Abstract:
The article takes a problem of the right to believe considered in the context of
William James’ philosophy of religion and kept in the convention of a dialogue
with sceptics, agnostics and intellectuals (scientists), arguing against the law to
hold beliefs for which any sufficient intellectual arguments do not speak. It is
a rule of intellectualism, with which – defending the right to believe in the theoretically
irrational judgements – James polemizes. In the starting point James
accepts the agnostic „ignoramus et ignorabimus”. Thereby he admits that in the
matters of religion we cannot attain knowledge or at least the scientific knowledge.
However , he does not agree that in every case, in which “we do not know
what to think”, we have not the right to any judgement at all. The author of The
Will to Believe indicates that we are allowed to harbour the beliefs, for which we
cannot find any support in the purely intellectual arguments, being guided by
pragmatic reasons of a volitional-affective nature. In this way James formulates
a widen model of rationality, in which he differentiates between the logical (theoretical)
rationality and the pragmatic one. Beliefs, especially the religious ones,
which remain theoretically (logically) irrational, are rational in the pragmatic
sense. As a result James questions the agnostic conclusion refusing us the right
to believe without any sufficient intellectual reasons.
