The Beauty of Belief

My project is to attempt to pragmatically restructure the notion and concept of Faith.  In order to do this, I will focus on the works of William James, Leo Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Paul Tillich.  While all these writers may not be Pragmatists, the framework which James sets forward employs can employ each of these thinkers in the quest toward a new Pragmatic Faith.

Faith, I believe to be something which is essential to the human condition, but what I mean by faith should be clarified. I don’t think that Faith presupposes religion, or that religion presupposes Faith. I don’t think they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but I do want to throw that out there. Faith, in my working, would be something more akin to the Ultimate Concern of Paul Tillich. That anything may be the object of a person’s highest concern, and that they act accordingly with that concern.

At this point of my project, I’d like to think that Faith and Belief are synonymous, but that may and possibly will change in the future as I further develop this point of view. So, then, what is Faith? Faith is a completely subjective thing, a belief in either an object, notion, or system which is the Ultimate Concern of an individual. For many people, and as it has been traditionally made, religion is a person’s ultimate concern, as it provides for the comfort and security of many. However, I will not limit my definition so, as I believe that ultimate concerns for people can be things such as their family, children, ideals, hopes, or even things such as extraterrestrial life, and more commonly in modern society, money, or love.