Your Humble Blogger is currently reading George Santayana's essays on Character and Opinion in the United States. I wasn't much enjoying it; in part, a lengthy discussion of the virtues and flaws of William James' philosophy is less enlightening to those like Your Humble Blogger who hasn't read him. I am aware, more or less, of his book on The Varieties of Religious Experience, but I have only the vaguest idea of its contents or influence, and of his other writings I am totally ignorant.
And yet ... after a hundred pages or so, there was a stretch I really enjoyed, and so I'll pass it along. Santayana had characterized James' attitude towards religious belief (fairly or unfairly) as essentially that belief is good in and of itself, independent of whether the thing believed in is true or not, or is good or not. Essentially, he says James transfers the value from the thing believed in to the act of belief. I don't know whether this is true of James (I don't even quite know whether I've correctly characterized Santayana), but I do think it is true of a lot of people I come in contact with. It wouldn't surprise me greatly if that strand of thought derives from James.
I don't even disagree entirely; belief in anything is, on the whole, better than a belief in nothing. Of course, as Umberto Eco says (claiming it's a quote from someone else), "when men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything." Belief is a part of the human condition; the world is far too complicated to move around in without believing in something; the Ten Commandments, inductive reasoning, Run Expectancy, some guideline or shortcut for action. So, believe!
Furthermore, I still believe, in my tolerant way, that other people's beliefs, tho' different than mine, are worthy of respect. That, to a certain extent, is the positive residue of James, as it leads a lot of us to say "Shamanism may well be bizarre and irrational, but it does seem to work for some people, so let's not try to destroy their belief in it. After all, my own beliefs may well seem bizarre and irrational to them." And that's all good. But there's an important difference between tolerating other people's beliefs (and actions) and tolerating my own. If there are things I believe that I don't actually believe (and there are lots of those, from the value of Lou Merloni to my justification for leaving dirty dishes in the sink, up to, quite possibly, egalitarianism), it is in no way intolerant to stop believing them. And it's best to believe in things that you think are good things to believe in.
"Believe, certainly: we can not help believing; but believe rationally, holding what seems certain for certain, , what seems probable for probable, what seems desirable for desirable, and what seems false for false," says Santayana. This means examining what you believe, which is difficult, time-consuming, and complicated. "We do not need a will [in order] to believe; we only need a will to study the object in which we are inevitably believing." Well, and I have quibbles with a lot of the details of those sentences, but on the whole, it is, after all, what I'm doing here, with the help of my Gentle Readers: studying what I believe.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.