WILLIAM JAMES AND THE METAPHYSICS OF EXPERIENCE William James is often considered one of America’s most original philosophical minds, while also a foundational thinker for the study of religion. Despite this reputation, he is rarely considered a serious philosopher or religious thinker by contemporary stand- ards. In this new interpretation David Lamberth argues that James’s major contribution was to develop a metaphysics of experi- ence integrally related to his pluralistic and social religious ideas. Lamberth systematically interprets James’s radically empiricist world-view and argues for an early dating () for his develop- ment of this metaphysics. He offers a radically empiricist reading of The Varieties of Religious Experience and a close analysis of APluralistic Universe. Concluding, he connects James’s ideas about experience, pluralism, and truth to current debates in philosophy, philosophy of religion, and theology, suggesting James’s functional, experien- tial metaphysics as a conceptual aid in bridging the social and interpretive with the immediate and concrete, avoiding radical rela- tivism and uncritical realism. David C. Lamberth is Assistant Professor of Theology in the Faculty of Divinity of Harvard University