Situated Religious Cognition in Jamesian Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

Pragmatist philosophy of religion has, since the early days of the tradition, developed distinctive accounts of (what we now call) “situated” religious cognition highly relevant to currently ongoing discussions in this developing field. This paper focuses on William James’s pragmatism as an important example of such an approach in the philosophy of religion. Some central “situational” themes in James are identified, and special attention is given to the relation between the (situation-dependent) concepts of belief and hope in Jamesian pragmatism. The ontological status of the “objects” of situated religious cognition is thereby also briefly discussed.