A critical comparison of William James and Søren Kierkegaard on religious belief

This thesis is a critical comparison of the accounts of religious belief proposed by<br/>William James and Søren Kierkegaard. Both James and Kierkegaard greatly emphasize<br/>the subjective aspects of religious belief. In view of this fact, surprisingly little<br/>comparative work has been done in this area. I contribute to this literature in two ways.<br/>Firstly, I make a brief assessment of what James knew of Kierkegaard’s work.<br/>Secondly, I draw four comparisons between Kierkegaard and James. In Chapter One I<br/>examine the claim that Kierkegaard proposes a pragmatist account of faith of the kind<br/>that James sets out in his essay The Will To Believe. I argue that this claim rests on a<br/>misunderstanding of Kierkegaard’s argument that to have faith is to take a risk. In the<br/>following chapter I discuss James’s and Kierkegaard’s views on formal proofs for the<br/>existence of God. Both philosophers reject the notion that faith can be based on such<br/>proofs. I distinguish between their positions, and argue in favour of Kierkegaard’s. In<br/>the third chapter I compare Kierkegaard’s and James’s accounts of religious experience.<br/>James views religious experiences as a special kind of evidence for the existence of<br/>God. For Kierkegaard it is a mistake to view religious experiences as evidence. Such<br/>experiences should be understood in relation to the concept of religious authority. In the<br/>final chapter I examine Kierkegaard’s conception of faith as a life-view. I argue that for<br/>Kierkegaard a life-view is a fundamental perspective on one’s existence. I compare this<br/>conception with James’s concept of philosophical temperament and in relation to his<br/>discussion of the sick soul.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Southampton

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Chipp, Jonathan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Schoenbaumsfeld, Genia