Toward an Existential Epistemology

Though William James isn’t regarded as an existentialist, he made an interesting point that can facilitate developing an existential epistemology. He said in “The Will to Believe”

“As a matter of fact we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why…Our faith is faith in some one else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.”

When it comes to epistemology, I think James is right. Most of the information we obtain is through secondary sources. There’s a limited amount of first hand analysis that we as humans engage in, and I think necessarily so. One reason is that we are historical beings. We are “thrown” into the time-space continuum and simply “find” ourselves somewhere in it. As a result we cannot interview or analyze anyone or anything that existed before us. Likewise, we are somewhat limited on an individual basis as to how far we can travel. For the most part, I think the majority of humans stays within a very well defined geographical area most of their lives, whether it be a city, state, or country.

In attempting to come to any epistemological certitude, we cannot go behind ourselves. We ultimately end up at our own subjectivity. This is not to relativize the whole enterprise, it just properly locates it. If we can’t go behind ourselves, then we are our ultimate reference point. We end up somewhere similar to Descartes, but not identically. What we have is a direction towards an existential epistemology, and I think that can be a useful tool of balance.