PHIL-330 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4-5: The Savage Mind, Scientific Method
Document Summary
At the the end of the third lecture, james had pointed to two kinds of attitude in those who have powerful religious experiences: pessimism and optimism. In the fourth and fifth lectures, he focuses on the latter, healthy-mindedness, as he calls it. James distinguishes two kinds of religious optimism: the simple and the complex. The former is the case of those who are naturally optimistic, the latter is the case of those who have to work at being optimistic. The capacity for even a transient sadness or a momentary humility seems cut off from them as by a kind of congenital anaesthesia. [p 83] the writer"s prime example of the simple variety of religious optimism is walt. Whitman, whose brand of defiant healthy-mindedness is especially not to his taste. James focuses in particular on something called mind-cure, a movement in vogue at the time in the usa.
