Philosopher Taylor Speaks On William James, Religion

Charles Taylor, a leading figure in philosophy, delivered the annual William James Lecture on Religious Experience last night at the Harvard Divinity School.

Taylor is currently a professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University and is the author of many books, including the well-known Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.

Taylor spoke on James's work The varieties of Religious Experience, focusing on how it has anticipated many of the religious trends in America today, but has neglected the importance of organized religion.

"You don't find yourself in a foreign country or a foreign time when you read William James," Taylor said.

In James' work, the experience of a sense of evil, melancholy or a powerful feeling of personal sin can motivate religious experience, he said.

James claimed that people best experience religion as individuals, according to Taylor. He saw an individual experience as superior to organized religion.

Taylor said James' beliefs reflect America today because a "tremendous hunger and search for spirituality" has led people to pursue individual religious paths independent of organized churches.

"More and more people in the last 50 years conceive of a spiritual life where everybody should follow the spiritual path that most speaks to themselves as individuals," Taylor said.

Some people, especially the better educated, find the most satisfaction in an agnostic philosophy, especially based on the ideas of Nietzsche, according to Taylor.

"They break altogether with the normative moral order and see that order as something that crushes human beings," he observed.

Taylor remarked that this movement towards individual religious satisfaction is an unprecedented and important phenomenon.

"When we get this in our sights the whole discourse on secularization will have to be remade," he said.

However, Taylor claimed that James' approach was too narrow and that for many people religious experience occurs in a more social context.

He observed, for example, that the some of the fastest growing religious organizations today are Pentecostal groups that fuse religion with a group identity.

Taylor said this trend is caused in part by the increased mobility and dislocation of the modern world.

"When people are broken out of thick communities and pitched into cities they can experience whatever sense of incapacity they have as something that can be touched by giving themselves to Christ."

He also claimed that for many people, the highest religious experience can occur through an organized church, in contrast to James' praise of personal experience. The identification with a group helps people face oppression.

"There is a continuing importance of religion which helps from collective identities," he said.

Taylor used the example of he Poles, who have used Catholicism to define a powerful national identity despite being ruled by foreigners.

When asked about the impact of a secular society on Christianity, Taylor critiqued religious leaders who were too vigorous in trying to bring church and state together.