Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

Dealing as it does with the ultimate questions of existence, religion serves as a fitting climax for Pragmatism.

James had previously written a major and well-received book on religion, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), which he alludes to in this lecture. Through that book, James became known as a thinker who took religion and spirituality seriously and considered faith to be as real and authentic as other forms of human experience. In this lecture, James aims to reconcile pragmatism with religious thought.

Pragmatism is obliged to respect any idea that proves useful for life. This applies also to the ideas propounded by various religions. Thus, James concedes that the idea of God as Absolute is a useful idea because it has served as the basis of the active faith of many people throughout history.

James argues that one can take religious ideas either in a monistic or a pluralistic way. To illustrate his point, he discusses at length Walt Whitman’s poem “To You.” The poem is a comforting hymn to the glory of the reader, whom Whitman is addressing. Read monistically, the poem is an invitation to rejoice in one’s own innate being: “Look back, lie back, on your true principle of being!” (106). Taken pluralistically, the poem refers to embracing one’s best and highest possibilities. James says that both interpretations are valid; but while the first one points to a unified self, the second points to multiple possibilities within one person. This second interpretation is more amenable to pragmatism because it is an incitement to action and future experience rather than to a static contemplation and self-satisfaction. As James sums it up, while the monistic interpretation makes us passive, the pluralistic interpretation makes us actively engaged.

The clash of these two views is reflected in two different religious attitudes toward the idea of salvation. James develops a subtle argument, which occupies the remainder of the lecture. He analyzes the question of salvation—whether the world will be saved, in the religious sense—by testing the concept of possibility through a pragmatic lens. Pragmatically speaking, to say that something is possible means, first, that “there is nothing extant capable of preventing the possible thing” (109), but also, more positively, that conditions presently exist for that thing to be realized.

As believers in absolute principles, Rationalists believe in the Absolute (usually identified with God) and that all things are essentially one (monism); rationalism sees the concept of unity as a “container and limiter” of possibilities, ensuring that nothing will go seriously wrong in the universe and that “the upshot shall be good” (109). In consequence, they believe that reality is basically good, that all things naturally work out for the best, and that there are things that “must and shall be” (109), including salvation. Thus, rationalists hold that in the end salvation is assured for all because it is inevitable. In this sense, rationalism is fundamentally optimistic.

The opposite, pessimistic view, holds that the salvation of the world is impossible. This is a minority view in Western philosophy; 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is its preeminent proponent.

In between these two views is what James calls meliorism, which he identifies with pragmatism. The melioristic position holds that salvation is possible but conditional. Meliorism imagines a God who at the beginning of time proposed to man a world that could reach salvation if people did their best. Life would thus be “a real adventure, with real danger” (112) and would depend on cooperation among human beings. James dramatizes this proposal, imagining how “the world’s author” would have “put the case” (112). James is confident that most people would be willing to take on this risk; but he concedes that some prefer to adopt the more secure, monist position of self-surrender rather than the active hard work of achieving salvation.

James grounds this cooperative or participatory view of salvation in pragmatism. For an example of how salvation might be viewed from a pragmatic perspective, he proposes that any achievement of an individual’s ideal might contribute to the world’s salvation. In this way, individual human beings have creative power to affect the destiny of the world as a whole, and thus salvation would be achieved by leaps and starts, just like knowledge.

Rationalists reject this idea as irrational because they see the whole world as moving as a single great system, not irregularly and inconsistently. But James proposes that an individual’s achievement might function as “one moment in the world’s salvation” because “our acts, our turning-places” are “the workshop of being,” which cause the world actually to “grow” (110). Ultimately, James argues, change comes to the world because “someone wishes it to be here” and not because of “material causes” and “logical necessities,” which are only “spectral things” (111).

James proposes that there are thus two kinds of religiosity:

1. The monist or rationalist attitude, which lovingly rests in and surrenders the self to God as an almighty and absolute power.
2. The moralistic attitude that believes in achieving one’s own salvation with God as a partner in our quest.

The second attitude is closer to pragmatism, and James sees it as fundamentally more in tune with facing life in all its possibilities.

Now, we need to choose between the two philosophical views sketched in Lecture 1: the tender-minded and the tough-minded. This is “the final question of philosophy” (113), to which all the lectures have been leading—the intellectual climax of the book.

As James develops his final argument, he alludes to a pair of concepts developed in his earlier book, Varieties of Religious Experience: that of the “healthy-minded” and the “sick-souled” type of religious person. These types roughly correspond, respectively, to the moralistic and the monistic types of religion outlined here. The healthy-minded person holds an optimistic view of the universe and believes in achieving his own salvation through self-help. The sick-souled person is acutely aware of the existence of evil and sin, and stresses the need for repentance and dependence on God. James insists that we choose a view, because they might not be compatible.

James doubts the ultimate truth of the tender-minded/monistic view of the universe: “May not religious optimism be too idyllic? Must all be saved? Is no price to be paid in the work of salvation?” (114). To James it seems that the ultimate “seriousness” of life demands that sacrifices—that “noes and losses form a part of it” (114).

Thus, in the closing pages of the book, James is prepared to cast his lot with the “more moralistic view” that salvation is conditional, not assured, and that there is a possibility for “real losses and real losers” (114). While he concedes, in pragmatic fashion, that the “prodigal-son attitude” is useful and appropriate in some circumstances, it is not “the right and final attitude towards the whole of life” (114). (James is alluding here to the New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son, who after having foolishly squandered his inheritance returned to his father in sorrow and repentance, trusting in and receiving his father’s mercy and love.)

In concluding the lecture, James stresses that pragmatism does not in any way equate to atheism; both Varieties of Religious Experience and the present book show that he is “for the reality of God” (116). Indeed, James believes that human experience is not all there is in the universe and that our knowledge embraces only a small part of what exists, which includes the workings of a higher power.

James uses the metaphor of household pets to illustrate his point. Our pets “inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries” (116), yet they don’t understand most of what they see. Pets’ relationship to the human world is parallel our perspective on “the whole of the universe” (116), which is more complex and wondrous than we can possibly understand. James used this analogy of the dog in the library outside of Pragmatism, and it is one of his most often-quoted ideas.

Pragmatism affirms that, because belief in God has worked throughout human history, it is therefore true. Thus, “pragmatism can be called religious” (116). However, which of the types of religion discussed in this lecture will work pragmatically in the long run remains an open question. In the meantime, James believes that the “pluralistic,” “moralistic,” and “melioristic” view of religion may be “as good a religious synthesis as you are likely to find” and “exactly what you require” (116).

This lecture emphasizes James’s conviction that pragmatism offers something for everyone. In particular, we see James’s desire to include religious belief in the framework of pragmatism. Because James supported the idea of religious faith, many religious thinkers came to view pragmatism as an ally, in contrast to materialist philosophies that tended toward agnosticism and atheism. Although James does not necessarily adhere to the Judeo-Christian view of God and religion, his pragmatic approach has often been seen as elastic enough to accommodate a variety of religious views.

Throughout the book James has argued that pragmatism functions as a mediator between various schools of thought (or, in this case, religious views). However, pragmatism is not totally neutral, since it favors the practical, the pluralistic, and the empirical. Even so, it is able to accommodate opposing views and assimilate them into a pragmatic framework, thus creating harmony between opposing views.

James suggests that viewing salvation as active work and relying on the grace of God for salvation both have validity. Rather than pronouncing one or the other view to be correct, James in true pragmatic fashion proposes his case in a tentative and equivocal way. He offers his audience a set of possibilities and invites them to decide where they stand.