William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life 0739190148, 9780739190142

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William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life

American Philosophy Series Series Editor: John J. Kaag, University of Lowell Advisory Board Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Joe Margolis, Marilyn Fischer, Scott Pratt, Douglas Anderson, Erin McKenna, and Mark Johnson The American Philosophy Series at Lexington Books features cutting-edge scholarship in the burgeoning field of American philosophy. Some of the volumes in this series are historically oriented and seek to reframe the American canon’s primary figures: James, Peirce, Dewey, and DuBois, among others. But the intellectual history done in this series also aims to reclaim and discover figures (particularly women and minorities) who worked on the outskirts of the American philosophical tradition. Other volumes in this series address contemporary issues—cultural, political, psychological, educational—using the resources of classical American pragmatism and neo-pragmatism. Still others engage in the most current conceptual debates in philosophy, explaining how American philosophy can still make meaningful interventions in contemporary epistemology, metaphysics, and ethical theory. William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life, edited by Jacob L. Goodson Epistemic Issues in Pragmatic Perspective, by Nicholas Rescher Loving Immigrants in America: An Experiential Philosophy of Personal Interaction, by Daniel G. Campos The Religious Dimension of Experience: Gabriel Marcel and American Philosophy, by David W. Rodick Aesthetic Transcendentalism in Emerson, Peirce, and Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting, by Nicholas L. Guardiano Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy: Thinking the Plural, edited by Marcia Morgan and Megan Craig Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and its Originality, by Aaron Wilson Emerson’s Metaphysics: A Song of Laws and Causes, by Joseph Urbas Death and Finitude: Toward a Pragmatic Transcendental Anthropology of Human Limits and Mortality, by Sami Pihlström Ethical Habits: A Peircean Perspective, by Aaron Massecar The American Philosopher: Interviews on the Meaning of Life and Truth, by Phillip McReynolds Recovering Integrity: Moral Thought in American Pragmatism, by Stuart Rosenbaum Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty’s Neopragmatism: Studies, Polemics, Interpretations, by Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski

William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life Edited by Jacob L. Goodson

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Goodson, Jacob L., editor. Title: William James, moral philosophy, and the ethical life / edited by Jacob L. Goodson. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2017. | Series: American philosophy series Identifiers: LCCN 2017042606 (print) | LCCN 2017046649 (ebook) | ISBN 9780739190142 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781498505147 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: James, William, 1842-1910. | Ethics. | Conduct of life. Classification: LCC B945.J24 (ebook) | LCC B945.J24 W4743 2017 (print) | DDC 170—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042606 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For Donald G. Wester: professor, mentor, friend, and the one who introduced me to William James

Contents

Acknowledgmentsxi Introductionxiii Jacob L. Goodson PART I: MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY1 1 Emotions and Morals in The Principles of Psychology3 Guy Axtell 2 Ethics and Emotion in William James’s The Principles of Psychology21 Gregory Eiselein 3 Love and Sex in William James’s Principles of Psychology35 Jacob L. Goodson PART II: JAMES’S EARLY WRITINGS ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY45 4 Blindnesses in James’s Day—and Beyond Amy Kittelstrom

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5 “To See or Not to See?”: That Is the Question: James’s “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” D. Micah Hester and Joseph D. John

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6 Horny Hands and Dirty Skin: Courage, Humility, Patience, and Tolerance in William James’s Ethics Jacob L. Goodson

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PART III: MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF JAMES’S “POPULAR ESSAYS”

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7 The Cries of the Wounded: Transformative Moral Interpretation in James, Royce, and Peirce 89 Roger Ward 8 The Moral Life as the Basis for Moral Philosophy John R. Shook 9 Regretting the Impossible Neal A. Tognazzini PART IV: THE MORALITY AND IMMORALITY OF JAMES’S “THE WILL-TO-BELIEVE” ARGUMENT 10 The Will-to-Believe is Immoral Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse 11 Stoic Rhetoric and the Ethics of Empowered Individualism: “The Will to Believe” as Moral Philosophy Scott R. Stroud and Jaishikha Nautiyal PART V: THE MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF JAMES’S LECTURES ON HUMAN IMMORTALITY

97 121

141 143

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12 William James on Human Immortality Anthony Karlin

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13 A Radical Empiricist Defense of Irrationality Ermine L. Algaier IV

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PART VI: MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

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14 Understanding the Warrior Spirit: William James on Nature, Virtue, and the Will to Empire G. Scott Davis

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15 William James and Thomas Aquinas on the Fruits of Love and Saintliness Eric J. Silverman

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16 William James as Virtue Ethicist: The Heroic Virtue of Voluntary Poverty Lee H. Yearley

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Contents

PART VII: MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF JAMES’S PLURALISM AND PRAGMATISM 17 Is James an Existentialist? Frederick J. Ruf 18 The Cries of the Wounded in Pragmatism: The Problem of Evil and James’s Pragmatic Method as an Ethical Grounding of Metaphysics Sami Pihlström

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19 James on Pragmatism and Religion Guy Axtell

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20 Leaping into the Gap: Religion and the Moral Life Seth Vannatta

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21 The Moral Framework of A Pluralistic Universe347 Gary S. Slater PART VIII: JAMES’S LATER WRITINGS ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY363 22 The Education of Moral Character: A Comparison of James and Aristotle Pamela C. Crosby

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23 Is War Evil? Reflections on William James’s “The Moral Equivalent of War” David L. O’Hara

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Index399 About the Contributors

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Acknowledgments

William James’s philosophy entered my life as a teenager, and I am grateful to Donald G. Wester for introducing me to James’s work in the most intense ways possible for an undergraduate student. I have attempted to live and to think in Jamesean ways, as much as possible, throughout my adult life. For giving me the gift of James’s philosophy, I dedicate this book to Dr. Wester. Southwestern College remains a wonderful place to teach, think, and write. I am grateful to President Brad Andrews for his support of the general education requirement in ethics for all undergraduate students at Southwestern College. Teaching PHIL 120: Ethics and Society provided inspiration, in part, for putting this book together. Cheryl Rude found funding for some of the research involved with this project, and I remain in her debt in so many ways. I am grateful to Marjorie Snyder and Lacie Wallace for their help in gathering materials through interlibrary loan. This project would not have been completed without the assistance and thoughtfulness of Erika Paul (Southwestern College). Her work on the book far exceeded the expectations outlined in the syllabus for PHIL 451: Ethics and Law in American Philosophy. Former students who helped my research and writing along the way include: John Carpenter (now at the University of Virginia), Morgan Elbot (now at the University of Memphis), and Lindsey Graber (now at King’s College in London). I am grateful to these former students for continually challaging and improving my thinking and writing.

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Introduction Jacob L. Goodson

Virtue theory, natural law, deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism: these are the basic moral theories taught in “Ethics,” “History of Philosophy,” and “Introduction to Philosophy” courses throughout the United States. If and when the American philosopher William James (1842–1910) gets brought into these courses, there is uncertainty about where to place his thinking. Utilitarianism has become the default position for understanding James’s pragmatism and radical empiricism, but this default position fails to acknowledge and address James’s multiple criticisms of John Stuart Mill’s formulaic approach to questions concerning the ethical life. Upon a close reading of James’s writings—Principles of Psychology, Talks to Teachers, Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, and an array of book reviews and essays—we can catalogue the ways in which James tries to avoid the following: the staticity of the four cardinal virtues as defended and explained by Aristotle (see ch. 6), the hierarchies of Christian natural law theory (see Goodson 2016: 57–78), the absoluteness and principle-ism found in Immanuel Kant’s deontology (see ch. 18), the moral calculus of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism (see Goodson 2016: 57–78), and the resolute pessimism of atheistic existentialism (see ch. 17). In addition to shying away from certain aspects of moral theories, James seeks to avoid particular moral positions. Neal A. Tognazzini demonstrates how James refuses the position of philosophical determinism (see ch. 9), and Gary Slater explains James’s moral aversions to the position of monism (see ch. 21). Clarifying and elaborating upon James’s differences from these dominant moral theories—as well as influential philosophical positions—is a crucial feature of this collection of essays.1 This collection, however, is not wholly negative—that is, only describing what James’s moral theory is not. Additionally, we articulate the positive xiii

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features of James’s moral reasoning: what are James’s moral positions, and what does it mean to live the ethical life? Ultimately, the contributors answer these questions in substantial and thorough ways. However, I sketch out two possibilities here for the purposes of orientation and to introduce the hypothesis that motivates this collection. Early in his career, James tends to connect pedagogical strategies and the scientific method with the moral life. For James, one aspect of being a scholar—grounded in the scientific method—involves developing and maintaining an ethical relationship with one’s object(s) of study. Similarly, one of the purposes of being a professor involves handing down and modeling the ethical life for one’s students because the college years are a time in which “the habits of men” are cultivated and formed.2 The results of not forming good habits during the college years will be hell to pay later in one’s life: 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 walking 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. (James 1950: 127)

These arguments continue to be helpful for and within the academy today, and James provides an articulate and clear vision for both positions: concerning our ethical relationship toward the objects we study and understanding college life as a time of ethical development. Another possibility concerns the oft-quoted line from James’s essay, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”: the importance of learning to listen “to the cries of the wounded” (James 1977: 635). This phrase comes as a quotation from his colleague Josiah Royce (1855–1916), and it continues to be employed in arguments found within contemporary pragmatism—namely by Hilary Putnam (see Putnam 2004: 130; Putnam 2017: 342), Ruth Anna Putnam (see Putnam 1997: 282–299), and Charlene Haddock Seigfried (see Seigfried 1990: 388–389; Seigfried 1996: 223). Contemporary pragmatists, however, tend to neglect reflecting on what this phrase means in relation to different moral theories. If developed with attention and depth, “the cries of the wounded” contains a great deal of promise for contemporary modes of moral reasoning—that is, for patients who become subjects of medical research, for persons living in poverty, and for victims of war. This collection of essays fills this void within contemporary pragmatism—most notably in chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 21. The hypothesis that serves as the motivation for this collection concerns the difference between the early James and the later James. In his early

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writings, James attempts to interweave aspects of deontological and virtuecentered reasoning in ways that guide his moral reasoning and lead to helpful insights concerning how to live an ethical life. In his later writings, James tends to reason in consequentialist and more utilitarian ways—even to the point of abandoning some of the original accomplishments found in his early writings.3 The question becomes, is there a concrete point at which this shift occurs? I believe that we can mark a concrete turning point in “The Will-toBelieve.” In “The Will-to-Believe,” James responds to William Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief.” Clifford invites too much burden of proof, places an unwarranted amount of power in a scientific understanding of sufficient evidence, and refuses to risk belief out of a fear of error. In his response, James goes to other extremes: James defends no need for burden of proof, develops an anti-scientific stance, and refuses any degree of fearfulness in favor of over-risking beliefs. I believe that the primary difference between the early James and the later James involves how the later James loses a healthy dose of fear in his thinking. The early James makes the scientific method normative for thinking, but the later James prioritizes pluralism over the scientific method. In the present collection, there are two essays on James’s “Will-toBelieve.” They present readers with two conflicting interpretations of James’s argument. On the one hand, Scott Aikin and Robert Tallise make three claims in order to reach their conclusion that James’s argument encourages immorality: (a) James’s argument is immoral because it encourages recklessness with our beliefs; (b) James’s argument is immoral because it encourages unreflectiveness, which means that it lacks prudence; and (c) James promotes intellectual vice over intellectual virtue, especially with regards to the relationship between individual beliefs and scientific inquiry. On the other hand, Scott Stroud and Jaishikha Nautiyal frame James’s “Will-to-Believe” as his turn toward Stoicism, and they offer three insights within their interpretation: (a) religious beliefs concern external events and objects—usually beyond our control—and James encourages us to have a resilient attitude toward these external events and objects; (b) the task of ordering our beliefs involves the relationship between emotion, rationality, and volition and does not require evidence beyond our control; and (c) temperance works as an intellectual virtue, which serves as a mean between requiring too much burden of proof in relation to our beliefs and an “anything goes” approach to our beliefs. Extending my hypothesis in terms explicitly related to the traditional moral theories: the early James does not work in the tradition of utilitarianism whereas the later James writes as if this is the philosophical tradition he adopts and continues.4 The early James creatively blends and develops both deontology and virtue theory whereas the later James drops deontology for utilitarianism. Virtue theory seems to remain a constant within James’s

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thinking, most likely because he never moves away from recognizing the significance of habits. The present collection proves this claim concerning virtue theory; connections with virtue theory are highlighted in chapters 3, 6, 11, 14, 15, 16, 22, and 23. James’s engagements and negotiations with virtue theory include the following schools of thought: Aristotelianism, Christian Scholasticism, Liberalism, Stoicism, and Transcendentalism. Some James scholars prefer the later James: the less scientific yet more pluralistic, the less deontological and more utilitarian, the less fearful and more risk-taker James. I happen to prefer the early James and find less wisdom while reading and teaching James’s later writings. Less wisdom is better than no wisdom, and I certainly find wisdom in James’s later writings—especially in his later writings on higher education, the ethics of warfare, and death. For instance, in 1907, James writes this about death: To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent, the mere fact that matter could have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred for ever after. It makes no difference what the principle of life may be, material or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself to all life’s purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter’s possibilities. (James 1975: 50)

Robert Richardson says that this passage represents a rare instance of James “not rushing into a belief” in Pragmatism, and his courage (as opposed to recklessness) and patience (as opposed to impatience) results from the difficulty of surviving “the death of one’s child” (Richardson 2006: 256–257). The principal challenge to my hypothesis does not come from those who champion James’s thinking as consistent and progressive throughout his writing career but, rather, an interpretation of James’s moral reasoning represented by Sarin Marchetti of the State University of Milan. Marchetti argues that James does not work with the dominant moral theories of Western culture but, rather, seeks to complicate and work against the idea that we need moral theories for the ethical life. Marchetti claims: “James advanced no substantive moral position” (Marchetti 2015: 21). He thinks this is true throughout James’s writing career. Marchetti contends “that James’s intention was [to] undermin[e] any attempt to build a moral theory that would rule our moral lives from above their contingencies,” and this contention works “[a]gainst those interpreters who read in his work either a defense of an eclectic version of utilitarianism or an outline of a deontological theory of value” (Marchetti 2015: 21–22). Fair enough. However, when Marchetti actually attempts to explain James’s moral moves, he cannot avoid but relating those moves to traditional moral theories. To make my point, I offer two instances from his chapter on Principles of Psychology. First, Marchetti argues that the link

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between ethics and psychology within Principles of Psychology concerns how “James presents the moral dimension of some aspects of our subjectivity in connection with the kind of attitude and disposition that we might assume toward them” (Marchetti 2015: 125)—a sentence that can be uttered about any theorist working within the virtue tradition who thinks that our moral psychology matters as much as the objects requiring our virtuous response. As I have argued elsewhere, James’s Principles of Psychology offers a virtuecentered approach to how philosophers, psychologists, and scientists engage with their objects of study (see Goodson 2010: 243–258). Second, Marchetti demonstrates how James learned much from Immanuel Kant’s anthropological reasoning: A similar characterization of the relationship between ethics and psychology was explored by Kant in his Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht, a text James read avidly as a young scholar. Despite the philosophical distance between the two thinkers, for both Kant and James the adjective pragmatic characterizes anthropology . . . as a kind of practical inquiry, through which human beings take care of themselves in their possibilities of knowledge and conduct. Pragmatic anthropology depicts human beings as agents constantly engaged in improving their faculties with some goal of excellence in view: a goal which is not fixed by some principle or norm, ruling our behavior from outside, but rather negotiated each time reality grabs our philosophical—which is to say, critical—gaze. (Marchetti 2015: 128)

Although Marchetti does not claim that James works within Kant’s deontological framework, Marchetti gives James scholars enough reason in this passage to explore the relationship between Kant’s philosophy and James’s moral reasoning in Principles of Psychology. Whether it concerns Jamesin-relation-to-Aristotle, James-in-relation-to-Aquinas, James-in-relation-toKant, James-in-relation-to-Mill—such explorations remain the primary goal of the present collection. Indeed, it sounds like Marchetti simply affirms my earlier claim of what James seeks to avoid: the absoluteness and principleism found in Immanuel Kant’s deontology. The principal challenge to my hypothesis, in the end, might be no challenge at all but a redescription of James against moral theory (Marchetti’s claim) rather than James repairing traditional moral theories (my claim).5 I have structured this collection roughly in a chronological way in terms of James’s writing career. This structure enables readers to recognize how James’s moral reasoning changes and evolves throughout his philosophical career, and what he thinks of the ethical life at different times in his life. However, the first five parts of this collection are not in exact chronological order. The not-so-exactness concerns the early writings of James, between

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the period of 1888 and 1897, which I have broken into sections based on themes: Part I. Moral Interpretations of Principles of Psychology; Part II. James’s Early Writings on Moral Philosophy; Part III. Moral Interpretations of James’s “Popular Essays”; Part IV. The Morality and Immorality of “The Will-to-Believe”; and Part V. The Moral Implications of James’s Lectures on Human Immortality. Most of James’s writings in these sections follow chronological order, but there are some exceptions: “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” and “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” were published after The Will-to-Believe and Other Popular Essays in Philosophy, but they were written and presented by James before most of the material was published in The Will-to-Believe and Other Popular Essays. James calls “What Makes a Life Significant” a sequel to “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” and “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” although “What Makes a Life Significant” is not published with the other two essays. Lastly, I place the essays about James’s lectures on human immortality in between the essays on “The Will-to-Believe” and Varieties of Religious Experience because this groups together James’s reflections on all aspects of the religious life. Some of the chapters have been mentioned throughout this introduction, but the others deserve their due in this introduction as well. In Part I. Moral Interpretations of Principles of Psychology, readers will gain a sense of the role of emotion within James’s moral reasoning. There are two chapters on the emotions as the foundation or “roots” of James’s moral reasoning (Guy Axtell’s “The Emotions and Morals” and Gregory Eiselein’s “Emotion and the Roots of James’s Ethical Thinking”), and I offer a chapter on the emotion of love and the activity of sex within our ethical lives (“Love and Sex in Principles of Psychology”). Most scholars of James’s philosophy agree that there are three primary essays on moral philosophy in James’s scholarly corpus: “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” and “What Makes a Life Significant.” In this collection, we have five chapters explaining the relation of James’s essays to broader philosophical ways of reasoning: Roger Ward’s “The Cries of the Wounded: Transformative Moral Interpretation in James, Royce, and Peirce,” John Shook’s “The Moral Life as Basis for Moral Philosophy,” Amy Kittelstrom’s “Blindnesses in James’s Day—and Beyond,” D. Micah Hester and Joseph D. John’s “To See or Not to See—That Is the Question,” and my chapter entitled “Horny Hands and Dirty Skin: Courage, Humility, Patience, and Tolerance in William James’s Ethics.” The chapters in parts III and IV were mentioned earlier in this introduction. In Part V, Anthony Karlin and Ermine Algiers provide readers with two different perspectives on the ethical implications of James’s lectures on human immortality. Readers will find a heavy dose of virtue theory in Part VI of this

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collection—which involves three chapters exploring moral interpretations of James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. Albeit in different ways, all three of the contributors—G. Scott Davis, Eric Silverman, and Lee Yearley—demonstrate the role of virtue-centered reasoning in James’s Varieties. Beginning with Frederick J. Ruf’s “Is James an Existentialist?” Part VII is the lengthiest one and includes five chapters on James’s Pragmatism and A Pluralistic Universe. The other chapters in Part VII are: Sami Pihlström’s “The Problem of Evil and James’s Pragmatic Method as an Ethical Grounding of Metaphysics,” Guy Axtell’s “James on Pragmatism and Religion,” Seth Vannatta’s “Leaping into the Gap: Religion and the Moral Life,” and Gary Slater’s “The Moral Framework of A Pluralistic Universe.” The final section of this collection address James’s later writings on higher education and warfare: Pamela Crosby’s “The Education of Moral Character: A Comparison of James and Aristotle” and David O’Hara’s “Is War Evil? Reflections on William James’s ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’.” Although this collection in sum achieves much in terms of furthering scholarship on William James’s moral reasoning, I want to highlight a particular accomplishment of this collection. In addition to Sami Pihlström’s wonderful book entitled The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything: Jamesian Perspectives on Mind, World, and Religion—which includes helpful insights on James’s theory of evil—the present collection provides readers with two substantive chapters on James’s views on evil: Sami Pihlström’s “The Problem of Evil and James’s Pragmatic Method as an Ethical Grounding of Metaphysics” and David O’Hara’s “Is War Evil? Reflections on William James’s ‘The Moral Equivalent of War.’” Readers will find that this collection of essays both affirms and negates my hypothesis. Certainly, more work on this question needs to be researched. One result of this collection, however, seems to be that a virtue-centered approach to the ethical life remains a constant feature of James’s moral reasoning from the 1880s up until his death in 1910. Little else seems constant within James’s writings on moral philosophy and the ethical life, and this lack of constancy is what makes James still so interesting to read with surprising bits of wisdom over one hundred years after his death.

NOTES 1. To the extent that this collection begins with James and looks backward into the philosophical tradition, I strongly recommend reading this collection of essays alongside another recent collection of essays that begins with James and looks both backward and forward (see Sullivan & Tarver 2015). 2. On the significance of the phrase “habits of men,” see Tarver (2007: 275–290).

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3. Although consequentialism and utilitarianism share several features in common, Lewis Vaughn provides a helpful distinction between the two: consequentialism is “a theory that asserts that what makes an action right is its consequences” (Vaughn 2015: 674), whereas utilitarianism is “a theory that asserts that the morally right action is the one that produces the most favorable balance of good over evil, everyone considered” (Vaughn 2015: 677). The later James is a thoroughgoing consequentialist but more selectively a utilitarian. 4. Robert Richardson claims that while James—in the 1880s and 1890s—found Mill’s utilitarianism to be a serious project, “the utilitarians did not [consider] emotions” but, rather, “they understood it [their theory] to involve a rational calculus of happiness by which all pleasures and pains” are measurable through mathematical formulas (Richardson 2006: 157). In the early 1900s, however, James “thought of dedicating Pragmatism to Dewey, Schiller, and Papini . . . but James really wanted to throw his lot with the utilitarian tradition—since he was concentrating on the utility of pragmatism—so he dedicated the book to John Stuart Mill” (Richardson 2006: 487). 5. I believe that Marchetti would think there is a real difference between our two approaches to James. On his terms, my approach simultaneously carries on Richard Gale’s interpretation of James’s “divided self” (see Marchetti 2015: 23, 218–230) and defends the “substantive approach” to reading James (see Marchetti 2015: 12–13). In my judgment, Marchetti simultaneously carries on John Roth’s overly individualistic interpretation of James (see Roth 1965; Marchetti acknowledges this much: “Roth explicitly refuses to narrow down James’s ethics to a defense of moral theory, pointing rather to the richness of his account of the moral self” [Marchetti 2015: 119–120]) and reads James as dismissing the philosophical traditions that he inherits rather than repairing those traditions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Goodson, Jacob L. 2010. “Experience, Reason, and the Virtues: On William James’s Reinstatement of the Vague.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 31(3): 243–258. Goodson. 2016. “‘The Woman Question’: James’s Negotiations with Natural Law Theory and Utilitarianism.” In Feminist Interpretations of William James. Edited by Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 57–78. James, William. 1950. Principles of Psychology: Two Volumes. New York, New York: Dover Publications. James. 1977. “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.” In The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition. Edited by John J. McDermott. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. 629–645. Kant, Immanuel. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Edited by Robert B. Louden. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Marchetti, Sarin. 2015. Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James. New York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

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Pihlström, Sami. 2007. The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything: Jamesian Perspectives on Mind, World, and Religion. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Putnam, Hilary. 2004. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Putnam. 2017. “Philosophy as a Reconstructive Activity: William James on Moral Philosophy.” In Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey. Edited by David MacArthur. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. 331–348. Putnam, Ruth Anna. 1997. “Some of Life’s Ideals.” In Cambridge Companion to William James. Edited by Ruth Anna Putnam. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. 282–299. Richardson, Robert. 2006. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Press. Roth, John. 1965. Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Westminster Press. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 1990. William James’s Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Seigfried. 1996. Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Sullivan, Shannon and Tarver, Erin (editors). 2016. Feminist Interpretations of William James. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Tarver, Erin. 2007. “Particulars, Practices, and Pragmatic Feminism: Breaking Rules and Rulings with William James.” In Journal of Speculative Philosophy 21(4): 275–290. Vaughn, Lewis. 2015. Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues. Fourth Edition. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Part I

MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 1

Emotions and Morals in The Principles of Psychology Guy Axtell

On the somatic or embodiment theory of the emotions that William James presents in The Principles of Psychology, “Emotion is a consequence, not the cause, of the bodily expression” (James 1981[1890]: 1058). James challenged the folk psychology of his time with this thesis, reversing the accepted relationship between emotional affect and bodily changes. When James asserts that “emotion is a consequence” of physiological changes, he refers to the agent’s experience of the emotion. While “The Emotions” chapter (XXV) traverses the entire range of experienced emotions from the “coarser” and more instinctual to the “subtler” emotions intimately involved in cognitive, moral, and aesthetic aspects of life, James limits himself there to an account of emotional consciousness. For this reason, he does not speak a great deal about either theoretical or practical reasoning. There are few direct discussions in the text of Principles about what later came to be called moral psychology, and fewer about anything resembling philosophical ethics. Still, James’s short section on the subtler emotions is insightful. When read in connection with his later philosophical writings, Principles does provide substantial basis from which to reconstruct James’s views about the ways that human emotion colors our moral psychology, and how this fact should inform philosophical approaches to talking about the moral life. James makes a very basic distinction between the questions of psychology and those of metaphysics (including moral metaphysics) and casuistry. When James does comment in Principles on questions that go beyond psychology but are of special interest to philosophers, his basic naturalistic insight remains that the mind and its environment have evolved together, and must be studied together. The ideas that mind and body are intrinsically and dynamically coupled, and that perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and judgments change in ways responsive to the state of the body, are not original to James. But few 3

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would contest Richardson’s (2006) claim that his development of them in Principles, and in “The Emotions” chapter more particularly, furthered them in ways that helped the burgeoning field of psychology emerge as a distinct discipline from philosophy on the one hand, and physiology on the other. One metaphysical debate James allows himself to discuss in Principles is that between rationalism and naturalism. Against the traditional “mind stuff” theory, James wanted to show that consciousness cannot be merely cognitive because it is principally active and purposive. James rejected the Platonic view of the self with a faculty of Reason firmly the charioteer in control of Appetite and Will. But he also rejected the materialist view on which “science is satisfied when a psychic fact is once for all referred to a physiological ground” (James 1994[1894]: 205). Because much of James’s theory of emotion is couched in terms of feelings—the physiological changes and disturbances we feel when we are angry or joyful—it invites a phenomenological account of emotional consciousness. The importance of introspection and phenomenological description is basic to James, but some other psychologists would deny the need for his phenomenology and thought experiments, while others would allow that need yet deny the substance of James’s account, holding that he gets the phenomenology wrong. The Principles of Psychology was published in 1890, and we must allow for corrections to James wherever they are empirically cogent or philosophically well-motivated—but not if objections to his account depend on a misreading of him or on ignoring important distinctions that he drew. Most often, James’s account of emotion is dismissed when it is classified as a version of emotions-as-feelings. “Feelings theories” are viewed by their critics as opposed to perceptual and appraisal theories of emotion, and as simplistic accounts unable to distinguish among emotions themselves, or to capture the intentionality of emotion. Partly for these reasons, feelings theories and the James-Lange thesis have been out of vogue for many years, and James’s work on emotion in Principles with them. But some writers see James making a comeback, due both to developments in cognitive and social psychology that re-animate somatic theories, and to the work of “new sentimentalist” moral psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Prinz. These new sentimentalist authors to whom we will later return have pushed a number of James’s ideas about emotion in new directions, including his idea of “emotional temperament” and his psychologically based critique of the project of normative ethical theory. Prinz, for example, discusses contemporary findings that “whenever neuroscientists look at brain activity during emotional states, they see heightened responses in exactly those brain areas that are known to register and regulate bodily changes” (Prinz 2012: 244). Discussing these and other studies, he argues that “the weight of the evidence favors the embodiment theory” over certain of its rivals. The moral



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psychology and philosophical views of the new sentimentalists display a neoJamesian orientation—explicitly so at least in the case of Prinz. While the theme of “the emotional dog and its rational tail” that Haidt and Prinz share with James is a matter of considerable controversy today, their proximity to James demonstrates further the continued relevance or “liveness” and many of the ideas we see given early expression in Principles. Complementing this, contemporary pragmatists including Barbalet (1999), Ellsworth (1994), Palencik (2007), and Stoklosa (2012) have defended James against misinterpretation while highlighting some important trends in empirical psychological research that he anticipates. This chapter will generally support these defenders of James, and the empirically informed ethics that they aim to develop. We will spend less time in defending James from specific objections, however, than in developing some of the ways that his account of emotion adds significantly to contemporary discussions at the borders of moral psychology and philosophy: discussions over the foreground/background of consciousness distinction, social-emotional intelligence, emotional temperament, emotional learning, moral imagination, and selfhood and narrativity. The viability of new sentimentalist research programs is largely left open in this chapter, and so is the question of how Jamesian in spirit these writers in general are, either in their psychology or in their writings on philosophical ethics. We will, however, discuss substantial connections, 1) between Haidt’s “social intuitionism” and James’s ideas about emotional temperament and overbeliefs; and 2) between Prinz’s and James’s respective thoughts about the limits of normative ethical theories. THE COARSER EMOTIONS AND THE EMBODIED SELF James’s attempt to invert the cause/consequence relation accepted in his day led him to draw vivid contrasts that his critics sometimes jumped upon as an attack on common sense. For example, he writes that “we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and [it is] not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be” (James 1884: 190). Phoebe Ellsworth in her paper from a special journal edition on William James and emotion, writes that, “The old theory, the commonsense theory, which James criticized, assumed the following sequence: stimulus > interpretation > affect > bodily response. The commonsense theory of a century ago is easily recognizable as the commonsense theory of today . . . with interpretation emphasized and bodily response generally neglected” (Ellsworth 1994: 227). Written two decades ago, her paper finds that the common sense theory “also resembles the current ideas

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of cognitive scientists.” But, happily for defenders of James, including Ellsworth, this appears no longer to be the case. Ellsworth does find James culpable for sometimes speaking about the order of stimulus, interpretation, bodily response, and affect as if they are things, like billiard balls. “Over the past century, James’s [descriptions and examples] of large units of perception (see a bear), behavior (tremble, run), and feeling (feel afraid) have drawn our attention away from the recognition that none of these units is elemental, none is stable. They are all in motion, all the time, and there is no reason to believe that one must and before another begins” (Ellsworth 1994: 228). If this is correct, then certain aspects of longstanding debate over the ordering problem are misguided, and perhaps create roadblocks to a possible synthesis of the perception, appraisal, and somatic theories of emotion (compare Clark 2015).1 We should probably also start by agreeing with her that, “Some of James’s claims were definitely wrong, and others are confusing and possibly self–contradictory. He argued very firmly that there were ‘no special brain-centres’ of the emotion and this is certainly false. He was never very clear on whether the physiological feedback was a cause or a component of the emotion” (Ellsworth 1994: 224).2 Although James may treat emotional consciousness as a kind of epiphenomenon arising from bodily sensations, Ellsworth shows how far James is from the claim of some of his critics: that he makes emotions dumb, and treats them as immune from social conditioning. The Jamesian view puts strong emphasis on the physiological and “felt” nature of emotions, caused by a physiological disturbance that in turn was prompted by some disturbing situation or stimulus. But emotion is not the bodily response and nothing more. James’s defenders point out against the “nothing buttery” interpreters of James that “Emotion is not like instinct or ‘impulse’ in so far as the behavioral consequences of emotion are not necessarily immediate and automatic” (Barbalet 1999: 254). Firstly, somatic theory, as already mentioned, has been enormously fruitful. Like Prinz, Stoklosa points out that physiological responses preceding or attending the experience of emotions anticipated decades of investigation of emotion-specific autonomic nervous system activity, as well as keen interest in interceptive responses. Individuals differ markedly in emotional expressions and in their ability to detect their own bodily sensations. Given James’s interest in abnormal psychology, he would likely be very interested in how his theory fits with empirical work on the emotions and depersonalization, psychopathology, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Secondly, while James holds that bodily sensations are essential to the experience of emotion, he does not appear to hold a reductionist view on which research on emotion is exhausted by research on bodily processes. The emotions are not exhausted by the coarser emotions as they must be to



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make a reductionist reading plausible. One thing commonly overlooked in casting James’s account of emotion as a simplistic or reductionist feelings theory, is that James explicitly acknowledges a spectrum of emotions: from those he calls the coarser emotions, such as anger, fear, love, and shame, to those he calls the “subtler” emotions. Some emotions, like some virtues, may be possible only for a reflective mind. To an indefinite degree, both emotion and instinct can be inhibited or modified by habits, since instinct, for James, is not merely blind or reflex impulse. James in his philosophical writings has much to say about how our moral agency, and the quality of our lives, depends upon “habitually fashioning our characters” in better or worse ways, and about how moral emotions are involved in character formation and selfhood (James 1981: 130). Ellsworth finds it hard to ignore a substantial role of cognition (“perception” is more than the sensation) and appraisal in James’s theory. She would presumably, like myself, find much in common between James as she reads him, and Prinz’s attempt to integrate somatic, perceptual, and appraisal theories into one. But, however that may be, Barbalet identifies the mistake of taking the theory of emotional consciousness in Principles as James’s full theory of emotion: Because a reductionist reading of James is commonplace, the primacy he [James] places on emotions for practically every aspect of human being simply is lost to most accounts of this work. Emotion, for James, mediates all human actions. The idea that it is emotions which endue “value, interest, or meaning [in] our respective worlds” is not confined only to his study of religious experience. It pervades his work, from the early essays to his last writing.3 Able defenders of James also respond to more specific objections brought against him, some of which we will pursue in this section and the next. One is that he ignores the role of experience and culture in the shaping of emotion. Another is that he says little about the possible roles of emotion in cognition and behavior. Still another is that he “gave no weight to the process of evaluating mentally the situation that causes the emotion” (Damasio 1994: 130). Although it is certainly true that James does not speak a great deal in Principles about how emotion influences our moral judgments, Barbalet I think has little problem showing that a closer reading of Principles and a broader reading of James, including his philosophical papers, brings ample textual evidence to reject these three objections. Rather than taking them up in turn, we will return to them in the course of discussing some of James’s key insights related to the somatic theory of emotion. We can begin with his discussion of the foreground/background of conscious awareness, and how it involves bodily awareness. The readiness for certain kinds of events and actions is reflected in consciousness. John Dewey, who acknowledged Principles as a primary influence

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over him, held as James did that recognition of a background, including its somatic dimension, is needed to explain the coherence of action and cognition. But what is the body’s role in structuring the preconscious background to conscious mental life and purposive action? For James, this “fringe” of conscious awareness, this “halo of felt relations” (James 1981: 247), always involves a feeling of one’s body: “We think; and as we think we feel our bodily selves as the seat of the thinking. If the thinking be our thinking, it must be suffused through all its parts with peculiar warmth and intimacy that make it come as ours” (James 198: 235). Some contemporary views that have overlaps with James but develop concerns with the background, selfhood, and emotion and narrativity include radical enactivism, which “defends an antiintellectualist, nonrepresentationalist account of what lies in the background of, and makes possible, our explicitly contentful speech, thought and action” (Hutto 2012: 37; See also Colombetti 2014). While James and Dewey both affirm a qualitative background as cognitively necessary for mental life, Richard Shusterman finds that Dewey makes a more sustained argument for the qualitative background necessary to mental life as having both somatic and social aspects. James certainly did not neglect the social conditioning of emotion, and indeed insisted on it for even the coarser emotions. Thus, Dewey is still elaborating the Jamesian insistence that “Habit is thus the enormous fly–wheel of society, it’s most precious conservative agent” (James 1981: 125). But Dewey develops much further how socially-conditioned habit is part of the structuring and guiding mental background of our agency. James’s and Dewey’s views more clearly diverge over whether bodily background feelings should, to the extent possible, be regularly “brought to the foreground” in practical life. James in Principles says that to foreground the somatic background “would be a superfluous complication” (James 1981: 126).4 It is true that spontaneous habit often functions most effectively, but does the Jamesian position adequately address the problem of the formation of bad habits? Full transparency of the somatic background seems unachievable, and somatic reflection may not reveal the self-deceptions about our emotional states to which we are prone. But Dewey allows the somatic background to be more articulate, and Shusterman argues that this is the most consistent pragmatist position. Since the somatic habits and qualitative feelings of the background are conditioned by environments both physical and social, critically scrutinizing one’s somatic feelings may allow a person to learn things about him or herself. For example, a person may become mindful of discomforts in interaction with people of certain races, religions, or ethnicities, and, “through the recognition of such feelings come to recognize that he may have prejudices of which he was previously unaware” (Schusterman 2008: 220).



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Before moving on to the subtler emotions, it might be mentioned that the knowledge we have of the states of mind of others, and particularly of their emotions, is related at a physiological level to our ability to simulate the other’s state. Given James’s keen interest in physiological functions it would not be surprising to find a modern-day James to be interested in recent advances in brain imaging and the neurochemical analysis of specific neural circuits (e.g., the hypothalamic and limbic systems). I imagine him also keenly interested in empirical research on mirror neurons and the vagus nerve, and how they engage empathetic emotions by allowing us to share the affective experience of others.5 THE SUBTLER EMOTIONS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL CHARACTER The section of “The Emotions” chapter titled “The Subtle Emotions” introduces them by saying, “These are the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic feelings” (James 1981: 1082). By describing his focus as being “feelings,” James signals that he is still restricting himself to the psychological study of emotional consciousness, not an account of how emotions do or should affect moral, intellectual, and aesthetic judgments. Still, James here introduces his idea of personal temperament, and explains the grounds for holding that there are substantial emotional differences between individuals that affect moral character and judgment. Emotional responses can certainly influence behavior, but the connection is indirect, in contrast with instinct, which James treats as a “faculty of acting” or as leading to behavior directly. But James does not neglect in Principles to discuss either 1) the emotional apprehension of possible outcomes of action; or 2) the relationship between emotional knowledge of the self and behavior. Options to trust or not to trust, which James highlights in his “Will to Believe” paper, for example, are emotionally dependent: they involve emotional apprehension of different possible futures or outcomes. Moreover, emotional consciousness makes its way not only into practical reason supplying wants and desires, but into theoretical reason, or belief and perceptions of reality. For emotions are integrally involved in intellectual or cognitive matters through those judgments of salience upon which all rational thought and action depends. Ronald de Sousa’s theory of emotions (2013) appears close to James when he writes that “emotions are not so much perceptions as they are ways of seeing—species of determinate patterns of salience among objects of attention, lines of inquiry, and inferential strategies” (de Souza 2013). James’s chapter, “The Emotions” follows his chapter, “Instinct.” Instincts and emotions are two classes of impulses, and both have a physiological basis

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in the sense of their general causes. “Every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion, as well”: Emotions in this way “are continuous with instinct, but the class of emotional impulses is larger than that of instinctive impulses.” James also thought that despite the continuity, emotion attaches to more objects than instinct, and plays a less direct role in explaining behaviors. It plays a less direct role in part because emotional reactions are often excited by objects with which we have no practical dealings, for instance, aesthetic appreciation of an art piece. “It’s stimuli are more numerous, and its expressions and more internal and delicate and often less practical” (James 1981: 1058). So, while James focuses much more on the coarser emotions, he certainly allows that people can reflect upon their emotions, and do not necessarily act upon them. The subtler emotions are less the “primitive emotional species” that we associate with instincts and reflex actions. What we have is a continuum of more to less direct impact on action, and it is for some of the same reasons that James always refers to a coarser-subtler spectrum rather than employing a more demonstrative coarse/subtle distinction. This would also seem to allow recognition, as Ellsworth wants, that emotion plays a vital role in cognition, but that cognition can also play a major, initiating role in emotion: an experienced emotion can occur due to a blind reflex action or as a result of cognitive appraisal. That James primarily uses “emotion” in a narrowly defined sense to refer to emotional feelings and their physiological causes seems to serve his purposes, but also has the unfortunate effect of inviting his critics to say that he ignores many functions of subtler emotions in mental life. James comments on this misunderstanding of his theory in a later paper, “The Physiological Basis of Emotion” (1894), and at the same time responds directly to a critic who objected that in admitting subtler forms of emotion, James “throws away his whole case.” This is a complete Straw Man, James responds. The imagined “case” refers to a theory quite other than his own, since “all that I ever maintained being the dependence on incoming currents of the emotional seizure or Affect” (James 1994[1894]: 208, note 10). Passages such as these add to Barbalet’s response to the charge that James gave no weight to the process of evaluating mentally the situation that causes the emotion. To Ellsworth they also suggest that cognition and appraisal play a far greater role in James’s theory than his critics allow. But isn’t a “judicial state of mind . . . classed among awarenesses of truth,” and thus independent of somatic initiation or influence? Aren’t our judgments of neat, right, witty, generous, and the like, intellectual perception of how certain things are to be called? No, here James insists otherwise. He does intend to undermine a certain cognitivist, folk psychological view that this notion suggests: As if consciousness were only cognitive! He admits looking back at Principles



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that his language might be thought to suggest a more thoroughly biological or behavioristic account than he intended, but claims that all that he had insisted upon there was that the body’s sounding board is still among the “ingredients” of the subtler emotions: “As a matter of fact, however, the moral and intellectual cognitions hardly ever do exist thus unaccompanied. The bodily sounding board is at work, as careful introspection will show, far more than we usually suppose” (James 1981: 1085). Consciousness of selfhood allows for the development of character and the ability to more consciously control habits and emotional impulses. James and Dewey share a recognition of the importance to personal identity of the emotional imagination, and with it, the moral imagination as well. “An emotional temperament on the one hand, and the lively imagination for objects and circumstances on the other, are thus the conditions, necessary and sufficient, for an abundant emotional life” (James 1981: 1088. See also 704). James does seem to hint, though again not explore, how the subtler emotions enable moral awareness or mindfulness, for he finds them vital to the redirection of attention, and to determination of salience. Attention for James also involves imagination and anticipation. Unfortunately, James restricts the discussion to this and a few other generalities about the subtler emotions. But there is an unmistakable kind of “mindfulness” message in James’s allusion to emotional development: “Refuse to express a passion, and it dies. Count ten before venting your anger, and its occasion seems ridiculous” (James 1884: 197). Even while experiencing anger, we can develop the self-control to “assiduously, and in the first instance, cold-bloodedly, go through the outward movements of those contrary dispositions which we prefer to cultivate.” This aids self-control in the instant, but over the longer term, the construction of valuable habits is needed “if we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves” (James 1884: 198). While the idea of emotional temperament focuses on the individual, James does not neglect the social affections or the social aspects of selfhood. Moral emotions are objects of emotional learning, and this is so even if emotions are not always conscious, or if we are referring not so much to felt e­ motions but to the “thick” affective concepts by which we describe these states. Evolutionary ethics tends to rest everything on the survival of the individual, and automaticity theories are often under the sway of a new form of ­biologism or naturism James would avoid. In asserting that the mind and its environment evolve together, James understands environment in terms of a social or relational self (see Richardson 2006). The social affections allow survival as “only one out of many interests. . . . To the individual man, as a social being, the interests of his fellows are part of his environment” (James 1878: 182; see also Morton 2013).6

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Pragmatist approaches in ethics highlight the importance of the moral imagination and moral ideals. Many of the most complex moral emotions rely upon social-emotional intelligence, and the capacity to put oneself in a point of view other than one’s own. The differences James finds between individuals include this ability to harness one’s imagination: “No matter how emotional the temperament may be, if imagination be poor, the occasions for touching off the emotional trains will fail to be realized, and the life will be pro-tonto cold and dry” (James 1981: 1088). And in the “Imagination” chapter itself, even though it is not much concerned with emotion, James notes, “How unexpectedly great are the differences between individuals in respect of imagination” (James 1981: 704). James’s notion of intellectual and emotional “temperament” is all that is needed to make a further substantial connection with the value of the moral imagination to ethical judgment. Enactivists like Daniel Hutto overlap with pragmatism in emphasizing connections between moral development and narrativity. As Hutto puts it, the emotions “have a kind of structure that is ripe with narration” (Hutto 2006: 17; see also Radman 2012).7 We make sense of our own actions and those of others by imaginatively placing them in a narrative. We forge continuity between our past, present, and future selves in the same way.8 JAMES AND THE NEW SENTIMENTALISTS A final question to examine in this chapter is how far the moral psychology of emotionists like Prinz and social intuitionists like Haidt can be used to show the continued relevance and influence of some of James’s core ideas about emotion. The neo-Jamesian character of “New Sentimentalist” thought is firstly evidenced in the claim that Haidt and Prinz make, that experiments in ethics reveal a story of “the emotional dog and its rational tail.” This thesis is one that Humeans and pragmatists earlier propounded. It is also interesting to see how James, Haidt, and Prinz each use psychology as a challenge to the ambitions of hard universalist normative ethical theories. Utilitarianism and deontology both expect the moral agent to deliberate when faced with an ethically charged situation, and to apply certain principles understood as universal dictates of reason. Sentimentalists generally challenge the rationalist preference for cool principles over passionate engagement. Of course, the psychological study of emotion in moral decision-making is not one-sided. Psychologists have shown conclusively that too much dependence on emotions leads to confusing ethical judgments with what personally disgusts us (the “yuck factor”), while too little engagement of emotions correlates with tendencies to disregard moral rules and perhaps even to be constitutively unable to be concerned with the welfare of others. But Prinz



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and Haidt are both concerned with how habits of numbing or suppressing emotion can easily impair moral reflection. James, who had a keen interest in abnormal psychology, understood connections between certain pathological personalities and missing or deviant emotional responses. Valuing moral emotions balances and provides counterpoint to what Prinz describes as the ills of “detached analysis.” Haidt’s social intuitionism and Prinz’s emotionism differ in their understanding of human moral psychology, but both see emotions guiding ethical judgments, and emotional and social competence or intelligence rather than deliberation as main drivers of ethical decision-making. Prinz thinks that: If we could replace our passionate rules with cool principles, there would be hideous consequences . . . we would risk becoming indifferent to the needs of distant others . . . . Sentiments are better suited for the regulation of behavior than any dispassionate alternative. They are the safeguards against vicious indifference. . . . Sentiments are better suited for the regulation of behavior than any dispassionate alternative. (Prinz 2007: 307–308)

A prime example of both this point and the previous may be the footbridge scenario in the well-known Trolley Problem experiments on moral decision-making. A comparison of the “pull a lever” and “push a person from a footbridge” scenarios shows that “diminishing the emotional intensity of the method of killing doubles the approval rate” (Prinz 2007: 25). A second source of support for this conclusion comes from variations where if the language of description is not one’s first language, this also turns out to dramatically increase the approval rate for pushing a random bystander to his death with the intention of saving five others (Costa et al. 2014). So presumably it is a good thing if emotions rise up and stand in the way of an over-easy act utilitarian calculus that might indicate the rightness of pushing the stranger from the bridge. Psychologists note the emotion-center engagement of those who pull back from the deed, due to the emotional dread or horror of actually pushing a person to their apparent death. This is why “happy pushers” wind up higher on psychological gauges of psychopathological tendencies, rather than appearing as poster children for utilitarian “impartiality.” The social aspect of Haidt’s social intuitionism emphasizes that we “bind” intellectually or ideologically into groups, after which group dynamics appear which often lead to creating us/them polarities. “Binding can thus be blinding”: Binding serves positive functions, but also results in a kind of partiality as we learn to see things in terms of the particular intuitions or moral ideals with which our chosen group bonds. In terms of the analysis of political discourse in the United States that this yields, neither the political left nor the political right is necessarily more ethically principled, although

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they prioritize ethical values and symbols in divergent ways. An example that Haidt develops is the contrast between politically liberal “equality of outcome” and conservative “equity of rewards of and punishments.” These are competing ideals of fairness, the one emphasizing distributive justice, and the other merit as the rewarding of the deserving. Haidt’s social intuitionism reintroduces something like temperament into the study of ethical differences, and powerfully extends it to the analysis of political orientations, left and right. It should be remembered that, as for Haidt, temperament for James clearly encompasses social influences and group affiliations. While James does not refer to intuitions very often, he does take a quite holistic view of the passions and emotions that inspire religious and ethical “overbeliefs.” The most direct connection may be to the role James gives to temperament in explaining philosophical and religious disagreement, and in defense of a moderate fideism in which faith is “the greeting of our whole nature to a kind of world conceived as well adapted to that nature” (James 1988: 414). Here, James in his usual way restricts himself to personal attitudes. Although he has great insights on personal religiosity, etc., it is perhaps unfortunate for contemporary readers that he never progresses to discuss social and institutional religion to anywhere near the same extent. James sees emotions energizing moral agency, and Haidt’s social intuitionism can perhaps be taken as showing how what James calls the strenuous mood is motivated in diverse ways by conservatives and liberals. Gut Reactions (2004) develops Prinz’s theory of emotion, and The Emotional Construction of Morals (2007) engages issues at the intersection of empirical psychology and metaethics. In Gut Reactions, Prinz develops what he calls an embodied appraisal theory of emotion that marries the JamesLange somatic theory with aspects of an appraisal and perceptual theories, both of which there may be some textual basis for in James’s writings.9 Emotions, for Prinz, are perceptions in the double sense that they are states within systems dedicated to detecting bodily changes, but also, through the body, they carry information and appraisal regarding concerns within one’s environment. This claim that emotions are perceptions, when separated from certain intellectualist assumptions, “falls out” of any somatic theory. Contrary to much conventional wisdom, emotions also qualify as appraisals: They carry information, representing “organism-environment” relational themes bearing on well-being. They are valenced, implicitly appraising concerns in one’s physical or social environment by registering a pattern of physiological responses. The claim that “emotions are also appraisals, insofar as they represent concerns, as standard cognitive theories maintain” (Prinz 2007: 65) seems foreign to James-Lange, but “means that an emotion can be unwarranted or warranted.” As appraisals, emotions are valenced and are generally



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experienced with a positive or negative character. This, Prinz thinks, is important for explaining motivation. Embodied appraisal theory is intended to reconcile a long-standing debate between those who say emotions are cognitive and those who say they are noncognitive. Embodied cognitive theory is built to allow both views and even to deflate the philosophical importance attached to that contrast. Although the intellectualism of the original appraisal theory is rejected, Prinz balances, as James and Dewey would, the effects of nature and nurture: “We are products of culture and experience, not just biology . . . culture and history are essential to an understanding of who we are and how we think and act” (Prinz 2012: 365). Prinz calls his view emotionism, or more formally, constructivist sentimentalism. His emotionist account of moral decision-making picks up his embodied appraisal theory, but goes much further into philosophical issues. In The Emotional Construction of Morals, Prinz tries to mediate the debate between evolutionary psychologists and social constructionists. He argues that moral values are based on emotional responses, and that these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. Building emotionism on a noncognitive theory of moral emotions is meant to establish the priority of emotions and sentiments over any more universal moral criteria. On a metaethical level, Prinz presents moral properties as response-dependent properties. The only ground to unify moral properties are our emotional reactions. These views, which fall into what James calls moral metaphysics, we need not pursue further. But I do want to highlight one strong overlap with James regarding the new sentimentalist use of experiments in ethics to challenge the ambitions of hard universalist normative ethical theories. The limits of normative ethical theories, whether based upon track record or empirical studies in moral psychology, is a shared theme of James, Dewey, Haidt, and Prinz. Not just a failed track record of establishing the correct theory, but also empirical work on how people actually make moral judgments, can lead to skepticism about the pretentions of normative ethical theory. From a pragmatist perspective, we can certainly appreciate Prinz’s conclusion that “there is no single litmus test for moral progress,” and that we need to acknowledge a plurality of standards of assessments for morality. The great normative ethical theories “are stunningly elegant and ambitious . . . [But] they are ambitious to a fault. Human morality is multifaceted. We have a range of different rules that cannot be unified under any single principle.”10 If James is sometimes criticized for not saying enough about how emotions affect the moral judgments, the critic must realize that James is affirming this connection while at the same time rejecting the Kantian tradition and its whole way of approaching a so-called metaphysics of morals. James’s

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sentimentalism, grounded in his psychological studies, leads to viewing ethics as more perspectival and situational than normative ethical theories like Kant’s typically insist it must be in order for moral agents to be rational, and in order for their actions to have moral worth. If, as sentimentalists assert, morals are emotionally based, then people lacking certain emotional competencies should be hampered in the moral domain. That psychopaths indeed turn out to suffer from profound emotional deficits, deficits that lead them to treat moral rules and principles as mere conventions, supports the sentimentalist contention that emotions are necessary for making moral judgments. None of this means that reasoning is irrelevant to morality, but it shows that emotional or social intelligence are crucial to ethical development and that deliberation based upon master principles may not be. Contrary to their treatment in the Enlightenment style, normative ethics, moral emotions, and emotional sensitivities can be seen as necessary aspects of moral agency/ competence. Psychology can ask about the origins of our moral ideas and moral judgments, but psychology’s questions are different from those of metaphysics and casuistry. James does not reduce moral motivation to a biological affair. But his skepticism about the ambitions of Kantian duty ethics and other universalist normative ethical theories is indicated by his replacement of them with what he calls the casuistic question. What complements or alternatives are there to “hortatory” ethics, ethics which appeal to moral ideals and motivations? James, anyway, understood Mill’s utilitarianism too well to mistake it for an individual’s rational decision procedure. By trading in Benthamite hedonistic calculus and Millian utilitarianism for a simpler casuistic practice animated by the claims and demands of actual stakeholders, James again marks his break from the ambitions of modernist normative ethical theory. In James’s casuistry, we can ask how we should take each other’s aims into account, and how to rank our claims alongside theirs. But James is skeptical of what Alan Ryan calls “a ‘point of view of the universe’ which yields the answer that a wholly rational agent would accept as binding on himself” (Ryan 2013: 223).11 Being skeptical about the ambitions of normative ethical theory, James opts for an arbitration, a mediation between stakeholders with their own ineliminable interests and perspectives. In “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James also insists that philosophers have no special authority or expertise when they venture to say which course of action is best. They are no different from other people in how they react to moral situations, “so far as we are just and sympathetic instinctively, and so far as we are open to the voice of complaint”—which is to say, to the cries of the wounded. Here is another aspect of Jamesian sentimentalism, as an alternative to the passive and intellectualist conceptions of agency inherited from Kant and the Enlightenment.



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In conclusion, then, the work of empirically-based “new sentimentalist” writers like Haidt and Prinz meshes pretty well with pragmatist ethics, while making especially promising use of key aspects of James’s theory of emotion. These authors recognize that, as pragmatists like Stuart Rosenbaum put it, our moral ideals must be concrete, not abstract: “They must be psychologically available to ordinary individuals, not an achievement of reason or theory” (Rosenbaum 1987: 87). One need not embrace whole hog the sentimentalist thesis of “the emotional dog and its rational tail” to allow that empirical studies of emotion and moral judgment strongly confirm the Jamesian and Dewey critique of the ambitions of hard universalist normative ethics.

NOTES 1. Andy Clarke argues for a predictive processing (or PP) account of emotion. A “predictive twist” he thinks “allows us to combine a core insight of the James-Lange theory (the idea that interoceptive self-monitoring is a key component in the construction of emotional experience) with a fully integrated account of the role of other factors, such as context and expectation. Previous attempts to combine these insights have taken the form of so-called ‘two-factor’ theories, where these depict subjective feeling states as essentially hybrid states involving two components—a bodily feeling and a ‘cognitive’ interpretation. It is worth stressing that the emerging predictive processing account of emotion is not a ‘two-factor’ theory as such. Instead, the claim is that a single, highly flexible process fluidly combines top-down predictions with all manner of bottom-up sensory information, and that subjective feeling states (along with the full range of exteroceptive perceptual experiences) are determined by the ongoing unfolding of this single process. Such a process will involve distributed patterns of neural activity across multiple regions. PP thus posits a single, distributed, constantly self-reconfiguring, prediction-driven regime as the common basis for perception, emotion, reason, choice, and action. The PP account of emotion thus belongs, it seems to me, in the same broad camp as so-called ‘enactivist’ accounts . . . that reject any fundamental cognition/emotion divide and that stress continuous reciprocal interactions between brain, body, and world” (Clarke 2015: 235). 2. To perhaps qualify these “concessions” however, while there are areas of the brain rightly classified as “emotional centers,” they demonstrate multiple areas of function. Van Slyke (2014) tries to show that pragmatists and virtue theorists would both correctly reject a dichotomy between reason and emotion, and that these theories are more consistent than dual-process theories with contemporary perspectives in cognitive neuroscience on the relative contribution of emotion and cognition to different types of functions. 3. Barbalet 1999: 262. James quoted from 1985[1901]: 128. 4. This claim seems to me in tension with other claims James makes, that “the physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics.” That foregrounding the background would be a superfluous complication is arguably inconsistent with his own better pragmatic maxim telling us that any one experience “must be sifted and tested, and run the gauntlet of confrontation with

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the total context of experience, just like what comes from the outer world of sense” (James 1985[1901]: 311). 5. See Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie (eds.) (2011), especially pp. xxviiix–xxx. This nerve when it fires releases oxytocin to the mirror neurons at witnessing a compassionate act, causing us to simulate and to literally feel another person’s joy almost instantaneously. Given James’s interest in para-psychology research, a contemporary James might even be intrigued by soma-based HeartMath, with its thesis that human emotions emit a very real physical field, and that not brain activity but heart rhythms stand out as the most dynamic factor related to experience of inner emotional states. These physiological states, according to some new-age spiritual groups, present another subliminal door, besides that of mystical experience, onto our connectedness with other living things, and so with “a wider world of being than that of our everyday consciousness” (James, 1985: 523–4). 6. James and Dewey’s recognition of moral imagination is amplified by Morton’s study of emotion and imagination, especially where he writes that we should not “take complex emotions, particularly moral approval and condemnation, at face value, [but rather] see how they can result from really basic emotions—anger, fear, disgust, hope—gathered and structured in terms of our ability to imagine from different points of view” (Morton 2013: 87). 7. Radman, for example, writes, “it is not unaided and uneducated; it has a reason of its own that resides in the ‘knowing body’ and is manifested in the automatism of routine and in complex mental acts no less than in most simple movements” (2012: xi). 8. For Hutto and other philosophers of emotion like Peter Goldie, the thoughts and feelings in which an emotion is embedded typically have not only a somatic dimension, but a narrative one as well. See Hutto, from Menand 2006: 100. 9. James held that, “Not a cognition occurs, the feeling is there to comment on it, to step it as a greater or lesser worth” (quoted from Richardson 2006: 183. See also Ellsworth). 10. Prinz (2007: 304). This is quite similar to Dewey’s claim about there being multiple sources or springs of moral value, and how this undermines viewing normative ethical theories as competing for a single, uniquely correct decision procedure. Dewey perhaps developed this from James’s similar but less developed claim that while “various essences of good” have been propounded as the base for a unitary system of ethics, none have proven satisfactory (1956[1891]: 200). 11. “James was hostile to premature tidiness in any field of inquiry, and may have thought that ethics was a field where tidiness came a poor second to richness of sympathy . . . . [D]ifferent ideals pull us in different directions and . . . no uniquely rational resolution of the conflict is to be had in Jamesian thought” (Ryan: 224).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barbalet, J. M. 1999. “William James’s Theory of Emotions: Filling in the Picture.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 29 (3): 252–266. Clark, Andy. 2015. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



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Colombetti, Giovanna. 2014. The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind. Boston: MIT Press. Coplan, Amy, and Goldie, Peter. 2011. “Introduction.” In Coplan and Goldie (eds.), Empathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Costa, Albert, Alice Foucart, Sayuri Hayakawa, Meilna Aparici, Jose Apesteguia, Joy Heafner, et al. 2014. “Your Morals Depend on Language.” PLoS ONE 9 (4): e94842. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094842. Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Penguin Books. De Sousa, Ronald. 2013. “Emotion” entry of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotion. Dewey, John. 1929. Experience and Nature. New York: Dover Press. Ellsworth, Phoebe. 1994. “William James and Emotion: Is a Century of Fame Worth a Century of Misunderstanding?” Psychological Review 101 (2): 222–229. Haidt, Jonathan. 2001. “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.” Psychological Review 108: 814–834. Hutto, Daniel. 2006. “Unprincipled Engagements: Emotional Experience, Expression and Response.” In Richard Menary (ed.), Radical Enactivism. John Benjamins Pub. Co. Philadelphia: 13–38. Hutto, Daniel. 2012. “Exposing the Background: Deep and Local.” In Zdravko Radman (ed.), Knowing without Thinking: Mind, Action, Cognition, and the Phenomenon of the Background. Palgrave Macmillan, New York: 37–56. James, William. 1878. “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 12 (1): 1–18. James. 1884. “What is an Emotion?” Mind 9: 188–205. James. 1891. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” International Journal of Ethics 1 (3): 330–354. Reprinted in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications (1956): 184–210. James. 1981[1890]. The Principles of Psychology (2 volumes). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1985[1901]. Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1988. Manuscript Lectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1994[1894]. “The Physical Basis of Emotion.” Psychological Review 101 (2): 205–210. Morton, Adam. 2013. Emotion and Imagination. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Palencik, Joseph. 2007. “William James and the Psychology of Emotion: From 1884 to the Present.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43 (4): 769–786. Prinz, Jesse. 2004. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prinz. 2007. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prinz. 2012. Beyond Human Nature. London: W. W. Norton & Co. Richardson, Robert. 2006. In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

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Radman, Zdravko, (ed.). 2012. Knowing Without Thinking: Mind, Action, Cognition, and the Phenomenology of the Background. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Rosenbaum, Stuart. 1987. Pragmatism and the Reflective Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Ryan, Alan. 2013. “Pragmatist Moral Philosophy.” In John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics. London: Routledge. Shusterman, Richard. 2008. Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stoklosa, Anna. 2012. “Chasing the Bear: William James on Sensations, Emotions and Instincts.” William James Studies 9: 72–93. Van Slyke, James. 2014. “Moral Psychology, Neuroscience, and Virtue: From Moral Judgment to Moral Character.” In Kevin Timpe and Craig Boyd (eds.), Virtues and Their Vices. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2

Ethics and Emotion in William James’s The Principles of Psychology Gregory Eiselein

This chapter argues that the foundation of William James’s ethical philosophy is his theory of emotion. By linking his theory of emotion to “The Sentiment of Rationality” (1881) and his work on ethics in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (1891), I hope to clarify the connections James sees among affective states, reason, and right action. The emotions are for James the means by which sentient creatures adapt to surprises in their environments. At the moment of thwarted expectations, affective responses prepare one for learning and insight (“the sentiment of rationality”) but also for the formation of normative claims and evaluative judgments. THE JAMES-LANGE THEORY OF EMOTION In “What is an Emotion?” (1884) and The Principles of Psychology (1890), James developed his famous theory of emotion. Although he would share joint credit for the idea with the Danish psychiatrist Carl Lange, who formulated independently a similar theory about the same time in a monograph titled “On Emotions: A Psycho-Physiological Study” (1885), the most important starting point for understanding James’s approach to the emotions is the work of Charles Darwin, both the theory of natural selection and his remarkable but underappreciated The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), which prepares the way for James’s own theory. Although many thinkers, from the Stoics to Spinoza to Adam Smith among others, have linked their study of the emotions to moral philosophy, Darwin largely avoids ethical issues to focus on the physical and visible aspects of emotion. He wants to provide a naturalistic explanation of, to use his own words, “the expressions and gestures involuntarily used by man and 21

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the lower animals, under the influence of various emotions and sensations” (Darwin 1998: 33). James extends this attention to observable and physical expression and understands emotion as “nothing but the feeling of a bodily state,” as something that “has a purely bodily cause,” as he puts it in Principles of Psychology (James 1981: 2:1065). The usual, perhaps still most common, idea about emotion is that we encounter an exciting stimulus (a shark while swimming in the ocean, a text message that breaks off a romantic relationship) and then we consciously feel emotion (fear, sadness), which prompts a physical expression (we tremble or cry). James, however, does not think of emotion as a conscious or cognitive state that produces bodily effects or expressions like trembling or crying. Instead, he famously reverses the usual order: “the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and . . . our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion” (James 1981: 2:1065, italics and small caps in the original). Emphasizing the embodied affective activity itself and not any cognitive state prior to it, James summarizes his theory of emotion and its sequencing in this way: Common-sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry. (James 1981: 2:1065–66, italics in the original)

In short, James’s theory of emotion gives priority to embodied affective activity, which happens on an instinctive or somatic level before any cognitive state of fear, sadness, joy, and so on. As significant and important, as original and provocative as it might be, an approach to the emotions that prioritizes the body might seem to bypass moral reasoning and ethical decision-making. If our embodied responses to affectively exciting stimuli happen before we are able to contemplate the consequences of those responses or think through our intentions or submit them to even the briefest of ethical reflections, the emotions might be of questionable or uncertain use in the development of a moral philosophy. The embodied emotions might be an extraethical concern, with no real or significant role



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in dealing with moral questions. Or the emotions might be a sort of problem or obstacle in the development of proper ethical thinking, something to be overcome or controlled, something to be regulated or trained. In either case, an embodied or physiological theory of emotions does not seem to be a promising point of departure in the development of a moral philosophy. Odd as it might seem, however, I would like to suggest that the foundation of James’s ethical philosophy is this theory of emotions found in Principles. JAMES AND ETHICS James never pursued the subject of ethics in a systematic or book-length study, but he did address moral questions and contemplate a range of topics with prominent ethical implications: his advice to students about how to live lives full of meaning and respect for others in Talks to Students (1899), his deep and positive regard for the virtues of “saintliness” in Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), or his fierce critique of United States imperialism in “The Philippine Tangle” (1899), for example. Yet the essay that perhaps best outlines his approach to ethical thinking is “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” published just a year after Principles. Early in this essay, James separates himself from “ethical sceptics” (James 1992: 595) and politely distinguishes himself from the consequentialism and utilitarianism of philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill whose views he considers simplistic or reductive. They cannot account for an important range of human activity without avoiding explanation in terms of “either association [with seeking pleasure or avoiding pain] or utility” (James 1992: 597). For instance, the “love of drunkenness,” “bashfulness,” “seasickness,” “the susceptibility to musical sounds,” “the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry, for mathematics, or for metaphysics” (James 1992: 597) and more. This list of phenomena that resist simplistic utilitarian (or deterministic or adaptationist) explanations resembles a similar list in “The Emotions” chapter in Principles of Psychology—“Sea-sickness, the love of music, of the various intoxicants, nay, the entire æsthetic life of man” (James 1981: 2:1097)—which James offers up as evidence of the “accidental origin” (James 1981: 2:1097), in evolutionary terms, of certain emotional reactions. As James understood well, the theory of natural selection helps us to understand how adaptive changes over time benefit the species but also how a stochastic evolutionary process, in which each variation is random or nondetermined, can produce features in an organism that have no clear evolutionary utility or real adaptive use (see Eiselein 2014: 30–31; and Gould 2002: 1036). James was clearly fascinated by affective phenomena that emerged in what he called this “quasi-accidental way” (James 1981: 2:1097). Moreover, in

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“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” he seems to consider “a vast number of our moral perceptions” (James 1992: 597) to be in this same category, which leads him to insist that “Our [moral] ideals have certainly many sources” (James 1992: 598). Yet these concerns or questions can only matter in a world with sentient beings: “nothing can be good or right except so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or thinks it to be right” (James 1992: 601). If there are no sentient beings, or if there are and they make no demand, then there is no need for an ethical system. Yet the moment “a claim actually made by some concrete person” (James 1992: 602) appears, ethical obligation emerges. “Claim and obligation are, in fact, coextensive terms,” according to James, “they cover each other exactly” (James 1992: 602). In James’s narrative, ethics begins once we have a real sentient being who has a claim to bring, who feels a need or an unsatisfied demand. From this perspective, ethics does not exist in the abstract, without real beings who feel and need. As he says at the start of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”: “[T]here is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance . . . there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics” (James 1992: 595). With no possibility for ethical rules in advance of real creatures with real needs and demands, James brings to the foreground the question of how to decide among competing moral claims. There are, as he notes, already several ethical systems in place that attempt to determine “the essence of all good things or actions” (James 1992: 607) to help one decide, but he sees all of them as deficient, especially when viewed from the various perspectives of “the demand of some actually existent person” (James 1992: 606). So, in lieu of a traditional approach, James decides, “that the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand. The demand may be for anything under the sun” (James 1992: 607). In other words, James avoids a system for deciding in advance between competing moral claims because, in his view, no one ethical perspective could do so in an impartial way. There is really no more ground for supposing that all our demands can be accounted for by one universal underlying kind of motive than there is ground for supposing that all physical phenomena are cases of a single law. The elementary forces in ethics are probably as plural as those of physics are. 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. (James 1992: 607–08)

In other words, James refuses to develop an ethical system that teaches us how to use a proper understanding of “goodness” to choose among the



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various and competing goods. Instead, he suggests that our “guiding principle for ethical philosophy” should be “simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can” (James 1992: 610). Unlike most conventional moral philosophies, James’s ethical thinking does not recommend or provide a specific set of guidelines for right and wrong behavior, at least not one that could be articulated prior to an actual situation in which some creature feels unfulfilled expectations. Instead, his ideas reorient ethics around finding inclusive ways of addressing these unsatisfied demands. Such an ethical project begins with James’s understanding how such demands emerge from embodied, emotional responses to the world.

JAMES ON RATIONALITY AND COGNITION Linked to his theorization of emotion and ethics are James’s ideas about cognition. In “The Sentiment of Rationality” (1878), James explains that we know rationality “by certain subjective marks,” specifically “a strong feeling of ease, peace, rest” (James 1992: 504). He goes on to define irrationality in equally affective terms. For James, emotions are not separate from or in tension with thinking. They are an important part of cognition. Or to be more precise, James sees cognition as a part of our larger physiological engagement with and interpretation of our environments. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a cross-section at a certain point, of what in its totality is a motor phenomenon. In the lower forms of life no one will pretend that cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action. (James 1992: 519)

Emotions are immediate, vivid, focused responses to “novel or unclassified experience” (James 1992: 515). According to James, “So long as an object is unusual, our expectations are baffled” (James 1992: 514). These unusual objects, novelty in general, or uncertainty about the future all generate what James calls “expectancy” (James 1992: 514), in which novelty acts as a kind of “mental irritant” to the thinking-feeling creature. In this heightened affective state, we try to resolve our curiosity about the strange or dangerous object back into our usual expectations about the world. In fact, James insists, The utility of this emotional effect of expectation is perfectly obvious; “natural selection,” in fact, was bound to bring it about sooner or later. It is of the utmost practical importance to an animal that he should have prevision of the qualities of the objects that surround him, and especially that he should not come

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to rest in presence of circumstances that might be fraught either with peril or advantage,—go to sleep, for example, on the brink of precipices, in the dens of enemies, or view with indifference some new-appearing object that might, if chased, prove an important addition to the larder. Novelty ought to irritate him. All curiosity has thus a practical genesis. (James 1992: 515)

Emotions alert us to perceived changes and possible dangers, and thus they prepare us to learn how to adapt to our dynamic environments and survive in them. A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH TO EMOTION Before I connect more closely James’s ethics to his theories of rationality and emotion, I want to take a brief detour through the work of German social theorist Niklas Luhmann, whose work provides a distinctive way of understanding the relationships among ethics, emotion, and cognition. I chose Luhmann because his work is informed by developments in cognitive science and by the work of James. Like many recent affect theorists, Luhmann takes James’s lead and avoids the traditional dichotomous separation of feeling from thought. Instead, he sees emotion and cognition working together, while also imagining a role for ethics within psychic systems. For Luhmann, emotions are complex, internal adaptations to fulfillment or disappointment of expectation, the adaptations of consciousness to perceived changes, dangers, or problems. Luhmann imagines the emotions as protective, as functionally similar to a body’s immune system: when consciousness is threatened with disruption, emotions emerge (see Luhmann 1995: 267–275). The basic emotion from this point of view is surprise-startle, to use Silvan Tomkins’s terms (see Tomkins 1995: 107–108). Surprise reorients attention from one thing to another, preparing the mind to perform an operation of consciousness with heightened simplicity and dispatch. Emotions simplify “procedures of discrimination” (Luhmann 1995: 274); or put another way, they reduce “the number of cues utilized in any situation” (J. A. Easterbrook quoted in Luhmann 1995: 561n42) and thus heighten sensitivity to the remaining information. Emotions, then, are events that alert a system to a disruption or possible disruption of expectation and prepare the system to respond in a way that preserves autopoiesis, the reproduction and self-maintenance of the system. One way social and psychic systems handle disruptions is learning; Luhmann refers to these responses as “cognitions” or “[e]xpectations that are willing to learn” (Luhmann 1995: 320). Cognitive responses change the way we see things and add to what we know. For example, you expect your boyfriend at 8:00 p.m. The clock strikes 9:00, and you feel distress. The distress



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provokes an attempt to find a possible explanation. Narrowing the possibilities quickly, you wonder if his plane has been delayed, and you check flight status updates on your phone. A second important way of handling disappointments and disruptions is moral; Luhmann stylizes such responses as “expectations not disposed toward learning” or “norms” (Luhmann 1995: 321). While they are not less wise or less justified than cognitions, normative responses hold on to expectations even when they are disappointed. You expect your boyfriend at 8:00. The clock strikes 9:00, and you are seized with distress. In your anguish you think, why does he always do this to me? Why is he such a jerk? You feel justified in expecting him at 8:00 because he said he’d arrive at 8:00. He should do what he says. The expectation is not relinquished, even though the fact of the matter has disappointed it. Though distinct, cognitions and norms are both necessary resources for handling disruptions of expectation, and Luhmann emphasizes that daily life is filled with a mixture of learning and norms (Luhmann 1995: 321)—when, for instance, after checking the airline website three times and calling his phone twice, you finally learn at 2:00 a.m. in your sleep-deprived distress that he turned off his phone and stopped off at a bar to have a drink with his ex, and your cognitive inclination turns normative. Regardless of any particular response or combination, cognitions and norms both work to enable systems to re-embed surprising stimuli back into the ordinary structures of thinking, perceiving, and interpreting the environment. OUR MORAL LIVES BEGIN WITH OUR EMOTIONS Thus, to synthesize my examination of James so far and to connect it to Luhmann’s ideas, we can say that the ways that sentient creatures typically handle the emotional surprise of novelty are two-fold. The first is what James would call the “sentiment of rationality.” For James, rationality is very much a feeling: “the feeling of rationality and the feeling of familiarity are one and the same thing . . . no other kind of rationality than this exists” (James 1992: 514). He compares to the notion of “coming ‘to feel at home’ in a new place, or with new people” (James 1992: 515): “When after a few days we have learned the range of all these possibilities, the feeling of strangeness disappears” (James 1992: 515), and the sentiment of rationality sets in. This resolution of our emotional response makes the strange familiar and changes the way we see things and adds to what we know. This learning leads also to changes in our larger set of expectations about the world. The second way we sentient creatures handle the emotional surprise of novelty is not learning or rationality, but instead morality. Instead of weaving the surprising object or incident into our previous but now larger sense

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of our universe and reality, the creature holds on to the original expectations. Using a sense of justice or morality, the creature counterfactually retains expectations that have been in reality thwarted. James calls them “claims” or—more vividly toward the end of his “Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” essay—“the cries of the wounded” (James 1992: 614). Like Luhmann, James is describing an emotionally stirring encounter with the world in which a sentient creature refuses to accept the world as it is. In short, the emotions, as James conceives them, are the sentient creature’s embodied responses to the introduction of surprising objects or situations into their environments. These physical reactions to surprises, to disappointed or contradicted expectations, prepare the organism to process novel information. The sentient creature typically does so, in James’s view, in one of two ways. The first is rational, which learns to accept the novelty and to make it a part of a revised set of expectations about the world; it generates eventually a feeling of rest, ease, or familiarity. The second is moral, which refuses to accept the disappointed expectation and instead to insist that the world should not be this way; it generates an ongoing emotional engagement with the world. This ongoing emotional engagement is often an attempt to reform the world (or ourselves) from the way it is to the way it should be. ETHICAL ALTERNATIVES AND THE CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE OF JAMES’S WORK This essay has tried to clarify not just James’s relationships back to Darwin or forward to Luhmann but also the important links among James’s own ideas regarding affect, cognition and rationality, and ethics. This linking together of his work on emotion, ethics, and rationality also reminds us how radical James’s antifoundationalism and antiessentialism can be. In typical Jamesian fashion, he is the enemy of false oppositions, and he refuses to separate thinking and feeling. From a traditional point of view, James’s powerful antifoundationalist approach often seems to undermine the very thing it seeks to explain or defend. His theory of truth as outlined in Pragmatism (1907), for example, transforms truth from something that is universally, authoritatively, and transcendentally valid into something contingent, provisional, or useful. Truth becomes simply what we label ideas that work. Such a theory seems to undermine some basic or conventional ideas of what truth is. Likewise, in his defense of religion, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), James’s astonishing ability to admire and appreciate a wide range of religious beliefs and practices corrosively undermines the idea that one of these religions could be the one, true religion. So too when discussing rationality and cognition, James appears to incapacitate the traditional notion of rationality by making



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it another kind of feeling, instead of an especially clear-headed mental power that allows one to overcome feeling to determine true versus false. And James’s ethical theory, which refuses in advance to discriminate between good and bad or among competing goods, would seem to undermine traditional understandings of the function of ethics, in favor of something far less discriminating and far more inclusive of plural claims, wants, and desires. This analysis and the comparison to Luhmann also remind us of the need to connect better James’s work to contemporary cognitive science and systems theory. Mark Johnson, a US philosopher working at the intersection of the cognitive sciences and the humanities, has noted that even though “The words ‘pragmatism’ and ‘cognitive science’ are seldom spoken in the same breath” (Johnson 2006: 369), the two converge in multiple ways: the embrace of naturalistic methods for studying the mind, the commitment to nonreductive explanations, and the nondualistic theory of mind that accepts an embodied view of meaning, the role of feeling in thought, and a deep understanding of the role of emotion in reasoning. Johnson goes on to explain that some contemporary neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have embraced James’s work. Damasio argues that James was basically correct in stressing that the emotions play a crucial role in the organism’s monitoring of its internal states and its ongoing assessment of its changing relations to aspects of its environment. . . . As James said, emotion plays a crucial role in reasoning; rather than being its enemy, emotions are part of what makes good reasoning possible. (Johnson 2006: 369)

The ideas defining and animating cognitive science and various forms of cognitive culture studies have fascinating histories, and it is important that we appreciate better James’s contributions to these contemporary ways of understanding the embodiment of the mind and the interrelated functions of affective, reasoning, and ethical processes. But we should not see James as simply a footnote in the history of the study of complex systems. James’s approach offers us ethical alternatives that we do not find in systems theorists like Luhmann. As I have explained, both Luhmann and James understand ethics in connection to emotion and the organism’s attempt to adapt to the introduction of novelty in its environment. Neither seems to believe in a unified or stable moral universe. Both avoid sweeping moral pronouncements designed to provide a guide for others about how to live, and both are skeptical about or cautious of “ethics” traditionally conceived. Luhmann’s own perspective on ethical issues is clearly amoral. He prefers descriptions about the functions of values, norms, morals. He avoids

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normative claims and has no normative basis for his theory. Luhmann characterizes his work in terms of a “skeptical abstinence vis-à-vis norm-centered theory” (Luhmann 1995: 325). This doesn’t mean he thinks society can exist without norms or that theory should ignore ethics. But he clearly favors a science, broadly understood, that is as ethically neutral as possible (see Luhmann 1995: 102, 522n84); the relationship of such a science to norms would be simply to understand their functions. This amoral position is consistent with systems thinking’s ideas about the paradox of form: morality cannot be good or bad because the difference between good and bad (morality) cannot itself be good or bad (see Luhmann 1999a). Or to put it positively, to see or understand morality, one must abandon morality. At times, however, it is clear that Luhmann’s work is antagonistically antimoral. It regards morals as “dangerous” (Hayles and Luhmann 1995: 35) and ethics as fighting words. “Morality,” he writes, “works to promote conflict by clearly indicating that one’s position lies on the side of right and by subjecting the opposing side to public rejection” (Luhmann 1995: 392). Ethics polarize conversations and prevent consensus: “Morality repels, quarrels, and impedes the resolution of conflicts” (Luhmann 1995: 235). Hence, a systems theoretical analysis of moral values would be simply political: “who is taking what side” and what are the interest groups involved (see Luhmann 1999b: 55). James has his own doubts about morality, of course. On an affective level, James seems to suggest that too much goodness is depressing. In Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899), he reflects on a week spent among utopians, reformers, and educators at Lake Chautauqua with all of its “Sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality” (James 1992: 862–63). His response on rejoining “the dark and wicked world again” was liberation: “Ouf! What a relief!” (James 1992: 863). Elsewhere in his Talks, he seems to suggest that the problem with morality is epistemological. We simply don’t know with any certainty: “neither the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands” (James 1992: 860). In Psychology (1892), the one-volume version of his magnum opus The Principles of Psychology, James presents the blind spot that enables vision as a scientific fact (James 1992: 37–38). In Talks, however, he mentions the partial, necessary blindness of the observer to suggest that we can benefit not from an overcoming of blindness but an awareness of it: “Our inner secrets must remain for the most part impenetrable by others, for beings as essentially practical as we are necessarily short of sight. But if we cannot gain much positive insight into one another, cannot we at least use our sense of our own blindness to make us more cautious in going over the dark places?” (James 1992: 862). For James, an awareness of this blindness will not give us insight into lives



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of others, but it might discourage us from dogma and persecution. James does not advocate mutual understanding or consensus—in fact, he seems to think it impossible. His notion of tolerance derives not from an expectation that we could learn to understand each other better, but only that we might realize that we don’t understand and can’t really understand much at all about the world’s “hidden meaning” (James 1992: 848). In short, both James and Luhmann know that, paradoxical as it may seem, our ethics can be an ethical problem, and our morals immoral. Still, I see an important difference. For Luhmann, his functional and critical approach to morality is intentionally reductive and deflationary. Luhmann once said, “I know one single maxim in ethics, avoiding ethics” (Luhmann quoted in Gumbrect 2012: 11). While I appreciate the pithy reminder that our moralities often create more problems than they solve, Luhmann’s approach to ethics is, to use James’s phrase, a little too “easy-going.” In “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” he writes, The deepest difference, practically, in the moral life of man is the difference between the easy-going and the strenuous mood. When in the easy-going mood the shrinking from present ill is our ruling consideration. The strenuous mood, on the contrary, makes us quite indifferent to present ill, if only the greater ideal be attained. (James 1992: 615) All through history, in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the don’t care temper, we see the antagonism of the strenuous and genial moods, and the contrast between the ethics of infinite and mysterious obligation from on high, and those of prudence and the satisfaction of merely finite need. (James 1992: 616)

The strenuous mood, he notes, “needs the wilder passions to arouse it, the big fears, loves, and indignations” (James 1992: 615), and those who act in this mood often draw their “energy and endurance . . . courage and capacity for handling life’s evils” (James 1992: 616) from some sort of deep belief or religious faith. In my reading of this conclusion to “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James uses affective descriptions to distinguish different approaches to moral questions. I am not certain that he thinks that either the strenuous mood or the easy-going mood is morally better or epistemologically more sound than the other. They’re just different. On the other hand, he does seem to think that the strenuous mood will triumph in the end: “the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type” (James 1992: 616). James’s affective approach to ethics provides us, then, with alternatives. Perhaps it is best, in most instances, to relax. In Talks, James is a clear advocate of what he calls “moral relaxation” (James 1992: 837) and a “toning down of . . . moral tensions” (James 1992: 840). An appreciation of our own

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blind spots, James hopes, might facilitate precisely the kind of moral relaxation that will make our own lives more “significant” and the lives of others less likely to become a target of our own morality. At other times, when facing “life’s evils” or being asked to accept the unacceptable, we need “the big fears, loves, and indignations” to empower us to do battle against what is for the cause of what should be. In these moments, the easy-going mood may not be so useful. I don’t think the strenuous mood brings Stoic contentment or Zen-like peace or even, to be honest, ordinary happiness. I think Luhmann and James are both right when they suggest that one of the basic functions of ethics is to create conflict. But, unlike Richard Rorty, who sees pragmatists like James as “utilitarian” (Rorty 2006: 258), I don’t think James is ultimately a utilitarian or a hedonist, or someone who thinks that happiness is always the goal. Some clearly prefer the strenuous path, and James makes a powerful case that it is precisely the kinds of emotional resources available to one in the strenuous mood that allow “the wounded” and those who attend to “the cries of the wounded” to endure and survive. BIBLIOGRAPHY Darwin, Charles. 1998. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, edited by Paul Ekman. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eiselein, Gregory. 2014. “Theorizing Uncertainty: Charles Darwin and William James on Emotion.” In America’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory in U.S. Culture, 1859–present, edited by Tina Gianquitto and Lydia Fisher, 19–39. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Gumbrect, Hans Ulrich. 2012. “‘Old Europe’ and ‘the Sociologist’: How Does Niklas Luhmann’s Theory Relate to Philosophical Tradition?” Translated by Markus Hediger. E-Compós 15, No. 3: 1–14. Accessed March 29, 2015. http://www .compos.org.br/seer/index.php/e-compos/article/viewFile/866/628. Hayles, Katherine and Niklas Luhmann. 1995. “Theory of a Different Order: A Conversation with Katherine Hayles and Niklas Luhmann.” Cultural Critique No. 31: 7–36. James, William. 1981. The Principles of Psychology, edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt et al. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1992. Writings, 1878–1899, edited by Gerald E. Myers. New York: Library of America. Johnson, Mark. 2006. “Cognitive Science.” In A Companion to Pragmatism, edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, 369–77. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Luhmann, Niklas. 1995. Social Systems. Translated by John Bednarz, Jr. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.



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Luhmann, Niklas. 1999a. “The Paradox of Form.” In Problems of Form, edited by Dirk Baecker., Translated by Michael Irmscher with Leah Edwards, 15–26. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 1999b. “Sign as Form.” In Problems of Form, edited by Dirk Baecker. Translated by Michael Irmscher with Leah Edwards, 46–63. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rorty, Richard. 2006. “Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism.” In A Companion to Pragmatism, edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, 267–66. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Tomkins, Silvan. 1995. Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, edited by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chapter 3

Love and Sex in William James’s Principles of Psychology Jacob L. Goodson

Love and sex have been treated as topics within moral philosophy at least since Plato’s Symposium (Plato 2003). Plato’s student, Aristotle clarified a virtue-centered approach to sex—arguing that temperance is the virtue that applies to our sexual appetite, behavior, and desires (Aristotle 2009). Ever since, a handful of philosophers—the canonized names are Epicurus (341–270 BCE), Augustine (354–430 CE), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 CE), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804 CE), and the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814 CE)—have commented on and reflected upon (what one of my professors in graduate school labeled) the ethics of intimacy. In the 1,400 pages that comprise The Principles of Psychology, William James dedicates one paragraph to the role of sex and sexuality within human psychology. Contrast this with Sigmund Freud’s philosophical psychology, which makes sexuality central to the psychological make-up of every human being. What is the explanation for James neglecting the significance of human sexuality within psychology? One possible answer is James was a Victorian male who perpetuated cultural norms, assuming sex as taboo. Another possible answer is that James knew of Freud’s (early) work and thought that his own responsibility involved taking American psychology in a different direction from how Freud was driving Austrian/German psychology. While the first answer might contain a kernel of truth to it, the second answer seems very unlikely given that Freud’s relevant publications do not start until 1895—five years after the publication of The Principles of Psychology. I believe the best answer is that James found sex to be a biological aspect of human existence and not a subject matter relevant for psychology. Biologically, the purpose of sex entails human drive as much as desire; the consequences of sex involve reproduction. Sex might be biological and physiological, neither moral nor psychological, for James. 35

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This answer, however, remains unsatisfying because James treats lots of biological and physiological issues within his two-volume Principles of Psychology. Most notably, of course, is James’s theory of emotions—which shifts emotion from the psychological to the physiological. Even if James views love and sex as biological and physiological aspects of the human life, readers can make the judgment—given that he writes on other issues relating to the biological and physiological—that there is neglect on James’s part. I propose a way forward: to actually examine what James says about love and sex in The Principles of Psychology and, based on his actual words about love, relate it to other arguments found within The Principles of Psychology.1 I reveal my findings now: while love and sex can be treated separately within The Principles of Psychology, James offers his readers a social and teleological account of both love and sex that surprisingly fits closest to the position known as “metaphysical sexual optimism.”2 Who cares whether James’s philosophical psychology fits best with the position of sexual optimism (or sexual pessimism)? It matters because James’s minimal discussion on love and sexuality in his 1,400 page The Principles of Psychology means that there has been a lack of attention to sex and sexuality within American philosophy.3 Instead of allowing this trend to continue within American philosophy, I seek to put American philosophy on the path of “metaphysical sexual optimism” by explaining and evaluating James’s philosophical psychology. First, I offer an orienting framework for understanding James’s The Principles of Psychology. Second, I outline James’s psychology of love found in The Principles of Psychology. Third, I outline James’s reflections on sex and sexuality found in The Principles of Psychology. Finally, I make the case that James’s views on love and sex fit within the position known as “metaphysical sexual optimism.” SOCIAL, TELEOLOGICAL, AND VIRTUE-CENTERED REASONING IN THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY William James is often accused of being too individualistic, too naturalistic, too utilitarian.4 In this section, I demonstrate the broader ways in which James’s Principles of Psychology tends toward social, teleological, and virtue-centered ways of reasoning. He makes all of these explicit through criticisms of his contemporary, Herbert Spencer. Spencer was a British scientist, perhaps best known for coining the phrase “the survival of the fittest,” which he considers his contribution to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In The Principles of Psychology, James displays distaste for Spencer’s work in the philosophy of science. For purposes of understanding the social, teleological,



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and virtue-centered aspects of James’s philosophy of science, it is instructive to identify James’s concerns with Spencer’s work in both biology and psychology. In Principles of Biology, Spencer uses the phrases “the survival of the most adapted” and “the survival of the fittest.” James argues that Spencer’s philosophy of science encourages individualism and viciousness; also, Spencer accounts for only efficient and material causality—which James identifies as a reductive feature of Spencer’s scientific reasoning. Even before writing The Principles of Psychology, a very young William James found his own scholarly voice in an essay critiquing Spencer’s philosophy of science: “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence” (James 1878: 1–18). When this piece is combined with The Principles of Psychology, I find five arguments relevant as an orienting framework for making sense of James’s views on love and sex: (a) love is an aspect of the natural world and not a human addition to the natural world; (b) philosophical naturalism needs to be explained through a logic of the virtues—where humility and patience are necessary dispositions for philosophers, psychologists, and scientists— rather than any doctrine that suggests viciousness is a primary feature within our natural relationships (see Goodson 2010: 243–258); (c) philosophical naturalism ought to provide a social (rather than individualistic) and teleological (in addition to efficient and material causality) philosophy of science that remains intelligible on Darwinian standards of natural science; (d) philosophical naturalism remains fully indebted to Darwin’s scientific reasoning but strongly pushes back on Spencer’s extra-scientific claim known as “the survival of the fittest”; and (e) because of the social, teleological, and virtuecentered aspects of philosophical naturalism, philosophical naturalism needs not conflict with religious reasoning. In other words, James defends Darwinian evolution but draws clear lines against individualism and reductive accounts of causation within evolutionary theory. James’s account of love and sex must be taken as part of his social, teleological, and virtue-centered approach to naturalism and philosophical psychology. LOVE IN THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY William James makes two clear remarks about the psychology of love, and he offers three suggestive ideas about love as well. I begin with James’s clarity on the subject matter and then explain the implications of his three suggestions. First, in his chapter called “Association” toward the end of volume 1 of The Principles of Psychology, James defines love in terms of “the association of the agreeableness of certain sensible experiences with the idea of the object capable of affording them.” He continues, “The experiences themselves may

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cease to be distinctly imagined after the notion of their pleasure has been transferred to the object, constituting our love thereof” (James 1950: I.599). In his psychology of love, James offers an object-centered account of love— which means that the object of love has as much determination for what we love as our own internal feelings of love. I call this view James’s externalist psychology of love. Second, in his chapter on volition in volume 2 of The Principles of Psychology, James teases out the contradictions involved with what he labels the “passion of love.” (James 1950: II.543). This passion, he continues, “can coexist with contempt and even hatred for the “object” that inspires it, and it lasts the whole life of the man is altered by its presence” (James 1950: II.543). By “monomania,” James means a fixated and obsessive enthusiasm for one object—in this case, the object of love. The “passion of love” can be present alongside seemingly contradictory feelings: “contempt and even hatred.” These contradictory feelings can be present at the same time, in the same person, and in ways that do not lead to insanity. The remaining points on love come about through implication of James’s philosophical psychology. It seems that James finds fear to be the opposite of love in terms of association. James defines fear as “a transfer of the bodily hurt associated by experience with the thing feared, to the thought of the thing, and with the precise features of the hurt left out” (James 1950: I.599). Love is defined in terms of associations of “agreeableness” whereas fear is defined in terms of negative associations. If fear negatively opposes love, does James think that there are negative results of love? Yes, according to James, love enables the negative feeling of jealousy. James claims that jealousy “is unquestionably instinctive” but an instinct triggered by love (James 1950: II.437–439). Jealousy involves a triangle of relationships: The lover: the one who feels love toward the beloved object The beloved object: the one for whom the lover directs her/his love The object of jealousy: the one who displays affection toward the beloved object and whose affections toward the beloved object are perceived by the lover.

I call jealousy a negative feeling, but this is not a moral judgment. It is negative only in the sense that it is an unwanted feeling that results from the desired or wanted feeling of love. Feeling jealousy is morally neutral: what the lover’s habits lead her/him to do with that jealousy is what requires a moral judgment.5 Lastly, James thinks that those whom we love in the most intimate and daily ways ought to be constituted as part of our “self.” In a somewhat famous passage, James writes,



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In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes, and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account (James 1950: I.291).

Our loves become part of who we are—literally part of our selves. This usually includes spouse and children. This is not exactly a new idea within the history of philosophy, for Aristotle thinks that friendships based on virtue—as opposed to ones based on pleasure and utility—lead to recognizing that friend as an “other self.” Instead of focusing on friendship, however, James shifts the emphasis to family. James has a very masculine view of the self in this passage, but there is no logical demand—within this ­passage—that prevents readers from extending his reasoning in more gender inclusive ways.6 In summary, James’s psychology of love offers the following philosophical claims: (1) an externalist view of love, (2) recognizing the contradictions brought about because of the passionate nature of love, (3) the feeling of fear brings about the opposite associations as the feeling of love, (4) jealousy results from love, and (5) those whom we love the most come to count as part of the constitution of the self. SEX AND SEXUALITY IN THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY The case this section builds up to is that James’s few thoughts on sex and sexuality ought to be understood in accordance with the philosophical position known as “metaphysical sexual optimism.” I will make that case more fully in the next section. In this section, I focus exclusively on what James actually writes about sex and sexuality found in three passages, only one of which (the third one) offers any substance on its own. First, James considers the conditions necessary for sexual activity: “The sexual act is not performed until every condition of circumstance and sentiment is fulfilled, until time, place, and partner all are fit” (James 1950: 1.22). James’s sentence resembles what I have defended as the A-concept theory of sex—which emphasizes how sex ought to be understood as part of relational continuity rather than a momentary act of penile penetration (see Goodson 2016b: 265–290). James has high standards for when a healthy and proper sexual encounter can occur: “every condition of circumstance and sentiment is fulfilled,” and both “time” and “place” are “fit.” Both partners have to be “fit,” and by “fit” he seems to mean that sexual activity has to be emotionally and morally consensual from beginning to end. Second, James defends chastity as a virtue that prevents us from becoming barbarians. He frames sex as a biological and physiological feature of

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humanity, and chastity serves as the virtuous habit that tempers our biological and physiological needs. He writes, [A]ll human social elevation [depends] upon the prevalence of chastity. Hardly any factor measures more than this the difference between civilization and barbarism. Physiologically interpreted, chastity means nothing more than the fact that present solicitations of sense are overpowered by suggestions of aesthetic and moral fitness which the circumstances awaken in the cerebrum; and that upon the inhibitory or permissive influence of these alone action directly depends. (James 1950: 1.22–23)

On one hand, this passage sounds like James has a pessimistic view of sex in the sense that our sexuality makes us appear as barbarians; this view opposes “metaphysical sexual optimism” and, instead, tends toward “metaphysical sexual pessimism”—similar to what we find in the Christian philosophies of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.7 On another hand, James does not claim that sexuality inherently makes us barbarians but, rather, the lack of “aesthetic and moral fitness” turns us into barbarians. Chastity seems to be James’s word for what Aristotle means by applying the virtue of temperance to our sexual appetites. This is not a pessimistic view of sex but logically follows from the first point that sex needs to happen within the right circumstances for it to be healthy and proper sexual activity. The first passage studied in this section emphasizes the conditions and contexts for sexual activity; this second passage focuses on the motivations and temperament involved for sexual activity. No optimistic view of sex would want to justify all sexual behavior, and James’s use of the word “chastity” seems to help us draw a line between healthy forms of sexual activity versus vicious and violent forms of sexual activity. Like Aristotle, James defends a virtue-centered approach to sexuality. Unlike Augustine’s claim that chastity comes to us as a gift from God (see Augustine 2009: VIII.7),8 this virtue does not come from a supernatural source but is naturally cultivated through the development of good habits. Third, in the chapter entitled “Instinct,” under the heading of “Love,” James writes: Of all propensities, the sexual impulses bear on their face the most obvious signs of being instinctive, in the sense of automatic, blind, and untaught. The teleology they contain is often at variance with the wishes of the individuals concerned; and the actions are performed for no assignable reason but because Nature urges just that way. Here, if ever, then, we ought to find those characters of fatality, infallibility, and uniformity, which, we are told, make of actions done from instinct a class so utterly apart. But is this so? The facts are just the reverse: the sexual instinct is particularly liable to be checked and modified



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by slight differences in the individual stimulus, by the inward condition of the agent himself, by habits once acquired, and by the antagonism of contrary impulses operating on the mind . . . what might be called the anti-sexual instinct, the instinct of personal isolation, the actual repulsiveness to us of the idea of intimate contact with most of the persons we meet. (James 1950: II.437–438)

James presents two views of sex in this passage and defends the latter one. We should read James’s position in this way: “the sexual instinct is particularly liable to be checked and modified” (a) “by slight differences in the individual stimulus,” (b) “by the inward condition of the agent himself,” (c) “by habits once acquired,” and (d) “by the antagonism of contrary impulses operating on the mind.” James’s position concerns how sex is a natural instinct that gets “checked and modified” by other biological, moral, and physiological aspects that comprise who we are as human beings. The question becomes, how should we understand this bodily system of checks and balances with regard to our sexual instincts? My claim is that the first position on sexuality—outlined by James— represents “metaphysical sexual pessimism” while the second position—the one defended by James—represents “metaphysical sexual optimism.”

METAPHYSICAL SEXUAL OPTIMISM The position of “metaphysical sexual optimism” has five characteristics. First, the philosophical view that human sexuality ought to be understood as a “mostly innocuous dimension of our existence.” Secondly, post-Darwinism, human sexuality comes about through an evolutionary process—which means that there is neither a singular nor static way to define human sexuality. Third, sex relates more to our emotional well-being and does not relate as much to our rational powers. Fourth, there is a tendency to praise—rather than fear—the power of sexual impulses. Fifth, some philosophers who hold to this position make a strong link between sex and happiness. Our question is: do William James’s views on love and sex fit with these characteristics? First, James completely agrees that sexuality relates to the “innocuous dimension of our existence.” This is what James means by calling sex a natural instinct. Second, James also agrees that human sexuality comes about through an evolutionary process. Unlike other Darwinist philosophers, however, James holds onto a teleological view of evolution. In relation to sex and sexuality, this means that sex cannot be reduced to a mechanism of survival. Rather, the teleological feature of sex means that our sexual acts line up with the purposes we give ourselves as human beings—with how we see ourselves

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as passionate, rational, volitional human beings. The next section addresses teleological philosophy of science. Third, James does not claim that sex relates more to emotions and less to rationality. However, James defines love strictly in terms of the passions. Therefore, James’s psychological account of love meets the requirements for the characteristic that love and sex relate more to our emotional well-being and less to our rational powers. Fourth, James neither fears nor praises the sexual impulse. As a Victorian male, it would have been taboo for him to praise sex and sexuality—which does not excuse the limitations of his thinking about sex and sexuality but, more simply, offers an explanation for why he fails to praise sexual activity. Fifth, James actually links happiness and sex when he describes antisocial behavior in terms of the refusal of the natural sexual instinct: “the anti-sexual instinct, the instinct of personal isolation, the actual repulsiveness to us of the idea of intimate contact with most of the persons we meet.” James thinks that such behavior limits the happiness that an individual can experience in his life. By making this claim, James surprisingly links human happiness with human sexuality. James shares four of the five characteristics for the position known as “metaphysical sexual optimism.” By reconstructing what James actually says about love and sexuality, we find that this Victorian male philosopher offers us a surprisingly optimistic—perhaps even positive—view of sex and sexuality. The fact remains that neither love nor sex plays a significant role within his philosophical psychology, and his reflections on these subject matters are disappointingly minimal. The moments in which James does reflect on love and sex, however, he seems to come closest to Aristotle’s virtue-centered approach to seeking to temper sexual appetite, behavior, and desires. Neither Aristotle nor James makes the judgment that sex is inherently wrong.9 NOTES 1. This chapter serves as a sequel to my chapter on the question of James’s views on gender and sexuality (see Goodson 2016a: 57–77). 2. “[M]etaphysical sexual optimists . . . perceive nothing especially obnoxious in the sexual impulse. They view human sexuality as just another and mostly innocuous dimension of our existence as embodied or animal-like creatures; they judge that sexuality, which in some measure has been given to us by evolution, cannot but be conducive to our well-being without detracting from our intellectual propensities; and they praise rather than fear the power of an impulse that can lift us to various high forms of happiness.” (Soble: http://www.iep.utm.edu/) 3. American philosophy fits the mold of how Kate Millett talks about Western philosophy in general: Millett distinguishes between thinking philosophically about



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“sex” and thinking philosophically about “sexual politics,” and she claims that Western philosophers tend to do the former but not the latter (see Millett 2000). 4. Of course, these are all of the accusations and labels that the present collection of essays seeks to tease and test out. 5. Our habits, not our feelings, make our lives either hellish or worthy of living: “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 walking 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.” 6. For a different view than my own, see Seigfried 2016: 35–36. 7. “The pessimists in the philosophy of sexuality, such as St. Augustine . . . perceive the sexual impulse and acting on it to be something nearly always, if not necessarily, unbefitting the dignity of the human person; they see the essence and the results of the drive to be incompatible with more significant and lofty goals and aspirations of human existence; they fear that the power and demands of the sexual impulse make it a danger to harmonious civilized life; and they find in sexuality a severe threat not only to our proper relations with, and our moral treatment of, other persons, but also equally a threat to our own humanity.” (Soble: http://www.iep.utm.edu/) 8. The most famous line of Augustine’s Confessions: “God, grant me chastity but not quite yet.” Readers tend to focus their attention on the word “chastity,” but the request for chastity from God seems as important as what the request is about. 9. Three of my professors pushed me to think about the role of love and sex in James’s Principles of Psychology: Lallene Rector (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary), Cristina Traina (Northwestern University), and Donald Wester (Oklahoma Baptist University). Although it has been 15 years (or more) since being under their teaching, I am happy that this chapter provides those answers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. 2009. Nichomachean Ethics. Translated by Lesley Brown. New York: Oxford University Press. Augustine. 2009. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodson, Jacob L. 2010. “Experience, Reason, and the Virtues: On William James’s Reinstatement of the Vague.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 31 (3): 243–258. Goodson. 2016a. “‘The Woman Question’: William James’s Negotiations with Natural Law Theory and Utilitarianism.” In Feminist Interpretations of William James. Edited by Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania St. University Press. Goodson. 2016b. “Zou Bisou Bisou: Feminist Theory and Sexual Ethics in Mad Men.” In The Universe Is Indifferent: Theology, Philosophy, Mad Men. Co-edited by Ann W. Duncan and Jacob L. Goodson. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Press.

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James, William. 1878. “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence.” In The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 12, No. 1: 1–18. James. 1950. The Principles of Psychology: Two Volumes. New York: Dover Publications. Millett, Kate. 2000. Sexual Politics. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Plato. 2003. The Symposium. Translated by Christopher Gill. New York: Penguin Press. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 2016. “The Feminine-Mystical Threat to MasculineScientific Order.” In Feminist Interpretations of William James. Edited by Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania St. University Press. Soble, Alan. “Philosophy of Sexuality.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/ (accessed December 7, 2016).

Part II

JAMES’S EARLY WRITINGS ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 4

Blindnesses in James’s Day—and Beyond Amy Kittelstrom

“On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” and “What Makes a Life Significant” are companion essays composed by William James in one extended process of reasoning. They appear at the end of his slim volume Talks to Teachers, and to Students, on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899), an anthology of the addresses he had delivered on the popular lecture circuit after his massive achievement, The Principles of Psychology (1890), and came out shortly after James turned forty-eight. While he was developing the ideas that became, in the twentieth century, pragmatism and radical empiricism, he pitched his working philosophical understandings to young women and men, earnest largely Anglo-Protestant middle-class audiences of educators and students. These two essays represent not only the end of that one book but also the end of that era of endeavor, in which The Will to Believe (1896) had introduced what James was then calling his “pluralistic” philosophy (James 1992: 708). Earlier, he had tried calling it “practicalism.” It defied labels. In these last two essays of this phase of his career, James laid out as carefully and succinctly as he could how in the absence of any valid absolute perspective on truth, each unique human perspective offers a precious angle on truths that can only be glimmered collectively. His pluralism, or multiperspectivalism, mandated a “democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality”—including that of laborers, who were second-class American citizens 47

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at the time (James 1992: 708). As careful and succinct as James aimed to be, these essays also loop, suggest, intimate, and ventriloquize because his argument was not only a philosophical offering but also a humanistic engagement with the times in which he lived. His argument could not be expressed in a formulaic or linear style. The enduring value of the essays consists of exactly this socio-philosophical interpenetration. FORM AND CONTENT The essays bear gerunds that fill the mouth for titles. “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” is about both the universal human inability to feel other people’s feelings or comprehend their inner life and the particular sociocultural inability of some groups of humans to perceive the equal worth of other groups of humans. The first part came from his psychology and the second from his emerging social consciousness. “What Makes a Life Significant” introduces the powerfully resonant phrase “the religion of democracy” to describe how sacredly we must respect the invisible inner lives of others, whose actions serve ideals that not only may differ from our own but must do so. In both essays, the acute and urgent “labor-question” of the late nineteenth century is used to illustrate James’s philosophical points with a practical application (James 1992: 868, 877). The national crisis of industrial strife clearly troubled James, who used the suicide of an unemployed laborer—and father of a tenement-dwelling family—to illustrate the problem of evil in his later Pragmatism (1907). Together, the last essays of his early career provide a compelling argument for cross-class cooperation and communication as well as a vivid reflection of what James valued and understood and what he believed his audience to value and understand, which helps indicate what blinded the American educated elite of his time. James evidently composed the essays in a style designed to draw this educated audience into his reasoning about the blindnesses he believed they shared. Although it takes some effort to say “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” and “What Makes a Life Significant”—especially one after another, as one should do even mentally because they must be considered together— the effort is worthwhile because James could not compress the principles he had to communicate any further. The titles seem to promise different subjects, but as the essays show, the blindness James describes in the first essay is blindness to the significance of others’ lives, and the significance he describes in the second is almost wholly obscured by the blindness established in the first. “Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions,” James laments in the third paragraph of his extended argument, “so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives” (James 1992: 841). And “alien,” in the 1890s, as



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in the twenty-first century, meant not only other than oneself but also specifically immigrant, non-Anglo and non-Protestant in the context of an often xenophobic America. James walks the line of ambiguity in choosing such language as he proceeds with his layered argument. He cuts into a layer and pulls away, sticks the knife in somewhere else and draws it slowly out, gradually opening up seams beneath the stiff surface of assumptions that cover the pulsing reality he wishes to touch and wants his audience at least to smell. Human perceptions are limited because “culture is too hidebound” and empathy is thwarted by “ancestral blindness,” which was passed down to James too (James 1992: 864, 862). To explain how human individuals are trapped in their own consciousness, he imagines the perspective of a dog for whom human intellectual pleasures are a mystery before bringing himself into the story as practically canine in his incomprehension of the satisfaction of a rural farmer who clears a small patch of forest for his family in order to eke out subsistence. This tacking of James between concrete examples punctuated by his own momentary understandings continues across both essays, knitting them together as the gradual accession of light in James’s own mind promises not full transcendence but partial new awarenesses that are as good as awareness gets and indubitably better than sheer darkness, however modest they may be. His looping technique models how consciousness dawns, neither as a swinging pendulum nor as a series of progressions and setbacks, but instead as erratic piercings of light that all add up to more light no matter how randomly distributed they are or how much darkness remains. This elliptical form, shimmering all about his argument with suggestion rather than assertion, is itself a form of argumentation—an aspect of his thesis about human blindness and its consequences. Form and content work together throughout these essays, particularly in James’s use of extensive extracts from the writings of others. His technique of skipping his writing along upon a succession of others’ voices reaches full flower in his subsequent Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)—in which his democratic respect for the individual comes across in his sensitive treatment of diverse mystics, ascetics, self-styled prophets, and humble devotees. In these late early-period essays James borrows the voices of different writers to help him communicate his argument. He told his young friend, the progressive social reformer Pauline Goldmark, he wanted her to read “‘On a certain blindness,’ etc.” because of “the truth it so inadequately tries by dint of innumerable quotations to express” (James 2000: 517). Indeed, paragraphs and pages at a time are given over to authors other than James, who often sighs audibly in literary appreciation after an exquisite passage. Partly this technique serves to draw James’s audience nearer to him, as though they were all simply sitting and reading together; partly it relieves the monotony of a didactic voice. Most importantly, however, James uses other authors’ voices

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to illustrate polyvocality—in fact to demonstrate and enact the very multiperspectivalism he is arguing brings more light and more truth. The two essays not only loop and skip, they also pause and hover as successive sonorous voices speak while James falls silent. Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish writer, helps explain the principle of inner hidden divinity for James, although that is hardly what Stevenson had in mind when he recollected his boyish fun with cheap lamps he and his mates would hide inside their overcoats. The Harvard idealist Josiah Royce uses Christian imagination to spur empathy, and then an obscure French novelist, the English ­Romantic poet William Wordsworth, the exuberant Walt Whitman, the great Leo Tolstoy, and an array of English and Anglo-American writers alternately express angles on the divine. A literary-philosophical relay of insight brings the reader from a state of presumed utter insensitivity to the inner lives of others into some awareness that a range of experiences and a diversity of perspectives indicate a truth fuller, richer, realer than any one vantage point on the vastness of reality. The viewpoints of these alternate authors are essential to James’s argument not only thematically, by way of illustrating multiperspectivalism, but also in terms of what might be called their “subject position”—the elite white maleness conditioning their experiences. James may not have thought of himself as selecting a canon, but his curation of literary sources undeniably promotes an unrelievedly privileged point of view—whatever subtler differences his authors shared. The closest James could get to escaping the prism of his own educated elite was through Walter Wyckoff (1865–1908), a Princeton graduate who chose to live as an unskilled laborer in the 1880s and wrote about it. Besides Wyckoff, James had basically no access to workers’ perspectives— with only his own extremely limited contact with workingmen, servants, or drivers he himself had hired, for example, or laborers whose experiences he entirely imagined, to mine for understanding. His selection of a series of literary voices to help him describe blindness and significance promotes the Anglo-Protestant cultural perspective he believed he and his audience shared, a perspective broadened only by European writers like Tolstoy. Expecting his audience to be familiar with these authors, James is able to incorporate their verbal formulations into his argument in a way that actually heightens the divide between “we of the highly educated classes (so called)”—how he defines himself and his audience—and the laboring classes whose inner divinity he is trying to include in reality (James 1992: 856). The educated literary voices of his essays speak for themselves, naturalizing their culture and giving it outsized representation compared to the humble folk for whose inner significance James is arguing so strenuously in other ways. Yet, James seems to sense this problem through the haze of his own ancestral blindness when he wonders how long it will be before a born-and-raised



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member of the working class will write realistic fiction as well as Tolstoy and, thereby, illuminate humanity as to how laborers unite practice and ideals. Whiggish though this fantasy was, James was also skeptical that any great writer could come of humble origins, a skepticism in line with his psychological axiom that character is formed by one’s early twenties. Habits are so strong, James thought, and the superiority of the elite to the masses so obvious, “hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years” (James 1992: 145–46). Hence the wistful tone James uses when longing for a future working-class writer to help make real for the reading world his inner life. “Must we wait for someone born and bred and living as a laborer himself,” asks James, “but who, by grace of Heaven, shall also find a literary voice?” (James 1992: 867). Just what constitutes a literary voice remains assumed in these essays, not explicated, but it seems to be gendered male. For some reason, absence being a kind of presence, the slave narratives published in mid-nineteenth-century America did not qualify for James. In the context of this relative paucity of broadly diverse voices—of interclass voices—James’s imagination of the Viennese peasant woman, the Hungarian subway worker, and the Italian or other death-defying builder of the world’s first skyscrapers makes the only shade of difference he can make in these essays. The only shade of difference William James could make, though, opened a new category of thinking—a harnessing of the Romantic imagination to the democratic concept of human equality so that a fantasized inner divinity of the other could be conceptualized vividly enough to make a difference in actual perception. This practical idealism of James sounds most clearly in the call to humility he delivers to his educated audience. “Hands off” means do not coerce or judge others because everyone has limitations—for “neither the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands” (James 1992: 860). From taking the principle of “each” very seriously, James suggests that “the poor and the rich” should behold one another from the perspective of the eternal and infinite, “sub specie aeternitatis,” giving birth to tolerance and goodwill as never seen before (James 1992: 880). Note, he makes no suggestion that the poor become safe and comfortable. Note also the absence of African Americans from his imagined, inwardly divine other, an absence that not only reflected the segregated Jim Crow America in which James lived and worked and enjoyed his successes but also reinforced and solidified the exclusion of former slaves and their descendants from the body politic. James used “african savages” to illustrate his notion of cultural blindness, illiterates who thought a newspaper must be magical

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eye medicine, but never in these essays did he acknowledge diversity in the American population beyond the simple dichotomy between the unstated Anglo educated norm for which he claimed to speak—exemplified by Chautauqua, the middle-class paradise of lectures and soda-water—and the laboring immigrants whose perspectives he finds so alien and wishes to render less so (James 1992: 842). Why did James focus on the problem of labor and not “the Negro problem,” as American racial injustice was called at the time and as James’s own student from earlier in the 1890s, W.E.B. DuBois, most certainly discussed with him? When James was preparing to share a platform at the dedication of the monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment in 1897 with Booker T. Washington, the former slave turned educator and orator who did so much to shape American racial politics in the decades after federal withdrawal from the former Confederacy, why did he refer to Washington in a letter to a friend as “the Darkey” (James 2000: 266)? Why did James objectify his fellow orator with that slur and yet invite Washington and his wife to be guests at his Cambridge home? The short answer is: James was a man of his time, specifically a wealthy Anglo-American man of his time. Rather than sectioning off his racial attitudes as irrelevant to his philosophy, modern scholars should incorporate these racial aspects of James’s thought into their understanding because modern scholars can see those racial attitudes while they were hidden to James’s own consciousness. In other words, even the absences in James’s texts form presences. DuBois, far from being publicly bitter about his educational experience at Harvard, remembered landing “squarely in the arms of William James . . . for which God be praised” (Hutchinson 1995: 36). DuBois was frequently a guest at the James home and levied his understanding of pragmatism into a productive position for his extraordinary career, especially evident in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a copy of which James gave his brother Henry the novelist, recommending it as “a decidedly moving book by a mulatto ex-student of mine” (James 1994: 242). Similarly, James’s student Horace M. Kallen, a lapsed Jew, launched his literary-political career on a pragmatic basis, using “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” to develop what Kallen named “cultural pluralism,” which appeared first in a 1915 essay “Democracy vs. the Melting Pot” and again in his 1924 Culture and Democracy in the United States (Hollinger 1995: 92–96). Kallen made the case for Jewish belonging among the diverse American cultures while minimizing the African-American experience, a manifestation of the anti-black prejudice that made him leery of taking tea with the first African-descended Rhodes scholar, Alain Locke, who applied pragmatic principles in his own liberationist work in Harlem and beyond (Menand 1995: 391). Progressive reformers across lines of class and color applied pragmatic thinking to programs and policies. James could not have foreseen these applications of his work, but his own blind spots did not prevent such creative appropriations.



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Instead, his blind spots serve as peripheries to indicate what was the center of his vision. In these essays, his perceptual center was his sense of his audience’s common ground with him. One more formal element of these essays interweaves with its content tellingly: Christian language. When James said, “the scales seemed to fall from my eyes,” he became a St. Peter proclaiming the true gospel of Christ he had once shunned and now beheld as divine (James 1992: 866). But in this case, the noble workingman functioned as a sort of Christ with truly divine nature while James, who makes himself a sort of God the Father when he pauses his narrative by noting “and there I rested on that day,” was in real life no Christian at all (James 1992: 867). Nor was his audience evangelical or fundamentalist; they were not that sort of Anglo-Protestant, which makes them representative of the growing American cultural divide between urban, northern, and elite versus rural and resentful. James’s audience surely included some Reform Jews but was culturally dominated by so-called mainline Protestants: the modernists, liberals, and socially concerned Christians who knew their Bibles and accepted Darwin’s 1859 theory of natural selection by scientific consensus, as James most certainly did. He never had been any sort of believer in the gospel of Christ, but he knew his Bible and developed his pluralism as a semitheistic religion that he actively practiced without ever going to church. Cosmopolitan as James was in some ways, in the 1880s and 1890s he was so surrounded by the liberal Christian atmosphere of Boston Unitarianism, he operated in the frame of what was visible to them. And so provincial were they that in James’s Ingersoll Lecture, delivered before the Harvard community in 1897—well into the era of Chinese exclusion as federal policy—he asks who among his audience thinks Chinamen are fit to perpetuate eternally and answers: “Surely not one of you.” Into the face of such hegemonic anti-Chinese prejudice, James then tested his argument for “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” and “What Makes a Life Significant” by accusing his audience: ‘Tis you who are dead, stone-dead and blind and senseless, in your way of looking on. You open your eyes upon a scene of which you miss the whole significance. Each of these grotesque and even repulsive aliens is animated by an inner joy of living as hot or hotter than that which you feel beating in your private breast. (James 1992: 1124–25)

He was fighting prejudice with prejudice. Knowing he could only see with cloudy eyes, he described what he could see so that other eyes with different clouds could see more than before. “What most horrifies me in life,” James had told his friend Goldmark, “is our brutal ignorance of one another” (James 2000: 517). The struggle against ancestral blindness must continue.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Hollinger, David A. 1995. Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books. 92–96. Hutchinson, George. 1995. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 36. James, William. 1992. Writings, 1878–1899. Ed. Gerald E. Myers. New York: Library of America. 145–46, 708, 841–80, 1124–25. James. 1994. The Correspondence of William James. Volume 3: William and Henry, 1897–1910. Charlottesville: U P of Virginia. James. 2000. The Correspondence of William James. Volume 8: 1895–June 1899. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 3: 242. 4: 266, 517. Kittelstrom, Amy. 2015. The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition. New York: Penguin Press. 155–210. Menand, Louis. 2001. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 391.

Chapter 5

“To See or Not to See?” That Is the Question: James’s “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” D. Micah Hester and Joseph D. John

While his work in both psychology and philosophy has been praised as groundbreaking, William James was no systematic thinker. He developed no fully sustained metaphysics, epistemology, or moral philosophy, and yet for James, no one of these philosophical areas could be divorced from the others. Ultimately, it has been argued that it is best to see his philosophy as “vision” (see Talisse & Hester 2004), and he called his philosophical weltanschauung (his “worldview”) “radical empiricism”: Radical empiricism consists first of a postulate, next a statement of fact, and finally of a general conclusion. The postulate is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. [Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for philosophical debate.] The statement of fact is that the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves. The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possess in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure. (James 1909: 136)

James postulates that only and all experience matters to philosophy—radical empiricism establishes an attitude, an approach to philosophy writ large. Once such a vision of philosophy is postulated, a “fact” about experience 55

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itself is put forth—namely, the “parts” of experience include both “disjunctive” and “conjunctive” elements, and this “fact” leads to the “conclusion” that while experience is divisible it is also constitutively self-supporting in and through its content. Ours, accordingly, is a “pluralistic universe.” James goes further than the modern empiricists such as Locke and Hume, who see experience as reducible to atomic sensations and isolated moments/events. James claims this plurality includes the connections among sensations and events as well. James’s philosophy, then, is shot through by this radically empirical vision, and this is no less true of his moral philosophy and axiology. While his essay, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (MPML 1891) is James’s best-known work in ethics, nowhere is his concern for taking all experience seriously more evident in his corpus than in his essay, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.” (OCB 1899) Therein, James emphasizes two important points: first, the origin of value is individual e­ xperience. Value does not preexist, to be captured by the right kinds of human ­experience—it emerges from it. Second, most, if not all, moral problems emerge from the fact that humans are creatures with a peculiar habit of blindness with regards to each others’ values and interests. That is, the starting point of any moral theory—as with any theory, according to James—is the content of experience, specifically the ethical experiences both of ourselves and of others. Further, though philosophers frequently believe themselves to have articulated or found some absolute standard of morality, no one person holds the whole of truth about values. The essay, “On a Certain Blindness” is James’s demonstration of the importance of a radically empirical vision in relation to social/practical/axiological conditions of life—that is, all and only the interests and values of all involved must be taken seriously in any and all moral determinations. Of course, this one essay, taken alone, is far from a complete analysis of morality, and even taken together with his other essays, James never developed a fully systematic moral philosophy. However, his various writings do succeed in analyzing important aspects of the moral life that must be addressed in any comprehensive moral theory. In MPML, James speaks to a concept of “the good” that is grounded in experience, and he describes how conflicts between/among goods lead to an imperative for determining “goods” that are worthy of pursuit. According to MPML, “There is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance” (WB: 142). Values cannot be known, considered, or weighed against each other before they emerge from experience. The moral philosopher (which we all are) cannot stop at identifying those concerns, because they are pressing— there are many conflicting claims and obligations, and we cannot choose them all. His/her task is to develop creatively an inclusive story that captures



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the vast array of interests at play. While James has a highly individualistic account of morality in that values emerge from individual experience, he cannot escape the social nature of the concerns he is addressing. He recognizes that in order to fashion a moral “universe” one must “satisfy alien demands” when in pursuit of one’s own ends. It is only a few years later that James seems to take a step back to what may be seen as prior concern—not simply “what should one do in the face of moral conflict?” but instead, “whence cometh conflict in the first place?” How is it that individuals come to have such a wide variety of values that often conflict? This, one might say, is the question behind the essay, “On a Certain Blindness.” The purpose of this chapter, then, is to flesh out the moral implications of this “certain blindness.” This blindness is an aspect of the human condition that directly affects our ability to act ethically in the world. James’s moral philosophy struggles with individual interests, values, and desires in light of the need to fashion a way to live together in harmony. His is a “pluralistic universe” full of a “variety of lived experience.” Overall, however, James’s work in ethics falls short of a comprehensive moral philosophy. In light of this, though, we begin with a brief look at MPML, in order to place James’s radically empirical vision into a larger argument that suggests we should cultivate a kind of suspended judgment about others’ choices and actions—an “overcoming” of our blindness—until reasonable investigation has occurred, and that the “best” outcomes are those that “invent some manner” of including others’ values in our moral determinations. THE BLINDNESS WE HAVE With an alarm chiming in the room, a nurse gets up from the computer to check the monitor, shuts off the alarm, and sighs. The patient in the bed is 12 years old, but is only the size of a 6-year-old. He is well-known to the critical care nurse, the entire pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) staff, in fact, as he has spent many months of his life in the hospital. He was born prematurely, with multiple congenital anomalies which have resulted in him permanently connected to the ventilator, and his chronic care needs often result in him having to spend time in the PICU and pulmonary unit of the hospital. While requiring massive effort over his lifetime by his mother and home nursing, he is well cared for, able to get out into the world, visiting amusement parks and attending concerts, among other activities. His mother beams when he smiles and is wholly devoted to him. He is her world, giving up her job to be home with him. As he lies in the hospital, she is by his side, encouraging him to get better and imploring the staff to keep him going.

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The experiences of the healthcare providers are quite different, however. They see a boy on the decline, working hard to breathe, suffering under the strain of tests and medications and therapy. They feel as if what they do is as much torture as care, and they wonder out loud what the point of all this is. They see the child as barely conscious, and they “diagnose” the mother with “denial.” His time in the ICU moves from days to weeks, and conversations between the staff and mother grow more tense and terse. Ultimately, the issue is basic, though not simple: What should be done for the boy, and why? With such ethically charged challenges as posed by this situation, we might look to moral philosophers for ways to address the concerns of the family and providers. Some moral philosophies develop moral principles that are designed or identified to determine ethically acceptable actions—be these based on duties or consequences or some other important values. Like philosophers before (and after) him, William James strives to place our actions on firm moral ground. His work in ethics, however, is piecemeal but insightful. In MPML, James argues that no individual’s experience is by necessity more worthy than another’s: “We all help determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race’s moral life” (WB: 142). Although human history does develop some consistent cultural values that endure—“we are born into a society whose ideals are largely ordered over time” (WB: 155)—each situation poses new interests or reexamines old interests within new contexts. Each individual holds his/her own values uniquely. Adjudicating among them, while requiring tolerance and awareness of cultural factor and societal values, must take all values and interests seriously. The moral philosopher must note the tragic loss of any individually expressed value that is not supported through our ethical determinations, for “the cries of the wounded will soon inform” us of the consequences (WB: 159). James’s normative claims in MPML begin with the expressed experience of individuals—where the “goods” identified in experience form the basis for our determination of “the good.” As such, every individual’s desires are important to our moral considerations. These desires, when expressed, are “claims”1 and for James, “[T]here is some obligation wherever there is a claim. . . . [E]very de facto claim creates in so far forth an obligation” (WB: 149). According to James, a personal claim in part constitutes a corresponding request that this claim be satisfied in the context in which it arises. He is not here using the term “obligation” to denote the outcome of an adjudication of claims nor as that which follows from a moral imperative. That is, he is not saying that simply because I request a car and you have one, you must give it to me. Instead, James’s “claim” is descriptive of lived experience wherein individual activities (i.e., claims) place into the conversation of the



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community the need to recognize said claims. In this, James’s view closely aligns with that of John Dewey. Some activity proceeds from a man; then it sets up reactions in the surroundings. Others approve, disapprove, protest, encourage, share and resist. Even letting a man alone is a definite response. Envy, admiration and imitation are complicities. Neutrality is non-existent. (1988 [1922]: 16)

Though articulated differently, Dewey and James seem to be saying the same thing. People make claims, perform actions, express desires, and others who have the resource to meet the claim are, in the broadest sense of the term, obligated. They are obliged to recognize, reconstruct, redirect, and respond to the claim in conjunction with their own activities. This obligation is basic and precritical, a kind of de facto or pro tanto obligation. In order to move from de facto obligations to “ethical” obligations, however, takes critical reflection upon our present and anticipated obligations in order to determine which obligations to fulfill and which to let drop. While de facto obligations arise with every expressed desire, a truly ethical obligation only results from the reflective process of weighing competing claims and their corresponding obligations—for example, an investigation of my desire to have a car versus your desire to keep your money or car. Ethics then begins with concrete claims that produce existent obligations, but the “moral philosopher” (which we all are) cannot rest there. In order to arrive at an ethical outcome, we must adjudicate existing claims, intelligently and imaginatively devising a way to fulfill as many as possible. We must responsibly decide, in light of all de facto obligations, which to satisfy and which to let slide. The decisions will be troubling, and we will be called to account for them, as those whose demands go unsatisfied will rightly require of us an account of our decision-making. So once again, we are confronted with the demand for inquiry which must be addressed, as we have said, by way of the radically empirical attitude, taking experience and meaning where we can find them. Every expressed claim places us in a position which demands we recognize it and react to it. And it is our task to decide which to pursue and which must fall away, recognizing that the challenge of such a moral philosophy means that some ideals, in James’s words, will be “butchered,” and demands for their inclusion in future considerations will continue—our de facto considerations must be addressed anew.2 Certainly, in the Jamesian sense of the term, we have many obligations. Since we are caught up in social relationships, it would be virtually impossible not to have them. People constantly have desires and make claims which demand our time and energies. Morality consists of sorting

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out these claims and deciding which take priority. But in order to sort out these claims we must first be able to get outside our own values in order to allow for proper evaluation of all values at play. This, then, brings us to the motivation for OCB. Eight years after MPML, James is haunted by a social and moral psychological question: Can we come to know and understand the experiences and values of others, and if so, how? The primary concern is that we persistently fail to give others’ due credit. Despite our obligations to try to understand others, and even our attempts made in good faith, James notes that our own individual values routinely affect our forms of judgment about others. He calls this the “blindness” of our human condition. He observes, We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons’ conditions or ideals. (TTP: 132)

James speaks here of the blindness of human beings to each others’ duties, interests, and values—a blindness brought on by self-absorption in our own interests and values. He warns of the problems with making “absolute” judgments concerning others given this blindness in us. If we take James seriously, then we must be careful in our attempts to decide for other people concerning situations that affect them. Our self-concerned habits lead to the easy judgment that what is best for others is simply what we judge to be best for ourselves; at which point, simply adjudicate according to our own obligations and satisfactions rather than attempt to understand other people’s desires and beliefs. However, unlike MPML, OCB is less an argument than it is a demonstration, only in the last paragraph gesturing to the ethical consequences of his insights. In fact, in describing the essay, James says, “I tried to make you feel how soaked and shot-through life is with values and meanings which we fail to realize because of our external and insensible point of views. . . . [This is] the basis of all our tolerance, social, religious, and political” (TTP: 150, emphasis added). James’s central claim regarding morality—namely, that morality begins with felt experience—is also the method he uses to support that claim. Through providing examples and citing vivid poetry and prose (more than half the essay consists of quotations from other authors), James tries to make the reader feel the experience of others; evoking recognition of



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the personal nature of experience of others as well as ourselves, thus pointing to the origin of value he spelled out earlier in MPML: The feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity; and of the essential vulgarity of others, as querulousness, anxiety, egoistic fussiness, etc; are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own pure sake. The nobler thing tastes better, and that is all we can say. (WB: 144)

As noted above, in MPML James paints a picture of a moral universe of individuals. The very notion that something is good or bad depends on the fact that some person judges it to be good or bad. If there were only one person, that person’s judgments would be law. Since there are many people, the moral life demands that we address competing claims in order to fashion a moral universe. To satisfy this demand, we must first recognize the plurality of values held by each of us. He uses the essay OCB to make this point by excerpting a great many passages from others’ insightful writings. Perhaps the most poignant provided comes as an extended (several pages worth) quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson. In the passage, Stevenson describes a group of boys who took to carrying around a tin “bull’s-eye” lantern underneath their coats, a custom they copied from the lives of adults they wished to emulate, sailors and police. The lantern smelled bad, and there was a significant risk of burning oneself. For all practical purposes the undertaking was largely pointless, but it gave each of them a secret joy: The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart, to know you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.” (TTP: 136, citing Stevenson’s “The Lantern Bearers”)

To outsiders, the boys were running around cold, dark, and wet, and looked miserable. But each held the secret lantern close, the secret filling them with joy. According to James, this is how we must imagine the life of others. From the outside, Stevenson argues, a stranger’s life “may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a bull’s eye at his belt” (TTP: 136). James continues his essay, citing Wordsworth, Shelley, Carlyle, Emerson, and others at great length. Each of these writers conveys experiences of individuals which too often go uncovered and unconsidered: James includes

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Whitman’s insightful account of the vividness of a ferry crossing and that same “hoary loafer’s” simple account of riding in a carriage through a city and watching a scene unfold. To this James adds Cellini’s account of religious ecstasy in even a dungeon and Tolstoi’s descriptions of the inner joys of Peter in War and Peace. After recounting example after example, James somewhat abruptly ends his essay and summarizes his argument in the final paragraph. When we start to understand these vividly held personal experiences of others as the place where value emerges, “It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us” (TTP: 149). CAN BLINDNESS BE OVERCOME? We can see, then, the importance, to James of recognizing the inner lives and values of others, and yet we are locked in a paradox. The “certain human blindness” to which James refers is precisely a blindness to the inner life of others, and it is a “blindness with which we all are afflicted” (TTP: 132). Throughout, James’s implication is that this blindness is incurable. But if so, then what would it even mean to value others’ inner lives if they always remain blinded from us. On the one hand, James acknowledges a troubling part of the human condition, and on the other, desires to overcome something that seems, in principle, insurmountable. It is important to remember, then, that OCB makes almost no logical argumentation at all. Instead, James intentionally and frequently uses literary passages to show just these aspects of the human condition in order to connect with our common sensibilities. Poets and literary geniuses have the ability to communicate something of that inner life by providing insight, not through argument but through vision. In fact, “The basis of all our tolerance” (OCB: 150) comes by way of seeing differently, of envisioning the lives of others. But if this envisioning is possible, then it would seem that blindness can be overcome. In fact, if we are completely and utterly unable to recognize the “alien” experiences of others, moral progress would be impossible. Again, MPML states, 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 that only is the path of peace! (WB: 156)



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The paradox is not so easily dismissed. The force of James’s essay dissolves if this “certain” blindness does not exist as part of the human condition, and yet, the moral life is doomed to failure if our blindness cannot be overcome. So, do we have to remain blind, or are we able to see the inner life of others? The genius of the essay, by avoiding argument and using literature, is that James is able to demonstrate through these narrative and poetic accounts, in ways argument could never show, that, in fact, both are true. The necessary implication here is that our blindness is not complete; it is a matter of degree. We can use the analogy to the difference between “legal” blindness and “complete” blindness to make our point. It is not uncommon for those who are legally but not completely blind to refer to themselves as blind. Similarly, blindness of which James speaks admits of degrees. As such, the question is not “Are you blind?” but “How blind are you?” We all have some incurable blindness, being unable to see off into the distance, unable to grasp some ideals that others find to be significant. However, we also can have the veil lifted. Skilled poets, engaging teachers, imaginative individuals of many kinds can offer others a fleeting glimpse of others’ felt experiences, and a skilled reader of poetry or invested student might be able to see farther than others. So how might we come to see farther than ourselves? James’s solution can be read as having three parts: first, pay attention to one’s own experience; next, to pay attention to the experience of others; and third, admit that the blindness can never be fully overcome. James implies that we ought to do these things, but James did not set them out here as an organized method. Thus, it seems reasonable to consider these “obligations” in the sense discussed earlier, following from James’s more general normative claim in MPML. All values being intrinsically valuable and worthwhile, we ought to fashion a moral universe that recognizes as many ends as possible. BLINDNESS TO OURSELVES As a radical empiricist, James claims that the starting point in coming to recognize values is ourselves. To begin with oneself is to realize the depth of one’s own experiences, to recognize that they are shot through with values. By analogy, then, one can begin to generalize personal experiences. Throughout OCB, James implores us to take stock of our own life—what experiences around us are we missing by simply not paying attention. All kinds of oncein-a-lifetime experiences pass us by. Drawing on Whitman’s account of riding a ferry, James writes, When your ordinary Brooklynite or New Yorker, leading a life replete with too much luxury, or tired and careworn about his personal affairs, crosses the ferry

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or goes up Broadway, his fancy does not thus ‘soar away into the colors of the sunset’ as did Whitman’s, nor does he inwardly realize at all the indisputable fact that this world never did anywhere or at any time contain more of essential divinity, or of eternal meaning, than is embodied in the fields of vision over which his eyes so carelessly pass . . . to the jaded and unquickened eye, it is all dead and common, pure vulgarism, flatness, and disgust. (TTP: 144)

If we are blind to our own experience, it is little wonder why we are blind to the experiences of others. For James, it would seem, then, that paying attention to the depth of your own experience is both a good in itself and a good insofar as such attention consciously or unconsciously evokes an appreciation for others’ experiences. It may be the case that by neglecting to see the beauty and value all around us, we may fail to meet an obligation we have to ourselves. Even though the individual bears the effects of this neglect in solitude, a value goes unrealized, and that value is as much a part of the moral universe as any other. Further, the implication is that a commitment to observation of one’s own experience is what gives rise to the knowledge—not so much understood as it is felt—that all other persons have this felt experiential knowledge as well. So much of our experience is contingent, surprising, and vivid beyond words—if we are surprised by our own newly experienced values as they emerge, then it should not be surprising to us that others have experienced some of these shared values for themselves in their own vivid ways. James’s main emphasis in this essay, though, is that the values of others are quite often unique to themselves and utterly foreign to us. BLINDNESS TO OTHERS The next obligation that James implies is that although we are often blind to the experiences of others, we can, in actuality, come to recognize and understand their values to some extent. James gives an example from his own life: riding through the countryside, he saw clearings and huts in the forest that he regarded as “unmitigated squalor” and the destruction of beautiful forest (TTP: 134). Upon talking to his driver, though, James realized that the people who lived there regarded those clearings as sources of great pride and accomplishment. Through this communication, then, new values were disclosed. Thus, we ought to pay attention to and learn about each other’s experiences. There seem to be two ways to put this implication into action: put simply, we ought to listen—as James listened to his driver—and we ought to express ourselves well so that others may listen. Crediting yet another poet, James notes that the “inner life of [Wordsworth] carried the burden of a significance that has fed the souls of others, and fills them to this day with inner joy” (TTP: 140). Through his poetry, Wordsworth was able to connect his own



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insights, values, and experiences with others. James focused his explanations here on those exceptional poets and artists that he thought were able to do this very well, but we need not assume that only these exceptional individuals were capable of such talk. Expressing oneself clearly, even if it’s not in memorable, poetic language, is vital for moral progress and conflict resolution between individuals. Thus, James recognized that morality depends on shared experiences between individuals. The moral life finds each of us to be experiencers and values carriers. It is our moral “baggage.” That baggage shapes our experiences, interests, and desires. But in a finite universe with billions of people with limited powers and resources, our values interests and desires can run into conflict with others’ moral baggage. What we want, which good to pursue, which path is right, are all up for debate when other people’s wants, goods, and pursuits challenge our own. Morality is social, as John Dewey tells us, and these challenges call us to account for ourselves in light of the situation at hand. This accounting may be ignored, descriptive, or reflective, but the social aspect of the moral life is constitutive. We do not live in isolation, and our decisions and actions do not occur in a vacuum. Dewey, better than James, recognized the fundamentally social character of human experience, but James implicates the social life as well. It is in essays like “On a Certain Blindness” that this implication comes through, and one consequence of implication of sociality is that humans share some things in common. One of those common characteristics is that we all strive for significance in life. As James tells us elsewhere, “whenever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life become genuinely significant” (WB: 134). We identify our ideals and strive to actualize those ideals through action. As he tells us elsewhere, The significance of life . . . is the offspring of a marriage of two different parents, either of whom alone are barren. The ideals taken by themselves give no reality, the virtues by themselves no novelty. . . . [T]he thing of deepest—or at any rate, of comparatively deepest—significance in life does seem to be its character of progress, or that strange union of reality with ideal novelty which it continues from one moment to another to present. (WB: 164)3

An individual progresses in life whenever s/he is able to develop an end and deploy means to attain it within his/her lived experience. For example, the desire to walk in a patient with a spinal chord injury gives meaning to his/her life as s/he progresses through medical treatment and physical therapy. The activity is meaningful precisely for the reason that it entails a personal ideal (wanting to walk) and the wherewithal to achieve the ideal (the strength of character to succeed which energizes the hours of effort).

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Of course, simpler, less time-consuming, more routine ideals and labors (such as desiring to eat and then preparing a meal) are in their own ways instances of meaningful progress, for it is our everyday labors which develop the character of our grander schemes, while grander schemes help to shape the development of everyday pursuits. Our daily ideals often become part of the means to yet further ideals, and still are themselves ends to be enjoyed without recourse to their function in our higher goals. Again, physical therapy, for example, takes many individual efforts that come together to produce a self-supporting individual, and each activity—for example, using support bars, weight training, the first 10 feet of distance traveled—can be satisfying and enjoyable in its own right quite independent of the connections to the whole. Given this two-part account of “significance” (or, as James sometimes calls it, “meaning”), every person at any stage of life can have ideals, and meaning in life is highly individualized. As James says, “[T]here is nothing absolutely ideal: ideals are relative to the lives that entertain them” (WB: 163). Here again, we are confronted with James’s own radically empirical attitude. Experience everywhere and anywhere is taken seriously, and “meaning,” in this way, arises from individual and specific ideals held. As part of his radical empiricism, James holds that it is impossible to know fully the experiences of another, shot-through with value and experience. Experience, he argues, is always personal and individual (cf. “Stream of Thought” chapter in The Principles of Psychology). However, in relation to human “blindness,” James illustrates in “On a Certain Blindness” that despite the personal nature of experience it is still possible to open oneself up to the experience of others’ values and interests. To work “past” our blindness to each other’s ideals and struggles in obtaining them, we must recognize something we all share—the having of ideals and the struggling themselves. BLINDNESS TO BLINDNESS The third implication—one that James captures remarkably well here—is that while morality is largely social, there remains an irreducibly individual aspect. Part of understanding the other, James seems to suggest, is to acknowledge that for all our efforts, we cannot enter into the mind of another, to feel the lantern closely underneath their cloak, nor experience their secret joy from the smell and the heat. The other has such a lantern, just as we do—that we all carry with us values and interests that motivate our lives. Ethically, then, we must accept that to understand the other entails both a measure of empathy and a recognition that full and total understanding of the other is impossible. We must find some middle ground: on the one hand, a total disregard for the feelings of another, dismissed as unknowable, is obviously a moral problem



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for James. Another problem, though—and a more insidious one—is a mistaken belief that one does indeed understand the deep secrets of another, completely understands them, and is therefore in a position to judge that person. The self-appointed judge imagines him/herself in the position of the other, and also imagines that his/her imagination is sufficient to understand all the relevant details about that person’s life. So, a final tension of the essay can be put, thusly: if we imagine that blindness can be entirely overcome, we will remain blind to our own blindness. The beginning of moral theorizing, then, is not so much an attempt to empathize and completely understand the other, but an admission that one could not ever fully accomplish this while at the same time attempting to gain insight into the other person’s inner life. This may seem paradoxical, but it is not contradictory as long as we consider blindness to be a matter of degree—something to be diminished as much as possible, but never completely overcome. One example of the tension and its importance can be seen in contemporary society regarding the experiences of different cultures. No matter how great their intellectual and emotive concerns may be, white Americans will never fully engage with the experience of black Americans. This does not, then, entail that white Americans should simply give up and embrace their continued blindness to Black experiences. The conviction that blindness can never be fully overcome may lead some to prematurely give up and overlook the experiences of others that we actually can come to know, at least in part—especially when works of great Black poets and writers are there for them to read. No, in fact, overstating the blindness simply widens the divisions. On the other hand, however, another great injustice occurs when it is presumed that some careful intellectual reflection about the experiences of Black persons by white persons is somehow adequate to the task. So, too, tensions may arise when the empathy of heterosexuals presumes to feel the force of gay/lesbian experiences—or even men for women, rich for poor, and so forth. The problem, then, is not (necessarily) a lack of empathy or trying to understand; it is the failure to realize that there are some things experienced at a visceral level that others simply cannot or will not feel or comprehend. Even those closest to us, those whom we have much in common, will have their own private lanterns. Thus, morality cannot depend solely on the ability to comprehend fully the experience of another by imaginatively placing oneself in another’s shoes. If it did so depend, then no person could be completely moral. A great deal of morality then, depends on James’s claim here that the person in the best position to describe his or her private lanterns is herself; as James puts it, “Hands off!”; it is incumbent upon us to take their word for it, barring good reasons for doubt. Even when there are compelling reasons for the desires of any individual to be stifled or criminalized for some greater good, we ought not feel at ease.

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A BLINDNESS OF JAMES No one is immune to the problem of blindness, and as M. C. Otto suggests, James himself seems to have been blind to a great deal of the suffering and social ills of his own time (Otto 1943). Perhaps, Otto argues, James was too eager to find a sort of romance in life even when a person is enduring serious economic and social injustice. While he was no doubt a compassionate person, Otto argues, James underestimated “the depressing, degrading effects of having to exist in poverty, day in and day out, in an atmosphere on economic insecurity, subject to being thrown on the scrap heap of unemployment when no longer wanted” (1954: 185) In particular, Otto refers to James’s instance that despite these sorts of conditions, there remains something of value. Otto substantiates his account by appealing to James’s criticisms of Walter Wyckhoff, who tried to highlight the many ways in which the working class’s lives were being ruined by unfair conditions. James argued that Wykhoff failed to see all the wonderful aspects of toil and labor and acknowledge that some of those laborers were perfectly content, hard work being its own reward (Otto 186–187). To this we may add the account we just considered in “On a Certain Blindness.” James speaks admiringly of the heroic and vivid inner lives of men sentenced to dungeons and horrors of war, almost praising their horrible conditions as ways to create new kinds of values. It would seem that James used his own imagination to supplement some of the accounts of inner lives of others rather than genuinely listening to others. According to Otto, James focuses on the hidden private goods in each person’s life as somehow ameliorating the struggle. While he talks of private lanterns and vivid ferry rides, James seems to exclude the private sufferings. However, the larger context of James’s work reminds us that he avoided absolute and dogmatic claims, tending instead toward fallibalism. In fact, he writes, “The very best of men must not only be insensible, but be ludicrously and peculiarly insensible to many goods” (MPML: 345). That is to say, James admitted—and particularly emphasized—that he himself is also afflicted with the “certain blindness.” But Otto’s point emphasizes an area that James may have left underdeveloped: the art of listening well. James no doubt thought we ought to listen, as he listened to his driver on that Appalachian trail. But if it is a virtue to become a poet who can communicate one’s inner life to others, so too is it a virtue to become a skilled listener, someone who can help others express their own inner lives according to their own frameworks, without reinterpreting or misrepresenting those inner lives.4 Through collecting stories, listening, and paying attention to the experiences of others as best as we can, and admitting where we cannot, we can start putting together a picture of the moral universe. One recalls the old Jain



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parable about the six blind men arguing over the elephant: upon encountering the leg, one man claims it must be a pillar. Another grabs the tail and asserts that it is a rope, and a third grabs the trunk and says that it is a tree. The last three touch the side, the ear, and the tusk, respectively, claiming respectively that they have encountered a wall, a fan, and a pipe. Each has part of the truth, and none are wrong about their own perceptions. It is only when all the perceptions are taken together that the isolated images and experiences become a unified, integrated picture. James believes that our task, in the guise of the moral philosopher, remains to widen the picture as much as possible in order to attempt to fashion a moral universe. CONCLUSION As the boy continues to lie in the hospital and the days and weeks tick by, too many backroom discussions occur among healthcare providers, between family members, but no bedside conversations take place that investigate the values and interest on both sides of the moral divide. Neither side can see why the other does not get it. After a while, however, someone calls for an ethics consultation, and the clinical ethicist begins, not with ethical precepts and moral rule, but by talking—talking to the boy’s mother, talking to the healthcare providers. She learns of the mother’s experiences of joy, of triumph over obstacles. The mother also expresses her fears—not just of losing her son but of being a “bad mother” for allowing him to die. The team talks of the distress that they feel when the boy shudders at their touch or grimaces when stuck. They speak of issues of resources, and concern for “quality” of the child’s life. At last, they are brought to a room to talk together, and in that discussion, stories are told—by both parties. The ethicist recites the mother’s concern about being a good mother to the team, and the team is visibly moved. The mother hears the distress in the voices of the nurses who care for him daily. Little by little, they see each other for who they are—not entirely, not fully— but insightfully, at least. The discussion moves to another day, and again, more is revealed, and in the latter discussion, decisions are made about the trajectory of the child’s care that both parties can accept. Neither party ends where they began, and yet both find common ground together. Neither the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. (TTP: 149)

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NOTES 1. There is debate in the secondary literature about what James means by “claim” here. On the one hand, James himself slips among the terms “claims,” “ideals,” and “demands.” While we have chosen to see “claims” as a descriptive of a certain kind of lived experience, experience that may be captured alternatively by “ideals” or “demands” depending on perspective, much more hangs on the interpretation of this term for the moral understanding of James by the likes of Roth (1969), Myers (1986), Gale (1999), and Cooper (2002), and we leave it to them to work through the confusion. 2. We have not pointed out potential weaknesses in this Jamesian account. We take it as a reasonable account of ethics in light of taking on a radically empirical attitude. However, others may find reasons to reject this as a reasonable account of ethics, regardless. See, for example, the critique of James’s moral philosophy in the recent book by Robert Talisse and Scott Aikin, Pragmatism: A guide for the Perplexed (2008). There is a strong argument that is raised primarily by the fact that James’s position does not recognize that some “demands . . . [simply] would be immoral to meet” (115). They try to make the case for the kind of moral “intuitionism”—what they call “common sense moral commitments” (116) that grounds their critique. James’s claim, however, is that no such “common sense” claims can be made a priori. Only experience and reflection can determine which demands must go unsatisfied. Some demands will, by the very nature of the “costs” involved in their satisfaction, have a much harder time being justified, and thus they will practically never move from de facto to de jure. 3. James does qualify this idea of “significance” employed here with the phrase “for communicable and publicly recognizable purposes.” We take this qualification as a contrast with remarks he makes elsewhere in such works as Varieties of Religious Experience where he admits to the possibility of a kind of mystical “private” significance in an individual’s life. Cf. James 1902: 379–429, Lectures XVI & XVII, “Mysticism.” In particular, James’s qualifier specifically opposes his use of the term “mystical states of consciousness” in Varieties where James begins his definition of this term with the idea that the mystical is “ineffable,” “transient,” and “passive”— three terms not readily applicable to socially recognizable meaning in life. Since my discussion is concerned with lived, social experience, James’s qualifier becomes unnecessarily redundant. 4. Another American philosopher worth considering on this point is Jane Addams, who wrote extensively on the art and necessity of listening well (cf. Addams 1919).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Addams J. 1919. “The Devil Baby at Hull House” The Atlantic, October. Cooper W. 2002. The Unity of William James’s Thought. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.



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Dewey J. 1988 [1922]. Human Nature and Conduct. Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 14. Boydston J (ed.). Carbondale, Il: Southern Illinois University Press. Gale R. 1999. The Divided Self of William James. New York: Cambridge University Press. James, William. 1981 [1890]. The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Cited as PP) ———. 1979 [1891]. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (Cited as MPML). In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (Cited as WB). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1978 [1909]. The Meaning of Truth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1983 [1899]. “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (Cited as OCB). In Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Cited as TTP). Myers GE. 1986. William James: His Life and Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Otto, MC. 1943. “On a Certain Blindness in William James.” Ethics 53(3): 184–91. Roth JK. 1969. Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James. Louisville, KY: Westminster Press. Talisse, RB. and Hester DM. 2004. On James. East Windsor, CT: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Talisse, RB. and Aikin SF. 2008. Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum.

Chapter 6

Horny Hands and Dirty Skin Courage, Humility, Patience, and Tolerance in William James’s Ethics Jacob L. Goodson

“[V]irtue with horny hands and dirty skin [is] the only virtue genuine and vital enough to take account of…” William James, “What Makes a Life Significant”

The day before I had a job interview for an administrative position at a prestigious university on the east coast, my mother called me to offer her judgment on the job description: “This job requires tolerance toward students of other religious traditions, but I raised you to convert them—not tolerate them. What is your plan for the interview tomorrow?” Initially, I was shocked by the sheer amount of assumptions being made in this telephone call: uninvited an unreflective judgment about administrative demands in the academy, my adult self being held to the standards of my childhood, and an unwelcomed query concerning my interview plans for facing a made-up problem. This position involved working for the Dean of Religious Life, and the interview allowed me to spend a significant amount of time with the Dean. At one point during the day, he asked me, “Do you have any concerns with this position?” As an act of tolerance toward her, I decided to give representation to my mother’s voice so I asked, “Evangelical Christians might look at this job and say that it demands ‘tolerance’ toward members of other religious traditions whereas an Evangelical might think that conversion and proselytizing ought to be one’s posture toward those of other religious faiths. What would you say to this concern?” I tell this story because of the ironical role of “tolerance” within it. While I was told not to be tolerant, the only way to take seriously the antitolerance position involved demonstrating tolerance toward it. What kind of person should I be? Should I be intolerant toward my mother by not giving voice to her advice, or be tolerant toward my mother’s advice and give voice to her 73

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position of intolerance? The more generic version of this question is: should one be intolerant by not giving voice to the position of intolerance, or should one be tolerant toward the position of intolerance by giving voice to positions of intolerance? William James offers a strong defense of tolerance as a particular kind of virtue.1 James even admits that tolerance is a complex and messy virtue: one that leads to calloused hands and dirties the skin. James’s understanding of tolerance serves as a mid-point position, between defending intolerance and claiming tolerance as impossible to achieve. Bernard Williams argues that while tolerance seems necessary within the modern world, it remains an “impossible virtue” to actually practice (see Williams 1996: 18–27). By thinking of tolerance as a complex and messy virtue, James carves out a position making tolerance difficult but not impossible. James defends tolerance as one of ten virtues in “What Makes a Life Significant”—an essay I interpret as representative for what philosophers and scholars now call the tradition of liberal virtue. In this chapter, I outline the ten virtues recommended by James in “What Makes a Life Significant” and make a case for what I consider James’s four cardinal virtues: tolerance, patience, humility, courage. Second, I explain the significance of James’s metaphors of “horny hands” and “dirty skin.” Third, I discuss James’s understanding of happiness, joy, and living a significant life. The Jamesean answer to the question—should one be intolerant by not giving voice to the position of intolerance, or should one be tolerant toward the position of intolerance by giving voice to positions of intolerance?—is that exercising tolerance toward people and positions of intolerance becomes one way that being virtuous remains complex and messy in our everyday lives. Tolerance is a virtue that callouses the hands and dirties the skin. Giving voice to intolerant positions displays the virtue of courage,2 because it risks being perceived as the intolerant having a hold on you. Giving voice to intolerant positions displays the virtue of humility, because you do not prioritize your own positions over and against those of which you disagree. Giving voice to intolerant positions displays the virtue of patience, because you endure their intolerance in your own life. By the phrase giving voice, I mean how we need to learn to make tolerance an active virtue rather than a passive one.3 JAMES’S FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES According to William James, there is no set formula for the significant life. There are virtues, however, that aid us in coming to know how to navigate life without a set formula. James thinks that it does not matter which context you find yourself: these virtues are the ones required for the virtuous life, and



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living the virtuous life guides us in making our lives significant. I find ten virtues defended by James in “What Makes a Life Significant”: tolerance, courage, patience, sympathy, insight, good will, humility, reverence toward others, love toward others, and good humor. Cultivating these virtues results in happiness, joy, and living a significant life. James divides his discussion of virtue into two groups: ideals and sentiments. An ideal has two characteristics: intellectually conceived and novelty.4 James argues “that there is nothing absolutely ideal: ideals are relative to the lives that entertain them.” The virtues that are ideals are not absolute ideals—which mean that they might look different relative to the person who cultivates them. By sentiment, James means the passionate part of human beings that tries to find balance and moderation; three virtues help us achieve this balance and moderation.5 For clarity’s sake, I define each of these virtues based on James’s words within “What Makes a Life Significant” (some quotations, sometimes a summary). After defining each virtue, I focus on what I consider James’s four cardinal virtues. Ideal Virtues Tolerance: “The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours. No one has insight into all the ideals. No one should presume to judge them off-hand. The pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep” (James 1977: 645). Love toward others: “If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people’s lives . . . such persons know more . . . truth than [what they feel in their hearts]. The vice of ordinary . . . affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable today, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd” (James 1977: 646). Courage: Interchangeable with the word “bravery,” this is the virtue required for the daily jobs of working on “freight-trains, on the decks of vessels, in cattleyards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen”; courage becomes an “unconscious” virtue, and it’s required for the “heroic life” (James 1977: 649). Humility: Required for the virtue of tolerance, humility is the virtue that ought to be directed at oneself and relates to the limited knowledge that we have of others. Patience: This virtue relates to the ability to endure, and endurance is required both in ordinary life and in times of suffering; patience also relates to tolerance because tolerance requires not making judgments about others too quickly.

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Reverence: Kindness gets treated as a child-like virtue, relating to respect, that ought to be directed toward one’s neighbors; reverence serves as the adult version of kindness, which ought to be directed toward both neighbors and strangers (James claims he maintained the ideal of “awe and reverence in looking at the peasant women” in Vienna); showing kindness toward neighbors ought to lead to reverence toward both neighbors and strangers. Good Humor: If tolerance is the ability “to live and let live” (James 1977: 660), then good humor names the capacity for the enjoyment of being tolerant.

Sentimental Virtues Sympathy: As a virtue that brings balance, sympathy balances the humility we have toward ourselves and the reverence we have toward others. Insight: This virtue prevents our blindness(es) from turning into cruelty and intolerance; insight balances our natural tendency toward blindness with the virtue of tolerance. Good Will: If kindness is the way that we show respect toward our neighbors, then good will names the capacity for the enjoyment of being kind.

While it remains unclear how James orders the virtues, I believe that he favors four virtues as the most significant (in the sense of what makes one’s life “significant”): courage, humility, patience, tolerance.6 This judgment relies on my previous research relating to how humility and patience are necessary intellectual virtues—within psychology, philosophy, and the natural sciences—within James’s Principles of Psychology (see Goodson 2010: 243–258). I read “What Makes a Life Significant” as James’s attempt to turn humility and patience from intellectual virtues to moral virtues and to mount a strong defense of courage and tolerance as moral virtues as well. In Principles of Psychology, James defends humility as an intellectual virtue that allows natural scientists, psychologists, philosophers to “break asunder” objects in ways that are not over-determined by human tendencies. He does not use the word humble but, rather, the stronger word of “submission.” James claims that we must submit to our objects of study for the experimental method to work. In “What Makes a Life Significant,” he does not use the word humility strictly as an intellectual virtue though it does relate to knowledge: our humility helps us recognize the limited knowledge that we have about persons. Humility has an intellectual quality, but it ought to be understood as a moral virtue that allows and invites the greater virtue of tolerance. The similarity between James’s use of humility in both Principles of Psychology and “What Makes a Life Significant” concerns how humility provides a correction to Cartesian rationalism.7 Whereas Rene Descartes’s rationalism leads to the conclusion that we do not have knowledge of other minds, James wants to offer a more moderate position through the virtue



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of humility. By defending humility as a virtue, James seeks to affirm both a positive and negative claim: we can have knowledge of other persons as equally valid members of the human community, but we cannot have full knowledge of their circumstances and motivations. On my interpretation of “What Makes a Life Significant,” humility is not a moral virtue for its own sake but for the sake of tolerance. How should we understand James’s defense of tolerance as a virtue? George Cotkin interprets James’s defense of tolerance, as a moral virtue, as the result of James’s own personal struggles and temperament. James’s defense “of tolerance for diversity cannot be attributed to the books that he read or the philosophical theories he developed. As a young man, he experienced profound depression and uncertainty, which greatly influenced his understanding of life’s variety and problems” (Cotkin 1994: 136). While James’s personal struggles and temperament provide a helpful beginning point for thinking about the virtue of tolerance, it seems that much more is going on in “What Makes a Life Significant.” James claims that the purpose of the argument in “What Makes a Life Significant” concerns making the ideal of tolerance “less chaotic.” How does James achieve this goal? James offers three arguments in order to make tolerance “less chaotic.” First, the virtue of tolerance involves the skill of “non-interference” with others.8 In particular, we ought to refrain from interfering “with their own peculiar ways of being happy” (James 1977: 645). This is not an anything goes claim, however, because their “peculiar ways of being happy” cannot be violent or do violence toward those who are tolerant. Second, since no singular individual possesses “insight into all ideals” (James 1977: 645), the virtue of tolerance requires us to withhold judgment about others and their virtue or vice. This argument or aspect of “liberal virtue” is the one that receives the most criticism because it seems paradoxical, at best, to make the judgment that we should not make judgments (see González de la Vega 2016). I believe that James avoids this paradoxical position with the additional phrase “off-hand”: “No one should presume to judge them off-hand” (James 1977: 645). Within James’s moral reasoning, tolerance does not require withholding judgment for all time and in all places. Rather, tolerance requires making judgments but doing so with an intense amount of patience—which is another cardinal virtue found within “What Makes a Life Significant” and will be treated next. A thorough treatment of virtue requires identifying the vices that oppose virtue, and James fulfills this task in his third argument. The two vices that oppose tolerance are cruelty and injustice (see James 1977: 645). Both cruelty and injustice tend to happen, James claims, when we display impatience in making judgments about others. Cruelty also gets grouped with “hideous ancestral intolerances”—both of which, James claims, we ought to “escape” (James 1977: 645). Instead of justice being the correction to injustice, tolerance is the virtue that corrects

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injustice.9 Since patience becomes a requirement for how to display tolerance, we ought to treat the virtue of patience next. James relates patience both to having endurance in ordinary life and to making sound judgments on others. If patience is required for making proper judgments on others, then it seems that patience has a similar function to ancient conceptions of prudence: knowing when and where to express one’s wisdom.10 Through an explanation of the Aristotelian tradition of virtue, John Bowlin explains how patience and tolerance strengthen one another as virtues. The tolerant who are also patient endure an effect of toleration’s act, of their own patient endurance. This act causes estrangement from those they tolerate. This estrangement elicits their sorrow, and this sorrow requires the moderating influence of their patience. With sorrow moderated, they can endure the estrangement from others that their act of toleration allows and so persist in this act and tend towards its ends. . . . Virtue in one power enables virtue in another. Following Aristotle, we might say that the patient endure hardship by moderating sorrow, and they do so for the sake of virtue and profit—in this instance, for the sake of the tolerance that is due the tolerated and for the social peace and individual autonomy that the tolerant hope to secure for those they tolerate and for themselves in this company. (Bowlin 2016: 153–154)

Bowlin’s description of how patience and tolerance strengthen one another in the Aristotelian tradition of virtue provides a much more substantial account than the one we find in James’s “What Makes a Life Significant,” but I think that it describes the relation between patience and tolerance in a way that fits James’s overall moral reasoning. In terms of having endurance in ordinary life, James compares those who have the virtue of patience with instruments and tools that require long labor: “wherever a scythe, an axe, a pick, or a shovel is wielded, you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient endurance racked to the utmost under the length of hours of the strain” (James 1977: 649). To have the virtue of patience is to be able to live one’s ordinary life in the ways that these instruments and tools have to endure every instance they are used for “the length of hours of the strain.” The demand for patience increases and intensifies during times of suffering. On one hand, Bernard Brennan points out that in our times of suffering—within James’s moral reasoning—we ought to learn to “pass our days with zest, stirred by prospects, thrilled by remoter values” (Brennan 2004: 24), and patience provides us with an assurance that brings us peace. On another hand, Michael Slater connects James’s understanding of patience with the virtue of hope during our times of suffering: moral agents need a “psychological capacity to provide relief from suffering and the hope of a better outcome” (Slater 2009: 231). We have two



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contrasting accounts of James’s reflections on suffering: either we ought to accept our suffering where patience becomes the virtue that provides us with an assurance that brings us peace during times of suffering, or patience offers us the psychological capability to find relief from suffering and to hope for more beyond our suffering. I think this is evidence of two Jameses: an early James and a later James. Brennan’s interpretation relies on material written in the 1880s and 1890s—namely essays published prior to and with “The Will-to-Believe.” Slater’s interpretation of James’s reflections on suffering relies on material written after 1905—namely Pragmatism. For purposes of interpreting and understanding the role of patience in James’s “What Makes a Life Significant,” therefore, it seems that we ought to accept our suffering— with patience serving as the virtue that provides an assurance that brings us peace during those times of suffering. James interchanges courage with bravery throughout “What Makes a Life Significant.” In the Western moral tradition, courage and fortitude are used interchangeably with bravery being one of the characteristics of those who exercise courage. The key passage about courage, in “What Makes a Life Significant” reads, I was speeding with the train toward Buffalo, when, near that city, the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction brought me to my senses very suddenly. And now I perceived, by a flash of insight, that I had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness, and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. Wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human nature on the rack, I had never noticed the great fields of heroism lying round about me, I had failed to see it present and alive. I could only think of it as dead and embalmed, labelled and costumed, as it is in the pages of romance. And yet there it was before me in the daily lives of the laboring classes. Not in clanging fights and desperate marches only is heroism to be looked for, but on every railway bridge and fire-proof building that is going up to-day. On freighttrains, on the decks of vessels, in cattleyards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen, the demand for courage is incessant; and the supply never fails. There, every day of the year somewhere, is human nature in extremis for you. (James 1977: 649)

Focusing on the concepts of courage and heroism aids us best for understanding this passage. James does not offer any different definition of courage than we have from Aristotle: courage is the virtue that moderates our fear(s), and the vices that oppose courage are cowardice and recklessness. Also, like Aristotle, James considers courage a “manly virtue” (James 1977: 657). Any critique of courage as a masculine virtue offered up of Aristotle’s moral reasoning equally applies as the same failure in James’s moral reasoning (see Hirschman 1998: 201–247; Slote 2011: 123–130; Goodson 2017:

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chapter 5).11 For James, courage is a virtue that is demanded whilst performing particular jobs: those who work to build buildings, on the decks of ships, on freight trains, in mines, on railway bridges, and with cattle. Also, firefighters and police officers have jobs that demand courage. In the next paragraph, James calls all of these workers “our soldiers” (James 1977: 649)—which suggests that James has Aristotle’s account of courage in mind, where soldiers exemplify virtue, and this is James’s way to democratize courage as a virtue. About 650 years before James published “What Makes a Life Significant,” the Christian medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas democratized Aristotle’s account of courage. Aquinas argues that going on a lengthy journey with a friend and sitting with someone who is ill and dying exemplify courage as much as soldiering does. According to Stanley Hauerwas, Aquinas concludes that Christian martyrdom—which can happen to both men and women—provides the highest model of courage (see Hauerwas 1997: chapter 9). Hauerwas thinks that Aquinas sought to shift courage from a “manly virtue” to a virtue that could be exercised by all moral agents. Aquinas’s defense of courage gives us a way to measure William James’s understanding of courage as a moral virtue. Both seek to make courage available to all moral agents—not only to soldiers, as Aristotle does—but Aquinas seems to relegate courage to extraordinary circumstances (being killed for one’s religious beliefs, going on a journey, staying with someone near the end of their life) whereas James discovers courage “alive” and “present” all around him. James finds courage in the ordinary lives of those who have difficult jobs. James even has a name for what it means to not see courage in the ordinary: “pure ancestral blindness” (see Lachs 2012: 93). Courage moderates fear, and we see the virtue of courage demonstrated in jobs all around us.12 Courage also leads to heroism. In the generation prior to James, Ralph Waldo Emerson—a close friend of the James family—made the case that heroism is needed within society but should be judged as irrational (see Emerson 1929: 200–205). I read James’s “What Makes a Life Significant” as a recovery of a traditional notion of heroism against Emerson’s claim that heroism is irrational. According to Cornel West, James’s notion “of moral heroism intends to energize people to become exceptional doers under adverse circumstances, to galvanize zestful fighters against excruciating odds” (West 1989: 59). I think West accurately summarizes James’s intentions with his defense of heroism. In “What Makes a Life Significant,” a reader gets the sense that the “heroic life” guarantees a “significant” life. Not everyone who achieves a “significant” life is heroic, but heroism secures significance for William James. Listing cardinal virtues is part of a longstanding tradition of wisdom. For Aristotle, the four cardinal virtues are prudence, temperance, courage, justice. For Augustine, the three cardinal virtues are faith, hope, charity. Thomas



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Aquinas combines these two and defends seven cardinal virtues. For the defenders of the ethics of care in the twentieth century, the four cardinal virtues are compassion, love, mercy, sympathy. William James offers his own version of the four cardinal virtues: courage, humility, patience, tolerance. Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill defend some version of tolerance as a virtue required within modern society (see Fiala 2003). Quite recently, tolerance has been defended and/or evaluated as the primary “liberal virtue” (see Bowlin 2016; González de la Vega 2016; Ward 2010). William James joins this tradition of liberal virtue,13 but this tradition differs on the other virtues required. More recently, Bican Sahin narrows the liberal virtues down to three—justice, prudence, and tolerance (Sahin 2010)—whereas Bruce Ward defends four cardinal virtues that he says combine Christian moral reasoning with the tradition of liberal virtue— authenticity, compassion, equality, and tolerance (Ward 2010).

HORNY HANDS AND DIRTY SKIN The most interesting claim that James makes within “What Makes a Life Significant” comes directly after his paragraph on courage and heroism. As I awoke to all this unidealized heroic life around me, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes; and a wave of sympathy greater than anything I had ever before felt with the common life of common men began to fill my soul. It began to seem as if virtue with horny hands and dirty skin were the only virtue genuine and vital enough to take account of. (James 1977: 649)

The phrase “horny hands,” I have learned only in the process of writing this chapter, is a nautical term to describe the calloused hands of captains from holding onto the ship’s wheel for so long and with so much aggression. To the best of my knowledge, “dirty skin” is not a phrase with a particular meaning to it but simply serves as James’s metaphor for how virtue requires us to involve ourselves in the messiness of life. Hands and dirt serve as key metaphors within James’s “What Makes a Life Significant.” In addition to the above passage, James also writes about the metaphor of hands in this sentence: “[n]ow the plot . . . thickens; how strangely the complexities of this wonderful human nature of ours begin to develop under our hands” (James 1977: 656). Human nature “develops” for James only when we actively and aggressively use our hands—only when we act within the world according to our virtues. After unpacking this metaphor, this seems like a basic Aristotelian insight: not pleasure but excellence through exercising virtue is how human nature develops. James has more to say about dirt as well.

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The more ideals a man has, the more contemptible, on the whole, do you continue to deem him, if the matter ends there for him, and if none of the laboring man’s virtues are called into action on his part,—no courage shown, no privations undergone, no dirt or scars contracted in the attempt to get them realized. It is quite obvious that something more than the mere possession of ideals is required to make a life significant in any sense that claims the spectator’s admiration. (James 1977: 657)

The contrast that arises here concerns “dirt and scars” versus “the spectator’s admiration.” Throughout his writing career, James connects the spectator view of knowledge with what he calls “vicious intellectualism.” Mark Vernon summarizes James’s reasoning quite well: James “loathes what he . . . calls ‘vicious intellectualism’—the preference for concepts over reality. It’s cultivated by the fantasy of an objective science—and is insidious because it turns you into a spectator of, not a participant in, life” (Vernon 2010: paragraph 4). Vicious intellectualism is vicious, Vernon explains, because “[i]t encourages speculation for speculation’s sake” (Vernon 2010: paragraph 4). What we learn in “What Makes a Life Significant” is that the spectator view is vicious because it avoids the “dirt” and “scars” required for cultivating and practicing virtue. These metaphors give us a sense of the differences between Aristotle’s and James’s understanding of the virtues. First, James thinks that virtues are not necessarily “stable” but “are found only in experience” and need to be continually “tested” (Brennan 2004: 78). Aristotle thinks that virtue is a “stable disposition to act and feel according to some ideal or model of excellence” (Vaughn 2016: 136). Second, James does not apply the logic of Aristotle’s “golden mean” to his four primary virtues. James considers the sentimental virtues as the ones that balance our ethical lives, but none of the sentimental virtues make the cut—in my interpretation—for James’s cardinal virtues. Third, Aristotle argues that virtues are good for their own sake; James thinks that virtues are good only in relation to “their concrete usefulness” (Brennan 2004: 79).14 When discussing different religious virtues in the Varieties of Religious Experience, James returns to his dirt metaphor and claims that it is better “to contract a dirt-mark” than to hold onto a useless virtue. HAPPINESS, JOY, AND MAKING LIFE SIGNIFICANT James offers these virtues as useful virtues for living the virtuous life, and living the virtuous life guides us in making life significant. By “significant,” James means a life filled with both joy and happiness. In “What Makes a Life Significant,” his use of adjectives helps us distinguish between happiness and



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joy. In very basic terms, happiness seems to be external while joy seems to be internal.15 Happiness remains mysterious and results from a combination of exercising virtue and “some ridiculous feature of . . . external situation[s]” (James 1977: 659). He uses the adjective “inner” at least three times, in “What Makes a Life Significant” to describe “joy”: “now we are led to say that . . . inner meaning can be complete and valid for us also only when [there is] inner joy” (James 1977: 656); “[i]t is quite obvious that something more than the mere possession of ideals is required to make a life significant in any sense that claims the spectator’s admiration,” and this “something more” is “[i]nner joy” (James 1977: 657); “[we] gain a certain inner joyfulness at the increased importance of our common life,” and “[s]uch joyfulness is a religious inspiration and an element of spiritual health” (James 1977: 658).16 James remains Aristotelian in the sense that happiness and joy result from excellence, not pleasure. James differs from Aristotelianism in thinking that the virtues are good only in relation to their usefulness. What makes a life significant, according to William James? Achieving happiness and “inner joyfulness” through exercising the virtues of courage, humility, patience, and tolerance. These virtues are the most useful for us as we get our hands calloused and our skin dirty in the complexity and difficulty of our daily lives. James also wants us to remember that significance remains relative to each individual. This individualism does not diminish the need for the virtues but increases their usefulness in terms of how individuals implement the virtue in complexity and messiness of their everyday lives. NOTES 1. In terms of Michael Walzer’s recently made distinction between tolerance and toleration, James intends his use of tolerance to cover both “tolerance (the attitude) . . . and toleration (the practice)” (Walzer 1997: xi). 2. Through personal correspondence, Rev. Phil Kuehnert helped me understand this aspect of James’s moral reasoning: not only was “tolerance . . . within you [but] courage: courage to bring the question to the Dean.” (Personal Correspondence, [February 15, 2017]). 3. Through personal correspondence, Jonathan Malesic asks, “Does tolerating the intolerant require giving voice to their position? Can you simply let them have their position and remain silent about it?” (Personal Correspondence, [March 8, 2017]). For tolerance to be considered a messy virtue, then it must become an active virtue— which requires more than allowing others to have their positions and remaining silent about those positions. Tolerance might involve passivity and silence but, for James, this passivity and silence is found more in the virtue of reverence.

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4. James clarifies: “An ideal, for instance, must be something intellectually conceived, something of which we are not unconscious, if we ‘have it; and it must carry with it that sort of outlook, uplift, and brightness that go with all intellectual facts. Secondly, there must be novelty in an ideal—novelty at least for him whom the ideal grasps. Sodden routine is incompatible with ideality, although what is sodden routine for one person may be ideal novelty for another.” (James 1977: 656). 5. One of the failures of “What Makes a Life Significant” is James’s lack of clarity concerning what he means by sentiment or sentimental virtue. Perhaps “The Will to Believe” represents James’s attempt to achieve clarity concerning the relationship between our passions and volition. 6. Bernard Brennan accurately summarizes James’s moral reasoning when he writes that, for James, “virtues cannot be arranged in a hierarchy according to their intrinsic nobility. But the need to arrange the virtues in some kind of order of relative importance must be faced . . . because of a very practical need” (Brennan 2004: 79). 7. On the relation between Cartesian rationalism and the virtue of humility in The Principles of Psychology, see Goodson 2010: 243–258. 8. Andrew Fiala makes a quite succinct claim: “James recognizes that the fact of diversity requires toleration” (Fiala 2002: 105). 9. The American class system provides James with his most thorough illustration of why we need tolerance in relation to injustice because the wealthy and the poor fail to see one another as human beings: “We are suffering today in America from what is called the labor-question; and, when you go out into the world, you will each and all of you be caught up in its perplexities. I use the brief term laborquestion to cover all sorts of anarchistic discontents and socialistic projects, and the conservative resistances which they provoke. So far as this conflict is unhealthy and regrettable—and I think it is so only to a limited extent—the unhealthiness consists solely in the fact that one-half of our fellow countrymen remain entirely blind to the internal significance of the lives of the other half. They miss the joys and sorrows, they fail to feel the moral virtue, and they do not guess the presence of the intellectual ideals. They are at cross-purposes all along the line, regarding each other as they might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata, or, if they seek to get at the inner motivation, making the most horrible mistakes. Often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man is a cowardly greediness for safety, luxury, and effeminacy, and a boundless affectation. What he is, is not a human being, but a pocket-book, a bank-account. And a similar greediness, turned by disappointment into envy, is all that many rich men can see in the state of mind of the dissatisfied poor. And, if the rich man begins to do the sentimental act over the poor man, what senseless blunders does he make, pitying him for just those very duties and those very immunities which, rightly taken, are the condition of his most abiding and characteristic joys! Each, in short, ignores the fact that happiness and unhappiness and significance are a vital mystery; each pins them absolutely on some ridiculous feature of the external situation; and everybody remains outside of everybody else’s sight” (James 1977: 658–659). Strikingly, this passage could be written exactly the same way in 2016/2017. 10. Andrew Fiala captures James’s moral reasoning well when he argues that, for James, “although we tend to think that our own view of the world is the only right one,



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we often find that we simply do not properly understand the point of view of those . . . whom we might be inclined to criticize” (Fiala 2002: 104–105). 11. In “The Energies of Women: William James and the Ethics of Care,” Susan Dieleman gives a very nuanced critique of James and “manly virtue” (see Dieleman 2016: 121–140). 12. In her essay on “What Makes a Life Significant” for the course PHIL 451: Ethics and Law in American Philosophy at Southwestern College (Winfield, KS), Erika Paul clarifies James’s moral reasoning on courage: James “concludes that his own human blindness prevented him from seeing . . . courageousness in the mundane. He expected courage to look like something out a romance novel; instead, he had been surrounded by heroism and courage the entire time. This took shape in the form of policemen, firemen, [and,] cattlemen. These sorts of people become stigmatized as blue-collar . . . peasants when in . . . actuality they are the unsung heroes of the world. [In “What Makes a Life Significant,”] James caught himself participating in his own critique of humanity” (Paul 2017: paragraph 4). 13. Andrew Fiala recognizes James’s place in the tradition of liberal virtue, but he focuses on the Varieties of Religious Experience and never mentions “What Makes a Life Significant” (see Fiala 2003). 14. Brennan adds: “We respect virtues only by reason of their concrete usefulness to us as we face life’s problems” (Brennan 2004: 79). 15. For those readers who might question too much of a neat division between the “inner” and “outer” within James’s philosophy, he makes such a division quite clear in this essay when he writes, “we make a combination of two things in judging the total significance of a human being. We feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only could be calculated) of his inner virtue and his outer place—neither singly taken, but both conjoined. If the outer differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist? They must be significant elements of the world as well” (James 1977: 653). 16. This third point about “inner joyfulness” containing “religious inspiration and an element of spiritual health” receives James’s full philosophical attention in his Varieties of Religious Experience—an interpretation fully defended and explained in both Brennan’s and Slater’s treatments of James’s moral reasoning (see Brennan 2004: 21–35; Slater 2009: 117–118).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bowlin, John. 2016. Tolerance Among the Virtues. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Brennan, Bernard P. 2004. The Ethics of William James. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Rose Dog Books. Cotkin, George. 1994. William James: Public Philosopher. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Dieleman, Susan. 2015. “The Energies of Women: William James and the Ethics of Care.” In Feminist Interpretations of William James. Edited by Shannon Sullivan

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and Erin Tarver. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 121–140. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1929. “Heroism.” In The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Wm. H. Wise & Company. pp. 200–205. Fiala, Andrew. 2002. “Toleration and Pragmatism.” In The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16, no. 2. pp. 103–116. Fiala. 2003. “Toleration.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.utm. edu/research/iep/t/tolerati.htm. González de la Vega, René. 2016. Tolerance and Modern Liberalism: From Paradox to Aretaic Moral Ideal. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Goodson, Jacob L. 2010. “Experience, Reason, and the Virtues: On William James’s Reinstatement of the Vague.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 31, no. 3. pp. 243–258. Goodson. 2017. Strength of Mind: Courage, Hope, Freedom, Knowledge. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Press. Hauerwas, Stanley. 1997. Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Hirschman, Linda Redlick. 1998. “The Book of ‘A’.” In Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle. Edited by Cynthia A. Freeland. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 201–247. James, William. 1950. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Publications. James. 1977. “What Makes a Life Significant.” In The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition. Edited by John J. McDermott. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. James. 1982. Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Penguin Press. Lachs, John. 2012. Stoic Pragmatism. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Sihan, Bican. 2010. Toleration: The Liberal Virtue. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Slater, Michael. 2009. William James on Ethics and Faith. New York: Cambridge University Press. Slote, Michael. 2013. The Impossibility of Perfection: Aristotle, Feminism, and the Complexities of Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Vaughn, Lewis. 2015. Doing Ethics. Fourth Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Vernon, Mark. 2010. “William James, Part 7.” In The Guardian: https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/belief/2010/nov/29/william-james-agnosticism-will-to-believe. Walzer, Michael. 1997. On Toleration. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Ward, Bruce. 2010. Redeeming the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Liberal Virtues. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. West, Cornel. 1989. The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Williams, Bernard. 1996. “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue.” In Toleration: An Elusive Virtue. Edited by David Heyd. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 18–27.

Part III

MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF JAMES’S “POPULAR ESSAYS”

Chapter 7

The Cries of the Wounded Transformative Moral Interpretation in James, Royce, and Peirce Roger Ward

“The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” is one of William James’s most sermonic essays. Besides the proverbial three points and a poem, the rhetorical force of the essay builds to a call for engagement and action in response to a divine call. James avoids the philosophical problematic of defining the good or the beautiful and focuses rather on how one forms a moral platform in response to the “cries of the wounded,” a phrase that evokes Psalm 83 and the warning to mind “Thy innocent ones.” James says his 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 ethical point of view” (James 1969: 65). I think what James is after is a morally transformative platform that generates a genuine moral universe for the philosopher by motivating action and providing plausible stability through metaphysical crises. This resultant position is similar to his description of religious conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and a part of my work in this essay is to show how James’s moral platform is unstable in the direction of this broader and more profound sense of transformation. Cheryl Misak notes that James, Peirce, and Royce were intimately familiar with each other’s ideas, and influence and reaction flowed back and forth between them. Peirce taught Royce at Johns Hopkins, and James and Royce engaged in a life-long and well-documented debate (Misak, 82ff). Interestingly, in the penultimate step of “The Moral Philosopher” James notes that, “All this is set forth with great freshness and force in the work of my colleague, Professor Josiah Royce: The Religious Aspect of Philosophy” (James 1969: 86). Exactly what “all this” of “The Moral Philosopher” matches with Royce’s idealism and religious insight raises obvious interpretive issues, since in the body of the essay James launches his practiced diatribe against 89

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idealisms like Royce’s. There are clues scattered in the “Moral Philosopher” that also indicate Peirce’s prominent influence in James’s thinking, such as the evolutionary character of morality produced by unsettlement and James’s flat rejection of the need for a “living and personal God,” an ongoing dispute between the friends (James 1969: 86). James collects these conflicts and ideas and joins them into an overall satisfying account in “The Moral Philosopher,” and it is this act of moral interpretation that I want to bring explicitly to view. As persuasive as James is, I argue that such an interpretative approach to the moral life is philosophically risky. First, the platform of the moral philosopher appears dependent, perhaps even contingent, on surrounding intellectual conditions, reducing the possibility that other unique and active thinkers can arrive at a similar conviction or plan of action. And resolving one’s experiences and influences into a platform oriented primarily toward action also risks accepting the satisfaction of practical doubts for a genuine moral transformation. We may hear the cries of the wounded only as an irritant to be assuaged by our personal moral constructions rather than as an imperative to act and reform our plans of action by virtue of further philosophical and experiential discoveries. James’s transformative moral platform aims, I argue, to create existential force to engage in everyday ethics as well as prepare for radical actions, rule breaking as he says, for the sake of our genuine moral universe. Perhaps he has John Brown in mind as we might have Martin Luther King and Gandhi. But is James’s platform sufficient to sponsor a continuous moral life conversant with conventions and yet articulate enough to challenge emergent moral conflicts such as denying global climate change or ISIL burning people alive? I am sure members of both these groups claim they have a genuine moral universe, but that can’t be sufficient to make their actions moral. Socrates tells his disciples in the Theaetetus to become like the divine, “as righteous as possible” (Plato 1987: 176b) irrespective of resolving the metaphysical issues of the soul, and that parallels a part of James’s position. Socrates’s daemon stops him before he makes a mistake, but its curious silence allows him to challenge the conventions of Athens even under the threat of death. James needs a limit like this in order to sustain the moral action he desires, and thus the “cries of the wounded” may serve as a guiding ideal for testing his account of a transformative moral platform while also directing us toward the transformational meaning hidden in the contours and silences of our thought and experiences. TRANSFORMATION AND CONVERSION IN “THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER AND THE MORAL LIFE” James says he aims to establish that ethics is not final and cannot be made up in advance. This is his ostensible purpose, but under this cover James takes



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his reader on a pilgrimage to a conception of ethics that rests not on authority or final truth, but on the building of ideals into a platform from which a moral life can be pursued. Taking a page out of Peirce’s book, he follows the consequences of questions morality raises in psychology, metaphysics, and casuistic response. The platform aspect of his ethics comes most clear in the casuistic section, and to my reading, this is his most compelling idea. We all do operate with a series of values, aiming to keep our “most imperative ones on top.” The moral life demands choices be made on a case-by-case basis, and our moral strength and vitality depends on how these operating values are ordered, followed, and altered. But the most spectacular aspect of this essay is James’s infectious confidence in the force of our moral life, balanced upon perceptions of claims made by others, our desire for systematic resilience, and a respect for conventions and beliefs of the people with whom we stand in communion. “Here we are,” James announces, “in a world where the existence of a divine thinker has been and perhaps always will be doubted by some lookers-on, and where, in spite of the presence of a large number of ideals in which human beings agree, there are a mass of others about which no general consensus obtains” (James 1969: 75). We find ourselves with him in the casuistic place, needing to comprise an order, looking back to the psychological origin of our worries, and interested in where we can go from this stance, already anticipating the trial that will prompt us further toward the point of commitment. There are five main turns from traditional moral conceptions in the path to peace James presents in the essay. The first is that intuition is stripped of the possibility of any external referent, and rather “the feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity . . . are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own sake” (James 1969: 67). Second, moral value emerges from claims made by beings. “The moment one sentient being is made part of the universe,” James says, “there is a chance for good and evils really to exist . . . . So far as he feels anything good, he makes it good” and being good for him reaches to the absolute good, for he is “the sole creator of values in that universe” (James 1969: 70). The third pivot is to a moral system demanded by the philosopher in reaction to a world of disordered pluralism, “with which,” James says, “the philosopher, so long as he holds to the hope of a philosopher, will not put up. There must be some which have more truth or authority; and to this the others ought to yield. Here,” he concludes, “the notion of obligation comes emphatically to view” (James 1969: 71). A fourth turn is toward an ideal moral world that includes limits. “The actual possible in the world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded . . . some part of the ideal must be butchered” (James 1969: 78). Lastly, the philosopher turns back to accepted moral conventions as a base from which the system is carved out,

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but “which particular universe this is he cannot know in advance; he only knows that if he makes a bad mistake cries of the wounded will soon inform him of the fact” (James 1969: 83). So, a most inclusive world is demanded by the philosopher, shaped by the necessary butchering of the ideal revealed in the experiences of pain it produces in others. This last point is connected to the demand to live the strenuous life and engage the struggle with keen sensitivity. The role of the divine in James’s essay parallels these junctures; morality is not a theologically grounded intuition, a living personal God adds nothing to the sense of obligation, a divine mind would construct the most ideal system of values and by that achieve authority. And the cries of the wounded remain a part of the butchered ideal in response to which even a divine all-knower would have to construct a system of values. The vocation to the moral life James articulates is to imitate the divine, perhaps even to follow the divine, but not to depend upon obedience to authority or an abstract notion of perfection for the moral life. The individual and the divine share the same casuistic ground, but postulating a divine mind entails a possible completeness within this moral universe. That challenges the philosopher and perhaps even constitutes a claim on the universe made by the philosopher. I think this reciprocating claim is heard in the concluding words of the essay; “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; therefore choose life that thou and thy seed may live” (James 1969: 87). It is not clear if James is speaking in his own voice here or reflecting the voice of Moses who he is quoting (without reference to KJV Deut. 30:11ff). If we demand an authoritative and valid system in the universe, then we find ourselves being held responsible to the image we have invoked for answering just that demand, and that can be found only by a test of our personal genius in an “unsparing practical ordeal” that no books or lectures can protect us from. He continues the quotation of Deuteronomy, but now without the quotation symbol so apparently in his own voice, “It is not in heaven, neither is it beyond the sea; but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (James 1969: 87). I may have tipped my hat enough for you to anticipate my next step in tracking James’s moral transformation. James is both fascinated and scared by God. The God of the Bible prompts the moral life in the faithful, but the moral life in James’s moral universe can have no origin except that sourcing from himself or from his nature as a sentient being. And so God is, for James, just this ground of self-prompting moral possibility. In a way very similar to his co-opting of Moses’s words, James co-opts the formulations of Jonathan Edwards in Chapters 9 and 10 of The Varieties of Religious Experience. Even granting that James used a version of Edwards’s Religious Affections that was heavily edited, he translates the question of religious affections, which for Edwards means the soul graciously influenced and changed by an



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encounter with the Christ of the scripture, to mean the product of the affections appearing in one’s habits. James says Edwards focuses on “the fruits not the roots” of conversion. And thus, he elides Edwards’s conversion with his own description of a person transforming into their “highest center of energy” (James 1982: 239). The trajectory toward a morally transformative platform in the “Moral Life” begs the possibility of this fuller notion of a more general conversion, un-prompted, as it were, by the “cries of the wounded.” The sheer possibility of the higher life available to the person through transformation via “whatever is considered divine” is the sufficient, and for James, the uniquely sufficient ground of transformation. James’s conversion replaces moral and religious content with an infinite demand (void of content) to rise to our highest form. The extension from the moral platform to conversion indicates an absence hidden within the calling to the moral life, and exploring this absence is where Royce and Peirce can help us. THE CRIES OF THE WOUNDED Wilky James, named for the essayist that introduced his father to Swedenborg’s ideas, was wounded in the Civil War. He convalesced at the James’s home and William sketched him resting in bed. From the view of the “Moral Life,” what kind of claim does Wilky have on brother William? What does his cry inform the moral philosopher about the universe, and how does a moral life include such cries for attention in its formulation? Is the philosophical interest in morals effectively prompted by contingent circumstances, or are these only the occasion for an act of will? And at what end does this prompted moral transformation aim? Following James’s reference to Royce’s The Religious Aspect of Philosophy reveals obvious parallels. Both follow a moral concern into a religious insight, overcoming skepticism and rejecting utilitarianism. But James’s notion of the moral life as satisfying “alien demands” (James 1969: 74) is a clear dividing point. For Royce, any perception of pain always includes our own. In this Schopehnaurian vein Royce writes, “you and I seem to ourselves to be different and perhaps warring individuals. . . . Only the sentiment of pity sees through the temporal veil of illusion, and so seeing, in its intuitive and unreflective way, it whispers to us that the pain of each is in truth the other’s pain” (Royce 1965: 93). This higher insight directs the philosopher to a “full surrender of full self to the service of some high end” (Royce 1965: 125). Instability of the ideal in individual choice of moral agents is the problem to overcome (Royce 1965: 133), leading to the determination to “Act always in the light of the completest insight into all the aims that thy act may affect. . . Act as if thou wert at once they neighbor and thyself. Treat these two lives

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as one life” (Royce 1965: 141, 149). The philosopher serves this insight by securing it by reason for the thought of others: “Act to increase the number who possess the insight,” is the command Royce follows (Royce 1965: 173). This move to extending an insight involves working for harmony. “The highest good then,” Royce writes, “is not to be got by any one of us or by any clique of us separately. Either the highest good is for humanity unattainable, or the humanity of the future must get it in common. Therefore, the sense of community, the power to work together, with clear insight into our reasons for so working, is the first need of humanity” (Royce 1965: 175). I think we see a divergence between Royce, for whom extending the moral insight is to find in suffering a propaedeutic to right thinking, and James, for whom the conditions of the cry prompts the individual philosopher to seek action, and peace is found only for the philosopher in allaying or answering demands. Interestingly, it is the call of God on the moral philosopher that brings James and Royce together, and yet also reveals a deep tension. Royce follows the religious insight that, “We want to know that, when we try to do right, we are not alone . . . this something may be a person or a tendency” (Royce 1965: 219). A thinking being, a seer of all good and evil, is desired (Royce 1965: 220), and if the ideal aims can lead us to Infinite Worth, all is well, and if not that, Royce says, the best possible aspect of reality must be chosen instead (Royce 1965: 222). But our individual and corporate efforts are gathered under the rubric of a universal truth: “The world is not one process merely, but an eternal repetition of the drama of infinite reason always active and always at the goal” (Royce 1965: 263). For Royce, this drama of reason excludes a god beyond or outside the drama. He writes, “either God creates nothing external to himself, or else, in creating he works under the laws that presuppose a power higher than himself, and external to himself” (Royce 1965: 278). This idea destroys the ground of theistic arguments but leaves “the truly religious elements,” such as the postulation of a moral rationality in the world. “We may,” Royce says, “and indeed, morally speaking must postulate that the Eternal, of which this world is the mere show, is in itself absolutely righteous” (Royce 1965: 297). And thus, “without active faith, expressed in postulates, very little practical good can be done from day to day” (Royce 1965: 294). I think this is the ground of James’s postulated allknower from whom the philosopher receives the vocation of morality. The further conclusion of Royce where I think James remains in tension is that we construct but do not receive the external reality of the world, and that infinite reason is already at the goal (Royce 1965: 304). And this brings us to a last step in tracing the fault lines of James’s interpretative work in “The Moral Philosopher.” The moral demand James encounters is a real other, an external world of real loss and trial against which we struggle. Peirce, along with James and Royce, mocks utilitarian ethics in his



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1895 essay “Evolutionary Love” because it valorizes sacrificing someone’s good for the pleasure of one in the name of the interest of the whole. Peirce also finds no aliens, only “the least of these” who get whacked by the greedy. The gospel of greed, the image of our capitalistic willingness to expend the lives of others for material gain, stands contrary to the Gospel of Love that does not systematize opposites, but that takes even the foulest evil as part of the universe as an object to be incorporated into love, “warming the unlovely into loveliness” (Peirce 2009: 184). This real toward which we think and act is not constrained by us, as James seems to favor, nor is it a version of the rational All, as Royce would have it, but is the world not-yet-but-would-be IF God is. This reality remains provisional until its normative force lives through our correction of moral error guided by shared instincts. Tolerating the cries of the wounded without action is one such error. The demand, which we meet as a possible, is for self-controlled action that relieves the cause of the cries and exposes our hardness of hearts that often deflects the cries. The function of reason in human action and habit reflects the evolutionary love of the universe; an objective reality discovered by the progress toward it marked by pain and loss. These signs of the moral life indicate a continuing need of refinement toward a truth reached only by action obedient to a temporally infinite task, but grounded in a Real God. Such a vision prompts Peirce to suggest in a letter to his friend William, “The true theist’s God is a being whom we can only vaguely know, but his essence is reality. The Ideal—He is . . . it is strange to me that you should not see how completely satisfactory is this idea” (Peirce 1904). James describes a compelling order of meaning motivating the moral life that grows from individual action and reflects a wider world of values. This moral universe is evoked into significance by a promise of meaning without an obligation exceeding that which is discovered in the presence of other finite beings, or the grounding of an already completed moral world. James’s interpretation draws us into his world, and it equally draws us into the challenges of his, and our, moral interpretations and platforms. TRANSFORMATIVE MORAL PLATFORMS James is on safe ground when he begins this essay with the presumption that we all stand somewhere from whence we engage the moral world. We live by a system of values, instincts, or convictions, and our speculation takes the form of trials and errors shaped by reflection. From James, we take the point that every such platform is transformative, because anyway it tips, either toward conversion, toward the All, or toward the Real, it leads us on. As a teacher of ethics, this gives me some comfort. If a platform tips toward

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conversion, it seeks content; if toward the Absolute, it seeks practical individuation and temporal significance; and if toward the Real, it seeks a normative account of obedience and related content. Working in this diagnostic way, moral platforms and their construction via experience and the tradition of philosophy provides us with a very handy tool or insight into the lives of our students, our community, and ourselves. I find the deeper resonance of James is that these claims, whichever platform we construct, are lodged in our hearts. The challenge of moral transformation dies when it is separated from this holistic personal sense. “Thou mayest do it,” he admonishes. The cries of the wounded, the voices of “thy innocent ones,” abused by the powerful and callous in Psalm 83, speak first to our hearts, and what we do from that origin either makes our moral world or reveals the moral world—but in all cases, we join the chorus of moral demand when we hear, “thou mayest do it.” BIBLIOGRAPHY James, William. Essays in Pragmatisim. New York: Hafner, 1969. James, William, and Martin E. Marty. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. London: Penguin, 1982. Peirce, Charles S., and Max H. Fisch. Writings: A Chronological Edition. Vol. VIII. Bloomington: Indiana U, 2009. Peirce, Charles S. Correspondence to William James (L244). 1904. Plato, and Robin A. H. Waterfield. Theatetus. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1987. Royce, Josiah. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy: A Critique of the Bases of Conduct and of Faith. New York: Harper, 1965.

Chapter 8

The Moral Life as the Basis for Moral Philosophy John R. Shook

Few essays by William James have been more misinterpreted, and poorly understood even by fellow pragmatists, than “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” Generous commentators and hostile critics alike recount its centrality to James’s ethics. Yet they typically impose ethical views of their own imagination, and assert that James does, or must, affirm them. Worse, these impositions permit James to appear to contradict himself. The charitable apology is dutifully supplied: James is such an impressionistic thinker, and an occasionally disorganized mind. Thus, the commentator feels entitled to supply a layer of ethical philosophy to construct something solid under him. Some singular view expressed by James is selected in order to neatly categorize his ethical theory. James’s ethics has accordingly been treated as a type of utilitarianism, a virtue ethics, a salvific theism, and so on. But commentators are not able to rest easy after their labors. They are forced to admit how their chosen categorization proves troublesome, due to a statement James makes about morality, or a principle James pronounces about ethics. Commentators then struggle to ascertain why James, or anyone else, thought that his ethical theory is philosophically sound. At least the main purpose of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” stands out from the beginning. 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 so far as we contribute to the race’s moral life. 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 hypotheses 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. (James 1897: 184; James 1979: 141)1 97

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Few commentators defend dogmatic ethical philosophizing, so James’s primary point has many admirers. However, most of James’s essay is more about determining the content of ethical philosophy, and how moral philosophers shall participate in its determination. Commentators mostly find, despite their discrepant interpretations, that James’s ethical theory ensures that the moral philosopher’s task is hopeless. IS MORAL PHILOSOPHY HOPELESS? A survey of pragmatist commentators struggling with “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” includes the following instructive examples. Abraham Edel decided that there can be no place for rules or principles in morality according to James, so each person must creatively deal with their own moral problems, with nothing more in hand than an injunction to increase human satisfactions insofar as those are grounded in feelings. The moral philosopher appears to be constrained by act utilitarianism. However, James should not be a utilitarian. Edel notices James’s appreciation for religious experience’s capacity to shape personal character, and his preference that passions take the lead in moral decisions, so Edel aligns James with virtue ethics. That position remains too individualistic and chaotic to satisfy Edel’s effort to detect a rounded-out moral system in James, lending the moral philosopher little solid guidance. Edel states that he expects a “philosopher more attentive to the social and historical setting of our ideas” to justify universalistic ideals such as justice. Edel than forages through dozens of James’s other writings to gather suggestive excuses for James’s reduction of virtue to one’s “passionate nature” and his failure to recognize morality’s stable social nature (Edel 1993: 6–13). Edward Madden finds a very different ethics in James’s essay. He asserts that James did employ a fundamental rule for morality, a thoroughly utilitarian principle. In Madden’s words, that singular rule is “one ought to maximize need satisfaction for all concerned,” and he claims that James’s commitment to this rule could never be altered by any amount of future experience (Madden 1979: xxxiii). Madden concludes that James only ends up endorsing yet another “parochial” moral system alongside the rest, so a moral philosopher must not imitate James’s own example. Besides this considerable contrast in interpretations between two otherwise able pragmatists, their juxtaposition has a further interesting feature. They both bring up John Dewey. Madden quotes from a letter from Dewey to James, sent soon after the initial publication of “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” in which Dewey expressly agrees with James on desires constituting claims and obligations, and with James’s discussion of rules



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(Madden 1979: xxxiii). These pointed but brief agreements are sufficient for Madden to judge that Dewey has a similar a priori commitment to that same utilitarian principle of James’s. As for Edel, he clearly prefers Dewey’s more social and historical treatment of morality, but shows little interest in classifying Dewey as a utilitarian. Other capable pragmatists, and James enthusiasts and admirers all have similarly struggled with James’s essay. Two more examples can illustrate this trend. Gerald Myers would like to classify James as a straightforward utilitarian, but James’s refusal to countenance the torture or abandonment of anyone halts Myers in confusion. Myers promptly faults James for the contradiction, adding that James’s theory cannot actually guide any moral philosopher trying to fulfill James’s injunction to wisely adjudicate among life’s ideals. Indeed, “James never tried to be the kind of moral philosopher he described in his essay” (Myers 1986: 400). Myers is not impressed by the role of religion in James’s ethics, since the perplexities of moral life get transferred over to the mysteries of mysticism. For James, according to Myers, a person simply turns one’s life over to any chosen moral authority and lives according to its wishes to pragmatically fulfill them. While pragmatist in spirit, Myers intimates, that method does not sound like moral philosophy anymore. Ruth Anna Putnam does not judge that James’s ethics devolves into irresponsible wish-fulfillment—moral responsibility must weigh heavily on us all. She can agree with Myers that James expects the moral philosopher to undertake an impossible task, but not because of religion’s mysteries. Rather, James’s ethics seeks an ultimate coherence among worthy ideals, but no singular coherence resolves their conflicts, as there are too many possible arrangements to humanly consider. At most, a moral philosopher can offer a few advancements in certain ideals that are more inclusive and cause the least loss to other ideals, in order to increase the overall satisfactions of demands (Putnam 1990: 83). However, the project to pursue more inclusive ideals puzzles Putnam, because a commitment to “the most inclusive ideal” strikes her as not only unapproachably perfect, but merely an imported ideal of James’s own devising, violating his pledge that the moral philosopher would stay impartial. All the same, Putnam is quite right to point out how James rejected coherence, and similar aesthetic qualities such as harmony, as criteria for converging upon one singular set of finalized ideals. James had explicitly demoted the aesthetic in his 1890 work, The Principles of Psychology. A section classifying lower and higher stages of thinking starts from sensation and the perception of things, proceeds to reasoning about objects, and reaches its sophisticated stages in aesthetic appreciation and then ethical decision. Associationist psychology and its empiricism is duly criticized throughout his psychological and philosophical writings.

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Jeremy Bentham’s hedonism falls far short. Not even John Stuart Mill’s empiricism fully accounts for complex forms of thinking, moral sensibilities, and higher values, which all depend on the brain’s own creative relational processes, processes developed under social circumstances somewhat unique to each person. At higher stages, these mental processes allow for thoughtful creativity. Therefore, James’s ranking is based on the degree of conscious selection and deliberate choice infused into each stage’s mode of experience. Ascending, still higher, we reach the plane of Ethics, where choice reigns notoriously supreme. An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. To sustain the arguments for the good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle our longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot unflinchingly on the arduous path, these are characteristic ethical energies. But more than these; for these but deal with the means of compassing interests already felt by the man to be supreme. The ethical 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 . . . his choice really lies between one of several equally possible future Characters. What he shall become is fixed by the conduct of this moment. . . . [I]n these critical ethical moments, what consciously  seems  to be in question is the complexion of the character itself. The problem with the man is less what act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall now resolve to become. (James 1890: I. 287–8)

James would never trust aesthetics in the ethical realm, because our prejudiced eye is too quick to pass judgment on lives very different from our own. In his essay “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” he relates his encounter with backwoods life in mountainous North Carolina. Describing his dismay at the ugly squalor of settler life, he writes, The forest had been destroyed; and what had ‘improved’ it out of existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer, without a single element of artificial grace to make up for the loss of Nature’s beauty. . . . No modern person ought to be willing to live a day in such a state of rudimentariness and denudation. Then I said to the mountaineer who was driving me, “What sort of people are they who have to make these new clearings?” “All of us,” he replied. “Why, we ain’t happy here, unless we are getting one of these coves under cultivation.” I instantly felt that I had been losing the whole inward significance of the situation. Because to me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation, I thought that to those whose sturdy arms and obedient axes had made them they could tell no other story. But, when they looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of was personal victory. The chips, the girdled trees, and the vile split rails spoke of honest sweat, persistent toil and final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes. In short, the clearing, which to me was a mere ugly picture



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on the retina, was to them a symbol redolent with moral memories and sang a very pæan of duty, struggle, and success. I had been as blind to the peculiar ideality of their conditions as they certainly would also have been to the ideality of mine, had they had a peep at my strange indoor academic ways of life at Cambridge. (James 1899: 8–9)

Our aesthetic feelings and judgments cannot do justice to the ideals pursued in the lives of others. In general, for James, the worthiness of ideals cannot be fairly tested by any aesthetic criteria. Imposing one’s preferred aesthetic criteria amounts to the imposition of a partial perspective on life. A philosophical imposition of some familiar aesthetic criteria in turn amounts to resorting to setting an a priori standard. As far as James could see, only the truly unfamiliar, the uncharted territory of fresh experience from an original course of action, could guarantee that nothing a priori or necessary is determining matters. Determinism is incompatible with the moral life of accomplishing real good, as James argues in “The Dilemma of Determinism,” for even a little good makes its own positive contribution to the growth of reality. We genuinely create when we choose ethically (James 1897: 170–5; James 1979: 132–135). For James, the ethical choice is the freest choice, and vice versa. It appears that the moral philosopher must be closely acquainted with the necessity of freely making choices about the most important matters in life. In fact, James expects moral philosophers to forge most decisive choices impacting us all. Can that burden really be shouldered?

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER’S ROLE The moral philosopher seeks an ethical philosophy: “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 ethical point of view” (James 1897: 184–5; James 1979: 141). Having abjured a priori systematizing, James restricts the moral philosopher’s inquiry to moral matters already in the world, including the philosopher’s own search for that ideal unity to an ethical world. “The subject matter of his study is the ideals he finds existing in the world; the purpose which guides him is this ideal of his own, of getting them into a certain form. This ideal . . . is a positive contribution which the philosopher himself necessarily makes to the problem. But it is his only positive contribution. At the outset of his inquiry he ought to have no other ideals” (James 1897: 185; James 1979: 142). In order to definitively banish those ethical necessities and a priori moral frameworks, James must ground morality and ethical ideals in the concrete

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moral life of sentient beings, with no exceptions allowed. All moral rules and principles, up to the highest ideals a society may revere, have their ultimate basis in the actual claims and corresponding obligations of real people, somewhere and somewhen. James accordingly places extremely rigorous demands on a moral philosopher. Imposing an a priori system for morality must be avoided, so abstract reasonings based on intuitive principles or fine sensibilities aroused by aesthetic characteristics cannot play decisive roles. Yet ethical ideals are needed. Moral philosophers suggest them. They are mere hypotheticals, however. A moral philosopher’s own ideal(s) count no more and no less than any others until their worth is evident, and their worth must be tested by the future course of human welfare. Before we discuss the nature of that testing, James’s requirement of impartiality needs clarification. Two of James’s statements about testing ideals appear to conflict. James requires impartial testing, to rule out prejudiced testing. Impartiality in ethics usually means that abstract individuals, not actual people, are subject to moral norms, so that everyone is equally under a moral duty to comply no matter who a person happens to be in real life. However, James additionally requires that the tests of ideals be grounded only in the actual demands of real people. This triad of statements may be inconsistent with each other: 1. James: “The entire undertaking of the philosopher obliges him to seek an impartial test” (James 1897: 199; James 1979: 151). 2. Definition: An impartial test would never prioritize particular people, regarding them at most as abstractly generic individuals. 3. James: “That test, however, must be incarnated in the demand of some actually existent person” (James 1897: 199; James 1979: 151–2). How can a test be impartial if particular people and their personal demands constitute both the tested ideal (for people must propose ideals) and the means of confirming that ideal (for ideals should satisfy demands)? It is clear that James does expect every ideal to arise from some group commitment, or at least some individual’s commitment, to its worth. Ideals must not float freely apart from the real demands of real people. And it seems just as clear that James expects a moral philosopher to test ideals in the same manner, no matter whose ideals they happen to be—even one’s own. If these three statements are truly inconsistent, the reasonable resolution calls for rejecting one of them. The ethical skeptic admits that ethical impartiality is a fine standard but unattainable, so 1 is denied: a plurality of subjective moral viewpoints remains forever irreconcilable. The act utilitarian rejects 2, instead requiring that an impartial test simply include all actual people, so that all demands are fairly taken into account. The ethical apriorist



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denies 3, expecting that an idealized ethical system is valid universally, since it is designed for all individuals regardless of who they actually happen to be. As for James, he saw no inconsistency here. To understand why James may be correct, consider the ethical apriorists. James depicts them like this: “They imagine an abstract moral order in which the objective truth resides; and each tries to prove that this pre-existing order is more accurately reflected in his own ideas than in those of his adversary. It is because one disputant is backed by this overarching abstract order that we think the other should submit” (James 1897: 194; James 1979: 148). Ethical apriorists effectively rely on a quasi-deductive argument that has much in common with abduction. The following schematic argument captures a typical procedure: 4. The entire moral life of the world can be confirmed as stably and coherently real. 5. Only if this set S of ethical principles is valid, would 4 be correct. 6. Therefore, S must be valid. James’s point made against the ethical apriorists is this: an ethical apriorist is able to imaginatively perceive that hoped-for stable and coherent moral world only by viewing it through that principled framework S, and then that perception of the hoped-for world is taken to be a complete confirmation of S. In effect, presuming S creates the desired perception of the world as already perfected, and that perfect world is simultaneously “evidence” of the prior validity of S. The logical invalidity of this procedure is apparent. The “evidence” cannot be sufficiently independent from the imposed framework, and any number of complex frameworks could accomplish that same sort of “verification.” Little confidence can be assigned to premise 5, because of the term “only”—it is too convenient that the perfect moral world is visible “only” through S’s framework, and it is not the case that only S will serve in that capacity. Rival ethical apriorists would not be able to confirm a coherent moral world by way of each other’s systems. Each apriorist interprets the actual world’s moral matters through a preferred framework, so a rival’s treasured moral exemplars seem to be poor evidence, and vice versa. Onlookers have their own intuitions and sympathies too, and no one could possibly be impartial. The problem with ethical apriorism for James lies not with allowing a presumed ethical ideal to help create the evidence counting in its favor. James’s own ethical theory requires that constructive feature, as we shall explore. Rather, ethical apriorism rashly tries to perfectly comprehend the entire moral world all at once, and forever. An ethical apriorist attempts to anticipate far too much about the moral life, now and eternally. Yet the breadth and

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extent of present and future moral experience across one species like us, or many sentient species, must radically exceed any philosopher’s grasp. At an extreme, an ethicist might attempt to imagine the moral viewpoint of a deity. James doesn’t object to that effort, but a moral philosopher is only entitled to hope that one’s favored ideal enjoys divine favor—no moral philosopher will be ascertaining God’s fuller ethical vision. All the same, the philosophical quest for that fuller ethical vision is the only alternative to skepticism: Yet the philosopher, just because he is a philosopher, adds his own peculiar ideal to the confusion (with which if he were willing to be a sceptic he would be passably content), and insists that over all these individual opinions there is a system of truth which he can discover if he only takes sufficient pains (James 1897: 198–9; James 1979: 151).

The skeptic can rest content with a moral cacophony. The moral philosopher must search for ethical systematization. It is no objection against James that his preferred type of moral philosopher is driven to seek more cohesive systems of finer ideals, by revising prior established ideals with a personal contribution. This revisionary process, guided by a visionary end, is depicted by James as a magnified and more public version of what occurs inside anyone’s mental processes as creative thought makes its decisive contribution to the system of knowledge possessed by one’s mind. That analogy between intellectual learning and moral creativity is suggestive. However, the crucial difference between personal knowledge and public knowledge lies in the great consequences for society if its ideals are adjusted and increased by one. James cannot be talking merely about personal ethics, but social ethics as well.

SOCIAL ETHICS There are few philosophers so capable of personalizing morality as James. It all starts with individual sentient beings: “Surely there is no status for good and evil to exist in, in a purely insentient world” (James 1897: 190; James 1979: 145). The moral life is grounded in obligations of one to another, and those obligations arise for no other reason than that individuals have needs, express their values, and demand claims upon their satisfaction. The relation between obligation and claim is as close as possible, emphasized with James’s own italics: “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” (James 1897: 194; James 1979: 148).



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James’s argument for this stance rests on the inconceivability of the alternative: that something beyond the realm of life has a rightful veto preventing a sincere claim from arousing any obligation. James does not deny that many claims should not be obliged, but that evaluation must itself be based on some other obligations arising from claims. “Which obligations are to be morally genuine?” is a question to be answered by looking to the features of obligations and those making claims, not by looking to anything transcendent apart from the life world of obligations. We inveterately think that something which we call the “validity” of the claim is what gives to it its obligatory character, and that this validity is something outside of the claim’s mere existence as a matter of fact. It rains down upon the claim, we think, from some sublime dimension of being, which the moral law inhabits, much as upon the steel of the compass-needle the influence of the Pole rains down from out of the starry heavens. But again, how can such an inorganic abstract character of imperativeness, additional to the imperativeness which is in the concrete claim itself, exist? Take any demand however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only possible kind of proof you could adduce would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that ran the other way. The only possible reason there can be why any phenomenon ought to exist is that such a phenomenon actually is desired. Any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount; it makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all. (James 1897: 195; James 1979: 148–9)

The moral life begins and ends with creatures sentient enough to make and recognize obligations upon each other. Wherever such minds exist, with judgments of good and ill, and demands upon one another, there is an ethical world in its essential features. . . . [W]hile they lived, there would be real good things and real bad things in the universe; there would be obligations, claims, and expectations; obediences, refusals, and disappointments; compunctions, and longings for harmony to come again, and inward peace of conscience when it was restored; there would, in short, be a moral life, whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed. . . . Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist, in yon blue heaven above us bent, we form at any rate an ethical republic here below. (James 1897: 197–8; James 1979: 150)

James speaks of our “ethical republic” only in the most generic manner. Each deserves the equality to be able to create obligations, but the matter of which obligations shall morally prevail is a separate issue. He sees how all the world’s societies, past and present, are far from civically unified. Human society in general since its origins has been a constant scene of experimentation

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as peoples fought for moral ideals and suffered the consequences, of victory as well as defeat. Moral ideals for James are basically social norms regulating legitimate obligations—which are most obligatory, which are optional, and which are beneath notice. Each society is perfectly capable of discovering for itself, over long experience, how well its moral ideals can sustain the good of the whole. This is a utilitarian perspective on social ethics, but no moral philosophy need be involved. The long brutal march of cultural development— “an experiment of the most searching kind” (James 1897: 206; James 1979: 156) as James puts it—eventually tests innumerable moral ideals and their combinations. By the time any philosophers show up to lend their commentary, societies can appear to have been designed by some singular mind, for their sets of important moral ideals are at least somewhat coherent and stable enough to permit ordinary life to carry on. History is the first teacher of philosophy, and existing culture is the second. 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 that only 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. Polyandry and polygamy and slavery, private warfare and liberty to kill, judicial torture and arbitrary royal power have slowly succumbed to actually aroused complaints; and though someone’s ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each improvement, yet a vastly greater total number of them find shelter in our civilized society than in the older savage ways. 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 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. (James 1897: 205–6; James 1979: 155–6)

Do not be ready to imagine that James regards existing cultures with much satisfaction, however. Respect is appropriate, but not philosophical satisfaction. Within cultures and between cultures, the most bewildering variety to morality persists. The wars of the flesh and the spirit in each man, the concupiscences of different individuals pursuing the same unshareable material or social prizes, the ideals which contrast so according to races, circumstances, temperaments, philosophical beliefs, etc.—all form a maze of apparently inextricable confusion with no obvious Ariadne’s thread to lead one out. (James 1897: 198; James 1979: 151)



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That variety persists at the philosophical level of reflection concerned with better ethics for all humanity. Various essences of good have thus been found and proposed as bases of the ethical system. Thus, to be a mean between two extremes; to be recognized by a special intuitive faculty; to make the agent happy for the moment; to make others as well as him happy in the long run; to add to his perfection or dignity; to harm no one; to follow from reason or flow from universal law; to be in accordance with the will of God; to promote the survival of the human species on this planet—are so many tests, each of which has been maintained by somebody to constitute the essence of all good things or actions so far as they are good. No one of the measures that have been actually proposed has, however, given general satisfaction. (James 1897: 200; James 1979: 152)

What is the philosopher of ethics to do? The ethical apriorist is tempted to dictate what must be judged as good and right, to be able to regulate what is truly good and right everywhere. Again, James forbids it. All one’s slumbering revolutionary instincts waken at the thought of any single moralist wielding such powers of life and death. Better chaos forever than an order based on any closet philosopher’s rule, even though he were the most enlightened possible member of his tribe. No! if the philosopher is to keep his judicial position, he must never become of the parties to the fray. (James 1897: 204; James 1979: 155)

All the same, a moral philosopher advocating one or another moral ideal, appealing to its preservations of goods and expansion of more goods, has James’s blessing: As a militant, fighting free-handed that the goods to which he is sensible may not be submerged and lost from out of life, the philosopher, like every other human being, is in a natural position. (James 1897: 204; James 1979: 154)

The moral philosopher’s role is to experimentally struggle for the better ethical system of ideals, but only component by component, not by dogmatically systematizing the entirety of the moral life. Each moral philosopher can only pursue one’s own moral agenda, and from that perspective, this effort must appear to be just a lone individual’s attempt to bring moral respect to disrespected obligations. However, from a broader perspective, one moral agenda is in fact nothing less than a creative readjustment of an entire system of moral ideals all deserving considerable respect. As a consequence, personal ethics is social ethics for James. In the course of ordinary moral life, the wisest course is the safest course, because of the

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vast accumulation of human wisdom embodied in traditional customs and norms. James notes, “The presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good” (James 1897: 206; James 1979: 156). Social conflict is manageable, in many cases, because established social structures and institutions carry their due weight. James would never suppose that mere conventionality is all there is to morality, however. He does not reduce morality to what has survived from the past, no matter how venerable and sensible, nor does he equate customary morals with worthy ideals sought by ethics. Most of the past should not stay unchanged forever, even if it cannot all be changed at once. What can be changed now has to preserve the worth of the past. That is why James must warn against radicalism: “The philosopher must be a conservative, and in the construction of his casuistic scale must put the things most in accordance with the customs of the community on top” (James 1897: 206; James 1979: 156). Custom is not king, but established moral norms, and especially high ideals, should be subsumed into a revised ethical system if at all possible. As James pronounces his ultimate standard for judging ideals, it is supposed to sound like a conservative standard. [T]hose 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 more inclusive side—of the side which even in the hour of triumph will to some degree do justice to the ideals in which the vanquished party’s interests lay. 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 that only is the path of peace! (James 1897: 205; James 1979: 155)

Ethics cannot resort to demonizing the opposition as “alien” and it must not quickly resort to conflict. Revolutionaries may find that war comes to them, but their ethics must be more constructive than destructive. The moral philosopher (in the guise of a thinker, literary author, holy figure, or statesman) is essential to the partial and ongoing improvement to a society’s social ethics. Every now and then, however, someone is born with the right to be original, and his revolutionary thought or action may bear prosperous fruit. He may replace old “laws of nature” by better ones; he may, by breaking old moral rules in a certain place, bring in a total condition of things more ideal than would have followed had the rules been kept. (James 1897: 208; James 1979: 157–8)



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Although each moral philosopher has their own more inclusive ethical vision to support their particular moral agenda, somehow the actual trials and results of all of their efforts forged together can direct society toward a worthier ethical system that none of the participants quite anticipated. Above it all, a philosopher aloof from this ethical drama can perceive an unsteady yet inexorable trend: The pure philosopher can only follow the windings of the spectacle, confident that the line of least resistance will always be towards the richer and the more inclusive arrangement, and that by one tack after another some approach to the kingdom of heaven is incessantly made. (James 1897: 208; James 1979: 157)

THE ETHICAL IMPERATIVE It bears repeating that James’s moral philosopher is under an injunction to advance ideals collectively, as well as individually: “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” (James 1897: 205; James 1979: 155). Advancing a new ideal with righteous zeal comes with the job of moral philosopher, but the systematic nature of moral ideals must not be overlooked. When we think of principled moral ideals, our thoughts turn to singular declarations of profound right, or terrible wrong. It may not occur to us that ideals in action are woven together in mutually supportive or antagonistic patterns which help make up even broader networks of social norms tracing back into the deep history of a culture or even a civilization. Those vast networks of social norms exist to serve the collective good. In James’s ethics, the good is more fundamental than the right: There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. (James 1897: 209; James 1979: 158)

Established rules can be reliable guides for most of the moral life, but no rule is more important than all the people whose goods are at stake. The moral philosopher may advocate for an ideal principle, but the worth of that ideal must ultimately point to actual goods at risk, both present and future, and answer to those goods.

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He knows that he must vote always for the richer universe, for the good which seems most organizable, most fit to enter to complex combinations, most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. But which particular universe this is he cannot know for certain in advance; he only knows that if he makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform him of the fact. (James 1897: 210; James 1979: 158)

Despite appearances, this aim of moral philosophy is no ordinary utilitarianism, if it is utilitarian in any sense. James sets aside theories content to point out psychological origins for ideas of good and bad, and hedonism and act utilitarianism are nonstarters for James. Conceiving of demands and obligations as specifiable and static matters, ready for measuring and aggregating, is not compatible with James’s portrait of the creative mind or the dynamic society. What will be good won’t necessarily look like what has been good. Utilitarianism relies on recognized goods; James cannot. Fortunately, there are more varieties of consequentialism than utilitarianism. While established norms and moral ideals serve fairly identifiable goods, the goods produced by a novel ideal will not be so easily identified in advance. Although James insists that the future good is the true test of creative moral philosophy, he does not say that a philosopher has to accurately specify which goods will become available in all their concrete manifestations. An ideal such as political freedom surely creates vast goods as well as harms, but no one could ever delineate what they all will be, before political freedom is introduced into a country. Fortunately, no moral philosopher need take up that task, a task which must be hypothetical and experimental rather than procedural and calculable. In James’s ethics, to borrow a phrase from philosophy of science, the context of hypothesis is one thing, while the context of justification is another. That distinction prevails for any truly experimental inquiry. As James says, “ethical science is just like physical science, and instead of being deducible all at once from abstract principles, must simply bide its time, and be ready to revise its conclusions from day to day.” Even well-confirmed hypotheses may be held accountable by more accumulated evidence. These experiments are to be judged, not a priori, but by actually finding, after the fact of their making, how much more outcry or how much appeasement comes about. What closet solutions can possibly anticipate the result of trials made on such a scale? Or what can any superficial theorist’s judgment be worth, in a world where every one of hundreds of ideals has its special champion already provided in the shape of some genius expressly born to feel it, and to fight to death in its behalf? (James 1897: 207–8; James 1979: 157)

Long-held ethical ideals must similarly face reevaluation, no matter how many have championed them, but only when accumulated experience



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dictates. James is proposing moral experimentalism.2 A new ideal, no matter how urgently needed, must be integrated alongside as many established ideals as possible. The moral philosopher accordingly envisions a worthier ethical system which hopefully will increase the future’s goods. If a society undergoes modification toward that ethical system, the consequences will gradually become apparent, so reevaluation awaits. A fresh generation of moral philosophers will be energized by the emergent need for further ethical revision, and the cycle continues. These two ethical contexts, of vision followed by revision, are not strictly independent, since they are only distinguishable phases of ethical thought over time. The abiding burden of ethical thought is that it must help create hoped-for goods which, when realized, won’t be exactly as envisioned, and may not prove sufficiently satisfactory. James offers no hope that swift convergence on a single ethical system is coming. Quite the opposite. No matter how many goods are created by each revisionary system, more possibilities for further novel goods emerge too, and the inadequacies of ideals are exposed yet again. However, we must not fault ideals themselves, since they make those future goods possible. Yet no ideal is finalized until all moral life comes to a halt. We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race’s moral life. 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 hypotheses 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. (James 1897: 184; James 1979: 141)

Ethical apriorists understand this all too well—they must engineer their preferred system to fit some selected mode of moral life which must not fundamentally change. Static ideals suit static societies. That is not conservativism, but petrification. A “passion” for absolute certainty, displayed by the “absolutely certified philosophies” that James scolds in “The Sentiment of Rationality” exhibits but one aspect of rationality, and not a very practical one at that (James 1897: 90–1; James 1979: 76). The absolutist, tragically disappointed by the world, is left with moral skepticism’s “anaesthesia” while the moralist has abundant “energy” for acting on creeds to prove them true (James 1897: 87; James 1979: 87). James leaves the moral life wide open to plurality, novelty, vitality, and creativity, for as far into the future as moral creatures have a future. Following James’s guidance, moral philosophers must always be (a) regretting how contemporary ideals leave many goods impoverished and (b) envisioning a finer system of compelling ideals, while (c) submitting that system to the test

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of future consequences and (d) confessing that no one could know the finest or final possible system of ideals. This guidance cannot amount to utilitarianism’s pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number. No moral philosopher can presume to actually craft a novel arrangement of ideals by calculating in advance just how specifiable greater goods will be measurably increased over some definite number of people. James does not conflate the context of hypothesis with the context of justification. The moral philosophers envisioning a finer system of ideals are rarely in a position to initially know why inherited ideals fall short, or to finally assess the outcomes of their reformations. The thinkers who create the ideals come he knows not whence, their sensibilities are evolved he knows not how; and the question as to which of two conflicting ideals will give the best universe then and there, can be answered by him only through the aid of the experience of other men. (James 1897: 208–9; James 1979: 158)

James rightly depicts ethical reformations as longer-term projects, in which reforming ethicists play a crucial yet limited role. These moral philosophers do not even have to work together to carefully estimate potential outcomes to ethical reformations, as far as James indicates. James does not rule out teamwork in ethics, but there is nothing about biological or cultural forces that produces just the right social movement at the right time. Ethical creativity is ultimately individualized in James’s hands. His account depicts the moral philosopher as a pioneering figure, akin to the “Great Man” described in “Great Men and Their Environment” whose independent initiative can alter the course of history (James 1897: 231–2; James 1979: 173–174). Pioneers in the realm of ethics explore ambiguous and treacherous territory: moral philosophers must simultaneously respect high ideals and regret how many of those same ideals are not just inadequate but responsible for tragic loss.3 Moral philosophers could take collective action based on forged consensus, all the same, if their prioritized ideals coincide. Allies needn’t be scarce. There’s nothing inherently special about the honorific title of “moral philosopher” anyway. Its job description can be fulfilled within a variety of careers interested in the general good and public service. His function is in fact indistinguishable from that of the best kind of statesman at the present day. His books upon ethics, therefore, so far as they truly touch the moral life, must more and more ally themselves with a literature which is confessedly tentative and suggestive rather than dogmatic—I mean with novels and dramas of the deeper sort, with sermons, with books on statecraft and philanthropy and social and economical reform. (James 1897: 210; James 1979: 159)



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Coalitions of concerned activists mobilized by the same ideal surely make a large impact on society, and perhaps the greatest difference to social reform movements. All the same, there is nothing about James’s ethical imperatives to increase human goods and readjust ideals in a manner that requires consensus or the avoidance of conflict among individuals or coalitions.4 Indeed, James leads the reader to expect that those supreme visions of moral philosophers, even of the same era and culture, would not always coincide. He even appears to revel in the pluralistic way that every reformer advancing a new ideal may be met by equal and opposite reformers arising to defend established ideals and offer alternative plans. James’s ethical theory itself does not require that the moral thinkers of each generation should agree on the greatest social ills and opportunities of their time. His creative injunction to boldly confront social problems with a novel ideal cannot guarantee that kind of agreement. His conservative injunction to minimize damage to established ideals compels no such agreement either, and it cannot provide any unique formula. James never lends the impression that moral philosophy as a whole is basically about a singular path forward toward an evident ethical future. That impression is advanced by James’s opposition, admirers of ethical apriorism. In summary, James has supplied his answers to the psychological, metaphysical, and casuistic questions of moral philosophy, so that “the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations.” But this true order can only emerge in the lives of moral creatures in the indefinitely long run, after all the trials of the moral life have been undergone and evaluated. This would have served as James’s concluding statement to “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”: And yet if he be a true philosopher he must see that there is nothing final in any actually given equilibrium of human ideals, but that, as our present laws and customs have fought and conquered other past ones, so they will in their turn be overthrown by any newly discovered order which will hush up the complaints that they still give rise to, without producing others louder still. . . . And although a man always risks much when he breaks away from established rules and strives to realize a larger ideal whole than they permit, yet the philosopher must allow that it is at all times open to anyone to make the experiment, provided he fear not to stake his life and character upon the throw. (James 1897: 206; James 1979: 156)

The ethical apriorist has been refuted: no final system of ethical ideals can be permanently settled by mortals in advance. James’s essay could have halted at section four with this argumentative success. Section five reveals his fuller agenda for moral philosophy.

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THE DIVINE INFLUENCE Besides his creative and conservative injunctions for ethics, James adds a constructive injunction. Finer ethical ideals, and more comprehensive systems of ideals to accommodate them, will control the moral life into the indefinite future only if they are primarily constructed by philosophicallyminded thinkers who are also minding God. In the final section, James argues for this injunction: “the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands” (James 1897: 213–4; James 1979: 161). James does not credit God for either the moral life, the ethical republic, or the advancement of ideals. We are psychologically capable of instigating claims and understanding the meaning of obligatory claims on their respective goods, and deeper thinkers among us can promote the better life through advocating finer ideals. Again, James makes no argument for God based on the actuality of the moral life or the possibility of ethical progress. He instead raises a fourth question alongside the initial three questions. “The religion of humanity” affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does. Whether the purely human system can gratify the philosopher’s demand as well as the other is a different question, which we ourselves must answer ere we close. (James 1897: 198; James 1979: 150)

James’s answer to this additional question is “No.” Ethics in the abstract does not depend on a prior affirmation of God, but ethical progress in the real world could: “The chief of all the reasons why concrete ethics cannot be final is that they have to wait on metaphysical and theological beliefs” (James 1897: 210; James 1979: 159). Moral philosophy cannot overlook the practical question of how best to realize finer ideals for humanity. Religion, for James, adequately answers that question. However, theology will not be arriving to rescue morality. There is continuity between moral philosophy and theology, but it renders theism dependent on the moral life, not the other way around. James provides three interwoven arguments in section five for his judgment that moral philosophy should align with theism: an inductive argument grounded in moral psychology, a deductive argument based on the metaphysics of ethics, and an abductive argument about the efficacy of casuistic ethics. Induction from moral psychology: Ethical progress usually depends on strong moral energies of those motivated by a conviction that their ideals are divinely sanctioned, so moral philosophers pursuing ethical progress probably think that their ideals are divinely sanctioned.



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Deduction from metaphysical ethics: God’s moral demands lend an infinite perspective to the significance of any formulated ideal; ideals of infinite significance awaken strong moral energies needed for ethical progress; therefore, God’s moral demands are necessary for ethical progress. Abduction from casuistic ethics: Our improving ethical systems would enjoy progressive coherence and convergence if God’s supreme obligations ground the finest ethical system, and we must seek coherent and convergent ethical systems, so God’s supreme obligations should guide us in our ethical progress.

None of these arguments for God’s involvement in ethics could ever prove that God exists. At their highest plausibility, they are all compatible with God not actually existing. Furthermore, taken together, they cannot even demonstrate that every moral philosopher must affirm God while doing ethics. As matters were left at the end of section four, moral philosophy can be disorganized, discordant, and undeified. If moral philosophers (and similar kinds of reformers) were not held responsible for actually advancing ethical causes on behalf of ideals, that’s where matters could be left. All the same, James conceives of the moral philosopher as a social reformer obligated to a higher calling. James does not believe that the moral philosopher is sufficiently motivated to social action by merely considering the finite goods for finite creatures. He expects moral philosophers to design better ideals for the sake of human welfare, but he does not really expect them, or anyone else, to make supreme sacrifices simply for the sake of humanity’s future. Many of us . . . would openly laugh at the very idea of the strenuous mood being awakened in us by those claims of remote posterity which constitute the last appeal of the religion of humanity. We do not love these men of the future keenly enough; and we love them perhaps the less the more we hear of their evolutionized perfection, their high average longevity and education, their freedom from war and crime, their relative immunity from pain and zymotic disease, and all their other negative superiorities. This is all too finite, we say; we see too well the vacuum beyond. It lacks the note of infinitude and mystery, and may all be dealt with in the don’t-care mood. No need of agonizing ourselves or making others agonize for these good creatures just at present. (James 1897: 212; James 1979: 160)

No ethics by and for humanity alone could provoke the high moral energies and strenuous ethical quests necessary for serious struggles on behalf of ideals. Nothing human is worth sacrificing for the merely human, in James’s view. Even the perfectible super-human could not be enough. No matter how advanced any species becomes, it is still confronted by potential ruin for this life and the final void after life. No natural religion could ever satisfy the

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moral hope that it all must participate in some ultimate meaning, as James argues in “Is Life Worth Living?” A religion of humanity or nature leaves us in a “moral multiverse” of despair (James 1897: 43–4; James 1979: 42–43). Without hope placed in a higher perfect purpose, a person’s life cannot be heroic and one’s unredeemed suffering is “a sort of hell” (James 1897: 58; James 1979: 53). What more reliably arouses strenuous moral effort is the tragic fate of lost goods held in supreme esteem by an infinite being. James ultimately cannot be a utilitarian because no amount of finite goods reasonably justifies ethical struggles. “All through history, in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the don’t-care temper, we see the antagonism of the strenuous and genial moods, and the contrast between the ethics of infinite and mysterious obligation from on high, and those of prudence and the satisfaction of merely finite need” (James 1897: 213; James 1979: 161). James stands firmly on the side of an ethics of the infinite in order to stand for any finite ethical progress. The potential for our ethical future is conducted by the hypothetical role of God. James repeatedly states that hypothetical status for God. It would seem, too—and this is my final conclusion—that the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands. If such a thinker existed, his way of subordinating the demands to one another would be the finally valid casuistic scale; his claims would be the most appealing; his ideal universe would be the most inclusive realizable whole. If he now exists, then actualized in his thought already must be that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pattern which our own must evermore approach. In the interest of our own ideal of systematically unified moral truth, therefore, we, as would-be philosophers, must postulate a divine thinker, and pray for the victory of the religious cause. (James 1897: 213–4; James 1979: 161)

God is ultimately a practical ethical postulate. God is not a premise for ordinary moral life, nor a presupposition for fortunate ethical advances. Those lower levels of morality do not require God or belief in God. But the higher level of ethics, where one must struggle and sacrifice for real social change in the name of ideals, does require fidelity to God. Fidelity to God and God’s ideals is not grounded in knowledge of God: “exactly what the thought of the infinite thinker may be is hidden from us even were we sure of his existence; so that our postulation of him after all serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood” (James 1897: 214; James 1979: 161). James repeatedly says that religion will never yield more knowledge of God than science ever could—the philosophical question is instead whether one is entitled to adopt a faithful agnosticism instead of a skeptical agnosticism. Nowhere does James urge a straightforward pragmatic argument



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for the existence of God. That would be too mundane and expediently prudent. Even in “The Will to Believe,” James does not argue that we should believe in God in order to preserve what we have and secure it from risk for all time. Quite the opposite! We should place faith in God in order to put our lives at risk and sacrifice what we have without any certainties about the future. That kind of faith only makes sense if we seek out a relationship with the supremely real. James appeals to our good will, as any relationship must begin with some trust rather than suspicion, so that we may inaugurate and maintain beneficial relationships (James 1897: 25–28; James 1979: 29–32). But those relationships are not designed for our comforts, now or in the future. Indeed, it is the religious person, not the skeptic or the naturalist, who will authentically encounter evil and know evil personally. There is no pragmatic argument for the existence of God in James’s writings. James is offering a pragmatic argument for the existence of moral philosophers. There would be such worthy reformers, if they were guided by God. Ultimately, James wants us to believe in God because he wants us to believe in ourselves. That ultimate ethical imperative—Commit to the strenuous moral life!—firmly rests on those three pillars of psychology, metaphysics, and casuistry. First, human psychology: The capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a God, men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest. (James 1897: 213; James 1979: 161)

Second, visionary metaphysics: Our attitude towards concrete evils is entirely different in a world where we believe there are none but finite demanders, from what it is in one where we joyously face tragedy for an infinite demanders’ sake. Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life’s evils, is set free in those who have religious faith. (James 1897: 213; James 1979: 161)

Third, effective casuistry: For this reason, the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall. (James 1897: 213; James 1979: 161)

These three pillars are not erected to simply support a confession of faith in God, but primarily to support a conviction of faith in one’s self. That faith

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is a universal faith, freely available to anyone: “the philosopher must allow that it is at all times open to anyone to make the experiment, provided he fear not to stake his life and character upon the throw” (James 1897: 206; James 1979: 156). Some fearless moral philosophers, guided by divine visions, can become what James calls “religious saints” in The Varieties of Religious Experience. That book’s expectations for religious saints and justifications for their role in ethical progress flow seamlessly from James’s arguments in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (Shook 2013). Few among us will prove to be religious saints, of course, but we can still play vital participatory roles in advancing moral progress. Living the moral life is the grand experiment of life, and the greatest risk of life. How shall we answer that call? [W]hen 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 and use of that also are but revelations of our personal aptitude or incapacity for moral life. (James 1897: 214; James 1979: 162)

God is never on trial—it is only we who are ever on trial. James’s fundamental question is a perennial challenge. Shall we be moral, and commit to the moral life? NOTES 1. Surprisingly few James scholars have recognized the significance of a posteriori experimentalism for his moral philosophy. A recent exception is Sergio Franzese (2008: 40–43). 2. Moral revolutions are the hardest on revolutionaries themselves; see Sarin Marchetti (2015: 102–111). 3. Most commentators, mesmerized by their own imposition of utilitarianism on James’s ethics, entirely miss this feature to James’s “ethical republic.” Trygve Throntveit does not (2014: 92–108). 4. Michael Slater, of the numerous commentators on James’s ethics which he helpfully surveys, more plausibly explicates that continuity (2009: 86–94).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Edel, Abraham, 1993. In Search of the Ethical: Moral Theory in Twentieth Century America. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Franzese, Sergio. 2008. The Ethics of Energy: William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.



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James, William. 1890. The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. New York: Henry Holt. James, William, 1897. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. James, William. 1899. Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on some of Life’s Ideals. New York: Henry Holt. James, William. 1979. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular ­Philosophy, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Madden, Edward, 1979. “Introduction.” In William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis, xi–xxxviii. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marchetti, Sarin, 2015. Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Myers, Gerald E. 1986. William James: His Life and Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Putnam, Ruth Anna. 1990. “The Moral Life of a Pragmatist.” In Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. Owen Flanagan and Amélie Rorty, 67–89. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shook, John R. 2013. “William James on Religious Saints and Verifying the God Hypothesis.” Religious Studies and Theology 32(2): 185–208. Slater, Michael R. 2009. William James on Ethics and Faith. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Throntveit, Trygve. 2014. William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 9

Regretting the Impossible Neal A. Tognazzini

Contemporary philosophical discussions of free will are still largely structured around what Peter van Inwagen (1983) has called The Compatibility Question, where what is at issue is whether free will could exist in a deterministic universe. (If the universe is deterministic, then at any given moment there is only one physically possible future—namely, the one prescribed by the past and the laws of nature. And a world with free will, you might think, is a world where what I do next isn’t prescribed by anything that isn’t me.) A newcomer to the literature on free will could be forgiven for being puzzled by this framework, since standard interpretations of quantum mechanics have it that our universe is not deterministic. So why exactly should we care so much about The Compatibility Question? But compatibility questions like this one aren’t quite what they seem. The question of whether we could have knowledge of ordinary truths if all our experiences were instilled by a Cartesian demon, for example, doesn’t depend for its force on our believing that such a demon exists. This is because what the question is really about, after all, is the nature of knowledge itself, and perhaps we can get knowledge to reveal a bit about itself if we put it into extreme conditions. I think we might say something similar about the question of determinism and free will. Our interest is in the nature of free will itself, and asking The Compatibility Question may be a particularly fruitful means of getting straight to the heart of the matter. I mention all of this because in what follows I plan to examine a related compatibility question, one that is discussed at length in William James’s 1897 essay, “The Dilemma of Determinism.” James’s avowed aim in that essay is to examine the “implications” of determinism, and to show, in particular, that if determinism is true, then we are caught in an uncomfortable dilemma. The dilemma is a complicated one (in part because one of its horns 121

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has two branches), and I’ll spell it out more carefully in the next section. But for now, let me just point to the horn that will be our primary object of concern, which is this: if determinism is true, then no one can ever rationally regret anything that has ever happened. I suppose this view could be called incompatibilism about determinism and rational regret, and James’s commitment to this view is one of the things that moves him to espouse an indeterministic view of the universe, what he calls “the free-will theory of popular sense based on the judgment of regret” (James 1956: 176). The consequences of determinism, in James’s view, are just too extreme; they “violate my sense of moral reality through and through” (James 1956: 177). But the issue of the truth of determinism is not the only lens through which I want to approach James’s essay today. I’m also interested in the nature of regret, and I’m hopeful that the question of whether determinism is compatible with rational regret might give us a fruitful context in which to think about what regret involves. James’s argument that determinism is incompatible with rational regret depends not only on a particular conception of determinism, but also on a particular conception of regret, one that I think is problematic. So, in what follows I plan to use James’s argument as an occasion for thinking carefully about this common but obscure attitude. Let me begin by giving a bit more of the context. I mentioned above that the eponymous dilemma is a complicated one, and this is because it is actually two nested dilemmas. In the final analysis, James thinks that accepting a deterministic worldview leads either to pessimism or subjectivism. Since neither is acceptable, James rejects the deterministic worldview. In brief, here is a reconstruction of James’s reasoning. By “pessimism,” James has in mind the view that the universe is doomed to contain some things that it ought not to contain. If, on the one hand, we maintain that a deterministic world would still contain moral wrongdoing, then we have to think of moral wrongdoing as an inevitable (because determined) component of the universe. This is a sort of pessimism because it involves viewing the universe “as an organism whose constitution is afflicted with an incurable taint, an irremediable flaw” (James 1956: 162). We might escape this variety of pessimism by maintaining instead that a deterministic world would not contain any moral wrongdoing, and hence that our judgments of regret are always and everywhere unfitting (since they contain as a constituent judgment that their objects ought not to have been, which judgment implies the existence of an alternative way the world could have unfolded, whose existence is precluded by the truth of determinism).1 But this is also a sort of pessimism, since it involves viewing our unfitting judgments of regret as themselves an inevitable (because determined) component of the universe. So, determinism is supposed to imply pessimism because it implies that we



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must view the universe either as containing inevitable instances of wrongdoing, or else as containing inevitable instances of irrationality. As James puts it: “[The deterministic world] must be a place of which either sin or error forms a necessary part” (James 1956: 164). There is one way to escape the pessimism, and it is to take the view that James calls “subjectivism.” On this view, although our judgments of regret are unfitting (i.e., they inaccurately represent the world as a world that could have been different), they are not flaws in the world, because what happens [in the universe] is subsidiary to what we think or feel about it. Crime justifies its criminality by awakening our intelligence of that criminality, and eventually our remorses and regrets; and the error included in remorses and regrets, the error of supposing that the past could have been different, justifies itself by its use. (James 1956: 165)

I confess to not entirely understanding the subjectivist view,2 which is why I have opted for that extended quotation from James himself. As far as I can tell, nothing in what follows will depend on it, since we will focus our attention exclusively on the pessimism horn of the dilemma. James claims that subjectivism is preferable to pessimism, but since subjectivism is also out of the question—it leads to “the fatalistic mood of mind” and “ethical indifference” (James 1956: 171)—he is forced to reject the assumption of determinism, which led us into the dilemma in the first place. But as I’ve already emphasized, I’m less concerned with the dilemma itself and more concerned with its ingredients. In particular: I think there is more to be said in favor of compatibilism about determinism and rational regret than James acknowledges. And so I’ll try to say it, which will require me to look closely at the thesis of determinism and at the nature of regret. I hope that the result will be not only an avenue of escaping James’s dilemma, but also clarity about the metaphysical and ethical issues at stake. To focus ideas, it will help to regiment James’s reasoning in the form of an argument. Doing so will allow us to see precisely where the compatibilist3 might try to resist. Here’s how I think it goes (James 1956: 161–162): 1. To regret something is, at least in part, to judge that it ought not to have occurred—that is, that something else ought to have occurred instead. 2. But it’s true of an occurrence that it ought not to have occurred only if it was possible for something else to have occurred instead. 3. If determinism is true, then no occurrence is such that it’s possible for something else to have occurred instead. 4. So, if determinism is true, then no occurrence is such that it ought not to have occurred.

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5. So, if determinism is true, then any token of regret incorporates a false judgment. 6. An attitude is rationally held (or “fitting”) only if it does not rest on a false judgment. 7. So, if determinism is true, then every token of regret is irrational (or “unfitting”). As I see it, the first three premises are the ones to focus on.4 (4) follows validly from (2) and (3); (5) follows validly from (1) and (4); (7) follows validly from (5) and (6); and (6) is intended to be an uncontroversial (partial) spelling out of what it means for an attitude to be rationally held. (Compare: to the extent that fear represents a nondangerous reality as dangerous, and hence is unfitting, the fear is irrational.) So, what can be said on behalf of the first three premises? Each premise is appealing, and you can see their appeal by imagining that you are the narrator in Robert Frost’s well-known poem, “The Road Not Taken.”5 There you are, standing in the middle of the woods, having come to a halt at the divergence point of the two footpaths on whose shared segment you have just recently been walking. You know (because you know how “way leads onto way”) that whichever path you choose; you won’t be able to come back to try the other. So, you choose (for whatever or no reason—the narrator in fact doesn’t seem to have one), and that choice shapes your life (as choices tend to do). Now, go beyond the poem and imagine that the path you chose led to something that you regret. Perhaps while on that path you met a professional philosopher and the two of you had such a compelling conversation that you decided to go get your doctorate, but now, ten years later, you are frustrated and fed up with how difficult it is to land a tenure-track job, and you find yourself regretting that you ever walked down that fateful path. Had you taken the other path instead, you think, you would have gone on to be a professional brewer, which was your original plan. Now, with something like this scenario in mind, think back to the first three premises in the argument. Premise (1) says that part of what constitutes your regret is the judgment that you ought to have walked down the other path instead. That seems right. Perhaps regret is an emotion that involves more than just that judgment, but something like that judgment at least seems to be involved.6 Regret is often expressed, after all, with phrases like, “You know, I really shouldn’t have done that.” Premise (2) is a bit abstract, but in this particular context, we can motivate it by imagining a slight alteration in your wooded walk. Rather than having hit a fork in the road, imagine instead that the path never diverged, so that there was in fact nowhere you could have turned off to avoid having that conversation with the philosopher. Imagining that altered situation, doesn’t the judgment that you ought to have taken a



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different path dissolve? After all, there was no other path. Finally, premise (3) says that if determinism is true, then in the entire history of the universe (including the future relative to where we are now), there has been (and will be) only one unified path, utterly without forks. If there are no forks in the path, and regret involves a judgment that implies the existence of forks, then regret is irrational. And that, I take it, is James’s case for incompatibilism about determinism and rational regret. What should we make of the case? Let me start by making a few remarks about premises (2) and (3) and their interaction. I said above that if determinism is true, then the universe contains no forks. But that was sloppy, because there are at least three things that would count as a universe containing no forks, and although James doesn’t clearly distinguish between them, only one is a consequence of the thesis of determinism. One way the universe would contain no forks is if, properly speaking, the phrase “the universe” denotes a four-dimensional spatiotemporal “block” that contains not just what is happening right now, but also everything that ever has or ever will happen. Imagine it, if you like, as a loaf of bread sliced up into continuum-many slices (one for every moment of time), where the heel on the left is the moment of the Big Bang and the heel on the right is the moment (if such a moment there will be) of the Big Crunch. If the universe just is the four-dimensional object that has among its parts everything and everyone that ever has, does, or will exist, then the universe contains no forks. From the God’s-eye perspective, so to speak, it’s not as if reality has a branching structure, where the branches are ways things could go but won’t. And that’s because from the God’s-eye perspective, every event is (tenselessly) happening. This view of the universe is often called eternalism.7 And James does seem, at points, to have the eternalist block universe in mind as he writes. For example, toward the end of the essay (James 1956: 181) we read the following in a footnote: And is not the notion of eternity being given at a stroke to omniscience only just another way of whacking upon us the block-universe, and of denying that possibilities exist?—just the point to be proved. To say that time is an illusory appearance is only a roundabout manner of saying there is no real plurality, and that the frame of things is an absolute unit. Admit plurality, and time may be its form.

In the context of the essay, what James means when he exhorts us to “admit plurality” is that we have reason to believe that determinism is false, and that instead there are the sort of “real possibilities” that are required for the

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rationality of regret. So, it seems clear here in this passage that he thinks a “block universe” is a deterministic universe. But this is false. It is possible to be an eternalist about time—to think that everything that ever did, does, or will exist, does (tenselessly) exist somewhen—and yet reject the thesis of determinism. How? By recognizing that eternalism is merely the thesis that all the slices of the block exist whereas determinism (as applied to a block universe) is a thesis about the connections between the slices. In particular, determinism is the thesis that all the information about what’s happening in one slice can be derived from the information about what’s happening in any other slice, a derivation that would proceed (roughly) by plugging the information about one slice into the antecedents of the conditionals that express the laws of nature, and then simply applying modus ponens.8 James himself recognizes this extra feature of determinism, but perhaps doesn’t see how it can be separated from eternalist block universe. James says (James 1956: 150), What does determinism profess? It professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb: the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible.

Note the talk of “decreeing” and “fixing.” It is true that determinism is a thesis about how certain slices of the universe “decree,” with the help of the laws of nature, what happens at other slices. But endorsing the mere existence of these other slices does not commit one to thinking that they stand in the “decreeing” or “having been decreed” relations.9 Moreover, merely endorsing the existence of those other slices does not commit one to thinking that no other slices could have existed—that is, that there are no real possibilities. The block universe is how the universe did, does, and will unfold; that it’s a block doesn’t entail that it couldn’t have been constituted by different slices (or that “the universe” couldn’t have referred to a different block). To think otherwise would be to conflate “will” with “must.”10 So, the universe might be forkless because the future—the one future— might be a part of reality. (One is tempted to say that the future is already a part of reality, which would be fine so long as one keeps in mind that this means only that it’s now true that the future exists, even though it’s not true that the future exists now.) But that sort of forklessness is consistent with claims about possibilities. These reflections reveal another route to a forkless universe, though, which is to adopt necessitarianism, the view (often thought to be championed by



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Spinoza) that every truth is necessarily true. According to this view, there is no other way our universe could have unfolded other than the way it in fact unfolded (or will unfold). Again, if we use the block universe as a heuristic, then the necessitarian will say that the block couldn’t have contained any other slices. You think you could have had toast rather than cereal for breakfast this morning, but you’re wrong. You think you could have refrained from making that snide remark about your colleague last week, but you’re wrong. According to the necessitarian, no fact could have been otherwise. James sometimes talks as if he thinks the determinist is committed to necessitarianism, as when he says (James 1956: 151–152), Determinism . . . says that [possibilities] exist nowhere, and that necessity on the one hand and impossibility on the other are the sole categories of the real. Possibilities that fail to get realized are, for determinism, pure illusions: they never were possibilities at all . . . . Both sides admit that a volition, for instance, has occurred. The indeterminists say another volition might have occurred in its place: the determinists swear that nothing could possibly have occurred in its place.

But determinism is a more restricted (and less implausible) thesis than necessitarianism. Again, the thesis of determinism tells us that there is only one future that is consistent with the way things have gone, holding fixed the laws of nature. But that doesn’t mean that there are no other possible futures consistent with the way things have gone; it’s just that those other futures will be futures in possible worlds that have different laws. And determinism doesn’t mean that there are no possible futures consistent with our laws of nature; it’s just that those other futures will be futures in possible worlds that have a different past. In general, the determinist can grant that the world could have been different in many ways. The only thing they insist on is that all of those possibilities either have different laws of nature, or else a different past. Which brings us, finally, to the third way in which the universe could be forkless, the determinist way. According to the determinist, if you plant your feet firmly here in the present and look futureward, holding fixed everything that has already happened and the laws of nature, then “the future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb” (James 1956: 150). That’s because, according to the determinist, the present state of things contains sufficient information to allow us to deduce all future states of things, using the laws of nature as our major premise. The thesis of determinism is, in fact, usually stated with a box out front, as a matter of entailment between past and laws, on the one hand, and future states of the world, on the other. And so, there is a real sense in which if determinism is true, the actual future is

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the only possible future—that is, the only way the universe could unfold that is consistent with the conjunction of the laws and the past. This sense of forklessness is somewhere in between eternalism and necessitarianism. For the eternalist, the universe has no forks because what will be already is. But other things could have been; and moreover, there may be no “decreeing” relation between today and tomorrow. For the necessitarian, the universe has no forks because nothing else could be, full stop. The one way the universe will unfold is the only way any universe could have unfolded, since ours is the only one possible. For the determinist, the universe has no forks because nothing else could follow what has already happened without a miracle. The one way the universe will unfold is the only way a universe with our laws and past could unfold. I’ve belabored these distinctions because I think making them calls James’s argument into question. Recall again premises (2) and (3): 2. But it’s true of an occurrence that it ought not to have occurred only if it was possible for something else to have occurred instead. 3. If determinism is true, then no occurrence is such that it’s possible for something else to have occurred instead. Premise (2) is the claim that “ought not” implies “possibly not,” and premise (3) is the claim that determinism is incompatible with “possibly not.” But these two premises will only work together to generate a valid argument if the sense of “possibly not” is held fixed. What that means is that to have any hope of making premise (3) true, and of using premise (3) together with premise (2) to generate a valid argument, both premises have to be made precise as follows: 2. But it’s true of an occurrence that it ought not to have occurred only if it was possible for something else to have occurred instead, holding fixed the actual past and laws of nature. 3. If determinism is true, then no occurrence is such that it’s possible for something else to have occurred instead, holding fixed the actual past and the laws of nature. As we’ve seen from above, the qualification “holding fixed the actual past and the laws of nature” is needed to get premise (3) to express a truth, but then that qualification must also be added in premise (2) to preserve the validity of the argument. But the problem is that the revised version of premise (2) no longer enjoys the intuitive support that the original version did. Recall that the original premise was supported by the thought that when we judge of some occurrence that it ought not to have happened, we seem to be



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saying (in part) that something else ought to have happened instead. So, we seem to be committed to there being a something else that could have happened instead. And if it were to turn out that what happened had to happen, then plausibly we would rescind our judgment that it should have happened differently. Because in that case, there would be nothing at all that we could point to and say that we wished that thing had happened instead. By hypothesis, there is no such thing. But now this revised premise is compatible with there being something else that could have happened instead; it’s just that the something else in question couldn’t be seamlessly woven into the fabric of the universe as it is currently constituted. In order for it to have happened, the past would have to have been different, or the laws would have to have been different. But nevertheless, this alternative course of events is “out there,” in logical space, staring back at us as we wish that it were actual. Given its presence in logical space, it’s no longer clear why it can’t serve as the witness for our claim that something else (namely, it) ought to have happened instead.11 So, to put it succinctly: the worry is that premise (2) is plausible only if we take the relevant lack of possibility as lack of possibility tout court (thinking like a necessitarian), and premise (3) is plausible only if we take the lack of possibility as lack of possibility given the past and laws. The slide between these two perspectives is what lures us into the argument, but it’s a trick. Let me move now to premise (1), the claim that regret involves a judgment that the thing regretted ought not to have occurred. In his essay, James often uses morally wrong actions as examples of events that ought not to have occurred, and then he uses a premise he thinks he has established—namely, that if determinism is true, then no event is such that it ought not to have occurred—to argue that if determinism is true, then it is irrational to regret actions that appear to be morally wrong, since they would not in fact be morally wrong. This chain of reasoning would only be valid, of course, if rational regret required a belief that the regretted event ought not to have occurred. And James relies explicitly on that presupposition (James 1956: 163–164): Our determinism leads us to call our judgments of regret wrong, because they . . . [imply] that what is impossible yet ought to be . . . . When murders and treacheries cease to be sins, regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors. The theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of see-saw with each other on the ground of evil. The rise of either sends the other down. Murder and treachery cannot be good without regret being bad: regret cannot be good without treachery and murder being bad.

In other places, though, he makes clear that determinism would render regret irrational not just with respect to (seeming) moral wrongs, but also with

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respect to any events that—in some broader sense, presumably—ought not to have occurred. For example, (James 1956: 159–160): Hardly an hour passes in which we do not wish that something might be otherwise . . . . Now, it is undeniable that most of these regrets are foolish . . . . Even from the point of view of our own ends, we should probably make a botch of remodeling the universe. How much more then from the point of view of ends we cannot see! Wise men therefore regret as little as they can.

Here it seems clear that James’s target is not just regret of (apparent) moral wrongdoing, but also regret of any action that we think the universe (or we) would be better off without, and so “ought not to have happened” in a sense that is broader than morality. So, the judgment that James thinks is involved in regret is something like this: it (my life, the universe?) would be better had this event not occurred. This more general interpretation of the judgment involved in regret still allows James to run his argument. After all, if the judgment is true, then it seems to follow that something else could have happened instead (namely, the state of affairs that “would be better”), and it is just this possibility claim that James thinks is ruled out by the truth of determinism. But is James right to think that regret involves a judgment that it would have been better had the event regretted not occurred?12 A reason to think no such judgment is involved: often our mistakes have consequences we wouldn’t wish away, and often these consequences wouldn’t have existed but for the mistake.13 And yet we can still regret the mistake. For concreteness, let me give a case from my own life. In 2009, my wife and I bought a house in Williamsburg, Virginia. This was right after the 2008 financial crisis, and we thought that it would be a good time to take advantage of the drop in housing prices (not to mention a rebate for first-time home buyers that President Obama was offering). A bigger part of the reason for buying a house, though, was simply that we were tired of renting a small apartment. In retrospect, we realize the beliefs on which we based our decision to buy a house were unjustified, and after we settled into our house the market took another downturn and we ended up in a situation from which we were able to extricate ourselves only by paying a rather large sum of money. So, we regret deciding to purchase our house in 2009. On the other hand: it’s almost certain that our 6-year-old daughter would not exist had we not purchased our house in 2009. After we settled into our new house, we decided to try to start a family, but that project had to be put on hold for a few months after my wife fell down the stairs to the laundry room and broke her foot. (She would need X-rays as it healed; hence wouldn’t want to be pregnant.) So, our daughter—that very individual—would not have



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existed had my wife not broken her foot, which she wouldn’t have done had we not purchased that house in 2009.14 Given the counterfactual dependencies here (and these sorts of connections are all around us), am I now under any rational pressure to withdraw my regret about purchasing that house in 2009? I can’t see why I would be. At least, I can’t see why I should be tempted to withdraw my regret unless I had some theory about regret working in the background that I was attempting to accommodate. And I think there is a “folk theory” of regret that is often working in the background when people reflect on their past, and that attracts them to the cliché that we shouldn’t regret anything that has happened because everything that has happened has made us into the person we are today. (Just do a Google image search on the phrase “no regrets” to see what I mean.) I guess the thought is supposed to be that affirming your life as it is today requires affirming the road that led you to where you are, which requires affirming every step you took along that road, which precludes wishing any step were different, which precludes regretting any of the steps.15 I think each link in this chain of inferences is questionable, but I just want to focus on the last. In some legitimate sense, I don’t wish that we hadn’t bought our house in 2009, since my daughter’s very existence seems to depend on that particular lapse of judgment. But I do regret buying the house. In what, then, does my regret consist, if not something like a judgment that things would have been better had they gone differently? Here I think there are several possible directions we could go, all of which stay true the phenomenology of an episode of regret. For example: perhaps the judgment underlying my regret in this case is simply the judgment that I made a mistake, that I came to a particular conclusion without sufficient justification. Some mistakes enrich our lives; others don’t. But a mistake’s outcomes don’t seem to affect its status as a mistake, and so don’t seem to preclude the mistake-maker from regarding that mistake in the aversive way that is characteristic of the emotion of regret. Or again: perhaps the judgment underlying my regret in this case is the thought that I wouldn’t recommend that course of action to anyone else who was confronted with the same choice. I have in fact had many subsequent conversations with people who are considering purchasing a first home, and have reported my regret at the poor decision as a cautionary tale. Of course, no one has responded by asking whether I therefore regret having my daughter (nor should they, since that would seem to be a clear non sequitur). Or again: perhaps the judgment underlying my regret in this case is the more complicated counterfactual judgment that I wouldn’t make that same choice again if I were in that same situation again. But surely you would, the critic responds, since your daughter’s existence depended on it! I reply: I think we’re equivocating on the phrase “same situation.” If I could time

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travel back to 2009 and try to talk my younger self out of making that decision, would I? Of course not; besides being futile, I’m not interested in trying to secure for myself a life without my daughter. But surely that’s not what I have in mind when I judge that I wouldn’t make the same decision again in the same situation. I’m not holding everything about my present life fixed when I make relevant judgment. Let’s try again: if God hit “rewind” on the universe, and then let the events of 2009 play out again, would I make the same decision? Well probably I would; after all, I did. But again, surely that’s not what I have in mind when I judge that I wouldn’t make the same decision again in the same situation. I’m not holding nothing about my present life fixed when I make the relevant judgment. Rather: when I make the judgment, I hold certain things about my past situation fixed, and I hold certain things about my present situation fixed.16 I don’t hold fixed that my daughter was an indirect result of that decision; I do hold fixed that I am more knowledgeable today about purchasing a home than I was in 2009. So: knowing what I know now about being a first-time home-buyer, I wouldn’t make the same decision again. That’s a painful thought; I regret the past decision.17 But perhaps this just shows that I have saddled James with a view of regret that is stronger than he needs. His view, as we have reconstructed it, is that regret involves the judgment that it would have been better had the regretted event not occurred. But a more modest view would say that regret simply involves the judgment that the regretted event might have gone differently.18 This more modest view could still serve as an engine for James’s argument: if James is right that determinism precludes possibility, then any judgments about how things might have gone will turn out false, regardless of how good things would have been in that alternative scenario. And, plausibly, the alternative judgments I have proposed above would all come out false if things couldn’t have gone differently. After all: would seems to imply could, and would recommend that you don’t seems to imply you can refrain, and was a mistake seems to imply a correct answer was possible. But I’m skeptical even of this more modest view. One source of my skepticism is a conviction whose defense would take us too far afield, namely that some per impossible counterfactuals are true—or, if they can’t be true, then they can have some other property that makes them potentially useful in practical reasoning.19 On this line of resistance, we could say that even if things couldn’t have gone differently, we might nevertheless be able to assert a true counterfactual whose antecedent is “If things had gone differently . . . .” If that’s right, then we might be able to understand the judgment involved in regret as a counterfactual, one that would or could be true even if its antecedent is impossible. Perhaps we could even represent the judgment with a counterfactual that makes explicit its per impossible nature, something like: if only it had been possible for me to do otherwise, I would have.20



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But another way to go at this point is to complicate our picture of the attitude of regret. Up until now, we’ve been talking about the attitude as though it is a standard emotion, some combination of representational content that interacts with a value or desire to produce a negative affect. And we have been thinking of that representational content as something roughly belieflike; at least, as something that can be called “fitting” or “unfitting” based on whether it accurately represents the world. But perhaps the right way to think of regret is not as an emotion but rather as an attitude more like an intention. It wouldn’t be an intention, of course, since intentions are directed futureward and regret is directed pastward, but regret might nevertheless involve the same sort of commitment that we often take to be involved in forming an intention to act. This suggestion is pursued at length by R. Jay Wallace (though Wallace would disagree with my contention that I can rationally regret an event even when the existence of something to which I attach great importance (e.g., my daughter) counterfactually depends on the occurrence of that event). He says (Wallace 2013: 55–56), My suggestion is that we should understand the element of preference that is involved in all-in regret in analogy with intentions to action . . . . To prefer on balance that things should have been otherwise in some respect is to have an intention-like attitude toward that prospect; one takes a definite stand on the question as to whether things should have been otherwise, and is committed to the answer that one thus affirms, in a way that resolves for oneself the question of whether things should or shouldn’t have been otherwise in the relevant respect.21

Wallace goes on to point out that just as we can form conditional intentions to perform actions that we aren’t yet sure we’ll have an opportunity to perform, so we can regret past actions that we aren’t sure could have been otherwise. What if we’re wrong, and the action regretted was the only action that could have been performed? Well, if regret is more like an intention than it is like a belief, then the truth of the proposition that makes its way into the content of the attitude is neither here nor there. On this view, not only is determinism compatible with rational regret; so is necessitarianism.22 I’m not confident that Wallace has correctly identified the practical question to which regret is supposed to be the answer—“the question of whether things should or shouldn’t have been otherwise” strikes me as an odd question, and in any case not exactly a practical question. More plausible to my ear is to conceive of the practical question along the lines of a thought experiment: you’re in this context; here’s what you know; what do you do? The attitude of regret would then be the intention-like commitment you make when you answer that hypothetical question with: not what I did. But regardless of

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the details, the point remains: if regret is something like a conditional intention, then the fact that you could never be in the condition doesn’t render the attitude irrational. But why, then, is there such a strong association between regret and possibility? I agree that there is something compelling about the Jamesian view, so perhaps the burden is on me to explain that attraction away. Here’s a suggestion: although the judgment that things would have been better had they gone differently is not any part of what constitutes regret, it is very often the occasion for regret. And I don’t say that the judgment in question could never be true—very often, I suspect, it will be, and any temptation to think that every little detail about how my life is now depends in some important way on every mistake I’ve made in the past strikes me as pure sophistry. In any case, when we do make such a judgment, it may generate regret at how things actually went. But the counterfactual judgment, rather than being part of the regret, seems more likely to be an indicator that what actually happened contained something regrettable. There is a parallel here with the debate over the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which is the principle that someone is morally responsible for what they have done only if they were able to do otherwise (Frankfurt 1969). This principle plays a key role in an argument for the conclusion that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility, and whether the principle is true is a matter of considerable dispute. But those who reject the principle might be found saying things like this: the inability to do otherwise does not in itself rule out moral responsibility, but it can certainly be an indicator (perhaps it is a reliable indicator) of something else which does rule out moral responsibility. When we offer the excuse, “I couldn’t help it,” it’s an effective excuse only in those cases where it provides information about the actual reasons why we behaved how we did. In those contexts, “I couldn’t help it” tells our audience that I did what I did only because I had no other options.23 But so long as your lack of options isn’t why you did what you did, that you lacked options is neither here nor there when it comes to your blameworthiness. Another fruitful comparison might be with the attempt to give counterfactual analyses of causation (such as Lewis 1973).24 Someone trying to explain away the attraction of such analyses might say that we are inclined toward counterfactual analyses of causation not because they specify what it is in virtue of which one event causes another, but rather because, when the relevant counterfactual dependencies hold, that is often a very good indication that the one event causes the other. That is: the counterfactuals, when they are true, give us information about what actually happened. But sometimes the counterfactuals are false even when causation is present (as in cases of over determination).



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My proposal for why the Jamesian account of regret is so tempting has a similar structure. The thought is that when we say, “It would have been better had I done something else,” this occasions regret because it gives us some information about how poorly things actually went. But just as truths about moral responsibility aren’t true in virtue of facts about the ability to do otherwise, and just as truths about causation aren’t true in virtue of facts about what would have happened had the cause not occurred, so truths about how poorly things went aren’t true in virtue of facts about how well they might have gone instead. In closing, let’s retreat from the weeds we’ve just been exploring. We’ve been considering James’s argument for the conclusion that determinism is incompatible with rational regret, and I’ve suggested that that argument relies on three controversial premises: 1. To regret something is, at least in part, to judge that it ought not to have occurred—that is, that something else ought to have occurred instead. 2. But it’s true of an occurrence that it ought not to have occurred only if it was possible for something else to have occurred instead. 3. If determinism is true, then no occurrence is such that it’s possible for something else to have occurred instead. I’m inclined to think all three of these premises are false, at least on their most natural interpretations.25 Against what James seems to suggest, determinism is not the thesis that events that won’t occur can’t occur. Rather, it is the thesis that events that won’t occur can’t occur in a world that shares our past and our laws. That point seems to show either that premise (3) is false, or that, if we reinterpret the consequent of premise (3) so that it includes the restriction to events consistent with our past and our laws, then premise (2) ends up false (once we revise it to save the validity of the argument). But even if I’m wrong, and there is a single sense of ‘possibility’ according to which premises (2) and (3) both come out true, there are still problems with premise (1). Premise (1) offers an initially plausible partial characterization of the attitude of regret, but I’ve suggested that we have reason to be suspicious of it. In particular, there are other judgments that would seem to be equally plausible candidates for being constituents of the attitude of regret, and the rationality of those other judgments isn’t held hostage by the truth of determinism or any other thesis about how the world might have gone. Moreover, there is a way of understanding regret according to which it isn’t an attitude that attempts to represent the world accurately, but rather an attitude that serves to shape our will (an intention-like commitment). In that case, it’s not clear why facts about what possibilities there are would be relevant to the rationality of regret.

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Finally, I have tried to explain why the Jamesian view of regret is attractive despite being false, namely that thoughts about what could have been often occasion regret without being in any way constitutive of it. With that explanation in mind, let’s revisit one of the most powerful passages from James’s article. Toward the end of his essay, James says (James 1956: 175–176), I cannot understand regret without the admission of real, genuine possibilities in the world. Only then is it other than a mockery to feel, after we have failed to do our best, that an irreparable opportunity is gone from the universe, the loss of which it must forever after mourn.

I confess to being moved by this reflection, but on second thought there are two ways of understanding the claim that “an opportunity is gone from the universe.” On the first, it’s a way of saying that what was once within our grasp is now permanently inaccessible to us. This, I suspect, is the intended reading. But there’s a second reading, too, according to which an opportunity is “gone from the universe” by never having been there in the first place. And there doesn’t seem to be any reason why those lost opportunities—those that were never there—can’t be mourned, too.26

NOTES 1. On the relevant notion of fittingness (as opposed to the broader notion of “appropriateness”), see D’Arms and Jacobson 2000. 2. Though it seems roughly Hegelian, James describes it as “the strictly dramatic point of view,” in which we view the world “as a great unending romance which the spirit of the universe, striving to realize its own content, is eternally thinking out and representing to itself” (p. 170). 3. That is, the compatibilist about determinism and rational regret. From now on I’ll leave that qualification implicit. 4. Why have I stated the premises in terms of regretting “occurrences” rather than more straightforwardly in terms of regretting “past choices or actions”? Simply because James himself seems to be working with a conception of regret according to which it is possible to regret more than just one’s own past actions. See, for example, page 160. 5. Matthew Talbert (2016: 15) appeals to this poem to illustrate a related idea. 6. See note 14 below on the relationship between emotions and judgments. 7. For an influential contemporary discussion of this view, see Sider 2001. 8. See, for example, the influential formulation of the thesis of determinism in van Inwagen 1983: “Determinism is, intuitively, the thesis that, given the past and the laws of nature, there is only one possible future” (p. 65). Notably, determinism is not the simpler and much more controversial thesis that there is only one possible future.



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9. How do the future slices get there, then, if not by being decreed by present slices? The same way the present slices got here, presumably. Perhaps causation has something to do with it, but causation need not be deterministic. Or perhaps there’s just nothing in virtue of which the slices themselves exist; perhaps they are a fundamental part of reality. 10. Some have thought that the eternalist picture of time itself, irrespective of the truth of determinism, poses problems for free will and moral responsibility. For a response to these worries, see Tognazzini 2010. 11. To be fair, this is too quick. If, when we say that an event ought not to have happened, we just mean something like “It would have been better had that event not happened,” then the response I give in the text applies. Determinism does not eliminate the possibility that something else has happened, and so claims about whether a deterministic universe would have been better had something else happened might still make sense. But if, when we say that an event ought not to have happened, we mean something more like “When I performed that action, I did something morally wrong,” then the mere existence of a better possible course of action isn’t sufficient to quell the worries embodied in premise (2). This is because someone might accept the claim that “ought implies can” together with the claim that “can implies possible, holding fixed the past and the laws.” And then all of the sudden it does seem like determinism would disallow us from saying, at least of morally wrong actions, that their agents ought not to have performed them. I sidestep this issue in the main text because (a) it has its own voluminous literature I can’t adequately engage in this essay, and (b) interpreting James in this way reduces his worry about regret to the more familiar worry about whether determinism is compatible with the ability to do otherwise, whereas I’m interested in seeing whether James has anything distinctive to add to these familiar debates. Moreover, my worries about premise (1), articulated below, would still be pertinent. I’m grateful to Hud Hudson for raising this worry. 12. One reason you might worry about this claim is if you have a view of the emotions according to which they don’t even partly consist of judgments. Suppose, for example, that you adopt Roberts’s (2003) view of the emotions, according to which they are concern-based construals, where a construal is something broadly perceptual rather than judgmental. I mention this possibility in a footnote, however, because so long as you think emotional states have any representational component at all (whether or not it’s a judgment), then we can run something like James’s argument. Again, to take Roberts as an example: if regret doesn’t involve a judgment but instead a construal of a past event in the terms might have been otherwise (Roberts 2003, 241), then regret would still be unfitting in a deterministic world, if we grant the rest of James’s premises. So, my use of the term ‘judgment’ in the body of the paper is meant to be interpreted broadly enough to include any cognitive state that has the same “direction of fit” as a belief. 13. The issues that arise here bear an obvious resemblance to those that arise in discussions of the nonidentity problem. See Parfit 1987, chapter 16. 14. Of course, we probably still would have had a different child who would have brought joy to our lives. So, I’m not claiming that our lives would have been worse had we not purchased our house in 2009; only that it’s not clear that our lives would have been better. But the crucial point is that this difficult-to-evaluate counterfactual

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about what our lives would have looked like seems utterly irrelevant to whether it is rational to regret our decision to purchase the house. 15. See Wallace 2013 for a fascinating discussion (and partial endorsement) of this view of interplay between regret and affirmation. Wallace also considers, in this context, Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return. I regret not having the space or expertise to incorporate a discussion of that idea here. 16. Cf. Wallace 2013: 62. 17. You might also think (as Frances Howard-Snyder suggested to me in conversation) that the way to make sense of regret in these cases is by saying that it arises from pro tanto reasons rather than all-things-considered reasons. On this understanding, I regret purchasing my house because I have pro tanto reason to wish it away, despite the fact that all-things-considered, I would not want it to have been otherwise. But the very issue is what ought to be included in the domain of the quantifier “all.” What about my life right now is relevant to the assessment of that past choice as one that I wouldn’t make again? 18. This is the view Robert Roberts suggests (2003: 241), though as I said in note 14 above, he doesn’t think it’s accurate to describe the element in virtue of which an emotion can be fitting as a judgment. 19. See Nolan 1997 for a detailed exploration of how to make sense of impossible worlds and counter possible conditionals. 20. I suspect that the counterfactuals that are involved in practical thought are often per impossible in this way. Consider the advice that begins with “If I were you . . . .” It’s obviously impertinent to reply to such advice by saying either (a) “But you couldn’t be me!” or (b) “But if you were me, you’d have done the same thing that I did.” Consider also the phenomenon of constitutive luck, which is often encapsulated by the thought, “Had I been subjected to those influences, I would have ended up the same way.” This thought is important (perhaps importantly true), even if the antecedent is impossible because “those influences” include information about, say, genetics. 21. In line with the analogy to intentions, I take the relevant notion of “should” to indicate the “should” of practical reasoning rather than the “should” of morality. Granted that I know what I ought to do, there is still a further question: namely, what to do (what I should do). Compare Frankfurt 2004, chapter 1. 22. The view sketched just above—that regret involves a counterfactual judgment that is per impossibile—would make rational regret compatible with necessitarianism, as well. That strikes me as just the right result. 23. At the end of Harry Frankfurt’s influential discussion of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, he proposes an alternative principle to capture the more fundamental intuition: “A person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise” (Frankfurt 1969: 838). 24. Thanks to Ryan Wasserman for suggesting this parallel. 25. Slightly more carefully: I suspect that any valid argument incorporating these premises will have at least two false premises: premise (1) and either (2) or (3) (depending on how ‘possibility’ is disambiguated). 26. This paper owes its existence to one of the most impressive students I taught at The College of William & Mary: Allison White. I am grateful to her for all of our



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conversations, and I am grateful to the students in my Fall 2013 senior seminar, who helped me think through some of the issues dealt with in this chapter. Thanks also to Jacob Goodson for encouraging me to think more seriously about William James, and for inviting me to contribute to this volume. For helpful comments on a previous version of this paper, thanks very much to Frances Howard-Snyder, Hud Hudson, Ryan Wasserman, and Dennis Whitcomb.

BIBLIOGRAPHY D’Arms, Justin & Daniel Jacobson. 2000. “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the ‘Appropriateness’ of Emotions.” In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61(1): 65–90. Frankfurt, Harry. 1969. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” In The Journal of Philosophy 66(23): 829–839. Frankfurt, Harry. 2004. The Reasons of Love. Princeton: Princeton University Press. James, William. 1956. “The Dilemma of Determinism.” In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications. 145–183. Lewis, David. 1973. “Causation.” In The Journal of Philosophy 70(17): 556–67. Nolan, Daniel. 1997. “Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach.” In Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38(4): 535–72. Parfit, Derek. 1987. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Roberts, Robert. 2003. Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sider, Theodore. 2001. Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tognazzini, Neal A. 2010. “Persistence and Responsibility.” In Time and Identity, edited by Campbell, O’Rourke, and Silverstein. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 149–163. Van Inwagen, Peter. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wallace, R. Jay. 2013. The View From Here. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part IV

THE MORALITY AND IMMORALITY OF JAMES’S “THE WILL-TOBELIEVE” ARGUMENT

Chapter 10

The Will-to-Believe is Immoral Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

This chapter consists of three arguments against the morality of adopting James’s doctrine of the will-to-believe. The first is an extension of W. K. Clifford’s argument from the “Ethics of Belief” that credulous belief endangers others. The second argument is that James’s practical cases of willingto-believe are morally abhorrent. The third argument is that James’s religious application of the doctrine of the will-to-believe yields intellectually insular faith communities and opens Jamesian religious belief to what we call the problem of deepening dogmatism. This chapter consists of three arguments in defense of the thesis that James’s doctrine of the will-to-believe is immoral. The first line of flight is an external criticism of James’s view that there are “lawful” exceptions to W. K. Clifford’s evidentialist norm that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything on insufficient evidence” (Clifford 1879: 175). In essence, we argue that insofar as James’s cases are indeed lawful, they are not exceptions to evidentialism (but are more pragmatist expansions of the notion of evidence), and insofar as they are exceptions to evidentialism, they are immoral for the very reasons the Cliffordian suggests. Our second line of argument takes the form of an internal criticism; we argue that James’s examples of willing-to-believe are morally objectionable independent of their breaking the evidentialist’s norm. Our third argument contends that the will-to-believe has the untoward consequences of deepening dogmatism. In essence, the more resolutely one deploys the will-to-believe, the more dogmatically one must take one’s commitments. Our broad conclusion, then, is that the Jamesian will-to-believe doctrine is immoral for a variety of converging reasons.

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We assume that our reader is already adequately familiar with James’s “The Will to Believe,” hence we need not rehearse its argument beyond the following brief overview. The central argument of “The Will to Believe” consists of what we call James’s ascending case. James asserts that 1. Cliffordian evidentialism (CE) is prima facie acceptable. 2. Religious faith seems to be ruled out by CE. 3. Friendship, romantic conquest, and social coordination cases are lawful exceptions to CE. 4. That the cases in 3 consist of genuine options with morally preferable outcomes and are doxastically efficacious explains why they are lawful exceptions to CE. 5. Religious faith is a genuine, moral, and doxastically efficacious option. 6. Therefore, religious faith (despite appearances in 2) is also a lawful exception to CE. James’s ascending case argument dovetails with what we take to be the core of the will-to-believe doctrine. Will-to-Believe (WTB): If S has an option that is genuine, rationally undecidable, and has a morally preferable outcome that is doxastically efficacious, then S may (and perhaps must) decide on the basis of S’s passional nature for the morally preferable and efficacious hypothesis.

Call cases that satisfy the conditions specified with the WTB principle WTBcases. One crucial element in WTB-cases is doxastic efficacy. These are chases where, as James puts it, “faith in a fact can help create the fact” (James 1979: 29).1 Now, James’s standard example for doxastic efficacy is not found in “The Will to Believe,” but figures in James’s earlier essay on “The Sentiment of Rationality.” It is his famous alpine climber case: A climber, high on a mountain, must jump a crevasse. If the climber believes he can make the jump, a successful jump is more likely, since he will jump confidently. By contrast, a climber with doubts that he can make the jump will leap tentatively, and thereby fall to his doom. According to James, the philosophical lesson is clear, “In this case . . . the part of wisdom clearly is to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of the clearly indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of the object. There are then cases where faith creates its own verification” (James 1979: 80). In “The Will to Believe,” James offers examples of a different sort—romantic conquest, friend making, social coordination, and practical advancement are proposed by James as cases where one’s resolute belief in one’s success contributes to it coming to be.



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There is of course much more to say about the details of James’s argument. For our purposes, it suffices to note that, according to James, there are two important components of WTB-cases that make them “lawful”: (a) their doxastic efficacy, and (b) their being genuine options. With this in mind, we can offer some more detail about our three lines of argument: 1. Doxastic efficacy, when responsibly enacted, is not a counterexample to evidentialism; and when not responsibly enacted, it is dangerous to other people (just as Clifford’s argument ran). 2. All of the cases of doxastic efficacy of genuine options James runs encourage attitudes of entitlement and morally abhorrent behavior. 3. The belief requirement of doxastic efficacy makes doubt in cases of genuine (and so, momentous) options an enemy of practical success. This yields what we call the problem of deepening dogmatism. It is commonplace among pragmatists to side with James against Clifford. But we think this is in error. There are pragmatic reasons not only to be sympathetic with Clifford, but to be positively antiJamesian. THE TRUTH NORM AND DOXASTIC EFFICACY James identifies two norms that animate cognitive life, “our first and great commandments as would-be knowers.” They are: We must know the truth, and We must avoid error.

He restates the norms later as commands: Believe truth! Shun error!

To fix terms, call the first norm the “Believe Truth” norm, and the second the “Avoid Error” norm. One question is whether these two are indeed distinct norms, rather than two faces of a single norm. Surely getting truth just is not being in error. But an important difference becomes visible when we consider the project of formulating beliefs at a time and maintaining them over time. James presents the difference with a single sentence. The case is simply that an agent, in choosing between a variety of options (A, B, C, or D), upon seeing that some option B is an error, but having no evidence for A (or C or

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D), may suspend judgment with regard to all the options. “[W]e may escape B by not believing anything at all, not even A” (James 1979: 24). This is a legitimate case for material difference, as our agent in this circumstance indeed avoids error by withholding belief. But she does not live up to the Truth Norm, because (by hypothesis) A is true, but, in suspending belief, she does not believe A. And so, we have a dilemma, of sorts. The two norms—Believe Truth and Avoid Error—seem suitable for governing our cognitive lives. Yet the norms can come apart. When they do, how should we choose which to honor? James notes that “by choosing between them we may end by colouring differently our whole intellectual life” (James 1979: 24). According to James, how we choose one is a function of what kind of thinkers we want to be. James turns to W. K. Clifford and his evidentialist scruples, which prioritize the Avoid Error norm, and thus drive Clifford to religious agnosticism. James diagnoses this tendency of valorizing the Avoid Error norm over the Believe Truth norm as a response to a kind of fear. “Believe nothing, he (Clifford) tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies” (James 1979: 24). The inclination to forego belief forever, rather than to believe a lie, to be in error, is the product of what James identifies as a fear: the “preponderant horror of becoming a dupe” (James 1979: 25). The horror of dupery, the indignity of error, the shame of should-haveknown-better—these are the motivating factors driving the evidentialist’s project. That is what James takes to be the root of the Cliffordian evidentialist program, the thought that error is in itself horrible. This leads James to an analogy between marshaling one’s beliefs and a general preparing his soldiers for battle. “It is like a general informing his soldiers it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories over enemies or nature gained” (James 1979: 25). The force of this analogy is that those who are risk-averse are doomed to be cowards. Not only will the risk-averse fail to get the good things (victories over enemies and the truth) but, moreover, doing without these things yields a serious defect in character: “excessive nervousness” (James 1979: 25) and a kind of “sickliness” (James 1979: 7). The contrast is with the character expressed by committing to the priority of the Believe Truth norm. In committing to the priority of the Believe Truth norm, one is, on the analogy with the deliberating general, expressing vitality, bravery, and vigorousness in the face of risk. Later in “The Will to Believe,” James endorses faith as an expression of “courage” and action over reticence and indecision (James 1979: 32). The calculation must be that the losses one might incur by adopting a belief are worth the risk, especially given what stands to gain should one’s belief turn out to be true. To be sure, there are costs to playing it safe, too.



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Comparatively, the Jamesian judgment is that “the risk of being in error is a very small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge” (James 1979: 24). Hence the case for the preferability of the Believe Truth norm must be made comparatively, and James thinks he has accomplished the first half of the task by portraying the Avoid Error norm as an expression of nervousness, cowardice, and sickliness. The second part of the task consists in showing that following the Believe Truth norm does better. Thus, James begins by claiming that errors aren’t really that costly, and that a kind of lightheartedness with falsity is necessary for thinking creatures. James holds that error is a “very small matter,” we must approach risks with our chins up, not with paralyzing fear. We must see that “Our errors are surely not such awful things . . . . [A] certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf” (James 1979: 25). Thus, the comparison is complete: the Avoid Error norm is an expression of excessive nervousness and the horror at being a dupe. And, according to James, this is a fear that the evidentialist “slavishly obeys.” This yields suspension of judgment and inaction. The Believe Truth norm, by contrast, expresses lightheartedness and healthy mindedness, thus yielding a willingness to take risks and a kind of intellectual courage.2 It is a matter of where our passions and nature take us, James notes “[T]hese feelings of our duty about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our passional life” (James 1979: 25). The case, as James has made it, is not that following the Believe Truth norm is obligatory, but that it is permissible and preferable. Those whose natures are inclined toward cowardly sulking or are deeply afraid of error to the point of never believing anything—they can follow the Avoid Error norm as they wish. That would be fine for them. But James denies that prioritizing the Avoid Error norm is obligatory for everyone else. Many of us, as James expects his audience to agree, are less risk-averse. And so, the courageous and active path calls to them. To the pragmatist, James holds, the Believe Truth norm is more “fitting” (James 1979: 25). At this stage, we have the convergence of two arguments. On the one hand, we have the observation of doxastic efficacy—that beliefs sometimes help create facts. On the other hand, there is James’s case that the Believe Truth norm may take priority over the Avoid Error norm. The convergence, then, is that the Jamesian argument here yields two independent but converging reasons to believe in WTB circumstances. However, there is one variable that is a necessary part of the evaluation of the cases. We much ask whether in the WTB-cases the willing believer is imagined to be reflectively aware that her belief is doxastically efficacious. This is no small matter, since the topic of James’s and Clifford’s essays is the management of belief, and one central question of that management is whether it matters if the believer follows the

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rules of management just as a kind of unthinking habit (rather than after having identified the norm, endorsed it, and then followed it reflectively). Call the former kind of use non-reflective use—one has a practice, and the norms just describe it. Call the latter reflective use. We will argue, ultimately, that use of WTB is acceptable only if reflectively; WTB is not acceptable unreflectively.

REFLECTIVE USE OF THE WTB In a reflective use case, we stipulate that the subject in question has identified some features of the circumstance as fitting appropriately with a rule of epistemic management, and then acts in a way either required or allowed by the rule. In the case of convergence of the Believe Truth norm with doxastic efficacy in WTB-cases, the reflective subject must have some rough view of her situation along the following lines: I ought to believe truths, and in this case, if I believe that p, my belief will contribute to p’s truth. I am inclined to believe that p, so I should embrace that inclination to believe that p.

What makes the case reflective is that the subject sees the rule and she sees it from the first-person perspective. As Richard Gale terms it, the subject makes a “knowing self-induction” (1980). However, notice something important about this case. Assuming that the subject is right about the doxastic efficacy of her belief, she has a reason counting in favor of p’s truth. In this case, it is the believer’s own mental state that will by hypothesis make p more likely. This is, then, evidence that p. Perhaps our reader will balk at this argument. One may deny that mental states (beliefs, decisions, intentions, and so on) can be evidence that their contents will be true. But they often are! Under normal circumstances, a subject has evidence of what she will be doing when she gets home in virtue of what she intends to do when she gets home. Her intention to watch the news, say, will, all things being equal, contribute to its being true that she will watch the news. Moreover, a subject’s desires will contribute to truths, too—if she desires pepperoni pizza upon entering a pizza parlor, she has evidence that she will, after ordering, have a pepperoni pizza. Again, if James’s view of doxastic efficacy is right, then beliefs (under particular circumstances) can be part of what cause their fitting the world; one will, just as with desires and intentions, act in a way that will make them true. In this regard, the pragmatist conception of beliefs as plans for action yields grounds for a pragmatist expansion of what counts as evidence. Sometimes, beliefs are doxastically efficacious, and when they are, having the belief



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and being aware of their efficacy is itself evidence for the belief’s truth. The importance of this point cannot be lost on a Cliffordian, and the reason why is clear: James’s WTB-cases, if they are reflective, are not counterexamples to Clifford’s evidentialist principle.3 NON-REFLECTIVE USE OF THE WTB In non-reflective WTB-cases one can identify the lawfulness of the belief only in the third person. In these cases, the believer needn’t know that her confident belief contributes to its own truth—the subject may merely confidently believe and that is all. In this non-reflective belief case, the matter is only in evaluating the believer’s background character in these cases, what kind of inclinations the believer has. For this evaluation, we must recall that James’s case for the Believe Truth norm’s priority was a contrastive one. James’s case proceeds on the evaluation of certain belief-regarding characteristics of people. When following the Believe Truth norm, one expresses the virtues of courage and health. When one follows the Avoid Error norm, one expresses the vice of slavish fear. But if the matter really is one of evaluating the contrasting features of character, perhaps it’s worth hearing from a Cliffordian on the issue? The following is what we call the sauce for the goose answer to James. James paints a picture of the evidentialist’s character, and then deploys it as an argument. The argument is ad hominem in form, namely: In using Principle X, a subject expresses a doxastic character. If the doxastic character expressed is objectionable, then so is Principle X. If the doxastic character expressed is admirable, then so is Principle X

James has made the case that the doxastic character of those who follow the Avoid Error norm is objectionable and those who follow the Believe Truth norm manifest an admirable doxastic character. But that’s what the Believe Truth advocates say of themselves. What might the other side say back? Perhaps we should see what an evidentialist’s picture of James’s character looks like? Maybe the argument will be a bit different after that. Consider that the evidentialist might propose the following character assessment of the ­Jamesian will-to-believer: What does a light-hearted attitude toward error yield? Cavalier and irresponsible assertion, reckless and self-indulgent speculation. Noxious bullshit. What does care to avoid error yield? Careful and studious assessment of the evidence, prudent decisions, and safe paths. Responsible belief management. Who do you want as your general, head of state, or teacher of your children?

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What we think the sauce for the goose reply to James yields here is that the problem of deliberating between the two norms of belief management is not so easy as James made it seem. James is right that we often must choose between the two, but that it’s not a wholly simple case that the Believe Truth norm always wins out, or that when it does, it’s not so easy a win. The reality is that we must often satisfice between these two norms, sometimes tentatively hypothesizing and thereby risking error, but with the hopes that we gain truth. We do sometimes make errors, but we must be aware of what comes with those errors in order to responsibly take them. An overworked parent may have the hypothesis that his daughters often need spankings. This hypothesis often occurs to him and looks live and electric around 7:00 p. m. when they are misbehaving, screaming, he’s tired, and just burned dinner. But what if he’s wrong and corporal punishment messes kids up? What if it messes him up, too?4 The error costs are between brutalizing your kids for no good reason and thereby scarring yourself and them or raising brats. It seems the overworked parent ought to opt for the latter. Moreover, he can avail himself of other means to reduce their brattiness. Surely no Jamesian would be lighthearted about the errors of spanking, but we do desperately need the truth, not just error avoidance. Our point with the sauce for the goose argument is that if the evaluations of unreflective WTB-cases is a matter of contrasting evaluations of doxastic character, James’s case has left out the crucial contrast. We know what the Believe-Truthers say about the Error-Avoiders, but James has given no consideration to the similarly gaunt portrait that the Error-Avoider is likely to paint of the Belive-Truther. And so, James does not tell us how, if turnabout is fair play, he would dispel the unflattering image. But the goose as well as the gander needs sauce, and so we’ve outlined what such a reply would be. Recall that the Cliffordian principle of prohibiting belief with insufficient evidence is very demanding—there are no exceptions. Before moving on, it should be made clear why. Clifford himself is explicit on this point, but one would never have gotten this from James’s presentation. James is too eager to present Clifford as an intellectual coward. But Cliffordian evidentialism is not intellectual cowardice—in fact, we think it takes a good deal of courage in many cases to withhold belief than believe, because one must go without comforting fictions and be willing to call bullshit when one sees it. Moreover, Clifford’s demanding norm arises not just out of sheer principled error avoidance or the horror of dupery, but because your errors endanger other people. Clifford’s examples show this concern clearly. The wishful thinking ship owner endangers the ship’s crew and its passengers; the bigoted reporters believe and publish endangering fictions about a religious minority. Irresponsible believing yields negligent action. (And it bears noting that in



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this regard, Clifford is a pragmatist about belief.) Clifford sees belief’s dark side, its hazards. James, by contrast, seems utterly insensitive to this; he counsels lightheartedness in the face of error. It is no surprise later, in the essay “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” that James says his philosophers must rely on “the cries of the wounded” (James 1979: 158) in order to identify when they have made errors. Indeed! One who is lighthearted about error is likely to be unrestrained, even when it comes to placing others at risk of harm. Foresight on the basis of evidence, or even restraint when without it, and the resulting restraint, is surely preferable.5 THE WILL-TO-BELIEVE AND MORAL BEHAVIOR James’s ascending case draws an analogy between (a) the doxastic efficacy of friend making, romantic conquest, and social advancement, and (b) the doxastic efficacy of religious belief. James’s argument is that because the former are lawful and WTB-cases, religious faith is lawful, too, when it is a WTB-case. So, the argument depends on the acceptability of the idea that the more mundane examples are indeed WTB-cases, and then builds up to religious belief. Thus, it is, as we noted earlier, an ascending case. However, in his review of the mundane cases, James simply takes it as obvious that lawfulness is the correct stance. But this is not nearly as clear as James supposes. In fact, there is arguably something deeply objectionable about James’s accounts of friend making, romantic conquest, and social advancement. To wit: in each, James suggests that ambitious young men adopt attitudes of entitlement, which will encourage entitled behavior, which in turn brings the boons of success—wives, friends, and social advancement. Not only does the recipe overlook the question of whether one deserves these gains, it does not seem likely to be effective. DOXASTIC EFFICACY AND ACTS OF ASSUMPTION James’s case depends on his point about doxastic efficacy—that faith in a fact can be a maker of the fact. Earlier, we noted James’s alpine climber case, and we have no moral truck with it in basic outline. To be sure, life-saving strategies are generally good things and no rule of epistemology should be granted the power to override them. However, we should emphasize again that non-reflective deployments of doxastic efficacy are sheer recklessness. So, let us for now stipulate that James is recommending a policy of reflective doxastic efficacy, where one adopts the belief (or maintains one’s inclinations to believe) with an eye to making it true.

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Let us call such reflective endorsements acts of assumption. In such acts, a subject reflectively endorses holding a belief with the aim being that in holding the belief, the subject has reason to believe that she will behave in a way that will contribute to the belief’s truth. And so, as in the alpine climber case, one adopts a confident attitude, with the plan that in being confident that one can make the jump makes a successful jump more likely. The trouble is, beyond this alpine climber case, all of James’s WTB-cases with acts of assumption are morally abhorrent. Take, first, James’s examples of friendship and romantic conquest. They begin with the question: Do you like me or not? James sets up his program by contrasting it with the consequences of suspending judgment when there is no evidence (as the evidentialist is assumed to recommend). James writes chidingly of the Cliffordian evidentialist, “[I]f I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence . . . ten to one your liking never comes . . . . How many women’s hearts are vanquished by the mere sanguine insistence of some man that they must love him!” (James 1979: 28). James takes it that being an evidentialist means that if one does not have evidence that the person in question likes you, not only will you not believe the person likes you (you will suspend judgment), but you won’t be friendly to him, either. This is, of course, patently absurd, as one most certainly can be friendly to another person without the holding belief that the other is one’s friend. In fact, that’s what most friend making gestures amount to. Regardless, James’s case is that the belief that you are friends, or that the woman of interest likes you or finds you attractive, is doxastically efficacious, and so should be a target for an act of assumption “The previous faith on my part in your liking’s existence is in such cases what makes your liking come . . . . The desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special truth’s existence” (James 1979: 28). Again, James’s counsel is that because these beliefs are doxastically efficacious, if Adam wants Betty to be his friend, it is a winning strategy for Adam to adopt the belief that Betty will be my friend; similarly, if Adam wants to woo Betty, he should adopt the belief Betty is attracted to me. These beliefs will help bring about the friendship and the romance. James recommends the same for practical success as well, “Who gains promotions, boons, appointments but the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who . . . takes risk for them in advance? His faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and creates its own verification” (James 1979: 28–9). Again, James’s thought is that acts of assumption produce their targets: Believe that the promotion is yours, and you’ll act like you deserve it. When you act like you deserve a promotion, you make a “claim” on those above you; they’ll notice you and think you’re deserving of a promotion. That makes it more likely that you will get the promotion. And it’s all because you believed you’d get it!



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ACTS OF ASSUMPTION AND ENTITLED ATTITUDES In the spirit of the intellectual advice proffered in “The Will to Believe,” let us submit some of our own advice in contrast with James’s. Never fear—we do not take ourselves to be suited to advise those who seek friends and lovers. Our advice instead aims to produce another instance of what we call a sauce for the goose argument against James. To be sure, James’s analyses of friendship and romantic conquest are deployed in an argument from analogy regarding lawful belief management strategies in matters concerning religious commitment. However, James nonetheless is offering advice about how to make friends, pursue romantic interests, and win boons. We think James’s advice is generally terrible. Consider friendship. There is a much more effective and appropriate way to win friends: Make yourself worthy of friendship and honor the virtues that others embody and the aspirations they have. Instead of taking others to like you so that they may come to like you, perhaps you should focus on being someone they should like? If in the end they do not like you, the loss is theirs. Regarding the matter of romantic conquest, James’s advice is patently ridiculous, bordering on an endorsement of harassing behavior. As Brian Zamulinski notes, “The one in which a delusional man harasses a woman until she gives in and presumably marries him is repugnant as well as implausible” (Zamulinski 2002: 448).6 James’s advice seems to be that one should be confident. And this seems appropriate, as far as it goes. But how far exactly does it go? It’s implausible to think that confidence is always the right policy. Is there anything worse than a man who takes himself to be such a prize that no woman could help but fall for him? Such a man is performing the act of assumption, but it yields contempt, not conviviality. With Zamulinski, we see a darker side to James’s advice. “You must love me!” is the belief of a stalker and abuser. Sometimes the reason why one doesn’t have evidence that another is romantically interested is because the other is not interested. Sometimes that’s just a fact that one must live with. Far better to cultivate within oneself the traits and dispositions that make one attractive than to assume that others are already attracted. These same points apply equally for the promotions and boons that James later discusses. Instead of focusing one’s mind on the thought that they will come and that one will attain them, one rather should take steps toward making oneself deserving of them. To put the point in a general way, what’s missing from James’s analyses of friendships, romances, and promotions is the thought that we ought to strive to make ourselves deserving of such goods. Indeed, one must wonder whether a friendship founded on Jamesian acts of assumption could possibly run deep or persist. One who sees his friendships as originating in a doxastically

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efficacious assumption rather than in the effort to deserve others’ friendship is likely to lose out on the distinctive goods that strong friendships deliver. This is even more obvious in the case of lovers: Were Andy to attribute his romance with Betty to his early adoption of a confident, insistent strategy, he surely misses the whole point of love. And he misses the goods as well. MOMENTOUS OPTIONS AND DEEPENING DOGMATISM We turn next to our third criticism, which contends that James’s view encourages a kind of dogmatism. We begin with James’s idea of a genuine option. James holds that an option is genuine when it is live, forced, and momentous. The crucial element of this set is momentousness, so we may ignore liveness and forcedness for the present purposes. An option is momentous when it is unique, significant, and non-revisable. It is trivial if it fails any one of these. James makes this clear in his contrast between two cases: On the one hand, the choice of exploring the North Pole with Dr. Nausen and, on the other hand, the chemist’s decision to test a theory. In the North Pole case, it is “your only similar opportunity” for “North Pole sort of immortality.” On the other hand, a chemist who wants to test a hypothesis may invest time and resources on an experiment, and so “he believes it to this extent.” But if the experiment does not yield the results expected, he may quit the experiment and only be at a loss for his time. As James summarizes his point, “[T]he option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when its stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise” (James 1979: 15). And so, momentous options are unique, significant, and not reversible, even if it starts looking like the decision is unwise. Next consider cases of doxastic efficacy, where belief helps make the fact. What’s important about these cases is that if one harbors doubt, if one does not believe, then one’s action will not be performed with the degree of energy and confidence required for success. And so, the belief must be complete in order to be efficacious. Returning again to the alpine climber case, James is clear, “If in the mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, I actively connive at my destruction” (James 1979: 88). That is, doubt is the enemy of successful practice. Now, drawing these points together, we can capture James’s argument as follows: 1. All WTB-cases are genuine options and cases of doxastic efficacy. 2. If an option is genuine, it must be momentous (and chosen as such). 3. If an option is chosen as momentous, it must be chosen as irreversible (and maintained even if it appears later to be unwise).



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4. If an option is taken and is doxastically efficacious, one must believe fully. 5. If one believes fully for the sake of doxastic efficacy, one does not harbor doubts and one recognizes doubts as morally repugnant. 6. Therefore, all WTB-cases are options that are (i) chosen as irreversible, and (ii) wherein doubt is repugnant. The resolutely antiskeptical doxastic policy embraced by James as the doctrine of the will-to-believe is a potent recipe for dogmatism. In fact, seeing one’s views as unchangeable and seeing doubts about their truth as moral errors is arguably the hallmark of dogmatism. And so, James’s WTB-cases are encouragements of that intellectual vice. DOGMATISM DEEPENED This consequence will likely come as a surprise to those sympathetic to James’s program. It would furthermore be a surprise to James himself, as he makes it clear that he poses the doctrine of the will-to-believe in the spirit of tolerance, “No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought . . . to respect one another’s mental freedom” (James 1979: 33). James rehearses this aspiration in the Introduction to his Will to Believe volume, “I have preached the right of the individual to indulge his personal faith at his personal risk” (James 1979: 8). It is important to remember that James’s endgame for “The Will to Believe” is a justification of religious faith. The faith’s content is reconstructed in the form outlined in Section X of the essay, but nowhere is James clear that this must be the full replacement of the religious commitments. Rather, it seems that with the will-to-believe doctrine, religious life may continue unabated. Once it is reconstructed and in line with it being a WTB-case, transubstantiation, for example, is left in place for Catholics who take the Eucharist. James runs the argument later in his Pragmatism lectures, “The bread-substance must have been withdrawn and the divine substance substituted miraculously. . . . The substance-notion breaks into life, then, with tremendous effect” (James 1991: 40). Because of the significant difference that believing makes for the believer’s life, the belief, again, creates its own verification. But now a problem arises. How will the Jamesian program deal with disagreement, criticism, and doubts? Surely a kind of pluralism arises from the will-to-believe as a belief policy. Many different kinds of belief will be live and momentous (and doxastically efficacious) for a wide variety of people. And so, James’s program of believing in WTB-cases will yield a panoply of different beliefs, and no one is positioned to veto the beliefs of others.

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In fact, James holds that the will-to-believe doctrine gives rise to an “intellectual republic,” one in which inhabitants live with an “inner tolerance,” a place where they each “live and let live” (James 1979: 33). But given the features of the conditions for WTB-cases, the envisioned utopia of religious toleration simply does not follow. Bertrand Russell noted how strange this promise is, given how the WTB-cases must work. One gathers . . . from [James’s] instances that a Frenchman ought to believe in Catholicism, an American in the Monroe Doctrine, and an Arab in the Mahdi . . . It seems odd that . . . [James] should maintain acceptance of his doctrine should diminish persecution; for an essential part of each of the above creeds is that people who think otherwise must be taught their place. (Russell 1996: 87)

The question is why one should expect the will-to-believe to foster religious tolerance rather than hostility and strife. Put otherwise, why not expect the will-to-believe doctrine to deepen a kind of circle-the-wagons insularity and dogmatism that now plagues many communities of religious believers?

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VIEWS The key to the deepening dogmatism charge is that the beliefs for which one would need to deploy the will-to-believe are those about which there is reasonable disagreement. The only reason why James must formulate the doctrine and define WTB-cases is because they are instances of important decisions we must make in ignorance and about which there is debate, skepticism, and doubt. With these sorts of conflicted cases, the views aren’t just self-regarding; they regard the alternatives, too. Views about salvation, for example, are also views about how one fails to be saved. The faithful must look askance at those with little faith. Accordingly, James’s view may yield a liberalism of belief-policy, but once the policy is adopted, there is no limit on the ways one may view those who do not share one’s own beliefs. In fact, it seems clear that a stolid belief in apostasy’s wickedness should be a perfectly natural byproduct of WTB-cases. Consider again James’s rhetoric about those who doubt, “Skepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality” (James 1979: 89). Refuse to believe, and you shall be right, for you shall irretrievably perish (James 1979: 54). The requirement of evidence is a kind of “snarling logicality” (James 1979: 31) and an “excessive nervousness” about error (James 1979: 29). Hence, we see that internal to the doctrine of the will-to-believe is a negative assessment of those who believe other than how and what one believes.



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The irony, again, is that James’s promise is that the doctrine of the will-tobelieve will yield religious tolerance, but, given the way WTB-cases must be derived, nothing of the sort should be expected. Instead, those who in WTBcases adopt a belief will be thereby averse to updating their evidence and adjusting their beliefs appropriately, and, moreover, they will assess those who believe differently (and especially those who no longer believe similarly) as significantly flawed. The dogmatism deepens in that, as momentous options, one must see oneself as having committed irreversibly. CONCLUSION We conclude that James’s doctrine of the will-to-believe is immoral. If unreflectively followed, it encourages reckless belief policies. If reflectively followed, it encourages acts of assumption that foster morally objectionable attitudes and behaviors and, moreover, breeds doxastic habits that place one on the road to dogmatism. In many ways, it is a shame that W. K. Clifford died so young. It, surely, was a tragedy for his wife and small children. But it was a loss for the history of philosophy, too, that he did not live to reply to James’s essay. There is no doubt that Clifford would have had a lot to say in reply. For one thing, Clifford surely would have objected on the grounds that James clearly deploys a straw man against him.7 But that’s not all. So much of James’s argument draws force from the unflattering depictions of the evidentialist, that one expects that Clifford would have returned the favor by offering an unflattering image of the Jamesian credulist. We have here tried to channel some of our own Cliffordian tendencies in suggesting what Clifford’s rebuttal might have looked like. Certainly, the conversation is not over and Jamesians will have things to say back. But we hope that they will reply with evidence and not with acts of assumption to the effect that we are just obviously wrong. Were they to do so, it would most clearly strengthen our case that Jamesian policies yield dogmatism, and we would be happy that we were right. But we would be disappointed that so many had taken such bad intellectual advice and been made the worse for it. NOTES 1. References to “The Will to Believe” and other essays in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (James 1979) will be in the form (James 1979: page number). Identifying doxastic efficacy as central to James’s argument is essential for the case to meet minimal standards of cogency. See Gale’s identification

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of the “belief-helping-to-make-true” condition for WTB-cases (1980: 3 and 1999: 103). See also Aikin (2014) for a compete account of how doxastic efficacy should be conceived. 2. As George Mavrodes rightly notes, one can maintain this only if one can remain “lighthearted in thinking about errors” (1963: 195). Others noting the passional background for this point are Nathanson (1982: 573), Clark (1990: 109), and Axtell (2001: 327). 3. David Hollinger notes that James’s case, that he’s provided exceptions to evidence requirements is “philosophically obscurantist” (1997: 77). Again, Gale (1980 and 1999) and Aikin (2014) have made the case that James’s cases, if reflective, are more refinements of the notion of evidence than counterexamples to Clifford’s evidentialist rule. 4. There is evidence for both of these thoughts. See Gary Bartlett (2010) for an overview of the problem of escalation in spanking. 5. In many ways, our argument here is an updated version of Dickinson Miller’s classic challenge to James’s essay, that the program not only elides the valuable with the probable, and choosing with believing, but that in doing so, the “irrational optimism” that arises is not only confused but dangerous (1942: 550). When one gives into the temptation of making the “must” of desire and preference into the “must” of reasoned judgment, costly errors are risked. “There is a deep kinship and connection between the tragedy of sophistical reasoning—the mind’s miscarriage—and the tragedy of human affairs” (1942: 553). 6. Ammerman, too, worries that the “she loves me” thought can carry one too far (1965: 266). 7. See Zamulinski (2002) and Aikin (2014) for overviews of the misrepresentations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aikin, Scott. 2014. Evidentialism and the Will to Believe. London: Bloomsbury. Ammerman, Robert. 1965. Ethics and Belief. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. 65: 257–266. Axtell, Guy. 2001. Teaching William James’s ‘The Will to Believe.’ Teaching Philosophy. 24: 325–45. Bartlett, Gary. 2010. An Argument Against Spanking. Public Affairs Quarterly. 24: 65–77. Clark, Kelly James. 1990. Return to Reason. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. Clifford, William Kingdon. 1879. “The Ethics of Belief.” In Lectures and Essays. New York: Macmillan and Company. Gale, Richard. 1980. William James and the Ethics of Belief. American Philosophical Quarterly. 17: 1–14. Gale, Richard. 1999. The Divided Self of William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollinger, David. 1997. “James, Clifford, and the Scientific Conscience.” In The Cambridge Companion to William James. Ed. Ruth Anna Putnam. New York: Cambridge University Press. 69–83.



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James, William. 1991 [1907]. Pragmatism. Amherst: Prometheus Books. James, William. 1979 [1897]. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (James 1979: page number). Mavrodes, George. 1963. James and Clifford on ‘The Will to Believe’. The Personalist. 44: 191–8. Miller, Dickinson. 1942. James’s Doctrine of ‘The Right to Believe.’ The Philosophical Review. 51: 541–558. Nathanson, Stephen. 1982. Nonevidential Reasons for Belief: A Jamesian View. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 42: 572–80. Russell, Bertrand. 1996 [1909]. “Pragmatism.” In Philosophical Essays. New York: Simon and Shuster. 79–111. Zamulinski, Brian. 2002. A Re-evaluation of Clifford and His Critics. The Southern Journal of Philosophy. 60: 437–457.

Chapter 11

Stoic Rhetoric and the Ethics of Empowered Individualism “The Will to Believe” as Moral Philosophy Scott R. Stroud and Jaishikha Nautiyal William James’s 1896 lecture, “The Will to Believe,” is arguably his best known work of philosophy, at least among his non-book length works. It is almost inevitably read, loved, and refuted for being a work on pragmatist epistemology played out in the arena of religion and philosophy. This framing is not incorrect, of course, since he does explicitly cast his rhetorical point in this lecture to the Yale (and later, Brown) Philosophical Club as a rejoinder to W. K. Clifford’s insistence that “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” (Clifford 1876: May–1877: Dec: 29). Thus, James’s argument is seen as a justification for faith in matters of belief, at least in those realms where there is not enough evidence to decide momentous, forced, and live choices. It is typically read as an extension of his pragmatist theory of truth, at least as it lines up with his religious concerns. What is often overlooked, however, is how this important lecture (and later, essay) functions as part of James’s living body of ethical philosophy. James wrote no equivalent text to his masterful Principles of Psychology (1890) for matters in the arena of moral philosophy, but where he did build up his thinking on such matters was in front of the countless audiences he addressed. This chapter will examine “The Will to Believe” as part of James’s ongoing quest to elaborate an account of pragmatist ethics. The ethics he was offering to his audiences was novel, however, and it privileged the living and acting individual. This focus on the living agent flows naturally from James’s psychology, as a vital part to it was the functioning and alteration of habits resident in the individual organism. These habits are not merely physical, though. They can be equivalent to what we call mindsets; such habits of thought and valuing can help us see this lecture as not merely about the justification of one’s religious beliefs. Instead, this lecture will be recast in 161

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this chapter as part of James’s continuing fascination with stoic thought and its focus on the normative value of the empowered individual will. Why bring stoicism into the discussion of “The Will to Believe”? We will argue that the interesting confluence of religious and scientific belief in “The Will to Believe” was a reflection and a reworking of James’s longstanding interest in stoic philosophy. As early as June 1866, James was reading Marcus Aurelius’s (121–180 CE) classic text of stoic philosophy, the Meditations, at the slow rate of two or three pages each day. He revealed this pensive pace in a letter to depressed friend, Thomas Ward, alongside James’s advice for Ward’s recovery. James effectively tells Ward to beat his depressive moods with stoic willpower and a deterministic pessimism about results: “I think we ought to be independent of our moods, look on them as external for they come to us unbidden, and feel if possible neither elated or depressed, but keep our eyes upon our work, and if we have done the best we could in that given condition, be satisfied” (James 1992[1866]: 140). This is of a piece with his early reading notes taken on Epictetus in 1862–63 (Richardson 2006: 53). In notes taken in 1862, James summarizes the individualistic empowerment he was beginning to discern in stoicism: “I am in his power who can gratify my wishes and inflict my heart. Not to be a slave then, I must have neither Desire nor aversion for anything in the power of others” (James 1862: 35). This chapter will argue that the “justification for faith” he sought in “The Will to Believe” can be seen as a developed extension of this stoic concern with empowering individuals through getting them to realize their power of choice and will. This was a mandate James saw in the stoics so clearly that he continued to proselytize on their behalf beyond his early letters to Ward: we can verify that he continued to give copies of Marcus’s Meditations to family and friends as late as 1905 (Sutton 2009: 70–89). This chapter will argue that “The Will to Believe” can be seen as an extension of James’ fascination with stoic moral commitments, especially in the forms that individual powers of will foreground in matters of belief based upon faith. As a moral text, “The Will to Believe” is about reconciling science not with religion per se, but with the stoic emphasis on the power and freedom of the individual will. A second aspect to this lecture that is often overlooked is how James argues these adapted stoic points. As Paul Stob has noted, James was an eminently rhetorical philosopher, one who constantly developed his arguments and ideas in and to a range of particularized audiences (Stob 2013). The moral import of “The Will to Believe” gains a rhetorical edge—if one wants to push for the stoic empowered self, and its value lies in it actually being realized in the living agency of one’s audience, how might one argue in such a way as to enable that achievement? This chapter will also analyze James’s popular style of argument in this lecture as a lived stoic rhetoric—a way of persuading his audience and readers such that he enables their powers of choice and assent.



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STOICISM AND THE ETHICS OF INDIVIDUAL EMPOWERMENT Our attempt to think through “The Will to Believe” as a moral text must begin with the influence that was stoicism. This will allow us to ascertain how James, speaking on these topics in this way, might have been trying to influence his audience to cultivate themselves in a stoic-influenced manner. To begin such a reconstructive argument, let us start with the figure that was top of mind when James thought of and talked about stoicism—the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Marcus is now known to philosophers as the author of the Emperor’s Reflections or Meditations (we will henceforth refer to this text as Meditations) (Antoninus 1863: 30).1 Marcus was born on April, 26 in 121 AD, and had a fortunate childhood that owes its strong foundations to several of his relatives, teachers, and friends that he acknowledges in his reflections in the first chapter of the Meditations. His ruminations on stoic ethics reflect his own commitment to an austere and disciplined orientation to life that began at the age of eleven (Antoninus 1863: 7–31). The stoic philosophy of the Meditations is grand in its scope, yet it so often focuses on the individual. His work in Meditations is a collection of thoughts that were self-oriented reflections on the situations he encountered in his own life. Pierre Hadot writes that Marcus’s work entails a philosophy that is most importantly “a way of life,” that he utilizes to guide his own quest to live in accordance with “that of the ideal good man” (Hadot 2001: 35). In Marcus’s reflections, the moral ideal encompasses a persevering and steadfast attitude toward the precarious, unpredictable, and sometimes painfully unavoidable situations life presents to everyone. In the face of such hardships, Marcus’s ideal endorses a will to be just, courageous, and tranquil in the acceptance of adverse phenomena out of one’s control. In the text where Marcus offers his gratitude to his mentors, he also acknowledges the influence of a “Greek slave” (Antoninus 1863: 37–38). This is a reference to the slave-turned-stoic philosopher, Epictetus. Despite differing from Marcus’s style of writing, Epictetus’s discourses are an important explanatory conduit for Marcus’s Meditations. These discourses, recorded by Arrian, show Epictetus as a vibrant lecturer and questioner, engaging his listeners in an attempt to convert them to the stoic way of living and thinking (Epictetus 1995). In the form of either author, stoic philosophy is characterized by desire to teach its writer/ reader something ethical and valuable about living. With this brief description of Marcus’s origins and the purpose of Meditations, we now turn toward the pragmatic cornerstones of the Stoics: dogmas as rules/principles for life. Hadot’s commentary on Marcus’s reflections on the stoic attitude in Meditations is a valuable approach to understand the stoic tradition further. Marcus discusses three pragmatic approaches to living and

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striving for happiness that entail a general orientation, “an indivisible inner disposition” or basic choice (Antoninus 1863: 36). These global approaches are called “dogmata” or dogma. In Hadot’s words, “a dogma is a universal principle which founds and justifies a specific practical conduct, and which can be formulated in one or several propositions” (Antoninus 1863: 36). Dogmas are cornerstones of stoic action that help distinguish moral good from moral evil. Stoicism considers only those actions to be morally good or beneficial which encourage an individual to become “just, temperate, courageous and free” (Antoninus 1863: 37). Consequently, morally malevolent actions are those that cultivate the opposite characteristics or vices in an individual. The important aspect to note about Marcus’s stoicism is its experiential or practice-based focus. Without habitually attending to these dogmas, the “inner images or ‘phantasiai’” through which the dogmatic focus comes to light is dimmed. And images are what motivate agency and activity in the world in stoic philosophy. Hence, it is imperative for an individual to keep repeating and practicing the principles that uphold the three stoic dogmas for living (Antoninus 1863: 183). The individual must see the stoic sense of freedom and personal value before their eyes, and in all of their actions. How does one inculcate this stoic form of life and action? One of the ways to practice these dogmas is to write them down for oneself in a rhetorical attempt to make one’s life more stoic in its qualities (Hadot 2001: 30).2 In Hadot’s reading of the Meditations, this action is a spiritual exercise that withdraws one to one’s inner fortress (as opposed to an exteriority such as houses or the natural world) to commit the dogmas to lived experiences (Hadot 2001: 38). Even though these spiritual exercises encourage one to focus on mastering their inner discourse and seeking tranquility there, the actions that the exercises inspire are for the common good and largely aim at societal improvement (Sutton 2009: 75). Since the world is a tangle of relationalities over which we have no real control, the retreat into one’s soul as Marcus puts it is not as self-indulgent as one may think. Instead, it focuses on one’s own powers and how they position the self in an ethical relation to others: “All things are implicated with one another and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other thing. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to form the same universe” (Antoninus 1863: 185). For the stoics, falsely building up a sense of the individual’s importance—at the expense of others—was immoral because it committed us to goals that were inherently beyond our agential power. In the final analysis, what we have control over is our judgments or reactions to our imagistic impressions: we cannot control the external, deterministic world that impinges on us in the form of impressions, but such an “impression then leads to a judgment; [and] passions for the Stoics are the results of judgments and are, as a result, always in our power” (Staley 2009: 63). We can control the passions that enslave us, cause



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us suffering, and so forth that come from our reactions to the impressions of the world. Thus, stoicism combines an external determinism (bordering on fatalism) with a strong reading of individual will in the sense of our ability to choose our valuing of and reactions to external events. This internal empowering of the individual through their judgements creates an intriguing equality among all humans. Stoicism is typically described as a cosmopolitan philosophy, not one prone to regionalized views of the value of human agency. This communitarian focus is prominent in the kephalaia (chief points) that Hadot discusses as Marcus’s pithy organizing strategies; these serve as his rules of living in self-renewing ways that yield ultimately transformative implications for an individual (Hadot 2001: 38). For example, the orientations that Marcus uses stress the necessity of cultivating a resilient attitude toward adverse phenomena that are largely out of one’s control because these adversities cycle through communities time and time again. If anything, such adversity reminds us of our relationality and foregrounds the communitarian spirit of Stoic thought. Further, the kephalaia localize divinity in individuals as opposed to outsourcing it to an external God that oversees the world of action: “And thou has forgotten this too, that every man’s intelligence is a god, and is an efflux of the deity” (Antoninus 1863: 299). Such a stoic orientation to action undergirds humanity’s equality in partaking of the divine through their powers of agency, and is pervasive in our value judgments and reactions to phenomena unfolding in attunement with “universal Nature” (Hadot 2001: 38). It is at this point that we can see the rhetorical nature to stoic persuasion, and to the spiritual exercises that Marcus puts himself through in the course of writing his Meditations. The rhetorical aspect is often overlooked in regard to stoic philosophy, since it seems like the stoics simply wanted a plain philosophical style to transfer to the public utterances of stoic philosophers and rulers (Atherton 1988: 392–427). Yet the linguistic ingenuity of stoic texts such as the Mediations yearns for an examination of its peculiar style and the sources of its persuasiveness beyond merely being straightforward. For instance, the Meditations is an extremely unusual text in that it appears not to have been intended for publication. Only after many centuries did it see the light of scholarly attention in 1517 (Hadot 2001: 22). The question of the rhetorical gains in prominence when we start asking seemingly simple questions about the Meditations. Was it a diary Marcus kept? Most likely not, since almost all of its utterances are not reflecting on the day’s events or descriptive in nature. Was it an outline of a larger work? In all likelihood, it was not part of a larger or lost work, as it displays virtually no organizing structure. It is aphoristic, but repetitive; it is pointed, but it seems to hint at no sustained explanation beyond momentary observations or thoughts. As Hadot describes it, the Meditations serve as a sort of self-focused spiritual activity

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for Marcus: it was a course of “voluntary, personal practices meant to bring about a transformation of the individual, a transformation of the self” (Hadot 2001: 87). Here we can extend Hadot’s analysis and note the rhetorical nature of these exercises—Marcus appears to be writing for himself in an attempt to change or cultivate that self. In other words, his writing down of dogmas and observations are rhetorical means to habituate the stoic philosophy as a way of life in himself. It is not clear that these writings were meant for future use; indeed, the repetition of various themes in different parts of the Meditations may illustrate their present focused value. Each serves as an expedient means now to cultivate the sort of habits a good stoic ought to have concerning the world, the self’s power of judgment, and the worth of others. In order to carve out a rhetoric of stoicism that we will argue influences James’s pragmatic attitude toward action and agency in “The Will to Believe,” we need to extract some techniques that Marcus utilizes in the Meditations. One of Marcus’s key approaches in Meditations is his use of imaginative exercises over and above syllogistic reasoning; it is the former, and not the latter, that are helpful in the inculcation and practice of stoic dogmas. In order to develop a resilient attitude toward events outside of one’s willful control and also accept one’s mortality, Marcus encourages the writer/reader of the spiritual exercises (himself) to imagine these inevitable and morbid realities of living and dying. This stoic strategy can be seen as an instance of “enargeia,” or the linguistic technique that stokes one’s imagination through vivid presentation of some scene, as opposed to simply giving a syllogistic argument (Stroud 2012: 254; Webb 2009). Given the imagistic psychology assumed by stoicism, one can see the value of such uses of vivid description. They literally create an impression that affects the listener, and that demands action and possibly stoic restraint. Marcus used this persuasive technique in describing the deterministic motions of the universe and how this should cause agents (such as him) to reevaluate their overinflated sense of self-worth. The periodic movements of the universe are the same, up and down from age to age . . . Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among those who are born, who live together, and die. And consider too the life lived by others in olden time, and the life of those who will live after thee, and the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even thy name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else. (Antoninus 1863: 28–30, 238–40)

This vivid scene is intended to bring the full scope of time before Marcus’s mental eye, and to reshape how he judges the worth of things and self in



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such a situation. He rhetorically creates a situation that shapes and habituates a certain type of stoic reader. This reader is also one who judges and values in a certain way. He is empowering himself through highlighting the stoic source of value and agency—his own power of judging or reflecting on images—and in devaluing illusory foci of agency (such as being able to affect this universe). Vivid images tempt the agent the most, but if used correctly, they can sharpen a stoic sense of what ought to be valued in our reactions. The second technique that complements Marcus’s imaginative exercises is his approach to writing as a personal spiritual exercise. It was personal in that he spoke as a person committed to a particular way of life, and he spoke to himself as the reader of this text as a particular person to be changed or cultivated. Stoicism can be seen as demanding intensely personal means of persuasion. Hadot explains Marcus’s maneuver as a repetitive tactic that addresses the varying themes of Meditations. The repetitive ways in which the dogmas are articulated highlight what Hadot explains as the self-directing faculty in humankind (“hēgemonikon”) (Hadot 2001: 49). This self-directing principle is the agentive power of mental discrimination that helps one distinguish between what is within one’s control and not. These repetitive articulations solidify but also constantly reinvent the self-directing faculty in an individual. For Marcus, writing implies contemplative, introspective, succinct, and self-oriented means of self-renewal: “Constantly then give to thyself this retreat and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from discontent with the things to which thou returnest” (Antoninus 1863: 122). Yet, the brief and fundamental attributes of principles explain how writing acts as a repetitive and self-directing modality of spiritual discipline in Marcus’s work. There is a capacity for “reformulation” in writing for oneself that sustains the practice of dogma driven stoic living “as an achievement of awareness, intuitions, emotions and moral experiences which have the intensity of a mystical experience or a vision” (Hadot 2001: 51). As Hadot remarks, writing in the stoic tradition merely catalyzes the stoic practices of living in accordance with the dogmas and “by means of the association of ideas, reactivates a series of representations and practices, about which Marcus—since he is writing only for himself—has no need to go into detail” (Hadot 2001: 50). Thus, we see in the Meditations Marcus speaking to himself, about himself. This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, they are external and remain immovable; but our

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perturbations come only from the opinion which is within. The other is that all these things thou sees change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation: life is opinion. (Antoninus 1863: 123–124)

One sees in this passage the personal tone of Marcus’s stoic rhetoric. He writes to remind himself of the vital doctrines of stoicism: the universe is largely out of one’s control and impermanent, and that any human has ultimate value in their ability to practice inner restraint over how their soul reacts to this world. If stoic rhetorical practices are successful, individuals will adopt such doctrines as a way of life. If the stoic fails, his or her audience will not see the universe and human freedom in such a manner in their everyday activities. THE “WILL TO BELIEVE” AND THE ETHICS OF INDIVIDUAL EMPOWERMENT Much has been written on the epistemological implications of James’s lecture and eventual essay, “The Will to Believe” (Fuller 1996: 633–650; Gale 1999: 71–91; Gavin 2013; Wood 2008: 7–24). In the present chapter, we want to argue that one can see the “The Will to Believe” as not simply defining and defending a space for religious belief, but also as continuing and adapting a stoic undercurrent in James. This stoic undercurrent is explicitly ethical, and it relates religious belief to the capacity of ultimate value for the stoic tradition: the individual agent’s power of judgment and valuing. James changes this equation, though, but his charge and his means can be seen as inherently influenced by the stoic tradition he was explicitly taken by in his youth. Understanding William James’s thought, especially that influenced by the personal address of the stoic tradition, often requires a sensitivity for the context of its presentation. Much of his published work appeared first in the form of lectures to specific audiences. Such rhetorical concerns of audience adaptation were no accident; James seemed to relish the chance to speak to specific audiences, blending his message with what they desired to hear. This sensitivity to audience adaptation infected the various styles James employed in his philosophical argumentation. Robert Richardson divides James’s style into three categories depending on the occasion and audience. James’s “first style is the labored technical writing of his early papers and parts of The Principles of Psychology”; the second style is “the middle style used when addressing College philosophy clubs,” and James’s “third style is his plainest, clearest, most public style. It is at once vivid, personal, comprehensible, and without a shred of condescension” (Richardson 2006: 360). “The Will



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to Believe” clearly falls into the second style, as it was originally presented in lecture form in front of philosophy clubs at Yale University and Brown University. James’s audience was familiar with philosophy and science, yet they were not the experts he addressed through his technical writings. They also seemed relatively uninterested, as he complained to Sarah Whitman in a letter—the Yale club was a “most remote and listless audience, my host Ladd, as on a former occasion, uttering no syllable of comment on the words to which his ears had been exposed” (Richardson 2006: 361). But for James, this was a vital lecture—he even schemed a book by the same title before he had aired this lecture in public (Richardson 2006: 361). What did he want to convey to this listless audience? In the introduction to the lecture, he tells his audience that amidst “our Harvard freethinking and indifference” many at his institution seem to have lost the true value of religion. He assumes this in his present collegiate audience, and tells them the point of his talk: “I have brought with me tonight something like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you,—I mean an essay in justification of faith, a defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced” (James 1977: 717). James’s goal was to defend the right and necessity of religious belief at some vital points in life. This was not the only point he could have made, however. He seemed to get some push back on this thesis, for the 1897 book’s preface seems defensive about this defense of rational faith. He notes that readers may wonder if it’s a “sad misuse of one’s professional opinion” to encourage religious beliefs in one’s academic audience. Are not we too prone as it is to take religious beliefs without critical examination, such a skeptic may ask? Why wouldn’t James promote science more, and leave religion to its own survival? In the same preface, he notes his rhetorical concerns in speaking to this university crowd—I quite agree that what mankind at large most lacks is criticism and caution, not faith. I admit, then, that were I addressing the Salvation Army or a miscellaneous popular crowd it would be a misuse of opportunity to preach the liberty of believing as I have in these pages preached it” (James 1911: x). Audience was a central concern for James in this address; there was something about his philosophically focused audiences at Yale and Brown, and beyond in the academic readership of the book by the same name, that drove his message. Whereas such faithful audiences as he mentions may need science to serve as a critical wind through their established camps of doctrine, the audience he was to address needed the opposite. [A]cademic audiences, fed already on science, have a very different need. Paralysis of their native capacity for faith and timorous abulia in the religious field are their special forms of mental weakness, brought about by the notion,

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carefully instilled, that there is something called scientific evidence by waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of shipwreck in regard to truth. But there is really no scientific or other method by which men can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing too little or of believing too much. To face such dangers is apparently our duty, and to hit the right channel between them is the measure of our wisdom as men. (James 1911: x)

James sought to convince his audience, saturated as it was in the scientific ethos, that religious belief was not worthless. As he was about to put it in his lecture, it was sometimes necessary. This was an audience that was all too ready to discount religious belief as irrational and reckless in a world increasingly animated by modern science. James, trained as a scientist, respected this viewpoint, but wanted to make room for religious belief. The argument he makes for this view in “The Will to Believe” is elegant and controversial. He starts by dissecting belief for his audience. He gives the name of “hypothesis” to anything that can be proposed as a belief one can adopt, and such hypothesis can be distinguished on his famous three-part scheme. They can be living or dead, meaning that they are either real possibilities in our world and action paths, or “dead” ideas or strategies we can never get behind and consider adopting. Our hypotheses can also be forced on us or avoidable, meaning that some decisions must be made now (forced), or decisions on such a hypothesis can be delayed without real harm or a permutation struck between what seemed like two mutually exclusive options (avoidable). Lastly, hypotheses for belief can be either momentous or trivial. The former involves consequences and paths that matter to us; the latter, like the choice of jam on one’s toast, does not matter for the course of one’s life or its significance. James will focus on the realm of hypotheses that are living, forced, and momentous. These matter to our lives, necessitate a choice now, and cannot be redone or undone. James’s ultimate point, on the usual reading of “The Will to Believe,” is two-fold. First, many of our deepest scientific orientations are passional decisions, even when they seem to be based upon evidence. This point extends James’s earlier ruminations in essays such as “The Sentiment of Rationality,” one that reappears in the book The Will to Believe. Second, and more prominent in terms of its originality, is the claim in the “The Will to Believe” lecture that “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds” (James 1977: 723). These are the cases of living, forced, and momentous choice that cannot be decided by any appeal to decisive evidence; indeed, “to say, under such circumstances, ‘Do not decide, but leave the question open,’ is itself a passional decision,— just like deciding yes or no,—and is attended with the same risk of losing the



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truth” (James 1977: 723). These are often the hypotheses of religion, and science cannot decide these matters for us. If one waits for scientific evidence, one makes a choice now. They live their life in a certain nonreligious way that cannot be recouped if the evidence eventually appears, James’s reasoning seems to imply. What sense can we make of this argument about belief if we take James’s longstanding interest in stoic philosophy and bring it to the foreground? We argue that one can see “The Will to Believe” as part of a moral program pushed forward by James in such public lectures. One can call this a “program” since it holds both a theory of the ethical life and a commitment to means or ways to reach such moral endpoints. Like the stoics in general and Marcus Aurelius in particular, James was committed to instilling certain views about the world and freedom in his listeners. Also, he shared many of the approaches stoics used in their texts to inculcate these views as a lived philosophy, be they in the individuals in Epictetus’s audience or Marcus himself. In other words, bringing stoicism into our explanatory story moves “The Will to Believe” from the realm of pragmatist epistemology into the arena of pragmatist moral theory. It also brings rhetoric and the means of persuasion into moral theory, a very pragmatic accouterment to the dry realm of mere theorizing that seemed off-putting to pragmatists such as James (Stroud 2009: 378–401). Emma Sutton gives us a place to start with the stoics—she claims that James was attracted to figures like Marcus because he tried to pair certain views of the world that bordered on science (e.g., determinism) with metaphysical views of God, fate, and so on (Sutton 2009: 83). On this reading, James appreciated the stoics because they reconciled science and religion, a long-standing tension in his life. Yet this does not fully emphasize the point that we surveyed in Marcus earlier—the stoic commitment to ethics being a lived philosophy. Marcus’s Meditations were a tool to energize in him the stoic doctrines focusing on the value of individual judgment. When we turn to “The Will to Believe” as a text extending the stoic ethical tradition, we can see this fixation in terms of the willfulness of belief. Before James arrives at his thesis acknowledging that our passional nature must decide some issues, he engages Clifford’s view that it is immoral to believe things on insufficient evidence (James 1977: 721). This objection was anticipated in reply to James’s idea of “believing by our volition” (James 1977: 720). To this James argues, largely in the third subsection of “The Will to Believe,” that our “willing nature” is operative in many or most of our evidentially based decisions. James considers it a “fact” of experience that our decisions on and about evidence are not based on “intellectual insight” or “pure reason”—instead, “as a matter of fact, we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why” (James 1977: 721). We identify or construct arguments and evidence

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to appease our previously held commitments, all of which have a passional hue to them: “Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other,—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.” Why isn’t this a decision based upon logic, his audience may ask? James personalizes this and displays its passional dimensions by postulating next a skeptical inquirer: “But if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! Certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another,—we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make” (James 1977: 722). James surrounds the activities of choosing beliefs with passions, as he concludes right before standing forth with his official thesis: “Evidently, then, our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief, and it is only the latter that are too late for the fair; and they are not too late when the previous passional work has already been in their own direction” (James 1977: 722). James is attempting to get across to his audience the personal aspect to believing. Belief is an activity, one that we have control over, even if it involves the passions. These passions are us, in the Jamesian system, as they reflect our engagements with the world and are further shaped by these activities. We can see this aspect of “The Will to Believe”—the idea of the willfulness of belief and its passional drives—as a rewriting of the stoic emphasis on true freedom being an inner power to moderate or alter our reactions to the outside world. For the stoic that James read so slowly and recommended to others throughout his life, Marcus Aurelius, the world had a charted course and individual virtue came through freeing one’s self from an illusory attachment to this world and desired consequences. In reconciling his scientific modernism with a respect for religion, James alters this equation. Gone is the fatalism about external affairs; James believes our passional choices can make a difference in how the battles of this worldly existence turn out. Yet he maintains the stoic turn toward the inner as primary, as well as their commitment to our inner agency. When we face certain living, forced, and momentous choices in what we believe, we actively create our self and our world through our willful nature. Like the stoics, James simply wants us to do this with an utmost clarity over what our powers are, and the domain in which they function. Unlike the stoics, shaping and acknowledging our passional nature is part of our inner agency for James. Knowing about one’s willful nature as a believer is vital part to



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being the sort of ethical individual James wants to encourage through his lecturing and writing. One senses throughout “The Will to Believe” that he wants his audience to adopt this ethic of individual empowerment, and not simply think that they are leaving their decisions up to science, pure reason, or some other extravolitional power. For the individualized ethic that James was explicating for his philosophically inclined audiences, our value resides in our ability to own our choices of such matters as religious belief. This idea of a stoic ethic of individual empowerment can allow us to explain the rhetorical aspects that Paul Stob notes about “The Will to Believe,” when he observes: “In many ways, the sermonic quality of the lecture overshadowed his philosophical qualifications, which indicates some of the power of his appeals” (Stob 2014: 32). Stob is right that individualism and community building take place in such talks as James’s “The Will to Believe,” but we can now add the lifelong concern with stoicism to this account. James wanted to build a community based upon individuals who possessed the virtue of controlling their willful natures. Thus, James sermonized this theme in his address, as he wanted to continue the stoic emphasis of philosophy as doctrine and as entailing certain energizing means of putting it into practice. It is this latter concern—that of the stoic thinker with the means of instantiating the right orientation toward the power of the individual agent—that highlights the complex mix of rhetorical tactics and communitarian worries in James’s “The Will to Believe.” James saw a specific ethical goal; he wanted to create the sort of empowered individuals who knew that their volition, largely animated by passions, mattered in the world. It mattered in science, but it also mattered in a more sustained sense in two additional realms: that of moral matters and those of religious choice. The former also includes some of James’s best examples under the concept of “personal relations” (James 1977: 730). He was concerned about our beliefs about relationships contributing to the truth of those beliefs vis-à-vis the relationship. In making this point, we see the outline of the stoic concern with rhetorical means—in this case, personal address in the form of vivid examples. James asks his audience to imagine a relationship between two individuals, one of which turns out to be James and the other, the audience member: Do you like me or not?—for example. Whether you do or not depends, in countless instances, on whether I meet you half-way, am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation. The previous faith on my part in your liking’s existence is in such cases what makes your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until you shall have done something apt, as the absolutists say, ad extorquendum assensum meum [to force my assent], ten to one your liking never comes. (James 1977: 730)

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The point is straightforward: our belief in relationship being a certain way often influences whether those relationships are in fact that way. But the rhetorical point goes beyond this doctrine. James addresses these audience members, and places them in an imaginative situation that forces them to think through the point he is making. One could make this same point abstractly, but here the concerns with rhetorical means (such as example) are tempered by the ethical goal—creating certain kinds of individuals through this employment of language and evoked image. James wants to shape a certain sort of relationship with his audience through his specific choices in how he talks to them about beliefs and orientations. The ethics of “The Will to Believe” implicates the speaker, James, in the quest to create certain types of willful and empowered individuals as its living endpoint. James is sensitive to how such willfulness could go wrong. Indeed, he hints at the problems of this in regard to religious credulity in his preface. In the specific arguments of “The Will to Believe,” however, this worry over the wrong sort of empowered individual agent comes to the fore in regard to what can be called false certainty. What is false about such feelings of individual will is that their orientation toward their agency puts them in a harmful and false relation with other agents. We can understand this point better if we read it alongside the stoic position that Marcus enunciates in his Meditations. The basis for his stoic cosmopolitanism is that the individual only values themselves and their projects more than the selves and projects of other agents when they misunderstand the range and scope of their own powers, as well as the workings of nature. James alters this ethical realignment of our view of self and other in “The Will to Believe” in an interesting way. The willfulness involved in religious belief is acceptable, or even necessary, because none of us can uphold Clifford’s charge and exclude religious belief based upon evidentiary considerations. We make a decision, or as James puts it, he and his audience must choose. Only a false certainty would say that we are constrained to choose this religious option, James says, because there is no sense of certainty of that nature available to us. If it was available, it would be something unique to us, since the view we claim certainty for is opposite of views that others have claimed certainty for—as James exclaims to his audience, “For what a contradictory array of opinions have objective evidence and absolute certitude been claimed!” After surveying a range of diametrically opposed views on religious and earthly matters, James summarizes his point: “there is indeed nothing which some one has not thought absolutely true, while his neighbor deemed it absolutely false; and not an absolutist among them seems ever to have considered that the trouble may all the time be essential, and that the intellect, even with truth directly in its grasp, may have no infallible signal for knowing whether it be truth or no” (James 1977: 726). We take our chances



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with our beliefs, but we must be intelligent and caring with how we channel our willful empowerment as believers. Unlike the stoics, James held out hope for our beliefs melioristically mattering in shaping the universe. But like the stoics, he wanted an appreciation for the equality of others as similarly endowed willful agents. Our empowerment was not unique; it is an achievement that we must ideally share with the community of individuals around us. By the end of “The Will to Believe,” one gets the sense that James’s audience, if they have followed him, will now be moved to a certain orientation on the permissibility of religious belief. Opposed to his own preface, this moral endpoint is not merely a bland justification of the possibility of faith and belief. Instead, it becomes a unique mix of empowered individuals and a stoic-influenced cosmopolitanism of believers. James employs the rhetorical tactic of personal address to make this final point about the permissibility of religious belief. He excludes rules of evidence that preclude individual risk on religious beliefs, and asserts the power and necessity of individual passional choices. This ability is tied to one’s inner freedom and worth as a believing and acting being, a nod to Marcus’s constant refrains about human judgment: “In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider” (James 1977: 734). We can choose to believe, or wait for proof, but at the end of the day we must realize that we are making a willful choice as an agent: as James tells his audience, “In either case we act, taking our life in our hands” (James 1977: 734). This stoic concern with the inner locus of agential value and freedom combines with the same power in others to shape James’s appeals for tolerance and a sort of intellectual cosmopolitanism. Immediately after making the point that we always act on these important choices of belief, he addresses his audience directly, and as members of a community of willful agents: No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another’s mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism’s glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things. (James 1977: 734)

With the personal references to himself, he draws himself into this narrative of willful belief; with the references to his audience as being equal to himself as well as to the other individual believers, he draws his audience into this plan for inner cultivation. The rhetorical means of personal address, coupled with the vivid imagery of the concluding quotation from Fitz-James Stephens concerning the snowy mountain pass, all serve as ways to make James’s

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concerns with the ethic of individual empowerment a reality in his audience. James is not merely theorizing in “The Will to Believe”; he is attempting to create the sort of cognizant, knowingly willful believers that value self and other in a community of belief. This is his intellectual republic, and it assumes a more definitive shape when we read it in light of his stoic influences. “THE WILL TO BELIEVE” AS DIALOGICAL SPIRITUAL EXERCISE The hallmark of Marcus’s Meditations was its personal character. As far as we know, it was never intended or prepared by him to be a persuasive text for others. We are moved by it now solely by virtue of the transitivity of human experience and stoic goals—his concerns and aspirations overlap with ours, so when we read him trying to convince himself of these matters, we are equally moved. James’s “The Will to Believe,” as indebted to Marcus’s doctrines, themes, and methods as it is, differs in a crucial regard. James was not speaking just to himself, he was addressing others. These others were the members of the Yale and Brown philosophy clubs, but they were also the readers his philosophical text would undoubtedly attract. What was he to do with this unique opportunity? Of what was he to persuade them, and how was he to do it? These are rhetorical questions of ends and communicative means, and this chapter has hopefully illustrated how one can see “The Will to Believe” as attempting to inculcate the doctrines of willful belief, tolerance of other believers, and a worry about overbearing self-certainty. The means he uses to achieve these, we have argued, parallel stoic employments of vivid description (enargeia) and personalized address. But his vivid use of image and personalized address occur in a dialogic setting; they implicate this audience, and not merely James. Unlike Marcus, James does not seem fixated on a personal lack of belief in stoic dogmas. He does seem focused on conveying these attitudes and ideas as living orientations to his audience, however. Using Hadot’s scheme, we can describe the sort of spiritual exercises employed by James in “The Will to Believe” as dialogic spiritual exercises. He is using linguistic means to engage other agents, and to persuade them to imagine their agency in a new, and empowered, manner. Such a reimagining of willful belief, if successful, ought to also entail a revaluation of the value of others as fellow community members in a system of empowered agents. Thus, the stoic residue that we can observe in James’s “The Will to Believe” is changed in a vital way: he orients his spiritual exercises toward others, a stark contrast to the private, diary-like exercises of Marcus Aurelius. Unlike the stoics, James held his faith in the ability of



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willful agents to change the world for the better, but this depends on success in his rhetorical attempts at persuasion. In a later, unpublished manuscript titled “Faith and the Right to Believe,” James seems to tone down his often-misinterpreted focus on willful belief (James 1977: 735). Yet his point is the same: the world is unfinished, and how it turns out necessarily depends on our acts of what we choose to believe. Opposing those who say the world is finished—“intellectualists,” as he calls them—James defends probability and meliorism in our courses of religious belief that affect self and others: “it may be true that work is still doing in the world-process, and that in that work we are called to bear our share. The character of the world’s results may in part depend upon our acts. Our acts may depend on our religion,—on our nor-resisting our faith-tendencies, or on our sustaining them in spite of ‘evidence’ being incomplete. These faithtendencies in turn are but expressions of our good-will towards certain forms of result” (James 1977: 736). In this unpublished piece that was a planned for use in introductory classes in philosophy, James again aims to create an image of a certain universe in his readers, one in which agential decisions matter. Like the stoics, he tempers the tendencies toward self-aggrandizement; it all doesn’t depend on me, as “the melioristic universe is conceived after a social analogy, as a pluralism of independent powers. It will succeed just in proportion as more of these work for its success. If none work, it will fail. If each does his best, it will not fail” (James 1977: 739). James’s point, tempered as it is with a faith in changing the world through collective individual empowerment, remains the same as his sustained argument in “The Will to Believe”: “we can create the conclusion, then.” The stoic themes of Marcus Aurelius changed the young James, but he clearly became a thinker that moved beyond his youthful views. In spite of all his growth as a thinker, the tailings of stoicism remained with James. In reimagining “The Will to Believe” as a moral discourse, we can discern the deeply embedded veins of a hopeful yet restrained stoicism in a pragmatist thinker so concerned with cultivating the will to believe in himself and in his audience.

NOTES 1. We use this edition as it was likely the one that James had in his youth. 2. Marcus learned the art of rhetoric in his youth with a teacher named Fronto. Fronto’s pedagogy forced Marcus to copy out edifying maxims or quotations from famous authors and to reflect on their meaning. This in turn, according to Hadot, informed his later practice in the Meditations.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius. 1863. The Thoughts of the Emperor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library. 7–299. Atherton, Catherine. 1988. “Hand over Fist: The Failure of Stoic Rhetoric.” Classical Quarterly 38: 392–427. Clifford, William K. 1876: Dec – 1877: May. “The Ethics of Belief.” In Contemporary Review. London: Macmillan. 29. Epictetus. 1995. The Discourses of Epictetus, trans. Robin Hard. London: Everyman. Fuller, Robert C. 1996. “‘The Will to Believe’: A Centennial Reflection.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64: 633–650. Gale, Richard M. 1999. “William James and the Willfulness of Belief.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59: 71–91. Gavin, William J. 2013. William James in Focus: Willing to Believe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hadot, Pierre. 2001. The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 35. James, William. 1862. Notebook 3. Unpublished manuscript. Cambridge: Harvard University Library. 35. James, William. 1911. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green, and Company. x. James, William. 1992 [1866]. The Correspondence of William James, vol. 4, ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 140. James, William. 1977. “Faith and the Right to Believe,” In The Writings of William James, ed. John J. McDermott, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 735. James, William. 1977. “The Will to Believe,” In The Writings of William James, ed. John J. McDermott, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 717. Richardson, Robert D. 2006. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. Boston: Mariner Books. 53. Staley, Gregory Allan. 2009. Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press. Stob, Paul. 2013. William James and the Art of Popular Statement. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Stob, Paul. 2014. “The Rhetoric of Individualism and the Creation of Community: A View from William James’s ‘The Will to Believe,’” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 44: 32. Stroud, Scott R. 2009. “William James on Meliorism, Moral Ideals, and Business Ethics,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 45: 378–401. Stroud, Scott R. 2012. “William James and Impetus of Stoic Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 45(3): 254. Sutton, Emma. 2009. “Marcus Aurelius, William James and the ‘Science of Religions.’” William James Studies 4: 70–89. Webb, Ruth. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination, and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Burlington: Ashgate. Wood, Allen. 2008. “The Duty to Believe According to the Evidence.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 63: 7–24.

Part V

THE MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF JAMES’S LECTURES ON HUMAN IMMORTALITY

Chapter 12

William James on Human Immortality Anthony Karlin

In his 1897 Ingersoll lecture, subsequently published as “Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine,” James characterizes immortality as “one of the great spiritual needs of man” (James 1982: 77). If my own experience is any guide, I expect that the typical individual reading of James’s essay today would characterize the belief in immortality much less enthusiastically—possibly even unable to take the idea of life after death seriously at all. Very few people, I suspect, would list immortality among their most pressing needs. Although resistance to such “over-beliefs” were common in James’s own time, over the last 100 years the sobering cosmology of science has continued to dominate the cultural consciousness, resulting in an even more secularized society. With this in mind, I believe that, in order to comprehend the worth of James’s essay, it is necessary as a preliminary matter to consider why he regarded immortality as one of our “great spiritual needs.” What, exactly, did James think immortality was needed for? What problem does the need for immortality answer? Without answering these questions James’s responses will have little resonance for us. The problem, of course, relates directly to James’s general understanding of and response to the end of human life—death. This particular subject goes right to the heart of James’s philosophy. Examining James’s thoughts on death takes one straightaway into his conception of the human condition, his fear and love of life, the function and justification of religious faith, and the conditions necessary for living a moral life. A sensitive interpreter of James’s work ought to feel overwhelmed by abundance of relations among these issues. Accordingly, before James’s replies to the supposed objections in “Human Immortality” are considered, I will outline some of the general features of James’s religious thought as it relates to the problem of death. If the reader is solely interested in James’s remarks on immortality in “Human Immortality,” 181

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one can safely skip to sections (5) and (6) where those ideas are specifically addressed. Otherwise, I begin in section (1) by considering how James was forced to reckon with the issue of human mortality early in life. Additionally, I relate James’s conception of the “sick-soul” to Ernest Becker’s ideas concerning the problem of death. With an understanding of the problem in place, I turn in section (2) to James’s appraisal of religious belief—its vital moral functions and the role it plays in addressing the problem of human mortality. In section (3) I try to make explicit the relationship between James’s general account of religious belief and the specific belief in immortality. In section (4) I pivot to the moral justification for religious belief and, drawing on the work of Sami Pihlström, I propose a Jamesian response to Bernard Williams’s well-known objection to immortality. Sections (5) and (6), as mentioned above, discuss “Human Immortality” and James’s views concerning the nature of consciousness and his profound regard for the value and dignity of human life, respectively. In the concluding section, I compare Nietzsche’s broad criticism of religious belief with James’s ideas, finding some important common ground between the two contemporaries. In the final analysis, I suggest that James’s perception of ambiguity in the natural world is largely responsible for the distance between him and thinkers like Nietzsche with regard to their openness to religious faith. Moreover, I suggest that this ambiguity allows for what Otto Rank termed “legitimate foolishness”—a potentially useful way of describing and accepting the inevitable risks we take in forming our vital belief systems. Again, my hope is that the arrangement of the issues in this way will be helpful in understanding the importance of immortality in James’s philosophy. JAMES AND THE PROBLEM OF DEATH The issue of human mortality forcefully confronted James early in life. His struggles with various physical ailments as a young man certainly brought about an awareness of elemental human frailty. Be that as it may, I believe that two events of James’s young adulthood were seminal to his confrontation and life-long engagement with the issue of human mortality. The two transformative events were the American Civil War and the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Each of these developments played a vital role in setting the direction of James’s thought concerning the human condition. In order to make the impact of these events on James clear, we need to briefly consider some of the relevant aspects of James’s biography. The Civil War broke out in the spring of 1861 when William James was nineteen years old. Each of James’s younger brothers, Garth Wilkerson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), would eventually volunteer for the war



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effort for the purpose of aiding the abolitionist cause. Although Bob, by all accounts, served admirably, it was Wilky’s dramatic war experience that left a lasting impression on the James family. Wilky joined the 54th Massachusetts regiment in 1863 when he was seventeen years old. The 54th had the distinction of being the first African-American regiment of the war and Wilky was a devoted supporter of the abolitionist cause. On July 18th, 1863, under the command of the young, Harvard graduate, Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th led an attack on Fort Wagner, resulting in hundreds of casualties including the death of Shaw. Wilky was severely wounded during the assault and was discovered unconscious in a field hospital by Shaw’s father, who personally escorted his return to the James home. William was home during this period and witnessed the arrival of his brother on a gurney (Richardson 2006: 56). He watched as Wilky slowly recuperated, even capturing the somber mood of his bed-ridden brother through drawings. Fortunately, Wilky eventually recovered and, remarkably, chose to rejoin the 54th until the war ended— totally committed to the abolitionist cause. William, during this time, was far less certain of his calling. After the war ended, James changed his course of study from chemistry to comparative anatomy at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. One of the first works he read was Darwin’s The Origin of Species—published four years prior in 1859 (Richardson 2006: 57). Darwin’s account of the evolutionary process provided an explanation for the development of human life without invoking a creator God or divine plan for creation. The consequence of Darwin’s account, we know, was the expedited unsettling of Western religious thought. According to Darwin, the natural world, rather than the work of Providence, is the unvarnished product of billions of years of spontaneous variation and environmental pressures. All complex life forms evolved from simpler life forms which means that all living things share a common ancestry and humans have no providential origin—or destiny, for that matter. The readily apparent conflict between the work of Darwin and religious belief was certainly not lost on James. His father, Henry Sr., was an outspoken Swedenborgian Christian mystic whose religious convictions were unmistakably communicated to the rest of the family. Shortly after reading Darwin, James, very tellingly, bought his father’s book Christianity, The Logic of Creation (Richardson 2006: 58). He concerned himself with this conflict almost immediately. James, like many others, was impressed by Darwin’s account and held some variety of evolutionary theory throughout his life, conceding the natural brotherhood between human and nonhuman life. These convergent events and their repercussion on the direction of James’s thinking should not be overlooked. The terrible carnage wrought by the Civil War placed death at the forefront of national consciousness while, at the same time, Darwin’s popular evolutionary theory deprived human life of its

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providential origin and hoped-for future. The Civil War made the factuality of death inescapable while Darwin made life irredeemable. The combination of these forces generates a situation which, when fully recognized, is too perplexing for any individual to successfully manage. The predicament is what the anthropologist Ernest Becker carefully analyzes in his seminal work, The Denial of Death. Becker observes how the unequivocal acceptance that we are flesh-and-blood creatures, subject to the same terrible ending as all other flesh-and-blood creatures, fills us with terror. Seeing ourselves as belonging to the same “red in tooth and claw” natural world as all other creatures, we are forced to reckon with an ignoble and fleeting existence. Becker describes our sense of disbelief: This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and selfexpression—and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. (Becker 1997: 87)

The anguish evoked by the consciousness of our approaching death is a species of suffering that nonhuman animals, lacking the necessary level of self-awareness, are evidently immune from. Accordingly, one of the defining features of human life is the awareness of death. Like other creatures, self-preservation is one of primary, instinctual motivations, and yet, by understanding ourselves as mortal, this supposedly useful instinct appears to be ultimately fruitless. We find our situation is not only terrifying, it is also absurd. The blind and capricious operations of nature have given rise to a being capable of self-cultivation but also capable of discovering its meaningless and tragic fate. Echoing Andre Malraux’s observations in The Human Condition, Becker writes, A person spends years coming into his own, developing his talent, his unique gifts, perfecting his discriminations about the world, broadening and sharpening his appetite, learning to bear the disappointments of life, becoming mature, seasoned—finally a unique creature in nature, standing with some dignity and nobility and transcending the animal condition; no longer driven, no longer a complete reflex, not stamped out of any mold. And then the real tragedy . . . that it takes sixty years of incredible suffering and effort to make such an individual, and then his good only for dying. This painful paradox is not lost on the person himself—least of all himself. (Becker 1997: 269)

Consciousness of our mortality is, Becker concludes, “the most fundamental and terrifying problem of human life” (Becker 1997: 100). The anticipation of our complete elimination from the universe casts an ominous shadow over our lives. The practical effects of this are, quite literally, demoralizing.



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The loss of a future horizon diminishes the importance values and ideals we hold in the present, especially those which are the most demanding of our effort. The terror described by Becker is the same terror that James describes in his account of the “sick-soul” in The Varieties of Religious Experience. I will continue to use James’s term “sick-soul” even though I find it misleading—James does not believe individuals possess “souls,” nor does he believe that the sick-soul is pathologically sick or diseased. Rather, the sick-soul is the individual who is unable to “throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil” and cannot disregard the “diseased, inferior, and excrementitious stuff” of life (James 1985: 113–114). The sick-soul perceives that behind “everything is the great spectre of universal death, the all-encompassing blackness” (James 1985: 118). The terror of our natural condition is expressed by James most clearly in his description of an experience he had while working at a mental asylum, which he falsely attributes to an anonymous French correspondent and must be quoted at length. Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects, I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. That shape am I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since. It was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone. . . . In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. My mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger, which you

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may well believe I was very careful not to disturb by revelations of my own state of mind. I have always thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing. . . . I mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that, if I had not clung to scripture-texts like The eternal God is my refuge, etc., Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, etc., I am the Resurrection and the Life, etc., I think I should have grown really insane. (James 1985: 134–135)

The terror described so vividly by James centered on the realization that the difference between living well and not living well is negligible. As natural creatures, we are all susceptible to decay. As James’s biographer Linda Simon points out, the epileptic patient could not be cured by strengthening his will—he was at the mercy of his own biology, that is, at the mercy of nature (Simon 1999: 125). This is what so shook James to the core of his being, “That shape am I, I felt, potentially.” The sick-soul cannot simply look away from this reality: “Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and skull will grin in at the banquet” (James 1985: 119). Awareness of death is the “worm at the core” of our being and to deny it, says James, is the “consecration of forgetfulness and superficiality” (James 1985: 119). A wholly naturalistic conception of the human condition is one infused at all times with tragedy. For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation. (James 1985: 120)

Again, an unfortunate practical effect of this picture is a diminishment of our moral efforts. The sick-soul experiences a “passive loss of appetite for all life’s values” as any “original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled with the dust.” (James 1985: 126, 135). What is needed, says James, is “a life not correlated to death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature” (James 1985: 119). James sees religious belief as the best and most promising way to fill this prescription: “Here is the real core of the religious problem: Help! help!” (James 1985: 135). James believes that without some kind of assistance everyone, not only the sick-soul, is destined for failure.



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For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.” (James 1985: 120)

In James’s case, then, Darwin enforced the reality of human creatureliness and the fate that entails, but, he couldn’t simply turn away from the subject of death—life during wartime made that impossible. It is no wonder at all that James suffered from depression throughout his young adult life. The situation is simply too much for anyone to manage. But James was not disquieted by the problem; he wanted to determine whether individuals like the sick-soul can flourish given such a dim fate. The solution, or one promising solution, reached by James is the religious belief in God and the possibility of immortality. THE FUNCTION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF James regarded individual religious faith (as opposed to institutional religion) as playing a vital and unparalleled role in human lives throughout history. He recognizes the ability of faith to transform a life overwhelmed by hopelessness, that is, the sick-soul, into one of hopeful and active moral striving. As Michael Slater has recently argued, ethics and religious faith are inseparably interwoven in James’s philosophy. Slater makes this connection explicit by singling out two important functions of religious belief in James’s thought: the possession of a morally strenuous attitude and metaphysical intimacy. Slater describes metaphysical intimacy as “the achievement of a saving or liberatory sense of intimacy with an unseen order or ‘wider self’” (Slater 2009: 7). Well-doing, James thought, ultimately requires a sense of well-being. This unseen order or “wider self” is what James also refers to as “God”—a higher spiritual agency continuous with the natural order. The importance of metaphysical intimacy for human moral flourishing is that it transfigures the hopeless scientific-naturalistic conception of the universe into one with containing hoped-for possibilities. This world may indeed, as science assures us, someday burn up or freeze; but if it is a part of his order, the old ideals are sure to be brought elsewhere to fruition, so that where God is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things. (James 1985: 407)

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As should be apparent, these two functions—moral strenuous and metaphysical intimacy—answer the needs of those like the sick-soul whose life has become crippled by a conception of the universe which has no meaningful role to offer. However, it is not just the sick-soul who needs assistance. According to James, the conscientious agnostic or atheist who, with knowledge of human mortality, still decides to commit themselves to secular, ethical life, will inevitably break down and fail. The moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so long as this athletic attitude is possible all goes well-morality suffices. But the athletic attitude tends ever to break down, and it inevitably does break down even the most stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when morbid fears invade the mind. To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o’er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. (James 1985: 45)

James does not deny the possibility or value of secular ethics, but he does deny the human capacity to fully live up to our ideals. What James identifies is what John E. Hare has described as the “moral gap.” Hare describes the moral gap as the distance between moral demand and our capacity. The typical response to this discrepancy between demand and capacity is, according to Hare, to either exaggerate our powers to fit the demand or lower the demand to fit our powers. Hare calls the former “puffing up the capacity” and is what James describes above as the “athletic attitude” (Hare 2002: 99ff.; James 1985: 45). Hare, drawing inspiration from Kant, argues that it is not possible for us to have duty as our only desire—we are finite beings with other needs and desires (Hare 2002: 102). We may add here that one of those needs and desires is metaphysical intimacy—a sense of well-being in the universe, unavailable to the secular moralist. This type of failure, James observes, does not just apply to the more morbid personality types. [T]ake the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievement are pitched far higher than the achievement themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting. (James 1985: 110)

However you consider it, the task is too great; life gives us more than we can handle. As the number of failures add up, discouragement sets in, and the effort inevitably wanes. The “athletic attitude” corresponds to the “energetic fantasy” that characterizes what Becker calls the “causa-sui project”—the illusion of self-sufficiency:



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The causa-sui passion is an energetic fantasy that covers over the rumbling of man’s fundamental creatureliness . . . . One suspects at all times that one is fundamentally helpless and impotent, but one must protest against it . . . . If the causa-sui project is a lie that is too hard to admit because it plunges one back to the cradle, it is a lie that must take its toll as one tries to avoid reality. (Becker 1997: 107)

There is a power in letting go. “What [the moralist] craves,” James claims, “is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is” (James 1985: 45). James claims that “in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power” (James 1979b: 160). For James, the saint represents the religious individual par excellence whose conversion includes resignation and the “shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections.” The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy . . . and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. (James 1985: 226)

Thus, what belief in a higher power does for us, according to James, is to acknowledge our failings and unburden us from a false idea of self-sufficiency. There is an “immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down,” he writes (James 1985: 220). The religious believer places themselves at the mercy of a higher power who is able to embrace and redeem them. They’ve resigned themselves to imperfection but, with much of the burden removed, are able to actively forge ahead believing that progress is possible. IMMORTALITY AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF The hope for immortality is frequently regarded as an essential religious belief but towards the end of Varieties, James remarks that immortality “is eminently a case for facts to testify” (James 1985: 412). James recognizes that, for many, life after death is the sole meaning of religious faith. However, he is seemingly willing to set it to the side as non-essential, claiming we may be satisfied if only “our ideals are cared for in ‘eternity’” (James 1985: 412). On James’s own account, however, I would argue that without belief in the possibility of life after death, much of the functioning of religious faith, as James describes it, is either severely diminished or lost altogether.

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One obvious problem with treating immortality as a peripheral concern is that a religious faith without it does nothing to address the “worm at the core” that brings about the need for “a life not correlated to death,” as James so sympathetically describes. It leaves the problem of human mortality untouched. “The fact that we can die, that we can be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity,” James claims (James 1985: 119). In his discussion of the sick-soul, James appears to be making a plea similar in character to Miguel de Unamuno’s in The Tragic Sense of Life. We do not need God in order that He may teach us the truth of things, or the beauty of them, or in order that He may safeguard morality by a system of penalties and punishments, but in order that He may save us, in order that He may not let us die utterly. And this singular longing, because it is a longing in each and every normal man—those who are abnormal by reason of their barbarism or their hyperculture do not count—is universal and normative. (Unamuno 1978: 346)

Additionally, if there is no hope for life after death, it is difficult to understand how one could achieve a sense of metaphysical intimacy. How could one be expected to achieve a feeling of peace and security with a universe complicit in their extinction? “We and God have business with each other,” James claims, “and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled” (James 1985: 406). What would be the nature of this business partnership if our elimination from the world is part of the deal? Without any possibility for salvation it seems that many would reject the deal. James’s suggestion that the preservation of our ideals would be sufficient raises additional troubling concerns. In particular, it seems to diminish the value of the individual. Eyeing the potential danger of this type of belief, Eugene Fontinell remarks, “Using humans, whether individually or collectively, as a ‘means’ to some end or life outside themselves is just as repugnant when the user becomes Nature, or Spirit, or God, or Mankind” (Fontinell 2000: 191). Moreover, we not only desire that some of our ideals survive but also that we will be present to witness their realization. This issue was directly raised in a letter to James from his friend Carl Stumpf. Your sentence: ‘If our ideals are only cared for in “eternity,” I do not see why we might not be willing to resign their care to other hands than ours’ seems to me to contain a sort of inner contradiction. The realization of ideals is only possible on the presupposition of individual immortality. . . . Let the earth become frozen, let no new individuals arise, then where is the realization of ideals to be found, if the spirit does not endure? (Perry 1935: II:343)



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In response to Stumpf, James concedes, I do not see why there may not be a superhuman consciousness of ideals of ours, and that would be our God. It is all very dark. I never felt the rational need of immortality as you seem to feel it, but as I grow older I confess I feel the practical need of it much more than I ever did before; and that combines with the reasons, not exactly the same as your own, to give me a growing faith in its reality. (Perry 1935: II:345)

Clearly, the issue of immortality for James was a vital one of increasing significance. I suspect that, in Varieties (and this is also true for “Human Immortality”), James strategically attempted to put his best “tough-minded” self forward in order to offset what may have appeared as excessive sentimentality. In the final lecture of Varieties, “Conclusions,” James reveals this worry: “In re-reading my manuscript, I am almost appalled at the amount of emotionality which I find in it” (James 1985: 383). Perhaps he was afraid that the religious belief in immortality would be too closely associated with self-serving interests and self-aggrandizement—contrary to the spirit of his description of the religious function. Whatever the reason for his hesitations, the truth is that James did ultimately correlate the hope for immortality with religious faith and in other writings, such as “Human Immortality,” he explicitly and repeatedly identifies it as a vital human need.

THE ETHICAL GROUNDING OF IMMORTALITY Sami Pihlström has recently drawn attention to the ethical grounding of metaphysics in James’s thought, finding similarities between Kant and James on this matter. The idea is that metaphysical beliefs (such as the hope for immortality) are, for James, ultimately grounded in our ethical demands. Pihlström emphasizes the ethical grounding of metaphysics in light of the case James makes in “The Will to Believe” which permits us to have over-beliefs under certain conditions: when the “choice between the rival hypotheses cannot be conclusively decided on the basis of evidence and other intellectual considerations and that the choice is a genuine (live, forced, and momentous) one for us” (Pihlström 2008: 61). In other words, because a belief such as immortality can neither be factually proved nor disproved, it must be evaluated on some other basis. The primary basis James suggest is the moral value the belief has for our lives in the here and now. “Belief in immortality,” writes Pihlström, “is philosophically legitimate just insofar as it helps make the world a better place—helps to establish a “moral order” (Pihlström 2008: 62). Pihlström believes (and I agree) that: “Respect for human life and its moral demands

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required, in [James’s] view, a recognition of the possibility of immortality” (Pihlström 2008: 59). This interpretation of James serves to highlight, as Pihlström notes, the irrelevance of prior metaphysical arguments against immortality. Because beliefs such as immortality are justified on moral grounds, Pihlström reasons, the “science-fiction-like metaphysical discussions of the possibility and desirability or undesirability of immortality” appear to be profoundly irrelevant” (Pihlström 2008: 63). With Pihlström’s suggestion in mind, I want to pause here and consider Bernard Williams’s well-known case against the desirability of immortality. Williams argues that personal immortality is undesirable because we would inevitably become bored and lose interest in life, resulting in unbearable tedium. The point is rather that boredom, as sometimes in more ordinary circumstances, would be not just a tiresome effect, but a reaction almost perceptual in character to the poverty of one’s relation to the environment. Nothing less will do for eternity than something that makes boredom unthinkable. What could that be? Something that could be guaranteed to be at every moment utterly absorbing? (Williams 1993: 87)

Unless we can conceive of an activity or series of activities that would permanently stave off boredom, Williams argues, we should reach the conclusion that, at some point in time, we are better off dead. To support this conclusion, Williams cites Karel Čapek’s fascinating play The Makropulos Case, in which the main character, Elina Makropulos, despite having an immortality potion, decides to stop taking it after 342 years. It could be argued that her character was defective in many respects, for example, she seems to lack intellectual curiosity, and creative imagination, as well as any sense of the moral life. She appears to have lived what James would regard as a narrowly aesthetic life—an Epicurean life of limited and refined pleasures. This kind of life reflects, says James, the “sobering process which man’s primitive intoxication with sense-happiness is sure to undergo” (James 1985: 121). They leave “the world in the shape of an unreconciled contradiction, and seek no higher unity” (James 1985: 122). More than that, much of her life and energy is spent concealing her true identity and condition, preventing the formation of any lasting relationships. I believe Williams’s response to such criticisms is that it doesn’t matter the character of the person—at some point the possibilities of a certain type of character, however defined, would be exhausted. And at that point, life is not worth living. Perhaps, but it is all very vague. The attempt to imagine our lives several hundred or thousand or more years from now in a yet-to-be-determined, altered environment, has a sense of unreality to it and is difficult to confidently pass judgment on. The idea of eternity numbs the mind—the time



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frame corresponding to our most passionate interests constitutes the minutest fraction of it. Additionally, the character of an individual may be perfectly predictable but the possibilities latent in the encompassing environment are not. Williams seems to assume the universe will remain relatively static, or at least contains a finite number of interesting possibilities for us. We can simply reject that assumption. More importantly, to place before a sick-soul, whose life has been dramatically improved by religious faith, the question of whether such faith ultimately leads to boredom seems, as Pihlström suggests, profoundly irrelevant. To expect one to set aside the vital goods of religious faith on the basis of shaky metaphysical speculations about our eventual level of interest in a future life demonstrates a lack of sensitivity to the urgency of our moral needs. Even if Williams’s argument is not successful, James does believe that religious beliefs ought to be reflected upon and evaluated not solely in terms of their practical moral effects, but also in light of our lived experience and other empirical evidence. This is important to recognize. Our over-beliefs are conditioned by both epistemological and ethical criteria. Beliefs must fit our experience and have a sense of reality to them in order for them to be “live” options for us. These beliefs are informed by our values and vital needs but must reckon with empirical data, with what we regard as established and undeniable facts. Ethics grounds metaphysics but our beliefs must comport with our basic, working knowledge of reality. This is the reason James makes an effort in “Human Immortality” to argue that the popular scientific understanding of consciousness does not rule out the possibility of immortality. Faithfulness to experience is why James spent over twenty years engaged in psychical research, exploring the possibilities of human consciousness in a cautious and systematic way. We certainly have a right to metaphysical beliefs, but not any metaphysical beliefs and not just those which seem morally praiseworthy—they must run the gauntlet of our empirical knowledge and fit a plausible conception of reality. With this in mind, let us now turn to James’s Ingersoll Lecture on human immortality. BRAIN FUNCTION AND THE POSSIBILITY OF IMMORTALITY Does the modern biological understanding of consciousness rule out the possibility of immortality? This is the first question James takes up in “Human Immortality.” The most commonly held belief about consciousness is that it is nothing but a product and function of the brain. Consciousness conceived largely discredits the possibility of life after death. That is, if consciousness owes its existence and operation to a physical organ, the argument goes, then it will cease to be when the organ ceases to operate. Or, to put it another

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way, if consciousness is absolutely dependent upon the brain, it cannot exist apart from the brain. This psychophysiological view of consciousness was the reigning view of the scientific community in James’s day and remains so today. James is willing to concede that this understanding of consciousness is perfectly consistent with our own experience and the findings of scientific research. Everyone knows that arrests of brain development occasion imbecility, that blows on the head abolish memory or consciousness, and that brain-stimulants and poisons change the quality of our ideas. The anatomists, physiologists, and pathologists have only shown this generally admitted fact of a dependence to be detailed and minute. What the laboratories and hospitals have lately been teaching us is not only that thought in general is one of the brain’s functions, but that the various special forms of thinking are functions of special portions of the brain. When we are thinking of things seen, it is our occipital convolutions that are active; when of things heard, it is a certain portion of our temporal lobes; when of things to be spoken, it is one of our frontal convolutions. (James 1982: 79–80)

Here James grants that the scientific evidence which supports the reigning theory of consciousness is compelling and he acknowledges that the holdouts to this view are thought to be “a few belated scholastics, or possibly some crack-brained theosophist or psychical researcher” (James 1982: 81). Nevertheless, even if this account is true, “function can mean nothing more than bare concomitant variation,” says James (James 1982: 88). James maintains that all science has shown is that when brain states change, consciousness changes, but this does not prove that the brain produces consciousness. That is, brains producing consciousness is one way the relationship could operate, but it’s not the only way. As James points out, the brain-thought relationship may not be productive, like a tea-kettle producing steam, but, rather, permissive, like a crossbow releasing an arrow, or transmissive, like a prism through which light is “determined to a certain path and shape” (James 1982: 86). Therefore, “when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain,” writes James, “we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function” (James 1982: 86). The latent and unchallenged assumption of science has been that thought can only be a productive function of the brain—but there are reasonable alternative accounts that do not entail an absolute dependence of consciousness on the brain. These alternative conceptions of the brain-consciousness relationship have particular advantages. One way the transmission theory is superior to the productive theory, according to James, is that it begins by assuming that consciousness “already exists, behind the scenes, coeval with the



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world” (James 1982: 89). The productive theory requires that consciousness is always being produced, de novo, while the transmission theory, in contrast, “avoids multiplying miracles” (James 1982: 89). Thus, James argues that it is simpler to assume that consciousness exists in its own right rather than the counter-intuitive assumption that it is produced by something of a seemingly dissimilar nature. Another way the transmission theory seems superior to James is that it is able to account for “those obscure and exceptional phenomena reported at all times throughout human history,” including [R]eligious conversions, providential leadings in answer to prayer, instantaneous healings, premonitions, apparitions at time of death, clairvoyant visions or impressions, and the whole range of mediumistic capacities, to say nothing of still more exceptional and incomprehensible things. If all our human thought be a function of the brain, then of course, if any of these things are facts,—and to my own mind some of them are facts,—we may not suppose that they can occur without preliminary brain-action. (James 1982: 92–93)

According to the production theory, these extraordinary types of psychic phenomena must be understood as meaningless at best and, at worst, pathological. The transmission theory, on the other hand, naturally accounts for exceptional psychic states, particularly if we “suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother-sea” (James 1982: 94). If our brain forms a threshold against an impinging “mother-sea” of consciousness, the “exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the dam” can meaningfully be accounted for (James 1982: 94). For these reasons, in addition to its consistency with the hope for immortality, James argues the transmission theory is the superior theory, though acknowledging many puzzles remain to be solved. The advantages of this general conception of consciousness is further elaborated in Varieties where James connects subliminal consciousness to an unseen order (the “mother-sea”) which suggests a pathway for higher spiritual energies to filter in. Just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things material, so it is logically conceivable that if there be higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy Subliminal might remain ajar or open. (James 1985: 197)

As Richard R. Niebuhr points out, James advances a double hypothesis. First, our subliminal consciousness may be a gateway to another reality. Second, this additional reality may contain higher spiritual agencies. For James, these are only hypotheses, but, as Niebuhr puts it, hypotheses that James “takes

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with the greatest seriousness” (Niebuhr 1997: 229). In a letter written to Henry W. Rankin in 1901, James describes the gravity of these ideas as they relate to his own outlook on life. 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. The impressions and impulsions and emotions and excitements which we thence receive help us to live, they found invincible assurance of a world beyond the sense, they . . . communicate significance and value to everything. (James 1920: II: 149–50)

James expresses a similar view regarding the reality and value of the world beyond the sense in the final lecture of Varieties. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this [mystical or supernatural] region . . . we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal. (James 1985: 406)

In sum, James understood his transmissive theory of consciousness as not only compatible with science, but also thought it was much more inclusive of empirical data, for example, the mystical, psychical, and spiritual experiences that have permeated and textured all of human history. These types of experiences, James believed, science had wrongly ignored and marginalized. The ability of his theory to preserve a vital human need (the possibility of immortality) as well a vast variety of religious belief without dismissing the findings of science made it, if nothing else, James thought, the morally superior theory. A DEMOCRATIC VIEW OF IMMORTALITY The second objection or obstacle to belief in immortality James replies to is what one might call, along with Eugene Fontinell, the “logistical objection” (Fontinell 2000: 115). The logistical objection is the idea that immortality



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cannot be believed because it would entail the survival of an “incredible and intolerable number of beings.” James’s concern, according to Fontinell, is “how could God possibly maintain in existence the billions of people who have existed and who will come to exist?” (Fontinell 2000: 115). Indeed, James raises this concern; however, that particular issue neither exhausts nor captures the heart of James’s discussion. The concern for James is not only the “logistical problem” concerning overpopulation in the City of God, but, more importantly, the difficulty we have in believing that countless evolutionary variations of human life have been worth saving. I interpret James as obliquely addressing the prejudice that evolution must entail diminishing the value of human life, which then becomes an obstacle to belief in immortality. James’s discussion on this matter is valuable for revealing his belief in and appreciation for the dignity of human life—past, present, and future. According to James, the old “aristocratic view” of immortality which claimed only an elite few will be saved is no longer a tenable option. Our evolved sympathetic nature, claims James, has led us to reject the exclusivity of this old view in favor of a more inclusive “democratic view” of immortality. For a man who had at times professed a kind of nonchalance about this issue of immortality, the following eulogistic description of the human plight is unequivocally passionate and inspired: Bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh are these half-brutish prehistoric brothers. Girdled about with the immense darkness of this mysterious universe even as we are, they were born and died, suffered and struggled. Given over to fearful crime and passion, plunged in the blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hideous and grotesque delusions, yet steadfastly serving the profoundest of ideals in their fixed faith that existence in any form is better than non-existence, they ever rescued triumphantly from the jaws of ever-imminent destruction the torch of life, which, thanks to them, now lights the world for us. How small indeed seem individual distinctions when we look back on these overwhelming numbers of human beings panting and straining under the pressure of that vital want! And how inessential in the eyes of God must be the small surplus of the individual’s merit, swamped as it is in the vast ocean of the common merit of mankind, dumbly and undauntedly doing the fundamental duty and living the heroic life! We grow humble and reverent as we contemplate the prodigious spectacle. Not our differences and distinctions,—we feel—no, but our common animal essence of patience under suffering and enduring effort must be what redeems us in the Deity’s sight. An immense compassion and kinship fill the heart. An immortality from which these inconceivable billions of fellow-strivers should be excluded becomes an irrational idea for us. (James 1982: 97)

What James highlights in this passage is the impulse to dismiss as insignificant the innumerable lives of our common ancestors, due to our habitual

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blindness towards the inner struggles of others. The lives of our predecessors were marked by trials no less terrifying than ones we encounter and it was their indomitable yearning for life that we owe the existence of our own lives to. If there is any redemptive personal quality to be found within human history, James observes, surely it is “patience under suffering and enduring effort.” James uses evolutionary theory as an opportunity to awaken our sympathy towards the suffering of others and locates the value of individual lives in the heroic and often tragic pursuit of progress. We may be incapable of seeing the value of lives so different than our own, James suggests, but the needs of the Universe and God’s love are inexhaustible and have no bounds. “The heart of being can have no exclusions akin to those which our poor little hearts set up,” says James (James 1982: 101). Habitually acknowledging the universal struggle of humanity ought to make us more sensitive to the fact that we all are, fundamentally, overwhelmed by life and this awareness may helpfully serve as a bulwark against crass intolerance of those apparently different than us. Accordingly, despite his earlier remarks, which indicate a modest interest in immortality, James’s profuse, emotional exhortations to recognize the sanctity of human life reveals a man who was sensitive to the issue of immortality. James believed we are worthy of salvation. But then so are all those “brutes” who preceded us.

NIETZSCHE, JAMES, AND LEGITIMATE FOOLISHNESS Thus far, I’ve accepted the contention by James and others that religious belief, including the hope for immortality, are beneficial to life. Religious beliefs appear to serve vital human needs by sustaining our moral ideals and invigorating our efforts to realize those ideals. Provided that we are willing to subject these beliefs to ongoing evaluation—both moral and epistemological—we are, James believes, acting responsibly. However, critics of religious belief have often condemned them on the grounds that these beliefs, rather than being useful for human life, actually impoverish and degrade it. Nietzsche, in particular, believed that Christianity has a been a tremendous detriment to human life. In The Antichrist, he mercilessly advances the idea that Christian faith, by juxtaposing another, perfect realm of reality next to our fundamentally imperfect one, has done humanity the most terrible disservice. When the emphasis of life is put on the ‘beyond’ rather than on life itself when it is put on nothingness -, then the emphasis has been completely removed from life. The enormous lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, everything natural in the instincts, - everything beneficial and life-enhancing in the



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instincts, everything that guarantees the future, now arouses mistrust. To live in this way, so that there is no point to life any more, this now becomes the ‘meaning’ of life. . . . What is the point of public spirit, of being grateful for your lineage or for your ancestors, what is the point of working together, of confidence, of working towards any sort of common goal or even keeping one in mind? (Nietzsche 2005a: 39–40)

Rather than invigorating individuals to pursue a morally rich life in the here and now, Nietzsche laments that Christian belief in an idealized future life in the “beyond” directs our care in the wrong direction. Our world, including ourselves, with all its imperfections, becomes a target of moral condemnation. The all-knowing and judging Christian God, Nietzsche thought, forces us to place an undue emphasis on our guilt, which robs us of our sense of self-worth and reinforces feelings of ineptitude. Whatever sense of self-worth we can muster is derived comparatively by seeking out others to judge more harshly than oneself. Nietzsche recognizes the need for meaning but science, he believes, has proven religion false; and science itself offers no meaning. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche proposes the “eternal recurrence” as a solution to living fully in a Godless universe without meaning. What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ (Nietzsche 2005b: 194)

Nietzsche challenges us to embrace the world as it is and to reflect on whether the lives we are living represent the kind of life we could bear repeating indefinitely. In Ecce Homo, he reiterates this idea. My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that you do not want anything to be different, not forwards, not backwards, not for all eternity. Not just to tolerate necessity, still less to conceal it - all idealism is hypocrisy towards necessity-, but to love it. (Nietzsche 2005a: 98)

The eternal recurrence is a radical affirmation of the worth of life despite the fact that there is no personal salvation. Live life in a way you will never regret, Nietzsche seems to say. “Those who cannot bear the sentence, ‘There is no salvation,’” says Nietzsche, “ought to perish!” (Heller 1976: 193). Although Nietzsche’s general assessment of religious belief is vastly different than James’s, there is a surprising amount of common ground between

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the two. One immediate similarity is that James would wholeheartedly agree with Nietzsche’s demand that religious beliefs (all beliefs for that matter) must be life-affirming. Beliefs which are unable to prove their value for this life are to be rejected. This is a hallmark of James’s philosophical thought. Regarding the idea of God, James writes, If [God] proves himself useful, the religious consciousness asks for no more than that. Does God really exist? How does he exist? What is he? are so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse. (James 1985: 399)

A religious faith that either has no measurable effect on the life of a believer or causes the believer to become maladapted to life, ought to be dropped on James’s account. James emphasizes that mystical religious experiences “must be sifted and tested, and run the gauntlet of confrontation with the total context of experience” which includes judgments of “moral helpfulness” and “philosophical reasonableness” (James 1985: 338). Again, ongoing evaluation is part of our responsibility for holding over-beliefs. Another similarity between Nietzsche and James is the unwillingness to ignore or discount the existence of evil—the senseless, indefensible suffering which pervades the natural world. One of James’s most curious beliefs is the idea of finite God and is directly related to this point. Because James was unable to reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing, beneficent God with natural evil, he felt forced to the conclusion that there must be some limits to the higher power. James definitely did not advocate treating the world as a lost cause, something to simply put up with before jumping ship to the next life. Sometimes James even appears to embrace the world in a Nietzschean fashion. Possibly reflecting on the loss of his infant son, James writes, To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter could have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever after. It makes no difference what the principle of life may be, material or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself to all life’s purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter’s possibilities. (James 1975: 50)

Both Nietzsche and James saw the instrumental value in science for improving the human condition, though both viewed the worship of science as an existential dead end. The bleak worldview of sick-soul is the scientific worldview, the worldview of the nihilist. It contains no ultimate meaning or directives for human action.



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Where James and Nietzsche noticeably part ways is with regard to what James calls the “dramatic possibilities” of nature. The materialistic cosmology of science was something Nietzsche seems to have accepted as basically accurate, whereas James was constantly noticing theoretical blind spots. For James, much of the natural world was still open to interpretation and metaphysical speculation—as “Human Immortality” demonstrates regarding the nature of consciousness. In short, the world always maintained a sense of mystery for James. For Nietzsche, there was much less ambiguity. William Gavin has helpfully highlighted the importance of the “vague” to James’s philosophical outlook. “When James talks of the need to preserve the vague,” Gavin writes, “he is arguing against certainty, that is, against the usurping of the privileged position of center stage once and for all by any formulation of the universe” (Gavin 1992: 2). Gavin contrasts James’s fallibilistic attitude of James with what he calls “bumbling.” “Bumbling” is a term I shall use to refer to a situation wherein on seeks certainty, seeks the apodictic, the fundamental Archimedean point as a necessary desideratum in life, but fails to find it. Bumbling, then, refers to a depressing state of affairs in which one allows the goal to be defined in terms of certainty and then cannot manage to achieve it—or at least to pretend to have achieved it. The vague, in contrast, refers to a situation that has not degenerated into an overly false clarity, and to one that does not intend to come up with final certainty. (Gavin 1992: 2–3)

Vagueness for James, according to Gavin, was not so much a liability as it was an opportunity to choose from competing ideas about a reality too profuse for complete comprehension—and this makes life ineluctably intense. “Life presents a challenge to which we must respond,” says Gavin (Gavin 1992: 3). James’s appreciation for the vague or ambiguous is brought up by Eugene Fontinell in response to John J. McDermott’s essay “The Inevitability of Our Own Death: The Celebration of Time as a Prelude to Disaster.” McDermott claims, echoing Nietzsche, that the religious hope for immortality is a self-deception used to mask the painful reality of death. McDermott’s approach to dealing with the badness of death is to somehow appreciate time as sacred. I believe that time is sacred. It is not sacred, however, because it has been so endowed by God, the gods, nature, or any other force. I believe that time is sacred because human history has endowed it with meaning, our suffering, our commitments, and our anticipations. (McDermott 1986: 166)

These types of suggestions I find utterly perplexing. McDermott appears to suggest that our individual and collective human efforts leave some sort of

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eternal imprint on time which can never be cancelled. But I do not understand how this optimism is justified provided the naturalistic worldview he assumes. If we endow time with meaning, then, once we no longer exist, time will no longer be endowed with meaning. Fontinell observes how, unlike James, McDermott fails “vast ambiguous body of religious experience” (Fontinell 2000: 183). Ambiguity not only discourages the “bumbling” quest for certainty and dogmatism, as Gavin observed, it also leaves room for faith, for unrealized possibilities, for hope. Ambiguity allows for what Otto Rank calls “legitimate foolishness.” In Beyond Psychology, Rank describes legitimate foolishness as the “creative expression of the natural self which we condemn as irrational” (Rank 2011: 49). Ernest Becker describes legitimate foolishness as the alternative to the modern valuing of the hyperlogical mind, that is, the mind of the neurotic individual. The modern mind, Becker claims, “is the banishment of mystery, of naïve belief, of simple-minded hope. We put the accent on the visible, the clear, the cause-and-effect relation, the logical—always the logical” (Becker 1997: 200). There is no one more logical than the lunatic, more concerned with the minutiae of cause and effect. Madmen are the greatest reasoners we know, and that trait is one of the accompaniments of their undoing. All their vital processes are shrunken into the mind. What is the one thing they lack that sane men possess? The ability to be careless, to disregard appearances, to relax and laugh at the world. (Becker 2011: 201)

Becker submits that we need illusions—legitimate foolishness—in order to overcome our natural neurosis: “childlike foolishness is the calling of mature men” (Becker 2011: 202). Such foolishness needs to be evaluated, according to Becker, by “how much freedom, dignity, and hope a given illusion provides” (Becker 2011: 202). I want to suggest that something like the idea of “legitimate foolishness” comes very close to capturing the spirit of James’s understanding of religious faith. Religious beliefs are, again, James thinks, justified (legitimated) on the basis of their moral helpfulness and fit with the data of experience. Yet, there is always a personal risk involved with these beliefs. We are always liable to playing the fool. Consider James’s response to W. K. Clifford’s concerns about being duped in “The Will to Believe”: Biologically considered, our minds are as ready to grind out falsehood as veracity, and he who says “Better go without belief forever than believe a lie!” merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe. He may be critical of many of his desires and fears, but this fear he slavishly obeys. He cannot



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imagine anyone questioning its binding force. For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world. (James 1979b: 25)

Our over-beliefs may be illusions, we may prove to be fools and dupes. And yet, James asks, what is the alternative? After all, the risk of dupery is characteristic of many parts of life, not only religious belief. For example, Hare observes how we “commit ourselves to long-term undertakings like marriage and raising children when the empirical evidence, from our experience of our own lives and the lives of others, is against the chances of success” (Hare 2002: 271). If it is foolishness, it is a profound kind of foolishness—the kind which Becker describes as contributing freedom, dignity, and hope to our lives. It is foolishness that chooses to err on the side of more life, on the side of hope. In his lecture notes from the mid-1890s, James explains his understanding of the stakes involved. The world is a datum, a gift to Man. Man stands and asks himself, ‘What is it?’ Science says molecules. Religions says God. Both are hypotheses. Science says, ‘You can’t deduce or explain anything by yours.’ Religion says, ‘You can’t inspire or console by yours.’ Which is worth most, is, after all, the question. Molecule can do certain things for us. God can do other things. Which things are worth most? (Perry 1935: I:493)

If religious beliefs, such as the hope for immortality, prove fruitful in keeping individuals “more sane and true,” as James himself testified, it seems that such faith may legitimately be regarded as a gift to life (James 1985: 406). At the end of his life, James clearly stated his deeply held beliefs regarding religious faith and our right to believe. Faith thus remains as one of the inalienable birthrights of our mind. Of course it must remain a practical, and not a dogmatic attitude. It must go with toleration of other faiths, with the search for the most probable, and with the full ­consciousness of responsibilities and risks. (James 1979a: 113)

BIBLIOGRAPHY Becker, Ernest. 1997. The Denial of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster. Fontinell, Eugene. 2000. Self, God, and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation. New York: Fordham University Press. Gavin, William. 1992. William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Hare, John E. 2002. The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance. New York: Oxford University Press. Heller, Eric. 1976. “The Importance of Nietzsche.” In The Artist’s Journey into the Interior. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. James, William. 1920. The Letters of William James. Two vols. Edited by Henry James. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. James, William. 1975. Pragmatism (The Works of William James). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1979a. Some Problems of Philosophy (The Works of William James). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1979b. The Will to Believe (The Works of William James). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1982. Essays in Religion and Morality (The Works of William James). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience (The Works of William James). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. McDermott, John J. 1986. Streams of Experience: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of American Culture. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Niebuhr, Richard R. 1997. “William James on Religious Experience.” In The Cambridge Companion to William James: 214–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005a. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy). Edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche. 2005b. The Gay Science (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy). Edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James. Two vols. Boston: Little, Brown. Pihlström, Sami. 2008. “The Trail of the Human Serpent is Over Everything”: Jamesian Perspectives on Mind, World, and Religion. Plymouth, UK: University Press of America, Inc.Rank, Otto. 2011. Beyond Psychology. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Richardson, Robert D. 2006. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Simon, Linda. 1999. Genuine Reality: A Life of William James. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Slater, Michael. 2009. William James on Ethics and Faith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Unamuno, Miguel de. 1978. The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1993. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” In The Metaphysics of Death: 71–92. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Chapter 13

A Radical Empiricist Defense of Irrationality Ermine L. Algaier IV

On November 10, 1897, William James delivered the second annual “Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man” to an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.1 To my knowledge, no scholar has explored the relationship between James’s earliest formal description of radical empiricism as announced in the preface to The Will to Believe and the way that he approaches the problem of immortality through the Ingersoll lecture.2 In response to this lacuna, I make an attempt to uncover the historical and thematic continuity between the two texts. By framing the question of immortality as a problem of irrationality, I demonstrate how James’s methodological orientation seeks to liberate the epistemic minority from the dogmatic and monistic tendencies of the late nineteenth-century scientific and philosophical communities. Against the secondary literature that is primarily driven by internal interpretations, that is, readings that predominantly focus on either the metaphysical or biographical themes, I sketch out a radical empiricist reading that highlights the ways in which the Ingersoll lecture is externally oriented toward safeguarding the social and psychological suffering of those individuals that maintain a practical right to believe in the afterlife.3 THE METHODICAL ORIENTATION OF THE INGERSOLL LECTURE: “IRRATIONALITY AS THE PRIUS” In order to grasp the epistemological and moral heart of the Ingersoll lecture, it is best to start with a brief summary of James’s argument. The text itself is divided into two parts, consisting of two objections that, according to him, were stumbling blocks to the modern mind.4 The first objection responds to the idea that the modern scientific causal understanding of the brain refutes 205

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the possibility of immortality. It poses the question that if the inner life of subjective experience is a function of the materiality of the brain, then how is it possible to have any sort of afterlife experience if the brain, which is responsible for consciousness, is destroyed? Given the overwhelming evidence of the mechanical relationship between the mind and the body, James draws out the major premises of what he calls the “theory of production” (James 1982 [1898]: 82–84, especially note 3). Simply stated, consciousness is conceived as a product of the brain and when the brain ceases functioning, it is no longer capable of its productive function. Taking stock of his audience and the argument that he is about to put forward, James implores his audience to unequivocally subscribe to “the great psychophysical formula: Thought is a function of the brain” (James 1982 [1898]: 81). He then poses the question: are we logically compelled to disbelieve in human immortality? In response to this question, James establishes the fact that several types of function, for example, the transmissive theory or the permissive theory, empirically occur in the natural world. As such, he argues that we are not restricted to one frame of reference, that is, the production function of material causality. Due to the nature of other types of function it is logically possible that the notion of human immortality is compatible with one or more of these alternative paradigms. However, we cannot empirically determine, one way or another, which theory is right. Rather, all that we can note is that function is nothing more than “bare concomitant variation” (James 1982 [1898]: 88). In short, James maintains that we are not logically compelled to rigidly adhere to one specific explanatory model of the relationship between the brain and the mind: therefore, we are not logically compelled to disbelieve in immortality. Immortality, according to his analysis, is an equally rational and logical possibility when viewed from the standpoint of the transmission theory which subscribes to different metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions. Having briefly summarized the lecture, we can note that the correlation between James’s radical empiricism and the methodological orientation of the Ingersoll lecture was not entirely lost among his critics and supporters. In 1901, George Holmes Howison (1834–1916 CE), a friend and philosophical colleague, provides us with a context for bridging the gap. Drawing on the correspondence between James and George Howison, we can begin to unpack the various layers of the lecture in order to tease out the moral and social orientation of the text. Less than a year after James gave his Ingersoll lecture, Howison composed a response entitled, “Human Immortality: It’s Positive Argument” and later published it in his book, The Limits of Evolution.5 The title of the essay captures its significance insofar as it purports to be the exact opposite of James’s



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“Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine.” While James’s empirical text adopts a defensive strategy in order to salvage the belief in the life hereafter, Howison’s essay advances a positive thesis insofar as it attempts to rationally prove the possibility of personal immortality. At first the two began discussing the pros and cons of James’s Ingersoll lecture, but the conversation quickly turned toward the topic of Howison’s recent publication. After receiving a letter in which James both praises and criticizes it, Howison responds by asserting that James is too stubborn in his own belief and that he is so blinded by his own radical empiricism “that arguments however careful and however emphasized for a priori certainties make no impression on you at all” (James 2001: 520).6 To explain, James initially praised Howison for “rational fitness” and the “uncompromising way in which [he] lays down a conception of the world” (James 2001: 502–503). However, shortly thereafter, he raises the objection that Howison is “almost unconscious of the primâ facie rebelliousness of the world of facts” and that he “simply override[s] them, strong in [his] conviction of the ultimate ideality” (ibid. 503). Whether or not this is an accurate assessment of Howison and his work on personal idealism, the criticism is quite revealing of James’s own standpoint, in general, and of his radical empiricism in particular. For example, it brings to mind James’s physiological account of reflex action and the perspectival manner in which we reconstruct the world of the given from the standpoint of our own teleological biases. In “Reflex Action and Theism” he explains that [w]e break [the order of the world, i.e the given] into histories, and we break it into arts, and we break it into sciences; and then we begin to feel at home. We make ten thousand separate serial orders of it, and on any one of these we react as though the others did not exist. We discover among its various parts relations that were never given to sense at all (mathematical relations, tangents, squares, and roots and logarithmic functions), and out of an infinite number of these we call certain ones essential and lawgiving, and ignore the rest. Essential these relations are, but only for our purpose, the other relations being just as real and present as they. (James 1979 [1897]: 96)

As a radical empiricist, James’s pluralism rests upon the idea that facts are many and varied. In his initial description of radical empiricism as a pluralism, he asserts that “the crudity of experience remains an eternal element thereof. There is no possible point of view from which the world can appear an absolutely single fact” (James 1979 [1897]: 6). On this view, problems arise when an individual, or an entire epistemic community, reconstructs the world of finite facts by assigning their own meaning and value under the guise of objectivity and certainty. Throughout his writings of the late 1870s through the end of the century, James urges us to be more careful about the

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nature, range, and scope of our moral and epistemological claims. In the preface to The Will to Believe he maintains that “To the very last, there are various ‘points of view’ which the philosopher must distinguish in discussing the world; and what is inwardly clear from one point of view remains a bare externality and datum to another” (ibid. 6). After alluding to the idea that Howison’s vision of the world is unilaterally determined by his personal idealism, and thereby restricts his point of view, James asserts that the so-called “brutality and madness” of facts should be the starting point, not the end point. In a reflective manner that speaks volumes about James’s moral and epistemological writings of the 1880s through the late 1890s, he closes the topic of conversation by writing, “I find myself more and more disposed to believe in irrationality as the prius” (James 2001: 503). To clarify this important observation, it is crucial that we understand this dispositional draw toward “irrationality.” Although it would be a fruitful enterprise to flesh out James’s conception of irrationality by defining it, contextualizing it with respect to his many uses of the term, and establishing its philosophical parameters, for the purposes of this chapter we can settle with grasping irrationality as a locative placeholder.7 Irrationality, taken in the most generic sense, signals the closure of the epistemic exploration from a particular point of view based upon the understanding that the associative idea has departed from the path of reason. Given James’s predilection toward fallibility, contextualism, and pluralism, it is easy to foresee that he considers the dichotomy of rationality/irrationality to be a highly contextualized cultural construct that is modified by our own interpretative experience. Used in its derogatory fashion to disparage another’s idea, irrationality is more than just a tool that arbitrarily demarcates the limits of “legitimate” epistemic discourse: it has profound ramifications at the moral, psychological, and social levels as well. Elsewhere, I have written at length how James’s description of radical empiricism as a “definite philosophical attitude” is rooted in an epistemic sensitivity to the alogical (or irrational) other and how his criticism of dogmatism, infallibilism, and monistic thinking are all philosophically driven by an acute awareness of the epistemic, moral, and social dynamics at play when various points of view are unjustly subjected to intolerance and oppression.8 On this view, it is not surprising that just because something is considered irrational from a doxic point of view, it need not signify an objective or universal claim that is rooted in epistemological certainty. From an opposite and equally valid standpoint, the location and associative implications of irrationality radically differ in their nature, range, and scope. As I discuss in the next section, this is precisely how I interpret James to be thinking about the problem of immortality in the Ingersoll lecture. My contention is that when we take into account the above correspondence and the way that James orients his reader to his style of argumentation, we



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can get a better sense of his target audiences: the arbitrary authority and the epistemic minority. The former group is readily understood as the dogmatic materialist and/or anyone subscribing to the doxic majority that fiercely defend the impossibility of a life hereafter. The latter group may be identified as a minority community whose ideals are externalized and rejected; that is to say, a composition of individuals whose social fate has already been decided by the epistemic majority as being “confused” and “irrational” based upon their commitment to maintain a belief in the possibility of a life hereafter. IMMORTALITY, IRRATIONALITY, AND THE PROBLEM OF PERSPECTIVE One of the key insights into James’s early radical empiricism is that when one or more groups arbitrarily prioritizes their system of meaning and value, pronouncing it as objective and certain, then not only have they lost their epistemological footing and begun dabbling in the uncertainty of metaphysical speculation, but they have also set up arbitrary and oppressive epistemic, social, and moral restraints on the epistemological minorities. As alluded to in the above summary of the Ingersoll lecture, the end point or conclusion of the dogmatic materialist is that immortality is incompatible with its worldview and is therefore deemed irrational. This is precisely the point at which James wants to insert himself as a radical empiricist. From a thematic point of view, he could not have been more clear about his radical empiricist orientation to the problem before him: not only is the dogmatic materialist convinced of the infallibility of his view, but he also maintains that it is the only correct position.9 Whereas the irrationality of immortality is the conclusion for the dogmatic materialist, the radical empiricist takes up the opposite end of the perspective insofar as the so-called irrationalism signals the mere starting point of thinking through the problem. To begin the analysis of the argument, we catch a glimpse of James’s socio-moral orientation to the problem of immortality at the beginning of the lecture when he suggests that “[w]hether we care or not for immortality in itself, we ought, as mere critics doing police duty among the vagaries of mankind, to insist on the illogicality of a denial based on the flat ignoring of a palpable alternative” (James 1982 [1898]: 87). By following this train of thought, we can see how his argument functions as a radical empiricist critique of perspectival limits that seeks to retract the “fangs of cerebralistic materialism” while also serving as a platform to liberate the epistemic minority from the moral, psychological, and social constraints of irrationality (James 1982 [1898]: 88).

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As a radical empiricist, James is convinced that the universe is not understood in any one particular way: “[p]rimâ facie the world is a pluralism” (James 1979 [1897]: 5). Applying this orientation to the physiological psychologist and the problem of immortality, he wants to show that the question of rationality hinges upon the perspective taken. What is illuminated by the light of reason for one point of view is internally congruous with how facts and datum are interpreted from that particular point of view; meanwhile the very same facts interpreted from a different point of view may lead to an opposite, or contradictory, conclusion. For example, when we consider the psycho-physiological doctrine of thought being a function of the brain, we can see that two people might look at the same fact and come to widely divergent conclusions. According to James’s account, when psycho-physiologists consider the relationship between the brain and the mind, they are naturally led to the conclusion that immortality is an impossibility. When the physiologist who thinks that his science cuts off all hope of immortality pronounces the phrase, “Thought is a function of the brain,” he thinks of the matter just as he thinks when he says, “Steam is a function of the tea-kettle,” “Light is a function of the electric circuit,” “Power is a function of the moving waterfall.” In these latter cases the several material objects have the function of inwardly creating or engendering their effects, and their function must be called productive function. Just so, he thinks, it must be with the brain. Engendering consciousness in its interior, much as it engenders cholesterin and creatin and carbonic acid, its relation to our soul’s life must also be called productive function. Of course, if such production be the function, then when the organ perishes, since the production can no longer continue, the soul must surely die. Such a conclusion as this is indeed inevitable from that particular conception of the facts. (James 1982 [1898]: 84, emphasis added)

In this passage, it is clear that James is not discrediting the physiological psychologist’s mode of reasoning, suggesting that her conclusion is drawn from false premises or that there is some other issue at play. As discussed below, the problem derives from the dogmatic manner in which this position pronounces its conclusion as objective and true. The key turning point for understanding the text as an experiment in radical empiricism is the conjunctive language of “if.” If the productive function is an accurate account of the relationship between the mind and the brain, then mortality is the logical outcome and immortality is a rational impossibility. The conjunctive term, however, implies that other options are theoretically (and practically) available. To illustrate this point, James explains that the productive function is not the only type of function available to us in the



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natural world. He goes on to suggest two other types, for example, the permissive and transmissive functions, and explains that the transmissive function is logically compatible with a life hereafter. Whether or not the alternatives are considered to be “real” and “rational” possibilities are, according to James, a dispositional matter. Regardless of what we may personally believe, James’s ethics of tolerance and respect suggest that we must carefully consider the matter before we assign meaning and value to opinions that do not cohere with our own. This is nowhere more apparent than in his correspondence with William Sloane Kennedy, an American author and journalist (James 2000: 487). Kennedy read James’s lecture and wrote up a brief review in the December issue of Conservator, a venue dedicated to the work of Walt Whitman (Kennedy 1898: 150–51). In response to Kennedy’s letter, James explains his reasoning behind the first argument of the Ingersoll lecture: “I use the transmission-theory to bar the dogmatism of the cerebralists . . . . I am only against cerebralism calling it impossible” (James 2000: 487). James closes his letter by saying that “I object to any one way of treating the world . . . . It is too mixed an affair to submit to any one formula” (Ibid). In order to justify the multivalent relationship between the brain and the mind, James presents the audience with multiple analogies whereby function is understood as the transmission, or movement across a threshold from one location to another. James offers an intriguing analogy utilizing a line from the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “Adonais.”10 The example being that of light refracting in a prism whereby “[t]he energy of light, no matter how produced, is by the glass sifted and limited in color, and by the lens or prism determined to a certain path and shape” (James 1982 [1898]: 86). For brevity’s sake, however, the point is illustrated more simply when we consider the radio and draw a simply analogy between the brain and the machine. If we presume consciousness to be that which is broadcast by a radio, then we can see that the source of consciousness is the radio wave, not the radio itself: the radio only transmits the signal, it does not produce it. Thus, if and when the radio breaks it does not destroy the radio wave itself, only its current manifestation. The analogous point being raised is to see that it is possible that under a different set of presuppositions consciousness is capable of existing without a material body. On this view, function is empirically verifiable and is analogically compatible with the possibility of immortal existence. James explains that if the transmission theory is logically compatible, then there is no reason that the materialist opinion is the only “rational” interpretation of the mind-body relation. He writes that if we take seriously the problem of mind-body relations, we are not restricted to a one-sided interpretation only.

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The supposed impossibility of [consciousness] continuing comes from too superficial a look at the admitted fact of functional dependence. The moment we inquire more closely into the notion of functional dependence, and ask ourselves, for example, how many kinds of functional dependence there may be, we immediately perceive that there is one kind at least that does not exclude a life hereafter at all. The fatal conclusion of the physiologist flows from his assuming offhand another kind of functional dependence, and treating it as the only imaginable kind. (James 1982 [1898]: 86)

According to James’s argument, the physiological psychologist is not capable of objective evidence and certitude; nor, for that matter, is the believer. James’s radical empiricism emphasizes that, empirically speaking, we have no evidence in either direction. Here he is alluding to the idea that beneath the search for objectivity and certitude, we all too often encounter the problematic epistemic juncture whereby metaphysical speculation dogmatically transforms itself into authoritative knowledge.11 What he is doing is pointing to the limits and bias of rationality. As argued in “The Will to Believe” and “The Sentiment of Rationality,” what is deemed rational is perspectivally biased insofar as elements of rationality are often times rooted in the passional dimension. In the Ingersoll lecture, this comes to the foreground of the text when James discusses the problem of “concomitant variation.” According to his argument, neither the production nor the transmission theory is more credible or conceivable than the other. While the production theory may appear to be more popular, it raises the question as to whether or not it is more rational and scientific to assume that the relationship between the mind and the brain is predicated upon production. The immediate reply is, that, if we are talking of science positively understood, function can mean nothing more than bare concomitant variation. When the brain-activities change in one way, consciousness changes in another; when the currents pour through the occipital lobes, consciousness sees things; when through the lower frontal region, consciousness says things to itself; when they stop, she goes to sleep, etc. In strict science, we can only write down the bare fact of concomitance. (James 1982 [1898]: 88)

Empirically speaking, we can neither confirm nor deny the superiority of one theory over the other when we consider the facts as they are. “[F]or polemic purposes,” James declares, “the two theories are thus exactly on par” (James 1982 [1898]: 89). He goes on to qualify this position by maintaining that at its most basic level “all talk about either production or transmission, as the mode of taking place, is pure superadded hypothesis, and metaphysical hypothesis at that, for we can frame no more notion of the details on the one alternative than on the other” (James 1982 [1898]: 88). The parallel between this passage



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and his radical empiricist description of the limits of rationality is quite striking: “[a]fter all that reason can do has been done, there still remains the opacity of finite facts as merely given, with most of their peculiarities mutually unmediated and unexplained” (James 1979 [1897]: 6). CONCLUDING REMARKS I have tried to show that there is a deep and abiding connection between James’s early radical empiricism and the orientation and argumentation of the Ingersoll lecture. The primary benefit of adopting a radical empiricist reading of the Ingersoll lecture is that it opens up new dimensions of the text that have been largely overlooked. First, we can see that on this view the first objection of James’s Ingersoll lecture is more than just a platform to expound upon the doctrine of the transmission theory which is the most common scholarly interest in, and objection to, his lecture. Similarly, my reading goes beyond the immediate concerns of his personal over-beliefs regarding life after death.12 In contrast, I have fleshed out an overlooked moral dimension of the text that demonstrates that James’s defense of the epistemic outsider is rooted in his ethic of tolerance and respect. In addition to uncovering a previously overlooked historical dimension of the Ingersoll lecture, this reading establishes a thematic continuity between his social and moral orientation in the first objection with his moral writings, like “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.” In both pieces, he expresses his concern for the repressed minority and the way that they are affected at the social level. We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy which we vainly look to others—the others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons’ conditions and ideals.13 (James 1983 [1899]: 132)

A second merit of this reading is that it serves as a historical and thematic bridge for connecting James’s early and mature radical empiricism. Not only does it expand our understanding of James’s early period by providing further evidence about the social-sensitivity of his “definite philosophical attitude,” but it also depicts the Ingersoll lecture as his first public engagement that employs a radical empiricist methodology. Further detailed study of the Ingersoll lecture as an experiment in radical empiricism will enhance

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our understanding of James’s over-arching philosophy of radical empiricism by filling in gaps between his initial announcement in The Will to Believe and when he began composing the essays that were posthumously published as Essays in Radical Empiricism.

NOTES 1. Broadly construed, the lecture, “Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine,” serves two purposes: first, it stands as a democratic defense of the rational legitimacy of religious belief with regards to the logical possibility of human immortality, and second, it rejects an aristocratic view of immortal existence in favor of a democratic demographic. 2. Several scholars, notably Myers (1986: 383) and Cooper (2002: 158), have speculated that central features of the transmissive theory may be associated with James’s later metaphysical developments of radical empiricism, that is, as an entry to “pure experience.” 3. On occasion, scholars offer more than the standard two-page summary of the lecture and provide one or two central insights about the text, its ideas, and how it fits into James’s biography and/or his metaphysical philosophy. The two classic examples are Julius Seeyle Bixler’s Religion in the Philosophy of William James and Ralph Barton Perry’s The Thought and Character of William James. For example, Bixler notes that “[i]t would surely be surprising if James with all his human sympathy and his willingness to allow hope a part in the formation of belief should not himself have cherished any overbeliefs on a question of such recurrent as that of life after death” (Bixler 1926: 145). He goes on to suggest that James’s personal statements are misleading, for example in Human Immortality he says that his thoughts on immortality have “never been of the keenest order.” A careful reading, Bilxer argues, of James’s writings and correspondence reveals a personal attitude in favor of human immortality. In the opposite direction, Perry pieces together a compelling narrative emphasizing that the metaphysical nature of the transmission theory was long gestating in James and that it “was clearly an anticipation of the hypothesis developed in his later metaphysics and philosophy of religion, in which the mystical and similar experiences were interpreted as an overflow of superhuman mentality through a lowering of the normal threshold” (Perry 1935: II. 133). Almost all of the secondary literature which follows can be categorized as additional staking claims with respect to one of the two readings. For example, Henry Samuel Levinson implicitly sides with Perry and focuses on the metaphysical side of the text, pointing out that the transmission theory “signaled James’s break away from a theistic to a pantheistic idiom” (Levinson 1981: 287 n. 23). 4. For the sake of brevity and for the narrow purpose of this chapter, I will not spend much time addressing the second objection. For interested readers, a brief summary is as follows. In the second objection, James remarks that the traditional view of immortality—he calls it the “Aristocratic view of immortality”—is based upon the quantitative understanding that eternity is the destination of an “élite, a select and manageable number” (James 1982 [1889]: 96). When this quantitative



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view is combined with our own inner qualitative appeal, that is, a personal desire for immortality, and situated within a Darwinian worldview that is predicated upon a notion of deep time and therefore an uncanny number of historical beings, then the idea of immortality becomes less meaningful. James observes that if an individual is to believe in immortality, it “demands of us nowadays a scale of representation so stupendous that our imagination faints before it, and our personal feelings refuse to rise up and face the task” (ibid.: 97–98). In other words, the objection is that immortality, on such a scale, has lost its personal meaning and significance. James argues that this problem is rooted in a psychological structure of objectification and projection and that the desire for immortality can once again become an acute psychological possibility if we can see through this self-imposed limitation. From a qualitative perspective, he maintains that we are blinded to the inner significance of the life of the other and thus while we can imagine an afterlife for ourselves, we cannot imagine a possible afterlife scenario that would include such a gross number of others. In response to this, he argues for a democratic view of immortality which is rooted in equality that recognizes the inner significance of the “alien” other. On this account, when we see through our objectification of the other, we can recognize that the desire for immortality is just as pressing for the other and that a meaningful afterlife is possible even on such a vast scale. 5. Section six of The Limits of Evolution is entitled “Human Immortality: Its Positive Argument” and the basis of the chapter serves as a rebuttal to James’s 1897 Ingersoll Lecture. In the William James Papers at Houghton Library, there is a copy of Limits which belonged to James’s personal library (Houghton WJ 439.94). While there are marginal notes in James’s hand, section six is completely free of marginalia! Judging by James’s critical comments in the correspondence, it is clear that he read Howison’s criticism of his 1897 Ingersoll lecture. How James managed to not mark up the text is worth considering. 6. It should be noted that prior to James’s composition, delivery, and subsequent publication of the Ingersoll lecture, Howison was familiar with James’s early radical empiricism. One year prior to James’s famous lecture, “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” Howison hosted a series of formal discussions that examined James’s empiricism as presented in his Will to Believe essays (see Appendix V of The Will to Believe). On August 27, 1897, Howison inaugurated the series by giving the opening lecture which discussed “the general character of Professor James’s philosophy, with some account of its sources, and some suggestions towards the criticism of it. [The book at large, but particularly the Preface.]” (James 1979 [1897]: 441). Unfortunately, only the program of discussion was published and I have not found any indication that Howison preserved his lecture notes, thus we do not know the extent to which he praised or critiqued James, much less how well he understood the philosophy of radical empiricism. 7. While it is beyond the scope of this current chapter, I would suggest that a proper study of James’s conception of irrationality would need to span the entirety of his career approaching the topic through multiple lenses: physiology and psychology; moral and social writings; his study of religion and psychical research; and his philosophy of pragmatism and radical empiricism.

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8. See Algaier 2014 and 2015. 9. Recall how James initially defines his radical empiricism in the preface to The Will to Believe: “Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say “empiricism,” because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say “radical,” because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as a hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square” (James 1979 [1897]: 5). 10. “Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, / Stains the white radiance of eternity” (James 1982 [1898]: 86). For an analysis of the poem and its relation to James’s transmission theory see Barnard 1997: 163–170. 11. See section VII of “The Will to Believe” and his discussion of the objectivity and certitude. 12. For accounts that primarily address the transmission theory as the focal point of the 1897 Ingersoll lecture, see: Perry (1936), Levinson (1981), Fontinell (1986), Myers (1986), Westra (1986), Barnard (1997), Cooper (2002). For the secondary literature that focuses on James’s over-beliefs, see: Bixler (1926), Perry (1936), Gavin (1976), Barnard (1997). Both Pihlström (2002) and Ruetenik (2006) break free of this dichotomy by offering new readings that focus on James’s pragmatism and ethics. 13. In reference to R. L. Stevenson’s essay, “The Lantern Bearers,” James tries to portray this perspectival problem. He writes that “[t]he truth is that we are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideals to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and to the whole inner significance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is absolutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all” (James 1892 [1898]: 99, footnote 10).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Algaier, Ermine. 2014. “Epistemic Sensitivity and the Alogical: William James, Psychical Research, and the Radical Empiricist Attitude.” The Pluralist. 9, No 3: 95–109. Algaier, Ermine. 2015. “Reconstructing James’s Early Radical Empiricism: the 1896 Preface and the ‘Spirit of Inner Tolerance.’” William James Studies. 11: 46–63. Barnard, G. William. 1997. Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bixler, Julius Seelye. 1926. Religion in the Philosophy of William James. Boston: M. Jones. Cooper, Wesley. 2002. The Unity of William James’s Thought. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.



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Fontinell, Eugene. 2000. Self, God, and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation. New York: Fordham University Press. Gavin, William. 1976. “William James’ Attitude Toward Death.” Journal of Thought. 11, No 3: 199–204. Howison, George. 1901. The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism. London: The MacMillan Company. James, William. 1979 [1897]. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. The Works of William James. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Vol. 6 of The Works of William James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1982 [1898]. Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. In Essays in Religion and Morality, edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Vol. 9 of The Works of William James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 1983 [1899]. Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. The Works of William James. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Vol. 10 of The Works of William James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, William. 2000. The Correspondence of William James. Vol. 8 1895- June 1899. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. James, William. 2001. The Correspondence of William James. Vol. 9 July 1899– 1901. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Kennedy, William Sloane. 1898. “Professor William James and Human Immortality.” In Conservator. 9 (December): 150–51. Levinson, Henry S. 1981. The Religious Investigations of William James. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Myers, Gerald. 1986. William James: His Life and Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James, 2 Vol. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Pihlstrӧm, Sami. 2002. “William James on Death, Mortality, and Immortality.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. 38, No. 4: 605–628. Ruetenik, Tadd. 2006. “Does a ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ Exist? Immortality and Ethics in James’s Religious Pragmatism.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. 42, No. 3: 417–430. Westra, Laura. 1986. “The Religious Dimension of Individual Immortality in the Thinking of William James.” Faith and Philosophy, 3, No. 3: 285–297.

Part VI

MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Chapter 14

Understanding the Warrior Spirit William James on Nature, Virtue, and the Will to Empire G. Scott Davis Henry Cabot Lodge was an imperialist and he was happy to let everyone know it. He opens his history of the Spanish-American war by announcing that Three hundred and fifty years ago the empire of Charles V circled the globe, and was the greatest military and political power among civilized men. Of that mighty fabric, the year 1898 has witnessed the unlamented end . . . . Spain at last is confined practically to her peninsula, where her people can do as they please with each other, but whence they can trouble the world no more. (Lodge 1899: 1–2)

The agent of Spain’s “unlamented end,” of course, is the United States of America, which stands for “civil and religious freedom” over and against “bigotry and tyranny as hideous in their action as any which have ever cursed humanity” (ibid.). Already well established in the Senate, Lodge was numbered among “the nation’s foremost imperialists” and a vocal advocate “for civilization and the advancement of the race,” insistent that, “as one of the great nations of the world, the United States must not fall out of the line of march” (Tomkins 1970: 4–5). William James despised him. Writing to his son Henry, who was making the rounds in Washington in May of 1900, James swore, “Don’t go to Cabot Lodge, d—n him. I’ve just read his Philippine speech in extensor, and a more deliberately brutal piece of savagery I never read” (James 2001: 211). This typified James’s attitude toward American imperialism. James’s first public entry into the imperialism debate is a response to the Venezuelan crisis of 1895. Britain and Venezuela were engaged in a protracted border dispute when President Cleveland, himself an anti-imperialist, “determined to use the dispute to assert U.S. preeminence in the Western 221

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Hemisphere” (Herring 2008: 307). To that end, Cleveland and his Secretary of State Richard Olney issued a demand for a public commission to decide the dispute. Cleveland may well have been asserting the Monroe Doctrine as a break on ever more obstreperous European imperialism, but James fired off a letter to his congressman condemning the intervention as a prelude to war. The grotesque logic of the Cleveland-Olney communications is only matched by their gratuitously insulting form. Was there ever anything more infernally cynical than to make of an incident where we pretend to urge upon others the use of the humaner international methods the pretext and vehicle for a wanton and blustering provocation to war? (James 1987: 151)

This letter was read into the Congressional Record on December 28, 1895. In the Harvard Crimson of January 7, 1896, Lodge’s friend Theodore Roosevelt, Harvard class of 1880, heaped scorn on the “stock-jobbing timidity, the Baboo kind of statesmanship,” exemplified by his alma mater, suggesting that, “if Harvard men wish peace with honor they will heartily support the national executive and national legislature in the Venezuela matter.” (ibid.: 578) Two days later, James responded to the editors, describing Cleveland’s stance vis-à-vis Great Britain as “Back down or fight,” at which point, he continues, Congress and a large part of our newspapers and people thereupon go fightingdrunk; and Mr. Roosevelt writes you a letter to call any of us who may have presumed to beg our congressmen to slow-up if they can, “betrayers” of our native land. We are evidently guilty of lese-majeste in Mr. Roosevelt’s eyes; and though a mad president may any day commit the country without warning to an utterly new career and history, no citizen, no matter how he feels, must then speak, not even to the representative constitutionally appointed to check the President in time of need. (ibid.: 152–153)

Here, James links the three components that will characterize his subsequent thoughts on America and war: The human instinct for conflict and confrontation; the United States as the historical representative of freedom and justice; and the moral pre-eminence of democratic practice. WILLIAM JAMES AND THE COURSE OF EMPIRE Two years later the United States had a different President, William McKinley, but a similar inclination to empire. In April of 1898, President McKinley was authorized to intervene in Cuba. His ultimatum to Spain was rejected and both countries declared War on April 25. James continued to involve himself,



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both privately and publicly, in the battle against nascent imperialism. On June 15, 1898, he writes to Francois Pillon, that he is “going to a great popular meeting in Boston to-day where a lot of my friends are to protest against the new imperialism.” In May, Admiral Dewey had destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and on June 10, American troops had come ashore at Guantanamo. Both had been described as part of a necessary humanitarian intervention to maintain peace and good order. “Our disclaiming of all ideas of conquest,” writes James, “is sincere,” but, he goes on, it neglects “the psychological factor” that is built into our very natures. Once the excitement of action set loose, the taxes levied, the victories achieved, etc., the old human instincts will get into play with all their old strength, and the ambition and sense of mastery which our Nation has will set up new demands . . . . We had supposed ourselves (with all our crudity and barbarity in certain ways) a better nation morally than the rest, safe at home, and without the old savage ambitions, destined to exert great international influence by throwing in our “moral weight” etc. Dreams! Human Nature is everywhere the same; and at the least temptation all the old military passions rise, and sweep everything before them. (James 2000: 372–374)

The states of Europe have, since their inception, given free rein to human nature at its Machiavellian worst, making and breaking treaties, initiating wars, all in the service of self-interest. The United States was founded on the proposition that everyone should be free and equal in a democratic society, but Roosevelt, Lodge, and the other imperialists have drummed up such an enthusiasm for empire that what might have been a humanitarian intervention will almost certainly devolve into conquest and some form of annexation, not only of Cuba, but of the Philippines as well. In fact, the situation in the Philippines would engage James’s pen from late winter into the early summer. H. W. Brands dates the birth of the Philippine independence movement to 1887 and the publication of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, which the religious authorities in charge of Philippine censorship deplored as inspiring “among the submissive and loyal sons of Spain in these far-off isles a profound and abiding hatred of the Mother Country” (Brands 1992: 39–40). In fact, there had been periods of peasant revolt since the 1840s. In 1897, the peasant oriented Katipunan group split from the provisional government, associated with the upper classes, and led by Emilio Aguinaldo. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, Aguinaldo assumed that the Americans would share his anti-imperialist movement. He met with the American consul in Singapore, after which Aguinaldo wrote in his diary that, “Pratt said Dewey replied that the United States would at least recognize the independence of the Philippines under the protection of the U.S. Navy.” He went on to record that “The consul added that there was no necessity for entering into a formal

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written agreement because the word of the Commodore and the U.S. Consul were in fact equivalent to the most solemn pledge” (ibid.: 45). Thus began a tradition of duplicity on the part of the United States that remains appalling to read. In May, Dewey, responding to the Secretary of the Navy, insisted “the United States has not been bound in any way to assist the insurgents by any act or promise,” though he did add that “these people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self-government that the natives of Cuba” (ibid.: 46). By August, Aguinaldo and his troops had invested Manila. The Spanish garrison apparently decided that “surrendering to the Americans entailed less humiliation than capitulating to the colonials. The result was a curious affair in which Spanish soldiers fought to keep the Filipinos out of the city while they allowed the Americans to enter” (ibid.: 47). Aguinaldo and the rest of what was now the government of the Philippine Republic, moved to Malolos, to the northwest of Manila, where they drafted a constitution. Felipe Agoncillo was dispatched as Minister Plenipotentiary, first to Washington and then to Paris, where he was systematically ignored. Back in Washington, Agoncillo filed the following memorandum with the Department of State: 1. American precept and example have influenced my people to desire an independent government. 2. Suffering, as did the Americans, from alien rule, they rose and drove out foreign masters. 3. They established, and for seven months have maintained, a form of government resembling the American, in that it is based on the right of the people to rule. 4. According to doctrines laid down by distinguished American Secretaries of State, this government is entitled to recognition by the American Republic. 5. The expelled government of Spain, having, at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Peace, been in possession of but one port, and the remainder of the Philippines, except Manila, having been in the possession of the Philippine Republic, and all attributes of sovereignty having passed from Spain, that country could give no title to the United States for the Philippine Islands. 6. Spain having no title to give, her claim cannot be rendered better by the ratification of the Treaty of Peace. 7. From the foregoing, it would seem to follow that the present recognition of the first Republic of Asia by the greatest Republic of America would be consonant with right, justice, and precedent. (ibid.: 48) His argument, worthy of the trained lawyer he was, was, nonetheless, ignored by the American government. McKinley issued his “benevolent assimilation”



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proclamation on December 21, 1898. The Treaty of Paris was sent to the Senate on January 4, 1899 and ratified just over a month later (Brands 1992: 26–35). William James, however, continued to pay attention, even as he began to prepare his Gifford lectures. In January of 1899, James writes to a friend that, “I wish to Heaven you might be made to disbelieve in our mission of impregnating the Philippinos with American ideals and educating them for freedom. You may depend on it that it is sheer illusion, and can only mean rottenness and ruin to them” (James 2000: 480). Shortly after ratification of the treaty, he sent off a long letter to the editor of the Boston Transcript decrying American treatment of Aguinaldo in terms that might have been taken from Agoncillo’s memo. Aguinaldo’s movement was, and evidently deserved to be, an ideal popular movement, which as far as it had had time to exist was showing itself “fit” to survive and likely to become a healthy piece of national self-development . . . . And what did our Administration do? So far as the facts have leaked out, it issued instructions to the commanders on the ground simply to freeze Aguinaldo out, as a dangerous rival. (James 1987: 155)

American virtue has been subverted by the warrior spirit and our humanitarian posturing is nothing more than a cloak for our actual intentions: “We are here for your own good; therefore unconditionally surrender to our tender mercies, or we’ll blow you into kingdom come” (ibid.: 156). PRAGMATISM, ETHICS, AND ASSESSING WAR The time had come to prepare for the Gifford Lectures. James chose to do this closer to Edinburgh, spending most of 1900 and 1901 in Europe. Shortly before sailing, however, James sent off another hefty letter to the Transcript, this time in response to now Governor Roosevelt, whose Chicago speech the paper had reprinted on April 11. In what became the title essay of The Strenuous Life, Roosevelt declaimed that I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the task of governing the Philippines, and who openly avow that they do fear to undertake it, or that they shrink from it because of the expense and trouble; but I have even scanter patience with those who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity, and who cant about “liberty” and the “consent of the governed,” in order to excuse themselves for their unwillingness to play the part of men. (Roosevelt 1900: 15)

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To this James replied, Not a word of the cause—one foe is as good as another, for aught he tells us; not a word of the conditions of success. Just as revolution, per se, seems the ideal status to strata of the Parisian populace bred in a certain tradition, so war in the abstract and per se seems the ideal status to Governor Roosevelt; and peace in the abstract and per se is his notion of the ignominious human life . . . . But when it comes to turn itself concretely into Shafter’s policy of “Kill half the natives and govern the rest justly,” one feels that abstract aesthetic and organic emotionalities may need a policeman to keep them in check. (James 1987: 163)

James writes as if from the perspective of the just war tradition, but it is hard to know how he became acquainted with this literature. The great Carnegie collection of international law texts in translation did not begin to appear until 1911 and it is not clear how James might have read them. As late as 1923, James’s pragmatic successor Dewey would write of Grotius and his approach to the ethics of war that it, “fell largely into discredit and disuse outside the orthodox moralists of the Catholic church . . . . Even when retained, as in some texts, it was in perfunctory deference to tradition rather than as a living intellectual force” (Dewey 1923: 55–56). James may have encountered Grotius in a somewhat more positive light in Sydney Smith’s Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy, which we know James was reading in late 1863 (Richardson 2006: 59–60). Smith’s lectures, delivered in Edinburgh between 1804 and 1806, were reprinted by Harper & Brother in 1850, but Smith does not discuss the details of Grotius or just war thinking. Campbell’s 1814 translation was reprinted in 1901, with an introduction by Assistant Secretary of State David Hill, but I can find no record of James having consulted it. Nonetheless, James’s response to Roosevelt contains the central theses of the jus ad bellum. The last sentence asserts the need for some sort of constraint on the inclination to go to war. In context, it takes for granted that if war is to be undertaken it should be under the authority of the national government and it explicitly calls on that authority to provide just cause beyond the “emotionalities” elicited by our warrior instincts. Those emotions typically give way to our selfinterested acts, thus they must be restrained and directed to the appropriate end, another way of stating the demand for right intention. Right intention is also implied by the demand for the conditions of success. Perhaps, forced to undertake an independent inquiry, James the pragmatist is working his own way toward what a common sense notion of justice demands. Here, then, is James, five years into the debate over imperialism, beginning to meld his opposition to conquest into his more general approach to ethics. When, in 1896, he brought his early philosophical essays together as The Will to Believe, he dedicated the volume to Charles Sanders Peirce, “to



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whose philosophic comradeship in old times and to whose writings in more recent years I owe more incitement and help than I can express or repay” (James 1979). From Peirce, James learned to question philosophical dogma and ground his analysis in evidence of experience. Rather than seeking an insight that provides the foundation for a top-down theory of reality—the sort of philosophy that Peirce attributes to Descartes—the philosophical inquirer, like all other students of the world, begins with the world as he finds it. What else, after all, can he do? But given the limits and fallibilism of inquiry, he should be sensitive to the incongruities and conceptual puzzles that present themselves. A student of the history of science, Peirce is fond of citing Galileo, Gilbert, Huygens, and others to illustrate the tentative yet committed way the best scientists pursue their research. James, in “The Will to Believe,” attempts to articulate this pragmatic perspective (Peirce himself was rarely happy with James’s ways of putting things) when he writes that, “the most useful investigator, because the most sensitive observer, is always he whose eager interest in one side of the question is balanced by an equally keen nervousness lest he become deceived. Science has organized this nervousness into a regular technique, her socalled method of verification” (James 1979: 26–27). But when it comes to moral questions, James goes on, it is a different matter. “A moral question,” he writes, “is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist” (ibid.: 27). Because a moral situation typically presents the need to act in the moment, the agent must exercise his best judgment, with the evidence and beliefs available at the moment. This means, in the unfortunate vocabulary he chooses to use, giving rein to the passions. The “intellect/passion” dichotomy introduces the specter of relativism, obscuring the role that facts play in moral judgment. “Turn now,” he writes, from these wide questions of good to a certain class of questions of fact, questions of personal relations, states of mind between one man and another.” The sceptic, who chooses not to act before receiving a finding similar to those of chemistry, is taking a moral stance. “Who gains promotions, boon, appointments, but the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who discounts them, sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come, and takes risks for them in advance?” (ibid.: 28). This section of “The Will to Believe” needs to be read in light of James’s earlier essay, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” delivered at Yale in 1891. Here, James argues in detail against the “ethical sceptic,” insisting that the moral philosopher attempt “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 ethical point of view” (ibid.: 141). The “stable system” to which James refers, is not a systematic moral theory, be it that of Plato’s Republic, the

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natural law of modern Neo-Thomists, or the natural law of contemporary Neo-Darwinians, what James calls, reviewing Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics, “his vast dream of universal fatalism” (James 1987: 353). What James is driving is best thought of as an account of the types of relations that people can form with each other, in the context of sorts of practices and institutions that those same people can also form with others, the “promotions, boons, appointments,” and the like of the later essay. This will include, as does all inquiry, openness to criticism, revision, and even rejection of practices and attitudes that have previously been tolerated. Adopting a particular ideal at the outset, transforms the moral philosopher from “a judicial investigator” into “an advocate for some limited element of the case” (James 1979: 142). When he turns to “what we mean by the words ‘obligation,’ ‘good,’ and ‘ill,’” it turns out that “such words can have no application or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists . . . . The moment one sentient being, however, is made a part of the universe, there is a chance for goods and evils really to exist. Moral relations now have their status, in that being’s consciousness” (ibid.: 145–146). Only such beings have desires, pleasures, and pains that must be identified, acknowledged, and dealt with. There are, James insists, no abstract ideals, but only those that emerge out of our lives negotiated together. When it comes to solving our practical problems—the urge for empire, say—“ethical science is just like physical science, and instead of being deducible all at once from abstract principles, must simply bide its time, and be ready to revise its conclusions from day to day” (ibid: 157). Some later pragmatists, notably Richard Rorty, see James as following in the path of Mill, advocating a “romantic utilitarianism” (cf. Rorty 1999: 266ff.). I’m not so sure. But for the moment it will suffice to watch James wrestle with American imperialism. PRAGMATISM AGAINST EMPIRE: IN SEARCH OF AN ALTERNATIVE ASCETICISM So how does this emergent pragmatism play out in judgments about war? We saw above that James takes it for granted that just cause and reasonable hope for success are questions that must be addressed if a responsible judgment is to be made. By May of 1900, he is in Switzerland, working on his Gifford lectures. But he is still drawing attention to competing interpretations of the events in the Philippines. He has found, in the diary of a French naval officer, an account of the events of 1898 much closer to that given by Aguinaldo and Agoncillo. James sent an introductory letter, with his own partial translation, to the Springfield Daily Republican, which published it on June 4. Less than two weeks later, he sent to the same paper a translation of Ferdinand



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Blumentritt’s account of the occupation (James 1987: 169). Blumentritt was an Austrian scholar who had developed a close epistolary friendship with Jose Rizal, translating Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere into German and producing numerous writings on the Philippines beginning in the 1880s. Perhaps thanks to James, Blumentritt’s summary account of Philippine ethnography was translated and published in 1900. In March of 1901, James is still following events in the Philippines, remarking on Aguinaldo’s capture to Elizabeth Evans, who had startled James “by saying that Blumentritt has never been to the islands. I thought him an old sojourner” (James 2001: 452). On April 30, he writes Frances Morse to express his dismay over Harvard awarding McKinley an honorary degree. “The degree is now degraded,” he writes, “for McK. has no use for language except to lubricate and beautify untruth? Think of his honoring Funston for as base a forgery as was ever committed” (ibid.: 473). General Frederick Funston had learned the whereabouts of Aguinaldo—“with the help of the ‘water cure,’ no doubt” (Miller 1982: 166)—and sent a troop of Filipinos disguised as insurgents, along with American regulars, to infiltrate the camp. Once received, they opened fire “while Funston’s group rushed the village . . . . The defenders fled in a panic, leaving behind their leader” (ibid.: 168). Funston received the Congressional Medal of Honor, sparking a debate in the press about tactics “unbecoming a civilized military power or a United States soldier and a violation of the accepted laws of war” (ibid.: 169). Continuing hostilities provoked extreme and sometimes undisciplined responses by American troops. In December of 1901, General Franklin Bell issued orders that seemed, on their face, to violate the law of war encapsulated in Francis Lieber’s General Orders No. 100, the law constraining the prosecution of war by United States Armies. In particular, articles 15 and 16: Art. 15. Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government . . . and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God. Art. 16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty—that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding

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except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.

Bell made it clear that subsequent treatment of the Filipinos would no longer be constrained by even these comparatively lax standards. Thus, in retaliation for American losses, “by lot select a P.O.W.—preferably from the village in which the assassination took place—and execute him” (Miller 1982: 207). In Batangas, the population “was herded into concentration camps, which were bordered by what Bell called ‘deadlines.’ Everything outside of the camps was systematically destroyed—human’s crops, food stores, domestic animals, houses, and boats” (ibid.: 208). When the press got word, yet another outcry erupted. A Senate inquiry was called for, chaired by Henry Cabot Lodge. Sessions were held through June of 1902 and a report was released in August. James followed the proceedings as well as he could, even after he left for the United Kingdom in April. On February 1, he wrote that “the democrats in the Senate are putting up a good debate” (James 2002: 6). On May 4, he wrote Charles Eliot Norton from Lamb House, Rye, to note that “I suppose you are rejoicing as much as I in the public interest finally aroused in the Philippine conquest” (ibid.: 40). Less than two weeks later James was in Edinburgh, preparing to deliver his second set of Giffords. Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature was published on June 9, the day before James embarked on his voyage home. While on board, he wrote to Ernst Mach, praising his Principien der Warmelehre, and to Sarah Whitman, noting that “the only unpardonable crime is that of wanting to reform one another, after the fashion of the U.S. in the Philippines” (ibid.: 59–60). How, if at all, did James’s preoccupation with the American conquest of the Philippines affect his writing of Varieties? In Rome for Christmas of 1900, fretting about his “miserable first course of Gifford lectures,” James admitted to Sarah Whitman that “my consolation for all things is the way in which the Filipinos and Boers keep up the fighting” (James 2001: 397). But he doesn’t suggest any conceptual connection. Still, there are a few oblique points of intersection. Early on in Varieties, he draws a distinction between “morality pure and simple,” which “accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning,” and religion, for which “dull submission is left far behind and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place” (James 1985: 41). “For morality,” James continues,



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life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism . . . . Even a sick man, unable to be militant outwardly, can carry on the moral warfare. He can willfully turn his attention away from his own future, whether in this world or the next. He can train himself to indifference to his present drawback and immerse himself in whatever objective interests still remain accessible. He can follow public news, and sympathize with other people’s affairs. (ibid.: 45)

For the religious individual, however, “the time for tension in our soul is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away.” This “happy relaxation,” and all that comes with it, is the fundamental characteristic of religious experience. “If religion is to mean anything definite for us,” he concludes, “it seems to me that we ought to take it as meaning this added dimension of emotion, this enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce” (ibid.: 46). At this stage in his thinking, morality cultivates the self-sacrificial virtues necessary for pursuing the demands of the reigning law. “Perfect conduct,” James writes, “is a relation between three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recipients of the action. In order that conduct should be abstractly perfect, all three terms, intention, execution, and reception, should be suited to one another” (James 1985: 283). In a world of “human crocodiles,” the appropriate virtues will be those familiar ones of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. “In the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. The powers of darkness have systematically taken advantage of them . . . . The whole history of constitutional government is a commentary on the excellence of resisting evil” (ibid.: 284). Read in the light of James’s reflection on his own government, this passage carries an irony that might otherwise be missed. The implied moral theory is both complex and a function of James’s philosophical and psychological naturalism. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” appeared while James was at work on Psychology: Briefer Course, whose naturalism is enthusiastic. “Habit,” James writes, “has a physical basis” (James 1984: 125). Humans in general have instincts that naturally dispose them to act in certain circumstances. Regular repetition creates neural pathways that facilitate action. Up to a point, these pathways are malleable and admit of different habits in both groups and individuals. “‘Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature,’ the Duke of Wellington is said to have exclaimed; and the degree to which this is true no one probably can

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appreciate as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely over again” (ibid.: 132). “Given the ability to mold the character, particularly of children and young adults,” habit serves as “the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bonds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor” (ibid.: 132–133). Here is the background to the “dull submission” that characterizes morality in Varieties. In short, evolution has shaped human beings to respond from birth with various instincts and impulses grounded in their physical nature. The disposition to acquire habits makes it possible for groups to mold each other to act as a cohesive unit in the pursuit of common goals. But at the same time, returning now to Varieties, “ancestral evolution has made us all potential warriors” (James 1985: 291). In the struggle for survival, those who could combine emerging intellectual with physical skills stood a better chance of survival, and thus a better chance of propagating offspring similar to themselves. The consequences of natural selection, combined with social education into the virtues necessary for protecting the society, fostered the warrior spirit until very recently. “Does not,” asks James, “the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the ‘spirit’ of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not,” he continues, “the exclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which most children are brought up today—so different from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical circles—in danger, in spite of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fibre?” (ibid.). When forced, whether by choice or necessity, to exert themselves in the pursuit of conquest, human beings achieve surprising levels of endurance. “Death turns into a commonplace matter, and its usual power to check our action vanishes. With the annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges of new energy are set free, and life seems cast upon a higher plane of power . . . . The beauty of war in this respect is that it is so congruous with ordinary human nature” (ibid.). Heroism has a dark side, however, in “the biologically useful instinct of welcoming leadership, and glorifying the chief of the tribe . . . . In the endless wars of those times, leaders were absolutely needed for the tribe’s survival. If there were any tribes who owned no leaders, they can have left no issue to narrate their doom” (ibid.: 295). We may no longer “grovel” before the tribal chief. We may even, as in the anti-imperialist press of James’s time, ridicule overreaching generals (see Miller 1982: 235). But it remains important to maintain a strong and prepared army. To this end, as a “clear-headed Austrian officer” maintains, “if the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. The measure of goodness in him is his possible use in war” (James 1985: 292). Because of the



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warrior spirit through which we evolved, it is possible, particularly with the younger recruit, to discipline him so that, “the most insignificant individual, when thrown into an army in the field, is weaned from whatever excess of tenderness towards his precious person he may bring with him, and may easily develop into a monster of insensibility” (ibid.: 291). This had been illustrated in horrifying detail in the reports of American atrocities in the Philippines. Thus, “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” (ibid.: 292). Because we are malleable, particularly in adolescence, it is possible for our military institutions to mold us into killing machines, capable of unimaginable atrocities, such as those carried out in the Philippines. The laws of war are well and good, but they are no match for those basic instincts, particularly as honed by military training. “What we now need to discover in the social realm,” writes James, “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” (ibid.). The only equivalent James sees is voluntary poverty. Lectures 14 and 15, on the value of saintliness, shift from describing the “fruits of genuine religion and characteristics of men who are devout,” to “appreciation; we have to ask whether the fruits in question help us to judge the absolute value of what religion adds to human life” (ibid.: 262). In the context, James reminds his readers that the “word ‘religion,’ as ordinarily used, is equivocal.” It is equivocal because A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to ‘organize’ themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word ‘religion’ nowadays, we think inevitably of some ‘church’ or other; and to some persons the word ‘church’ suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale undiscriminating way they glory in saying they are ‘down’ on religion altogether. (James 1985: 268–269)

Without passing on the integrity of any particular religious body, James reasserts his commitment to studying the individual expressions of religious experience. “The baseness so commonly charged to religion’s account are thus,” he writes, “almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion’s wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion” (Ibid.: 271). The various saintly virtues—devoutness, purity, tenderness, et cetera—are all subject to extravagance and excess. “Perfect conduct,” he continues,

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Is a relation between three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recipients of the action? In order that conduct should be abstractly perfect, all three terms, intention, execution, and reception, should be suited to one another. The best intention will fail if it either work by false means or address itself to the wrong recipient. Thus no critic or estimator of the value of conduct can confine himself to the actor’s animus alone, apart from the other elements of the performance. (Ibid.: 285)

All virtues must be exercised in a social arena, where intention may define the species of the act, but circumstances may nonetheless render it defective. It is, I believe, no accident that these remarks on the complex structure of moral acts, and of our moral lives generally, serves as a preface to James’s discussion of asceticism. Ascetics present some of the most extravagant behavior, disposing most normal people “to treat the general tendency to asceticism as pathological” (James 1985: 289). But this, James believes, would be too hasty. Asceticism, even in its excesses, displays “the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which is neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal to the soul’s heroic resources, and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering” (ibid.). Because the appeal of worldliness is real, and debilitating, the ascetic embraces poverty in a heroic move to overcome the circumstances that conspire to render his moral performances defective. This is a heroism that may stand as an alternative to the inclination to war “that is so congruous with our ordinary human nature” (ibid.: 291). Ascetics, particularly those who have, in their maturity, “shown a tendency to lay less stress on special bodily mortification,” (ibid.: 288) display an alternative heroism to that made possible by the “wholesale organization of irrationality and crime” (Ibid.: 292) that is modern war. Nietzsche’s “antipathy” to saints—here James quotes The Genealogy of Morals at length—may be self-indulgent, but it points to “the clash between the two ideals . . . . 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?” (ibid.: 297). James’s answer is clear. Francis, Luther, and the rest of the great saints manifest “their strength and stature . . . their passion, their goodness,” (ibid.: 299) without exercising the evolved impulses that have “made us all potential warriors” (ibid., 291). The ascetic, at work in the world, accepting voluntary poverty in the process of seeking the good of his neighbors, illustrates a form of life that can be “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” (ibid.: 292). After a decade of public involvement in the movement against imperialism, after following the horrors of American atrocities in the Philippines, James is convinced that modern war will invariably subvert both the virtues



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of the individual and the democratic values he loves. But his training in postDarwinian medicine and psychology make it equally clear that human beings have evolved to be aggressive, risk-taking, warriors. This dilemma haunts him even as he drafts his lectures for The Varieties of Religious Experience. We know this from his correspondence. Saintliness, reviled by Nietzsche and viewed as generally “pathological” in the “liberal Protestant circles” (James 1985: 288–289) which make up James’s audience, provides, when properly understood, a model of nonaggressive, politically oriented, heroism. Unlike many of his fellow citizens, James embraces it as a form of “‘the strenuous life,’ without the need of crushing weaker peoples” (ibid.: 292). Whether or not James can make this case to America remains to be seen. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brands, H. W. 1992. Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines. Oxford: Oxford University Press Herring, George. 2008. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. Oxford: Oxford University Press James, William. 1979. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press James. 1984. Psychology: The Briefer Course. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press James. 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press James. 1987. Essays, Comments, and Reviews. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press James. 2000. The Correspondence of William James, v. 8: 1895-June 1899, ed. Skrupskelis & Berkeley Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press James. 2001. The Correspondence of William James, v. 9: July 1899–1901, ed. Skrupskelis & Berkeley Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press James. 2002. The Correspondence of William James, v. 10:1902- March 1905, ed. Skrupskelis & Berkeley Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press Lodge, Henry Cabot. 1899. The War with Spain. New York: Harper & Brothers Malcolm, George A. 1921. “The Malolos Constitution,” Political Science Quarterly, 36/1, pp. 91–103 Miller, Stuart Creighton. 1982. “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903. New Haven: Yale University Press Roosevelt, Theodore. 1900. The Strenuous Life; Essays and Addresses. New York: Century Co. Tomkins, E. Berkeley. 1970. Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890–1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Chapter 15

William James and Thomas Aquinas on the Fruits of Love and Saintliness Eric J. Silverman

The positive transformative effects of religious conversion upon character have been discussed by many thinkers. Two paradigmatic, systematic, and detailed accounts of religiously transformed life are offered by William James and Thomas Aquinas. James’s account of the radical changes resulting from conversion found in saintliness and Aquinas’s Thomistic ideal person embodying caritas offer great insight into the deepest effects of religious devotion. However, while these accounts have considerable similarities concerning the effects of conversion upon sexual chastity, generosity, and the subordination of material goods to religious goods, notable differences remain in their observations concerning both the internal psychological and external lifestyle effects of conversion. One of the more foundational differences between the two thinkers’ accounts is the contrast between Aquinas’s theocentric emphasis upon the saintly character’s renewed disposition centered upon love of God and James’s anthropocentric focus upon the saintly character’s disposition towards the self and humanity. Furthermore, Aquinas introduces important otherworldly priorities in the way that love is to be carried out. Even love of one’s fellow human is based in the more primary love for God. Furthermore, Aquinas emphasizes the importance of heavenly immaterial goods over earthly goods, drawing attention away from some of the earthly pragmatic benefits of saintly actions toward other people emphasized in James’s account. Finally, I conclude by examining the difficulty Jamesian pragmatism has in judging the relative value of character changes within the two distinct views. It is easy for contemporary pragmatists focusing upon the earthly benefits of religion to discount any discussion of the “other-worldly” benefits of religious devotion. However, Jamesian judgments concerning the value of the changes brought about by saintliness ultimately reduce to the observation that the 237

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pragmatist values religious conversion inasmuch as it produces immediately practical earthly results that are already subjectively valued by the pragmatist. Unfortunately, this approach offers few resources for establishing what the pragmatist should rather than does value in character traits and practical actions flowing from those traits, whether these actions and traits are rooted in religious or secular inspirations. This problem reduces the usefulness of Jamesian evaluations in general when interacting with thinkers who are not already wed to Jamesian assumptions about value. I propose a principle of humility for both the pragmatist and traditional religious thinker, wherein both thinkers acknowledge the inherent limitations of their approaches. JAMES ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SAINTLINESS In his influential volume Varieties of Religious Experience, William James offers a pragmatic and anthropocentric account of the practical effects of religious devotion in a section entitled “Saintliness.” This discussion of saintliness naturally leads into further discourse concerning the Value of Saintliness. James begins his discussion of saintliness by identifying the inner foundations of the religiously devoted’s externally changed life. These inner foundations are constituted by four central religious feelings. First among these inner foundations is, “a feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power” (James 1920: 272). This first inner foundation is an expanded perspective of the world along with an accompanying awareness of a divine higher power. This awareness allows one to see beyond her narrower, small-minded, egoistic interests. Once the devoted person becomes aware that the self and the self’s interests are miniscule in the immense metaphysical reality of the world, a shift toward the larger perspective of the ideal power—of God in the Christian conception of the ideal—is possible. The second central religious feeling is, “a sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control” (James 1920: 273). The second inner foundation of the religious life consists of a sense of union, connection, or bondedness with God—The Ideal Power. This feeling flows naturally from the initial conviction of the reality of His existence. The individual’s willingness to surrender to the directions of this ideal and embrace its accompanying broader perspective prepares the way for dramatic life change. Among Christians this ideal power is perceived to be both personal and intimately interested in the individual, since God is viewed as a being of perfect love for all. A sense of connection with a loving



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God makes it easy to abandon self-centeredness in light of the ideal’s love. Yet, this experience also prepares the individual to embrace that God’s love is for all. The third religious feeling is, “an immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down” (James 1920: 273). This inner experience goes beyond the first two. Not only is the individual willing to submit to the greater ideal and embrace the broader perspective of divine reality, but the devoted person experiences both joy and freedom through union with the ideal. A sense of connection with God’s greater perspective does not merely enable self-surrender, but literally redefines the contours and interests of the self. As the devoted individual embraces a broader internal view of self through connection with God, systematic external life change becomes possible. The devoted need not be preoccupied with the previous narrow concerns of the self since she now accepts that the self’s genuine concerns are broadly redefined to identify with the concerns of the ideal. These concerns of the ideal, which are now accepted as the concerns of the self, include the concerns of all humanity. This entails a dramatic shift in the self’s priorities. The fourth and final religious feeling grounding saintliness is, “a shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections” (James 1920: 273). The natural consequence of the three previous internal changes is a new disposition towards both the ideal and people more broadly. The saintly person gains an awareness of a broader reality found in the divine ideal, a new metaphysical perspective is embraced, and a new identity is found in connection with the divine. The practical result of these three changes is a new outward disposition towards others. Love and harmony are sought with all persons. Experience of unity with the ideal reshapes the individual’s view of the world. Human connectedness and interdependence is now more apparent to the saintly individual. A new set of values has been embraced from the ideal’s perspective. Therefore, others-centeredness and living in harmony with all are now priorities. These priorities make sense in light of the saintly person’s newly converted view of the world. JAMES ON THE FRUITS OF SAINTLINESS James proceeds to document a series of lifestyle changes in the lives of specific saintly individuals. He catalogs these changes as depicted within a wide variety of religious writings. While the effects of conversion are not identical in every instance, he identifies four recurring character patterns flowing from the previously described four religious feelings. These new character patterns are asceticism, strength of soul, purity, and charity (James 1920: 272–3).

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Asceticism takes the form of an overarching higher order directive against prioritizing the dictates of bodily goods. The saintly person might not view bodily good as evil in itself. Bodily goods may even be positive. Yet, they are now viewed as inferior to religious, ethical, and immaterial goods. In extreme cases, the individual finds active pleasure in sacrificing bodily goods as an expression of loyalty to the higher immaterial ideal. This ascetic directive flows out of the new religious identification with the immaterial ideal and as such, is self-forgetful in general and is especially self-forgetful of the individual’s physical concerns. Asceticism takes many forms. It may take the form of nonviolence amidst direct personal provocation or danger (James 1920: 281–2). Asceticism is embodied in unconditional obedience within the religious life (James 1920: 310–3). It may express itself as the general rejection of physical ease or pleasure: temperance in diet, simplicity in choice of clothing, and in rejection of the sensual or sexual. Asceticism can also be found in voluntary poverty (James 1920: 315– 320). In such cases, abandoning an earthly preoccupation with material things allows the saintly person to pursue superior spiritual and immaterial goods. Asceticism frees the devoted person from the constraints of worldly desires and preoccupations. It frees her time, attention, and resources which are now available for redirection by the Ideal. She is now better able to pursue God and serve humanity since the self’s earthly desires have been laid aside. Asceticism also improves her ability to provide for the material needs of others since she is no longer preoccupied with obtaining such goods for herself. Motives for asceticism vary. The devoted may view asceticism as a fruit of love aimed at pleasing God, asceticism may be due to a low view of the unworthy self, it may be an attempt to appease the deity, or it may even be a form of penance for past moral trespasses (James 1920: 283–4). In some cases, asceticism can be taken to a pathological extreme where the generally useful trend of rejecting worldly comforts turns instead to intentional selfdestruction for its own sake. James notes this ascetic trend among the devoted runs counter to a broader recent hedonistic trend that unequivocally embraces worldly goods and physical comforts. He observes, “A strange moral transformation has within the past century swept over our Western world. We no longer think that we are called on to face physical pain with equanimity. It is not expected of a man that he should either endure it” (James 1920: 297). Unsurprisingly, this recent secular shift emphasizing bodily goods and the traditional religious emphasis on the comparative importance of immaterial goods have increased the gulf between religious and secular values. While some more recent versions of secular ethics such as utilitarianism judged pleasure to be the sole good to be



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promoted; in contrast, religious ethics continues to view pain as potentially redemptive and pleasure as potentially corrupting. A second new disposition that comes from religious conversion is a new internal strength of soul. Like the traditional virtue of fortitude, the devoted person experiences strong new motives that make their older egoistic motivations and fears comparatively trivial. This trait is sometimes accompanied by an overriding tranquility concerning hardship or tragedy. The devoted can possess contempt for danger while rejecting the desire for safety as a worthwhile reason for action. There is a new ability to endure hardship and maintain sustained efforts over time (James 1920: 285–6). A third new religious disposition is a preoccupation with personal purity (James 1920: 290–1). This purity is constituted by increased sensitivity to spiritual priorities as well as an interest in keeping the self untainted by sensual influences. This disposition is not merely a directive against physical appetites or an ascetic abandonment of the pursuit of those goods, but there is also an affirmative directive toward complete personal purification from worldly taintedness. To become more like the immaterial ideal, the saintly person must lay aside material interests. Purity includes the broad judgment that many worldly pleasures and preoccupations are unworthy of human attention compared to the greatness of unity with God. This judgment is even applied to many activities that are not directly forbidden by or overtly incompatible with religion. The activities one might reject in the pursuit of purity include: smoking, chewing tobacco, acknowledging the worldly status of another with a hat tip, wearing ornate clothing, using prestigious titles, and many other common customs and small pleasures (James 1920: 290–5). The final disposition James identifies with religious saintliness is charity. For James, the charitable disposition is constituted by an increased empathy for all humanity and broader creation. The charitable person possesses strong motivation to avoid quarrels, antipathy, hatred, and negative interactions that set people against one another. She seeks to embrace enemies as friends and lowly persons as equals and kin. While embracing others as equals levels the differences between self and other, the saintly person’s new view concerning the kinship of all humanity goes beyond a desire for mere equality. The saintly person also seeks unity with others whether they are distant relationally, distant geographically, lowly in status, and even those who were previously enemies. The saintly person views barriers like distance, previous animosity, outgroup status, and other mundane worldly concerns as irrelevant to the genuine status and value of others. The joyously devoted disposition desires kindness and tenderness within all relationships. This desire may even go beyond their human relationships and be extended to animals as well (James 1920: 278–81). The overall transformed life from these four new dispositions constitutes James’s account of the practical changes in the saintly person’s life.

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AQUINAS ON THE INFUSED THEOLOGICAL VIRTUE OF CARITAS For Aquinas, the most important and central virtue is caritas—usually translated as charity or love, it is roughly the Latin equivalent of the term agape in the biblical Greek. However, since the contemporary use of “charity” and “love” differ considerably from Aquinas’s concept, it is useful to employ a more distinctive term like “charitable love” to distinguish it from these contemporary concepts. The Summa Theologicae’s “Treatise on Love” includes twenty-three questions spanning nearly 150 articles1 on various aspects of the virtue of charitable love and its contrasting vices. Its discussion of love is among its longest and most detailed discussions of any of the virtues. In contrast, the fellow theological virtue of hope merits a mere six questions and the cardinal virtue of prudence warrants only ten questions. Only the Summa’s discussions of the virtues of justice and temperance rival the length and detail of its discussion of charitable love. In his explanation of the virtues, Aquinas explicitly claims that “charitable love is the mother and root of all virtues, since it is the form of all virtues” (Aquinas 1920: Q62. A4.).2 Charitable love is the central virtue, a deeply embedded character trait, which shapes and guides all other genuine virtues. Any genuine virtue simultaneously expresses charitable love and any trait which does not express love is not truly virtuous. For example, Aquinas views the courage of the thief as no virtue at all (Aquinas 1920: Q23. A7–8.). Even if such a person exhibits something similar to a virtue by controlling his fear in accordance with the actual danger involved in a situation, since the thief’s actions are inherently unloving, his “courage” is not virtuous at all. Aquinas expands on Aristotle’s discussion of friendship to describe love as a type of friendship towards all consisting of two types of overarching desires (Aquinas 1920: Q23. A1.). As a result, love expresses itself in many ways. The lover desires both the good of the beloved (Aquinas 1920: Q23. A1.) and a type of relationally appropriate unity with the beloved (Aquinas 1920: Q27. A2.). These psyche-shaping and action-guiding desires ground many other emotions, actions, and choices of the ideal loving person. The fully loving person has these desires toward all people, including God, angels, self, close relationships, and more distant people with the default minimum relationship being that of “neighbor” (Aquinas 1920: Q25.). In other words, every person has high moral value and should be treated as a nearby friend whether they are relationally close or distant. Finally, charitable love—like all the theological virtues—can only be infused supernaturally by God rather than developed through habit and personal effort as in the traditional Aristotelean model of virtue development (Aquinas 1920: Q63. A3.).



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Aquinas holds a complex view of human happiness including a foundational distinction between perfect eternal happiness in heaven consisting of the ongoing contemplation of the beatific vision of God and imperfect earthly happiness consisting of a multifaceted objective list (Aquinas 1920: Q1–5.). Since Aquinas holds to this multifaceted objective list view of human well-being including both more important spiritual goods as well as less important earthly goods, he believes charitable love’s desire for the good of others motivates a range of both spiritual and “practical” earthly behavior (Aquinas 1920: Q1–5.). For example, he refers to one of the direct results of love as ‘almsgiving,’ which is ultimately defined in terms of sharing both physical and spiritual goods. In the more contemporary pragmatist mindset, charity—even religious charity—is primarily associated with practical “earthly” generosity rather than intangible spiritual generosity. However, while Aquinas emphasizes that the religiously transformed life marked by love results in practical earthly generosity concerning material goods (Aquinas 1920: Q32.), love expressed through intangible spiritual generosity through religious acts such as prayer and moral instruction are depicted both as loving and ultimately more important expressions of almsgiving. Furthermore, Aquinas emphasizes the importance of moral instruction through fraternal correction as an overflow of love. Since wrongdoing harms both the wrongdoer and those targeted by his actions, correcting the wrongdoer through fraternal correction expresses love to both perpetrator and victim. However, the wrongdoer rather than the potential victim of his wrongdoing receives the more important immaterial good-moral truth—through fraternal correction. Even the name of “fraternal correction” emphasizes the essential kinship, brotherhood, and loving desire for closer unity with the wrongdoer sought by the corrector. The loving person approaches fraternal correction primarily as a brother seeking the genuine good for and closeness with a beloved, but self-destructive brother. For Aquinas, generosity in sharing physical goods, spiritual goods, and fraternal correction are the same general type of actions in that they are all ways to share genuine goods rooted in a loving desire for beneficence and/or closeness with the beloved (Aquinas 1920: Q33. A3.). Aquinas, like many medieval and ancient thinkers, places a high value on both virtue and otherworldly goods. This valuation is best understood as a difference in the philosophy of well-being or happiness from many recent thinkers. As a result, he views love for others as consisting in a wider and different range of behaviors than more modern thinkers like Immanuel Kant (Kant 1956: 4:399; Kant 1996: 6:401) or William James. Therefore, while Aquinas, like the pragmatist, emphasizes that the religiously transformed life marked by love results in generosity (Aquinas 1920: Q32) through almsgiving, he

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defines these terms more broadly allowing for both immaterial and material subtypes of almsgiving. For Aquinas, generosity in sharing both physical goods and spiritual goods through actions like fraternal correction (Aquinas 1920: Q33.) are literally the same kind of action in that they are both almsgiving. The two activities differ mainly in that fraternal correction shares a spiritual type of good rather than a physical good. When this principle is combined with the central importance Aquinas attributes to loving God and finding eternal happiness in the contemplation of God, it is easy to predict that many external actions emanating from the internal charitable life will emphasize the importance of immaterial goods rather than the more immediately practical earthly goods valued by pragmatism. Furthermore, since Aquinas embraces a personal account of God, and love is a disposition toward persons, love for God turns out to be the most important loving relationship. Even love of humanity is derivative from the love of God since love for humanity is based upon the love for the divine image recognized in humanity as image bearers of God (Aquinas 1920: Q25. A1.). Love of God is the central command of the Christian scriptures and is the foundation of all other commands (Matthew 22: 36–40, Luke 10: 25–28, Mark 12: 28–34). Accordingly, both charitable love and the entire Summa Theologicae have a theocentric focus. Aquinas even begins the Summa with a forty-three-topic examination of the nature of God, including hundreds of sub-questions. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the importance of love in human relationships is subordinated to the importance of love for God. This emphasis is well in line with the New Testament tradition claiming that the most important commandments are first to love God with the whole self and second to love thy neighbor as thyself. Along with his account of the central virtue of love, Aquinas discusses the corresponding vices: hatred, sloth, and envy. Hatred is the vice most directly opposed to love. Hatred is constituted by a desire for harm rather than good for persons and by shunning relationally appropriate union with them (Aquinas 1920: Q34. A1–6.). As with charitable love, the goods relevant to hatred will include both immaterial moral and spiritual goods as well as practical physical goods. Interestingly, hatred turns out not to be the foundation of moral viciousness, but rather the pinnacle of moral degradation developed from other more foundational vicious roots. The most directly unloving vicious roots are envy and sloth since these vices involve sorrow over persons attaining their good. This sorrow naturally leads to desiring the absence or opposite of these goods in people’s lives for their own sakes, which is the essence of hatred. Aquinas’s depiction of envy has important distinct nuances that differ from the contemporary conception of envy defined as “the feeling of wanting to



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have what someone else has” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: Entry on Envy). Instead, he quotes Damascene’s account claiming “envy is sorrow in the good of another” (Aquinas 1920: Q36. A1.). Therefore, envy is not constituted by an affirmative desire of wanting to possess someone else’s goods, but instead it is a reaction against another person’s attainment of a good for its own sake. Undoubtedly, there are zero-sum situations where the external expressions of these differing dispositions look similar. If there is only one piece of cake and there are two of us, then if I want an entire piece of cake, fulfilling my desire for the cake requires that you get none of it, and I may become upset if you get the cake instead of me. Yet, while such a desire might embody selfishness, greed, or gluttony, it is not truly an example of envy as traditionally construed. Envy would consist in a resentful internal reaction upon another person’s attainment of the cake full stop, whether or not depriving the other person of cake would have benefited the self. Envy is a desire to deprive others of a good for no further reason. One of the best recent characterizations of the vice of envy is found in the depiction of Antonio Salieri’s attitude towards Mozart in the 1984 movie Amadeus. In this characterization of Salieri, he resents Mozart’s incredible musical giftedness, and this envy ultimately results in the hateful desires that Mozart did not have these gifts or even life itself. Of course, Salieri’s musical giftedness would not be improved in any way if Mozart had lost his giftedness or if he died prematurely, but that was not the point of Salieri’s envy. He wished Mozart this ill primarily for its own sake. Any vocational benefits resulting from Mozart’s untimely demise were a comparatively small concern. Instead, Salieri was primarily resentful that Mozart’s great musical gifts had been bestowed upon such a childish individual who had not earned such gifts (Forman Milos 1984). The other vice directly opposed to love is sloth. Unlike contemporary conceptions of sloth as “the quality or state of being lazy” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: Entry on Sloth), Aquinas’s account identifies a deeper root. He depicts sloth as “sorrow in [one’s own] spiritual good” (Aquinas 1920: Q35. A1.). Just as envy is sorrow resulting from another’s good, sloth is sorrow resulting from one’s own good. Sloth is sometimes seen in individuals who want to avoid the shallow earthly discomforts caused by the pursuit of greater spiritual and moral goods. This vice can be embodied in the person who values physical comfort more than spiritual truth and is therefore unmotivated to embrace the devoted religious life as it can come into conflict with earthly comforts. Such a person views the religious life as too much trouble to pursue and would mourn the earthly pleasures that might be sacrificed for it. Therefore, sloth results in a practical apathy towards the most important aspects of

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one’s own well-being. While the contemporary sense of sloth has become associated with general laziness, the slothful person may actually be rather industrious in the pursuit of other goods. Essentially, sloth is a failure of love towards the self, since such a person does not love the self adequately enough to experience the proximate temporary discomfort needed to obtain ultimate happiness longer-term. Through the sorrow sloth and envy possess concerning persons attaining their own good, they provide the foundation for hatred’s direct rejection of loving desires. UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JAMES AND AQUINAS While William James and Thomas Aquinas have projects with important similarities in that they focus upon the changes brought about by religious devotion, there are also foundational differences in the nature of their projects. Most importantly, James’s project is a descriptive empirical endeavor focused on identifying and explicating recurring patterns among the religiously devoted. In contrast, Aquinas’s project is more abstract, offering a theoretical pattern of the paradigmatic effects of conversion in the lives of the religiously devoted. Secondly, while most of James’s examples are from Christian literature, his project is self-consciously pluralistic while Aquinas’s project is exclusively focused upon the expected patterns caused by genuine Christian conversion. Finally, while both thinkers discuss virtuous internal character qualities as well as external changed behaviors, there is a palpable difference in their emphases. James puts a stronger emphasis upon the outward external life changes brought about by saintliness while Aquinas focuses upon the changes in internal virtuous dispositions that result in changed external behaviors. Broader philosophical differences develop from these foundational differences. James’s more empirical approach requires an anthropocentrism that focuses on observable human behavioral changes since neither God nor internal character changes are directly observable. Meanwhile, Aquinas’s more abstract approach is naturally more compatible with his theocentric preoccupations. Similarly, each approach lends itself to a differing view of human well-being. James’s pragmatic interest in observable changes in well-being directs his interest towards earthly, physically observable improvements in human conditions. In contrast, Aquinas’s more abstract approach is naturally compatible with a broader view of well-being emphasizing the importance of immaterial and even heavenly goods. The value of virtue and the eternal heavenly existence weighs heavily in Aquinas’s account. In turn the implications of these views lead to yet more differences, such as James’s description



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of extreme expressions of asceticism as pathological. In contrast, Aquinas’s view is open in principle to the possibility that undermining one’s physical well-being might be justified if it is necessary to obtain more important immaterial spiritual gains. For example, Aquinas prioritizes love of neighbor above love of one’s own body, but not above one’s own self (Aquinas 1920: Q26.). Thus, his views allow earthly bodily sacrifice to be both practically and morally rational. Despite such differences, many important similarities remain between James’s and Aquinas’s accounts. Since James is an empirical psychologist, but not a strict behaviorist, he identifies several important patterns in religious feelings that mirror Aquinas’s views. The first common type of religious feeling described by James—of the awareness of a greater ideal power and firm conviction in its reality—has important similarities to Aquinas’s account of the virtue of faith, which he describes as the logically prior root of both hope and love (Aquinas 1920: Q62. A4.). In both cases, confidence in the existence, goodness, and personal importance of this ultimate being is a necessary condition for life change. James’s second and third religious feelings concerning self-surrender and new-found freedom in devotion to the ideal power are strikingly similar to Aquinas’s view that love of God is the central disposition of love that grounds love of humanity as divine image bearers. Finally, in both accounts, a loving connection with the ultimate being is the central motivation undergirding practical life change. In James, this loving feeling is the final result building upon the previous three religious feelings, while for Aquinas, a loving disposition builds upon the logically prior theological virtues of faith and hope (Aquinas 1920: Q62. A4.). James’s account of the saintly life embodied in the four changes of asceticism, strength of soul, purity, and charity (James 1920: 273–273) also has important similarities to Aquinas’s views concerning religious life change. For example, the practical other’s centeredness of Jamesian charity and Thomistic almsgiving towards earthly needs are quite similar in that they both seek to meet important physical needs. Furthermore, Aquinas’s account of the cardinal virtues of fortitude and temperance has much in common with James’s account of strength of soul and purity. Both sets of traits require a life that is lived with ongoing commitment focused upon God rather than earthly goods and both result in sweeping ongoing life change. Finally, while there is no specific section of Aquinas dedicated to asceticism as a virtue, Aquinas’s virtuous ideal possesses an otherworldly focus rooted in love of an immaterial God. This central feature of the devoted Christian life entails an abandonment of physical preoccupations such as those found in gluttony, lust, greed, and similar earthly centered lifestyles. Asceticism is only indirectly valuable on Aquinas’s account. Accordingly, its role is less foundational.

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Despite the many character similarities found in James’s and Aquinas’s ideals, there is a vital difference between their views rooted in the ultimate nature of happiness. Since James’s pragmatism only views earthly states of affairs as potential contributors to happiness, this view of well-being entails that James only values character changes resulting in an increase in specific earthly states. While these may be earthly feelings or the fulfillment of practical earthly needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and self-control resulting in the long-term improvement of one’s earthly state, etc. James is concerned only about the earthly results of character change. Yet, this strict focus upon earthly happiness begs the question against Aquinas and religion more generally: if our earthly condition is only one transitional and temporary mode of existence that leads to a more important eternal mode of existence as traditional religion has long taught, then surely religion’s effect on the eternal mode of existence has great importance. Accordingly, Aquinas makes a foundational distinction between the imperfect happiness that is possible on earth and the perfect eternal happiness that the blessed can expect to experience in heaven. If pursuit of the two types of good conflict, Aquinas resolves the conflict in the favor of eternal rather than earthly goods. Therefore, whatever earthly and therapeutic benefits religion may have, the importance of such changes is dwarfed by the eternal weightiness of heavenly goods. Furthermore, James’s pragmatism has no non-question-begging resources for addressing this problem. While it is certainly true that only earthly consequences of religion are measurable and that therefore we can have a higher level of confidence concerning these effects of religion, there is no way to confirm that these are the only or most important effects of religion. Instead, pragmatism leaves us at an impasse. The pragmatist has centered her philosophical approach upon the measurable and knowable realm of earthly human experience at the cost of abandoning all consideration of more distant heavenly effects of religion. Such considerations are ruled out a priori, essentially as part of the unknowable noumenal real of life in itself. Yet, it is difficult to imagine a superior philosophical alternative. The pragmatist’s starting point is inimical to the sorts of questions the traditional religionist wishes to raise. The revelatory sources the Thomist and other traditionally religious thinkers wish to employ are viewed as untrustworthy to the pragmatist. How then can we proceed? We don’t want to simply presuppose the falseness of religion by judging them by question-begging hostile a priori criteria. Yet, neither should we dogmatically presuppose the truthfulness of any religion. Perhaps, the safest way to proceed is through simple humility, acknowledging the limitations of each approach. Surely, the pragmatists’ observations of patterns in the lives of the religiously devoted are useful to all and all observers should accept them with a high level of confidence.



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When the pragmatist humbly limits himself to this role, as James typically does, the importance of his contribution is indisputable. Yet, if James or the contemporary pragmatist shifts from this role as an observer and reporter of patterns in religion to the more authoritative role as an evaluator of the value of religion, she risks imposing nonreligious pragmatic criteria in evaluating religion; criteria that would be incomplete or false if some religion were true in the traditional nonpragmatic sense of the word. Similarly, it comes as no surprise when the Thomist or other religiously devoted person insists there are reasons for embracing religion, but such claims should be made humbly and respectfully rather than dogmatically and anti-intellectually. Just as the pragmatist should not simply stipulate a question-begging criterion for evaluating truth that eliminates the possibility that traditional religious claims might be taken seriously, the religious traditionalist should not simply assert religious or revelatory authority in a question-begging way. CONCLUSION William James and Thomas Aquinas both provide elaborate accounts of paradigmatic life change resulting from religious devotion. Their accounts overlap significantly in that they report dramatic changes in life style resulting in increased generosity, sexual restraint, temperance, and the general subordination of material goods to immaterial religious concerns. However, there are also notable differences in the methodologies, presuppositions, and the values employed within each account. The more empirical and anthropocentric approach of the pragmatist naturally ignores immaterial and otherworldly aspects of traditional religious claims. While there is no non-question-begging way to resolve these differences, both approaches are useful when employed humbly with the acknowledgment of the limitations imposed by each’s presuppositions and methodologies.3 NOTES 1. In the Summa theologiae, a ‘Question’ refers to a grouping of several topically related, more specific questions that are called ‘Articles.’ 2. While the Latin translations here and elsewhere are my own, I have consulted the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and found it to be helpful. 3. This paper benefited from a research fellowship at Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, which was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aquinas, Thomas. 1920. Summa Theologicae Second and Revised Edition. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. London: Burnes, Oats, and Washburne. James, William. 1920. Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longman’s, Green, and Co. Kant, Immanuel. 1956. The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by H. J. Paton. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc. Kant, Immanuel. 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals second edition. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ sloth. Accessed on 5/13/16. Milos, Forman. 1984. Amadeus. Berkeley, CA: The Saul Zaentz Company.

Chapter 16

William James as Virtue Ethicist The Heroic Virtue of Voluntary Poverty Lee H. Yearley

A strange idea, one might say, to approach William James as a virtue ethicist, even if one accepts that James is a polymath genius and the category of virtue ethics covers much. Yet we may find—or so I hope to persuade you—that virtue ethics not just fits James but its tools and approaches also both illuminate him and are illuminated by him. This approach, moreover, has other subsidiary benefits. Most notably, it shows the ways in which James is a part of, even a major contributor to, the tradition of virtue ethics in America (a lengthy, distinguished, and distinctive tradition) and helps us grasp more firmly why literary qualities often mark James’s presentations, as they do that of other virtue ethicists (Yearly 1996).1 Examples of what this approach can generate are myriad, but two are most important here. It enables us to see significant parts of The Varieties of Religious Experience not as treatments of religious experience, much less mysticism, but as treatments of virtue. Furthermore, and of special importance to us, it enables us to understand James’s singular contribution to a major contemporary debate: the possible applicability of traditional virtues and ideas about virtues, especially those with religious content, to the current situation. James does not, of course, often use the word virtue. The reasons for this are many, but a major one is that many uses of the idea of virtue in modern times had been criticized, even become objects of attack and ridicule by significant thinkers and for reasons that James would have found congenial.2 More perplexingly, he rarely refers to the knottier problems in the psychology of the self that the virtue tradition addresses in such detail. Many of the theoretical issues, however, that he deals with at length in the Principles of Psychology—ideas of dispositions and attention for instance—are not just staples of the virtue tradition, but its accounts also often parallel his—or at the very least can be productively related to them. The main reason for these 251

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lacunae probably is that the detailed and systematic accounts found in parts of the neo-Aristotelian tradition exemplify the kind of intellectual analysis that—especially in its theological forms—he usually had little use for and even scorned and mocked. Nonetheless, his treatment of saintliness in The Varieties of Religious Experience and most especially his treatments of the separable characteristics of saintliness can be understood, as we will see, in ways that resemble major concerns of particularly the neo-Aristotelian virtue tradition in its Christian form. A noteworthy example of this, if not one on which we will concentrate, is the virtue of hope, and a brief consideration of it is worthwhile. Hope is central to James as a telegraphic list of its relevance makes clear: It deeply informs James’s distinction between the sick-souled and the healthyminded; undergirds his analysis of the will to believe; frames his whole discussion of the significance of religiously based experience and action; and provides the basic substratum that makes intelligible his understanding of heroism’s characteristics and significance, particularly those aspects of it that manifest distinctive kinds of courage such as continuing self-sacrifice for others. Its centrality arises from a key feature of hope for him—and the ­resonances with Kant are evident—that is contained in the following complex, even paradoxical idea: The achievement of certain goals, whether personal or social, rests on the hope that the goals can be achieved, even will be achieved. More, however, than just that is necessary, as James usually acknowledges, but here especially turning to traditional Christian accounts is only of some help. These accounts are usually fundamentally informed by Aristotelian categories and St. Paul’s highlighting of the triad of faith, hope, and charity—as well as the numerous analyses it generated. The intellectual fireworks that cascade across the sky in, say, Aquinas’s analysis are most impressive, but unlike what occurs with other analyses, such as that of pride, the results for those who seek a deeper understanding of the phenomenon—especially in a modern context—are often unsatisfying. This is especially true if one probes the subject’s vexing central questions; questions such as the distinction between religious and ordinary hope, or the precise role of the deficiencies of presumption and despair, or the exact character of hope’s dispositional form, or the specific ways in which it interacts with and informs other virtues.3 Unlike his treatment of voluntary poverty as a heroic virtue, which can productively draw on traditional sources, his analysis of hope cannot and therefore remains incomplete. Further, the treatment of hope, unlike poverty, manifests fewer literary qualities and that can lead one to wonder if the characteristics of literary, perhaps even especially poetic, approaches better suit a profound treatment of hope than do the rigorous analytic prose that almost all theological and philosophic traditions employ. (Especially relevant examples are those “definitional poems” of Emily Dickinson that concern hope.)4



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Let us turn, therefore, to examine more closely how James’s work can be productively viewed through the lens virtue ethic’s procedures and questions provide—especially when religious virtues are a focus. This also enables us to see his contribution to the contemporary debate about the applicability of traditional virtues to a society formed by modern ideas and ideals, especially the peculiar modern society that is America. The agenda is, then, ambitious and the space brief. Moreover, James is a multifaceted even protean figure with many accomplishments and even more interests who comments on subjects relevant to this inquiry in many different genres and venues. To contain the subject, I will basically focus only on James’s treatment of saintly virtue and its value in The Varieties of Religious Experience, concentrating on a few especially rich examples. Throughout, moreover, I will pursue the conversation with James that he invites and makes necessary, if only because his treatment is often at once compelling and flawed. We best engage him then by adopting the spirit of James’s own approach to most religious accounts. We must give a textured reading of what he says and then evaluate it critically. In that spirit, I begin by explicating his often confusing, and at times confused, account of the worth of actualized religious virtues.

SAINTLY VIRTUE AND ITS VALUE: AN INTRODUCTION To study saintliness in James is to study actualized religious virtues, and it is a subject to which he devotes much attention. The three lectures on “Saintliness” and the two lectures on the “Value of Saintliness” make up slightly less than a quarter of the 527 pages of The Varieties of Religious Experience. More important than the mere size of the analysis is James’s contention that when we look at this subject The really important part of our task opens, for . . . we began all this empirical inquiry not merely to open a curious chapter in the natural history of human consciousness, but rather to attain a spiritual judgment as to the total value and positive meaning of all the religious trouble and happiness which we have seen.5 (James 1902: 259)

The quote is worth lingering over. James announces almost half way into his inquiry that “the really important part of our task” begins, the preceding having been, it seems, just “a curious chapter” and one devoted to the “natural history of human consciousness.” Now, however, we are to aim at a different level of judgment, “spiritual judgment” about what we have seen. This involves, as he later specifies, a “change [of] our attitude from that of

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description to that of appreciation; we have to ask whether the fruits in question [of religion] can help us to judge the absolute value of what religion adds to human life” (James 1902: 326). That in turn seems to mean, if we are to credit fully one of James’s more intriguing comments, that if he were to parody Kant he would “say that a ‘Critique of pure Saintliness’ must be our theme.” We can only speculate on all the implications of this statement, but James had recently tangled seriously with Kant’s project. This account may, then, be a tempered appropriation of Kant’s critical method. It aims to do with virtues something like what Kant did with so many other subjects, Kant having of course provided a highly abstract general treatment of “virtue” and an incisive but basically “acritical” treatment of specific virtues (James 1902: 326).6 What we surely do have is James’s aspiration to work as a comparativist in his hopes to treat the full panoply of human and religious excellences the world provides, a project barely present in Kant and of special importance to us today. His own knowledge of other traditions was severely limited, and most of James’s examples are drawn from relatively late parts of the Western Christian tradition. Further, he almost never treats examples that manifest radical divergences in fundamental ideas about the basic character of the self, the sacred, and the cosmos. Nonetheless, James surely does treat cases that differ in basic ways, cases in which the truly alien is present. We must, then, recognize, honor, and comment on those comparative impulses even while we acknowledge their limitations.7 Let us now turn directly to James’s analysis of saintliness, of actualized religious virtues. James presents his analysis as if a simply descriptive, separate section on saintliness will be followed by an evaluative, constructive section on its value. James, however, often does not do exactly what he says he will do. More important in this case, James’s understanding of the interaction of interpretation and evaluation underlies his whole enterprise here, and it subverts any neat binary division he might make. The two projects are not neatly divided, then, and that situation produces a productive if also untidy examination. THE FORM AND GENERAL APPROACH OF JAMES’S ANALYSIS OF SAINTLY VIRTUE James’s more abstract treatment of saintliness need not detain us, except for those few points that are especially relevant to our subject. He starts from the presumption that whatever the pathos or even horrors religion has displayed or caused, “the best fruits of religious experience are the best things that history has to show” (James 1902: 259). Most important here, he argues that



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any full explanation of saintliness is impossible because we cannot unravel the varying contributing factors. Some are contingent, such as temperament, and others are beyond our view, such as a full specification of the exact role of abnormal or apparently higher kinds of causation. Despite this, James does think he can present the state’s central characteristics. The saintly character is one “for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy,” and it has four marks the first three of which are basically identical to James’s defining characteristics of religion.8 (The saint, briefly put, feels part of a wider unselfish life, has surrendered to an ideal power, and has had the self “meltdown” in a way that produces elation, freedom, and a shift toward loving and harmonious affections.) The resemblances between the marks of saintliness and of religion clarify James’s procedures here as well as the sources of his more abstract generalizations. He proceeds by attending closely to the characteristics that exemplary figures display. Further, those characteristics are the key source for the abstractions he thinks are defensible. These marks, moreover, should be understood as dispositions and the link to neo-Aristotelian virtue theory is evident. They are not, then, passing, occurrent reactions but dispositions to be, and thus also to act and react, in specific ways. They do not simply represent episodic or passing phenomena. They are the ways in which a person characteristically views and responds to the world. Of special interest to James, given all this, are the practical consequences of this state. James surely notes various kinds of quite different consequences, even if he, understandably, fails to pursue many of them. The failure to pursue some however—for example, the consequences of equanimity—reveal much about two matters. One is James’s own propensities, especially his predilection for what the Western tradition labeled the “active life.” The other is his lack of detailed information about those many religions in which equanimity both plays a prominent role and differs from the kind of equanimity that characterizes those Stoic traditions about which James did know something.9 The major characteristic of saintliness on which he does focus is one that does appear in most religions: asceticism. He defines its core as the overcoming both of normal desires and of usual notions of the self’s needs, specifying further that it is valuable simply for what it is and not just for what it produces. Attaining to an ascetic character is a laudable goal in itself, in significant part because such an attainment signifies a twice born character, a person who has overcome the state of having—or, better, being—a sick soul. More important to James, however, are asceticism’s direct effects. He enumerates a number of them, including the expression of loyalty to a higher power and a strength of soul marked by new reaches of patience and fortitude, but most significant is another one. The overcoming basic to asceticism

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underlies any increase in a person’s charity and produces “tenderness” (James’s word) toward fellow creatures. Here as elsewhere, then, James remains fundamentally concerned with what he calls those “unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule” (James 1902: 270).10 James’s belief that only the overcoming of self-seen in asceticism can produce a truly charitable or tender regard for others highlights three important features of his project. The first and least central here is that James avoids, even might be said to be serenely indifferent to, the theoretical formulations and puzzles evident in those traditional Christian accounts that focus on grace’s actions when discussing the higher reaches of charity. This is not to say that forms of an empowerment that reach beyond the ordinary are not a feature of James’s understanding. It is to say, however, that he does not engage in theoretical discussions with any of the multiple accounts that detail interactions of the realms of nature and grace or the natural and theological virtues. In fact, he can be said to evince a positive and principled disinterest in them. Most significant here because more embedded in James’s distinctive approach is the second feature. James affirms the centrality of benevolence and its kin in a way that resembles many thinkers associated with the Enlightenment project, and yet he argues against them that it can be best produced by asceticism. In this way, James’s project resembles that of Jonathan Edwards in The Nature of True Virtue: real benevolence is crucial but arises only through a fundamental change in the self’s estimation of its importance, a change that arises from, or is manifested in, a kind of ascetic regard and practice. The notions that asceticism produces charity and that Enlightenment thinkers failed to appreciate the connection leads to our third feature, a more general and especially challenging part of James’s overall project. Modern thinkers, he thinks, often have identified well and highlighted those virtues that people must have. They have failed, however, to recognize that only traditional religious practices, ideas, or ideals—if in transmuted form—can produce them. This subject plunges us into James’s treatment of how best to think about the crucial general topic of the possible applicability of traditional virtues to a modern context. We can best begin this examination, one that will focus on the virtue of asceticism generally and poverty particularly, by turning to an example, the virtue of autonomy, which highlights important features of James’s approach. The virtue of autonomy rests on an affirmation of the importance of having chosen (in the weak sense of that word) either to be a person of a certain sort or to affirm that you choose to be as you have been determined to be by various external forces. Put simply, moderns want to be able to say, “It is my



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life.” Put more technically, they believe that a person should have and value a second-order disposition that informs all first-order dispositions and makes those dispositions distinctively one’s own.11 James thinks a virtue like autonomy manifests a set of ideas and web of supporting beliefs that a modern person literally has no choice but to accept and work with and from. This exemplifies James’s firm belief that some ideas are both basic to our understanding and also products of a specific historical and cultural situation. (We need to remember this affirmation when we encounter some of James’s grander declarations of universality.) James defends his position in several theoretical works, but most helpful given our concerns are a graphic set of locutions in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Most revealing, perhaps, is a characteristically indirect exposition of the essential and the accidental in saintly virtue in which James, taking as his example the need to participate in worldly affairs, says the following: “Taking refuge in monasteries was as much an idol of the tribe in the middle ages as bearing a hand in the world’s work is to-day” (James 1902: 371). James refers here to an idea, service in the world, that he held dear, rested much of his ethical thinking on, and thought he could rationally defend. But he also calls it an instance of idolatry in the standard religious sense but also in Francis Bacon’s special sense of “idols of the tribe,” with all that implies. Service in the world is crucially important, but its foundation does not basically differ from another idol most would reject, the notion of refuge (with all that word’s native ambivalences) in a monastery. It has the same standing and may, in time, appear to people to be quite as suspect or simply wrong as refuge does today. An ideal of service in the world might, then, be basic to our self-understanding and action; it might even be literally something the contrary of which we cannot coherently entertain. But it remains an idol; it had no more ultimate justification than that. Furthermore, the ways in which the role of service determines our selfunderstanding helps explain why autonomy can be a modern notion with which we must think, and yet also in James’s account have features that manifest traditional aspects. That account is often (and for good reasons) closer to features of Augustine’s or Dante’s ideas about free action than to a number of modern ideas about autonomous action. In consonance with the tradition, James commends the kind of autonomy that enables a person to give up one kind of freedom to gain the freedom to pursue those goals that are produced by contact with, or even surrender to new, empowering and especially valuable forces. It resembles therefore, to use a favored example of both Augustine and Dante, those situations in which an act of self-sacrifice for a loved person is both fully free and compelled by erotic love for the person. Erotic love moves a person to a specific, fully free action. People who do not share

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a similar notion of erotic love will see such actions, however, not as free but as compelled by an external force. Similarly, asceticism can seem, to many, to arise from binding one’s self to external standards that undermine true autonomy and any new, fuller kind of freedom. James, in contrast, thinks asceticism provides a richer, if correspondingly complicated, example of the applicability of traditional ideas and virtues to modern situations and thus also of the issues that appear with those modern ideas and virtues with which we must think and act. Let us turn, then, and begin our inquiry into this, our central example. JAMES’S TREATMENT OF THE VIRTUES OF ASCETICISM: AN OVERVIEW One crucial feature of this example appears when we consider that while James is critical of most Enlightenment thinkers’ rejection of asceticism, he shares with them a suspicion about many ascetics. He manifests an acute sense of the distortions or pathologies that asceticism can manifest, as well as of the peculiar cultural ideals that asceticism can reflect. At times, in fact, his treatment of monkish virtues is as acerbic as anything found in Hume, and Hume establishes a remarkably high benchmark. Nevertheless, James chooses not only to focus on the admirable sides of asceticism but also to make asceticism a necessary, perhaps even sufficient, condition for the presence of full benevolence and other virtuous states. It is this focus that leads James to end his treatment of saintliness with an analysis of those three “minor branches of self-mortification [that] have been recognized as indispensable pathways to perfection”: chastity, obedience, and poverty (James 1902: 310).12 He recognizes that each of these can be discussed in a positive form—what ought to be pursued—or in a negative form—what ought to be inhibited or extirpated. Unlike many traditional figures he normally emphasizes the positive side for both theoretical and rhetorical reasons. These three virtues are of course drawn from the Catholic monastic tradition, and that highlights two important subjects. One is the implication of removing these virtues from their traditional context, the other is their possible comparative import. James self-consciously removes the virtues from the cultural context in which they operated where, unlike for most people today, they were a possible, even finer, option than the options that ordinary life presented. In so doing he universalizes them, asserting the possible applicability of almost all of them to a modern situation. One might even say he democratizes them.13 Further, although James specifically draws on virtues from within Catholic Christianity, analogs to them are present in other traditions whether or



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not James fully understood that. These analogs become clear if we focus on how each of these three religious virtues deals with fundamental inclinations or even needs. Put more technically, it becomes evident if we recognize that these three are corrective virtues—characteristics that correct some tendency that needs treatment or make good some motivation that demands strengthening. Chastity concerns powerful biological drives, needs for intimacy, and in most cases basic cultural notions about the importance of children and family. Obedience deals with the notion that human agency is a significant, in fact a key part of what counts in assessing integrity. Poverty concerns inclinations or needs to possess objects and the fact that people are always defined in part by what they can call their own. James’s examination of poverty, as we will see, is long and deep. In contrast to that, he chooses not to treat chastity at all, and his brief analysis of obedience reflects his confessed doubts about the viability of most aspects of that virtue in a democratic world. For people inclined to read a text through the lacunae in it, James’s silence on chastity and truncated treatment of obedience could provide rich materials. I will not pursue that approach here, but rather just mention that in the case of chastity (where a reading through lacunae might be most productive) his reticence probably is best explained by considerations about the environment in which he operates and to which he must be responsive if he is to be understood. The case with obedience is different and worth some comment because of the significance of both the subjects involved and the fact that James’s analysis would have been helpful in pursuing them. This occurs because traditional accounts of the virtue of obedience often turn on the ability and need to freely surrender one’s own will to that of another. People are, so to speak, supposed to surrender most of their freedom, and thus ordinary integrity, in order to attain a higher state of freedom and a new kind of integrity. This kind of directive raises important theoretical questions, and they are questions versions of which James had considered. One is the ability really to surrender autonomy for the sake of a purportedly higher kind of autonomy while another is the character of the state that might be attained. Although we can wish that James had probed such issues, given both their significance for him and the probable level of his sophistication in treating them, we must also acknowledge how far such an inquiry might have taken him from his major concerns. A last subject is different in that it treats one of his (and our) major concerns here: the ways in which traditional virtues may be applicable to a society with democratic forms and aspirations. James is surely correct to query the viability of at least some aspects of the virtue of obedience in a democratic world. Nonetheless, one can argue that other aspects of the

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virtue, those that circle around the question of who should serve whom and why, would reward careful consideration given distinctive forces in modern society. Those forces, either for political or commercial gain, aim to generate obedience toward specific ideas or people and often do so by the use of forms of persuasion that operate at less than conscious levels. Further, and here we need not draw on Marxist critiques, many today recognize the importance of probing the often mysterious character of those loyalties that operate in even the most democratic of societies. Loyalties like these seem to produce problematic virtues that operate in ways that resemble some traditional ideas of obedience but also undermine most ideals of autonomy. This topic, then, is very relevant to some of James’s central concerns, especially as they turn on the nurturing of genuine autonomy. But, as with the more theoretical questions, such considerations might well have diverted James from what he did do, and did so well. And to that subject we may now turn. MODERN APPLICABILITY AND JAMES’S PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO ASCETICISM: INTRODUCTION The subject of asceticism presents in stark relief a set of difficult questions for James’s analysis of saintly virtue’s value. This is especially true when ascetic virtues are understood, as they must be for James, as instances of heroic action. In fact, these virtues represent one of the most difficult possible test cases for James’s general philosophical approach, his “pragmatism” (a new term, as he says, for an old approach) because their contribution to any obvious social or even personal good is questionable, especially in a modern context. James, quite characteristically, honestly addresses many of the relevant questions. He emphasizes, for instance, both how significant social contexts are for what is believable and how those contexts change over time. He develops well, then, the case that no ascetic idea or practice is acceptable that current standards in common life seem to make simply incredible or even truly doubtful. Moreover, he highlights that what he calls “corruption by excess” shadows all complicated human activities. He argues quite plausibly that few virtuosi, few truly able performers of such activities, can maintain either a balanced sense of the variety of possible goods that human beings can manifest or place well their own good in relation to those other various goods. Furthermore, he astutely points out that corruptions by excess often are especially prevalent when religious goods are pursued. One reason for that is the apparent value of religious goods. But another is that many saints have, as James sharply puts



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it, intellects “no larger than a pin’s head” and seem prone to pursue a deity whose character is marked by providing arbitrary personal favors or being jealous about personal honor or glory (James 1902: 354, 339–340).14 Exactly these features of saintliness have led many moderns to question if saintliness’s ascetic characteristics have any real value, and James, again quite characteristically, engages directly with those critics, critics that range from Nietzsche to proponents of the notion of adaptation found in social Darwinism. He recognizes that such critics present an ideal of the flourishing human that differs radically from even the best kind of virtuousness he presents. Indeed, he understands that saints will seem to be ineffective, even cruelly weak, when compared with the powerful figures these critics prefer. As he says in one of those evocative formulations for which he is rightly famous, “Compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of the world, saints are herbivorous animals, tame and harmless barn-yard poultry” (James 1902: 372). James realizes, then, that a powerful case can be made, in fact has been made, against the value of any traditional saintly virtues with heroic features and a substantial religious component. Further, he well understands that his own philosophical approach, his pragmatism, seems to echo that case because it appears to entail the judgment that nothing of real value appears with the apparent virtues if the approach’s standards are rigorously applied. (One can even wonder if James was drawn to this subject in part because it seems to test so grievously his own fundamental approach.) Put differently, these virtues challenge any overly simple understanding of pragmatic criteria by expanding and giving added texture to that category.15 James’s general responses to these problems are much less telling and provocative than what appears when he treats specific concrete cases, especially in the context The Varieties of Religious Experience provides. In treating cases that have a specific concrete form, his full powers of exposition, astute self-criticism, and nuanced if at times elusive responsiveness to possible criticisms appear. Nowhere are these qualities more evident than in his analysis of asceticism in general and the case of poverty in particular, and to that we may now turn. JAMES’S TREATMENT OF POVERTY AS A PARADIGMATIC ASCETIC AND RELIGIOUS VIRTUE James understands well that the general idea of poverty covers a great number of diverse phenomena and some are without value. Involuntary poverty, for him, presents no ideal state at all, even if the appropriate enduring of it may generate something of value. Moreover, as with other forms of asceticism, he

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simply rejects those activities that so evidently harm people that they can easily (for moderns at least) be labeled pathological. Finally, he is uninterested in the intermittent appearance of feelings that temporarily lead people to want to buy no more and to surrender what they have, although he is interested in what such a reaction can show us about deeper human ideas and energies. James’s own focus often appears to be on the possession of material objects, but he plays productively both on the ambiguity of the notion of possessions and on the vagueness of some lines demarcating the material and the nonmaterial. In fact, as we will see, exactly those ambiguities become important when he treats the spiritual import and ultimate justification for embracing the virtue of poverty. (In doing this he follows the example of traditional figures like Dante.) Nonetheless, in his initial account, he basically excludes those usages that would extend to, say, ordinary achievements or reputation. Further, he spends little time distinguishing among material possession; between, say, my elegant new jacket and my new book on Shakespeare’s sonnets. Given this, it helps to specify the contours of the subject more precisely and formally than James does. The phenomenon he addresses is a person’s treatment of and attitude toward possessions that fulfill two conditions. The first is that one can dispose of them without causing unreasonable damage to oneself or others. The second is that if one does dispose of them it is because of a commitment to some general life plan or goal. Questions arise, of course, about the meaning of specific elements in such a formulation: For example, exactly what is “unreasonable”; how great is the difference between “damage” to oneself and to others; how clear must be the “commitment”; and what characteristics must the “plan or goal” have? James approaches such questions indirectly if at all and his analysis could be thought to suffer from that lack. Usually, however, what he does address is so basic and his manner of approaching it so penetrating that we best follow his lead, even if it is helpful to continue to keep in mind the general map that an approach like the preceding can present. James starts from the seeming peculiarity of the ideal of poverty: it is an ideal that aims at the rejection of possessions rather than their appropriate or moderate use. Further, he assumes that “the instinct of ownership is fundamental in man’s nature.” These considerations mean the ideal of poverty represents a “seemingly unnatural opinion,” and therefore, James thinks we must therefore inquire into what he calls its “spiritual grounds” (James 1902: 315–317).16 Understanding James’s point here as well as grasping the strategy he employs is important. They tell us much about both James and one kind of attempt to treat traditional religious virtues, especially ascetic ones, in a modern context. James has chosen not to focus on a virtue where the analysis



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would seem initially plausible to moderns, and therefore where he could hope to gain widespread agreement. The kind of moderation that controls genuine avarice would be an example of such a “plausible virtue.” A treatment that argued, as do many classical and modern Western treatments, that the goal people should pursue is a mean between excessive liberality and excessive possessiveness seems initially plausible and likely to gain acceptance. But James chooses not to talk about the moderate use of property; he talks instead about not possessing property. James chooses, then, that kind of heroic religious virtue where he cannot draw on many normal presumptions and arguments to defend or even to make plausible the virtue. James is balancing on a tightrope here, and the act he must perform exemplifies all his best work on religious virtue. An evocative image from Wittgenstein (who was a great admirer of James and especially of The Varieties of Religious Experience) helps capture what is involved. He says, “An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it” (Wittgenstein 1984: 73e).17 James’s approach to religious virtues and especially the virtue of voluntary poverty exemplifies such a balancing act. He must not fall into either of two dangerous alternatives. On the one hand, the religious virtue cannot rely on such bizarre notions that people cannot really take it seriously. The claim, to use an example from James, that the only way to appease a deity’s anger is to sacrifice children is an example of such a notion. James’s pragmatic method as well as other philosophical considerations demand that virtues not rest on what will seem to modern people to be implausible ideas. On the other hand, if the virtue is truly a religious one, it must not rely on such common and sensible notions that most people would, with little thought, accept it. The idea that a person should help other people if such help causes no pain or dislocation would be an example. That kind of virtue would simply repeat the conventional wisdom of the day and thereby say little about either religion or the possible applicability of traditional religious virtues. As in the case of the tightrope walker, a precarious balance must be achieved and renewed. That kind of skillfulness demands forms of presentation (and thinking) that extend beyond the usual, almost necessary, binary focus of many theoretical presentations. More literary means, then, often best capture what occurs with such a tightrope walker’s performance, involving as it does continuous minute adjustments to maintain a balance that is both aesthetically satisfying and lifesaving. Such literary presentations—as we will see—are not just pleasing, they are necessary to achieving what needs to be achieved.18

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Further, to understand the needed performance—looking as though it is “walking on nothing but air”—it helps to distinguish between what we can call mistakes and blunders. Mistakes occur when people fail in an easily identifiable and explainable way to use correctly an idea or practice. Blunders occur when people fail so egregiously to use correctly an idea or practice that identifying the exact error, much less explaining it, by ordinary means is difficult. The skillful following of etiquette rules provides a clear if not especially profound instance. At a formal Western dinner, it is a mistake to use the wrong piece of silverware if I have even a minimal understanding of the required etiquette. It is, in contrast, a blunder if I belch loudly to show my appreciation, although it can signal to the knowledgeable not the boorishness of a bad mistake but a culturally different system, say one from Southeast Asia. Of importance here, when we measure religious ideas and perspectives against normal ones, we can say (with a nod to Wittgenstein) that truly religious ideas always manifest blunders that are too large to be simple mistakes.19 If someone says that Obama was elected president in 2005, I assume the speaker has made a mistake. If, however, the person says he was elected in 1383, I assume the speaker’s blunder occurs because a different calendric system is being used. To believe a different system is operating does not, of course, end the analysis. If (as in this example) an Islamic calendric system is being used, that understanding may make me consider what is implied by using such a system to identify Obama’s election, or more generally, what is implied by using any calendric system that relies on origin dates with religious significance. Evaluating the possible meaningfulness of such different systems involves, then, a variety of other inquiries and judgments, but most significant here is another if related point. Basic religious perspectives contain blunders not mistakes because the blunders arise from the abnormality of the viewpoint the perspective manifests. It remains true that if such religious ideas are to be acceptable, they must not violate certain basic notions and webs of ideas. Nonetheless, such ideas can stretch them or place them in dramatically different contexts, different “language games” if you will. This balancing act and the tightrope performance it involves fundamentally informs James’s discussion of heroic religious virtues and helps explain his use of literary means. To recap and evaluate James’s approach here, he thinks we simply do and must reject some ideas. For example, to borrow one of Wittgenstein’s pungent illustrations, the idea that cars might grow out of the ground. We reject such ideas largely because they violate too many of our basic notions; in this case the difference between what grows and what is made. James is therefore both clear and on defensible ground in arguing that we must reject religious ideas, and thus the virtues they produce, when they violate some



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basic notions. The grounds for rejection can be ethical as in the case of a god who demands the sacrifice of children. But others involve our acceptance of modern modes of scientific and historical investigation. Examples here for James would include many traditional Christian notions about miracles and probably most Buddhist notions about karma. This much, then, is both clear and relatively uncontroversial. More controversial, less clear, and most crucial to James is another claim: Humans can entertain apparently very odd ideas, especially odd religious ideas, and thus the virtues they produce without surrendering basic notions. Recognizing this, he believes, is extremely difficult. All too often people mistakenly think that odd religious ideas conflict fundamentally with basic notions; they must be led to see the idea or action’s oddness is neither a mistake nor too great for them to entertain it. Put differently, they need to see why what we earlier called “blunders” manifest different language games, ones that call for distinctive kinds of understanding and evaluation.20 James’s acceptance of this helps to explain why he thought it necessary to use the rhetorical strategies he did when writing much of The Varieties of Religious Experience. To use a word James might have shied away from, that part of the work on which we will now focus rests on a specific apologetic strategy. It is to show people that the ideas surrounding and producing the heroic virtues of asceticism generally and poverty in particular are ones that they can entertain. Poverty is the case James develops at the greatest length and depth, but it also serves as an exemplary case for asceticism because virtually anything that James says about the grounds for poverty also applies to asceticism. He chooses poverty not just because it is a paradigmatic example of ascetic virtues. It also serves well his overall aims in significant part because of the role that wealth and the pursuit of wealth play in James’s (and one could say our own) America. As he dramatically puts it in a locution we will examine closely later: “I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers” (James 1902: 369). James’s defense of the ideal of poverty attempts to show three related things, each of which he seems to believe appear to be wrong to most sophisticated intellectuals, conventional adherents of religion, and successful worldly people. The first is that the virtue of poverty only seems to violate notions that are fundamental to modern people’s self-understanding. The second is that the ideal of poverty manifests a different yet plausible or even compelling (if literary means are used) view of what the human situation is. The third is that the virtue can produce general results in society that virtually everyone will find worthwhile.

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We will return to each of these three but, put telegraphically, the defense of each is as follows. The first, that the ideal does not violate any tenet basic to modern understandings, relies on a principle about human beings’ character and obligations that can be defended on pragmatic grounds if they are appropriately textured and expanded. The second, that the ideal is in fact compelling, can be defended by showing that the pursuit of poverty should be largely understood as an expressive and therefore heroic virtue not an acquisitive virtue. The third, and most fragile, rests on an attempt to show the effectiveness in society, or even necessity to society, of the kinds of goods that religious virtues produce. James’s choice of poverty as a paradigmatic heroic religious virtue as well as a key instance of ascetic virtues is, I think, a good or even inspired one. Unlike chastity, obedience, or a variety of other religious virtues that might be chosen, poverty provides a subject matter the analysis of which engages several important matters. The religious, or at least odd, character of the virtue is unquestionable. Unlike, say, a classical Christian virtue like patience which shares many qualities with ordinary patience, the differences between poverty and its more normal relative—the moderate use of possessions—are clear.21 Moreover, poverty can easily function as a productive category in cross-cultural comparisons. The role possessions should play in people’s lives remains a question all cultures must face. Furthermore, the relationship of the virtue of voluntary poverty to some deeply held American cultural ideas and ideals means the analysis is both engaging and challenging, especially because the virtue can, with relative ease, be seen as a positive ideal, not just as a negative prohibition. Finally, voluntary poverty is the kind of ideal (although it is surely not unique among religious ideals) that virtually no one, especially in modern times, can claim to have so clearly actualized that easy judgments on other people can be made and thus self-analysis avoided.

JAMES’S RATIONALE FOR AND PRESENTATION OF THE VIRTUE OF VOLUNTARY POVERTY James attempts to make the virtues of asceticism in general and poverty in particular understandable, attractive, and ultimately of critical importance to modern people. But he proceeds in a fashion that is circuitous and often cryptic by even the high standards James himself can set. Nonetheless, he can be said to present four separable points or loci for discussion, moving from what most people will find plausible to what they may well find implausible.



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The more seemingly implausible (or at least questionable) ideas or claims become, the more he uses evocative locutions and poetic language especially when treating what he calls the deeper, usually more religiously significant, facets of the subject. In emphasizing these literary features in James’s presentation, I am not arguing that James does not make arguments of a rigorous and even conventional sort. He surely does. Nor am I declaring that he does not present precise analysis, if often in his own inimitable and at times rambling way. He surely also does that. But I am arguing that at times and with certain subjects, we cannot easily separate out his claims from the ways in which he presents them. In this and other ways, his prose can at times closely resemble poetry, if with few of poetry’s formal metric or rhythmic elements, and therefore one needs to approach it as one does poetry. In fact, some of his presentations can best be approached as one does the poetry of Emily Dickinson, especially her definitional poems.22 Nevertheless, the first two of his four points are clear, even pedestrian, enough to demand no such attention. They do have implications that generate interesting kinds of issues, but James fails to pursue them with the vigor other thinkers have. Simply put, the first point is that who people are and what they do is more important than what they have; character not possessions essentially identifies people. The second claim is that a life that does not focus on possessions is a freer life, a life in which autonomy can more easily be pursued and protected.23 James’s last two points not only are of a different order, but they also gather up a set of challenging motifs in The Varieties of Religious Experience, for example, the need for the destruction of normal selfhood, the contact with potent but mysterious enabling forces, and the abnormality evident in certain exalted religious expressions. James’s presentation of them may be brief, but it is potently evocative and demands close attention. He says, [T]here are in the cult of poverty other religious mysteries. There is the mystery of veracity: “Naked came I into the world,” etc.—whoever first said that, possessed this mystery. My own bare entity must fight the battle—shams cannot save me. There is also the second point, the mystery of democracy, or sentiment of the equality before God of all his creatures” (James 1902: 323–324).24

Let us begin with the second and more easily understood of the two mysteries. James’s way of formulating this, especially his use of the words “democracy” and “equality,” is significant. It illustrates his continuing attempt to show that certain social ideals, such as a democratic one, demand a religious base even though many people wish to deny the need for such a base. Further, the simple “or” in the formulation points to the role James thinks God can still play in a modern context.

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This second mystery explicitly draws on a prominent notion in virtue ethics: the importance of a person’s general life plan or goals, the idea that a person’s general perspectives or orientations are crucial to the cultivation and evaluation of specific virtues. Especially important here is the claim that our view of ourselves is determined in significant part by the general standards against which we measure ourselves. To use what occurs in normal society as our standard leads us to validate our conventional desires and ideas. To use a sacred standard, even if one only episodically glimpsed and barely understood, leads us to see ourselves and the desires and ideas that guide us in a far different way. That standard, James thinks, will both generate a sense of the unimportance of what distinguishes us from other people and display the questionable character of most of what we normally pursue and use to define ourselves. Further this recognition tends, he thinks, to nullify most of people’s usual acquisitive desires because they arise from the desire to distinguish oneself from others. In fact, the desire to solidify a sense of integrity and therefore of significance combines with the desire to protect that integrity’s distinguishing marks to produce two significant effects: It separates us from other people and produces most acquisitive desires. James’s ideas here are illuminated and deepened by notions found in two different locales, one a debate in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, the other the traditional formulations of several distinct religions. The first appears in one facet of the long-standing debate in analytic philosophy between, to use unpolished labels, Kantians and Aristotelians. Put simply, the Kantians argue that rationally defensible ontological constraints ought (and therefore also can) constrain the projects of any individual. In contrast, the Aristotelians argue for the irreducible value to the agent of “private projects,” even those which reliable outside observers would deem problematic or worse. The former argue, in one formulation, for a so-called “characterless self” as the fundamental source of humanity, while the latter believe that kind of self drains away most of what makes any human being human. (Christine Korsgaard and Bernard Williams represent well the highly sophisticated form the two different approaches can take.) Much of importance in any overall evaluation of human actions obviously depends on which of these two positions one adopts, and James fits within, or more accurately, is illuminated by the latter position. It leads him, however, to religious ideas and thereby dramatically distinguishes his position from almost all prominent philosophers in the AngloAmerican analytic tradition. James acknowledges the significance of private projects and thus opposes the notion of a characterless self, but he also thinks people must overcome those projects that normally define their identity if they are to achieve the state that manifests the “mystery of democracy.” In so



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doing, he calls on a religious realm (and thus his use of the word “mystery”) that challenges any simple Aristotelian ideas and demands the expression of religious virtues like the ideal of poverty. The appreciation shown here of the importance of religious dimensions makes unsurprising the way that James’s ideas resonate with those found in several different religious traditions—whatever may be the basic distinctions in their metaphysical claims. We see links, for example, with many neo-Confucians’ conjoining of disinterest and benevolence as well as in the connections of ideas about desire, the self, compassion, and the Bodhisattva ideal in a number of Mahayana Buddhists. Closest to James’s own ideas, however, are those thinkers in the Christian theological tradition who argue for a very strong connection between love of God and love of neighbor. Aquinas, for example, argues that the two loves are just two versions of the same fundamental idea. Moreover, he also asserts that both should generate an appropriate valuation of oneself (and by implication all others), and that only this kind of evaluation can overcome pride and produce humility. To love other people, then, is to see everyone as related to God, and therefore also as called to humility when measured before God. Connections like especially these Christian ones can surely be said to clarify and illuminate James. But he seems to have known little about truly sophisticated theological formulations of these ideas. Furthermore, he clearly has a different ontology, and thus sense of God, than traditional Christian theologians. Indeed, in a very revealing description of what constitutes the ideal attitude, James says it is not humility before a higher power or being but rather it is humanity. An especially relevant text reads, “It is not exactly the sentiment of humility, though it comes so close to it in practice. It is humanity rather, refusing to enjoy anything that others do not share” (James’s italics). The desired attitude, then, arises from an abandoning of ourselves not to God but “to the remorseless logic of our love for others” (James 1902: 324).25 James’s shift of focus here is noteworthy. In virtually all traditional Christian perspectives, humility’s contrast with pride rests largely on differing attitudes to God—Satan’s desire to equal or surpass God being a classical exemplification. In James’s case, however, it is the relation to human beings that is expressed in the refusal to enjoy what is not shared.26 The conceptual form of this second of the two mysteries is, then, clear whatever may be our evaluation of the claim that loving others must entail the extremely high bar of a refusal to enjoy anything that others do not share. The conceptual form of the first mystery is also clear but only at its most obvious level, after which it leads to far more complicated and religiously potent arenas. At the simplest level, the mystery of veracity reflects the fact that we enter the world possessing nothing, appear to leave it possessing

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nothing, and can at any point be dispossessed of anything, or everything, we have. This truth about our origin, end, and vulnerability is impossible to deny, even if keeping that truth firmly in mind can be very difficult. Moreover, and more important here, exactly what comprises an appropriate response to that truth is not self-evident. Responses to the stark perception of the mystery of veracity can vary enormously, and they surely need not include the virtue of voluntary poverty. One cogent and influential example of such a response is Aristotle’s resolutely this-worldly attempt to build a life plan that as far as possible protects people against the ravages that human vulnerability can generate, against what the reign of luck can produce. Further refinements of that notion appear elsewhere, say, in later Stoic treatments that generate complicated notions about how to be basically unmoved or unaffected by the evident problems that a clear understanding of our origin, end, and vulnerability produce. Less profound and perhaps finally unworkable ideals include the kind of reflective hedonism that appears throughout the tradition and a bumper sticker popular in our time enshrines in a banal fashion, “The person with the most toys wins.” Probably more profound than any of these Western alternatives is the Confucian vision that Xunzi presents. He thinks the mystery of veracity can be both acknowledged and tamed by means of Confucian rituals.27 James knew well versions of the Western ideas. Indeed, they all can be said to be permutations of what James saw as some of healthy-mindedness’s highest forms. They range from the type of hedonist who aims in a guarded fashion to amass kinds of integral pleasure to the type of Stoic who aims to escape attachments to variable goods. Nonetheless, in this case as in others, and despite his gallant efforts to give a truly sympathetic account of the healthy-minded, James believes the sick-souled person represents a truer understanding of life if only because, as we will see, conversion can arise more genuinely and easily from that state.28 To better understand why James thought such responses were imperfect, we can turn to a cluster of related ideas implied by many of his accounts although never explicitly spelled out in any of them. All concern the significance general perspectives have, especially the impact on specific understandings and actions that general orientations and aims make. These ideas are central to Aristotelian Christian virtue theory and modern versions of it appear in many places; for example, in the analysis of how horizons determine meaning; in the distinction between strong and weak evaluations; and in those definitions of religion that stress fundamental orientations.29 The basic claim is both simple and controversial: people’s general perspective fundamentally informs all their significant attitudes and actions. This occurs because people’s perceptions of and reactions to specific events, their understandings of the salient characteristics of those events, control their



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attitudes and actions. These perceptions and reactions, in turn, are controlled by the framework within which people place those events. A framework that includes the “mystery of veracity” and the fragility it implies will therefore also affect most significant activities and perceptions. Strikingly evident, for example, will be the understanding that although possessions do protect a person against certain kinds of contingencies, they cannot protect a person from the most serious contingencies. The wealthy still get crushed when earthquakes strike. One set of objections to the ideal of poverty can, then, be dismissed on the grounds that it manifests an inadequate, a limited and superficial, general framework. Other frameworks, however, are not so frail, and they present a crucial question for James: Can people have a framework that includes at least most of what the mystery of veracity points to and yet also reject on defensible grounds the ideal of poverty as a virtue? The approaches of the reflective hedonist, Stoic, or Aristotelian who focuses on luck’s role surely seem to be fitting candidates. If so, their responses also seem to call in question the general notion that underlies James’s whole project here, the idea that people need a version of traditional religious virtues to live fully flourishing lives. James’s best responses to both of these specific and general challenges are indirect, and with them we will conclude. One is his understanding of the role of erotic attachment and the seemingly peculiar autonomy it produces. The other and more important are his views on the place of heroism with regard to both the specific virtue of poverty and the general notion of religious virtues. (Each of these, as we will see, challenges any simple understanding of the criteria James’s pragmatism employs.) Let us turn to the first of these two subjects. James’s understanding of autonomy, as noted earlier, reflects ideas about the connection between erotic attachment and the freedom of the will that are prominent in the tradition that identifies Augustine and Dante as paradigmatic figures. Of special importance here, however, is the way in which especially Dante but also Augustine links the virtue of poverty to erotic attachment, the facing of death, and the production of a new kind of benevolence. This is shown memorably in Dante’s depiction in Paradiso canto XI (60–61) of St. Francis’s ardent love of poverty: Personifying poverty as a woman, Dante declares that she is a lady “to whom, as if she were/ death, no one unlocks the gate of pleasure” (a cui, come la morte,/ la porte del piacer nessun diserra). The line has, of course, the extraordinary potency and multiple resonances of Dante’s best poetry as well as being set in a complex canto which is one of his masterpieces. Most important here, however, is one crucial thread: the way the poetic depiction of St. Francis’s life and achievement treats the adoption of the virtue of voluntary poverty. It connects that adoption to a full-blooded

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erotic connection because it alone, seemingly, can overcome the pull of avarice and thus the fear both of poverty and of what accompanies it, notably the fear of death. That, in turn, alone can produce the new kind of benevolence St. Francis represents. Dante’s evocative highlighting of how only an erotic connection overcomes the fear the virtue of poverty corrects leads us to James’s own understanding of the role of fear in relation to poverty in general and the mystery of veracity in particular. He puts the point sharply in a dramatic statement we noted earlier: “[It] is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers” (James 1902: 369). This statement could be attributed to overheated rhetoric, but I think much more is involved. The word “poverty” here carries, in addition to its conventional meaning, all those features that James has previously discussed, for example, indifference to many occurrences, a willingness to sacrifice, and an inability to be bribed. Moreover, and more important here, James highlights the fear of poverty in the statement (as did Dante’s presentation), and the analytic framework of neo-Aristotelian virtue theory can help us understand why he highlights it. Fear generates reactions such as flight, hesitation, and the inability to view situations clearly. Each of these, in turn, can undermine autonomy and corrupt good judgment especially if the fear is exaggerated, is more than or different from the fear a virtuous person would feel in a similar situation. Further, most of the fears need not be occurrent emotions or even easily recognizable emotions. They can be those kinds of dispositions (ones James describes brilliantly) that narrow attention and thereby make a person appreciate only certain options or tend only in certain directions. These fears can destroy autonomy, poison judgment, and make impossible the kinds of actions that most distinguish human beings. Moreover, their dispositional character makes the overcoming of them especially taxing, makes them demand in fact a kind of religious resolution and empowerment. Such a resolution and empowerment for James fits within what he calls the world of the heroic and to that we may now turn. IN HEROISM LIFE’S SUPREME MYSTERY IS HIDDEN A consideration of fear’s role in people’s attitudes about poverty moves us, then, into the subject with which we end: James’s understanding of that larger realm where he believes all these considerations belong, the realm of the heroic. The virtue of poverty can be fully grasped only, he thinks, if seen as a proper object for heroic pursuit and activity. Understanding James’s account of the realm of the heroic places special demands on us, however, and we



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must recognize them. Most important is realizing that although his account surely has philosophical and theological dimensions on which we can draw, his presentation often has a distinctively literary flavor, and we must both respect that and employ appropriate methods to interpret it. Also significant, if finally, less important, we must acknowledge that there is a counter current (a not unfamiliar situation with James) to this understanding of the heroic. It can gain a troubling prominence in any interpreter’s mind because James never examines rigorously much less systematically the exact ways in which heroic ideals and actions are to inform the lives of most individuals. At one juncture, for instance, he declares that only easier but unspecified demands should induce the most fundamental kind of praise or blame: “The conduct we blame ourselves for not following lies nearer to the middle line of human effort. It is less dependent on particular beliefs and doctrines. It is such as wears well in different ages, such as under different skies all judges are able to commend” (James 1902: 339). Further, at another later place, he even says that each of us must discover for himself the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteed and no set orders to be given to individuals, so long as we follow the methods of empirical philosophy. (James 1902: 377)

Comments like these do not accord with his more usual treatments of the significance of heroism, although resources are present to resolve them. Rather, however, then focus on those resources, let us move on to consider our main subject.30 Whatever caveats James presents, he remains the kind of thinker about virtue, especially religious virtue, for whom the heroic is a basic category, and therefore distinctions made within neo-Aristotelian virtue theory illuminate his account. One example is the distinction between expressive and acquisitive virtues, virtues done to acquire a specific state or object and virtues animated by the heroic desire to express a human state seen as integral whatever the result.31 Other distinctions made in that tradition’s Christian form are also helpful. Most notable are the ways religious virtues differ from normal virtues because of distinctions among the kinds of objects pursued; among the goals of the intentions manifested; and among the precise forms of behavior produced.32 Unlike a number of thinkers in that tradition, however, James must deal centrally with the perception that ideas about the heroic often travel in disreputable, even noxious company. In fact, he understands that for many moderns, heroism is a suspect or even discredited notion. It often seems to fit

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well only into military contexts as well as to generate activities or people that are problematic at best. Moreover, even in its better forms, it remains liable to generate sentimental formulations and exemplifications and the distortions of realistic evaluations they produce.33 Nonetheless, James attempts to reformulate ideas about the heroic, especially as they connect with the ideal of poverty to make them viable once again. This attempt is crucially important to him because he thinks, as one of his most arresting statements puts it, that what appears in “mankind’s common instinct for reality” is that the world is “essentially a theatre for heroism [because] in heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden” (James 1902: 364). The statement is, I believe, worth pondering, in fact pondering in a way that resembles how we consider a line of poetry: What does it mean to say life has, or is, or hides not just a mystery but a supreme mystery? Why would heroism be crucial to penetrating or probing that mystery? Are we to see the locution “a theatre for heroism” as a rhetorical flourish or should we picture ordinary life as like a theatre with components such as an audience, a playwright, and even perhaps a script? However we answer these questions, the statement is a “dark saying” that leads to a striking point. James believes, like Sophocles and a few other tragedians, that heroes and heroism disclose to us realities understandable in no other way. Heroes do so because they stand between the virtually impenetrable world of the sacred and the manifest but limited truths of normal life. The heroic, then, both uncovers features of higher realities and illumes the otherwise pedestrian character of ordinary activity. It can stand midway between what people can know little or nothing about and what people can know much about, but little that helps them understand life’s deeper questions. James focuses on the heroic, then, because he wants to move people beyond the caution the bourgeois display, and in so doing, he hopes to show them the beneficial results such caution precludes. He also focuses, however, on the heroic in order to move people beyond what he calls the “athleticism” involved in the normal pursuit of virtue, including the focus on effort and training he himself so often displays. Such athleticism was prevalent in the secular education and practice of the day as well as in so-called muscular Christianity. (Needless to say, the massive self-help industry of our own day bears some striking resemblances to these phenomena.) As he puts it in a text concerning poverty to which we will return, beyond the athletic activity involved in doing and being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounder still, something related to that fundamental mystery of religious experience, the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to a larger power. So long as any secular safeguard is retained . . . the vital crisis is not passed, fear still stands sentinel, and mistrust of the divine obtains. (James 1902: 320)



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James questions then anything that impedes the kind of heroic action that both produces a new kind of assurance and brings contact with sacred forces. Only in fact by moving beyond a reliance on effort and practical good sense can people contact religious powers and generate the sense of higher safety and connection that is fundamental to religion. The heroic temper serves therefore as a litmus paper that tests not only one’s true worth but also one’s legitimate love of what is most basic to religious life. This current in James, especially when considered at its most general level, can easily perplex even the most sympathetic reader. It is best approached, I think, by focusing on statements that concern (at least initially) concrete phenomena, and especially noteworthy are two—if only because they are at once both gripping and problematic. One is that “no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be . . . [no matter how] inferior to ourselves in this or that way, if yet we cling to life, and he is able to ‘fling it away like a flower’ as caring nothing for it, we account him in the deepest way our born superior” (James 1902: 364). The other (one that Wittgenstein was deeply affected by) is, “Each of us in his own person feels that a high-hearted indifference to life would expiate all his shortcomings” (James 1902: 364). These two statements are eloquent but they also can sound hopelessly romantic or even painfully jarring to our ears, and in this way they resemble the more general statement that preceded them. The phrase about “the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to a larger power” or the notions of either being “able to ‘fling it [life] away like a flower’ as caring nothing for it” or of finding expiation for all shortcomings in high-hearted indifference to life are prime examples. One could interpret them in terms drawn from the rich eroticism of the Victorian Gothic or even be drawn to parody them by a use of Freudian categories. We need, however, to be cautious about such a reaction remembering that as sophisticated a modern as Wittgenstein found the last especially moving and insightful. We live in an age saturated with the ideal of ironic distance, one therefore marked by the real effort needed to recover, even imaginatively, ideas of love, self-sacrifice—and thus autonomy—that resemble those that characterized many in the tradition, including Dante or Augustine. This should lead us to proceed with caution and to interrogate closely our own responses. Indeed, we might well wonder if some of James’s more heated comments about heroism aim to generate such interrogations.34 Even if, further, some of James’s formulations grate or at least sound odd and feel discordant most of them echo a motif that has a rich lineage in the West. It reaches back to Plato’s “mad lovers of the good,” so called because their loves seemed to be a senseless distortion to more settled, upright citizens. That produces Aristotle’s more soberly analytic but still radical examinations of self-love and self-sacrifice, a current that continues on but even intensifies

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within one pulse in Christianity. Examples include Augustine’s claim that the athleticism of pagan virtues was a major reason they were splendid vices; Aquinas’s treatment of the dangers of an improper solicitude for temporal matters; and Dante’s validation of erotic sexual passion as a sacred mode. Moreover, this lineage also endorses a related idea crucial to James’s account here—the idea that heroic courage, especially if based in an erotic love of exactly the sort needed to embrace the virtue of poverty, is an especially significant example of the heroic temper. All courage involves overcoming fears to reach higher goods, but heroic courage displays an overcoming of the fears engendered by those normal standards by which most people measure their well-being. Heroic courage actualizes the overcoming of fears associated with the normal pursuit of utility, pleasure, and even survival, three standard inclinations called in question by the virtue of poverty. The surrender of possessions on which we rely exemplifies for James, then, the courageous overcoming of basic fears, and thus it becomes a paradigm of truly heroic action. Indeed, it signifies a fundamentally new kind of being that arises from the kind of radical change in character that can claim one of James’s most exalted designations: conversion. James puts this well in one of his more significant and subtle statements. Really to give up anything on which we have relied, to give it up definitely, ‘for good and all’ and forever, signifies one of those radical alterations of character which came under our notice in the lectures on conversion. In it the inner man [sic] rolls over into an entirely different position of equilibrium, lives in a new centre of energy from this time on, and the turning-point and hinge of all such operations seems usually to involve the sincere acceptance of certain nakednesses and destitutions. (James 1902: 321)

As the parts of the preceding quotation that I have italicized make clear, there is much to consider in this statement, much that both sums up and directs us beyond what we have been considering. Of special importance here is that James points to the presence of a new kind of governing disposition, one which reflects a posture that combines attachment and detachment in a new way. It is a disposition that affects three of people’s most important general perspectives and the actions that arise from them. First is what they believe characterizes them. Second is what gives them fulfillment. Third is what provides them with safety. Appreciating the significance of this presence involves—as with all facets of James’s discussion of heroism and the virtue of poverty—a need to remember that dispositions, not specific discrete acts or states, are involved. (This is one reason, incidentally, why many Romantic readings of James can miss the mark badly.) Virtues for James are basically dispositions, as in



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neo-Aristotelian virtue theory, and their presence or absence, not particular actions, is crucial. Dispositions can, of course, express themselves in action. But only a few, such as the disposition to be punctual, will always manifest themselves in just one kind of action—that is, arriving on time. Most complex human dispositions, such as the disposition to be courageous or to embrace poverty will manifest themselves in different, often substantially different, ways depending on the circumstances in which they are exercised. The courageous person when facing danger can stand firm or can flee, while the person who embraces poverty may welcome or reject a specific kind of possession. With dispositions, then, specific actions are both much less significant than is the presence of the needed disposition and not always a clear manifestation of its basic character.35 The import of this focus on dispositions appears when we try to understand some of James’s more striking comments on the general significance of the virtue of voluntary poverty as what corrects the fear of poverty. That fear, James thinks, has corrupted the ability to conceive of alternative states; people have lost the capacity even to envision what those states might produce. As he says, We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier [sic] indifference, the paying one’s way to what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly. (James 1902: 368)

The lack of the needed disposition has destroyed a fundamental ability, the ability to imagine and thus entertain a crucially important alternative state of excellence. This is why the disposition that the virtue of voluntary poverty manifests constitutes such a significant component for James of any truly good life in the modern world. It alone (or almost alone) can correct the stunting of life that occurs when, for modern people, neither of the two traditional heroic alternatives are found, for good reasons, to have little attraction. One alternative, the kind of asceticism presented by traditional religious ideas and practices all too often, James thinks, manifests the vanity of saints or worse the pathetic futilities of individuals increasing their own perfection. The other alternative, one that embodies that spirit of war, can often have similar twisted motives and, further, is far more destructive of people’s ordinary well-being or even lives. James wants, then, in his famous phrase, a moral equivalent of war as well as a modern equivalent of that saintly struggle or warlike encounter with danger that he thinks most of his contemporaries, quite appropriately, find of

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dubious value. He seeks a strenuous life of heroic proportions and asks, “may not voluntarily accepted poverty be the ‘the strenuous life,’ without the need of [either] crushing weaker peoples” or crushing the broader aspects of oneself and selfishly pursuing only one’s own perfection? It can then qualify as a properly heroic life and for reasons that have little to do with its ability to help produce charity. The trials involved in surrendering material goods present a truly worthy foe and the results can produce an equally worthy fulfillment, especially because the pursuit of wealth has entered the “very bone and marrow of” the times and has produced the extremely harmful effect that people “have grown literally afraid to be poor” (James 1902: 367, 368). To overcome that fear is, for James, a worthy goal in itself. The fact that this pursuit will also change the self in a way that produces new charitable relationships with people is an extraordinary and most significant added benefit. And, of course, for James the possibility of failure, including the ever-present shadow of a death without assurances, is what makes the quest truly heroic.

NOTES 1. On these last two topics, see Yearley 1996, 2004a. So many have contributed to this paper that I will not attempt to list them all, with the exception of Christopher Yang, Justina Torrance, and the editor of this volume who has my special thanks. 2. For an account of these criticisms that focuses on both philosophic and theological traditions see Schneewind 1998; for one that focuses on literary treatments, see Berthoff. To speak of a virtue tradition is, of course, to point to a river with many currents, some of which conflict enough to raise doubts about the adequacy of the metaphor of a single river. Think for instance of Aquinas’s and Hume’s different treatments of specific virtues and of those underlying features that guide their analyses of virtue, much less the different roles in each of religious virtues. In my account, the approaches and formulations of the neo-Aristotelian tradition, often in especially its Christian forms, provide the major reference point, in significant part because they both usually fit well with James—at least the more Aristotelian parts do—and always illuminate him. 3. Even a truly gifted interpreter for modern audiences of traditional sources can stumble; see Pieper’s accounts of hope. 4. Poem #314 [Franklin edition] is the most famous of these poems. The questions that circle around hope may be especially relevant for an American like James. The “optimism” that so many have found characteristic of America is often best thought of as a kind of hope, even when it tilts toward the innocent or jejune. 5. James 1902: 259. References to The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature are noted as James 1902 plus page number; they will appear in the main text if without any accompanying comments. These references are to



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the 1902 edition published by Longmans, Green, and Company; the Penguin edition of 1985 follows that edition’s pagination. The relevant volume in the collected works published by Harvard has a finding list that relates its pages to these pages; see pp. 667–669. I do not attempt here to cite those many texts in James that relate in some fashion to our subject with the single exception of several citations from The Principles of Psychology (noted as PP plus volume and pages numbers) that provide especially useful material. 6. James 1902: 326. The very notion “saint’’ has, of course, a range of meanings especially if it is used as a term of art that covers distinct traditions. Thickets of thorny questions, moreover, surround many of these concepts used here to analyze it; for a more detailed analysis of what I mean by them, see, Yearley 1990: 13–17, 106–111. James’s clearest account of several of them appears, if in a different and earlier context, in PP 1; see, for example, pp. 131, 279–313. 7. Tracy’s analysis deals well with the more theoretical aspects of James’s comparative project; see pp. 27–47. For more on my own approach see Yearley 1998b, 2011. 8. The quoted material comes from VRE 271 while the marks appear on VRE 272–273. Needless to say, they are treated in a more detailed and subtle fashion in what follows. 9. For a comparative treatment of equanimity, see Yearley 2015. James also enumerates as a major practical consequence of asceticism a purity that aims to deepen unspotted spiritual consistency but he only indirectly examines it. Strength of soul, further, is hardly discussed although when he does treat it he gathers equanimity under it. 10. James 1902: 279. James seems to believe that the charity or tenderness present in saints (and by extension in the community) will resolve or modulate virtually all conflicts. We need, however, to ask whether something more than charity is needed, especially for those people who imperfectly mirror the higher reaches of human perfection—something, perhaps, like procedural justice; see Hampshire’s treatment of a closely related problem. 11. The modern ideal of autonomy (as well as the story of its rise) are, of course, complex topics; see Schneewind 1986, 1998 for fine accounts of different kinds. For an especially subtle philosophic account of the related idea of integrity, see Taylor 1985: 108–141. 12. James 1902: 310. On the peculiarities of asceticism, see VRE 296–299. James’s focus on asceticism could be said to reflect an often criticized feature of his account, a concentration on the individual. To my mind, however, James always presupposes that many communal features must inform individuals, although he rarely stresses the point in VRE; see for example, PP 1: 279–313, especially the discussion of this topic in PP 1: 279–302. For places in VRE where he does stress it, see the footnote on VRE: 200 and, further, note pp. 111, 123, and 511. Finally, James’s treatment of prayer is relevant here (sec VRE: 463–477). My sense is that James’s belated consideration of this topic in VRE led him to ideas that often sit uneasily with his earlier, more individualistic, formulations. For a treatment of James’s purported “individualism” by an anthropologist who can hardly be said to underestimate the importance of the communal, see Geertz: 167–186.

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13. For a critical account of James’s attempt to remove these virtues from their original communal and thus role specific context, see Yearley 1998a: 125–128. 14. See James 1902: 354; on corruption by excess see VRE: 339–340. 15. For an account that presses hard, perhaps too hard, on the fragility of James’s account, see Yearley 1998a: 123–125. 16. James 1902: 315, 317; also note the “the ascetic paradox,” VRE: 315 as well as PP 1: 281 on the significance of collecting property. Even more than is usual, with James’s examination here, his “argument,” or even his separable points or observations, are not always clear. The risk is always present, then, that much of what an interpreter says owes more to the interpreter’s ingenuity than to James’s own ideas. I feel reasonably confident, however, that I am entering into the kind of conversation with him that the style and goals of his thinking invite. On the latter point, see the two accounts of reasoning and thus interpretation on which I draw: Taylor 1993a and Hampshire: 83–105. 17. Wittgenstein, 1984: 73e. On the related general idea that much religious thought deals with irresolvable but revelatory (or at least illuminating) and productive tensions, see Yearley 2004b: 144. 18. One can also say that James devises and uses some theoretical procedures for similar reasons. One example are his ideas about serial analysis, see VRE: 382; also note the account of the subjective and objective, VRE: 498–502. On the related notion of a spectrum analysis, see Yearley 1990: 17–23, 67–72, 80–83, 124–129. 19. See Wittgenstein 1972: 57–59 for remarks that point in this direction. Wittgenstein’s views on religion often do not closely resemble James’s, but there are some remarkable similarities. Relevant to the similarities discussed here is my analysis of cases where “spiritual regret” is inappropriate; see Yearley 2016. 20. The notion of language games originates, of course, with Wittgenstein and has been used (and misused) in a number of different contexts. For an austere and philosophically sophisticated account of the general notion, see Kenny 2006: 126–140. For a powerful application of it to religious materials—including predications about the sacred and the relationship to poetic diction—see the essays in Kenny 2004. 21. A good example is Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between Christian patience and ordinary patience, see Yearley 1990: 136–141. 22. For developments of these ideas, see Yearley 2010. 23. See Yearley 1998a: 113–114 for a fuller discussion of these two points. 24. James 1902: 323–324. A robust version of the good person criterion operates here and in other places in James, for example in VRE: 325; see Yearley 1993b: 238–243 for a discussion of that criterion. Also note Turner’s argument (pp. 231–271) that “communitas” is what people really seek when they embrace voluntary poverty. 25. James 1902: 324. The last phrase quoted above occurs in a passage from Chapman that James uses to illustrate his ideas. See G. Taylor 2006 for a subtle philosophical account that shares James’s shift of focus, but also identifies significant problems with the idea that one ought to refuse to enjoy what is not shared. 26. James never treats in a detailed or precise fashion the more general question at hand here: how, or if, virtues are either connected or unified. James’s more abstract formulations, at times, sound as if he thinks distinct virtues are different permutations of the “same” virtue. His examples and more nuanced accounts make it clear,



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however, that he holds only to the idea that virtues are connected, even if charity is, perhaps, an architectonic virtue. James is not then left with the many severe difficulties that beset any strong version of the idea that virtues are unified. (For a fuller, more technical discussion, see Yearley 1998a: 120–121.) This relates to another methodological problem he does not really address: the set of complicated issues that arise when considering how ideas about virtue relate to different kinds of theories. On this subject, see Yearley 1990, especially pp. 175–182 and the exchange between myself (Yearley 1993a: 386–388) and Nussbaum: 362–365. 27. See Yearley 2014 for a treatment of this Confucian vision. 28. The relative value for James of the sick-souled and the healthy-minded is, of course, a contested interpretative issue and it relates to other large issues such as the meaning of conversion. To support my interpretation, I will just note here several especially important texts. At VRE: 163 James makes three claims about the superiority of the sick­souled (also note the cruder exposition of this point on pp. 362–363). Pages 136, 137, and 166–167 fill out that account. The footnote on page 488 brings the two states closer together, at least when certain criteria are employed. 29. For a fuller discussion of how horizons operate in situations like these, see Yearley 1990: 132–134. Especially important is the idea that a horizon will affect a person’s ability both in dramatic situations and in ordinary ones. Indeed, the effect will often be especially pronounced when less is at stake—and therefore little conscious reflection occurs—than when more is at stake. 30. Three possible approaches to these substantial problems are available and each might combine with one of the others. First, James could be said to hold to a version of the relationship between injunctions and virtues that draws on what Donagan calls a “rationalist moral theory,” but connect it with an account of heroic virtues (see Yearley 1990: 49–51). Second, although saintliness in James seems, at least at times, to have fewer gradations than does virtue, to be more of an “all or nothing” category, we might think of the ways in which traditional Christian thinkers often argued that grace may imperfectly form “natural” features of the self, and speculate that James may also have an idea like that in mind. (See Yearley 1990: 30.) Finally, the idea of semblances of virtue could elucidate one kind of hierarchy that James would have found congenial. 31. For a more extensive treatment of this distinction see Yearley 1990: 20–23 and Yearley 1998a: 128–131; my analysis draws on Irwin’s treatment. If the distinction is seen as simply a descriptive one, any expressive motivation is acceptable. In both traditional accounts and James’s, however, evaluative elements are always prominent; see Yearley 1990: 129–143, 154–168. Note that James’s ideas about heroism also show his ambivalence about the affirmation of the importance of ordinary life that Taylor (2002) and others identify as arising in the Reformation and becoming an important aspect of modern consciousness. 32. See Yearley 2003 for a development of these last ideas in a tradition that may appear to be even more inhospitable to the idea of religious virtues than anything found in James. 33. Heroism’s character, role, and relationship to democratic ideas were prominent issues in the America of James’s period as Cotkin discusses. Indeed, one could argue the tension between egalitarian and perfectionist ideals that Cavell sees as so crucial

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to American ethical thought revolves around an understanding of the heroic.For another treatment of heroic virtue in the America of roughly James’s time, see Yearley 1996. That piece serves in many ways as a companion to this dimension of the current account. Melville operates, of course, in a different genre than does James, but both share the idea that normal kinds of theoretical analysis are, in this area, unable to present well what needs to be presented. Most important, the two figures draw very different conclusions, and those differences illuminate James, Melville, and much about fundamental options in America. 34. See Milder for an especially astute general account of the ways in which “Romanticism” and reactions to it informed nineteenth-century intellectual life; Melville rather than James is the book’s central focus but the relevance to James is clear. Also note Richardson’s detailed account of the differing contexts in which James operated. 35. James’s most complete account of dispositions appears in PP 1: 131; 279– 313. For a treatment of distinctions among dispositions, see Yearley 1990: 13–17, 106–111.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anthony. 2006. Wittgenstein. (Revised Edition) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Basil Wiley [op 1973]. Berthoff, Warner. 1986. Literature and the Continuances of Virtue. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 1988. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cotkin, George. 1990. “The Discourse of Heroism.” In William James, Public Philosopher. pp. 95–122. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 2000. “The Pinch of Destiny: Religion as Experience, Meaning, Identity, Power.” In Available Light, Anthropological Reflections on Philosophic Topics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hampshire, Stuart. 1989. Innocence and Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Irwin, Terence. 1977. Plato’s Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. James, William. 1981. The Principles of Psychology. 3 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [First published 1890]. James. 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [First published 1902]. James. 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Penguin Books. [First published 1902]. Kenny, Anthony. 2004. The Unknown God. New York: Continuum. Milder, Robert. 2006. Exiled Royalties. Melville and the Life We Imagine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1993. “Comparing Virtues.” Book Discussion: Mencius and Aquinas by Lee H. Yearley. Journal of Religious Ethics 21 (2): 345–367.



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Pieper, Joseph. 1997. Faith, Hope, Love. Translated by R and C. Winston and Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. [o.p. 1982]. Richardson, Robert. 2006. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Schneewind, Jerome. 1986. “The Use of Autonomy in Ethical Theory.” In Reconstructing Individualism, Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought. Edited by T. Heller, M. Sosna, and D. Wellbery. 64–75. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Schneewind. 1998. The Invention of Autonomy. A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1993. “Explanation and Practical Reason.” In The Quality of Life. Edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. 208–231. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor. 2002. Varieties of Religion Today, William James Revisited. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Gabriele. 1985. Pride, Shame and Guilt. Emotions of Self-Assessment. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor. 2006. Deadly Vices. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tracy, David. 1990. Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-Religious Dialogue. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans. Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1972. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by C Barrett. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wittgenstein. 1984. Culture and Value. Edited by G. H. Von Wright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yearley, Lee H. 1990. Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage. Albany: State University of New York Press. (Chinese translation, 2011: Mengzi yu Akuina: meide lilun yu yonggan gainian, trans. S. Zhonglian, Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.) Yearly. 1993a. “The Author Replies.” Book Discussion: Mencius and Aquinas by Lee H. Yearley. Journal of Religious Ethics 21 (2): 385–395. Yearly. l993b. “Conflicts among Ideals of Human Flourishing.” In Prospects for a Common Morality. Edited by G. Outka and J. J. Reeder. 233–253. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yearly. 1996. “Heroic Virtue in America: Aristotle, Aquinas, and Melville’s Billy Budd.” In The Greeks and Us: Essays in Honor of Arthur W. H. Adkins. Edited by R. B. Louden and P. Schollmeier. 66–92. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yearly. 1998a. “The Ascetic Grounds for Goodness: William James’ Case for the Virtue of Voluntary Poverty,” Journal of Religious Ethics. 26 (1): 105–135. Yearly. 1998b. “Selves, Virtues, Odd Genres, and Alien Guides: An Approach to Religious Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics. 25 (3), 25th Anniversary Supplement: 127–155. Yearly. 2003. “Virtues and Religious Virtues in the Confucian Tradition.” in Confucian Spirituality, vol. 1. Tu Weiming and E. Tucker, eds. (vol. 11A of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest.) New York: The Crossroads Publishing Co. 2003. pp. 134–162.

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Yearly. 2004a. “Genre and the Attempt to Render Pride: Dante and Aquinas,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 72 (2): 313–339. Yearly. 2004b. “Presentation and Persuasion in the Classical Confucian Tradition.” in Confucianism in Dialogue Today: The Modern West, Christianity, and Judaism. Liu Shu-Hsien, J. Berthrong, and L. Swidler, eds. Philadelphia: The Ecumenical Press. pp. 137–152. Yearly. 2010. “Ethics of Bewilderment,” Journal of Religious Ethics. 38 (3): 439–463. Yearly. 2011. “Virtue Ethics in Ancient China: Light Shed and Shadows Cast.” in How should one live? Comparing Ethics in Ancient China and Greco-Roman Antiquity. R. King, D Schilling, eds. Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag. pp. 121–151. Yearly. 2014. “Ritualization as Humanization.” in Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi. T. C. Kline III and J. Tiwald, eds. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 81–106. Yearly. 2015. “The Role and Pursuit of the Virtue of Equanimity in Ancient China and Greece.” in The Good life and Conceptions of Life in Early China and GrecoRoman Antiquity. R. King, ed., Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag. pp. 363–386. Yearly. 2016. “New Religious Virtues.” in Comparative Religious Ethics. Charles Matthews, Matthew Puffer, Mark Storsiee, eds. Abington, England: Routledge, 2016. [The most recent and complete reprinting of a piece originally given as the University Lecture in Religion at Arizona State University and distributed to members of the AAR].

Part VII

MORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF JAMES’S PLURALISM AND PRAGMATISM

Chapter 17

Is James an Existentialist? Frederick J. Ruf

The question of William James and existentialism might not seem like a question at all. He is so firmly a pragmatist in our current thinking and existentialism is so other in its concerns and its attitude, that the simple paring of them in a sentence strikes our eyes now as a non sequitur. We might as well ask about James and Thomism or James and the picaresque novel. Come to think of it, the second of those seems like a better bet than existentialism. But in 1958, William Barrett claimed that James was an existentialist and insisted that he was better considered so than as a pragmatist—and Barrett made those claims in a book, Irrational Man, that was very widely read in the decade or two after it appeared. If we remember that judgment at all, we probably consider it as one of the greater mistakes of a man we seldom read today, anyway, a misreading by an early existentialist enthusiast. But Barrett’s assessment has long lodged in my mind, an irritant and, perhaps, a stimulant, and if we look at Barrett’s reasons we might draw the line more precisely between existentialism and pragmatism and, above all, perceive James more clearly. Barrett’s embrace of existentialism is enthusiastic, and he writes largely in the mode he espouses, alarmed at a contemporary vacuity, concerned for his readers’ well-being, and passionately offering a remedy for desperation. Philosophy is not a matter of calmly arriving at answers, despite the dominance of the analytic tradition at the time he was writing, but sharply provoking an encounter with “the roots of our own existence” (Barrett 1962: 3). What draws Barrett to James are principally his personalism, his suffering, and his emphasis on action. Barrett begins his book with an indictment of philosophy for its bloodless professionalism, its “academic” character. Bertrand Russell and Rudolph Carnap are minding the store when the world is on fire. Thank God for existentialism. Instead of logical positivism what was needed 287

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were people who realized that they had a personal stake in their lives and felt the desperate urgency not just to think but to do. From Pragmatism Barrett takes “concreteness and adequacy” as terms for the origins and ends of philosophy, the need to see philosophy as resulting from concrete lives (from “men of flesh and blood”) and as addressing human lives in their “fullness,” not simply their cognitive function. To Barrett, the role of the professor had become as quiescent as it was for Kierkegaard who considered “quiet living on in perfect accommodation what makes an assistant professor so odious” (Marshall 2013: vi). To be a philosopher had sadly become just another job from which one could make a living, and the job requirement was to be sober and sensible and highly specialized. Science was the model for philosophy and the careful decipherment of the precise nature of the universe was a task for precise, dispassionate, rational work. What was lacking, in Barrett’s view, was the passion of a Socrates or Plato, proposing the “total vision of man and the cosmos in the light of which the individual’s whole life was to be lived” (Barrett 1962: 5). It was scope and urgency that Barrett saw as missing among philosophers, the desperate need to address desperate questions of existence—and not just doing some logic problems from nine to five. We can do far worse than using Tillich’s The Courage to Be as a handbook on existentialism, and the theologian has a similar indictment of the detached thinking of his time, as well as similar praise for total personal involvement. “The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude,” Tillich writes. He admits that abstraction from the world has a certain practical value, but “a self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing” (Tillich 1952: 123–124). The critique of rationality as a dispassionate tool and the urgent advocacy of the involvement of the “whole” self in one’s fate are what Barrett is happy to see in James. When James criticizes rationalism in Pragmatism, it’s not logical positivism that’s his target but Hegelianism and yet its highly intellectualized abstractions are similarly detached both from other human aspects and from the world. Those rational abstractions result in the “block universe” that James so often mocked (James 1977: 39). As a result, rationalism is a “classic sanctuary . . . a refuge” and a lover of closed systems (James 1975: 18, 20). James’s language is vivid and telling. The cleanliness and remoteness of rationalism, its safety and security are due to the wall between it and the rest of existence, but Tillich’s “existential attitude” of involvement is not possible from within a wall. What James means by rationalism is not just those who write as Josiah Royce or Hegel did, seeking the system that coolly and dispassionately will encompass all, but those who rely solely on argumentation as though the self



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were a treatise, to be addressed in purely reasoned terms and persuaded by reasoned terms. For “concreteness and adequacy” and a self that is existentially “involved” are not just a better set of terms, that is, terms that are more reasonable and convincing intellectually. Concreteness is a different way to be and to write for James, and the two cannot be separated. Look at how he describes concrete experience: “The world of concrete personal experiences . . . is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed.” The universe of “concrete facts [has] awful bewilderments . . . surprises and cruelties [and] wildness” (James, 1975: 17–18). I want to point out not just what James is saying but how he is saying it. James’s terms do something quite different to his readers (or people in his lectures) than to persuade their rationality. He provides us with an experience that is more like poetry than the treatise. We are forced not just to consider and think but to experience what “tangled, muddy, painful, and perplexed” mean. He gives us images not precise concepts. “Muddy” isn’t an argument it’s the suck of the boot and wet socks, and “perplexed” is head scratching and dismay. That is concreteness for James, the sensory and affective, as well as the cognitive. Barrett says that James “affected a popular jauntiness of expression” and says we shouldn’t be put off by it for there is “intellectual power” lying behind it (Barrett 1978: 256). But I’d say that what is so good about James and what might connect him to existentialists is different than intellectual power. It’s experiential power, emotional, and sensory power. The core of that existential connection isn’t just something James puts on and could as well do without. Barrett doesn’t quite recognize the nature or value of James’s “vernacular,” but it’s very important that we do (Barrett 1978: 256). James isn’t a rationalist though he uses his intellect. He embeds his rationality in a much larger experiential world, a world of a very particular kind. Famously Louis Mackey argues that Kierkegaard is a “kind of poet” and disagrees strenuously with those who treat him “as though he were a straightforward philosophical or theological writer” (Mackey 1972: x). Many of us have done the same with James, treating him as though he were a “straightforward philosopher,” and Barrett’s attention to “concreteness and adequacy” as a link between James and the existentialists might yet help steer us back. Let me say that more strongly: it ought to steer us back. I claimed at the start of this essay that paying attention to Barrett’s claim that James was an existentialist might help us see James more clearly and here is the first benefit: we need to see James as a poet, as a literary figure essentially and not just coincidentally. He is not a philosopher as most of us usually think of that word. From this point of view, what makes Sartre an existentialist is more Nausea than Being and Nothingness, more No Exit than Existentialism as Humanism (and, indeed, Sartre’s literary output is much larger than his philosophical). Sartre’s 1938 novel is shot through with ideas but they’re interwoven with

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story and character and setting and a deeply disturbing but valuable psychological breakdown. Existence really does precede essence in Nausea so that the philosophical argument has about the same proportion in the book as the writing down of philosophy might have had for Sartre himself (who once said that he thought a great deal more about sex than he did about philosophy). It’s one thing to argue that existence precedes essence but an entirely different thing to plunge argument into existence, like the dissociated but fascinating thoughts of a man about time as he leans his head against a window, watching an old woman “stump further and further away” on a Friday afternoon (Sartre 1964: 30–31). Moreover, the existence that Nausea depicts has some striking affinities with James’s for being “multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed,” as well as for its “bewilderments . . . surprises, cruelties, [and] wildness.” When Roquentin is bothered by his own hands and how they touch objects around him, we might see something like “the contradictions of real life” that James describes. “A little while ago, just as I was coming into the room, I stopped short because I felt in my hand a cold object which held my attention through a sort of personality. I opened my hand, looked: I was simply holding the door-knob” (Sartre 1964: 4). Even worse is when the hand of the Self-Taught Man feels to Roquentin like “a fat white worm” (Sartre 1964: 4). That seems bewildered and painful. And that’s the suffering that makes James seem so existential to Barrett. Barrett brings up the passage in James that might be the one that attracts the most attention in his entire corpus, the “French Correspondent” (or “panic fear”) passage from The Varieties of Religious Experience (James 1985). I think we might all remember when someone’s commentary or a professor first turned the key for us and we realized that the horrifying vision of potential mental and emotional catatonia was not just someone else’s but James’s very own. Amiable and charmingly quirky William was, we realized, a “detraque of the deepest dye,” as unstable, in his own way, as George Fox, featured in The Varieties for roaming through muddy streets shouting, “Woe to the bloody city of Litchfield!” (James 1985: 16). This is pathology. An emotional trapdoor opens beneath our feet when we see the experience as James’s own, and afterwards reading the Varieties for argument is no longer sufficient. To Barrett, it’s evidence that James suffered and “philosophized in a personal and emotional mode” (Barrett 1978: 256). Conceptions of freedom and determinism weren’t just abstractions or issues for the classroom, but desperate matters for James. We’re stuck in our lives “up to our own necks,” as Barrett vividly puts it (Barrett 1978: 266). The patient in the asylum with greenish skin, sitting motionless on a shelf like a statue and James’s nightmarish insight, “That shape am I, I felt, potentially”—that could easily be a passage in Nausea, Barrett is suggesting (James 1985: 134–135).1



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So, James, like the existentialists, writes in an experiential manner because existence comes first and that existence is personal and concrete. And, again like the existentialists, James’s life chokes him with suffering of a particularly personal and psychological kind. But is James’s experiential suffering really existential? Could the “French Correspondent” passage really be in Nausea? James argues that our philosophical positions are matters of temperament, and that we need to see ideas in the context of the person. “Who touches this book touches a man,” James quotes Whitman, and he suggests that “the books of all the great philosophers are like so many men” (James 1975: 24). I wonder if the reference to Whitman doesn’t point us in a better direction than the existentialists for they weren’t the first to insist on the context of a life. The English and American Romantics did, as well. I’m thinking of Coleridge who rejected detached rationality when he said of Christianity, “it’s not a theory or a speculation but a life . . . try it” (Coleridge 1840: 201). He insisted on the mixture of ideas and life extensively in his own Biographia Literaria, a great unruly “heap” that contains German idealism, literary criticism, accounts of his childhood and education, disputes with Wordsworth, poetry, anecdotes, advice on reading, and much more. The Romantic is the era of biography, of the lives of Jesus. It’s Balzac and Byron, Goethe and Carlyle, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. But the best affinity with James might be the James family friend and outsized American who blends life, philosophy, religion, and the poetic: Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the first place, Emerson (like Coleridge, Carlyle, and Goethe) was not only a kind of poet, he was a poet, as well as a very serious thinker, yet, like Kierkegaard, not a “straightforward philosopher.” His reasoning was done in a highly literary manner—which is why Emerson became the sole possession of English departments for so many decades and, something like James, an embarrassment to generations of philosophical and theological thinkers. In addition, like James, his language wasn’t just a manner, behind which was the real value, “serious intellectual power.” His language was his power by being different from mere argument. The Divinity School address is not a treatise. Emerson was not invited back to Harvard Divinity School for so many years because of the sensory power of his words. Consider this: “The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary” (Emerson 1971a: 79). It’s likely that few if any academic journals in philosophy or religion today would accept those sentences, and perhaps not this very book. As was said of James, the reasoning is wooly, whereas our preference is to sheer the wool. Really, it’s not even the flesh under the wool that we’re interested in. Rather we want to abstract from anything tactile or olfactory to get to “lambness.” But, as

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with James’s use of muddy and perplexed, “charm and command” (not to mention “myrrh and storax”!) are words that trigger multisensory experiences and that’s what gives them their power and effect. Emerson, like James (and Kierkegaard), is a poetic thinker and not just a thinker who writes poetically. But is there suffering in Emerson? If I argue that James has affinities with Romanticism that are similar to those Barrett sees in existentialism, it can’t just be that he’s literary (a kind of poet), but that he presents us with a concrete existence that involves desperation. For Barrett, “we’re up to our necks” in life, as Roquentin was in Nausea. Did Emerson suffer anguish? Was he “up to his neck” in life? Ordinarily we might think that Emerson was not. He’s the person who claimed that “even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house,” a view so distanced from the anguish of death as to be anti-existential (Emerson 1971c: 77). We might think of Henry James Senior’s view of Emerson as someone always with the poise and pose “to appear as a fisherman with his fish upon the hook” (Perry 1935: 97). Having the universe at the end of your line and never losing that poise—that seems anti-existential, too. Is it possible that James takes his literary manner and his holistic blending of thought and autobiography from the Romantics, but the sine qua non of existentialism, angst, makes James “a kind of Sartre” rather than a kind of Romantic? Is there suffering in Emerson that’s at all like the “French Correspondent” passage? As it happens, Emerson’s essay “Experience” is very like the anguished suffering that we see in James. In fact, we might read it as existential, though we’d be wrong. The essay was written after Emerson’s five-year-old son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever, and it’s as stunning a confession of pain as James’s panic fear. Emerson is so utterly distressed that he denies his pain, “The only thing that grief has taught me is how shallow it is,” and yet his very insistence puts the lie to his pretense and intensifies our impression of his suffering (Emerson 1971b: 29). “[Grief], like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers” (Emerson 1971b: 29). Oh, Emerson, would you really pay that price? You’d sacrifice Waldo for insight?! His anguish is so powerful that it blinds him in a Kubler-Ross-like denial and blinds us with the intensity of his grief. We might, again, be reminded of Tillich whose “existential point of view” is that we are finite and will die and that the awareness of that nonbeing is unbearable for even a moment, and so it’s quickly transformed something more bearable, through which the “sting” is nonetheless felt (Tillich 1952: 36–39). That’s the existential view, and perhaps it’s in both James’s panic fear and Emerson’s grief that he flees from in a panic. And all of us would recognize the situation into which Emerson is plunged after Waldo’s death as very like the existential. He opens “Experience” with



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a nightmare of disorientation that seems as though it must be from Kafka. “Where do we find ourselves?” he asks. “In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight” (Emerson 1971b: 27). The Emerson who could simply say in the Divinity School address, “I ought” and become “illimitable” in the “divine and deifying” religious sentiment is now utterly lost. He knew where he was in the entire universe, “an inlet into the deeps of Reason,” and now he is just “a wart” (Emerson 1971a: 79, 83). So, is Emerson also existential? Do Emerson and James and Sartre exist in a continuous chain, an existential perennial philosophy? Absolutely not, and Emerson’s response to his nightmare has far greater affinities with James than either has with Sartre. Emerson understands his anguished predicament, and that’s enough to make him Romantic instead of existential. He’s larger than it is and can put it into perspective. It’s not purely a conceptual comprehension. Rather he largely contains human anguish within his experiencing. He knows there are “lords of life”—“Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness”—and while he “cannot give their order” or “claim any completeness” he’s done a very complete job in knowing their number and their names (Emerson 1971b: 47). He has a lot of poise by the end of the essay, and feels no anxiety (the sine qua non of existentialism for Tillich). Emerson’s fishing line has hooked the universe again, and he’s certainly not Kafka or Sartre. What of James? Is his view of suffering also comprehensive? Can suffering be contained? Cornel West presents the basic stability of James’s political, social, and economic world, and his genial efforts toward reconciliation with the past and with past authorities. He wants to “lessen the shock of the new for the entrenched middle class” and “preclude the undermining of the status quo,” West says (West 1989: 55, 57). Personally, as well as socially, as we can see in Jamesian pragmatism, he’s invested in what can work, in what bears fruits rather than in intensifying what fails or facing up to the unbearable dimensions of evil of a social or personal kind. James criticizes rationalists and monists for diminishing real human suffering, as we’ve seen. Pragmatism contains the wrenching story of a John Corcoran who is unemployed and whose family is not only without food but evicted from their home. Despondent, John Corcoran drinks carbolic acid and dies. James juxtaposes this vivid, concrete story with Josiah Royce’s words, “The very presence of ill in the temporal order is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order” (James 1975: 21). James pungently and perhaps angrily makes the rationalist’s conclusion clear: “these slain men make the universe richer” (James 1975: 21). No, insists James. We need to feel pain and not simply think about it.

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And yet there is something distant about James, too, and it makes him more like Emerson than the existentialists. Like Emerson, he has poise, he’s optimistic, and he’s not anxious—and I would hasten to point out that those are personal attributes and not simply intellectual proposals. They are, as he says, “ways of fronting life” (James, 1920: 122). He doesn’t simply understand conceptually. As Tillich sees it, existentialism requires courage in the full anxious awareness of one’s finitude to the point of despair, courageously existing in spite of the full power of despair.2 James, similar to Emerson, does not make the courageous confrontation with anxiety the center of his life. He transforms anxiety into life and energy. For example, in the first chapter of the Varieties when James remarkably presents the most significant religious figures as those who suffer from mental illness, he evaluates them within a larger frame that diminishes the anguish of their suffering. [Religious] leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. . . . Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trance, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classified as pathological. (James 1985: 15)

And yet, such mental instability isn’t the last word, as it is with Roquentin in Nausea. There isn’t simply the stunning and anxiety-provoking power of pathology. James rejects that view, calling it “medical materialism.” Instead he asks us to consider what the significance is of those with mental illness. We don’t evaluate them by their disease and their suffering but by how their words appeal to us, fit with our other beliefs, and are useful for our lives (James 1985: 21–23). The acuteness of the depression or despair is contained in the amount of life that results: “life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis” what matters most (James 1985: 399).3 We would never find that affirmation of life in an existentialist.4 James triumphs over his own sense of paralysis and depression, discovering the will, and finding the whole of a life (in his writings, teachings, and family) to subsume his bouts of depression. James in his writings is remarkably free of anxiety and does not show the Tillichian courage that insists on the full strength of despair. I’m reminded of Freud’s admiration of James for his lack of anxiety during a bout of angina when heart disease later killed him. I stated at the start that Barrett’s description of William James as an existentialist was an irritant and a stimulant. I might add now at the end that Barrett’s claim is a very valuable irritant. I think that the worst thing we can do to James is to treat him as a thinker, abstracting his ideas from the



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concreteness of both his language and his life, including his suffering. James is adamant that we shouldn’t exclude “the noise of facts,” by which he doesn’t just mean a collection of examples but the intrusion of the sensory, the experiential, and the inconclusive into our writing, and yet we commonly do exclude that noise (James 1975: 21). Our writing longs for conclusions, for sharp edges and clear distinctions, and yet James says that the pragmatic method requires that we look at each word, to put it in the stream of our personal experiencing, and to see it not as a solution but as a “program for more work” (James 1975: 28). We need life and style in our writing if we’re to be Jamesian for then we’ll have fewer neat conclusions and—fortunately!— more work to do. Yes, the inclusion of life and style are more Romantic than existential, but the urgency of their inclusion certainly is existential.

NOTES 1. Italics in original. 2. See Tillich, chapter 5. 3. James quotes James Henry Leuba, but it’s a sentiment with which he strongly agrees. 4. Though we do in Tillich.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barrett, William. 1978. The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Age. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. 256. Barrett, William. 1962. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books. 3, 5. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1840. Aids to Reflection with a Preliminary Essay by James Marsh, D.D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 201. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1971a. The Divinity School Address in Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. I, ed. by Robert E. Spille and Alfred R. Ferguson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 79, 83. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1971b. “Experience,” in Collected Works, Vol. III. 27, 29, 47. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1971c. “Spiritual Laws,” in Collected Works, Vol. II. 77. James, Henry, Jr., ed. 1920. The Letters of William James. Vol. II. New York: Longman, 1920. 122. James, William, 1977. A Pluralistic Universe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. 39. James, William. 1975. Pragmatism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. 17–18, 18, 20, 21, 24.

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James, William. 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. 15, 16, 21–23, 134–35, 399. Mackey, Louis. 1972. Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. x. Marshall, Ronald F. 2013. Kierkegaard for the Church: Essays and Sermons. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock. vi. Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James. Boston: Little Brown, 1935. 97. Sartre, Jean Paul. 1964. Nausea, trans. by Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions, 1964. 4, 30–31. Tillich, Paul. 1952. The Courage To Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952. 36–39, 123–24. West, Cornel. 1989. The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. 55, 57.

Chapter 18

The Cries of the Wounded in Pragmatism The Problem of Evil and James’s Pragmatic Method as an Ethical Grounding of Metaphysics Sami Pihlström

William James’s Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) is rather minimalistic when it comes to explicit discussions of ethics or moral theories. The book is most famous—and in fact rather notorious— for its defense of what has become known, and has often been ridiculed, as the “pragmatist theory of truth,” according to which truth is more or less coextensive, or even conceptually reducible to, usefulness or satisfactoriness. However, far from subscribing to such an extremely implausible theory of truth (which I will not discuss here in any detail), Pragmatism is also one of those writings by James that upon a closer reading turn out to contain substantial ethical insights and reflections, though not explicitly formulated moral theories or principles. Those insights and reflections are developed in tandem with James’s treatment of religion and metaphysics. Therefore, in order to understand the ethical picture James defends in Pragmatism (and, by extension, elsewhere in his oeuvre), one also needs to pay attention to the religious and metaphysical aspects of his work. This chapter examines the way in which James’s “pragmatic method,” as articulated in Pragmatism, is reinterpretable as a philosophical method seeking to ground metaphysical inquiry in ethical reflection and evaluation. James introduces the pragmatic method—originally formulated by Charles S. Peirce in the 1870s1—in Lecture II by suggesting that when seeking to determine the meaning of our “ideas” (e.g., concepts, conceptions, beliefs, theories, and worldviews), we should look into the possible (conceivable) practical effects they and/or their objects might have in human experience and habits of action. (Note, however, that James is, again notoriously, relatively unclear 297

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here, because he is not as careful as Peirce to distinguish the practical effects of ideas from the practical effects of the objects of those ideas.) In Lectures III and IV, he illustrates this method by applying it to some metaphysical problems, including theism versus materialism (atheism), the concept of substance, freedom, as well as monism versus pluralism. On my reading (which I won’t be able to substantiate here), in all these cases, the pragmatic method is a method of assessing the rival views (“ideas”) from an ethical perspective. But what does it mean, for James, to evaluate our ideas from an ethical perspective? The pragmatic method remains hopelessly vague if it simply encourages us to look for the practical meaning of metaphysical (and religious/theological) views in their ethical impact, unless we have some idea about how to go on investigating that impact.2 Here, I believe, we should take the further step of interpreting the pragmatic method as a method of taking seriously the “cries of the wounded” (a phrase that does not occur in Pragmatism)3 in relation to the various metaphysical views or theories that could be proposed regarding these matters at issue. It is a method that looks into the possible futures of the world in which we live, focusing on what the different metaphysical views “promise” and on whether they can function as philosophies of hope, especially from the point of view of the “wounded,” the sufferers or the victims of evil. This is a profoundly ethical undertaking. Far from maintaining that our metaphysical problems ought to be solved first—or that we could simply get rid of them—in order to turn to ethical problems later, James is suggesting that we should begin our metaphysical inquiries from the ethical examination of the practical relevance of the rival metaphysical ideas that have been or can be proposed, and that this ethical examination can only take place if we focus on how “the wounded” would respond to this or that world picture being true. This discussion of what I call the ethical grounds of metaphysics (and, more generally, the metaphysics-ethics entanglement) in Pragmatism ought to be placed in a context of a more generally ethically oriented reflection on issues of fundamental human importance, especially evil and death. As both the opening and the closing of Pragmatism indicate, James is deeply conscious of the significance of the problem of evil, and he is strongly opposed to any philosophical and theological attempts (e.g., theodicies) to explain evil away or to justify its existence. This is another example of Jamesian pragmatist metaphysics ultimately grounded in ethics. The metaphysical controversy between monism and pluralism, in particular, invokes the problem of evil. James offers an ethical argument against monism and in favor of pluralism by pointing out that the former, unlike the latter, leads to an irresolvable theodicy problem. Moreover, the problem of evil is not merely an example by means of which we may illustrate the Jamesian pragmatic method. Much more importantly,



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it offers a frame for the entire project of Pragmatism (and for James’s pragmatism more generally). The problem of evil provides an ethical motivation for exploring, pragmatically, metaphysical issues that ultimately need to be linked with ethics. This exploration takes place in a world in which theodicies are no longer possible (if they ever were). No theodicist consolation is an option, James argues, for an ethically serious thinker. What we may call Jamesian antitheodicism is therefore a crucial element of his pragmatic method (framed by the problem of evil). Pragmatism as a whole, then, is a profoundly ethical work—or so I will argue. It does not contain any theory of ethics, and arguably James is opposed to the very idea of a single correct ethical theory.4 But it does maintain that philosophical issues, whenever they are pragmatically investigated, can only be adequately explored in an irreducibly ethical context. For James, unlike the scientifically (and politically) progressivist meliorist pragmatist John Dewey (and most other pragmatists), ethics is primarily an existential matter inseparably tied up with death, evil, and our general human finitude and vulnerability— and, therefore, with religious and metaphysical concerns about the ultimate nature of reality. In this respect, James is significantly closer to thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Jean-Paul Sartre than to his fellow pragmatists like Dewey (or even Peirce). Ethics in general, and evil in particular—as a frame of ethics, as urging us into adopting the moral perspective, as “hurting us into morality,” to borrow a phrase from Avishai Margalit (2002)—is a compelling issue for the “sick soul” rather than the “healthyminded” (even though this terminology, again, is not used in Pragmatism).5 In other words, to adopt a truly ethical attitude to the cries of the wounded is to embrace a fundamentally melancholic view of the world. The problem of evil, I will argue, emerges as a “transcendental” frame, a transcultural (albeit not therefore culturally neutral or non-cultural but, rather, always inevitably culturally (re)interpreted) condition making ethical seriousness possible. I will proceed by first examining the entanglement of ethics and metaphysics in James’s account of the pragmatic method (section 1). I will then further discuss James’s views on evil and illuminate my claim about the problem of evil as the “frame” of Pragmatism (section 2). The concluding section 3 will complete the argument with some brief reflections on the Jamesian concept of the “sick soul.” THE PRAGMATIC METHOD: WHAT ARE “PRACTICAL EFFECTS”? James famously argued that in every genuine metaphysical dispute, some practical issue is, however remotely, involved. If there is no such issue

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involved, then the dispute is empty. Jamesian pragmatism is thus both influenced by and in contrast with the Kantian (somewhat proto-pragmatist) idea of the “primacy of practical reason” in relation to theoretical reason. For Kant, the metaphysical ideas of God, freedom, and immortality are only vindicated by the practical, instead of theoretical, use of reason. The Jamesian pragmatist, however, goes beyond Kant in emphasizing not simply the “primacy” of ethics to metaphysics but their profound inseparability or entanglement. Pragmatist inquiries into metaphysical topics, such as James’s, lead to the radical claim that metaphysics might not, in the last analysis, even be possible without a relation to ethics: pragmatically analyzed, we cannot arrive at any understanding of reality as we humans, being ourselves part of that reality, experience it, without paying due attention to the way in which moral valuations and ethical commitments are constitutive of that reality by being ineliminably involved in any engagement with reality possible for us.6 Ethics, then, plays a “transcendental” role constitutive of any metaphysical inquiry we may engage in. More specifically, ethics seems to function as a ground for evaluating rival metaphysical hypotheses and for determining their pragmatic core meaning. The (conceivable) practical results the pragmatist metaphysician should look for are, primarily, ethical. Examples of such ethical evaluation of metaphysical matters can be found in the Jamesian pragmatic search for a critical middle path between implausible metaphysical extremes, as discussed in the third lecture of Pragmatism, “Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered.” The topics James there (and in the fourth lecture in which the analysis continues) considers include debates over substance, determinism versus freedom, materialism versus theism, monism versus pluralism, and (somewhat indirectly) realism versus nominalism. Some of these metaphysical examples are quite explicitly ethical. Such are, for instance, the dispute between determinism and free will, as well as the one between materialism and theism, which the philosopher employing James’s pragmatic method examines from the point of view of what the rival metaphysical theories of the world “promise”: how does, for instance, the conceivable future of the world change if theism, instead of materialism (atheism), is true, or vice versa? In Lecture III of Pragmatism, James argues, among other things, that theism, unlike materialism, is a philosophy of “hope,” because it promises us a world in which morality could make a difference. Let us briefly examine the dispute between materialism (or atheism) and spiritualism (or theism) (see James 1907: 48–56). When the pragmatic method is applied to this problem, the problem of whether the world is “guided” by its “lower” or “higher” elements (James 1907: 49), it will not be treated in a “stagnant intellectualist fashion” but dynamically, with an eye to the future of the world: “What do we mean by matter? What practical difference can it



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make now that the world should be run by matter or by spirit?” Here, James crucially notes: “It makes not a single jot of difference so far as the past of the world goes, whether we deem it to have been the work of matter or whether we think a divine spirit was its author” (James 1907: 50). Accordingly, the mistake of both extremes, traditional atheistic materialism and traditional theism, is the assumption that the world is “finished,” complete as it is. The dispute is “purely verbal,” if there is no future, no experiences to expect (James 1907: 51). “[I]f no future detail of experience is to be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism becomes quite idle and insignificant. Matter and God in that event mean exactly the same thing—the power, namely, neither more nor less, that could make this completed world” (James 1907: 52). The preferred middle path, the pragmatic position, can be reached only when that assumption is given up and when it is realized that the merits of the rival standpoints must be inquired into in terms of the future they promise for the world, the future experience that may result, if one of them is true and the other false. That is an application of the pragmatic method, which advises us, in order “[t]o attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object,” “only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare,” and to conclude that “[o]ur conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all” (James 1907: 29). When it is admitted that the world has a future, and that the two rival hypotheses, materialism and theism, offer quite different future expectations, then the dispute can be pragmatically considered, and it will be immediately seen that it is “intensely practical” (James 1907: 52).7 What this means is that it is an irreducibly ethical dispute. It is all about how we should react to the world in which we live, not just about how the world should be explained or understood. Ethical qualities may be present in whatever we face in our experiences of the world around us. This even concerns such apparently purely theoretical metaphysical issues as the one concerning the concept of substance, analyzed by James in Lecture III of Pragmatism. As was also pointed out by James in the posthumously published work, Some Problems of Philosophy,8 substance metaphysics may lead not only to a dualism of matter and spirit but also, perhaps even more problematically, to metaphysical monism, which seems to be, for James, an ethically highly undesirable philosophical system (no matter whether one’s monism is materialistic or idealistic). Pluralism, emphasizing the power of individuals to make a difference in the world’s scheme of things, is morally better for us, because it energizes us into ethically relevant action.9 Therefore, we have to adjust our conception of the pragmatic merits

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of the substance accordingly. The final arbiter of our ontological postulations generally, including the question of whether to postulate substances or not, is ethical. We still need to determine in more detail how exactly the ethical becomes involved in, or even a criterion for, the metaphysical. This does not happen with reference to any specific moral theory, that is, not by requiring metaphysics to serve some specific ethical good, as defined in some such theory, whether utilitarian, deontological, or virtue. On the contrary, James’s pluralism must be extended to cover the plurality of humanly possible approaches to ethical reflection. There is no single correct moral theory but a plurality of “voices” we need to carefully listen to whenever we seek to reflect on what we ought to do and how we ought to think. This pluralism is closely related to James’s resolute antireductionism—his emphasis on the irreducible significance of individual perspectives, whether religious, metaphysical, political, or moral. While James has often been simplistically taken to be a utilitarian, or at least a consequentialist, in ethics, more careful examinations of his moral thought, such as Sergio Franzese’s and Sarin Marchetti’s, show how misleading this is.10 “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James’s only essay explicitly addressing and focusing on moral philosophy, is skeptical toward the very possibility of moral theory, insofar as moral theories are understood as systems of principles governing morally right conduct, or true or false sets of beliefs about what the good life consists in. Thus, far from being committed to any particular moral theory, James in that essay—from which the phrase, “the cries of the wounded” is borrowed—examines critically the very project of theorizing about morality. Ethical systems are “totalizing” in a way antireductionist pragmatism emphasizing individual perspectives cannot allow. No single moral principle can capture the richness and irreducibility of moral life. Therefore, as James says, “there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance,” “no final truth in ethics . . . until the last man has had his experience and had his say” (James 1897: 141). This is also the context in which the famous phrase, “cries of the wounded” occurs: 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. The thinkers who create the ideals come he knows not whence, their sensibilities are evolved he knows not how; and the question as to which of two conflicting ideals will give the best universe then and there, can be answered by him only through the aid of the experience of other men. . . . In point of fact, there are no absolute evils, and there are no non–moral goods; and the highest ethical life—however few may be called to



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bear its burdens—consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete–emergency than other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men what the question always is–not a question of this good or that good simply taken, but of the two total universes with which these goods respectively belong. He knows that he must vote always for the richer universe, for the good which seems most organizable, most fit to enter to complex combinations, most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. But which particular universe this is he cannot know for certain in advance; he only knows that if he makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform him of the fact. . . . His books upon ethics, therefore, so far as they truly touch the moral life, must more and more ally themselves with a literature which is confessedly tentative and suggestive rather than dogmatic–I mean with novels and dramas of the deeper sort, with sermons, with books on statecraft and philanthropy and social and economical reform. (James 1897: section IV)

The call for a “largest total universe of good” in passages like this should not be misunderstood as an embracement of utilitarianism; nor, however, should James’s criticism of moral theories such as utilitarianism be misunderstood as claiming that the consequences of our actions should not be taken into account in the moral evaluation of action. Of course they should. The problem with utilitarianism is not that it emphasizes consequences; the problem with deontology is not that it emphasizes principles and obligations (or, in Kantian terms, the moral law). The problem with both is that they seek to reduce morality into some strict system, that is, that they are moral theories in the first place. A healthier—more pragmatic—way of approaching morality philosophically can, James seems to think, be found in the employment of the pragmatic method, which urges us to view all concepts and beliefs (“ideas”) from the point of view of their potential ethical relevance—as suggested above by means of the substance and theism versus atheism examples. In addition to the pragmatic method, we might say that in a sense the Jamesian approach to the metaphysics of substance, of theism, etc., is an application of the pragmatist conception of truth. Our ideas expressed or expressable by means of such concepts—our metaphysical views and commitments—are pragmatically “true” or “false” in so far forth as they put us in touch with ethically

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significant experiences. The truth of a metaphysical view can be assessed by means of the pragmatic criterion of its ability to open us to the cries of the wounded. It is right here, in a pragmatist ethically colored and structured metaphysics, that truth, in James’s memorable phrase, “happens to an idea.” However, I still need to strengthen the case that James’s pragmatism (and Pragmatism, in particular) really focuses on evil, as this may not be automatically obvious. I will therefore next offer an extended discussion of James on evil. This will culminate in the claim that the problem of evil functions as a frame of pragmatism (of the book and of the view) analogously to the way in which death, according to William Gavin’s (2010) reading of James, is at issue both in the beginning and in the end of Pragmatism. This does not at all mean that James would not be the philosopher of hope that he obviously is, given his compelling meliorism, as developed in Pragmatism. On the contrary, that philosophy of hope is made possible by the serious concern with evil and death that frames the very development of a melioristic philosophy of religion, and ethics, and metaphysics, in that book, and throughout James’s philosophical project. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AS A FRAME OF PRAGMATISM (AND OF PRAGMATISM) Recognizing the reality of evil11 is a key element of James’s pluralistic pragmatism and its conceptions of religion and morality. The critique of monism, especially the attack on monistic Hegelian absolute idealism, is a recurring theme in James’s philosophy. An investigation of the problem of evil can show how he argues against monism and defends pluralism on an ethical basis and how, therefore, his pragmatic metaphysics is grounded in ethics.12 James was troubled by the problem of evil already at an early stage of his intellectual career, during the time of his spiritual crisis in 1870. He felt that the existence of evil might be a threat to a “moralist” attitude to the world, leading the would-be moralist to despair. “Can one with full knowledge and sincerely ever bring one’s self so to sympathize with the total process of the universe as heartily to assent to the evil that seems inherent in its details?” he wondered, replying that if so, then optimism is possible, but that for some, pessimism is the only choice.13 Already at this stage, he saw a problem with the idea of a “total process” optimistically taken to be well in order. According to Ralph Barton Perry (Perry 1964: 122), both optimism and pessimism were impossible for James, because he was “too sensitive to ignore evil, too moral to tolerate it, and too ardent to accept it as inevitable.” It is already here that we can find the seeds of his melioristic pragmatism, which he later, especially in the final eighth lecture of Pragmatism, developed in more detail.



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This view says, in short, that we should try to make the world better, bravely fighting against evil, without having any guarantee that the good cause will win, but having the right, or perhaps even the duty, to hope that it might and to invest our best efforts to make sure it will. James worked on these issues throughout his life. In the eighth chapter of his last book, Some Problems of Philosophy, he offered several arguments against monism, among them the argument that monism creates, and will not be able to solve, the problem of evil. Evil, for pluralism, presents only the practical problem of how to get rid of it. For monism the puzzle is theoretical: How—if Perfection be the source, should there be Imperfection? If the world as known to the Absolute be perfect, why should it be known otherwise, in myriads of inferior finite editions also? The perfect edition surely was enough. How do the breakage and dispersion and ignorance get in? (James 1911: 138)

That pragmatists, unlike monists, must take evil and imperfection seriously, refusing to be deaf to the cries of the wounded, is presented as one of the ethical motivations grounding the entire pragmatist method in the first lecture of Pragmatism. Referring to the actual fate of some extremely unhappy individuals, such as (drawing from a publication by Morrison I. Swift, an anarchist writer) an unemployed and in various ways disappointed and discouraged sick man who found his family lacking food and eventually committed suicide, James argued, against “the airy and shallow optimism of current religious philosophy” (James 1907: 20), that what such desperate human beings experience “is Reality”: “But while Professors Royce and Bradley and a whole host of guileless thoroughfed thinkers are unveiling Reality and the Absolute and explaining away evil and pain, this is the condition of the only beings known to us anywhere in the universe with a developed consciousness of what the universe is” (James 1907: 21). Thus, idealist, optimistic philosophers “are dealing in shades, while those who live and feel know truth” (James 1907: 22); a Leibnizian theodicy postulating a harmony of the universe is “a cold literary exercise, whose cheerful substance even hell-fire does not warm” (James 1907: 20). What I am calling theodicism is, for James, part of the “unreality in all rationalistic systems” of “religious” philosophy that remain “out of touch with concrete facts and joys and sorrows” (James 1907: 17). James here even quotes at length from Leibniz’s Théodicée (James 1907: 19–20), concluding that “no realistic image of the experience of a damned soul had ever approached the portals of his mind” (James 1907: 20). In order to overcome the ethically unbearable condition of the philosophical (and theological) tradition of theodicism, James offers pragmatism as a philosophy that can, pluralistically, respond to a variety of

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experiences, including genuine loss and evil—without simply tolerating such experiences, and without entirely losing the consolation of religion with the abandonment of theodicies (James cf. 1907: 23). It is from this antitheodicist challenge that Pragmatism, like pragmatism, unfolds. Despite its first appearance as an active “pro-life” philosophy made for the brave and the strong, pragmatism is primarily a philosophy not for the “healthy-minded” person who “deliberately excludes evil from [her or his] field of vision” (James 1902: 83), but for the “sick soul” who views evil as the very essence of life and of the world (James 1902: 114ff.; see also section 4 in this chapter). Already in the context of this distinction, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, James attacked the monistic, pantheistic view that saw the foundation of evil in God.14 He found it necessary to allow the world “to have existed from its origin in pluralistic form” in which evil is, though real enough, not essential and is something “we might conceivably hope to see got rid of at last” (James 1902: 115). While the Varieties speaks about the sick soul, Pragmatism urges us to take seriously the “lost-soul” and the “damned soul” that rationalistic theodicism forgets. To do so is to hear, or at least try to hear, the cries of the wounded—and to refuse the bargain James imagines in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (echoing Dostoevsky), the bargain of purchasing the happiness of millions with the price of the eternal torment of a single “lost soul” (James 1897). Toward the end of the Varieties chapter on the sick soul, we find one of James’s most elaborate discussions of the attitudes we can take to the evil we find in our world: The method of averting one’s attention from evil and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. . . . But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one’s self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth. . . . It may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever, and that, in respect of such evil, dumb submission or neglect of notice is the only practical resource. . . . But provisionally . . . since the evil facts are as genuine parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic presumption should be that they have some rational significance, and that systematic healthy-mindedness, failing as it does to accord to sorrow, pain, and death any positive and active attention whatever, is formally less complete than systems that try at least to include these elements in their scope. The completest religions



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would therefore seem to be those in which the pessimistic elements are best developed. (James 1902: 137–139)

Pluralism, a picture of the world as a place in which evil is a reality but in which an individual can make a difference by fighting against it, is thus already present in the Varieties but reaches its culmination in James’s late works: Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, and Some Problems of Philosophy.15 Throughout these books, he tried to find a philosophical expression for the feeling aptly described by Perry (Perry 1964: 237), namely, that “the redeeming quality of life was that heroism which can exist only when there is a live evil to be resisted and overcome; and thus to recognize in evil an indispensable condition of good is to condone it.” The possibility of a “real fight” with genuine risks, which can make life meaningful, is what pluralism, as opposed to monism, attempts to make sense of. Far from being just an external addition to James’s pragmatism (understood as a method of “making ideas clear” and of thus explicating and resolving metaphysical questions), pluralism is in fact its principal ethical and metaphysical outcome; the pragmatic difference that a clear-sighted acknowledgment of the reality of evil makes in our lives is that monism cannot, ethically, be true for us, because in order to be genuinely ethical agents we must be able to make a difference in attempting to resist the evil whose reality we ought to take seriously. Now, arguably, even James saw evil as a “condition of good” in the sense that it was required in order for there to be such a real fight. Did he, then, “condone” evil, against his own warnings? We can perceive a tension in his view at this point, manifested, for example, in the quote from the Varieties given above. On the one hand, it is wrong—morally wrong and therefore also metaphysically suspect—to simply “accept” evil as a condition of goodness, as the background against which goodness may become visible, as theodicists might put it; on the other hand, James’s own pluralism, insisting on the need for a real fight against the evil we must refuse to tolerate, is committed to the reality of evil as its own condition of intelligibility. In a world without evil there would be nothing to fight against, based religion that gives him nothing for a “moralist” to do, no vital tasks for religious or ethical thought to perform. Thus, evil has a “rational significance” even in James’s own pluralist and antitheodicist view. A related, but not identical, tension in James has been lively identified by Richard M. Gale. At the root of the clash between his promethean and mystical self is his ambiguous attitude toward evil, his both wanting and not wanting to believe that we have absolute assurance that we are safe because all evils are only illusory or ultimately conquered. When James was in his healthy promethean frame of

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mind he tingled all over at the thought that we are engaged in a Texas Death Match with evil, without any assurance of eventual victory, only the possibility of victory. This possibility forms the basis of his religion of meliorism. But there is a morbid side to James’s nature, a really morbid side, that ‘can’t get no satisfaction’ in the sort of religion that his promethean pragmatism legitimates. In order to ‘help him make it through the night’ he needs a mystically based religion that gives him a sense of absolute safety and peace that comes through union with an encompassing spiritual reality. The assurance that all is well comes not from philosophical theodicies, for James always charged them with being intellectually dishonest, but from what is vouchsafed by mystical experiences of unification. (Gale 2005: 8; see also 185)

There is some truth in this, but it crucially depends on Gale’s interpretation of James’s “divided self.” The passages from the Varieties already quoted, and similar ones, do provide some support for Gale’s reading, according to which the pragmatic “strenuous mood” was not enough for James. On the other hand, the “insufficiency of meliorism and the healthy-minded outlook in general” (Gale 2005: 9), as analyzed by James in the Varieties and elsewhere, might even be regarded as a pragmatically necessary, something to be arrived at through a serious consideration of the ethical inescapability of the problem of evil. Then, the search for a mystical union, of the “all is well” state of mind, etc., would—contra Gale—itself be subordinated to pragmatism. Moreover, it is not always clear whose views James is, in the Varieties, describing. Some of the experiences he refers to might be close to his own, others not. Another problem in Gale’s account, regarding James and evil, is that while he correctly notes James’s refusal to accept any theodicies, he finds it unproblematic to distinguish between God’s perspective to evils (which, according to theodicies, are not really “ought-not-to-bes” for God), and ours (see Gale 2005: 66–67), overlooking the obvious fact that any properly Jamesian treatment of evil must be carried out from a human perspective inextricably tied to an ethically engaged finite agency. This is, clearly, also the perspective adopted in Pragmatism. The paradox of both needing the reality of evil (of “accepting” it in the sense of being committed to its reality) and needing to constantly fight against it, trying to eliminate it, was in a way observed by James himself as early as 1870, when he was recovering from his personal crisis: “I can’t bring myself, as so many men seem able to do, to blink the evil out of sight, and gloss it over. It’s as real as the good, and if it is denied, good must be denied too. It must be accepted and hated and resisted while there’s breath in our bodies” (Perry 1964: 388). So, evil presents us with a seemingly impossible task: we must both accept its reality and try to make it absent, eliminate it, destroy it. This “must” is an ethical one, but it can also be seen as the “must” of what Kantian philosophers call transcendental principles. The necessity



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to both accept and to resist evil, as James viewed it, can be interpreted as a transcendental requirement for the possibility of living a meaningful, ethically structured life.16 It may, however, be a requirement as infinite as the ethical demand itself. Monistic attempts to explain evil away are, according to James, examples of ethical corruption.17 Insofar as we are able to live a meaningful life at all, monism cannot be an adequate attitude to that life. Yet, our fight against ethical corruption may itself be unending and infinite.18 What we (today) can see James as attacking in his criticisms of Hegelian idealists like F. H. Bradley and other monists is, among other things, the standard (analytic) philosophy of religion in which the reality of evil is primarily presented as an intellectual problem for theism, calling for a theodicy. Few philosophers endorse a monistic idealism any longer, but this by no means makes James’s arguments inapplicable in the contemporary situation. We should bear in mind that, for James, the recognition of the reality of evil is also a precondition for a viable form of religion. It is, as T. L. S. Sprigge puts it, “only on the basis of a pluralistic metaphysics that we can have a morally reputable theism,” according to James (Sprigge 1993: 197). Of course, James gave up some of the standard assumptions of (Christian) theism, particularly the conception of God as omnipotent and infinite. The finite nature of his God(s)—his view of God not as the absolute sovereign of the universe but as a “great cosmic fighter for goodness” who is not responsible for evil (Sprigge 1993: 197)—is the most important dividing issue between his views and those of traditional Christian theologians and philosophers of religion. No wonder that James’s pluralistic resolution of the problem of evil has not been particularly popular either in his lifetime or in more recent philosophy of religion, excluding works by some of his commentators. Indeed, in traditional theology, the philosophical choice required by the reality of evil has been conceptualized as a decision between monistic and dualistic world views; James’s pluralistic option has seldom been seriously considered. James’s pragmatist and pluralist position can be summarized as an outcome of a transcendental argument in a quasi-Kantian fashion. The reality of evil is understood by James to be a necessary condition for the possibility of ethically meaningful or valuable life (in a pluralistic metaphysical setting), including any true religious meaning one may find in one’s life. Evil is not intrinsically, metaphysically, necessary to the universe itself, as the absolute idealist would be forced to hold (given that each part of the absolute is equally necessary as the absolute as a whole),19 but it is necessary in a presuppositional sense: if there is any legitimate role for religious (theistic) beliefs to play in our lives, such a system of beliefs must acknowledge the reality of evil while resisting the “corrupted,” immoral idea that an ultimately moral creator “planned” it and is prepared to pay the price in order to secure some greater good.

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Furthermore, the metaphysical acceptance of evil and the fight against it constitute a pragmatic criterion of adequacy of pragmatism itself. Pragmatism proves to be a philosophy which takes evil seriously, without hiding it or trying to explain it away (as monistic idealism does, according to James), but which encourages us to join in a struggle against it, melioristically trying to make our world a better one. The problem of evil is, then, pragmatically resolved in James’s pluralistic pragmatism—and this is a reflexive pragmatic argument in favor of pragmatism and pluralism themselves. By enabling us to make a difference, pragmatism offers a more satisfactory picture of the nature and role of evil in human lives than monistic idealism (or, mutatis mutandis, some contemporary analytic philosophers’ evidentialist theism typically postulating a theodicy). The price to be paid here, however, is permanent metaphysical and theological insecurity: there is no final solution to the problem of evil, as new experiences of ever more horrendous evils may eventually make it impossible for us to go on actively fighting against evil, as pragmatism urges us to do. Insofar as a pragmatic defense of pragmatism is available, such a defense will have to remain fallibilistic. We may just be unable to react pragmatically to the problem of evil, and for many thinkers this may be a ground for rejecting religious beliefs altogether. Thus, according to this Jamesian antitheodicy, the recognition of genuine evil is required as a background, or as I prefer to say, a transcendental condition, of the possibility of making a difference, a positive contribution, in favor of goodness. Positive thinking is possible and meaningful against a melancholic background, against the negativities that a “sick soul” perceives in her/ his world. Positive individual contributions, then, have their legitimate role to play, empirically speaking, provided that a pessimistic position is accepted transcendentally. Only the sick soul sees, profoundly enough, that everything is not all right, that the world is, for many of us (at least “the wounded”), in an important sense a wrong or even evil place, and that therefore pragmatic, even positive, thinking and “difference-making” is required. Otherwise, no “positive” approach can be serious enough. It should be relatively clear on the basis of these discussions that the problem of evil can be seen as a frame that puts the other philosophical explorations of James’s Pragmatism into a certain context. It shows that reacting to the problem of evil—and the highly individual experiences of being a victim to evil that we may hear in the “cries of the wounded”—is essential in our ethical orientation to the world we live in, which in turn is essential in the use of the pragmatic method as a method of making our ideas clear, both metaphysically and conceptually (and even religiously or theologically). Pragmatism, as we saw, opens the project of advancing a melioristic philosophy with a discussion of the concrete reality of evil. And in the final pages, James returns to evil, suffering, loss, and tragedy.



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In particular, this query has always come home to me: May not the claims of tender-mindedness go too far? May not the notion of a world already saved in toto anyhow, be too saccharine to stand? May not religious optimism be too idyllic? Must all be saved? Is no price to be paid in the work of salvation? Is the last word sweet? Is all ‘yes, yes’ in the universe? Doesn’t the fact of ‘no’ stand at the very core of life? Doesn’t the very ‘seriousness’ that we attribute to life mean that ineluctable noes and losses form a part of it, that there are genuine sacrifices somewhere, and that something permanently drastic and bitter always remains at the bottom of its cup? I cannot speak officially as a pragmatist here; all I can say is that my own pragmatism offers no objection to my taking sides with this more moralistic view, and giving up the claim of total reconciliation. . . . It is then perfectly possible to accept sincerely a drastic kind of a universe from which the element of ‘seriousness’ is not to be expelled. Whoso does so is, it seems to me, a genuine pragmatist. (James 1907: 141–142)

It is this very same moral seriousness that I find essential to emphasize in the contemporary discourse on evil. There is a sense in which our moral life with other human beings in a world full of suffering is tragic: given our finitude, we will never be able to fully overcome evil and suffering; yet we must, melioristically, try. James’s pragmatism is a crucial move toward the kind of antitheodicism I think we vitally need in any serious moral philosophy of evil. It may also keep our eyes open to the reality of the tragic dimension of human life. Yet, even the notion of tragedy might lead us astray here in something like a theodicist manner. Tragedies, though not themselves theodicies, are meaningful and “deep” in a sense in which human real-world evils and sufferings such as the Holocaust often are not.20 It is presumably better to speak about Jamesian melancholy—about the sick soul’s fundamentally melancholic way of approaching ethics, and the world in general. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that James’s antitheodicy (and the understanding of the problem of evil as a “frame”) emerges in the context of developing pragmatism in general as a philosophy—not only as an ethical approach but as a philosophical orientation in general. In this context, as is well known, James offers pragmatism as a critical middle ground between “tough-minded” and “tender-minded” philosophies. Antitheodicy and melancholy are, thus, conditions for the adequacy of (pragmatist) philosophizing as such.

CONCLUSION: THE SICK SOUL In The Varieties of Religious Experience, James tells us that the sick souls are those who, in contrast to the “healthy-minded,” maintain that “the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world’s meaning most

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comes home to us when we lay them most to heart” (James 1902: 114). The sick souls, then, are those “who cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to suffer from its presence” (James 1902: 116). Reflecting on the reality of evil and suffering, we may become “melancholy metaphysicians” (James 1902: 121), acknowledging human helplessness and sadness even when life seems happy and easy. James concludes, as we saw, that “[t]he completest religions would . . . seem to be those in which the pessimistic elements are best developed”—that is, “religions of deliverance,” according to which one has to “die to an unreal life” in order to be “born into the real life” (James 1902: 139). It is the perspective of the “melancholy metaphysician,” I would argue, that Pragmatism also opens, through its employment of the pragmatic method. The concept of the sick soul is, for James, a concept to be employed in the psychological and philosophical description and explanation of certain kind of religious attitudes and ways of living and thinking. However, given the close relation between religion and ethics in James, this concept can, I believe, be used in ethical contexts bracketing the actual religious aspects of, say, conversion. We may say that the sick soul takes seriously—ethically seriously—the evil and suffering around her/him in the world even if s/he never experiences this as a religious problem. The sick soul, then, acknowledges that (as James puts it toward the end of Pragmatism, as quoted above) “something permanently drastic and bitter” may always be in store for us, however successfully we fight against evil and suffering. Does one actually have to be a sick soul in the Jamesian sense in order to be able to be ethical at all? Well, I think the answer is no, in a sense roughly comparable to the sense in which you do not have to be a transcendental idealist (in a Kantian context) in order to have objective experiences, even if you do have to be a transcendental idealist (according to Kant) in order to be able to philosophically account for the possibility of objective experience. Thus, we may reconstruct the Jamesian argument as maintaining that you must be a sick soul in order to be able to account for the possibility of ethics. The problem we have been dealing with throughout this paper is (in non-Jamesian terms) transcendental rather than empirical. The concept of the sick soul, like antitheodicism, is constitutive of the possibility of the ethical, not for anyone’s actually being, or failing to be, ethical. Insofar as we detach the notion of the sick soul from its immediate context in the psychology of religion, we may say that James writes in the same intellectual and spiritual setting in which Richard Bernstein, Susan Neiman, and some other contemporary philosophical and political theorists of evil operate, a context in which evil is a challenge to our attempt to find life ethically and existentially meaningful at all—a context very different from



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the theoretical context typical of mainstream evidentalist and theodicist philosophers of religion.21 Acknowledging evil and the potential disharmony and even absurdity of life (individual and social), as well as the limits of philosophical theorization and reflection on these matters, while affirming an active, melioristic attitude (against an unavoidably tragic background), can be seen as a key Jamesian contribution to the problem of evil and to the challenge to reflect on the relations between religion, metaphysics, and morality arising from this problem. According to James, as I read him, we should never philosophically theorize in a theodicist manner about the potential “harmonious” justification, accommodation, or meaningfulness of evil and suffering. We should, rather, acknowledge evil and its victims by not attempting to explain it, or their sufferings, away; and we should simply fight against evil instead of accepting it by justifying it. Moreover, we should fight against the corruption of acceptance. All of this is an attempt to articulate, in a non-corrupted language, what it means to try to listen to the “cries of the wounded.” This essay has attempted to show that this fight against evil (and against corrupted theodicies) is part and parcel of the pragmatic method itself, as developed in Pragmatism. It is by employing this method that we turn our attention to ethics whenever we are concerned with the world in any allegedly or apparently non-ethical sense—conceptually, metaphysically, or perhaps religiously—and it is through that kind of reflective attention that we inquire into what needs to be done by listening, as carefully as we can, to the cries of the wounded. Only the sick soul really hears those cries. The pragmatist ethical thinker is, on James’s view, a sick soul in this (transcendental) sense. This condition for the possibility of ethics, for the possibility of the ethical point of view itself, can only be reached if we learn to appreciate the way in which the Jamesian pragmatic method is framed by the recognition of evil. Moreover, if the argument of this essay is plausible, this is not only a condition for (the possibility of) ethics but for philosophy in general. It is only by responding to evil in an antitheodicist manner that we may reach an adequate metaphilosophy avoiding the extremes of both excessive tender-mindedness and excessive tough-mindedness. Reflexively, the success of pragmatism in doing this—in being able to recognize the reality of evil without theodicies— yields an argument (at a meta-level) for pragmatism itself. This meta-level reflexivity could be carried further: when we pragmatically evaluate the success of pragmatism in responding to evil antitheodicistically, thus offering an ethical argument for pragmatism, this line of argument itself needs to take seriously the antitheodicist requirement that (I have argued) James finds necessary for the pragmatic method.22

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NOTES 1. See, in particular, Charles S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), in Peirce 1992. 2. I think my own previous work on this—cf. for example, Pihlström 2009— doesn’t go deep enough in this respect. 3. This phrase comes from William James, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (1891), in James 1897. 4. See, for an excellent argument to this effect, Franzese 2008. 5. For James’s views on the “sick soul,” see his 1902 work; I will return to this notion toward the end of the essay. 6. It may be worth noting that the radical “humanist” pragmatist F. C. S. Schiller, who was influenced by James (and whose influence on James is acknowledged by the latter in many places), even published an article with the title, “The Ethical Basis of Metaphysics” (1903). The essay is reprinted in Schiller 1903. 7. When the dispute is thus considered, James’s sympathies are, unsurprisingly, on the theistic side, because the “need for an eternal moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast” (1907: 55), and James always acknowledged the pragmatic importance of such deep human needs. 8. See James 1911: chapter 7. James here repeats much of the pragmatic criticism of substance already familiar from Pragmatism. 9. See the defense of pluralism in James 1907: Lecture IV. A further critical perspective on traditional substance metaphysics is, though largely implicitly, opened up in James 1912, in which James argues for the reality of (experiential) relations (see especially chapter 3). A substance-attribute metaphysics would, by his lights, yield a metaphysics of things detached from each other, thus sacrificing genuine relationality. 10. See Franzese 2008; Marchetti 2015. I have discussed this matter, for example, in Pihlström 2013: 104–108. 11. In this essay, I have to bracket a potentially very interesting issue, which also ought to be brought into contact with pragmatist ethics, namely, recognition. James can be seen as arguing that evil, and especially the suffering victims of evil, the “wounded,” ought to be adequately ethically recognized, and that without such a recognizing attitude, our moral philosophy, and even our metaphysics, will remain seriously incomplete. For a now classical work on recognition in general, see Honneth 2005. 12. In this section, I borrow from my discussion of James’s views on evil in Pihlström 2008: chapter 4. See also Kivistö and Pihlström 2016: chapter 5. 13. Notebook sheets from 1870, quoted in Perry 1964: 120–121. Here James saw that fighting evil—holding that “though evil slay me, she can’t subdue me, or make me worship her” (1964: 121)—required freedom of the will, and was thus connected with the key problem of his spiritual crisis. (Freedom, of course, is necessary, according to James, for any serious ethical philosophy. Perry notes that “moralism” is just one name for what might be described as James’s “fundamental seriousness”; see 1964: 388). 14. Even though Christian theism, for instance, is of course not pantheistic (but on the contrary, emphasizes that the created world is distinct from its divine creator), James eventually saw little difference between the theist’s affirmation of the infinity



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of God and the pantheist’s conception of the world as a whole as divine. The problem of evil is equally pressing for both. 15. In addition to the passages of Pragmatism and Some Problems of Philosophy already cited, see also James 1909, where he once again argues that the idealists’ absolute inevitably leads to the problem of evil (among other difficulties) and proposes his own pluralistic view as an alternative. 16. As I have emphasized on other occasions, a conflation of the “transcendental” and the “transcendent” is characteristic of pragmatism scholarship—and of the pragmatists’, especially James’s and Dewey’s, own works, too. When Wesley Cooper (2002: 147) tells us that James’s “God will not be transcendent to experience, and consequently his God will not have transcendental resources for denying the reality of evil, for instance,” he is guilty of such a conflation, failing to connect the issue with the properly Kantian sense of the “transcendental” (which I am, of course, assuming here). Otherwise, Cooper’s brief notes on James and evil are on the right track: “About evil, James’s empiricism insists that even so august a concept as that of God must conform itself to the coerciveness with which some experience bespeaks evil” (2002: 143); this remark is related to a discussion of James’s views on the pragmatic meaning of “God” (cf. James 1907: 18, 41–43). My only complaint (here) is that the “must” Cooper helps himself to is open to a transcendental reading. 17. Cf. Sprigge 1993: 181. “[The Absolute] includes all evil, and has . . . in a manner willed it. Thus absolute idealism forces us to think that all partial evil is greater good misunderstood. And to think thus, in James’s opinion . . . is morally corrupting.” 18. This argument of course by no means shows that life is meaningful but only that if it is, then monism must be rejected. 19. Cf. Sprigge 1993: 588. 20. Such examples of our historical past of course offer us cases of cries of the wounded that can no longer be heard. Insofar as listening to the cries of the wounded is a constitutive condition of the ethical (we might summarize the Jamesian position in this way), the Holocaust is a paradigmatic case of a historical cruelty leading us to the limits of the ethical, or even beyond ethics in any conventional sense of this concept. Cf. here, for example, Agamben 2002. 21. See, for example, Bernstein 2002; Neiman 2002. 22. For helpful comments and criticism, I should like to thank Russell Goodman, Vincent Colapietro, Henrik Rydenfelt, Naoko Saito, Paul Standish, Sandra Laugier, Thomas Schmidt, Ana Honnacker, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir, and most importantly, Sari Kivistö. The topic of this essay is more comprehensively discussed in Kivistö and Pihlström 2016: chapter 5.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agamben, Giorgio. 2002. The Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. D. Heller-Roazen. New York: Zone Books. Bernstein, Richard. 2002. Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Cooper, Wesley. 2002. The Unity of William James’s Thought. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Franzese, Sergio. 2008. The Ethics of Energy: William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus. Frankfurt: Ontos. Gale, Richard. 2005. The Philosophy of William James: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gavin, William. 2010. “Pragmatism and Death: Method vs. Metaphor, Tragedy vs. the Will to Believe.” In John Stuhr (ed.), 100 Years of Pragmatism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 81–95. Honneth, Axel. 2005. Kampf um Anerkennung, 2nd ed. Frankfurt Main: Suhrkamp; 1st ed. 1992. James, William. 1897. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Eds. Fredrick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1979. James. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: New American Library, 1958. James. 1907. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1975. James. 1909. A Pluralistic Universe. Eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1977. James. 1911. Some Problems of Philosophy. Bison Books Edition, Ed. Ellen Kappy Suckiel. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. James. 1912. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Bison Books Edition, Ed. Ellen Kappy Suckiel. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Kivistö, Sari and Pihlström, Sami. 2016. Kantian Antitheodicy: Philosophical and Literary Varieties. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Marchetti, Sarin. 2015. Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Neiman, Susan. 2002. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Peirce, Charles S. 1992. The Essential Peirce, vol. 1. Ed. Nathan Houser. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Perry, Ralph Barton. 1964. The Thought and Character of William James: Briefer Version. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row; first published 1948. Pihlström, Sami. 2008. “The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything”: Jamesian Perspectives on Mind, World, and Religion. Lanham, MD: University Press of America (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group). Pihlström. 2009. Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology. London: Continuum. Pihlström. 2013. Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God. New York: Fordham University Press. Schiller, F.C.S. 1903. Humanism: Philosophical Essays. London: Macmillan. Sprigge, T.L.S. 1993. James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court.

Chapter 19

James on Pragmatism and Religion Guy Axtell

Critics and defenders of William James both acknowledge serious tensions in his thought, tensions perhaps nowhere more vexing to readers than in regard to his claims about an individual’s intellectual right to their “faith ventures.” Focusing especially on “Pragmatism and Religion,” the final lecture in Pragmatism (1906), this chapter will articulate certain problems with James’s ethics of belief. Some of these problems are theoretical, but others are practical in the sense of bearing upon the real-world upshot of adopting James’s quite permissive ethics of belief. The chief theoretical puzzlement we will explore is the tension constituted on the one side by James supporting the general function of religious “overbeliefs” as valuable for the meaning and moral motivation they afford to people, and on the other side by his insistence on the speculative and passion-driven nature of these beliefs. James wanted very much to “hold upright” the general function of religious overbeliefs: Defense of an intellectual and moral right to our various faith ventures, and to the particular doxastic and sub-doxastic commitments that constitute them, is an enduring theme of James’s philosophical writings. He thinks that they are connected with ethics by serving to animate the “strenuous mood”; he also claims to find a person’s religious and philosophical overbeliefs “the most interesting thing” about them. Yet at the same time, he makes it a point to undercut their epistemic rationality, at least in the abstract evidentialist or synchronic sense of acceptance on the basis of the logical sufficiency of one’s present evidence. So how could James defend our having intellectual and moral right to them, while continually “dissing” their epistemic credentials and emphasizing the primacy of the passions, moral sentiments, and personal temperament in their acquisition and maintenance? Interestingly, religious dogmatists and skeptics both take issue with James’s stance, with dogmatists typically denying what James called the 317

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“riskiness” of their faith ventures, and skeptics denying the intellectual and moral right James claims individuals have to be choosers of their own risk. We can, of course, see some of this tension in various forms of religious fideism, but rather than taking it as indication that their beliefs are speculative and uncertain as they others’ to be, fideists typically claim a special access to truth. Among more skeptical critics of James, the tension in question helps motivate the standard objection that a “pragmatic” defense of religious belief legitimizes wishful thinking and falls victim to the “wrong-kind-of-reasonsfor-belief” problem.1 Primarily, I want to defend James from such worries in this chapter, as I think that the Jamesian view that faith tendencies are “extremely active psychological forces, constantly outstripping evidence” (James 1911: 111) is psychologically quite astute. It will also be argued that James was correct to reject an evidentialist epistemology and ethics of belief in favor of a more permissive account that does not take disagreement necessarily to imply error and irrationality. While the connection between James’s descriptive psychology and his normative defense of a permissive ethics of belief is of course indirect, that connection is nevertheless important. So, this particular tension in James’s thought is not as problematic as many critics of James have made it out to be (see Gale 2002). I will argue that what in the epistemology of disagreement is called permissivism has philosophical advantages over the non-permissivist position associated with evidentialism. Being able to defend the possibility of reasonable disagreement among evidence-sharing epistemic peers is arguably a big practical as well as theoretical advantage, because when we treat disagreement as a sign of error and irrationality, as is necessarily the case with non-permissivist accounts that deny the possibility of reasonable disagreement, we treat others quite differently, and with less empathy or attempt at understanding. At the same time, Jamesian permissivism has the important practical advantage of supporting what John Rawls calls reasonable pluralism, something I have elsewhere argued that non-permissivist views that flow from the best-known versions of evidentialism cannot (Axtell 2013). But there are also practical problems with James’s stance that I want to articulate. My sharpest criticism of James in this chapter concerns one of them: the problem of whether his account of faith ventures is adequately risk-aware. As a prime example of this problem, in the preface to The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, James replies to critics who object that he is defending intellectual irresponsibility. He does so in part by conceding, “I quite agree that what mankind at large most lacks is criticism and caution, not faith” (James 1897: 7). Yet, he continues, he will speak primarily in defense of the legitimacy of religious faith because the needs of the particular audience he is addressing are not those of “the common person or mankind at large.” The audience James sees himself as addressing is highly



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educated and more sophisticated, yet laboring under a materialist interpretation of science. While it is true that different audiences have different biases, and that it is pragmatic to address the particular audience one is speaking to, I nevertheless find this “apple-polishing” reply by James very unsatisfying. James’s relative lack of concern with the criticism and caution that he acknowledges is needed among less philosophically and scientifically sophisticated audiences is even more disconcerting in view of recent violence rationalized by religious and quasi-religious beliefs. As I prepared to write this chapter, news spread of trials for hate crimes by Kansas white supremacists against Jews, by a South Carolina white supremacist for the shooting deaths of multiple members of a historic Black church, by radicalized MuslimAmericans in Tennessee against US Marines training there, and in California against their own suburban neighbors. Contemporary neo-Jamesians, like Kierkegaardians, need to say more about the practical problem, and how fervent belief may lead to a “teleological suspension the ethical.” For such suspension, and the end-justifies-the-means rationalization of harm to others, is another self-exemption, another way to give ourselves a moral holiday, sometimes demonstrably worse than the easy-going attitude that James spends much time criticizing. Perhaps this concern with “the common person or mankind at large” is a matter of what I think philosophers and psychologists of religion should today be most centrally concerned with, topics including connections between various specific models of religious faith and the psychology of radicalization and terrorism. To be sure, James does at points try to “hedge the license to indulge in private over-beliefs,” but rarely does he discuss the sway of collective beliefs, testimonial traditions replete with revered scriptures, and institutionalized or politicized religiosity. Partly due to this, the cautionary, risk-averse side of his account remains substantially underdeveloped relative to his council of courage with respect to faith ventures. James’s lectures largely address themselves to one side of what I will want to insist today needs to be treated as a multisided but interconnected set of issues. Contemporary pragmatist philosophers should continue to draw much from James’s psychological insights and from his defense of the general function of religious overbeliefs as contributory to personal perfection and moral motivation. But they should definitely not set aside “the common person or mankind at large,” as James on my view too easily allows himself to do in his lectures on pragmatism and religion. JAMES’S PERSONAL OVERBELIEFS “Pragmatism and Religion” largely describes and defends James’s own religious overbeliefs, which he characterizes as pluralistic and melioristic.

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These committed positions James takes up are expressed more abstractly and philosophically than are the religious or spiritual beliefs of most people, but he definitely sees them as having practical implications for moral motivation. The use of the term “pluralism” by James is somewhat vexed, because it can have different moral, epistemic, and metaphysical associations. Although I will want to focus on James’s pluralism about overbeliefs rather than just the views he found most congenial to his own spiritual and intellectual temperament, we might best approach our main topic by starting off with a brief discussion of the latter. These ideas are developed not just in Pragmatism, but also in the lectures that became A Pluralistic Universe (1908) and in the slightly earlier (but posthumously published) Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912). James’s philosophical method, he tells us, is “known sometimes as the pragmatic method, sometimes as humanism, sometimes as Deweyism, and in France, by some of the disciples of Bergson, as the Philosophie nouvelle.” But it was not transcendental idealism that James admired in the European humanists, and he admits that “I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically” (James 1912: 156). If this means that he evaluated and appropriated it in terms of the moral philosopher and the moral life, then it is easy to see why he also says that, “Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of—it being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of ‘co,’ in which conjunctions do the work” (James 1912: 194).2 James contrasts his religious orientation with conventional theism, with its sharp division between the created and the Creator, as well as with the absolute idealism of his time, represented especially by the thought of Josiah Royce. Sometimes, James describes himself as navigating between a materialist empiricism which leaves no room for religion, and a rationalism like that of absolute idealism which leaves no room for experience. Ruth Anna Putnam writes that James finds both views unacceptable because neither allows for the intimacy he seeks; neither, however logical and even beautiful it may be, lets loose our moral energy; neither leaves room for free will. In contrast, an empiricism that includes religious experiences . . . leaves room for a religion that is compatible with free will. (Putnam 2013: 208)

James claims that “the great religious difference” of his time lies between those “who insist that the world must and shall be, and those who are contented with believing that the world may be, saved.” The monistic view tries to “transmute the entire category of possibility into categories more secure,” making all good things certain, and all bad things impossible in the eternal” (James 1907: 126).



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To go further, James thought that monism and absolute idealism whitewashed the problem of evil in ways that an empiricist attitude could not abide: The more “pluralistic and moralistic” attitude he recommends taking up is one in which the “salvation” of the universe—the triumph of good over evil—was not the foregone conclusion that he thought it must be for absolute idealists. On the latter view, the absolute is perfect and does not suffer; suffering, he suggests, is not real for absolute idealists. James took such views as granting us a permanent moral holiday, meaning that we are under no obligation to alleviate suffering. But for James there are real evils and it is our task to battle to eliminate them as best we can. Here we come to James’s melioristic theme: that our energies are needed, and that our future depends on what each of us contributes to the cause of ameliorating suffering and developing an increasingly inclusive moral community. Meliorism is presented as a middle path between an optimism that thinks the world’s salvation inevitable, and a pessimism that thinks its salvation impossible (James 1907: 128). The foregoing is nothing more than a brief description of James’s personal religious overbeliefs. These were metaphysical views with moralistic presuppositions and implications. When James does allow himself to argue for the superiority of his melioristic overbeliefs in a comparative fashion, he first signals this by saying that he “cannot speak officially as a pragmatist” to support it, but can only say “that my own pragmatism offers no objection to my taking sides with this more moralistic view and giving up the claim of total reconciliation” (James 1907: 132). It is important for readers of James to note the significance he attaches to this distinction; he is telling us not to confuse his development of his personal overbeliefs with any claim that his own religious orientation is exclusively fit to promote the strenuous mood! But wait—isn’t James rather inconsistent on this score, running his multiples senses of pluralism together in ways that easily confuse his audience? Isn’t this worry heightened by James repeatedly using pragmatist and radical empiricist standards to adjudicate between different moral conceptions of godhead? (James 1907: 164–165 and 171–172).3 James does argue repeatedly that his melioristic worldview is more supportive of the strenuous mood than objective idealism, and also that religious worldviews are more supportive of it than materialist. So, there is a legitimate worry about how far can he go in this regard without impugning the kind of epistemic and moral pluralism that springs from his notion of temperament, or again, from his notion of the many valid experiments of living that help to “build out” and “test” (in an experiential sense) a more generic religious hypothesis.4 As a religious personalist, James seems to acknowledge that atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, absolute idealism, conventional theism, etc. are different one from another, and that none is likely anytime soon to vanquish the others.5 Piotr Gutowski rightly notes, “James himself believed in the

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superiority of the religious position over atheism, and he gave some reasons for that; he did not just announce the preferences of his own emotional nature. He was, however, conscious that those reasons will not be counted as objective evidence by atheists or agnostics” (Gutowski 2015: 94). Beyond the description he gives to his own overbelief as a form of pluralism, the permissive, non-evidentialist ethic of belief James advocates is an account of doxastic responsibility that recognizes the active and passional nature of faith ventures. Let’s now turn to this latter kind of pluralism, the kind James associates with the right to believe thesis and with a permissive ethics of belief allowing for divergent, legitimate ways of “building out” more generic competing materialist and religious hypotheses.

MILL, JAMES, AND EXPERIMENTS OF LIVING In describing the positive functions of faith ventures, James draws attention to John Stuart Mill’s similar concept, “experiments of living.” Indeed, one clear influence on James’s philosophical writings is Mill’s On Liberty, Chapter III, “On Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being.” As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when anyone thinks fit to try them. (Section 4.1)6

Mill anticipates some of the ideas found in James’s Will to Believe lecture when he claims that people “should be free to act upon their opinions—to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril” (Chapter III). James found Mill’s humanist philosophy to be a positive influence on his whole social milieu, and not just on himself. While Mill was not the religious believer James was, it was to Mill’s influence that he attributes a welcome expansion in his own time of a “spirit of inner toleration.” Although James as I mentioned often seems one-sidedly focused on personal religiosity and individual moral motivation, he agrees with Mill on more than just his willingness to live and let live in speculative matters. James could agree strongly with Mill’s arguments for the social benefits of diversity. With some important qualifications, diversity has epistemic benefits, aiding deliberation. James prefers the metaphor of Darwinian competition of ideas over any notion of an invisible hand leading the best ideas to prevail. These metaphors, like that of a “marketplace of ideas,” have their problems, but neither Mill nor James



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would be surprised by recent psychological experiments showing that people display better critical reasoning and less bias when placed in situations where their opinions and decisions are openly challenged, than in situations where they are constantly reinforced by a consensus of like-minded others. James’s mature position highlights methodological parallels with science, such as the Comtean point that hypotheses and regulative assumptions serve a crucial role in scientific discovery despite having a provisional status, and not (yet) enjoying a preferred degree of supporting evidence.7 Crucial tests are difficult to find even in hard science, and “test” seems somewhat metaphorical when applied to how personal beliefs are found to well or ill-fit one’s total experience. Still, this emphasis on methodological parallels between scientific and religious “hypotheses” invites a dialogue between science and religion, and replaces the model of complete insulation from criticism, and well as the model of conflict-between-reason-and-faith that strong fideism can sometimes motivate. Indeed, invoking a Darwinian image of a survival of the fittest among religious and philosophical overbeliefs also served to bring James’s account more in line with Mill’s stated view in On Liberty, that “Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for the purposes of action” (Mill 1978 [1854]: 24). James’s defense of a right to believe is a normative position, a position about what our ethics of belief should be. But James would probably point us first to his more descriptive, psychological studies as a prelude to addressing these normative questions. Psychological profiles and a taxonomy of religious and non-religious character-types (again developing from Mill) come to be part of James’s argument for the normative position he takes. But the descriptive and prescriptive should not be confused. James correctly understood faith tendencies as “extremely active psychological forces, constantly outstripping evidence” (James 1911, 111–113). Jamesian psychological fideism states that coming to faith for people is no logical chain of inference; while faith tendencies utilize available evidence, they employ it in a series of leaps from ought to is. In these respects, where he describes the “faith ladder,” James reflects a good deal of Kierkegaard’s honesty in eschewing rationalism and in recognizing religious faith as a matter of subjective conviction in the face of objective uncertainty. James’s philosophical use of descriptive or psychological fideism is complex, but is plausibly interpreted as a defense of overbeliefs as personal answers to personal demands for intelligibility and meaning: “the greeting of our whole nature to a kind of world conceived as well adapted to that nature” (James 1911: 111). Mill held “that mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable,

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and a diversity not an evil, but a good” (Mill 1978 [1854]: 3.1). James takes psychological fideism as strong support for much of what he held in common with Millian pluralism. In one sense the Millian-Jamesian claim that “as it is useful that while mankind is imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living” goes only slightly beyond Locke’s much earlier claim that since unity of religious belief is an unrealistic expectation, we should extend tolerance and civility to those whose religious views differ from our own. Each of these authors grounds their pluralistic normative conclusion on descriptive observations. But in another sense, the relationship between James’s descriptive (psychological) and normative (pluralistic right to believe) projects is not easy to establish. As psychological fact, James held, “That theory will be most generally believed which, besides offering us objects able to account satisfactorily for our sensible experience, also offers those which are most interesting, those which appeal most urgently to our aesthetic, emotional, and active needs” (James 1911: 312).8 Critics might object that even if people often in fact let moral and practical factors influence what they allow themselves to believe, they don’t need to, and indeed are only epistemically rational when they instead settle their beliefs on the basis of reason and evidence. Given especially that James associates the presence of belief with a disposition to act, shouldn’t we reinforce shared norms for doxastic responsibility, rather than making personal satisfaction the primary measure? But James directly challenges the pretensions of evidentialism in both its skeptical version (for example, William Clifford) and on its religious version (rational theology, or for another contemporary example, the Christian evidentialist apologetics of Richard Swinburne). Against the skeptical version, there are no purely epistemic proscriptions against believing beyond (James would say “ahead of”) logically sufficient evidence. The norms that should govern doxastic responsibility are primarily diachronic, not synchronic. Even were we to allow the evidentialist’s reduction of doxastic responsibility to the synchronic norm of limiting one’s propositional attitude to the weight of evidence presently had, the kind of worldview beliefs in question are ones where multiple, diverse forms of evidence vie. It will thus be a question of holistic weighing, not strict logical inference. There is no principle, James insists, that can tell us we must always value caution and avoidance of holding a false belief, over courage and the embrace of beliefs that while speculative, may yet be true.9 RISK-TAKING, IDENTITY, AND THE MOOD OF FAITH Evidentialists like William Clifford were moral evidentialists. But C ­ lifford’s claim that people should adhere to an austere ethic of belief—one that



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deems it morally wrong to believe anything on logically insufficient evidence (because society or humanity rightly demands such a sacrifice of all doxastic faith ventures, that is, faith beliefs)—seems too strong a demand to be made on Clifford’s moral grounds. James’s and Mill’s personal moral rights are at least as strong as are Clifford’s supposed social moral duties to withhold assent to a claim until presented with logically sufficient evidential support.10 But on the other hand, it should be recognized that adopting a position of religious rationalism/evidentialism is often little more than an apologetic strategy: It functions to rationalize beliefs originally taken on board for other reasons, which the apologist was never truly willing to submit to serious challenge or revision. For James, as an opponent of religious rationalism and as one who instead emphasized the role of personal experience, the right to believe is not premised on the ability of rational theology to prove the existence of God, or of a moral order to the universe. Beyond some basic form of deism or monotheism, assenting to specific tenets of a religious faith tradition (especially one tied to testimonial traditions, and to miracle events or divine interventions into the natural order), intimately involves the will or passions. Religious rationalism/evidentialism tries to “sink” the facts of the passional contributions and of “riskiness” in religious belief. In bad faith, it conceals or denies what James called the “mood of faith” in one’s convictions. But the fideist rejoins: If the tenets of faith could be proved, what is the value of faith? Following this thought, there seems to be a fideistic minimum in assent to any actual religious tradition. James, I think, would not only agree with this point, but would also side with psychologists who see risk-taking, both active and doxastic, as intimately connected with the development of identity. Risk-taking is bound to issues of self-experimentation, autonomy, personal identity, and group identity. Indeed, for psychologists like Cynthia Lightfoot, risks are “avatars of a liminal self”: “Risks are actively sought for their capacity to challenge, excite, and transform oneself and one’s relationships with others. In this regard, risks are speculative, experimental, and oriented toward some uncertain and wished-for future” (Lightfoot 1997: 2, 163).11 There are two perspectives on risk, both one-sided, that go far back in the history of ideas. One is of risk-taking-as-irresponsible-choice, and as inviting trouble; the other is of risk-taking-as-opportunity. Conceived of as opportunity—James’s emphasis—emotional and intellectual satisfactions both provide motivation for the cognitive risks we take on. This is especially so since James refused to make hard distinctions between ethics and other branches of philosophy. So, the evaluations we make of our own faith ventures are primarily prospective: they are diachronic not just synchronic; they intimately involve prospects for action, and hence practical and not just theoretical reason. At the end of “Pragmatism and Religion,” James indeed

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urges his audience to indulge their diverse faith-ventures as “what are needed to bring the evidence in.” James wants us to confirm that along with evidence at the ready, temperament and identity-shaping cognitive risk-taking are quite legitimate factors in giving shape to the answers we give ourselves to limit questions. But he wants us also to openly recognize the “mood of faith” that characterizes overbeliefs—beliefs taken aboard “ahead” of logically sufficient evidence. Practical interests and moral concerns to affect our cognitive agency does not seem to legitimately hold sway over every day empirical claims; when disagreement arises over a strictly objective question, we naturally suspect that some party to the dispute must be inattentive, confused, prejudiced, or in some other way cognitively at fault. But neither is it a matter of only a few exception cases where practical interests weigh in. These psychological insights on risk-taking and identity cannot be overthrown simply by describing practical reasons as the normatively “wrong kind” of reasons for belief, period. PLURALIST PERMISSIVISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS We are now in position to examine more directly James’s pluralism at the level of religious and philosophical overbeliefs. The diversity of our experiences, the religious ambiguity of the world, the active role of the emotions in cognition, individual temperament, and descriptive or psychological fideism all contribute support to Jamesian pluralism. By extension, Jamesian pluralism seems to recognize that different religious worldviews are potentially equally valid at least in terms of spurring moral motivation, if not also in terms of capturing different “live” conceptions of godhead.12 “Potentially” is an important qualifier here, since pluralism and relativism are to be distinguished. With understanding, we can learn to allow even a good deal of toleration towards the intolerant in thought—those who lack that spirit of inner toleration, and who care only of God’s and not of empiricism’s glory. Sami Pihlstrom writes, [I]n the case of religion, it is crucially important to take into account not just the diverse religious experiences that individuals have had, and may have, but also the diversity and plurality of conceptual, theological, and philosophical approaches to those experiences, that is, the richness of philosophical and theological traditions through which people have tried to understand and organize their religious lives and problems. What this means is that no single philosophy, religion, not even James’ own pluralism or pragmatism, can offer us an overarching, privilege perspective on the deeply problematic phenomena of religion. We really do need a plurality of perspectives. This is one of the key implications of Jamesian pragmatism: we must be prepared to employ conceptual frameworks . . . in order fully to account for the pragmatically relevant differences in people’s religious options and problems. (Pihlstrom 2013: 90)



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Pihlstrom thinks that it helps to recognize different senses in which James or others might be self-described pluralists. To understand James, we need to be clear that there is a “plurality of pluralisms” operating in his thought, and we also need to own up to the uncomfortable implications of diversity itself: While committing to a worldview of my own I must also recognize it as but one among many, one that, though seeming well-evidenced to me, most likely relies on grounds for which I can claim no special authority or universality. James is not dogmatizing, Pihlstrom argues, because he recognizes both the diversity and the epistemic precariousness of religious overbeliefs, including his own. But neither does this religious pluralism (pluralism of religious overbeliefs), or this meta-level interpretive pluralism (the “liveness” in our age of both the religious hypothesis and its materialist rival)13 entail “anything goes” relativism. The moral implications of different conceptions of Godhead, and the moral implications of theistic, polytheistic, deistic, agnostic, or atheistic overbeliefs, are among the many topics we can study and discuss. For Pihlstrom’s James, “Reflexivity is responsibility; Even if no ‘voice’ is absolute and infallible in human affairs, we can intelligently inquire into the pragmatic acceptability of any particular perspective” (Philstrom 2013: 92). Religious ambiguity, the temperament thesis, and psychological fideism are three sources of our Jamesian pluralism about overbeliefs. Perhaps this rejection of the notion of epistemic uniformity, and of the demand for consensus, can lead to a richer conception of human rationality. As Ian Kidd (2013) writes, despite all the work on emotion and moral judgement in psychology in recent decades, we still need greater appreciation of the cooperation of sentiments and intellect in human cognition, and more specifically of “the existence, role, and plurality of temperaments, especially the role in shaping our epistemological and metaphysical predispositions and our existential needs”: Understanding how temperaments regulate conviction, doubt, and other epistemic evaluations is essential to the project of critical inquiry, not least because it indicates that philosophical disagreements may reflect different ‘ground-floor intuitions’ . . . rather than necessarily indicating the obstinacy, dogmatism, or ignorance of one’s interlocutors. (Kidd 2013: 393)

If we placed James into contemporary debate in the so-called epistemology of disagreement, he would be a defender of what Thomas Kelly would call an epistemically permissive position. Permissivism, which allows for multiple interpretations of a disclosed body of evidence, has theoretical and practical advantages over non-permissivism and the “rational uniqueness thesis.” This thesis, rational uniqueness, is that for any given proposition and total body of evidence, there is only a single doxastic attitude (for instance, belief, suspension, or disbelief) that the evidence makes rational.

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Some supporters of the rational uniqueness thesis see it as making rational disagreement impossible among evidence-sharing epistemic peers. But defenders of this view (Conee and Feldman 2004; White 2014) appear to equivocate between a weaker but more plausible version of uniqueness as a claim about there being one unique rational doxastic attitude that one person can take to a target proposition, given her total evidence that bears upon it, and a much stronger version of uniqueness as a claim with interpersonal import. The latter claim, which is what supporters of the “equal weight view” (Feldman) need to maintain in order for their account to be normative for how one ought to respond to disagreement among evidence-sharing peers, is much less plausible. To show why, Kelly appeals to James’s key point about how the truth goal can come apart. If one person may reasonably weigh avoiding false beliefs somewhat higher than gaining true beliefs, while another may reasonably vary in this balance of cognitive goals, then the argument for rational uniqueness as a thesis with interpersonal import is undercut: [T]he fact that they are different goals creates the need for trade-offs; the optimal strategy for the achievement of one is not the optimal strategy for the achievement of the other. . . . [This] Jamesian route to vindicating a permissive epistemology . . . works just as well in a framework that employs credences [degrees] instead of all-or-nothing beliefs. (Kelly 2013: 303–304)

I would go further than Kelly and maintain that reasonableness follows from, rather than determining permissibility, and that permissibility in turn follows virtue (responsible inquiry). Epistemic evidentialism, tied to the uniqueness thesis, tends to undermine the notion of reasonable philosophic or religious disagreement. The upshot of what I take to be the failure of various proposed forms of epistemic evidentialism is that it is misguided to seek universal norms in something like “belief’s own ethics.” The only philosophically plausible argument for wholesale principles of constraint on belief formation and revision is moral evidentialism, the kind we see instanced in William Clifford’s argument that James famously responded to. Ironically, however, this form of it has been all but abandoned by contemporary evidentialists, who went out looking for a purely epistemic source of norms for doxastic responsibility, but came up only with a new reign of error. Some evidentialist critics like Scott Aikin distance themselves from the equal weight view, yet still adhere to a version of the uniqueness thesis by bemoaning the fact that with James’s permissive epistemology “we will have lawful and interminable inconsistency” (Aikin 2014: 179). My response is that lawful inconsistency is just the upshot of what John Rawls describes as reasonable pluralism, and bids us to see as the predictable outcome of freedom of opinion under conditions of democracy. The “interpersonal slack,”



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to use Kelly’s helpful phrase, that permissivists defend has both moral and intellectual support in the “burdens of judgment” arguments that Rawls uses to deliberate the grounds of reasonable pluralism.14 The pragmatist’s ability to make sense of reasonable disagreement among evidence-sharing peers, and its support for Rawlsian reasonable pluralism, are two key advantages of the approach, not disadvantages as their critics sometimes make them out to be.15 Pragmatists should stand with Rawlsian reasonable pluralism and against the demand for consensus that the rational uniqueness thesis commits us to. Michael Eldridge (2013) correctly sees Aikin and Robert Talisse as influenced by the non-permissivist approach of Cheryl Misak, on which “in order to engage others in conversation or dialogue, we have to see their disagreements as implying a mistake on someone’s part. Otherwise we are merely talking past each other.” But, Eldridge responds, this “get[s] things backwards. If we see disagreements exclusively in terms of mistakes, then we begin to talk past each other.”16 Like Eldridge I think Talisse and Aikin have failed to recognize important differences between pluralism and relativism. But this response still does not address a potentially more difficult problem, first articulated by Bertrand Russell and more recently developed by Talisse and Aikin (2005; 2011): In view of what does Jamesian pluralism really demand toleration? Certainly, James treats it as doing so, and certainly he says many brave things about challenging one’s own beliefs by confrontation with others, and committing oneself to revising or abandoning them if they are found wanting. But what is it about James’s account that actually demands this willingness to revise our own beliefs, or to tolerate those who disagree with us? (Russell 1910: 97).17 The Jamesian commitment to inclusivity, to taking account of others’ claims and demands, would be crucial to satisfactorily answering these questions and to distinguishing Jamesian pluralism from relativism, on the one hand, and from dogmatic religiosity on the other. Todd Lekan, for example, tries to show how James qualifies the right to indulge in personal overbeliefs and to have them inform one’s practical reasoning: “Strenuously pursue your first order ideals. However, be on guard lest this pursuit inhibit the ideals of others—especially when these ideals promote or at least do not threaten greater inclusivity. Take care to adopt first order ideals that promote inclusivity. When possible, strive to help others promote their ideals, especially when those ideals are themselves conducive to inclusivity” (Lekan 2007: 15). In a recent book, William James and the Quest for the Ethical Republic, Trygve Throntveit points out that James clearly wants to extend Mill’s ideas about the role of deliberation and criticism in the positive social function of a “marketplace of ideas.”18 He writes,

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Despite rejecting moral certainties and a fixed ethical code, James identified three virtues that human experience suggested were useful to moral reasoning and likely to remain so. First was experimentalism, the willingness to reflect critically on our values and change them if experience warranted. Second was historical wisdom, and awareness of the practical needs and contingent factors that had driven the ethical experiment in the past, which helped discipline experimentalism without discouraging it. Third was empathy, the recognition that others’ values were facts of experience against which our own must be tested. All three virtues manifested the ‘strenuous mood’ that, for James, characterized the highest ethical life. Strenuosity demanded commitment to ongoing reflections, deliberation, and reconciliation of conflicting values. (Throntveit 2014: 2–3)

TOWARDS A PERMISSIVE YET RISK-AWARE ETHICS OF BELIEF I have argued that Clifford’s moral evidentialism makes too strong a demand on persons, and that permissivism moreover wins out over the sort of nonpermissivism we find based upon the rational uniqueness thesis. But in this final section, I want to switch tracks and come back to the practical problem with the Jamesian ethic of belief that I identified earlier: its lack of an adequately risk-aware treatment of faith ventures. Although I have largely defended James, I think it is useful for Talisse and Aikin to ask hard questions about whether pluralism is a self-consistent philosophy, and more specifically whether James’s account has the resources to provide censure of those who are dogmatic or intolerant. Can it help us differentiate the “strenuous mood” from ordinary, run-of-the-mill religious enthusiasm? My worry connects to Talisse and Aikin’s, in that I find it paradoxical for James to sharply criticize dogmatism, rationalization of prior belief, and the institutionalization of religion, while defending and at times even seeming to make a necessity of people’s “active religiosity,” which it should be obvious for many or most people is inextricably bound up with just such factors. Jamesian religious personalists and some religious liberals in his audience may appreciate his experimentalism, but do rank-and-file adherents of the historical religions, especially the Abrahamic family, really believe that the faithful can be as “inclusive” and accepting of differences as Jamesian pluralism seems to suppose? Remember, James has studied persons by way of character types, but he has directly studied neither collective and institutionalized religiosity, nor the character of different models of faith embraced by particular religions or religious sects. It is arguably these, as much or more so than the factors James focuses on, that tend to supply directives for ways



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of treating outsiders to the “home” religion. So, I am afraid we are still left to ask whether for this family of religions, or more likely, for models of faith embraced by particular religious subgroups within it, mutual toleration and respect will not be perceived as “impossible virtues.” The experimental attitude James prefers might lead us to take every religious tradition as a “living” tradition in the sense of being open to, and even demanding reinterpretation by each new generation. But the fixed nature of religious teachings and models of faith for many religious adherents is a serious risk to the kind of marketplace of ideas that James envisioned. Perhaps President John F. Kennedy put these risks best in a speech in which he stated, “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie —deliberate, contrived and dishonest— but the myth —persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”19 James would not like us to end on this dour note about the difficulty for “the common person or mankind at large” to adopt the new religious virtues his pluralism promotes. But Kennedy’s point perhaps supplies James a needed helping of the psychological insight into human behavior for which the latter is rightly famous. One concern about James when read as a moralist is that he does not well distinguish the benefits of living a morally strenuous life sustained by religious faith, from the problems either of religious “enthusiasm,” or of a politicized religion imposing itself over the public sphere through paternalistic laws. James seems to have agreed with Thomas Jefferson in holding that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.”20 But unfortunately, he paid very little attention to the distinction Jefferson drew, and that many secularists and members of religious minorities find so important, between religious commitments as contributing to personal perfection, and as potentially leading to oppressive use of state power. If active religiosity and strenuous moral living means asking more from yourself than you ask of others, who could argue? But secularist critics regularly point out injuries that a group’s commitment to strenuous moral living can have upon fellow citizens. Granting the function of religion in many people’s paths towards personal perfection, we should also grant that the beliefs of my neighbors may indeed do me harm: this depends largely not on what the true believers believe, but on how they think of and treat outsiders, and on how, if they could have their way, they would have their own beliefs impact the public sphere.21 To summarize, when it comes to how James uses his descriptive account of faith tendencies to support the right to believe, I find myself wishing that his approach was substantially more risk aware, more geared towards censure of religious orientations that motivate moral and epistemic injustices towards

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outsiders to the faith. James’s concern with motivating the strenuous mood might indeed be thought frightening in a “post-liberal” era of Christian apologetics, or in an age of growing Islamist ideology, etc. When the risks involve moral harms and epistemic injustices to others, the actor may not be the best judge, after all. So, my positive suggestion is that we need to substantially strengthen the “criticism and caution” side of James’s ethics of belief, rather than emphasizing just one’s personal right to be the chooser of one’s risk. Pragmatist theory is especially well-suited to offer the needed blend of philosophy and moral psychology to examine the sources of intolerance in religious worldviews and secular ideologies. James is right that, “Our thoughts determine our acts, and our acts re-determine the previous nature of the world” (James 1909: 774). But we can little afford to ignore the responsibility of the faith ventures of the “common person,” as James too often did.

NOTES 1. While I will defend James from this charge, I largely agree with Lekan 2007 that James’s argument in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” for the necessity of a “theological postulate” to animate the strenuous mood, is untenable. That it may be necessary for some people is a weaker claim, and one more consistent with Jamesian personalism. While I do not do so here, I would also take issue with James’s related claim in that paper that “The deepest difference, practically, in the moral life of man is the difference between the easy going and the strenuous mood.” 2. James relatedly found that conventional theism, with its sharp division between the created and the Creator, allows for no genuine two-way relation between humans and the divine. 3. Radical empiricism upholds “a world imperfectly unified still, and perhaps always to remain so” (160–161). It “harmonizes best with a radical pluralism, with novelty and indeterminism, moralism and theism, and with the “humanism” lately sprung upon us by the Oxford and the Chicago schools” (1912: 34). 4. James would say the same thing about various forms of materialism as ways of building out the contrary Naturalistic Hypothesis. One wishes that he would have at least affirmed that these latter are not necessarily pessimistic but can share a melioristic spirit of improvability of the human lot—something humanists like Dewey and Mill would certainly insist upon. 5. Eldridge (2007) writes, “Understanding James’s argument for personalism begins with recognizing that for James ethics is first philosophy.” But James is equally fallibilist and pluralist about ethical beliefs and systems. Uffelman notes, “James advocated working to bring about the very largest total universe of good because he did not believe it to be practically possible to pin down a monistic theory of value or singular definition of the good. His meliorism is a response to his pluralism” (2012, 171).



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6. James dedicated Pragmatism to Mill, “from whom I first learned the pragmatic openness of mind and whom my fancy likes to picture as our leader were he alive today” (18). 7. According to Klein (2015: 72), James developed methodological parallels between science and religion in order to achieve “a therapeutic goal—to convince despairing Victorians that religious faith can be reconciled with a scientific epistemology. James argues that the prospective theist is in the same epistemic situation with respect to the ‘religious hypothesis’ as the scientist working in the context of discovery.” For another account of James’s thought about the relationship between science and religion, see Axtell (2013). 8. In Varieties, James writes, “Our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow” (1902, Lecture 3). 9. Pluralists about rationality might also hold that where one’s evidence set is large and diverse, and the evidential relations between that set and a target proposition are accordingly complex or opaque, there will not be single doxastic attitude (or degree of credence) that the evidence makes rational. This is often the case with our philosophical, political, and religious beliefs. The complexity and opacity of evidential relations with these kinds of beliefs should lead us to a rejection of the uniqueness thesis and to a reaffirmation of reasonable disagreement. 10. On James and Clifford, see Axtell (2001). 11. See also Jennifer Welchman’s (2006) defense of a Jamesian ethics of self-experimentation. 12. Qualifications are also in order because we should not characterize Jamesian pluralism as akin to John Hick’s version of religious pluralism, though it clearly does have some overlaps. 13. “Hypothesis” is a term that to my knowledge James never uses with respect to particular detailed overbeliefs themselves. So, to understand these epistemological senses of pluralism, James tells us not to confuse the overbeliefs that “fill out” either the materialist or the religious hypothesis with those more generic hypotheses themselves. I have elsewhere (2013) marked the two levels of Jamesian epistemic pluralism by distinguishing experiments of living from living experiments. Of course, James realizes that the materialist hypothesis is a “live option” in his social milieu, and among his audience. That it might not be a live option for him, and that his writings are more concerned with comparing monist and pluralist religiosity, does not mean he doesn’t recognize reasonable disagreement at the level of competing materialist and religious research programs. Both are “live” until future experience falsifies one or the other—and again, don’t hold your breath. 14. Rawls (1995: 249). The present, permissive account directly supports the Rawlsian “burdens of reason,” which he defined as, “the sources of reasonable disagreement among reasonable persons, [that] are the many hazards involved in the correct (and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgment in the ordinary course of political life.”

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15. Thomas Kelly (2014: 303, 305). For a development of the pragmatists’ consistency and Feldman and Conee’s inconsistency with a) the possibility of reasonable disagreement and b) Rawlsian reasonable pluralism, see Axtell (2011). 16. Eldridge (2013) quoting from Misak (2004: 16). 17. For comments see Talisse and Aiken (2005); also Aiken (2014: 179). For defenses of Jamesian pragmatic pluralism against these objections, see Eldridge (2013), Uffelman (2012), and Putnam (2011). 18. Throntveit (2014: 60). Thus, Throntveit imputes to James the view that “individuals’ beliefs in the possible, and not just the proven, served a necessary social function, not just private needs” (72). 19. J.F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11, 1962, http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-3370. 20. Jefferson, Query XVII of Notes on the State of Virginia. 21. Jefferson was concerned with the coercions of what he called religious establishment. “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others,” so religious morality should not manifest as paternalistic laws or other strictures that compromise the principle of separation of church and state. ­Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, http://www.thefederalistpapers. org/founders/jefferson/thomas-jefferson-note-on-the-state-of-virginia-query-xvii.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aikin, Scott F. 2014. Evidentialism and the Will to Believe. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Axtell, Guy. 2001. “Teaching James’s ‘The Will to Believe,’” Teaching Philosophy 24(4): 325–345. Axtell, Guy. 2011. “From Internalist Evidentialism to Virtue Responsibilism.” In Evidentialism and its Discontents, edited by T. Dougherty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 88–102. Axtell, Guy. 2013. “Possibility and Permission? Intellectual Character, Inquiry, and the Ethics of Belief.” In H. Rydenfelt and S. Pihlstrom (eds.), William James on Religion. New York: Palgrave, 165–198. Conee, Earl and Feldman, Richard. 2004. Evidentialism: Essays in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eldridge, Michael. 2007. “The Universe as Thou: William James’s Religious Personalism,” (unpublished conference paper), http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/ mleldrid/SAAP/USC/TP24.html. Eldridge, Michael. 2013. “In Defense of Pragmatic Pluralism,” SAAP conference paper, http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/TAMU/P43G.htm. Gale, Richard. 2002. “A Challenge for Interpreters of Varieties,” Streams of William James 4(3): 32–33. Gutowski, Piotr. 2012. “To Be in Truth or Not to be Mistaken?” In D. Łukasiewicz and R. Pouivet (eds.), The Right to Believe: Perspectives in Religious Epistemology. New Brunswick NJ: Ontos, 85–102.



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Hollinger, David. 2006. “‘Damned for God’s Glory: William James and the Scientiifc Vindication of Protestant Culture,’” In William James and a Science of Religions, edited by W. Proudfoot. New York: Columbia University Press, 9–30. James, William.1897/1979. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1902/1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1907/1975. Pragmatism in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1909/1977. A Pluralistic Universe in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1911/1979. Some Problems in Philosophy in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1912/1976. Essays in Radical Empiricism in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James. 1927. “Reason and Faith,” Journal of Philosophy. 24(8): 197–203. James. 1981. Pragmatism with Introduction by Bruce Kuklick. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. James. 1988. Manuscript Lectures in The Works of William James, edited by Frederick H. Buckhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kelly, Thomas. 2014. “Can Evidence be Permissive?” In M. Steup, John Turri, and E. Sosa, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Kidd, Ian James. 2013.  “A Phenomenological Challenge to ‘Enlightened Secularism,’” Religious Studies 49(3): 377–398. Klein, Alexander. 2015. “Science, Religion, and the Will to Believe,” HOPOS 5(1): 72–117. Lekan, Todd. 2007. “Strenuous Moral Living,” William James Studies 2: 1–45. Lightfoot, Cynthia. 1997. The Culture of Adolescent Risk-Taking. New York: Guilford Publications. Mill, J.S. 1978/1859. On Liberty. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co. Misak, Cheryl. 2004. “Making Disagreement Matter: Pragmatism and Deliberative Democracy.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18(1): 9–22. Pihlstrom, Sami. 2013. “Pragmatic Realism and Pluralism in Philosophy of Religion.” In H. Rydenfelt and S. Pihlstrom (eds.), William James on Religion. New York: Palgrave, 78–110. Proudfoot, Wayne (ed.), 2013. William James and a Science of Religions. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Putnam, Ruth Anna. 2013. “William James.” In Chad Meister, Paul Copan (eds.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. London: Routledge. Putnam, Ruth Anna 2011. “Response to Talisse and Aikin, ‘three Challenges to Jamesian Ethics,’” William James Studies 6: 24–27. Rawls, John. 1995. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Rizzieri, Aaron. 2013. Pragmatic Encroachment, Religious Belief, and Practice. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Russell, Bertrand. 1910. “Pragmatism.” In his Philosophical Essays. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 87–126. Suckiel, Ellen. 2015. Review of William James on Ethics and Faith, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24379-williamjames-on-ethics-and-faith/. Talisse, Robert, and Aikin, Scott. 2011. “Three Challenges to Jamesian Ethics,” William James Studies 6: 3–9. Talisse, Robert, and Aikin, Scott. 2005. “Still Searching for a Pragmatist Pluralism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41(1), 145–160. Throntveit, Trygve. 2014. William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Uffelman, Mark. 2012. “A Reply to Talisse and Aikin,” William James Studies 9: 169–184. Welchman, Jennifer. 2006. “William James’s ‘The Will to Believe’ and the Ethics of Self-experimentation,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42(2): 229–241. White, Roger. 2014. “Evidence Cannot be Permissive.” In M. Steup, J. Turri, and E. Sosa, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Chapter 20

Leaping into the Gap Religion and the Moral Life Seth Vannatta

What is the relationship between religion and morality? That an internal relationship exists is perhaps a post-Abrahamic assumption. But for our purposes, such an assumption is warranted, given the focus of the present volume on the moral philosophy of William James, whose empirical description of religious experience seems to bracket the ancient and the pagan. That much of Mosaic Law in the Old Testament—prohibitions against murder and adultery, for instance—is moral in nature, suggests that religion provides the sanction of the moral life by providing the moral law to be followed. This is one conceptual option of the relationship. Jesus of Nazareth claimed to fulfill (if not problematize) this relationship by shifting the emphasis from following the law externally to realizing it internally. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us not only to refrain from adultery, but also to cleanse our lustful hearts. On that account, morality seems not about refraining from inner passions by following prohibitions against them, but about a reformation of one’s desires. Paul had to navigate the relationship as well. Did the early Christians need to follow Mosaic Law and Hebrew procedures to be full recipients of the good news? In his letters to Rome and Galatia, Paul argued that the Gospel was for Jew and Gentile alike by demonstrating that Abraham was first justified by his faith in God, answering his call to travel to Canaan, and only afterward following the divine dictate to establish his covenant with God. But is the faithful surrender to God, by Abraham or others, itself a moral act, or do morally valuable acts flow from the submission that faith affords? The relationship between these two modes of experience, religious and moral, is framed again by the central debate of the Reformation. Martin Luther, worried on the one hand about the sale of indulgences and on the 337

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other about the seemingly perpetual failure of moral strivings to achieve divine perfection, posited justification by faith alone. Luther relied on Paul’s letters to advance the proposition that one cannot work oneself into the kingdom of heaven. If our acts cannot save us, and only the undeserved grace of God can, the central question became: how does the grace of God work in the human heart? What are the practical fruits of the gifts of God? In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan likened the human heart to a dusty room. When swept, the dust flies up into Christian’s face, choking him. When water is sprinkled into the room, the dust settles and can be swept safely. Sweeping the dry dust of original sin amounts to following the law alone. Our moral strivings fall short and produce more sin with each act. Sweeping the settled dust is a function of how the water (the grace of God) works in the human heart (Bunyan 1856: 60–61). This brief introduction of the history of Judeo-Christianity illustrates some complexity into the question at hand. Are religion and morality coextensive? Does religion sanction morality? Does religion complete morality, and if so in what sense? What is the nature of the religious self qua moral agent? Is the religious self an autonomous personality choosing to follow divine law or a temperamental result of a divine gift whose acts flow freely in accordance with the law? In order to illustrate William James’s answer to these questions, a philosophical framework is necessary. I will begin this chapter by explaining some possible relationships between religion and morality offered by British philosopher, Michael Oakeshott and explain Oakeshott’s suggestion of the most adequate relationship—that religion is the completion of morality. Second, I will illustrate how James makes this proposition concrete in his pragmatist analysis of the status of possibility. And last, I will articulate how saintliness provides a rich account of the completion to which Oakeshott referred. I aim to show that James, in both his chapter, “Pragmatism and Religion” in Pragmatism and in his Varieties of Religious Experience empirically animates the proposition that religion is the completion of morality. Religion is a mode of life where ideal moral possibilities are functionally real and pragmatically meaningful. The world grows pluralistically and melioristically toward its salvation and perfection within the workshop of being, where individual acts actualize ideal possibilities and create further possibilities towards the salvation of the world (James 2007: 174). Such is his application of pragmatism to the logic concerning the question of the salvation of the world—the religious “completion” of morality. In the Varieties, James gives denotative reference to this philosophical articulation. Saints contribute to the world’s salvation with each act of leaping into the gap of possibility.



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POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN RELIGION AND THE MORAL LIFE In his 1933 opus, Experience and its Modes, British philosopher, Michael Oakeshott distinguishes concrete experience from its various abstract modes, including scientific, historical, and practical experience. Further, he situates both religious and moral experience within the mode of the practical, a move consonant with the tradition of American pragmatism, of which William James was such a famous proponent. In his essay of the same title as the present chapter, Oakeshott attempts to determine the proper relation between religion and the moral life. If the view that religion stands outside of the moral world is too “extravagant and abstract,” a more realistic relation demands articulation (Oakeshott 1993: 39). Oakeshott concludes that the view that religion is the completion of morality is the “least inadequate” of the theoretical relationships between religion and morality (Oakeshott 1993: 45). Oakeshott proposes three options for connecting religion and the moral life: (1) religion as morality itself, (2) religion as the sanction of morality, and (3) religion as the completion of morality (Oakeshott 1993: 39). Oakeshott quickly dismisses the equation of religion and morality as an abuse of language, but reconstructs the option more charitably as “morality as the condition for religious belief” (Oakeshott 1993: 40). According to this option, if religion is a human activity, it must be an activity of moral personalities, and no doctrine deserves the name of religion if it does not accord with the requirements of moral personality. Oakeshott, by way of reference to John Wood Oman, a philosopher and theologian, contrasts this option with conceptions of divine grace operating mechanically upon humans. If human activity is a mere effect and outcome of grace, it cannot be counted as moral because the distinguishing mark of moral activity is autonomy (Oakeshott 1993: 40). This view attempts to synthesize the apparent independence of moral activity and dependence of religious submission by treating them as “one and indivisible: ‘for we serve God only as we are true to our own souls, and we are true to our own souls, only as we serve God’” (Oakeshott 1993: 43). Oakeshott’s critique of this option is that it relies on an overly abstract notion of autonomy. Practical wisdom supplements mere autonomy to “rescue it from abstraction.” Oakeshott writes, “A concrete moral action is an autonomous, free, and adequate reaction of a personality to a situation” (Oakeshott 1993: 44). The second option Oakeshott explores, “religion as the sanction of morality,” begins with the rejection that morality can find its own naturalistic support. Revealed religion, as both supernatural and objective is the necessary foundation for morality (Oakeshott 1993: 42). Oakeshott finds this position

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both unchristian and immoral. If autonomy is a necessary condition of morality, then blindly following revealed law amounts to acting morally, immorally (Oakeshott 1993: 43). Given these dual accounts by Oakeshott, we can conclude that if grace works mechanically in the human heart or if laws are blindly followed, neither the products of grace or the acts in accordance with the law can be considered moral. Neither the sweeper of damp dust nor the Abrahamic man of faith tells us much about how religion and morality intersect. The third option Oakeshott concludes to be the least inadequate is “religion as the completion of morality.” Oakeshott’s conclusion rests on a certain selfcontradiction in morality. First, each ought obeyed produces further oughts, which, despite your dutiful completion of the first ought, condemn you once more (Oakeshott 1993: 41). Such was Luther’s central problematic. Second, morality is a social, evolving communal enterprise acting in search of the ideal good. It is a vain search for an unattainable. This “should be” is enough for morality, but not enough for religion, which involves a belief in a real object, not a should, but an is. In religion the good is real, while in morality it is abstract. Religion thus provides the concrete completion of morality because goodness achieved in religion involves losing oneself in God, not in becoming better morally. Here Oakeshott splits the question of the self into the religious self, the self surrendered, and the moral self, the self asserted. As we will see, James’s construction of the tender-minded, rationalist, and monistic conception of religion on the one hand, and the tough-minded, empiricist, and pluralistic conception of religion on the other, frames a tension in the relation between religion and the moral life quite similar to the ones Oakeshott presents. As James puts it, “Religion in the sense of self-surrender, and moralism, in the sense of self-sufficingness, have been pitted against each other as incompatibles frequently enough in the history of human thought” (James 2007: 178). The relation between religion and morality must account for the difference between self-surrender and self-responsibility. James does so empirically and pragmatically. THE VALIDITY OF POSSIBILITY AND THE MEANING OF OUR ACTS Writing before Oakeshott, James shares with him a concern for overly abstract conceptions of religion. But their conceptions of abstraction and its defects differ slightly. Oakeshott’s worry concerning abstraction is more akin to James’s anxiety over the psychologist’s fallacy, where the product of analysis is taken as concrete and having antecedent ontological existence. For Oakeshott, analysis creates abstractions, but it is a mistake to treat these as



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concrete wholes. Instead, they are abstract parts. In many cases where James aims to avoid “vicious reification” of abstractions, he would agree with this account of and critique of abstractionism. But when religion is James’s concern, his focus is on the rationalism of systematic theology where rational unity and perfection are interpreted as necessary conditions for the possibility of the moral life. Here, the abstract is the product of generalization and internal coherence. James emphasizes that such unity should be conceived as an end, not a principle, an ultimate, not an absolute, a last, not a first (James 2007: 171). Because the concept of perfection’s use and meaning are coextensive, the conception of a perfect unity is true if it “squares well with life’s other uses” (James 2007: 165). Conceiving of unity as a rational principle and necessary antecedent condition for the possibility of morality (which Oakeshott reconstructed as religion as the sanction of morality), makes us “lie back,” indifferent to the future. The problem of the conception of a perfect world as either a principle or an end centers on the validity of possibility. Because the rationalist interprets the salvation of the world as necessary, and the empiricist interprets it as possible, James pragmatically investigates the meaning of possibility. What difference does it make if something is possible (James 2007: 171–172)? James adds to the abstract meaning of possible (differing from the necessary and actual), the concrete meaning that some of the conditions for the actualization of the possible are extant, and he claims that this is empirically true for the salvation of the world (James 2007: 173). In A Pluralistic Universe, James writes: “The believer finds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous with a more of the same quality which is operative in the universe outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with” (James 1961 [1909]: 45). Here, James elaborates on the extant conditions of the world which the believer finds continuous with his “tenderer parts of his personal life.” While the pessimist conceives of salvation as impossible and the optimist conceives of it as inevitable, the meliorism to which pragmatists incline treats salvation as possible (James 2007: 173–174). The pragmatic meliorist views each of our ideals as live options capable of being actualized under the conditions James describes as “first such as mixture of things as will in the fullness of time give us a chance, a gap that we can jump into, and finally OUR ACT” (James 2007: 174). For James, our acts are leaps into these gaps, these ideal possibilities, and the intersection of our acts and our ideals is the “workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making, so that nowhere may the world grow in any other kind of way than this” (James 2007: 175). What are the constituents of such a workshop of being? James presents several, including the extant conditions of the world’s present state, the trust in our fellow people, and the belief in God. Theism, insofar as it is not the product of a lecture on metaphysics, has always viewed God as the one

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helper, the most important condition enabling our leap into the gap to be fruitful. James ends his lecture refusing to think that the pluralistic, human experience, upon which his entire philosophy hinges empirically and pragmatically, exhausts the highest forms of experience in the universe. Further, he points to The Varieties of Religious Experience as evidence of this refusal. To James’s discussion of saintliness in that book, I now turn in an attempt to fill out my position that for James, religion is the completion of the moral life. SAINTLINESS AND THE FRUITS OF OUR ACTS The constituents of James’s workshop of being must include temperament. In his chapter on saintliness in the Varieties, James presents a psychology of the common human will: it is a constant battle of “yeses and noes,” impulses and inhibitions to act (James 1982: 263). Love, courage, enthusiasm, and selfsurrender battle with shyness, laziness, despair, and stinginess for primacy of over our wills. However, the “man who lives in his religious centre of personal energy, and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasms,” is different act (James 1982: 267). His lower “noes” cannot infect his higher, nobler energies. While for most of us, these moments of enthusiasm where our hard hearts soften are temporary, this is not the case with saints act (James 1982: 267). Their “gift of tears” has permanence to it (James 1982: 267). James is much less concerned with how the conversion takes place, through what subliminal window the voice of God communicates, and much more interested in the fruits of religion in character, which he calls Saintliness (James 1982: 271). The saintly character experiences the world as inhabited by a wider power, personified as God, but possibly including abstract moral ideals (James 1982: 272). This wider power to which the saint surrenders is felt as continuous with the saint’s life. Ego and self-centeredness dissipate, and other-centered interests are embraced freely and with intensity (James 1982: 273). James states that these inner conditions are accompanied by practical consequences including asceticism, strength of soul, purity, and charity (James 1982: 273–274). The affection of self-surrender and self-forgetfulness, James claims, is not a mere “derivative of theism,” and this is perhaps why he is so skeptical of rationalist and systematic theology. Such systems rarely if ever produce the energies that envelop the saintly soul and motivate acts of moral courage. He is concerned with both a description of the “faith-state” and the fruits of its endurance in saintly acts (James 1982: 279). James denotatively defines the faith-state in a way that reminds us of the tension between morality and religion. The equanimity and passionate self-surrender, even amid external tumult and stress, are accompanied by an “abandonment of



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self-responsibility” (James 1982: 289). Traditional moral theories would seemingly require self-responsibility as the necessary condition for either the autonomous production of a universal duty, the calculation of the hedonic principle, or the practical valuation of the proper virtue to be enacted in a given situation, what James calls “worldly prudence.” James describes the self-surrender by those who, in the face of torture and even death, experience suffering with an enthusiastic happiness and security transcending the vicissitudes of an ordinarily terrifying situation. James claims that these temperamental results of the faith-state produce “indispensable pathways to perfection” (James 1982: 310). However, the tensions between self-surrender and self-responsibility, between religion and morality, are put into clearer view by way of James’s empirical and experiential approach in The Varieties. James differentiates the codification of the ascetic procedures by the Church from the asceticism that results from individual faithstates. In the latter, he sees a “more delicate spirit” (James 1982: 304). But even here he refers to the “vertigo of self-contradiction” and the “ascetic paradox” (James 1982: 306, 315). The tension between religion and morality is most evident when we examine the virtue of obedience. James begins his discussion of obedience with an admission that his contemporary secular culture does not hold it in high esteem. Rather, the individual duty to determine one’s conduct and live by the results is the more accepted contemporary social ideal (James 1982: 310–311). This is the self-sufficingness of morality to which James referred in Pragmatism. Even as James attempts to understand the virtue of obedience, he quotes a Jesuit authority, who writes, “in obeying we can commit no fault” and Saint John Climachus, who called obedience “an excuse before God” (James 1982: 312). Few of James’s or our contemporaries would respond to these references to obedience with moral praise. However, James’s empirical approach to understanding religion, via religious experience, is thoroughgoing, as he writes, “One can never fathom an emotion or divine its dictates by standing outside of it” (James 1982: 325). As is his pluralism when he declares, “each emotion obeys a logic of its own and makes deductions which no other logic can draw. Piety and charity live in a different universe from worldly lusts and fears, and form another center of energy altogether” (James 1982: 325). If internal tensions, paradoxes, self-contradictions, and pluralistic logics characterize the faith-state that James describes, then how is he to measure them morally, when, having given up the positive dogmas of theology as first principles, no easy, mathematical calculation of their worth is available? How is religion in the characteristic of these experiences related to the moral life in general? James aims to test saintliness “by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity” (James 1982: 331). Importantly, James does not claim that saintliness can “prove” itself, but only “approve” itself, by

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showing how the religious attitude caters to life’s many needs in its various environmental contexts (James 1982: 331). James is not so naïve to suppose that saintliness cannot regress into vicious extravagance, and he takes time to show how saintly virtues, such as devoutness, can, when manifest in certain temperaments amid certain environments, morph into fanaticism. He is clear that the saintly virtues are not the only live options to deal with life’s evils and to meet life’s many moral needs. He admits that we want a modicum of retributive justice in our communities and that most of us find “worldly prudence” a more workable virtue. Moreover, concern with social ills seems a more pressing moral concern in his day than the need to save individual souls was in previous phases of Christianity. James is well attuned to the evolution of the ways communities shape and interact with religious transformation and the affectations of faith. But James returns to the language of pragmatism and religion when evaluating the saintly character. He calls saints “impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant” (James 1982: 358). To impregnate, animate, and give life in this way is to use one’s “creative energies” to toil in the workshop of being, where acts and ideal possibilities intersect. Saints are willing to risk being dupes and victims by taking the first step, the leap into the gap of moral possibility. When successful, charity and non-resistance are more powerful than the alternatives of force or worldly prudence (James 1982: 358). James makes neither any absolute judgment about the value of saintliness nor any explicit connection to moral philosophy in The Varieties. His radically empirical approach, his pragmatism, and his thoroughgoing pluralism pervade his estimation of the worthiness of the saintly character. His empirical approach abandons the “theological criteria” and forces an estimation of saintliness in relational terms. As he puts it, “According to the empirical philosophy . . . all ideals are matters of relation” (James 1982: 374). His pragmatism demands that saintliness be judged by its function in its environment (James 1982: 370). And his pluralism resists judgment from an absolute standard. Because the worth of the saint’s character is a matter of “economical relations,” there is “no absoluteness in the excellence of sainthood” and “the verdict will vary according to the point of view adopted” (James 1982: 374– 376). But as the saint is adapted to a higher conceivable society, he is, at least abstractly, a higher type of man than the “strong man” (James 1982: 375). CONCLUSION And so, we return to our question concerning the relation between religion and morality. As we have seen this hinges on the relation between



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self-surrender and self-responsibility. It was Oakeshott’s hypothesis that religion relates to morality as the concrete whole of which morality is an abstract part. A reconciliation of the two tensions hinges on the way each philosopher cashes out the meaning of the abstract and the concrete. For Oakeshott, the completion is not one in a historical series, but as the concrete whole is the completion of abstract products of analysis found within it (Oakeshott 1993: 42). James’s pragmatism, on the other hand, constantly looks to the future for the concrete consequences of religious belief and moral temperament, and I believe he sees the religious completion of morality in the historical and temporal mode that Oakeshott avoids. But since James, too, is a fallibilist, he does not make this explicit. How might Oakeshott’s unique articulation of the relation between religion and morality map onto James’s account of the matter? First, for James, the realm of the possible, including moral ideals, is real and its reality is found in the pragmatic account of its validity. Some constituents of its actualization are extant, including both individual ideals and individual acts. But it is neither actual nor necessary. This applies to the salvation of the world insofar as the perfection and unity of the world is no principle to be followed but an end to be achieved. Our temperaments, ideals, and trust in our fellow men and women, and importantly, our belief in the reality of the unseen and in God, are the extant constituents of the actualization of moral possibilities. Second, for James, our moral acts are the workshop of being, creating the world’s salvation at the intersection of ideal possibility and action. Third, an empirical account of saintliness crystallizes the relation between self-surrender and self-responsibility. Surrender does not end in indifference or apathy. It does not lie back in optimistic faith. Selfsurrender renders the self responsible as it unifies the self and concentrates its energy toward other-centeredness. The self-responsibility of morality only applies to the Janus-faced tug of yeses and noes most of us face daily. The surrender of oneself has functional consequences that James puts as follows: The thought of this [divine] order yields him a superior denomination of happiness, and a steadfastness of soul with which no other can compare. In social relations his serviceability is exemplary; he abounds in impulses to help. His help is inward as well as outward, for his sympathy reaches souls as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected faculties therein. Instead of placing happiness where common men place it, in comfort, he places it in a higher kind of inner excitement, which converts discomforts into sources of cheer and annuls unhappiness. So he turns his back on no duty, however thankless; and when we are in need of assistance, we can count upon the saint lending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon any other person. (James 1982: 370)

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Consider that James’s empirical account of saintliness resolves the tension between self-surrender and self-responsibility pragmatically. The difference surrender makes is in the responsibility to duty and the enacted virtues of charity, purity, and patience that ensue from self-surrender. Religion is the completion of morality just as religious experience illustrates a resolution to this tension. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brennan, Bernard P. 1961. The Ethics of William James. Pittsburgh, PA: Bookman Associates. Bunyan, John. 1856. The Pilgrim’s Progress. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. James, William. 1909. A Pluralistic Universe. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. James, William. 1982. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Martin E. Marty, ed. New York: Penguin Books. James, William. 2007. Pragmatism: A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking. Bel Air, CA: Filiquarian Publishing. Oakeshott, Michael. 1993. Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life. Timothy Fuller, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Chapter 21

The Moral Framework of A Pluralistic Universe Gary S. Slater

There is an epigram that my father used to share with my brothers and me. He would say, “There are two parts to every decision: first you make a decision, and then you make it the right decision.” Given our confused response, he might have added that there are two parts to receiving fatherly wisdom: hearing the advice, and then spending years trying to figure out what it means. Gradually, however, the message has become clearer. Understanding it rests, I think, on the following premises: a. There are real moral values embedded within a correspondingly real world. b. Persons have a capacity to alter the world and bring about the increase or realization of those values. c. The world is constantly in flux, such that the state of affairs characterizing the “first part” of a decision is not that which characterizes the “second part.” Another way to put this is that the world is fundamentally open and unfinished. d. Human awareness is also open; that is, human awareness is necessarily incomplete, both in spite of and because of such relatively stable categories of knowing, language, culture, or history. Taken together, these premises suggest that making a decision is indeed always the “first part” of a decision, in that a decision is an act of anticipation, within concrete circumstances, for outcomes hoped for but not fully known. These outcomes are then corrected in the “second part” of that decision by one’s encounters with real things, which disabuse one of false notions and avail themselves to be engaged or even repaired. These reflections on decision-making, and especially the corresponding premises, provide a 347

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helpful point of entry into the moral framework of William James’s A Pluralistic Universe. There is much more to A Pluralistic Universe than a moral framework, of course. Asked to deliver the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford’s Manchester College (now Harris Manchester College) on “the religious aspect” of his philosophy, James proposed to speak about the “present situation in philosophy” (Richardson 2006: 498). The result was a series of eight lectures delivered in 1908 and published the following year as A Pluralistic Universe. The work is an attack on idealist monism in philosophy, particularly the notion of an Absolute as promulgated by such followers of Hegel as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Josiah Royce. James argues that however tidy may be the notion of the Absolute, its benefits fail to compensate for its problems, which include methodological impracticality, logical inconsistency, and above all, an alienation between individuals and their environment. This alienation diminishes human freedom and entails an impoverished religious and moral imagination. Moreover, absolute idealism elevates conceptual or theoretical rationality at the expense of other forms of rationality, thus misrepresenting what philosophy is and impairing its ability to encompass and respond to the full spectrum of human experience. In place of the Absolute, James refines the philosophy of radical empiricism he had introduced in 1904–5, offering a pluralistic vision for religion, metaphysics, logic, and ethics. He also recalibrates the relationships among these disciplines by subdividing rationality into four types—intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and practical—a move that reduces the dominance of logic within philosophy even as it expands rationality to engage a “turbid, muddled, gothic” picture that is closer to experience as it’s actually lived (James 2011: 16). A Pluralistic Universe also entails a set of ethically relevant commitments not explicitly contained within the moral framework listed above. For example, James encourages an attitude of reverence with regard to one’s ecological relationship with the world. He also offers an empirically grounded methodology that orients itself toward a wide range of religious phenomena. Most of all, he suggests an interpersonal ethics of the everyday and of the intimate. It is the task of this chapter to trace a moral framework within this mix, grounding it within the set of premises listed in the first paragraph and explaining how it entails the commitments listed above. This chapter unfolds in four steps. First, it reconstructs James’s critique of philosophies of the Absolute. Second, it catalogues some of the attempts to reconstruct the philosophical framework of A Pluralistic Universe in the wake of James’s pluralism regarding rationality and his challenge to disciplinarity. Third, it articulates a moral framework, sketching a spatial metaphor in which the polarities of inner/outer, nearer/farther, and experiences/concepts are represented radially in a manner that captures James’s emphasis on flux,



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on the pragmatic utility of concepts, and on what he calls the “faith ladder” (James 2011: 107). Fourth, the chapter surveys some important entailments of this moral framework with respect to ecology, philosophy of religion, and interpersonal ethics. SCALPING THE ABSOLUTE A Pluralistic Universe represents a sustained challenge to philosophical idealism, or the philosophy of what James calls the Absolute. Indeed, before arriving in Oxford, James wrote to his brother Henry of being “eager for the scalp of the Absolute” (Richardson 2006: 499). This critique is positioned within a philosophical taxonomy, the first division of which is between what James calls spiritualistic versus materialistic philosophies. James rejects materialism immediately as both logically and emotionally unsatisfying. The next division, applying within spiritualistic philosophies, is that of intimate versus foreign, or between dualistic theism and pantheism, respectively. Like materialism, dualistic theism is also dismissed offhand, in that its positing of a divine agent fully separate from the universe is so out of step with the dominant contemporary intellectual currents as to hardly be worth entertaining.1 This leads to a third division, within spiritualistic pantheism, which is that of monism versus pluralism—or, to put it in the terms James prefers throughout the work, the Absolute versus radical empiricism. James’s taxonomy is expressed in Figure 21.1. It is the distinction between Absolute idealism and radical empiricism that comprises the bulk of A Pluralistic Universe. Before venturing into James’s critique of the Absolute, it helps to be a bit clearer on his distinction between Absolute idealism and radical empiricism. In its most basic terms, this distinction (in which the philosophy of the Absolute stands in as a species of rationalism) is such that “empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes” (James 2011: 2). Even more important

Figure 21.1  The Moral Framework of A Pluralistic Universe.

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is the distinction between what James calls the all-form and the each-form, or the “form of totality” versus the “distributive form of reality,” respectively (James 2011: 11). It is on the basis of the distinction between each-form and all-form that James mounts his critique of the Absolute in its greatest detail. This critique can be understood with respect to two aspects: internal and ethical. That is, James articulates what he takes to be the intrinsically unappealing features of Absolute philosophy, that is, the reasons why it may be considered an “improbable hypothesis” (James 2011: 37). And he also shows also how the Absolute generates consequences that are unacceptable on ethical grounds. Regarding the internal failures of the Absolute, James identifies at least three specific problems. The first is that accepting the Absolute lends itself to little if any investigation of empirical realities. As James puts it, “the absolute is useless for deductive purposes,” such that “whatever the details of experience may prove to be, after the fact of them the absolute will adopt them” (James 2011: 42). He then goes on to remark of “something really weird and uncanny in the contrast between the abstract pretensions of rationalism and what rationalistic methods concretely can do” (James 2011: 48). The second internal problem with the philosophy of the Absolute, closely connected to the first, is that it is “thin.” That is, it grapples only the conceptual surfaces of things rather than their experiential content, glossing over swaths of experience in its rush to prove the logical necessity of the Absolute. On this score, James does concede that Hegel, unlike such Anglophone idealists as Bradley or Royce, is indeed “thick,” with a keen eye for empirical observation. Indeed, for James, “Hegel’s vision, taken merely impressionistically, agrees with countless facts” (James 2011: 33). Thick or thin, however, no amount of observational detail can save the Absolute from its third internal problem, which is that its logic offers no satisfactory explanation for the problem of the One and the Many. As James recognizes, “Different ‘selves’ thus break out inside of what the absolutist insists to be intrinsically one fact. But how can what is actually one be effectively so many?” (James 2011: 68). James observes that individuals “differ from the absolute not only by defect, but also by excess,” in that there are realities internal to personal experience that do not reduce to a static, timeless Absolute (James 2011: 68). David Lamberth has identified James’s critique here as the “problem of compounding consciousness,” which is “to show how each experience contains actual relations that are productive (or constitutive) of both its similarity (aggregation) to and its difference (individuation) from other experiences” (Lamberth 1999: 173). In James’s terms, even were intellectualism not so unsavory on a moral or ethical level, it would still fail on the terms it sets for itself. Yet for James, the Absolute does fail on a moral and ethical level, and if anything, this problem is more significant than the internal critique. As



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Michael R. Slater has observed, for James, “above all, it was the practical consequences of absolute idealism that most worried him, including its implications for how we understand ourselves, the world, and our relationship to it” (Slater 2014: 170). James’s ethical critique contains at least two concerns. The first concern is that accepting the Absolute generates a host of intractable moral problems. For example, regarding the “speculative ‘problem of evil’” we are left “wondering why the perfection of the absolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as darken the day for our human imaginations” (James 2011: 39). James’s second ethical concern with the Absolute is that its metaphysics “makes the universe discontinuous” (James 2011: 69). That is, the Absolute possesses a “perfection” that is “represented as the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience” (James 2011: 39). In terms of the ethical implications of this discontinuity, one is reminded of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s line from The Karamazov Brothers: “the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular” (Dostoyevsky 2007: 58). The ethical implications here are that, in tethering ourselves to such a view, we objectify ourselves within an alienated reality governed by a remote, aloof Absolute. These internal and ethical failures converge in a particular term that captures the heart of James’s critique: vicious intellectualism. Vicious intellectualism is the “treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the name’s definition fails positively to include” (James 2011: 20). This tendency fails on logical as well as ethical grounds. Logically, vicious intellectualism makes it difficult to account for any sort of proximate relation. As James puts it, “the words ‘as’ and ‘quâ’ bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with phenomenal diversity” (James 2011: 16). Ethically, vicious intellectualism holds that theoretical or conceptual rationality is the only kind of rationality that is philosophically respectable. This results in the aforementioned alienation of an observer from everyday life. As David Lamberth has put it, Vicious intellectualism not only prefers concepts to experience, it is a form of extremist valuation and habituation on which reality is reduced to a series of names . . . . Once so valued and conceived in language, the chief problem for philosophy becomes the problem of relatedness in all its forms, of cause and effect, of proximity, of necessity, and so on. (Lamberth 2014: 139)

Vicious intellectualism not only makes lived experience an illogical mess of contradictions reconciled only within some distant Absolute mind; it also deprives one of any means to ameliorate the dislocation aside from theoretical logic. For James, this is a situation that calls for a radical solution, one that attacks not only the idealist legacy of Hegel or Kant, or even the rationalist

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legacy of Leibniz or Descartes, but also the preference within Western philosophy for static concepts over physicality and flux that traces back as far as Plato (James 2011: 79). NAVIGATING RATIONALITIES In moving from James’s critique of the Absolute toward the articulation of a moral framework, a question arises. Does radical empiricism deny conceptual thought entirely? The answer is no. James does value conceptual thought, holding that “both theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives” (James 2011: 73). However, James does apply his pluralism to rationality itself. This is a crucial move, both for understanding A Pluralistic Universe and deriving from it a moral framework. As James puts it, “rationality has at least four dimensions, intellectual, aesthetical, moral, and practical; and to find a world rational to the maximal degree in all these respects simultaneously is no easy matter” (James 2011: 37). James admits that his own preferred system of radical empiricism does not resonate perfectly with all of his four forms of rationality, failing particularly in its aesthetic dimension.2 An important feature that recommends it above its idealist or materialist alternatives, however, is its recognition that these forms of rationality can even be distinguished. In its openness and multivalence, James’s radical empiricism raises some challenging moral questions. For example, if morality is but one type of rationality, separate from the others, then how might one construct a moral framework at all? For the existence of a framework within implies the participation of its other forms of rationality in at least some contexts. And if the practical, logical, and aesthetic forms of rationality are enlisted, then what rule or principle holds them together as a framework rather than a loose confederation? The present chapter claims that there is indeed a framework that is not restricted exclusively to the moral, one that draws from all four rationalities in a systematic way. But radical empiricism challenges not only a unitary form, but also disciplinarity per se, in that “reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and surrounds it” (James 2011: 71). These are challenges that must be dealt with before such a framework can be articulated. Commentators on William James have found various ways to bring together the disciplines implicated in James’s pluralistic approach to rationality. Joel D. S. Rasmussen, for example, has argued in “Jamesian Pluralism and the Ancient Quarrel” that A Pluralistic Universe offers an alliance of metaphysics and poetics. Rasmussen argues that “James proposes a middle way between absolutist metaphysics and deconstructive irony: one in which



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neither philosophy nor poetry achieves or even seeks a final victory over the other, but in which they together make a deep and committed alliance” (Rasmussen 2014: 155). Another example comes from Sergio Franzese, whose Ethics of Energy argues that the key to understanding James’s career lies in its moral emphasis, such that “the moral problem is the ultimate and fundamental problem of a being who needs to choose in order to exist” (Franzese 2008: 103). This suggests that the act of navigating among rationalities is, to the extent it involves decision-making, inherently moral. Still another example can be found in Sami Pihlström’s “Jamesian Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God,” which argues that the pluralism of A Pluralistic Universe is best understood as a “metaphilosophical” or even “meta-metaphysical” pluralism, “replacing the idea of a single absolute conception of reality . . . with several acceptable ontologies serving different purposes” (Pihlström 2014: 188–189). By positing Jamesian metaphysics as an a posteriori discipline, one responsive to the projects and purposes of particular individuals, Pihlström offers a vision of ethics as perhaps the linchpin of James’s radical empiricism. For present purposes, a particularly helpful example of navigating Jamesian rationalities comes from David Lamberth. Examining James’s contributions to philosophy of religion, Lamberth offers a sense of how radical empiricism integrates its different types of rationality. Lamberth argues that in James’s philosophy thinking should be understood less as “contemplation or theoria” than as “a form of adaptive behavior oriented most basically to action in and on a relatively stable but also continuously evolving environment” (Lamberth 2014: 135). Such a redefinition in thinking carries some important consequences. For example, as an adaptive behavior, philosophy benefits from its being grounded in diverse circumstances, such that “philosophy in the singular is . . . of particular importance due to the functional power of philosophies in the plural” (Lamberth 2014: 135). Moreover, conceptualization comes to be seen as subsequent to personal acts of decisiveness, and metaphysical, logical, and conceptual claims—while valid, indeed while true—are evaluated insofar as they serve moral ends as human flourishing or responding to suffering. In Lamberth’s account, such a shift renders philosophy “accountable in a deep and integral way for the whole range of normative domains of human thought, consciousness, and practice” (Lamberth 2014: 143–144). Religion is implicated in this process, as “religion, in its multifarious plurality, is, from a philosophical perspective, functional for striking a balance of rationality among the competing domains of rationality within human culture and practice, and more broadly within the world of experience” (Lamberth 2014: 143–144). Although religion is not to be equated exclusively with morality, Lamberth’s recognition that religion resonates across each form of rationality—particularly his claim that “the deeper question is not which form

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of rationality is superior, but rather what balance we should strike among our competing rational domains”—speaks to the effort to explore a moral framework of A Pluralistic Universe (Lamberth 2014: 141). Collectively, the efforts of Rasmussen, Franzese, Pihlström, and Lamberth are all instructive to the present task. Simply by offering integrative accounts of the different disciplines and rationalities implicated in A Pluralistic Universe, these authors suggest that it is plausible to think of a moral framework within James’s thinking in 1908–9. By providing demonstrations of intellectual ordering within James’s work in such a way that contingency within such ordering is itself respected, Rasmussen et al. make a cumulative case that all four rationalities are to be activated within a moral framework of A Pluralistic Universe. Taken together, the result is a framework for moral inquiry of a wide range of types, with each type of the rationality as its own sort of normative measure. James’s pluralism about rationality facilitates investigation into particular situations, in that it allows one to ask which type of thinking best serves that situation. Aesthetics and metaphysics combine toward ethical ends, such that what one determines to be good or beautiful and what one determines to be real come to help one determine what is right to do. The following section points toward a framework by sketching a visual metaphor in which James’s rationalities interact. TOWARD A MORAL FRAMEWORK OF A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE: A SKETCH Imagine a point of infinitesimal portentousness, a point from which emanates—pouring outwards in all directions—all novelty, change, and chance in the universe. This point, which can be called a “center,” is an asymptotic rupture of space-time, and you are positioned immediately adjacent to it. You are an Emersonian “transparent eyeball,” looking out into the world in raw perception.3 The emanations from the point diffuse like rays, and you, being transparent, experience the rays passing through you. Yet you can never turn to face the rupture itself; rather, you can only swivel around it facing outward. What you experience are the effects of the rupture’s emanations as reflected off of real objects within your field of perception. When you perceive an object, what you perceive are its simple qualities—colors, textures, sounds, etc.—as illuminated and animated by rays from the center. The closer objects are to you, the more intensely perceived are their qualities, and they’re irradiated by the novelty, change, and chance emanating from the point just behind you. There is no reflection here, only experience. Yet reflection does occur, through the positioning of concepts as thin, concave planes curving inwardly at various distances beyond the objects you



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perceive. From your point of view, concepts are thin backgrounds against which given sets of objects are silhouetted. The silhouetting of objects against a given conceptual background represents your understanding of those objects in an intelligible way, which is to say your grouping those objects as part of a category represented by that concept. The more distant is a given concept from you, the more objects it stands behind, and so the generality of that concept can be understood as greater. With conceptual generality comes aesthetic aridity, as the conceptual plane is further from the emanating center. Planes as concepts can be shifted, compounded, or substituted within this space through volitional effort, which is how your intellection works. Beyond volitional effort, there are thus two fundamental operative forces: a centrifugal force of emanations from the center, alive with change and qualitative intensity, and a centripetal force of shifting concepts, grouping objects in intelligible patterns from outward in. If you were to imagine an opaque, encircling orb around all possible objects, this would be the Absolute or allform that James so criticizes. The preceding metaphor—henceforth referred to as the physical sketch— can be taken to suggest the moral framework of A Pluralistic Universe, a framework that follows from James’s critique of the Absolute and grounds its entailments for ecology, religion, ethics, and other possible further applications. Although this physical sketch makes no explicit reference to morality, it is still the heart of the chapter. A bit of explanatory effort is necessary to ground it within James’s text, however. Given James’s challenge to intellectualism (and given his fertile literary imagination), there is a sense in which metaphor is an appropriate vehicle on which to base a moral framework, or at least as appropriate as would be some set of logical propositions. As James puts it, “To deal with moral facts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests as mechanical forces, our conscious ‘selves’ as ‘streams,’ and the like” (James 2011: 82). Though this sketch is an invention, it bears mentioning that James’s style employs spatial references of a similar nature, references that resonate in various ways. Note the following passage: My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more . . . . What we conceptually identify with and say we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our full self is the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious possibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving, and can hardly begin to analyze. (James 2011: 94)

Never one to shy away from vivid imagery, James here describes human consciousness as embedded centrally within wider contexts in a way that

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captures the relation between oneself and one’s objects of perception. James deepens this metaphor as one’s relationship with a surrounding space “quivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass,” in which “we ourselves form the margin of some more really central self” (James 2011: 94–95). James also complains about how “ordinary monistic idealism leaves everything out,” asking whether the universe might be “made on a richer pattern, with room in it for a long hierarchy of beings” (James 2011: 58). Whatever the resonances of James’s references here individually, collectively they attest to the richness of James’s visual imagination and to the possibility of exploring a moral framework in like manner. The physical sketch I have offered speaks to three areas within A Pluralistic Universe that are important to its moral framework: its emphasis on flux, its inner/outer distinction within phenomenal experience, and its exploration of what James calls the “faith ladder” (James 2011: 107). Regarding James’s emphasis on flux, its link to the physical sketch is important for two reasons. First, for James, flux is closest to reality; as he puts it, “by reality here I mean reality where things happen” (James 2011: 71). Recall that, in the physical sketch, one is situated adjacent to a center. As it is this center from which all change emanates, one’s perception is thus inundated with flux, akin to what James calls the “rush of our thought forward through its fringes” (James 2011: 92). In such a situation, conceptualizing phenomena, to borrow a poetic phrase from Marcel Proust,4 is like “cutting sections, at different heights, in a jet of water,” artificially cutting into the “single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of all the forces of . . . life” (Proust 2006: 114–115). By positioning one’s imagination close to a central rupture, the physical sketch maintains James’s sense of “life as something always off its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a darkness” (James 2011: 93). The second reason that the recognition of flux within the sketch is important bears more directly on the morality of A Pluralistic Universe. It is not controversial to argue that morality should engage with real experience. If real experience is that of flux, as James argues, following Bergson, then a moral framework should be able to account for that. Lamberth captures the moral dimension to Jamesian flux in recognizing that by “considering the world to be in process, making a place for novelty, and . . . describing a means for our own actions to influence the flux, pluralism therefore makes comprehensible the moral aspect of our own activities in the universe” (Lamberth 1999: 195). Yet how might this work? That is, how can process be made comprehensible? To answer this, the inner/outer distinction within phenomenal experience must be considered. James writes often in A Pluralistic Universe of the interior and exterior aspects of things. As understood within the physical sketch, the inner/outer distinction is to be taken not in terms of what is intrinsic or extrinsic to a



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given entity, but rather what faces toward or away from the decision-maker’s specific perspective. That is, the “inner” side of a thing faces the central point within the moral sketch, whereas the “outer” side of a thing faces away from it. As such, inner and outer should be understood as corresponding to different modalities of experience: the perceptual and the conceptual, respectively. James himself writes of inner and outer in similarly epistemological terms, holding that we “know the inner movements of our spirit only perceptually” and that “theoretic knowledge . . . touches only the outer surface of reality” (James 2011: 82). Significantly, in spite of the epistemological difference to inner versus outer, the two sides are oddly symmetrical when taken to extremes. That is, neither extreme—the central point or the outermost horizon (whatever that may be)—allows for meaningful distinctions. For the outermost horizon, everything is distinct, for reasons examined already in James’s critique of the Absolute, such that no meaningful proximate distinctions can be made. As for the center, nothing is meaningfully distinct, since distinctions require concepts against which that which is distinguished can be compared. The center, dominated by perceptual experience, does not allow this. Instead of either the inner or the outer side of things, then, it is rather the convergence of inner and outer, of perception and conception, which allows us to make the kinds of distinctions incumbent within a moral framework. As James puts it, “Direct acquaintance and conceptual knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the other’s defects” (James 2011: 83). The distinctions engendered by concepts are not grounded in absolute foundations, since conceptions can be shifted as adaptive responses. It is possible, in other words, to recognize them and revise the framework in light of experience. The insights on flux and on the distinction between within and without regarding experiential objects intersect in what James calls the “faith ladder,” the discussion of which concludes the final lecture of A Pluralistic Universe. As James puts it, I have spoken of what I call the ‘faith-ladder,’ as something quite different from the sorities of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form . . . A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it true or not? you ask. It might be true somewhere, you say, for it is not self-contradictory. It may be true, you continue, even here and now. It is fit to be true, it would be well if it were true, it ought to be true, you presently feel. It must be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and then—as a final result— It shall be held for true, you decide; it shall be as if true, for you. And your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making it securely true in the end. (James 2011: 107)

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It is possible to read the sequence of points in James’s “faith ladder” ethically, with the word “right” substituted for “true.” There are two observations that bear this out. The first concerns James’s refusal here to specify the source of an insight. This resonates with the metaphoric imagination of the physical sketch, in which novelty emerges from behind one’s vision and cannot be reduced to a given determinate cause.5 The second observation resonates with James’s concluding emphasis on ethical action. In concluding his “faith ladder” in this way, James corroborates the message that opened this chapter. That is, James grounds the advice that there are two parts to every decision: the decision, and then making it the right decision. Though “reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy” indeed “exceeds our logic,” the pluralistic, open world James presents nonetheless bears the capacity to suggest, even for such limited minds as ours, ways of bringing about what one knows to be right (James 2011: 71). Morality can be taken here as an adaptive response, in that we perceive value—and pain, as cries of the wounded—in what is around us and use a plurality of resources to map out a plan of action. Morality can also be construed as a form of guiding commitment. Not unlike James’s well-known claim that one is afraid after one runs from a bear, so does the rightness of a decision comes in its “second” part, that is, after one has committed to its being true (James 1884: 190). Regarding the physical sketch as a metaphorical load-bearer with regard to the moral framework of A Pluralistic Universe, it may seem its reference to a center works against James’s pluralism. A center, after all, calls for a perimeter, and an edge implies what can be taken as an Absolute, with all the problems James describes. But recall that, in the physical sketch, the center just refers to where you are placed. This functions in the same spirit in which James notes that “I must point, point to the mere that of life, and you by inner sympathy must fill out the what for yourselves” (James 2011: 95). There is no universally prior guideline for what makes a decision the right one, though one can combine ethics and aesthetics as a sort of dispositional priming. The intersection of the outer and the inner, the conceptual and the perceptual, or the aesthetic and the metaphysical, is the realm of the moral. To put this in terms of James’s four types of rationality, each type can be designated in the following manner. Logical rationality functions to clarify the utility of concepts in mapping out suggestions for action. Aesthetics functions to identify particularity, as it is the aesthetic dimension of an object that marks one’s perceptual encounter with it. Metaphysics functions to maintain commitment to something beyond the human while remaining open to the widest possible range of phenomenal experience (and open to revision). And morality functions to maximize human flourishing through the cultivation of sympathy for what is encountered at various grades of generality—whether it is larger and beyond the human or smaller and immediately present.



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SOME ENTAILMENTS OF A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE Having traced a moral framework for A Pluralistic Universe, it is worth asking what such a framework might entail. Possible entailments range widely, with three areas in particular standing out: ecology, pluralism within the study of religion, and the ethics of everyday life. Regarding ecology, James has it that we “inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose instruments we are” (James 2011: 100). This spiritual environment is space imbued with vitality and meaning, and, significantly, it is not spiritually distinct from ourselves. This suggests a kind of collective sympathy with the world, especially the natural world. As James puts it in his lecture on Gustav Fechner, We rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the ocean. We grow out of her soil as leaves grow from a tree. The wavelets catch the sunbeams separately, the leaves stir when the branches do not move. (James 2011: 57)

Since matter is neither brute material nor devoid of spiritual significance, such qualities render the world as an appropriate object of ethical attention. In fact, to the extent that the world differs from the human, this difference lies in the sense that the spiritual element of nature is perhaps more than the human, beyond our apprehension even if encountered within perceptual experience. This suggests a disposition of reverence toward nature that is made that much more significant by what James sees as our capacity to alter our natural environment. The second entailment worth mentioning concerns James’s pluralism and the study of religion, specifically the very wide range of religious phenomena whose investigations James’s pluralism allows. Lamberth has pointed out that although “James usually claimed to be unreligious, he was endlessly interested in and concerned with religion,” and that “the older he got . . . the more convinced he became of the functional value of religion, or more aptly, religious experiences, for human life” (Lamberth 2014: 142). As James’s last major work, A Pluralistic Universe finds its author speaking sympathetically about religion in an astonishingly broad way, with insights that open onto religious experience not only in accounts of individual lives—as he did so famously in Varieties of Religious Experience—but also with regard to religious communities and belief systems. For example, James speaks sympathetically of Protestant Christianity in references to Luther in his final lecture, holding that “experience of the Lutheran type brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy” (James 2011: 99). Specifically, James suggests that this happens because of Luther’s relinquishing of moral self-sufficiency, such that sincerity “to give up one’s conceit or hope of being good in one’s own right is the only door to the

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universe’s deeper riches” (James 2011: 99). Since, as Michael Slater has argued, James’s “thinking about religion was shaped in important ways by the predominantly Protestant culture and society of his time,” the resonance with Protestant Christianity might not seem surprising (Slater 2014: 10). Yet A Pluralistic Universe also resonates with Roman Catholic thought, as well. For example, James cites Fechner’s point that the “original sin . . . of both our popular and our scientific thinking is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature” (James 2011: 99). This point resonates with a long tradition in modern Catholic phenomenology, including such figures as Jean-Luc Marion, who has argued that faith represents less an inadequacy of empirical information than of our concepts to apprehend the spiritual phenomena interwoven into the experience of nature (Marion 2002:145–152). James’s thinking also encompasses non-Christian and even polytheistic systems, such that the “God of our popular Christianity is but one member of a pluralistic system” (James 2011: 37). What makes this breadth of religious interests a moral entailment is that the diversity of religious studies afforded by James’s radical empiricism is itself a virtue. As James puts it, “The most a philosophy can hope for is not to lock out any interest forever” (James 2011: 10). James’s philosophy offers the means to keep things open, the ongoing collisions and collusions within the framework he lays out constitutes an enduring and expansive vision for the study of religion. The third significant entailment of the moral framework of A Pluralistic Universe is its focus on the ethics of the concrete, particular details of everyday life. Even James’s vision of God is so conceived: ‘God,’ in the religious life of ordinary men, is the name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. (James 2011: 41)

Recognizing an ideal tendency in things rather than an Absolute whose contrast with everyday objects renders them dislocated and warped as a contrast, James offers a moral framework that loves the world enough to respect its given particularity, a move that is borne out in the suggestion substituting the language of rationality for that of intimacy (James 2011: 104). As Pihlström has put it, James’s pluralism “promises to bring trust and ‘intimacy’—instead of ‘foreigness’—to our relation with the universe, enabling us to feel ‘at home’ in the world” (Pihlström 2014: 195). One of the consequences of this disposition is sympathy for another in one’s midst. This point, among its other suggestions, indicates a connection with the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Indeed, Megan Craig has developed an ethics that brings together Levinas and James. In Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology, Craig draws



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upon the metaphor of the “face”—a key term for Levinas’s ethics—as the ethical embodiment of the pluralistic worlds of James’s radical empiricism. Her thesis is that “making these worlds [faces] vivid requires a pragmatic phenomenology, one that is plural, messy, specific, fallible, emotional, and personal,” a phenomenology that offers the possibility of hope in a world without closure, as well as a dialogue between traditions that have had too little to say to one another (Craig 2010: 117). As such, James’s attention to the everyday manifests itself in ongoing responsiveness to conditions, including cries of pain. CONCLUSION James develops from his critique of the Absolute a rich set of commitments for contemporary ethics—far more than have been listed. In fact, in the open, pluralistic metaphysics James propounds, the unfinished list of commitments is central to the whole enterprise. One might also criticize what James is trying to do. For instance, James argues that the Absolute should support more empirically oriented projects. Yet couldn’t the same be said about the panpsychism at the heart of radical empiricism? In marginalizing the place of concepts within philosophy (and by extension ethics), James leaves himself open to the charge that “anything goes,” or that the system James’s work supports is either too unitary, too metaphysical (this is a critique shared by a variety of twentieth-century thinkers on both sides of the analytic/continental divide) or too loose and solipsistic to support worthwhile projects. Yet in spite of all this, A Pluralistic Universe remains relevant to analyzing religion and cultivating morality in a variety of situations, offering the resources to act decisively with limited information and in changing circumstances. Moreover, A Pluralistic Universe carries implications for ecology, religious diversity, and interpersonal ethics, areas that are far from irrelevant. And in its presentation as an instrument of action as much as a set of philosophical content, it could remain relevant for a long time to come. NOTES 1. These two options, pantheistic pluralism and absolute idealism, have diminished in prominence since 1908, eclipsed in several ways by a resurgence of both materialism—or rather naturalism—and theism. 2. Out of the philosophical systems in Lecture I, different systems resonate with different forms of rationality. Materialism, for example, is practically appealing but morally and aesthetically odious. Dualistic theism satisfies on a moral level, yet it runs up against severe intellectual barriers. For its part, the idealism of the Absolute offers intellectual and even aesthetic rewards (logical problems previously mentioned aside), yet its moral and practical shortcomings are virtually irremediable (James, A Pluralistic Universe, 37–38).

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3. In his essay, “Nature,” Emerson expressed the metaphor of the transparent eyeball for the perception of nature as purely receptive rather than reflective (Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. William H. Gilman. New York: Penguin Group, 1965). 4. Proust, as an avid reader of Henri Bergson, has a nontrivial historical connection to James. Bergson’s ideas comprise the bulk of Lecture VI of A Pluralistic Universe. 5. James’s disinterest in pinning down the source of a spontaneous insight in his “faith ladder” resonates with a similar argument to be found in C. S. Peirce’s “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” which, like the Hibbert Lectures, dates from 1908. Similarities between Peirce and James here include a non-deterministic argument for God, a step-by-step sequence to adopt, a firm link between belief and behavior, and an aesthetic element within insight. Differences include a more holistic, monist emphasis in Peirce than James’s own pluralism and an ethical priority for James versus an aesthetic one for Peirce.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Craig, Megan. 2010. Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. 2007. The Karamazov Brothers. Ware: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature. Franzese, Sergio. 2008. The Ethics of Energy: William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus. Berlin: Ontos Verlag. James, William. 2011. A Pluralistic Universe. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. James, William. 1884. “What is an Emotion?” Mind, 9: 188–205. Lamberth, David. 2014. “A Pluralistic Universe a Century Later.” In William James and the Transatlantic Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 133–150. Lamberth, David. 1999. William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marion, Jean-Luc. 2002. “They Recognised Him; and He Became Invisible to Them.” In Modern Theology 18(2): 145–152. Pihlström, Sami. 2014. “Jamesian Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God.” In William James and the Transatlantic Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 183–198. Proust, Marcel. 2006. Swann’s Way. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Rasmussen, Joel D.S. 2014 “Jamesian Pluralism and the Ancient Quarrel.” In William James and the Transatlantic Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 151–166. Richardson, Robert D. 2006. William James in the Maelstrom of American Modernism. New York: Mariner Books. Slater, Michael R. 2014. “James’s Critique of Absolute Idealism in A Pluralistic Universe.” William James and the Transatlantic Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 167–182. Slater, Michael R. 2014. Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part VIII

JAMES’S LATER WRITINGS ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 22

The Education of Moral Character A Comparison of James and Aristotle Pamela C. Crosby

In “The Social Value of the College-Bred” (SVCB), William James writes that a democratic society with its influential interplay of four elements— formidable institutions, popular media, charismatic leaders, and the general populace—has immense potential to overturn its democratic principles and self-destruct as moral and other types of standards degenerate. To counteract this potential for destruction, James underscores the need for college students to acquire a “critical sense” for moral excellence (James 1987e: 107). This critical sense is a type of general insight or perception, developed by ongoing reflection on the moral and intellectual virtues in others that are tested in their own lives, leading them to see the value of these virtues for themselves. SVCB and other works on ethics and education can provide us with a starting point from which we can formulate and evaluate moral education models and programs for college students. In order to augment his general and often sketchy ideas on moral education, I compare and contrast what I claim to be James’s moral theory with the moral theory of Aristotle as they both relate to education. I argue that while James does not espouse traditional virtue theory such as that of Aristotle, both moral theories have significant aspects in common. I then provide some contemporary findings and examples that support aspects of James’s and Aristotle’s theories. JAMES’S MORAL THEORY AS IT RELATES TO CHARACTER EDUCATION When James responds to critics of democracy in his address to Radcliff students in 1907 (James 1987b: 678),1 the United States is still a young nation, and in the eyes of skeptics, it has yet to prove its endurance. Its weakness, 365

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they contend, is that its power is concentrated in its citizens, whose inferior inclinations in social, moral, and political life often overtake more worthy and edifying preferences, eroding overall standards. James agrees that democracy’s critics have fittingly identified its weakness: voters often elect leaders who use cunning rhetoric to appeal to people’s self-interest and emotions in efforts to cloud their thinking about what is good, excellent, and moral. Intensifying this influence is what James calls the “popular university,” which is frequently the primary source of information, entertainment, and edification for democratic citizens and which consists of popular media such as newspapers, journals, magazines, and books (James 1987e: 112). Mesmerized by these media as educational authorities, the nation’s citizenry helps to create its celebrities, public intellectuals, and political leaders, who promote their own specific interests. Thus, these four forces—citizenry, media, institutions, and society’s leaders—make up the complex interplay of influence. To illustrate this state of affairs, James compares human society to a ship subject to winds of shifting directions, pulled and tugged by the decisions, actions, emotions, beliefs, and voices of its people. Always subject to shipwreck when threatened by a strong gale or storm (such as the unrestrained mayhem over the Dreyfus trial in France), its fate is ever tenuous (James 1987e: 110). THE VALUE OF A CRITICAL SENSE Yet, while low standards of reason and conscience can be fatal to a democratic nation whose leadership is borne by its citizenry, James does not concede that the United States is inevitably condemned to fail. When human progress is made, great individuals have paved the way. Heroic leaders, and the people who support and follow them, are the two fundamental elements influencing historic achievement. What is needed to keep the ship of state in safe waters is the steady hand of the pilot, a strong moral and judicious leader, who is able to steer the ship as it progresses on its onward course (James 1987e: 110). Although being only one person whose physical strength is small in contrast to the vessel’s power, the pilot is able to effect immense influence through consistent and able efforts. A frequent theme for James in many of his works on ethics and social justice is the potential of human beings to transform societal and world events significantly rather than to be completely overwhelmed by them, a point he makes when criticizing the theories of social Darwinist Herbert Spencer (e.g., James 1979: 163–89). However, from where does a democratic society select worthy individuals to lead the people boldly and show them how to be responsible, knowledgeable, and discriminating citizens? This question is crucial because the fate of



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any country lies in the guiding hands of its leaders and in the hands of those who choose them. In answer to this fundamental question, James points to the “college-bred” (alumni), who can guide the nation in selecting and becoming leaders who assume the pilot’s role. College graduates with the proper training and knowledge can steer the “human ship” in favorable directions and apply what they have learned in many different settings and institutions (James 1987e: 110). James compares the educated class in a democracy to the European aristocratic class. Although there are many faults in an aristocracy, the ruling classes provide a means of stability in an important way: they pass on to new generations a sense of discrimination for quality. A democracy, with its voters and their variable perspectives also needs some sort of stable presence that values excellence and critical thought and can pass on these values to its future generations. College and university alumni, composed of individuals who promote, apply, and evaluate standards, traditions, and values that were passed down to them, provide this sort of stable social structure. As they assume their roles throughout the nation, they broaden this social structure, which can influence others who have not had such training. Although large institutions, including governmental structures, have a sizable capacity for corruption, a characteristic James calls bigness (James 1920: 90), college alumni go out in the world in various fields and institutions unbound by a single institutional power that would increase their chances of institutional corruption. While being a particular class of society, alumni have advantages of preserving culture even as they retain their pluralistic perspectives and actions (James 1987e: 110).2 This crucial contribution of college graduates to the nation means that the primary mission of a college or university in a democracy is not merely to teach students subject matter or methods—although they are, of course, necessary. Rather, the primary mission in a democracy is to teach young people how to recognize leaders of moral and intellectual excellence who can apply proper standards in all elements of intellectual, social, and moral life—in James’s words: “to know a good man when you see him [sic]” (James 1987e: 106).3 This seemingly oversimplified claim is supported in this way: many assume that at a technical school, one learns a specific skill only—that technicians leave their educational institutions to be little more than human tools in some narrow field of endeavor. James disagrees with this reductive view. One learns far more than just a skill when learning how to do something well. One acquires a critical eye for evaluating other persons’ skills in that field. But one’s skill goes beyond that. By acquiring this intuition of what makes this or that job a good one, skilled artisans acquire a sense of what good work means in a general sense; therefore, critical judgment can identify the characteristics

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of what makes a job good in general. James defines critical sense as a kind of “wisdom” that is an ability to evaluate a good job in so far as one can perceive its “ideal values” (James 1987e: 108). General characteristics of what makes something good or bad are visible to those who have earlier observed them in many contexts, forms, and guises—a kind of cultivated skill that can only be learned by experience. To further his argument for the need for a general critical sense, James compares the skilled tradesperson’s educational experience to that of the college graduate, emphasizing the similar need of both to have keen judgments of what is good. The field of expertise for college students who make up democracy’s stable presence, however, should include the skill of identifying what makes good human beings; hence, being able to know good persons when you see them. These alumni should have been trained in discerning what characteristics make the best leaders and thinkers in all facets of life so that they may elect, appoint, and hire them—as well as serve as leaders with these characteristics themselves. James cautions his audience that sometimes potential leaders are dismissed based on their outward or superficial packaging such as unsophisticated language or poor dress—or because they do not fit the criteria that popular media use to identify praiseworthy leaders. While others may be mistaken about these individuals as far as what qualities characterize moral excellence, college graduates—with their keen sense of discernment—should be able to “smell . . . the difference of quality” in leaders as well as their “proposals” as soon as they go out into the world (James 1987e: 108). How can colleges provide the experience for students to acquire this critical discernment for human excellence on which the future of democracy depends? Because the stakes are high, the answer to this question is a critical one. Students can begin to acquire this critical sense by becoming familiar with “human masterstrokes” in varied locales, organizations, and courses that provide exposure to human achievement in its many degrees of attainment. For James, one of the richest sources for this exposure is the humanities. In fact, humanities means for James the “study of masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor” or the “sifting of human creations” (James 1987e: 107). Reading biographies, histories, and literary works affords the reader diverse contexts in which to engage critically with heroes, heroines, and others from many different walks of life, social classes, ethnic groups, and cultures. Literature is the ideal humanities course because students not only study masterpieces (the product of human excellence) but also the lives of the characters, the lives of the authors themselves, and often their respective historical contexts. In addition to literature, biographical and historical studies provide a means to add humanistic value to other subjects. It is possible to make every



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course of study convey a humanistic dimension by integrating the content of the subject itself with the historical and biographical accounts of the great persons behind important achievements. James does not mention in SVCB what opportunities the college should provide in order that students develop in themselves what they recognize as good in others. He does not stress here the importance of active engagement in the formation of students’ character education although he does speak generally that great leaders establish initiatives and set examples that others should follow (James 1987e: 109). James denies that one can develop one’s own worthy character solely by reading about good persons or merely learning how to recognize the good in the particular persons one encounters. To examine how critical sense of the good in others leads to a critical sense of one’s own character and actions, we turn to other works by James. THE VALUE OF IDEALS Based on SVCB, we see that young people can identify worthy ideals for themselves based on the general characteristics of good human beingness they have learned from the cultivation of their critical sense. They begin to see not only what moral human beings are but also what they do. James does not identify specific ideals that all people should follow, nor does he provide a concise definition of a worthy ideal, but in addresses to students, such as “What Makes a Life Significant” (WMLS) and other works, he provides his audience with some guidelines on how to recognize and choose worthy ideals (James 1977e; 1977a; 1977b). Drawing from these works, we can see that a worthy ideal for James is often a goal whose function is to lead one to improve the conditions of life for others and for one’s self and to afford one’s self a meaningful existence. While worthy ideals vary considerably from person to person (James 1977e: 656–58), here are some guidelines from James for choosing worthy ideals: First, worthy ideals are the result of personal reflection. They are freely chosen, and they provide some degree of joy and motivation in their pursuit (James 1977e: 656). Second, the pursuit of worthy ideals compels individuals to view and experience things differently, and these ideals lead them to new directions. Because their achievement alters their lives in fundamental and constructive ways, persons are constantly aware of their pursuit of them (James 1996: 228–31; 1977e: 656). Third, worthy ideals must be believed to be feasible, but yet pursued with some significant degree of struggle that demands considerable action and are thus not quickly nor easily attained (James 1977e: 650).

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Fourth, the pursuit of worthy ideals must be compatible with others’ pursuits of worthy ideals so that there is an achievement of balance of goods for all beings in the world. The worthiest of ideals are those that involve the striving of an individual with others to improve the conditions of life and thus to help increase the happiness and well-being of all without the destructive forces of institutional corruption (James 1977e: 645; 1977b: 617; 1920: 90). Fifth, the worthiness of ideals must be judged on the basis of their consequences in experience and should often be altered in light of new knowledge and experience (James 1977e: 656). A critical sense helps individuals to see the general qualities of something in a particular instance of it—such as the standard of workmanship of a product, the level of value of a service, or the degree of moral excellence in a human being. As young people become familiar with the general qualities of worthy moral character when they study lives through the humanities and as they are exemplified in people with whom they interact, they can form their own worthy ideals to which they can devote themselves. THE VALUE OF ACTIVE VIRTUES AND HABITS As young individuals formulate ideals, they continue to apply their critical sense to determine the kinds of specific actions and thoughts that can help them attain these ideals as well as refine them. James emphasizes that ideals cannot fulfill their function without being in combination with the “active virtues”—such as “endurance, fidelity, and courage” (James 1977e: 658–659)—which are necessary for their realization. To acquire the capacity to perform these actions and master these thoughts, young people must develop the appropriate habits that promote the active virtues. In Principles of Psychology, James devotes a chapter to the topic of habit—describing living creatures as “bundles of habits” (James 1950: 104). Habits, James explains, are the results of activity in the nerve centers that have created paths that exist until new paths (habits) supersede them. The function of education is to take advantage of the nervous system’s ability to form habits and make sure that beneficial patterns of behavior are formed as early as possible so that they can become second nature (James 1950: 108, 122). Although persons may desire to be morally good, desire is not enough; neither is having a “reservoir of maxims” from which to draw (James 1950: 125). To develop good character demands active involvement, time and time again, without long interruptions between those times, until good habits are shaped. James writes that building habits such as moral rightness is dependent upon behaviors that toughen persons when they confront disappointment or hardship. He recommends that young people engage in activities that they



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do not like so as to nurture this toughness. Young people should know that developing worthwhile moral habits such as endurance and courage, though often painful and tedious at first, will yield productive results in one’s personal life and career (James 1950: 126–127). Building on the idea that habit is a powerful force in pursuing the moral life, James in a later work—“The Moral Equivalent of War”—proposes that a nationwide program be established for all young people that would accomplish two primary goals: provide a means to share a portion of the workload demanded of low-skilled workers crucial to keeping the nation going and help to nurture in young people the active virtues (James 1977a: 669). The jobs include menial work such as washing dishes and working on a fishing fleet, and such experiences help to nurture those virtues that come about from sharing the burden of laborious tasks with others. Furthermore, as young people become older, they should assume jobs with greater responsibility. James argues in a letter to Harvard’s Daily Crimson that college students should assume roles of leadership that demand a considerable degree of autonomy such as self-governance in all aspects of campus life as they experience first-hand the consequences of their actions for others and themselves. James argues that an overemphasis on rules of conduct imposed from the outside can make the rules as ends-in-themselves to the extent that students do not see the need for self-discipline that must accompany responsible freedom and do not develop habits of making good decisions in the consequences of experience (James 1987a: 123–24). A COMPARISON AND CONTRAST OF THE MORAL THEORIES OF JAMES AND ARISTOTLE AS THEY RELATE TO CHARACTER EDUCATION As is evident in these essays and addresses, James had faith in students’ capacity to select and become leaders given the right experience and guidance. His works on education provide us with some starting points. In order to develop further James’s moral theory as it relates to education, below are a comparison and contrast of his concepts of critical sense, worthy ideals, and active virtues and habits with Aristotle’s concepts of phronēsis or practical wisdom, worthy ends, and habit—beginning with the role and purpose of character education. THE VALUE OF CHARACTER EDUCATION Aristotle’s ethical theory is described as virtue ethics, which is often contrasted to consequentialism. John Stuart Mill profoundly influenced James,

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and as a result, James’s ethical theory has many consequentialist aspects. James’s theory also espouses aspects of virtue theory that are similar to Aristotle’s. The focus of Aristotle’s ethics is character formation. In the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), he sets out to answer the question “What would a virtuous person do?” Clearly, Aristotle and James agree on several aspects of their respective moral theories and the implications of these moral theories for character education. They both agree that every society needs a stable presence that values excellence and passes on this esteem for excellence to its future generations. For James, the college-educated bear that responsibility; for Aristotle, it is the city-state or polis. The city state—and its governance— with all of its institutions is a living laboratory for teaching virtuous living and furnishes the appropriate setting and resources for excellences to be realized in order that citizens achieve fulfilling lives Aristotle 1941a: 1103a14–21; 1941c: 1323a14–21). While Aristotle emphasizes the positive and necessary role of institutions (such as government) in character development (though he acknowledges that institutions can be corrupt), James often emphasizes the dangers of bigness, the potential for institutions to corrupt the morals and undermine the freedom of the individual (James 1920: 90). While James argues that huge changes can take place if enough ethical individuals work together for a common moral purpose (James 1977a: 123–24), he has been criticized for understating the good that institutions can do (Garrison and Madden 1977: 211). Although Aristotle and James differ in their emphases on the role of institutions as good or evil influences on moral development, both agree that developing character depends upon the notion that acting virtuously is done by agents who freely choose an act, understand fully what they are doing, and perceive the act as morally good (Aristotle 1941a: 1109b30–1115a2). In addition, the goal of moral education for Aristotle and James is developing an enduring moral character (habits). Aristotle describes such a character as having the right desires, performing the right behaviors in the right circumstances, and having a perception of what is good (Aristotle 1941a: 1113a30–35). For both James and Aristotle, one type of instruction that helps to develop character involves making available to students moral exemplars who can behave as guides. Aristotle maintains that first-hand acquaintance with role models is especially helpful for those who in their early development have not cultivated a certain degree of moral maturity, especially when experiencing unfamiliar circumstances (Aristotle 1941a: 1143b10–15, 1180b5). While young people can see other persons in many different situations and think seriously about the actions of others, they can begin to apply particular standards in their own lives, seeing what is useful in different circumstances. For example, poetry’s worth for Aristotle is that it allows a means for young



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people to see motivations and behaviors of human beings (Aristotle 1941b: 1451b5–10). This window into the thoughts and actions of characters is similar to James’s plea for the teaching of the humanities in order that young persons can recognize persons of excellence and of high moral character. However, learning from exemplars and principles is only the beginning, and saying that they are important does not mean that young people should follow rules mechanically or imitate others without critical thought or that these instructional methods are enough (Aristotle 1941a; 1105a28–35). For both Aristotle and James: students should discover for themselves whom to emulate and how to apply these rules in their own circumstances to determine if some rules should be rejected altogether. The test of effective moral education, for both James and Aristotle, is that students learn to make their own decisions to act in certain ways and not because others tell them to do so. THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL WISDOM As we look more closely at Aristotle’s ethical theory, we get a better detailed account of what makes a decision and action virtuous. Attainment of virtuous ends (ends that express the habit of doing what is excellent) and the cultivation of what Aristotle calls phronesis or practical wisdom (the ability to identify the right actions to achieve appropriate ends and the intelligence and genuine desire to attain them) are each one dependent upon the other for the formation of moral character (right habits) (Aristotle 1941a: 1140a5–1145a10). First, what does Aristotle mean by practical wisdom? Practical wisdom is not merely desire or reason but the combination of the two whose focus is action. Practical wisdom, then, is the understanding that leads to a particular action to achieve morally good general ends, and instead of a formal logical procedure, it is more of a perception (Aristotle 1941a: 1140b5–27. As for James, Aristotle holds that this sensitivity or perception is dependent upon experience and does not involve the memorization of numerous rules or one ultimate principle. Such a sensitivity is needed because, for one thing, human beings could not possibly have at their fingertips all the moral laws that would address every particular ethical dilemma (Aristotle 1941a: 1143a5–31). For another thing, to try to describe the right behavior with specific language destroys the generality of the moral perspective, meaning that it could not be applied in many different kinds of situations. What is needed is the ability to apply a principle that is general and flexible enough to move beyond one particular instance to other instances while determining its particular aspects that call for particular actions. The only ultimate principle is to do the appropriate action for the appropriate reason in the appropriate

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circumstances: it is to do what a good person would do (Aristotle 1941a: 1104a5–9, 1106b20–24, 1109a25–28, 1143b21–27). Aristotle and James argue that by observing what humans do, as well as by testing their own actions in various situations, individuals devise general notions from particular experiences that indicate that some kinds of actions and qualities are morally good. When they encounter a new experience, they can determine that a certain type of action among many types of actions previously learned as good would be appropriate. They can then apply it in particular ways while continuing to add conceptions of novel possibility yet to be tried in other contexts. Particular experiences (combined with practical reason), argues Aristotle, enable individuals to perceive virtuous ends (the general ends that they have already found to be worthy through education and experience) in each particular choice, develop a clearer understanding of what virtue is, and with each experience become more adept at determining other virtuous general ends (Aristotle 1941a: 1142a12–15). This process makes persons more able to make good ethical choices and to increase the capacity for practical wisdom and thus contribute to the formation of a good moral character. By acting courageously in particular circumstances, for example, we develop a courageous disposition, and James would agree. THE VALUE OF VIRTUOUS ENDS AND HABITS Striving toward virtuous ends is the other essential element of a high moral character for Aristotle and can be compared and contrasted with James’s conception of worthy ideals. Virtuous ends for Aristotle express the mean between two extremes: excess and deficiency. For example, to live a life of courage (which is a worthy end) is to live in such a way that one reacts to dangerous situations without recklessness on the one extreme, or cowardice on the other. (Aristotle 1941a: 1106b36–1107a26). Practical wisdom provides the insight for how to achieve these ends. The worthiest end that persons can choose is to live a flourishing life or what Aristotle calls happiness or eudaimonia. This ongoing striving for a worthy and excellent life is the noblest of ends because it is complete in itself; therefore, it points to no other end beyond itself. Activities that lead to such flourishing should be performed with the best of a person’s abilities. The supreme end of any polis should be such that all citizens possess eudaimonia (Aristotle 1941a: 1095a15–20; 1941c: 1280b38–42). Because the activities individuals perform should be the worthiest for them as human beings, persons with eudaimonia exercise their reasoning and moral capacities to the fullest sense. For Aristotle, all creatures belong to a particular species that is characterized by its essential qualities. All members



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of the species share the same potentiality and strive to actualize it, and for human beings, the potentiality that defines them is reasoning ability. For Aristotle, to exercise one’s reasoning ability to its fullest capacity is to lead a life of contemplation of the profound philosophical questions including the meaning of human existence and its place in the world. Other noble ways of life include that of a devoted political leader or soldier with high moral character and intellectual excellence whose work contributes the most to the state’s well-being. Aristotle argues that a good life is one in which the focus is not on inferior pleasures for one’s self; to achieve eudaimonia, one cannot be devoted to accumulation of power, shallow sensual pleasures, or wealth but, rather, to what is the most worthy in and of itself (Aristotle 1941a: 1098a6–19, 1104b8–13; 1941c: 1281a3–8). As our character is formed while we attain more understanding of what worthy ends are that we should want to pursue, we view the world and our relations to it differently. As we acquire new habits to pursue those ends by applying our practical wisdom, these habits help us to develop new dispositions, and in turn shape our overall character. Our character, experience, and decision-making continue to guide us in choosing the most noble ends, and the actions and thoughts that are deserving of those ends. Thus, each of these elements—character, experience, worthy ends, and practical wisdom— cannot contribute to a moral and excellent life without the other. They work as a whole but maintain their distinctive characteristics. Like Aristotle, James agrees that one’s devotions to worthy ideals should demand our most attention and effort. Leaders and citizens in a free society ought to endeavor to achieve these ideals. Often when speaking of virtues and ideals that help to form one’s moral character, James argues for what Aristotle would describe as the mean. For example, James learned as a young man from his observations of German scientists at work that self-discipline and patience are needed to advance in the field of physiology (James 1995a: 250). Realizing that he too often appealed to complete resolution too readily, he set out to acquire the virtue of patience—that is, having the quality of not being too anxious to obtain results while simultaneously having the right amount of focus and diligence to facilitate progress. During this same period in James’s life, he struggled with seeing the value of the broad education he acquired in contrast to the highly specialized studies of the German physiologists. After much angst, he concluded that it is a sign of “low traits” to show disrespect to some “department of Experience” (James 1995b: 307). He saw the need to find the right tension between specialization in a field of study and a broad education, which involves taking into consideration the relevant aspects of the whole of human experience, including its moral and aesthetic dimensions. Seeking a balance between specialization and a holistic education as well as between an impatience for

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conclusive certainty and too much focus on detail, demonstrates James’s own striving for the mean as an ideal in the moral life. Regarding Aristotle’s devotion to contemplation as the highest and most fulfilling end, James, as a professor of philosophy, also lived a life of contemplation, and accordingly, he spent much of his life reflecting on, exploring, and writing about philosophical questions. However, James would be reluctant to call any one way of life the absolute worthiest or any one ideal as the most ultimate and complete. He cautions his audience that all persons should strive to respect as much as possible what others hold dear—including the livelihoods that they claim make them fulfilled. We cannot know with certainty, he maintains, the reasons why persons find joy in what they do. As long as those persons do not harm others or themselves, we have no right to judge what they cherish. James translated this respect for what others hold dear in his teaching by urging his students to make their education and careers their own. In his addresses to students, he alerts them not to force their judgments on others’ ways of life (James 1987f: 77).4 Nevertheless, James is not a relativist. He advised his students not to study only one particular subject in any field exclusively (Palmer 1996: 31). In his writings and addresses, he criticizes public opinion as being easily manipulated by popular culture with its exploitation of people’s emotions and its substandard quality of mass media. He points to the type of leaders who possess critical sense and high moral principles as essential to the success of a democratic state. He is not reluctant to judge products and services of all kinds of labor—engineering, medical practice, art, music, and books—as of excellent or inferior quality and all degrees in between. He is quick to point out that uncontrolled emotions can destroy lives and when reinforced on a large scale, can destroy even nations.5 While James tends to agree with Aristotle that control of negative emotions is necessary for a flourishing life, he does not privilege reason over other aspects of human experience as the most defining and important trait of a human being. Like Aristotle, for James, to know a human being is to know its function and its use. A person functions not only as a physical and rational being but also as an emotive being. In order to know what makes a being a person, one must take into account common traits that identify a human being. However, in James’s writings on ethics, he points to the many dimensions of the experiences of human beingness and cautions his readers to appreciate the inner complex lives of others comprised of many kinds of emotions, interests, and values of which we can only be aware as they are willing to share them with us.6 Furthermore, for Aristotle and the type of society in which he lived, in order for some to have worthy lives, those designated as slaves provide the services that are necessary for a few to maintain the required conditions for their flourishing. The welfare of slaves is important merely in the ways that



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they can contribute to the well-being of the citizens—often with their physical strength. It is important that all citizens have flourishing lives, argues Aristotle, but those with a lack of ability to deliberate with sophisticated reasoning skills are not considered to be capable of achieving such happiness (Aristotle 1941c: 1254b20–55a2, 1280a32–34). Aristotle seems to view human nature as occurring in degrees—with some having more human beingness than others, depending upon the sophistication of their reasoning power. Obviously, James lived in an exceedingly different time and society where the freedom of mobility in the pursuit of happiness was at least legally proclaimed as a fundamental freedom. James was wealthy, however, and had several servants, worked at a university that barred women from obtaining degrees, lived in a land where women did not have equal rights of citizenship, and, in many areas of society, there was strict racial segregation. Although in his writings, he champions the unappreciated, James was not well-suited in his social position to understand the challenges of the marginalized in many aspects of life. In some of James’s personal writings, there are racist remarks (Garrison and Madden 1977: 217; James 1935a: 418, 1935b: 544). Yet, James reached out to persons of color and to women whose potential he admired. He often went out of his way to help them obtain the education and other opportunities he believed they deserved and wanted (Du Bois 2011: 38; Simon 1998: 243–44; Richardson 2006: 307–08). He helped to provide support for colleagues in financial need (Simon 1998: 350–51). James was not the perfect person, but his eloquent call to reject outward labels and titles as the defining means of human worthiness and merit is a reminder of the intrinsic worth of all human beings.7 One cannot know with certainty their hidden natures and potential. Thus, they should be given as much chance as possible to realize their potential and those ends they deem worthy for themselves. THE VALUE OF HIGHER PLEASURES For Aristotle, a necessary means of acquiring good moral habits is for young people to learn how to experience pleasure when doing what they know is good and experience pain when they do what they know is not good. The result is that they desire performing the proper action, not because of duty or sheer determined persistence, but because they take delight in doing so. One emotion, which may be at first a feeling of displeasure or pain, is transformed into another emotion, a feeling of pleasure. This type of pleasure is a feeling that one is contributing to one’s well-being and ongoing fulfillment—not a shallow pleasure. Such pleasure is a complex relationship of desire and reason that is formed by experience and enables one to have power over one’s emotions (Aristotle 1941a: 1104b10; 1113a30).

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In contrast to Aristotle, rather than focusing on the need to take pleasure in doing good for its own sake, James, in Principles of Psychology, focuses on the quality of toughness—overcoming what is distasteful or painful by sheer endurance (one of the active virtues). When doing so, one acquires a kind of asceticism that comes with acquiring the so-called manly habits that are presented as superior to other habits that James considers as soft. Such resolute asceticism is like a type of insurance protection that one continues to maintain by practice. It is a form of preparation for when the time comes that such toughness and courage are needed. James uses terms such as inured and self-denial, to create the notion that moral education is a hardening process used to overpower a harsh reality that comes with doing the right thing (James 1950: 126–27), while Aristotle emphasizes that such an adverse reaction to doing the right thing is a misconception. However, in James’s later works on ethics he often uses the term inner joy to describe the pursuit of ideals to which one dedicates one’s life (James 1977e: 656; 1977c: 636). James would agree, then, that the ultimate goal should be that children learn to take pleasure in doing the good for its own sake: the pursuit and accomplishment generate a profound happiness as a result of the ongoing fulfillment of one’s potential as a worthy human being. In turn, it is certainly the case that Aristotle would agree with James that until human beings do the good as a willing expression of one’s moral character, they must learn the toughness of patience, persistence, and courage in undertaking what they at first do not want to do. THE VALUE OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION In sum, Aristotle would agree with James regarding the following: 1. Character education is especially critical for a society because leaders come from its citizenry. 2. A society is threatened by the interplay of four powers of influence: • Naïve popular opinion • Corrupt institutions • Power-seeking leaders • Irresponsible public media 3. Higher educational institutions provide an enduring structure in three ways: • Passing down cultural traditions and values • Graduating leaders who make up a stable social class • Training of young people to acquire intellectual and moral standards to become leaders 4. The development of a good person requires three essentials—with each one influencing, evaluating, and refining the other in experience:



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• A general critical sense that recognizes worthy character traits • Worthy ideals for a meaningful life • The active virtues such as courage, fidelity, and endurance. • The primary goal of educational institutions should be to help provide the conditions for nurturing these three essentials. While Aristotle’s insights on practical wisdom and moral ends help to flesh out James’s notion of developing character through education, James’s theory—while not systematic as that of Aristotle—requires the institution of equality and diversity that can only exist in a society that promotes freedom of all people to pursue the ideals that they have chosen for themselves. For James, each person should be mindful of how one’s pursuit of ideals might restrict the freedom and well-being of others to pursue theirs. Although both James and Aristotle find fault with democracy because moral as well as other standards decline when popular opinion rules, Aristotle is convinced that democracy leads inevitably to mob rule (Aristotle 1941a: 1161a7–9), while James praises democratic ideals and remains hopeful that democratic societies can succeed. However, when James writes about the need for individuals to cultivate a moral critical sense to save democracy, he directs his call to college graduates as a select group of people who can acquire a certain level of sophistication regarding this type of judgment. College graduates “more than others” are able to elect the best leaders (James 1987e: 110). In light of this claim, it could be argued that James is similar to Aristotle in that society is saved by a select few who are intellectually able to acquire a college education; in 1910, it was 3% of the US population (Wattenberg et al. 2000: 53).8 While James can be criticized for seeming to privilege college graduates in SVCB as only those fit to lead (Cotkin 1994: 132), he acknowledges that for this diverse world to flourish, it requires many different sorts of leaders— not just those with formal educations. To help cast a wider net, he argues that it is the duty of the university to broaden its appeal and access to the greatest number of students so that “higher education” is “widely shared” (James 1987d: 35). For Aristotle, as a virtue theorist, the emphasis is on the development of the moral character of the moral agent; for James, as a consequentialist, the emphasis is on the intended consequences for others as well as the agent. Therefore, James stresses that moral agents should consider how their moral actions in the pursuit and realization of their ideals affect others as well as themselves. With the exception of James’s democratic ideal, either theory does not exclude the other. James’s democratic ideal improves the moral evil of exclusivism of Aristotle’s society; the elaboration of Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom augments James’s discussion of critical sense.

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THE VALUE OF HOLISTIC AND CHALLENGING EXPERIENCES What does current research in college student development say about the moral insights of James and Aristotle as they relate to moral development? First, the college experience should advance all facets of human development: personal, emotional, social, and civic. Researchers who study brain imaging attest that the development of the mind is intricately connected to the development of the physical, emotional, and social aspects of the human being. Thus, in order for students to develop their critical abilities most fully (which James and Aristotle say are crucial to moral development), they should participate in many different kinds of experiences that help them to realize these different factors of human development (Keeling and Hersh 2011: 74). Research findings about the effects of diverse experiences on human development suggest that college life should provide opportunities for students to engage in novel activities and encounter new perspectives that challenge them to question ideas, systems of thought, and values that they once regarded as absolutes. These opportunities are crucial for complex intellectual, social, and emotional development that includes the capacity for resilience, which is akin to James’s concept of endurance and Aristotle’s concept of courage and is a key in fostering the ability to adapt, to manage discord, and to handle tension. Thus, a certain degree of struggle—which can sometimes be threatening or painful—furthers the complexity of the maturation process (Keeling and Hersh 2011: 52). Related to such findings is the demand by faculty, administrators, and community leaders that students learn the knowledge and skills that cultivate personal and social responsibility—which should be a primary ultimate mission of higher education and an essential aspect of its core curricula. Five dimensions of the personal and social responsibility model as articulated by the Association of American College and Universities are the following: 1. Striving for excellence: Developing a strong work ethic and consciously doing one’s very best in all aspects of college. 2. Cultivating academic integrity: Recognizing and acting on a sense of honor, ranging from honesty, fairness, and respect for others and their work to engaging with a formal academic honor code. 3. Contributing to a larger community: Recognizing and acting on one’s responsibility to the educational community and the wider society, locally, nationally, and globally.



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4. Taking seriously the perspectives of others: Recognizing and acting on the obligation to inform one’s own judgment; engaging diverse and competing perspectives as a resource for learning, citizenship, and work. 5. Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning and action: Developing ethical and moral reasoning in ways that incorporate the other four dimensions; using such reasoning in learning and in life. (Reason 2013: 41) One educational model that can offer guidelines for providing these opportunities is service-learning. In fact, James is described by many as the intellectual forefather of the concept of service-learning as a result of his authorship of “Moral Equivalent of War” and its call for young people to engage in national service. Service-learning is a type of practical education that focuses on human, community, and/or ecological needs and provides fundamental benefits to the service recipients (Rocheleau 2004: 14).9 One of its goals concerns achieving a balance between learning and community outcomes, and it is based on the principle that deep learning includes the experience itself, critical reflection about the experience, and intentional outcomes—all elements that James and Aristotle would support. Engaging in service-learning in the humanities is an educational practice in which students can explore the meaning of the concept human being, while observing and pondering myriad human experiences, perspectives, and conflicting interpretations (Jacoby 2015: 47), a fundamental learning goal to which James and Aristotle attest. Specifically, the integration of service-learning with literary studies can provide opportunities for students—among other things—to evaluate arbitrary cultural/social norms and categorizations—the metaphorical “wrappings” to which James refers—and to create ways to address injustice and other social ills that such biased perceptions engender. Through their readings and activism, students encounter multicultural perspectives that expose the privileged and the marginalized and demonstrate the importance of respect for difference; they apply critical analysis to determine how literature contrasts, enriches, and/or mirrors real-life experience. Engaging the literary and the theoretical combined with the practical opens up new horizons of possibilities that students can envision for improving the lives of both human and non-human creatures and the societies and habitats in which they live (Grobman and Rosenberg 2015: loc 73–111, 448, 630). In order to see how this notion translates into actual student learning, it is helpful to note examples of how college faculty and staff have integrated service-learning and literary studies in their academic courses. One example is “Reliving and Remaking the Harlem Renaissance,” where undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke read selected texts of the Harlem Renaissance to gain an understanding and appreciation of how literature addressed issues of social justice at that time (Hicks 2015: loc

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1514–729). Their service-learning experience involved the organization of writing workshops where students provided tutoring and guidance for community youth and later published their works in a literary magazine. Another example is “Sustainable Harvests: Food Justice, Service Learning, and Environmental Justice Pedagogy” at Drew University (Wald 2015: loc 4106–306). Students met with Spanish-speaking farmworkers and later compared and contrasted what they had learned from their conversations and the literary depictions that they had read of the plights of food laborers. By means of literary study and service-learning, they increased their understanding of the social and political circumstances that influence the production and distribution of food to US consumers. The students organized groups to promote outreach materials for an organization of farmworkers to use in helping communities and individuals to understand the social injustice issues concerned with poverty and food production. Both types of service-learning experiences demand that students develop a critical sense for what traits characterize worthy moral leaders as they assume leadership roles in helping to make positive differences in the lives of others while dealing with the conflicts and obstacles that call for them to apply the active virtues. Such experiences help students to understand their roles as citizens (Grobman and Rosenberg 2015: loc 407), and, as a consequence, are likely to influence the type of life goals or ideals they want to pursue. THE VALUE OF WISE DECISION-MAKING Although moral education is usually regarded as necessary to bring about socially advantageous results in a given culture, its pernicious potential is obvious. Because its purpose is to cultivate in youth specific values and train young people to behave in certain ways, it cannot be regarded as neutral (Pritchard 1988: 475). It has the capacity to proselytize destructive beliefs and practices on an enormous scale. As a form of “socialization,” character education can be harmful indoctrination when its intention is to transmit “contestable” values to students without providing them the means to evaluate these values critically (Pritchard 1988: 477). For both James and Aristotle, children are in need of authority and outwardly imposed training regarding habits and beliefs, but as they mature, proper instruction focuses increasingly on the need for young people to learn to make decisions for themselves. In order for that to happen, they must acquire through experience and guidance a critical sense, the proper ideals, and the necessary habits that both thinkers say are necessary elements of character education that can foster wisdom needed for citizens and their leaders to flourish in a society—a society that cannot flourish itself without such wisdom.



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NOTES 1. James discusses in his diary (1987b: 678) the Radcliff address that was later published as SVCB. 2. Though James does not point out in this essay ways universities can become corrupt, he mentions these ways in other works, such as A Pluralistic Universe (1977d: 12–14), “The PhD Octopus” (1987c); and “The True Harvard” (1987f). 3. James reflects his culture’s gender bias of the time in this phrase. 4. Not forcing our judgments on others is a common theme of James (1977c; 1977e). 5. The dangers of uncontrolled emotions is a primary theme of SVCB (1987e). 6. The hiddenness of the self is a common theme of James (1977c; 1977e). 7. In other works, James condemns the focus on outward labels (1987c; 1987e; 1977c). 8. The number denotes percentage of population of 25 years old or older. 9. Jacoby (2015: 1–3) notes ways that service-learning differs from civic engagement and community service.

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James. 1995b. Letter to Thomas Wren Ward, 24 May 1868. In The Correspondence of William James, Volume 4: 1856–1877, edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, 304–11. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. James. 1996. Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy. Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press. Keeling, Richard P., and Richard H. Hersh. 2011. We’re Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Palmer, George Herbert. 1996. “William James.” In William James Remembered, edited by Linda Simon, 30–35, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Pritchard, Ivor. 1988. “Character Education: Research Prospects and Problems.” American Journal of Education 96(4): 469–95. Reason, Robert D. 2013. “Creating and Assessing Campus Climates that Support Personal and Social Responsibility.” Liberal Education 99(1): 38–43. Richardson, Robert D. 2006. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rocheleau, Jody. 2004. “Theoretical Roots of Service Learning: Progressive Education and the Development of Citizenship.” In Service-learning: History, Theory, and Issues, edited by Bruce W. Speck and Sherry Lee Hoppe, 3–21. Westport, CT: Praeger. Simon, Linda. 1998. Genuine Reality: A Life of William James. New York: Harcourt Brace. Wald, Sarah D. 2015. “Sustainable Harvests: Food Justice, Service Learning, and Environmental Justice Pedagogy.” In Service Learning and Literary Studies, edited by Laurie Grobman and Roberta Rosenberg, 4106–306. New York: Modern Language Association of America, Kindle edition. Wattenberg, Ben J., Louis Hicks, and Theodore Caplow. 2000. The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000. Washington, DC: AEI Press.

Chapter 23

Is War Evil? Reflections on William James’s “The Moral Equivalent of War” David L. O’Hara

This chapter is about war and how to look at it through the lens of William James’s philosophy. In looking at James’s view of war, one question that arises is whether war is evil and what that might mean. For James, the question of evil is not strictly a metaphysical question. The way James thinks about evil touches on his metaphysics, but for James evil is primarily a matter of ethics. In simpler terms, James is not as concerned with the nature of evil as he is concerned with what we do about it. My approach will be to sketch a picture of James’s pragmatism, to talk about James’s view of evil, to turn to his essay “The Moral Equivalent of War,” and to raise a few questions about the applicability of James’s idea of war. My conclusion will focus on James’s virtue ethics as it applies to drone warfare. I will not make suggestions for policymaking but, as is fitting to James’s virtue ethics, soul-making and the repair of the world. KEROUAC’S GUN I approach this topic from an oblique angle, by offering a short passage from Jack Kerouac’s semi-autobiography, On the Road. Kerouac (or rather, his persona Salvatore Paradise) was in San Francisco, and his friend Rémy had found him a job as a security guard and loaned him a handgun for his work. Kerouac describes what it was like having the gun in his pocket: Meanwhile I began going to Frisco more often; I tried everything in the books to make a girl. I even spent a whole night with a girl on a park bench, till dawn, without success. She was a blonde from Minnesota. There were plenty of queers. Several times I went to San Fran with my gun and when a queer 387

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approached me in a bar john I took out the gun and said “Eh? Eh” What’s that you say?” He bolted. I’ve never understood why I did that; I knew queers all over the country. It was just the loneliness of San Francisco and the fact that I had a gun. I had to show it to someone. I walked by a jewelry store and had the sudden impulse to shoot up the window, take out the finest rings and bracelets, and run to give them to Lee Ann. Then we could flee to Nevada together. The time was coming for me to leave Frisco or I’d go crazy. (Kerouac 1991: 73)

Putting aside the literary disputes about how Kerouac wrote his text, this passage helpfully runs together a number of important and confusing elements of human life—especially desire for intimacy and fear of strangers. Kerouac had at this point done military service, so guns were not unfamiliar to him, but this is the first time he has had a gun at his disposal for personal reasons. The presence of the gun changes the world for him. I offer this passage because I conclude by thinking about another kind of weapon, UAVs or drones. Like Kerouac’s gun, drones are in one sense neutral; yet, in another sense they are new for us: a tool at our disposal that offers us a new opportunity for reflection on ethics in war. They are devices that hold the potential to change us, perhaps without our noticing the change, just as for Kerouac, the presence of this new thing in a charged environment brought him to make decisions that were born out of a somatic reality and only later to reflect on them. My hope is that by thinking with William James about the way our bodies and our decisions are related, we might prepare ourselves to make more reflective and better decisions. JAMES’S PRAGMATISM Pragmatism may be thought about as anti-Cartesianism; as the continuation of the American tradition of Transcendentalism; as an embrace of science combined with a rejection of scientism. Peirce outlined some of the basic doctrines of pragmatism in a series of articles in 1877–1878 entitled “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” and in an early paper, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.” James later popularized the name. James wrote, in his book Pragmatism, “A glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word pragma, meaning action, from which our words ‘practice’ and ‘practical’ come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878 . . . . It lay entirely unnoticed by anyone for twenty years, until I, in an address . . . at the University of California, brought it forward again and made a special application of it to religion” (James 1947: 199–200).



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As Peirce first conceived it, pragmatism was a rejection of Cartesianism within the discipline of epistemology. As a theory of inquiry, pragmatism does not aim at producing certainty. Rather, it espouses a phenomenological approach that is akin to the methods of the natural sciences, aiming to discover the meaning of terms through an examination of the functions and consequences of things. In an article Peirce published in 1878, Peirce described what he called the “Pragmatic Maxim”: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (Peirce 1992: 132). By focusing on our conceptions of the practical effects of objects, pragmatists chart a course between the extremes of essentialism and relativism, between the belief that things have a perfect and perfectly knowable essence, and the belief that things are simply what we make them to be. If the strict essences of things turn out to be inaccessible to us, pragmatism nevertheless offers a means of understanding those things without despairing of understanding real relationships between things that do not depend exclusively on our whims. Pragmatism takes a similar approach to ethics. In the absence of objective and certain ethical principles, pragmatism adopts a fallibilistic and experimental approach to determining rules for ethical conduct. Pragmatism does not expect to arrive at final and incorrigible propositions about the world, but neither does it lack hope that progress can be made and that lives can be improved by communal inquiry and research. In general, pragmatists understand inquiry as transactional, rejecting theories of knowledge that regard a mind as a blank slate, and wherein the learner is, as Dewey put it, a mere “spectator” of nature. Pragmatism eschews skepticism, especially Descartes’s skepticism: what Peirce calls mere “paper doubts.” For example, when the skeptic claims to doubt her own existence for the sake of experiment, while in fact she does not really doubt it. Like Peirce and the Transcendentalists before him, James attends closely to experience and takes it as his starting point for his philosophy, trusting that experience does not need a complicated introduction or justification before we take it seriously. Earlier modern philosophers found themselves deeply concerned with grounding experience in reliable a priori metaphysics. In a sense, the pragmatists reverse this relationship. Rather than seeking the basis of experience in metaphysics, experience can provide us with sufficient knowledge of any metaphysics we may need in order to begin to conduct our affairs. This is not a doctrine of certainty, but a doctrine of action, and it means that out metaphysics must wind up being developmental—growing as our experience of the world grows.

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James was not trained as a philosopher but as a physician, and he devoted much of his career to psychology. His first published book was his twovolume Principles of Psychology, which has become one of the foundational texts in pragmatist philosophy. Among the most prominent features of James’s thought are an epistemic commitment to “radical empiricism,” melioristic ethics, and pluralism in metaphysics. For James, our experiences are neither atoms of sensation nor mere sensation for that matter. Our experience comes not as a string of data points but as a continuous stream of thought: sensations and relations and vagueness all together, one thing blending into the next without seams. Radical empiricism holds that “the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience” (James 1909: 1). Beginning with experience is part of what leads us to pluralism. Pluralism, for James, is a matter of accepting the world as it comes to us, without insisting that something more than is given ties it all into a neat whole. Finally, James’s meliorism is the doctrine that we can and should attempt to make the world better. We experience both good and evil in the world, and we have reason to believe ourselves effective agents of change. It is reasonable to believe then that we may effect at least some of the good we wish to see, and to eliminate at least some of the evil we wish to see removed. This word “meliorism” is from the Latin melior, “better.” It is not optimism or a sense of inevitable human progress but neither is it pessimism; James sees no reason to suppose either good or evil must reign. Rather, he sees the real possibility that our efforts to correct evil may be at least partly efficacious. JAMES’S THEORY OF EVIL Unlike earlier philosophers of religion who attempt to explain evil on metaphysical grounds, James’s approach to evil is empirical. The theme of evil shows up throughout James’s work, from his early Principles of Psychology to his posthumous Some Problems in Philosophy. James frequently wrote for popular audiences, and he thought philosophy was vitally important and relevant for everyone—not merely for academics. This means that philosophy must address problems that matter to everyone. Evil is inescapably one such problem. As he wrote in Varieties of Religious Experience, “Evil facts are a genuine portion of reality” and should not be ignored by any philosophical system (James 1985: 136).1 His approach to evil is akin to a physician’s approach to illness; as James’s biographer, Ralph Barton Perry, put it, James was “too sensitive to ignore evil, too moral to tolerate it, and too ardent to accept it as inevitable” (Perry 1996: 122). We need not know the reason why people suffer before we



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acknowledge that their suffering is real and attempt to provide some relief. Even if we cannot give a full account of why there should be evil at all, we may observe its symptoms and discover treatments.2 James gives an account of evil in his masterwork, The Principles of Psychology. The empiricist does not begin with trying to explain how evil could be in the world or exactly what its nature might be but with our experience of evil. In the simplest terms, we infer evil through our emotions—which are, in turn, dependent upon our bodily states. Since our bodily states are responses to the world, our knowledge of evil arises from facts as we experience them bodily. This does not make evil wholly dependent on the individual. We share inherited organic similarities, and to some degree our knowledge of evil arises from these inheritances—the genetic history of our species. James writes about the human brain: The hemispheres would then seem to be the seat of memory. Vestiges of past experience must in some way be stored up in them, and must, when aroused by present stimuli, first appear as representations of distant goods and evils; and then must discharge into the appropriate motor channels for warding off the evil and securing the benefits of the good. (James 1950: I.20)

The job for the psychologist involves reflecting on fear as a response to evil facts. The job for all of us is to join in these reflections and arrange the world as to minimize loathsome experiences. Reflection is necessary to prevent our mistaking repugnance for knowledge. Fear may be revelatory but only through careful reflection does it yield its full revelation. WAR IN JAMES Let me turn now to the question of war. One of the last essays James wrote offers a good illustration of James’s mature thought about evil. This essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” begins with a sharp insight about war— namely that it is both horrible and attractive to us. Invoking the memory of the Civil War, James writes this: There is something highly paradoxical in the modern man’s relation to war. Ask all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have the war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would

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be willing in cold blood, to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. (James 1971: 3)

Although James was a committed pacifist, his essay is not a simple condemnation of war. As he puts it, “Pacifist though I am, I will refuse to speak of the bestial side of the war-régime . . . and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment” (James 1971: 6). By “the higher aspects,” James means that he intends to examine the psychology of our experience as it grows. Our experience indicates that we have a vital need for something that war provides, for a strenuous life. The problem is that we have failed so far “to realize the full inwardness of the situation” and to revise our beliefs accordingly (James 1971: 10). The “full inwardness of the situation” is that war is not inevitable as a natural or ideal fact, but we inherit from our ancestors both a deeply ingrained pugnacity and a love of glory. Militarists understand this instinctively, and recognize that a world without militarism would be “a cattleyard of a planet!” James is sympathetic to the militarist’s belief that the horrors of war are “a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-education . . . of ‘consumer’s leagues’ and ‘associated charities,’ of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed” (James 1971: 7).3 What pacifists fail to recognize is that the strenuous, military life is itself good, not evil: 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 . . . . The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters in stock—of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection—so that Roosevelt’s weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face of nature. (James 1971: 7)

Military life provides one of the few places where people advance in rank for thinking of the community first rather than thinking of themselves. Perhaps this is why James says, “The martial virtues . . . are absolute and permanent human goods” (James 1971: 12). Nevertheless, James is also sympathetic with the preachers of perpetual peace. His study aims to correct their misguided belief that reason or faith alone will free us from the horrors and evils of war. Our inherited drives are too deeply seated and cannot be simply ignored or disavowed. James invokes the story of the Melian dialogue from Thucydides. The Melians and the Athenians do not lack reasonableness; they are both eminently reasonable.



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And they do not lack piety; as the Athenians remind the Melians, the gods themselves rule where they will, and the Athenians have inherited this from the gods themselves, so they do not expect to be condemned by the gods for destroying Melos. Militarists are not without piety; indeed, James says, they regard military service as a sacrament. We need not look far to see that this view has changed very little a century later. If reason or religion cannot save us from our inherited nature, what can? James’s reply is that we will need something like a combination of religion and reason—that is, we will need to adopt a kind of thoughtful utopian ideal. This is not a new idea, of course. Kant offered a utopian ideal as well, and some of his ideas have met with success: international commerce, communication between heads of state, and international political forums all have their place in peacemaking. As James acknowledges, we have substituted commerce and the preparation for war for war itself, since they provide other opportunities for “the strong life” (James 1971: 4). But these are at best weak and unreflective substitutes for war. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that ‘peace’ and ‘war’ mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may even be reasonably said that the intensely sharp competitive preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the ‘peace’ interval. (James 1971: 6)

If we are to make serious headway in changing this state of affairs, then we must permit ourselves to examine our psychological need for the strong life and then deliberately create social structures that satisfy that need in constructive and healthy ways. Along with that, we must cast off the groundless fatalism that says we will always have war. Through the adoption of a more fruitful and melioristic belief in human freedom we may be able to develop a “moral equivalent of war.” James confesses this is a utopian vision, but he also believes that it is at least possible to improve ourselves—enlisting our energies in social projects that imitate the strenuous life of militarism while working for the common good. Our concern with the evils of war provides us with an opportunity for self-examination and for improvement of the human condition. The problem with Kant’s solution to war is that it looks for salvation to come from reasonable social structures. James recognizes that what is necessary is not a top-down social change but the transformation of the imaginations of individuals. When we believe that war is inevitable, this belief shapes our actions and our attitudes.4 James puts it like this:

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Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead back to two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one aesthetic, and the other moral; unwillingness, first, to envisage a future in which army-life, with its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in which the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided quickly, thrillingly, and tragically, by force, but only gradually and insipidly by ‘evolution’; and, secondly, unillingness to see the supreme theatre of human strenuousness closed, and the splendid military aptitudes of men doomed to keep always in a state of latency and never show themselves in action. (James 1971: 9–10)

What we need is, first of all, an education that broadens our imagination through the study of biographical history—expanding our sense of what is possible through the stories of others’ lives.5 Secondly, we need a new kind of militarism: “This is my idea . . . 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 . . . . [So] the [social] injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would follow. (James 1971: 13)

James’s new militarism would preserve the strenuous elements and give us a way to exercise our pugnacity and love of glory by addressing our energies to natural obstacles to human flourishing. IS JAMES’S “MORAL EQUIVALENT” VIABLE? Is war evil, for James? Violent war brings about evils, but the drives that lead us to war may be redirected melioristically to bring great good. President Kennedy’s Peace Corps owes some debt to James’s ideas in “The Moral Equivalent of War.” I say, “some debt” because plainly the Peace Corps is not exactly what James had in mind, however laudable it may be. It is too small scale, too focused on only a few people. What James envisioned was not merely a moral alternative of war for those who were uncomfortable with war. James’s meliorism is not merely a longing for plural opportunities but for a transformation of cultural imagination, a redirecting of our cultural and national trajectory, a strong voice to write a new chapter in our national autobiography—one not merely determined by our nation’s formative years. James wants to provoke us to imagine a world in which the peace corps is the desirable option for our most militaristic youth, the place where our Achilleses yearn to go and serve. James’s vision is more like that of the Inca institution of the mita, in which everyone participated for the common good, giving up a portion of their



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youth not to military service but to peaceful public service. Of course, the mita is itself a cautionary tale; it can be abused by private interests. The story of the mita makes me think that James was too sanguine in his hopes for the transformation of our militaristic drives; but perhaps he would just call this a failure of imagination on my part. “The Moral Equivalent of War” might be helpful as a way of providing moral vision and imagination. James’s ethic may not be the best basis for policy—though we should not rule that out—but appeals to the individual are strong. What you imagine and enact with your life has the possibility of becoming a new way of life for others. James describes the visionary as a prophet and so entices us to become the visionary. His appeal is for each of us to be imaginative, to be visionary, and to change the world. In other words, your vision of the way things could be, your meliorism, can underwrite real change in the world. My final point concerns the recent use of drones (UAVs) within warfare. The language we use to describe the use of UAVs for delivering targeted lethal force has been criticized as dehumanizing of our enemies. William Saletan argued in Slate that drones save lives because the number of noncombatants killed in airstrikes has decreased as drone strikes have replaced the use of heavier munitions. Cornel West claims, however, that they are responsible for the murders of hundreds of children killed alongside suspected militants. A person cannot surrender to a drone, or reason with it, or beg for mercy; all of these are ethical issues in warfare. There are (at least) two serious issues with drone strikes. First, we seem to be especially concerned these days with the question of whether drones can be used against Americans. This is not the first time our government has had recourse to deadly weaponry or to flying weapons. I suspect that there is something that troubles us about the nature of the drone itself. Perhaps General McChrystal’s comments about the way drones make us hated around the world comes from the same source: a bodily reaction to the thought of an inescapable enemy. Our bodies react to that, and we feel it as fear. That fear is our sign, James says, of evil. This does not mean drones are evil, but it means we need to raise ethical questions about drones—especially if we take seriously our inherited idea that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It may be that what we are responding to there has very little to do with the threat of death and very much to do with repugnance at being constantly under someone else’s watchful gaze. The second issue is the question of what happens on the other end of the drone: to the so-called pilot. If we apply James’s ideas about war to the use of drone warfare, it seems like the drone pilot is given considerable stress without much opportunity to exercise what James understands to be the military virtues.

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I began with an anecdote from Kerouac. Given what James says about the importance of stories for shaping our imagination, let me end with another story: this one from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, his prescient novel about conflict in Viet Nam. Fowler, the protagonist, is talking with a French fighter pilot, Trouin, who has just come back from a mission where he had to strafe the enemy with his machine guns: Trouin said, ‘Today’s affair—that is not the worst for someone like myself. Over the village they could have shot us down. Our risk was as great as theirs. What I detest is napalm bombing. From three thousand feet, in safety.’ He made a hopeless gesture. ‘You see the forest catching fire. God knows what you would see from the ground. The poor devils are burned alive, the flames go over them like water. They are wet through with fire.’ He said with anger against a whole world that didn’t understand . . . . ‘We are fighting all of your wars, but you leave us the guilt.’ (Greene 1992: 196–197)

This distance we have created for ourselves is something we ought to be concerned about. Drones are not evil per se but, perhaps like Kerouac’s gun, the environment and tools we create open up new possibilities for us and shape who we are. Trouin hates the weapon he has been given because it gives the enemy no chance to fight back—exposes him to no risk. This makes virtue impossible for Trouin. He feels in his own body the horror that his enemies feel, and he is angry with those who send him to inflict it. It is hard to deny the goodness of how technology saves lives, but we should be concerned about the possibility that in saving lives we are at the same time making virtue harder to practice. NOTES 1. James’s own life provided him with ample opportunity to experience evil firsthand. James suffered from ill health throughout his life, including at least one major psychological crisis. He regarded his own experience of suffering to be typical of the human condition. 2. Because we all are forced to make philosophical decisions that affect the conduct of life, everyone is already engaged in philosophy, at least to some degree. 3. Interestingly, James echoes Thoreau on this point. Thoreau’s criticism of his culture in “Walking” is that we are deer who have become cattle, people who have left the vigorous and risky life for the safe and tame life of the cattleyard. 4. War fatalism, like religious fatalism, evinces a lack of imagination. 5. “It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself up” (James 1971: 13).



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BIBLIOGRAPHY Greene, Graham. 1992. The Quiet American.New York: Modern Library. James, William. 1947. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. James. 1950. Principles of Psychology: Two Volumes. New York: Dover Publications. James. 1971. Moral Equivalent of War and Other Essays and Selections from Some Problems in Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row. James. 1996. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Kerouac, Jack. 1991. On The Road. New York: Penguin Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1992. Reasoning and the Logic of Things. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Perry, Ralph Burton. 1996. The Thought and Character of William James. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Index

action(s), 7–12, 16–17, 21, 24–25, 40, 48, 57–59, 64–65, 70, 82, 89–90, 94–95, 101, 107–8, 112, 115, 129–33, 136–37, 146–48, 150, 154, 164–66, 170, 200, 207, 221, 223, 231–32, 234, 237–38, 241– 44, 252, 256–58, 260, 262, 265, 268, 270–77, 287, 297, 301, 303, 323, 325, 339, 345, 353, 356–58, 361, 366–77, 379, 381, 388–89, 393–94 ambiguity, 49, 201–2, 262, 307–8, 326 American Civil War, 93, 182–84, 391–92 American imperialism, 221, 228 American politics, 52, 221–35, 331, 394–95 anthropology, xvii, 184, 237 antiessentialism, 28 antifoundationalism, 28 anxiety, 6, 61, 231, 293–94, 340, 375 Aristotelianism, 35, 39–42, 78–83, 242, 252, 268–78, 365–83 asceticism, 49, 234, 239–41, 247, 255– 66, 277, 342–43, 378 atheism, 209, 298–303, 321, 349 authenticity, 81, 117 autonomy, 88, 256–60, 267, 271–72, 275, 325, 338–40, 343, 371

avarice, 263, 272 beauty, 64, 89, 100,190, 320, 354 the Book of Deuteronomy, 92 Buddhism, 265, 269 Cartesian rationalism, 76–77, 121, 227, 388–89 charity, 80, 231, 239, 241–42, 247, 252, 256, 278, 342–46 chastity, 39–40, 43, 237, 258–59, 266, 235 The Christian Reformation, 234, 337–40, 359–60 Christian Sacraments (Baptism, Eucharist), 155 Christian Scholasticism, xvi, 40, 80–81, 237–49, 269, 275–76 Christianity, 53, 73, 80–81, 92–93, 155, 183, 198–99, 234, 237–49, 252, 252, 256, 258–59, 264–66, 269– 70, 274–76, 291, 309, 314–15, 332, 335–40, 343–46, 359–60 compassion, 68, 81, 197–98, 269 The Compatibility Question, 120–36 Confucianism, 269–70 consequence(s), 3–6, 13, 22, 35, 49, 58, 60, 65, 91, 104, 106–8, 111–12, 122, 125, 130, 143, 151–52, 170, 399

400 Index

172, 183, 196, 232, 239, 255, 258, 279, 303, 342, 345–46, 350, 353, 360, 370–71, 379, 382, 389 consequentialism, xv, xx, 23, 110, 302, 371–72, 379 courage, xvi, 31, 74–76, 79–85, 146–50, 163–64, 232, 242, 252, 276–78, 294, 319, 324, 342, 370–71, 374, 378–80 cowardice, 79, 84, 146–47, 150, 374 Cries of the Wounded, xiv, 14, 16, 28, 32, 58, 89–96, 110, 151, 297–315, 358 cruelty, 75–78, 229, 289–90, 315 death/dying, xvi, 80, 102, 110, 166, 181–203, 213–14, 232, 271–72, 278, 292–93, 298–99, 304, 319, 343 deism, 325 democracy, 47–52, 80, 196–98, 214–15, 222–23, 230, 234–35, 258–60, 267–69, 281, 328, 365–79 deontology, xv–xvii, 12, 15–16, 26, 81, 188, 191, 252, 254, 268, 300, 302–3, 308–9, 312, 315, 393–94 despair, 116, 252, 294, 304, 342, 389 determinism, 101, 121–37, 162, 164–66, 171, 256–57, 290–300, 358 divided self, xx, 301–8 dogmatism, 24, 30–51, 56, 68, 75, 97– 98, 107, 112, 143, 145, 154–57, 143–57, 163–67, 176, 101–205, 208–11, 227, 302–3, 317–18, 327, 329–30, 343 doubt, 30–31, 67, 90–91, 144–45, 154– 57, 257, 259, 279, 327, 389 education, 232, 274, 365–86, 394 embodied appraisal theory, 14–15, 21–23 emotion, 3–34, 36, 39, 41–42, 124, 131, 133, 137, 138, 191, 226, 231, 255, 272, 290, 325–26, 343, 376, 377–78, 391

enactivism, 8, 12, 17 endurance, 31, 75, 78, 117, 232, 342, 370–71, 378–80 envy, 59, 84, 244–45 epistemology, 30–33, 55, 148, 151, 161, 168, 171, 193, 198, 205–13, 317– 24, 327–29, 333, 357, 389–90 the Epistle to Galatians, 337–38 the Epistle to Romans, 337–38 equality, 14, 47–53, 77, 81, 102, 105–6, 165, 175–76, 215, 223, 241, 267, 377, 379 eternalism, xv, 38–39, 164–68, 237–39, 244, 246–47, 256–58 eudaimonia, 374–77 evidentialism, xv, 143–58, 161, 193, 310, 317–18, 324–29, 169–76 evil, 31–32, 48, 91–95, 104, 117, 129, 164, 185–86, 200, 228, 231, 240, 293, 297–315, 321, 344, 351, 372, 379, 387–96 evolution/evolutionary theory, 11, 21–26, 36–37, 41–42, 95, 183–84, 197–98, 232–35, 395 evolutionary psychology, 3–4, 15 existentialism, 90, 200–203, 234–35, 261, 287–95, 299, 312–13, 319, 323, 327 experimentalism, 12, 13, 76, 110–11, 118, 154, 321–24, 330–33 fairness, 14, 380 faith, 14, 31, 80, 92, 94, 117–18, 141, 143–57, 161–62, 169, 175–77, 181–203, 247, 252, 317–33, 337– 38, 340, 342–46, 348–49, 356–58, 360–62, 392 fallibilism, 208, 227, 149–57, 201, 68, 332, 345, 389 fear and trembling, 5–7, 22, 109, 185– 86, 272, 303 freedom, 110, 155, 162, 164, 168, 171– 72, 175, 189, 121, 222, 239, 247, 257–59, 272, 290, 300, 348, 372, 377, 379, 393

Index

free will/freedom of the will, 112, 121– 39, 162, 259, 272, 314, 320 Freudian, 35, 275, 294 friendship, 39, 75, 144, 151–54, 242 generosity, 237, 243–44, 249 gluttony, 245, 247 God, 40, 43, 53, 90–95, 104–7, 114–18, 165, 183–87, 190–91, 197–203, 229, 237–44, 247, 265–69, 300, 301, 308–9, 315, 325–26, 337–62 God’s-eye perspective, 125 good humor, 75–76 goodness, 24–25, 30, 232–34, 247, 307–10, 340, 344, 396 good will, 75–76, 117, 177 the Gospel according to Luke, 244 the Gospel according to Mark, 244 the Gospel according to Matthew, 186, 244 greed, 84, 95, 245–47 habits, xiv, xvi, 7–8, 11, 13, 38, 40–43, 51, 56, 60, 93, 95, 148, 157, 161, 166, 231–32, 242, 297, 349, 360–83 happiness, 32, 41–42, 75, 82–84, 163– 64, 243–48, 291, 306, 343–45, 370, 374–78 healthy-minded, 147, 186, 270, 281, 306, 308, 311–12 hedonism, 16, 32, 99–100, 110, 240–41, 270–71, 343 Hegelian, 136, 288–89, 304, 309, 348–51 heroism, 68, 79–81, 85, 116, 197–98, 232–35, 251–82, 307, 308 higher education, 363–83 hope, 78–80, 115–16, 187, 190–91, 195, 201–3, 210, 214, 242, 247, 252, 278, 298, 304 humanism, 289–90, 320, 332 humility, 37, 73–84, 238, 248, 269 idealism, 51, 89–90, 199, 207–8, 291, 304, 309–10, 315, 320–21, 348–51, 356, 361

401

idolatry, 257 immortality, 179–204, 204–15 imperialism, 23, 221–26, 227–28, 234 impossibility, 121–39, 30–31, 66, 74, 188, 209–12, 255, 304, 320–21, 331, 341, 394, 396 individualism, 36–37, 47–48, 56–67, 78, 83, 93–97, 104–5, 161–77, 187, 190, 207, 233, 238–39, 279, 301–2, 307, 310, 317–18, 322, 342–50, 353, 366, 369–74, 393, 395 injustice, 48, 52, 60, 67–68, 75, 77–78, 84, 213, 331–32, 381, 394 insight, xv, xix, 3, 7, 14, 17, 21, 30, 50– 51, 60, 62, 64–65, 67, 69, 75–77, 79, 81–82, 89, 93, 94, 96, 171–72, 209, 214, 227, 237, 290, 292, 297, 319, 326, 331, 357–59, 362, 365, 374, 379–80 intention(s), xvi, 4, 13, 22, 31, 62, 80, 133–35, 138, 148, 225–26, 231, 234, 240, 273, 281–82 irrationality, 25, 80, 122–25, 129–30, 133–34, 158, 170, 197, 202, 205–15, 233–34, 318 jealousy, 38, 61, 65, 261 joy, 4, 18, 53, 61–62, 64, 66, 69, 74–75, 82–85, 117, 137, 199, 239, 241, 305, 369, 376, 378 judgment (aesthetic, moral, intellectual/ rational), xx, 7, 9–17, 38, 42, 57, 60–61, 77–78, 100–101, 105, 114, 122–25, 129–38, 147, 152, 164–66, 200, 213, 227–28, 237–38, 241, 253, 329, 344, 367–68, 379, 381 Jus ad Bellum, 266 justice, 14, 28, 77–78, 80–81, 98, 222, 224, 226, 231, 242, 344, 382 Kantian, xvii, 15–16, 26, 81, 188, 191, 252, 254, 268, 300, 303, 308–9, 312, 315, 393–94

402 Index

law, 24, 94, 105–8, 115, 143–45, 149, 151, 153, 194, 226, 229–33, 291, 303, 328, 331, 334, 337–38, 340, 373 legitimate foolishness, 182, 198–203 liberalism, 14, 53, 74, 77, 81, 156, 330 love (emotional, psychological), 7, 23, 31–32, 35–39, 41–42, 95, 152–54, 342 love (erotic, romantic), 40–41, 257–58, 271–72, 275–76 love (as a virtue), 42, 75, 81, 242–47 love of God, 237–40, 244, 247, 269–70 lust, 247, 337, 343 Marxism, 260 melancholy, 294, 306, 311–12 meliorism, 177, 304, 308, 321, 332, 340, 390, 394–95 mercy, 81, 186, 189, 395 The Metaphysical Club, 40–41 metaphysical sexual optimism, 35–36, 39–42 metaphysical sexual pessimism, 39–41 metaphysics, 3–4, 15–16, 91, 171, 181, 188–92, 201, 205–6, 209, 212, 214, 238–39, 269, 298–300, 313– 14, 320, 327, 348, 351, 353, 361, 381, 387–90 metaphysics of morals, 3, 15, 89–90, 123, 114–15, 117, 123, 191–93, 297–310, 321, 358, 351, 353–54 mind/body relationship, 3–18, 21–28, 206, 211, 388, 391, 395 mindfulness, 11, 379 modern empiricism, 12, 56, 258, 324 monism, 216, 298, 300–309, 321, 348–51 monomania, 16 moral ideals, 12–17, 24, 106–10, 198, 342, 345 moral imagination, 5, 11–12, 18, 348 natural law, 121, 126–28, 135–37, 227–28

naturalism, 4, 37, 186–87, 231, 361 necessitarianism, 126–28, 133, 138 novelty, 25–29, 65, 75, 84, 111, 354, 356, 358 overbeliefs, 14, 214, 317–33 overindulgence, 233–34, 260 pacifism, 392–94 patience, xvi, 37, 74–83, 197–98, 266, 280 Peace Corps, 394–95 perfection/perfectionism, 92, 99, 103, 107, 115–16, 198, 231, 222, 233–34, 248, 258, 277–82, 293, 305, 319, 321, 331, 337–38, 340–45, 351–52, 392 pessimism, 112, 123, 162, 185, 304–7, 310, 312, 321, 341, 390 philosopher (obligations, responsibilities, and role of the philosopher), 16, 37, 56–69, 89–118, 151, 207 phronēsis/practical wisdom, 339, 371, 373–74 Platonism, 4, 35, 90, 227, 275–70, 288, 352 pluralism, xv–xvi, 15, 47–48, 52, 55–57, 91–92, 113, 155–56, 177, 207–10, 246, 297–315, 317–33, 338, 340–46, 347–62, 390 poor, 47, 51, 84, 277–78 poverty, xvi, 68, 259–66, 272–78, 382 practical reason/practical reasoning, 3, 9, 132, 138, 300–301, 325–26, 329, 374 practice(s), 16, 50–51, 74, 147–48, 154, 164–68, 173, 222, 227–28, 256, 260, 264, 269, 274, 277, 353, 378, 381–82 pragma, 388 pragmatic method, 263, 295, 297–313, 320 pragmatism, xiii–xvii, xx, 8, 12, 15, 17, 28–29, 32, 47–48, 52, 79, 97–101, 116–18, 145–51, 161–66, 171,

Index

177, 215–16, 225–38, 242–49, 260–63, 266, 273, 287–89, 293, 295, 297–315, 317–34, 338–49, 361, 387–90 prudence, xx, 31, 78, 80–81, 116, 231, 242–44 Psalms, 89, 96 purity, 233–34, 239–41, 247, 279, 342, 346 radical empiricism, xiii, 47, 55–59, 63–66, 70, 205–16, 320–21, 332, 344, 348–53, 360–61, 390 recklessness, xv, 16, 79, 149–51, 157, 170, 374 regret, 111–12, 121–39, 199, 280 religion, xv, 7, 14, 28, 31, 37, 48, 53, 62, 73, 80, 82–83, 85, 89–96, 98–99, 114–18, 143–60, 161–77, 181–203, 214–15, 223, 230–31, 233, 237–49, 251–81, 291, 293, 297–313, 317–34, 337–46, 348– 49, 353, 359–61, 393 religious belief, xv, 14, 28, 31, 80, 143– 60, 161–77, 183–93, 198–203, 214, 318–22, 324–25, 339, 345 religious experience, 7, 98, 200–203, 251, 274, 320, 337, 346 religious faith, 31, 73, 117, 144, 151, 155, 181, 193, 200, 319, 323, 325, 331 republic, 105–6, 114, 118, 156, 175–76, 224, 329–30 republicanism, 222–25 reverence, 74–76, 83, 101–2, 197, 319, 348, 359 rightness, xx, 13, 21–25, 40, 65, 94,107, 109, 156, 226, 302–4, 347–48, 354, 358, 359, 370–75, 378 Roman Catholicism, 155–56, 226, 258–59, 360 saintliness, 23, 233–35, 237–49, 251–82, 338, 342–46 self, 4–11, 38–39, 93–94, 117–18, 162– 68, 172–77, 184–203, 237–49, 251–58, 268–70, 281, 288–89,

403

307–9, 325, 338–46, 355–56, 359, 369 self-awareness, 7–11, 30–31, 49, 183–86, 292, 294 selfish/selfishness, 238, 245, 278 self-preservation, 184 sentimentalism, 4–5, 12–17, 76, 82, 84, 191, 273–74 the Sermon on the Mount, 337 sex/sexuality, 35–43, 237, 240, 245, 275–76, 290 sick soul, 182–93, 252, 255, 270, 281, 299, 306–14 skepticism, 15–16, 29–31, 51, 93, 102– 4, 111, 116–17, 132, 155–57, 172, 302, 317–18, 324, 342–43, 389 sloth, 244–46 social constructionism, 6, 8, 11–17, 208 stoicism, xv, xvi, 32, 161–77, 255, 270–71 strength of soul, 239, 241, 247, 255–56, 279, 342 subjectivism, xvii, 17, 25, 102–3, 122–23, 205–6, 237–38, 293, 323 suffering, 16, 58, 68, 75, 87–79, 84, 94, 115–16, 164–65, 184, 197–98, 200–201, 205, 224, 229–30, 234, 265, 272, 287–95, 298, 310–14, 321, 343, 353, 390–91, 396 supernatural virtue/theological virtue, 242–49, 256 sympathy, 16, 18, 60, 75–76, 81, 103, 185, 197–98, 213–14, 231, 304, 314, 345, 358–60 teleological suspension of the ethical, 319 teleology, 36–37, 40–42, 207, 319 temperance, xv, 35, 40, 80, 231, 240, 242, 247, 249 tenderness, 233–34, 241, 255–56, 279, 341 terror, 184–86, 319 theism, 97, 114–15, 207, 298, 300–303, 309–10, 314–15, 320–21, 325, 332, 341–42, 349, 361

404 Index

theology, xvi, 40, 43, 92–95, 114–18, 235–47, 252, 269, 305–6, 309–10, 324–26, 332, 340–44 Thomism, 40, 80–81, 227–78, 237–49, 252, 269, 276, 278, 280, 287 tolerance, 31, 51, 58, 60, 62, 73–84, 155–57, 175, 210–11, 213, 324 tragedy, 58, 111–12, 116–17, 157–58, 184, 186–87, 198, 241, 310–13 transcendentalism, 28, 61–62, 80, 111–12, 116–17, 157–58, 184, 186–87, 198, 241, 291–94, 310–13, 315, 320, 362, 388–89 truth, 10, 24, 28–31, 47–51, 53, 56, 69– 70, 75, 90–97, 103–4, 111, 116, 127–37, 145–55, 169–75, 190, 203, 210, 243, 245, 249, 270, 274, 297, 301–9, 317–18, 323–24, 328, 331, 333, 339, 341, 357–58 uncertainty, xiii, 22, 25, 77, 209, 318, 323–24 utilitarianism, xiii, xv–xvi, xx, 12–13, 16, 23, 32 93–95, 97–100, 102,

106, 110, 112, 116, 118, 228, 240–41, 302–3, 322–25, 329–30, 332–33, 371–72 vagueness, 95, 192–93, 201–2, 262, 298, 390 vicious intellectualism, 82, 341, 351 virtue theory, xiii–xix, 17, 35–42, 73– 85, 97–98, 173, 231–35, 237–49, 251–82, 302, 330, 343–46, 365– 83, 387, 392, 394–96 voluntary poverty, 233–34, 240, 251–80 war/warcraft/warfare, xvi, 84, 117, 143–58, 161–77, 181–203, 221–35, 252, 318–19 warrior, 221–35 Will-to-Believe, xv, 84, 117, 143–58, 161–77, 181–203, 252, 318–19 wisdom, xvi, xix, 14–15, 78, 80–81, 107–8, 144, 169–70, 263, 330, 339, 347, 365–85

About the Contributors

Scott F. Aikin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He writes on American Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, and epistemology. Ermine L. Algaier IV is the Managing Editor of William James Studies and Secretary of the William James Society. He teaches Philosophy and Religious Studies as an adjunct instructor at University of Massachusetts—Lowell. Guy Axtell is Chair of the Philosophy & Religious Studies Department at Radford University in Virginia. His published work includes a pragmatic pluralist reconstruction of concept of objectivity: Objectivity (Polity Press). Pamela C. Crosby, a National Milken Family Foundation Award Educator, has served as editor since 2004 of the Journal of College and Character, published by NASPA—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. She is a vice president on the Board of Directors of the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought and is a past associate editor of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy.  G. Scott Davis received his degrees from Bowdoin College and Princeton University. The author, most recently, of Believing and Acting: The Pragmatic Turn in Contemporary Religion and Ethics (Oxford University Press), he taught at Columbia University and Princeton University before becoming the Lewis T. Booker Professor of Religion and Ethics at the University of Richmond. Gregory Eiselein is Donnelly Professor of English and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Kansas State University. He is the author or editor of seven books on American literature and culture. 405

406

About the Contributors

Jacob L. Goodson earned his PhD from the University of Virginia where he concentrated on American philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of religion. He serves as the Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. D. Micah Hester, PhD, is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Pediatrics at University of Arkansas Medical School, as well as clinical ethicist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Joseph D. John is a PhD candidate in the philosophy department at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Anthony Karlin teaches online at Fort Hays State University. His areas of teaching include Bioethics, Political Philosophy, and Classical American Pragmatism. Amy Kittelstrom is Professor of History at Sonoma State University and the author of The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition (Penguin Press). Jaishikha Nautiyal is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, with a particular research focus on pragmatist aesthetics and affect theory. Her published work has appeared in journals such as The International Journal of Listening, Women’s Studies in Communication, and Education and Culture: A Journal of John Dewey Society. David L. O’Hara is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Classics, and Chair of the Department of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD. He teaches and writes on American philosophy, classical Greek philosophy, philosophy of religion, and environmental humanities. Sami Pihlström is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the President of the Philosophical Society of Finland. He has published widely on pragmatism, philosophy of religion, ethics, and metaphysics. Frederick J. Ruf is Associate Professor in the Theology Department at Georgetown University and author of three books: The Creation of Chaos: William James and the Stylistic Making of a Disorderly World



About the Contributors

407

(SUNY Press); Entangled Voices: Genre and the Construction of the Self (Oxford University Press); and Bewildered Travel: The Sacred Quest for Confusion (University of Virginia Press).  John R. Shook teaches science education and research ethics for the University at Buffalo’s EdM degree “Science and the Public.” He has published numerous books about American philosophy, including The Essential William James and Dewey’s Social Philosophy. Eric J. Silverman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Christopher Newport University. He has research interests in ethics, medieval philosophy, and philosophy of religion, and he published The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Lover with Lexington Books.  Gary S. Slater is trained in the logic and semiotics of the pragmatist philosopher C. S. Peirce, and he is interested in building from this base to examine pragmatism more broadly—especially its ethical dimensions. He is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. Scott R. Stroud earned his PhD in philosophy from Temple University where he specialized in American pragmatism. He is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin and author of John Dewey and the Artful Life (Pennsylvania State University Press) and Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric (Pennsylvania State University Press). Robert B. Talisse is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. His research is focused on topics at the intersection of epistemology and political philosophy. Neal A. Tognazzini is an associate professor of philosophy at Western Washington University, working primarily at the intersection of ethics and metaphysics on free will and moral responsibility. He received his PhD from the University of California, Riverside.  Seth Vannatta is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. He earned is PhD in Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2010, writes in the areas of American Pragmatism and philosophy of law, and is the author of Conservatism and Pragmatism in Law, Politics, and Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan).

408

About the Contributors

Roger Ward is Department Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown College in Kentucky. He is the author of Conversion in American Philosophy: Exploring the Practice of Transformation (Fordham University Press). Lee H. Yearley is the Walter Y. Evans-Wentz Professor of Oriental ­Philosophies, Religions, and Ethics in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University.