Jamesian Reasonable Belief and Deweyan Religious Communities: Reconstructing Philosophy Pragmatically with Philip Kitcher

This essay responds critically to several chapters of Philip Kitcher’s Preludes to Pragmatism in which he rejects William James’s defense of religious belief and affirms John Dewey’s naturalist “religious” orientation to community and nature. I argue that Kitcher misinterprets James’s argument about the ethics of belief and that he fails to appreciate the radical character of James’s pragmatist proposal for a “science of religion” grounded in individual religious experience. Moreover, I argue that, contrary to Kitcher’s account, Dewey’s affirmation of the value of individual religious experience is largely continuous with James’s analysis, and that Dewey’s call for community efforts to solve urgent human problems invites the participation of churches as well as the “secular humanist” institutions Kitcher advocates. Because James and Dewey offer wise guidance for all of us on these interrelated topics, I suggest that Kitcher reconstruct his approach to religion in more pluralistic, classically pragmatist terms expressed in a more inclusive tone, both to avoid scientistic dogmatism and to invite both thoughtful religious believers and secular humanists into “inter-faith” democratic inquiry under the shared banner of a “religious and ethical humanism” that addresses urgent contemporary issues.