Essays in Philosophy of Religion (Jostarhaye Falsafeh Din)

William James’ arguments in the essay ‘will to believe’; Review and evaluation

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mehdi Akhavan 1
Seyyed Amin Moosavizadeh 2

1 Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Allameh Tabatabai University

2 Master of Philosophy and Islamic Theology, Allameh Tabatabai University

Abstract
William Clifford in the essay ‘The Ethics of Belief’, claimed that to believe on the basis of insufficient evidences is wrong, anywhere, anytime and for everyone. In the article ‘will to believe’, William James, replying this claim, argued that religious belief is a genuine decision and in such decisions, Faith justification is will to believe.
The principal claim of James in the essay is to define genuine choice and to assign monotheistic faith to it. Believing in God if be a genuine decision must meet three characteristics: a) the inevitability; b) being alive; and d) being risky.
In this paper, after reviewing a summary of the most important ideas of James and criticisms of him, we will check the validity of the assignment of the three characteristics to Faith.

Keywords

William James
will to believe
morality of faith
William Clifford
Clifford, William (1876-1877). ‘The Ethics of Belief’, Contemporary Review. 29.
James, William (1897). The Will to Believe and Other Essays, London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Jordan, Jeff (2004). ‘Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatic-belief-god/.
Hick, John (1990). Philosophy of Religion, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Gale, Richard (1990). On the Nature and Existence of God, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Wood, Alan (2002). ‘W.K. Clifford and the Ethics of Belief’, in Unsettling Obligations: Essays on Reason, Reality and the Ethics of Belief, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Wainwright, William, (1995) Reason and the Heart: a prolegomenon to a critique of passional reason, NY: Cornell University Press.
Duddles, Nathan (2012). ‘The Will and Ethics of Belief: Epistemic Risks and Moral Consequences’, Honors Theses.
Russell Goodman (2000). ‘William James’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Pierce, Charles S. (1908). ‘A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’, Hibbert Journal, 7.
Lloyd, Alfred Henry (1907) The Will to Doubt: An Essay in Philosophy for the General Thinker, University of Michigan.
Kaufmann, Walter (1958). Critique of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Harper & Row.
 

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