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歐美研究
Inquiry in the Domain of Religion and
William James’s “The Will to Believe”
Hsi-Heng Cheng
Graduate Institute of Philosophy, National Tsing Hua University
No. 101, Sec. 2, Kuang-Fu Rd., Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
E-mail:
Abstract
William James’s “The Will to Believe” is primarily concerned
with the epistemology of religious belief. According to many scholars,
James proposed this highly controversial criterion of believing: one
has the right to decide upon a belief option via one’s willing or pas-
sional nature, despite the lack of supportive intellectual grounds, so
long as certain conditions are satisfied; he then argued that this crite-
rion is applicable to religious belief options. This paper, however,
reveals that “The Will to Believe” aims to defend one’s epistemic
right to inquire, and claims that those who take a religious belief op-
tion as what James calls “a genuine option,” have the right to follow
the epistemological command that we must know the truth, to
choose the path of inquiry they deem likely to work in their relevant
inquiries, and to believe the opinion reached through such inquiry.
Key Words
:
William James, Blaise Pascal, epistemology, religion,
right
