William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience

The discipline of psychology emerged from the discipline of philosophy. In the late 19th century, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that the human mind could be studied scientifically. This idea gained credence when European neurologists began using the clinicopathological method. This meant comparing the problems that a person had had during his or her lifetime (the clinical part) to the brain pathology found at autopsy.  Thus, the study of psychology would have to reconcile the biological aspects of how the brain works with the cultural influences that shape our minds. By the 1890s, the discipline of psychology was separated from philosophy (including the philosophy of mind) and theology, at least at the university level. American psychologists, possibly influenced by the religious diversity of the American population, began studying the psychology of religious experience.

William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience began as a set of 20 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. These were annual lecture series established by Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford, FRSE (Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh) to “promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God.” A Gifford Lectures appointment is a high honor in Scottish academia.

William James was the son of a Swedenborgian theologian and was the brother of novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. William James was trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard but never practiced medicine. Instead, he became the first educator to offer a course in psychology, and he became an important philosopher of the Pragmatist school.

Read the text: The Varieties of Religious Experience

Listen to the audiobook: LECTURE 00 CONTENTS AND PREFACE.