Purpose, Power, and Agency

Abstract

There are various reasons for taking a second look at anything at all. One reason is to discern aspects which have been overlooked; another fre quently related reason is to reappraise the value or relevance of whatever is being reconsidered. A thing might be deemed worthless or negligible because some feature or set of features has been overlooked. And this way of conceiving the thing might become so familiar, so entrenched, that it powerfully, because subtly, works against alternative conceptions.1 In cer tain intellectual circles, for example, the critiques of religion have become so familiar that the religious hypothesis is not (in William James's phrase) a living option.2 As John Dewey noted, familiarity is more likely to breed credulity than contempt: We take the familiar conception, containing its im plicit evaluation, as worthy of our belief, simply because it is familiar. Thus, a second look undertaken from a fresh perspective is ordinarily most promising; for it is most likely to bring into focus overlooked facets and un suspected relevancies of familiar topics.