the varieties of religious experience a study in human nature

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Contents: Religion and neurology - Circumscription of the topic - The reality of the unseen - The religion of healthy-mindedness - The sick soul - The divided self, and the process of its unification - Conversion - Conversion - concluded - Saintliness - The value of saintliness - Mysticism - Philosophy - Other characteristics - Conclusions - Postscript. a major philosophical planet who whirled on his own axis and drew all of the other pragmatic luminaries into his powerful field.'-Morton White, The Age of Analysis. 'William James is original, exciting and cosmopolitan. The result is a book that has become a living force in religious literature.

His categories have become standard in the study of religions and indeed have passed into common speech.' As a student of religion, he has illuminated a wonderful variety of recorded experiences by grouping, comparing, and analyzing them. He presents his arguments with boldness, sympathy, and the common sense of science.Īs Jacques Barzun, the distinguished scholar, points out, 'The reader of The Varieties will not find James a conventional 'scientist' who uses the facts of physiology or psychology to explain away the facts of religious life. In this classic on the psychology of the religious impulse, William James studies such religious phenomena as conversion, repentance, mysticism, saintliness, the hopes of reward and the fears of punishment.

The Varieties of Religious Experience is one of his most brilliant works. He could make the most abstruse of theories at once clear and vivacious. One of the greatest philosophical minds America ever produced, William James had a genius for the concrete and vivid phrase.

The varieties of religious experience a study in human nature