Abstract

This dissertation seeks to clarify the nature and meaning of religious experience and to develop criteria for validating it through a critical examination of the mature religious philosophies of James and Royce. ;Chapter One focuses on James's psychological approach in The Varieties of Religious Experience and argues that by disregarding the institutional and social dimensions of religious experience James construes it as essentially mystical in nature. The degree to which James's own mystical experiences shaped his understanding of mysticism is explored, and his belief that intense mystical experiences are revelatory of unmediated reality is challenged. ;Chapter Two focuses on James's interpretation of religious experience at the end of the Varieties and in A Pluralistic Universe. While the inchoate polytheistic interpretation of the Varieties may be consonant with his radical empiricism and pluralism, it is philosophically unsatisfactory. Further, the pluralistic monism of A Pluralistic Universe comes precariously close to the absolute idealism of which he was critical. ;Chapter Three offers an evaluation of Royce's The Sources of Religious Insight, arguing that his approach, with its emphasis on the social dimension of religious experience and its rejection of preoccupation with the mystical, offers a broader, more adequate perspective for understanding religious experience. ;Chapter Four explores major themes in Royce's The Problem of Christianity--his theory of community, his triadic epistemology, and his notion of the world of interpretation. Royce's treatment of historical Christianity is viewed against the backdrop of his general theory. ;Chapter Five considers how religious experience might be validated. The near-death experience is taken as a distinctive form of mystical religious experience which, when scrutinized, may be validated only by placing it within larger social, cultural, and historical, religious, and moral contexts. The chapter concludes with an enumeration of five criteria of validation gleaned from James and Royce: experiential intensity, positive pragmatic consequences, coherence with synthesizing reason, consistency with prevailing religious tradition, and nisus toward universal community. ;The final brief chapter suggests areas for further testing of the validation criteria