Saints?

Abstract

When one of this journal’s editors asked me to edit an issue and told me I would select the topic, the idea of dedicating papers to the question of individuals immediately came to mind. Pragmatism has such a social orientation in the current literature that it seems that individuals get left behind. But the question of the nature of individuals, and especially how much of the good life should be left to individual contemplation, has occupied pragmatists at least since Emerson. I have selected and arranged the contributions so that, to me, they speak to each other. And I see no need to offer a traditional preface to the volume in which I tell readers what the authors will tell them in their own words better than I. Instead I offer my own thoughts on the nature of exemplary individuals and on why the question is important in contrasting Dewey and James on religious experience and questions of metaphysics. And although I do not spend any real time in the essay on Emerson and Thoreau, I would align them more with James than Dewey. I tried hard not to use the word ‘community’ in my essay. Why focus on James? Personally I have always wanted to write something dealing with the Varieties of Religious Experience. It was suggested to me by my favorite undergraduate teacher Robert O’Connell in 1969 and I got around to reading it in 1990. It’s an especially odd book, the most personal writing of an author inclined to honest expression. Even James expressed embarrassment at the amount of emotion it contained. Once again, thanks to the editors for allowing me to select and arrange these papers. And thanks to the contributors for allowing me to work with them.