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Not everyone can smile their way through life — and William James thought that was not a weakness, but a doorway. This lecture from Academy of Ideas opens his Varieties of Religious Experience and lays out his famous contrast between the healthy-minded and the sick soul. For those who cannot look away from evil and suffering, James insisted the despair is a real part of reality, perhaps even the best key to its meaning. And for those who pass through the dark and come out the other side, he had a name: the twice-born. It is an honest look at why the deepest sorrow and the greatest joy so often grow from the same root.
Full Video Transcript
The 20th century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wrote,
In Western literature there are four great thinkers, whose services to civilized thought rest largely on their achievements in philosophical assemblage.
These men are Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, and William James.
In this lecture we are going to examine some of the ideas of one of these individuals, namely the American philosopher William James.
During the years 1901 and 1902, James delivered a series of lectures titled Varieties of Religious
Experience, in which he presented a fascinating contrast between those he called healthy-minded
and those he referred to as sick souls, and it is this topic which will be the concern
of our lecture.
However, before we begin, it will be useful to briefly discuss James’ views on religion.
Today, religion is a very polarizing subject.
Most people automatically associate religion with the major organized religions,
and hence their attitudes towards the organized religions
will often determine their views on the subject of religion as a whole.
In fact, even at the turn of the 20th century when James was delivering his lectures,
this seemed to be the case.
For as James said,
When we hear the word religion nowadays, we think inevitably of some church or other.
And to some persons the word church suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny
and meanness and tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale undiscerning way they glory in
saying that they are down on religion altogether. The purpose of James’s lectures was not to examine
the structure, rituals, and dogma of organized religions, but rather he was interested in
examining the more personal and experiential aspect of religion, that being the religious
or spiritual experiences which arise within individuals. As James put it, religion shall
mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far
as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.
It is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies,
and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.
Now it should be noted that James leaves it open as to what one considers divine, and
he by no means is implying that the divine must be some form of monotheistic god or supreme
Leaving it up to the individual to decide what they considered divine allowed him to say,
a man’s religion might thus be identified with his attitude, whatever it might be, toward what he felt to be the primal truth.
But given this conception of religion, a further question arises.
What was the value of religion according to James?
To answer this question, it is helpful to understand that James believed there were two fundamental teachings to be gained from religion.
And as Robert Richardson writes in his biography of James, these were
First, that something is wrong, and second, that it can be set right.
In other words, James believed that religious experiences could help humans deal with the inevitable struggles associated with life.
These religious experiences, while differing from person to person according to James,
share some features in common which help people through their trials and tribulations.
A few of these common features of religious experience which James identified were
a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, an assurance of safety and a temper of peace,
and in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.
Having cleared up what James meant by religion and religious experience,
we will now move on to examine his views on the healthy-minded and the sick souls.
To James, these represented alternative ways of viewing the world,
which keeping in mind his definition of religion, resulted in different religious temperaments.
The healthy-minded were individuals who James associated with what he called the mind-cure
movement.
The leaders in this faith, James said, have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving
power of healthy-minded attitudes, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and
trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary
states of mind.
Based on this description, it is evident that this movement, in one form or another, has
continued to be influential up until the present day.
For example, many of the self-help books published these days espouse some form of healthy-mindedness,
or what is now more commonly called positive thinking.
That digression aside, James believed there were definite benefits to adopting the healthy-minded
view of life.
James, who struggled with depression and pessimism, understood the detrimental effects associated
with negative thinking, and the rejuvenating effect positive thinking can have on one’s
life.
However, James also recognized that for some individuals, the healthy-minded view was not
appropriate.
As James said,
“…there are men who seem to have started life with a bottle or two of champagne inscribed
to their credit, whilst others seem to have been born close to the pain threshold, which
the slightest irritants fatally send them over.
Does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually on one side of the pain threshold
might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lived on the other?”
In other words, James did not believe that a single religious temperament, or more broadly
speaking, a single perspective on life was appropriate for all individuals.
Those individuals who are incapable of living on the positive side of the pain threshold,
according to James, would probably not find healthy-mindedness a realistic, beneficial,
or even a possible perspective to adopt.
Rather, such people cannot help but see the world in a much different light.
For them, the suffering and evil of the world is too real to be ignored.
James called this view of life, which was the focus of his lecture titled The Sick Soul,
morbid-mindedness.
It is likely that most will agree that the morbid-minded view of life is unavoidable
for some people due to the circumstances of their lives or their attitudinal disposition.
However, many will also suggest that such a view is not desirable and hence should be
avoided at all costs.
However, this was not James’s view, as he said,
account for, are a genuine portion of reality, and they may after all be the best key to
life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels
of truth.”
Furthermore, individuals who are stricken with morbid-mindedness should not be seen
as weak or cowardly according to James, instead, some of the greatest individuals in history
have struggled with morbid-mindedness.
Utilizing one such man as an example, James asks,
When such a conquering optimist as Goethe can express himself in this wise,
how must it be with less successful men?
What James was referring to was a statement made by Goethe in 1824,
which strongly suggests that he was likely someone who would identify himself with the morbid-minded.
I will say nothing, Goethe wrote, against the course of my existence,
but at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden,
and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years,
I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being.
It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.
However, while these states of pessimism and despair seem to be an inevitable and necessary part of life,
James did not believe they had to be permanent.
Rather, James had a great belief in the individual’s ability to change their views
and eventually escape from the pessimism, which often seems so overwhelming.
James referred to those who escaped the morbid view of life as the twice-born.
And interestingly, James thought there was a connection between the depth of one’s despair and the level of appreciation for life that one could eventually achieve.
It is, in other words, out of the deepest depths of despair that the most joyous experiences are born.
But James was well aware, and this was likely due to his personal struggles, that such a process of being twice born was not easy.
And we will finish this lecture with a quote by James which reveals his own personal attitude
towards life, which assisted him in his struggle or fight with the darkness of despair.
“…If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the
universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one
may withdraw at will.
But it feels like a real fight, as if there were something really wild in the universe
which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.
Source: Academy of Ideas