The Sources of Religious Insight by Josiah Royce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Taking Reason Religiously

When intuitions about spirit are transformed into doctrinal commands, religion is reduced to a matter of tribal identity. When these same intuitions are denied a social existence, religion is reduced to a travesty of mistaken identity. Allowing religion to be what it is without forcing it into polemical categories is the main purpose of The Sources of Religious Insight. It is not so much a philosophy of religion as it is a religious appreciation of reason.

‘Be reasonable’, is the frustrated plea of many a spouse, or friend, or work colleague when confronted by the apparent intransigence of a position we find problematic. ‘Reason’ is a standard we invoke in order to overcome all false views due to everything from prejudice to error. Reason, we think, solves problems. The fact that our exhortation is not just persistently ignored but also turned right round on us to ‘Be reasonable’ in return might suggest a somewhat fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of the term.

The fact is that no one knows what constitutes reason at any moment. It has no fixed definition in daily life. It might mean ‘Be logical’, but rarely do any of us know the subtleties of Aristotelian syllogism. Or it might mean ‘Be sensible’, meaning look to your own experience or that of others to confirm what needs to be done. But, of course, no situation is identical to any previous; there are always good reasons why ‘this time’ is different. Or it might mean ‘Be less selfish’, in other words, stop wanting whatever it us you do want so we can stop this argument. This response may work sometimes with children but even then only when accompanied by the threat of coercive power.

Perhaps science knows something about reason that the rest of us don’t. The problem here is that the way science is conducted in, say, astrophysics, is very different from the way it’s conducted in molecular biology. ‘Good scientific method’ is not something either scientists or philosophers of science agree on. And the history of science shows that differences in what competent scientists have done from one period to another are often dramatic. To further complicate the mix, many, perhaps a majority of, scientific advances in some disciplines are completely accidental, the result of fortunate mistakes rather than reasoned science.

Royce’s central point in The Sources of Religious Insight is that it is a natural and universal religious skill or instinct that is the key to what we mean by reason. In this light, the book is rather precisely mis-titled and might better have been called The Religious Sources of Reason. With his typical delicacy in thought, Royce makes a thought- inducing, not to say eminently reasonable, argument.

For Royce “Insight is knowledge that makes us aware of many facts in one whole...” Insight is neither a deduction from first principles; nor can it be generated from the repetitive events of experience. Insight is the ability as well as the result of perceiving a ‘form’. Insight allows us to notice that a myriad of mechanical parts in fact constitute something called an automobile. More abstractly, insight establishes the existence of something called ‘the economy’, and ‘the planetary system’, or ‘the family’. Insight even creates a recognition of things as distinct parts of larger wholes, like atoms, and quarks, and individual human beings.

Royce then goes on to specify the nature of a religious insight, or more particularly what he considers, plausibly, the central and universal insight of religion: the need for salvation. Salvation from or for what? Royce says from our infinite and infinitely destructive neediness, “from our insatiably changing desires.” The positive dimension of salvation is the achievement of harmony, a theme which Royce has consistently developed in all of his philosophical writing.

By harmony Royce does not mean the establishment of some abstract oneness with the universe in a state of mystical transcendence. Rather he means the conception of the precise and concrete conditions that would allow us, and our fellow-man, to achieve all our aspirations without qualification, compromise or diminishment. Obviously this is an ideal state, and not one that can be achieved factually. The point of harmony is to recognise the ideal to be worked toward, a teleological focus which is as relevant and meaningful to my neighbours, all of them, as it is to me.

The common term for religious insight is ‘revelation’. Revelation is a personal phenomenon despite its more or less universal occurrence. “We are prone,” Royce says, “to live many lives, seldom noting how ill-harmonised they are... based on mutually inconsistent plans... except during moments of insight.” These are moments of revelation in which are own lives can be seen as a whole, in which a form can be discerned, even if only in vague outline. And this form is constituted not just by the different elements of my own personality with its diverse, incompatible aims, but also our place in the diversity of social systems in which we participate - familial, social, political, economic, and religious.

These moments of “wider vision” have two vitally important consequences. In the first instance they provide the functional definition of reason in terms of both aims and the pattern of life that incorporate and facilitate the achievement of these aims. Secondly, this ‘ruling form’ takes on a compelling transcendent significance, a guide for one’s life, which may never rise above the level of the unconscious, but which nonetheless has substantial psychic and emotional force. In Jungian psychology, such a vision of order is called ‘integration’. The equivalent religious term is ‘God’s Will’.

That God’s Will should be the source of reason is therefore a very reasonable conclusion in Royce’s philosophy. It is also, among other things, an assurance that salvation, the resolution of infinitely conflicting desires, is possible. “The unreasonable person is the person who can see but one thing at a time... who can grasp but one idea when a synthesis is required. The reasonable man is capable of synthesis.” Synthesis is “the viewing of many facts, or principles, or relations in some sort of unity or wholeness.” In other words, reason is not opposed to intuition but to narrowness, the inability, or more likely unwillingness, to see the forest for the trees.

There is only one method that is effective in overcoming narrowness; that is the adoption of the point of view of another as completely as one adopts one’s own - not to the exclusion of one’s own, but in addition to one’s own. This is an exercise of reason, the ability to perceive many facts in their unity. It is also the method of salvation. Insight reveals that some super-personal existence is real. Even to deny the truth of thus insight is to presume its validity. One may choose to call this reality ’spiritual’ but this does not reduce the reality of what is designated.

That there is no such thing as a ‘final Insight’ should be obvious. Not only is insight multiplied by the point of view of every human being living or ever having lived, but since insight provokes insight, there is a potentially infinite ‘feedback loop’ that continues to expand human horizons without any limit. Insights will continue to proliferate until the end, if such a thing is possible, of the universe. As it does so, reason approximates more and more closely to God’s Will, or in more secular terminology, truth.

Reason is thus the source of religious insight, but equally, religious insight is the foundation of reason. “The insight of the reason not only points out a heaven that overarches us, but also reveals an influence that invariably transforms us.” Remarkably, Royce concludes with a most pointedly ethical observation and command as antidotes to much of the philosophical nihilism produced during the 20th century: Heaven, not Hell, is other people; and God is revealed in and through them.

So if you, like me, find Richard Dawkins and your Evangelical cousins from Alabama equally creepy, yet have closet religious tendencies, this may be something for you.

Postscript: These journalistic pieces were pointed out to me by Robin Friedman and suggest that there is mileage left in Royce’s philosophy yet:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/op...
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2...
https://eu.desertsun.com/story/opinio...

View all my reviews