PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION AND LIBERALISM AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IN WESTERN COUNTRIES
William
James (seated) and Théodore Flournoy
Abstract
At the turning point of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the
psychology of religion was an attempt of some liberal thinkers to renew
liberalism as a philosophy of freedom. In this liberal approach, psychology as
a new science was the counterpart of the sociological attempt to understand
religion in the context of culture. Like the German sociologist Max Weber, the
American psychologist William James and his Swiss colleague Theodore Flournoy
tried to understand the rationality of the religious experience. But unlike Max
Weber, they did not study religion in a macro-perspective but in a
micro-perspective. Rejecting in this way Max Weber’s axiological neutrality,
which is a scientist’s objective attitude leading irreparably to scepticism,
William James and Theodore Flournoy were able to analyse the religious experience
in terms of subjective equilibration. While William James analysed this
experience in its moral consequences in exceptional cases, Theodore Flournoy
proceeded to a mathematical analysis, which led him to compare psychological
equilibration with economical equilibration. This comparison allowed the Swiss
psychologist to conciliate William James’ analysis of exceptional religious
cases with Granville Stanley Hall’s quantitative method. Furthermore, his
proximity with the Lausanne School, which developed a radical mathematical
conception of economy with Leon Walras (who is a founder of the Marginalist
theory with William Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger) and the general equilibrium
theory with Wilfredo Pareto (Pareto
efficiency), allowed Flournoy to formulate a symbolic efficiency of
religion, which is comparable to Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Much like William James’ study of religion,
Flournoy’s analysis of religious experience integrated spontaneity as a fundamental
element of analysis in mystical cases, for instance, but his analysis
integrated a mathematical approach of psychology, which could be extended to
ordinary cases of religious experience in terms of social peace and economic
wellbeing.
Introduction
During the nineteenth century, the American and the European continents
proceeded to a first modernisation of what we today call “the Industrial Revolution”.
This revolution was due to the great development of the sciences emancipated
from the religions[1].
Then, from an economy principally based on agriculture and on ground property,
the “capital” of money became a force of production for industrial products[2].
The empirical approaches of science have radically transformed the economy,
society and policy of these industrial countries by the technology stemming
from these very sciences, such as biology, chemistry and physics[3].
But after one century of this strong industrial development, some problems
emerged in the individual, in society, in policy and - most of all - in culture[4]
of these Western countries. Because the traditional way of life was entirely discredited
by the modern way of life[5],
some psychological and physiological disorders occurred in the individuals for
whom the meaning[6]
of life changed radically. There was no more transcendent reference for the modern
individual in a modern society built on a modern economy[7].
Then the impact of these psychological (micro or private) and social (macro and
public) disorders obliged theologians, scientists and politicians to renew
their interpretations of modernity and to formulate new frames of thought to
give meaning to the modern life, essentially based on the polarization between
materialism and spiritualism, Marxism and nationalism. These new interpretations
were automatically confronted with the question of religion in science and in
culture, because all kinds of believes contain a transcendental meaning or a
teleological aspect, which implies a certain tolerance of the difficulties of
life and results in a certain approach to overcoming them[8].
This is the reason why we can consider all these materialist and spiritualist interpretations
as secular religions, from which emerge the new challenges in good or in evil[9]
of the twentieth century.
William
James and Théodore Flournoy
However, in viewing nationalism and communism as threats to individual
freedom, psychology as a science (experimental psychology) applied to religious
phenomena (psychology of religion) was one of the attempts of some liberal thinkers
at the end of the nineteenth century to renew liberalism as a philosophy of
freedom beyond good and evil. Among these thinkers were the American
psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) and his European
counterpart Théodore Flournoy (1854-1920), who built their thoughts and their
friendship on their common Protestant denomination and around their will[10]
to conciliate religion and science[11].
Despite these common interests, William James particularly centred one of his
theoretical interests on the policy[12]
emerging from the consequences of the religious belief in the concrete life,
oriented as he was towards the Welfare State (economic policy), whereas
Theodore Flournoy centred one of his practical interests on the economy[13]
emerging from the genesis of religious belief as technologies of the self,
oriented as he was towards Marginalism (political economy). Both these
specificities, political and economical, appear when we consider their thoughts
in their specific contexts.
William James’ American Context
As an American citizen and as an eminent professor at Harvard[14],
William James felt some moral obligations towards his students and the future elite[15]
of the United States, amongst whom we can count the Afro-American sociologist,
historian and civil rights activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois[16]
(1868-1963) and the 26th President of the United States Theodore
Roosevelt[17]
(1858-1919).
In a certain manner, these two famous students of William James are
emblematic of James’ paradox, because they embodied the sociological[18]
and political[19]
aspects of a psychology based on a binary conception of the world
(possible/impossible), which includes an infinite plurality of elements in a
teleological conception of life (1/0). As we shall see, contrary to Théodore
Flournoy who conceives pluralism as an infinity of sets with finite elements
(Leibniz’s com-possibility of worlds), William James built his philosophy on Pascal’s
wager (1623-1662)[20].
Though William James did not base the principle of life on a wager, he kept
Pascal’s framework to found it on the principle of belief, essentially binary[21].
This principle seemed rightly problematic to W. E. B. Du Bois, suffering and
struggling against racism, because the area of political science in which
William James had intended to concentrate appeared from a sociological point of
view to justify discrimination and social injustice based on a physiological
and psychological conception of inequality between races (Black and White) and
social classes (Marx).
For example, one of William James’ most important concepts, “the
strenuous life”[22],
was largely used by Theodore Roosevelt – during a speech before the Hamilton Club
of Chicago, April 10, 1899 –, who found in this concept an ultimate meaning for
his personal life as well as for the conduct of his Presidency (1901-1909) to rally
the maximum number of American citizens around his heroic conception of life,
essentially aristocratic: “In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the
West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who
pre-eminently and distinctly embody all that most American in the American
character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine
of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to
preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires
mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship,
or from bitter toil, and who out of this wins the splendid ultimate triumph” [23].
From the individual to the group, this concept allowed to the greatest
number of white people to identify themselves with their political elite, as
they “believed” to belong to an aristocratic race. Although William James believed
to be struggling against Hegel’s monism, his concept allowed one to justify the
segregation between blacks and whites, in spite of the equality of American
citizens provided by United States Constitution.
In 1909, W. E. B. Du Bois was lucid about this purely formal equality:
“The Negro in this country suffers not only those hindrances that spring from
his former enslavement, but he suffers even more from the obstacles imposed in
race and caste feeling. Our treatment of colored people in this country
constitutes the greatest charge that can be made against our patriotism, our
religion, our humanity. The civilized world stands aghast at the crimes
committed almost daily by race hatred in this country, the most advanced
civilization under the sun”[24].
Then, if William James philosophically tried to struggle against Right
Hegelians (fascism) and Left Hegelians (communism) with a certain psychology of
belief, stemming from extraordinary religious cases, his political interest for
the industrial development of the United States and its psychological
consequences found an issue in a religious conception of the United States as
country of “individual freedom”: “We are suffering to-day in America”, said
James in 1899, “from what is called the labor-question; and when you go out
into the world, you will each and all of you be caught up in its perplexities.
I use a brief term labor-question to cover all sorts of anarchistic discontents
and socialistic projects, and the conservative resistances which they provoke.
So far as this conflict is unhealthy and regrettable, – and I think it is so
only to a limited extent, – the unhealthiness consists solely in the fact that
one-half of our fellow-countrymen remain entirely blind to the internal
significance of the lives of the other half. They miss the joys and sorrows,
they fail to feel the moral virtue, and they do not guess the presence of the
intellectual ideals”[25].
But, if James’ struggle against Hegelianism helped spare the American citizen
from the European dilemma between fascism (spiritualism) and communism
(materialism), the identification of all the individuals with a single and sole
political corpus (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, WASP) transferred the problems
due to the “labor-question” to “race hatred” in the United States. In a certain
way, we could see in the “race hatred” of white people against black people, at
the turn of twentieth century, in the United States, the failure of the
constitution of “technologies of the self”[26]
(individual freedom) against the “industrial technology” (due to the labour
division) increasing with the nation-states and their political and economical imperialism.
This is the reason why William James’ binary conception of the belief in an American
spirit or in American character[27]
led the national solidarity in the United States to mix with a Machiavellian
conception of the nation, as a racial and territorial unit[28],
in function of its opposition to “the other”[29].
Théodore Flournoy’s European Context
Unlike Adam Smith’s modern economic theory, Théodore Flournoy was against
an economy based on industrial technology and in favour of technologies of the
self (trickster/free rider), which he termed “religious psychology”, like a
symbolic reversal of the American “psychology of religion” and its tendencies
towards the Welfare State (defensive principle for the greatest number of
people) and the Reason of State (offensive principle for the greatest number of
people)[30].
Following the example of Swiss philosopher Charles Secrétan (1815-1895) and the
Marginalist economists, – Carl Menger (1840-1921), William Stanley Jevons
(1835-1882) and Léon Walras (1834-1910) –, Théodore Flournoy promoted a
conception of the individual positioned against any kind of macro-structure, be
it State or society, and for any kind of micro-structure (molecular mass, atom,
electron[31]),
because the Swiss context did not allow a united conception of the “Swiss
character” around ethnic, linguistic and religious unities. That is the reason why
Flournoy did not see in the individual’s belief in the nation-state the
foundation of inter-individual links.
For example, the patriotism of his cousin, the Swiss psychologist
Edouard Claparède, was not well considered by Flournoy, because it amounted to
saying that faith in God is substituted by faith in the supremacy of one
culture over others, like “Deutschland über alles”[32],
which means that one interpretation, one culture, one civilisation, is
considered to be the objective one (a dogma/monism), despite multiple possible
interpretations in competition with one another (free market/pluralism). This
allowed the belief in the possibility for one human being “to know” in one
theory of knowledge, Hegel’s work Science
of Logic (1817), the whole history of the supreme nation as the integral
and objective evolution of human race in oneself, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).
Therefore, according to Hegel, humanity will understand that he, as the
ultimate philosopher, that him, – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – incarnates “the
last man” who has ended the official and “objective” interpretation of History,
because he had in himself recapitulated, gathered in his mind the whole
contents of History, the whole content of the Spirit that Napoléon had
physically (or politically) achieved and that Hegel, himself, ends
metaphysically (or culturally).
This kind of knowledge process is what Flournoy used to call “panpsychism”
(a global objective point of view), of which he denounced the aporia in 1904[33]
(for a partial subjective point of view). It is at least interesting to note that
Flournoy was conscious of Western countries misinterpretation of the complexity
of the world, and which a new science like ethnology[34]
tackled. This misinterpretation was the undoubted proof of an ethnocentric
naivety to be the most advanced civilization of the world, which reinforced the
development of a national ideology founded on the “American character”[35].
This ethnocentric and civilizational monism led to constitute the “national
identity” in opposition to “the other” in a perpetual war against other
“national identities”. Positioning himself, against the personalization of
nations as concrete actors possessing an organism similar to human body and
then an identity, Flournoy proposed a different conception of otherness, noting
that James’ combination between industrial technology and American government
led irremediably to a bad use of psychology, used at the beginning of the
twentieth century to naturalise the economic[36],
social[37]
and political[38]
differences in the United States of America. However, European imperialism
proceeded to a similar naturalization through colonization, which led to
different racial theories, proposed notably by the French diplomat Joseph
Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882)[39],
and to their different applications, from protectorates to later Nazi concentration
camps.
Because Western countries had industrial technology, they believed in
the universality of their principles and values in a way which let no choice to
the traditional people of different parts of society and of the world to
preserve their history and culture. But it was not possible for these traditional
people to let things happened like this. The more people must appropriate
something outside them, the more this appropriation must come only from the
inner person, from his self. That is the reason why the Industrial Revolution
happened only with an affirmation of the self to be efficient. In other words,
when people struggle against modernization due to the Industrial Revolution,
they irremediably become more individual. This is why they experience
Flournoy’s paradox of dying to be reborn as a supra-man. This paradox is more
precisely defined in the following terms: in wishing to return to the sources
of their tradition in modern times, people become individual because the reason
of belief, which is necessarily anti-individual in traditional society, is
transferred to the individual who struggles against modernity and who devotes himself
to his faith[40].
For example, struggling against materialism, spiritualists like the
French philosopher Henri Bergson[41]
(1859-1941) practised such an individual affirmation. This occurred in their
hatred against modern economy, modern society and modern politics.
Paradoxically, the struggle against modernity constituted the “technologies of
the self”, because the sensitive individual is deeply penetrated by the
principles against which he struggles. It is obvious that struggling against an
enemy requires knowing his strategy and his knowledge, the modern sciences.
This phenomenon of interpenetration between two enemies occurred in a negative
dialectic, where the recognition of the slave by the master is necessary for a
so-called equality. That is the reason why the defensive[42]
(progressive reforms) and offensive[43]
(strong foreign policy) policies of Western nation-states, which supported the industrial
technology and ensured the society of consumption, changed into two similar principles
for the individual who finally identifies with the Spirit of his nation; or,
conversely, these principles can be changed into two opposite principles for
the individual who struggles against the Welfare State and the society of
consumption to free the market, understood as an interplay of pure forces. For
example, in his work Matter and Memory
(1896), Henri Bergson distinguished two kinds of memory that we easily could
refer to ontogenesis and phylogenesis: 1) “habit memory” and 2) “pure memory”. To
understand these two kinds of memory, we must consider Bergson’s life. As Jew
at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe, Bergson was hardly confronted
with the question of religion. Although he felt profoundly attracted to
Catholicism, he finally refused to convert to Christianity in the name of
nationalism (identification with the Spirit of his nation). It is necessary at
this point to say that the French republicanism is monist. If his philosophy
did not indicate what exactly constitutes “pure memory”, Bergson as man acted
in favour of the nation-state and was near to the Establishment[44].
In this way, he personally failed in his quest of universalism for nationalism.
In fact, as Flournoy said to William James in a letter of July 17, 1907, he did
not like Bergson[45]
for this reason. The more precise reason of his attitude towards Bergson was
due to the so-called universal dimension of his “élan vital” (vital outburst). The
nation-state was not a universal reference for Flournoy, because the
construction of a national myth as “History” to define national identity gave
not a universal meaning to all human beings, but rather a relative
interpretation linked to a particular nation for a particular group of persons,
who claims from this perspective to be the most advanced civilization in the
world despite the particular identity of each man.
And despite what one might say, a nation-state always considers itself
to be the most civilized culture in the world and, according to Hegel and
James, war would be necessary to build an identity of a nation-state, because a
relative identity in competition with others always needs to build its identity
against others.
The structuring of individuals into the nation-state means that a group
identity imposes its official history on the individual, dispossessing him of his
own identity, of his own life, through his family, through his society and
through the education that he received at public school. This is the process of
industrial technology based on the division of labour to allow the ordinary man,
the ultra-specialized worker, to live in security inside his country and to
allow to his national heroes, the ultra-specialized soldiers, to conduct wars,
with industrial weapons, outside the country[46].
But, as a neo-Kantian and liberal thinker, Flournoy was unable to accept
the conception of the nation-state, because he was not able to renounce
individual freedom (pluralism) for national identity (monism). According to
Flournoy, Bergson’s mistake then was to construct a philosophy, which tackled
the question of individual freedom, in a conceptual vagueness. This conceptual
vagueness provoked by an abundant use of metaphors did not allow adopting a right
behaviour following the individual situation (micro-economy). Furthermore, this
manner to proceed confused the reader through a so-called peaceful style which
actually advocated a national policy and a national history, understood as
collective memory or “pure memory”[47].
In a certain way, the fact that Bergson had accepted to become president of the
committee on international cooperation of the League of Nations (1921-1926) was
from this point of view pure hypocrisy. In fact, contrary to Bergson who built
his philosophy on a false universalism (“peace” between nation-states),
Flournoy’s religious psychology was based on Charles Secrétan’s Protestant
fundamentalism (individual freedom)[48],
which overcomes the “literal” understanding of the Bible to give access to
Jesus’ feeling of Divinity. In other words, in trying to understand the
presence of God in the human being (the universality in man), Flournoy overcame
his Protestant fundamentalism in favour of a “liberal” approach of Protestantism
(liberal theology). Flournoy’s liberal approach is very interesting, because it
included all the sciences as different “conceptual languages” to discover truth
(God). Contrary to his colleague at the University of Geneva, the linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who was working on the anagram of God in the
classical literature (1906-1909)[49],
Flournoy did not focus his research on the combinatory of forms. But he
included infinitesimal calculus in the combinatory of finite elements,
constituted as a universe of probability allowing infinitesimal results, to see
in infinite universes of finite elements the possibility to reach God. That is
the reason why, unlike Descartes, the “rationality” employed by Flournoy was
not intellectualist (based on forms) but experimental (based on meaning). This meant
for Flournoy as a “psychologist” the experimentation of the Otherness through
his own life (subjective approach). But the way to experiment the absolute Other
meant also to experiment the relative others through the multiple sciences as
“conceptual languages”, understood as universes of finite elements, to reach
God in an asymptotic quest of God symbolized by the invisible tangent.
According to Flournoy, a concept is not a form understood as a word, but a
symbol indicating a meaning as direction in the life, as a “moral obligation”.
This possibility of including mathematic in experimental psychology let him to realise
Wilhelm Wundt’s ideal conceiving psychology as a science (1832-1920). This is
the reason why Flournoy, so interested by the sciences as conceptual languages,
became a historian and philosopher of sciences in 1887. In his opinion, the
different sciences are like different attempts to reach the truth. However,
having overcome his dogmatic approach of religion (a formal approach of
religion), he understood that the sciences are confronted with the same danger
(theory of knowledge). Therefore, in order to struggle against all kind of
systematic closure, Flournoy promoted a method based on the “life value” of
beliefs, even though William James promoted a method based on the “cash value”
of concepts. And unlike Bergson[50],
Flournoy did not use a mystic approach to reach the absolute Otherness through
the sciences. Knowledge of ancient sciences[51]
and perpetual learning of modern sciences[52]
were the way to reach the truth. The field of sciences was not too vast for
him, because he did not conceive the sciences through the prism of Adam Smith’s
labour division. On the contrary, Flournoy did not separate the public and
private spheres, but gathered both to increase his power, to become a “total
man”. In order to increase his power, he took a third way beyond all kinds of
logical opposition by relying on the internal crack of the original sin. His
method relied on a psychophysical dualism, which allowed him to consider the
plurality of forces in man. In fact, Flournoy based his theory on the strong
feeling which tears the individual in two parts, body and mind. Succumbing to
himself, the individual must overcome himself as human to become a “supra-man”.
This experience is religious when the individual believes to be connected to an
absolute force, which sustains him entirely. This is the aspect of pragmatism
that interested Flournoy with its treatment of conceptual languages in the
concrete life. Flournoy was effectively most interested by the functioning of
conceptual languages to concretely constitute technologies of the self. But
contrary to James, Flournoy’s technologies of the self were not linked to a
national character (American character), but to the “multiple individual” who
becomes a unity in looking for God. He noticed that the individual is not
constituted in first in unity, but that this unity must be constituted through
his life experience. Thus, following Charles Secrétan’s intuition, Flournoy took
an interest in multiple personalities, given his curiosity about the
constitution of the individual unity. Astonishingly, the result was different
than James’ result. Flournoy did not obtain a concept as a word but as a
number: “Where does the number come from?” wrote Flournoy in his manuscripts, “according
to certain persons, from time; according to other persons, from space; the
multiplicity of objects that we see in front of us in space. It is both true
and false; for the idea of a number to occur to somebody, man must use the
concepts of time and space which are innate ideas. The number does not come to
mind if man is not in presence of a plurality of sensations in time nor without
an object in space. But man must not confuse these occasional causes of number
emergence with the fundamental cause: the apperception[53];
animals have a succession of impressions (state of temperature, pain, pleasure,
etc.) but they see several objects outside them; a dog does not confuse a tree
with a man, the dog recognizes his master, but it does not have internal
conditions; this plurality of impressions does not give rise to the number, the
inner vision is necessary. This is the exercise which we execute without
thinking about it; superior animals also have this faculty, but not at the same
degree; it is in the nature of thought that we must look for the number. When
we think about something, we have a plurality of ideas; in comparing the acts
of thought, we notice that there is between them, often something in common
which comes not from the nature of things but from thought”[54].
This number as a blind spot is necessary for human beings to see beyond
specific a space-time, but tells nothing about its own nature. This blindness,
which allows us to see beyond things as a part of finite universe, is what
Flournoy called faith, which allows going through different universes of
meaning by drawing an “indifference curve”. According to him, faith and trust
are one and the same, because, if human beings are divided in themselves, they
are confronted to several worlds or universes of meaning (markets), which
select the most adapted number (the price) for the specific context (theory of
value). This conception of the individual as a plurality comes from Darwin,
because the more an individual is plural, the more he is able to adapt to very
contrasted situations and thus minimize the risks of mental bankruptcy by
rigidity (dogmatic or static approach of things). But making the infinitesimal
calculus easier, Flournoy divided the individual into quantum of forces in
competition. It follows that the internal worlds and the external worlds are
connected by the number (the price) which wins among others, considering it is
the most adapted to supply and demand. This arises from an “equilibration”
between the individual and the market (the middle), but, to make this
equilibration possible (transfer from a universe to another), the individual
and the market must be free. This freedom is necessary for the free expression
of forces, mathematically conceptualized. This mathematical conceptualization
allows one to avoid all kinds of idealism (American spirit included) in favour
of flexible mathematical structuring. Considering that numbers have no meaning
in themselves, Flournoy saw in their unequal interactions the emergence of
their meaning seen as direction (theory of value). Regardless of the word we
use to qualify the quantum of force, the number reacts positively
(assimilation) or negatively (submission) to a meeting with another quantum.
Then the “will of power” (assimilative capacity or “capital” (1) in another
meaning than Adam Smith) only determines the quantum assimilation by another
(theory of income (2)/theory of interest (3)). Of course, the most powerful will
(the “winner-takes-all markets”) is the one, which is looking for the absolute
Otherness (God), because looking to reach the absolute Otherness the will of
power increases by assimilating difference (Pareto efficiency: 20% of the bests
take 80% of markets). Then this liberal way to assimilate the other quanta means
that the will wants itself as a will of power, as faith. This is what Carl
Menger and Charles Secrétan call the real “capital”, which is simply a way to
increase oneself[55].
Contrary to James, Flournoy’s ideal is not a specific meaning of will as “American
character”. That is the reason why this difference allowed him to integrate
Granville Stanley Hall’s quantitative method and to reject William James’
friendship with French philosopher Henri Bergson[56].
Because, according to Flournoy, the individual can believe in whatever he wants
but what will determine his power is his “will of power”, his capital as
assimilative capacity. It is easy to recognize in this concept Friedrich
Nietzsche’s “Will of Power” (1844-1900). Flournoy read him in the French
translation of Henri Albert (1868-1921) and completed his concept of “supra-man”
with his conception of the assimilation of the otherness as way to reach God
(the third way)[57].
Flournoy preferred more Nietzsche’s concept of “supra-man” than James’ “strenuous
life”, because, as the experience of Theodore Roosevelt shows, James’ concept
aimed to reinforce the unity of the United States of America through the
Federal Government (economic policy). Following Charles Secrétan, Flournoy
helped the Marginalist economists think about the “subjective moment” in
micro-economy in giving to them a psychological conception of the individual
which is compatible with an economy no longer based on an industrial
technology, like Adam Smith’s theory of the modern economy, but on the free
individual. James’ interest in the political unity of the United States (macro-structure)
also explains why James did not appreciate Secrétan’s thought (micro-structure),
as he wrote to Flournoy in a letter of September 19, 1892: “I am much obliged to you for the paper by
Secrétan, and (unless you deny me the permission) I propose to keep it, and let
you get a new one, which you can do more easily than I. It is much too oracular
& brief, but its pregnancy is a
good example of what an intellect gains by growing old: One says vast things
simply. I read it stretched on the grass of Monte Motterone, the Righi of this
region, just across the Lake, with all the kingdoms of the Earth stretched
before me, and I realized how exactly a philosophic Weltansicht resembles that
from the top of a mountain. You are driven, as you ascend, into a choice of
fewer and fewer paths, and at last you end in two or three attitudes from each
of which we see a great part of the Universe amazingly simplified and
summarized, but nowhere the entire view at once. I entirely agree that
Renouvier’s system fails to satisfy, but it seems to me the classical and
consistent expression of one of the
great attitudes, that of insisting on logically intelligible formulas. If one
goes beyond, one must abandon the hope of formulas
altogether, which is what all pious sentimentalists do; and with them M.
Secrétan, since he fails to give any articulate substitute for the “Criticism”
he finds so unsatisfactory. Most philosophers give formulas, and inadmissible
ones, as when Secrétan makes a mémoire
sans oubli = duratio tota simul = eternity!” [58].
If all kinds of reactions against modernity led necessarily to a
modernization of religion through individualization, Flournoy showed the way to
conciliate science and religion in endowing the free individual with
technologies of the self that Flournoy called “religious psychology”.
Flournoy’s religious psychology was constructed on two principles, defensive
and offensive, inspired by Kant’s distinction between “glauben” (to believe)
and “wissen” (to know), against all kinds of external authorities (society and
State). His principles were completely intended for the individual as an
armour: the first principle is “the exclusion of the transcendence” (defensive
principle against external orders); and the second is “the biological
interpretation” (offensive principle to increase “the will of power”). Justifying
his hostility against all kind of external authorities, Flournoy always kept in
mind these words of Charles Secrétan: “I do not assign any definable authority
to writings or traditions, the Establishment brings to us. All external infallibility
will be an insurmountable obstacle to the work of penetration which shall come
about. If divine inspiration blows somewhere, it will be felt itself: only the
spirit speaks to the spirit, only the spirit discerns the spirit”[59].
Theodore Roosevelt equipped the Federal Government of the United States of
America in 1908 with the first of the two principal federal agencies: the
Bureau of Investigation (BOF), today known under the appellation Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), constitued
in 1947, when the Nazis were defeated. The reason of this late creation of the
CIA could be ideologically understand as the new opposition between capitalism
and communism, even though the previous ideological opposition had been between
fascism and communism. The transfer from James’ liberalism to capitalism as an
ideology against communism could be understood with James’ interest in the
federation of the nation around the “American character”. Though liberalism is
not spiritualism, James found in Bergson’ philosophy a way to justify his “stream
of consciousness” as “élan vital”. As we have already seen, Bergson’s concept
of “élan vital” served to sustain French Republicanism, which is necessarily
monist. If the United States has constituted both its agencies over a long
period of time, we can see that the foundation of the CIA in 1947 represents
the advent of a nation-state constructed entirely on a binary conception of
belief (1/0). In this way, the will to believe into a nation of freedom gave to
the Federal Government a religious halo. This is the reason why we always see
in the President of the United States a Christ figure. But Charles Secrétan and
Théodore Flournoy were very aware of the risk of constituting an economy, a
society and policy on a Spirit of nation inspired by Hegel, because, according
to Secrétan, order is necessary to protect and to act as a nation. This means a
control of economy, society and policy, justifying some threats of State
against the individual, as George Orwell admirably described in 1984 under the name of Big Brother. If
Secrétan struggled against the capital as knowledge for a capital as “will of
power”, Flournoy struggled against the nation as supra-man for a conception of
the individual who is indomitable. Because he did not believe in a supra
objective reason incarnated by the State (the Reason of State), Flournoy’s
psychology and philosophy helped Marginalist economists like William Stanley
Jevons, Carl Menger and Léon Walras to constitute a theory of micro-economy
centred around a psychological conception of the truly free individual.
Conclusion
Finally, with
an understanding of how William James’ psychology of religion took place in the
American context and how Théodore Flournoy’s religious psychology took place in
the European context, we are now able to say that their respective thoughts
were both linked to totally different contexts. At the turn of the twentieth
century, the United States was emerging as a powerful new nation-state and the old
Europeans powers were in decline. This opposition naturally led to different
interests between James and Flournoy. Although they had certain similarities,
we have seen that James was principally interested in policy, whereas Flournoy
was principally interested in the economy. The psychologies and the
philosophies, that they put forth, could only be inverted. James was
theoretically thinking about the unity of the United States as a nation-state
(the multiple in the one); and Flournoy was practically thinking about the many
of the multiple European countries (the one in the multiple). Economically,
sociologically and politically, the issue played out between the Right
Hegelians and the Left Hegelians, spiritualism and materialism, fascism and
communism. But, as believers in individual freedom, William James and Théodore
Flournoy had to think of another way, a way which went beyond good and evil. As
such, in his theoretical struggle against Hegel’s monism, James was taken in a
dialectic which pushed him to formulate, despite his own claims, a monism
through the will to believe, understood as a will to struggle against evil for
good, even though Flournoy, in his practical struggle against the so-called
scientist’s objectivity, built technologies of the self, based on the
individual as composed of multiple personalities. Both thinkers therefore tackled
differently religion: James’ idea of the multiple in the one positioned his
goal towards the constitution of an American spirit (religion linked to the
policy as macro-structure); Flournoy’s idea of the one in the multiple
positioned his goal towards the constitution of the “total individual” as
completely independent in his choices (religion linked to the economy as
micro-structure). That is the reason why James’ thought allowed his former
student of Harvard, the 26th President of the United States, Theodore
Roosevelt, to rely on his concept of “the strenuous life” as an American
character to lead a progressive policy inside the country and an aggressive
policy outside the country. This is also the reason why Flournoy’s thought allowed
the Lausanne school in economy, Léon Walras and Wilfredo Pareto, to formulate a
micro-economy based on the subjective choice. If the psychology as science
helped both thinkers to endow their respective interests with two principles,
one defensive and one offensive, the consequences are totally opposite: the
Federal Government of the United States equipped with two agencies, the FBI (1908)
to insure the internal security and the CIA (1947) to prevent the external
threats in the case of James; the individual equipped with a strong belief in
his natural law and a sure behaviour in his moral obligation in the case of
Flournoy. Furthermore, we can see in the combination between industrial
technology and the State what John Kenneth Galbraith called in his famous work The New Industrial State (1967) the
“technostructure” as macrostructure. In this technostructure, multinational
corporations are structured like the State to control the market, which is not
free, and the State works like an industry of war. Then, the psychology of
religion serves both the interests of the multinational corporations in
creating desires of consumption based on the religious specificities of
different communities and the interests of the State in informing terrorist
threats. On the contrary, the religious psychology is founded on supply and
demand, which allows totally adapting behaviour to different situations, including
chance. But it allows above all a complete independence of the individual and
his critic exercise as democratic duty. Always alert in adapting to different
unforeseeable circumstances, the individual cannot constitute a “capital” like
Adam Smith understood it, but his capital becomes his will of power as an assimilative
capacity of that which is foreign to him. The only context of the free
expression of this will of power is the free market, because the free market
always obliges the individual to become another and to move near God in the
permanent renewal of oneself. In fact, with his religious psychology, Flournoy
realized Charles Secrétan’s will to found a political economy on the psychology
of free individual, on the pure will of the self without external interferences
apart from chance, what Adam Smith called “the invisible hand”.
Today the
Americans are still reinforcing the Welfare State to benefit their society of
consumption, while the Europeans nation-states are going bankrupt. But because
the Europeans will certainly not be able to maintain a high level of industrial
technology, the Welfare State will go bankrupt too, undoing collective
passivity to individual activity. This is the reason why, after the bankruptcy
of the nation-states in Europe, we will be able to dream of the Great European
Market to trace the contours of a Great Society never seen before: a pure
tournament of forces.
[2] Adam Smith (1723-1790) theorized the Industrial Revolution in his book The Wealth of Nations (1776), which is
considered to be the foundation of modern economy theory.
[3] The progress of industrial technology is a consequence of the division of labour, promoted by Adam
Smith.
[4] For example, Austrian
psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) tackled similar problems in his famous
book Civilization and its Discontents
(1929). The German original title of this book was Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. The persistent difficulties to
translate the term Kultur are
emblematic of the Western countries’ hesitation towards its imperialism (the
ninetieth century for the Europeans and the twentieth century for the
Americans). Should they consider the history as a development of morals
(Emmanuel Kant) or ethics (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)? Samuel Huntington
believed to have found an issue with The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1992).
[5] We shall see that William James’ strenuous life is fundamentally
different from Théodore Flournoy’s way of life, which is founded on a perpetual
alienation of EGO for a larger conception oft he self.
[6] The question of the meaning will be one of the principal questions that
William James and Théodore Flournoy are going to think about in constructing an
empirical theory of truth, radical
empiricism for James and transcendental
empiricism for Flournoy.
[7] The German economist and sociologist Max Weber called this modern
phenomenon of rationalisation “the disenchantment of the world”.
[9] The passage from dogmatic religions to secular religions will be the
reason of the polarisation between right Hegelianism (nationalism) and left
Hegelianism (Marxism). The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
tried to overcome both these extremes in his book Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886).
[10] Through the ternary scheme that we are going to talk about later, we
will see that William James is more interested by the third aspect of this
scheme the action, while Théodore Flournoy is more interested by the first
aspect of this scheme the faith.
[11] Robert C. Le Clair
(1966), The letters of William James and
Théodore Flournoy, Madison, Milwaukee and London: The University of
Wisconsin Press.
[12] During his whole life, William James was confronted to Hegel’s
philosophy through the American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916) in
particular.
[13] Théodore Flournoy is a neo-Kantian: “Personnellement en effet, je me
suis trop profondément pénétré aux jours de ma distinction kantienne entre le
“Glauben” et le “Wissen” (sans doute parce qu’elle répondait à ma nature
congénitale) pour pouvoir m’en affranchir aujourd’hui et me couler dans le
moule opposé” (“F.W.H. Myers et son oeuvre posthume” in Archives de Psychologie. T.II, 1903).
[15] William
James (1899), Talks to Teachers on
Psychology : and To Students on Some of Life’s Ideal, Bombay,
London : Longmans Green, 1902.
[16] “[Among his
professors,] William James was
an altogether different phenomenon. All energy in a well-built frame, a
somewhat disorganized lecturer, he was notably available for advice and
brainstorming, even for that era when professional solicitude toward students
was the natural relationship, rather than the sometimes unavoidable one of
later generations. His Logic and Psychology course played lecture halls, with
James encouraging fascinated students to talk him through proofs of the
existence of the Deity, to argue over the nature of sensations and
consciousness, the need for practical personal and social solutions (“live
option”), the optimal balance between science and faith – all of it soon
leading to the ground-breaking Principles
of Psychology (1890) and The Will to
Believe (1897). The empirical and psychological essentials of the Jamesian
philosophy were already unmistakable, although the term “pragmatism” was a few
years away from general currency. It was a lumping of philosophical
temperaments into “tough-minded” and “tender-minded” categories, the testing of
the “cash value” of ideas by demanding to know what concrete difference their
being true makes in the real world, and an insistence that society must
accommodate the plural, unsettling, competing interests of individuals
(“Individualism is fundamental”). For James, arguments for the existence of God
and the pursuit of ethics depended in the final analysis not on logic or
evidence but on belief. “The question of having moral beliefs at all or not
having them,” he asserted, “is decided by our will.” But it was the man, as
much as the ideas, that made James’s discipline much more appealing to Du Bois
than the area of political science in which he had intended to concentrate.”
David Levering Lewis (1993), W. E. B. Du
Bois. Biography of a Race 1868-1919, NYC: Henry Holt & Co., pp.87-88.
[17] In a certain manner, we can say that Theodore Roosevelt incarnates,
through his Presidency, William James’ thought in policy, providing by a
logical interpretation of his philosophical concept of “Strenuous Life”,
essentially binary: 1) progressive reforms for a Welfare State and 2) strong
foreign policy for Reason of State.
[20] “In Pascal’s Thoughts there is a celebrated passage known in literature as
Pascal’s wager. In it he tries to force us into Christianity by reasoning as if
our concern with truth resembled our concern with the stakes in a game of
chance. Translated freely his words are these: You must either believe or not
believe that God is – which will you do? Your human reason cannot say. A game
is going on between you and the nature of things which at the day of judgment
will bring out either heads or tails. Weigh what your gains and your losses
would be if you should stake all you have on heads, or God’s existence: if you
win in such case, you gain eternal beatitude; if you lose nothing at all. If
there were an infinity of chances, and only one for God in this wager, still
you ought to stake your all on God; for though you surely risk a finite loss by
this procedure, any finite loss is reasonable, even a certain one is
reasonable, if there is but the possibility of infinite gain. Go, then, and
take holy water, and have masses said; belief will come and stupefy your
scruples, – Cela vous fera croire et vous
abêtira. Why should you not? At bottom, what have you to lose?” William
James (1897), The Will to Believe,
NYC: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956, pp.5-6.
[21] “I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped.” William James
(1897), The Will to Believe, NYC:
Dover Publications, Inc., 1956, p.29.
[22] Like we shall see later, Flournoy preferred Nietzsche’s conception of
“will of power” than James’ “strenuous life”, because the concept of James led
to a binary conception of life policy, which is here schizophrenic. In policy,
the application of his concept resulted to American wars against Cuba and
Philippines. If Theodore Roosevelt followed until the end the logic of the
strenuous life, William James was confronted to his own paradox. That is the
reason why he finally did not approve these American wars. For example, it is
easy to refer us to his purposes about Chautauqua. James preferred war
(strenuous life) to peace (boring life). But his paradox is simple: James
promoted the individual freedom, but, in his confrontation against Hegel, he
founded this “freedom” on a conception of Reason, which comes from the German
Enlightenment. Then, his “will to believe” is a will to believe into the State.
And the Reason, which emerges from this conception of “strenuous life” in
policy, is a Hegelian ethics of a nation. The notion of nation is dangerous for
Charles Secrétan and Théodore Flournoy, who were not able to see in it the
reason of individual behaviour. Because it led irremissibly to the expropriation
of the self for a reason built by the State. An external freedom, which is
insured by the State, substitute to the internal freedom, which is a pure
feeling of freedom.
[23] Theodore
Roosevelt, The Strenuous life, essays and
adresses, London : Grant Richards, 1902, p.1.
[24] William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
(1909), Efforts for Social Betterment
among Negro Americans. A Social Study made by Atlanta University, under the
patronage of the Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund, Atlanta : The
Atlanta University Press, p.122.
[25] William
James (1899), Talks to teachers on
Psychology : and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, London, New
York & Bombay : Longmans, Green & Co., p.297.
[27] Considering themselves like a “nation of freedom”, a real democracy, the
Americans always considered to live in the country of God. For example, “In God
We Trust” appeared on the US coins since 1864.
[28] At the end of the nineteenth century, an ideology based on the “Blut und
Boden” (Blood and Soil) emerged in Germany. In a certain way, we can find some
similarities in the USA.
“Such absence of
human nature in extremis anywhere
seemed, then, a sufficient explanation for Chautauqua’s flatness and lack of
zest.
But was not this a
paradox well calculated to fill one with dismay? It looks like indeed, thought
I, as if the romantic idealists with their pessimism about our civilization
were, after all, quite right. An irremediable flatness is coming over the
world. Bourgeoisie and mediocrity, church sociable and teacher’s conventions,
are taking the place of the old heights and depths and romantic chiaroscuro.
And, to get human life in its wild intensity, we must in future turn more and
more away from the actual, and forget it, if we can, in the romancer’s or the
poet’s pages. The whole world, delightful and sinful as it may still appear for
a moment to one just escaped from the Chautauquan enclosure, is nevertheless
obeying more and more just those ideals that are sure to make of it in the end
a mere Chautauqua Assembly on an enormous scale. Was im Gesang soll leben muss im Leben untergehn. Even now, in our
country, correctness, fairness, and compromise for every small advantage are
crowding out all other qualities. The higher heroisms and the old rare flavors
are passing out of life.
With these thoughts
in my mind, I was speeding with the train toward Buffalo, when, near that city,
the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron
construction brought me to my senses very suddenly. And now I perceived, by a
flash of insight, that I had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness,
and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. Wishing for heroism
and the spectacle of human nature on the rack, I had never noticed the great
fields of heroism lying round about me, I had failed to see it present and
alive. I could only think of it as dead and embalmed, labelled and costumed, as
it is in the pages of romance. And yet there it was before me in the daily
lives of the labouring classes. Not in clanging fights and desperate marches
only is heroism to be looked for, but on every bridge and fire-proof building
that is going up to-day. On freight-trains, on the decks of vessels, in
cattle-yards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen,
the demand for courage is incessant; and the supply never fails. There, every
day of the year somewhere, is human nature in
extremis for you. And wherever a scythe, an axe, a pick, or a shovel is
wielded, you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient
endurance racked to the utmost under the length of hours of the strain.”
William James (1899), Talks to teachers on
Psychology : and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, London, New
York & Bombay : Longmans, Green & Co., pp.273-275.
[31] According to Flournoy, any concepts whatever (molecular mass, atom,
electron, etc.) could be reduced to their symbolical efficiency. They work like
mathematical symbols, which have no meaning in themselves but in the variable
configuration of their interaction as structure.
[33] Théodore
Flournoy (1904), Sur le panpsychisme
comme explication des rapports de l’âme et du corps. Communication
présentée au IIme Congrès international de Philosophie, Genève 1904,
Archives de Psychologie, T.IV, pp.129-144.
Théodore Flournoy
(1915), “Religion and Psychoanalysis”, Ms.fr.7842.11, Library of Geneva.
[35] It is beyond doubt that the
American will to control the entire world comes from a monist point of view
largely due to Hegel. We shall see that two organs of the Federal Government
the FBI to control the public sphere and the CIA to control the foreign sphere
constitute the defensive and offensive principles of a nation to control the
macro-economy on the base of market planning. Today, this kind of planning is a
will to “moralize” the market.
[39] Joseph
Arthur de Gobineau (1855), Essai sur
l’inégalité des races humaines. Vol. I & II, Paris : Firmin Didot,
1884.
[40] « Le
refus de la modernité. Entretien avec Marcel Gauchet », in Marianne/L’Histoire :
Les intégristes, hors-série, août-septembre 2009, pp.12-19.
[41] The Nazis were very interested by Henri Bergson’s thought. That is the
reason why they were looking for to translate his work into German language.
[44] Henri Bergson (1915), The Meaning
of War – Life and Matter in conflict, London: T.Fisher Unwin Ltd.
[45] “What simplicity and what clarity there is in your system and your style,
compared with the over-refined and farfetched speculations of the French
metaphysicians! – I am thinking of Bergson and his recent volume, L’évolution créatrice, which is inspired
by a lofty and beneficent spirit, but which in execution is singularly confused
and undigested; when one tries to divest his thought of the metaphors and superb
images in which it is wrapped up, one can understand nothing; it’s clear enough
that he wants to save liberty, individuality, – but basically he hardly
succeeds, for this élan vital which is the source of all, and which engenders the
plurality of beings in coming up against the resistance of no one knows what,
singularly ressembles the unconscious Thrust of the German monists; for them
too, the absolute Idea, or the unconscious Will or Force, etc., is the
primordial urge, the original jet d’eau
which breaks into small drops or divides up into finite beings; and in
Bergson’s theory, it seems to me, you hardly escape any better from determinism
or from fundamental monism than you do with Fichte or Schopenhauer, Hartmann,
etc. It is true that what interests one about a philosopher is not what he has succeeded in carrying through, but what
he has aimed at and tried to do – not
what he has proved, but what he believes. And seen in this way, Bergson
is very attractive and stimulating. Only I have the impression that he is not
so original as many people think he is; various indications make me think that
he dipped pretty freely – even before his first work, “Les Données immédiates
de la conscience”, – into the “Critique philosophique”, and especially into the
articles which that review published, between 1880 and 1889, by a certain Will.
James. – I allow myself to tell you this, because this remark was made to me
spontaneously by one of my friends, an amateur philosopher who knows your
writings very well and who, on reading Bergson’s L’évolution créatrice, had the
impression that you had been considerably plundered! (This amateur philosopher
is Monsieur L. Cellérier, banker and son of Professor Cellérier, professor of
mathematics at the Geneva Academy.) Cellérier finds that all the Bergsonian
theory of Duration and of
Consciousness is only a plagiarism of your Stream of Consciousness. –” Robert C. Le Clair (1966), The letters of William James and Théodore
Flournoy, Madison, Milwaukee and London: The University of Wisconsin Press,
pp.189-190.
[48] Charles Secrétan (1849), The philosophy of freedom. Course of moral philosophy. T.I &
II, Paris: Chez L. Hachette.
[49] Jean
Starobinski (1971), Les mots sous les
mots. Les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure, Paris : Gallimard.
[51] Théodore Flournoy (1915-1917), “Philosophy of sciences. History of
occult sciences”, Ms.fr.7839.3-10, Library of Geneva.
[54] Théodore Flournoy (1887-1888),
“Philosophy of sciences”, Ms.fr.7838.1-7, Library of Geneva, pp.108-109.
[55] Carl Menger, “Contribution à la théorie du capital”. Translated from
German to French by Charles Secrétan. Abstract from the Revue d’Economie politique November-December 1888, Paris: L. Larose
et Forcel.
[56] Théodore
Flournoy (1911), La philosophie de William
James, St-Blaise : Foyer Solidariste, pp.183-184.
[57] Théodore Flournoy
(1938), Jesus’heroism, intelligence and
generosity, St-Blaise: Foyer Solidariste, pp.34-35.
[58] Robert C. Le Clair (1966), The
letters of William James and Théodore Flournoy, Madison, Milwaukee and
London: The University of Wisconsin Press, p.14.
[59] Théodore
Flournoy (1907), The religious genius,
St-Blaise : Association Chrétienne Suisse des Etudiants, p.47.
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