William James: Facts, Faith, and Promise

WILLIAM JAMES: FACTS, FAITH, AND PROMISE ONE OF THE CENTRAL criticisms of the empirical tradition is that it cuts the heart and spirit out of man and sorrowfully limits him to the starkly cold realm of facticity. Empiricism, say its critics, radically limits man to the world of objective facts and dogmatically asserts that the only things which exist are those things of a material and immediately knowable nature. Those things that are not knowable to science or to some form of objective analysis or measurement simply do not exist. Within such a perspective such questions as God, the reality of the soul, and the concept of infinity are immediately denied as being de facto impossible. While this criticism may be true of a number of empiricists, there are highly influential exceptions, among whom is William James. Although James was an avowed spokesmen of pragmatism and radical empiricism, he was never willing to absolutely limit man's perspective of reality to the immediate facts of experience. James contended that facts are simply not enough and that man can out-strip the bald facts of experience through the actualization of his willing nature or personal commitments of faith. Early in his career James discovered what he felt to be the proper vehicle for escaping the limitations of a radically empirical world view through his readings of the French philosopher Charles Renouvier. "I think that yesterday (April 29, 1870) was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second 'Essais' and see no reason why his definition of Free Will-' the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts '-need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-until next year-that it is no illusion. My first acl: 489 490 A. R. GINI of free will shall be to believe in free will." 1 By accepting the reality of faith, belief, and/or free will James freed himself from the " Bayblonian Captivity " of " brute facts " and opened himself to the possibility of fulfilling his existential desires and religious needs. It is my contention that, for James, the fiat of faith became the main ingredient for all adjudications that man makes in the fields of philosophy, science, daily living, and, most importantly, religion. The burden of this study shall be an attempt to show how faith pervades the various sectors of James's over-all thought, especially in regard to religion. I shall attempt to specify all those factors which go into each personal act of faith in regard to the various circumstances in which faith acts are necessitated. By so doing I hope to free James from the usual pejoratives associated with the empirical tradition. I also hope to show that Professor James was not merely a spokesman for " popular pragmatism" who was only interested in the "cash value" of men's individual and immediate actions but that James was a highly refined philosopher whose sensitivities also included the ultimate goals and morals needs of all men. * * * * Let us begin our investigation of the doctrine of "free will" or the " gospel of belief or faith" by defining the terms " will," "belief," and "faith." First of all, by the term "will" James does not wish to indicate a specifically definable organ of the body or a section of the brain. The will is a generic term which expresses the volitional, active, or selective nature of man. The will is man's natural ability to choose or select between two or more alternatives. Thus, " to will " means to " act " or " choose " between a this or a that. In a very real sense, then, "to will" is to "act" on a singular "commitment" between a plurality of possible options; or another way of expressing it would be to say that the will is man's power or faculty of de1 Wm. James, The Letters of William James, ed. by Henry James, III (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 19~6) pp. 147, 148. WILLIAM JAMES: FACTS, FAITH, AND PROMISE 491 liberate choice and action. By the term " belief " James meant an individual's consent or assent to...