Pure Experience, Radical Empiricism

A World of Pure Experience
William James (1904)

First published in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 1, 533-543, 561-570.

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It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time, always loosening of old landmarks, a softening of oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another reflecting on the part of systems anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of the extant school-solutions. The dissatisfaction with these seems due for the most part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is confused and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to crave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though it were at some cost of logical rigor and of formal purity. Transcendental idealism is inclining to let the world wag incomprehensibly, in spite of its Absolute Subject and his unity of purpose. Berkeleyan idealism is abandoning the principle of parsimony and dabbling in panpsychic speculations. Empiricism flirts with teleology; and, strangest of all, natural realism, so long decently buried, raises its head above the turf, and finds glad hands outstretched from the most unlikely quarters to help it to its feet again. We are all biased by our personal feelings, I know, and I am personally discontented with extant solutions; so I seem to read the signs of a great unsettlement, as if the upheaval of more real conceptions and more fruitful methods were imminent, as if a true landscape might result, less clipped, straight-edged and artificial.

If philosophy be really on the eve of any considerable rearrangement, the time should be propitious for any one who has suggestions of his own to bring forward. For many years past my mind has been growing into a certain type of Weltanschauung. Rightly or wrongly, I have got to the point where I can hardly see things in any other pattern. I propose, therefore, to describe the pattern as clearly as I can consistently with great brevity, and to throw my description into the bubbling vat of publicity where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics, it will eventually either disappear from notice, or else, if better luck befall it, quietly subside to the profundities, and serve as a possible ferment of new growths or a nucleus of new crystallization... (continues)

The Varieties of Pure Experience: William James and Kitaro Nishida on Consciousness and Embodiment

Joel W. Krueger

1. Introduction 
The notion of “pure experience” is one of the most intriguing and simultaneously perplexing features of William James’s writings. There seems to be little consensus in the secondary literature as to how to understand this notion, and precisely what function it serves within the overall structure of James’s thought. Yet James himself regards this idea as the cornerstone of his radical empiricism. And the latter, James felt, was his unique contribution to the history of philosophy; he believed that philosophy “was on the eve of a considerable rearrangement” when his essay “A World of Pure Experience” was first published in 1904. While Western philosophy is still perhaps awaiting this “considerable rearrangement,” James’s notion of pure experience was quickly appropriated by another thinker who in fact did inaugurate a considerable rearrangement of his own intellectual tradition: the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870—1945), the founder and most important figure of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy.
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Kitaro Nishida is widely recognized as Japan’s foremost modern philosopher. His earliest major work, An Inquiry into the Good (1911), is generally considered to be the founding statement of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy. Other prominent Kyoto School figures, including Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962), Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990), and Masao Abe (1915– ), each acknowledged the profound influence of Nishida’s work on their own intellectual development. Pluralistic in his outlook and comparative in his methodology, Nishida was throughout his life deeply influenced by a number of western thinkers and religious figures (a trait shared by most other prominent Kyoto School figures). For instance, Nishida speaks favorably of Augustine, Kant, Hegel and Bergson, and concedes that these Western thinkers, among others, had a hand in shaping his thought.
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But it was with James’s formulation of pure experience that Nishida first believed that he had found a conceptual apparatus upon which he could ground the characteristic themes and concerns that have since been designated “Nishida Philosophy.” Additionally, Nishida felt that James’s idea of pure experience was able to preserve some of the more important features of Buddhist thought that Nishida looked to incorporate into his own system... (continues)

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RECONSTRUCTING JAMES’S EARLY RADICAL EMPIRICISM: THE 1896 PREFACE AND “THE SPIRIT OF INNER TOLERANCE”

ERMINE L. ALGAIER IV

ABSTRACT. This paper re-contextualizes William James’s early radical empiricism based upon a historical and philosophical reading of the 1896 preface of The Will to Believe. I suggest that James’s “irrational” early radical empiricism, as guided by the “spirit of inner tolerance,” is tinged with a fringe sensitivity or awareness of the epistemic outsider. Based upon his critique of the blind monist, this paper argues that when we look toward a wider conception of James’s philosophy, it reveals that his early radical empiricism is intimately concerned with social and moral elements with regard to matters of fact and perspective. Utilizing Gavin’s manifest-latent hermeneutic, I show how James defends this type of outsider, the epistemic underdog, with the hope of creating a more open, free, and democratic marketplace of ideas and practices that is predicated upon the value of respectful difference.

When we look toward James’s first public announcement of radical empiricism, it becomes clear that we need to be more critical as to how we discuss his ideas. In contrast to Edward Madden’s interpretation, I am suggesting that we avoid using James’s later formulation (e.g. his 1904-05 technical writings) as a measuring stick for his 1896 articulation.[1] As we inquire into James’s early radical empiricism,[2] we ought to not assume that he is directly concerned with metaphysics, with pure experience, and the epistemological relations of the subject-object dichotomy.[3] A more critical reading, I suggest, is one which draws from the historical, thematic, and philosophical context of James’s work in the mid to late 1890’s... (continues)