A happy and virtuous consciousness

Yesterday was Henry Adams's birthday.*

Late in William James's life-very late-he and Adams corresponded about Adams's entropic pessimism. 

William's attitude is key to finding delight in dark times. It's never too late to be happy.

From the summer of 1910:

…The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"—save that it sets a terminus—for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of which rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions—their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget—being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium—in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully canalisés that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question.

There! that's pretty good for a brain after 18 Nauheim baths—so I won't write another line, nor ask you to reply to me. In case you can't help doing so, however, I will gratify you now by saying that I probably won't jaw back.—It was pleasant at Paris to hear your identically unchanged and "undegraded" voice after so many years of loss of solar energy. Yours ever truly,

WM. JAMES.

[Post-card]

The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 gutenberg.org

* https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-sunday-february-95e?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios (Richard Ford too. Frank Bascombe deals with the second law better than Henry did.)

I Am An American Philosopher: Mariana Alessandri

“It means for my thoughts to grow in this soil—the soil of South Texas for the past 15 years, and in Mexico City whenever I get the chance to think there… To be an American philosopher is to be keenly aware of one’s location in America, to be devoted to a local community, and to agree to think from that place.”

MARIANA ALESSANDRI is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Director of Religious Studies, and Faculty Affiliate in both Mexican-American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. She is the author of Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves through Dark Moods (Princeton University Press, 2023) which was named an NPR “Book We Love” for 2023. In addition to her other research (spanning existentialism, Latin-American philosophy, and religious studies), and pieces written for popular audiences, she has also been a Fulbright Scholar, been awarded the APA’s prize for public philosophy, and won SAAP’s Jane Addams and Inter-American Philosophy awards. You can find Mariana’s work at www.marianaalessandri.com and on IG @mariana.alessandri

What does American philosophy mean to you?

I used to think American philosophy meant American pragmatism, specifically. Although I enjoy reading William James and Henry David Thoreau, and my pragmatist husband and I even named one of our children after Ralph Waldo Emerson, I do not consider myself an American pragmatist. But American philosopher, yes. It means for my thoughts to grow in this soil—the soil of South Texas for the past 15 years, and in Mexico City whenever I get the chance to think there. I teach at Gloria Anzaldúa’s alma mater and have written articles about how I read her as a US-American, Mexican American, and Mexican philosopher. To be an American philosopher is to be keenly aware of one’s location in America, to be devoted to a local community, and to agree to think from that place... (continues)

https://american-philosophy.org/i-am-an-american-philosopher-mariana-alessandri/