Outside Reading 1- Buddy Powers

This semester I’ve been reading a collection of lectures in writing by William James. He is one of the greatest American Philosophers to date and is credited as the founder of the pragmatism in philosophy. His perspective on the human interaction between the physical world and abstract ideas are applicable to our Religion in Film class discussions on the ideas of the Holy, mysterium, and tremendum. James uses a wonderful simile to show how pragmatism views the interaction of our sensory world and abstract ideas. Pragmatism is a system for answering metaphysical questions, thus it is extremely important to observe how these two paradigms (the sensory and abstract) interact. According to James’s metaphor we are fish swimming in the “sea of sense” which is the tangible world that surrounds us. It is within this world that we experience things. The word pragmatism comes from the Greek word pragma which means, “act,” so experience is very important to James. But there is also, in this metaphor, that which is above the water’s surface. These are the abstract ideas. A fish can not breathe pure air, just as a man can not purely communicate with an abstract idea. Rather, the oxygen from the air enters the water and supports aquatic life through “redirection.” In the films we’ve watched this semester we get a glimpse at the abstract through the medium of movies. At this part of the metaphor the pragmatic view is most clearly expressed: man exists in an experiential world that he must participate in (just as a fish must live in water), but there is also a realm of abstract ideas of which a man learns of, recieves, through experience (as a fish recieves oxygen diffused from the air into the water). It is important to note that just as the fish needs the oxygen from the air to live, so man needs and idea of the Holy, mysterium, and tremendum to live fully according to James.