Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:17:05.399Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religious Experience, Emotion, and Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Wayne Proudfoot
Wayne Proudfoot
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York, NY 10027
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the wake of Kant's critique of speculative metaphysics, many students of religion and theology have sought immediate access to the real and a foundation for doctrine and belief in religious experience. It was thought by some that a mode of experience might be discovered that was unscathed by the activity of the imagination in the construction of the forms and categories, and that would be broader than Kant's exclusively moral account of religion. It is not accidental, then, that the phrase “religious experience” has come to be reserved almost exclusively for aspects of experience that are allegedly prereflective, that transcend the verbal, or are in some way free of the structures of thought and judgment that language represents. The search has been for some channel of cognitive immediacy, whether the chosen mode of experience was volitional or affective.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 70 , Issue 3-4 , October 1977 , pp. 343 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy (tr. Harvey, J. W.; New York: Oxford University, 1958) 8.Google Scholar

2 Aristotle, , Rhetorica, 1378a (tr. W. Rhys Roberts, in Works of Aristotle Translated into English, ed. Ross, W. D., vol. 11; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924).Google Scholar

3 Rhetorka, 1378ab.

4 Rhetorica, 1383b, 1384b.

5 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness (tr. Barnes, H. E.; New York: Philosophical Library, 1956) 252–302.Google Scholar

6 See Dodds, Eric R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California, 1964) ch. 2.Google Scholar

7 Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death (tr. Lowrie, W.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1954) 146–207.Google Scholar

8 I owe this observation to Professor Arthur Danto.

9 Foot, Philippa, “Moral Beliefs,” in Theories of Ethics (ed. Foot, P.; Oxford: Oxford University, 1971) 86.Google Scholar

10 Otto, Idea of the Holy, 7 (original emphasis).

11 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1888) 277.Google Scholar Donald Davidson has recently argued that a cognitive theory of the emotions can be extracted from Hume. See “Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976) 744–57.Google Scholar Davidson suggests that in addition to his identification of pride with a simple impression, Hume also presents an account of “propositional pride.” Hume's writing on the subject, however, has served to reinforce the view of emotions as simple noncognitive impressions.

12 See Lovejoy, Arthur D., The Reason, the Understanding and Time (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1961).Google Scholar

13 See Bernstein, Richard J., “Peirce's Theory of Perception,” in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (Second Series; ed. Moore, E. C. and Robin, R. S.; Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1954) 165–89.Google Scholar

14 James, William, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1890) 2.449–50 (original emphasis).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Bedford, Errol, “Emotions,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 57 (1957) 281–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., 284.

18 Ibid., 285.

19 See Parsons, Katherine Pyne, “Mistaking Sensations,” Philosophical Review 79 (1970) 201–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Bedford, “Emotions,” 303–04.

21 Proudfoot, Wayne and Shaver, Phillip, “Attribution Theory and the Psychology of Religion,” JSSR 14 (1975) 317–30.Google Scholar

22 Schachter, Stanley and Singer, Jerome E., “Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State,” Psychological Review 69 (1962) 379–99;Google ScholarCannon, Walter B., Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage (2d ed.; New York: Appleton, 1929).Google Scholar

23 Marañon, G., “Contribution à l'Etude de l'Action Emotive de l'Adrénaline,” Revue Française d'Endocrinologie 2 (1924) 301–25.Google Scholar

24 Schachter, Stanley, Emotion, Obesity and Crime (New York: Academic Press, 1971) 3–4.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 4.

26 For phenomenological descriptions of such moods, see, for example, Niebuhr, Richard R., “The Widened Heart,” HTR 62 (1969) 127–54;Google ScholarHeidegger, Martin, Being and Time (tr. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E.; New York: Harper, 1962) 225–311.Google Scholar

27 Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Douglas, Mary, “Self-evidence,” in Implicit Meanings (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) 276–318.Google Scholar

29 See Slater, Philip E., Microcosm: Structural, Psychological, and Religious Evolution in Groups (New York: Wiley, 1966).Google Scholar

30 Otto, Idea of the Holy, 8.

31 Tillich, Paul, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University, 1952) 36–39.Google Scholar

32 Peirce, Charles Sanders, “The Fixation of Belief,” in Collected Papers (ed. Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1934) 5.376.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 5.292.