Sep 22, 2026 · 1 hr 14 min · 11 segments
What if we reimagined Christian spirituality as something fundamentally communal, and religious conversion as something that extends beyond altar calls and private devotion? Spirituality scholar…
Michael CeragioliGuest
Zach MikkelHost
With, with James in particular, I'm wondering with what he's doing is, I mean, does that in some way mirror sort of the American transcendentalists in a way? Like, are there, are there, um, sort of common features to what he's doing with what the transcendentalists are doing? Cause I think.
with this sort of approach of the field of spirituality, it almost seems at first glance that the Transcendentalists would be a more naturally suited partner perhaps than the pragmatists, particularly Pius and Reuss.
But we could also kind of maybe see a sort of, I don't know, a fork in the road in American intellectual history where we have the pragmatists and the transcendentalists.
But we also have a highly individualistic culture that really believes in self-reliance and almost is kind of like frontier mentality.
But I'm wondering if what James is doing mirrors in any way like Thoreau and Emerson.
Like how you might kind of frame your own project in light of sort of that history.
to some of what we've been talking about, this sort of small world in the, you know, Harvard base, as much as I hate to say it, intellectual culture in the, you know, in the Northeast, in the U S.
So, you know, James's father was, was a philosopher, incredibly eccentric philosopher.
And so Emerson would be over for dinner, you know, James grew up around the sort of kitchen table with, with Emerson around, this is definitely coming out of transcendentalism.
And what, what purse says again, purse is critical of what he would call the, he saw nominalism everywhere, what he would call the nominalism of, um, transcendentalism.
So again, he's attempting to clarify and make sense of some of these earlier ideas to refine what he understands to be the sort of philosophical mistakes made left and right.
But the point is, what Peirce would say is as much as I'm kind of taking, moving in this direction of grounding these intellectual traditions, I find that like again and again as like a virus that has been latent for a while, right? Transcendentalism emerges, you know, maybe at the last turn.
So I do think that we can look at it in that way too as pragmatism is trying to sort of shape these early, you know, kind of transcendentalist thinkers in Emerson and Thoreau.
With, with James in particular, I'm wondering with what he's doing is, I mean, does that in some way mirror sort of the American transcendentalists in a way? Like, are there, are there, um, sort of common features to what he's doing with what the transcendentalists are doing? Cause I think.
with this sort of approach of the field of spirituality, it almost seems at first glance that the Transcendentalists would be a more naturally suited partner perhaps than the pragmatists, particularly Pius and Reuss.
But we could also kind of maybe see a sort of, I don't know, a fork in the road in American intellectual history where we have the pragmatists and the transcendentalists.
But we also have a highly individualistic culture that really believes in self-reliance and almost is kind of like frontier mentality.
But I'm wondering if what James is doing mirrors in any way like Thoreau and Emerson.
Like how you might kind of frame your own project in light of sort of that history.
to some of what we've been talking about, this sort of small world in the, you know, Harvard base, as much as I hate to say it, intellectual culture in the, you know, in the Northeast, in the U S.
So, you know, James's father was, was a philosopher, incredibly eccentric philosopher.
And so Emerson would be over for dinner, you know, James grew up around the sort of kitchen table with, with Emerson around, this is definitely coming out of transcendentalism.
And what, what purse says again, purse is critical of what he would call the, he saw nominalism everywhere, what he would call the nominalism of, um, transcendentalism.
So again, he's attempting to clarify and make sense of some of these earlier ideas to refine what he understands to be the sort of philosophical mistakes made left and right.
But the point is, what Peirce would say is as much as I'm kind of taking, moving in this direction of grounding these intellectual traditions, I find that like again and again as like a virus that has been latent for a while, right? Transcendentalism emerges, you know, maybe at the last turn.
So I do think that we can look at it in that way too as pragmatism is trying to sort of shape these early, you know, kind of transcendentalist thinkers in Emerson and Thoreau.
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