In William James’ radical empiricism, he employs “experience” as a relational notion as an attempt to overcome the subject-object dualism, which in many ways differ from the mainstream use of the term. This cause difficulty in understanding James’ radical empiricism. On the other hand, a distinctive characteristic of early Chinese thinking is its understanding of existence as based on interaction, and understanding determination of things as emergent in such interaction. This relational thinking structure may help us better understand James’ notion of the “context of experience.” Through this comparison we might be able to better understand the continuity and complexity of the content of the human experience, and to also celebrate the capacity of human beings to optimize the creative possibilities of this experience to live significant lives.

The Philosophy of Religions Workshop is proud to host a discussion with Prof. Stephen S. Bush of Brown University, a leading scholar on the philosophy of religions, religious ethics, and the theory of religion.  His 2014 monograph Visions of Religion has become a modern classic in the academic study of religion, and his next book, William James on Democratic Individuality, was a novel study of the title thinker’s notoriously obscure political philosophy.  Prof. Bush will be discussing a chapter from his upcoming book manuscript Beauty and Solidarity: The Aesthetics of Political Ecology titled “Reimagining Solidarity.”  Prof. Bush describes the “heart of that project” as “the proposal of a notion of political beauty that is relevant for emancipatory, pluralistic politics,” and draws from thinkers including Iris Murdoch and Emmanuel Levinas, and in this chapter especially, from Georges Bataille.