A Commentary on the Relevance of Charles Taylors Critique of William James: Varieties of Spirituality and Religion and their Relevance to Psychopathology | Insight Medical Publishing

Charles Taylor’s Gifford lectures published as A Secular Age has stimulated much discussion. In preparing for his lectures Charles re-read the Gifford lectures of William James. He wrote Varieties of Religion Today as an appreciative criticism of James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. In this commentary I address Taylor’s criticisms of James in terms of relationships between institutional and individual religion, belief in God, and psychopathology in a secular age.