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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

William James Society: summer '25 newsletter

 

Summer 2025 Newsletter

President’s Message from Dr. Phil Oliver

When I think of William James in summer, I think naturally of his annual escape at term’s end to his Chocorua summer home in New Hampshire, with (he told his sister Alice) its “fourteen doors, all opening out”…

William James' summer house in Chocorua, NH.

I think as well of his many Adirondack excursions, where at the end of one day’s hike he came upon a “ferocious metaphysical dispute” surrounding a squirrel…

and where he had what he called a Walpurgis Nacht pseudo-mystical experience…

And then I think of the terrific split-venue Chocorua/Cambridge centenary celebration of his life and work the James Society sponsored in August 2010, “in the footsteps of William James,” coinciding with Harvard’s Houghton Library exhibition Life is in the Transitions. 

I think of the time he got horribly lost on a hike and probably propelled the heart-strain that expedited his exit from this earth at age 68 in August 1910.

And of course I think of the nobility of that exit. It was in his dying summer a hundred and fifteen year ago, when he penned a marvelous riposte to Henry Adams’s morose pessimism over the universe’s own mortality. The entire letter (dated June 17, 1910) is a tour de force of indomitably life-affirming human spirit, even in the shadow of looming personal extinction. It concludes with a crescendo of defiantly insistent hopefulness: “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… 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.'”

Isn’t that an exit!

It was in his terminal summer that James declared, a bit disingenuously, that there were “no fortunes to be told and no advice to be given,” in the conclusion of his final publication, “A Pluralistic Mystic”-a paean to his eccentric friend Benjamin Blood, but from our vantage more a brave “Farewell!” at the conclusion of a remarkably inspiring, perceptive, and humane life devoted to the unyielding defense of experience in all its irreducible variety.

The disingenuity in question has less to do with fortune-telling (though he was more than sufficiently receptive to the experience of unscrupulous seers and non-creditable prognosticators) than with advice. He was full of that. “Be not afraid of life” was one of his better lines, in this regard.

And it’s probably the line we need most to heed ourselves, in this summer of our own (and America’s) unsettled fortune. He’d tell us, I’m sure: you can stand it.

As he told us just before that final farewell: “There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it?”

We’re still here, to enjoy experience and to shape it; to enjoy the world and to change it.

So say we at the William James Society, in the spirit of our namesake: enjoy your summer, and ameliorate your world.

Phil Oliver, President, William James Society

Digital Spotlight

“Revisiting the Classics with AI” – John Kaag (May 13, 2025)

WJS Vice President John Kaag considers what it means to engage James in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. He explores how digital tools might extend James’s commitment to pluralism and the varieties of experience.

This short piece is ideal for faculty and students interested in public philosophy and digital pedagogy.

🔗 Read the article

Access the Rebind AI E-book of Varieties of Religious Experience with John Kaag and Bessel Van Kolk

Community Updates

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An interview with Alexander Klein

William James, Where All Consciousness Is Motor - 3:16

...James also thinks inquiry needs to be conducted in a scientific fashion, but especially in philosophical inquiry, he doesn't think this should be done using jargon, in a technical fashion. James's outlook here is evolutionary—he suggests that if natural selection operates on physical traits in populations of organisms, then a kind of selection may operate on ideas in an ecology of discourse. In the short-run, the ideas that proliferate may well be inferior in a host of ways to the ideas technical science produces. But on James's view, what counts in the long run (again, thinking especially of philosophy here) is the ideas that are adopted and passed along by *everyone,* not just by trained professionals. What makes those ideas true, for James, is that the ideas are in some sense adopted and carried forward by the entire community. And the entire community can't engage with ideas that can only be expressed in jargon.

So the case for James's account being the more promising pragmatist option when it comes to objectivity (at least in philosophy) rests on the relative size of the community of inquiry. On James's model, what's true is what sticks in the long run, from generation to generation, among all humans, not just the cognoscenti. It's obviously debatable whether biases and distortions are more likely to be canceled out in larger communities, but that's the (in my view not implausible) assumption on which Jamesean objectivity hinges...

https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/william-james-where-all-consciousness-is-motor?fbclid=IwY2xjawL13stleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETBIcVpsMmtJd0tHb2JKZ2YzAR5INrYMGFZEz22icemD2NPjvCUrRk2TNaIuobsSUPfsTMgoEWe_jRaSH4VuQg_aem_3PiAcQYhUJVC9N4NjShCYA

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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

A message from the William James Society

Enjoy your summer AND help ameliorate our world: we at the William James Society approve this message. wjsociety.org … @wjsociety.bsky.social

https://substack.com/@philoliver/note/c-137901371?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
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William James Society newsletter-note from the president, Summer '25

 WJ in summer

[Recording at Substack]
Time to draft a presidential summer missive for the William James Society newsletter.

When I think of William James in summer, I think naturally of his annual escape at term's end to his Chocorua summer home in New Hampshire, with (he told his sister Alice) its "fourteen doors, all opening out"...



I think as well of his many Adirondack excursions, where at the end of one day's hike he came upon a "ferocious metaphysical dispute" surrounding a squirrel...



and where he had what he called a Walpurgis Nacht pseudo-mystical experience...

And then I think of the terrific split-venue Chocorua/Cambridge centenary celebration of his life and work the James Society sponsored in August 2010, "in the footsteps of William James," coinciding with Harvard's Houghton Library exhibition Life is in the Transitions.

I think of the time he got horribly lost on a hike and probably propelled the heart-strain that expedited his exit from this earth at age 68 in August 1910.

And of course I think of the nobility of that exit. It was in his dying summer a hundred and fifteen year ago, when he penned a marvelous riposte to Henry Adams's morose pessimism over the universe's own mortality. The entire letter (dated June 17, 1910) is a tour de force of indomitably life-affirming human spirit, even in the shadow of looming personal extinction. It concludes with a crescendo of defiantly insistent hopefulness: "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... a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness... 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.'"

Isn't that an exit!

It was in his terminal summer that James declared, a bit disingenuously, that there were "no fortunes to be told and no advice to be given," in the conclusion of his final publication, "A Pluralistic Mystic"-a paean to his eccentric friend Benjamin Blood, but from our vantage more a brave "Farewell!" at the conclusion of a remarkably inspiring, perceptive, and humane life devoted to the unyielding defense of experience in all its irreducible variety.

The disingenuity in question has less to do with fortune-telling (though he was more than sufficiently receptive to the experience of unscrupulous seers and non-creditable prognosticators) than with advice. He was full of that. "Be not afraid of life" was one of his better lines, in this regard.

And it's probably the line we need most to heed ourselves, in this summer of our own (and America's) unsettled fortune. He'd tell us, I'm sure: you can stand it.

As he told us just before that final farewell: "There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it?"

We're still here, to enjoy experience and to shape it; to enjoy the world and to change it.

So say we at the William James Society, in the spirit of our namesake: enjoy your summer, and ameliorate your world.
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William James Society newsletter, Spring '25

 WJS Newsletter (NEW!)

The newsletter will periodically announce, anticipate, and recap WJ Society events (such as the recent WJS session at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) annual meeting in Washington DC (March 13-15 2025), and will share other items of interest. Meanwhile, you can follow the William James Society at Bluesky (and follow the WJS president at Bluesky). If you have something relevantly Jamesian you’d like to share, you can submit it to president@wjsociety.org or the WJS secretary at secretary@wjsociety.org

Spring 2025 Newsletter

President’s Message: Dr. Phil Oliver, WJS Presidential Address at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

Good morning. Thank you for rousing yourselves so early for this event. It’s no great sacrifice for me, long a habitue’ of the pre-dawn. Ignore the clock and embrace the hour, I say with Thoreau, “morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me… To be awake is to be alive.” Etc.

I do recognize the temperamental element involved in the varieties of auroral experience. If you’re not a morning person, your presence here is all the more gratifying. And if you flew to DC it may even be heroic, these days. Just being here at all is frankly a bit unsettling, tasked as we are with trying to cast a little Jamesian light in the shadow of so benighted a national presidency (albeit one that makes all before it, less one, shine brighter in retrospect).

But since we are here, we should rise to appreciate what Adam Gopnik has lately called our “truly unique, only-once-in-the-universe gift of consciousness. That’s some comfort. We’ll sleep long enough soon enough.” Being “woke” is not in vogue with the current DC in-crowd, but we interlopers recognize the deep appeal of eyes wide open before eternal dormancy resumes. I like Jane Fonda’s definition: being woke just means “giving a damn.”

The unfortunate timeliness of my title this morning, its allusion to these “dark times,” may need no extensive elaboration. Many of us felt the civic darkness descending well before November’s election, but I don’t think so many of us anticipated, then, the full depth and suddenness of its descent. Those of us who’ve spent decades deliberating (strolling, conversing) with William James, though, know the threat of personal darkness to be perennial for all but the “once-born”… (continues)

 

Lighting candles AND cursing darkness

[Accompanying slideshow…]

Response to 2025 WJS Presidential Address, John Shook

Phil Oliver’s reflections on William James help to remind me about recentering as a pragmatist. That’s been James’s role in my own philosophical development. The round table of philosophers from Peirce, James, and Royce to Santayana, Dewey, and Mead are only congruent through that core of James himself. They encircle together, and defend a singular approach to philosophy, thanks to a Jamesian sensibility that I feel pulsing at the heart of all of them.

They were contemporaries philosophically as well as generationally. The youngest among them, Santayana and Mead, born in 1863, became professors in 1889 and 1891 respectively, well in time to witness the 1890s eruption of pragmatism from Peirce and James at close hand. But that was an era of grand metaphysical contests among dualistic, neoKantian, Hegelian, and materialist systems. None of them satisfied our Americans, who adapted what they could and borrowed from each other in order to refine and define what they found to be livable philosophies.

It must be remembered that no less less than four original philosophies of life and knowledge emerged from the crucible of northeastern academia of the late 1800s: namely personalism, pluralism, pragmatism, and naturalism. That these philosophies were, and remain to this day, mutually conversant and cooperative was almost entirely due again to the shining example of James, who exemplified all four in harmony. His was the intellectual and spiritual canopy under which our Americans could root down their tenets and raise up their theories without crowding out the rest.

Indeed, none of their sprawling philosophies could have by themselves flourished. They fertilized each other’s conceptual soil, made niches for the other’s discoveries, balanced each other’s productivities, and together grounded a sustainable ecology for further endeavor. Together in symbiosis they were more inhabitable for the mind as well as livable for the spirit, than any of them could have been in isolation.

Their metaphysics when brought together and posed for a family portrait makes one squint hard and struggle to focus for lack of any one obvious tenet or systematic feature. That very lack should shift the eye elsewhere. There is indeed one evident commonality, illustrated well by James’s philosophy. My earlier hint is now your clue, about their collective resilience against those grand totalitarian systems so dominant during their careers.

Our Americans did not miss in their efforts to capture something essential about absolutely everything, having offered comprehensive philosophies themselves. They each beheld cosmologies and stitched epistemologies and attached axiologies. I am referring not to the breadth of their ambition or the depth of their thought, but instead to their hub centering each one’s philosophical core. James expressed that heart with all his heart in every one of his major writings and most of his occasional pieces.

Phil Oliver has pointed directly at it with his illustrations about that power of James to deliver us from bigness and grant us a moment’s peace, so long as energies are refreshed for trying again to make a difference in the only place where we can ever make any difference, right where we are still positioned. All the meaning we merit and make is generated in the here and now, or else nowhere and never.

The safest characterization to be made about our American philosophers as a collective lies in this principle:

The ultimacy of the Local.

And a corresponding self-sufficiency – a sense of presence and persistence, no matter the lure of the eternal or the security of the universal.

The primacy of the local has a message for the intellectual totalitarians: your Arches and Axioms and Abstractions actually need locality to literally make any sense whatsoever. The greatest potency and abundancy of any reality already has its ur-Ground of Being right here and right now. Philosophy in its metaphysical and cosmological mappings can stretch as far or farther than the imagination, but every spot on any map in its entirety bears the identical marker – “Here is a place to be.” Only the local in all its plenitude holds together the All and the Almighty.

No absorptions into pure absolutes, no dissolutions of stubborn objects, no frameworks for frail finitudes, no postulates to arrest doubt, and above all no imperatives to command action. The current of the cosmos runs through us, and the course of cosmic fates carries us. No mastermind beyond the skies has any right to leave us in doubt about empowering ourselves. No assembly of essences could have significance unless they make an appearance for appreciation. No laws for regimentation work better than the self-organization from little interdependencies. No nets of necessities can make anything move one millimeter or illuminate one idea. No orchestration of objectivity would convey any knowledge without incorporating every perspective. No rendering of uniform justice should strictly prevail over the just causes of individual deeds.

The view from eternity is just another perspective from which to survey what really matters, what has always only mattered, the local perspectives, the only perspectives, from where anything could be seen. The view from nowhere is a blind view of nothing for no one.

It is said that philosophy’s owl of wisdom takes flight only at dusk. Yet that owl glides through a charted woods that reaches up to the sky with every day’s light. Philosophy’s wide eyes can take in the smallest details and track the least as well as the great. Much lays in shadow, but of the absolute night, philosophy need know nothing, because there’s nothing there to follow or to fear. Here, and only here, does the ultimate find its footing and its fulfillment. Your own thoughtful pause at the sight of a bright moon over a stilled lake is imbued with more reality in that serene situation than a million multiverses in calculated multiplication.

James always told us, Your own philosophy as a well-lit way to guide your life won’t be a trackless path into oblivion. The trek you take helps to stitch together the fabric of space-time in wavey fields of fortune, hopefully making the future more habitable for those who come up after us. We can make a safe bet on a philosophy of meliorism since that attitude towards life made our own lives possible, and bearable. Totalitarianism pities smallness and counsels surrender. We reply that pessimism is the bitter betrayal of all humanity. Courage is never wasted, and sacrifice is never unrewarded, for we are weaving what is most worthy of ourselves into that meaningful tapestry of ultimate reality.

Response to 2025 WJS Presidential Address, Kevin Decker

We found out that John Kaag wouldn’t be able to attend about a week ago, so I asked Phil Oliver if I should prepare some comments as a pinch-hitter. I wasn’t able to do that over the course of the week, for this reason: while those of you at semester schools are likely luxuriating in your spring break, this week has been the final week of courses for quarter-based schools like mine.

But on the long plane ride from Washington state, I had time enough to think—and to discover that Peirce was essentially right. If you let your subconscious play around with a set of disconnected ideas for long enough, you will either muse your way to a plausible hypothesis or come up with Trump’s tariff policy. I did the former.

I appreciate Phil Oliver’s attempt to re-present William James to us as an inspiration in the current moment. We share at least two things: we both walk dogs as our “moment of Zen” and publicly hold that New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is not a particularly deep thinker. On the plane ride, I re-read a number of James lectures and essays for another kind of inspiration. And “The Moral Equivalent of War” did it.

If I attempt to re-trace the thread of my Peircian musement, it probably started with the book project that I am presenting a selection from later today. I have been trying to take James’ and Dewey’s injunction against intellectualism seriously by applying pragmatism to the philosophy of craft. That effort soon blossomed into a wider look at the role of human labor in civil society, and to the eventual realization that it is not only globalization or social complexity that MAGA is reacting against, but that there has also occurred a serious weakening of the value of the dignity of work in the United States.

This is not an original thesis. It is pursued by critical theorist Axel Honneth in his new book which I highly recommend, called The Working Sovereign, and shows up in the writings of Harvard public philosopher Michael Sandel. In fact, it was in a public conversation between Sandel and French economist Thomas Piketty (published as Equality: What it Is and Why it Matters) that the new conservative attack on public goods was raised. As an antidote, Piketty and Sandel discussed introducing National Service to the US as one crucial way to attack the declines of quality, craft, personal investment, and social valorization in our lives at work. It is worth noting that in France, Emmanuel Macron introduced voluntary national service for teens aged 15 to 17 in 2021.

Which brings us back to James. “The Moral Equivalent of War” was written as a leaflet for the Association for International Conciliation. Most of the scholarly attention it has received has rightly been spent on James’ attitude toward the history of war, traditional masculine virtues, and the Spanish-American War and American imperialism in general. But if we can get past the fact, that James favors “instead of military conscription a conscription of the whole youthful population [boys only, he makes clear later] to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature”—and if we can also ignore James the pacifist conceding that “so long as anti-militarists propose no substitute for war’s disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war …so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the [militarist’s] situation. And as a rule they do fail”—if we can get past both these things, then James is proposing a program for American national service that had (and I would argue), still has the potential to help reverse the loss of public goods that neoliberals and paleoconservatives seem determined to strip away from us. It provides a valid counter-narrative to “warrior” mentality for public service that the military under the loathsome drunkard Pete Hegseth represents. And as fewer high school graduates are choosing to go to college, we face the problem of how to instill cooperative, citizen virtues in the next generations. This is a concrete melioristic project.

Between 2003 and 2013, former U.S. Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) made five unsuccessful attempts to pass the Universal National Service Act, which would have required all people in the United States between ages 18 and 42 to either serve in the military or perform civilian service specifically related to national defense. This is too close to what James is rejecting in “Moral Equivalent,” and I agree that service in national defense is too narrow to serve the multifarious purposes that such a program would need to fulfill. We would not be able to invite our own “gilded youth,” as James referred to those in his time, “to get the childishness knocked out of them” “according to their choice” of project or skill set. But compulsory—but also paid—civilian national service could be modelled on FDR’s National Youth Administration in the late 30’s. And by contributing to the rebuilding of American infrastructure or even serving as hard-working American ambassadors to allies (we can get them back!), what could potentially become a “lost generation” of American youth could learn, as James put it, “to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking.” And leave the cell phones at home, kids.

 

Recent publications about William James

Compiled by WJS At-large Member, John Shook

BOOKS
Consciousness Is Motor: William James on Mind and Action AM Klein – 2025 – books.google.com
George Santayana’s and William James’s Conflicting Views on Transcendence A Rionda – 2024 – Springer
The Oxford Handbook of William James AM Klein – 2024 – books.google.com
William James and Sigmund Freud on the Mind: Saving Subjectivity AI Tauber – 2025 – books.google.com
William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician Emma K. Sutton, University of Chicago Press.

ARTICLES
A Dialogue between Pragmatism and Existentialism: W. James and F. Nietzsche on Truth R Yılmaz – Problemos, 2024 – zurnalai.vu.lt
Artistic imagination and its role in moral progress. Embracing William James’ cries of the wounded S Castella-Martinez, B Weber – Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2024 – journals.sagepub.com
Charlene Haddock Seigfried’s feminist interpretation of William James N Stamenković – Theoria, Beograd, 2024 – doiserbia.nb.rs
Cosmic Harmony and an Unseen Order: On Mysticism, Panpsychism, and Philosophical Temperaments in William James S Pihlström – Philosophical Perspectives on Esotericism, 2024 – taylorfrancis.com
George Santayana’s and William James’s Conflicting Views on Transcendence A Rionda – 2024 – Springer
Josiah Royce, William James, and the Social Renewal of the “Sick Soul”: Exploring the Communal Dimension of Religious Experience MA Ceragioli – Religions, 2024 – mdpi.com
Le naturalisme de William James: Du pathos à l’éthos de la contingence RM Calcaterra – Archives de Philosophie, 2024 – shs.cairn.info
Mysticisme et pragmatisme dans la philosophie religieuse d’Alfred Loisy. Une comparaison avec William James A Lannoy – Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 2025 – biblio.ugent.be
Pragmatism and Conflicts at Work: Theoretical and Methodological Insights from William James E von Fircks – Trends in Psychology, 2024 – Springer
Psychological Principles in Education: Reviewing William James’ Impact on Teaching Practices MN Anwar, S Sharif, M Shareef – Journal of Education and Social …, 2024 – ideas.repec.org
Situated Religious Cognition in Jamesian Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion S Pihlström – Religions, 2024 – mdpi.com
Taking Pragmatism Seriously Enough: Toward a Deeper Understanding of the British Debate over Pragmatism, ca. 1900–1910 Y Braaksma – Journal of the History of Ideas, 2024 – muse.jhu.edu
The Imperial: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking K Unterman – Modern American History, 2024 – cambridge.org
The Precarious Articulation of Religious Experience in William James’ The Will to Believe S Lederle – Azimuth: philosophical coordinates in modern and …, 2024 – torrossa.com
The Varieties of Experience: William James After the Linguistic Turn by Alexis Dianda H Wells – American Literary History, 2024 – muse.jhu.edu
Transpersonal Psychology—William James and Moving Beyond a Materialist Paradigm E Sheppard – Mild Altered States of Consciousness: Subtle Shifts of …, 2024 – Springer
Trust redundant: St John Henry Newman and William James on the eviction of the person from philosophy P McHugh – EducA: International Catholic Journal of Education, 2024 – eprints.gla.ac.uk
William James’s Assessment of Nihilism as a Psychological Phenomenon J Stewart – Phainomena:[glasilo Fenomenološkega društva v …, 2024 – phainomena.com
William James’s experience of presenting The Varieties of Religious Experience: His Gifford performance in historical context. JR Snarey, J McLendon – History of Psychology, 2024 – psycnet.apa.org
William James’s Inquiry into Modes of Existence C Frigerio – European Journal of Pragmatism and …, 2024 – journals.openedition.org
William James: physician of the public’s soul A Kleinman – The Lancet, 2024 – thelancet.com
William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician AI Tauber – 2024 – JSTOR
William James on unification. W Viney – History of Psychology, 2024 – psycnet.apa.org
William James’s naturalism: From the pathos to the ethos of contingency RM Calcaterra – Archives de Philosophie, 2024 – cairn-int.info
William James, Karl Jaspers, And The Call to Transcendence RD Gordon – Global Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 2024 – tudr.org
William James: The Mystical Experimentation of a Sick Soul DH Nikkel – Religions, 2024 – mdpi.com

REVIEWS
Review of Evidentialism and the Will to Believe by Scott Aikin, Andrew D. Cling Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Review of A Pragmatist Philosophy of History, written by Marnie Binder T Viola – Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2024 – brill.com
Review of A Pragmatist Philosophy of History PHG Stephens – 2024 – The Pluralist
Review of “John J. Stuhr, No Professor’s Lectures Can Save Us: William James’s Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism, Oxford: Oxford University Press … M Bella – Body Ideas and Political Communities in Eric …, 2024 – brill.com
Review of Josiah Royce: Pragmatist, Ethicist, Philosopher of Religion R Friedman – 2024 – scholarlypublishingcollective.org
Review of Alexis Dianda, The Varieties of Experience: William James after the Linguistic Turn. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2023 S Marchetti – European Journal of Pragmatism and …, 2024 – journals.openedition.org
Review of Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy by Trevor Pearce A Klein – Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2024 – muse.jhu.edu
Review of Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives U Schulenberg – 2024 – JSTOR
Review of Three roads back: how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James responded to the greatest losses of their lives: by Robert D. Richardson, Princeton & Oxford, Princeton … MA Foust – 2024 – Taylor & Francis
Review of Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives A de Galzain – Revue française d’études américaines, 2024 – cairn.info
William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician by Emma K. Sutton. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA, 2023. 240 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 978 … A Ione – Leonardo, 2024 – muse.jhu.edu

Recent Publications in Focus

Neon colored Socrates portrait

Agnes Callard’s recent book delves into Socratic philosophy, emphasizing the importance of continuous inquiry. While the primary focus is on Socrates, Callard’s discussions resonate with Jamesian themes, particularly the interplay between belief and evidence.

“In ‘The Sentiment of Rationality,’ William James describes ‘the two great aesthetic needs of our logical nature, the need of unity and the need of clearness.’ There is no one who thinks like William James; he is in a league of his own.” –Agnes Callard

https://wwnorton.com/books/open-socrates

Newsletter Archive

January 1, 2025: A Note from the President– Happy New Chapter!

On behalf of the society I invite you to (re-)join our growing, pluralistic community. We reflect various backgrounds, disciplines, and traditions. Some are institutionally affiliated scholars, others are independent. But all share the belief that William James’s philosophical and humanistic legacy offers something crucial our time desperately needs.

The future is (as ever) uncertain but, we Jamesians believe, is also malleable and at least partly, potentially responsive to our most thoughtful and committed exertions in the present. “The really vital question for us all,” he said, “is What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?”

James also liked to say life feels like a “real fight,” not a mere game of inconsequential “private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.” That rings at least as true in 2025 as it must have in 1884, when in Dilemma of Determinism he sought to rally his peers to the spirit of “meliorism”–of trying to improve the human prospect, without any advance guarantees of success.

But because James was a happy fighter, a seeker and celebrant of what he called our “springs of delight,” I think an organization devoted to promoting his distinctive mode of thought and action must also court joy, hope, and a resolute resilience in the face of whatever hard challenges await us.

And because he was a pluralistic humanist, we should also embrace his philosophy of ‘co’: “The pluralistic form [of philosophy] takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of ‘co’…”

As so, my fellow James Society cohorts, we can afford neither of the twin luxuries of excessive optimism or pessimism in these challenging times. Neither of those attitudes can summon our best efforts. Let us get on with doing our small bit to try and build a better world.

The great essayist E. B. White said “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Hard, sure. But a Jamesian will insist on both.

So let us be meliorists. And let us have a good time doing it.

Happy New Year!

Phil Oliver
President, William James Society

president@wjsociety.org
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