Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"
    A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"
    A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"
    Ebook42 pages43 minutes

    A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Nonfiction Classics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Nonfiction Classics for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535840293
    A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Varieties of Experience

      Sep 1, 2020

      THERE IS A PUZZLE at the heart of my academic work. I am an anthropologist, and among other things, I study the voices (or auditory hallucinations) of people in different countries who have schizophrenia. Their voices are clearly shaped by local cult

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Writer Turned Mystic

      Jan 27, 2020

      The Writer Turned Mystic
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Best Panaceas for Heartaches

      Sep 22, 2017

      The Best Panaceas for Heartaches
      17 min read

    • Article

      Psychedelic INSIGHT

      Nov 22, 2022

      Psychedelic INSIGHT
      12 min read

    • Article

      Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking: How Julian Jaynes’ famous 1970s theory is faring in the neuroscience age.

      May 28, 2015

      Julian Jaynes was living out of a couple of suitcases in a Princeton dorm in the early 1970s. He must have been an odd sight there among the undergraduates, some of whom knew him as a lecturer who taught psychology, holding forth in a deep baritone v

      14 min read

    • Article

      Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking

      Nov 9, 2017

      Julian Jaynes was living out of a couple of suitcases in a Princeton dorm in the early 1970s. He must have been an odd sight there among the undergraduates, some of whom knew him as a lecturer who taught psychology, holding forth in a deep baritone v

      14 min read

    • Article

      Ram Dass, Part Of The '60s Psychedelic Movement, Dies At 88

      Dec 23, 2019

      In 1963, Richard Alpert ended one life and launched a new one: Ousted from Harvard University's faculty with co-merrymaker Timothy Leary for giving hallucinogenic drugs to students, he became a point man for the psychedelic movement of the '60s. Many

      6 min read

    • Article

      Against Willpower

      Feb 2, 2017

      Against Willpower
      9 min read

    • Article

      How Women Came to Dominate Neuroendocrinology

      Aug 16, 2018

      When Kathleen Morrison stepped onto the stage to present her research on the effects of stress on the brains of mothers and infants, she was nearly seven and a half months pregnant. The convergence was not lost on Morrison, a postdoctoral researcher

      9 min read

    • Article

      Listen To The Voices In Your Head

      Feb 1, 2017

      Schizophrenics and other people with unquiet minds are locked up, medicated, and stigmatized. Now a radical movement is telling them they might not be sick at all.

      16 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Sexual Orientation: Sexual fluidity is a challenge to both traditional and alternative sexual narratives.

      Oct 6, 2016

      Lisa Diamond’s seventh interview is the one that she remembers best. She had recruited “subject 007” at Cornell University, where she was studying how women who express attraction to other women come to understand their sexual identity.  One early ev

      12 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Sexual Orientation

      Aug 16, 2018

      Lisa Diamond’s seventh interview is the one that she remembers best. She had recruited “subject 007” at Cornell University, where she was studying how women who express attraction to other women come to understand their sexual identity.  One early ev

      12 min read

    • Article

      Best Intentions

      Jun 4, 2023

      Best Intentions
      3 min read

    • Article

      Morals, Meaning, And Nonsense

      Jun 1, 2022

      In Metaphysical Animals, philosophers Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a captivating collective biography of four college friends who went on to become formidable figures in 20th-century moral thought: Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley (né

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Diagnosis Trap

      Sep 13, 2022

      The Diagnosis Trap
      10 min read

    • Article

      Erich Fromm

      Jan 31, 2018

      Erich Fromm
      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Discoveries Inspired By Drugs

      Jan 10, 2023

      Sigmund Freud discovered early on that cocaine proved to be a wonder drug in developing the foundation of psychoanalysis. It compelled people to open up and let go of their ego, at least until the high wore off. Freud first obtained cocaine from Ange

      2 min read

    • Article

      This Essentially Meaningless Conflict

      Sep 22, 2017

      MARILYNNE ROBINSON’S accomplishments are impressive by any standard: she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal, among other honors. But perhaps a better measure o

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience" - Gale

      1

      The Varieties of Religious Experience

      William James

      1902

      Introduction

      In The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), William James offers a sense of validity to the formerly abstract idea of spiritual experience. With an understanding of physiology, psychology, and philosophy, James studied cases of religious inspiration and concluded there were specific aspects of human consciousness that contained energies that could come to a person's assistance in time of great need. The result is what he refers to as the religious experience.

      Trained in chemistry and medicine, James looked at religious experience as a scientist might, by researching many case studies. However, his theories about religious experience were also heavily influenced by his philosophical interests, which drew him to conclude that an unseen reality does exist and is available to everyone for exploration. His sentiments were somewhat aligned with the beliefs of the transcendentalists, with his work honoring the individual rather than the institutions of religion.

      The Varieties of Religious Experience is actually a collection of lectures James delivered in Edinburgh, Scotland. The lectures were sponsored by Adam Gifford, who was interested in promoting a series of studies of what he referred to as a natural theology. James's lectures became by far the most popular in the series. James also received international attention and praise as one of the first American philosophers to have his ideas welcomed and respected in Europe. Although not cited as James's best book, The Varieties of Religious Experience continues to be referred to as one of the best books on religion. In his day, intellectuals tended to categorize religious experiences as no more than a nervous condition or a reaction caused by indigestion. The Varieties of Religious Experience portrays the need for a sense of the spiritual as a natural and healthy psychological function.

      The Varieties of Religious Experience has been so successful that it has been reprinted thirty-six times. It is lauded as being as influential and as significant in the twentieth century as it was when first published. To emphasize this point, the board of the Modern Library established that James's book is the second-best nonfiction book of the twentieth century.

      Author Biography

      William James is referred to as the father of American psychology. He is known for his two-volume work, The Principles of Psychology, which summarizes his theories in a field that in the early twentieth century was considered a relatively new science. These volumes took James twelve years to write. However, by the time he completed this work,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1