The Religious Dimensions of Ethical and Political Life: A Study in U.S.- American Pragmatism and Latin American Liberation Philosoph

My dissertation engages two philosophical traditions that seek to understand and reconstruct the religious dimensions of ethical and political life: 1) classical U.S.-American pragmatism as articulated by William James (1842-1910), Josiah Royce (1855-1916), and John Dewey (1859- 1952) and 2) Latin American liberation philosophy as exemplified by Enrique Dussel (1934- present). The overarching aim is to show how the religious impulse, when held in check by certain critical principles, is among the most powerful resources humans possess (or perhaps more accurately, the most powerful force that possesses humans) for engaging in the ethical and political project of transforming ourselves and our world.;The first chapter outlines William James' approach to religion as something that may contribute to a more unified psychological life and a more strenuous practical life. For James, the genius and vitality of religion stems from our capacity to experience ourselves as belonging more intimately to an "unseen" or "ideal" world than to the "seen" or "real" world, so that we are psychologically motivated to painstakingly realize the ideal.;Since James left the social dimensions of religion largely unexplored, the second chapter turns to Josiah Royce, who elucidates how profound transformations come about when an individual comes to identify with the memories and hopes of a larger community, especially when it is posited as part of the universal community of life. We can understand this transformation as religious (in the etymological sense of "to bind") since it recognizes interdependence and cultivates our ethical bonds.;Chapter three uses John Dewey to go beyond Royce's limited analysis of the concrete historical conditions that have produced "lost" individuals in need of the "saving power" of participation in community life. By re-working Royce's religious community as democratic community, Dewey naturalizes and concretizes the conditions for human flourishing. Dewey also shows how the religious dimension of life shows up in everyone (though many very reasonably dispute calling this dimension religious ), since our lives depend upon our desire and ability to incorporate and embody ideals (things which "are and are not") in habit-based forms of practical life and public institutions.;As a power source that moves people through their convictions, the ties between religion and oppressive ideals must be differentiated from those between religion and liberating ideals. With this in mind, my final chapter works to avoid a dangerous (but typical) reduction of American philosophy to U.S. philosophy by putting pragmatism into an inter-American dialogue with Enrique Dussel's philosophy of liberation. Like the pragmatists, Dussel develops intimately interconnected philosophies of religion, ethics, and politics, but he does so by beginning from the reality of so many peoples' everyday experiences of being poor or otherwise oppressed. In the process, Dussel also achieves a critical transformation of pragmatism's philosophy of religion by emphasizing the moments of our experience when our projects and identities are interrupted by those excluded or oppressed by the present order, so that we are called to open ourselves and our projects to criticism launched from beyond our limited sense of who "we" are. My final chapter enacts this at the philosophical level by interrogating the U.S.-American pragmatist account of the religious dimensions of ethical and political life by way of a transformational Latin American critique.