The Pluralist

When William James spoke about belief to the philosophy clubs of Yale and Brown in 1896, he forewarned his audience of the nature of his comments by describing them as a “sermon on justification by faith” (James 13), titling the talk “The Will to Believe.” Although there is disagreement about the substance of James’s remarks, it is fairly innocuous to assert that James thought they were appropriate because of the prevalence of the “logical spirit” of many of those who practiced academic philosophy that led them to the conclusion that religious faith was untenable. Aware of his audience, James presents his view on the permissibility of religious faith on the terms and grounds familiar to professional philosophers. His rhetorical devices and argumentative strategies remain the rules of engagement in many academic philosophy circles today.

Some four years before, Anna Julia Cooper also wrote to champion the importance of belief in the last chapter of her book, A Voice from the South, titled “The Gain from a Belief.” As a black woman born into slavery, educated at Oberlin College, and working as a pioneering teacher in the Washington, DC, area, Cooper’s monograph was the first of its kind from someone with her background. She begins the book with a forward that offers the book up as the testimony of a voice that had not yet been considered in the court of public opinion. Public opinion of the time was preoccupied with the role of the post-Reconstruction South in the larger polity and the claims for suffrage by black men and white women. Cooper set out to produce a book that would take seriously the standpoint of black women in the political clamor.

Cooper intended a more varied audience for “The Gain” than James did for his remarks on believing. While it is difficult to pin down just who Cooper’s book actually reached in the year it was published, her forward, rhetorical style and subject matter suggest that she hoped it would be read [End Page 32] by both the white and black literate classes. Her appeal for belief is set up as a dialogue between the author and a man who stands apart from the rest of the people in a marketplace. Cooper’s description of the man-apart with his “cold, intellectual eye” is a caricature of the professional philosopher, a nod to those who would have attended the philosophy clubs where James was invited to speak. Yet, Cooper’s goals differed from those of James. She did not intend to convince the philosopher that he could (and in some cases, must) choose to believe through arguments that would appeal to his “logical nature” as James did. Rather, Cooper’s purpose was to entreat the skeptic to believe through appeal to his moral feelings.

Just as James’s remarks on faith have prompted detractors from both the religious faithful, who have claimed his calculated treatment of belief does not capture what it means to really believe, and epistemologists who have sought to disprove his logic, Cooper’s piece might chafe the contemporary professional philosopher. Cooper’s rhetorical style may seem dated and even out of place. If we limit our considerations of her essay to the class of professional philosophers who pay the most attention to the work of William James, the pragmatists, Cooper’s essay may easily be dismissed because she does something that even James does not do. In “The Gain” and throughout A Voice from the South, Cooper makes use of a wealth of Christian rhetoric and so can be read as a progressive Christian of sorts. Could her work on belief only be of use if we believe as she did? If the gain she extols is a gain to be had by only the Christian faithful, then perhaps it would not be of as much use to the pragmatist, who might be a believer but would surely rather rely on human ingenuity than divine inspiration or help, when it comes to social amelioration. But another reading of the text is...