“Make What You Can of It If You Are a Philosopher”: An Essay on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Christian Spiritualism”

Abstract

A number of years ago, renowned English biographer Andrew Lycett wrote a short piece about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that highlighted the seemingly irreconcilable tension between Doyle the creator of the “super-rational” detective Sherlock Holmes, and Doyle the passionate defender of “Christian Spiritualism”. In this essay, I aim to explore this alleged tension, ultimately arguing that these two Doyles need not be in tension—the only true tension being between the two terms in Doyle’s preferred philosophy, “Christian Spiritualism”.

Keywords

• rationalism
• spiritualism
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Sherlock Holmes
• Christian Spiritualism