The experience of perspective

James's philosophy of experience offers us a different way to understand philosophy, one grounded in perspective. 

"However sceptical one may be of the attainment of universal truths . . . one can never deny that philosophical study means the habit of always seeing an alternative, of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid again, of imagining foreign states of mind. In a word, it means the possession of mental perspective." 31 

Philosophy is no longer conceived as a love of Truth. Philosophy is grounded not in the search for Truth or Beauty or Reality, but in the quest for perspectival shifts and new postures in which the philosopher learns to imagine the alien, to see the unusual, to notice what has passed unnoticed. To see and feel differently than what we have become accustomed to is the ultimate goal of James's philosophy. This is an individual goal as much as it is a social one. It is a goal that I argue is better served by a philosophy of experience.

The Varieties of Experience: William James After the Linguistic Turn, by Alexis Dianda

"Doing and creating and suffering"

A slightly different take on WJ's youthful commitment to free will-

"Set in the biographical context of James’s back pain and mental ill health, it would seem that free will, as a philosophy of indeterminism, represented, for him, the chance that his own situation might improve. It was the intellectual foundation on which hope and resilience were made possible; the hope that eventually, perhaps, his future and others’ would be less blighted with the evils of illness and pain.116

A diary entry for April 30, 1870, recorded James’s adoption of this new perspective and how he applied it to his own life. He wrote of how, “hitherto, when I have felt like taking a free initiative, like daring to act originally, . . . suicide seemed the only most manly form to put my daring into.” He then proposed a new way of thinking about his future, however, one that was predicated on a belief in the reality of his own “free will” and “creative power,” a life built on “doing and creating and suffering.”117"

"William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" by Emma K. Sutton: https://a.co/hWf2zf8

"William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician"

"James was awarded his MD from Harvard Medical School in March 1869, after more than five years of interrupted study. This certificate lists his examiners, who included Oliver Wendel Holmes Sr., and the subject of his thesis, namely, the effects of cold on the body. (Diplomas, degrees, notifications of appointments, etc., William James papers [MS Am 1092.9–1092.12, MS Am 1092.9 (4571), Box: 40], Houghton Library, Harvard University.)

There is one element of James’s life and work that unites these disparate identities, however. In 1869, several years before he secured his first lectureship, he graduated from Harvard Medical School and earned his MD. Hampered by his own ill health, James abandoned his plans to practice as a doctor, but these studies were only the beginning of a profound and lifelong occupation with questions about the essential nature of health, healing, and invalidism and their implications for society. His writings, across their disciplinary breadth, return time after time to issues of a medical provenance. In this book I make the case that James’s medical interests, concerns, and values are the threads that bind many of his seemingly unconnected pursuits together. They are the warp and weft of many of his best-known publications and major lines of thought."
...
"William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" by Emma K. Sutton: https://a.co/4PTkAZq

William James and I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field

 It was a nice dream. We didn't care if we ever got back.

"When my revered friend and teacher William James wrote an essay on “A Moral Equivalent for War,” I suggested to him that baseball already embodied all the moral value of war, so far as war had any moral value. He listened sympathetically and was amused, but he did not take me seriously enough. All great men have their limitations, and William James’s were due to the fact that he lived in Cambridge, a city which, in spite of the fact that it has a population of 100,000 souls (including the professors), is not represented in any baseball league that can be detected without a microscope..." Morris R. Cohen, in The Dial,Vol. 67, p. 57 (July 26, 1919)

Baseball as a National Religion, John Thorn

In the beginning (of the William James Society): "The Streams of William James"

This is exciting (if you're a Jamesian):

William James Society executive board member and (with his Pragmatism Cybrary) master archivist of American Philosophy John Shook informed us at yesterday's board meeting that he has recovered the earliest society publications, going back to "The Streams of William James" which launched, with the Society itself, back in 1999. And here they are... including my own contributions to the first issue (which I remembered, vaguely) and the third (which I'd entirely forgotten), here:


Thanks for the memories, John. And the institutional memory.

Stoic Pragmatism 6: Open Seminars Online (Chris Skowronski)

  Stoic Pragmatism: Open Seminars Online 

SEMINAR SIX: Why Has Cultural Pluralism (so often) Been a Challenge?  Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 19.00-20.30, Berlin Time (CEST) 

 Zoom link HERE: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88293106089?pwd=Uaef7fHbPCAPLu0XkgdcJ9SQUuIYMA.1 

Programme of Seminar Two:  

I Chris Skowronski’s talk 

II Open discussion about the talk 

III Questions and Comments about other topics, if there are any 

Questions and Issues to be discussed 

1 When did the term “cultural pluralism” (as philosophical stance) appear in pragmatism and what did  it refer to? And how is it difference with a colloquial meaning of this term? 

2 Can we talk about cultural pluralism in the context of stoic pragmatism? 

3 Why cultural pluralism (in a colloquial meaning) is so challenging? 

4 Any links with the Cynic/Stoic idea of cosmopolitanism? 

5 What is the difference between cultural pluralism (philosophical stance) and such cultural policies  as multiculturalism, the Melting Pot, globalization, DEI/EDI, and similar policies? 

A short presentation of some published claims or stances related to these questions and issues (see full bibliography  below). 

Definition of and conditions for cultural pluralism by German-American pragmatist, Horace  Kallen: 

A “Standpoint” saying that culture means a positive and “sympathetic recognition and understanding  of differences” (Kallen 1998 [1924], 56). 

“Cultural growth is founded upon Cultural Pluralism. Cultural Pluralism is possible only in a  democratic society whose institutions encourage individuality in groups, in persons, in temperaments,  whose program liberates these individualities and guides them into a fellowship of freedom and  cooperation“ (Kallen 1998 [1924], 43). 

Kallen’s teacher at Harvard, Santayana’s related stance: 

“Human virtues and human forms of society had various natural models, according to differences of  nature or of circumstances. Virtue, like health, has different shades according to race, sex, age, and  personal endowment. In each phase of life and art a different perfection may be approached” (Santayana 1995 [1951], 337). 

Stoic cosmopolitanism (Marcus Aurelius) 

“If thought is something we share, then so is reason—what makes us reasoning beings. If so, then the  reason that tells us what to do and what not to do is also shared. And if so, we share a common law. And thus, are fellow citizens. And fellow citizens of something. And in that case, our state must be the  world. What other entity could all of humanity belong to? And from it—from this state that we  share—come thought and reason and law“ (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV, 4) 

Stoic (Hierocles) metaphor of concentric circles (widening circles of concern, oikeiosis) “The first and closest circle is that which each person draws around his own mind, as the center: in  this circle is enclosed the body and whatever is employed for the sake of the body. For this circle is  the shortest and all but touches its own center. The second after this one, standing further away from  the center and enclosing the first, is that within which our parents, siblings, wife, and children are 

ranged. Third, after these, is that in which there are uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers,  the children of one’s siblings, and also cousins. After this comes the one that embraces all other  relatives. next upon this is the circle of the members of one’s deme, then that of the members of one’s  tribe, next that of one’s fellow citizens, and so, finally, that of those who border one’s city and that of  people of like ethnicity. The furthest out and largest one, which surrounds all the circles, is that of the  entire race of human beings” (Hierocles 91) 

Stoic pragmatist stance (Lachs/Skowroński on cosmopolitanism and widening circles of  concern) 

“The idea of oikeíôsis (most famously pronounced by Hierocles) says that my interests and social  engagement should move outwards, from my individual self to my family, then, if possible, to my  fellow citizens, and then finally to my fellow human beings. The metaphor of a stone thrown into the  water and creating waves, smaller and smaller, yet spiraling out to the farther regions of the pond,  illustrates the direction my energy should go out into public, social, and cultural life. Lachs makes this  picture more social, pragmatist, normative, and even sees this ‘expansion of ego-boundaries” as “an  aim of civilization’(Lachs 1998, 35)” (Skowroński 2023, 20) 

Stoic pragmatist stance (Lachs on cosmopolitanism and widening circles of concern) We should “distinguish our obligations to those near and dear from duties to unknown multitudes  around the globe. If I owe everything I can provide to everyone who can use it, I must not prefer  meeting my children’s needs to feeding the hungry in East Timor” (Lachs 2012, 105). 

“The history of civilization coincides precisely with the gradual expansion of the boundaries of the  self. We have learned to see first others close to us, then anonymous members of our group,  eventually our enemies, and finally, in a halting way, the multitude of strangers that constitute  humankind as somehow vitally involved in who we are. Only such extended ego-boundaries can  explain why industrial nations offer helping hands when disaster strikes on the other side of the globe.  We can see self-interest as the source of foreign aid, of peacekeeping missions, and of humanitarian  help only if we think in terms of such an enlarged notion of self” (Lachs 1998, 33-34). 

Santayana’s stance on cosmopolitanism and widening circles of concern 

“A psychological sense in which an individual may transcend himself. His thoughts will embrace all  his familiar surroundings; and his habits being necessarily social, his passions will be social too. The  scope of his affections may eventually extend over the whole world” (Santayana 1969, 196). 

“The full grown human soul should respect all traditions and understand all passions;; at the same  time it should possess and embody a particular culture, without unmanly relaxation or mystical  neutrality” (Santayana 1986 [1944-1953], 464). 

Related stance by M. Nussbaum: cosmopolitanism / concentric circles  

“I argue that Cicero provides a promising way forward, which we can further develop. Just as we can  defend the intrinsic and motivational importance of ties to family and friends without denying that we  owe something to all our fellow citizens (which a just tax system would presumably arrange), it is  possible to cultivate (through moral and civic education) a type of patriotism that is, on the one hand,  compatible with strong familial, friendly, and personal love, and, on the other hand, builds ties of recognition and concern with people outside our national borders. This has often been done, and great Political leaders including Lincoln, Nehru, F.D.R., and Martin Luther King, Jr. have succeeded, at  least for periods of time, in cultivating that type of mixed concern in their nations” (Nussbaum 2019,  13).

“In practical terms, we may give what is near to us a special degree of attention and concern. But we  should always remember that these features of placement are incidental and that our most  fundamental allegiance is to what is human. Special duties are just delegations from the general duty to humanity. The special measure of concern we give to our own is justified not by any intrinsic value  of the local, but by the overall requirements of humanity. (The Stoics think that we usually promote the goals of humanity best by doing our duty where life has placed us—raising our own children, for  example, rather than trying vainly to care for all the world’s children)” (Nussbaum 2019, 78). 

Bibliography 

Hierocles 2009. Hierocles, the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments and Excerpts. Translation David Konstan.  Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. 

Kallen, Horace 1998 (1924). Culture and Democracy in the United States. New Brunswick and London: Transactions Publishers. 

Lachs, John and Shirley Lachs, eds. 1969. Physical Order and Moral Liberty: Previously  Unpublished Essays of George Santayana. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 

Lachs, John. 1998. In Love with Life: Reflections on the joy of living and why we hate to die. Nashville:  Vanderbilt University Press. 

Lachs, John. 2012. Stoic Pragmatism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Translation Gregory Hays. New York; The Modern Library. Nussbaum, Martha 2019. The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal. Harvard University Press. Santayana, George 1986 (1944–1953). Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. 

Santayana, George 1995 (1951). Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. 

Santayana 1969; see Lachs 1969. 

Skowroński, Krzysztof P. 2023. A Meaningful Life amidst a Pluralism of Cultures and Values: John  Lachs’s Stoic Pragmatism as a Philosophical and Cultural Project. Leiden-Boston: Brill.  See also: stoic pragmatism bibliography http://berlinphilosophyforum.org/stoic-pragmatism-bibliography updated-may-2024/ 

See more about stoic pragmatism here: http://berlinphilosophyforum.org/stoic-pragmatism/

The general’s greatest conquest

Grant's battlefield heroism was matched by the courage to complete his memoirs, pain and pressure be damned, as cancer closed in and the light dimmed. When he finished writing,
he was done.

Equally impressive was his winning battle against alcohol. Twain understood:

"Mark Twain had struggled with similar cravings for alcohol and tobacco. When they discussed the subject, Grant mentioned that although doctors had urged him to sip whiskey or champagne, he could no longer abide the taste of liquor. Twain pondered this statement long and hard. "Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was become an offense?" he wondered. "Or was he so sore over what had been said about his habit that he wanted to persuade others & likewise himself that he hadn't ever even had any taste for it." 95 Similarly, when Grant told Twain that, at the doctors' behest, he had been restricted to one cigar daily, he claimed to have lost the desire to smoke it. "I could understand that feeling," Twain later proclaimed. "He had set out to conquer not the habit but the inclination—the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk." 96 Although Twain hated puritanical killjoys who robbed life of its small pleasurable vices, he respected abstinence based on an absence of desire."

— Grant by Ron Chernow
https://a.co/1C1oYrI