A Common Faith - Softcover

Dewey, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300186118 ISBN 13: 9780300186116

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2013

Synopsis

In A Common Faith, eminent American philosopher John Dewey calls for the “emancipation of the true religious quality” from the heritage of dogmatism and supernaturalism that he believes characterizes historical religions. He describes how the depth of religious experience and the creative role of faith in the resources of experience to generate meaning and value can be cultivated without making cognitive claims that compete with or contend with scientific ones. In a new introduction, Dewey scholar Thomas M. Alexander contextualizes the text for students and scholars by providing an overview of Dewey and his philosophy, key concepts in A Common Faith, and reactions to the text.

About this title

About the Author

John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. Thomas M. Alexander is professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A COMMON FAITH

By JOHN DEWEY

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1934 Yale University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-300-18611-6

Contents

Introduction by Thomas M. Alexander........................................
ix
I: Religion Versus the Religious...........................................
1
II: Faith and Its Object...................................................
27
III: The Human Abode of the Religious Function.............................
55

CHAPTER 1

RELIGION VERSUS THE RELIGIOUS

Never before in history has mankind been so much oftwo minds, so divided into two camps, as it is today.Religions have traditionally been allied with ideas of thesupernatural, and often have been based upon explicit beliefsabout it. Today there are many who hold that nothingworthy of being called religious is possible apart from thesupernatural. Those who hold this belief differ in manyrespects. They range from those who accept the dogmas andsacraments of the Greek and Roman Catholic church as theonly sure means of access to the supernatural to the theist ormild deist. Between them are the many Protestant denominationswho think the Scriptures, aided by a pure conscience,are adequate avenues to supernatural truth andpower. But they agree in one point: the necessity for a SupernaturalBeing and for an immortality that is beyond thepower of nature.

The opposed group consists of those who think the advanceof culture and science has completely discredited thesupernatural and with it all religions that were allied withbelief in it. But they go beyond this point. The extremists inthis group believe that with elimination of the supernaturalnot only must historic religions be dismissed but with themeverything of a religious nature. When historical knowledgehas discredited the claims made for the supernatural characterof the persons said to have founded historic religions;when the supernatural inspiration attributed to literaturesheld sacred has been riddled, and when anthropologicaland psychological knowledge has disclosed the all-too-humansource from which religious beliefs and practiceshave sprung, everything religious must, they say, also go.

There is one idea held in common by these two oppositegroups: identification of the religious with the supernatural.The question I shall raise in these chapters concerns theground for and the consequences of this identification: itsreasons and its value. In the discussion I shall develop anotherconception of the nature of the religious phase ofexperience, one that separates it from the supernatural andthe things that have grown up about it. I shall try to showthat these derivations are encumbrances and that what isgenuinely religious will undergo an emancipation when it isrelieved from them; that then, for the first time, the religiousaspect of experience will be free to develop freely onits own account.

This view is exposed to attack from both the other camps. Itgoes contrary to traditional religions, including those thathave the greatest hold upon the religiously minded today. Theview announced will seem to them to cut the vital nerve of thereligious element itself in taking away the basis upon whichtraditional religions and institutions have been founded.From the other side, the position I am taking seems like atimid halfway position, a concession and compromise unworthyof thought that is thoroughgoing. It is regarded as aview entertained from mere tendermindedness, as an emotionalhangover from childhood indoctrination, or even as amanifestation of a desire to avoid disapproval and curryfavor.

The heart of my point, as far as I shall develop it in thisfirst section, is that there is a difference between religion, areligion, and the religious; between anything that may bedenoted by a noun substantive and the quality of experiencethat is designated by an adjective. It is not easy to find adefinition of religion in the substantive sense that wins generalacceptance. However, in the Oxford Dictionary I findthe following: "Recognition on the part of man of someunseen higher power as having control of his destiny and asbeing entitled to obedience, reverence and worship."

This particular definition is less explicit in assertion ofthe supernatural character of the higher unseen power thanare others that might be cited. It is, however, surchargedwith implications having their source in ideas connectedwith the belief in the supernatural, characteristic of historicreligions. Let us suppose that one familiar with the historyof religions, including those called primitive, compares thedefinition with the variety of known facts and by means ofthe comparison sets out to determine just what the definitionmeans. I think he will be struck by three facts thatreduce the terms of the definition to such a low commondenominator that little meaning is left.

He will note that the "unseen powers" referred to havebeen conceived in a multitude of incompatible ways. Eliminatingthe differences, nothing is left beyond the bare referenceto something unseen and powerful. This has been conceivedas the vague and undefined Mana of the Melanesians;the Kami of primitive Shintoism; the fetish of the Africans;spirits, having some human properties, that pervade naturalplaces and animate natural forces; the ultimate and impersonalprinciple of Buddhism; the unmoved mover ofGreek thought; the gods and semi-divine heroes of theGreek and Roman Pantheons; the personal and lovingProvidence of Christianity, omnipotent, and limited by acorresponding evil power; the arbitrary Will of Moslemism;the supreme legislator and judge of deism. And these arebut a few of the outstanding varieties of ways in which theinvisible power has been conceived.

There is no greater similarity in the ways in which obedienceand reverence have been expressed. There has beenworship of animals, of ghosts, of ancestors, phallic worship,as well as of a Being of dread power and of love and wisdom.Reverence has been expressed in the human sacrifices of thePeruvians and Aztecs; the sexual orgies of some Orientalreligions; exorcisms and ablutions; the offering of the humbleand contrite mind of the Hebrew prophet, the elaboraterituals of the Greek and Roman Churches. Not even sacrificehas been uniform; it is highly sublimated in Protestant denominationsand in Moslemism. Where it has existed it hastaken all kinds of forms and been directed to a great varietyof powers and spirits. It has been used for expiation, forpropitiation and for buying special favors. There is no conceivablepurpose for which rites have not been employed.

Finally, there is no discernible unity in the moral motivationsappealed to and utilized. They have been as far apartas fear of lasting torture, hope of enduring bliss in whichsexual enjoyment has sometimes been a conspicuous element;mortification of the flesh and extreme asceticism;prostitution and chastity; wars to extirpate the unbeliever;persecution to convert or punish the unbeliever, and philanthropiczeal; servile acceptance of imposed dogma, alongwith brotherly love and aspiration for a reign of justiceamong men.

I have, of course, mentioned only a sparse number of thefacts which fill volumes in any well-stocked library. It may beasked by those who do not like to look upon the darker sideof the history of religions why the darker facts should bebrought up. We all know that civilized man has a backgroundof bestiality and superstition and that these elementsare still with us. Indeed, have not some religions, includingthe most influential forms of Christianity, taught that theheart of man is totally corrupt? How could the course ofreligion in its entire sweep not be marked by practices thatare shameful in their cruelty and lustfulness, and by beliefsthat are degraded and intellectually incredible? What elsethan what we find could be expected, in the case of peoplehaving little knowledge and no secure method of knowing;with primitive institutions, and with so little control of naturalforces that they lived in a constant state of fear?

I gladly admit that historic religions have been relative tothe conditions of social culture in which peoples lived. Indeed,what I am concerned with is to press home the logicof this method of disposal of outgrown traits of past religions.Beliefs and practices in a religion that now prevailsare by this logic relative to the present state of culture. If somuch flexibility has obtained in the past regarding an unseenpower, the way it affects human destiny, and the attitudeswe are to take toward it, why should it be assumedthat change in conception and action has now come to anend? The logic involved in getting rid of inconvenient aspectsof past religions compels us to inquire how much inreligions now accepted are survivals from outgrown cultures.It compels us to ask what conception of unseen powersand our relations to them would be consonant with thebest achievements and aspirations of the present. It demandsthat in imagination we wipe the slate clean and startafresh by asking what would be the idea of the unseen, ofthe manner of its control over us and the ways in whichreverence and obedience would be manifested, if whateveris basically religious in experience had the opportunity toexpress itself free from all historic encumbrances.

So we return to the elements of the definition that hasbeen given. What boots it to accept, in defense of the universalityof religion, a definition that applies equally to the mostsavage and degraded beliefs and practices that have related tounseen powers and to noble ideals of a religion having thegreatest share of moral content? There are two points involved.One of them is that there is nothing left worth preservingin the notions of unseen powers, controlling humandestiny to which obedience, reverence and worship are due,if we glide silently over the nature that has been attributed tothe powers, the radically diverse ways in which they havebeen supposed to control human destiny, and in which submissionand awe have been manifested. The other point isthat when we begin to select, to choose, and say that somepresent ways of thinking about the unseen powers are betterthan others; that the reverence shown by a free and self-respectinghuman being is better than the servile obediencerendered to an arbitrary power by frightened men; that weshould believe that control of human destiny is exercised bya wise and loving spirit rather than by madcap ghosts or sheerforce—when I say, we begin to choose, we have entered upon aroad that has not yet come to an end. We have reached a pointthat invites us to proceed farther.

For we are forced to acknowledge that concretely there isno such thing as religion in the singular. There is only amultitude of religions. "Religion" is a strictly collective termand the collection it stands for is not even of the kind illustratedin textbooks of logic. It has not the unity of a regimentor assembly but that of any miscellaneous aggregate.Attempts to prove the universality prove too much or toolittle. It is probable that religions have been universal in thesense that all the peoples we know anything about have hada religion. But the differences among them are so great andso shocking that any common element that can be extractedis meaningless. The idea that religion is universal proves toolittle in that the older apologists for Christianity seem tohave been better advised than some modern ones in condemningevery religion but one as an impostor, as at bottomsome kind of demon worship or at any rate a superstitiousfigment. Choice among religions is imperative, andthe necessity for choice leaves nothing of any force in theargument from universality. Moreover, when once we enterupon the road of choice, there is at once presented a possibilitynot yet generally realized.

For the historic increase of the ethical and ideal contentof religions suggests that the process of purification may becarried further. It indicates that further choice is imminentin which certain values and functions in experience may beselected. This possibility is what I had in mind in speakingof the difference between the religious and a religion. I amnot proposing a religion, but rather the emancipation ofelements and outlooks that may be called religious. For themoment we have a religion, whether that of the Sioux Indianor of Judaism or of Christianity, that moment the idealfactors in experience that may be called religious take on aload that is not inherent in them, a load of current beliefsand of institutional practices that are irrelevant to them.

I can illustrate what I mean by a common phenomenonin contemporary life. It is widely supposed that a personwho does not accept any religion is thereby shown to be anon-religious person. Yet it is conceivable that the presentdepression in religion is closely connected with the fact thatreligions now prevent, because of their weight of historicencumbrances, the religious quality of experience fromcoming to consciousness and finding the expression that isappropriate to present conditions, intellectual and moral. Ibelieve that such is the case. I believe that many persons areso repelled from what exists as a religion by its intellectualand moral implications, that they are not even aware ofattitudes in themselves that if they came to fruition wouldbe genuinely religious. I hope that this remark may helpmake clear what I mean by the distinction between "religion"as a noun substantive and "religious" as adjectival.

To be somewhat more explicit, a religion (and as I havejust said there is no such thing as religion in general) alwayssignifies a special body of beliefs and practices having somekind of institutional organization, loose or tight. In contrast,the adjective "religious" denotes nothing in the way ofa specifiable entity, either institutional or as a system ofbeliefs. It does not denote anything to which one can specificallypoint as one can point to this and that historic religionor existing church. For it does not denote anythingthat can exist by itself or that can be organized into a particularand distinctive form of existence. It denotes attitudesthat may be taken toward every object and every proposedend or ideal.

Before, however, I develop my suggestion that realizationof the distinction just made would operate to emancipatethe religious quality from encumbrances that now smotheror limit it, I must refer to a position that in some respects issimilar in words to the position I have taken, but that in factis a whole world removed from it. I have several times usedthe phrase "religious elements of experience." Now at presentthere is much talk, especially in liberal circles, of religiousexperience as vouching for the authenticity of certainbeliefs and the desirability of certain practices, such asparticular forms of prayer and worship. It is even assertedthat religious experience is the ultimate basis of religionitself. The gulf between this position and that which I havetaken is what I am now concerned to point out.

Those who hold to the notion that there is a definite kindof experience which is itself religious, by that very fact makeout of it something specific, as a kind of experience that ismarked off from experience as aeesthetic, scientific, moral,political; from experience as companionship and friendship.But "religious" as a quality of experience signifiessomething that may belong to all these experiences. It is thepolar opposite of some type of experience that can exist byitself. The distinction comes out clearly when it is notedthat the concept of this distinct kind of experience is used tovalidate a belief in some special kind of object and also tojustify some special kind of practice.

For there are many religionists who are now dissatisfiedwith the older "proofs" of the existence of God, those thatgo by the name of ontological, cosmological and teleological.The cause of the dissatisfaction is perhaps not so muchthe arguments that Kant used to show the insufficiency ofthese alleged proofs, as it is the growing feeling that they aretoo formal to offer any support to religion in action. Anyway,the dissatisfaction exists. Moreover, these religionistsare moved by the rise of the experimental method in otherfields. What is more natural and proper, accordingly, thanthat they should affirm they are just as good empiricists asanybody else—indeed, as good as the scientists themselves?As the latter rely upon certain kinds of experience to provethe existence of certain kinds of objects, so the religionistsrely upon a certain kind of experience to prove the existenceof the object of religion, especially the supreme object, God.

The discussion may be made more definite by introducing,at this point, a particular illustration of this type ofreasoning. A writer says: "I broke down from overwork andsoon came to the verge of nervous prostration. One morningafter a long and sleepless night ... I resolved to stopdrawing upon myself so continuously and begin drawingupon God. I determined to set apart a quiet time every dayin which I could relate my life to its ultimate source, regainthe consciousness that in God I live, move and have mybeing. That was thirty years ago. Since then I have hadliterally not one hour of darkness or despair."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A COMMON FAITH by JOHN DEWEY. Copyright © 1934 Yale University Press. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300186118
• ISBN 13: 9780300186116
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 80