Consequences of Lutheranism: James and Rorty on the Sacred

VIALE, CLAUDIO MARCELO

Buenos Aires

Simposio; International Symposium Richard Rorty; 2013

GAF. Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

Abstract: the primary object of this article is to analyze how William James and Richard Rorty conceive the sacred. The latter explicitly follows in his philosophy of religion a Jamesian path which stresses the importance of privatizing religion. I will put forward two arguments against this interpretation: first, that James?s notion of self-surrender is incompatible with the Rortyan idea of privatization; second, that this notion of self-surrender has Lutheran roots in James?s Varieties of Religious Experience.