Religion in Classical Pragmatism — Peirce, James, Royce and Dewey

This course will be taught online

Goals

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Classical Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable figures associated with it include Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914), William James (1842 – 1910), Josiah Royce (1855 – 1916) and John Dewey (1859 – 1952). The aim of this course is to offer students a characterization of the core claims of Pragmatism, while giving special emphasis on the way these authors conceived of religion.

Programme

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The course begins with an introduction to Pragmatism, aiming to identify the core philosophical claims that define this position. After that, the course will focus on the way pragmatist philosophers conceived of religion. To this end, the course will center on the reading, commentary and in-class discussion of key works by Charles Sanders Peirce (“A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God”), William James (“The Will to Believe” and “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”), Josiah Royce (“What is Vital in Christianity?”) and John Dewey (“A Common Faith”).

pre-requisites

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(The course will be taught in English. Therefore, an intermediate knowledge of the English language is required.)

Bibliography

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• Dewey, John (1934/1967). A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• James, William (1896/1979). The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. London: Harvard University Press.
• James, William (1902/2002). The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. London: Routledge.
• Peirce, Charles Sanders (1908/1980). “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God”, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Ch. Hartshorne and P. Weiss. London: Harvard University Press.
• Royce, Josiah (1909). “What Is Vital in Christianity?”. The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 408–445.

Tuitions  fees

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For more details see table in informações úteis

Teachers

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Alberto Oya (PhD) is Investigador Doutorado Contratado at the Instituto de Filosofia da Nova (NOVA FCSH) and Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the FCSH – Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Oya has published over thirty papers in professional philosophical peer-reviewed journals, and he is the author of the books The Metaphysical Anthropology of Julián Marías (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), First-Person Shooter Videogames (Brill, 2023), Unamuno’s Religious Fictionalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and An Introduction to Logical Positivism (Amazon Books, 2020).