For William James, the "right to believe" was a life-or-death matter: he attributed his recovery ... more For William James, the "right to believe" was a life-or-death matter: he attributed his recovery from suicidal depression to a decision to permit himself to believe in free will. In his Gifford Lectures, published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience, he extended this privilege to religion, providing a naturalistic but sympathetic interpretation of conversion, mystical states of consciousness, saintly affections, and prayer. Though it lacked the fully worked out philosophical conclusion James had hoped to provide, the Varieties became an instant classic, prized by figures as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Muhammad Iqbal, D. T. Suzuki, and Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous). James's admirers praise him for his robust defense of religious experience and its life-changing power; his detractors criticize him for his emphasis on private, eccentric, and extreme mental states. But the Varieties is best understood in the way James understood himself, his philosophical system, and reality as a whole: as an unfinished project. In recounting the making of the Varieties, I suggest ways in which James's oversights can be corrected, his exuberant pluralism more fully realized, and his religious classic rediscovered for today.
All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of par... more All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.
Excerpt adapted from Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the ... more Excerpt adapted from Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) in The Chronicle of Higher Education (The Chronicle Review), May 8, 2015.
The first three chapters of PRAYER: A HISTORY (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), co-authored with Philip Z... more The first three chapters of PRAYER: A HISTORY (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), co-authored with Philip Zaleski. Our preferred title was THE LANGUAGE OF PARADISE -- but "X: A HISTORY" was in vogue back then.
All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of par... more All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.
In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a manifesto calling for reforms in e... more In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a manifesto calling for reforms in end-of-life care and translating into a psychological idiom the ancient religious idea of dying as a peregrinatio animae, a pilgrimage of the soul from this world to the next. In 1975, Raymond Moody published a slim book, Life after Life, that introduced the now-ubiquitous expression “near-death experience” and opened a new era in the modern search for intimations of human immortality. Coming after the unraveling of the spiritualist movement, and at the high-water mark of the death awareness movement, Life after Life offered a less outré approach to the mysteries of the spirit world. This article examines the debates about near-death experience, focusing on popular narratives and near-death studies. It also discusses critical perspectives about the subject as well as cultural differences and interpretations of near-death testimony. It then looks at the near-death experience of a skeptic, ...
For William James, the "right to believe" was a life-or-death matter: he attributed his recovery ... more For William James, the "right to believe" was a life-or-death matter: he attributed his recovery from suicidal depression to a decision to permit himself to believe in free will. In his Gifford Lectures, published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience, he extended this privilege to religion, providing a naturalistic but sympathetic interpretation of conversion, mystical states of consciousness, saintly affections, and prayer. Though it lacked the fully worked out philosophical conclusion James had hoped to provide, the Varieties became an instant classic, prized by figures as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Muhammad Iqbal, D. T. Suzuki, and Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous). James's admirers praise him for his robust defense of religious experience and its life-changing power; his detractors criticize him for his emphasis on private, eccentric, and extreme mental states. But the Varieties is best understood in the way James understood himself, his philosophical system, and reality as a whole: as an unfinished project. In recounting the making of the Varieties, I suggest ways in which James's oversights can be corrected, his exuberant pluralism more fully realized, and his religious classic rediscovered for today.
All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of par... more All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.
Excerpt adapted from Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the ... more Excerpt adapted from Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) in The Chronicle of Higher Education (The Chronicle Review), May 8, 2015.
The first three chapters of PRAYER: A HISTORY (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), co-authored with Philip Z... more The first three chapters of PRAYER: A HISTORY (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), co-authored with Philip Zaleski. Our preferred title was THE LANGUAGE OF PARADISE -- but "X: A HISTORY" was in vogue back then.
All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of par... more All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.
In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a manifesto calling for reforms in e... more In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a manifesto calling for reforms in end-of-life care and translating into a psychological idiom the ancient religious idea of dying as a peregrinatio animae, a pilgrimage of the soul from this world to the next. In 1975, Raymond Moody published a slim book, Life after Life, that introduced the now-ubiquitous expression “near-death experience” and opened a new era in the modern search for intimations of human immortality. Coming after the unraveling of the spiritualist movement, and at the high-water mark of the death awareness movement, Life after Life offered a less outré approach to the mysteries of the spirit world. This article examines the debates about near-death experience, focusing on popular narratives and near-death studies. It also discusses critical perspectives about the subject as well as cultural differences and interpretations of near-death testimony. It then looks at the near-death experience of a skeptic, ...
Uploads
Papers by Carol Zaleski
Books by Carol Zaleski
Papers by Carol Zaleski