CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
There are two good things in life: freedom of thought and freedom of action[1]. In the whole world man is the only being that is condemned by its nature to be free as well as to be religious. So by nature man is endowed with the power of the will just as he is equally endowed with religious tendency.
Freewill in the simplest term means the freedom to make choice. Moreover, man in his own very nature cannot extricate himself from the bondage of making choice. In the same vein man is equally held bound by religious tie, so man cannot but be religious. For man to choose otherwise, is already a choice of its own and a religion of its own. That is why I maintain that man is condemned to be free and equally religious. No wonder Jean Paul Sartre asserts.
“I am condemned to be free. This means no limit to my freedom can be found except freedom itself, or if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free.” 2
It seems unthinkable to imagine a world without freewill, that type of world should be devoid of punishment and reward. This is because in such a deterministic world, what ought to be will come to be, at the time it was destined to be, and through the agent it was destined to come through.
However this freedom man enjoys is not unconnected to the very fact that man is the only being endowed with a conscious thinking faculty. Ekwutosi has this to say: “that human act is the result of a complex process in which the decisive point is the will after a deliberation of the intellect…….. Specifically human action possesses the following constitutive qualities knowledge, voluntary/freedom. 3
This question of freewill is ontological to man. To talk of man without freewill, is to create a different kind of being which cannot occupy the “status quo” of man. So it is a contradictio interminis to talk of man without freewill. No wonder the issue of freedom was given a prime position in the constitution of United States of America. In the first ten amendments known together as the bill of rights, it clearly stipulates such basic rights as the freedom of speech, of religion and of press. Deleuze said that: The doom of Europe is predicted because with the death of God and religion from their life and culture, a period of instability, aimlessness, emptiness and darkness sets in4.This goes to underscore the importance and inevitable role of religion in human life. No wonder Omoregbe asserts that:
“religion is such a sticking and interesting phenomena to human life that it cannot be ignored even by sceptics, agnostics or the atheists. There is no phenomenon which moulds and controls man’s life as much as religion does. Men have given up not only their life but even their possessions for their religious beliefs- — — thus religion has such a powerful grip on man that it cannot be ignored in human society”5
Here we are not going to give a detailed account of freewill and religion, but will do so in subsequent chapters. So let us have an insight into William James view.
William James was a New York born pragmatic philosopher. He started from physiology to psychology and finally to philosophy. However, just like other philosophers did not philosophize in isolation; his contemporaries include: Charles Sanders Pierce and John Dewey. They are known as classical pragmatists. Moreover, we may not be able to understand William James unless we are at home with his pragmatic theory, which serves as a gate way to all other of his philosophy.
This word pragmatism has a rich evolution; Pierce derived the word from Kant’s usage of German word “pragmatisch”. He then applied it to an empirical condition which was founded by three American philosophers Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and John Dewey. Three of them fought to save philosophy from metaphysical idealism, and equally save religious and moral ideals from empiricist, positivist scepticism. However, the three classical pragmatists had very different philosophical concerns, though they still share one foundation, and that is pragmatism. This their pragmatic theory manifested in every of their philosophical endeavour, that is why James who was more interested in religion said that a belief in God is at least practically verified if it provides comfort to the believer, the satisfactory consequence of holding the belief as well as of the proposition believed are to constitute verification6
Pragmatism concerns itself with purposeful action and the interplay of theory and practice. It stresses on what James called cash valueof beliefs. In all, pragmatism can be defined as: a philosophy that attempts to apply the methods of science to philosophy, its central idea is that the meaning and truth of an idea are determined by the idea’s effect in practice and conduct.7
Having gathered some indebt knowledge to what I am going to examine, let me then stipulate the pattern the long essay will take. This work is composed of four major chapters. The chapter one includes the following; Introduction, statement of problem, purpose of studies, scope of study and methodology. Chapter two will be applied in exposing the nature and notion of religion and freewill, their origin, their characteristic features and their functions. The third chapter will be a critical analysis of the religious experience, Mystical experience as a base for belief about God, problem of religious experience, William James pragmatic religious experience, and William James pragmatic verdict. Having gone thus far, the chapter four will be a critical evaluation and conclusion.