This thesis presents an empirical study of the meeting between a group of doctoral students and their research milieus, understood as a web of values in the social rooms. The purpose is to explore what these research milieus mean for the doctoral students and their questions about views of life.   The theoretical points of departure are on one hand the Uppsala Studies in Faith and Ideologies and on the other the concept of habitus in the study Homo Academicus of Pierre Bourdieu, including the idea that the postgraduate studies can be seen as a secondary socialization.   The study consists of three parts: an observation study, a questionnaire study and a field survey consisting of personal interviews.   The results are in short: 1.      Approximately seven of ten doctoral students reflect on questions about views of life every day or every week. 2.      The milieus of views of life, as interwoven parts of the research milieus, have influence on how the doctoral students think about questions of life. The empirical material shows that there is “a now” and “a then” to these questions. There often appears to be a difference between the cluster of life values in the research milieu and the much more soft values of the students that initiates this process. 3.      The value process mentioned above that is an important part of the secondary socialization often ends in conformity with those values that are parts of the present paradigm. However the process can also end in such a value conflict that the students (ca 25%) often or very often have reflected on discontinuing their postgraduate studies. The students’ soft values seem to be more important than the values they meet in the research milieu. 4.      These value questions, including the research ethics and the postulates of the paradigms, have little or no place in the university education. A part of the participants are of the opinion that questions about views of life are taboo in their research milieu.   The results from the empirical study are then confronted first with the theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu, particularly his overly structuralistic view of agents and their habitus, and then with some central moments in the theoretical concept of Anders Jeffner, the prominent figure in Uppsala studies in faiths and ideologies. It is Jeffner’s individualistic view of the autonomous actor with a relative constancy in views of life that is called into question by the empirical results of this study.

This study argues that a pragmatic conception of religion would enable philosophers to make important contributions to our ability to handle concrete problems involving religion. The term 'philosophical anthropology', referring to different interpretative frameworks, which philosophers draw on to develop conceptions of human phenomena, is introduced. It is argued that the classical pragmatists embraced a philosophical anthropology significantly different from that embraced by most philosophers of religion; accordingly, pragmatism offers an alternative conception of religion. It is suggested that a conception of religion is superior to another if it makes more promising contributions to our ability to handle extra-philosophical problems of religion. A pragmatic philosophical anthropology urges us to view human practices as responses to shared experienced needs. Religious practices develop to resolve tensions in our views of life. The pictures of human flourishing they persent reconstruct our views of life, thereby allowing more significant interaction with the environment, and a more significant life. A modified version of reflective equilibrium is developed to show how we, on a pragmatic conception of religion, are able to supply resources for criticism and reform of religious practices, so the extra-philosophical problems of religion can be handled. Mainstream philosophy of religion attempts to offer such resources by presenting analogy-arguments from religious experience. Those arguments are, however, unconvincing. A comparison of the two conceptions of religion thus results in a recommendation to reconstruct philosophy of religion.