The Ethics of Energy: William James's Moral Philosophy in Focus 9783110327830, 9783110327458

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Sergio Franzese The Ethics of Energy

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickhard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume 19

Sergio Franzese

The Ethics of Energy William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have generously contributed to the development and the achievement of the research from which this book is the result. Yet, some persons have a special place in my mind and in my heart and deserve special recognition. John Lachs, I have learnt much from him, as a philosopher and as a teacher, although my inextinguishable debt of gratitude with him goes far beyond academic work and reaches the deepest levels of my personal life. Bruce Wilshire, whose works and his interpretative energy had been a major reference and inspiration even before I had the honor and the pleasure to meet him in person. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, for the invaluable suggestions and constructive criticisms and, even more, for her friendship and her inspiring presence. The most sincere expression of gratitude to my friend and colleague Jason Alexander for his help in the linguistic revision of the text and for his philosophical remarks, and to Roger Gathman whose patient and thoughtful help has been a real “condition of possibility” for the achievement of this work. I am grateful also to all the friends that supported me with their love and care and thereby made completing my work easier. Yet, a special mention is for Won S. Choi, not only for his more than substantial material support, but especially and above all for his warm and continuous friendship during a long and difficult period of my life. Something of our nightlong “metaphysical” conversations is mingled in this book together with the smoke of his cigars and of my innumerable cigarettes.

Summary Introduction William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus

3 11

1. “The Moral Philosophy and the Moral life”: a Misunderstanding

11

2. Idealism and Utilitarianism: the Teleological Question

18

3. Moral Experience and Moral Philosophy

26

4. From Moral Philosophy to Ethics

42

The Anthropological Question

49

1. James and Philosophical Anthropology

51

2. James’s Overcoming of Darwinism. The Microcosmic View

71

3. Psychology as Anthropology. Mind, Consciousness and Instinct

81

4. The Primacy of Action

99

Habits and Ethics

105

1. Habits and Emotions. Bain’s Moralist’s Psychology

106

2. Individual and Society. James’s Philosophical Psychology

111

3. The Function of Habit

125

4. Habit and Ethics

129

5. Towards an Ethics of Energy

143

The Question of Energy

145

1. The Energetic Self

145

2. The Age of Energy

148

3. James and Energy

161

The Ethics of Energy

181

1. The Energies of Men

181

2. The Unseen Universe. A Religion of Energy

212

Bibliography

224

Index

234

List of Abbreviations for the Works of William James PP PB P TT VRE WB ERE/PU SPP MEN ML EPh EPs ECR EM MS

Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Ed, 1950. Psychology. The Briefer Course. NotreDame (IN): Univ. of Notre Dame Pr., 1985. Pragmatism and The Meaning of the Truth. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1978. Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some Life’s Ideals. New York Henry Holt & Co, 1899. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1985. The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard Univ. Pr., 1979. Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe. New York: Longmans & Green, 1958. Some Problems of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1979. Manuscript Essays and Notes. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1988. Manuscript Lectures. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1988. Essays in Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr.,1978. Essays in Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1983. Essays, Comments and Reviews. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1987. The Energies of Men. New York: Moffat, Yard & C., 1913. Memories and Studies. New York: Longmans, Green & Co, 1912.

Introduction There seems to be a multitude of texts about William James’s ethical and moral thought, as a quick glance at any recent bibliography would show. To justify adding another book to that list, I need to begin with the insight that struck me when I was working on my first book on James. I was using the celebrated lecture-essay, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, which by common consent presents the gist of James’s moral philosophy, but the more I looked at it the less it seemed to fit its alleged role as an outline of an ethical theory; even more disturbing, it was not consistent with all the rest of the Jamesian production. In addition, it was full of those peculiar contradictions and flaws conceded by all the James’s scholars. Despite all the interpretative problems and the undeniable faults, however, nobody, to my knowledge, has thought of “rehabillitating” James by questioning the usual interpretation, which goes back to Perry, and suggesting that the essay of 1891 does not work as an outline of a moral theory because it was certainly not intended to be one. On the contrary, it was intended to show the futility of that traditional philosophical task, which is perhaps why philosophers have tended not to read it too closely. The first aim of this book, is to try a sort of “third way” approach to James that avoids the poles of apology, on the one side, and critical takedown, on the other, searching instead for an interpretation that makes sense of one James’s most enigmatic achievements while avoiding getting swamped by his embarrassing contradictions. The inquiry that follows from such interpretative premises leads to the first “paradoxical”, conclusion, namely, that the essay “The Moral philosopher and the Moral Life” is a critical analysis of the validity of any moral theory, in the terms of its relation to the moral philosopher, rather than presenting another specific moral theory. This problematic account of moral theory shows James’s recognition of the moral and axiological crisis that characterizes the end of the XIX century. In the essay James is explicitly moving away from the two major ethical poles of his age, namely, neo-Hegelian idealism, in either its Bradleyan and Roycean varieties, and utilitarianism of which James recognized, as did Dewey after him, the important contribution but also the insufficiency and the metaphysical dependence on a universal teleology of good. The failure of the traditional moral theories

4 and the emerging need for a positive science of morals required a new ethical theory that had to be as experimental and open-ended. When we free ourselves from the spell cast by Perry’s assumptions about what James’s moral theory should be, we can see an essentially negative, i.e. critical, movement delineated in “The moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, intending to clear space for new and different philosophical insights. It is in response to the spirit of James’s gesture, as by his own account he thought his essay on the Moral Philosopher was important, that I begin with a very focused and detailed hermeneutical analysis of this very tiny portion of James’s work in order to show the reader the advantage of abandoning the habits of one interpretative style, which seeks to connect James’s moral thought with one or another school of ethical philosophy, to take us to another perspective of reading, which asserts the claim of philosophical anthropology as the privileged theoretical frame within which the development of James’s thought needs to be reconsidered. Such a transition is not artificially imposed from the outside, but is entailed in the internal articulations of the conceptual movement traced by James, which breaks with the traditional categories of the classic empiricism and empirical psychology and their positivistic variants and opens to spiritualism, energism and vitalism as a more dynamic account of reality. Along this line it is possible to find scattered throughout James’s works hints of a different “ethics” which arises out of the characteristic Jamesian valorization of energy and is infused in the pragmatist’s account of experience, that is, an ethics of energy. Such an ethics, it is true, has never been presented as an organized system but it can be gathered and reconstructed on its basic lines. The final part of this book is dedicated to the detection of the main tenets of such an ethics. As a preliminary remark, we stress that the definition of the ethics of energy does not (and cannot) escape the ambiguity of the genitive. Ethics OF energy means an ethics that organizes energy, as well as an ethics that stems out of energy. This is a constitutive ambiguity that cannot be resolved but rather needs to be fully affirmed as the leading symptom of the ontological situation out of which such an ethics originates. The ethics James so coarsely outlined is intended to be used to organize energy, precisely because what is at stake in it is the energetic and active nature of

5 the human being as the indeterminate being. Our need, our will and capability to organize energy occurs precisely because energy is the very texture of being. It is however clear that the dialectic dyad, nature-culture, which approximately corresponds to the two meanings involved in the unfolding of the meaning of the ethics of energy, is not completely resolved in the ethical dimension through the recognition of its ontological foundation. In other words, the recognizing the fact that being is energy should not lead us to conclude that being self-organizes spontaneously according to ergonomically more suitable criteria according to some anthropocentric principle. On the contrary, nature is governed by the second law of thermodynamics; and the ethics of energy, far from being a projection of culture onto nature, will represent the attempt to absorb nature into culture as a project that arises from the peculiarity of human nature itself. From this perspective, there are two unavoidable pre-conditions that must be met in order to fully understand the sense and meaning of James ethics of energy: one is the reconstruction of James’s philosophical anthropology; the other is the (related) discussion of the fundamental issue of ”habit”. In fact, the “ethics of energy” appears rooted in the philosophical-anthropological image of human beings James elaborates in his early writings and in the Principles of Psychology. The view of humans as “indeterminate” beings hinges on James’s notion of primacy of action, which constitutes the organizing principle from which he derives both his psychology and his version of pragmatism. The human being, as the animal endowed with an excess of impulses and an excessive capacity for stimula, needs to learn to channel its own energy to behaviors adopted to the construction of its own world. In short, humans need to learn how to transform their overflowing and loose activity into work. This discipline is made possible by our capacity to oppose our natural tendency to passivity and dispersion in becoming human in the face of the world, since “The great thing… in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy […] the more of details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.” (PP I, 122). In such a perspective, nature – that nature of which the life of our body is a part –

6 becomes the task of giving form to the natural, pulsional, unqualified energetical life of the indeterminate being. Accordingly, ethics for the undetermined being is first of all a vital need, and cannot be, in the first instance, anything but an ethics of selfdetermination, that is, of control and organization, within which the principle of the primacy of action finds its means and objects. Not only do James’s conceptions of the emotions and of the selectivity of consciousness point in this direction ; but his moral and religious views do so as well. Control and organization of energy occur as organization of the self through the fundamental function of habit, and consequently of education. The adoption of the notion of “habit” as the cornerstone of selforganization (Bain, Mill), avoids problems associated with the mechanistic and dualistic conception of the human and leads to the notion of a bodily self, wherein bodily and psychological phenomena are but two faces of the same activity. The methodological dualism of the Principles is thus confronted with and at last replaced by a gnoseological monism that presents the embodied self as a polarity of the field of experience (see Essays in Radical Empiricism), that is, of action. In such a perspective, ethics appears as the problem of consistency in the organization of the self, that is, of one’s own power and action, and in the deployment of the experiential field. Only at this point does the experiential ethics, hinted at in the 1891 essay, begins to reveal its real meaning. Since traditional a priori ethics is unable to provide an adequate grounding and organization of individual experience, it must be rejected. Moral life, being a constitutive part of life, must be reintegrated into the wider range of the individual’s way of going about organizing and applying his or her energy. Socially, the organization of energy involves the constitution of collective habits, which are properly thought of as institutions. Institutions appear in this context as dynamic forms of equilibrium in the interplay among individuals’ energies, captured in some collective tendency; yet such an equilibrium is permanently open to rearrangement, that is, to an internal reorganization of the field of energy, which occurs according to the inner laws of social physics. The ethics of energy, then, appears strictly intertwined with James’s moral perspective. Energy is not, and cannot be, the foundation of value, but rather is the normative condition of the praxis that realizes human

7 values. In other words, the ethics of energy is the ethical structure of the human historical and cultural movement that aims at the construction of the human world. Moral effort for James is not characterized through the achievement of some special value, or set of values, but rather through the infinite striving of human beings engaged in a permanent struggle against evil, however that is defined in the individual instance. The “struggle against the evil” is the common denominator of human culture and human efforts, in all ages and latitudes. It is to such moral endeavor that human energies must be subordinated and from such a paramount moral ideal they must receive their moral qualification. But this poses the question of what, exactly, the “ultimate mystery of evil” (WB, 38) is. James took the term “evil” to have the factual meaning it had in the social debate of his time, when disease, poverty, slavery, exploitation were routinely described as evils in newspapers and decried as such by social reformers. What links these evils together is that they enforce limits on the full and free expansion of human life and action. Seen under the aspect of being that force which limits man, nature, or natural agency, insofar as it frustrates or opposes human purposes or escapes human ideals and purposes, is evil. There can be no moral community between humans and nature, and morally speaking nature is the enemy. Thus, good is human action as opposed to evil; namely, to what is nothuman, that is, to what is not “spiritual”. In this perspective, evil is also the absence or the loss of ideality in human life. Energy, then, acquires moral value as it is directed to a “spiritual” effort, which is defined by its striving for the achievement of an ideal. James’s ethics of energy integrates the moral dimension by being the very condition of such an effort. Accordingly, the ethics of energy is an ethics of energizing, and in its own way it is an ethics of virtue, if we take virtue in terms of its ancient Greek meaning, namely, as arethè, that is, as manhood, valor, excellence in power/ability, with its related verb: aretào, namely, to be fit or proper. The ethics of energy is, thus, an ethics of excellence or perfection in acting powerfully and in a fashion that appears proper to others. All further moral determination of such an ethics strictly depend on this basic notion of virtue, which expresses the “ought to be” of a being who is, in every instance, indeterminate, and whose essence it is to act. Insofar as this ethics

8 consists in the creation, organization and management of individual and/or social human energies, it is also asceticism, understood in the light of its etymological root as preparation, training. Training is to act in the most “virtuous” way in order to shape a “virtuous” character. In fact, such an asceticism, cannot be an absolute ideal, but rather should to be understood as an attitude subordinate and instrumental to the achievement of a given ideal, that is, as the spirit of the instructions that go into organizing individual energies for the realization of the human world. Yet, the ethics of energy is not merely a technique, the use of an ordered set of steps to achieve perfection of some type; rather it is already an actual moral praxis that involves, empowers and realizes human spirituality. Indeed, the ethics of energy turns out to be a philosophy of action, which has moral meaning exactly because the human being is the animal that acts and human moral life is not exhausted just in thinking or contemplating the ideals but requires their enactment. In this sense only the ethics of energy can become a criterion of moral judgment, for it entails the evaluation of the free, namely, spiritual character of human action. In fact, it is evident that it does not belong to the ethics of energy to establish on particular order of priority among moral ideals; the organization of energy is synonymous with the organization of ideals. Rather, it is concerned with the practical attitude of the agent, that is, with the “virtue” of agent’s behavior. We can distinguish, then, actions that are ethically wrong in so far as they are a subtraction or dispersion of energy from the achievement of the ideal. Or, taking up the notion of evil as that which essentially resists the core property of man, the principle of action, wrongful behavior weakens the action against the order of nature in itself, or evil, and by that increase the amount of human submission, passivity and enslavement. In this view, there is no such a thing as a morally indifferent action or a “moral holydays” Thus, an ethics of energy highlights the nexus between energy, freedom and spirituality, which together constitute the core of the human moral dimension and the fringe of moral action. It is at the moment that these elements are bonded that there emerges a virtuous circle between the dynamogenic power of the ideals and the energy required to enhance ideals, mediated by the ascetic exercise.

9 In this circle the determination of the highest spirituality is reserved for religious experience as that presenting the highest and most powerful ideal, while at the same time it gives itself as the access to the divine, defined as the inexhaustible source of human energy. In this perspective, the ethics of energy becomes an inquiry in the basic practical articulation of this delicate plexus of human and divine. James’s speculations about the divine, strongly influenced by Thomas Davidson, reaches the idea of the “religion of humanity” namely, the idea of a concurrence of human and divine in the work for the salvation of the world. Such a work, which is an ongoing process, does not imply, for James, any teleological drive since the “what” the “when” and the “how” of its accomplishment are left indeterminate. Rather, it is the actualization of the divine through the human, and the ethical dilemma of choosing between the “world” and the “invisible order” seems to merge into the inseparability of the two orders. We cannot serve God unless by serving human beings, and likewise we cannot work for the world unless we work through the divine. The two orders merge in a cosmos in which energy reigns supreme. As this condensed outline of James’s philosophical use of energy shows, the ethics of energy contains the sketch of a moral and political project in which nature and God are integrated in the ongoing construction of the cultural space of the “polis”. Of course, we see James’s radical humanism at work here, a humanism that sees human beings as the problematic center of being and transforms nature and religion into a political task. Yet, it is exactly from the political standpoint that the transposition of the physical notion of energy into a moral and social category discloses the danger of its mythopoieic and metaphysical perspectives. “Energy”, as much as its sibling notion “force”, extracted from their strict technical-scientific use, easily metamorphose into mythological figures, casting a pseudo-scientific glamour over what is at heart a “magical” explanation and comprehension of the totality as well as the particular. The double confrontation between James’s optimism and the social prophets of entropy like his friend, Henry Adams on one hand, and James’s notion of will and Nietzsche’s philosophy of force on the other shades the dangerous areas of contact shared by James’s energetic ethics with the ideological, namely, justificatory, use of energy as well as with

10 the metaphysics of force. The clear recognition of James’s effort to keep his view away from such dangerous issues goes of course hand in the hand with the historical concern about the unintended contribution that James’s energism supplied to the mythology of power, force and efficiency which supported the political and economical enterprises of the beginning of the 20th century. It is fair, however, to remember that James’s ethics of energy remains little more than a sketch, or more correctly an array of suggestions, which cannot be evaluated as a full-fledged theory as it is. Accordingly, such an ethical view easily generates more problems and questions than answers and solutions. In particular there are legitimate questions about the actual meaning and practical consequences such a doctrine can foster at a basic moral level. A detailed answer to such questions would be too a hard task that would possibly take another book. As a very broad indication, however, it seems that in evaluating James’s ethics of energy we need to resist the temptation to look for or to draw from it a set of rules or prescriptions or a practical solution for particular problems. It is James’s insight that an ethics, or a moral theory, is to be suggestive more than imperative, hortatory more than prescriptive. In this sense it is important too remember what James says in the Talks to Teachers: “The science of logic never made a man reason rightly and the science of ethics (if there be such a thing) never made a man behave rightly. The most such science can do is to help us to catch ourselves up.” (TT, 15) To the extent in which the only moral act is thinking (PP II, 566), the meaning of ethics is to stimulate and support thinking. Granted the limits of human powers, adequate thinking begets fair actions, or at least the fairest at hand.

CHAPTER I

William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus 1. “The Moral Philosophy and the Moral life”: a Misunderstanding In Chapter LXVI, entitled “Moral Philosophy,” of his monumental work, The Thought and Character of William James, Ralph Barton Perry highlights the connection between the lecture on “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral life,”1 given at Yale in 1891 (then published in The Will to Believe in 1897), and the course of ‘Ethics 4’ (1888-1889), thus originating one of the central themes in commentary on what is generally called James’s moral philosophy. In addition, he provides two important bits of information about the lecture: first, James valued this lecture above all the other essays collected in The Will to Believe, as testified by F. Abauzit, the French translator of The Varieties of Religious Experience2; second, the lecture was a huge failure3, since the audience gave him the coldest possible reception;, These two facts must be coordinated and interpreted. Such a harsh reception, for such allegedly momentous achievement, would have been unlikely if James had presented the sketch of a moral theory, just in the terms to which we are accustomed after Perry’s account, to wit, in the familiar terms of individualism, search for fulfilment, maximization of satisfaction, and tolerance. Briefly, success of a kind would have been assured if such a lecture had presented a modified version of Mill’s utilitarianism, colored by a greater stress on individual satisfaction, a sentimental wink at toleration, and even a reference to the moral need for God. The case here was different. James said something he thought absolutely momentous, and it felt like a slap in the face to the audience,

1

Hereafter abbreviated as MP. See R.B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, p. 263, n.1. 3 Ibidem, pp. 263 and 274-275. 2

12 who remained “absolutely mute.”4 The apparently obvious but so far never asked question, is “why?”; and this turns out to be no irrelevant question at all, for it leads us to ask about the fundamental nature of James’s moral philosophy. 1.1. A Question of Method: Perry’s interpretation It has already been noted that Perry shows insight by stressing the connections between MP and the course “Ethics 4”. But credit must be modified in this case, for in presenting MP, Perry, claiming all the while to be expounding the moral philosophy of William James, is actually discussing and commenting on the “notes” for the course ‘Ethics 4’5. Subsequently, Perry moves on to the later essays “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” “Human Immortality,” “The Energies of Men,” and others, skipping over MP, giving it, implicitly, the same reception that was given to it by its original audience. Thus, Perry leaves undiscussed the allegedly fundamental text of James’s moral philosophy, and its content is accounted for only by the notes for ‘Ethics 4,’ as if the two texts were perfectly identical. A peculiar textual method, indeed. In fact, since the notes were not intended for reading but rather to remind James of the main arguments of the course, they cannot replace the MP published text. It is worthwhile to quote at length the well known passage from James included in Perry’s work: “The ulterior proposition usually brought forward is that whatever seems to us obligatory is better than what seems not so.… But impulses and imperatives run together, and the same act may seem imperative to one man, but not so to another.… So far as I feel anything good I make it so. It is so, for me…. Prima facie, goods form a multifarious jungle. Must we so leave them, or can they be unified? If there were any quality by participating in which all concrete goods are made good, that would be a unifying and subordinating principle. Of all the proposed summa genera, pleasure and perfection have the best claim to be considered. So far as enjoyment is a part of perfection, and so far as the consciousness of perfection brings pleasure, these two standards do not conflict, but involve each other. Inquiry presently shows us that, whether we take a unifying principle or whether we treat goods as irreducibly plural, in either case we practically come up against problems insoluble by a priori rules. The abstract best would be that all goods should be realized. That is physically impossible, for many of them exclude each other. The whole difficulty of moral life consists in deciding, when this is the case, which good to sacrifice and which to save. The difficulty is the good excluded, and exists where pleasures and perfections are the 4 5

See Letter WJ to Henry James, Feb. 15, 1891. See ML.

13 goods as much as when these have no common denominator…. The solution is, by Royce’s ‘moral insight’: consider every good as real good, and keep as many as we can. That act is the best act which makes for the best whole, the best whole being that which prevails at least cost, in which the vanquished goods are least completely annulled…. But how decide conflicts?... Follow the common traditions. Sacrifice all wills which are not organizable, and which avowedly go against the whole. No one pretends in the main to revise the Decalogue, or to take up offenses against life, property, veracity, or decency into the permanent whole. If those are a man’s goods, the member is not a member of the whole we mean to keep. […] When the rivalry is between real organizable goods, the rule is that one victorious should so far as possible keep the vanquished somehow represented. Find some innocent way out. […] The world’s trial better than the closet solution.”6

Perry’s comment on this passage is the following: “The principle is clear: values derive ultimately from the interests of the individual; and the social whole is justified by the inclusion and reconciliation of its individual parts. Individualism is fundamental.” This comment, which is at the origin of the belief that James’s moral philosphy is a theory of values, surreptitiously presupposes as its major premise that James, in the passage above, is stating the outlines of a moral system. Yet, terms such as “whole,” “reconciliation” and “inclusion,” which Perry correctly gathers from James’s passage, seem to be more applicable to a thinker like Royce, to whom James himself refers. If one agreed with Perry that these terms define the main points of James’s view, one would be actually claiming that James is adopting Royce’s view. This is, however, an unjustified inference that cannot be drawn from the passage, and it is an inference that has been falsified historically. In addition, there is the problem of the reconciliation between individual and totality. The language of the “reconciliation in the whole,” typical of Hegelian and neo-Hegelian doctrines, does not really match the fundamental importance of individualism Perry himself stresses. One cannot escape the dilemma, either reconciliation in the whole or individualism. Stating, as Perry does, that individualism is fundamental in the reconciliation in the whole is just to open the door to an inexhaustible series of contradictions that it would be unfair to blame on James. There is no doubt that there is some strong affinity between the passages quoted from the ‘Notes’ and the text of MP, yet, in analyzing the latter, it seems evident that in their proper context the similar passages have a quite different meaning from that attributed by Perry. In fact, they 6

ML, pp. 264-265.

14 appear as middle terms of arguments and not as conclusions, and seem to confirm the hypothesis that the passages in the “Notes” should not be taken as conclusive statements. Further problems stemming out of Perry’s interpretation that the “Notes,” as well as MP, would be the cornerstone of a moral theory dealing with goods and values – a suggestion that has been widely accepted, by the way – push for an alternative interpretation of James’s essay. Indeed, such an interpretation, leads to significant contradictions, and obliges James’s interpreters to perform several interpretive contortions. It needs just to be remarked that, when conceived in terms of goods and values, the principle of maximum satisfaction would inevitably end up as some sort of economic principle of allocation of goods. A pretty awkward upshot, one among the many, which cannot be discussed here, and which, however, makes Perry’s interpretation sound all the more weird, if possible7. The real paradox of Perry’s account of James’s moral theory depends upon the substantial equivalence of required goods, which necessarily follow from the existential equivalence of demands that apparently James establishes in MP)8. Beside that, the real point is that James’s assumption of the equivalence of demands taken as a point of departure does not in itself give us the principle of maximum satisfaction as a viable moral principle, for it is deprived of any normative, let alone prescriptive, function, insofar as the goods do not have nor need a common ground of comparison, nor a hierarchy. In other words, granted that we can be said to 7

Several major James’s interpreters after Perry tried their hand at the acrobatic attempt to square or make sense of the so-called James’s ethical theory: from the classic K. Roth and B.P. Brennan, to G. Bird, J. Campbell, and more recently to H. Putnam and R. Gale. No interpretation, however, appears to be conclusive, or able to provide even a partial solution to the riddle allegedly offered by James’s essay on the moral philosopher. Along with this tradition of riddle solving endeavors it is fair to recommend also two recent articles by M.R. Slater and T. Lekan (see Bibliography) which, despite some interesting insights and a remarkable exercise in ingenuity, show once more, through the tangle of (self)contradictions in which they get involved, the unviability of the traditional “ethical theory” hypothesis and of any consequent attempt to make sense of it as of a positive, unitary doctrine. 8 See WB, p. 195 “Any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount; it makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all.”

15 have a moral problem only when we are confronted with a dilemma that forces us to face a real and momentous decision between mutally exclusive goods, a principle trying to coordinate heterogeneous demands, i.e., demands that do not create any dilemma, is not only ineffective but also irrelevant or nonsensical in the instant that we want it to make a practical difference – which is the touchstone of the pragmatic method, as James emphasizes again and again. In much the same way any attempt to decide between competing demands, which enjoy an equivalent right to satisfaction is doomed to failure9. As a matter of fact, far from being a fault in James’s theory, this is exactly the problem James was trying to highlight. In addition, the very first page of MP shows that James is not concerned with goods and demands for goods but more consistently with ideals: “So far as the world resists reduction to form of unity, so far as ethical propositions seem unstable, so far does the philosopher fail of his ideal. The subject matter of his study is the ideals [my italics] he finds existing in the world; the purpose which guides him is this ideal of his own, of getting them into a certain form.” (WB, 142)

It is hardly necessary to point out that, though ideals are goods and values, not all goods and values can be classified as ideals. Private property vs. common property, monogamy vs. free love, liberalism vs. socialism: ideals, for James, are not individuals’ goods and values that can be reduced to some particular course of action, but, rather, are suitable regional arrangements of specific areas of human relations (WB, 156-157). An 9

The example J. K. Roth presents in Freedom and the Moral Life, shows all the oddities of treating James maximizing principle as a first level moral theory. Roth, quite rightly cannot help wondering how James’s principle would work in the case in which a group of people has a unanimous demand for the death of one specific individual. The consequences of the use of James’s alleged moral principle in such a case are at least puzzling. On one hand, the group is perfectly entitled and morally justified to demand someone’s death, yet, the individual is perfectly entitled and morally justified in demanding to stay alive; thus, for any casemorality would be satisfied in some way, what is odd. The futility of such a moral principle is blatant. In order to escape the oddity of such a result, Roth argues that choices must always be made considering their implications for the freedom and the unity of the community (p. 63). Yet, such a conclusion is not entailed or supported by James’s doctrine since it sets freedom and unity of community as universal moral values, irrespective of anyone’s demands. It is evident that what saves James from the troubles in which his interpreter puts him is the fact that James originally said something different from what Roth suggests.

16 ideal, in its broader meaning points to a view of the world, a Weltanschauung; in its narrower meaning, it is an organized system of goods, considered as a worthwhile achievement. Actually, ideals are competitive and can be compared, and this comparison makes sense, because their opposite consequences can be evaluated on the same criterion and our interests converge thematically on the same object. Moreover, at least in a Jamesian perspective, all things being equal, the demand for one certain ideal could be deemed equivalent to the demand for another. Thus, it seems also evident that the famous “principle of inclusion” as the solution to the mutually exclusive demands that define our primitive goods must be referred to ideals, or, in other words, must be thought of as a normative standard governing the coexistence of sets of required goods, each set constituting the meaning of a certain ideal. In turn, it would become possible to find ideals that share good types if not good tokens, and using our principle, organizing them in accordance with the ideal’s original structure of relations (ML, 183). Such an operation would be logically and practically impossible for any other object that is less abstract and inclusive than an ideal (WB, 155-156). So far, we have worked with the hypothesis that Perry’s assumption that the “Notes” and MP present James’s moral philosophy is a sound one. It would take more than the shift from the term “good” to the term “ideal,” however, to explain the outrageous character of James’s lecture. Thus, our starting question is still to be answered, and the quest for an answer will lead us beyond Perry’s view and force us to reconsider the meaning of MP. 1.2. The Moral Philospher and the Limits of Moral philosophy Sometimes too much attention is paid to a title, sometimes too little. Rivers of ink have been poured over “The Will to Believe.” At the other extreme, no attention has been paid to the title “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral life” – for it seems to have been immediately agreed upon that it is an essay on James’s moral philosophy. Yet, even a superficial attention to the title would make clear that the essay concerns the relation between ‘the moral philosopher” and “the moral life,” as trivial as it may seem to make this understanding explicit. James did not call it “Towards a New Moral Life” or “Maximizing the Good,” because those were not the issues

17 at stake in the essay. What was at stake was, for James, as important as, or maybe more important than, a new moral philosophy. In light of even this superficial consideration of the meaning of the title of the work, Perry’s interpretation seems to lead us astray. He writes: “What does the moral enthusiast care for philosophical ethics? Asked James in 1879. The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life…is his answer to this question and his only published discussion of theoretical ethics.”10 The latter remark has already been discussed; as for the “moral enthusiast,” there is not a single reference to such a thing in the whole essay. In fact, the topic of the essay is more technical than this, and it concerns nothing less than the condition of validity of any moral theory. In other words, MP is not the sketch of a system of moral philosophy, but, more reasonably, a critical analysis of the conditions of possibility of moral philosophy. The aim of the essay lines up with the general attitude of the German positive school and in particular with Wundt’s Ethik, whose main tenets were the rejection of any intellectualistic and aprioristic method in moral philosophy and the attempt to work out a positive, namely, experimental, science of morals based on the analysis of moral “facts” as much as physics is a science of physical facts11. “These theoretical observations were necessary to bring out the novelty of the German school. It is, in effect, a protest against the use of deduction in the moral sciences and an effort to introduce, finally, a genuinely inductive method. […] Only the German theorists understand moral phenomena as facts which are at once empirical and sui generis. Ethics is not an applied or derived science, but an autonomous one. It has its own object which it ought to study as the physicist studies physical facts or as the biologist studies biological facts, and empoying the same methods. Its facts are mores, customs, legal prescriptions,and economic phenomena…It observes, analyses, and

10

WB, p. 263. As for the development of moral science in the German school, see E. Durkheim “La morale positive en Allemagne”, Revue Philosophique, 12, XXIV, 1887 [Engl. Ed. Ethics and the Sociology of Morals. New York: Prometheus Books, 1993]. Whereas it is well known that James was very familiar with Wundt and his works there is no clear evidence of his reading of Durkheim’s essay. It is however extremely likely he had a chance to read it since he was a reader and a contributor of the Revue. The affinity of some parallel passages would also support this hypothesis, which for lack of better evidence has to remain speculative. It is however true that the conception of “experimental ethics” James adopts in the essay had already been put forth in Wundt’s Ethik. 11

18 compares these12 facts, progressively elevating itself toward discovery of laws which explain them.”

A similar program can be spotted in the very beginning of James’s essay: “The main purpose of this paper is to show that there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance. We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy. In other words, there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say. In the one case as in the other, however, the hypothesis which we now make while waiting, and the acts to which they prompt us, are among the indispensable conditions which determine what that ‘say’ shall be.” (WB, 141)13

Rejecting dogmatism, that is, the universal and the a priori, from moral philosophy, means rejecting its previous historical tradition stemming from Plato, and, what is more significant, rejecting the necessity of giving a prescriptive character to moral theory14. Before entering a detailed analysis of James’s text, however, it is useful to evaluate the premises of such a rejection, that is, James’s relations with the moral theory of his days, in order to grasp the singularity of a work such as MP, which represents the first and the last James’s contribution to moral philosphy.

2. Idealism and Utilitarianism: the Teleological Question James’s moral perspective matures all along the ‘80’s15. Its development takes place on the background of his fastidious and ruthless criticism of Spencer’s cosmic and evolutionary philosophy, as testified by James’s 12

E. Durkheim, “La morale positive en Allemagne”, cit., p. 278 [Engl. Ed. p. 127] See also WB, p. 156: “All this amounts to saying that, as far as the casuistic question goes, ethical science is just like physical sceince, and instead of being deducible all at once from abstract principles, must simply bide its time, and be ready to revise its conclusion from day to day.” 14 An interesting reference can be found in J. M. Guyau, Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction. Paris: 1885. 15 The important role played by Lotze’s works in the formation of such a perspective cannot be neglected. But although I have dealt with this elsewhere, it cannot be explored here since it would lead us far from our present analysis. As for Lotze’s influence on James see also O. Kraushaar, “Lotze’s Influences on the Pragmatic and Practical Philosophy of William James,” Journal of History of Ideas, I, (1940). 13

19 courses of “Philosophy 3”, and in between the two theoretical extremes of utilitarianism and neoidealist absolutism, with special reference to Royce. The common trait such different doctrines share, in James’s view, is a metaphysical teleological attitude, which marks their dogmatic and intellectualistic approach to reality. Accordingly, social evolution, utilitarianism and idealism all put forward some moral philosophy that, fatally flawed by the assumption of aprioristic principles, falls short of providing an effective analysis, let alone a standard, of real moral life. 2.1. James and Royce’s Ontotheology As a result of the intense exchange with his friend and colleague Royce in the years immediately following the publication of the Principles, James underwent a sort of Hegelian “temptation.”16 The relation between James and Royce is not an easy one and it is characterized by James’s strong ambivalence toward Royce’s philosophy. Part of such ambivalence is the result of the Fichtean current in Royce’s practical philosophy, which aligned it with the tradition of American Transcendentalism (from Channing to Emerson to Henry James Sr.) which James’s had literally inherited from his father. On the other hand, Royce’s decision to cast his philosophy in terms of some version of Hegelian totality clashed with James’s radical rejection of the idealist metaphysics of the Absolute. According to Royce, the moral order cannot depend upon the freedom of the will, since the latter is ontologically impossible. The moral problem of the achievement of a moral order, as a reconciliation of individual wills within a harmonious community, which Royce posited in The Religious Aspects of Philosophy (1884)17, is solved, then, in The World and the Individual, through a redefinition of the meaning of individual freedom. Freedom of the will consists in the way in which the uniqueness of the will of a unique and finite “I” expresses the Absolute18. The achievement of the 16

See J. Wahl, “William James d’apres sa correspondence” in Vers le concret, pp. 5067. 17 It seems evident that James’s Notes of 1888/89 refer to this text. 18 J. Royce, The World and the Individual, vol II, lct. VIII, #v, p. 352. At the subjective level the question of free-will, for Royce, concentrates in the issue of the individual’s ability to direct his/her attention.

20 moral order of the world hinges upon the notion of “Ought,” which sums up the individual’s moral obligation to understand and accomplish his or her own share of the cosmic project constituting the “inner meaning” of the divine will. The achievement of such a project is coincident with the ultimate meaning of human moral action, that is, the struggle against evil. The ongoing settlement of the moral order is in direct proportion to the ongoing elimination of evil from the world. Thus, human life takes on a character of extreme seriousness. Indeed, in virtue of their ontological condition, human beings share a bond of solidarity in permanantly and unavoidably committing themselves to the the project of achieving the moral order in this world. This requires from each individual an absolute fidelity to one’s own ideal, that is, a full devotion to one’s own life-plan19. Although Royce’s “Absolute” blatantly shows its Hegelian origins, it is the Fichtean doctrine of “Streben,” taken as the very form of the human temporal dimension, that defines the character of Royce’s moral view. Since the only possible achievement of perfection is in the eternal order of God, the temporal order cannot but remain a place of infinite tension, i.e., a never-ending striving toward the accomplishment of a task that necessarily exceeds human power and ability. Thus, dissatisfaction and restlessness are irreducible character of human existence; there is no moral allowance for quiet, or, to use James’s words, for “moral holidays.” “Being comfortable” is the paramount sin against the divine will20. However, while James shared Royce’s goal of overcoming the antithesis between monism and pluralism on behalf of an ethical view of action, James remained averse to the metaphysics of the Absolute that was the basis of Royce’s notion of moral order21. James returns to Royce’s theory of absolute in several manuscript notes belonging to the decade between 1888 and 1899 in which one beholds an ambiguous and controversial attitude on James’s part. James is unable to object to Royce’s monistic idealism, but at the same time he cannot accept a Roycean Absolute in which the manifold of reality is unified and the human struggle against evil is already successfully completed and predetermined in the 19

Ibidem, p. 406. Ibidem, pp. 407-408. 21 See R.B. Perry, op. cit., vol. I, p. 798. 20

21 eternal order of divine self-consciousness, which, for James, deprives it of moral value (WB, 139, n.1)22. To be sure, Royce’s Absolute is not as rigid as the analogous conceptions of other neohegelians of his days, and Perry is possibly right in saying that James himself would have probably admitted that Royce’s world appears less as a “block-universe” than as a moral and emotional unity. Yet, the very idea of an absolute totality as object of an eternal consciousness excludes the possibility of real pluralism, that is, excludes the possibility of a human history indeterminate and in fieri through human action (WB, 181). Moreover, for Royce, the experience of evil was real, but only as a necessary expression of an unavoidable human finitude. In the final analysis, “evil” is but the consciousness of the incommensurability between human power and human task, i.e., a metaphysical dissatisfaction that is the expression of the apprehension of the perfection of the totality, where evil turns out to be a necessary moment and as such is wholly justified. In other words, correctly understood, sub specie aeternitatis, “evil” is not evil at all. In James’s view, insofar as God is eternal consciousness, Royce’s “God’s sorrows” cannot but be “contemplated” sorrows. That is, “God’s sorrows” are not lived sorrows, while evil in human experience, on the other hand, is real and concrete: lived pain in live flesh and bones. For James the reality of the experience of pain does not show the limit of the modality of human experience, but its superiority, or rather its ontological uniqueness. Experience of evil is not mere appearance, or imperfect knowledge, but rather it presents us with an access to the reality, ultimate and insuperable, of sorrow. Only on the basis of this is it possible to build up the ontologically secondary stage of ideal realities23. Differently stated, the assumption of the experience of evil as real is an idea which must lead ontology back to anthropology, making human experience the fundamental ontological dimension grounding all ethical demands and efforts toward the construction of a moral order in the world. This means that the metaphysical belief in the real or virtual existence of an already 22

See also ECR, p. 387. (#121: Review of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy by J. Royce – 1885) 23 See J.M. Guyau, op. cit., p. 165.

22 accomplished moral order is a mystification that diverts us from understanding the nature of moral action, and the “Absolute” can be accepted only as a justification for “moral holiday,” but it can never replace action altogether24. James’s ethical problem, with regard to Royce’s was how to rescue Fichte from the theological and teleological claws, so to speak, of Hegel’s absolute, while preserving the mystical and religious flair of Royce’s philosophy. In other words, James’s problem was how to preserve Royce’s devotion to the ideal and the moral tension, while rejecting Royce’s Absolute, taken as the foundation of such devotion and the telos in which that tension dissolves and loses its moral coloring. Teleology appears here as the actual problem. Indeed, an absolute teleology such as that of idealistic monism was the denial of any possible form of indeterminism and individual freedom, that is, the denial of the pluralistic “metaphysics” James was elaborating in those years. From this perspective P.B. Blood’s “Pluralistic Mystic,”25 and the pervasive influence T. H. Davidson exercised on James in the same years turn out to be extremely significant26. James’s anti-metaphysical attitude in particular owes its first stage of development to the encounter with Davidson’s radical agnosticism, which effectively balanced James’s mystical inclination and propelled him to resolve his ambivalence between a spiritual need for the unity of the world and the intellectual demand for a radically anti-metaphysical pluralism coordinant with a radically antiteleological attitude. 2.2. The Moralist’s Fallacy. The Utilitarian Teleology of Pleasure The natural move for James here would be to move towards the historical opponent of idealism, namely, utilitarianism. In particular, 24

See P, 41 ff. P. B. Blood, Anaesthetic Revelation. New York: 1874. See W. James, Eph, pp. 172190. On the personal relations between James and Blood see R. B. Perry, op. cit., vol. II, ch. XLVI and LXXXIII. 26 On Davidson’s influence on James, see M. H. DeArmey, “Thomas Davidson Apeirotheism and its Influence on William James and John Dewey,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XLVIII (1987). 25

23 James’s admiration for Mill, and their common ground in the empiricist tradition would legitimate such a hypothesis. Such a hypothesis, however, is not supported by James’s writings. In MP James refers to utilitarianism on two occasions. It is useful here to quote the two passages. In the first, at the beginning of the essay, James writes: “[...] the Benthams, the Mills, and the Bains have done a lasting service in taking so many of our human ideals and showing how they must have arisen from the association with acts of simple bodily pleasures and relief from pain. Association with many remote pleasures will unquestionably make a thing significant of goodness in our minds... But it is surely impossible to explain all our sentiments and preferences in this simple way.” (WB, 142-143)

Later on, James refers to utilitarianism without naming it. The topic he is discussing is whether there has ever been a universally satisfactory criterion of good. In this context, referring to the utilitarian notion of “good” as tendency to bring happiness, James says: “The best on the whole of these marks and measures of goodness seems to be the capacity to bring happiness. But in order not to break down fatally, this test must be taken to cover innumerable acts and impulses that never aim at happiness” (WB, 152-153). Both passages suggest that James is taking a critical distance from anything that resembles an utilitarian standpoint. The two passages share a sense that that utilitarianism has importantly revealed the merely human origin of our moral ideals, acting as an antidote against the metaphysical view of ethics; but it has not been any more successful than its predecessors in providing an adequate moral standard. James provides two reasons for the failure of utilitarianism: the first is that the psychological theory on which utilitarianism stands, namely, the associationistic theory, is flawed27. The second reason is explained in the second passage: the test of happiness, namely, the principle of the greatest happiness, “must be taken to cover innumerable acts and impulses that never aim at happiness.” In other words, utilitarianism is not less teleological, i.e., metaphysical, than the idealism it opposes, since it tacitly presupposes an hedonic telos playing the same shaping role as the idealist’s Absolute. 27

A more detailed account of James’s criticism of associationism is offered in chapter III.

24 This conclusion is illuminated by two passages, the first belonging to the “Notes on Ethics I, 1878-1885, #4472,” the second to a long manuscript note for the course of ethics in 1888-1889. The teleological essence of utilitarianism becomes evident in the teleology of pleasure entailed by the “Principle of Utility,” which informs Mill’s doctrine28. James focuses on the error involved in the teleological description of human actions in the first note, which points out the main argument behind his rejection of the hedonistic conception: “All teleological ways of considering facts commit the fallacy of ex post facto prophecy. Taking a present good they admit to be a good for which it was produced; they say: without them we should not have had it; ergo they were right however undesirable they seemed in themselves. Forgetting in this that whatever had been instead of them wd. have been consistent with our now enjoying some good or other and that this other good wd. then have a right to be considered the good for wh. the past evil existed etc... An attained good can only prove the features of the past to be consistent with itself, not ministerial to the summum bonum.” (“Note on Ethics I. 1878-1885 #4472,” MEN, 300)

Utilitarians mistakenly assume what they view as the greatest good to be the absolute, universal and ultimate good; consequently, all human actions, no matter what they are intended for, are interpreted in the light of and as subservient to the universal principle of happiness. Such an attitude could be named the “Moralist’s fallacy” by analogy to the one James criticized in the Principles as the “psychologist’s fallacy”29. Its general form would be that once the moralist has formulated an abstract account of human nature and a universal moral principle stating how such a nature ought to realize itself, the moralist will impose his/her own personal standpoint as an absolute moral principle and try to account for and organize all human actions in compliance with such a priori presumptions, twisting an open “multiversum” into a finite moral universe30. We can see how the moralist’s fallacy applies to the utilitarians in our second passage, in which James points out the self-canceling oddity of 28

See J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Bk. VI, chap. XII: “Without attempting in this place to justify my opinion...I merely declare my conviction, that the general principle to which all rules of practice ought to conform, and the test by which they should be tried, is that of conductiveness to the happiness of mankind, or rather, of all sentient beings: in other words, that the promotion of happiness is the ultimate principle of Teleology.” 29 PP I, pp. 196-197. 30 A very similar argument is already sketched in Wundt’s Ethik.

25 hedonistic ethics. For, indeed, there is no way the hedonistic standpoint could persuade anyone to avoid selfish behavior if he or she lacks an altruistic impulse. “The man says: I take no pleasure in the act you propose. But the hedonist starts by saying that the only intelligible end of action is the pleasure of the actor, and that if he acts for the pleasure of others it must be because their pleasure gives him pleasure. In this case, consequently he must either by some physical operation make the man find his own pleasure in other’s pleasure; or else make him believe that he ought there to find it. But what can “ought” mean here? It can only mean that he will find it if he tries, if he puts himself into the right disposition etc. But the man retorts: ‘that means if I become another man. Meanwhile I don't find it and won’t find it’.” (MEN, 303)

The abstract view of human beings, produced by philosopher’s speculations, takes the place of the real, living human being. Indeed, the hedonist of whatever sort can object to a demand for real pleasure only by proposing an ideal kind of pleasure, namely, an hypothetical higher pleasure. Such a pleasure is not necessarily a pleasure experienced as such by his interlocutor; nevertheless, it is the only and ultimate good that this latter, to the extent he/she is a good human being, is supposed to be always looking for. As James stresses, “the greatest possible good is what some possible person would find pleasant if he existed. Meanwhile he may nowhere exist,” therefore it is by no means evident why anybody ‘ought to’ accept so hazardous a bet and trade an actual and sure pleasure in the present for a possible pleasure in the future, whose realization no hedonist can guarantee. Hedonism, then, as far as it attempts to overcome the selfish standpoint on behalf of a universalistic ethics, as in Mill's case, cannot help assuming a “stern or tragic attitude towards certain inferior pleasures.” The consequent claim is that only dignity, resulting from living according to a tragic attitude, and accomplishing a higher purpose by means of selfsacrifice and loss of lower pleasures, can be the highest of all the possible pleasures. The unavoidable practical consequence of such eudaemonistic teleology, as James points out, is an “inhibitory doctrine” of morals open to every kind of abuse and coercive social device on behalf of collective happiness31. This happens because the ‘greatest happiness’ does not 31

See MEN, p. 305: “Such a hedonist ought to rejoice in all old abuses, despotism, persecutions etc. If radically committed to his principle, the avoidance of pain ought not to guide him but only the compassing of certain kinds of pleasure.” ( “Notes on Ethics” II, 1888-1889 #4428).

26 originate from the refinement of the individual's own experience of happiness, but is the account of happiness “from the point of view of the disinterested hedonist philosopher looking on.” “The stern mood is hardly compatible with the pleasure-philosophy. Still if it is, then the question, what right has the philosopher so to treat the world, can receive only one answer, it is his pleasure or that of someone whose pleasure he makes his end. What makes others amenable to his pleasure? Receives no answer. That they ought to desire what he desires can only mean on his principle that if they so desire they will get more pleasure than they do now. But from their present point of view it wouldn't be pleasure, so they can't be expected to feel the obligation.” (MEN, 305-306)

The eudemonistic philosopher’s attitude, according to James, produces a monistic teleology engendering the violent repression and restriction of the individual’s freedom on behalf of a universal. Whenever the moral philosopher imposes (as Mill does) an a priori amounting to his own ethical vision of the world, he is acting so as to impose his own ideal of the good. As a matter of fact, any universalistic view, based on such a philosophical attitude – even if it comes from unselfishness and love of humanity – is, for James, totally unacceptable. Indeed, due to its partiality, any totalizing ethical system necessarily crushes some of the real possibilities different individuals can offer. It imposes hard consequences and costs on those individuals who have to comply with it, the chief of which is the loss of the very condition of moral life, individual freedom.

3. Moral Experience and Moral Philosophy We will return to the moral topics presented above in different fashion as we advance in our view of the development of James’s philosophy. Here, we want to look more closely at James’s notion that the teleological attitude is the great blunder of traditional moral philosophy, which goes back to what we have called the “moralist’s fallacy”, namely, to the peculiar intellectualistic and aprioristic attitude that characterizes the relation between the moral philosopher and the moral life. Such an attitude is what experimental moral science is supposed to critique and replace. A meaningful example of this kind of development of utilitarian eudaimonism is in A. Huxley’s Brave New World. See also Putnam’s interesting analysis of this in H. Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism, lect. III.

27 3.1. The Breakdown of Moral Philosophy. A Short Survey Starting from the assumption that the condition of moral philosophy consists of hypotheses to be verified through the whole process of the moral experience of the human race32, James states that the intention of his essay is to show the impossibility as well as the futility of an a priori and dogmatic moral theory. (WB, 141) Thus, the aim of MP is not to define a system or a hierarchy of moral values and principles intended to rule individual or collective behavior, but rather to inquire into the constitutive attitudes and activity of moral philosophers in order to outline a more adequate approach to the nature and meaning of moral experience. The main argument of James’s essay follows from his notion of what the moral philosopher does: “The aim is to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and make of the world what one may call a genuine universe from the moral point of view.” (WB, 185-186)

Such a systematic unification stands upon the assumption that the principle that grounds the unity of the system must be ultimate and universal. This universal principle can take one of three different forms: psychological, metaphysical, casuistic. As a matter of fact, as James goes on to show, none of these three foundational forms proves absolutely valid and acceptable; consequently, no attempt to unify moral life into a single systematic totality has been or ever will be successful and it will never possibly be. Accordingly, the moral unification of the world has to be taken as what it has always been, namely, the projection of the personal ideal of the moral philosopher upon all people, even though the moral philosopher has no standing to make that projection, holding no special function in relation to the rest of the human race nor practicing any special expertise to justify his claim. Morality is a historical outcome of the life of the human race and moral unification, if it ever happens, will obtain through the same historical process humanity has carried on thus far, a diverse self-adjustment within the different moral communities represented in the world. To such a process the moral 32

It is possible to detect here a transposition of Peirce’s conception of knowledge as the infinite movement of the scientific community toward the knowledge of reality. See C. S. Peirce, “Some consequences of Four Incapacities” (1868), C.5. 264-317.

28 philosopher contributes with his/her own personal ideal as much as everybody else but there is no ultimate moral philosophy that can say what the right adjustment is supposed to be. Even the existence of God, as far as God can be helpful in the conduction of moral life, cannot change the situation and provide a valid moral foundation, to the extent that the revelations of God, interpreted by the moral philosopher, once again recapitulates the illegitimate projection of a privileged experience over the experiential diversity of the whole human race, which contains at least some who do not accept it. Finally, given James’s rejection of the orthodox moral philosopher’s project, to salvage any kind of moral insight philosophy can give us at all, we must turn to the gist of the moral life, namely, to the personal endeavor each one puts in the achievement of one’s own ideal, and correspondingly, the really vital moral problem of the individual’s adopting the best attitude that will lead to the achievement of his or her own ideals. 3.2. Moral Philosophy vs Moral Life. A Detailed Analysis James’s criticism of the psychological foundation of moral philosophy picks up the same themes as with his criticism of utilitarianism, themes which can be criticized in intuitionism and evolutionist moral theory too. The psychological method in moral philosophy consists in tracing human moral ideals back to the basic feelings of pain and pleasure combined through the mechanism of association. But as a matter of fact – James objects – human beings display original moral feelings and refined ideals which cannot be reduced or explained in term of pleasure and pain, and whose existence and varieties depends on the complex and creative nature of human mind and brain, a thesis that James already stated in the chapter XXVIII of the Principles. “All higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experiences than in that of probable causes of future experiences […] Our ideals have certainly many sources. They are not all explicable as signifying corporeal pleasures to be gained, and pains to be escaped.”

29 3.2.1. The Metaphysical Question A metaphysical approach to moral life is endorsed by philosophers, such as Kant or Royce, that focus on the meaning of good and evil and the question of obligation as the fundamental problems of a moral theory. The ultimate meaning of the metaphysical problem in moral philosophy is the search for the standards of the judgment of value. The problem is entailed by the issue of obligation: what is better is also what ought to be chosen and done. The task of moral philosophy, hence, is the definition, according to universal standards, of an order of priority within the axiological field. Standards must be universal if they are to affirm the recognition of obligation in any and all circumstances. Yet, the equivalence of “being” and “ought to be,” which is here identified as the ideal towards which the moral philosopher strives, is precisely what appears unlikely and escapes the grasp of the moral theory. These topics were the subjects of the course “Philosophy 4,” which James taught in 1888-89. Here, the metaphysical question of good and evil is considered as the basic moral question in connection with the problem of choice, as a specific existential condition of human beings (MEN, 301). “Good” and “evil”, are not and cannot be a matter of essence, but depend on subjective preferences respect to several possible options. Accordingly, in MP, the meaning of terms such as “good,” “evil,” and “obligation” do not depend upon an alleged metaphysical and absolute order of the world, but instead are the correlate of the presence of some human consciousness with its own desires and demands33. “The same object is good or bad there, according as you measure it by the view which this one or that one of the thinkers takes. Nor can you find any possible ground in such a world for saying that one thinker’s opinion is more correct than the other, or that either has the truer moral sense. Such a world, in short, is not a moral universe […] Multiply the thinkers into a pluralism, and we find realized for us in the ethical sphere something like that world which the antique sceptics conceived of […].” (WB, 146)

33

The first appearance of this argument is in two coordinate texts published in 1878, which exposed James’s objection to Spencer’s and Huxley’s teleological evolutionism: the Lowell Lectures and the article Are We Automata?. In these, James states that terms such as “utility,” “advantage,” “interest,” and “good” have meaning only in a world in which there is a consciousness that feels things as useful and good in relation to its own individual purposes (EPs, p. 44).

30 Such a pluralistic world is exactly what the moral philosopher as such “will not put up with”. The philosophical ideal of the moral unification of the world requires that a more truthful or authoritative opinion or ideal must exist “so that the others ought to yield”. As a matter of fact, however, the superiority of an ideal “cannot be explained by any abstract moral ‘nature of things’” but depends for its validity on the actual claims of an existing thinker. For ideals, paraphrasing the Berkeleyian dictum, esse est percipi. Each consciousness has the power to make an ideal good by feeling and deeming it good; the problem, however, is that no consciousness has the power to establish in the same way the superiority of one’s own ideal. The subjective foundation of “good” and “evil”, then, leaves the question of how obligation is to be enforced troublingly unanswered. There is no paramount ideal which can oblige all the others to yield. James on several occasions lectured on the topic of the foundation of obligation, as is shown, for example, by the abstract from the course of 1888-89 and several manuscript notes belonging to the decade between 1878 and 188534. In the abstract of the course of Ethics taught in 1888-89, James briefly sketches out a psychological analysis of the feeling of obligation (ML, 183)35. The feeling of obligation was the keystone of the ethics of the intuitionist school. Yet, the intuitionist claim appears to James to invert the logical relation between value and obligation, so it cannot constitute a possible solution to the problem of the foundation of obligation. The feeling of obligation is subjective and common to several objects and goods, and it is does not contain in itself criteria for determining which of these values and goods are really “better.” Thus, the intuitionist solution, while solving the problem of organization, leaves unattended the more fundamental ethical question of how we choose the better. In addition, every act can be subject to two different kinds of obligation, inner and outer, which can easily be at odds. In such a case, none of the possible “obligatory” options is more cogent than the other, and the choice must undergo further trial under different criteria (ML, 183). 34 35

See W. James, “Notes on Ethics I – 1878-1885, #4472,” MEN, p. 308. On the origin of the feeling of obligation, see also J. M. Guyau, op.cit., ch. IV.

31 Finally, in MP James resolves to adopt the subjective foundation of obligation: “We see not only that without a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be no obligation, but that there is some obligation wherever there is a claim.”

Obligation, hence, far from being grounded in the objectivity of the ideal can, and must, be posited only as relative to an actual individual demand which claims its satisfaction as, and because, it is posited36 (WB, 148-149). In other words, obligation is the form of the demand. Thus, the issue of obligation translates into its own terms James’s famous assumption of the equivalence of demands. All the demands are equal in their right to be satisfied, and to this extent they are obligating. Whether such demands are actually taken into account or satisfied is a merely empirical issue that does not affect their virtual character as obligations37. It is, however, important to stress that such metaphysical justification of obligation is not intended as a practical postulate and does 36

The argument is pretty intuitive, since there is no metaphysical ground for obligation, and since any obligation is a limit to one’s own freedom, there is no reason why anybody should comply with an obligation nobody is claiming for. As for the issue of the equivalence between demand and obligation, it seems evident that lacking any paramount “moral” principle or standard either every demand is obligating or none is; for there is no general criterion to decide which one should and which shouldn’t be taken as such. 37 M.R. Slater, as well as some of the James’s interpreters he quotes, in his recent “Ethical Naturalism and Religious Belief in ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’,” (see Bibliography) apparently sees the coincidence of demand and obligation as a major flaw of James’s humanistic “ethical theory”, insofar as “James’s assertion that claims are binding on us insofar as we choose to recognize them as binding undercuts his earlier assertion that claims ipso facto entail obligation” (p. 18). I cannot agree, however, with Slater’s remare, which apparently does not take account of the actual shift between the logical and the practical level. The very fact that “claims and obligation are logically equivalent” does not entail that they are such at the practical level unless somebody actually recognize such an equivalence. A de jure obligation does not mean a de facto obligation. Any demand is virtually obligating but actually subject to others’ recognition, let alone material possibility, what makes exactly the gist of James’s argument about why a metaphysically grounded ethical theory cannot cover up real life and turns out to be inefficient not to say useless. It is however the case that overall James is explicitly dealing with the metaphysical question in order to demonstrate the impossibility of moral objectivity, rather than attempting its foundation, as Slater seems to surmise. An analogous problem seems to be there with T. Lekan’s article too (see Bibliography).

32 not provide any “moral objectivity”, namely, any grounds for any systematic moral unification of the world whatsoever, which means no moral philosophy can be built on such a ground. Rather, James’s intention is to show how, moving from the equivalence of obligations, as we must, we undermine any alleged metaphysical basis for the philosophical ideal of the constitution of a moral universe. In other words, the metaphysical approach to the foundation of an objective ethics is a dead end38. 3.2.2. The Casuistic Question The foregoing discussion of the metaphysical problem of rejecting any philosophical claim to an a priori foundation of a universal and absolute moral system leaves, however, a practical question unanswered. Even assuming that obligation is created by demands and all the demands are metaphysically equivalent, isn’t it the case that there is a demand among the conflicting ideals for a system of moral truths that could ground an absolute moral universe? And aren’t we, by denying that demand, countering it, then, with another absolute demand? This is the topic of the casuistic question and the last resort of moral philosophy. Even without a metaphysical foundation, the philosophical ideal of the unification of the manifoldness of ideals, insofar as it expresses the human need for the construction of a human, namely, cultural, world, has not lost its worth and power. Like all the other ideals, the philosophical ideal can claim its right to satisfaction, provided that philosophers become aware of their condition as agents inter pares, that is, provided they drop their unwarranted conviction that they uniquely possess the ability to transcend their contingent condition as particular human beings in achieving insight into an absolute view of moral life. 38

A further evidence of James’s opposition to any project of universal and objectively grounded moral system can be found in his letter of 12 January 1883 to Erasmus Darwin: “Now I take it that your father meant to protest against this ideal of a perfection equally binding on all types of creature […] virtue can’t swing in vacuo, – it is relative to the facts of life & these fact are wholly different in the case of the two objects, why not call each right “in his way” & why not deny the existence of any rightness at all out of relation to the particular “way” of its subject. […] I may add that I think your father’s way on the whole more sound than Abbot’s, that is more fruitful.” (Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, vol. 43, n. 4, 2007, p. 750.)

33 Deprived of any metaphysical support, philosophy is obliged to search for moral truth in the human world, whereas the moral philosopher, in the attempt to organize the multifarious and often conflictual multiverse of ideals, has to resist the temptation of imposing his/her own personal view of the world upon society. Rather, the moral philosopher has to search for an objective criterion on the basis of which it is possible to organize and rank all the ideals which come out on the stage of the world, including his own. The ethical demand for a moral order of the world is not a superideal that can be taken for granted; rather, it is one ideal among all the others, though a “peculiar” one, as James clearly states. Thus, the fulfillment of the ideal of the moral philosopher seems to be subordinated to the philosopher’s ability to find a sound and acceptable criterion of organization that will not be rejected by other fellow human beings. Yet if it goes hard with the absolutist it is also the case that the search for a naturalistic criterion does not achieve any better result. The history of moral philosophy, James remarks, moved hand in hand with the development of casuistry, and with the inquiry into a “natural” notion of the essence of “good.” Unfortunately, such an inquiry has never yet attained its aim (WB, 152). In the Ethics course of 1888/89, James dwelt on the issue of the definition of “intrinsically” good, focusing on the organization of goods and ideals according to their “being better,” that is, according to their participation in this intrinsically good character (ML, 182). To be considered good, James writes, a thing must be conceived as belonging to a genus already accepted as good. The attempt to define the “good” through the method of genus et differentia is rhetorical, since the hypothesis of a genus “intrinsically” good is implicitly ruled out by James’s theory of selective attention (PP II, 335). Class and essence are just forms of instrumental rationality. Thus, if any concept, namely, any class or genus, is defined through its substantial, or essential, properties, and if the essential properties are singled out on the basis of the interests of the consciousness that is defining the concept, then the class “good” depends upon the interests of whoever is defining it; in other words, “good” is relative, and not universal. In MP James cuts it short by remarking that none of the manifold definitions or tests of “good” that philosophers have suggested as the

34 ground for a moral system has ever satisfied humankind, nor provided a criterion of universally accepted good. “The various ideals have no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals. No single abstract principle can be so used as to yield to the philosopher anything like a scientifically accurate and genuinely useful casuistic scale.” (WB, 152-153)

The conclusion, for James, is that the only viable ethical principle that governs the essence of good is of anthropological origin and consists in the notion of good as satisfaction of desire: “the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand.” (WB, 152-153). This, however, is neither a philosophical answer nor a philosophical solution and even less the basic principle of a moral theory; rather, James has led us in a circle back to the starting point. Of course, the satisfaction of demand is subjectively good, but the ethical question points us elsewhere, to the determinants of the organization and, according to the case, the limitation of satisfaction that are entailed in choice. Thus, once stated that the only possible notion of good is the satisfaction of individual desires, the moral philosopher has not made a single step further toward the creation of a moral universe. Indeed, this is not an unexpected and puzzling outcome, but rather the conclusion at which the dialectic movement of James’s argument was directed. Thus, it is perfectly consistent for James to state that, as a purely theoretical problem, the casuistic question would be nonsensical and unworthy of being raised (WB, 153). Indeed – “If the ethical philosopher were only asking after the best imaginable system of goods” – that is, for the most perfect moral ideal, this would be the one that Royce suggested, namely, that all the demands should be satisfied as soon as made. Such a solution, however, appears merely theoretical, that is, abstract or unrealistic in the actual constitution of the world, with its limited space and time and resources39. In fact, in the human world, the casuistic question, far from being a matter dependent on an abstract ideal order of the world, is rather the necessary result of a practical need of discrimination on the basis of 39

See P, pp. 138-139. “In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled immediately, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute’s own world. […] In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition.”

35 contingent material conditions (WB, 153). From the practical viewpoint, speculative solutions to the ordering of goods is simply unsatisfactory and cumbersome. Accordingly, there is no universal moral order of the world to be detected once and for all, and the philosophical effort, indeed, always falls short of covering the whole of the wider and multifarious order of reality. 3.3. The Role of Moral Philosophers and the Principle of Maximum satisfaction If James’s conclusion seems extreme or paradoxical, this is, as he himself remarks, because the problematic aspect of the task of moral philosophy is usually hidden behind the status quo. Actually, moral philosophers never start with a blank tablet, but with an already established social order where a certain number of ideals are already organized and preferences for certain values are already entrenched. Yet, if some moral philosopher fancied building up a brand new a priori and universal moral order, bracketing all of the extant moral institutions and organization currently at work in the world, it would be immediately evident that the business was not only far beyond the limits of his/her power, but also completely pointless (WB, 154-155). The situation changes from ridiculous to appalling when we imagine the moral philosopher, like a “Pontiff”, or like Renan’s “savant,” in possession of real power over life and death by which he can force his own moral ideal upon other people40. Such a vision, James remarks, would make the hypothesis of a permanent chaos far more agreeable than any enlightened system prepared in a philosopher’s closet. In fact, if such a thing as moral philosophy is to exist, it must be completely above the parts, sine ira et studio: “No! if the philosopher is to keep his judicial position, he must never become one of the parties of the fray.” Is that a restatement of the objectivity of moral philosophy? Of course not. Realistically speaking, there is no place outside the game for a moral philosopher to sit and judge, and actually James is just restating that moral philosophy as an “objective” 40

See WB, p. 155. See also ECR, #104, pp. 327-331 (“Review of Dialogues et fragments philosophiques by E. Renan – 1876”).

36 and “disinterested” view of the world is not possible. Thus, the force of the subsequent rhetorical question derives from this apparently paralyzing conclusion: “What can he do, then, it will now be asked, except to fall back on skepticism and give up the notion of being a philosopher at all?” (WB, 155). The question, in its rhetorical movement, indeed would be nonsensical if James believed it were possible to construct an objective moral philosophy. We have now elaborated the context wherein James presents the famous principle of maximum satisfaction to which Perry refers, which according to the consensus view of James’s interpreters constitutes the gist of James’s moral philosophy. For the sake of the argument, at this point, the reader will please bear with us if we re-quote certain passages at length. The subject is still the moral philosopher’s activity and the ironical overtone should not go unnoticed. “But do we not see a perfectly definite path of escape which is open to him just because he is a philosopher, and not the champion of one particular ideal? Since everything which is demanded is by that fact good, must not the guiding principle for ethical philosophy (since all demands conjointly cannot be satisfied in this poor world) be simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can? That act must be the best, accordingly which makes for the best whole, in the sense of awakening the least sum of dissatisfaction. In the casuistic scale, therefore, those ideals must be written highest which prevail at the least cost, or by whose realization the least possible number of other ideals are destroyed. Since victory and defeat there must be, the victory to be philosophically prayed for is that of the most inclusive side – of the side which even in the hour of triumph will to do some justice to the ideals in which the vanquished party’s interests lay.” (WB, 155)

There are a host of interpreters for whom this passage is a neat statement of the cornerstone of James’s moral philosophy, which could be easily ranked with others that have a strong utilitarian tendency, with the minor difference from the classical utilitarians in that James also wants to accommodate some humanitarian and democratic opening to the “vanquished” ideals41. Thus, eventually, the moral philosopher would have 41

Examples of the “normative” interpretation of the principle are, for example, in G. Bird, William James, 1986; G. E. Myers, William James. His Life and Thought, 1986. Myers in particular reads James’s “ethical theory” as a late variation of utilitarianism (p. 400), along with Gale and Wesley Cooper. More recently cf. M.R. Slater, cit., (p. 27), which happily synthesizes the respective views: “What is unclear from James’s discussion of this issue, however, is whether we should interpret James as claiming that we should seek to maximize the desires of individuals (which surely motivate their demands) or rather their ideals. On the basis of these passages, James can be –

37 found the key for a principle based moral theory and would only be left to deal with the technical problem of the application of such a principle to particular concrete cases. Had not James already ruled out utilitarianism as a viable moral theory and turned down any attempt to build the moral unification of the world over a single principle, such interpretation could be excused for excerpting this one passage from the essay and ignoring its function within the dialectical play of James’s argument. Yet, as we have seen, this is not the case. It is rather true that the PMPS, qua principle, provides a second order philosophical criterion to evaluate moral decisions and arrangements on the making, or once they are made42; such a criterion, however, does not play a major role in the actual development of the moral order. The follow up of the quoted passage clarifies the line of the argument. “The course of history is nothing but the story of men’s struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive order. Invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands, – that and only that is the path of peace! Following this path, society has shaken itself into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of science…. So far then, and up to date, the casuistic scale is made for the philosopher already far better than he can ever make it for himself. An experiment of the most and has been – interpreted as either a “desire-satisfaction” utilitarian, or as an “idealsatisfaction” utilitarian. The difficulty facing James is that these forms of utilitarianism potentially conflict, and he appears to endorse both.” Possibly the difficulty is that James endorses neither, since he has already excluded utilitarianism as a valid moral system, while at the same time excluding the PMPS as a first-order rule or prescription. 42 Cf. J. Dewey, Ethics (1908), p. 301: “Rules are practical; they are habitual ways of doing things. But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods of judging things. The fundamental error of the intuitionalist and of the utilitarian… is that they are on the lookout for rules which will of themselves tell agents just what course of action to pursue; whereas the object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself. No genuine moral principle prescribe a specific course of action.” Cf. also T. Lekan, cit., p. 13: “We might then read James’s casuist rule as a second-order ideal precisely because its function is to offer a philosophical criterion a philosophical criterion to resolve conflicts among first-order ideals.” Oddly enough, however, in order to save James’s “ethical theory” assumption supposedly, just a couple of lines below Lekan steps back on the casuit rule as a first-order ideal “that guides our efforts to continually make the best, not the perfect, inclusive rule,” although he recognizes that the casuist rule would minimally constrain the pursuit of such first order ideals from thwarting others’ goods.”

38 searching kind has proved that the laws and usages of the land are what yield the maximum of satisfaction to the thinkers taken all together. The presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good. The philosopher must be a conservative, and in the construction of his casuistic scale must put the things 43 most in accordance with the customs of the community on the top.” (WB, 155-156)

In this wider context, it seems evident that the outcome of James’s argument, roughly stated, is that there is nothing that the moral philosopher can do that history has not already done and continues to do better44. What the moral philosopher “writes higher in the casuistic scale”, turns out to be simply a transcription of an ideal that is already successful. The casuistic scale is already made before the moral philosopher can lay his hands on it, 43

We need to focus, here, on a fundamental suggestion implicit in James’s ethical analysis, to which both the text of MP and the notes of the Ethics course point. The “good will” is not a generic or sentimental notion (despite James’s lyricism), but rather marks the border between the “ethical”, almost completely assimilated to the “political”, and the non-ethical situation. Indeed, if the interplay of the agencies that constitute the moral web of a society is to be possible, and peace is achieved by the inclusion of the minority ideals within winner’s organization of ideals, it is clear that the border between the “ethical” and the “non-ethical” runs through the treacherous region of dialogue. Openness to dialogue and willingness to act always and in any circumstance as an interlocutor, rather than as a winner (or a loser), what James defines as readiness to satisfy all demands, appear, thus, as the specific characters and condition of the establishment of an ethical situation. In other words, whatever the arrangement of ideals a particular system adopts, such an arrangement is “ethical” insofar as it actually preserves the dialogical disposition, which in itself is essentially a matter of “good will”, that is, willingness. Such an indication is once again metaethical, that is, it draws the horizon within which an ethics is possible and significant. It does not open, however, a positive field of action for moral philosophy to the extent the aforesaid dialogical disposition fully remains within the boundaries of the human interplay which precedes and grounds moral philosophy. In this perspective, ethics of communication, à la Habermas, would not be a viable way out of the impasse of moral philosophy and undergo the same problems of any other ethical theory. Accordingly, the refusal of communication, that is, the negation of the dialogical perspective, annihilates ipso facto the dominion of ethics and politics and their dialogical dimension, and throws open to the dominions of madness, crime, or war, faced with which philosophy, and moral philosophy in particular, dialogical by essence, can only withdraw in silence. 44 An analogous argument for the evaluation of religions appears in VRE, p. 325. “The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. […] When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.”

39 as it were, and moral philosophy cannot be anything but the record of what human beings in the course of their history have already done45. The imposition of a moral system from outside of the intrinsic dynamics of the world is ruled out by those factors that go into making the history of moral systems. There is no rule of the game; the game consists of rules in the making The stress James puts on the role of history is less surprising than one may possibly think. James was just coming out of his Hegelian “temptation,” but above all Wundt’s and Lotze’s influence appear at work here. In particular, Lotze’s theory of history as the ongoing movement of establishing of human culture all over the world seems an important reference here, as well as Wundt’s “Law of Heterogeneity of Ends” (Das Gestz der Heterogenie der Zwecke)46. Freed from any totalizing teleology, history is the restless movement of James’s “human serpent”, which leaves nothing outside or above it, morally speaking. Moral philosophy, using the conceptual tools it is really entitled to use, cannot replace the historical and constitutive process of social dynamics at work in the establishment of the moral order. 45

It is worthwhile to remark the substantial analogy between James’s view of moral philosophy and that proposed by the German positive school of economics: K. Menger, A. Wagner, G. Schmoeller, A.E.F. Schaeffle. See in partic. A.E.F Schaeffle Bau and Leben des socialen Körpers, (Tubingen, 1875),vol. I, pp. 550-674; vol. II, pp. 59-81: “Morality is not a system of abstract rules that people find inscribed in their consciences or that the moral philosopher deduces in the privacy of his office. It is a social function or, even more, a system of functions which is formed and consolidated under the pressure of collective needs…. The moral philosopher can, then, neither invent them nor construct them; he must observe them wherever they exist and then seek their causes and condition in society. No doubt the sense of the ideal…intervenes in the evolution of moral ideas; but it does not create them.” [Qtd. from E. Durkheim, Ethics and the Sociology of Morals, cit., pp. 74-75.] 46 Cf. also E. Durkheim, op. cit., pp. 125-126 [Engl. Ed. p. 103-104]: “This law shed a great deal of light on the evolution of morality in the future. […] Theory is always inadequate to reality. We must renounce speculation concerning the end of our efforts, since even the next goal escapes us. All that we can do is to outline beforehand and in very general terms the direction the future will take. […] To summarize, then, moral ideas are formed under the influence of unconscious causes the consequence of which they conceal. Deliberate thought plays only a small part in this process; it only intervenes to establish and concecrate results that come about without conscious thought.”

40 “On the whole, then, we must conclude that no philosophy of ethics is possible in the old-fashioned absolute sense of the term. Everywhere the ethical philosopher must wait on facts.” (WB, 156)

Accordingly, the relation between the moral philosopher and the moral life is completely a posteriori. The moral philosopher can record the current moral order and can even evaluate the order on the basis of the PMPS, intended as a criterion to compare social moral arrangements among themselves; whether this can make any difference to the development of social dynamics, however, depends more upon chance than upon philosophical ability47. 3.4. Moral Philosophy as Experimental Science Moral philosophy is possible only as a critical science which takes each moral ideal as an hypothesis and each moral choice as an experiment48. Moral experimentalism meets here the pragmatist notion of truth as process of verification (P, VI, passim). The value of a moral belief or hypothesis is to be judged by the practical consequences it begets in the world of human relations. Ideals and judgments of value are true insofar as they turn into satisfying relations among human beings, but it is evident that the moral philosopher has no privileged role in this process. The moral philosopher, as anybody else, can either take part in the “game” as a representative of one particular ideal, or he can be the interested beholder or the excellent witness of an autonomous process that he can only describe and codify (WB, 157-158)49. From the standpoint of “scientific morals,” then, the moral philosopher must be as conservative as he can possibly be, since he is aware that the current order is the ultimate and verified result of a 47

A similar standpoint will be neatly reaffirmed by Dewey. See J. Dewey Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 25-26. 48 See WB, p. 156: “These experiments are to be judged, not a priori, but by actually finding, after the fact of their making, how much outcry or how much appeasement comes about. What closet solution can possibly anticipate the result of trials made on such a scale?” 49 It is however true, as James points out, that in this perspective, ethics necessarily tends to be assimilated to politics, as the empirical art of organization of social demands. “In all this the [functions of the] philosopher [are] indistinguishable from that of the best kind of statesman at the present day.” (WB, pp. 158-159).

41 reasonably successful historical experiment. Yet, it is a necessary consequence of the experimental attitude that the philosopher cannot help being aware of the intrinsically unstable equilibrium granted to the current order. Every apparently steady stage of moral order entails enough dissatisfaction to unbalance it and push history forward to a new arrangement (MS, 103). It is quite impossible to hide the dialectic which underlies James’s view of morality as historical outcome50. It is, of course, a “groundless” (abgegründet) dialectic unsupported by a universal teleology, but remaining nevertheless an ongoing dialectic in which oppressed and sacrificed ideals in a given order sooner or later return to haunt the established ideals and demand to be tested and verified. This leads to a crisis of the moral paradigm, which finds the moral philosopher divided between the duty to defend the status quo and the recognition of the right of the new ideals to have their chance (WB, 155-156). Once again, James’s analysis does not leave any room for rehabilitating the priority of the role of moral philosopher, once he has knocked down the assumptions that underlie that supposed priority. At the moment ethical paradigms enter into crisis, it is possible philosophers qua philosophers may enjoy an analytically clarified view of the issue at stake and of its origins; this however does not mean they also know the solution of the problem. Actually, when the established system starts crumbling and everybody turns to the moral philosopher for enlightenment, the moral philosopher most of the times appears to be just as clueless as everybody else (WB, 158-159). The very language James uses to describe the moral philosopher’s involvement in the moral dilemma is symptomatic of the limits of 50

See PU, pp. 88-89: “The impression that any naif person gets who plants himself innocently in the flux of things is that things are off their balance. Whatever equilibriums our finite experiences attain to are but provisional.... Of no special system of goods attained does the universe recognize the value as sacred. Down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous appetite for destruction, of the larger system of history in which it stood for a moment as a landing-place and stepping-stone. This dogging of everything by its negative, its fate, its undoing, this perpetual moving on to something future which shall supersede the present, this is the hegelian intuition of the essential provisionality, and consequent unreality, of everything empirical and finite.... Taken so far, and taken in the rough, Hegel is not only harmless, but accurate. There is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please you to call it, one that the whole constitution of life establishes.”

42 philosopher’s position. The moral philosopher can “vote” for the most inclusive order and he can “pray” for its victory. “Praying” and “voting”, however, point to a wishful attitude that has very little to do with theoretical activity or with any form of effective action at all. Actually, the moral philosopher can only hope and wish for a better order of some sort just as any other sensible mortal in his place would do. Thus, the moral interest in the moral philosopher’s position is revamped by James: the issue becomes not one of showing how the moral philosopher has a finer sense of morality, but one in which the grounds of the impossibility of the moral philosopher to provide a sound positive answer to genuine moral problems points to, in James’s view, a sort of “field of indeterminacy” within the moral system. Such indeterminacy undermines any established rule and leaves everybody with no clue about the right attitude to adopt (WB, 158) and committed to one’s own free choice51.

4. From Moral Philosophy to Ethics Such a reconstruction of the meaning of MP is more than suitable to answer our starting question. The reception was hostile because in about an hour James had turned upside down the very meaning and value of moral philosophy before an audience that was possibly open to Sumner’s social Darwinism but much less ready to take James’s moral relativism, let alone the uncanny religious implications emerging here and there among the essay’s sentences. Chances are that if many of those listeners found outrageous the idea that God was not the ground of morality and that there was no absolute “good” to seek for, they certain were disturbed by James’s alternative, the “religion of humanity”, with its ambiguous references floating between Channings and Comte, and his notion of the experimental science of morals, revealed as the holistic, historical process of selfcreation of morality through the worldly dialectic of human ideals.

51

See also PP II, p. 672.

43 4.1. Paradigmatic Crisis and Ethical Choice The account of human history as an ongoing moral experiment brings James at the very threshold of a sociology of morals. James, however, will never step through that threshold. Indeed, James in stressing that “claim and obligation ” are, in fact, coextensive terms,” (WB, 194) has depicted social fabric as a dynamic network of obligations, which echoes Royce’s view of community as united by bonds of responsibility. Obligations and responsibilities, however, do not originate from the social or communitarian dimension. Moral relations are created by the moral choices of individuals, who work thus as the primary condition and source of any moral order (WB, 156). In fact, although any individual is involved in obligations as he/she lives in society, before being a social fact “real ethical relations” are an inner problem of the individual in itself. One self can make demands on another self that are the source of the an individual’s inner moral conflicts and obligations52: “We call tyrannical demands imperatives. If we ignore these we do not hear the last of it. The good that we have wounded returns to plague us with interminable crops of consequential damages, compunctions and regrets. Obligation can thus exist inside a single thinker’s consciousness; and perfect peace can abide with him only so far as he lives according to some sort of casuistic scale which keeps his more imperative goods on top.” (WB, 158-159)

Accordingly, morality at its higher pitch is not full integration in the social order, but rather expression of an original tension within the individual, which expresses itself as a possible conflict between individual and society. For James, any actual moral system includes two virtual breaking points, which work as the agencies of the moral change of the world. First, there is the survival, in the subterranean social life, of those ideals that have been sacrificed by the current social order, but can be revitalized and reactivated at any time if social conditions so allow (WB, 156)53. 52

The conflict between selves is supported James’s account of the threefold self in chap. X of the Principles. In particular, the inner moral conflict as well as the possibility of overcoming the actual moral system on behalf of a different and higher ideal is made possible by the shift from the actual to a potential social self (PP I, p. 316.) 53 See also WB, pp. 258-259.

44 Second, the chance variations at work in the species, as described by Darwin, have never stopped their activity and can still beget individuals endowed with different idiosyncratic ideals and demands, the powers or abilities of which may modify the system on their behalf54. The appearance, or reappearance, of such ideal claims in critical times always take place through special individuals, the innovators, who break away from the established rules on behalf of a larger ideal, thus initiating a new moral experiment55. Such a breakdown of a given moral paradigm is, for James, the very place in which authentic moral life is deployed, and in which infringement of established moral rules, as an activity that concretely expresses human freedom and creativity, appears as “the highest ethical life” (WB, 158). When embodied in individuals endowed with the right amount of energy and passion, “all the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary” (WB, 144), for they have the power to overturn the hierarchy of the established values. Such paradigmatic crises necessarily beget a conflictual relation between the individual and society. Thus, the infringement of rules is not characterized by the pleasure of license, but by an inner necessity, by the weight of the responsibility any innovator takes upon him or her self, and by the seriousness the consequences the person’s transgression can beget in his or her life. In this sense, James’s proviso is: the highest ethical life is in the infringement of rules, “however few may be called to bear its burdens.” (WB, 158) As much as James rejects conservative immobilism, he also refrains from cheap and gratuitous rebellion and transgression. Not all moments of history are such moments of crisis that require breaking up the ethical system, and not all the deviants are innovators of morality (WB, 157). As matter of fact, innovators are few, and they can do nothing without the sympathy of their fellow citizens. Rejection by peers, or by society at large, is the extreme risk of the moral innovator, or 54

See G. E. Myers, op. cit., p. 399. See W. James “Great Men, Great Thoughts and Their Environment”, Atlantic Monthly XLVI, 1880. On great men’s action as propellers of history, see also H. Lotze, Mikrokosmos, [Bd III, Bh. VII, KIII, #4], pp. 65-69. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of Hegel’s theory of world-historical individuals. As for the sources of James’s notion of great men, I allow myself to remind the reader my “Introduction” to W. James, I grandi uomini e il loro ambiente – L’importanza degli individui. Pisa: Edistudio, 1995. 55

45 revolutionary, who necessarily, in departing from the established moral order, exposes himself to its blame and repression. Nonetheless, undertaken on behalf of a different and higher ideal, individual rebellion and infringement of norms have a real practical meaning and constitute a concrete possibility for change within human history. Heroic morality, romantic individualism, and worship of great men combine together in James and find their naturalistic justification in the Darwinian theory of chance variation as the major agent in the mutation of species. Faithful to Emerson’s lesson of normative autonomy56, James adopts a radically individualistic view, advocates individuals’ rights to defend their own values against current customs, and endorses the premises of a morality of brave engagement and loyalty to one’s own ideals. The deepest meaning of individual morality is in a superior and foreseeing ethicality, in which external social obligation is replaced by inner obligation to one’s own higher ideals, and the highest point of moral life consists of supererogatory acts57. Thus, James disposes of moral philosophy, bound to its descriptive task, and of its casuistic question, in order to approach an ethical perspective focused on the character of the moral agent and on his/her emotional involvement in the values to be exhalted, that is, in the agent moral, or, emotional, energy58. 56

See R. W. Emerson, “Self-Reliance” in Essays II (1841). T. Lekan (cit.) rightly wonders whether James’s theory “like utilitarian thinking…would allow for a meaningful distinction between obligatory and supererogatory acts.” It seems however evident that once rejected the utilitarian interpretation of James’s essay, together with the assumption that it is intended to frame a first order moral doctrine, the very topic of strenuous mood coupled with the theory of the potential social self throws open to an heroic ethics and provides a neat basis of distinction between the two kind of acts; with the proviso that there are obligatory acts that as they are fully endorsed, to wit, to the extent they are lived actively as a choice rather than passively as mere obeyance, are also supererogatory. 58 Cfr. R. Collins, Interactions Ritual Chains, Princeton Univ. Pr., 2004, pp. 108-109: “Emotional energy is like the psychological concept of ‘drive’, but it has a specifically social orientation. High emotional energy is a feeling of confidence and enthusiasm for social interaction. […] Emotional energy is not just something that pumps up up some individuals and depresses others. It also has a controlling quality from the group side. Emotional energy is also what Durkheim called ‘moral sentiment’: it includes feelings of what is right and what is wrong, moral and immoral.” 57

46 “The solving word, for the learned and the unlearned man alike, lies in the last resort in the dumb willingness and unwillingness of their interior character, and nowhere else.” (WB, 163)

And again: “[…] The only force to appeal to us, which either a living God or an abstract ideal order can wield, is found in the ‘everlasting ruby vaults’ of our human hearts, as they happen to beat responsive and not irresponsive to the claim.” (WB, 196)

This emotionally energetic condition of superior ethical life is mirrored in the distinction between opposite ethical attitudes that James names the “strenuous mood” and the “easy-going” or “genial” mood. The two attitudes refers to the articulated relation between the individual self, its own ideals and the social order with its actual ideals, values, customs and practices (WB, 159-160). All the fundamental concepts of James’s moral view – viz. strenuous mood, effort, will to believe – line up on the same side of the barricade, as it were, in opposition to habit, agnosticism, and the genial mood. The opposition, briefly stated, is that between activity and passivity, between conflict and acquiescence. Such a truly ethical opposition marks the major moral difference between one individual and another, and it is the very form of moral conflicts in human history (WB, 161). The moral dilemma between “good” and “evil” entails a inner conflict, which would be fair to call the conflict of freedom, concerning the kind of life and the kind of individual one chooses to be. “[…] when this challenge comes to us, it is simply our total character and personal genius that are on trial; and if we invoke any so-called philosophy, our choice or use of that also are but revelations of our personal aptitude or incapacity for moral life.” (WB, 162)

No rest for the wicked, as it were, but also no phony excuses for the weak. Whereas the moral problem of “good” and “evil” may have no final solution, turning out to be metaphysically and theoretically irrelevant, the lines of the ethical problem now come into sharper focus, as does its urgency: must an individual support and strive for what he/she thinks is good, whatever it be? As far as a single individual cannot decide what the universe is supposed to be, it is still in the individual’s power to decide what he/she wants to be in the universe. The way one acts and the reasons

47 why one acts define unequivocally and with no residual what one is, namely, one’s own character59. In the typology of decisions in James’s Principles of Psychology, the ethical question coincides with the decision of the fifth kind, which concerns existential choices and entails the problematic phenomenon of the effort of the will60. From yet another perspective, the ethical choice is the moral meaning of the “will to believe,” that is, the attribution of reality to something that does not actually exist but which has in this attribution its first condition of existence. In this perspective, the strenuous choice is a choice along the line of greatest resistance, and ethics appears as a question of energy61. Yet, the inner tensions of such a plastic and slippery notion as that of “energy”, as well as its ideological dangers cannot be overlooked; and it is more than fair to keep James’s ethical view at distance from any sort of romantic and velleitarian prometheanism (pace Professor Gale), as much as from any unconsidered, mystical aesthetics of force. As James will clarify later “energy” is not a principle, let alone a metaphysical principle on which a an aesthetics or an ideology of power can be built up; it is rather an expedient way to unify and account for different phenomena, ranging from psychological to nervous, from physiological to spiritual which constitute the emotional and active matter of moral life: “The term energy doesn’t even pretend to stand for anything ‘objective’. It is only a way of measuring the surface of phenomena so as to string their changes on a simple formula.” (P, 103) The ethics of energy is mostly and above all a doctrine of formation and construction of character which mirrors the fundamental opposition 59

I skip here the issue of religious belief as support of the strenuous mood James refers to in MP, § V, for it is not a relevant argument for the purpose of the present chapter. I will come back to the issue of religion, however, in chapter IV. 60 See PP II, p. 535. On the existential meaning of the decision with effort, see S. Franzese L’uomo indeterminato. Roma: D’Anselmi, 2000, pp. 167-174. 61 Cf. PP I, p. 288: “ […] the energy par excellence has to go farther and choose which interest out of several equally coercive, shall become supreme. The issue here is of the utmost pregnancy, for it decides a man's entire career. When he debates, Shall I commit this crime? Choose that profession? Accept that office, or marry this fortune? his choice really lies between one of several equally possible future Characters. What he shall become is fixed by the conduct of the moment

48 between culture and nature. For James, however, such an opposition moves away from its traditional idealistic matrix to attain a more naturalistic and anthropological foundation. The construction of the cultural world is the vital need of the only species that controls and organizes nature as a matter of own survival. The ethics of energy appears in such a perspective as the necessary policy through which human beings transform nature in themselves and in their environment into a cultural world.

CHAPTER II

The Anthropological Question The analysis developed in the previous chapter presents us with a difficult alternative. On the one hand, we could say that James simply does not have a moral philosophy, since, as we have shown, he doesn’t fit comfortably in the moral schools of his time: while he sometimes employs utilitarian language, he shows why the utilitarian attempt to impose a moral system based on pleasure is fundamentally flawed; and at the same time, he resists the “Hegelian temptation” to postulate an absolute, for in so doing one would destroy the “striving” that is at the heart of moral action. On the other hand, if we insist that James does have a moral philosophy, we are then obliged to ‘come up with the goods’, so to speak, and the only way to do that is to retrace the basic elements of an ethics in the corpus of James’s writings instead of trying to read that philosophy off some standard, canonical text. The first hypothesis, insofar as it is radical and provocative, is tempting. The second, however, is more realistic and more consistent with the general mood of a philosopher who explicitly declared that the problem of morality was the central problem of his life. Furthermore, our way of presenting the alternative, far from being tendentious or paradoxical, takes its cues from James himself, since it is the same alternative from which James’s philosophical enterprise sets out. Concerning this issue, James writes in his diary on February, 1st, 1870: “Today, I about touched bottom, and perceive plainly that I must face the choice with open eyes; Shall I frankly throw the moral business overboard, as one unsuited to my innate aptitudes, or shall I follow it, and it alone, making everything else stuff for it?”

James, as we will show, chose the second option. What this means will reveal itself as we follow his track. We must keep in mind, however, that the first option not only existed, but plays a critical role in the dialectic by which James pursued his “moral business”. It proved to be the kind of option that is not easily repressed and “exorcised,” as it were, by a “voluntary” decision. The idea that “the moral business” is hopelessly baffling to the individual intellect is the shadow that follows James’s moral

50 speculation. In this light, it seems evident that the popular as well as edifying image of James as a philosopher of optimism needs to be reconsidered. James was by temperament a tragic thinker, perfectly aware of the ungroundedness of all human constructions, and in particular of the constructions of human thought. Few other philosophers of his day felt with such an intensity the limit and the insufficiency of human reason and knowledge. The orror vacui that he shared with other major thinkers – we cannot help thinking at least of Kant or Nietzsche – generates a positive philosophy, a philosophy of energy, action, and commitment that is not, however, the result of a serene trust in the world, but rather the expression of a will to believe, a realization that trustworthiness is a precarious structure built up in the world, and easily thrown down. It is a bridge thrown over a chasm and toward an indefinite end62. The other thing we need to consider is James’s expression “making everything else stuff for it.” The project is evident: everything must be thought and directed in the perspective of the moral question, which thus becomes the implicit inspiring and organizing core of James’s investigation, either psychological or philosophical. Yet, such a declaration means also that the moral question requires a major preliminary work since it is not clear at all how a moral life is possible in the deterministic landscape drawn by the empirical sciences of nature. It is true that a diary note recording reflections at an early age in state of pessimism is not necessarily to be taken as a lifetime commitment. And yet, as a glance over James’s work as a whole shows, the problem of an intellectual absolutism or pessimism – the horns of his dilemma – remained central to his philosophy. Finding an alternative to pessimism is the process we are tracing here, and it will take us through certain unappreciated sources – namely, Hermann Lotze – and into James’s counterattack on Darwinism. The moral question can be posited only after the relationship between human being and nature has been clarified. In other words, the moral question is strictly dependent upon the anthropological question, whose development, which was in response to the questions posed by Darwinian evolutionary theory, must provide the frame of reference within which 62

See B. Wilshire “Charles Peirce on the Pre-Rational Ground of Reason” in The Primal Roots of American Philosophy, pp. 208-210.

51 morality can have a meaning. Ethics is the main and ultimate chapter of a philosophical anthropology.

1. James and Philosophical Anthropology In an interesting article entitled “the Anthropological Foundations of William James’s psychology,”63 M. A. DeArmey suggests the possibility of considering James himself as a forerunner of “Philosophical Anthropology”, the school of thought associated with Scheler and Plessner, which had its early root in Kant‘s anthropology, and included among its highest profile thinkers in philosophy, E. Cassirer, A. Gehlen and M. Merleau-Ponty, and among scientistists, F.J.J Buytendijk, K. Goldstein and E. Strauss. The author of the present work endorses such an interpretative perspective, which needs, however, to be clarified64. In “Man and History,” Scheler defines Philosophical Anthropology as “A basic science which investigates the essence and essential constitution of man, his relationship to the realms of nature.”65 The problem of the place of man in nature, or in other words the question of “human nature,” is, thus, the central question of philosophical anthropology posed by Scheler’s seminal work, Man’s Place in Nature The deepest sense of philosophical anthropology, as Scheler points out, is that Man is a problem for Itself66, and that this “being a problem for himself” is probably the most peculiar attitude that distinguishes Man from the other animals, as It is the animal which makes Its own existence the subject of inquiry. The problem 63

M. H. DeArmey “The Anthropological Foundations of William James’s Philosophy” in M.H. DeArmey and S. Kousgaard, The Philosophical Psychology of William James. Washington, pp. 17-40. On James’s philosophical anthropology, see also J. M. Edie William James and Phenomenology, 1987, and more recently S. Pihlström “Metaphysics with a Human Face: William James and the Prospect of Pragmatist Metaphysics”, William James Studies 2(1), 2007. 64 A more specific and detailed analysis of James’s philosophy as “philosophical anthropology” constitutes the content of a previous essay. See S. Franzese. L’uomo indeterminato. (Roma: D’Anselmi, 2000) 65 M. Scheler Philosophical Perspective, p. 65. 66 I maintain the word “Man” when required for the sake of fidelity to the quoted text. Where the word “Man” signifies the human kind or human beings in general I will write it with capital “M” and refer to it with the neutral pronoun “It.”

52 of Man’s nature is the very problem of the modern age, that is, of the age of scientific knowledge of nature, and it is not by chance that, as the sciences of nature develop, the question not only does not dissolve or reduce to a physical explanation, but is intensified. Man must be considered a special project of nature, with a task of Its own which constitutes the meaning and the style of human existence. Man’s place in nature has to be a special and absolutely unique one, and anthropology, as Gehlen states, is not just the last chapter of zoology. From this standpoint, the tension between the philosophical anthropology and the evolutionist theory of Man – especially Darwinian evolutionism – is evident. There is no doubt that Darwin‘s theory of the origin of species opened the ‘anthropological’ issue about the origin and the nature of Man, but Darwinism presents the terms of the question and not the solution of the problem. The rejection of the evolutionism as an overall cosmological theory does not mean, of course, a rejection of a “scientific,” namely, naturalistic, study of Man; rather, this rejection demands an altogether different use of scientific data within a more comprehensive anthropological image in which all the functions, higher and lower, organic and spiritual, are integrated in a single structural unity, as the correlative activities of a special mode of existence67. Philosophical anthropology, thus, must be a special discipline which blends together bio-medical science and the phenomenological analysis of human life as a coherent whole in order to define human nature and its most typical and fundamental structures, the “anthropina.” Scheler and Plessner considered it the task of philosophical anthropology to work out a theory of evolution that could clarify human origins, present a sound theory of will, give an adequate account of the intersubjective relations 67

See A. Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, p. XIV. “Our aim is instituting a system of enlightening reciprocal relations between all Man’s essential features, from the upright posture to morality since all these characters constitute a system, in which they presuppose one the other. The question of ‘causes’ must be left aside: there are no causal relations. Man is a unique project, and all Its characteristics converge into the same unitary project. […] There is no derivation, but only integration. Consciousness, representative world, language, are not to be derived from or reduced to somatic processes. Art and religion cannot be understood as sheer reflexes of the organic life. Higher and lower functions are vital necessities by the same, identical right.”

53 between human beings, solve the body-mind problem, and allow for a comprehensive reflection on the destiny of Man. In addition to these, DeArmey points out, we can single out some fundamental methodological features of the anthropo-philosophical inquiry: “An anthropology of excellence must be more than just another philosophical catalog on man. Secondly, phenomenological investigations should be viewed as confirming or falsifying theories of human nature. However, phenomenological essences and existential patterns must be ‘situated’ in the broader context of the physiological, historical organism. […] Thirdly, it should consider seriously the problem of a beginning. Where should an account of human nature begin? Is it merely a matter of style, or historical problematic?... And finally, philosophical anthropology must be universal – applicable to all human beings regardless of culture-peculiarities. Indeed, it is desirable that this discipline state the condition, in the general nature of human being, for the achievement of a culture in general.”68

There is little doubt that James belongs by right, although maybe not chronologically, to such a speculative horizon. In considering James’s role as philosophical anthropologist ante litteram, we have to take notice of at least two important aspects. First, if philosophical anthropology is the attempt to answer the anthropological question raised by the Darwininan evolutionism in the nineteenth century, there is little doubt that James found himself at the very center of this question. James not only lived in the “Anthropological Age,” but moreover, the cultural environment with which he was involved was engaged in the debate between evolutionists and anti-evolutionists, the chief protagonists on both sides being, often, personal acquaintances. Second, James joined in his person the two fundamental requirements for an excellent philosophical anthropologist: an accomplished medical education and a pronounced philosophical attitude, supported by a very sensitive inclination to introspection. James’s affinity to the problems and the objectives of the philosophical anthropological school, along with his awareness of his very special position as scientistphilosopher is voiced in his letter of December 1875 to Harvard’s President, Charles William Elliot: “A real science of man is now being built up out of the theory of evolution and the facts of archaeology, the nervous system and the senses. It has already a vast material extent.[…] Apart from the reference to myself, it my firm belief that the College cannot possibly have psychology taught as a living science by anyone who has not first-hand acquaintance with the facts of nervous physiology. On the other hand, no mere physiologist can adequately realize the subtlety and difficulty of the psychological portion of his own subject. […] A union of the two disciplines in one 68

M.A. DeArmey, op. cit., pp. 20-21.

54 man, seems the most natural thing in the world, if not the most traditional. But if tradition is required, Goettingen with Lotze, and Heidelberg and Zurich with Wundt would serve as the most honorable precedents for Harvard College in the path I propose.”

To Darwin and Lotze, James’s influences of the time, we need to add two other names: Kant and Renouvier(for his Neo-Kantian spiritualism) to to get a sense of the sources that influenced the vocabulary and concepts of James’s anthropological framework69. It is only in such a framework that we can understand the genesis of James’s anthropological image and its central tenet: the view of the human being as the indeterminate being. 1.1. Culture and Nature. Kant’s Teleological Perspective The storm which swept Western culture after the publication of Darwin‘s Origin of Species in 1859 is well known, and there is no need for a detailed account here. It is enough to say that Darwin’s book not only called into question the traditionally established relationship between Man and animal, but it also definitely undermined the traditionally accepted metaphysical and theological image of the world held since Aristotle. In fact, the major alarm concerning Darwin’s theory was not the idea of evolution in itself (Lamarck and Spencer worked out evolutionist theories before Darwin’s without producing the same violent reactions), but rather the abolition of any fixed bound between species, especially between animal and human species. A major metaphysical issue was raised by the relevant role that chance played in Darwinian evolutionism, that is, the idea, as Peirce well pointed out, that “chance begets order.” The debate between opponents and supporters of Darwin’s theory spread in Europe and America with an unpredictable virulence. In the Preface to his major work of 1863 bearing the significant title The Place of Man in Nature, the famous naturalist T.H. Huxley, who was among the first followers of 69

On James’s relationship with Kantian philosophy see R. B. Perry, op. cit., ch. XLIV. See also the more recent T. B. Carlson “James and the Kantian Tradition” in The Cambridge Companion to William James, 1997. As for James’s relation to to Renouvier and his school see the very accurate M. Girel “A Chronicle of Pragmatism in France Before 1907. William James in Renouvier’s Critique Philosophique”, in S. Franzese, F. Kraemer, Fringes of Religious Experiences. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2007.

55 Darwin’s evolutionism and probably its major spokesman, synthetically depicts the situation: “Among the many problems which arrived to my consideration, the position of human species in the zoological classification was one of the most serious. Indeed, in that epoch, that was a hot issue, in the sense that all those who touched it could be almost sure to burn their own fingers quite seriously. […] Linneus had taken one position, Cuvier another one; and among my elder contemporaries, men like Lyell, considered by many as revolutionaries of the purest kind, opposed strenuously to anything that tended to slaughter the barrier between Man and the rest of animal world.”70

At Harvard, when James still was a medical student, Darwinian evolution was hotly debated. The two outstanding exponents of the opposite factions, the anti-Darwinan Louis Agassiz and the pro-Darwinian Asa Gray, were both James’s professors. At the time, James was surely neither uninterested in the evolutionist question, nor insensitive to its philosophical implications. Although James did not actively enter into the disputation, he presented himself as a follower of Spencer’s philosophy of evolution, and was well acquainted with Darwin’s and Huxley’s works. Before traveling to Germany in 1867 to get acquainted with the methodology of research in the new school of experimental psychology associated with Wundt, Fechner, and Helmholtz, among others, James’s interests were focused on what was called physiological psychology. On a professional level, he accepted the sort of empirical reductionism typical of the positivist age. While in Germany, however, James, growing disillusioned with psycho-physics, which seemed to offer no positive answer to the major questions of the meaning of human life from a reductionist and deterministic standpoint, underwent a radical existential crisis. As a result of this, James turned his back on scientific psychology and turned his interest to philosophy, and in particular to Kant. The first Kantian work that James read was Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Kant’s anthropology is structured by the fundamental opposition between nature and culture. According to Kant there are two possible kinds of anthropology, a physiological anthropology, that is, a study of what nature makes of Man, and a pragmatic anthropology, that is, a study of what Man makes of Itself as a free agent. Man is both Nature and Reason, but what distinguishes Man as such is Its freedom, that is, that It can use Its 70

T.H. Huxley The Place of Man in Nature, p. vii.

56 reason to transcend Its natural part and thereby impose Its control on Nature. Nature shows itself in Man as passion and desire. However, as a free agent, that is, a rational being, Man has the power to discipline and subordinate Its desires and passions and organize them under rational principles. This power is what in an individual is called its character, and in humanity as a whole is called culture. “From a pragmatic consideration, the universal, natural (not civil) doctrine of signs (semiotica universalis) uses the word character in two senses.... The first is the distinguishing mark of the human being as a sensible or natural being; the second is the distinguishing mark of a human being as a rational being endowed with freedom. The man of principles, from whom one knows what to expect not from his instinct, for example, but from his will, has a character”71

Character means unity and consistency of individual life and it is what makes of an individual a person, that is, a free moral agent. Such a character is by no means natural, but is acquired by means of discipline and can be considered the self-creation of a second nature, i.e., as culture. According to Kant, the very possibility that allows Man to be a person is rooted in the fact that Man is the only living being endowed with selfconsciousness, that is, the only living being that has a concept of “self.” Self-consciousness, rationality and freedom distinguish Man from all the other animals as a being endowed with spontaneity, that is, as a being which has no preassigned natural environment and finality, but rather the power to (re)create itself and its own world according to Its own aims72. “Therefore, in order to assign the human being to his class in the system of animate Nature, nothing remains for us than to say that he has a character, which he himself creates, insofar as he is capable of perfecting according to the ends that he himself adopts.”73

For James, Kant’s anthropology appeared not only as the way out of the prison of determinism, but also as a way to reconcile the natural and the 71

I. Kant Pragmatic Anthropology, § 89, p. 185. See also I. Kant Critique of Judgement, p. 281: “There remains therefore of all his purposes in nature only the formal subjective condition, viz. the aptitude of setting purposes in general before himself and (independent of nature in his purposive determination) of using nature, conformably to the maxims of his free purposes in general, as means. […] The production of the aptitude of a rational being for arbitrary purposes in general (consequentely in his freedom) is culture. Therefore, culture alone can be the ultimate purpose which we have cause for ascribing to nature in respect to the human race.” 73 I. Kant, Pragmatic Anthropology, cit., p. 238. 72

57 spiritual in Man without being obliged to renounce either scientific knowledge or the higher meaningfulness of human life. He retained, indeed, the idea of the importance of desires in human conduct and the fundamental notion of consciousness as spontaneity and creation of the world. The subsequent reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason provided James with a further argument for separating the realm of scientific knowledge of nature from that of spiritual life, and thereby escaping determinism. James’s last step out of the existential crisis generated by the competing demands of science and the spirit was given to him by his reading of Renouvier’s Essays. This is not the place to canvass the influence that Renouvier’s “voluntarism” had on James and on his doctrine of the “will to believe,” which has been well covered in the literature. What is important to stress here is that Renouvier strengthened James’s conviction regarding the positive power of free-will, self-determination, and the right to believe in free-will as an existential choice and as the only way to give a meaning to life. On this basis James sketched the outline of his anthropological view, as revealed by the famous “Pomfret note”, written in the summer of 1869. The note is just a rough sketch, which probably summarizes the results of James’s reflections on the problems which captivated his mind in the last three years, problems concerning the essence of human nature. “(a) Man= a bundle of desires, more or less numerous. He lives inasmuch as they are gratified, dies as they are refused. (b) They exist by mere self-affirmation; and, appealing for legitimation to no principle back of them, are the lowest term to which man can be reduced. (c) Abridgement to extent of gratification (as in natural history, painting), and in degree (personal isolation, unfathomability of everything to our knowledge.) The expansive, embracing tendency, the centripetal, defensive, forming two different modes of self-assertion; sympathy and self-sufficingness... To accept the universe, to protest against it, voluntary alternatives.” (TC I, 301)

As DeArmey rightly points out, the note is an early version of James’s essential conception of Man as “open teleology,” which will develop finally into James’s late doctrine of pluralism and meliorism. Accordingly, it is also possible to consider this note as the embryo of all of James’s philosophical work. Yet, it is worthwhile paying attention to the radical

58 anthropologism of James’s view as it emerges from these few lines. James posits the problem of legitimation, but there is no other legitimation for Man than Man Itself. Human nature is given with no possibility of further metaphysical foundation; “Man is the animal with no fixed end but also with no legitimation.” This kind of “tragic” attitude, which is also a feature of Kant’s philosophy, is one of the main drives in the development of James’s thought; although it runs counter to the popular image of James as a voluntarist and optimist philosopher, this tragic attitude emerges continuously and unexpectedly in his works. If we pay attention to this theme, we will detect another James, as it were, whose extremely positive anthropology is drawn on the reverse of an extremely negative metaphysics. 1.2. James and Evolutionism. The Metaphysical Club. Around the early ‘70’s when James was lecturing at Harvard, a group of young scholars, including Chauncey Wright, C. S. Peirce, N. St. John Green, J. Fiske, J. Holmes and James himself, founded the Metaphysical Club and met to discuss “fundamental questions,” as Peirce reported in a letter to the Editor of the Sun74. One of these fundamental issues, and apparently the most discussed, was precisely the evolutionist doctrine. The key-figure of the Metaphysical Club, according to Peirce, was Chauncey Wright, one of the earliest American supporters of Darwin’s evolutionism, which he combined, via methodological skepticism, with a radical empiricist and an anti-metaphysical attitude. In this context, James, who, as a student, had espoused Spencer’s evolutionism, was suddenly converted to Darwinian theories by Wright’s and Peirce’s criticisms of Spencer’s naive mechanist and teleological theory of evolution75. Darwin’s theory fitted with both James’s medical 74

See P. P. Wiener Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism. Cambridge (MS): Harvard Univ. Pr., 1949, ch. II. In his work, Wiener provides a detailed reconstruction of the birth and activity of the Metaphysical Club, on the basis of Peirce’s reports. 75 James’s dismissal of Spencer’s philosophy is marked by the undergraduate course (“Natural History 2”) on “Physiological Psychology” in 1876/77 and 1877/78 in which Spencer’s Principles of Psychology was used as a text and thoroughly criticized. James’s critical attitude toward Spencer will characterize many of his subsequent

59 interests in neurophysiology and his moral tension toward an antideterministic account of the natural world. As P.P. Weiner notes: “William James was fascinated by the evolution of the brain and nervous system and by Darwin’s account of the physiological expression of emotions in man and animals, along with other Darwinian views of the origin of human traits.”76 Yet, James’s relationship with Darwin’s theories, especially with regard to the anthropological question, was rather ambivalent. In James, Darwinian evolutionism took a “metaphysical” twist that left aside the aspect of environmental selection in favor of the theory of “chance variations,” which better suited James moral views. “What James as a metaphysician finally retained of evolution, namely the idea of temporalism and spontaneous variation, served him persistently in his defense of the primary importance of individual experience and personal freedom. That is the Ariadne’s thread to James philosophy of evolution. The elusive but genuine character of individual spontaneity in both the external world and in man is in James’s view of evolution epitomized by ‘saltatory’ mutations, original, spontaneous, irreducible phases of experience.”77

Yet James’s metaphysical reading was consistent with the general way Darwin was received in America. Asa Gray, the first who introduced Darwin’s theory in American culture, had mainly focused on the religious problem raised by Darwinism. Indeed, Gray recognized that the central philosophical problem in the theory of natural selection was that of chance versus design, or mechanism versus teleology. So also did the opponents of Darwinism, beginning with Agassiz, and the whole issue of Darwinism in a short time became less of a scientific than a religious and moral issue. Briefly, it was in the spirit of that period in American cultural history to overlook the sheer scientific aspects of Darwin’s theory in favor of its meaning for metaphysical or anti-metaphysical positions, and, consequently, to privilege those aspects which better supported one or another side. Thus, it is not surprising that James stressed those features of Darwinism which better fitted his belief in human spontaneity and in the efficacy of human initiative. courses in the ‘80’s and in the ‘90’s. For a more detailed account see R.B. Perry, op. cit., chap. XXVIII. 76 Op. cit., p. 97. 77 Ibidem, p. 101.

60 On the other side of the Atlantic, things were not very different. In particular, T.H. Huxley greeted Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection as the most convincing scientific alternative to Divine Providence and stated the definitive supremacy of mechanism over teleology. Indeed, Huxley had been one of the first to perceive the philosophical relevance of Darwin’s theory. In defending Darwin’s account of the origin of species, Huxley had focused on the anthropological question that was implicit but deliberately undeveloped by Darwin, in the Origin78. Huxley showed that Darwinian theory, pushed to the radical and materialistic limit, implied the total absorption of Man within the animal world. In other words, Huxley explicitly formalized the problem of the place of Man in nature as a philosophical-anthropological question: “The question of the questions for humanity... is to ascertain the place of Man in nature and his relation with the universe of things. […] Since it will be admitted that a certain knowledge of Man’s position in the animated world is an indispensable preliminary for a correct comprehension of Man’s relations with the universe.”79

1.3. Harmony and Progress. Huxley ‘s Cosmological Anthropology Huxley, following Darwin’s theory of evolution, supported the view that the evident structural unity between Man and the animal world meant that there was no essential distinction between the two, but only a contingently different evolutionary path: Man, only distinguished by Its peculiar evolutionary development, is no special creature, but just an animal like all the others80. 78

In On the Origin of Species Darwin merely writes “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history leaving open the question of the origin of Man, not only because he feared the reactions to his theory as applied to Man, but also because there was not enough scientific evidence for such an application: no fossil relics of hominids were found outside of Europe and these were less than 200,000 years old. That is, too recent to support the theory of a common origin of all species, human included, from a first protoanimal whose appearence on the planet should have been dated much earlier than 200,000 years ago.” 79 T. H. Huxley, op. cit., pp. 77 e 80. 80 In order to understand the violent impact of Huxley’s view on his cultural environment the contemporary reader has to imagine the conventional wisdom of Huxley’s day, in which the theological and creationist conception of Man assumed Man’s priority and difference from other animals as being part of Man’s spiritual essence and divine descent, a view supported by biblical text. Man was considered as a

61 Huxley, however, could not provide a fully satisfactory answer to the problem of the difference between human and animal mental power. According to his view, man is an animal like all the other, just at a different, higher point of the evolutionary process, one characterized by the production of conscious thinking. This machine-like notion of Man, as the animal which secretes consciousness is mirrored in Huxley’s theory of “conscious automaton,” which James will criticize in an article of 1880 entitled “Are We Automata?,” one of the major documents in the development of James’s anthropological view. It is difficult to grasp the real meaning of Huxley’s view and of distinctions like that which supposedly pertains between ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ animals, unless we regard it against the ideological horizon of Comte’s positivism and his notion of one-tracked progress, the different stages of which are ranked in order of complexity. In Huxley’s account, evolution moves along one line from the lowest organisms to highest – that is, from simpler organisms to those which show a higher degree of complexity in their organization. In other words, nature’s pattern reveals a progressive dynamic that produces ever more complex and organized organisms, and this is the movement and the progress of the natural world. For Huxley, then, the hierarchy of beings that results from the positivistic metaphysics of progress underlying his evolutionary teleology puts Man at the top. As he puts it, “…considering the intimate relation between Man and the rest of living world.... I cannot see any reason to doubt that they all are coordinate terms of the great progression of Nature, from the informed to the formed – from the inorganic to the organic – from the blind force to the conscious intellect and will.”81 Thus, the human animal occupies his preeminent place in Nature in virtue of some mysterious cerebral molecular activity82. The gist of Huxley’s teleology become much clearer Evolution and Ethics, containing articles and lectures written between the ’70’s and ’80’s and collected and published as a book in 1894. In the long essay that gives special kind of living creature bearing the brand of divine spirit in Its soul. In this context, a mere difference in the modes of evolution was considered no difference at all. 81 Ibidem, pp. 150-151. 82 T.H. Huxley, op. cit., pp. 140.

62 the title to the book, Huxley elaborates an account of his evolutionary view that is more philosophical and pessimistic, showing some affinity with Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. Here, Huxley moves away from the positivistic conception of evolution as unilinear progress towards a notion of Nature as Cosmic Process, into which is embedded a more dubious teleology. Evolution now takes on a twofold meaning: it can be progress from simple to complex, or, as the recently discovered law of entropy suggested, it can be regression from complex to simple. In other words, evolution is less an explanation of the Cosmic Process than a general statement about the method and the result of that process. To be sure, the Cosmic Process works in view of some end, but there is no clear clue of what this end should be. This text is important as an expression of James’s cultural milieu, but also as a direct reference, despite James’s general critical attitude toward Huxley. In Huxley’s later evolutionism, the Kantian distinction between nature and culture is interpreted, under the influence of German idealism, as a binary opposition. Nature and culture are antithetical aspects of the one Cosmic Process. The principle working throughout animate nature is Darwin’s “struggle for existence,” whereas culture is the result of human work performed to eliminate the conditions of this struggle83. Insofar as physical, intellectual and moral Man is part of Nature and a product of the Cosmic Process, human life is seen as a place of a continuous tension between the “artificial” – the product of culture – and the “natural” – a blind force that is always aiming at the destruction of such a product. This tension is the origin of the distinction between natural and cultural products, and it is the foundation of those legal and institutional instruments that Man uses to suppress conflicts that arise between the competing desires of different individuals; the history of this repression is the history of Man’s independence from the “state of nature” in the “state 83

Noteworthy is the affinity between Huxley‘s notion of culture and Gehlen‘s category of “relief” (Entlastung) as the typical structure of the anthropological dimension and condition of human culture. The relation between nature and culture emerges as a thread which connects the origin of philosophical anthropology with its final expression in the common attempt to single out the most universal and, at the same time, significant structure of human nature.

63 of art” of civilization.84 In Huxley, political suggestions typical of the liberal tradition from Hobbes to Kant and Fichte blend with the Malthusian theory of population, already acknowledged by Darwin to form the core of the theory of natural selection.85. A perfect, ideal state of culture, if ever attained, could not be a steady and permanent condition because the complete elimination of the natural destructive activity would turn into a problem of overpopulation: “The problem of such an Eden is the growth of population and its consequent problems. The struggle for existence should be reinstated in some form or it needs to reduce the population as well as the gardener cuts off and eradicates defective and superb plants.”86

The struggle for existence is the great natural device to cull the growth of population. From this point of view, ethics is an unnatural thing and a double-edged sword because, while assisting human beings to achieve the “state of art,” it nonetheless debilitates the powers necessary in the struggle for existence. The idea is that of reversed selection, widely used also by Nietzsche87. The self-limitation essential in the ethical process works in exactly the opposite direction of Darwinian natural selection. The “evolution of society” is an altogether different process not only from the “evolution of species” but also from that which produces variety within the “state of art;” what is called struggle for existence in the society is often a 84

See I. Kant Critique of Judgement, cit., p. 282: “The formal condition under which nature can alone attain this its final design (culture) is that arrangement of men’s relations to one another by which lawful authority in a whole, which we call a civil comunity, is opposed to the abuse of their conflicting freedoms; only in this can the greatest development of natural capacities take place.” 85 See C. Darwin On the Origin of Species (1859). London: Watts & Co, 1950, p. 55. “A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase.... Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical condition of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage.” 86 T. H. Huxley Evolution and Ethics, p. 44. 87 See e.g. F. Nietzsche The Gay Science (trans. W. Kaufmann). New York, Vintage Books, 1974, I, §1: “Even the most harmful man may really be the most useful when it comes to the preservation of the species; for he nurtures either in himself or in others, through his effects, instincts without which humanity would long have become feeble or rotten.”

64 struggle for the means of enjoyment. In the struggle for the means of enjoyment, success is achieved not by individual excellence, courage, strength, or shrewdness, but by means of qualities such as energy, industriousness, intellectual power, perseverance, and sympathy. The result is a reversed selection in which, because of ethics, the best individuals from the natural point of view, namely, the strongest, the bravest, the “toughest,” yield to the best from the cultural standpoint, that is, the weakest under the natural perspective, the “tender.” Consequently, the former are condemned to a life at the margins of society as “criminals” or “rejects.”88 Yet, as Huxley points out, this condition can be easily reversed because the more culturally refined political society becomes, the more it is at risk from various disasters: overpopulation and wars unbalance its equilibrium, and the forces of nature push at its limits, undermining its delicate mechanism and reinstating the natural law of selection of the strongest. Huxley thus offers an apocalyptic and nihilistic prediction that epitomizes his last view of evolution as the core of a cosmicanthropological philosophy of history: “What is before the human race is a continuous struggle to preserve and improve the state of art of an organized political society in opposition to the state of nature; in this society and by that Man can develop a civilization of values, able to self-preserve and improve itself, until the evolution of the globe will have irreversibly begun its downward parabola, so that the cosmic process takes back its predominance and, once again, the State of Nature will take over the surface of the planet.”89

1.4. The Descent of Man. Instinct, Sociality, and Morality in Darwinism In the years between 1859, date of the first edition of On the Origin of Species, and 1871, year of publication of The Descent of Man, Darwin 88

T.H. Huxley, op. cit., §XIV, pp. 57-58. Ibidem, §XV, p. 60. A passage of analogous flavor is in A.J. Balfour The Foundations of Belief. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1895, pp. 30-31, quoted by James in Pragmatism. Lect. III, see P, p. 54. There is an undeniable cosmicapocalyptic trend shared by many outstanding positivist authors ‘fin de siècle,’ which originates from the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics. Some other interesting examples can be found in E. Renan Dialogues Philosophiques (1876); A. Blanqui L’eternité par les astres (1871); F. Nietzsche On Truth and Falsity in Extramoral Sense (1876). On the ideological and social implication of the theory of entropy see ch IV. 89

65 published five revised editions of the Origins. In the later editions, apart from the addition of new discoveries which worked as further evidences of his theory, Darwin made some slight but necessary corrections to the presentation of his theory. First, he clarifies the issue of individual chance variations, which had been misunderstood by his interpreters: variations are individuals within a species, not single changes in individual structure; moreover, they are far less frequent and relevant in the evolution of a species, than his readers seemed to surmise90.. Second, Darwin realized that the language he had used in the early editions was subject to a sort of teleological misunderstanding. Indeed, in the first edition (1859) Darwin had spoken of “natural selection” as acting on behalf of species, preserving those characteristics that were more advantageous to them. It was a metaphorical expression, but many interpreters, especially those more committed to theological and religious positions, had found in it a possible way to reconcile the theory of evolution with the argument of “divine design.” Darwin carefully points out that that was not his intention, and that it was just a – possibly illchosen – metaphor. “Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural Selection: Some have imagined that Natural Selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life. [...] Others have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in the animals which become modified. […] In the literal sense of the word Natural Selection is a false term; but who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? [...] It has been said that I speak of Natural Selection as an active power or Deity; [...] Every one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word nature; but I mean by nature, only aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us. With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be forgotten.”91

Darwin, thus, reaffirms the absolutely mechanical character of natural selection against teleological interpretation. Yet, another and more influential attempt to connect Darwinism and religion had also been made, according to which the theory of evolution could be accepted for animals and plants as long as a special place were reserved for Man. According to this view, Man’s body may possibly have evolved, but the human mind’s 90 91

C. Darwin The Origin of Species (1872/76), pp. 74-75. Ibidem, 66.

66 properties cannot be reduced to the product of mechanical processes, thus according Man a different position in “creation,” and opening the door to divine intervention in the scheme of nature. To reject such an interpretation, Darwin decided to publish the vast material he had collected on anthropology, which he had excluded from the Origin92. In 1871, Darwin published The Descent of Man, in which all the possible ambiguities in his own view of the place of Man in nature and the supernatural origin of human mind were ruled out: “There can be no doubt that the differences between the mind of the lowest man and of the highest animal is immense. […] Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties... of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”93

The Descent, as Darwin points out, has a threefold object “firstly, whether man, like every other species, is descended from some preexisting form; secondly the manner of his development; and thirdly, the value of the difference between the so-called races of man.”94 The first two points, which are the subject of the first four chapters of the book, are particularly relevant to the present analysis. The great variability in features and character that Man shares with all the other animals and, at the same time, the presence in Man of structures which belong to other species at a lower stage of evolution are sufficient ground – according to Darwin – to assert that Man, like all the other animals, evolved from a remote singular progenitor. This was a protospecies from which, through several variations, all the different species have descended. Yet, explained in this way, the substantial sameness of nature between Man and other animals fails to account for the 92

C. Darwin The Descent of Man, p. 1: “The nature of the present work will be best understood by a brief account of how it came to be written. During many years I collected notes on the origin and descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but rather with the determination not to publish, as I thought that should thus only add to prejudices against my views. […] Now, the case wears a wholly different aspect. […] In consequence of the views now adopted by most naturalists, and which will ultimately... be followed by others who are not scientific, I have been led to put together my notes, so as to see how far the general conclusion arrived at in my former works were applicable to man.” 93 Ibidem, ch. IV, p. 130. 94 Ibidem, p. 2.

67 most striking difference between Man and Animal, namely, the difference in their mental power. “We have seen in the last two chapters that man bears in his bodily structure clear traces of his descent from some lower form; but it may be urged that, as man differs so greatly in his mental power from other animals, there must be some error in this conclusion.... My object in this chapter is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and higher mammals in their mental faculties.”95

Darwin has no doubt that there is an enormous difference between the mental powers of Man and animals, but makes the claim that this is not an absolute qualitative difference, only a difference in the level of evolution of the higher faculties. We find no difference in kind between the animal and the human mind. The intervals that can be found between a species and another are filled with innumerable individual gradations, from the lower to the higher (for Darwin assumes directional evolution in the realm of mental powers), so that a continuous line of development in mental power can be detected between one species and an other; in the same way it is possible to find a gradation in mental power between different individuals within the human species. Moreover, in Man can be found those instincts that are found in other animals, such as self-preservation, sexual behavior, desire for procreation, parental love, etc., though what distinguishes Man from other animals is that “man, perhaps, has somewhat fewer instincts than those possessed by the animals which come next to him in the series” (DM, p. 68). Darwin‘s suggestion, here, is that the higher an animal’s rank in the evolutionary hierarchy, the lesser the number of their instinctsand their complexity, and the more their behavior depends on wants that are fulfilled by “possessing similar powers of reasoning”. Yet, as Darwin points out, the issue of the relation between intelligence and instinct is quite complex, and Cuvier’s theory of inverse ratio between instincts and intelligence finds no evidence in experience. There is little doubt that the difference between higher and lower animals consists of a lesser amount of mechanical and fixed reactions, and in an increasing amount of contingency and freedom in behavior. Yet, there are, according to Darwin, no conclusive elements in favor of a correlation between intelligence and instincts such that it is possible to consider the greater or lesser presence of one or the other as a 95

Ibidem, pp. 66-67.

68 determinant factor in ranking the species. To be sure, intelligence and instinct interact in different ratios in directing the behavior of both animals and Man. Instead of using this uncertain criteria to demarcate the direction of mental evolution, Darwin urges another characteristic of higher animals, and Man especially: a greater plasticity and integration in mental activity and a reduction of separate, fixed actions. This change is almost certainly due to the greater complexity in the development of the brain, which is typical of higher mammals, primates and Man. In particular, what seems radically to separate Man from all the other animals is the exercise of such higher mental activities as abstraction, general conception, self-consciousness, mental individuality, language, sense of beauty, and religion. Here, however, Darwin’s discussion becomes necessarily less conclusive, and limited to sort of a negative argument aiming only at stressing the absence of conclusive evidence against the possibility of the evolutionary conception. This critical point within the theory of evolution is the necessary consequence of Darwin’s attempt to hold to the theory of an all-encompassing linear evolutionary progression. Such an attempt reveals the monistic attitude that Darwinian evolutionism shares with other representatives of Positivism. In the course of quite successfully defending his theory from theological and creationist challenges and appropriations, Darwin goes to the opposite extreme and falls back on a mechanist, though not teleological, metaphysics, in which relevant factual differences are overlooked on behalf of the consistency of the system. Thus, the attempt to make of anthropology the last chapter of an evolutionary zoology ends up mystifying the special form of human existence, rather than fairly accounting for it. It is quite relevant, from this standpoint, to note Darwin’s reference to the objection to the theory of natural selection expressed by the Duke of Argyll. “It has often been objected to such views...that man is one of the most helpless and defenceless creature in the world; and that during his early and less well-developed condition, he would have been still more helpless. The Duke of Argyll, for instance, insists that ‘the human frame has diverged from the structure of brutes, in that direction of greater physical helplessness and weakness. That is to say, it is a divergence96 which of all others it is most impossible to ascribe to mere natural selection.”

96

C. Darwin, The Descent of Man, cit., p. 64.

69 It is quite possible to read in this kind of objection an echo of Herder’s view of Man as “wanting nature” (Maengelwesen), and a forerunner of Gehlen’s account of Man as a “paradoxical animal,” namely, a sheer contradiction in terms of animal life and the relative struggle for life. Darwin’s answer, in pure evolutionary style, is inconclusive: “we cannot say whether man has become larger and stronger, or smaller and weaker than his ancestors.” As a matter of fact, when considered from the pure mechanicalbiological point of view, the fact that Man has become, through natural selection, “in the rude state in which he now exists...the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth,” is a real enigma, and a question Darwin prefers to leave unanswered. In short, Darwin’s linear theory of evolution does not solve crucial questions about Man’s natural history and instead occludes them, even if we plainly admit that Man’s organic structure is similar to that of others animals. Thus, Darwin’s theory of evolution works for Man only if we consider the variation within a particular species originally engendering a form of life different from all the others and occupying a special place in nature. Consciousness, conception, abstraction, language, sociality, and almost all the other superior faculties are the specific “spiritual” activities of a species with a peculiar physical structure, and such activities are the necessary and exact correlatives of such a physical structure. In this species, as Darwin himself remarks, the structure of the hand goes along not only with the bipedal erect posture and the growth of the brain’s hemispheres but also with the abstract notion of “object,” with verbal language, with reflective self-consciousness, with an indeterminate state of mental activity, and last, but not least, with the social life entailing the division of labor. In other words, Darwin implicitly recognizes the correlation between human physical structure and those basic conditions of human sociality that reveal human existence as a cultural form of life , and that allow the human animal to live only by means of its work of transforming its environment into a world. In this light, Darwin’s explanation of the origin of morality in the human species conveys some ambiguity, as well97.. 97

Ibidem, p. 101.

70 Moral sense is the product of the interaction between social instinct (feeling of sympathy), mental power (consciousness and language), and habit. “We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity.... But in the case of man, who alone can with certainty be ranked as a moral being, actions of a certain class are called moral, whether performed deliberately, after a struggle with opposing motives, or impulsively through instinct, or from the effect of slowly-gained habit.”98

Yet, it is not the case that the presence and the interaction of such elements inevitably begets a moral sense. Moral sense in the human species consists essentially of “comparison between past and future actions, or motives, and of approving and disapproving of them:” Darwin’s reconstruction, which is gathered from the typical themes dealt with in the empiricist tradition, from Locke to Smith and Bain, works ex post facto from the account of the existent to its possible origins. The tacit equivalence between impulses and motives reduces moral deliberation to a mechanistic pattern of the conflict of impulses and feelings, conceived as physical forces. Yet, as the very idea of conflict and deliberation implies an indeterminate state, the functions of a high level brain structure must deal with this outside any instinctual feedback loop, which stands in stark contrast to the model of the instinctive structure of behavior. In other words, we need a special kind of mental activity to adjudge the conflict between impulses, and this structure is mostly, if not exclusively, human. The weakness of the model upon which the empirical perspective is built is made evident by the proliferation of accessory hypotheses required to maintain the continuity between the conflict of impulses and the moral deliberation. Indeed, as Darwin puts it, in order to keep our moral life we need an “inward monitor,” feelings of sympathy, of regret, of shame, a love of praise, in addition to memory, self-consciousness, consciousness of time, activity of comparison, reason and so on. Once again, the problem with a straightforward Darwinian account is that all this should have been produced by chance and natural selection from lower species, which adequately conduct their life without such complications.

98

Ibidem, p. 115.

71

2. James’s Overcoming of Darwinism. The Microcosmic View The many problems entailed in Darwin’s anthropology make James’s relationship with Darwinism quite critical and rather idiosyncratic in that it is less a literal advocacy of Darwin than a philosophical reinterpretation. Indeed, James selects out of Darwin’s evolutionism only those features most favorable to his own philosophical purposes: the theory of chance variations, the notion of hereditary dispositions, and the idea of the unachieved and inexhaustible variety and complexity of nature. On the other hand, James abandons the fundamental theory of linear directional evolutionary development since it seems too teleological. In addition, James changes the Darwinian relation of activity-passivity between individual and environment, transforming the selective action of environment on variations into an interaction between spontaneous variations as an active, creative force, and environment as plastic and reactive medium of activity. Experience is not, for James, adaptation of the internal relations to the external, as per Spencer, but rather a reciprocal transformation guided by the original spontaneity of mind. James regards spontaneous variations as the least mechanical aspect of Darwin’s evolutionism and as a dynamic and causally effective factor within the natural world. Spontaneous variations are not a passive product of environmental selection; rather, they act and react, and insofar as they are something new, they are sources of positive novelty in the world. All of those special features of the human form of life, including consciousness, morality, aesthetics, and language, are indeed cumulative variations, as Darwin states, but they are absolutely gratuitous and non-instrumental. That is, such features of the human form of life do possess neither positive survival value nor can they be traced back to their origin as simple instruments of adaptation; rather, they are ways in which Man modifies and (re)creates Its world. There is a clear rejection, on James’s part, of the crypto-teleology of the “principle of survival,” which follows from Darwin’s correction of the theory of natural selection99. There is no immediate and necessary relation 99

Ibidem, p. 62: “I now admit... that in the earlier editions of my Origin of Species I perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest. […] but I am convinced... that very many structures which now appear to us

72 between utility and survival in the interaction between variation and environment; this is why the variations, which introduced the highest development of human faculties, did not disappear, but successfully survived despite their biological uselessness. James did not agree with Huxley that evolution and natural selection suffice as explanations of the cosmic process. Instead, they are the general description of the possible but not necessarily unique way in which things go on. Additionally, James later challenges the dogmatic aspect of evolutionism’s positivistic attempt to replace religion with science, finding it incompatible with the facts of science itself: “Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes, as the scientific mind now follows them, she appears to cancel herself.” (VRE, 491)

Thus, James’s “metaphysical” reading of evolutionism is always focused on the priority of chance over determination and of novelty over repetition as the conditions of conceiving an open universe for human moral freedom. In considering James’s revision of Darwinian evolutionism, it is noteworthy that the problem of the origin of Man is absolutely missing. The descent of Man is not an issue for James. Man’s origins are lost in a too remote past; hence, any assumption about such origins is theoretically irrelevant because they are out of the reach of our necessarily limited useless, will hereafter be proved to be useful, and will therefore come within the range of natural selection. Nevertheless, I did not formerly consider sufficiently the existence of structures, which, as far as we can at present judge, are neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work. […] It is, as I can now see, probable that all organic beings, including man, possess peculiarities of structure, which neither are now, nor were formerly of service to them, and which, therefore, are of no physiological importance.”

73 knowledge. James takes account of the issue of evolution and variations only with reference to the human brain and within the limits of human knowledge, that is, only to the extent they constitute the final justification for the variety and complexity of human mind, and the ultimate answer to the question about the conditions of our experience. In stressing, consistently with his Kantian (and Emersonian) references, the creative and active autonomy of Man, James more or less assumes the account of human nature as culture, and accepts the view that the human form of life exists in a state of insuperable tension between culture and nature. Man is the being which has “culture” as Its own nature. Morality, as the point at which the tension between nature and culture becomes most evident, is the core of this tension, but it is also the highest expression of that autonomous creativity that is at the very heart of the human form of life. 2.1. Anthropology and Psychology Although a momentous source of innovative and original suggestions for a new, scientific view of Man and nature, Darwinism failed to provide a conclusive answer to the anthropological questions it opened. Moreover, from the moral standpoint, evolutionism turned into a reductionist naturalism that considered the human moral dimension as a mere byproduct of biological life. James rejected this view, which was supported by, among others, his friend Chauncey Wright, as “nihilistic.” The distinction between theoretical science and morals, which James borrows from Kant, is intended to save the primacy and autonomy of practical reason and put it out of the reach of any form of positivist reductionism. The distinction saves morality from exile in the irrational dominion of sentimentalism or superstition, or transformation into a mere organic byproduct. The ambiguous relationship between James and Darwinism can be understood, thus, only from James’s twofold need of acquiring a scientifically correct image of Man as living being and, at the same time, retaining the moral significance of human life. James adopts quite a similar attitude in relation to psychology. In comparison to the psychological tradition in which James had been educated, namely, the empiricist psychology of Locke, Hume and Bain, and the experimental psychology of Helmholtz, Fechner and Wundt, the

74 psychological theory James offers in the Principles gives the impression of an anti-psychology, that is, a philosophical anthropology. In such a context, psychological experimental “data” turn into “phenomena” and “activities” of a psychical life that cannot be broken down into its components, but rather develops as a fluid dynamic with quite blurred and undefined boundaries. The Principles does not so much explain as, instead, show the several aspects of psychical life as the very modes of human life in its complexity. Thus, the psychological “explanation” cannot undermine the moral meaning of certain phenomena. “Moral meaning” in itself is not only a phenomenon as true and real as those that can be “measured” in a laboratory, but it is also the ultimate condition of meaningfulness of human existence, prior to any single psychological phenomenon. 2.2. Lotze and the Microcosmic View James’s attempt to overcome the reductionist naturalism of empiricist psychology, saving the spiritual dimension of Man and the primacy of moral experience, without falling into the opposite extreme of Hegelian idealism, owed a lot to the influence of H. Lotze, which James considered the “deepest philosopher of the day… and the most exquisite of contemporary minds.” James’s first contact with Lotze’s theories occured in 1867 in Berlin, through the reading of Lotze’s Medicinische Psychologie (1852). From James’s annotation is possible to reconstruct the development of his Lotzian early reading which are the beginning of a lifelong and most influential intellectual relation testified by the manifold mentions and quotes scattered in James’s works and letters100. James bought the second German edition of Mikrokosmus (1869) in 1876 and the English edition in 1885. The Logik (1874) and the Metaphysik (1878) were acquired just after their publication. James read all these works before he started working at the Principles in 1880 and their relevance in the preparation of his masterpiece is claimed in its Introduction: “I cannot resist the temptation at the end of my first literary venture to record my gratitude for the inspiration I have got from the writings of J.S. Mill, Lotze, Renouvier, Hodgson and Wundt […].” (PP I, p VII) 100

For a more detailed analysis of Lotze’s influence on James, see the excellent studies of O. F. Kraushaar listed in the bibliography.

75 As well as in a earlier letter to Stanley Hall: “I have read about half of Lotze’s Metaphysics. He is the most delectable, certainly, of all German writers – a pure genius. […] However, it gratified and at the same time disgusted me to see how many choice pages of my everlasting psychology had been anticipated by Lotze.”101

From the perspective of our task in this chapter, recovering the lineaments of James’s philosophical anthropology, it is important that the reader have some sense of Lotze’s philosophy. As Lotze is no longer on the reading list of major philosophers, and has even been generally neglected by James’s scholars, we think it is of interest to bring out some of the major themes in Lotze’s Mikrokosmus, a text James knew very well. Lotze’s vocabulary and themes had a tendency to transmigrate into James’s own writings, since they often, as James said, anticipated his themes. James in fact adopted the Mikroksomus for his own courses courses of Philosophy, the main topic of which is exactly the anthropological question on the place of Man in the Cosmos and the moral meaning of human existence. James’s dissatisfaction over evolutionism and its mechanistic account of nature and human life found a substantial ally in Lotze’s antipositivistic and spiritualistic attitude as presented in Mikrokosmus102. For Lotze, the primacy of truth of which science boasts must yield to the primacy of moral and aesthetical values and of practical reason, for the search for truth is meaningful only when directed by respect for the facts of experience in the service of the intellectual and moral demand for the respect for the spiritual aspect of human existence and for its unity and consistency103. Thus, whereas, for evolutionists, the unification of the cosmos is achieved through the concept of evolution from a common origin and/or toward one common end, for Lotze, it originates instead from the deep unity of the living presence of one ideal principle. The ultimate meaning of human existence, then, as expressed in an individual’s spiritual 101

Letter WJ to S. Hall, Oct. 10 [1879]. See H. Lotze Mikrokosmos, cit., pp. xxvi-xxvii. 103 Analogously cf. PP II, pp. 312 ff.; “The sentiment of Rationality”, [WB]: “To sum up: No philosophy will permanently be deemed rational by all men which… does not to some degree pretend to determne expectancy, and in a still greater degreemake a direct appeal to all those powers of our nature which we hold in highest esteem.” 102

76 and emotional demands, is the realization of the world of value in the world of nature. 2.2.1. Man and Animal The place of Man in the great cosmos of nature is the central issue of Lotze’s Mikrokosmos104, whose two major theses are clearly outlined from the very beginning: first, that the presence of mental life, consciousness, and soul distinguishes Man from all the other living beings; and second, that Man has a “non-natural” nature, since Man is the being whose nature, vocation, and destiny is to transcend nature in direction of a moral world, that is, in the direction of the world of culture. The leitmotiv of the Mikrokosmos is the clear, substantive distinction between Man and animal. The evolutionistic hypothesis is unable to explain the unfathomable distance that separates human culture from animal life105. Nature does not establish a hierarchical chain of beings, nor set it as an ultimate end, but, instead, it offers a plurality of forms of life. Consequently, the place of Man in nature must be defined according to the characteristic features of human life and not by Its “taxonomical” relation to other species. In the relationship with the external world Man displays the specific nature of Its mental life as continuous activity of symbolization and interpretation106. The animal perceives and reacts to the object or the sign of the object, that is, to the symptom of the presence of the object. Man, on the other hand seems to be endowed with the power to “read” what is perceived, as a symbol of an object, although such an object is spatiotemporally or conceptually remote, or not existent at all107. In addition, Man is the only animal that can create his own symbols. The root of the difference between Man and animal is to be sought in the great versatility and variety of the processes of thinking through which Man is able to transform the impressions into objects of knowledge. Through such processes, Man has the ability to transform the moment of the passive absorption of external world, typical of sensitive life, into a 104

See H. Lotze cit., Bd I, I, I, p. 28. Ibidem, Bd. II, V, I, p. 145. 106 Ibidem, Bd. II, V, ii, p. 180. 107 Ibidem, Bd. II, V, ii, p. 306. 105

77 characteristic attitude of possession of the world. This tendency to transform an immediate stimulus into a mediated object is present at every level of human mental development and constitutes the basic condition for the passage from the vague consciousness of the animal to human personal self-consciousness. The world and self-consciousness appear thus as a dyad that defines the specific characteristic of human mental development as the ability to beget concepts108. Man’s use of concepts, self-consciousness, and language, or in general, the transcendent dimension of thought e, its capacity for distancing itself from the immediate presence of the stimulus and passing beyond it to see its universal meaning – are the expression of the specific difference of the human form of mind. Transcendence is, in this way, the constitutive freedom of human spirit109. By virtue of such transcendence, human mind transforms the “natural” world of material objects into a world of “meanings,” into a “cultural” world. By the same token, Man can never relate immediately to Nature but only through culture, that is, within an organized system of meanings. Man is never “natural,” in the way in which animals are, but in Its own being always “cultural” only. In short, culture is Man’s only nature110. According to this perspective, it is more than significant that, in Mikrokosmus, seldom is there any mention of instincts, and then only as “denied” entities. This does not mean that according to Lotze Man has no instinct, but rather that, in the human form of life, instinct appears always in a mediated form, namely, is transposed as cultural expressions. Lotze’s dismissal of the instinctual element from human behavior opens the way to a definitive differentiation between the animal and human forms of

108

Ibidem, Bd. II, V, iv, pp. 284-285. Ibidem, Bd. II, V, iv, pp. 284-285. 110 H. Lotze, op. cit, Bd. II, V, ii, p. 216. See also Goethe’s fine account of such a culturizing process in W. Goethe Beitraege zu Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten, Bd I. “Man’s surroundings do not merely act upon; he in his turn reacts upon them, and by allowing himself to be modified he modifies everything around him. Thus a man’s clothes and furniture give us sure indication of his character. Nature forms man; he transforms Nature, and yet this transformation is quite natural. Seeing himself placed in the great wide world, he stakes out, and hedges round, his own little world within it, and furnishes it after his own image.” 109

78 existence, and to a definition of the latter in terms of action, selfdetermination, and project. 2.3. Action and morality. The Destiny of Man Man is the living being who always acts, at least implicitly, in view of an order of the world that Man Itself creates. The distinction between behavior and action traditionally defines the separation between the “natural” and the “cultural” animal. For Lotze, the meaning of action can be understood by reference to the distinction between activity and passivity, that is, between “what happens through us” and what we, properly speaking, do. Such a distinction, which James will turn into the corner-stone of his own ethical view, entails a difference between the mechanical movements that the body produces under the stimulus of the external environment and that consciousness records as mere events, and the acts that the “I” spontaneously produces and recognizes as “its own.” Yet in using this distinction to characterize Man as a “cultural animal,” Lotze opens up a fundamental problem in his anthropology: how is the cultural Man related to the natural Man – in other words, how is spirit related to the body?111 Human spirit needs a bodily mechanism in order to construct its ideal order. The feelings of pleasure and pain on which most of the spiritual life depends are activated through bodily structures that undergo laws and forces completely different from the free spiritual energy that is the mark of human species112. It is through action that the spiritual forces of the Ideal are integrated to the mechanism of bodily activity and become spontaneous expressions of the self. Yet, it is a bit of an equivocation to call such actions voluntary, since the will is not what distinguishes action from a mere psycho-motor event. Will and desire are not autonomous forces, but, instead, they appear only in relation to the value of their objects. No action can by any means be an “indifferent” or “disinterested” psychical event; rather, all actions are

111 112

H. Lotze, cit., Bd. II, VI, iii, p. 407. Ibidem, Bd. II, V, iv, p. 273.

79 necessarily events that beget pleasure or pain, events whose particular characters are the “interests” that connect the agent and the object113. Interest, that is, the attention to the pleasure and pain produced while acting, is the core of action, since, for any living being, the preservation and reproduction of pleasure are the only spur to practical activity. Such a tendency to pleasure varies in different forms of existence according to the different qualities of a species’ mental and bodily development and sensitivity. The value of things, then, depends upon the stability of individual’s mental states. What corresponds to ephemeral mental states is less valuable than what corresponds to the general permanent organization of mind, and the highest value corresponds to a mind completely purified of any particularity and contingency, that is, to a mind perfectly universal and permanent114. Correspondingly, the moral status of a “person” in itself, apart from other judgments, is dispositional, correlative to an individual organization of desires and values according to steady dispositions that express themselves in consistent and steady lines of action115. In all the other animal species, each individual integrally recapitulates the generic structures and modes of its species in its behavior. Accordingly, any sample of the species desires the same things as any other member of the species, and, in the same conditions, they all act and react approximately in the same way. The human species, however, appears more like a collection in which each “specimen” shows specific characteristics of its own, according to which each is organized in an idiosyncratic arrangement. The singularity of such an arrangement is what is called the “style” of a person. Thus, whereas animals display a behavior, a human being, qua person, has a style of action that is at once the form and rule of its own relation to the world. The notion of “person,” because of such a regulative connotation, is the core of the moral and ethical dimension that is the keystone of “culture” as the original condition of human existence. Man is indeed, as Darwin claims, the “moral animal;” yet, morality is not the product of animal instincts, but rather follows from the human need for rules, that is, from the 113

Ibidem, Bd. II, V, v, p. 312. In relation to the analogous notion in James (see in partic. PP, chapp. XXII and XXVI) see Lotze’s notion of “interest.” 114 Ibidem, p. 314. 115 Ibidem, pp. 325-326.

80 need for organizing the world that is the specific character of human species. Animals do not need morality precisely because they have instincts, which provide a steady and insuperable rule of behavior and which mirror a certain order of the natural world wherein the species lives. Such is not the case, however, for the human species. whose amazing capacity for adaptation is the necessary correlative of its instinctual insufficiency. Human beings can live almost anywhere, because instinct does not really chain them to any specific environment. In this light, the attention that Lotze dedicates to the ritualistic aspect of human culture is especially significant. The fact that rituals are the very core of human culture is the necessary consequence of the lack of natural rituality in the human form of existence116. Man creates rituals and ceremonies in order deliberately to produce that order of the world that animals have by nature. Through rituals, Man organizes according to values and meaning a world otherwise substantially unstructured and fluid. The moral meaning of “person,” thus, consists in the imposition of a rule or a style on the world as well as on oneself as part of nature, and such a rule is the consequence of a project that has its conditions of continuity and consistency in the unity and stability of the person’s organization of desires and values. To define a human being as a person means also that a human being cannot be defined as what it is, but only through that at which the human being is aiming in its work. Lotze, in this way, deals with the apparent destruction of the theological theory of the design of the world by Darwinian science – responding to it as James did, as an anthropological challenge. The ultimate end is not derived from human nature; rather, it is the end that reveals the origin, the meaning, and the place of Man in the world117. Insofar as such an end is not only one and ultimate but is also permanently inscribed in the ontological foundation of the world, such an end is also a destiny through which Man can alone understand and define Itself118. The content of this destiny is undefined, and the way to its accomplishment is infinite. At the individual level as well as at the level of the species, Man is different from any other living being because It has the 116

Ibidem, Bd. II, V, ii, p. 212 ff. Ibidem, Bd. II, V, v, pp. 334-335. 118 Ibidem, p. 335. 117

81 “awareness of infinity.” Thus, to define the essence of Man as “open teleology,” or “transcendence,” or “project,” or “action,” at last means only and always to define Man as an original and permanent performative tension projected onto an open world119.

3. Psychology as Anthropology. Mind, Consciousness and Instinct From Lotze’s anthropological view, James borrows several key points, which will play an important role in the development of his own psychological and philosophical thought, among which we sort the most relevant for our present purpose: the qualitative difference between animal and humans as “cultural” beings, the idiosyncrasy of mind, the notion of consciousness as selective activity, the importance of rituals, namely, cultural habits for the organization of environment into a human world, the pluralistic and indeterministic view of human history as an open-ended process led by the ideals and the energies of the individuals. Psychogenesis and selective consciousness constitute the major topic of James’s early essays, those that precede the publication of The Principles of Psychology. These essays, emerging in the confrontation with the major representatives of evolutionism – Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley – work to delimit the conceptual space within which James’s organic analysis of human mental life will proceed and display an already well outlined and organized view of the essential elements of James’s anthropological conception. 3.1. Spontaneity and Teleology. The Social Environment The article “Some Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence” (1878), the first published by James, marks his break with Spencer’s evolutionism in favor of Darwinian evolutionism. James, following Chauncey Wright, adopts the Darwinian view against Spencer’s teleology since it seemed to entail a greater indeterminism. Yet, as we have pointed out, the criticism of Spencer should not be mistaken for a full 119

Ibidem, p. 340.

82 adoption of Darwin‘s evolutionism. Rather, James is more interested in using Darwin’s theory for methodological, not to say instrumental, purposes, but maintains a critical distance from its major premises as he sees them. Spencer assumed that the evolution of mental life was in one to one correspondence with the evolution of life. Indeed, according to Spencer, the level of mind’s evolution and perfection is to be measured according to the degree of “correspondence of inner relations to outer relations.” Such an account of mind, and especially of human mind, as mere product of external influences which modify it as soft wax, is the major target of James’s criticism, which detects two errors in Spencer’s account: first, the notion of mind as cognitive function only; second, the surreptitious adoption of a universal teleology in which survival and physical welfare are taken as ultimate and universal ends. There is no doubt, for James, that, from the sheer cognitive standpoint, the mark of mind’s excellence is the degree of its possible adherence to the relations of the external world. Yet, it is true that mental activity is not limited to cognitive judgments and that a well-founded and complete theory of mental evolution cannot overlook the fact that, in the definition of mind, emotional and axiological judgments must be included as well. James’s idea is that mental excellence is to be found less in the correspondence to the environment than in the power to impose subjective interests on the environment in order to change it. Moreover, the very definition of correspondence is vague and has meaning only if it refers to ends, which alone supply criterion by which the excellence of mental activity can be evaluated. Indeed, in order to evaluate whether a mental activity is adequate and expresses a correct correspondence between mind and environment, it is necessary to know which end the thinker intended to achieve so that the mental excellence can be appraised only on the basis of achieved ends. For Spencer these ends are survival and physical welfare, but, James argues, Spencer’s assumptions are gratuitous, since they do not correspond to any relation in the external world. Thus, their presence in the mind cannot be explained according to Spencer’s theory. The necessary conclusion, for James, is that a fair account of mind must also acknowledge a “subjective spontaneity”, which sets out values and standards of judgment. Such subjective spontaneity expresses itself in the

83 “interest” that precede and guide the mind’s matching up to the environment and more generally determining the sense of experience as a whole. Interests, thus, can be considered as a priori with respect to cognition, and the most evolved mind is that which is most able to grasp the correspondence between certain present states of affairs in the outer world and the ends that our interests project in the future. The highest mind, thus, is characterized not only by a variety of ends it pursues, but also by its imagining of the manifold possible ways to attain these ends, and thus it is possible to say that the most developed minds are indeterminate since in as much as they revert to no fixed behavior in correspondence to a given end120. Whatever their origin, the alleged universal ends of Spencer’s teleology, survival and physical welfare, cannot be accepted a priori in any case, precisely because these ends are presented as universal. No species, especially no highly evolved species, can be conceived as driven by such ultimate ends. On such an account, all living beings, especially any human being that has its own survival as its unique paramount interest, would not only be in contradiction with these supposed universals in ordinary life, which consists of numerous actions that do not advance the individual’s physical welfare, but would impoverish his or her form of life by adopting Spencer’s ends as maxims. Survival is not the ultimate end of the human species, but only a casual consequence of some behavior connected to subjective interests and satisfaction. James’s metaphysical standpoint is clear: there is no universal a priori end in Man. Individuals are led by different and multifarious interests, and they all contribute to make life worthy of preservation through the joined efforts of the members of the species. Preservation is made possible exactly because no one is so thematically concerned with his or her own preservation as to exclude all other interests; rather all are concerned with the achievement of other ends that are embedded in the matrix of interests of collectivities. Individuals 120

In the “Lowell lectures,” in 1878, James focuses again on the relations between consciousness, as necessary complement of superior mental activity, and the brain’s development in higher animals. The cerebrum adds a factor of instability to animal behavior, and the role of consciousness is to determine behavior according to goals and interests. The formation of consciousness is the end of the reign of chance and the beginning of the reign of intelligence.

84 who attend to ends that other individuals in a collectivity value may survive even if their ends are absolutely useless from the mere perspective of biological survival. This allows for the survival of apparently anomalous or “useless” variations (individuals) in the human species, as for example artists and philosophers. This particular condition within the human species means, for James, that Man is not directly subject to natural selection. By virtue of culture, the human form of life is governed by other laws than the law of the fittest, displaying many different levels of fitness to the ‘environment’, which is itself connected to the manifold interests and ends produced by the human species as a whole. Though this interpretation may seem to diverge from the Darwinian model, it is nonetheless evident that James, here, is elaborating Darwin’s suggestion that ‘division of labor’ is a fundamental and peculiar constituent of the human form of life as well as the main structure of human society. Indeed, in James’s account, natural selection no longer occurs between individual and natural environment, but, instead, between individuals and species, or, in other words, between individuals and their social environment. “To the individual man, as a social being, the interests of his fellow are a part of his environment.” (ECR, 53) Sociality is not a “tool” for the survival of individuals, as in Darwin. In James’s view, survival itself, as the term is used by Spencer and Darwin, is never the paramount agency or the ultimate end of human action: “If the animal’s brain acts fortuitously in the right way, he survives. His young do the same. The reference to survival in no way preceded or conditioned the intelligent act; but the fact of survival was merely bound up with it as an incidental consequence, and may, therefore, be called accidental, rather than instrumental, to the production of intelligence. It is the same with all other interests.” (ECR, 62-63)

To this extent survival cannot be the cause of sociality either, but rather must be taken as a mode of life, or better, an a priori of the human species. Thus, abandoning the classic naturalistic view of evolutionism which considered Man, as any other natural being, directly involved within the process of natural selection, James sees the relation between Man and nature as originally mediated by society which operates here as a second level environment. This “second level”, however, is not an overstructure which keeps Man apart from nature. Like Kant before him, and like Huxley and Lotze, James saw human life to be a process of supplanting the natural environment [Umwelt] with the human, namely, with the cultural

85 world [Welt]. Yet, this is not to be taken as if there was some sort of original moment in which Man is only in Nature, only after which It starts replacing nature with culture. In other words, there is no evolutionary or historical progression from the state of nature to the state of culture, and Man is the being whose only possible nature is culture.” 3.2. The Function of Consciousness Two texts of 1878, the “Lowell Lectures” and the article “Are We Automata?”121, mark a fundamental step in the definition of James’s anthropology since they focus on the relationship between the nervous system (NS) and consciousness122. In these texts, the issue of the function of interests, which, as we noted above, held a significant place in Lotze’s philosophical anthropology, becomes more and more important in the development of James’s inquiry into the determinants of human mental activity. It is evident, here, that along with taking Lotze’s notion of interests seriously, James is also attempting to conjoin Lotze’s account of the primacy of aesthetical and practical feelings with an evolutionistic theory. The theory of the “conscious automaton,” also known as epiphenomenalist theory, first presented by Huxley in the “Belfast Address,”123 and subsequently supported by other naturalists such as Clifford and Hodgson124, claims that feelings are nothing but a by-product of nervous activity125. In James’s view, Huxley’s thesis is the obvious consequence of the extension of the theory of the reflex arc, and it is determined by an evident aesthetical criterion that leads to a symmetric separation between the mechanical phenomena and the phenomena that 121

“Notes for the Lowell Lectures” in ML, pp. 16-43; “Are We Automata?” in EPs, pp. 38-61. The two texts can be considered as related developments of the same topic. Evidence of this is the fact that “Lecture 6” of the Lowell Lectures is almost integrally incorporated into “Are We Automata?” This latter will eventually become, without substantial modifications, chapter V of the Principles. 122 See ECR, p. 302. 123 Published on Fortnightly Review, N.S. Vol. XVI, p. 555. 124 W. K. Clifford, “Body and Mind,” Fortnightly Review, N.S. Vol. XVI, 555; S. Hodgson, The Theory of Practise I, pp. 416 ff. 125 EPs, p. 38.

86 escape scientist’s observation. In fact, the presence of consciousness not only seems to be strictly related to the presence of cerebral hemispheres, but it is also correlated with their development. There is an evolutionary progression that goes from the animals, with minimal degree of consciousness and very simple nervous system, to humans, wherein an extremely intense activity of consciousness corresponds to an unusual hypertrophy of cerebral hemispheres. The problem for James is to detect the functional correlation between brain development and the activity of consciousness. In other words, why does a more developed brain need a consciousness?126 From the evolutionary perspective, consciousness is a late and quite new formation; consequently, James supposes, its utility can be understood only if we assume that it counterbalances a defect in the late development of the nervous system, namely, the hypertrophy of the hemispheres. From the anthropological perspective, James’s thesis is a direct descendent of the thesis of human imperfection suggested by Herder127. Evaluated according to standards of animal efficiency, the human animal appears quite wanting and not apt to survive; that is, the human animal appears to possess a “defective nature” (Maengelwesen). The hypertrophy of cerebral hemispheres is a variation within the human species that is advantageous and challenging at the same time. Indeed, the abnormal growth of the brain is the anatomo-functional premise of the complete instability of cerebral activity and of the indeterminate state of mental life, which have their beneficial expression in the greater versatility of human thought. As James puts it in the Principles: “But what are now the defects of the nervous system in those animals whose consciousness seems most highly developed? Chief among them must be instability. The cerebral hemispheres are the characteristically ‘high’ nerve-centres, and we saw how indeterminate and unforeseeable their performances were in comparison with those of the basal ganglia and the cord. But this very vagueness constitutes their advantage. They allow their possessor to adapt his conduct to the minutest alterations in the environing circumstances, any one of which may be for him a sign, suggesting distant motives more powerful than any present solicitations of sense.” (PP I, 139)

126

EPs, p. 41. See J.G. Herder Abhandlung ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, 53, 18a. On the inadequacy of Man as animal see also I. Kant Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, I, p. 395. 127

87 Such an instability is thus at once the condition of human advancement over the other species (EPs, 41-42), but also a serious handicap from the perspective of the effectiveness of action. In short, such an instable organ would seem to be too whimsical to maintain a regular and useful line of action (EPs, 42-43). In such a context, consciousness works as a perfecting organ, that is, as an organ of stabilization of the precarious equilibrium of mental activity. The task of consciousness is to “ballast” the floating mind and improve its performance by anchoring its activities in interests and ends which provide action with continuity and consistency. In other words, the consciousness, in its selective capacity, stabilizes action by choosing from the manifold of possibilities in the external world those inputs only that match the individual’s interests (EPs, 46). The presence of consciousness means, then, choice and action in view of an end, namely, intentionality. Experience, thus, is not a passive recording of stimuli, but the product of the intentional interaction between original and preexistent mental structures and the overabundant stimuli from the external environment: humans experience what they are interested in experiencing. Hence, James’s inquiry focuses on the a priori conditions of experience – the “natural a priori” as James calls them in the Principles (XXVIII) – that is, on the interests and their origin and formation. In “The Great Men and their Environment”128 and “The Importance of Individuals” (1880-81), James deals specifically with the issue of the production of interests in the individual within the evolution of the species. The two essays mark James’s moment of closest adhesion to the Darwinian theory of chance variation129. The production of great men in society, responding to the same forces, on a different plane, as the formation of mind in the individual, is not dependent upon some stimulus given by the environment, but rather upon internal causes that freely determine the features of the mind according to the laws of heredity long before the environment can exert its influence. For Spencer, the development and the activity of mind are completely determined by external influences and mirror the order of the “external relationships” according to the regularity 128

First published on Atlantic Monthly, XLVI, Oct., 1880. Republished in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. 129 See C. Darwin The Descent of Man, cit., p. 44.

88 of their occurrence. In fact, James argues, such a description is correct only with regard to the mental activity of animals and the lower stages of human mind. Yet, it is more than evident that a human of average intelligence enjoys a spontaneity of conception that is the consequence of his particular mind-set and of his temperament, and these have nothing to do with the regularity and the repetition of the phenomena experienced in the external environment (WB, 184). The substantial difference between human and animal thinking is the ability to reason, that is, the ability to infer an unknown term from a known one through the selection of a middle term. Whereas associative thinking, which humans have in common with animals, moves through chains of objects or images, reasoning operates through substitution of wholes and their relationships to parts. Inferential ability depends upon the high degree of indetermination of human mind, indetermination that allows the human mind to transcend the present object and grasp those significant qualities of the object that connect the object to other objects of experience. In turn, the identification of such qualities is not a “neutral” activity but is dependent upon the purposes and the interests of the individual (EPs, 10). Experience as it is processed in the primordial state of knowledge is vague, blurred, and lacking internal organization. In such conditions, the acquisition of knowledge is not and cannot be merely associative. Rather, it must be based on some sort of dissociative activity that allows for selective focusing on a specific group of related sensations, while leaving in the background the nebula of sense data that surrounds it. Such an ability to distinguish and select specific sets of sensations – that is, the objects of attention – is the ability to “see in the situation,” an insight that is developed through the experience but is rooted in the practical and aesthetical inclination originally inscribed in the mind. Following Lotze, James recognizes the difference between the animal and the human mind in the different quantities and diversities of their interests (EPs, 16)130. Animal thinking is habitual because satisfies a limited and fixed amount of interests. On the contrary, human thought, being related to a unlimited range of interests and constitutionally more 130

See H. Lotze, Mikrokosmos, cit., Bd II, V, iv, p. 280; see also Ibidem, v, pp. 312313.

89 sensitive to the slightest stimulations in specific situations, is always ready to start out on new paths and to create new and unusual combinations. The specific differences between human and animal behavior depend, for James, upon the specific human ability to process the raw, indeterminate sense data by abstracting its essential qualities in forming the concept of an object. Human thought’s transcendence, that is, the ability to think what is not immediately present or what is different and remote from what is immediately given, is the condition that makes the human being the “metaphysical animal” (EPs, 26) Similarly, self-consciousness and language, typical features of the human form of life, are the products of this ability to break down and transcend the stream of experience. Self-consciousness originates from the ability to separate, within the very activity of thinking, the “thing” from the thought in itself. Language originates from the ability to replace objects with signs, that is, from the ability to transcend an immediately present “thing” and transpose it into a “meaning.” In short, Man is the symbolic animal par excellence. Human existence is so rooted in this symbolic activity that it colors the whole relationship between nature and culture. The whole construction of the human cultural world, indeed, is grounded on the symbolic power of Man, power that is the expression of the two fundamental characteristics of human thought: the analogical connection and the transcendence of the datum131. 3.3. The Theory of Emotions The selective activity of consciousness, which is the very core of human experience, is, for James, strictly intertwined with the intentional structure of interest. In turn, the analysis of interests entails the analysis of emotions. Interests and emotions are the constituents of the idiosyncratic reactive structure of mind, that is, of the a priori mental structure that determines, a parte subjecti, the interaction between the individual and the 131

On the value of symbols see also C. S. Peirce C.P. 1.558; 2.249; 5.103. The relation between symbols as “meanings” and the costruction of culture as network of social activities and institutions will be developed later on by H. Mead.

90 environment132. This interaction is governed by the principle of the primacy of action, which should always be held in the background when considering James’s view of human nature. James breaks entirely with the view that mind provides us with a mirror of nature, and presses, instead, for a model based on complete interactivity, on the human being always adding to and changing nature. Emotions, in particular, are, for James, original and irreducible formations of mental life and have a fundamental role both in the construction of experience and in the definition of the relationship between individual and world. The first account of James’s theory of emotions, also known as JamesLange theory133, appears in an article published in Mind in 1884. In the article, James reverses the traditional theory according to which bodily movements and reactions follow from emotions, claiming, instead that bodily movements and changes are the origin rather than the consequence of emotions134. James writes: “My theory on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.” (PP II, 449) In the version of the article edited as chap. XXV of the Principles, James is very careful in clarifying the difference between his own theory and the analogous theory proposed by Lange in 1885135. The two theories, James admits, are almost equivalent concerning the physiological nature of the emotions. However, according to James, Lange’s theory is still in thrall to the old descriptive psychology, which regarded emotions as individual, classifiable entities, when no description of an emotion has “absolute 132

See PP II, p. 442. Carl Lange (1834-1900), Danish psychologist who in a booklet entitled Ueber Gemüthbewegungen (Leipzig 1885) formulated a psycho-physiological theory of emotions similar to James’s. Cfr. PP I, chap. XXV. 134 See C. S. Peirce in Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868) (C.5.264-317): “There is some reason to think that, corresponding to every feeling within us, some motion takes place in our bodies. This property of the thought-sign since it has no rational dependence upon the meaning of the sign, may be compared with what I have called the material quality of the sign; […] An emotion. On the other hand, comes much later in the development of thought…and the thoughts which determine it already have motions corresponding to them in the brain, or in chief ganglion; consequently, it produces larger movements in the body, and independently of its representative value, strongly affetcs the current of thought.” 135 C. Lange Ueber Gemüthsbewegungen. Leipzig: 1887. See PP II, p. 449. 133

91 truth”. On the contrary, for James, a complete description of the physiological phenomena that correspond to an emotion is not only materially impossible, since such phenomena can change from individual to individual, but it is also useless once the nature of relationship between the phenomena and emotions has been clarified. (PP II, 449). Since its very first appearance, James’s theory of emotions has been the target of many criticisms that stressed the odd conclusions that such theory would support – for example, as when one critic claimed that we are sad because we cry and not the other way round. James never really engaged in a full defense of his theory against such criticisms136. James’s theory of emotions, however, attains two important results: first, the overcoming of the traditional, classificatory psychology of emotions, à la Bain, which considered emotions as independent individual agencies within the mental life, while, as James saw it, the “internal shadings of emotional feeling... merge endlessly into each other” (PP II, 448); and second, and perhaps more relevant, the dismissal of the associative and/or causal connection between an emotion and its bodily expression137. Indeed, the variety and the variability of the reflex acts involved in the emotional process makes the very nature of the emotion extremely complex and idiosyncratic138. Because of this complexity, it is impossible to state which bodily movements are supposed to correspond to a specific emotion. Thus, in the life of the same individual, and even more among different individuals, each emotional state appears as a unique phenomenon, although language and concepts used to describe it tend to generalize it and create some sort of typicality. In this sense the entification and generalization of emotions is a product of the language of psychology that, for its own disciplinary purposes, oversimplifies the complexity of its objects139. Such oversimplifications, however, are to be taken as expedient 136

PP II, p. 450. See e.g. A.Bain, The Emotions and the Will. (Washington, D.C.: University Publ. of America, 1977), ch. I, passim. 138 See PP II, p. 454. 139 See A. Bain, cit., #31, p. 49: “Only those aspects of the consciousness that have some external characters to distinguish them can be recognized by fellow-beings…. For our purposes two states of feeling must be held as identical when an identity exists between all the appearances. If there is any peculiar shade tone or coloring of emotion that has not outward sign or efficacy, such peculiarity is inscrutable to the inquirer.” 137

92 fictions only, useful to refer to a more or less indefinite group of phenomena, but do not designate any single specific object140. It is the dismissal of the associative connection between emotions and bodily expressions, however, which invalidates the criticisms to James’s theory. Such criticisms are based on the belief that there is a fixed relation between a particular bodily expression and certain feelings – for example, between sadness and crying. In fact, the gist of James’s theory is exactly to rule out any fixed association between emotions qua emotions and bodily movements qua bodily movements. The issue for James is not what is moving what and in what order, but rather the fact that nothing is moving anything. Association is replaced with identity; that is, there is as much emotion for as much movement as is in the body, and “the feeling of the bodily changes IS the emotion.”141 It is also possible to understand James’s theory as an application of the pragmatic principle of meaning according to which “our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects.” Consequently, it is possible to infer that what James means by his formula is that our conception of emotion is reducible, in the end, to the idea of the concurrent bodily changes (PP II, 451-452): “A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.” A certain group of bodily phenomena constitute the “meaning” of some particular emotion and cannot be attributed to another emotional state. Consequently any attempt at “natural” classification of the emotions appears useless, as much as any attempt of classification of instincts would be inconclusive. Indeed, instincts and emotions depend, for James, upon the same physiological structure; that is, emotions are the product of some “preorganized mechanism” of “backdoor” origin that reacts when stimulated by some external object142. Because of their common bodily matrix, emotions and instincts very often express themselves in much the same fashion so that an organism stimulated by an external stimulus reacts through a psycho-motorial activity that, in its basic form, appears either like an emotion or an instinctive reaction, or both at once. (PP II, 442.) Similarity in expression, however, does not mean identity in function. Not 140

See PP I, pp. 194-195. See also Letter WJ to Renouvier, Sept. 30, 1884. 142 See PP II, pp. 474-475. 141

93 only their range of action distinguishes instincts and emotions, as James points out in the chapter XV of The Briefer Course of Psychology, but, despite their identical physiological structure, they have different functions: an emotion is a tendency to feel, whereas an instinct is a tendency to act143. The practical meaning of the assimilation of instincts and emotions must be understood with reference to a twofold anthropological and moral perspective; namely, with regard to the fact that once emotions have been assimilated to the instincts, they become modifiable and controllable. In other words, in virtue of their equivalence with bodily movements and behavior, emotions as well as instincts can be educated: the control of behavior produces the control of emotions144. The novelty of James’s position compared to the classic theory of emotions is quite significant. Indeed, the classic theory claimed that the perception of the stimulus awakens the emotion, which, in turn, moves the body. Such a view, however, entailed an account of emotion as an uncontrollable “natural agency” and determinant of the action. Emotion was a point of escape, or, if you will, a field of indeterminacy in the ordered landscape of personality. According to the classic empiricist theory, controlling emotion requires a full array of secondary emotions and feelings such as social instincts, feelings of sympathy, of regret, of shame, etc. But such “moral” feelings proved themselves quite inadequate since, insofar as they were feelings too, they were as unreliable as the emotions they were supposed to keep in check. From the anthropological perspective, the uncontrollability of emotions involved two fatal consequences: first, the risk of a huge dispersion of energy as consequence of an uncontrolled emotional life (TT, 454-460); second, the permanent jeopardy of the cultural world constantly threatened by the emotional factor. It is not a matter, of course, of believing that all the emotional factors can be controlled, but rather of claiming that no “natural” factor is in itself absolutely uncontrollable. 143

See PB, p. 242. See PP II, 463. See also “The Gospel of Relaxation” in TT, p. 450. An important anticipation of this view is in J. Buchanan, Philosophy of Human Nature (1812). Buchanan introduced the doctrine of the Swiss pedagogist J. H. Pestalozzi (17461827) into the American culture, echoes of whom can be detected in James’s anthropological and educational views as well.

144

94 3.4. Instincts and Habit In 1887 James published two articles in Popular Science Monthly, one on instinct and the other concerning habit. Both of them were later republished without any subtantial variation in the Principles as Chapters IV and XXIV145. According to these articles, the relevance of the issue of instinct within the anthropological question depended, for James, on the erroneous account of the nature of instincts offered by the traditional psychological literature on the topic. Traditionally, instinct is described as “the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.” (PP II, 383) Instincts would be, thus, functional correlates of bodily structures, or, in other words, tendencies or impulses of these organs to act typically for the automatic fulfilment of certain ends. The teleology entailed by such an account shows itself in the quite common scientific custom of “talking about these admirably definite tendencies to act… by naming abstractly the purpose they subserve, such as self-preservation or an instinct of maternity and the like.” Such an attitude is the source of a optical illusion that leads us to overlook the instrumentality of such a classification and to believe in the actual existence of such providential teleology146. In fact, such an account of instinct outlines the picture of an abstract animal affected by abstractions such as “fear of death,” “preservation of life,” and so on (PP II, 393-394). However, an adequate account of instinctual behavior such as it really is cannot but be a physiological account according to the structure of the reflex act (PP II, 384). From this perspective, instinctual behavior appears less as an 145

The simultaneous publication of the two articles looks more than fortuitous. James apparently intended instinct and habit as strictly related and had made of them a single subject of inquiry. If this is the case, it is quite evident that here James is joining the debate about Maine de Biran’s heritage as it characterizes French psychology in the last quarter of the XIX cantury. Indeed, for Maine de Biran, instinct and habit were strictly intertwined and belonged to the same thematic area of inquiry. Whereas, on the question of effort, for example, James marks his distance from Maine de Biran, it seems quite evident that he adopts a Biranian acount of the relationship between instincts and habits. See F.P.G. Maine de Biran Influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser, and also Noveaux essais d’anthropologie, pp. 161-165. 146 See PP II, pp. 384-385.

95 elementary, simple, and fixed act than as an unlimited power of action that regards acts and objects even very remote in time and space. Accordingly, instinct is a plastic, functional structure that is at once both extremely complex and subtly well adapted to its aim and a structure in which the organization of several moves and simple acts is entailed. James, here, adopts Schneider’s definition of instincts as impulses and their threefold classification as sensation-impulses, perception-impulses, and idea-impulses147. Sensation-impulses depend on the immediate sense contact with the object and act according to the pure and simple structure of the reflex arc. Perception-impulses instead presuppose a mediated experience of the stimulus. Idea-impulses (or imagination-impulses) require an explicit imaginative-symbolic mediation: indeed, they can be triggered by the mere idea or image of the aim, or by the symbol of the aim, and they require more or less complex evaluations of the relationship between means and end (PP II, 385). In virtue of such mediation the continuity of the reflex arc in this third kind of impulse, the stimulusreaction, is more likely to be broken than in the other two, since the impulse needs to go through the higher brain before being translated into a reaction. Consequently this third kind of impulse is far more controllable and modifiable than the other kinds. In any living being ranked above a certain degree of nervous development, a single instinctive action can involve all the three kinds of impulses organized in various sequences and cooperating to the achievement of the same purpose. The interaction of the impulses, supported by the interaction of the reflex arcs, however, allows James to refute the account of instinct as blind and fixed behavior and formulate an innovative theory of modifiable instincts (PP II 391). Thus James reverses Cuvier’s hypotheses concerning the lack of instincts in the human animal. Humans are not characterized by the lack of instincts, but rather by an superabundance of instincts that inhibit and modify each other in a continuous interplay. In turn, instincts are susceptible to being modified by experience148; and through memory, reflection, and prediction they stop being “blind” and become controllable. 147 148

G.H. Schneider, Der Thierische Wille, 1880. See PP II, 390.

96 The typical hesitation in actions, which characterizes human behavior, thus does not depend on an insufficient instinctual support, but rather on the excessive number of instincts, each in competition with the other, leaving thought and action suspended and delaying the transformation of impulses into a motory discharges149. Accordingly, James questions the traditional opposition between instinct and reason, finding that there is no antagonism between reason and instincts as traditionally construed, and there is no point, then, in assuming that reason can, or needs to, inhibit instincts or take their place (PP II, 393). Rather, reason can control instinct through inferences apt to produce an image able to trigger an instinct as an alternative to the one presently at work. Consequently, given the richness and variety of its instincts, the human animal cannot be deemed purely instinctual; rather, it shows its nature as the cultural animal in this respect, too. Indeed, although instincts are ultimate and irreducible factors in the life of an organism, and their origin and modes cannot be accounted for150, yet many of them are far from being fixed and immodifiable, whereas others can be acquired or created ad hoc, through habit or experience, according to the “law of inhibition by habit” (PP II, 394)151. Similarly, the law of transitoriness rules the change or the permanence of instincts over time according to a parabolic movement of development and decline, which presents the conditions for the establishment of the instincts as a habits. Thus, there is a close interdependence between instincts and habits. Instinct is but a dawning form of behavior, a hint that habit assumes and stabilizes into an automatic behavior (PP II, 402). James’s account of habit appeals to the same principle of parsimony that he had already used in order to justify the emergence of consciousness, and that he will use again in his later works as the most suitable explanation of some original and irreducible structures of human form of life. “Man is born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made arrangements for in his nerve-centers. Most of the performances of other animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so enormous, that most of them must be the fruit of 149

James offers a detailed survey of the main human instincts at the end of the chapter XXIV of the Principles. 150 See PP II, 386. 151 See the analogous position in J. M. Guyau Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction.

97 painful study. If practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expenses of nervous and muscular energy, he would therefore be in a sorry plight.” (PP I, 113)

Consciousnesses as well as habit are the ergonomic devices needed to save, organize, and control the nervous and muscular energy of the human animal. The issue is once again the indeterminateness of the nervous structure that is translated into an unbounded openness toward the world. Such openness, if unchecked, would potentially result in a huge expenditure of energy, if the attempt were made to respond to every stimuli. The complex psychical structure of the human animal is necessary to contain this polymorphous openness while at the same time allowing the human animal to effectively and selectively interact with its environment for its survival and development. The function of habit, indeed, is to reduce the conscious attention by which acts are performed according to an ergonomical criterion152. In other words, habit, by creating routines, relieves the human mind from the labor of keeping each single object and act under the control of the whole system of awareness. The mind is thus left free to operate more fruitfully at the borders of experience, where something new and relevant may engage the individual’s interest. Habit, in its full meaning, thus loses any mechanistic connotation and becomes a rather sedimented and repetitive activity and choice153. Focusing here on the anthropological meaning of the role that James attributes to habit and to its relationship with instinct, two specific aspects need to be highlighted. First, James’s notion that the human animal is endowed with an overwhelming amount of instincts is the equivalent of saying, from the functional standpoint, that humans are not determined by any instinct in particular. Moreover, deprived of a fixed and repetitive behavioral structure and being modifiable by experience and habit, instinct is reduced to just a hint, a conatus, an innuendo; or, in a more radical perspective, instinct is dissolved and decomposed, on one hand, into the simple physiological reflex act, and, on the other hand, into a species of the notion of interest. Instinct means, then, that, at the physiological level, there are some reactive structures that, though not easily identifiable, are 152

Such a criterion, as we remarked above, is analogous to Gehlen’s notion of “relief” (entlastung). See A. Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. 153 See PP I, pp. 115-118. See also an analogous passage in Maine de Biran Noveaux essais d’anthropologie, pp. 163-164.

98 evidently excited by certain near or far, material or immaterial, actual or virtual stimuli. These structures can always be inhibited, and their expressions in behavior are so differentiated and modifiable that they are unpredictable at the individual level. Second, the functional substitution of instinct by habit within human behavior allows James to establish, in the most radical fashion, the subordination of the natural to the human-cultural order. Accordingly, James restates the distinction between nature and culture; that is, James reemphasizes the status of Man as cultural animal and, following Kant, the foundation of culture in the free play of the interaction of symbols and human actions subordinated to the necessary coercion of discipline. Habit means the possibility of overcoming the blind determinism of natural drives, and discipline, as the necessary praxis for the formation and the establishment of habit, is the way to such a specifically human kind of freedom154. For James, who assumes Mill’s account of character, the creation of habits coincides with the formation of character, that is, with the organization of an “aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm, prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life” (PP I, 125)155: hence, the social value of the formation of habits. The creation of habits, or at least of certain habits, is indeed the primary task of education within society and major task of the society itself on behalf of its own preservation (PP I, 121). At the social level, habit, as institution, “relieves” the community from an effort of continuous reorganization and redefinition of its roles and values156. Habit turns society into a complex and effective instrument of 154

See I. Kant Critique of Judgement, cit., § 83. The account of character as disposition to act is of course derived from the analogous Aristotelean doctrine: cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, B, 1-7. James, however, does not make any reference to Aristotle, despite his knowledge of the Aristotelean doctrine, and he prefers to refer to J. S. Mill, who in turn explicitly refers to Aristotle. Accordingly, it is legitimate to claim an Aristotelean origin of James’s account of character. 156 This aspect of James’s theory of habit will be widely developed by G.H. Mead. See G.H. Mead Mind, Self and Society, pp. 260-261 [§ 34]. “There are what I have termed ‘generalized social attitude’ which make an organized self possible. In the community there are certain ways of acting under situations which are essentially identical […] 155

99 the transformation of the external natural environment into a human world. Education, intended for the creation of habit, operates through symbolic messages in order to communicate meaning and values shared in the society. Habit, thus, arises from culture but also resubmerges into culture as its major constitutive and preserving power. In other words, habit is the fundamental condition for the establishment of the human order, aesthetical and practical, within nature.

4. The Primacy of Action Instincts, habits, emotions, interests, and consciousness constitute the internal structures and the articulations of human action. Since the early 1880’s, James’s anthropological image had been organized around the central notion of the “primacy of action” as specific character of human form of life. In the entry “Pragmatism” in Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Peirce summarizes James’s doctrine as follows: “In 1896 William James published his Will to Believe, and later his Philos. Conceptions and Pract. Results, which pushed this method to such extremes as must tend to give us a pause. The doctrine appears to assume that the end of man is action – a stoical axiom which, to the present writer at the age of sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly as it did at thirty.”157

In fact, as the early essays show, James’s doctrine of the primacy of action was conceived long before 1896, and, to be sure, long before the publication of the Principles. Yet, it is only with the Principles that the doctrine acquires its psycho-physiological justification. In particular, the doctrine of the primacy of action required the statement and the development of the theory of “modified interactionism,” of which some sketches are already present in the early essays. There are, then, whole series of such common responses in the community in which we live, and such responses are what we term ‘institutions’. […] Thus the institutions of society are organized forms of group o social activity – forms so organized that the individual members of society can act adequately and socially by taking the attitude of others toward these activities.” 157 J. Baldwin (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. New York: McMillian, 1911, p. 322.

100 The basic physiological structure of the interaction between Man and its environment is clearly stated at the beginning of chapter XXIII of the Principles: “The reader will not have forgotten, in the jungle of purely inward processes and products through which the last chapters have borne him, that the final result of them all must be some form of bodily activity due to the escape of the central excitement through outgoing nerves. The whole neural organism, it will be remembered, is, physiologically considered, but a machine for converting stimuli into reactions; and the intellectual part of our life is knit up with but the middle or “central” portion of the machine’s operations. […] Every impression which impinges on the incoming nerves produces some discharge down the outgoing ones, whether we be aware of it or not. Using sweeping terms and ignoring exceptions, we might say that every possible feeling produces movement, and that the movement is the movement of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts.” (PP II, 372)158

James is presenting here is what we can call the “black box” model. The relationship between humans and the world is structured as a continuous cycle in the middle of which remains a “black box” that designates the mental activity of the individual and its physiological support, namely, the cerebral hemispheres (PP I, 12)159. At the level of the nervous centers, cerebral activity is divided into lower activities – automatic or semiautomatic reactions of basic, innate or acquired and then consolidated, processes – and higher, that is, intellectual activities such as thought, reasoning, and ideation. The incoming stimulus running through the afferent nerves, enters at least one of the two levels of the brain, there activating some processes by which it, in turn, is elaborated, and finally comes out as motor discharge. The introduction of the higher brain activity within the action-reaction circuit is the gist of James’s “modified interactionism,” and it represents a significant modification of the standard theory of the reflex arc that supported the evolutionary account of interactionism. Indeed, modified interactionism introduces the indeterminacy characteristic of the higher human brain functions at a lower level, within the mechanistic impulse-reaction pattern of the reflex arc itself. Inside the hemispheres, the incoming impulse produces feelings, perceptions160, images, and emotions – whatever can be gathered under the general notion of “thought.” In turn, the impulse is reorganized according to the structures of relation embedded in the mind-brain (the physiological 158

See also “Reflex Action and Theism,” in WB, p. 114. See ibidem, pp. 113-115. 160 See PP II, pp. 1-3. 159

101 a priori of the species, or individual idiosyncrasies, habits, interests, feelings) and the selective activity of consciousness. Thus, unless we are dealing with a very simple reflex act, as for example eye-blinking, any reaction, no matter how automatic or insignificant, reverberates in the higher centers and never escapes consciousness completely. In other words, there are very few acts that can be considered purely automatic and beyond all conscious control. So there are very few acts that, although performed without awareness in standard conditions, could not be called upon as “voluntary,” or conscious, acts when needed. How a nervous stimulus can activate brain structures and, at the same time, appear as a thought even as it functions as movement is something James deliberately refuses to explain. It is noteworthy, however, that in no place does James try to reduce thought to its concurrent neural activity. Far more important for James is the fact that, whatever happens in the mindbrain, be it a sequel of electric discharges or a goblins’ dance – human beings, because of their physiological composition, cannot help (re)acting, and such action, to which the brain-mind activity is subservient, is the most important aspect of their existence. The instrumentality of reason, which characterizes James’s pragmatism, is, thus, the necessary consequence of an implicit anthropological view. Human mental activity is the activity of a being that is primarily, originally, and unavoidably active. According to this perspective, James’s stress on the notion of interest is fully explained and the whole of his psychological and philosophical inquiry must be considered in that light. Indeed, the notion of interest appears as the cornerstone of a new conception that shows the agent intentionally open and continually dealing with things in the world. In turn, all the psychic functions and the higher and lower mental activities converge in “interest.” Instincts, emotions, habits, attention, memory, will, intellect, and reason find their explanation and organization within a life of consciousness that is wholly permeated by the intentional pulse of interest, which, as James claims, is but the active core of the subjectivity, namely, the “self” that finds itself at the very source of actions and experience. Active interest and interested action, as the core of human existence, mean, from the anthropological perspective, that human psychic activity as a whole is ruled by a selective criterion that satisfies a vital demand for parsimony or “relief.” In other words, active

102 interest and interested action satisfy the vital need for a human animal possessing no natural, instinctual, guidelines to obtain orientation and determinacy in a undetermined world of sensations. At the same time, human psychic activity deploys itself as an ever open projectuality: interest always unfolds itself in the future, as it were; it is always involved with what is to come or has to be done161. The selective activity of consciousness intrinsically is a prediction and project that bears the mark of the intentionality of interest. Concepts, memories, images, and habits are built and preserved in relation to what appears interesting, that is, in relation to what belongs to an action that is always projected into the future. The “essential” qualities of things that we collect into concepts, as well as many of the acts that have been consolidated as habits, are those we think, believe, or foresee that we can count on in some future course of action. In James, the anthropological image is one in which the functional dynamism of action has primacy owing to the fact that consciousness and reason are characteristic but secondary modes of the phenomenon of human existence. Thus, human beings do not act because they think, but rather think because they act. Yet, the instrumental character of consciousness, intellect, and reason affirmed by James’s psychology is not ruled by the “law of caprice”. The appearance of consciousness marks the end of the domain of chance and the beginning of the kingdom of intelligence, which is to say that it marks the beginning of the axiological organization of the world. If the activity of consciousness is “to compare and choose” (ML, 27), this happens always only derivatively by reference to action, which is always already given as its original and foundational condition, and to its axiological dimension. The human being is the indeterminate being that, in its action, determines and determines itself. Or, equivalently, the being that chooses because it has interests and creates values. Action, then, is not mere reaction or blind impulse upon no scheme and to no end, but the determination and definition of the world. That is, action is the necessary condition for an existence that is not bare survival or reproduction of the species, but is, rather, the construction of an 161

See PP I, p. 8: “The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon.”

103 axiologically connoted world. Thus, for James, to say that the human is the being that acts means that human action, with a greater or lesser degree of awareness, depending on the situation, tends toward morally ordering the world. In James’s anthropological view, the moral problem is the ultimate and fundamental problem of a being who needs to choose in order to exists (ML, 25-27). As we will see in our next chapter, the enculturation of choice, or the path of education as it makes its way through the jungle of human habits, will assume a much larger importance in James’s ethics than in those of the other schools, for whom education is, at best, a derivative activity.

CHAPTER III

Habits and Ethics The anthropological image that emerges in James’s early psychological works, which is organized around the principle of the primacy of action and maintains “indeterminacy” as the fundamental feature of Man, increasingly moves to the center of James’s later works, serving as the ground of both his moral inquiry and of his version of pragmatism. As we saw in the previous chapter, James’s notion that Man is indeterminate is not the notion that Man is an absolutely unpredictable being, or one who will do anything at any time. Rather, it speaks to the variety and number of instincts, the endless sensitivity to stimulus, and the need, then, for order and organization in order to translate that indeterminacy into living action. Ethics, then, is a vital need for the indeterminate being, and it must be an ethics of self-determination. That is, ethics must control and organize one’s power of action or, what amounts to the same thing, one’s energy. Control and organization of energy occur as the self is organized through the fundamental function of habit. In this sense, the word ethics, for James, recovers its original Aristotelean meaning in that ethics concerns the formation of character (ēthos) or is concerned with the shaping of a person and his/her modes of action. James’s rejection of the associationism, so central to the British school of empirical psychology, did not extend to all aspects of that school. In particular, his notion of “habit” as the cornerstone of the organization of the self was taken from Bain. Indeed, Bain had already advanced the idea of a control of the emotions through the body: “The voluntary control that we can exercise over the moving members of the body is the only means for suppressing or restraining emotions, apart from the turning aside of the currents of the brain into other channels.”162 James too thought habit tended to give us full control of instincts and emotions. The novelty of James’s account of habit, however, lies in the different frame wherein it is developed: Bain’s idea is, in itself, valid and effective, but the psychological theory on which it stands is erroneous and 162

A. Bain Emotions and Will, pp. 7-8.

106 wanting. The adoption of the notion of habit as cornerstone of an ethical view, then, entailed for James a full confrontation with empirical psychology.

1. Habits and Emotions. Bain’s Moralist’s Psychology The main tenet of Bain’s theory of emotions is that no emotion is possible without a full participation of the physical system, including the whole nervous system, the glands and the muscles163. Consequently, where a feeling exists, there is also a “free diffusion of nervous energy over the brain.” The view is intended in a strictly materialistic way, and, as Bain states, is opposed to the common, dualistic view of the independence of the mind from the body164. Bain claims here his debt with the French Ideologues, in particular Destutt de Tracy and Cabanis, from whom he adopts the sensualist and mechanistic conception of the body. Bain’s theory, however, shows an internal tension between the mechanistic account of will as “operating on the muscles only”, and the account of will as a faculty apt to restrain emotions and feelings, operating in this later case to control the expenditure of nervous energy on behalf of the deployment of intellectual activity. Bain’s solution – that the will can control the body’s motion by suppressing the muscular expressions of feelings – cannot avoid a dualistic view introduced into the system by the very notion of will. The original hedonistic formula of “volition” as “the great fact that our Pleasures and Pains... prompt to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate the last,” is put in tension by a surreptitious notion of will as faculty: “It is not necessary to dwell upon the well-known fact, already alluded to, of the power of the will to suppress the outspoken manifestations of feeling, and to initiate a habit of suppression in consequence of which it is no longer possible to read the emotions of men in the language of nature. This voluntary restraint applies immediately to the muscular movement operated through the voluntary class of muscles […].”165

163

Ibidem, p. 9. Ibidem, p. 8. 165 Ibidem, p. 15. 164

107 Bain grafts his theory of habit as suppression of emotional overflow onto an account of behavior in terms of reflex action. The creation of habits is the transformation of emotional states and their consequent movements into “secondary automatic,” unconscious actions that produce the least amount of nervous, emotional excitement, in accordance with the mechanist’s principle of least action. Habit is the effect of education, whose aim is to narrow the sphere of influence of a sensational or active stimulus by eliminating superfluous movement and reducing to the necessary minimum the bodily movements through which the emotion expresses itself. “It is the power of education to change the natural and primitive course of the emotional currents, and to determine an artificial mode in the spread of the cerebral wave.”166

The general theory underlying this view is that the body through the nervous system reacts as a whole to external stimuli, although specific emotions seem to have a predilection for expression in specific organs. Consequently, such an unorganized and uncontrolled involvement of the whole body is an unnecessary expenditure of nervous power. Thus, its reduction and control, the purpose of education, is rooted in a natural physiological principle. Bain rather uneasily deploys this theory in the quantitative and mechanist language of eighteenth century, and overcomes the even greater conceptual embarrassment of explaining why such a “voluntary” suppression of emotion is necessary by allusion to social custom and aesthetics: “The suppression of these accompaniments is the work of education, and the distinction of mature life. But this extinction is never complete at any age. All that is deemed ungraceful in the extraneous accompaniments of speech is repressed among the cultivated classes of society, but gestures that have not this character are preserved, and even superadded for the sake of the increased animation that they impart to the human presence.”167

The introduction of an extrinsic, aesthetic justification of the suppression, such as the ungracefullness of the superfluous movements, generates serious doubts about the depth and consistency of the theory, and does not provide any real genealogical explanation for it. In fact, Bain transforms education into a mere course of social etiquette, a matter of 166 167

Ibidem, p. 14. Ibidem, p. 16.

108 learning how to behave in the ways the cultivated classes of society find graceful. The problem here is less with this explanation’s ideological character, which itself could call for discussion at some other point, than with the exteriority of such an explanation, which leaves basic questions unanswered. On the one hand, Bain’s use of the the mechanistic (hedonistic) model does not provide any intrinsic justification for the educational suppression of emotions, to the extent they are not painful; while on the other hand, his insertion of a dualistic notion of “will” as a faculty seems to require a non-mechanistic mediating agency to direct the will. In other words, why should emotions be suppressed? What is the standard of the will? The answer, in this instance at least, is that the will ought to will what is aesthetically pleasant for the society, or for the better part of it; a less psychological than gratuitously sociological answer, and one that, to boot, provides no sociological account of how the cultivated classes came to this consensus. In fact, a better account is offered in chapter IX of the second part of The Emotions and the Will, which is dedicated to the moral habits. Here, Bain restates his fundamental assumption that the control of the emotions through the moral habits is necessary because “where the emotions dominate the intellect cannot confer prudence on the affairs of men.” The task of moral education is to provide individuals with the balance between the opposite “districts” of the mind, the emotional and the intellectual; the agency governing this balance is the will. The difficulty of Bain’s position is evident: he is offering a revised edition of Bishop Butler’s moral theory with the will in place of conscience but without the metaphysical support of religion. Yet, once again, without the religious background that supported Butler’s view, the action of the will lacks a rationale. Why should the will work on behalf of prudence? Is prudence the natural outcome of the action of intellect once the emotions have been suitably repressed? If that is the case, is morality simply the expression of prudence? And if not, how does intellect recognize and choose the ends or the rules for moral behavior? Bain’s analysis in chapter IX starts from the issue of the moral choice, traditionally narrated as a battle between opposite powers or drives, pitting the passions, emotions, sensuousness, on the one side, against reason, “good will”, prudence, morality on the other. The problem in these

109 situations, as Bain claims, is to keep the attention fixed on the right thing to be done and not to let the attention be diverted by other and more immediately appealing stimuli. “Commencing then from the natural beginning of our subject, I shall first remark upon the control of the volitions of sense and appetite. We find, when we come to balance the conflicting interests of life, that the pleasures of the sense stimulate us too far in pursuit, and the pains of sense too far in avoidance. […] we desire to bring the influence of habit to assist the force of volition, which is best done by means of a tolerably unbroken series of decisions on one side.”168

The idea, although common to the dualistic tradition, is somewhat at odds with the sensualist and hedonistic theoretical ground of Bain’s moral claims. Volition is “the great fact that our Pleasures and Pains... prompt to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate the last.” Yet, such volition is to be controlled by the decisions of something beyond the achievement of pleasure, such as the formation of moral character. It is however evident from the hedonistic standpoint that such a solution is a rather uncanny deus ex machina. Again, in Bain’s theory, volition, which within a sensualist/mechanical schema responds to pleasure, by choosing to maximize it – just as it responds aversely to pain – is in the odd position, of also repressing pleasure systematically on behalf of civilization or morality. How does this switch in function happen? The contradiction is solved, according to Bain, through the action of (self)education, which is defined as the process of impressing on the individual’s mind habits that fix certain suitable behaviors to the extent that their execution is no longer matter of attention, but of simple automatism. “What is to be done, therefore, is to mark certain objects as paramount to certain others, and to initiate each person into the deliberative preference by gentle stages.”169

So much for the principle of pleasure. Once again the question arises about what makes “certain objects as paramount to certain others,” and the only answer is: the fact that society deems such objects to be paramount as means of its own preservation170. What cannot be explained by features possessed by the individual emerges in the collectivity of individuals. The 168

Ibidem, p. 501. Ibidem. 170 Ibidem, p. 527: “The major part of every community adopt certain rules of conduct necessary for the common preservation, or ministering to the common well-being.” 169

110 meaning of morality for Bain is wholly captured by the public morality and implanted in the self through the sense of duty, defined as a sentiment of obligation toward the demands of the community. Following this theme, Bain contends the sense of duty must be implanted in the individual through a “regime of compulsion”, meaning that the the individual is subjected to a system of rewards and punishments to force him or her to obey social norms. “Order being once established in a society, that is to say, the practice of obedience being habitual to the mass of the community, it is only necessary to apply a disciplining process to the young to prepare them for the same acquiescence in the public morality.”171

The “disciplining process” consists in the creation of habits through a double method involving, on the one hand, the behaviorist creation of mechanical and automatic behaviors through association and, on the other, the exertion of a volitional effort along the line of greater resistance. To this second aspect belongs the “habitual control of the Attention, as against the diversions caused by outward objects.” To the first aspect belongs the creation of privileged pathways of the discharge of nervous energy in the direction of the socially approved line of action. negatively, this means fighting against anti-social sensual appetites. Positively, this means the practice of the continuous and inflexible repetition of a succession of actions leading to the socially desirable result – a form of what would be called, by twentieth century behaviorists, “conditioning”. The explanation of the procedure of creation of the habit clearly exemplifies the metaphysical character of the physiological mechanism underlying Bain’s view. “What the individual has had to act so many times in one way, brings on a current of nervous power, confirming the victorious, and sapping the vanquished, impulse. The force of determination that unites the decisive movement....with the perception of the appointed hour is invigorated slowly but surely; and there is an equal tendency to withdraw the nutritive power that keeps up the pleasurable sensibility opposed to the act. I cannot doubt that there is such a thing as literally starving a very acute pleasurable or painful sensibility, by crossing it, or systematically discouraging it. So on both sides the force of iteration is softening down the harsh experience... and bringing about, as time advances, an approach to the final condition of mechanical 171

Ibidem, p. 528. The comparison of education with animal training appears more than significant in this context, see p. 516: “Our present theme might be illustrated by the domestication of the animal tribes. It is both curious and instructive to find out what those peculiarity are that render some animal docile, in contradistinction to so many others.”

111 punctuality and entire indifference. Years may be wanted to arrive at this point. […] Not however, I think, without the two main conditions of an adequate initiative and an unbroken persistence.”172

Nervous power casts off its existence as a mere physiological agency and takes on the lineaments of a “force of determination”, which is a kind of metaphysical moral agency. In conclusion, Bain’s psychology appears flawed inasmuch as it is pulled between two irreconcilable poles: mechanism on the one side, voluntarism on the other. Bain’s solution is utterly unsatisfying, for it runs around the whole problem by adopting “society” as the black box in which the self’s hedonic reasoning is reconfigured, or, in other words, where the pleasure seeking will is suddenly transformed into its opposite, the instrument of duty governed socialization. In the end, Bain’s psychology is reduced to an ideological support for a pre-established moral and social standard.

2. Individual and Society. James’s Philosophical Psychology It should be noted that James’s references to Bain’s psychology are always rather ambivalent and not necessarily easy to sort into an outline. As is well known, James criticized Bain’s theory quite outspokenly, making the differences between Bain’s and his theory of will into a standard question on the exams in the classes he taught. At the same time, Bain’s two-tome treatise was the textbook for James’s psychology classes. These facts should be taken as the sign of a major tension in James’s relationship with Bain’s psychology. A close reading will show that several of Bain’s main tenets are absorbed into James’s psychology, e.g., the theory of brain paths; the account of will as attention173. the notion of habit as saving energy and as a mechanism of social regulation. However, in the light of James’s philosophical anthropology such as I have construed it in the previous chapter, such elements need to be reinterpreted in the light of James’s fundamental notions: the primacy of action and the indeterminacy of Man.

172 173

Ibidem, p. 503. See A. Bain, op. cit., § 19, p. 517. See also PP II, pp. 561-562.

112 This change of perspective, which is James’s real contribution to psychology, also involves a reconsideration of habit from the social standpoint. Bain’s theory of habit is intended to produce the “normal” citizen. In fact, the function of habit is not only a matter of keeping the excess of emotion under control in order to save nervous energy and improve the individual’s performance, but its function is also the creation of the socially fit individual, that is, of an individual able to share the common feelings and attitudes of its society. Social standardization, then, seems to be the gist of Bain’s psychology of habit, to the neglect of the dynamic axis of novelty and creativity which, in fact, is the outstanding fact of human history, one that has formed, among other things, the class system to which Bain refers. James, although ready to recognize the major value of habit as a means of socialization, is nonetheless extremely sensitive to the danger to the full development of individual potential posed by Bain’s view. James resists Bain’s conformism on behalf of an individualistic conception of society in which the individual ultimately has a priority over the society, which should not be sacrificed on behalf of social stability. Society must be open and dynamic, and the dialectical tension between the individual and society is not necessarily a fault to be overcome, but an opportunity for novelty and change. If habit is necessary to organize the self’s energies in view of its potential socialization, this organization must always primarily serve to empower the self in seeking the path of its own singularity, which only can occur through a process of self-organization from within. Bain’s reduction of morality to the standardization of individuals, in James’s view, entails a major loss in terms of the richness of the universe, and a denial of human freedom, insofar as it replaces the natural with social determinism. It misconstrues the organization of energy and construction of the cultural world to treat them as instruments of human power directed towards extinguishing the original element of individuality that is the very point of human existence. The original tension between individual and society cannot be avoided, but must rather be preserved as the engine that keeps human history and culture working. Bain’s psychological theory must be rejected, then, not only for its inconsistent stab at synthesizing mechanism and mentalism, but, on the anthropological level, as a fallacious and ideologically biased view of the

113 human being and of its modes of action. Bain’s conformism is an erroneous basis upon which to build moral assumptions. 2.1. The Associationistic Fallacy and the Limits of Associationism James’s critical approach to Bain’s psychology marks the separation between James and the tradition of the empiricist psychology. The key point of this separation is the criticism of the associationist theory and its mechanistic view of human behavior. In fact, what was at stake in the criticism of associationism was a completely different account of human will. It is significant, indeed, that James’s most straightforward attack against Bain occurs in a footnote in the chapter XXVI of the Principles, where James says: “The silliness of the old-fashioned pleasure-philosophy saute aux yeux. Take, for example, Prof. Bain's explanation of sociability and parental love by the pleasure of touch: ‘Touch is the fundamental and generic sense.... The combined power of soft contact and warmth amounts to a considerable pitch of massive pleasure…. Touch is both the alpha and the omega of affection. As the terminal and satisfying sensation, the ne plus ultra, it must be a pleasure of the highest degree. […] It must be that there is a source of pleasure in the companionship of other sentient creatures. […] To account for this, I can suggest nothing but the primary and independent pleasure of the animal embrace [mind, this is said not of the sexual interest, but of ‘Sociability at Large’].” (PP II, 551, footnote)

The “old-fashioned” psychology, namely, Bain’s psychology, is “silly,” that is, naively stupid and simplistic. It is simplistic because it reduces the dynamic of human action to only one of its components, associative thought. It is naïve and myopic because it presents an intellectual construction as experiential data, thus allowing the real data of experience to escape its grasp. A good part of the importance of James’s criticism of associationism may be lost if it is not seen in strict relation to James’s anthropological image. The rejection of associative theory is not a mere matter of technicalities but rather entails a different anthropological view focused on human spontaneity and indetermination. It is easy to detect echoes of James’s early essays in James’s attack on associative psychology: the human mind deploys an original, spontaneous idiosyncratic activity that cannot be reduced to the influence of the environment. Insofar as associative processes are at work in the human mind, analogical processes

114 are at work as well, and they do not depend on the contiguity of external objects but on the spontaneity of the inner processes of mind. Reducing human thinking to habits and material contiguity falsifies the facts of consciousness and denies humans’ highest intellectual possibilities and freedom of thinking174. Moreover, the weakness of the associative theory becomes evident once we consider that it works only post facto: “The same outer object may suggest either of many realities formerly associated with it – for in the vicissitudes of our outer experience we are constantly liable to meet the same thing in the midst of differing companions – and a philosophy of association that should merely say that it will suggest one of these, or even of that one of them which it has oftenest accompanied, would go but a very short way into the rationale of the subject. This, however, is about as far as most associationists have gone with their ‘principle of contiguity.’ Granted an object, A, they never tell us beforehand which of its associates it will suggest; their wisdom is limited to showing, after it has suggested a second object, that that object was once an associate.” (PP I, 533)

From the perspective of the theory of will, the criticism of associationism develops into a criticism of the hedonistic theory of action – that pleasure serves as the sole motive to action – and, by way of the destruction of that theory, into a criticism of ethical hedonism. Indeed, according to hedonistic ethics, the norm of maximizing pleasure is based on the insight that all actions aim directly or indirectly at pleasure. That is, they aim to something that is pleasurable or, in most of cases, to something that is not pleasurable at all but that has been made pleasurable through habitual association with something pleasurable. Thus, the hedonist argues, although the agent is not apparently aiming at anything pleasurable, actually the agent is acting for pleasure’s sake with reference to whatever pleasurable is associated with the ongoing action. In all cases, then, the agent acts for the sake of pleasure175. 174

See “Great Men and Their Environment,” WB, p. 185: “But turn to the highest order of minds, and what a change! Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy. […] That is to say, the same premisses would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion; [...] notions are shaken out of the same reservoir – the reservoir of a brain in which the reproduction of images in the relations of their outward persistence or frequency has long ceased to be the dominant law.” 175 See, e.g., J. S. Mill Utilitarianism, § IV, p. 310.

115 We have already pointed out James’s metaphysical objection to the hidden teleology entailed in the hedonistic view; however, it bears remembering that James specifically objected also to the psychological scaffold that supported the claim of hedonistic ethics: “It might be that to reflection [stress added] such a narrow teleology would justify itself, that pleasures and pains might seem the only comprehensible and reasonable motives for action, the only motives on which we ought to act. That is an ethical proposition, in favor of which a good deal may be said. But it is not a psychological proposition; and nothing follows from it as to the motives upon which as a matter of fact we do act. These motives are supplied by innumerable objects...If the thought of pleasure can impel to action, surely other thoughts may.” (PP II, 552)

With respect to the theory of pleasure, chapter XXVI of the Principles provides an attentive analysis that aims at undermining the hedonist thesis concerning the indissoluble causal bond connecting pleasure to action: no action, by nature, is performed with the sole aim of pleasure. Here again the target of James’s ironic attack is Bain: “Pleasures and pains are for professor Bain the ‘genuine impulse of the will’. […] Accordingly, where professor Bain finds an exception to this rule, he refuses to call the phenomenon a ‘genuinely voluntary impulse’. The exceptions, he admits, ‘are those furnished by never-dying spontaneity, habits, and fixed ideas’. […] Sympathy ‘has this in common with Fixed Idea, that it clashes with the regular outgoings of the will in favor of our pleasures’. Prof. Bain thus admits all the essential facts. Pleasure and pains are motives of only part of our activity.” (PP II, 554-555)

As a matter of fact, James argues, the possible reasons for any action, whether voluntary, instinctive, or reflected actions, or of the ideo-motor type, are numerous and underdetermined. We can accept that pleasure could be at times a spur to action and pain, while the inhibition of seemingly pleasure bringing action might be attributed to the conflict of rival motives, so that an action may be traced back to a tangle of mental objects all endowed with an exactly similar impusive and inhibitive power (PP II, 558). To this impulsive and inhibitive quality James gives the name interest, as denoting a more adequate basis for a theory of action than that of “pleasure.” The term “interest” describes an active tendency to focus on those ‘states of affairs’ that fit with our mental structures and so arouse positive feelings of adequacy between world and mind. Interest is, thus, the basic factor in the selective activity of consciousness. The essential character of experience can be found in the interplay between consciousness, as the living source of interest (“The Home of Interest”), and the environment. Interest, as an active tendency, thus means a

116 “coupling” between the consciousness and the object into a “praxis”, for which the object of interest is an intended object and so is immediately an object acted toward, that is, an end. But – this is the key point – the object is “enacted” because it is interesting, that is, intended, and no pleasurable impulse or objective is required for action176. Because of the thick texture of the intentional relation of consciousness with the world, composed as it is of innumerable and non-predetermined mental objects, a hedonistic teleology cannot predict the vagaries of human activity. Indeed, the role interest plays as a stimulus for action emphasizes the intentionality of consciousness, which is directed at external objects that become practical goals. In the intentional relation of consciousness with the world, the object of interest is thought of as an end, or as “for the sake of” an end, and such an object is the only real end of the action177. James’s interactionist view, which as we saw draws heavily on Lotze’s, understands feelings of pleasure and pain as the feed-back that guides the relation to the interesting object; under that aspect, they play only an instrumental and subsidiary role in the unfolding of our worldly interaction: “Objects and thoughts of objects start our action, but the pleasures and pains which action brings modify its course and regulate it; and later the thoughts of the pleasures and the pains acquire themselves impulsive and inhibitive power…. So widespread and searching is this influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements that a premature philosophy has decided that these are our only spurs to action [...] This is a great mistake, however. Important as is the influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli.” (PP II, 554) 176

See PP II, p. 558: “If one must have a single name for the condition upon which the impulsive and inhibitive quality of objectsdepends, one had better call it their interest. The ‘interesting’ is a title which covers not only the pleasant and the painful, but also the morbidly fascinating, the tediously haunting, and even the simply habitual, inasmuch as the attention usually travels on habitual lines, and what-we-attend-to and what-interests-us are synonymous terms.” 177 On the intentional nature of self in James, see B. Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology: A Study of "The Principles of Psychology", Ch. VI. It is noteworthy that an analogous conception, though based on different grounds, is also developed by Bradley. See F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 86: “The practical end, if it is to be a practical goal and standard, must present itself to us as some definite unity, some concrete whole that we can realize in our acts, and carry out in our life. And pleasure (as pain) we find to be nothing but a name which stands for a series of this, that, and the other feelings, which are not except in the moment or moments that they are felt, which have as series...any reference at all, any of them, beyond themselves.”

117 Consequently, it is legitimate to claim that, for James, for whom interest and not unqualified pleasure serves as a spur to action, it is the nature of the object insofar it satisfies my interest which originates pleasure, and not the pleasure that defines my interest. The feeling of pleasure is characterized by and subsequent to the nature of the object of interest that agent is intending178. As a result, if we want to conceive the nature of an action exactly as it is experienced by human consciousness, we must say that pleasure becomes meaningful only according to the interest upon which it depends. From this perspective, it can be easily maintained that no real pleasure is experienced except as a consequence of an interest; that is, pleasure is always experienced as related to objects “demanding” an action in their direction179. In James’s psychological view, then, the hedonistic conception inverts the ordinary relationship between ends and means in human action, mixing together what James called the ‘pleasure of achievement’ with the impulse that lead to the act. The hedonistic attitude of acting for the sake of pleasure, however, can only be accounted for as just one of the many possibilities within the broader range of human behavior, but not as its general pattern (PP II, 557-558). At the origin of the hedonistic account we need to recognize a methodological error of the classic empiricist psychology in the analysis of the experiential data, an error that James identifies in chapter VII of the Principles as the “Psychologist’s fallacy.” “The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report…. Another variety of the psychologist' fallacy is the assumption that the mental state studied must be conscious of itself as the psychologist is conscious of it. The mental state is aware of itself only 178

An analogous account is also in Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, p. 52: “To sum up: our conscious active impulses are so far from being always directed towards the attainment of pleasure or avoidance of pain for ourselves, that we can find everywhere in conscious extra-regarding impulses, directed towards something that is not pleasure, nor relief from pain; and, indeed, a most important part of our pleasure depends upon the existence of such impulses.” 179 PP II, p. 558 n.*: “How much clearer Hume's head was than that of his disciples! ‘It has been proved beyond all controversy that even the passions commonly esteemed selfish carry the mind beyond self directly to the object; that though the satisfaction of these passions give us enjoyment, yet the prospect of this enjoyment is not the cause of the passions but, on the contrary, the passion is antecedent to the enjoyment, and without the former the latter could never possibly exist’ etc. (Essay on the Different Species of Philosophy, § 1, note near the end.)”

118 from within; it grasps what we call its own content, and nothing more. The psychologist on the contrary, is aware of it from without, and knows its relations with all sorts of other things.” (PP I, 195)

Indeed, by systematically confusing first person reports with third person reports, empiricist psychology fails to understand the subjectively experienced phenomenon of the spontaneity of consciousness and of its intentional relation to objects, because it is operating in the framework of an objective and falsely empirical description to try to impose the artificially regulation of an awkward associative mechanism upon all mental phenomena. In this perspective, hedonism is essentially the result of an optical illusion produced by associationistic psychology. Brentano’s formula of intentionality – “each consciousness is the consciousness of something.” – plays a very influential role here. In the Principles, James directly quotes Brentano: “The phenomena inwardly apprehended are true in themselves. As they appear – of this the evidence with which they are apprehended is a warrant – so they are in reality. Who, then, can deny that in this a great superiority of Psychology over the physical sciences comes to light? […] No one can doubt whether the psychic condition he apprehends in himself be, and be so, as he apprehends it...” (PP I, 187)

Brentano's view clearly reverberates in the double definition that James gives of “the Psychologist's fallacy.” James, however, works out an extended account of Brentano’s law, according to which if “every consciousness is the consciousness of something,” it must be conversely true that each consciousness of something is the consciousness of the very thing of which we are aware and of nothing else. In Bishop Butler's words, “everything is what it is and not another thing.” The theory of pleasure, then, appears as a blatant instance of the Psychologist’s fallacy in its basic postulate of psychological egoism, which results from the psychologist observing the agent’s behavior from an external point of view, and devising a coherent causal succession between the action and its resulting pleasure. Through a unhappy application of the notion of causa finalis, the psychologist comes to view pleasure as the spur and end of action, rather than just as its possible outcome. Thus, the psychologist overlooks the fact that what the agent is conscious of, as an end, is in most cases an external object and not an internal state of his own. The notion of the “psychologist’s fallacy,” provided James with a handy methodological weapon to level against the teleology of pleasure. Indeed,

119 if the agent claims a consciousness of a certain object as his end, the psychologist, or any observer of the action, has no ground to claim something else, or pleasure, as agent’s real purpose180. And this holds true even when the agent is aiming at an external object in consequence of an association with a feeling of pleasure on account of agent’s education181. Rather, in James’s view, a more correct account would be that the agent, operating within the intentional frame of his consciousness, chooses objects which, though they can turn out to be pleasurable, differ in their interest for the agent from the pleasure they may procure, and these objects are to be considered as his/her true ends, and not as mere associated representatives of pleasure. The relevant ethical consequence of James’s criticism is that pleasure can be assumed to be a spur of action and source of moral feelings only in a limited number of cases. For the other cases, such aspects of human life depend on other inner mental processes that remain undetermined and indeterminable from the perspective of the psychological inquiry and that have the power to determine the interests and the objects that move us to action182. 180

On the limits of an objective account of the causes of others’ behavior, see also Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 52: “In the first place, it is urged that Pleasure, though not the only conscious aim of human action, is yet always the result to which it is unconsciously directed. The proposition would be difficult to disprove; since no one denies that pleasure in some degree normally accompanies the attainment of a desired end: and when once we go beyond the testimony of consciousness there seems to be no clear method of determining which among the consequences of any action is the end at which it is aimed. For the same reason, however, the proposition is at any rate equally difficult to prove.” 181 See Ibidem, p. 53. “ […] In fact, the doctrine that pleasure... is the end of all human action can neither be supported by the results of introspection, nor by the results of external observation or inference: it rather seems to be reached by an arbitrary and illegitimate combination of the two.” See also F.H. Bradley, Ethic. Std., cit., p. 85: “What it has before its mind is an object, an act or an event, which is not (for itself at least) a state of the feeling self, in itself or others. To say that, in desiring the right, it propose to itself a pleasure to be got by the right, is to assert in the face of facts. To the moral mind that feeling is an accompaniment or a consequent, and it may be thought of as such. But to think of it as more, to propose it as the end to which the act or objective event are the means, and nothing but the means, is simply to turn the moral point of view upside down” 182 The use of the “psychologist’s fallacy” in ethics begets sort of a “moralist’s fallacy”. See infra cap. I § 2.2.

120 2.2. Will and Character The criticism of associationism necessarily entails a new theory of the will. The difference between James’s and the traditional account of “will” is explicitly marked in the lecture on “will” included in Talks to Teachers: “All our deeds were considered by the early psychologists to be due to a particular faculty called the will, without whose fiat action could not occur. Thoughts and impression, being intrinsically inactive, were supposed to produce conduct only through the intermediation of this superior agent.… This doctrine was long ago exploded by the discovery of reflex action, in which sensible impressions, as you know, produce movement immediately and of themselves.” (TT, 101-102)

Will is not a faculty, but rather a name for two distinct things: 1) the entire capacity for impulsive and active life, including instinctive reactions and habitual, automatic, or semiconscious acts; and 2) acts that are deliberately performed. The latter are acts that require a distinct idea of what they are and a focused attention on the part of the mind. In other words, will is a continuously ongoing ideational process strictly intertwined with the other thinking processes occurring in the stream of thought. Specific to James’s account of will is the exclusively mental character of will’s action. Will is just a relationship between ideas and performs no direct action on the motor apparatus. Ideas, according to Renouvier’s theory of ideo-motor actions183, have the power to produce movement, and will is only an idea followed by its respective movement or action184. Thus the relationship between thought and movement is to be understood on the basis of the kinetic power of ideas, and the classic problem of the will is nothing but the erroneous translation into physiological characteristics of a higher level of complication in the interplay of ideas. The ideo-motor actions as much as most of the automatic and semi-conscious actions can be inhibited by other ideas 183

See James’s comparative review of Bain and Renouvier in ECR, #103, 321-326. See also EPs, p. 109. James’s reference for the theory of ideo-motor actions are also to Carpenter and Lotze. In addition, James often makes reference to a detailed description of ideo-motor actions in Bain’s Sense and Intellect. 184 See W. James,“The Feeling of Effort” (1880) in EPs. In this article James denies the existence of a feeling of effort intended as feeling of innervation (Innervationengefuehl) held by Bain, Muller, and Wundt. James, here, discounts also Maine de Biran’s theory of effort of the will as muscular effort. Will, James argues, can be only a moral phenomenon that cannot be put in relation with any neuromuscular phenomenon.

121 entailing opposite conduct and consequences. The activity of the will, or deliberation, then, is nothing but the conflict between opposite ideas. Once the conflict is resolved and the action is released, we describe this as decision, or fiat, but this by no means entails that there is a specific “act of the will” to trigger the action. Of course, James’s account of will leaves open the question of whether according to such a perspective our acts can still be considered “free,” namely, indeterminate, or whether we need to consider them as the necessary result of an autonomously ongoing process of thought, which, however, was not a question psychology alone could answer. The problem of free-will is a fundamental question that obliges James to engage in a thorough analysis of the issue of the effort of the will. The problem with the decisional process, that is, of the will or free-will, is whether the element that resolves the deliberation is internal or external to the interplay of the antagonist motivations. In other words, the question is whether the will is just one more motivation, that is, an additional “push” that we call “effort.” In chapter XXVI of the Principles, James redefines the decisional process on the basis of the distinction between ideo-motor and deliberate actions (PP II, 522). Starting from this distinction, together with simple ideo-motor, automatic, and semiautomatic actions, James also identifies five types of decision, four of which are dependent on the mere interplay between motivations. The fifth type is the only one that can be properly named voluntary decision, and the only one wherein the “feeling of effort” occurs. “In the fifth and final type of decision, the feeling that the evidence is all in, and that reason has balanced the books, may be either present or absent. But in either case we feel, in deciding, as if ourselves by our own willful act inclined the beam; in the former case by adding our living effort to the weight of the logical reason which taken alone, seems powerless to make the act discharge; in the latter by a kind of creative contribution of something instead of a reason which does a reason’s work.” (PP II, 534)

The creative contribution of James’s second case is evidently the kind of voluntary act at work in the so-called “will to believe.” The first case, however, is exactly what is at stake in the free-will vs. determinism question. This specific case of voluntary decision has a major relevance here, since, as it will become clear later, it focuses directly on the issue of the formation of character. In either case, as James clearly stresses, the

122 fifth kind of decision is an exceptional and rather rare occurrence in an individual’s life, since most human actions actually occur without any effort or with just an illusory feeling of effort (PP II, 535). It is a major tenet of James’s account of will that the effort of the will is at last nothing but an effort of attention and this is a necessary consequence of the fact that, for James, will is equivalent to the propulsive nature of consciousness. There is for James a sort of natural a priori hierarchy of objects of interest, ranked by their power to occupy the focus of our attention and, consequently, to trigger an action. In this order, the objects that appeal to the immediate, instinctual or habitual interest of the agent are ranked higher. By contrast, abstract, unusual, or unpleasant ideas have a rather weak propulsive power and seldom counterbalance or inhibit the more immediately compelling ideas of the other kind. Such a classification of the objects of interest as immediate and remote corresponds to the classification of the objects of attention presented in chapter XI of the Principles (PP I, 416). The objects of immediate interest are the objects that more easily capture our attention, for they appear as actual and immediate matter for action, that is, as more real. The distinction between close or remote objects is thus a function of the degree of reality the agent assigns them. Sense objects are immediately more interesting because they are deemed more “real,” that is, more easily available for agent’s action185. It is, of course, this “degree” or “sentiment” of “reality” that supports the belief and determines belief’s power to trigger action (PP II, 547). Thus, in standard conditions, a person is mostly influenced by the motives related to those objects he or she takes as more real, namely, the objects that can be more immediately acted upon. Yet, it is a common, albeit infrequent, experience that, in some particular circumstances or for some exceptional individuals, “strong” motives are inhibited or subordinated to “remote” ones; that is, occasionally the motives related to ideal, unusual or unpleasant objects, and the corresponding action follow

185

This is a necessary consequence of the theory of reflex-arc. Since the organism is a system of transformation of external impulses into (re)action, it will be more immediately attracted by objects that allow for a sudden release of the motor discharge than by those that suspend or delay it.

123 the line of greater resistance. (PP II, 536)186. In such peculiar cases, allegedly, the “victory” of the “weaker motives” depends upon an “effort of the will”. James’s phenomenological analysis of the effort of the will shows that the notion of “effort of the will” points to a “priviliged situation” of “authenticity” in which a victory over oneself is experienced187. Indeed, the decision of the fifth type is characterized, a parte subjecti, by the fact that it does not follow from the progressive and autonomous fading-out of one of the two conflicting options but rather by the conscious “murder” of it. The “murdered” option, however, haunts the consciousness as the possibility “that could have been realized” (PP II, 534). In this sense, James in the Talks to Teachers highlights the connection between this type of decision and the weakness or the futility of “inhibition by repression:” the repressed idea will reemerge again in time, called forth by the very effort used to repress it (TT, 297). In the fifth type of decision, which we will name “existential,” the task of “will” is to keep the difficult option steadily in the focus of attention, or, analogously, to keep the attention onto the “difficult” idea. This special action of will is what is felt as “effort,” and consequently, as James claims, the effort of the will is nothing but an effort of attention (PP II, 561562)188. In one case there is an effort to keep the attention focused on an 186

“Sphere of effort is thus found wherever non-instinctive motives to behavior are to rule the day.” See also PP II, p. 548. 187 See P. Ricoeur, Philosophie de la volonté, p. 167. 188 The account of the effort of will as effort of attention does not really solve the question of determinism, since a determinist – e.g., Schopenhauer – could easily argue that, if that is the case, what is determined is the passage of thoughts. In “The Dilemma of Determinism” (WB), James tries to solve the problem through a definition of freedom as pluralism and possibility of novelty in the world. . Yet, as Peirce remarked, James’s alleged logical link between plurality and possibility is gratuitous (see C. S. Peirce CP, 8.311); for cosmic tychism does not mean free will at the individual level, for as far as the world as a whole can be “free,” the individual can be fully determined as product of the chance encounter of several chains of determinants (ML, pp. 424-426). Thus, James’s attempt to solve the dilemma of determinism does not overcome the limits of the third Kantian antinomy. The question of determinism confirms its nature of metaphysical question and, as such, as James finally admits, can be overcome only through a voluntaristic belief. Later on, James reaches a view of individual freedom as a fetish-concept with relative or little ethical relevance, at least with respect to the traditional perspective of moral responsibility (P, pp. 59-61; ML, p. 342). Among the thinkers of James’s days, an analogous perspective can be found in

124 idea that is in itself difficult to sustain or somewhat repulsive189. In other cases, the effort is in supporting an idea that is perfectly counterbalanced by its antagonist (PP II, 568). By choosing a certain idea instead of its antagonist, the individual chooses to take care of that special ideal and make it part of his/her life and the choice of the idea means the choice for a certain kind of life rather than another. The decision of the fifth type, then, is the very type of the ethical decision, and is the cornerstone of moral life. James concludes that such effortful decisions are rare, for such existential occasions are not met with every day. James’s account of “effort” in terms of conflict between “strong” and “weak” motives, however, hides the egological dialectic that underlies such a simplistic opposition. The inclinations and the dynamic of the attention are, thus, a consequence of the internal dialectic of a person’s different “selves” (material, social, spiritual). Consequently, the only possible term of an effort of “will,” if such a thing ever existed, must be the rank or the hierarchy of the “selves”190. The singularity of the decisions of the fifth type, then, consists of the fact that, whereas in the other types of decision what is “willed” is an object in the world, whatever it might possibly be, in the fifth type, the individual itself, although not thematically, is the object of its own decision. In the decision with effort, all the “self” of the individual is engaged, and the worldly term of such a decision is but the metaphor or the transposition of the egological configuration that realizes itself in it. The decision for a higher ideal rather than for one’s personal advantage is not just a matter of motives but rather is an attempt to shift the focus from one kind of self to another, that is, to reset the rank of the selves. In other words, it is a redefinition of one’s own existential project, that entails the assumption of a special attitude about one’s own life, and to this extent this kind of decision is always “free.” Thus, In “Are We Automata?”, James objected to Schopenhauer’s claim that our decisions are subject to the determinism of character: although this is generally true, James argues, an exception must be made for the case in which what is the subject of the F. H. Bradley (Ethical Studies) and H. Sidgwick (The Methods of Ethics), J. Dewey (Ethics 1906-1932), and more recently in A. Heller (General Ethics). 189 See PP II, pp. 563-565. 190 Cf. PP I, chap. X.

125 decision is the character itself. In such cases there is no character determination and the decision is free, that is, undetermined (EPs., 51)191. Through the intertwining between will and attention, James creates the conditions that may join together character, will, and attention into one unique structure of personality. The ethical dilemma becomes the occasion and the test of the exercise of the “will,” and the effort of the will or the effort of attention to one’s own ideals, becomes the synthesis and expression of an individual’s character, namely as the “power, reality, being, and substance” of such an individual. Thus, personality is defined by the amount of attentive effort it can produce, that is, by the amount of power or energy an individual can expend in the deployment of his or her own existence192.

3. The Function of Habit James’s account of “will” sets the issues of the formation of character and of the relevance of habits as the crucial ethical questions. Here, James, in resisting Bain’s mechanism, explicitly endorses a major tenet of Maine de Biran’s spiritualist anthropology: habit, far from being purely mechanical, rather appears as an ambivalent function which blurs the distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts, that is, between consciousness and unconsciousness. Character is a “bundle of habits,” that is, of dispositions to act, but such dispositions lie outside of the sphere of the “will.” Rather, they precede voluntary, namely, conscious action. James distinguishes between habits originating from innate inclinations, namely, instincts, and acquired habits, that is, habits that depend upon interaction with the environment. In other words, habit is the result of the process of fixation of impulses into organized and automatic, or semiautomatic, sequences of movements. To 191

See e.g. A. Schopenhauer, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik. (Frankfurt a. M., 1841). 192 See “Notes for Philosophy 3: The Philosophy of Evolution (1879-1885),” ML, pp. 146 ff. Here James argues that the “power” to hold fast to unpleasant or unattractive images is one and the same with the very “essence of character” (p. 148). A marginalia beside this passage shows a list of the following words: Strenght /Reality/Being/Substance.

126 this extent, habit is sedimented “will,” if by “will” we understand conscious action. The process of acquisition of a habit is characterized by the manifoldness of “conscious acts” necessary in order to transform a deliberate into automatic act. James refers twice to the habit of playing piano as a model to explain the nature and the creation of habits. The piano player exemplifies the criss-cross of automatism and awareness, impulse and formal mechanism, novelty and sedimentation that makes of habit an ambiguous gray zone between body and mind. At the same time, it is well known that persistent “voluntary” application and exercise is necessary to reach an effective automatic system of action and reaction. Habit, as well as instinct, is anything but immediacy. The very possibility of the creation of habits is an emergent feature of the plasticity or indetermination of the nervous system. James endorses the traditional mechanistic theory of brain paths, but updates it according to then current accounts of neurology that depicted the brain path as a mechanistic metaphor for processes of electrochemical rearrangement (PP I, 107)193. Yet, in proportion as the explanatory shift was made to the electrochemical dynamic account, psychologists grew less certain of their ability to summarize all the elements and their sequences inthe process; and certainly localizing them was beyond the scope of science in James’s time. The conclusion, thus, is predictably vague. In fact, habit is the fixation of nervous paths of discharge (reflex-arcs) in the “matter” of the nervous system. This “matter”, however, is in a continuous state of tension, and such tension tends to discharge along any “path” the nervous energy finds viable. Indeed, it is likely that as long as there is an already established path, it would work as a locus minoris resistentiae; nothing, however, really prevents the tension from discharging along new paths and creating a new “line of cleavage”. Translated in terms of electrochemical reactions, such an account amount to nothing more than the vague claim

193

Cf. PP I, pp. 104-107. Although the electrochemical activity was a dawning and not established scientific account of brain working in James’s days, James drops some hints in this direction and his account seems to point at a physico-chemical and molecular dynamics rather than at barely mechanical one.

127 that an action that has already been performed is very likely to be repeated again unless another action occurs194. “All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter.” (PP I, 109)

Insofar as habit is embedded in the “matter” of the nervous system, however, habit is “inertia,” that is, passivity. Yet, into this passivity is condensed a considerable quantity of activity, so that habit appears as this sort of active passivity or passive action whose major benefit is the economy of nervous energy (PP I, 112-113). At the same time, habit “reduces the conscious attention with which our acts are performed.” It is only in the perspective of consciousness as a “make up” device that such an account of habit becomes consistent195. Consciousness is not the the paramount object towards which evolution is directed, but rather an energy saving “device” improving the efficacy of our interaction with the environment. As far as possible, humans try to create routines for ordinary tasks and save energy and consciousness for other new or unexpected undertakings. This leads to the first “ethical” concern stemming out of James’s anthropology: the creation of energetically economic habits for the sake of a more effective human life. A second issue originates from the very theory of habits. Indeed, insofar as the dynamic of habits is vague, the range of an individual’s habits is not only wide but also randomly multifarious, not to mention whimsical. Humans build habits out of almost anything, from head scratching up to writing philosophical essays. Although James gives us a sense of what habits do – the habit standardizes the most effective and ergonomic performance path to the desired object – he is not implying that any particular habit is thereby self-evidently justified. This issue leads to three distinct although closely related ethical problems: first, how to cultivate certain habits rather than others in an individual; second, how to effect changes in an entrenched habit; and last, 194

See also C. S. Peirce “Man’s Glassy Essence,” The Monist 3 (Oct. 1892): 1-22 (also in C.P. 6.238-271). “Another physical property of protoplasm is that of taking habits. The course which the spread of liquefaction has taken in the past is rendered thereby more likely to be taken in the future; although there is no absolute certainty that the same path will be followed again.” 195 See above, chap. II.

128 but not least, by what standard should we judge whether a habit is beneficial or harmful? The first two problems clearly point to the question of education, the third instead to a moral, or more correctly, an axiological question. Habits, James states walking on Biran’s steps, cannot be started by will, to the extent no action in general has a voluntary start. Although “many, perhaps most, human habits were once voluntary actions, no action…can be primarily such.… The voluntary action before that, at least once, must have been impulsive or reflex” (PP I, 109, footnote.)196. The exclusion of the will, which marks the distinction between James’s theory of habit and Bain’s, is perfectly consistent with the postulate of the primacy of action. In order to act, humans do not need will, for they cannot help acting, in any case. Rather, will, if any such a thing exists at all, is needed to delay or to redirect action, but not to trigger it197. Thus, habits come out of spontaneous, namely, chance impulses. In other words, an act must occur involuntarily by chance at least once before it can be repeated and appropriated as a habit. For whatever reasons a habit develops for the first time, it is in itself beyond an individual’s control. In fact, the reasons that dispose an individual to assume a given habit rather than another are not necessarily evident to the individual. Accordingly, the practical ethical problem is whether and how a certain habit can be changed or quitted once it has been acquired. The answer is at once affirmative and problematic. Against Bain, James excludes the possibility that in normal conditions changes of habit might be effected through a special act of the “will”. Nonetheless, James’s theory of habit which puts it at the crossroads of passivity and activity allows for change in habit. Habit is passivity – but not mere passivity – as much as it is inertia – but not mere inertia. Habit “relieves” consciousness from a full, thorough-going control of the action, but it can not really “turn off” consciousness. In the chain idea-action-sensation that constitutes the habit routine, the immediate antecedents of each movement of the chain “are at any rate accompanied by consciousness of some kind. They are sensations 196

See also PP II, pp. 486-487. In this sense, it is consistent with James’s theory of will that any apparently “voluntary”, namely, deliberate, action is not a first movement but possibly the redirection of an already existent thrust intended in another direction. 197

129 to which we are usually inattentive, but which immediately call our attention if they go wrong” (PP I, 118). Habit is never mere mechanism, and passivity can always be drafted into activity, that is, conscious action. Following his consistent bias, James substitutes attention for the old fashioned will: if the activity silently flowing at the border of the scope of consciousness somehow gets into difficulty, the ongoing action immediately registers to the attention, and what had been seemingly mechanical passivity is now inhabited by conscious activity that attempts to deal with the unexpected hindrance or adjusts to the new situation.

4. Habit and Ethics James stresses the ethical implication of such an account of habits at the end of chapter IV of the Principles. Providing some practical maxims and suggestions, the few pages that constitute the end of chapter IV require some consideration since they are the closest James comes to an ethics. It is possible to read an implicit recognition of this ethical concern in James’s statement that “the physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics.” This claim, which could easily slip away as just a remark en passant, becomes relevant against the background of what was previously said in the first chapter. Hortatory ethics is almost the only relevant aspect of moral philosophy about which we can soundly speak, and such an ethics has its most powerful ally in the knowledge of the physiological constitution of human beings. The aim of such an ethics is, of course, some sort of “good;” on the nature of which James provides the following clue: “The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves the never so little scar.” (PP I, 127)

Ethics allies with physiology in showing the way to the good life, which consists above all in a well structured and well disposed personality198. 198

It is noteworthy that James holds to his relativistic attitude, and while indicating the formation of personality as the condition of a good life offers no substantial or

130 Quoting the Duke of Wellington, James endorses the view that habit is more than a “second nature; it is all the nature an individual has.” The construction of personality is a discipline, a matter of exercise and repetition. An organ, James repeats after Carpenter, grows in the way it has been exercised, and the nervous system is no exception. Individuals are thus authors of their own destinies, for through habits, they make of themselves the persons they are. Consequently, they are much better off if they begin by making of themselves the persons they want or are supposed to be, by engraving the behavior they need in their nervous systems. “Good,” then, is the creation of a character as a completely fashioned “tendency to act” in the direction of whatever a person considers worthwhile to be acted on or for. Or, in other words, “good” is the creation of instincts as a determination of indeterminate being. Such a determination, in turn, is “good” because it is ergonomically advantageous and more effective. Thus, as far as the good life is a realization of the union between reality and ideal novelty199, such a union, to be actualized through human action, is possible only for an agent that is able to manage its energy and act effectively in view of its ends. This union between reality and ideal novelty and the corresponding acquisition of the individual’s means of its achievement are the two sides of the same ethical problem. James’s argument is deployed as follows: in an overwhelming number of instances, we see that, over time, the shaping power of habitand its inertial resistance to change, grow stronger by force of repetition. Military life is a clear instance of how several years of training and repetition of certain fixed behaviors can shape the character of an individual into a second nature. All kinds of activity and job, however, fix their “ways of the shop” upon the individual according to the patterns of his or her “group” and according to the “proper”, namely, the most effective ways to perform one’s own duty. In much the same way, the habits acquired in matters of personal behavior, taste, language – namely, that complex set of personal universal axiological definition of “good” and “evil”. Virtue is taken as dispositional and a good life is a fully fashioned personality whatever its ends and values might be. As for the content virtue and vice keep their social and conventional character. 199 See B. Wilshire, “Introduction” to William James. The Selected Writings, cit. p. XXXI.

131 inclinations and typical actions that constitute the “style” of an individual – are created and consolidated once and for all in his or her early years of life. The task of education is exactly to create a whole set of such habits that “relieve” the individual from the effort of deliberating about every tiny, trivial, although necessary, act of everyday life. “The more the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our high powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lightning of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed everyday, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.” (PP I, 122)

There are some time tested practical maxims that can be used by people who have not yet ingrained in their nervous system some basic, useful acts, namely, some “daily duty,” as a habit, or, by implication, can be used to break an old, “bad” habit and replace it with a new “good” one. To the two quite commonsensical and traditional practical maxims that James borrows from Bain’s chapters on moral habits200, James adds a third one: “Seize the very first opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain” (PP I, 124). This third maxim, although not less commonsensical is, however, interesting, for it grafts James’s theory of emotions onto the body of folk psychology. Emotions have motor power, and a person must take advantage of this power when setting a new habit because, unless they are boosted by emotions and enacted, the most exquisite ethical precepts and maxims as well as the most delicate moral feelings will remain as just vapid abstractions or wishful sentimentalism with no real moral value. “A character, as J.S. Mill says, is a completely fashioned will” (PP I, 125), and not a compound of good intentions. Consequently, moral personality is, and cannot be other than, a way of action constructed and fashioned through the repeated actualization of one’s own moral feelings

200

A. Bain Emotions and Will. The two maxims say: “We must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible”; and “Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.” It should be noticed, by the way, that the three maxims altogether provide almost all the pragmatic meaning of the term “strong-willed”.

132 and maxims. The feelings and the maxims that are not acted on only have a ghostly existence, if they exist at all. Indeed, the postulate of the priority of action engenders a mistrustful attitude toward any idea which is not enacted. Both the abstract and intellectualistic morality that has a maxim for every situation but does not generate a consistent behavior and the sentimental morality of the “heartful” person whose only action is weeping over the “evils” of the world while contemplating the delicacy of their own feelings and the purity of the ideal good are moralities of vacuous and hypocritical characters201. “Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.” (PP I, 125)

The theory of emotions particular to James, which travels from bodily change to the emotion rather than the other way around, touches on ethics There is nothing like a pure, “inner,” immaterial emotion. From the ethical perspective, this means that there are no indifferent or “innocent,” inactive feelings. The feeling that is not acted on is positively acting as a hindrance to a certain course of action. On the other hand, performing a “good” action cannot but generate a “good” emotional environment as an overtone of character. In other words, there is no “inner” life without “outer” life; or, to be more exact, there is only one life that allows for different perspectives and accounts of the same occurrences, and such a life is made of an individual’s action in the world. The dreamer who feeds his/her moral vagaries and “sentiments” without acting on them is positively acting against them. Non-action is just another kind of action, and, for as much as it is worth, the individual for as much as possible is morally responsible for that. In such a context, however, also the issue of moral responsibility needs a restatement. If we accept James’s twin rejections of both universal moral standards and of the dualistic account of will, how, then, do we practically create “proper habits”? Can they even be the objects of intention? In fact, to the extent that the creation of habit is hardly a deliberate choice, the issue of the formation of character, especially in the sense that of Mill’s 201

See PP I, p. 125. The mood of the passage and the explicit critical reference to Rousseau (criticized also by Bain) allow for an apparently obvious reference to Hegel. See Phaenomenologie des Geistes, V, B, b-c.

133 “completely fashioned will”, appears as an infinitely escaping point in the dialectic of the voluntary and the involuntary. In this sense, as James points out, the question of moral responsibility is not dependent upon the question of free-will, (P, 59-60). The individual is not to be deemed responsible because has built certain habits, but only because he or she is exactly those set of habits that he or she is. Thus, the issue of “moral responsibility” should be understood as concerning the “moral worth” of the person according to social standards. Insofar as “moral personality” is fashioned through the repeated actualization of one’s moral feelings and maxims, it is conversely necessary that one’s habits unequivocally show the dominant feelings and maxims, or values, that are embodied in one’s life, since such habits are the sedimented feelings or maxims that inspired the actions. Actions do not lie, and, more than anything else, they show (or betray) one’s real self (or selves), as much as they reveal one’s beliefs at the very moment one enacts them. In conclusion, one is not responsible because he/she could, but exactly because he/she cannot act differently, to wit, one is responsible for the kind of person one has allowed him/herself to become. Once the deed is done if the agent could act differently is but a queer metaphysical question202. By that James brings morality down to legality, to use Kantian terms, and approaches analogous positions Justice Wendell Holmes set forth on the legal side and Dewey developed in his ethical theory. In fact, there is no conscience game allowed here, and to the extent that we have will not as faculty but as attention only, no universal moral standard, and personality is a bundle of habits, the only consistent conception of moral responsibility is whether someone has or has not done what he/she was supposed to according to the social standards.

202

Cf. P, pp. 59-60: “Instinct and utility between them can safely be trusted to carry on the social business of punishment and praise. If a man does good acts we shall praise him, if he does bad acts we shall punish him […]. To make our human ethics revolve about the question of ‘merit’ is a piteous unreality. James’s reference is to O. Wendell Holmes’s so called “theory of negligence”, according to which liability does not depend upon agent’s intention but only stands on the fact that the agent damaged or injured somebody else out of negligence. See O. Wendell Holmes Common Law (1880).

134 4.1. Education and Habit The issue of “giving form” to the individual appears, thus, as the central problem of James’s ethics. “Shaping” is a continuous, ongoing process and it is a “tough” process. The explicit and repeated reference to military discipline gives away the model of habit James has in mind. Such model comes back again in James’s late essays such as “The Moral Equivalent of War.” For anyone retaining the perception of James as the prophet of naïvely free and extemporaneous creative energy, reading the pages James dedicates to military discipline should come as a salutary shock. Discipline and self-discipline become the core of the ethical question and the cornerstone of culture. For instance, what makes of a German scholar or of an English gentleman special models of behavior is not a special “essence” of their own, but only a specific fashion of behavior that is the result of a well-disciplined training. The former is fashioned as an “instrument of research,” whereas the latter “is a bundle of specifically qualified reactions, a creature who for all emergencies of life has a line of behavior distinctly marked out for him in advance.” Important as they can possibly be, however, self-education and selfdiscipline cannot be taken for granted and they are more of an ultimate achievement than a starting point, so on a large scale they cannot be counted on as basic processes of formation. Accordingly, education, as creation of adequate habits in individuals, appears to James at once as a major issue in ethical theory and a paramount social task203. 4.2. Education and Morality In the TT, James presents the twofold meaning of education as both construction of character (108) and “organization of the resources in the human being” (27) “In our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple conception of what an education means. In the last analysis, it consists in the organizing of resources in the human being, of powers of conduct that shall adapt him to social and physical world. 203

Although it is not strictly relevant for the present argument it is worthwhile to stress the strong Aristotelean influence on this part of James’s ethical thought as for the dispositional account of character and also for the view of education as social duty. (See Aristotle Nic. Eth., II, i, 4-6; iv, 3).

135 An ‘uneducated’ person is one who is nonplused by all but the most habitual situations. On the contrary, one who is educated is able practically to extricate himself, by means of examples with which his memory is stored and of the abstract conceptions which he has acquired, from circumstances in which he never was placed before. Education in short cannot be better described than by calling it the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior.” (TT, 27)

Education, however, must take place within an institutional context. In the text of the Talks, the appointed institutions are the school and, in the background, the Academy, but it is possible to surmise that, in a wider context, James would not have underrated the specific role either of the family or of other social institutions in such a complex process. In this sense, for James, the character of the individual is, in good part, a product of the culture in which the individual has been raised. More exactly, the individual is a product of the sometimes difficult interaction between his or her inborn tendencies and the shaping action of his or her cultural environment. Chapter XV of TT, dedicated to “The Will,” provides the fine structure of the educative dynamic. Education is, in its main structure, the process of interaction between the instructor and the pupil or, more generally, the “instructed.” Such interaction is often less than pacific insofar as it involves the conflict of the “wills” of the two participants in the process. Under such a perspective, chances are that the educative process can turn into a violent one, as James, quoting John Wesley, points out: “Break your child’s will, in order that it may not perish,’ wrote John Wesley. ‘Break its will as soon as it can speak plainly – or even before it can speak at all. It should be forced to do as it is told, even if you have to whip it ten times running. Break its will, in order that its soul may live.’ Such will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the victory not always with the would-be will-breaker.” (TT, 107)

The problem with the traditional, “will-breaking” pedagogy is that, whereas it certainly produces undesirable side effects, at the same time, it is not certain to produce the desired effect; that is, such a pedagogy does not really work, and it does not work because it assumes a misleading account of human psychology. Once again, if “the will” is not a “mechanical” faculty, it is highly possible that there is no “will” to break; rather what actually happens in applying the old pedagogy is the warping of the whole character of the “instructed,” and, on the part of the instructor, the beginning of a habit of bullying. Against this “will-breaking” pedagogy, the “soft” pedagogy James endorses assumes the notion of will

136 as attention and the art of teaching as ability to keep and lead a pupil’s attention through diversion rather than by inhibition or imposition, the very same way in which a good trainer tames a horse204. The control of another’s will is a matter of “hooking” his/her attention through an alluring set of associations in order to lead his/her attention to focus on what the teacher wants it to be focused on. In other words, the teacher has to capture the pupil’s attention, or stream of thought, in order to lead it through the subject concerning which the teacher wants the pupil to concentrate. As James explains, there are two kinds of inhibitions through which training might be accomplished: by repression and by substitution. Inhibition by repression, based on the idea of “will power,” has a weaker effect, if any at all. Indeed, an idea that is inhibited by repression is never really removed from consciousness but only kept in check. Insofar as the pressure is released, the repressed idea recovers its leading power205. Indeed, James argues, there are ideas that can never be repressed, no matter how hard one tries. Yet, any idea can be substituted for another, provided that, through an appropriate link of associations, one is able to slide his or her focus of attention onto a new idea. In this case, the replaced idea disappears from consciousness, yielding to a new course of thought and action without “fighting it off.” The work of the educator is exactly to effect such a substitution in order to have pupils acting “for the sake of” rather than “against” something. The superiority of inhibition by substitution is immediately transposed from school education into a more general ethical consideration: “He whose life is based upon the word ‘no’, who tells the truth because a lie is wicked, and who has constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and mean 204

See TT, p. 108: “Drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to something else; then, leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of association, spring it on again before he has time to recognize it, and as likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty. It is no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse: we divert his attention... lead him round in a circle, and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him more invincible.” 205 It is possible for the present reader to extend the interpretation of James’s analysis through Freud’s notions of “removal” and “sublimation,” both assumed as effects of repression. Indeed, according to Freud, in both cases, the repressed idea reappears “disguised” as neurotic symptom, perversion, or higher ideal. However, while James’s analysis could be considered a possible source for Freud, it is clearly evident that James did not envisage the question in these terms.

137 propensities, is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he would be if the love of truth and magnanimity positively possessed him from the outset, and he felt no inferior temptations.” (TT, 113)

Morality is not a matter of repression or self-denial but rather of positively acquiring the right ideas. An action for the sake of some “good” is more effective and, on the whole, more fulfilling than an action by negation or by restraint from “evil”, for this latter does not really exclude evil, but keeps it alive in the background as a “denied’ but living possibility. In this sense, James’s reference to Spinoza becomes extremely significant in illustrating his ethical perspective: “Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything that a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good. He who habitually acts sub specie mali, under the negative notion, the notion of bad, is called a slave by Spinoza. To him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman. See to it now, I beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of a good.” (TT, 113)206

The action sub specie boni is the action that follows from an adequate conception of the state of affairs. The process of deliberation, as James explain, “consists in trying to apperceive the case successively by a number of different ideas, which seem to fit it more or less, until at last you hit on one which seems to fit it exactly.” Thus, James says, the process of deliberation consists of focusing on the right idea, that is, the adequate idea of the situation, holding fast to it by an effort of attention and allowing the action to follow from such an idea – which also counts for what concerns moral choice. At last, James synthesizes, all that a moral act consists of is nothing but thinking; that is, a moral act is one that follows from the acquisition and possession of adequate ideas207: “Our moral effort, properly so called, terminates in our holding fast to the appropriate idea.” (TT, 186) In this sense, the reference to Spinoza is coupled with a reference to 206

James freely summarizes the last part of the book IV of Spinoza’s Ethics. See B. Spinoza, Ethics, IV, PP 63 ff. 207 See TT, 110 and analogous passages in PP II, pp. 565-566: “This comes out very clearly in the kind of excuses which we most frequently hear from persons who find themselves confronted by the sinfulness or harmfulness of some part of their behavior. “I never thought,’ they say. ‘I never thought how mean the action was, I never thought of these abominable consequences.’ And what do we retort when they say this? We say:’Why didn’t you think:? What were you there for but to think?’ And we read them a moral lecture on their irreflectiveness.”

138 Aristotle’s doctrine of the practical syllogism208. Clear understanding, adequate knowledge, sound inference, and holding fast to the idea are the way to the good, and the only possible ethical precepts. The drunkard who fails in the recognition of his or her own real situation – to use James’s example – that is, who fails to subsume his or her own specific case under the universal conception of a “drunkard,” is fated to remain such209. Thus, the problem of the “weakness of the will” can be approached at three different levels: 1) there is no clear understanding of the universal idea (e.g. drunkard, cheater, thief, etc.); 2) the inability to hold fast to such an idea; 3) inability to subsume oneself under the universal category otherwise clearly understood. Here, education has a twofold task: 1) providing a wide and articulate “stock of ideas” so that, when in need, the individual knows how to “label” the current situation; 2) encouraging “pupils” to think and create habits of thinking that incorporate the difficult moment of the “effort of attention” so that, at the occurrence of a certain idea, the appropriate behavior follows (or is avoided) automatically. In this sense, persuasion and the creation of “interesting” links work more effectively than mere repression. The third point is the sticking point, as it has been for every moral theory since Kant. Here, there is not much that education can do insofar as there is no way to force anybody to think – or to think correctly – if the individual cannot or does not want. In the former case, we face a lack of judgement, for which, as Kant said, there is no remedy210. In the latter, the problem is far more complex and deserves a separate analysis. 4.2.1. Stigma and Regret. Heroism and Asceticism in Ethics When analyzing James’s fifth category of decision, which we called the “existential” decision, we suggested that what is at stake in this type of decision is an image of the self. We also said that such a decision is at the same time free and difficult, or, more precisely, that, because it consists in a determination of the indeterminate, such a decision is difficult insofar as it is free. The individual is confronted with the question “what do I want to 208

See PP II, 565, note*. The reference is to Aristotle, Nic. Eth., VII, 3. See PP II, p. 565 and TT, p. 110. 210 See I. Kant Critique of Pure Reason, p. 178, footnote. 209

139 be,” and there is no answer that is completely satisfying because any choice, or decision, entails the “murder” of several other possible and interesting options211. Following James’s notion that morality essentially consists of thinking, that is, of finding the adequate conception for a situation and correctly subsuming one’s own case under such conception, we take it that the rival selves among which the individual choses each belong to a “universal”, that is, a class, and that thus, the choice of the self is also a choice of a class. Such classes, however, are socially constructed and constitute a important part of the individual’s “social self.” These universals are embedded in the language the individual shares with it associates and the individual is “constituted” by them at least as much as the individual (re)constitutes them in using them212. Behavioral universals shouldn’t be regarded as merely descriptive, but come with an axiological overtone, an evaluative fringe, that the individual cannot ignore or avoid, and that, in some way, he or she cannot help sharing. Thus, in normal conditions, there is little or no inner resistance in subsuming oneself under the classes “worker,” “student,” “husband,” “football player,” whereas there can be strong inner resistances against subsuming oneself under the categories “drunkard,” “drug addict,” “cheater,” “debauchee” etc. because of the “stigma” attached to such categories. Consequently, the willingness to subsume oneself, namely, to recognize oneself, under one of such classes is distorted by the refusal to stigmatize oneself. The effort of attention in this case would be to hold fast to a personal image of oneself that is stigmatized by and repulsive to a certain society, group or culture. The whole recognition of one’s own belonging to a stigmatized class with the consequent feeling of regret – that is, the “wish that something may be otherwise” (WB, 160), which in this case is the self one has chosen – and the effort to maintain attention focused on that image, are, for James, the

211

See e.g. PP I, pp. 309 ff. This special process which lays at the basis of morality as assumption of the meanings created by the “generalized other” is well acounted for in Mead’s social psychology. See G.H. Mead, op. cit., II, § 20; III, § 33.

212

140 necessary conditions for a substantial change of habit, that is, for a change of character or personality213. The feeling of regret appears for James as the central, illuminating phenomenon of moral life, so much so that James, at one point, writes: “The indeterminism I defend, the free-will theory of popular sense based on the judgment of regret, represents the world as vulnerable and liable to be injured by certain of its parts if they act wrong.” Regret is the evidence of the undeterminedness of human life, namely, of human “freedom,” and, consequently, the very condition of change and novelty in individual existence214. The assumption of the “judgment of regret” as the fundamental factor in moral life had already been presented by Darwin. Yet, whereas for Darwin the feeling of regret depends upon internalizing the blame of others, for James it is an autonomous phenomenon that originates in the relationship between the “states of affairs” and the moral structure of the individual215. Confronted with events that contradict one’s 213

For James’s analysis of the feeling of “regret” see “The Dilemma of Determinism”, WB, p. 161. This situation suffers an exception in the case of the heroic action intended to change a moral paradigm or affirm a new moral ideal. In such a case, the individual recognizes himself/herself as “stigmatized” but, at the same time, denies the moral value of the stigmatization since he or she refers to an ideal or different community with a different moral standard. In this case, however, the effort of attention is in holding fast to the conception of all the harmful consequences following from one’s own position, including the idea of one’s own civil or biological death. 214 See “The Dilemma of Determinism” WB, pp. 161-163. James’s argument is that, in a fully deterministic universe, the feeling of regret would be a contradiction since everything would be what it ought to. Consequently, the very existence of a feeling of regret pleads for an undeterministic or at least partially “free” universe in which chance and real options are given. 215 It is possible and also correct to argue that the stigma is nothing but a sort of objectified social blame. In this sense, the feeling of regret always has an intersubjective origin, that is, is a culturally grounded phenomenon. The individual “learns” through education and social influence what is “wrong” and which “types” of persons are to be blamed. Thus, the difference between Darwin’s and James’s conceptions of regret would be just the stress on the interiorization of the blame. As far as such an interpretation would be, at least partially, correct – and James himself would possibly endorse it – it seems also evident that there is more than that in James’s view. The autonomy of the feeling of regret entails the presence of a moral structure of personality (moral feelings) that precedes the actual moral contents provided by education and culture. The individual has a moral “attitude” that is not a mere social product, although it can be filled with social contents. From the practical

141 own moral dispositions and criteria, the individual cannot help judging them “wrong” and think that they ought not to happen (WB, 161). It is clear, here, that moral judgment, for James, is not mere sentimental utterance or expression; consequently it would be incorrect to understand the phenomenon of “regret” as a mere emotional expression of discomfort or distress about some “unpleasant” event. Rather, the feeling of regret involves the whole moral structure of the individual; that is, it involves the meaning that existence has for such an individual, which is why James frames his discussion of regret in a larger discussion of the worldview of determinism. In the expression of regret, the individual’s moral structure is confronted by the whole chain of happenings that constitute outward existence, and expresses itself in the specific mode of thinking of something as something that “should (not) have happened” or that “should (not) have been done.” The regret for something that one has (not) done, insofar as it is consciousness of one’s own inadequacy to some moral standards, is the only possible emotional condition for a change of attitude or habit. The emotional state is the vehicle that allows the individual to focus on the adequate image of what he/she is and, through that, to engage the process of change of habit or self-education in direction of a different image or definition of oneself. Such a process is, however, a difficult one and it cannot be accomplished unless the awareness of one’s own situation is supported by an adequate moral energy able to sustain the effort of attention that is necessary to effect the change. On the other hand, as James says, “wise men regret as little as they can.” The wise person is the one who, sometimes foreseeing the possibility of regret, has balanced his or her own character in a way that offers the least possible occasion for regret and, at the same time, understands that there is nothing to be regretted since, given certain premises, things could not have been different from perspective, the autonomy of the feeling of regret means that the individual does not really need actual blame in order to feel regret. In this sense, the individual has a “conscience” that is a sentiment of inadequacy between states of affairs and ideals. It is, however, important to recall the closeness between moral and aesthetic feelings stated by James. The sentiment of “wrong” has no ontological “thickness;” rather, this sentiment is the perception of a fault in the order of things, much like the perception of an untuned note in a melody. In this sense “conscience” is not a faculty, but only an ability.

142 what they have actually been. In this sense, regret appears as a justified ultimate reaction only before the “absurdity” of human life or those events that overwhelm the sound course of human affairs216. There is something heroic in the process of changing one’s own character, as well as in the affirmation of new ideals, which entails a strenuous resistance to the inertial force of old habits or of more genial attitudes. The heroism of individual volition is, for James, something that needs to be prepared and cultivated through a sort of ascetic exercise. Like muscular strength, the disposition to heroic effort needs to be kept alive by daily practice: the energy required in the moral emergency is not a gift of nature but the product of a wise accumulation and management of one’s own energies. “So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.” (PP I, 127)

It is important to stress that asceticism, for James, though an important element of morality, is not, however, the aim or the essence of moral life. For James, asceticism is purely instrumental, a discipline undertaken for the accumulation of energy necessary for moral life. Indeed, asceticism for its own sake, as with the idea of human action solely for the sake of pleasure, would be a perversion of the dynamic of human action. That is, asceticism not intended in view of a further aim would be a perverse selfdenial or, in other words, nothing but futility or narcissism. In fact, also the greater scale asceticism of the saints, as James points out in the Varieties of the Religious Experience, is not mere annihilation of oneself but rather a deeper source of creative energy. “These saintly methods are, as I said, creative energies; and genuine saints find in the elevated excitement with which their faith endows them an authority and impressiveness which makes them irresistible in situations where men of shallower 216

WB, p. 161: “But still some regrets are pretty obstinate and hard to stifle, regrets for acts of wanton cruelty or treachery, for example, whether performed by others or by ourselves.” Once again, it is important to stress the cultural perspective of such evaluations. Nothing is “absurd” or “unsound” in itself. Things appear regrettable in relation to the background of a specific conception of what “humans” ought to be, that is, in relation to the background of a cultural standard – a cultural standard that, nevertheless, remains relative. Unavoidably, James’s rejection of moral ontology commits his ethical speculation to a radical perspectivism.

143 nature cannot get on at all without the use of worldly prudence. This practical proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint’s magic gift to mankind.” (VRE, 215)

5. Towards an Ethics of Energy The analysis of James’s theory of habit shows that it involves a powerful tension between activity and passivity, action and habit, determinism and indeterminism. This is the starting point of James’s great ethical theme, and the very core of James’s anthropology. While recognizing the utility and necessity of the habitual and dispositional character of human life – “habit is the great fly-wheel of society” – James shows elsewhere a temperamental and romantic predilection for the conative aspects of action and existence. Such a predilection can be found in all the key concepts of James’s philosophy from the priority of action as criterion of truth to transgression as expression of higher ethical life. Action is freedom and creation, the conditions for a positive coming into existence of novelties. To act rightly, however, is possible only as a consequence of awareness and understanding, and as an overcoming of the mechanical passivity of instincts and habits. The tension grows evident in the moral perspective217. Moral habits as well as social institutions are necessary in order to provide a sound and ergonomic organization of individuals and society, but this very process of mechanization is fated to be assimilated into the passive formalism of morality and bureaucracy that are the outward forms of a loss of human spontaneity. The individual has always to keep in contact with human creative energy, without which human life is meaningless; and thus, moral habits, insofar as they degenerate into passive morality, become “bad” habits, namely, habits that 217

Although in more intellectual terms, J. Dewey remarks the same tension; see Human Nature and Conduct, p. 121: “Habits are conditions of intellectual efficiency. They operate in two ways upon the intellect. They are blinders that confine the eyes of mind to the road ahead. They prevent thought from straying away from its imminent occupation to a landscape more varied and picturesque but irrelevant to practice. Outside the scope of habit, thought works gropingly, fumbling in confused uncertainty, and yet habit made complete routine shuts in thought so effectually that it is no longer needed or possibile. […] All habit-forming involves the beginning of an intellectual specialization which if unchecked ends in thoughtless action.”

144 stifle the human power of action, and need to be changed or recharged. By changing them, individual moral life cannot help being at odds with morality (social customs), even when the individual apparently endorses the established customs. In fact, moral action, insofar as it is moral, that is, insofar as it is active and self-aware, cannot but be a negation of morality as passive acquiescence to habits. Such a negation is the kind of attitude James calls the “strenuous” mood, that is, the mood of acting with effort, that is, against instincts/habits in behalf of one’s own ideals. James’s stress on the “volitive man” echoes the heroic moral autonomy of Carlyle and Emerson (“Self-Reliance”) and the romantic representation of the hero218. Yet, the hero is not such “by nature.” To be sure, there is a drive for the heroic at the core of human beings219, but such a drive is not enough to “make” the hero. As Wilshire put it: “For James, most of our problems stem from our inability to cope with this drive: either we try to blink it out of existence or gloss it over with crypto-sophistication in our modern institutions, e.g. educational ones, or we allow it rampant, superstitious, and destructive expression as in war.”220 The problem with the heroic drive is, once again, a problem of the control of energy. The volitive individual, the hero, is the individual able to express an amazing inner power, namely, the individual who can summon a superior amount of energy in the struggle against “evil” (whatever this term could possibly mean). This energy, however, should not be expended wastefully. It needs to be preserved for the proper occasion and organized through the difficult process of the formation of the individual. This is an ascetic process, and is the only possible condition for the realization of the individual and of his or her own ideals. In other words, heroic morality needs a special ethics, that is, an ethics of energy.

218

See PP I, p. 127: “He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.” 219 See B. Wilshire, “Introduction”, cit., p. xxxii: “The strongest behavioral motivation, according to James, is the drive for the heroic. There is something wild and heroic at the center of us. Man’s ‘common instinct for reality’ regards the world as ‘a theatre for heroism’ in as yet undecuded struggles with evil.” 220 Ibidem

CHAPTER IV

The Question of Energy 1. The Energetic Self The Gifford Lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902 mark James’s most explicit “energetic” turn, although, as we have seen in the last chapter, a thematic of energy has been the tacit tendency all through James’s earlier thought. In a late addition to the chapter XXVI of the Principles221, James, while discussing the problem of effort, analyzes Fouillée’s “interesting and suggestive” theory of “idée-force” and his conception of the identity between thought and power. James is not willing to go all the way with Fouillée’s suggestion that energy is the equivalent of the very existence of thought, since, although thought can be considered an activity, such an activity includes several moments of passivity (PP II, 570571). Nevertheless, it is also clear that at least a part of thought is active and an expression of power; and that such a power, as James points out elsewhere, is the “essence of character” (ML, 146 ff.). James admits the force of Fouillée’s methodological assumption that “for the thought processes to go on at all is an activity”, which leads him to the strong notion that “if we admit, therefore, that our thoughts exist, we ought to admit that they exist after the fashion they appear, as things, namely, that supervene upon each other, sometimes with effort and sometimes with ease.” If, as we saw in the last chapter, James thought of morality as a matter of “acquiring the right ideas”, this notion has to be seen in reference to James’s idea that thoughts were in the world. The questions that are raised by how they are “in the world” take us into the heart of the subject of this chapter. In the “Gifford Lectures,” while analyzing the phenomenon of conversion, James explains the “transformation” of personality, which 221

James added the discussion of Fouillée’s theory to the already finished chapter after he came back from the Conference of Psychology in Paris in 1889.

146 constitutes the essence of conversion, as a permanent shift of the “centre of energy” from one group of interests to another. James’s account seems to replay the theory of interests James had already presented in the Principles: “[…] a man’s ideas, aims, and objects form diverse internal groups and systems, relatively independent of one another. Each aim which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested excitement, and gathers a certain group of ideas together in subordination to it as its associates; and if the aims and excitement are distinct in kind, their groups of ideas may have little in common. When one group is present and engrosses the interest, all the ideas connected with other groups may be excluded from the mental field.” (VRE, 160)

In everyday life some group of ideas controls most mental activity, and the focus of the field of consciousness, that is, attention, rapidly shifts from one group to another according to a pre-established hierarchical organization that constitutes the egological fine structure of a specific individual’s existence. In relation to these dominant groups of interests, other thoughts, wishes, and vagaries constitute a sort of outskirts of the mind, fated to remain mere “velleities” since, as James says, “the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different system.” (VRE, 161) The identification of the real self, namely, the dominant set of interests, with the “centre of personal energies” (VRE, 162) is the point of this description, for it relates the “centre of energy” to what in the Principles, is called the “self of all the other selves,” or the “home of interest”, that is, an ungraspable, lived zone of ongoing activity. To the extent that the inner self is the stream of consciousness as a whole – i.e., the inner stream of existence of the individual – the recognition of it as “centre of energy” becomes metaphysically relevant, since it defines the “essence” of the individual as energy. Further evidence for such a conclusion is provided by James’s identification of the centre of energy with the “soul,” a term “not to be taken in the ontological sense,” but in phenomenal terms as Buddhists and Humeans do, that is, as “only a succession of fields of consciousness” (VRE, 161), or, in James’s words, as the “stream of consciousness.”222 Thus, the “hot” parts of consciousness – which, through

222

The identity of (power of) thinking and spirit has its forerunner in the Enlightmentist sensistic tradition see also C. A. Helvétius De l’esprit, “Discourse I”:

147 emotional excitement, occupy the focus of our attention – work as “the centres of our dynamic energy.” Accordingly, “the group of ideas to which [a man] devotes himself, and from which he works” are “the habitual centre of his personal energy.” James’s translation of the life of consciousness in energetic terms is evidently important enough that James doesn’t mind risking a certain vagueness as to why it is preferable to his previous psychological language. The language of energy is not “rigorously exact” (VRE, 162), and the process through which an individual can change his or her centre of energy cannot be fully explained either by an external observer or by the one who undergoes it: psychology can provide a general description of such a process, but it is unable to explain the reasons for it and which forces are at work in any specific case. From the scientific perspective, then, James’s new account of the life of consciousness in the language of energy sounds more obscure than in his previous description in more traditional psychological terms in the Principles. Yet, it is legitimate to suppose that this is not the way James saw this matter. The language of energy, although apparently more obscure, allowed James to give an organic account of the extremely dynamic reality of psychical life, which was distorted by the classificatory language of the old psychology. In fact, James is not pointing to any substantial change in his theory of the actual processes of psychical life, but showing how they can be described in two different but not opposite schemas, and he seems interested in establishing a sort of continuity between the two accounts and a real possibility of translation of one language into the other. While we may be surprised by James’s adoption of a new terminology, it was by no means unusual to use energetics in James’s day to discuss the ultimate scientific and philosophical questions. Consequently, approaching psychological phenomena from the energetic perspective, far from entailing a loss in scientific exactness, was rather a move in direction of the latest scientific frontier. It had become evident that the precision of the language of the old psychology disguised a relative lack of knowledge, tied to an outdated scientific view. The vagueness of “By spirit we understand either the effect of the power of thinking (that is the whole of a man’s thoughts), or the very power of thinking.”

148 the language of energy, although uncertain, conversely appeared more promising insofar as it depended upon a new and richer, although not completely explored, scientific view.

2. The Age of Energy In his Introduction to The Varieties of Religious Experience, M. E. Marty points out the significance of James’s topic of the organization of energy with reference to the cultural environment in James’s day: “William James...flourished in turn-of-the-century America, a time of immense cultural ferment. Two recent book titles, both of them dealing with his era, depict elements of that culture. Howard Mumford Jones called his work The Age of Energy. America in that age was turning industrial, urban, imperial. Its thinkers were churning out experiments and solutions to match their hopes for progress. Robert Wiebe, on the other hand, saw the times impelling A Search for Order, as Americans tried to put names and handles on the new forces, to control energy, to define their personal and collective223lives. William James embodied something of what both those titles suggest.”

Yet, correct as it certainly is, Marty’s remark can sound reductive if James’s focus on the topic of energy is assumed simply to reflect the development of American industrialization. Rather, James really lived in the “age of energy,” and his attention to the question of energy is clear evidence of his sensitiveness and participation in what, at the time, appeared to be the scientific and philosophical question of the century. Although a detailed historical account of the development of the theory of energy at the turn of the century would take us too far off our course, here, a short survey of the main points of the question of energy can be helpful in clarifying the frame and the meaning of James’s notion of energy. 2.1. Energy and Entropy The reappearance of the cosmological problem in the second half of the nineteenth century was strictly dependent on the development of the science of thermodynamics. Starting from the technological problems 223

M. E. Marty “Introduction” to W. James The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, Penguin, 1982), p. vii.

149 posed by the improvement of steam engines, physicists discovered the fundamental laws governing the transformation, conservation and dissipation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, and posited the heat death of universe. These concepts became the driving force behind a major philosophical and epistemological debate. It is important to note that the theory of energy, or “force”, was haunted from the very beginning by the question of the dispersion of energy; that is, since Sadi Carnot’s studies on the ideal engine in 1824. In opposition to the older metaphysical assumption that matter was indestructible, nineteenth century physics proposed that energy always keeps falling to a lower level, or, to put it another way, heat always flows from hot bodies to cold bodies – which in essence means that ultimately, the energy in the universe will fall to zero. Carnot’s ideal engine, consequently, able to transform all the heat to work, while providing its own alimentation, in a completely “reversible” process functions as an ideal parameter, which embodies the transformation of heat into work, or the the first formulation of the principle of conservation of energy, and the first approximative calculation of the “mechanical equivalent of heat,” perfected by Joule later on. The ultimate formulation of the principle of conservation of energy is presented about twenty years later in Helmholtz’s famous paper Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft (1847), where Helmholtz blurs the traditional distinction between matter and force, taken as mere abstractions, and points to a more realistic view that unifies matter and force into one reality: “It is evident that the concepts of matter and force cannot be applied separately to nature. Pure matter would be indifferent to the rest of nature, since it would never produce any changes in it or in our sense organs; a pure force would be something which exists and yet does not exist, for that which exists we call matter. It would be equally erroneous to interpret matter as something which produces effects and force as an empty concept to which nothing existing corresponds; both, on the contrary, are abstractions from reality, formed in precisely the same way. We can perceive matter only through its forces, not in and of itself.”224

According to Helmholtz, the quantity of force in the universe taken as a closed system is fixed and immutable; consequently, by distinguishing between two aspects of force – one, a “force of tension” (Spannkraft), 224

H. von Helmholtz “The Conservation of Force: A Physical Memoir” in Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, ed. R. Kahl. (Middletown (CT), Wesleyan Univ. Pr., 1984), pp. 4-5.

150 namely a potential force, and two, a “vis viva” (lebendige Kraft), namely an actual force – which are reciprocally convertible one into the other through movement, the meaning of the principle of conservation of force is that the sum of these two forces is assumed as always constant. The consequence of the principle, then, is that any amount of work in the system requires a transformation of one kind of energy into the other so that any increase of energy at one point of the system entails a loss of energy at another point. Such a passage of energy from one point to another is possible in virtue of Helmholtz’s principle of the mechanical equivalent of heat, namely, the claim that work and heat energy are equivalent. Helmholtz clarifies in a later paper: “The equivalent of heat has been determined by Mr. Joule, of Manchester. He found that one unit of heat, or that quantity of heat which is necessary for raising temperature of a pound of water 1°C, is equivalent to the mechanical work by which the same mass of water is raised to 4231/2 meters, or 1389 English feet. This is the mechanical equivalent of heat. By these considerations, it is proved that heat cannot be a ponderable matter, but that it must be a motive power […] We see therefore that the energy of every force in nature can be measured by the same measure, by foot-pounds, and that the energy of the whole system of bodies which are not under the influence of any exterior body must be constant, that it cannot be lessened or increased by any change. Now the whole universe represents such a system of bodies endowed with different sorts of forces, and therefore we conclude... that the amount of working power, or the amount of energy in the whole system 225 of the universe, must remain the same... whatever changes may go on in the universe.”

The cosmological remark at the end of Helmholtz’s passages sets the premises for the philosophical problem of energy triggered by the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics. The critical point of the intense debate on the status of energy, which follows from Carnot’s theory, and which engaged brilliant physicists such as Joule, Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and Clausius, is clearly stated in a long paper on the dynamical theory of heat that Thomson publishes in 1851 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh226. In this paper, Thomson draws the consequences from the cosmological implications entailed in Carnot’s assumption of the universal irreversibility of natural phenomena and the consequent progressive and unavoidable loss of energy of the universe as 225

H. von Helmholtz, “The Application of the Law of Conservation of Force,” op. cit., pp. 112-113. 226 W. Thomson, “On the Dynamical Theory of Heat, with Numerical Results Deduced from Mr Joule’s Equivalent of Thermal Unit, and Mr Regnault’s Observations on Steam” in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

151 thermal system. All natural phenomena require work, that is, heat or energy; yet, as Clausius had demonstrated, only a certain amount of such heat is transferred whereas another amount is consumed and made unavailable for human use. Natural processes are irreversible, and, although energy in itself is always preserved in the closed system of the universe, we can predict that at some point, the energy present in the universe will not be available for mechanical work. Thomson points out that there is a portion of kinetic energy, namely, heat, which, once generated, cannot be completely reconverted into either potential or kinetic energy. In 1852, Thomson in a short paper entitled “On a Universal Tendency in Nature to Dissipation of Mechanical Energy” sketches the picture of a universe which, by progressive consumption of heat, advances slowly but necessarily toward an absolute immobility, or, in other words, toward the “thermal death of universe.” Thomson’s view is formalized about ten years later by Clausius, who, in the lecture “Ueber verschiedene für die Anwendung bequeme Formen der Hauptgleichungen der mechanischen Waermetheorie” (1865), presents the notion of entropy, which includes the concept of transformation (Verwandlung) of heat into work and of a hot body into a cold one, plus the concept of disgregation. Thus, an increase of entropy means a progressive increase of disorder and immobility of an energetic system. A more popular formulation of Clausius’s cosmological view is provided later by Helmholtz in the lecture “Contraction Theory of the Sun’s Heat” (1897), which, while pointing out the perfect equivalence of the animal body to steam-engine “as regard the manner in which it obtains heat and force,” also predicts that the planet is doomed to die by exhaustion of its energetic sources: “But even though the force store of our planetary system is so immensely great, that by incessant emission which has occurred during the period of human history it has not been sensibly diminished, even though the length of the time which must flow by before a sensible change in the state of our planetary system occurs is totally incapable of measurement, still the inexorable laws of mechanics indicate that this store of force, which can only suffer loss and not gain, must finally be exhausted. Shall we terrify ourselves by this thought? Men are in the habit of measuring the greatness and the wisdom of the universe by the duration and profit which it promises to their own race;

152 but the past history of the earth already shows what 227 an insignificant moment the duration of the existence of our race upon it constitutes.”

The nihilistic and antihumanistic conclusion Helmholtz draws from the theory of entropy shows how thermodynamics acquired a moral resonance at the end of the nineteenth century, and how technical and even purely theoretical speculation in physics was transformed into a cosmological and religious issue. Modern thermodynamics, including the theory of entropy, is one of the summits of the development of XIX century science; Darwin’s theory of evolution, can be called the other one. Like Darwin’s theory, the former too seemed to radically undermine the theological and anthropocentric view of the world. That theological concern was foreshadowed in the perplexity, or in the simple rejection, that the hypothesis of the destruction of work energy produced in the pioneers of the thermodynamics. Such an attitude is exemplarily illustrated by Joule, who, at the beginning of “On Matter, Living Force, and Heat,” declares the indestructibility of the natural forces as a necessary consequence of the divine omnipotence: “We might reason, a priori, that such absolute destruction of living force cannot possibly take place, because it is manifestly absurd to suppose that the powers with which God has endowed 228 matter can be destroyed any more than that they can be created by man’s agency.”

Whereas for Joule, as well as for Mayer and Thomson, the theological argument constituted an unquestionable limit and guideline of the scientific research on energy, for the German heralds of the new materialism, the generalization of Helmholtz’s principle of conservation as a law of nature represented a precise model for the objective study of nature, freed from any transcendent or vitalistic interpretation. Moleschott, Vogt, Haeckel, Czolbe, and Buchner advanced their “tough-minded” naturalism – as James will define it – joining the principle of conservation of energy with the assumption of the indestructibility of matter. Buchner, in Kraft und Stoff (1855), presents his conception of universe as a closed system, an infinite circle in which nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, but 227

H.von Helmholtz “Contraction Theory of the Sun’s Heat” in Applications of Energy (ed. R.B. Lindsay). (Dowden: Hutchinson & Ross, Inc., 1976), p. 191. 228 J. Joule, “On matter, Living Force, and Heat” in Memoirs of James Prescott Joule, 1892, p. 7.

153 rather an eternal matter reorganizes itself following the transformations of energy, whose quantity, according to Helmholtz’s postulate, is constant. All natural phenomena at all different levels, from mineral to human, can and must be explained in terms of matter and force with no appeal to spiritual or extranatural factors, as bluntly stated by Haeckel: “The great law of nature, which, under the title of the ‘law of substance’, we put at the head of all physical considerations, was conceived as the law of ‘the persistence of force’ […] the law is now usually called the ‘law of persistence of energy. […] Our monistic view, that the great cosmic law applies throughout the whole of nature, is of the highest moment. For it not only involves, on its positive side, the essential unity of the cosmos and the causal connection of all phenomena that come within our cognizance, but it also, in a negative way, marks the highest intellectual progress, in that it definitely rules out the three central dogmas of metaphysics – God, freedom and immortality. In assigning mechanical causes to phenomena 229 everywhere, the law of substance comes into line with the universal law of causality.”

Accordingly, Haeckel in turn rejects the law of entropy as in contradiction with the law of persistence of force, the “fundamental law of nature”: entropy holds only for particular thermal closed systems, as engines, in which nor reversibility is possible, but cannot work for the whole universe at large. “The second thesis of the mechanical theory of heat contradicts the first, and so must be rejected. The representatives of the theory of entropy are quite correct as long as they confine themselves to distinct processes, in which, under certain conditions, the latent heat cannot be reconverted into work […] In the world at large, however, quite other conditions obtain – conditions which permit the reconversion of latent heat into mechanical work.”230

Both the materialistic view and the entropic model were challenged not only from the religious and philosophical perspective – in particular, Schopenhauer’s attack against the “stupid and coarse materialism” of modern science is worthy of mention – but also from other scientists informed by a religious background such as W. J. McQ. Rankine, C. Maxwell, Balfour Stewart, and Peter Tait, or with a strong empiricist commitment such as H. Hertz and E. Mach, who objected to the very notion of “energy” or “force”. Rankine in “On Reconcentration of the Mechanical Energy of the Universe” (1852), postulated the existence of an interstellar medium, the ether, able to reconvert heat into mechanical

229 230

E. Haeckel The Riddle of the Universe, p. 232. Ibidem, pp. 247-248.

154 energy, so that, over an extremely long span of time, energy can regain the heat gradient and the universe can escape the thermal death. Lined up against the materialist perspective was also James Clerk Maxwell, who encouraged his students to hold to experience in order to grasp the great truths of nature and to understand how these truths cannot but be in harmony with the great truths of Christianity. For Maxwell, however, the notion of “dissipation of energy” showed its anthropomorphic character. Dissipated energy, as Thomson defined it, is the energy that is no more available for human use and purposes. Yet, Maxwell concludes, being out of human “use” does not mean being absolutely lost or destroyed231. In this sense, Maxwell’s interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics, known as the theory of “Maxwell’s demon,” countered the idea of dissipation by a theoretic model in which natural phenomena are regionally reversible, which implies that the arrow of time was not perfectly described by entropy – in fact, it could be reversed232. The idea of a reversible universe is, of course, purely theoretical but at the same time produces a viable alternative to the entropic vision and breaks the inexorable necessity of the thermal death. On the other hand, taking Maxwell’s demon seriously requires giving up a homogeneous universe. In its place is one that splits up into different sections of interaction among molecules that must be split again into sections, and so on, indefinitely, that will be described in his later theory of electromagnetic fields: the physical model of a pluralistic universe. In this sense, it is quite noteworthy that Maxwell’s confrontation with Thomson led to a discussion of the issue of free-will, in which both rejected Helmholtz’s mechanistic and deterministic view of nature, his radical commitment to the theoretical destruction of vital forces, and his subjection of biological phenomena to the laws of conservation of force. For Thomson, the will of the living creatures could direct, but not reverse, the natural tendency of energy to diffuse in the form of heat. Maxwell, although agreeing with Helmholtz that the soul cannot be the direct motive of the body, argued that the soul in the form of will can direct the action of 231

Later on Maxwell has been convinced by Willard Gibbs that his former definition of entropy, taken from Tait, as available energy was mistaken, and that his demon was meant to show that the second law is a statistical regularity, not a dynamical law. 232 Letter C.Maxwell to J. W. Stutt, 1870.

155 matter and energy. Free-will in Maxwell’s account appears to be possible insofar as it works by taking advantage of instabilities and discontinuities in the mechanical system233. Following Rankine and Maxwell’s religious and antimaterialistic perspective, Balfour Stewart and P. Tait, in The Unseen Universe (1872), adopted the principle of dissipation of energy as an instrument against materialism and scientific atheism. According to Stewart and Tait, the principle of dissipation is the very demonstration of the possibility and necessity of the existence of a personal God, that is, of a divinity who creates and preserves all things from the inexorable desegregation of matter. Consequently, they argued, materialists are wrong in assuming science to be incompatible with religion. Instead, science and religion converge toward the same truth: God is the only possible origin and the only possible condition of the existence of the universe. It is the very principle of dissipation, together with the materialist principles of matter and force, that logically necessitates the existence of an invisible world in order to support and justify the visible universe. Indeed, granted that the visible universe has had an origin and is fated to an end, according to the principle of continuity, the existence of the universe can be explained only assuming the existence of an “unseen universe” that preceded and will follow the visible universe and that provides its laws and order. Thus, far from excluding God from the realm of nature, the science of thermodynamics offers the best evidence of the divine creation and the eternal relation between God and the natural world. God is the inexhaustible source of energy that grants life and order to the universe. The switch from God as the source of energy to God as energy is logically entailed by this position. Thus the chemist W. Ostwald, developing Helmholtz’s idea of the identity of matter and force in conjunction with the antimaterialistic trend of the science of energetics in his Vorlesungen ueber Naturphilosophie (1901), claims that, since substance is by definition what persists under transformations or changes, the only possible substance is energy. Such a conclusion is not only experimentally supported, but also methodologically correct, since the 233

It is important to stress the evident affinity between Maxwell’s account of free-will and James’s version of freedom as indeterminism as presented in “The Dilemma of Determinism.”

156 alternative view, scientific materialism, is unable to provide a general, exhaustive explanation of natural phenomena. Thus, the universe is made of different kinds of energies (Motion, Space, Heat, Electrical, Magnetic, Chemical, Radiant), which are in dynamic equilibrium among themselves, according to the principle of equivalent transformation, so that the total change of energy in the process of transformation within the system must be zero. Therefore, Ostwald claims: “Matter is nothing but a spatially distinguishable composite sum of energy quantities. We are accustomed to call fundamental properties of matter those factors of these energies which are proportional to each other and to the mass. In this we give preference to the mechanical properties: mass, weight, and impenetrability (volume), although, for example, the ability to undergo chemical changes is associated with ‘matter’ no less than other properties. The other energy factors, which are not necessarily proportional, such as velocity, temperature and electrical potential, etc., we have been accustomed to call ‘states’ of matter.”234

The distinction between matter and energy is purely functional and their definitions merely operational and dependent upon human habits of thinking or practical necessity. The universe in itself is nothing but a complicated and infinite interplay of energies. 2.2. Thermodynamics and Ideology. The Question of Virility The foregoing section is, of course, merely a coarse outline of the scientific background from which the language and the ideology of energy in James’s time derives. As we have pointed out, thermodynamics was like Darwinism in the influence it had on transforming a traditional metaphysical view of the world and producing a new drift in the philosophical and theological landscape of the nineteenth century. Like Darwinism, the meaning of thermodynamics went beyond the boundaries of scientific and experimental speculation and became a subject of social concern and debate through a process of popularization (or vulgarization), which smoothed the asperity of the technicalities of scientific literature on behalf of an easier and sometimes mystifying account of one of the major discoveries of the century. Thermodynamics thereby became a reservoir of 234

W. Ostwald, “Studien zur Energetik, II. Fundamenten der Allgemeine Energetik” (1892) translated in Applications of Energy. Nineteenth Century, p. 348.

157 metaphors and arguments that were transposed from physics to social thought so that, to the same extent it is possible to speak of a social Darwinism, it is possible to speak of a social thermodynamics as well. By the same token, the ideology of thermodynamics becomes mythopoieic, and the term “energy” is borrowed from its scientific context to be turned into a mythical notion able to explain everything without any single counterfactual evidence235. Thus, thermodynamics is interpreted – for example in H. Adams and G. Le Bon – as a philosophy of history and as an explanation for the increasing disorder of society236. The law of entropy undermined the positivistic metaphysics of progress and, at the same time, cloaked with a “scientific” justification the socioeconomic causes of the increase of social disorder brought about by the process of industrialization and urbanification of European society. In turn, A. Blanqui, dreaming of an eternal recurrence of the historical chances that eventually favored the success of the Paris’s “Commune,” grounded his utopian hope for an “eternity through the stars” (L’eternité par les astres 1878) in thermodynamics, while E. Renan gave way to his hypochondriac vision of thermic extinction of the universe in his Dialogues Philosophiques (1876)237 At the same time other writers like T. Carlyle, J. Ruskin, and H. Adams dressed their ultraconservative criticism of society with the authority of the new science, transforming a set of hardly comprehensible equations into keys to the divination of the “Signs of the Times.” “[…] writers like Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and Henry Adams… take on a special role as representatives of, mediators for, and critics of their nation and their historical moment. Like the Old Testament prophets, they claim to read ‘The Signs of the Times’. But in the nineteenth century they had to compete for authority... with scientists...who claimed a professional monopoly on the interpretation of nature. Social

235

See E. Cassirer Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, I-1 and III-1. Cassirer defines as a mythical, or magical, account of force, either a conception of force as substance instead of a web of causal relation and an indifferentiated notion of activity working as general explanation of everything – such is, for example the notion of mana. 236 Cf. H. Adams A Letter to American Teachers of History, Washington, 1910. See also James’s review of G. Le Bon The Crowd: A Study in the Popular Mind, in ECR #176, p. 533. 237 See W. James ECR, §104, pp. 327-331.

158 prophets were able to borrow the language and authority of physicists because physicists had already borrowed the language and authority of social prophets.”238

Writers could count on this social reception of scientific concepts because, in the case of thermodynamics in particular, scientists such as Helmholtz had already established a popular account of the scientific concepts endowed with the aura of the scientific authority. Such a vicious circle of science and social literature produced a popular image of the conservation and dissipation of energy as having a particular import for social theories. Accordingly, the concept of entropy, related to the ideas of decline, irreversibility, and disorder: “A social prophet who uses the word entropy is saying that society, or the universe, or the economy, is a closed system that is running down like the hypothetical steam engine.”239

Literary images with “dying suns” and “silent eternal nights,” as old as the history of human culture itself, gained a new power and authority from their marriage with the scientific notion of entropy. Such a tragic cosmological perspective, however, goes hand in the hand with the heroic and individualistic vision of energy. Thus, in “The Place of Life” by Balfour Stewart and J. N. Lockyer there is an extremely interesting analogy of the notion of energy based on the popular notion of “individual energy:” “We shall venture to begin this article by instituting an analogy between the social and the physical world, in the hope that those more familiar with the former than with the latter may be led to clearly perceive what is meant by the word ENERGY in a strictly physical sense. Energy in the social world is well understood. When a man pursues his course undaunted by opposition, he is said to be a very energetic man. By his energy, we mean the power which he possesses of overcoming obstacles; and the amount of his energy is measured by the amount of obstacles which he can overcome, by the amount of work he can do.… By means of the energy of his character he will scatter the ranks of his opponents and demolish their ramparts.”240

The passage, worth quoting at length, not only provides a paradigm of the analogical use of energetic concepts, but also shows their ideological use. The very assumption that “in the social world energy is well 238

G. Myers, “Nineteenth-century Popularizations of Thermodynamics and the Rhetoric of Social Prophecy” in Energy and Entropy. Science and Culture in the Victorian Britain, p. 308. 239 Ibidem 240 B. Stewart, J. N. Lockyer “The Place of Life in a Universe of Energy,” Macmillan’s, 20 (September 1868), p. 319.

159 understood” is not only an attempt to explain a scientific notion through a commonsensical one, but implicitly assumes the truth and the authority of a social view as a guarantee for a scientific notion and thereby grants scientific authority on the popular view of energy, a logical circle constructed out of a wholly fallacious reversion of meanings. In addition, the commonsensical notion of energy provides a glimpse of the “warlike” view of social interaction out of which it originates and which is thereby legitimated and justified as a natural necessity: the energetic man is the one who “scatters the ranks of his opponents and demolishes their ramparts.” As we already know, it is “socially well understood” that this is the meaning of energy, which cannot help but be “scientifically true”; such associations were cemented by the use of other terms such as “work” to apply both to the measure of energy of a steam engine and the labor of a man. It is enough then, to consider the eulogistic moral connotation traditionally assigned to the term “energy” to reach the obvious conclusion that the individual who defeats most of his enemies and does a lot of work is by definition and absolutely a “good” individual241. In the period from 1890-1910, the theme of energy takes on a political connotation in American society in the form of an ideology of “virility”. “Virility” grows into a political category within the harsh political debate between the reformers and the professional politicians; to the formers’ charge of “ignorance”, “coarseness”, and “corruption”, the latter’s replied stressing their opponents’ “intellectualism”, “mannerism”, and “refinement”, which were so many ways to imply their lack of virility and effeminacy. The type of the tough American male, the hero of the traditional myth of the fronteer, with his aggressive virility, is set against the “feebleness” of the “political hermaphrodites”, the “weaklings” and “mollycoddles”, the “bookworms” and the “professors” attempting to feminize and corrupt the primally masculine and pugnacious spirit of the American people and democracy242. This ideology of manhood cloaked a 241

See for example E. Junger Der Arbeiter (1932). To the romantic ideal of society modeled on the free market economy and work as organization, Junger opposed technology and “total mobilization,” which determines the human typology of the “soldier-worker.” 242 Such a typical image of American virility was recognized also abroad, e.g. Cf. P. de Rousiers, La vie Americaine L’éducation et la société. Paris: Didot, 1892, p. 325: “[…]

160 much less noble and idealistic tangle of political and economical private interests and corruption, providing a ready ideological alibi when the “robber Barons” and their businesses were accused of sharp practices and corruption by extolling their virile energy and aggressiveness. In this cultural atmosphere, Theodore Roosevelt’s political strategy, using the language of energy and the images of virility to effectuate reforms, broke the impasse into which the reformers had gotten themselves. The image of the reformers as refined elitists implied that they had no grasp on the everyday life of common people. This criticism of the reformers was not completely farfetched: the reformist agenda, which put a premium on improving American governance and change inequities in the social and economical life, only succeeded when it was joined to a genuine concern for the weakening of the American society and the loss of its traditional values. Innovation and reform had to go hand in the hand with the preservation of the energetic virtues. Thus Roosevelt captures in his own career the motifs of the American age of energy, turning his personal ideal of virility and energy into a moral and political battle-cry243. The model of the “strenuous life” Roosevelt endorsed in his own person and proposed to the Americans, was a moral and political ideal which entailed the development of the military virtue of courage, endurance, sacrifice and hard work: in a word, it promoted a warlike virility, “without which no nation will ever be able to become anything.”244 to become American one needs to take life as struggle rather than as enjoyment, and seek in it for the successful striving, the strenuous and effective action, rather than for amusement, leisure and the refined pleasure of arts and society. Everywhere… we realized that moral worth, individual energy and active and creative energy are the qualities that grant to the American man his success and make of him a special kind of individual. 243 On James’s “macho” model of manhood see K. Townsend’s interesting essay Manhood at Harvard: William James and Others. (NewYork: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997). Lately H.C. Mansfield in his Manliness (Yale Univ. Press., 2007), [chap IV], has dedicated a few pages to James’s model of virility, with an explicit reference and comparaison to Roosevelt’s. Although I would not undersign every part of Mansfield’s analysis, his highlighting the presence of a virility model informing James’s moral and pragmatic thought, and its connection with Roosevelt’s ideology, is insightful. 244 Roosevelt’s famous speech “The Strenuous Life” (April, 11, 1899) occurs in the very same years in which James singles out the “strenuous mood” as the typical

161

3. James and Energy The question of energy is the point where James’s two areas of inquiry, the scientific and the philosophical, converge. As a matter of fact, most of the debate about energy was already well developed by the time James began his philosophical career. James had already taken his position against materialism and determinism; thus his interest lays mainly along the line of the spiritualistic energetism which had its main representative in Maxwell and Ostwald. In 1875, James reviewed Balfour and Tait’s The Unseen Universe. In the review, with a fair understanding of the question at stake in the energetic debate245, James objects to both Rankine’s doctrine of the “ethereal medium,” and Balfour and Tait’s hypothesis of the unseen world, for he takes both views as being too speculative and supported more by religious beliefs than by scientific, i.e., experimental, data and calculations. In James’s words, the authors are but “short-winded natural theologians” and their arguments are “primitive” and “unscientific.” Yet, James’s final evaluation is not fully negative. In line with his doctrine of the “subjective method”, presaging the path that will eventually take him to the doctrine of the “will to believe,” James approves and justifes the enterprise of the authors on behalf of the moral meaning of the world246. “Our author’s belief in the ‘betterness’ of that ‘other’ world which he constructs for us demands from him at the end...the same simple act of teleological trust... with which the most narrow-minded old woman so quickly envelops her briefly-recited cosmogony. We for our part not only hold that such an act of trust is licit, but we think furthermore, that any one to whom it makes a practical difference (whether of motive to action or of mental peace) is in duty bound to make it. If ‘scientific’ scruples withhold him from making it, this proves his intellect to have been simply sicklied o’er moment of ethical life in MP; it is however the case that James opposed the “abstractness” and the imperialistic use of Roosvelt’s account of such notion. Cf. Letter WJ to the “Boston Evening Transcript”, April 15, 1899. 245 W. James, ECR, §91, pp. 291-294. 246 Twenty years later, however, James in “Is Life Worth Living?” replays a slightly modified version of Balfour-Stewart’s theory of the unseen universe as support for a supernaturalistic view of religion and against natural theology. “A man’s religious faith…means for me essentially his faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained” (WB, p. 51). The trust in the “unseen spiritual order,” “of which we know nothing positive,” is justified according to the principle of the “will to believe,” that is, “if only thereby life may seem to us better worth living again” (WB, p. 52).

162 and paralyzed by scientific pursuit. In the physical realm the ‘subjective method’ of finding truth may be the root of all evil. But the affirmation that this physical world has also a moral meaning and a moral plan is one that no argument drawn from purely physical truth can either establish or impugn.”

Evidence of James’s attention to the debate on energetics can be found in some later texts, and specifically in Pragmatism (1906), Essays in Radical Empiricism (1904-1906) and in the posthumous Some Problems of Philosophy. In Pragmatism, in particular, beside the explicit mention of Maxwell and Ostwald as examples of the pragmatist attitude of thinking, James deals with the metaphysical significance of the concepts of God, matter, and energy in relation to entropy and the thermal death of the planet. The metaphysical question of the alternative between God and Matter as first principles appears nonsensical from a pragmatist perspective, unless it is considered in view of the possible future of the humankind, that is, unless it deals with a moral perspective. Here James quotes at length a passage from A.J. Balfour’s The Foundation of Belief, a text which belongs to the loci classici of apocalyptic description of the entropic exhaustion of the life of the universe that dotted the popular and “prophetic” literature of the second half of the nineteenth century. James’s intention here, however, is neither rhetorical nor ideological, but is rather instrumental to his need to illustrate the problem to the audience through a vivid set of images with which they are already well acquainted247. Given a possible ending of all life in entropic catastrophe, the meaning of the metaphysical alternative between God and Matter is immediately evident. If we believe that Matter is the fundamental principle of the universe, nothing can prevent matter from following its eternal laws and lead the universe to its necessary death. If, on the contrary, we believe that a benign God oversees the destiny of the universe, chances are that the universe, its moral order, and all the human efforts in it are not doomed to destruction. Actually, James is replaying the fundamental thesis of The Unseen Universe, although in a more problematic and less fideistic way (P, 53-56).

247

In the TT James advices the teachers about the expediency to use an intensely imaginative language to convey an extremely abstract content. On James’s use of catching imaginative language, see also the recent article K. Boudreau, “The Greatest Philosophy on Earth: William James’s Lowell Lectures and the Idiom of Showmanship”. William James Studies, II, 2007.

163 A few pages later, James will approach pragmatically the very notion of energy supported by Ostwald’s authority: “Energy is the collective name (according to Ostwald) for the sensations just as they present themselves (the movement, heat, magnetic pull, or light, or whatever it may be) when they are measured in certain ways. So measuring them, we are enabled to describe the correlated changes which they show us, in formulas matchless for their simplicity and fruitfulness for human use.” (P, 93)

This passage is echoed in a footnote in Some Problems of Philosophy where James says: “I omit saying anything in my text about ‘energetics’. Popular writers often appear to think that ‘science’ has demonstrated a monistic principle called ‘energy’, which they connect with activity on one hand and with quantity on the other. So far as I understand this difficult subject, ‘energy’ is not a principle at all, still less an active one. It is only a collective name for certain amounts of immediate perceptual reality... It is not an ontological theory at all, but a magnificent economic schematic device for keeping account of the functional variations of the surface phenomena.” (SPP, 206, n. 1)

The two passages show not only the rooted influence of Mach’s functionalism on James late epistemology248, but they also show James’s commitment to a lifelong nominalistic phenomenalism and his refusal to transform energetics into an ontology. Energy is nothing but a name, a “conceptual device,” a “denkmittel” (P, 84)249. Yet, such nominalism becomes problematic when considered in the perspective of the essay on The Varieties of the Religious Experience, where energy seems to shoulder a lot of explanatory weight. Granted that energy is only a conceptual “device,” a necessary question on the meaning of the “energy” that constitutes the ultimate core of the self in VRE250. 248

See E. Mach, Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit. Praha, 1872; and Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historich-kritisch dargestellt. Praha, 1883 [I Engl. Ed. 1893], chap. V: “All the ideas of conservation, as well as the concept of substance, have their own valid foundation in the economy of thought. A single variation not related to anything else, with nothing steady to refer to, cannot be understood nor accounted for. [Footnote: If we consider that every scientific law is an abstraction which entails the repetition of similar occurrences, such preposterous applications of the law of conservation of energy to the universe as a whole are fated to fall.]” 249 See also P, p. 102: “Thus, names are just as ‘true’ or ‘false’ as definite mental pictures are. They set up similar verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent practical results.” 250 Although Pragmatism and Some Problems of Philosophy follow the Gifford Lectures, the short span of time elapsed between them allows us to consider these texts

164 3.1. James’s Metaphor of Energy Anyone who tried to trace James’s notion of energy back to the scientific theories of his days would eventually find himself in the embarrassing situation of having to admit that James does not follow any particular scientific theory of energy, even if his texts certainly echo with the contents of the scientific debate on energy Familiarly speaking, it is fair to say that James “is into energy,” but in quite an idiosyncratic and peculiar way. As we have seen at the end of the previous section, such an attitude begets a rather confusing intellectual situation in which “energy” is at the same time something real and just a “name,” a collective name for a particular collection of phenomena. The question is whether we have any reason not to assume that James is making another familiar mythical use of the notion of energy. It is possible to detect two major uses of the concept of energy in James’s texts: a metaphysical use, and a psychological, or anthropological use, from which a moral use strictly follows. In the metaphysical use, in James’s late works, the term “energy” accounts for the whole of the processes of the universe, including God and the psychic agencies, as well as for experience as the process of interaction between “subject” and “world” conceived according to an energetic model mirroring Maxwell’s theory of the fields of energy. Here in particular, the fluidity of the energetic fields corresponds to the continuous flowing of consciousness and its objects in the dynamic texture of experience. In the psychological use we rather find a nervous (neural) energy and a spiritual energy, referring both to the inner core of the self and to the intensity of muscular or mental action: the problematic phenomenon of effort of attention, as well as any overcoming of difficulties, obstacles, or hindrances, physical or moral, is an expression of energy. Habit and selfcontrol are regarded as potential, or stored, or saved energy251. as belonging to the same thematic period of the last ten years of James’s life. In other words, the notion of energy of the later texts is not a linear development or variation of that assumed in VRE. 251 See EM, p. 13 “When I speak of human energizing in general, the reader must therefore understand that sum-total of activities, some outer and some inner, some muscular, some emotional, some moral, some spiritual, of whose waxing and waning in himself he is at all times so well aware.”

165 The question, of course, is the relation between these two different accounts of energy. James himself recognized the problem of confusing the two, and in a note in A Pluralistic Universe distinguishes the use of energy to describe mental activity-trains composed of thought, in their energetic aspect, from those “parts of their nature” that “energize physically”252. The option seems to be between the continuity – the view that psychological energy is only a part of the whole energy acting in the universe – and the microcosmic model – the view that nervous/psychological energy is in the human microcosms what energy tout court is in the greater universe. Either view is problematic. The continuity model is indeed simpler and more logical, but it entails the risks of a treating energy as a substance and implicitly entails a determinism according to which all human action would be part of a greater wave of cosmic energy. The microcosmic model, in turn, is problematic (regardless of the contradiction it poses with respect to James’s refusal of microcosmic anthropology) because it leaves open the question about what specific difference there could be between human energy and the “other” energy. In this case too, however, energy would be taken as a substance and would lead to an essentialistic account of the human form of life, as in Lotze. Either solution, then, seems to fall short of James’s intention. The reason for this failure is that either solution takes “energy” as a “thing” or a physical entity, that is, metaphysically, whereas James tends to see “energy” as a collective name for the occurrence and interaction of several different phenomena. More precisely, “Energy,” is a metaphor instead of a name, a powerful conceptual image that organizes and illustrates, more than it explains, the manifold realities of human experience253. Of what is “energy” a metaphor? Nothing less than what James, in a letter to T. Ward, 252

Cf. PU, p. 390. Cf. P, p. 103: “‘Energy’ does not even pretend to stand for anything objective. It is only a way to measure the surface of of phenomena so as to string their changes on a simple formula.” On the notion of “metaphor,” see U. Eco Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio. Torino, Einaudi 1984; pp. 141-198. Cf. also B. Wilshire Role Play and Identity: the Limits of the Theatrical Metaphor. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1982, p. 241: “Since perception is basic to that worldly presence of things-along-with-otherthings which is meaning itself, then metaphor – that sensuous grasping of things in terms of what they are not – is endemic and fundamental to cognition itself.”

253

166 defines as the core of his whole “Anschauung,” namely, the view that there is something that is really acting in the universe; “Energy” is, and is thus actually experienced, in its strict Aristotelean sense of actuality, namely, as “activity.” or in other words, what James, echoing Bergson, calls the “live, active organic character of the universe.” “Now, it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever we find anything going on. Taken in the broadest sense, any apprehension of something doing, is an experience of activity. […] Bare activity then, as we may call it, means the bare fact of event or change. […] The sense of activity is thus the broadest and vaguest way synonymous with the ‘sense of life’” (ERE, 161)

The metaphor of energy gives us an account of what, strictly speaking, can neither be said nor illustrated, namely, life itself, or the whole of the activity of the universe and the very fact that such an activity exists. In this sense, the term “energy” has a metaphysical value, not because it is supposed to refer to a first cause – as James reminds us in SPP, energy is neither a principle, nor a cause; it does not “explain” anything, and an explanatory metaphysics is futile – but because it designates the totality of actual objects and relations in their dynamic aspect as pointing to the whole life of the “booming and buzzing universe.” Energy does not exist as a “first cause”254, it must be taken rather as all things and none in particular, with their relations and interactions, all included in the same field of experience255. “Energy” used in this way becomes the common denominator, or the summum genus, of all the phenomena256, and the model of the dynamism of

254

See MEN, pp 49-51, [Notes on Activity I] # 4421: “So the objection lands us in ontologism generally. Real ‘activity’ goes with real ‘entities’ behind the phenomenal world. Who gives up such entities must also give up real activities. I myself, who stick to phenomena, can only repeat (paraphrasing Lotze about entities) that since the utmost a real activity could do if it did exist would be to make itself gelten as such, get itself recognized, felt, realized, experienced, as such, and that since we have it realized as such whenever we feel ourselves sustaining our purpose against obstacles and overcoming them [ours italics], or being overcome by them, why then that we have all the activity that there can really be, and have it all within experience itself.” 255 Compare to F. Nietzsche The Genealogy of Morals, I, §13 and Posthumous Fragments, VII, 1 (Jul.-Aug. 1882). Both James and Nietzsche present an account of energy that rejects the notion of substance and equates energy with activity. 256 It is possible to see James’s metaphor of energy, then, as akin to Kant’s notion of “fundamental power”, namely, as “principle of systematic unity” of all the different

167 the universe as well; it also represents the dynamics of experience (including the borderline notion of “pure experience” that James inherits from Avenarius and shares with Bergson). Translating human experience into the metaphoric language of energy provides a common ground and a model of understanding for the whole texture of being. Experience is but the conscious side of the general texture of activity of which the universe is constituted, and James shows how it is possible, according to the energetic model, to understand experience as a continuum once we abandon the idealistic interpretation of experience as constituted by the opposition of subject and object257. So what is James trying to convey: that experience is to be put under the category of energy – or that energy is a metaphor of experience? Either is possible. What really matters here is that James has found in the scientific notion of energy an acceptable paradigm for his fundamental cosmological view: a fully interactive universe wherein the only steady reality is the continuous movement and change of everything. James’s holistic notion of experience as a self-contained whole without foundation is the reverse side of a universe as a self-contained energetic system in which all the possible articulations of being are but temporary energetic arrangements. Such a metaphysical view, lurking through the pages of the Essays on Radical Empiricism, becomes fully developed in the lectures of A Pluralistic Universe by moving gradually through some representative figures: Hegel, Fechner, Bergson. The great lesson of Hegel’s philosophy – once rid of the logico-metaphysical apparatus – is the genuine insight into reality as a continuous flow and becoming of things, which develop one from the other through the process of experience. Hegel, however, instead of keeping to his original view of reality as continuous movement of particulars, moved away from the concrete reality of the world and assumed ideas as the only reality. James, on the contrary, aims at overcoming the distinction between material and spiritual without privileging one over the other and conceiving spirit and matter as commingled in the one texture of the universe. Such a view had already been tentatively outlined in 1895 in “Is kinds of empirical activities. See I. Kant Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 536-537 [B 677]. 257 Cfr. ERE, passim.

168 Life Worth Living?” where James presented the belief in the complementarity and continuity between “physical order” and “unseen spiritual order” as the real and healthy meaning of religious attitude258. In this perspective, Fechner’s Zend-Avesta becomes a paradigmatic text. The spiritual is not an exception in the middle of nature, but rather the rule. There is spirit everywhere in the universe, Fechner says, and consciousness is intermingled with any material body. Here James passes from a view of consciousness and universe as discontinuous to an account of the functional continuity between spirit and nature. While rejecting Fechner’s theory of a sensorium communis of the universe, James appropriates the suggestion from Fechner’s religious metaphysics of some psychical synthesis constituting the universe. Experience is not the private belonging of a monadic consciousness but the activity of a compounding of consciousness. As James states at the beginning of the Lecture V of PU: “I wish to discuss the assumption that states of consciousness, so-called, can separate and combine themselves freely, and keep their own identity unchanged while forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope” (PU, 181).

The passage from the traditional atomic model of consciousness to the “compounding” of fields of experience is at the same time a function of and dependent on the energetic view, and sets the ground for the reception of Bergson’s synechism, the conception of the universe as a continuum. Once “experience” is recognized as belonging to the general activity of the universe, that is, as the conscious side of this perpetual cosmic movement, and once it is established that “energy” is not a principle or a cause, but rather a model for such a movement, the psychological use of the term energy can be seen to cohere with the metaphysical perspective, and their differences taken to be applications in different contexts, according to the schema laid down in the Essays in Radical Empiricism259. 258

See WB, p. 57: “That the world of physics is probably not absolute, all the converging multitude of arguments that make in favor of idealism tend to prove; and that our whole physical life may lie soaked in a spiritual atmosphere, a dimension of being that at present we have no organ for apprehending, is vividly suggested to us by the analogy of the life of our domestic animals.” 259 Several passages in ERE can instantiate James’s central view that “Classification depend on our temporary purposes. For certain purposes it is convenient to take things in one set of relations, for other purposes in another set. In the two cases their contexts are apt to be different” (p. 141). In this sense “energy” can be classed either as cosmic

169 Human activity can be accounted for through the model of energy insofar as it belongs to the whole activity of the universe, but since energy is intended only as a metaphor, or a model, but not as a “first cause”, there is no risk of falling into monistic physical determinism, or of dissolving the boundary separating human action from other physical events. Rather energy exists and it is actually going on, in the world and in oneself respectively, to the extent it is experienced as such; to apply causal language here adds nothing to our account of this fact, and thus – using James’s criteria that one must be able to trace “a practical difference”, or “conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve” (P, 46-47) – we gain nothing from using that language, and so should drop it. 3.2. The Practical Meaning of Energy In the attempt to analyze the notion of energy James refers to in VRE, we have seen how James developed the notion of energy as a metaphor for the general activity of the world. Such a metaphorical account, however, does not provide a conclusive answer to the question about the relation between the metaphysical and the psychological accounts of energy. It rather leaves open the legitimate question whether, “energy”, suitably denuded of the claim that it counts as a substance and practically applied as a metaphor for activity in general, allows for the ethical use entailed in James’s psychological account of energy. In fact, if “energy” is only a metaphor, it turns out at last ethically irrelevant, whereas inversely, if it is used to denote a “real” power, it would indeed be ethically relevant but metaphysically suspicious, because it would open the door to a monistic and deterministic principle. Questions which in turn leads us back to the fundamental metaphysical dispute between materialism and teleology260, and to the basic anthropological question of whether the energetic view entails completely reabsorbing human beings within the general cosmic movement or if there is a special

and as human, as well as physical and spiritual not because of its aboriginal essence but according to the set of relation in which it is taken. Cf. also “The Experience of Activity”, pp. 184-186, in particular the related footnotes. 260 Cf. ERE, p. 179.

170 “place of Man in nature”; and if we decide the latter is the case, we must still decide how this special status is translated in energetic terms. The metaphorical account of energy, as revealing the identity between energy and activity, allows us to cast a light on the co-implication between the metaphysical and the psychological account of energy by following the guideline James provides in his analysis of the “experience of activity”261. Once again, the pragmatist formula of “Known as”, here, brings us back to the crossroad between the ordo essendi and ordo cognoscendi, the ontological and the gnoseological, which characterizes James’s radical empiricism262. Activity as such has its ontological certification through its being experienced as the apprehension that something is going on, that something is doing, that some change is taking place. As for bare activity the existence of activity is fully coextensive with the sense of it The formula that the existence of energy is coextensive with the experience of energy we have gives us the thread that leads us to the metaphysical account of energy. Through a sort of micro-reduction, James shifts the focus to another aspect of the experience of activity and introduces us into the realm of subjective activity. Were we in a world in which we cannot experience anything doing anything – what we could take as sort of a cheap “epoché” – “we should feel our own subjective life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise active world.” (ERE, 161) Such subjective experience strikes us as an experience of an activity which constitutes at least a part of the general activity (or inactivity) of the world, which however comes “[…] with desire and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of resistence so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed to activity arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes to birth.” (ERE, 163)

To the extent such qualifications of activity are sensed they are real features of activity; and to the extent such features are experienced in the 261

See ERE, chap. VI. Cf. ERE, p. 160: “The principle of pure experience is also a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as a fact, it says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some experient. […] Everything real must be experienced somewhere, and every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real.”

262

171 “external” activity in the world, it appears evident such an external activity is understood by reference to the model provided by the subjective activity. Thus, insofar as the subjective experience of activity depicts the features of human activity, the “objective” relation between cosmic and human activity is transposed to the subjective, experiential foundation of activity, which solves the problem of the relation between the two accounts of activity by articulating different levels of experience: an experience of bare activity, an experience of inner intentional activity; an experience of external either causal or intelligent activity263. Thus, while “mechanical energy” and “spiritual energy” are both “real” and both belong to the same realm of being, they are descriptive of different levels of experience of the world and, to that extent, the analogy between them cannot be turned into an identity. In fact, the ethical use of the term “energy” does not depend upon the solution of the metaphysical problem264, or upon the actual existence of a separate human microcosms, but rather upon how such “energy” is experienced, or “known as”: it is experienced as a tension against an obstacle in the pursuance of an end, that is, as a telic activity, and to the extent such an activity is endowed with value, it entails its ethical meaning. “What it is ‘known-as’ is what there appears. The experiencer of such situation posses all that the idea contains. He feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the triumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the space, the swiftness or the intensity…or whatever remaining characters the situation may involve.” (ERE, 166)

Thus, the ethical account of human energy appears as the prosecution and expansion of the earlier question of effort265. The feeling of effort, be it 263

Cf. PP I, p. 8: “The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon. We all use this test to discriminate between an intelligent and a mechanical performance.”. Cf. also ERE, p. 169, note: “There are, in fact, three distinguishable ‘activities’ in the field of discussion: the elementary activity involved in the mere ‘that’ of experience, in the fact that something is going on, and the farther specifications of this something into two whats, an activity felt as ‘ours’ and an activity ascribed to objects. […] There is a wider sense in which the whole ‘choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,’ and their activities, are ours, for they are our ‘objects’. But ‘we’ are here only another name for the total process of experience, another name for all that is, in fact; […]” 264 Cf. ERE, pp. 178-180. 265 “The Feeling of Effort” (1880); PP II, pp. 575-579.

172 muscular or psychological, rather than indicate the presence of some special nervous activity, translates the exertion of one’s own force against an outer or an inner resistance, that is, the energetic relation between two forces, one of which, at least, is conscious of it. In so far as one of these two agents has a consciousness, it is also supposed to have ends, which means that it can be driven by ideas, from which we can deduce that its activity has a spiritual dimension266. Such a kind of activity, in its being the realization of an idea (or an ideal) against the resistance of the world or of one’s own passitvity is ethical in its own nature. “I must say one word about the extraordinarily intimate and important character which the phenomenon of effort assumes in our eyes as individual men. […] the effort seems to belong to an altogether different realm, as if it were the substantive things which we are […] He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is an hero. […] The world thus finds in the heroic man its worth match and mate; and the effect that he is able to put forth to hold himself erect and keep his heart unshaken is the direct measure of his worth and function in the game of human life.” (PP II, 578)

Accordingly, James’s use of the word “energy” in the moral context appears analogous to the “warlike” and “heroic” meanings accrued by the ‘strenuous life’ extolled by the moralists of his day, as well as in Roosevelt’s rhetoric. Thus, for example, of energy James writes, “we have it realized as such whenever we feel ourselves sustaining our purpose against obstacles and overcoming them [ours italics], or being overcome by them” (MEN, 49-50)267. James’s adherance to such notion of “individual energy” – which was perfectly consistent with his romantic background (Emerson, Carlyle)268 – appears, however, less ideologically colored than stating the necessary outcome of the very nature of human activity as it is actually experienced, namely, as a permanent opposition against some resistance and in view of something else, in which every 266

Cf. also E. Boutroux La Nature et l’Esprit. Paris, 1904-1905, pt. II, § 3. Cf. also ERE, p. 139 (lct. V): “Any one ‘content’, such as hard, let us say, can be assigned to either group. In the outer group it is ‘strong’, it acts ‘energetically’ and aggressively.” 268 It is fair also to include T. H. Davidson and his energetic panentheism, which equates God with energy, among the sources of James’s energetic individualism, although it can be disputed whether Davidson is to be considered a romantic. See ECR, pp. 86-97, in particular p. 93 “In one of his letters to the Class, Davidson sums up the results of his own experience of life in twenty maxims, as follows: 1) Rely upon yourself and your own energies, and do not wait for, or depend upon, other people….”. See also Letter T. Davidson to WJ, Dec. 29, 1882. 267

173 outcome shows as an achievement, and a self-affirmation, and every rest as a failure, and a shrinking of one’s own Self. There is little doubt that such an account of human activity fits well within James’s anthropological frame characterized by the selective function of consciousness and the priority of action. Nonetheless this account of individual energy is not to be confused with the description of some kind of “hypostatized” special force, emerging from a microcosmic dimension and submerging into the general activity of the universe. Nor is human spirituality a second kind of energy. Sticking to James’s radical empiricism, it is rather the energetic circuit between idea and action which characterizes conscious, namely, human activity. In this perspective spiritual energy does not mean the activity of a spiritual “substance” over the material world, nor an activity that takes place at the inner level of consciousness only – the consciousness of activity is not the activity of consciousness – but rather an actual and effective activity that goes through the physical world and involves ideas as its own conditions and drives, and habits as secure potential and ability to act269. Indeed, while this is not the acceptance of a microcosmic view, it is however the recognition, or maybe the position, of a special status of human activity within the physical world, and the term “human energy” is a metaphor for the possibility of a teleology within the realm of materialism, for the occurrence of freedom and novelty within the physical universe of necessity, and at the same time for the incommensurability between the mechanical laws of matter and the flowing and creative dynamism of life. Such a view shows James aligning himself with the vitalism of his day and, in particular, with the French school of vitalism, heir to Renouvier’s

269

Cf. also Letter G. Santayana to WJ, Paris, Dec. 6, 1905: “A more technical point. You say ‘activity’ can be spiritual only. Is your activity, or sense of activity, not rather an enérgeia than a dynamis? Of course I should be the first to agree that activity, in the sense of actuality and conscious stress, belongs only to consciousness or even to the rational and reflective energy of thought. But efficiency, in the sense of regular predictable contiguity with other specific events, belong only to dynamis, to the potential (=the potent). […]”

174 and Janet’s spiritualism270. In James’s day Virchow, Roux, and Verworn in physiology and Botroux and Bergson in philosophy focused on the notions of “organism”, “life”, “struggle” and “expansion”, “choice” and “chance”, as well as on those of “spirit”, “spiritual life”, “consciousness” in order to provide an account of a rich and complex set of behaviors that exceeded the boundries of the physical laws. James shares with the representatives of vitalism the fundamental anti-reductionism that claims that living organisms cannot be explained only through physical law, as well as the belief in the irreducibility of psychical phenomena to physiological ones. The individual, with its psychology and activity, opens a field of indeterminacy within the natural world and starts a counter-movement which escapes and reverts the energetic determinism of the physical world. Thus, in James, there is a fundamental distinction between inorganic and organic, and, within the realm of organic, between human beings and other living beings. Such a difference of the human over the merely organic is based on the human spiritual dimension, which presented through the metaphor of individual energy, is, for James, the indication of what we can call the “human anomaly” within the energetic schema of nature. 3.3. The Human Anomaly The ethical value of the metaphor of individual energy becomes evident against the background of the ideological use of the notion of entropy, where it appears as a sort of reductionist and mechanistic anti-utopia, as deterministic as Spencer’s progressive evolutionism James had criticized in his early writings. Both kinds of determinism, the evolutive and the 270

The spiritualist reaction arises within the positivist cultural environment, less as opposition than as a development of positivist categories. The main sources for such a spitiualistic movement are Leibniz’s dynamic atomism and, consequently, Boscovich’s theory of the the “points of force” (Philosophia Naturalis Theoria 1759). See C. S. Peirce CP 6.238-271. “Unless we are to give up the theory of energy, finite positional attractions and repulsions between molecules must be admitted.… In short, we are logically bound to adopt the Boscovichian idea that an atom is simply a distribution of component potential energy throughout space…combined with inertia.” In particular, the spiritualistic movement has its most representative figures in France: Janet, Renouvier, Magy, Vacherot, and Levêque.

175 devolutive, assume no difference of level between the inorganic and the organic within the physical realm of nature. Thus, by imposing on all existing things the rigid order of the laws of physics, both the evolutionists and the devolutionists transform the scientific account of a set of phenomena into a metaphysical philosophy of history. Yet, this is exactly the problem for James: nature and history are two separate dimensions of being. Nature provides the material possibility for history, but the two are not inter-convertible. So that what can be considered natural progress or decay does not coincide with what we can consider the moral or cultural progress or decay of human history. In other words, whereas nature is quantitative, history is qualitative; that is, history is concerned with the “distribution” of energy, which is certainly not synonymous with the sheer amount of it, as James points out in one of his last letters, one to Henry Adams. James was responding to Adams’ pamphlet, Letter to American Teachers of History, in which he applied the theme of the dissipation of energy promiscuously to disprove both the goodness of God and the fact of Darwinian evolution, casting special doubt upon human exceptionalism, that is: “That man alone enjoys the supernatural power of consciously reversing nature’s process, by raising her dissipated energies, including his own, to higher intensities.”271 James consistently opposed such coarse determinism, with its cheap application of physical theory to human history at large, doing injury to both sides. In fact, James argues, the amount of energy physically disposable in nature, in absolute values, at any given time cannot support any assumption about the actual quality of the correlated status of human culture. “But I protest against your interpretation of some of the specifications of the great statistical drift downwards of the original high level energy […]. To begin with, the AMOUNT of cosmic energy it costs to buy a certain distribution of fact, which humanly we regard as precious, seems to be an altogether secondary matter as regards the question of history and progress. Certain arrangements of matter on THE SAME ENERGY-LEVEL are, from the point of view of man's appreciation, superior, while others are inferior…. 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 insert 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 271

H. Adams, op. cit., p. 128.

176 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 canalized 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 a single question.”272

There is more than this, however, to be considered. Doubtlessly the theory of entropy holds true for the physical inorganic world. Inorganic existence, however, is not the only kind of presence in the world; living beings seem able to recreate their energies. As for humans in particular – as James remarks in “The Energies of Men” (1906-7) – they seem to have a hidden storage of energy and the ability to draw their energies out of inexhaustible inner sources. “It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata.” (EM, 8)

James’s approach to the problem of entropy is framed within the boundaries of the antithesis between nature and culture that characterized his philosophical anthropology. If humans were merely a piece of nature, they would be destined to decay as energy seeks the lowest thermal gradient. Here, the wraith of the thermal death mirrors the ghost of determinism that haunted the young James. But entropy as well as determinism, are only possible views of the world, just as exhaustion and damnation are only one of the possible directions of humanity. Human life, however, is mostly engaged in that specific activity that we have previously defined as the construction of culture, that is, the 272

See Letter W.J. to H. Adams, Bad-Nauheim, June 17, 1910. This letter is extremely important as it exhibits James’s concern with the energetic question until the last days of his life. The major value of this letter is to rule out the reductionistic interpretation of James’s energism as naturalism and to reaffirm both the opposition nature-culture which is at the very core of James’s philosophical anthropology and James’s metaphysical rejection of any sort of teleology and determinism.

177 humanization of the natural world through the characteristic attitudes of morals, art, and religion273. Thus, insofar as we enter the moral world, that special human field of experience, we find energy variously exerted as the self, the activity of mind, the courage, the commitment and the struggle for the moral order of the world, and as the moral order itself. When human action is guided by ideals and intended for the construction of a human world – the continuous effort to build and maintain a culture and a moral order – it appears as an anti-entropic countermovement, absorbing an increasing expenditure of energy and displaying an increasing degree of complexity and organization. On the condition that we realize we are talking in metaphors, and not about substances, this additional energy can be called “spiritual energy”, thus denoting the activity of the spiritual dimension of the individual, or in other words, the dynamogenic power of ideas, which creates the special condition we could call the “human anomaly,” in virtue of which the entropic process, at least virtually, can be reversed. By virtue of their spiritual dimension, human beings have the ability to draw energy from their own ideas, as it were, and, in so doing, to 273

An evaluation of a theory of art on the basis of energy, namely, an “aesthetic of energy,” is far beyond the purpose of this work. A few hints scattered here and there in James’s works allow us to think that such an aesthetics could be worked out. Yet, two major questions seem to hinder such a development. First, while we do have a few of James’s ethical essays that would allow us at least a tentative extrapolation of James’s ethics of energy, there are no essays concerned with aesthetics in James’s extant corpus. That means that any attempt to work out an aesthetics would be extremely speculative and without any textual support. Second, even if such an attempt were accomplished, it is difficult to say, as far as I can see, what the substantial, namely, the structural, difference between the ethics and the aesthetics would be besides the obvious change of subject. Indeed, an aesthetics of energy, far from being a theory of “beautiful,” could only look like a theory of art, or better, of art making – in other words, an ethics for artists. In a similar direction, I think, Dewey’s Art as Experience goes. Insofar as ethics and aesthetics are concerned with performativity, that is, organization and formation of what is unorganized and formless, they both seem bound to show some sort of structural identity. In no possible way is this intended to deny the value and the function of art in the economy of energy and in the construction of human culture, nor would James think so. Rather, it seems that James’s silence on aesthetics can be understood as a recognition of the fact that what in art is a question of feelings, interest, and “taste” is out of the grasp of theory, whereas for what in art is a question of organization of energy, form, and habit, to the extent which they belong to the range of human actions, psychology and ethics are enough.

178 introduce a source of new energy into the physical world, or at least to manage more proficiently the energy they have. Thus, when we strip human “energy” of any mythical connotations, what it comes down to, for James, is that human destiny is in human hands, and dependent upon human power and ability to use and organize their activity for the construction and the preservation of the human world, in defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here the meaning and the task of an ethics of energy reveal themselves: to inquiry in the conditions in which human energy is produced and can be organized on behalf of human civilization. Under these special conditions, as we said, any kind of energy can be transformed into mechanical energy, that is, into motive power or action. Such special condition of transformation, as for human energies, are provided by special dynamogenic ideas and by ethics as a way of constructing individuals endowed with a more effective and increased power of action and living a more abundant life in the world. In this perspective, however, one more question needs to be met concerning an ambiguity in James’s ethical use of the term “energy”; for, once we have accepted its metaphorical value, as for individual, or spiritual, energy too, we cannot but wonder what the technical energetic language James adopts in his works can refer to. Thus in VRE James explains that: “The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals that are creative and ideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either on the amount of steam-pressure chronically driving the character in the ideal direction, or in the amount of ideal excitement transiently acquired.” (VRE, 266)

This is not the only instance in James of such seemingly literal energetic images: we find, in James, references to “spending” or “wasting” or “accumulating” or “storing” energy, and energy is “power” or “work.” But what do these terms mean when referred to something that is not a “thing”? Is spiritual energy wasted or accumulated in the same way in which an engine lets heat out or is fueled? Is spiritual activity like an engine’s work? Of course not. Such a reductionist view is actually far from James’s intention; yet, at the same time, with the metaphor of “energy” comes the legacy of the original lexical function of the term “energy” in physics and engineering. Once we assume spiritual power as “energy,” we cannot but be carried away, as James is, by the conceptual gear and the vocabulary

179 that science and technology have created for “energy,” which can lead us to viewing spiritual energy “as if” it were the same as mechanic energy274. Yet, as James shows in the very same text, the vocabulary of energy is nothing but a simile that needs to be translated every time into the appropriate reality of the object “Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. A given machine will run best under a certain steam-pressure, a certain amperage; an organism under a certain diet, weight or exercise. […] And it is so with our sundry souls: some are happiest in calm weather; some need the sense of tension, of strong volition, to make them feel alive and well.” (VRE, 299)

In other words, once introduced, the metaphor of energy must be adopted in all its conceptual surroundings, and the whole vocabulary of energy has to be taken loosely, keeping in mind its analogical character. As a general guideline henceforth we will understand “energy” as power of action and efficiency, and the rest of the related terms as what, for several possible reasons, increases, preserves or decreases them.

274

In The Energies of Men James shows himself to be perfectly aware of the vagueness and ambiguity of the language of spiritual energy: “Expressed in this vague manner, everyone must admit my thesis to be true. The terms have to remain vague; for though every man of woman born knows what is meant by such phrases as having a good vital tone, a high tide of spirits, an elastic temper, as living energetically, working easily, deciding firmly, and the like, we should all be put to our trumps if asked to explain in terms of scientific psychology just what such expressions mean. […] it is obvious that the intuitive or popular idea of mental work, fundamental and absolutely indispensable as it is in our lives, possesses no degree whatever of scientific clearness to-day.”

CHAPTER V

The Ethics of Energy 1. The Energies of Men James’s most explicit inquiry in the nexus of issues we discussed in the last chapter – the relation of the physicist’s ‘energy’ to human or spiritual ‘energy’, and its ethical implications – is the 1907 essay, The Energies of Men275, wherein James straightforwardly sketches the task of a “methodical program of scientific inquiry” on human energy, : “The two questions, first, that of the possible extent of our powers; and, second, that of the various avenues of approaching them, the various keys for unlocking them in diverse individuals, dominate the whole problem of individual and national education. We need a topography of the limits of human power […]. We need also a study of the various types of human being with reference to the different ways in which their energy reserves may be appealed to and set loose.” (EM, 38)

The relevance of such a program, in which almost the whole of mental science and of the science of conduct would find a place, is ethical and political at once; for energy is an ethical as well as a political problem; nay, it is the ethical and political problem par excellence, in as much as it turns out to be essentially a problem of education. As we saw in our chapter on habit, education is the social core of ethics as well as politics, upon which the destiny of individuals and nations depends. “If my reader will put together these two conceptions, first, that few men live at their maximum of energy, and second, that anyone may be in vital equilibrium at very different rates of energizing, he will find, I think, that a very pretty practical problem 275

Delivered as the presidential address the American Philosophical Association at Columbia University, December 28, 1906. First published in Science, N.S. 25 (No. 635), 321-332, then republished in Philosophical Review, Jan. 1907. The two published versions although analogous by content and inspiration are not perfectly identical. The quotations in the text have been chosen from either versions depending on their clearness in illustrating James’s view. James struck a chord with the public as well: as his biographer, Gerald Myers, writes, “thousands of non-professionals showed up for his public lectures.” [Myers, op. cit., p. 1] His colleagues, too, recognize that, as Santayana put it, James “had a prophetic sympathy with the dawning sentiments of the age, with the moods of the dumb majority.” G. Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, 1926, p. 204.]

182 of national economy, as well as of individual ethics, opens upon his view. In rough terms, we may say that a man who energizes below his normal maximum fails by just so much to profit by his chance at life, and that a nation filled with such men is inferior to a nation run at higher pressure. The problem is, then, how can men be trained up to their most useful pitch of energy? And how can nations make such a training most accessible to all their sons and daughters. This after all, is only the general problem of educations, formulated in slightly different terms.” (EM, 10-11)

Yet, long before reaching such a clear awareness of the anthropological dimension of the energetic problem, James had already been doing his part to train people up to “their most useful pitch of energy” through the “lectures on some ideals of life,” which, together with a couple of other later essays, constitute James’s only ethical writings, presented, significantly, as essays in “popular philosophy.” In these essays, James approaches both questions and sketches a preliminary outline of an ethics of energy, by showing the intimate connection between ideas, ideals and moral action. At the same time, in keeping with his statement that genuinely philosophical ethical works must ally themselves with a tentative and suggestive literature (WB, 159), James offers his moral speculations, supported by his experience as a psychologist, in the form of lectures intended to improve the moral tone through energetic management of individuals and nations, without superimposing any universal moral perspective or standard.

1.1. Energetic Ideals The development of James’s energetic ethics is marked by three important lectures: “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (1892),“Is Life Worth of Living?” (1895), and “What Makes a Life Significant” (1899). Generally speaking, the three essays analyze the meaning and relevance of ideals for human life from different perspectives. Ideals play a very important role in human life, functioning to keep human beings in action; for they are among the factors that have the power to unlock human energies making the use of such energies worthy and meaningful. On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings highlights two important aspects of ideals in human life: the first is that ideals are the meaning of human life, or, in the energetic language, the “fuel” that allows human beings to perform and achieve the most uncanny enterprises. The second, which is

183 the necessary development of what is stated in MP, is the ethical necessity for tolerance of others’ ideals, as the only possible condition for the existence of social life. James’s nominalist criticism of the absolute claims of moral philosophy has resulted, as we have shown, in the claim that ethics cannot provide a universal and necessary axiological organization of ideals. This was the message of MP, which, as we remarked in our first chapter, was received unenthusiastically by its first audience, at Yale. But James’s criticism makes way for another claim: that all ideals must be left free to “act” – unless we want to leave a good share of human energies unemployed. The free interplay of energies James envisions here leads to two possible scenarios: a state of chaotic and widespread conflict, that is, the disintegration of social life, or the pluralistic interaction among different interests. The only difference between the two is the degree of tolerance for the “other”, namely, for the different ideal that any social agent can practice. James adopts here the broadest possible view: all ideals deserve at least a silent consent to their being held, except for those that involve an attack to the very pillars of social coexistence – life, property, decency, and veracity276. It is important to stress that, for James, tolerance does not originate from empathy or even less from understanding of others’ ideals. Human blindness to others’ ideals is an unavoidable condition; consequently, it is this impossibility of understanding others that makes tolerance necessary as a practical postulate for the sake of development of human existence. The maximum of understanding humans can reach concerning such a matter is the awareness of their blindness, that is, the awareness of their limit in fully realizing what makes others’ lives meaningful. Consequently, as odd as it may seem, the only reasonable foundations for tolerance is in human blindness: every one of us cannot fully understand or be understood by every one else. Pragmatically, the attitude of tolerance begets better consequences than its opposite. Tolerance is thus not only a fundamental condition of social life but is also a major achievement in moral life since it

276

Cf. the already quoted text of the “Notes for Philosophy 4” (1888-1889) ML, p. 183. James’s list of the “pillars” of society is taken from Locke’s list of natural rights. See J. Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, § 87. James adds “veracity” and “decency” to Locke’s list.

184 requires a considerable amount of effort to consent, although only negatively, to what is not understood. A detailed exploration of the role of ideals in human life is the content of the two almost homonymous essays “Is Life Worth Living?” and “What Makes Life Significant”. The first essay starts with the issue of suicide: is there any reason not to commit suicide if we feel that special existential condition called taedium vitae? If we exclude the interdiction of suicide pronounced by natural religion, which is ineffective for the one who has given up the naive belief in a God of nature, is there then any other reason to refrain from suicide and keep on living? James’s answer to Hamlet’s question is affirmative although tentative. Granted that suicide is no more a blasphemy and that we are free to relieve ourselves of the burden of life, it is nonetheless true that engagement in the struggle against evil can be an effective way to reenergize and requalify one’s own life and make it worth of living. Since it is proved that, in general, “suffering and hardship do not abate love of life,” but rather that involvement in struggle brings joy and enthusiasm, to engage oneself in a venture against the evils of this world can provide one’s own life with the necessary tonic of meaningfulness and prevent suicide277. In much the same way other ideals can effect the same result with no appeal to supernatural power or judgment: “Thus, then, we see that mere instinctive curiosity, pugnacity, and honor may make life on a purely naturalistic basis seem worth living from day to day to men who have cast away all metaphysics in order to get rid of hypochondria, but who are resolved to owe nothing as yet to religion and its more positive gifts”(WB 51).

Admittedly, it appears as a pretty mild proposal, which James himself defines a “poor half-way stage” although an “honest” standpoint. In fact, there is little doubt that any appeal to the highest ideals of struggle against evil, honor, fairness, or the construction of human culture can hardly reach someone who is immersed in the mood of taedium vitae, for taedium vitae is exactly the state of mind in which all these noble things have become meaningless. Yet James, following the dictum that moral philosophy can only be hortatory, cannot state what a would-be suicide ought to do, but rather presents a possible alternative to the suicide’s view in the hope of stimulating him/her to adopt a different perspective on the meaning of life. 277

An analogous interpretation of the melioristic view of the world in terms of human adventure is also in P, pp. 139-140.

185 The question: “Is Life Worth Living?” James argues, has more than one affirmative answer for those who like to hear them. Life is full of value and meaning because it has all the value and meaning that each one gives to it, if ever (WB, 61). Ideals and the effort to achieve them provide all the meaning and the worth world and life need. Indeed, no other moral argument could actually stop the suicide if he/she cannot see any interest in other perspectives, or any meaning in his/her life. Yet, it isn’t the issue of suicide per se that interests James, here, but the ideal and spiritual meaning of life, as it is demonstrated by his second essay on the same subject: “What Makes a Life Significant”. Here, James returns to two of his favorite themes: first, that the meaning of life is in the struggle, namely, in the effort human beings put forth in their activities; and second, that such an effort has a moral value only if it is for the sake of an ideal. Human work has meaning only when the physical and the spiritual orders of life are fully integrated; mere expenditure of physical and muscular energy with no spiritual dimension is brutal and mechanistic, and it appears more like a (social) problem than like a human achievement. The dramatic core of this essay is James’s famous account of his visit to the Assembly Ground at Chautauqua278. The passage, as well as its 278

“A few summers ago I spent a happy week at the famous Assembly Grounds on the borders of Chautauqua Lake. The moment one treads that sacred enclosure, one feels one's self in an atmosphere of success. Sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness, pervade the air. It is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale. Here you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants, beautifully laid out in the forest and drained, and equipped with means for satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous higher wants of man. […] You have culture, you have kindness, you have cheapness, you have equality, you have the best fruits of what mankind has fought and bled and striven for under the name of civilization for centuries. You have, in short, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners. I went in curiosity for a day. I stayed for a week, held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear. And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying: ‘Ouf! what a relief! Now for something primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. […] Let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and sufferings.” See also Letter R. Kipling to WJ, Aug. 31, 1896.

186 conclusion, is extremely important because it marks the tension between human effort and cultural world as the gist of James’s ethics. Good, we said above, is neither the ideal nor the effort in itself, but rather the active tension (the effort) toward the ideal, namely, the construction of a cultural world, that is, a world in which evil is overthrown or controlled, if not eliminated. Yet, having finally achieved its goals, the culture at its perfect ergonomical equilibrium is utterly boring and unheroic; it is the taedium vitae as social institution, and no matter how delectable and relaxing such a life can be, one can reasonably doubt whether such lifestyles aren’t inferior on the whole to those run “at higher pressure.” “An irremediable flatness is coming over the world”, James writes. In contrast to the earnestness and tolerance of Chautauqua that left a taste of something finished and smug, James sees, as the train that carries him away from Chautauqua goes by Buffalo, construction workers on a sky scraper, and the contrast seems to him all in favor of the “daily lives of the laboring classes,” (TT, 274) in whose efforts a heroic struggle is going on all unnoticed. In order to have meaning and value for oneself as well as in others’ eyes a life needs struggle and sacrifice. James rejects the utopia of Chautauqua on behalf of the never-ending struggle of light versus darkness, and of the strenuous and heroic fighting against evil and death279. To be sure, it is difficult not to be puzzled when reading such a heroic hymn to danger and struggle, pervaded by such an apparent lack of concern for the actual costs, in terms of pain and sacrifice, not only to oneself but to others, and for what? seemingly in order to satisfy an aesthetic enthusiasm for the infinite struggle and fighting. A parallel passage from a previous conference, “The Dilemma of Determinism”, 279

Compare to VRE, p. 375: “It is meanwhile quite possible to conceive an imaginary society in which there should be no aggressiveness, but only sympathy and fairness – any small community of true friends now realizes such a society. Abstractly considered, such a society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing might be realized there with no expense of friction. To such a millennial society the saint would be entirely adapted. His peaceful modes of appeal would be efficacious over his companions, and there would be no one extant to take advantage of his nonresistance. The saint is therefore abstractly a higher type of man than the "strong man," because he is adapted to the highest society conceivable, whether that society ever be concretely possible or not. The strong man would immediately tend by his presence to make that society deteriorate.”

187 however, casts some more light on James’s mind. James’s rejection of Chautauqua’s “perfect” society is not to be understood according to the gnostical point of view, to wit, life struggle is not to be preferred in itself as just a means to enrich one’s own ethical consciousness and expand one’s own understanding of the world. Human life is not “a ‘roman expérimental’ on an infinite scale” to behold in a cynical and analytic attitude, as James polemically points out against Zola. It is rather the “illusoriness of the notion of moral progress” with all its related sentimentalism that James rejects, on behalf of Carlyle’s “old-fashioned” philosophy of work, engagement and duty. “He said: ‘Hang your sensibilities! Stop your sniveling complaints, and your equally sniveling raptures! Leave off your general emotional tomfoolery, and get to WORK like men!. But this means a complete rupture with the subjectivist philosophy of things. It says conduct, and not sensibility, is the ultimate fact for our recognition. With the vision of certain works to be done, of certain outward changes to be wrought or resisted, it says our intellectual horizon terminates. No matter how we succeed in doing these outward duties… do them we somehow must; for the leaving of them undone is perdition.” (WB, 165)

Carlyle’s “objective philosophy”, or at least his rejection of sensitivity as a standard of conduct, is grafted upon the doctrine of the Streben which James received from Fichte through Emerson and Royce, and which James recodes in the terms of an energetic ethics. To strive for the ideal is much more important and better than to realize it, in particular when we deal with a partial realization only. James is not an inattentive observer of the society of his days though, and he is perfectly aware of the human suffering entailed in the heroic struggle for the improvement, or “salvation,” of the world, as well as that such suffering mostly is the sad lot of the weaker social classes280. James’s view, however, is equally far from both Tolstoy’s religious 280

In this sense, the thesis that James is insensitive to social problems and the issue of the “working class,” (see, for example, M. C. Otto, “On a Certain Blindness in William James”), misses the point. In fact, James clearly notes the difficult economical conditions of workers and the exploitation they suffer, and there is little doubt that he included these problems among the evils we need to fight. Yet, from James’s moral standpoint, improving economic conditions of the working class is fair and right, but is not enough to give them a meaningful and worthy life. Workers need not only higher wages but also culture; that is, workers need the possibility to work for their ideals and to see their work as a realization of their ideal world. In other words, according to James, workers need a fully human life.

188 humanitarianism and from the romantic velleitarism of the “beautiful souls” (TT, 288). Neither mere brutal, mechanistic work, intended to its own reproduction only, nor the contemplation of ideals, with no actual hold on reality, can provide a meaning for human existence and make life worth living. Work and suffering in themselves have nothing noble if they are not supported and informed by some ideal, just as ideals have nothing noble if they are not embodied in work, and if they are not accompanied by virtues such as patience, courage, kindness, and tolerance. The work and the ideal form a irreducible couple. Thus, Chautauqua must be rejected because, in its apparent realization of the ideal, it is actually only a “moral holiday,” namely, a “dead end” within a world crying out for human help and sacrifice in the long project of improvement. Struggle is human “essence”, not the Darwinian “struggle for life”, but struggle for a fully human world and for a life worth living. To such an end, human energies must be directed; for the sake of this “cultural” world, human beings must deploy their warrior virtues and inclinations. 1.2. Energetic Discipline In fact, all the virtues originate and find their meaning in that primary virtue of necessity which is the energetic economy: the basic virtue for a being which by nature has an innate predisposition to the dispersion of energy. The question of how to manage energy runs through some of James’s major late works: The Gospel of Relaxation (1899), The Varieties of Religious Experience, The Energies of Men (1907), and The Moral Equivalent of War. A reading of these texts in chronological order shows, however, the inner problems of the energetic issue which – despite James’s intentions of making of it the ethical, educational, and political question of the century – by overlooking the social mediation of the energetic question, fails to reach the actual political dimension. In fact, social and political development of the issue of energy are replaced by the religious perspective (taking religion in the widest account of the term), which leaves the question of energy at the stage of the immediate relation between the particular and the universal, or, what comes down to the same

189 thing, all within the anthropological dimension from within which all the energetic question started. The educational aspect of the ethics of energy, that is, the social problem of teaching people to manage their own energies is the gist of The Gospel of Relaxation281, which originates from the combination of two psychological issues: first, James’s theory of emotions and, second, the analysis of the difference between explosive and cold-blooded temperaments that James includes in the chapter on “Will” of the Principles, in which James at first observes that “It is quite impossible to judge, as between an obstructed and an explosive individual, which has the greatest sum of vital energy” (PP II, 538). Finally, however, James expresses his positive appreciation for the “men of impulses”. “Many of the most successful military and revolutionary characters in history have belonged to this simple but quick-witted impulsive type. Problems come much harder to reflective and inhibitive minds. They can, it is true, solve much vaster problems; and they can avoid many a mistake to which the men of impulse are exposed. But when the latter do not make mistakes, or when they are always able to retrieve them, theirs is one of the most engaging and indispensable of human types.” (PP II, 538-539)

From James’s mature energetic perspective, however, things can appear quite differently, which gives the essay Gospel of Relaxation its hortatory sting, as James contrasts the British custom of managing emotions through the control and exercise of the body with America’s disciplinary laissez faire, the contracting, on a national scale, of an anti-ergonomic attitude embedded in the cultural rewards given to the exaggerated, the stressed, and the nervous282. While James has celebrated spontaneity himself in his

281

It is one of the lectures collected in TT. See TT, pp. 123-124. “The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals… in substance… the appearance of unusual energy in America is superficial and illusory, being really due to nothing but the habits of jerkiness and bad coordination for which we have to thank the defective training of our people. […] Well, my friends, if our dear American character is weakened by all this over-tension… where does the remedy lie? It lies, of course, where lay the origins of the disease. If a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing, the fashion and taste must be changed […]. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that,

282

190 writings, here he condemns the indiscriminate profusion of energy and “nervous overtension” as, so to speak, opportunity costs, which obstruct the ideational flow and its transformation into movement. In other words, the mercurial, overexcited temperament appears more energetic exactly because it puts out and wastes a greater amount of energy; such an expenditure of energy, however, does not mean a greater effectiveness in action nor a greater amount or a better quality of achievements. On the contrary, such an exceeding amount of energy is rather a hindrance to a well organized and precise action. Agitation is not the same as positive activity, and thrill and excitation do not mean more intense and powerful mental activity (TT, 127). James traces these effects in the characteristic facial expressiveness, the bodily posture, and the very voice of his American compatriots, making a sort of physiological chart of the national character. Effectiveness and precision in action are the fair outcome of self-control and emotional calm. It is an important educational aim, then, that people, and children in particular, learn how to master their bodies and emotions, namely, how to manage their physical and psychical energies, because such self-mastery will make them more effective individuals and consequently will make more effective and productive the nation of which they both are the citizens and the energetic resources. James, thus, comes back to the fundamental question of habits and their formation. Humans have “reproductive power stored up in form of habits,” as James had already stated in the Lowell Lectures (ML, 39). Habits, in turn, are condensed energy, provided we have created ergonomically advantageous habits. The creation of such habits, then, should be the major concern of society, the subject of ethics, and the task of education. Once again, James’s ethics is hortatory; he tries to stimulate and produce in his audience the awareness of the relevance of creating such energetic habits. The construction of good habits is not the task of educational institutions only, but everybody’s commitment. Indeed, since habits are created by imitation, everyone is committed to providing others with a model of ergonomic behavior283. on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.” 283 See TT, p. 123. “The latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the imitative

191 “So we go back to the psychology of imitation again. There is only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example which others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads from east to west.” (TT, 126)

It is however to VRE we need to turn as to the key text in which James sets forth the main outline of the ethics of energy, starting from conclusion of the essay on the moral philosopher and the moral life. In fact, on one hand James maintains the opposition between the strenuous and the genial mood as the very core of ethical life: “Earnstness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one’s self – it makes little difference, for when the strenuous mood is on one the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what.” (VRE, 264)

Through VRE’s pages the ethic of energy turns out more and more to be an ethics of heroism in which hardship, courage and creativity go hand in the hand with the increase of spirituality, namely, energy. “The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals that are creative and ideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either on the amount of steam pressure chronically driving the character in the ideal direction, or on the amount of ideal excitement transiently acquired.” (VRE, 266)

James reckons among the benefits of religion the increasing of such spiritual energy which allows us to attain an higher level of moral performance; this is not the point here, however, and we need to return to the relevance and function of religion later on. Rather, it is important to stress, here, how James’s account of the stern mood neatly outlines a series of oppositions between activity, energy, action, maximization of energizing, and efficacy on the one hand, and passivity, entropy, waste of energy, degeneration, and decay on the other. Such a view had already been anticipated in the Principles with the claim that moral action always entails a major expenditure of “moral energy,” for it is always the follow-up of a decision with effort “on the line of greater resistance”284 (PP II, 548). Thus the dyad energy-entropy, activitypassivity, acquires in James a full moral value: roughly speaking, energy/activity is structurally “good,” entropy/passivity is structurally impulse. First Bagehot then Tarde, then Royce and Baldwin here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social.” 284 See also PP I, pp. 287-288; PP II, pp. 536, 562-563; 578-579

192 “evil,” or, to put it another way, from the ethical standpoint the acts that display an increase or a surplus of energy are “good,” whereas those that show a low or decreasing level of energy are “bad” (VRE, 241). In this perspective the mechanization entailed in habits is ethically ambiguous: it is “good” insofar as it saves and stores energies for further and more momentous achievements; it is “bad” when it is mere disempowered acquiescence into repetition285. The heroic character of such an ethics of energy finds its counterbalance in asceticism as its condition and overall mood. Refraining from egotistic asceticism aiming at self-perfection, James looks at asceticism as a practice stemming out of the same root of heroism, and which is able to keep the heroic attitude alive in two possible way, that is, by generating and managing inner energies, through a detached and sensible attitude towards worldly goods, or asceticism as poverty (VRE, 365), and by keeping alive the heroic standards of life through the endurance of sort of military life, or asceticism as warlike attitude (VRE, 366-367). “Yet the fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that is universally available. But when we gravely ask ourselves whether this wholesale organization of irrationality and crime be our only bulwark against effeminacy, we stand aghast at the thought, and think more kindly of ascetic religion. One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which infested it, there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May not voluntarily accepted poverty be ‘the strenuous life’, without the need of crushing weaker peoples?” (VRE, 367)

We find here in VRE the embryos of James’s two last essays in the ethics of energy – The Energies of Men and The Moral Equivalent of War – put in their own contest, that is, the relation of energy to that particular form of heroic life that saintliness is and to religion as the general name which cover the heroic and ascetic endeavor against world’s evil and in behalf of the salvation of human kind286. 285

For a detailed analysis of the instances of moral ambiguity of James’s concept of habit see also R. Tursi “James on Habit,” Northern Illinois Univ., 1999. 286 Cf. D.S. Browning Pluralism and Personality, pp 147-148: “James’s heroism, as we have noted, has strongly ascetic overtones. This is true even though his entire theory of man gives a positive, in fact indispensable, place for human instincts, passins and subjective interests. […] The heroic and strenuous life, with its orientation toward

193 Yet, the account of saintliness as example of the strenuous mood at its highest level of spiritual energy, James draws out of the phenomenon of conversion and the model of the twice-born soul, turns out quite problematic to the extent the saint becomes sort of an energetic moral standard and a social one on top. In other words the question of saintliness presents the question of the social standard of the energetic behavior for the collective; would one even want the saint’s optimal energetic profile to be the template for society as a whole? And how would such a thing be possible? Actually, it is the question of the value, the moral and social value, of saintliness that works as the litmus test of the social dimension of the ethics of energy; whether it be possible to find the social mediation able to turn the stern mood from an individual attitude into a social moral standard, that is, into a collective value and imperative, a question that had been left unanswered in MP. It is in a short but intense confrontation with Nietzsche on the question of the value of saintliness that the issue of the ethical mediation of energy and of the assumption of energy as a value show what is at stake in the attempt to transform energy into a moral paradigm. 1.3. The Value of Saintliness and The Philosophy of Force: James vs Nietzsche At the end of the lecture on “The Value of Saintliness” in VRE, James explicitly refers to Nietzsche as “the most inimical critic of the saintly impulses.” In these few pages, James opens a confrontation on the issue of the nature of saintliness with the author of the Genealogy of Morals, which is almost unavoidable – after all, Nietzsche is not only a critic of saintliness but is also the most representative philosopher of energy of the turn of the century287. In fact, what is at stake in James’s short analysis is less a more distant ends and its care for both present and future generations, requires some capacity toinhibit that mass of impulses concerned with short-terms goals. […] The inhibition which James has in mind is the inhibition of inattention. The positive energizing which he envisions comes from the application of our attention to these long-range goals.” 287 Starting from the years 1880-82, as a consequence of his reading of authors such as F. A. Lange (Das Geschichte des Materialismus), Boscovich, Fechner, Helmholtz, Caspari, Mayer and Spir, Nietzsche elaborates a complex physico-biological energetic

194 different account of the nature of saintliness, than a different view of energy itself. Such different perspectives emerge as a confrontation between James’s view of energy as opening toward an “unseen world” and Nietzsche’s account of energy as an attitude of “faithfulness to the Earth.”288 “Poor Nietzsche’s antipathy is itself sickly enough, but we all know what he means, and he expresses well the clash between the two Ideals. The carnivorous-minded ‘strong man,’ the adult male and cannibal, can see nothing but mouldiness and morbidness in the saint’s gentleness and self-severity, and regards him with pure loathing. The whole feud revolves essentially upon two pivots: Shall the seen world or the unseen world be our chief sphere of adaptation? and must our means of adaptation in this seen world be aggressiveness or non-resistance?” (VRE, 373)

In other words, Nietzsche’s view of energy appears as an alternative, that is, as the other possible of development of energetic view. For James, Nietzsche’s contemptuous interpretation of the saint – the degenerate par excellence, the “man of insufficient vitality” – is the consequence of a common prejudice that assumes that “there can be only one intrinsically ideal type of human character: the best man absolutely and apart from the utility of his function, apart from economical considerations.” Nietzsche’s “philosophy of force” is the outcome of a monistic view of energy as existing in terms of an absolute scale against which all beings are measured, and according to which the saint is degenerate because the saint has not the straightforward aggressiveness of the “strong man.” This conception that accounts for the formation of organisms as expression of the “force” of their parts. In such a view, which is the fine structure of the more celebrated theory of the “will to power,” control of power constitutes the biological origin of spiritual and moral life. Nietzsche’s works and the posthumous fragments of Nietzsche’s Nachlass, from 1884 until 1889, show Nietzsche engaged in a continuous speculation on the themes of energy, power, force, and body and their reciprocal relations and organization as the source of human culture. The vast material and its dispersion makes any specific quote or textual reference insufficient and futile. For a first approach to Nietzsche’s energetism see A. Mittasch, F. Nietzsche als Naturphilosoph, Stuttgart 1952; Ch. Andler, Nietzsche, sa vie et sa pensée, Paris 1958; K. Schlechta-A. Anders, F. Nietzsche. Von den verborgenen Anfaengen seines Philosophierens, Stuttgart 1962; W. Mueller-Lauter “Der Organismus als innerer Kampf. Der einfluss von Wilhelm Roux auf Friedrich Nietzsche,” Nietzsche-Studien, VII, 1978; G. Campioni Sulla strada di Nietzsche, ch. V. (“Scienza e filosofia della forza”). Pisa, ETS 1993. 288 On this topic see also S. Franzese “James vs Nietzsche: Energy and Asceticism in James,” Streams of William James, vol 5, Issue 2, Summer 2003.

195 sounds like a hasty conclusion to James; for the problem with the saint is not his sheer amount of energy but rather its social allocation. According to James, the origin of sainthood is in a special sensitivity to certain kinds of emotions, which trigger an immense expulsive power that allows for actions and behaviors that are beyond the emotional budget of most human beings. “The saintly character” James says, “is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual center of energy” (VRE, 271). In other words, a saint is an individual in whom spiritual interests take over most of the others interests of life. Such a condition can lead to heroic forms of abnegation and higher moral life as well as to forms of pathetic extravagance and lunacy. Even ascetic life, the traditional mark of the saint, is not so much evidence of “weakness of instincts” (which is what James pretty fairly takes Nietzsche’s position to be) as it is a product of faith and desire for purity. Admittedly, it can also be the consequence of idiosyncratic or pathological states of mind289. Moreover, the ascetic life can be explained through the energetic model: there are individuals that, like certain machines, need to be under high pressure to run best – “some need the sense of tension, of strong volition to make them feel alive and well” (VRE, 299). James continues: “Now when characters of this latter sort become religious, they are apt to turn the edge of their need of effort and negativity against their natural self; and the ascetic life gets evolved as a consequence.” (VRE, 299)

So, even if we grant Nietzsche’s point, the problem with the saint is not in his/her lack of energy, but rather in the their social adaptation. In fact, the consequence of such an extreme temperament is a passionate attitude that, in an imperfectly balanced or uncharitable individual, can create fanaticism with all its unhappy consequences of intolerance and violence (VRE, 340-341). The one-sidedness, fanaticism, egotism, and extravagance which characterize the lives of many saints, then, are unacceptable to modern moral sentiments, which demand that religion be associated with social righteousness and attention to the world’s welfare. In fact, James argues, referring to Spencer, a straightforward outburst of force is not the only possible expedient behavior in human life, and the value of the saint should rather be considered as a function of his adaptation to the society he 289

James lists the characteristics of asceticism in VRE, pp. 296-297.

196 lives in going forward – that is, as a project that is continually changing. Accordingly, since higher moral life is an expression of the potential social self (PP I, 315-316), and ideals owe most of their dynamic power to their social nature, the value of an ideal as much as of a certain moral attitude is always a double function, in which it must, to an extent, fit its social environment, while at the same time, if it is successful, tending to change that social environment itself, for, as James says, the “potentialities of development in human souls is unfathomable.” Thus, James displaces Nietzsche’s use of a natural hierarchy of energy states for a standard by which many people of many different types are adopting to and changing environments all the time: “From the biological point of view, St, Paul was a failure, because he was beheaded. Yet he was magnificently adapted to the larger environment of history...” (VRE, 367). Indeed, abstractly speaking, the saint would be the higher type of human being because he is well adapted to a higher type of society in which the Nietzschean “strong man” would be harmful and dangerous290. Yet, such a judgment, as James points out, is merely speculative, since the peaceful society in which the saint would be the perfect specimen of the human race is far from being the actual world with which we have to deal. In the world we know, “we find that the individual saint may be well or ill adapted, according to particular circumstances.” Following this notion of an ideal fit between a particular conduct and the world, James postulates a general schema of “perfect conduct” involving “the relation of three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recipient of the action” (VRE, 355). Saint’s actions, then, are to be evaluated case by case on the basis of such a moral standard, according to which “we find that the individual saint may be well or ill adapted, according to particular circumstances” (VRE, 375), and that whereas some saints are a full success according to the world’s standard and they are a major force in enhancement of social welfare (VRE, 376377), others are a failure and an easy prey for worldly “predators” and humorous writers. There is, in short, no absolute moral excellence in sainthood, and spirituality is not a guarantee of righteousness.

290

See VRE, p. 375.

197 In this sense, James’s analysis of the type of the saint is not less critical than Nietzsche’s view of the “all too human,” if not morbid, nature of the saint. James’s account of saintliness oscillates between the view of the saint as hero and the saint as a monstrous aberration of the common human pattern. Nietzsche’s analysis of saintliness, in turn, is not completely wrong. Rather, for James, Nietzsche’s characterization of sainthood as weakness and degeneration is biased, and Nietzsche grasped just one of the possible perspectives on the phenomenon of sainthood. James’s view instead is that all excesses tend to be vicious and, according to the layman’s ethical perspective, a healthier energetic equilibrium is more advantageous and ethically correct for our ordinary life. The well-balanced distribution of one’s own interests, leading to a proportionate development of the self, is more advantageous for most lives than a life full of idiosyncratic bursts of overflowing energy. James’s version of energism is not held in thrall by the amount of energy expended, which cannot be a suitable ethical standard. This is rooted in the very nature of the human mental life, which, as we saw in outlining James’s anthropological image of Man, is distinguished from the other animals by its power of selective attention. Instead the context and the fashion in which such energy is expended, which depend upon the dynamic of ideals that constitute the very meaning of human moral life, need to be considered. As James sees it, then, the difference between Nietzsche and himself hinges upon their differences over the metaphysics of energy. James does not object to Nietzsche’s rejection of any attempt to correlate morality and utility, the “English morality” as Nietzsche called it, but rather to the way Nietzsche’s “genealogical” inquiry, as presented in The Genealogy of Morals, presupposes a monistic account of energy, which maintains a quantitative notion of “energy” or “will to power” as the ontological foundation of moral value. James’s criticism, then, is not a defense of sainthood in itself, but rather another example of James’s rejection of any metaphysical monism: the ethics of energy cannot turn into a metaphysics of energy and even less into a philosophy of force. It is, however, true that the appeal to “English morality”, namely, the three-term moral standard, shows the tension between the stern mood and the social dimension of morality, that is, between the heroic and energetic attitude, on one hand, and the rational calculability of the social morality,

198 on the other. As far as for Nietzsche such opposition is solved in favor of the former, for James it marks the moral boundaries of the ethics of energy, that is, its inability to develop into a social moral standard unless by turning, through it mythopoeic imaginery, into a monistic metaphysics of energy. The question becomes even more evident, when James leaves the level of the theoretical analysis of “energy” as metaphor and puts his ethical account of energy in much less metaphorical, and much more crudely substantialized terms, following the romantic and heroic popular notions of his day, according to which a very energetic man is “a man who pursues his course undaunted by opposition.” What James understands by energy here is the power that a person possesses to overcome obstacles – the man, in Roosevelt’s famous phrase, “in the arena” “his face marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and falls short again and again”, yet who strives, unlike those “cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat”291. Roosevelt’s words, here, could easily be transposed to James: energy is efficacy of action within a view of life as permanent struggle and fighting. In some way the Nietzschean “blonde beast” is still haunting James’s energism, and Nietzsche’s philosophy of force, with its opposition between the “strong” and the “weak” appears as a disquieting limit case of James’s energetic perspective. In order to avoid such a direction, energy simply taken by itself cannot be considered as a source of moral value, and the moral value of human activity cannot be reduced to the quantitative evaluation of expenditure of energy292. Accordingly, independently from its quantity, energy needs to receive its moral qualification from the kind of actions in which it is deployed to the extent that they are subservient to human ideals. In other words energy is subject to human ideals and culture – which still provide the normative frame of action – as the necessary condition of their accomplishment293.

291

John A. Gable (Ed.) The Man in the Arena: the selected writings of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 5. 292 See Letter WJ to H. Adams, June 17, 1910. 293 In this sense “energy” cannot even work as a naturalistic principle as in G. Simmel’s view of energetic evolutionism, which entails a naturalistic account of social

199 Although such an outcome does not necessarily prove a failure of James’s ethics of energy, nonetheless it leads to a radical redefinition of the original project. The ethics of energy can become a practical doctrine if and only if energy can be extolled to a metaphysical or naturalistic absolute principle able to work as a source of value and a ground for obligation. In other words an ethics of energy cannot become a moral theory but by running into the moralist’s fallacy which James detected beneath all moral theories. In particular in the case of “energy” it could not obtain as moral principle but through the process of mythopoeic and mythological mediation which turns the anthropological need for effective and powerful action into a metaphysics of force and an ideology of efficacy294. Thus, James pluralism hedges the extent to which an ethics of energy can be taken seriously: the ethics of energy needs to step back and settle at the individual and instrumental stage. Indeed, no real moral achievement is possible unless individuals and society learn how to organize and manage their own energy, that is, unless they learn how to give form to their life and how to preserve their action from decay and passivity. Thus, even though the ethics of energy does not set moral aims and values, it is, however, the way in which one becomes the master and author of one’s own energy. To this extent, such an ethics is itself a value and it is good. It is “good” in the meaning James inherited from the classics, in particular Aristotle and Spinoza: good as a way of empowerment of the individual. In this sense, we said, James equates the ethics of energy with asceticism in its primitive sense, namely, as a preparation or training (askéo, áskesis), rather than as an absolute value and a moral ideal295. Asceticism, however, is not to be taken as a denial of the world in itself, that is, as an expression of the absolute negative value assigned to the evolution, Cf. G. Simmel Ueber sociale Differenzierung. Sociologische und psychologische Untersuchungen, Leipzig 1890, ch. VI. 294 The risk of falling into a ideology of mere efficacy, as it is well known, threatens also James’s pragmatism as epistemological theory. 295 In this sense the ethics of energy follows a physiological cycle of accumulation and dissipation which is not the expression of a inner incremental logic but rather follows the guideline of a satisfying interaction with the world. In other words the ethics of energy is not a metaphor for the logic of capital accumulation, and James’s asceticism is not synonymous with Weber’s capitalist’s asceticism. From the Weberian perspective, James’s view is thus anterior to the threshold of modernity.

200 world and as an attempt at the transcendence of it. Against such pessimistic and anti-vital asceticism belonging to Buddhism and to Schopenhauer James and Nietzsche eventually line up together. To Nietzsche, then, James tacitly concedes at least some of his argument about the perversion of saints’ ascetic life, insofar as a practice has supplanted its purpose in the moral life296. This is what is wrong with the “ascetic ideal”. In fact, as an ideal, ascetic discipline has been perverted into a view of the world and a criterion for morals. In the final instance, the two thinkers meet in the recognition of the instrumental value of asceticism as a source of spiritual energy and as an instrument of self-formation297. Thus, asceticism gives us a set of practices useful to face the hardest of battles in conquering oneself, that is, in exercising that control of one’s own indeterminate and manifold nature, which is the very meaning of spirituality. The individual energizes him or herself optimally, arriving at the stage of becoming one’s own master. Such an ascetic activity is the fundamental condition of creative power in arts as well as in all other human deeds. Thus Nietzsche wrote: “As we have seen, a certain asceticism, a severe and serene abstemiousness of the best intentions will be numbered among the conditions which are conductive to the highest spirituality, as well as to its most natural consequences: so it will from now on come as no surprise to learn that philosophers have always been favorably biased in their treatment of the ascetic ideal.”298

And James, in turn, remarks “[t]hese saintly methods are… creative energies (VRE, 358) […] [r]epresentatively, then, and symbolically…

296

As for Nietzsche’s negative account of asceticism as degeneration, denial of life, expression of a declining vitality and self-castration, see F. Nietzsche MA, III, §§ 139, 142 JGB III, §§ 46, 47, 55; GD, VIII, §§ 1-5; AC, §§ 3, 5, 6, 7, 16, 21, 39, 43, 51. 297 As for Nietzsche’s view of asceticism and ethics as formation of individuality and empowerment see. F. Nietzsche, MA III, §§ 137, 141, 142, IV §§ 230, 242; JGB III §§ 61, 76; M II § 109; GD VIII, §41; PF 1887-88 §§ 9.145, 9.151, 9.153, 9.174. Cfr. V. Gerhardt, Die Moral des Immoralismus, in G. Abel, J. Salaquarda (Hrsgg.), Die Krise der Metaphysik. Festschrift fiir W Miiller-Lauter. Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1989, pp. 417-47; Id., Friedrich Nietzsche. München: Beck, 1993; Id., Selbstbegründung. Nietzsches Moral der Individualität, in "Nietzsche-Studien" 21, 1992, pp. 28-49; Id., Das individuelle Gesetz. Uber eine sokratisch-platonische Bedingung der Ethik, "Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Philosophie“, 22, 1997, pp. 3-21; B. Giovanola, Nietzsche e l’Aurora della Misura. Roma: Carrocci, 2002; ch. 8. 298 Friedrich Nietzsche The Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic. Douglas Smith, Translator. (Oxford: Oxford U P, 1996), p. 91.

201 asceticism must be acknowledged to go with the profounder way of handling the gift of existence” (VRE, 364)299. 1.4. Two faces of asceticism: Culture vs Nature. It is exactly the issue of handling the gift of existence to which James returns in The Energies of Men, and especially the vexing problem that, because of physiological or social reasons, humans energize generally below the limit of their possibilities300. Here, the energetic account of the “self” as “centre of energy” developed in VRE is called upon. Energizing below one’s own limit means being inferior to one’s own optimal standard, to wit, in moral terms, to one’s own best potential self. The exceptional individuals, the geniuses, the great men, are those individuals who have the ability to maximize their energies and push them to the extreme301. Yet, as James stresses, the terms “energy” and “maximum” have not only a quantitative but also a qualitative meaning. Human energies are not only physical (e.g. muscular strength) but also psychological and spiritual, and the maximization of energy that leads to a higher level of life (power) involves spiritual and intellectual activity, which is higher than physical activity alone, “even though,” James argues, “the total heat given out or the 299

The topic of human empowerment and of the acquisiton of power through ascetic practices in view of a new creation of the world is developed to its extreme consequences by the Italian pragmatist Giovanni Papini, who was both a James’s and a Nietzsche ‘s reader. In this context Papini claims thet becoming God is the paramount human aim, and stresses the role of pragmatism as a method of knowledge and as a means to gain power over things and the world. See G. Papini “Dall’uomo a Dio” (1906) in G. Papini Filosofia e Letteratura, pp. 377-399. Although a detailed comparison of James’s and Papini’s views on the question of power is out of question in this context, it is however the case that Papini’s view really shows the tension, as well as the attraction, between James’s ethics of energy and Nietzsche’s philosophy of force and brings out the hidden peculiar potentiality of James’s pragmatism. 300 Cf. EM, p. 11: “The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in coordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject – but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us it is only an inveterate habit – the habit of inferiority to our full self – that is bad.” 301 See PP I, p. 423.

202 foot-pounds expended by organism may be less” (EM, 12). Human energy in general – James points out – must be taken as the “sum-total of activities, some outer and some inner, some muscular, some emotional, some moral, some spiritual.” (EM, 13) The upshot of James’s hortatory essays in ethics is to suggest that, on the one hand, a more balanced “normal” lifestyle, which is more disciplined and regular, is better than to one that dissipates its energy unwisely, because, on the other hand, this allows the best self to emerge upon the right occasion. Discipline is the background against which creative spontaneity flourishes best. This casual energy talk draws us back to the unavoidable ambiguity of the energetic crossroads of matter/body and spirit; the quantity of energy that defines individual existence is a blend of physical and spiritual energies interacting and supporting each other; the quality of energy, however, depends on the spiritual dimension out of which the action originates. If we translate this from the energetic language, it means that individual existence is an indissoluble compound of body and spirit, with the latter supplying the meaning and sense of human existence. Thus, the spiritual dimension has the power to raise an individual’s power much above his or her habitual standard to a higher and energetic level. In turn, the exertion of the effort increases the level of spiritual activity. Indeed, the secret of the qualitative superiority of certain individuals or actions over others is found in that ready access to the higher level of “spiritual” activity, which constitutes exactly the amount of effort that the agent expresses in such activities. There are special cases, however, in which an individual can overcome the usual threshold of fatigue and weariness and attain a new and extraordinary level of energy, much higher than his standard level of energizing. “We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigueobstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth ‘wind’ may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatiguedistress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.” (EM, 7-8)

The phenomenon of “second-wind” puts in focus a crucial question in energy management. A key-point in the ethics of energy is the control of

203 the dynamogenic factors that work like “switches” and that have the power to “unlock what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of individual power.” James singles out three dynamogenic factors: 1) emotions302; 2) will; and 3) ideas and beliefs. The control of these three factors, however, appears quite problematic. “Emotions and excitements due to usual situations are the usual inciters of the will,” but such a stimulus is not reliable since emotions “act discontinuously; and in the intervals the shallower levels of life tend to close in and shut us off” (EM, 26). Thus, apparently will and ideas only can be relied upon. Will, in turn, is supposed to be the normal opener of deeper level of energy, but “the difficulty is to use it.” In fact, the appeal to will, or more correctly, as James states, to “moral volition,” is complicated by the vagueness of the solution to the question of “effort.” The effort of the will, namely, effort of attention, cannot be acted “at will,” as we have already seen in our third chapter. Thus, the appeal to will amounts to this: if one has the energy to make an effort of volition, one finds a new and deeper level of energy opening up within. But this begs the question, as it is also true that if one has enough energy to make such an effort, chances are that one has already attained a deeper level of energy, so there is no need for effort. Logically, the effort to will the effort to will more must, itself, have arisen from the will. In fact, the effort and the attainment of the new energy seem to be consubstantial – unless, as James suggests, they are exactly the same thing, or another name for the fact that one has accomplished some apparently uncanny deed. James is aware of the slippery ground on which he is walking, and this is made evident by his reference to the “god Chance” making an effort through us (EM 26); thus, he stops at last at the level of phenomenological account, presenting the notion that, in common experience, a moral volition seems to produce a dynamogenic effect lasting in time, a presentation made without dwelling over the technical details of such an ambiguous mechanism. 302

“The excitements that carry us over the usually effective dam are most often the classic emotional ones, love, anger, crowd-contagion, or despair. Life’s vicissitudes bring them in abundance.”

204 “The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will. The difficulty is to use it; to make the effort which the word volition implies. But if we do make it (or if a god, though he were only the god Chance, makes it through us), it will act dynamogenically on us for a month. It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition, such as saying ‘no’ to some habitual temptation, or performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power.” (EM, 25-26)

As dynamogenic agencies, emotion and will can only operate predictably through their stabilization in the form of habits. James replays here the topic of asceticism as empowering self-discipline, he canvassed in the Principles (PP I, 126-127) and in turn in the TT and in VRE. Asceticism is an exercise of the “will” for the storage and management of energy. The secret of will and energy, then, is in the set of routines that go into discipline, which creates a capability, in our structure of habits, to act successfully. Discipline, to wit, ascetic discipline, as both the Western and Eastern religious tradition show, is the condition of management of energy in view of the achievement of one’s own purposes insofar as asceticism through spiritual exercises (e.g., yoga), increase strength of character, personal power, ability to bear the difficulty of life, and the unshakeability and serenity of the soul303. “Accordingly the best practical knowers of the human soul have invented the thing known as methodical ascetic discipline to keep the deeper levels constantly in reach. Beginning with easy tasks, passing to harder ones, and exercising day by day, it is, I believe, admitted that disciples of asceticism can reach very high levels of freedom and power of will.” (EM, 26-27)

In this vein, James seems to turn again to the saint as the model for the individual who embodies the most energy within a moral project, and in whom discipline and the values of humanity are expressed and sought for at the highest level. Saintliness, however, is not the only chance to earn an energetic attitude. An important alternative to religious ascetic discipline is found in the practice of military discipline. In The Moral Equivalent of War 303

See EM, p. 27. “Ignatius Loyola’s spiritual exercises must have produced this result in innumerable devotees. But the most venerable ascetic system, and the one whose results have the most voluminous experimental corroboration is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan.[sic!] From time immemorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, or whatever code of practise it might be, Hindu aspirants to perfection have trained themselves, month in and out, for years. The result claimed, and certainly in many cases accorded by impartial judges, is strength of character, personal power, unshakeability of soul..”

205 (1910)304, James takes sides in the debate between militarists and pacifists with a “modest proposal” that could put the argument at rest to the satisfaction of both parts, and, more importantly, to the advantage of human-kind. The essay not only shows that the late James still held to the ideal of energetic discipline, but also, more importantly, because it shows the ethics of energy strictly dependent upon the achievement of human paramount ideals, and the stern mood morally qualified by the role it plays in the most fundamental moral opposition, that between nature and culture, which is also the ultimate human task. The accomplishment of such a task relies upon the energetic character of individuals, and such a character needs to be formed through an adequate training able to create the energetically useful habits individuals can recur to in their struggle on behalf of human salvation. Accordingly militarists make a good point when arguing that military life is important because its discipline helps in strengthening men’s characters305 and in creating and preserving martial virtues like endurance, courage, modesty, abnegation, obedience, and a spirit of sacrifice, without which men would become a herd of effeminate, morbid, spoiled, egoist individuals. “Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic. Its ‘horrors’ are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-education and zoophiles, of ‘consumer’s leagues’ and ‘associated charities,’ of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet! So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military character in stock – if keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection.…” (MS, 276).

304

The essay was written for the Association for International Reconciliation and published as a booklet (n. 27), then republished in McClure’s Magazine, Aug. 1910 and in The Popular Science Monthly, Oct. 1910. 305 In this case, considering the topic and the cultural and historical context, the term “man” is preserved as seemingly more adequate than the more generic “human being”.

206 James is of course sensitive to such an argument, since he is the first to hold that the virtues militarists want to preserve and enhance are the pillars of moral life and that military discipline is a very effective model of education and creation of habits306. Yet it is necessary to find a way to preserve the discipline and the martial virtues through orientation to a different and non-destructive end, namely, a “moral equivalent of war.”307 “So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail.”

The expression, moral equivalent of war, a parallel of Joule’s “mechanical equivalent of heat,” points us to an alternative kind of war. Since war is necessary, because only war can create the suitable conditions for the enhancement of heroic virtues, it is necessary to think of a moral reconversion of war, substituting a struggle of humans against nature, on behalf of equality, justice, and the common welfare, for the usual cruelty and violence of humans against other humans. “We must make new energies and hardihood continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built – unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths, fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood.”

The moral equivalent of war, then, would have its own conscripts, serving in a civil army. This would aim at the construction of a human world, rather than at its destruction, while at the same time, by its discipline, passing on those martial virtues that are so necessary to channel and optimize human energies308.

306

“The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gain by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods.” See also PP I, pp. 120-121. See also above Chap. III, § 4.1. 307 James had already presented the idea of a “moral equivalent of war” in VRE, pp. 366-367. 308 James’s idea of a civil army seems to be a moderate revival of E. Bellamy’s project of creation of an “industrial army.” See E. Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1886. See also E. Bellamy, “How I wrote Looking Backward,” Ladies’ Home Journal, II (April, 1894), 1-3. James’s knowledge of Bellamy and his utopian view is

207 “If now – and this is my idea – there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would follow. The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fiber of the people; no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life.…”

1.5. The Power of Ideals: Toward a Cosmic perspective James’s last essay finally points to the human infinite struggle against nature, which is “evil” to the extent it is limitation rather than condition of accomplishment of human ideals. Such a never-ending task is the ultimate human end, in view of which a general conscription of humanity is justified and on behalf of which human energies receive their moral qualification. The relief of human kind from misery is the test of the only efficacy and worth of human action we are interested in. The energetic ethics indeed originates from the anthropological axiom of the primacy of action, but it acquires its ethical and moral form from its destiny as the drive to transform the natural into cultural world, a project which constitutes the very peculiarity of the human condition. Insofar as human beings exist in the tension between nature and culture, the evaluation of their action must involve a parameter of “human” efficacy, that is, of constructive and creative power. Thus, “good” must be antientropic action, that shows a major organized and constructive power; that is, an action is good if we see that it possess a high level of energy and is intended as an affirmation of human ideals in the construction of a human world. Conversely, “evil” is the loss of power – passive acquiescence in the status quo – the fading away of human energy into the mechanism of nature. The “strenuous” choice marks the apex of the ethical life at the very moment its moral significance is properly understood. The strenuous mood is not just stubborn or sentimental exhibition of fanaticism or egotist selfaffirmation, but it rather shows the virtuous circle between ideals and energy which is the core of moral life. The higher the ideals the more energetic human action becomes. proved by James’s reference to Bellamy’s novel Dr. Heidenhain’s Process (see WB, p. 144).

208 Such dynamogenic power of human ideals, hinted at in MP, is illustrated in “The Energies of Men”, when analyzing the power of ideas and belief as the third, and possibly the only effective, kind of dynamogenic factors, religious ideas seem to take a special place, among the ideas that trigger the utmost energizing power. Here, however, James seems to even the balance between merely ethical and religious ideals; for if religious beliefs can energize human action beyond its usual limits, other ideas can too, with or without a transcendent support. Such ideas are usually synthesized in special words with great symbolic value, which work as a battle-cry able to summon up and direct individual’s power into a more effective action. “As certain objects naturally awaken love, anger, or cupidity, so certain ideas naturally awaken the energies of loyalty, courage, endurance, or devotion. […] They may transfigure it, unlocking innumerable powers which, but for the idea, would never have come into play. ‘Fatherland’, ‘the Flag’, ‘the Union’, ‘Holy Church’, ‘the Monroe Doctrine’, ‘Truth’, ‘Science’, ‘Liberty’, Garibaldi’s phrase ‘Rome or Death’, etc., are so many examples of energy-releasing ideas.” (EM, 31)

These ideal stimulants reconnect the analysis of the dynamogenic power of ideas to the doctrine of the “will to believe”309. At last, human beings act in view of ideals they believe in, and from such ideals they draw their power to act. Such a power, however, is embedded in symbolic words in virtue of their transindividual social origin; so it is through ideals that individuals relate to their social dimension, which in turn, in virtue of human egological structure, promotes and realizes their potential social self. A benefit of this energetic view, is that it ties together the individual and society in more objective terms that those encountered in James’s earlier psychology, which rested on the subjective structure of the ego only. However, these terms and ideas are but hints, lacking systematic development. James indeed never really explored the relation between individual and – society, holding fast to the late nineteenth century’s cult of substantial individualism, which is reflected in the frequent passages in 309

Cf. also “The Sentiment of Rationality”, WB, p. 146 “Any philosophy which makes such questions as What is the ideal type of humanity? What shall be reckoned virtues? What conduct is good? Depend on the question What is going to succeed? – must needs fall back on personal belief as one of the ultimate conditions of the truth. For again and again success depends on energy of act; energy again depends on faith that we shall not fail; and that faith in turn on the faith that we are right, – which faith thus verifies itself.”

209 James in which he points to society as a hindrance to the development of individual’s moral and intellectual energies, which excessive regard for or submission to social conventions, or feelings of decorum and respectability, or the desire for a smooth life, tend to lower (EM, 37)310. Although, actual society cannot in itself supply the super-individual source of energy for moral volition, James’s reference to a “social” origin of the dynamogenic power of ideals, points to a super-individual source of energy, which, for him, however, assumes more of a religious than of a social, i.e., political significance. Moral life appears, thus, as individual energetic action against society on behalf of humanity and it is up to the religion of humanity, symbolized in Pragmatism by the ongoing movement of the human serpent, to support and direct the effort of moral life in MP. Although to some extent energetic ethics may not ever establish itself as a social and political praxis, it is always of use as a cosmic perspective, in which the opposition between culture and nature can be reabsorbed into a religious view, and allowing us to glimpse the fact that very struggle is at once the expression and the aim of the divine. Religious faith becomes, thus, the condition for and the very attainment of the highest human energy: “Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capability for handling life’s evil, is set free in those who have religious faith” (WB, 161)

In the final section of MP, James stresses the intimate connection between the “strenuous mood” and religious faith, so much as to lead some of his interpreters to assume a real shift of mind on his part and read this final section as an attempt to turn his naturalistic, or humanistic, moral perspective into some sort of religious ethics311. Actually, James’s 310

In James subjectivity at the level of the “social self” includes the “other” as group or community, accordingly the ideal, which animates the potential social self, in its dynamogenic power includes the community or the “other” as source of energy. Such inclusion however is only implicitly assumed and energy appears in any case as an individual issue only. Although but a speculative hint, it could be interesting to suggest that a further development of the analysis of dynamogenic power of the relation between individual and society would have possibly lead James closer to Durkheim’s contemporary studies on the energetic effect of religious/social rituals (see E. Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, 1912). 311 Cfr. the already mentioned article by M.R. Slater, which brilliantly presents such an interpretative line. Consistent with this standpoint is Slater’s attempt to draw some

210 argument seems consistent with his notion that energetics, on the basis of a psychological, or even anthropological, observation, provides us with the only ethical evidence we have. Briefly, the extreme expenditure of energy required by the strenuous mood is unlikely to be supplied at its maximum or for a long span of time for humans’ sake only. In other words, not even the highest human ideal is able to trigger the most powerful and a long lasting commitment unless it is circumfused by a religious overtone, to wit, as James says, unless we assume the demands of an infinite claimant. The reason for that is clear: human beings, humanity, posterity, with all their ideals noble and enlightened as they can possibly be are “too finite, we see too well the vacuum beyond” (WB, 160). Anybody who is going to sacrifice, cripple, endanger his/her life, or just making a living hell of it, for the sake of an ideal, and has to endure it, wants that ideal to succeed and last forever. For the being who has the capacity to, as it were, fix its eyes into the infinite, nothing less than the infinite will be equal to the sacrifice of one’s own unique life. Humanity with its waxing and waning, with its historical ups and down, cannot promise what only God can, that is, the eternal preservation of the conquering ideal and the everlasting meaningfulness of the sacrifice. Infinity and hope, are the keys that unlock the reservoir of human energy. The argument recurs in Pragmatism where religious belief appears as strictly intertwined with meliorism (P, 137-144) and the meaning of God is identified with the preservation is an eternal moral order (P, 53-55). Is this the foundation of a religious ethics? Not in traditional terms, that is, as a first order moral system. Rather it is the inclusion of God in the anthropological dimension, as an answer to the most deep-seated human need, namely, the need for a meaningful life and eternity. In very much the same way, in “Reflex Action and Theism” James declared the superiority of theism as the most rational view when considered from the standpoint of foundational conclusion from what he considers James’s final religious position. In Slater’s analysis, the apparent failure of a naturalistic foundation to ground an ethics drives James to seek a supernaturalistic, namely, theistic, ground. Such an interpretative line, however, necessarily get entangled in even more severe contradictions to the extent it seeks for foundation and objectivity whereas it is exactly objectivity and foundation which James is ruling out altogether, whether of the naturalistic or supernaturalistic kind. In other words where there is no moral theory at stake there cannot even be a religious moral theory in view.

211 human practical needs, to wit, from the anthropological perspective of the priority of action. Theism encourages the idea that human action is ultimately purposeful, and thus is a standing encouragement to meaningful human action, whereas materialism, determinism and absolute Idealism crush this prospective hope, making of human action an ultimately pointless endeavor. To such an extent religious belief is morally desirable insofar as it prompts individuals to the most energetic action, so much that “if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in God, men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard.” (WB, 161) To be sure, the position of the moral philosopher, James’s ethical touchstone, would be transformed in a world with a divine thinker: no longer would that philosopher simply offer suggestions, as there would be, indeed, an absolute standard. This is just a hypothesis though312. As a matter of fact, even if such a divine thinker existed, as It plays the role of an ideal in James’s system, the content of Its mind remains sealed and concealed from human sight, and the philosophical ideal of moral systematic unification is fated to be thwarted once again. Consequently, even if God exists, God’s existence does not provide any objective foundation to moral theory313, but only an energizing hope, an empowering belief, intended to support human ideals by letting “loose in us the strenuous mood”. Thus it is not ethics which grows religious, but rather it 312

The structure of James’s argument makes pretty explicit its hypothetical character: “It would seem… If… If… Meanwhile…” (WB, pp. 161-162) 313 This foundational issue derives from James’s ambiguous statement: “When, however, we believe that a God is there, and that he is one of the claimant […] The more imperative ideals now begin to speak with an altogether new objectivity and significance…” (WB, p. 160). Beside the fact that such newly acquired objectivity would be a property of ideals and not of moral philosophy, it is evident that even granting God’s existence, it doesn’t follow that anybody knows which ideals are selected in God’s view. Thus, every and all the ideals would acquire objectivity at once, that is, everybody would claim his or her own ideal as coincident with God’s demands (which by the way is exactly what usually happens, human history being full of “Gott mit uns” enthusiasts); all of this alleged “objectivity” would turn out to be only “subjective objectivity”, returning us to our starting point of understanding moral life as a conflict of ideals, which is what James so fairly outlines. It is rather the case that such a “subjective objectivity” of ideals provided by the belief in a divine thinker is among the energizing factors which boost up human action. Then, as James holds, the existence of a divine thinker would not provide any theoretical objectivity but only an increase of energy.

212 is religion which becomes ethical, that is, which enters as a constitutive part of the ethics of energy as an essential part of that spiritual dimension which seems able to unlock hidden human energies and provide a steady increase of the general energetic level of individual’s life.

2. The Unseen Universe. A Religion of Energy The energizing power of religion is a recurring leitmotiv in James’s works, reaching its utmost development in the analysis of conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, where conversion, in which old habits are broken and peripheral interests suddenly conquer the “centre of an individual’s energy” to give his/her life an unprecedented level of energy and enthusiasm matching an unprecedented new interest. James’s approach to religious feeling as the highest point of human spirituality and as the necessary condition for the achievement of the ethical project, however, far from establishing a religious ethics, highlights instead the irresolvable ambiguity of James’s view of God. Such an ambiguity is evident in the letter of August 1882 to T. H. Davidson, in which James associates the rejection of traditional theology with a view of God as primus inter pares, that is, as a helpful power that is the source of the unlimited trust in the effectiveness of human struggle against pain and for the achievement of a moral order314. Yet, at the very moment we try to define James’s notion of God, the picture appears blurred. 2.1. The Emotional Nebula. God or the Divine In Reflex action and Theism315, God appears as the only possible rational object offered to contemplation – as James puts it: “Anything short of God is not rational; anything more than God is not possible...” Yet it is immediately evident that James is not referring to the traditional scholastic notion of God and all of its set of attributes316. In rather the same way, in Is 314

Letter W. J. to Thomas Davidson, Jan. 8, 1882,. Address delivered to Unitarian Ministers’ Institute at Princeton, Mass., 1881. First printed in the Unitarian Review in 1881, then republished in WB. 316 WB, p. 97. See also P, pp. 39, 62. 315

213 Life Worth of Living? James not only questions the validity of any possible natural theology, but emphasizes our need of freeing ourselves from such conception of God in order to gain a more satisfactory relationship with the universe (WB, 43). While God must be conceived as “the deepest power of universe” and as a “mental personality,” at the same time, God is by its nature an unknowable personality, external to human experience (WB, 98). We do not need to talk of a “deus absconditus” or of some sort of Spinozism in James. Rather, it is the case that God appears to be the necessary correlate of the special structure of human experience, built on the triad of the modified interactionism (stimulus-consciousness-reaction) that organizes the objects of knowledge in view of ends and with reference to the volitional nature of human beings (WB, 106). In fact, a Feuerbachean perspective making of God merely a projection of human best essence is here out of question317. Yet, as we have accumulated the tendencies and themes in James that, collectively, form his anthropological image, and have argued that this image stands at the center of James’s work, linking his disparate positions over the course of his work, it is no surprise that we would also claim that James provides an anthropological foundation for the theological dimension. It is not that the human mind is considered as innately constituted to know God, on the Cartesian model, but that God is the rational correlate of the human need for acting within the organized and sensible framework of the world. God functions in a way that no other purpose and hope, be it invested in matter or in atoms, in history or in nothingness, could do318. Davidson, as a rigorous agnostic, quite rightfully objected to such a view of God, for James was founding belief on the merely wished-for, instead of some demonstration, or even on a statement of God’s existence319. The fact that the belief in God makes much more sense of the world cannot mean that God exists or that world actually makes sense at all, but only that one would like it to be the case. Moreover, in just this case, James’s theory of belief appears deeply problematic. Indeed, if we accept God as an object of belief, such belief should beget, though in an 317

See P. K. Dooley, Pragmatism as Humanism, p. 93. See P, p. 55. 319 Cf. Letter T. Davidson to WJ, Jan. 26, 1882. 318

214 infinite perspective, the achievement of God, yet it is not clear at all how God could be at once exterior to humanity and a kind of goal achieved through human action. If God is a true “mental personality,” we need to suppose that God exists independently of human action; on the other hand, if God coincides with the achievement of the moral order of the world, as James sometimes seems to suggest, then it would be legitimate to argue that such a God is nothing but a metaphor. Yet, if this is the case, James’s talk about how God can be “the deepest power in the universe” seems to have to go overboard, unless we understand it to have the same status as James’s energy-talk: as a metaphor for the life that counts within that same universe. The ambiguity is not solved in any of James’s texts; rather, it seems that James deliberately swings between one meaning and the other, substituting an emotional nebula for a clear cut definition, or pointing to an infinite metaphysical horizon toward which the faith of the common man, the devotion of the saint, and the speculation of the theologian are supposed to converge. Of God – whether God exists or not, and what God’s nature be – nothing can actually be known or said. Any discourse on God, which is necessarily produced by human speakers with human concepts, can only be on God’s meaning and function as conceived by human beings, that is, it can never transcend a human, and usually expedient, account of God (VRE, 264-266). Echoing Kant, James states that the idea of God, has no theoretical meaning, but rather displays an invaluable practical value (VRE, 52). Properly speaking, human beings have no need for God qua God, but do need to believe in God; that is, they need a religion, or a religious feeling, that makes them feel at home in the world and stimulates their moral energies. Whatever God might possibly be in itself and whether God exists or not, the idea of God originates in the volitional nature of human beings in virtue of the specifically human “spiritual” power of thinking that transcends the immediately necessary. Such a power distinguishes human beings from all other animals and makes humans superior to them by unfathomably enlarging human power of action (WB, 104). Under this perspective, the subtitle of The Varieties of Religious Experience, “A study in Human Nature,” appears to be extremely significant. Here, on the one hand, James defends faith and religious

215 feeling from the coarse attacks of positivistic reductionism and agnosticism, and advocates for the rationality of believing beyond the narrow boundaries of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, James’s analysis of religious phenomena remains within the limits of psychology and physiology and shows an unshaken loyalty to the anthropological perspective320. The “divine” is nothing but the object of an inner and subjective experience that can never, not even for a moment, attain a transcendent, objective correlate. The “divine” is part of human spiritual experience, whereas God, if such a being exists, remains beyond such experience321. Whatever the feeling of the divine suggests to human beings, the relation of such a feeling to God is unknowable and ineffable. Yet, it is not the case for James that the experience of the divine is sheer illusion. Rather, it is absolutely concrete and effective, albeit only in virtue of the psychological postulate according to which the object of a consciousness is absolutely real for the consciousness that experiences it (VRE, 393). The religious feeling is a concrete phenomenon that comes along with a real perception of “something there,” and this feeling expresses the relation of a human being with the divine, that is, with the “original truth” that lies at the origin of the universe. The specific character of such religious experience is the solemnity the individual experiences when answering the appeal coming from a “primeval reality that apparently has in itself the very meaning of the universe.”322 Insofar as it is a real feeling, religiosity itself, not institutional religion, expresses “the reaction of man to life,” that is, expresses the human cosmic attitude of acceptance or rejection of the universe as a totality. In so doing, religiosity adds something to the sphere of the existence of the subject and appears like an “organ” necessary for human life and performing a vital function on the biological level (VRE, 49). Religiosity’s specific biological function consists of stimulating and empowering performative energies and, at the same time, of providing relief from evil through comprehension 320

See VRE, p. 44. See also S. Franzese “Is Religious Experience the Experience iof Something? ‘Truth’, Belief and ‘Overbelief’ in the Varieties of Religious Experience,” in S. Franzese, F. Kraemer Fringes of Religious Experience, cit., pp. 139-156. 322 See V. Boublik, “L’expérience anonyme du sacre,” Archivio di Filosofia, 1974, 397-406. 321

216 of the place of evil within the order of universe and stimulating the spirit of sacrifice, both of which have the power “to make joyous what is necessary.” In other words, religiosity seems to have the power to raise the threshold of pain, as it were, and make acceptable an evil that is unbearable in itself. By this, human beings are made more resistant to the pressure of the external world and given heart as they go about trying to achieve their most important tasks; that is, they are made able to survive and act in a natural environment for which they are naturally inadequate (WB, 160-161 ff)323. Thus, religiousness appears to be more satisfying than simple morality which, often under the pressure of external events or because of organic or psychological weakness, cannot help yielding to resignation or desperation (VRE, 45-46). Accordingly, the phenomena of “saintliness” and asceticism appear as further evidences of the dynamogenic and relieving power of religious sentiment; yet, such a power comes from within the human being. It is evoked and triggered not only by the belief in the divine, but also by the habit of religious life that is the very meaning of such a belief324. But a great energetic power, James points out, is attained also through prayer, which is the very essence of true religion and its real meaning: “Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about.: energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts” (VRE, 367).

The meaning of prayer consists neither of begging for favors from the divinity nor the rote repetition of empty formulas, but rather in putting oneself in touch with the spring of the life of universe, namely, with the mysterious power to which the sentiment of the divine points. “Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion… Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. It is prayer that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar or neighboring phenomena as purely moral or aesthetic feelings. Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer, 323

It is important to stress that, in MP, God is considered always and only as an energetic support of the highest ideals, that is, as the key-stone of the energetic system. Thus, for James, God’s existence does not, in the final analysis, provide any foundation or specific content to any special moral view. 324 On ascetism as control of feelings see also E. Boutroux “La psychologie du mysticisme” in La nature et l’esprit. See also Mathias Girel “Varieties of Experience in Boutroux & James”, Streams of William James, vol. 5, Issue 2, Summer 2003.

217 by which I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulae, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence….” (VRE, 366)

Prayer is communion with the divine, that is, the access at the inexhaustible spring of energy it actually is; and it is therapy for the sickness of soul. James shows, as never before, the mystical side of his temperament in these pages on the meaning and value of prayer, where influences of Christian and Islamic mysticism from the Aeropagites to John of the Cross, Therese of Avila, and Al-Ghazali reverberate. What James is pointing to is a silent and inner prayer that evokes an ineffable and nameless God, whose existence is the first and irresolvable enigma of the universe. Yet, it is just here that prayer also exposes a problematic issue for the philosopher: “The genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly bound up with the question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not deceitful.”(VRE, 367)325. Indeed, if there is no certainty about God’s existence, if such certainty is by definition excluded from the horizon of human experience, then why cannot we say that prayer is nothing but inner soliloquy, auto-suggestion, auto-hypnosis, or simply, indulgent self-deception? In other words, what prevents the thought that prayer does not attain any source of energy simply because there is no source to attain? This is a natural objection, but it comes out of a reversal of the empirical perspective; nay, it is the offspring of a mistaken empiricism that predetermines intellectually what the experiential datum ought to be while overlooking actual experience. 325

See VRE, p. 401. “Spiritual strenght really increases...and yet, this may be nothing but his subjective way of feeling things. [...] What is the objective ‘truth’ of their content” In the footnote James specifies that “The word ‘truth’ is here taken to mean something additional to bare value for life, although the natural propensity of man is to believe that whatever has great value for life is thereby certified as true.” The passages do not seem to point to James’s adoption of a second account of truth in addition to the pragmatic one, as has been recently suggested (H. Putnam at the Centenary International Conference on “William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience” in Edinbourgh (Scotland) 2002). Rather, as the brackets seem to testify, James is wondering whether another kind of truth, different from the pragmatic one – an objective “truth” – can be found here. James hints, of course, to the positivistic attitude of those who look for a counterfactual for religious feelings. In other words, as the subsequent pages show, James is evaluating somebody’s else notion of religious truth, which is quite different from adopting such a notion.

218 What is experienced beyond any doubt – and is the core of every religion which deserves such a name – is that prayer is a source of spiritual energy (VRE, 367-376). James’s argument seems to reproduce the standard pragmatist argument: if the effect of prayer is the increase of spiritual energy that actually follows from praying, then insofar as this increase occurs, the validity of prayer is perfectly verified. Briefly, if prayer works, it must be true. As for the origin of its power, this is a metaphysical question that does not affect the effectiveness of prayer and can be put aside, since it has no possible answer. James, however, does not exclude the hypothesis that there could really be something knowable (in the sense of a thing exterior to private and personal phenomena) at the origin of the religious energy and pushes his quest for an answer toward the unconscious dimension of the ego. Now, pushing the quest for the divine toward the unconscious dimension could appear, prima facie, as if he had definitively waived any claim to a real object for religious sentiment, that is, as if he had definitely adopted a subjective perspective. This would be true, though, only if we understood the unconscious in Freudian terms. Yet, it is nonetheless the case that this would be a (mis)understanding that goes very far from James’s view326. Rather it is true that to the extent that in James the social, namely, institutional dimension of religion is excluded in principle from the very account of the essence of religion, that is, religiosity, understood as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (VRE, 29-31), religion, as well as ethics, stays as an individual issue. Accordingly, to the ethical dimension of asceticism corresponds a mystical attitude on the religious side, both characterized by a fundamental individualism that is colored by James’s romantic inability to mediate between the part and the whole, to wit, between the individual and the universal. From the energetic standpoint, religion is an individual as well as paradoxical phenomenon, to the extent it requires the individual to draw its energy from something that is different and beyond the ego. 326

On the relations and differences between James and Freud see A.A. Roback, William James, pp. 82-83. See also J. Barzun, A Stroll with William James, pp. 227239.

219 The peculiar character of James’s energetic view of religion stands off if compared, for example, with Durkheim’s contemporary studies on the notion of “mana” in totemic cults, in which – in keeping with the Durkheim’s view of Deus sive Societas327 – “mana” and totemism are analyzed with the idea that the energy flow goes to the individual from the collective consciousness or through its symbols and representatives (totem). In James, instead, individual energy seems just to bypass the explicit dimension of collective consciousness to attain the anonymous and subconscious dimension of the generic and undifferentiated human, that is, the vague all-encompassing “whole” – be it God, the anima mundi, or the soul of the species – in reference to which only the individual defines itself. In fact, what James and his friend F.H. Myers, the author of the essay Subliminal Consciousness (1892), meant by unconscious is better defined as subliminal, or subconscious328. The subliminal dimension opens for James the way for a different interpretation of the spiritual power of religion. In the religious sentiment, the individual finds himself/herself mystically connected, through the highest part of himself/herself, with an immense power that operates in the universe and by which his/her spiritual power is increased. Such surplus of energy is what is called the “divine,” or “God”. Once again, it is legitimate to ask whether such a surplus actually exists, that is, whether God exists. But, according to James, if we hold onto our experience, the answer cannot be but affirmative, provided we exactly define what the words “divine” and “God” stand for (VRE, 403). 2.2. The Subliminal Sea of Energy. Human and Divine The “divine” is the profound dimension of the ego, the unfathomable mass of the iceberg of the human psychical life, of which the “I” is but the 327

Cf. E. Durkheim The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912): “If the totem is the symbol of both God and the society, is it not because the god and the society are one and the same?” 328 The notion of subconscious, or subliminal consciousness, was quite popular in James’s times because of what the application the “Mind-Cure Movement” was doing to it in the religious field. See VRE, p. 91.

220 visible top. Here James, admittedly, follows Myers, according to whom the psychical entity of every individual is much wider than that “I” of which the individual is aware. Individuality is thus only partially expressed in aware, bodily manifestations, whereas an unlimited, “silent I” lies in wait beneath the threshold of consciousness. Through the feeling of the divine, asceticism and prayer, human spirit draws from the subliminal reservoir of vital energy a “surplus” of energy that is the main meaning of religion. “The mother-sea and fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word mystical in a very wide sense.... I attach the mystical or religious consciousness to the possession of an extended subliminal self, with a thin partition through which messages make irruption. We are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a sphere of life larger and more powerful than our usual consciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continuous.”329

Thus, in James’s view, Myers’s subliminal theory is enlarged beyond the boundaries of individual organism to conceive a spiritual world that envelops and pervades the visible world and in which the subliminal self connects and merges with the spiritual forces of the universe. The visible world and the invisible world are intertwined in a continuous effusion of energy that makes the boundaries of individuality vanishing and blurred330. As James writes in Human Immortality: “We need only suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pour over the dam.” In the terms of a science of religion, the religious sentiment that characterizes human spirituality can be explained as the experience of an individual’s being immersed in the sea of energy along with all the other living beings and, at the same time, can be explained as the possibility of merging into such a sea and absorbing its energy. Such an explanation, however, does not, for James, exhaust the objective sphere of religiosity. In other words, the energetic “pantheism” does not necessarily exclude the possibility that God, as a mental individual entity exterior to the universe might be the source of the energy that pervades universe. James, is not ready to give up such a God, although this would possibly be the most consistent attitude for him, as he explicitly states in a letter to C. A.

329

Letter WJ to Henry W. Rankin, Edinburgh, June 16, 1901. See W. Proodfoot “William James on an Unseen Order,” Harvard Theol. Rev., Jan 2000.

330

221 Strong331. Even if the existence of God cannot be object of experience, “God,” however, is still available as an object of an ‘over-belief’ that can still create active connections with an individual’s existence and that insofar is real and true. (VRE, 406-407). While stating his personal over-belief in the existence of God, however, James, cannot help moving the divine back into the range of the human: the effects that count to verify God’s existence constitute evidence only in as much as they influence individuals’ personal centers of energy. James insists on restricting the discussable meaning of God’s existence to the meaning and value that individuals assign to the world. A world with a God is a world where the demand for a moral order is taken seriously. It is a safer and more satisfying world; it has a sense and a direction, which, however, are nothing but the sense and the direction that human beings want to give to it. The pragmatic conception of God, which from the last pages of VRE, reappears in the last lecture of Pragmatism, reaffirms the primacy of the anthropological image in James’s search for God, and, at the same time, answers Davidson’s objection about the possible value of a ‘voluntaristic’ notion of God’s existence. Such an answer entails James’s reinterpretation of Davidson’s apeirotheistic view of the ‘divinity of man’332. In itself, the 331

Letter WJ to C. A. Strong, Apr. 9, 1907: “[...] Your warnings against my superstitious tendencies, for such I suppose they are... touch me, but not in the prophetic way, for they don’t weaken my trust in the healthiness of my own attitude […]. For instance, my ‘God of things as they are,’ being part of a pluralistic system, is responsible for only such of them as he knows enough and has enough power to have accomplished.... The ‘omniscient’ and omnipotent’ God of theology I regard as a disease of the philosophy-shop. But having thrown away so much of the philosophyshop, you may ask me, why I don’t throw away the whole? That would mean too strong a negative will-to-believe for me. It would mean a dogmatic disbelief in any extant consciousness higher than the ‘normal’ human mind; and this in the teeth of the extraordinary vivacity of man’s psychological commerce with something ideal that feels as if it were also actual (I have no such commerce, I wish I had, but I can’t close my eyes to its vitality in others).” 332 See M.H. DeArmey, “Thomas Davidson’s Apeirotheism and Its Influence on William James and John Dewey,” cit., pp. 695-698: “God develops in and through the develpment of the world process. If we could imagine what God would be like prior to the world’s development, we would have to imagine this being as a ‘mere vague feeling’. The universe is reducible to energy feelings. Reality consists in societies of such feelings […]. Reality then is a Gottergemeinschaft. Everything has the potential

222 notion of “God” has the same value in explaining the constitution of the world as other mutable notions such as “energy,” “matter,” “nature.” As a descriptive theory, theism is more confusing and contradictory than materialism or pantheism. (P, 49-55). Its advantage appears only in relation to the future achievement of human projects and, in particular, in relation to the achievement of that cosmic project James defines as the “salvation” of the world. Such a salvation is not the object of the eternal contemplation of a divine consciousness, as Royce held, but rather the possible result of human efforts for the achievement of a moral order of the world. Such an achievement is a challenge, an enterprise whose end is not absolutely granted, but only glimpsed (P, 130). The adventure of human history as it marches towards salvation is broadly governed by the heroic moral attitudes of seriousness, of effort, and of the restless struggle against evil. It is precisely here, then, that human spirituality with its view of God, plays its fundamental role in supporting the human effort by providing hope for a future success (P, 55). Accordingly, God becomes the guarantee of human efforts, not as a metaphysical ground of success, to be sure, but as the promise that the efforts and the sacrifices are not in vain; for human forces are supported by a huge power which cooperates with the human being for the attainment of world’s salvation (P, 136-144). The moral work of humankind is the cooperation of human beings in solidarity one with the other, but also of human beings in solidarity with God. Faith in this human/divine collaboration is at the very content of human spirituality and the highest source of energy and relief for humans. Insofar as the belief in the cooperation with God is alive and deploys its beneficial effects – insofar, that is, as human beings actualize their communion with God in the achievement of World’s salvation – God fully exists and the energy human beings draw from their religious experience of the divine is real. Hence, from the perspective of James’s philosophical to be a God, for the divine essence is latent within each individual […]. Thus, in Davidson’s theory of mystical experience ‘to be perfectly human’ is the path to the vision of God. Secondly, on Davidson’s view there is the same mode of development in the life of God as there is in the evolution of life, and this is self-replication. To argue that human beings contain the form or essence of God is no more absurd than the established principle in genetics that the form of the individual is contained in his cells.”

223 anthropology, the divine is not exhausted in the human, nor can the human be explained through the divine. Rather, God’s and human actions are a convergent series heading towards an infinitely receding horizon, which is at the same time the materialized achievement of human spiritual life and the absolute realization of the divine in the world. Here at the very core of history lies energy, which weaves both the visible and the unseen universe within a common texture.

Bibliography Primary Literature Works of William James (with abbreviations) Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Ed., 1950. (PP) The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard Univ. Pr., 1979. (WB) Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe. New York: Longman & Green, 1958. (ERE/PU) Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. New York Henry Holt & Co., 1899. (TT) Pragmatism and The Meaning of the Truth. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1978. (P) The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1985. (VRE) Some Problems of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1979. (SPP) Manuscript Essays and Notes. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1988. (MEN) Manuscript Lectures. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1988. (ML) Essays in Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1978. (EP) Essays in Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1983. (EPs) Essays, Comments and Reviews. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1987. (ECR) Memories and Studies. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912. (MS) The Selected Letters of William James. Edited by Elizabeth Hardwick. New York: Doubleday, 1993.

225 Secondary Literature Studies on William James G.W. Allen, “William James’s Determined Free Will”. In Essays on Determinism in American Literature, Kent State Univ. Pr., Ohio, 1964. W. Barnard, Exploring Unseen Worlds. W. James and the Philosophy of Mysticism. New York, 1997. J. Barzun, A Stroll with William James, Chicago:The Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1983. J.E. Bayley, “A Jamesian Theory of Self”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, XII, no. 2 (1976). L. Bellatalla, Uomo e ragione in William James. Torino: Armando ed., 1979. H. Bergson, “Sur le pragmatisme de William James”. La pensée et le mouvant. Paris: Alcan, 1950. G. Bird, William James. London: Kegan Paul, 1986. J.S. Bixler, “The Existentialists and William James”. The American Scholar, wint. 1958/59. P.F. Boller, “Freedom in the Thought of William James”. American Quarterly, XVI, no. 2 (1964). E. Boutroux, William James. Paris: A. Colin, 1911. B.P. Brennan, The Ethics of William James. New York: Bookman Associates, 1965. D.S. Browning, Pluralism and Personality. Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Pr., 1980. R.G. Burton, “Nonevidential Reason for Belief: a Jamesian View”. Philosophy. and Phenomenological. Research, XLII, no. 4 (1982). M.D. Bybee, “James’s Theory of Truth As a Theory of Knowledge” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, XX, 3, (1984). J. Campbell, “William James and the Ethics of Fulfillment”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, XVII, 3 (1981). F.I. Carpenter, “William James and Emerson”. American Literature, XI (1939).

226 A. Civita, La filosofia del vissuto. Milan: UNICOPLI, 1982. M.H. Dearmey and S. Kousgaard, The Philosophical Psychology of William James. Washington D.C: Univ. Pr. of America, 1986. M.H. DeArmey, “Thomas Davidson’s Apeirotheism and Its Influence on William James and John Dewey”. Journal of the History of Ideas, XLVIII (1987). P.K. Dooley, Pragmatism as Humanism. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1974. __________ “The Nature of Belief: The Proper Context for James’s The Will to Believe”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, VIII, no. 3 (1972). G.L. Doore, “William James and the Ethics of Belief”. Philosophy, 58 (1983). J.M. Edie, “The Genesis of a Phenomenological Theory of the Experience of Personal Identity: William James on Consciousness and the Self”. Man & World, vol. 6, no. 3 (1973). ________ “John Wild’s Interpretation of William James’s Theory of The Free Act”. Man & World, 8, no. 2 (1975). _______ William James and Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana Un. Pr., 1987. R.M. Gale, “William James and the Ethics of Belief”. American Phil. Quarterly, 17, no. 1 (1980). ________ The Divided Self of William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 1999. W.J. Gavin, “James’s Methaphysics: Language as the House of ‘Pure Experience’”. Man and World, 12, no. 2 (1979). A. Gurwitsch, Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Evanstone: Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1966. P. H.Hare, E.H. Madden, “William James & C.J. Ducasse on the Ethics of Belief”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, IV, no. 3 (1968). P. Kauber, P. H. Hare, “The Right and Duty to Will to Believe”. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, IV, no. 2 (1974). H.M. Kallen, William James and Henri Bergson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1956.

227 F. Kersten, “Franz Brentano and William James”. Journal of History of Philosophy.”, V (1969): 177-121. O.F. Kraushaar, “Lotze’s Influence on the Psychology of William James”. Psychological Review, XLIII (1936). _____________ “What James’s Philosophical Orientation Owed to Lotze”. Philosophical. Review XLVII (1938). _____________ “Lotze as a Factor in the Development of James’s Radical Empiricism and Pluralism”. Philosophical Review, XLVIII (1939). _____________ “Lotze’s Influence on the Pragmatic and Practical Philosophy of William James.” Journal. of History of Ideas, I (1940). C.S. Layman, “The Truth in The Will to Believe”. History of Philosophy Quarterly IV, no. 4, (1987). T. Lekan, “Strenuous Moral Living”. William James Studies, 2008. G.H. Myers, William James, his Life and Thought. London: Yale Un. Pr., 1986. M.C. Otto, “On a Certain Blindness in William James”. Ethics, LIII, no. 3 (1943). R.B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James. Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1936. _________ In the Spirit of William James. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1958 H.H.Price, “Belief and Will.” The Aristotelian Society Publ. Suppl. vol. XXVIII, (1954). R. A. Putnam (ed), The Cambridge Companion to William James. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1997. H. Reverdin, La notion d’expérience d’aprés William James. Genève: Georg et C., 1913. G. Riconda, Invito al pensiero di James. Milan: Mursia, 1999. A.A. Roback, William James. His Marginalia, Personality and Contribution. Cambridge (Mass.): Sci-Art Publishers, 1942. J.K. Roth, Freedom and The Moral Life. The Ethics of William James. Philadelphia: The Westminster Pr., 1965.

228 J.R. Scudder, “The Moral Sense of Education in William James’s Philosophy”. Analecta Husserliana, XXII: 327-333. C.H.Seigfried, William James’s Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy. New York: State Univ. Pr., 1990. ______ “The Structure of Experience.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XII, no. 4 (1976). ______ “The Philosopher’s ‘License’: William James and the Common Sense.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XIX, no. 3 (1983). M.R. Slater, “Ethical Naturalism and Religious Belief in ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’.” William James Studies, 2008. E.K. Suckiel, The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James. London: Univ. of Notredame Pr., 1982. H.S. Thayer, “On William James on Truth”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XIII, 1, 1977. E.Thorndike, “A substitute for Free Will”. In Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James. New York: Longman & Green, 1908. P.J. Tumulty, A Study in the Ethics of William James. Doctoral Dissertation, Dept. of Phil. Univ. of Notre Dame, Indiana, 1974. J. Wahl, Vers le concret. Paris: Vrin, 1932. L.F. Werth, “The Banks of the Stream of Consciousness”. History of Philosophy Quart., III, 1 (1986). B.W. Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology: a Study of The Principles of Psychology. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1968. ____________ “Protophenomenology in the Psychology of William James”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, V, 1 (1969). ____________ “Introduction”. William James. The Essential Writings (edited by J.M. Edie). Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1984. ___________ The Primal Roots of American Philosophy. University Park (PA): The Pennsylvania State Univ. Pr., 2000.

229 Studies on Pragmatism R.Abel, Humanistic Pragmatism: The Philosophy of F.C.S. Schiller. New York: The Free Press, 1966. J.A. Ayer, The Origin of Pragmatism. London: MacMillan, 1968. R. Berthelot, Un romantisme utilitaire. Paris: Alcan, 1911. C.Hartshorne, Creativity in American Philosophy. Albany: State Univ. of New York Pr., 1984. A.O. Lovejoy, The Thirteen Pragmatisms & Other Essays. Baltimore: J. Hopkins Pr., 1963. G.E. Moore, American Pragmatism: Peirce, James and Dewey. New York: Columbia Un. Pr., 1961. ________ “Professor James’s Pragmatism.” Procedings of the Aristotelian Society VIII, (1907-8). G. Papini, “Saggi sul pragmatismo”. Filosofia e letteratura. Milano: Mondadori, 1961. H. Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle (IL): Open Court, 1987. _________ Lezioni sul pragmatismo (Italian Lectures:Lectures on Pragmatism). Bari: Laterza, 1992. S.B. Rosenthal, Speculative Pragmatism. La Salle (IL): Open Court, 1990. A Santucci, Il pragmatismo in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1963. _________ Storia del pragmatismo. Bari: Laterza, 1992. I Scheffler, Four Pragmatists. London: Routledge & Keagan Paul, 1974. C Sini, Il pragmatismo americano. Bari: Laterza, 1972. J. Wahl, Les Philosophie Pluralistes d’Angleterre et d’Amerique. Paris : Alcan, 1920. P.P. Wiener, Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Pr., 1972.

230 General Essays H. Adams, A Letter to American Teachers of History. Washington, 1910. A. Alexander, Theories of The Will in the History of Philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898. F.H. Bradley, Ethical Studies. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990. (ed. Brantliger), Energy and Entropy. Science and Culture in the Victorian Britain. Indiana Univ. Pr., 1989. C.D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Routledge & Keagan Paul LTD, 1951. I Carter, M. Curti, The Growth of American Thought. New York: Harper & Bths, 1951. P. Giustiniani, Antropologia Filosofica. C. Monferrato: Ed. PIEMME, 1991. R.B. Goodman, American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1990. G. Madinier, Conscience et mouvement. Louvain: Ed. Nauwelaerts, 1967. J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1901. D.H. Monro, Empiricism and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1967. C. Eagle Russet, Darwin in America. San Francisco: W.H: Freeman & Co, 1974. OtherReferences Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1985. A. Bain, Emotions and Will. Washington, D.C.: University Publ. of America, 1977. H. Bergson, Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience. Paris: PUF, 1991. _________ Matière et Memoire. Paris: PUF, 1982.

231 E. Boutroux, De la contingence des lois de la nature. Paris: Alcan, 1905. __________ La Nature et l’esprit. Paris: Vrin, 1926. __________ Education and Ethics. London: William & Norgate, 1913 P. Brantlinger (ed.), Energy & Entropy. Science and Culture in Victorian Britain. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1989. D.S. Browning, Pluralism and Personality. Bucknell Univ. Pr., 1980. E. Cassirer, An Essay on Man. Yale Univ. Pr., 1992. C. Darwin, The Origin of the Species (1872/76). New York: New York Univ. Pr., 1988. ________ The Descent of Man. New York: Prometheus Books, 1998. J. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct. Carbondale: South. Illinois Univ. Pr., 1988. ________ Ethics (1908). Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Pr., 1983. ________ Reconstruction in Philosophy. New York: H. Holt and Co, 1920. R.W. Emerson, Essays I-II. Franklin Center, Penn.: Franklin Library, 1981. ____________ Representative Men. London: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Pr., 1996. E. Durkheim, “La Science Positive de la Morale en Allemagne”. Revue Métaphysique de la France et de l’Etranger, XII, 1887. ___________ Ethics and the Sociology of Morals. New York: Prometheus Books, 1993. ___________ Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse. Paris, Alcan, 1912. John A. Gable (Ed.), The Man in the Arena: the selected writings of Theodore Roosevelt. The Legacy Project, 2003. A. Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. Wiesbaden: A.V.A., 1978. T.A. Goudge, The Thought of C.S. Peirce. New York: Dover Publ., 1950.

232 J. Gouinlock, The Moral Writings of John Dewey. New York: Prometheus Books, 1994. J.M. Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine. Paris: Germer Baillière et C., 1879 _________ Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction. Paris: 1885. E. Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe. New York: Prometheus Books, 1992. W.C.Havard, Henry Sidgwick & Later Utilitarian Political Philosophy. Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Pr., 1959. T.H. Huxley, The Place of Man in Nature. London: D. Appleton & Co, 1956. __________ Evolution and Ethics. London: The Pilot Pr., 1947. H. von Helmholtz, Selected Writing of Hermann von Helmholtz (Edited by R. Kahl). Middletown (CT): Wesleyan Univ. Pr., 1984. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. New York: St. Martin’s Pr., 1929. ______ Critique of Judgment. New York: Hafner Pr., 1954. ______ Pragmatic Anthropology. Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2006. R. Bruce Lindsay (ed), Applications of Energy in Nineteenth Century. Stroudsbourg (PA): Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, Inc., 1976 H. Lotze, Mikrokosmos. Leipzig, 1923. E. Mach, Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit. Praha, 1872. _______ Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historich-kritisch dargestellt. Praha, 1883 [1st Engl. Ed. 1893]. F.P.G. Maine de Biran, Influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser. Paris: Vrin, 1984. __________________ Noveaux essais d’anthropologie. Paris: Vrin, 1984. H.C. Mansfield, Manliness.Yale Univ. Press, 2007. G.H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967.

233 J. S. Mill, A System of Logic. London: Longman & Greens, 1919. J.S. Mill, J. Bentham, Utilitarianism and Other Essays, Penguin Books, London, 1987. P. Ricoeur, Philosophie de la volonté. Paris: Aubier, 1949. J. Royce, The World and the Individual. New York: The Macmillian Co, 1899. C. Smith, The Science of Energy: a Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain. London: Athlone, 1998. M. Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Darmstadt: 1928. __________ Man’s Place in Nature. Boston: Beacon Pr., 1961. __________ Philosophical Perspective. Boston: Beacon Pr., 1958. F.C.S.Schiller, Studies in Humanism. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1907. H. Spencer, The Principles of Biology. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966 [1898]. B. Spinoza, Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt. Hamburg: F. Meiner Verlag, 1999.

Index A Abauzit F............................................11 Adams H. .................................157, 176 Agassiz L. ....................................55, 59 age of energy....................................148 Al-Ghazali........................................217 anomaly (human)....................174, 177 apeirotheism.....................................221 a priori (natural).................................87 Aristotle................................54, 98, 138 asceticism.........................142, 204, 216 Assembly Ground ........See Chautauqua associationism ..................................113 automaton (conscious)....................... 85 Avenarius R. ....................................167 B Bain A. ..70, 73, 91, 105, 112, 113, 115, 120, 128, 131 Baldwin J. ..........................................99 Balfour A.J.................................64, 162 belief ....21, 40, 122, 123, 213, 216, 221 Bellamy E.........................................206 Bergson H. ...............166, 167, 168, 174 Bird G.................................................36 Blanqui L.A................................64, 157 Blood P.B...........................................22 Boscovich R.J. .........................174, 193 Boutroux E. ..............................174, 216 Bradley F.H......................116, 119, 124 Brentano F........................................118 Buchanan J. ........................................93 Butler Bishop ...........................108, 118 Buytendijk F.J.J. ................................51

Carpenter W.B. ........................120, 130 Caspari O. ........................................193 Cassirer E. ..........................................51 centre of energy........146, 147, 201, 212 chance variation................................. 87 Channing W.E. .................................. 19 character ............ 98, 125, 130, 134, 140 Chautauqua.............................. 185, 186 Clausius R.J.E.......................... 150, 151 Clifford W.K. .................................... 85 consciousness ........................ 85, 86, 87 consciousness (subliminal )..............219 conservation of energy (principle of) 149 cosmic process……………………….62 culture.. 39, 55, 56, 62, 63, 69, 73, 76, 79, 80, 85, 89, 98, 99, 112, 134, 135, 140, 148, 175, 176, 177, 184, 186, 194, 207 Cuvier G. ............................... 55, 67, 95 D Darwin C…44, 52, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 81, 82, 84, 87, 140, 152 Davidson T.H. ... 22, 172, 212, 213, 221 DeArmey M............. 22, 51, 53, 57, 221 Destutt de Tracy .............................. 106 deus absconditus.............................. 213 Dewey J. .................... 37, 124, 143, 177 discipline 52, 56, 98, 134, 204, 205, 206 discipline (military) ..................134, 206 divine 66, 152, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223 Duke of Argyll................................... 68 Duke of Wellington ......................... 130 E

C Cabanis P.J.G....................................106 Carlson T............................................54 Carlyle T. .........................144, 157, 172 Carnot S. ..................................149, 150

Eco U............................................... 165 education ...... 53, 94, 98, 107, 108, 109, 110, 119, 128, 131, 134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 205, 206 effort ................................ 121, 123, 203

235 effort of attention..................... 139, 203 effort of the will............................... 203 Emerson R.W. ..... 19, 45, 144, 172, 187 emotions (theory of).............................90 energism .................................. 145, 176 energy ...... 144, 163, 164, 167, 172, 218 Entlastung …… See relief entropy 62, 64, 149, 151, 152, 157, 158, 162, 176, 191 ethical decision.................................124 evolution……...54, 55, 58, 59, 175, 222 evolution (of brain/mind)……...59, 127 evolution (social)……………19, 199n. evolutionism ..52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 152, 174, 198n., experience ........................................168 F Fechner G.T. ........55, 73, 167, 168, 193 feeling of effort ................120, 121, 122 feeling of regret................................141 feeling (religious)............ 212, 214, 215 Feuerbach L. ....................................213 Fichte G................................22, 63, 187 Fiske J. ...............................................58 force (philosophy of) …9, 10, 47, 193, 194, 197 Fouillée A.........................................145 Freud S. ............................................218

Helmholtz H........55, 73, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 158, 193 Helvétius C.A...................................146 Herder J.G. ...................................69, 86 History 21, 33, 37, 38, 41, 44, 45, 46, 59, 64, 112, 151, 157, 175, 205, 222 Hobbes T............................................63 Holmes J.............................................58 Hume D......................................73, 117 Huxley A............................................26 Huxley T.H. ..29, 54, 55, 60, 62, 63, 64, 72, 84, 85 I ideals 15, 16, 32, 33, 35, 37, 41, 43, 44, 45, 125, 141, 142, 144, 182, 184, 188, 196, 205, 207, 216 Ideologues ........................................106 idiosyncrasies.............................44, 101 inhibition by habit ............................. 96 inhibition by repression ................... 136 inhibition by substitution................. 136 instincts... 63, 67, 77, 80, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 105, 125, 130, 143 intentionality...................... 87, 102, 118 interactionism (modified)...................99 interest ..................................... 101, 115 invisible world................................. 220 J

G Gehlen A. ...................51, 52, 62, 69, 97 Goethe W. ..........................................77 Goldstein K. .......................................51 Gray A..........................................55, 59 Guyau J.M........................18, 21, 30, 96 H habit....................97, 126, 127, 128, 130 Haeckel E. ........................................152 heat (mechanical equivalent of) 149, 150, 206 Hegel G.W.F. .........13, 22, 41, 132, 167 Heller A............................................124

Janet P.............................................. 174 John of the Cross ............................. 217 Joule J. ..................... 149, 150, 152, 206 Junger E........................................... 159 K Kant I. 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 58, 63, 73, 84, 86, 98, 138 Kraushaar O.F. .................................. 18 L Lamarck J.B....................................... 54 Lange C. ............................................ 90

236 Lange F.A........................................ 193 Le Bon G. ........................................ 157 Leibniz G. W. .................................. 174 Linneus .............................................. 55 Locke J. ....................................... 70, 73 Lockyer J.N. .................................... 158 Lord Kelvin ....................Vedi Thomson Lotze H....18, 39, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 84, 85, 88, 116, 120

P

Mach E. ........................................... 163 Maengelwesen ............................. 69, 86 Maine de Biran F.P.G........ 94, 120, 125 Marty M.E. ...................................... 148 Maxwell C. ..... 153, 154, 155, 161, 162, 164 Mayer F. .......................................... 152 meliorism........................................... 57 Menger K........................................... 39 Merleau-Ponty M...............................51 metaphor ..................................165, 169 metaphor of energy ..........................166 Metaphysical Club .............................58 Mill J.S.......................11, 23, 24, 25, 98 Mind-Cure Movement .....................219 Moleschott J. ....................................152 moral personality .............................133 moral sense.........................................70 Myers F.H. ...............................219, 220 Myers G. ..........................................158 Myers G.E. ...................................36, 44 mysticism .........................................217

Parsimony (Principle of) ...................96 Peirce C.S....27, 54, 58, 89, 90, 99, 123, 127, 174 Perry R.B........11, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, 54 Pestalozzi J.H.....................................93 Plessner H. ...................................51, 52 pluralism ..................20, 21, 22, 57, 123 Pomfret note.......................................57 praxis..........................................98, 116 prayer .......................216, 217, 218, 220 psychologist’s fallacy .............. 117, 118 Putnam H........................................... 26 R Rankin H.W..................................... 220 Rankine W.J.McQ. .......... 153, 155, 161 rationality..................................... 33, 56 reflex arc.............................. 85, 95, 100 regret.................... 70, 93, 139, 140, 141 relief……………..…62n, 97n, 101, 207 religion............................................. 215 religiosity................................. 215, 220 Renan E. .............................. 35, 64, 157 Renouvier C......... 54, 57, 120, 173, 174 Ricoeur P. ........................................ 123 rituals ................................................. 80 Roosevelt T...............................160, 172 Roth J.K............................................. 15 Rousseau J.J..................................... 132 Roux W.................................... 174, 194 Royce J. ...... 13, 19, 20, 22, 34, 43, 187, 191, 222 Ruskin J. .......................................... 157

N

S

Nietzsche F........9, 50, 63, 64, 166, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201

saintliness ................................ 193, 216 Schaeffle A.E.F. ................................ 39 Scheler M. ................................... 51, 52 Schmoeller G..................................... 39 Schneider G.H. .................................. 95 Schopenhauer A. ....... 62, 123, 124, 153 selection (natural)…………...59, 60, 63 selection (reversed)............................ 63 selfconsciouness ................................ 89 self (social)............................... 139, 196

M

O obligation .....20, 26, 29, 30, 43, 45, 110 organization (of energy)...105, 148, 177 Ostwald W. ......155, 156, 161, 162, 163 Otto M.C. .........................................187

237 Sidgwick H. ..................... 117, 119, 124 Smith A.............................................. 70 Spencer H. .... 29, 54, 55, 58, 71, 81, 82, 83, 87, 174, 195 Spinoza B. ....................................... 137 Spinozism ........................................ 213 Spir A. ............................................. 193 spontaneity.. 56, 57, 59, 71, 82, 88, 113, 115, 118, 143 Stewart B……..................153, 155, 158 St. John Green N. .............................. 58 stigma .............................................. 139 Strauss E. ........................................... 51 Streben .......................................20, 187 strenuous mood ..........................46, 144 Strong C.A. ......................................221 supererogatory acts ............................45 synechism .........................................168 T taedium vitae....................................184 Tait P................................153, 155, 161 teleology (open) .................................57 teleology (evolutionary)…………….61, 174 Therese of Avila...............................217 Thomson W..............150, 151, 152, 154 tolerance...........................................183 transcendence.........................77, 81, 89 tychism .............................................123 U universe (unseen)............. 155, 161, 223 V Virchow R. ...................................... 174 vitalism ............................................ 173 Vogt K. ............................................ 152 W Wagner A. ......................................... 39 Wahl J................................................ 19 Weltanschauung ................................ 16

Wesley J. ......................................... 135 Wiener P.P......................................... 58 will... 106, 121, 125, 126, 132, 135, 203 Wilshire B.......................... 50, 116, 144 Wright C. ............................... 58, 73, 81 Wundt W.M......................... 55, 73, 120

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