Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna Lecture) [Paperback]

Charles Taylor (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674012534 | ISBN-13: 978-0674012530 | Publication Date: November 30, 2003

A hundred years after William James delivered the celebrated lectures that became The Varieties of Religious Experience, one of the foremost thinkers in the English-speaking world returns to the questions posed in James's masterpiece to clarify the circumstances and conditions of religion in our day. An elegant mix of the philosophy and sociology of religion, Charles Taylor's powerful book maintains a clear perspective on James's work in its historical and cultural contexts, while casting a new and revealing light upon the present.

Lucid, readable, and dense with ideas that promise to transform current debates about religion and secularism, Varieties of Religion Today is much more than a revisiting of James's classic. Rather, it places James's analysis of religious experience and the dilemmas of doubt and belief in an unfamiliar but illuminating context, namely the social horizon in which questions of religion come to be presented to individuals in the first place.

Taylor begins with questions about the way in which James conceives his subject, and shows how these questions arise out of different ways of understanding religion that confronted one another in James's time and continue to do so today. Evaluating James's treatment of the ethics of belief, he goes on to develop an innovative and provocative reading of the public and cultural conditions in which questions of belief or unbelief are perceived to be individual questions. What emerges is a remarkable and penetrating view of the relation between religion and social order and, ultimately, of what "religion" means.

(20020128)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the early 20th century, Harvard sociologist William James delivered a series of lectures in Edinburgh that were eventually put together in book form as The Varieties of Religious Experience, still in print today. A century later, philosophy professor Charles Taylor spoke for the same lecture series, revisiting James's work for a postmodern audience. His Varieties of Religion Today is a provocative, witty and worthy conversation with James's timeless work.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In these lectures, delivered at the Institute for the Human Sciences in Vienna, Taylor (philosophy, McGill Univ.; Sources of the Self) reconsiders William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), a seminal text in American religious studies, examining whether the points James made are relevant today. While recognizing James's extraordinary insight into the spiritual needs of the modern world, Taylor makes one major criticism: that James rejected the legitimacy of communal religious experience, i.e., the experience of Church, and concentrated on individual religious experience as paradigmatic. But even as he takes issue with the narrowness of James's focus, Taylor finds much of interest in his subject and uses James's works as a springboard for his own discussions of the current state of religion in America, which he sees as struggling with the same debate about religious faith and doubt. In doing so, Taylor offers a well-written, easily accessible overview of today's individualistic religious tendencies. Recommended for larger public collections and those with strong holdings in theology. Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 142 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (November 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674012534
• ISBN-13: 978-0674012530
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #371,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A reflection on religious belief and the state, June 28, 2002

By 

Sammy Jo "sammy_jo" (Midwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Hardcover)

This book is a collection of a series of lectures Charles Taylor gave reflecting on the legacy of William James. In thinking about James' work, Taylor reflects on the tensions between private religous experience and public religious expression; the problem of belief and unbelief; and the implications our religious beliefs have for our political organization. It is almost impossible to do justice to the richness of Taylor's thought in a short review.

Taylor's first task is to situate James within his own religious context. James inherited the strand of religious belief that was quintessentially Protestant -- with an emphasis on private feeling as against public expression. For James, the ultimate religious experience is private and fundamentally individual. This precludes James from fully grasping the types of religious expression that are more communally-based.

Taylor's second task is to reflect on James personal struggle with the question of belief and unbelief. In James' day a strong argument was being made that religious belief is intellectually dishonest. Taylor offers a good summary of James' defense of belief as a viable choice.

Finally, Taylor integrates James' thought with the question of how our religious belief interacts with our political structures. Taylor offers an invaluable historical narrative of the variety of relationships between religion and state that we have seen in the past. In doing so, he makes our current dilemmas much clearer. We are moving from a country that has a broad consensus in some sort of belief, but which allows individuals to join whatever church best gives expression to that experience, to a country in which there is no such broad consensus. If there is no shared understanding of the sacred, we are forced to ground our political structures in the purely human. It is not yet clear whether the new project will succeed, but in his reflections on the tensions between belief and unbelief and their relationship to our political organization, Taylor can only enhance our discussions as we move forward into this virgin territory.

Taylor's book does presume that the reader has a fairly sophisticated historical sense. And he often makes reference to the situation in France, which can be a bit opaque to those who lack a basic familiarity with French culture. Indeed, he often quotes from French writers without offering a translation. Still, the book offers valuable insights, even to those without the background to fully grasp everything he writes.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Varieties of Reading Experience, May 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna Lecture) (Paperback)

This book is a fascinating, thought-provoking meditation on religious issues related to William James' classic work. Taylor's take on religious developments in Western Europe/North America is fascinating and enlightening in several senses of the word. And while truly respectful of William James and his insights, Taylor is no cheerleader and convincingly discusses a number of James' key blind spots along with their probable sources. The book's brevity and readability belies the punch it packs.
The one glaring imperfection is the pedantic and pretentious refusal to translate French quotations, some of which seem like they're probably quite important. Too bad, I'll never know for sure.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charles Taylor and William James, March 1, 2008

By 

Michael D. True (Worcester, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna Lecture) (Paperback)

Charles Taylor's "Varieties of Religion Today," is a superb reflection on the importance of William James' commentary on religion a century ago. In a precise, brief, and resonant book, Taylor conveys a vivid sense of James' insights, yet provides a valuable critique of his "Varieties of Religious Experience" and "Will to Believe," for the contemporary reader. In addition to being a incisive essay in its own right, "Varieties of Religion Today"
is a useful introduction to several of Taylor's other books and principal concerns as a philosopher, including on the ethics of belief. I have already read the book three times, and look forward to returning to it, as each reading reveals another level of understanding and insight into the state of religion and secularism in the U.S. particulary and other Western nations. A virtue of the book for this reader, who isn't a philosopher, is the clarity of language and lack of professional jargon.