Religion and Radical Empiricism

This monograph examines the relationship between William James's radical empiricism and his philosophy of religion, arguing that radical empiricism provides a distinctive philosophical framework for understanding religious experience that avoids both reductive naturalism and traditional supernaturalism. Frankenberry demonstrates how James's mature philosophical position offers resources for contemporary philosophy of religion that have been underutilized in debates about religious belief and experience.

The work traces the development of radical empiricism from James's psychological writings through his metaphysical essays, showing how this philosophical stance grounds his approach to religious phenomena. Frankenberry argues that radical empiricism, with its emphasis on pure experience as the fundamental reality and its rejection of substantialist metaphysics, enables a non-reductive account of religious experience that takes seriously both its phenomenological richness and its epistemic significance. The analysis reveals how James's position challenges the subject-object dualism that structures most philosophical approaches to religion, whether skeptical or apologetic.

Central to Frankenberry's interpretation is the claim that radical empiricism dissolves many traditional problems in philosophy of religion by reconceiving the nature of experience itself. Rather than viewing religious experiences as subjective states requiring validation through objective criteria, James's framework treats them as irreducible relations within the stream of pure experience. This approach, Frankenberry contends, undermines both the rationalist critique of religion as lacking adequate evidence and the fideist retreat into pure subjectivity.

The monograph engages critically with interpretations that separate James's psychology of religion from his metaphysics, arguing instead for their essential unity. Frankenberry shows how radical empiricism provides the philosophical justification for James's pluralistic approach to religious truth claims while avoiding relativism. The work situates James's position in relation to both his philosophical contemporaries and subsequent developments in American philosophy, particularly process thought and pragmatist philosophy of religion.

By recovering the radical empiricist dimensions of James's religious thought, Frankenberry's study contributes to contemporary discussions about religious pluralism, the evidential value of religious experience, and the relationship between naturalism and religion. The monograph demonstrates how James's philosophy offers an alternative to the dominant options in philosophy of religion, suggesting possibilities for understanding religious phenomena that respect both their experiential reality and their diversity without requiring traditional metaphysical commitments.