In “William James and the varieties of postmodern religious experience”, Grace M. Jantzen problematizes an interpretation of James’ scholarly work—specifically as it relates to mystical experience, the reliability of such accounts, as well as the role that religion has in a (post)modern society— that is popular amongst analytic philosophers of religion. This interpretation stresses the importance of an objective stand-point through which reports of mystical experience can be evaluated. It would seem at first that this is the only way to move beyond the impasse James’ creates in his discussion of mysticism: if moments of ecstasy, or mystical episodes that cannot be explained through recourse to phenomenal reality “have the right” to be binding on those individuals who experience them, but not on others, how can this tell us anything about the evidential value of these experiences? James’ use of the word “right” suggests that he is posing a question quid juris— how is the person who has this experience entitled to it? If the mystic is entitled to it by virtue of experiencing it and the one who has not experienced it is entitled to reject it, then it would seem that (in the absence of an “objective” arbiter) it is entirely appropriate to consign mystical experience to a “private, subjective” sphere “without political consequence”— which is precisely what analytic philosophers of religion have done (Jantzen). Janzten does concede that James “leaves himself wide open to such interpretations”(Jantzen). However, thinkers can be read against themselves and this is what Jantzen sets out to do.

The Kantian stricture that analytic philosophers of religion apply to mystical experience in their reception of James work— by relegating mystical experience to the realm of noumena— can only be accomplished, argues Jantzen, if a third conclusion that James’ reaches concerning the authority of mystical states is ignored. In this conclusion, James mentions the possibility of “other orders of truth”, suggesting an ontological pluralism that would thoroughly disrupt the clean Kantian divide between phenomena and noumena (Jantzen). Indeed, Jantzen interprets this third conclusion as an example of James attempting to “escape the Kantian strictures on knowledge of the noumenal” (Jantzen).

Another consequence of this privileging of the purely “objective”, disinterested stand-point when investigating mystical or religious phenomena is that not enough attention is paid to said experiences’ historical determinants, nor their political implications. These considerations are absolutely indispensable for an analysis of the varieties of religion in post-modernity, according to Jantzen. Granted, James is not a historian of religion nor a political scientist— his focus, quite clearly expressed at the beginning of the Gifford lectures, is psychology. Jantzen recognizes this fact, and argues that acknowledging these factors does not detract from James’ goals in the least. She notes that his analysis of religious doctrine is inextricably linked to his “philosophy of pragmatism” that emphasizes the “organic connection” between theory and practice, or “thought and conduct”(Jantzen). James’ view is that the truth-value of a proposition is not only determined by its fidelity to the “facts” but also by its practicability. This attentiveness to “conduct” is sorely missing from the analysis of analytic philosophers of religion. The practitioners of rarefied forms of theology are passionately denounced by James— their God is a “metaphysical monster” and their theological system does not even approach the status of truth (Jantzen).

Analytic philosophers of religion have been able to maintain their position by disavowing James’ Hegelianism. Hegel’s theory of critical sociality precludes any privileging of a “stand-pointless” judgment; one cannot simply appeal to the imperative of observing things as they actually exist because Hegel’s project calls into question the “putative objectivity” of immediate sense experience (Jantzen). This crude empiricism fails because it does not have a concept, or theory of the whole. One cannot arrive at a conclusion about the value of something by dint of accumulating “facts”. The space of reason “arises within a shared linguistic and cultural system”(Jantzen). As such, Jantzen argues that a study of mystical experience must take into account the socio-political landscape which is constitutive of them (Hindus have visions of Shiva, Chrisitans of Jesus, Muslims of Mohammad), and more broadly, the social construction of religion itself. Jantzen realizes that this is not a view that she can directly attribute to James himself, but nonetheless she argues it must lie at the core of any ethical pragmatism.

I would like to now evaluate Jantzen’s argument; strengths and certain weaknesses that I identified in the text. I think that Jantzen’s repudiation of the analytic position was well-argued, even though this meant, as mentioned earlier in the essay, reading James against himself. I think this is a good strategy because it brings to our attention what may have been dismissed as trivial in earlier readings of James’ work— the opposition between what is “essential” or “inessential” in the text is unsettled and called into question. Jantzen’s historicist approach also struck me as (although this can be attributed to the prejudices that I brought to my reading of the essay) altogether more convincing than the claim that there exists a position of pure objectivity from which one can dismiss personal experiences. However, that we are all informed by social and cultural biases, is a statement that I think hardly anybody would deny— and so I was left wondering if the arguments made by the analytic philosophers of religion moved beyond a Kantian denunciation of mystical experience. Indeed, throughout the essay, Jantzen refers to this group without ever mentioning its members or their specific arguments, and so I thought her argument operated at a somewhat general register. On the issue of generality or abstraction, I also think that Jantzen’s article would have benefited from more clarity concerning the usage of the word “postmodern”. A working definition is not offered in the article, and this left me with many questions. Jantzen does not seem to conceive of post-modernism along the same lines as Lyotard or Jameson, instead, I thought that the definition of postmodernity operative in the essay viewed it as something inaugurated by political and social tumult, or perhaps characterized by multiple, contradictory religious prejudices that merely conceal structures of power. I also found myself wondering if Jantzen was linking postmodernism with the impulse to historicize and remain attentive to ideological motivations— if such a link can be made, then are we to think of Hegel, Gadamer, and James as theorists of the postmodern? Are the analytic philosophers of religion merely offering encomiums to their own ideological biases, with nothing more to say?

The relationship between secularism and progressivism is something that Jantz comments on in the final pages of the essay. She argues that those who claim that a progressive politics can only emerge in the absence of religion are categorically wrong. However, I think that Jantz’s position is actually quite similar to the one she argues against. She writes, “rejection of religious experience by critical and progressive thinkers would simply abandon the field to those who conscript religious experience to devastating and reactionary ends” (Jantzen). Her statement categorizes those who have faith into two categories: the senseless reactionary and the “critical and progressive thinker”. Is this entirely different from the categorization that the secular progressive makes between the enlightened agnostic and the savage believer? Is this categorization also not an act of ideological mystification— completely ignoring the political determinants of radicalism? Jantzen has, throughout the essay, reminded us of the necessity to contextualize matters concerning religious experience, and even asks the Foucaldian question: “What political and cultural technologies of power remain unchallenged if religious experience is construed as private unsituated intensity?” (Jantzen). If religious experience has socio-political determinants then surely the same thing can be said of religious extremism or fanaticism. Insofar as the spectral figure of the extremist is the Other of a secular, civilized society, then its role in producing this Other must also be investigated. I will end with a quote from a recent book that I read criticizing precisely this attitude, that is, pragmatist or Habermasian approaches to sociality, which I find pertinent to my analysis: “Unthinkable within such a framework is that some might be excluded from or choose to opt out of the space of reasons: the space is bounded with all exits and entrances sealed. This precludes the possibility of radical dissensus and therefore of drastic change: the terms of rational agency are already determined such that alternative forms of practical rationality are ruled out from the outset as infeasible, ridiculous, violent, dangerous, undemocratic… or nonhuman” (Comay).

Works Cited

Jantzen, Grace M. “William James and the Varieties of Religious Experience.” 2004, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203413135.

Comay, Rebecca. The Dash–the Other Side of Absolute Knowing. MIT Press, 2018.