of James’s distinction between healthy- and mor- So here is James’s solution to his therapeutic problem: he argues bid-minded (or sick-souled) constitutions (e.g., Niebuhr 1997, 220, Kitcher 2004, 123–125, Levinson 1981, 108–111, Ramsey 1993, 89–97), of his distinc- that faith in the “common” person’s God — that is, faith in a primus inter tion between religious monism and pluralism (e.g., Niebuhr 1997, 20–21, Per- pares of a pluralistic universe — would enable precisely the sort of dou- ry 1935, II.353–355, Hollinger 2004, 23–29), and less often of the James family tendency to pit religiosity against moralism (e.g., Levinson 1981, 91–94, Perry ble-barreled therapy James was seeking. Such faith offered proscribed 1935, 116, 56–64). But I have not found treatments that connect this set of dis- but real comfort for the morbid constitution, thereby helping alleviate tinctions with James’s interest in curbing suicide (fighting emotional poverty) emotional poverty; and it is premised on the thought that salvation is and in anarchist activism (fighting material poverty), or with the theoretic project I outline below. There is a literature that documents Henry Sr.’s inter- possible, but only if the universe’s disconnected “parts shall do their best” est in social activism (e.g., Levinson 1981, 10–14, Perry 1935, I.28–38). And (SPP 1911, 73). This thought appeals to our healthy-minded “feeling of James’s interest in anarchism and fighting poverty have lately come to the fore in works like (Livingston 2016, Coon 1996). For someone who dissents action,” spurring us to be activists against material poverty. from Coon and Livingston’s portrayal of James as an anarchist, see (Thront- It is not a stretch to say that James’s proposed resolution of this veit 2014, 6, ch. 4, esp. 112–114). Throntveit, Coon, and Livingston all agree, therapeutic problem was absolutely central to his lifelong deliberation however, that James was socially engaged, and concerned about political problems like poverty and imperialism; nothing I say here turns on whether about religion. The final lecture of Pragmatism culminates in a propos- James is properly described as an anarchist in a narrow doctrinal sense, or al along the lines I have suggested (P 1907, 139–142), as does The Va- (say) as a proto social-democrat, as he is characterized in (Kloppenberg 1986). rieties of Religious Experience (VRE 1902, 413–414). That the therapeutic 22. Also see (WTB 1897, 32, 49) on the “right to believe.” problem has been so rarely emphasized in the literature on James is a 23. In his response to a 1904 questionnaire circulated by James B. Pratt, James professed to believe in the “existence” of a personal God who must be “cog- nizant and responsive.” To the question, “do you believe in God” because of “some argument?” James answered: “Emphatically, no” (James 1920, 2.213).

philosophers’ imprint – 10 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

fear of being wrong or even a desire to advance one’s career, can play a “The Will to Believe” was originally given as an address to under- fruitful role in researching an as-yet unconfirmed scientific hypothesis, graduate philosophy clubs at Yale and Brown in 1896 (WTB 1897, 13). so we should feel free to give emotions like our own morbid-minded The piece was apparently intended as a follow-up to an earlier essay desire for comfort a role in religious inquiry. Pace Misak, then, James that James had discussed with Brown’s philosophy club the prior year does countenance attending to believers’ needs when we “are inquiring (Boodin 1942/1996, 207–208). into whether there in fact is a God.” But that is not because believers’ The earlier essay (the aforementioned “Is Life Worth Living?”) pur- needs somehow provide evidence for God’s existence. In the course of sues a therapeutic project: a single life, we simply can get no “coercive evidence” about whether [W]hat I propose is to imagine ourselves reasoning with a God exists (WTB 1897, 27, 79), so we are free to give emotional needs fellow-mortal who is on such terms with life that the only a guiding role in inquiry, just as we do (rightly, according to James)24 comfort left him is to brood on the assurance “you may when researching an as-yet unconfirmed hypothesis in science. He in- end it when you will.” What reasons can we plead that sists that when we shift finally to verifying a hypothesis, the “abstract may render such a brother (or sister) willing to take up intellect” then must act as an “indifferent … umpire” (WTB 1897, 27), the burden again? (WTB 1897, 39) but he thinks that in what we now regard as the context of discovery, emotion should have a rather freer rein. I have defended this read- Here James is not primarily concerned with the desperate workers ing of James’s theoretic project elsewhere (Klein 2015, 2018; cf. Misak Swift would write about — instead, he proposes to help soothe what 2018).25 Here I will focus on how this theoretic project hooks up with he calls the “metaphysical tedium vitæ which is peculiar to reflecting the therapeutic project we have been discussing. men” (WTB 1897, 39). So this is therapy, but therapy does not mean ir- rationalism; James portrays the condition from which “reflecting men” 24. Thus in “The Sentiment of Rationality” James writes: “‘Subjective’ be it called! and ‘disturbing’ to those whom it foils! But if it [sentiment] helps those who, suffer as responsive to “reasons.” as Cicero says, ‘vim naturæ magis sentiunt’ [feel the force of nature more], it is Today it would be controversial at best to suggest that what “would- good and not evil. Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work be suicides” (WTB 1897, 39) most need is rational argument. But right when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be or wrong, James depicts these “reflecting” persons as experiencing in- not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher ner turbulence caused by a commitment to a methodological natural- across the way” (WTB 1897, 77, my underline). Notice his use of the word “form” — James is claiming that sentiment plays a legitimate role in dreaming ism (as we might now call it) that seems incompatible with genuine up hypotheses, not that sentiment provides evidence of truth when we are religious faith. In particular, they think this naturalism is committed to engaged in confirmation. the following principle: “[w]e must always wait for sensible evidence 25. In correspondence, P. D. Magnus asks how my reading squares with James’s reference (in “The Will to Believe”) to a chemist who apparently is not li- with “theories like that of Darwin, or that of the kinetic constitution of matter” censed to have faith in her hypothesis because that hypothesis isn’t momen- which “may exhaust the labors of generations in their corroboration.” James tous (WTB 1897, 15). I think it is clear that this chemist is not meant to repre- is very clear that such long-term scientific research may permissibly involve sent scientific practice at large. The point of the example is to emphasize that faith in an as-yet-unconfirmed hypothesis. So the chemist in “The Will to Be- short-term research may not have momentous consequences — this chemist lieve” is not entitled to have faith in her hypothesis, but that is emphatically is portrayed as pursuing a finite, year-long research project only. Compare not because her hypothesis is scientific. It is because her hypothesis can be James’s treatment of the chemist in “Sentiment of Rationality” whose research corroborated or refuted in the short-term. For more on this example, see be- is even shorter — it only concerns testing whether some wallpaper contains low, p. 15. arsenic (WTB 1897, 79). That research project immediately gets contrasted

philosophers’ imprint – 11 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

for our beliefs; and where such evidence is inaccessible we must frame suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for com- no hypotheses whatever” (WTB 1897, 50).26 In other words, for these munion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is “reflecting” persons, the only acceptable cognitive standards are those to construe the scientific order of nature either theologi- that pass muster in natural science, and science permits no belief in cally or poetically — and what result can there be but in- unconfirmed hypotheses, they think. ner discord and contradiction? (WTB 1897, 40–41) “Is Life Worth Living?” thus offers a more detailed diagnosis of what In short, the “reflecting” persons he is speaking to are committed to fol- is causing the emotional poverty discussed above (in section two). lowing the cognitive standards of science; but these standards seem to These “reflecting” persons are them incompatible with religious faith. James supposes (what seems tied to their senses, restricted to their natural experience; uncontroversial for his epoch) that many of these persons will have and many of them, moreover, feel a sort of intellectual a religious “craving”; and if they do they will inevitably experience loyalty to what they call “hard facts,” which is positively “discord.”27 shocked by the easy excursions into the unseen that other The real theoretic question in which James is interested is the one people make at the bare call of sentiment […]. [T]he crav- he thinks stands to soothe the morbid-mindedness that is “peculiar ing, when the mind is pent in to the hard facts, especially to reflecting men” (op. cit.): whether, given a prior commitment to as science now reveals them, can breed pessimism, quite methodological naturalism, we are permitted to believe that God exists. as easily as it breeds optimism when it inspires religious The threat to such permission stems from the prospect that a belief in trust and fancy to wing their way to another and a better God’s existence, if the belief is undertaken without sufficient evidence, world. […] Now suppose a mind […] whose imagination would violate naturalism’s doxastic standards. The compatibility of reli- is pent in consequently, and who takes its facts “hard”; gious faith with naturalism is the central issue of “The Will to Believe” 28 26. The phrase “methodological naturalism” today connotes a metaphilosophy (Klein 2015), the central issue in the Human Immortality lectures, and that would have been familiar in spirit, but not in substance, to James’s era. an issue of fundamental importance in the Varieties as well. But pace I take the spirit of the position to be that the same epistemic standards that govern the best science govern all areas of inquiry, including philosophy 27. This is a more specific, perhaps more rarefied version of the melancholia and religion (if they are to be epistemologically defensible at all). This is the Henry Sr. had written poignantly about (“When our worthless ships […] go “methodological naturalism” James endorses, and that he takes his despairing down at sea, [… w]hen our children die,” etc.; op. cit.). But it is from his father peers to endorse (Klein 2015). James often defends religion by challenging that William learned to take morbid-mindedness as an important part of life prevailing assumptions about just what principles the epistemic standards to be wrestled with openly and seriously in philosophy, not swept aside as of the best science in fact include. Indeed, the quotation to which this note is some kind of embarrassment. appended articulates a principle he thinks his peers wrongly include in these standards. Thus in this sense of the term, two “methodological naturalists” 28. In the preface to the second edition of Human Immortality, James sums up the could well disagree about the substance of the epistemic standards governing aims of his lecture this way: “But my concern in the lecture was not to discuss the best science. In contrast, today the phrase is widely associated with a par- immortality in general. It was confined to showing it to be not incompatible ticular, substantive view about the epistemic standards in question — in par- with the brain-function theory of our present mundane consciousness. I hold ticular, with the view that science, and by extension philosophy, is exclusively that it is so compatible […]” (ERM 1899, 76, italics original). Here the issue is engaged in a search for synthetic truths using strictly a posteriori methods the compatibility of belief in an afterlife with the basic thesis of “physiological (Papineau 2016), a view that owes a good measure of its influence to (Quine psychology,” namely, that our conscious thoughts are all “functions” of our 1969). I have distinguished James’s view from the latter sort of naturalism in brains (ERM 1898, 79). There is an obvious kinship between this compatibil- (Klein 2008, 2016, 2018). In this essay I employ the phrase “methodological ity question and the issue of whether methodological naturalism is compat- naturalism” in the former, more general sense. ible with belief in God’s existence.

philosophers’ imprint – 12 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

Rorty, Misak, and other critics, James’s theoretic project was simply that is therefore not permissible for a naturalist to entertain. In sharp not to prove that God actually does exist — that question “cannot by its contrast, James writes, pluralism nature be decided on intellectual grounds” (WTB 1897, 20, italics original). is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere giv- The question for the “would-be suicide,” instead, is whether naturalists en, not a mere passion, like love, which views things in a have a “right to believe” (WTB 1897, 32, 49) in God. James, of course, rosier light. It is indeed that, as we have seen abundantly. answered in the affirmative.29 But it is something more, namely, a postulator of new The point of contact between James’s theoretic and therapeutic facts as well. The world interpreted religiously [he means projects is precisely the religious pluralism I discussed in section two. via pluralistic, common-sense religion — AK] is not the To get a grip on this, let us return to the Varieties passage where James materialistic world over again, with an altered expres- entertains the principle that “God is real since he produces real effects” sion; it must have, over and above the altered expression, (VRE 1902, 407). Misak worries that that the “real effects” at issue are a natural constitution different at some point from that just the comfort someone might feel upon believing that God is real. which a materialistic world would have. It must be such But we are now in a position to make better sense of that passage. It that different events can be expected in it, different con- continues this way: duct must be required. This thoroughly ‘pragmatic’ view Only when this farther step of faith concerning [a primus of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by inter pares] God is taken, and remote objective conse- common men. […] It is only transcendentalist metaphysi- quences are predicted, does religion, as it seems to me, cians who think that, without adding any concrete details get wholly free from the first immediate subjective ex- to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the perience, and bring a real hypothesis into play. (VRE 1902, expression of absolute spirit, you make it more divine just 407, italics original) as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. (VRE 1902, 407–408, my underline) Religious pluralism proposes the existence of an independent being who is like a “personage in a drama” — that is, it proposes that God is In this important passage James tells us that monism is effectively a a being whose effects we could observe if we were appropriately situ- pseudo-hypothesis. Only pluralism passes methodologically-natural- ated. This is why pluralism “bring[s] a real hypothesis into play.” istic muster as a permissible hypothesis to entertain, for James. Again, The key contrast, of course, is with religious monism. James’s central the issue is that monism proposes that God is nothing but the total- theoretic charge against this doctrine is that since it regards God as the ity of everything that exists. James thinks it follows that there could totality of all that exists, it is not proposing a universe that would be in principle be no testable differences between a universe where the different in any verifiable way from a Godless universe. His complaint monistic hypothesis is true, and a universe where it is false. That only is that monism is a purely subjective, empirically-vacuous hypothesis pluralism can “free” the religious hypothesis from its origins in mere “subjective experience” suggests that James believed the only reasons 29. For a response to the objection that science only allows us to entertain an one could have for being a monistic theist would be purely sentimen- unconfirmed hypothesis, not to outright believe it, before the evidence is in — an objection Peirce actually raised against James — see (Klein 2015, 77– tal. This is a remarkable charge coming from someone who has so 78, 96–97). often been read as holding that subjective comfort is by itself a good

philosophers’ imprint – 13 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

reason for thinking the hypothesis “God exists” is true. In fact, the very But to the extent that James fleshes out just what thermodynamic absurdity of treating such “subjective experience” as evidence is pre- consequences we should expect to find if God were to exist, the ef- cisely the objection he is raising against religious monism. fects he specifies would not be verifiable in any recognizable sense: In contrast, the pluralistic hypothesis postulates the existence of a “A world with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or particular, divine being in the universe whose actions affect events. If freeze, but we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and we can neither directly observe this being, nor directly observe sur- sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition” (P 1907, 55). James is not prising effects in the universe that would be a matter of course if the naïve enough to suggest that God might reach down and bend the being existed (P 1898, 263–266), then we should abandon the hypoth- second law of thermodynamics. Instead, he seems to think that if this esis. That is to say, the pluralistic hypothesis has empirical content; the universe “burn[s] up or freeze[s],” God might go on to create another monistic hypothesis does not. universe with “the old ideals” still intact. But it is just not realistic to We now arrive at a weak point in James’s theory. For the pluralistic think we ever could detect this effect, since no observer from this uni- hypothesis to have empirical content, there have to be some clear tests verse could ever be in a position to verify the supposed result. we could eventually run to check for expected effects of a pluralistic James obviously does intend his pluralistic religious hypothesis to God. But James is vague about just what sorts of effects we should be be verifiable in principle, even if he has difficulty spelling out what on the lookout for; and when he is not vague, he is unrealistic. such verification would look like. For in other passages he repeats the Let’s begin with an unrealistic passage. In his 1898 “Philosophical idea that this hypothesis can (somehow) be tested, though he retreats Conceptions and Practical Results,” James suggests that if a pluralistic to vagaries in spelling out how these tests might work. For example, in God were to exist, we might expect some concrete thermodynamic the preface to The Will to Believe he writes:30 results (the passage also appears in Pragmatism): If religious hypotheses about the universe be in order at [A]ccording to the theory of mechanical evolution, the all, then the active faiths of individuals in them, freely laws of redistribution of matter and motion, tho they are expressing themselves in life, are the experimental tests certainly to thank for all the good hours which our or- by which they are verified, and the only means by which ganisms have ever yielded us and for all the ideals which their truth or falsehood can be wrought out. The truest our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their scientific hypothesis is that which, as we say, “works” best; work again, and to redissolve everything that they have and it can be no otherwise with religious hypotheses. Re- once evolved. I cannot state it better than in Mr. Balfour’s ligious history proves that one hypothesis after another words: “The energies of our system will decay, the glory has worked ill, has crumbled at contact with a widening of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and knowledge of the world, and has lapsed from the minds inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a mo- of men. Some articles of faith, however, have maintained ment disturbed its solitude.”(P 1907, 53–54) themselves through every vicissitude, and possess even more vitality to-day than ever before: it is for the “science Alluding to the idea of the eventual heat-death of a purely mechanical of religions” to tell us just which hypotheses these are. universe, James goes on to intimate that this process might somehow be altered if a pluralistic God were to exist. 30. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to grapple with this passage.

philosophers’ imprint – 14 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

Meanwhile the freest competition of the various faiths five minutes, others may defy ages” (WTB 1897, 79). He goes on to with one another, and their openest application to life by contrast a chemical test of whether some wallpaper contains arsenic their several champions, are the most favorable condi- with a biological test of Darwin’s entire theory of evolution. The for- tions under which the survival of the fittest can proceed. mer can be done instantly, while the latter “may exhaust the labors (WTB 1897, 8) of generations in their corroboration,” and James’s suggestion is that corroboration of the religious hypothesis might well take even longer. This passage makes the naturalistic claim that only a religious hypoth- Still, I think we must acknowledge that the answer may ultimately esis that can in principle be “verified” by “experimental tests” is genu- be unsatisfying to the anxious naturalist. James’s message is that re- ine. James likens this testability requirement to what we demand of a ligious faith is compatible with naturalism because there is a way of “scientific hypothesis.” Once we formulate testable hypotheses, a kind construing the religious hypothesis — the pluralistic way — as a conjec- of natural selection of ideas can proceed, where only “the fittest” — only ture that will one day be testable. But he is able to muster little concrete those that remain consistent with “experimental tests” — survive. detail about how such tests might actually work. But James still owes us a story about what kinds of “experimental So I think the deepest philosophical vulnerability of James’s view tests” we might put our religious hypotheses to. For critics will imme- lies elsewhere than critics like Misak, Rorty, and so many other have diately suspect that religious ideas might sometimes survive in virtue supposed. James in fact denied that subjective comfort of the hypoth- of their therapeutic effects alone, and not in virtue of being well-sup- esis that God exists somehow provides epistemic support for that hy- ported in any empirical sense. I take myself already to have shown pothesis. Instead, I have argued that the central trouble with James’s that, particularly in his attack on the monistic religious hypothesis, position is as follows. He wanted to craft a religious hypothesis that James makes clear that he denies that emotional comfort can provide would be naturalistically permissible to believe. To be naturalistically epistemic support in the context of justification (even if it can provide permissible to believe, his religious hypothesis must have empirical practical guidance in the context of discovery). So his discussion of the content, even if it has not yet been verified. And yet he fell short on “experimental tests” of religion in the above passage is not intended to this last step, in my view, for he was ultimately unable to specify any refer to the comfort people might take in the idea of God, I contend. clear or plausible consequences one could hope to observe if a plural- Still, James has trouble either plausibly or clearly articulating just what istic God were actually to exist. empirical effects we might expect from his pluralistic hypothesis. That To sum up — in section two I tried to show that James gives us four strikes me as the real weak point in his account. therapeutic (non-evidentiary) reasons for accepting the pluralistic hy- James can respond to these worries by suggesting that even if we pothesis about God. 1) The hypothesis stands to appeal to our “feeling have not yet figured out how to run “experimental tests” of the plural- of action” when we are healthy-minded; 2) it stands to provide comfort istic religious hypothesis, we someday might. This response fits with when we are feeling melancholy; 3) because of (1), it stands to spur us texts where he contends that religion and science do not differ with to combat material poverty; and 4) because of (2) it stands to help us respect to epistemic standards, but rather with respect to how long it combat emotional poverty as a social problem. might take to devise effective experiments and gather persuasive evi- In section three I tried to show that James’s theoretic project with dence. “Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis,” James writes. respect to religion is largely undertaken in service to the emotional “The only difference is that while some hypotheses can be refuted in poverty problem, a problem he thought was particularly acute when

philosophers’ imprint – 15 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

it came to “reflecting” persons. These persons supposedly despair be- Bush, Stephen. Forthcoming. “James and Religion.” In The Oxford Hand- cause they regard their own methodological naturalism as incompat- book of William James, edited by Alexander Klein. New York: Oxford ible with religious faith. So James’s theoretic project is to console such University Press. “would-be suicides” by showing that religious pluralism amounts to a Coon, Deborah J. 1996. “‘One Moment in the World’s Salvation’: An- verifiable hypothesis that meets the usual standards of methodologi- archism and the Radicalization of William James.” The Journal of cal naturalism. American History 83 (1):70–99. His results were mixed. Nevertheless, Rorty is quite wrong to sug- Croce, Paul Jerome. 2009. “A Mannered Memory and Teachable Mo- gest that The Varieties “dithers” (Rorty 2004, 92) between advancing ment: William James and the French Correspondent in the Variet- what I am calling the “therapeutic” project of showing that religion can ies.” William James Studies 4:36–69. be comforting, and on the other hand offering evidence for God’s ex- Habegger, Alfred. 1994. The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. New York: istence, or in other words developing a “natural theology” (Rorty 2004, Farrar Straus and Giroux. 87). Rorty’s mistake is, ultimately, the same as Misak’s: they both think Hollinger, David A. 2004. “Damned for God’s Glory: William James only these two theological projects are available to James, and they and the Scientific Vindication of Protestant Culture.” In William both read him as unable to make up his mind about which of these James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing the Varieties of Religious projects he wants to pursue. Experience, edited by Wayne Proudfoot. New York: Columbia Uni- Instead, I have argued that James was not developing a natural the- versity Press. ology at all. His theoretic project was instead about “permission” to James, Henry. 1850. Moralism and Christianity. 2nd ed. New York: J. S. believe in God for the committed methodological naturalist, not about Redfield. finding evidence for God’s existence that would compel any reason- James, Henry, Sr. 1863. Substance and Shadow. Boston: Ticknor and able inquirer. And I have argued that James’s theoretic project is de- Fields. signed to satisfy the therapeutic needs of “reflecting” Victorians who James, Henry, Sr. 1884a. The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James. Ed- had fallen prey to a chronic melancholy, but a melancholy he thought ited by William James. Boston: J.R. Osgood. was responsive to reason. James’s theoretic project ultimately fell James, Henry, Sr. 1857. Christianity: The Logic of Creation. New York: D. short. But his strategy for pressing theoretical philosophical reflection Appleton & Co. into service for addressing some of the concrete social ills of his own James, Henry, III, ed. 1920. The Letters of William James. 2 vols. Boston: day — material poverty and suicidal despair, respectively — was inge- The Atlantic Monthly Press. nious, and deserves closer scrutiny than it has yet received. James, William. 1884b. “Introduction.” In The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, edited by William James, 7–119. Boston: J.R. Osgood. Bibliography James, William. 1891. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” In- Bailey, Victor. 1998. This Rash Act: Suicide across the Life Cycle in the Vic- ternational Journal of Ethics 1 (3):330–354. torian City. Stanford: Stanford University Press. James, William. 1897/1979. The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popu- Boodin, John Elof. 1942/1996. “William James as I Knew Him.” In Wil- lar Philosophy. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers liam James Remembered, edited by Linda Simon, 207–232. Lincoln: and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. University of Nebraska Press.

philosophers’ imprint – 16 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

James, William. 1902/1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Edited before the Great Divide, edited by Maria Baghramian and Sarin Mar- by Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. chetti, 228–250. London: Routledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kloppenberg, James T. 1986. Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and James, William. 1907/1975. Pragmatism. Edited by Fredson Bowers and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920. New Ignas K. Skrupskelis, Works of William James. Cambridge: Harvard York: Oxford University Press. University Press. Lamberth, David. 1997. “Interpreting the Universe after a Social Anal- James, William. 1909/1977. A Pluralistic Universe. Edited by Fredson ogy: Intimacy, Panpsychism, and a Finite God in a Pluralistic Uni- Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis, The Works of William James. verse.” In The Cambridge Companion to William James, edited by Ruth Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Anna Putnam, 237–259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, William. 1909/1978. The Meaning of Truth. Edited by Frederick H. Leary, David E. 2015a. “New Insights into William James’s Personal Cri- Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis, The Works of sis in the Early 1870s: Part II. John Bunyan and the Resolution & William James. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Consequences of the Crisis.” William James Studies 11: 28–45. James, William. 1911/1979. Some Problems of Philosophy. Edited by Fred- Leary, David E. 2015b. “New Insights into William James’s Personal erick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis, The Crisis in the Early 1870s: Part I. Arthur Schopenhauer and the Ori- Works of William James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. gin & Nature of the Crisis.” William James Studies 11: 1–27. James, William. 1982. Essays in Religion and Morality. Edited by Fred- Levinson, Henry S. 1981. The Religious Investigations of William James. erick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis, The Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Works of William James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Livingston, Alexander. 2016. Damn Great Empires! William James and the Kitcher, Philip. 2004. “A Pragmatist’s Progress: The Varieties of James’s Politics of Pragmatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strategies for Defending Religion.” In William James and a Science of Marchetti, Sarin. 2015. Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James. Religions: Reexperiencing the Varieties of Religious Experience, edited by Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Wayne Proudfoot, 98–138. New York: Columbia University Press. Misak, Cheryl J. 2017. “James on Religious Experience.” Philosophical Klein, Alexander. 2008. “Divide Et Impera! William James’s Pragma- Inquiries 5 (2):63–73. tist Tradition in the Philosophy of Science.” Philosophical Topics 36 Misak, Cheryl J. 2018. “James and British Philosophy.” In The Ox- (1):129–166. ford Handbook of William James, ed. Alexander Klein. New York: Klein, Alexander. 2015. “Science, Religion, and ‘the Will to Believe’.” Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/ HOPOS: The Journal for the International Society for the History of Phi- view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199395699.001.0001/oxfordhb- losophy of Science 5 (1):72–117. 9780199395699-e-25 (accessed 2018-08-08). Klein, Alexander. 2016. “Was James Psychologistic?” Journal for the His- Niebuhr, Richard R. 1997. “William James on Religious Experience.” In tory of Analytical Philosophy 4 (5):1–21. The Cambridge Companion to William James, edited by Ruth Anna Put- Klein, Alexander. 2018. “In Defense of Wishful Thinking: James, Quine, nam, 214–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emotions, and the Web of Belief.” In Pragmatism and the European Papineau, David. 2016. Naturalism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso- Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology phy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Winter ed. https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2016/entries/naturalism/.

philosophers’ imprint – 17 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019) alexander klein Between Anarchism and Suicide

Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quine, Willard van Orman. 1969. “Epistemology Naturalized.” In On- tological Relativity and Other Essays, 69–90. New York: Columbia University Press. Ramsey, Bennett. 1993. Submitting to Freedom: The Religious Vision of Wil- liam James, Religion in America Series. New York: Oxford University Press. Rorty, Richard. 2004. “Some Inconsistencies in James’s Varieties.” In William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing the Varieties of Religious Experience, edited by Wayne Proudfoot, 86–97. New York: Columbia University Press. Royce, Josiah, Joseph LeConte, George Holmes Howison, and Sidney Edward Mezes. 1897. The Conception of God: A Philosophical Discus- sion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Real- ity. Edited by George Holmes Howison. Vol. 1, Publications of the Philosophical Union of the University of California. New York: The Macmillan Company. Slater, Michael. 2009. William James on Ethics and Faith. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swift, Morrison I. 1905. Human Submission. Philadelphia: The Liberty Press. Throntveit, Trygve. 2014. William James and the Quest for an Ethical Re- public. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Whitney, William Dwight. 1890. The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language. 6 vols. New York: The Century Co.

philosophers’ imprint – 18 – vol. 19, no. 32 (august 2019)