“What am I to believe?”

Abstract

The intellectual context for Part I is established by a review of certain figures of the modernist era who were examining the nature and history of religion. Among the sociologists was the work of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, both of whom aspired to an objective review of the origin and nature of religion; in philosophy William James, who sought to reconcile “the varieties of religious experience” with empirical science; and in theology Rudolf Otto, who sought to understand the relation of religious experience and reason. Otto’s work especially provides the framework for the readings of Eliot and Stevens in Part I.