WILLIAM JAMES AND THE METAPHYSICS OF EXPERIENCE

William James is often considered one of America’s most original philosophical minds, while also a foundational thinker for the study of religion. Despite this reputation, he is rarely considered a serious philosopher or religious thinker by contemporary standards. In this new interpretation David Lamberth argues that James’s major contribution was to develop a metaphysics of experience integrally related to his pluralistic and social religious ideas. Lamberth systematically interprets James’s radically empiricist world-view and argues for an early dating (1895) for his development of this metaphysics. He offers a radically empiricist reading of The Varieties of Religious Experience and a close analysis of A Pluralistic Universe. Concluding, he connects James’s ideas about experience, pluralism, and truth to current debates in philosophy, philosophy of religion, and theology, suggesting James’s functional, experiential metaphysics as a conceptual aid in bridging the social and interpretive with the immediate and concrete, avoiding radical relativism and uncritical realism. 

David C. Lamberth is Assistant Professor of Theology in the Faculty of Divinity of Harvard University