Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (review)

In 1999, the Canadian philosopher and political scientist Charles Taylor delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. He dedicated them to the question of what it means to call our age secular. While preparing these lectures he engaged with William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience—which itself had been based on the Gifford Lectures presented by James in 1901 and 1902. Taylor was inspired by the continuing argumentative force and contemporary relevance of James' work and felt impelled to ask himself, in confrontation as well as conversation with James, where the locus of religion is today. Taylor's Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisitedis the short yet very rich result.

In taking account of the complexity and richness of James' book as well as of the broad range of meaning that is covered by the term "religion," Taylor is engaging in a difficult task. Here one can decide either to write a commentary on James' text or else devote oneself to an interpretation of religion in the contemporary world. Those who try to do both are indeed pursuing an ambitious project, running the risk of either not doing justice to James' book or not telling much about the role and position of religion in society today. Taylor opts to do both in Varieties of Religion Today.

He begins by discussing James' conception of religion as an individual experience. He emphasizes the distinction that James makes between what happens to individuals (designated as religious geniuses) who undergo a religious experience that is both original and powerful and the religious life of communities and churches that transmit this primary experience to believers. It is in this context that Taylor quotes the defining passage from James:

Religion therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. ¹

Taylor concludes from this that James ascribes to religious institutions at most a secondary role by limiting them to transmitting and communicating the original inspiration, while the real meaning of religion is to be found in the individual experience and not in corporate life.

It is not surprising, considering Taylor's philosophical position, that he takes issue with James' interpretation of religion. Taylor believes that criticism is necessary here because there seems to be an affinity between James' take on religion and certain aspects of modernity. One could interpret James' description of religious experience as the only possible form that religion today can assume. But this, according to Taylor, is not the case.

His criticism involves several points. First, James is so deeply influenced by a "Protestant" self-understanding that he has trouble getting beyond a certain degree of individualism and accepting a broader, more "Catholic" view. James misses the point that the essential connection between the believer and the divine is cultivated mainly through communal life as it is practiced in churches. He ignores the phenomenon of a collective religious life that consistsof individual religious connections rather than being the resultof them. Second, by focusing on the inner life of the person who has a religious experience, James excludes theology from the center of religious life. Yet, there is a need for at least a minimal articulation of that for which belief and hope are striving. Taylor sees empirical evidence for his argument in the many important and widespread religious forms found in society today that do not resonate with James' concept of religious experience. On a conceptual level, he raises further criticisms. Referencing Hegel and Wittgenstein, he defends a position that asserts an experience is without content if nothing can be said about it. Moreover, it is society that provides us with...