The Varieties of Religious Experience »

William James (1842–1910), brother of writer Henry James, was born in New York and studied medicine at Harvard, where he taught from 1872; James continued on to write books and become one of the most renowned psychologist-philosophers in the Western world. His other famous works include Principles of Psychology (1890) and Pragmatism (1907).

The Varieties of Religious Experience is certainly the most notable of all books in the field of the psychology of religion and probably destined to be the most influential [one] written on religion in the twentieth century' said Walter Houston Clark in Psychology Today. The book was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in June 1902.

Jaroslav Pelikan

The old cliche that Henry James wrote novels as though they were philosophical treatises whereas William James wrote philosophic treatises as thogh they were novels, while unfair to Henry, describes...the William James of The Varieties of Religious Experience very well. Believers and unbelievers (and semibelievers) will continue to find it both a resource and a challenge.

Introduction

Lecture 1 - Religion and Neurology

Lecture 2 - Circumscription of the Topic

Lecture 3 - The Reality of the Unseen

Lecture 4-5 - The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness

Lecture 6-7 - The Sick Soul

Lecture 8 - The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification

Lecture 9 - Conversion

Lecture 10 - Conversion-concluded

Lecture 11-13 - Saintliness

Lecture 14-15 - The Value of Saintliness

Lecture 16-17 - Mysticism

Lecture 18 - Philosophy

Lecture 19 - Other Characteristics

Lecture 20 - Conclusion

Postscript