Final Report

A Common Faith

By John Dewey

The book is based on lectures given by John Dewey as part of the 1933-1934 “Terry Lectures” at Yale University. The book is available for free on JSTOR if you login using your MTSU login info.

One of the biggest things that stood out to me in the first chapter/section was Dewey’s analysis of why religion doesn’t appeal as much as it did in the past and how many of those things have not changed since 1934. The faith written about in A Common Faith reminds me of the kind of faith that Dr. Oliver

spoke of in class when he referred to the William James’ mountain climber example.Dewey says that his goal is to “develop another conception of the religious phase of experience, one that separates it from the supernatural and the things that have grown up about it.” To me as someone who is not religious he is essentially trying to redefine or reclaim the word religious in “religious experience”. He says that “whatever introduces genuine perspective is religious, not that religion is something that introduces it.” (pg. 24) and “The actual religious quality in the experience described is the effect produced, the better adjustment in life and its conditions, not the manner and cause of its production.” (pg. 14) Dewey throughout this section is trying to lay out a common “religious experience” that can be had by anyone and is not exclusive to a select group of people who have to believe a certain thing to attain some form of special knowledge. Dewey says that “The determining factor in the interpretation of the experience is the particular doctrinal apparatus into which a person has been inducted.” (pg. 13) and he wants people to move away from interpreting experiences in this way. Dewey also talks about the view held in “Modern religious liberalism” that there is a gap between “scientific and religious experience” which implies that there is a limited sphere where scientific knowledge is supreme but that there is also “another region”...”of intimate personal experience wherein other methods and criteria hold sway.” This really just stood out to me because of the significant amount of people who seem to not only hold this view that there is a gap between “scientific and religious experience”, but also say that the gap is essentially permanent regardless of scientific advancement. Dewey went on to say “Yet the gap may only reflect, at most, a limitation now existing but in the future to be done away with.” Dewey then continues and says that it's an old and dangerous argument to say that “because some province or aspect of experience has not yet been ‘invaded’ by scientific methods, it is not subject to them”. (pg. 34-35) Dewey says things throughout this middle section of the book like “It is probably impossible to imagine the amount of intellectual energy that has been diverted from normal processes of arriving at intellectual conclusions because it has gone into rationalization of the doctrines entertained by historic religions.” (pg. 33) and “Interpretations of the experience have not grown from the experience itself with the aid of such scientific resources as may be available. They have been imported by borrowing without criticism from ideas that are current in the surrounding culture.” (pg. 36) Dewey throughout the book is very critical of people tying their religious doctrines to their “religious” experiences but acknowledges, “The experience is a fact to be inquired into.” (pg. 35) but that using your personal interpretation of this experience to explain it or its cause is misguided because of its “dependence upon a prior conception of the supernatural.” (pg. 35) which is essentially given to you by your “surrounding culture”. He continues on to defend science as “a method of changing beliefs by means of tested inquiry as well as of arriving at them.” (pg. 39) against the claim by many religious people that because so many things get disproven in science that it is unreliable as a “mode of knowledge.” Throughout this section I kept thinking of the parallels between this book and The End of Faith by Sam Harris primarily due to the theme of trying to emancipate religious doctrine from experiences that would be typically considered mystical. Dewey goes on later and says “An ideal is not an illusion because imagination is the organ through which it is apprehended. For all possibilities reach us through the imagination.” (pg. 43) This makes me wonder whether he would say that you cannot believe a religious doctrine and separate “religious experiences” from your personal religious interpretation or if it is possible through imagination, or that you must first not adhere to a religious doctrine and then you are better able to make use of “religious experiences”. He does say that “what I have tried to show is that the ideal itself has its root in natural conditions; it emerges when the imagination idealizes existence by laying hold of the possibilities offered to thought and action.” (pg. 48) Things like this is why I imagine Richard Rorty said in the video I posted that many philosophers thought he was a relativist because they would argue that people imagine the ideal differently. I believe Dewey is trying to say that the ideal is imagined differently because what can be imagined is dependent on “physical and social experience.” (pg. 49) and through the process of changing reality through action you can change what can be imagined.

This is the video I referred to about Rorty discussing Dewey.