PHIL-330 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6-7: Pantheism, Stoicism, John Bunyan
Document Summary
In these two lectures, james looks at how people may be affected by awareness of sin in themselves and of evil in the world. He begins by noting the healthy-minded response to evil, but spends most of the two lectures on a response he labels morbid. According to the writer, the healthy-minded response to evil is essentially to minimise it. Thus, the catholic practice of confession and absolution [p 128] allows penitents to, as we might say, walk away from their sins. He may have rejected the catholic sacrament of penance, but his attitude to repentance was still to a degree healthy-minded: you should simply accept that you are a sinner and put your trust in god"s mercy. James sees healthy-mindedness as associated with a particular stance in religious philosophy. If you are going to free god from responsibility for the existence of evil in the world, then you have to see evil as a totally independent principle.
