A colloquium on the centennial of William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"
March 24, 2002: 2:00pm to 6:30pm
March 25, 2002: 9:00am to 3:30pm
Location:
Room 555, Lerner Hall, Columbia University
2920 Broadway (at West 115th Street )
New York , NY 10027
This colloquium is free and open to the public. Registration is optional.
Sunday, March 24, 2002
2:00pm-3:30pm
"Damned for God's Glory:" William James and the Scientific Vindication of Protestant Culture
David Hollinger, Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California , Berkeley . His most recent books include Science, Jews, and Secular Culture ( Princeton , 1996) and Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (Basic Books, 1995, revised edition, 2000). He is spending the academic year 2001-02 as Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford .
4:00pm-5:30pm
Pragmatism and 'An Unseen Order' in Varieties
Wayne Proudfoot, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Columbia University . His publications include God and Self (Bucknell, 1976) and Religious Experience ( Berkeley , 1985), which won the 1986 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence. He is currently at work on a book on pragmatism and American religious thought.
5:30pm-6:30pm
Wine and Cheese Reception
Monday, March 25, 2002
9:00am-10:30am
The Fragmentation of Consciousness and The Varieties of Religious Experience: William James's Contribution to a Theory of Religion
Ann Taves, Professor of History of Christianity and American Religion at the Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University . Her most recent book, Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, 1999) was awarded the Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy and Religion in 2000 and was designated as one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Books of 2000. She is currently working on a series of essays on dissociation, memory, and religious experience.
10:45am-12:15pm
The Varieties of Ordinary Experience
Jerome Bruner, a native New Yorker, is University Professor at New York University , where he teaches at the School of Law . He received a doctorate in psychology from Harvard in 1941, where he taught until 1970 when he became Watts Professor at Oxford . His principal interest centers on how culture shapes mind, and his most recent book, Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (2002), deals with the narrative construction of "reality." He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Yale, Harvard, and the Sorbonne, among others, and received the International Balzan Prize in 1987.
12:15pm-1:30pm
Lunch break
1:30pm-3:30pm
Some Inconsistencies in James's Varieties
General discussion with Richard Rorty, educated at the University of Chicago and Yale, and has taught at Wellesley , Princeton, the University of Virginia . He is currently a professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford. He is the author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1989); Contingency, Irony and Solidarity ( Cambridge , 1989); and Achieving our Country (Harvard, 1997).
Background on The Varieties
In 1901-1902 William James delivered the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at Edinburgh , published as The Varieties of Religious Experience: a study in human nature. James was a professor of philosophy at Harvard who helped establish academic psychology in this country. He brought to the topic of religious experience a broad acquaintance with contemporary work in both psychology and philosophy.
James writes well, and Varieties is illustrated with quotations from reports of religious experience gleaned from his reading of classical religious authors and from contemporary sources, including pamphlets, letters and journal entries. Despite his claim that the psychological description had expanded so much that philosophical analysis had to be postponed, James uses these accounts to describe and evaluate different forms of experience, and to propose a "science of religions" that would range beyond the distinctly Protestant culture he represented.
After a period of neglect, American pragmatism has enjoyed a renaissance during the past twenty-five years, bringing renewed interest in James's writings on the part of historians, philosophers, and students of literature. The centennial anniversary of Varieties provides an occasion for reexamining a book that has always elicited a wide audience and can provoke fresh thinking about religion and its relation to science.
Wayne Proudfoot, Ph.D. Columbia University
Speaker Biographies:
Jerome Bruner, a native New Yorker, is University Professor at New York University , where he teaches at the School of Law . He received a doctorate in psychology from Harvard in 1941, where he taught until 1970 when he became Watts Professor at Oxford . His principal interest centers on how culture shapes mind, and his most recent book, Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (2002), deals with the narrative construction of "reality." He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Yale, Harvard, and the Sorbonne, among others, and received the International Balzan Prize in 1987.
David A. Hollinger is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California , Berkeley . His most recent books are Science, Jews, and Secular Culture ( Princeton , 1996) and Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (Basic Books, 1995, revised edition, 2000). He is spending the academic year 2001-02 as Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford
Wayne Proudfoot is a Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Columbia University . His publications include God and Self (Bucknell, 1976) and Religious Experience ( Berkeley , 1985), which won the 1986 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence. His is currently at work on a book on pragmatism and American religious thought.
Richard Rorty was educated at the University of Chicago and Yale, and has taught at Wellesley , Princeton, the University of Virginia . He is currently a professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford. He is the author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1989); Contingency, Irony and Solidarity ( Cambridge , 1989); and Achieving our Country (Harvard, 1997).
Ann Taves is Professor of History of Christianity and American Religion at the Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University . Her most recent book, Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, 1999) was awarded the Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy and Religion in 2000 and was designated as one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Books of 2000. She is currently working on a series of essays on dissociation, memory, and religious experience.
Sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation as part of the Templeton Research Lectures on the Constructive Engagement of Science and Religion.
