Fruits of Health; Roots of Despair: William James, Medical Materialism and the Evaluation of Religious Experience

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James introduces the term “medical materialism” to describe the fallacious attempt by some scientists to argue against the value of spiritual ideas. Two literary case studies will be considered for purposes of better understanding James’ idea. What’s more, it will be shown that, in addition to James’ three criteria for the appropriate evaluation of religious experience, there is another factor not made explicit, namely that of hopefulness. This factor serves to distinguish ordinary from pathological morbid-mindedness, the latter of which has no religious significance.Tadd Ruetenik teaches philosophy at Penn State Altoona. He received his Ph.D. from the English and Philosophy program at Purdue University. Correspondence to Tadd Ruetenik, tlr18@psu.edu.     

Nietzsche as ‘Europe’s Buddha’ and ‘Asia’s Superman’

Nietzsche represents in an interesting way the well-worn Western approach to Asian philosophical and religious thinking: initial excitement, then neglect by appropriation, and swift rejection when found to be incompatible with one’s own tradition, whose roots are inexorably traced back to the ‘ancient’ Greeks. Yet, Nietzsche’s philosophical critique and methods - such as ‘perspectivism’ - offer an instructive route through which to better understand another tradition even if the sole purpose of this exercise is to perceive one’s own limitations through the eyes of the other: a self-destruktion of sorts. To help correct this shortcoming and begin the long overdue task of even-handed dialogue - or contemporary comparative philosophy - we will be served well by looking at Nietzsche’s mistakes, which in turn informed the tragic critic of the West of the last century, Martin Heidegger. We may learn here not to cast others in one’s own troubled image; and not to reverse cultural icons: Europe’s Superman, and Asia’s Buddha.

Nietzche’s Echo—A Dialogue with Thomas Altizer

Prophets provoke psychological unrest, especially when exposing accepted beliefs as profound deceptions. The biblical prophets exemplify such confrontation as do certain atheists ardently opposed to the images of God created by those seers. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche dramatically illustrates this type of counterforce to the Judeo-Christian tradition. His prophet Zarathustra is intended to be a model for the modern mind, one free of superstitions inflicted by antiquated religious dogma. Nietzsche’s credo “God is dead” served as a declaration for the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, it became a theological diagnosis. As a “movement,” or “tenor,” the death of God or radical theology was spearheaded by Thomas Altizer, a well-published young professor center-staged during the turbulent 1960s. His work foreshadows a new strain of atheism currently represented by biologist Richard Dawkins (2006, The God delusion. New York: Houghton Mifflin), philosopher Daniel Dennett (2006, Breaking the spell. New York: Penquin), neuroscientist Sam Harris (2004, The end of faith. New York: W.W. Norton; 2008, Letter to a Christian nation. New York: Vintage), journalist Christopher Hitchens (2007, God is not great. New York: Twelve), and mathematician John Allen Paulos (Paulos 2008, Irreligion. New York: Hill & Wang). This twenty-first century crusade against belief in God is best understood as a psychodynamic ignited by Altizer’s Christian atheism. The present dialogue reflects that dynamic while the prologue and epilogue reveal evidence of Providence amidst claims of God’s demise in contemporary history.     

D. Z. Phillips’ contemplations on religion and literature

This paper critically discusses D. Z. Phillips’ use of literary works as a resource for philosophical reflection on religion. Beginning by noting Phillips’ suggestion, made in relation to Waiting for Godot, that the possibilities of meaning that we see in a literary work can reveal something of our own religious sensibility, I then proceed to show what we learn about Phillips from his readings of certain works by Larkin, Tennyson, and Wharton. Through exploring alternative possible readings, I argue that, although Phillips’ discussions are of considerable philosophical interest, they undermine his claim to be deploying a purely contemplative hermeneutical method.     

Erikson’s Case of the Theological Student

This article focuses on Erik H. Erikson’s case of a theological student on the borderline of psychosis. The case, presented in a lecture published in Insight and Responsibility (1964, pp. 47–80), was important to Erikson for two important reasons: It enabled him to gain confidence in his capacity to help young adults and convinced him that he was not being disloyal to Freud by focusing on patients’ religious experiences. His presentation of the case focuses on an enigmatic dream image that caused the patient to believe that he was losing his mind but that, when interpreted, led to a breakthrough in his therapy and eventual recovery of his mental health. The springboard for his study of Martin Luther, this case illustrates the three primary religious images that Erikson identifies in Young Man Luther (1958): the maternal matrix, the paternal voice, and the pure self. It also illustrates how the timely appearance of a new person in one’s life may have enormous therapeutic value.     

Conquering the quarters: Religion and politics in Hinduism

Conclusion Our understanding of South Asian society and history is sometimes muddled by the rigid distinctions we make between ‘religion’ and ‘politics.’ The resurgent appeal of Hindu nationalism, the involvement of Hindu renouncers in contemporary Indian politics, and the continuing relevance of religious issues to political discourse throughout South Asia, show that such a distinction is of limited utility. In this essay, I have examined the notion of digvijaya in some detail, in an attempt to show that this ‘most important Indian concept with regard to sovereignty’ was always both a ‘religious’ and a ‘political’ phenomenon. When it was performed by Hindu kings in the classical period, the ‘political’ dimension of digvijaya was foregrounded, while in the medieval and modern periods, when it was associated primarily with Hindu renouncers, its ‘religious’ aspects were paramount. But neither ‘political’ nor ‘religious’ aspects were ever absent from any of the digvijayas discussed here because religion and politics were mutually entailed in the digvijaya at all times, just as kings and renouncers were—and still are—alter-egos of each other. I am tempted to conclude that the digvijaya melded religious and political domains. Yet perhaps even to speak of ‘melding’ religion and politics is a peculiarly modern kind of discourse. Perhaps we need to rethink our categories and recognize that politics always has a religious element, while religion is always a political force.     

The Making of the Reliably Religious Boy

In Men, Religion, and Melancholia: James, Otto, Jung, and Erikson (D. Capps, 1997) and Men and Their Religion: Honor, Hope, and Humor (D. Capps, 2002), I argued that men are no less religious than women, but their religiousness is different from that of women because it has its psychological origins in the emotional separation between a boy and his mother around the ages of three to five. Employing Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (S. Freud, 1917/1963) essay, I suggested that their religiousness is rooted in an ontological state of melancholy (which is different from the psychological state of depression). In Men and Their Religion I identified the religions of honor and of hope as the primary forms of male melancholic religion, and suggested that humor is a third form that may come to one’s assistance when one experiences the limitations of the other two religions. In this article, I focus on my own early adolescent years (age 11–14) and explain how one boy became reliably religious, that is, how he embraced or internalized the religions of honor and of hope. In the companion article, I will explain how these two religions were relativized—and thereby preserved—by the religion of humor.     

Liberal pluralism,radical orthodoxy and the right tone of voice

This paper considers two differenttones of voice in philosophy and theology (‘liberal pluralism’ in contrast to ‘radical orthodoxy’) and relates it to a discussion about the theology of religions. ‘Tone of voice’ in this context is intended to denote the affective potency (or not) of a theological perspective as it impacts and influences religious attitudes. In addition, at a related level, ‘tone of voice’ is used when speaking of first-order or second-order perspectives: for example, a first-orderconfessional tone in contrast to a second-ordernotional tone. The paper proceeds to critically engage with John Hick’s pluralism and John Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy particularly from the point of view of considering thetone adopted by both perspectives. The conclusion is that both views are inadequate: Hick’s pluralism—as a second-order meta-theory—lacks the first-order power that is needed to affect ‘hearts and minds’, Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy has rhetorical power but is an ‘unfounded’ narrative which lacks the ability to rationally engage with thereal world. In the end, the suggestion is that the ‘right tone of voice’, in a religious context, ought to combine a realistic enquiry concerning the order-of-things with a first-order rhetorical strength.     

The phenomenology of religious humility in Heidegger’s reading of Luther

The return to religion in contemporary continental philosophy is characterized by a profound sense of intellectual humility. A significant influence within this discussion is Heidegger’s anthropology of finitude in Being and Time and his later critiques of onto-theology. These critiques, however, were informed by Heidegger’s earlier phenomenology of the lived experience of religious humility performed alongside his reading of Martin Luther’s theology. This article shows that for Luther and Heidegger, religious humility is foremost an affection structured according to the enactment of one’s dissimilitude from God and resulting existential tribulation. During a seminal period in his development, Heidegger’s phenomenology of humility changed from an Eckhartian conception of detachment culminating in the unio mystica to a Lutheran conception of humiliation and Anfechtung. Heidegger’s break from a mystical phenomenology of humility parallels Luther’s own break from that tradition, and anticipates contemporary developments in the continental philosophy of religion.

Otto’s idea of the ‘numinous’- A crosscultural reappraisal

Conclusion Rudolf Otto’s concept of the ‘numinous’ was developed through study, observation, personal experience and religious and philosophical influences. The main philosophical influences for Otto's thought came from Fries, Schleiermacher, and Kant—from whom Otto derived the concept of thea priori nature of the numinous. However, the numinous does not appear to be a universally applicable category of experience, much lessa priori, and in some cases may distort religious experience. The example of Hinduism demonstrated how easily the concept of the numinous may be applied to one     

Review of John D. Caputo: <Emphasis Type="Italic">On Religion</Emphasis>

This is a review of John Caputo’s recent Routledge book on religion. Caputo’s central idea is captured by the phrase ‘religion without religion’, by which he means a religious stance or attitude that is not circumscribed by allegiance to any specific creed.     

MARTIN RÁZUS: Literary and Philosophical Reflections on Morality1

Martin Rázus (1888–1937) was one of the most important personalities of Slovak Lutheran social, political, cultural, literary, and intellectual life during the first half of the twentieth century. First, I examine the picture of Slovak rural morality portrayed in the works of Rázus, particularly his 1929 novel Svety[Worlds], in which Rázus presents the morality of the people in the Slovak countryside from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the 1920s. Second, as the ethical and moral issues of life are crucial topics of Rázus's philosophical and ethical reasoning, I examine Rázus's ethical treatise Argumenty[Arguments] (1932), in which he develops, explains, and philosophically justifies many of his ideas concerning the ethics and morality expressed in his literary works and political and religious essays.     

The Cult of Doctors: Harvey Cushing and the Religious Culture of Modern Medicine

Harvey Cushing had an extraordinary life in medicine as an innovative brain surgeon and a pivotal figure in the biomedical revolutions taking place at the turn of the twentieth century. Expressions of sincere devotion from Cushing’s patients often rely on distinctly religious language to capture the meaning and impact of the doctor in their lives. If these devotional sentiments from former patients were the only traces of religious meaning associated with the life of Cushing, they could easily be discounted as an all-too-common, and some might say particularly confused, infusion of personal spirituality into the realm of medicine and health. But these expressions of adoration and veneration may be only the proverbial tip of a deep, wide, and largely unseen religious iceberg. Cushing’s extraordinary accomplishments did inspire both patients and the public in this era, but it is proposed that his life is embedded in a much larger and more significant religious movement driving the cultural success and power of biomedical science: the cult of doctors. Gary Laderman, Ph.D., is a cultural historian who has written two books on death in America, Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford UP, 2003) and The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883 (Yale UP, 1996). His PhD is in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is working on a new book project that explores the intersections of religion and medicine in the twentieth century. This is the first article from that project.     

Dwelling in the Nearness of Gods: The Hermeneutical Turn from M<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">ou</Emphasis> Zongsan to T<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">u</Emphasis> Weiming

This article argues that, as far as the problem of Confucian religiosity is concerned, there is an interpretative turn from Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics to Tu Weiming’s religious hermeneutics. Some concluding remarks are made: First, Tu’s hermeneutics is rooted in the ontology of self as interrelatedness, which is completely different from Mou’s theory of true self as transcendental subjectivity. Second, Tu’s hermeneutics of self can be better illuminated with the help of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein as Being-with (Mitsein). For Tu and Heidegger, self cannot be seen as something separate from community. This article also points out that the paradigmatic shift is evidenced in another similarity between the four categories of self, community, nature, and the transcendent in Tu’s hermeneutics on the one hand, and the four symbols of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals employed by Heidegger to interpret the meaning of dwelling, on the other. In such a primordial situation of dwelling, gods are not supposed to be intellectually known; they are rather to be neighbors in community.     

A Psychology of Religious Plurality: From Intra-Religious Dialogue to Intra-Psychic Reality

Panikkar’s (The intra-religious dialogue, 1978) classic, re-issued by Paulist Press in 1999, grapples with the theological challenges in the disciplines of comparative theology and the theology of religions through what he terms, “intra-religious dialogue.” In this psychology of religious plurality, I use works from a variety of disciplines to highlight the achievements of Panikkar’s intra-religious dialogue, as well as to critique his work in the hope of finding categories of understanding that can be profitably used to face the inter-personal crises of the contemporary world, namely religious terrorism.     

Abravanel in Italy: the critique of the kabbalist Elijah Hayyim Genazzano

Among many uncharted vistas of scholarship on Isaac Abravanel, a comprehensive account of his scholarly afterlife seems especially distant. This essay illustrates the possibilities latent in the study of Abravanel’s reception-history by investigating a sharp critique of Abravanel composed in his lifetime. Its author was a Tuscan kabbalist, Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano (c. 1440–c. 1510), who studied with the renowned talmudist and kabbalist, Benjamin of Montalcino, and engaged in a disputation with a Franciscan friar, Francesco d’Acquapendente. The critique, which appears in Elijah’s ’Igeret ḥamudot (an epistolary tract sent to Benjamin of Montalcino’s son David), comprises such central themes of medieval and early modern Jewish thought as aggadic authority, prophecy’s relationship to human perfection, and philosophy’s relationship to Kabbalah. It unexpectedly serves as the main exhibit in Elijah’s larger argument regarding the limits of the human intellect and of truths arrived at by way of philosophic “speculation.” After surveying Abravanel’s exegetical monograph ‘Aṭeret zeqenim, the immediate object of Elijah’s wrath, the essay investigates the conceptual components of Elijah’s critique. It concludes by seeking to explain the thoroughly baneful image of Abravanel that Elijah presents despite the significant spiritual sensibilities and intellectual points of contact these two thinkers shared. The key appears to be differences between Elijah’s Italian religious-intellectual context and the Ibero-Jewish tradition that shaped Abravanel. The essay argues that differences in their formative intellectual contexts, coupled with the genuinely elusive character of Abravanel’s religious thought, are among the things that kept the type of Sephardic traditionalism that Abravanel represented—elements of which Elijah ought to have applauded—hidden from Elijah’s view.     

Anthropological Approaches to ‘Primitive’ Religions

The study of religion by social anthropologists, as distinct from the classical philosophical approach of the Greeks and their medieval heirs, began in the late 19th century with Edward Tyler’s Primitive Culture (1871). Tyler’s approach was completely a priori in style in that it did not rest on systematic field work or empirical observation. The same approach characterized James Frazer’s famous book, The Golden Bough (1891). Baldwin Spencer, the founding father of Australian anthropology, was persuaded by Frazer to see the sophisticated religious beliefs and rites of the Aboriginal groups he studied in central Australia as mere ‘magic’. By the 1960s, a new generation of anthropologists, influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss and English thinkers like E. Evans Pritchard, had arrived on the scene. This new ‘turn’ in anthropology led a number of contemporary scholars to the radical position that Western anthropology itself is a socio-cultural phenomenon that can be investigated in a broadly anthropological way. To see what this involves, it is worthwhile examining a number of crucial misunderstandings of Australian Aboriginal beliefs and practices that have been the artefactual result of various anthropological approaches.

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Belief, faith, and acceptance

Belief is a central focus of inquiry in the philosophy of religion and indeed in the field of religion itself. No one conception of belief is central in all these cases, and sometimes the term ‘belief’ is used where ‘faith’ or ‘acceptance’ would better express what is intended. This paper sketches the major concepts in the philosophy of religion that are expressed by these three terms. In doing so, it distinguishes propositional belief (belief that) from both objectual belief (believing something to have a property) and, more importantly, belief in (a trusting attitude that is illustrated by at least many paradigm cases of belief in God). Faith is shown to have a similar complexity, and even propositional faith divides into importantly different categories. Acceptance differs from both belief and faith in that at least one kind of acceptance is behavioral in a way neither of the other two elements is. Acceptance of a proposition, it is argued, does not entail believing it, nor does believing entail acceptance in any distinctive sense of the latter term. In characterizing these three notions (and related ones), the paper provides some basic materials important both for understanding a person’s religious position and for appraising its rationality. The nature of religious faith and some of the conditions for its rationality, including some deriving from elements of an ethics of belief, are explored in some detail.     

Vampires,Desire, Girls and God: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Twilight</Emphasis> and the Spiritualities of Adolescent Girls

Fantasy fiction long has been read for its capacity to narrate religious meanings and themes for young readers. Since its publication in 2005, Stephenie Meyer’s young adult series Twilight, in which an adolescent girl falls in love with a vampire, has become a pop culture phenomenon among U.S. teen girls. Although vampires usually represent dangerous desire, rarely have these creatures been treated as spiritually attractive figures. Using feminist perspectives on the psychology of gender and Christian feminist theology, this article offers a critical exploration of Twilight’s constructions of intimate relationships, supernatural masculinities, and girlhood, arguing that Twilight’s girl-appeal stems from its ability to tap into both the sexual and spiritual desires of girls.