Voluntarism and Self-surrender in William James’s Conception of Religion
In this work I hold that William James’s conception of religion is divided between what could be identified as his voluntarism and his idea of self-surrender. In my approach, James’s voluntarism is the heart of The Will to Believe, whereas the idea of self-surrender is the key to understand The Vari...
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| Format: | article |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication Date: | 2015 |
| Country: | Perú |
| Institution: | Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú |
| Repository: | Revistas - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú |
| Language: | Spanish |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/14614 |
| Online Access: | http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/arete/article/view/14614 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Summary: | In this work I hold that William James’s conception of religion is divided between what could be identified as his voluntarism and his idea of self-surrender. In my approach, James’s voluntarism is the heart of The Will to Believe, whereas the idea of self-surrender is the key to understand The Varieties of Religious Experience. These two works respond to a tension in James’s philosophy and canbe seen as two antagonistic intellectual projects. The analysis of this inner tension in James’s conception of religion is the core of this paper. I will also state that his self-surrender notion, unlike his voluntarism, allows us to visualize an essential aspect of James’s conception, that is to say, its morbid aspect. |
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